MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY,

Received
Accession No.

Given by
Place,

VNo book op pamphlet is to
oratory without the permiss8-

be removed from the Uab-
ion of the Trustees.

Branch Library, 426 Fifth Avenue.

ESTABLISHED BY EDWARD L. YOUMANS.

THE

POPTJLAK SCIENCE

donated ** s90Ca*t*»

,-jANTlLfi LIBRARY ASS

MONTHLY.

*

:

^ano^

EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS.

B-JWHMr9i

VOL. XXXVII.

MAY TO OCTOBER, 1890.

NEW YORK :

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

1, 3, and 5 BOND STREET.

u? "j

1890.

COPTBIGHT, 1S90,

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

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THE £_ )>

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

MAY, 1890.

EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS:*

THE MAN AND HIS ^VORK.

Br JOHN FISKE.

IN one of the most beautiful of all the shining pages of his His-
tory of the Spanish Conquest in America, Sir Arthur Helps
describes the way in which, through " some fitness of the season,
whether in great scientific discoveries or in the breaking into
light of some great moral cause, the same processes are going on
in many minds, and it seems as if they communicated with each
other invisibly. We may imagine that all good powers aid the
' new light/ and brave and wise thoughts about it float aloft in
the atmosphere of thought as downy seeds are borne over the
fruitful face of the earth " (vol. iii, page 113). The thinker who
elaborates a new system of philosophy deeper and more compre-
hensive than any yet known to mankind, though he may work
in solitude, nevertheless does not work alone. The very fact
which makes his great scheme of thought a success and not a
failure is the fact that it puts into definite and coherent shape
the ideas which many people are more or less vaguely and loosely
entertaining, and that it carries to a grand and triumphant con-
clusion processes of reasoning in which many persons have al-
ready begun taking the earlier steps. This community in mental
trend between the immortal discoverer and many of the brightest
contemporary minds, far from diminishing the originality of his
work, constitutes the feature of it which makes it a permanent
acquisition for mankind, and distinguishes it from the eccentric
philosophies which now and then come up to startle the world
for a while, and are presently discarded and forgotten. The his-

* An Address before the Brooklyn Ethical Association, March 23, 1890.

TOL. XXXVII. — 1

3176G

2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tory of modern physics — as in the case of the correlation of forces
and the undulatory theory of light — furnishes us with many in-
stances of wise thoughts floating like downy seeds in the atmos-
phere until the moment has come for them to take root. And so
it has been with the greatest achievement of modern thinking —
the doctrine of evolution. Students and investigators in all de-
partments, alike in the physical and in the historical sciences,
were fairly driven by the nature of the phenomena before them
into some hypothesis, more or less vague, of gradual and orderly
change or development. The world was ready and waiting for
Herbert Spencer's mighty work when it came, and it was for that
reason that it was so quickly triumphant over the old order of
thought. The victory has been so thorough, swift, and decisive
that it will take another generation to narrate the story of it so
as to do it full justice. Meanwhile, people's minds are apt to be
somewhat dazed with the rapidity and wholesale character of the
change ; and nothing is more common than to see them adopting
Mr. Spencer's ideas without recognizing them as his or knowing
whence they got them. As fast as Mr. Spencer could set forth
his generalizations they were taken hold of here and there by
special workers, each in his own department, and utilized therein.
His general system was at once seized, assimilated, and set forth
with new illustrations by serious thinkers who were already
groping in the regions of abstruse thought which the master's
vision pierced so clearly. And thus the doctrine of evolution has
come to be inseparably interfused with the whole mass of think-
ing in our day and generation. I do not mean to imply that peo-
ple commonly entertain very clear ideas about it, for clear ideas
are not altogether common. I suspect that a good many people
would hesitate if asked to state exactly what Newton's law of
gravitation is.

Among the men in America whose minds, between thirty and
forty years ago, were feeling their way toward some such unified
conception of nature as Mr. Spencer was about to set forth in all
its dazzling glory — among the men who were thus prepared to
grasp the doctrine of evolution at once and expound it with fresh
illustrations — the first in the field was the man to whose memory
we have met here this evening to pay a brief word of tribute. It
is but a little while since that noble face was here with us and the
tones of that kindly voice were fraught with good cheer for us.
To most of you, I presume, the man Edward Livingston Youmans
is still a familiar presence. There must be many here this even-
ing who listened to the tidings of his death two years ago with a
sense of personal bereavement. No one who knew him is likely
ever to forget him. But for those who remember distinctly
the man it may not be superfluous to recount the principal in-

EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS. 3

cidents of his life and work. It is desirable that the story
should be set forth concisely, so as to be remembered ; for the
work was like the man, unselfish and unobtrusive, and in the
hurry and complication of modern life such work is liable to be
lost from sight, so that people profit by it without knowing that
such work was ever done. So genuinely modest, so utterly desti-
tute of self -regarding impulses was our friend, that I believe it
would be quite like him to chide us for thus drawing public at-
tention to him, as he would think, with too much emphasis. But
such mild reproof it is right that we should disregard ; for the
memory of a life so beautiful and useful is a precious possession
of which mankind ought not to be deprived.

Edward Livingston Youmans was born in the town of
Coeymans, Albany County, N. Y., on the 3d of June, 1821. From
his father and mother, both of whom survived him, he inherited
strong traits of character as well as an immense fund of vital
energy, such that the failure of health a few years ago seemed (to
me, at least) surprising. His father, Vincent Youmans, was a
man of independent character, strong convictions, and perfect
moral courage, with a quick and ready tongue, in the use of which
earnestness and frankness perhaps sometimes prevailed over pru-
dence. The mother, Catherine Scofield, was notable for balance
of judgment, prudence, and tact. The mother's grandfather was
Irish ; and, while I very much doubt the soundness of the gener-
alizations we are so prone to make about race characteristics, I
can not but feel that for the impulsive — one had almost said ex-
plosive— warmth of sympathy, the enchanting grace and vivacity
of manner, in Edward Youmans, this strain of Irish blood may
have been to some extent accountable. Both father and mother
belonged to the old Puritan stock of New England, and the fa-
ther's ancestry was doubtless purely English. Nothing could be
more honorably or characteristically English than the name. In
the old feudal society the yeoman, like the franklin, was the small
freeholder, owning a modest estate yet holding it by no servile
tenure, a man of the common people yet no churl, a member of
the state who "knew his rights and knowing dared maintain."
Few indeed were the nooks and corners outside of merry England
where such men flourished as the yeomen and franklins who
founded democratic New England. It has often been remarked
how the most illustrious of Franklins exemplified the typical
virtues of his class. There was much that was similar in the tem-
perament and disposition of Edward Youmans — the sagacity and
penetration, the broad common sense, the earnest purpose veiled
but not hidden by the blithe humor, the devotion to ends of wide
practical value, the habit of making in the best sense the most out
of life.

4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

When Edward was but six months old, his parents moved to
Greenfield, near Saratoga Springs. With a comfortable house
and three acres of land, his father kept a wagon-shop and smithy.
In those days, while it was hard work to wring a subsistence out
of the soil or to prosper upon any of the vocations which rural
life permitted, there was doubtless more independence of charac-
ter and real shiftiness than in our time, when cities and tariffs
have so sapped the strength of the farming country. In the fam-
ily of Vincent Youmans, though rigid economy was practiced,
books were reckoned to a certain extent among the necessaries of
life, and the house was one in which neighbors were fond of gath-
ering to discuss questions of politics or theology, social reform or
improvements in agriculture. On all such questions Vincent
Youmans was apt to have ideas of his own ; he talked with enthu-
siasm, and was also ready to listen ; and he evidently supplied an
intellectual stimulus to the whole community. For a boy of
bright and inquisitive mind listening to such talk is no mean
source of education. It often goes much further than the reading
of books. From an early age Edward Youmans seems to have
appropriated all such means of instruction. He had that insa-
tiable thirst for knowledge which is one of God's best gifts to
man ; for he who is born with this appetite must needs be griev-
ously ill-made in other respects if it does not constrain him to
lead a happy and useful life.

After ten years at Greenfield the family moved to a farm at
Milton, some two miles distant. Until his sixteenth year Edward
helped his father at farm-work in the summer and attended the
district school in winter. It was his good fortune for some time
to fall into the hands of a teacher who had a genius for teaching
— a man who in those days of rote-learning did not care to have
things learned by heart, but sought to stimulate the thinking
powers of his pupils, and who in that age of canes and ferules
never found it necessary to use such means of discipline, because
the fear of displeasing him was of itself all-sufficient. Experience
of the methods of such a man was enough to sharpen one's dis-
gust for the excessive mechanism, the rigid and stupid manner of
teaching, which characterize the ordinary school. In after-years
Youmans used to say that " Uncle Good " — as this admirable ped-
agogue was called — first taught him what his mind was for.
Through intercourse and training of this sort he learned to doubt,
to test the soundness of opinions, to make original inquiries, and
to find and follow clews.

But even the best of teachers can effect but little unless he
finds a mind ready of itself to take the initiative. It is doubtful
if men of eminent ability are ever made so by schooling. The
school offers opportunities, but in such men the tendency to the

EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS. 5

initiative is so strong that if opportunities are not offered they
will somehow contrive to create them. When Edward Yonmans
was about thirteen years old he persuaded his father to buy him a
copy of Comstock's Natural Philosophy. This book he studied
at home by himself, and repeated many of the experiments with
apparatus of his own contriving. "When he made a centrifugal
water-wheel, and explained to the men and boys of the neighbor-
hood the principle of its revolution in a direction opposite to that
of the stream which moved it, we may regard it as his earliest at-
tempt at giving scientific lectures. It was natural that one who
had become interested in physics should wish to study chemistry.
The teacher (who was not " Uncle Good ") had never so much as
laid eyes on a text-book of chemistry ; but Edward was not to be
daunted by such trifles. A copy of Comstock's manual was pro-
cured, another pupil was found willing to join in the study, and
this class of two proceeded to learn what they could from reading
the book, while the teacher asked them the printed questions —
those questions the mere existence of which in text-books is apt to
show what a low view publishers take of the average intelligence
of teachers ! It was not a very hopeful way of studying such a
subject as chemistry ; but doubtless the time was not wasted, and
the foundations for a future knowledge of chemistry were laid.
The experience of farm-work which accompanied these studies ex-
plains the interest which in later years Mr. Youmans felt in agri-
cultural chemistry. He came to realize how crude and primitive
are our methods of making the earth yield its produce, and it was
his opinion that, when men have once learned how to conduct
agriculture upon sound scientific principles, farming will become
at once the most wholesome and the most attractive form of
human industry.

Along with the elementary studies in science there went a
great deal of miscellaneous reading, mostly, it would appear, of
good solid books. Apparently there was at that time no study of
languages, ancient or modern. At the age of seventeen the young
man had shown so much promise that it was decided he should
study law, and he had already entered upon a more extensive
course of preparation in an academy in Saratoga County when the
event occurred which changed the whole course of his life. He
had been naturally gifted with keen and accurate vision, was a
good sportsman and an excellent shot with a rifle, but at about
the age of thirteen there had come an attack of ophthalmia which
left the eyes weak and sensitive. Perpetual reading probably in-
creased the difficulty and hindered complete recovery. At the age
of seventeen violent inflammation set in, the sight in one eye was
completely lost, while in the other it grew so dim as to be of little
avail. Sometimes he would be just able to find his way about the

6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

streets, at other times the blindness was almost total, and this
state of things lasted for nearly thirteen years.

This dreadful calamity seemed to make it impossible to con-
tinue any systematic course of study, and the outlook for satis-
factory work of any sort was extremely discouraging. The first
necessity was medical assistance, and in quest of this Mr. You-
mans came in the autumn of 1839 to New York, where for the
most part he spent the remainder of his life. Until 1851 he was
under the care of an oculist. Under such circumstances, if a man
of eager energy and boundless intellectual craving were to be
overwhelmed with despondency, we could not call it strange. If
he were to become dependent upon friends for the means of sup-
port, it would be ungracious if not unjust to blame him. But
Edward Youmans was not made of the stuff that acquiesces in
defeat. He rose superior to calamity, he won the means of liveli-
hood, and in darkness entered upon the path to an enviable fame.
At first he had to resign himself to spending weary weeks over
tasks that with sound eye-sight could have been dispatched in as
many days. He invented some kind of writing-machine which held
his paper firmly and enabled his pen to follow straight lines at
proper distances apart. Long practice of this sort gave his hand-
writing a peculiar character which it retained in later years.
When I first saw it in 1863 it seemed almost undecipherable ; but
that was far from being the case, and, after I had grown used to
it, I found it but little less legible than the most beautiful chi-
rography. The strokes, gnarled and jagged as they were, had a
method in their madness, and every pithy sentence went straight
as an arrow to its mark.

While conquering these physical obstacles Mr. Youmans began
writing for the press, and gradually entered into relations with
leading newspapers which became more and more important and
useful as years went on. He became acquainted with Horace
Greeley, William Henry Channing, and other gentlemen who
were interested in social reforms. His sympathies were strongly
enlisted with the little party of abolitionists, then held in such
scornful disfavor by all other parties. He was also interested in
the party of temperance, which, as he and others were afterward
to learn, compounded for its essential uprightness of purpose by
indulging in very gross intemperance of speech and action. The
disinterestedness which always characterized him was illustrated
by his writing many articles for a temperance paper which could
not afford to pay its contributors, although he was struggling
with such disadvantages in earning his own livelihood and carry-
ing on his scientific studies. Those were days when leading re-
formers believed that by some cunningly contrived alteration of
social arrangements our human nature, with all its inheritance

EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS. 7

from countless ages of brutality, can somehow be made over all
in a moment, just as one would go to work with masons and car-
penters and revamp a house. There are many good people who
still labor under such a delusion.

Though Mr. Youmans was brought into frequent contact with
reformers of this sort, it does not seem to me that his mind was
ever deeply impressed with such ways of thinking. Science is
teaching us that the method of evolution is that mill of God, of
which we have heard, which, while it grinds with infinite efficacy,
yet grinds with wearisome slowness. It was Mr. Darwin's dis-
covery of natural selection which first brought this truth home
to us ; but Sir Charles Lyell had in 1830 shown how enormous
effects are wrought by the cumulative action of slight and unob-
trusive causes, and this had much to do with turning men's minds
toward some conception of evolution. It was about 1847 that Mr.
Youmans was deeply interested in the work of geologists, as well
as in the nebular theory, to which recent discoveries were adding
fresh confirmation. Some time before this he had read that fa-
mous book, Vestiges of Creation, and, although Prof. Agassiz truly
declared that it was an unscientific book crammed with antiquated
and exploded fancies, I suspect that Mr. Youmans felt that amid
all the chaff there was a very sound and sturdy kernel of truth.

Among the books which Mr. Youmans projected at this time,
the first was a compendious history of progress in discovery and
invention ; but, after he had made extensive preparations, a book
was published so similar in scope and treatment that he abandoned
the undertaking. Another work was a treatise on arithmetic, on
a new and philosophical plan ; but, when this was approaching
completion, he again found himself anticipated, this time by the
book of Horace Mann. This was discouraging enough, but a
third venture resulted in brilliant success. We have observed
the eagerness with which, as a school-boy, Mr. Youmans entered
upon the study of chemistry. His interest in this science grew
with years, and he devoted himself to it so far as was practicable.
For a blind man to carry on the study of a science which is pre-
eminently one of observation and experiment might seem hope-
less. It was at any rate absolutely necessary to see with the eyes
of others if not with his own. Here the assistance rendered
by his sister was invaluable. During most of this period she
served as amanuensis and reader for him. But, more than this,
she kept up for some time a course of laboratory work, the results
of which were minutely described to her brother and discussed
with him in the evenings. The lectures of Dr. John William
Draper on chemistry were also thoroughly discussed and pon-
dered.

The conditions under which Mr. Youmans worked made it

8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

necessary for him to consider every point with the extreme de-
liberation involved in framing distinct mental images of things
and processes which he conld not watch with the eye. It was
hard discipline, but he doubtless profited from it. Nature had
endowed him with an unusually clear head, but this enforced
method must have made it still clearer. One of the most notable
qualities of his mind was the absolute luminousness with which
he saw things and the relations among things. It was this quality
that made him so successful as an expounder of scientific truths.
In the course of his pondering over chemical facts which he was
obliged to take at second hand, it occurred to him that most of
the pupils in common schools who studied chemistry were practi-
cally no better off. It was easy enough for schools to buy text-
books, but difficult for them to provide laboratories and appara-
tus ; and it was much easier withal to find teachers who could ask
questions out of a book than those who could use apparatus if
provided. It was customary, therefore, to learn chemistry by
rote ; or, in other words, pupils' heads were crammed with unin-
telligible statements about things with queer names — such as
manganese or tellurium — which they had never seen, and would
not know if they were to see them. It occurred to Mr. Youmans
that, if visible processes could not be brought before pupils, at any
rate the fundamental conceptions of chemistry might be made
clear by means of diagrams. He began devising diagrams in dif-
ferent colors, to illustrate the diversity in the atomic weights of
the principal elements, and the composition of the more familiar
compounds. At length, by uniting his diagrams, he obtained a
comprehensive chart exhibiting the outlines of the whole scheme
of chemical combination according to the binary or dualist theory
then in vogue. This chart, when published, was a great success.
It not only facilitated the acquirement of clear ideas, but it was
suggestive of new ideas. It proved very popular, and kept the
field until the binary theory was overthrown by the modern doc-
trine of substitution, which does not lend itself so readily to
graphic treatment.

The success of the chemical chart led to the writing of a text-
book of chemistry. This laborious work was completed in 1851,
when Mr. Youmans was thirty years old. Prof. Silliman was
then regarded as one of our foremost authorities in chemistry,
but it was at once remarked of the new book that it showed quite
as thorough a mastery of the whole subject of chemical combina-
tion as Silliman's. It was a text-book of a kind far less common
then than now. There was nothing dry about it. The subject
was presented with beautiful clearness, in a most attractive style.
There was a firm grasp of the philosophical principles underlying
chemical phenomena, and the meaning and functions of the sci-

EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS. 9

ence were set forth, in such a way as to charm the student and
make him wish for more. The book had an immediate and
signal success ; in after-years it was twice rewritten by the au-
thor, to accommodate it to the rapid advances made by the sci-
ence, and it is still one of our best text-books of chemistry. It
has had a sale of about one hundred and fifty thousand copies.

The publication of this book at once established its author's
reputation as a scientific writer, and in another way it marked an
era in his life. The long, distressing period of darkness now came
to an end. Sight was so far recovered in one eye that it became
possible to go about freely, to read, to recognize friends, to travel,
and make much, of life. I am told that his face had acquired an
expression characteristic of the blind, but that expression was
afterward completely lost. When I knew. him it would never
have occurred to me that his sight was imperfect, except perhaps
as regards length of range.

Mr. Youmans's career as a scientific lecturer now began. His
first lecture was the beginning of a series on the relations of
organic life to the atmosphere. It was illustrated with chemical
apparatus, and was given in a private room in New York to an
audience which filled the room. Probably no lecturer ever faced
his first audience without some trepidation, and Mr. Youmans
had not the main-stay and refuge afforded by a manuscript, for
his sight was never good enough to make such an aid available
for his lectures. At first the right words were slow in finding
their way to those ready lips, and his friends were beginning to
grow anxious, when all at once a happy accident broke the spell.
He was remarking upon the characteristic instability of nitrogen,
and pointing to a jar of that gas on the table before him, when
some fidgety movement of his knocked the jar off the table. He
improved the occasion with one of his quaint bons mots, and, as
there is nothing that greases the wheels of life like a laugh, the
lecture went on to a successful close.

This was the beginning of a busy career of seventeen years of
lecturing, ending in 18G8 ; and I believe it is safe to say that few
things were done in all those years of more vital and lasting
benefit to the American people than this broadcast sowing of the
seeds of scientific thought in the lectures of Edward Youmans.
They came just at the time when the world was ripe for the doc-
trine of evolution, when all the wondrous significance of the
trend of scientific discovery since Newton's time was beginning
to burst upon men's minds. The work of Lyell in geology, fol-
lowed at length, in 1859 by the Darwinian theory ; the doctrine of
the correlation of forces and the consequent unity of nature ; the
extension and reformation of chemical theory ; the simultaneous
advance made in sociological inquiry, and in the conception of the

io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

true aims and proper methods of education — all this made the
period a most fruitful one for the peculiar work of such a teacher
as Youmans. The intellectual atmosphere was charged with con-
ceptions of evolution. Mr. Youmans had arrived at such concep-
tions in the course of his study of the separate lines of scientific
speculation which were now about to be summed up and organ-
ized by Herbert Spencer into that system of philosophy which
marks the highest point to which the progressive intelligence of
mankind has yet attained. In the field of scientific generaliza-
tion upon this great scale, Mr. Youmans was not an originator ;
but his broadly sympathetic and luminous mind moved on a
plane so near to that of the originators that he seized at once
upon the grand scheme of thought as it was developed, made it
his own, and brought to its interpretation and diffusion such a
happy combination of qualities as one seldom meets with. The
ordinary popularizer of great and novel truths is a man who
comprehends them but partially and illustrates them in a lame
and fragmentary way. But it was the peculiarity of Mr. You-
mans that, while on the one hand he could grasp the newest sci-
entific thought so surely and firmly that he seemed to have en-
tered into the innermost mind of its author, on the other hand he
could speak to the general public in a convincing and stimulat-
ing way that had no parallel. This was the secret of his power,
and there can be no question that his influence in educating the
American people to receive the doctrine of evolution was great
and wide-spread.

The years when Mr. Youmans was traveling and lecturing
were the years when the old lyceum system of popular lectures
was still in its vigor. The kind of life led by the energetic lect-
urer in those days was not that of a Sybarite, as may be seen from
a passage in one of his letters : " I lectured in Sandusky, and had
to get up at five o'clock to reach Elyria ; I had had but very little
sleep. To get from Elyria to Pittsburg I must take the five o'clock
morning train, and the hotel darkey said he would try to awaken
me. I knew what that meant, and so did not get a single wink of
sleep that night. Rode all day to Pittsburg, and had to lecture
in the great Academy of Music over foot-lights. . . . The train
that left for Zanesville departed at two in the morning. I had
been assured a hundred times (for I asked everybody I met) that
I would get a sleeping-car to Zanesville, and, when I was all
ready to start, I was informed that this morning there was no
sleeping-car. By the time I reached here I was pretty completely
used up."

Such a fatiguing life, however, has its compensations. It
brings the lecturer into friendly contact with the brightest minds
among his fellow-countrymen in many and many places, and en-

EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS. n

larges his sphere of influence in a way that is not easy to estimate.
Clearly an earnest lecturer, of commanding intelligence and
charming manner, with a great subject to teach, must have an op-
portunity for sowing seeds that will presently ripen in a change
of opinion or sentiment, in an altered way of looking at things
on the part of whole communities. No lecturer has ever had a
better opportunity of this sort than Edward Youmans, and none
ever made a better use of his opportunity. His gifts as a talker
were of the highest order. The commonest and plainest story, as
told by Edward Youmans, had all the breathless interest of the
most thrilling romance. Absolutely unconscious of himself, sim-
ple, straightforward, and vehement, wrapped up in his subject,
the very embodiment of faith and enthusiasm, of heartiness and
good cheer, it was delightful to hear him. . And when we join
with all this his unfailing common sense, his broad and kindly
view of men and things, and the delicious humor that kept flash-
ing out in quaint, pithy phrases such as no other man would
have thought of, and such as are the despair of any one trying
to remember and quote them, we can seem to imagine what a
power he must have been with his lectures.

When such a man goes about for seventeen years, teaching
scientific truths for which the world is ripe, we may be sure that
his work is great, albeit we have no standard whereby we can
exactly measure it. In hundreds of little towns with queer
names did this strong personality appear and make its way and
leave its effects in the shape of new thoughts, new questions, and
enlarged hospitality of mind, among the inhabitants. The results
of all this are surely visible to-day. In no part of the English
world has Herbert Spencer's philosophy met with such a general
and cordial reception as in the United States. This may, no
doubt, be largely explained by a reference to general causes ; but
as it is almost always necessary, along with our general causes, to
take into the account some personal influence, so it is in this case.
It is safe to say that among the agencies which during the past
fifty years have so remarkably broadened the mind of the Ameri-
can people, very few have been more potent than the gentle and
subtle but pervasive work done by Edward Youmans with his
lectures, and to this has been largely due the hospitable reception
of Herbert Spencer's ideas.

It was in 1856 that Mr. Youmans fell in with a review of Spen-
cer's Principles of Psychology, by Dr. Morell, in the Medico-
Chirurgical Review. This review impressed him so deeply that
he at once sent to London for a copy of the book, which had been
published in the preceding year. It will be observed that this
was four years before the Darwinian theory was announced to the
world in the first edition of the Origin of Species. Toward the

12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

end of that book Mr. Darwin looked forward to a distant future
when the conception of gradual development might be applied
to the phenomena of conscious intelligence. He had not then
learned of the existence of such a book as the Principles of Psy-
chology. In later editions he was obliged to modify his state-
ment and confess that, instead of looking so far forward, he had
better have looked about him. I have more than once heard Mr.
Darwin laugh merrily over this, at his own expense.

After struggling for a while with the weighty problems of this
book — the most profound treatise upon mental phenomena that
any human mind has ever produced — Mr. Youmans saw that the
theory expounded in it was a long stride in the direction of a gen-
eral theory of evolution. His interest in this subject received a
new and fresh stimulus. He read Social Statics, and began to
recognize Mr. Spencer's hand in the anonymous articles in the
quarterlies in which he was then announcing and illustrating
various portions or segments of his newly discovered law of
evolution. One evening in February, 1860, as Mr. Youmans was
calling at a friend's house in Brooklyn, the Rev. Samuel Johnson,
of Salem, h%nded him the famous prospectus of the great series
of philosophical works which Mr. Spencer proposed to issue by
subscription. Mr. Johnson had obtained this from Edward Sils-
bee, who was one of the very first Americans to become interested
in Spencer. The very next day Mr. Youmans wrote a letter to
Mr. Spencer, offering his aid in procuring American subscriptions
and otherwise aiding in every possible way the progress of the
enterprise. With this letter and Mr. Spencer's cordial reply be-
gan the life-long friendship between the two men. It was in that
same month that I first became aware of Mr. Spencer's existence,
through a single paragraph quoted from him by Mr. Lewes, and
in that paragraph there was immense fascination. I had been
steeping myself in the literature of modern philosophy, starting
with Bacon and Descartes, and was then studying Comte's Phi-
losophic Positive, which interested me as suggesting that the spe-
cial doctrines of the several sciences might be organized into a
general body of doctrine of universal significance. Comte's work
was crude and often wildly absurd, but there was much in it that
was very suggestive. In May, 1860, in the Old Corner Bookstore
in Boston, I fell upon a copy of that same prospectus of Mr. Spen-
cer's works, and read it with exulting delight, for clearly there
was to be such an organization of scientific doctrine as the world
was waiting for. It appeared that there was some talk of Tick-
nor & Fields undertaking to conduct the series in case subscrip-
tions enough should be received. Mr. Spencer preferred to have
his works appear in Boston ; but when in the course of 1860 his
book on Education was offered to Ticknor & Fields, they declined

EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS. 13

to publish, it, which, was, of course, a grave mistake from the
business point of view. Mr. Youmans, however, was not sorry
for this, for it gave him the opportunity to place Mr. Spencer's
books where he could do most to forward their success.

Some years before, during his blindness, his sister had led him
one day into the store of Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. in quest of a
book, and Mr. William H. Appleton had become warmly inter-
ested in him. I believe the firm now look back to this chance
visit as one of the most auspicious events in their annals. He
became by degrees a kind of adviser as regarded matters of publi-
cation, and it was largely through his far-sighted advice that the
Appletons entered upon the publication of such books as those
of Buckle, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Haeckel, and others of like
character, always paying a royalty to the authors, the same as to
American authors, in spite of the absence of an international
copyright law. As publishers of books of this sort the Appletons
have come to be pre-eminent. It is obvious enough nowadays
that such books are profitable from a business point of view.
But thirty years and more ago this was by no means obvious.
We were very provincial. Reprints of English books, transla-
tions from French and German, were sadly behind the times. In
the Connecticut town where I lived people would begin to wake
up to the existence of some great European book or system of
thought after it had been before the world anywhere from a
dozen to fifty years. In those days, therefore, it required some
boldness to undertake the reprinting of new scientific books, and
none have recognized more freely than the Appletons the impor-
tance of the part played by Mr. Youmans in this matter. His
work as adviser to a great publishing house and his work as
lecturer re-enforced each other, and thus his capacity for useful-
ness was much increased.

When Mr. Spencer's book on Education failed to find favor
in Boston, the Appletons took it, and thus presently secured
the management of the philosophical series. This brought Mr.
Youmans into permanent relations with Mr. Spencer and his
work. In 1861 Mr. Youmans was married, and in the course of
the following year made a journey in Europe with his wife. It
was now that he became personally acquainted with Mr. Spencer,
and found him quite as interesting and admirable as his books.
Friendships were also begun with Huxley and other foremost
men of science. From more than one of these men I have heard
the warmest expressions of personal affection for Mr. Youmans,
and of keen appreciation of the aid that they have obtained in
innumerable ways from his intelligent and enthusiastic sympa-
thy. But no one else got so large a measure of this support as Mr.
Spencer. As fast as his books were republished, Mr. Youmans

i4 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

wrote reviews of theni, and by no. means in the nsnal perfunctory
way ; liis reviews and notices were turned ont by the score, and
scattered abont in the magazines and newspapers where they
would do the most good. Whenever he found another writer who
could be pressed into the service, he would give him Spencer's
books, kindle him with a spark from his own magnificent enthu-
siasm, and set him to writing for the press. The most indefati-
gable vender of wares was never more ruthlessly persistent in ad-
vertising for lucre's sake than Edward Youmans in preaching in
a spirit of the purest disinterestedness the gospel of evolution. As
long as he lived, Mr. Spencer had upon this side of the Atlantic
an alter ego ever on the alert with vision like that of a hawk for
the slightest chance to promote his interests and those of his sys-
tem of thought.

Among the allies thus enlisted at that early time were Mr.
George Ripley and Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, both of whom did
good service, in their different ways, in awakening public interest
in the doctrine of evolution. In those days of the civil war it
was especially hard to keep up the list of subscribers in an
abstruse philosophical publication of apparently interminable
length. Mr. Youmans now and then found it needful to make a
journey in the interests of the work, and it was on one of these
occasions, in Xovember, 1SG3, that I made his acquaintance. I
had already published, in 1861, an article in one of the quarterly
reviews in which Mr. Spencer's work was referred to ; and another
in 1863, in which the law of evolution was illustrated in connection
with certain problems of the science of language. The articles
were anonymous, as was then the fashion, and Mr. Youmans's curi-
osity was aroused. There were so few people then who had any
conception of what Mr. Spencer's work meant, that they could have
been counted on one's fingers. At that time I knew of only three
— the late Prof. Gurney, of Harvard ; Mr. George Roberts, now an
eminent patent lawyer in Boston ; and Mr. John Clark, now of
the Prang Educational Company. I have since known that there
were at least two or three others about Boston, among others,
my learned friend the Rev. W. R. Alger, besides several in other
parts of the country. "When we sometimes ventured to observe
that Mr. Spencers work was as great as Xewton's, and that his
theory of evolution was going to remodel human thinking upon
all subjects whatever, people used to stare at us and take us for
idiots. Anv one member of such a small communitv was easv to
find ; and I have always dated a new era in my life from the Sun-
dav afternoon when Mr. Youmans came to my room in Cam-
bridge. It was the beginning of a friendship such as hardly
comes but once to a man. At that first meeting I knew nothing
of him except that he was the author of a text-book of chemistry

EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS. 15

which I had found interesting, in spite of its having been
crammed down my throat by an old-fashioned memorizing teach-
er who, I am convinced, never really knew so much as the differ-
ence between oxygen and antimony. At first it was a matter of
breathless interest to talk with a man who had seen Herbert
Spencer. But one of the immediate results of this interview was
the beginning of my own correspondence with Mr. Spencer, which
led to manifold results. And from that time forth it always
seemed as if, whenever any of the good or lovely things of life
came to my lot, somehow or other Edward Youmans was either
the cause of it or at any rate intimately concerned with it. The
sphere of his unselfish goodness was so wide and its quality so
potent that one could not come into near relations with him
without becoming in all manner of unsuspected ways strengthened
and enriched.

In the autumn of i860 we were dismayed by the announce-
ment that Mr. Spencer would no longer be able to go on issuing
his works. In London they were published at his own expense
and risk, and those books which now yield a handsome profit did
not then pay the cost of making them. By the summer of 1865
there was a balance of £1,100 against Mr. Spencer, and his prop-
erty was too small to admit of his going on and losing at such a
rate. As soon as this was known, John Stuart Mill begged to be
allowed to assume the entire pecuniary responsibility of continu-
ing the publication ; but this, Mr. Spencer, while deeply affected
by such noble sympathy, would not hear of. He consented, how-
ever, with great reluctance, to the attempt of Huxley and Lub-
bock, and other friends, to increase artificially the list of sub-
scribers by inducing people to take the work just in order to help
support it. But after several months the sudden death of Mr.
Spencer's father added something to his means of support, and he
thereupon withdrew his consent to this arrangement, and deter-
mined to go on publishing as before, and bearing the loss.

But, as soon as the first evil tidings reached America, Mr. You-
mans made up his mind that 85,500 must be forthwith raised by
subscription, in order to make good the loss already incurred. It
is delightful to remember the vigor with which he took hold of
this work. The sum of 87,000 was raised and invested in American
securities in Mr. Spencer's name. If he did not see fit to accept
these securities, they would go without an owner. The best Wal-
tham watch that could be procured was presented to Mr. Spencer
by his American friends ; a letter, worded with rare delicacy and
tact, was written by the late Robert Minturn ; and Mr. Youmans
sailed for England to convey the letter and the watch to Mr.
Spencer. It was a charming scene on a summer day in an Eng-
lish garden when the great philosopher was apprised of what had

16 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been done. It was so skillfully managed that lie could not refuse
the tribute without seeming churlish. He therefore accepted it,
and applied it to extending his researches in descriptive sociology.

Of the many visits which Mr. Youmans made to England, now
and then extending them to the Continent, one of the most impor-
tant was in 1871, for the purpose of establishing the International
Scientific Series. This was a favorite scheme of Mr. Youmans.
He realized that popular scientific books, adapted to the general
reader, are apt to be written by third-rate men who do not well
understand their subject ; they are apt to be dry or superficial or
both. No one can write so good a popular book as the master of a
subject, if he only has a fair gift of expressing himself and keeps in
mind the public for which he is writing. The master knows what
to tell and what to omit, and can thus tell much in a short com-
pass and still make it interesting ; moreover, he avoids the inaccu-
racies which are sure to occur in second-hand work. Masters of
subjects are apt, however, to be too much occupied with original
research to write popular books. It was Mr. Youmans's plan to
induce the leading men of science in Europe and America to con-
tribute small volumes on their special subjects to a series to be
published simultaneously in several countries and languages.
Furthermore, by special contract with publishing houses of high
reputation, the author was to receive the ordinary royalty on
every copy of his book sold in every one of the countries in ques-
tion, thus anticipating international copyright upon a very wide
scale, and giving the author a much more adequate compensation
for his labor. To put this scheme into operation was a task of
great difficulty, so many conflicting interests had to be consid-
ered. Mr. Youmans's brilliant success is attested by that noble
series of more than fifty volumes, on all sorts of scientific sub-
jects, written by men of real eminence, and published in England,
France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, as well as in the United
States.

A word is all that can be spared for other parts of our friend's
work, which deserve many words and those carefully considered.
His book on Household Science is not the usual collection of
scrappy comment, recipe, and apothegm, but a valuable scien-
tific treatise on heat, light, air, and food in their relations to every-
day life. In his Correlation of Physical Forces he brings together
the epoch-making essays of the men who have successively estab-
lished that doctrine, introducing them with an essay of his own
in which its history and its philosophical implications are set forth
in a masterly manner. In his book on the Culture demanded by
Modern Life we have a similar collection of essays with a simi-
lar excellent original discussion, showing the need for wider and
later training in science, and protesting against the excess of time

EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS. i7

and energy that is spent in classical education where it is merely
the following of an old tradition.

As a crown to all this useful work Mr. Youmans established, in
1872, The Popular Science Monthly, which has unquestionably
been of high educational value to the general public. It was not
the aim of this magazine to give an account of every theory ex-
pounded, every fact observed, every discovery made from year to
year, whether significant or insignificant. The mind of the peo-
ple is not educated by dumping a great, unshapely mass of facts
into it. It needs to be stimulated rather than crammed. Educa-
tion in science should lead one to think for one's self. The scien-
tific magazine, therefore, should present articles from all quarters
that deal with the essential conceptions of science or discuss prob-
lems of real theoretical or practical interest, no matter whether
every particular asteroid or the last new species of barnacle re-
ceives full attention or not. The Popular Science Monthly has
now been with us eighteen years ; its character has always been of
the highest, and it must have exerted an excellent influence not
only as a diff user of valuable knowledge, but in training its readers
to scientific habits of thought in so far as mere reading can con-
tribute to such a result.

In concluding our survey of this useful and noble life, what
impresses us most, I think, is the broad, democratic spirit and the
absolute unselfishness which it reveals at every moment and in
every act. To Edward Youmans the imperative need for edu-
cating the great mass of the people so as to use their mental
powers to the best advantage came home as a living, ever-present
fact. He saw all that it meant and means in the raising of man-
kind to a higher level of thought and action than that upon
which they now live. To this end he consecrated himself with
unalloyed devotion ; and we who mourn his loss look back upon
his noble career with a sense of victory, knowing how the good
that such a man does lives after him and can never die.

[Mr. Fiske's address was followed by appreciative remarks from
several gentlemen who had known Mr. Youmans, and who gave
many interesting reminiscences of him. We append a letter from
Mr. Spencer, which arrived too late to be read at this meeting.]

64 Avenue Road, Regent's Park, London, N. W., March 13, 1890.

Dear Mr. Skilton : I received your telegram last night, and
from the wording conclude that you wish some letter from me
about Youmans which Fiske may read in his lecture on the 23d. I
am very glad to respond to the request, and I can not do this better
than by giving you the following copy of a passage in my Auto-
biography concerning him :

"The relation thus initiated was extremely fortunate; for

TOL. XXXTII. — 2

18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prof. Edward L. Youmans was, of all Americans I have known
or heard of, the one most able and most willing to help me.
Alike intellectually and morally, he had in the highest degrees
the traits conducive to success in diffusing the doctrines he es-
poused ; and from that time to this he has devoted his life
mainly to spreading throughout the United States the doctrine
of evolution. His love of wide generalizations had been shown
years before in lectures on such topics as the correlation of the
physical forces ; and from those who heard him I have gathered
that, aided by his unusual powers of exposition, the enthusiasm
which contemplation of the larger truths of science produced in
him was in a remarkable degree communicated to his hearers.
Such larger truths I have on many occasions observed are those
which he quickly seizes — ever passing at once through details
to lay hold of essentials ; and, having laid hold of them, he
clearly sets them forth afresh in his own way with added illus-
trations. But it is morally even more than intellectually that
he has proved himself a true missionary of advanced ideas.
Extremely energetic — so energetic that no one has been able to
check his overactivity — he has expended all his powers in ad-
vancing what he holds to be the truth ; and not only his powers
but his means. It has proved impossible to prevent him from in-
juring himself in health by his exertions ; and it has proved im-
possible to make him pay due regard to his personal interests. So
that toward the close of life he finds himself wrecked in body and
impoverished in estate by thirty years of devotion to high ends.
Among professed worshipers of humanity, who teach that human
welfare should be the dominant aim, I have not yet heard of one
whose sacrifices on behalf of humanity will bear comparison with
those of my friend."

Though the volume containing this passage will not be pub-
lished until after my death, I am very willing that this tribute of
admiration to my late friend should be made public now.

I am, faithfully yours, Herbert Spencer.

A committee of the British Association is charged with the collection of infor-
mation respecting the disappearance or threatened disappearance of rare plants.
While instances of complete extinction of any species within recent times may be
rare, there are more of local extinction or of apparent extinction for a time, and
the cases of threatened extinction are numerous enough to he alarming. A potent
factor in the changes that have taken place is " the injudicious action of botanists
themselves, and of botanical exchange clubs. The 'dealer' and 'collector' also
figure largely in the process, while tourists are not responsible for much damage
except indirectly by patronizing dealers. It is too often forgotten that the very
rarity of a plant is the sign, and in great degree also the measure, of the acuteness
of its struggle for existence, and that, when a plant is in unstable equilibrium with
its environment, a small disturbance may have di?proportionately great effects."

ON JUSTICE. 19

ON JUSTICE.

By HERBERT SPENCER.

TN" the January number of this Review* (page 126), I made
L-L the incidental statement that "should I be able to complete
Part IV of the Principles of Ethics, treating of Justice, of which
the first chapters only are at present written, I hope to deal ade-
quately with these relations between the ethics of the progressive
condition and the ethics of that condition which is the goal of
progress — a goal ever to be recognized, though it can not be actu-
ally reached." These chapters were written nearly a year ago :
the fourth, not quite finished, having been untouched since May
last. In view of the possibility that the division of which they
form part may never be completed, or otherwise that its comple-
tion may be long delayed, it has occurred to me that as the topic
dealt with is now being discussed, these first chapters may, per-
haps with advantage, be published forthwith. The editor having
kindly assented to my proposal to issue them in this Review, I
here append the first three : reserving two others, conveniently
separable in subject-matter, for another article.]

I. Animal-Ethics. — Those who have not read the first division
of this work f will be surprised by the above title. But the chap-
ters on Conduct in General and The Evolution of Conduct will
have shown to those who have read them that something which
may be regarded as animal-ethics is implied.

It was there shown that the conduct which Ethics treats of is
not separable from conduct at large ; that the highest conduct is
that which conduces to the greatest length, breadth, and complete-
ness of life ; and that by implication there is a conduct proper to
each species of animal, which is the relatively good conduct — a
conduct which stands toward that species as the conduct we mor-
ally approve stands toward the human species.

Most people regard the subject-matter of Ethics as being
conduct considered as calling forth approbation or reprobation.
But the primary subject-matter of Ethics is conduct considered
objectively as producing good or bad results to self or others
or both.

Even those who think of Ethics as concerned only with con-
duct which deserves praise or blame, tacitly recognize an animal-
ethics ; for certain acts of animals excite in them antipathy or
sympathy. A bird which feeds its mate while she is sitting is re-
garded with a sentiment of approval. For a hen which refuses to

* Nineteenth Century ; also Popular Science Monthly for March, page 616.
f Reference is here made to the Data of Ethics.

20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sit upon her eggs there is a feeling of aversion ; while one which
fights in defense of her chickens is admired.

Egoistic acts, as well as altruistic acts, in animals are classed
as good or bad. A squirrel which lays up a store of food for the
winter is thought of as doing that which a squirrel ought to do ;
and, contrariwise, one which idly makes no provision and dies of
starvation, is thought of as properly paying the penalty of im-
providence. A dog which surrenders its bone to another without
a struggle, and runs away, we call a coward — a word of repro-
bation.

Thus then it is clear that acts which are conducive to preser-
vation of offspring or of the individual we consider as good rela-
tively to the species, and conversely.

The two classes of cases of altruistic and egoistic acts of ani-
mals just given, exemplify the two cardinal and opposed principles
of animal-ethics.

During immaturity benefits received must be inversely propor-
tionate to capacities possessed. Within the family-group most
must be given where least is deserved, if desert is measured by
worth. Contrariwise, after maturity is reached, benefits must
vary directly as worth : worth being measured by fitness to the
conditions of existence. The ill fitted must suffer the evils of un-
fitness, and the well fitted profit by their fitness.

These are the two laws which a species must conform to if it
is to be preserved. Limiting the proposition to the higher types
(for in the lower types, parents give to offspring no other aid than
that of laying up a small amount of nutriment with the germ ;
the result being that an enormous mortality has to be balanced by
an enormous fertility) — thus limiting the proposition, I say, it is
clear that if, among the young, benefit were proportioned to effi-
ciency, the species would disappear forthwith ; and if, among
adults, benefit were proportioned to inefficiency, the species would
disappear by decay in a few generations (see Principles of Soci-
ology, section 322).

What is the ethical aspect of these principles ? In the first
place, animal life of all but the lowest kinds has been maintained
by virtue of them. Excluding the Protozoa, among which their
operation is scarcely discernible, we see that without gratis bene-
fits to offspring, and earned benefits to adults, life could not have
continued.

In the second place, by virtue of them life has gradually
evolved into higher forms. By care of offspring which has be-
come greater with advancing organization, and by survival of the
fittest in the competition among adults which has become keener

OJST JUSTICE. 21

with, advancing organization, superiority -has been perpetually fos-
tered, and further advances caused.

On the other hand, it is true that to this self-sacrificing care
for the young and this struggle for existence among adults, has
been due the carnage and the death by starvation which have
characterized the evolution of life from the beginning. It is also
true that the processes consequent on conformity to these prin-
ciples are responsible for the production of torturing parasites,
which outnumber in their kinds all other creatures.

To those who take a pessimist view of animal-life in general,
contemplation of these principles can of course yield only dissatis-
faction. But to those who take an optimist view, or a meliorist
view, of life in general, and who accept the postulate of hedonism,
contemplation of these principles must yield greater or less satis-
faction, and fulfillment of them must be ethically approved.

Otherwise considered, these principles are either, according to
the current belief, expressions of the Divine will, or, according to
the agnostic belief, indicate the mode in which works the Unknow-
able Power throughout the Universe ; and in either case they have
the warrant hence derived.

But here, leaving aside the ultimate controversy of pessimism
versus optimism, it will suffice for present purposes to set out
with a hypothetical postulate, and to limit it to a single species.
If the preservation and prosperity of such species are to be de-
sired, there inevitably emerge one most general conclusion and
from it three less general conclusions.

The most general conclusion is that, in order of obligation, the
preservation of the species takes precedence of the preservation of
the individual. It is true that the species has no existence save as
an aggregate of individuals ; and it is true that, therefore, the wel-
fare of the species is an end to be subserved only as subserving the
welfares of individuals. But since disappearance of the species,
implying disappearance of all individuals, involves absolute fail-
ure in achieving the end, whereas disappearance of individuals,
though carried to a great extent, may leave outstanding such
number as can, by continuance of the species, make subsequent
fulfillment of the end possible ; the preservation of the individual
must, in a variable degree according to circumstances, be subordi-
nated to the preservation of the species, where the two conflict.
The resulting corollaries are these :

First, that among adults there must be conformity to the law
that benefits received shall be directly proportionate to merits pos-
sessed : merits being measured by power of self-sustentation. For,
otherwise, the species must suffer in two ways. It must suffer
immediately by sacrifice of superior to inferior, which entails a

22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

general diminution of welfare ; and it must suffer remotely by
furthering increase of the inferior and, by implication, hindering
increase of the superior, and by a consequent general deterioration
which, if continued, must end in extinction.

Second, that during early life, before self-sustentation has be-
come possible, and also while it can be but partial, the aid given
must be the greatest where the worth shown is the smallest —
benefits received must be inversely proportionate to merits pos-
sessed: merits being measured by power of self-sustentation.
Unless there are gratis benefits to offspring, unqualified at first
and afterward qualified by decrease as maturity is approached,
the species must disappear by extinction of its young. There is, of
course, necessitated a proportionate self-subordination of adults.

Third, to this self-subordination entailed by parenthood has,
in certain cases, to be added a further self -subordination. If the
constitution of the species and its conditions of existence are such
that sacrifices, partial or complete, of some of its individuals, so
subserve the welfare of the species that its numbers are better
maintained than they would otherwise be, then there results a
justification for such sacrifices.

Such are the laws by conformity to which a species is main-
tained ; and if we assume that the preservation of a particular
species is a desideratum, there arises in it an obligation to conform
to these laws, which we may call, according to the case in ques-
tion, quasi-ethical or ethical.

II. Sub-Human Justice.— Of the two essential but opposed
principles of action by pursuance of which each species is pre-
served, we are here concerned only with the second. Passing over
the law of the family as composed of adults and young, we have
now to consider exclusively the law of the species as composed of
adults only.

This law we have seen to be that individuals of most worth, as
measured by their fitness to the conditions of existence, shall have
the greatest benefits, and that inferior individuals shall receive
smaller benefits, or suffer greater evils, or both results — a law
which, under its biological aspect, has for its implication the sur-
vival of the fittest. Interpreted in ethical terms it is that each
individual ought to be subject to the effects of its own nature and
resulting conduct. Throughout sub-human life this law holds
without qualification ; for there exists no agency by which, among
adults, the relations between conduct and consequence can be in-
terfered with.

Fully to appreciate the import of this law we may with advan-
tage pause a moment to contemplate an analogous law ; or, rather,
the same law as exhibited in another sphere. Besides being dis-
played in the relations among members of the species, as respect-

ON JUSTICE. 23

ively well or ill sustained according to. their well-adapted activi-
ties or ill-adapted activities, it is displayed in the relations of
parts of each organism to one another.

Every muscle, every viscus, every gland, receives blood in pro-
portion to function. If it does little it is ill-fed and dwindles ; if
it does much it is well-fed and grows. By this balancing of ex-
penditure in action and payment in nutriment, there is, at the
same time, a balancing of the relative powers of the parts of the
organism ; so that the organism as a whole is fitted to its exist-
ence by having the proportions of its parts continuously adjusted
to the requirements. And clearly this principle of self -adjustment
within each individual is parallel to that principle of self -adjust-
ment by which the species as a whole keeps itself fitted to its en-
vironment. For by the better nutrition and greater power of
propagation which come to members of the species that have fac-
ulties and consequent activities best adapted to the needs, joined
with the lower sustentation of self and offspring which accompany
less adapted faculties and activities, there is caused such special
growth of the species as most conduces to its survival in face of
surrounding conditions.

This, then, is the law of sub-human justice, that each individual
shall receive the benefits and the evils of its own nature and its
consequent conduct.

But sub-human justice is extremely imperfect, alike in general
and in detail.

In general, it is imperfect in the sense that there exist multitu-
dinous species the sustentation of which depends on the wholesale
destruction of other species ; and this wholesale destruction im-
plies that the species serving as prey have the relations between
conduct and consequence so habitually broken that in but very few
individuals are they long maintained. It is true that in such cases
the premature loss of life suffered from enemies by nearly all mem-
bers of the species, must be considered as resulting from their na-
tures— their inability to contend with the destructive agencies they
are exposed to. But we may fitly recognize the truth that this vio-
lent ending of the immense majority of its lives, implies that the
species is one in which justice, as above conceived, is displayed in
but small measure.

Sub-human justice is extremely imperfect in detail, in the sense
that the relation between conduct and consequence is in such an
immense proportion of cases broken by accidents — accidents of
kinds which fall indiscriminately upon inferior and superior in-
dividuals. There are the multitudinous deaths caused by inclem-
encies of weather, which, in the great majority of cases, the best
members of the species are liable to like the worst. There are

24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

otlier multitudinous deaths caused by scarcity of food, which, if
not wholly, still in large measure, carries off good and bad alike.
Among low types, too, enemies are causes of death which so oper-
ate that superior as well as inferior are sacrificed. And the like
holds with invasions by parasites, often widely fatal. These at-
tack, and frequently destroy, the most perfect individuals as read-
ily as the least perfect.

The high rate of multiplication required to balance the immense
mortality among low animals, at once shows us that among them
long survival is not insured by superiority ; and that thus the sub-
human justice, which consists in continued receipt of the results
of conduct, holds individually in but few cases.

And here we come upon a truth of great significance — the truth
that sub-human justice becomes more decided as organization be-
comes higher.

Whether this or that fly is taken by a swallow, whether among
a brood of caterpillars an ichneumon settles on this or that, whether
out of a shoal of herrings this or that is swallowed by a cetacean,
is an event quite independent of individual peculiarity : good and
bad samples fare alike. With high types of creatures it is other-
wise. Keen senses, sagacity, agility, give a particular carnivore
special power to secure prey. In a herd of herbivorous creatures,
the one with quickest hearing, clearest vision, most sensitive nos-
tril, or greatest speed, is the one most likely to save itself.

Evidently, in proportion as the endowments, mental and bodily,
of a species are high, and as, consequently, its ability to deal with
the incidents of the environment is great, the continued life of each
individual is less dependent on accidents against which it can not
guard. And, evidently, in proportion as this result of general
superiority becomes marked, the results of special superiorities
are felt. Individual differences of faculty play larger parts in
determining individual fates. Now deficiency of a power short-
ens life, and now a large endowment prolongs it. That is to say,
individuals experience more fully the results of their own natures
— the justice is more decided.

•

With creatures which lead solitary lives, the nature of sub-
human justice is thus sufficiently expressed ; but on passing to
gregarious creatures, there enters into it a new element.

Simple association, as of sheep or deer, profits the individual
and the species only by that more efficient safeguarding which
results from the superiority of a multitude of eyes, ears, and noses
over the eyes, ears, and nose of a single individual. Through the
alarms niore quickly given, all benefit by the senses of the most
acute. Where this, which we may call passive co-operation, rises

ON JUSTICE. 25

into active co-operation, as among rooks where one of the flock
keeps watch while the rest feed, or as among beavers where a
number work together in making dams, or as among wolves
where, by a plan of attack in which the individuals play different
parts, prey is caught which would otherwise not be caught ; there
is still greater advantage to the individuals and to the species.
And, speaking generally, we may say that gregariousness, and co-
operation more or less active establish themselves in a species
only because they are profitable to it ; since, otherwise, survival
of the fittest must prevent establishment of them.

But now mark that this profitable association is made possible
only by observance of certain conditions. The acts directed to
self-sustentation which each performs, are performed more or less
in presence of others performing like acts ; and there tends to re-
sult more or less interference. If the interference is great, it may
render the association unprofitable. For the association to be
profitable the acts must be restrained to such an extent as to
leave a balance of advantage. Survival of the fittest will else ex-
terminate that variety of the species in which association begins.

Here, then, we find a further factor in sub-human justice.
Each individual, receiving the benefits and the injuries due to its
own nature and consequent conduct, has to carry on that conduct
subject to the restriction that it shall not in any large measure
impede the conduct by which each other individual achieves bene-
fits or brings on itself injuries. The average conduct must not
involve aggressions of such amounts as to cause evils which out-
balance the good obtained by co-operation. Thus, to the positive
element in sub-human justice has to be added, among gregarious
creatures, a negative element.

The necessity for observance of the condition that each mem-
ber of the group while carrying on the pursuit of self-sustentation
and sustentation of offspring, shall not seriously impede the like
pursuits of others, makes itself so felt, where association is estab-
lished, as to mold the species to it. The mischiefs from time to
time experienced when the limits are transgressed, continually
discipline all in such ways as to produce regard for the limits ; so
that such regard becomes, in course of time, a natural trait of the
species. For, manifestly, regardlessness of the limits, if great and
general, causes dissolution of the group. Those varieties only
can survive as gregarious varieties in which there is an inherited
tendency to maintain the limits.

Yet, further, there arises such general consciousness of the
need for maintaining the limits, that punishments are inflicted on
transgressors — not only by aggrieved members of the group, but
by the group as a whole. A " rogue " elephant (always distin-

26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

guished as unusually malicious) is one which, has "been expelled
from the herd : doubtless because of conduct obnoxious to the rest
— probably aggressive. It is said that from a colony of beavers
an idler is banished, and thus prevented from profiting by labors
in which he does not join : a statement made more credible by
the fact that drones, when no longer needed, are killed by worker-
bees. The testimonies of observers in different countries show
that a flock of crows, after prolonged noise of consultation, will
summarily execute an offending member. And an eye-witness
affirms that among rooks, a pair which steals the sticks from
neighboring nests has its own nest pulled to pieces by the rest.

Here, then, we see that the a priori condition to harmonious
co-operation comes to be tacitly recognized as something like a
law ; and there is a penalty consequent upon breach of it.

That the individual shall experience all the consequences, good
and evil, of its own nature and consequent conduct, which is that
primary principle of sub-human justice whence results survival
of the fittest, is, in creatures that lead solitary lives, a principle
complicated only by the responsibilities of parenthood. Among
them the purely egoistic actions of self-sustentation have, during
the reproductive period, to be qualified by that self -subordination
which the rearing of offspring necessitates, but by no other self-
subordination. Among gregarious creatures of considerable in-
telligence, however, the welfare of the species occasionally de-
mands a further self -subordination.

We read of bisons that, during the calving season, the bulls
form an encircling guard around the herd of cows and calves, to
protect them against wolves and other predatory animals : a
proceeding which entails on each bull some danger, but which
conduces to the preservation of the species. Out of a herd of
elephants about to emerge from a forest to reach a drinking-
place, one will first appear and look round in search of dangers,
and, not discerning any, will then post some others of the herd to
act as watchers; after which the main body comes forth and
enters the water. Here a certain extra risk is run by the few that
the many may be the safer. In a still greater degree we are
shown this kind of action by a troop of monkeys, the members of
which will combine to defend or rescue one of their number ; for
though in any particular case the species may not profit, since
more mortality may result than would have resulted, yet it profits
in the long run by the display of a character which makes attack
on its groups dangerous.

Evidently, then, if by such conduct one variety of a gregarious
species keeps up, or increases, its numbers, while other varieties,
in which self -subordination thus directed does not exist, fail to do

ON JUSTICE. 27

this, a certain sanction is acquired for -such conduct. The preser-
vation of the species being the ultimate end, it results that where
an occasional mortality of individuals in defense of the species
furthers this preservation in a greater degree than would pursuit
of exclusive benefit by each individual, that which we recognize
as sub-human justice may rightly have this second limitation.

It remains only to point out the order of priority, and the re-
spective ranges, of these principles. The law of relation between
conduct and consequence, which, throughout the animal kingdom
at large, brings prosperity to those individuals which are struct-
urally best adapted to their conditions of existence, and which,
under its ethical aspect, is expressed in the principle that each
individual ought to receive the good and the evil which arises
from its own nature, is the primary law holding of all creatures ;
and is applicable without qualification to creatures which lead
solitary lives, save in that self-subordination needed among the
higher of them for the rearing of offspring.

Among gregarious creatures, and in an increasing degree as
they co-operate more, there comes into play a law, second in order
of time and authority, that those actions through which, in ful-
fillment of its nature, the individual achieves benefits and avoids
evils, shall be restrained by the need for non-interference with the
like actions of associated individuals. A substantial respect for
this law in the average of cases being the condition under which
alone gregariousness can continue, it becomes an imperative law
for creatures to which gregariousness is a benefit. But, obviously,
this secondary law is simply a specification of that form which
the primary law takes under the conditions of gregarious life ;
since, by asserting that in each individual the interactions of
conduct and consequence must be restricted in the specified way,
it tacitly reasserts that these interactions must be maintained in
all other individuals.

Later in origin, and narrower in range, is the third law, that
under conditions such that, by the occasional sacrifices of some
members of a species, the species as a whole prospers, there arises
a sanction for such sacrifices, and a consequent qualification of
the law that each individual shall receive the benefits and evils of
its own nature.

Finally, it should be observed that whereas the first law is
absolute for animals in general, and whereas the second law is
absolute for gregarious animals, the third law is relative to the
existence of enemies of such kinds that, in contending with them,
the species gains more than it loses by the sacrifice of a few mem-
bers ; and in the absence of such enemies this qualification im-
posed by the third law disappears.

28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

III. Human Justice. — The contents of the last chapter fore-
shadow the contents of this. As, from the evolution point of
view, human life must be regarded as a further development of
sub-human life, it follows that from this same point of view, hu-
man justice must be a further development of sub-human justice.
For convenience the two are here separately treated, but they
are essentially of the same nature, and form parts of a continuous
whole.

Of man, as of all inferior creatures, the law by conformity to
which the species is preserved is that among adults the individu-
als best adapted to the conditions of their existence shall prosper
most, and that individuals least adapted to the conditions of their
existence shall prosper least — a law which, if uninterfered with,
entails survival of the fittest, and spread of the most adapted
varieties. And as before so here, we see that, ethically consid-
ered, this law implies that each individual ought to receive the
benefits and the evils of his own nature and consequent conduct :
neither being prevented from having whatever good his actions
normally bring to him, nor allowed to shoulder off on to other
persons whatever ill is brought to him by his actions.

To what extent such ill, naturally following from his actions,
may be voluntarily borne by other persons, it does not concern us
now to inquire. The qualifying effects of pity, mercy, and gen-
erosity, will be considered hereafter in the parts dealing with
Xegative Beneficence and Positive Beneficence. Here we are con-
cerned only with pure justice.

The law thus originating, and thus ethically expressed, is ob-
viously that which commends itself to the common apprehen-
sion as just. Sayings and criticisms daily heard imply a percep-
tion that conduct and consequence ought not to be dissociated.
When, of some one who suffers a disaster, it is said — u He has no
one to blame but himself/' there is implied the belief that he has
not any ground for complaint. The comment on one whose mis-
judgment or misbehavior has entailed evil upon him, that " he
has made his own bed, and now he must lie in it," has behind it
the conviction that this connection of cause and effect is proper.
Similarly with the remark — " He got no more than he deserved."
A kindred conviction is implied when, conversely, there results
good instead of evil. " He has fairly earned his reward " ; " He
has not received due recompense"; are remarks indicating the
consciousness that there should be a proportion between effort put
forth and advantage achieved.

The truth that justice becomes more pronounced as organiza-
tion becomes higher, which we contemplated in the last chapter,
is further exemplified on passing from sub-human justice to

ON JUSTICE. 29

human justice. The degree of justice and the degree of organi-
zation simultaneously make advances. These are shown alike by
the entire human race, and by its superior varieties as contrasted
with its inferior.

We saw that a high species of animals is distinguished from a
low species in the respect that since its aggregate suffers less mor-
tality from destructive agencies, each of its members continues on
the average for a longer time subject to the normal relation be-
tween conduct and consequence ; and here we see that the human
race as a whole, far lower in its rate of mortality than nearly all
races of inferior kinds, usually subjects its members for much
longer periods to the good and evil results of well-adapted and
ill-adapted conduct. We also saw that as, among the higher ani-
mals, a greater average longevity makes it possible for individual
differences to show their effects for longer periods, it results that
the unlike fates of different individuals are to a greater extent
determined by that normal relation between conduct and conse-
quence which constitutes justice ; and we here see that in mankind
unlikenesses of faculty in still greater degrees, and for still longer
periods, work out their effects in advantaging the superior and
disadvantaging the inferior in the continuous play of conduct
and consequence.

Similarly is it with the civilized varieties of mankind as com-
pared with the savage varieties. A still further diminished rate
of mortality implies that there is a relatively still larger propor-
tion, the members of which, during long lives, gain good from
well-adapted acts, and suffer evil from ill-adapted ones. While
also it is manifest that both the greater differences of longevity
among individuals, and the greater differences of social position,
imply that in civilized societies more than in savage societies, dif-
ferences of endowment and consequent differences of conduct are
enabled to cause their appropriate differences of results, good or
evil : the justice is greater.

More clearly in the human race than in lower races are we
shown that gregariousness establishes itself because it profits the
variety in which it arises, partly by furthering general safety and
partly by facilitating sustentation. And we are shown that the
degree of gregariousness is determined by the degree in which it
thus subserves the interests of the variety. For where the variety
is one of which the members live on wild food, they associate only
in small groups : game and fruits widely distributed can support
these only. But greater gregariousness arises where agriculture
makes possible the support of a large number on a small area ;
and where the accompanying development of industries intro-
duces many and various co-operations.

3o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

But that which, was faintly indicated among lower beings is
conspicuously displayed among human beings — that the advan-
tages of co-operation can be had only by conformity to certain
requirements which association imposes. The mutual hindrances
liable to arise during the pursuit of their ends by individuals liv-
ing in proximity, must be kept within such limits as to leave a
surplus of advantage obtained by associated life. Some types of
men, as the Abors, lead solitary lives, because their aggressiveness
is such that they can not live together. And in view of this ex-
treme case it is clear that though, in many primitive groups, indi-
vidual antagonisms often cause quarrels, yet the groups are main-
tained because their members derive a balance of benefit — chiefly
in greater safety. It is also clear that in proportion as commu-
nities become developed and their division of labor complex, the
advantages of co-operation can be gained only by a still better
maintenance of those limits to each man's activities necessitated
by the simultaneous activities of others. This truth is illustrated
by the unprosperous or decaying state of communities in which
the aggressions of individuals on one another are so numerous
and great as to prevent them from severally receiving the normal
results of their actions.

The requirement that individual activities must be mutually
restrained, which we saw is so felt among certain inferior grega-
rious creatures that they inflict punishments on those who do not
duly restrain them, is a requirement which, more imperative
among men, and more distinctly felt by them to be a require-
ment, causes a still more marked habit of inflicting punishments
on offenders. Though in primitive groups it is commonly left to
any one who is injured to revenge himself on the injurer, and
though even in the societies of feudal Europe, the defending and
enforcing of his claims was in many cases held to be each man's
personal concern ; yet there has ever tended to grow up such per-
ception of the need for internal order, and such sentiment accom-
panying the perception, that infliction of punishments by the com-
munity as a whole, or by its established agents, has become habit-
ual. And that a system of laws enacting restrictions on conduct,
and punishments for breaking them, is a natural product of human
life carried on under social conditions, is shown by the fact that
among multitudinous nations composed of various types of man-
kind, similar actions, similarly regarded as trespasses, have been
similarly forbidden.

Through all which sets of facts is manifested the truth, recog-
nized practically if not theoretically, that each individual carrying
on the actions which subserve his life, and not prevented from
receiving their normal results good and bad, shall carry on these
actions under such restraints as are imposed by the carrying on of

ON JUSTICE. 3i

kindred actions by other individuals, who have similarly to receive
such normal results good and bad. And vaguely, if not definitely,
this is seen to constitute what is called justice.

We saw that among inferior gregarious creatures, justice in its
universal simple form, besides being qualified by the self-subordi-
nation which parenthood implies, and in some measure by the
self-restraint necessitated by association, is in a few cases further
qualified in a small degree by the partial or complete sacrifice of
individuals made in defense of the species. And now in the high-
est gregarious creature we see that this further qualification of
primitive justice assumes large proportions.

No longer as among inferior beings demanded only by the
need for defense against enemies of other kinds, this further self-
subordination is, among human beings, also demanded by the
need for defense against enemies of the same kind. Having be-
come the predominant inhabitants of the Earth, and having
spread wherever there is food, men have come to be everywhere
in one another's way ; and the mutual enmities hence resulting,
have made the sacrifices entailed by wars between groups, far
greater than the sacrifices made in defense of the groups against
inferior animals. It is doubtless true with the human race, as
with lower races, that destruction of the group or the variety
does not imply destruction of the species ; and it therefore follows
that such obligation as exists for self-subordination in the inter-
ests of the group or the variety, is an obligation of lower degree
than is that of sustentation of offspring, without fulfillment of
which the species must disappear, and of lower degree than the
obligation to restrain actions within the limits imposed by social
conditions, without fulfillment of which the group will dissolve.
Still, it must be regarded as an obligation to the extent to which
the maintenance of the species is subserved by the maintenance
of each of its groups.

But the self-subordination thus justified, and in a sense ren-
dered obligatory, is limited to that which is required for defensive
war. Only because the preservation of the group as a whole
conduces to preservation of its members' lives and their ability to
pursue the objects of life, is there a reason for the sacrifice of
some of its members ; and this reason no longer exists when war
is offensive instead of defensive.

It may, indeed, be contended that since offensive wars initiate
those struggles between groups which end in the destruction of
the weaker, offensive wars, furthering the peopling of the Earth
by the stronger, subserve the interests of the race. But even sup-
posing that the conquered groups always consisted of men having
smaller mental or bodily fitness for war (which they do not ; for

32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it is in part a question of numbers, and the smaller groups may
consist of the more capable warriors), there would still be an
adequate answer. It is only during the earlier stages of human
progress that the development of strength, courage, and cunning,
are of chief importance. After societies of considerable size have
been formed and the subordination needed for organizing them
produced, other and higher faculties become those of chief im-
portance ; and the struggle for existence carried on by force, does
not always further the survival of the fittest. The fact that but
for a mere accident Persia would have conquered Greece, and the
fact that the Tartar hordes very nearly overwhelmed European
civilization, show that offensive war can be trusted to subserve
the interests of the race only when the capacity for a high social
life does not exist, and that in proportion as this capacity de-
velops, offensive war tends more and more to hinder, rather than
to further, human welfare. In brief we may say that the arrival
at a stage in which ethical considerations come to be entertained,
is the arrival at a stage in which offensive war, by no means cer-
tain to further predominance of races fitted for a high social life,
and certain to cause injurious moral reactions on the conquering
as well as on the conquered, ceases to be justifiable; and only
defensive war retains a quasi-ethical justification.

And here it is to be remarked that the self-subordination
which defensive war involves, and the need for such qualification
of the abstract principle of justice as it implies, belong to that
transitional state necessitated by the physical-force-conflict of
races; and that they must disappear when there is reached a
peaceful state. That is to say, all questions concerning the ex-
tent of such qualifications pertain to what we distinguished as
relative ethics ; and are not recognized by that absolute ethics
which is concerned with the principles of right conduct in a
society formed of human beings fully adapted to social life.

This distinction I emphasize here because throughout succeed-
ing chapters we shall find that recognition of it helps us to
disentangle the involved problems of political ethics. — Nine-
teenth Century.

The constantly receding character of the unexplained was illustrated by Dr.
Burdon Sanderson, in his address at the British Association, by reference to the
discovery of the cell, which seemed to be a very close approach to the mechanism
of life ; " but now we are striving to get even closer, with the same resnlt. Our
measurements are more exact, our methods finer ; but these very methods bring
us to close quarters with phenomena which, although within reach of exact inves-
tigation, are, as regards their essence, involved in a mystery which is the more
profound the more it is brought into contact with the exact knowledge we possess
of surrounding conditions."

SUMPTUARY LAWS AND THEIR SOCIAL INFLUENCE. 33
SUMPTUARY LAWS AND THEIR SOCIAL INFLUENCE.*

By WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, M. D.

THERE are many persons who have what they conceive to be
the good of their fellow-creatures so greatly at heart that,
when they can not succeed in making them conform to a standard
of right and wrong that they have set up for themselves, endeavor
to accomplish their object by legal enactments. It is true they
are very apt to do this under the fiction of insuring the public
welfare ; but it is none the less a fact, even if we admit the force
of their alleged motive, that such laws as those to which I refer
interfere with the personal liberty of those against whom they
are aimed, and this to an extent incompatible with that degree of
freedom of will and of action which is inseparable from the indi-
vidual in all communities founded upon what we call liberty.
Moreover, they are inquisitorial in their nature, and, what is per-
haps a point of even still greater importance, they fail to accom-
plish the object in view; and being continually evaded on one
pretext or another, tend to diminish that respect for the majesty
of law which all well-ordered citizens should entertain.

The history of sumptuary laws, or laws tending to limit luxury
and expense, shows how truly the remarks just made are founded
on fact ; and yet in all ages of the world such laws have been
passed, to be disobeyed, held in contempt, remaining on the statute-
book unenforced, and finally either passing into oblivion or being
formally repealed. As we are apparently passing through a stage
of our national existence in which sumptuary laws are making
their appearance, it seemed to me that the Society for Medical
Jurisprudence and State Medicine might very properly have its
attention directed to the subject.

Among the first within our knowledge to provide by law for
the regulation of the appetite, the taste, the affections, the dress,
and the most minute details in the life of a citizen was Sparta,
Sparta was a small country and its people were few ; they were
surrounded by powerful neighbors. The first principle instilled
into the mind of every individual was, that the state had a claim
upon him superior to that of parents or of any relational or social
bond. He was from the very cradle trained for war ; luxury, being
regarded as incompatible with true manliness, was to be sup-
pressed at all hazards. Foreigners, being liable to become a dis-
turbing factor in the system of discipline enforced, were not
allowed to enter Sparta ; even the feeble children, as being unfit

* Read before the New York Society for Medical Jurisprudence and State Medicine,
June 3, 1889.

vol. xxxvii. — 3

34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for war and liable to become burdens on the community, were
put to death. Gold and silver wer*e excluded, and the coinage was
of iron. As far as possible the whole nation was fed alike. That
the system was effectual in accomplishing the object that Lycur-
gus had in view, is probably true. It succeeded just as persecu-
tion succeeds when it is thorough and implacable. A half-hearted
system of persecution not only fails in its object, but invariably
advances the cause against which it is directed. If, for instance,
we could kill all those who oppose us in our efforts to make mat-
ters accord with our own way of thinking, we should undoubtedly
be triumphantly successful ; but if we only killed a few of them, it
would not be long before the number of the remainder would be
so augmented that they would kill us.

Nowhere has the inefficacy of sumptuary laws been more
thoroughly demonstrated than in Rome. There the dress, the
food, the furniture of the houses, were attempted to be regulated
by law after law, which were either openly or secretly disobeyed,
and which eventually disappeared from the statute-books. The
cost of entertainments was limited ; the number of guests a person
might have at his house was restricted. No woman was allowed
to have more than half an ounce of gold, or to wear a dress of
more than one color, or to ride in a carriage. In France, during
the Celtic period, a law was passed that women should drink
water only. In 1188 or thereabout no person was allowed to wear
garments of vair, gray, zibeline, or scarlet color. No laced or
slashed garments were allowed, and no one could have more than
two courses at meals. In 1328 scarlet was only permitted to be
worn by princes, knights, and women of high rank. The use of
silver plate was prohibited except to certain high dignitaries ; and
women were frequently sent to prison in forties, fifties, and sixties
at a time for wearing clothes above their rank. Even as late as
the seventeenth century gold, as an ornament on carriages, build-
ings, and gloves, was prohibited.

In England, during the reign of Edward IV, cloth of gold or
silk of a purple color was prohibited to all but members of the
royal family. Lords were allowed to wear velvet, knights satin,
and esquires and gentlemen camelet. None but noblemen were
allowed to wear woolen clothes made out of England, or fur of
sables, and no laborer, servant, or artificer might wear any cloth
which cost more than two shillings a yard. In the year 1336 an
act of Parliament was passed which I quote in full, as showing to
what extremes law can go in the way of interfering with the
interior life of the citizens :

" "Whereas heretofore, through the excessive and over-many
sorts of costly meats which the people of this Realm have used
more than elsewhere, many mischiefs have happened to the

SUMPTUARY LAWS AND THEIR SOCIAL INFLUENCE. 35

people of this Realm : for the great men by these excesses have
been sore grieved, and the lesser people who only endeavor to
imitate the great ones in such sorts of meats are much impover-
ished, whereby they are not able to aid themselves nor their liege
lord in time of need as they ought, and many other evils have
happened as well to their souls as to their bodies, our Lord the
King, desiring the common profit as well of the great men as of
the common people of his Realm, and considering the evils, griev-
ances, and mischiefs aforesaid, by the common assent of the prel-
ates, earls, barons, and other nobles of his said Realm and of the
commons of the said Realm, hath ordained and established that no
man, of what state or condition soever he be, shall cause himself
to be served in his house or elsewhere, at dinner-meal or supper,
or at any other time, with more than two courses and each mess
of two sorts of victuals at the utmost, be it of flesh or fish, with
the common sort of pottages without sauce or any other sort of
victuals. And if any man choose to have sauce for his mess he
may, provided it be not made at great cost ; and if flesh or fish be
to be mixed therein it shall be of two sorts only at the utmost,
either flesh or fish, and shall stand instead of a mess except only
on the principal feasts of the year, on which days every man may
be served with three courses at the utmost, after the manner
aforesaid."

But laws and proclamations were of no avail, though they
continued to be issued and passed down to the reign of Queen
Elizabeth ; and in the reign of James I all sumptuary laws were
repealed. Since then the people of England have been allowed to
wear, to eat, and to drink what they pleased.

In our own country the experiment has been tried with as
much thoroughness and with practically as little result as has
attended the attempt by other nations. As early as the year 1639
we have the prototype of that curious law enacted a few years
ago in the State of Iowa, which prohibits one person from invit-
ing another to take a drink, or treating, as it is called.

In the records of the colony of Massachusetts for the year
mentioned we find as follows :

" Forasmuch as it is evident unto this Court that the common
custom of drinking one to another is a mere useless ceremony,
and draweth on that abominable practice of drinking healths,
and is also an occasion of much waste to the good creatures and
of many other sins," such things are declared to be a reproach
to a Christian commonwealth and are not to be tolerated. How-
ever, invectives of the council appear to have been of little effect,
notwithstanding the severity of the punishments which were
meted out to those who infringed the laws. Drunkenness, which
is at most only a vice, was made a crime ; and in 1636 one Peter

3 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Bussaker was condemned for drunkenness to be whipped with
twenty stripes well laid on. Robert Coles, for drunkenness com-
mitted at Roxbury, was condemned to be disfranchised, and to
wear about his neck so that it would hang upon his outward gar-
ment a letter D, made of red cloth, and set upon white, to con-
tinue this for a year, and not to leave it off at any time in public,
under penalty of forty shillings for the first offense and five
pounds for the second. Severity of punishments appeared only
to aggravate the evil against which they were directed, for in
1648 the Court was forced to declare that " it is found by experi-
ence that a great quantity of wine is spent and much thereof is
abused to excess of drinking and unto drunkenness itself, not-
withstanding all the wholesome laws provided and published for
the preventing thereof." It therefore orders, with a blind per-
versity which is a remarkable instance of the fatuity which actu-
ates people when they endeavor to accomplish the impossible,
that those who are authorized to sell wine and beer shall not har-
bor a drunkard in their houses, but shall forthwith give him up
to be dealt with by the proper officer, under penalty of five pounds
for disobedience.

Tobacco, for some cause or other, was especially obnoxious to
the early colonial authorities of Massachusetts. The trade in the
weed was only allowed to the old planters, but the sale or use of it
was absolutely forbidden unless upon urgent occasion for the
benefit of health and taken privately. It was also ordered that
victualers or keepers of an ordinary shall not suffer any tobacco
to be taken into their houses, under penalty of five shillings for
every offense, to be paid by the victualer, and twelvepence by the
person who takes it. Further, it was ordered that no person
should take tobacco publicly, under the penalty of two shillings
sixpence, nor privately in his own house or in the house of an-
other before strangers ; and that two or more shall not take it
together anywhere, under the aforesaid penalty for every offense.

It is true these laws against the use of tobacco are not so severe
as some that have been enacted in other countries, but they were
equally inefficacious. Thus, a Sultan of Turkey issued an edict
to the effect that any one of his subjects detected in the act of
smoking should for the first offense have his cheeks bored and
transfixed by his pipe ; for the second offense he was to have
his nose cut off ; and for the third he was to lose his head.
Fines in the case of the New-Englanders, and mutilation and
death in the case of the Turks, have not in the slightest degree
prevented the use of tobacco ; and that some recent laws to
which I shall presently draw attention will prove equally futile
there can be. no doubt.

In all these instances of sumptuary laws the ground has been

SUMPTUARY LAWS AND THEIR SOCIAL INFLUENCE. 37

taken that not only was the individual to be benefited, but that
society as a whole was to be improved. Prohibitory laws relative
to the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors which have been
enacted in this country in our own times are based upon this
assumption, but the arguments that have been used by those ad-
vocating such laws show that this is not the only motive by
which they are governed. It has been and still is repeatedly
asserted in the speeches and writings of these people that those
who indulge in alcoholic liquors or in the use of tobacco spend
money which could otherwise be more profitably used, and that
indulgence in the habit of drinking or smoking directly conduces
to idleness and luxurious habits. These assertions are probably
true, and the laws against which the practices in question are
directed are essentially sumptuary laws.

The laws which several States have enacted relative to the
manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors are true sumptuary laws,
notwithstanding the fact that it is claimed by their adherents that
they are measures which every independent State having a regard
for the welfare of society is in duty bound to enforce. On that
ground there are many other acknowledged evils against which
the law-making power might very properly direct its energies,
and which would interfere scarcely less with personal rights. One
chief difficulty with such laws is that if thoroughly enforced, they
do harm to those who never under any circumstances drink intoxi-
cating liquors to excess, and yet who are benefited by their mod-
erate use. As a matter of fact they never are enforced equally
upon all classes of the community. In the most severe of all the
States it is perfectly practicable for any person with pecuniary
means to import as much alcoholic liquor for his own use and
that of his family and friends as he chooses. The poor man, to
whom a glass of beer or of wine taken decently and in order
might not only do no harm, but might supply a positive want of
his system, has to go without, or else resort to all kinds of deceit
and subterfuge to get what he wants. States exceed their legiti-
mate powers when they undertake to prevent a person doing that
which is beneficial to him, and which does no harm to any one
else. Moreover, as I have already said, such laws, being in this
age of the world impossible of enforcement, tend to bring all law
into contempt. It is not necessary for me to go into detail on
this point ; every one who hears me knows how the prohibitory
liquor laws of the various States that have passed them are dis-
regarded and ridiculed. Every now and then we hear of some
instance where an offender is arrested and punished, but for every
one brought before the courts a thousand go unnoticed. In the
States of Maine, Vermont, and Rhode Island I know from my own
personal experience that, notwithstanding the stringent liquor

4o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

indignant at being treated in so outrageous a manner, and utters
his protest in no measured language ; his conduct only serves
to convince his captors that the charge based upon the odor of
alcohol is well founded, and he is mulcted in forty or sixty dollars,
or sent to the workhouse for ninety days, as the case may be. No
one is safe under such a law ; it is often a very difficult matter to
determine whether a person is drunk or sober, and frequently it is
impossible even by the most minute examination. Again, some
people become intoxicated from a single glass of champagne,
while others will drink two or more bottles with impunity. It
is manifestly unjust to allow an individual peculiarity like this
to establish the guilt or innocence of an accused person.

As I have said, why stop at making drunkenness a crime when
there are other vices far more immoral and more destructive to
the character of the perpetrator ? Why not enact a law against
lying ? There are laws against slander, which injures the one
against whom it is directed, and they are well enough, for to injure
another is a crime. But lying in the abstract remains unnoticed
by the penal statutes, though a more degrading vice in the eyes of
all civilized mankind than mere drunkenness.

On the first of June of the year 1889 a statute went into effect
in the State of New York which prohibits, under severe penal-
ties, the selling of cigarettes to minors under the age of sixteen ;
and the State of Michigan has recently not only enacted a similar
law, but goes farther, and interdicts the manufacture of cigarettes
within the limits of the State. Is it to be supposed for one mo-
ment that minors under the age of sixteen in either State smoke
fewer cigarettes than they did before these laws were passed ?
How is the vender to know in many cases whether the applicant
for cigarettes is over sixteen or not ? And is there any difficulty
for any minor to get a companion who is undoubtedly over six-
teen, or some one else, to buy cigarettes for him ? Legislatures,
that pass such laws, and governors that sign them, are apparently
ignorant of the first principles of jurisprudence. I venture to say
that even now, although not two weeks have elapsed since the act
went into effect, it is practically a dead letter in the city of New
York and throughout the State generally, and I am quite sure
that not a single conviction will ever be obtained under its pro-
visions. I am not certain that our society did its full duty in
not protesting against the statute-books being encumbered with
such rubbish. Cigarette-smoking by minors is an evil to be sup-
pressed by proper instruction and by the intervention of parents
and guardians. If these latter can not prevent it, it is quite cer-
tain that all the policemen in the State, backed by all the majesty
of this particular law, will have their labor for their pains.

THE STRENGTH OF SPIDERS AND SPIDER-WEBS. 41
THE STRENGTH OF SPIDERS AND SPIDER-WEBS.*

By HENEY C. McCOOK, D. D.

T

IHE frailty of a spider's web has passed into a proverb. Yet,
comparatively, the silken line of an orb-weaver is very
strong. According to Schaffenberger, it requires ninety spinning
threads of an Epe'ira to yield one thread of the thickness of a
caterpillar's thread ; and, according to Leeuweiihoek, it requires
eighteen thousand spider lines to make the thickness of a hair of
the beard. These comparisons are suggestive, although in a meas-
ure deceptive, since there are vast differences in the size of the
threads woven by Epeiroids. It is probable that the extraordinary
strength of the thread is due to the superposition of a large num-
ber of extremely minute threads. However, after the thread is
woven, Meckel could not recognize it as consisting of more than
eight to ten strands. A geometric snare, whether vertical or hori-
zontal, must be strong enough to sustain the weight of a spider of
considerable size, such as Argiope cophinaria or Epe'ira insularis,
particularly when the female is heavy with eggs.

Blackwell thus determined by experiment the strength of a
line by which a female Epe'ira diademata, weighing ten grains,
had sustained itself from a twig : He attached to the extremity
of the line a small piece of muslin with the corners nearly drawn
together, so as to form a minute sack, into which he carefully
introduced sixty-one grains' weight in succession, being more than
six times the weight of the spider. On the addition of half a
grain more the line broke.

Not only must an orb sustain the weight and movements of its
maker, but it must also have sufficient strength to hold the various
insects which strike upon it. Bees and wasps are sometimes able
to break through the spiral meshes of a large snare, but generally
the threads are strong enough to hold them, in spite of their
struggles, until the proprietor can enswathe them. Moreover, the
orb-web must be able to sustain the weight of evening dews. One
who has seen such snares in the early morning, when every viscid
bead appears to have attracted to itself an incasing armor of sil-
very dew, and has noticed how the spiral strings are bagged down
under the weight of the same (Fig. 1), must have inferred that the
snare was able to support a comparatively heavy burden. The
same is true concerning summer showers, which must fall very
heavily, and be driven before a pretty strong wind, in order to
batter down a well-constructed orb-web.

* Reprinted from Vol. I of American Spiders and their Spinning- Work, by the kind
permission of the author, to whom we are also indebted for the accompanying illustrations.

4o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

indignant at being treated in so outrageous a manner, and utters
his protest in no measured language ; his conduct only serves
to convince his captors that the charge based upon the odor of
alcohol is well founded, and he is mulcted in forty or sixty dollars,
or sent to the workhouse for ninety days, as the case may be. No
one is safe under such a law ; it is often a very difficult matter to
determine whether a person is drunk or sober, and frequently it is
impossible even by the most minute examination. Again, some
people become intoxicated from a single glass of champagne,
while others will drink two or more bottles with impunity. It
is manifestly unjust to allow an individual peculiarity like this
to establish the guilt or innocence of an accused person.

As I have said, why stop at making drunkenness a crime when
there are other vices far more immoral and more destructive to
the character of the perpetrator ? Why not enact a law against
lying ? There are laws against slander, which injures the one
against whom it is directed, and they are well enough, for to injure
another is a crime. But lying in the abstract remains unnoticed
by the penal statutes, though a more degrading vice in the eyes of
all civilized mankind than mere drunkenness.

On the first of June of the year 1889 a statute went into effect
in the State of New York which prohibits, under severe penal-
ties, the selling of cigarettes to minors under the age of sixteen ;
and the State of Michigan has recently not only enacted a similar
law, but goes farther, and interdicts the manufacture of cigarettes
within the limits of the State. Is it to be supposed for one mo-
ment that minors under the age of sixteen in either State smoke
fewer cigarettes than they did before these laws were passed ?
How is the vender to know in many cases whether the applicant
for cigarettes is over sixteen or not ? And is there any difficulty
for any minor to get a companion who is undoubtedly over six-
teen, or some one else, to buy cigarettes for him ? Legislatures
that pass such laws, and governors that sign them, are apparently
ignorant of the first principles of jurisprudence. I venture to say
that even now, although not two weeks have elapsed since the act
went into effect, it is practically a dead letter in the city of New
York and throughout the State generally, and I am quite sure
that not a single conviction will ever be obtained under its pro-
visions. I am not certain that our society did its full duty in
not protesting against the statute-books being encumbered with
such rubbish. Cigarette-smoking by minors is an evil to be sup-
pressed by proper instruction and by the intervention of parents
and guardians. If these latter can not prevent it, it is quite cer-
tain that all the policemen in the State, backed by all the majesty
of this particular law, will have their labor for their pains.

THE STRENGTH OF SPIDERS AND SPIDER-WEBS. 41
THE STRENGTH OF SPIDERS AND SPIDER-WEBS.*

By HENRY C. McCOOK, D. D.

T

IHE frailty of a spider's web has passed into a proverb. Yet,
comparatively, the silken line of an orb-weaver is very
strong. According to Schaffenberger, it requires ninety spinning
threads of an Epeira to yield one thread of the thickness of a
caterpillar's thread ; and, according to Leeuwenhoek, it requires
eighteen thousand spider lines to make the thickness of a hair of
the beard. These comparisons are suggestive, although in a meas-
ure deceptive, since there are vast differences in the size of the
threads woven by Epeiroids. It is probable that the extraordinary
strength of the thread is due to the superposition of a large num-
ber of extremely minute threads. However, after the thread is
woven, Meckel could not recognize it as consisting of more than
eight to ten strands. A geometric snare, whether vertical or hori-
zontal, must be strong enough to sustain the weight of a spider of
considerable size, such as Argiope cophinaria or Epeira insularis,
particularly when the female is heavy with eggs.

Blackwell thus determined by experiment the strength of a
line by which a female Epeira diademata, weighing ten grains,
had sustained itself from a twig : He attached to the extremity
of the line a small piece of muslin with the corners nearly drawn
together, so as to form a minute sack, into which he carefully
introduced sixty-one grains' weight in succession, being more than
six times the weight of the spider. On the addition of half a
grain more the line broke.

Not only must an orb sustain the weight and movements of its
maker, but it must also have sufficient strength to hold the various
insects which strike upon it. Bees and wasps are sometimes able
to break through the spiral meshes of a large snare, but generally
the threads are strong enough to hold them, in spite of their
struggles, until the proprietor can enswathe them. Moreover, the
orb-web must be able to sustain the weight of evening dews. One
who has seen such snares in the early morning, when every viscid
bead appears to have attracted to itself an incasing armor of sil-
very dew, and has noticed how the spiral strings are bagged down
under the weight of the same (Fig. 1), must have inferred that the
snare was able to support a comparatively heavy burden. The
same is true concerning summer showers, which must fall very
heavily, and be driven before a pretty strong wind, in order to
batter down a well-constructed orb-web.

* Reprinted from Vol. I of American Spiders and their Spinning- Work, by the kind
permission of the author, to whom we are also indebted for the accompanying illustrations.

42

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

An illustration of the remarkable strength and elasticity of the
foundation lines of orb-webs appears in a biographical notice of the
distinguished astronomer, the late General Ormsby M. Mitchell,

printed with an
edition of his lect-
ures. Prof. Mitch-
ell directed his
great ingenuity to
the problem of
causing a clock to
record its beats
telegraphically,
and at the same
time perfectly per-
form the work of
a time - keeper.
The required
makes and breaks
in the battery
were effected by
means of a cross
of delicate wire
and a mercury-
cup. Many obsta-
cles having been
overcome, there
arose the great
difficulty of pro-
curing a fiber suf-
ficiently minute
and elastic to con-
stitute the physical union between the top stem of the cross
and the clock pendulum. Various materials were tried, among
others a delicate human hair, the very finest that could be ob-
tained, but this was too coarse and stiff. Its want of pliancy
and elasticity gave to the minute " wire cross " an irregular mo-
tion, and caused it to rebound from the globule of mercury into
which it should have plunged. " After many fruitless attempts,"
says Prof. Mitchell, " an appeal was made to an artisan of wonder-
ful dexterity — the assistance of the spider was invoked ; his web,
perfectly elastic and perfectly pliable, was furnished, and this
material connection between the wire cross and the clock pendu-
lum proved to be exactly the thing required. In proof of this
remark I need only state the fact that one single spider's web has
fulfilled the delicate duty of moving the wire cross, lifting it, and
again permitting it to dip into the mercury every second of time

Fig. 1.— Sector of a Dew-laden Orb-web. (Magnified.)

THE STRENGTH OF SPIDERS AND SPIDER-WEBS. 43

for a period of more than three years ! How much longer it
might have faithfully performed the same service I know not, as
it then became necessary to break this admirable bond, to make
some changes in the clock. Here it will be seen that the same
web was expanded and contracted each second during the whole
period, and yet never, so far as could be observed, lost any portion
of its elasticity."

At various times there have been placed on record accounts of
the capture by spiders of small vertebrate animals, as snakes, mice,
and birds. Popular stories to the same effect have from time to
time been sent the rounds of the daily press, and found utterance
and often illustration, the latter sometimes of a most original and
remarkable character, in popular magazine literature. The great
seeming disparity, in such cases, between the size and vigor of
captive and prisoner ; the confusion of the various narratives in
details as to the species and behavior of the spider, and the charac-
teristics of her snare ; the radical departure from known food
habit of species that are insectivorous ; together with the fact that
the accounts all have come from lay observers, have been more or
less lacking in scientific accuracy and minuteness of detail, and
wholly without scientific verification — these considerations have
caused such records and reports to be discredited by arachnologists
and naturalists generally. But there are a few cases, confirmed
by circumstantial evidence, and reported by observers of good
reputation and careful habit, which deserve notice.

The physical powers of the Lycosidce, the popular running,
ground, or wolf spiders, are well illustrated by an instance recorded
in the proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila-
delphia. The result as reported was achieved by pure strength
and activity, without any of the mechanical advantages of a
snare. Mr. Spring, while walking with a friend in a swampy
wood, which was pierced by a dike three feet wide, was attracted
by the extraordinary movements of a large black spider in the
middle of a ditch. Closer examination showed that the creature
had caught a fish ! She had fastened upon it with a deadly grip
just on the forward side of the dorsal fin, and the poor fish was
swimming round and round slowly, or twisting its body as if in
pain (Fig. 2). The head of its black enemy was sometimes almost
pulled under water, but the strength of the fish would not permit
an entire submersion. It moved its fins as if exhausted, and often
rested. Finally it swam under a floating leaf near the shore and
made a vain effort to dislodge the spider by scraping against the
under side of the leaf.

The two had now closely approached the bank. Suddenly the
long black legs of the spider emerged from the water, and the
hinder ones reached out and fastened upon the irregularities of

44

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the sides of the ditch. The spider commenced tugging at his
prize in order to land it. The observer ran to the nearest honse
for a wide-mouthed bottle, leaving his friend to watch the strug-
gle. During an interval of six or eight minutes' absence the spi-
der had drawn the fish entirely out of the water ; then both creat-
ures had fallen in again, the bank being nearly perpendicular.
There followed a great struggle, and on Mr. Spring's return the
fish was already hoisted head first more than half its length out
upon the land. It was very
much exhausted, hardly mak-
ing any movement, and was
being slowly and steadily
drawn up by the spider, who
had evidently gained the vic-
tory. She had not once quit

Fig. 2.— A Fish captured by a Dolomede Spider.

her hold during the period of a quarter to half an hour of obser-
vation. Her head was directed toward the fish's tail ; she stepped
backward up an elevation of forty-five degrees, dragging her cap-
tive with her.

The observers were unfortunately unable to await the issue of
the matter, and therefore caught the combatants in the bottle,
partly filled with water. The fish swam languidly at the bottom
of the vessel, and the spider stood sentinel on the surface, turning
when the fish turned and watching every motion. The bottle was
set aside and visited after an interval of three hours. The spider
was then found dead at the bottom of the jar, but the fish was
alive and lived twenty-four hours afterward. The spider was
three fourths of an inch long and weighed fourteen grains; the
fish was three and one fourth inches long and weighed sixty-six
grains. The spider was probably bruised by the catching.

THE STRENGTH OF SPIDERS AND SPIDER-WEBS. 45

One of the most remarkable records of the physical and me-
chanical powers of spiders is made in Silliman's Journal. The ac-
count is authenticated by the names and statements of a number
of gentlemen resident in the vicinity of the occurrence, Batavia,
N. Y. One evening Hon. David E. Evans found in his wine-cel-
lar a live striped snake, nine inches long, suspended by the tail in
a spider's web between two shelves. The snake hung so that its
head could not reach the shelf below it by about an inch. The
shelves were about two feet apart, and the lower one was just be-
low the bottom of a cellar window, through which the snake prob-
ably passed into it. From the upper shelf there hung a web in
the shape of an inverted cone, eight or ten inches in diameter at
the top, and concentrated to a focus about six or eight inches from
the under side of this shelf. From this focus there was a strong
cord made of the multiplied threads of the spider's web, appar-
ently as large as sewing-silk, and by this cord the snake was sus-
pended. A rude sketch of the serpent
suspended in the web was made by
an eye-witness, and is exactly repro-
duced at Fig. 3. A close examination
showed that the snake's mouth was
entirely closed by a number of threads
wound around it. Its tail was tied in
a knot so as to leave a small loop or
ring, through which the cord was
fastened, as seen in the figure.

Accepting the account as true, or
at least probable, I would make the
following inferences : First, the de-
scription of the web, although suffi-
ciently indefinite, leaves little doubt
that the snake was originally taken
in a snare of a species of tube-weaver,
and most probably by the medicinal
spider, Tegenaria medicinalis (Hentz). The broad-sheeted web
of this spider is frequently found in cellars, which are favorite
haunts. It builds near windows, in the angles and along the sides
of walls, having its tubular den in a crack or opening laid along
an angle (Fig. 4). The sheet is usually drawn upward until its
exterior margin is higher than the plane of the entrance of the
tube. There is thus formed a sort of pouch within which insects
often fall, and so are readily captured by the spider, who mounts
guard at the door of her den. Over the door the tube frequently
rises into a sort of tower.

I had often wished for an opportunity to follow up critically
one of the recurring reports of the physical powers of spiders.

Pig. 3.

-A Snake entangled in a
Spider's Web.

46

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

This wish was gratified in the summer of 1882. An article drifted
through American newspapers which detailed the ensnaring of a
living mouse by a Kentucky spider. I was fortunately able to
trace the story to its origin in the Lebanon (Ky.) Standard and
Times. Correspondence with its intelligent editor, Mr. J. W. Hop-

Fig. 4. — The Pouch, Web, Tower, and Cocoon of the Medicinal Spider.

per, brought me entire confirmation of the report from a number
of trustworthy sources. I think the incident of sufficient impor-
tance to justify a somewhat detailed presentation. The original
account, as published by Mr. Hopper, is as follows :

" A very curious and interesting spectacle was to be seen
Monday afternoon in the office of Mr. P. C. Cleaver's livery-stable
in this city. Against the wall of the room stands a tolerably tall
desk, and under this a small spider, not larger than a common
pea, had constructed an extensive web reaching to the floor (Fig.
5). About half past eleven o'clock Monday forenoon, it was
observed that the spider had ensnared a young mouse by passing
filaments of her web around its tail. When first seen, the mouse
had its fore-feet on the floor, and could barely touch the floor
with its hind-feet. The spider was full of business, running up
and down the line and occasionally biting the mouse's tail, mak-
ing it struggle desperately. Its efforts to escape were all un-
availing, as the slender filaments about its tail were too strong

THE STRENGTH OF SPIDERS AND SPIDER-WEBS. 47

for it to break. In a short time it was seen that the spider was
slowly hoisting its victim into the air. By two o'clock in the
afternoon the mouse could barely touch the floor with its fore-
feet ; by dark the point of its nose was an inch above the floor.
At nine o'clock at night
the mouse was still alive,
but made no sign except
when the spider descend-
ed and bit its tail. At
this time it was an inch
and a half from the floor.
Yesterday morning the
mouse was dead, and
hung three inches from
the floor. The news of
the novel sight soon be-
came circulated, and hun-
dreds of people visited
the stable to witness it.
The mouse was a small
one, measuring about an
inch and a half from the
point of its nose to the
root of the tail."

The space given the
above facts may seem to |||
some to be in undue pro-
portion to their impor-
tance. But, apart from
the value of positively
determining any point in
natural history, the dis-
cussion has this conclusion : The capture of small vertebrate ani-
mals by both sedentary and wandering spiders is possible; the
one by the mechanical strength of their snares, the other by their
physical strength. There is thus laid the foundation, at least, for
the presumption that such animals may be or become natural
food for the larger species of araneads. This is certainly a most
important fact in the life-history of spiders, and would greatly
enlarge the range of their habits.

Fig. 5.— A Mouse hanging in a Spider's Snare.

Me. F. J. Moss, of the New Zealand Legislature, and an extensive traveler in
Polynesia, suggests that the deterioration of the natives of those regions may be
partly due to faulty instruction. It is neither desirable nor expedient to thwart Na-
ture too much. What is most needed, this author thinks, is to allow the islanders in
their work and their amusements free scope for the imaginative powers with which
they are endowed, and the exercise of which is too often foolishly discouraged.

48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES— FRENCH AND

AMERICAN.

By GEOEGE W. BEAMAN.

THE general subject of American secondary school programmes
has been of late years a most prolific one. What with the
relative or particular importance of the mother-tongue, classical
studies, history, modern languages, and, more recently, manual
training, the educational essayist has been rather embarrassed by
the multitude of the topics presented him. As the result of much
discussion, contention, and wordy warfare, we have, however, to-
day, certain secondary school programmes, generally speaking
quite similar in their character, marking in a more or less defined
manner the routes along which our boys are traveling on their
respective journeys to college, to scientific school, or to practical
business life. While there is to be noted a decided advance and
improvement in pedagogical methods in our secondary schools
within the last few decades, it yet remains true that no intelligent
reader of the programmes, as exhibited in the catalogues of our
leading endowed fitting schools, and public grammar and high
schools, can fail to be struck by a certain lack of co-ordination,
system, and, in most instances, by an apparent want of a genuine
appreciation of the real demands that the present age makes
upon modern secondary schools. Once outside the old fixed lim-
its of the classics, there is to be observed much disagreement
among the schools themselves, both as to the proper subjects to
be included in the programme and the relative time to be devoted
to the studies that are placed in the school curriculum. When
comparison of these programmes with those of other countries is
made, we have at once afforded us a most striking exemplification
of how far we still are in this country from any well-defined con-
sensus as to what the modern secondary school programme really
should be. In view of the revolutionary period through which
the schools have been passing during the past thirty years, this is
perhaps hardly to be wondered at. The broadening of the college
requirements for entrance, largely brought about by the demands
of a public sentiment, no longer fully satisfied with purely medi-
aeval curricula, has in itself served to call for many modifications
of the secondary schools' programme. With Harvard and Johns
Hopkins opening their doors to students unequipped with the tra-
ditional Greek, there has of course arisen a demand for prepara-
tion in other prerequisites which have necessarily been substi-
tuted for- Greek. In response to the general outcry for them, the
courses in modern languages, in the mother-tongue, history, and

SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES. 49

particularly in science studies, have had to be greatly extended
or recast. The many admirable scientific schools and colleges
throughout the country have made demands for special prepara-
tion that have had to be met. Furthermore, it has come to pass
that the college prerequisites in the old classical studies even have
been very considerably increased. Altogether it may be stated
that the demands made upon the preparatory schools to-day are
probably at least twenty-five or thirty per cent in excess of the
demands of twenty-five or thirty years ago. Coincident with this
multiplication and extension of preparatory studies, there has
arisen in our country a sentiment which to no inconsiderable ex-
tent has reduced the hours devoted to study. A few decades since
a boy fitting for college with its limited requirements in Latin,
Greek, and mathematics, spent six hours per diem in school, and,
as a matter of course, expected to give two, three, or possibly
more hours to study at home. Now, he spends four or five hours
in the school-room ; and the sight of a text-book under his arm as
he idly saunters homeward excites comment in the community as
to the severe mental strain to which school-children are nowa-
days subjected by rigorous masters.

The result of all this is a state of affairs to which President
Eliot, of Harvard University, has recently invoked the serious
attention of the American public* He states that the average age
of admission to Harvard University has been gradually rising for
many years, and has now reached the extravagant age of eighteen
years and ten months. He also notes that in view of the increased
time required for the completion of his professional education,
after leaving college, it follows that a man, thoroughly preparing
himself for life, finds himself unprepared for self-support much
before he is twenty-seven years old. This result is by no means
peculiar to Harvard or to Harvard graduates, but holds true as
to all colleges in the United States. Its remedy, in the opinion of
President Eliot, is in both shortening and enriching our second-
ary school courses of study. As illustrating what other countries
have succeeded in doing in this direction, he cites the school
courses of France. The hours of recitation of these courses, less
elaborate and difficult than those of Germany, are, he claims, so
far as hours of recitation are concerned, substantially the same as
those of this country ; yet, under them, the French boy is better
prepared for matriculation at seventeen years of age than ours are
at nineteen. He therefore calls for a serious examination of the
programmes of Venseignement secondaire class ique of France in
comparison with the programmes of American preparatory

* A paper read before the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational
Association at Washington, February 16, 1888, published in the Atlantic Monthly, August,
1888. Remarks before the Commercial Club, Providence, R. I., March, 1889.
vol. xxxvn. — 4

5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

schools, as likely to yield results which, can not but be conducive
to educational progress in this country.

As might be expected from the eminence of its author, the
paper of President Eliot has excited much interest in regard to
the French secondary school programmes. Much comment has
resulted both as to the facts and the conclusions arrived at. The
facts represented in the address as to the age of matriculates in
American colleges are only too patent. The defects of the pro-
grammes of the preparatory schools of this country are unfortu-
nately equally patent. The great need of some readjustment of
existing methods of our fitting schools and schools of grammar
and even primary grades, for the benefit of boys preparing for
modern collegiate, scientific, and university training, is so impera-
tive that no friend of educational advance in this country can fail
to welcome this valuable contribution to the literature of the sub-
ject given by the President of Harvard University. But, not-
withstanding his admirable paper, and the comment which has
followed, so far as one can judge from the literature of the con-
troversy, no one has apparently made haste to follow President
Eliot's advice and make any serious comparative examination of
the French and American school programmes. On the contrary,
there are indications that, with true American inconsequence,
many persons are already either clamoring for the adoption of the
French curricula forthwith, as a panacea for all our secondary
school deficiencies, or, with great lack of knowledge and accurate
information, are condemning them outright as a foreign growth
quite unsuited to American soil. This is to be regretted ; for as-
suredly the comparative study of the programmes of the two coun-
tries would give American school boards and American parents
much information that should be known and accurately known.
This examination is additionally desirable from the fact that, in
his felicitous presentation of some characteristics of the lyce'e cur-
riculum, Dr. Eliot seems to have omitted to note some of the
more important features of the programmes that give them their
strength, and has quite failed to point out how it happens that the
French boy is really enabled to pass his examinations for the
baccdlaureat es lettres at the early age of seventeen years. It may
also be said that the examination is likewise desirable for the rea-
son that President Eliot has inadvertentlv made some statements
as to the French courses of study that the official programmes
hardly seem to warrant.

In the present paper the attempt will be made to present, in a
somewhat more precise manner than has been undertaken by
President Eliot, certain details of the curricula of not only the
classical lyce'es, but also of the secondary special schools of
France. In connection with this, the attempt will also be made to

SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES. 51

exhibit, with, equal precision, some facts as to comparative courses
in vogue in typical preparatory schools of the United States.
Following the suggestion of Dr. Eliot, particular reference will be
made to the Public Grammar and Public Latin School of the city
of Boston. To obtain the requisite data the writer has first tabu-
lated the hours of recitation per week entering into the enseigne-
ment secondaire classique and the enseignement secondaire spe-
cial of France. These tables have then been brought into com-
parison with similar tables, prepared on precisely the same plan,
of the courses of study in both the classical and scientific depart-
ments of certain typical fitting schools in the United States. The
hours of recitation having been made the unit of the tabulation,
the tables thus exhibit the total number of recitations in every
subject taught, each year, and for the entire course of every school
subjected to this examination. From the resultant figures the
percentage of each study to the whole course has been also de-
rived. The data as to the French courses were collated from the
latest official programmes of the schools, as prescribed by the order
of January 22, 1885, for the classical lycdes,* and by the order of
August 10, 1886, for the secondary special schools, f The data
as to American schools were derived from information supplied
by the head masters of the schools in question. The result of this
tabulation has been to exhibit in full relief the curricula of both
countries, and to bring into graphic view some very striking
points of difference in the courses of study as carried out in the
French and American schools, as well as to expose many singular
differences of practice obtaining in our own schools. The large
space that these tables would occupy precludes their publication
in connection with this paper, but the methods of compilation are
here mentioned, in order that such statements as may be made by
the writer as to the details of the courses of instruction in both
countries may be depended on as being as absolutely correct as a
careful and conscientious tabulation can make them.

The programmes thus compared, at once exhibit two most im-
portant facts to which President Eh'ot has made no reference
whatsoever, viz. : that if a boy in France is prepared for matricu-
lation at seventeen years of age, instead of nineteen, as with us, it
is due (1) to the fact that, between the ages of eight and seven-
teen, the French boy devotes more time to study than the Ameri-
can boy; and (2) to the further fact that, with his increased
amount of reading, the French lad has had eliminated from his
preparatory course the serious study of subjects considered by the

* Plan d'Etudes des Lycees — Programmes de l'Enseignement classique. Paris: Mai-
son Delalain Freres.

f Plan d'Etudes et Programmes de l'Enseignement secondaire special dans les Lycees
et Colleges present par Arete du 10 Aout, 1886. Paris : Maison Delalain Freres.

52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

French, school authorities non-essential to that particular course,
but which with us are still firmly intrenched in every prepara-
tory school programme ; in brief, that the results obtained under
the French programmes, in both the classical and scientific pre-
paratory schools, are due to honest hard work, persistently con-
tinued for a term of years on a well-defined plan, which is char-
acterized by a complete disjunction of the courses that lead to
college, from those that are intended for youth for whose antici-
pated career in life a knowledge of the classical languages is not
deemed essential.

A comparative examination of the programmes of the Boston
Latin School with the French lyce'e course brings out this excess
of hours in the French school very prominently. The French
boy, in his ten years' sojourn in the lyce'e, spends 8,560 hours in
the recitation-room, while in the corresponding course in Boston *
the recitation hours are 7,790 only. With a ten-per-cent excess
in recitation hours, and a corresponding increase of study, it is
evident that the two courses can not be considered " as substan-
tially of the same strength." However much we might " enrich "
our curricula by imitating French methods, it seems quite clear
that we certainly could not, by this process, hope to " shorten "
them any.

Turning to the relative assignment of time to the subjects
taught in common by the two schools, there is to be noted also
one other point where the statistics and Dr. Eliot are at variance.
One searches in vain for that " preponderance " of time given to
the French language in the lyce'es as compared with the instruc-
tion in the English language in the Boston Latin School. In fact,
the " preponderance " is, on the contrary, altogether on the side of
the Boston schools, where over twenty-eight per cent of the whole
course is devoted to the mother-tongue, to only 20'8 per cent in
the lyce'es. This is an interesting fact, which will doubtless be
surprising to most readers. It is a prevalent opinion in the United
States that in our schools too little time is devoted to the study of
our own language. And lest it may be urged that this " prepon-
derance " is offset by the nine hours' course per week in philosophy,
given in the last year, where, President Eliot states, " French re-
sumes almost exclusive possession of the programme," it may be
said that, according to the official programme, this claim can not
be legitimately made. The course of philosophy in question em-

* The programme of the Boston Latin School, embracing six years of study, and that
of the French lycees ten years, there have been prefixed to the tables of the Latin School
— for purposes of comparison — the recitation hours of four years of the grammar-school
courses preliminary to it. All references to the Latin School courses in this paper will,
therefore, be understood as embracing the result of tabulation of ten years' school work —
not that of the six years' course of the Latin School proper.

SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES. 53

braces the elements of psychology, logic, morals, and metaphysics,
with a study of the principal schools of philosophy and the vari-
ous philosophical authors. In connection with the last-mentioned
branch of the course, as is natural, considerable prominence is
given to the French philosophical writers, and one hour per week
of the nine is expressly devoted to the Latin and Greek authors.
This course of philosophy, admirable as it is, and interesting as
(perhaps) it may be to the average youngster of seventeen years,
can in no sense be properly classed as an adjunct to the mother-
tongue instruction, except in so far as history, geography, or any
other branch of study, carried on in the vernacular, can be so con-
sidered. In the programme it is very properly classified by itself.

Referring to the courses in modern languages, there is certainly
here no question as to where the preponderance lies. In the French
lycde the living languages are made prominent from the prepara-
tory year, and the strength of the course developed in the first
three years. The total is 1,000 hours, or 117 per cent of the whole
hours, compared with 380 hours, or 4*9 per cent only in the Bos-
ton Latin School. Latin and Greek, which naturally form the
pieces de resistance of the French classical course, are, as one
might expect, much more prominent than with us. The Latin is
begun in cinquieme, the pupil eleven' years of age, with ten hours
of recitation per week, and is continued with reduced hours for
six years, giving a total of 1,500 hours, against 1,293 hours at
the Boston Latin School. In the last year (classe de philosophie)
the technical study of Latin is omitted, but, as above stated, one
hour per week of the nine allotted to philosophy is devoted to
Greek and Latin authors, the original texts being freely employed.
Greek is begun in the second term of the fourth year of the course,
the pupil twelve 'years of age, with two hours per week for the
rest of the year, and is continued through the classe de rlietorique.
Taken together, the Greek and Latin recitations of the French
course occupy 2,340 hours, contrasted with 1,805 hours in the Bos-
ton Latin School.

The importance attached to drawing in the French scheme of
instruction is shown by the considerable time devoted to it. This
is in most striking contrast to the almost general neglect of this
important branch of education, not only at the Latin School of
Boston, but at nearly all classical fitting schools in the United
States. In the French lyce'e 7'9 per cent of the whole course is
devoted to drawing ; in the Boston Latin School the percentage
is 2'9.*

Among the various illustrations of the difference of the two

* In the Latin School proper no instruction in drawing is given. The percentage referred
to is derived from the preceding grammar-school courses.

S4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

programmes, none is more interesting than that of the rela-
tive number of hours devoted to mathematics in the French and
American courses. The figures are as follows : French lycee,
740 hours ; Boston Latin School, 1,387 hours. The French boy-
arrives at the end of his classical preparatory course of study,
having been subjected on an average to less than two hours of
recitation per week in mathematical subjects. The average Amer-
ican pedagogue would certainly rise with protests deep, and dis-
gust profound, if ever it were proposed to him to fit a boy for
college with an allowance of only 8'7 per cent of the whole school
course for his arithmetic, algebra, and geometry.* Yet this is
precisely what the French do — in their classical course. In the
Boston representative course the percentage is 17*8 per cent.

As the treatment of mathematics in the French classical course,
with the limited time allotted to this study, is of general interest,
a resume of it is given here. In the preparatory class of the lyce'e,
as well as in the classe de liuitieme following, the allotted time is
devoted to simple arithmetical work in whole numbers, mental
work, and to the solving of easy problems. In septieme (third
year of the course) are added decimal numbers and the metric
system, with drawing of geometrical figures. In the next year
there is a review of work oh whole numbers, a continuation of
mental exercises and problems, and decimals ; work on fractions
is entered upon, and elementary geometry is begun. In the suc-
ceeding year arithmetic is continued, with the study of the rule of
three, interest, discount, with simple problems in alligation, a
detailed review of the metric system, and with further very ele-
mentary geometrical exercises. In quatrieme, theoretical geom-
etry is begun, with one recitation per week. In troisieme, the two
hours per week are devoted to a review of ' arithmetical subjects,

* The percentage of hours devoted to recitations in mathematics, in such typical fitting
schools of the United States as have supplied data to the writer, is as follows : Boston Latin
School (with four years' grammar-school course added), 17*8 per cent. Boston English High
School (with two years' grammar-school course added), 16'6 per cent. Phillips Academy
Exeter, N. H., classical course, 26*5 per cent ; scientific course, 26*9 per cent. Williston
Seminary, Easthampton, Mass., classical course, 26*7 per cent; scientific course, 25'7 per
cent. Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., classical course, 25*7 per cent ; scientific course,
28*8 per cent. St. Paul's School, Concord, N. H., classical course, 24*9 per cent ; scientific
course, 27*8 per cent. Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, X. J., classical course, 17 per
cent ; scientific course, 22*7 per cent. St. Mark's School, Southborough, Mass., exclusively
classical, 21*6 per cent. Doubtless these percentages may, in some of the schools cited, be
increased or decreased in the case of certain pupils ; but they represent the mathematical
courses as prescribed for the major portion of them. How strikingly the figures illustrate
the different methods of treatment of the mathematical question, in the United States and
France, will be understood when it is further stated that the percentage allowed to math-
ematics in the French lycee course is only 8*7 per cent, and in the secondary special course,
where mathematical studies are considered by the French to be especially prominent, only
17 per cent.

SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES. 55

elementary algebra is begun, and geometry is continued. In
classe de rhetorique (ninth year of the course), two hours a week
are devoted to recitations in solid geometry and cosmography;
and in the last year (classe de philosophic), four hours per week,
are devoted to a complete review of the work of the previous years
in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry.

It must be admitted that in this country the mathematical in-
struction, sketched above, would be thought to afford a somewhat
meager outfit for a young man intending to present himself for
examination at any of our American colleges,. with their present
mathematical prerequisites. It is also obvious that the French,
who, according to President Eliot, " are quite as skillful with num-
bers as the Americans," do not gain a skill in " ciphering " in the
classical lyce'e course. This proficiency is obtained elsewhere, as
will be further shown. The French are, indeed, not only skillful
with numbers, but are as a nation eminent for their mathematical
ability ; and their management of the much-vexed problem of the
relative time to be devoted to elementary mathematical branches
in the classical fitting schools commends itself to the serious con-
sideration of American educators. A comparative exhibit of the
classical lyce'e and Boston School courses clearly shows that it is
to the excess of hours of recitation as a whole, and in no small
degree to the holding of mathematical studies in abeyance, that
the French are enabled to accomplish what they do in the way of
bringing their boys to college at an early age. Give to the Boston
course, for instance, ten-per-cent increase of recitations, plus the
difference existing at present between the respective hours given
to mathematical studies in the lyce'e and Latin School courses, and
we have 1,426 hours. This is more time than is at present devoted
to Latin, in the Boston Latin School, during its entire six years'
course. It still more closely represents the difference in the re-
spective hours given in the two countries to modern languages and
drawing, with the hours of the entire course in philosophy added.
It clearly follows — reversing the point of view — that Harvard has
but to slightly reduce its requirements in mathematics to the
French lyce'e standard, to enable it to obtain from its matriculates
— those coming at least from the Boston Latin School — not only
the attainments in philosophy considered so desirable by its presi-
dent, but also considerable proficiency in such other branches of
the French programme as its honorable faculty may " elect " to
receive.

With the present public sentiment, and especially in view of
the present requirements in mathematics on the part of American
colleges, it is not probable that we can look for a reduction in
mathematical studies in our classical preparatory courses to the
point exhibited by the programmes as existing in France. But

5 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that tlie protest against the excessive and unnecessary time given
to mathematical instruction in all our schools which has begun,
will continue, none can doubt. As is well known, no primary or
secondary school programme of this country can be scratched
without revealing an omnipresent Tartar known as arithmetic.
This mathematical Cossack is ever found firmly settled in his
saddle, and foraging for subsistence hither and yon, upon friend
and foe alike. The result is, that in the classical preparatory school
the boy is hampered and handicapped by serious mathematical
studies which absorb time that he could more profitably devote to
his mother-tongue, to modern languages, and to science studies.
On the other hand, in the scientific or English courses, the pupil
fitting for the scientific school, or for business, is forced to take
unwelcome draughts of Latin. These last are somewhat diluted,
it is true, and are given perhaps on the general principle entering
into the administration of certain family medicines, viz., that if
not of any direct service to the patient, they can do him no pos-
sible harm. But in point of fact, while as a rule the Latin given
in these brief courses can be of little or no value to a pupil fitting
for the scientific school, time is taken from subjects having a
direct personal bearing on his future career. It is interesting to
note how, in France, this feature of instruction is managed.

A French boy having passed through the grades of the lyce'e
classique, as exhibited in the preceding table, and intending to
devote himself to a literary profession, proceeds without further
ado to his examination for the baccalaureat es leitres wherein
mathematics plays but a subordinate part, as is indicated by the
small percentage of time given it in the lyce'e course. But, for
the benefit of graduates designed for the national schools, or for
those who prefer to present themselves for examination for the
baccalaureat es science instead of es lettres post-graduate lyce'e
mathematical courses are instituted. The classe de rnathema-
tiques elemehtaires , for instance, has for its object the study of
matters comprised in the programmes of the baccalaureat es sci-
ences, as well as those of the military (Saint-Cyr), the naval, and
forestry schools and the central school. The curriculum of this
class devotes seven and a half hours per week to mathematics,
four and a half hours to science studies, two each to the mother-
tongue, Latin and modern languages, three hours to history and
geography, one hour to philosophy, and four hours to drawing.
This course is of but one year. It is usually taken by pupils from
the classe de rhetorique, but may be taken by pupils from the
classe de philosophic who wish to review and increase their mathe-
matical attainments. A much stiffer and more comprehensive
drill in mathematics is afforded by the classe de mathematiques
speciales. This course is also of but one year. The instruction

SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES. 57

given in this class has for its object the preparation of pnpils who
have completed the lyce'e course, and who purpose entering the
polytechnic, the superior, or the central schools. None are ad-
mitted to this course who have not previously manifested an apti-
tude for it. The hours of recitation per week are, mathematics
eleven hours, descriptive geometry three hours, physics and
chemistry five hours, natural history three hours, French lan-
guage two hours, modern languages two hours, history and geog-
raphy three hours, and drawing two hours ; total, thirty -one
hours.

The instruction to-day given in France under the name of Ven-
seignement secondaire special has found a secure footing only
after many years of violent discussion and constant opposition.
Its career, however, has been steadily advancing and gaining in
public consideration ever since its organization in 1865. Its pro-
gramme was extended and revised in 1881, and in 1886 it was
organized on its present basis. The courses of study have been
framed with especial reference to the requirements of a large class
of pupils of good social position, who have neither the desire, the
tastes, nor perhaps the leisure for long years' study of dead lan-
guages. It is a response to the needs of a large class for a prepa-
ration for actual life in various careers, which the classical
courses are incapable of giving. The school is in a sense the
Realschule of the French, differing from its German congener,
however, by the entire elimination of Latin from its programme.
The course comprises six years of study, crowned, at its success-
ful termination, by the diploma of bachelier de Venseignement
secondaire special, the possession of which entitles the holder to
admission to the examinations for the baccalaureat es sciences, for
the military school of Saint-Cyr, and, with the exception of the
Polytechnic School, which still holds to its classical requirements,
to other national schools with requirements of a general similar
character.

However interesting, as an illustration of French school meth-
ods, the curriculum of the secondary special schools may be, the
severity of the course, as a whole, renders it unlikely that it will
ever be very closely imitated in this country. The recitations
here range from twenty-five to twenty -nine hours per week, giv-
ing, for the whole course, 6,360 hours, against 4,360J hours in the
American representative of the same type of school.* The official

* As the secondary special schools of France occupy about the same place in the
French system as the upper classes of grammar schools and the English high schools
occupy in ours, the French programmes of these schools have been brought by the writer
into comparison with a typical American school — the courses of the two upper classes of
the grammar schools and those of the English High School of Boston being employed as a
fair American representative.

5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

programme shows that the instruction of these 6,360 recitation
hours are distributed as follows : Mother-tongue, 1,000 ; modern
languages, 1,160; history, 360; geography, 280; mathematics,
1,080 ; science studies, 960 ; drawing, 960 ; penmanship, 160 ; book-
keeping, 80 ; morals, 40 ; legislation, 80 ; political economy, 40 ;
philosophy, 160. The ages of the pupils average eleven years in
the first and sixteen in the last class. The recitation hours of
a pupil passing through the last two grades of the grammar
school, and the four years' course of the English High School in
Boston are, barring certain changes on account of options, as fol-
low : Mother-tongue, l,illi ; modern languages, 494 ; history,
570 ; geography, 152 ; mathematics, 722 ; drawing, 760 ; book-keep-
ing, 95.

Here, again, as in the case of the French classical lyce*e course,
the instruction in the mother-tongue is found to be less than in
the American representative school. The hours devoted to mod-
ern languages (1,160) are, in fact, somewhat in excess of those
given to French (1,000), and, it may be added, are in most marked
contrast to the time allotted to the same study in the Boston
High-School programme (494), even after the latter has received
a credit under this head for a certain number of hours that in
point of fact are used by many pupils for Latin.

Mathematics, which, as has been seen, plays but a subsidiary
role in the classical lycee course, in the secondary special course
assumes more prominence comparatively, the average being 4£
hours against 3-J- hours' recitation per week in the typical Ameri-
can programme. Yet even here it is not up to what may be
termed the United States standard. A tabulated exhibit of the
hours of the classical courses of the two countries shows that an
average of only one hour and fifty minutes per week is given to
mathematics in the classical lyce'e course, compared with an aver-
age of three hours and forty minutes in the Boston classical school
course. A comparison of that course with the French secondary
special programme develops also the fact that a typical American
classical school not only devotes more hours to mathematics than
the French consider essential for a preparatory scientific course,
but also exhibits the further surprising fact that the Boston Eng-
lish High-School course, with two years of grammar-grade school
prefixed to it, actually gives less time to mathematics than is de-
voted to that study in the six years' course proper of the Latin
School. And this is not by any means peculiar to the Boston
school courses. The programmes of other schools exhibit a treat-
ment of the mathematical subjects quite similar. At Phillips
Exeter precisely the same number of hours is given to mathemat-
ics in the classical and scientific courses. At Williston, even
after adding the course in surveying to the mathematics, the per-

SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES. 59

centage of the latter to the whole course is less than on the clas-
sical side.

From the data here given it seems clear that if we are to hope
to pnt our schools on anything like an equality with those of
France, to say nothing of those of other civilized countries of the
world, certain modifications of our school programmes have cer-
tainly to be made. First and foremost among those changes there
would seem to be indicated a need for a certain specialization of
our school courses with reference to the different demands made
upon the schools by different classes of pupils. That our schools
of primary and secondary grade, as they stand to-day, do not re-
spond to the varied requirements of American society, seems quite
obvious. The complaint of President Eliot sufficiently indicates
their shortcomings, so far as a preparation for college is con-
cerned. For many years professors and teachers at scientific and
technical schools have mourned the dearth of preparatory schools
that should give them pupils not handicapped by great deficien-
cies in training of the powers of observation. Business men are
quite unanimous in their belief that the schools do not afford
a satisfactory training for commercial pursuits, while he who
runs may read their many deficiencies for the constantly increas-
ing class of pupils whose period of school life terminates in the
grammar grade.

The main cause of the present stage of development of the
school system is not so deeply hidden that one has to search long
for it. The average American school programme at the present
time is simply a living illustration of a development, on Amer-
ican lines — influenced and modified by national characteristics
— of the old educational theory that literature and language are
the basis of all mental culture and training. The educational
structure reared on this theory, beset and more or less dam-
aged by modern assaults, has been repaired here and patched
there, but the old framework and the old foundations have ever
remained to cramp intelligent reconstruction and practical re-
form. The result is in the main a hotchpotch with which no one
is thoroughly satisfied. It would seem to be a clear case of the
old house repaired and refurnished, until it is satisfactory to no
one. It is passing strange that the school system of the United
States, in respect to its want of specialization, should stand almost
unique among the many examples of the national aptitude in
adopting means to ends. In business life, in professional life, in
industrial pursuits, our nation has shown itself peculiarly clever
in its concentration of labor in systematic, well-defined channels
having special reference to the results to be attained. Yet, when
we come to compare our school programmes with those of other
nations, we not only find that we do not do as much school work,

60 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nor as satisfactory work, but that what we do is done in an anti-
quated and unscientific manner. • In France, for example^ we
find a school system that in its superior primary course gives
to the child of the humblest artisan not only a solid foundation
in all essentials of mother-tongue instruction, but, by means of
its complementary courses, in manual training and modern lan-
guages as well. We likewise find a clean-cut, well-defined course
in the special secondary schools for the child who seeks prep-
aration for commercial or professional life by modern meth-
ods ; while, by the systematic arrangement of its classical lycee
course, results are achieved which excite the admiration and envy
of the president of one of our most honored universities. Turn-
ing to our own programmes, we find what can only be character-
ized as a more or less futile effort to build on one foundation
several distinct structures, each one of which is diverse in the
special ends sought to be accomplished. In our effort to do
everything, we have failed to do anything sufficiently well to
entitle it to favorable comparison with the results attained by a
more skillful apportionment of labor.

We can also learn from the French programmes that if Amer-
ican schools are to accomplish results comparable with those
attained in France, American children have not only to work on
more specialized lines, but have also to work more. There can
be no doubt that the outcry against "long school hours" and
" home study," which for many years past has been so resonant
in this country, has seriously affected the efficiency of our schools.
As the exhibit of school programmes here given shows, the average
hours of recitation in American fitting schools are very consid-
erably less than in those of France. And those of France are to
about an equal degree less than the hours of' the German gymna-
sia and Realschulen. It is full time that a halt be called on the
further progress of this absurd clamor. The idea that a healthy
American boy, between the age of eight and fifteen years, let out
of school, as he generally is in these days, at from one to two
o'clock, should not do a certain amount of systematic study at
home, certainly can but be characterized as absurd. It is probable
that but few persons, who have not made special inquiry in regard
to it, appreciate the extent to which this sentiment against out-of-
school study now prevails in this country. If it has had the effect
of crippling the public schools, it may be said that it has really par-
alyzed many private ones where this feeling is pandered to. The
advanced age of pupils entering the private fitting schools, as
well as the advanced age of college matriculates, is to a great
extent due to this disinclination of parents to submit their chil-
dren to regular systematic study in their earlier school life. In
collecting the data for this paper the writer has been pleased to

SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES. 61

ascertain that on the part of certain endowed home fitting schools
established on recent foundations, direct efforts are being made to
counteract these deficiencies of earlier years by a systematic reg-
ulation of pupils' time — both as regards study and recreation.
The result, as could be anticipated, is a marked broadening of the
school course, as well as a decided decrease in the ages of the
senior class pupils. It is because of the possibilities in this direc-
tion, as well as to respond to the rapidly increasing demand in
the United States for them, that thoroughly good preparatory
home schools, which shall fit boys for college and scientific school
in a rational manner, are now especially in request. The average
home school that fits for everything or anything, and that is a
fraud from its glossy catalogue to its ornate diploma, is suffi-
ciently well known to the average parent, and is not here alluded to.
The home schools now needed to meet our modern requirements
can have an existence only by virtue of some man or men willing
to liberally endow them. It would seem, too, that the ideal pre-
paratory home school should embrace at least six years of instruc-
tion. It should be fully equipped and prepared in all respects to
respond thoroughly to the three distinct demands that are now
made upon the modern fitting school, viz. : (1) preparation for
college with all the maximum requirements in the classics ; (2)
preparation for college without Greek, but with adequate modern
language and science-study substitutions ; (3) preparation for the
scientific school without Latin or Greek, but with equivalent and
honest substitutions of somewhat increased mathematical instruc-
tion (as compared with the classical branches), together with
modern languages and science studies, so taught that in all re-
spects of severity of course they shall equal in disciplinary results
the drill given in the classical courses.

To the response that may be made, to the effect that we already
have preparatory schools doing precisely this work, and doing it
well, it is claimed that the few facts presented in connection with
this paper are in themselves a sufficient refutation. There is
another point. The writer would be among the last to impugn
the ability, the conscientious devotion, the peculiar fitness, even,
of the heads, and, generally speaking, of the staffs of these classical
schools, for he has the highest appreciation of them. But the fact
remains that, with hardly an exception, the faculties of the old clas-
sical preparatory schools that have been erected on the old endow-
ments seem to be incapable of giving absolutely fair and honest
treatment to their so-called preparatory scientific or English ad-
juncts. They are bound hand and foot in the old traditional
bonds. By reason of their educational bias they are precluded
from yielding a hearty, enthusiastic response to any demand that
a classical curriculum does not meet. In point of fact, why should

62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

they ? They have personally no faith whatever in the real value
of any training except that gained by the study of the classics.
They appreciate that the scientific course is but a graft on the old
trunk, made in great measure for the pecuniary advantage of
their establishment, and in response to a popular demand, which
they hope and pray may soon find a speedy death. They have no
hesitation in proselytizing in the ranks of the brighter " scien-
tific" pupils sent them, for the benefit and glory of the "full
rounded course " — in embryo. Here again they are justified, for
the preparatory scientific courses are in fact but indifferent patch-
work compromises between the claims of the past and the de-
mands of the present. These courses really do give no thorough
secondary school work in any one subject, except possibly mathe-
matics. With an apparently semi-superstitious feeling as to the
mysterious results produced on the human mind by communion
with a Latin grammar, for even a limited period, little dabs of
Latin have been introduced into these courses. This study ex-
tends in the scientific course of some preparatory schools through
one year, sometimes two, rarely three years. With no desire what-
ever to depreciate the undoubted value, to certain pupils, of an
honest, bona fide study of the classical languages, continued for
years, it is submitted that these cursory courses of Latin can give
no results in any way commensurate with the time expended on
them. In Germany the classicists have ever stoutly maintained
that any reduction of hours devoted to Latin in the gymnasium
course would deprive it of all value ; yet they there give to it
nine hours per week for five years, and eight hours for four years
more. In the Realschulen they devote to it eight hours a week
for two years, six hours for three, and five hours for four years.
The value that the German school authorities would place upon
a course of Latin of three or four hours per week for one, two,
or even three years, affords a pretty little arithmetical problem
whose solution is respectfully relegated to the designers of these
American courses. Beyond this Latin and the regulation four or
five hours a week in mathematics, what else does one find in our
preparatory " scientific " courses ? As but few of the more modern
scientific schools or schools of technology have requirements in
Latin— and as one and all of them are desirous of obtaining from
their matriculates all, and more than they often get, in the way
of modern languages— one could properly expect that the fitting
schools would afford opportunities for solid preparation in French
and German. As will be seen, this demand is by no means well
responded to. In the scientific courses of one prominent fitting
school consulted by the writer, no instruction whatever in mod-
ern languages is given. In the programme of another of these
schools—which is also the most modern, therefore lending some

SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES. 63

encouragement to the hope of more enlightened procedure as time
rolls on — we find that modern languages enter into but three of
the four years' course. Leaving the modern languages, and look-
ing at the time devoted to science studies, the same desultory
treatment is found. There is encouragement to be had in the
assurances of laboratories erected and in course of erection, and in
the information that in some fitting schools Harvard's require-
ments in experimental physics and chemistry can be fully met ;
but, so far as the curriculum itself of the scientific course is con-
cerned, we have but the hope of something better in the future.
If one glances at the time allotted to the education of the hand
by means of drawing, or if one is curious in the matter of history
and mother-tongue instruction, almost equally unsatisfactory
work is encountered. Yery properly, any intelligent parent,
studying such courses with a view of submitting to one of them
a boy whom he has decided to educate on modern methods, hesi-
tates. It is not strange that in his extremity he finally concludes
that a serious, well-defined course in the ancient languages is of
more value than the olla podrida preparation presented him on
the " scientific " side. As this is precisely what the makers of the
programmes themselves believe, this conclusion is applauded — and
there is rejoicing over the rescue of another boy from a " one-
sided education " !

A comparative examination of French and American prepara-
tory school programmes, therefore, at least yields this much ; that
our educational methods are in great need of thorough revision if
we are to hope to stand well alongside the French in all that per-
tains to judicious preparation for college, for scientific school, or
for the general demands of modern life. This examination further
shows that we stand in pressing need not only of fitting schools
that meet these demands as they exist to-day, but so untrammeled
and free from all sort of sectarian or educational bias that they
can freely expand and respond to the demands that will assuredly
follow as years roll by, and colleges and universities still further
yield to the influences that are slowly but surely liberating them
from the traditions of the past. An honest home fitting school,
firmly founded on the principle of responding to the demands as
they exist to-day — not as they existed a century or two ago — suffi-
ciently endowed to render it free to maintain firmly all the re-
quirements of its different rational courses of instruction, seems
to be the great educational need of the day. As the weakest link
of dur educational chain lies most undoubtedly in the earlier years
of the preparatory course, this school should be prepared to take
pupils at twelve years of age ; it would be better if they could be
taken at ten, and the course be made to embrace eight years in-
stead of six. It should be a home school, for the reason that, with

64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the prevailing habits of American family life, it is becoming with
us every day more and more impossible to obtain from pupils the
proper amount of work, associated with the proper regime as to
exercise and recreation— and diet even— so long as they remain
under the parental roof. Such a school could not fail to soon
stand as an exponent of the development of a higher, better, and
truer secondary education. It would be a model for the encour-
agement of other schools of a similar character that would soon
come into existence, and it would make its impress upon the pro-
grammes of public secondary schools. Any man of wealth who is
animated by the ambition of sending his name down to a grateful
posterity linked with a noble educational benefaction, could not
to-day find a more deserving field for the investment of a spare
million than in the founding of such a school. To the colleges, to
the universities, to the schools of industrial science, would the
money thus invested be of as great benefit as if donated directly
to them. For, as the gentle rain sinking far down into the earth
among the rootlets refreshes and revives the mature tree, so would
a preparatory school of this character give to the higher institu-
tions of learning strength at a vital point where it is peculiarly
needed.

-♦•♦«•-

SCENES ON THE PLANET MERCURY.*

Br G. V. SCHIAPAEELLI,

OF THE OBSEBVATOBY OF MILAN, ITALY.

"VTO one of the planets that were known in ancient times is so
-i-N difficult to observe as Mercury, and none presents so many
obstacles to the study of its orbit and physical constitution. As
to its orbit, Mercury is the only planet the course of which seems
even now to have partly cut loose from the laws of universal
gravitation, and the theory of which, although well built up by
the genius of Leverrier, is still in considerable disagreement with
the observations. The little we know of its physical construc-
tion is derived from the observations made a hundred years ago by
Schroeter at Lilienthal. A telescopic examination of this planet
is really a difficult affair. Describing a small orbit around the
sun, Mercury is never seen so far from it as to make it possible
to observe it, in temperate latitudes, in the full darkness of night.
It is rarely possible to observe it in the twilight before sunrise
or after sunset ; it being then so near the horizon and so affected
by the agitations and unequal refractions of the lower strata of
the atmosphere that it usually presents itself to the telescope with

* Address before the Royal Academy Dei Lincei, December 8, 1889.

SCENES ON THE PLANET MERCURY. 65

an uncertain and flaring aspect which appears to the naked eye as a
strong scintillation. For this reason the ancients called it SrtX/W,
or the scintillating star. No other resource is left than to essay
observations in broad daylight, in the presence of the sun always
near, and in an always illuminated atmosphere.

Some efforts I made in 1881 persuaded me that it was possible
both to see the spots of Mercury and to get sufficiently connected
and continuous observations of them in broad daylight, and I de-
cided in the beginning of 1882 to make a regular study of this
planet. During the eight years since then, I have had Mercury in
the field of my telescope several hundred times ; often, it is true,
with little profit and at the expense of great loss of time, either be-
cause of the agitation of the atmosphere, which is often strong
during the day — especially in the summer months — or on account
of the insufficient transparency of the air. But by patience I have
succeeded in seeing the spots on the planet one hundred and fifty
times with more or less precision, and in making also fairly satis-
factory drawings of them, employing at first, for the purpose, our
eight-inch Merz equatorial, but afterward our great eighteen-inch
Munich instrument.

I found the rotation of the planet quite different from what it
has hitherto been supposed to be, on the basis of insufficient obser-
vations made with imperfect telescopes a hundred years ago. I
may describe it in a few words by saying that Mercury revolves
around the sun in the same manner as the moon revolves around
the earth. As the moon's journey around the earth is performed
in such a way that it always shows nearly the same face and the
same spots, so Mercury, in traversing its orbit around the sun,
constantly presents nearly the same hemisphere to that source
of light. I say nearly — not exactly — the same hemisphere. For
Mercury is subject, like the moon, to the phenomenon of libration.
In observing the full moon, even with a small telescope, we re-
mark that the same spots generally occupy the central regions of
its disk ; but, if we study them and their distances from the east-
ern and western borders more minutely, we shall soon perceive,
as Galileo first did about two hundred years ago, that they oscil-
late to a considerable degree, now toward the right and now
toward the left — exemplifying the phenomenon called libraiion in
longitude. . This arises from the moon's directing one of its diam-
eters perpetually and almost exactly, not toward the center of the
earth, and not toward the center of the elliptical lunar orbit, but
toward the one of the two foci of its orbit which the earth does
not occupy. To the observer occupying this point, the moon
would consequently always present the same appearance. But to
us, who are at a mean distance of forty-two thousand kilometres
from that point, the moon presents somewhat different aspects

VOL. XXXVII. — 5

66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

according to the time when we look at it, sometimes showing us a
little more of its eastern, sometimes a little more of its western,
regions. Mercury presents itself to the sun in different phases of
its cycle in a similar manner. It constantly directs one of its
diameters, not toward the focus of its elliptical orbit which is
occupied by the sun, but toward the second focus. These two
foci being distant from one another not less than a fifth of the
whole diameter of the orbit of Mercury, the libration of the planet
is enormous. The point that receives the rays of the sun verti-
cally changes its place on the surface of the planet, and performs
an oscillatory movement along the equator forty-seven degrees in
amplitude, or through more than one eighth of the equatorial
circumference. The whole duration of this oscillation, including
the going and returning, is equal to the time employed by Mer-
cury in traversing its orbit, or about eighty-eight terrestrial days.
Thus Mercury stands oriented toward the sun like a magnet
toward a mass of iron ; but this orientation is not constant to
the point of excluding a movement of oscillation of the planet
to the east and to the west, like that which the moon performs
toward us.

This oscillation is of great importance for the physical con-
dition of the planet. Suppose, for instance, that it did not exist,
and that Mercury always turned the same hemisphere to the light
and heat of the sun, the other hemisphere remaining plunged in
perpetual night. The point of the surface situated at the central
pole of the illuminated hemisphere would have the sun eternally
in the zenith ; the other points of the planet accessible to the
solar rays would have the sun always at the same point in their
horizon, at the same height, without any apparent movement,
without any perceptible change ; consequently, no alternation of
night and day, no variety of season ; the stars eternally invisible
because of the perpetual presence of the sun ; and, Mercury hav-
ing no moon, we can hardly imagine how the inhabitants of those
regions, condemned to an endless day, could find a means of regu-
larly computing time.

Such are, in fact, nearly the conditions that prevail in Mercury,
but only approximately. The oscillating movement of the Mer-
curial globe as toward the sun would be attributed by an observer
on the surface of the planet to the sun, as we attribute to the sun
the diurnal movement which really appertains to the earth. To
us the sun seems to circle regularly from east to west, defining in
twenty-four hours the period of day and night ; to the observer
on Mercury, the sun will describe a back-and-forth movement
through an arc of forty-seven degrees in the celestial vault, while
the position of the arc as toward the horizon will always be the
same. The complete period of the double oscillation will com-

SCENES ON THE PLANET MERCURY. 67

prise almost exactly eighty-four terrestrial days. According as
the arc of solar oscillation is all above the horizon of the observer
or all below it, or partly above and partly below it, there will be
different appearances and a different distribution of light and
heat. In the regions, covering three eighths of the planet, where
the arc is all below the horizon, the sun will never be seen, and
the darkness will be perpetual. Thick and eternal night will
reign there, except perhaps from the accidental appearance of
some light produced by refraction and atmospheric glows, or phe-
nomena like the aurora borealis ; together with the light emitted
by the stars and planets.

Another part of Mercury, including also three eighths of its
surface, will have the arc of oscillation all above its horizon, and
will be continually exposed to the rays of the sun, without any
other change than the variations in the obliquity of the rays
through the different phases assumed during the period of eighty-
eight days. Night is absolutely impossible. In other regions, cov-
ering a quarter of the planet, in which the arc of oscillation is
partly above and partly below the horizon, there will be alterna-
tions of light and darkness. In these privileged regions the pe-
riod of eighty-eight days will be divided into two intervals, one
characterized by a continuous light, the other by darkness ; the
two intervals will be equal in some places, of different length in
others, according to the position of the place on the surface of the
planet, and the length of the part of the solar arc which appears
above the horizon.

The possibility of organic life in a planet constituted after this
manner depends on the existence of an atmosphere capable of dis-
tributing heat into different regions, in such a way as to diminish
the extremes of heat and cold. Schroeter, a hundred years ago,
suspected the existence of an atmosphere round Mercury; my
observations afford more definite indications of it, and affirm its
existence with a much greater probability. The spots of the
planet are most clearly visible when they are in the central parts
of the disk, and grow dimmer and ultimately disappear as they
approach the border. I have been able to assure myself that this
phenomenon is not merely due to the greater obliquity of the per-
spective, but is because some obstacle is really presented to the
view of spots situated in such positions. That obstacle can hardly
be anything else than the greater extent of atmosphere that the
light-rays have to traverse in coming from the edges than from
the center of the disk. We have, therefore, reasons for believing
that the atmosphere of Mercury is less transparent than that of
Mars, and more nearly like that of the earth. The circular contour
of the planet, moreover, in which the spots become less visible,
always appears more luminous than the rest, but often irregularly

68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

luminous, more so at some points than at others ; and sometimes
we can see on its borders bright white regions that remain in
sight several days in succession, but are generally changeable, and
show themselves sometimes in one place and sometimes in another.
I attribute these phenomena to condensations going on in the at-
mosphere of Mercury, which reflects more light into space the
more opaque it becomes. Similar white regions are also often
seen in the interior of the disk, but they are not so brilliant there
as on its border. Further, the dark spots of the planet, while
they are permanent as to form and arrangement, are not always
equally evident. They are sometimes more intense, at other times
paler. Sometimes, also, one or another of them will become mo-
mentarily invisible. Such peculiarities can not be attributed to
any other cause than atmospheric condensations similar to our
clouds, which veil the ground of the planet in different degrees,
sometimes in one region, sometimes in another. An observer,
looking from the depths of space upon the countries of our earth
covered with clouds, would perceive a like spectacle.

Very little can be said of the nature of the surface of Mercury.
We must recollect that three eighths of it are inaccessible to the
solar rays and to sight ; on that side, therefore, we have but slight
hopes of ever learning anything certainly. It will also be hard
to gain a correct and sure knowledge of the part we can see. The
dark spots, even when they are not clouded, usually appear under
the form of extremely thin trails of shadow. In ordinary con-
ditions they are distinguishable only at the expense of much atten-
tion and weariness. Under the best conditions they have a brown,
warm tint, like that of sepia ; of a tone very indistinct upon the
general color of the planet, which is usually of a clear rose bor-
dering on copper. Forms or bands so vague and diffuse, with
indistinct borders, always leaving a place for arbitrary definition,
are not easily represented in a satisfactory manner. Still, I be-<
lieve the indeterminateness of outlines is, in the majority of cases,
only apparent, and a result of the insufficient optical power of the
instrument ; for the more perfect the view and the finer the image
we get of the shadows, the more do we find them disposed to break
up into a multitude of smaller details. By employing more pow-
erful telescopes, they could doubtless be resolved into more re-
duced forms.

While it is so hard to make a good study of the dark spots of
Mercury, it is not easy to express a well-founded opinion upon
their nature. They might be attributed to the different materials
composing the solid surface of the planet or to its structure, as we
know is the case with the moon. But if we are disposed to con-
sider them as in some way resembling our seas, and to suppose
the existence of an atmosphere around the planet, with condensa-

SCENES ON THE PLANET MERCURY. 69

tions and precipitations, I do not know of any decisive arguments
that can be opposed to the opinion. The spots are not gathered
in large masses, but are disposed in areas and zones of small
extent ; are greatly ramified, and alternate with considerable uni-
formity with clear spaces. We may, therefore, conclude that no
vast oceans or great continents exist on Mercury ; but that land
and sea interpenetrate one another and give rise to conditions
very different from those which exist on the earth, but which
may be more desirable.

Mercury is a world that differs from ours as much as Mars
does. The sun lights it and warms it much more intensely than
it does the earth, and in a very different way. If life exists in
that world, it is doubtless under conditions so different from ours
that we can hardly imagine them. The eternal presence of the
sun, darting its rays almost vertically on some regions, and its
perpetual absence in the opposite countries, would seem intoler-
able to us. And yet, if we reflect upon it, we shall remark that
such a contrast would produce a more rapid, more powerful, and
more regular atmospheric circulation than that which spreads the
elements of life over the earth ; and it possibly is brought about
in this way that as complete and even perhaps more perfect equi-
librium of temperature is produced on the whole planet than
with us.

Mercury, by directing the same face toward the sun during its
whole revolution, is peculiarly distinguished from the other plan-
ets, all of which the length of whose rotation has been determined,
turn round their axes in a few hours. This mode of rotation, how-
ever, which would be unique among the planets, seems common
enough among the satellites. All testimony is to the effect that
our moon has always conformed to it. The first three satellites
of Jupiter probably behave in the same way, and the observations
of Auwers and Engelmann demonstrate that the fourth does so.
Cassini verified the same fact for Japhet, the eighth satellite of
Saturn. It may, therefore, be considered the rule among the sat-
ellites, while it is an exception among the planets.

The exception may probably be attributed to the proximity of
Mercury to the sun, and perhaps also to the fact that it has no
satellites ; and depends, I think, on the way Mercury was formed
when the solar system took its present shape. The peculiarity
constitutes a new datum to be added to those which astronomers
will have to take account of in studying solar and planetary cos-
mogony.— Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from a
French version by F. Terby in del et Terre.

7o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ARTIFICIAL HONEY AND MANUFACTURED SCIENCE.

Br ALLEN PRINGLE,

PRESIDENT OF THE ONTARIO BEE-KEEPEBS' ASSOCIATION.

TTTE are often told that this is a scientific age, and the state-
VV ment is undoubtedly true. The world now more than ever
before looks to science as a secular if not a spiritual guide. How-
ever much their speculations may be questioned and controverted,
the scientific book and the scientific man are popularly accepted
as authority, at least on matters of physical and historical fact.
The veracity of science therefore is, or ought to be, above suspi-
cion. How careful, then, ought the teacher and exponent of sci-
ence to be that his assertions are true ; that his alleged facts are
facts ; and that even his speculations are free from the appearance
of dogmatism ! He needs to be especially particular when writing
for the general public, for people untrained in science will accept
his statements as expert testimony. Errors will thus be sure to
mislead his readers, many of whom are without the knowledge
that would enable them to discriminate between the true and the
false in his assertions.

In The Popular Science Monthly for June, 1881, appeared an
article on Glucose and Grape-Sugar, by Prof. H. W. Wiley. In
that article the following unfortunate statement was made : " In
commercial honey, which is entirely free from bee mediation,
the comb is made of paraffin, and filled with pure glucose by
appropriate machinery/' To say that there was not one word of
truth in that extraordinary assertion is the short and proper way
to put it, and that is exactly what I undertake to say. There was
not a tittle of evidence that any such honey had ever been made
up to that time, nor is there a particle of evidence that any such
honey has since been made.

Nevertheless, this vile slander on an honest and honorable in-
dustry has done incalculable injury to bee-culture in America, if
not throughout the world. A lie is said to travel half round the
world while the truth is getting ready to start, and this one
proved no exception. Though contradicted and refuted over and
over again, it still lives and is still going. Newspapers still keep
iterating and reiterating Prof. Wiley's slander, but they seldom
publish a correction. Thousands of people, common and uncom-
mon, still believe that scientific yarn that comb-honey is manu-
factured throughout without " bee mediation," and why shouldn't
they ? The former believe it because the newspapers say so, and
the latter because the magazines and encyclopaedias say so ; for it
is a fact that this itinerant fiction has actually found a place in

ARTIFICIAL HONEY AND MANUFACTURED SCIENCE. 71

the American Cyclopaedia and the American supplement to the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. In justice to the latter, however, it
mnst be said that the British work, whose publishers repudiate
the American supplement, contains nothing of this.

Here is what the American Cyclopaedia says on the subject:
" Glucose is very extensively fed to bees, which eat it with great
avidity, and store it away unchanged as honey. It is also put up
directly in trade as honey — with which bees have had nothing to
do — being put by means of appropriate machinery into artificial
combs made of paraffin " (page 834, vol. viii, edition of 1883).

The American supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica
has this information on the subject : " Honey is manufactured on
the same plan, only here the bees are employed to assist in the
fraud. They are furnished with a supply of starch-sugar, which
they store in their combs, when these combs are also fraudulent,
being made from paraffin and furnished to the bees, who fill them
with glucose and cap them with genuine wax. It is difficult
to see how the art of adulteration could be carried further"
(page 41, vol. i, Hubbard Brothers, Philadelphia and New York,
1885).

Argument and refutation failing to kill the falsehood, the ed-
itor of Gleanings in Bee-Culture — a responsible man financially
— offered a reward of one thousand dollars to any one (including
Prof. Wiley) who would produce some of the so-called " manu-
factured " honey, or designate the place where it was made or
could be found. This offer is still open and good. The writer of
this article also offered through the press a reward of one hun-
dred colonies of bees (equal to about one thousand dollars) to any
one who would produce some of this "artificial honey." This
offer also is still open and good. None, however, has ever been
produced. No one has yet come forward to claim the cash or the
bees.

Prof. Wiley had supplemented the assertion above quoted with
the following additional information, probably to encourage the
manufacturers : " This honey " (that is, the manufactured article)
" for whiteness and beauty rivals the celebrated real white-clover
honey of Vermont, but can be sold at an immense profit* at one
half the price." Now, had that business of honey manufacture
been as practicable as profitable, the temptation to embark in it
would have been almost too much for human nature to resist.
But it seems nobody went in, while nearly everybody believed
that other bodies were in.

However, Nature's dearth is likely to produce conviction
where facts, arguments, and rewards failed to do so. The seasons
of 1887 and 1888, especially the latter, were unpropitious for the
" busy little bee," and yielded but little honey. The crop was a

7 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

general failure, not only in America but in Europe. The modi-
cum of honey produced, especially of comb-honey, was soon ex-
hausted, and the dealers as well as consumers, North, South, East,
and West, were crying out for honey. The producers were inun-
dated with letters and orders which they could not fill. Now, here
was the grand opportunity for the manufacturers of "artificial
honey." If the article could be sold "at an immense profit at half
the price " of the genuine article, as Prof. Wiley assures us, these
bogus manufacturers could have coined money — there were " mill-
ions in it " apparently. But they failed to appear. The glucose
was available, the paraffin ditto, and the " appropriate machinery "
ought, in the interval under the law of progress, to have become
still more " appropriate " and perfect in its work ; but, strange to
say, the famine of honey continued. The tempting prices were
offered in vain. Not a pound of the stuff ever " materialized/' so
far as anybody could find out. Nor was this gap in the extracted
honey, caused by the drought, filled by any artificial substitute,
which also goes to prove that the prevalent notion that honey is
extensively adulterated has very little foundation in fact. Con-
sidering the comparatively low market prices of honey the past
few years, and the facility with which the genuine article can be
produced in modern scientific bee-culture, adulteration would
hardly pay for the trouble.

That there is but very little adulteration either of comb or
extracted honey may be safely asserted. The prevalent popular
belief to the contrary may be accounted for in two ways — by the
prevalent ignorance of the character and what I might call the
habits of honey, and by the erroneous teachings and misleading
reports of the authorities under review. While it may be said, in
general terms, that honey chemically consists of sugar and water,
in the proportion usually of about seventy-five per cent of the
former to twenty-five of the latter,* these elements vary so much
in their proportions in different grades of honey gathered from so
many different flowers at different seasons of the year that there
is no sure test, chemical or other, of honey. Even the polari-
scope, but recently considered a certain test of its purity, and
still so considered by some analysts, is found to be uncertain and
unreliable. While generally in pure honey the ray of light is
turned to the left, some samples, equally pure, though perhaps
stored rapidly and capped prematurely, may contain so much
cane-sugar that the ray is turned to the right. Hence the mis-
takes of chemists, relying upon the integrity of the polariscope,
in passing upon the purity or impurity of honey. They have

* According to C. Tomlinson, F. R. S., F. C. S., dextrose thirty-eight per cent, levulose
thirty-six, water twenty-two, and the remaining four, salts, wax, pollen, gluten, and aromatic
and coloring matters.

ARTIFICIAL HONEY AND MANUFACTURED SCIENCE. 73

pronounced samples adulterated which were known to he the
pure products of the flowers gathered by the bees. Every apia-
rian specialist knows that during the course of one good honey
season, beginning with the early spring bloom of willow, maple,
fruit, etc., and ending with the fall bloom of golden-rod, buck-
wheat, etc., he can get nearly a dozen different grades or kinds
of honey — in color from the very light, almost transparent linden
to the turgid and black buckwheat, and in flavor from the mild
and delicious sweet to that which is strong, rank, and quite un-
palatable to some tastes. Let a person with no special knowl-
edge of honey be presented with the former for his sight and
palate, and then with the latter, and, ten to one, he will declare
that the one sample is not honey at all, but a vile imitation.
Then, again, good, pure honey, through mismanagement, may be-
come so deteriorated in quality and altered in taste as to at once
provoke suspicion of adulteration.

Granulation was also regarded as a sure test of the purity of
honey, but it is not so, as some pure grades, containing only the
non-cry stallizable sugar, will not granulate ; while other samples
mixed with glucose will granulate. The light-colored and best
grades of honey will be fine-grained ' in granulation, while other
grades will be coarse-grained and present the appearance of sugar
for certain to the uninitiated.

When an honest man falls into an error, he is always willing
to correct it as soon as it is pointed out to him and proved to be
such. Prof. Wiley was expected to do that much at least toward
repairing the injury he had wittingly or unwittingly done the
whole fraternity of bee-keepers. But Prof. Wiley failed to do so,
so far as the public knows. He neglected — I may safely say
refused — to make the amende honorable. The apiarists became
incensed, indignant, and demanded proof of his assertion or a
retraction. The professor of science vouchsafed neither the one
nor the other. Finally, after years had elapsed, being still hotly
pursued by the apiarists and bee journals, especially the Ameri-
can Bee Journal, Prof. Wiley did manage to make an explana-
tion or "statement"; which, however, in no way improved his
position before the public either as an honorable man or a pro-
fessor of science. About seven years after uttering the slander to
the world, he speaks, and makes this astounding admission :

" At the time, I repeated this statement more in the light of a
pleasantry than as a commercial reality, for I did not believe that
it was possible commercially to imitate the comb." (Letter dated
Washington, D. C, May 29, 1888, addressed to W. M. Evans, and
published in the American Bee Journal of June 13, 1888.)

In this attempted justification of himself Prof. Wiley says he
had heard from a friend of his (now deceased) that comb-honey

74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

was manufactured in Boston as stated above. On the strength of
that, and that alone, he made the deliberate assertion which I
have quoted from The Popular Science Monthly.

Now, after reading and re-reading the context in The Popu-
lar Science Monthly article, I find not a shadow of evidence that
this statement was meant for a fiction and not for a fact. It is
given seriously and deliberately, along with other alleged scientific
facts, with no intimation or indication whatever of its spurious
character. The readers (and no doubt the publishers) of The
Popular Science Monthly accepted the statement in good faith
as a fact. The newspapers, of course, accepted it as true from so
respectable an authority as The Popular Science Monthly, and
even the encyclopaedias finally took it in. Indeed, nobody, it
seems, took it as a fictitious " pleasantry," or even dreamed it was
meant for one, till the exigencies of the case required such a con-
struction (or misconstruction) from the author himself. If it
really was meant as a harmless scientific squib, with no malice
'prepense, the question arises, How is it that the professor neg-
lected to set the matter right when he found that everybody was
taking his joke seriously, to the great detriment of an important
industry, and the calumnious aspersion of honest honey-pro-
ducers ?

Another example of spurious science is now before me. The
Medical Standard for June, 1889, contains a leading article on
Embryology, by a learned New York doctor, in which we are
gravely informed that " a worker bee is a highly organized creat-
ure, with a well-developed brain, wonderful sense-organs, intricate
muscular apparatus, and yet it is an offspring of an unimpreg-
nated queen bee." Now, this is all well put and quite true, except
the last clause, which is just the opposite, of the truth. Any
apiarian specialist could have told the doctor that while it is true
that the virgin queen bee lays eggs which produce drones or
males, she never deposits eggs which produce females — that is,
workers and queens — until after she is impregnated by the drone.
Hence, the worker bee is not " an offspring of an unimpregnated
queen bee."

"While it would be obviously unfair and unreasonable to hold
the Monthly morally responsible for the specimen of wily science
and its results to which this article refers,- it is, perhaps, not en-
tirely free from blame in allowing the matter to rest uncorrected
so long. I take the liberty of here suggesting to publishers of
encyclopaedias and scientific works the wisdom of first submitting
doubtful points and dubious assertions, made by men outside
their special departments, to practical men in such departments,
whether the latter be learned or unlearned, for the knowledge of
an unlearned man touching his own particular line of business

WALLACE OX "DARWINISM." 75

(even the science of it) may exceed that of the scientist both in
accuracy and extent. Such a course would often save the special-
ist from humiliation, and spare the* public the infliction of some
very queer science, which, not infrequently, fails to dovetail with
every-day facts.

•»•»

I

WALLACE ON "DARWINISM."

By the LORD BISHOP OF CAELISLE.

HAVE read with deep interest, as doubtless have many other
persons, Mr. Wallace's volume entitled Darwinism, which
appeared in the month of March last year. No one has a higher
right to teach the world on this recondite subject ; and when it is
borne in mind that Mr. Wallace was himself an independent dis-
coverer of the principle associated with the name of Darwin, and
that, nevertheless, no sentence indicative of rivalry or jealousy —
in fact, no sentence laying claim to original discovery — occurs
throughout the book, it is impossible not to be struck with a feel-
ing of reverence toward a writer who combines such remarkable
ability with no less remarkable modesty. Reference is made to
this point in an article in the Contemporary Review (August, 1889)
by Prof. Romanes, who writes thus :

It was in the highest degree dramatic that the great idea of natural selection
should have occurred independently and in precisely the same form to two work-
ing naturalists ; that these naturalists should have been countrymen; that they
should have agreed to publish their theory on the same day ; and last, but not
least, that, through the many years of strife and turmoil which followed, these
two English naturalists consistently maintained toward each other such feelings
of magnanimous recognition that it is hard to say whether we should most
admire the intellectual or the moral qualities which, in relation to their common
labors, they have displayed.

Prof. Romanes further lays stress upon the fact that, whereas
opinion has lately tended, as between the two naturalists, toward
Wallace and away from Darwin, there is no sign of triumph in
the book.

If ever there was an occasion (writes Prof. Romanes) when a man of science
might have felt himself justified in expressing a personal gratification at the turn-
ing of a tide of scientific opinion, assuredly such an occasion is the present ; and,
in whichever direction the truth may eventually be found to lie, historians of
science should not omit to notice that in the very hour when his life-long belief is
gaining so large a measure of support, Mr. Wallace quietly accepts the fact with-
out one word of triumph.

It is very pleasant to read this record of forgetfulness of self
in the feeling of complete devotion to the cause of science and of
truth ; possibly instances of such self -forgetfulness are not so un-
common as they are sometimes supposed to be.

76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But Mr. Wallace needs no compliments from me, and it is not
for the purpose of paying them that I have taken pen in hand.
My purpose is rather to commit to paper certain thoughts which
have occurred to me during the reading of his most interesting
volume, and which it may perhaps be worth while to record. It
seems to me that the publication of Mr. Wallace's work affords
an occasion for taking stock, as it were, of that which the author
describes as "Darwinism." It is needless to say that in the
author's use of the word there is nothing vague, much less dis-
paraging, in this term. The term is used in a certain definite
sense, and is intended to express, not evolution in general, but
evolution by those special processes to which Mr. Darwin believed
evolution to be due. It is, I think, manifest that much advantage
may accrue even from a declaration at the hands of such an
authority as Mr. Wallace of what " Darwinism " is ; but, besides
this, it is specially advantageous, now that a quarter of a century
has passed since the great revolution in thought on this class of
subjects commenced, that we should know what is the real position
of the controversy ; there has been sufficient time for the smoke
and din of the battle to pass away, and we can now form a better
estimate than was possible in earlier days of the actual result of
the engagement. I propose, therefore, to offer some remarks upon
Mr. Wallace's volume, chiefly from the point of view just indi-
cated; observing in general that the conclusion which seems to
me to be of chief importance is this — that while Mr. Wallace
holds to Darwin's views in the most important particulars, he
does not regard " Darwinism " as any explanation of some of the
most important phenomena which the living world presents.

This observation, however, must stand on one side for the
present. The point which must occupy us just now is the actual
meaning of '"' Darwinism," upon which possibly not a few persons
have somewhat hazy notions. Let me quote Mr. Wallace : *

In order to show the view Darwin took of his own work, and what it was that
he alone claimed to have done, the concluding passage of the introduction to the
Origin of Species should he carefully considered. It is as follows: "Although
much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt,
after the most deliberate and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that
the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly
entertained — namely, that each species has been independently created — is erro-
neous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable ; but that those
belonging to what are called the same genera are the lineal descendants of some
other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged
varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species. Furthermore, I
am convinced that natural selection has been the most important, but not the
exclusive, means of modification." It should be especially noted, adds Mr. Wal-

* Page 9.

WALLA CE ON "DARWINISM." 77

lace, that all which is here claimed is now almost universally admitted, while the
criticisms of Darwin's works refer almost exclusively to those numerous ques-
tions which, as he himself says, will long remain obscure.

Mr. Wallace then proceeds to explain precisely what is meant
by natural selection, and what, therefore, the Darwinian theory
really is :

The theory of natural selection rests on two main classes of facts, which
apply to all organized beings without exception, and which thus take rank as
fundamental principles or laws. The first is the power of rapid multiplication in
a geometrical progression ; the second, that the offspring always vary slightly from
the parents, though generally very closely resembling them. From the first fact
or law there follows, necessarily, a constant struggle for existence; because,
while the offspring always exceed the parents in number, generally to an enor-
mous extent, yet the total number of living organisms in the world does not, and
can not, increase year by year. Consequently, every year, on the average, as
many die as are born, plants as well as animals ; and the majority die premature
deaths. They kill each other in a thousand different ways; they starve each
other by some consuming the food that others want ; they are destroyed largely
by the powers of nature — by cold and heat, by rain and storm, by flood and fire.
There is thus a perpetual struggle among them which shall live and which shall
die ; and this struggle is tremendously severe, because so few can possibly remain
alive — one in five, one in ten, often only one in a hundred or one in a thousand.

Then comes the question, Why do some live rather than others ? If all the
individuals of each species were exactly alike in every respect, we could only say
it is a matter of chance. But they are not alike. We find that they vary in
many different ways. Some are stronger, some swifter, some hardier in constitu-
tion, some more cunning. An obscure color may render concealment more easy
for some, keener sight may enable others to discover prey or escape from an
enemy better than their fellows. Among plants the smallest differences may be
useful or the reverse. The earliest and strongest shoots may escape the slug ;
their greater vigor may enable them to flower and seed earlier in a wet autumn ;
plants best armed with spines or hairs may escape being devoured ; those whose
flowers are most conspicuous may be soonest fertilized by insects. We can not
doubt that, on the whole, any beneficial variation will give the possessors of it a
greater probability of living through the tremendous ordeal they have to undergo.
There may be something left to chance, but on the whole the fittest will survive*

Upon this statement of what " Darwinism " is, coming to ns as
it does from the highest authority, certain observations suggest
themselves.

In the first place, objection may be taken to the phrase, the
fittest will survive. The phrase, if I am not mistaken, was not
originally devised by Mr. Darwin, and seems open to criticism.
For fitness implies something of moral superiority ; you can not
measure it in respect of length, or breadth, or strength, or any
other quality capable of being tested by strictly physical condi-
tions. Moreover, there is some danger of being betrayed by the

* Pages 10, 11.

78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

phrase into the error of arguing in a circle ; for, in the case of not
a few creatures which have survived, it is difficult to give any
good reason for their survival except upon the assumption of
their fitness as proved by the very fact of their survival. Thus
their fitness leads to their survival, and this survival leads to the
conclusion that they must have been the fittest. Which is argu-
ing in a circle. Still further, it is not difficult to suggest exam-
ples in which the expression, survival of the fittest, manifestly
breaks down. Sir Isaac Newton was, as is well known, a very
delicate child, difficult to rear. Suppose that Newton and a pow-
erful navvy, or coal porter, or grenadier, had been compelled to
rough it as children at Dotheboys Hall or some similar establish-
ment, which would have survived ? Not Newton ; and yet it may
be fairly argued that in many respects he would have been the
fittest. Nor is this imaginary case an altogether unfair test of the
propriety of the phrase ; for it is impossible to give any true defi-
nition of fitness which shall exclude all moral and intellectual
qualities, all qualities in fact which are of the highest value, and
which shall simply include those elements of toughness and wiri-
ness, and strength of sinew or stomach, which are chiefly calcu-
lated to prolong life in trying circumstances.

Putting out of consideration, however, the propriety of the
language by which survival in the struggle for life, whether
among vegetables or animals, is expressed, it is to be admitted
that the principle indicated is a true one. That is to say, it may
be regarded as admitted by all persons whose studies and natural
powers render their opinion of any real value, that modification
by natural selection is an element in that evolution of living
forms of which the evidence appears to be irresistible. Natural
selection is a vera causa ; the question is, What is the extent of
its action ? how much can it do ?

Darwin considered it necessary to supplement natural by that
which he termed sexual selection ; in doing which he was quite
consistent, because he speaks (as we have already seen) of natural
selection as " the most important, but not the exclusive, means of
modification " of species. This supplemental hypothesis, however,
does not commend itself to Mr. Wallace's judgment.

Mr. Darwin (he writes), as is well known, imputed most of the colors and
varied paterns of butterflies' wings to sexual selection — that is, to a constant
preference, by female butterflies, for the more brilliant males ; the colors thus
produced being sometimes transmitted to the males alone, sometimes to both
sexes. This view has always seemed to me unsupported by evidence, while it is
also quite inadequate to account for the facts.

Again, after explaining his own views on the subject of orna-
mental appendages of birds and other animals, he writes :

The various. facts and arguments now briefly set forth afford an explanation

WALLACE ON "DARWINISM." 79

of the phenomena of male ornament as being due to the general laws of growth
and development, and make it unnecessary to call to our aid so hypothetical a cause
as the cumulative action of female preference.'

Whether the views put forward by Mr. Wallace do in reality-
render unnecessary the Darwinian hypothesis of sexual selection
will not be here discussed ; it is sufficient to note that the conclu-
sions of Mr. Darwin in this not unimportant matter have, after
abundant time for examination and reflection, been rejected by
the naturalist who more perhaps than any other has a right to
criticise him.

But Mr. Wallace rejects also the evolutionist views of another
very competent naturalist, Prof. Romanes ; and it will aid in the
development of the purpose of this paper if I refer in passing to
this rejection. The theory of Prof. Romanes is described by him
under the phrase physiological selection ; it is not necessary in
this place to explain what the theory is ; it is sufficient to say it is
regarded as highly important by Prof. Romanes, and as utterly
unfounded by Mr. Wallace. It would be impertinent on my part
to offer any opinion as between these two authorities; but the
conclusion may be fairly drawn that there is probably much at
present unknown in the subject of evolution, as well as not a little
doubt with regard to some fields of inquiry into which our knowl-
edge is supposed to extend.

But the most striking and interesting feature of Mr. Wallace's
book, from what I may describe as the human point of view, is to
be found in that part of his work in which he denies, and (as he
believes) proves himself to be justified in denying, the application
of the principle of natural selection to the evolution of the human
faculties. This denial is a fact of the first order of magnitude ;
and I confess that I can see no ground for the language of strong
depreciation in which Prof. Romanes, in the article already re-
ferred to, describes this portion of Mr. Wallace's book. He speaks
of the substance of the concluding chapters as being " sadly like
the feet of clay in a figure of iron, marring by its manifest
weakness what would otherwise have been a completed and self-
consistent monument of strength." No argument in the article
justifies this condemnation ; and it is, perhaps, not too much to
say that many of his readers will find in the condemned portion
of Mr. Wallace's book that which has the deepest interest for
themselves, while it must not be forgotten that the views put
forward are alleged by Mr. Wallace to rest upon proofs which he
formally submits for examination. Let us see, then, what this
clay formation contains.

Mr. Wallace fully accepts " Mr. Darwin's conclusion as to the
essential identity of man's bodily structure with that of the higher
mammalia, and his descent from some ancestral form common to

80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

men and to the anthropoid apes." But he observes that u although
perhaps nowhere distinctly formulated, his (Mr. Darwin's) whole
argument tends to the conclusion that man's entire nature and all
his faculties, whether moral, intellectual, or spiritual, have been
derived from their rudiments in the lower animals, in the same
manner and by the action of the same general laws as his physical
structure has been derived/' This conclusion Mr. Wallace con-
siders to be " not supported by adequate evidence, and to be di-
rectly opposed to many well-ascertained facts."

I will not endeavor to reproduce the whole of Mr. Wallace's
argument on this subject, but will present what appears to me to
be the pith of it; and I do this with the greater satisfaction,
because what is here advanced seems to harmonize with what I
have already written in criticising the phrase survival of the
fittest.

Let us confine ourselves, for simplicity's sake, to one human
faculty, namely, the mathematical. The problem is, how to pro-
duce a mathematician by the process of natural selection. The
reader must bear in mind clearly what the theory of natural
selection is, as already expounded. It is the survival in the strug-
gle for life of those individuals which possess variations from
their fellows favorable to their preservation. In order, therefore,
that the mathematical faculty should be evolved by the process
of natural selection, it is necessary to suppose that those individ-
uals, which have an advantage in the possession of rudimentary
mathematical faculties somewhat in excess of their fellows, should
be the survivors in the struggle for life. The mere possession of
this rudimentary advantage must be an aid toward life preser-
vation. This in itself is hard to understand ; but it becomes
harder still when we bear in mind the rareness of the mathe-
matical gift. In our own time it would be perhaps an over-
estimate to say that the mathematical faculty existed in any
marked degree in one per cent of the population; assume such
a proportion to have generally held in human history, then it
would be necessary to suppose that these rare specimens of rudi-
mentary mathematical ability had some very decided advantage
in the struggle for life : but what ground is there for such a sup-
position ? Grant that ten men in a tribe of a thousand had dis-
covered how to count upon their fingers, or suppose them to have
discovered some elementary geometrical theorem, how would this
help them when a neighboring tribe attacked them, or when fam-
ine and pestilence were abundant ? It is difficult or impossible
to say.

And the same argument would seem to apply to other human
faculties, music and all forms of art, writing, even speech. Con-
sider speech for a moment as the most universal and most dis-

WALLACE ON "DARWINISM." 81

tinctive of human faculties. Here the problem is just the reverse
of that which occurred in the case of mathematics : in that the
favorable variation to be preserved is rare, in this the variation
scarcely exists ; the faculty of speech is universal ; how, then, can
there be a survival of the fittest where all are equally fit ?

It seems difficult to resist this kind of argument, and I should
not be surprised to find the opinion gain ground, and ultimately
become established, that while the human faculties have undoubt-
edly been developed gradually, the development can not in any
way be traced to the process of natural selection.

But if it be once admitted that the principle of natural selec-
tion is inadequate to explain the development of specially human
qualities, there is a temptation to go back to the consideration of
the powers and instincts of some of the inferior creatures, and to
inquire whether natural selection may not be inadequate also in
their case, as in that of man. I confess that I have never been
able to perceive how the principle can be brought to bear upon
such phenomena as the architecture of insects — for example, that
of bees and wasps. What, I suppose, ought to have happened is
this, that some variation of an ancient form of bee made a rough
approximation to a modern honeycomb, that they who made the
best honeycomb were the fittest to survive, and that in this way
by slow degrees and by natural selection a race of bees was pro-
duced capable of performing the geometrical wonders which mod-
ern bees perform. But there are two difficulties : First, in con-
ceiving the original start of insects in the direction of architect-
ure ; and, secondly, in perceiving the connection between good
architects and survival in the struggle for life. Certain bees
might make their wax go further than other bees, and our actual
bees use their wax with absolutely mathematical economy ; but it
is difficult to perceive how this economy is helpful in the struggle
for life. Can we get over these difficulties ? If it were a case of
some device for self-preservation, the conclusion might be differ-
ent. For example, if we can imagine some variation of a race of
spiders devising, in ever so rough a form, those curious houses
which have attained such perfection in the hands of the trap-door
spider, we can also easily believe that this variation would be
likely to survive, and that while less ingenious spiders became
the prey of their enemies, those which were concealed in their
cunning castles would escape. But there is nothing parallel to
this in the case of wasps and bees ; here we have a beautiful geo-
metrical problem somehow solved, apparently without connection
between the solution and the preservation of life. One of two
conclusions seem inevitable — either the geometrical skill has be-
longed in its perfection to bees and wasps ever since those insects
existed ; or else the geometrical skill has been developed by some

VOL. XXXVII. — 6

82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

internal law of 'growth, independently of all questions of natural
selection.

There is another class of natural phenomena upon which Mr.
Wallace writes much that is deeply interesting, but to which it
may possibly be questioned whether the principle of survival by
natural selection is applicable — namely, the phenomena of mimic-
ry. Of course it is quite intelligible, to take an instance, that a
living creature which is very much like a leaf will escape many
enemies, and even have such an advantage in the struggle for life
that many other living creatures would be like leaves if they
could. But when we endeavor to go back in imagination to the
commencement of the mimicking process, we must conceive of a
creature not at all like a leaf, but among whose offspring there
are certain individuals which have a slightly leaf -like appearance,
and that these survive in preference to others not having the ap-
pearance in question. The conception involves two difficulties :
First, the notion of certain individuals having a slightly leaf -like
appearance is eccentric and hard to accept. It is different from
that of individuals varying by length of leg, or strength of wing,
or what not. It is a variation, so to speak, not of degree but of
kind. And, secondly, it is difficult to see why a resemblance to a
leaf, admitted to be slight, and therefore one would imagine not
easily perceived, should be any substantial protection from ene-
mies, and so an appreciable advantage in the struggle for life.

Similar difficulties occur with regard to other cases of mimicry.
My space does not permit me to examine them in detail ; but I
have come to the conclusion that, while mimicry may probably
be always connected with some advantage which it confers on the
animal, it is difficult to conceive of the mimicking transformation
being originally brought into operation by any process of natural
selection.

This failure of the principle of natural selection to explain
much that is connected with the evolution both of men and of
inferior creatures may lead us to inquire, to what extent the prin-
ciple satisfies etiological requirements even in those cases in
which its application appears most complete. The modification
and multiplication of species require three conditions to be post-
ulated : (1) an original species; (2) the power of multiplying that
species by reproduction ; and (3) the occurrence of variations in
the successive generations.

Now (1) the existence of the original living germ or germs
must, I suppose, be left by universal consent in mystery. Mr.
Darwin treated of the Origin of " Species," not the Origin of " liv-
ing tilings" This latter question is not likely ever to come within
the reach of human science ; certainly it has not done so yet.
Given the existence of the material universe, or the existence of

WALLACE ON "DARWINISM." 83

living things, and there is abundance of opening for discovery
with respect tb the laws of matter and the laws of life ; bnt mat-
ter and life must first be given : this is sufficiently obvious ; but
it is worth noting, because there is sometimes a tendency to make
a confusion between creation and the laws of created things ;
whereas it is obvious that creation is one thing, and the law gov-
erning created things is quite another. But (2) as the original
existence of living things is a mystery, so also is the reproduction
of them. The continuity of life on the earth's surface, insured in
various ways more or less resembling each other, and all agreeing
in this, that there is apparently no tendency in vital power to de-
generate or wear itself out in the course of ages, is, as it were, a
standing mystery of creation. The scientific man has nothing to
do with this mystery ; to him it is simply a fact or phenomenon ;
but he who tries to go beyond phenomena and to get at the cause
behind them will recognize reproduction as being etiologically
equivalent to continuous creation. The great feature, however,
of the principle of natural selection is (3) the occurrence of varia-
tions. Mr. Wallace lays great stress on the abundance of the
variations which occur in nature, and the corresponding impor-
tance of this element in the Darwinian theory ; and he is obviously
wise in doing so. But it is well to observe that it is impossible to
regard variations either on the one hand as a necessary feature of
reproduction, or on the other as simply fortuitous. With regard
to the latter supposition it is, certainly, difficult to conceive of
chance as being a principal factor, say, in the production of a
horse, to say nothing of a man. But even the former supposition
is not quite an easy one : it is difficult to see why variations capa-
ble of being made permanent should occur, and why (if there be
offspring at all) the offspring should not be exactly like the parent ;
in not a few cases this seems to be the law of living things. What
I wish to point out, however, is this, that from the etiological
point of view there ought to be a cause for variations as well as
for other phenomena ; and that, therefore, when we use the phe-
nomenon of variations as a part of the machinery of natural selec-
tion, we do not get rid of the task of inquiring, as philosophers,
why those useful variations occurred. In fact, in this as in many
other instances, what is done is to shift the process one stage back-
ward, but to leave the question of the primary cause very much
where it was. Variations are abundant, says the student of natu-
ral history, and advantageous variations are preserved and made
permanent by the process of natural selection : let it be granted.
But the philosopher may still say : How comes it that advan-
tageous variations should occur ? Must not this occurrence be the
result of some pre-established principle or law of development ?
Take the case of the horse, which Mr. Wallace has dwelt upon

84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at some length, and has illustrated by a diagram. The evolution
of the horse of historical times, and of the present day from the
orohippus of the Eocene period, as exhibited to the eye by Mr.
Wallace's diagram, is as interesting a presentation of a physical
pedigree as can well be conceived. We see, as it were, the progress
of Nature's work ; the transformation from several toes to one toe,
which was, in reality, the operation of thousands of years, is visi-
ble as a connected continuous process from beginning to end. But
what the diagram does not, and can not, put in evidence is this —
namely, the marvelous beauty of the horse in his ultimate con-
dition. So far as any conclusions can be drawn from the diagram,
the top and the bottom of the page stand upon an equal footing ;
there would seem to be no reason why orohippus should not have
been derived from equus by expansion, as easily as equus has
been derived from orohippus by contraction. When, however,
we look, not at the equus of science, but at the horse of the hunt-
ing-field or the race-course, or at our own stable friend, who has
carried us safely for hundreds of miles, we perceive that, somehow
or other, we have, in these modern days, an animal of the most
perfect kind with regard to speed, beauty, and mechanical perfec-
tion. We feel convinced that it would be in every way a mistake
that he should develop toes and become orohippus ; we are sure
that orohippus has rightly been improved off the face of the earth
in order to make room for equus. All this is, in the best sense of
the phrase, in accordance with the principle of the survival of the
fittest ; but I confess that I find it difficult to realize the transfor-
mation of orohippus into equus upon the pure and simple notion
of advantageous variations in the struggle for life ; for, in truth,
if the question be one of mere survival, it is difficult to say, when
the earth was inhabited by wild creatures, in what manner the
possession of one toe instead of three or four should give equus
any advantage over orohippus. One can quite understand that a
jury of Newmarket jockeys would decide that equus was fittest to
survive ; but in the absence of human judgment the conclusion is
not so easy to reach. At all events, it seems more probable that
the transformation was originally ideally contained in the concep-
tion of this class of creature, and that equus may be regarded as
bearing to orohippus something of the same kind of relation as is
borne by a frog to a tadpole, or by a moth to a caterpillar.

May it not well be that predetermined transformation has as
real a place in the genesis of species as it certainly has in that of
individual creatures ? Nothing, perhaps, strikes most minds as
more surprising than insect and reptile transformation. That a
crawling animal should, by a complicated process, involving a
condition of motionless helplessness, be ultimately transformed
into a creature of active life spent in flying through the air, or

WALLA CE ON "DARWINISM." 85

that toads and frogs should find it necessary to pass through the
fish-like life of tadpoles — this class of facts may well puzzle the
thinking mind ; but the advantage of them is that they are facts ;
no one can dispute them ; and taking our stand upon them we
may guess that the processes of Nature are analogous, in cases in
which we can not distinctly prove that they are so. May it not
be, then, that the Eocene period of creation presented a condition
of things out of which a higher condition was evolved, not simply
by the perpetuation of advantageous variations, but much more
by virtue of an internal principle of growth, similar to, or at least
comparable with, the principle which develops the foetus or which
transforms tadpoles and caterpillars ? Adopting this view, we
should have in both cases a limit toward which transformations
tended ; as the butterfly is the ultimate form of the caterpillar,
and the caterpillar was the forerunner and necessary ancestor of
the butterfly, so equus may perhaps be regarded as the ultimate
form of orohippus, and orohippus as the forerunner and necessary
ancestor of equus. At all events, this view of the facts seems to
be tenable, and it is free from certain difficulties by which the
hypothesis of natural selection pure and simple is undoubtedly
beset.

The question of growth, evolution, development, by an internal
power similar to, and comparable with, that which we see daily
and hourly at work all round about us, leads to the discussion of
another and very interesting question — namely, whether man can
perfectly be described as " derived from the lower animals." The
expression is Mr. Wallace's. He speaks of "man in his bodily
structure " as having been " derived from the lower animals, of
which he is the culminating development." * I venture to ques-
tion whether this is a correct statement of the facts of the case. I
am not venturing to throw doubt upon Mr. Wallace's scientific
deductions ; on the other hand, their correctness shall for the sake
of argument, if on no other ground, be fully granted ; all the
more readily in consideration of the important limitations of the
principle of natural selection made in the case of man, as already
noticed and discussed. What I venture to doubt is, whether the
process of human evolution, as accepted by Mr. Wallace, can be
rightly described by the terms which he applies to it. Certainly
there is something in the conception of such derivation from
which the feelings of most of us not unnaturally shrink, and from
which they would gladly be free, if freedom can be had consist-
ently with scientific truth. There is something in it of that " let-
ting the house of a brute to the soul of a man," of which Lord
Tennyson sings in his most recent volume. It may be worth

* Page 454.

86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

while, therefore, to consider whether the phrase, " derivation from
the lower animals," is one which can be maintained as rightly ex-
pressing the truth which it is intended to express concerning the
physical history of our race.

Now it is manifest that if we look back, so far as is possible,
into the remote past, when the first germ of animal life appeared
upon the globe, two conditions of things, and two only, are con-
ceivable. Either (A) there was a single germ of life, from which
all subsequent living forms have been evolved or developed ; or
(B) there were several or many germs of life, from which, in sepa-
rate streams, so to speak, the evolution of living creatures took
place. Mr. Darwin inclined, I think, to the latter supposition ; but
either A or B must be accepted by all evolutionists of all schools.
Let us consider them successively.

A. If we make the supposition that living forms commenced
upon the globe from a single germ, then it follows that all living
creatures now existing — insects, fishes, birds, beasts, man — have
been evolved by some process or processes from one and the same
origin : whether the process of variation and natural selection be
sufficient to account for the development, it is not necessary for
the purpose of this argument to decide ; it is sufficient to say, and
this can scarcely be denied, that by some process or processes the
development has taken place. Therefore, ascending to the hy-
pothesis now under consideration, it will be true that the lower
animals and man had a common origin ; but this is manifestly a
different thing from asserting that man is "derived from the
lower animals." If we go up to the hypothetical origin of life, or
the single germ, this latter assertion is obviously untrue, because,
as by hypothesis there was then only one germ, there could be no
distinction of superior or inferior ; but if we stop short of the ori-
gin and observe the condition of things at any period subsequent
to the hypothetical beginning, we shall find progress being made
toward the development of man and simultaneous progress being
made toward the development of the lower animals. But it does
not follow that, because this simultaneous development is taking
place, therefore we can say that one form of life is developed from
the other ; it might be as correct to say that the inferior animals
were developed from man, as man from the inferior animals.
Take an illustration from that which is possible in the case of
rivers. Conceive of two rivers running into the sea ; trace their
course, and suppose that ultimately you come to the same source
in the distant mountains ; it would not be correct to say that one
of these rivers was derived from the other. The correct state-
ment would be that they sprang from one and the same source,
that they had different histories, and that they terminated in dif-
ferent streams.

WALLACE ON "DARWINISM." 87

When we speak of the lower animals, do we not in fact postu-
late the existence of man ? Lower .than what ? Surely lower
than man : therefore inferiority can not be predicated until man's
existence has been assumed, or has become a fact ; and therefore
to speak of man being derived from the lower animals in the
remote past, when, if you only go far enough, there is no higher
or lower, would seem to be a confusing use of language.

If it be urged that the objection now made to the phraseology
used by Mr. Wallace is merely a verbal quibble, I venture to
argue, on the other hand, that there is not a little importance in
the objection. I quite admit that if the creation of man be a
merely fortuitous fact, a lucky hit, so to speak, in the infinite
variety of living forms developed from a single original living
germ — if, in fact, creation be without the high purpose which
human life, as distinguished from all other forms of life, seems to
make manifest — it is scarcely worth while to argue the question
whether man was derived from the inferior animals or not. But
if man be the intended crown of creation existing in the determi-
nate counsel and foreknowledge of God from the beginning, then
it does seem to be worth while to argue that the derivation of
man and beast from the same living germ is not the same thing
as the derivation of one from the other. A sane man may have
the misfortune to have an idiot brother ; the sane man and the
idiot are derived from the same parents, but it would be incorrect
to say that one was derived from the other. May there not be
some analogy between a case of this kind and the case of man
and beast ?

B. So much, then, for the hypothesis of one original germ of
life ; the argument becomes perhaps more simple if we adopt the
second hypothesis, namely, that of several or many germs.

For in this case it is not unreasonable to suppose that specific
differences existed among the original germs. I confess that the
notion of the development of all forms of life from one original
germ offers to my own mind an almost insuperable difficulty.
The arguments drawn from the experimental facts of variation
and natural selection, from the observed progression of animal
forms in successive geological strata, and the like, seem to me
quite inadequate to explain the development of insects, fishes,
birds, mammals, from one stock. Consequently, to my own mind
it is a relief to be able to think of several, and if of several then
possibly of any number, of original germs. The hypothesis is not
opposed to, but quite in accordance with, Mr. Darwin's own
views ; in fact, he was far too cautious a man to dogmatize con-
cerning the unity of the origin of living forms, when all attempt
at the examination of the question of origin would necessarily
carry him far beyond the limits of possible experiment. Let us

88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

then adopt provisionally the hypothesis of a multiplicity of germs
of life ; and if we do this, there is nothing wild or strange in the
supposition that the germ of man was different from other germs.
It would be beyond all that scientific caution would justify to
assume that, given a number of original germs of life, it is matter
of chance into what each will develop. It is contrary, I think, to
the whole analogy of Nature to suppose that a living germ, which
is to all intents and purposes an ovum or egg, may ultimately
develop into an oak, or a fish, or a man, according to its surround-
ings or according to mere chance. At all events, it is much more
probable, much more according to analogy, that each germ should
have its specific character, and that so man should have been man
in intention and preparation from the very beginning of things.
It may have been — in fact, according to the supposition of evolu-
tion it must have been — that in the early condition of life upon
the globe there was no man (in the full and proper sense of the
word) in existence, but his progenitors would be there ; and what
is submitted is this, that those progenitors were undeveloped
men, and not " lower animals." What they visibly were scientific
discovery has not yet put in evidence ; it is admitted that there
is a " missing link " between the present and the past. Some sci-
entific men hope that the link may be found, some think that it
is hidden under the sea ; but, whatever the truth may be with
regard to this point, what is maintained is this, that, on the
hypothesis of a multiplicity of original germs of life, it is
more probable than otherwise that certain germs contained the
promise of men, others of " lower animals " ; and that, if so,
it is incorrect to speak of the lower animals as the progenitors
of men.

This view of the case, though founded upon a criticism of Mr.
Wallace's language, would seem nevertheless to be consistent
with his real views concerning the origin of man. In the last
chapter of his work, entitled Darwinism applied to Man, to
which reference has been already made, it is contended, as
we have seen, that the principle of natural selection will not
account for the development of the human faculties. I recur to
that chapter chiefly for the purpose of making two extracts, which
will, I think, tend to strengthen the arguments which have been
already advanced. After rehearsing three stages of progress in
creation — the change from the inorganic to the organic ; the in-
troduction of sensation or consciousness, constituting the funda-
mental distinction between the animal and vegetable kingdoms ;
and the existence in man of a number of his most characteristic
and noblest faculties, those which raise him above the brutes and
open up possibilities of almost indefinite advancement — Mr. Wal-
lace writes thus :

WALLACE ON "DARWINISM." 89

These three distinct stages of progress from the inorganic world of matter and
motion up to man, point clearly to an unseen universe — to a world of spirit, to
which the world of matter is altogether subordinate.*

And again :

Those who admit my interpretation of the evidence now adduced — strictly
scientific evidence in its appeal to facts which are clearly what ought not to be on
the materialistic theory — will be able to accept the spiritual nature of man, as not
in any way inconsistent with the theory of evolution, but as dependent upon those
fundamental laws and causes which furnish the very materials for evolution to
work with.t

Declarations such as these, coming from such an authority,
must doubtless be very comforting to those minds which feel
themselves compelled to receive the evidence for evolution but
shrink from materialism, which feel convinced that materialism
can not be true, and yet have an uneasy suspicion that evolution
points to it as a logical conclusion. But if we admit with Mr.
Wallace that variation and natural selection are not adequate to
explain the evolution of man's higher qualities and faculties, we
are not merely delivered from the acceptance of materialism, we
are invited and even compelled (as has been urged in a former
part of this paper) to review the whole question of the extent of
the application of Mr. Darwin's great principle. He would be a
rash man who, in the face of Mr. Darwin, Mr. Wallace, and the
whole generation of naturalists who have followed in their steps,
should deny that natural selection was a vera causa in creative
work ; but there is no rashness or audacity in maintaining what
Mr. Darwin did not deny, and what Mr. Wallace emphatically
affirms, namely, that there is needed for the explanation of phe-
nomena something beyond, and essentially different from, the
process of natural selection. All seems to point beyond matter
into the region of mind, beyond mechanical sequence to purpose,
beyond all verai causm to the causa causarum, beyond Nature
to God.

I will close this paper by recording an incident which was
communicated to me some years ago in the course of conversa-
tion by Dr. Thompson, the late Master of Trinity College, Cam-
bridge.

Dr. Thompson was walking, in his college days, with two com-
panions, one of whom was Alfred Tennyson ; of the name of the
other I am not sure. The path by which they went was one
which all Cambridge men know, namely, that which leads from
the backs of the colleges through the fields toward Coton. After
passing the brook, which used to be crossed (and perhaps is now)
by a rude wooden bridge, it was perceived that Tennyson had

* Page 476. t Ibid.

VOL. XXXVII. — 7

9o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

lagged behind. He had paused by the side of the brook, brought
his eyes as near as he could to the surface of the water, and was
examining with intense interest the subaqueous life which the lit-
tle stream contained. After a time he rejoined his companions,
and this was his utterance when he joined them : "What an imagi-
nation God has ! * The words must have made a deep impression
upon my informant's mind ; otherwise he would not have re-
tained them in memory, and would not have thought it worth
while to repeat them to me. They made a similar impression
upon myself when so repeated ; and I can not but regard them as
containing a true philosophy of Nature. Whatever may be the
power of natural selection, and whatever causes may be at work
to produce the varied scene of life which the world contains, you
need some underlying cause, both of life itself and of reproduc-
tion and variation, and of all natural phenomena ; and if causally
the existence of the universe may be attributed to God's will and
purpose, so the endless variety of vital manifestations may be
attributed to that which in the case of man we should call imagi-
nation.

In reality, whatever may be the actual historical genesis of
Nature, we seem to need a guasi-Platonic doctrine of antecedent
ideas in the divine mind as the basis, the underlying condition, of
the existence of things as we see them. It is matter for fair
discussion among naturalists how much may be attributed to
natural selection, how much to sexual, how much to physiologi-
cal, and so forth. But such discussions can not go to the root of
things ; they do not reach the original thought out of which the
works of Nature, as we call them, originally spring. Michael
Angelo, as we are told, used to sit with his hammer and chisel
before his marble block, and shape it without any previous mod-
eling process into the figure which he intended to produce ; other
sculptors, I believe, with only this one grand exception, make
their model in clay, and thence proceed by semi-mechanical steps
to the finished work ; but Michael Angelo and all other sculptors
have alike the seminal idea in their minds, and the manner of its
evolution is comparatively a matter of detail. Something of the
same kind may be said of the production of natural things. It
may be possible for naturalists to discover some of the steps by
which the finished work comes to be what it is ; but the actual
origin of natural things — the wonders of life, the varied beauties
of the universe, above all, the mind of man, which is capable of
understanding, appreciating, and discussing the problems to which
natural things give rise — is to be sought in no region lower than
that which may, with all reverence, be described as the mind, or
as the imagination of God.— Nineteenth Century.

CATS AND THEIR FRIENDSHIPS. 91

CATS AND THEIR FRIENDSHIPS.

By W. H. LAERABEE.

I HAD for ten years a cat whose intelligence interested me
greatly and was considered remarkable by all persons who
took notice of her. Her confidence in her master and mistress,
her evident enjoyment of their society, her happy faculty of put-
ting herself upon an understanding with them, her familiar inter-
est in matters of the household, the shifts and devices of which
she was master, and her sagacity manifested in ways as various
as the exigencies she had to meet, evoked frequent admiration
and praise. These manifestations led me to look into the subject
of knowledge in cats, and I have found that she was not singular,
or even exceptional, in the quality of her faculties. She appears
to have been a type to which a great many of the more happily
trained members of her race can easily measure up. My observa-
tions have been naturally extended to other animals, and have led
to the conclusion that most domesticated species and many wild
ones are capable of and often manifest equally high degrees of
mental development. But cats — and dogs too — are more at home
with us, have more opportunities to learn, and come under closer
and more constant observation than the others.

The cat belongs to a large and highly specialized family ; to
one that is clearly distinguishable from the other families of ani-
mals, while the resemblances between its own members is so
strong that even the careless, unprofessional observer will hardly
fail to assign at a glance an individual of any of its species to it.
All the members of the family are, according to Wood, light,
stealthy, and silent of foot, quick of ear and eye. They are ex-
ceedingly graceful in form and movement, have flexible bodies
and limbs — walk, we might say, on tiptoe — are alert and swift in
action, and are exceedingly cunning. Between many of them and
the cat itself there is hardly any prominently visible difference
except in size. Curious resemblances in features of line or ex-
pression may be remarked between the portraits of the Felidce
in Wood's Natural History and cats with which the observer is
acquainted. A copy of the photograph of the head and breast of
a tiger at rest, in a portfolio by our side, might be easily mis-
taken, except for a few differences in the shading of the hair, for
a life-size portrait of the cat that has given the occasion of this
article. St. George Mivart recognizes fifty living species of the
cat family, forty-eight of which he includes in the genus Felis.

The history of the domestic cat has been traced back to the
ancient Egyptians, among whom the earliest notices of it appear

92

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 1.— Egyptian Cat (Felis maniculata.)

on the monuments of the second empire of the twelfth dynasty
(about 2400 b. a), at Beni Hassan. It seems to have appeared
there just after the Egyptians had made considerable conquests
in Nubia, whence it may have been brought, already domesticated,
among the spoils of war. The mummified cats in the Egyptian

tombs are not identical with
our house cat, but seem to
belong to a native species
(Felis maniculata, Pig. 1)
which is said to be still in-
digenous in Nubia, where it
is found on the western side
of the Nile, in a stony dis-
trict in which brushwood
grows.

The domesticated animal
was slow in making its way
from Egypt into the neighboring nations. The Hebrews were ap-
parently without it, and it is not once mentioned in the Bible. No
evidence has been found that the Assyrians and Babylonians were
acquainted with it. According to authors who have investigated
the philological branch of the history, these people possessed a
binary nomenclature for animals, with generic and specific names,
and included their lions and panthers among the dogs — a thing
they would hardly have done if they had been familiar with house
cats. It was not known to the Greeks and Romans till a compar-
atively late period ; and all the earlier representations of cats on
their monuments are referred by the authorities to the wild cat
or some other animal than the domestic cat. According to the
most careful conclusions on this subject, the mouser of the Greeks
and Romans was a weasel, and led an independent, not a domestic,
life. The Aryans of India had cats at a very early but not at
their earliest period ; for while the names of the animal are all
Aryan, it was not, according to Pictet, designated by any simple
term such as would have been given it in primitive times, but by
composite names, having such meanings as "house-animal," " rat-
eater/' and " mouse-enemy." The name of the wild cat (Fig. 2),
however, embodied a root common to many of the European lan-
guages. It becomes in Persian, pushak ; in Afghan, pishik ; in
Kurdish, psiq; in Lithuanian, pnije ; in Irish, pus and feisag ;
and in Erse, pusag and piseag ; whence the English "puss." It is
derived by Pictet from a Sanskrit root puclilia or pitclilia, that
means ''tail/' and therefore points to one of the most striking
external features of the animal. The name by which the cat
was known to the later Greeks — alXovpos — and which was origi-
nally applied to the weasel, refers to the same feature. It is

CATS AND THEIR FRIENDSHIPS.

93

Fig. 2.— Wild Cat (Felis catus.)

compounded from two words that give the meaning of "wavy

tail."

The Latin name of the cat tribe (Felis) appears to have been
originally applied to the weasel and other mousers, and after-
ward to the wild cat. The word catus or cattus came into nse
in about the fourth century, and is found first in the agricultural
writer, Palladius, who recommends that cats be kept in artichoke-
gardens for protection against mice and moles, and remarks that
men had previously been served for this purpose by weasels. The
name catta is found later in
the Greek church histo-
rian, Evagrius Scholasticus,
about a. d. 594. Historical
inferences have been drawn
from the absence of the re-
mains of cats in the ruins of
Pompeii, and from the fact
that the name common to
all the other Romance lan-
guages does not occur in
Wallachian. It is concluded

that the domesticated animal had not become common when Pom-
peii was destroyed, in a. d. 79, or when Dacia was isolated from
the rest of the Roman world by barbarian conquest, in the third
century. Mr. W. Boyd Dawkins infers, from his researches in the
caves in which the Celts took refuge from the Saxons, that cats
were unknown in Great Britain before about the year 800.

Cats easily commended themselves as efficient vermin-destroy-
ers to such extensive grain-raisers as the ancient Egyptians ; and
a people so ready to deify everything needed little prompting to
put them in their pantheon. They may also have made them-
selves useful in killing snakes, an occupation in which, if the sto-
ries are true, they sometimes become very expert. Rengger, who
has written of the mammals of Paraguay, declares that he has
more than once seen cats pursue and kill snakes, even rattle-
snakes, on the sandy, grassless plains of that land. " With their
rare skill," he says, " they would strike the snake with their paw,
and at the same time avoid its spring. If the snake coiled itself,
they would not attack it directly, but would go round it till it be-
came tired of turning its head after them j then they would strike
it another blow, and instantly turn aside. If the snake started to
run away, they would seize its tail, as if to play with it. By virtue
of these continued attacks they usually destroyed their enemy in
less than an hour, but would never eat its flesh."

Cats are represented on some of the Egyptian monuments as
accompanying their masters on hunting expeditions. In a wall-

94

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

picture on a tomb at Gurneh, a hunter is represented in his boat
in the marshes as about to hurl his throw-stick at a covey of
birds, while a cat by his side is on the alert to spring upon the
game he is expected to bring down. Another picture (Fig. 3) rep-
resents the cat seizing a bird. This would involve going into the

Fig. 3.— An Egyptian Fowling Scene. 1. Sportsman using the throw-stick. 2. Keeps the boat
steady by holding the stalks of a lotus. 4. A cat seizing the game in the thicket. 5. A decoy
bird. 6. Fishes, the emblem of water.

water, an act to which our modern cats usually have a very
strong dislike. If the Egyptian cats had the same feelings, they
must have come under the discipline of skillful trainers. But
there have been fisher cats in modern times. Mr. Ross, in his
Book of Cats, tells of one that lived in 1829, which caught fish
with great assiduity, and frequently brought them home alive.
She taught another cat to fish, and they used to go out together,

sometimes taking opposite sides of the
river. Another story is quoted by the
same author, of a cat at the battery in
Plymouth, England, that was in the
habit of diving into the sea, bringing
up fish, and leaving them in the guard-
room for the sailors. She was seven
years old, and " as fond of the water as a Newfoundland dog,"
and hunted regularly along the rocks at the water's edge for
her game, " ready to dive for it at a moment's notice/7 A cat
described by Mr. Lawson Tait was a remarkable fisher, and would

Domestic.

Wild.

Fig. 4.— Cats' Tails.

CATS AND THEIR FRIENDSHIPS.

95

wade into a small pond up to her shoulders to catch her game.
She was " always fond of dabbling in the water." Mr. Harrison
Weir * tells of a cat which used to go into the water up to her
shoulders to bring in the fish which her master drew up with the
hook, and which stole out the minnows that had been placed, for
safe keeping, in a well of cold spring-water.

The domestic cat is not identical with the Egyptian cat, and,
therefore, if descended from it, must have undergone modifica-
tions in the process. It is not known whether it has interbred
with the wild cat ; but it is possible that some of the varieties
have originated in that way. The marks of difference between
the species are very plain. The most obvious one is the shape of
the tail (Fig. 2), which in the domestic cat is long, slender, and
tapering, while in the wild cat it is shorter, stumpy, and bushy.
The fact that no tendency has been observed in either of these

Fig. 5.— Mrs. Scott's English Taebt " Coppa." First Prize at the Crystal Palace Cat

Show, 1886.

forms of tail to revert to the other is in favor of a permanent
specific difference. The minor varieties of cats are numerous, but
the important ones are not many. A line is drawn between the
short-haired and the long-haired varieties. Of the former are the
tabbies (Figs. 5 and 10) — brown, blue, or silver ; red and spotted
tabbies — of various colors, with their delicate stripings, cloudings,
or spots ; the Chartreuse, blue, or Maltese, which has long, slate-
colored fur, and a bushy neck and tail ; the Spanish, or tortoise-
shell (Fig. 11) — white, black, and reddish-brown, mixed, whose

Our Cats and all about Them. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

closer resemblance than that of the others to the Egyptian cat has
suggested that the animal may have come to Europe by way of
the Strait of Gibraltar ; and the Manx (Fig. 6), a curious variety,
says Wood, on account of the entire absence of a tail, the place of
which member is only indicated by a rather wide protuberance.
" It is by no means a canny animal, for it has an unpleasant,
weird-like aspect about it. ... A Manx cat, with its glowing
eyes and its stump of a tail, is a most unearthly-looking beast."
The manner in which its peculiarity has been perpetuated has not
been accounted for. The long-haired cats include the Persian

(Fig. 7), a gray -blue and
silky animal, having a tail
of great length and covered
with hair six inches long,
which it carries arched over
its back like a squirrel's ;
and the Angola, a beautiful
animal, and knowing it —

fig. 6,-manx cat. "gorgeous in its superb

clothing of long, silky hair
and bushy tail." It is one of the largest of domestic cats, and
one of the heartiest eaters. Then there are the Chinese cat,
large, with fine, glossy hair and hanging ears ; the royal cat
of Siam (Fig. 8), clear tawny or buff, with black muzzle, face,
ears, and feet, suggesting the figure of a pug dog ; black cats,
which belong among the tabbies; and white cats, concerning
which the belief prevails that if they also have blue eyes they are
deaf. This connection has been accepted by Mr. Darwin as an in-
stance of correlated variability, and is explained by Mr. Lawson
Tait — the white color or albinism being regarded as a result of
arrested development — by the fact of the common origin in the
epiblast of the three structures affected — the fur, the iris, and
the tympanic membrane.

The bent of the cat's mind was pleasantly defined a few years
ago by a writer in the London Spectator, who said there could
be no doubt as to the view Puss took of the philosophy of nature
and life. She is quite satisfied that the world and everything in
it were made and exist for cats. This appears in all that well-
bred and cared-for cats do, and in every accent and tone of their
voice. Puss possesses herself with the air of a proprietor of the
best place and the best food ; expects to be waited upon ; demands
a share of every dish ; and looks upon us as at once her Provi-
dence and her servant.

Cats are not demonstrative like dogs, and do not submit to
training like the horse. The dog has been credited with un-
bounded affections, and the horse with almost human sagacity ;

CATS AND THEIR FRIENDSHIPS.

97

but the cat still suffers under the bad character that Buffon —
who can not have been acquainted with any reputable specimens
of the race — gave her. She is said to be selfish, spiteful, cruel,
crafty, treacherous, loving places and not persons, and in every
way unworthy of fellowship in the household. J. G. Wood an-
swers these accusations by saying that the cats with which he
has been most familiar " have been as docile, tractable, and good-
tempered as any dog
could be, and dis-
played an amount
of intellectual pow-
er which would be
equaled by very few
dogs, and surpassed
by none." To all per-
sons who have given
their confidence to
Puss and received
hers in return, they
need no answer.

Numerous traits of
the sort that make
all the world kin ap-
pear in the cats —
human-like qualities
and affections that
bring them into sym-
pathy with their mas-
ters. Such traits will

be made manifest to any one who even partially takes Puss into fel-
lowship ; and whoever puts himself on good terms with her will
find his association marked by wonderful examples of intelligence
and affection, and will be ready to declare that there is no cat
like the particular one with which he is dealing. The declaration
will be true in a measure, for individuality is one of the most
conspicuous traits of the species. A considerable literature has
been written in demonstration and illustration of the more pleas-
ing aspects of feline character, on which I have drawn for inci-
dents from works that will be mentioned in course; and more
freely from articles on animal intelligence in Nature and the Re-
vue Scientifique, and from a Cat Competition, organized several
years ago by the Republican Journal, of Belfast, Maine, in which
many contributors gave the stories of their pets. Evidences are
afforded in these observations of the habitual exercise by cats, in
the ordinary course of their lives, of such qualities as recognition
of their friends and attachment to them, capacity to form friend-

Fig. 7,

-Mrs. Valance's Persian, " Fluffy II."
Cat Show, 1886.

Crystal Palace

98

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

By per-
Pub-

ships with men and animals, exercise of self-denial, willingness
to do favors or to help, understanding of language, ability to make
their wants intelligibly known, humor, foresight, knowledge of
right and wrong, the use of means to ends, capacity to adapt
means to circumstances, the time-sense, and many other forms of
intelligence. Lindsay, in his Mind in the Lower Animals, shows
also that they, with other brutes, are liable to mental diseases
not unlike those to which the human mind is subject.

Thoophile Gautier, remarking on the difficulty of conquering
the friendship of a cat, says that " she is a philosophical animal,

orderly, quiet,
tenacious in her
habits, a lover of
order and propri-
ety, and one who
does not bestow
her affections
blindly. She will
gladly be your
friend if you are
worthy of it, but
not your slave.
In her tenderness
she regards her
own free will, and will not do for you what she judges to be unrea-
sonable ; but once she has given herself to you, what absolute con-
fidence, what fidelity of affection ! " Wood says that there is per-
haps no animal so full of trust as a cat that is kindly treated, as
there is none which, when subjected to harshness, is so nervously
suspicious. Cats keenly recognize these distinctions in character,
even among members of the same family, and govern themselves
accordingly. Pertinent to this point is the newspaper squib of the
maid who told her master that she knew Tom had returned from
school, though she had not seen him, because the cat was hiding
under the stove.

1 Tad," of Burnham, Maine, used to meet his master, a night
watchman, every morning at the store-door, and accompany him
home. After the master died, " Tad *' continued to go for him
and wait ; then, not finding him, would return home and wander
about the house as if in search of him. " Hannah/' of North
Monroe, Maine, began to take care of the baby as soon as it came ;
increased its attentions when the child could walk ; would go after
him and call him back when he started to wander out of bounds,
and then go to the house and mew for help till some one came to
take the truant in charge. "Thomas," of Sandy Point, Maine,
was accustomed to be fed with crumbs from the table by a single

Fig. 8.— Mrs. Vyvtan's Rotal Cat of Siam. Prize-winner
mission, from Harrison Weir's Onr Cats and all about Tbem.
lished by Houyhton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York.

CATS AND THEIR FRIENDSHIPS. 99

member of the family, and to go and call him to dinner if he was
tardy. My cat in like manner nsed to look to her mistress and to
no other person for tidbits from the breakfast-table. " Daisy," of
Belfast, who stayed with her mistress during an illness, missed
her from the room and went out to look for her. Meeting her
unexpectedly, she looked np, says the mistress, " as frightened as
if she had seen a ghost. My voice, however, reassured her, and,
if ever a cat smiled, I am sure she did." Another cat of the
Belfast group, not a favorite and shy toward all other persons,
became attached to a sickly infant and its faithful nurse, never
failing to respond to its cries by going to its cradle and soothing
it by purring and caresses till it became quiet. The cat of M.
Arbousset, a French missionary in Africa, refused food when the
child to which it was attached died, sought and mourned for its
friend in a marked manner, and in a few days was found dead on
its grave. The suggestion has been made, and is worthy of con-

Fig. 9. — Archangel Blue Cat. By permission, from Harrison Weir's Our Cats and all about
Them. Published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York.

sideration, that when pets die in this way soon after their human
companions, it may be because they caught the disease from them
rather than from intensity of affection. But this can not apply
to the cat told of in the Leisure Hour, which, when the child its
playmate died, refused food at first, but afterward, having found
its companion's grave, spent most of its time there, going to
the house for its meals. A critic, in the Saturday Review, claims
to have known more than one instance of a cat, ordinarily con-
stant to its own habits of comfort, breaking through its self-made
rules to sit outside the door of an invalid as if waiting for news.
The Rev. J. G. Wood's " Pret " was capable of the most earnest
manifestations of gratitude. One day, when, having been forgot-
ten, she had become very hungry, she flew " like a mad thing " at
the meat and milk her master gave her ; but hardly lapped a
drop before she went to him purring loudly and caressing him to
express her thanks ; then went to the plate, " but only just touched

lOO

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

her nose, and again came to thank me " — actually refraining from
enjoying the food she was so much in want of till she had repeat-
edly acknowledged her obligations for it.

A story is quoted by Mrs. Cashel Hoey from the London
Spectator, of " Nero/' who, loving all the family and showing his
love for each in different ways, especially loved his master, and
was usually the first to hear his step. He could distinguish the
click of his master's door-key, and would run to answer it ; was
distressed if his master failed to return at evening, and would go
look for his portmanteau, to see if that was gone too — that being
his sign that master was taking a journey. If the portmanteau
was in its place, he was satisfied ; if not, he would lie down and
refuse food. If he knew the master was going away, he would

try to hide himself in
the cab ; and if mas-
ter appeared with his
hat on in the day-
time, supposing he
was going out, would
try to take it off ; but
if at night, was con-
tented, for master
had come home.

The cat's strong
attachment to its
home, and indispo-
sition to change it,
are not peculiar to it,
but are common to
all animals, includ-
ing man. The trait
is often manifested,
and sometimes in
remarkable ways, in
dogs, horses, and cat-
tle. In man it is fre-
quently illustrated in
the affection known
as " homesickness."
The ability which
animals display un-
der its influence in finding their way back to their old accustomed
haunts from long distances and by difficult or tortuous ways, or
even by roundabout roads, when return over the direct route (as
when it includes the crossing of bodies of water) is impossible, is
the wonder of naturalists, and up to this time one of the unsolved

Fig. 10.— Finely Marked Spotted Tabby Cat. By permission,
from Harrison Weir's Our Cats and all about Them. Pub-
lished by Hougbton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York.

CATS AND THEIR FRIENDSHIPS. 101

problems of animal psychology. It has received the name of " the
homing instinct/' and is regarded by some naturalists as constitut-
ing an additional sense. The dog seems usually to be more ready
than the cat to follow his master in a change of home, and to recon-
cile himself to the new place, but this may be because he stands in
a different relation toward him. The dog is sure of at least one
fast friend wherever he lives, while the cat can not always reckon
even upon that. In many families, where she is tolerated, as,
according to Buffon, only because she is less objectionable than
the rats and mice, she has no one to caress her or show affection
to her. In this case, when her situation is barely endurable, she
naturally fixes her attachment on the place where she has found
cozy retreats and knows all the hunting-grounds, rather than
upon persons who have given her no consideration, and of whom
she perhaps stands in fear. Whether the cat will in the long run
prefer its old home, deserted or inhabited by strangers, to a new
home, along with the persons it has been accustomed to meet, may
depend very much upon the treatment it has received from those
persons. My cat was removed three times in ten years ; and, aside
from the temporary embarrassment caused by finding herself in
a strange place, readily adapted herself to the new quarters, and
showed no disposition to go back to the old haunts. Lindsay, in

Pig. 11.— Finely Marked Tortoise-Shell Cat. By permission, from Harrison Weir's Onr Cats
and all about Them. Published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York.

his Mind in the Lower Animals, refers to cases of cats following
their masters from house to house, from place to place, and accom-
panying them on visits to other people's residences, as uncon-
cernedly as a dog. Wood tells of a family on the coast of Scot-
land who removed to the opposite shore — sailing around instead
of crossing the country — leaving their cat with a neighbor. But
the animal followed them, and found them in some way, present-
ing itself after a few weeks at their door, " weary, ragged, and
half starved." It had left its old home and gone out into the
unknown to seek the family with whom it had lived. A case pre-

102

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cisely similar, except as to the local topography, is related in
Chambers's Journal, of a cat in a military chaplain's family at
Madras. This animal also, having found its old friends on the
other side of the city, several miles from their former home,
went back and brought her kitten. Some of the incidents bear-
ing upon this feature have an aspect of eccentricity. The young
cat of a neighbor of the writer's disappeared from the house
and was not found or heard of for six months. At the end of that
time it returned and made itself at home at once, but grown
and so changed that, though its familiarity was remarked upon as
singular, it was not recognized till its identity was accidentally
established by the discovery of a peculiar though obscure mark.
Dr. A. Corriveau tells in the Revue Scientifique of a cat which was
lost in a similar way. Five months afterward it was found in
the house by the side of its companion, travel-soiled but plump,
and recognizable by a red spot on its forehead. It had a very
pleasant visit with its old mate and friends for a week, and then
disappeared as unaccountably as it had done before. It is told in
the Life of Sir David Brewster, by his daughter, that a cat in the
house entered his room one day and made his friendship in the
most affectionate manner — "looked straight at him, jumped on
his knee, put a paw on each shoulder, and kissed him as distinctly
as a cat could." From that time the philosopher himself provided
her breakfast every morning from his own plate, till " one day she
disappeared, to the unbounded sorrow of her master. Nothing was
heard of her for nearly two years, when Pussy walked into the house,
neither hungry nor thirsty nor foot-sore — made her way without
hesitation to the study — jumped on my father's knee — placed a paw
on each shoulder — and kissed him exactly as on the first day."

These incidents pertain to only one of the human-like traits
that have been named as to be found in cats. The study to which
they introduce us is an alluring one, and opens the more expan-
sively the further we proceed in it.

Prof. Mendelejeff, in his Royal Institution lecture, found an analogy between
the unseen world of chemical changes and the visible world of the heavenly bodies.
Our atoms, he said, form distinct portions of an invisible world, as planets, sat-
ellites, and comets form distinct portions of the astronomer's universe; "our
atoms may therefore be compared to the solar system, or to the systems of double
or of single stars ; for example, ammonia may be represented in the simplest man-
ner by supposing the sun nitrogen, surrounded by its planets of hydrogen, and
common salt may be looked upon as a double star formed of sodium and chlorine.
Besides, now that the indestructibility of the elements has been acknowledged,
chemical changes can not otherwise be explained than as changes of motion; and
the production by chemical reactions of galvanic currents, of light, of heat, of
pressure, or of steam-power, demonstrates visibly that the processes of chemical
reaction are inevitably connected with enormous though unseen displacements,
originating in the movements of atoms in molecules."

REGENT GLACIAL WORK IN EUROPE. 103

RECENT GLACIAL WORK IN EUROPE.

Bt Mrs. K. B. CLAYPOLE.

AT the recent meeting of the British Association at Newcastle,
Prof. James Geikie opened the Section of Geology with a
summary of the results obtained during the last few years by
continental glacialists. Sketching the steps by which the iceberg
theory has been abandoned by German and Swiss geologists, he
dwelt on certain features of the drifts of the peripheral areas,
which for some time were hard to account for by land-ice. Of
these, the bedded deposits occurring so frequently in the bowlder-
clays of the peripheral regions, and the occasional silty and un-
compressed character of the clays themselves, remained unex-
plained until a clew was found to their origin in the geographical
distribution of the clays in which they occur. ' These stony clays,
of inconsiderable thickness in Norway, the higher parts of Sweden,
and in Finland, reach a thickness of about forty-three metres
in southern Sweden, and eighty metres in the northern parts
of Prussia ; and in Holstein attain a depth of one hundred and
twenty to one hundred and forty metres, and still greater depths
in Hanover, Mark Brandenburg, and Saxony. The aqueous de-
posits associated with the stony clays also gradually acquire more
importance as they are followed from the mountainous and high-
lying tracts to the low ground, until, along the southern margin
of the drift area, the " diluvium " appears to consist of aqueous
accumulations alone. The explanations of these facts by German
geologists have been summed up recently (1884) by Dr. Jentzsch,
from whom Prof. Geikie quoted enough to show that they are
quite in accordance with the views long held by glacialists else-
where.

The general conclusions reached by continental glacialists, and
summarized by Prof. Geikie, are :

1. Before the invasion of northern Germany by the inland
ice, the low grounds bordering on the Baltic were overflowed by
a sea which contained a boreal and arctic fauna.

2. The next geological horizon in ascending order is that which
is marked by the glacial and fluvio-glacial detritus of the great
ice-sheet which flowed to the foot of the Harz Mountains, and has
been traced by the occasional presence of rock-strise and roches-
moutonnees, of bowlder-clay and northern erratics, rather than
by recognizable terminal moraines.

3. A well-marked temperate fauna and flora marks the inter-
glacial beds which follow, and which, in their geographical dis-
tribution and the presence in them of such forms as Elephas
antiquus, Cervus elephas, and C. megaceros, and a flora compar-

io4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

able to that now existing in northern Germany, justify geologists
in concluding that this era was one of long duration, and charac-
terized in Germany by climatic conditions apparently not less
temperate than those that now obtain.

4. To this well-marked interglacial era succeeded a second
overflow of Scandinavian inland ice, confined to a region much
narrower than that covered by the first. Its boundaries are shown
not only by the geographical distribution of the youngest bowlder-
clay, but by the direction of rock-striae, the trend of erratics, and
the position of well-marked moraines.

Concerning the ground-moraines of the Alpine lands of cen-
tral Europe, the only question that has recently given rise to
much discussion is the origin of the materials themselves. The
observations of able investigators appear to Prof. Geikie to
have demonstrated that these materials have been derived, in
chief measure, from the underlying rocks by the erosive action
of the ice that overflowed them. German geologists are not
agreed upon this much-debated question of glacier-erosion — a few
still maintaining that glaciers have little or no eroding power.
But where the evidences of erosion have been studied over a
wide region, from which the ice has completely disappeared,
rather than at the lower ends of existing glaciers, some of the
strongest opponents of glacier-erosion have been compelled to go
over to the other camp. As an example, Prof. Geikie quoted
Dr. Blaas, who, through his observations on the glacial forma-
tions of the Inn Valley, has recanted his former views and be-
come a formidable opponent of the very theory which he once
upheld. To his books and to memoirs by Penck, Bruckner, and
Bohn, and especially to the chapter on glacier-erosion by the last-
named author, Prof. Geikie refers those who may be anxious to
know the last word on this question.

Observations by Drs. Bruckner and Penck have led to the
opinion that the loess is of interglacial age. Examining a wider
range of evidence, Prof. Geikie has little doubt that the loess be-
longs to no particular horizon, though it must be considered
strictly a Pleistocene accumulation. Concerning its mode of
formation he discussed the various theories advanced, and gave it
as his opinion — an opinion formed from what he has himself seen
of the loess in various parts of Germany, from reading, and from
conversation with those who have worked over loess-covered re-
gions— that it is for the most part of aqueous origin, formed in
the slack waters of the great rivers, and in the innumerable tem-
porary lakes which occupied or partly occupied many of the val-
leys and depressions of the land. Probably some may have been
derived from the denudation of bowlder-clay, some from " rain-
wash/' while much of the so-called Bergloess with its abundant

RECENT GLACIAL WORK IN EUROPE. 105

land-shells, and its generally unstratified character, owes its ori-
gin to rain, frost, and wind. Admitting that some of the loess of
the lower grounds may have been reworked by the same agents,
Prof. Geikie fonnd no evidence in the facts adduced by German
geologists of a " dry-as-dust " epoch having obtained in Europe
during any stage of the Pleistocene period.

Within recent years the fossils of the loess have received close
attention, and through them so much knowledge has been gained
of the various modifications experienced by Pleistocene organ-
isms that, taken with other evidence of interglacial conditions,
there is little room to doubt that this period was characterized
by great changes of climate. How often arctic, steppe, prairie,
and forest faunas and floras have replaced each other is yet a
matter of dispute. The occurrence of fossiliferous deposits inter-
calated among glacial accumulations throughout all the glaciated
tracts of Europe show that however many advances and retreats
of the ice there may have been, they were on a gigantic scale
characterizing all the glaciated areas.

The bearing of the establishment of at least two eras of glaci-
ation on the position of Palaeolithic man was pointed out by
Prof. Geikie. The mere occurrence of glacial deposits under-
neath implement-bearing beds no longer proves these latter to be
post-glacial. The horizon of glacial accumulations underlying
Palaeolithic gravels must now be determined by ascertaining
their relative position ; and it is a remarkable fact that the bowl-
der-clays which occur beneath such old alluvia belong, without
exception, to the earlier stages of the Glacial period. In 1871-,72
Prof. Geikie published a series of papers in the Geological Maga-
zine, maintaining that the alluvial and cave deposits must be
assigned to preglacial and. interglacial times, and in chief to the
latter. Evidence was adduced to show that during the last stage
of the Glacial period man lived contemporaneously with a north-
ern and Alpine fauna, in such regions as southern France ; and
that Palaeolithic man and the southern mammalia never revisited
northwestern Europe after extreme glacial conditions had disap-
peared. Prof. Geikie at the same time colored a map to show at
once the areas covered by the glacial and fluvio-glacial deposits
of the last Glacial era, and the districts in which the implement-
bearing and ossiferous alluvia had been found ; and this clearly
brought out that the latter never occurred at the surface within
the regions occupied by the former. Similar evidence has been
recently obtained by continental geologists ; and a map published
by Dr. Penck in 1884, showing the areas covered by the earlier
and later glacial deposits in northern Europe and the Alpine
lands, and indicating at the same time the various localities
where Palaeolithic finds have occurred, does not give a single

VOL. XXXVII. 8

io6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

locality within the regions covered by the accumulations of the
last Glacial era. So greatly are students of the Pleistocene ossif-
erous beds influenced by what is known of the interglacial depos-
its and their organic remains, that many do not now hesitate to
correlate with those beds the old ossiferous and implement-bear-
ing alluvia which lie altogether outside of glaciated regions. In
France, where the relation of Pleistocene alluvia has been espe-
cially canvassed, these alluvia have been also included among
interglacial deposits. M. Boule also, in the Revue d'Anthropolo-
gie, 1889, correlates the Palaeolithic cave and river deposits of
France with those of other countries, and shows that they must
be of interglacial age. He is satisfied that in France there is
evidence of three glacial and two well-marked interglacial eras.
The oldest of the Palaeolithic stages of Mortillet culminated
during the last interglacial era, while the more recent Palaeolithic
stages coincided with the last great development of glacier ice.
The Palaeolithic age, so far as Europe is concerned, came to a
close during this last cold phase of the Glacial period.

Interesting as is the development of the climatic and geo-
graphical changes of which our Palaeolithic predecessors were the
witnesses, the clearing up of the history of Pleistocene times is
not the only end that workers in this field have in view. Prof.
Geikie, therefore, closed his address with a hope that the definite
knowledge of the conditions of the Pleistocene period and of the
causes which gave rise to them would lead to the better under-
standing of the climatic conditions of still earlier ages ; the suc-
cess with which other problems have been attacked by geologists
forbidding him to doubt that ere long we shall have done much
to dispel some of the mystery still enveloping the question of geo-
logical climates.

■♦•»

THE BOTANIC GARDENS AT KEW.

By FKEDEK1K A. FERNALD.

"T is now about two hundred years — the exact date is not
-L known — since Lord Capel laid out the garden that has become
a scientific institution of world-wide fame and influence. Switzer
says, in his quaint Ichnographia Rustica, 1718, " The earliness
with which this lord appeared in gardening merits a very great
place in my history, and a better pen than mine to draw it." On
the death of Lord Capel, in 1696, the estate of Kew House, includ-
ing the garden, passed into the hands of his son-in-law, who added
to its importance for a while by making it the headquarters of
English astronomy. It was afterward leased by Frederick, Prince
of Wales, son of George II. The garden was made a scientific es-

THE BOTANIC GARDENS AT KEW. 107

tablishment— what they called a " Physic Garden" in those days—
by the widow of Frederick, the dowager Princess Augusta, under
the advice of the Earl of Bute. She employed William Aiton to
direct the scientific work, and Sir William Chambers to superin-
tend the decorative gardening. " Science will ever be grateful to
the one," says a writer in The Saturday Review,* "and Taste
will never forgive the other while his constructions remain." In
1768 Sir John Hill published a catalogue of the plants at Kew.
There were fifty ferns, about six hundred trees and shrubs, and
several thousands of herbaceous plants. The list was not greatly
lengthened twenty-one years after, when Aiton issued the Hortus
Kewensis with the aid of Dr. Solander. But the collections
made by Sir Joseph Banks in Captain Cook's famous voyage were
deposited here ; then those of Robert Brown and Allan Cunning-
ham, who had accompanied Captains Flinders and King respect-
ively to Australia; then the plants of Brazil and the Cape of
Good Hope, gathered by Messrs. Bowie and Masson; those of
Caley, and Ker, and Menzies, and a host of smaller collections.
In 1810 William Aiton the younger published a new edition of
his father's work, which contained nearly ten thousand descrip-
tions. About 1789 the estate was bought by George III, who
devoted much of his leisure to its improvement. But evil days
followed the death of Sir Joseph Banks, in whom Kew had a friend
at court. For all Aiton could do, the gardens sank into neglect,
and in 1838 it was proposed to disestablish and disendow them.
A protest was raised, and, after further consideration, the gardens
were surrendered by the crown and became a national establish-
ment in 1810. Sir W. J. Hooker was appointed director in the
following year. Kew has been fortunate in having had few
changes in directors. It was in charge of William Aiton from
1759 to 1793 ; of William Aiton, Jr., from 1793 to 1840 ; Sir W. J.
Hooker was director from 1841 to 1866 ; his son, Sir Joseph D.
Hooker, from 1866 to 1886 ; and to him has succeeded Mr. W. T.
Thiselton Dyer.

Under the directorship of Sir W. J. Hooker the Royal Botanic
Gardens rapidly advanced in importance. During his term of
ofiice a report of the Progress and Condition of the gardens was
made annually. This was superseded in 1883 by a monthly Bul-
letin of Miscellaneous Information. The early reports of Sir
William Hooker are interesting, besides their historic and scien-
tific value, for the evidence they give of his sturdy, ceaseless bat-
tles with the Treasury. The director is pathetic, indignant, and
argumentative by turns, and one way or another he contrived to

* The writer is indebted to an appreciative article in The Saturday Review (Lon-
don), of October 5, 12, and 19, 1889, for the material of this sketch.

io8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

worry on till better times. In 1844 Sir William took the first
important step of his administration by petitioning for a grant of
the Royal Fruit House, which he offered to fill with his private
collection of plant products. It was allowed in 1847, and thus the
Museum of Economic Botany had its origin. This branch of the
establishment now occupies three buildings. Every tree and
plant which is known to serve a useful purpose is represented
there, with illustrations of the manner of its employment, if pos-
sible. While the collection is very popular with the holiday vis-
itor who comes only to be entertained, any one can understand its
serious value to an ingenious and thoughtful mechanic or manu-
facturer. The Museum of Timber is largely used already. Cabi-
net-makers and furniture manufacturers quite recognize by this
time what a store of hints for their craft is garnered here. The
utility of the economic section, moreover, is by no means confined
to the inhabitants of the British Isles. From every quarter of the
globe samples of new products are sent for examination and report.
So long ago as 1815 an Herbarium and Botanical Library had
been projected at Kew. George III, doubtless persuaded by Sir
Joseph Banks, even raised a building for the purpose. After
Sir Joseph's death, however, the scheme lapsed, and the building
was granted to the King of Hanover. On his decease, Sir William
Hooker urged the fulfillment of the old design, and his petition was
granted when Mr. Bentham and Dr. Bromfield bequeathed their
collections to the nation. The Herbarium of Kew is the largest
in the world, and by far the most useful, because it is also most
admirably arranged. The number of specimens in it is not on
record. At Sir William Hooker's death, twenty-four years ago
a rough estimate made the number a million, exclusive of dupli-
cates. The written catalogue fills two gigantic volumes, and has
to be continually posted up, for the collection increases by twenty
thousand or so yearly. The dried plants in their portfolios stand
in cases, and all are arranged upon the system of Sir Joseph
Hooker's great work, the Genera Plantarum. The student has
only to give the number attached to any genus in that book, and
the case is unlocked and the portfolio laid before him in a mo-
ment. There are no formalities to check the young scholar here.
He has but to present his credentials to Prof. Oliver, keeper of
the herbarium, sign his name, and get to work. There are inter-
esting features at every step of this noble collection, fascinating
bits of history connected with every group of cases which bears
the name of some distinguished botanist, the fruits of whose life-
long labor are stored here. Of all these, perhaps the herbarium
of Dr. Lindley is the most attractive. It occupies only four small
cabinets, but the contents will surpass the visitor's utmost expec-
tations. On the lower floor is preparing the catalogue of all plants

THE BOTANIC GARDENS AT KEW, 109

known, for which Mr. Darwin left a bequest. Mr. Daydon Jack-
son, Secretary to the Linnsean Society, has had the work in hand
over three years, and it is not nearly finished. He employs a staff
at the British Museum also, The catalogue of the library is not
printed, but is contained in a ponderous manuscript volume in the
keeper's room. The books include, besides all modern volumes
and pamphlets on botany, a great number of those antique curios-
ities which bibliomaniacs treasure.

The work at Kew covers a vast field. In the first place officially
stand the botanic interests — to study new plants and class them.
Next, where plants are wanted for cultivation, which can not be
obtained readily in the market, or which the service of the public
demands, the Royal Gardens will supply them if possible. Where
diseases, vegetable or animal or insect pests, threaten local plan-
tations, Kew will look into the matter and consult with experts
at home. Kew is ready also to report and to obtain advice upon
new-industries which those upon the spot suggest. Furthermore,
it keeps an eye on all institutions of the same class through-
out the British Empire, which act in concert with their great
model in the mother-country, and through it with one another.
Foreign institutions co-operate in like manner with Kew to a cer-
tain extent. From time to time the authorities of Kew publish a
list of new plants, which at present seem to average five hundred
to six hundred a quarter, including those renamed for scientific
purposes. From time to time, also, they publish a list of the seeds
matured in the Royal Gardens, which are exchanged, on appli-
cation, with all regular correspondents. One of these seed-lists
includes something like four thousand species. This magazine of
seeds is collected, nominally, for the benefit of institutions which
may be able some time to return the favor in part, but in practice
no one who applies with a serious purpose for seeds or plants is
refused. How the rapidly increasing population of the globe is to
be provided with food and clothing is a problem which the au-
thorities of Kew believe falls within their department. They wel-
come every vegetable product which is reported to have qualities
that make it useful to mankind, whether as a food, a medicine,
a convenience, or a substance useful in manufactures. They are
glad to report upon specimens of such substances, or to obtain
the reports of trustworthy experts.

The story of the cinchona plantations is a good instance of the
work of the Royal Gardens. Some forty years ago both the Eng-
lish and the Dutch authorities in the East Indies took alarm at
the growing price of quinine, due to the rapid decrease of the for-
ests of cinchona in Peru. The Dutch moved first, and imported
a great number of seeds and seedlings, which they planted in Java
at a heavy cost. But, probably because they had no Kew to advise

no THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

them, the Dutch had chosen a species which was hardly worth
growing, and the plantations have been long since nprooted. For
some years the English Government confined itself to importing
seeds and plants, which died on the passage to India. This was
evidently futile, and Sir William Hooker urged a systematic pro-
cedure. Mr. Clements Markham, in 1859, was sent to Peru to col-
lect seeds and young trees. When he returned, his precious stores
were received at the Gardens, nursed, and transmitted to India
with trifling loss. This effort was successful. In the plantations
of Bengal, laid out and managed by officers recommended by Sir
William Hooker, there were, at the date of the latest report, about
five million trees. From Kew cinchona-trees have been distrib-
uted also to all parts of the world where there was a chance for
successful cultivation. The plantations of Ceylon are only infe-
rior to those of Bengal ; in Jamaica the sales of bark exceed
£5,000 a year ; the tree has been introduced also into St. Helena,
Trinidad, Mauritius, Cape of Good Hope, Queensland, and many
other settlements. The output of the cinchona drugs from these
sources up to 1880 was 87,704 pounds, which, taking quinine at an
average value of two dollars an ounce, would represent $2,806,528.
Ipecacuanha is a plant scarcely less important than cinchona
itself. But few members of the vegetable kingdom so absolutely
refuse to exist under anything short of perfectly satisfactory con-
ditions. In 1866 Sir Joseph Hooker sent a specimen to the Bo-
tanical Gardens at Calcutta, which promptly died. Then a strug-
gle began in which the advantage was now on one side, then
on the other. In 1875 the Director of the Calcutta Gardens tri-
umphantly reported that he had one hundred thousand nice young
plants, but in 1886 the strain received from Kew direct alone sur-
vived— less than five per cent — and all hope of successful cultiva-
tion in India has been abandoned long since. Plants had been
sent out to Singapore, however, in 1875,#with much more lively
confidence, and there perseverance found its reward. Ipecacuanha
is established in the Old World at last, and the authorities of Kew
may be trusted to diffuse the cultivation. Another instance is
Liberian coffee, distributed from Kew to take the place of that
grown in the East Indies, which was affected by a fungoid pest,
and that of the West Indies, which suffered from the white fly.
Liberian coffee, moreover, will thrive in hot and moist situations,
where the Arabian variety is unable even to live. It has been
introduced in a great many places, but, although its growth is
very promising, it has nowhere become the general crop. This
imperfect success was another problem for the investigators of
Kew, and the solution is now believed to be found in the fact that
the treatment proper for the Arabian berry after gathering is not
suited to the Liberian, with a widely different pulp.

THE BOTANIC GARDENS AT KEW. m

Among the many questions sent to Kew from all parts of the
world, there must "be some of trivial importance, or which could
be perfectly well answered at the local* botanic gardens. But all
genuine inquiries receive attention. Debate has been gravely
held, opinions even have been formed and reported upon such
matters as a South African cane which some gentleman in those
distant parts thought adapted for fishing-rods ; upon the value of
West African palm-kernels as material for coat-buttons ; upon a
pithy stem which the government of a West India island believed
suitable for razor-strops.

One function of a national institution very seriously regarded
at Kew is the training of young men to fill botanic situations in
the colonies. Something is demanded of such young men beyond
the practical knowledge which suffices at home. Instruction is
given them in the principles of scientific botany, and those general
conditions which rule the practice of horticulture under differing
circumstances. The advantage of this system all around scarcely
needs illustration. While serving the interest of the colonies, it
increases the sources of information for Kew, since all these emi-
grants keep up more or less of a correspondence with the institu-
tion in which they were trained.

The village of Kew lies on the south side of the Thames, about
six miles westward from Hyde Park Corner in London. " The
Gardens " are a favorite resort for holiday-makers and tourists,
being visited by six or seven hundred thousand persons yearly.
Painters also flock there in summer-time. When the crown sur-
rendered its rights to them in 1840, the Gardens had an area
of eleven acres, and contained ten greenhouses of one sort or
another. Sir William Hooker promptly begged permission to
annex the Orangery and the land adjacent ; then a part of the
Pleasure Grounds ; and after that the Royal Kitchen and For-
cing Grounds. All these petitions being granted, by 1847 the
Gardens had reached their present dimensions — about seventy
acres. Three years later the rest of the Pleasure Grounds was
granted for the establishment of an Arboretum, making the total
area little less than two hundred and fifty acres. " The Arbore-
tum is the richest in Europe, no doubt," says the writer in The
Saturday Review, "but probably inferior to that of Harvard
University, where special attention has been paid to this depart-
ment." This admission in a British journal, and The Saturday
Review above all others, should be very gratifying to Ameri-
cans. The failure of Kew's Arboretum to be the finest in the
world is explained on the ground that the soil — sandy and shal-
low, resting on a stratum of gravel — is unsuited to many kinds of
trees. In former times, also, when an imperial collection had to
be got together as quickly as possible, and as cheaply, specimens

112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

were not planted with the care which might have overcome the
disadvantage. It became necessary to reconstruct the Arboretum
twenty years ago on this account. A singular example of the in-
fluence of fashion in gardening then came to light. The British
public had been running after evergreens so hotly that nursery-
men had ceased to grow deciduous species. It seems incredible
that the authorities of Kew should have asked in vain for months
throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, for young aspens.
As for American oaks, maples, etc., they absolutely could not
be found in the kingdom. Unscientific lovers of the beautiful
may rejoice that it has not yet been found necessary to interfere
with the old forest trees, planted, perhaps, by Lord Capel. The
new-comers are arranged by genus — all the willows, for example,
with the alders, around the pretty lake, pines here, cedars there,
oaks, nuts, maples, tamarisks, camellias, ranunculus, etc., etc.

In the Garden proper the smaller plants are found in bewilder-
ing array. No list of the species represented at Kew has been
taken since that of the younger Aiton in 1810, but one is now
being made. Some departments have been catalogued already.
Of orchids, there are about 1,400 species ; ferns, 1,100 ; stove plants,
2,500 ; succulents, 1,000 ; palms and cycads, 500 ; greenhouse plants,
3,000 ; herbaceous, 4,000 ; trees and shrubs, 3,000 ; in several cases,
however, the figure is but a guess as yet. The total, great as it
will prove to be, bears but a small proportion to the sum of Na-
ture's wealth. If we take the flowering plants alone, as enumer-
ated in Bentham and Hooker's Genera Plantarum, there are two
hundred natural orders, 10,000 genera, and 100,000 species; and
this leaves out of account the ferns and all the lower orders of
Cryptogamia. The Economic Section has few visitors, and they
are not tempted to carry exploration far. Not a few of the culi-
nary and medicinal herbs in use are found here. If by some
fatal chance the onion of commerce should be exterminated in the
back-gardens of England, Kew is prepared to replace it. Side by
side therewith grow the patience-dock and the skunk-cabbage,
the briony, the cuckoo-pint, the Japanese yam, and the all-good.
In ferns the Kew collection is exceedingly rich. It has had three
special benefactors in this department, to the first of whom, Mr.
George C. Joad, the public is indebted for the charming rock-gar-
den opened in 1881. Sir Joseph Hooker had long been working
for one, and the bequest of Mr. Joad's collection of ferns brought
the matter to a crisis. Dr. Cooper Forster was an enthusiast upon
the culture of filmy ferns, and Mr. W. C. Carbonell was specially
interested in the cultivation of hardy ferns, particularly in the
crossing of them, and the development of sports. Both these gen-
tlemen bequeathed their treasures for the nation's enjoyment when
their own power of enjoying them ended.

SKETCH OF HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT. 113

The glass houses at Kew are extensive structures. The Win-
ter Garden covers more than an acre and a half of ground. The
Palm House is three hundred and sixty-two feet long and one hun-
dred feet wide. The new Orchid House is one hundred and forty
feet in length, adding the two wings together. This last is not
wholly satisfactory — to the orchid enthusiast an orchid house
never is, nor can be. Supplemented, however, by a low, neat
range, from which the public is excluded, nearly all the 1,400 spe-
cies which form the national collection thrive admirably. British
orchidists are proud of Kew — nowadays — for it was not so satis-
factory in this department a few years since.

+•»

SKETCH OF HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT.

MR. SCHOOLCRAFT was a conspicuous figure in the scien-
tific life of the early part of the century. A pioneer in
some fields, the immediate follower of the pioneers in others,
he was, in all the branches of research to which, he gave atten-
tion, earnest, ready, diligent, sagacious, original, and modest. As
among his titles to be remembered, the biographer who prefaces
his Personal Memoirs names the early period at which he entered
the field of observation in the United States as a naturalist ; the
enterprise he manifested in exploring the geography and geology
of the Great West ; and his subsequent researches as an ethnolo-
gist in investigating the Indian languages and history. " To him
we are indebted for our first accounts of the geological constitu-
tion and the mineral wealth and resources of the great valley
beyond the Alleghanies, and he is the discoverer of the actual
source of the Mississippi River in Itasca Lake. For many years,
beginning with 1817, he stirred up a zeal for natural history from
one end of the land to the other, and, after his settlement in the
West, he was a point of approach for correspondents " — on these
topics and for all the Indian tribes.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was born in Albany County, K Y.,
March 28, 1793, and died in Washington, D. C, December 10, 1864.
He was the descendant, in the third generation, of an English-
man, James Calcraft, who, having served with credit in the armies
of the Duke of Marlborough, came to America in the reign of
George II, in the military service, and was present at operations
connected with the building of Forts Anne, Edward, and William
Henry. After these campaigns he settled in Albany County as a
land-surveyor, married, and in his old age conducted a large
school — the first English school that was taught in that frontier
region. In connection with this incident his name became

TOL. XXXYII. — 9

ii4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

changed to Schoolcraft. He died at the age of one hundred and
two years. John, his third son, was a soldier under Sir William
Johnson. Lawrence, John's son, distinguished himself during the
siege of Fort Stanwix. He was afterward director of the glass-
works of the Hon. Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, at Hamilton, near
Albany ; and established the manufacture of glass in western
New York.

Henry Schoolcraft spent his childhood and youth in Hamilton,
cultivated poetry, and maintained an excellent standing in schol-
arship. At an early age he manifested a taste for mineralogy
and natural science, which were then (about 1808) almost un-
known in the country ; formed the beginnings of collections ;
and organized an association for mental improvement. He inves-
tigated the drift stratum of Albany County as seen in the bed of
Norman's Kill ; and afterward, while living at Lake Dunmore,
Vt., put himself under the teaching of Prof. Hall, of Middlebury
College; added chemistry, natural philosophy, and medicine to
his studies ; erected a chemical furnace, and went into experi-
menting ; and picked up a knowledge of Hebrew, German, and
French. He began writing for books and periodicals in 1808 —
contributing, among other things, papers on the Burning Springs
of western New York, and on archaeological discoveries that had
been made in Hamburg, Erie County. In the last paper, which
was published at Utica in 1817, he pointed out the necessity of
discriminating between the antique French and European, and
the aboriginal period, in American antiquity. He was engaged
for a time in directing the building of works connected with his
father's glass-making enterprises in Vermont, New Hampshire,
and western New York. The ideas and knowledge gained in
these operations supplied the material for his proposed work on
Vitreology, or the application of chemistry to glass-making, the
publication of which was begun in 1817. The supervision of
these works required the making of considerable journeys, and
these created in him the desire to travel through the wilds of the
" Far West," which then hardly extended beyond the Missouri
River.

He made some " preliminary explorations " to his contemplated
journey in western New York in 1816 and 1817, and started from
Olean on the Alleghany River for a journey down the Ohio and
up the Mississippi in 1818. A large company of intending emi-
grants had gathered there waiting for the season to open, and
Schoolcraft took passage in the first ark. Arrived at Pittsburg,
he stopped to explore the geology of the Monongahela Valley, and
was greatly interested in the rich coal and iron beds. He stopped
to visit the Grave Creek mound and the ancient works at Mari-
etta. At Louisville he found " organic remains " of several spe-

SKETCH OF HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT. 115

cies in the limestone rocks of the falls, and published anony-
mously in the paper some notices of its mineralogy. At the
month of the Cumberland River he exchanged the ark for a keel-
boat or barge, with which, propelled by poles pushing on the bot-
tom, he made from three to ten miles a day against the swift cur-
rent of the Mississippi to Herculaneum, Mo. On this voyage he
traveled over a large part of the west bank on foot, and gleaned
several facts in its mineralogy and geology which made it an
initial point in his future observations. He spent three months
in examining the lead mines, personally visiting every mine or
digging of consequence in the Missouri country and tracing its
geological relations into Arkansas. Hearing of syenite suitable
for millstones on the St. Francis, he visited that stream and dis-
covered the primitive tract ; and he pushed his examinations west
beyond the line of settlement into the Ozark Mountains. He now
determined to call the attention of the Government to the impor-
tance of its taking care of its domain in the mines, and with this
purpose packed his collections and took passage in the new
steamer St. Louis for New Orleans. Hence, having inquired into
the formation of the delta of the Mississippi, he sailed by brig for
New York. He opened his collections and invited examination
of them, published a book on the mines and physical geography
of the West and a letter on its resources, and went to Washing-
ton to present his views on the care of the mines to the officers of
the Government. While he was looking for a secretary within
whose purview the matter fell, Mr. Calhoun invited him to ac-
company General Cass, Governor of Michigan, as naturalist and
mineralogist on an expedition to explore the sources of the Mis-
sissippi and to inquire into the supposed value of the Lake Supe-
rior copper mines. He accepted the position, though the compen-
sation was small, because, he says, " it seemed to be the bottom
step of a ladder which I ought to climb."

Mr. Schoolcraft left New York in March, 1820, reached Niag-
ara Falls on the 1st of May, and Detroit by steamer a week later.
While waiting for the completion of arrangements for embar-
kation, he attended to the correspondence which had been pro-
voked by the publication of his work on the mines and the re-
sultant awakening of interest in the varied resources of the
Mississippi Valley and the subject of geographical and geological
explorations. He determined to reply to all letters that appeared
to be honest inquiries for geographical facts, " which I only, and
not books, could communicate." The route of the expedition " lay
up the Detroit and St. Clair Rivers and around the southern
shores of Lakes Huron and Superior to Fond du Lac, thence up
the St. Louis River in its rugged passage through the Cabotian
Mountains to the Savannah summit which divides the Great Lakes

n6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from the Mississippi Valley. The latter was entered through the
Cantaguma or Sandy Lake River. From this point the source of
the Mississippi was sought up rapids and falls and through lakes
and savannahs, in which the channel winds. We passed the inlet
of Leech Lake, which was fixed upon by Lieutenant Pike as its
probable source, and traced it through Little Lake Winnipeg to
the inlet of Turtle Lake in upper Red Cedar or Cass Lake in lati-
tude 47°. On reaching this point the waters were found unfavor-
able to proceeding higher. The river was then descended to the
falls of St. Anthony, St. Peter's, and Prairie du Chien. From the
latter point we ascended the Wisconsin to the portage into Fox
River, and descended the latter to Green Bay." At this point the
expedition was divided. The party to which Mr. Schoolcraft was
attached proceeded to Chicago, thence traced the eastern coast of
Michigan, and rejoined the other party, which had gone north
to trace the shores to Michilimackinack. About four thou-
sand miles were traversed. Reports were made to the Govern-
ment by Mr. Schoolcraft on the mineralogy and geology of the
region ; on the copper deposits of Lake Superior ; on the botany,
fresh-water conchology, zoology, and ichthyology; soil, produc-
tions, and climate received attention ; and the Indian tribes were
subjects of observation by General Cass. " In short, no explora-
tion had before been made which so completely revealed the feat-
ures and physical geography of so large a portion of the public
domain." A new interest in mineralogy and geology was awak-
ened by this expedition, and Mr. Schoolcraft's narrative of it was
hurried into press under the pressure of the public clamor for its
results. The book was published in May, 1821.

Mr. Schoolcraft shortly afterward embarked, with General Cass,
on another expedition. The route lay. from the present site of
Toledo, up the Miami of the lakes, down the Wabash and Ohio to
Shawneetown, overland across the " knobs " and prairies, taking
a famous locality of fluor-spar on the way, to St. Louis ; thence
up the Illinois to the rapids and on horseback to Chicago, stopping
to find the fossil tree in the bed of the Des Plaines. In Chicago,
a treaty was made with the Pottawattamies for the surrender of
about five million acres of land, to which Mr. Schoolcraft should
have given his signature among the others, but he was too ill —
{ did not, indeed, ever expect to make another entry in a human
journal." The incidents and observations of the journey have
been published as Travels in the Central Portions of the Missis-
sippi Valley. In the next year (1822) Mr. Schoolcraft was ap-
pointed Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie, of which he says, giving
his reasons for accepting it : "I had now attained a fixed posi-
tion ; not such as I desired in the outset and had striven for, but
one that offered an interesting class of duties, in the performance

SKETCH OF HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT. 117

of which, there was a wide field for honorable exertion, and, if it
was embraced, also of historical inquiry and research. The taste
for natural history might certainly be transferred to that point,
where the opportunity for discovery was the greatest." The posi-
tion afforded him excellent opportunities for studying the Chip-
pewa language and Indian mythology and superstition, character-
istics, and customs, of which he made the best use. He deter-
mined to be a laborer in the new field of Indian studies. His
diary during the whole term of his office shows him leading a
busy and varied life. We find in it notes on his subjects of
study, of his readings on various general topics, observations
on the natural features of the region, remarks on mineralogical
specimens, and incidents of official work.

Mr. Schoolcraft spent the winter of 1824-J25, on leave of ab-
sence, in New York, where he superintended the printing of his
Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley. " So-
ciety " was much interested in Mrs. Schoolcraft, the Northern
Pocahontas," a lady of aristocratic Irish descent on one side, and
tracing her ancestors on the other side to the royal house of the
Chippewas, who was withal, having been educated abroad, highly
accomplished and refined in her manners. She was the daughter
of Mr. John Johnston, of Sault Ste. Marie, who had married the
daughter of Wabojeeg, a distinguished Chippewa chieftain. In
1825 he attended a convocation of the Indian tribes at Prairie du
Chien, where a treaty was signed, through which it was hoped
internal disputes between the tribes might be settled by fixing the
boundaries to their respective territories. In the next year he at-
tended a similar gathering of the Chippewa tribes at Fond du Lac,
where the principles of the treaty of Prairie du Chien were reaf-
firmed, and a new treaty was made, under which the Indians ac-
knowledged the sovereign authority of the United States ; ceded the
right to explore and take away the native copper and copper ores,
and to work the mines and minerals in the country ; and provision
was made for the education of the Indians and their advancement
in the arts. The system of Indian boundaries established by these
treaties was completed by the treaty of Butte des Morts, August,
1827. The three treaties embodied a new course and policy for
keeping the tribes in peace, and were founded " on the most en-
larged consideration of the aboriginal right of fee simple to the
soil." In 1827 he was elected a member of the Legislative Council
of the newly organized Territory of Michigan — an office which was
not solicited, and was not declined. As a member of this body
during four sessions, he directed his attention to the incorporation
of a historical society ; to the preparation of a system of township
names derived from the aboriginal languages ; and to some efforts
for bettering the condition of the natives.

n8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A proposition was made to Mr. Schoolcraft in 1828 to go as
one of the scientific corps of an exploring expedition which the
Government contemplated sending to the south seas, under the
direction of the Secretary of the Navy. In his reflections on the
prospects of this expedition and the acquisitions to knowledge
that might be expected to accrue from it, he regarded the experi-
ments of Dr. Maskelyn, denoting a greater specific gravity in the
central portion of the globe than in its crust, as opposed to a
theory that was then advocated of an interior void. Yet he
thought " we are advertised, by the phenomena of earthquakes,
that this interior abounds with oxygen, hydrogen gas, caloric,
and sulphur, and that extraordinary geological changes are af-
fected by their action. It does seem improbable that the pro-
posed expedition will trace any open connection with such an
interior world ; but it may accumulate facts of the highest impor-
tance." There was something, however, about the getting up
and organization of the expedition which he did not like, and an
apprehension whether Congress would not cripple it by voting
meager supplies and outfits. He declined to go.

A note from Mr. G. W. Featherstonaugh, giving a disparaging
view of American scientific achievement, and inclosing the pro-
spectus of a journal designed to correct these things, gave Mr.
Schoolcraft opportunity for bearing strong tribute to the genu-
ineness of real American scientific research. The critic's remarks
might be true as to a certain class, who had not made science a
study; but, if applied to the power and determination of the
American mind devoted to natural history, it was " not only un-
just in a high degree, but an evidence of an overweening self-
complaisance, imprecision of thought, or arrogance. No trait of
the American scientific character has been more uniformly and
highly approbated by the foreign journals of England, France,
and Germany than its capacity to accumulate, discriminate, and
describe facts. For fourteen years past, Silliman's Journal of
Science, though not exclusively devoted to natural sciences, has
kept both the scientific and the popular intelligent mind of the
public well and accurately advised of the state of natural science
the world over. Before it, Bruce's Mineralogical Journal, though
continued but for a few years, was eminently scientific; and
Cleaveland's Mineralogy has had the effect to diffuse scientific
knowledge not only among men of science, but other classes of
readers. In ornithology, in conchology, and especially in botany,
geology, and mineralogy, American mind has proved itself emi-
nently fitted for the highest tasks."

The Michigan Historical Society was founded, chiefly through
Mr. Schoolcraft's instrumentality, in 1828, and the Algic Society
on February 28, 1832. The latter organization had in view the

SKETCH OF HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT. 119

reclamation of the Indians, and, connected with, this, the collec-
tion and dissemination of information respecting their language,
history, traditions, customs, and character; their numbers and
condition ; the geological features of their country, and its natural
history and productions. It also proposed some definite means of
action for furthering the moral instruction of the Indians, and
for helping the missionaries in all work for their benefit. As
president of this society, Mr. Schoolcraft was asked to lecture on
the grammatical construction of the Algonquin languages as
spoken by the Northwestern tribes, and to procure a lexicon of
it ; also to deliver a poem on the Indian character at the annual
meeting of 1833. Other literary efforts of this period were, an
address before the Historical Society of Michigan in 1830, and an
address, in 1831, before the Detroit Lyceum, on the natural history
of the Territory. In the summer of 1832 Mr. Schoolcraft, under
a commission from the Government, organized and commanded
an expedition to the country upon the sources of the Mississippi
River. The primary object of the expedition was to extend to the
Indians living north of St. Anthony's Falls the measures previous-
ly taken with those south of that point, to effect a pacification ; also,
to endeavor to ascertain the actual source of the river. He ascend-
ed the St. Louis from Lake Superior to Sandy Lake summit, and
passed thence direct to the Mississippi six degrees below the central
island in Cass Lake, which was till then the ultimate point of geo-
graphical discovery. Thence he went up the river and its lakes,
avoiding too long circuits of the stream by portages, to the junc-
tion of the two branches, where by the advice of his Indian guide
he took the left-hand, or Plantagenian branch, to Lake Assawa, its
source. Thence he went by portage, a distance of " twelve rest-
ing-places," to Itasca Lake, which he struck within a mile of its
southern extremity. The lake was judged to be about seven
miles in length, by one or two broad ; " a bay, near its eastern
end, gave it somewhat the shape of the letter y." The discoverer
returned, through the stream and its lakes,, to St. Peter's.

The narrative of this expedition was published in 1834 ; and
was republished, with the account of the expedition of 1820, in
1853, under the title, Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to
the Sources of the Mississippi River in 1820, completed by the
Discovery of its Origin in Itasca Lake in 1832. The whole of Mr.
Schoolcraft's earlier life and work up to this time is recorded,
mostly from day to day, in his Personal Memoirs of a Residence
of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Front-
iers, etc., 1812 to 1842, a book having " the flavor of the time, with
its motley incident on the frontier, with Indian chiefs, trappers,
government employe's, chance travelers, rising legislators, farmers,
ministers of the gospel, all standing out with more or less of indi-

120

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

viduality in the formative period of the country." This book
abounds with evidence of Mr. Schoolcraft's scientific and literary
activity, as well as of his efficiency in work in whatever field.
As early as 1820 we find a letter from Amos Eaton, asking him
for information for the second edition of his Index to Geology,
respecting the secondary and alluvial formations and the strata
of the Rocky Mountains. Dr. Samuel Mitchell writes him, in
1821, about the shells and other specimens he has sent, including
a " sandy fungus," and inviting specimens for the cabinet of the
Emperor of Austria. Profs. Silliman and Hall acknowledge the
value of his examination of the mining regions of Missouri ; Prof.
Silliman asks for articles for his journal ; and Sir Humphry Davy
thinks his book would sell well in England. Prof. Cleaveland
writes him, in 1827, that he is about preparing a new edition of
his work on mineralogy, and solicits the communication of new
localities. In the same year Mr. Schoolcraft himself writes that
the collection he made in Missouri, etc., in 1819, appears to have
had an effect on the prevalent taste for those subjects, " and at
least it has fixed the eyes of naturalists on my position on the
frontiers." Mr. Peter S. Duponceau addresses him, in 1834, on
the structure of the Indian languages, " in terms which are very
complimentary, coming, as they do, as a voluntary tribute from a
person whom I never saw, and who has taken the lead in investi-
gations on this abstruse topic in America." He pronounces Mr.
Schoolcraft's book on the Chippewa languages one of the most
philosophical works on the Indian languages which he has ever
read. In another letter Mr. Duponceau acknowledges having
used Mr. Schoolcraft's grammar, giving due credit, in preparing a
prize essay for the Institute of France, on the grammatical struct-
ure of Indian languages. Dr. Thomas H. Webb, of Providence,
in 1835, notifies him of his election as an honorary member of the
Rhode Island Historical Society, and asks about aboriginal in-
scriptions on rocks. The Massachusetts Historical Society, in
1836, asks him to proceed with his work on the Ojibway lan-
guage, complete it, and let the society publish it. John J. Audu-
bon asks for aid in preparing his work on American quadrupeds.
There are numerous notices of specimens that have been sent to
Mr. Schoolcraft to pass upon, and solicitations from persons rep-
resenting the principal magazines, to contribute of the results of
his researches.

A new disposition of official posts having been made, Mr.
Schoolcraft transferred his residence in 1837 to Michilimackinac
or Mackinaw. Thence he removed, in 1841, to New York, where
he expected to find the surroundings more favorable to the col-
lation and publication of the results of his observations on the
red race, whom he " had found in many traits a subject of deep

SKETCH OF HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT. 121

interest ; in some things wholly misunderstood and misrepresent-
ed ; and altogether an object of the highest humanitarian inter-
est." But the publishers were not yet prepared in their views to
undertake anything corresponding to his ideas. In the next year
he carried out a long-deferred purpose of visiting England and
continental Europe, attending the British Association at Man-
chester. On his return he made a tour through western Vir-
ginia, Ohio, and Canada. In 1875 he was appointed by the Legis-
lature of New York as a commissioner to take the census of the
Indians of the State, and collect information concerning the Six
Nations. The results of this investigation were embodied in his
Notes on the Iroquois, a second enlarged edition of which was
published in 1847. The latter part of his life was spent in the
preparation — under an act passed by Congress in 1847 — of an
elaborate work on all the Indian tribes of the country, based upon
information obtained through the reports of the Indian Bureau.
This work — which was published in six quarto volumes — is de-
scribed in Duyckink's Cyclopaedia of American Literature as cov-
ering a wide range of subjects in the general history of the race ;
their traditions and associations with the whites ; their special
antiquities in the several departments of archaeology in relation
to the arts ; their government, manners, and customs ; their phys-
iological and ethnological peculiarities as individuals and na-
tions ; their intellectual and moral cultivation ; their statistics of
population ; and their geographical position, past and present.

Mr. Schoolcraft became interested in religion at an early pe-
riod in his career, and his journals show him ever more earnestly
co-operating in local religious movements ; furthering the prog-
ress of missionary effort among the Indians, by whatever de-
nomination ; laboring for the promotion of temperance among
them ; and taking the lead in whatever might contribute to their
well-being or to the repression of wrong against them. His
literary activity was prolific, and appears to have .been nearly
evenly divided between poetry, Indian lore and ethnology, and
the objects of his explorations and scientific investigation. Be-
sides books of poems and the narratives already named, he pub-
lished Algic Researches, a collection of Indian allegories and
legends (1839) ; Oneota, or the Characteristics of the Red Race in
America (1844-'45), republished in 1848 as The Indian and his
Wigwam; Report on Aboriginal Names and the Geographical
Terminology of New York (1845) ; Plan for investigating Ameri-
can Ethnology (1846) ; The Red Race of America (1847) ; A Bib-
liography of the Indian Tongues of the United States (1849) ; and
American Indians, their History, Condition, and Prospects (1850).
He received the degree of LL. D. from the University of Geneva
in 1846 ; and was a member of many learned societies.

122

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CORRESPONDENCE.

AGRICULTURE 02T THE PLAINS.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

IN the February number of The Popular
Science Monthly was published an arti-
cle, by Stuart 0. Henry, entitled Rainfall
on the Plains. Mr. Henry claims that the
rainfall on our plains has not increased to
any appreciable extent since the first settle-
ment ; and he says that the general impres-
sion that settlement and cultivation traveling
westward have been attended by a gradual
increase of rainfalls is a " remarkable falla-
cy." He concludes that agricultural opera-
tions can never be successfully carried on
west of a line about the ninety-eighth me-
ridian, and that attempts to utilize the regions
named for purely agricultural purposes, with-
out artificial irrigation, will only result in
calamitous failure. Mr. Henry makes the
statement that " the reports of the Kansas
and Nebraska Boards of Agriculture will
show that, in the territory lying west of the
ninety-eighth meridian in those States, the
acreage of land actually under cultivation,
when compared with the whole area of that
territory, is almost insignificant." After
seventeen years of residence in southwestern
Nebraska, near the one hundredth meridian,
I am convinced that Mr. Henry is correct as
to the absence of an increase of rainfall ;
but his conclusions are very erroneous, and
must have been formed without informa-
tion as to the great growth in wealth and
population in the region west of the ninety-
eighth meridian during the last ten years.
The statement that the cultivated land west
of the ninety-eighth meridian in Kansas and
Nebraska is insignificant when compared with
the whole area of that territory may have
been true ten years ago, but at the present
time it is far from the truth. The writer
believes that no increase of rainfall has ever
been necessary to fit the country named for
profitable farming, but that the rainfall has
always been sufficient, and that the obstacles
to farming that have existed resulted from
the newness of the country, rather than from
lack of rain, and that these obstacles are
gradually disappearing as the country settles
up, and will wholly disappear when the coun-
try becomes as densely settled as are the
States of Iowa and Illinois.

Mr. Henry's gloomy statements seem like
an echo of predictions made by sundry scien-
tific gentlemen twenty years ago concerning
the plains of Kansas and Nebraska ; and he
might be aptly compared to a modern Rip
Van Winkle, who has just awakened after a
twenty years' sleep, ignorant of the wonderful
growth that the country west of the ninety-
eighth meridian has made. When he penned
the lines quoted, was he aware that Jewell

County, Kansas, which lies west of the ninety-
eighth meridian, is the champion corn-pro-
ducing county in the Union ? Was he aware
that nearly one half of the wealth and pop-
ulation of the State of Nebraska is to be
found west of the ninety-eighth meridian?
The report of the Nebraska Board of Agri-
culture for the year 1889 has not been issued,
but we have the report for 1888. The crops
in Nebraska in 1888 were not as good as in
1889, nor was there as much ground in culti-
vation. I give below some statistics taken
from the report for 1888 making a compara-
tive statement of the amount of wheat, corn,
and potatoes raised east of the ninety-eighth
meridian and west of that meridian in the
State of Nebraska. It will be admitted by
all that wheat, corn, and potatoes require as
much moisture as do any farm products. It
must be borne in mind that many of the
western counties are very new and their capa-
bilities not developed ; but enough is shown
to completely disprove Mr. Henry's state-
ments. In the counties of Nebraska that lie
west of the ninety-eighth meridian there were
raised in 1888 of corn, wheat, and potatoes:

Corn 52,847.469 bushels

Wheat 7,038.688 "

Potatoes 8,626,145 "

In the counties in Nebraska lying east of

the ninety-eighth meridian there were raised

in 1888:

Cora 93,379,370 bushels

Wheat 4,876,190 "

Potatoes 2,724,996 "

It will thus be seen that the counties
west of the ninety-eighth meridian produced
about thirty-six per cent of all the corn,
about sixty per cent of all the wheat, and
about seventy-six per cent of all the pota-
toes that were raised in 1888 in Nebraska,
and as a matter of fact a good portion was
raised west of the one hundredth meridian.
Reference to the same report shows that in
1888 there were 2,611,33V acres of improved
land in the Nebraska counties lying west of
the ninety-eighth meridian. These statistics
clearly demonstrate that the improvements
there made are far from " insignificant,"
and, could the statistics for 1889 be had, we
would, without doubt, have a still more en-
couraging showing. A. E. Harvey.
Orleans, Nebraska, March 26, 1890.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS AS AFFECTING CRIME
AND VICE.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Under the above heading Mr. Reece
presented some statistics in The Popular
Science Monthly for January, apparently
showing a high and increasing per cent of
crime in those communities where there

EDITOR'S TABLE.

123

were the fewest illiterates as compared with
those where there were the most. In the
succeeding numbers of the Monthly two
writers, apparently accepting the statistics
without question, have proceeded to draw
conclusions from them. Some one has wit-
tily said that " nothing can lie like fig-
ures " ; and certainly any one who deals
much with statistics knows that unless care-
fully and thoughtfully handled they are
capable of giving the most deceptive re-
sults. For this reason startling conclusions
should not be accepted without careful con-
sideration. There is getting to be too wide
a tendency to accept statistics as decisive
proof on any subject without regard to how
they were prepared or discussed.

In the January Lend a Hand, Mr. David
C. Torrey carefully discussed the records of
crime in Massachusetts, which was one of
the States where Mr. Reece found his high-
est per cent of criminals, and some of his
results seem worthy of quoting, as throwing
much light on this subject :

From 1350 to 1835 the total commitments in-
creased from 8,761 to 26,651 ; in the first-mentioned
year, 1 to 113 inhabitants : in the second, 1 to 72 in-
habitants. It is found, however, on investigation,
that the increase is almost entirely confined to crimes
against public order and decency, while the commit-
ments for the more serious crimes against persons
and property have not even kept pace with the
growth of population. The following statistics for
the years since 1865 in which a census has been
taken proves this statement. This division by
crimes was first made in the returns to the State in
1865, and was not made in 1875:

COMMITMENTS FOB CEIMES AGAINST

YEAR.

Persons and
property.

Order and
decency.

1365

3,975
5,097
3,779
4,339

5,760
11,290

1370

1S80

13,274

1335

21,812

For the more serious crimes in 1S65 and 1870, the
average commitments were 1 to 301 inhabitants,
while in the years 1880 and 1S35 they were 1 to 436
inhabitants. The increase in commitments was for
less serious crimes exclusively, and there was an
actual decrease in commitments for more serious
crimes, in proportion to population, of forty-four per
cent. The larger portion of the less serious crimes,

those for which commitments are increasing, are
crimes of intemperance; so Mr. Torrey makes a sec-
ond division of crimes, separating those of intem-
perance from all other crimes. The returns to the
State permit of this division for a longer period :

YEAR.

Commitments
for intem-
perance.

Commitments

for all other

crimes.

Total com-
mitments.

1850

3.341

8,221
3,442
4.302
9,350

10,962
18,701

5,420
7.-11

8,322
5,616
7,250

6,091
7,950

8.761

1855

16,032

I860 ..

1865

11,764
9,918

1870

16,600

1875

24,548

1880

17,053

1885

26,651

This division shows that the total increase in all
crimes other than intemperance, taken together, has
been only fifty per cent (population not considered),
but that commitments for intemperance have in-
creased nearly five hundred per cent. The commit-
ments which were not for intemperance are com-
pared with the population of the State with the fol-
lowing results : In 1850, 1 commitment to 183 in-
habitants; in 1S55, 1 to 144; in 1S60, 1 to 147:. in
1865, 1 to 225; in 1870, 1 to 201; in 1875, no statis-
tics ; in 18S0, 1 to 280 ; in 18S5, 1 to 244. From 1350
to 1865 the average commitments for crimes other
than intemperance were 1 to 174 inhabitants, while
from 1870 to 1835 it was 1 to 241 inhabitants. Thus
a decrease of thirty-eight per cent is shown in all
crimes other than intemperance during a period of
seventeen years.

The question of crime in Massachusetts thus re-
solves itself into a question of intemperance, pure
and simple for it is owing to intemperance alone
that there is an increase of commitments. Mr. Tor-
rey proceeds to show that the increasing commit-
ments for intemperance do not necessarily prove an
increase of intemperance. The public has a different
opinion of the crime of intemperance from what it
has of other crimes. The commitments for more
serious crimes could not increase without an increase
of those crimes ; but, because so few of the men who
drink to excess are committed, there is abundant
opportunity for an increase in commitments for in-
temperance without an actual increase of intemper-
ance. In thirty-five years public sentiment has been
aroused against intemperance, and the increased
commitments caused by this sentiment and the
changes in law which it has brought about are the
inadequate grounds which warrant claims that crime
is increasing in Massachusetts. The State seems
still to have encouragement to continue its schools
and its reformatories and its churches, with faith
that it can not only take care of the children born to
it, but also that it can assimilate to its social order
those which it is forced to adopt. — Boston Post.

H. Helm Clayton,
Bute Hill Observatoet, JSeadville, Mass.,
March 30, 1890.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

PRACTICAL ECONOMICS.

IN" last month's Table we had a few
words upon the discredit into which
what is sometimes called the M or-
thodox" political economy has fallen
among practical men. It is a pleasure
to be able to call attention to a book
which furnishes a signal example of the
way in which economical studies should
be pursued. We refer to the volume

brought out a few months ago by Mr.
D. A. Wells, under the title of Recent
Economic Changes. Mr. Wells is not a
dogmatist, though it is evident he has
sufficiently definite opinions of his own.
He conceives it to be his main business
to marshal the facts that seem to him
capable of explaining the present mate-
rial condition of society, and of indi-
cating the course that things are likely

124

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to take in the future. He has no spe-
cial theory to advocate, and he prom-
ises no speedy renovation of society if
only his advice be taken. He knows
too much to be a visionary ; he has too
firm a hold on the actual to be carried
away by the merely ideal or fanciful.
He finds no fatal flaw in the present so-
cial system ; he does not see, in fact, how,
given human nature as it is, things could
be very different from what they are.
At the same time he is an earnest be-
liever in progress ; but he thinks that
progress depends more npon individual
adaptation to necessary conditions of
existence than upon any cunningly con-
trived devices for an improved distri-
bution of the products of industry. In
a word, he is a man whom the devour-
er of contemporary socialistic romances
would tind a little dull, but whom the
practical man of business would find
both interesting and instructive in the
highest degree. As a large part of Mr.
"Wells's book appeared originally in the
pages of this magazine, we may pre-
sume that many of our readers have a
more or less vivid recollection of the
course of his argument. What Mr. "Wells
set himself chiefly to do was to trace to
its cause or causes the present disturbed
condition of the world from an eco-
nomic point of view. Given such a
problem, a writer who wished to create
an immediate sensation would bring
forward some theory about the land, or
about the currency, or about monopo-
lies, or about the waste involved in com-
petition, and would declare with much
emphasis and vainglory that he alone
had the true key to the whole situation.
Mr. Wells is more modest. All he pro-
fesses to see is that the rapid pace of
invention and discovery in the modern
world is sufficient to account for enor-
mous vicissitudes both in the money
market and in the labor market. Capi-
tal has been destroyed in huge blocks
and recreated by new methods; labor
has been forced to quit one employ-
ment after another and find new open-

ings for itself. The course of business
has become more and more difficult to
calculate, and only the stronger heads
and more resolute wills have been able
to hold their own amid the changes and
chances of the hour.

Mr. Wells does not deal in mere gener-
alities. He treats separately each aspect
of his subject, and under every head gives
facts in abundance — "modern instances,"
as Shakespeare expresses it. He shows
what has been done in the way of open-
ing new routes ; and, in the case of the
Suez Canal, he traces to that one cause
the most momentous results as regards
the course of trade. He discusses very
fully the effects of the cheapening of
transportation by land and by sea, show-
ing how, to this cause, must be attrib-
uted much of the agricultural depression
existing in different parts of the world.
He dwells on the inventions and dis-
coveries by which manufactures have
been cheapened, and labor constantly
displaced and again provided for. He
shows how improved methods of farm-
ing render less efficient ones unprofit-
able, and how little good has been done
to the farming population by the home-
stead and other exceptional laws passed
for their benefit— nay, how they have
been injured by the overzeal of their
friends in the Legislature. He discusses
the effect of restrictions on trade, and
shows in what idle fashion the govern-
ments of the world, with one or two ex-
ceptions, handicap their own commerce
in the effort to injure that of their neigh-
bors, and how the effect of the whole
protectionist madness is simply to place
a heavy drag upon the industrial energy,
not to say upon the conscience, of man-
kind. We can not pretend, however, in
this place to give even the most rapid
summary of the contents of Mr. Wells's
volume. Suffice it at present to say that
he has described with great fullness and,
so far as we can judge, with great accu-
racy, the conditions under which the
business of the world is now being car-
ried on, and the circumstances that have

EDITOR'S TABLE.

125

concurred to make the present epoch
one of peculiar commercial and industrial
unrest.

What is the lesson, then, we are to
draw from Mr. "Wells's pages, so far as
the social problems of our own time
are concerned ? We learn from it that
there is nothing radically unsound in
our social system ; and, further, that the
total effect of all the changes of the last
twenty-five or thirty years has been to
improve materially the condition of the
working classes. Hours of labor are
not as long on the whole as they used
to be ; wages are higher ; and the pur-
chasing power of money is greater.
What is the case, however, is that, in
the rush of change which has marked
recent years, there is a constant selec-
tion and reselection of the better men,
and that the worse — the less competent,
the less efficient in every way — find them-
selves relegated to poorer conditions of
life. There is an upward current and
there is a downward current : those who
move up do not spend much time or en-
ergy in singing the beauties of the pres-
ent system ; but those who are moving
down waste no small amount of the little
energy they have in bewailing its de-
fects, and, with the help of a few liter-
ary gentlemen of lively sympathies and
facile speech, manage to create a wide-
spread impression that a world in which
they do not get all they would like must
be a very badly governed world indeed.
The whole social question seems to lie
here, that some, through natural defi-
ciencies of one kind or another, can not,
in any satisfactory degree, adapt them-
selves to the world as it is. We should
be sorry to profess, or to feel, indiffer-
ence to the problem even as thus stated ;
but what are we going to do about it ?
The true methods of reform are of slow
application ; and immediate suffering it
is impossible altogether to prevent. The
path of social reform, we are strongly
persuaded, lies mainly along these three
lines :

1. Diminution of state interference

with private liberty, including state re-
strictions on trade and state encourage-
ment of trade.

2. Constant inculcation of the doc-
trine of individual responsibility, and
constant effort to mold better individ-
uals.

3. An honest, vigorous, and simple
administration of justice.

These three conditions (to which
many minor but still important ones
might be added) are all intimately con-
nected. For example, how can we
preach the doctrine of individual re-
sponsibility with any success, if the in-
dividual is daily surrounded by a closer
and closer network of arbitrary enact-
ments, designed at once to abridge his
liberty and to relieve him of the exer-
cise of judgment and caution ? And how
can we have a really efficient adminis-
tration of law, till law itself undergoes
a pruning, and is brought down to its
necessary elements?

To return, however, to Mr. Wells's
book. We are glad to see its merits
very frankly acknowledged in an article
published in the March number of Mac-
millan's Magazine, the writer declaring
that Mr. Wells deals with his subject " in
a manner altogether superior to any-
thing which this country (England) can
show." We shall only say in conclusion
that the book is an eminently useful one
to-day and will remain so for many
years to come. A careful perusal of its
pages would clear infected brains of
many sickly fancies.

TRAINING IN REALITIES.

It is a long time since an earnest
thinker proclaimed that wisdom was the
principal thing, and that with all a man's
gettings he should strive to get under-
standing; but whether the world to-day
— even those who regard the utterance
as carrying with it more than human
authority — can be said to pay due heed
to the maxim is more than doubtful.
Instead of wisdom, men exalt opinion,

126

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and traditions are taught where truth
should be explored. We have large and
influential schools decrying the use of
reason, and we have millions of people
to-day trying to think true what their
common sense tells them is not true.
All this does not make for the world's
peace or stability. It will not be really
well with society until men generally
are brought to recognize that there is
such a thing as truth, and that its claims
upon them are paramount. Our systems
of education need to be revolutionized.
"When a young person leaves school or
college nowadays, do we expect to find
that his or her judgment has been de-
veloped in practical things ? Do we ex-
pect to find a keen sense of what is true,
a quickness in distinguishing shams from
realities, and a well-established habit of
yielding, upon all disputed questions, to
the greater weight of evidence ? Nothing
of the kind. We look for a little knowl-
edge of arithmetic and mathematics
generally, a modicum of geography and
grammar, a smattering of literature, a few
confused notions of natural science, a dis-
continuous skeleton of historical knowl-
edge, and not much else. The judgment
has not been trained, the sense of truth
has not been trained, nor has any insight
worth mentioning been given into the
realities of life and duty. We do not
blame the teaching fraternity for this ;
society as a whole is responsible. The
want of interest in truth as truth, the
lack of perception of its importance, is
a broad social characteristic of the time,
and floods the schools just as it floods
the market-place, the press, and the pul-
pit. But, while we do not in any special
manner blame the teaching profession,
we feel like summoning all serious men
to consider whether a very decided and
vigorous effort should not be made to
place our schools upon a higher level in
this respect. No one can doubt that,
if our minds were set upon it, a sim-
ple gymnastic might be devised which
would, from the outset, train childish
minds in the perception of truth and

lead them on from stage to stage in the
acquisition, not of sham but of real
knowledge. A child in course of edu-
cation should never be removed from
actual contact with the world about him.
He should be made to feel that every
general rule given to him is merely a
summary expression of a number of con-
crete examples. He should be early
familiarized with the method of proof,
and in every possible way encouraged
to ask for proofs. He should be made
to realize the activity of his own senses ;
to feel that knowledge is coming to him
through those avenues ; and that, only
as it so comes, is it entitled to be con-
sidered real knowledge.

Such a system of education as we
have hinted at would banish the intel-
lectual poverty and squalor of our time;
and this could not be done without an
immense improvement of general social
conditions. The sentimentalists of our
day bestow a huge amount of sympathy
upon the victims of poor wages ; but
they do not grieve as they might over
the victims of poor thoughts and disor-
dered imaginations. The dust and dirt
heaps that obstruct the entrance to thou-
sands of minds are not visible as material
masses ; but they are there all the same,
and the injury they cause is greater than
any due to mere limitation of material
conditions. The land is full of delusions,
and scarcely anywhere do we see any
clear consciousness of the grand possi-
bility open to the human race of co-op-
erating in the discovery and application
of truth, including, of course, and in the
first place, the laws of social well-being.
"We too readily resign ourselves to the
idea that men's opinions must differ by
the whole circle of possible thought, and
that a common standard of truth is un-
attainable. Well might the reproach be
launched against this generation, " O
ye of little faith ! " Amid the manifold
and ever-widening discoveries of science
we resign ourselves to intellectual chaos,
as if there were no common heritage of
truth for us all, or as if human minds

LITERARY NOTICES.

127

were not all made essentially on the
same pattern. What the times seem to
call for is some association of men and
women bent on nothing else than the
introduction, primarily into our educa-
tional systems, but as much as possible
into social life generally, of a supreme
regard for that which is real.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Practical Hints for the Teachers op Pub-
lic Schools. By George Howland. In-
ternational Education Series, Vol. XIII.
New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 198.
Price, $1.50.

This volume deals with the practice
rather than with the theory of education. It
tells what to do, and does not concern itself
with any comprehensive scheme of educa-
tional philosophy. The author is superin-
tendent of the public schools of Chicago,
and the several chapters of this volume are
based upon papers read before the teachers
of that city and vicinity. The author has
not aimed to produce an exhaustive and
systematic treatise, but has confined his at-
tention to the following ten topics : Moral
training in city schools, the character of
the teacher, the place of memory in school
instruction, elements of growth in school-
life, the scholarship aimed at in the school,
the teacher in the school-room, how the
school develops character, the class recita-
tion, the school principal, and the work of
the superintendent. The pages of the book
are dominated by the personality of the au-
thor, and the things and practices recom-
mended are such as his experience tells him
are good. In regard to moral training, the
subject that he treats first, he has no faith
in text-books or special instruction ; he would
trust entirely to " the quiet suggestion, the
fitly chosen word, the interested inquiry, the
look, the unfeigned sympathy, the favored
opportunity, the firm but calm decision of
the loved and loving teacher." In other
subjects, however, he would depend al-
together upon books. The sesame to all
progress, he says, is found inscribed on the
printed page. In the six years before the
child comes to school he has had a training
without books which, as Mr. Howland affirms,
has been very effective. " He has early

learned that fire will burn, that cold will
freeze, and knows, beyond the power of
Webster or Worcester to tell him, the mean-
ing of burn and freeze ; and by many a
bump has the force of attraction been im-
pressed upon him." He has learned a lan-
guage, and has acquired much other knowl-
edge. By similar means the Indian acquires
a wonderful training of his senses, his hands,
and his mental powers. " He learns to do,"
says Mr. Howland, " in the only true way,
by the doing." In acquiring a knowledge
of language the author recommends this
same process. Correct use of words and
a nice appreciation of their meanings and
force are to be secured, he says, " not from
dictionary, but from use alone." That the
teacher should learn by this method, how-
ever, he deems inadmissible. In his chap-
ter on " The School Principal " he says :
" We learn to do by doing, is one of those
aphoristic half-truths well suited to catch
the ear and delude the mind of the un-
thinking. We may acquire a mechanical
facility by repeated doings of what we al-
ready know how to do, but we learn to do
by learning how other people do, and by the
aid of this knowledge striving to do some-
thing better." The volume is especially
marked by an energetic character and a
confident tone which assure the reader of
the real interest of the author in the work
of the teacher.

First Lessons in Political Economy. By
Francis A. Walker. New York : Henry
Holt & Co. Pp. 323. Price, $1.25.

The special purpose of this book is to
bring political economy within the grasp of
youth from fifteen to seventeen years of age.
The author has not made it childish by re-
stricting himself to " words of two sylla-
bles," or by any similar device. The char-
acter which he has aimed to give the volume
in order to adapt it to young pupils consists
in " a clear arrangement of topics ; a simple,
direct, and forcible presentation of the ques-
tions successively raised ; the avoidance, as
far as possible, of certain metaphysical dis-
tinctions which the author has found very
perplexing to students of even a greater age ;
a frequent repetition of cardinal doctrines ;
and, especially, a liberal use of concrete
illustrations, drawn from facts of common

128

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

experience or observation." The fact that
one purpose of the treatise is to interest be-
ginners in the subject of political economy
has also modified its character. " The author
has not held himself, as strictly as he has
sought in previous works to do, to the treat-
ment of political economy as a science, to be
distinguished from the art of political econ-
omy. He has allowed himself great freedom
in assuming that certain results are desirable
in themselves, and certain other results un-
desirable ; and he has sought to show how
these may be avoided and those attained.
Much, which, in his other works, has been
treated as belonging to the applications of
political economy, is wrought into the sub-
stance of the present treatise." The work
is divided into two chief parts, one treating
of " Production and Exchange," the other of
" Distribution and Consumption." Each
section is numbered and has a title, and the
volume is indexed.

Fuel and its Applications. By E. J. Mills
and F. J. Rowan. Illustrated. Phila-
delphia : P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp.
xx + 802. Price, $7.50.

It is one of the obstacles to gaining a
competent knowledge of technology that its
manuals become almost worthless when a
few years old, but it is the glory of the sci-
ences on which technology depends that
they advance fast enough to make these
books antiquated so quickly. This is espe-
cially true of the group of industries based
upon the science of chemistry. In order to
supply the lack of a comprehensive, authori-
tative new work dealing with these indus-
tries, a series ' of volumes has been pro-
jected, under the general title "Chemical
Technology, or Chemistry in its Applica-
tions to Arts and Manufactures." It will
be edited by Charles E. Groves, F. R. S.,
editor of the " Journal of the Chemical So-
ciety," and William Thorp, B. Sc. As much
of the matter of Richardson and Watts's
"Chemical Technology " as is available, es-
pecially the historical portions, will be incor-
porated in the new work. Of this series the
present volume is the first. The most im-
portant sections of the general field, to be
covered in later volumes, are "Lighting,"
"Acids and Alkalies," "Glass and Pottery,"
"Metallurgy," "Textile Fabrics," "Leather,

Paper, etc.," " Coloring Matters and Dyes,"
"Oils and Varnishes," "Brewing and Dis-
tilling," "Sugar, Starch, Flour," etc. The
present volume treats of "Fuel and its Ap-
plications " generally ; its special employ-
ment in various branches of chemical manu-
facture being preserved for detailed consid-
eration in the volumes devoted to the special
subjects enumerated above. In the chapters
devoted to the production of fuel, tables are
given showing the composition of the differ-
ent woods and coals, together with informa-
tion concerning the formation of peat, lig-
nite, and coal, the world's production of coal,
explosions in mines from fire-damp and coal-
dust, etc. The figures representing the out-
put of coal in Britain and other countries
show the enormous development which has
taken place in the fuel industry all over the
world. Methods of burning charcoal, both
in heaps and kilns ; and methods of coking,
in heaps and in ovens, are described, with
illustrative views and diagrams. On the
continent of Europe, methods of cleaning,
washing, and classifying coal have reached
a great degree of elaboration, and the prac-
tice in Britain has progressed somewhat in
the same direction. Considerable space is
devoted to these methods, and the machines
employed in them. The most marked ad-
vance in respect to the manufacture and
application of fuels in the past generation
has been in the control and utilization of
gases. The waste gases from coking ovens
are now collected for their ammonia, tar,
and other by-products, the gases from blast-
furnaces using coal and from gas-producers
are also made to yield these products ; and
great advance has been achieved in the ex-
traction of ammonia in shale distillation.
More important than these is the use of
coal-gas, and in America of " natural " gas
also, as fuel. The methods and appliances
for using gaseous and also liquid fuel re-
ceive a general representation in this vol-
ume, and copious references are given for
specialists who may wish to study particular
branches of the subject. The portion of the
volume devoted to the application of fuel is
introduced by chapters on the theory of heat
and the nature of flame. The matters of
chimney - draught, forced combustion, and
smoke prevention are then taken up. The
special application of fuel considered first

LITERARY NOTICES.

129

is in domestic heating. The open fireplace
and several ventilating fireplaces, and the
" American " stove, are mentioned ; but most
space is given to gas heating and cooking
stoves. Heating by means of hot air, hot
water, and steam also receives attention. The
application of fuel to vaporization, i. e., the
heating of boilers, is next treated ; and from
this subject the authors pass to the evapora-
tion of liquids and distillation. The drying
of wood and malt, baking bread, and firing
brick and porcelain, also have a place. Fur-
naces for metallurgical and other technologi-
cal operations are next treated, and an im-
portant chapter follows on gas-furnaces, in-
cluding those using the regenerative prin-
ciple. The closing chapter deals with the
practical effect of fuel. A series of tables
giving analyses of coals follows. Through-
out the book exact information in regard to
the several divisions of the subject is fur-
nished in tables and diagrams. The volume
contains seven plates and six hundred and
seven other illustrations, and is provided
with an adequate index.

Liberty and a Living. By Philip G. Hu-
bert, Jr. New York and London : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 239.

This book is described in its sub-title as
the record of an attempt to secure bread and
butter, sunshine and content, by gardening,
fishing, and hunting. One of its mottoes is,
" The royal peace of a rural home." The
author, a writer on New York newspapers,
wearied with the monotony and drudgery
of city life, sought a way in which he could
spend his time in the outdoor season prof-
itably in the open air, and without giving
up the winter residence in the city which
his profession demanded. He found a place
on the sea coast of Long Island which af-
forded a home, garden, wood-lot, access to
the water for boating and fishing, and hunt-
ing privileges. The book describes his life
there, and the moral and practical lessons
derived from it. The transcript of the
diary of a week gives a realistic picture of
the average life. The home and its arrange-
ments, the garden-work and its returns, the
fishing, the bee-raising, the advantages de-
rived from the possession of a wood-lot, and
the balance of advantages and disadvantages,
are described in successive chapters. The
vol. xxxvii. — 10

balance is shown to be decidedly in favor of
the country, pre-eminently so to those who
seek quiet, rational enjoyment, with health,
who desire leisurely culture without excite-
ment, who are willing to live independently
of fashion, and who do not attach an exag-
gerated importance to show.

Jonathan Edwards. By Alexander V. G.

Allen, D. B. Boston and New York :

Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 401. Price,

$1.25.

This is the first volume of the series of
"American Religious Leaders," or biogra-
phies of men who have had great influence
on religious thought and life in the United
States, in which it is intended, besides de-
picting great figures in American religious
history, to indicate the leading character-
istics of that history, the progress and pro-
cess of religious philosophy in America, the
various types of theology which have shaped
or been shaped by the various churches, and
the relation of these to the life and thought
of the nation. The present volume relates
to the earliest and probably the greatest of
those leaders — the thinker who, along with
Benjamin Franklin, American and foreign
critics agree in naming as representative of
American intellectual activity in the eight-
eenth century. Prof. Allen's aim in this bi-
ography has been "to reproduce Edwards
from his books, making his treatises, in their
chronological order, contribute to his por-
traiture as a man and as a theologian." Some-
thing more than a mere relation of facts
seemed to be demanded in order to justify
the endeavor to rewrite his life. What we
most desire to know is, what he thought,
and how he came to think as he did. " Ed-
wards is always and everywhere interesting,
whatever we may think of his theology. On
literary and historical grounds alone no one
can fail to be impressed with his imposing fig-
ure as he moves through the wilds of the New
World." Edwards's life is full of dramatic
incident, and his writings furnish ground
for fruitful study — a study which he that
would understand the significance of New
England thought in the last century, and un-
der its later aspects as well, will find indis-
pensable. The summation of the result of
Edwards's work is concluded with the asser-
tion that " all who accept the truth that
divine things are known to be divine be-

13°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cause humanity is endowed with the gift of
direct vision into divinity, are accepting
what Edwards proclaimed, what constitutes
the positive feature of his theology. There
are those who have made the transition from
the old Calvinism, through the mediation of
this principle, to a larger theology as if by a
natural process. Among these typical think-
ers were Thomas Erskine, McLeod Camp-
bell, and Bishop Ewing in Scotland, or the
late Mr. Maurice in England. These and
such as these, in whom the God-conscious-
ness is supreme, are the true continuators of
the work of Jonathan Edwards."

Exercises in Wood-working; with a Short
Treatise on Wood. By Ivin Sickels.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 158,
with Plates.

This book is written for manual train-
ing classes in schools and colleges, having
been prepared in the first instance in manu-
script for the students in the College of the
City of New York. The manuscript was
copied for other schools. Many changes and
additions were made under the suggestions
of subsequent teaching ; and it is now print-
ed and published, for all who desire a vol-
ume of the kind. Being the product and
result of work in teaching, it could hardly
be other than a working book ; and a work-
ing book, so far as it reveals itself to a critic's
ken, it is. Its scope is the presentation of
the facts which are most essential to the
wood-worker's success and the good execu-
tion of his work, and of directions for the
use of his tools and for manipulation. These
facts and directions are given in a simple,
concise style, intelligible to any pupil of or-
dinary sense. The book deals particularly
with carpentry and joinery, and is divided
into two parts. The first part treats of the
structure, properties, and kinds of wood ;
its manufactures and economic relations to
other substances ; parasitic plants and in-
sects, and means of preserving wood ; under
these heads are articles on the structure and
composition of wood, branching of stems,
age of trees, their decay, the season for
cutting, milling, drying, and warping, the
properties and defects of wood, its measure
and values, and the kinds of wood. The
several species used in wood-work, coarse
and fine, are named and described; their
value is estimated, their special qualities are

pointed out, and the purposes indicated to
which they are applied. This is followed by
a tabular exhibit of the qualities of the va-
rious kinds of wood. A few words are given
to the relations of wood and iron, and the
wood-working trades are mentioned, and car-
pentry and joinery defined. A description of
parasitic plants or fungi injurious to living
trees and lumber follows ; an account of in-
jurious insects, prepared expressly for the
book by Mr. Bashford Dean, and directions
concerning the preservation of wood are given.
The second part contains the exercises, pre-
ceded by a description of tools. The directions
for the care and use of tools are explicit, and
are illustrated by drawings representing the
method of handling each tool, and the mark
it makes. These exercises are followed by
those concerning the forming and fixing of
the several kinds of joints, gluing, making
boxes, with hinging tops, drawers, and gen-
erally on uniting several pieces to make a
complete structure; a series on the details
of ordinary house carpentry, whence models
may be constructed and the building of the
various parts making up a wooden dwelling
learned; the use of the frame-saw and meth-
ods of bending wood ; pattern-work ; shap-
ing (boat model) by the use of templets ; and
veneering, with directions for painting and
polishing.

The National Medical Dictionary. Two
vols. By John S. Billings, M. D., etc.,
and Collaborators. Philadelphia : Lea
Brothers & Co. Price, $12.

This work aims to define " every medical
term in current use in English, French, Ger-
man, and Italian medical literature, including
the Latin medical terminology of all of these
languages." The pronunciation' of English
and Latin terms is indicated, and the deriva-
tion of most English and Anglicized Latin
words (except names of drugs and plants) is
given. The dictionary does not attempt to
be cyclopedic, but gives simply brief defi-
nitions of the words and phrases included in
its list. Prefixed to the first volume is a
number of tables, including a table of doses,
of antidotes, of the inch and metre system
of numbering spectacle-glasses, of thermo-
metric scales, of the average dimensions of
the foetus at different ages, of the average
dimensions of the parts and organs of the
adult human body, and of the weights of the

LITERARY NOTICES.

131

organs. Among these tables, also, there is
a series, prepared by Prof. W. 0. Atwater,
showing the percentages of nutrient ingredi-
ents in a large number of food-materials, the
fuel-values in the same, and standards for
dietaries for different classes and occupa-
tions. Another table shows the expectation
of life as derived from records of life-insur-
ance companies, and from the last United
States census.

The Anatomy op the Frog. By Dr. Al-
exander Ecker. Translated, etc., by
George Haslam, M. D. Illustrated. Ox-
ford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Mac-
millan & Co. Pp. 449, with Colored
Plates. Price, $5.25.

The frog is aptly designated by the au-
thor as eminently the physiological domestic
animal. It is kept in every physiological
laboratory, and is daily sacrificed in num-
bers on the altar of science. The physiolo-
gist has recourse to it, not only to obtain an-
swers to new questions, but for the sake of
demonstrating easily and quickly the most
important known facts of the science. It
has furnished the means through which many
most important discoveries in physiology have
been made. It has " afforded almost the only
material for the investigation of the excita-
bility of nerves and its associated electro-
motive changes, and also no inconsiderable
part of the remaining nerve and muscle
physiology." Much of our knowledge of the
functions of the spinal cord is derived from
experiment upon it. Its muscles have served
for the investigation of the phenomena and
the conditions of contraction. But for the
web of its foot and the gills and tail of its
tadpole, " we should not perhaps for a long
time have arrived at a satisfactory knowl-
edge of the existence and the conditions of
the capillary circulation. Acquaintance with
the constituents of the blood directly con-
cerned in nutrition ; important facts in the
physiology of the blood and lymph ; and in-
sight into the laws of the heart's action,
have all been obtained by observations and
experiments on the frog. To it, also, in his-
tology, we owe much of our knowledge of
the structure of nerve-fibers, their origin
and termination, their relations within the
ganglia, and the structure of muscular fiber ;
and for the study of reproduction and devel-
opment the frog has, next to the chick, af-

forded the most important material." The
importance of students being well acquaint-
ed with the anatomy and structure of an ani-
mal which plays so prominent a part in their
researches is obvious ; and it is this which
Dr. Ecker, who is Professor of Human and
Comparative Anatomy in the University of
Freiberg, and Dr. Haslam, have furnished
in the present book. The original work of
Prof. Ecker was published in 1864. A second
part, embodying, besides the author's work,
fruits of the researches of Prof. Wieders-
heim, appeared in 1881-82. The transla-
tion was undertaken by Dr. Haslam at the
suggestion of Prof. A. Gamgee, and was ac-
cepted by the delegates of the Clarendon
Press as one of the series of Foreign Bio-
logical Memoirs published by them. But it
soon became evident that a mere translation
would be unsatisfactory, and that it would
be desirable to recast and modify parts of
the book, and to give descriptions of the
minute structure of the several organs. The
translator has included the results of recent
researches, and has added facts derived from
his own observations.

The Elements op Astronomy. With an
Uranography. By Prof. Charles A.
Young. Boston : Ginn & Co. Pp. 470.
Price, $1.55.

Prop. Young has prepared this text-book
for use in high schools and academies, using
in it much of the material and many of the
illustrations of his larger work, General As-
tronomy. The author has tried to avoid
going to an extreme in cutting down and
simplifying, while giving a clear treatment
of every subject. From the number of
pages in the book it may be inferred that he
has provided abundant material for a high-
school course in astronomy. He has paid
special attention to making all statements
correct as far as they go, though many of
them, on account of the elementary charac-
ter of the book, are necessarily incomplete.
No mathematics higher than elementary
algebra and geometry is introduced into the
text. In an appendix of some seventy pages,
methods of making certain calculations and
the construction of astronomical instruments
are described. The Uranography comprises
a brief description of the constellations vis-
ible in the United States, with four maps,
from which the principal stars may be iden-

132

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tified ; also a list of such telescopic objects
in each constellation as are easily found, and
lie within the power of a small telescope.
The volume is illustrated with one hundred
and fifty-eight cuts.

American Spiders and their Spinning-Work.
Vol. I. By Henry C. McCook, D. D.
Published by the Author: Academy of
Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. Pp. 372.
Price $30 (set of three volumes).

The naturalist who takes dried or alco-
holic specimens as the subjects of his study
can prosecute his researches at all times and
seasons, and independently of the will of the
creatures that he is studying. But this ad-
vantage is offset by the limitation that the
habits of the creatures, the kind of places
they live in, the sort of structures they make,
the way they move about, obtain their food,
and rear their young, are a sealed book to
him. The observations of the field natural-
ist, on the other hand, are attended by many
more difficulties than those of the laboratory
student. He must go to his specimens in-
stead of having them brought to him. Per-
haps they are not to be found at all seasons,
and, when they are accessible, many hours
must be spent in watching familiar actions
in order not to miss a chance of seeing a
new operation. He has the compensation,
however, that he studies the creatures alive ;
hence the things which are hidden from the
laboratory naturalist are revealed to him,
and the knowledge that he gains arouses the
widest interest and wins the greatest appre-
ciation. The results which Dr. McCook lays
before us in the present volume belong
mainly in the latter class. They relate to
the spinning-work of spiders, as performed
in the making of webs and dens. With this
is naturally connected some account of the
methods of procuring food and the nesting-
habits of these creatures, and the intelli-
gence that they display in adapting their
operations to particular circumstances. In
order to give the reader a correct idea of
how spiders form their threads, a fully illus-
trated chapter on the structure of the spin-
ning-organs has been introduced. The whole
work will be confined to the orb-weavins:
spiders of the United States, but a vast
amount of material relating to other tribes,
which the author has collected, has been
drawn upon in order to make comparisons

between the habits of the orb-weavers and
other spiders. To the general reader, who
sees no important difference between any
two common wheel-shaped spider-webs, the
distinct varieties of orb-weavers' snares de-
scribed by Dr. McCook will be a revelation.
Artists, too, who are supposed to be careful
about the correct shapes of the things they
draw, seem to have looked only carelessly at
spiders' webs, for our author states that he
has never seen but one in art work or book
illustrations that gave proof of having been
drawn from a natural web, by one who knew
its characteristics. In three chapters the
general features, the mode of constructing
in detail, and the armature of orb-webs
are presented. Passing to varieties of
the orb, Dr. McCook describes the web
with its center of closely woven silk tis-
sue and a zigzag ribbon extending upward
and downward, which is made by Argiope, a
spider whose large size and beautiful mark-
ings make it conspicuous in our autumn
fields. The round vertical webs made by
Epe'ira and other spiders are then touched
upon. An account is given of the composite
snares, which consist of a wheel-shaped web
combined with a maze of intersecting lines ;
also of the sectoral orb, in which there is
always one division of the wheel that is not
crossed by the concentric rings.

Among the other peculiar features in webs
that the author describes are the domed orb
of the basilica spider, the ribbon decorations
of the feather-foot, the triangle or part of a
circle constructed by the triangle spider, and
the somewhat irregularly radiating snare of
the ray spider. A chapter on the engineer-
ing skill of spiders gives instances of their
using weights to hold their webs taut, their
placing of stay -lines in the best position al-
lowed by circumstances, using unfamiliar
substances for building a nest, etc. Espe-
cially interesting is a chapter on the me-
chanical strength of webs and the physical
power of spiders, in which cases are given
of spiders capturing and hoisting from the
ground animals many times as large as them-
selves. Other topics that are fully treated,
but which can be only mentioned here, are
feeding habits, uses of poison, and nest-
making habits. In a concluding chapter on
the genesis of snares, the author traces the
relations which exist between the various

LITERARY NOTICES.

J33

forms of spinning-work treated in the fore,
going pages. The volume contains three
hundred and fifty-four illustrations, the au-
thor being convinced that a drawing is bet-
ter to communicate some facts than pages
of words. The pictures, moreover, are of
artistic quality, and the mechanical work of
the volume is of a high grade, making the
book a remarkably handsome one. In the
second volume of this work the author will
treat the habits and industry associated with
mating and maternal instincts, life of the
young, etc. The third volume will be a sys-
tematic presentation of the orb-weavers of
the United States, the descriptions being ac-
companied by a number of lithographic
plates colored by hand. The work, aside
from its scientific value and its popular in-
terest, will be a treasure to the library of
any one who secures a copy. The " author's
edition " is limited to two hundred and fifty
numbered copies, which are issued in cloth
with uncut edges. A large part of the edi-
tion had been subscribed for before publi-
cation.

The Report of S. P. Langley, Secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution, for 1889,
states that the income of the Smithsonian
fund is becoming less and less adequate for
the work of the Institution with each year
of the country's growth. This fund is now
$703,000, of which only $1,500 have been
received in bequests since the original Smith-
son legacy. The secretary calls attention
to the Institution as a suitable trustee for
moneys intended for the advancement of
knowledge. Additional space is needed
for exhibition purposes for the National
Museum. The appropriation allowed for
making the foreign exchanges required
by Government does not cover what this
service costs the Institution, even though
free transportation is given by many steam-
ship companies. The library received 17,-
354 accessions in the course of the year, and
the collection is so large that much of it is
inaccessible from lack of room. The collec-
tion of living animals, which numbers over
three hundred, has outgrown its accommoda-
tions, and a scheme for creating a zoologi-
cal park on Rock Creek, in the District of
Columbia, is being agitated. The report in-
cludes statistics of publications of the Insti-

tution during the year, of accessions to the
museum and to the library, and of interna-
tional exchanges.

A great many facts which chemists con-
stantly need to refer to are put into handy
shape in the little pamphlet which Prof.
John H. Appleton has published now for
eight years, called the Laboratory Year-Book
(G. Roscoe and Co., Providence, 12 cents).
This publication contains a calendar, notes
on the chemical work done in the preceding
year, a list of new elements announced since
1877, a table based on the latest revision of
atomic and molecular weights, tables of
weights, measures, and thermometer scales
and equivalents, the C. G. S. system of units,
pronunciations of words used in chemistry,
logarithms, postal regulations, etc.

The Meteorological Observations made on
the Summit of Pike's Peak, January, 187 4^
to June, 1888, are published in the Annals
of Harvard College Observatory, Vol. XXII.
The observations were made and were pre-
pared for the press by the United States
Signal Service, and the expense of publica-
tion has been borne by the Boyden fund.
The observations occupy four hundred and
fifty-eight quarto pages, and are introduced
and supplemented by a few pages of text.

The Observations of the Neio England
Meteorological Society for 1888, published in
the Annals of the Harvard College Observa-
tory, contains tables in which the work of
the society for the year is summarized. In
a general account of the weather of the year
it is stated that nine months were colder
and three warmer than the average in New
England. The total precipitation exceeded
the usual annual fall by twenty-five per cent.

Among the papers that have appeared in
recent numbers of The Modern Science Es-
sayist (James H. West, Boston ; 10 cents a
number) is one on The Scope and Principles
of the Evolution Philosophy, by Lewis G.
Janes, the first lecture of the Brooklyn Ethi-
cal Association's second season. Dr. Janes
represents evolution as a universal method,
explaining the processes of all activity. He
states the agnostic position in regard to the
Unknowable Cause, and denies that the evo-
lutionist is a materialist. In his closing
paragraphs he points out the kind of aid
that evolutionary philosophy can give to the
solution of the problems of society. The

134

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Moral and Religious Aspects of Herbert
Spencer's Philosophy are presented in a
paper by Sylvan Drey, under three heads:
First, Spencer's theory of religion; second,
Spencer's theory of morality ; third, the re-
lation of religion to morality from the Spen-
cerian point of view. The object of the
essay is exposition and not defense, and the
author has the happy faculty of clear state-
ment, which such work requires. In a lect-
ure on Primitive Man, Z. Sidney Sampson
sketches the life-record of man as it is re-
vealed to us by the flint implements belong-
ing to the Pleistocene and possibly to earlier
geologic periods, by the articles found among
the piles in the Swiss lakes, etc. The lect-
ure is devoted mostly to the discoveries and
conclusions relating to the earlier Old and
New Stone Periods. C. Staniland Wake de-
scribes The Growth of the Marriage Rela-
tion, giving the attitude of primitive peoples
toward consanguineous marriage, some of
the varieties of polygyny and of polyandry
that have obtained in various countries, and
the chief features in the growth of monog-
amy.

Two successive volumes of the Questions
of the bay series are devoted to " the rail-
way problem." One of these, by Hon. W.
D. Dabney, is entitled The Public Regulation
of Railways (Putnams, $1.25). It deals
with the commercial relations of the rail-
ways to the public, and does not take up the
regulation of the roads with reference to
safety and convenience. The author dis-
cusses first the legal aspects of the ques-
tion and then its economic aspects. Un-
der the former head are considered the
sources of legislative power over railroads,
and the limitations of this power arising
from charter contracts, from the property
rights of the owners of railways, and from
the powers of Congress over interstate
commerce. On these subjects, the decisions
of the United States Supreme Court are
taken as authority almost exclusively. On
the economic side the discussion is based
principally upon material contained in the
reports and decisions of the Interstate Com-
merce Commission, and in the testimony and
arguments presented to that body in the re-
port made and testimony taken by the
"Cullom Committee" of the Senate, and
various other reports. The closing chapters

contain a brief analysis of the Interstate
Commerce Act, and a consideration of the
relations of the express companies to the
railways and to the people.

The phase of the subject dealt with by
Mr. John M. Bonham concerns Railway Se-
crecy and Trusts (Putnams, $1.25). The
secret discounts that railways make to cer-
tain monopolistic manufacturing corporations
the author regards as the most serious feat-
ure of the railway problem. In his discus-
sion of the subject he traces the growth of
abuses in railroad management, showing
that they owe their existence to the faulty
system under which railroad charters have
been granted. He states that the commis-
sions that have been appointed to regulate
great trusts and corporations fail to accom-
plish any reform because they have not the
power to get at the secret agreements of
these bodies, and he recommends a system
of inspection which will prevent the unjust
favoritism complained of.

The Report of the Commissioner of Edu-
cation for 1887-88 is about as late in ap-
pearing as that of the preceding year,
although it was completed three months
earlier. The efforts and appeals of Com-
missioner Dawson for prompt publication of
this document should meet with better suc-
cess. Among the topics that receive special
attention in the report are the condition and
needs of education among the thousand
Metlakahtla Indians, who have recently re-
moved from British Columbia to an island
near Sitka, also among the other inhabitants
of Alaska. Manual training, industrial in-
struction, and education at the South, are
also carefully reviewed.

A course of lectures on the Constitutional
History of the United States, as seen in the
Development of American Laiv (Putnams, $2),
delivered at the University of Michigan, has
been published in book form. The subjects
and lecturers are as follows : The Federal
Supreme Court : its Place in the American
Constitutional System, by Judge Thomas M.
Cooley; Constitutional Development in the
United States as influenced by Chief-Justice
Marshall, by Hon. Henry Hitchcock ; as influ-
enced by Chief -Justice Taney, by Hon. George
W. Biddle ; as influenced by the Decisions
of the Supreme Court since 1865, by Prof.
Charles A. Kent ; and The State Judiciary :

LITERARY NOTICES.

135

its Place in the American Constitutional
System, by Hon. Daniel H. Chamberlain.

The treatise on Money, by James Piatt
(Putnams, 75 cents), is historical, commer-
cial, and economic in scope. It gives a
sketch of the origin of money, after which
the question, What is money ? is discussed.
The author defines money as " a commodity,
of the same general nature as all other com-
modities." But he says that, although a
wealth in itself, its utility consists in its
ready convertibility. Paper is not money,
according to his view. Considerable space
is devoted to explanations and counsel about
banking. Exchange and interest receive
attention, and the author then proceeds to
discuss wealth and capital. Some consider-
ations on panics are given, with the aim of
preventing the tight grip on money that
always aggravates a panic. In the closing
sections, means of attaining individual suc-
cess and national prosperity are pointed out.

The History of Federal and State Aid to
Higher Education in the United States has
been prepared by Frank W, Blackmar, Ph.
D., at the request of the Bureau of Educa-
tion, as one of the series upon the history of
higher education in the United States, au-
thorized by the Secretary of the Interior.
It is intended to represent the progress of
the State idea in education from the founda-
tion of the colonies to the present time. It
discusses the rise of national education, with
its relation to local, and brings forward the
opinions of statesmen and scholars concern-
ing the duties and functions of government
in public education. A brief history is given
of the methods adopted by Congress to en-
courage and assist institutions of learning,
while the main body of the work is devoted
to the presentation in a condensed form of
the plans pursued by the Legislatures of
thirty-eight States in the treatment of higher
education. One of the strongest inferences
drawn by Commissioner Dawson from the
investigation is that in nearly every instance
the foremost desire of the people has been
for colleges and universities rather than for
schools of a lower grade, the opinion having
prevailed that primary and secondary schools
were dependent for their existence on higher
institutions.

The Twenty-seventh Annual Report of the
Massachusetts Agricultural College gives an

account of the work of the institution dur-
ing 1889, with the usual information about
course of study, professors, equipment, etc.
Appended to this report is a paper by Prof.
Paul Wagner, of Darmstadt, On the most
Profitable Use of Commercial Manures,
translated by Prof. Charles Wellington in
answer to the demand for information on the
subject.

In The Evolution of a Life (Holt Pub-
fishing Company, $2), Henry Truro Bray tells
the story of his early life, of his career as a
clergyman in the Methodist and then in the
Episcopal Church, and of Ms being forced to
leave the ministry on account of his growing
disbelief in the supernatural doctrines of re-
ligion and his increasing disgust with the
practices of church - members and men in
holy orders. The experiences and incidents
which are told in this volume under the veil
of fictitious names exhibit many of the per-
sons with whom Mr. Bray's labors brought
him in contact in no very enviable light.
The story, especially the part relating to the
author's married life, reveals the joys and
sorrows, hopes and fears, discouragements
and triumphs of an affectionate, sensitive,
and religious nature, which has been sadly
torn by contact with the world.

Bulletin No. 7 of the Iowa Agricultural
Experiment Station contains accounts of ex-
periments and observations on seven sub-
jects. The chief article is on varieties of
corn, and is illustrated with four plates. The
other topics treated are the millets, sugar
from sorghum, the codling moth, new Cyni-
pidce, the hog-louse, and varieties of grapes.

The Monthly Bulletin of the Iowa State
Board of Health (Des Moines, 25 cents a
year) is a decidedly practical and wide-awake
document. Each number is made up of
brief and timely articles on hygienic sub-
jects, replies to questions, reports of mortal-
ity, and of the appearance of contagious dis-
eases within the State, etc. A Signal Corps
meteorological report for each month is also
included.

A brief account of Massage and the Origi-
nal Swedish Movements has been prepared
for physicians and others interested by Kurre
W. Ostrom (Blakiston, 75 cents). It de-
scribes the operations of massage, with fig-
ures, and the various passive movements be-
longing to the Swedish system. Lists of

136

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

manipulations and movements suitable for a
large number of diseases are given. In these
applications Ling's and Mezger's systems
have generally been followed. Some consid-
erations in regard to the effects of exercise
are included in the volume, and a caution
against the untrained " rubbers " who form
a large part of those who claim to be mas-
seurs in America, or who use the name as a
cloak for vice.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED,

Alabama. Agricultural Experiment Station. Mi-
croscopical Study of* Certain Varieties of Corn. By
P. H. MelL Pp. 16, with Plate.

American Chemical Society, Journal, March, 1890.
Monthly. New York: John Polhemus. Pp. 24.
$5 a year.

Barkan, Louis, M. D. How to preserve Health.
New York : Exchange Printing Company. Pp. 344.

Bashkirtseff, Marie. The Journal of a Young
Artist. New York : Cassell Publishing Company.
Pp. 434. 50 cents.

Bean. Tarleton H. Description of a New Cottoid
Fish. Pp. 2.

Blackmar, Frank W. The History of Federal
and State Aid to Higher Education in the United
States. Washington: Government Priuting-Office.
Pp. 343.

Boole. Marv. Logic taught by Love. Boston :
Alfred Mudge & Son. Pp. 177.

Brinton, Daniel G. Essays of an Americanist.
Philadelphia : Porter & Coates. Pp. 489. $3.

Brinton, Daniel G., and Jastrow, Morris, Jr.
The Cradle of the Semites. Pp. 26.

Canfield, William B., M. D. Three Papers on
Pulmonary Phthisis and Pneumonia. Pp. 10. —
Some Complications of Chronic Endarteritis. Pp.
10. — The Early Detection of Pulmonary Consump-
tion. Pp. 11. Baltimore.

Church, M. B., Grand Rapids, Mich. Sanitary
Ceilings and Walls. Pp. 8.

Clark. Daniel, M. D. Faith- Cure. Toronto: D.
T. McAinsh. Pp. 11.

Coast and Geodetic Survey, United States.— Cul-
minations and Elongations of Azimuths. By Charles
A. 8chott. Pp. 5.— Verification of Weights and
Measures. By 0. n. Tittmann. Pp. 3.— Descrip-
tion of Two New Transit Instruments. By Edwin
Smith. Pp. 4.— Relation between the Metric Stand-
ards of Length. By C. A. Schott and O. H. Titt-
mann. Pp. 10.

Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Sta-
tion Bulletin. Sundry Investigations. Pp 82 —
Second Annual Report. Pp. 223. Ithaca, N. Y.

Coulter, Stanley. Histology of the Leaf of Taxo-
dium. Pp. 32, with Plate.

Crothers. T. DM M D. Sketch of the Late Dr.
Edward Turner the Founder cf Inebriate Asylums.
Hartford, Conn. : Case, Lockwood & Brainard Com-
pany. Pp. 25.

Dall, W. H. ReDort on Mollusca and Brachi-
opoda obtained by United States Fish Commission

p2nrer n£lbatro^s- Wasbington : Government
rnnting-Omce. Pp. 144.

«.„ w™J?' S"rles;. A Nafurahst's Vovage round
the Word New edition. Illustrated. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 551. $5.

tion06?' D22 G" S'' SaD Francisco- Dental Educa-
Cha?trUggi8t' NationaL Pois<>°s and their Antidotes.
Pp^67' Wi,Ham L The Nature of Amalgams.

Earl, A. G. The Elements of Laboratory Work.
London and New York : Longmans, Green & Co.
Pp. 179. $1.40.

Education Association, National. Proceedings
of the Department of Superintendence, March,
1S89. Washington : Government Printing-Office.
Pp. 800.

Etter, J. W.. D. D., Editor. Quarterly Review of
the United Brethren in Christ Vol. I, No. 1, Janu-
ary. 1890. Dayton, O. : W. J. Shuey. Pp.100. 50
cents. $1.50 a year.

Everts, Orpheus, M D, College Hill, Ohio. Treat-
ment of the Insane. Pp. 8.— Expert Testimonv and
Medical Experts. Pp. 8.

Fewkes, J. Walter. A Few Californian Medusae.
Pp. 12, with Plates.— On Excavations made in Rocks
by Sea-Urchins. Pp. 21.

Fisher, Sydney G., Philadelphia. The Cause of
Increase of Divorce. Pp. 20.

Forbes, S. A.. University of Illinois. History
and Status of Public-School Science Work in Illi-
nois. Pp. 15.

Friese, Philip C. Semitic Philosophy. Chicago :
S. C. Griggs & Co. Pp. 247.

Fyffe, C. A. History of Modern Europe. Vol.
III. New York : Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 572.
$2.50.

Gilbert, Charles H. Gillichthys Y-cauda at San
Diego, Cal. P. 1.

Green. H. L., Freethinkers' Magazine. Gior-
dano Bruno: his Life, Works, etc. Pp. 20.— Gior-
dano Bruno, Pamphlet No. 2. Pp. 20.— Roscoe
Conkling Memorial Oration. By Robert G. Inger-
boII. Pp. 8.— Robert G. Ingersoll's Centennial Ora-
tion of the Declaration of Independence. Pp. 22. —
The Myth of the Great Deluge. By James M. Mc-
Cann. Pp. 32.— What constitutes a Freethinker?
By H. L. Green. Pp. 8.— Church and State, etc. By
" Jefferson." Pp. 28.

Grote, A. Radcliffe. Revised Check List of the
North American Noctuidae. Part I. Bremen, Ger-
many. Pp. 52.

Heydenft- ldt. S., Jr. The Union of the Conscious
Forces. San FranciFco. Pp. 12.

Hubbard, T. S., & Co.. Fredonia. N. Y. Descrip-
tive Catalogue of Grape- Vines and Small Fruits.

Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station. Sec-
ond Annual Report. Pp. 18 —The Biology of Ensi-
lage. Pp. 122.

Illinois State Board of Health. Tenth Annual
Report. Pp. 313.

Iowa State Board of Health. Monthly Bulletin,
February, 1890. Pp. 24.

James. Joseph F. The Effect of Rain on Earth-
worms. Pp. 3.

Knobloch, A. Sound-English. A Language for
the World. New York: Gustav E. Stechert.
Pp. 63.

Koebele, Albert. Natural Enemies of the Fluted
Scale. Washington : Government Printing-Office.
Pp. 32.

Lum, Dyer D. The Economics of Anarchy.
Chicago : George A. Schilling. Pp. 59.

McDonald, Marshall, Commissioner. Bulletin of
the United States Fish Commission for 1887. Wash-
ington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 475.

Mason. Otis T. The Archaeology of the Potomac
Tide-Water Region ; and Wilson, Thomas. The
Palaeolithic Period in the District of Columbia.
Washington : Government Printing-Office. Pp. 10.

Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station.
Productiveness of Farm-lands. Pp. 16.

Mills, W. T. Tariff Legislation or Arbitration ?

Minnesota, Public Health in. February, 1890.
Pp. 8.

Niagara State Reservation. Sixth Annual Report
of the Commissioners. Albany : James B. Lvon.
Pp. 84.

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station. Eighth
Annual Report. Pp. 64.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

137

Riley, C. V., and Howard, L. O., Editors. Insect
Life. January and February, 1890. Pp. 64.

School Management, A Primer of. Syracuse,
N. Y. : C. "W. Bardeen. Pp. 44. 25 cents.

Sensenig, David M. Numbers TJniversahzed.
An Advanced Algebra. Part II. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. Pp.492. $1.26.

Shufeldt, R. W., M. D. Osteology of Arctic and
Sub-Arctic Water Birds. Pp. 13, with Plates.— On
the Position of Chamaea in the System. Boston :
Ginn & Co. Pp. 24.

Southwick Nurseries, Massachusetts. Gillett&
Hosford. Catalogue of Wild Flowers, Shrubs, Trees,
and Vines. Pp. 28.

Spencer, David E. Local Government in Wis-
consin. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University. Pp.
20. 25 cents.

Stejneger, Leonhard. Birds collected in Kauai,
Hawaiian Islands, by Valdemar Knudsen. Wash-
ington : Government Printing-Office. Pp. 10.

Stone, W. E. Cane-Sugar in the Sweet Potato.
Pp.5.

Thorpe, T. E. A Dictionary of Applied Chem-
istry. London and New York: Longmans, Green
&Co. Vol I. Pp.715.

Tubs with Bottoms and Tubs without. (Anony-
mous.) Printed for the author at 20 Cooper Union,
New York. Pp.345. $1.

Walcott, Charles D. Inarticulate Brachiopod
from the Trenton Limestone. P. 1.

Ward, Lester F. The Geographical Distribution
of Fossil Plants. Washington : Government Print-
ing-Office. Pp. ISO, with Map.

Wendel, F. C. H. History of Egypt. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 158.

White, David. Cretaceous Plants from Martha's
Vineyard. Pp. 8, with Plate.

Whitlock, L. L. List of Scientific and Trade Pa-
pers. Boston. Pp. 80. 50 cents.

Willard, Frances E. Glimpses of Fifty Years.
The Autobiography of an American Woman. Chi-
cago: Woman's Temperance Publishing Association.
Pp.704.

Yeo, J. Burney, M. D. Food in Health and
Disease. Philadelphia: Lea Brothers & Co. Pp.
583.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Jacob EnniSt — This able but retiring man
was born in Essex County, N. J., in 1807. He
came of sturdy Scotch-Irish stock on his fa-
ther's side, and was of Dutch extraction (the
Doremuses) on his mother's side. After grad-
uating at Rutgers College, and when yet quite
a young man, he connected himself with the
Dutch Reformed Church, and was by that or-
ganization sent to the islands of Java and
Sumatra as a missionary, where he remained
four years. Here his powers of observation
and his love for the study of nature had an
early development. Returning to his native
country, he soon engaged in educational work,
and was elected Professor of Natural Sciences
in the National Military College of Bristol,
Pa. Afterward he became principal and pro-
prietor of the Scientific and Classical Insti-
tute of Philadelphia, where he spent the best

part of his life. He also occupied for some
years the chair of Physical Sciences in the
State Normal School at Shippenburg, Pa. In
his career as an educator, he from the start
laid great stress on the importance of the
study of nature, and was indeed a bold and
fearless innovator in this respect, anticipat-
ing by perhaps a quarter of a century the
recognition that scientific studies have sub-
sequently had in all the highest institutions
of learning. His life was quiet, simple, dig-
nified, but laborious. He was a member of
the chief scientific bodies both in this coun-
try and abroad, and his contributions in the
shape of addresses before learned societies,
pamphlets, and articles in scientific periodi-
cals were many and varied, always strikingly
original, often profound, and sometimes pro-
phetic. Among these contributions, chiefly
on astronomical problems, "was one entitled
The Two Great Works to be done on our Si-
dereal Systems. In this publication two ques-
tions are asked — First : Which way round
does the great ring of the milky way revolve ?
Second : In which direction must we look for
the center of our sidereal systems, and how
far is it distant? These two questions he
attempted to answer himself in an unpub-
lished work, upon which he expended all the
time and thought that he could command
during the latter days of his life. He con-
sidered this the most important and certain-
ly the most original and far-reaching of his
works on astronomy, and it will no doubt be
published in due time. In his book on The
Origin of the Stars, published over twenty
years ago, some of the most transcendental
problems of physical astronomy were at-
tacked and solved with a keen analysis, an
abundance of facts, and a wealth of illus-
tration worthy of a master of the science.
Prof. Ennis's intellectual scope and sympa-
thies were not narrow or one-sided ; he was
familiar with the entire range of English and
classical literature, and was an excellent lin-
guist. His literary style was simple, direct,
and lucid ; he had a great dislike for " big
words," and always succeeded in making his
ideas clear by the use of plain and untechnical
language even when handling the most ab-
struse problems. His habits and tastes were
simple, his wants few, his disposition kindly
and gentle, and the attitude of his mind was
distinctly reverent. He was so quiet, mod-

i38

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

est, and unobtrusive that but few suspected
the presence of a great thinker so near at
home, and fewer still knew him personally.
He died in Houston, Texas, January 12, 1890.

The Late Henry James Clark. — A biogra-
phy and bibliography of Henry James Clark
has been published by the Massachusetts
Agricultural College, in which he was the
first professor. He was born in 1826, be-
gan the study of botany under Asa Gray in
1850, and became a pupil and private assist-
ant of Agassiz, who spoke of him in 1857 as
"the most accurate observer in the coun-
try." He was in succession adjunct Pro-
fessor of Zoology in Harvard University;
Professor of Botany, Zoology, and Geology
in the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania ;
Professor of Natural History in the Univer-
sity of Kentucky; and Professor of Com-
parative Anatomy and Veterinary Science
in the Massachusetts Agricultural College;
and he was a member, fellow, or correspond-
ent of the principal American scientific so-
cieties, including the Academy of Sciences
when its membership was limited to fifty.
He assisted Agassiz in the preparation of
parts of the Contributions to the Natural
History of the United States ; delivered lect-
ures on histology and the Cambridge Muse-
um of Comparative Zoology ; and delivered
a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute
on Mind in Nature ; or the Origin of Life,
and the Mode of Development of Animals.
He died on the first day of July, 1873, in the
forty-eighth year of his age. The list of his
scientific writings comprises twenty -seven
titles, mos of which cover more than one
article.

Educational Valne of Manual Training.
— The committee report of the National
Council of Education on the Educational
Value of Manual Training admits the rea-
sonableness of substituting a system of man-
ual training in special schools, in so far as it
can be done, for the old system of appren-
ticeship, but insists that the training ought
not to be begun before the completion of
the pupil's twelfth year, nor before he has
had the statutory instruction prescribed by
the state in the intellectual branches of
school work. It admits that manual train-
ing is an educative influence, and that, in so

far as the schools teach the scientific prin-
ciples that underlie the practical points of
their work, they add intellectual education
to physical education. The study of general
scientific principles, according to Dr. William
T. Harris's interpretation of the views of the
report, would be educative in the first rank :
they explain all machines and all natural
phenomena in our present experience, and
will explain those that we meet in the fu-
ture. In the second rank are special appli-
cations of science in the form of theories
of special machines, as, for example, of the
steam-engine. These theories explain all
machines made in accordance with them ;
they are very general, but not so general as
the scientific theories of the forces involved.
They are accordingly less educative. A third
and least educative school exercise is the
construction of a particular machine, when
the theory is narrowed down to a special
example. The laborer meets many new
things in the work of constructing the ma-
chine, but unhappily they are not educative,
because they are contingent, and do not as-
sist in explaining or constructing the next
machine. Examined in these three grades
of educative value, the purely manual work
of the school belongs to the lowest grade,
and furnishes the obscurest knowledge of
principles covered up by a mass of non-es-
sential circumstances. The committee, how-
ever, lays stress on the importance of aes-
thetic culture through drawing. It is cult-
ure in taste that American workmen need,
and not culture in skill, for our laborers are
already ingenious and skillful and indus-
trious. Drawing is the best means of ac-
quiring familiarity with the conventional
forms of beauty in ornament — forms that
express the outlines of freedom and grace-
fulness, and charm all peoples, even those
who have not the skill to produce them;
and make markets for the articles that bear
them.

Causes of Insanity. — The latest report of
the British Commissioners of Lunacy gives
tables showing the causes of insanity as
verified by the medical officers of the institu-
tions, in the cases of 136,478 patients who
have been admitted into public and private
asylums since 1887. The causes are classi-
fied as " moral " and " physical." As might

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

»39

be expected, " intemperance in drink " heads
the list of single causes, with 18,290 cases.
Of "moral causes," "domestic trouble,"
" adverse circumstances," and " mental
anxiety and worry, and overwork," are col-
lectively held responsible for 25,897 cases.
Of other moral causes, "religious excite-
ment" is credited with 3,769 cases, "love
affairs " with 2,224, and " fright and nerv-
ous shock " with 1,953. Of physical causes,
"sexual diseases" are credited with 3,447
cases, " overexertion " with 761, " sun-
stroke " with 1,686, " accident or injury "
with 4,199, " diseases of women " with
11,315, "old age" with 5,773, "privation
and starvation " with 2,607, " fevers " with
880, "puberty" with 582, and "other bodi-
ly diseases or disorders " with 14,719.
Previous attacks had occurred in 22,703
cases. Hereditary influence was ascertained
in 28,063, and congenital defect in 5,881. As
between the sexes, 66,918 were of the male
and 69,560 of the female sex.

Rights on Other Men's Lands. — A paper
by Mr. Hyde Clarke, on "The Rights of
Property in Trees " on the land of another,
relates to a curious custom of primeval
times which still survives in some lands.
The author first met it as a land judge in
Asia Minor in 1862, when he was called
upon to grant compensation for olive-trees
belonging to one or more persons on the
lands of others, and for honey - trees or
hoards of wild honey in state or communal
forests. Papers read by the Rev. Dr. Cod-
ington gave information of the existence of
a like system in Melanesia. It likewise
prevails, according to Mr. Crocker, of the
British North Borneo Company, in Borneo,
in respect to the Icatapang, or honey-tree,
and also in the case of caves containing edi-
ble bird's-nests. Sir Spencer St. John also
observes that in Borneo the land nominally
belongs to the state or tribe, but the owner-
ship is not a private property in land in our
sense of the word. He had observed that
certain of the tapang, on which the bees
construct their nests, often belonged to
special families, and were not touched by
their neighbors. Sir Thomas Wade has
found a similar right in China, where, when
hill farms or gardens are leased, the tenant
will pay the proprietor a yearly rent. All

fir-trees or bamboos on the ground before it
is let belong to the proprietors, and the ten-
ant is "not free to appropriate them. If
there were no such trees on the ground when
it was let, and such trees were subsequently
planted by the tenant, they would be at his
disposal. Separate property in trees is also
traceable in India, particularly in Chota
Nagpore, where Mr. J. F. Hewitt has fre-
quently found that fruit trees growing on
land are owned by persons other than the
owners or cultivators of the soil. The
mhowa- trees, which are exceedingly valu-
able, are frequently divided among the in-
habitants of the villages near which they
grow. This individual property in trees is
not in Turkey confined to Asia Minor, but
prevails as a general law in the empire.
Miss Pauline Inby found it in Bosnia, and
bought an interest of the kind in a certain
estate. It seems also to have anciently
existed in the British Islands, and is recog-
nized in the Brehon records of Ireland. But
there, and in most European countries, the
vestiges of the separate rights have ceased
to exist.

Soaping Geysers. — It ha3 been often ob-
served that throwing soap into the geysers
of the Yellowstone Park will produce or
hasten an outburst. The phenomenon has
been investigated by Prof. Arnold Hague,
of the United States Geological Survey, who
finds that two conditions are essential to the
production of an eruption in this way : first,
the surface caldron or reservoir should hold
but a small amount of water, exposing only
a limited area to the atmosphere ; and, sec-
ond, that the water should stand at or above
the boiling-point of water for the altitude of
the geyser basin above sea-level. The latter
is the principal factor. Many of the geysers
and hot springs present the singular phe-
nomena of pools of water heated above the
theoretical boiling-point, and, unless dis-
turbed, frequently remain so for many days
without exhibiting any signs of ebullition.
Thermal waters in this condition may be made
to boil by other artificial means that will dis-
turb their equilibrium, as by casting sinter
into them, and, in one instance at least, by a
strong temporary gust of wind. If soap or
lye is thrown into most of the small pools, a
viscous fluid is formed ; and viscosity is, in

140

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the opinion of the author, the principal cause
in hastening geyser-action. It tends to cause
the steam to be retained within the basin,
and, when the temperature stands at or above
the boiling-point, explosive liberation must
follow. All alkaline solutions exhibit, by
reason of this viscosity, a tendency to bump
and boil irregularly. Viscosity in the hot
springs must also tend to the formation of
bubbles and foam when the steam rises to
the surface, and this in turn aids to bring
about the explosive action, followed by a
relief of pressure, and thus to hasten the
final and more powerful display. The prac-
tice of casting in soap is regarded as detri-
mental to the preservation of the geysers,
and as a proper object of restriction.

The Nature of Poisoned Arrows. — The

word poison, as applied to the poisoned arrows
used in the Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, the
Banks Islands, and the New Hebrides, should
be understood, according to the Rev. Dr. R. H.
Codington, in a peculiar sense. The practice
of administering poison in food was com-
mon among the natives, but it was doubtful
whether what was used had much power of
doing harm. The deadly effect was expected
to follow from the incantations with which
the poison was prepared. In the same way
the deadly quality of the poisoned arrows
was never thought by the natives to be due
to poison in our sense of the word, though
what was used might be, and was meant to
be, injurious and active in inflaming the
wound. It was the supernatural power that
belonged to the human bone of which the
arrow-head was made on which they chiefly
relied, and with that the magical power of
the incantations with which it was fastened
to the shaft. The bone of any dead man
will give efficacy in the native belief to the
arrow, because any ghost may have power
to work on the wounded man ; but the bone
of one who was powerful when alive is more
valued. In Lepers' Island, a young man,
out of affection for his dead brother, took
up his bones and made them into arrows.
He carried these about him, and did not
speak of himself as " I," but as " we two " —
his brother and himself — and he was much
feared; all the supernatural power of the
dead brother was with the living. Although
it is the human bone that gives the deadly

quality to the arrow, the bone must be pre-
pared with certain incantations which add
supernatural power. The poison is an addi-
tion to the power of the bone. The native
did not much consider, if at all, the natural
power to hurt, of either bone or poison. A
dead man's bone made the wound, the power
of the ghost was brought by incantation to the
arrow, and therefore the wounded man would
die. Euphorbia-juice is hot and inflaming;
it is smeared on the bone with an incanta-
tion which calls in the power of a dead
man's ghost ; when the wound is given, the
ghost will make it inflame. The cure of the
wounded man is conducted on the same prin-
ciple. If the arrow-head, or a part of it,
can be recovered, it is kept in a damp place
or on cool leaves ; the inflammation of the
wound is little, or subsides. Shells are kept
rattling over the house where the man lives,
to keep off the hostile ghost. In the same
way the enemy who has inflicted the wound,
and his friends, will drink hot and burning
juices, and chew irritating leaves ; pungent
and bitter herbs will be burned to make an
irritating smoke, and will be tied upon the
bow that sent the arrow ; the arrow-head, if
recovered, will be put into the fire. The
bow will be kept near the fire, and its string
kept taut and occasionally pulled, to bring
on tension of the nerves and the spasms of
tetanus. Prof. Victor Horsley has suggested
that the value of the human bone tipping the
arrow was first made evident by the employ-
ment of a bone from a corpse recently dead,
in the decomposing tissues of which the
septicsemic virus would consequently be flour-
ishing.

The Mesozoie Atlantic Coast Region. — In

his address before the Geological Section of
the American Association, Prof. Charles E.
"White, defining the Mesozoie formations of
North America, said that the rocks of the
Triassic age are found from Prince Edward
Island to the Carolinas. They rest on for-
mations, from the Archaean to the Carbon-
iferous, inclusive. Verv few invertebrate
fossils have been found in the Trias of the
Atlantic coast region, and these are of little
value for indicating the age of the strata
that contained them. Intermediate between
the Triassic beds and the undisputed Creta-
ceous deposits of this region is a series of

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

141

strata of littoral and estuary origin, to which
the name Potomac formation has been ap-
plied. These deposits are only a few hun-
dred feet thick, and, though frequently cov-
ered from sight, seem to be continuous from
New Jersey to Mississippi. Invertebrate fos-
sils are rare, but large collections of fos-
sil plants have been found in the Potomac
region. The best authorities recognize sev-
eral of these fossils as Jurassic. Briefly,
then, the Mesozoic of the Atlantic coast
region consists of a probable representation
of the Upper Trias of Europe, a possible one
of the Upper Jura, a probable slight one of
the Middle Cretaceous, and a practically
certain representation of a large part of the
Upper Cretaceous, with a hiatus between the
latter and the Eocene. The speaker advo-
cated a system of classification more suited
to this country than the European one. The
time has come when North American geolo-
gists can and ought to hold a commanding
position in this matter.

Olives and their Oil. — The olive has
been cultivated in the regions of the Medi-
terranean coasts from time immemorial. Ol-
ive-oil there takes the place of butter. Spain
has about 3,000,000 acres in olives, Italy
2,250,000, and France about 330,000 acres.
Forty-five varieties of the fruit are described.
The tree occasionally grows to be sixty feet
high, and twelve feet in circumference of
trunk. The varieties differ in the nature of
the wood, the foliage, and the quality and
shape of the fruit. The fruit is mild, or
sharp, or bitter ; and the oils differ like-
wise ; so that a pure olive-oil may be unfit
for purposes of food, and only fit for greas-
ing machinery and making soap. The green,
unripe olives, having had the bitter taste
extracted with salt, are preserved in vinegar
with spices. The ripe olives are gathered in
the fall, when they are as large as common
plums. They are of dark-green color, and the
pit, now become a hard stone, contains a
savory kernel. The flesh is spongy, and its
little cells are filled with the mild oil, which
runs out at the least pressure. The finest
oil is the virgin oil which is made by col-
lecting the freshly gathered olives in little
heaps, and letting them press the oil out by
their own weight. It is clear, and has a deli-
cate, nutty taste, with little or no odor. When

the fruits cease to give the oil by them-
selves, they are pressed with small millstones,
yielding an oil which is also clear and has a
pleasant taste. The olives, still rich in oil,
are next put in sacks, boiling water is poured
over them, and they are pressed once more.
The oil gained by this process is yellowish-
green, and has a sharp taste and an unpleas-
ant smell. At Marseilles the olive-oils are
classed into manufacturing oils for burning,
greasing machinery, and soap-making; re-
fined oil ; oil from the pulp or husks, and
table or edible oil. The last is superfine,
fine, half fine, and ordinary. The table oil
is refined by allowing it to run through lay-
ers of thin sheets of wadding into tin perfo-
rated boxes. The wadding absorbs all the
thick particles, and leaves the oil clear and
tasteless. The olive crop is variable and un-
certain, and is seldom profitable more than
once in six or eight years.

Avogadro. — According to a sketch pub-
lished by Prof. Hugo Schiff, of Florence, in
the " Chemiker Zeitung," Amadeo Count
Avogadro, son of the magistrate Filippo
Vercellone, was born in Turin, August 9,
1776. He studied jurisprudence at the Tu-
rin University, became Doctor of Laws on
March 16, 1796, and then held a position
under the Government till 1S06, when he
began his scientific career. In physics he
was self-taught, and obtained a subordinate
position in the Collegio delle Provincie in
Turin, which was then and still is a richly
endowed department of the Turin Universi-
ty. On November 7, 1809, he became Pro-
fessor of Physics at the Gymnasium in Ver-
celli. In 1820 he was elected Professor of
Mathematical Physics at the Turin Univer-
sity. Later this chair of instruction was
abolished, and Avogadro resumed the prac-
tice of law. He was, however, reinstated in
his chair through the influence of Charles
Albert, and remained at the university till
1850, when he retired on account of old age
and ill health. He died at Turin, July 9,
1856, at the age of eighty years. Avogadro
was but little known in Italy and unknown
in foreign countries. He shared with Charles
Gerhard, who died in the same year, August
19, 1856, the same fate. It was only after
death that their great and important contri-
butions to science found recognition.

142

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Atmospheric Nitrogen as Food for
Plants. — The results of experiments at the
agricultural stations at Middletown and
Mansfield, Conn., are in favor of the value
of atmospheric nitrogen as a food for plants.
The conclusions are deduced from them by
Prof. Atwater that many, if not most, of
the leguminous plants are able to and do ac-
quire large quantities of nitrogen from the
air during their period of growth ; and that
there is some connection, not yet defined,
between root -tubercles and the acquisition
of this aliment. The cereals with which ex-
periments have been completed have not
manifested the same power, and they do not
have such tubercles as are formed on the
roots of the legumes. The addition of soil in-
fusions did not seem necessary for the pro-
duction of root-tubercles. The size and vigor
of the plants, and their gain of nitrogen from
the air, seemed to be proportional to the abun-
dance of root-tubercles in the experiment.
Losses of nitrogen sometimes occurred, but
always in cases where there were no root-tu-
bercles. The ability of legumes to gather
nitrogen from the air helps to explain the
usefulness of certain members of the family
as renovating crops, and enforces the im-
portance of using them to restore fertility to
exhausted soils. Conversely, the loss of ni-
trogen suffered by some other crops, such as
oats, suggests a possible reason why they
should appear to be " exhausting " crops.

Coffee in Brazil.— The cultivation of cof-
fee has been greatly extended in Brazil dur-
ing recent years, chiefly in the southern
provinces. The planting is done on freshly
cleared ground after a single crop of Indian
corn has been raised from it, either by sow-
ing the seed directly or often by transplant-
ing from slips grown in nursery rows. Dur-
ing the earlier years corn, beans, and occa-
sionally sugar-corn are grown between the
rows. The coffee-plant usually begins to
bear at the fourth year from the nursery, or
the fifth or sixth year from the seed. The
tree is supposed to reach its prime at ten
years old, becomes practically sterile at twen-
ty, and may by care be kept in bearing for
forty years. The extremes of the flowering
season are from August to January. The
berry begins to form in November, and to
ripen in April or May, when the harvesting

begins. This is done by hand, and gener-
ally very carelessly. The berries are washed,
dried, and put through various processes of
cleaning for the market ; what is called
" washed " coffee is put through a different
process, in which much of the treatment is
given under water.

Objeet-Stndies in Botany. — Prof. Bessey
some time ago urged teachers of botany to
give a more intelligent direction to the col-
lections which their pupils will make during
the season of study. The usual course is to
gather a surplus of the showy flowers which
are the most easily studied, and neglect the
others, of which less is known. The teacher
should take special pains to point out the
features of interest in the funguses, etc.,
which the student may bring in. Let him
direct attention to the pores, on the walls of
which the spores are developed — to the
closely interwoven threads of the body of
the fungus. When a spotted strawberry-
leaf is brought in, let him tell something,
if it be but little, about the cause of the
spots ; and let the pupil be taught to look for
similar spots on other plants, and to study
them. Do so with lichens, with pond-scums,
with green slimes, with mosses, with liver-
worts— in fact, with whatever is brought in
by the sharp-eyed young collector. " He
must be a poor teacher indeed who can not
suggest something to his pupil about a toad-
stool or a puff-ball. It is not necessary to
know the species or even the genus to which
a plant has been assigned in order to be able
to make valuable suggestions to one's pu-
pils."

Contributions to the Geology of Staten
Island. — Dr. N. L. Britton has reported to
the Natural Science Association of Staten
Island concerning observations that lead him
to consider that the serpentine and talcose
rocks forming the main ridge of the island
were derived from magnesian limestone and
hornblende or tremolite strata. The rocks
were doubtless originally deposited in a con-
formable sequence, but the serpentines were
left on top in the folding of the strata. The
hypothesis of a southwestward extension of
the crystalline rocks across New Jersey has
been confirmed in a well-boring at Perth Am-
bov. Considerable additions to the fossil

NOTES.

H3

flora have been obtained by Mr. Hallick from
the ferruginous sandstone on the shore at
Tottenville. The occurrence of copper, de-
rived from the decomposition of pyrites, in
the limonite ore beds at Todt Hill is men-
tioned. Several well-defined nearly driftless
areas north and west of the terminal mo-
raine illustrate an interesting feature of gla-
ciation.

NOTES.

Prof. D. S. Martin's Geological Map of
New York City and its Environs is the only
map giving in detail the geology of the en-
tire region (fifty-five by sixty-eight miles)
surrounding the metropolis ; it is compiled
with great care from separate sources, some
of which are not easily accessible, and some
are unpublished ; it exhibits the relations of
many geological systems and series east of
the Alleghanies ; and shows striking features
connected with the Glacial age, the terminal
moraine, and the ancient (now submerged)
channel of the Hudson River. A pamphlet
of explanations accompanies every copy. A
few copies of the second edition of the map
still reman for disposal at ten dollars each.
No more are likely to be published. Address
Prof. Martin, at Rutgers Female College, West
Fifty-fifth Street, New York.

Mr. C. R. Orcutt remarks, in the West
American Scientist, on the prominence of the
great variety in rock-lichens in producing a
pleasing effect in the scenery of Lower Cali-
fornia. Red, yellow, gray, and white are the
prevailing colors, and the whole side of a cliff
is often covered by lichens of the same tint.
Quartz, however, is not a favorite rock with
the lichens, and consequently is seldom con-
cealed. The lichens frequently imitate, in
coloring, the natural hue of the rocks on
which they are found.

A book by Mr. George F. Kunz, the dis-
tinguished mineralogical expert of the house
of Tiffany & Co., on the Gems and Precious
Stones of North America, is announced for
publication by the Scientific Publishing
Company, New York. It will be a popular
description of the occurrence, value, history,
and archaeology of precious stones in Amer-
ica, and of the collections in which they ex-
ist, with a chapter on pearls. The several
species and varieties are described system-
atically. The work will be sold at ten dol-
lars a copy.

Mr. John Griffttt, of Smyrna, has re-
ported favorably on the results of a sea-
son's experiments in rearing silk-worms on
mulberry-trees, under muslin screens, in the
open air, using the regenerated Bournabat
graine. They show that the regeneration was
thorough and complete, enabling the worms

to endure the low temperature of 45° F.,
with storm and wet for ten consecutive days.
The proportion of Ratine or satin-like cocoons
was extraordinary — fifty to two hundred and
ninety-four in all. A somewhat similar trial
made in India some years ago was success-
ful experimentally but not financially. In
this case the worms, under calico screens,
ate along the hedge at their will, new relays
taking the place of the old ones as the parts
of the hedge over which thev had eaten re-
covered their leaves.

River water was substituted for spring
water in one of the quarters of Paris sev-
eral times last summer. In every instance,
according to the " Semaine Medicale," an in-
crease of typhoid fever was observed. The
quantity of spring water brought to Paris
being insufficient for the demand, the Coun-
cil of Public Hygiene and Health has deter-
mined to expedite the labors for the new
supply from springs recently bought by the
city, and to insist that the use of the present
spring waters be limited to food purposes.

Henry Holt & Co. will publish soon, In-
troduction to Systematic Botany. By Charles
E. Bessey, professor in the University of
Nebraska, and author of Bessey's Botanies
in the American Science Series.

M. de Malarce recently informed the
French Academy of Sciences that the use of
the metric system had in 1887 become com-
pulsory in countries having an aggregate pop-
ulation of 302,000,000, being an increase of
53,000,000 persons obliged to use it in ten
years ; use was optional in countries having
nearly 97,000,000 inhabitants ; and was le-
gally admitted and partially applied in coun-
tries having an aggregate population of 395,-
000,000. The systems of Japan, China, and
Mexico are decimal but not metric. Hence
the metric system is legally recognized by
794,000,000 people and decimal systems by
about 474,000,000 others.

By the Hungarian trade law of 1884,
every commune in which there are fifty or
more apprentices must provide for their ed-
ucation, and afford special courses of in-
struction. The apprentice schools in Buda-
Pesth contain a preparatory class, provide a
course of three years, and are chiefly de-
signed to educate apprentices for the higher
trade schools. Each district of the town
must have at least one apprentice school.
No class is to have more than fifty or at
most sixty pupils. Deserving pupils are pro-
moted at the end of each year. In the oth-
er towns and counties of the kingdom there
are 229 apprentice schools, with 1,237 teach-
ers and 38,081 pupils.

The Swedish Oyster-culture Society is try-
ing to acclimatize American oysters from
Connecticut on the coast of the province of
Bahus. The young oysters seem to thrive
welL

H4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A scheme of the French Government to
encourage the intermarriage of life-convicts
in New Caledonia with life-convicts import-
ed from the prisons at home is pronounced
mischievous by the " Lancet." The purpose
is to build up family relations in the inter-
est of morality ; but British experience is to
the effect that such alliances lead to the
multiplication of criminals, and that the real
check to crime lies in breaking up and iso-
lating the criminal class. Testimony gleaned
by M. Louis Barron from the journals of
New Caledonia points in the same direction,
and forms an instructive commentary on the
law of heredity as deduced by Darwin.

The French fishermen are troubled by
the depredations of porpoises, for which they
have not succeeded in finding a remedy.
An attempt was made to catch them in seine
nets, but they jumped out of the snares.
They were scared away by guns and torpe-
does, but the fish were frightened and dis-
appeared with them. They are too numer-
ous to be shot one by one in an effective
manner. The only thing to be done seems
to be for the fishermen to unite and drive
them away in crowds ; but this will have to
be often repeated. Insurance and payment
of damages by the Government are the last
measures of relief suggested ; but they, too,
are expensive to somebody.

Vanilla is produced from a species of
orchid that attaches itself to walls, trees,
and other suitable objects. The plant has a
long, fleshy stem, and the leaves are alter-
nate, oval, and lanceolate. The flower is of
a greenish-white color, and forms axillary
spikes. The fruit is a pod, measuring when
full grown some ten or twelve inches in

length and about half an inch in diameter.
The quality of the pod can be determined by
the presence or non-presence of a crystalline
efflorescence called givre, and by its dark
chocolate-brown color. The fragrant givre is
vanillin, C8H803. The pods also contain va-
nillic acid, oily matter, soft resin, sugar, gum,
and oxalate of lime.

A striking example of degeneration in
growth is exhibited by the scale that attacks
greenhouse and other plants. According to
Mr. Bernard Thomas, in "Science Gossip,"
it is a degenerated female which lives upon
the sap of the plant, continuing to increase
in size and reproduce its young. These may
be found underneath it as minute red bod-
ies, just visible to the naked eye, and at this
time of their life comparatively active creat-
ures ; but they soon settle down and begin
to degenerate. Their eyes become indis-
tinct, and finally, with their antenna; and
legs, shrivel away, the body loses its thick-
ness, and they appear as if without life.

Totems are defined by Mr. J. G. Fraser
as " a class of material objects which a sav-
age regards with superstitious respect, be-

lieving that there exists between him and
every member of the class an intimate and
altogether special relation." They are tribal
emblems, family symbols, signals of nation-
ality, expressions of religion, bonds of un-
ion, and regulators of marriage-laws and of
the social institutions. The system of to-
tems exists among most primitive peoples,
and in similar forms with the North Ameri-
can Indians, Australians, South Africans,
Arabs, hill tribes of India, Polynesians, and
many other peoples. Among a tribe in Co-
lombia, where descent is in the female line,
it goes so far that if a man happens to cut
himself with his own knife, to fall off from
his own horse, or to hurt himself in any way,
his mother's clan demand blood-money from
him for injuring one of their totems.

OBITUARY NOTES.

Prof. Van Quenstedt, of Tubingen, one
of the most famous of German paleontolo-
gists, died December 21st, at an advanced
age. He was the author of a work on the
Jura, and of a Handbook of Petrefacten-
kunde, or the science of petrifactions. He
had an especially profound knowledge of the
Lias of Wiirtemberg and its fossils.

M. Ch. Fievez, assistant in the spectro-
scopic department of the Royal Observatory
of Brussels, died February 2d, aged forty-five
years. He studied first for the military pro-
fession, but was invited to the observatory
by M. Houzeau, and entered it after studying
under Janssen at Meudon. His most impor-
tant work was the construction of a chart of
the solar spectrum on a larger scale than
that of Angstrom. He made a detailed
study of the spectrum of carbon, and experi-
ments on the behavior of spectral lines un-
der the influence of magnetism and of
changes of temperature.

Dr. C. C. Parry, a distinguished Ameri-
can botanist, recently died at Davenport,
Iowa, aged sixty-seven years. He made val-
uable collections of plants, and was an au-
thority in the classification of the North
American flora. He was for several years a
botanist in the* Agricultural Department in
Washington. Mount Parry, near Denver,
was named after him.

Prof. Richard Owen, geologist, died from
accidental poisoning at his home in New Har-
mony, Ind., March 24th. He was a son of the
Scotch philanthropist, Robert Owen, and was
born in Scotland, January 6, 1810. Having
been schooled in Europe and come to the
United States, he studied civil engineering in
Kentucky, was a Professor of Geology there,
served in the United States Survey, was a
captain in the Mexican War, was State Ge-
ologist for Indiana, professor in Indiana
State University, and lieutenant-colonel and
colonel in Indiana volunteer regiments.

THEODORE SCHWANN.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

JUNE, 1890.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE.

VIII. THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND EGYPTOLOGY.

By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D., L.H.D.,

EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

IN the great ranges of investigation which, bear most directly
upon the origin of man, there are two in which Science within
the last few years has gained final victories.

The significance of these in changing, and ultimately in re-
versing, one of the greatest currents of theological thought, can
hardly be overestimated ; not even the tide set in motion by
Cusa, Copernicus, and Galileo was so powerful to bring in a new
epoch of belief.

The first of these conquests relates to the antiquity of man on
the earth.

The fathers of the early Christian Church, receiving all parts
of our sacred books as equally inspired, laid little, if any, less
stress on the myths, legends, genealogies, and tribal, family, and
personal traditions contained in the Old Testament, than upon
the most lofty poems, the most instructive apologues, and the
most powerful utterances of prophets, psalmists, and apostles.
As to the life of man upon our planet, by bringing together indi-
cations of elapsing time in the various books of the Bible, early
Christian commentators arrived at conclusions varying some-
what, but in the main agreeing. Some, like Origen, Eusebius,
Lactantius, Clement of Alexandria, and the great fathers gener-
ally of the first three centuries, dwelling especially upon the Sep-
tuagint version of the Scriptures, thought that man's creation
took place about six thousand years before the Christian era.
Strong confirmation of this view was found in a simple piece of

VOL. XXXYII. — 11

i46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

purely theological reasoning : for, just as the seven candlesticks
of the Apocalypse were long held to prove the existence of seven
planets revolving about the earth, so it was felt that the six days
of creation prefigured six thousand years during which the earth
in its first form was to endure ; and that, as the first Adam came
on the sixth day, Christ, the second Adam, had come at the sixth
millennial period. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, in the second
century, clinched this argument with the text, " One day is with
the Lord as a thousand years"; hence the view of the early
Church, that the world was then in its last period, and that the
seventh day — the great millennium — would arrive about the year
1000 of our era. What striking consequences this belief finally
produced all scholars of mediaeval history know well.

On the other hand, Eusebius and St. Jerome, dwelling more
especially upon the Hebrew text, which we are brought up to re-
vere, thought that man's origin took place at a somewhat shorter
period before the Christian era ; and St. Jerome's overwhelming
authority made this the dominant view throughout western Eu-
rope during fifteen centuries.

The simplicity of these great fathers as regards chronology is
especially reflected from the tables of Eusebius. In these, Moses,
Joshua, and Bacchus — Deborah, Orpheus, and the Amazons —
Abimelech, the Sphinx, and CEdipus, appear together as person-
ages equally real, and their positions in chronology equally ascer-
tained.

At times great bitterness was aroused between those holding
the longer and the shorter chronology, but, after all, the difference
between them, as we now see, was trivial ; and it may be broadly
stated that in the early Church, " always, and everywhere, and by
all," it was held as certain, upon the absolute warrant of Script-
ure, that man was created from four to six thousand years before
the Christian era.

To doubt this, and even much less than this, was to risk dam-
nation. St. Augustine insisted that belief in the antipodes and in
the longer duration of the earth than six thousand years were
deadly heresies, equally hostile to Scripture. Philastrius, the
friend of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, whose fearful catalogue
of heresies served as a guide to intolerance throughout the
middle ages, condemned with the same holy horror those who
expressed doubt as to the orthodox number of years since the
beginning of the world, and those who doubted an earthquake to
be the literal voice of an angry God, or who questioned the plu-
rality of the heavens, or who gainsaid the statement that God
brings out the stars from His treasures and hangs them up in the
solid firmament above the earth every night.

About the beginning of the seventh century, Isidore of Seville,

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. i47

the great theologian of his time, took up the subject. He accepted
the dominant view, not only of Hebrew but of all other chro-
nology, without anything like real criticism ; the childlike faith
and simplicity of his system may be* imagined from his summa-
ries which follow. He tells us :

" Joseph lived one hundred and five years. Greece began to
cultivate grain.

" The Jews were in slavery in Egypt one hundred and forty-
four years. Atlas discovered astrology.

"Joshua ruled for twenty-seven years. Ericthonius yoked
horses together.

" Othniel, forty years. Cadmus introduced letters into Greece.

" Deborah, forty years. Apollo discovered the art of medicine
and invented the cithara.

" Gideon, forty years. Mercury invented the lyre and gave it
to Orpheus."

Reasoning in this general way, Isidore kept well under the
longer date; and the great theological authority of southern
Europe having thus spoken, the question was virtually at rest
throughout Christendom for nearly a hundred years.

Early in the eighth century the Venerable Bede, the great
theological authority of the North, took up the problem. Dwell-
ing especially upon the received Hebrew text of the Old Testa-
ment, he soon entangled himself in very serious difficulties ; but,
in spite of the great fathers of the first three centuries, he reduced
the antiquity of man on the earth by nearly a thousand years, and,
in spite of mutterings against him as coming dangerously near a
limit which made the theological argument from six days to six
ages look doubtful, his authority had great weight, and did much
to fix western Europe in its allegiance to the general system laid
down by Eusebius and Jerome.

In the twelfth century this belief was re-enforced by a tide of
thought from a very different quarter. Rabbi Moses Maimonides
and other Jewish scholars, by careful study of the Hebrew text,
arrived at conclusions diminishing the antiquity of man still fur-
ther, and thus gave strength to the shorter chronology throughout
the middle ages : it was incorporated into the sacred science of
Christianity; and Vincent de Beauvais, in his great Speculum
Historiale, forming part of that still more enormous work which
sums up all the knowledge possessed by the ages of faith, placed
the creation of man at about four thousand years before our era.*

* For the date of man's creation as given by leading chronologists in various branches of
the Church, see L'Art de Verifier les Dates, Paris, 1819, vol. i, pp. 27 et seq. In this edition
there are sundry typographical errors ; compare with Wallace, True Age of the World,
London, 1844. As to preference for the longer computation by the fathers of the Church,
see Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii, p. 291. For the sacred significance of the six days of

i48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

At the Reformation this view was not disturbed. The same
manner of accepting the sacred text which led Luther, Melanch-
thon, and the great Protestant leaders generally, to oppose the
Copernican theory, fixed them firmly in this biblical chronology ;
the key-note was sounded for them by Luther when he said, " We
know, on the authority of Moses, that longer ago than six thousand
years the world did not exist." Melanchthon, more exact, fixed
the creation of man at 3963 b. c.

But the great Christian scholars continued the old endeavor to
make the time of man's origin more precise ; there seems to have
been a sort of fascination in the subject which developed a long
array of chronologists, all weighing the minutest indications in
our sacred books, until the Protestant divine, De Vignolles, who
had given forty years to the study of biblical chronology, de-
clared that he had gathered no less than two hundred computa-
tions based upon Scripture, and no two alike.

As to the Roman Church, about 1580 there was published, by
authority of Pope Gregory XIII, the Roman Martyrology, and
this, both as originally published and as revised in 1640 under
Pope Urban VIII, declared that the creation of man took place
5199 years before Christ.

But of all who gave themselves up to these chronological
studies, the man who exerted the most powerful influence upon
the dominant nations of Christendom was Archbishop Usher. In
1650 he published his Annals of the Ancient and New Testaments,
and it at once became the greatest authority for all English-speak-
ing peoples. Usher was a man of deep and wide theological
learning, powerful in controversy; and his careful conclusion,
after years of the most profound study of the Hebrew Scriptures,
was, that man was created 4004 years before the Christian era.
His verdict was widely received as final ; his dates were inserted
in the margins of the authorized version of the English Bible,
and were soon practically regarded as equally inspired with the
sacred text itself ; to question them seriously was to risk prefer-
ment in the Church and reputation in the world at large.

The same adhesion to the Hebrew Scriptures which had influ-
enced Usher, brought leading men of the older Church to the same
view ; men who would have burned each other at the stake for

creation in ascertaining the antiquity of man, see especially Eicken, Geschichte der
mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung ; also Wallace, True Age of the World, pp. 2,3. For
the views of St. Augustine, see Topinard, Anthropologic, citing the De Civ. Dei., lib. xvi,
c. viii, lib. xii, c. x. For the views of Philastrius, see the De Haeresibus, c. 102, 112, et
passim, in Migne. For Eusebius's simple credulity, see the tables in Palmer's Egyptian
Chronicles, vol. ii, pp. 828, 829. For Bede, see Usher's Chronologia Sacra, cited in Wallace,
True Age of the World, p. 35. For Isidore of Seville, see Isidore, Etymologia, lib. v, c. 39 ;
also lib. iii, 617.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 149

their differences on other points, agreed on this : Melanchthon and
Tostatus, Lightfoot and Jansen, Salmeron and Scaliger, Petavius
and Kepler, inquisitors and reformers,- Jesuits and Jansenists,
priests and rabbis, stood together in the belief that the creation
of man was proved by Scripture to have taken place between 3900
and 4004 years before Christ.

In spite of the severe pressure of this line of authorities, ex-
tending from St. Jerome and Eusebius to Usher and Petavius, all
in favor of this scriptural chronology, even devoted Christian
scholars, had sometimes felt obliged to revolt. The first great
source of difficulty was increased knowledge regarding the Egyp-
tian monuments. As far back as the last years of the sixteenth
century, Joseph Scaliger had done what he could to lay the
foundations of a more scientific treatment of chronology, insist-
ing especially that the historical indications in Persia, in Babylon,
and, above all, in Egypt, should be brought to bear on the ques-
tion. More than that, he had the boldness to urge that the
chronological indications of the Hebrew Scriptures should be
fully and critically discussed in the light of Egyptian and other
records, without any undue bias from theological considerations.
His idea may well be called inspired, yet it had little effect as re-
gards a true view of the antiquity of man, even upon himself, for
the theological bias prevailed above all his reasonings, even in
his own mind. Well does a brilliant modern writer declare that,
" among the multitude of strong men in modern times abdicating
their reason at the command of their prejudices, Joseph Scaliger
is perhaps the most striking example."

Early in the following century Sir Walter Raleigh, in his
History of the World (1603-1616), pointed out the danger of ad-
hering to the old system. He, too, foresaw one of the results of
modern investigation, stating it in these words, which have the
ring of prophetic inspiration : " For in Abraham's time all the
then known parts of the world were developed. . . . Egypt had
many magnificent cities, . . . and these not built with sticks, but
of hewn stone, . . . which magnificence needed a parent of more
antiquity than these other men have supposed." In view of these
considerations, Raleigh followed the chronology of the Septuagint
version, which enabled him to give to the human race a few more
years than were usually allowed.

About the middle of the seventeenth century Isaac Vossius,
one of the most eminent scholars of Christendom, attempted to
bring the prevailing belief into closer accordance with ascertained
facts, but save by a chosen few his efforts were rejected. In some
parts of Europe a man was by no means safe from bodily harm
in holding new views on chronology. As an example of the ex-
treme pressure exerted by the old theological system at times

i5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

upon honest scholars, we may take the case of La Peyrere, who,
about the middle of the seventeenth century, put forth his book
on the Pre-Adamites — an attempt to reconcile sundry well-known
difficulties in Scripture by claiming that man existed on earth be-
fore the time of Adam. He was taken in hand at once; great
theologians rushed forward to attack him from all parts of
Europe ; within fifty years thirty-six different refutations of his
arguments had appeared ; the Parliament of Paris burned the
book, and the Grand Yicar of the archdiocese of Mechlin threw
him into prison and kept him there until he was forced, not only
to retract his statements, but to abjure his Protestantism.

But, in spite of warnings like this, we see the new idea crop-
ping out in various parts of Europe. In 1672 Sir John Marsham
published a work in which he showed himself bold and honest.
After describing the heathen sources of Oriental history, he turns
to the Christian writers, and, having used the history of Egypt to
show that the great Church authorities were not exact, he ends
one important argument with the following words : " Thus the
most interesting antiquities of Egypt have been involved in the
deepest obscurity by the very interpreters of her chronology, who
have jumbled everything up {qui omnia susque deque permiscue-
runt), so as to make them match with their own reckonings of
Hebrew chronology: truly a very bad example, and quite un-
worthy of religious writers."

This sturdy protest of Sir John against the dominant system
and against the " jumbling " by which Eusebius had endeavored
to cut down ancient chronology within safe and sound orthodox
limits, had little effect. Though eminent chronologists of the
eighteenth century, like Jackson, Hales, and Drummond, gave
forth multitudes of ponderous volumes pleading for a period
somewhat longer than that generally allowed, and insisting that
the received Hebrew text was grossly vitiated as regards chronol-
ogy, even this poor favor was refused them ; the great mass of
believers found it more comfortable to hold fast the faith com-
mitted to them by Usher, and it remained settled that man was
created about four thousand years before our era.

This tide of theological reasoning rolled on through the eight-
eenth century, swollen by the biblical researches of leading com-
mentators, Catholic and Protestant, until it came in great majesty
and force into our own nineteenth century ; and it was well re-
ceived. At the very beginning of our century it gained new
strength from various great men in the Church, among whom
may be especially named Dr. Adam Clarke, who declared that," to
preclude the possibility of a mistake, the unerring Spirit of God
directed Moses in the selection of his facts and the ascertaining
of his dates."

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 151

All opposition to the received view seemed broken down ; and
as late as 1835, indeed as late as 1850, came an announcement in
the work of one of the most eminent Egyptologists, Sir J. G.
Wilkinson, to the effect that he had modified the results he had
obtained from Egyptian monuments, in order that his chronology
might not interfere with the received date of the Deluge of Noah.*

But all investigators were not so docile as Wilkinson, and
there soon came a new train of scientific thought which rapidly
undermined all this theological chronology. Not to speak of
other noted men, we have early in the present century Young,
Champollion, and Rosellini, beginning a new epoch in the study
of the Egyptian monuments. Nothing could be more cautious
than their procedure, but the evidence was soon overwhelming in
favor of a vastly longer existence of man in the Nile Valley than
could be made to agree with even the longest duration then
allowed by theologians.

First of all, in spite of all the suppleness of men like Wilkin-
son, it became evident that, whatever system of scriptural chro-
nology was adopted, Egypt was the seat of a flourishing civiliza-
tion at a period before the "Flood of Noah," and that no such
flood had ever interrupted it. This was bad, but worse remained
behind : it was soon clear that the civilization of Egypt began
earlier than the time assigned for the creation of man, even ac-
cording to the most liberal of the sacred chronologists.

As time went on, this became more and more evident : the long
duration assigned to human civilization in the fragments of
Manetho, the Egyptian scribe at Thebes in the third century b. c,
was discovered to be more accordant with truth than the chronol-
ogies of the great theologians ; and, as the present century has
gone on, scientific results have been reached absolutely fatal to
the chronological view based by the universal Church upon Script-
ure for nearly two thousand years.

* For Lightfoot, see his Prolegomena relating to the age of the world at the birth of
Christ; see also in the edition of his works, London, 1822, vol. iv, pp. 64, 112. For
Scaliger, see the De Emendatione Temporum, 1583 ; also Mark Pattison, Essays, Oxford,
1889, vol. i, pp. 162 et seq. For Raleigh's misgivings, see his History of the World, Lon-
don, 1614, p. 227, Book II of Part I, section 7 of chapter i ; also Clinton's Fasti Hellenici,
ii, 293. For Usher, see his Annales Vet. et Nov. Test., London, 1650. For Marsham,
see his Canon Chronicus Aegyptiacus Ebraicus Graecus et Disquisitiones, London, 1672.
For La Peyrere, see especially Quatrefages, in Revue des Deux Mondes for 1861, as cited
in Topinard, Anthropologic, p. 52. For Jackson, Hales, and others, see Wallace's True
Age of the World. For Wilkinson, see various editions of his work on Egypt. For Vig-
nolles, see Leblois, vol. iii, p. 617. As to the declarations in favor of the recent origin of
man, sanctioned by Popes Gregory XIII and Urban VIII, see Strauchius, cited in Wallace,
p. 97. For the general agreement of church authorities, as stated, see L'Art de Verifier
les Dates, as above. As to difficulties of scriptural chronology, see Ewald, History of
Israel, English translation, London, 1883, pp. 204 et seq.

i52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

As is well known, the first of the Egyptian kings of whom
mention is made upon the monuments of the Nile Valley is Mena,
or Menes. Manetho had given a statement, according to which
Mena must have lived nearly six thousand years before the Chris-
tian era ; this was looked upon for a long time as utterly inad-
missible, since it was so clearly at variance with the chronology
of our own sacred books ; but, as time went on, large fragments
of the original work of Manetho were more carefully studied and
distinguished from corrupt transcriptions, the lists of kings at
Karnak, Sacquarak, and the two temples at Abydos were brought
to light, and the lists of court architects were discovered. Among
all these monuments the scholar who visits Egypt is most im-
pressed by the sculptured tablets giving the lists of kings. Each
shows the monarch of the period doing homage to the long line of
his ancestors. Each of these sculptured monarchs has near him a
tablet bearing his name. That great care was always taken to
keep these imposing records correct is certain ; the loyalty of sub-
jects, the devotion of priests, and the family pride of kings were
all combined in this, and how effective this care was is seen in
the fact that kings now known to be usurpers are carefully
omitted. The lists of court architects, extending over the pe-
riod from Seti to Darius, throw a flood of light over the other
records.

Comparing, then, all these sources, and applying an average
from the lengths of the long series of well-known reigns to the
reigns preceding, the most careful and cautious scholars have
satisfied themselves that the original fragments of Manetho rep-
resent the work of a man honest and well informed, and, after
making all allowances for discrepancies and the overlapping of
reigns, it has become clear that the period known as the reign of
Mena must be fixed at about five thousand years B. c. In this the
three great Egyptologists of our time concur ; Mariette, the emi-
nent French authority, puts the date at 5004 B. c, and with this
the foremost English authority, Sayce, agrees ; Brugsch, the lead-
ing German authority, puts it at about 4500 B. c. We have it, then,
as the result of a century of work by the most acute and trained
Egyptologists, and with the inscriptions upon the temples and
papyri before them, both of which are now read with as much
facility as many mediaeval manuscripts, that the reign of Mena
must be placed close upon seven thousand years ago.

But the significance of this conclusion can not be fully under-
stood until we bring into connection with it some other facts re-
vealed by the Egyptian monuments.

The first of these is that which struck Sir Walter Raleigh —
that, even in the time of the first dynasties in the Nile Valley, a
high civilization had already been developed. Take, first, man

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 153

himself : we find sculptured upou the early monuments types of
the various races — Egyptians, Israelites, negroes, and Libyans —
as clearly distinguishable in these paintings and sculptures of
from four to six thousand years ago as the same types are at the
■present day. No one can look at these sculptures upon the Egyp-
tian monuments, or even the f ac-similes of them, as given by Lep-
sius or Prisse d'Avennes, without being convinced that they
indicate, even at that remote period, a difference of races so great
that long previous ages must have been required to produce it.

Take, next, the social condition of Egypt revealed in these
early monuments of art : they force us to the same conclusion.
Those earliest monuments show that a very complex society had
even then been developed. We not only have a separation be-
tween the priestly and military orders, but agriculturists, manu-
facturers, and traders, with a whole series of subdivisions in
each of these classes. The early tombs show us sculptured and
painted representations of a daily life which even then had been
developed into a vast wealth and variety of grades, forms, and
usages.

Take, next, the political and military condition : one fact out of
many reveals a policy which must have been the result of long
experience. Just as now, at the end of the nineteenth century,
the British Government, having found that they can not rely
upon the native Egyptians for the protection of the country, are
drilling the negroes from the interior of Africa as soldiers, so the
celebrated inscription of Prince Una, as far back as the sixth
dynasty, speaks of the Maksi or negroes levied and drilled by
tens of thousands for the Egyptian army.

Take, next, engineering : here we find very early operations in
the way of canals, dikes, and great public edifices, so bold in con-
ception and thorough in execution as to fill our greatest engineers
of these days with astonishment. The quarrying, conveyance,
cutting, jointing, and polishing of the enormous blocks in the
interior of the Great Pyramid alone are the marvel of the fore-
most stone-workers of our century.

As regards architecture, we find not only the pyramids, which
date from the very earliest period of Egyptian history, and which
are to this hour the wonder of the world for size, for boldness, for
exactness, and for skillful contrivance, but also the temples with
long ranges of colossal columns wrought in polished granite, with
wonderful beauty of ornamentation, with architraves and roofs
vast in size and exquisite in adjustment, which by their propor-
tions tax the imagination, and lead the beholder to ask whether
all this can be real.

As to sculpture, we have not only the great Sphinx of Gizeh,
so wonderful by its boldness and plastic character, dating from

i54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the very first period of Egyptian history, but we have ranges of
sphinxes, heroic statues, and bas-reliefs, showing that even in the
early ages this branch of art had reached an amazing develop-
ment.

As regards the perfection of these, Lubke, the most eminent
German authority on plastic art, referring to the early works in
the tombs about Memphis, declares that, " as monuments of the
period of the fourth dynasty, they are an evidence of the high
perfection to which the sculpture of the Egyptians had attained."
Brugsch declares that " every artistic production of those early
days, whether picture, writing, or sculpture, bears the stamp of
the highest perfection in art." Maspero, the most eminent French
authority in this field, while expressing his belief that the Sphinx
was sculptured even before the time of Mena, declares that " the
art which conceived and carved this prodigious statue was a
finished art, an art which had attained self-mastery and was sure
of its effects " ; and Sir James Fergusson, the highest English au-
thority, declares, " We are startled to find Egyptian art nearly as
perfect in the oldest periods as in any of the later."

The evidence as to the high development of Egyptian sculpture
in the earlier dynasties becomes every day more overwhelming.
What exquisite genius the early Egyptian sculptors showed in
their lesser statues is known to those who have seen those most
precious specimens in the Boulak Museum at Cairo, which were
wrought before the conventional type was adopted in obedience
to religious considerations.

Take, next, decorative and especially ceramic art : as early as
the fourth and fifth dynasties we have vases, cups, and other ves-
sels showing exquisite beauty of outline and a general sense of
form equal to Etruscan and Grecian work of the best periods.

Take, next, astronomy : to say nothing of the other evidences of
a long development of thought in this field, we may go back to
the very earliest period of Egyptian civilization, and we find that
the four sides of the Great Pyramid are adjusted to the cardinal
points with the utmost precision. " The day of the equinox can be
taken by observing the sun set across the face of the pyramid,
and the neighboring Arabs adjust their astronomical dates by its
shadow."

The same view is confirmed by philologists. To use words of
Max Diincker : " The oldest monuments of Egypt, and they are the
oldest, monuments in the world, exhibit the Egyptian in possession
of the art of writing." It is found also by the inscriptions of the
early dynasties that the Egyptian language had even at. that early
time been developed in all essential particulars to the highest
point it ever attained. What long periods it must have required
for such a development every scholar in philology can imagine.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 155

As regards medical science, we have the Berlin papyrus, which,
although of a later period, refers with careful specification to a
medical literature of the first dynasty.

So, too, as regards archaeology : the earliest known inscrip-
tions point to still earlier events and buildings, indicating a long
sequence of previous events. *

And, finally, as to all that pertains to the history of civiliza-
tion, no man of fair and open mind can go into the museums of
Boulak or the Louvre or the British Museum and look at the
monuments of those earlier dynasties without seeing in them the
results of a development in art, science, laws, customs, and lan-
guage, which must have required a vast period before the time of
Mena for their development. And this conclusion is forced upon
us all the more invincibly when we consider the slow growth of
ideas in the earlier stages of civilization as compared with the
later — a slowness of growth which has kept the natives in many
parts of the world in that earliest civilization to this hour. To
this we must add the fact that Egyptian civilization was espe-
cially immobile; its development into castes is but one among
many evidences that it was the very opposite of a civilization
developed rapidly.

As to the length of the period before the time of Mena, there is,
of course, nothing exact. Manetho gives lists of great personages
before that first dynasty extending over twenty-four thousand
years. Bunsen, one of the most learned of Christian scholars, de-
clares that not less than ten thousand years were necessary for the
development of civilization up to the point where we find it in
Mena's time. No one can claim precision for either of these state-
ments, but they are valuable as showing the impression of vast
antiquity made upon the most competent judges by the careful
study of those remains. No unbiased judge can doubt that an
immensely long period of years must have been required for the
development of civilization up to the state in which we there
find it.

The investigations in the bed of the Nile confirm these views.
That some unwarranted conclusions have at times been an-
nounced is true ; but the fact remains that again and again rude
pottery and other evidences of early stages of civilization have
been found in borings at places so distant from each other, and at
depths so great, that for such a range of concurring facts, consid-
ered in connection with the rate of earthy deposit by the Nile,
there is no adequate explanation save the existence of man in that
valley thousands on thousands of years before the longest time
admitted by our sacred chronologists.

Nor have these investigations been of a careless character. Be-
tween the years 1851 and 1854, Mr. Horner, an extremely cautious

i56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

English, geologist, sank ninety-six shafts in f our rows at intervals
of eight English miles, at right' angles to the Nile, in the neigh-
borhood of Memphis. From these pottery was brought up from
various depths, and beneath the statue of Rameses II at Mem-
phis at a depth of thirty-nine feet. At the rate of the Nile de-
posit a careful estimate has declared this to indicate a period of
over eleven thousand years. As eminent a German authority in
geography as Peschel characterizes objections to such deductions
as groundless. However this may be, the general results of these
investigations, taken in connection with the other results of re-
search, are most convincing.

And, finally, as if to make assurance doubly sure, a series of
archaeologists of the highest standing, French, German, English,
and American, have within the past twenty years discovered relics
of a savage period, of vastly earlier date than the time of Mena,
prevailing throughout Egypt. These relics have been discovered
in various parts of the country, from Cairo to Luxor, in great
numbers. They are the same sort of prehistoric implements
which prove to us the early existence of man in so many other
parts of the world at a geological period so remote that the figures
given by our sacred chronologists are but trivial. The last and
most convincing of these discoveries, that of flint implements in
the drift, far down below the tombs of early kings at Thebes, will
be referred to later. What such discoveries prove, we shall con-
sider in the next chapter.*

* As to Manetho, see for a very full account of his relations to other chronologists,
Palmer, " Egyptian Chronicles," vol. i, chap. ii. For a more recent and readable account,
see Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, English edition, London, 1879, chap. iv. For
lists of kings at Abydos and elsewhere, also the lists of architects, see Brugsch, Pahner»
Mariette, and others ; also illustrations in Lepsius. For the various race types given
on early monuments, see the colored engravings in Lepsius, Denkmaler ; also Prisse
d'Avennes, and the frontispiece in the English edition of Brugsch ; see also statement re-
garding the same subject in Tylor, Anthropology, chap. i. For the fullness of development
in Egyptian civilization in the earliest dynasties, see Rawlinson's Egypt, London, 1881,
chap, xiii ; also Brugsch and other works cited. For the perfection of Egyptian engineer-
ing, I rely not merely upon my own observation, but on what is far more important, the tes-
timony of my friend the Hon. J. G. Batterson, probably the largest and most experienced
worker in granite in the United States, who acknowledges, from personal observation, that
the early Egyptian work is, in boldness and perfection, far beyond anything known since,
and a source of perpetual wonder to him. As to the perfection of Egyptian architecture,
see very striking statements in Fergusson, History of Architecture, Book I, chap. i. As
to the pyramids, showing a very high grade of culture already reached under the earliest
dynasties, see Liibke, " Ges. der Arch.," Book I. As to sculpture, see for representations
photographs published by the Boulak Museum, and such works as the Description de
l'Egypte, Lepsius's Denkmaler, and Prisse d'Avennes ; see also as a most valuable small
work, easy of access, Maspero, Archaeology, translated by Miss A. B. Edwards, New York
and London, 1887, chaps, i and ii. See especially in Prisse, vol. ii, the statue of Chafre
the Scribe, and the group of u Tea " and his wife. As to the artistic value of the Sphinx,
see Maspero, as above, pp. 202, 203. See also similar ideas in Liibke's History of Sculpt-

GLASS-MAKING. 1 5 7

GLASS-MAKING.

By C. HANFORD HENDERSON,

PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY IN THE PHILADELPHIA MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOL.

IV. — IN THE ATELIER OF A GLASS-WORKER.

THERE are few objects of manufacture which better than
glass illustrate the immense preponderance in value of hu-
man labor over crude material. It is a substance which might
serve economists as a parallel to their favorite illustration of the
comparative values of a steel watch-spring and the bit of iron-
bearing earth from which it is wrought.

In the case of glass, the crude materials are so plentifully dis-
tributed in nature as to be almost valueless. The basis of the
compound, sand, is so very abundant that it has furnished the
symbol, in more than one parable, for quantity without limit.
Like the unnumbered sands of the sea was a vast promise to
the children of men. Somewhat less abundant than the sand are
the other chemicals which it is necessary to mix with it in order
to produce that double silicate which goes under the general name
of glass. They are, however, far from being either scarce or ex-
pensive. The alkaline ingredient, the carbonate of soda, is made
from common salt, a mineral whose wide distribution in nature is
at once apparent when one recalls the fact that the sea, thirty or
forty times in bulk the total elevated mass of the earth, is one-
vast storehouse of the substance ; that salt springs or brines
abound at our very doors — in New York State, in Michigan, and
in Virginia ; and that vast deposits of the solid rock-salt are to be
found in Louisiana and Prussia. The third ingredient, the lime,
is simply calcined limestone, a rock which forms whole ranges of
hills, and is found in every corner of the globe. For the produc-
tion of the fine flint glass, or crystal, which forms the special sub-
ject of the glass- worker's skill, it is also necessary to add a fourth
ingredient, red lead or minium. As this is the oxide of an easily

ure, vol. i, p. 24. As to astronomical knowledge evidenced by the Great Pyramid, see
Tylor, as above, p. 21. For delineations of vases, etc., showing Grecian proportion and
beauty of form under the fourth and fifth dynasties, see Prisse, vol. ii, Art Industriel.
As to the philological question, and the development of language in Egypt, with the hiero-
glyphic system of writing, see Rawlinson's Egypt, London, 1881, chap, xiii; also Le Nor-
mant; also Max Diincker, Geschichte des Alterthums, Abbot's translation, 1877. As to
the medical papyrus of Berlin, see Brugsch, vol. i, p. 58, but especially the Papyrus Ebers.
As to the corruption of later copies of Manetho and fidelity of originals as attested by the
monuments, see Brugsch, chap. iv. As to the accuracy of the present Egyptian chronology
as regards long periods, see ibid., vol. i, chap, xxxii. As to the pottery found deep in the
Nile and the value of Horner's discovery, see Peschel, Races of Man, New York, 1876, pp.
42-44. For succinct statement, see also Laing, Problems of the Future, p. 94.
vol. XXXVII. — 12

i58

THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MOXTHLY.

reducible and useful metal, it is naturally considerably more ex-
pensive than the earthy ingredients, but its cost is still far within
the limits of moderation. The Rocky Mountains and the Missis-
sippi Valley furnish lead ores in such abundance that the com-
pounds of the metal may fairly be classed among cheap products.
The total cost of the "batch" can not be more than a few cents
a pound. Compare this with the value of the finished products.
The finer cut glass will sell for perhaps as many dollars a pound,
while the finest cameo glass may bring almost as many hundred,
It must not be supposed, however, that the difference, or even the

Fig. 1.— The Glass-Cctter at his Wheel.

greater part of it, goes into the pocket of the manufacturer. A
fair proportion reaches that destination, but by far the larger
share goes for meat and bread and coal, houses and cloth, to sus-
tain the life of the army of men, women, and children by whose
labor these dull earths and oxides are transformed into the brill-
iant carafes and bowls which adorn our dinner-table-.

Much the greater part of this increased value is conferred upon
the glass by the dexterous hand-work expended in the atelier,
rather than by the coarser operations which attend the furnace
proee— This, however, is the basis of all that follows, and the
beginnings of the finest cut-glass bowl or cameo vase are to be
sought in the mixing-room, where the crude materials are put
together. In different establishments the proportions vary, as
in the manufacture of all other forms of glass products, and
even in the same establishment uniformity is far from absolute.

GLASS-MAKING. 159

Although, glass is supposed to be a fairly definite chemical com-
pound, each manufacturer has his own notions on the subject,
and occasionally he changes his mind, or perhaps his supplies
come from a different locality. The result, in either case, would
be a slight change in the composition of the batch. A typical
mixture would be for every hundred parts of fine white sand
about forty parts of alkali (carbonate of soda), ten parts of burned
lime, and forty parts of red lead.

It will be noticed that the batch is essentially different from
that used in the manufacture of window and Of bottle glass. It
differs both in the character and the quality of the materials em-
ployed. The ingredients common to the several mixtures must
be much purer for use in the production of table and household
glassware of the finer grades. Care is taken that the sand shall
contain no iron ; and, in order to free it from any admixture of
loam or other disadvantageous earthy materials, it is subjected to
a washing process before it is brought to the mixing-room. By
this treatment the more finely divided matter, such as clay and
the like, is carried off with the water, while the coarser sand settles
to the bottom of the washing-troughs. Further, in the selection
of the alkali, the cheaper sulphate of soda is never substituted for
the carbonate, as is frequently done in the manufacture of bottles.

In the processes of the atelier the competition is a question of
quality rather than of quantity. The element of human labor is
so large that it would not be economical to expend it upon an in-
ferior grade of glass. The workers, or rather the men who direct
them, go on the principle of those wise domestic economists who
reflect that the cost of labor in making up clothing is approxi-
mately constant, and who therefore do not feel that they can
afford to buy shoddy.

The earthy materials — sand, alkali, and lime — give substance
and transparency. Fused together, they form ordinary glass.
The additional ingredient, the red lead, has a special function to
perform It has for its immediate object an increase in the weight
of the glass ; and since in general an increase in weight means
an increase in refracting power, its ultimate object is an additional
brilliancy in the product. Every one has noticed the heaviness
of cut glass ; or, if he has not, and enters a shop to buy a piece of
it, the shop-keeper is very apt to call his attention to the fact —
particularly if the price be correspondingly heavy — assuming that
weight is an undeniable guarantee of quality and brilliancy. If
you object to the price, he puts the piece into your hands and
says confidingly, " Just feel the weight of it ! * The argument is
a pertinent one, but not altogether conclusive, for there are many
other elements besides weight upon which the merit of the prod-
uct depends. It is quite possible to have the glass too heavy for

i6o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

beauty, since the dense lead compounds have a tendency to sepa-
rate from the lighter silicates, and, consequently, if present in too
large amounts, they make the glass streaky and mottled. In gen-
eral, lead glass for domestic uses has a specific gravity of from
three to four — that is, it is from three to four times as heavy as
an equal bulk of water. The brilliancy given to the glass by its
increased density has attached the name crystal to this particular
product.

It is essential that the several ingredients should be thoroughly
mixed, and to this end the operation is carried out mechanically.

The materials are fed
into the upper end
of a slowly revolving
hopper, whose axis is
slightly inclined to
the horizontal, and
are thoroughly mixed
by the time they reach
the discharging end.
A dainty pink pow-
der falls into the re-
ceiving bins. Its sub-
sequent baptism by
fire transforms the
opaque into the trans-
parent. The furnaces
employed for this
purpose are of the
type common to other
glass-melting process-
es— simply a circular
and intensely heated
chamber, surmounted
by a stack, and pro-
vided with radial openings to permit the blowers to dip their blow-
pipes into the molten contents of the fire-clay crucible-pots.

The scene around this industrial caldron is quite as busy as
that which has its center in the bottle furnace, and is even more
varied. The workers are fashioning objects of the most diverse
shape and for the most unlike purposes. Some are blowing lamp-
chimneys, others gaslight globes, or decanters or dishes. In the
center of the apartment a large press, with engraved steel dies, is
squeezing the plastic " metal " — for so the glass-blower designates
his still fluid glass — into decorative panels for car-windows and
transoms. As one passes from one end of the large room to the
other, he will see almost every conceivable shape in glass, suited

Fig. 2.— The Process of Engraving on Glass.

GLASS-MAKING.

161

for table or other domestic usage, taking form in the hands of the
adroit workers. It is the scene of an intense and a highly ingen-
ious activity. The bottles and dishes and globes intended for sub-
sequent treatment in the atelier are all blown, the manipulations
being varied in accordance with the special form it is desired to
produce. As a rule, it may be said that it is cheaper to produce
the pressed glass than the blown, since less time is required in
fashioning the articles;
but for the finer work
the blown is always
preferred, as glass
worked exclusively in
the air has a much
more brilliant surface
than that which has
been formed in con-
tact with the faces of
the iron mold. The
plain articles thus
shaped are known in
the trade as " blanks."
The largest manufact-
urers of cut and en-
graved glass also make
their own blanks, but
there are a number of
establishments which
confine themselves ex-
clusively to the proc-
esses of ornamentation.
The articles intended
for such decoration go
from the blower to the
annealing leer, where they are permitted to pass through a cham-
ber of brick- work some sixty to eighty feet long, subjected to a
gradually decreasing temperature for a period of twenty-four
hours or less, according to the circumstances of the work. The
articles to be annealed are placed in wrought-iron cars, and are
slowly moved through the leer, coming out perfectly cold.

It is in this way that the blanks are prepared for the atelier
proper. Here one finds a number of very interesting operations
going on side by side. The untechnical visitor will perhaps be
most attracted by the cutting process, since the results are so
brilliant, and the articles possess so staple a value. He will get a
good insight into the general principles by following the process
of cutting a carafe.

Fig. 3.— The Operation of making Ground Glass Globes.

i6z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The blank itself is perfectly plain — a simple, heavy bottle with
smooth surface. Its proportions are good. The decoration is to
consist of a twenty-fonr-pointed star on the bottom, a series of
more or less complicated diagonal cuttings on the bulging sides,
and six or eight broad facets around the neck. To these may be
added a number of features of less prominence, such as a series of
oval facets around the base of the carafe, and some smaller cut-
tings at the top. It is the glass-worker's custom to begin with the
star on the bottom. This is cut entirely by the eye, no design
being traced on the glass. The first process is known technically
as " roughing " it, and consists in cutting the design in the glass
with coarse tools, which leave rough facets, but remove most of
the glass to be cut away. The roughing- wheel is made of iron,
and is about two feet in diameter. It is mounted on a horizonal
axis. The face of the wheel is about seven eighths of an inch
broad, and is kept supplied with a mixture of coarse sand and
water allowed to constantly drip upon it from a hopper above.
The wheel makes about a thousand revolutions a minute, the
speed varying with the character of the work to be done. It is
slower for the deeper cuttings. The workman seizes the carafe
with both hands, and presses the bottom firmly against the edge'
of the rotating wheel, making a cut across the center, and as far
each way as it is desired to have the star extend. Then he turns
the carafe around one sixth of a revolution, and makes a similar
cut through the center, judging of the distance entirely by his
eye. A second turn of one sixth of a revolution, and a third
cut along a diameter is made. This gives a six-pointed star.
The intervening spaces are then divided by similar cuts, and
the spaces thus formed again divided, giving a twenty -four-
pointed star.

A tyro in the art would make a very poor figure of it, but the
regular cutters become exceedingly expert, and are able to make
comparatively perfect designs in this seemingly off-hand fashion.
A trained eye will, of course, have no difficulty in detecting inac-
curacies, but the designs are symmetrical enough for all purposes
of decoration,

The cutting does not yet possess much beauty, for its faces are
as rough as ground glass. Already, however, it begins to show
the promise of what it is to be. In treating the bulging sides of
the carafe, greater difficulties present themselves in disposing the
pattern symmetrically. It is, therefore, the custom to paint a
number of guiding lines on the surface of the glass. A few cir-
cular lines surrounding the carafe, and a few up-and-down lines
afford a series of intersections which are sufficient to enable the
cutter to develop a uniform pattern. In the same way the facets
surrounding the neck are determined by a couple of limiting cir-

GLASS-MAKING.

163

cles, and similarly with the secondary part of the decoration.
This completes the rough work.

The second process is that of " smoothing/' and is carried out by
means of wheels made of a natural stone found in Scotland, known
as the Craig Leigh stone. A large part of modern Edinburgh is
built out of this material. It is a compact silicious stone, wearing
very uniformly, and almost free from that tendency to crumble
which characterizes the majority of our native sandstones. The
stone wheels are about the same size as the iron wheels used in the
roughing process ; but their cutting edges, instead of being smooth,
are beveled, thus giving a sharp edge in the center of the face.
This is occasionally
sharpened by regrind-
ing, or by holding
pieces of flint against
the beveled faces of
the revolving wheel.
A tiny stream of wa-
ter falls constantly
against the face of the
stone. Each cut made
on the iron wheel is
gone over on the stone,
and, by the finer fric-
tion, the surface of the
facets becomes smooth
and transparent. The
carafe is slowly be-
coming an object of
beauty.

Next in the order
of the processes comes
the polishing, which
is effected by wooden
wheels mounted as be-
fore and supplied with
pumice or rotten-stone.
Red willow is considered the best material for the polishing-wheel,
though poplar is also frequently used. The hard woods are found
to be less suitable for the purpose. The wooding — for so this third
process is called in the atelier — gives a fine finish to the smoothed
facets and adds greatly to their brilliancy. It is a process, how-
ever, which is only practicable in cases where the cutting is rather
deep. "Where it amounts to little more than a tracing, the wooden
wheel would be of slight use.

Still a fourth process is required before the carafe is ready to

Fig. 4. — The Sand-Blast in Operation.

164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be washed and placed on sale. It is that of brushing. The brush
is made of spun glass, and is applied in the form of a wheel as a
burnisher. Those who have seen gilt used in china-painting will
recall the pencils of spun glass with which the gilding is bur-
nished after being fired. The rapidly revolving brush of glass
cleans out the cuttings more perfectly than could be done in any
other way, and adds the final luster to the facets. The carafe is
now completed. Other articles are cut in much the same way,
slight modifications being made to suit different shapes and pat-
terns.

At the present time very good copies of cut-glass articles are
made in pressed goods, and at about one twentieth of the cost ;
but the difference between the two products can readily be de-
tected. Not only are the pressed goods less brilliant, but the
edges of their facets are visibly rounded from the fusion, and fail
to give the sharp, clear faces of the genuine cut glass. One can
tell the fine article at once by simply rubbing his finger over the
cutting. The sharp edges of the genuine article are unmistaka-
ble. Another attempt to combine beauty and economy is made
by cutting some prominent feature of a pressed-glass article, and
letting the brilliancy thus obtained make amends for the duller
facets of the less exposed portions. In this way pressed-glass de-
canters are made quite presentable by being supplied with well-
cut stoppers, and covered dishes pass muster through the merit of
their brilliant knobs. Still another device is that of grinding off
the faces of pressed-glass goods, and thus securing, as the result of
a much cheaper process, the sharp edges and well -polished faces of
the real cut glass. The process, however, is not a very successful
one. It sounds better than it works out in practice. Wares
treated in this way have the serious defect of lacking brill-
iancy when compared to the air-blown glass and entire cutting.
They are now made in but small quantity, for they can not com-
pete in public estimation with the ordinary pressed goods, since
they cost about five times as much, and are far from being five
times as effective.

In the most artistic circles there is at present a slight reaction
against cut glass in favor of the light and graceful articles made
in blown glass. But meanwhile the sale of cut glass grows larger
each year, for the improvements in the method of production
bring it within reach of an increasingly wide circle of buyers.
It promises to remain a standard article of manufacture, for its
brilliancy will always attract admirers, and any disappearance
will be but temporary. The old-fashioned chandeliers and cande-
labra, made with pendants of cut glass, are pushed out of the
market by newer metallic goods, only to periodically reappear
from their obscurity.

GLASS-MAKING.

165

Alongside of the cutter's wheel one sees a corner of the atelier
devoted to a species of cutting in miniature, which goes under
the name of engraving. The cutting instrument is a small cop-
per disk, sometimes as tiny as a dentist's tool, and sometimes sev-
eral inches in diameter. It is mounted with its axis horizontal,
and is made to rotate very rapidly. The cutting is lone under-

pin. 5.— The Printed Designs, ready for Transference to the Glass, in the Etching

Process.

hand, instead of overhand, as in the former operation, which
means, in the language of the outside world, that the article to he
engraved is brought into contact with the rotating disk from be-
neath, instead of being pressed against its upper surface. The
disk is supplied with a mixture of emery and oil. This is the real
cutting agent ; the disk simply applies it. In almost all cases the
work is done solely by the eye, without any guiding lines what-

166 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ever. Frequently the engraver originates his pattern as he goes
along — a species of improvising which is quite full of interest to
an on-looker. In time the men become very skillful in this sort
of work, and are quite ready in thinking out new designs. It is
entirely a matter of experience, the work depending largely on a
nice sense of touch, since the glass is for the most part obscured
by the spattered emery and oil. In this way geometric designs
of considerable complication, wreaths and flowers, birds, fishes,
and dragons, are traced on goblets and other table-ware, as well
as on globes and similar articles. It is also the process by which
initials and monograms are cut on glass, and its frequent appli-
cation for this purpose is familiar to every one who is not near-
sighted.

The tracery is accomplished sooner than one would fancy. As
a rule, it is used in connection with some other form of ornamen-
tation. Frequently in the case of globes there is a light tracery
around the central portion, and plain bands at the top and bot-
tom. These are put on very expeditiously, and, consequently, at
little cost. The process is known technically as " obscuring."
The globes are mounted on a lathe over a sand-box, being fastened
between plates of cork in order that they shall not be fractured
by the jar. The workman presses a bundle of soft, annealed
iron wire against the surface of the quickly rotating globe, and,
almost in less time than it takes one to tell about it, the band is
completed. The band at the other end of the globe is put on in
the same way. If two parallel bands are to be put on near to-
gether, the bundle of wire is in two parts, and both bands are
made at the same time. The wires simply determine where the
obscuring shall be. The real grinding is done by the sand and
water with which the surface of the globe is kept constantly sup-
plied. By using a larger bundle of wire, and passing it over the
entire surface of the globe, the obscuring is made complete, and
we have the so-called ground-glass globe.

The obscuring process is used in connection with both cutting
and engraving, a design frequently being brought out much more
beautifully by reason of the obscured or translucent background.
In this case, however, the cut pattern must not be subjected to
the final brushing process, for the glass brush would smooth the
obscured surface and give it the almost transparent character
displayed by ground glass when moistened with oil or water.
The effect would be to make the portion of the glass around the
cutting look constantly wet — an undesirable form of decoration.
Some of the most pleasing designs are thus produced by a com-
bination of two or more processes. However fully and artistically
a plain glass globe may be decorated, there is apt to be an un-
pleasant effect of thinness of design from the unrestricted pas-

GLASS-MAKING.

167

sage of the light through the transparent portions. But by ob-
scuring the entire surface of * the globe, and then cutting even a
very modest design upon the background so prepared, the result
is much more effective. The transmitted light, from its subdued
character, is also more agreeable. The cutting is done in the so-
called " mud-box " — a designation which has arisen from the fact
that the spent sand or mud from the cutting of heavier articles is
here utilized.

. Fig. 6.— Printing the Designs and Wrapping the Globes, prior to the Etching.

These processes are all purely mechanical. They depend upon
the direct friction between the glass and the abrading powder, or
between the glass and the cutting stone, as in the case of the
smoothing process. It is possible, however, to bring about this
grinding action by less direct pressure. One of these indirect
methods — the sand-blast — deserves particular mention, both be-
cause of its commercial importance and because of its ingenuity.
Some years ago there was published a book which pointed out,
with more or less cunning, a prototype in nature for nearly all
our mechanical devices. The author did not, I believe, mention
the sand-blast, but he might well have done so, for it is a direct
imitation, though perhaps an unconscious one, of a process which
Nature has been using very effectively ever since the first blast
of wind carried the earliest sand-grains against the Eozoic rocks.
This natural sand-blast has done not a little in altering the ap-
pearance of the face of the earth. In the Rocky Mountains there
are many curiously sculptured rocks in the comparatively rain-
less districts, which owe their carving almost entirely to this

1 68

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

-■ -

~~

agency. Still more striking, perhaps, has been the effect of blow-
ing sand upon the monuments of antiquity. Those who have seen
the Obelisk, in Central Park, New York, or have read descriptions
of it, will probably recall the fact that on those sides which were
originally exposed to the desert wind the hieroglyphics have
been entirely worn off by the grinding action of centuries of blow-
ing sand. The action is precisely the same in the atelier, except
as to the matter of time. A strong blast of air, charged with par-
ticles of sharp, clean sand, will obscure a plain glass surface in
the course of a few seconds. It is applied very ingeniously. The
design to be traced on the glass is cut out of soft rubber, and the
stencil thus formed is held firmly against the surface. The blast
of sand-carrying air is secured by means of an exhaust, and is so

arranged that it may
be made to enter a
sheet-iron box placed
so that its upper sur-
face shall be at about
the level of an ordi-
nary table. There is
a round opening in
the top of the box,
somewhat larger
than the pattern to
be ground, but not
so large as the sheet
of rubber in which it
is cut. Glass and rub-
ber are then pressed
against the opening,
and, by means of a
pedal, the blast is
turned on. In a very
¥§j short time, scarcely
more than five or ten
seconds, the blast is
turned off, and the
stenciled pattern is
found ground on the
glass. So quickly
does the blast do its work that the capacity of the machine may
be said to be limited only by the speed with which the operator
can adjust things.

The action of the blast is rather interesting. The soft-rubber
stencils will endure many exposures, while the hard flint glass is
perceptibly worn away in a few seconds. The reason of this is

Fig. 7.— The Process of Etching.

GLASS-MAKING. 169

that the little particle of moving sand can not be brought to rest
immediately. However quickly its flight is arrested, there is an
appreciable interval of time during which its motion must be
parted with. Striking against the soft and flexible rubber, the
sand is brought to rest gradually, for the rubber is sufficiently de-
pressed by the Lilliputian blow to dispose of the motion stored up
in the particle. When, however, the sand strikes against the
hard and rigid glass, there is no giving way possible. The grains
must either stop instantly or else they must penetrate between
the molecules of the glass. In the latter case they would natu-
rally detach little fragments in sufficient number to roughen the
surface of the glass and make ■ it translucent. Experience shows
that this is precisely what happens. If the naked hand be held
over the blast, a pricking sensation is felt, but the skin is not
broken ; it is too pliable. Thin sheet-iron stencils are sometimes
substituted for those of rubber ; their elasticity makes them fairly
durable.

The sand-blast was invented by an American, but, as the origi-
nal patent has expired, any one is at liberty to use the machine.
The inventor has since made a number of modifications and im-
provements, which are protected by subsequent patents. The
newer form is used, I believe, more in England than in this coun-
try— not so much from a failure on our part to appreciate its
merits, as from a dislike of the peculiar royalty arrangements.
The machines are sold, and a certain royalty charged each week,
whether the works are running or not. As such an arrangement
makes the expense a constant quantity, while the income is a
variable, it is not acceptable to the majority of American glass-
workers.

Other agents besides mechanical find employment in the atelier.
One of the properties of glass which makes it most highly es-
teemed, in both the household and the laboratory, is its almost
total indifference at ordinary temperatures to acids and other cor-
rosive chemicals. It is slightly acted upon by the strongest sul-
phuric acid and by steam under great pressure, but only after the
lapse of considerable time. There are few substances, however,
which are not, Achilles-like, vulnerable in some one particular. In
the case of glass, the effective solvent is the comparatively rare
compound, hydrofluoric acid. It is not strange, therefore, that in
the numerous manipulations to which glass is subjected this fact
should be utilized. It forms the basis of the one chemical process
of the atelier, that of etching. It is a process readily and cheaply
carried out, and from its effectiveness it is one of increasing im-
portance. The piece of glassware to be treated is protected, in
those parts which it is desired shall not be acted upon by the acid,
by some substance indifferent to it, such as wax, paraffin, or a

170

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

specially prepared ink. The parts not coated are thus the only
ones exposed when the piece is phinged into the bath of hydro-
fluoric acid. They are soon bitten by the acid, and in this way the
design is traced upon the glass. As globes for lamps and gas are
the subjects most frequently chosen for this treatment, the process
can, perhaps, best be understood by following such an article
through the several stages of its decorative development. The
designs are adapted from a variety of sources. The draughtsman
is supplied with drawing-books containing examples of conven-
tionalized flowers. From this unit he works out a design of
proper size and shape — that is, something which when wrapped
around the globe shall cover just one half of it, and so, by repeti-
tion, the whole. He traces his designs on a panel of heavy plate

Pig. 8. — Four Stages : To the right, the plain ground globe ; then the globe wrapped in printed
paper; next, the printed globe, with the paper removed; and finally, to the left, the finished
product.

glass. The surface is coated with a special ink made of lamp-
black, rosin, and wax, and the design then picked out by means of
a sharp tool. The plate, thus prepared, is subjected to the action
of a strongly acid bath of hydrofluoric acid for a period of from
fifteen to twenty minutes. The uncovered parts of the plate are
deeply eaten away. The ink is then washed off, and the plate is
ready to print from. Frequently designs are etched on both sides
of the panel, both for economy of material and of storage.

The printing is done on a simple engraver's press, the im-
pressions being taken upon smooth, white paper, somewhat heavier
than tissue. As the ink used for the purpose has a decided tend-

GLASS-MAKING. 1 7 1

ency to become stiff and unmanageable in the cold, a gas-flame is
kept constantly burning under the engraving plate. The sheets
of paper as they come from the press are covered with a thick
layer of ink in those portions which correspond to the parts of the
globe not to be etched. While still fresh, the printed sheets are
passed to a girl sitting at a neighboring table. She cuts off the
superfluous paper surrounding the design, and wraps the print
around the globe to be treated. A second print serves to cover the
globe completely. The paper is pressed tightly against the glass,
and the wrapped-up globe then warmed over a gas-stove for a few
moments. The paper is left on for a day or so, and when it is
finally removed the design is found transferred to the glass. It
will be seen that the process is not unlike that by which in former
years decalcomania were attached to china and marble, to their
supposed ornamentation.

The globe is now a study in black and white, and is ready for
the etching proper.

The acid-room — for such is the name applied to the apartment
where the etching process is carried out — is a truly villainous place.
The atmosphere is so charged with hydrofluoric acid that* it has a
sharp smell and a most irritating effect upon the bodily economy
generally. The instantaneous photograph of the bath had to be
taken with more than customary expedition, lest the ninety-dollar
lens in use should be fouled by the fumes. The man in charge of
the process wears rubber gloves, and has his face partially pro-
tected from the fumes by a thick, bluish- white ointment. His ap-
pearance, in consequence, is far from prepossessing. The protec-
tion, however, is of a very superficial character. It leaves the
eyes and the breathing apparatus entirely exposed. The operators
soon show the ravages of the unwholesome atmosphere. Poor,
pale ghosts of men, with red and blinking eyes, one wonders that,
in a world so full of wholesome activities, they should be willing
to sacrifice the best part of themselves in such an unnecessary
cause. It is one of the saddest features of modern industrial life
that things become so vastly more important than men, that both
employers and employed — the responsibility is a joint one — come
to look upon the ledger account as the first consideration and man-
hood the second. Dainty as are the products of this industrial-
ism, I find myself taking less pleasure in them as I go more among
the workers, and see what a price of dull routine and unwhole-
some labor is paid for the wares. If beautiful things are neces-
sarily the product of unbeautiful lives, I am quite willing to forego
the things. Under the present industrial regime, one feels almost
an accessory to the degradation of human life if he purchase arti-
cles made on a large scale under the factory system. Morally,
there is complicity, however unwilling we may be to admit it. It

172

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is a question worth considering whether political freedom and
industrial slavery represent an ideal with which any people may
worthily remain content. An industrialism is conceivable, with
hours so reasonable and conditions so wholesome that the lives
of the workers shall be as beautiful as the wares they produce.
Whether this will result from the present competitive system car-
ried to its extreme, or from a substituted co-operative system, re-
mains to be seen. In the atelier, the main process in operation is
the transformation of moving, human energy into the stored-up

Fig. 9.— The Portland Vase.

energy represented by a highly wrought product. One may be
pardoned, then, if his thought turns occasionally upon the source
of the energy, the man. It is not an agreeable reflection to pre-
sent to the reader that the majority of our brothers in large cities
are living bitter, hateful lives, but I believe that it is a true one.
It is perhaps well to entertain the thought for a moment, since
our people, presumably sympathetic and compassionate, not only

GLASS-MAKING.

173

do not deplore this sacrifice of the best elements in human life,
but on the contrary hold up as an ideal for whose protection and
extension the national policy should chiefly exert itself, that very
industrialism under which this sacrifice takes place. Food, cloth-
ing, shelter, and the household goods and gods have value only
as they minister to human life. But, by a curious inversion, these
things are now held to be of greater importance than the life
which they were originally intended to conserve. The savagery
of modern times wears a different garb from that of the past, but
it is none the less of the essence.

But to return to the acid- worker, for his besmeared face and
irritated eyes are still before us. The three windows of the little
room in which he works are kept open winter and summer, in the
hope of diluting the poisonous fumes — a clumsy arrangement at
the best. It would be quite possible to have the atmosphere, if
not entirely wholesome, at least comparatively so, by placing the
acid bath directly under a good flue or exhaust, so that the escap-
ing fumes should be drawn off artificially. Every chemist's labo-
ratory contains such an evaporating closet.

The hydrofluoric acid employed for etching is a chemical un-
familiar to the majority of people. Its corrosive character, and
the fact that it has few common uses, preclude such an acquaint-
ance. The source of the acid, however, the mineral fluor-spar, is
quite abundant in nature. It is so beautiful a mineral, occurring
in nearly all the colors of the rainbow and in well-defined cubes
and octahedra, that it is given a prominent place in all mineral-
ogical cabinets. It is, therefore, probably better known than the
acid derived from it. The mineral itself is a fluoride of lime, and,
when treated with oil of vitriol, gives off fumes of hydrofluoric
acid. These are exceedingly soluble in water, forming the ordi-
nary hydrofluoric acid of commerce. The bath used in etching
the globes contains in addition a certain amount of oil of vitriol.
Glass plunged into such a bath will have its surface eaten away,
but will remain transparent. The wooden trough containing the
bath is from three to four feet long, and less than a square foot in
cross-section. Half a dozen globes are treated at a time. They
are mounted on a steel axle, separated from each other by washers
cut out of thick rubber. These serve the double purpose of pro-
tecting the glass from injury and of keeping the liquid out of the
interior. When the axle is put in place in the trough, the globes
are about half submerged in the bath. The axle is given a slow
rotary motion, and, at the end of about fifteen minutes, the etch-
ing is completed. The globes are removed from the bath, and an-
other axle carrying six fresh globes put in its place. The chemi-
cal action consists in the formation of gaseous fluoride of silicon,
the bath affording the fluorine and the glass the silicon. It is

VOL. XXXVII. — 13

i74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

rendered more complete and more uniform by the rotary move-
ment of the axle. The globes have now only to be washed, and
nothing further remains but to sell them. The etching process is
completed.

The solution of hydrofluoric acid leaves the etched portions of
the glass transparent ; but if some alkaline salt, such as ammonium
or potassium sulphate, be present in the bath, the etched portions
are rendered opaque. This reaction is utilized to obscure globes,
in place of the grinding process already described. The globes
have only to be dipped into such a bath for a moment or so, to be
thoroughly obscured. As both sides of the glass are acted upon,
the process of chemical obscuring is only used where the globe is
not to be further decorated. In this same department the opera-
tion of "bisquing" is being carried on. If opalescent glass or
colored translucent glass be dipped into such an alkaline bath for
a brief, time, it will take the dull finish characteristic of bisque.
Thousands of the so-called fairy lamps, in red and pink and blue
opalescent glass, are treated in this manner. Glass surfaces
which are subsequently to be painted on are also bisqued in order
to facilitate the process. A very brief immersion makes the sur-
face sufficiently rough to write on with an ordinary lead-pencil
without the least difficulty. The large white plaques exposed for
sale in the art-stores are prepared in this manner. The bath is
contained in large wooden tanks, and the articles are simply
dipped in by hand.

The products of all these processes — of cutting, engraving,
grinding, and etching — are all more or less beautiful. The highest
excellence is attained, however, when the several processes are
combined in the production of the once greatly admired cameo
glass. The best of this is now manufactured in England, but it
has also been made, though with less success, in America.

The prototype of this variety of glass is the celebrated Port-
land vase, with whose history and mishaps most people are famil-
iar. It was found about the sixteenth century in a sarcophagus
in the neighborhood of Rome, and for more than two centuries
adorned the salon of the Barberini family. When their collection
was sold, the vase was purchased by the Duchess of Portland, for
eighteen hundred and seventy-two pounds, and was loaned to the
British Museum. Even in such safe keeping it came very near
complete destruction at the hands of a madman named Lloyd,
who gave it a heavy blow with a stick. It has since been repaired
with such ingenuity that one can scarcely distinguish the numer-
ous fractures. The vase is supposed to date from the time of the
Antonines, and is one of the finest examples of ancient glass-mak-
ing extant. The body is of a deep-blue color and the raised
figures are of opaque white. For many years archaeologists be-

GLASS-MAKING, i75

lieved that the vase was made of onyx, and described it as a most
interesting cameo. It is now known to be made of glass composed
of two layers.

The Portland vase was a hint to the glass-makers, and one
that they made good use of. In the most elaborate examples of
the modern product three colors are employed, and the effect, if
the material has been judiciously managed, is exceedingly beau-
tiful.

A vase is the best type of the cameo glass, since the function
of the ware is almost wholly decorative. From beginning to end
the process is one of great ingenuity. The basis of the vase is
commonly of opalescent glass — that is, glass made opaque by the
presence of some finely ground but insoluble oxide, or some such
mineral as cryolite or fluor-spar. A lump of this glass is gathered
on the end of the blowpipe and formed into a symmetrical shape
by rolling on the marvering-table. It is then dipped at short in-
tervals into two baths of molten glass of the colors desired. The
composite lump is fashioned into shape by means of those various
manipulations which the glass-blowers perform so adroitly. This
gives a vase made up of three distinct layers of different colors.
Its subsequent treatment is both chemical and mechanical. The
design is painted on the glass by hand, or else transferred with
special care from freshly printed paper, as in the case of the
etched globes. The vase is then dipped into the bath of hydro-
fluoric acid and allowed to remain until both of the outer colors
on the exposed portions are eaten off. It is now taken out, the
ink washed off, and its subsequent treatment intrusted to the en-
graver. At this stage of the process only two out of the three
colors are plainly visible, the intermediate one being seen simply
as a colored line between the other two surfaces. By means of
the engraving-wheel the outline of the design is made more clear
cut, and enough of the outer layer removed to show the interme-
diate color as a delicate shading. An immense amount of work
can thus be put upon a comparatively small article, and the cost
meanwhile grows in proportion. Single pieces have been manu-
factured in England valued as high as two thousand dollars.

In spite of its great beauty and ingenuity, however, it is an
undeniable fact that the cameo glass is losing rather than gain-
ing in favor with the buying public. Some of the establishments
which formerly produced it have ceased to do so. Several causes
have been assigned for this lessened appreciation. Manufactur-
ers say that the cost has been so far reduced that the rich will
not buy it, and, in consequence, the middle classes no longer care
for it. But such is not the general course of events in industrial
matters, and the statement is to be taken with a grain of salt.
The probable trouble is, that some of the cameo-ware has been

i76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

produced in distressing colors and in unfortunate combinations.
Injudiciously managed, it is easily possible to produce meager
and inartistic effects. The average buyer has, therefore, been dis-
posed to reckon with himself that, dollar for dollar, he could get
more beauty elsewhere, and has accordingly gone there. The
intrinsic merit of the ware is such, however, that an early revival
of interest in it may be expected.

The processes of the atelier are much more varied than those
described. These special ones have been selected as being among
the most characteristic, particularly of American establishments.
Moreover, they are types, and have an independent interest as
ingenious adaptations of means to ends.

Before closing the door upon the atelier, the factor of its per-
sonnel deserves a moment's attention. I refer now to the work-
ers— not in their social or human capacity, but merely as mer-
chandise-producers. Their labor is expended almost exclusively
in the creation of supposed beauty. It is true that the work is
lavished for the most part upon objects of utility ; but still it
would all fall under the head of ornamentation, since the utili-
tarian quality in the products has been conferred elsewhere than
in the atelier. It is curious, then, in view of this end, to find the
workers of the most inartistic cult. In other departments of
glass-making, and notably in the production of picture-windows,
the possibilities of the material have attracted artists of the high-
est rank, and the results have been quite worthy of their effort.
No such artistic invasion has taken place in this department.
Considering the lives and training of the workers, the surprise is
that they have realized as much beauty as they have. There is
nothing in the atmosphere they breathe to cultivate such a senti-
ment. It is related of a celebrated Japanese cloissonne-msiker
that, having acquired a considerable sum of money from the sale
of some of his choice wares at one of the Paris expositions, he
expended the entire amount in the creation of a beautiful garden
around his work-rooms, believing that such an environment
would inspire his people to produce even more beautiful wares.
I presume that a spirit such as this is possible only where one
works for excellence rather than for money.

Accoeding to Dr. S. T. Hickson, a naturalist-traveler, the people of the island
of Sangir, near Celebes, suppose that, when a man is sick, his proper soul is driven
out of him and replaced by a saMt, or soul of sickness ; and they employ, to
eject the evil spirit, a means of mild persuasion. God-cages or god-canoes, made
of wood and ornamented with twigs and leaves, are hung up in the patient's dwell-
ing, in which the sakit, if pleased with the substance and design of the structure,
will take up its abode ; after which, it is supposed, the sick man will imme-
diately recover.

ATMOSPHERIC DUST. 177

ATMOSPHERIC DUST.*

By Db. WILLIAM MARCET, F. R. S.

THE infinitely small particles of matter we call dust, though
possessed of a form and structure which escape the naked
eye, play important parts in the phenomena of nature. A certain
kind of dust has the power of decomposing organic bodies and
bringing about in them definite changes known as putrefaction,
while other kinds exert a baneful influence on health, and act as
a source of infectious diseases. Again, from its lightness and
extreme mobility, dust is a means of scattering solid matter
over the earth. It may float in the atmosphere as mud does in
water, and, blown by the wind, will perhaps travel thousands of
miles before again alighting on the earth. Thus Ehrenberg, in
1828, detected in the air of Berlin the presence of organisms be-
longing to African regions ; and he found in the air of Portugal
fragments of infusoria from the prairies of America. The smoke
of the burning of Chicago was, according to Mr. Clarence King,
seen on the Pacific coast.

Dust is concerned in many interesting meteorological phenom-
ena, such as fogs, as it is generally admitted that fogs are due to
the deposit of moisture on atmospheric motes. Again, the scat-
tering of light depends on the presence of dust, as is shown in one
of Tyndall's interesting experiments. There is no atmosphere
without dust, although it varies much in quantity, from the
summit of the highest mountain, where the least is found, to the
low plains, at the sea-side level, where it occurs most abun-
dantly.

The origin of dust may be looked upon, without exaggeration,
as universal. Trees shed their bark and leaves, which are pow-
dered in dry weather and carried about by ever-varying currents
of air ; plants dry up and crumble into dust ; the skin of man and
animal is constantly shedding a fine material of a scaly form.
The ground in dry weather, high roads under a midsummer's
sun, emit clouds of dust consisting of very fine particles of earth.
The fine river and desert sand, a species of dust, is silica ground
down into a fine powder under the action of water. If the vege-
table and mineral world crumbles into dust, on the other hand
it is highly probable that dust was the original state of matter
before the earth and heavenly bodies were formed ; and here we
enter the region of theory and probabilities. While it is best to
avoid as much as possible stepping out of the track of known

* Abstract of an address delivered before the Royal Meteorological Society, January
15, 1890.

VOL. XXXVII. — 14

i78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

facts, there is a limit to physical observation, and in some cases
we can do no more than glance into the possible or probable
source of natural phenomena.

This has been done, as to the origin of the universe, by Prof.
Norman Lockyer, in his article on the History of a Star. The
author proposes there to clear in our imagination a limited part
of space, and then set possible causes to work : that dark void
will sooner or later be filled with some form of matter so fine that
it is impossible to give it a chemical name ; but the matter will
eventually condense into a kind of dust mixed with hydrogen gas,
and constitute what are called nebulae. These nebulae are found
by spectrum analysis to be made up of known substances, which
are magnesium, carbon, oxygen, iron, silicon, and sulphur. This
dust comes down to us in a tangible form — dust shed from the
sky on the earth, and large masses, magnificent specimens of
meteorites, which have fallen from the heavens at different times,
some of them weighing tons. There are swarms of dust traveling
through space, and their motion may be gigantic. From photo-
graphs taken of the stars and nebulae, we are entitled to conclude
that the swarms of dust meet and interlace each other, becoming
raised by friction and collision to a very high temperature, and
giving rise to what looks like a star. The light would last so long
as the swarms collide, but would go out should the collision fail ;
or, again, such a source of supply of heat may be withdrawn by
the complete passage of one stream of dust-swarms through an-
other. We shall, therefore, have various bodies in the heavens,
suddenly or gradually increasing or decreasing in brightness,
quite irregularly, unlike those other bodies where we get a pe-
riodical variation in consequence of the revolution of one of them
round the other. Hence, as Mr. Lockyer expresses it, " it can not
be too strongly insisted upon that the chief among the new ideas
introduced by the recent work is that a great many stars are not
stars like the sun, but simply collections of meteorites, the par-
ticles of which may be probably thirty, forty, or fifty miles apart."
These swarms of dust undergo condensation by attraction or gravi-
tation ; they will become hotter and brighter as their volume de-
creases, and we shall pass from the nebulae to what we call true
stars. Mr. Lockyer imagines such condensed masses of meteoric
dust being pelted or bombarded by meteoric material, producing
heat and light, the effect continuing as long as the pelting is kept
up. To this circumstance is due the formation of stars like suns.
Our earth originally belonged to that class of heavenly bodies,
but from a subsequent process of cooling assumed its present
character.

The dust scattered everywhere in the atmosphere, which is
lighted up in a sunbeam or a ray from the electric lamp, is of

ATMOSPHERIC DUST. 179

an organic nature. It is seen to consist of countless motes, rising,
falling, or gyrating, although it is impossible to follow any of
them with the eye for longer than a fraction of a second. We
conclude that their weight exceeds but very slightly that of the
air ; and, moreover, that the atmosphere is the seat of multitudes
of minute currents, assuming all kinds of directions. One day
last June, from the top of Eiffel's Tower in Paris, I amused my-
self by throwing an unfolded newspaper over the railing round
the summit of the tower. At first it fell slowly, carried away by
a light breeze ; but presently it rose, and, describing a curve, began
again to fall. As it was vanishing from sight, the paper seemed
to me as if arrested now and then in its descent, perhaps under-
going again a slight upheaval. Here was, indeed, a gigantic mote
floating in the atmosphere, and subject to the same physical laws,
though on a larger scale, as those delicate filaments of dust we see
dancing merrily in a sunbeam.

It is difficult to say how much of the dust present in the air
may become a source of disease, and how much is innocuous.
Many of the motes belong to the class of micro-organisms ; and
experiments show how easily these micro-organisms or sources of
infectious diseases can reach the lungs, and do mischief if they
should find a condition of the body on which they are able to
thrive and be reproduced. Atmospheric motes, although it has
been shown that they are really deposited in the respiratory
organs, do not accumulate in the lungs and air-passages, but un-
dergo decomposition and disappear in the circulation. Smoke,
which is finely divided coal-dust, is clearly subjected to such a
destructive process ; otherwise the smoky atmosphere of many of
our towns would soon prove fatal, and tobacco-smoke would leave
a deposit interfering seriously after a very short time with the
process of respiration. Dust, however in its physical aspect
is very far from being always innocuous, and many trades are
liable to suffer from it. The cutting of chaff, for horses' food, is
one of the most pernicious occupations, as it generates clouds of
dust of an essentially penetrating character. Persons engaged in
needle manufacturing and steel - grinders suffer much from the
dust of metallic particles. Stone-cutters, and workmen in plaster
of Paris, coal-heavers, men engaged in the manufacture of cigars
and rope, those employed in flour-mills and hat and carpet mak-
ing, are liable to suffer from dust. A number of methods have
been adopted, more or less successfully, to rid these trades of the
danger due to this source. I observed many years ago that char-
coal has the power of retaining dust in a remarkable degree, and
having had respirators made of it, found them very effective in
preventing dust reaching the lungs.

Micro-organisms — dust-like particles capable of cultivation or

180 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

reproduction in certain media and at certain temperatures — are
scattered everywhere in the atmosphere. Interesting inquiries
into their distribution in air and water have been made by Dr.
Miquel at the Montsouris Observatory, Paris, and by Dr. Percy
Frankland in England. Dr. Frankland has found that the num-
ber present is much reduced in winter. Experiments made in in-
closed places, where there is little or no aerial motion, show the
number of suspended organisms to be very moderate ; but as soon
as any disturbance in the air occurs, from draughts or people
moving about, the number rapidly increases and may become
very great. Being slightly heavier than air, they have an invari-
able tendency to fall, and on that account collect on the surface
of water. Hence rivers, lakes, and ponds are constantly being
thus contaminated.

Important points connected with dust of organic origin are its
inflammability and its liability to explode when mixed with air.
The property of explosiveness was forcibly illustrated in the de-
struction of six flour-mills by this cause in Minneapolis, Minn., in
May, 1878. Coal-dust in coal-mines is a cause of accident from
explosions which has been closely investigated in England, Ger-
many, and other mining countries. The subject was thoroughly
treated by Sir Frederick Abeel, in a paper on Accidents in Mines,
read before the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1888.

Extremely fine particles of mineral dust may exist in the at-
mosphere, and do exist there more frequently than is generally
thought, while they escape detection by our senses. The author,
while making experiments on the Peak of Teneriffe, in 1878, found
the knife-edges of his balance so clogged with this invisible dust
that the balance refused to act. When wiped off, the dust col-
lected again in a few minutes, and it was only by continually
wiping it away that he was able to go on with his investiga-
tion. Prof. Piazzi Smyth, while on the Peak of Teneriffe, wit-
nessed strata of dust rising to a height of nearly a mile, reaching
out to the horizon in every direction, and so dense as to hide fre-
quently the neighboring hills. Prof. S. P. Langley, looking down
from the height of fifteen thousand feet on Mount Whitney, Cali-
fornia, into a region that had appeared clear from the valley below,
saw " a kind of level dust ocean, invisible from below, but whose
depth was six or seven thousand feet, as the upper portion only of
the opposite mountain-range rose clearly out of it."

Dust storms are classified by Dr. Henry Cook, according to
their intensity, as atmospheric dust, dust columns, and dust storms.
Dr. Cook has observed in India that there are some days on which,
however hard and violently the wind may blow, no dust accom-
panies it, while on others every little puff of air or current of
wind forms or carries with it clouds of dust. If the wind which

ATMOSPHERIC BUST. 181

raises the dust is strong, nothing will be visible at the distance of
a few yards, and the snn will be obscured. The dnst penetrates
everywhere, and can not be excluded from honses, boxes, and even
watches, however carefully guarded. The individual particles of
sand appear to be in such an electrical condition that they are
ever ready to repel each other, and are consequently disturbed
and carried up into the air. Dust columns are regarded by Dr.
Cook as due to electrical causes. On calm, quiet days, when
hardly a breath of air is stirring, and the sun pours down its
heated rays with full force, little eddies arise in the atmosphere
near the surface of the ground. These increase in force and diam-
eter, catching up and whirling round bits of sticks, grass, dust,
and lastly sand, until a column is formed of great height and con-
siderable diameter, which usually, after remaining stationary for
some time, sweeps away across country at great speed. Ultimately
it loses gradually the velocity of its circular movement and dis-
appears. In the valley of Mingochar, which is only a few miles
in width, and surrounded by high hills, Dr. Cook, on a day when
not a breath of air was stirring, counted upward of twenty of
these columns. They seldom changed their places, and, when they
did so, moved but slowly across the level tract. They never inter-
fered with one another, and appeared to have independent exist-
ences. Mr. P. L. H. Baddeley, in his book on Whirlwinds and
Dust Storms of India, tells of a gentleman at Lahore who fixed an
electrometer apparatus, so adjusted as to report atmospheric elec-
trical movements, and observed that it was strongly affected dur-
ing dust storms.

Volcanic dust consists mainly of powdered vitrified substances
reduced by the action of intense heat. It is interesting in many
respects. The ashes or scoria shot out in volcanic eruptions are
mostly pounded pumice, but they also originate from stones and
fragments which are pulverized by striking against each other.
Volcanic dust has a whitish-gray color, and is sometimes nearly
white. Thus it is that, in summer, the terminal cone of the Peak
of Teneriff e appears from a distance as if covered with snow ; but
there is no snow on the mountain at that season of the year, and
the white cap of the peak is due to pumice ejected centuries ago.

The friction caused by volcanic stones and rocks as they are
crushed in their collision develops a mass of electricity which
shows itself in brilliant displays of branch lightning darting from
the edges of the dense ascending column. During the great erup-
tion of Vesuvius in 1822 they were constantly visible, and added
much to the grandeur of the spectacle. It not unfrequently hap-
pens that the dust emitted from Vesuvius falls into the streets of
Naples ; but this is nothing in comparison with the mass of finely
powdered material which covered and buried the towns of Pompeii,

i8z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Herculaneum, and Stabise, in the year 79. The eruption of Kra-
katoa, in 1883, exceeded, in all probability, in its deadly effects,
and as a wonderful phenomenon of nature, the outburst of Vesu-
vius in the year 79. It is shown, in the report of the Krakatoa
Committee of the Royal Society, that the detonations caused by
the explosive action were heard a hundred and fifty miles away.
Captain Thompson, of the ship Medea, sailing at a point seventy-
six miles northeast of Krakatoa, saw a black mass like smoke
rising into the clouds to an altitude which was estimated as not
less than seventeen miles. All the eye-witnesses agree as to the
splendor of the electrical phenomena. The old crater of Krakatoa
was eviscerated, and a cavity was formed more than a thousand
feet deep. On the morning of the 27th of August three vessels at
the eastern entrance of the Strait of Sunda encountered the fall
of mingled dust and water, which soon darkened the air, and cov-
ered their decks and sails with a thick coating of mud. Some of
the pieces of pumice falling on the Sir R. Sale were said to have
been of the size of a pumpkin. All that day the three vessels were
beating about in darkness, pumice-dust falling upon them in such
quantities as to employ the crews for hours in shoveling it from
the decks and in beating it from the sails and rigging. The speed
and distance attained by the pumice ejected from the volcano may
be conceived from the fact stated in Mr. Douglas Archibald's con-
tribution to the report, that dust fell on September 8th more than
thirty-seven hundred English miles from the seat of the eruption.
The great mass of the pumice was of a dirty, grayish-white tint,
and was very irregular in size.

The dust ejected from Krakatoa did not all fall back at the
same time upon the sea and the earth. The lightest portion formed
into a haze, which was as a rule propagated westward. Most ob-
servers agree in regarding this haze as the proximate cause of the
twilight glows, colored suns, and large corona which were seen for
a long time (more than two years) after the eruption. The haze
was densest in the Indian Ocean and along the equatorial belt,
and was often thick enough to hide the sun when within a few
degrees of the horizon.

I hope I have succeeded in showing that infinitely small ob-
jects, no larger than particles of dust, act important parts in the
physical phenomena of nature.

Mr. H. "W. Seton-Karr tells, in one of his books of travels, of his ascent of
one of the spurs of Mount St. Elias, following the track of a brown bear with
always an uneasy expectation of meeting the animal itself, to the height of seven
thousand two hundred feet. Here the wonderful spectacle was presented of no
less than seventeen thousand square miles of glaciers stretching over the face of
the country. Excepting Greenland, according to this traveler, these glaciers are
the most extensive in the world outside of the arctic and antarctic regions.

ON JUSTICE. 183

ON JUSTICE.

By HERBERT SPENCER.
[Conclu de d. ]

IV. The Sentiment of Justice. — Acceptance of the doctrine of
organic evolution determines certain ethical conceptions. The
doctrine implies that the numerous organs in each of the innu-
merable species of animals, have been either directly or indirectly
molded into fitness for the requirements of life by constant con-
verse with those requirements. Simultaneously, through nervous
modifications, there have been developments of the sensations,
instincts, emotions, and intellectual aptitudes, needed for the ap-
propriate uses of these organs ; as we see in caged rodents that
exercise their incisors by purposeless gnawing, in gregarious creat-
ures which are miserable if they can not join their fellows, in
beavers which, kept in confinement, show their passion for dam-
building by heaping up whatever sticks and stones they can find.

Has this process of mental adaptation ended with primitive
man ? Are human beings incapable of having their feelings and
ideas progressively adjusted to the modes of life imposed on them
by the social state into which they have grown ? Shall we sup-
pose that the nature which fitted them to the exigencies of sav-
age life has remained unchanged, and will remain unchanged, by
the exigencies of civilized life ? Or shall we suppose that this
aboriginal nature, by repression of some traits and fostering of
others, is made to approach more and more to a nature which
finds developed society its appropriate environment, and the
required activities its normal ones ? There are many believers in
the doctrine of evolution who seem to have no faith in the con-
tinued adaptability of mankind. While glancing but carelessly
at the evidence furnished by comparisons of different human races
with one another, and of the same races in different ages, they
ignore entirely the induction from the phenomena of life at large.
But if there is an abuse of the deductive method of reasoning
there is also an abuse of the inductive method. One who refused
to believe that a new moon would in a fortnight become full, and,
disregarding observations accumulated throughout the past, in-
sisted on watching the successive phases for three weeks before he
was convinced, would be considered inductive in an irrational
degree. But there might not unfairly be classed with him those
who. slighting the inductive proof of unlimited adjustability, bod-
ily and mental, which the animal kingdom at large presents, will
not admit the adjustability of human nature to social life until
the adjustment has taken place : nay, even ignore the evidence
that it is taking place.

i84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Here we shall assume it to be an inevitable inference from the
doctrine of organic evolution, that the highest type of living
being, no less than all lower types, must go on molding itself to
those requirements which circumstances impose. And we shall,
by implication, assume that moral changes are among the changes
thus wrought out.

The fact that when surfeit of a favorite food has caused sick-
ness, there is apt to follow an aversion to that food, shows how,
in the region of the sensations, experiences establish associations
which influence conduct. And the fact that the house in which a
wife or child died, or in which a long illness was suffered, be-
comes so associated with painful states of mind as to be shunned,
sufficiently illustrates, in the emotional region, the mode in which
actions may be determined by mental connections formed in the
course of life. When the circumstances of a species make certain
relations between conduct and consequence habitual, the appro-
priately-linked feelings may come to characterize the species.
Either inheritances of modifications produced by habit, or more
numerous survivals of individuals having nervous structures
which have varied in fit ways, gradually form guiding tenden-
cies, prompting appropriate behavior and deterring from inap-
propriate. The contrast between fearless birds found on islands
never before visited by man, and the birds around us, which show
fear of man immediately they are out of the nest, exemplifies
such adaptations.

By virtue of this process there have been produced to some ex-
tent among lower creatures, and there are being further produced
in man, the sentiments appropriate to social life. Aggressive ac-
tions, while they are habitually injurious to the group in which
they occur, are not unfrequently injurious to the individuals
committing them ; since, though certain pleasures may be gained
by them, they often entail pains greater than the pleasures. Con-
versely, conduct restrained within the required limits, calling out
no antagonistic passions, favors harmonious co-operation, profits
the group, and, by implication, profits the average of its indi-
viduals. Consequently, there results, other things equal, a tend-
ency for groups formed of members having this adaptation of
nature, to survive and spread.

Among the social sentiments thus evolved, one of chief impor-
tance is the sentiment of justice. Let us now consider more
closely its nature.

Stop an animal's nostrils, and it makes frantic efforts to free
its head. Tie its limbs together, and its struggles to get them at
liberty are violent. Chain it by the neck or leg, and it is some
time before it ceases its attempts to escape. Put it in a cage, and

ON JUSTICE. 185

it long continues restless. Generalizing these instances we see
that in proportion as the restraints on actions by which life is
maintained are extreme, the resistances to them are great. Con-
versely, the eagerness with which a bird seizes the opportunity
for taking flight, and the joy of a dog when liberated, show how
strong is the love of unfettered movement.

Displaying like feelings in like ways, man displays them in
other and wider ways. He is irritated by invisible restraints as
well as by visible ones ; and as his evolution becomes higher, he
is affected by circumstances and actions which in more remote
ways aid or hinder the pursuit of ends. A parallel will elucidate
this truth. Primitively the sentiment of property is gratified
only by possession of food and shelter, and, presently, of cloth-
ing ; but afterward it is gratified by possession of the weapons
and tools which aid in obtaining these, then by possession of the
raw materials serving for making weapons and tools and for
other purposes, then by possession of the coin which purchases
them as well as things at large, then by possession of promises
to pay exchangeable for the coin, then by a lien on a banker, regis-
tered in a pass-book. That is, there comes to be pleasure in an
ownership more and more abstract and remote from material sat-
isfactions. Similarly with the sentiment of justice. Beginning
with the joy felt in ability to use the bodily powers and gain the
resulting benefits, accompanied by irritation at direct interfer-
ences, this gradually responds to wider relations: being excited
now by the incidents of personal bondage, now by those of politi-
cal bondage, now by those of class privilege, and now by small
political changes. Eventually, this sentiment, sometimes so little
developed in the negro that he jeers at a liberated companion
because he has no master to take care of him, becomes so much
developed in the Englishman that the slightest infraction of some
mode of formal procedure at a public meeting or in Parliament
which can not intrinsically concern him, is vehemently opposed
because in some distant and indirect way it may help to give
possible powers to unnamed authorities who may perhaps impose
unforeseen burdens or restrictions.

Clearly, then, the egoistic sentiment of justice is a subjective
attribute which answers to that objective requirement consti-
tuting justice — the requirement that each adult shall receive the
good and evil effects of his own nature. For unless the faculties
of all kinds have free play, these results can not be gained or suf-
fered, and unless there exists a sentiment which prompts mainte-
nance of the sphere for this free play, it will be trenched upon
and the free play impeded.

While we may thus understand how the egoistic sentiment of
justice is developed, it is much less easy to understand how there

186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is developed the altruistic sentiment of justice. On the one hand,
the implication is that the altruistic sentiment of justice can come
into existence only in the course of adaptation to social life. On
the other hand the implication is that social life is made possible
only by maintenance of those equitable relations which imply the
altruistic sentiment of justice. How can these reciprocal require-
ments be fulfilled ?

The answer is that the altruistic sentiment of justice can come
into existence only by the aid of a sentiment which temporarily
supplies its place and restrains the actions prompted by pure ego-
ism— a pro-altruistic sentiment of justice as we may call it. This
has several components which we must successively glance at.

The first deterrent from aggression is one which we see among
animals at large — the fear of retaliation. Among creatures of the
same species the food obtained by one or place of vantage taken
possession of by it, is in some measure insured to it by the dread
which most others feel of the vengeance which may follow any
attempt to take it away ; and among men, especially during primi-
tive stages of social life, it is chiefly such dread which secures for
each man free scope for his activities, and exclusive use of what-
ever they bring him.

A further restraint is the fear of reprobation shown by uncon-
cerned members of the group. Though in the expulsion of a
" rogue " elephant from the herd, or the slaying of a sinning mem-
ber of the flock by rooks or storks, we see that even among ani-
mals individuals suffer from an adverse public opinion ; yet it
is scarcely probable that among animals expectation of general
dislike prevents encroachment. But among mankind, " looking
before and after " to a greater extent, the thought of social dis-
grace is usually an additional check on ill-behavior of man to
man.

To these feelings, which come into play before there is any
social organization, have to be added those which arise after
political authority establishes itself. When a successful leader in
war acquires permanent headship, and comes to have at heart the
maintenance of his power, there arises in him a desire to prevent
the trespasses of his people one against another ; since the result-
ing dissensions weaken his tribe. The rights of personal venge-
ance and, as in feudal times, of private war, are restricted ;
and, simultaneously, there grow up interdicts on the acts which
cause them. Dread of the penalties which follow breaches of
these, is an added restraint.

Ancestor-worship in general, developing as the society devel-
ops into special propitiation of the dead chiefs ghost, and pres-
ently the dead king's ghost, gives to the injunctions he uttered
during life increased sanctity ; and when, with establishment of

ON JUSTICE. 187

the cult, he becomes a god, his injunctions become divine com-
mands with dreaded punishments for breaches of them.

These four kinds of fear co-operate. The dread of retaliation,
the dread of social dislike, the dread of legal punishment, and the
dread of divine vengeance, united in various proportions, form a
body of feeling which checks the primitive tendency to pursue
the objects of desire without regard to the interests of fellow-men.
Containing none of the altruistic sentiment of justice, properly so
called, this pro-altruistic sentiment of justice serves temporarily
to cause respect for one another's claims, and so to make social
co-operation possible.

Creatures which become gregarious tend to become sympa-
thetic in degrees proportionate to their intelligences. Not, in-
deed, that the resulting sympathetic tendency is exclusively, or
even mainly, of that kind which the words ordinarily imply ; for
in some there is little beyond sympathy in fear, and in others
little beyond sympathy in ferocity. All that is meant is that in
gregarious creatures a feeling displayed by one is apt to arouse
kindred feelings in others, and is apt to do this in proportion as
others are intelligent enough to appreciate the signs of the feel-
ing. In two chapters of the Principles of Psychology — Sociality
and Sympathy and Altruistic Sentiments — I have endeavored to
show how sympathy in general arises, and how there is eventually
produced altruistic sympathy.

The implication is, then, that the associated state having been
maintained among men by the aid of the pro-altruistic sentiment
of justice, there have been maintained the conditions under which
the altruistic sentiment of justice itself can develop. In a per-
manent group there occur, generation after generation, incidents
simultaneously drawing from its members manifestations of like
emotions — rejoicings over victories and escapes, over prey jointly
captured, over supplies of wild food discovered ; as well as la-
ments over defeats, scarcities, inclemencies, etc. And to these
greater pleasures and pains felt in common by all, and so express-
ing themselves that each sees in others the signs of feelings like
those which he has and is displaying, must be added the smaller
pleasures and pains daily resulting from meals taken together,
amusements, games, and from the not infrequent adverse occur-
rences which affect several persons at once. Thus there is fos-
tered that sympathy which makes the altruistic sentiment of
justice possible.

But the altruistic sentiment of justice is slow in assuming a
high form, partly because its primary component does not become
highly developed until a late phase of progress, partly because it
is relatively complex, and partly because it implies a stretch of

188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

imagination not possible for low intelligences. Let us glance at
each of these reasons.

Every altruistic feeling presupposes experience of the cor-
responding egoistic feeling. As, until pain has been felt there
can not be sympathy with pain, and as one who has no ear for
music can not enter into the pleasure which music gives to oth-
ers ; so, the altruistic sentiment of justice can arise only after the
egoistic sentiment of justice has arisen. Hence where this has
not been developed in any considerable degree, or has been re-
pressed by a social life of an adverse kind, the altruistic senti-
ment of justice remains rudimentary.

The complexity of the sentiment becomes manifest on observ-
ing that it is not concerned only with concrete pleasures and pains,
but is concerned mainly with certain of the circumstances under
which these are obtainable or preventable. As the egoistic senti-
ment of justice is gratified by maintenance of those conditions
which render achievement of satisfactions unimpeded, and irri-
tated by the breaking of those conditions, it results that the altru-
istic sentiment of justice requires for its excitement not only the
ideas of such satisfactions, but also the ideas of those condi-
tions which are in the one case maintained and in the other case
broken.

Evidently, therefore, to be capable of this sentiment in a devel-
oped form, the faculty of mental representation must be relatively
great. Where the feelings with which there is to be sympathy
are simple pleasures and pains, the higher gregarious animals
occasionally display it : pity and generosity are from time to time
felt by them as well as by human beings. But to conceive simul-
taneously not only the feelings produced in another, but the plexus
of acts and relations involved in the production of such feelings,
presupposes the putting together in thought of more elements
than an inferior creature can grasp at the same time. And when
we come to those most abstract forms of the sentiment of justice
which are concerned with public arrangements, we see that only
the higher varieties of men are capable of so conceiving the ways
in which good or bad institutions and laws will eventually affect
their spheres of action, as to be prompted to support or oppose
them ; and that only among these, therefore, is there excited un-
der such conditions that sympathetic sentiment of justice which
makes them defend the political interests of fellow-citizens.

There is, of course, a close connection between the sentiment
of justice and the social type. Predominant militancy, by the
coercive form of organization it implies, alike in the fighting
body and in the society which supports it, affords no scope for
the egoistic sentiment of justice ; but, contrariwise, perpetually
tramples on it, and at the same time the sympathies which origi-

ON JUSTICE. 189

nate the altruistic sentiment, of justice are perpetually seared by-
militant activities. Contrariwise, in proportion as the regime of
status is replaced by the regime of contract, or, in other words, as
fast as voluntary co-operation, which characterizes the industrial
type of society, becomes more general than involuntary co-opera-
tion, which characterizes the militant type of society, individual
activities become less restrained, and the sentiment which rejoices
in the scope for them is encouraged ; while, simultaneously, the
occasions for repressing the sympathies become less frequent.
Hence during warlike phases of social life the sentiment of jus-
tice retrogrades, while it advances during peaceful phases, and can
reach its full development only in a permanently peaceful state.*

V. The Idea of Justice. — While describing the sentiment
of justice, the way has been prepared for describing the idea of
justice. Though the two are intimately connected they may be
clearly distinguished.

One who had dropped his pocket-book, and, turning round,
finds that another who has picked it up will not surrender it, is
indignant. If the goods sent home by a shopkeeper are not those
he purchased, he protests against the fraud. Should his seat at a
theatre be usurped during a momentary absence he feels himself
ill-used. Morning noises from a neighbor's poultry he complains
of as grievances. And meanwhile he sympathizes with the anger
of a friend who has been led by false statements to join a disas-
trous enterprise, or whose action at law has been rendered futile
by a flaw in the procedure. But though in these cases his sense
of justice is offended, he may fail to distinguish the essential trait
which in each case causes the offense. He may have the senti-
ment of justice in full measure while his idea of justice remains
vague.

This relation between sentiment and idea is a matter of course.
The ways in which men trespass on one another become more nu-
merous in their kinds, and more involved, as society grows more
complex ; and they must be experienced in their many forms, gen-
eration after generation, before analysis can make clear the essen-
tial distinction between legitimate acts and illegitimate acts.

A special reason for this should be recognized. Ideas as well
as sentiments must on the average be adjusted to the social state.
Hence, as war has been frequent or habitual in nearly all societies,
such ideas of justice as have existed have been perpetually con-

* Permanent peace does in a few places exist, and where it exists the sentiment of jus-
tice is exceptionally strong and sensitive. I am glad to have again the occasion for point-
ing out that among tribes called uncivilized, there are some, distinguished by the entire
absence of warlike activities, who in their characters put to shame the peoples called
civilized. In Political Institutions, §§ 437 and 574, I have given eight examples of this
connection of facts taken from races of different types.

i9o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fused by the conflicting requirements of internal amity and exter-
nal enmity.

Already it has been made clear that the idea of justice, or at
least the idea of human justice, contains two elements. On the
one hand there is that positive element implied by recognition of
each man's claims to unimpeded activities and the benefits they
bring. On the other hand there is that negative element implied
by the consciousness of limits which the presence of other men
having like claims necessitates. Two opposite traits in these two
components especially arrest the attention.

Inequality is the primordial idea suggested. For if the prin-
ciple is that each shall receive the benefits and evils due to his
own nature and consequent conduct, then since men differ in their
powers there must be differences in the results of their actions.
Unequal amounts of benefit are implied.

Mutual limitations to men's actions suggest a contrary idea.
When it is seen that if each pursues his ends regardless of his
neighbor's claims, quarrels must be caused and social co-opera-
tion hindered, there arises the consciousness that bounds must be
set to the doings of each ; and the thought of spheres of action
bounded by one another, involves the conception of equality.

Unbalanced appreciations of these two factors in human justice
lead to divergent moral and social theories, which we must now
glance at.

In some of the rudest groups of men the appreciations are no
higher than those which we see among inferior gregarious ani-
mals. Here the stronger takes what he pleases from the weaker
without exciting general reprobation ; while, elsewhere, there is
practiced and tacitly approved something like communism. But
where habitual war has developed political organization, the idea
of inequality becomes predominant. If not among the conquered,
who are made slaves, yet among the conquerors, who naturally
think of that which conduces to their interest as that which
ought to be, there is fostered this element in the conception of
justice which asserts that superiority shall have the benefits of
superiority.

Though the Platonic dialogues may not be taken as measures

of Greek belief, yet we may reasonably assume that the things

they take for granted were currently accepted. Socrates inquires

— " Do you admit that it is just for subjects to obey their rulers ? "

' I do," replies Thrasymachus.* Though otherwise in antagonism,

* The Republic, Book I, translated by Jowett, p. 159 (edit, of 1871). Instead of " Do
you admit," the rendering given by Messrs. Llewelyn Davies and Yaughan is " You doubt-

less also maintain."

ON JUSTICE. 191

the two agree in this conception of what is just. At a later
stage of the inquiry, Glaucon, describing a current opinion,
says :

" This, as they affirm, is the origin and nature of justice: — there is a mean or
compromise between the best of all, which is to do and not to suffer injustice,
and the worst of all,, which is to suffer without the power of retaliation ; and
justice being the mean between the two, is tolerated not as good, but as the
lesser evil." And immediately afterward it is said that men " are only diverted
into the path of justice by the force of law." *

In this significant passage several things are to be noted.
There is first a recognition of the fact, above indicated, that at an
early stage the practice of justice is initiated by the dread of
retaliation, and the conviction, suggested by experience, that it is
on the whole the best to avoid aggression and to respect the limit
which compromise implies ; there is no recognition of intrinsic
flagitiousness in aggression, but only of its impolicy. Further,
the limit to each man's actions, described as " a mean of compro-
mise," and respect for which is called " the path of justice," is
said to be established only " by the force of law." Law is not
considered as an expression of justice otherwise cognizable, but
as itself the source of justice ; and hence results the meaning
of the preceding proposition, that it is just to obey the law.
Thirdly, there is an implication that were it not for retaliation
and legal penalties, the stronger might with propriety take ad-
vantage of the weaker. There is a half -expressed belief that su-
periority ought to have the advantages of superiority ; inequality
occupies a prominent place, while equality makes no definite
appearance.

The conception here indicated that justice consists in legality,
is, toward the close of Book IV, developed into the conception
that justice consists " in each of the three classes doing the work
of its own class " : carpenter, shoemaker, or what not, " doing
each his own business, and not another's " ; and all obeying the
class whose business it is to rule.f Thus the idea of justice is made
to include the idea of inequality. Though there is some recog-

* Book II, p. 229.

f On another page there is furnished a typical example of Socratic reasoning. It is
held to be a just " principle that individuals are neither to take what is another's, nor to
be deprived of what is their own." From this it is inferred that justice consists in " hav-
ing and doing what is a man's own " ; and then comes the further inference that it is
unjust for one man to assume another's occupation, and " force his way " out of one class
into another. Here, then, because a man's own property and his own occupation are both
called his own, the same conclusion is drawn concerning both. Two fallacies are in-
volved— the one that a man can " own " a trade in the same way that he owns a coat, and
the other that because he may not be deprived of the coat he must be restricted to the
trade. The Platonic dialogues are everywhere vitiated by fallacies of this kind, caused by
confounding words with things — unity of name with unity of nature.

i92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nition of equality of positions and claims among members of the
same class, yet the regulations respecting community of wives,
etc., in the guardian-class, have for their avowed purpose to
establish, even within that class, unequal privileges for the benefit
of the superior.

But now observe that while in the Greek conception of justice
there predominates the idea of inequality, while the idea of equal-
ity is inconspicous, the inequality refers, not to the natural
achievement of greater rewards by greater merits, but to the
artificial apportionment of greater rewards to greater merits. It
is an inequality mainly established by authority. The gradations
in the civil organization are of the same nature as those in the
military organization. Regimentation pervades both, and the
idea of justice is everywhere conformed to the traits of the social
structure.

And this is the idea of justice proper to the militant type at
large, as we are again shown throughout Europe in subsequent
ages. It will suffice to point out that along with the different
law-established positions and privileges of different ranks, there
went gradations in the amounts paid in composition for crimes
according to the rank of the injured. And how completely the
idea of justice was determined by the idea of rightly-existing in-
equality, is shown by the condemnation of serfs who escaped into
the towns and were said to have " unjustly " withdrawn them-
selves from the control of their lords.

Thus, as might be expected, we find that while the struggle
for existence between societies is going on actively, recognition of
the primary factor in justice which is common to life at large,
human and sub-human, is very imperfectly qualified by recogni-
tion of the secondary factor. That which we may distinguish as
the brute element in the conception is but little mitigated by the
human element.

All movements are rhythmical, and among others social move-
ments, with their accompanying doctrines. After that concep-
tion of justice in which the idea of inequality unduly predomi-
nates, comes a conception in which the idea of equality unduly
predominates.

A recent example of such reactions is furnished by the ethical
theory of Bentham. As is shown by the following extract from
Mr. Mill's Utilitarianism (p. 91), the idea of inequality here en-
tirely disappears :

The Greatest-Happiness Principle is a mere form of words without rational
signification, UDless one person's happiness, supposed equal in degree (with the
proper allowance made for kind), is counted for exactly as much as another's.
Those conditions being supplied, Bentham's dictum, " everybody to count for one,

ON JUSTICE. 193

nobody for more than one,11 might be written under the principle of utility as an
explanatory commentary.

Now though Bentham ridicules the taking of justice as our
guide, saying that while happiness is an end intelligible to all,
justice is a relatively unintelligible end, yet he tacitly asserts that
his principle — " everybody to count for one, nobody for more than
one/' is just ; since, otherwise, he would be obliged to admit that
it is unjust, and we may not suppose he would do so. Hence the
implication of his doctrine is that justice means an equal appor-
tionment of the benefits, material and immaterial, which men's
activities bring. There is no recognition of inequalities in men's
shares of happiness, consequent on inequalities of their faculties
or characters.

This is the theory which Communism would reduce to prac-
tice. From one who knows him, I learn that Prince Krapotkin
blames the English socialists because they do -not propose to act
out the rule popularly worded as " share and share alike." In a
recent periodical, M. de Laveleye summed up the communistic
principle as being " that the individual works for the profit of the
State, to which he hands over the produce of his labor for equal
division among all." In the communistic Utopia described in Mr.
Bellamy's Looking Backward, it is held that each " shall make
the same effort," and that if by the same efforts, bodily or mental,
one produces twice as much as another, he is not to be advantaged
by the difference. At the same time the intellectually or physic-
ally feeble are to be quite as well off as others : the assertion
being that the existing regime is one of " robbing the incapable
class of their plain right in leaving them unprovided for."

The principle of inequality is thus denied absolutely. It is
assumed to be unjust that superiority of nature shall bring supe-
riority of results, or, at any rate, superiority of material results ;
and as no distinction appears to be made in respect either of phys-
ical qualities or intellectual qualities or moral qualities, the im-
plication is not only that strong and weak shall fare alike, but that
foolish and wise, worthy and unworthy, mean and noble, shall do
the same. For if, according to this conception of justice, defects of
nature, physical or intellectual, ought not to count, neither ought
moral defects, since they are one and all primarily inherited.

And here, too, we have a deliberate abolition of that cardinal
distinction between the ethics of the family and the ethics of the
State emphasized at the outset : an abolition which must eventu-
ate in decay and disappearance of the species or variety in which
it takes place.

After contemplation of these divergent conceptions of justice,
in which the ideas of inequality and equality almost or quite ex-

VOL. XXXVII. — 15

i94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

elude one another, we are prepared for framing a true conception
of justice.

In other fields of thought it has fallen to niy lot to show that
the right view is obtained by co-ordinating the antagonist wrong
views. Thus, the association-theory of intellect is harmonized
with the transcendental theory on perceiving that when, to the
effects of individual experiences are added the inherited effects of
experiences received by all ancestors, the two views become one.
So, too, when the molding of feelings into harmony with require-
ments, generation after generation, is recognized as causing an
adapted moral nature, there results a reconciliation of the ex-
pediency-theory of morals with the intuitional theory. And here
we see that the like occurs with this more special component of
ethics now before us.

For if each of these opposite conceptions of justice is accepted
as true in part, and then supplemented by the other, there results
that conception of justice which arises on contemplating the laws
of life as carried on in the social state. The equality concerns the
mutually-limited spheres of action which must be maintained if
associated men are to co-operate harmoniously. The inequality
concerns the results which each may achieve by carrying on his
actions within the implied limits. No incongruity exists when
the ideas of equality and inequality are applied the one to the
bounds and the other to the benefits. Contrariwise, the two may
be, and must be, simultaneously asserted.

Other injunctions which ethics has to utter do not here concern
us. There are the self-imposed requirements and limitations of
private conduct, forming that large division of ethics treated of
in Part III ; and there are the demands and restraints included
under Negative and Positive Beneficence, to be hereafter treated
of, which are at once self-imposed and in a measure imposed by
public opinion. But here we have to do only with those claims
and those limits which have to be maintained as conditions to
harmonious co-operation, and which alone are to be enforced by
the society in its corporate capacity.

Any considerable acceptance of so definite an idea of justice is
not to be expected. It is an idea appropriate to an ultimate state,
and can be but partially recognized during transitional states ; for
the prevailing ideas must, on the average, be congruous with ex-
isting institutions and activities.

The two essentially-different types of social organization, mili-
tant and industrial, based respectively on status and on contract,
have, as we have above seen, feelings and beliefs severally ad-
justed to them ; and the mixed feelings and beliefs appropriate to
intermediate types, have continually to change according to the

• ON JUSTICE. i95

ratio between the one and the other. As I have elsewhere shown,*
during the thirty — or rather forty — years' peace, and consequent
weakening of the militant organization, the idea of justice became
clearer : coercive regulations were relaxed and each man left more
free to make the best of himself. But, since then, the redevelop-
ment of militancy has caused reversal of these changes ; and,
along with nominal increases of freedom, actual diminutions of
freedom have resulted from multiplied regulations and exactions.
The spirit of regimentation proper to the militant type has been
spreading throughout the administration of civil life. An army
of workers with appointed tasks and apportioned • shares of prod-
ucts, which socialism, knowingly or unknowingly, aims at, shows
in civil life the same characters as an army of soldiers with pre-
scribed duties and fixed rations shows in military life ; and every
further act of Parliament which takes from the individual money
for public purposes and gives him public benefits, tends more and
more to assimilate the two. Germany best shows this kinship.
There, where militancy is most pronounced, and where the regu-
lation of citizens is most elaborate, socialism is most highly devel-
oped ; and from the head of the German military system has now
come the proposal of regimental regulations for the working
classes throughout Europe*.

Sympathy which, a generation ago, was taking the shape of
justice, is relapsing into the shape of generosity ; and the gener-
osity is exercised by inflicting injustice. Daily legislation betrays
little anxiety that each shall have that which belongs to him, but
great anxiety that he shall have that which belongs to somebody
else For Wliile no energy is expended in so reforming our judi-
cial administration that every one may obtain and enjoy all he has
earned, great energy is shown in providing for him and others
benefits which they have not earned. Along with that miserable
laissez-faire which calmly looks on while men ruin themselves
in trying to enforce by law their equitable claims, there goes
activity in supplying them, at other men's cost, with gratis novel-
reading !

Evidently, then, amid this chaos of opinions the true idea of
justice can be but very partially recognized. The workman who,
in pursuance of it, insists on his right of making his own contract
with an employer, will continue to be called " a black-leg " ; and
the writer who opposes the practice of forcibly taking A's prop-
erty for B's benefit will be classed as an "a priori bigot/' — Nine-
teenth Century.

* Principles of Sociology, §§ 266, 26V ; Political Institutions, §§ 573, 574 and 559.

196

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EVIDENCES OF GLACIAL ACTION IN SOUTH-
EASTERN CONNECTICUT.

By Hon. DAVID A. WELLS.

EEMARKABLE evidences of glacial action in southeastern
Connecticut seem thus far to have almost entirely escaped
the attention of geologists. In fact, the most superficial survey
of the section of country bordering on Long Island and Fisher's
Island Sounds, and extending from Connecticut River on the
west to Watch Hill, and perhaps to a point farther east, in Rhode
Island, can hardly fail to produce a conviction that it was in
this region that one, at least, of the great New England glaciers
debouched into the waters of the Atlantic ; unloading or drop-

FlG. 1.

ping, as its progress was arrested by the ocean, or as it subse-
quently gradually wasted and receded by change of climate, a
vast multitude of bowlders, of which a very large proportion are
of uncommon magnitude. There would also seem some reasons
for believing that the central or medium line of this glacier is
now indicated by the course of the so-called Thames River —
which is more properly an arm of the sea rather than a river —

EVIDENCES OF GLACIAL ACTION IN CONNECTICUT. 197

and represents a deep but comparatively narrow cut in the under-
lying hard granitic rocks ; and which, certainly near its mouth,
to a depth of fifty feet or more beneath. the present river-bottom,
as was shown by the recent borings in connection with the con-
struction of the Shore Line Railroad Bridge at New London, is
now filled up with mud or coarser detritus. East of the mouth
of the Thames River the shores of the mainland, and the surface
of the numerous little adjoining islands, are strewed with bowl-
ders— many of large size, and often resting on a highly smoothed
basis of bed-rock without the intervention of any surface soil
whatever; as is illustrated by Fig. 1, which represents (from a
photograph) a bowlder (and the changes in the way of destruc-
tion which such masses of rock are undergoing), between Groton
and Noank, on the line of the New London and Providence Rail-
road, and which is a very conspicuous object as seen from the
cars, on the left hand side of the track going east.*

The number and size of the bowlders that are strewed over the
bottom of Fisher's Island Sound are also a matter of interest and

Vza. 2.

wonderment to even those least acquainted with the subject, who
sail over and fish in its shallow waters ; while Fisher's Island
itself is little other than a mass of bowlders covered in great
part by sand, and probably marks the terminal line where a
heavy ocean surf arrested the further progress of the glacier by

* All the illustrations accompanying this paper are reproduced from photographic
pictures.

198

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

breaking in upon its structure, floating off its ice-fragments in
the form of bergs or floes, and, by releasing at the same time
its heavier rock and gravel . constituents, built up a breakwater
which, as an island, now forms what is known as " Fisher's Island
Sound." Fig. 2 represents a not unfrequent example of the char-

acter of the materials which enter into the construction of this
natural breakwater, as seen from the western side of this island.

But it is in the region to the east and west of the line of the
Thames River, and which it has been suggested may have been
the axis of the ancient glacier, and not very far removed from
this line, that bowlders of extraordinary size occur most numer-
ously ; and among them is a rock which until very recently has
been regarded as one of the largest, if not the very largest, bowl-
der that has thus far been recognized in this or any other coun-
try. This rock — of coarse crystalline granite — is situated in the
town of Montville, New London County, about six miles south of
Norwich, and about a mile west of the Montville Station on
the New London and Northern Railroad ; and, under the Indian
name of ' Sheegan," has almost from the first settlement of the
country been recognized as a great natural curiosity. Its posi-
tion is on the edge of a gentle mound or knoll, on the northeast
slope of a little valley ; and its dimensions, according to recent

EVIDENCES OF GLACIAL ACTION IN CONNECTICUT. 199

measurements by Prof. Crosby, of the Boston Society of Natural
History, are as follows : northwest side, forty-six feet ; northeast,
fifty-eight ; southeast, forty-five ; southwest, seventy. Maximum
height, reckoning from the lower or down-hill side, to the highest
point on the upper side, approximately, sixty feet ; approximate
cubic contents, seventy thousand cubic feet ; approximate weight,
about six thousand tons. Other and former reported measure-
ments of this rock indicate much larger dimensions than those
reported by Prof. Crosby ; and, although the determinations of
an expert observer like the latter are entitled to the greatest
confidence, it is nevertheless true that the form of the rock is so
irregular as to render an exact estimate of its size, cubical con-
tents, and weight a matter of no little difficulty. Figs. 3 and 4
give an idea of the position, size, and appearance of the " Sheegan "
Eock, as seen from the valley beneath it, looking west. The intro-
duction into the picture of the horse and wagon beneath the rock
affords in some degree a standard for estimating its height. The
cavity or recess beneath the rock, which is said to have been
occupied, at the time of the first settlement of the country, by a

Fig. 4.

Mohegan Indian (from whom the rock undoubtedly derived its
name) as a dwelling-place, is sufficiently capacious to admit of
being used as a place of shelter for the sleds and other farm
implements of the farmer proprietor. A rude ladder on the
southern side of the rock affords facilities for reaching its top
and obtaining a somewhat extensive view of the surrounding
country.

It will probably have been noticed in the above description

200

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that the expression, " has been regarded " as a bowlder, has been
employed. The reason of this is, that a recent examination of this
rock (in March, 1890) has led Prof. Crosby to the somewhat start-
ling conclusion that it is not a bowlder, but " simply an angular
and prominent remnant of a large granite vein, still undisturbed
in its original position upon beds of gneiss ; and that its chief
geological interest is found in the fact that, notwithstanding its

Fig. 5.

exposed position, it has survived the disintegrating influence of
the elements and successfully resisted the pressure of the great
ice-sheet." Prof. Crosby also states that, " through the undercut-
ting action of the frost, forming quite an extensive rock-shelter "
(i. e., the cavity or recess on the lower or valley side), " is afforded
an opportunity to observe the actual contact of the massive gran-
ite and the finely laminated micaceous gneiss " upon which the
granite rests.

For one of very limited experience to dispute the conclusions
of such a trained observer as Prof. Crosby would be presumpt-
uous ; and yet it would not seem unreasonable to ask that they
should not be considered as entirely determinative without a
further careful examination of the problem on the part of ex-
perts. The question as to whether the contact of the granite of
the assumed bowlder and the underlying gneiss is one of situ-
ation or of composition is not an easy one for decision, without a
very clear opportunity for examination. The fact that such a

EVIDENCES OF GLACIAL ACTION IN CONNECTICUT. 201

huge mass of granite should have resisted the pressure of a great
ice-sheet, and remained so prominently in place as part of a vein,
when such pressure and an accompanying movement and grind-
ing were sufficient to not only round off and obliterate everything
like angularity from the granite surface, but also remove or re-
duce down to a much lower level and over a large proximate area
the whole vast mass of rock on which the granite protuberance,
if it be a portion of a vein, must have been as it were originally
imbedded, is, as Prof. Crosby admits, a result not a little singular.
There is certainly nothing analogous to such a phenomenon in
the vicinity, and it may well be questioned whether there is any-
thing similar anywhere.

Furthermore, as throwing some light on this subject, there are,
as before stated, in comparative proximity to the " Sheegan "
Rock, a large number of undoubted bowlders of .the same granite,
which, though not comparable as regards size, may yet be regarded
as extraordinary, and as clearly involving the exercise of an enor-
mous disrupting and transporting power within a rather limited
area. One of these bowlders in the same township of Montville,
which is also an object of public curiosity, and known as the
" Goal " Rock, is, according to measurements made for the writer,
twenty-one feet high, twenty-five long, and twenty-five thick.
Another, in the vicinity of Gardner's Lake, from which nearly
one fourth of the original mass has been detached in fragments,
is reported as eighteen feet six inches high, thirty-five feet long,
and twenty feet thick. A third, on the east side of the Thames
River, in the town of Preston, is fourteen feet high, twenty feet
long, and seventeen feet thick ; and at least three or four others
in the same region, of similar dimensions, might be enumerated.
Above a mile east of " Allen's Point," and on one of the highest
of the elevations bordering the river, an area of several acres is
so covered with huge bowlders that in places it is difficult to find
a path through them ; while the -southern slope of the same ele-
vation, not far removed, is so strewed with such a multitude of
rounded, small bowlders that they have the appearance of having
been planted artificially.

Fig. 5 represents an extremely picturesque though not a very
large bowlder, on the road between Norwich and Taftville, on the
lands of the Ponemah Manufacturing Company, and almost in the
center of the village that has within a comparatively few years
grown up about it ; and which, most fortunately, has thus far been
carefully protected by the company against the Vandalic spirit
which is so often prompted to mutilate or destroy everything in
the nature of a public curiosity.

VOL. XXXVII. — 16

202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

UTILITY IN ARCHITECTURE.

By BARK FEEEEE.

IT is a significant commentary on the actual state of our culture
that architecture, the most ancient and grandest of the arts,
is to-day the least understood, the least satisfactory, the least
appreciated of all the achievements of our civilization. This is
the more remarkable because there are few periods so prolific of
building as our own. There have been times when great and
splendid works have been raised by some ambitious ruler who
has produced monuments quite unlike anything that is under-
taken at the present ; but, while we erect no costly palaces or mag-
nificent temples, we build thousands of smaller structures whose
combined cost in any one year or term of years greatly exceeds
the sums expended on the most elaborate edifices of antiquity
in the same time. This is especially the case in our own country,
where there is a constant and active demand for buildings of all
kinds, for the most expensive as well as the cheapest, for state use
and for the individual citizen. And yet, in spite of this undi-
minished call, which in any department of trade or of manufact-
ures would at once produce the very best results and the most
satisfactory methods, the architecture of our time is so thoroughly
bad, so wanting in the first principles of common sense, so de-
based, that this noblest of all the arts is scarcely included in the
term, and our critics speak patronizingly of it as just being
" gradually recognized " as such.

Architecture has an historical chronology of at least four thou-
sand years during which we can trace its growth, and in which it
expressed in a very thorough manner the conditions under which it
was developed. It has been reserved for the superior knowledge
of modern times to cast it aside as one of the peculiar products of
a less intelligent age, as something to admire for its past monu-
ments, but as being quite out of our modern ideas of progress.
Because in the last few years a partial revival has taken place ;
because it has been discovered that it offers a convenient and
expensive way of impressing the beholder with the importance of
the builder ; because our rich men and large corporations want to
give some visual evidence of their resources — it has been taken
up as something that may be approved of as a means of testifying
to the wealth of our cities and adding to their general good looks.
The very art element of architecture has been the cause of its
degradation. From the most useful of arts, it has become mostly
ornamental. From meaning and expressing the utility of an edi-
fice, it has come to refer to its appearance only. People have for-

UTILITY IN ARCHITECTURE. 203

gotten that it arose from the necessity of man for shelter, and
view it as a product of the study or of "the studio in which beauty
and sesthetic effects are the only ends sought, while utility, con-
venience, expression of intention, have all become secondary con-
siderations. Nothing could "be more erroneous, nothing more
fatal to the production of sound architecture.

Architecture is not the product of the imagination, but the
result of experience and foresight. The painter in his studio, or
the sculptor in his, has nothing to dictate to his thoughts or
force them into certain channels. His fancy is free, and he allows
it to carry him where it will. The architect, on the other hand,
is limited by innumerable requirements and difficulties, all of
which are real and physical, and all of which must be overcome
before his work can be a success. His creations are not intended
for the decoration of a gallery or to be preserved under glass,
but they must stand the test of time and of climate, must bear a
relation to the manners and customs of the day. He must exer-
cise care and discrimination in the selection of his materials.
He must count their cost and be fully acquainted with their phys-
ical properties. There is, in fact, no end to the details he must
consider, in all of which there is no place or opportunity for the
exercise of the imagination. His art is the product of natural
conditions, and may be not inappropriately compared to a plant
which, through the action of certain external elements or forces,
finally assumes a character that can be directly traced to the en-
vironment, and which is, in fact, directly dependent on it.

These views are not those popularly held on the subject, but
it is impossible to make an intelligent study of the history of
the art without reaching them, if, indeed, they had not been
already indicated by common sense. Of all the arts, architecture
calls, for the greatest exercise of thought ; yet, strangely enough,
this is the very element that is most wanting in it at the present
day. All successful buildings must express an idea ; they must
mean something. The architecture of previous times rests on
this basis, and those structures which give the most evidence
of the fact are the most successful. Even in the distorted view
of our day those buildings which depart from this position are
the most condemned. Yet the very people who censure such
lack of judgment by their ancestors do not hesitate to follow
in their footsteps and produce architectural monstrosities that
should never have been conceived in an intelligent age. The
very rudest of African savages is fully aware of this important
fact, and keeps it well in mind in building such structures
as the simple needs of his life and his primitive ideas require.
Thus, for example, he will build a very different edifice for a
granary than he will to live in. It has been reserved for the

204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nineteenth, century, with its great wealth, its boundless resources,
and its extensive and diversified knowledge, to cast this cardinal
principle to one side. Savages may, indeed, be foolish enough, to
build houses which, exactly express the life of their builders and
answer every requirement of their primitive form of existence,
but we of this time are above such, petty expedients, and can well
afford to conform our lives to our architecture. We do not need
to make our architecture conform to ourselves.

Judging from the monuments of our time, the view that archi-
tecture is not ornamentation but construction, not for beauty but
for utility, not for an elaborate exterior but for a well-devised in-
terior, not for something pleasing to look at, but for something to
live in or to be put to a certain well-defined purpose, is not one that
has any considerable support. A glance at a few of the chief
points of architectural history will show how true this is, and to
what an extent it underlies all that is good in the building art.
It is characteristic of the earliest stages of society, those in which
architecture had its birth, that nothing is built without a reason.
Then people had too few ideas, were provided with too limited
means, to be able, on the one hand, to think of unnecessary erec-
tions, or, on the other, to do more than was called for by abso-
lute necessity. Architecture was barren of ornament, and had a
crudeness that is almost repulsive to modern eyes ; but, never-
theless, primitive buildings answered their purpose, as a rule,
much more satisfactorily than many later ones.

Illustrations of structures in which use, not beauty, is the cen-
tral idea, are to be found among the masters of art in antiquity.
The Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, all followed this
leading idea. There are, indeed, instances where the folly of a
wealthy tyrant has produced an overloading of ornament, an un-
necessary multiplication of details, and a striving after effect has
led to the employment of bad methods ; but these exceptions do
not disprove the rule. On the contrary, these very structures are
censured for their violation of this fundamental principle, and
it is those in which it is adhered to most closely that excite our
admiration and esteem.

Utility, then, being the first element of successful architecture,
it follows that the structure of buildings varies according to the
use to which they are to be put. This proposition is self-evident,
and expresses only ordinary common sense. It would scarcely
call for demonstration, were it not for the fact that many modern
buildings are constructed on the basis that, if they look well,
whether the outward form is suitable or not for the purpose for
which they are intended, or whether the exterior expresses the
interior in any way, all has been done that is required. A very
different state of affairs existed in the past. The ancient Egyp-

UTILITY IN ARCHITECTURE. 205

tians, for example, adopted a totally different style of architect-
ure for their temples or palaces than they did for their dwellings.
The former were of stone, and of a massive method of building
that was intended to withstand the wear and tear of ages ; the
latter were of wood or brick, constructed in a light manner, and
without much concern as to their durability. The Romans sup-
ply another illustration of the same fact. These people were un-
questionably the greatest builders the world has seen, and the
methods they employed can properly serve as a guide for later
usage. Much of their architecture, judged by the pure standard
of the Greek, on which it largely rested, is bad from an aesthetic
point of view, and not a little of their construction was devised
on methods that can not always be approved of ; but, apart from
this, the buildings of the Romans offer many interesting exam-
ples of the application of idea to structure, and- the importance of
utility over mere questions of art.

It has been remarked that in ancient Rome no one ever had
a doubt as to the use to which any building was put or what it
was ; and, in truth, great as was the variety of Roman buildings,
their forms were so many, their plans so varied and so well ex-
pressed in the structure, that there never could have been room for
the smallest doubt on the subject. The temple" differed from the
basilica, the basilica from the amphitheatre, the amphitheatre
from the palace, the palace from the baths. In a word, each class
of buildings had its own form, its own plan, which was based, not
on some fancy of the architect, not on some individual caprice,
not on some mistaken idea of the beautiful, but on the single
thought that if the building answered its purpose it was satisfac-
tory and accomplished all that was to be expected of it. In the
golden age of the Roman Empire enormous sums of money were
spent in adorning the capital and chief cities with public works —
buildings not only for the emperor himself but for public and
state use as well. The display of wealth and luxury was lavish
in the extreme ; ornament and decoration were to be seen in every
available place in the greatest profusion ; yet in the midst of all
this gorgeousness the Roman architect never forgot the destina-
tion of the building. If a complicated structure, like a bath, was
needed, there was no limit to the extent to which the plan was
elaborated ; if a simple edifice was required, such as a basilica,
there was no multiplication of parts for external effect, but simply
the large hall and the necessary rooms. The ornament was fre-
quently profuse and much overdone, but the architecture proper,
the structure itself, the plan, the essential part, was never any-
thing else than what it was intended to be.

There is nothing astonishing in this method, which is only the
application of common sense to art and the subordination of orna-

2o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ment to the requirements of the time. It would not call for com-
ment were it not that modern builders so persistently refuse to
recognize it as a fundamental principle in building. Nowadays,
when an architect designs a building, he is satisfied he has done
all he is required to do if it looks well. If the builder of a house
wants a stairway or a window in a particular place because he
thinks it will be more convenient, and thereby interferes with the
symmetry of the drawing that is submitted for his inspection, he
is argued out of it because, forsooth, it will destroy this carefully
prepared symmetry or spoil some technical gimcrack that the
architect regards as his chief device ; and if by chance the owner
carries the day, the architect retires in chagrin, and despairs of
his art ever making good progress.

No greater harm is done to the true advancement of architect-
ure than this insistence that exterior effect is the sole end to be de-
sired. More than any other cause it has operated to depress the art,
and helped to make people question the utility of intrusting their
interests to the architects. It has spread abroad the impression
that these gentlemen, who might be very useful, are unnecessary
luxuries, and that a much more comfortable dwelling can be built
by indicating one's own desires and following one's own sugges-
tions and views as to convenience, than by paying large sums for
"pretty" facades that very likely conceal more discomfort and
dissatisfaction than the most vivid imagination can conceive of in
a twelvemonth. As a natural result there is a popular skepticism
as to the value of professional services that not only hinders the
development of a modern architecture, but does serious injury to
the profession as well. Yet architects have only themselves to
thank for this condition of things, and they can never hope to win
the confidence of the public until they have laid aside their so-
called art, and begun to design structures with the sole end of
making them answer the requirements for which they are in-
tended.

The most remarkable movement in modern architecture has
been the Gothic revival, in the midst of which we are living. It
has resulted in the wholesale approval of all that is mediaeval, and
all that bears the impress of Gothic art. It is important, not only
as showing an interest in the really good work of previous times,
but as indicating an appreciation for an art that is based on com-
mon sense and the adaptation of ends to means. Gothic architect-
ure is nothing if not sensible. It originated in a time in the
world's history when building was at its lowest ebb. The found-
ers of Gothic art were possessed of limited means ; they were
without wealth, and their general knowledge was of the scantiest.
The magnificent structures to which the Romans had been accus-
tomed were impossible to them. Every stone counted, every item

UTILITY IN ARCHITECTURE. 207

of expenditure was rigorously scrutinized and, if not essential,
cast to one side as a luxury that was unnecessary and could not
be afforded. It followed, therefore, that a Gothic building had
no superfluous parts, no erections intended solely for effect, noth-
ing that was not absolutely essential. There was no unnecessary
multiplication of detail ; there was no attempt at a refined balance
of parts or at symmetry.

Symmetrical building is the greatest bugbear that besets the
modern architect, and has done more to throw him into disrepute
than any other invention of the craft. The making of two parts
of a building the same, whether their use was identical or not, is
a very recent invention, and, though practiced by the Romans to
a limited extent, was almost unknown prior to the fourteenth
century. Every style has permitted more or less irregularity,
according as the plan required it, and it was not. until the Renais-
sance— a movement that is responsible for more architectural sins
than is generally supposed — that the astonishing idea was pre-
sented to the world that all the corresponding parts of a building
must be alike. The Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, and
the architects of mediaeval Europe, were all equally free and un-
symmetrical in their designs and their methods. Even the Greeks,
who produced more symmetrical buildings than any other people
of antiquity, varied their designs to suit circumstances. It is
needless to multiply examples, and it is sufficient to point out
that this freedom from restraint, this ability to vary the design,
is one of the chief glories of Gothic architecture, and helps make
it applicable to the varied requirements of modern life.

Yet this very freedom militates against the use of Gothic, and
is one of the reasons why it is not as satisfactory for modern re-
quirements as it ought to be. The capability for constant varia-
tion permits the architect to compose designs of not a little beauty
and almost infinite variety, which so fascinate him that in his
search for a pleasing facade he forgets that the external ap-
pearance of his building may not conform to the best plan or the
greatest convenience. The new Law Courts in London furnish a
remarkable illustration of this. These buildings were designed
by one of the leaders of the Gothic movement — Sir George Gilbert
Scott — a man who was thoroughly imbued with the Gothic spirit,
and who devoted his life to the propagation of Gothic forms. Yet
he so far overlooked the prime element of Gothic architecture —
utility — that the completed structures have been found totally un-
suited for the purposes for which they were intended. It can not
be wondered at that, when those to whom we look for guidance
fail, there should be so many smaller failures by those not so well
equipped, and who can not, therefore, be expected to have the same
knowledge. There can be no surprise that there has been a revul-

208 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sion against Gothic art, which, bids fair to reach such proportions
as to once more drive it out of- use.

There is nothing more misunderstood at the present day than
Gothic architecture. It is popularly supposed that if a building
has a sloping roof, and is plentifully adorned with buttresses, pin-
nacles, towers, arches, balconies, dormers, and similar things, it is
in the correct form of that order. Gothic architecture is, indeed,
characterized by all these objects in one shape or another ; but
the mere placing of them in juxtaposition no more produces it
than does the placing alongside of each other water, flour, and
yeast make bread. It is the proper and due combination of these
constituents that produces the desired result in each case. Gothic
buildings have sloping roofs, because the style originated in a
part of the world where the rainfall was abundant, and some de-
vice was needed to throw off the water. They have arched open-
ings, because practical experiments in building have demon-
strated that they are the most economic and safe form to use.
They have buttresses and pinnacles, because they were necessary
to resist the thrust of a vaulted roof. In the best Gothic not one
of these forms was used unless it was an essential part of the con-
struction. The moment one is applied to a building for orna-
mental purposes, or for any object other than as a necessity to its
statical condition, the structure ceases to be Gothic and becomes
a hybrid without a name.

Gothic architecture never employed a form that was not neces-
sary. In this respect it offers a striking contrast to what is now
called modern Gothic, which consists in applying ornament to sur-
faces and giving them forms which have no real meaning of their
own, and are nothing more than ornamentation. A building does
not become Gothic simply because it has a gable or a carved door-
frame ; the principle, the cause which made them Gothic in the
old form, is wanting, because from parts of the structure they
have become mere pieces of decoration. Gothic architecture is
expressed by many forms ; but its true character lies not in them,
but in the application of sound constructive methods to the sci-
ence of building. It is this principle that gives it a glory of its
own, and it is the violation of this fundamental element which
renders the Gothic architecture of the present day so unsatis-
factory and so un-Gothic in spirit.

But there is another element of Gothic architecture that calls
for consideration, and that is, that notwithstanding it could be
varied and each part made to be exactly what it was intended to
be without regard to the total effect, the results are perfectly satis-
factory from an aBsthetic standpoint. It shows, in a conclusive
manner, that a building can be erected with the sole aim of being
useful and answering exactly the requirements for which it is

UTILITY IN ARCHITECTURE. 209

designed, and at the same time be of sufficient beauty to call forth,
the commendation of future ages. In other words, utility in
architecture is not synonymous with ugliness, nor does it follow
that, because a structure is essentially useful, it is any the less
beautiful. This fact is of great importance, because many modern
builders have the singular idea that beauty of form and utility
of structure are mutually antagonistic. The Gothic builders,
for instance, employed the grandest forms and the most ambi-
tious designs for their cathedrals; but, when they set about
building a dwelling or a warehouse, kept their designs well within
the limits for which they were intended. They used the same
shapes, the same details, the same ideas, it is true ; but the applica-
tion of them is different in a dwelling from that in a church.
Modern architects, on the contrary, do not hesitate to apply forms
and methods that are peculiarly ecclesiastical, and which have no
significance in any other connection, to domestic work ; and it is
no unusual thing to-day to see a castle turret decorating the cor-
ner of a thoroughfare, or a church doorway leading into a financial
institution. A confusion naturally ensues as to the use of the
structure, and the average spectator is frequently at a loss to
know for what purpose a particular building is intended. In
mediaeval times such a condition would have been impossible,
because then the idea that intention was the chief thing to be ex-
pressed in a structure was so firmly imbedded that any other
process would never have been thought of.

It goes without saying that, if an adherence to this principle
produced satisfactory results in past times, the same methods
would bring about equally good ones at the present day. And
yet the thought is so far forgotten as to be seldom practiced. Not
all the architecture of the present time is bad, but so much of it
is, that no opportunity should be neglected of hastening a reform.
Our political thought is directed toward reform ; we have ballot
reform, civil-service reform, tariff reform, and very shortly the
art world must have architectural reform, or it will be impossible
to live in our houses. In place of use, we are given ornament ; in
place of intention, we have design. On every side buildings are
criticised for their appearance, and are generally found unsatisfac-
tory— a state of affairs that can be directly traced to their lack of
ideas. Music is flat and insipid just so far as ideas are absent
from it, and the same may be said of architecture. There are un-
rivaled opportunities for good work and plenty of it in this coun-
try, and yet there is a constant cry of dissatisfaction with the
products of our architectural labor. Government architecture is
as bad as that produced under private auspices. In ancient Rome
it was the government's work that was the best done and has
survived the longest. In the nineteenth century it is the private

210 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

work that reaches a respectable age, while that done by the gov-
ernment undergoes a rapid decay. The difference between the
ancient and the modern method is enormous, and it needs no
guide to tell which is the better. In our time, in our country at
least, government architecture is considered of more importance
for its effect on the " boys " than for any direct relation to the
progress of art. There is no limit to the expenditures that are
made on our large public buildings, but they are no sooner com-
pleted than extensive repairs are necessary that not infrequently
amount to as much as the original cost.

Nothing could be worse than this, yet it is happening every
day. Our streets are lined with hideous structures and comfort-
less dwellings. Lighting and ventilation, plumbing and heating,
and all the requirements of our daily life, are sunk into subordi-
nate positions beside the questions of external effect and the sup-
port of a large number of political hangers-on whose interest in
architecture terminates with the job. It is evident that this can
not be continued indefinitely. Sooner or later there will come a
revulsion in public feeling, and an insistence that our architecture
shall express our civilization in its fullest development, regardless
of designs or exteriors. The direction in which we are working
is essentially bad ; and it is manifest that, if they did things bet-
ter in past time, when utility was the prime consideration, the
sooner we return to primitive methods the better it will be. It is
a lasting disgrace to our culture that the Bushman and the Hot-
tentot, the Indian and the Patagonian have ideas in architecture
that put our own attempts to the blush and will render us a laugh-
ing stock to posterity. The instincts of animals, even, teach them
ways and means of construction that are far in advance of the
methods of the men of the nineteenth century. Did not the
wise man say go to the ant and consider her way and be wise ?

The architecture of the past teaches us many facts of interest
and value, but none more important than this, that a building
must express an idea. It must not seem to be what it is, but be it,
without any uncertainty or doubt. In the structures now going
up around us, in this land as well as in other lands, this essen-
tial element is apt to be found wanting. There are too many
buildings that need repairs and alterations before they can be
occupied. There are too many structures erected for external
effect, without due regard to the planning and the use to which
they are to be put. There is too much drawing of pretty plans
and elevations on paper, without proper attention to structural re-
quirements. There is too much haste, too much careless manage-
ment, too much poor construction, too much attention to detail,
too much bad taste. As a result, our buildings are bad in concep-
tion and execrable in execution. "We must not condemn a build-

EDUCATION AND CRIME. 211

ing f or some unpleasant detail, some crude idea. Nothing could
be less proper ; no building, no matter what its form, should be
condemned until we know its purpose, and whether it fills it or
not. The very fact that it is necessary to speak of " knowing the
purpose " of a building shows how thoroughly the art has degen-
erated.

■♦•»

EDUCATION AND CRIME.

By Rev. A. W. GOULD.

IN the January number of The Popular Science Monthly there
was an article by Benjamin Reece on Public Schools as affect-
ing Crime and Vice. In that article Mr. Reece mentions the fact
that " in the decade ending with 1880, population having increased
thirty per cent and illiteracy only ten per cent, the number of
criminals present the alarming increase of eighty-two per cent."
And he asks : " Can it be possible that with greater educational fa-
cilities there is to be increased crime ? Perish the thought ! Yet
if the instruction of our common schools subdues the tendency to
crime,' why is it that the ratio of prisoners, being one in every
3,442 in 1850, rose to one in every 1,647 in 1860, one in 1,021 in 1870,
and one in 837 in 1880 ? " He tells us further that " the illiterates
of the United States comprise seventeen per cent of the total pop-
ulation. . . . The general average of illiteracy is exceeded by ev-
ery one of the original slave States with the exception of Missouri,
but the average ratio of the mentally and morally unsound is
only reached in the State of Maryland. South Carolina, which
shows the highest percentage of illiterates, presents the lowest
average of any State in the Union as regards insanity and crime " ;
and his conclusion is that " our condition of decreasing illiteracy
and increasing crime" means that "in the adjustment of our
schools we have gone too far in our aim for material advance-
ment and development of wealth, and that we are correspond-
ingly losing in the direction of moral growth and culture."

In other words, he thinks that the United States census proves
that the increase of prisoners in our prisons is the result of the
increase of pupils in our schools. And as I find that these " novel
and threatening facts" have aroused some apprehension among
those interested in our public-school system, it seems to me desira-
ble that some one should point out the figures in our census which
seriously modify, if not wholly destroy, Mr. Reece's alarming in-
ference that our public schools are nurseries of crime.

Figures, like Bible-texts, may not lie, but they can be made to
prove almost anything ; and it would not be difficult to establish,
by our census figures, the exact opposite of Mr. Reece's conclu-

212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sion, if we may be allowed to use the same reasoning that he does.
For his statistics only show that crime and edncation are both
increasing. But that does not prove that the increase in educa-
tion is the cause of the increase in crime. Diseases have increased
during the past half-century, and so has medical skill ; but that
does not prove that the one increase was caused by the other.
Perhaps the increase of diseases would have been far greater had
it not been for the increase in the power to cope with them. So
education may, for aught Mr. Reece's statistics prove, be the only
thing that prevents a still more rapid growth in crime.

The statistics of our last report show that the most enormous
strides in developing a criminal class have been taken in those
States where ignorance, and not education, most aboimds. If we
take the ten States that have the largest number of citizens un-
able to write, we shall find that from 1850 to 1880 the ratio of their
prisoners has increased over fivefold, from one in 5,400 to one in
970 ; from 1860 to 1880 it has grown threefold, or from one in 3,600
to one in 970 ; while the ten States that have the fewest citizens
unable to write have swelled the proportion of their criminals
only threefold for the longer period and only fifty per cent for the
shorter — the figures being, for 1850 one in 3,100, for 1860 one in
1,500, and for 1880 one in 1,050. So that in the States of greatest
illiteracy the relative increase of criminals during the last twenty
years has been six times as rapid as in the States of least illiteracy.
And if we ask in what classes the most ignorance is to be found,
our census tells us that the foreign-born are fifty per cent more
illiterate than the natives, and the blacks seven times as illiterate
as the whites ; and our census tells us. further that the foreign-
born furnish one hundred per cent more than their share of crimi-
nals, and the blacks one hundred and fifty per cent more than
their share.

Do not these facts prove that the advance in crime is the result
not of education but of the absence of education ? We might
think so, if figures had not that reprehensible habit of being all
things to all men. Therefore, we may find, upon a more careful
examination, that there is some other cause than ignorance for
this rapid growth of our prison population in certain parts of our
country. If I am not mistaken, there are several such causes, some
of them entirely independent of the change in the illiteracy of the
nation. One of them lies in the transition from an unsettled con-
dition to a settled condition on our constantly advancing frontier :
another is in the change from slavery in the South ; and, a third is
in the gradual elevation of the standard of human conduct, mak-
ing crimes of actions that had been only lawful escapades in ear-
lier times.

The first cause comes out clearly if we compare the ten States

EDUCATION AND CRIME. 213

that were on the frontier in 1850 with ten older States— the New
England and Middle States, for instance. In the former the ratio
of criminals has been multiplied four or five times during the
past thirty years, while in the latter it has only doubled, rising
from 244 to 1,148 prisoners in a million inhabitants on the frontier,
and from 450 to 1,074 on the seaboard. Of course, it is obvious
that in a new country there will be a certain amount of lawless
conduct unpunished at first, before sheriffs, courts, and jails are
in running order. But the rapid increase in the proportion of
criminals, as the State grows older, does not mean more crime ;
it often means less. The evil-doers are arrested and sentenced,
and so get into our prisons and our census ; and then we are told
that crime is increasing. Kansas had only 289 prisoners to each
million of inhabitants in the decade before the rebellion, while it
had 1,300 to the same number in the last report ; yet every one
knows that this State was a far more dangerous place at the ear-
lier time than now. Colorado had only 477 offenders per mill-
ion at its first census, in 1870, but in 1880 it reported 1,950, a gain
of nearly fivefold in a single decade ; while on the other hand
the older States, like New Hampshire and Connecticut, showed an
actual decrease in percentage during these periods.

But the transition from slavery to freedom was a far more
efficient cause in swelling the ratio of this class. If we compare
ten of the original slave States with our ten New England and
Middle States, we shall find that the increase in crime in the slave
States has been three or four times as great as in the free States.
The former had, for each million of population, only 161 criminals
in 1850, and 240 the next decade. But in 1870 they had 829, and
in 1880 1,166. This was an increase of sevenfold, while the free
States only a little more than doubled their criminal element.

That this was the result of the emancipation is seen in many
ways. The sudden leap shows it between the decade before and
after the war, or between 1860 and 1880, if 1870 be thought too
near the contest to be a fair test. Those twenty years gave a
gain of fivefold in the proportion of prisoners of the Southern
States, while the Northern States showed a gain of less than
forty per cent. Single instances reveal it still more clearly. Mis-
sissippi sprang from 67 to 1,158 criminals in a million inhabitants,
and other States of the South show nearly as great a gain ; while
New York and Massachusetts actually declined in their criminal
percentage during that time, as did some other Northern States.

The explanation is obvious. Before the war the negroes were
slaves, and nearly all their offenses were punished by their mas-
ters, so that the State had no occasion to imprison them. But now,
from five to ten times as many blacks as whites, in proportion to
their numbers, are found in the jails or chain-gangs of the South.

214 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

And when we remember that the greatest illiteracy is to be found
in the former slave States, we- see that the increase of the criminal
ratio in the South may not be due wholly to ignorance, in spite of
census figures. The ignorance and the crime were both there be-
fore the criminals were locked up and counted in the census.

One might, indeed, claim that the lessened ignorance had much
to do with revealing this criminal element and imprisoning it. And
this brings us to our third cause of the increased ratio of crime.
The gradual elevation in the standard of life, and the intervention
of the courts in cases which were formerly decided by the bullet
or the knife, occasions a rapid increase in the official number of
criminals.

Drunkenness, I suppose, was not a crime anywhere in our land
half a century ago. Now drunkenness and disorderly conduct
form one tenth of all the crime of the country. And naturally
the restraint of these offenders will be most complete in the most
orderly and educated parts of our land. Accordingly, we find that
the ten educated States show a proportion of imprisonments for
these offenses tenfold greater than the uneducated States do. The
one has 2,865 and the other only 198 in a population three fourths
as large. And the educated States record three times as many pris-
oners as the uneducated States for assault and battery and simple
assault. If any one wishes to prove from the census that educa-
tion is a failure, he could find no stronger facts than these — a ten-
fold larger share of drunkenness and a threefold larger share of
violence in the States where men can read and write than in the
States where they can not.

But, of course, no one thinks that the South is more quiet, or-
derly, and innocent than the North. No one believes that there was
not a single case of drunkenness or disorder in all Alabama and Ar-
kansas in 1880, and only a score of cases of assault, while Massachu-
setts, with a less population, had 597 cases of drunkenness and dis-
order and 337 cases of assault ; yet this is what the census tells us.
The natural interpretation must be, that drunkenness and violence
are not punished by imprisonment in certain States, while they are
in others, and the States that punish least are most illiterate. This
interpretation is amply confirmed by the census itself. Though
education shows three times the violence that ignorance does, yet
ignorance perpetrates three times as many murders as education,
and that, too, while two or three of the educated States imprison
the murderer for life, and so swell the number, and while the illit-
erate States do not even think of arresting some murderers, and
often acquit others who are most notoriously guilty. It was only
last year that all the land heard that a certain Dr. McDow, a mar-
ried man of Charleston, S. C, murdered a Captain Dawson, simply
because he saved a girl whom the doctor was trying to ruin. No

EDUCATION AND CRIME. 215

one denied the murder, yet the papers tell us that the doctor
was triumphantly acquitted and honored by the society of the
city as a hero, instead of being counted by the census as a
criminal.

And it is only in a high state of society that offenses against
virtue cease to be either overlooked or avenged by violence. In
this very State of South Carolina there are only four such offend-
ers reported in prison, while Michigan has forty and Massachusetts
over two hundred. The latter State, indeed, has more than all the
illiterate States together. Yet, are we to think that Michigan is
ten times as sinful as South Carolina, or that Massachusetts has
more vice than all the ignorant States combined ? McDow's case
shows that such vice exists, and how it is regarded. A clergyman
of the South recently asserted in the Nation — and he has not been
contradicted — that only a small minority of the colored women
were chaste ; yet the census makes them far more virtuous than
their white sisters of the North. We do, indeed, hear quite fre-
quently of negroes being lynched for such offenses, but they obvi-
ously do not count in the census.

Therefore, though education may swell the list of criminals,
there are reasons for thinking that more education and not less is
what certain parts of our country need. They need more prison-
ers. If more men were punished for drunkenness and violence,
there would be less murder. If more murderers were executed
instead of being lynched or lionized, there would be less violence.
It is by checking the lesser offenses that the greater offenses are
avoided, though the prisons are filled thereby. And as civiliza-
tion improves in the South, no doubt the proportion of men in
prison will increase, at least for the present ; and the whole
country can not rise in its standard of moral conduct without
increasing the law-breakers, especially while we have to assimi-
late each year such a large and often lawless element from other
lands.

One of the results of raising the mass to a higher moral level
is, that individuals here and there drop out ; and the higher we
are raised the more will drop, and this will continue till those in-
capable of self-control have disappeared. It is only among sav-
ages— where there is no chance to drop, because all are on the
ground — that we find no criminals or paupers. And Mr. Reece
actually sighs for the " perfect order " found associated with the
" densest ignorance " among the cave-dwelling Veddahs and other
tribes. Possibly we might attain this " perfect order " if we would
imitate the savages in leading a savage life. But that would be a
pretty dear price to pay for such order as savages secure.

Most of us prefer civilization with all its drawbacks. We pre-
fer to see our country settled, though we know that jails will be

216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

built and occupied. The very convenience of city life is paid for
by added crime. The disorder that might be allowed in a wilder-
ness among savages can not be tolerated in a crowded metropolis
among civilized people. The ten States that have the largest
cities punish fifty per cent more violence and sixty per cent more
drunkenness than their share, though they have twenty per cent
less than their proportion of murders. Petty crimes come from
civilization, great crimes from barbarism. But among barbarians
great crimes are called virtues, and petty crimes are unknown or
unnoted.

I think, then, we need not fear that universal education is to
bring us universal crime. We want more and better education.
Of course, it is not the mere ability to read and write that is to
save a man from prison. He must learn self-control and acquire
a loftier standard of life. Mr. Reece dwells much upon the fact
that a large percentage of our criminals can read and write. But
that does not prove that their education made them criminals. I
dare say a still larger percentage of them can see, yet it was not
their ability to see that made them criminals. The densest igno-
rance may, like total blindness, keep men from crime ; but we do
not propose to put out our eyes of either mind or body. We will
have men learn to see better, morally and physically. It is im-
perfect education that has brought men to prison, as we see from
the constant relation of our criminal class to our illiterate classes.
They may, indeed, have some sort of an education, but the vast
majority of them are ignorant themselves, and have ignorant
kindred and associates ; and to be ignorant amid the civilization
of to-day is to be jealous and bitter and rebellious.

The very fact that Mr. Reece cites to prove his thesis, that igno-
rance is innocence and knowledge crime, disproves it most com-
pletely. South Carolina, he says, has the highest percentage of
illiteracy and the lowest of crime ; but, if he had taken one glance
below the surface, he would have seen a fact far more " novel and
threatening " than any he discovered. Out of the 626 criminals
of South Carolina, 570 are black and only 56 are white. Why
are there ten times as many blacks as whites in jail, when they
constitute only three fifths of the population ? The only answer
the census gives is in the fact that they are three times as illiter-
ate as the whites. So that the very State summoned to prove that
ignorance is exemption from crime, has ten elevenths of its crimi-
nals from the most ignorant class in the country. But perhaps
Mr. Reece thinks that their ignorance is not quite dense enough, as
one in four can still write. They certainly have not yet reached
the point where ignorance is bliss.

THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM. 217
THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM.

By JAMES A. SKTLTOK

WITH LETTERS FROM HERBERT SPENCER, PROF. HUXLEY, AND

DR. LYMAN ABBOTT.

IN the sacred literature of the Christian Church a word appears
that to its founder and to his immediate followers evidently
had a deep significance, the nature of which was at least partially
concealed from his later followers, and is still concealed from
those of the present day, through admitted mistranslation.

Standing on Mars' Hill and speaking to the men of Athens,
Paul affirmed that in all things they were " too Godi-f earing." *
Whereupon he proceeded to declare and make known unto them
the God whom they worshiped as the Unknown or Agnostic God.
In so doing he spoke of a God, the Lord of heaven and earth, who
made the world and all things therein ; who dwelt not in temples
made with hands ; who needed nothing, seeing he was the giver
of life, breath, and all things ; who had made of one blood all
nations of men; and who had determined the times before ap-
pointed and the bounds of their habitation. He declared that
they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and
find him, though he was constantly at hand, and the one in whom
they lived and moved and had their being. He closed with a
strongly put antithesis in which, without declaring divine con-
demnation of their agnosticism, which he said God " winked at,"
and they might therefore tolerate, he urged them to obey the com-
mand of God — "metanoein" — to practice metanosticism. This
word has been translated to mean " repent." It is hardly suffi-
cient to say that that translation is etymologically inadequate;
the history of the Christian Church also, for eighteen centu-
ries, proves it to be practically so. Paul evidently found in the
word " metanoein " the open door of a temple in which a God-
fearing worship might be exchanged for a God-loving worship.
The history of his own life shows that his personal conversion
was a metanostic process through which a defective external sight
was exchanged for a clear insight, revealed to him as with a
lightning-flash at midnight, wherein he instantly saw " the world
and all things therein " in an entirely new aspect.

The question, then, indirectly presented for the consideration of
the entire Christian Church, in the following correspondence, is,
Whether it should adopt the word actually used by Paul, with its
large meaning, either alone, as a step forward, and to restore to
the sacred record and to the working power of the Church the

* The word he uses is " deisidaimonesterous," and includes the idea of devil-fearing.

TOL. XXXVII. — 17

2i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

true meaning of the word used by Paul, but first used by the one
whom he preached and followed, as the central and supreme word
in his system of salvation for the world and for mankind ; or, co-
operatively with science and philosophy, for the purpose of secur-
ing their powerful aid for its work in the world ?

CORRESPONDENCE.

New York, November 20, 1889.

Herbert Spencer, Esq.

Dear Sir : I beg the privilege of presenting hereby, for your
consideration and determination, a question of seemingly uni-
versal importance, that has arisen in the course of our work in
the Brooklyn Ethical Association.

As far as possible I have sought to so present it as to limit
your labors therein to yea, yea, or nay, nay.

The question relates to the selection and adoption of words for
general use in the new philosophy, and as substitutes for the
words agnostic and agnosticism, to express the affirmative side of
the agnostic conception.

As a result of our experience of nearly two years in attempt-
ing to popularize evolution views, we find that just there our
greatest obstacle is to be found, and our time and labor are most
occupied and consumed, and increasingly so as we approach the
popular mass.

The object of this communication is to propose as such affirma-
tive substitutes the words metagnosticism and metagnostic, or
metanosticism and metanostic, and to ask therefor your own ap-
proval and also that of Prof. Huxley — in concert, if possible.

My own view is that the new or substitute words involve no
surrender or concession, but, on the contrary, if adopted would
mark an advance in the nomenclature of the agnostic phi-
losophy.

The accompanying statement was made by me as part of the
discussion following the reading of the essay of Dr. Lewis G.
Janes, on The Scope and Principles of the Evolution Philosophy,
the first of the current series of the Brooklyn Ethical Associa-
tion, on the evening of October 13, 1889, and it will explain itself.

I also hand you herewith a list of words and their definitions,
derived or derivable from the Greek verbs gignoslcein and noein,
in composition with the preposition meta, the imperative form of
which was used, according to the Greek Testament, by John the
Baptist and Jesus Christ, in that passage in which they are made
in the Douay Bible to say, "Do penance, for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand," following the Latin Yulgate ; and in King
James's and later English versions, " Eepent, for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand."

THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM. 219

These definitions of these words were prepared more than a
year ago, at the special written request of Rev. Lyman Abbott,
D. D., the pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn ; and the list is a
copy of the first rough draft or study made in compliance with
that request, but, for reasons unnecessary to explain here, has not
yet been presented to him. For what use these definitions were
intended by him I am neither authorized nor prepared to posi-
tively state. Dr. Abbott is in special charge of theology, liturgies,
and ecclesiastical history, as editorial contributor, under the chief
editorship of Prof. William D. Whitney, in the preparation of
The Century Dictionary, which is an encyclopedic dictionary of
the English language, now in course of publication by the Cent-
ury Company, the first volume of which now lies before me. . . .
In Volume I the words agnostic and agnosticism are defined at
length, with references to Huxley, Romanes, and Cobbe, and to
the source of the suggestion of the same by Prof. Huxley in the
mention by St. Paul of the altar he had seen erected by the Athe-
nians to the Unknown God.*

As I have previously informed you, early in his pastorship of
Plymouth Church, Dr. Abbott declared his belief in the evolution
philosophy, and his high sense of the value of its co-operation in
the religious work of the future. He is also the editor of The
Christian Union, the leading liberal religious newspaper in Amer-
ica. His position as such may be stated to be evangelical-liberal,
or conservative-progressive, with the promise of moving faster
and further, as soon as circumstances permit. Practically, things
are in a ferment in all religious denominations in America at this
time ; or, to speak more accurately, we seem to be entering a new
constructive period, and one which furnishes agnosticism and
evolution their great religious opportunity.

In the statement referred to I have used the words meta-
gnostic and metagnosticism to preserve or make parallelism in
form with the words agnostic and agnosticism, to which the
public eye and ear have now become accustomed, and to the bet-
ter present the expressive antithesis involved therein. I am,
however, fully aware that a word-form and meaning directly de-
rived from the word metanoeite (metanoeo), which is the actual
word placed in the mouth of Christ by and through the Greek
original, would have certain great advantages. Prominent among
them would be the ever-present evidence it would furnish that in
the gospel, as actually preached by Christ and his immediate con-
temporaries and handed down to us, so far as we know it, the
human mind was to occupy the leading place, to be elevated, and

* The authority of the Century Dictionary for this erroneous explanation of Prof. Hux-
ley's derivation of the word " agnostic " (see letter from Prof. Huxley) was the New Eng-
lish Dictionary.

220

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not degraded and disfranchised, as it lias been by bis alleged fol-
lowers for ages past. Not only in this respect, as it seems to me,
would the adoption of such a word bring science and philosophy
into harmony with the true religion of Christ and nature, but it
would also compel the beginning of a change in organized Chris-
tianity that would eventually bring it into complete harmony
with them.

Whether the best word is metagnostic, metanostic, meta-
gnosticism, or metanosticism, or some other form derivable di-
rectly or more remotely from the root nous, mind, is to me a ques-
tion of minor importance. I would select that which, on the
whole, is the truest and best, for the purpose of bringing about
the desired reconciliation of religious with other forms of truth,
even if it were necessary to manufacture the form for the occa-
sion; and this, it seems to me, we are at liberty to do, since,
strange as it may seem, while we have in our language and in
frequent use all the other words derived from the kindred Greek
words, the most important words of all, and the supreme words
of the religion of the English race (metanoeite and metanoia),
have never, apparently, up to this time, been transferred to or
adopted into the English language.

The suggestion is based upon the proposition that the words
to be adopted do and shall express, cover, or include the affirma-
tive side of the terms agnostic and agnosticism. The selection of
the proper forms I leave entirely to you, in co-operation with
Prof. Huxley, if you approve the suggestion and think the mat-
ter worthy your and his attention.

Certainly it must, it seems to me, be considered a desirable
thing to find words of affirmative import to designate the affirma-
tive meaning hidden under the terms in present use, since it must
seemingly tend to foreclose further argument and confusion on
that branch of the subject.

I inclose copies of these papers to be addressed and forwarded
to Prof. Huxley, if that course meets your approval.

My own plan would be, on receipt of the approval of yourself
and Prof. Huxley, to bring the matter before the public, through
our Association, at one of the meetings of the series now well com-
menced for the season, through The Popular Science Monthly,
and by other means within my present reach. I am confident
that recognition in the Century Dictionary would follow, and
that a great impulse would be given to the new philosophy, to
what would practically be a new or reformed Christian religion,
m harmony with human intelligence and progress, with the ex-
press word and thought of the founder of Christianity, and cal-
culated to combine them in the interests of the world and the race.
Very respectfully yours, James A. Skilton.

THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM. 221

a

The "list" referred to included the words meta(g)nostic, nouns
and adjective, meta(g)nosticism, meta(g)noiology, and meta(g)no-
sis. The definitions given were made approximately parallel
with the definitions of the words diagnostic, prognostic, diagno-
sis, prognosis, etc., as found in Webster, and need not he here
presented.

Monday, November 25th.

P. S. — The foregoing letter was complete on Saturday last. On
Sunday, the 24th inst., by a coincidence that seems to me not to
be a mere coincidence, Dr. Abbott, without any knowledge of this
correspondence or my intentions, took for his subject the sermon
of Paul on Mars' Hill, for the purpose of dealing with the " new
doctrine " and " new thing " involved in the " new theology " now
agitating the American churches. He referred to your position
and that of Prof. Huxley, quoted from your writings, and prac-
tically placed himself not only in line with agnosticism as ex-
plained by you, but so near to the position I have given him in
these pages that the next step must have brought out the new
word. His expressed thought implied it, and I had prepared
myself to hear it, when he suddenly brought his sermon to a close.
I feel myself, therefore, once more justified in my statements, and
am all the more anxious to use, or rather to have you use, the
present opportunity. I will ask him to print the sermon, that I
may send it to you in confirmation.* J. A. S.

STATEMENT.

Dr. Janes having unexpectedly and without suggestion of
mine used my name in connection with the term "metagnos-
ticism," I feel compelled to make my use of it as clear as possible
at once, without waiting another occasion.

The doctor chooses his words with exceeding skill and care.
He says that he will endeavor, in defining philosophical agnos-
ticism, to show that " in every department of scientific, historical,
and true philosophic investigation, indeed, it is consistent and
coincident with the meta-gnosticism of his friend Mr. Skilton." \

As so limited — to the definition of philosophical agnosticism
— the statement and the subsequent showing are both entirely
satisfactory. But the limitation is not so.

As adopted and used by me, the term meta-gnosticism has a
much larger meaning, and has an important bearing not only
upon science, history, and philosophy, but also upon and in re-

* The substance of the sermon is embodied in an article in the Forum for April,
1890.

f For a discussion of meta(g)nosticism in relation to the evolution of society, see Evo-
lution— Popular Lectures and Discussions, before the Brooklyn Ethical Association, pp.
216-227.

222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ligion, meaning the religion of our civilization, as well as the
religion of evolution and the future.

The evidence is abundant that even in the domains of science
and philosophy the word agnosticism does not and can not express
in full the idea or system for which it stands representative. Mr.
Huxley, the inventor of it, is, as we all know, in a state of con-
stant warfare over it ; and as to Mr. Spencer, it is sufficient to
refer to his controversy with Frederic Harrison and his " xu " as
the appropriate symbol " for the religion of the Infinite Unknow-
able."

With both of these men — the acknowledged leaders among
agnostics — and with all their followers, the trouble is that at
present they are compelled to seek to accomplish the practically
impossible by attempting to read a positive and affirmative mean-
ing into a word that is and can be only indefinite and negative.
And the words meta-gnosticism and meta-gnostic are proposed
for the purpose of meeting precisely that difficulty, and for the
reason that they are positive and affirmative.

Mr. Huxley really found the word agnostic, or its root, already
in use in the Greek language, and borrowed and used it for the
want of a better one, little thinking, doubtless, how important it
would become. It is believed that the time has now arrived for
importing another word, cognate in origin and affirmative in
meaning, into our language, if it be found by competent authority
to meet the requirements of the case.

In his essay entitled Retrogressive Religion, in reply to Harri-
son, Spencer says (p. 68, Appletons' edition) :

" I might enlarge on the fact that, though the name Agnos-
ticism fitly expresses the confessed inability to know or conceive
the nature of the Power manifested through phenomena, it fails
to indicate the confessed ability to recognize the existence of that
Power as of all things the most certain. I might make clear
the contrast between that Comtean Agnosticism which says that
( theology and ontology alike end in the Everlasting Wo with
which Science confronts all their assertions/ and the Agnosticism
set forth in First Principles, which, along with its denials, em-
phatically utters an Everlasting Yes. And I might show in
detail that Mr. Harrison is wrong in implying that Agnosticism,
as I hold it, is anything more than silent with respect to the
question of personality ; since, though the attributes of person-
ality, as we know it, can not be conceived by us as attributes of
the Unknown Cause of things, yet ' duty requires us neither to
affirm nor deny personality/ but 'to submit ourselves with all
humility to the established limits of our intelligence ' in the con-
viction that the choice is not 'between personality and some-
thing lower than personality/ but e between personality and some-

THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM. 223

thing higher/ and that ' the Ultimate Power is no more repre-
sentable in terms of human consciousness than human conscious-
ness is representable in terms of a plant's functions/ " And again
(p. 6Q, id.) : "Whereas, in common with his teacher Sir William
Hamilton, Dean Mansel alleged that our consciousness of the Ab-
solute is merely ' a negation of conceivability ' ; I have, over a
space of ten pages, contended that our consciousness of the Abso-
lute is not negative but positive, and is the one indestructible ele-
ment of consciousness ' which persists at all times, under all cir-
cumstances, and can not cease until consciousness ceases ' — have
argued that while the Power which transcends phenomena can not
be brought within the forms of our finite thought, yet that, as be-
ing a necessary datum of every thought, belief in its existence
has, among our beliefs, the highest validity of any : is not, as Sir
W. Hamilton alleges, a belief with which we are supernaturally
' inspired/ but is a normal deliverance of consciousness."

These quotations are sufficient to show that, as he holds it,
there is a positive and affirmative side to the doctrine of the
Unknowable, or to agnosticism, as taught by Mr. Spencer ; and
also that there is occasion for a word or words to express it.

In his article Agnosticism, published in The Popular Science
Monthly for April, 1889, Prof. Huxley says :

" Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence
of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle.
That principle is of great antiquity ; it is as old as Socrates ; as
old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that
which is good ' ; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which
simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to
give a reason for the faith that is in him ; it is the great principle
of Descartes ; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science.
Positively, the principle may be expressed : In matters of the in-
tellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without
regard to any other consideration. And negatively : In matters
of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which
are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the
agnostic faith, which, if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall
not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the
future may have in store for him.

" The results of the working out of the agnostic principle will
vary according to individual knowledge and capacity, and accord-
ing to the general condition of science. That which is unproved
to-day may be proved, by the help of new discoveries, to-morrow.
The only negative fixed points will be those negations which flow
from the demonstrable limitation of our faculties. And the only
obligation accepted is to have the mind always open to con-
viction."

224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In view of such utterances — and of many similar ones in other
writings of both Spencer and Huxley — it seems that a positive
and affirmative word, or set of words, capable of expressing the
agnostic idea, if to be found or framed, would not only be appli-
cable, but would be acceptable to them and fit for the system of
thought with which the essay of the evening is concerned.

The words proposed come from the same root as the words
gnostic, agnostic, prognostic, and diagnostic.

The root is verbal and affirmative. It means to know ; and
with the prefix meta, means to know beyond. The noun means
beyond-knowledge. Beyond-knowledge may be knowledge "be-
yond the sphere of sense," and correspond to Spencer's definition
of religion, or, as you will, it may refer to all knowledge beyond
mere sense-perception, and so include all human knowledge that
exceeds that of the brute animal and is derived from or limited
by the senses. As for myself, I prefer the total meaning : for
then, as the civil engineer uses his base-line and two known angles
to measure distances and relations of things beyond the river
where he can not go with his tape-line, and the astronomer the
distances, actual and relative, of the heavenly bodies, so we may
use our actual hither-knowledge for the purpose of dealing with
the field of beyond-knowledge — or of the Unknowable — where the
senses can give us no direct aid.

As to the appropriateness of the adoption of the proposed words
into the English nomenclature of religion, the evidence at hand is
still more authoritative and conclusive than in the case of science
and philosophy.

In his preceding essay — Religion : A Retrospect and a Prospect
— Mr. Spencer begins with these words :

"Unlike the ordinary consciousness, the religious conscious-
ness is concerned with that which lies beyond the sphere of sense. *
A brute thinks only of things which can be touched, seen, heard,
tasted, etc. ; and the like is true of the untaught child, the deaf-
mute, and the lowest savage. But the developing man has thoughts
about existences which he regards as usually intangible, inaudible,
invisible ; and yet which he regards as operative upon him."

If you ask the source from which the proposed words are de-
rived, the reply is that, as to the second form, it is found in the
New Testament, and is the supreme word in the messages of John
the Baptist, of St. Paul, of Jesus Christ, and of the gospel gener-
ally, wherein it is believed truly to have the precise meaning — as
shown by the context — of the proposed English word or words
under discussion ; and that, as to the first form, it is constructed
by throwing out the prefix — a — from the word agnosticism, and
substituting the prefix — meta.

Prof. Huxley, the inventor of the word agnostic, is said to

THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM. 225

have derived it from St. Paul's mention of the Unknown or Ag-
nostic God. The word now suggested is derived from the substi-
tute proposed by St. Paul at the same time. While St. Paul did
not advise the Athenians to erect an altar to the metanostic God
in place of the altar they had erected to the Agnostic God, he
used the word metanoein, and he thereby clearly advocated the
practice of what we may properly call metanosticism as the alter-
native and substitute for agnosticism, in connection with religion
and its observances. This he did after expressly declaring the
absence of any divine condemnation of their agnosticism, which
God is said to have " winked at " or overlooked. The strong and
suggestive antithesis made use of by St. Paul has been lost in the
translations of the language employed by him on that occasion ;
but there is no time to enlarge, here and now, upon the fraudu-
lent travesty practiced upon mankind for ages by the Church in
translating the original word so used to mean " do penance " and
" repent."

I content myself with asking, What would be the consequences
of the candid, common, and proper acceptance and use, through-
out the civilized world, of such a word to express the central
thought of the science, the philosophy, and the religion of our
age and of the ages to come, sanctioned by the high priests of
each of these departments of thought ?

I have only a word to add : Without committing this Associa-
tion, as its corresponding secretary, or otherwise, or any other
person but myself, to the proposition, it is my purpose to submit
the question of the adoption of the words meta-gnostic and meta-
gnosticism, or metanostic and metanosticism, as affirmative sub-
stitutes for the words agnostic or agnosticism, to Mr. Spencer
and Mr. Huxley, in the hope that, as leaders in modern agnostic
thought, they will see their way clear to their adoption, and
thereby supply a link to unite science, philosophy, and a true
Christian religion in behalf of humanity and future ages.

And when their replies are received — if so be — they will be
communicated to this Association for its further consideration,
and possibly for its co-operative action.

LETTER OF HERBERT SPENCER.
64 Avenue Road, Regent's Park, London, N. W., December 22, 1889.

My Dear Sir : I have to thank you for the volume of Evolu-
tion lectures, which I received recently. I presumed that they
would eventually be bound together, and that you would kindly
send me a copy. This, of course, I shall like to keep.

Will you excuse me if I do not go into the matters raised by
your late letters ? I have been made so ill by over-excitement
that until Wednesday last I had not been out for more than a

226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

month, and, though I am now better, I must avoid every mental
tax, however small.

I did not receive the journal which you named in your last,
containing some matter respecting Dr. Abbott's address (I think
it was). Very truly yours,

Herbert Spencer.

J. A. Skilton, Esq.

LETTER OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

Eastbourne, England, December 10, 1889.

Dear Sir : I have read the papers which accompanied your
letter of the 25th of November with much attention ; but, I regret
to say, with the result that I can discover no good ground for the
change of nomenclature which you propose. Permit me to trouble
you with my reasons for that conclusion :

The term " Agnostic " was not suggested by the passage in the
" Acts of the Apostles " in which Paul speaks of an inscription to
the " Unknown God" (dyvwo-ro) 0e<p). It is obvious that the author
of that inscription was a theist — I may say an anxious theist —
who desired not to offend any God, not known to him, by ignor-
ing the existence of such a deity. The person who erected the
altar was, therefore, in the same position as those philosophers
who, in modern times, have brought about the apotheosis of igno-
rance under the name of the " Absolute " or its equivalents.

" Agnostic " came into my mind as a fit antithesis to " Gnos-
tic " — the " Gnostics " being those ancient heretics who professed
to know most about those very things of which I am quite sure I
know nothing.

" Agnostic," therefore, as the name of a philosophical system
is senseless ; its import lies in being a confession of ignorance — a
warning set up against philosophical and theological phantoms —
which was never more needed than at the present time, when the
ghost of the " Absolute " slain by my masters Hume and Kant
and Hamilton is making its appearance in broad daylight.

Your definition of " metagnosticism " says that it " relates to
beyond-knowledge." That is exactly what all the "absolute"
philosophers profess the u Absolute " does ; and it is precisely that
profession which I consider to be futile and mischievous. To my
mind science is exact and organized knowledge — neither more nor
less. And the knowledge which goes "beyond knowledge" is
something which my cognitive faculties do not enable me to ap-
prehend.

The term " Evolution Philosophy " which you employ seems
to have different meanings for different people.

For me, evolution is a name for a certain process, the occur-
rence of which in various groups of things is as nearly demon-
strated as any historical event can be. And this, I think, consti-

THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM, 227

tutes a fair ground for the expectation that the whole cosmic pro-
cess will turn out to be one of evolution. The business of philos-
ophy, as I understand it, is, among other things, to arrive at a
scientific theory of evolution ; but these other things are quite as
important as evolution. Philosophy, in fact, should embrace the
whole of which the theory of evolution is a part.

Three or four generations of patient workers, cautiously feel-
ing their way by the well-known methods of true science, may
bring our posterity within sight of such a philosophy. For the
present, while welcoming all attempts to foreshadow it, with due
gratitude to their authors, and holding fast by that which is good
in them, it is very necessary that we should not confound such
scaffoldings with the edifice, the foundations of which are not yet
complete. I am, dear sir, yours very faithfully,

T. H. Huxley.

James A. Skilton, Esq.

Prof. Huxley asks that the foregoing letter be made public, on
the ground that " there seems to be a good deal of misconception
as to the position which now (as always) (he) I hold(s) in respect
of current philosophical speculations."

LETTER OF REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D. D.

Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, April 22, 1890.

My dear Mr. Skilton : There are two distinct questions
raised in this correspondence, one an etymological, the other a
philosophical one: the first relates to the use of language, the
second to the limits of knowledge ; the first is as to the meaning
of a word, the second as to the powers of the mind.

I. Metanoeo is composed of two Greek words, noeo, to think,
and meta. Now meta, in composition, appears to imply one of
three things: either (1) fellowship, as in meta-didomi, to give
to or share ivith another ; or (2) exchange, as in metallasso, to
change with another, to exchange ; or (3) sequence, as in meta-
melomai, to care afterward, to regret. I can not find that meta
ever signifies beyond. The preposition used for this purpose is
huper. Thus we have hnperekperissou, exceeding abundantly,
literally beyond measure. It would seem, therefore, according
to the analogy of language, if the New Testament writers had
wished to coin a word to express the idea of knowledge beyond
knowledge, the word would have been not meta-noia, but huper-
noia.

It is, however, very clear that the word repent does not cor-
rectly represent the meaning of the Greek word meta-noeo, if
we have regard to the etymologies of the two words. Repent is
strictly to repunish, and this is the idea which the Latin mis-

228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

translation has carried into the New Testament teaching. We
have, as a consequence, the popular idea, that the first step in a
religious life is self-inflicted punishment for past sin; an idea
which gave rise in the middle ages to the elaborate system of vol-
untary penances, fasting, flagellations, etc., and, more spiritually
interpreted, to the still common idea that no man can "begin a
Christian life without first undergoing what is called a " con-
viction of sin" — that is, a sense of shame and sorrow more or less
poignant because of sin. This misconception — for I am sure that
it is a misconception — leads modern revivalists to endeavor, by
various rhetorical and dramatic devices, to create such a feel-
ing of sorrow ; and would-be converts to endeavor, co-operating
with them, to beget in themselves such an experience. And con-
version is thought to be, or at least to be attested by, a sudden
emotional change from such an experience of regret and remorse
to one of peace and joy. This endeavor is scarcely more consist-
ent with the true teaching of the New Testament than the grosser
and more material endeavor to inflict self -punishment for sin by
penance. The flagellation of the soul is not more scriptural than
the flagellation of the body. What the Bible calls on men to do
is not to repent — that is, to punish themselves — but to " change
their minds," that is, to change their aims and purposes and hab-
its of thought and inward life. We have no English equivalent,
so far as I know, for the Greek words meta-noeo and meta-noia;
the phrase " change of mind " expresses an idea quite too super-
ficial. A change of the whole attitude of the soul toward life is
indicated. This may, and I think does, involve looking beyond
the sphere of sense ; it involves a perception of something that is
beyond knowledge ; but this is rather psychologically involved in
the mental condition than etymologically involved in the Greek
word meta-noeo.

II. In respect to the psychological question, it is hardly neces-
sary for me to do more than say that I am in entire agreement
with you, and with what seems to me to be clearly involved if
not explicitly stated in what you have quoted from Herbert Spen-
cer. Scientific knowledge — truth that is scientifically demonstra-
ble— is derived by logical processes from observed phenomena.
This scientific process makes it reasonable to believe as a proba-
ble hypothesis that there is a psychic life which the decay of the
physical organization does not destroy ; but what is the nature of
that life, and whether it preserves its individuality, or is absorbed
into the general psychic force of the universe to reappear in new
forms, are questions on which the scientific process throws little
or no light. So the scientific process makes it as absolutely cer-
tain as anything can be that " we are ever in the presence of an
Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed." But

THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM. 229

it is far from making certain what is the natnre of this Energy,
which is scientifically as unknowable as the inherent natnre of
matter or of force. But there is a knowledge beyond knowledge ;
that is, a knowledge of truths which are not ascertained by logi-
cal processes from observed phenomena, and are not, therefore,
demonstrable by logical processes from observed phenomena. We
know all aesthetic, all ethical, all spiritual truths by other means
than scientific processes. Into these truths we come by looking be-
yond the sphere of sense ; by looking beyond the larger domain of
logical deduction ; by aesthetic, moral, spiritual perception. We
know that God is, because we commune with him as a personal
friend and he is " nearer than breathing, closer than hands and
feet " ; we know that we are immortal — not shall be — because we
have in ourselves a consciousness of life which physical pain and
decay can not injure or impair. Thus our faith may be truth-
fully described as a knowledge beyond knowledge ; but it is not
any less certain and trustworthy because it transcends scientific
tests and demonstrations.

I hope I have given a definite and tolerably clear answer to
what seem to me to be the two questions implied in your cor-
respondence. There is a knowledge beyond knowledge. The
error of agnosticism is not in its denials ; it is in its psychology ; it
is in the fact that it ignores a part and that the larger and more
important part of man's mentality — his power to perceive directly
and immediately a world not cognizable, directly or indirectly, by
the senses ; that power which alone makes him a being of taste, of
affections, of moral or spiritual capacity. The answer to agnosti-
cism is not in maintaining that by the scientific process we can
arrive at certainty concerning truths which are not scientific ; it is
by a recognition of what you have called rneta-nosticism, the pow-
er of grasping knowledge beyond knowledge ; though the word
meta-nosticism, at least in so far as Scripture use is relied on
for its meaning, hardly conveys, it appears to me, though it
does imply, the idea which you purpose it shall convey in the
future. Yours sincerely,

Lyman Abbott.

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

Dealing with the uncorrected mistranslations of the New Ver-
sion, Rev. Treadwell Walden says : *

It may now be imagined with what interest and expectation we looked for-
ward to the New Version, realizing full well the difficulty of reproducing the
original in this place and elsewhere more faithfully, and of making a change so

* An Undeveloped Chapter in the Life of Christ. The Great Meaning of the Word
Metanoia, lost in the Old Version, unreeovered in the New, pp. 14, IV, 18, 38, 39.

23o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

startling, but hoping that, at the least, a marginal rendering would indicate the
literal alternative, or a glossarial note define the Greek expression in a way that
would go far to correct the English one. But the revision flows on, making a
ripple of change in almost every verse, yet with not a sign of perturbation over
this sunken rock. Neither a light-ship nor a buoy warns of a spot where there
has been shipwreck before now.

"We understand, however, that it was the subject of discussion among the re-
visers, and that the matter was finally passed by, not because the present rendering
was satisfactory, but because no one equivalent English word could be found
comprehensive enough for the purpose. What, then, has been so long lost in the
Old Version, remains unrecovered in the New, because of a reluctance to employ
a paraphrase! The poverty of our language, in this respect, is to keep us poor.
Or, it may be, something else was at the bottom of it, symptoms of which are
apparent in other instances. It may have been the reluctance of that kind of
conservatism which prefers not to disturb traditional notions or long-established
formularies. We comfort ourselves, however, with the thought that the New
Version is not a finality, but only tentative to that which shall yet meet the brave
demand of the nineteenth century. What we have is a bold and noble move, but
the whole of English Christendom are in council over it now, and suggestions and.
criticisms will flow in for some years to come; changes of view will also take
place, making the way clearer and easier to a more fearless and absolute transfer
of the original into our native tongue.

It were a bold word from any but a Divine mouth — we should say — and yet
the human tongue has been uttering it, virtually, all along in another sphere.
What has been the proclamation of science in its own material world, but " Meta-
noeite? Change your mind from the near testimony of Sense to the distant wit-
ness of Discovery "? Sense says : The sun rises in the east and revolves about the
earth ; the earth is the center of the celestial sphere. But Science — knowledge —
proclaims a contradiction, and, with it, a revolution. It is the earth that goes
round the sun, the sun is but one of that starry host, the blue firmament melts
into illimitable space ; it is an illuminated universe which lies out there, in which
this apparently ponderous globe floats like an atom in a sunbeam. So Science, an
echo of the divine voice, has enlarged, reversed the whole consciousness of man.
Her metanoia has been proclaimed, not only here, but everywhere in her mate-
rial field. Whithersoever she has gone, Nature has inverted its apparent order,
its phenomena have widened out into once occult principles, and the first human
impression of them has had to be revoked.

We can now imagine how, under such a conception, the pulpit would awake
to the grandeur of its work, how the Church would awake to the grandeur of her
cause. The themes of the one, the methods of the other, would move with
splendor and with power to one definite and mighty end — the summoning of
mankind to the metanoia, this new mind, and the announcement of everything
on the divme side of life, which would inspire and create it. For we are just on
the verge of a great epoch. All this intellectual activity in the material world
is surely working toward a moment of reaction when the same intensity of move-
ment will turn the other way, and the universal demand will be for a knowledge
of the spiritual. The voice of Science, crying in its wilderness, will be found to
have been preparing the way to this. It will turn out to be the " expectation "
of this age. Out of its dust and ashes shall mount again the cry : " Metanoeite !
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand ! n Let us see to it that neither the Bible,
the Church, nor the pulpit, gives then an uncertain sound.

THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM. 231

Mr. Walden also quotes De Quincey as saying :

In my opinion the Greek, word metanoia concealed a most profound meaning —
a meaning of prodigious compass — which tore no allusion to any ideas whatever
of repentance. The meta carried with it an emphatic expression of its original
idea — the idea of transfer, of translation — or, if we prefer a Grecian to a Roman
appareling, the idea of a metamorphosis. And this idea, to what is it applied ?
Upon what object is the idea of spiritual transfiguration made to "bear? Simply
upon the noetic or intellectual faculty — the faculty of shaping and conceiving
things under their true relations. The holy herald of Christ, and Christ himself,
the finisher of prophecy, made proclamation alike of the same mysterious sum-
mons, as a baptism or rite of initiation, namely, Meravoelre — henceforth transfig-
ure your theory of moral truth ; the old theory is laid aside as infinitely insuffi-
cient; a new and spiritual revelation is established. Metanoeite! Contemplate
moral truth as radiating from a new center ; apprehend it under transfigured rela-
tions.

No exhibition of blank power — not the arresting of the earth's motion — not
the calling back of the dead to life, can approach in grandeur to this miracle
which we daily behold — namely, the inconceivable mystery of having written and
sculptured upon the tablets of man's heart a new code of moral distinctions, all
modifying — many reversing — the old ones. "What would have been thought of
any prophet, if he should have promised to transfigure the celestial mechanics; if
he had said : I will create a new pole-star, a new zodiac, and new laws of gravi-
tation; briefly, I will make a new earth and new heavens? And yet a thousand
times more awful it was to undertake the writing of new laws upon the spiritual
conscience of man. Metanoeite ! (was the cry from the wilderness). "Wheel into
a new center your moral system — geocentric has that system been up to this hour
— that is, having earth and the earthly for its starting-point ; henceforth make it
heliocentric (that is, with the sun, or the heavenly, for the principle of motion).

In an appendix Mr. Walden also prints an extract from a let-
ter of Rev. Philip Schaff, D. D., in which the latter expresses
" cordial approval " of the " able, excellent, and truthful article
on the meaning of metanoia" and states that " conservatism pre-
vented a change, and the difficulty of substituting a precise equiva-
lent word," doubtless referring to the proper substitute in the
new version for the word " repentance."

Attention may here be called to the fact that Hamilton says,
" I would employ the word noetic to express all those cognitions
which originate in the mind itself." Why not rather employ the
words metanoetic or metagnostic for that purpose ? It is to be
remembered also that Lewes, in the Foundations of a Creed, says
that he found it necessary to invent the new word metempirical,
to " clearly designate " the " province where sense has no footing,
where experiment can exercise no control, and where calculation
ends in impossible quantities," the region of the " supersensible " ;
and to distinguish it from the province of the empirical, the region
of the sensible and the extrasensible. But that word does not
seem to have been generally accepted, and is not adequate for our
purpose.

23 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It appears, then, from an examination of the accompanying
correspondence and quotations, that in two of the most important
provinces of human thought, religion and philosophy, there is no
proper and accepted English word to designate the supreme prin-
ciple and element of the systems ; that the universally accepted
word to designate the same in one of them is, and for many years
has been, known to be utterly insufficient if not false, by many
among the leaders, and that in the other province such a word is
much to be desired.

It is no part of our purpose to discuss the appalling disclosure
of an only plan of salvation offered to the world, and yet con-
cealed from it for ages of agony through want of a word by which
to make it known; nor to discuss the effects of that disclosure
upon the a common people " when it shall be finally made clear to
them. After the publication of this article it can no longer be
said that no attempt has been made to supply the missing word,
and it will be for those whose function it is to decide such matters
either to slowly adopt it, to supply a better, or to allow us to
drift without it. But at this moment the word here proposed as
adequate, and advocated as especially fit in view of its tendency
to unite and harmonize both domains of human thought, interest,
and activity concerned, has not been accepted by the leading au-
thorities of either religion or philosophy, so far as it has been
submitted to them.

However, Dr. Abbott seems to admit that, etymologically,
philosophically, and scripturally, the proposed word implies, if
it does not convey, the desired meaning.

As to the suggested word Jiupemoia, the fact that the prepo-
sition huper was not used in the New Testament becomes a strik-
ing negative argument in favor of our word. Moreover, huper
evidently relates to quantity or proportion, and means excess,
while meta relates to space or position, and means universally —
according to Webster — in composition, beyond, over, after, etc.

Much remains to be said, but enough has already been said
to open the discussion of the subject, and to put the responsibili-
ties of the situation upon the leaders of religious and philosophic
thought, to whom they properly belong.

The objects of anthropometry, according to Mr. Francis Galton, are to define
the individual or the race, and to show in what way and to what extent he or it
differs from the others. By taking measurements the individual is taught to know
his own relative powers at any given time, and we are helped to watch over the
development during the period of growth, and to give it direction if it does not
proceed normally. Measurements of the head are designed to show how much
and up to what age the brain continues to grow, and to aid in comparing the edu-
cated with the uneducated classes.

TIN AND ITS NATIVE LAND. 233

TIN AND ITS NATIVE LAND.

By M. BRAU DE SAINT POL LIAS.

TIN, which, every one knows, but which few, except men of
science and metallurgists, are acquainted with, is one of the
most precious and most interesting metals. After gold and silver,
it is intrinsically the most precious of those in use. It is nearly
of the same color and almost as bright as silver, but has less
resistance and is less valuable. When warmed by friction, it has
a pronounced odor and taste. When it is bent, the derangement
of the crystals of which its mass is formed causes it, without any
fracture taking place, to emit a peculiar sound which metallur-
gists call its cry, and by means of which an expert can nearly de-
termine its degree of purity. The places where tin is produced
are few, scattered sparsely over the surface 'of the globe ; and it
disguises itself under the form of a blackish mineral which, to
the profane eye, gives no sign of the treasure that is within it.

.One of the richest as well as most ancient tin mining dis-
tricts is in the Malay Peninsula, the Golden Chersonesus of the
ancients. The name of the province, Perak, signifies silver ; but
it is peculiarly the province of tin. A few years ago we visited
the mines there, ascending the Larrout River in a Chinese junk to
Telok-Kartang, where a warm reception awaited us from the Eng-
lish colonial authorities. Thence we went, in a country wagon,
and afoot after it had broken down, through a country where
tigers are not rare, to Thaiping, the principal toAvn in the district.
We found lodging in the house of the assistant resident on the top
of the Boukit Bandera, which appeared to our eyes at the moment
a veritable castle of the fairy tales. Opening the window in the
morning, we could look from our elevated position upon the coun-
try of tin, which lay in nearly its full extent before us. Large
mounds of white earth and water-holes of strange form, breaking
up the surface at different points around the ham pang, marked
where mines had been worked or were still in working. Chinese
coolies were climbing up and down the notched tree-trunks which
served as ladders to the open pits, bearing on their shoulders bam-
boos, at each end of which hung the baskets in which the mineral
was carried. Hydraulic wheels, which were nothing but primi-
tive wooden Archimedes' screws, or norias with inclined buckets,
were turning with harsh creakings, lifting the water out of the
bottom of the excavations. Animation prevailed over the whole
plain, in which were to be seen by turns arid spots of mineral
refuse, or exuberant tropical vegetation. Farther on the country
grew hilly, and the view was at last shut off by a semicircle of
high mountains, in which are found the true mines, in quartz

TOL. XXXVII. 18

234

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

veins charged with tin, intersecting the granitic masses. The
washings of these veins, mingled with alluvial sands, have been
carried down by the rivers and spread by them through the floods
of the ages over the bottom-lands of the country. Taking advan-
tage of this work of Nature, man, instead of quarrying in the
mountain for the vein and having to blast the incasing rock, has
only to look in the flats for the mineral.

The mines were worked by the Chinese, no European operator
having been as yet established in the country. It did not take
long to witness the extremely simple process by which the ore is

Fig. 1— Sungei Lembing Tin-Mining District, Peninsula or Malacca.*

extracted. After clearing off the ground, the surface and subsoil
are removed for one, two, or three metres, till the mineral, tin-
bearing bed is exposed ; this is sometimes several metres thick.
The mineral is carried in baskets, as we have seen, up the cocoa-
trunk ladders, to a wooden flume which is washed by a current of
water. As the mine grows deeper this labor, with the rudiment-
ary means at the disposition of the Chinese, is made extremely
difficult by the inflow of water. The washing of the tin-bearing
earth is done by coolies, who witli a rake remove the stones and

* The illustrations in this article are views in the lands of the British "Pahang Cor-
poration," which has been formed to work the mines in Pahang, eastern Malacca.

TIN AND ITS NATIVE LAND.

235

work up the material in such a way as to eliminate the light
sands that are mixed with oxide of tin, till only twenty-five or
thirty-five per cent of foreign matter is left. The mineral thus en-
riched is melted in little brick furnaces, with the aid of a bellows
of bamboo, which is worked by a coolie as if it were a syringe.
The white metal as it runs out is cast into the well-known cubic
ingots with one side flaring over the edges, so as to give them a
pair of ears by which they can be more easily handled. A great
deal of metal is certainly wasted in this process ; and a second
washing of the refuse would probably be very remunerative. The
Chinese and Malays call this lost metal young, tin, which is re-
turned to the earth to ripen, because it is not yet old enough to
stay in their primitive machines. It is only now, after no one
can tell how many centuries since tin has been known and worked
in the peninsula, that a rational system of operating the mines is
about to be adopted.

The use of tin dates from extreme antiquity. Homer mentions
it as kassiteros, in the descriptions of the arms of his heroes. He-
rodotus speaks of the British Islands as the kassitericles. The
Phoenicians obtained the tin which they furnished to the ancient
world chiefly from those islands, but partly also from Gaul and
the Iberian Peninsula. Before the Phoenicians and the Greeks,
however, the Chaldeans
knew this metal under
the name of kastira. The
most ancient document
in which a mention of it
has been found is prob-
ably a hymn to the fire,
which M. Oppert has
translated from the Ac-
cadian language, a tongue
the knowledge of which
has been recently revived
from cuneiform docu-
ments. Tin was desig-
nated in them, five thou-
sand years ago, as anahu.
The biblical text in the
Book of Numbers, in
which Moses names tin

in the enumeration of the metals, is therefore comparatively mod-
ern, for it is of fifteen hundred years later date than the hymn to
the fire. Even more definite than these texts is an Egyptian
statuette in bronze (an alloy of tin) of the age of the pyramids, or
3600 years B. c.

Fig. 2.— Native Chinese Tin-stamping Mill on the
Kuantan, Malacca.

236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Let us return to our own age, and see what is the present
annual production of tin. In a recent book on the Industries of
the Netherlands, M. de Ramaix gives as the production of the
Dutch East Indies, ten thousand tons ; of Cornwall, eight thou-
sand tons ; and of Australia, seven thousand tons ; in all, twenty-
five thousand tons. These figures show that the English mines
have fallen off since the days of the Phoenicians, when Cornwall
was the principal center of production. They have been left be-
hind by the Dutch East Indies, and will soon be overtaken by
Australia, if the number, seven thousand tons, given as the pres-
ent production of its mines, is not exaggerated. Saxony and Bo-
hemia, which still figure in the cyclopaedias as sources of tin, are
not mentioned in M. de Ramaix's estimate. A graver omission is
that of the Malaccan mines, which I have mentioned as the most
ancient, and also perhaps the most productive. According to
Mr. Patrick Doyle's Tin-Mining in Larut (London, 1879) the Ma-
lay states of the Malaccan Peninsula exported to Penang in 1877,
in round numbers, 2,500 tons of tin, and the Siamese states of the
same country, 7,000 tons, making 9,500 tons in all. From per-
sonal information, I estimate the exportation from the single Ma-
lay state of Perak, in 1881, at 6,139 tons. The production of the
peninsula having grown steadily since 1876, I believe I can as-
sert that it now takes the lead among tin-producing countries,
and that the world's total present annual production of this metal
is not less than 45,000 tons.*

Yet this production is hardly sufficient to supply the needs of
existing industry, for the price of tin before the crash in copper,
by which it was also affected, had reached the high figure of $800
a ton. This is because, while the applications of the metal have
varied much at different periods, it has always been applied to
numerous uses. There is hardly a house so humble that has not
its utensils of tin- ware. Wherever woman has advanced beyond
the crystal of the fountains, of which Seneca boasts, we are sure
to find, if not a looking-glass, a mirror ; and there is hardly a
country so savage that European glasses silvered with the amal-
gam of tin have not reached it. It is used in all the applications
of soldering, in tin - foil for wrapping preserved foods, and in
printing-types. Some of the uses which our forefathers made of
it are matters of much interest.

In the middle ages tin passed from the Gauls to the Merovin-
gian Franks ; and, according to Gregory of Tours, basilicas were
roofed and tombs were covered with it. It was extensively used

* I believe that these figures understate the facts. In a book on the Political Geogra-
phy and Economical Situation of the Malay Peninsula, in 1888, published by the French
Minister of Public Instruction, M. de La Croix gives the production of the peninsula, from
official documents, as over 24,000 tons, or more than half that of the entire globe.

TIN AND ITS NATIVE LAND. 237

in convents and churches, where devotional objects of every kind
were made out of it — crosses, chandeliers, holy-water bowls, other
vessels, organ-pipes, and pilgrim-standards. It was allowed, with
gold and silver, to enter into* the composition of the sacred ves-
sels, when wood, lead, copper, and bronze were prohibited as base
or insalubrious, and glass on account of its fragility.

Bishops and priests were buried with their symbols, crosses,
and chalices represented in tin. This metal served well in place
of silver in the illumination of ancient manuscripts, as it now
takes the place of gold in the lacquers of China and Tonquin, in
which the metallic luster of tin-foil has given the transparent
varnish the yellow shine of gold. Some objects found in the
Italian tombs have an interesting resemblance to those of Ton-
quin and China. Curiously, the custom of the Chinese and Ana-
mites, of burning papers to their ancestors bearing the figures
of objects which they use while living, finds its equivalent among
the peoples of Europe, who placed in the tombs of their dead tin
images of similar objects, such as forks, knives, tongs, tripods,
and candlesticks.

Tin was likewise employed for numerous purposes, often ex-
alted ones, in the life of the middle ages. The ceremonial cups in
which the wine was formally offered to a sovereign or to a lord
making a solemn entry into a city, and the goblets given as prizes to
the most adroit bowmen, were usually made of it. So were cups and
measures for wine and oil, porringers, and dishes of all sizes. Plates
came later. This piece, which it seems to us so natural to set on
the table in front of each guest, is not of older use than the twelfth
century. Even at that time every plate served in common for
two or three persons. Before that, our ancestors ate, as I have
done myself, among the rajahs of Oceania, each one taking the
morsels with his hand from the common dish.

Grand commemorative medals, seals affixed to documents, ink-
stands, and tokens were struck in tin. The use of this metal was
still more general in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth cent-
uries. The tin eating-dish came into general use, even among
peasants and workingmen, and was provided for animals. Queen
Isabella's cats and the Emperor Frederick's hunting-birds had
them ; and tin drinking-dishes were made for the royal birds and
for song-birds of every kind. Barbers' emblems, to the seven-
teenth century, representing a bearded figure, were of tin, to dis-
tinguish them from surgeons' signs, which were of yellow metal
or brass.

Relegated till then to the kitchen or the offices of the large con-
vents or the houses of the great lords, save in perilous times when
it was brought out to take the place of silver plate on the mas-
ters" tables, tin passed, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, into

238

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

-Campbell's Tin Lode (Pahang Corporation),
showing Ancient Workings.

the hands of real artists.
It then furnished the ma-
terial for those wonderful
pieces of goldsmith's work
that were saved by the low
price of the metal from the
melting-pot which works
of gold and silver conld
not escape, and which have
come down to ns as pre-
cious specimens of middle-
age art. The pewterers of
England, Flanders, and
Spain, particularly of Bar-
celona, then produced
works of real taste. The
most remarkable art -
works which remain to us
from that epoch were pro-
duced in France and Ger-
many, especially in Nu-
remberg, whose pots and
plates of tin were as fa-
mous as its dolls. Tin thus
had then all the honors
of the precious metals. It
still shares with the pre-
cious metals the advan-
tage of cleanliness, which
is set forth by many au-
thors, who recommend it
for the preservation of
medicines that would be
changed by contact with
any other metal.

The importance of the
question of the source
whence tin was derived at
such a remote age was in-
dicated by M. Daubrey,
when he said, in the French
Academy of Sciences, that
this metal presented a
double interest : " On one
side, its use in the form
of bronze characterized a

TIN AND ITS NATIVE LAND. 239

grand epoch in human history ; and, on the other side, the ap-
pearance of the mineral, not resembling any metallic substance,
and the rarity of its deposits, supposed knowledge among the
first miners of which we have hardly any other evidences.
What country, then, in which tin is produced, was sufficiently
civilized more than fifty centuries ago for its people to have
knowledge enough of mineralogy to recognize the metal in the
dark mineral that contains its oxide ; and which had such a
social organization as to make practicable the different operations
and enterprises on which its extraction depends ? * M. Germain
Bapst expressed the opinion, three years before our first visit to
Perak, in one of the most remarkable and interesting works that
have been published on the subject, that this country was the pen-
insula of Malacca.

A curious relation has been traced between the names which
the Malays of the peninsula give to tin and' lead — tima poute
(white), tin, and tima itam (black), lead — and the names given
by Pliny — plumbum candidum (white lead, or tin), and plumbum
nigrum (black lead, or lead) ; and also between the Malay tima
and the English, Dutch, and Danish tin, the German zinn, and
the Swedish tenn. Etymologists ask if this Malayan application
of tin at a time when the kassterides islands, as yet without a
name, were lying in the solitude of their dense forests, and the
primitive populations of Switzerland, who also used tin for the
ornamentation of their earthen vessels, had not yet built their
lake villages, did not start from Malacca, and, carried by slow
migrations, but directly, and over the heads of the Assyrians
and Greeks, reach the extremity of Europe at a much later
period.

Thus, this peninsula of Malacca, which is now covered by
virgin forests inhabited by wild orang-sakeys, dotted with
swamps that have to be crossed on elephants' backs, peopled by
rhinoceroses and tigers, may at that time have been at the head
of the world's civilization, and had its railroads, telegraphs, tele-
phones, temples and theatres, artists and journalists, deputies and
bankers, speculators and pickpockets — everything, in fact, that
appertains to the last expression of progress, but under very
different forms — perhaps even its Eiffel Tower in bamboo — while
Europe was still in the period of its orang-sakeys. Such is the
way of the world. Why should not every country have its turn ?
— Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Sci-
entifique.

A satisfactory report has been made of the results of the first year's working
of the new educational programme of the Central Provinces of India, in which
special provision is made for technical education.

24o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE.

By Mrs. FANNY D. BERGEN.
III.

A FEW of the many groundless beliefs concerning both the
useful and the injurious powers of certain reptiles and
batrachians have been already enumerated, but such fictions are
by no means confined to these uncanny -looking tribes of animals.
Indeed, it would seem as if such a knowledge of the real nature
of the commonest animals and plants as might readily be acquired
by even untrained observers had been altogether supplanted by
chimerical delusions which are incredibly hard to eradicate, for,
as Dasent remarks, " popular tradition is tough."

Among the ancient Egyptians, cats were highly revered, sacri-
fices even being offered them and temples built for them, and
after death many were preserved as mummies. Travelers state
that the modern Persians, too, greatly esteem the domestic cat.
But from very early times, in most countries where the cat has
been kept as a domestic animal, she seems to have been an object
of suspicion. Cats have been the reputed familiars of witches ;
have at other times been supposed to incarnate witches, or even
the father of witches, the devil himself. It is, .then, natural
enough that cats should figure rather prominently in the list of
animals credited with exceptional powers for good and evil.
Remnants of many ancient beliefs concerning such powers are
still found — some among us, and more, it may be, in older coun-
tries. A trustworthy old woman whose early life was spent near
Cork, Ireland, tells me that it is well known that in old times cats
could sometimes speak, and that she herself remembers one in-
stance in her girlhood of a cat speaking with a human voice. " It
was on an oiland aff the coast of Oireland," said she, in her queer
mixture of the brogue and Yankee dialect, " a bit o' land all sur-
rounded with water. There was a woman was cardin' wool, and
after she carded it she put it into her sieve,* and then her cat
came along and pulled it about, and she quished him away, and
whin she did that he said, ' Ye'd better lave this oiland, or ye'll be
sorry.' And nixt day there came up a very high tide, and swipt
away ivery livin' thing on the oiland. I suppose the cat just
wanted an excuse for spakin' whin he tangled up the woman's
wool. Ah, cats are very knowin' ! and there's great virtue in a
cat's blood, 'specially that of a black cat, or its skin, aither." Al-

* A kind of wicb hoop, with the bottom covered with tanned sheepskin, and used to hold
the carded wool.

ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE. 241

most every one is familiar with the time-honored belief that a cat
must not be left alone in the room with a little child for fear that
" the cat will suck the baby's breath." So general is the belief in
this breath-sucking power of the cat that I have taken pains to
consult several distinguished physicians in New England as to its
probability, and have received from each a most unequivocal
statement of disbelief in any such phenomenon. One eminent
Boston physician suggests that the notion may be based on the
fact that a cat likes warmth, and naturally might lie up close to
the warm breath of a sleeping child. Any injury which the latter
might receive would therefore come from breathing an impure
air, charged with carbonic-acid gas, and if the cat were diseased —
for instance, had consumption — there would be the possibility of
inhaling the bacilli or germs of tuberculosis. But is it not more
than possible that the popular apprehension is descended from
the old-country dread of the animal's connection with witchcraft ?
De Gubernatis cites the fact that, in Monferrato, black cats, being
thought to be witches, are carefully kept away from the cradles
of children ; and the same precaution is taken, for the same rea-
son, in Germany. In the latter country, black cats are in general
thought to be ill-omened creatures, and, if one is found on a sick-
bed, it foretells death ; or if on a grave, it signifies that the soul of
the departed is in the possession of the evil one. In earlier times,
I conclude that black cats were usually considered to be especially
evil-boding ; but this notion has apparently undergone a change,
so that now the white or light-colored cat is often reckoned the
forerunner of evil, while the black one is the harbinger of good.
There is a popular saying in various parts of New England that
it betokens good luck to be followed by a black cat. A black or
gray cat or kitten coming to a house will bring good luck, but a
white one is a sign of calamity. " If you drive away a black cat
that comes to you, you drive away your luck." The possession of
a black-nosed, " smutty-nosed," cat brings wealth, while in Maine
it is said the ownership of a white cat entails poverty. In Canada
and parts of Michigan I find the notion is that lucky cats are those
of three colors, and therefore the owner of one of the not uncom-
mon variety, mottled with black, white, and orange, should keep
her as a mascot, or luck-bringer. Among the negroes of Alabama
it is believed that after death the spirits of old maids take posses-
sion of black cats. There is a popular belief in parts of Pennsyl-
vania that, if by accident cats' hair be swallowed, it will turn into
worms. In central Maine one may find a more generalized form
of this superstition. The belief there is that, if any kind of a hair
be allowed to enter the human stomach, it will gradually change
into a snake — the species of the latter undefined. A native of
Cumberland, England, has told me that there it is a common say-

VOL. XXXTII. 19

242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing that one must not swallow a hair of a cat, since if swallowed
it will develop into a kitten within its hapless host.

From southern Illinois comes the notion that a felon may be
cured by simply putting on, dry, three hairs from the tip of a
black cat's tail. It would be so very easy a matter to test the effi-
cacy of this remedy that it is almost incredible that experiment
has not before now dissipated such an absurd belief even from
the most credulous mind. Possibly there is some relation be-
tween this prescription and a saying found in central Maine that
in the tip of every cat's tail are three hairs of the devil. All are
aware of the ease with which in cold, dry weather, the fur of a
cat is electrified by friction ; but who would imagine that any
connection could be conjectured between this phenomenon and
lightning ? There is, however, a New England superstition, of
greater or less extent, that it is very unsafe to tolerate the pres-
ence of a cat during a thunder-storm. I know of one lady in Sa-
lem, Mass., who never allows her cat to remain in the living-
rooms of the house when a thunder-storm is threatened. No
sooner do dark clouds begin to gather than Tabby is relegated to
the cellar for fear " she may draw the lightning." The reasonable-
ness of this precaution is quite worthy of the superstition which
occasions it. The grease tried out by roasting a perfectly black
cat is recommended in northern Ohio as a curative ointment in
any disease of the skin. From central Maine came the preposter-
ous notion that consumption may be cured by cooking a black
dog (one without a white hair) and eating the fat on bread. In
the same region a much-prized unguent for pimples, roughened
skin, or any other cutaneous disturbance, is the grease of a
weasel. It would certainly seem that but a trifling quantity of
fat could be obtained from one of these slender creatures. Pliny
states that the gall of one kind of weasel (probably the ferret) is
a most efficacious remedy for the sting of an asp ; also that the
flesh of another species, preserved in salt, is a cure for the bites of
serpents. The dried flesh of the weasel was often kept by the an-
cient Romans to be given in small quantities as an antidote for
any narcotic poison. Indeed, great remedial powers were, accord-
ing to Pliny, attributed by his contemporaries to these animals,
their ashes being often kept to form an important ingredient in
some of the grewsome compounds that figured so largely in
Roman therapeutics. Most Aryan mythologies abound in tales of
the supernatural wisdom and cunning of the weasel. Phaedrus
and iEsop both introduced it into their fables; and Aristotle, in
his History of Animals, among other attributes ascribes to it
enough reasoning foresight to eat the herb rue before attacking
serpents. The Greeks supposed .the odor of this plant to be ob-
noxious to these reptiles, and credited their wily adversary with a

ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE. 243

knowledge of the fact. Wherever found, the weasel has, and I
suppose deservedly, a general reputation for great cunning and
alertness. But of all the various beliefs in its fabulous powers
and attributes so prevalent among earlier civilizations, few, so far
as I have been able to ascertain, seem to have descended to our
own time and country, though a good many still hold their
ground in various parts of the British Isles. In the north of Eng-
land it is popularly thought to be very unsafe to molest a weasel
or to kill or injure its young, lest the artful animal spit on the
offender and paralyze him, or else secretly spit into his food and
so poison him. A young emigrant from county Sligo, Ireland,
has told me that the peasants there have undoubting faith in this
capacity of the weasel to avenge itself by the voluntary ejection
of saliva that is poisonous to man. I wish I might reproduce the
rich brogue and open-eyed credulity with which this Irish boy
related several stories illustrative both of the revengeful disposi-
tion and of the reasoning ability of the weasel. But I can only
give, in an approximation to his language, two instances which
he assured me had come under his own observation. "A mon
in our part o' the country wonst fought wi' a weasel. She was
vurry mad un' she fought 'urn a long time, un' at las' she spet on
'uz shins. The mon was af eard then un' let her alone, un' I me-
self saah wheriver the weasel 'd spet on 'urn, uz shins turned
black in spots." " There was a lot o' min a-wurrkin' in a field,
un' wan uv 'm tuk some little young weasels out av their nist in
a wall that was theer. Thin whin th' ould weasel saah what was
done wi' 'urn, she just wint to the can o' milk that they had for
their dinner, and spet in th' can un' wint aff ; un' thin the mon
wint back wi' the little weasels afther he'd watched th' ould one
a bit, un' he lift thim in the nist. Un' thin th' ould weasel wint
as quick as iver she cud to the can o' milk un' spilt it so the min
cudn't dhrink any uv it. She wudn't be afther hurtin' 'urn whin
they'd taken the little wans back." The country people in county
Sligo believe that these agile carnivores are so very cunning that
they know all that men say about them, and so it is felt to be
unsafe even to speak ill of the little thieves. It is also there
thought to be very lucky to carry a purse made of a weasel's skin.
There is an old custom among the Irishwomen in county Kerry
to go out with bread or other food in their hands, to meet hunters
coming home with their ferrets, and after feeding the latter, to
keep " for luck " whatever crumbs are left over.

An old-time remedy for the disease commonly known as " the
shingles " (herpes zoster) still survives in the United States, rang-
ing from Maine through Massachusetts and New York to Ohio,
and perhaps even more widely. The treatment consists in the ap-
plication of the skin of a freshly killed cat to the diseased surface

244 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the body. In Massachusetts it is believed that to be efficacious
the skin must be that of a black cat. In one country town in
eastern Massachusetts the same remedy is recommended for hives.
A reputed cure for asthma, still extant in Boston, is to wear a
muskrat-skin, the hair to come next the chest of the patient. A
correspondent from central New York knoivs of inflammation of
the bowels having been cured by applying the flesh side of the
pelt of a freshly killed lamb. In parts of Ohio it is thought that
chilblains may be quickly relieved by wrapping the feet in a
" warm, bloody rabbit-skin" (hare-skin). The last-named remedy
calls to mind the method of curing ruddiness of the face by anoint-
ing it overnight with hare's blood, cited in that incomparable med-
ley of wisdom and folly, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. The
nausea attendant on the painful disease called milk-sickness,
which is so dreaded in many of the newly settled parts of the
Western States, may, it is said, be allayed by drinking hot water
into which has been dropped a little freshly drawn blood of a
chicken. Canadian lumbermen, when fortunate enough to shoot
a deer, often wrap themselves at night in its skin in order to keep
off witches.

Pliny, in his Natural History, states that the bite of a serpent
may be cured by immediately applying to the wound a living
mouse, split asunder, or the warm flesh stripped from the bones
of a cock. We find a possible survival of these ancient Roman
remedies in the application of the freshly cut surface of a stunned
domestic fowl to a snake-bite. The poison is supposed to be ab-
sorbed by the quickly circulating blood of the chicken and finally
to kill it. If it die before most of the poison is thought to have
been absorbed, another is at once to be applied. This mode of
treatment is reported from Michigan, but I have reason to believe
that in a more or less modified form it prevails rather generally
where poisonous snakes are found. In northern Ohio they say
that a living fowl cut open and applied while bleeding constitutes
another cure for " shingles." In the town of Woburn, Mass., it is
not snake-poisoning or shingles, but scarlet fever and diphtheria,
that may be cured by applying to the chest the palpitating body
of a hen that has been stunned and immediately cut open. This
last remedy recalls the account of the last illness of Philip of Bur-
gundy (Philip the Good), in Charles Reade's admirable mosaic of
mediaeval life, The Cloister and the Hearth. You remember that
in the latter part of the fifteenth century the duke lay sick at
Bruges with the disease now known as diphtheria. " Ho ! this is
grave. Flay me an ape incontinent and clap him to the duke's
breast," says the doctor. But no ape was to be had. " Then Doc-
tor Remedy grew impatient and bade flay a dog. l A dog is next
best to an ape, only it must be a dog all of one color.' So they

ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE. 245

flayed a liver-colored dog and clapped it yet palpitating to their
sovereign's breast ; and lie died."

There is a popular supposition of wide range, based upon I
know not what, that it is very healthful for children to play with
dogs. A weak child, it is thought, may gain strength by being
with a dog, or, if diseased, the child may be cured by having the
animal " take the disease " — for example, inflamed eyes or any
disorder of the skin. Within a year a college graduate told me,
in perfect good faith, of acquaintances, a Boston doctor and his
wife, whose little girl had been greatly afflicted with some form
of eczema which they all hoped would disappear, as the parents
had purchased a fine dog to play with the child.

When a dog is teething, the upper incisors, according to a
New England superstition, must be removed as soon as they be-
come loose, or he may " swallow them and have fits/' Perhaps
even more generally received is the fancied danger of allowing a
child's milk-tooth after extraction to fall into the possession of a
dog or cat, lest the animal swallow it, and the child have a dog's
or cat's tooth grow in place of the lost one. The Mexicans and
Indians in Texas say that every animal has brains enough to tan
its own skin ; and so the latter, in the case of the wolf, panther,
wild cat, and some other animals, is mainly prepared by rubbing
into the flesh side of it the brains of its former wearer. A some-
what common fancy among children, perhaps too among adults
as well, is that " every part strengthens a part " — that is, that the
liver, heart, brains, and so on of animals, when eaten, go directly
toward nourishing the corresponding organs in the eater. A
similar doctrine was worked out in great detail by the American
Indians, and is, I believe, held by many other savage tribes. It
seems altogether probable that such beliefs, wherever found
among civilized people, old or young, are survivals from remote
antiquity, and that they are closely akin in their nature and
origin to the well-known doctrine of signatures which has played
so great a part in the systems of medicine of primitive peoples.

Mr. Charles Aldrich, of Webster City, Iowa, relates the fol-
lowing curious superstition : " A neighbor residing on a small
farm near me has, on several occasions, spoken of his experience
with ' hog mice.' He came to this country many years ago from
Northamptonshire, England, where he had often seen these
strange animals. They are also occasionally seen by him here
in Iowa. This mythical rodent is about the size of a barn
mouse, but its striking peculiarity as to its outward appearance
is, that it has a head and face fashioned exactly like that of
a hog. It is a very ' uncanny ' little beast. If it merely runs
across the body of a sleeping person, or of a domestic animal,
such unfortunate person or animal will be grievously afflicted.

246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with lameness or soreness wherever the monse sets down one of
its little feet. Serious disability often comes from the touch of
the \ 'og mouse/ In some extreme cases the affliction is well-nigh
incurable, and may last a lifetime. My old friend said that it
was no hearsay matter with him. He had ' seen 'og mice both in
Northamptonshire and 'ere in Hamerica.' One of his colts l was
disabled by a 'og mouse running hover it, and was a long, long time
getting well.' A striking peculiarity of the hog-faced mouse, ac-
cording to my old friend, is, that it is never seen at rest, but always
' on a dead run,' as if fleeing from pursuit."

It seems to me almost certain that this redoubtable f 'og mouse '
is merely a shrew, whose long and pointed snout might suggest
the visage of a hog. In Great Britain the most maleficent pow-
ers are commonly attributed to shrews, and an interesting passage
concerning the matter in White's Natural History and Antiqui-
ties of Selborne deserves to be quoted verbatim : " At the south
corner of the plestor, or area, near the church, there stood, about
twenty years ago, a very old, grotesque, hollow pollard ash, which
for ages had been looked on with no small veneration as a shrew
ash whose twigs or branches, when gently applied to the limbs of
cattle, will immediately relieve the pains which a beast suffers
from the running of a shrew mouse over the part affected ; for it
is supposed that a shrew mouse is of so baleful and deleterious a
nature that, wherever it creej)s over a beast, be it horse, cow, or
sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and
threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against this acci-
dent, to which they were continually liable, our provident fore-
fathers always kept a shrew ash at hand, which, when once medi-
cated, would maintain its virtue forever. A shrew ash was made
thus : into the body of the tree a deep hole was bored with an
auger, and a poor devoted shrew mouse was thrust in alive, and
plugged in, no doubt with several quaint incantations long since
forgotten. As the ceremonies necessary for such a consecration
are no longer understood, all succession is at an end, and no such
tree is known to subsist in the manor or hundred."

It appears that similar powers for evil have also been attrib-
uted, in parts at least of Great Britain, to field mice, which by
creeping over the backs of sheep were thought to produce paraly-
sis. The remedy for such an injury was to inclose the mouse in
a tree, and stroke the afflicted animal with its branches as above
described. How far, if at all, these old-country superstitions
have become naturalized among us I do not know.

The belief that the American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatus)
can at will " shoot " its quills is one of wide acceptance among
unscientific people. I remember the woodcut in my first spelling-
book, labeled porcupine, and how, in reply to my questions in

ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE. 247

regard, to the nature of the bristly-looking little fellow, I was
told of his protective power of discharging a volley of quills at
either a hunter or any four-footed enemy. This interesting fable
about our own unaggressive rodent is doubtless an application of
a similar exaggeration of earlier origin concerning the African
porcupine. No doubt the story arose at the outset from the
extreme readiness with which the quills are detached from the
skin of their owner, contrasting remarkably as it does with the
savage hold which their minute barbs take of the flesh of the in-
cautious meddler in whom they lodge.

A cure for a felon, recommended in central Maine, is to wrap
the offending finger in the thin membrane which lines an egg-
shell. More interesting than this is the south of Ireland conceit
that sucking the first egg laid by a black hen will clear the voice
and render it musical,

One of the most unique of veterinary remedies is the following
sent me from Bradford, Mass. : " If a cow lose her cud, put a
live frog down her throat and it will bring back the cud."

In Alabama and Texas a hymenopterous insect, of the family
Mutillidce,, which bears a superficial resemblance to a red ant, is
locally known by the entirely undeserved name of cow-killer, from
the supposed destructive effect of its sting upon cattle.

The dragon-fly is greatly feared by little folks in Maine, as
they believe that it often sews together the lips of children, and if
the mouth be left open to prevent the sewing of the lips the warn-
ing cry, is " Look out, he'll sew up your swallow ! " A very cau-
tious little girl, therefore, was accustomed on sight of ene of these
insects to open wide her mouth, keep her lips far apart, and then
cram her fist into her mouth to keep the enemy out of her throat.
In parts of Massachusetts the story goes that it is only children
who tell lies who are in danger of having their mouths sewed up
by the " devil's darning needle," while in New Hampshire and
parts of Pennsylvania, the children think that their ears, eye-
lids, nostrils, and lips must be guarded, or they may be sewed up
by the dreaded darning-needle. This graceful and beautifully col-
ored insect has various names besides the well-known one just men-
tioned. In New Jersey it is often called " spindle " ; in the neigh-
borhood of New Orleans, " mosquito-hawk," and very likely this
may be a most rational appellation; but it goes without saying that
that of " snake-doctor," common in many of the Southern States,
is entirely senseless. The negroes and ignorant whites, however,
really believe that ailing snakes are attended by these flying "doc-
tors." In Tennessee and Illinois either " snake-doctor " or " snake-
feeder " is the popular name, and the latter is the one in general
use both among children and adults in Ohio, Indiana, and some
other States of the Mississippi basin. When a child in northern

248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

central Ohio, I remember that neither my playmates nor myself
doubted, when we saw dragon-flies darting to and fro or hover-
ing over ponds or swamp-lands, that they were carrying food to
their friends the snakes ; and the sight of a snake-feeder always
put those who feared snakes on their guard.

Some years ago a friend of mine was spending the night in
Boston. Her hostess advised her, upon retiring, to be sure and
keep the bedclothes well over her feet during the night, as the
house was infested with cockroaches, and it was said that the in-
sects would gnaw one's toe-nails if opportunity offered. This sug-
gests a rather popular New England superstition that if you kill
a cricket the rest of the tribe will come unawares and bite holes
in your clothes. We find the same superstition in Ireland. The
Irish in general say that it is very lucky to have crickets come to
take up their abode in your premises, only you must be very care-
ful not to injure one. A young Irishman once told me that if by
chance boiling water were spilled upon one, as might easily hap-
pen among the peasants who cook by an open fire, about the
hearth of which the crickets like to live, the unlucky person who
had done the injury would be sure to find that the crickets had
gnawed holes in his socks and other garments during his sleep ;
at the same time and in the same room the clothes of other per-
sons who had not harmed the crickets would be unmolested. A
Maine saying is that, if one of the sprightly elves become impris-
oned in some crevice, ill-fortune will surely attend any bystander
who does not release him. In some places with us the cricket is
said to be propitious, but there is a Maine belief that its chirping
foretells sorrow. This is a probable outgrowth of the saddening
effect of long-continued listening to the little reveler's music, so
mingled in its cheer and pathos. We may pretty certainly con-
clude that our whimsies about the cricket have in the main been
directly transplanted from the British Isles, while those of the
latter region are, in turn, modified versions of ancient ancestral
beliefs common to many branches of the Aryan race. In White's
Selborne the author says, in speaking of crickets : " They are the
housewife's barometer, foretelling her when it will rain ; and are
prognostic sometimes, she thinks, of ill or good luck, of the death
of a near relation, or of the approach of an absent lover." Among
various prognostications of death recounted in the poet Gray's
Pastoral Dirge we find —

" And shrilling crickets in the chimney cried."

The Spectator says that the voice of the cricket has inspired more
terror than the roaring of a lion. According to Pliny, the cricket
was an insect greatly esteemed by ancient magicians.

It is often said that the house-fly is indigestible by the human

ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE. 249

stomach. If one is so unfortunate as to swallow a fly, the com-
forting remark very apt to be offered among country people
is : " Well, it'll come up ; a fly won't stay on the stomach, you
know."

In central Illinois pills made by rolling up spider-webs into
small balls are recommended to be taken for ague. In connection
with this remedy it may be interesting to .notice that Burton, in
his Anatomy of Melancholy, tells how his mother, who was much
given to doctoring the poor of her parish, had great confidence in
the efficacy, in ague cases, of a spider inclosed in a nutshell
wrapped in silk, to be worn as an amulet by the patient. Burton
himself was at first incredulous, but after some observation he
came to believe that the amulet was beneficial. His own conclusion
was greatly strengthened upon his finding authority for this use of
the spider in the writings of Dioscorides, the famous botanist, who
lived in the early part of the Christian era,' and whose Materia
Medica, written in Greek, was for fifteen hundred years the high-
est medical authority. Carrying spiders upon the person as an
ague-cure must once have been somewhat popular in England.
Brand quotes from the diary of Elias Ashmole, April 11, 1681, the
following : " I took early in the morning a good dose of elixir and
hung three spiders about my neck, and they drove the ague away.
Deo gratias ! " Indeed, a vastly greater antiquity may be assigned
to this absurd practice, for the use of a spider's web or the creat-
ure itself as a specific for ague can at least be traced back to the
first century of our era ; for Pliny, in prescribing for this disease,
says : " It may be worth while to make trial whether the web of
the spider called i lycos' is of any use applied with the insect
itself to the temples and forehead in a compress covered with
resin and wax ; or the insect itself, attached to the body in a reed —
a form in which it is said to be highly beneficial for other fevers."
In the medical chapters of his Natural History Pliny again and
again speaks of the remedial virtues of spiders and their webs,
and, among multifarious prescriptions of this kind, advises the
application of a spider for three days as a cure for a boil, care
being taken not to mention the animal's name before applying it ;
also of cobwebs wet with oil and vinegar for fracture of the skull,
or of the web of a white spider for chapped lips. I have chanced
upon several other spider-web remedies in our own country be-
sides the ague-cure above mentioned. A Deerfield (Mass.) mode
of treatment for felons is merely to wind the finger about with
cobwebs. In northern New York cobwebs wet in hot water and
applied externally are recommended for the relief of pain in dis-
eases of the kidneys and bladder. The same application is used
in parts of Vermont for acute inflammation of the breast.

A quaint custom is widely prevalent among country boys and

2)0

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

girls of asking a" daddy-long-legs » to point out the direction m
which pasturing cattle maybe found. When I was a little girl
in northern ( >hio, many a time, before starting to drive home the
cows from a woods-pasture— in which they might easily have
wandered out of sight— have I looked about in the angle of a
gate-post, or under the cap of a board fence, in whose shady cor-
ners the daddy-long-legs often lurk, and, having found one of the
torpid beings, seized him by one leg and held him as I repeated
our prescribed incantation:

" Gran'-daddy, gran'-daddy-long-legs,
Tell me where my cows are, or I'll kill you ! "

Naturally, the spider, discomfited by his bondage, would lift
one of his legs, and the cows, it was said, would be found in the
direction indicated by this uplifted leg. I don't think that we
children really believed that this indication would always hold
good, or that we even paid very much attention to the path so
designated; but, as I remember it, we felt it to be the proper thing
to do to consult our oracle, and I doubt not the ceremony sent us
off on our evening quest with better courage. The same custom
is reported from different parts of New York State, Indiana, Illi-
nois, and Tennessee. The incantation varies somewhat with the
locality. In Tennessee it is simply —

"Daddy-long-legs, which way are my cows? "

An old physician writes me that " in western New York, sixty

years ago, the verses ran —

' Grandfather gray-beard,

Tell me where my cows are, or I'll kill yon ! '

After this had been repeated several times in a drawling mono-
tone, lengthening out the syllables e gray ' and ' kill/ if the captive
lifted a leg and held it suspended for a moment, he was faithfully
released; otherwise, he was ruthlessly killed." Certainly there
must be some occult connection between these malodorous arach-
nids and the cows, for in Tennessee the farmer-boys tell you that
killing a grand-daddy-long-legs will make the cows go dry.

In the pine woodlands of southern Louisiana, so a New Or-
leans lady writes, there are found little mounds of mud, with
quite a large opening in the center of each — probably crayfish-
holes. Negro nurses caution the children under their charge
never to touch these tiny mounds, believing that they are snake-
holes, and that any meddling will lead the snake which lives there
to leave his burrow at night and come and bite the offender.

In western New York, forty or fifty years ago, the panacea for
dirt or other foreign substances in the eye was what the children
called " crabs' eye-stones," the two calcareous, lenticular concre-
tions found between the stomach-walls of the crayfish. In these

ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE. 251

gastroliths is stored away for the molting season a reservoir of
material to form a new shell. The children, having no knowledge
of the real use of the gastroliths, believe them to be a providen-
tial arrangement for the relief of pain in man, and for genera-
tions this belief has been entertained by adults, for the gastroliths
are really the commercial eye-stones that were once widely used to
remove any irritating particle from the eye ; but the practice is
now condemned by physicians. It is scarcely possible that there
is any power sui generis in these neat little bodies which an arti-
ficial f ac-simile would not possess. Very likely this widely credited
virtue of the eye-stones is a result of the varied use in medicine
of the European crayfish in past ages. Powdered gastroliths were
formerly used in Europe as an antacid, while Pliny cites a score
of prescriptions in which the crushed animal, the bruised flesh,
the juice expressed from it, macerations in various liquids, or the
incinerated and pulverized shell were recommended for all sorts
of purposes from antidoting poisons to allaying fevers.

Some time ago I heard a very notable New England house-
keeper ask a young girl, who was assisting her by preparing a lob-
ster for the tea-table, if she had been careful to remove the "lady."
In answer to my inquiry as to what was meant by this, I was told
that there is a part known as the " lady" — a small, greenish object
inside the lobster, which is a perfect image of a tiny woman seated
in a chair — and that this part of the animal is deadly poison, and
should therefore always be carefully removed in preparing the
flesh for the table. I find that, in general throughout Massachu-
setts, this name of " lady " is given to the stomach, which may be
imagined to bear a remote resemblance to a miniature woman.
Since the lobster is a notorious sea-scavenger, the contents of the
stomach would probably be very undesirable for food, though why
this stigma of being poisonous should need to be attached to the
hard, calcareous-toothed, inedible stomach-walls it would not be
easy to tell. In central New Hampshire the name " lady " is some-
times applied to the intestine — the dark tube running lengthwise
of the lobster's body — and this is considered poisonous. In Cam-
bridge, Mass., an intelligent fish-dealer, on being questioned as to
the nature and position of the " lady " in the lobster, designated by
that name the edible ovary popularly called the " coral." An in-
genious theory has been propounded to me to explain the cause of
the so-called " lady " being dangerously poisonous. The reasoning
was about as follows: "You know that lobsters must be alive
when they are dropped into hot water to be cooked. If you should
let them die before they are cooked, they would be poison and not
fit to eat, and I suppose that the poison, which before they are
cooked is scattered everywhere through its whole body, all goes
into the " lady " while the lobster is being boiled."

252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In Louisville, Ky., the children are afraid to kill the common
sow-bug (Oniscus), which they call " mad dog," believing that the
disagreeable-looking little crustacean can give one the hydropho-
bia. In my own mind there is a faint recollection of having
heard that a poultice made from these creatures possessed great
remedial powers of some kind. The genuineness of my half-ob-
literated reminiscence of the therapeutical value of the sow-bug
lately received an unexpected confirmation from the pages of a
copy of The Complete English Dispensatory, by John Quincy,
printed not far from the middle of the eighteenth century. This
rare old book, which had long lain among the unconsidered rub-
bish in the garret of an old-fashioned New Hampshire farm-house,
contains a vast amount of curious medical lore. Not a few of the
remedies which it describes are so alchemistically compounded as
to seem to have come straight down from the later adepts in that
pseudo-science. Other preparations, again, are unpleasant enough
in their composition to satisfy an ancient Roman or a modern
Chinese practitioner, as witness the following (by no means one
of the most objectionable) :

" Expressio Millipedum Simplex (A Simple Expression of
Millipedes). — Take live millipedes and white sugar ana § iij, beat
them well together in a marble mortar, and pour upon them lb. j
of white wine, which strain out again by hard squeezing."

This formula is quoted by Quincy from Dr. Fuller's Pharma-
copoeia Extemporanea as a diuretic. Among other synonyms for
" millipedes " as here used, Quincy gives " sows " and " onisci." I
find that Pliny recommends " millipedes " (which the editor of the
translation of the Natural History in Bohn's series identifies with
onisci) for pains in the ear. Holland is quoted in a foot-note in
the above-mentioned translation, as sanctioning the use of wood-
lice (sow-bugs) for pains in the ears ; and the editor also states
that English school-boys swallow them alive, and that old women
advise their use in consumptive cases.

Perhaps every one has noticed the club-shaped, whitish mass
at the proximal end of a freshly pulled human hair. This root of
the hair, together with the attached connective tissue and adipose
material, is often absent, from the fact that the hair frequently
breaks off near the opening of the follicle, instead of coming out
entire from the interior of the latter. So it has come about that
the root of the hair is in different localities mistaken for an ani-
mal parasite, called a hair-eater. In many places in Maine and
Massachusetts, if these bulbs are noticed among combings, people
will say that the scalp is infested with hair-eaters, and that the
latter must be killed, or they will certainly ruin the hair.

NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL CEMENTS. 253

NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL CEMENTS.

By Prof. LA ROY F. GRIFFIN.

THE cements now in the market are of two kinds: natural,
made directly from stone ; and artificial, commonly called
Portland cement. The manufacture of the former consists simply
in burning and grinding the cement stone, a magnesian limestone
containing about fifteen per cent of silica and a little silicate of
alumina. The burning drives off the small amount of combined
water and all the carbon dioxide from the stone, leaving the lime
and magnesia as oxides, while the grinding to a powder puts it
into the best possible condition for mixing with sand and gravel,
and moistening to form a mortar. Artificial cement consists of
about sixty-two per cent of lime mixed with silica and silicate of
alumina in nearly the same proportions as' those found in the
cement stone, and it is free from magnesia. This seems to be the
whole difference in its constitution. In use, the artificial cement
sets rapidly and attains maximum hardness in a comparatively
short time ; the natural cement hardens rather slowly and reaches
its maximum hardness only after a long period of exposure to
the air.

The increasing use of cement in modern construction, either
alone or more commonly as mixed with sand and gravel, demands
that the qualities of the different kinds, and the means of testing,
both roughly and accurately, should be generally understood.
The foundations of all important structures, in situations where
they can not rest directly upon solid rock, owe their strength to
cement. They are usually made of concrete, cement mixed with
sand or gravel, and they are often strengthened by iron beams so
as to bind the whole into one continuous mass. Tunnels under
rivers, sewers, cable trenches, and all the numerous subways of
our large cities, are either concrete or masonry laid in cement
mortar. Their strength, again, is the strength of the cement used.
And even the piers of most of the large bridges are now made in
part or wholly of concrete. Oftentimes, even the walls of stone
and brick buildings are rendered more secure by being laid up
with mortar of which cement forms a large ingredient. Used for
so many purposes, the necessity of uniform quality, and proper
knowledge of the quality of the cement used, become plain.

Before examining the methods of testing now employed and
comparing the results, the process of hardening needs to be com-
prehended. Some things are not yet quite clear in it, but it is
certainly in the main a chemical process. Mixed with water, the
lime and magnesia of the cement unite to form a hydrate, and it

254 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is probable that the silicates also recombine with some of the
water. This is the first step, and produces the so-called setting.
It is best passed through while the cement is exposed to the air,
and is the reason why cement mixtures must be used as soon as
moistened. But, this now complete, a more complex process is set
up. The moistened cement brought in contact with the air, or
exposed to water, at once begins to absorb carbon dioxide, for all
ordinary air contains the gas, and most water holds it in solution.
The gas unites with the lime to form a carbonate again, and this
goes on until the whole of the lime is turned back to limestone.
The same change occurs in the magnesia, but in this the action
proceeds more slowly. With a pure lime cement this action is
probably nearly complete at the end of a few months ; but, with a
cement containing magnesia, it will continue for many years.
The strength of the cement increases so long as the change con-
tinues. So a Portland cement will develop its full strength in a
few months, while our natural cements will not for years, and,
so long as it continues, the structure improves.

Rough testing of cement, so as to enable a workman to get a
crude and imperfect idea of its value, is easy. Enough of the
pure cement should be taken to make a ball an inch in diameter
and mixed with just sufficient water to make it mold readily and
be rolled into a ball. Then it should be exposed to the air and
left for two hours. At the end of that time it should be set ; then
it should be put into water and left. It should grow gradually
harder, and should show no signs of cracking or crumbling,
even when left for ten days. Any cement that does not endure
this test is not of sufficiently good quality to make satisfactory
structures ; any cement that stands this properly will be gener-
ally satisfactory if properly used.

In determining how to construct a building, a series of tests is
often required that shall show tensile, breaking, twisting, and
crushing strength, and also adhesion of the materials used for
mortar. No one of these can be dispensed with, since material
that will endure one satisfactorily will often fail utterly in an-
other, and hence prove worthless for the use desired ; but for gen-
eral purposes the test of cement which is the most valuable is
that which determines its tensile strength. Comparative tests of
this show the value of cements from different sources better than
any other one test.

To make an accurate test of any lot of cement, great care is
necessary in selecting and manipulating the samples. The test
sample ought not to be taken from a single package, but from
several in equal quantities and thoroughly mixed. The sample
must also be carefully protected from air and moisture until the
test is made. When used, it must be molded with just the right

NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL CEMENTS.

255

Fig. 1

amount of water to render it plastic. Too small an amount will
leave some particles dry; too large an amount will gather in
masses, will evaporate, leaving pores, and will give too small
results. The test is now commonly made by molding a bri-
quette of a form approved by engineers, as shown
in Fig. 1, which is drawn of one third actual size.
The mold is a clamp of metal exactly one inch in
thickness and exactly one inch across at R. This
makes the area of the smallest place exactly an
inch. The moistened cement is carefully placed in
the mold with a spatula and pressed enough to ren-
der the whole mass homogeneous. It is left in the
mold until it can be removed by opening the mold,
and then it is exposed to the air for exactly twenty-
four hours, after which it is put into water and
allowed to rest there until the test is made. ■ The
length of time depends upon the purpose of the
test. In order to make certain that all the cement
produced is of a uniform quality, seven days is suf-
ficient. Such a test is made of every lot shipped
by the Milwaukee Cement Company, and probably by all other
reliable manufacturers. If the test is to determine the ultimate
strength developed or to compare cements from different sources,

then a series of tests should be made by break-
ing " briquettes " made at the same time but left
in water for different periods. The reason is,
that a quick-setting cement 'will develop its full
strength in a short time, and if the test is made
at the end of that time it might show a greater
tensile strength than another one slow in setting,
even when the latter would ultimately have sev-
eral times its strength.

The test can be made in any form of testing
machine, though one in which the test is applied
by uniformly increasing the strain, as by running
shot into a bucket upon the end of a lever, gives
the most accurate results ; but the briquette
should be held in a clutch that presses accu-
rately upon the sides, as shown in Fig. 2. This
applies the tension equally, and gives a very ac-
curate test. A long series of these were made
by Mr. D. J. Whettemore, C. E., at Milwaukee in
1874, in which seventeen native cements showed
an average tensile strength at the end of seven
days of 80 &• pounds. The lowest of these broke at 38 pounds,
while the highest sustained 139f pounds. Later tests made in

Fig. 2.

z56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

the same way have shown that these were unreliable as final
tests of strength, because the briquettes had not hardened suffi-
ciently, and the table would place inferior cements above those
of much greater strength because the inferior develops its ulti-
mate strength much sooner. But a comparative test of the same
cements when mixed with sand in equal parts was also made,
and is of very great value and probably perfectly reliable, for
the tests were then made at the end of ninety days, so giving the
slow-setting cements time to develop their strength.

Thus the one which in the test applied to clear cement broke
at 38 pounds now sustained 152i pounds, an increase of four hun-
dred per cent ; while the one that was the strongest at the end of
seven days now broke at 204|- pounds, an increase of only fifty-four
per cent. The one that showed the greatest tensile strength of all,
at the end of ninety days, the Milwaukee cement, 290 pounds, broke
at only 96 at the end of seven days. An experiment made with a
briquette taken at random, that had been made six months and
exposed to the air at least half that time, strikingly showed the
same fact, for it broke only under a strain of 636 pounds. This
test was made simply to show the writer the method of using the
testing machine.

The United States Government had a series of tests made a
few years ago, using the cements commonly sold in the West, and
giving in each case the mean result of seventy -five tests. The
table is so interesting that we give it entire.

Tensile Strength of Pur.e Cements, each Test given "being the Mean Result from
Seventy-five Specimens, Thirty and Sixty Days.

Thirty days.

Sixty days.

A Cement

Pounds.
320
288
303
220
202
382

Pounds.
345

B Cement

310

C Cement

330

E Cement

280

F Cement

282

D (Milwaukee)

350

Cement is far more often called upon to resist a crushing than
a tensile strain. A large number of tests has been made to de-
termine the weight required to crush a cube one inch in each
dimension. When mixed with sand in equal proportions, the best
cements will sustain a crushing weight of upward of a ton, the
specimen having been allowed to harden for ninety days, while the
poorest do not sustain quite half a ton, and even when mixed with
three parts sand to one of the cement, the Milwaukee, which tests
have shown the best, sustains over eleven hundred pounds. These
tests show conclusively that structures well built of mixed cement

SKETCH OF THE ODOR SCHWANN. 257

and sand or coarse gravel will sustain any reasonable weight
without danger of yielding.

Little needs to be added upon adhesion. Many attempts have
been made to determine the adhesive strength of various cements,
usually without success — not because they do not hold properly,
but because they hold until the brick or stone to which they have
been applied is ruptured before the cement is separated from its
surface. This shows that the adhesion is always sufficient for all
uses, and this seems to be true of all our native cements. Their
use, therefore, mixed with mortar adds greatly to the strength of
the structure.

All these qualities of cement warrant its continual and in-
creased use, particularly of all the better grades. Probably the
English Portland is the best of all, but its cost is so much be-
yond that of our native cements as to warrant using them in
its place in somewhat larger proportion in all places where
time can be allowed for the hardening.

» »

SKETCH OF THEODOR SCHWANN.

By M. LEON FREDERICQ.

ON the 23d of January, 1878, was celebrated at the University
of Lie'ge, by the scientific men of Belgium and others rep-
resenting neighboring European states and more distant coun-
tries, the fortieth anniversary of the professorship of Theodor
Schwann. Men of all nations joined, by their presence or by
letter, in honoring the man who, as the founder of the cell theory,
had showed that all the varied and complex manifestations of
Nature are one in kind, and had given a new direction to physio-
logical research.

The object of this demonstration, Theodor Schwann, was
born on the 7th of December, 1810, at Neuss, near Dusseldorff, in
Rhenish Prussia, and died in Lie'ge, in January, 1882. His father
and grandfather were goldsmiths ; but the father, after Theodor
was born, established a printing-office — himself, with the aid of
an artisan, constructing the first press — which has become one of
the most prosperous concerns of the kind in the Rhenish country.
From it was issued the memorial volume published in 1879 in
honor of Theodor Schwann.

The youth inherited from his father a decided taste for manual
occupations, which afterward proved of great assistance to him
in his laboratory work. While still a child he used to spend his
play-hours in making miniature instruments of physics with the
most primitive materials. From the primary school he went into

VOL. XXXVII. — 20

258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the humanitarian courses in the pro-gymnasium of his native
village, and thence, for the completion of his studies, to the
Jesuit College at Cologne. His lively intelligence and assiduity
attracted the attention of all his teachers. He exhibited a
marked predilection for mathematical and scientific studies, es-
pecially in physics.

He was still undecided as to the career he should choose, when
he enrolled himself, in October, 1829, in the class in philosophy
at Bonn. His family were deeply religious, and would have been
glad to see him become a clergyman like his elder brother Peter,
who died in 1881, Professor of Theology and honorary canon at
Frauenburg. Therefore he began with a mixed course, including
metaphysical and logical studies, along with those in mathematics
and science. The latter branches in the end absorbed all his at-
tention, and he decided to study medicine.

He became the pupil of the anatomist and physiologist Jo-
hann Muller, and that fixed his destiny. Muller, with a full
appreciation of Schwann's abilities, made him an associate in his
labors, and they experimented together on the motor and sensitive
roots of the spinal nerves, and on the coagulation of the blood.
Having passed the philosophical and scientific examinations at
Bonn, Schwann went to Wurzburg, where he passed three semes-
ters, and then removed to Berlin to complete his studies and go
through his final examinations. He found Muller here again, as
Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, and under his direction
performed the investigation on the necessity of oxygen to the
development of the embryo in the hen's egg, on which was based
his inaugural dissertation on receiving the degree of doctor of
medicine.

Muller, insisting upon Schwann's following a scientific career,
had him appointed in 1834 aid at the Anatomical Museum, of
which he was director. The position was an extremely modest
one, and not at all pleasant. The late Director of the Berlin Mu-
seum, Peters, speaks of having seen Schwann at work for whole
days scraping the fins of a giant ray while preparing its skeleton ;
and many of the specimens in the zoological collections bear wit-
ness to the conscientious care with which he performed this mo-
notonous work. The five years which Schwann spent here with
Muller were a period of intense application, marked by a succes-
sion of discoveries. All the great works which illustrate his name
date from this epoch.

A characteristic portrait of Schwann as he appeared at this
time has been drawn by Henle, who passed several years under
the same roof with him. He says : " He was a man of stature
below the medium, with a beardless face, an almost infantine and
always smiling expression, smooth, dark-brown hair, wearing a

SKETCH OF THE OD OR SCHWANN. 259

fur-trimmed dressing-gown, living in a poorly lighted room on
the second floor of a restaurant which was not even of the second
class. He would pass whole days there without going out, with a
few rare books around him and numerous glass vessels, retorts,
vials, and tubes, simple apparatus which he made himself. Or I go
in thought to the dark and fusty halls of the Anatomical Insti-
tute, where we used to work till nightfall by the side of our excel-
lent chief, Johann Muller. We took our dinner in the evening,
after the English fashion, so that we might enjoy more of the ad-
vantage of daylight. Our porter's wife furnished the meat, we the
wine and wit. Those were happy days which the present genera-
tion might envy us ; happy days when the first good microscopes
had been sent out from the shops of Plossi at Vienna, or of Pis-
tor and Schick at Berlin, which we paid for by exercising a stu-
dent's economies ; happy days, when it was still possible to make
a first-class discovery by scraping an animal' membrane with the
nail or cutting it with the scalpel." Muller had at that time be-
gun the publication of his great treatise on physiology, a work of
scientific criticism into which he admitted nothing as true that
had not been verified by himself or by his assistants under his
eyes. Schwann, at his instigation, undertook a number of physi-
ological and microscopical researches for this work. He exam-
ined the texture of the voluntary muscles ; pointed out a method
of isolating the primary fibers, and demonstrated the origin of
the transverse striae of their primitive bundles. He sought for
the terminations of the nerves in the muscles, without being able
to discover them. He did not accept the ansated termination,
which was generally believed in then, but has now been dis-
proved. He first determined the existence of the proper walls of
the capillary vessels, and came very near discovering their endo-
thelium. He demonstrated, by physiological experiments with
cold water, the muscular contractibility of the arteries. He dis-
covered in the mesentery of the frog and the tail of the tadpole
the division of the primitive fiber of the nerves, an observation
then without precedent. He first proved, by microscopical ex-
amination and by the re-establishment of the function, the res-
torableness of cut nerves ; and he first made use of that faculty in
approaching the question of learning whether the sensitive or
motor fibers, when stimulated in their middle parts, propagate
the irritation toward both the center and periphery at once, or
only in one direction. He invented the muscular balance, for
measuring the force of the muscle in different states of contrac-
tion. He demonstrated that muscular contractility follows the
same law as the elasticity of a body which, having the same
length as the muscle at its maximum contraction, is stretched out
to the length of the muscle at rest. This work on muscular force

26o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

was the beginning of the series of researches by the aid of which
Du Bois-Reymond, Helmholtz, and others have built up the
general physiology of the nerves and muscles. It was the first
instance, says Du Bois-Reymond, of the examination of an emi-
nently vital force as if it were a physical one, and of the mathe-
matical expression in figures of the laws of its action.

Schwann assisted, with the professors at Berlin, in the prepa-
ration of the Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Medical Sciences, to
which he contributed the articles on vessels, hematose, urinary
secretion, and cutaneous secretion. At this period, also, he began
the experiments which led up to the discovery of the digestive
ferment, pepsin; and the principles which he set forth on the
subject are essentially the same as are still taught, the elucidation
of a few details being all that has been added.

In one of the theses attached to his inaugural dissertation,
Schwann had opposed the theory of spontaneous generation,
which had begun to prevail again, after a general abandonment of
Spa'ilanzani's germ theory. The absence of microbes from prepa-
rations which had been hermetically sealed was attributed to the
deprivation of oxygen. Schwann and Franz Schulze labored
independently to disprove this view. Schulze showed that vege-
table and animal infusions could be preserved for months in the
presence of air and after renewing supplies of air, if the air was
first passed over sulphuric acid to kill the germs in it. Schwann
communicated to the Society of German Naturalists and Physi-
cians the results of similar experiments, and of others in which
he destroyed the germs by calcination. He explained putrefac-
tion as a work of decomposition by the germs developing them-
selves at the expense of the organic substance, in proof of which
he showed that arsenic and corrosive sublimate, which were poi-
sonous to infusoria, were also the best preservatives against putre-
faction. It remained to be shown that the calcination of the air
did not deprive it of its essential properties of sustaining respira-
tion and promoting alcoholic fermentation — for the advocates of
spontaneous generation might say that the development of life
was prevented by asphyxiation. Schwann's view was sustained
when he found that frogs suffered no inconvenience in calcined
air ; but, when it came to apply the test to the fermentation of
alcohol, no fermentation took place. Schwann was not discour-
aged by this, but proclaiming a new discovery, that yeast was an
organic growth, and working out experiments to prove it, con-
verted the apparently hostile result into an additional support to
his theory. These ideas did not receive at once the support they
deserved. They had a formidable adversary in Liebig, who set
forth another theory of fermentation, and ridiculed them with a
parody. Schwann, averse to controversy, made no answer to

SKETCH OF THE ODOR SCHWANN. 261

Liebig's contradictions or to his joke. He bided bis time. It
came in a quarter of a century, when Schwann saw his theory-
extended to cover a great variety of chemical and pathological
actions, and almost universally accepted ; and received in 1878,
from Pasteur, who had carried it to its highest triumph, a letter
recognizing him as the one who had opened the road by follow-
ing which his own wonderful discoveries were made.

These researches might of themselves have sufficed to make
the name of Schwann illustrious. But they are relatively but
little known because their fame has been dimmed in the face of
the incomparable luster of his great discovery of the cell theory.
The publication of the book in which the basis of this theory was
laid down opened a new era in biological study. We might search
in vain, says Simon, in his History of the Natural Sciences, for an
example of a more radical revolution in the direction and character
of scientific labors than that which was effected in 1838 and 1839
by the publication of Schwann's histogenetic theory. The revolu-
tion was sudden, and triumphed, we might say, without resistance.
As Henle has remarked, the scientific soil in which this theory
took root and grew had been prepared from two different points
of view : one, philosophical or ideal ; the other, positive or histo-
logical. The philosophical preparation dated from the beginning
of the study of Nature, and was illustrated in the propensity of
the human mind to look for some simple cause for the diversity of
phenomena. To this we owe the monads of Epicurus and Leib-
nitz, Oken's philosophy of Nature, and many other efforts ancient
and modern. On the other side, certain histological researches,
often very modest, but coming close to the facts, had prepared a
way for the cell theory. Robert Brown had discovered the cellu-
lar nucleus in 1831 ; Mirbel, Von Mohl, and Unger had demon-
strated that the organs and tissues of plants were at bottom
aggregations of cells in different degrees of transformation.
Schleiden had been studying the important part played by the
nucleus in the formation of vegetable cells, and had given it the
name of cytoblast ; and other authors had found in animals or-
gans formed of cells. But these were as yet only isolated facts.

Schwann has himself told the story of the way the idea of his
discovery first occurred to him. " One day," he says, " when I
was dining with M. Schleiden, that illustrious botanist spoke of
the important part which the nucleus plays in the development
of plant-cells. I at once recollected that I had seen a similar
organ in the cells of the dorsal cord, and instantly appreciated
the extreme importance the discovery would have if I could show
that it plays the same part there as the nucleus of plants in the
development of vegetable cells. It must follow, in fact, in conse-
quence of the identity of so characteristic phenomena, that the

262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cause which produces the cells of the dorsal cord could not be
different from the one that gives origin to the vegetable cells."
The two men went together to the amphitheatre of anatomy to
examine the nucleuses in question, and Schleiden recognized a
complete resemblance between them and the nucleuses of the
cells of plants. " From that time," Schwann continues, " all my
efforts were directed to finding proof of the pre-existence of the
nucleus in the cell." And he goes on to tell how his views were
confirmed as his researches advanced. At the time Schwann thus
undertook to show that all the organs are of cellular origin, the
structure of most of them was very imperfectly known. The
application of the microscope to researches in animal histol-
ogy was of recent introduction, and everything was to create.
Schwann did not shrink from the tremendous task which opened
up before him ; and what he had done first for the cartilages and
the dorsal cord, he tried in succession for all the other bodily tis-
sues ; and in all he had the joy of seeing his idea confirmed.

Schwann came upon many new discoveries in the course of
these investigations. He first compared the egg to a cell, and rec-
ognized cells in the globules of the blastoderm; described the
stellar pigmentary cells, the layers of the nail, the development of
feathers, the nucleuses of the prisms of the enamel, those of the
smooth and striated muscles, the fibers of the dental pulp, the
cells destined to be transformed into fibers of the crystalline, etc.
He called attention to the envelope of the nervous fibers which
bears his name as the sheath of Schwann — all of which discover-
ies have been confirmed by modern research armed with its more
perfect technic and superior instruments. The theory of the cell
as the primordial element of all the tissues was hereafter to serve
as the Ariadne's thread to the numerous investigators who devoted
themselves to the study of morphology, ' and was to help them
explain the infinite variety of organic forms. It gave a definite
purpose to the application of the microscope to investigations in
anatomy and physiology. It was the foundation of modern physi-
ology? and all the morphological progress accomplished during
nearly the past half-century has grown out from it. Except for
its having familiarized the conception of the constitutional unity
of living matter, and having declared the principle that every
cell is the product of another cell, the doctrine of selection and
descent could not, in the opinion of Edward Van Beneden, have
gained ground. Its salutary influence in pathological anatomy
and the advance of physiology was immediate and great. Acting
in another direction, it put an end to the theory of a special vital
force, which was in full sway when it was first promulgated, and
raised up that of physico-chemical action, which has taken its
place. How was it possible to reconcile the notion of cellular

SKETCH OF THE ODOR SCHWANN, 263

individuality with the existence of a single vital force, presiding
over the working of all the functions ? It would be necessary to
reject such a hypothesis and seek the reason of vital phenomena
in the properties of molecules and atoms, or else to assign a
vital force in miniature to each cell. Schwann insisted that the
hypothesis was both superfluous and insufficient. He could not
conceive its existence unless it possessed the attributes of intelli-
gent beings ; and preferred to seek the cause of the final purpose
in nature in the Creator rather than in the creature.

Schwann was just putting in press the book containing his
microscopical researches and his later results, when he was in-
vited, in his twenty-ninth year, to take the place of Windischman
as Professor of Anatomy at Louvain. His position at Berlin was
pleasant, but overmodest, and offered no near prospects for pro-
motion. So he accepted the proffer, and prepared at the end of
1838 to remove. He had to meet a considerable difficulty, in the
beginning of his career at Louvain, from the necessity of speak-
ing in French ; but his lectures were successful, and still form
the basis of instruction in microscopic anatomy at the university.
During his term here he published a memoir on the uses of the
bile, the results of which, while it gave a new operation in physio-
logical technics, have not been fully confirmed ; applied Quetelet's
method of statistics to physiological phenomena; and attempted
the artificial production of organic elements.

In 1848, Spring, of the University of Lie'ge, finding the com-
bined labors of the chairs of Physiology, General Anatomy, and
Comparative Anatomy too much for a single professor to perform,
asked to be relieved of a part of his burden. Schwann was
selected to fill the place, and was installed in November of the
same year Professor of Anatomy, Spring reserving to himself
the branches of osteology and myology till 1853, when the
whole course came under Schwann's charge. Some opposition
was expressed at first to the coming of a stranger to the univer-
sity ; but this soon passed away, for the brilliant reputation of
the new professor, the excellence of his teaching, and the loyalty
and amenity of his disposition silenced hostile comment, and won
hearts to him. In later years he refused several offers of brilliant
scientific positions in Germany — from Breslau in 1852, Wtirzburg
and Munich in 1854, and Giessen in 1855. In 1858 he exchanged
the chair of Descriptive Anatomy for that of Human Physiology,
and in 1870 became an emeritus professor.

Clearness, order, and method are described by those who at-
tended his lectures as the characteristic qualities of Schwann's
teaching. His courses in physiology were eminently demonstra-
tive and experimental. Laboratory work always presented a
great attraction to him. He was interested in the development of

264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

scientific technics, and regularly made himself acquainted with
new instruments and methods. He had qualities of heart corre-
sponding with the superiority of his mind. His pupils recollect
the quiet good-will and fatherly kindness which he showed toward
them, and returned them with grateful demonstrations.

Although he was actively engaged in scientific pursuits during
the whole of his long career, he never mingled in the discussions
of the learned world after he went to Belgium. During the five
years of his residence in Berlin, his discoveries followed upon one
another like the explosions of a piece of fire-works ; and all the
great discoveries that made his name illustrious and opened new
horizons to scientific thought date from that time. After remov-
ing to Belgium, he published only one work, his researches on the
uses of the bile. He became almost forgotten outside of Belgium,
and many, not hearing his name mentioned any more, thought he
was dead. This may be charged to his aversion to personal con-
troversy. While the cell theory, as a whole, was established, some
of the details gave rise to disputes in which he did not care to en-
gage. Believing that he had reached an ultimate principle which
time would only establish more strongly, he was willing to let
details take care of themselves. But he never lost his interest in
the scientific movement ; and, at the time of his death, he was
engaged in studying the influence of electrical discharges on the
development of the lower beings in organic infusions.

In Schwann's theory all the phenomena of life were explained
by the properties of atoms. The cell was an aggregation of atoms
obeying the laws of nature as if it were a crystal. Plants and
animals were aggregations of cells, likewise machines destitute of
spontaneity. But man differed from animals by possessing an
immaterial element that lifted him above them and gave him
freedom. It was in this way that he escaped materialism, and
kept himself in line with the Church, to which he submitted his
studies, having even sought and obtained ecclesiastical approval
for the cell theory before he would publish it. For many years
he was collecting materials for a great philosophical work in
which the cell theory should take the proportions of a general
theory of organisms. Beginning with the definition of the atom,
his Theoria, as he called it, was to include all the manifestations
of life. Psychological phenomena and the dogmas of the Catho-
lic religion were to have definite places in it. Death prevented
his beginning the final preparation of it ; and his heirs could only
find in his desk a manuscript of seventy-two sheets entitled Man
considered from the Physiological Point of View, as he is, and as
he is to he.— Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from
the Revue Scientifique.

CORRESP ONDENCE.

265

CORRESPONDENCE.

PRESIDENT HILL'S DEFENSE.
Editor Popular Science Monthly :

DEAR, SIR : In the April number of
your magazine you say that a sen-
tence quoted from me by Bishop Vincent
in The Chautauquan " is absolutely without
foundation." The objectionable sentence is,
" Some counselors, like Herbert Spencer, ad-
vise us to follow our own self-interest, with-
out concern for others, with the assurance
that all will thus be happier, because more
independent." The quotation is made from
my volume of lectures on The Social Influ-
ence of Christianity. It is I rather than
Bishop Vincent who should " either justify
the above statement in regard to Mr. Spen-
cer or withdraw it." My respect for Mr.
Spencer's ability as a thinker and his sin-
cerity as a man is so great that I should
certainly withdraw a statement that I felt
misrepresented him to those who may not
share my high opinion of him. In seeking
to render justice to Mr. Spencer, I trust you
will not apply the lex talionis to those who
may seem to you to do him wrong.

The sentence which you condemn as " ab-
solutely without foundation " occurs after a
criticism of " undiscriminating charity" in
the distribution of wealth, and the citation
of a case where the literal interpretation of
Christ's words, " Give to him that asketh
thee," led to the demoralization of a parish.
In antithesis to this extreme I name Mr.
Spencer as a representative of what I con-
sider the opposite extreme — the emphasis of
egoism. Of course, I do not mean that Mr.
Spencer advocates an absolute and unquali-
fied selfishness, taking no account of the
rights of others. His teaching is, that there
is a u permanent supremacy of egoism over
altruism " ; that " each creature shall take
the benefits and the evils of his own nature,
be they derived from ancestry or those due
to self - produced modifications," and that
" egoistic claims must take precedence of
altruistic claims" (Data of Ethics, pp. 186,
187, 189). He advances two suppositions :
(1) "that each citizen pursues his own hap-
piness independently, not to the detriment
of others, but without active concern for
others " ; and (2) " that each, instead of
making his own happiness the object of
pursuit, makes the happiness of others the
object of pursuit"; and argues that the
amount of happiness would not be greater
in the second case (Data of Ethics, p. 227).
He sees " inconsistency " in the doctrine ex-
pressed in the Christian maxim — " Love
your neighbor as yourself " (Data of Ethics,
p. 233). His conclusion is that "general
happiness is to be achieved mainly through
the adequate pursuit of their own happiness-

es by individuals ; while, reciprocally, the
happinesses of individuals are to be achieved
in part by their pursuit of the general hap-
piness " (Data of Ethics, p. 238). Is not the
center of concern here for each one his own
happiness, with only so much regard for the
happiness of others as is likely to reflect hap-
piness upon himself ?

Mr. Spencer also says : " The poverty of
the incapable, the distresses that come upon
the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and
those shoulderings aside of the weak by the
strong, which leave so many ' in shallows
and in miseries,' are the decrees of a large,
far-seeing benevolence. It seems hard that
an unskillfulness which with all his efforts
he can not overcome should entail hunger
upon the artisan. It seems hard that a la-
borer incapacitated by sickness from com-
peting with his stronger fellows should have
to bear the resulting privation. It seems
hard that widows and orphans should be
left to struETEcle for life or death. Neverthe-
less, when regarded not separately, but in
connection with the interests of universal
humanity, these har^h features are seen to
be full of the highest beneficence — the same
beneficence which brings to early graves the
children of diseased parents, and singles out
the low-spirited, the intemperate, and the
debilitated as the victims of an epidemic "
(Social Statics, p. 354). In the foregoing
paragraph Mr. Spencer has included types
of all the objects of human charity. He
himself says (p. 356) : "At first sight these
considerations seem conclusive against all
relief to the poor — voluntary as well as com-
pulsory; and it is no doubt true that they
imply a condemnation of whatever private
charity enables the recipients to elude the
necessities of our social existence." He
" makes no objection " to " helping men to
help themselves," " countenances it rather,"
but he shows no concern for those who need
our charity because they can not help them-
selves.

In another book he says, " It may be
doubted whether the maudlin philanthropy
which, looking only at direct mitigations,
persistently ignores indirect mischiefs, does
not inflict a greater total of misery than the
extremest selfishness inflicts " (The Study of
Sociology, p. 345). But all charity inspired
by personal sympathy looks mainlv to "di-
rect mitigations," and overlooks those " indi-
rect mischiefs " which the aid of the inferior
is likely to produce. The " extremest self-
ishness " would seem from this presentation
to be better than interference with that
" large, far-seeing benevolence " which Mr.
Spencer sees in the operation of the law of
consequences.

266

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I am not alone in my view of Mr. Spen-
cer'a teaching upon this point. In his criti-
cism of The Kan versus the State, in The
Popular Science Monthly, vol. xxvii, p. 170,
Trof. ile Lareleye says, "The law that Mr.
Herbert Spencer desires to adopt is simply
Darwin's law — the survival of the fittest."
< >n page 1 T'J, after citing a passage explaining
the manner in which natural selection among
animals is accomplished, M. de Laveleye
adds, " This is the ideal order of things
which, we are told, ought to prevail in hu-
man societies." In his Rejoinder Mr. Spen-
cer evades this by saying that his Social
Statics was written in 1851, while Darwin's
Origin of Species was written in 1859. This
le - itisfactory so far as the expression " sur-
vival of the fittest" is especially "Darwin's
law," but the principle is involved in the
operation of the u large, far-seeing benevo-
lence" which kills off the weak and helpless,
by whatever name it is designated. Mr.
Spencer docs not seem to complain of M. de
Laveleye's imputation, if the latter means
"the survival of the industrially superior,
and those who are fittest for the require-
ments of social life." I understand Mr.
Spencer to oppose carrying the struggles of
the "tooth and claw" period into our indus-
trial era, but that he is willing to permit the
operation of the principle of natural selection
with more civilized weapons.

In his Rejoinder to M. de Laveleye, Mr.
Spencer, after speaking of the distribution
of aid by the Government, says, " If others,
in their private capacities, are prompted by
affection to pity or to mitigate the evil re-
sults, by all means let them do so " ; but
this assumes the tone of mere sufferance
when he immediately adds : " No power can
equitably prevent them from making efforts,
or giving money, to diminish the sufferings
of the unfortunate and the inferior ; at the
same time that no power can equitably co-
erce them into doing so." I understand this
to mean that there is no right in the state to
interfere with private charity, if any one is
moved to it. In another place Mr/Spencer
says (p. 189), "Without wishing to restrain
philanthropic action, but quite contrariwise,
I have in various places argued that philan-
thropy will better achieve its ends by non-
governmental means than by governmental
means." I understand by this that Mr.
Spencer has no wish to " restrain " philan-
thropy, and he believes the voluntary form
better than the compulsory ; but he does not
claim any wish to promote charity, and the
kind of "philanthropy" he has in mind
seems to be only such as is consistent with
his other doctrines. As he views it, true
philanthropy is best expressed by non-inter-
ference. The greatest happiness is worked
out by the law of consequences, which in
reality is a " large, far-seeing benevolence."
'Inevitably, then, this law in conformity
with which each member of a species takes
the consequences of its own nature ; and In

virtue of which the progeny of each mem-
ber, participating in its nature, also takes
such consequences : is one that tends ever to
raise the aggregate happiness of the species by
furthering the multiplication of the happier
and hindering that of the less happy. All
this is true of human beings as of other
beings" (Data of Ethics, p. 190).

I have tried to present the grounds on
which my statement regarding Mr. Spencer
rests. I think he means to encourage self-
reliance as the primary virtue of humanity,
and that he seriously believes that what is
known in the world as " charity " weakens
it. The question is not now whether he is
right or wrong, but whether or not this is
his teaching. I am aware that my words
can be so interpreted as to represent Mr.
Spencer as indifferent to human beings other
than himself, but that is not my meaning.
He distinguishes between acting " to t/ie
detriment of others " and acting " without
active concern for others'1'' (Data of Ethics, p.
227), and I use the words " without concern
for others " in his own sense. If you think
the word " active " modifies the meaning in
any important way, I am willing to introduce
it in my sentence, if I can be assured that
"concern," which is but passive and not
active, has any meaning. Otherwise the ex-
pression " active concern " is a pleonasm.

Mr. Spencer's doctrine is, as I interpret
it, that, if each looks out well for himself,
then all will be happy, at least as soon as
" adaptation " has been realized ; and until it
has, no amount of solicitude for others or
sacrifice in their behalf can possibly realize
their happiness.

Very respectfully yours,

David J. Hill.
University of Rochester,

Rochester, N. Y., April 12, 1890.

THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE.
Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : In reply to the letter of Mr. Gustav
Lindenthal (vol. xxxvi, page 844), criticising
my remarks as to the lack of stability of sus-
pension bridges (page 478), I would like to
make the following statement :

I do not consider it at all necessary that
my remarks upon any of the different types
of bridges should be followed by the words
"as usually built," as, from thetitle of the
article, The Evolution of the Modern Rail-
way Bridge, I could not possibly refer to any
mode of construction other than that in gen-
eral use or some antiquated method.

I did refer to the suspension bridge as
"usually built," and as such it is very defi-
cient in rigidity, and in practice it has been
found almost impossible to so brace it later-
ally and vertically as to render it in any way
a desirable bridge for the passage of our
modern heavy trains at a high rate of speed.

I refer simply to the suspension bridge
up to its present point of evolution, both as

EDITOR'S TABLE.

267

to length of span and method of construc-
tion, and not to the possible suspension
bridge of the future.

In regard to the remainder of Mr. Lin-
denthal's letter : A bridge to be stable and
rigid, in the engineering meaning of the
words, must be so designed that under any
probable form of loading no change of form
can take place, either in the bridge as a whole
or any of its parts, other than that due to the
elasticity of the material used.

The suspension bridge, as we know it,
consists of a flexible chain or cable from
which the roadway is hung: given a suffi-
ciently heavy moving load relative to the
dead weight of the bridge, and the form of
the curve assumed by this chain or cable
will change with each change in the position
of the load, and the bridge can not be called
stable.

The mere fact that the inverted arch is
in stable equilibrium while the upright arch
is not, has absolutely no bearing upon this
question, when we consider the form of the
materials that are used in each case. I ad-
mit that, if the steel arches of the St. Louis
Bridge were inverted and braced and coun-
terbraced in a manner similar to that made
use of at present, the bridge would be as
stable, etc., as the present bridge ; but cer-
tainly not- if the vertical and lateral brac-
ing were dispensed with, and simply a chain
substituted for the present compression arch.
It is, however, impossible to state the
relative merits of different bridge desi<nis
without taking into account the length of
span ; and to a great extent the question is
decided by the relation that exists between
the 'dead load, consisting of weight of the
bridge, and the live load, consisting of the

passing train, etc. The following may be
taken as the maximum economic lengths for
railway bridges of iron or steel :

Plate girders 50 feet.

Eiveted lattice 350 "

Pin -connected with parallel chords or

arched top chord 550 "

Cantilever 1,750 "

Suspension, over 1,750 "

When the suspension bridge reaches such
a size that the weight of any probable load
that may come upon it is nothing as com-
pared to its own weight — as would be the
case in the proposed suspension bridge ex-
tending from New York to Jersey City, de-
signed by Mr. Lindenthal, with a central
span of 2,850 feet— then much that has been
said here in regard to the instability of sus-
pension bridges will not apply, owing to the
fact that under no circumstances would it be
possible to so load a bridge of such dimen-
sions that the load would bear even an ap-
preciable value to its own weight.

One word more in regard to " the popu-
lar and fashionable misconception as to the
merits of the cantilever bridge." Its greater
deflection is due simply to the fact that it is
in the form of a girder fastened at one end
and strained over a pier, and does not
amount to a demerit in the principle.

If I understand Mr. Lindenthal's use of
the expression "all other things being equal,"
etc., correctly to mean vertical and lateral
bracing, etc., practically everything never
could be equal ; and the cantilever bridge,
within the limits of span given, is in every
way superior to the suspension bridge as a
modern railway bridge. Respectfully,

Charles Davis Jameson.
Iowa City, April 3, 1S90.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

DOES MR. SPENCER INCULCATE SELF-
ISHNESS?

VE print in our present number a
letter from President David J.
Hill, of the Baptist University of Roch-
ester, in which an attempt is made to
justify the statement contained in his
book on the Social Influence of Chris-
tianity, and reproduced, with the sanc-
tion of Bishop Vincent, in The Chautau-
quan, that Mr. Spencer " advises us to
follow our own self-interest, without
concern for others, with the assurance
that all will thus be happier, because
more independent." If such a statement
could be justified, President Hill would
doubtless be highly qualified to perform

the task. He has a high respect, he
tells us, for Mr. Spencer's " ability as a
thinker and sincerity as a man " ; and we
may presume that this high opinion has
not been formed without adequate study
of Mr. Spencer's works — such a study
as would give ample command of illus-
trative passages in such a discussion as
the present. The question now is: Has
President Hill proved his case? Has he
justified the damaging remark made by
him in regard to Mr. Spencer's ethical
system? We venture to say that he
has not done so, but, on the contrary,
has signally failed in his attempt. The
reason is, that the facts are against him.
Whether he is fully aware how much

268

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the facts are against him is a question
we do not undertake to decide ; but it

us to us hardly probable that he
would even try to maintain his present
position if thoroughly informed on the
point at issue.

Dr. Hill tells us that, in the lecture
in which the passage challenged by us
occurred, he was drawing attention to
the two hurtful extremes of undiscrimi-
nating charity and complete egoism, as
represented by Herbert Spencer; and
that it was thus that he came to say
that "some counselors, like Herbert
Spencer, advise us to follow our own
self-interest without concern for others,
with the assurance that all will be thus
happier because more independent."
The intention to make Mr. Spencer the
representative of a more or less repul-
sive moral doctrine is thus avowed.
What, then, is the proof that Mr. Spen-
cer advocates any such doctrine? Dr.
Hill points us to a passage in which Mr.
Spencer uses some of the words em-
ployed to summarize his teaching. But,
in the passage in question (Data of
Ethics, page 227), Mr. Spencer is not
giving any counsel ; he is simply mak-
ing two suppositions and drawing a
conclusion from each. These are his
words : " Suppose that each citizen pur-
sues his own happiness independently,
not to the detriment of others, but with-
out active concern for others ; then their
united happiness constitutes a certain
sum — a certain general happiness. Now
suppose that each, instead of making his
own happiness the object of pursuit,
makes the happiness of others the object
of pursuit ; then again there results a cer-
tain sum of happiness." He goes on to
show that it is impossible any general
gain could result from the neglect of
one's own happiness in the pursuit of
that of others. What proof is there
here that he would not wish us to in-
terest ourselves in the welfare of our
neighbors? The whole drift of the
chapter (entitled Trial and Compro-
mise) in which the above passage is

found is to show that absolute egoism
and absolute altruism alike defeat the
ends in view : the absolutely egoistic
man fails to make himself happy, and
the absolutely altruistic man fails to
make others happy ; therefore, some
compromise between the two principles
is necessary. Not to go any further
than this we find Mr. Spencer's position
sufficiently defined. He does not stand,
as Dr. Hill would have his readers be-
lieve, for " the emphasis of egoism " :
what he emphasizes, and that over and
over again, is the necessity for a due
blending of egoism and altruism.

But Dr. Hill has other proofs. He
quotes Mr. Spencer as saying that there
is "a permanent supremacy of egoism
over altruism." True ; and how does
Mr. Spencer explain the words ? Let us
quote : " The acts by which each main-
tains his own life must, speaking gener-
ally, precede in imperativeness all other
acts of which he is capable. . . . The
acts required for continued self-preserva-
tion, including the enjoyment of benefits
achieved by such acts, are the first requi-
sites to universal welfare. Unless each
duly cares for himself, his care for all
others is ended by death ; and if each
thus dies, there remain no others to be
cared for." Then follow the words
which Dr. Hill relies on to help his
case: " Thjs permanent supremacy of
egoism over altruism is further made
manifest," etc. Now, here we have it
fully explained that by " supremacy " is
meant priority in time and precedence
in biological importance. How is this
to be twisted into an exhortation "to
follow our own self-interest, without
concern for others " ?

Dr. Hill further asserts Mr. Spencer's
teaching to be that " each creature shall
take the benefits and evils of its own
nature, be they those derived from an-
cestry or those due to self-produced
modifications." This is not quite cor-
rectly put, though the error is probably
not intentional on Dr. Hill's part. Mr.
Spencer does not say that " each creat-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

269

ure shall," etc., but that there is a law in
nature, which, however it maybe quali-
fied, can not be essentially changed, that
" each creature shall,'1'' etc. The distinc-
tion is not without importance; as
quoted by Dr. Hill, Mr. Spencer seems
to be laying down a law in the spirit of
a legislator, whereas he is only announc-
ing a law in the tone of a discoverer.
Now, if Dr. Hill does not believe there is
any such law as Mr. Spencer announces
and formulates, let him say so ; the con-
troversy will then turn on the interpre-
tation to be given to the history of man-
kind. But, again, let Mr. Spencer ex-
plain himself: "Any arrangements
which in a considerable degree prevent
superiority from profiting by the re-
wards of superiority, or shield inferi-
ority from the evils it entails — any ar-
rangements which tend to make it as
well to be inferior as to be superior — are
arrangements diametrically opposed to
the progress of organization and the
reaching of a higher life." Is this true
or not ? Again, is it true, or not true,
that " general happiness is to be achieved
mainly through the adequate pursuit
of their own happiness by individuals ;
while, reciprocally, the happinesses of
individuals are to be achieved in part by
their pursuit of the general happiness"?
"We say it is true ; but we do not agree
with Dr. Hill, who says that " the center
of concern for each one is here his own
happiness, with only so much regard for
the happiness of others as is likely to
reflect happiness.1' Mr. Spencer is not
discussing "the center of concern," but
the best conditions for the production of
general happiness ; and his position can
only be traversed by showing that the
conditions he asserts to be the best are
not the best. Unless this can be done,
what is the use of talking about " the
center of concern " ? It will be observed
by the careful reader that what Mr.
Spencer postulates in the first half of
the above sentence is adequate pursuit
of one's own happiness. The word is
well and happily chosen, and gives the

key, we may say, to the whole thought
of the writer on the point involved.
The adequate pursuit of one's own hap-
piness is one thing; the inordinate or
selfish pursuit of it is quite another.

Dr. Hill quotes a passage from So-
cial Statics, and draws from it the con-
clusion that Mr. Spencer " shows no con-
cern for those who need our charity
because they can not help themselves."
The conclusion is not justified, in our
opinion, by the text. On the contrary,
the whole passage is expressive of sym-
pathy with suffering, and there is noth-
ing in Mr. Spencer's system to check the
relief of suffering except where to do so
would be to entail greater subsequent
suffering. Quoting from Mr. Spencer a
passage in which he says, ""Without
wishing to restrain philanthropic action,
but quite contrariwise," etc., Dr. Hill
comments on it as follows: "I under-
stand by this that Mr. Spencer has no
wish to restrain philanthropy; but he
does not claim any wish to promote
charity." "We certainly do not so under-
stand the words " quite contrariwise " ;
we think they do imply a desire on Mr.
Spencer's part to promote any charity
that will be truly philanthropic and not
hurtful in its effects. " As he views it,"
says Dr. Hill, " true philanthropy is best
expressed by non-interference." Mr.
Spencer has never said anything to jus-
tify this remark; but he has said that
non-interference is better than a good
deal of the interference that calls itself
charitable. Dr. Hill tells us in conclusion
that he is aware that his words — those
referred to by us last month — " can be
so interpreted as to represent Mr. Spen-
cer as indifferent to human beings other
than himself; but that," he adds, " is not
my meaning." If Dr. Hill was aware,
when he penned the words in question,
that they could be so interpreted, he
should in common fairness have guarded
against such a misapprehension. If, on
the other hand, he has only now become
aware that they are open to a wrong in-
terpretation, he should hasten to say

270

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that he should not have used such
wor<K

Up to this point we have been examr
inim: what Dr. Hill offers as his proofs
that Herbert Spencer advises us " to fol-
low our own interest without concern
for others " ; it remains now to glance
at a few of the numerous passages which
show in the most positive and conclu-
sive manner that Herbert Spencer holds
no such principle as that imputed to
him, but, on the contrary, earnestly de-
sires that we should concern ourselves
for one another, and that sympathy
should govern in all human relations.
It is very singular indeed that these pas-
sages should have missed, if they did
miss, Dr. Hill's scrutiny; and more sin-
gular still, if he was cognizant of them,
that he should not have considered that
any of them had a bearing on the ques-
tion at issue. We must devote the re-
mainder of our space mainly to quota-
tions. To show what he understands
by moral motives, Mr. Spencer says
(Data of Ethics, page 121) : " The man
who is moved by a moral feeling to help
another in difficulty, does not picture to
himself any reward here or hereafter,
but pictures only the better condition he
is trying to bring about. One who is
morally prompted to fight against a so-
cial evil has neither material benefit nor
popular applause before his mind; but
only the mischiefs he seeks to remove,
and the increased well-being which will
follow their removal." Then take the
following as indicating his ideal of social
life: "A society is conceivable formed
of men living perfectly inoffensive lives,
scrupulously fulfilling their contracts,
and efficiently rearing their offspring,
who yet, yielding to one another no ad-
vantages beyond those agreed upon, fall
short of that highest degree of life which
the gratuitous rendering of services
makes possible. . . . The limit of evo-
lution of conduct is consequently not
reached until, beyond avoidance of di-
rect and indirect injuries to others, there
are spontaneous efforts to further the

welfare of others " (Data of Ethics, page
147). " Sympathy is the root of both jus-
tice and benevolence " (do., page 148).

Any one wishing to know what scope
Mr. Spencer allowed to the altruistic
principle would naturally turn to the
chapter in his Data of Ethics entitled
Altruism versus Egoism. Dr. Hill did
net find it in the interest of his argu-
ment to make any quotations from that
chapter ; we must, therefore, be allowed
to produce a few : " That any one should
have formulated his experience by say-
ing that the conditions to success are a
hard heart and a good digestion is mar-
velous, considering the many proofs that
success, even of a material kind, greatly
depending as it does on the good offices
of others, is furthered by whatever cre-
ates good-will in others. The contrast
between the prosperity of those who to
but moderate abilities join natures which
beget friendships by their kindliness, and
the adversity of those who, though pos-
sessed of superior faculties and greater
acquirements, arouse dislike by their
hardness or indifference, should force
upon all the truth that egoistic enjoy-
ments are aided by altruistic actions.
This increase of personal benefit achieved
by benefiting others is but partly achieved
where a selfish motive prompts the seem-
ingly unselfish act ; it is fully achieved
only when- the act is really unselfish.
. . . Those (services) which bring more
than equivalents are those not prompted
by any thoughts of equivalents. For
obviously it is the spontaneous outflow
of good nature, not in the larger acts of
life only, but in all its details, wrhich
generates in those around the attach-
ments prompting unstinted benevo-
lence" (page 211). Not bad for a man
who is credited in an article written by
a college president, and selected by a
bishop for the reading of young people
whose opinions are in course of forma-
tion, with advising us "to follow our
own interest without concern for oth-
ers " ! Not so bad this either : " If we
contrast early poetry, occupied mainly

LITERARY NOTICES.

271

with war and gratifying the savage in-
stincts by descriptions of bloody victo-
ries with the poetry of modern times,
in which the sanguinary forms but a
small part, while a large part, dealing
with the gentler affections, enlists the
feelings of readers on behalf of the
weak, we are shown that, with the de-
velopment of a more altruistic nature,
there has been opened a sphere of en-
joyment inaccessible to the callous ego-
ism of barbarous times" (page 215).
We have marked many other passages
for quotation, not in the Data of Ethics
alone, but in other works of Mr. Spen-
cer's as well, but our limits forbid the
use of them. Enough has been pro-
duced, however, to prove to any un-
prejudiced reader that the accusation
brought against Mr. Spencer of counsel-
ing selfishness is, as we said before,
"absolutely without foundation," and
does signal injustice to a man the whole
of whose philosophy is so strongly in-
spired by a social motive. In the matter
of moral science many people are to-
day in the position in which men in gen-
eral were some generations ago in rela-
tion to physical science. Just as the
alchemists of a former time were bent
on achieving the transmutation of met-
als, and the astrologists on reading in
the stars the destinies of individuals
and of states ; and just as these precur-
sors of the scientific workers of our time
would have been greatly discouraged
and would perhaps have abandoned their
labors if persuaded that their methods
were vain and their hopes visionary and
unrealizable ; so, if we may be allowed
to say so, the pre-scientific or anti-scien-
tific moralists of our own time are dis-
posed to spurn any ethical system that
is not transcendental in its character
and does not nourish boundless hopes.
Truth, however, is making its way in
the world ; and gradually all intelligent
men will be led to see that better, wider,
and more permanent results can be
achieved by working on the moral lines
laid down by science, than by striving,

with the older philosophies and theol-
ogies, to scale the heaven of an un-
attainable virtue. Let us hope that the
present discussion may have a little in-
fluence in this direction.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Journal of Researches into the Natural
History and Geology of the Countries
visited during the voyage round the
World of II. M. S. Beagle, under the
Command of Captain Fitz Roy, R. N.
By Charles Darwin. A new edition,
with Illustrations. New York : D. Ap-
pleton & Co. Pp. 551, with Maps.
Price, $5.

There are only a few books that have
the qualities of an originality and freshness
that never wear out. Darwin's Naturalist's
Yoyage must be conceded a prominent place
in the list. It has been a little more than
fifty years since it was first published. That
is a very long time in the life of a book of
science and even of a book of travels. Ei-
ther is likely to become antiquated and ob-
solete in that period. The book of science
comes to be read largely as a curiosity, and
to derive its chief interest as being a land-
mark from which the advance accomplished
may be measured. The book of travels be-
comes a kind of history, and is valued for
the illustrations it furnishes of the scenes
and conditions that once prevailed. Mr.
Darwin's Journal, in whichever aspect we
regard it, seems as life-like, real, and saga-
cious as if it were the fresh record of the
latest observer. The prediction made by
the Quarterly Review on its first appearance,
that " it must always occupy a distinguished
place in the history of scientific investigation,"
is more than fulfilled. The work accom-
plished by Darwin on this voyage has been
gone over, in its various parts, many times,
with all the advantages of increased knowl-
edge and approved appliances and methods
of investigation ; and it is surprising how
little of it has to be rewritten. So far from
any of its science seeming obsolete, we find
all through the narrative observations which
are in effect unconscious predictions, the
product of the author's peculiar way of look-
ing at things, of what has since been de-
termined; and we are also constantly re-
minded that the later determinations are to

272

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the largest extent the outcome of Mr. Dar-
win's own subsequent work. The track of
the voyage and its principal features are
well known to all persons who are conver-
sant with the scientific literature of the last
half-century, for hardly any book has been
more frequently referred to in that litera-
ture. The places visited were not as famil-
iar then as they have since been made, and
of the natural life of many of them hardly
anything was known. So Mr. Darwin en-
joyed the advantage of being one of the
first visitors and often the first scientific
observer. Much of the book is, there-
fore, the original record by a discoverer
of his discovery. Of the manner in which
that record has been composed, we need
say no more than quote Mr. John Mur-
ray's remark in the Prefatory Notice to
the present edition, that " the extraordinary
minuteness and accuracy of Mr. Darwin's
observations, combined with the charm and
simplicity of his descriptions, have insured
the popularity of this book with all classes
of readers, and that popularity has even in-
creased in recent years." Not only are Mr.
Darwin's observations as a rule accurate and
anticipatory of much that has since been es-
tablished ; they also comprehend nearly every-
thing that should fall under the ken of a thor-
ough-going investigator. Seeing all that the
experienced traveler sees and a great deal
more than most of this class think of looking
for, he portrays the scenery with a few well-de-
fined traces ; studies the geology ; looks after
the animal and vegetable life, with an eye that
discerns as much in a few hours of sojourn
at a place as duller observers might hardly
discover after months of study ; peers with
equal keenness into the habits and most
trifling actions of the animate world ; takes
note of the human life, of society, of man-
ners and customs, the conditions of civiliza-
tion, and of the prospects for the future of
the countries he visits ; and interweaves the
whole with pertinent yet undogmatic specula-
tions as to the meaning of the various feat-
ures that came under his eye such as mark
all the man's work— most of which have
been verified, or are in course of verification
by investigations to which he gave the start
and on lines of research which he himself
marked out. Perhaps the point to which
the present interest is attached is embodied

in his observations on coral reefs, which
have come under discussion again in con-
sequence of the new results obtained by the
Challenger Expedition. Some of his ob-
servations— in cases where the aspect is
affected by the progress of human settle-
ment— are in more or less striking contrast
with what is to be seen now. One of the
strongest contrasts, perhaps, is offered in
the picture of New Zealand, where the na-
tives at the time of his visit lacked the
charming simplicity of the Tahitians, and
the greater part of the English were "the
very refuse of society." But in the more
detailed fillings of even this picture we find
foreshadowings of the higher civilization
that has overtaken the Maoris, and the pros-
perity that has attended the English colony.
The present edition of Mr. Darwin's narra-
tive is illustrated by views not in the pre-
vious editions, most of which were made on
the spot by Mr. R. T. Pritchett with the book
by his side, and others are taken from en-
gravings which Mr. Darwin himself had se-
lected for their interest as illustrating his
voyage.

North American Geology and Paleontol-
ogy. For the Use of Amateurs, Students,
and Scientists. By S. A. Miller. Cin-
cinnati. Pp. 664.

This work includes a summary of the
general principles of geology, with defini-
tions of the principal formations represented
in North America, and a manual of Paheo-
zoic paleontology. The first chapter, on
the "Definitions and Laws of Geology,"
concisely presents the principles of geologi-
cal theory, including the agencies by which
the structure and appearance of the super-
ficial crust of the earth are affected ; expla-
nations of the more general terms used in
geology, and remarks on the principles of
nomenclature. For the systems, the gener-
ally accepted names are used. In choosing
between the methods that have been fol-
lowed in naming the groups, a preference is
expressed for calling each group after the
place in which the strata were first studied
and described, because a name thus formed
is sufficiently technical ; it can not be used for
any other purpose ; and it indicates the typi-
cal locality of the exposure. On the other
hand, names founded on the mineralogical

LITERARY NOTICES.

273

or other special character of the exposure
may prove inapplicable to the representative
of the same group in some other situation.
The systems, as they are known in North
America, are then described in their order,
beginning with the Laurentian, in the first
ninety pages ; and the typical localities and
general extent of each are noticed. The
rest of the volume is occupied with the
paleontological manual ; and this is intro-
duced with an ample exposition of the rules
of nomenclature. The list is classified, be-
ginning with the plants, and passing through
the animal orders to the batrachians, each
sub-kingdom and class being introduced by a
text describing its characteristics and its or-
ders. The names of all the species, arranged
in alphabetical order, are given under the
genera to which they belong, with the au-
thors of them, the dates of publication, and,
frequently, references to two places of pub-
lication. The cases are marked when ge-
neric and specific names are not known to
occur in the Palaeozoic rocks of North Amer-
ica ; of synonyms, names not described as
required by the rules of nomenclature, pre-
occupied names, and names condemned for
any other reason ; and erroneous references
of species to genera are pointed out and cor-
rected. A large proportion of the genera
are illustrated by engravings of typical
species.

Fort Ancient. The Great Prehistoric
Earthwork of Warren County, Ohio.
Compiled from a Careful Survey, etc., by
Warren K. Moorehead. Cincinnati :
Robert Clarke & Co. Pp. 129, with
Plates and Map.

Fort Ancient is a very extensive and im-
portant " mound-builders' " earthwork, over-
looking the Little Miami River and its fail-
road, a few miles above Cincinnati. It is
described by the author as " the greatest of
all prehistoric earthworks in the Mississippi
basin." Mr. Moorehead conceived that a
full account of so remarkable a structure was
desirable, and prepared himself conscien-
tiously to furnish it. The first step was to
make a survey, and for this, with a corps of
competent workers, he went over the entire
structure many times, and carried on a work
which, he trusts, will need no additional re-
searches to complete. In this he was as-
sisted by Mr. Gerard Fowke and Mr. Clinton

vol. xxxvn. — 21

Cowen. The main purposes of the writer
have been to set before the public, in as
brief and exact a manner as possible, the
prominent features and wonders of the
monument, and to insist upon its purchase
and preservation by some historical or scien-
tific association. The fort is situated upon
a plateau standing close to the river-bank,
at a height of 269 feet above low water,
and about 900 feet above the level of the
sea. The irregular contour of the work is
18,712 feet in length, but a diameter drawn
from north to south is only 4,993 feet long.
The structure consists of two large incis-
ures, called the old and new forts, connected
by a narrower passage-way which the author
calls the isthmus. At the southern end of
the isthmus, where it is narrowest, is the
" great gateway," guarded by a mound on
either side. Opposite it, at about one third
of the length of the isthmus, is the " Cres-
cent Gateway." The space between these
gateways is called the " Middle Fort," and
appears to have been the strongest part of
the work. Numerous graves, skeletons, and
remains of human work were found in and
around the fortifications, and evidences of an
ancient village site in the valley. The whole
proves to the mind of the author that Fort
Ancient was built for defense ; that it was a
rallying-point for a large population inhabit-
ing a district of considerable extent, and was
often the scene or the witness of fierce battles.
It may have been used as a fortified village
site, with people living within its walls all
the time — not enough to command the in-
closure, but enough to keep it in good repair.
A high opinion is expressed of the ability of
the constructors. They showed extraordi-
nary patience, and "have left evidence of
the possession of qualities seldom found
among savages. They engineered the posi-
tion of the walls with reference to the most
secure places with admirable skill." With '
no tools, such as we use, and wicker baskets
and skins as the only means of conveyance,
by mere strength of hand and back, they
accomplished a work before which we, even
with our modern implements, would hesitate.
The selection of the site, " the best for the
purpose which the valley of the Ohio offers " ;
the skill with which the walls were carried
around the entire inclosure ; the care with
which weak and exposed points have been

274

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

strengthened; the lookout mounds; their
skull*, etc., indicate for them a higher place
in the scale of being than the majority of
the tribes and remnants of tribes whom the
white settlers of western Ohio found there.
Mr. Muorehead believes they were Mandans.

Firm Annual Report of the Bureau of
Ethnology, lS83-'84. By J. W. Pow-
ell, Director. Washington. Pp. liii +
564.

This handsome volume gives ample evi-
dence as to the active prosecution of the
work of the Bureau of Ethnology during the
year that it covers. The director reports
that the field-work of 1883-'84 embraced
explorations of mounds in several States
east of the Rocky Mountains ; explorations
of ruins in Arizona and New Mexico ; fur-
ther researches among the Zuiii, by Mr.
Cushing; and studies of signs, languages,
and myths in various localities. At the same
time office-work in preparing for publication
materials already gathered was being vigor-
ously carried on. The first of the papers
accompanying the director's report is on
Burial Mounds of the Northern Sections of
the United States, by Prof. Cyrus Thomas,
and was noticed in this magazine in March of
last year. There is a paper by Mr. Charles
C. Royce, on the Cherokee Nation of Indians,
being a narrative of their official relations
with the colonial and Federal governments.
This record gives attention in orderly se-
quence to the historical traditions of the
Cherokees, to their early contacts with ex-
plorers and colonists, to successive treaties
and cessions of territory, with the events
leading thereto, and the ensuing results.
Through the paper appear biographical no-
tices, accounts of the trials and struggles
due to deportation and conflict, and many
interesting facts showing the persistent ad-
vance of this intelligent people in civiliza-
tion, numbers, and prosperity. The paper
is accompanied by two large folded maps
showing the former and present boundaries
of the territory occupied by the Cherokees,
also by a map of the year 1597, being the
earliest which shows their location. The
Mountain Chant, a Navajo ceremony, is de-
scribed by Dr. Washington Matthews. The
essay is divided into a translation of the
myth on which the ceremony is based, an

account of the nine days' exercises, and the
originals and translations of the songs and
prayers used in the course of the ceremo-
nial. Four colored plates representing pict-
ures made on the ground with colored pow-
ders, and many cuts showing implements
and actions employed during the course of
the rites, illustrate the paper. An account
of the arts and customs of the Seminole In-
dians of Florida, with illustrations, is con-
tributed to the volume by the Rev. Clay
MacCauley. Mrs. Tilly E. Stevenson de-
scribes The Religious Life of the Zuni Child,
which includes a ceremony, performed before
the child is four years old, by which he is sup-
posed to receive the sacred breath of super-
natural beings. The colored masks worn by
the boys, and the colored figures made on
the ground in this ceremony, are represented
on lithographic plates.

History of Egypt. By F. C. H. Wendel.
New York : D. Appleton & Co. (History
Primers.) Pp. 159. Price, 45 cents.

The author's purpose in preparing this
little book has been to give a brief account
of Egyptian history which would be as reli-
able as the present state of Egyptological
science presents, and to create a deeper in-
terest in the study of ancient Egypt. He
rightly believes that this study is of the
greatest value, and of an importance that
is growing more manifest every day to the
student of almost every branch ; for in it
probably lie, at least in a large part, the
foundations of our science and art. The
story is told in a careful, scholarly manner ;
bears the marks of a thorough study and
preparation ; and is brought up as nearly to
the latest discovery as is practicable in a book
which requires time to pass through the
press. For sources of information the Egyp-
tian monuments are almost wholly relied upon
— thus securing the correctness that is de-
rived from contemporary records. The vexed
question of chronology is ingeniously solved,
or rather cut, by adopting Eduard Meyer's
plan of "approximate dates," or of giving
the latest date that can be assigned to the
era, and leaving it understood that it is im-
possible to determine how much earlier the
event may have taken place. This date, for
the accession of Menes, is about 3200 b. c.
The book supplies a real want of a compact,

LITERARY NOTICES.

275

popular history of this most ancient of na-
tions, in the light of the latest researches.
While we accept as valid the author's rea-
son for not including the science, art, and
literature, as well as the dynastic history —
that the space contemplated by the plan did
not admit of it — we hope that some one
will do as good work for those features, and
the popular life, too, of Egypt, as is done in
this work for its politics and foreign rela-
tions. The material for illustrating them is
abundant, and is lively, characteristic, hu-
man, and vastly fuller of interest than the
long list of unpronounceable names of un-
known kings, with their ascriptions of divine
qualities to themselves, of which a chronicle
of events must largely consist.

History and Pathology of Vaccination.
By Edgar M. Crookshank, M. B. Phila-
delphia : P. Blakiston, Son & Co. 2 vols.

The story of the introduction of inocula-
tion for the small-pox into England, and of
its replacement by vaccination through the la-
bors of Jenner, is fully told in these two fine
volumes. It is a record which is extremely
interesting and instructive to the lay reader,
besides being historically valuable to the phy-
sician. The practitioner in England, where
the work originated, will also find many of
its facts and figures available for a practi-
cal purpose for which there is slight occa-
sion in the United States, namely, for com-
bating prejudice against vaccination. The
first volume opens with a history of small-
pox inoculation in various European and
Asiatic countries and in England. Then
follow the traditions, current among the dai-
ry-maids in the last century, that persons
who had taken the cow-pox from the ani-
mals were proof against the small-pox ; and
evidence is given to show that Benjamin
Jesty, a farmer, purposely transferred the
disease from a cow to his wife and his two
children in 1774, thus anticipating Dr. Jen-
ner in vaccination by over twenty years. A
portrait of Jesty forms the frontispiece of
the volume, and a small portrait of his wife
is also given. An account of Jenner's life
and his work in this field forms a large part
of the volume, and contains extracts from
many of his letters and essays on the sub-
ject. Successive chapters deal with various
sources of vaccine lymph — namely, human

small-pox, cattle - plague, sheep small-pox,
goat-pox, cow-pox, and " grease " in horses.
A brief account of the progress of vaccina-
tion jn England after the death of Jenner is
also given. The volume is illustrated with
many full-page colored plates. The second
volume consists of reprints of selected es-
says, beginning with the first edition of Jen-
ner's Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of
the Varioke Vaccina, published in 1798. It
contains also essays by Pearson, Woodville,
Loy, Bousquet, Ceely, and other physicians
prominent in the early history of vaccina-
tion, and several others by Jenner. The
author contributes to this volume a paper
describing an Outbreak of Cow-pox near Crick-
lade (Wiltshire) in 1887.

The Psychology of Attention. By Th.
Ribot. Authorized Translation. Chi-
cago : The Open Court Publishing Com-
pany. Pp. 121. Price, 75 cents.

This treatise is a clear and interesting
study of the mechanism of the mental atti-
tude that is necessary to any advance in skill
or knowledge. It is founded upon the ex-
periments and investigations of recent years,
which have examined and defined the bodily
manifestations accompanying the intellectual
state. Heretofore many psychologists have
been content to view attention from the sub-
jective side only, and consequently have not
given any comprehensible account of its gen-
esis. M. Ribot uses the reverse method. He
finds that there are two forms of attention :
the primitive or natural, which he names
spontaneous, exhibited by animals with only
a few developed senses, and by man until
training or force steps in ; second, the arti-
ficial or voluntary, a cultivated product
whose effects psychologists have dissected.
Both forms are dependent upon emotional
states, and the mechanism of each is motory,
mainly in the form of inhibition or "arrest-
ed motion." The physical manifestations,
the vaso-motor phenomena, the respiratory
changes, the bodily expressions, and the
cerebral effects, are the wheel-work of atten-
tion ; and the patient investigation of these
by Darwin, Riccardi, Galton, Maudsley, Prey-
er, and Fer6, has made an explanation of its
mechanism possible.

In considering the cerebral phenomena
the old problem is encountered — whether

276

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mind act3 first upon body, or body upon
mind. This M. Kibot declines to discuss.
Voluntary attention originated after the ear-
liest period of savagery, when man realized
the alternative of perishing or going to work.
It differs from the spontaneous form in that
the motive or influence producing the emo-
tional state is supplied from without. Edu-
cators make use of fear, sympathy, and cu-
riosity, to cultivate attention in the child;
as it advances in growth, duty, emulation,
and ambition are introduced; and, finally,
voluntary attention is maintained by habit
and organization A study of the internal
mechanism shows that attention is accom-
plished by inhibition. In the normal state
of consciousness, sensations, images, ideas
come and go. Attention arrests this process
and inhibits all but the chosen series. Ener-
gy is used to perpetuate this condition, and
from this expenditure results the feeling of
effort. The morbid cases of attention are
treated under the heads Hypertrophy of
Attention, Atrophy of Attention, and Con-
genital Infirmity. They prove that atten-
tion depends upon emotional excitation. In-
cidentally, M. Ribot gives some suggestive
examples of what may depend upon full
recognition of the physical nature of at-
tention.

The Extermination of the American Bison.
By William T. Hornaday. Washington :
Government Printing-Office (Smithsonian
Institution). Pp. 548, with Plates and
Maps.

Mr. noRNADAY is a naturalist and taxi-
dermist by profession, and is superintendent
of the Xational Zoological Park, thus com-
bining qualifications which well fit him for
making a book of this kind. He is, further-
more, a writer who knows how to interest
the reader, and has composed an attractive
as well as an instructive book. His purpose
is to help the public fully to realize the folly
of allowing all our most valuable and inter-
esting American mammals to be wantonly
destroyed, as the buffalo has been. The
wild buffalo is practically gone forever; and
it is doubtful whether the institution of pre-
serves and the formation of herds, however
intelligently they may be executed, will avail
to save the species permanently, even in a
captive state. In the first part of his work
the author considers " the life-history of the

bison," under the headings of Discovery
of the Species, Geographical Distribution,
Abundance, Character, Habits, Food, Men-
tal Capacity and Disposition, Yalue to Man-
kind, and Economic Value to Western Cat-
tle-Growers. The story of extermination is
related in the second part. One of the most
important chapters in the first part is that
in which the value of the bison is estimated
under domestication, in hybrids, and as a
beast of burden. At present (May 1, 1889),
"although the existence of a few widely
scattered individuals enables us to say that
the bison is not yet absolutely extinct in a
wild state, there is no reason to hope that a
single wild and unprotected individual will
remain alive ten years hence. The nearer
the species approaches to complete extermi-
nation, the more eagerly are the wretched
fugitives pursued to the death wherever
found." While the herds, which once ranged
over nearly the whole of our country, for-
merly numbered hundreds of thousands of
individuals, the few groups that are left
count only dozens. An estimate made on
the 1st of January, 1889, gave the whole
number running wild — in all North America
— as 635 ; and including those in captivity
and those under Government protection in
Yellowstone Park, the whole number of in-
dividuals of the species as 1,091 ; and these
few are still hunted, and shot when found.

Handbook of Practical Botany. By E.
Strasburger. Edited from the German
by W. Hillhouse. Second edition, revised
and enlarged. New York: Macmillan &
Co. Pp. 425. Price, $2.50.

This volume embodies a course of labora-
tory work laid out by a botanist whom the
English editor calls "one of the greatest
living masters of microscopical observation."
The introduction tells how to use the micro-
scope, and describes the instruments of dif-
ferent makers. The first subject for study
is the structure of starch of different kinds.
A list of the material wanted is given at the
head of the chapter ; the appearance which
each kind of starch should present under the
microscope is described, its behavior under
various reagents is noted, and directions for
drawing the grains are given. The following
lessons are similar in character. Among the
subjects for investigation are movements
of protoplasm, epidermis and stomata, the

LITERARY NOTICES.

277

structure of different kinds of stem, of cork,
of the growing tip of stem and of root, the
vegetative structure and the modes of repro-
duction of cryptogamous plants, and the
structure of various seeds and fruits. The
text is illustrated with 149 cuts. An appen-
dix contains lists of plants and of reagents
used in study, etc.

Handbook of Commercial Geography. By
George G. Chisholm, Fellow of the Royal
Geographical and Statistical Societies.
London and New York : Longmans,
Green & Co. Pp. 515. Price, $5.

Commerce has undergone a change cf
character in recent times the nature of which
i3 indicated by the disappearance of the
word " venture " from the commercial vocab-
ulary. Cargoes of good3 are not now shipped
to distant ports in blind ignorance of whether
or not a sufficient demand exists at their
destination for the commodities sent. The
legend of the rash Yankee, who apparently
tempted the financial fates by sending a lot
of warming-pans to the West Indies, would
be impossible at this day. Commerce has
settled down to a more even course, it is
carried on by more exact methods, and is
directed more by knowledge and less by
chance than at earlier times. But there re-
mains much room for improvement in the
knowledge which importers and exporters
possess of the products and the needs of
foreign countries. To supply information
of this sort, and in such a form that it may
have " intellectual interest," is the aim of
the present volume. " In writing the work,"
says the author, " I have had three classes
chiefly in view : first, teachers who may wish
to impart additional zest to their lessons in
geography from the point of view of com-
merce ; secondly, pupils in the higher schools
and colleges that are now devoting increased
attention to commercial education ; and,
thirdly, those entering on commercial life,
who take a sufficiently intelligent interest in
their business to make their private studies
bear on their daily pursuits." An intro-
ductory chapter embodies certain general
facts relating to the production, distribution,
and exchange of commodities, such as differ-
ences in soil and climate, in the price and effi-
ciency of labor, in facilities for transportation
and communication, in import and export
regulations, in language and money. The

world's articles of commerce are then taken
up, under a number of classes, and the source
of supply of each, and, in case of the more
important commodities, other details, such as
mode of production, history of the industry,
uses of the article, quality of the product from
different places, and statistics of production.
Then the countries of the world are taken
up in succession, the location and geographi-
cal character of each is stated, its general
commercial advantages and disadvantages are
pointed out, after which the important prod-
ucts of the several sections and towns of
the country are named, statistics being given
in numerous instances. About thirty maps
are interspersed through this part of the
volume, showing the products, density of
population, railways, etc., of different coun-
tries. An appendix of fifty pages gives
tables of statistics in regard to the imports
and exports of the chief countries of the
world, and related information. The volume
has a full index, which is far from a matter
of course in English treatises.

The Bermuda Islands. By Angelo Heilprin.
Philadelphia: The Author, Academy of
Natural Sciences. Pp. 231. Price, $3.50.

The material of this volume embraces
geological, zoological, and botanical observa-
tions, and includes a few glimpses from the
traveler's point of view. " My main object
in visiting the islands," says the author,
"was to satisfy my mind on certain points
connected with the structure and physi-
ognomy of coral reefs, to the study of which
the Bermudas offer special advantages. I
contemplated but little work in zoology, and
that which was accomplished may be con-
sidered supplemental to the plan of work
originally laid out." The first chapter, and
to some extent the second, consist of " gen-
eral impressions" of the islands and sur-
rounding waters, and the inhabitants of both.
The view herein given is less roseate but
probably nearer correct than the descriptions
of writers more dominated by poetic enthu-
siasm than by scientific accuracy. Prof.
Heilprin next sketches the physical history
and geology of the Bermuda Islands, and
then takes up the coral-reef problem. He
discusses the chief contributions that have
been made to our knowledge of coral reefs,
his own convictions being in favor of Dar-

278

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

win's

subsidence theory. The following
chapters deal with the zoology of the islands,
consisting mainly of descriptions of the
species collected. Prof. Heilprin states that
" the Bernmdian fauna is essentially a wind-
drift and current-drift fauna, whose elements
have been received in principal part from
the United States and the West Indies,"
while certain mollusca and Crustacea are of
a distinctively Pacific type. An appendix,
consisting of notes on the recent literature
of coral reefs, is added. The volume is
illustrated with seventeen full-page photo-
engravings and lithographic plates.

Lectures on Russian Literature. By Ivan
Panin. New York and London : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 220. Price, $1.50.

The curious confession made in this vol-
ume that there is no originality in Russian
literature, but that it acts as " a sieve for
Western thought," or as "a wall against
Asiatic barbarism," would seem to condemn
it to the obscurity from which it has so late-
ly emerged. The author believes, however,
that the three virtues — intensity, moderation,
and sincerity — which pre-eminently distin-
guish Russian poets and novelists, will not
only rescue them from oblivion, but oblige
Western writers finally to seek in them mod-
els of expression. He finds four phases of
evolution in literature: First, the youthful
period of joyous song ; second, rebellion and
lament ; third, aggression and warfare ;
fourth, belief and inspiration. These are
exemplified in Russia by Pushkin, the bard ;
Gogol, the protester ; Turgenef, the warrior ;
and Tolstoi, the preacher. The Lectures are
entertaining, and give the reader an insight
into four typical Russian authors.

Lessons in the Structure, Life, and Growth
of Plants. By Alphonso Wood. Re-
vised and edited by Oliver R. Willis.
New York : A. S. Barnes & Co. Pp. 220.
Price, $1.

This text-book was written more than
twenty years ago, and is now recast and re-
vised to adapt it to new means and methods
of study, and to the advanced state of the
science. In its new form it is offered as a
suitable introduction and companion to any
of the manuals of the flora of North America.
Part I is devoted to structural, Part II to
physiological, and Part III to systematic

botany, but it is not prescribed that the
subjects shall be taken up in this order.
The volume is clearly printed and copiously
illustrated, and is provided with a combined
index and glossary.

A paper of nearly three hundred quarto
pages on The Geographical Distribution of
Fossil Plants has been prepared by Lester F.
Ward, to form a part of the report of the
United States Geological Survey for 1886-'8Y.
It is a continuation of the Sketch of Paleo-
botany which appeared in the Fifth Annual
Report, and will be followed by a paper on
Problems of Paleobotany, in which the au-
thor will discuss many subjects in this field
that he has not yet treated. The present
paper takes the form of a narrative of the
publication of discoveries of plant fossils.
The division of the earth first taken up is
Europe, and here the great number of small
beds that have been discovered and of mono-
graphs that have been written about them
precludes much more than a mention of each
one. The flora of the arctic regions has
been so magnificently treated by Prof. Os-
wald Heer that Mr. Ward has deemed it su-
perfluous to pick up what little collateral
matter has been brought out by other au-
thors. Nearly the same statement applies
to India, on account of Feistmantel's labors ;
and to Canada, where Dawson has done thor-
ough work. But, in treating the United
States, Mr. Ward has felt in duty bound to
make the geographical review as complete
as the data in his possession would permit.
Here more analysis of the separate finds is
made than in the case of the European
countries. This section is accompanied by
a map of the United States, on which the
chief localities in which fossil plants of va-
rious geological ages have been found are
indicated by different colored circles. Nu-
merous foot-notes on every page give exact
bibliographical information concerning the
works referred to in the text. The paper
has a full index.

The second number of the Bulletin from
the Laboratories of Natural History of the
State University of Iowa contains papers on
the Anatomy of the Gorgonidae, by C. C.
Nutting — well illustrated ; and on the Na-
tive Fishes of Iowa, by Seth E. Meek.

The Report of the Council of the Cana-

LITERARY NOTICES,

279

dian Institute depicts a year of progress dur-
ing 1888-89, and, according to the testi-
mony of competent witnesses, shows that a
wonderful amount of work was accomplished
in proportion to the small sum of money
which the society was able to command.
Twenty-four ordinary meetings and thirty-
six meetings of sections were held, at which
seventy papers in all were read. The archaeo-
logical report, by Mr. David Boyle, gives no-
tices of several features of research and of
the examination of a number of sites, and is
accompanied by a paper on French relics
from village sites of the Hurons, by Mr.
A. F. Hunter, and a Bibliography of the Art
and Archaeology of the Dominion of Canada
and Newfoundland, by Mr. A. F. Chamberlan.

The work of the Geological and Nat-
ural History Survey of Minnesota in 1888
was prosecuted by two parties, one of which,
under Mr. Uly S. Grant, was occupied dur-
ing a part of the season in making collec-
tions of rock samples in certain typical crys-
talline formations in typical localities, and
afterward in the iron-ore beds ; and the
other, under Mr. Horace V. Winchell, spent
the whole season on the iron-ore beds. The
work added materially to the exact knowl-
edge of the geology of the northeastern part
of the State, and particularly to that of the
nature and relations of the iron-ores. A
general presentation of this knowledge, in a
somewhat systematic manner, has been at-
tempted in the report. The superintendent
of the survey, Prof. N. H. Winchell, is about
to enter on the preparation of a final report
covering the northern part of the State.

Observations on Sexual Selection in Spi-
ders of the Family Altidm is a paper pub-
lished in the " Occasional " Volume of the
Natural History Society of Wisconsin, by
George W. and Elizabeth G. Peckham. The
investigation which it records is directed to
the origin — in spiders — of color, and its re-
lation to sexuality, concerning which two
general theories are offered by Mr. Wallace :
first, that natural selection modifies color in
the female for purposes of protection ; and,
second, that color may be produced or in-
tensified when there is a surplus of vital
energy, as in male animals generally, and
sometimes in the females, and more espe-
cially at the breeding season. Unusual fa-
cilities are offered for testing these theories

by the Araneides on account of the great
numbers of their species and the wide dif-
ferences between the several groups in hab-
its • and in amount of ornamentation. The
study of several genera shows that, in the
sedentary groups of spiders, while many of
the species are plainly colored, there are
nearly as many that present the most beau-
tiful tints ; and some of the wandering and
very active groups are, for the most part,
clothed in somber hues. Again, no relation
is shown between the color development of
the females and their nesting habits. The
former observation is contradictory to the
supposition of a causal relation between vi-
tal activity and color development ; the latter
to that of the need of a protective coloring,
while nesting, by the female. A further ex-
planation of the sexual coloring is then
sought, with the conclusion that some groups
of spiders have reached a condition of close
harmony with their environment ; this har-
mony being brought about through the same
modifications of color, form, and habit as
are seen among insects, to the attainment
of the common ends of capture of prey and
protection from enemies.

In Remarks upon Extinct Mammals of the
United States, Dr. R. W. Shufeldt publishes
studies illustrated, of Tinoceros ingens ; The
Ancestry of the Horse ; Ancient Whales and
Coryphodons ; Half- Apes and Lemurs ; the
Saber-Toothed Tigers, and Hairy Mammoths
and Sea-Cows.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Allen, Harrison, M. D. A Clinical Study of the
Skull. Washington : Smithsonian Institution. Pp.
77.

Almulac & Co., New York. The Rational Pro-
duction and Treatment of Milk. Pp. 20.

American Naturalist, Philadelphia. Criticisms
of United. States Geological Survey, Paleontological
Department. Pp. 36.

Ashmead, William H. New Ichneumonidae in
United States National Museum. Washington: Gov-
ernment Printing-Office. Pp. 64.

Blackman. Frank W. Spanish Colonization in the
Southwest. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University.
Pp. 79. 50 cents.

Bloxam, Charles Loudon. Chemistry, Inorganic
and Organic, with Experiments. Philadelphia : P.
Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 799.

Bodine, J. M., M. D., University of Louisville
Medical Department. The Four Commencements.
Pp. 19.

Central Park Menagerie, New York. Report for
1889. Pp. 42.

Chamherlin, T. C, Madison, Wis. The Coming
of Age of State Universities. Pp. 12.

Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
Bulletin No. 102. Fungicides. By Roland Thaxter.
Pp. 7.— Annual Report for 1889. Pp. 280.

280

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Crooker, J. EL, Madison, Wis. The Public
School and the Catholics. Pp. 16.

Cox. Charles F. Protoplasm and the Cell Doc-
trine. Now York Microscopical Society. Pp. 24.

Daniels. William W., St. Louis, Mo. Daniels's
Short Haul. Pp. 82. 25 cents.

Davis, Eben II. The Fourth Reading Book.

Philadelphia : J. B. Lippinoott Company. Pp. 448.

:it>.

•les, Robert G., M. D. Evolution of Medical

oe. Boston : James H. West. Pp. 16. 10

c<.nt>.

Elmer, Dr. G. H. Theodor; J. T. Cunningham,
translator. Organic Evolution as a Kesult of the
Inheritance of Acquired Characters. London and
New York : Macmfllan & Co. Pp. 4-35. $3.25.

Ferre, Barr, New York. Primitive Architect-
ure. Pp. 20.

Fitch, J. G. American Training Schools and
Colleges. London and New York : Macmillan &
Co. Pp. 133. 60 cents.

Foster, William E. References to the Constitu-
tion of the United States. New York : Society for
Political Education. Pp. 50. 25 cents.

Gilbert, G. K. History of the Niagara Eiver.
Albany : James B. Lvon. Pp. 24. — The Strength
of the Earth's Crust. Pp.5.

Gould, George M., M. D. A New Medical Dic-
tionary. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co.
Pp. 579. $3.25.

Hale. Horatio. The Oregon Trade Language, or
'•Chinook Jargon." Loudon: Whittaker & Co.
Pp.63.

Harland, Marion, Editor. The Home-Maker.
Monthly. Yol. IV, No. 1. New York : Home-
Maker Company. Pp. 88. 20 cents ; $2 a year.

Iowa Academy of Sciences. Proceedings for
1887, 1888, 1889. E. E. Call, Secretary, Des
Moines. Pp. 101.

Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station, Ames.
Bulletin No. S, with Annual Report. Pp. 48.

Irelan, William, Jr. Ninth Annual Report of
the State Mineralogist of California. Pp. 352.

Jordan. David Starr. Report on Fishes in Vir-
ginia. North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana,
Washington : Government Printing-Office. Pp. 173.

Jordan. David Starr, and Evermann, B. W.
Yellow-finned Trout of Twin Lakes, Colorado.
Pp.2.

Kimbnll, Arthur L. Physical Properties of
Gases. Boston and Ne-^ York : Houghton, Mif-
flin & Co. Pp.233. $1.25.

Kunz, George F. Gems and Precious Stones of
America. Illustrated. New York : Scientific Pub-
lishing Company. Pp. 836. $10.

Lee, Arthur Bolles. The Microtomist's Vade
Mecum. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son, & Co.
Pp. 413.

Lewis. T. H.. St Paul. Minn. Mounds of the
Mississippi Basin. Pp. 6.— Sculptured Rock at
Trempealeau, Wis. Pp. 3, with Plate.

Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station. Sec-
ond Annual Report, 1889. Annapolis. Pp. 163.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston.
Annual Catalogue, 18S9-1S90. Pp. 207.

Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station,
Amherst. Seventh Annual Report. Pp. 333.

Mearns, Edgar A., United States Army. New
Mammals of Arizona. Pp. 32.— Rirdsof Fort Kla-
math, Oregon. Pp. 12.— Avifauna of Portions of
Arizona. Pp. 12.— A Rare Squirrel, new in Arizona.
Pp. It'.— Birds of the Hudson Highlands. Addendum
to List. P. 1.— Reviews of Dr. Mearns's Collections
by N. L. Britton and H. H. Rusby. Pp. 20

Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station.
Vegetables. By L. R. Taft. Pp. 43.- Insecticides.
By A. J. Cooke. Pp. 13.

Minnesota, Public Health in. March, 1890.
Pp 8.

Montgomery, D. H. Heroic Ballads. Boston :
Ginn & Co. Pp. 319. 50 cents.

Mooney, James, Washington. Cherokee Theory
and Practice of Medicine. Pp. 60.— Cherokee Bail
Play. Pp. 28, with Plate.

Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station. Bul-
letin No. 13. The Sugar-Beet. By H. H. Nichol-
son and Rachel Lloyd. Pp. 81, with Map.

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, Colum-
bus. Bulletins on Potatoes and Commercial Ferti-
lizers. Pp. 15 and 73.

Pennsylvania, University of. The Study of
Politics and Business. Pp. 11.

Poteat, W. L., Wake Forest College, N. C. A
Tube-Building Spider. Pp. 17.

Sheldon, Eufus. The Evolution of Law. Bos-
ton : J. H. West. Pp. 20. 10 cents.

Smith, John B. Noctuidse of Temperate North
America. Washington: Government Printing-Of-
fice. Pp. 42.

Sterrett. J. MacBride, D D. Studies in Hegel's
Philosophy of Religion. New York : D. Appleton
&Co. Pp. 34S. $2.

Swedenborg, Emanuel. The Divine Love and
Wisdom. New York : American Swedenborg
Printing and Publishing Society. Pp. 375.

Taylor. John A. The Evolution of the State.
Boston : James H. West. Pp. 20. 10 ceuts.

Townsend. Smith, M. D. Report of the Health
Officer of the District of Columbia. Washington:
Government Printing-Office. Pp. 190, with Charts.

Truth -Seeker Company, New York. Free-
Thought. Pp. 82. 25 cents.

Virginia. University of. Publications of the Lean-
der McCormick Observatory. Vol. L, Part 1. Dou-
ble Stars, 1885-1836. Pp. 52.

Van Scheffen, J. V. Ekkehard : A Tale of the
Tenth Century. New York : W. S. Gottsberger &
Co. 2 vols. Pp. 305 and 333.

Ward, R. Halsted. Plant Organization. Pp. 31,
with Blanks. S5 cents.

Washburn College Laboratory of Natural His-
tory, Bulletin. Pp. 12.

Whiting, Harold. Experiments in Physical
Measurement. Cambridge, Mass. : John Wilson &
Son. Pp. 278.

Wiley, John, & Sons. Scientific and Industrial
Catalogues 7 and 8. Mathematics, Astronomy, etc.
Pp. 60. — Assaying, Metallurgy, etc. Pp. 65.

Willard, Francis E. Glimpses of Fifty Years.
Chicago : H. J. Smith & Co. Pp. 700.

Wolff, Alfred R., C. E., New York. The Ven-
tilation of Buildings. Pp. 32. 25 cents.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

EYOlution of the Fish-Hook. — "The

Evolution of the Fishing-Hook" has been
made the subject of a study by Mr. Edward
Lovett, who discerns the first implement of
the kind in the flint " gorges," and some of
the flints, which are called " knives," of the
paleolithic "finds." They were fastened,
perhaps, to a line of twisted vegetable fiber,
or to a thong of one of the whip-like marine
algae, by being suspended around the middle.
When baited, the " hook " would stand up
and down. Swallowed by the fish and jerked
up, it would be brought at right angles to
the line and stand across the throat of the

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

281

fish, so as to bring it along. Another form
was a bow, sharpened at both ends and tied
around the middle ; or a disk of haliotis-
shell, which is still used, in connection with
a hook, as a trolling bait for jack or pike.
Some very early hooks appear to have been
provided with some kind of a barb. Of the
bone hooks of the Eskimos, one is mentioned
that was carved to resemble a fish ; another
had an iron nail for a point ; and another
example had the shaft of bone, the point of
iron, and a polished stone sinker, showing a
combination of the Stone, Bone, and Iron
ages in one specimen. The Fijians use a
barbless hook of mother-of-pearl for trail-
ing over the stern of a canoe, the glitter of
which attracts the fish. Some hooks from
the Ellis Islands are made of the iron wire
in which European packing-cases are bound,
which is bent into a curve, the end sharp-
ened to a point, and turned inward and
downward, and is lashed in such a way that
the strain on the hook has a tendency to
keep the curve in proper adjustment. One
hook is made of a forked limb. In Europe,
not many hooks are found anterior to the
Iron age. Among the bronze hooks from
the lake-dwellings of Switzerland is one very
closely resembling the hooks of our own time.
An extraordinary specimen is formed of the
upper mandible of an eagle, notched down
to the base. Hooks in the British Islands
have undergone but little change, except in
finish and quality, since the dawn of the
Iron period. Looking upon the subject as a
whole, we find a gradual development from
the rudest form of stone, through shell,
wood, bone, copper, and iron, down to the
beautifully tempered fine steel salmon-hook
of the present day ; and we also have exam-
ples in which these stages of progression
overlap one another, as shown by hooks of
compound manufacture, like those of shell
and bone, wood and bone, bone and iron,
and even stone, bone, and iron together.

Cloud-bursts. — Many recent disastrous
floods have owed their severity to a sudden
down-pour of water occurring when the
streams of the surrounding country were
already filled by rain which had fallen pre-
viously. Such a down-pour is called a cloud-
burst. As explained by Prof. Ferrel, in his
book on The Winds, great quantities of rain

and hail sometimes collect at a considerable
height in the vortex of a tornado, being
held up by the strong upward current of
air.* When the weight of the accumulated
mass has become great enough to over-
come the force of the ascending current, the
rain or hail pours down at one or more
points. The whole system may also be-
come weak and break up from some other
cause, when the same result follows. Thus,
if a tornado heavily charged with rain, in
moving over the country, strikes a mountain-
side, its whirling motion is checked and the
upward current weakened, when a cloud-
burst results. This is why cloud-bursts oc-
cur oftenest on mountain-sides. It is not to
be supposed that the accumulation of water
would be evenly distributed over all parts of
the ascending current, but it would collect
at several points ; hence, when it becomes
able to force its way down, it descends not
in drops, but in streams which often make
great holes in the ground. On a steep
mountain-side, if the stream continues for a
short time only, it may give rise to a land-
slide, or may wash out a great ravine, through
which the water rushes down to the valley
below, carrying rocks and trees along with it.

Treatment of Lightning-Shock. — A re-
port of a curious case of lightning-shock,
with recovery, has been published by Dr. J.
B. Paige, of Montreal, with remarks by Drs.
Frank Buller and T. Wesley Mills. The sub-
ject, a young married woman, was struck by
a flash, the intensity of which was shown by
its effects on metallic objects to be very
great. It passed from a bird-cage, hanging
near her, to her head above the left eye,
thence along the ear to the central line of
the thorax, along the stocking suspender to
the top of the stocking, leaving marks on
both legs. Thence no trace of the current
was detected till the foot was reached, whence
it passed, leaving large rents in the stocking
and slipper, but no marks on the skin. The
force of the shock was enough to throw the
woman from the chair on which she was sit-
ting, upon and across another some two or
three feet distant. She was found complete-
ly unconscious, motionless, with muscles re-
laxed, left eye closed, right one open, face
purple, pulse imperceptible, and neither
heart-sounds nor respiratory murmur audi-

282

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ble. Her clothes were loosened and artificial
respiration was begun, and the first sign of
life appeared about three minutes afterward.
Breathing was greatly impeded, when respira-
tion was first resumed, by accumulations of
saliva, whieh were removed. Consciousness
began to return and the muscles of the arm
to regain strength in between half and three
quarters of an hour. Sight was restored to
the right eye, but it could not be moved.
Though the subject could not speak, the pa-
ralysis passed away slowly, so that in about
two weeks solid food could be swallowed.
Twelve or fourteen hours after the accident,
intense pain set in about the head, neck,
arms, and chest, which did not pass away
from the head for seven days, and occurred
occasionally after that. At the end of four
weeks the patient was able to return to her
home. In six months complete recovery had
taken place, except in the left eye. To the
question whether the patient could have re-
covered without the assistance rendered just
after the accident, Prof. Mills replies that
" considering that respiration was suspended,
that the circulation, even with artificial res-
piration, was so feeble that the temperature
fell, that consciousness did not return for so
long, it does not seem reasonable to believe
in the possibility of spontaneous recovery.
But the case does seem to teach, in the
clearest way, the importance of using such
means as those employed in this instance
promptly and perseveringly."

Natural Guides to Land Values.— The

chief of the Agricultural College at Down-
ton, England, has given in a recently pub-
lished article some of the indications by
which the fertility of soils may be judged.
The following colors indicate barrenness in
soils: 1. Black, as being in most cases
caused by an excess of vegetable matter or
peat. 2. White, as indicating a thin, chalky
soil, or the presence of white sand close to
the surface. 3. Yellow, whether dark or
light. 4. Light gray. 5. Blue. 6. A pie-
bald or variegated color. A good soil
ought to be from twelve to eighteen inches
deep. Alluvial soils owe their fertility in a
great measure to their depth. Tenacity
docs much to determine the productive
power of soil. Tenacity is seen in the
clearly cut furrow, and the impression left

by the foot when the soil is moist. In
tenacious soil the footprint is clear and
sharp at the edges, and every nail-mark
shows ; whereas, in loamy soil the tread is
indistinct and the edges of the footprint
crumble away. In dry weather, a cracked
surface and hard yellow clods are the marks
of a stiff soil. The skillful judge of land will
not rely too much upon the physical charac-
ter of the soil alone. Land always covers
itself with herbage of some sort, from the
quality and quantity of which the best pos-
sible indication of the soil's yielding power
may be obtained. Plenty of timber is a
favorable augury. "Who can not recall some
beautiful valley where the well-grown trees
seem almost to meet their branches over
green meadows and patches of grain and
other crops ? On the other hand, inclement
and thin soils carry a stunted and forlorn
timbering. Turning to the sort of tree, we
may mention large, spreading oaks as signs
of good land. The elm is found to perfec-
tion on village greens and near to home-
steads where the ground has become, or
always was, rich, and in other favored situ-
ations. The mulberry and the walnut, the
apple and the quince, are never found vig-
orous on other than good land ; and the ash,
the sycamore, and the chestnut are also in-
dications of fertility. Certain other trees
indicate the reverse. We see plantations of
larch on barren uplands and soils difficult to
put to other uses. Scotch fir, spruce, yew,
and other cone-bearing trees are often found
on poor land. Beeches thrive on the thin-
nest of limestone, and the birch will grow
in the most unpromising places. Coming
down to the plants, none is a more unfailing
guide to fertility than chick weed. Nettles
never grow on bad land, and dandelions and
buttercups are not seen on poor pastures.
Thistles also show a good soil. The state
of growing crops and the appearance of
stubbles should also be noted, although such
indications may show rather the character of
the farming. Certain wild grasses show
barrenness, while grass-land which seems
covered with dead, unkempt stuff, like badly
made hay, is always barren.

Gardening Classes of the Missouri Bo-
tanical Garden.— The Trustees of the Mis-
souri Botanical Garden, carrying on the in-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

283

tentions of Mr. Shaw, its founder, have
prepared a plan of garden scholarships,
providing for the instruction of a limited
number of pupils in practical horticulture.
The classes are intended to consist of six
pupils, who will be taught for not more
than six years each. They will be regarded
as apprentices in the Botanical Garden, and
required to work in it under the direction
of the head gardener, performing the duties
of garden hands, and being advanced gradu-
ally from simpler to more responsible tasks.
After the first year their working hours will
be reduced to five a day, that they may de-
vote the rest of the time to study, in which
they will enjoy free the privileges of the
tuition of the School of Botany at Washing-
ton University. For their services in the
garden they will be paid from two hundred
to three hundred dollars a year, with con-
veniently situated lodgings. Applicants for
scholarships will be examined in the upper
grammar-school branches ; and, in case of
an excess of them, will be subjected to com-
petitive examination, in which other branches
will be brought in. The studies will be, for the
first year, in practical duties ; for the second
year, vegetable and flower gardening, small-
fruit culture, and orchard culture; for the
third year, readings in forestry, elementary
botany, landscape gardening, and the rudi-
ments of surveying and draining; for the
fourth year, botany of weeds, garden vege-
tables, and fruits ; for the fifth year, vege-
table physiology, economic entomology, and
fungi ; for the sixth year, botany of garden
and greenhouse plants, ferns, and trees in
their winter condition, with the theoretical
part of some branch of special gardening.
Pupils will also be trained in legal forms
and in keeping accounts. Two of the six
scholarships are at the disposal of local hor-
ticultural societies, provided their candidates
pass the examinations.

Museum of the University of Pennsyl-
vania.— The Archaeological Museum of the
University of Pennsylvania, begun in Decem-
ber, 1889, by the purchase of a small collec-
tion of stone implements, has grown in the
few months since, till it includes ten thousand
objects from all the United States, Mexico,
Central America, and parts of South America.
It is intended to make it representative of

the early civilization of the Americas, and
to exhibit as far as possible the implements
used by the Indians, in their warfare, agri-
culture, and domestic life, before the advent
of Columbus. It is intended hereafter to
build up the collection mainly by explora-
tions, and to this end all parts of the coun-
try will be thoroughly searched. In addi-
tion to the American specimens, the museum
contains a fine collection of flints, bronze
implements, and pottery from Europe, and
objects from Asia, Africa, and the South
Sea islands. Preparations are making by
Prof. Rothrock for the establishment in the
university of a Museum of Economic Bot-
any, to consist of all kinds of woods, vege-
table fibers, grains, and drugs, arranged so
as to illustrate the processes of manufacture
from the raw product, and the various uses
to which each material may be put. It is
expected to make this department of practi-
cal use to manufacturers and wood-workers,
who may be guided by its aid to the selec-
tion of suitable material, and learn where it
can be got.

Coffin-IVails. — Baring-Gould has contrib-
uted to The Gentleman's Magazine an arti-
cle full of curious lore on this sepulchral
subject. He says that the studding of a cof-
fin with nails — which has evidently not ceased
to be common in England — is a curious sur-
vival. The nails are no longer of any use,
for the lid is fastened down with screws, but
even when stone coffins were used — sar-
cophagi— the nails were not omitted. Iron
was from the first regarded with supersti-
tious reverence. In Egypt iron was the
symbol of victory over death — of the power
of resurrection given to man. The Romans
also had a reverence for iron, and attributed
to it mysterious powers. By drawing a cir-
cle on the ground or in the air, with an iron
point, thrice round a person, they believed
all noxious influences were banished. An iron
spike applied lightly to a wounded part would
relieve its pain. Rust for curative and pro-
tective purposes might be had from old
nails, from which it must be removed with
moistened iron. The nail was specially used
because it was a symbol of fate. On the
Ides of September every year the highest in
authority in Rome drove a nail into the wall
of the Temple of Jupiter. That day was the

284

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

beginning of the Roman year, and the driv-
ing of the nail was thought to bring with it
prosperity fur the new year. Livy tells us
i , it when the gods seemed hostile and un-
moved by the distresses of the nation, the dic-
tator broke the spell of evil by driving in a
nail. Once a nail driven in had banished a
plague ; then a nail had healed discord,
riiny says that, if a nail be driven into the
pillow on which a man suffering from epilep-
sy has laid his head, it will heal him. In all
these notices we see iron used as destroying
the power of evil, breaking the force of dis-
aster, banishing disease, expelling death.
Consequently, nails were put in urns or fu-
nereal cists to keep away from them every
evil power, demons, witches, and as a pledge
of final restoration. The iron horseshoe
nailed to a door owes its power to break the
force of witchcraft not only to its being a
symbol of Odin's horse, but also to the met-
al of which it is composed. Shears were fre-
quently buried with bodies down till late in
the middle aires. It is said that even within

O

the memory of man they have been buried
in coffins with corpses in Swabia. Some-
times as many as five were laid in the coffin
with one corpse. The idea was the same as
with nails — the metal was the important mat-
ter, rather than the form it took. The steel
or iron was a preservative to the corpse, a
protection and an assurance of resurrection.
For the same reason that nails and shears
were buried with the dead, swords were laid
with them, and not necessarily because they
would need them in the next world. Even
Charlemagne was buried with his sword. The
Icelandic sagas are full of stories of cairns
broken into by heroes to rob the dead of
their swords. Already in historic times the
significance of the sword buried with the
dead was lost ; and in the Saga of Olaf the
Saint a ghost actually invites a Norseman to
break into his tomb and relieve him of his
sword and other valuables.

Habits of the Manatee. — The London
Zoological Society has acquired a living spe-
cimen of the manatee, one of the only two
kinds of " herbivorous cetaceans " now ex-
isting. Concerning the habits of these ani-
mals, Miss Agnes Crane has written, from
observations of a pair several years ago in
the Brighton Aquarium, that lettuce and

endives, of which they could eat thirty
pounds a day, formed their favorite food.
The male would devour at a pinch leaves of
the cabbage, turnip, and carrot. Both rel-
ished those of the dandelion and sow-thistle.
Sometimes the animals would swim about
and pursue the leaves floating on the water ;
at other times the plants were seized in their
mouths, drawn down, and eaten under the
water, while the hand-like fore-fins were em-
ployed in separating the leaves. The food
was invariably swallowed below the surface.
They are not at all at ease when out of the
water, but seem oppressed by their bulk.
The male was observed to make a few at-
tempts at terrestrial progress by turning
himself round and moving a few inches when
the tank was empty. With jaws and tail-
fin pressed closely to the ground, the body
of the animal became arched, and was moved
by a violent lateral effort, aided and slightly
supported by the fore paddles, which were
stretched out in a line with the mouth.
But the effect of these very labored efforts
was not commensurate with their violence ;
and their relation to active locomotion might
be compared to the state of a man lying
prone, with fettered feet and elbows tied to
his side.

Odd Dishes of the Olden Time. — The

cook-books of a hundred or more years ago
afford reading well adapted to excite curi-
osity of appetite, if we may speak in that
way. Their lists of pickles and flavors em-
braced a great many articles that we do not
think now of using in that way. Jams
were made of vegetables ; parsnips, raspber-
ries, etc., were made into cakes ; and beets,
potatoes, and oranges into biscuits. For
making violet cakes the directions were to
" take the finest violets you can get, pick off
the leaves, beat the violets fine in a mortar
with the juice of a lemon, beat and sift
twice their weight of double-refined sugar,
put your sugar and violets into a silver
saucepan or tankard, set it over a slow fire,
keep stirring it gently until all your sugar is
dissolved ; if you let it boil it will discolor
your violets ; drop them in china plates ;
when you take them off put them in a box,
with paper between every layer." Wines
were made of every fruit ; of such flowers
and vegetables as cowslips and parsnips ;

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

285

from flowers and berries of elder ; from syc-
amore, walnut, blackberry, and balm. To
make shrub, to one gallon of milk flavored
with lemons and Seville oranges were added
two quarts of red wine, two gallons of rum,
and one gallon of brandy. The books give
directions how to spin gold and silver webs
for dessert, to spin birds' nests, to make a
Chinese temple or obelisk, a fish-pond with
silver and gold fishes, a hen's nest with
strips of lemon for straw, and eggs filled
with flummery, and a hen and chickens in
jelly. To make a "desert island," "take a
lump of paste and form it into a rock three
inches broad at the top, set in the middle of
a deep china dish, and set a cast figure on
it with a crown on its head and a knot of
sugar-candy at its feet, etc. ... If this dish
is for a wedding supper, put two figures in-
stead of one." There are also recipes for
a " rocky island," a " floating island," with
sheep and swans, " or you may put in snakes
or any wild animals of the same sort," " Sol-
omon's temple in flummery," " moonshine,"
and " moon and stars in jelly " — a half-moon
with seven stars shining out of flummery
colored with cochineal and chocolate to imi-
tate the color of the sky. Among solid
dishes the books tell how to make porcupine
of a breast of veal, to surprise a shoulder of
mutton or any other joint, to dress a joint to
look like a hen and chickens, to bombard
veal, to transmogrify pigeons, to Florent'ne
a hare, make a Solomon Gundy, make an
artificial turtle, and barbecue a pig.

Trees and Malaria. — According to Prof.
Corrado Tommassi Crudelli, some of the
prevalent notions respecting relations of for-
ests and malaria are mistaken ones. The
relations are not direct. Forests do not
contribute to the propagation of malaria un-
less they are growing upon a malarious soil ;
and they can not make a soil malarious
which would not be malarious without them.
But they favor the development of malaria,
when it is already there, by intercepting the
solar rays, and thus checking evaporation
and retaining moisture in summer. When
the obstacle to the direct action of the solar
rays is removed from infected land, the sum-
mer drying lessens the malarious generation,
and in some favorable circumstances may
even arrest it. The idea prevails in Rome

that forests act as a screen to prevent mala-
ria from crossing them by causing it to be
filtered out in their foliage, and the estab-
lishment of forests at certain places is ad-
vised for that purpose. But it has been
proved that the destruction of woods and
forests in such situations has not led to an
increase of malaria, but frequently to its
mitigation by promoting better drainage and
improved cultivation. The production of fe-
vers in the Agro Romano and in Rome is
the result of a complexity of meteorological
and physiological conditions. An abundant
development of malaria is verified only when
the malarious soil is damp and warm. The
malarious charge of the atmosphere may
vary greatly according to the different pro-
portion of the two indispensable factors of
malaria — heat and moisture. If both are at
their maximum, so is the malaria, especially
when the sky is clear. When the malarious
charge of the atmosphere has been great for
many days in succession, and the bodies of
the inhabitants have become more or less
impregnated with the malarious germs, a
fall of temperature may be very injurious,
by causing an arrest of the germs within
the organism and preventing their rapid
elimination by the secretions. Hence it is
that northern winds exercise an unfavorable
influence during the fever seasons.

Soda Salts in Arizona. — The deposits of
sulphate of soda of the valley of the Verde
River, Arizona, have long been known and
extensively quarried by the rancheros of the
region to obtain a substitute for salt for cat-
tle and horses. They have recently been
visited by William P. Blake, who found the
deposits of thenardite and allied minerals
associated with it to cover several acres in
extent, and reach a thickness of fifty or sixty
feet or more. They appear as a series of
rounded hills, with sides covered with a
snow-white efflorescence and a greenish-col-
ored and yellow clay at the bottom and top,
partially covering the saline beds. The bulk
of the deposits consists of thenardite, in a
coarsely crystalline mass, so compact and
firm that it has to be got out by drilling and
blasting. The white efflorescence on the
hills is composed of the hydrous sulphate of
soda {mirabilite), which occurs in close as-
sociation with the thenardite. Other asso-

286

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ciatdl minerals are rock-salt in beautifully
transparent masses, sparingly disseminated ;
the anhydrous sulphate of lime and soda
(glauh, rib | ; and " pseudomorphs," in which-
the glauberite having disappeared, its place
is supplied by amorphous carbonate of lime
exactly filling the matrices of its crystals.

Iloly Things and Toys from Torres
Strait. — Prof. A. C. Haddon has fitted up
in the British Museum a collection of objects
from Torres Strait, which illustrates the
customs and superstitions of the people of
that still savage quarter. Among the ob-
jects are some forty native skulls, some of
which had been strung in bunches as trophy
decorations of the hut of a warrior, while
others had been used for ceremonies and
divination. The great eccentric masks em-
ployed in semi-religious and secular dances
are represented by specimens which the col-
lector believes to be the last of their kind.
One of them, a crocodile mask, had such
striking powers that the native from whom
it was obtained refused to put it on for fear
that death would be the consequence, be-
cause it was not the season of the year when
it might be legitimately worn. Of the
charms, those in stone and wood shaped like
dugongs are very interesting. There are
charms to protect against poisoning, love-
charms, rain-making charms, charms to make
the tobacco-plant grow ; female figures, some
in coral to keep the fire in when the house-
wife is absent ; and taboo figures and signs
of various kinds. The musical instruments
include some ingenious drums, "bull-roar-
ers," and a new kind of simple construction.
Of toys there are tops of considerable weight,
of which the Papuan spins several on his
toes at the same time, and arrangements of
string used as a sort of cat's cradle. The
implements and articles of clothing and those
for personal adornment are varied. An or-
nament worn by a betrothed girl appears
to be derived from two fish-hooks placed
back to back. Several specimens grimly
illustrate the old savage customs. A hard-
wood weapon is marked with eleven notches,
to indicate as many heads which the owner
has cut off. A double cassowary head-dress
that belonged to a late king of the island
Tud was handed over by his son to Prof.
Haddon, together with the boar-tusks which

he wore in his mouth on war expeditions, on
the understanding that they were to go to
the British Museum, where "plenty men"
wanted to see them. When drawings or
photographs of some of the natives were be-
ing taken they would ask, " Queen Victoria,
he see picture along we fellow ? " — that is,
Will Queen Victoria see our picture ? — to
which the professor replied in the same
strain, " S'pose he want> he see ; I no savee.
Plenty men along England want to savee
about you fellow." Some of these photo-
graphs may now be seen in this collection,
recording features and decorations which,
in a few years, will have died out.

NOTES.

Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, of Philadelphia,
recently received from a woman-patient the
singular present of a cord of white-oak wood,
chopped down and sawed up by her own
hands. He had recommended to her an act-
ive, outdoor life in the woods for nervous
invalidism. She had followed his directions,
with results of which the cord of sawed
wood was one of the evidences.

Dr. E. N. Sneath, lecturer on the His-
tory of Philosophy at Yale, has been inspir-
ing the preparation of a series of small vol-
umes of selections from the leading philoso-
phers from Descartes down, so arranged as
to present an outline of their systems. Each
volume will contain a biographical sketch of
the author, a statement of the historical po-
sition of the system, and a bibliography.
Those so far arranged for are Descartes, by
Prof. Ladd, of Yale ; Spinoza, by Prof. Fuller-
ton, of the University of Pennsylvania ;
Locke, by Prof. Russell, of Williams ; Berke-
ley, by ex-President Porter, of Yale ; Hume,
by Dr. Sneath, of Yale ; and Hegel, by Prof.
Royce, of Harvard. Kant, Comte, and Spen-
cer will certainly be added to the series, and
others if encouragement is received. The
publishers will be Henry Holt & Co.

The American Academy of Political and
Social Science, of which Prof. Edmund J.
James is president, was founded in December,
1 889, for promoting the study of the polit-
ical and social sciences, particularly of those
which are omitted from the programmes
of other societies, or which do not at present
receive the attention they deserve. Among
them are sociology, comparative constitu-
tional and administrative law, philosophy of
the state, and portions of the field of politics.
It will attend to the publication of material
that will be of use to students which does
not now reach the public in any systematic
way. The plan of the academy includes
meetings for the presentation of papers and

NOTES.

287

communications, the establishment of a li-
brary, and the dissemination of knowledge
through publications and by other means.

The Messrs. Merriam, publishers of Web-
ster's Dictionary, issue a circular calling at-
tention to the misleading way in which a
cheap reprint of an old edition of Webster's
Unabridged Dictionary is being advertised.
It is the edition of 1847, the copyright of
which has expired by the lapse of forty-two
Tears. It lacks all the words that have been
added to the language since 184*7, and these,
especially in the department of science, have
been many ; it contains numerous etymolo-
gies that have been proved erroneous by the
results of later research ; it lacks the tables
of biographical, geographical, and other in-
formation, which are appended to recent edi-
tions of Webster, and it has no illustrations
in the body of the volume. The reprint is
produced by some method of photogravure,
giving blurred letters, very trying to the eyes,
and the paper and binding are so flimsy that
the book must fall to pieces with very little
use. It is not the current edition of Web-
ster's Unabridged Dictionary, as its publish-
ers wish the public to believe — it is not even
the "original" edition, as it explicitly claims
to be, for that was published in 1828.

The most interesting feature of Dr. R-
W. Shufeldt's report to the American Or-
nithologists' Union on Progress in Avian
Anatomy for the Years 1888-1889, is the
announcement that a Handbook to the
Muscles of Birds has been prepared by the
author, and is in the press of Macmillan & Co.
It is based on studies of the raven. Several
monographs, mostly technical, by Dr. Shu-
feldt and other authors, American and for-
eign, are mentioned in the report. Among
them is one by Mr. F. A. Lucas, on the Skele-
ton of the Extinct Great Auk.

A clear and forcible article on The Sup-
pression of Consumption, by G. W. Hamble-
ton, is published in Science for April 25th.
Dr. Hambleton deems the most important
step in suppressing this disease to be to re-
duce its production. The means which he
recommends for this end are almost entirely
hygienic, and are based on the theory that
consumption is produced by conditions that
impede the respiratory functions. The chief
of these are compression of the chest, and
the presence of dust in the air inhaled. His
statements are well fortified by cases which
he has treated successfully, including his
own.

The first fossil found in the " Cheyenne
sandstone " of Kansas — which is considered
referable to the Trinity division of Arkansas
and Texas — is described by Mr. F. W. Cragin
as a part of a cycad, similar to those from
the Purbeck Dirt-beds of England, but dif-
fering from them in form and in the size of
the petioles. A leaf of Platanus, found in a

stratum of very fine, soft chalk of supposed
Niobrara Cretaceous age, is described by the
same author as of interest, both on account
of its preservation in a kind of rock in which
land vegetation is rare, and because it con-
tributes evidence that chalk is sometimes
formed very near land, and if so, then pre-
sumably in water of but moderate depth.

The increase of leprosy in British Guiana
is attracting attention. It was introduced
by negroes from Africa, and added to by
immigrants from India in 1842 and 1858,
and from China in 1861 and 1862. One
Indian tribe was infected with it fifty years
ago from the negro colony, but no other
tribe has had it. Mr. J. D. Hilles, of Deme-
rara, who has investigated the subject, is
convinced that the disease is communicable
by marriage or cohabitation, and by inocula-
tion or contact. He has seen cases that un-
doubtedly arose by contagion.

The investigations of Dr. Th. Kocher, of
Berne, on goitre, while they do not clear up
the question of the origin of the disease,
cast a dim light upon it. Comparing the
water of the parts of his canton in which
goitre is common with those parts that are free
from it, the author found considerable quan-
tities of organic or organized material in it.
In certain goitrous parts, particular families
having access to special water-supplies free,
or relatively so, from this organic material
are free from goitre, although breathing the
same air, living on the same soil, engaging
in the same occupations, and eating the same
food with their goitrous neighbors. Hence,
he concludes, the organic factor is the one
that determines the prevalence of goitre.

Mr. Joseph Thomson commends the semi-
civilized region forming the central area of
the Niger basin as one of the most promis-
ing fields for commerce in all tropical Africa.
It is densely populated, and is divided into
powerful and, for Africa, well-governed em-
pires, in which life and property are fairly
secure. The people have made some ad-
vance in civilization, and are famed for the
excellence of their manufactures. Inland
trade is organized, an efficient transport
service exists, labor is abundant, the Niger
presents an uninterrupted water-way to the
very heart of the region, and the country is
healthy, for Africa.

A large stump of Syringodendron alter-
nans, discovered some time ago standing in
the coal mines of St. Etienne, France, is
about ten feet high, three feet in diameter
at the starting-point of the roots, and twenty
inches in diameter at the top. The roots re-
semble the fossil Siigmaria. The trunk has
the cicatrices and flutings of the Sigillaria,
and the leaves seem to have been linear. In
a prostrate tree (upper part) of the same
species a few feet from this one, the leaf-
scars were more clearly marked, but smaller.

288

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Dr. E. Pagf.t Thurston believes that
while it is theoretically right to omit farina-
ceous food in feeding infants that have to be
brought up by hand, a little is needed when
cow's milk is used, to retard curdling. These'
solids, as well as the preparations of barley,
Isinglass, and linseed, act mechanically by
adding something to thicken the milk, and
entangle the curds as they are formed. In
the shape of bread-crust, Brighton biscuit, or
other " infant's foods," they may be added in
very small quantities, so that the milk can
still be sucked through the tube of a feed-
ing-bottle.

Cases of lead-poisoning among the Jac-
quard weavers in a Swiss factory were traced
by F. Schiiler to the dust from leaden weights
which are used by the weavers to carry the
thread of their warp. After the varnish has
been rubbed off from the weights, the lead
begins to wear away, and falls in fine parti-
cles among the dust on the floor. In some,
cases this dust is as much as 56*86 per cent
lead, and even when the utmost care was
taken, nine or ten per cent of lead was
found in it.

According to Mr. Ilansen-Blansted, the
beech is overcoming all other trees in the
struggle for existence in the Danish forests.
It is driving out the birch, except in marshy
places ; it is taking the place of the firs ; and
there are signs that it is gradually gaining
the advantage over the oaks.

OBITUARY NOTES.

Sir Robert Kane, a distinguished Irish
chemist and author, died in Dublin, Febru-
ary 16th. He was born in Dublin in Sep-
tember, 1810. His father was the proprietor
of sulphuric-acid and alkali works near the
city, and he developed a taste for chemical
knowledge very early in life, publishing his
first paper— On the' Existence of Chlorine
in the Native Peroxide of Manganese— in
1828. This was followed by other contribu-
tions. He was appointed Professor of Nat-
ural Philosophy to the Dublin Society in
1834, and devoted himself to original re-
search in chemistry. He was afterward
head of the Museum of Irish Industry, and
first President of Queen's College, Cork. He
was author of a large and important work
on the Industrial Resources of Ireland. He
received many honors, in reco£mition of his
scientific labors, from the Government and
from learned societies.

M. Edmond Hebert, an eminent French
geologist, died April 4th, in the seventy-
eighth year of his age. He was made Pro-
fessor of Geology at the Sorbonne in 1857,
and in the same year was chosen to succeed
Charles Sainte-Claire Deville in the Section
of Mineralogy in the Academy of Sciences.
He was author of many important geological

memoirs. His principal works were on the
Oscillations of the Crust of the Earth, and
the Ancient Seas and their Shores in the
Paris Basin. He was an exponent of the
doctrine of the adequacy of existing causes
to explain geological phenomena.

Prof, von Quenstedt, of Tubingen, one
of the most famous of German paleontolo-
gists, and a mineralogist, too, died December
21st. He was author of works on the Jura,
and one on petrifactions or fossils. He
was distinguished for his profound knowl-
edge of the Lias of Wiirtemberg and its
fossils.

Dr. Paul Niemeyer, Sanitarv Counselor,
and author of works relating to hygiene,
died in Berlin, on the 25th of February, in
the fifty-sixth year of his age. Several of
his books, including his Doctrine of Health,
Advice to Mothers, and Sunday Rest, had
wide circulation, and were translated into
other languages. He assisted Miss Nightin-
gale in the revision of her Notes on Nursing.

M. Charles M. V. Montigny, a Belgian
astronomer and meteorologist, died near
Brussels, March 16th, aged about seventy
years. He was honorary professor in the
Royal Athenaeum of Brussels, and a member
of the Belgian Academy of Science ; and
had been connected with the observatory as
a correspondent since 1879. His most im-
portant researches were on the scintillation
of the stars, for which he invented an instru-
ment called the scintillometer, which he ob-
served industriously for several years, and
which led him to new views concerning re-
fraction ; the relation of the height of the
barometrical column and the pressure of the
wind ; the velocity of the wind, and its in-
clination. In the last research he is believed
to have been the first who occupied himself
with the subject.

Dr. George Thurber, an eminent bota-
nist and writer on horticultural subjects,
died in Passaic, N. J., April 2d, in the sev-
entieth year of his age. He was born in
Providence, R. I., in 1821. Studying phar-
macy, he became interested in botany. In
1850, in connection with the United States
and Mexico Boundary Survey, he explored
the botany of the country between the Gulf
of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. The re-
sults of this, study were published by Asa
Gray in Plantae Novas Thurberianae. He was
from 1859 to 1863 Professor of Botany and
Horticulture in the Agricultural College of
Michigan. As editor of the American Agri-
culturist, from 1863 till 1885, he made it the
ablest and most influential journal of its
class. He published, in 1859, American
Weeds and Useful Plants — an enlargement
of Darlington's Agricultural Botany; con-
tributed on botanical subjects to Appletons'
Cyclopaedia ; and made a thorough, systematic
study of grasses.

MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

JULY, 1890.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE.

IX. THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND PEEHISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY.

By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D., L. H. D.,

EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

WHILE the view of chronology based npon the literal accept-
ance of Scripture texts was thus shaken by researches in
Egypt, another line of observation and thought was slowly devel-
oped, even more fatal to the theological view.

From a very early period there had been dug from the earth,
in various parts of the world, strangely shaped masses of stone,
some rudely chipped, some polished ; in ancient times these were
generally considered as thunderbolts, and known as " thunder-
stones." This idea was carried into the middle ages, and we find
in the eleventh century an emperor of the East sending to the
Emperor Henry IV, of Germany, a " heaven axe " ; and, in the
twelfth century, a Bishop of Rennes asserting the value of thun-
der-stones as a divinely appointed means of securing success in
battle, safety on the sea, security against thunder, and immunity
from unpleasant dreams : even as late as the seventeenth century
a French ambassador brought a stone hatchet, which still exists in
the museum at Nancy, as a present to the Prince-Bishop of Ver-
dun, and claimed for it health-giving virtues.

Yet, as early as the latter part of the sixteenth century, Michael
Mercati tried to prove that the " thunder-stones " were weapons or
implements of early races of men, though from some cause his
book was not published until the following century, when other
thinking men had begun to take up the same idea.

But early in the eighteenth century a fact of great importance
was quietly established : in the year 1715 a large pointed weapon
of black flint was found in contact with the bones of an elephant,

vol. xxxvii. — 22

zgo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in a gravel-bed near Gray's Inn Lane, in London. The world in
general paid no heed to this ; if the attention of theologians was
called to it, they dismissed it summarily with a reference to the
Deluge of Noah ; but the specimen was labeled, the circumstances
regarding it were recorded, and both specimen and record care-
fully preserved.

In 1723 Jussieu addressed the French Academy on The Origin
and Uses of Thunder-stones. He showed that recent travelers
from various parts of the world had brought a nunibei* of weapons
and other implements of stone to France, and that they were es-
sentially similar to what in Europe had been known as " thunder-
stones " : a year later this fact was clinched into the scientific
mind of France by the Jesuit Lafitau, who published a work
showing the similarity between the customs of aborigines then
existing in other lands and those of the early inhabitants of
Europe. So began, in these works of Jussieu and Lafitau, the
science of comparative ethnography.

In 1730 Mahudel presented a paper to the French Academy of
Inscriptions on the so-called " thunder-stones," and also presented
a series of plates which showed that these were stone implements,
which must have been used at an early period in human history.

In 1778 Buffon, in his Epoques de la Nature, intimated his
belief that " thunder- stones" were made by early races of men;
but he did not press this view, and the reason for his reserve was
obvious enough : he had already one quarrel with the theologians
on his hands, which had cost him dear — public retraction and
humiliation ; his declaration, therefore, attracted little notice.

In the year 1800 another fact came into the minds of thinking
men in England. In that year John Frere presented to the Lon-
don Society of Antiquaries sundry flint implements found in the
clay-beds near Hoxne ; that they were of human make was certain,
and, in view of the undisturbed depths in which they were found,
the theory was suggested that the men who made them must have
lived at a very ancient geological epoch ; yet even this discovery
and theory passed like a troublesome dream, and soon seemed to
be forgotten.

About twenty years later Dr. Buckland published a discussion
of the subject, in the light of various discoveries in the drift and
in caves. It received wide attention, but theology was hushed to
silence by his soothing concession that these striking relics of
human handiwork, associated with the remains of various extinct
animals, were proofs of the Deluge of Noah.

In 1823 Boue*, of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, showed to
Cuvier sundry human bones found deep in the alluvial deposits
of the upper Rhine, and suggested that they were of an early geo-
logical period; this Cuvier virtually, if not explicitly, denied:

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 291

great as he was in his own field, he was not a great geologist ; he,
in fact, led geology astray for many years. Moreover, he lived in
a time of reaction ; it was the period of the restored Bonrbons — of
the Yoltairean King Lonis XVIII, governing to please orthodoxy.
Bond's discovery was, therefore, at first opposed, then enveloped
in studied silence.

Cnvier evidently thought, as Voltaire had felt under similar
circumstances, that " among wolves one must howl a little " ; and
his leading disciple, Elie de Beaumont, who succeeded him in the
sway over geological science in France, was even more opposed to
the new view than his great master had been. Bou^s discoveries
were, accordingly, apparently laid to rest forever.*

In 1825 Kent's Cavern, near Torquay, was explored by the
Rev. Mr. McEnery, a Roman Catholic clergyman, who seems to
have been completely overawed by orthodox opinion in England
and elsewhere; for, though he found human bones and imple-
ments mingled with remains of extinct animals, he kept his notes
in manuscript, and they were only brought to light more than
thirty years later by Mr. Vivian.

The coming of Charles X, the last of the French Bourbons, to
the throne, made the orthodox pressure even greater. It was the
culmination of the reactionary period — the time in France when
a clerical committee, sitting at the Tuileries, took such measures
as were necessary to hold in check all science that was not per-
fectly " safe " ; the time in Austria when Kaiser Franz made his
famous declaration to sundry professors, that what he wanted of
them was simply to train obedient subjects, and that those who
did not make this their purpose would be dismissed ; the time in
Germany when Nicholas of Russia and the princelings and min-
isters under his control, from the King of Prussia downward, put
forth all their might in behalf of " scriptural science " ; the time
in Italy when a scientific investigator, arriving at any conclusion
distrusted by the Church, was sure of losing his place and in dan-
ger of losing his liberty ; the time in England when what little
science was taught was held in due submission to Archdeacon
Paley's doctrines and the Thirty-nine Articles ; the time in the
United States when the first thing essential in science was, that it
be adjusted to the ideas of revival preachers.

Yet men devoted to scientific truth labored on ; and in 1828

* For the general history of early views regarding stone implements, see the first chap-
ters in Cartailhac, La France Prehistorique ; also Joly, L'Homme avant les Metaux ; also
Lyell, Lubbock, and Evans. For lightning-stones in China, see citation from a Chinese
encyclopaedia of 1662, in Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 209. On the universality of
this belief on the surviving use of stone implements even into civilized times, and on their
manufacture to-day, see ibid., chapter viii. For the treatment of Boue's discovery, see
especially Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, Paris, 1885, p. 11.

292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Tournal, of Narbonne, discovered in the cavern of Bize specimens
of human industry, with a fragment of a human skeleton, among
bones of extinct animals. In the following year Christol pub-
lished accounts of his excavations in the caverns of Gard ; he had
found in position, and under conditions which forbade the idea of
after-disturbance, human remains mixed with bones of the extinct
hyena of the early Quaternary period. Little general notice was
taken of this, for the reactionary orthodox atmosphere involved
such discoveries in darkness.

But in the French Revolution of 1830 the old politico-theologi-
cal system collapsed : Charles X and his advisers fled for their
lives ; the other continental monarchs got glimpses of new light ;
the priesthood in charge of education were put on their good be-
havior for a time, and a better era began.

Under the constitutional monarchy of the house of Orleans in
France and Belgium less attention was therefore paid by Govern-
ment to the saving of souls ; and we have in rapid succession new
discoveries of remains of human industry, and even of human
skeletons so mingled with bones of extinct animals as to give ad-
ditional proofs that the origin of man was at a period vastly ear-
lier than any which theologians had dreamed of.

A few years later the reactionary clerical influence against
science in this field rallied again. Schmerling in 1833 explored a
multitude of caverns in Belgium, especially at Engis and Engi-
houl, and found human skulls and bones closely associated with
bones of extinct animals, such as the cave bear, hyena, elephant,
and rhinoceros, while mingled with these were evidences of hu-
man workmanship in the shape of chipped flint implements ; dis-
coveries of a similar sort were made by De Serres in France and
Lund in Brazil ; but, at least as far as continental Europe was
concerned, these discoveries were received with much coolness,
both by Catholic leaders of opinion in France and Belgium, and
by Protestant leaders in England and Holland. Schmerling him-
self appears to have been overawed, and gave forth a sort of apol-
ogetic theory, half scientific, half theologic, vainly hoping to sat-
isfy the clerical side.

Nor was it much better in England. Sir Charles Lyell, so
devoted a servant of prehistoric research thirty years later, was
still holding out against it on the scientific side ; and, as to the
theological side, it was the period when that great churchman,
Dean Cockburn, was insulting geologists from the pulpit of York
Minster, and the Rev. Mellor Brown denouncing geology as " a
black art," " a forbidden province " ; and when in America Prof.
Moses Stuart and others like him were belittling the work of
Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock.

In 1840 Godwin Austin presented to the Royal Geological So-

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 293

ciety an account of his discoveries in Kent's Cavern near Torquay,
and especially of human bones and implements mingled with,
bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, cave bear, hyena, and other
extinct animals ; yet this memoir, like that of McEnery fifteen
years before, found an atmosphere so unfavorable that it was not
published.

But just at the middle of the nineteenth century came the be-
ginning of a new epoch in science — an epoch when all these earlier
discoveries were to be interpreted by means of investigations in
a different field : for, in 1847, a man previously unknown to the
world at large, Boucher de Perthes, published at Paris the first
volume of his work on Celtic and Antediluvian Antiquities, and
in this he showed engravings of typical flint implements and weap-
ons, of which he had discovered thousands upon thousands in the
high drift beds near Abbeville in northern France.

The significance of this discovery was great indeed — far greater
than Boucher himself at first supposed. The very title of his
book showed that he at first regarded these implements and weap-
ons as having belonged to men overwhelmed at the Deluge of
Noah ; but it was soon seen that they were something very differ-
ent from proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis : for they were
found in terraces at great heights above the river Somme, and,
under any possible theory having regard to the truth, must have
been deposited there at a time when the river system of northern
France was vastly different from anything known in the historic
period. The whole discovery indicated a series of great geologi-
cal changes since the time when these implements were made, re-
quiring cycles of time compared to which the space allowed by
the orthodox chronologists were as nothing.

His work was the result of over ten years of research and
thought. Year after year a force of men under his direction had
dug into these high-terraced gravel deposits of the river Somme,
and in his book he now gave, in the first full form, the results of
his labor. So far as France was concerned, he was met at first by
what he calls " a conspiracy of silence," and by a contemptuous
opposition among orthodox scientists, at the head of whom stood
Elie de Beaumont.

This heavy, sluggish opposition seemed immovable : nothing
that Boucher could do or say appeared to lighten the pressure of
the orthodox theological opinion behind it — not even his belief
that these fossils were remains of men drowned at the Deluge of
Noah, and that they were proofs of the literal exactness of Gene-
sis seemed to help the matter. His opponents felt instinctively
that such discoveries boded danger to the accepted view, and they
were right : Boucher himself soon saw the folly of trying to account
for them by the orthodox theory which he had adopted at first.

294

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

And it must be confessed that not a little force was added to
the opposition by certain characteristics of Boucher de Perthes
himself ; gifted, f oresighted, and vigorous as he was, he was his
own worst enemy ; carried away by his own discoveries, he jumped
to the most astounding conclusions : the engravings in the later
volume of his great work, showing what he thought to be human

i hires and inscriptions upon some of the flint implements, are
worthy of a comic almanac ; and at the great National Museum
of Archseology at St. Germain, beneath the shelves bearing the
remains which he discovered, which mark the triumph of a great
new movement in human science, are drawers containing speci-
mens hardly worthy of a penny museum, from which he drew the
most unwarranted inferences as to the language, religion, and
usages of prehistoric man.

But Boucher triumphed none the less. Among his bitter oppo-
nents at first was Dr. Rigollot, who in 1855, searching earnestly for
materials to refute the innovator, dug into the deposits of St. Acheul
— and was converted : for he found implements similar to those
of Abbeville, making still more certain the existence of man dur-
ing the Drift period. So, too, Gaudry a year later made similar
discoveries.

But most important was the evidence of the truth which now
came from other parts of France and from many other countries.
The French leaders in geological science had been held back, not
only by awe of Cuvier, but by recollections of Scheuchzer. Ridi-
cule has always been a serious weapon in France, and the ridicule
which finally overtook the adherents of the attempt of Scheuchzer,
Mazurier, and others, to square geology with Genesis, was still re-
membered. From the great body of French scientists, therefore,
Boucher secured at first no aid. His support came from the other
side of the Channel. The most eminent English geologists, such as
Falconer, Prestwich, and Lyell, visited the beds at Abbeville and
St. Acheul, convinced themselves that the discoveries of Boucher,
Rigollot, and their colleagues were real, and then quietly but firmly
told England the truth.

And now there appeared a most effective ally in France. The
arguments used against Boucher de Perthes and some of the other
early investigators of bone caves had been that the implements
found might have been washed about and turned over by great
floods, and therefore that they might be of a recent period ; but
in 1861 Edward Lartet published an account of his own excava-
tions at the Grotto of Aurignac, and the proof that man had ex-
isted in the time of the Quaternary animals was complete. This
grotto had been carefully sealed in prehistoric times by a stone at
its entrance ; no interference from disturbing currents of water
had been possible ; and Lartet found, in place, bones of eight out

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 295

of nine of the main species of animals which, characterize the
Quaternary period in Europe ; upon them were marks of cutting
implements, and in the midst of them coals and ashes.

Close upon these came the excavations at Eyzies by Lartet and
his English colleague, Christy. In both these men there was a
sobriety and a carefulness in making researches and in stating
results which converted many of those who had been repelled by
the enthusiasm of Boucher de Perthes. The two colleagues found
buried together, in the stony deposits made by the water dropping
from the roof of the cave at Eyzies, the bones of numerous ani-
mals extinct or departed to arctic regions, one of. these a vertebra
of a reindeer with a flint lance-head still fast in it, and with these
were found evidences of fire.

Discoveries like these were thoroughly convincing. But there
still remained here and there a few gainsayers in the supposed in-
terest of Scripture, and these, in spite of the convincing array of
facts, insisted that in some way, by some combination of circum-
stances, these bones of extinct animals of vastly remote periods
might have been brought into connection with all- these human
bones and implements of human make in all these different places,
without supposing that these ancient relics of men and animals
were of the same period. But a new class of discoveries came to
silence this contention. At La Madeleine in France, and at vari-
ous other places, were found rude but striking carvings and en-
gravings on bone and stone representing sundry specimens of
those long-vanished species. These specimens, or casts of them,
can now be seen in all the principal museums. They show the
hairy mammoth, the cave bear, and various other animals of the
Quaternary period, carved rudely but vigorously by contemporary
men ; and, to complete the significance of these discoveries, travel-
ers returning from the icy regions of North America have brought
similar carvings of animals now existing in those regions, made
by the Eskimos during their long arctic winters to-day.*

* For the explorations in Belgium, see Dupont, Le Temps Prehistorique en Belgique.
For the discoveries by McEnery and Godwin Austin, see Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, Lon-
don, 1869, chap, x; also Cartailhac, Joly, and others above cited. For Boucher de Perthes,
see his Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes, Paris, lS47-'64, vol. iii, pp. 526 et seq. For
sundry extravagances of Boucher de Perthes, see Reinach, Description Raisonnee du Musee
de St. Germain en Laye, Paris, 1889, vol. i, pp. 16 et seq. For the mixture of sound and
absurd results in Boucher's work, see Cartailhac as above, p. 19. Boucher had published
in 1838 a work entitled De la Creation, but it seems to have dropped dead from the press.
For the attempts of Scheuchzer to reconcile geology and Genesis by means of the Homo
diluvii testis, and similar " diluvian fossils," see the chapter on Geology in this series. The
original specimens of those prehistoric engravings upon bone and stone may be best seen
at the Archaeological Museum of St. Germain and the British Museum. For engravings of
some of the most recent, see especially Dawkins's Early Man in Britain, chap, vii, and the
Catalogue du Musee du St. Germain. For comparison of this prehistoric work with that

296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

As a result of these discoveries and others like them, showing
that man was not only a contemporary with long-extinct animals
of past geological epochs, but that he had already developed into
a stage of culture above pure savagery, the tide of thought began
to turn. Especially was this seen in 1863, when Lyell published
the first edition of his Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of
Man; and the fact that he had so long opposed the new ideas

re 'force to the clear and conclusive argument which led him to
renounce his early scientific beliefs.

Research among the evidences of man's existence in the early
Quaternary, and possibly in the Tertiary period, was now pressed
forward along the whole line. In 1864 Gabriel Mortillet founded
his review devoted to this subject; and in I860 the first of a series
of scientific congresses devoted to such researches was held in
Italy. These investigations went on vigorously in all parts of
France and spread rapidly to other countries. The explorations
which Dupont began in 1861, in the caves of Belgium, gave to the
museum at Brussels eighty thousand flint implements, forty
thousand bones of animals of the Quaternary period, with a num-
ber of human skulls and bones found mingled with these remains.
From Germany, Italy, Spain, America, India, and Egypt similar
results were reported.

Especially noteworthy were the further explorations of the
caves and drift throughout the British Islands. The discovery
by Colonel Wood in 1861, of flint tools in the same strata with
bones of the earlier forms of the rhinoceros, was but typical of
many. A thorough examination of the caverns of Brixham and
Torquay, by Pengelly and others, made it still more evident that
man had existed in the early Quaternary period : the existence of
a period before the Glacial epoch or between different glacial
epochs in England, when the Englishman was a savage, using
rude stone tools, was then fully ascertained, and, what was more
significant, there were clearly shown a gradation and evolution
even in the history of that period. It was found that this ancient
Stone epoch showed progress and development : in the upper lay-
ers of the caves, with remains of the reindeer, who, although he
has migrated from these regions, still exists in more northern cli-
mates, were found stone implements revealing some little advance
in civilization ; next below these, sealed up in the stalagmite,
came, as a rule, another layer, in which the remains of reindeer
were rare and those of the mammoth more frequent, the im-
plements found in this stratum being less skillfully made than

produced to-day by the Eskimos and others, see Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, chapters
x and xiv. For very striking exhibitions of this same artistic gift in a higher field to-day
by descendants of the barbarian tribes of northern America, see the very remarkable
illustrations in Rink, Danish Greenland, London, 1877, especially those in chap. xiv.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 297

those in the upper and more recent layers ; and, finally, in the
lowest levels, near the floors of these ancient caverns, with re-
mains of the cave bear and others of the most ancient extinct ani-
mals, were fonnd stone implements evidently of a yet ruder and
earlier stage of human progress. No fairly unprejudiced man
can visit the cave and museum at Torquay without being con-
vinced that there were a gradation and evolution in these begin-
nings of human civilization. The evidence is complete ; the
masses of breccia taken from the cave, with the various soils, im-
plements, and bones carefully kept in place, put this progress
beyond a doubt.

All this indicated a great antiquity for the human race ;
but in it lay the germs of still another great truth, even more
important and more serious in its consequences to the older
theologic view, and this will be discussed in the following
chapter.

But new evidences came in, showing a yet greater antiquity of
man. Remains of animals were found in connection with human
remains, which showed not only that man was living in times
more remote than the earlier of the new investigators had dared
dream, but that some of these early periods of his existence must
have been of immense length, embracing climatic changes be-
tokening different geological periods: for with remains of fire
and human implements and human bones were found not only
bones of the hairy mammoth and cave bear, woolly rhinoceros and
reindeer, which could only have been deposited there in a time of
arctic cold, but bones of the hyena, hippopotamus, saber-toothed
tiger, and the like, which could only have been deposited when
there was in these regions a torrid climate. The conjunction of
these remains clearly showed that man had lived in England
early enough and long enough to pass through times when there
was arctic cold and times when there was torrid heat ; times when
great glaciers stretched far down into England and indeed into
the continent, and times when England had a land connection
with the European continent, and the European continent with
Africa, allowing tropical animals to migrate freely from Africa
to the middle regions of England.

The question of the origin of man at a period vastly earlier
than the sacred chronologists permitted was thus absolutely
settled ; but among the questions regarding the existence of man
at a period yet more remote, the Drift period, there was one
which for a time seemed to give the champions of science some
difficulty. The orthodox leaders in the time of Boucher de
Perthes, and for a considerable time afterward, had a weapon of
which they made good use ; the statement that no human bones
had yet been discovered in the drift. The supporters of science

298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

naturally answered that few if any other bones as small as those
of man had been found, and that this fact was an additional
proof of the great length of the period since man had lived with
the extinct animals; for, since specimens of human workman-
ship proved man's existence as fully as remains of his bones
could do, the absence or even rarity of human and other small
bones simply indicated the long periods of time required for
dissolving them away.

Yet Boucher, inspired by the genius he had already shown,
and filled with the spirit of prophecy, declared that human bones
would yet be found in the midst of the flint implements, and in
18G3 he claimed that this prophecy had been fulfilled by the dis-
covery at Moulin Quignon of a portion of a human jaw deep in
the early Quaternary deposits. But his triumph was short-lived ;
the opposition ridiculed his discovery ; they showed that he had
offered a premium to his workmen for the discovery of human
remains, and they naturally drew the inference that some tricky
laborer had deceived him. The result of this was, that the men
of science felt obliged to acknowledge that the Moulin Quignon
discovery was not proved.

But ere long human bones were found in the deposits of the
early Quaternary period, or indeed of an earlier period, in various
other parts of the world, and the question regarding the Moulin
Quignon relic was of little importance.

We have seen that researches regarding the existence of pre-
historic man in England and on the Continent were at first
mainly made in the caverns ; but the existence of man in the ear-
liest Quaternary period was confirmed on both sides the English
Channel, in a way even more striking, by the close examination
of the drift and early gravel deposits. The results arrived at by
Boucher de Perthes were amply confirmed in England. Rude
stone implements were found in terraces a hundred feet and
more above the levels at which various rivers of Great Britain
now flow, and under circumstances which show that, at the time
when they were deposited, the rivers of Great Britain in many
cases were entirely different from those of the present period, and
formed parts of the river system of the European continent. Re-
searches in the high terraces above the Thames, the Ouse, as well
as at other points in Great Britain, placed beyond a doubt the fact
that man existed on the British Islands at a time when they were
connected by solid land with the Continent, and made it clear
that, within the period of the existence of man in northern Eu-
rope, a large portion of the British Islands had been sunk to
depths between fifteen hundred and twenty-five hundred feet
beneath the Northern Ocean — had risen again from the water —
had formed part of the continent of Europe, and had been in

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 299

unbroken connection with Africa, so that elephants, bears, tigers,
lions, the rhinoceros and hippopotamus, of species now mainly
extinct, had left their bones in the same deposits with human
implements as far north as Yorkshire. Moreover, connected with
this fact came in the new conviction, forced upon geologists by
the more careful examination of the earth and its changes, that
such elevations and depressions of Great Britain and other parts
of the world were not the results of sudden cataclysms, but of
slow processes extending through vast cycles of years — processes
such as are now known to be going on in various parts of the
world. Thus it was that the six or seven thousand years allowed
by even the most liberal theologians of former times were seen
more and more clearly to be but as a mere nothing in the long
succession of ages since the appearance of man.

Confirmation of these results came from various other parts
of the world, especially from the drift deposits both on the east-
ern and western coasts of America. The discoveries at Trenton,
New Jersey, and at various places in Delaware, Ohio, Minnesota,
and elsewhere, along the southern edge of the drift of the glacial
epochs, clinched the new scientific truth yet more firmly ; and the
statement made by an eminent American authority is, that " man
was on this continent when the climate and ice of Greenland
extended to the mouth of New York Harbor." The discoveries of
prehistoric remains on the Pacific coast, and especially in British
Columbia, finished completely the last chance at a reasonable
contention by the adherents of the older view. As to these inves-
tigations on the Pacific slope of the United States, the discoveries
of Whitney and others in California had been so made and an-
nounced that the judgment of scientific men regarding them was
suspended until the visit of perhaps the greatest living authority
in his department, Alfred Russel Wallace, in 1887. He confirmed
the view of Prof. Whitney and others with the statement that
" both the actual remains and works of man found deep under
the lava-fiows of Pliocene age show that he existed in the New
World at least as early as in the Old." To this may be added the
discoveries in British Columbia, which prove that, since man ex-
isted in these regions, * valleys have been filled up by drift from
the waste of mountains to a depth in some cases of fifteen hun-
dred feet ; this covered by a succession of tuffs, ashes, and lava-
streams from volcanoes long since extinct, and finally cut down
by the present rivers through beds of solid basalt, and through
this accumulation of lavas and gravels." The immense antiquity
of the human remains in the gravels of the Pacific coast is
summed up by a most eminent English authority and declared to
be proved, "first, by the present river systems being of subse-
quent date, sometimes cutting through them and their superin-

3oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cumbent lava-cap to a depth, of two thousand feet ; secondly, by
the great denudation that lias taken place since they were depos-
ited, for they sometimes lie on the summits of mountains six
thousand feet high ; thirdly, by the fact that the Sierra Nevada
has been partly elevated since their formation." *

As an important supplement to these discoveries of ancient
implements came sundry comparisons made by eminent physiolo-

* For the general subject of investigations in British prehistoric remains, see especially
Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain and his Place in the Tertiary Period, London, 1880.
For Boucher de Perthes's account of his discovery of the human jaw at Moulin Quignon, see
his Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes, vol. iii, pp. 542 et seq., Appendix. For an ex-
cellent account of special investigations in the high terraces above the Thames, see J.
Allen Brown, F. G. S., Palaeolithic Man in Northwest Middlesex, London, 1887. For dis-
coveries in America, and the citation regarding them, see Wright, The Ice Age in North
America, New York, 1S89, chap. xxi. Very remarkable examples of these specimens from
the drift at Trenton may be seen in Prof. Abbott's collections at the University of Penn-
sylvania. For an admirable statement, see Prof. Henry W. Haynes, in Wright, as above.
For proofs of the vast antiquity of man upon the Pacific coast, cited in the text, see
Skertchley, F. G. S., in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute for 1887, p. 336; see
also Wallace, Darwinism, London, 1890, chap, xv; and for a summary, as cited, Laing,
Problems of the Future, London, 1889. For a striking summary of the evidence that
man lived before the last submergence of Britain, see Brown,, Palaeolithic Man in North-
west Middlesex, as above cited. For proofs that man existed in a period when the streams
were flowing hundreds of feet above their present level, see ibid., p. 33. As to the evi-
dence of the action of the sea and of glacial action in the Welsh bone caves after the
remains of extinct animals and weapons of human workmanship had been deposited, see
ibid., p. 198. For a good statement of the slowness of the submergence and emergence of
Great Britain, with an illustration from the rising of the shore of Finland, see ibid., pp. 47
48. As to the flint implements of Palaeolithic man in the high-terraced gravels throughout
the Thames Valley, associated with bones of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, etc., see
Brown, p. 31. For still more conclusive proofs that man inhabited North Wales before the
last submergence of the greater part of the British Islands to a depth of twelve hundred
to fourteen hundred feet, see ibid., pp. 199, 200. For maps showing the connection of the
British river system with that of the Continent, see Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain,
London, 1880, pp. 18, 41, 73 ; also, Lyell, Antiquity of Man, chap. xiv. As to the long
continuance of the early Stone period, see James Geikie, The Great Ice Age, New York,
18S8, p. 402. As to the impossibility of the animals of arctic and torrid regions living
together or visiting the same place at different times in the same year, see Geikie, as
above, pp. 421 et scq. ; and for a conclusive argument that the animals of the period
assigned lived in England, not since, but before, the Glacial period, or in the intcrglacial
period, see ibid., p. 459. For a very candid statement by perhaps the foremost leader of
the theological rear-guard, admitting the insuperable difficulties presented by the Old Testa-
ment chronology as regards the creation and the deluge, see the Duke of Argyll's Primeval
Man, pp. 90-100, and especially pp. 93, 124. For a succinct statement on the general sub-
ject, see Laing, Problems of the Future, London, 1889, chapters v and vi. For discoveries
of prehistoric implements in India, see notes by Bruce Foote, F. G. S., in the British Jour-
nal of the Anthropological Institute for 1886 and 1887. For similar discoveries in South
Africa, see Gooch, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland,
vol. xi, pp. 124 et seq. For proofs of the existence of Palaeolithic man in Egypt, see Mook,
Haynes, Pitt-Rivers, and others, cited at length in the next chapter. For the corroborative
and concurrent testimony of ethnology, philology, and history to the vast antiquity of man,
see Tylor, Anthropology, chap. i.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 301

gists between human skulls and bones found in different places
and under circumstances showing vast antiquity.

Human bones had been found under these circumstances as
early as 1835 at Canstadt near Stuttgart, and in 1856 in the Nean-
derthal near Dusseldorf ; but in more recent searches they have
been discovered in a multitude of places, especially in Germany,
France, Belgium, England, the Caucasus, Africa, and North and
South America. But comparison of these bones showed that even
in that remote Quaternary period there were great differences of
race, and here again came in an argument for the yet earlier ex-
istence of man on the earth ; for long previous periods must have
been required to develop such racial differences. Considerations
of this kind have given a new impulse to the belief that man's ex-
istence dates back at least into the Tertiary period. The evidence
for this earlier origin of man has been ably summed up not only
by its brilliant advocate, Mortillet, but by a former opponent, one
of the most conservative of modern anthropologists, Quatref ages ;
and the conclusion arrived at by both is, that man did really ex-
ist in the Tertiary period. The acceptance of this conclusion is
also seen in the recent work of that most able investigator, Alfred
Russel Wallace, who, cautious and conservative as he is, places
the origin of man not only in the Tertiary period, but in an
earlier stage of it than most have dared assign; even in the
Miocene.

The first thing raising a strong presumption, if not giving
proof, that man existed in the Tertiary, was the fact that from all
explored parts of the world came in more and more evidence that
in the earlier Quaternary man existed in different, strongly
marked races and in great numbers. From all regions which
geologists had explored, even from those the most distant and dif-
ferent from each other, came this same evidence — from northern
Europe to southern Africa ; from France to China ; from New
Jersey to British Columbia ; from British Columbia to Peru. The
development of man in such numbers and in so many different
regions, with such differences of race and at so early a period,
must have required a long previous time.

This argument seemed to be strengthened by discoveries of
bones bearing marks apparently made by cutting instruments,
in the Tertiary formations of France and Italy, and by the dis-
coveries of what were claimed to be flint implements by the Abbe'
Bourgeois in France, and of implements and human bones by
Prof. Capellini in Italy.

On the other hand, some of the more cautious men of science
are content to say that the existence of man in the Tertiary period
is not yet settled. As to his existence throughout the Quaternary
epoch no new proofs are needed. Even so determined a supporter

02

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the theological side as the Duke of Argyll has been forced to
yield to the evidence.

Of attempts to make an exact chronological statement throw-
in «• light on the length of the various prehistoric periods, the
most notable have been those by M. Morlot, on the accumulated
strata of the Lake of Geneva ; by Gillieron, on the silt of Lake
Neuf chatel ; by Horner, in the delta deposits of Egypt ; and by
Riddle, in the delta of the Mississippi. But while these have
failed to give anything like an exact result, all these investiga-
tions together point to the one great truth so amply established,
of the vast antiquity of man, and the utter inadequacy of the
orthodox chronology based by theologians upon our sacred books.
The period of man's past life upon our planet, which has been
fixed by the universal Church, " always, everywhere, and by all,"
is thus perfectly proved to be merely trivial compared with those
vast geological epochs during which man is now known to have
existed.*

-♦♦♦-

GREENLAND AND THE GREENL ANDERS. \

By ELISEE EECLUS.

TILL recently Hooker, Payer, and others supposed that the
interior of Greenland presented vast spaces free of ice, grassy
valleys where herds of reindeer grazed, and popular legends were
appealed to in support of this view. Nordenskjold also sug-
gested that the phenomenon might be explained by the action of
the winds, which after crossing the inland ranges descended in
warm currents like the fohn of Switzerland, and thus melted the
snows of the valleys. But the systematic researches made in re-
cent years have failed to discover any of these inland oases. The
whole land appears, on the contrary, to be covered with a continu-
ous ice-cap fringed by glaciers which move down the outer valleys
to the neighborhood of the sea, or to the fiords of the periphery.
The valleys themselves have disappeared, and, despite local irregu-

* As to the evidence of man in the Tertiary period, see works already cited, especially
Quatrefages, Cartailhac, and Mortillet. For a summary, see Laing, as above, pp. 103-105.
See also, for a summing up of the evidence in favor of man in the Tertiary period, Quatre-
fages, Ilistoire General des Races humaines, in the Bibliotheque Etymologique, Paris, 1887,
chap. iv. As to the earlier view, see Vogt, Lectures on Man, London, 1864, lecture xi.
For a thorough and convincing refutation of Sir J. W. Dawson's attempt to make the
old and new Stone periods coincide, see H. W. Haynes, in chap, vi of the History of
America, edited by Justin Winsor. For development of various important points in the
relation of anthropology to the human occupancy of our planet, see Topinard, Anthropol-
ogy, London, 1890, chap. ix.

f From advance sheets of North America, by Elisee Reclus, soon to be published by
D. Appleton k Co., being the fifteenth volume of The Earth and its Inhabitants.

GREENLAND AND THE GREENLANDERS. 303

larities, the ice-cap slopes like a shield uniformly toward the inte-
rior. Thus, in certain places the explorer should expect to meet
elevations of seven thousand or eight thousand feet ; but, owing
to an optical illusion, he scarcely knows whether he is climbing or
descending. The horizon seems to rise on all sides, says Nordensk-
jold, " as if he were at the bottom of a basin."

The aspect of these boundless wastes rolling away in scarcely
perceptible undulations, and in the distance mingling the gray of
their snows with the gray of the skies, at first gave the impression
that Greenland was a uniform plateau, a sort of horizontal table.
The belief now prevails that the rocky surface of the land is, on
the contrary, carved into mountains and hills, valleys and gorges,
but that the plastic snows and ice have gradually filled up all the
cavities, which now show only in slight sinuosities on the surface.
Allowing to the whole mass of the ice-cap an average thickness
of five hundred feet, it would represent a total volume of about
one hundred and fifty thousand cubic miles. This sermer sudk,
or " great ice " of the Greenlanders, flows like asphalt or tar with
extreme slowness seaward, while the surface is gradually leveled
by the snow falling during the course of ages and distributed by
the winds. In the interior of the country the surface of the ice
and snow is as smooth as if it were polished, looking like " the
undisturbed surface of a frozen ocean, the long but not high bil-
lows of which rolling from east to west are not easily distinguish-
able to the eye." * Nevertheless, the exterior form of the ice-cap
has been greatly diversified, at least on its outer edge, where in
many places it is difficult to cross, or even quite impassable. The
action of lateral pressure, of heat produced by the tremendous
friction, of evaporation and filtration, has often broken the surface
into innumerable cones a few yards high, in form and color resem-
bling the tents of an encampment. The depressions of the snowy
plateau are filled with meres, lagoons, and lakes ; streams and riv-
ulets excavate winding gorges with crystal walls in the snow and
ice. Cascades, frozen at night, plunge during the day into pro-
found crevasses ; during the expedition of 1870 Nordenskjold saw
intermittent jets of water rising to a great height, which he was
unable to study, but which he supposes must be geysers.

Most of the glaciers reaching the coast round the Greenland
seaboard present a somewhat regular frontal line, from which
blocks of varying size break off with every wave and drift away
with the current. But the frozen streams which yield those huge
masses large enough to be called icebergs, that is, " mountains of
ice," are relatively few in number, their production requiring a
combination of favorable circumstances, such as the thickness of

* Nansen, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, August, 1889.

304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the parent glacier, the form of its bed, and the depth of the water
at its mouth. The larger fragments originate for the most part
along that remarkable break which is presented in the normal for-
mation of the coast-line between Egedesminde and the Svartenhuk
Peninsula. Rink enumerates not more than thirty Greenland gla-
ciers which discharge really large icebergs, and of this number
only six or eight yield blocks of the first magnitude.

The average velocity of the congealed masses is about fifty
feet in the twenty-four hours, but in some places a much greater
speed has been recorded, though still varying considerably with
the seasons. A branch of the Augpadlartok glacier, north of
Upernavik, moves at the rate of one hundred feet a day, the high-
est yet measured. But how enormous must be the pressure of the
inland ice-fields to discharge into the sea the vast quantities of ice-
bergs which are yearly sent adrift along the Greenland seaboard !
Estimated in a single block the annual discharge from each of the
five best-known glaciers would represent a mass of about seven-
teen billion cubic feet in capacity, and fifty-six hundred feet in
height, depth, and thickness. Reduced to a liquid state this mass
would be equivalent to a stream discharging seaward five hun-
dred cubic feet per second, or 15,500,000 a year.

The formation of this drift ice, or floating icebergs, is one of
those phenomena which were discussed long before the seaboard
had been studied, or before the breaking away of the frozen masses
had actually been witnessed. "Wherever the glaciers discharge
through a broad valley preserving a uniform width and depth for
a considerable space, and advancing seaward through a fiord of
like dimensions, and with gently sloping bed, the ice may pro-
gress without any of those accidents caused by the inequalities of
more rugged channels. Under such conditions the compact mass
glides smoothly forward over its rocky bed without developing
any rents or fissures. But as it moves down like a ship on its
keel, it tends to rise, being at least one twentieth lighter than the
displaced water. It is also left without support by the sudden
fall of its bed beyond the normal coast-line. Nevertheless, it still
continues its onward movement through the waters to a point
where its weight prevails over its force of cohesion with the frozen
stream thrusting it forward. At this point it snaps off suddenly
with a tremendous crash, and the iceberg, enveloped in»a thousand
fragments projected into space, plunges into the abyss and whirls
round and round to find its center of gravity amid the troubled
waters. On recovering from the bewilderment caused by all
this tumult and chaos, the spectator finds that the glacier has
apparently receded a long way toward the head of the bay, in the
middle of which a crystal peak is seen slowly drifting away with
the current. . In this he recognizes the huge fragment detached

GREENLAND AND THE GREENLANDERS. 305

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

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GREENLAND AND THE GREENLANDERS.

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from the glacier, though seldom able to detect its primitive form,
the greater part, say at least six sevenths of its volume, sinking
below the surface.

If Greenland, like other regions, passed through a glacial
epoch, the fossil remains preserved in its sedimentary rocks show
that it had also its hot and temperate periods. The old formations

Scale 1 : 300,000-

6 Miles.

The scale of heights is 50 times greater than that of lengths.
Fig. 3.— Movement of the Kanderdlttg-Suak Glacier, Umanak District.

which have yielded Carboniferous, Triassic, and Jurassic fossils,
present types of organisms comparable to those at present found
in the torrid zone. The upper chalk beds, abounding in vegetable
forms, analogous to those of the subtropical and temperate zones,
had already been examined by Giesecke at the beginning of this
century. They supplied to Nordenskjold a very remarkable flora,
especially rich in dicotyledonous plants represented by numerous
families of Cycadea, a tree-fern, and even a bread-fruit tree. At
that time the mean temperature must have been as high as 68°
Fahr.

The Miocene flora, whose general physiognomy corresponds to
a more temperate climate, averaging about 53° or 54° Fahr., is il-
lustrated by splendid specimens discovered chiefly in Disco Island

3o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and the surrounding peninsulas. Quite a fossil forest is buried
under the ferruginous mass of Mount Atanekerdluk, a peak which
rises to a height of over a thousand feet over against Disco, and
which is now surrounded by glaciers on all sides. From these de-
posits Whymper, Nordenskjold, and others have extracted one hun-
dred and sixty-nine species of plants, of which about three fourths
were shrubs and trees, some with stems as thick as a man's body.
Altogether there have been discovered in the Greenland strata as
many as six hundred and thirteen species of fossil plants. The
most prevalent tree is a Sequoia, closely resembling the Oregon
and Calif ornian giants of the present epoch. Associated with this
conifer were beeches, oaks, evergreen oaks, elms, hazel-nuts, wal-
nuts, magnolias, and laurels ; and these forest trees were festooned
with the vine, ivy, and other creepers. A leaf of a Cycadea found
among these fossil remains is the largest ever seen ; and a true
palm, the Flabellaria, has been discovered among the remains of
these old arctic forests.

To develop such a flora the climate of north Greenland must
at that time have been analogous to that at present enjoyed on the
shores of Lake Geneva, twenty-four degrees nearer to the equator.
According to the same gradation of temperature, the dry lands
about the north pole itself must at the same epoch have had their
forests of aspens and conifers. According to Oswald Heer, the
change that has taken place in the climate since then represents a
fall of 30° or 40° Fahr. for north Greenland. The interval between
these two ages was marked by the Glacial period, whose traces are
visible on the west coast.

Although incomparably poorer than that of Miocene times, the
present flora of Greenland is sufficient to clothe extensive tracts
with a mantle of mosses, grasses, and brushwood. Wherever the
snows melt under the influence of the sun or of the warm east
winds, herbaceous and other lowly plants spring up even on the
exposed nunatdkher, and to a height of five thousand feet.
Owing to the uniform intensity of the solar heat, the summer flora
is almost identical on the low-lying coast-lands and highest mount-
ain-tops. True trees occur in the southern districts, where Egede
was said to have measured some nearly twenty feet high. But
the largest met by Rink during all his long rambles was a white
birch fourteen feet high growing amid the rocks near a Norse
ruin. Few trees, in fact, exceed five or six feet, while most of the
shrubs become trailing plants. Such are the service and alder,
which on the coast reach 65° north latitude ; the juniper, which ad-
vances to 67° ; and the dwarf birch, which ranges beyond 72°.

In its general features the Greenland flora, comprising about
four hundred flowering plants and several hundred species of
lichens, greatly resembles that of Scandinavia. Hooker and Dr.

GREENLAND AND THE GREENLANDERS. 309

Robert Brown regard it as essentially the same as that of the
north European highlands and lacustrine regions. Even on the
west coast, facing America, this- European physiognomy is said to
prevail, although to a less degree than on the opposite side, which
appears to be much poorer in vegetable forms. But, though lim-
ited, the American element is important, supplying to the natives
numerous edible berries, alga?, and fuci, which have saved whole
tribes from starvation during periods of scarcity. The Europeans
have also their little garden-plots, where they grow lettuce, cab-
bage, turnips, and occasionally potatoes about the size of school-
boys' marbles.

The great bulk of the present population consists of Danes,
Danish half-breeds, and the Eskimo proper, more or less modified
by crossings with the early Norse settlers. Nearly all the inhabit-
ants, already Christianized and civilized by the missionaries, are
grouped in parishes, whose organization differs from correspond-
ing European communities only in those conditions that are im-
posed by the climate and the struggle for existence. There still
survive, however, a few tribes of pure Eskimo stock, such as those
recently discovered by European explorers beyond the Danish ter-
ritory north of Melville Bay and on the east coast. Others also may
perhaps exist along the shores of unvisited or inaccessible fiords.
But the most northern camping-ground hitherto discovered is
that of Ita (Etah), situated in Port Foulke on Smith Sound, in 78°
18' north latitude. In 1875 and again in 1881 it was found aban-
doned ; but it is known to have been previously inhabited, and the
natives had returned to the place in 1882 and 1883.* When vis-
ited by Hall and his party, this little group of twenty persons, who
had never seen any other human beings, fancied that the strangers
were ghosts, the souls of their forefathers descending from the
moon or rising from the depths of the abyss. In their eyes the
ships of John Ross were great birds, with huge, flapping wings.

Among the Greenland Eskimo are most frequently found men of
average and even high stature, especially on the east coast. Most
of those on the west side are short, but thick-set and robust, with
short legs, small hands, and a yellowish- white complexion. The
face is broad and flat, the nose very small, the eyes brown and
slightly oblique like the Chinese ; the hair black, lank, and falling
over the forehead ; the expression mild, suggesting that of the seal,
the animal which is ever in their thoughts, and whose death is their
life. They have also the seal's gait and carriage, as well as a
rounded figure well lined with fat to protect it from the cold.
What essentially distinguishes the Eskimo from the Mongolian,
with whom he was till recently affiliated, is the extremely " doli-

* Greely, Three Years of Arctic Service.

3io

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

chocephalous " form of his head, the skull, with its vertical sides
and sharp crest, often affecting a " scaphocephalous " or boat-like
shape. According to Dall, the cranial capacity is higher than that
of the red-skins.

Both sexes are dressed very much alike. European fashions,
however, have already penetrated among the Greenlanders, and
in many districts men are now met wearing the garb of European
laborers, while the women deck themselves with cotton stuffs and
many-colored ribbons. But in winter no costume could advan-
tageously replace their capacious boots, sealskin pantaloons, close-
fitting jacket, and the amaut, or hood which "keeps baby warm/'
In Danish Greenland the women no longer tattoo their chin, cheeks,
hands, or feet, nor do they now insert variegated threads under the
skin, the missionaries having interdicted these " pagan " practices.

Singing, dancing,
the relation of the
old legends, even
athletic games
among the young
people, were also
formerly sternly
repressed. Indul-
gence in strong
drinks is allowed
only once a year,
on the anniversa-
ry of the King of
Denmark, and the
royal monopoly of
the trade with
Greenland is justi-
fied on the ground
that in this way
the importation
of spirits is pre-
vented.

Posses sing-
great natural in-
telligence com-
bined with love
of instruction, the Greenlanders may justly claim to be civilized.
The great majority read and write their mother - tongue, and
sing European melodies, while several speak English or Danish.
Nearly all the families have their little library, and read their
Eskimo newspaper, as well as the collections of national legends,
illustrated with engravings by native artists. Greenland even

Fig. 4.— Greenland Eskimo.

GREENLAND AND THE GREENLANDERS. 311

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3i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

possesses at least one original work, the account of the voyages
of Hans Hendrik, companion of Kane, Hall, Hayes, and Nares.

Formerly, the right of property was restricted to objects of
personal use, such as clothes and weapons ; the hunting-grounds
belonged to the whole community, and the produce of the chase
or fisheries was equally distributed among all. The rights of
communal property were also regulated and safeguarded by gen-
eral assemblies followed by public banquets. But the Europeans
have changed all that by introducing the principle of sale and
purchase, by enlarging to their own profit the rights of personal
ownership, and proclaiming the new gospel of "every man for
himself." The result is a general impoverishment and moral
degradation of the people. They are no longer like the Eskimo
visited by Graah on the east coast — " the gentlest, the most upright
and virtuous of men." Nevertheless, the language possesses not
a single abusive term, and it is impossible to swear in Eskimo.

The part of Greenland where Eric the Red built his strong-
hold, and where the banished Norsemen flocked around him, is
still one of the least deserted regions, as it also is the most fertile
and temperate. Julianahaab, capital of this district, contains one
fourth of the entire population of the country grouped on the
banks of a small stream in a grassy valley near a deep fiord,
which is unfortunately not easily accessible to shipping.

Upernivik (Upernavik) and Tasiusak, lying still farther north
in 73° 24' north latitude, are the last European settlements in
Greenland, gloomy abodes lost amid the snows at the foot of yel-
lowish or brick-red rocks. In winter the sun sets for eighty days,
yet by a sort of mockery this glacial district bears an Eskimo
name meaning " spring." The horrors of war were extended to
this extremity of the habitable world at the beginning of the
present century, when Upernavik was burned by the English
whalers, and all communication between Greenland and Den-
mark interrupted for the seven years from 1807 to 1814.

The Siamese Government is taking great pains to encourage the speedy develop-
ment of the enormous potential resources of the country, and has sagaciously done
much in that direction. Telegraphs have been established ; schools, hospitals, and
other public buildings have been erected, and are increasing every day. A tramway
company, supported mainly by Siamese capital, is running street cars in the me-
tropolis. A river flotilla company, wholly Siamese, carries the passenger traffic of
the stream on which Bangkok is built ; important gold-mining operations have
been begun by a company, in which a majority of the subscribers are Siamese ;
and a trunk line of railway is under contract. A large and lucrative export
trade in cattle has sprung up ; and mills, docks, and fleets of German and Eng-
lish ships, all doing a flourishing business, attest the prevalence of a spirit of
enterprise.

EVOLUTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 313

EVOLUTION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS.*

By DAVID STARR. JORDAN,

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA.

I.

""VTO one with good eyes and brains behind them has ever
-i-N looked forth on the varied life of the world — on forest or
field or brook or sea — without at least once asking himself this
question : " What is the cause of nature's endless variety ? " We
see many kinds of beasts and birds and trees and flowers and in-
sects and blades of grass, yet when we look closely we find not
one grass-blade in the meadow quite like another blade. Not
one worm is like its fellow-worm, and not one organism in
body or soul is the measure of its neighbor.' You may search
all day to match one clover-leaf, and, should you succeed, even
then you have failed ; for, if the two leaves agree in all physical
respects, they may still be unlike in that which we can not see,
their ancestries, their potentialities. Again, with each change of
conditions, of temperature, of moisture, of space, of time, with
each shifting of environment, the ranga in variety increases.
" Dauer in Wechsel " (persistence in change) ; " this phrase of
Goethe," says Amiel, "is a summing up of nature." And the
naturalist will tell you that the real variety is far greater than
that which appears. He will tell you that, where commonness
seems to prevail, it is the cover of variety. The green cloak
which covers the brown earth is the shelter under which millions
of organisms, brown or green, carry on their life-work.

Each recognizable kind of animal or plant is known in biology
as a species. The number of forms now considered as distinct
species is far beyond the usual conception of those who have not
made a special study of such matters. I have an old book in my
library, the tenth edition of the Systema Naturse, published by
Linngeus in 1758. This book treats of all the species of animals
known a little more than a century ago. In its eight hundred
and twenty-three pages some four thousand different kinds of
animals are named and briefly described. But for every one of
these enumerated by Linnaeus, more than one hundred kinds are
known to the modern naturalist, and the number of species still
unknown doubtless exceeds the number of those already recorded.
Every year for the last quarter of a century there has been pub-
lished in London a plump octavo volume known as the Zoological
Record. Each of these volumes, larger than the whole Systema

* An address delivered before the Chicago Institute, in a course on the Testimony of
Science in regard to Evolution.
vol. xxxvii. — 24-

3i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Naturae, contains the names of the species new to science added
to our lists during the year of which it treats ; and in the record
of each year we find the names of two or three times as many as
are mentioned in the whole Systema Naturae. Yet the field shows
no signs of exhaustion. As these volumes stand on the shelf
together, it is easy to see that the later volumes are the thickest,
and that the record for the present year is the largest of all. The
additional species named and described in 1889 are more than ten
thousand. Moreover, what is true of the increase of knowledge
in systematic zoology, is even more marked in the case of botany.
Such, then, is the variety of life on the globe — a variety of which
Linnaeus and his successors had never dared to dream.

And yet, great as this variety is, there are, after all, only a few
types of structure among all animals and plants — some three or
four or eight or ten general modes of development — all the rest
being minor variations from these few types.

It is even true that all life is but a series of modifications of a
single plan ; for all organisms are composed of cells, the essential
element of which is always a single substance — protoplasm. All
are governed by the same laws of development, reproduction, and
susceptibility to outside influences. Unity in life is therefore not
less a fact than is life's great diversity. In whatever way we
account for the diversity, the essential unity must not be forgot-
ten. The bonds of unity among organisms constitute what the
naturalist calls homology.

That these resemblances have some deep significance, no
thoughtful student of nature has ever doubted. What this sig-
nificance may be is the underlying question in that branch of
philosophy which has come to be known as evolution.

In the present discussion I shall take for- granted that answer
to these questions which is associated with the name of Darwin ;
and, as a student of the relations and distribution of animals, I
firmly believe that no answer to these questions fundamentally
different from his will ever be possible.

The essence of the Darwinian theory is this, that the various
species of the present day are all derived from pre-existing forms,
more or less unlike them ; that this derivation takes place through
the operation of natural laws — the law of heredity, the law of
response to external stimulus or environment, and the law less
clearly understood by which variations from ancestral types are
constantly produced; the "divine initiative" in the individual
which struggles against sameness and monotony. The constant
tendency of organisms to multiplication by geometric progression
in a world of limited extent, already apparently full, brings about
a constant struggle for existence among these organisms, and by
this struggle, we have the progressive adjustment of individuals

-EVOLUTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 315

to tlieir environment — an adjustment which is made more and
more complete by the ceaseless destruction of the unadjusted.
According to this theory, the * same causes which have produced
difference of species in the past must be still at work, and must
continue to produce similar differences in the future. To the
theory of derivation is opposed the old idea of " special creation."
But this theory of special creation has never had in science other
than a provisional existence. It was a mere name for a process
not understood. If each of the millions of species of animals and
plants living and extinct came about by a " special creation," then
special creation can not be an operation outside the limits of law.
It is simply the name given in ignorance to the law by which
species are produced. What has been done so many times must
be done in some uniform way. What this way is, the theory of
evolution professes in some degree to define.

The fact is, the theory of development gives the only clew by
which the naturalist can be guided in his work. If the mutual
affinities of species do not depend on the law of heredity, they are
unintelligible. They are impossible. If the variation of species
is really immutability in disguise, we can not trust our senses.
We are left to choose between some form of the development
theory and a hopeless unscientific agnosticism, content with the
surface facts, and ignorant of the laws of which these facts are
the expression.

I do not wish to-night to discuss either the general question of
evolution nor that special theory of the method of evolution
which is associated with the name of the master of modern zool-
ogy. I shall take evolution and Darwinism for granted, and con-
fine myself to a statement of certain facts and principles in the
science of zoogeography and to their bearing on the question of
the origin of species. There are many difficulties in bringing the
facts of this science down to the needs of concrete illustration.
A science so broad as to include all human history at once with
the history of every group of animated organisms can not well be
compressed into a discussion of a single hour. And with this I
may recall the additional difficulty, present in all discussions of
the subject of evolution, of distinguishing single illustrations
from arguments. Isolated cases of geographical variations in
species would not have great value as arguments for the develop-
ment theory were the cases really isolated. The force lies in this
fact, that these cases are typical ; that what may be said of one is
true of a thousand.

In like manner the full force of the laws of homology and he-
redity can only be felt when their effect is cumulative, as in the
mind of the anatomist who has followed each organ through its
protean disguises in a wide range of forms.

316 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Still, again, the force of the argument drawn from embryology
does not come from a knowledge of the changes in a single egg.
All these studies need the second premise, obtained by years of
comparison in different fields of investigation, that no case is iso-
lated. Without this premise, the argument would be incomplete.
The few cases of development or change which can be brought to
popular notice are simply illustrations and not proofs.

As Prof. Bergen has well said, "it is important that we
should understand that none of the kinds of evidence in favor of
evolution loses so much by being represented only by scattered
instances as the argument from distribution." And, conversely,
no argument is so strong when all the known facts are brought
into consideration together. The universal fact of the mutability
of species can be really understood or appreciated only by him by
whose eyes multitudes of species have been seen to change. To
the ordinary observer the species seems constant, just as the face
of a cliff seems constant. To the student of nature mutability is
everywhere. Just as the wind and rain and frost quietly but
surely change the face of a cliff, so do other forces of nature as
quietly but as surely change the face of a species.

And now we may notice that it was precisely this phase of the
subject, the relation of species to geography, which first attracted
the attention of both Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace.

Both these observers noticed that island life is neither strictly
like nor unlike the life of the nearest land, and that the degree of
difference varies with the degree of isolation. Both were led
from this fact to the theory of derivation, and to lay the greatest
stress on the progressive modification resulting from the struggle
for existence.

In the voyage of the Beagle, you remember, Mr. Darwin was
brought in contact with the singular fauna of the Galapagos Isl-
ands, that cluster of volcanic rocks which lies in the open sea
some six hundred miles west of the coast of Equador and Peru.
The sea birds of these islands are essentially the same as those of
the coast of Peru. So with most of the fishes. We can see how
this might well be, for both sea birds and fishes can readily pass
from the one region to the other. But the land birds, as well as
the reptiles, insects, and plants, are mostly peculiar to the islands.
The same species are found nowhere else. But other species very
much like them in all respects are found, and these all live along
the coast of Peru. In the Galapagos Islands, according to Dar-
win's notes, " there are twenty-six land birds ; of these, twenty-one
or perhaps twenty-three are ranked as distinct species, and would
commonly be assumed to have been here created ; yet the close
affinity of most of these birds to American species is manifest in
every character, in their habits, gestures, and tones of voice. So

EVOLUTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 317

it is with, the other animals and with a large proportion of the
plants. . . . The naturalist, looking at the inhabitants of these
volcanic islands in the Pacific, feels that he is standing on Ameri-
can land."

The question, then, is this : If these species have been created
as we find them on the Galapagos, why is it that they should all
be very similar in type to other animals, living under wholly dif-
ferent conditions, but on a coast not so very far away ? And
again, why are the animals and plants of another cluster of vol-
canic islands — the Cape "Verde Islands — similarly related to those
of the neighboring coast of Africa, and wholly unlike those of the
Galapagos ? If the animals were created to match their condi-
tions of life, then those of the Galapagos should be like those of
Cape Verde, the two archipelagoes being extremely alike in re-
spect to soil, climate, and physical surroundings. If the species
on the islands are products of separate acts . of creation, what is
there in the nearness of the coasts of Africa or Peru to influence
the act of creation so as to cause the island species to be, as it
were, echoes of those on shore ?

If, on the other hand, we should adopt the obvious suggestion
that both these clusters of islands have been colonized by immi-
grants from the mainland, the fact of uniformity of type is ac-
counted for, but what of the difference of species ? If the change
of conditions from continent to island may on the island cause
such great and permanent changes as to form new species from
the old, why may not like changes take place on the mainlands
as well as on the islands ? And if possible on the mainland of
South America, what evidence have we that species are perma-
nent anywhere ? May they not be constantly changing ? May
not what we now consider as distinct species be only the present
phase in the changing history of the series of forms which consti-
tutes the species ?

The study of these and many similar facts can lead to but one
conclusion :

These volcanic islands rose from the sea destitute of land life.
They were settled by the waifs of wind and of storm, birds and
insects blown from the shore by trade winds, lizards carried on
drift-logs and floating vegetation. Of these waifs few came per-
haps in any one year, and few perhaps of those who came made
the islands a home ; yet, as the centuries passed on, suitable inhab-
itants were found. That this is not fancy we know, for we have
the knowledge of many similar transfers. Every one who has
approached our eastern shores by sea in the face of a storm will
realize this. Hosts of land birds — sparrows, warblers, chickadees,
and even woodpeckers — are carried out by the wind, a few fall-
ing exhausted on the decks of ships, a few others falling on

3i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

off-shore islands, like the Bermudas, the remainder drowned in

the sea.

Of the immigrants to the Galapagos the majority doubtless

die and leave no sign. A few will remain, multiply, and take pos-
session, and their descendants are thus native to the islands. But,
isolated from the great mass of their species and bred under new
surroundings, these island birds come to differ from their parents
and still more from the great mass of the land species of which
their ancestors were members. Separated from these, their indi-
viduality would assert itself. They would assume with new envi-
ronment new friends, new foes, new conditions. They would de-
velop qualities peculiar to themselves— qualities intensified by
isolation. " Migration/' says Dr. Coues, " holds species true ;
localization lets them slip/' This would be more exactly the
truth should we say that localization holds peculiarities true;
migration lets them slip. Local peculiarities disappear by wide
association and are intensified when individuals of similar
peculiarities are kept together. Should later migrations of the
original land species come to the islands, the individuals surviv-
ing would in time form distinct species, or more likely, mixing
with the mass of those already arrived, their special characters
would be lost in those of the majority.

The Galapagos, first studied by Mr. Darwin, serve to us only
as an illustration. The same problems come up in one guise or
another in all questions of geographical distribution, whether of
continent or island.

The relations of the fauna of different regions are intimate in
direct relation to the ease by which barriers may be crossed. Dis-
tinctness is in direct proportion to isolation. What is true in this
regard of the fauna of any region as a whole is likewise true of
any of its individual species. The degree of resemblance among
individuals is in direct proportion to the freedom of their move-
ment, and variation within what we call specific limits is again
proportionate to the barriers which prevent equal and perfect dif-
fusion.

The various divisions or realms into which the surface of the
earth may be divided on the basis of the differences in animal life
each has its boundary in the obstacles offered to the spread of the
average animal. Each species broadens its range as far as it can.
It struggles knowingly or not to overcome the barriers of ocean
or river, of mountain or plain, of woodland or desert, of moist-
ure or drought, of cold or heat, of lack of food or abundance of
enemies, whatever these barriers may be. Were it not for these
barriers, every species would become what only man now is, prac-
tically cosmopolitan. Man is pre-eminently the barrier-crossing
animal. The degree of hindrance offered by any barrier to the

EVOLUTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 319

extension of species is only relative. That which constitutes an
impassable barrier to some gronps is a high-road to others. The
river which opposes the passage of the monkey or the cat would be
the king's highway to the frog or the turtle. The waterfall which
checks the ascent of the fish would be the chosen home of the
ouzel.

In spite of the great variety among the barriers existing on the
earth, we may divide the globe roughly into five realms or areas
of distribution, having their boundaries in the sea or in differences
of climate. One or two of these realms are sharply defined ; the
others are surrounded by a broad fringe of debatable ground,
which forms a region of transition to some other zone.

The largest of these realms is the holarctic realm, which com-
prises nearly all of Asia, Europe, and North America, the arctic
and north temperate zones. The north temperate zone has prac-
tically a continuous climate, the chief variations being in eleva-
tion and rainfall. The close union of Alaska to Siberia forms an
almost unbroken land area from the eastern coast of America
around to western Europe. To the south the species increase in
number and variety ; the arctic regions are remarkable for what
they lack, yet the general character of the life is almost unbroken
over this vast district. Alfred Kussel Wallace refers to this unity
of northern life in these words :

" When an Englishman travels by the nearest sea route from
Great Britain to northern Japan, he passes by countries very
unlike his own both in aspect and in natural productions. The
sunny isles of the Mediterranean, the sands and date-palms of
Egypt, the arid rocks of Aden, the cocoa-groves of Ceylon, the
tiger-haunted jungles of Malacca and Singapore, the fertile plains
and volcanic peaks of Luzon, the forest-clad mountains of For-
mosa, and the bare hills of China pass successively in review, until
after a circuitous journey of thirteen thousand miles he finds him-
self at Hakodadi in Japan. He is now separated from his start-
ing-point by an almost endless succession of plains and mountains,
arid deserts or icy plateaus ; yet, when he visits the interior of
the country, he sees so many familiar natural objects that he can
hardly help fancying he is close to his home. He finds the woods
and fields tenante'd by tits, hedge-sparrows, wrens, wagtails, larks,
redbreasts, thrushes, buntings, and house-sparrows, some abso-
lutely identical with our own feathered friends, others so closely
resembling them that it requires a practiced ornithologist to tell
the difference. . . . There are also, of course, many birds and in-
sects which are quite new and peculiar, but these are by no means
so numerous or conspicuous as to remove the general impression
of a wonderful resemblance between the productions of such
remote islands as Britain and Yesso " (Island Life).

32o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A journey to the southward from Britain or Japan or Illinois,
or any point within the holarctic realm, would show the success-
ive changes in the character of .life, though gradual, to be more
rapid. The barrier of frost which keeps the fauna of the tropics
from encroaching on the northern regions once crossed, we come
on the multitude of animals whose life depends on sunshine, the
characteristic forms of the neotropical realm.

The neotropical realm includes South America, the West In-
dies, and the hot coast-lands of Mexico and Central America. To
the northward, this realm overlaps the holarctic in the transition
regions of Sonora, Arizona, Texas, and Florida ; but to the south-
ward the barrier of the broad ocean keeps it practically distinct
from all others. The richness of this fauna in forms and species
makes the great forests of the Amazon the dream of the natural-
ist. Joaquin Miller gives a vivid picture of the life of tropical

America :

Birds hung and swung, green-robed and red,

Or drooped in curved lines dreamily,

Rainbows reversed from tree to tree,

Or sang — low hanging overhead,

Sang soft as if they sang and slept,

Sang low like some far waterfall,

And took no note of us at all.

Corresponding to the neotropical realm in position, but with a
less rich and varied fauna, is the Ethiopian realm. This includes
the greater part of Africa, merging gradually on the north into
the holarctic realm, through the transition regions of Barbary,
Italy, and Spain. In monkeys, herbivorous mammals, and reptiles,
this region is wonderfully rich. In variety of birds and fishes the
neotropical region far surpasses it.

The Indian realm comprises southern Asia and the neighbor-
ing islands. Its rich fauna has much in common with that of
Africa, and it is, moreover, surrounded by transition districts
which lead on the north to the holarctic, and on the west to the
Ethiopian. On the east the Indian realm is lost in the islands of
Polynesia, which represent each one its own degree of transition
and isolation.

The Australian realm of Australia and its islands is more iso-
lated than any of the others. It shows a singular development of
low types of life, as though in the progress of evolution this con-
tinent had been left a whole geological age behind the others. It
is certain that, could the closely competing fauna of the holarctic
or Indian realms have been able to invade Australia, the dominant
mammals and birds of that region would not have been marsu-
pials and parrots. In the words of Prof. Bergen, "the antiquated
forms of life are found in abundance only in regions where they

EVOLUTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 321

have been long shut off from communication with the great land
masses." The rapid multiplication which certain holarctic ani-
mals and plants have shown when transported to the Australian
realm, demonstrates what might have taken place if impassable
barriers had not previously shut them out.

Each of these great realms may be indefinitely subdivided into
provinces and sections, for there is no end to the possibility of
analysis. No township or school district has exactly the same
animals or plants as any other ; and, finally, in ultimate analysis
no two animals or plants are alike. Modification comes with the
growth of each new individual, and steadily increases with the
individual's separation in time or space from the parent stock.
Moreover, we observe apparent anomalies of distribution in every
realm : here appears an animal, there a plant, which seems to have
a character or a place which it ought not to hold. To the result
of unexpected or chance crossing of barriers these apparent anom-
alies in geographical distribution are due. Anomalies in distri-
bution, like anomalies in evolution, would cease to be such if we
knew all the facts and circumstances of their previous history.
The present range of the tapir in Farther India and in the north-
ern part of South America, two widely separated regions, is at
first sight an anomaly of distribution. This anomaly disappears
when we know that formerly the tapir ranged over the holarctic
realm and became gradually extinct with the changing climate.
The bones of a tapir, much like one of the South American species,
are found in recent clays in Indiana (Ellettsville), and similar re-
mains exist in France, in China, and in Burmah. The isolated,
unexterminated colonies are now left at the extremes of the ani-
mal's former range, and these colonies at present constitute what
we call distinct species.

The more extended are our studies the fewer are the anomalies
which arrest our attention, and the fewer are the distinctive or
characteristic forms. There is little foundation for the current
belief that each species of animal has originated in the area it
now occupies, for in many cases our knowledge of paleontology
shows the reverse of this to be true. Even more incorrect is the
belief that each species occupies the district or the surroundings
best fitted for its habitation. This is manifest in the fact of
the extraordinary fertility and persistence shown by many kinds
of animals and plants in taking possession of new lands, which
have become, through the voluntary or involuntary interference
of man, open to their invasion. Facts of this sort are the " enor-
mous increase of rabbits and pigs in Australia and New Zealand,
of horses and cattle in South America, and of the sparrow in
North America, though in none of these cases are the animals
natives of the countries in which they thrive so well " ("Wallace).

322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The persistent spreading of European weeds to the exclusion of
our native plants is a fact too well known to every farmer in
America, The constant movement westward of the white- weed
and the Canada thistle marks the steady deterioration of our
grass -fields. Especially noteworthy has been this change in
Australia and New Zealand. In New Zealand the weeds of
Europe, toughened by centuries of struggle, have won an easy
victory over the native plants. Edward Wakefield, in his history
of New Zealand, says that " many animals and birds acquire
peculiarities in the new country which would indeed astonish
those accustomed to them in the old. They usually run to a
much larger size and breed oftener. They also take to strange
kinds of food. Birds deemed granivorous at home become in-
sectivorous here, and vice versa. Some learn the habits of the
native species. Skylarks imitate the native wagtail, and may
often be seen perching on fences and telegraph wires. They
sing in the night-time, too, a thing unheard of in the old country,
and doubtless acquired from the nocturnal habits of New Zealand
birds."

The European house-fly in New Zealand has completely extir-
pated the large blue-bottle fly which was formerly a source of
great annoyance to the settlers. An account is given of a farmer
who filled a bottle with house-flies and carried them eighty miles
into the country, liberating them one by one, in the vicinity of his
sheep-folds, in order to let them take the place of the native flies.

It is said that red clover would not grow in New Zealand un-
til bumble-bees were introduced to fertilize its flowers. "Wake-
field estimates that the introduction of these large wild bees has
been worth five million dollars to the farmers in New Zealand.

Dr. Hooker states that, in New Zealand, " the cow-grass has
taken possession of the road-sides ; dock- and water-cress choke
the rivers, the sow-thistle is spread all over the country, growing
luxuriantly up to six thousand feet ; white clover in the mount-
ain districts displaces the native grasses," and the native (Maori)
saying is, ' ' As the white man's rat has driven away the native
rat, as the European fly drives away our own, and the clover
kills our fern, so will the Maoris disappear before the white man
himself" (E. L. Youmans).

As among some characteristic survivals of the Celts in Hampshire, England,
Mr. T. W. Shore mentions the round huts of the charcoal-burners, resembling
those which were common in the Celtic period; the art cf osier-working or
basket-making ; the mounds on which many ancient churches are built, which
were probably sacred sites of those people ; and the peculiar orientation of many
churches twenty degrees north of east, which is supposed to have been derived
from the pagan Celtic reverence for the May-day sunrise.

CONCERNING CORPORATION LAW. 323

CONCERNING CORPORATION LAW.

By AMOS G. WARNER,

PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL SCIENCE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA..

IF ten Americans desire to engage in ten distinct business enter-
prises, it is conceivable that they will incorporate ten joint-
stock companies, and each, belong to all of them. While other
countries have granted the privilege of existence to private cor-
porations with extreme caution, if not reluctance, the many Legis-
latures of the United States have vied with one another in making
it easy for them to be born. To adapt words heretofore applied
to another matter : " The whole system of the free incorporation
of private companies in the United States, with all its excellences
and all its defects, is thoroughly characteristic of the American
people. It grew up untrammeled by any theory as to how it ought
to grow, and developed with mushroom rapidity."

We have no " system " of corporation law in this country ; we
have, instead, a tangled mass of statutes, which is yet further
amended and ensnarled at the recurring sessions of our various
Legislatures. We have a still larger mass of judicial decisions,
which all the ingenuity and industry of the many writers on the
subject can never quite systematize and reduce to order. Even
when this feat may be approximately accomplished for a moment,
the growth of judge-made law is so rapid that any treatise is
speedily out of date. A redeeming feature of the situation is that
the mimetic tendencies of our States lead the new ones to follow
the examples set by the older, and thus a certain degree of uni-
formity is introduced into the different codes of law. The many
sources of legislation also make it possible that a large amount
of experimenting may be done without danger to the country
as a whole. The immediate and disastrous consequences of the
Granger railroad laws were thus limited to a few States in the
Northwest, while their more general influence, as examples of
what can but should not be done, has been of use to the whole
country. One railroad president has gone so far as to say that in
their results these laws have made a solution of the railroad prob-
lem possible.

The diversity of regulation has two effects — one commend-
able, the other not. The first is that when companies do busi-
ness in all or many of the States at once, and in any line, like
that of insurance, where ascertained corporate soundness is the
best advertisement, a good code of laws in any one State makes
the fact that a company does business there a helpful recom-
mendation. The Massachusetts law regulating insurance is an

3 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

example of this. Its stringent requirements do not hamper the
companies of that State, but are, on the other hand, an introduc-
tion and a guarantee that distinctly aid the Massachusetts com-
panies when they carry their operations into other common-
wealths. The same influence is apparently at work in the case of
mortgage investment companies ; a few of the "best established
among them priding themselves on complete and ostentatious
compliance with the rigid but wise laws regarding publicity of
accounts.

The second effect of the diverse rules regarding corporations
in the different States operates in an exactly opposite direction.
Since it is quite well established that a corporation may incor-
porate in one State and do all its business in another or others,
there is a tendency for dishonest companies to take out charters
in that State which bothers them with the fewest restrictions. A
charter granted by the Legislature of Pennsylvania incorporating
a company to do business in any State except Pennsylvania was
held to be void; the Kansas court holding that no interstate
comity permitted one commonwealth "to spawn corporations"
upon other States which it would not allow to operate within its
own borders. But the same thing is accomplished if a State, by
a general act, permits companies to organize without specifying
the place of business. Under some laws one corporation is not
allowed to hold the stock of another ; but, on the other hand, there
are States that will willingly incorporate a company for the ex-
press purpose of holding the stocks of other companies. This is
a very convenient fact when a " trust " is to be formed. A State
noted for the laxity of its laws in this regard can serve as the
birthplace of any number of companies. At present, according
to Mr. W. W. Cook, " the snug harbor of roaming and piratical
corporations is the little State of West Virginia. Under its laws
a corporation may be created for any purpose for which a part-
nership may be formed, except speculation in land ; the capital
stock may be five millions of dollars or less ; there is no tax ex-
cept fifty dollars annually ; residents or non-residents, aliens or
citizens, may be directors; the principal place of business and
directors' or stockholders' meetings may be in or out of the State ;
there is no liability of directors or stockholders except on unpaid
subscriptions, and no public reports are required. . . . The incor-
poration of companies for the purpose of enabling them to do all
their business in other States seems to be one of the chief indus-
tries of West Virginia." States can only guard themselves against
the invasion of hordes of these irresponsible artificial persons by
strict statutory regulation of " foreign corporations," but for the
most part they have not taken any general precautions of this
character.

CONCERNING CORPORATION LAW. 325

Besides the defects in the corporation law of the United States
which originate in its formless heterogeneity, there are other spe-
cific evils quite generally present, which it seems not impossible
to lessen. It is the purpose of this rJaper to present suggestions,
drawn from the experience of this and other countries, regarding
four points that seem to be of strategic importance in the reform
of corporation law :

1. The prevention of "frauds in founding" (Grundungs-
schwindeln). It is a suggestive fact that we have in English no
recognized equivalent of the German word here parenthetically
introduced. Neither is the English term " promoters " commonly
used by American writers. Our examination of the problems of
corporate management has been so superficial that we must make
or borrow a nomenclature when we wish to discuss the evils con-
nected immediately with the creation of companies. Yet a large
portion of the evils connected with the existence of corporations
originate at just this point. Men organize companies, at times,
for the sole purpose of unloading upon them an unprofitable busi-
ness. Let the experience of Eastern capitalists with Western
mining stocks be put in evidence, and no one will question this
statement. Mining companies with a nominal capital of fifty
million dollars that have never declared a dividend are not un-
common ; and very frequently the stock of mammoth companies
sells at one cent on the dollar for some time before it becomes
worthless. But the experience in mining is only an extreme case
of what takes place in many departments of industry.

In England, turning thither solely because the facts have
there been made accessible and have not in this country, it is
found that certain men make a business of acting as " promoters."
They are skilled in the writing of prospectuses of companies, and
know all the arts by which stock can be sold. They devote their
energies especially to small companies and small investors. For
a time their activity was turned largely to organizing " single-
ship companies," the shares of which could be placed among
country parsons, serving- women, and other classes of small in-
vestors likely to know very little about commerce, and therefore
likely to believe anything a well-printed " prospectus " might tell
them. Many of these small companies never went so far as to
build even a single ship, but enough ships were built by them to
materially increase the number of " ocean tramps," and to call for
much adverse criticism from the committee appointed "to in-
vestigate the loss of life at sea." The " commission appointed to
inquire into the depression of trade " also had much to say of the
influence of the creation of such great numbers of limited liability
companies, of the direct loss to investors, and of the general de-
moralization of trade resulting from it. In fact, many English

326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

investigators have laid great emphasis on the idea that over-
speculation is due largely to the formation of joint-stock com-
panies that have no real excuse for existence except the further-
ance of the personal aims of the " promoters." It is a little curi-
ous that, among the three hundred real or alleged causes of " hard
times/' brought to the attention of our National Bureau of Labor,
the reckless creation of limited liability concerns was not men-
tioned. In 1886 a writer estimated that there were afloat in the
English stock market fully two billion pounds of speculative
securities, of which at least a fourth were mere gambling count-
ers. It is to such a state of things that a recent law review at-
tributes the fact that real investors now shun the stock exchange,
and speculative operators are compelled to live on the plan of
" dog eat dog."

The stock exchanges of this country have had a somewhat
similar experience, and the self-limiting nature of the speculation
fever is indicated by the fall in value of a place in the Chicago
Stock Exchange of three thousand dollars within a few years.
As yet few steps have been taken to restrain the incorporation of
absurd or fraudulent companies. Wasteful and semi-piratical
paralleling of railroad lines is encouraged ; incipient railroads
are preyed upon by construction companies ; companies of all
sorts are bound hand and foot by the contracts entered into by
an initial board of directors, and are brought into existence that
they may be so bound.

None of the leading commercial countries seem to be quite
satisfied with the attempts they have made to remedy such evils
as these. Germany allows definite payment from the corporation
funds for the trouble and expense properly incurred by the men
who organize a joint-stock company, but guards very carefully
against the illicit gains too often made by "promoters." The pro-
visions for registering new companies are especially stringent in
all cases where a private business or factory is to be sold to a cor-
poration organized to buy and manage it. The fullest possible
publicity is sought regarding all the initial acts of a new com-
pany, and some matters where the first decision must be final are
reserved for a second meeting of the stockholders. Shares may
run either to " bearer " or to a particular name. The latter can
not be issued for a less amount than fifty thaler per share and the
former for less than one hundred thaler per share. By forbidding
the issue of shares of less amount; it is hoped to make investors
consider more carefully the subject of investing, and to prevent
the floating of small shares in worthless companies among the
class of very small investors, who are most likely to be swindled.
Some companies designed to engage in what are considered espe-
cially hazardous enterprises are forbidden to issue shares of less

CONCERNING CORPORATION LAW. 327

than one thousand marks each. The opinion of the United
States consul-general at Frankfort-on-the-Main is that all these
restrictions have not availed to prevent a regular "incorpora-
tion fever," from which he expects 'very disastrous results ere

long.

In France there has been some agitation in favor of returning
to the old system in operation till' 1863 of " special concessions r
by which the right to organize a joint-stock company was a favor
granted by the Government, and not a right conferred by general
statute. The weight of authority and influence is, however,
against this retrograde movement. Leroy-Beaulieu, in consid-
ering it, recalls the fact that the prefect of police of Louis Phi-
lippe refused Leclaire permission to organize the great profit-
sharing company which was afterward established with signal
success and which still bears his name. Leroy-Beaulieu adds,
" We can bear the guardianship of law, but not of government."
Certainly there should be no wish in this country to go back to
the old system of special legislative charter, under which men
made a business of lobbying for charters which were afterward
sold to the highest bidder. One of the things upon which we
can especially congratulate ourselves is of having got rid of this
old source of legislative corruption, which gave us our wild-cat
banks, and numberless other reasons for dreading it.

Our own experience may help us in dealing with frauds in
founding if we will stop to consider the difference between the
old State banks and our present national banks. The greater
security of the latter comes largely from detailed legislation
which prescribes the conditions under which artificial persons,
designed for the transaction of a given business, will be permitted
to be born. What we need at present as regards miscellaneous
corporations is fuller knowledge of all the facts connected with
their history, and especially of their genesis. Massachusetts is
the only State that has collected statistics of private corporations
at all comparable with those of the English register of joint-stock
companies. Most of the States provide that all new corporations
shall register with more or less fullness ; but this is either a mere
formality negligently performed, or else its sole object is to bring
the corporation within reach of the tax-gatherer. The record is
usually not published, or in some cases, as in Ohio, there is no way
to trace in the published returns the outcome of the enterprises
whose beginning is chronicled. In fact, our greatest need in pre-
venting frauds in founding, as in preventing most other evils con-
nected with corporate management, is completer publicity, and, as
one result of this, fuller statistical data.

2. The proper regulation of the borrowing power. It has
been stated on good authority, but is not true, that the evils of

328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

corporate management of property began when it was found that
corporations could borrow. Abuse of the borrowing power is cer-
tainly a very common sin among artificial persons, and especially
among American railways. When the holders of a small amount
of stock, only partially paid in, build a road with borrowed money,
the limitation of their liability shields them from personal loss ;
while their power of voting themselves salaries, and of concluding
profitable contracts either with themselves or friends, gives them
great opportunities for personal profit irrespective of the success
of the road. The last report of the statistician of the Interstate
Commerce Commission shows that many of the minor and branch
lines of the country have been built wholly with borrowed money
—that is, they are bonded to their full cost value. Many of the
longer and independent roads are bonded at half to three fourths
of their entire capitalization. The total bonded debt of the rail-
roads of the United States is actually greater than the total of
their share capital ; and this, although the amount of water in the
stocks is much larger than in the bonds. As the possession of the
majority of the stock gives control over all the capital invested
in the roads, it follows, from the figures given in the statistician's
report, that the ownership of 81,932,234,128, or 2377 per cent of the
total railway capital, insures complete direction over $8,129,787,731
of railway capital, or 136,883*53 miles of line. Massachusetts law
forbids the bonding of a road to an amount exceeding the total of
paid-up share capital, and this regulation is being introduced by
other States. To forbid the issue of bonds that must be sold below
par has been found to limit unsatisfactorily legitimate enterprises,
but the effect of such a regulation is thought to be good if applied
with care to specific classes of corporations. As to what is best
in this matter, as in those that have gone before, we need more
definite information.

3. How to secure a more representative and more responsible
directorate. In regard to the election of directors it may be said
that one device to prevent the tyranny of a majority of the stock-
holders has been frequently tried, and another frequently recom-
mended. The former plan is to limit the number of votes which
any one person may cast. In Massachusetts no person except a
municipal corporation can vote over one tenth of the capital stock
of a railroad corporation. The trouble with this plan, and the
variations of it that have been tried, is that evasion is too easy.
Dummy stockholders are very easy to manufacture, and it is diffi-
cult to unmask them. The much-recommended device for accom-
plishing a similar purpose is that of cumulative voting. By this
device a shareholder is allowed to cast as many votes for any one
director as the number of his shares, multiplied by the number of
directors to be elected at the given time. Nebraska has a provision

CONCERNING CORPORATION LAW. 329

of this sort in her Constitution, but the domestic corporations in
the State have not had a sufficient development to thoroughly test
its influence. It will probably do but little good to secure minori-
ty representation on the board of directors, unless the laws are so
drawn as to limit the tyranny of a majority of the directors. The
State of Maryland and the city of Baltimore have derived but
scant benefit from their privilege of appointing a minority of the
directors of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. But if minority
representation be backed by the proper legislation governing the
actions of the directors, there is no doubt that it is an efficient
way of checking the misdeeds of stock majorities. .

In Germany there is a second body chosen, under special rules,
by the stockholders, known as the board of supervisors (Auf-
sichtsrath). This board has the fullest possible power of inves-
tigation and report, but very little power of any other kind.
Its usefulness must obviously depend on the rules governing
its selection, since, if so chosen as to have interests wholly in
common with the directors, it would be of no use as a check
upon them.

Turning to the question of responsibility, we find that in this
country the principle of limited liability is almost invariably the
same for the director as for an ordinary stockholder, though the
director is personally liable for all illegal or unauthorized acts.
There has been a great deal of agitation of late for the introduc-
tion of the French plan of protecting ordinary stockholders by
the grant of limited liability, but leaving the directors liable for
the corporate debts to the full amount of their respective fortunes.
The experience of France with these societes en commandite has
proved that responsible men can be found to manage any legiti-
mate enterprise under this plan. A recent English act permits
the formation of such companies in England, but the companies
decline to adopt this principle under mere permissive legislation.
To make this form of organization mandatory upon certain select-
ed classes of our corporations is an experiment that ought to be
tried, and is much better than going back to the old plan of un-
limited liability for stockholders, as California has done.

Under the head of the responsibility of the directors must also
be treated the question of the relation of the corporation to its
employe's. Albert Fink one day called together the presidents of
certain roads he was trying to organize for their mutual good,
and told the gentlemen who responded to his call that he wanted
them all to resign. He further explained that this was advisable
in order that their general freight agents might thereafter be
nominally, as then actually, in charge of the several properties.
The Interstate Commerce Association went down very largely be-
cause the " gentlemen " who were partners to the agreement could

vol. xxxvii. — 25

33o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not or would not control their subordinates. Part of this alleged
powerlessness is no doubt assumed that the head may escape re-
sponsibility for the action of the members, but part of it is quite
certainly genuine. The development in bulk of the ponderous
artificial beings has exceeded the development of their nervous sys-
tems, and the monsters can only sprawl and plunge instead of go-
ing forward to a definite end. This condition, however, is progress-
ively cured by automatic processes. We have as yet no economic
treatise on corporation by-laws in general, but well-recognized
rules are developing for the organization of specific classes of cor-
porations.

In the narrower view the relation of the corporation to its em-
ploye's is merely a question of wages, of strikes, and lock-outs, and
of relative losses from these disturbances to employers and em-
ployed. The statistics of strikes and lock-outs collected by our
National Bureau of Labor show that almost the only industry in
which the losses inflicted by strikes are heavier on the employers
than on the men is that of transportation. The undetermined
losses inflicted upon the general public by this class of strikes
must be also especially large. Two ways of dealing with these
evils have been tried in Europe, either of which seems to be a par-
tial remedy, but neither of which seems likely to commend itself
to Americans. The first is to impose a heavy per diem fine or
even forfeiture of charter upon any corporation that fails to per-
form its public functions. This forces the company to make terms
of some kind with the strikers. When strikers in this country
have tried to secure the forfeiture of charters through the courts,
on the ground that the companies did not discharge their public
functions, they have met with little success, though in some cases
a street-car company has thought it necessary to insist on running
a single car each day in order to secure its charter against at-
tack on this ground. The second European method of guarding
the public against the loss of strikes is to make it a misdemeanor
for any employe* to quit work without giving (say) five days' no-
tice. The trial of this method has been advocated in this country,
but it may be doubted if our system of police could be relied on
to enforce such a law, or if, at the critical time, public opinion
would indorse it. That the great corporations see the necessity
of acting in the matter, so as to avert the danger that continually
hangs over them and the public, is seen in the rapid development
of relief associations and other devices for making the position
of the employe* more stable than it has ever yet been in this coun-
try. The President of the Union Pacific Road has advocated the
withholding from subordinate officials of the arbitrary power of
dismissing the men, the object being to make the men an integral
part of the corporation, and to give them security in their posi-

CONCERNING CORPORATION LAW. 331

tions during good conduct, and a prospect of promotion if espe-
cially efficient. The problems that our Government must con-
front in the matter of civil-service reform are also to be dealt with
by our corporations, and the conditions are enough alike so that
the experience of each may serve for the guidance of both.

4. Adequate publicity of corporate transactions. The need of
thorough publicity of corporation accounts has been already
dwelt on at some length. Nearly all the abuses to which corpo-
rate management of property is liable originate and wax mighty
only when concealed. On the other hand, secrecy, even when it
does not cloak abuses, is commonly suspected of doing so. Most
of the unreasoning and unreasonable attacks on corporations have
been made when those in charge of the corporations insisted on
the privilege of keeping their affairs entirely to themselves. The
advantages of business secrecy to the individual business man
who practices it are abundantly manifest, but its advantages to
the public at large, while also manifest, are countervailed by very
serious disadvantages. Experience seems to have demonstrated
quite conclusively that a being at once so vulnerable and so pow-
erful as a corporation can not afford to keep its affairs entirely to
itself, and if it could afford to do so the public can not afford to
let it. There is said to be a strong tendency toward " socialism "
in this wresting of business secrets from the great managers of
the world's industries, and bringing the most private of business
transactions to the bar of public opinion. Many will no doubt
answer that " the charge is true, and we glory in its truth." Many
more will be inclined to say, with the present writer, that, while
this objection should be given its due force, it has not nearly
force enough to overrule the strong necessities of the case. The
chief danger that legitimate enterprises have to fear from com-
plete publicity is that of overtaxation. The wealth of the cor-
porations lying fully exposed to public view, it is so easy for the
politician to fill the public coffers from that source that we
already find certain classes of corporations driven out of certain
States by excessive taxation. But it may be doubted whether tax-
ation is as likely to be excessive when the state of a company's ac-
counts is definitely known, as when the politician and his constitu-
ents are free to draw upon their imaginations for the amount of
wealth in the corporate coffers. In other words, it seems probable
that in this country, as yet, we have less to fear from willful injus-
tice than from mutual misunderstandings begotten of secrecy on
the one hand, and suspicion on the other. European countries are
distinctly ahead of us in this matter. They have by no means
solved all the problems connected with the corporate manage-
ment of property, but they have at least collected more of the
data that will make a solution possible.

332

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

When, in 1873, Adolph Wagner read before the German Verein
fiir Socialpolitik an elaborate paper on joint-stock companies, he
made many suggestions as to the reform of corporation law. But
he concluded by defending the thesis that, while the reform of
corporation law was indispensable, this alone, however perfectly
accomplished, could not suffice to eliminate the evils of corporate
management of property ; he contended that corporations must
continue to be mischievous until they are restricted to a narrower
field of activity than that now occupied by them ; that the state,
in its various branches, must assume control of those enterprises
that are of necessity monopolies.

To the interminable discussion recalled by the name of Wag-
ner and the mention of his thesis it is here desired to contribute
but a single suggestion. Spencer and others dwell always upon
the distinction between " compulsory co-operation " through the
state, which is said to be characteristic of a " militant regime"
and " voluntary co-operation " through private associations, which
is said to be the proper thing under an " industrial regime." ISTow,
is it not true that the distinction between these two kinds of " co-
operation " is fading out ? Co-operation can be wholly " volun-
tary " only when isolation is a possible alternative. Is not indus-
trial isolation becoming almost as impossible as political isola-
tion ? Co-operation through the state is becoming less and less
" compulsory " in the old significance of the term, because it is
becoming more and more possible to choose what government we
will live under. This comes from increased facilities, both physi-
cal and legal, for moving from one state to another. Formerly,
a man must obey the state under which he was born ; his " co-
operation " with it was, indeed, compulsory. Now, expatriation
is a comparatively simple and pleasant alternative to obedience.
States and nations are coming to compete with each other for
desirable citizens, as producers of services or commodities for-
merly competed with each other for purchasers. There can be
no doubt that Bismarck's hand was less heavy upon Germany
because so many of her citizens emigrated, and so many more
of them might have emigrated to this or other countries. Within
the States and cities of our own republic we see our Legislatures
and town councils continually coerced by considerations of at-
tracting or retaining desirable classes of citizens. It is easier to
escape from the power of the Legislature of Pennsylvania than
from the influence of the Pennsylvania Railroad ; it is easier to
get beyond the reach of the tax-gatherers of all our States than
to cease to pay tribute to the Standard Oil Company or to the
anthracite coal pool. The point may be restated thus: The
^coming servitude" to which we are advancing through the
increasing dominance of the state will be modified by the power

INSECT PESTS OF THE HOUSE. 333

of the individual to choose what state he will serve. On the
other hand, industrial co-operation, in its broadest sense, is be-
coming more and more compulsory ; the distinction, therefore,
between "voluntary" and "involuntary" "co-operation" is of
ever-lessening importance.

-+++-

INSECT PESTS OF THE HOUSE.

By Miss MAEGAEETTE W. BEOOKS.

THE various insects which infest the dwelling have been from
time immemorial a trial to careful housekeepers. Just as out
of doors the gardener is constantly employed in protecting plants
of all kinds from the ravages of insects, so in the house there is a
perpetual warfare carried on against these indoor pests. Some eat
holes in our clothes, others destroy carpets and hangings, while
still others are attracted by the food in our pantries and store-
rooms.

Unless one has watched the habits of insects and studied their
development, it is hard to realize that in their mode of growth they
differ from the other animals with which we are familiar. By
some it is supposed that an insect grows as a bird or a cat grows
— that is, by imperceptible increase in size, with no marked change
in form. With this idea it is not strange that a tiny fly should be
thought a young fly that will gradually grow bigger, or that a
large fly should be supposed to have lived some time to have at-
tained such size. It is a fact fairly well understood that moths
and butterflies pass through several changes between the egg and
the perfect insect, and that the caterpillar, or worm, as it is more
often called, seen feeding in our gardens, or crawling over side-
walks or fences in search of a convenient spot in which to under-
go its transformations, will before long assume a totally differ-
ent appearance ; it is not so generally known, however, that in
the larger number of insects the change is nearly if not quite as
great.

Among the insects which infest our houses we find representa-
tives of most of the various orders of insects, and a study of these
forms alone would prove of interest and value. Their habits are
well known to the housekeeper, and so in many cases is their ap-
pearance in one or more stages ; but a history of their life from the
egg to the perfect insect is still a mystery to many people, and it
is to these that the following pages may be of interest. In this
article attention is called only to the more common insect pests of
the house.

Clothes-Moth (Tinea pellionella). — One of the commonest of

334 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

household pests is this little moth. Most housekeepers are famil-
iar with the different stages of its growth, and all are aware
of the fact that it is not the little delicate silvery moth that does
the damage, except indirectly by laying its eggs in our woolen
garments.

The moth, measuring less than half an inch across its spread
wings, easily makes its way through the smallest crevices, and
unless care is taken in the spring and summer we may find gar-
ments that have been
carefully laid away in
boxes and drawers, as
well as clothes hanging
in closets, are infested
by this creature. As a
general rule, the worm
deb a seems to prefer partial-

Fig. 1.— Clothes-Moth, a, the moth (natural size) ; b, larva ; ly worn and Soiled gar-
c, case ; d, pupa (b, c, and d are enlarged).* n , n

ments to new cloth.

Early in the spring garments should be well beaten and
brushed to dislodge the moths or any eggs that may have been
deposited in the folds of the cloth, and then hung in the air and
sun for a while.

When possible, garments should be folded in paper, leaving no
chance for the moth to enter ; large paper bags being convenient
for this purpose. Camphor-wood or red-cedar chests are valuable
in protecting articles which can not easily be wrapped in paper, as
the odor of these woods is disagreeable to the moth ; and when
these are not to be had, oil of cedar poured on paper, which is then
rolled up so that the oil shall not grease the garments, will make
an ordinary box moth-proof. These rolls of paper should be scat-
tered through the box and should be renewed two or three times
during the spring and summer. It is said that black pepper or
whole cloves sprinkled among woolen clothes will prevent the
moth from depositing its eggs, as will also pieces of tallow
wrapped in paper, and the odor of carbolic acid, turpentine, or
benzine is very offensive to the moth. Camphor, as is well
known, is beneficial in keeping away moths, but should never be
placed near seal-skin, as it causes this fur to change color, show-
ing streaks of gray or yellow. The great secret in taking care of
furs is said to be frequent and thorough beating, the furs being
kept in close closets lined with tar-paper.

It has been said that the odor of tobacco is disagreeable, but in
the experience of some it has seemed rather to attract than to re-

* Figs. 1, 5, and 6 are from Our Common Insects, by Prof. A. S. Packard, and we are
indebted to the kindness of the author for permission to use them.

INSECT PESTS OF THE HOUSE. 335

pel the moths. In more than one case it was found that clothes
belonging to men using no tobacco were free from the attacks of
moths, while in the pockets of -those who smoked constantly were
found both eggs and larvae mixed with bits of tobacco, the gar-
ments having been eaten in various places. Of course, this is not
an absolute proof of the inefficacy of tobacco, as there may have
been other causes of attraction, and fresh, clean tobacco may, after
all, be found effectual.

The larvae or the eggs can be killed by putting the article in
which they are found in a tightly closed vessel, and plunging it
for a short time into boiling water, or it can be placed in an oven
heated to a temperature of 150° Fahr.

It is hardly necessary to describe the moth, which, although
so small, is easily recognized as an enemy by most housewives,
though in many cases little moths of various species attracted to
our rooms by the lamp-light in the evening are often mistaken
for the clothes-moth and destroyed. It may be well to state that
the clothes-moth rarely flits about the light.

Soon after the moth issues from the cocoon the female finds its
way to the substance suitable for food for its young, and upon this
material it lays fifty or more eggs. In about a week the egg is
hatched, and almost immediately the worm begins to eat, and not
only uses for food the fibers of the article upon which the egg was
laid, but also makes of the material a covering for itself — a little
tube in which it lives, spinning for a lining the softest silk, which
it emits from glands in the head. From time to time, as the little
worm grows, it enlarges its case, either by adding to the ends or
by cutting with its sharp jaws little slits in the sides of the case,
filling in the space between the edges with the substance nearest
at hand, forming a neat patch. Not content with eating and
making a shelter for itself of the cloth upon which it lives, the
little worm cuts through the cloth as it makes its way in various
directions, dragging its case after it. If the case is torn from it,
or in any way injured, it soon makes a new one or patches the old.
After a while, at the approach of warm weather, the little worm
closes the ends of its case and changes to a pupa or chrysalis,
and in two or three weeks the moth appears.

Buffalo-Bug (Anthrenus scrophularice). — Within fifteen or
twenty years there has appeared a new addition to the already
long list of injurious insects introduced into this country from
Europe. Although called a bug, which is the name commonly
applied to all insects having inconspicuous wings, it is in reality
a beetle, and why the name buffalo is applied is not known for a
certainty ; some say it was first noticed in this country in the city
of Buffalo, New York, while one writer says it was named from
its fancied resemblance to a buffalo. Whatever may be the

336

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

reason for this name, and however inapt it may be, it is known
more commonly by it than by its more proper name of " carpet-
beetle."

The larva which does the damage measures when full grown
about three sixteenths of an inch in length. It is covered with
hairs, the longest ones being on the last segment of the body,
forming a sort of tail. It makes no cocoon, but when full grown
remains quiet for a short time, then the skin splits along the back

Fig. 2.— Cabpet-Beetle. a, larva, upper side; 6, larva, under side; c, pupa; d, perfect insect
(after Riley). The straight lines at the sides show the actual length of each form.

and the pupa is seen. It continues in this state for a few weeks,
when the skin of the pupa bursts and the perfect insect is dis-
closed— a beautiful little beetle, less than an eighth of an inch in
length, marked with red, black, and white. From October until
spring the beetles may be found in all stages of growth — that is to
say, in the larval, pupal, and perfect states.

It is found that few of the usual preventives are of any use
against the attacks of this beetle, and for this reason it is a diffi-
cult pest to eradicate. In some places it has proved so destructive
that carpets have to be dispensed with, and in their place rugs are
used, as being more conveniently examined.

Tallow or tallowed paper placed around the edges of the car-
pet, which are often the parts first attacked, is said to be effectual.
In many cases the carpets are cut, as if with scissors, following
the line of the seams in the floor, and as a remedy for this it has
been recommended that the seams be filled during the winter with
cotton saturated with benzine. Kerosene, naphtha, or gasoline are
offensive to the beetle as well as benzine, but benzine is perhaps
the simplest and safest preventive to use. It can be poured from
a tin can having a very small spout, it being necessary to use but
little.

Before tacking down a carpet it should be thoroughly ex-
amined, and if possible steamed. If in spite of precautions a car-

INSECT PESTS OF THE HOUSE.

337

pet is found infested, a wet cloth, can be spread down along the
edges, and a hot iron passed over it, the steam thus generated
not only killing the beetles and larva?, but destroying any eggs
that may have been laid. Clothing is sometimes attacked as
well as objects of natural history — such as stuffed birds and
mammals.

It was believed that the beetle must feed on some plant, for in
a number of cases it was captured out of doors, and it was finally
discovered feeding on the pollen of the flowers of spiraeas, the
beetle living on the plant for a while and then returning to the
house to lay its eggs. When this was proved, it was suggested
that spiraeas should be planted around houses infested by the
beetle ; by doing this the plants could be often examined and the
beetles destroyed.

Cockroaches (Blattidce). — Among the Orthoptera, to which
order this family belongs, we find a different mode of transforma-
tion. Were it not for its small size and the absence of wings, the
young would closely resem-
ble the parent, and, after
molting or changing its
skin several times, it reach-
es maturity without having
passed through a stage in
which it keeps perfectly
quiet, as in the case of the
moth and beetle.

The eggs of the cockroach
are carried about in a lit-
tle case by the female, and
when these eggs are ready
to hatch, this case is dropped ; and it is said by some writers that
the little ones are helped out by the mother. Just after the young
come from the egg, and after each molt, they are white, but the
usual color is brown or black. They molt five or six times before
reaching maturity.

Cockroaches are very troublesome, eating anything that comes
in their way ; are unpleasant to look upon, and are specially dis-
gusting to us on account of their disagreeable odor.

The large cockroach (Periplaneta orienialis), or "black beetle,"
as it is sometimes called, might in some cases be not unwelcome,
as it acts as a scavenger, keeping the corners of the rooms it fre-
quents clean, and furthermore it feeds on that most disgusting of
pests, the bed-bug. Though this is said in its favor, we think
there is no doubt that the remedy might be thought as bad as the
disease, and it would be considered more agreeable to find some
other way of exterminating the bed-bug ; and most people would

25*

Fig. 3. — Cockroach, a, male ; b, female.

338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

prefer having their corners cleaned in the ordinary way, with
soap and water ; nevertheless, it is sometimes of service in this
way. This cockroach is of a dark-brown color, about an inch in
length ; the male having short wings, while the female has only
rudimentary wings. It is very troublesome in kitchens, coming
out at night when the lights are out.

A somewhat larger insect is the American cockroach (Peripla-
neta americana), which is a lighter brown color, both the male
and female having well-developed wings. This species is not so
often found in houses, but frequents water-pipes and sewers and
the cargoes of vessels.

The smallest cockroach which is a pest in our houses is the
"water-bug" (Ectdbia lapponica). It is also known as the " Cro-
ton-bug." This insect is very common in houses in New Eng-
land, and, though eating any kind of food, is especially fond of
bread. It frequents bakeries, where it proves a great annoyance,
sometimes being baked in the bread in spite of care. It also eats
the covers of books bound in cloth, but will not touch those bound
in leather.

It has been said that sailors have been greatly troubled by
cockroaches eating the nails of their fingers and toes, and the
hard parts of their feet and hands, but this has been questioned.
However, a writer in Nature affirms that while in Australia he
was awakened one night by cockroaches nibbling his feet, which
were badly blistered, and in the morning he found the skin had been
eaten from a large blister, causing a painful sore, and that the
hard skin of the heel had also been eaten. Another writer in the
same journal says that this habit of cockroaches is well known to
all West Indians.

Borax is very disagreeable to cockroaches and will drive them
away, and it is said to kill them if mixed with white sugar and
sprinkled around the corners frequented by them. The following
receipt for a preparation to exterminate cockroaches is given in
a late number of Science : thirty-seven parts of borax, nine parts
of starch, and four parts of cocoa. This preparation should be
sprinkled around their haunts.

Insect-powder does not kill them but renders them stupid, and
while in this condition they can easily be swept up and destroyed.
In England cockroaches are sometimes caught with stale beer,
which is placed in a deep dish, bits of wood being so arranged
that the cockroaches can climb into the liquid. The following
preparations are mentioned in Harris's Insects Injurious to Vege-
tation, but, as they are poisonous, they should be used with the
greatest care. The first is a tablespoonful of red lead and Indian
meal, mixed with enough molasses to make a thick batter ; the
other is a teaspoonful of powdered arsenic mixed with a table-

INSECT PESTS OF THE HOUSE. 339

spoonful of mashed potatoes. These preparations should be used
for several nights in succession.

Bristle-Tail or Silver-Fish (Lepisma). — Often when look-
ing into a box or drawer which has remained in a damp place
for some time, or on opening an old book, we see a curious little
silvery creature running swiftly out of sight. It is so unlike the
insects which we usually find in our houses that one hardly knows
what to call it. It is nevertheless an insect, though belonging to
a low order. Its long, slender body is covered with delicate iri-
descent scales, from which is derived its name "silver-fish"; it
has no wings and passes through no metamorphoses. It feeds
on silken clothing, tapestry, and the like, but is more destructive
to books, eating the paste of the binding and even the leaves,
though loose papers are more often attacked. A few years ago
one species was found doing a great deal of damage in museums
by eating the labels. The labels which were, rendered illegible
by the attacks of this insect were made of heavily sized paper, in
most cases common unglazed paper remaining untouched by them ;
and it was also found that only clothing finished with starch or
sizing was subject to their attacks. Prof. Hagen, writing on this
pest, recommends that insect-powder, which easily kills them,
should be sprinkled about silk dresses or any articles liable to be'
injured by them. Where papers are pressed close together the
Lepisma can do no damage ; but in cases where pressure might
injure the papers or pictures they might be inclosed in boxes,
taking care that the covers fit so closely that no space is left for
the insect to enter, or the boxes might be sealed up by pasting
strips of paper around the covers, a paste with which insect-pow-
der has been mixed being used for this purpose ; valuable framed
engravings might be covered on the backs with common paper,
the same kind of paste being used. There is no doubt that labels
washed in an alcoholic solution of corrosive sublimate would be
rendered proof againstr the attacks of this insect.

Death- Watch (Anobium). — Books are also eaten by the larva
and the mature insect of several species of beetles belonging to the
genus Anobium. These beetles produce the ticking sound some-
times heard in the wood-work of houses, specially noticeable at
night, when everything is quiet. This sound is probably a sexual
call, and is made by the beetle rapping the wood with its head.
Injury is also done by them to furniture and food, and they some-
times prove a great annoyance. Their depredations may be pre-
vented by washing articles liable to be attacked in a solution of
corrosive sublimate in alcohol, or objects such as books may be
exposed to the odor of carbolic acid or benzine, or they may be
fumigated with burning sulphur.

There are still other insects which do more or less damage in

34o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

libraries * by eating the books, but those already mentioned are
the principal ones.

Ants (Formic idee). — Of the large black or brownish ants that
trouble us in store-rooms but little can be said, as, so far as I have
examined the authorities within my reach, I have found but little
mention of them. Judging by my own experience, they are very
difficult pests to expel from the house. Cayenne pepper is said
to be disagreeable to them, and arsenic mixed with any kind of
attractive food will kill them. Oil of peppermint is found very
effectual in driving them away, but everything in its vicinity is
so permeated with the odor that its use can not be recommended.
It is often said that borax will drive them away, but this has been
tried without success ; however, according to a writer in the
Popular Science News, the borax should first be heated, to deprive
it of its water of crystallization. Hot alum- water is very offensive
to most of the insect pests of the house, and should be applied
with a brush when nearly boiling hot.

Ants are extremely fond of sugar, and anything containing it
will attract them. A glass of jelly left uncovered within their
reach will be found tunneled in every direction, and, by pouring
boiling water upon it, the ants within may be killed.

An excellent and simple trap for them is a sponge wet with
some sweet sirup. When the interstices of the sponge are filled
with the ants, it can be carefully taken up and plunged into boil-
ing water, and again set for them after saturating the sponge with
the sirup.

Another trap which is still more simple is a plate covered with
a thin layer of lard, which should be placed in the closet frequent-
ed by them. This would probably prove more effectual in catch-
ing the little yellow ant (Myrmica molesta), which is sometimes
very troublesome in the house.

Mention should be made of the white ants, which, although
resembling the true ants in appearance, really belong to the order
of Neuroptera. The only species found in the United States does
great damage by eating the interior of the wood-work of build-
ings. These ants enter the timbers of the foundation from below,
and extend their galleries to the top, leaving the outside untouched,
so that their presence is unsuspected until the supports suddenly
give way.

Several years ago the " dungeon/' as it is called in the State-
House in Boston, was found to be undermined by them, and Dr.
Hagen apprehended considerable trouble if their depredations

1 Prof. Yerrill found in the library of Yale College a caterpillar belonging to the genua
Angioma eating the leather bindings of old books. When ready to transform, this larva
spins a silken cocoon, and after a short time there issues from it a little moth measuring
half an inch across its spread wings.

INSECT PESTS OF THE HOUSE, 341

were not immediately checked. In addition to the danger of the
supports giving way, there was reason for alarm in the fact that
they also destroy books and paper ; but in this case, fortunately,
the papers stored in the part of the ' State-Honse in which they
appeared were of little value. Measures were taken at the time
to prevent their devastating work, and it is hoped that they have
been exterminated ; but Dr. Hagen, in an article on the subject a
few years later, thought it not improbable that they had spread
farther, as nothing was done to prevent their entering other parts
of the building.

These ants feed on rotten wood, living in old stumps of trees,
and sometimes in old fences, and Dr. Hagen suggested the remov-
ing of every old stump around buildings and in the vicinity of
cities, thus diminishing the number by depriving them of their
necessary food. Places kept moist by hot steam are particularly
favorable for the work of these little creatures ; and more or less
trouble was occasioned in Cambridgeport, at the telescope works
of Alvan Clark and Son, where a timber constantly moist from the
steam was honey-combed by them ; and some years ago a bridge
near Porter's Station in Cambridge was destroyed, probably from
the same cause. As many trains stopped under this bridge, it was
constantly moist from the steam of the locomotives.

So far the insects mentioned are those that do direct injury
to our clothes, carpets,* food, books, etc., but there are still
others which frequent our houses and prove very annoying in
various ways ; and besides these there are numerous insects which
cause much trouble in collections of natural history, and in mu-
seums the utmost care must be exercised to prevent their attacks.
It is not often that these museum pests prove of much annoyance
in the house. I have found the larva of a beetle (Attagenus pellio)
in the sawdust of a doll's arm ; and the larva of another species
(Attagenus megatama) is sometimes found to have eaten the
feathers in pillows, and the short particles of the feathers become
so firmly fastened in the ticking by the repeated shakings of the
pillow that a fine, soft felting is made, resembling the fur of a
mole.

Bed-Bug (Cimex lectularius) . — The eggs of the bed-bug are
white in color and oval in shape. The young differ but slightly
from the parent. The full-grown bug is wingless or possesses
rudimentary wings, is less than a quarter of an inch in length
and of a brown color. It is about eleven weeks in attaining its

* A brief mention may be made of a fly {Sccnopinus pallipcs) whose habits are but little
known. The larva is a long, white worm living under carpets, upon which it is supposed to
feed, and it is also found in rotten wood, but as yet it has not appeared in numbers suffi-
ciently large to prove an annoyance in the house. The fuil-grown fly measures about a
quarter of an inch in length.

342

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

growth. Dr. Packard, in his Guide to the Study of Insects, says
that bed-bugs may be destroyed by " a preparation consisting of
thirty parts of unpurified, cheap petroleum, mixed with a thousand
parts of water" ; and in the Popular Science News was published

the following formula for
a bed-bug poison : Into one
half pint of alcohol put one
ounce of camphor, with
one ounce of pulverized sal
ammoniac and one ounce
of corrosive sublimate ; to
this add one half pint of
spirits of turpentine and
shake well before using.
These solutions may be ap-
plied around the cracks

Fig. 4.-Bed-Bug. a, young; 5, adult (after Kiley), both an(J creviceS of a bedstead;

C'liltir^cd.

benzine, too, may be used
with good effect, and boiling water will destroy them, but the best
preventive is perfect cleanliness. Curiously enough, they live
parasitic upon domestic birds.

Flea (Pulex cams). — The fleas, although having no wings, have
until lately been classed with the flies (Diptera), but are now
placed by many writers in an order by themselves, the Aphanip-
tera. During the past
summer and fall there
has been considerable
annoyance caused in
and around Boston by
this troublesome in-
sect, and owing to its
habit of attacking
man it was supposed
to be the true human
flea, but a letter of in-
quiry on the subject,
addressed to an emi-
nent entomologist brought the following reply : " So far as I
know, we do not have the human flea in North America, and
ours is Pulex canis, the dog and cat flea. It seems to breed in
sandy cellars and such places at certain seasons."

The eggs of this flea are laid on the dog or cat, and, being
sticky, adhere to the hair until almost ready fo hatch, when they
fall to the ground. These eggs are very small, white, and oblong,
and but eight or ten are laid by one female.

The young larvse are hatched in about a week, and their growth

Fig. 5.— Flea, (much enlarged).

INSECT PESTS OF THE HOUSE. 343

is usually attained in less than two weeks ; they then pass two
more weeks in the pupal stage, when the perfect insect appears.
When dogs are badly infested by them, the use of common olive-
oil is recommended. This should be well rubbed into the hair
and over the skin, being allowed to remain for half an hour,
when it should be washed out with the best yellow soap and
lukewarm water. Dalmatian insect-powder has also been found
efficacious. This powder can be rubbed into the hair, and it can
be sprinkled around their kennels. It is not, however, best to use
it on cats, but possibly it might do no harm
to sprinkle it around their sleeping-places. A
better plan is to have the cat's bed made of
shavings or some such material that can often
be replaced, the old bedding being carefully
taken up and burned.

Some years ago there were on exhibition a
number of so-called educated fleas, and it is
thought by some people that the intelligence
of fleas must be very great if they can be
trained in this way ; but an article by Mr. W. FlG. 6.-larva op Flea.
H. Dall, in the American Naturalist, a few
years ago, showed that in every case the motions made by the flea
were caused, not by the training it had received, but by the strug-
gles made in its efforts to escape.

House-Fly (Musca domestica). — Familiar as we all are with
this insect in its mature state, it will be found that to many its
history before it appears in our houses is still very obscure, and
until some years ago, when Dr. Packard made a study of its life-
history, naturalists, too, were somewhat unfamiliar with its early
stages of growth, and to him we are indebted for the following
facts :

"We find the flies most annoying and abundant in the hot dog-
days of August, and, unless the greatest care is taken, our rooms
are filled with them, even though we maybe some distance from a
stable, where the desired food for the young is found. The eggs are
laid in bunches in manure, often buried out of sight, and, the con-
ditions being favorable, they are hatched in twenty-four hours.
The worm or maggot has no legs, and, after changing its skin,
appears larger, though otherwise remains about the same in ap-
pearance. After two or three days it again sheds its skin, and in
this stage of development it remains two or three days longer.
It then transforms into a chrysalis, in which state the body con-
tracts somewhat and becomes brown and hard, and, after six or
seven days, the perfect fly appears and lives for five or six weeks,
perhaps longer. A few flies probably live over the winter in crev-
ices of buildings until the warm spring days bring them out.

344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Dr. Packard kept a fly in a bottle from 6 p. M. one day until
8 A. m. the following day, in which time one hundred and twenty
eggs were laid.

Oftentimes flies are found dead on the window-sills or adher-
ing to the walls or ceilings, a white powder surrounding them ;
death in these cases having been caused by a parasitic plant grow-
ing upon them, the white powder observed about them being the
spores of the plant.

It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to speak of the various meth-
ods of preventing the entrance into our houses of these annoying
insects, or the manner of expelling when, in spite of screens and
nettings, we find them in our rooms. One must be always on the
watch, and better than any fly-trap or fly-paper is the little whisk
broom, constantly at hand to be used on these disturbers of the
peace. A strong solution of quassia, mixed with sugar to attract
the flies, is said to be an excellent fly-poison.

Flies can be kept out of stables by keeping the floor well swept
and clean, and sprinkled with kerosene-oil, only a very little be-
ing used.

Mosquito (Cidex pipiens). — Another dipterous insect which
frequents our dwellings is the common mosquito, an insect too
well known to need any description. During the season a female
will lay about three hundred eggs in several litters. These eggs
are deposited in standing water, running water being free from
them on account of the danger of the mosquito being drowned
when emerging from its pupa-case, which serves as a sort of raft
until the wings and legs are strong enough to support the perfect
insect.

The egg hatches soon after being deposited, and the young
lives upon decaying matter, growing very rapidly and changing
its skin several times. While in the pupa, state it takes no food,
and, unless disturbed, remains near the surface of the water. In
about four weeks after hatching, the pupa-skin splits along the
back, and the mosquito appears. It is perhaps hardly necessary
to mention that it is only the female that bites, or, more properly
speaking, stings.

A writer in Nature says that the " smell of American penny-
royal (Hedeoma pidegioides), when sufficiently strong, drives
them away at once." This remedy is often given, but I have
never yet seen it used with any effect. Another writer in the
same journal advises the use of a solution made by pouring boiling
water upon quassia-chips. This wash may be applied and left to
dry on the skin, acting as a preventive against the annoyances
of mosquitoes, gnats, etc. In a later volume of Nature a writer
reports having tried this wash with no beneficial results ; still, it
may be of use in some cases, and, being so simple, could easily be

APPARATUS-MAKING IN EDUCATION. 345

tried. Still other washes are made, some of which may be found
a protection. A number of rules are given in The Popnlar Sci-
ence News during the year 1882. The house can be kept tolerably
free from mosquitoes by using care, and a netting over the bed
protects one during the night ; but, when one wishes to spend his
summer vacation in the country, he is willing to try anything
that will protect him from these most annoying creatures, which
make a morning spent in the woods a torture instead of a pleasure.

-♦*♦-

APPARATUS-MAKING IN EDUCATION.

By M. C. WILSON,

PROFESSOR OF NATURAL SCIENCES, ALABAMA STATE NORMAL SCHOOL.

BY way of further illustrating the truth of what Prof. Wood-
hull says in his article, Home-made Apparatus, in the Au-
gust, 1889, number of The Popular Science Monthly, allow me to
present some work that has been done here in that direction.

We have no workshop and no tools. Our method of work is
this: In the study of natural philosophy, when a principle is
being enunciated, some half-dozen or more members of the class
are asked to make the piece of apparatus which illustrates this
principle. A week is allowed for its completion, or a longer time,
if the work involves much difficulty, or if the pupil has much
work in other classes. He is allowed to use any material he can
get, and he may ask the aid of a blacksmith, carpenter, or any
mechanic. But the work, when brought in, must be neatly fin-
ished, and must be made of materials that cost absolutely nothing.
Of the six or more pieces of the same kind, the neatest and most
accurate one is preserved in school. In this way, in the course of
time, some hundreds of pieces of apparatus are made which serve
perfectly well to illustrate the principles of natural philosophy.
These pieces are handled, tested, and compared by the pupils in
the class-rooms, and in this way they voluntarily spend spare min-
utes before and after school hours. They consist of such articles
as inertia apparatus, steelyard, balance of equal arms, pulleys, in-
clined planes, wheel and axle, hydrometer, siphon, fountains, Ley-
den jar, pith-ball electroscope, gold-leaf electroscope, batteries of
various kinds, magnets, electro-magnets, telegraph apparatus, etc.
These, if purchased from an instrument dealer, would amount to
several hundred dollars.

For materials for construction of apparatus, the pupils ask at
home or at stores or shops where they are acquainted. There are
always bottles, tin-foil, corks, wax, wood, scraps of wire, iron, tin-
plate, bits of thread, cloth, etc., to be had for the asking. Almost

vol. xxxvii. — 26

346

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

every kind of business in some way contributes its share. There
is no difficulty whatever in getting these things, for the mer-
chants and mechanics are usually pleased when the boys ask

for them.

One of the pieces of apparatus made in class was a steelyard,
which was constructed of a foot-rule. Exactly one inch from the
end a hole was bored ; through this a wire was passed and bent
into a loop. This served for the pivot. Three fourths of an
inch from the same end another wire, similarly bent and inserted,
served for the suspension of the weight. The pea was made of a
small piece of pig-iron picked up at the furnace. It was care-
fully weighed, and had a small cord tied around it so that it could
be slid along the beam of the steelyard. This apparatus was
made to illustrate the lever of the first order, and when tested
weighed as accurately as the grocer's scales.

Another piece was a balance of equal arms, which was sensi-
tive to five milligrammes, either loaded or empty. It is repre-
sented in Fig. 1. The beam, support, pointer, and index were cut
out of wood. The scale-pans were tin-box tops. The knife-edges

Fig. 1.— Balance op Eqttal Arms.

were made of old umbrella wire tempered hard. The weights,
from ten grammes to five milligrammes, were made of pieces of
copper wire. In making this balance, the pupil had his attention
forcibly called, by repeated failures, to the necessity of having
the arms exactly equal, to the best position of the center of
gravity of the balance, and to the importance of the knife-edges.
This balance — the best of four brought in — was used to determine
the specific gravities of minerals, and the results obtained agreed
closely with those given in Dana's Manual. It was also used in
the candle experiment to show that there is gain in weight when
a candle burns, and for numerous other experiments.

A hydrometer, made by another boy in the same class, accord-

APPARATUS-MAKING IN EDUCATION.

347

ICCO,

ii A

2b

ing to a suggestion found in Gage's Elements of Physics, illus-
trated well the advantage of requiring pupils to make apparatus,
even when free access is had to that made by the instrument-
maker. A piece of wood cut from the spoke of an old wheel was
loaded at one end with lead, so as to make it stand upright. It
was immersed in rain-water, and the water-level on it marked
1,000. By means of a Baumd's hydrometer the level of 900 was
found, and distances, equal to the distance between the two marks,
laid off above and below. Much to the boy's surprise, the hy-
drometer thus graduated would by no means coincide with his
Baume'. He attributed the error to the absorp-
tion of the fluids by the wood, and set to work
to make another, taking care this time to rub the
wood with beeswax, to render it impervious to
liquids ; but his second graduation was hardly
more satisfactory than the first. He then put
on a piece of cork for a float, the wood having
failed to keep an upright position in all liquids,
and graduated his hydrometer by means of dif-
ferent liquids whose densities had been found
with the Baume* hydrometer, and at last discov-
ered that the divisions were not equal. This piece
of work, represented in Fig. 2, consumed all the
boy's afternoons for a week ; but I saw the effect
of it in increased carefulness, and consequently
greater accuracy in his subsequent work, and,
what was still more important, in increased
thoughtfulness.

A condenser for use in distilling water was
made after the pattern of Liebig's. The outside
tube was made by boring a round piece of wood,
ten inches long and two inches in diameter,
through with an inch auger. The inside tube,
and those for entrance of cold water and exit of
hot water, were made of reeds. A bottle served
for the still, and the whole was supported on a
neat wooden stand.

Such work undoubtedly requires much energy
on the part of the teacher, for his suggestions JSiLcJcsIiot
will be needed and asked for many times during fig. 2.— htdbombtek.
the week. But if he is a mere college or high-
school graduate who has gained his knowledge of science from
the lectures and experiments of the professor, he will find this
work of making home-made apparatus even more beneficial to
himself than it is to the pupils. He will by means of it have
much light thrown upon obscure places, and will accordingly

1

348 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

teach more effectively. He will become so familiar with, his
work that he will find himself being transformed from a mere
hearer of lessons from the book into an enthusiastic co-worker
with his pupils.

♦•»

WHY SO MANY DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION?

By FRANK N. EIALE, Ph. D.

RELIGION is now recognized, as never before, to be a univer-
sal factor in race development. " Whether we descend into
the lowest roots of our intellectual growth, or ascend to the lofti-
est heights of modern speculation, everywhere we find religion a
power that conquers even those who think they have conquered
it." This fact is to the scientific student of religious thought
what the " cogiio ergo sum " was to Descartes, and what " justifica-
tion by faith " was to Luther — the foundation on which all must
rest, and the unquestioned presupposition from which he must
start. It is certainly the fact that can not be doubted, and the
one which no aqua regia of thought will dissolve.

But there are about as many definitions of religion as there
are forms of religious belief. Herbert Spencer defines it as " an
a priori theory of the universe." Matthew Arnold says it is
" ethics heightened and lit up by emotion ; or, more simply
stated, morality touched by emotion." Max Muller seemingly
differs widely from both, and calls it " the sense of dependence
on something or some one not ourselves " ; while Schleiermacher
carries the idea still further and says, " It is a feeling of absolute
dependence on something which, though it determine us, we can
in no sense determine." Feuerbach makes religion " a mere cov-
etousness, which manifests itself in prayer, sacrifice, and faith."
Strauss combines the elements brought out in the last two defini-
tions, and describes it as a " combination of absolute dependence
and covetousness." To Hegel, the great genius of German
thought, "religion is perfect freedom, for it is nothing more
nor less than the Divine Spirit becoming conscious of Himself
through the finite spirit." Yery similar to this are the definitions
of Luthardt and Martineau. The former says, " Religion is the
human mind standing in reverence and inspiration before the in-
finite energy of the universe, asking to be lifted up into it, open-
ing itself to inspiration"; while the latter expresses nearly the
same idea, though more tersely, " Religion is mere assent through
the conscience to God." Mr. Andrew Lang says : " Religion may
be defined as the conception of divine or at least superhuman pow-
ers, entertained by men in moments of gratitude, need, or distress ;
when, as Homer says, ' all folk yearn after the gods/" Flint, in

WHY SO MANY DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION? 349

his Theism, regards it as a " belief iu some god or powers above
on which we depend, and who are interested in ns ; together with
the feelings and practices resulting from such belief." Some-
what like this, bnt more explicit, is Prof. Whitney's definition,
"A belief in a supernatural being or beings, whose actions are
seen in the works of creation, and of such relation on the part
of man toward this being or beings as to prompt the believer
to acts of propitiation and worship, and to the regulation of
conduct." De Pressense* thinks "true religion has to do with
the relation of the soul to God," and Prof. Palmer sums it all
up as "the bond between the science of ethics and the science
of theology."

Many more definitions might be given, but let these few suffice ;
for they are typical of some sixty or more that have been exam-
ined. One is at once led to ask, Why are there so many defini-
tions of a fact that is so universally admitted to be as real as any
fact in the realm of mind or heart ? Although the definitions are
many, they can not be said to be contradictory or antagonistic.
When carefully examined, it will be found that they each describe
what their respective authors, either from personal experience or
observation, thought was the controlling element exhibited at the
moment of religious awakening. They are many, simply because
the element exhibited then is not the same with all, but varies
most markedly with environment, temperament, and general in-
tellectual advancement.

It is now admitted that the religious element, if it appears at
all, is called forth while one is reflecting on his personal destiny.
There is then born a conviction that our future existence is not
unalterably fixed, as that of the stone and the brute, but depends
largely on our will. We feel that ideals have a large part to play
in determining our future condition, and we desire to select such
material out of all our environment — yes, ought to select such — to
weave as a woof into the web of hereditary tendency, as will make
for us characters most nearly like unto the pattern given in our
ideal. In brief, it may be said that the religious element of the
life is called out the moment one earnestly asks the question,
" What must I do to be saved "—reach my ideal ? That it does
ever appear at this moment seems now to be a necessary conclu-
sion from psychical study, a most careful examination of the
marked religious awakenings in our own and other religious sys-
tems, from a study of the world's great religious leaders, and last
of all, by a study of the varying element in the historic changes
of religious thought. More than simply an enumeration of these
lines of evidence can not be here given. Admitting this to be a
fact, the reason why there are so many definitions will at once be
perfectly clear; for it will be found they each describe what

35°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

was thought to be the essential thing for the attainment of the

great idea.

A brief examination of a few of the definitions just given will
make this clear. When one of a pre-eminently scientific cast of
mind comes, in self-reflection, to the moment of religious awaken-
ing, he at once desires to know more of self and environment, that
he may act with greater certainty in determining his destiny. He
feels destiny depends primarily on Jcnoivledge, and to him religion
most naturally seems what it does to Herbert Spencer, "an a priori
theory of the universe." To those who feel, activity based on
knowledge is the all-important thing. Prof. Palmer's definition
better expresses the essential element — " the connecting link be-
tween the science of ethics and the science of theology" — the
former giving a knowledge of one's relation to his fellows, the
latter of his relation to the gods, religion being the dynamic called
forth by this twofold knowledge of personal duty. There are
others, again, decidedly social in their make-up. Their chief de-
light is in pleasant mingling with their fellows. These, on becom-
ing conscious that they are the molders of their own destiny, feel
at once that their " salvation " depends largely on a " good-will to
mankind," with the acts that result therefrom. All such can
truly say, with Arnold, that their religious life is " ethics touched
by emotion." There is another class in the social organism of a
clinging, dependent disposition, always followers and never lead-
ers in life. These generally become so overwhelmed at the thought
of their own responsibility that they lose all confidence in their
own ability to choose out their own way, and at once throw them-
selves helpless on " the powers that be." Fate, or God, or uni-
verse, or anything, they would sooner rely upon than their own
judgment. To these religion is what Muller found it, "a feeling
of dependence on some one or something hot ourselves." Extreme
cases are better described by Schleiermacher — " absolute depend-
ence on something which determines us, but which we can in no
sense determine " (affect).

In marked contrast to the cases already named there are those
whose lives are a perfect quintessence of egoism and selfishness.
To these religion is always a " mere covetousness, which manifests
itself in prayers, sacrifices, and faith." All such make Feuerbach's
creed theirs too, " Mann ist was er isst." A higher type of religion
than has been thus far named is that which feels " there is a di-
vinity within us that shapes our ends," and that we are all " sons
of the Highest." Such care not for self alone, but ever desire to
become more and more altruistic. They study the microcosm
only to more fully understand its functional place in the macro-
cosm. These, upon the religious awakening, have the egoistic
thoughts thrust aside like the drift-wood by the sea, feeling that

WHY SO MANY DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION? 351

they are only a hindrance to the attainment of the God-conscious-
ness. Hegel-like, they find that " religion is a perfect freedom,
for it is nothing more or less than the Divine Spirit becoming
conscious of itself through the finite' spirit/' They can also say,
with Martineau, it is " the human mind standing in reverence and
inspiration before the Infinite Energy of the universe, asking to be
lifted into it," or " ascent through the conscience to God." Re-
ligion to them is the last step of the Leibnitz's monad coming
into the consciousness of the divinity ever potentially present.

Besides the types of minds thus far studied, there is a large
proportion of the race influenced almost entirely by what may be
called personal influences — love, pity, sympathy, and the like. All
these, upon becoming religious, at once bestow similar feelings on
the gods, and imagine that these in turn bestow the same on them.
This mode of religious awakening is almost a universal one in the
earlier stages of race development. Many also feel, as Mr. Mar-
tineau says in his Study of Religion, that in some form or other
this will be likewise the final and highest stage of religious
growth. It is well described by both Profs. Flint and "Whitney,
as noted above, and is also implied in the terse expression of De
Pressense', " Religion is the relation of the soul to God."

Thus it will be seen that the various definitions of religion
are but facets of a common precious truth, reflecting at different
angles the light of a heart all aglow with the thought of personal
responsibility in individual destiny. They vary at times so as to
indicate almost generic differences, but they all describe facts
having a common psychological cause and point to a single pur-
pose. As the same sunlight that hardens the bricks in the cathe-
dral walls also melts the waxen taper at the altar, so a reflection
on personal destiny often calls forth in one a religious life entirely
different from that in another ; for the precise effect depends as
much on surroundings and internal difference as on that which
calls forth the religious life. These definitions are not found to
be like the Ptolemaic planets, mere lawless wanderers, in the
realm of religious thought, but have a common center, and are
guided by a universal law.

Me. John Aitkins's later observations on the number of dust-particles in the
atmosphere show that a very large proportion of the pollution caused thereby is
the product of human agencies. Both dust and humidity tend to decrease the
transparency of the air. Humidity alone seems to have no influence on the trans-
parency apart from the dust, but it increases the effect of dust by increasing the
size of the particles. Its modifying effect is influenced by the temperature. Dust
appears to condense vapor long before the air is cooled to the dew-point. Haze
is shown in many cases to be simply dust, on which there seems to be always more
or less moisture. All the fogs tested contained much dust.

352 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE MUSICAL SENSE IN ANIMALS AND MEN.*

By AUGUST WEISMANN.

THE author, having argued at length that the development of
the musical sense is not a result of sexual selection ; that it is
not a faculty essential to the preservation of the race ; and that,
as it exists naturally in individuals previous to being cultivated,
it is not a faculty that grows with the growth of the race — seeks
an explanation of its existence in regarding it as simply a by-
product of our organs of hearing. These organs, he goes on to
say, are necessary in the struggle for existence, and may therefore
have originated and been developed to a high degree in the pro-
cess of selection. No one can be made to believe that the hand
of man was formed with reference to playing the piano. It is
adapted to grasping and to delicate touch ; and, since these facul-
ties are of great use in the struggle for existence, there was noth-
ing in the way of making a finer fashioning of the hand already
present in animals, agreeable with that process. In this way it
has become finely fingered, delicate, and flexible as we know it,
and as we find it even in the lowest savages. We can do with this
hand a great many things that were not contemplated — if we may
be permitted the expression — in its structure ; among others, play
the piano, that instrument having been invented ; and a wild
African, if we drill him to it from childhood, can, under the con-
ditions of modern piano technics, learn it as well as a civilized
child. The same is the case, I believe, to a considerable degree,
in the artistic musical sense. That is, in a certain sense, a hand
with which we play on the soul, but a hand that was not origi-
nally designed for that purpose — that is, did not originate out of
the necessity of our discovering music, but out of entirely differ-
ent necessities. This assertion is in need of a fuller demonstration.
Our musical faculties consist of two parts : one, the organs of hear-
ing proper — the outer, middle, and inner ear, which translate the
different tones into nerve-movements ; and the second, of the brain
part, which converts these nerve - movements, when they have
passed through the auditory nerve, into tone-perceptions, and the
auditory center of the brain.

The first part of this duality — the organ of hearing proper — is
not, so far as we know, much more highly developed in man than
in many animals ; and is not in other ways so constructed that we
can conclude that it contains any different capacity from that of
those animals for hearing music. The higher animals can also
enjoy music, as my house-cat shows, when she comes at the play-

* From an article in the Deutsche Rundschau.

THE MUSICAL SENSE IN ANIMALS AND MEN. 353

ing of the piano to sit by the player, and sometimes jumps into her
lap or on the key-board of the instrument. I know of a dog, too,
in a family in Berlin, which comes in in like manner when there is
music, often from distant rooms, opening the door with his paw.
I knew of another dog, usually thoroughly domestic, which occa-
sionally played the vagabond for love of music. Whenever the
semi-annual mass was celebrated in the city he could not be kept
at the house. As soon as the so-called Bergknappen, which were
accustomed to play at this time in the streets, appeared, he would
run away and follow them from morning till evening.

Evidently neither cats nor dogs, nor other animals that listen
to human music, were constituted for the appreciation of it, for it
is not of the slightest use to them in the struggle for existence.
Moreover, they and their organs of hearing were much older than
man and his music. Their power of appreciating music is there-
fore an uncontemplated side-faculty of a hearing apparatus which
has become on other grounds what we find it to be. So it is, I
believe, with man. He has not acquired his musical hearing as
such, but has received a highly developed organ of hearing by a
process of selection, because it was necessary to him in the select-
ive process ; and this organ of hearing happens also to be adapted
to listening to music.

It can not be said that this has been produced in man by nat-
ural breeding, or that it may not have been formed previous to
the human period. We know nothing of our direct predecessors ;
and, even if their remains should be found, the bony parts of the
organs of hearing in their skulls would furnish no clew to the
microscopic particulars of the soft parts with which they were
covered during life. It is, however, most probable that the pre-
cursors of man had nearly the same organs that he has now ; for
the living caricatures of men, the apes, have them in nearly the
same perfection. We have a right to assume this, although we
have not such detailed examinations of these organs as Hasse and
Retzius have given us of similar organs in other mammals. We
can not determine whether the compass of the scale audible to
apes is quite as large as that of men ; but we are authorized to
presume that it is about the same. The power of perceiving the
intervals between musical tones depends on a complicated appa-
ratus in the coil of the ear. This apparatus, called, after its dis-
coverer, the organ of Corti, includes thousands of nervous hair-
cells, each of which is excitable only by a single tone of definite
pitch. The delicacy of one's auditory apparatus — the correctness
of Helmholtz's interpretation of the significance of these organs
being presupposed — depends on the number of these hair-cells.
According to the exact measurements and enumerations of Ret-
zius, there are 15,500 of them in the ear of man, 12,500 in that of

354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the cat, and 7,800 in that of the rabbit. Hence man has a more
perfect hearing than those animals, although we are not able yet
to determine whether his superiority consists in finer delicacy or
greater compass; possibly in both. There are also differences,
but probably not of great extent, in the number of auditory cells
between men ; and we can explain by these differences why some
persons can hear more sharply, or lower tones or higher tones,
than others. I myself have a passably fine musical ear, but I can
not hear the high tones in which certain species of grasshoppers
make music, though hundreds of them may be "fiddling" at the
same time, and although other persons recognize them without
difficulty.

The question now arises how, if only useful qualities become
established, this property of perceiving musical tones, possessed
by rabbits and cats in substantially nearly the same degree with
man, originated. It must be a matter of indifference to these ani-
mals, which do not make music, whether they have a musical
sense or not, and the development of their hearing apparatus
must have gone on with reference to other needs of theirs. What
were those needs ? In what respect is it useful to animals to have
the power of perceiving so great a number of distinct tones as are
provided for in their hearing apparatus ? The question has never
been discussed, and I confess that the answer is not easy, if a full
and detailed explanation is sought. But in a general sense the
reason seems easily comprehensible. Wild animals need a very
fine ear — beasts of prey, like cats, in order that they may hear and
distinguish all the tones that are emitted by their game. A con-
siderable scale is at once in demand for this ; one, for example,
which shall enable the wild cat to distinguish the cooing of the
dove, the call of the cuckoo through all its tones, and those of
the thrush, finch, linnet, pheasant, and the other birds and little
animals of the wood and field. The wild animal must also be
able to distinguish the sounds of his enemies — whether it be the
intended victim having to escape his pursuer, or the beast of prey
avoiding a rival; to the list of which, already large, has been
added man, who appeared after animals' organs of hearing were
fully developed. For this purpose the hearing of these animals
should be capable of perceiving low tones and high tones, and the
complete series of tones between. A feeling of wonder comes over
us when we see how highly developed the hearing of animals is,
and we can hardly comprehend it except we consider to what an
extent their existence in the wild condition depends upon an ex-
treme delicacy of the organ. There must be no uncertainty in
their minds as to the kind of source whence any sound comes.
A mistake may be a matter of life and death to them. The food
of a beast of prey is precarious, and he can not afford to let any

THE MUSICAL SENSE IN ANIMALS AND MEN 355

opportunity of supplying himself pass. It is not for nothing that
the fox watches night and day intent to take notice of the lightest
movement in the air ; or that the hare is a proverbially timid
beast, for the existence of his species depends upon his being on
the alert. We can thus understand to a certain extent why the
rabbit has 7,800 auditory cells in his organ ; a number that rep-
resents a wonderfully delicate refinement in his hearing, even
if we do not suppose each of these 7,800 cells to correspond with
a different tone, as, if we regard each cross-shaped group of four
cells as representing a single tone, this would give an exceedingly
large number — about two thousand — of tone-perceptions. We may
realize how delicate must be the hearing that appreciates even a
thousand tones when we recollect that our concert-piano scales
give only eighty-seven tones. Even if we take a scale of greater
compass, as of a hundred tones at intervals of a semitone, our
rabbit will have capacity to distinguish nineteen intertones in
each half-tone interval. We, ourselves, if we exercise our full
power of hearing, could distinguish some thirty intertones be-
tween the tones A and Ej, of our scale — a few more than the
difference in the number of vibrations corresponding with those
notes (A=440, Bj,=467"5).

To make this highly developed organization of the ear of real
benefit to the animal, the parts of the brain corresponding with
the auditory nerves must be constituted with like delicacy. So
also must those parts which serve for the remembrance of sensa-
tions. For, without memory and the power to profit by the les-
sons of experience, those powers would be of little use to the
animal.

It is only in a few instances that we can ascertain with any
degree of sufficiency how far an animal is capable of really com-
prehending our music. The capacity often appears to be consider-
able ; for it is well known that cavalry-horses frequently learn to
recognize the signals given by the trumpeters as well as their
riders do, and to make the motions answering to them before they
are directed to do so. We have, furthermore, in many birds, which
are far below the mammals we have named in mental capacity,
good evidence that our music can be heard and comprehended by
beings whose hearing apparatus has not been adapted to those
ends. I refer especially to birds which have no or only very sim-
ple songs of their own, and are yet able to imitate both the more
varied songs of other birds and human melodies. This is con-
spicuously the case with some of the parrots, which can learn to
repeat short melodies well and distinctly. They also possess the
proper organs for hearing music, although they do not themselves
make it. Thus our proposition seems well founded that, as man
possessed musical hearing organs before he made music, those

356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

organs did not reach their present high development through

practice in music.

Among the objections that may be brought up against this
theory, the most real is that founded on the existence of persons
without musical sense ; who can hear ordinary sounds and intona-
tions as well as musically gifted persons, but who can not define
musical intervals, can not take up a melody and repeat it, and can
not analyze harmonies. If their organs of hearing are as well de-
veloped as those of musicians, that would seem to be evidence that
the musical sense is something else than ordinary hearing, and
supplementary to it. But it has not been demonstrated that the
hearing of unmusical persons is as well developed as that of mu-
sicians, and I regard it as highly improbable. Although we have
no accurate data on the subject, the facts we have do not sus-
tain the proposition. The idea of unmusicality is a relative one.
Mozart had so wonderful a recollection of tone-pitches that he
could detect a difference of a quarter of a tone between a violin
he was playing and one which he had played on two days before.
Other men, whom we regard as men of high musical talent, have
only the weakest, or no memory at all, for absolute tone-pitches.
They can not tell whether a piece is played in A, C, or F, but are
satisfied if the tone-intervals within the piece are properly repre-
sented. Defects of this kind are corollaries of want of practice,
and result to a large extent from the considerable part which the
piano fills in musical teaching. The sense of players on the violin
— an instrument on which minute intervals of tone can be pro-
duced— is much clearer and more delicate than that of players on
the piano. The various degrees of defect in musical sense seem
to me to depend on a more or less imperfect structure of the or-
gans of hearing. Defects and aberrations appear in all parts of
the body, and must be particularly apt to overtake an organ which,
like the ear of man, is now no longer of the importance for main-
taining the species which it must have been several thousand
years ago when man was still in a state of nature. Or there may be
defects in the brain-centers that receive the nervous impressions,
or in the connections between the brain and nerves. Light is cast
upon these instances through the accounts of cases of aphasia and
musical impotency, in which, through injury to a small spot in
the brain, the faculty of appreciating or producing music is partly
or wholly removed, usually in connection with disorders of speech.
Besides the older observations of Kussmaul, Kast, Knoblauch, and
Oppenheim have made interesting contributions on this difficult
and complicated subject.

Have we a right to suppose that the musical gifts of the primi-
tive man were the same as we have to-day ? Can we imagine that
men were born in the earliest ages who might have furnished a

THE MUSICAL SENSE IN ANIMALS AND MEN. 357

Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, or have acquired even the average
musical skill of our day ? I do not believe it ; for something else
is needed for the comprehension of our present higher music than
the musical apparatus of our ear and brain-center, and more than
the musical instruction that can be given in one person's lifetime
— a refined, impressionable, cultivated soul.

The auditory center of the brain often spoken of is not simply
theoretical, but is defined with fair certainty. If, in a dog or an
ape, a particular spot in the temporal fold of the cerebrum is de-
stroyed on both sides, the animal will be made deaf, although his
ear-organs have not been disturbed. The animal's general health
is not impaired ; it continues to live, but it ceases to hear. Noises
passing through its hearing apparatus still excite nervous vibra-
tions, and these are still transmitted to the brain ; but the organ
is lacking there which should convert them into tone -percep-
tions and bring them to consciousness. The animal is "soul-
deaf." If, again, we were able to remove all the other parts of the
cerebellum and leave the hearing centers untouched, the mechan-
ical process of the production of tone impressions would still go
on, but the animal or the man would hear nothing, because there
would be nothing left in his brain to make him conscious of the
tone-impressions. With the rest of the cerebellum was taken
away the intellect, with all its side-faculties of feeling, fancy, self-
consciousness, etc. The "soul" is wanting, and without it the
finest musical notes, brought to place in the hearing center, make
no impression.

I have brought forward this hypothetical case to show that the
way in which music is comprehended depends not only on the
auditory centers, but as much on that which lies behind them,
which takes up the tone-images formed by them and gives them
reality — the " soul." If there is no " soul," as in the supposed
case, then the tone-images are not perceived ; if a highly devel-
oped, tuneful, and thoughtful human soul is present, then the
confluent and contrasted voices of a polyphone music are per-
ceived as a charming musical structure, a rich art-picture, the
single parts of which stand in perceptible connection ; going out
from one another, running back into one another, the individual
tone-pictures shape themselves by ever new variations into ever
new and interesting combinations. But if there is only the rela-
tively lowly organized brain of an animal, a parrot, for instance,
then the spiritual power of the complicated tone-picture will not pre-
vail, and only a possibly pleasant confusion of sounds is perceived.
The parrot will never be able to follow the course of a piece of
music, because he lacks the necessary degree of intelligence, but
will only be able to repeat snatches of it, with no comprehension
of the connection of the parts. Hence we conclude that affections

358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the same organs of hearing and of the auditory centers apper-
taining to them must produce different effects on the " soul " ac-
cording to its degree of development. The * soul * is in a manner
played upon by the musical movements of the auditory centers as
if it was an instrument ; the more complete the instrument, the
greater the effect. Hence the comprehension of our music by the
highest animals — the dog, the cat, and the horse — is exceedingly
imperfect, because of their limited mental development. Music
strikes them as pleasant or unpleasant, or attracts them, independ-
ently of what we call the character of the piece. The same dif-
ferences, except in a lesser degree, must prevail in the different
stages of development of the human soul. If the primitive man
did not have a mind equal to ours ; if man's intellect and all that
depends upon it has been growing sharper and more profound
during the thousands of years of his struggle for existence, his
faculty for comprehending music must also have been enlarged
in the course of time. For this reason we can not suppose that
any Beethovens were concealed among primitive men, or are run-
ning around among contemporary Australians or negroes. For
that is needed, not only a strongly cultivated musical sense, but
also a rich, great, deeply emotional soul such as accompanies an
intellect schooled according to the sum of its experiences. I
will go further, and say that I do not believe that a child of
one of these primitive men, if he were given to us to-day, could be
trained to the same degree of musical appreciation as our children
are capable of. The native higher mental faculties would be
wanting in him. "While savages are lower in mental development
than civilized man, and while we recognize that man's receptivity
for music has grown with his mental development, we must doubt
if any increase in the power of the human mind has taken place
in historical times. The civilized natives of antiquity appear to
have already reached a very high degree of mental capacity ; and
their lawgivers, poets, philosophers, architects, and sculptors have
had no successors superior to them. We have a right to suppose
also that the ancients had the same musical sense and talent for
music as we ; and that, if their music was inferior, it was not for
lack in that direction, but for the want of the products of the
continued exercise of the musical talent — of invention and dis-
covery— acquired and transmitted from generation to generation,
and added to, by the aid of which we have reached our high de-
gree of cultivation. Although man's physical power may not
increase, we have a right to expect an almost unlimited advance
of mankind in mental cultivation, by each generation building
upon the stage which its predecessor had reached, and thus con-
tinuing perpetually to go higher.

HUMAN HEREDITY. 359

HUMAN HEREDITY.

Br JAMES H. STOLLER,

PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY IN UNION COLLEGE.

IN common speech we use the term heredity as signifying simply
that principle by which the qualities of parents are transmitted
to their children. We give the term a meaning broad enough to
covei facts which come within our ordinary notice. We see that
the features of children — the shape of the brow and nose, the color
of the hair and eyes — bear a resemblance to those of the parents ;
as they grow older we notice not only physical but also psychical
resemblances — the temperament, tastes, and aptitudes are more or
less like those of the parents. We find an explanation of these
likenesses in the principle of heredity ; and, as no evidence of any
deeper operation of such a principle comes within our ordinary
observation, we limit it to these particulars. It is true that occa-
sionally we are reminded that the principle may extend to a
second generation ; we see the traits of the grandparent reap-
pearing in the child, this being most noticeably true in respect
to certain bodily disorders, as scrofulous diseases and certain
forms of insanity. But we seldom think that the principle of
heredity operates through more than the two or three generations
of our immediate ancestors, or that any other qualities than those
which are specifically peculiar to us — that mark our individuality
of body or mind — come to us by it.

A little reflection, however, must convince us that this prin-
ciple works more deeply. Those qualities that distinguish us as
members of a nationality — whence come they ? As Americans
we pride ourselves that there is something distinctive about us,
that places us in a different category from Englishmen and
Frenchmen. Whence come these national characteristics ? They
were possessed by our fathers and our grandfathers, and the im-
mediate inference, therefore, is that they come to us by inheritance.
Of course, we have to consider that the fathers who were the
founders of the nation did not inherit the American character-
istics, since we must regard them as the original possessors of
them. The fact seems to be that national characteristics origi-
nate in external causes, but once established they are perpetuated
by inheritance. It may be urged, of course, that external causes
operate upon succeeding generations as well as the antecedent
one, as evidenced in our nationality by its rapid absorption of
foreign stock. No doubt the direct influence of our institutions
is a constant force in the development of the national character-
istics, and goes a great way toward Americanizing citizens of for-
eign birth even in a single generation. But to native-born Ameri-

6o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cans this influence simply adds itself to that of inheritance, and
does not diminish its strength or importance. Taking a general
view of the question, the case becomes very obvious. It will
scarcely be disputed that national characteristics manifest them-
selves definitely, not only in the temperament, ideas, etc., of the
people, but also in their bodily features. We speak of the English
type of facial features, the German type, etc., and every one ap-
preciates that these terms express real distinctions. Moreover, we
know that these types have existed a long time, slightly vari-
able, no doubt, but never losing the main lines. It is scarcely
necessary to say that this continuance of type rests on heredity.
The case is precisely the same as that of the continuance of the
family likeness, only the family is larger and the features less
distinctive, though, in the long run, they are more faithfully con-
served.

Lying deeper than those characteristics that mark us as mem-
bers of a nationality are others that mark us as members of one
of the great races of the human family. The term race has differ-
ent significations according to its use, whether referring to dis-
tinctions chiefly of an anatomical character (though connoting
others), as the Caucasian, Mongolian, etc., races, or to distinctions
based more directly on differences of lineage, as the Celtic, Teu-
tonic, etc., races. For the purpose in hand we use it in the former
sense, dividing mankind into the usual five races, Caucasian, ne-
gro, Indian, etc. Now, it is obvious that our race characteristics
come to us in the same way as our national and family character-
istics : we get our white skin and orthognathous skulls by inherit-
ance just as truly as our more specific bodily features, only these
qualities come to us from ancestors more remote. We need not
concern ourselves here how they obtained them, nor whether
they were acquired suddenly in a single generation or gradually
through many generations. The point to be insisted upon is that,
race characteristics once established, they are transmitted by in-
heritance through all succeeding generations. Of course, the
principle applies not only to merely anatomical features, but to
mental traits as well. The peculiarities of mental constitution
that make the Caucasian the most progressive race are handed
down by inheritance just as truly as the color of the skin and the
shape of the skull.

Still deeper than the race characteristics — more fundamental
than they — are those that mark us as members of the human fam-
ily itself. Our convoluted brains, our power of verbal speech,
certain of our intellectual and our moral faculties, these are the
qualities that belong to us in common with all men, and that
distinguish us from the highest animals. Whence came these
qualities ? It can only be answered that they came from the

HUMAN HEREDITY. 361

fathers of the race, having been transmitted by the law of hered-
ity through the successive generations to us. It matters not
whether the race originated in a single pair or had a multiplex
origin, nor are we here concerned how our progenitors came to
possess these qualities at all ; the fact at hand is that, once hav-
ing lived, they transmitted to their descendants down to us their
distinctive human qualities.

The facts to which our attention has now been given are sum-
marized as follows :

All the qualities of our human nature come to us by inherit-
ance.

Those qualities which are strictly individual — the " skin-deep "
qualities — come to us from our immediate ancestors, our parents
and grandparents.

Those qualities which are less specific, which we have in com-
mon with others who live under the same laws and institutions,
and generally under similar physical conditions, come to us from
ancestors more remote, though quite within historic time.

Those qualities which are still more general, which we have in
common with others of the same general physical features, came
from ancestors much more remote, whose records are lost in pre-
historic time.

Those qualities which are broadly anthropological, which we
possess in common with all members of the human family, came
to us from the original progenitors of the race.

We have thus far considered only the strictly human qualities
of our nature. We have now to consider whether the operation
of the law of heredity extends also to the animal qualities. Let
us first notice those which man possesses in common with the
highest animals. They are, a vertebral column, giving form and
flexibility to the body ; two pairs of limbs for prehension and loco-
motion , mammary glands supplying food for the young ; a four-
chambered heart and double blood-circulation ; and, finally, a well-
developed nervous system, with sense-organs, placing the animal
in conscious relation with the external world. Does the principle
of heredity by which, as we have seen, all our anthropological
qualities have come to us, give us also these zoological qualities ?
The point here to be enforced is, that if the answer to this ques-
tion is not in the affirmative, then there is a break in that law, the
operation of which we have seen to extend from the most specific
to the most general anthropological qualities. In considering
whether there is such a break, the special point of inquiry is
whether the two classes of qualities, the anthropological and the
zoological, are different from each other in kind. For, if they be
the same in kind, the presumption is that the law operates in
respect to both ; in other words, that there is no break. The an-

VOL. XXXYII. 27

362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

thropological qualities are, as we have seen, partly physical — the
shape of the skull, the structure of the brain, the color of the skin —
and partly psychical, the intellectual and moral faculties. The
zoological qualities are also partly physical and partly psychical :
of the former class, the general structure of the body and the par-
ticular structure of organs, as the heart, lungs, glands, etc. ; of
the latter class, the faculties of intelligence. It appears, there-
fore, that the zoological qualities are the same in kind with the
anthropological, and the inference, therefore, is that the law of
heredity extends also to them. That is to say, as we proceed, step
by step, from the most specific to the most general qualities pe-
culiar to man, and then by the next step pass to those qualities
which we possess in common with the highest animals, we find
that the last term of the series is the same in kind with the oth-
ers, and all the reasons that lead us to conclude that the law of
heredity extends successively through the first terms of the series
lead us to conclude that it extends also to the last.

The fact that not all the anthropological qualities have their
zoological prototypes does not at all affect the force of the infer-
ence. We may allow, for example, that the moral faculties are
strictly anthropological ; but this does not detract from the evi-
dence that the intellectual faculties came from the zoological pro-
totypes, any more than the fact that the Italian people have dark
complexions detracts from the evidence that they descended from
Caucasian progenitors. In other words, the possession of specific
qualities by a class — qualities not received by inheritance — affects
in no way the evidence that the general qualities of the class were
received by inheritance. We have recognized this principle at
each step in the present discussion. For example, we saw that the
national characteristics of a people arise from other causes than
inheritance, but this did not lead us to conclude that the race
characteristics of the same people were not inherited. In fact,
every person affords in his own facial features an illustration of
this principle. The expression of our countenances, whether in-
telligent or dull, cheerful or grave, etc., has been determined by
the circumstances of our lives — education, etc. ; but the anatomi-
cal features — color of eyes, shape of nose, etc. — are inherited from
our parents.

Our conclusion, therefore, is that the evidences that man has
inherited his anthropological qualities apply equally as well to
his having inherited his zoological qualities.

Below those qualities which man has in common with the
higher animals are others which he possesses in common with the
lower animals also. These are chiefly anatomical and physiologi-
cal in character, such as the possession of bodies whose structural
units consist of cells, organs which perform the functions of ali-

HUMAN HEREDITY. 363

mentation, reproduction, etc. The reasoning already employed
leads us to conclude that these lower animals were the ancestors of
the higher, and transmitted to them- the qualities which the two
classes possess in common. For example, both the higher and
lower animals possess an alimentary canal — a tube running
through the body for the reception and digestion of food. We
conclude that this alimentary canal was not obtained by the
higher animals through external causes, but by inheritance from
the lower animals.

We have, finally, to consider those qualities which man, and
both the higher and lower grades of animals, possess in common
with the very lowest animals. These lowest animals, consisting
in respect to their physical characters simply of minute jelly-
particles, destitute of organization, agree with the higher animals
only in their physiological properties. These are essentially only
two, nutrition and reproduction. These, indeed, are the two abso-
lutely fundamental and essential properties of any living organ-
ism. Without the one, the life of the individual ceases ; without
the other, the life of the species. From the biological point of
view, the carrying out of these two functions of nutrition and re-
production is the sole end of existence of any living being. Ani-
mals differ from one another — they occupy a lower or higher place
in the scale of life — according to the advantages of organization
enabling them to carry out these functions. The special powers
possessed by animals which at first sight seemed to be ends in
themselves, are seen by a moment's reflection to be only subserv-
ient to these two great ends. In birds, for example, both those
powers depending upon structural perfection, as flight, vision,
song, and plumage, and those depending upon a highly developed
nervous system, as the instincts of migration and nest-building,
serve, in the end, wholly to better enable the animals to maintain
their own life and that of their species — to carry out the functions
of nutrition and reproduction. Thus, rapid flight and keen vision
enable them to procure food ; melodious notes and brilliant plu-
mage are sexual attractions ; while migration and nest-building are
directly connected with nutrition and reproduction respectively.
From these considerations it is seen that, to the biologist, the
simplest animals — the animate jelly-particles — are beings of far
higher rank than their physical simplicity would indicate, since
they carry on the same life-processes that other animals do, only
lacking parts and organs subserving the operation of these pro-
cesses. It is, therefore, only to assume that like proceeds from
like to suppose that from these simplest animals the higher forms
received by the law of heredity the two powers of their being
which all possess in common — nutrition and reproduction. The
differences subsisting between these lowest animals and the higher

364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

are not differences relating to the life-characters, but merely to
the physical forms in which life manifests itself.

As we know of no simpler organisms than these, and can not
conceive that life could manifest itself in any simpler forms, we
must regard them as the primordial animals — the progenitors of
the animal kingdom.

The conclusion which we reach, then, is that not only all man's
distinctively human qualities came to him by inheritance, but also
all his purely animal qualities. The former came from human
ancestors, the latter from animal ancestors. And as with the
former, so with the latter ; the more specific came from ancestors
less remote, the more general from ancestors more remote. The
most general, the absolutely fundamental and essential, came from
the primordial living beings.

The animals of the first life-period were succeeded by others
which, as we have seen, possessed not only the physiological char-
acters of the primordial organisms, but also certain anatomical
characters not received by inheritance, enabling them to carry out
the physiological processes more perfectly. If for the sake of sim-
plicity we consider the animals of the first and second life-periods
to be those which we have already designated as the lowest and
the lower animals respectively, then the latter received by inher-
itance from the former their functions of nutrition and reproduc-
tion, and acquired the special organs of alimentation and repro-
duction by which these functions were the better carried on. The
question whence these new characters came need form no part of
our present inquiry. For our purpose it will be sufficient to say
that they resulted from external causes, it being understood that
it is not intended to preclude the idea of the agencies in question
being natural causes. The fact here to be set forth is that these
animals of the second life-period transmitted, by the law of he-
redity, these characters that first appeared in them, along with
those which they had received by inheritance, to their descend-
ants. It is not to be supposed, of course, that the characters
were preserved unmodified as to details, but only that their gen-
eral nature, both as to structure and use, were retained. The
animals of the third life-period — which we may consider those
we have called the higher animals — therefore possessed at the
outset all the characters of the first, together with those that
were peculiar to the second. They, in their turn, under the in-
fluence of external causes, came to possess new characters — a ver-
tebral column, four-chambered heart, etc. — while those which
they had received by inheritance from their forerunners of the
second period attained in them a higher development ; in their
turn, too, they transmitted their advanced organization to the
succeeding order of beings— that is, to the human race. This

HUMAN HEREDITY. 365

same process continued through the successive generations of the
human family. The distinctively human qualities acquired at the
outset, together with the accumulation of inherited animal quali-
ties, were handed down to the races that succeeded. They, in
turn, "bestowed all that had been bequeathed to them, together
with their newly acquired race characteristics, to their descend-
ants. Finally, the national characteristics, which in our time we
may suppose to include all the traits that characterize civilized
man, were differentiated.

Civilized man, therefore, inherits the accumulation of benefits
that have come from the operation of the law of heredity through
the long ages since life began upon the earth. In a deeper sense
than we commonly think, we are the heirs of all the ages.

Man does not come into his full inheritance at the beginning
of his existence. It is a fact of exceeding significance that, at the
beginning of embryonic life, our bodies consist of nothing more
than a single cell, precisely similar to the minute organisms with
which life began upon the earth. It is as if man acknowledged
the debt which he owes to these primordial living beings. But it
is not only to the primal form of life that he makes this confession
of affinity; for, as is well known, the successive stages of em-
bryonic development represent the succession of type forms of
animal life as they appeared upon the earth. Thus, man comes
into his inheritance by degrees. At the beginning of his existence
he possesses the characters of the primal forms of life ; a little
later, those of the second life-period — such as belong to the lower
animals ; still later, those of the third life-period — such as belong
to the higher grade of animals. At a considerable time before
birth he has already come into possession of all the animal quali-
ties, and at birth the human physical characters are present.
Then follows a more perfect development of the physical char-
acters, and at the same time the acquirement of the higher human
characteristics — the power of speech and the mental and moral
faculties. Thus, in the unfolding embryo and in the growing child
we have recorded in dim but unmistakable characters the history
of the life of the earth.

A suggestion, looking to the future, here presents itself.
The same agencies out of which has come the progress of the past
are in operation now. It is, therefore, only in the course of nature
that there should be a further progress. And as respects man,
according to a law that has governed in the past, namely, that the
most recently acquired characters of a type are most subject to
progressive change, we may expect that advancement will be
chiefly in respect to his higher powers — his intellectual, moral,
and spiritual nature.

366 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A TALK ABOUT METEORITES.

By OLIVER WHIPPLE HUNTINGTON, Ph. D.,

INSTBCOTOB IN MINEBALOGY AND CHEMISTBY, HABVABD UNIYEBSITY.

METEORITES are particularly interesting because they com-
prise the only material coming to us from outer space. In
consequence of the striking phenomena resulting from their rapid
passage through our atmosphere, making them appear like balls
of fire visible at great distances, sometimes exploding with such
violence as to be taken for earthquakes, their falls have been
noticed and recorded since the earliest times. The accounts, how-
ever, were so imbued with superstitions, and so distorted by the
terrified condition of the narrators, that in most cases the witness-
es of the event were laughed at for their supposed delusions, and
it was not till the beginning of the present century that men
of science and people in general began to give credit to such
reports.

The earliest authentic records of stones falling from the sky
are to be found in the Chinese annals, which go back to 644 B. c,
and between that time and 333 A. d. Biot has traced sixteen dis-
tinct occurrences. In Europe, a meteorite is said to have fallen
in Crete as far back as 1478 B. c, but Greek history can not be
depended upon for events earlier than 700 B. c. A more proba-
ble fall, in 705 B. c, is mentioned by Plutarch ; while Livy, in
his History of Rome, gives an account of a shower of stones
which fell on the Alban Mount about 652 B. c, and which so
impressed the senate that they decreed a nine days' solemn festi-
val. Again, in 466 B. c, a stone fell at JEgospotamos, in Thrace,
which is mentioned in the Parian Marbles, and also by Plutarch
and Pliny, which is said to have been of the size of two mill-
stones, and equal in weight to a full wagon-load. Still more
famous was the meteorite which fell 204 B. c. in Phrygia, de-
scribed as conical in shape, of a deep-brown color, and looking
like a piece of lava, and so pointed at the top that it was called
the " needle " of Cybele. This stone was believed to have fallen
from heaven, and was worshiped at Pessinus by the Phrygians
and Phoenicians as the Great Mother of the Gods. At the time of
the second Punic war, upon the announcement by an oracle that
its possession would secure continued prosperity to the state, it
was demanded from King Attalus and taken with great ceremony
to Rome, where it was mounted on a silver statue of the goddess
in place of the head. Signor Lanciani has traced its existence
down to 1730. It was then finally lost sight of, but he thinks it
may still exist, buried in the ruins of the Palace of the Ca?sars.
The Diana of the Ephesians, « which fell down from Jupiter/' and

A TALK ABOUT METEORITES. 367

the Image of Venus at Cyprus, are now considered to have been
similar meteoric masses.

There is a stone whose history goes back at least twelve centu-
ries, built into the northeast corner of the Kaaba at Mecca, held
in great reverence by the Moslems, which is supposed to have had
a similar origin.

There are also numerous accounts of meteorites having been
worshiped in more modern times. One which fell about one hun-
dred and fifty years ago was worshiped for some time in the
temple of Ogi in Japan ; and a stone which fell in a field near the
village of Dooralla, in India, in 1815, was immediately decked
with flowers, and the natives would have builft a temple over it
were it not for a powerful constraint which took it to the British
Museum.

Undoubtedly the oldest meteorite still preserved is one now in
the Harvard collection, which was found by Prof. Putnam on the
altar of Mound "No. 4 of the Turner Group (Little Miami Valley,
Ohio). It possibly had been an object of worship to the old
mound-builders during some prehistoric age, and the worship of
such sky-stones is considered by many writers to have been the
oldest form of idolatry. It is well known, however, that meteoric
iron was used by the mound-builders for coating bronze ornaments
with a white metal ; and two meteoric fragments, consisting wholly
of iron, were found on a neighboring altar. Many such ornaments
are to be found in our museums. There is an account in Dio
Cassius of an attempt, under the Emperor Severus, to coat bronze
coins with silver which was said to have come down from heaven.
The same mistake of taking meteoric iron for silver is frequently
made in the present day, owing to an unusual whiteness of the
iron and its extreme malleability.

The oldest undoubted meteorite seen to fall was, till recently,
suspended by a chain from the vault of the parish church of En-
sisheim, in Alsace. The following, translated from a document
still preserved in the church, gives an account of its fall :

" On the 16th of November, 1492, a singular miracle happened ;
for, between eleven and twelve in the forenoon, with a loud crash
of thunder and a prolonged noise heard afar off, there fell in the
town of Ensisheim a stone weighing two hundred pounds. It was
seen by a child to strike the ground in a field near the canton
called Gisgaud, where it made a hole more than five feet deep. It
was taken to the church as being a miraculous object. The noise
was heard so distinctly at Lucerne Villing and many other places
that in each of them it was thought some houses had fallen.
King Maximilian, who was then at Ensisheim, had the stone car-
ried to the castle ; after breaking off two pieces, one for the Duke
Sigismund of Austria and the other for himself, he forbade fur-

368 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ther damage, and ordered the stone to be suspended in the parish
church."

In 1768 a stone was seen to fall at Luce*, in France, and three
French Academicians, one of whom was Lavoisier, were appointed
to investigate it. As they were convinced beforehand that the
stone could not have fallen from the sky, they reported to the
Academy that it was an ordinary stone, which had been struck by
lightning.

The German philosopher Chladni, in 1794, was the first to
bring together the accounts of bodies said to have fallen from the
sky, and he felt confident in his conclusion that at least two of
these came from outer space. One was the now well-known Pallas
meteorite, found by a Cossack, in 1749, on the top of a lofty mount-
ain, and brought by the traveler Pallas from Krasnojarsk, Siberia,
in 1772. The mass, consisting largely of iron, weighed fifteen
hundred pounds, and was thought by the Tartars to be a holy
thing fallen from heaven, because it differed entirely from all the
rocks of the country. The second was one found, in 1783, by In-
dians, projecting a foot above the ground, at Otumpa, province
of Tucuman, Argentine Republic. It was thought to be an iron-
mine, and Don Michael Rubin de Celis was sent to investigate it.
He reported that it was a mass of iron weighing about thirty
thousand pounds, and that there was no other iron in the neigh-
borhood, and no stones, and no human habitations.

Chladni argued that these two masses of iron must have been
formed through fire, and, as there were no signs of volcanoes in
the countries where they were found, and as volcanoes had never
been known to eject masses of iron, he concluded that they must
have come to our earth from space.

Two months after Chladni had advanced his theory, there fell
a shower of stones at Siena, in Tuscany, .an account of which
was given in a letter received by Sir William Hamilton from the
Earl of Bristol, dated Siena, July 12, 1794 :

1 In the midst of a most violent thunder-storm, about a dozen
stones of various weights and dimensions fell at the feet of differ-
ent persons, men, women, and children. The stones are of a quality
not found in any part of the Siennese territory : they fell about
eighteen hours after the enormous eruption of Mount Vesuvius,
which circumstance leaves a choice of difficulties in the solution
of this extraordinary phenomenon. Either these stones have been
generated in this igneous mass of clouds which produced such
unusual thunder, or, which is equally incredible, they were thrown
from Vesuvius at a distance of at least two hundred and fifty
miles ; judge, then, of its parabola. The philosophers here incline
to the first solution. I wish much, sir, to know your sentiments.
My first objection was to the fact itself, but of this there are so

A TALK ABOUT METEORITES. 369

many eye-witnesses it seems impossible to withstand their evi-
dence."

As the wind was from the north when the stones fell at Siena,
while Vesuvius was to the south, it was suggested that the cloud
from which they came had been blown all the way from Vesuvius
past Siena and then back again, before it condensed.

The next meteorite seen to fall was in England itself. On De-
cember 13, 1795, a stone weighing fifty-six pounds fell at Wold
Cottage, in Yorkshire, at about three o'clock' in the afternoon, and
several persons saw it fall. It fell on a perfectly clear day, and
penetrated twelve inches of soil and six inches of chalk rock. In
the neighboring villages sounds were heard which were taken for
the firing of guns at sea, and in two villages there was such a dis-
tinct sound of something whizzing through the air toward the
house of a Mr. Topham that several people ran there to see what
had happened. When the stone was dug up it was warm and
smoked. It was exhibited in London, and handbills were dis-
tributed giving an account of its descent. Such advertising, how-
ever, did not tend to make people believe in the celestial origin
of the stone ; and, as there were no volcanoes in England, it was
thought that it might have been condensed from a cloud of ashes
blown from Mount Hecla in Iceland. We do not, however, have
to go back one hundred years to find wild hypotheses as to the
probable origin of meteorites. Even now very little is known,
and the field for speculation is nearly as unlimited as it was then,
though the theories of a few centuries ago are simpler and more
amusing than the recent ones. In the chronicles of the Bene-
dictine monks a theory of the origin of meteorites is given
briefly thus :

" In the year 921, in the time of Lord John X, pope, in the sev-
enth year of his pontificate, signs were seen ; for, near the city
of Rome, many stones were seen to fall from the sky — such dread-
ful and terrible ones in the city of ISTarnia that people had to be-
lieve that they were brought straight from hell. The very biggest
of the stones, falling into the river Narnius, can be seen to this
day, projecting a cubit above the surface of the water."

A Persian philosopher, Syed Abdulla, in 1814, describing a fall
of stones near Bombay, says : " The causes of this may be, that in
the course of working (or of changes on) the ground, air being
extricated, may have entered into combination, and come near ele-
mental fire, and from this fire have received a portion of heat ;
that then it may have united with brimstone and terrene salt,
as, for instance, saltpeter ; when the mixture, from some cause,
being ignited, the fire bestows its own property on the mass, and
the stones which may have been above it are blown into the air —
God knows the truth."

37o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In 1818 Dr. W. G. Reynolds, in offering a theory on meteorites,
says : " Dr. Blagden considers electricity as the general cause of
these phenomena ; Dr. Gregory and others think they depend on
highly inflammable matter, as phosphorus, phosphorated hydro-
gen, etc., being volatilized and congregated in the upper regions
of the air. Dr. Halley ascribes them to a fortuitous concourse of
atoms, which the earth meets in her annual track through the
ecliptic ; and Sir John Pringle seems to regard them as bodies of
a celestial character, revolving around centers, and intended by
the Creator for wise and beneficent purposes, perhaps to our at-
mosphere, to free it of noxious qualities, or supply such as are
salutary." Dr. Reynolds then goes on to elaborate a most com-
plicated theory in which solid substances on the earth are changed
to vapor by the sun's heat ; these, rising as gases, finally give up
their heat by an explosion, and the particles, having no heat to
keep them apart, rush together and come down as solids.

" While the minds of the scientific men of France were in
this unsettled condition, there came a report that still another
shower of stones had fallen, this time in their own country, and
within easy reach of Paris. To settle the matter finally, if pos-
sible, the physicist Biot, member of the French Academy, was
directed by the Minister of the Interior to inquire into the event
upon the spot. After a careful examination of the stones and a
comparison of the statements of the villagers, Biot was convinced
that —

" 1. On Tuesday, April 26, 1803, about 1 P. M., there was a vio-
lent explosion in the neighborhood of L'Aigle, in the department
of Orne, lasting for five or six minutes ; this was heard for a dis-
tance of seventy-five miles round.

"2. Some moments before the explosion at L'Aigle, & fire-ball
in quick motion was seen from several of the adjoining towns,
though not from L'Aigle itself.

" 3. There was absolutely no doubt that on the same day many
stones fell in the neighborhood of L'Aiglq.

:e Biot estimated the number of the stones at two or three thou-
sand ; they fell within an ellipse of which the larger axis was 6*2
miles, and the smaller 2*5 miles ; and this inequality would indicate
not a single explosion but a series of them. With the exception of
a few little clouds of ordinary character, the sky was quite clear.

f The exhaustive report of Biot, and the conclusive nature of
his proofs, compelled the whole of the scientific world to recognize
the fall of stones on the earth from outer space as an undoubted
fact." *

The main difficulty in forming theories at the present time is

* British Museum Catalogue of Meteorites.

A TALK ABOUT METEORITES. 371

due to the fact that there are two distinct classes of meteorites,
irons and stones, the characteristics of which make it difficult to
assign a like origin to both. It is probable, however, that they
all belong to our solar system ; that they are revolving round the
sun in some different plane from the ecliptic, and that the earth
is constantly meeting them in its yearly journey. When they
come- into contact with our atmosphere, although they are moving
with planetary velocity — sometimes at the rate of forty-five miles
a second, more than twice as fast as the earth moves in its orbit —
their motion is rapidly reduced, owing to the resistance of the air,
so that in most cases they come to the ground like a spent cannon-
ball. Their passage through the air is only of a few seconds'
duration, yet the rapid reduction of velocity determines a great
heating effect, so that the meteorite, a moment before intensely
cold, is immediately fused on the surface, forming a coating vary-
ing from a fiftieth to a hundredth of an inch in thickness, and
this crust is one of the first characteristics by which a meteorite
is recognized. Moreover, the material burns away unevenly, form-
ing pittings or thumb-marks, resembling the marks left by the
fingers on a mass of putty — a character also observed on large
grains of partially burned powder picked up after the discharge
of large guns. The meteorite from Cynthiana, Ky., in the Har-
vard collection, shows similar marks though more in furrows,
made by a flow of the melted surface from the front to the back
of the mass during its passage.

The unequal heating of meteorites by the atmosphere causes
pieces to crack off, and sometimes the whole mass explodes. In
addition, the air rushing in to fill the space behind the rapidly
moving body, causes a sound variously compared to claps of
thunder, firing of musketry, the tearing of calico, and the like — a
noise frequently heard after the passage of the meteorite, owing
to the circumstance that the sound travels so much more slowly
than the mass itself. Furthermore, the high temperature of the
surface causes the mass to glow with a brilliant light, making it
appear like a ball of fire, and visible at distances depending on its
height above the horizon, sometimes over an area of one thousand
miles. Thus a meteorite was seen in 1876 to pass over the States
of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michi-
gan, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania ;
and explosions were heard like cannonading even to the distance
of one hundred and fifty miles from its course. Over Illinois it
was seen to break in pieces like a rocket, and over Indiana and
Ohio the pieces were computed to cover an area forty miles long
and five miles broad. At Rochester, Fulton County, Indiana, dur-
ing the meteorite's passage, a farmer heard the thud of something
striking the ground near his house, and in the morning found a

372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fragment of rock on top of the snow, which is supposed to be part
of the meteorite.

All meteorites appear to be fragments broken off from larger
bodies. Sometimes numerous fragments reach the earth, and at
other times only single masses. Thus, in the fall at L/Aigle,
already mentioned, about three thousand pieces were picked up,
scattered over an ellipse more than six miles long. An equally
large number fell at Knyahinya, June 9, 1866. Still more at
Pultusk in 1868. Several thousand were also picked up after a
fall at Estherville, Emmett County, Iowa, May 10, 1879. In such
a rain of meteorites the fragments vary greatly in size, some
weighing less than a grain, while the largest may weigh a hun-
dred pounds or more. In most cases the peculiar characters or
composition of the various specimens make it easy to recognize
them as fragments of the same mass. In the case of the Esther-
ville meteorite most of the pieces were coated with a fused crust,
owing to the explosion having taken place before they had lost
their great velocity.

In the case of a stone which fell at Butsura in 1861, fragments
found three or four miles apart could be fitted together, and some
of the pieces, though fitting perfectly, had been coated on the faces
of juncture with a thin crust, showing that they had been blown
apart when the meteorite was still very high in the air.

Meteorites, when not seen to fall, are easily recognized, not only
by the characteristic fused crust and pittings already referred to,
but by certain very marked peculiarities of structure. There are
three large groups : those consisting of metallic iron ; those con-
sisting of earthy minerals containing only grains of metallic iron ;
and those like the Pallas, made up of a continuous network of
iron inclosing stony matter. The stony meteorites are usually
made up of little rounded grains imbedded in a ground-mass of
fragments of the same material, a type of structure called chon-
dritic, which in its details is so characteristic that pieces of the
same mass can usually be easily identified, even though found at
places or times remote from each other. The iron meteorites are
still more easily recognized, although only about nine at most
have been seen to fall; for, since iron has not been found in
masses of any size in terrestrial rocks, unless in Greenland, these
large meteoric fragments are at once noticed wherever found.
Stony ones, on the contrary, are not only apt to be overlooked,
but the falls of past ages must have been altered and broken up
by weathering. Meteoric iron can be easily identified, because
it is usually extremely malleable, but at the same time very
tough, owing to its being made up of a network of crystalline
plates, the plates consisting of pure iron, bounded by layers of
an iron-nickel alloy and other impurities, which have separated

A TALK ABOUT METEORITES. 373

out during a slow process of crystallization, evidently from a
melted condition. This structure is best seen on a polished sur-
face which has been subject to tempering, or else etched with
acid. The acid, acting most readily upon the purest parts of
the iron, develops certain figures called Widmanstattian figures
if the plates are broad and well marked, and called Neumann
lines where they are reduced to fine markings. Till recently,
these two varieties of etched figures were supposed to indicate a
difference of crystalline structure ; but, by a study of the Harvard
collection (American Journal of Science, third series, vol. xxxii,
p. 284), it has been shown to depend on the time of crystallization
— that is to say, on merely the size of the crystals, and not a differ-
ence of form. In some cases these etched figures serve conclu-
sively to distinguish irons of different falls, but frequently they
vary on the same specimen, or depend on the direction in which
the surface is cut ; but there are large groups of irons closely re-
sembling each other in their etched characters. The distinction
of such irons has become of great importance, since the enormous
prices paid for meteorites offers a strong inducement to multiply
supposed falls. Iron meteorites are often cut up and distributed
by the finders before they have been fully identified, and the con-
fusion is further increased by the natural distribution due to the
explosions in the upper atmosphere. Thus a meteorite which fell
in Cocke County, Tennessee, some time previous to 1840, has been
turning up at various places ever since, and the numerous frag-
ments have been described from time to time under various names
as different falls.

In an attempt to prove that an iron which was found in Mav-
erick County, Kentucky, was identical with two Mexican ones, in
the Harvard collection (Proceedings of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, vol. xxiv, p. 30), the writer found that on break-
ing slabs of the respective irons the two Mexican specimens, which
had been generally accepted as identical, showed a marked differ-
ence of structure. One of them, known as the Butcher iron, when
broken in various directions by blows of a hammer, always exhib-
ited most brilliant and complex crystal faces, some of them half
an inch in diameter, certain of the faces being most beautifully
marked by a system of fine parallel lines arranged at certain fixed
angles. The second iron, on the other hand, from Santa Kosa, would
only break in two definite directions, exhibiting a single face with
little flaky surfaces, but none of the fine lines. This last iron, if
sawed to a thin edge, and then forced to break in a different direc-
tion from the two just mentioned, showed only a series of little
cube faces, very different from the Butcher iron.

On a similar examination of other irons resembling the two
Mexican ones in the figures brought out by etching, irons from

374 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Allen and Maverick Counties, Kentucky, and Chattooga County,
Georgia, appeared to be identical with the one from Santa Rosa,
though found at places so distant from each other and described
as independent falls, while none showed the striking fracture of
the Butcher specimens.

As the irons examined were among the most compact and mal-
leable of any in our collections, the result suggests a new way of
identifying fragments of the same original mass, where external
features are not sufficiently decisive, and, moreover, shows the
care that must be taken in determining supposed new falls.

■»»»

OBSERVATIONS UPON DOUBLING OF FLOWERS.

By BYEON D. HALSTED, Sc. D.,

PBOFESSOB OF BOTANY IN BUTGEBS COLLEGE.

FUNCTIONALLY a flower is for the production of offspring,
and in structure it may be considered as a transformed stem
with its metamorphosed leaves. In a typical flower — that is, one
having all the parts present and in an easily recognized form —
there are four sets of organs. The calyx forms the outer whorl of
leafy organs, and next within is the corolla, usually bright-col-
ored and showy. Inside of these two cycles of floral envelopes are
the essential organs : first the stamens, which bear the male ele-
ment as pollen-grains ; and the pistil or pistils, occupying the cen-
ter of the flower, the lower portion of which bears the seeds. In
the production of seed we find the aim and end of all floral struct-
ures. The pistil remains after the flowering period is past and
becomes the fruit, which may or may not be accompanied by
other portions of the flower. The stamens serve their purpose as
they shed their pollen, and usually quickly wither away, und the
latter is generally true of the petals.

As above stated, all the several parts of a flower are now
considered as modified leaves. The calyx is often green, leafy,
and indistinguishable from ordinary foliage. All gradations may
be found between calyx and corolla. The bright color is no argu-
ment against petals being leaves, for leaves of the common sort
often assume the most brilliant colorations. Other wild plants
illustrate the transition from petals to stamens — as, for example,
the flowers of the water-lilies ; and pistils are frequently broad,
green, and leaf -like, especially after the seeds are ripe, and the
two infolded halves open out and take on the form and function
of foliage.

We do not need to extend our examination upon this point in
search of proof for the morphological significance of the floral

OBSERVATIONS UPON DOUBLING OF FLOWERS. 375

structures, but plants under cultivation sometimes throw off some
of their disguises and give additional evidence of no mean impor-
tance. Just as the man under the influence of intoxicating liquor
may reveal qualities of his nature that might have otherwise
remained securely hidden, so the distortions seen in cultivated
blossoms furnish a key which unlocks the secrets of normal struct-
ures.

The common garden lily (Lilium tigrinum) often has, instead
of the six normal and similar parts to the perianth — the six sta-
mens and a single tricarpellary ovary — first a multiplication of the
petals and sepals, usually about twelve, followed (passing inward
in the flower) by a number of petal-stamens or stamen-petals.
The outer of these last have nearly lost their stamen character-
istics, being broad, highly colored, spotted, and with only ves-
tiges of anthers ; while the inner ones are exceedingly irregular,
and suggest that a severe struggle might have taken place be-
tween a hidden force that unimpeded would have made a petal,
and another aiming to produce a stamen. In all such flowers
there were no perfect stamens ; however, some of the petal-stamens
bore anther-lobes along their contorted edges, in which seemingly
perfect pollen-grains were produced in quantity. The pistil in all
these doubled flowers is an amalgamation of five or more car-
pels, but the tricarpellary type is not obliterated. In one instance
a petaloid structure was observed, with ovules arranged along the
mid-rib upon the upper side ; while above the two widely sepa-
rated edges were lines of chocolate color, characteristic of the
anther-lobes. In another instance the perianth was reduced to a
spathe-like structure, upon the inner veins of which were long
double lines of ovules. Within this structure was a much mis-
shapen pistil, compounded of at least six carpels, judging from
the styles and sections made of the ovary.

In the ordinary case of doubling it is considered that a stamen
is replaced by a petal, and the additional petals of the doubled
flower are limited in number by that of the stamens. It is at
once seen that this view does not hold with the lily ; for, in place
of the six normal stamens, there are at least twelve petals, only a
few of the inner ones of which retain any marks of stamens.
There is, therefore, an augmentation of the petals and transforma-
tion of the stamens. In the cultivated tulip the perianth is often
increased to three or more times the normal number (six) of parts,
and in one flower the modified stamens were found increased to
nine. The pistil frequently shows signs of transforming into
petals and becomes winged and bright-colored along one or more
sutures, while the ovules are sometimes exposed to view between
the separated valves.

The common garden paeonia is another largerflowered species,

376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

but quite unlike the lily or tulip, because the stamens are very
numerous in each blossom. In this plant there is no need of
speculating as to the origin of the petals. They arise in large
numbers from the failure of the stamens to develop as such.
The filaments broaden out upon opposite sides and a petal results.
In nearly half such petals the remnant of an anther can be seen
at the tip of the petal, which is somewhat notched, often deeply,
and in the center is the abortive anther. Near the center of the
flower the transition is more evident, for here the filament-wings
are not much broadened, and the anthers more prominent. Still
nearer the great center pistil the ordinary stamens may be found,
with their anthers bearing pollen. Occasionally the poppy illus-
trates a modification of the stamen in the opposite direction to
that given above — namely, the inner ones become small simple
pistils, which are either closely applied to the surface of the large
central compound pistil, or adherent to it and blending with the
stigmas.

The rose family and the crowfoots both furnish a long list of
plants which uniformly produce double flowers under cultivation,
and for this reason these two orders are rich in ornamental garden
species. Both the roses and the buttercups abound in stamens ;
and, from what we have seen in the poppy, it should be expected that
doubling would be easy in such plants. The examples of doubled
flowers in these two families are so familiar that no further com-
ment need be made. Among the hardy cultivated roses, for ex-
ample, it is rarely that a blossom can be found not exhibiting all
gradations between perfect stamens and unmistakable petals. It
may, however, be stated that in a member of the rose family
grown for its fruit — namely, the apple — petal-stamens were fre-
quently met with. In the Tallman sweeting variety, upon one
tree, the doubling was found as frequently as one flower in ten.
Usually one stamen was transformed, but rarely so much so as to
be distinctly petaline.

The abnormities which we have been considering, both ge-
nerically and specifically, are rarely met with in wild plants in a
state of nature. They are, therefore, transformations in flowers
concomitant with culture. It is a well-established fact that cult-
ure induces changes in those parts for which the plant is culti-
vated and it might be added that they are cultivated because of
this response. Varieties of any cereal differ mostly in the grain ;
beets, carrots, and turnips in the roots ; apples, plums, and peaches
in the fruit ; and so on. In accordance with the general rule,
plants grown for their flowers should vary most in the blossoms.
A plant when under cultivation has been removed from the con-
ditions which obtain in the wild state and is relieved from that
fierce struggle for life which is everywhere in progress among

OBSERVATIONS UPON DOUBLING OF FLOWERS. 377

feral plants. In other words, the cultivated plant is living an
unnatural existence ; stimulated by man's careful attention and
guided by his will, it yields to the demands of its guardian. Va-
riations quickly arise under such fostering conditions, and such
changes as are advantageous to man are, if possible, perpetuated
by him. This perpetuity in many instances can only be accom-
plished by non-sexual methods, as by cuttings, graftings, etc., and
it therefore follows that the seeding process is either ignored or
prevailed against. With their energies all turned in some other
channel, plants may in time cease to develop seed.

A flower of the showy sort we may consider as the product of
two great forces or groups of forces — namely, that which is within*
the plant, and for the lack of a better term may be called the con-
structive ability of the plant ; and those forces which act from
without, and are included in the general term environment The
chief factor in this last or external force is the modifying influ-
ence of insects, due primarily to irritation. For example, the lily-
flower in its wild state has reached its present condition because
the mother plants and their insect attendants have worked to-
gether to produce a structure that is admirably adapted to the
needs of each. It is, it seems to me, not asking too much of any
one who is a disciple of evolution, even in its mildest form, to
conceive that the simplest wind-fertilized flowers were the first of
all floral structures to appear in the far-away geologic times. In
those early ages, provided that we base our reasoning upon what
is seen to-day, it is easy to understand that out of the foliar struct-
ures there were evolved the primitive ovary and the ante- Adam-
ite stamen. That ancient ovary might stand in striking contrast
with the simple pistil of a pine-cone or leaf serration of a cycas,
and the corresponding stamen was perhaps only a slight modifica-
tion of a common leaf. But out of these primitive essential organs
came, by slow but by an ever-advancing adaptation to the sur-
rounding world, the wonderful combinations of color, odor, and
form which we see in the more complex floral structures of the
present day.

All the conspicuous parts of the flower outside of the essential
organs are for the purpose of securing a transfer of pollen from
the stamen of one flower to the pistil of another. This process of
cross-fertilization, as has been abundantly shown, is an advantage
to the offspring, which are stronger and therefore better able to
cope with surrounding rivals. Therefore, any change in floral
structure, however slight, born of accident as some would say, or
the result of an inward impulse to improve, is one step toward
that ideal condition of perfect adaptation between a plant and its
surroundings. So far as the sexual elements are concerned, this
ideal adjustment seems to be that of wide separation, and accord-

YOL. XXXVII. — 28

378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ino- to this view we find an explanation for the actual separation
upon different plants of stamens and pistils in dioecious species,
in different flowers in monoecious plants, and their practical sepa-
ration in all cases when the stamens and pistils in perfect flowers
mature at different times (dicogamy). Again, there is a long list
of plants in which wide fertilization is secured by one flower hav-
ing long stamens and short pistils, and another of the same species
with short stamens and long pistils (dimorphism). Aside from
all these well-defined plans for crossing, there are hundreds of
others none the less obscure and often vastly more ingenious —
plans so well worked out that the plant will fail to produce seeds
►unless a particular kind of insect visits it. All such species are
constantly striving to arrive at a perfect adaptation between the
flower and the peculiarities of its insect attendant. In short, the
plan for wide fertilization is so thoroughly apparent along the
many lines, that Darwin expressed the condition in the following
concise and striking terms : " Nature abhors continual close fer-
tilization."

The structure and form of the essential organs, like those of
the floral envelopes, have come to their present condition through
the prolonged interaction of plant and insect. Now, at the outset
plants cultivated for their flowers were those already showy — that
is, those in which the floral envelopes were conspicuous, fantastic,
or sweet-scented. Let us bear in mind that these showy wild
flowers became so in competition with hundreds of other species,
and underwent all the expense of floral display for purely selfish
ends. Each species worked out the problem of reproduction in
its own way ; and it is safe to assert that it became as much a part
of the life of a wild rose to develop bright petals as to form com-
pound leaves with large stipules.

In the historic development of such flowers it may be assumed
that the essential organs came first, and the surrounding parts
appeared and were preserved as they were found of service to
the plant. As time went on, additional stamens and pistils may
have been added, until the most economical number of parts was
reached — if it has been reached. The number varies in many of
the wild species to-day, and especially in those prominent in the
flower-garden.

It is only fair to hold the successful floriculturist responsible
for much of the seemingly stable increase of display in culti-
vated plants over their wild forms. This is the same credit
that is freely given to the horticulturist who increases the size,
for example, of the strawberry, by crossing, selection, etc., pos-
sibly at the expense of stamens, as seen in many of the pistil-
late sorts. By granting this there is no intention of overlook-
ing the long-established tendency in the wild plant to develop

OBSERVATIONS UPON DOUBLING OF FLOWERS. 379

in the direction taken when placed under the favoring conditions
of culture.

Garden plants illustrate with accelerated force the working of
the universal law of compensation. Fruits not only enlarge, hut
"become seedless. Therefore, the increase in the size and other
modifications in the flowers of such plants as are grown for their
blossoms is only in accordance with a general law. An augmen-
tation of floral parts is only a step beyond the increase in size of
parts already present, and may be largely a matter of convenience
in the arrangement of the parts in the bud. When we remember
that any augmentation in the petals, etc., would be seized upon by
the gardener, and if possible reproduced, the wonder is that the
increase is not greater than it is. It is not claimed that such an
augmentation is a direct advantage to the plant, any more than is
the exaggerated size of a cabbage-head or the thick, rich pulp of
a grape, especially when the cabbage splits open and falls apart
of its own weight, or the grape-pulp monopolizes the whole sub-
stance, and no seeds result. When the guiding hand of man is
withdrawn, cultivated plants soon or late find their way back to a
stable condition called the natural form, and are again able to
cope with their neighbors, depending entirely upon the conditions
attendant upon the wild state.

The point that now calls for our attention is the development
of one floral organ out of another widely differing from it in
appearance. Augmentation, we have seen, is to be expected, but
metamorphosis usually brings surprise. The unnaturalness of
this arises in part from the constancy of organs in wild plants, and
the general impression that a manifest difference in structure and
use must indicate dissimilar origin of the parts. All of the vari-
ous organs of a flower are now, as before stated, generally consid-
ered as lateral outgrowths from the stem, and in a state of nature
their number, size, shape, color, etc., depend upon the service of
each in the economy of the plant. In origin and early growth,
therefore, there is no microscopic difference between the sepals,
petals, stamens, and pistils. As shown at the beginning of this
paper, by taking the whole range of wild plants, it is not difficult
to find all gradations, from the outermost sepal to the central pis-
til. If these various parts have a common origin — namely, in
minute cellular outgrowths afterward connected with the primary
axis by a vascular cord — the wonder is that each type is adhered
to so closely in the wild forms, and the surprise should be that
under the modifying conditions of culture more striking combi-
nations are not found. The petals (that is, the inner whorl of
floral envelopes) and the stamens (the outer circle of essential
organs) form the boundaries between the two primary divisions
of the complete flower. It is here that the line of separation is

3go THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

most frequently broken, and especially in those flowers having an
indefinite number of stamens and petals. In such plants in the
wild state there is usually no established uniform number for
eit her of these parts, and it may be that they vary as circum-
stances determine. In such cases it seems more natural to sup-
pose that one gives place to the other, than that there is an inde-
pendent development of a new part. However, when we come
to the cultivated plants, this seeming chasm between petals and
stamens is bridged, and the difficulty now turns upon deciding
whether a certain organ is more or less stamen than petal.

As seen from both a physiological and morphological point of
view, the pistil is considered the most highly differentiated part
of the flower, the stamen next, petal next, and sepal least. Under
the conditions obtaining with the cultivated rose, stamens are less
important than petals, and probably less easily produced. Instead
of the slender filament surmounted by the two lobes of the anther,
bearing thousands of expensive pollen-grains, there is a broad,
loose-celled, showy petal. When a stamen is replaced by a petal,
it is naturally termed retrograde metamorphosis. In the rose, as
in many other cultivated plants, all gradations may be found,
from a normal stamen, with a slight color-line along one side of
the slender filament, to the perfect petal, which may have a small
notch at the tip, marking where the anther might have been. So
long as the demand for self -propagation is met in other ways, the
tendency to produce seed may be overcome, and the plant spends
its energies in the formation of showy blossoms, possibly losing,
for the time at least, the power to ripen seed. If the selective
power of the rosarian is now withdrawn, while at the same time
the stimulation of high culture remains, the inference is not un-
warranted that the retrogression would continue so far that no
flowers develop. It may be that the so-called green roses some-
times met with furnish solid ground for such a view. At any
rate, they are forcible examples of the throwing off of floral dis-
guises, and the true nature of the parts becomes evident to the
most skeptical.

Rosaceous flowers furnish examples of the simplest form of
doubling. In many others the struggle between the two forces
seems to have been more violent, and the results are far from uni-
form, even in the same flower. In some species the broadening of
the stamen takes place above the anther, as if the filament had
become prolonged and petaloid. Frequently with such structures
the rudimentary anther is at the base of the petal, or one half is
midway upon one side, and the other opposite it, the connective
having broadened out into the body of the petal. It is not un-
usual to find one half of the organ petaloid, while the other is
contracted, contorted, and bears an anther-lobe containing fully

OBSERVATIONS UPON DOUBLING OF FLOWERS. 381

developed pollen. In the petunia the doubling of the flower is
usually accompanied by a remarkable modification of the pistil
— in short, a secondary flower is formed within the ovary. Bot-
anists have long recognized an exceptional development of the
floral axis which has been termed prolifi cation. In this there may
be a prolongation of the axis beyond the blossom, and the devel-
opment upon it of ordinary foliage. The European larch fur-
nishes a good illustration of this. Sometimes an ordinary leafy
stem extends upward from the center of the cone for nearly a foot.
In rare cases leafy branches have grown out from theifree or
blossom end of pears, and buds and long branches have arisen
from the center of a rose. In the petunia this prolification, if we
may call it such, assumes the form of a small and much-contorted
flower. Repeated examinations of normal flowers fail to show
any unusual structure to the pistil. It is, therefore, associated
with the doubling process in the petunia. Instead of the end of
the floral axis, which terminates at the base of the single centrally
situated pistil, remaining as such, it develops into another flower,
and this within the ovary of the primary blossom. Just why we
should have this peculiar form of prolification, or any, in fact, is
not for us to decide. The ordinary forces which would construct
a normal flower have been thrown into confusion, and retrograde
metamorphoses and floral prolification have resulted. In fact, it
seems evident that out of the substance ordinarily producing a
capsule of petunia-seed has been formed in the same ovary an
amalgamation of stamens, petals, and a rudimentary pistil. In
short, the tendency to petaline display does not stop with the
stamens, but invades the pistil, and transforms it as already de-
scribed.

After doubling has once become established, and the tendency
is an hereditary trait, it still remains true that surrounding con-
ditions may favor or modify it. It is well known that among
wild plants the absence of favoring surroundings will hasten the
period of reproduction, and even augment the yield of fruit.
With doubled flowering plants it may be that they strive toward
the same end, but fall short because of non-reproductive tenden-
cies developed in them by long-continued culture for their showy
flowers only.

A eelationship between the flora of eastern Asia and of eastern North Amer-
ica was pointed out, as to Japan, by Dr. Asa Gray thirty years ago. It has been
illustrated since by discoveries of new species alike in both regions, but they have
been for the most part unimportant herbs. Greater force is now given to the
fact by the discovery, by Dr. Augustine Henry, that the Chinese and American
tulip-trees are identical. The discovery is significant in that it gives evidence that
the climates of eastern America and of China have continued to be alike since the
Tertiary period.

382 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

TELPHERAGE IN PRACTICAL USE.

By FREDERIK A. FERNALD.

A VAST field of application which electricity is only just en-
tering upon is the transportation of freight and passengers.
The use of electric motors for propelling passenger-cars on street
railways may be said to have passed through the experimental
stage into the domain of commerce. There are roads, using one
or another of four or five different systems, in operation or in
process of construction, in all parts of the United States, and new
contracts are frequently being announced. Nothing, however,
has been accomplished in this country in the direction of carry-
ing freight by electricity. But a system, called " Telpherage," has
been worked out in England, wljich is especially adapted to take
the place of horses in carting, as they are already being displaced
from the propelling of cars.

Telpherage may be regarded as a development of what is called
in England the " wire-rope haulage " system, by which freight is
conveyed in buckets suspended by a grip from an elevated wire
cable. For distances of a few hundred feet, an inclined cable,
down which loaded buckets suspended on traveling wheels move
by their own weight, has also been used. The telpher system
resulted from a union of the joint inventions of Profs. W. E.
Ayrton and John Perry with those of Prof. Fleeming Jenkin.
Prof. Jenkin had had in mind for some time the idea of propelling
electrically a continuous stream of light trains without attend-
ants along an elevated single rope or rail, which should be also
the conductor of the electricity. He had not solved the problem
of preventing automatically these trains from running into one
another, when he read an account of the plan for dividing elec-
trically the rubbed conductor of electric railways into sections,
devised by Profs. Ayrton and Perry, and described by the former
in a lecture at the Royal Institution, London, toward the close of
1882. This plan, designed to prevent leakage of electricity, also
furnished an absolute block, cutting off the power automatically
from any train whenever it approached too close to the one in
front of it. At Prof. Jenkin's suggestion, a partnership was
entered into by these three gentlemen, and " The Telpherage Com-
pany was soon afterward formed, to bring their system into
practical use. Experimental work was carried on for over two
years on the estate of Mr. Melton R. Pry or, the chairman of the
company.

Various details of construction were worked out in these
experiments, and at the beginning of 1885 the scheme was suf-
ciently developed to be put in practical operation. Arrangements

TELPHERAGE IN PRACTICAL USE.

383

were made with, the Sussex Portland Cement Company for build-
ing a telpher line to carry clay from the clay -pits on Lord Hamp-
den's estate at Glynde, in Sussex, to the Glynde Railway station.
While this work was in progress, Prof. Jenkin died, and was
succeeded as engineer of the Telpherage Company by Prof. Perry,
under whose direction the line was completed. It was put in
operation October 17, 1885. The general appearance of the Glynde
telpher line is shown in Fig. 1, and the following description of it

Fig. 1.— Part of the Telpher Line at Glynde.

is based upon lectures delivered by Prof. Jenkin and Prof. Perry.
The structure consists of a line of posts, eighteen feet high and
sixty-six feet apart, with cross-heads eight feet long at the top.
Instead of a cable, as used in the wire-rope haulage system, it was
found better to have round steel rods, three quarters of an inch
thick, running from post to post for the buckets, or " skeps," to
travel on. The ends of the rods are fastened to cast-iron saddles.
As the train of skeps runs on a single rail, a double track, or two
lines of rods, can be supported at the two ends of the cross-heads
on the single line of posts. As would be expected, these slender
rods sag somewhat under the weight of the loaded skeps, but the
trains are made of the length either of one span or two spans, so
that the part of the train coming up out of the depression is
helped on by the weight of the part just going down into it. The
sagging makes the mechanical resistance but little more than is
experienced in hauling a train of the same weight along a rigid
track, while the use of flexible rods enables the road to be built

384

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

much more lightly and hence much more cheaply than if stiff
rails were used. On curves, sidings, and sections for loading and
unloading, however, it is found better to employ the stiff rails,
which are supported by posts thirteen feet apart. The form of

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as
a

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switch which has been devised for telpher lines consists of a
hinged stiff blade of steel, which allows a train to run off on to a
stiff siding, when it is lowered so as to rest on the main line.

At intervals along the line straining-posts are placed, each of
which acts as an abutment for a number of spans on one side, and
carries a compensation gear, by which an equal number of spans

TELPHERAGE IN PRACTICAL USE. 385

on the other side are kept up to the proper tension. The compen-
sation gear consists of a chain attached to the end of a rod, which
here is not bolted to the saddle, and running down to a lever
and weight beneath the track. These gears keep the tension of
the rods uniform in spite of varying loads and temperature ; on
the line at Glynde the tension is two and a quarter tons. While
this line was being constructed, Prof. Perry discovered that the
tension of a rod could be determined very simply, by setting it to
vibrating, and counting the vibrations in a quarter of a minute.

A train on the Glynde line consists of an electric locomotive
and either five or ten skeps, in the latter case the locomotive be-
ing in the middle of the train. The skeps, are spaced- evenly and
somewhat widely apart, being connected by poles fourteen feet
long, in order to distribute the weight of the loaded train over a
considerable length of the rail, which allows the track to be light
and correspondingly cheap, and in order also to have the train of
the proper length to make the necessary electrical connections as
it passes from span to span. The poles are attached to the buck-
ets by a hook-and-eye coupling, easily detached. Each skep
weighs one hundred and one pounds, and holds about two hun-
dred and fifty pounds of dry clay. The cross-piece connecting
the two wheels is of wood, so that the bucket, being suspended
from this by a hanger, is insulated from the line, and may be
handled without any shock being felt. An empty train at Glynde
will travel to the clay-field where the track slopes down so as to
bring the skeps nearly to the level of the ground. A laborer
touches a key and stops the train, the skeps are then filled, the
key is touched again, and the train starts off.

At the railway siding the train does not stop. The buckets
pass above the middle of the cars, into which the clay is dumped
automatically by the handle at the bottom of each bucket strik-
ing an arm projecting from a post. Any kind of a load, such as
bags of grain or logs, may be hung from the hangers by replacing
the buckets by bands, or a seat holding two passengers may be
substituted for the bucket, which would allow of twenty passen-
gers being drawn by one locomotive. For passenger lines, how-
ever, Prof. Perry says that it would be found probably more
convenient to use a stiff rail rather than the flexible rod. A
single-ivheeled skep, suggested by Mr. Horace Darwin, has been
given practical form by Mr. Gordon Wigan. A train of these
skeps moves with less friction and is more flexible, so that it goes
round curves more readily than a train of the two-wheeled skeps.
Mr. Wigan has also designed a one-wheeled locomotive.

An end view of the " tandem locomotive," which is the form
used at Glynde, is shown in Fig. 3.

This consists of a Reckenzaun motor, with the necessary gear-

386

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 3.

-Tandem Locomotive
(end view).

ing, driving-wheels, etc. The locomotive is suspended by two
wheels, Q, which have rubber tires. The electridal current pass-
ing through the motor drives it at the rate of sixteen hundred to

seventeen hundred revolutions a minute,
and the power is transmitted by the cog-
wheels A and B to a second horizontal
shaft on which is a chain-wheel, F. A
chain going round this wheel, and round
two chain-wheels at C, C, causes the two
driving-wheels of the locomotive to rotate.
Various forms of grip and friction-
gearing locomotives have been devised by
the staff of the Telpherage Company, but
it was found that the simple locomotive
represented in the figure could go quite
readily up inclines as steep as one foot
rise in thirteen ; no grades so steep as this
were needed at Glynde, hence the more
elaborate machines were not put in use
there. Prof. Perry is confident that the
simple locomotive would be effective on
grades as steep as one in ten, if the rail be kept quite dry. It was
found that the weight of the locomotive, which is not much greater
than that of one of the loaded skeps, with the aid of the rubber
tires produces enough friction on the rail for the propulsion of
the train. In the wet season of the year the rubber tires will last
only a fortnight, but in dry weather their life is much longer.
Still, even on the wettest days the locomotive performs its work
quite well.

It was feared at first that trains near the engine-house would
move much faster than those which were farther away. But this
difficulty is prevented by an electrical governor attached to each
locomotive. In Fig. 4, D is the second shaft, and W W are the two
weights of a centrifugal governor, which are held ordinarily in po-
sition near the axis by means of the spring S. When the weights
fly apart to the dotted positions W and W, they draw the lever
into the dotted position and break the metallic contacts at c, so
that no electricity can be received by the motor. But no spark is
made at c, because, after the contact is broken there, a connection
of small resistance is continued for a short time at a, between two
carbons, or a piece of carbon and a piece of iron, one of which is
compelled by a spring to follow the other for some distance. If
the contact be suddenly broken when the motor is making sev-
enteen hundred revolutions a minute, the electric current will
remain cut off until the speed of the motor has become reduced
to about fifteen hundred. The position of the governor on the

TELPHERAGE IN PRACTICAL USE.

387

locomotive may be seen in Fig. 3, under the motor. While
ascending a steep grade the current will be on for almost the
whole time ; while descending* such a grade it will be off alto-
gether ; on level stretches it may be on for, say, a quarter of the
whole time of running. This plan avoids all waste in switches or
interposed resistances, and the current cut off by each governor is
too small to injure the dynamo.

But since a train when going down a steep incline is liable to
get up too great a speed, even without its motor receiving any

,v / ; w'

Fig. 4.— Electrical Governor.

electricity, the locomotive is provided also with a brake, shown
in Fig. 5. This is placed on the shaft of the motor, and the edge
of it may be seen in Fig. 3, beside the cog-wheel A. In Fig. 5,
W W are two weights whose centrifugal force, up to a speed of
eighteen hundred revolutions of the shaft A per minute, is bal-
anced by the springs S S, but above that speed the weights draw
outward and press the wooden brake-blocks B B against the metal
ring C, which is fixed to the frame of the locomotive, thus retard-
ing the motion of the train.

The method of working telpher trains employed at Glynde is
what the inventors call the " Cross-over Parallel System." Fig. 6
is a diagram showing the electrical connections according to this
system, where an up and a down track are used. Each track is
divided into sections, each span of the ordinary length being a
section. Alternate sections of each track, Ab B2, A3, B4, etc., are
electrically connected together and to one pole of the generator
of electricity D ; the other sections are also connected together,
and to the other pole of the generator. The two sets are well in-
sulated from each other. Only two wheels of a train are employed

388

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for making contact, and these wheels are just the length of a sec-
tion apart. When the leading wheel L is on a negative section, as
A2, the trailing wheel T is on a positive section, Ai, and vice versa,

so that a circuit is
made between the
poles of the gen-
erator through the
rails, the two con-
tact wheels of a
train, and a wire
connecting these
wheels through
the motor M on the
locomotive, which
thus receives its
supply of elec-
tric energy. Of
course, the current
through the motor
is stopped and re-
versed each time
the contact wheels
pass from a posi-
tive to a negative
or a negative to a
positive section, but this makes no difference with the direction
in which the motor runs, nor does it injure the dynamo. We can
cause the locomotive to run backward, however, by altering the
positions of the commutator-brushes on the motor. In the case
of a single track, the positive sections Ax, A3, etc., would have to

Fig. 5. — Mechanical Brake.

Ai

•** B4

V

&.

OM

*3

X

*2

Si

A*

A

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(JM,

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Bz

- Bi

Fig. 6.— Diagram op the Cross-over Parallel System.

be connected by a long wire instead of through the sections of
rail B2, B4, etc. This system requires that the sections shall all be
of equal length, which is sometimes inconvenient, as when broad
gorges have to be crossed, and at curved parts of the line. But
this difficulty can be overcome to some extent by employing a
" gravitation section " longer than the distance between the con-
tact wheels of a train. This section is constructed with a down-
ward slope, so that the weight of the train will propel it over the
part in which it receives no electric energy.

TELPHERAGE IN PRACTICAL USE.

389

Fig. 7 shows how the ends of the steel rods are fastened and
insulated from each other. The end of one rod is turned down
and fastened to the cast-iron saddle with a nut, as shown at the
right of the figure. The end of the next rod, A, is bolted to the
cast-steel cap C, which is insulated from the saddle by an insu-
lator of vulcanite, V ; and, in order that the tension of the rods
may not break the vulcanite, melted lead is run in between the

V--' . y//////////////^/////////////////y^/y////^/^

Fig. 7.— Ordinary Saddle.

saddle and the insulator, and between the insulator and the cap.
To prevent the metallic wheels of the skeps from short-circuiting
the two sections as they cross the tops of the posts, there are insu-
lated gap-pieces, as shown in this figure, on the saddles between
each rod and the next.

Each of the motors at Glynde receives a power of about fifteen
hundred watts, or about two horse-power, and as the potential is
about two hundred volts everywhere on the line, each motor re-
ceives about eight amperes when a train is running at about four
and a half miles an hour. The dynamo used on this line is a
Crompton six-unit " shunt- wound " machine of the Gramme type
driven by a steam-engine. It is evident that a telpher line could
be run with water-power, where this is available, even if the
source of power is several miles from the track.

The line at Glynde is a little under a mile in length. On long
lines it is expected that a source of power would be needed every
ten miles, working the trains for five miles in each direction.

The advantages claimed for telpher lines over surface rail-
roads using steam locomotives are, first, the much less cost of the
road and equipment. Thus, as the result of the experience gained
in constructing the Glynde line, it was estimated that a similar
line could be erected for a total cost equal to about six thousand
dollars, including engine, dynamo, track, and five trains, with

39o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

locomotives to carry one hundred tons a day. Where rivers and
gorges have to be crossed and very uneven ground is to be
passed over, no expensive bridging or grading has to be done.
It is not necessary to buy the land over which the line runs ;
only a right of way need be acquired — for the tracks being ele-
vated, the road does not interfere with the use of the ground for
agricultural or other purposes. At Glynde this consideration was
an important one, and the fact of the tracks being elevated was
also important for the reason that sometimes in winter some of
the fields over which the line passes are several feet deep in water.
The presence of an electric line of conveyance may be an actual
convenience for agricultural operations ; for a root - cutter, a
shearing-machine, a thrashing-machine, a circular saw, or any
other agricultural machinery, may be driven by attaching a small
electro-motor to the machine, and connecting it by wires with the
rods of the line.

A train of ten loaded skeps, on a road of flexible rods such as
has just been described, weighs about two tons, yet lines can be
designed, especially when stiff rails are used, that will carry
almost as heavy loads as desired. Yet telpher lines are especially
applicable where the traffic is not large enough, or the difficulties
of construction are too great, to make an ordinary railroad profit-
able, and where the goods would be conveyed in carts or on
pack-horses. Prof. Perry estimates that on a railway the cost of
transporting freight is about Id. per ton per mile, if there is a
sufficient amount of traffic ; that on a telpher line the cost is from
2id. per ton mile to 3id. ; whereas cartage can not be performed
at much less than Is. per ton mile, and even at this high price
the cost of constructing the cart-road and keeping it in repair is
left out of account. Telpherage is claimed to be superior to the
wire-rope haulage system in its power to turn sharp corners
with ease.

It was reported in the spring of last year that the Glynde line
had given every satisfaction under continuous working for over
three years, and that negotiations were in progress for the erec-
tion of telpher lines both in England and abroad. Among the
contracts then recently made was one for two lines in Cornwall,
for the carriage respectively of one thousand and five hundred
tons of tin ore a week.

In regard to possible applications of telpherage Prof. Perry
has said : " As we have it at present, it will not only be very use-
ful in bringing ore from mines, but it is easy to arrange for a
telpher line which will load or unload a vessel which is unable to
come close to shore on account of the shallowness of the water,
and we can imagine these trains of skeps running out over the
sea, running down into the hold of a vessel, running up again, and

COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH AMERICA. 391

coming back to land. . . . We have at present very modest aims.
I should prefer for some time to simply develop lines like the one
at Glynde ; but I am quite sure that in future, when more capital
than we have had at our command is employed to develop the
system, we shall have trains of skeps passing down empty into
coal-mines and along the workings, to be filled by the men as they
dig the coal from the face, coming back to the bottom of the pit,
and, moving up a vertical rod, passing on to the ordinary lines at
the surface, and then without stopping, except perhaps to be
labeled, traveling along, shunted from point to point by men
properly stationed, who will know what to do with each train by
the ticket upon it, until they will eventually reach the door of the
customer who is to use the coal. The immense amount of worry
which there has been in the development of telpherage, even as we
now see it, shows me that its grandest developments can not come
in my own time ; but that it must come in the long run ; and that
telpherage will be a general system of distribution of goods is a
fact which is fixed in my mind so securely that no amount of
disappointment or worry can remove it."

-*♦♦-

THE COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH AMERICA.*

By GEOEGE G. CHISHOLM, F. E. G. S.

THIS, the smaller half of the New World, has at least four
fifths of its area within the tropics, and hence yields chiefly
tropical products ; but here as elsewhere the temperate area, rela-
tively to its extent, furnishes a greater abundance of commercial
commodities, and it is in this part of the continent that the rate of
increase in the production of such commodities, and the develop-
ment of means of distribution for them, are now most rapid, and
European immigration is most constant.

The lofty chains of the Andes, on the west side of the conti-
nent, form an important climatic barrier. In the latitudes in
which the trade winds prevail they arrest the moisture-laden
winds from the Atlantic, draining the moisture out of winds that
had already been partly drained in their course over the conti-
nent farther east. The Andes also constitute a great obstacle to
communication between the east and west coasts. There is as yet
, no railway that completely crosses any part of them, though there
are railways which reach a height of upward of fourteen thou-
sand feet before attaining the table-lands between the principal
chains of these mountains.

* From the author's Handbook of Commercial Geography, recently published by Long-
mans, Green L Co., London and New York.

392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Some of the mighty rivers to the east of the Andes form excel-
lent water-ways. The Orinoco, in the north of the continent, is
navigable for steamers continuously for nearly a thousand miles.
The Amazon is navigable without interruption to the base of the
Andes, a distance of twenty-six hundred miles from its mouth,
and six thousand miles of navigation are afforded by the main
stream and its tributaries. Many of these tributaries, however,
have their navigable course greatly obstructed by falls and rap-
ids. The value of the navigation of the Amazon is diminished
by the paucity of population and products in the region through
which it flows and by the similarity of the products in nearly the
whole of its navigable course. The inland water-way, which is
already of most importance, and likely to remain most useful to
commerce in the future, is that from north to south formed by
the upper Paraguay and the lower Parana, a water-way which
is uninterrupted from near the source of the former river, and
which, like the Mississippi, brings hot and temperate climates
into direct communication. Its chief drawback is the extreme
shallowness of its estuary, the Rio de la Plata, or River Plate.

The population is still very scanty, probably not more than
thirty millions. Whites of pure blood form only from two to
three tenths of the whole, negroes about one tenth, and the re-
mainder either native Indians or people of mixed race ; so that on
the whole the Indian element still largely predominates. The
white population in Brazil is of Portuguese origin, and Portu-
guese is there the official language ; but elsewhere, except in Gui-
ana, the whites are mainly of Spanish descent, and Spanish is the
official language.

Brazil is an empire * which secured its independence of Portugal
in 1822. In size it is the rival of the United States and Canada.
Only a limited area has been turned to account for agriculture.
Even the area which travelers in Brazil deem it possible to bring
under cultivation at some future time is but a small fraction of
the whole. The equatorial valley of the Amazon is filled with
dense forests. Close to the coast, that trends in a southeasterly
direction, stretch ranges of mountains which cut off the Atlantic
moisture from the region behind. This region is made up mainly
of low table-lands (campos) with a sterile soil. North of about
20° south — that is, throughout the broader part of the country
south of the forests — these campos are considered fit for nothing
but pasture. There remains nevertheless an area in the south —
small, indeed, compared with the extent of the empire, but yet
between four and five times the size of Great Britain — in which
there are many fertile districts still unsettled, and a considerable

[These pages were written before Brazil became a republic. — Editor.]

COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH AMERICA. 393

extent of these in latitudes fit for European settlers. Till recently
the practice of slavery has deterred free immigrants from settling
in those provinces in which the institution was most firmly estab-
lished (those growing tropical products), but since 1871 it has
been in process of abolition, and it was entirely abolished in 1888.
Great efforts are hence being made by the Brazilian Government
to attract immigrants to those districts in which a substitute for
slave-labor is most needed. Immigrants, chiefly Italian and Port-
uguese, are now arriving in thousands. In the southernmost
provinces, where slavery was never very general, German and
Italian colonies have existed for many years. Railways are so far
most numerous in the coffee region of Brazil. Of the projected
railways, one of the most important is that designed to avoid the
rapids of the Madeira, but for which steamers would be able to
ascend to the base of the Bolivian table-land.'

The capital of the empire is Rio Janeiro, which is also the
chief seaport, and the principal outlet for the coffee region. Its
harbor is admirable on account of its commodiousness and safety,
and delightful on account of its beauty. The second port of this
region is Santos, farther south. Bahia, or San Salvador, and Per-
nambuco are the seaports of the region producing sugar, cotton,
and tobacco; Para, Maranham, and Ceara, those of the region
yielding forest products — rubber, Brazil-nuts, cabinet and dye
woods, together with cacao and sugar. The ports of the temper-
ate region producing animal products are Rio Grande do Sul,
Pelotas, and Porto Alegre, all of which are accessible only to ves-
sels of small draught (under eleven feet), on account of a bar at
the entrance to the shallow lake on which they all stand.

Colonial Guiana consists of three portions — one British, about
equal to Great Britain in size ; one Dutch (Surinam) ; and one
French (Cayenne). Cultivation of plantation products (chiefly
sugar-cane) is almost confined to the British and Dutch colonies,
and in these to a strip of lowlands along the coast and the river-
banks — a strip partly below sea-level, and protected by embank-
ments. In British Guiana Demerara is the chief sugar district.
The laborers are negroes, mulattoes, and coolies. In British Gui-
ana a rich gold-field lies on the banks of the Cuyuni in the west,
but it has long remained unworked on account of claims being
made to this portion of the territory by the government of Vene-
zuela. A rich gold-field is reported to have been recently discov-
ered on the borders of Dutch and French territory. Cayenne is
used by the French as a place of deportation for Arab convicts
from Algeria.

Venezuela, a republic in the north of the continent, consists
chiefly of the basin of the Orinoco. People of Spanish, Indian,
and negro descent, all now free, make up the bulk of the popula-

TOL. XXXVII. — 29

394 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion ; and the majority are settled on a small area of highland
valleys in the northwest, where branches of the Andes strike
northeastward, and then eastward parallel to the coast. The
staple product is coffee ; but cacao, cotton, tobacco, and sugar,
besides other tropical products, are grown. Gold in the east and
copper in the west are important minerals. The plains (llanos)
of the Orinoco are devoted to cattle and horse rearing, an industry
at one time much more flourishing than now. The chief inland
towns are Caracas (the capital) and Valencia, which are situated
in inland valleys from eighteen hundred to three thousand feet
in height, and are connected by rail with their respective sea-
ports, La Guayra and Porto (Puerto) Cabello. Ciudad Bolivar,
on the Orinoco, the navigation of which is free to all nations,
may also be ranked as a seaport, being accessible to sea-going
vessels.

Colombia is a republic with a similar population to that of
Venezuela, settled chiefly in the upper parts of the valleys of the
Cauca and Magdalena, where, in consequence of the great eleva-
tion, the grains of temperate climates are grown. In the low-
lands, on the other hand, rice is grown ; and it is so generally
eaten by the people that a deficiency of this commodity has to be
made up for by import. The mineral wealth is great, and gold,
silver, and precious stones take a leading place among the exports,
which include also Peruvian bark and plantation products. The
great channel of communication is the Magdalena, which is navi-
gable for steamers without interruption as high as Honda, but
on account of a bar at its mouth is connected with the sea by a
short canal running westward to Cartagena, and a railway from
Barranquilla to another seaport nearer the mouth of the river.
The Panama Railway (from Colon or Aspinwall in the north to
Panama in the south) and the Panama Canal belong to Colom-
bian territory. Bogota, the capital, is within five degrees of the
equator, but, in virtue of its situation at the height of eight thou-
sand feet above sea-level, enjoys a healthy climate, with a temper-
ature like that of a perpetual spring.

Ecuador is a republic chiefly south of the equator, but which
owes its name to the fact that its capital, Quito, is almost under
that line. Quito lies, like Bogota, between two chains of the
Andes, its elevation being between nine and ten thousand feet.
The only seaport is Guayaquil, whence cacao, grown on the west-
ern lowlands, is exported. At present communication is difficult
between Guayaquil and the capital, but a railway between the
two towns is now in progress. To Ecuador belong also the Gala-
pagos, or Turtle Islands, a group situated on the equator, about
seven hundred miles to the west.

Peru, a republic lying to the south of Ecuador, has a popula-

COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH AMERICA. 395

tion of about three millions, at least half of whom are pure In-
dians. It is composed of three zones : 1. A rainless coast strip,
fertilized only here and there by rivers from the Andes, which
afford the means of irrigation for sugar and cotton plantations
tended by Chinese coolies. 2. The sierra, or valleys and table-
lands of the Andes. On one of the table-lands lies (partly in
Bolivia) Lake Titicaca, the largest lake in South America, at the
height of twelve thousand five hundred feet above the sea. At
this height even barley seldom ripens, and the only regular food-
grain is derived from a native plant called quinoa (wholly unlike
our cereals). 3. The Montana, the region on the eastern slopes of
the Andes, containing the head- waters of the Amazon, a region
largely covered with impenetrable forests, of which the most
valuable product is Peruvian bark. The capital of the country is
Lima, an unhealthy city on the coast strip, a few miles from its
port, Callao.

The chief exports are sugar, cotton, nitrate of soda, and llama,
vicuna, and sheep's wool ; the first three derived from the coast
strip, the last from the sierra. Apart from nitrate of soda, the
mineral wealth for which Peru (including Bolivia or Upper Peru)
was long ago noted is at present commercially of little impor-
tance, but projects are now on foot for conferring renewed impor-
tance on them by the laying of railways. Among the railways
already in existence in Peru are two of the most remarkable in
the world, those namely by which the table-lands of the Andes
are reached. One of these is the Lima-Oroya Railway (not yet
completed), which attains in its passage through the western
chain of the Andes a height of fifteen thousand six hundred feet.
This railway it is proposed to continue northward to Cerro de
Pasco, where there are immense deposits of silver-ore, though the
silver-mines have been inundated for half a century. These it is
proposed to reopen and work scientifically. The other Andes
railway is from the southern seaport of Mollendo to Puno on Lake
Titicaca, and this line it is now proposed to continue northward
to Cuzco, the ancient capital of Peru. The value of this line has
already been greatly increased by the establishment of steamboat
traffic on Lake Titicaca and the river Desaguadero, the outlet
connecting that lake with Lake Aullagas in Bolivia. Another
railway project which has the prospect of being carried out is one
for a line southward from Lima, to be afterward continued up
the Andes to Huancavelica, where there are rich deposits of quick-
silver. It is likewise proposed to bring the Montana, now almost
completely shut off from external commerce, into connection with
the outside world by the laying of roads in the north to the Ama-
zon. In this district cotton and coffee plantations have already
been started with success.

396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Bolivia is a republic, now entirely inland, occupying the broad-
est part of the table-land of the Andes, with a montana to the
east. Its population is about two millions, inclusive of about
eight hundred thousand uncivilized Indians. Even the civilized
population is mainly of Indian origin. The communications of
Bolivia with Peru and Brazil have already been referred to. The
capital of the country is Sucre, on the part of the table-land
drained to the east. La Paz is the chief town on the table-land
of Lake Titicaca. The silver-mines of Potosi, which made Peru
so valuable a possession to the Spaniards, belong to this state,
and are still productive, though in a greatly diminished degree.

Chili, a republic, possesses the whole of the coast strip south
of Peru, together with the islands that fringe the coast, including
part of Tierra del Fuego and both sides of the Strait of Magellan
except in the extreme east. The northern portion of the country
is a continuation of the desert strip on the coast of Peru, and is
valuable solely for its mineral products — guano (near the coast
from the frontier to about 21-J-0 south), nitrate of soda, or cubic
niter, as it is also called (in the same latitudes, but farther in-
land), gold, silver, and copper. Copper is even more abundant
farther south, along the base of the Andes, north and south of
Coquimbo. Silver is also found more abundantly to the south of
Copiapo. The middle portion of the territory (between about 33°
and 38° south) contains the bulk of the population, who number
about two million five hundred thousand in all. The agricultural
products are mainly wheat, barley, and southern fruits — similar,
in fact, to those of Spain, which has a climate resembling that of
the more populous parts of Chili. Notwithstanding that whites
predominate in this republic (instead of Indians and half-breeds
as in most of the others), agriculture here also is generally in a
backward condition, except in some parts of the north, where
there are some admirable irrigation works. In the more thickly
peopled part of the country there are several hundred miles of
railway.

The capital of the country is Santiago, and its port is Val-
paraiso, on a fine bay looking to the north. Here is received the
great bulk of the imports, but since the greater part of the ex-
ports consists of mineral produce, chiefly nitrate of soda, copper,
and guano, the northern port of Iquique, whence most of the
nitrate and guano is shipped, has the largest share in the export
trade, Valparaiso coming only second, and Pisagua (another north-
ern port) and Coquimbo next in order. Next to minerals wheat
and other agricultural produce form the chief exports. The
leading imports are manufactured articles, coal, and iron. The
United Kingdom receives the bulk of the exports, and takes the
first place in the import trade, Germany and France following,

COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH AMERICA. 397

and contributing together a share about equal to that of Great
Britain. There is a considerable import trade in cattle and other
animals from the Argentine Republic across the passes of the
Andes, but the export trade by these routes is very scanty. The
passes chiefly used are those near the latitude of Santiago, the
Portillo and the Uspallata passes — the former nearly fourteen
thousand feet in height, the latter about five hundred feet less.
The Strait of Magellan is stormy and washed by strong tides,
and hence difficult of navigation, so that sailing vessels still pre-
fer the equally stormy, but for them less dangerous, route round
Cape Horn, in the south of Tierra del Fuego.

The Argentine Republic comprises a territory of more than a
million square miles, with a population of about four millions.
This territory consists mainly of a vast plain sloping down to the
Atlantic from the Andes, and other lofty mountains in the west
and northwest. It extends from within the tropics to the south
of the continent, embracing the eastern half of Tierra del Fuego,
and thus includes a great variety of climate. The districts in
which the population is most considerable and most rapidly in-
creasing are chiefly those in the neighborhood of the estuary of
La Plata and along the right bank of the lower Parana, where
there are not only the greatest facilities for commerce, but where
also the climate is most favorable to production and best suited
to people of European stock. The provinces to which this de-
scription applies are Buenos Ayres, south of the estuary ; Santa
Fe*, on the right bank of the lower Parana ; Cordoba, to the west
of Santa Fd ; and Entre Rios, " between the rivers " Parana and
Uruguay. The climate here is that of the warmer temperate lati-
tudes, generally with an ample rainfall. Toward the interior the
rainfall generally diminishes, and irrigation becomes necessary
for cultivation. It is more abundant, however, in the neighbor-
hood of the northern mountains, at the base of which there are
sugar and other tropical or sub-tropical plantations. The plain
extending eastward from these mountains to the river Paraguay
is mainly a region of open forest, and is inhabited at present
almost solely by a few tribes of wandering Indians. It is known
as El Gran Chaco, or " great hunting-ground."

Of late years the Argentine Republic, together with the neigh-
boring state of Uruguay, has been undergoing a rapid develop-
ment similar to that of the United States and Canada. They are
receiving streams of agricultural settlers, but in this southern
region the settlers are mainly from southern Europe (Italy, Spain,
and southern France). The Spanish and French immigrants in-
clude a large proportion of Basques, who are found to be among
the most valuable colonists in these regions. In the thirty years
ending 1886 upward of a million immigrants entered the country,

39s

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and in each of the three years 1886 to 1888 the number consider-
ably exceeded one hundred thousand. The branch of agriculture
mostly pursued by these immigrants is not tillage, as in the north-
ern region of European immigration, but the rearing of live stock
(chiefly sheep and cattle). Tillage, however, is receiving greater
attention, especially in the agricultural colonies, which have been
planted in large numbers since 1856, principally along the banks
of the Parana; and the result of this is seen in the rising export
of wheat and maize. The cultivation of maize is not at present
nearly so extensive as the climate of the settled districts admits
of, which is chiefly due to the want of a market for the produce ;
but there is reason to believe that its cultivation might be profit-
ably stimulated by the establishment of the " pork-packing " in-
dustry on the same basis as in the United States.

The chief export is wool. The natural facilities for inland
commerce afforded by the Paraguay and lower Parana have been
mentioned ; and here it may be added sea-going vessels can ascend
the Parana to Rosario, that the Parana is likewise navigable for
steamers above the confluence of the Paraguay as far as the limit
of the Argentine frontier, that steamers can ascend the Uruguay
River on the eastern frontier as far as the falls which occur in
about 314° south (at the Urugayan town of Salto), and that sea-
going vessels of fourteen or fifteen feet draught can reach as high
as the Uruguayan town of Paysandu. The Pilcomayo, on the
northern frontier, is navigable for two hundred and forty miles,
and the Rio Negro in the north of Patagonia affords three hun-
dred miles of navigation through a region deemed a few years
ago scarcely fit for settlement, but which is now being rapidly
stocked and settled along the whole course of the river. Pata-
gonia, the territory south of the Rio Negro, is mainly a stony
desert, but recent explorations have shown that it embraces a
considerable amount of fertile land along the base of the Andes.
On the coast of this territory there has long been a Welsh colony
at Chubut, in latitude 43°, where, among other things, wheat is
grown.

As in the United States, railways are being rapidly extended
to promote the commerce on which the immigration depends.
The Argentine Republic is the part of South America in which
railway construction has been, and still is, most active. There
are projects for no less than three railways across the Andes into
Chili. Of these the farthest advanced is the continuation of the
railway from Buenos Ayres to Mendoza across the Uspallata Pass.

The capital of the republic is Buenos Ayres, which stands on
the River Plate, and is at the same time the chief seaport, carry-
ing on about one third of the shipping of the republic. This pro-
portion would probably be larger if it were not for the defective-

COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH AMERICA. 399

ness of the port, which, is one of the chief hindrances to the devel-
opment of Argentine commerce. At present, in consequence of
the rapid silting up of the River Plate, large vessels have to
anchor ten miles from the city, and have not only to load and
unload with the aid of lighters, but in certain states of the river
large-wheeled carts have to he employed to convey goods and
passengers from the lighters to the wharves. Great harbor-
works are now, however, in progress with the view of providing
a navigable channel to large docks that are to be constructed
close beside the town. Lower down the estuary a new capital for
the province of Buenos Ayres has been founded under the name
of La Plata, and a port with docks and a navigable channel
nowhere less than twenty-one feet in depth has here been pro-
vided.

Uruguay, a republic lying between the estuary of the La Plata
and Brazil, has a similar surface, climate, and population, and
similar industries to the neighboring provinces of the Argentine
Republic, and is now being as rapidly developed. Among the
railways there is one avoiding the rapids of the Uruguay River
above Salto, and there is one in progress connecting Salto with
the capital. Having a greater rainfall on the whole than the
more populous districts of the Argentine Republic, Uruguay rears
relatively to area more cattle than the latter country ; and of the
one million two hundred thousand animals that were annually
slaughtered in the two republics for the making of preparations
of meat, on the average of the ten years 1876-1885, about fifty-five
per cent were slaughtered in Uruguay. This industry has made
the small towns of Fray Bentos and Paysandu, on the Uruguay,
well known throughout Europe. Among the countries sharing
in the commerce of Uruguay, the United Kingdom has the first
place both in imports and exports, supplying on the average of
the years 1878-1885 nearly twenty-nine per cent in value of the
imports, and receiving about twenty per cent of the exports.
The capital of Uruguay is Montevideo, which has an excellent
harbor.

Paraguay is an inland republic, lying mainly between the
Paraguay and Parana Rivers, with a very sparse population,
chiefly of native Indians. Its chief export product is the so-called
Paraguay tea, or mate. Tobacco, timber, and skins are also ex-
ported.

The Falkland Islands, situated to the east of the Strait of
Magellan, belong to the British. They have a damp, foggy cli-
mate, and are largely covered with peat, but are inhabited by a
small number of settlers engaged in the rearing of sheep and cat-
tle. They are frequently visited for repairs and supplies by ves-
sels that have made the passage round Cape Horn.

4oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SKETCH OF MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY.

MRS. CORBIN, Lieutenant Maury's daughter and biographer,
invokes for her father the reverence of the whole civilized
world ; for, she says in her Life, " the best part of his life was de-
voted to the performance of services which conferred benefits on
the seafaring class of all countries, while the ideas to which he
first gave birth have since borne fruit, and are likely to be useful
to the whole human race." She adds that " in Maury we have
two characteristics, each valuable in itself, but which almost inva-
riably produce great results when they are combined. He was
endowed with extraordinary powers of application and unflagging
industry in working out the driest details. But he also possessed
a vivid imagination, so that the dry bones of his new science were
endowed with life and interest by the magic touch of his descrip-
tive pen. It was Maury who created the science of the physical
geography of the sea, and gave that impetus to its study which,
in other hands, continues to produce results alike of practical and
speculative importance."

Matthew Fontaine Maury was born in Spottsylvania Coun-
ty, Virginia, January 24, 1806, and died in Lexington, Va., Feb-
ruary 1, 1873. He was descended on his father's side from two
families of Huguenot exiles, already connected by marriage before
they left France, who settled in Virginia in 1714. His father was
the sixth son of the Rev. James Maury, an Episcopal clergyman
and teacher of Albemarle County, Virginia, who numbered among
his pupils three boys who afterward became Presidents of the
United States, and five signers of the Declaration of Independence.
This scholar appears to have been already interested in the great
Northwest, and his speculations respecting the Missouri River, the
Western mountains, and the rivers beyond them, then hardly
known, greatly impressed his pupil Jefferson, who, when he be-
came President, secured the dispatch of the expedition of Lewis
and Clark.

When young Matthew was in his fifth year the family removed
to Tennessee, near Franklin, where they lived the life of early
settlers in a new country. His first ambition to become a mathe-
matician was excited by an old cobbler "who used to send the
shoes home to his customers with the soles all scratched over with
little x's and y's." A fall from a tree in his twelfth year, by which
his back was injured, for a time at least seriously, seems to have
marked the turning-point of his life. His father, thinking him
permanently disabled, yielding to his wish, sent him to Harpeth
Academy, of which the Rev. J. H. Otey, afterward Protestant

SKETCH OF MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY. 401

Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee, and William C. Hasbrouck, were
the teachers.

In 1825 he obtained, through the Hon. Sam Houston, a mid-
shipman's warrant in the United States Navy. His father, not
approving the career to which this pointed, while not forbidding,
refused to countenance him in accepting it. Having thirty dollars
which he had earned by doing tutor's work in the academy, young
Maury went on his own account for the East. There was no
naval academy then, and he went on shipboard at once. He soon
showed that his mind was set upon mastering the theory and prac-
tice of his profession. " It is related by some of his companions
of that period/' says Mrs. Corbin, " how he would chalk diagrams
in spherical trigonometry on the round-shot in the quarter-deck
racks, to enable himself to master problems, while pacing to and
fro, passing and repassing the shot-racks on his watch." With an
old Spanish work on navigation, he pursued the double object of
studying the Spanish language and adding to his stock of nautical
information. His first voyage was to England, in the Brandy wine,
which conveyed General Lafayette home to France ; his next was
in the Vincennes, round the world. On this voyage he constructed
a set of lunar tables and prepared himself for examination.

During his next cruise of four years on the Falmouth, Dol-
phin, and Potomac, beginning in 1831, Maury conceived the idea
of his current and wind charts ; observed and began to study the
curious phenomenon of the low barometer off Cape Horn, con-
cerning which he wrote his first scientific paper — for the Ameri-
can Journal of Science ; and began to prepare for the press a work
on navigation, for which he had been several years collecting the
material. It was published in 1839, was favorably noticed in Eng-
land, and was used as a text-book in the United States Navy.

Maury next received an appointment as astronomer and hy-
drographer on the South Sea Exploring Expedition, which was to
go out under Commodore Catesby Jones, and, preparatory to it,
practiced in the use of the telescope, transit instrument, and theodo-
lite ; but, Captain Wilkes succeeding to the command, he resigned,
in order to permit the new commander to select his own associates.
He was then assigned the duty of making surveys of Southern
harbors. While traveling on leave of absence from this work,
his leg was broken by the overturning of a stage-coach, whereby
he was disabled from active service for several years. The mis-
fortune is regarded by his biographer as having been a " blessing
in disguise " ; for it caused his mind to turn more intently to the
scientific side of his work, and thus contributed indirectly to the
f ruitfulness of thought by which his after-life was distinguished.

A series of articles on naval reform and kindred subjects, en-
titled Scraps from the Lucky-Bag, published by Maury under

402 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the pen-name of Harry Bluff, attracted attention and approval.
Anions the points discussed in them — most of which were brought
up for the first time — were the adoption of steam as a motive
1 tower; great-circle sailing ; the establishment of navy -yards and
forts at Memphis and Pensacola ; the use of blank charts on board
public cruisers ; the Gulf Stream and its causes ; the connection
of terrestrial magnetism with the circulation of the atmosphere ;
and a ship-canal from the Illinois River to Lake Michigan. The
papers gave their author fame, and secured respect for his opinions
on naval questions. He was placed in charge of the Depot of
Charts and Instruments at Washington, an office which was de-
veloped into the Naval Observatory and Hydrographical Depart-
ment. " No man," said Senator John Bell, " could have been found
in the country better fitted than Maury for this difficult duty ; and
he worked with the zeal and energy that were expected of him."

One of Maury's first enterprises in this office was the compila-
tion of his wind and current charts and sailing directions. He
had already, as sailing-master of the Falmouth, in 1831, observed
the want of trustworthy information concerning the winds and
currents encountered by mariners. He then resolved, if he ever
had opportunity, to compile such, information from the store of
old log-books in the Hydrographical Bureau of the Naval Depart-
ment. This he now did, and his charts and sailing directions were
furnished to the masters of vessels bound for foreign ports, who
in turn supplied the results of their own observations. The most
favorable reports came in of the value of the work, and it was
illustrated by some then really wonderful incidents.

The fact was demonstrated in American and English jour-
nals that, by the mere shortening of voyages they made possible,
these charts effected a very great saving in the expense of com-
merce between distant ports. Testimony was repeatedly borne to
their value in the annual reports of the Navy Department and of
congressional committees. Secretary Dobbin reported, in 1855,
that other maritime nations, appreciating the value of this plan
of investigation, had united in a common system of observations
for its further prosecution ; and that it was suggested by Lieuten-
ant Maury that the same system of meteorological research, " if
extended to the land, would afford for the agricultural interests
of the country, and for science too, results quite as important as
those which commerce and navigation have already received from
it." "While analyzing and tabulating these " millions of observa-
tions," Maury wrote his Physical Geography of the Sea, which
took rank at once as a masterly as well as a charming work. In
the preface to it the author attributed such success as he had
achieved to the observance of the rule "to keep the mind un-
biased by theories and speculations ; never to have any wish that

SKETCH OF MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY. 403

an investigation should result in favor of this view in preference
to that ; and never to attempt by premature speculation to antici-
pate the results of investigations, but always to trust to the inves-
tigations themselves." The book met a large demand at home and
abroad, more than twenty "editions having been sold in England
alone ; and it was translated into the French, Dutch, Italian,
Swedish, and Spanish languages. Following this came the as-
sembling of the Meteorological Congress at Brussels, in 1853, of
the chief nations interested in commerce, at which a uniform sys-
tem of observations on land and at sea was resolved upon. Among
the incidents of the conference was a letter in 1857 from Hum-
boldt, "at the age of ninety years," relating to its results, and
offering " to my illustrious friend and associate . . . the tribute
of my respectful admiration. ... It belongs to me, more than to
any traveler of the age, to congratulate my illustrious friend upon
the course which he has so gloriously opened."

Lieutenant Maury, after returning from the Brussels Confer-
ence, pressed the scheme of co-operation in meteorological obser-
vations on land. In addresses delivered at agricultural societies
in 1855 he urged farmers to make daily observations of weather
conditions and the state and yield of the crops, to be sent to him,
as sailors were sending their observations at sea ; and he advised
them to seek from Congress measures for the establishment of a
central office where these reports could be digested and the results
sent monthly, weekly, or even daily, to all parts of the country, so
that farmers could be " warned of the approach of storms, severe
frosts, etc., that might prove injurious to the crops." He denned
this proposition in an address before the United States Agricultu-
ral Society in January, 1856, as a concerted plan, the idea of which
was to spread the network of instruments and observers in this
country and over other parts of the world also, to which he was
assured the co-operation of men of science abroad would be given.
About three years afterward, in an address at Decatur, Ala., as if
foreseeing that his services might become forgotten, he said:
" Take notice, now, that this plan of crop and weather reports is
my thunder ; and if you see some one in Washington running
away with it, then recollect, if you please, where the lightning
came from." The whole record of Maury's meteorological work,
and his part in advocating this plan, were reviewed by Senator
Harlan, in a committee report to the United States Senate, made
in 1857. His scheme also embraced a system of meteorological
observations on the Great Lakes. Records had already been kept
for many years by the army, to which, Maury acknowledged,
* alone we are indebted for almost all we know concerning the
climatology of the country " ; but he explained that their value
was retrospective ; while the observations he proposed were to

4o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be used for predictions and warnings of what the weather was

to be.

As early as 1848 Maury had concluded, from his investigations
of the winds and currents, that a broad and level plateau — the
" telegraphic plateau " — existed at the bottom of the ocean between
Newfoundland and Ireland. His view was confirmed by the deep-
sea soundings that were taken at his instance between 1849 and
1853 ; and early in 1854 he reported to the Secretary of the Navy
that, so far as the bottom of the deep sea was concerned, a sub-
marine telegraph between Newfoundland and Ireland was prac-
ticable. A plateau seemed to have been placed there especially
for holding the wires and keeping them out of harm's way. His
views respecting the manner of constructing cables were con-
firmed, both in the behavior of the first cable, constructed differ-
ently from them, which failed, and the others, made more in har-
mony with them, which were successful. At the dinner given in
celebration of the arrival of the first message across the Atlantic,
Mr. Cyrus W. Field said, referring to the enterprise, "Maury
furnished the brains, England gave the money, and I did the
work."

A painful surprise came to Lieutenant Maury when the Naval
Retiring Board, under the act of Congress of February 28, 1855,
placed him on the retired list on leave-of -absence pay, but with-
out detaching him from the Naval Observatory. He regarded
the act as an indignity. He wrote to three of the Secretaries of
the Navy under whom he had served for expressions concerning
his efficiency, particularly inquiring why he had been kept at the
observatory instead of being sent to sea. Ex-Secretary Graham
answered : " I considered your services at the National Observatory
of far more importance and value to the country and the navy
than any that could be rendered by an officer of your grade at sea
in the time of peace. Indeed, I doubt whether the triumphs of
navigation and of the knowledge of the sea achieved under your
superintendence of the observatory will not contribute as much to
an effective naval service and to the national fame as the brilliant
trophies of our arms." Mr. John P. Kennedy wrote, " From my
knowledge of the nature of your scientific pursuits, their useful-
ness to the country, and your devotion to them, I can say that
nothing but such an emergency as left me no alternative, would
have induced me to withdraw you from your labors at the observa-
tory by an order to go to sea." Mr. "William Ballard Preston wrote
to similar effect. In the following winter Maury was, by special
act of Congress, reinstated and promoted to the rank of com-
mander, with back pay from the date of his retirement.

Other schemes discussed by Lieutenant Maury in general or
special papers, included the location of lighthouses on the Florida

SKETCH OF MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY. 405

and Gulf coasts ; systematic observations of the rise and fall of
the water in the Mississippi River and its tributaries, with gauges
at all the principal towns ; the redemption of the " drowned
lands " of the Mississippi; navigation by great-circle routes; a
ship-canal and railroad across the Isthmus, which he insisted
should be by way of Panama or Nicaragua rather than Tehuante-
pec ; the establishment of a great port at Norfolk, Va. ; and the
colonization of the surplus black and other population of the
South in the valley of the Amazon. The Darien expedition of
Lieutenant Strain and Lieutenant Herndon's exploration of the
Amazon were connected with two of these schemes. The " lane
route," followed by some of the transatlantic steamship lines,
originated in the publication by Maury, in 1855, of a chart on
which two lanes were laid down, each twenty-five miles broad, by
following which the danger of collisions might be reduced. In
acknowledgment of the value of the service rendered by this
plan, and by the wind and current charts and sailing direc-
tions, the merchants and underwriters of New York presented
him with five thousand dollars in gold and a handsome service
of silver.

When the Ordinance of Secession was passed by the Legisla-
ture of Virginia, Commander Maury believed that his paramount
obligation was to his native State. He accordingly left the serv-
ice of the United States and identified his fortunes with those
of Virginia and the Confederacy. There can be no doubt of his
disinterestedness in taking this course. His merits and the value
of his services were generally recognized throughout the North,
and he had but recently given courses of lectures in the principal
towns and cities, which were a series of popular ovations to him.
In going into the service of the Confederacy he put himself under
the direction, as his immediate superiors, of two men who, as
United States Senators, had been prominent in opposition to his
reinstatement after he had been put upon the retired list, and who
are said to have been hostile to him before the war and through
it. Of the manner of his leaving the service of the United States,
he said, May 12, 1861, in a letter to a friend in Newburg, N. Y. :
" I only saw last night the remarks of the Boston Traveller about
Lieutenant Maury's treachery, his desertion, removal of buoys.
It's all a lie ! I resigned and left the observatory on Saturday
the 12th ult. I worked as hard and as faithfully for ' Uncle Sam *
up to three o'clock of that day as I ever did, and at three o'clock
I turned everything — all the public property and records of the
office — regularly over to Lieutenant Whiting, the proper officer in
charge. I left in press Nautical Monograph, No. 3, one of the
most valuable contributions I ever made to navigation ; and, just
as I left it, it is now in course of publication there, though I shall

4o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

probably not have the privilege of reading tbe proof. ... As for
the buoys, I touched them not ! " The Grand Duke Constantine
and Napoleon III offered him positions in Russia and France, re-
spectively, which he declined. He became a member of a Council
of Three to assist the Governor of Virginia, and in June, 1861, was
appointed Chief of the Sea-coast, Harbor, and River Defenses of
the South. He assisted in fitting out the Merrimac ; invented a
torpedo to be used for harbor and land defense ; and was engaged,
in the summer of 18G2, in mining the James River below all the
defenses, when he was ordered to go to Europe to purchase torpedo
material. During the first and second years of the war he pub-
lished a series of papers urging the building of a navy, and of
protecting the bays and rivers with small floating batteries. He
stayed in England, on Confederate business, till the surrender of
Lee, when he dispatched a letter to the United States officer com-
manding the squadron of the Gulf, declaring that he regarded
himself in the relation to the United States substantially of a
prisoner of war. He then offered his services to Maximilian in
Mexico, and accepted the position of Director of the Imperial
Observatory. A plan he had conceived for the formation of a
colony of Virginians in Mexico was accepted by Maximilian, and
he was appointed Imperial Commissioner for Colonization. The
scheme was, however, abandoned as soon as Maury left Mexico to
return to England. His course in this matter was not approved
by his friends, either in Europe or in America. It is claimed that
he performed one great service for Mexico during his short career
there, in introducing the cultivation of the cinchona-tree.

Returning to England in March, 1866, Maury was given a testi-
monial, by naval and scientific men, in recognition of his scientific
worth and service. He was employed in Paris, by Napoleon III,
to instruct a board of French officers in his system of defensive
sea-mining. Returning to London, he opened a school of instruc-
tion in electric torpedoes, which was attended — at the expense of
their governments — by officers of the Swedish, Dutch, and other
nations. At the instance of Mr. C. B. Richardson, a New York
publisher, he undertook a series of geographical text-books, saying
as he went to his task, " I could not wind up my career more use-
fully (and usefulness is both honor and glory) than by helping to
shape the character and mold the destinies of the rising genera-
tion." He also wrote a popular book on astronomy, which has
never been published.

In 1868 Maury received the degree of LL. D. from the Uni-
versity of Cambridge, along with Alfred Tennyson, Max Muller,
and Mr. Wright, the Egyptologist, and declined an invitation
from Napoleon III to the directorship of the Imperial Observa-
tory of France. Taking advantage of the general amnesty act to

SKETCH OF MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY. 407

return to the United States, he declined the offer of the super-
intendency of the University of the South at Suwanee, Tenn., to
accept the professorship of Meteorology at the Virginia Military
Institute. Pending his entrance upon the duties of this position,
he considered a scheme for establishing a line of steamers be-
tween Norfolk and Flushing in Holland. During the last four
years of his life he worked at a meteorological survey of Vir-
ginia. He engaged actively again in the advocacy of his old
scheme for a Telegraphic Meteorological Bureau, in furtherance
of which he repeated an address in Boston and Missouri and sev-
eral places in the South. A paper on this subject presented to the
International Congress, at St. Petersburg, for the Advancement of
Geographic Knowledge, etc., was unanimously approved by that
body. The exposure incident to travel in fulfilling his lecturing
appointments brought on the illness which ended with his death ;
but he continued, to within a few days of that event, dictating
and revising the last edition of his Physical Geography.

Commander Maury is described by his daughter as having
been a stout man, about five feet six inches in height, with fresh,
ruddy complexion, curling brown hair, and with every feature of
his bright countenance bespeaking intellect, kindliness, and force
of character. " His fine blue eyes beamed from under his broad
forehead with thought and emotion, while his flexible mouth
smiled with the pleasure of imparting to others the ideas which
were ever welling up in his active brain. . . . His conversation
was enjoyed by all who ever met him; he listened and learned
while he conversed, and adapted himself to every capacity. He
especially delighted in the company of young people, to whom his
playful humor and gentle consideration made him very winning."
N. P. Willis, speaking of him to a friend, said that he made him
subject to his personal magnetism, and during a trip while they
were together, " unconsciously furnished an exquisitely interesting
study of character." He was a firm believer in the Christian re-
ligion, but did not join the church till 1867, when he was con-
firmed with his children in the Episcopal Church. His published
works, books, pamphlets, and official papers were numerous, and
bore reference to the researches which have been described in this
sketch, concerning which they stand as original authorities. Or-
ders were conferred upon him by the sovereigns of Russia, Den-
mark, Portugal, Belgium, and France ; gold medals by those of
Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Holland, Sardinia, France, and the free
city of Bremen ; and other honors by the Pope and Maximilian.
He was a member of ten foreign and four American scientific and
historical societies that are named, and of many other learned
bodies of which the records were lost during the war.

408

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CORRESPONDENCE.

VITIATED MOEAL TEACHING.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :
QIR: The letter of E. P. Meredith, in the
IO April Monthly, reviewing the article by
Benjamin Reece on "Public Schools as affect-
ing Crime and Vice " in your January number,
does not seem to go to the root of the evils
deprecated. It is true that high mental cult-
ure is not always accompanied by a corre-
spondingly high ethical standard, but often
the reverse, and that, as a general rule, our
public-school teachers " bear an exceptionally
good moral character, and a majority of them
are members of good standing in the various
churches," and that " the Sunday school,
where moral training is especially attended
to, is now considered an indispensable ad-
junct of every church ; yet, with all this,
vice and crime are on the ascending scale,
and in a most astonishing degree." But
when he says that " with this guarantee
for the moral training of the pupils by pre-
cept and example on the part of the teach-
ers, it seems to me that all is being done in
that line that can be done," is he equally
right ? Is there not some moral taint, some
poison-bearing germ from which such evils
grow, lurking within these ethical influences ?
When we read of some great bank defalca-
tion, of some much-trusted man absconding
with fiduciary funds, and the like, in nine
cases in ten the paragraph will end by stat-
ing that the perpetrator was a leader in a
Sunday school, or a leading man in a church
or a mission. Naturally we often ask why it
is so. The usual and the easy answer is,
that he put on the cloak of religion to screen
and facilitate his dishonest methods— " the
livery of heaven to serve the devil in." But
that facile answer prompts another still more
pertinent question, " Why did this professed
religious man add hypocrisy to his other in-
iquities ? " Must we not search the founda-
tions of his ethical culture for the fruitful
germ from which these evil actions sprang ?
It is more than probable that had any one
of those leaders of a church or Sunday school,
or of that majority of public-school teachers
"of good standing in the various churches,"
confessed that he did not believe, or even
that he doubted, that the world was made in
six days some six thousand years ago ; the
first man molded from its clay, and the first
woman from his newly made rib ; that Moses
conversed face to face with God ; that Lot's
wife was turned into a pillar of salt ; that in-
fants dying unbaptized are eternally damned ;
that the laws of nature were set aside when
Christ was begot — he would have lost the
position he held, and his social standing, as

Dr. Robertson Smith, Dr. Woodrow, and
many others have, for telling the truth. He
was therefore reticent, and soothed his stul-
tified conscience by saying to himself that,
if those things were not literally true, they
were in a figurative sense, and went on act-
ing if not uttering a lie, as a very large class
of people are doing every day for the same
reasons. The teacher, preacher, or layman
who does this is committing an immoral act,
and preparing his conscience for tolerating
others of a darker hue. We all know that
it is the first willful lie or profane oath ut-
tered that shocks the youthful conscience
and sears it for repetitions that cease to
shock. The late Henry Ward Beecher told
us somewhere that his was so shocked at the
first lie, that he sought the attic and behaved
in such a peculiar, repentant manner that
his mother questioned him, thinking that
he was about to experience religion. Now
the number of men and women who believe
in the supernatural part of our religion is
constantly growing less, yet for the reasons
that I have alluded to they do not avow it.
May it not be this constant acting of a lie
that corrodes the conscience and causes, in
a measure, the rapidly ascending degree of
vice and crime, and the "venality and cor-
ruption pervading every branch of the Gov-
ernment " ? Have we not reached that stage
of enlightenment and that sound policy at
which we can safely drop the supernatural
from our religion, and relegate it to the cults
of less advanced peoples, who still find it
necessary to keep that element ingrafted into
their theogonies, in order to awe their simple
and unintelligent followers ? We have out-
grown the age of witchcraft which our Puri-
tan ancestors believed in so fully, and we have
denied the divine rights of kings, which had
the same ethnic origin and for the same ends.
Why not eliminate the same element in our
religion, retaining all its sound ethical tenets,
and administer it upon the human teachings
of Christ and the natural laws that science
has revealed in the progress of civilization ?
The time is rapidly approaching when the
Bible will be expurgated, and all that science
proves false expunged ; the stirpiculture of
its patristic writers and the foul genesis of
Ammonite, Moabite, and Ishmaelite banished
to the pages of a dead language, leaving a
work that men can read without repulse, and
the children in our public schools without
pollution. As Mr. Meredith says, "Purify
the fountain, and the stream will become
likewise limpid and pure."

Addison Child.

Childwold, N. T., April 8, 1890.

CORRESP ONDENCE,

409

WHERE FLAX IS GROWN AND MANU-
FACTURED.

From The Irish Textile Journal.

Under this heading a correspondent in
Boston sends us for verification the follow-
ing cutting from a magazine article of recent
date :

" The finest flax grown in the north of
Ireland, in order to attain its highest qual-
ity, must be sent to Belgium to be steeped
in the water of a certain river. Returning
from there, it is spun into superfine yarns
by the best machinery and in the naturally
adapted moist climate of Belfast. At that
stage the product is again sent back to Bel-
gium, where it is woven into gossamer-like
fabrics, in low, damp cellars, under condi-
tions that would not be agreeable to the
north of Ireland, and the work of the Bel-
gian hand-loom weaver must then be carried
back to be bleached under the dripping skies
of the Green Isle."

The writer of the foregoing is a little
mixed in his ideas. The finest flax comes
to us from the Courtrai district, and the
" certain river " in which it is steeped is the
Lys, but no flax is sent from Ireland to be
steeped there. Courtrai flax is used by our
spinners for the finer counts of their yarns,
chiefly for hand-loom linens ; but these goods
are not necessarily woven in low, damp cel-
lars on the Continent any more than in the
north of Ireland, where the finest goods can
be made. Some descriptions of " gossamer-
like " lace are made in damp cellars in France,
and from hand-spun flax of the very finest
quality, worth £180 to £200 per ton. Of
course, we claim for Ireland that it possesses
the best climate in the world for bleaching,
but only a small quantity of foreign linen
is sent here to be finished.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : In reply to your esteemed f avor of
the 10th, received this morning, I have to say
that while the object of the remarks quoted
from the Irish Textile Journal apparently
is to discredit or belittle the statements
in the extract given from The Popular
Science Monthly, it is the fact that these
statements are only confirmed thereby in
quite a remarkable manner. While, for
instance, there may appear to be a con-
tradiction in the point made by the Irish
authority when he says that "no flax is
sent from Ireland to be steeped" in Bel-
gium— that is, at the present time — an ex-
amination of the text of The Popular Sci-
ence Monthly will show that no statement on
that subject is contained therein, and that it
was not necessary to the argument. If the
critic in question had been able to say that
no Irish flax had ever been sent to Belgium
for the specified purpose, or that no benefit
would have been derived therefrom, then his
remarks would have possessed a measure
of weight and of justification that the mere
vol. xxxvii. — 30

fact of its being apparently for the moment,
for undefined reasons, more advantageous to
employ Belgian-grown flax does not confer
upon them. The other comments made by
the same journal require absolutely no reply,
when it is borne in mind that the statements
of The Popular Science Monthly article have
reference only to the accomplishment of the
highest possible excellence in a certain lim-
ited industry at a given period, and by no
means can be held to apply to the produc-
tion of Irish fine linen generally or perma-
nently, or to other similar fabrics that may
be produced in different parts of the world.
Yours very truly,

J. J. Menzies.

220 South Hill Street, Los Angeles, Cal., )
April 17, 1690. J

A CENSUS OF HALLUCINATIONS.
Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : May I ask for the publicity of your
pages to aid me in procuring co-operation
in a scientific investigation for which I am
responsible ? I refer to the Census of Hal-
lucinations, which was begun several years
ago by the Society for Psychical Research,
and of which the International Congress of
Experimental Psychology at Paris, last sum-
mer, assumed the future responsibility, nam-
ing a committee in each country to carry on
the work.

The object of the inquiry is twofold : (1)
To get a mass of facts about hallucinations
which may serve as a basis for a scientific
study of these phenomena ; and (2) to ascer-
tain approximately the proportion of persons
who have had such experiences. Until the
average frequency of hallucinations in the
community is known, it can never be decided
whether the so-called " veridical " hallucina-
tions (visions or other "warnings" of the
death, etc., of people at a distance), which
are so frequently reported, are accidental
coincidences or something more.

Some eight thousand or more persons in
England, France, and the United States have
already returned answers to the question
which heads the census sheets, and which
runs as follows :

" Have you ever, when completely atoake,
had a vivid impression of seeing or being
touched by a living being or inanimate object,
or of hearing a voice ; which impression, so
far as you could discover, was not due to any
external physical cause ? "

The Congress hopes that at its next
meeting, in England in 1892, as many as
fifty thousand answers may have been col-
lected. It is obvious that, for the purely
statistical inquiry, the answer " No " is as im-
portant as the answer " Yes.''''

I ha^e been appointed to superintend the
census in America, and I most earnestly be-
speak the co-operation of any among your
readers who may be actively interested in

410

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the subject. It is clear that yery many
volunteer canvassers will be needed to secure
success. Each census blank contains in-
structions to the collector and places for
twenty-five names; and special blanks for
the "Yes" cases are furnished in addition.
I shall be most happy to supply these blanks
to any one who will be good enough to make
application for them to
Yours truly,

(Professor) William James,
Harvard Uatversity, Cambridge, Mabs.

THE MYSTEKIOUS MUSIC OF PASCAGOTJLA.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : Mr. Chidsey's article upon The Mys-
terious Music of Pascagoula, in your April
number, recalls a recent experience of mine.
While cruising on the west coast of Florida,
we lay at anchor one night at Rocky Point
in Old Tampa Bay, and heard most distinct-
ly a very curious musical note of some deni-
zen of the water. The sound consisted of a
single note, and was continuous for a long

time. It recalled the singing of telegraph
wires, or the hum of a planing-mill, or the
music of an iEolian harp. It occasionally
approached or receded, and more than one
such note — apparently from different animals
— could at times be heard at once. In our
cabin the sound seemed very distinct, but it
was in reality probably faint, as it was hard-
ly, or not at all, audible upon deck. My
companion and myself have both cruised
along the Gulf coast south of that point be-
fore, but had never heard this sound any-
where else; our captain, also, had never
heard it anywhere else, but said it was al-
ways to be heard at Rocky Point, which is a
principal oystering-ground for Tampa. The
sound bore no resemblance to that of the
drum, which is very common in Florida, and
which is a booming, interrupted noise. Its
most remarkable peculiarity was its steady
continuance — it certainly often lasted with-
out interruption for several minutes.

Yours, etc., William M. Meigs.

216 South Third Street,

Philadelphia, April 16, 1890.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

A MORAL ISSUE.

TO many of our friends, as we learn
from letters that reach us from
time to time, the position that The
Popular Science Monthly takes up on
political and economical questions ap-
pears more or less "onesided." They
would wish us, if we can not throw our
influence on the side of paternal and
protective government, at least to hold
the scales even between that system
and the anti-paternal, anti-protective
system, to which manifestly our pref-
erence is given. We are sorry to dis-
appoint any who find our pages suffi-
ciently interesting to command their
attention, but we do not see that we can
abandon our present attitude. There is
enough of trimming, enough of com-
promise, enough of the non-committal
style of writing in the newspaper press:
a magazine that professes to represent
science may be pardoned for being true
to what it conceives to be the teachings
of science. What we are compelled to
see in the restrictions that governments
impose upon the course of trade is not

a true statesmanship or a generous pub-
lic policy, but simply a series of trans-
actions, or, as they are now more fa-
miliarly called, " deals " with different
private interests. Who can truthfully
deny that this is the case ? Certain
manufacturers ask for protection and
get it. What is their object in asking ?
Surely their own private gain. What
do they ask? That other people may
be forced to buy their goods, so long as
the price is kept within a certain figure
which is fixed far above the value of
such goods in the markets of the world.
Is this a righteous demand to make ? It
seems to us far from righteous. It seems
to us that a man who approaches the
Legislature with a request that the pow-
er may be conferred upon him by law
to force his goods at a high price upon
people who could buy, and would much
prefer to buy, other goods at a lower
price, comes forward with an essentially
immoral proposition. But what if the
people at large accept the proposition,
it may be asked. What if they are will-
ing to impose a heavy tax upon them-

EDITOR'S TABLE,

411

selves in order that certain manufactures
may be established in the country ? "We
answer, that if the people were really
willing to impose the tax upon them-
selves, there would be no need of the
law. It is just because if the cheaper
goods were accessible, everybody would
buy them, that the applicant for "pro-
tection " seeks to tie the hands of the
public. But we are not without posi-
tive information as to the relation of
protection to politics. We know that
in the highest political circles men who
have had the tariff fixed to suit them-
selves are regarded as having received
important personal favors. They have
been put in the way of accumulating
large stores of " fat " at the expense of
the public, and if they are not forward
in yielding up a little of the fat, when
required, to help the party that framed
the tariff so accommodatingly, indignant
chairmen or secretaries of committees
are apt to talk in a very menacing way
about " frying the fat out of them."

The issue we see here is a moral one.
Certain relations between the state and
individuals are moral, natural, right.
Certain other relations are abnormal,
unnatural, wrong. Certain relations
give rise to no evil ; others are insep-
arable from evil. The protectionist
regime is fruitful — can any candid man
deny it ? — in hypocrisy and fraud : hy-
pocrisy on the part of those who, while
solely intent on their own gain, make
the most specious pretenses of patriot-
ism and philanthropy ; and fraud on the
part of those who are led into attempts
to evade a portion of the huge tax levied
on the goods they import. The regime
of non-interference would, in these two
respects, lift a tremendous burden oft
the morals of the community. Who can
pretend, in the face of known facts, that
the relations between the seekers after
protection and the tariff-makers are of
a moral kind ? How is it possible that
we should have honest legislation, when
interest after interest is constantly ap-
pealing for assistance or the continu-

ance or increase of assistance, pledging
itself tacitly if not expressly to return
the favor when election -day comes
round ?

A well-known French economist, M.
Courcelle-Seneuil, has lately expressed
himself so vigorously and pointedly on
this subject in the columns of the Nou-
velle Revue, that we are tempted to
quote one or two of his observations.
Speaking of the common opinion that
it is the business of government to pro-
mote the wealth of the community by
special legislation, he says : " All inquiry
in regard to this matter demonstrates :
(1) That governments in general have
no competence in questions of trade and
industry of a nature to authorize them
to regulate and control these depart-
ments of activity; (2) that the best
means of enriching a nation is to leave
its industry and commerce absolutely
free ; (3) that in interfering in commerce
and industry the governing power can
only transfer to one citizen the wealth
of another, contrary to the very end of
its institution, which is to maintain peace
by justice. Justice consists in defending
individual citizens against the violence
or fraud which their fellows might
otherwise exercise against them, while
leaving to each as far as possible the
conditions of existence natural to him
as an inhabitant of the planet. The
government could only favor a certain
number by giving them what it had
taken from the rest; in other words, by
practicing the very thing which its busi-
ness is to prevent — namely, injustice.
. . . For example: I am carrying on an
industry; I affirm that the nation has
an interest in having that industry fa-
vored or 'protected,' as they say; I add
that, if it is not protected, either by
means of a bounty paid out of the public
chest, or by a tariff that shall enable me
to levy a tax upon consumers for my own
benefit, I can not continue my business.
One or other of the two affirmations
may be false, and both commonly are.
Nevertheless, the public are so accus-

412

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tomed to be imposed upon by words,
that both affirmations may be admitted
without verification, particularly if they
are maintained by persons of great
wealth who go about in their carriages
begging alms of other people. . . . Estab-
lished for a quite different purpose, the
government has no competence in in-
dustrial matters, and can only act therein
upon the advice of others. This advice
is nearly always interested and unjust."

How entirely we concur in these re-
marks has already been indicated. If
any one can show us that we are wrong
in viewing this whole question in a
moral light, and pronouncing for that
theory of government which seems to
us most favorable to public and private
morality, we shall be prepared to con-
sider it in other aspects, and listen with
patience to the argumentations of those
who would fain persuade us that re-
strictions on the activity and free initi-
ative of individual citizens make for the
strength and prosperity of the people as
a whole, and that the national wealth
is increased when goods are produced
in the country at relatively high cost,
which might be procured from abroad
at relatively low cost.

The above remarks apply to tariff
legislation, but individual liberty is
abridged in many other ways that seem
to us essentially wrong. That the mem-
bers of a particular profession should
have laws passed in their special inter-
est, and should be empowered to decide
who may and who may not enter into
competition with them, is, we think, a
violation at once of justice and of lib-
erty. The worst of these things is, that
a public motive is always alleged for
what is in the main, if not exclusively,
the outcome of private greed or jeal-
ousy. It would scarcely be too much
to say that the most offensive forms of
trade-unionism are found in connection
with the so-called learned professions.
Time was when it was supposed that
the state had to look after the spiritual
health of individuals ; and for that pur-

pose to prescribe their theological be-
liefs and religious observances. That be-
lief has for the most part been exploded
in the modern world, but its place has
been taken by the notion that the state
is responsible for the intellectual health
of its members ; and in lieu of the state
church we have state schools. As re-
gards the physical health of the com-
munity, the general method is to legalize
one or two — possibly quite conflicting —
schools of medicine, and to empower
them to rule out, and if necessary to
prosecute and punish, all others. No-
body, broadly speaking, seems to believe
that, in the absence of all legislation of
this character, people could in any ade-
quate manner preserve their health or
protect themselves against gross impost-
ure. We believe it — believe it most heart-
ily ; and we believe that the science of
medicine would advance far more rap-
idly, and that, on the whole, the public
health would be far better, if every man
were left perfectly free to employ any
one he chose to attend him in sickness.
At present every licensed practitioner
feels himself authorized to call every
unlicensed practitioner a quack. We
should prefer a system under which, to
a quickened public intelligence in ques-
tions of health, and disease, the quack
should stand revealed by his quackery.
How much of real quackery is now con-
cealed by the license to practice it might
distress a confiding public to know.

Our voice may be as that of one cry-
ing in the wilderness, but we cry with
conviction when we call for more indi-
vidual liberty, with its correlative in-
dividual responsibility. There is some-
thing wrong, something vicious, in the
application of compulsion where free-
dom of choice is indicated by all the
natural conditions of the case. Force
should be reserved for cases in which
force is required, where nothing else
will serve the purpose, and where the
purpose is vital to the life of the society.
In other cases the application of force
is wrong. The issue of "Man vs. the

LITERARY NOTICES.

413

State " is a moral issue; and the more
the question is looked at in that light,
the more irrelevant, or at least unne-
cessary, other lines of argument will ap-
pear.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Hygiene of Childhood. By Francis H. Ran-
kin, M. D. New York: D. Appleton &
Co. Pp. 140. Price, 75 cents.

In this little volume plain and practical
advice is given in regard to taking care of
the health of children, from about two and
a half years of age to the completion of pu-
berty. Among the subjects here treated
which are liable to be carelessly regarded
by parents are sleep, regularity of the bow-
els, care of the skin, and school hygiene.
The author introduces also some observa-
tions on proper discipline — an essential in
securing the child's obedience to the laws of
health. The important subjects of food and
clothing receive full consideration. Until
very recently, as the author states, nearly
half the mortality in our larger cities was of
children under five years of age. When this
is contrasted with the few deaths of children
among people living in a state of nature,
the wholesale manner in which civilized
parents slaughter their offspring through
ignorance and carelessness becomes evident.
"When Catlin went among the Indians he
found that deaths of children under ten
years of age were very rare : in one of the
smaller tribes there had been only three in
ten years ; in the cemetery of another,
where the bodies were placed above-ground
on scaffolds, Catlin found only eleven bodies
of children in one hundred and fifty. With
the improvement of sanitary conditions in
cities the death-rate of the children has de-
creased, and there is no doubt that with the
spread of such knowledge as Dr. Rankin
gives will come a still better showing.

Essays op an Americanist. By Daniel G.
Brinton, A. M., M. D. Philadelphia :
Porter & Coates. Pp. 489. Price, $3.

In this volume Dr. Brinton has collected
a considerable number of his essays and ad-
dresses read on various occasions, and pub-
lished in the proceedings of the societies to
which they were presented. These he has

revised, and in many cases extended ; and
to them he has added several papers never
before published. The special purpose which
he designs the volume to serve is stated in
the following words from his preface : "In
a number of points, as for example in the
antiquity of man upon this continent, in the
specific distinction of an American race, in
the generic similarity of its languages, in
recognizing its mythology as often abstract
and symbolic, in the phonetic character of
some of its graphic methods, in believing
that its tribes possessed considerable poetic
feeling, in maintaining the absolute autoch-
thony of their culture — in these and in many
other points referred to in the following
pages, I am at variance with most modern
anthropologists ; and these essays are to
show, more fully and connectedly than could
their separate publication, what are my
grounds for such opinions." Dr. Brinton
classifies these essays under four heads :
ethnologic and archaeologic, mythology and
folk-lore, graphic systems and literature,
linguistic. Their general range is indicated
by the following titles, which are only a
small part of the whole : A Review of the
Data for the Study of the Prehistoric Chro-
nology of America ; On Palaeoliths, Ameri-
can and other ; The Sacred Names in
Quiche Mythology ; The Writing and Rec-
ords of the Ancient Mayas ; Native Ameri-
can Poetry; Some Characteristics of Ameri-
can Languages ; and The Curious Hoax of
the Taensa Language. In the essays on
graphic systems a number of hieroglyphs
are figured.

A Dictionary of Applied Chemistry. By
Prof. T. E. Thorpe, Ph. D., assisted by
Eminent Contributors. In Three Vol-
umes. Vol. I. London and New York :
Longmans, Green & Co. Price, $15.

The subject-matter of this work is pretty
closely restricted to chemical technology and
medicinal chemistry, space being allowed for
purely scientific aspects of the science only
when they have some direct bearing upon an
art or manufacture. For all such matters
the student is referred to the new edition of
Watts's Dictionary of Chemistry, to which
the present work may be regarded as com-
plementary. In preparing the articles special
attention has been paid to the bibliography
of the subjects, and, in certain cases, to the

414

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

compilation of trustworthy patent-lists. Vol-
ume I goes from A to Dy. Among its chief
articles are those on acetic acid, alcohol,
alizarin and allied coloring matters, alu-
minium, ammonia, analysis, azo- coloring
matters, bleaching, brewing, carbon, ce-
ments, chlorine, cyanides, dextrose, disin-
fectants, and dyeing. Under alizarin are
given the history of the artificial production
of this substance, the methods of preparing
a large number of derivatives of anthra-
quinone, and accounts of the anthraquinone
and dichloranthracene processes of manu-
facturing alizarin. The article on brewing
comprises quite full consideration of the
sources and chemical character of the water,
barley, and hops used in making beer, with
descriptions of the several steps in the pro-
cess. Sixteen figures of brewing apparatus
are given. In the article on cements, both
building cements and adhesive cements are
treated. Under the former division are in-
cluded hme-burning, mortar, plaster of Paris,
hydraulic mortar, pozzuolana, hydraulic ce-
ment, oxychloride cements, artificial stone,
and concrete. Analyses of many of these
substances are given in tables, and a bibli-
ography of the subject is appended. Many
of the articles involving descriptions of ap-
paratus are fully illustrated. The more im-
portant ones are signed, and a list of con-
tributors to the volume is prefixed, among
which may be found many well-known
names.

Gems and Precious Stones op North Amer-
ica. By George Frederick Kcnz. Il-
lustrated with Eight Colored Plates and
numerous Minor Engravings. New York :
The Scientific Publishing Company. Pp.
336. Large 8vo. Price, $10.

Mr. Kunz has written a very interesting
book, and it has been published in an ele-
gant style. Nearly all the known varieties of
precious stones occur in North America, and
many of the American specimens have much
beauty, but they are not found of such size
and quality nor in sufficient quantity to rank
them as an important product of the coun-
try. About one hundred thousand dollars'
worth of precious stones, including pearls,
are found in the United States yearly, but
this is less than the value of the output from
the diamond-mines of South Africa, or from
our coal and iron mines, for a single day.

The occurrence of diamonds in the United
States, Mr. Kunz tells us, is chiefly confined
to two belts of country : one along the east-
ern base of the Alleghanies, from Virginia
to Georgia ; the other along the western base
of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Ranges in
Oregon and northern California. The Dewey
diamond, found at Manchester, Va., in 1855,
weighed before cutting 23| carats, and 11-^-
carats afterward. It passed through sev-
eral hands, becoming the property of John
A. Morrissey, who had made a loan of six
thousand dollars on it. As it is off-color
and imperfect, it is to-day worth not more
than three or four hundred dollars. Mr.
Kunz gives the history of the finding of a
number of other American diamonds, many
of which were picked up by children, or by
persons knowing nothing of mineralogy.
Some of these were destroyed by being struck
with a hammer, their finders having an idea
that this was a test which a diamond ought
to stand. He also tells of reported finds of
diamonds in which the stone turned out to
be a quartz crystal which had been rolled
among the gravel of some stream till it had
acquired the appearance of a rough diamond.
Pieces of blue glass similarly worn into
the shape of pebbles have been taken for
sapphires. The largest crystal of sapphire
ever found is in the Shepard mineral collec-
tion at Amherst College. It weighs three
hundred and twelve pounds, is a perfectly
terminated prism, partly red and partly blue
in color, but opaque. It was obtained by Mr.
C. W. Jenks from his mine at Franklin, N. C.
In his chapter on the turquoise Mr. Kunz tells
of its use by the ancient Mexicans, and by
the Indians of the Southwestern United St? ,es,
and gives pictures of several ornaments of
their workmanship. He tells where the ruby,
topaz, and emerald are found, and where
occur a large number of less valuable stones,
such as the garnet, tourmaline, beryl, ame-
thyst, opal, agate, jasper, silicified wood, la-
pis lazuli, moonstone, sunstone, obsidian, am-
ber, jet, cat's-eye, serpentine, malachite, and
very many more whose names are less familiar.
His account of Chalcedony Park in Arizona,
where there are great blocks and whole tree-
trunks turned to agate, is a very interesting
portion of the book. There is also a remark-
ably attractive and fully illustrated chapter
on pearls. The chief pearl-fishing grounds

LITERARY NOTICES.

415

of America are in the Gulf of California, but
pearls are also found in shells of the unio,
mussel, common clam, and other shell-fish
all over the United States. Within one year
they have been sent to the New York market
from nearly every State in the Union. One
worth five hundred dollars was found in
Wisconsin in 1889, and others ranging in
value up to three hundred dollars have been
found in Vermont, Ohio, Texas, and Ten-
nessee. The archasologist will be especially
interested in the chapter on aboriginal lapida-
rian work in North America, and the general
reader will obtain much welcome informa-
tion from the concluding chapter dealing
with imports, values, cutting of diamonds
and other stones, mineral collections, and
uses of precious and ornamental stones for
silver articles and furniture and for interior
house decoration. Mr. Kunz was eminently
well fitted to produce this work, as he is the
gem expert for Messrs. Tiffany & Co., has
prepared several reports on the precious
stones of the United States for the Geologi-
cal Survey, and is the special agent in charge
of this subject for the census of 1890. The
magnificent plates showing all the important
stones in their natural colors are the work
of Messrs. Prang & Co., of Boston. The
many other engravings show articles of abo-
riginal production, forms of crystals, etc.
The book is of standard scientific value, giv-
ing as it does the mineralogical characters
and chemical analyses of the stones treated,
and its handsome form makes it worthv a
place in the finest library.

Food in Health and Disease. By J. Bur-
net Yeo, M. D., F. R. C. P. Philadel-
phia : Lea Brothers & Co. Pp. 583.

No one who examines this book can fail
to be astonished at the amount of informa-
tion that is here compressed within the lim-
its of a small volume. Of course, the author
has not put all that is known about dietetics
between its covers, but he has gone over the
ground with remarkable thoroughness. He
describes the preparation, cooking, and pre-
serving of food, tells the chemical composi-
tion and the special value of each of the com-
mon articles of food, the proper food for the
individual at each period of life, from in-
fancy to advanced age, tells how large num-
bers of persons may be fed cheaply and well,

as in prisons, camps, and on board ship, and
gives dietaries for all the principal diseases.
" I have thought it desirable," says Dr. Yeo
in his preface, " to enter fully and in detail
into the important subjects of army and pris-
on dietaries, school dietaries, and feeding
during the critical period of infancy and
childhood. In connection with the first of
these subjects I have been at pains to pre-
sent as fully as possible the admirable sys-
tem of feeding our soldiers at home stations,
so ably devised and carried out by Colonel
C. J. Burnett — a system which may serve as
a model of wholesome, economical, and in-
telligent feeding." Dr. Yeo gives a warning
against the tendency to overfeeding in adults,
especially those who habitually make little
physical exertion. The habit of drinking
milk with the meals is one way in which the
proper amount of food may be exceeded
inadvertently. In the part of the volume
devoted to food in disease, besides general
directions applicable to different diseases,
there are given various "cures " known by the
names of their originators. An appendix
contains tables of hospital dietaries, and an-
other contains a list of select recipes for
invalids' dietary.

A New Medical Dictionary. By George
M. Gould, M. D. Philadelphia : P. Bla-
kiston, Son & Co. Pp. 519. Price, $3.25.

The aim and scope of this work can be
best told by quoting from the preface. The
author's purpose has been u to include those
new words and phrases created during the
past ten years — a period rich in coinages —
which appeared destined to continuous usage.
... To frame all definitions by the direct
aid of new, standard, and authoritative text-
books, instead of making a patchwork of
mechanical copying from older vocabularies.
While neglecting nothing of positive value,
to omit obsolete words and those not perti-
nent to medicine except in a remote or fac-
titious sense. To make a volume that will
answer the needs of the medical student and
busy practitioner, not only by its compact-
ness of arrangement and conciseness of defi-
nitions, but also by its convenience of size
and price." A notable feature of the work
is its many tables, which comprise abbrevia-
tions, affixes, arteries, bacilli, ganglia, leuco-
maines, micrococci, muscles, nerves, plex-

416

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

uses, ptomaines, comparison of thermome-
ters, weights and measures, mineral springs
of the United States, and vital statistics.
The article on mineral springs is by Judson
Daland, M. D., and forms an appendix of
thirty-two pages. At first sight the volume
does not make a favorable impression, for
its exterior is severely plain, and it appears
to be printed from too small type ; but very
little examination is needed to show that
the publishers' claims as to good paper,
clear print, and binding so that the book
will lie open at any page, are well founded.

Handbook op Geology, for the Use of Ca-
nadian Students. By Sir J. William
Dawson, C. M. G., LL. D., F. R. S., Prin-
cipal of McGill University. Montreal:
Dawson Brothers. 1889. Pp. 250.

This is a practical treatise on geology,
well fitted to the needs of those for whom it
was written, more than half the volume be-
ing devoted to a review of the topography
and geology of Canadian territory. It in-
cludes the results of the later geological
surveys, the observations of Dr. G. M. Daw-
son in Manitoba and British Columbia in
1886-'87, and also the discoveries in paleon-
tology which have changed the chronology
of the Blattidce and other species.

The work is divided into three parts.
The first division treats of the constitution
of rocks, their classification, the fossils
found in them, and their arrangement. In
classifying rocks, the distinction made be-
tween their origin, chemical nature, and
texture is helpful. The second part relates
to chronology. The nomenclature adopted
by the International Congress is given, and
the equivalent terms in use by geologists.
The illustrations of the various eras, their
fossil plants and animals, are well chosen
and complete. The third and longest sec-
tion is descriptive of the physical and geo-
logical features of the country. This is di-
vided into six regions, and examination is
made of each. The author does not give
much space to the discussion of subjective
theories, such as the origin of the metamor-
phism of rocks, the plasticity of the earth,
and other mooted points ; but refers to au-
thors who have treated these subjects at
length. Even in regard to the deposit of
drift upon the plains by icebergs, he points
out " difficulties in the way of the theory of

glaciation caused by the absence of marine
mollusca and other forms of marine life."
As the area considered exceeds that of the
United States, and representatives of nearly
every period from Eozoic to modern times
are found within its limits, it is evident that
the student who becomes familiar with this
rock- structure and history goes forth well
equipped as a geologist. Directions are
given for slicing rocks and fossils for the
microscope, and a description of the tools
necessary for the field geologist, with sug-
gestions as to the best manner in which he
may pursue his work.

A History of Modern Europe. By C. A.
Fyffe, M. A. Vol. Ill, from 1848 to
1878. New York : Henry Holt & Co.
Pp. 572. Price, $2.50.

It is an important period which is cov-
ered by Mr. Fyffe's third volume, for dur-
ing these thirty years many events took place
whose influence in European history will be
great and lasting. Among these are the
creation of the Italian kingdom, the winning
of the leading position among the German
states by Prussia, and the war between
France and Germany in 1870-'71. This
period covers the greater part of Bismarck's
active career, and includes the years in which
Cavour and Disraeli made their fame. Soon
after it began, occurred the Crimean War ;
the dismemberment of Poland was among
its events, and it closes with the war be-
tween Russia and Turkey. The work is a
record of wars and state-craft, and does not
attempt to chronicle the progress of social,
commercial, and industrial affairs. The book
has large, clear print, topics are indicated
by marginal titles, and there is a copious
index.

The Way out of Agnosticism. By Francis
E. Abbot, Ph. D. Boston : Little, Brown
& Co. Pp. 75. Price, $1.

This little book is no more than a com-
pact introduction to a treatise on scientific
religion which Dr. Abbot is preparing. Ag-
nosticism, he says, declares that the scien-
tific method applies only to phenomena, to
the appearances or shows of things, and
has no possible application to noumena, or
things as they really exist in their internal
relations and constitutions. A scientific the-
ology, Dr. Abbot maintains, will show that

LITERARY NOTICES.

417

the scientific method applies both to phe-
nomena and noumena — both to things as
they seem and things as they are. Agnos-
ticism, destitute of the conception that God
is immanent in nature, does not see that to
know nature in any degree is to know God
in precisely that degree. There is no un-
knowable, but simply the unknown or the
imperfectly known. Against the relativity
of knowledge as held by Herbert Spencer,
he affirms that knowledge is based upon the
internal self-relatedness of an object. This
self-relatedness in its unity and constancy,
as Kant observed, is the reason why all who
judge an object come to agreement. For-
mulating the three types of real beings as
machine, organism, and person, Dr. Abbot
finds the universe to be all three. In the
perfect intelligibility of the universe he places
his hope for new light on the problems of
immortality and duty, which shall be as cer-
tain and trustworthy as the light science has
already cast on problems of physical nature.

The Elements of Laboratory Work. By
A. G. Earl, M. A. London and New
York: Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 179.
Price, $1.40.

Text-books adapted to the new and genu-
ine method of science study are so few as
yet that every progressive educator will wel-
come this addition to their number. The
course which it embodies is designed as an
introduction to all branches of natural sci-
ence, its object being to teach a method of
study rather than to convey information in a
prescribed field. It is adapted to s-tudents in
colleges and high-schools. To give an idea
of the method of the book we quote the di-
rections for the first exercise :

" To find equal quantities of matter : 1.
Use a balance, and counterpoise two pieces
of wood, cutting away one or the other with
a knife until exact balance is obtained. 2.
Counterpoise a piece of wood and a piece of
lead. 3. Counterpoise another piece of wood
with the lead, and then observe that the two
pieces of wood counterpoised by the lead
counterpoise one another.

" The above exercises show : 1. That with
the same kind of matter, wood, the pieces
which counterpoise each other are the same
size, or thereabout; but different kinds of
matter which counterpoise each other are

vol. xxxvii. — 31

not of the same size. 2. That two bodies
counterpoise each other if they each counter-
poise a third body, for these two bodies have
been, found to act alike under the same con-
ditions— that is, when placed in the same po-
sition, and with all the surroundings the same.
Two such pieces of matter are said to be equal
quantities of matter, however unequal in size
or different in appearance they may be."

Other exercises in weighing and some in
measuring length and volume follow. While
occupied with weighing, the student is di-
rected to take to pieces a balance very care-
fully, the points in its construction which it
is specially instructive for him to notice be-
ing stated. Observations of change of posi-
tion, of changes of temperature, and of cer-
tain mutual changes common to all kinds of
matter are among the early exercises of the
course. A chapter is devoted to " observa-
tions of certain mutual changes exhibited by
certain kinds of matter," namely, electrical
phenomena. Under the head of " observa-
tions which lead to the theory that all mat-
ter is made up of very small separate par-
ticles" are embraced experiments on solu-
tion, diffusion, and the pressure of gases. A
number of chemical experiments are given
in a chapter devoted to " investigation of
the composition of various kinds of matter."
The final division comprises experiments in
optics, designed to lead to the theory of
the ether. An appendix gives many practi-
cal hints in regard to conducting the work
in the laboratory. Lists of additional exer-
cises and questions are inserted at the end
of each chapter, and the text is illustrated
with many figures of apparatus and dia-
grams.

Numbers Universalized is the latter or
advanced part of the text-book of algebra
by Prof. David M. Sensenig (Appleton,
$1.25). The work is believed by its author
to embrace all algebraic subjects usually
taught in the preparatory and scientific
schools and the colleges of this country.
Part Second is divided into five chapters, as
follows : one embracing serial functions, in-
cluding, among other things, the binomial
theorem, and exponential and logarithmic
series ; one treating of complex numbers,
graphically and analytically ; one embodying
a discussion on the theory of functions ; one

418

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

treating of the theory of equations, and one
treating of determinants and probabilities,
so far as the author deems these of interest
and value to the general student. The vol-
ume closes with a supplementary discussion
of continued fractions and theory of num-
bers. The two parts of the book are paged
continuously, and may be had bound to-
gether.

Although prepared for English readers,
the Notes on American Schools and Training
Colleges, hyJ. G. Fitch (Macmillan, 60 cents),
contains much that American teachers can
read with profit. These Notes were made
during a visit of the author to America in
1888, and were embodied in his annual offi-
cial report on English Training Colleges,
presented to Parliament in 1889. It is al-
ways instructive to see ourselves as other
fair-minded observers see us, and this pict-
ure of our educational methods from a for-
eign point of view must help Americans to
realize what are the peculiarities, the merits
and defects, in a system all parts of which
seem to us equally natural and admirable.
An introduction has been prefixed to the
volume telling how education is supported
in England. This is a point on which many
Americans appear to be ignorant, and a
glaring case of such ignorance by a reverend
wrriter in an American magazine is taken by
Dr. Fitch as the text for his remarks. A
table showing schemes of graded instruction
in primary schools in England, New York,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Massachusetts, and
Ontario is inserted at the end of the volume.

Volume XI of the Transactions of the
Kansas Academy of Science covers the an-
nual meetings of 1887 and 1888. Most of
the papers embody results of scientific re-
searches on the geology, botany, and zoology
of Kansas. Among these are Horizon of
the Dacotah Lignite, by Prof. Robert Hay ;
On the Newly Discovered Salt Beds in Ells-
worth County, by E. H. S. Bailey; Personal
Observations upon the Flora of Kansas, by
Mrs. A. L. Slosson ; Geology of the Leaven-
worth Prospect Well, by E. Jameson; A
List of the Kansas Species of Peronospora-
ceoe, by W. T. Swingle ; and a Meteorologi-
cal Summary for the Years 1887 and 1888,
by Prof. F. H. Snow. There are also some
papers on general subjects.

Prof. Edicin S. Craidey, of the Univer-

sity of Pennsylvania, has published a text-
book entitled Elements of Plane and Spheri-
cal Trigonometry (Lippincott, $1), covering
that part of the subject which is generally
given in a college course. The first part of
the subject is presented in much detail, with
many examples and illustrations ; further on
the student is thrown more upon his own re-
sources. In the preface, sections are speci-
fied which may be omitted without impairing
the continuity of the text, if a shorter course
is desired. An appendix contains the for-
mulae which the student will find most use-
ful in subsequent work in mathematics.
Answers to a part of the examples are given
at the end of the book.

A fifth edition, revised and enlarged, of
the little work on Electric Light Installations
and the Management of Accumulators, by
Sir David Salomons, Bart., has just been pub-
lished (Van Nostrand, $1.50). The book is
now more than twice as large as when it
first appeared, having been extended to 334
pages, and contains ICO illustrations. The
rapidity with which four editions have been
disposed of, and the fact that the book has
been translated into German and French, are
practical indorsements of its value. Besides
expanding the chapters of the last edition,
the author has added two new ones, and
many of the cuts are now inserted for the
first time.

Prof. R. H. Ward, M. D., has published
a revised edition of his record-book for
botanical laboratory work entitled Plant
Organization (Ginn & Co., 85 cents). The
preface and introduction explain Prof.
Ward's scheme of writing descriptions of
plants ; then follow twenty pages in which
the terms commonly used in describing the
parts of plants are defined. Here the au-
thor gives, in addition to many of the tech-
nical terms, simpler words that may be used
by pupils whose course of study will be
short. The leaves of the book are tied in
by a cord, so that as each printed form is
filled out it may be removed and handed to
the teacher for examination. The forms, be-
sides lines for descriptive words, have spaces
for drawings. Blank pages are inserted, to
which dried specimens may be attached.

A manual of hygiene entitled How to
preserve Health has been prepared by Louis
Barkan, M. D. (Exchange Printing Company,

LITERARY NOTICES,

419

New York). It contains advice on all the
subjects usually comprised in a health
manual grouped under two heads — the pre-
vention of disease and the care of the sick.
In the latter department are some directions
which the layman is probably not expected
to use himself, for, in another place, the
author says that " so soon as unmistakable
signs of disease are perceived, a physician
should be called." The readableness of the
volume has been increased by putting into
it bits of description and accounts of ways
and customs in other countries.

Mr. Horatio Hale publishes a Manual of
the Oregon Trade Language, or Chinook
Jargon (London : Whittaker, 3s.), written to
form part of a volume of linguistics, the
work of several contributors, which is not
yet published. The author's first study of
the subject was made in 1841, when, as a
member of a United States exploring expe-
dition, he undertook an account of the eth-
nology of the Oregon region. He found the
jargon to comprise about two hundred and
fifty words ; the number had nearly doubled
in 1863, when the dictionary of George Gibbs
was published, since which time no material
change seems to have been made in the lan-
guage. In regard to the present volume,
Mr. Hale says, in his prefatory note, " Com-
prising, as will be seen, a complete grammar
and dictionary, with specimens of colloquial
and narrative phrases, songs, hymns, a ser-
mon, etc., it is intended to afford a manual
for the use of travelers and settlers in the
region where it is spoken, as well as an op-
portunity for philologists to study the con-
struction of a genuine international speech
now current, with the best results, among
populations in various stages of civilization,
speaking more than twenty distinct lan-
guages, and diffused over a territory nearly
half as large as Europe."

A new solution to the problem of an in-
ternational language is offered by Augustin
Knofach in a pamphlet entitled Sound- Eng-
lish (New York : Stechert, 25 cents). The au-
thor first sets forth the reasons why English
is more desirable as an international speech
than any artificial language, and asserts
that the only obstacle to such use is its ab-
surd, illogical spelling. He then illustrates
some of the irregularities of English spelling,

and answers the stock objections to any
change in a vigorous and interesting style.
In the second part of the pamphlet, Mr.
Knoflach presents his method of writing
English. It is a phonetic system, the de-
ficiencies in our present alphabet being sup-
plied by new letters. Long vowels are
printed in heavy or full-face type. Besides
giving the exact sound of each word, Sound-
English also indicates the accent. Syllables
containing long vowels are generally accent-
ed, so the full-face type is a mark of accent.
Where this rule does not apply, a consonant
is printed in full-face to mark the accent.
All capitals are discarded ; they are not
needed at the beginning of sentences, and
proper names are distinguished by the con-
text, as in spoken language. One advantage
claimed for this system is that type-writers
can be easily modified to write it, the heavy
letters being made by holding the space-bar
and striking the key twice. An appendix
in dialogue form answers objections to
Sound-English.

A system of metrology designed to su-
persede the metric as well as the remaining
old systems is set forth by the Hon. Edward
Noel, in a book entitled Natural Weights
and Measures (London : E. Stanford, 2s. Qd.).
Its linear unit is an ell of about twenty-five
inches, which is one ten-thousandth of the
semi-diameter of the earth — the measure
used by astronomers for expressing the im-
mense celestial distances. The foot would
be half an ell and would contain twelve
new inches. All other measures and the
weights would be derived from the linear
unit, as in the metric system. They would
be given the names now used for the old
weights and measures. The proposed sys-
tem differs from the metric in preferring
duodecimal division in linear and weight
measure, and binary division in surface and
capacity measure. The author finds much
to say in favor of the United Kingdom, the
United States, and Russia adopting the
"natural" system together, and he says it
well. By description and in tables he pre-
sents the system from every point of view,
and makes out a very able plea in its behalf,
both on practical and on sentimental grounds.

Mary Boole, the author of Logic taught
by Love (A. Mudge & Son, Printers, Bos-
ton), says of her own production; "This

420

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

book will seem to some a mere medley. Is
it a text-book of logic, a pious exhortation,
or a treatise on mythology ? " The ordinary
person will get exactly this impression from
a first glance at the book ; but he can not
help feeling a respect for the author's mind
from the fact that she realizes so well the
character of her own work. It consists of
a number of essays, dealing chiefly with
metaphysics, the Hebrew religion, and edu-
cational methods. One object of the volume
being to combat monotony and specializa-
tion in teaching, the chapters are far from
being severely methodical in scope or ar-
rangement. The author insists that too lit-
tle regard is commonly paid to the bearing
of different fields of knowledge upon each
other. She makes many references to the
work of George Boole, and frequently quotes
from his Laws of Thought. Another of her
authorities is Gratry, author of the Logique.
jEschines against Ctesiphon, edited by
Prof. Rufus B. Richardson (Ginn), has been
added to the College Series of Greek Au-
thors. A life of ^Eschines is prefixed to
the volume, and notes occupy about two
thirds of each of the pages on which the
text is printed. The book has a Greek in-
dex and an index of subjects.

A Report of Explorations in the Allegha-
ny Region, made by Prof. David Starr Jor-
dan, has been published by the United States
Fish Commission. This examination had two
general purposes : first, to ascertain the
general character of the streams of the Alle-
ghany region of Virginia, North Carolina, and
Tennessee, and of western Indiana ; their
present stock of food -fishes, and their
suitability for the introduction of species
not now found there ; second, to catalogue
the fishes native to each stream, whether
food-fishes or not, in order to complete our
knowledge of the geographical distribution
of each species, and to throw light on the
laws which govern geographical distribu-
tion. The results of the observations re-
corded in this paper accord with a previous
conviction of the author, that the question
of distribution reduces itself to a question
of barriers of various sorts. Each species
extends its range in every direction, and
holds the ground thus taken if it can.

The Bidletin of the United States Fish
Commission for 1887 consists of reports

and correspondence on a wide variety of
topics. Among the more extended articles
are reports on the fishes observed in Great
Egg Harbor Bay, New Jersey, in 1887, and
on the investigations by the schooner Gram-
pus on the Southern mackerel-grounds, and
a review of the mackerels of America and
Europe (with plates). A fully illustrated
paper of over one hundred pages, by J. W.
Collins, describes the beam-trawl fishery of
Great Britain. Among the articles of more
popular interest are an account of the Ameri-
can Sardine Industry in 1886, by R. E. Earll
and H. M. Smith; and The Aquarium : a
Brief Exposition of its Principles and Man-
agement (illustrated), by William P. Seal.

An account of The History of tlie Niaga-
ra River, by G. K. Gilbert, included in the
Report for 1889, of the Commissioners of
the State Reservation at Niagara, has been
reprinted in pamphlet form. It contains the
substance of the lecture which the author
gave before the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, at its Toronto
meeting in 1889, and is written in a style
which makes it attractive to the generally
intelligent person as well as interesting to
the geologist. Mr. Gilbert discusses the
changes of outlets of the Great Lakes caused
by the advance and retreat of the ancient
ice-sheet, and shows their bearing on the
history of the Niagara River. He then de-
scribes the work of the cataract in cutting
out its gorge, and concludes with a list of
questions which must be considered before
any satisfactory estimate of the rate of re-
cession of the falls can be reached. The
paper is illustrated with eight plates.

Three monographs by Mr. Robert Ridg-
way, published in the Proceedings of the
United States National Museum, comprise a
Review of the Genus Xiphocolaptes of Lessor,
in which the existence of a much greater
number of clearly defined forms than have
been recognized by leading authorities was
made apparent ; a Review of the Genics
Sclerurus of Sioainson — in which several
forms that had been " lumped together "
had to be distinguished ; and a List of Birds
(sixty-six species) collected on the Island of
Santa Lucia, West Indies, Abrolhos Islands,
Brazil, and at the Straits of Magellan, in
1887-88, by the Fish Commission steamer
Albatross.

LITERARY NOTICES.

421

Among the later publications by the
United States National Museum are de-
scriptive Notes of New Genera and Species
from the Lower Cambrian or Olenellus Zone
of North America, by Charles D. Walcott ;
New North American Acrididai, found north
of the Mexican Boundary, by Laurence Boe-
mer ; description of Two New Species of
Snakes from California, by Leonhard Stej-
neger ; Report on the Batrachians and Rep-
tiles collected by the United States Fish Com-
mission Steamer Albatross in 1887-'88, by
E. D. Cope ; Description of New Species of
Fishes collected at the Galapagos Islands and
along the coast of the United States of Co-
lombia during the same expedition, by D. S.
Jordan and C. H. Bollman ; and Annotated
Catalogue of Insects, collected by the Alba-
tross in 1887-88, by L. 0. Hoioard.

Two essays on Primitive Architecture
have recently been published by Barr Fer-
ree. In one, on Sociological Influences, re-
printed from The American Naturalist, he
tells how the form and arrangement of the
dwelling have been modified according as
the occupants were a single family or sev-
eral families living in communism, as they
were sedentary or nomadic, timid or war-
like, etc. In the other, first published in
the American Anthropologist, he takes Cli-
matic Influences for his subject, and shows
how they have affected the pitch of roofs,
the size of windows, the closeness of walls,
the choice of material, etc.

Mr. Alfred R. Wolff (New York) has
published a pamphlet on The Ventilation of
Buildings, in which he states the problem
that the architect has to solve, correcting
several popular misconceptions about venti-
lation, shows by what calculation the proper
quantity of fresh air to be supplied to the
inmates of a room may be found, and calls
attention to the fact that efficient ventilation
in cold weather involves additional expense
in heating. He then considers several meth-
ods of obtaining the required supply and re-
moval of air, and the relation of the usual
methods of heating to ventilation.

The Second Annual Report of the Agri-
cultural Experiment Station of Cornell Uni-
versity (published by the University, Ithaca,
N. Y.) contains the reports of the several
officers of the station, appended to which
are Bulletins 5 to 15 inclusive, dealing with

the production of lean meat in mature
animals; whether heating milk affects the
butter made from it; fodders and feeding-
stuffs ; influences of certain conditions upon
the sprouting of seeds ; wind-breaks in their
relation to fruit-growing, tomatoes, deterior-
ation of manure, etc. Many of the papers
are illustrated.

The Fourth Reading-Booh in Lippin-
cott's New Series, by Eben H. Davis (Lippin-
cott, 80 cents), is made up of selections in
prose and verse from standand English and
American authors, including some recent
writers, whose works are drawn upon by
permission of their publishers. A Chapter
of Suggestions for Training the Voice is pre-
fixed, and a list of questions for the use of
teachers and a vocabulary are appended.
The volume is illustrated.

A collection of Heroic Ballads, edited
with notes by D. H. Montgomery, has just
been issued (Ginn, 50 cents). The vol-
ume contains sixty-eight ballads, among
which are many whose excellence has made
them long popular, such as Macaulay's Ho-
ratius, Ivry, etc. ; Aytoun's Execution of
Montrose, and Edinburgh after Flodden;
Marco Bozzaris, Casabianca, Lochinvar, Bar-
bara Frietchie, Sheridan's Ride, and Curfew
must not ring To-night. Others less famil-
iar are Cowper's Boadicea, Scotland's Maiden
Martyr, Shan Van Vocht, Song of Marion's
Men, The Song of the Camp, and Lowell's
Commemoration Ode. Explanatory notes
are introduced at the foot of the pages, and
indexes to these notes and to the authors
represented are appended to the volume.

A very full treatise on whist, entitled
American Whist Illustrated, has been written
by G. W. P., the author of American Whist
and Whist Universal (Houghton, $1.75).
He states that this publication is a digest of
his two previous volumes, with all the
amendments, revisions, and changes in play
required by the application of recent inven-
tions and improvements in the practice of
the American game. The volume is intro-
duced by a short history of cards, including
the game of modern whist ; then follow the
laws of American whist and the rules of a
Boston whist club — the Deschapelles. In
his rules for original leads and his analyses
of the play of second, third, and fourth
hands, the author is liberal with reasons and

422

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

explanations. The characteristics of Amer-
ican Leads and of "The New Play" are
fully explained and illustrated, and due at-
tention is given to a large number of special-
topics. A chapter of some sixty pages on
Whist Practice consists of rules and counsel
designed to stimulate the indifferent player
to become a good one. A sample conversa-
tion, such as is carried on by four persons of
the former sort, is also introduced. Twenty
illustrative hands, with figures of all the
cards, conclude the volume.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Allen, Harrison. Description of Two New Spe-
cies of Bats. Washington : United States National
Museum. Pp. 16.

Brooks, W. K. On the Lucayan Indians. Na-
tional Academy of Sciences Pp. 223, with Twelve
Plates.

Brown, Harold P. A Test of the Efficiency of the
Westinghouse Alternating Current. New York :
J. W. Pratt & Son. Pp. 23.

Burt. Stephen Smith, M. D. Pulmonary Con-
sumption in the Light of Modern Eesearch. New
York. Pp. 14.

Checkley, Edward. A Natural Method of Phys-
ical Training. Brooklyn, N. Y. : William C. Bryant
& Co. Pp. 152. $1.50. '

Chicago Manual Training School Seventh An-
nual Catalogue. Pp. 38.

Church, A. H. The Chemistry of Paints and
Painting. London: Seeley & Co., Limited. Pd
310. $1.75. y

Collier, Dr. Peter. How to make Dairying more
Profitable. Pp. 15.

Cook, C. B., Agricultural College, Mich. The
English Sparrow. Pp. 8.— Foul Brood. Pp. 8.—
Insecticides. Pp. 12.

Durham. Evolution, Antiquity of Man, Bacteria,
etc. (Science in Plain Language Series.) Edin-
burgh : Adam and Charles Black. Pp. 127. 50
cents.

Faxon, Walter. Notes on North American
Crayfishes. Washington : United States National
Museum. Pp. 16.

Fiske, Amos K. Midnight Talks at the Club.
New York : Fords, Howard & Hulbert. Pp. 298.
$1. V

Forbes, S. A., State Entomologist. Eeport on
Noxious and Beneficial Insects of Illinois. Pp 132.

Fryer, John, Editor. Chinese Scientific and In-
dustrial Magazine. Quarterly. Vol. V., No. 1.
Shanghai : Lan-Tsz-Yang, Manager. 30 cents a
number ; $1 a year.

Griswold, W. M , Bangor, Maine. Directory of
Writers for the Literary Press. Pp. 59.

Orossmann, Rabbi Louis. Maimonides. New
York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 38.
25 cents.

Hackel, Eduard. The True Grasses. Translated
by F. Lamson-Scribner and Effie A. Southworth.
New York : Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 228.

Hambleton, G. W. The Suppression of Con-
sumption. New York : N. D. C. Hodges. Pp 37.
40 cents.

Henshaw, Samuel Bibliography of American
Economic Entomology. Part I. Washington : De-
partment of Agriculture. Pp. 454.

191H°It' Henry' & Co- Educational Catalogue. Pp.
1890ndpna m iver8ity' BI°omington. Catalogue for

Japan. Short Account of the Educational Soci-
ety. Pp. 19.

Kalamazoo College, Mich. Annual, 1889-190.
Pp.63.

Kimball, John C. Evolution of Arms and
Armor. Boston : James H. West. Pp. 32. 10
cents.

Knowlton, F. H. Revision of the Genus Aurau-
carioxylon of Kraus. Washington : United States
National Museum. Pp. 16.

Lee, Arthur Bolles. The Microtomist's Vade
Mecum. Second edition. Philadelphia : P. Blakis-
ton, Son & Co. Pp. 413.

Lowville Mineral Springs, Tourists1 Guide, 1890.
Pp.44.

Mark. Prof. E. L., Harvard University. Trichi-
na? in Swine. Pp. 22.

Marx, Dr. George. Catalogue of the Described
Aranese of Temperate North America. Washing-
ton : United States National Museum. Pp. 98.

Massachusetts State Agricultural Experiment
Station. Analysis of Commercial Fertilizers. Pp. 4.

Merrill, George P. Serpentinous Rocks of Essex
County, N. Y., New York City, and Easton, Pa.
Washington : United States National Museum.
Pp.6.

Michigan State Agricultural College Experiment
Station. Fruit List and Apple Scab. By L. R.
Taft. Pp. 42.— Tests of Pigs and Potatoes. By E.
Davenport. Pp. 10.

Minnesota. Public Health in. April, 1890. Red
Wing. Pp. 6.— Monthly. 50 cents a year. Pp. 16.

Oldenberg. H., Jastrow, J., and Convill, C. H.
Epitomes of Three Sciences. Chicago: Open Court
Publishing Company. Pp. 139. 75 cents.

Patten, Simon N. The Economic Basis of Pro-
tection. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co. Pp.
144 $1.

Patterson, H. J. The Use of Animal Charcoal in
the Determination of Fat in Feeding Stuffs. Pp. 4.

Peerless Brick Company. Philadelphia. Isomet-
rical Diagrams of Molded, Colored, and Ornamental
Bricks. Pp. 80.

Pennsylvania, Universitv of. Catalogue and
Announcements for 1890. Pp. 262.

Philadelphia Zoological Society. Report of the
Board of Directors. Pp. 20.

Pickering, Edward C, Director. Fourth Annual
Report of Photographic Study of Stellar Spectra at
Harvard College Observatory. Cambridge : John
Wilson & Son. Pp. 9.

Rauch, John H., M. D. Report on Medical Edu-
cation, etc., in the United States and Canada.
Springfield, 111. : Illinois State Board of Health. Pp.
167.

Remondino, P. C, San Diego, Cal. Phymosis
and the Prepuce. Pp. 16. — The Marine Climate of
the Southern California Coast and its Relation to
Phthisis. Pp. 5S.

Richardson, E. L. Associated Dairying. Con-
necticut Board of Agriculture Report. Pp. 43.

Roberts, I. P., and Wing, Henry H. Growing
Corn for Fodder and Ensilage. Cornell University
Agricultural Experiment Station. Pp. 15.

Rose Polytechnic Institute, Terre Haute, Ind.,
Eighth Annual Catalogue, 18S9, 1890. Pp. 52.

Rosse, Irving G, M. D. Bathing and Boating
Accidents. Chicago : American Medical Association.
Pp.7.

Suisse, Horaire Illustre (Swi«s Illustrated Time
Table). Zurich: Official General Inquiry Office.
Sheet.

Shaffer, Virginia Conser. How to remember
History. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott Company.
Pp.143. $1.

Skilton, James A. Evolution of the Mechanic
Arts. Boston : James A. West. Pp.24. 10 cents.

Storrs. R. S., D. D. Our Nation's Work for the
Colored People. New York: Holt Brothers. Pp.22.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

423

Thayer, William R. The Best Elizabethan Plays. 1
Boston : Ginn & Co. Pp. 611. $1.40.

Thompson, Robert Ellis, D. D. The Life of
George H. Stuart, written by Him=elf. Philadelphia :
J. M. Stoddart & Co. Pp. 333, with Portrait.

Tolstoi, Count Leo. The Kreutzer Sonata.
Boston : Benjamin R. Tucker. Pp. 143.

"Ward, Lester F. The Course of Biological Evo-
lution. Washington : Biological Society. Pp. 33.

Whiting, Harold. Experiments in Physical
Measurement Cambridge : John Wilson & Son.
Pp. 278.

Winslow. Arthur, State Geologist. Geological
Survey of Missouri. Bulletin No. 1. Jefferson City.
P|». 85.

Zoe, a Biological Journal. Monthly. Vol. I, No.
2. San Francisco. Pp. 32, with Plate. 20 cents;
$2 a year.

Zurcher, Rev. George, Buffalo Plains, N. Y.
Handcuffs for Alcoholism, Pp. 132. 25 cents.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Geological Survey-Work in Minnesota.

— The law of 1872, under which the Geo-
logical Survey of Minnesota was instituted,
was intended, according to Prof. N. H.
Winchell, to place the survey in close con-
nection with the State University ; and the
professorship of Geology and Mineralogy in
the university was maintained for six years
at the expense of the survey fund. From it
the museum of the university has obtained
the nucleuses of growing geological, zoo-
logical, and archaeological collections. The
survey was supported by legislative appro-
priations till the revenue from the sale of
salt-springs lands supplied their place. The
economic side of the enterprise has been
kept in mind constantly, though it has not
been conspicuous. " The annual reports em-
body common facts, and description cast in
a semi-scientific mold. They are addressed
primarily to a home constituency, in order
to show them the utility of the work of the
survey. As the survey becomes grounded
in the good-will of our own citizen?, it is
strengthened for doing more advanced work,
and at the same time finds a constituency
that is ready to welcome more strictly scien-
tific publications." Among the most im-
portant results of the work of the survey
have been the saving of the salt-springs
lands from being devoured by speculative
enterprises ; dissuading citizens, by the
publication of correct information on the
subject, from making fruitless searches for
coal ; calling attention to the economic re-
sources of the State ; and showing the
people how to secure cheaply a supply of

pure water for domestic purposes. The
scientific results, while not including any
great new discoveries, have been numerous,
and^ all have a place in the elucidation of
geological theory. The unfinished work
of the survey lies in the northern part of
the State, and, embracing the crystalline
rocks and the various questions of econom-
ic and technical geology that pertain to them,
is the most important as well as the most
difficult and costly part of its work.

Summer Courses at Harvard. — The

courses of summer instruction at Harvard
University will include four courses in chem-
istry (general elementary chemistry, qualita-
tive analysis, quantitative analysis, and or-
ganic chemistry) ; courses in experimental
physics and botany, geology (elementary and
advanced) ; topography, French, German, and
physical training ; and courses at the medi-
cal school. A general course of lectures on
methods of instruction will be given in ad-
dition by teachers in the several departments
represented by the schools, open free to all
members of the summer schools. Persons
are admitted as special students in the uni-
versity who desire to pursue for a year or
more the study of some particular subject ;
and who, having received a high-school or
academy training, wish to follow for one or
more years a course of liberal study prepara-
tory to some profession or to the walks of
active life. The summer courses will open
on different days between June 30th and
July 9th, inclusive.

Nature's Earth-Carving.— As the tools
used by Nature in carving the earth, Dr.
Archibald Geikie enumerates air, rain, riv-
ers, springs, and frost. , Exposure to the
air changes the hardest rocks. Cracks
form in them which receive the rain and are
enlarged by freezing in winter, to increase
the effect of the next season's rain in wash-
ing away the surface. No rock wears away
faster than white marble, the destruction of
which is speeded by the carbonic acid in the
air. The waste in a century sometimes
amounts to a third of an inch in thickness.
The more compact kinds of sandstone en-
dure better, and in tombstones still, after
the lapse of two centuries, show marks of
the chisel. Sandstones, however, usually con-

424

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tain a layer more soluble than the rest, along
which the rock splits and peels. Compact
rocks like granite are traversed by parallel
joints on which the weather acts destruc-
tively ; and the less compact clays, dried to
powder, are blown by the wind and swept
more rapidly into rivers, lakes, and the sea.
Tbe rain-streams, always running over the
same channels, furrow the hill-side and wear
it away still more rapidly ; and a sheep-walk
in a few years may become a deep ravine.
The material carried down, when spread at
lower levels, helps to form plains like mead-
ows, and these in time may be cut through and
partially carried away. Streams descending
from peaty regions are charged with car-
bonic acid, and destructive to limestone. In
all mountain regions the rivers are liable to
enormous increase in volume from heavy
rainfalls, when they carry off proportion-
ately larger quantities of earth. The work
of springs is like that of rain and rivers.
The sink-holes in limestone regions carry
the water down underground to do a similar
work there ; and this underground flow of
water often helps in the production of land-
slips, especially when the ground is covered
with bowlder-clay.

Teaching the "New Botany."— In the

" New Botany," as described by Prof. W. J.
Beal, in Garden and Forest, pupils are set to
studying plants before books. Previous to
the first lesson, "each pupil is furnished
or told where to procure some specimen
for study. If it is winter, and flowers or
growing plants can not be had, give each a
branch of a tree or shrub, which may be
two feet long. The examination of these is
made during the usual time for preparing
lessons, and not while the class is before
the teacher. For the first recitation each is
to tell what he has discovered. The speci-
mens are not in sight during the recitation.
In learning the lesson, books are not used ;
for, if they are used, no books will contain a
quarter of what the pupil can see for him-
self. If there is time, each member of the
class is allowed a chance to mention any-
thing not named by any of the rest. The
pupils are not told what they can see for
themselves. An effort is made to keep
them working after something which they
have not yet discovered. If two members

disagree on any point, on the next day,
after further study, they are requested to
bring in all the proofs they can, to sustain
their different conclusions. Give other
specimens for the next lesson, keep review-
ing, and generalize as details and facts ac-
cumulate. I like to give two species for
careful comparison. . . . After a few weeks,
reviews may be made in connection with
chapters in some book. I make it a rule to
give pupils specimens for study and com-
parison regarding every chapter in Gray's
Structural Botany before the book-lesson is
studied. I place no stress on making these
investigations in the order in which the
chapters of a text-book are arranged. Free
use is made of our botanic garden, the crops
in the vegetable-garden, fields, and experi-
ment station, and the thickets along the
river. Special topics are often assigned, in
which each student has to go many times
to observe and record observations on his
growing plant." Illustrations by drawing
are a prominent feature of the whole course.

Leaning Towers.— The leaning tower of
Pisa is not the only building of its kind.
There are many towers in northern Italy that
deviate from the perpendicular, so that a
writer has spoken of the country as " a land
of towers staggering in all directions like
tipsy men " ; and there are in England few
spires of any great altitude that are quite
upright. The inclination of the Italian towers
is a result of the character of the foundation
soil, and of mistakes in building. The soil
and subsoil of northern Italy down to the
water-level are composed of rounded stones
brought down by torrents and rivers from
the Alps. A broad foundation is a primary
condition of the stability of buildings erected
upon it. The builders of the towers had
classic models in their eyes, and did not con-
template the broadening of bases or the add-
ing of buttresses to insure stability. Con-
sulting appearances, and not venturing to
depart from the conventional, they built
straight up. The pressure concentrated on
the narrow base was too much for the shift-
ing stones beneath. They yielded at the
weaker points, and the towers bent over.
If the builders had minded the example of
their Gothic neighbors and widened their
bases, the load would have been more evenly

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

425

distributed over more ground, and the devia-
tion from the perpendicular would not have
been so obvious. There are many leaning
towers in Bologna, inclining in all directions ;
and few of the campaniles of Venice are per-
fectly upright.

Palaeolithic Implements in the United
States. — The Palaeolithic implements of the
District of Columbia, and indeed from all
over the United States, as described by Mr.
Thomas Wilson, are always chipped, never
polished ; are almond-shaped, oval, or some-
times approaching a circle ; have their cut-
ting edge at or toward the smaller end, and
not, as in the Neolithic specimens, toward
the broad end ; are frequently made of peb-
bles, and with the original surface some-
times left unworked in places ; and are ex-
ceedingly thick compared with their width,
so much so as to make it apparent that they
were never intended to have a shaft or han-
dle after the fashion of the axe or arrow
or spear-head. They were usually made
of quartz, quartzite, or argillite ; while the
Neolithic man used any material that would
grind to a smooth surface. They are not
known to have been used by the American
Indian, who when found by Europeans was
in the Neolithic stage. Of the thousands
of Indian mounds, cemeteries, graves, and
monuments which have been explored, not
one has ever yielded these Palaeolithic im-
plements. The articles found in the Dis-
trict of Columbia are of the same type as
Palaeolithic implements found in the Trenton
gravels ; at Little Falls, Minn. ; in Jackson
County, Ind. ; at Claymount, Del. ; and at
Loveland, Ohio ; and all together contrib-
ute to prove that a real Palaeolithic period
existed in the United States.

Sharing of Earnings. — After several
years of experimenting, Mr. Alfred Dolge,
of Dolgeville, Herkimer County, New York,
has decided upon a plan for sharing with his
employes the earnings of his manufacturing
business. A share of the net earnings of
the business is to be set aside each year,
and applied for the benefit of the employes
in three ways — as pensions, insurance, and
endowment. Every male employe who be-
comes unable to work after a continuous
service of ten years receives a pension equal

to fifty per cent of his wages. Each three
years of service over ten up to twenty-five,
increases the pension ten per cent. A dis-
abling accident happening to an employe
while on duty entitles him to a fifty-per-cent
pension, even if he has not served ten years.
Employes are also entitled to a life-insurance
policy for one thousand dollars after five
years' service, to a second one after ten years,
and a third after fifteen years. For each
employe rejected by the insurance company
with which the house contracts, and for
those entering the service of the house when
over forty years old, thirty-five dollars a
year is deposited instead of the policy. After
five years of consecutive service, also, an ac-
count is opened with each employe, upon
which he will be credited at the end of each
year according as the manufacturing record
shows that he has earned more than has
been paid him in the form of wages. If
through gross carelessness any employe has
caused the house a loss, such loss will be
charged against this account. This endow-
ment money shall be payable when the em-
ploye reaches the age of sixty years, or upon
his death. Against this account the em-
ploye may obtain a loan by paying inter-
est and furnishing collateral security. Mr.
Dolge is convinced that this scheme is su-
perior to what is known as profit-sharing,
because it is not projected from any idea of
benevolence, but is based on self-interest.
It places the employe on the same level with
his employer ; it puts him on his mettle, and
rewards him according to his own merit.
The main objection which Mr. Dolge has to
the ordinary profit-sharing plan is that it
gives the lazy and incompetent workman the
same percentage in addition to his wages as
it gives to the intelligent and industrious
employe, who has perhaps earned for his
employer twice as much as the former.

Science and Poetry. — Writing upon
Browning's Science in Poet Lore, Dr. Ed-
ward Berdoe maintains that, " other things
being equal, the poet who knows his natural
history, his botany, and his physical science,
will write better poetry than he who knows
nothing of these things." The author has
for some years been pointing out how Brown-
ing's scientific imagination and learning en-
hance the value of his poetic work and his

426

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

claims to recognition as a great teacher of
the nineteenth century. His work is " as dis-
tinctively the product of the age of science
as Petrarch's of the revival of learning."
There is not a mood of the human mind, Dr.
Bcrdoe continues, which is beyond the power
of this poet to analyze and explain. "Analy-
sis with him becomes invective. He is ' the
maker,' because he is so great an analyst.
Analysis with genius such as his leads to
synthesis, and for this he is called a scien-
tific poet." His poems teem with instances
of the influence which modern scientific dis-
coveries have exercised upon his genius, and
this possibly is one element in their ob-
scurity. As Max Miiller has said that neither
Tennyson nor Browning could be understood
without an acquaintance with the Greek and
Roman classics, so "in Browning's case a
knowledge of the physical sciences is also
demanded of us ; but this only shows that
Browning is in advance of his time, as a
leader of men should be. The age can not
be very distant when an acquaintance with
science will be as common as a knowledge of
the ancient classics. Then we shall hear
less of Browning's obscurity. Browning's
theory of life is eminently in accord with
the teachings of .evolution and development."
It is scientific because he goes into its pur-
pose, and what to the pessimist is infinite
mystery is replete with law and order to him.
A large number of citations from Brown-
ing's poems are given to confirm and illus-
trate these positions.

Recognition of Pictnres by Animals.— A

correspondent of The Spectator owns a fox-
terrier that had been cured of a tendency to
run sheep by judicious punishment. Some
time afterward the dog, which had been left
in a room for a few minutes with an unfin-
ished painting of sheep and sheep-dogs in
the snow, was found gazing intently at the
picture and showing all the signs of canine
excitement. As the figures of the sheep
were only eight or ten inches in length, the
owner believed that the dog must have un-
derstood that they were supposed to be at a
distance from him. The dogs in the picture
he apparently entirely ignored. Another cor-
respondent of the same journal tells of a
dog who, when shown a life-sized figure of a
cat worked in wools on a screen, made a rush

for it, and but for his master's clutching him
firmly by the collar the screen would have
been torn to shreds. A cat is also men-
tioned who sprang at a bird which her mis-
tress had painted on a fire-screen, and a dog,
who disliked being washed, that when shown
a large picture of a child scrubbing a fox-
terrier in a tub turned away his head rue-
fully and would not look at his " brother in
adversity." These instances are put forward
as evidence of animal intelligence. But do
they not rather serve as measures of the in-
feriority of brute to human intelligence?
For the dog or cat in each case was deceived
by an artificial representation on the flat
which would not deceive a human being.

Antiquity of Submarine Warfare. — The

efficiency of submarine mines or batteries
and of guard-boats and shore defenses is
augmented to a wonderful degree when the
two systems are made to supplement one
another. The combination of them affords
the only means now known for compelling
the enemy to long and cautious operations
when he would like to carry his purpose at
a blow. It is possible to evade or defy ei-
ther system alone, but " even the most dash-
ing commander would hesitate to run past
forts and batteries when every channel is
alive with destructive charges." The effi-
ciency of mines depends on every part of
their arrangement being complete ; and while
the laying of them is simple enough, they
are in practice subject to difficulties and
complications from weather, wind, tides, cur-
rents, fogs, and shifting ground, that can not
be foreseen. These cunning inventions of ex-
plosive engines, rams, and torpedoes, though
they seem so new and scientific, had their
counterparts in the devices of the past. The
spar torpedo-boats were like the Greek fire-
boats which were described in the thirteenth
century as old. The mobile torpedo-boat
had its prototype in those drifting or secretly
propelled infernal machines that figured in
the water -fights of two or three hundred
years ago. Fixed submarine mines were de-
scribed by Gianbaptista Porta in 1608. The
principles of these systems are old ; all that
is new in them is contained in the " modern
improvements" and more perfect adaptations.
The systematic application of submarine war-
fare, however, dates from the second half of

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

427

this century. Louis XIV would have noth-
ing to do with it. Napoleon discouraged
Fulton's efforts, because they favored the
art of defense as against his offensive op-
erations ; and in England Pitt was blamed
for experimenting with Fulton's devices be-
cause it was encouraging a mode of warfare
which, if successful, would be destructive to
English supremacy of the seas.

Astronomy on Lake Tanganyika. — Ac-
cording to Pere Vyncke, a French mission-
ary, the negroes on the western side of Lake
Tanganyika, although the sun passes over
their heads twice a year, take no notice of
his course, and have no idea of the solar
year ; but the moon plays an important part
in their life. They celebrate its renewing by
beating drums, firing shots, and shouting.
The new moon is hailed with general dances
by most of the African tribes. To keep the
run of its age they have a bundle of twenty-
eight or thirty sticks, of which they take out
one each day. They consult the stars to de-
termine the times for agricultural work, fish-
ing, etc. The rising of the Pleiades marks
the sowing season, and is celebrated by
dances and festivals in honor of the dead ;
and the constellation is called kili, or seeds.
The milky way is called the line of drought
and rain, because the rainy season begins
when it rises at sunset. The rising of
Orion's belt gives the time for catching a
certain fish. Another star, which Pere
Vyncke does not identify, is called by a
name signifying pounding manioc, because
that operation is begun when it is at the
zenith. Aldebaran is called the Northern
and Sirius the Southern Gem. The Centaur,
the Southern Cross, and the Ship, including
the beautiful star Canopus, which is not visi-
ble in the north, are called by names signi-
fying " paths " and " tens," because they
point the way to the south pole and are com-
posed of a large number of stars.

Voracity of a Pike.— The following story
is told by a correspondent of Land and
Water : " I and some friends were fishing in
a small river in Hertfordshire, and, sport
being poor, were watching a family of moor-
hens, just hatched. One of the fledglings,
venturing too far out, was carried down a
swift run, but managed to paddle into an

eddy. No sooner, however, was the little
creature in this supposed haven of refuge,
than there was a swirling movement from
below, a quick snap, and the fledgling disap-
peared in the jaws of a pike. Later on a
second chick got carried away and was also
swallowed by the pike, and very soon after-
ward, in spite of one rescue on our parts, a
third was sacrificed. This was more than
we could stand, and a spinning minnow, very
poorly adapted for pike - fishing, was pro-
duced. At the second cast the lure was
taken, and, fate being propitious, the gut
escaped the pike's sharp teeth. Result, a
fish of four pounds only. When landed, the
last-taken chick fell out of the pike's mouth
with an expiring gasp still in it, and, on the
fish being held head downward and shaken,
the other two made their appearance."

The Ordeal by chewing Rice. — The

East Indian method of discovering a thief
by the ordeal of chewing dry pounded rice
has almost disappeared of late. A case of
its successful application many years ago,
to discover who had stolen a gold watch
that was missing, is described in Chambers's
Journal. A native official, who was em-
ployed by the government for detecting
thieves by the rice ordeal, was called in to
conduct the process. The loser of the watch
was one of four young Englishmen who oc-
cupied a house together. All the servants
of the establishment, some forty-odd in num-
ber, were seated in two rows on the ground
in one of the long verandas of the house.
A small piece of green plantain-leaf was
first placed in each man's hands. The
thief-detector then went round with a bowl
of pounded rice, like flour, and with a
wooden spoon poured a quantity into the
open mouth of each servant. The order
was given that each man was, within five
minutes, to chew the rice-flour to a pasty
mass, and eject it on to his plantain-leaf.
Most of the men set to work with a will,
though a few were rather frightened at first ;
but long before the five minutes had elapsed
almost every one had got through with the
operation, and held the evidence of his in-
nocence in his hands. But why are so
many eyes turned toward one man, who sits
back as if anxious to avoid observation ?
We also look, and there is the favorite serv-

428

TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ant of the loser of the watch, with his face
almost convulsed, and trying in vain to get
the rice-flour out of his mouth. His lips
are dry, and his glands refuse to produce
the saliva which is needed to moisten the
rice-flour. At last the detector's eyes glare
upon him, and pointing at him with his long,
bony finger, he says solemnly, " There is the
thief ! " The victim quails and grovels on
the floor before him ; he faintly appeals to
his master for forgiveness, and promises
that he will restore the watch. The con-
victed thief slowly rises, and requesting his
master to follow him, goes to the well in the
garden, and produces the gold watch from
under a loose brick. This operation savors
of magic, but it has a psycho-physiological
explanation. It is one of the instances of
the influence of mind over body : the anxiety
of the culprit evidently arresting the flow
from the salivary glands.

Position of the Expert Witness. — The

expert, the Chemical News has said, occu-
pies an anomalous position in court. Tech-
nically, he is a mere witness ; practically, he
is something between a witness and an advo-
cate, sharing the responsibilities of both, but
without the privileges of the latter. He has
to instruct counsel before the trial and to
prompt him during its course. But in cross-
examination he is the more open to insult,
because the court does not see clearly how
he arrives at his conclusions, and suspects
whatever it does not understand. Hence,
not a few of the most eminent men in every
department of science distinctly and per-
emptorily refuse to be mixed up in any
affair which may expose them to cross-ex-
amination. " I will investigate the matter,
if you wish it, and will give you a report for
your guidance, but only on the distinct un-
derstanding that I am not to enter the wit-
ness-box." Such in substance is the decision
of not a few men of the highest reputation
and the most sterling integrity. Certainly
it is not for the interests of justice to render
it impossible for such men to give the court
the benefit of their knowledge. Further, the
spectacle of two men of standing contradict-
ing or seeming to contradict each other, in
the interest of their respective clients, is a
grave scandal. Thus, our present mode of
dealing with scientific evidence is found on

all hands unsatisfactory. The outside public
is scandalized; experts are indignant; and
the bench and the bar share this feeling, but
are disposed to blame the individual rather
than condemn the system. It was proposed,
as a remedy for this evil, that " the expert
should be the adviser of the court, no longer
acting in the interest of either party. Above
all things, he must be exempt from cross-ex-
amination. His evidence, or rather his con-
clusions, should be given in writing, and ac-
cepted just as are the decisions of the bench
on points of law."

Half a Centnry of Inventions. — " Those
of us not yet fifty years of age have probably
lived in the most important and intellectually
progressive period of human history," says
Iron, and names the following as a few of
the inventions and discoveries which have
originated or been made practical within the
past half-century : Ocean steamships, rail-
ways, street-car lines, the telegraph, ocean
cable, telephone, phonograph ; photography,
and a score of new methods of picture-mak-
ing ; aniline colors, kerosene, electric lights,
steam fire-engines, chemical fire-extinguish-
ers ; anaesthetics and painless surgery ; gun-
cotton, nitroglycerin, dynamite, and a host
of other explosives ; aluminum, magnesium,
and other new metals ; electro-plating, spec-
trum analysis, and the spectroscope ; audi-
phone, pneumatic tubes, electric motors, elec-
tric railways, electric bells, type-writers,
steam heating, steam and hydraulic eleva-
tors, vestibule cars, cantilever bridges. To
these may be added the vulcanizing of rub-
ber, the Bessemer steel process, bicycles, the
" Monitor " type of war-vessels, the dyna-
mite gun, and doubtless the list does not
now include all of the most important even.

Science in the Lanndry. — While washing
is declared to be as much a chemical process
as dyeing or pattern-printing, there has been
very little application of scientific principles
to it. The finishing up is held in the laun-
dries to be more important, but is really less
so than the preliminary processes of actual
cleansing. These are four in number — di-
gesting or soaking, washing, rinsing, and
drying. In cleansing, two sources of con-
tamination are to be kept in view — the dirt
that comes from without and settles on the

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

429

clothes, and the soiling that is caused by
transpiration from the body. It is most
important that the elements of bodily soil be
removed, and this is probably accomplished
quite as much in the drying as in the wash-
ing. We judge of the purity of clothes by
their " sweetness." This is, to a large ex-
tent, proportioned to the completeness with
which they have been acted upon by the at-
mosphere, or by its great oxidizing agent
ozone, and is consequently dependent on
the atmospheric conditions under which they
are dried. The lesson is, that atmospheric
drying is the best, and that laundry drying
by artificial heat can not be depended upon
to do its work, unless pains are taken to
give a free circulation of ozonized air.

Voice - Figures on Glass. — A curious
mode of decorating glass is practiced by an
English lady, Mrs. Watts Hughes. The fig-
ures which she produces are shell-like forms,
trumpet and snake like shapes, twisted to-
gether and combined, and crossed in va-
rious directions by lines, but not exactly
like anything in nature. The instrument
by which these lines are drawn is the voice,
and the method of procedure differs for
different figures. For a daisy -like figure,
Mrs. Hughes prepares a paste of flake-white
powder-color and water. On a thin mem-
brane of India-rubber stretched over one
end of a ring, resembling a napkin-ring, she
spreads a little water, to which some of the
flake-white paste is added, and thus floated
all over the disk. This ring is inserted into
the lower end of a tube turned up like the
letter J. She then sings into the upper end
of the tube a low note, firm but not very
loud. Tiny globules of the paste are thrown
up into the air by the vibration of the mem-
brane induced by the sound, and fall back
upon the center of the disk, making a little
round heap, like the center of a daisy. Mrs.
Hughes then sings a note of a different char-
acter from the first, when from the round
center of white paste will fly out, at un-
equal distances, little tentative star-like jets.
Sometimes two or three abortive attempts
will have been made, when suddenly a sym-
metrical row of petals will start out and
create with the center a dainty daisy -like
figure. The pansy form is produced some-
what in the same way as the daisy, but

more water is put on the disk in propor-
tion to the paste, and the note is sung dif-
ferently. In singing the shell and trumpet
figures, the paste is made with Prussian
blue, madder lake, or other pigment whose
weight and character suit it to the vibrations
of the particular note to be sung. Glass is
rubbed over with the paste when the figures
are to be called out upon it as well as the
membrane. With a small piece of glass,
Mrs. Hughes uses a bent-up tube and moves
the glass rapidly round on the disk. Should
the glass be too large to hold in the hand,
she uses a straight tube, and sings the note
while moving it round or along the glass.
Specimens of this work were shown in the
"Arts and Crafts Exhibition," at London,
last fall, and panes decorated in this way
form the lower part of the windows in Mrs.
Hughes's Home for Little Boys, at Islington.
The explanation of the phenomenon is that
the particles of coloring-matter are thrown
off from the vibrating parts of the mem-
brane and collect on the nodal lines — the
lines of no vibration. The nodal lines of
vibrating membranes were first thoroughly
studied by Savart.

Taming the Pnma. — To show what may
be done in the way of training the puma, or
Rocky Mountain lion, usually deemed one of
the most intractable of animals, William
Lant Carpenter writes to " Nature " an ac-
count of one he has recently seen at Livings-
ton, Montana. She is now three years old,
and was raised from a cub by Mr. W. F.
Wittich, who devoted eighteen months to
training her. He now has her under com-
plete control. " The beast not having been
fed for twenty-four hours, he trailed pieces
of raw meat over her nose and mouth, which
the puma never attempted to eat until the
word was given, as to a dog. Occasional at-
tempts were made, but a twist of the ear by
Mr. Wittich was sufficient to control her.
When meat was placed a few yards off, the
puma fetched it by word of command, and
permitted the meat to be taken from her
mouth by Mr. Wittich, who fondled her as
he would a cat. A very fine dog, a cross
between a pure setter and a pure St. Ber-
nard, five years old, named ' Bruce,' is on in-
timate and even affectionate terms with the
puma, who allowed him to remove meat

43°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

placed upon her jaws, and to eat it. On one
occasion the puma (who is often allowed to
range the house), the dog, and Mr. Wittich
slept together in the same bed. ... In
training her he has chiefly used the whip,
which she feels only on the nose, ear, and
under the tail ; he assures me he has made
his own teeth meet through her skin in sev-
eral other parts of her body without her
showing any signs of sensation. Her mem-
ory is short, and three weeks' intermission
of the performance necessitates much extra
training and trouble."

Beet-Sngar in Germany. — Baron Lucius's
report on the crisis in the beet-sugar indus-
try of Germany, from 1884 to 1887, brings
out the curious fact that the largest number
of roots were used in the manufacture of
sugar during 1884-'85, when the crisis was
most intense. This is accounted for by the
fact that preparations for extending the
manufacture and the cultivation of the roots
had been made before prices declined. The
increase was also promoted by the general
adoption of the processes of diffusion, and
the production of a beet-root richer in sac-
charine matter. The production of molasses
was also considerably increased. The Ger-
mans are estimated to consume eight kilo-
grammes of sugar per head ; and the ex-
ports have increased in greater proportion
than the production.

NOTES.

Prof. Samuel Cushman, Apiarist of the
Rhode Island Agricultural Experiment Sta-
tion, maintains, as the result of personal ob-
servation, that bees do no damage to grow-
ing or fair fruit. The juice of fruit is, in
fact, injurious to them ; and they do not at-
tack sound fruit, but only bruised fruit, or
that which has been previously injured by
other insects. Every member present of
the State Horticultural Society, before which
Prof. Cushman read his paper, sustained him
in this view. The author spoke also of the
useful agency of insects, particularly of bees,
in aiding the fertilization of flowers, and in
contributing to cross-fertilization.

In Prof. John Bach McMaster's course
of instruction in the history of the United
States in the University of Pennsylvania,
text-books are eschewed, and lectures and a
printed syllabus take their place. Students
are referred, whenever it is possible, to print-
ed documents for information; and maps

and diagrams, prepared by the members of
the classes, are required to accompany the
theses.

The Royal Geographical Society has
awarded its Royal Medals to Emin Pasha
and to Lieutenant Younghusband — to the
latter, for his journey from Manchuria over
the Mustagh Pass to Cashmere and India, of
which we have published an account ; the
Cuthbert Peek grant to Mr. E. C. Hare, for
observations on the physical geography of
Lake Tanganyika ; the Murchison grant to
Signor Vittoria Sella, in consideration of his
recent journey in the Caucasus ; and the
Gill memorial to Mr. C. M. Woodford, for
his expeditions to the Solomon Islands, of
which a report has been published in the
Monthly.

Extract from Stephen Girard's will,
dated February 16, 1830, in his eighty-first
year : " The orphans admitted into the col-
lege shall be instructed in the various
branches of a sound education, comprehend-
ing reading, writing, grammar, arithmetic,
navigation, geography, surveying, practical
mathematics, astronomy ; natural, chemical,
and experimental philosophy, the French
and Spanish languages (I do not forbid, but
I do not recommend, the Greek and Latin
languages), and such other learning and sci-
ence as the capacities of the several scholars
may merit or warrant. J would have them
taught facts and things, rather than words
or signs; and especially I desire that by
every proper means a pure attachment to
our republican institutions and to the sacred
rights of conscience, as guaranteed by our
happy constitutions, shall be formed and
fostered in the minds of the scholars." It
is interesting to see how distinctly this nota-
bly clear-headed man set forth the require-
ments of a real education, which are only
beginning to be adopted sixty years after
he penned these words.

In the opinion of Sir T. Spencer Wells,
President of an English Sanitary Association,
much of the outcry about dangers from
women taking up men's work is breath wast-
ed. He thinks women capable of a great
deal more than they have been accustomed
to do in times past. "If overwork some-
times leads to disease, it is more morally
wholesome to work into it than to lounge
into it." For every example of disease of
mind or body induced by mental overstrain
he has seen twenty " where evils equally
to be deplored are caused in young women
by want of mental occupation, by deficient
exercise, too luxurious living, and too much
amusement or excitement."

Movements for the abolition of war are
likely to gather increasing strength from the
growing and universal expensiveness of the
system. In the middle ages but little harm
was done by war, except to the fighters. If
a territory was overrun and devastated, there

NOTES.

43i

was but little fixed capital to be damaged,
and the next year's production of the soil
would be as good as ever. But the effects of
to-day's wars in civilized countries are felt,
not by the belligerents only, but to the very
ends of the earth. The network of com-
merce is so complicated and extensive that
any suffering felt by one member of the fam-
ily of nations is shared in more or less by
all. The Lancashire weavers probably suf-
fered more from the stoppage of the cotton
supply in our civil war than they would have
done by any contingency in a war between
England and Germany or France.

The researches of Mr. Charles B. Plow-
right into the distribution of calculous dis-
ease in England make apparent a corre-
spondence between it and gout, and some
likeness with the distribution of diabetes,
but little or no parallelism with that of rheu-
matism and albuminuria. When compared
with the rainfall map of the country, the
disease seems to prevail most where there is
least rain. So in Ireland, where the rainfall
is very heavy, fatality from calculus is rare.
Exposure to a dry atmosphere means, of
course, more loss of fluids to the body than
immersion in a moist atmosphere ; and it has
been proved experimentally that immersion
in water of a lower temperature than the
body of itself lessens the acidity of the
urine.

Several agencies deleterious to health
are mentioned by M. Raymondeau as con-
fronting the workers in Limoges china-ware.
They are forced to occupy a position that
promotes a spinal curvature ; the dust aris-
ing in the early operations of crushing and
grinding the quartz is deleterious to the
lungs ; the work in preparing the paste is
done on a panned floor over which water
flows continuously, or under conditions favor-
able to the propagation of the maladies of
dampness ; those who have to place the pre-
pared paste in the ovens are exposed to the
danger of an escape of sulphuric-acid gas ;
and those who turn, polish, and dust the
china suffer from the action of dust on their
bronchial tubes.

Some interesting facts were furnished
some time ago by English hatters respecting
the sizes of men's hats. The "size" is a
mean between the length and breadth of the
hat ; thus, measurements of seven inches and
a half by six inches and a half would give
No. 7, and so on. The usual size for an adult
Englishman is No. 1. Germans have round
heads, Malays small ones. The heads of
Portuguese average from six inches and sev-
en eighths to seven inches ; those of Span-
iards are a little larger. The heads of Japa-
nese excel the English average. Men that
have much to do with horses are said to have
the smallest heads ; and a rough relation ap-
pears to exist between the size of the head-
dress and the mental capacity.

Among the peculiar geological features
of Palestine, as described by Prof. Hull, are
traces of old sea margins two hundred feet
above the present sea margins, and the evi-
dences that an arm of the Mediterranean
had at one time occupied the valley of the
Nile as far as the First Cataract, when Afri-
ca was probably an island. It is also made
probable that, at the time of the Exodus, the
Red Sea ran up into the Bitter Lakes. In
illustration of the great changes that have
taken place in the elevation of the land east-
ward of these lakes, it was mentioned that
the waters of the Jordan Valley once stood
at 1,292 feet above their present height.

A small exposure of peridotite in Pike
County, Ark., described by Messrs. Branner
and Brackett, of the State Geological Survey,
is regarded as important in the suggestion it
offers respecting the time and character of
the disturbing influences by means of which
the region was sunk toward the end of the
Cretaceous period beneath the ocean, and as
interesting because it is the third reported
occurrence of picrite-porphyry in the United
States. The entire exposure is 2,400 feet
long by 1,600 feet wide.

A meeting of the International Congress
of Hygiene and Demography is arranged for,
to be held in London in 1 890. Sir Douglas
Galton is president of the organizing com-
mittee.

Three asteroids which have been discov-
ered since the 1st of January, 1890, bring
the number of these worldlets that have been
identified up to 290. Most of the more re-
cent discoveries seem to have been made by
specialists who pursue the search for aste-
roids as their chief work. Mr. Luther, who
discovered No. 288, has been about forty
years at the business, and this is his twenty-
fourth planet. M. Charlois, the discoverer
of No. 289, has detected six of these. No.
290 is M. Palissa's seventieth asteroid, al-
though he has been looking for them only
since 1874. Mr. Peters, of Clinton, New
York, has discovered forty-eight. The broth-
ers Henri discovered seven each, but of late
years their attention has been turned from
this subject to that of photographing the sky.

The collection of birds from the Galapa-
gos Archipelago, made in connection with the
voyage of the steamer Albatross in 1882, is
of special interest, for the reason that two
islands are represented in it upon which no
collections had been made before ; and sev-
eral new species have thus been added to
science ; while other islands have been care-
fully examined. From Mr. Robert Ridg-
way's description of these collections — pub-
lished among the Scientific Results of the Ex-
pedition— it appears that the avifauna of the
islands is not yet exhausted as a field for
promising research in the problem of the
derivative origin of species.

432

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Preserving fruits and vegetables by dry-
ins in the sun has been practiced from time
immemorial. Within historical times dry-
ing in kilns has been introduced, and within
the present century compression of the dried
product has been added to the process by the
French. Immense quantities of dried and
compressed fruits and vegetables are pre-
pared for the British Army and Navy. In
the Crimean War the following proportions
for mixed vegetables were decided upon and
are still adhered to : potato forty per cent,
carrot thirtv, cabbage ten, turnip ten, and sea-
soning herbs (onion, leek, celery, parsley,
parsnip, etc.) ten per cent. The vegetables are
also put up separately to meet special wants
in various parts of the British possessions.
After being dried they are compressed to
about one eighth their original bulk, and
formed into small slabs which are packed in
soldered tins stamped inside with the year of
manufacture.

The American Geologist states that the
largest gold-mine in the world is in Alaska.
It is lighted throughout by electricity and is
worked day and night. An offer of sixteen
million dollars for this mine has been refused.

OBITUARY NOTES.

The death of the German Count Keyser-
ling made a large breach in the little circle of
working araneologists, or students of spiders.
It was known that he had left a large amount
of manuscript for the concluding parts of
his work, Die Spinnen Amerikas, and this, it
was feared, would be lost to science. But
the publishers, with praiseworthy enterprise,
have resolved to complete Keyserling's work
as far as possible after his original plan.
They failed, however, to find any one in Eu-
rope who would edit the finished manuscripts
and complete the fourth volume, which treats
of the Epeiridce. In this emergency they so-
licited the aid of Dr. George Marx, of Wash-
ington, D. C, who has at last consented to un-
dertake the task. Being a thorough German
scholar and a well-furnished arancologist, Dr.
Marx is admirably equipped for this duty.
A large part of Count Keyserling's manu-
script, which was in a good degree of for-
wardness, has already been edited and will
soon be ready to transmit to Germany. Dr.
Marx will then edit the notes upon the Orbite-
larice and add descriptions of the species
which Keyserling had not reached at the
time of his death. He will thus contribute
about one third of the matter in what will con-
stitute Volume IV of Die Spinnen Amerikas.

Eugene Pelitot, an eminent French chem-
ist, died April 8th, in the eightieth year of his
age. He was most distinguished in the field
of agricultural and economic chemistry. As a
pupil of Dumas, he published his first paper
in 1836, on wood-spirit and its derivatives,
lie was Professor of Chemistry successively
in the Ecole Centrale and the Conservatoire

des Arts et Metiers, and of Analytical Chem-
istry applied to Agriculture in the National
Agronomic Institute; and for forty years
held a responsible position at the Mint. He
first isolated Uranium. He was author of
eighty papers on subjects of mineral and or-
ganic chemistry that bore relation to pure sci-
ence, industry, agriculture, and hygiene. The
most important of these were on the sugars.

Sir John Henry Lefroy, a British officer
distinguished in military life and in science,
died in Lewarn, England, April lltb, in the
seventy-ninth year of his age. He was Di-
rector of the Magnetical and Meteorological
Observatory at St. Helena in 1840 and 1841,
and removed to a similar position in Toronto
in 1842. During the next year he made a
magnetic survey of the interior of North
America from Montreal to the Arctic Circle.
In 1854 and 1855 he was scientific adviser
to the Duke of Newcastle at the War Office
on subjects of artillery and inventions. He
has since held several high military appoint-
ments.

Among the deaths of scientific men since
the beginning of the year, which have not
been specially noticed here, are those of
Dr. L. Taczanowski, of Warsaw, author of
works or papers on the ornithology of Peru,
Poland, Siberia, and Corea ; Otto Rosen-
berger, of Halle, best known in connection
with his work on Halley's comet ; Prof. Neu-
mayr, the geologist, of Vienna ; Dr. Gulia,
Professor of Botany, Hygiene, and Forensic
Medicine in the Royal University of Valetta,
Malta, and author of a flora of that island ;
Dr. F. Hauck, algologist, and author of the
volume on marine algae in the new edition
of Rabenhorst's Cryptogamic Flora of Ger-
many ; Lorenzo Respighi, of the Campidoglio
Observatory, Rome ; and Father Stephen Jo-
seph Perry, of the Stonyhurst Observatory,
England, who died in Demerara, where he
had gone to observe the eclipse of Decem-
ber 22, 1889. ■

Mr. James Nasmyth, the eminent Eng-
lish mechanical engineer and inventor of the
steam hammer, died in London, May *7th,
aged eighty-two years. He was born in Ed-
inburgh, the son of a distinguished artist.
When a boy he made a small steam-engine
for grinding his father's colors. In 1829 he
became an assistant to Mr. Maudsley in his
private workshop in London. After Mr.
Maudsley's death he made himself a set of
tools and began business, with a small capi-
tal, at Manchester. Besides the steam ham-
mer he invented a safety-ladle for foundries,
a ventilator for mines ; a steam-engine for
screw steamers, and a rolling-mill. He re-
tired from business in 1857 and became an
amateur astronomical observer, giving par-
ticular attention to the sun and the moon,
and to astronomical photography. His mon-
ograph on the moon, prepared in conjunction
with Dr. Carpenter, of Greenwich, is the most
valuable English work on the subject.

RUDOLPH KOEN1G.

t HE-
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

AUGUST, 1890.

COMMON SENSE APPLIED TO THE TARIFF

QUESTION.

By EDWARD ATKINSON.
I.

ACCORDING to the English, theory and practice of represent-
ative government, from which our own methods have been
derived (subject, however, to some variations of doubtful expe-
diency), it is the function of a Minister of Finance, named in this
country Secretary of the Treasury, to prepare a budget or esti-
mate of income and expenditures. At each session of the British
Parliament specific expenditures are recommended, and specific
sources of revenue are set off, which have been carefully com
puted, so that it may be hoped or expected that revenue and
expenditure will balance.

Any one conversant with the financial history of Great Brit-
ain will long since have ceased to wonder at the accuracy of these
estimates. If a probable surplus in revenue is expected from
existing taxation, the Chancellor of the Exchequer frames such
measures of relief from taxation as may be assumed to yield the
greatest benefit to the tax-payers. If, on the other hand, any
extraordinary expenses are to be provided for in the ensuing
year, then specific additions to taxation are recommended in order
to provide the necessary ways and means. Under these condi-
tions the opening speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer when
he presents the budget, so called, becomes the subject of most
careful public attention. The reputation of leaders in Pari* ment
is established or is lost by their ability to deal with financial
questions. Ministries stand or fall according to the ability of the
leader of the party to satisfy the public of his sound judgment in
dealing with the matter of public taxation. Thus, while the
reputation of the leaders of the House of Commons on either side

vol. xxxvii. — 32

434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is made or marred by their power of dealing with revenue ques-
tions, yet, in order to enable them to do so with intelligence, per-
manent officials are kept in office in the civil service of Govern-
ment through all party changes. These permanent secretaries
are charged with the duty of keeping the public accounts in such
a way that, in spite even of revolutionary changes in party poli-
tics, the continuity of the financial history and of the records of
account may be maintained with absolute integrity of purpose,
so that there may be no break in the established system, whoever
may be in power.

The names of Robert Giffen, permanent Secretary of the Board
of Trade ; of Sir Thomas H. Farrar, who for more than fifty years
occupied a most important position in the service of the Treas-
ury of Great Britain ; and the name of the late Sir Louis Mallet,
for many years permanent Secretary of the India Board, are well
known to every economic student both here and abroad.

When one fully comprehends these conditions under which
the conduct of the finances of Great Britain has been carried on
for many generations, it no longer remains a matter of surprise
that the knowledge of these subjects among the people of Great
Britain is far above that of the people in our own country. The
financial debates in Parliament are also so far above those of our
own Congress as to leave little room for comparison. With a few
conspicuous exceptions among our Representatives and Senators,
there is hardly a man capable of making a financial speech that
is worth any attention on the part of a student. There are many
speeches delivered which contain valuable information, but these
are mostly compiled in the party bureaus either by the clerks of
committees or by others who are conversant with affairs, gener-
ally men who are competent to meet the requisitions of members
when they desire to address their constituents through the me-
dium of the Congressional Record.

When any great financial debate comes up in the British Par-
liament there is hardly a speech made which is not worth close
attention, or which does not stand for the convictions of the
speaker, based on his own knowledge of the subject.

The proceedings in our Congress offer a severe contrast. Wit-
ness the customary course in the treatment of financial questions.
The annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury is laid upon
the table of the several committees, who immediately ignore all
the recommendations of the Secretary. The Committee on Ap-
propriations immediately proceed to recommend the expendi-
tures without any regard to revenue ; while the Finance Com-
mittee in the Senate and the Ways and Means Committee in the
House at once proceed to consider revenue measures without any
reference whatever to ways and means, and with scarcely any atten-

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 435

tion to the appropriations, except when the appropriations become
so extravagant as to hazard the success of the party in power.

Such have been the conditions under which revenue measures
have been treated by the present Congress, finally resulting in an
act the avowed purpose of which is to diminish the revenue by
increasing taxation, and to divert the increase of taxation from the
Treasury of the United States to the support of private enterprises,
either by direct bounty, as is proposed in the case of sugar, or by
indirect contribution, as in the case of tin plates and other matters.

What other description can be given to a revenue measure
framed upon the new theory of protecting — that is to say, of pro-
viding by public taxation the ways and means by which a specific
branch of private industry may be supported, with the incidental
purpose of yielding a lessening revenue to the public treasury ?

It has therefore seemed to me expedient that one who has been
studying the financial questions of this country for more than
twenty-five years might rightly assume the functions with which
the permanent civil officers of the British Parliament are charged,
viz., that of preparing a budget by sorting national expenditures
according to their kind, and by placing specific sources of reve-
nue against the different elements of the public appropriations.

The writer may not presume to rival the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer or the Secretary of the Treasury. It is their function to
deal as statesmen with the facts that are prepared for them by those
who are conversant with all the existing financial conditions.

The time has come when it is the duty of every man who may
be assumed to have some exact knowledge upon the subject of tax-
ation, to present his views when called upon in a simple, plain way,
without regard to his own private interests, whatever they may be.

Before coming to the main subject, I beg to say that I should
myself find it somewhat difficult to characterize my essay by any
distinctive title which would be theoretically correct. I observe
that my work, my figures, and my views are quoted by one party
as often as by the other ; and I also find that exceptions are taken
to my presentation of this subject in about even measure by the
doctrinaires on the free trade and the intolerants on the protect-
ive side alike. I may perhaps characterize this essay as one
" upon the protection of domestic industry, and the development
of the home market by exemption from unnecessary taxation " ;
or, for short, I will call it " Common Sense applied to the Tariff
Question."

The motive of this address may be given in the form of a
simple account current, which might be entitled " Uncle Sam in
Account Current with his People." We, his people, may rightly
charge Uncle Sam with the contributions which we are called
upon to make in order to meet the obligations of Government.

43 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

We may credit Uncle Sam with the expenditures that are re-
quired to meet the obligations of the war, and also for the con-
duct of the Government, equitably administered with the least
interference with the freely chosen pursuits of the people :

This account is adjusted to the prospective revenue, predicated
on receipts to date in the year 1890.

I will therefore make Uncle Sam debtor to the amount of the war taxes

which are collected under the internal revenue system on whisky $78,000,000

To the amount of the war taxes which are collected under the internal reve-
nue system on fermented liquors 27,000,000

To the amount of the war taxes which are collected under the internal reve-
nue system on tobacco 33,000,000

To the amount of the war taxes which are collected under the tariff on sugar

and molasses 60,000,000

$198,000,000

Add for elasticity in 1890 and 1891 2,000,000

$200,000,000

REVENUE FROM WAR TAXES.

We will credit Uncle Sam with the annual obligation for the payment of pen-
sions already granted, now rated at $65,000,000, adding for arrears

$35,000,000 $100,000,000

We may now hope that the current annual pensions, aside from ar-
rears, may not get beyond the sum named above, $65,000,000. It will
be observed that the payment of arrears is the liquidation of a debt
now in process of being audited, and that on payment the liquidation of
arrears of pensions is final.

We will credit Uncle Sam the amount of interest which must be paid on the

war debt 31,500,000

$131,500,000
We will credit Uncle Sam with the amount which should be applied to the

sinking fund for the extinction of the war debt 48,500,000

$180,000,000

When we balance these war taxes against the war expenses, we
find a surplus which may be carried forward to meet the ordinary
expenses of the Government, $20,000,000, and this surplus will be
subject to rapid increase with the growth- of population and the
presently diminishing burden of debt and pensions.*

* Between the date of the preparation of this treatise in May, 1890, when it was written
for submission to a private club, and the correction of the proof for publication, a Pension
Act has been passed which may for a time take up this excess of war taxes above the pre-
vious war expenses, and even a little more. It is believed, however, from the best infor-
mation that can be obtained, that even under this act the current annual pensions will not
exceed $100,000,000 a year.

On the other hand, the elasticity of the revenue which is due to the growth of the popu-
lation and progress of the country, will be likely to render the avails of the taxes on liquor,
tobacco, and sugar quite sufficient to meet even the extravagant pension-list under this and
previous acts, and the diminishing amount of interest on the public debt, even without
stopping the contribution to the sinking-fund, or providing for it in any other way. In
English practice, which we might well adopt, such an extravagant Pension Act as that
which has now been added to our previous ample provision would have been accompanied
by a proposed tax intended to meet it specifically, like an income-tax or a renewal of the
duty on tea and coffee. Such is not our habit of legislation, although it well might be.

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 437

In the analysis which I shall present in this essay, I shall en-
deavor to prove how readily the remainder of the necessary con-
tributions of the people to the support of the civil government
may be collected wholly from taxes on articles of luxury or of
voluntary use, or on the finer textiles which are dependent on
style and fancy for their sale, without putting any tax of any kind
upon any commodity, either partly manufactured, crude or raw
material, which is necessary in the processes of our domestic in-
dustry. I shall endeavor to show how the removal of $40,000,000
to $50,000,000 of obnoxious taxes now imposed upon this class of
materials may open the way to products, sales, wages, and profits
amounting to at least $500,000,000 a year, which such a policy
would add to the resources of this nation, to be divided equitably
among the people in the form of additional wages and profits ;
thus promoting domestic industry, enlarging the home market,
raising both the rate and the purchasing power of wages, and in-
creasing profits.

In the renewed discussion of the tariff question it has become
unpleasantly manifest that men are taking positions which may
soon lead to a very bitter conflict, in which contest mutual re-
crimination will cause distrust and may prevent any suitable re-
form of the tariff being carried into effect, as it ought to be, by
the common consent and governed by the common sense of all
men who are directly interested in the matter, and by the applica-
tion of that sound business judgment which should be applied to
this business question.

It is very true that there are moral as well as political consid-
erations underlying the whole problem of the tariff. Such being
the case, it is a matter of duty for the citizen who will not be di-
rectly affected either in property or in person in any considerable
measure by any changes in our tariff legislation, yet to watch it
and to give it a true direction. The effect of tariff measures, con-
sidered from the money point of view in their burden or their
benefit, has, I believe, been very much overrated ; but the evil of
dependence upon legislation in the conduct of industry can not
be exaggerated.

In the way in which this subject of tariff reform is now being
treated, whatever is done will be badly done ; therefore, great harm

In this connection, however, it may well be remembered that the interest on our public
debt at its highest point amounted to more than $150,000,000. It is not probable that
pensions and interest will exceed, if they equal, this sum. This great obligation for interest
did not prove to be inconsistent with a large excess of revenue which has been so wisely
applied to the reduction of our debt. The attempt to spend the public money in order to
prevent the reduction of the tariff has probably culminated ; but the increase of the obli-
gation for pensions renders a scientific or common-sense treatment of the tariff question
yet more necessary than it was before.

438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

will ensue before any true adjustment of duties can be made to
present conditions, although, both political parties now agree that
great changes are absolutely necessary. How can we separate this
question from party politics ?

It has always seemed to me very absurd, even grotesquely so,
that men who are accustomed to put confidence in each other in
the conduct of all their private affairs as well as in their town and
city work ; who trust each other in every walk of life ; who serve
together on boards of directors in savings banks, insurance com-
panies, trust companies, and the like, and who adjust all differ-
ences of judgment in a reasonable manner, yet when this subject
of tariff legislation comes up impute to each other, or else sus-
tain newspapers that impute to each other, every form of insincer-
ity, untruth, fraud, and malignant selfishness.

There is nothing so foolish as the imputations which are put
upon the advocates of free trade by their opponents, except the
corresponding imputations put by their opponents upon the mass
of the advocates of protection, of lack of care or consideration for
the public welfare. The masses are sincere on either side, however
time serving and incapable their political representatives may be.

Conceive what the conditions of this country would be if the
ideas which the Cobden Club represents had not prevailed, and if
our wheat and dairy products were boycotted as our pork is in
Germany ; or if our cotton were taxed as it was before the mar-
kets of Great Britain were made free. In 1880 there were nearly
eight million men occupied in agriculture ; now there are ten
million, more or less. In 1880 seventeen per cent of the product
of agriculture found a home market only by sale for export ; now
about twelve per cent. If we did not exchange this product for
other products, we could not sell it. If we could not sell it for
export, over a million men would be driven from the field to the
factory and to the workshop.

When I listen to the foolish talk of partisans on either side,
and witness the ill-judged contention on the tariff question, I am
sometimes inclined to exclaim, " A plague on both your houses ! "
Is it not time that this method of imputing wholly selfish or bad
motives should cease, and that any one or every one who indulges
in it should be held in contempt as an example of intellectual
stupefaction ?

It was well said by President Cleveland when he so bravely
brought the subject to an issue, " What we have to deal with is a
condition and not a theory."

Let us consider this condition, find out exactly what it is, and
then see what we have to do in the matter, each man on his own
account.

I have never known any intelligent advocate of a tariff for

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 439

protection who did not consider free trade as the ultimate object-
ive point in all tariff legislation. I do not know any man of any-
intellectual standing, in public or in private life, who does not
now look upon free trade as the true objective point of all tariff
legislation. All sensible men hold that there are existing condi-
tions which make it inconsistent with the public welfare to adopt
revolutionary free-trade measures at the present time ; but they
all accept the fundamental principle, provided certain conditions
precedent can be established in a safe and proper way.

The difference among intelligent men at the present time is
only as to the time when it may be suitable to begin tariff reform
in this direction, and upon the method of such reform. So it has
always been. It is only the first step that costs. Gladstone once
said, doubtless recalling his own experience and change of views,
" The road to free trade is like the way to virtue, the first step the
most painful, the last the most profitable."

The conditions which now obtain in this . country correspond
very closely to those which existed in Great Britain in 1842, at
the time when Sir Robert Peel was compelled to modify and ulti-
mately to change all his previous conceptions upon this subject,
and to become the leader in the great reform of the British tariff
which ended in the present system, sometimes called that of
British free trade. This system is not free trade in an abstract
or in an absolute sense, because Great Britain raises a large
revenue from duties upon foreign imports, and will probably be
compelled to do so for very many generations in order to sustain
the burden of her great debt. We shall also be compelled to raise
a large part of our revenue from duties upon imports, for one
generation ; but I will presently prove that our advantage in con-
ditions is so great that it may enable us within even less than one
generation to adopt absolute free trade if it shall become expedi-
ent to do so, except so far as it may continue to be necessary to
tax the import of spirits in order to maintain the revenue derived
from an excise measure. Whether or not absolute free trade may
be desirable or expedient, it will be time enough to determine
when the opportunity is offered. What we have to deal with
now is our present condition and not this theory, as President
Cleveland so well put it.

In one of Sir Robert Peel's great speeches which he made long
after he had entered upon this course, he spoke as follows, in ex-
planation of his course at the beginning of the reform of the tariff :

" I stated, and I am ready to repeat that statement, that if we
had to deal with a new society in which those intricate and com-
plicated interests which grow up under institutions like those in
the midst of which we live, had found no existence, the true ab-
stract principle would be to buy in the cheapest market and to sell

44o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the clearest. And yet it is quite clear that it would be utterly
impossible to apply that principle in a state of society such as
that in which we live, without a due consideration of the interests
which have grown up under the protection of former laws.
While contending for the justice of the abstract principle, we
may at the same time admit the necessity of applying it partially ;
and I think the proper object is first of all to lay the foundation
of good laws, to provide the way for gradual improvements,
which may thus be introduced without giving a shock to existing
interests. If you do give a shock to these interests, you create
prejudices against the principles themselves, and only aggravate
the distress. This is the principle on which we attempted to pro-
ceed in the preparation of the tariff."

Our present conditions correspond almost exactly to this state-
ment ; and the logic of events is bringing almost all economic stu-
dents, many legislators, and also nearly all the intelligent leaders
in the manufacturing and mechanic arts to the same conclusion to
which Sir Robert Peel was brought by the logic of events when
he took office in 1840 ; especially by the very disastrous condition
to which Great Britain had been brought under an obstructive
tariff policy the effect of which culminated at that date.

One may also refer to one of the greatest speeches that Daniel
Webster ever made — a speech which he delivered at Faneuil
Hall in October, 1820, at a meeting which had been called to resist
an increase of duties above the very moderate revenue tariff of
1816, which was then in force — a meeting such as ought to be
held now to protest against a worse measure. This meeting was
called by men whose names are familiar to every Boston man —
by William Gray, James Perkins, Nathan Appleton, Abbott Law-
rence, Joseph Sewell, George Bond, Thomas Wigglesworth, Will-
iam Sturgis, and by many others whose names have been house-
hold words among the merchants and manufacturers of Massa-
chusetts for generations. In dealing with the high tariff measure,
which was then being forced upon Massachusetts against her will,
Webster said :

" To individuals this policy is as injurious as it is to govern-
ment. A system of artificial government protection leads the
people to too much reliance upon government. If left to their
own choice of pursuits, they depend on their own skill and their
own industry ; but if government essentially affects their occupa-
tions by its systems of bounties and preferences, it is natural that
when in distress they should call on the government for relief.
Hence, a perpetual contest follows, carried on between the differ-
ent interests of society. Agriculturists taxed to-day to sustain
manufactures — commerce taxed to-morrow to sustain agriculture
—and then impositions perhaps on both manufactures and agri-

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 441

culture to support commerce. And when government has ex-
hausted its invention in these modes of legislation, it finds the
result less favorable than the original and natural state and
course of things. I can hardly conceive of anything worse than a
policy which should place the great interests of this country in hos-
tility to one another, a policy which should keep them in constant
conflict, and bring them every year to fight their battles in the
committee-rooms of the House of Representatives at Washington.

"An appeal has been made to the patriotic feelings of the
nation. It has been said we are not independent so long as we
receive these commodities from other nations. He could not see
the force of this appeal. He did not perceive how the exchange
of commodities between nations, when mutually and equally ad-
vantageous, rendered one dependent on the other, in any manner
derogatory to its interest or dignity. A dependence of this sort
exists everywhere, among individuals as well as nations. Indeed,
the whole fabric of civilization, all the improvements which dis-
tinguish cultivated society from savage life, rest on a dependence
of this kind. He thought the argument drawn from the necessity
of providing means of defense in war had been pressed quite too
far. It was enough that we had a capacity to produce such
means when occasion should call. The reasoning assumes that in
war no means of defense or annoyance can be probably obtained,
or not without great difficulty, except from our own materials or
manufactures. He doubted whether there was much ground for
that assumption. Nations had hitherto obtained military means
in the midst of war, from commerce. But, at any rate, as it was
acknowledged on all hands that the country possessed the ca-
pacity of supplying itself whenever it saw fit to make the sacrifice ;
and he did not see why the necessity of making it should be
anticipated ; why should we now change our daily habits and
occupations, with great loss and inconvenience, merely because it
is possible that some change may hereafter become necessary ?
We should act equally wise, he thought, if we were to decide that
although we are now quite well, and with very good appetites,
yet as it was possible we might one day be sick, we would there-
fore now sell all our food and lay up physic."

In another part of this great speech Webster, with prophetic
insight, foretold how the whole face of New England industry
and society would be changed for the worse if this high tariff
policy were forced into effect by sectional votes. Two generations
have passed since Webster's prophetic words in Faneuil Hall in
1820. This speech was given just seventy years ago. Do we not
now witness the representatives of different industries fighting
their battles in the committee-rooms of the House of Representa-
tives at Washington ? Do we not to-day witness agriculture

442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

taxed in order to sustain manufactures ; commerce taxed to sus-
tain agriculture ; and impositions proposed upon both agriculture
and manufactures to sustain commerce by subsidies and bounties ?

Again quoting President Cleveland, " It is a condition and not
a theory which we are called upon to meet." What is that condi-
tion ? Here are two parties in Congress each attempting to deal
with this great problem, each claiming to be equally in earnest to
promote domestic industry, to develop the home market, and to
protect the workmen of this country. The representatives of each
of these two parties are elected by great bodies of voters who are
equally honest and sincere in their efforts, or who have persuaded
themselves that they are, and that the future prosperity of the
country will depend upon their having their way. In this position
we merely find conditions of the same kind that have been met
before. In every great emergency each party claims to be the
savior of the country; but the country saves itself in spite of
parties, as it did in the civil war. Its material progress continues
on its stupendous way in spite of the little petty obstructions which
are interposed by those who believe they can manage all the affairs
of the people better than they can manage them for themselves.

Between these two parties, if this is to be a party question,
each one of us must make a choice when we vote or when we
select the party with which we must act. Both these parties claim
to protect domestic industry in the measures which they propose ;
but their proposed measures differ fundamentally. On the Re-
publican side the policy is to tax every foreign product, crude,
partly manufactured, or finished, of which a similar product has
been or can be established in this country, without regard to the
effect of such a tax on other branches of industry. Their avowed
purpose is to impose taxes " for protection with incidental reve-
nue," in order to render this country, as they term it, " independ-
ent of all others." It does not matter to them whether a branch
of industry which might be set up exists at the present time or
not. For instance, the Republican tariff bill will double the tax
on tin plates without regard to the use to which these tin plates
are to be put. No regard is paid to the nature of the work which
must be done in order to ascertain whether it is desirable or not.
The promoters of this measure simply say, Here is something
which may be made in this country for which we now exchange
our surplus products. The work ought to be done here, even if
its establishment costs twice or thrice what it is worth !

Now, if the most superficial examination had been given to
the kind of work which is to be done in dipping sheets of iron or
steel into melted tin by hand, no machine having been invented for
displacing this process, it would have been found that it is an art
for which the people of "Wales not only possess an inherited apti-

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 443

tude, but also that it is one which could not be established in this
country without importing the Welshmen to do it, because we
have so many opportunities for work, under more wholesome and
profitable conditions, that we can no.t afford to do such work, no
matter what the inducement may be.

In other words, the policy advocated by the Republican party is
one of privation and not of protection, and it is avowedly sustained
by many prominent Republicans against their avowed conviction of
what would be beneficial, and merely because an assumed party ne-
cessity compels them to surrender their own convictions of right.

On the other side, the policy advocated by the Democratic
party for protecting American industry is to exempt from taxa-
tion all articles of foreign origin which, either in a crude or in a
partly manufactured state, are necessary or useful in the processes
of domestic industry. They hold that our capacity to produce
food which the world must have or suffer from hunger ; cotton,
without which the commerce of nations would be crippled ; oil
which we can not burn ourselves ; goods, wares, tools, and imple-
ments of many varieties, the best of their kind; all our great
crops made and all our goods being produced or manufactured at
the highest rates of wages and yet at the lowest cost as compared
with any other country in the world, enables us to exchange these
products for the crude or partly manufactured materials, the raw
wool, the tin plates, and for whatever we need which foreign
laborers or workmen desire to sell in exchange. They hold that
if we can get for one day's work at high wages in our own coun-
try the product of ten days' work even of foreign paupers, we
can not afford to do that kind of work for ourselves ; they hold
that by such exchange we may gain yet higher wages and larger
profits, the wider we can extend our commerce on such terms.

They hold that what we receive from other countries in ex-
change for the excess of our products which we can not consume,
becomes as much a part of our own product as if these necessary
commodities had been produced on our own soil or from our own
mines and forests.

They hold that the home market is most fully established
when all possible obstructions to the mutual service of nations
are removed and the utmost facility given to the people of every
land to send to our home market what we need and to buy in our
home market what we do not want for our own use.

That is free trade, qualified by the necessity of obtaining a
revenue from duties on selected imports. When we have attained
it we may wonder why any one ever dreaded it ; and if I may once
more repeat my favorite quotation from Mr. Gladstone, " Then will
the ships that pass between this land and that be like the shuttle
of the loom, weaving the web of concord among the nations."

444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Between these two lines of policy every voter will soon be
compelled to choose, and by making this choice a great change in
the relative influence and importance of one party or the other
will be brought about unless we can separate this question from
party politics.

In order that this choice in each man's method of action may
be rightly made, it now becomes expedient to treat the method of
tariff reform simply as a business question and not as a party
question. Parties which were thrown out of all true relation to
the future by the issues of the past ought to be reorganized so as
to carry into effect the conclusions to which voters have been
brought by their convictions of right on the issues of the future.
When they are renovated in this manner one may expect a great
many men who are now holding prominent positions to be rele-
gated to private life. Their places will be taken by men who are
competent to apply reason, judgment, and common sense in their
methods of fiscal legislation, a faculty or capacity which has been
denied to many of those whom the circumstances of the past have
thrown up into positions of considerable prominence which they
have continued to hold up to the present time, but for which they
are incapable.

When dealing with the tariff question in this way it is prob-
able that every intelligent man who is conversant with affairs
and who has given any attention to the reform of the tariff will
agree wholly or very nearly with the following statement :

1. The present tariff is confused and inconsistent with itself in
many of its provisions.

2. Some of its provisions which were especially intended to
promote specific domestic manufactures have been either so erro-
neously framed or so construed in the Treasury Department as to
discriminate against the very branches of. industry which they
were intended to promote.

3. These badly framed or badly administered provisions of the
tariff acts promote undervaluation, evasions of duty, and fraud ;
but their worst effect is to discourage honest manufacturers and
merchants alike by the uncertainty which they cause as to the
future course of trade, as well as by the opportunities which they
give both to dishonest employers, importers, and unscrupulous
manufacturers to evade the laws.

I may venture to relate a little story of how tariffs are made
and unmade. It is one of many incidents which made me a free-
trader in principle.

I found an apparent inequality in the tariff act many years
since, adversely affecting a branch of industry in which I had in-
vested a few thousand dollars. I framed an amendment and sent
it to a prominent Congressman from Massachusetts, who was on

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 445

the Committee of Ways and Means, explaining the reasons why
it should be adopted. No hearings were given, and it seemed to
be so fair, as I also thought it was, that it was adopted and went
into the tariff with some other amendments. In it I used the
technical word "hank." That Congress dissolved presently on
the 4th of March. A few days later, the principal appraiser of
the Boston Custom-House called upon me and put to me the ques-
tion, " What is a hank ? " I told him it was a skein of cotton
yarn eight hundred and forty yards long ; adding, " Why do you
ask ? ?• " Because," said he, " some damned fool has put a duty in
the tariff by the hank, and, if we can't get around it, an estab-
lished and important branch of domestic industry will be ruined."
I asked for an explanation ; and upon the development of the
facts I said, " Well, you used the right term, and I am the man."
Then said the appraiser, " You must see if there is no way to get
around your amendment." I studied the matter carefully, and in-
vented a way for avoiding or evading my own act. The threatened
industry was saved, but I lost my little investment, as I deserved to,
for putting my money into a business which I did not understand.

But this was not the end. Matters went on smoothly for two
or three years, when there was a change of appraisers. The new
man contested my construction of my own amendment, and un-
dertook to enforce the law in accordance with the real intention.
An appeal was taken to the Secretary of the Treasury. By good
luck at that time I happened to call upon the collector ; he, know-
ing my familiarity with the art but knowing nothing of my pre-
vious connection with the act, nominated me as merchant ap-
praiser to decide the case on its merits. I of course sustained
the practice of the first appraiser who had consulted me, and
again the threatened industry was saved ; by sustaining my own
evasion of my own act, justice was done.

This is but one of many incidents which many men could re-
late ; it is but an example of many great wrongs which have been
done that have never been righted.

. I have stated the conditions which render important changes
in our tariff acts an absolute necessity. It is probable that all
intelligent manufacturers and merchants, and all legislators ex-
cept those who are bound by mere party ties in considering these
changes, would agree upon the following propositions :

a. In the preparation of measures for collecting duties upon im-
ports, such discrimination ought to be used as will most fully pro-
mote domestic industry and protect American labor from injury.

b. In framing such tariff measures, discrimination ought to be
used so as to develop the home market for domestic products to
the utmost ; so far as this can be done by the exercise of judg-
ment in framing tariff acts.

446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

c. It is neither lawful nor expedient to impose duties upon
imports without exercising such discrimination in the choice of
subjects of taxation as will most fully promote the public interest,
irrespective of private gain.

d. It is neither lawful nor expedient to frame measures for the
collection of revenue from duties on imports for the purpose of
raising or permanently maintaining the price of any given article
above what it would otherwise be ; except under the necessity of
taxing such article for purposes of revenue only.

e. It is neither lawful nor expedient to put either a duty or
a tax upon any crude or partly manufactured article which is ne-
cessary in the processes of domestic industry, by which large
numbers of persons may be burdened, even if the interests of a
lesser number might be for a time promoted.

If such are the conditions which we are now called upon to
meet, and if such are the lines on which we are to work, then mani-
festly the first consideration must be given to sorting and classi-
fying articles which are or may be imported, with a view to their
use rather than with a view to the question whether or not they
may be produced in this country. On the other hand, it must be
admitted that there may have been some branches of industry
which have been promoted by high duties and which may have
been developed a little more rapidly than they would otherwise
have been, under a high tariff, at the cost of the consumers for
the time being. How shall they be treated ?

It may be held that the position which has been assumed by
most of the advocates of the protective system, I mean protection-
ists, according to the common acceptance of the meaning of that
term, has been mainly due to the former misconception in regard
to the source of wages, which was held even down to the time of
Mill, and by him until a late period in his own life and work ; to
wit, a conception that wages are derived from a fund previously
accumulated, and therefore from a " wage-fund " which might be
to some extent under the control of capitalists by whom it should
be administered, either in one direction or in another at their own
choice. This mistaken conception of the source of wages leads to
the further misconception that we must make work, or provide
work, for a multitude, arbitrarily or willfully directing the force
of capital in one way or another. What we really desire to do,
what we really seek to attain, is that which is the purpose of all
science and invention— not to make work, but to save work ; to
diminish the effort which is necessary to procure subsistence,
shelter, and clothing, thereby increasing abundance. When we
do that, it becomes necessary that there should be the widest pos-
sible and the freest possible exchange of services, or an exchange
of product for product, of service for service, of product for serv-

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 447

ice, or of service for product, in order that those who are displaced
from one kind of work by the application of science and invention
may be most ready, able, and competent to take up some other
kind of work less arduous, less exhausting, and more conducive to
human welfare.

What is the object of exchange ? How few people ever ask
themselves that question ! If each one of us did not save himself
by exchange from some part of the necessary work required to
sustain life, there would be no exchange ; each one of us, and every
other man, would live and work for himself alone. All this is ele-
mentary. It becomes perfectly clear when considered as between
man and man. Does not the same rule govern the commerce of
nations ? What is the commerce of nations, except the sum of
the exchanges between man and man ? Unless each nation gains
by the exchange, does not the trade stop ? If both gain by the
exchange, does it not hurt both to stop it by legislation ? By ob-
structing exchange, we may make work where we might save it ;
but that nation loses most from such obstructions in which the
greatest abundance of product is attained at the least cost of labor
and at the highest rates of wages. If there were such a thing in
the world as pauper labor, that nation which exchanged the great-
est amount of the product of skilled labor for the greatest amount
of the product of pauper labor would save itself the most work.
Daniel Webster once said, when in his prime, " The people of this
country can not afford to do for themselves what they can hire
foreign paupers to do as well for them." This is true not only in
respect to the price of labor, but to the kind and quality of the
work which is to be done.

There are many branches of industry from which science has
not yet removed the noxious or bad conditions of the work. Dip-
ping sheets of iron or steel which have been treated with acid
into melted tin for conversion into tin plates is one of the arts
which it would be most undesirable to introduce into this country
until, by way of science and invention, its noxious conditions have
been removed : then it will come here itself ; the conditions will
then be equalized ; we can then afford to take up what it would
now be injudicious for us to undertake.

When we consider the obstructive and injurious effect of many
of our taxes, light although they may be in money, we find that
they are a heavier burden than those of almost any other nation
except Russia, Turkey, and Spain.

They have not increased the profits in the arts which were in-
tended to be promoted by their imposition, except for short or
variable periods; they have reduced wages in the protected
branches of industry below those which are attained in occupa-
tions which can not be subjected to foreign competition, while

448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

they have kept the prices of most important materials, which are
necessary in the processes of domestic industry, far above those of
our competitors, promoting their prosperity and retarding our
own progress.

Yet our enormous advantages in most of the conditions which
are conducive to human welfare are such that we thrive. Our
bad methods of taxation are like a pebble in the shoe of a runner,
keeping him painfully in the second place, when, if relieved, he
could lead the field without an effort.

It is due to these favorable conditions that the paradoxical form
of statement represents an absolute truth — viz., that our high rates
of wages are due to our very low cost of general production.

This leads us directly to the consideration of the conditions of
production, especially in the manufacturing arts, from which our
ample profits or high wages are or may be derived, if our moder-
ate taxes are rightly adjusted to our conditions. We possess so
great an advantage in our position and in our control of the pro-
duction of metals, of fibers, and of food products, that there can,
of course, be no equalization of wages in this country with those
of others, because we could only equalize by reducing our own.
The tendency of all the forces in action, when not artificially ob-
structed, is to raise the rate of wages, to diminish the margin of
profits, and to equalize the conditions of working people to their
great advantage. If we must wait for the equalization of wages
to those of other countries, as is so often urged, before undertak-
ing tariff reform, we may wait forever. It is our very advantage
in high rates of wages and low cost of production which might
enable us to proceed earnestly, safely, and surely to absolute free
trade within less than a generation, and to adopt that policy for
the very purpose, not of equalizing, but of maintaining our huge
advantage over every other nation.

One may sometimes feel humiliated when one sees men of skill,
capital, and ability trembling before the competition of what they
call pauper labor. Every man of affairs, every manufacturer,
every employer of labor, avoids low-priced or pauper labor in his
own work as much as possible ; he knows that it is costly ; he
knows that, when he can command skilled labor at the highest
price which is warranted by the market for the product, he will
do his work with that kind of labor at the least cost. When it
becomes necessary to run works on short time and to discharge a
part of the workmen, who are the ones discharged ? Not the
high-priced men; they can not be spared; it is the high-priced
men whose work is not affected by hard times. Every man makes
his own rate of wages by his skill, aptitude, and industry ; and
those who do the work in the best manner get constant employ-
ment. The incapable are sometimes subject to compulsory idle-

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION 449

ness. In the factories I have known cases where all the looms
were watched, and every weaver who did not reach a certain
standard in her earnings was discharged because the mill could
not afford to have poor weavers employed in it.

Yet, although we possess so many advantages within the limits
of our own domain, there are some parts of the world which hold
an advantage over us, especially in the production of some of
the crude materials which are necessary in the processes of do-
mestic industry. There are also many arts from which science has
not yet removed the noxious conditions or the excessive labor.
These arts we had better not undertake so long as we can buy
their product with the excess of our crops of grain and cotton.

Again, there are some sections of this country which could
be more adequately supplied with crude materials from Canada
than they can be from Pennsylvania ; New England, for instance,
in respect to iron and coal. Our members of Congress sustain
the policy which deprives us of the vast deposits of iron, coal,
and even of other materials, which are lying unused in the Mari-
time Provinces. They tax the wool of Australia and South
America ; they propose to double the tax on tin plates ; and they
endeavor to promote the manufacture of burlaps and other coarse
fabrics made of jute within our own limits.

The question of crude materials I have treated. The noxious
conditions under which tin plates are made, I have referred to.
The making of burlaps as it is now conducted in Dundee is one
of the least desirable occupations that human beings can be
called upon to follow ; until it has been improved, we had better
buy our burlaps with cotton than try to make them ourselves.

Even the finest fabrics which are suitable for taxation for
revenue, such as Brussels laces and the like, are made by hand
at the lowest wages and under the most abject conditions of life.
The finest silks must be woven by hand, because the silk-worm
does not spin his thread so evenly as to make it possible to weave
it on the positive power-loom. In fact, in respect to many of these
finer articles, which are perfectly suitable subjects for a tariff for
revenue rather than for protection, there are elements to which no
attention has been given ; they specialize themselves even accord-
ing to heredity or to peculiar conditions. The finest cotton yarns
are spun in England, sent to France to be woven, sometimes
transferred to Germany to be dyed ; and brought back to Eng-
land to be sold. Some of the finest linens are made by growing
the flax in one place, spinning it in another, and weaving it in
another, all far apart. We can not force the manufacture of flax
in this country until we have a great surplus of population which
shall be compelled to do the work which the Irish, the Belgians,
and the French are now forced to do for us even at the lowest

VOL. XXXTII. — 33

45o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wages. The preparation of the fine flax by rotting is noxious,
and can only be worked at the lowest possible rates of wages
paid for mere manual labor. We can better afford to raise flax
for the seed and burn the stalks rather than to force American
labor into un-American lines of work, in the preparation of the
fiber by the existing noxious methods.

All these matters must be considered, and when considered
they prove how futile, how impossible it is for a Congress com-
posed of men who have little or no knowledge of the practical af-
fairs of life, to attempt to regulate prices and wages, directly or
indirectly, by the enactment of revenue acts.

I have named several articles which are necessary in the pro-
cesses of our domestic industry, in which some other countries
possess an advantage over us, such as tin plates, burlaps, and the
treatment of flax. These advantages exist especially in respect to
crude materials to which machinery has not yet been applied to
any great extent ; and of manufacturing processes in which the
greater part of the work is done by hand. In hand-work the rate
of wages may be, and often is, a fair standard of the cost of pro-
duction. Hand-work here and elsewhere is that which earns least
and can not be protected by any system of taxation of any kind.

We annually import, free of duty, $120,000,000 worth of arti-
cles of food, and $140,000,000 worth of crude or partly manufact-
ured articles which are made use of in our domestic manufactures,
because we can not yet afford to do the work which would be re-
quired in the production of these articles, since our own workmen
can do so much better than to undertake the kind of work required.

But we also annually import, aside from sugar and molasses,
$40,000,000 worth of the most necessary articles of food ; and $130,-
000,000 worth of articles in a crude or partly manufactured condi-
tion which are absolutely necessary in the processes of our domestic
industry, on which we impose duties or taxes amounting to about
$50,000,000 a year. To that extent our workmen are placed at a
disadvantage as compared with the workmen of other manufactur-
ing countries in which most of these articles are admitted free.

The saving of this tax of about $50,000,000 a year would be but
a very small matter were it not for the effect of this tax on foreign
imports on the prices of many domestic products. Out of the
$50,000,000 a year which has been collected on crude materials,
about $4,000,000 has been gained to the Government from duties
on iron ore and pig iron. An addition of twenty-five cents on
each barrel of beer now produced would yield the same amount
of revenue. If it were assessed upon the beer, the entire tax
that the people pay would be secured by the Government, and
the exact cost would be $4,000,000 revenue, with three per cent
for the cost of collection by means of stamps.

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION 451

Now, what has been the effect of the tax of $4,000,000 on the
price of iron and steel in this country ? Various computations
have been made, the latest by Mr. A. B. Farquhar, of York, Pa.,
the largest exporter of agricultural .machinery in this country,
and perhaps one of the largest manufacturers of agricultural ma-
chinery in the world. He computes the actual difference in cost
of iron and steel to the consumers in this country during the last
ten years at about $700,000,000 or $70,000,000 a year. David A.
Wells, making very large corrections for contingencies, estimates
the difference in the cost of these metals to the consumers of
this country, as compared to the consumers of Great Britain, at
$560,000,000 for ten years, giving a little different period of time.
My own computations, which have been made with the utmost
care and which are based wholly upon the figures given by the
Iron and Steel Association of this country, and of the Iron and
Steel Institute of Great Britain, make the excess of price paid for
iron and steel in this country as compared to others, in the years
1880 to 1889 inclusive, not less than $500,000,000 and probably
$800,000,000. I may add that the effect of the tariff upon iron and
steel has been much greater than in respect to other articles. This
country now consumes thirty-five to forty per cent of the entire
product of iron made in the civilized world. Our consumption
at the present time is greater than the largest product of Great
Britain in any year. No other country could possibly supply us.
No other country could have supplied us for many years. But by
the partial obstruction to our demand upon Great Britain and
Germany, due to our own tariff, the price of iron and steel in
Europe has been very greatly depressed. The tendency through-
out the world has been to a rapid reduction both in cost and in
the price of these metals, due to the application of revolutionary
inventions. But the reduction in price in gold has been much
greater in Great Britain than it has been in this country : conse-
quently, by our own act we have protected the ship-builders, the
machinists, and the tool-makers of other countries, while prevent-
ing the extension of these arts in our own country ; even failing
to retain our home market.

We import a considerable proportion of the products of iron
and steel that we consume, sometimes in the form of railway-bars,
yet more in the form of hardware, tools, and machinery. A first-
class textile factory can not be equipped in this country without
resort to the machine-shops of Great Britain for a very consider-
able part of the most necessary machinery.

Again, the burden of a tax upon crude materials is to be
gauged, not by its ratio to the value of the product into which it
might enter and does enter as a component material, but in ratio
both to wages and profits in the arts in which it is needed. If we

45 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

artificially raise the cost of materials and are unable to control
the price of the product into which these materials enter, then it
often happens that we must keep the wages down in correspond-
ing measure, or else give up the undertaking ; and, again, a yet
more subtle difficulty : if we can not make a profit over and above
the cost of materials, the wages, and the general expenses, then
no capital will be invested in that branch of industry, and no
wages can be paid, for lack of profit.

Now, observe how subtle this matter is. Any conspicuous or
important branch of industry which will pay ten per cent profit
will attract capital and will be established ; but if the tax on the
crude material is even ten per cent upon the finished product, and
this tax can not be paid without doing away with the profit, then
that art stops, and the other ninety per cent which would be dis-
tributed among the workmen is lost to them, merely because there
is a disadvantage of ten per cent in the cost of the material as
compared to some other places.

Now, then, any one who is conversant with the complexity of
all modern manufactures can not fail to be aware that the reve-
nue which the Government derives of $50,000,000 on the crude or
partly manufactured materials which we do import and which we
do use in the processes of our domestic industry, may so much
restrict that industry by increasing our own cost of production
as to limit our home market both for domestic and foreign traffic,
and may prevent the establishment of arts in which ten times as
much, or $500,000,000, might be distributed among those who
would do the work if these articles were free from taxation.

This is the consequence of the higher price of domestic prod-
ucts in this country or the lower price which prevails abroad for
lack of competition.

The very worst effect of a duty on . crude materials ensues
when, according to its advocates, it is most successful. They hold
that if, by our tax, the price is put down in a foreign country,
then the foreigner pays the tax. There are no words suitable to
apply to such folly. By that very depression in the price of pig
iron and wool we have built up the manufactures and machine-
shops of Europe, and have failed more and more to hold our
home market even for the specific products of the loom and the
forge.

Moreover, the price of some of the most necessary articles of
our domestic products which enter into our domestic industry,
notably iron and steel, are maintained far above what the price
would be except for this system of taxation, although not, per-
haps, to the full measure of the rate of duty which is assessed.
Hence it follows that, owing to this higher price on the most
necessary articles of consumption in the manufacturing and me-

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 453

chanic arts, we have been unable even to retain our home market
for domestic manufactures, and have been cut off from any con-
siderable share in the supply of other countries.

In a rough and ready way, it may *be said that the cost of ma-
terials, in all the staple products of machinery or in manufactured
goods, ranges from one half to three quarters the entire cost of
the finished product. If the price of these materials is kept even
ten per cent higher in this country than it is in others, then of
course all profit may be cut off by that disparity, and, in spite of
vain attempts to put on compensating duties, that art languishes,
and we protect the foreigner rather than the American.

It will be remembered that no heavy stocks of food, fiber, or
fabrics are now carried anywhere in the world, beyond the prob-
able consumption of a single year or less. Hence it follows that,
in respect to the import of materials which enter into the processes
of our own work, whatever the price may be in any given year,
whether high or low, if through our high tariff' the consumers are
subjected to a higher price than our competitors abroad, our in-
dustry languishes and foreign industry is protected.

I have said that there are two parties, each earnestly claiming
to promote domestic industry. On the one side we find the Re-
publican party advocating privation of foreign imports, without
regard to the uses for which such articles are required, in order
to protect the few specific branches of industry in which we do
not yet excel other nations. On the other side we find the Demo-
cratic party advocating the protection of the domestic industry of
all alike, by exempting from taxation every article which is neces-
sary in the processes of domestic industry that we can procure in
any other country in exchange for the excess of our cotton, corn,
wheat, and other commodities, which, even at the highest wages
obtained anywhere in the world, are yet produced at the lowest
cost.

Such is the position of the question on which every voter will
be called to decide in exerting his influence and in choosing whom
he will support.

Such were the exact conditions in Great Britain in 1840, only
worse, because the natural resources of Great Britain, both in re-
spect to agriculture and mining, are so much less than our own.

The first measures of relief from taxation in Great Britain
were practically instituted by Huskisson in 1824, when wool and
some other crude materials were in part or wholly relieved from
duties. The effect of this change, especially upon the product of
domestic wool in Great Britain, was very beneficial ; relief from
duty gave the manufacturers of Great Britain the opportunity to
buy all the wool which they would require for any kind of work,
and the consequence was, that the demand for British wool in-

454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

creased, and did not diminish, as the farmers feared. These meas-
ures of Huskisson, however, were purely tentative ; and, subse-
quent to 1824, there was a great financial struggle in the process
of restoring specie payment in the Bank of England, and in the
bringing about conditions consistent with peace. The great Na-
poleonic wars in the early part of the century had thrown every
art and industry out of its true relation. But the method of
reform was not forced upon the attention of the people of Great
Britain until the disastrous results of the attempt to regulate
prices and wages by way of a high tariff, and the failure of this
method of promoting domestic industry and of developing a home
market had culminated in 1840.

In every history of this time, the picture of the condition of
Great Britain is one of the most painful suffering on the part of
most of the working people. The land was held in the hands of a
very few great landholders who were protected by the corn laws,
and who were thus enabled to charge high prices for necessary
food. Great wealth had been accumulating during the period of
war in the development of mines, works, and factories. Individ-
ual wealth existed in a measure never before witnessed ; and this
condition misled many legislators in this country ; it deceived the
very elect, and doubtless led Henry Clay and other champions of
a high tariff to advocate the very policy which Great Britain was
then being forced to give up by the disastrous results which had
ensued. Underneath this outside show of prosperity, poverty,
destitution, and want existed on every side ; pauperism existed as
never before or since among any English-speaking people.

At the time when Sir Robert Peel took office in 1840 it was
clearly proved that the very measures which had been enacted
for the purpose of establishing a home market and building up
domestic manufactures "had destroyed that market by reducing
the great mass of the population to beggary, destitution, and
want." I quote the exact words of a contemporary observer.

Those who choose to discriminate between the leaders of the
two parties of the present time may read the perversion of Eng-
lish history by James G. Blaine, in the North American Review ;
and the true picture which is given by General M. M. Trumbull.

It would be well worth while for any one who may have
been misled by the common errors about the influences which
brought Great Britain to reverse her policy in 1842, to read up the
economic history of that period. It can be done in a very few
days. All the facts are given by the radical Miss Martineau in
her History of Fifty Years' Peace ; by the Tory, Sir Stafford
ISTorthcote, in his Twenty Years' Financial Policy, explaining the
changes which Peel brought about; by the economist John
Noble's Fiscal Legislation in Great Britain; or in Carlyle's

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 45 5

Past and Present. The best summary is to be found in the little
book published in Chicago in 1884, by General M. M. Trumbull,
entitled The American Lesson of the Free Trade Struggle in Eng-
land. In this book will be found the whole record of the condi-
tion of England from 1838 to 1846, after the panic of 1836 which
originated in this country and spread to Great Britain had spent
its force, down to the culmination in 1846 of the measures which
Peel instituted but which were substantially completed by Glad-
stone in 1853. This history ought to be read by every man who
desires to make up his mind how to act in this country at the
present time. The logic of events is the same. We are repeating
history. We are suffering, so far as it is in the power of legisla-
tors to stop the progress of this country, from injudicious methods
of obstruction ; and we may make progress in agriculture and in
manufactures by " great leaps and bounds," as Gladstone put it,
whenever we choose to adopt the policy which will soon be brought
into action, whether we will or no, by the logic- of necessity.

The basis of Peel's tariff reform in England was established
by Joseph Hume, who, being appointed chairman of the commit-
tee in the House of Parliament, made a report on the tariff of
Great Britain, which then covered about twelve hundred and fifty
specific articles, at an average rate of about twenty-eight per cent
on dutiable imports. In this report he first sorted imports, ac-
cording to their use, under four heads :

Crude materials.

Partly manufactured materials.

Manufactured goods.

Articles of the nature of a luxury, like wines and tobacco.

It was a case of condition and not of theory which Sir Robert
Peel was called upon to meet when he took office. He met that
condition by discriminating in choosing the subjects of taxation
in the tariff which he presented, placing in the free list all the lit-
tle petty taxes or duties on which an agreement was readily made,
and then either making free partly manufactured goods or greatly
abating duties upon them, at the same time reducing the duties
on finished products except those of the fourth class, viz., those of
the nature of a luxury or voluntary use.

I had become so much impressed and influenced by the success
of this method that, during the last few months of the adminis-
tration of Secretary Hugh McCulloch, I suggested to him to class
the imports of this country in a way corresponding to Hume's
method. I gave him my reasons somewhat in this way, that in
whatever manner, by whatever party, under whatever name the
reform of our tariff should at a future day be taken up, it would
of necessity be governed by the logic of the lines or classes on
which these imports might then be sorted. The suggestion was

456

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

adopted. I made five classes ; and since that date the fiscal state-
ment of each year has been tabulated in that way.

I venture to incorporate at this point the statement of the im-
ports under each of the heads named with the duties thereon. I
take these figures from the last report of the Bureau of Statistics
of the Treasurer of the United States for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1889.

IMPORTS ENTERED FOR CONSUMPTION*.

Imports of Merchandise subdivided into Groups or Classes according to Degree of

Manufacture and Uses.

In the following tables the extended classification for imports entered for con-
sumption, embracing over a thousand articles and classes of articles, which is
mainly an alphabetical arrangement with two grand subdivisions of free and duti-
able articles, has been subdivided into the five following general groups or classes,
according to the degree of manufacture and uses of the articles imported. It is
hoped that the condensation of imports into these groups will in some measure aid
and simplify the labors of those engaged in investigating the operations of our
tarifflaws.

For more extended explanation of this classification, see report of this office on
Imported Merchandise entered for Consumption, 1887, page xxiv, etc.

Class A. — Articles of food, and animals.

Class B. — Articles in a crude condition which enter into various pro-
cesses of domestic industry.

Class C. — Articles wholly or partially manufactured, for use as ma-
terials in the manufactures and mechanic arts.

Class D. — Manufactured articles, ready for consumption.

Class E. — Articles of voluntary use, luxuries, etc.

The value of imported merchandise entered for consumption in the United
States, with the amount of duty collected thereon added, for the year ending June
30, 1889, has been as follows :

CLASSES.

(A) Articles of food, and animals

(B) Articles in a crude condition which en-
ter into the various processes of domestic
industry

(C) Articles wholly or partially manufact-
ured, for use as materials in the manufact-
ures and mechanic arts

(D) Articles manufactured, ready for con-
sumption

(E) Articles of voluntary use, luxuries,
etc

Total

Values.

Per cent

of total

value.

Doty
collected.

Per cent
of total
duty.

Total value
and duty.

$240,666,693 32 "45

172,134,716 23-22

84,354,5091 11 "38

147,596,641j 19 "91

96.678,539 13 04

$66,568,932 80 44

15,363,625

22,195,095
68,6S3,765

7-02

1015
3140

45.S90.357 20 99

$741,431,393 100 00 $215,701,774 100 00

$307,235,625

187,49S,341

106,549,604
216,2S0,406
142,569,196

$960,133,172

This table does not show the cost of the imports landed in our ports. There
are not included in the values of articles the cost of coverings, commissions, etc.,
excluded from the dutiable value by the act of March 3, 1883 ; nor freight charges
from the country of importation, and undervaluations, the aggregate amount of
which can not be estimated with any approximation to accuracy.

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 457

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458

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Summary of Values of Imported Merchandise entered for Consumption, by
Groups, according to Degree of Manufactures and Uses, from 1880 to 1889.

(A) Articles of
food, and ani- ■{
mats.

(B) Articles in a
crude condit'n
which enter
into the vari-
ous processes
of domestic in-
dustry.

(C) Articles
wholly or par-
tially manu-
factured, for
use as mate-
rials in the
manufactures
and mechanic
arts.

(D) Articles
manufactured,
ready for con
sumption.

(E) Articles of
voluntary use,
luxuries, etc.

Total.

Year

ending

Juue

30 —

VALUE OF —

1830
1S81
18S2

1SS3
1S84
1S85
1S36

18S7
1888

1889
1850

1881
1882

1833
1384
1335
1336
1S37
1838
1839
1880
1881
1882
1333
1884
1885
18S6
1SS7
1888
18S9
1880
1881
1882
1883
1884
1S85
1886
1887
1838
1SS9
1830
1881
1882
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889

18S0
1881
18S2
1833
1884
18S5
1836
1837
1888
1389

Free of duty.

$90,637,062

90,372,067

82.244,581

78,565,246

92,589.236

86,559,991

83,752,303

99.183,773

104,291,336

119,403,491

96,980,615

92.570,041

103,045,047

102.844.603

94,039,567

82.507,747

102,438,364

106,389,032

111.508,141

110.706,833

10,529,136

9,360.939

13.458.950

13,032,614

12,186,427

11,185,487

10,639,156

12,149.383

11,692,617

12,494,105

9,1:11,858

9,134,263

10,621,238

11,116,812

11,035,112

10,617,405

12.446,211

11,565,665

11,438,012

9,820,801

770,459

1,120,102

1,822,164

1,354,014

1,429.873

2,041,604

2,204.725

8,805,806

4,S74,746

4,149,350

208,049,180
202,557,412
210,721,980
206,913.289
211,280.265
192.912,234
211.530,759
233,093,659
244,104,852
256.574,630

Dutiable.

$108,528,901

125,984,270

147,876,926

135,834,124

132,136,969

107,706,369

112,453,925

112,273,076

115,114,040

121.263,202

63,075,261

56,929.006

61,010,729

46,321.172

44.457,174

37,101,595

41,613^653

59.542,660

56,221,508

61.427,333

62.657,777

53,711,565

65,736,906

75,580,521

69,963,939

61,271,465

67,855,317

67.505.441

73,013,645

71,860,404

120,872,7»5

135,095,640

147,545.470

151.292.076

123,015,766

103,4:0,164

113,824,644

121.473,106

188,852,878

137,775.S40

64,371.367

71.341,106

83.321,935

84.888,491

86.721.276

72.173,227

78,030,511

86,531,039

90,451,708

92,529,489

419.506,091
448,061,5S7
505.491,966
493,916,354
456,295.124!
386.667,820,
413,778.055
450.325,322
468.143,774
484,356,763

Total.

$199,165,963

216.356,337

230,121,507

214,399,370

224.726,255

194,266,360

196,206,228

211.456,849

219,395,376

240,666.693

160.055,876

149,499,047

164.055,776

149,165,775

13S,496,741

119,609,342

144,05^,022

165,931,692

16S,029,649

172,134.716

73,1S6,963

68.072.504

79,225,856

88,613.135

82,150,366

72,456.952

78,544,473

79.655.324

84,706,2^2

84,354,509

130,004,643

144,229,903

153,166,708

162,408,888

134,050,878

119,027.569

126.270,855

136:035,771

144,790,885

147,596,641

65,141,826

72,461,208

84.644,099

86,242.505

88.151,149

74.219,831

80,235,236

90.336,345

95,326.454

96,678,839

627,555,271
650,618.999
716,213,946
700,829.673
667,575,389
579,530,054
625,303,814
683,418,981
712,248,626
741,431,398

Duty.

$52,305,551
58,748,703
63.325.109
5S,556,1S3
59,135,172
61,695,247
61,064,714
67,998.334
64,393,790
66.568.932
20.650,123
17,130,700
18.788.424
12,936,129
11,922,748
9,454.989
12.863.115
19.567,903
15,880,839
15,363,625
18,864,498
17,475,342
19,943,553
23,055,271
18,536,278
17,088.148
20.115,152
20,393.493
21,824,738
22,195,095
56,271,500
63.665,^34
70,541,612
71.116.388
58.518,730
52.887,886
55.653,853
61,898.366
67,426,549
86,683,765
34,323,490
36,541,032
43.018,973
43,995,728
41,732,067
36,693,830
38,682.533
42,174,328!
44,033.886
45,890,357 j

1S2,415,162
193.561.011
215,617.671
209,659,699
189,844,995
177,319,550
18S,379.397
212,032,424
213.509.802
218,701,774

Ad valo-
rem rate
on duti-
able.

Per cent.

48 19
46(33
42-82
43-11
44-75
57-28
54-37
60 57
56-00
54-90
32 74
30-09
30 SO
27-93
26-82
25-48
30 91
32-86
28-16
25-01
30-11
29-76
30-35
30-50
26-49
27-89
29-68
30 21
29-89
30 -S9
46-55
47 13
47 81
47 01
47 '57
48-28
48-90

49 73
50-56
49-85
53 32
51-22
5163
51-83
48-12
50-84
49-58
4S-74
48-70
49-60

43-48
4320
42 66
42 45
41-61
45 86
45-55
47-10
45-63
45-13

Per

cent of

total

duty.

Per cent.
28 67
30'

29

27

31

34

32

32

30

20

11

8

8

6

6

5

6

9

7

7

10
9
9
11
9
9
10
9
10
10
30
82
32
33
30
29
29
29
31
81
18
18
19
20
21
20
20
19
20
20

•35
•37
•93

15

75

42
•07
•16
•44
•32
•85
•71
•17
•28
•33
•83
•23
•42
•02
•34

03
•25
•00
•76
•64
•68
•62
•22

15
•S5
•89
•72
•92
•82
•54
•54

19
•58
■40
•82
•88
■95

98
•98
•69
•53
■89

63
•99

Per

cent of

total

-value.

Per cent.
3172
33-25
32-18
30-59
33-66
33-52
81-38
30-94
30-80
82-45
25 52
22 98

22 91
2129
20 75
20-64

23 04
24-28
23 59
23-22
11-66

10 46
11-06
1264
12-81
12-50
12-56
11-66
11-90
11-88
20-72

22 17
22-08

23 17
20-08
20-54
2019
19-90
20-33
19 91
10-38

11 14
11-82
12-81
18-20
12-81
12-83
13-22
18-38
13- 04

Early in the administration of President Cleveland I ventured
to suggest to Assistant Secretary Fairchild to carry back this
classification from the year 1884, in which it was first established,
to the year 1880, so that we now have the result of ten consecutive
years, 1880 to 1889 inclusive, which I now submit for considera-
tion. I think all will agree with me that no committee of any
party or under any name can fail to be governed by the logic of
these lines in preparing measures of tariff reform.

SANITARY WORK IN GREAT DISASTERS. 459

SANITARY WORK IN GREAT DISASTERS.

By G. G. GEOFF, M. D., LL. D.,

PRESIDENT OF THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE BOARD OF HEALTH.

THE suggestions offered in this paper are derived from the
experience of the past summer at Johnstown, Pa., and in the
other flooded regions of the State, where a large share of the or-
ganization of the sanitary measures fell to the writer. Although
one ninth of the inhabitants of the devastated district perished
and were buried in the debris, along with thousands of domestic
animals; and although typhoid fever, measles, and diphtheria
existed in the district before the calamity, they never spread to
any great extent, and certainly never became epidemic.

The region was a peculiarly difficult one in which to conduct
sanitary relief. Along a narrow mountain valley for twenty
miles were scattered some twenty-eight towns and villages, form-
ing Johnstown. Of these, twenty were devastated by the flood,
which left almost every village isolated from the others, all
bridges and roads being destroyed, as also all horses and vehicles
of the inhabitants, thus rendering communication extremely diffi-
cult or impossible. The members of the State Board of Health
were unacquainted with the geography of the region, and with
the local physicians, as well as with those who volunteered their
services. There were no disinfectants on hand, and the whole
appropriation of the Board for sanitary purposes was but two
thousand dollars for the whole year. When, therefore, on June
1, 1889, representatives of the State Board of Health of Pennsyl-
vania reached the desolated Conemaugh Valley, to do what could
be done to prevent the occurrence and spread of disease among
the exhausted and stricken survivors, the best estimates that
could be hastily secured showed that ten thousand human beings,
one thousand horses, one thousand cows, together with a great
number of hogs, dogs, chickens, cats, etc., were drowned and
buried in the debris at Johnstown, and in the drift-piles down
the river, while ten thousand sufferers were without shelter, wet,
hungry, and distracted. There were slime, mud, carcasses of do-
mestic animals, and human bodies everywhere.

" No pen has yet fully described the condition that existed the
next day after the waters of the South Fork Lake had swept the
valley. The pen will never picture the desolation that existed,
or tell of the difficulties that confronted the inhabitants of the
stricken valley. The homes that were not swept away were left
in the most unsanitary condition imaginable. The flood in many
localities reached a height of thirty feet. This water contained

460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or was heavily laden with debris and every kind of filth, and
whatever this water touched it contaminated. As a result, every
house in the flooded district was filled to the second floor, in most
cases, with offensive matter. In many cases dead animals were
found in parlors, and scores of dead horses were removed from
dwellings and business stands. Everything was covered with
mud. There was not a place where the flood touched that man
could lay his head with safety."

The State work began June 1st and ended October 12th. The
result at Kernville, a ward of Johnstown, is a truthful index
for the whole district. " With the concentration of twenty-five
hundred people in three hundred and eighty houses, all subjected
to intense mental strain by reason of the calamity and the radical
changes in their habits of living, it is very gratifying to know
that during the continuance of the Board's operations not a case
of infectious disease developed in the district which should be
attributed to bad sanitary condition." In the past history of na-
tional disasters we do not read of such gratifying results, but dire
pestilence has too often followed great earthquakes, floods, fires,
famine, and the disasters of war.

There are several measures not strictly sanitary, but most
necessary, to which the sanitarian should give heed before his
own special work occupies his attention. If the officers of the
district have been lost, or in any way rendered inefficient, a
strong government must be at once organized, and the district
placed under efficient police control, that lawlessness and anarchy
do not prevail. At Johnstown the people named a "dictator,"
who decided all questions of government and kept the region in
order. The distress which lawlessness produces must not be toler-
ated. The organization of relief corps to succor the injured and
dying, and to organize temporary hospitals, should receive next
the attention of the sanitarian. So soon as the government is as-
sured, and temporary relief is progressing satisfactorily, he may
advise the proper committee as to what will be needed in the way
of food, clothing, shelter, and medical stores. These will be re-
quired in large quantities ; but in the United States, at least, we
can safely rely upon the country at large to supply these things
promptly. For shelter, tents can be had from the State Governors
by applying to them.

At Johnstown the people did not like tents, preferring any kind
of houses, and suffered great inconvenience from overcrowding
rather than go into the tents. There were two forms of ready-
made houses used — one, familiarly known as " Oklahomas," were
of two sizes : the smaller, eighteen by ten feet, with one room, and
a larger, eighteen by twenty-four feet, with two rooms ; and the
Hughes house, which was larger and better built, consisting of

SANITARY WORK IN GREAT DISASTERS. 461

four rooms. When tents or temporary houses arrive, the proper
location of these should be decided by the sanitary officer in
charge. These preliminaries having received attention, the work
proper of the sanitary officer begins :

1. The supply of disinfectants should be ordered at once. This
order should cover all that will be needed while the emergency
lasts, and is necessarily larger in summer than in winter. It was
found at Johnstown that the moral effect of a large supply of dis-
infectants was very great and for good. In ordering disinfectants
it is well to provide that what is not needed may be returned to
the manufacturers. Pure chemicals and those easy of application
are the best.

2. The region should be divided into convenient districts, and
each placed under a local physician as sanitary inspector. At
Johnstown the local physicians named one of their own number
as health officer, and he nominated to the State Board of Health
the inspectors, and this plan worked very well'. Inspectors are also
needed for the camps of citizens and laborers, for the morgues and
burial-places. These inspectors should all make a daily report in
writing, stating the exact sanitary condition of their districts, and
in these reports they should also state any need of food, clothing,
shelter, or medical stores. So long as is necessary, the inspectors
should give their whole time to their duties.

3. The burial of the dead needs early attention. In summer,
this must be hastened if the number be very large ; in winter,
more time for identification can be given. If the number of dead
is very large, and the distress of the survivors too great to permit
of accurate identification, bodies should be buried in their clothes,
so that identification can be made out at some future time, when
the bodies may be lifted for reburial. Very careful and accurate
descriptions of the bodies should always be taken before burial.
If possible, the bodies should be brought to one point for identi-
fication. At Johnstown, for ten days, a large proportion of the
bodies were embalmed, but if buried in their clothes this is not
necessary. Great care should be taken to number the graves as
the bodies were numbered at the morgue, so that when lifted the
record may be found to be correct.

4. The water-supply of the district should be inspected at
once, and frequently while the emergency continues. Wells and
springs had better be closed if any other water is available.
Impure drinking-water must not be tolerated for a moment
in these emergencies. Chemical analyses should be made fre-
quently.

5. One or more hospitals for contagious diseases should be
established at once, and every case of such disease, as it arises,
should be transferred to these hospitals, there to remain until all

462 • THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

danger of spreading the disease is over. This is a point of great
importance, and its neglect may result in grave disaster.

6. For the convenience of the survivors and of the laborers
who may be brought to the place, it will be necessary for the
health authorities to see that public privies, or closets, are erected.
These should be placed where most convenient. They should be
examined by inspectors of the different districts, and should be
under the charge of a careful and reliable foreman, who will daily
disinfect them. No foul odors should ever be permitted to arise
from these places.

7. If the free discharge from the sewers is impeded by debris,
these should be opened at once, so that water may be discharged
through them freely. In the case of floods it will very frequently
be found that the mouths of the sewers have been silted shut.
These should be opened. The escape of foul gases from sewers
at such a time is not to be permitted.

8. There is always, in time of disasters, danger of the people
becoming panic-stricken from fear of a pestilence arising, and in
our times well-meaning but ignorant persons are very liable to
convey messages to the daily press which tend to excite and dis-
tress the survivors. To prevent any panic in this way, the State
Board of Health found it necessary to issue occasionally " health
bulletins," which stated the exact condition of the public health
in the devastated district. These bulletins were printed and
posted throughout the whole region, and they were thought to
do much good. They were founded on the daily reports received
from the sanitary inspectors, from the other physicians in the
district, and from the hospitals. In addition to these "health
bulletins," the people may be greatly aided by issuing "circu-
lars of information." These circulars describe in the plainest
language the proper ways to disinfect the premises, to clean
them up, and about what should be eaten, and those things
which will best tend to preserve health in the midst of un-
favorable conditions. These circulars of information should be
placed in each house throughout the district as often as may be
deemed necessary.

9. It may, in some cases, be desirable to partially or wholly
depopulate the devastated district. This may be done by laying
out a town of tents, and then requiring the people to remove from
their homes into it. Such a town should be laid out as a military
camp, and should be under the same regulations as are military
camps. At Johnstown, a partial depopulation only was at-
tempted. The State furnished free transportation to all women
and children who desired to go elsewhere to their friends for a
few weeks or months, and all were urged to go for a short time.
For several weeks, also, transportation was given the men who

SANITARY WORK IN GREAT DISASTERS. 463

applied for the same. In this way the population was largely
reduced.

10. If the distress of the survivors is very great, it may be neces-
sary for the sanitary officers to assist the inhabitants in the disin-
fecting and cleansing of their homes. At Johnstown some thirteen
hundred cellars were cleansed by the State, and the debris was re-
moved from the streets and lots, wherever it was found to contain
the bodies of human beings and animals in numbers sufficient to
endanger the public health. This work of cleansing the district
can only be considered the work of the State so long as the dis-
trict is in a condition to be denominated a public nuisance.
When this ceases, the work of the State must also cease.

11. So soon as the disinfectants arrive, the sanitary officer
must see to their proper distribution and instruct the people as
to their proper use. At Johnstown, each sanitary inspector in
charge of a district was' authorized to open one or more depots,
in places most convenient for the inhabitants of his district, in
which depots disinfectants were stored. Large placards were
then printed and posted over each district, telling the inhabitants
where they could obtain disinfectants, and urging them to go and
obtain supplies of the same. Circulars of information were given
to all who applied, as also oral information, explaining how to
use each disinfectant. The result was, that people came by the
hundreds and carried the disinfectants to their homes, using them
with good effect. These stations should be kept open just so long
as the district is in a bad sanitary condition. Reference may be
made here to the mode of using some of the more common dis-
infectants. The debris formed of the broken houses and forest
trees, together with carpets, bedding, and household effects which
had become worthless, were, at Johnstown, destroyed by fire, along
with the bodies of the domestic animals. For fully three weeks
immense fires were burning at Johnstown, formed of the debris,
and in these fires hundreds of animals were cremated. In the
case of a great flood, those articles which it is desirable to burn
may be water-soaked, as was the case at Johnstown. Cremation
in such cases may be hastened by the addition of petroleum,
though at Johnstown a large donation of tar and rosin, made by
the citizens of Wilmington, K C, was used to aid in the combus-
tion of these wet substances. The rosin was found to have very
advantageous properties when applied to the cremation of car-
casses. It appeared to destroy the unpleasant odors arising from
the burning flesh, and in place gave out an agreeable balsamic
fragrance. It also burned with great heat, hastening combus-
tion, and could not be extinguished by heavy rains. By using
rosin liberally, and adding driftwood, there was no trouble in en-
tirely destroying the domestic animals with a single firing. The

464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tar was not so valuable in this work as the rosin. Large quanti-
ties of quicklime were used at Johnstown, and found to be very-
valuable for drying the cellars and , absorbing unpleasant odors.
The people were advised to whitewash their cellars and homes a
number of times, as the lime was believed to be very beneficial.
Chloride of lime was used also in sprinkling in the cellars and
about the houses. The Board of Health also furnished in solu-
tion bromine, chloride of lime, carbolic acid, and Quibbells's dis-
infectant. These were applied by means of sprinkling-cans. So
soon also as the streets were cleared of the debris, two sprinkling-
carts were set running. These used a solution of disinfectants,
which had a good effect upon the general atmosphere, and an
excellent moral effect, maintaining the confidence of the people.
At times, the workmen who are cleaning up the district will
imagine that they detect foul odors, and that it is dangerous for
them to work without a liberal use of disinfectants. In these
cases the presence of a laborer with a sprinkling-can, applying a
solution of disinfectants, produces a very reassuring effect. Dis-
infectants should be freely used about the morgues and in every
place where it can be hoped that they will do good. In this con-
nection it may be stated, to the credit of the manufacturers of
disinfectants, that, without knowing the means of the Board of
Health to pay them, they promptly filled all orders for their sup-
plies without a moment's questioning.

12. That the district may be entirely within the control of the
sanitarian, it is important that, as soon as possible, a house-to-
house inspection or survey be made of all the houses which are oc-
cupied in the district. This survey should be carefully recorded
on blanks prepared for the purpose, and should state whether the
house is occupied by owner or tenant, the number of rooms, num-
ber of families, the adult males, the adult, females, and children
under five years of age. It should also state the condition of the
cellar, kitchen, and living-rooms. The water-supply should be
examined and reported upon, as to source, condition, and amount.
The drainage of the premises should be carefully looked into.
The privy or water-closet should receive a minute inspection.
The surveyor should examine the condition of the yard and
stable, and the streets and alleys about the house. Note should
also be made of any present sickness in the house, and of the ex-
istence of any contagious disease in the house during or within
six months preceding. If any deaths have occurred within the
house in a year, record should be made of them. With all
these points before the Board of Health, if the survey has been
made with care, it will not be difficult for the Board to maintain
good health in the devastated district — certainly not if they
have the confidence of the survivors. If the devastated district

MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 465

is situated upon a stream, as was the case at Johnstown, it will be
necessary for the Board of Health to watch that no cause of dis-
aster to regions below is overlooked. It may be necessary to patrol
the river below and open drift-piles *and burn the carcasses of do-
mestic animals. If the stream is the water-supply for towns or
cities below, at the earliest possible moment it must be placed in
a condition not to carry disease to such places.

In a word, in a great national disaster, the Board of Health
must be prepared to meet each and every emergency as it may
arise.

-♦♦♦-

MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA.*

By HENRY W. HENSHAW.

FROM the time of its discovery by Grijalva in 1534 until
1607, a number of fruitless attempts had been made by the
Mexican authorities to colonize the peninsula of Lower Cali-
fornia, and no small amount of treasure had been wasted in
the efforts.

The sole obstacle to the success of the schemes for colonization
lay not in the indolent and peaceably disposed Indians, but in the
barren and inhospitable nature of the country itself, the wastes
of which offered but moderate subsistence to the natives, and
nothing whatever to satisfy the love of adventure and the thirst
for wealth of the Spaniard. Finding that all attempts to colonize
the new country were failures, the Mexican Government turned it
over to the Jesuits, who readily undertook its subjection to ecclesi-
astical authority. The first settlement was made on the Bay of
San Dionisio in 1697. The establishment of the missions proper
began immediately, and between this period and 1745 no fewer
than fourteen were established on the peninsula. It was not until
1769 that the occupancy of Upper California was inaugurated by
the founding of the mission of San Diego by the Franciscans, who
had superseded the Jesuits in charge of mission work in western
Spanish America. From this date until 1823 mission after mission
was established to the number of twenty-one, until the entire
coast area of California up to and a little beyond the Bay of San
Francisco was under mission sway. As mission history forms
one of the most interesting chapters relating to the aborigines of
this continent, it is the purpose of the present paper to briefly
notice the subject, with especial reference to some of the more
salient features of mission life and its effect upon the natives.

* The accompanying illustrations are from photographs generously loaned by Mr. S. I.
Jannus, who obtained them in 1889.
vol. xxxvn. — 34

466

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But, before turning to the subject proper, let us glance at the
California Indian as he was found by the missionaries. And first
as to his physical appearance.

Vancouver visited San Francisco in 1792, and thus alludes to
the natives : " If we except the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego,

B-D.Servoss.Em>T_ N.Y.

and those of Van Diemen's land, they are certainly a race of the
most miserable beings, possessing the faculty of human reason, I
ever saw. Their persons, generally speaking, were under the
middle size, and very ill made; their faces ugly, presenting a

MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 467

dull, heavy, and stupid countenance, devoid of sensibility or the
least expression."

A few years later, in 180G, Langsdorff describes the same In-
dians with somewhat more detail, as follows : " These Indians are
of a middling, or rather of a low stature, and of a dark-brown color
approacjiing to black. . . . They have large, projecting lips, and
broad, flat, negro-like noses ; indeed, many of their features, as well
as their physiognomy, and almost their color, bear a strong resem-
blance to the negroes. Their hair is, however, extremely different,
being long and straight ; if left to grow, it will hang down even
to the hips, but they commonly cut it to the length of four or
five inches, sticking it out like bristles ; this has a very disagree-
able appearance in the eyes of a European : the hair grows very
far down toward the eyes, so that the forehead is extremely low ;
the eyebrows are small and the beards thin; many shave them
close with mussel-shells. None of the men that we saw were

Mat*

Fig. 1.— Group of Mission Indians from Mesa Grande, San Diego County.

above five feet high ; they were ill-proportioned, and had such a
dull, heavy, negligent appearance that we all agreed we had never
seen a less pleasing specimen of the human race."

The Indians of Santa Clara Mission, many of whom were
from the interior tribes, appear to have impressed Langsdorff
much more favorably, and he concludes his description of
them with the statement that "the people of this mission are.

468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

indeed, generally considered as the handsomest in New Cali-
fornia."

The present Indians of San Diego and Los Angeles Counties, a
group of whom are presented in Fig. 1, are fair representatives of
the mission Indians of southern California. They approach more
nearly to LangsdorfFs description than to the pen-portraii drawn
by Vancouver. It is to be remembered, however, that these In-
dians belong to the great inland Shoshonian family, and are
doubtless intellectually brighter than were their brethren of the
coast farther north, about Santa Barbara and San Francisco, who
represent distinct families.

I have seen a considerable number of the mission Indians in
recent years, and can testify to the general accuracy of Langs-
dorfFs description, though of course they differ much individually
and among different tribes. In general it appears to me that the
Indians of the interior of the State are less sluggish physically,
and are mentally brighter, than those nearer the coast. Taking
the coast tribes all in all, they are the lowest type of Indian I
have ever seen, and it is probable that they represent the lowest
type north of Mexico.

At first this fact seems totally at variance with the fitness of
things ; for, if California was not literally a land flowing with milk
and honey, it possessed every attribute to be desired by a bar-
barous people. Its climate was mild and equable ; its coast and
inland waters teemed with fish and mollusks ; while the land
abounded with game and with nuts, roots, and seeds which were
both nutritious and easily procured. With such advantages as
these it might be supposed that the natives would have far out-
stripped the dwellers of less favored sections. Human progress,
however, does not always follow the lines of least resistance, and
it is probable that in their struggle toward civilization the races of
the world owe less to their advantages than to their disadvantages.
To put this seeming paradox in other words, man's improvement
has been largely compulsory, and, when he is not too heavily
handicapped, adverse surroundings stimulate instead of checking
his progress. Certain is it that the fine climate and abundant
natural products of California had their full effect in developing,
or rather in retarding the development, of the natives. Though
not deficient physically, the Indians, especially of the warmer
portion of the State, were exceedingly indolent and stupid. As a
rule they were not hunters but fishers, and hence their blood was
not quickened and their muscles hardened by the excitement and
toil of the chase ; nor were their wits sharpened to the same ex-
tent as those of the hunting tribes by the manifold and varied
necessities of their calling, nor by the sterner duties of war ; for
the hunting tribes are invariably warlike. Not so the Calif or-

MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 469

nians ; though there was a multiplicity of tribes and an abundant
population, and hence ample cause for intertribal strife, their
warfare was in keeping with the rest of their character, and had
in it little of the aggressive fierceness which characterized other
Indians to the eastward. No better evidence of their pusillani-
mous spirits need be required than their abject submission to
mission rule, enforced as it was at each mission by the presence
of two or three priests and only a half-dozen armed soldiers.

■ m
- - ..

Fig. 2.— Ruins of Branch Mission op Pala, twenty-five miles east of San Luis Ret;

established in 1816.

Though the natives of southern California, as the result of living
under rather similar conditions of environment, conformed in a
general way in physical appearance and in their mode of life, it
must not be supposed that there were not very many distinct
tribes which differed in many minor particulars. Within the mis-
sion area there were scores, if not hundreds, of tribes — just how
many we can not tell — and they were divided among no fewer than
nine distinct linguistic families. Perhaps the linguistic differ-
ences that characterized these tribes formed the most remarkable
point of distinction, and it is doubtful if anywhere else in the
world within the same area have there ever been observed so many
distinct families of language and so many dialects as in Cali-
fornia. As Lamanon remarks, "It is the difficulty of learning
all the languages that consoles the missionaries for their not
knowing any." In point of fact, the language changed dialecti-
cally every ten or fifteen miles, while totally distinct linguistic
families succeeded each other in bewildering profusion.

The California tribes were in no sense nomadic. That to
some extent they changed their place of abode with the season
is doubtless true, and in winter the tribes living immediately on

47o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the more exposed parts of the coast moved inland a greater or less

distance.

Although by no means densely populated according to modern
ideas, yet California was well divided up among the numerous
tribes, and was probably more completely occupied than any other
part of the United States. This is attested by the accuracy with
which the tribal lands were marked off^ in many places by artifi-
cial boundaries, as also by the rigidness with which trespass on
the territory of neighboring tribes was punished. Population
must be large, and the natural products of the soil of considerable
value, ere land rights are so carefully guarded. A large popula-
tion is to be inferred also from the proximity of the missions to
each other, since each one required a populous area from which to
draw its converts ; and, finally, a large population is attested by
the mission figures, which show that during the mission period,
from 1769 to 1834, some seventy-nine thousand converts were bap-
tized ; and yet this number can not by any means have represented
the total population for the sixty-five years, since by no means all
the Indians were converted.

As the Californian Indians were practically in the same cult-
ure state as those of other portions of the United States, though
upon a somewhat lower plane, I need not dwell further upon their
habits save to say that they lived in conical or wedge-shaped
lodges of tide or thatched grass, or in temporary wigwams of
branches ; wore very little clothing ; lived largely on fish, mollusks,
and seeds, and to a less extent upon game ; for the most part made
no pottery, but employed soapstone for domestic utensils when
that material was available, or used basketry vessels when it was
not ; were very fond of ornaments ; had a complex mythology ; re-
sorted to their sli am an s for the cure or prevention of disease, for
the destruction of enemies, either personal or tribal, for luck in
hunting or fishing ; and, finally, were fetich-worshipers. Such
were the people to enlighten and Christianize whom was to be
the life-work of the Franciscan fathers. Let us now observe the
methods adopted for these praiseworthy ends.

The Spanish and Mexican authorities did not intend that the
mission reign should be permanent. The viceroys of New Spain
saw in California an important political addition to Spanish-Mexi-
can territory, and even when secular colonization failed, and the
attempt was abandoned in favor of ecclesiastical methods, the ap-
proved plan of the Government for the mission establishments
contemplated these as but a temporary means to an end, and full
provision was made for the conversion of the missions into secular
establishments, quite independent of priestly authority, and for
the conferring of citizenship upon the Indians. To this latter end
it was provided that after ten years' service in the mission an In-

MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 471

dian might claim his liberty, provided a respectable settler would
become responsible for his good conduct. It was the clearly ex-
pressed idea of the Government that the Indians should be ren
dered self-supporting as rapidly as possible, and the missions were
looked upon as educational establishments to this end. Though
not openly antagonizing these provisions, the fathers never yield-
ed a hearty assent to the policy, and from the very first sought to
render the converts totally dependent and to establish between
themselves and their charges the relation of father and children,
in which policy they were only too successful. It was no part of
their plan to make the Indian self-supporting. The danger of
mission disestablishment disturbed the missionaries little, as they
openly said the Indians were incapable of self -maintenance.

For its own support and the maintenance of its converts each
mission had allotted to it fifteen square miles of land. The build-
ings were laid out in various ways — sometimes in the form of a
square inclosed by a high wall, and sometimes in detached sections.
To each mission was allotted a well-built church ; and though ex-
ternally these presented a rather rude appearance, yet their inte-
riors were finished with considerable care, and lavishly decorated
as far as the circumstances permitted. Among the pictures that

Fig. 3.— Modern Hut of Mission Indians, Coahuila Valley. Ramona and Children in

Foreground.

hung upon the church walls were always to be found two, repre-
senting respectively hell and paradise. The former depicted in
the most vivid way the future torments of the unregenerate, and
it proved a very effective means of conversion.

The houses of the neophytes were usually a little distance
from the mission proper, and consisted of open rows of little huts.
The accompanying sketch (Fig. 3) affords as good an idea of these

472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

primitive structures as is to be found among the modern mission
Indians, and is quite primitive. The roof is composed of thick
branches of a kind of sage-brush, and the pole wattles constitut-
ing its sides are chinked with mud.

=Late in mission history the houses were built of sun-dried
bricks, and were reasonably comfortable habitations, but in the
early period they were most miserable affairs. Vancouver de-
scribes them in 1792, and they were evidently nothing but the
native huts, made of willow saplings planted in the earth and
brought together at the top, with twigs interwoven and with a
thatching of grass and rushes. Vancouver says of them : " These

Fig. 4.— Adobe House op Mission Indians, Coahuila Valley, San Diego County.

miserable habitations, each of which was allotted for the resi-
dence of a whole family, were erected with some degree of uni-
formity, about three or four feet asunder, in straight rows, leaving
lanes or passages at right angles between them ; but these were so
abominably infested with every kind of filth and nastiness as
to be rendered not less offensive than degrading to the human
species."

Fig. 4 shows the modern adobe house, the use of adobe being
introduced into California by the Spaniards.

The fact is, that in the aboriginal state the sanitary condition
of the Indians was preserved by seasonal changes of residence, or
by burning the houses, for one reason or another, chiefly super-
stitious. They probably never burned them of their own accord

MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 473

to be rid either of vermin or filth, as the idea of cleanliness for
the sake of cleanliness is foreign to the savage mind. Constant
residence in one spot, under such conditions as Vancouver and
others described, had its legitimate effect upon the health of the
neophytes, as we shall see.

In these huts lived the married only ; the unmarried were
domiciled in separate buildings, usually directly under the eyes of
the missionaries, where they were locked up at night, each sex
separate. The unmarried women also worked separately, and
always under supervision.

When the missions were first established, the good fathers, as
a rule, experienced little difficulty in securing converts. Kind
words, and the gifts the Indians received in the shape of food and
clothing, proved an efficient means of conversion, and they were
baptized in gratifying numbers. Converts were encouraged to
visit their wild brethren at home, and by flattering accounts of
mission life induced many to return with them. As neophytes
grew scarce, the area from which they were drawn was extended,
and a greater or less number of recruits was obtained from the
distant interior tribes. Later, such means proved unavailing,
and other and more questionable methods were resorted to. Upon
one pretext or another, armed soldiers and armed converts were
sent out who frequently returned with a goodly number of cap-
tives ; and, for two reasons, these were mostly women and chil-
dren : first, because they were preferred, since the husbands fre-
quently followed them into captivity ; and, secondly, because in
the conflicts which preceded the capture of the wives and children
many of the men were killed and the rest driven away. In
these conflicts the wounded appear to have received little mercy.
Beechey witnessed the tragical issue of one of these holiday ex-
cursions by the neophytes of the mission of San Jose', and we are
indebted to him for the details. An armed launch had been placed
in charge of an alcalde of the mission, who while on the trip
planned an attack upon the Cosemenes of the San Joaquin, either
directly for the purpose of securing converts or in revenge for
some aggression. While in camp near the village they intended
to attack, the neophyte party was surprised by the Cosemenes,
and thirty-four were killed or taken captive. In this case appar-
ently the alcalde acted without authority, and doubtless without
knowledge or connivance on the part of the priests. However,
when the news reached the mission it was thought necessary to
strike terror into the victorious tribe, and accordingly an expedition
was sent against them. The result was that forty men, women,
and children were killed and forty women and children were capt-
ured and brought back to the mission. Thus the loss of the con-
verts was more than made good, the surrounding tribes were in-

474

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

spired with terror, and all with the loss of one Christian, who was
killed by the bursting of his own gun. Such acts reveal the darker
side of mission history, and the attempt has been often made to
free the priests from the blame of such transactions, on the ground
that they were ignorant of the extreme means employed. Such

h.

m

*jr?f¥v^^7^»?

Fig. 5.— Coahuila Indian, formerly a Neophyte op San Gabriel Mission, Los Angeles

County.

can hardly have been the case. Even when the ostensible purpose
of the visits of the converts was peace and not war, they were
armed, the boat being often provided, as Beechey tells us, with
cannon and musketry. Under such circumstances of superiority
it would have needed no prophet to foretell the probable action

MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 475

of Indian neophytes, doubtless often with old grudges to pay off
and eager to find favor in the eyes of their masters, and to claim
the reward of their zeal in the new faith. Another fruitful occa-
sion for wholesale capture was the escape of converts to neigh-
boring tribes, and the attempt to recapture them by armed force,
to which are to be added, of course, the petty manifestations of
hostility on the part of the unconverted tribes. Overt acts on
their part were followed by reprisals, and these always meant a
fresh supply of converts.

Having gained possession of their subjects, the next step was
to convert them to Christianity — a process neither very long nor
tedious. Before baptism it was customary to prepare the candi-
dates— if the term be applicable to unwilling captives — by pre-
liminary instruction, which the padres state never occupied less
than eight days. How clear an insight into the mysteries of the
Christian religion a pagan Indian, fresh from the worship of his
fetiches, is likely to obtain in eight days may be imagined ; but
the fathers declared that the instruction was ample. The usual
method of enlightenment is thus detailed by Beechey :

" Immediately the Indians are brought to the mission they are
placed under the tuition of some of the most enlightened of their
countrymen, who teach them to repeat in Spanish the Lord's
Prayer and certain passages in the Romish litany ; and also to
cross themselves properly on entering the church. In a few days
a willing Indian becomes a proficient in these mysteries, and suf-
fers himself to be baptized and duly initiated into the church.
If, however, as it not unfrequently happens, any of the captured
Indians show a repugnance to conversion, it is the practice to
imprison them for a few days, and then to allow them to breathe
a little fresh air in a walk round the mission to observe the happy
mode of life of their converted countrymen ; after which they are
again shut up, and thus continue to be incarcerated until they
declare their readiness to renounce the religion of their fore-
fathers." A remark by Beechey that he thought the teachers had
an arduous task, elicited from the priest the reply that " they had
never found any difficulty ; that the Indians were accustomed to
change their own gods, and that their conversion was in a manner
habitual to them." This was undoubtedly true, as was evidenced
by the rapidity with which numbers apostatized in favor of their
earlier gods whenever occasion offered.

Discipline among the converts was administered with some
severity. As was to be expected, desertion and the non-perform-
ance of their religious duties were the chief occasions of punish-
ment. A church-service is thus described by Beechey (page 367) :

"After the bell had done tolling, several alguazils went round
to the huts to see if all the Indians were at church ; and if they

47

76

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 477

found any loitering within them, they exercised with tolerable
freedom a long lash, with a broad thong at the end of it — a disci-
pline which appeared the more tyrannical, as the church was not
sufficiently capacious for all the attendants, and several sat upon
the steps without.

" The congregation was arranged on both sides of the building,
separated by a wide aisle passing along the center, in which were
stationed several alguazils with whips, canes, and goads to pre-
serve silence and maintain order ; and, what seemed more difficult
than either, to keep the congregation in their kneeling posture.
The goads were better adapted to this purpose than the whips, as
they would reach a long way, and inflict a sharp puncture with-
out making any noise. The end of the church was occupied by a
guard of soldiers under arms, with fixed bayonets — a precaution
which I suppose experience had taught the necessity of observ-
ing." The spectacle presented of church doors guarded by sol-
diers, and of attendants provided with whips' and goads to prick
the unwilling or ignorant into kneeling, is certainly not a very
edifying spectacle according to later ideas, and savors far too
much of slavery. Indeed, the resemblance was suggested to more
than one eye-witness ; and Perouse finds in the system an unhappy
resemblance to the slave plantations of Santo Domingo. He says :
" With pain we say it, the resemblance is so perfect that we have
seen men and women in irons or in the stocks ; and even the sound
of the lash might have struck our ears, that punishment being
also admitted, though practiced with little severity."

It is not improbable that there were occasional instances in
which undue severity was exercised in punishment, but it is safe
to conclude that cases of actual cruelty were not common. When
such occurred, it is probable that they were the acts of the sub-
ordinate officers of the missions, who were chiefly Indians, and
that they were not sanctioned by the priests. Nevertheless, the
charge was more than once made by the Government authorities.
Offenders were punished by fetters, the whip, and the stocks, and
by imprisonment. Estudillo says that the friars treated the ne-
ophytes as their children, correcting them with words, and for
serious offenses with from twelve to twenty-five lashes. Subse-
quently the latter number was the extreme limit fixed by author-
ity, the implication being that occasionally at least this number
had been exceeded. A deserter, says Langsdorff, was bastinadoed,
and an iron rod a foot or a foot and a half long was fastened to
one of his feet.

From the very first the fathers adopted the policy of compel-
ling the neophytes to work. By this means not only were they
instructed in certain useful occupations and kept out of mischief,
but by the products of their labor the missions were largely sup-

478

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ported and a considerable revenue derived from the sale of such
products to the presidios. All the agricultural and manufactur-
ing work was performed by the Indians. Each mission had a
large flock of sheep, the eleven missions in 1800 possessing eighty-
six thousand. The Indians sheared the wool, and spun and wove
if into blankets and coarse fabrics for clothing. They also made

Fig. 7.— Aboriginal Granaries made op Willow.

soap, and tanned the skins and hides ; they were the shoemakers
and saddlers, the carpenters and blacksmiths.

With respect to the number of hours the neophytes were com-
pelled to labor, there seems to be some doubt. In reply to the
commandant's charge that the neophytes were compelled to work
from six to nine hours a day, with extra work on special occasions

MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 479

as in harvest-time, and that the tasks laid upon both women and
men were too heavy, the fathers asserted that the working hours
were only from four to six hours, and that tasks were light, since
not more than one half the neophytes worked at any one time,
being excused on one pretext or another ; and that even when
they did work they never worked hard. Those familiar with the
Indians will be likely to accept the statements of the mission-
aries, since to induce the average Indian, half or wholly wild,
to overwork himself in steady toil would require a much more
severe regime than there is any evidence was ever employed at
the missions.

Perouse has left us an account of a day^s routine at one of the
missions, and, as the methods varied but little at the several estab-
lishments, it will probably answer for all : " The Indians, as well
as the missionaries, rise with the sun and go to mass, which lasts
about an hour. While this is in progress the breakfast is pre-
pared, the favorite atole or pottage, which consists of barley-flour,
the grain being roasted previously to grinding. It is cooked in
large kettles, and is seasoned with neither salt nor butter. Every
cottage or hut sends for the allowance for all its inmates, which
is carried home in one of their large baskets. Any overplus that
remains is distributed among the children as a reward for good
behavior, particularly for good lessons in the catechism. After
breakfast, which lasts about three quarters of an hour, they pro-

Fig. 8. — Mission Indian Graveyard in Coahuila Valley, Sam Dieuo County.

ceed to their labors, either out of doors or within. At noon the
dinner is announced by a bell, and the Indians quitting their work
go and receive their rations as at breakfast-time. The mess now
served is somewhat of the same kind as the former, onlv varied
by the addition of maize, peas, and beans ; it is named pozzoli.
After dinner they return to their work, from two to four or five ;
afterward they attend evening mass, which lasts nearly an hour,
and the day is finished by another supply of atole, as at breakfast.

480

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In the intervals of the meals and prayers the Indians are of course
variously employed according to their trade or occupation — that is
to say, either in agricultural labors, according to the season, or in
the store-rooms, magazines, and laboratories of the mission. The
women are much occupied in spinning and other little household
labors, the men in combing wool, weaving, melting tallow, etc.
One of the principal occupations of the missions is the manufact-
uring a coarse sort of cloth from the wool of their own sheep for
the purpose of clothing the Indians. The grinding the corn is left
almost entirely to the women, and is still performed by a hand-
mill."

It was a shrewd stroke of policy on the part of the fathers to
allot the laborious work of grinding meal to the women, in whose
hands it had been from time immemorial, since the men would
have stooped to such labor only by dint of the strongest coercion.

civ."/

_ £? •-

Jspi

Fig. 9.— Modern Mission Indian on his Travels.

With reference to the grinding of corn, Langsdorff (1806),
learning that the hand-mill which Perouse, out of the kindness
of his heart, left at the San Carlos Mission (178G), with the view
to lighten the heavy labor of the mealing-stones, was not in exist-
ence, and that no use had been made of it as a model to manufact-
ure others, records the curious fact that in perpetuating the use
of the stone grinding process the fathers were actuated by mo-
tives of policy. To use his own words, "As they have more men

MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 48 1

and women under their care than they could keep constantly-
employed the whole year, if labor were too much facilitated, they
are afraid of making them idle by the introduction of mills."
With the fathers the important question was, not how many con-
verts can be well instructed, and by what method can their prog-
ress to civilization be best facilitated, but how many can be got
together to be baptized and saved from the devil. Not improve-
ment but conversion was their guiding motive.

There is no good reason to believe that the neophytes were not
well fed, though the contrary was asserted by officials inimical to
the mission policy. That their fare lacked variety is probable,
but there was enough of it, and it was served three times a day,
as Beechey tells us, adding that it consisted of " thick gruel made
of wheat, Indian corn, and sometimes acorns, to which at noon is
generally added meat."

That the rule at the missions was not all work and no play is
evidenced by the fact that the neophytes were allowed to indulge
in their own habits and customs so far, says Langsdorff , as " they
are not inconsistent with their new religion. In their dances,
their amusements, their sports, their ornaments, they are freely
indulged." Like other Indians, they were great gamblers ; and,
whether by the tacit permission of the priests or not, they in-
dulged freely in the passion, chiefly by means of games of their
own invention. Drunkenness was more or less common among
them.

The picture of the California neophyte under mission rule thus
presented, while having its dark side, is by no means a revolting
one, and at first sight it might be supposed that the Indians un-
der such a system should be better off and happier than in their
original condition. They were well fed, well clothed, if not well
housed ; their tasks were not heavy, a reasonable amount of amuse-
ment was allowed, and they needed to take no thought for the
morrow, for everything was provided. While it must be evident
at once that such a system could not but prove an absolute failure
as regards the true civilization of the Indian, it does not imme-
diately appear why he should not have been contented with his
lot. If he was not contented, the fault lay with the system or
the Indian, and certainly not with the personal character of the
priests ; for, while there were a few black sheep among them, as a
body they represented a high standard of benevolence and integ-
rity. All who visited the missions in the early days extol the
fathers for the unselfish spirit with which they devoted them-
selves to what they believed to be the welfare of their subjects
and their kind-heartedness. It is doubtful if a purer and more
devoted set of men ever labored for the good of the heathen than
the early missionaries of California. Having power the most

VOL. XXXYII. — 35

482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

absolute, in the main they wielded it with moderation if not
always with discretion ; and, if they placed the spiritual welfare
of their children above their earthly good, it was due to the times
and their calling. It may be added that the same error is too
often to be discerned in missionary systems the world over. In
order to Christianize, the missionary should first educate.

The best proof of the good character and kindness of the
fathers is to be found in the fact that many of the neophytes
cherished an unbounded affection for them, as is attested by
many contemporaries. Nevertheless, from first to last of mission
rule, discontent was rife among the converts, and had the mission
Indian possessed but a spark of the courage which characterizes
our Eastern tribes, mission sway would have been short-lived.
Imagine a body of Iroquois driven to church by the whip, or
forced to kneel by being punched with goads ! The evidences of
discontent appear in the threatened uprising at all the missions
and the actual revolts at several, by the hostile attitude of all the
gentile tribes who were brought into direct or indirect relation
with the missions ; and, above all, by the numerous yearly deser-
tions at every establishment. The causes of trouble are not far
to seek. In the first place it is evident that, call it by what name
you will, the neophytes were subjected to a state of slavery — a
slavery, too, which galled, however mild the type, but from which
they found it exceedingly difficult to escape ; for, in addition to
the aid of the soldiers in hunting renegades, the priests could
usually count upon the assistance of the gentile tribes to return
fugitives. The wild Indians hated the neophytes, and the rule
among them was — once a neophyte always a neophyte. How
strongly linked was the chain which bound the neophyte appears
in the provision that, even when liberty was given him after ten
years' service, a portion of his earnings was still claimed by the
Church. The crops the neophytes were compelled to sow were
sown mainly for the profit of others, the harvests they reaped
were not their own. Thus the usual incentives of toil were
absent. Though professedly regarded as a child by the fathers,
the Indian was virtually a slave.

The sudden breaking up of all tribal ties and the substitution
of arbitrary authority for the independence of the liberty -loving
Indian, together with the complete change of life, must also have
been irksome and productive of unhappiness.

Possibly, however, the most potent of all causes for discontent
is to be ascribed to the fearful mortality which from the very
first raged among the mission folds. Its sources are somewhat
obscure, although it is safe to attribute it largely to what may be
termed unnatural conditions of life. It is stated, and it may be
readily believed, that when visited by even trifling disorders the

MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 483

Indian became despondent, generally refused to be ministered to,
and often died without apparent adequate cause. The Indian
rarely has much faith in civilized medical methods, and when
really sick almost invariably prefers* the ministrations of his own
shaman. Moreover, in the case of the California Indians there is
reason to believe that their want of faith in the skill of the
padres was well founded ; for both Beechey and Langsdorff, dif-
fering from Vancouver, note the astonishing amount of sickness
among the converts, and comment upon the lack of medicines and
the ignorance of the fathers as medical advisers.

Acknowledgments are due to Hubert H. Bancroft, not only for
a mass of hitherto unpublished facts relating to mission history,
but for many statistics of baptisms, births, deaths, etc., which he
has culled from mission archives. These are given by decades
for every mission. From these it appears that during the mission
period, from 1769 to 1834, an interval of sixty-five years, seventy-
nine thousand converts were baptized and sixty-two thousand
deaths were recorded. An analysis of the statistics furnished
by Bancroft reveals the fact that the death-rate among the neo-
phytes was about twice that of the negro in this country, and no
less than four times as great as the death-rate of the white popu-
lation.

At no time would it appear that the number of the births
among the mission converts was equal to the deaths. According
to Bandine, the governor states, in a report for 1800, that the num-
ber of deaths is almost double that of births ; and again, in 1815,
the president of the missions stated that there were three deaths
to two births. It was only by perpetual drafts upon the sur-
rounding tribes that the missions were sustained at all. The
high death-rate and small birth-rate explain what has become of
the California mission Indian. The former can not be attributed
to ordinary diseases, even when is taken into account the despond-
ency of the Indians when sick and the lack of proper medical
treatment. The records show that epidemics of small-pox,
measles, pulmonary diseases, and intermittent fever prevailed at
several periods, and all observers testify to the early introduction
of syphilis among the natives and to its severe ravages. With
this knowledge, perhaps it is not necessary to inquire further.
When are taken into consideration the unnatural herding togeth-
er of large numbers of Indians under the most unsanitary condi-
tions, practically without medicines and without proper medical
attendance, the ordinary effect of disease being heightened by the
dejection of the patients, and then add an epidemic or two of
any of the above diseases, and the probable result may easily be
foretold. The wonder is, not that the Indians died off rapidly, but
that any of them survived.

484

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

How many of them actually did survive can not be told, but
the number was relatively very small. The decree for the dises-
tablishment of the missions was made by the Spanish Cortes in
1813, but it was not carried into final effect until 1834. Between
1820 and 1830 there was a gradual but marked decline in mission
prosperity. In 1834 the twenty-one missions contained fifteen
thousand converts ; but earlier than this the constant drafts upon
the native tribes had about exhausted the supply, and by 1830 no
more converts were to be had within reach of most of the mis-
sions. In fact, most of the natives had been converted out of ex-
istence.

The wealth of the missions was no mean dowry for the surviv-
ing neophytes, for collectively they now contained among other
property one hundred and forty thousand cattle, twelve thousand
horses, and one hundred and thirty thousand sheep ; which totals,
though reduced from previous years, will afford some idea of the
wealth resulting from convert labor and missionary overseeing.
The missions had been more successful in the accumulation of
property than in civilizing the Indians.

As has been stated, the original plan of colonization contem-
plated the Indian as a citizen in individual possession of land,
each with his share of the accumulated mission property, consist-
ing of horses, cattle, sheep, etc. The experiment of giving the
Indian his freedom, so long contemplated, was now (1834) to be
tried. The fathers, facing the inevitable, recommended that a
partial trial be made first, as they believed that the Indian was
not ready for the experiment ; and, indeed, how was it possible
that he should be ? Had the intention from the very first been to
unfit him for independent existence, no better plan could have
been devised than the one actually followed. Educated he was
not, except in the necessary portions of the -ritual of the Catholic
Church, and in so far as a certain number spoke Spanish. Civil-
ized he certainly was not, since his knowledge of the art of hus-
bandry and of the manual arts was only sufficient to enable him
to be a producer under task-masters. He was, in fact, master
scarcely of the rudiments of civilization. In short, at the end of
mission rule, the Indian was really less capable of taking care of
himself than at the beginning : he was found a free man — he was
left a dependent.

Could the provisions of the secularization act have been car-
ried out gradually and honestly by capable officers and with the
co-operation of the missionaries, even then it may be doubted if
the intelligence and civilized attainments of the Indian would
have been equal to the occasion. As it was, political considera-
tions prevented a fair trial of the plan, and the final act in the
mission drama is little else but a history of robbery and oppres-

MENTAL STRAIN. 485

sion, in which the Indian, as usual, was the sufferer. The vast
mission herds and flocks melted away ; the implements which were
intended for the use of the Indian farmers were not, as a rule,
forthcoming ; and, of course, without domestic animals and with-
out the means of tillage, the land was of no use. The Govern-
ment, though possessing no claims whatever upon the mission
property, made frequent demands upon it, and, as Bancroft states,
the period from 1836 to 1842 was one of disaster in mission his-
tory. The downward path of the natives was rapid. Those who
obtained property sold it and converted the proceeds into liquor
and then resorted to stealing, to flight to the wild tribes, or to
return to bondage under the guise of servants in the town or on
the ranches. In the area between the Bay of San Francisco and
Los Angeles there are to-day probably not one hundred Indians.
Of the so-called mission Indians in San Bernardino and Los An-
geles Counties, the last Indian report gives a population of four
thousand three hundred and thirty. But very few of these are
descendants of the mission Indians of Franciscan times.

Such, in brief outline, is the history of the mission Indians.
They lived and died, and their few descendants now drag on a
miserable existence in out-of-the-way places, so poor and barren
as to be beyond the covetousness of the whites, or live dependent
wards of the Government.

-+•+-

MENTAL STRAIN.

By M. CHARLES EICHET.

A BOOK on mental over-pressure has been written by Madame
Manaceine for the protection of the men who are to follow
us. A continuance of the kind of life that is now led in the great
centers of civilization will involve the risk of compromising the
lot of future generations. We are going blindly, groping, toward
a new humanity, to issue from us, of which we can not predict the
character. This humanity is in danger of being a poor affair in-
deed, from whatever point of view we may regard the case, unless
we conduct ourselves better. Madame Manaceme has undertaken
to analyze the present conditions of existence, physiological and
psychological; to exhibit us to ourselves as we are; to draw a
balance-sheet of our mistakes in habits and education, for the
avoidance of a threatened decay. We owe her thanks for her
generous and patient attempt.

We have no right to be unconcerned about the future of man-
kind. We have an account to settle with the men of coming ages.
We must be careful for them. They are worthy of our interest

486

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and forethought, and we should be very culpable if we did not
have some care for the fate of our great-great-grandchildren.

The prominent characteristic of living beings, of whatever
kind, is the tendency to resemble their parents. It is fatal, irre-
sistible, and dominant in all biological laws. By heredity we ac-
quire this or that trait of our fathers, whether it be natural or
acquired in them. The consequence of this fact is momentous,
and has been admirably set forth by M. Marion in his book on
Moral Solidarity. It is, that our children will be the same as we
have been. They are our image and the faithful portrait of our-
selves. A vice acquired by us will become natural with them.
An accidental physical or moral blemish, brought on by our
faults, or errors, or carelessness, will become in them a natural
blemish, and they will transmit it to their descendants.

Unless we are now able to preserve our mental and bodily
forces intact, our grandchildren will be victims to our faults.
They would even have the right to a certain extent to call us to
account for our careless conduct. " What did you do with that
vigorous body and healthy and sturdy mind that were given you
by your parents ? for it is by your fault that we are miserable and
sickly." The importance of the question is thus well established.
Since the future depends on the present, it is no less than a ques-
tion of the future of men. This being fixed, the query arises,
Is there mental overstrain ? A careful examination of the facts
gives us occasion to answer affirmatively. In consequence of the
prodigiously artificial conditions of existence which our advanced
civilization has imposed upon us, we have greatly modified the
habitual and physiological life of our organism. A close study of
the habits of contemporary men, such as the author of this book
has made, will show that nothing is less in agreement with a
healthy vitality than the mode of living of to-day.

From very early years children are shut up in work-rooms for
many hours with tiresome books. They have no sufficient dis-
traction from these books, no better prospect of good to be derived
from them than the hope of some time passing an examination,
complicated, hard, and encyclopedic, of a compass surpassing
that of the knowledge of the wisest man that can be imagined.
Then, in youth there are still examinations, still hours of study,
still books, with only the scantiest provisions for diversion and
recreation, except by resorting to fatiguing dissipations. Too
much civilization, too much mental culture, with too little care
for the physical part. Do we forget that the material structure
is the organ of the mind, and that the mind can not maintain
itself in an enfeebled body ? We ought to realize that sooner or
later the body will avenge itself. We can not break away with
impunity from the laws of sound psychological hygiene. The

MENTAL STRAIN. 487

muscle that is not exercised becomes atrophied ; the muscle that
works too ranch becomes diseased. The mind that is not exer-
cised decays ; the mind that labors too mnch is distorted, and we
reach the sad result of weakening the understanding by the excess
of labor to which we subject it, of destroying the instrument we use.

The philosophers of the eighteenth century extolled what they
vaguely called a return to the state of nature. They imagined
that man was primarily a perfect being, and that, as his intel-
lectual and social growth have gone on, he has correspondingly
degenerated and become vicious. Nature did well, they said, but
civilization made him wicked. The reverse of this, however, is
nearer the truth ; and if we had to look for types of moral perfec-
tion, we should not go among savage peoples. Neither do savages
excel the civilized races in vigor and health of body. But while
we recognize that savages are not men whose bodies and minds
are in a supreme condition of excellence, we have to acknowledge
that civilized man has singularly neglected his body, that vesture
to which it is necessary to attach some importance ; for, without
that vesture, there is no man.

It is indeed hard to maintain the equilibrium of body and
mind. If we should try to lead an exclusively animal life, devoted
to eating, walking, sleeping, and making love, we should find
such existence insipid enough. We could not maintain it if we
would, for there are a thousand features of our present life that
we could not eliminate. But we can and should recommend and
require that a considerable place be given to physical exercise.
English youth, who practice passionately at cricket, cycling, and
canoeing, are at the same time good Hellenists, and often excel-
lent mathematicians. It is all the better for the mind to work, on
condition that the body is also exercised. A sound mind in a
sound body was the ancient maxim of the school of Salerno, and
no better formula has yet been found. Let us, then, have some
regard for the well-being of the body. Let us learn to keep our
muscles in full energy, to breathe the fresh and bracing air of the
mountains and the sea ; or, if these are too far away, the air of
the fields around our towns. By brief distractions of this kind
we will benefit the mind.

The sad thing about the matter is, that it is not so much intel-
lectual labor, of which the mind is capable of doing a great deal,
as irregularities in that labor, that do the harm. We are satisfied
that the great workers, who have performed grand achievements
by genius or patience, owe their triumph less to a temporary ex-
cess of labor, than to continuous, regular, persevering work,*

* Littre, one of the greatest workers that ever were, passed his whole day out of doors,
and never began to work till evening, at half-past seven, after dinner, and then stayed in
his library, bent over his books, without any relief, till about four o'clock in the morning.

488 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

interrupted by regular and systematic recreations. Above all —
and it is the most important point — it is necessary to abstain from
excess. Moderation, the just mean, which, has been so frequently
and so foolishly ridiculed, is in this master, as in many others,
true and practical wisdom. Not to force children to excessive
work in school, to be able to take rest, to limit our ambition and
desires as much as possible, to live for a few hours a day a purely
animal existence, are what we ought all to try to do ; and we
should be recompensed for it very quickly by better moral and
physical health. The value of that boon can not be overestimated.
If we represent the coefficient of happiness by 100, 95 of the marks
should go to health, while fortune and fame would only deserve
the other 5. The affair is one of habits rather than of regulation,
and legislation can have little effect upon it. Our duty is clear.
The first thing is to reform the education of children and youth.
Everybody should be made to understand that mental labor can
be good only as it is moderate and accompanied by bodily exer-
cise. Bodily activity should be encouraged, class-hours dimin-
ished, and play-hours increased. All this appears simple enough,
and easy, for everybody is at bottom agreed upon it. They all
preach moderation, and it has a fine sound. But is it ever easy
to be moderate — that is, wise ?

Civilization has certainly enormously extended our knowledge
of every kind. A well-informed man to-day must know some
three times as much as he would have had to know two hundred
years ago ; and in another hundred years he will have to know as
much more. But there is a limit to our mental capacity. We
must learn to restrain ourselves. Instead of being encyclopedists,
we shall have to be specialists ; and, even in our specialty, will
have to moderate our studies. We must never let physical needs —
the open air, exercise, and sleep — be sacrificed to the demands of
school examinations or the life of society.

We will end with a trite quotation. But trite quotations are
the best, because they recall uncontested and incontestable truths.
" Man," says Pascal, " is neither an angel nor beast." We shall
have to submit to being, partly at least, animals, and conse-
quently to take care of the animal which is half and perhaps a
little more than half of ourselves. If the animal suffers, the angel
will be ill. The future is for the races that do not sacrifice their
bodies. — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Re-
vue Scientifique.

As he lived in the same house with M. Barthelemy-Saint-Hilaire, he sometimes, when about
to retire, met his friend going to work ; for M. Barthelemy-Saint-Hilaire was accustomed to
begin at daylight. M. Littre led this laborious life, with inexorable regularity, for more
than fifty years.

ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS OF HELL. 489
ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS OF HELL.

By FEEDEEIK A. FEENALD.

THE idea of a place for tlie punishment after death of wicked
men is found in most, though not all, of the religions of the
present time and of antiquity. According to some beliefs, the
punishment is to last forever ; according to others, the torments
are to continue only for a time, and are to result in purifying the
imprisoned souls and fitting them for heaven. The Roman Cath-
olic religion has both a purgatory, or place of temporary torment,
and a hell, 'which is everlasting. No idea of penalty was connect-
ed with the classic hades — it was simply an under-world where
dwelt all those who had the misfortune to be dead, irrespective of
their conduct in life. The word comes from the Greek adjective
'Aifys, meaning unseen. The English word hell had also origi-
nally the same meaning. It is derived from the Teutonic base
lial, whence also the Anglo-Saxon Tielan, to hide, "so that the
original sense is the hidden or unseen place " (Skeat).

The conception of future existence which lays claim to the
greatest antiquity is that of the ancient Egyptians. According
to the Egyptian belief, if the great judgment resulted adversely,
" the condemned soul is either scourged back to the earth straight-
way, to live again in the form of a vile animal, as some of the
emblems appear to denote ; or plunged into the tortures of a hor-
rid hell of fire and devils below, as numerous engravings set forth ;
or driven into the atmosphere, to be vexed and tossed by tem-
pests, violently whirled in blasts and clouds, till its sins are ex-
piated, and another probation granted through a renewed exist-
ence in human form," * In his description of the Ritual of the
Dead, Renouf f mentions chapters in that book intended to secure
the soul against dangers in the nether world, such as having his
head cut off, dying the second death, suffering corruption, being
turned away from his house, going to the nemmat (an infernal
block for the execution of the wicked), going headlong into the
cherti-nutar, and eating or drinking filth. Various divinities are
invoked to save the soul from that god who feeds upon the ac-
cursed, from that god, who seizes upon souls, devours hearts, and
feeds upon carcasses. These perils which the good escape, says
Renouf, sufficiently show the fate which the wicked must expect.
From Persia, also, we get a religion of great antiquity — Zoro-
astrianism — which, in a modified form, is held to-day by the small

* William E. Alger, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, tenth edition,
1878, p. 103.

f The Religion of Ancient Egypt.

49o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

body of Parsis still to be found in Persia and India. According
to the Parsi belief, the good after death pass safely over the bridge
Chinevat, which stretches from Mount Alborj up to Garotman,
the blissful realm of Ormuzd;' while the wicked fall from the
bridge into the Gulf of Duzahk, which yawns beneath, where they
are tormented by dsevas. At the end of the world, a comet will
fall upon the earth, causing a vast conflagration, by which the
whole earth will be melted, and the molten stream will pour down
into Duzahk, carrying with it the sinners who are on earth at the
time. Here they and the earlier comers, except those already
redeemed by the prayers of friends, will burn for three days
and nights and then thus purified will be received into heaven.
Afterward all the dsevas, and even the arch-fiend Ahriman, will
have their evil burned away and will also enter the abode of
light.

The Laws of Manu, one of the early sacred books of Brahman-
ism, names twenty-one hells. Punishments for different sins are,
to be reborn into one of these hells, or to return to earth as a beg-
gar, cripple, or leper, or in the form of a rat, a sna^e, or a louse,
the penalty being in each case appropriate to the crime. Pun-
ishment need not be endless for any one, as each successive life
is a new probation, in which righteousness wins admission to a
higher stage of existence.

In Buddhism, which is one of the religions of China, and the
state religion of Thibet and other countries of eastern Asia, future
punishment is provided for in a great hell, comprising a system
of one hundred and thirty-six lesser hells. The torments of these
hells are depicted in many Buddhist books and paintings, with
much detail and vividness.

The punishments recorded in the Jade Record and other works on future tor-
ment give frightful pictures of the torture of bad men.; in many Buddhist temples
these are represented by small figures, and in others by life-size images. Men are
ground to powder, the dust becoming ants, fleas, and lice; pestled in a mortar,
and mashed to jelly in iron mortars ; chopped in slices with a knife and hacked to
pieces with hatchets; the tongue of deceit and lying pulled out; sawn asunder;
the bones and flesh crushed by falling mountains; women cast into a lake of blood ;
crossing the narrow bridge and falling among fiery serpents; the caldron of oil
for those who waste rice ; drunkards with the cangue and standing on the hands ;
quack doctors with hands and feet tied, and a large stone on the back, the fierce
judge administering hot drinks; a man going into the mill head foremost, with
the legs sticking out, and a dog coming out below in the transmigration; a head-
less ghost pulling his murderer to judgment ; disemboweled, tossed on a hill of
knives ; cast on a lake of ice ; chained to a red-hot cylinder ; iron dungeon, dark-
ness within and fire without; lashed with burning iron wires; when thirsty,
drinking molten iron; eating red-hot iron balls ; besides, there is the freezing hell,
the burning hell, and the hell of bubbling filth.*

*

The Dragon, Image, and Demon, by the Rev. Hampden C. Du Bose, pp. 311-313.

ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS OF HELL. 491

As for the two other religions of China, Confucianism tells
nothing whatever about punishment after this life, while Taouism
has a theory of retribution much like that of Brahmanism.

The Jews in Old Testament times had no idea of a hell. There
is no mention of punishment after death in the teachings of
Moses, nor is this doctrine taught by the prophets. The word
slieol, which is translated by hell in the King James version' of
the Bible, meant simply the abode of the dead, and corresponded
to the Greek hades, used in the ISTew Testament and other Greek
writings. Gloomy and repulsive ideas were associated with sheol,
similar to those we connect with death and the grave, but it was
the destination of good and bad alike, and not a place of punish-
ment.* The troubles which the wicked and the enemies of the
Jews were threatened with by the prophets pertained to this
world. They were pain, disease, loss of possessions and kindred,
hostility of neighbors, death, and indignities to the dead body.
The idea of sheol first became modified after the Persian captivity.
The place was divided into two parts, which were separated only
by the width of a thread. One of these divisions was for the
good, awaiting resurrection, and was called Paradise ; the other, set
apart for the wicked, was called Gehenna. This latter designa-
tion means " the valley of the son of Hinnom," and was originally
the name of a gorge outside of Jerusalem in which the Jews had
practiced the fiery worship of Moloch, and where afterward offal
from the city and the bodies of criminals were thrown, to be con-
sumed by the fires always kept burning there. The idea of Ge-
henna as a place of future punishment had appeared in rabbini-
cal theology and become quite detailed a century or more before
Christ. Hell was represented as having special apartments for
different kinds of torment. One place, from its darkness, was
called " Night of Horrors." The fire of Gehenna was said to have
been kindled on the evening of the first Sabbath, and would never
be extinguished, f A Talmudic writer, quoted by Alger, J says :
" There are in hell seven abodes, in each abode seven thousand
caverns, in each cavern seven thousand clefts, in each cleft seven
thousand scorpions; each scorpion has seven limbs, and on each
limb are seven thousand barrels of gall. There are also in hell
seven rivers of rankest poison, so deadly that if one touches it lie
bursts."

At the coming of Christ, there were three chief sects among
the Jews. The Pharisees, who were by far the most numerous,
believed that sinners were kept forever in a prison in the under-
world ; the Essenes believed that the vicious suffered eternal pun-

* Schaff-Herzog, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, article Hell.

% Basnage, History of the Jews, lib. iv, cap. 30. f Future Life, p. 509.

492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ishment in a dark, cold place ; and the Saddncees thought that the
soul died with the body. The first threats of hell in the Scriptures
occur in the teachings of Jesus. There are three words in the
New Testament which were translated by hell in the King James
Bible : hades, meaning the same as elsewhere in Greek literature ;
Gehenna, which was properly the hell of Hebrew conception, and
is uniformly so rendered in the revised version ; and Tartarus,
used only once (2 Peter, iii, 4), which is the regular Greek word for
the place of punishment after death.* The place of future pun-
ishment represented in Christ's teachings is a region of fire :
" Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the
hell of fire " (Matt, v, 22, revised version) ; the fire is to be eter-
nal and unquenchable : " It is good for thee to enter into life
maimed, rather than having thy two hands to go into hell, into the
unquenchable fire, . . . where their worm dieth not, and the fire
is not quenched" (Mark ix, 43, 48; see also Matt, xviii, 8).
In Revelation " St. John informs us what fuel is to support the
unquenchable fire: "If any man worshipeth the beast and his
image, ... he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the
presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb :
and the smoke of their torment goeth up forever and ever ; and
they have no rest day and night" (Rev. xiv, 9-11). In another
passage it is revealed concerning various kinds of sinners that
" their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brim-
stone : which is the second death " (Rev. xxi, 8). This doctrine was
intended to last unchanged for all time, for we find in the last
chapter the statement that, if any man shall add to or take from
the words of this book, he shall suffer all the torments and lose
all the rewards which are written in this prophecy (Rev. xxii,
18, 19).

The religion of Islam is characterized by lack of originality,
and the Mohammedan hell contains nothing but easily made va-
riations of the Gehenna of the Jews. To the man that disobeys
the precepts of the Koran it is promised that " God shall cast him
into hell-fire ; he shall remain therein forever." f Further it is
written : " Verily, those who disbelieve our signs, we will surely
cast to be broiled in hell-fire ; so often as their skins shall be well
burned, we will give them other skins in exchange, that they may
taste the sharper torment, for God is mighty and wise " (chapter
iv). The physical pain of fire, applied in various ways, is also the
staple of the following torments : " They who believe not shall
have garments of fire fitted to them ; boiling water shall be poured
on their heads ; their bowels shall be dissolved thereby, and also
their skins ; and they shall be beaten with maces of iron " (chap-

* Schaff-Herzog, ibid., idem. f The Koran, Sale's translation, chapter iv.

ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS OF HELL. 493

ter xxii). Those men who are sent to the left hand on the judg-
ment-day " shall dwell amid burning winds and scalding water,
under the shade of a black smoke, neither cool nor agreeable."
Ye " shall surely eat of the fruit of the tree of al-Zakhum* and
shall fill your bellies therewith ; and ye shall drink there only
boiling water."

In the Greek mythology, which was copied by the Romans, the
place of future punishment is called Tartarus. The universe is
represented in the poetry of Homer and Hesiod as a hollow globe,
divided by the flat earth. In the top of the upper hemisphere was
Olympus, the home of the gods ; in the hemisphere beneath the
earth was hades, the abode of all the dead ; and in its lowest depths
was Tartarus. An anvil would be nine days and nights in falling
from Olympus to the earth ; nine days and nights from the earth
to the bottom of Tartarus. " Around it, moreover, a brazen fence
has been forged ; and about it Night is poured in three rows." \ In
Tartarus there is darkness, and the air has no motion. It was at
this time regarded as the place of punishment for the Titans, who
had rebelled against the powers of Olympus. Later the poets
began to speak of mortals who had offended the gods, or had
been unjust to their fellow-men, being sent there after death.
Prometheus, who was guilty of overreaching Zeus, was punished
by being chained to a rock, part of the time on earth and part in
Tartarus. An eagle devoured his liver every day, and it was re-
newed every night. \ Ixion, who had been treacherous to Zeus,
was chained by the hands and feet to a wheel, which is described
as winged or fiery, and said to have rolled perpetually in the air.
He is further said to have been scourged and compelled to ex-
claim, u Benefactors should be honored." J

Sisyphus is represented by different authors as guilty of
treachery of various kinds. "His wickedness during life was
severely punished in the lower world, where he had to roll up
hill a huge marble block, which, as soon as it reached the top,
always rolled down again." \ Tantalus was a wealthy king, who
divulged the secrets of Zeus. " The gods punished him by placing
him in the nether world in the midst of a lake, but rendering it
impossible for him to drink when he was thirsty, the water always
withdrawing when he stooped. Branches laden with fruit, more-
over, hung over his head, but when he stretched out his hand to
reach the fruit the branches withdrew. Over his head there was
suspended a huge rock, ever threatening to crush him." % The
Danaides, or fifty daughters of Danaus, all but one of whom in

* A thorny tree with a fruit like an almond, but extremely bitter (Sale).

f Hesiod, Theogony.

\ Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

494 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

obedience to their father killed their husbands on their wedding-
night, were punished in Tartarus by being compelled everlast-
ingly to pour water into a sieve..

The idea of Tartarus becomes more definite in later classical
writings. Hades was divided into Elysium, or the region of dawn,
which was the abode of the good, and Tartarus, the region of
night, which was the destination of the wicked. Virgil describes
Tartarus in telling of the descent of JEneas to the under- world to
visit his father (iEneid, vi, 548-627). It is in the form of a prison,
inclosed with a triple wall. Phlegethon, a flaming torrent, rushes
by the walls, whirling great rocks along in its course. The huge
gate is swung between columns of adamant and from an iron
tower. Tisiphone, with her bloody robe tucked up around her,
watches the vestibule night and day. The great chasm is twice
as deep as from earth up to heaven. Groans are heard issuing
from the place, and the strokes of cruel lashes, the grating of iron,
and the clanking of chains. Khadanianthus judges the spirits on
their arrival, and they are then turned over to the Furies for ap-
propriate punishments, of which the torments of Ixion, Sisyphus,
and a few others are given as examples.

According to the Scandinavian mythology, all who die bravely
in battle are snatched away to Valhalla, Odin's magnificent ban-
quet-hall in the sky. Those who, after lives of ignoble labor or
inglorious ease, die of sickness, descend to a cold and dismal
cavern beneath the ground, called Mflheim — i. e., the mist-world.
This abode is ruled by the goddess of death, whose name is Hel.
The place of torment for reprobates is Nastrond, deeper under-
ground than Niflheim, and far toward the frigid north. This grim
prison is described in the following passage from the Prose Edda,
written in Iceland in the thirteenth century : " In Nastrond there
is a vast and direful structure with doors that face the north. It
is formed entirely of the backs of serpents, wattled together like
wicker-work. But the serpents' heads are turned toward the in-
side of the hall, and continually vomit forth floods of venom, in
which wade all those who commit murder or who forswear them-
selves." * According to the Voluspa, a poem of earlier date, the
evil-doers in Nastrond are also gnawed by the dragon Nidhogg.

The fathers of the Christian Church generally taught the exist-
ence of a hell of material fire and brimstone. Alger f gives as
their belief that at the resurrection the damned " were to be ban-
ished forever to a fiery hell in the center of the earth, there to
endure uncomprehended agonies, both physical and spiritual,
without any respite, without any end." The strict literality with
which these doctrines were held is strikingly shown in Jerome's

* Prose Edda, chapter lii. \ Future Life, p. 402.

ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS OF HELL. 495

artless question : " If the dead be not raised with flesh and bones,
how can the damned, after the judgment, gnash their teeth in
hell ? " " Origen, who was a Platonist, and a heretic on many
points," says Alger,* "was severely condemned for saying that
the fire of hell was inward and of the conscience rather than out-
ward and of the body." Tertullian says, " The damned burn
eternally without consuming, as the volcanoes, which are vents
from the stored subterranean fire of hell, burn forever without
wasting."! These words point also to the belief, noted above,
that hell was located under the earth.

In the middle ages the Christian conception of hell became
more detailed and more terrible. The details can be found not
only in the books of the period, but they were favorite subjects
for miracle-plays and for works of art, especially for the pict-
ures, carvings, and painted windows with which cathedrals were
adorned. The monks of the period produced an extensive litera-
ture of visions describing the torments of hell. In these visions,
according to Lecky —

The devil was represented bound by red-hot chains on a burning gridiron in
the center of hell. The screams of his never-ending agony made its rafters to
resound ; but his hands were free, and with these he seized the lost souls, crushed
them like grapes against his teeth, and then drew them by his breath down the
fiery cavern of his throat. Demons with hooks of red-hot iron plunged souls
alternately into fire and ice. Some of the lost were hung up by their tongues,
others were sawn asunder, others gnawed by serpents, others beaten together on
an anvil and welded into a single mass, others boiled and then strained through
a cloth, others twined in the embraces of demons whose limbs were of flame.
The fire of earth, it was said, was but a picture of that of hell. The latter was
so immeasurably more intense that it alone could be called real. \

By far the most elaborate description of the punishments of
sinners which the middle ages produced is that of Dante, whose
Inferno combines the torments of the classical Tartarus and the
horrors of the Christian hell. In this poem, which was written
about 1300, the author represents himself as being conducted
through the infernal regions by Virgil. Within the gates of hell,
but before crossing the river Acheron, the visitors found those
who had lived " withouten infamy or praise," and angels who had
been neither faithful nor rebellious, but only selfish. They " were
naked and were stung exceedingly by gad-flies and by hornets
that were there." # Beyond Acheron were found the great ones
of old, whose sin was lack of baptism. These were " only so far
punished that without hope we live on in desire" (iv, 41, 42).
In the third circle, rain, snow, and hail constantly poured down

* Future Life, p. 516. f Apologia, cap. 47, 48.
\ History of European Morals, vol. ii, pp. 235, 236.

# Divine Comedy : Inferno, Canto III, lines 65, 66, Longfellow's translation.

496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

upon the miry earth (vi, 10-12) — a truly dismal abode. Further
on a group of the damned are confined in tombs made as hot by
flames as iron need be for any art. Whenever a soul is cast into
another circle it sprouts like a seed, and grows into a tree. The
Harpies then cause it pain by feeding upon its leaves (xiii, 99-102).
Soon a drove of sinners was met, followed by " horned demons,
with great scourges, who cruelly were beating them behind"
(xviii, 35, 36). In one place were a lot of holes in the rocky floor,
in each of which a transgressor was stuck head downward, and
as far as the calf, while the soles of his feet were frying with a
greasy flame (xix, 13-30). In another place was a lake of boiling
pitch in which souls were immersed, while demons stood round
and kept them under the surface with gaffs (xxi, 16-57). Another
group of lost ones had their hands bound with serpents, which
were also biting and stinging their bodies (xxiv, 94-96). Others
were driven round a ring, where each time they passed a devil
would cut them open so that their bowels hung out, and the
wound would close again while they were making the next
circuit (xxviii, 22-42). In one of the inner circles, if from the
hospitals, " all the diseases in one moat were gathered, such was
it here, and such a stench came from it, as from putrescent limbs
is wont to issue" (xxix, 49-51). Its denizens were scratching
scabs from their sores as a knife takes the scales off a fish.

The punishments increase in severity with the descent to the
inner and smaller circles of the vast amphitheatre. In the ninth
and last circle, where traitors are punished, there is an ice-bound
lake, into which the perfidious ones are frozen. " The emperor of
the kingdom dolorous from his mid-breast forth issued from the
ice." He is supergigantic in size, and has three faces on his head.
In each mouth he crunches a sinner, but " To him in front the
biting was as naught unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine
utterly stripped of all the skin remained " (xxxiv, 55-60). The
three arch-traitors distinguished by these supreme torments were
Brutus, Cassius, and, the one in front, Judas.

The reformers made little change in the mediseval concep-
tion of hell. Calvin Writes: "Forever harassed by a dreadful
tempest, they shall feel themselves torn asunder by an angry
God and transfixed and penetrated by mortal stings, terrified by
the thunderbolts of God, and broken by the weight of his hand,
so that to sink into any gulfs would be more tolerable than to
stand for a moment in these terrors."

The characteristic austerity of the Puritans finds free scope in
the depiction of hell's torments. Their great poet Milton de-
scribes the place in the first and second books of Paradise Lost.
Satan and his host are cast into it " there to dwell in adamantine
chains and penal fire."

ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS OF HELL. 497

" A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed ; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible " (i, 61-63).

It is swept by " a fiery deluge, fed with ever-burning sulphur nil-
consumed." Besides a burning lake, it contains land or "firm
brimstone " — that is, " if it were land that ever burned with solid,
as the lake with liquid fire." From a hill on this land is dug ore
of gold and other metals, which furnish the building materials
for the magnificent palace Pandemonium, the high capital of
Satan and his peers. In the second book are mentioned " four
infernal rivers, that disgorge into the burning lake their baleful
streams." Far away was Lethe, the river of oblivion, and " beyond
this flood a frozen continent lies dark and wild, beat with per-
petual storms of whirlwind and dire hail." Thither at intervals
all the damned are brought to be tormented by extremes of heat
and cold (ii, 597-601). When Satan, starting out to discover the
earth, reaches the bounds of hell, he finds " thrice threefold the
gates — three folds were brass, three iron, three of adamantine
rock ; impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, yet unconsumed."
The teaching of the Church of England in Milton's time did
not differ much from that of the Dissenters. Jeremy Taylor
devotes two chapters to deliberately recounting the most atrocious
cruelties recorded in history, and asserts that they will be sur-
passed by the tortures in store for the wicked. A few instances
will suffice :

Alexander, the son of Hyrcanus, caused eight hundred to be crucified, and
while they were yet alive caused their wives and children to be murdered before
their eyes, that so they might not die once, but many deaths. This rigor shall
not be wanting in hell. . . . Mezentius tied a living body to the dead until the
putrefied exhalations of the dead had killed the living. . . . What is this in respect
of hell, when each body of the damned is more loathsome and unsavory than a
million of dead dogs ? . , . We are amazed to think of the inhumanity of Phalaris,
who roasted men alive in his brazen bull. That was a joy in respect of that fire
of hell. . . . The torment . . . comprises as many torments as the body of man
has joints, sinews, arteries, etc., being caused by that penetrating and real fire of
which this temporal fire is but a painted fire.*

The Puritans in America were no less emphatic in their depic-
tions of hell than the parent stock in England. Many are the
passages in the sermons of that stanch New England divine,
Jonathan Edwards, devoted to setting forth the agonies of eternal
punishment. The following extract is typical not only of Ed-
wards, but also of his contemporaries :

Imagine yourself to be cast into a fiery oven, or a great furnace, where your
pain would be as much greater than that occasioned by accidentally touching a

* Contemplations on the State of Man, Book II, chapters vi, vii.
vol. xxxvii. — 36

498 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

coal of fire as the heat is greater. Imagine also that your body were to lie there
for a quarter of an hour, full of fire, and all the while full of quick sense; what
horror would you feel at the entrance of such a furnace ! and how long would
that quarter of an hour seem to you ! And, after you had endured it for one
minute, how overbearing would it be to you to think that you had to endure it
the other fourteen ! But what would be the effect on your soul if you knew you
must lie there, enduring that torment to the full, for twenty-four hours! And
how much greater would be the effect if you knew you must endure it for a whole
year ! And how vastly greater still if you knew you must endure it for a thou-
sand years ! Oh, then, how would your hearts sink if you knew that you must
bear it for ever and ever ! — that there would be no end ! — that, after millions of
millions of ages, your torment would be no nearer to an end, and that you never,
never should be delivered ! But your torment in hell will be immensely greater
than this illustration represents.*

Among primitive peoples in various parts of the world, a
variety of notions in regard to future punishment have pre-
vailed. The African tribes which have not been affected by
Mohammedan or Christian influence, although they may believe
in future rewards and punishments, generally have no idea of
definite places for heaven and hell. The Kamtchadales also have
no hell. Of the American peoples, the ancient Mexicans affirmed
that the wicked went to Mictlan, a dismal cavern within the
earth. The Peruvian hell was also in the earth, and there the
reprobate must endure centuries of toil and anguish. The Eskimo
believe that hell is among the rocks, ice, monsters, and chilling
waters of the sea. All souls must go down into it, but the good
pass deeper to a more peaceful abode. The American Indians
have no idea of a place of future torment except where it has
been derived from white missionaries. " The typical belief of the
tribes of the United States," says Brinton,f " was well expressed
in the reply of Esau Hajo, great medal chief and speaker for the
Creek Nation in the National Council, to the question, Do the red
people believe in a future state of rewards and punishments ?
' We have an opinion that those who have behaved well are taken
under the care of Esaugetuh Emisee, and assisted ; and that those
who have behaved ill are left to shift for themselves ; and that
there is no other punishment/ "

No writer since ancient Egyptian times has given such a de-
tailed theory of the future life as Swedenborg. In his book on
Heaven and Hell, originally published in 1758, he says that pun-
ishments in hell are manifold ; the more cunning and malignant
of the damned domineer over the simpler. The faces of those in
hell are deathly and dreadful : some are black, some fiery, some
disfigured with pimples, warts, and ulcers; some have no face,
only a hairy or bony surface. The " infernal heat is turned into

* Jonathan Edwards's Works, vol. vi, p. 99. f The Myths of the New World.

ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS OF HELL. 499

intense cold when heat from heaven flows in, and then the infernal
inhabitants shiver like those who are seized with a cold fever."
The hells are everywhere — under mountains, rocks, plains, and
valleys. In the milder hells there appear to be cities of rude
huts ; in the huts are infernal spirits, engaged in continual quar-
rels, enmities, blows, and fightings ; in the streets and lanes rob-
beries and depredations are committed. In other hells there are
forests, or deserts, or ragged rocks, or ruins as of burned cities.

Christian preachers and writers of the present time do not
agree as to the nature of heir's torments. Many of them are
coming to attach a figurative meaning to the biblical descrip-
tions of hell, and seem as loath as their predecessors were eager
to dwell upon the subject. In the Fortnightly Review for Janu-
ary, 1876, Lionel A. Tollemache says, " The wiser among us are
seeking to drop hell out of the Bible as quietly, and about as logi-
cally, as we already contrive to disregard the plain texts forbid-
ding Christians to go to law, and Christian women to plait their
hair." Canon Farrar, in a series of sermons, has emphatically
declared his disbelief in a hell of material and everlasting fire.

That widely known book Letters from Hell describes the
place of torment as a country where the wicked are impelled to
continually follow the same pursuits as in life ; whatever they
wish for is at once provided, amusements of all sorts are indulged
in, but everything is empty and unreal, they are possessed by a
constant hunger for pleasure which is never satisfied, tormented
by memories of their lives on earth, driven from one thing to an-
other to escape threatened misery, always on the verge of despair,
and never by their feverish activity achieving even f orgetfulness.

The Roman Catholic Church now, as always, holds that there
are material torments in hell. The idea of hell which prevailed
in Europe in the middle ages was that taught by the Catholic
Church, which was practically the only form of Christianity at
that time. An extremely realistic picture of hell is drawn in a
Catholic tract, by the Rev. J. Furniss, C. S. S. R., published not
long ago, with high ecclesiastical indorsement, " for children and
young persons" in England and America. It is entitled The
Sight of Hell, and describes little children turning and twisting
in red-hot ovens, and screaming to come out.

The following statement of Catholic doctrine concerning hell
is abridged from A Catholic Dictionary, by Addis and Arnold.
Hell may be defined as the place and state in which the devils
and such human beings as die in enmity with God suffer eternal
torments. Theologians divide the punishments of the damned
into that of loss and that of sense. The former is the deprivation
of the vision of God. The devils and disembodied spirits of the
damned suffer from material fire. The lost are afflicted also by

5oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" the worm which never dies " — i. e., by the anguish of remorse ;
they are doomed to endure the society of others reprobate like
themselves, and they know that all hope is over. After the resur-
rection the body also is subject to torment. It is certain that hell
is a definite place, but uncertain where. Many of the fathers and
theologians have held that it is in the center of the earth. Origen
and some who followed him have thought that the punishment
of the wicked would not be eternal, but a council has defined that
the punishment of hell lasts forever.

Mr. C. H. Spurgeon, the celebrated English Baptist, says, in a
sermon on The Resurrection of the Dead :

There is a real fire in hell — a fire exactly like that which we have on earth,
except that it will torture without consuming. When thou diest thy soul will be
tormented alone in hell ; but at the day of judgment thy body shall join thy
soul, and then thou wilt have twin hells, body and soul together, each brimful of
pain ; thy soul sweating in its inmost pores drops of blood, and thy body, from
head to foot, suffused with agony; not only conscience, judgment, memory, all
tormented, but thy head tormented with racking pain, thine eyes starting from
their sockets with sights of blood and woe; thine ears tormented with horrid
noises ; thy heart beating high with fever ; thy pulse rattling at an enormous rate
in agony; thy limbs cracking in the fire, and yet unburned; thyself put in a
vessel of hot oil, pained, yet undestroyed.

Heine's Reisebilder contains a witty caricature of the ortho-
dox hell, in which his satirical genius has free play.

The Presbyterian Confession of Faith teaches that the punish-
ment of sin shall be separation from God, " and most grievous
torments of soul and body, without intermission, in hell-fire for-
ever."

That Unknown Country, a large octavo volume published in
1889, contains fifty chapters, each contributed by a living theo-
logian as his views concerning punishment after death. These
statements contain little description of the torments of hell ; they
are devoted mainly to discussing whether or no any of the con-
demned can shorten their term of punishment by repentance after
death, and whether hell may not end with either the final salva-
tion or annihilation of all the wicked. In this book Bishop Fow-
ler, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, says that the popular
conception of hell should be freed from the physical flames to be
correct. Rev. Chauncey Giles (Swedenborgian) compares hell to
an asylum for the incurably insane. Rev. Edward Everett Hale
says, " No Unitarian supposes that life after death is limited in
any way, so that one place in the universe can be mapped off as
heaven, and another place mapped off as hell." Dr. A. A. Miner
(Universalist) maintains that "punishment after death for the
sins of this life is not taught in the Word of God." C. W. Pritch-
ard, minister in the Friends' Church, Chicago, says, " Heaven is

THE DISCOVERY OF INVISIBLE WORLDS. 501

a place, and hades is a place" and calls the modern idea of hell
a "mystical, superspiritual view." Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn
(Presbyterian), asks : " What is the nse of explaining away a fur-
nace of fire, when God says there is one ? . . . I am not opposed
to saying it may be figurative ; but I know very well that if it is
not fire it is something as severe as fire. . . . God says it is fire,
and a furnace of fire. Besides that, I do not know that it is figu-
rative. It may be literal. The Bible sixteen times says it is fire."
Dr. H. W. Thomas, pastor of the People's Church, Chicago, says
that there is now a tacit admission on the part of even the ortho-
dox churches that " the teachings of the past on this subject are
not wholly true, and that, in some respects at least, they have to
be modified or abandoned."

The proprietor of a great foundry in Germany," says Alger,
while he talked one day with a workman who was feeding a
furnace, accidentally stepped back, and fell headlong into a vat
of molten iron. The thought of what happened then horrifies
the imagination. Yet it was all over in two or three seconds.
Multiply the individual instance by unnumbered millions, stretch
the agony to temporal infinity, and we confront the orthodox idea
of hell." * Mr. Alger maintains that the doctrine of a local hell,
a guarded and smoking dungeon of the damned, ought not to be
regarded as a truth contained in a revelation from God, because
it is plainly proved by historic evidence to be a part of the my-
thology of the world, a natural product of the poetic imagina-
tion of ignorant and superstitious men.f

-*-♦-♦-

THE DISCOVERY OF INVISIBLE WORLDS.

By Dr. KLEIN.

SOME discoveries have very recently been made in the starry
heavens which must be regarded, not only in what they are
of themselves, but also on account of the way in which they
were made, as among the most interesting of scientific events. It
seems, in fact, like a contradiction to say that astronomers in
Europe and America have been able to determine the velocity of
motion, size, and weight of stars that are not visible in any tele-
scope, and which no telescope to be made in the future, no matter
how great its power may be, will be able to show. The new sci-
ence also has the peculiar property that it recognizes mutual rela-
tions between objects apparently lying far from one another, con-
nects with one another phenomena which appear to have no com-

* Future Life, preface to the tenth edition. f Future Life, p. 699.

5o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mon measure, and draws fine lines of connection between earth
and sky. One of these lines was drawn some thirty years ago in
spectrum analysis ; and by its aid man has risen in mind to remote
worlds, and has sounded their physical and chemical constitution.
The same spectrum analysis has now again celebrated a great
triumph — a victory which might have been predicted, but the
time for which did not seem yet to have come.

Every one is acquainted with the spectrum which we see when a
ray of sunlight coming through a narrow opening passes through
a prism. With the aid of suitable instruments there can also be
seen in this spectrum a considerable number of dark cross-lines ;
and science has shown that these lines are caused by the presence
of certain simple bodies or elements, including iron, hydrogen, so-
dium, etc. When we examine the light of the stars through those
instruments, we shall perceive that in their spectrums too the dark
lines denoting these elements are present. On this is founded the
chemistry of the stars, for which we are wholly indebted to spec-
trum analysis. The situation of the dark lines in the spectrum is
unchangeable, or else we would not be able to conclude from it
respecting the elements represented there. The unchangeable
character persists, however, only when the source of light is at rest
as to the observer. If the shining body we are regarding is going
away from us very rapidly, the dark lines incline to shift them-
selves slightly toward the red end of the spectrum ; while, if it is
approaching us with great rapidity, they slide over toward the
violet. Without stopping to explain the causes of the shifting, we
may remark that it is very small even with the greatest velocities.
Former observers could hardly recognize it with certainty, because
their instruments were not delicate enough to reveal such slight
changes. Gradually makers have succeeded in constructing in-
struments that will show the changes with certainty. At the
Greenwich Observatory, where observations of this kind have
been carried on for several years, the motions in space of several
stars have been ascertained with the help of the spectroscope.
It has thus been found that the clear-shining Capella is receding
from the earth at the rate of twenty-seven English miles a second,
and that the brilliant star Vega in Lyra is approaching us at the
rate of thirty-four miles a second. As such observations deal
with infinitesimally small magnitudes, they are necessarily very
difficult and precarious. It has been found, by investigations at
the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam, that much more cer-
tain results are obtained if the spectrums of the stars are photo-
graphed and the measurements of the lines are made afterward
on the pictures. These results have been confirmed by spectro-
photographic researches at the Cambridge Observatory in North
America ; and thus the spectrographic method justifies the great-

THE DISCOVERY OF INVISIBLE WORLDS. 503

est hopes. With, this explanation we are prepared to understand
the important discoveries that have been made at Potsdam and
Cambridge.

The bright star Mizar in the Great Bear is known to all. It is
resolved in the telescope into two stars, the bright star being ac-
companied by a dimmer one, which is evidently a satellite, but pos-
sesses a period of revolution of about two thousand years. The
spectrum of the principal star has been photographed several times
since 1887 at the Cambridge Observatory, Mass., and the photo-
graphs have been carefully studied by Miss A. C. Maury, a niece of
the celebrated Dr. Draper. The curious fact has been brought out
that one of the photographed dark lines appears, at times, as if it
was split into two fine lines. The doubling appears in the photo-
graphs of May 29, 1887, and of May 17 and 27, and August 28, 1889.
In other photographs the lines appear washed out, as if they con-
sisted of two lines, yet not quite separated ; while on still others
they appear clearly defined. On making up the registers of
the times when the lines presented their different appearances,
it was found that they appeared double at intervals of fifty-
two days, washed out a few days before and afterward, and
at other times single and sharp. By way of test the time was
predicted when they should appear double again, and they came
so, true to the forecast. The other lines in the spectrum of
Mizar are not very sharp, and some of them are very faint. Care-
ful examinations have shown that those few sharp lines also ap-
pear somewhat washed and broader when the first line is doubled,
while the faint lines are at the same time very hard to see. The
explanation of these variations, according to Prof. Pickering, Di-
rector of the Cambridge Observatory, lies in the supposition that
the chief star Mizar is itself a double star, whose components re-
volve around one another in one hundred and four days, but are
still so close together that no telescope can separate them. They
appear even in the most powerful telescope only as a single round
star. When one of the two stars is moving toward the earth, all the
lines in its spectrum are pushed toward the blue end ; at the same
time the second star, since both participate in the revolution, must
be receding from the earth, and the lines of its spectrum are pushed
toward the red end. As soon, again, as the motion of the stars is
perpendicular to a line drawn to the earth, all the lines will have
their normal position, and mutually cover one another ; they will
appear single and distinct. The amount of the motion is calcu-
lated, from the extent of the doubling, at a hundred English miles
in a second ; from the period of revolution of one hundred and four
days, the circumference of the orbit is deduced to be 900,000,000
English miles, and the distance of the two stars apart 143,000,000
miles, or about the distauce of the planet Mars from the sun. The

5o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

period of revolution of Mars is six hundred and eighty-seven days,
and would be less if the mass or weight of our sun was greater.
We can hence calculate how many times greater than the mass of
the sun must be the mass of the two stars of Mizar for the revo-
lution to be accomplished in one hundred and four days. The
result is forty times the mass of the sun. So this little point of
light which Mizar in the Great Bear appears to the eye is the
equivalent of forty of our suns.

Before the news of this astonishing discovery made at Cam-
bridge had reached Europe, a similar investigation made at the
Potsdam Observatory was published. It was directed to the star
Algol in the head of Medusa. This star has been known for more
than two hundred years to be variable in brightness. It shines
for two days and a half with a steady white light, then loses
brightness for about four hours and a half, recovers during
about four hours and a half, and then continues steady again
for two days and a half. The changes go on with great regu-
larity, and it has been believed for the last hundred years that
Algol is attended by a double star revolving around it, by which
it is concealed from the earth at regular intervals, depending on
the period of its revolution. The periodical decrease of brill-
iancy is similar in its nature and cause to an eclipse of the sun,
when the dark moon is interposed between it and the earth. But
probable as this belief was, the fact had not been demonstrated.
A complete solution has been obtained by spectrum analysis.
Prof. Vogel, of the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam, and
his fellow- worker, Dr. Scheiner, have taken photographs of the
spectrum of Algol and carefully measured the dark lines. It has
thus been ascertained that these lines move toward the red before
the star appears at its weakest, toward the violet after that mo-
ment ; or, in other words, that Algol is receding from the sun in
the first half of its change, approaching it in the second half. This
would necessarily occur if the star was describing an orbit around
a dark body which should periodically conceal it for a time from
our view. The rate of motion of Algol is twenty-three English
miles in a second, and its period of revolution is two days, twenty
hours, and forty-nine minutes ; whence the circumference of its
orbit and the distance apart of the centers of the two stars may be
computed as was done in the case of Mizar. The latter is found to
be less than 3,000,000 English miles, a small enough distance for two
so large bodies. From the period of the light-changes and the ve-
locity of the motion we calculate the diameter of the principal star
to be 920,000 and of its dark companion 750,000 English miles.
The two bodies which form the Algol system are each nearly as
large as our sun, the diameter of the sun being taken at 750,000
miles, but their total mass is only about two thirds the mass of

EVOLUTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 505

the sun. We have, says Prof. Vogel, to think of these two bodies
as surrounded by extensive atmospheres, and that that of the
principal body, or Algol itself especially, must possess considerable
illuminating power. Under certain* presuppositions, the height of
this atmosphere is estimated at 216,000 English miles, and that of
the atmosphere of its dark companion at 168,000 miles. The small-
est interval between the atmospheres of the two bodies will thus
be 1,600,000 English miles, or less than can be found in our solar
system. It is not easy, as Prof. Yogel suggests, to conceive two
bodies so near of nearly equal size, one of which is in the highest
glow of heat, and the other in a condition of far-advanced cooling.
But the facts of observation lead to this conclusion, and in science
facts constitute the highest and ultimate authority, before which
everything must yield. Thus, we learn from the remarkable dis-
coveries in Potsdam and Cambridge that the world-order we meet
in our solar system does not reign throughout the kingdom of the
fixed stars, but that other relations come in which are quite dif-
ferent from those under which we live. — Translated for the Popu-
lar Science Monthly from Daheim.

•♦»■»-

EVOLUTION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS.*

By DAVID STARE JORDAN,

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA.

II.

I was lately called to examine a specially interesting problem in
geographical distribution, that of the dispersion of fishes in
the Yellowstone Park. This region is a high volcanic plateau,
formed by the filling of a mountain basin with a vast deposit of
lava. The streams of the park are for the most part among the
coldest and clearest of the Rocky Mountains, and apparently in
every way suitable for the growth of trout. All the hot springs
of the great Geyser basin are not sufficient to warm the waters
of the Fire-hole River. Yet, with the exception of the Yellow-
stone itself, all these streams are destitute of fish-life. A reason
for this is apparent in the fact that the plateau is fringed with
cataracts which no fish can ascend. Each stream has a canon
and waterfall near the point where it exchanges the hard bed of
lava for the softer rock below. So the best of trout-streams, for
an area of fifteen hundred square miles, are left without trout,
because their natural inhabitants can not get to them.

On the theory that each species occupies those places best

* An address delivered before the Chicago Institute, in a course on the Testimony of
Science in regard to Evolution.

5o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

suited to its life, this fact would represent a great oversight on
the part of Mother Nature. But with this is the curious fact that
the Yellowstone itself, both above and below its falls, is well
stocked with trout and with no other fish. This is an anomaly
of distribution, but this anomaly disappears when we examine
the continental divide as it appears at the head of the Yellow-
stone. At one point, the Two-Ocean Pass, only about an eighth
of a mile of wet meadow and marsh separates the drainage of the
Yellowstone from that of the Columbia. From the Columbia
the Yellowstone has therefore received its trout. No doubt every
anomaly of distribution would become perfectly simple could we
only know all the facts which bear on the case.

In my studies of the fishes of America I have had occasion to
especially investigate the barriers to their distribution, and the
relative value of these as limiting the range of the different
forms.

In general we may say that, with rare exceptions, in all waters
not absolutely uninhabitable, there are fishes. The processes of
natural selection have given to each kind of river or lake species
of fishes adapted to the conditions of life which obtain there.
There is no state of water, of bottom, of depth, of speed of cur-
rent, but finds some species with characters adjusted to it. Each
of these species has an ascertainable range of distribution, and
within this range we may be reasonably certain to find it in any
suitable waters.

But every species has beyond question some sort of limit to its
distribution, some barrier which it has never passed in all the
years of its existence. That this is true becomes evident when
we compare the fauna of widely separated rivers. Thus the
Sacramento, Hudson, St. Johns, and Rio Grande have not a single
species common to any two of them. None' of them has any spe-
cies peculiar to itself, and each one shares the greater part of its
fauna with the water-basins nearest to it.

With the shore fishes, as with other water animals, the bar-
riers are primarily the heights of the land and the depths of the
sea — physical obstacles not to be crossed. Next in importance is
the barrier of climate. With some forms of life this is absolute,
for the palm and the banana are the index of the torrid zone as
the dwarf birch and reindeer moss are the index of the frigid.
* Plants/' says Dr. Gray, " are the thermometers of the ages by
which climatic extremes and climates in general are best meas-
ured." In many groups anatomical characters are not more pro-
found or of longer standing than are the adaptations to heat and
cold. Heat-loving animals are far more numerous in species
than animals of cold climates, though the latter often make up
by greater abundance of individuals. Barriers less important

EVOLUTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 507

than those of climate arise from external surroundings — from
absence of means of defense, from character of food, of air, of
water, and the presence of various enemies. These conditions
vary in their importance with each group of animals, yet appar-
ently the least of them may be able to limit the range of species.
To limit the range is the first step toward extinction, for to cease
to advance is to retreat. Adverse conditions may invade even
the heart of its distribution, causing reduction of numbers, which,
if long continued, must mean rarity and final extermination.
Extinction comes to those species we call rare, and its advent
must be unnoticed. Circumstances become unfavorable to the
growth or reproduction of some animal. Its numbers are reduced
— it is rare — it is gone.

The air in Indiana but a few years since was dark with the
hordes of passenger pigeons at the time of their fall migrations.
The advance of a tree-destroying, pigeon-shooting civilization has
gone steadily on, and now who has seen a passenger pigeon ? I
have seen them, and I have a skin or two in my collection, but
the bird I knew as filling the trees in my boyhood is now in the
same region an ornithological curiosity.

A very slight change in the environment of any species may
be a matter of the greatest moment as regards its increase or per-
manence. The dependence of the clover on the number of cats in
a certain neighborhood is an illustration given us by Mr. Darwin.
The clover depends on the bumble-bee for the fertilization of its
pods. The nests of the bumble-bee are destroyed by the field-
mouse, which is thus an enemy of the clover. The balance is
restored by the work of the cat, who captures the mouse and pre-
vents its ravages on the nests of the bee. The old nursery jingle
of the cow that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the
rat is repeated throughout nature. With any change in any of
the elements in this series the whole equilibrium of nature is
interrupted. For this equilibrium is apparent only — a sort of
armed neutrality, an established order of things which the super-
ficial observer mistakes for real peace and permanence.

In some groups we find evidence of a progressive adaptation of
individuals to circumstances — for example, to climate, ending in
the formation of new species to accord with changed conditions
of temperature. We may illustrate this by means of the arctic
birches. In Norway, as in most northern regions with a moist
climate, there are large forests of birches. In the valleys, where
the summers are warm and reasonably long, the birches of differ-
ent species grow to be considerable trees. Farther to the north,
or higher up the mountains, the summer is too short for the
growth of birch-trees, and their place is taken by birches which
never pass beyond the size of small bushes. Still higher up there

5o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are birches even where snow falls during every month of the
year, and the distant sun gives only a glimpse of summer in July.
Competition with other plants is, of course, not severe in such
regions, but the birches must struggle against the weather. They
can live and multiply, if only they can adjust themselves to the
conditions of life. They must keep down their size, they must
carry as little foliage as possible, and their stems must be tough
enough to resist snow, and hardy enough to withstand almost
perpetual frost. Their year's growth must be finished in a very
short time, and leaves, flowers, and seeds must follow in the most
rapid succession. In short, there is room for birch-trees here, if
only the trees can be reduced to their lowest terms. And so
birch-trees have crept up the mountain-sides even to the very
edges of the perpetual snow. But such trees ! All trees requir-
ing sunshine, or long time for their summer's growth, are rigidly
kept away by " natural selection." The cold climate dwarfs the
individual, and the hard conditions exclude every individual not
dwarfed. I have before me three birch-trees from a Norwegian
mountain called the Suletind — the little trees known to the Nor-
wegian peasants as " Hundsoire," or " dogs'-ears." The trunk of
each tree is barely an inch in height. There are no branches,
and but three leaves. Half inclosed by the uppermost leaf is the
single little catkin of flowers. Leaves in June, blossoms in July,
fruit in August, and then the little tree is ready for its nine
months' sleep. These little trees are the Lapps of forest vege-
tation.

All natural history is full of similar cases of modifications.
Everywhere there is the most perfect adaptation of life to its con-
ditions. But this adaptation must come about through the sur-
vival of those organisms fittest to live under the conditions, while
the unfit die out and leave no progeny. But fitness is a relative
term ; for in mariy cases, as with the Norwegian dwarf birches,
the deformed or stunted may be the only ones fitted to survive.
An advantage ever so slight must in the long run conquer. The
gambler recognizes that final victory must always go with the
percentage of the dealer.

The restlessness of individuals is the key to all these prob-
lems. Each species of animal or plant is first the product of
heredity, and then of the various influences, reactions, and extinc-
tions to which we give the name of natural selection. Each spe-
cies may be conceived as making every year inroads on territory
occupied by other species. If these colonies are able to hold their
own in the struggle for possession, they will multiply in the new
conditions, and the range of the species becomes widened. If
the surroundings are different, new species or varieties may be
formed with time; and these new forms may invade the territory

EVOLUTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 509

of the parent species. Again, colony after colony of species after
species may be destroyed by other species or by uncongenial sur-
roundings.

Only in the most general way can the history of any species
be traced ; but, could we know it all, it would be as long and as
eventful a story as the history of the colonization and settlement
of North America by immigrants from Europe. Each region
where animals or plants can live has been thousands of times
discovered, its colonization a thousand times attempted. In these
efforts there is no co-operation. Every individual is for himself,
every struggle a struggle of life and death ; to each species each
member of every other species is an alien and ah enemy.

The arctic birches serve as one illustration only of the spread
and change of organisms in the face of a barrier apparently
insurmountable. I can not enter into detail as to the many
ways in which individuals manage to cross the barriers which
usually limit the species. These ways are as varied as the creat-
ures themselves, and infinitely more varied than the barriers. It
is enough to say that organisms have extended their range in
regions where their existence is possible. Here, by the long-con-
tinued process of adjustment to circumstances, with the incessant
destruction of the unadapted, these organisms have become so
well fitted to their surroundings as to give rise to the popular
impression that each species now inhabits that part of the world
best fitted for its occupation. Yet the very reverse of this must
be true, for in the growth of any species it is these features of
adaptation which are the last to appear. If, as anatomists now
teach, the history of the individual is an epitome of the history of
the group to which the individual belongs, then adaptive charac-
ters appearing late in the growth of the individual must have
appeared late in the history of the group. They are the last
changes made in the organism — mere after-thoughts in the work
of creation.

For example, the long pectoral fins of the flying-fish enable it
to make great leaps through the air, after the manner of the grass-
hopper. Yet we can not say that the flying-fish was meant to be
the bird among fishes, for its nearest relatives are without wings,
and the wing-development is one of the last acquisitions of the
individual. Its flight is simply an exaggeration of the leaping or
skimming which related forms with shorter fins accomplish. The
growth of the fins goes on with the increase of this power, and
greater power comes with the growth of the fins.

To my mind the strongest arguments for the theory of develop-
ment are those drawn from the changing character of the species
themselves.

No phase in the history of systematic science is more instruct-

5io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ive than the varying attitudes of the naturalist toward those local
modifications of species called geographical variations.

It was early noticed that, while individuals of any one species
in any limited region are substantially alike, this perfect identity
disappears with the examination of wider extent of territory.
These differences were often too small to justify the formation or
recognition of a new species, but too evident to be wholly neg-
lected. These subordinate species were termed by Linnaeus varie-
ties, and their geographical basis was often recognized. Thus, of
his Homo sapiens, or aboriginal man, Linnaeus recognized four
varieties — asiaticus, americanus, afer, and europcBUs. As with
the varieties of man, so with those of other animals and plants.
The individuals of England were not quite those of the same spe-
cies in Italy, and those in America showed their own peculiarities.

Sometimes these qualities could be exactly measured, in which
case a new species was described. Sometimes they proved elusive,
and the supposed new species were added to the great dust-heap
of synonymy. The work of the systematic zoologists of the last
generation was chiefly in museum cataloguing and labeling. To
them these half -tangible varieties were the object of special op-
probrium. On the museum shelves they were simply a nuisance,
obscuring the characters of the real species and throwing closet-
formed ideas of nature into utter confusion. Prof. Cope tells us
how variant shells have been crushed under the heel of the in-
dignant conchologist, because they would go neither into species
A " nor species " B." Specimens were often preserved from
typical localities," so that no confusion might be introduced
among the cherished specific characters. That Nature went on
producing these varying and intermediate forms was no concern
of the zoologist. That such forms were any part of Nature's plan
apparently never occurred to the followers of Linnaeus.

Says the botanist De Candolle : " They are mistaken who sup-
pose that the greater part of our species are clearly limited, and
that the doubtful species are in a feeble minority. This seemed
to be true so long as a genus was imperfectly known, and its spe-
cies were founded on few specimens — that is to say, were provis-
ional only ; just as we come to know them better, intermediate
forms flow in, and doubts as to the limits of the species become
more numerous."

The ease with which slight variations have deceived and con-
fused naturalists is one of the most discouraging features in the
history of science. Such variations have formed the basis of
thousands of useless and distracting names.

When Darwin was at work upon his monograph of the bar-
nacles, he wrote to a friend :

'Systematic work would be easy were it not for this con-

te

EVOLUTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 511

founded variation, •which, however, is pleasant to me as a special-
ist, though odious as a systematist. . . . How painfully true is your
remark that no one has hardly a right to examine the question of
species who has not minutely described many ! . . . Certainly I
have felt it humiliating, discussing and doubting and examining,
over and over again, when in my mind the only doubt has been
whether the form varied to-day or yesterday. . . . After describ-
ing a set of forms as distinct species, tearing up my manuscripts
and making them one species, tearing that up and making them
separate, and then making them one again (which has happened
to me), I have gnashed my teeth, cursed species, and asked what
sin I had committed to be so treated."

An epoch in systematic zoology began with the study of the
collections made by the United States Pacific Railway Survey
some thirty years ago. This was the first opening out to natural-
ists of the details of the fauna of a vast district under the same
parallels of latitude, but showing every variation in rainfall, ele-
vation, and physical surroundings. The most valuable results of
these collections were seen in the study of birds. It was found in
general that each bird of the Atlantic States had its counterpart
in the prairies, the sage-plains, the mountains, and the Pacific
slope. Differences were carefully sought for and found, for the
school of Prof. Baird allowed nothing to escape their analysis.
There were differences in size, in form and color, slight in degree,
but nevertheless really existing, and these were made the basis
of as many distinct species. Still further studies increased the
number of these species, until at last a large proportion of our
birds were represented by Eastern, Western, sage-brush, and
prairie species. Sometimes these closely connected forms were
distinguishable at first sight, as in the case of the yellowhammer,
and its double, the red-shafted flicker ; in other cases baffling the
most skillful, as with the two species of the crow-blackbird.

An illustration of these forms and their relations may be taken
from the common shore lark and its varieties, although it is fair
to say that some of these variations have never been regarded as
species.

The shore lark, or horned lark (Otocoris alpestris), ranges
widely over the colder and open parts of Europe, Asia, and
America. The common form, called alpestris, is familiar to most
of us. In the Northwestern region, as far south as Utah, is another
form, equally large, but paler in color {Jeucolcemd). In the prairie
region the lark is of the ordinary color, but smaller (praticoTa). In
the sage-plains, it is a similarly small but pale lark, with brighter
yellow in its throat ; this is arenicola. In Texas the bird is still
smaller and grayer (giraudi) ; while the small form found in New
Mexico and Arizona has its plumage strongly washed with red ;

5 12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

this is chrysolcema. In the interior of California the shore larks
are still smaller and redder (variety ruled), while northward and
coastwise appears a small lark with more streaked plumage;
this is strigata. All these can be generally recognized by an
expert ornithologist, and doubtless a closer analysis would reveal
the basis for still finer subdivisions.*

In 1871 Dr. Joel A. Allen published his masterly paper on the
Mammals and Winter Birds of Florida. This memoir has had
the practical effect of making all our ornithologists, for the most
part against their will, believers in the theory of derivation of
species.

Dr. Allen took up, as a matter of serious study, the variations
in individual birds. He showed that the variation of individuals
of the same species was far greater than had been supposed, and
that the characters relied on to distinguish species were often due
to slight increase*in these variations. For example, in Northern
birds the bodies would be larger, the bills smaller than in birds
of the same species from the South, and the coloration of birds
was often directly related to the degree of rainfall. He showed,
in brief, that each one of these many variations must be held to
define a distinct species, or else that the number of species of
American birds would have to be greatly reduced, and the range
of variation inside the species would need to be correspondingly
extended.

This claim for attention on the part of the despised variety
produced much consternation among students of birds. But facts
must be recognized ; and the final result has been, that we have
now extended our idea of each species until it is large enough to
include all that we know of intermediate and varying forms.
When a hiatus appears, whether existing either in fact or in our
material for study, there we put our line of definition. " We can
only predicate and define species at all," says Dr. Coues, " from
the mere circumstance of missing links. Species are the twigs of
a tree separated from the parent stem. We name and arrange
them arbitrarily, in default of a means of reconstructing the
whole tree in accordance with Nature's ramifications." f

* In the Auk for April, 1890, is an essay on the Horned Larks of North America, by
Jonathan Dwight, Jr. Mr. Dwight's conclusions are based on 2,012 specimens; those of
Mr. H. W. Henshaw, above given, on 350. To the forms mentioned above, Mr. Dwight
adds var. adusta, small, and " scorched pink '' in general hue, from southern Arizona and
northern Mexico ; var. menilli, large and dusky, in Idaho and neighboring regions ; and
var. pallidus, very small and pale, from Lower California.

f Dr. Allen says, in a recent paper : " We arbitrarily define a species as a group of indi-
viduals standing out distinct and disconnected from any similar group, within which, though
occupying different parts of the common habitat, we recognize other forms characteristic
of and restricted to particular areas. These reach a maximum degree of differentiation at
some point in the habitat, and thence gradually shade into other con-specific forms geo-

EVOLUTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 513

What is true of birds is equally the case with other groups of
animals. Continued explorations bring to light each year new
species of American fishes, but the number of new forms discov-
ered each year is usually less than 'the number of old supposed
species which are found to intergrade with each other, and have
so become untenable.

I have myself published three complete lists of the fresh-water
fishes of North America. The one published in 1876 enumerated
670 species ; that of 1878, 665 species ; while the list of 1885 con-
tained 587 species, although upward of 75 new species had been
found in the nine years which elapsed between the first and the
last of these three lists.

The old idea of a species as a separate entity, a special crea-
tion, has passed away forever. We can no more return to it than
astronomers can return to the Ptolemaic notion of the solar sys-
tem. The same lesson comes up from every hand. It is the com-
mon experience of all students of species. We have learned it
from Gray and Engelmann and Coulter, and from each of the
many students of American botany. We have learned it from
Baird and Allen and Coues and Ridgway and Stejneger, and from
all who have made life-studies of American birds. We have
learned it from Cope and Marsh and Leidy, and from all who
have searched the rocks for the bones of our ancestors.

I do not know of a single naturalist in the world, who has
made a thoughtful study of the relations of species in any group,
who entertains the old notion as to their distinct origin. There
is not one who could hold this view, and look an animal in the
face ! The study of the problems of geographical distribution is
possible only on the theory of the derivation of species. If we
view all animals and plants as the results of special creations in
the regions assigned to them, we have, instead of laws, only a jum-
ble of arbitrary and meaningless facts. We have been too fully
accustomed to the recognition of law to believe that any facts
are arbitrary and meaningless. We know no facts which lie
beyond the realm of law. I may close with the language of
Asa Gray :

" When we gather into one line the several threads of evidence
of this sort to which we have here barely alluded we find that they
lead in the same direction with the clews furnished by [other lines
of investigation]. Slender indeed each thread may be, but they
are manifold, and together they bind us firmly to the doctrine of
the derivation of species."

[Concluded.]

graphically contiguous." — On the Recognition of Geographical Forms ; The Auk, January,
1890, p. 1.

VOL. XXXTI1. — 37

5 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CENTERS OF IDEATION IN THE BRAIN.*

By BERNAED HOLLANDER.

ON the 22d of February, 1887, Prof. David Ferrier delivered an
address in this room on the question, " How far recent inves-
tigations on the functional topography of the brain could be
brought in relation with craniological and anthropological re-
searches with a view to establish the foundation of a scientific
phrenology." It is my object to-night to continue that discussion,
and to submit to you the basis of a scientific phrenology for your
examination and criticism. I take it for granted :

1. That all mind-manifestation is dependent on brain-matter.

2. That the various elements of the mind have distinct seats in
the brain, which, however, have not been as yet determined.

3. That the recent researches by physiological experimenters
and pathological investigators — which have resulted in defining
distinct regions for motion and sensation — established the physio-
logical correlative of psychological actions.

By applying galvanic currents to definite portions of the brain,
or by destroying certain areas, physiological experimenters cause
movements of certain limbs and muscles. In itself the distribu-
tion of motor areas in the brain would be of little value to the
psychologist except that it proves to him the plurality of func-
tions of the brain. When, however, we observe that the move-
ments caused by excitation form the physical parallel of a mental
action, we may arrive at the psychological function of a certain
portion of brain by reducing the various faculties of the mind to
their elements, and watching their physical expression. No gal-
vanic current will ever have the effect of demonstrating a center
of ideation — say the center for the emotion of power ; on the other
hand, there are several emotions and all the higher intellectual
operations, which have no outward physical signs. All which the
excitation of that portion of brain where the emotion of power
may have its center can effect is certain movements which such
an emotion would cause when irritated.

To arrive, then, at the demonstration of centers of ideation
there is but one way :

1. We must observe the physical expression of our thoughts
and feelings, as far as possible ; in other words, we must study the
outward visible signs of their manifestation.

2. We must take the limbs and muscles, which are affected by
definite emotions, and see on what occasions they are made to
move by central excitation.

A paper read before the Anthropological Institute, London, February 12, 1889.

CENTERS OF IDEATION IN THE BRAIN. 515

Let me give an example. The outward sign of a joyful emo-
tion is a drawing up of the corners of the mouth. The elevation
of the angles of the mouth is the muscular action going parallel
with the emotion of joy. The excitation of the nerve-center causes
the elevators to act. There is but one definite area from which
the elevator muscles can be made to act, therefore joyful emotions
must take their start from this center. When, then, a joyful
emotion excites this definite portion of gray matter, a nerve-cur-
rent passes to the lower center — the center for the movements of
the elevator muscles — and causes them to act. As the brain is a
very complex machine, other effects may be produced at the same
time, but this one has always been associated particularly with
exhilarating emotions. Persons of very cheerful dispositions
make the elevators act so frequently that the mechanism of the
nerve-display is facilitated by constant use, and the center will
easier appreciate these special impressions. The elevators will be
in time so accustomed to act that they will ieave impressions on
the face so marked to enable people to recognize, by mere physiog-
nomical signs, their brethren who are of such disposition.

Now, let us see what the actual experiments were.

Prof. Ferrier applied
a galvanic current to the
ascending frontal convo-
lution in monkeys on a
definite portion, marked
7 (Fig. 1), and to the
corresponding region in
dogs, jackals, and cats,
all with the effect of ele-
vating the cheeks and
angles of the mouth

With Closure Of the eyes. m& I.-Diagkam. (David Ferrier.)

On no Other region COUld ^ Center f0r the movements of the elevator muscles.

the Same be effected. <15) Gustatory center.

. . (11) Center for movements of the "platysma myoides mus-

Darwm (Expression cie."

^t +1-./-. TT'-m^+T^-nci -i-k oao (5) Center for movements of the arm and raising of the
Ot the Emotions, p. MZ, Bh0Ulder. (Patience muscles.)

etc.), says : " Dr. Du-

chenne repeatedly insists that under the emotion of joy the
mouth is acted on exclusively by the great zygomatic muscles,
which serve to draw the corners backward and upward. The up-
per and lower orbicular muscles are at the same time more or less
contracted. A man in high spirits, though he may not actually
smile, commonly exhibits some tendency to the retraction of the
corners of his mouth. According to Sir Charles Bell, in all the
exhilarating emotions the eyebrows, eyelids, the nostrils, and the
angles of the mouth are raised. The tendency in the zygomatic

15

5i6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

muscles to contract under pleasurable emotions is shown by a cu-
rious fact communicated to me by Dr. Browne with respect to
patients suffering from general paralysis of the insane : ' In this
malady there is almost invariably optimism — delusions as to
wealth, rank, grandeur — insane joyousness, benevolence, and pro-
fusion, while its very earliest physical symptom is trembling at
the corners of the mouth and at the outer corners of the eyes.
This is a well-recognized fact/ "

We have, then, sufficient evidence that the effect produced by
a galvanic current on the portion of brain marked 7 in Fender's

Pig. 2.— Diagram op Cranio

Some of the results of observations made by
the early phrenologists :

a, Hope : the organ of cheerfulness.

b, Imitation : the organ of mimicry.

c, Alimentiveness : the gustatory organ.

d, Cautiousness : the organ of circumspection,

fear, timidity.

e, Veneration: the organ of submission, re-

spect, devotion.

/, Attachment: the organ of friendship.

-Cerebra-l Relations. (Reid.)

Some of the results of experiments made by
modern physiologists :

o, Center for the movements of the elevator

muscles (elevating the cheeks and angles

of the mouth).

b, Facial Nerve Center : center for facial move-
ments.

c, Gustatory Center.

d, Center for movements of the platysma my-
oides, the muscle of fright.

e, Center for movements of the arm and rais-
ing of the shoulders. Patience Muscles.

topography is the physical expression of joy. "We know, then, for
positive that pleasurable emotions excite this center. But I do
not say that it is the function of the center to produce an emo-
tion of joy — a manner after which the old phrenologists would
have expressed themselves — I merely note that all pleasurable
emotions produce a nerve-current, which takes its start in this
region.

CENTERS OF IDEATION IN THE BRAIN. 517

Sir Crichton-Browne tells us that, in general paralysis of the
insane, there is invariably optimism, beginning generally with
trembling at the corners of the mouth and the outer corners of
the eye. The old phrenologists located " hope " in this region (a,
Fig. 2), and there is, no doubt, a strong relation between hope
and optimism ; and I find, in the writings of Combe, frequent
allusions that this organ gave a tendency to cheerfulness. At the
same time I must note that Gall, the founder of phrenology, did
not admit " hope " as a faculty, but included this portion of brain
in his organ of " imitation," or " center for mimicry," of which I
shall speak directly.

There are many defects in the old phrenological system ; one
of them being that it rather favored complex functions. But, all
the same, an unprejudiced investigator must take their observa-
tions into consideration. I need not remark that, when I refer to
phrenology, I mean only the observations of Gall, and not the
fancies and fallacies of his followers.

This center for the elevator muscles, and probable center from
which exhilarating emotions take their start, is in close connec-
tion with Exner's center for the facial nerve.

Ferrier's center, No. 7, is a little lower than the center for the
"nervus facialis" as located by Exner (Localisation der Func-
tionen in der Grosshirnrinde des Menschen, Wien, 1881). The
" nervus facialis " center occupies a very large portion of brain in
Exner's collection of pathological evidence. The most intense
centers for facial movements are localized by him in the squares
marked 57, 58, 65 (Fig. 3), but are said to extend actually from
the gyrus centralis anterior to the latter halves of the lower
frontal convolutions. He quotes many cases of disease of this
nerve, and is particularly struck with the frequency with which
disease of the facial nerve and aphasia concur. He says (page
56) it can not be mere chance that paralysis of the facialis is fre-
quently accompanied by aphasia and the reverse — an observation
which was also made by Ferrier.

There is sufficient evidence that the center for the facial move-
ments occupies an area extending from the ascending frontal
convolution to the middle frontal convolution — a fact which was
noted by Gall. He located in this region the talent for mimicry,
the talent of imitating the gestures of other people (b, Fig. 2) ;
more than this, he noted that, when this region was prominently
developed, there was not only a talent for mimicry, but also a
talent for the imitation of the voice of other people, and many
examinations and casts of heads of eminent actors were made to
prove this theory.

We have heard from Exner and Ferrier how closely the
speech and facial nerve centers are connected ; both in perfection

5i8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

being necessary for a clever actor. Bnt let me quote Gall him-
self. Speaking of a man with a peculiar prominence of this region,

he says :

" He imitated in so striking a manner the gait, the gestures,
the sound of the voice, etc., that the person was immediately rec-
ognized. I hastened to the institution for the deaf and dumb to
examine the head of the pupil Casteigner, who had been received
into the establishment six weeks previous, and who, from the
first, had fixed our attention by his prodigious talent for imita-

Fig. 3.— Diagram. (Sigmund Exner.) The darkest squares are Nos. 57, 58, 65, and are the most

intense centers for the movements of the facial muscles.

tion. On Shrove-Tuesday, when a little theatrical piece is usually
represented in the establishment, he had imitated so perfectly the
gesture, the gait, etc., of the directors, inspector, physician, and
surgeon of the institute, and especially of some women, that it
was impossible to mistake ; a scene which amused the more, as
nothing like it was expected from a boy whose education had
been absolutely neglected."

He goes on to explain that many men have a natural talent
for the stage or pantomime, and that the history of the lives of
great actors shows that the majority of them had received little
education and were intended for some other profession, but their
innate disposition drove them to the stage. The faculty of imi-
tation is exercised sometimes even in idiots and madmen. Pinel
says :

CENTERS OF IDEATION IN THE BRAIN. 519

" A young idiot, whom I have long had under my eye, has the
most marked and irresistible inclination to imitate all that she
sees done in her presence ; she repeats mechanically all that she
hears said, and imitates with the greatest fidelity the gestures
and actions of others, without much regard to propriety."

I can not go into details to-night as to the ample evidence,
pathological and otherwise, which the early phrenologists brought
forward in their time. They were only ridiculed and treated as
charlatans. To-day people know nothing of the old phrenology,
except what they hear from opponents and read in books by some,
phrenological dilettanti. Scientific men think Gall's theory ex-
ploded, because Sir William Hamilton and Flourens appeared to
disprove it ; but we know, since 1870, that the doctrines of these
two men are equally valueless, for Flourens taught that the whole
brain acted as an organ of the mind, and not, as we know now,
that special parts of the brain have separate functions ; while Sir
William Hamilton considered it impossible 'to form a system on
the supposed parallelism of brain and mind. L. Landois (Lehr-
buch der Physiologie) recommends a re-examination of Gall's
theories, and I hope to show you to-night that, whatever you
may think of the phrenological system, Gall's fundamental obser-
vations were correct.

Ferrier's experiments on monkeys on the anterior and inner
aspect of the uncinate gyrus, marked 15 (Fig. 1), had the effect of
" torsion of the lip and semiclosure of the nostril on the same side,
as when the interior of the nostril is irritated by some pungent
odor/' He says (page 244, The Functions of the Brain, London,
1886) :

" Irritation of the middle temporo-sphenoidal convolution I
have found in general to be without any obvious reaction except
toward the lower extremity, where in several instances movements
of the tongue, cheek-pouches, and jaws were induced very much
like those which are characteristic of tasting."

The same experiment on 15, the uncinate gyrus or extremity
of the temporal lobe of dogs, had the result of " torsion of the
nostril on the same side, as if from irritation directly applied to
the nostril." The same effect was produced by experiments on
cats and other animals. He continues :

Page 315 : " As above described, irritation of the hippocam-
pal lobule in the monkey, cat, dog, and rabbit was attended by
essentially the same reaction in all, viz., a peculiar torsion of the.
lip and nostril on the same side. This reaction is precisely the
same as is induced in these animals by the direct application of
some strong or disagreeable odor to the nostril, and is evidently the
outward or associated expression of excited olfactory sensation."

Page 321 : " As to the sense of taste, I have not succeeded in

52o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

differentiating any special region related to this faculty, but that
it is in close relation with the olfactory center is probable from
the facts described. It was noted in connection with electrical
irritation of the lower extremity of the temporo-sphenoidal con-
volutions in the monkey, and of the same region in the brain of
the cat, that movements of the lips, tongue, cheek-pouches, and
jaws were occasionally induced — phenomena which might be
regarded as indications of the excitation of gustatory sensation.
This interpretation receives support from the above - described
results of destructive lesions ; and we have, therefore, reasonable
grounds for concluding that the gustatory centers are situated at
the lower extremity of the temporo-sphenoidal lobes, in close rela-
tion with those of smell."

Page 431 : " The physiological needs of the organism, in so
far as they induce locally discriminable sensations, express them-
selves subjectively as definite appetites or desires, which are the
conscious correlations of physiological wants. The appetite of
hunger is the desire to satisfy or remove a local sensation, refer-
able to the stomach, in which the physiological needs of the
stomach express themselves. The substrata of the feeling of
hunger and appetite for food are the stomachic branches of the
vagus and their cerebral centers ; and, as local conditions of the
stomach may destroy or increase the feeling of hunger, so central
disease may give rise to ravenous appetite or sitophobia, condi-
tions exemplified in certain forms of insanity."

Ferrier thus proves the tip of the lower temporal convolutions
to be the " gustatory center " ; and even Hitzig, who is not always
flattering to Prof. Ferrier, delights in noting this discovery. Yet
I will show you immediately that this center — of which we are
most certain — was known and correctly localized in the same por-
tion of brain by the early phrenologists.

Many men claimed the discovery of the organ called " gusta-
tiveness," or " alimentiveness," but the editors of the Edinburgh
Phrenological Journal, vol. x, page 249, give Dr. Hoppe, of
Copenhagen, the credit of having been the first and most acute
observer.

" In December, 1823, he expresses the opinion that, besides the
nerves of the stomach and palate, of which alone he conceives
the sensations of hunger and thirst to be affections, there must be
also an organ in the brain of animals for the instinct of nutrition
for the preservation of life, which incites us to the sensual enjoy-
ments of the palate, and the activity of which is independent of
hunger and thirst."

In a second communication to the same journal, dated 28th
December, 1824, he says :

' Regarding the organ for taking nourishment, I have been led

CENTERS OF IDEATION IN THE BRAIN. 521

to think, since I wrote last, that the place where its different de-
grees of development are manifested in the living body is in the
fossa zygomatica (c, Fig. 2). Before I had thought at all of
phrenology I was struck with the remarkable breadth of the face
or head of a friend of mine, caused, not by prominent cheekbones,
as in some varieties of mankind, but more toward the ears, by the
great convexity of the zygomatic arch. Knowing that this indi-
vidual was exceedingly fond of good living, and that, even in
spite of a very powerful intellect, and propensities moderate in
almost every other respect, he was prone to indulge too freely in
the joys of the table, I afterward thought that this form of the
head and tendency of the mind might bear a nearer relation to
each other than had at first occurred to me ; and in some other
persons, notoriously fond of good eating and drinking, I found a
confirmation of my suppositions. This prominence of the bony
arch, I think, must be an absolute consequence of the part of the
cranium lying under the temporal muscle being pushed outward,
and diminishing in that direction the space of the fossa."

Dr. Hoppe considered the organ " alimentiveness " to be like-
wise the organ of taste. He says :

" That the sensation of taste only passes through the nerves
and is perceived in a part of the brain is a supposition, I think,
sufficiently proved. Now, it appears to me as highly probable,
and by analogy agreeing with other experience, that it is one
and the same organ which tastes, viz., distinguishes and enjoys,
and incites us to taste, or, in other terms, to take food and drink.
This, according to my opinion, is the organ of appetite for food,
and consequently it may be named the organ of taste, gustus."

Dr. Crook, of London, mentions that, several years before the
publication of Dr. Hoppe's papers, he himself had arrived at simi-
lar conclusions with regard to this faculty and the position of its
organ. He says :

" Three persons with whom I had become acquainted in the
year 1819, first led me to suspect that a portion of brain situated
near the front of the ear was connected with the pleasures of the
"festive board. From that time to the end of 1822 above a thou-
sand observations were made. As they tended to confirm this
view, several phrenological friends were informed of the result.
From 1823 I no longer doubted that the anterior portion of the
middle lobe was a distinct organ, and that its primary use was
the discrimination and enjoyment of meats and drink. It was
difficult, however, to hit the fundamental power. The situation
of the organ, under the zygomatic process and the temporal mus-
cle, frequently precluded the possibility of accurate observation.
But, notwithstanding, well-marked cases, both of a positive and a
negative kind, were investigated."

522 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A long controversy follows this paper on " alimentiveness,"
the gustatory center, in the Phrenological Journal, and much
ridicule was thrown at the originators for localizing a center for
hunger and thirst, those affections being thought due to the
stomach alone. Even to-day scientific men say phrenology is ex-
ploded, because certain thicknesses in the skull and the various
muscles make it impossible to distinguish the corresponding por-
tions of brain ; yet it is remarkable that the organ which has
been ridiculed most, and which was the most difficult to observe,
is to-day found correct.

If there were but two organs correctly localized by Gall, it
would justify a reconsideration of his work ; but there seems to be
a number of faculties, the localization of which has been confirmed
by modern experiments. Unfortunately, the later phrenologists
have spoiled many of Gall's original observations. I will just
give a few more examples, in order that my paper may receive
sufficient consideration, and may effect a change in your views
with regard to the old phrenology.

Prof. Ferrier's experiments on "the lower extremity of the
ascending parietal convolution" in monkeys, marked 11 (Fig. 1),
resulted in " retraction of the angle of the mouth. The action is
that of the platysma myoides."

Darwin (Expression of Emotions, page 298) says with regard
to the physical expression of " fear," and the platysma myoides
muscle :

" Sir Charles Bell (Anatomy of Expression, page 168) and others
have stated that this muscle is strongly contracted under the in-
fluence of fear ; and Duchenne insists so strongly on its impor-
tance in the expression of this emotion that he calls it the muscle
of fright."

This may perhaps suffice to show that the platysma myoides
muscle is called into action in the expression of fear.

Now let me draw your attention again to the old phrenology.
Gall located so-called " cautiousness " in an area which covers not
only Ferrier's center 11, but also the angular gyrus (d, Fig. 2).
He found an enormous development of this region in persons
known for their timidity, persons known to take alarm easily, and
who could be easily terrified.

As to the function of the angular gyrus, physiologists are not
agreed. Ferrier includes the gyrus in his center of sight. Munk
calls it " Seelenblindheit " — a strange name with a still stranger

meaning.

I will quote some passages which seem to indicate that the
effects produced by lesion of this region have some connection
with the function attributed to it by phrenologists.

Ferrier, Philosophical Transactions, 1875, Part II, pages 445-451,

CENTERS OF IDEATION IN THE BRAIN.

523

Resume*: "After destruction of the angular gyrus the animal
commences to feel about cautiously ; if pushed to move, it runs
against every obstacle on its way. If put on the floor, it cries out
and looks about quite frightened. If called, it points its ears and
cries. If taken up again, it clings to one as if afraid of being put
down. On the other hand, threatening with the stick has no
effect unless the stick is brought in contact with the eyes."

Munk (Functionen der Grosshirnrinde, page 25 etc.) makes
the same observations as Ferrier, only his region of destruction,
marked Ai (Fig. 4), includes a portion of brain where Gall located
his organ of " friendship " or

" attachment " (/, Fig. 2) ; and
Munk, speaking of the effect,
says : " However, the animal re-
mains cold at the sight of men,
whom it used to greet most
friendly, and even at the sight
of dogs, with whom it used to
play " ; an effect which can be
easily explained on phrenologi-
cal principles by the loss of
the organ of " attachment " or
" friendship." He goes on to re-
mark that the whip, which for-
merly frightened the animal
away to a corner, has now no
effect. The animal stops before
every obstacle on its path and
turns back again ; one has to
push it to go up any steps, and

then it feels its Way with its Fig. 4.-Diagbam. (Hermann Munk.) Extirpa-

llOSe, though not blind. When tiun o^f area marked ^ causing loss of social
' ° attachment, and of the emotion of fear.

recovering, it stares at every-
thing and examines every object most cautiously, both when lying
down and walking about, just as if it had to learn afresh and gain
new experience.

Goltz (Verrichtungen des Grosshirns, page 18, etc.) says it is
a well-known fact that animals are easily put into rage by the
appearance of a person in strange costume. He got his servant
dressed up in fantastic attire, and his dog would have torn him to
pieces had not proper precautions been taken. When the dog,
however, had been operated upon, and the experiment was repeat-
ed, he remained perfectly calm, even when the servant stepped
quite close to him, though the animal was by no means blind:

It is not difficult to detect in all these experiments an affection
of some faculty which, when excited, causes timidity. What the

5 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

element of that faculty is I can not tell, but in its actions it is con-
cerned with the emotion of fear.

Prof. Ferrier found, when experimenting on dogs and other
animals on a portion of brain marked 5 (Fig. 1), which corre-
sponds to " the ascending frontal convolution at the base of the
superior frontal " in the human brain, elevation of shoulder and
extension forward of the opposite fore-limb, or flexion of the fore-
arm and paw.

Now, according to Darwin, raising of the shoulders — sometimes
accompanied by extension of the arms — is a sign of non-resistance.
He inquires, page 271 :

" Why men in all parts of the world when they feel — whether
or not they wish to show this feeling — that they can not or will
not do something, or will not resist something if done by another,
shrug their shoulders, at the same time often bending in their
elbows, showing the palms of their hands with extended fingers,
often throwing their heads a little on one side, raising their eye-
brows, and opening their mouths."

On page 270 he says : " Shrugging the shoulders likewise ex-
presses patience or the absence of any intention to resist. Hence
the muscles which raise the shoulders are sometimes called, as I
have been informed by an artist, the patience muscles."

Mantegazza (La Physionomie et les Sentiments, page 113, etc.)
dwells on the importance of the movements of the arm in the act
of submission, devotion, and veneration. Darwin doubted whether
the kneeling posture, with the hands upturned and palms joined,
is an innate expression of devotion, but rather thought this post-
ure a sign of submission. Mantegazza differs from Darwin ; he
holds that it is from the habit we have from our childhood to join
our hands for prayer, that we employ the gesture when appealing
to human beings, who can do us either much good or great harm.
He thinks this gesture is innate and not acquired. He questioned
many artists, and gives as the result distinct rules, showing the
importance which the position of hand and arm play in the ex-
pression of veneration and devotion.

We know, then, that the raising of the shoulders, together with
the bending of the arms and hands, are concerned in the physical
expression of submission or non-resistance.

The old phrenologists located in this region their organ of
veneration " (e, Fig. 2) which is to give an impulse to devotion
and worship. Combe (System of Phrenology, page 212) says :
' Children who are prone to rebellion, regardless of authority, and
little attentive to command, will generally be found to have this
organ deficient. Veneration leads to deference for superiors in
rank as well as in years, and prompts to the reverence of author-
ity."

a

CENTERS OF IDEATION IN THE BRAIN. 525

Large " veneration/" say the phrenologists, produces an in-
stinctive feeling of respect ; a defect of " veneration " has the
effect of diminishing the reverence for power. Dr. Spurzheim
called it the emotion of reverence arid respect.

We see again the strong relation between the old phrenology
and the results of the experiments of modern phrenology. On the
one hand, I have shown you that the effect produced by Ferrier's
faradization is the natural language of a feeling of non-resist-
ance ; on the other, that observations of Gall resulted in ascrib-
ing to this portion of brain the seat of the emotion of respect
and reverence. Of course, respectful people do not resist au-
thority.

Gall appears to me to have been aware of the importance that
the study of the physical expression of our emotions and thoughts
will play some day, and to have been expecting that this study of
the physical parallel to our mental operations will furnish new
evidence for his or any other system, built upon the parallelism
of brain and mind. He devotes a chapter to pathognomy, of which
the following extract may prove interesting : " This art is found-
ed on Nature herself ; for it is Nature that prompts all the gest-
ures, the attitudes, the movements, finally the whole mimicry, by
which men and animals express all their feelings and ideas. Pa-
thognomy has its fixed and immutable laws, whether we appy it
to man or to animals, so long as the question relates to the same
'feelings and the same ideas. Pathognomy is the universal lan-
guage of all nations and of all animals. There is no beast or
man who does not learn it ; there is no beast or man who does not
understand it. It accompanies language and strengthens its ex-
pressions ; it supplies the defects of articulate language. Words
may be ambiguous, but pathognomy never is so. What would
become of engraving, painting, sculpture, the comic art, eloquence,
poetry, if the expression of the sentiments and ideas were not sub-
jected to immutable laws ? What means would they have in their
power to paint modesty, prudence, fear, despair, baseness, joy, an-
ger, contempt, pride or devotion ? Where is the animal or man
who takes time to deliberate on the manner in which he would
make his feelings and his ideas understood by others ? Even at
the moment when the feelings and the ideas arise, they are writ-
ten on the exterior in characters discernible by all the world. It
is certain, therefore, that the feelings, ideas, affections, and pas-
sions are manifested by suitable expression according to determi-
nate and invariable laws."

Gall noted the physical expression of our emotions, though he
could give us no explanation of its cause.

With the assistance of Hitzig, Fritsch, and Ferrier's experi-
ments on the one hand, and Gratiolet, Piderit, Darwin, and Man-

526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tegazza's observations on the other, I have endeavored to show
you to night : (1) the reason why certain muscles and limbs are
called into action by certain feelings and emotions ; and (2) how
to demonstrate centers of ideation by comparing the physiologi-
cal experiments with pathognomy.

My work is, however, not complete : for, first of all, I have not
attempted to find the elements of those faculties which I located ;
secondly, we must take into consideration that mind, like brain, is
very complicated, and, even had philosophers ever agreed as to its
elements, we know from experience that an emotion seldom acts
singly.

Like all novelties, my paper will create some opposition, but
I do not fear criticism : I only ask for a re-examination of Gall's
work, which I believe has been rejected without due consideration.

DISCUSSION.

Dr. Beddoe thought that, although phrenologists had erected
an edifice of straw and rubbish on the foundations laid by Gall
and Spurzheim, these last had been men of considerable power
and acuteness, whose observations ought not to be neglected in
any new attempts at the localization of faculty.

Dr. Ferrier remarked that, as the relations between brain and
mind were still in many respects very obscure, he cordially
welcomed any attempt to throw light on the problem. So far the
physiological or objective functions of certain cerebral regions
had been determined, but the question was, What are the correla-
tions between the objective and the subjective or psychological
aspects of these same regions ? As the brain was composed of sen-
sory and motor substrata, and as the brain was the organ of idea-
tion, therefore ideation was the functioning of centers whose ob-
jective functions were motor and sensory. That there was a
relation between the development of certain regions and certain
motor and sensory faculties and capacities was undoubted, and
was amply proved by the facts of comparative anatomy and phys-
iology, normal and morbid ; but whether any particular center
could be taken as the index of any particular intellectual faculty
or peculiarity was a totally different matter, for the same cen-
ter might be called into activity in connection with unnamable
mental states. Of which, then, would it be the index ? Mr. Hol-
lander's speculations in reference to so-called phrenological doc-
trines were ingenious ; but what we wanted was evidence founded
on careful investigation according to strictly scientific methods,
serving to indicate a relation between the development of partic-
ular centers and special mental faculties, aptitudes, or peculiari-
ties. At present he did not think that there was any such worthy
of consideration, beyond the general indications above mentioned.

CENTERS OF IDEATION IN THE BRAIN. 527

But the subject was one which was worthy of careful study, and
a scientific phrenology might one day become possible.

Mr. Wakefield said that, as men's minds undoubtedly differed
from each other in their natural characteristics, so, it might be
presumed, did also the physical organs through which mind mani-
fested itself. Was it possible to detect these differences ? Were
there, also, localized centers of action corresponding to certain
faculties or powers of the mind ? This was the problem for solu-
tion and demonstration. Some facts had come under his observa-
tion which led him to think that the solution was not hopeless ;
but the advance made in this department of knowledge as to the
true relation of mind and body was but slow and uncertain.

Mr. G. Bertin remarked that it had been ascertained that the
faculty of sight was localized in a convolution of the posterior
part of the brain, and as we know that the faculty of speech is
localized in the third left frontal convolution, it would seem that
modern discoveries disprove the assumptions of the phrenologists.
One great mistake of their system is to attribute the same facul-
ties to the two lobes of the brain, a fact disproved by the localiza-
tion of the faculty of speech on the left side. Another thing lost
sight of is, that the examination of the head could only show the
development of the surface of the brain, while we have no means
to detect its inner development. Nor must we forget that the
skull does not change after a certain age, though faculties may be
still developing. Another mistake of phrenologists is to localize
faculties too much ; if phrenology is to become a science, broader
lines will have to be followed, and Mr. Hollander's careful re-
searches will do much to further this object.

Mr. Hollander, in reply, observed that nobody disputes the fact
that there are brain-centers for ideation ; the question is only as
to their localization. But as the objective side — i. e., the physical
correlative of mental manifestation — has been in many cases suc-
cessfully established, there remains but the demonstration of the
subjective side. How far the speaker had succeeded in this may
be judged when the paper is read in type. So far he had not ex-
cited opposition. But now comes the coincidence that some of
Prof. Ferrier's researches, especially on the gustatory center, con-
firm the early phrenological observations long ago rejected. By
careful examination and a thorough study of Gall's works the
speaker found that there was a sound basis to his system. Gall
had extraordinary powers of observation, and was an expert in
comparative anatomy. He noticed the resemblance between the
skulls of murderers and the skulls of carnivorous animals ; the
predominance of the temporal lobe struck him, and both Prof.
Benedict and Lombroso — the authorities on criminal anthropology
— testify as to its correctness. Gall, in the same manner, noticed

528 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

peculiarities in the heads of actors, poets, musicians, etc. He
reasoned that there must be in the case of murderers an organ
giving an impulse to destroy or. kill (" destructiveness "), in the
case of mimics an organ giving an impulse to imitate (" organ of
imitation "), etc. Now, these deductions are open to criticism, but
the original observations are beyond dispute. There are no two
characters alike, neither are there two skulls alike. The question
in both cases is, how to measure the differences. There is no
instrument for the measurement of those " ups and downs," pro-
tuberances and depressions of the living head. Between the
skull of a Goethe and that of a murderer there are innumerable
varieties. As we are able to distinguish the two extremes, why
should we not succeed in demonstrating the intermediate stages ?
Gall's system was rejected at its first appearance, because it
threatened to upset familiar notions about the liberty of the will,
about special creation, and supernatural religion. This was the
first obstacle, and very few men, even nowadays, care to risk the
danger of opposing popular opinion. The author had attempted a
revival of Gall's system, more scientific and appealing to the learned
only. He hoped that it would be received without prejudice.

♦•»

A QUEER PET.

By ELIZABETH W. BELLAMY.

ONCE, for ten summer days, I had the pleasure of entertaining
a strange and most interesting guest, known among the
learned as the Mantis religiosa ; but the more familiar appella-
tion of devirs-riding-horse, by which he is designated amid his
native haunts, seems so appropriate to his demoniacal oddity that
the creature might be recognized thereby on sight, without de-
scription. He looks much more like a nag for an imp of the
Inferno than like a locust at prayer, despite the attitude as of
supplication assumed when about to snap up an unwary fly.

I captured my specimen upon the stalk of a common gera-
nium, to the pale-green color of which the hue of his long, slim,
grotesque body so closely approximated that it was by the merest
chance I espied him. Owing to this accommodation of tint — in
summer, like the grass and plants amid which he seeks his prey,
and, in autumn, like the twigs and branches whereon he alights —
the praying mantis, though by no means a rarity in the fields and
gardens of the South, commonly escapes all eyes save the sharp-
est. My prize was stalking his prey when I espied him. Nothing
can be stiller than the Mantis religiosa when he is waiting to
spring upon his victim ; and at that propitious moment, armed

A QUEER PET. 529

with, a tumbler in one hand and a palmetto fan in the other, I
made him my captive. I might have taken him with my fingers
easily ; but, though I do not believe, as the negroes do, that the bite
of the devil's-riding-horse is " bad luck," or that this insect will
" curse with blindness " by
spitting in its captor's eyes
if it can, I have a horror of
the creature, and I prefer not
to touch it.

By way of introduction to
those who do not know the FlG" 1-MAOT» REWGI08^

Mantis religiosa, I would explain that he is classed with the Or-
thoptera, whereby is declared his kinship with the crickets, locusts,
roaches, and grasshoppers ; yet he is not cheery like the cricket,
nor destructive like the locust, nor loathsome like the roach, nor
vivacious like the

" Gay little vaulter in the sunny grass."

Nor does he resemble any one of these in personal appearance.
Entomologically he is described in an array of big words which say
but little for the particular specimen that amused my midsum-
mer idleness. It is not as an entymologist, therefore, that I would
portray my queer pet.

To the non-entomological intelligence, then, my captive ap-
peared a pale, yellow-green, miniature demon, about two inches
in length, the most of whose body, so to speak, had run to neck.
About midway of this " neck " — or pro-thorax, to quote the ento-
mologists— were attached a pair of "arms" — antennce — with
joints like " elbows." Below these joints the arms were divided
and serrated, like the claws of a crab. Atop of the long neck the
head was set transversely, like the upper portion of the letter T.
An extremely flexible joint united this peculiar head to the rigid
neck, and enabled the creature to look in all directions, out of a
pair of extraordinarily intelligent and watchful eyes, that pro-
truded from each " end " of the head. The mouth was very large,
but, in spite of the powerful jaws, there was no expression of
ferocitv in that rather formidable feature. In normal condition
the body proper, which is perceptibly shorter than the neck — so
called — should be furnished with four slender, jointed legs, about
an inch in extended length ; but when under glass my prisoner
was seen to be minus the right hind-leg. This deficiency, how-
ever, did not appear to interfere in the least with his activity, for
he scrambled about his glass cell with a frantic speed that proved
five legs as good as six in his case ; of course, the two raptorial
" arms " count as legs when it comes to locomotion.

By way of beginning my study of his character, I dangled a
shoe-button first on one side and then on the other of his prison-

vol. xxxvii. — 38

53o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

house, sometimes at the top and sometimes at the bottom of the
glass ; and it was then that I discovered the wonder of the tiny
creature's eyes, the alertness of his intelligence, the extraordinary
flexibility of the minute joint upon which the head is made to
turn. He was not at all alarmed by the dangling black button,
which he evidently mistook for a particularly choice dinner ; but
he was plainly puzzled, and finally distressed, by his inability to
attain possession of this alluring dainty, seemingly within his
very grasp.

So long as the button was in his sight, his whole being was
absorbed in the effort to possess it ; but, that object removed from
his vision, he made the surface of the glass his study, feeling it
with his thread-like tongue, and stretching out his anterior, rap-
torial feet, with an evident air of inquiry, along the transparent
walls that shut him in so incomprehensibly.

Of course, the captive could not long remain in such a prison, and
at this juncture a small boy came to the rescue. When the devil's-
riding-horse is a subject of study, the small boy is an invaluable
coadjutor ; he quickly becomes expert as a purveyor of delicacies
in the shape of living insects, for dead ones the dainty mantis
will not deign to accept. The small boy, in this instance, perceiv-
ing at once the value of my captive, and the inadequacy of his
lodging, forthwith provided a discarded fly-trap of wire gauze,
cylindrical in form, six inches in diameter, and about nine inches
in height, surmounted by a top of tin. The lack of a fixed floor-
ing was supplied by a bit of cardboard.

The deviPs-riding-horse was manifestly pleased with his trans-
ference to his more spacious abode, and he looked about him with
a very comical air of studious observation. The wire gauze
offered no more obstacle to his locomotion than did the glass, but
he was plainly puzzled over the difference between the walls of
this prison-house and those of the one he had left : for a little
while he seemed to be weighing the problem intently, putting out
a cautious claw for inquiry, and turning his head with an expres-
sion of deep attention from side to side, and pausing every now
and then, in his upward course, to examine this strange new sur-
face.

The first meal we offered our fantastic guest was a dead fly,
but this he disdained in any way to notice ; though he was re-
peatedly shaken to the bottom of the cage where the dead fly lay,
he refused even to see it. Thereafter our fastidious captive had
his meals served to him au nature!. The living fly was simply
turned loose in the cage, and instantly the deviPs-riding-horse
was on the alert : warily he crept up the sides of the cage, settled
himself in a position to spring, and then the fly would move, and
the slow, laborious work of creeping upon his prey had all to be

A QUEER PET.

531

done over again. Bnt the patience of the deviFs-riding-horse in
pursuit of a dinner is inexhaustible, his perseverance indefati-
gable, and sooner or later the fly was inevitably his : with a snap
like a steel trap, he clasped his victim, and, settling upon his
haunches, he stripped off the gauzy wings — but at this point I
fled. The small boy, however, had a stouter heart, and presently
he announced that the meal was over ; the devil's-riding-horse had
devoured the fly, every atom, and was licking his claws !

We had a good magnifying glass wherewith to pursue our
study of the prisoner, but it was easy enough to discern all his
movements, his very expression, with the naked eye. Every one
has seen flies go through the performance children call " washing
its face/' a sight so
familiar that we fail
to be impressed by it.
In the devil's-riding-
horse this is a most
amusing exhibition.
Our specimen would
thrust out his fila-
ment of a tongue,
carefully lick his ser-
rated claws, examine
them closely, scratch
the back of his head
which he twisted
from side to side,
rub one jaw and then

the other, and turn and look at us out of those strange eyes of
his, as if to rebuke our impertinent staring. Not infrequently
he would end the performance with a mighty yawn — inaudible, of
course — and scamper away, as far as his limits would allow. His
bearing altogether was calculated to impress one with the idea
that he entertained a serene contempt for the whole human
family.

Apparently he did not object to his imprisonment, for he
showed no disposition to escape when, time and again, the oppor-
tunity was offered him ; and except when a fly was introduced to
his consideration, he usually remained motionless against the side
of his cage, as often as not with his head downward. He never,
of his own accord, betook himself to the bottom, not even in pur-
suit of his prey, and he finally came to prefer the tin top of the
cage — possibly on account of the shade it afforded — clinging there
like a fly to the ceiling. If we inverted the cage, he instantly
crawled upward and clung to the bit of cardboard that did duty
for a top. Once, when one of his claws was accidentally caught

Fio. 2.— Mantis beligiosa, with head raised.

53 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

between the cardboard and the tin rim of his cage, he dropped
down and stood shaking the wounded member, just as a boy
shakes his hand when he has caught his finger in a door ; then he
licked his bruises, holding up the tiny claw and carefully exam-
ining it.

Early on the morning of the seventh day after his capture, his
friend the small boy announced that the devirs-riding-horse had
shed his skin, and had grown to twice his former size ! But this
was not strictly accurate. The mantis had indeed shed his skin,
which lay in the bottom of his cage like a shrunken and discarded
garment, or rather like a sort of abandoned self, so perfect was
every feature of the outgrown mask ; but the devil's-riding-horse,
though wonderfully expanded in his new estate, was not twice as
large as we had known him the day before. In other respects,
also, he showed a difference : he was beginning to change color ; a
small brown spot was visible on the back of his folded wings, and
in two days more he was as brown as his cage — as brown as any
twig he might elect, in his coming freedom, to alight upon. But,
strangest change of all, the missing right hind-leg was there, very
much shorter than its fellow; and, whereas our devirs-riding-
horse had never heretofore seemed to be conscious of his deficiency,
he now went lame ! However, for yet another marvel, in a few
days more, that tardy leg was as well developed as the others.

About this time we discovered that something ailed our
prisoner. He clung more persistently than ever to the top of his
cage, and could hardly be induced to stir, even for a fly. Still, he
would at his leisure make a dash at every insect offered him ; but,
though he captured and killed his prey, he did not devour it.
Therefore, lest he should die on our hands, we decided to release
him. For this purpose we took him to the same flower-stand
where he had been captured, and on a bare shelf, exposed to the
blazing noon, we reversed the fly-trap, leaving it open to the sky.
The captive was, as usual, clinging to the tin top of his prison-
house, but, the instant he perceived himself at the abhorred bot-
tom, he began to crawl up the side of the cage.

Now, we had expected that the release of this prisoner would
be a very tame affair of ready wings ; but there was a dramatic
surprise in store for us. When we looked to see our mantis
1 spread his sheeny vans for flight," he paused on the tin rim that
bound the wire gauze, and lifting that queer head of his until it
almost lay back on his neck, he gazed up at the sky; turning
slowly from side to side, he took a long survey of the heavens, his
vision in no way troubled, it would seem, by the blinding light.
After several seconds of this sky-gazing, he shifted his position
slightly, and peered down at the depth from which he had as-
cended ; then he looked at the sky again, and again he peered at

THE USES OF AJTIMAL COL OB. 533

the bottom of his cage. Evidently he was puzzled ; heretofore,
when he climbed those walls, he had invariably found a rest at
top — tin at one end and cardboard at the other; but this vast
expanse of light was a marvel to be* pondered and not too rashly
accepted. That mantis never did fly ; he crawled around the edge
of the cage at last to a spot where it touched a higher shelf of the
flower-stand, and, as if he had just discovered that he was a
prisoner no longer, scrambled with more haste than discretion up
to the next shelf, where a huge black spider, whose lair was just
under the verge of the shelf, pounced upon him so suddenly that
retreat was impossible. The mantis was taken completely by sur-
prise, and the start he gave was so violent that but for the spider's
swift, encompassing arms, he must have fallen backward off the
shelf. Thereupon ensued a terrific struggle ; the devil's-riding-
horse made a brave resistance, but the spider would have proved
too much for him, so his late jailer, armed with a broom-straw,
separated the combatants. The spider retired to the shadow of
the shelf, and the mantis, climbing upon the leaves of a mespilus-
tree that reached against the farther side of the flower-stand, dis-
appeared from our ken forever.

-♦♦♦-

THE USES OF ANIMAL COLOR.*

By EDWARD B. POULTON, M. A., F. R. S.

COLOR, as such, is not necessarily of any value to an organism.
Organic substances frequently possess a chemical and physi-
cal structure which causes certain light- waves to be absorbed ; or,
the elements of tissues may be so arranged that light is scattered,
or interference colors are produced. Thus blood is red, fat is
white, and the external surface of the air-bladder in certain fishes
has a metallic luster, like silver. In such cases there is no reason
why we should inquire as to the use or meaning of the color in
the animal economy; the color, as such, has no more meaning
than it has in a crystal of sulphate of copper or iron. Such colors
are the incidental results of chemical or physical structure, which
is valuable to the organism on its own account. This argument
will be still further enforced if we remember that the colors in
question are, strictly speaking, not colors at all. Blood and fat
are so constituted that they will be red and white, respectively, in
the presence of light, but they can not be said to possess these
colors in their normal position, buried beneath the opaque surface
of an animal.

* From advance sheets of The Colors of Animals, by Edward B. Poulton, M. A., F. R. S.
International Scientific Series, No. LXVII. In press of D. Appleton & Co.

534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The existence of non-significant colors is, nevertheless, most
important, for they form the material out of which natural or
sexual selection can create significant colors. Thus the color of
blood may be made use of for " complexion," while fat may be
employed to produce white markings, as in certain insect larvae.
The yellow, brown, and red fatty matters of the connective tissue
are accumulated beneath the skin in patches, so as to produce
patterns.

All animal color must have been originally non-significant, for,
although selective agencies have found manifold uses for color,
this fact can never have accounted for its first appearance. It has,
however, been shown that this first appearance presents no diffi-
culty, for color is always liable to occur as an incidental result.
This is even true of the various substances which seem to be spe-
cially set apart for the production of color in animals ; for pig-
ments occur abundantly in the internal organs and tissues of
many forms. The brilliant colors of some of the lower organisms
are probably also non-significant. In all higher animals, however,
the colors on the surface of the body have been significant for a
vast period of time, so that their amount, their arrangement in
patterns, their varying tints, and their relation to the different
parts of the body, have all been determined by natural selection
through innumerable generations. Because the origin of all pig-
ments is to be found in the incidental result of the chemical and
physical nature of organic compounds, it by no means follows
that incidental or non-significant colors would have appeared at
all on the surface of most animals. And we find as a matter of
fact that such colors tend to disappear altogether, directly they
cease to be useful, as in cave-dwelling animals. On the other
hand, the non-significant color of blood or of fat would persist
undiminished in such forms. „

Just as natural selection may develop an appearance which
harmonizes with the surroundings, out of the material provided
by non-significant color, the same agency may lead to the disap-
pearance of the latter when it impedes the success of an animal in
the struggle for existence. Thus the red color of blood has disap-
peared in certain transparent fishes, which are thereby concealed
from their enemies. Among the manifold possible variations of
nature is that of a fish with colorless blood, which can, neverthe-
less, efficiently perform all the duties of this fluid. While such a
variation would be no advantage to the great majority of verte-
brates, it would be very beneficial to a fish which was already
difficult to detect on the surface of the ocean on account of its
transparency.

Colors may be useful in many ways, and are therefore always
liable to be turned to account in one direction or another. They

THE USES OF ANIMAL COLOR. 535

may be of direct physiological value to the organism, or may
assist in the struggle for existence by deluding other species, or
by aiding the individuals of the same species, or they may be in-
timately connected with courtship. *

The color of chlorophyl, which causes the green appearance
of vegetation, must be intimately connected with the important
changes which take place in this substance in the presence of
light. It is well known that under these circumstances carbon
dioxide (popularly called " carbonic acid ") can be split up, and its
carbon made to unite with the elements of water, forming organic
substance. Although this process has been much studied, it is still
very imperfectly understood. It is clear, however, that the color
of chlorophyl, involving the special absorption of certain light-
waves, has some direct bearing upon the changes which occur,

No equally clear instance has been proved to occur in the ani-
mal kingdom, except in those few forms which resemble plants
in possessing chlorophyl. Dr. Hickson, however, believes that
among corals " the most widely distributed colors will eventually
be proved to be allied to chlorophyl, . . . and perform a very
similar if not precisely identical physiological function." It is
much to be desired that this interesting suggestion, which Dr.
Hickson supports by many arguments, may be thoroughly tested
as soon as possible.*

In the very common association of colored substances with the
important function of respiration, it is clear that the color is not
more than incidental ; while the fish with transparent blood shows
that color is not indispensable for the due performance of the
function. Pigment is, however, of direct importance for vision ;
it is always present in the eyes of animals, except in the case of
albinos, and it is said that even they possess the essential visual
pigment associated with the termination of the optic nerve (reti-
nal purple).

The difference between the physiological importance of color
in animals and plants is well shown by the fact that a true albino
variety (not merely a variegated example) of a green plant could
not live for any length of time.

There are, however, certain cases among animals in which it is
extremely probable that color is of direct physiological value. It
is well known that dark colors readily absorb radiant heat, while
light colors do so with difficulty. For this reason black clothes
are most trying, and white most comfortable, in the hottest
weather. Conversely, a dark surface readily parts with heat by
radiation, while a white surface retains heat far more effectually.

A few writers had suggested that these principles may explain

* A Naturalist in North Celebes (Hickson, 1889), pp. 149-151.

536 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the colors of certain animals, but the question was first fully
entered upon in Lord Walsingham's presidential address to the
Yorkshire Naturalists' Union in 1885.* The predominance of
dark varieties of insects and white varieties of birds and mam-
mals in northern latitudes is connected with these facts. "Birds
and animals living through the winter naturally require to retain
in their bodies a sufficient amount of heat to enable them to main-
tain their existence, with unreduced vitality, against the severities
of the climate. Insects, on the contrary, require rapidly to take
advantage of transient gleams of sunshine during the short sum-
mer season, and may be content to sink into a dormant condition
so soon as they have secured the reproduction of their species ;
only to be revived in some instances by a return of exceptionally
favorable conditions."

It would be fatal for the temperature of one of the higher ver-
tebrates to sink a few degrees below the normal, except in the
case of certain species, such as the dormouse, etc., which have the
power of hibernating in a dormant condition ; such animals were
once called " warm-blooded," but are now more correctly termed
" homothermic," because it is the constancy of the temperature
which is so important, and which must be maintained whether
the surrounding medium be colder or warmer than themselves.
Other animals with an inconstant temperature are now correctly
called " poikilothermic " rather than " cold-blooded."

Lord Walsingham's conclusions appear to be supported by
the fact that young dark-colored caterpillars, like those of the
emperor moth (Saturnia carpini), or tortoise-shell butterfly ( Va-
nessa urticai), seek the light side of a glass cylinder, and always
change their position when the cylinder is turned round. The
question needs further investigation, and much might be learned
by interposing various screens between such larvae and the light,
thus cutting off different sets of light-waves.

The most important support to the hypothesis is found in an
experiment made by Lord Walsingham, in which several Lepidop-
tera of different colors were placed on a surface of snow exposed
to bright sunshine ; in half an hour the snow beneath the darker
insects showed distinct signs of melting, but no effects were seen
beneath the others. The differences were further brought out in
the course of two hours, when the darkest insect of the lot, a black
geometer, the chimney-sweeper (Odezia chcerophyllata) , "had de-
cidedly won the downward race among them."

It is therefore certain that the absorption of radiant heat is
favored by the dark colors of northern insects, and it is in every
way probable that they are benefited by the warmth received in

* See Entomological Transactions of the Union for 1885.

THE USES OF ANIMAL COLOR. 537

this way. We can not, however, as yet assert that such dark colors
are not also advantageous for concealment or some other purpose.

The white appearance of arctic birds and mammals must be
advantageous for concealment in a region so largely covered with
snow, but it is very probable that advantage is also secured by
checking the loss of heat through radiation.

Thus Lord Walsingham's experiments and conclusions seem
to prove that colors are sometimes of direct physiological value to
animals, although a great deal more work must be done before we
can safely estimate the proportion which this advantage bears to
others also conferred by the same colors.

By far the most wide-spread use of color is to assist an animal
in escaping from its enemies or in capturing its prey ; the former
is protective, the latter aggressive. It is probable that these were
the first uses to which non-significant colors were put. The re-
semblances are of various kinds ; the commonest cases are those
of simple concealment. The animal passes undetected by resem-
bling some common object which is of no interest to its enemies or
prey respectively, or by harmonizing with the general effect of its
surroundings ; the former is special, the latter general resem-
blance, and both may be protective or aggressive. Among the
most interesting special aggressive resemblances are the cases of
alluring coloring, in which the animal, or some part of it, resem-
bles an object which is attractive to its prey.

Mimicry is in reality a very important section of special resem-
blance. The animal gains advantage by a superficial resemblance
to some other, and generally very different, species which is well
known and dreaded because of some unpleasant quality, such as a
sting or an offensive taste or smell, etc., or it may even be pro-
tected from the animal it resembles : this is protective mimicry.
When, however, the animal resembles another so as to be able to
injure the latter or some other form which accompanies it or is
not afraid of it, the mimicry is aggressive. . . .

When an animal possesses an unpleasant attribute, it is often
to its advantage to advertise the fact as publicly as possible. In
this way it escapes a great deal of experimental " tasting." The
conspicuous patterns and strongly contrasted colors which serve
as the signal of danger or inedibility are known as warning colors.
In other cases such colors or markings enable individuals of the
same species easily to follow those in front to a place of safety, or
assist them in keeping together when safety depends upon num-
bers. It is these warning colors which are nearly always the
objects of protective mimicry.

Finally, in the highest animals, the vertebrata and many of
the most specialized invertebrate groups, we have some evidence
for the existence of an aesthetic sense. Darwin believed that this

538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sense was brought into play in courtship, and that colors and

pattern have been gradually modified by the preference of the

females for the most beautiful males ; he believed that such

sexual selection accounts for many of the most beautiful features

possessed by animals, viz., those which are especially displayed

during courtship.

♦*♦

THUNDER-STORMS.

By EOBERT H. SCOTT.

THUNDER-STORMS naturally attract universal attention
when they occur, and it may perhaps be of interest to point
out some particulars that have been ascertained about them.

The most obvious facts -are that a heavy cloud passes over the
observer, and that from it lightning appears, followed, after a
greater or less interval, by thunder ; and that usually heavy rain
or hail falls from the cloud. The damage wrought by these oc-
currences, whether by lightning-strokes or by the hail, is so seri-
ous that, in countries especially liable to such visitations, hail in-
surance forms an important item in the farmer's calculations. In
many countries such insurance is in the hands of the Government,
and accordingly statistics as to the amount of losses are to be ob-
tained ; whereas where insurance is in the hands of private com-
panies, information as to the expenditure of these companies is
naturally not published.

As regards the liability of certain districts to suffer damage
from thunder-storms, it has been maintained by several authorities
that these visitations are steadily increasing in frequency. A
most elaborate inquiry into the records of such occurrences was
printed in the Journal of the Statistical Office of Berlin for 1886.
From this it appears that the evidence indicated no general in-
crease in the frequency of lightning-strokes, but, on the contrary,
rather a decrease. Houses with soft or, in other words, thatched
roofs are struck about seven or eight times more frequently than
ordinary slated dwelling-houses. Houses in towns are much less
frequently affected than those in the country.

The geological character of the soil has a very great influence
on the risk. If this for a limestone soil be taken as one, that for
a sandy soil is nine, and for swampy land twenty-two. As regards
the different classes of trees, if the risk to a beech be taken as one,
that to a conifer (fir or spruce) is fifteen, to an oak fifty-four, and
to other deciduous trees forty. Another investigator accounts for
the comparative immunity of the beech by the fact that its leaves
are edged with short hairs, which allow the electricity collected in
the leaves to escape quietly.

As to the actual origin of atmospheric electricity, authorities

THUNDER-STORMS. 539

-
are not at all agreed, and the observations made on its phenomena
(made at different stations) do not accord in a satisfactory man-
ner. In fact, it appears as if the indications of the instruments
are due to local canses, so that they* do not lend themselves to any
useful generalizations. When a thunder-storm is actually raging
in the neighborhood of a station, the indications of electrometers
thereat are most erratic and violent, but it can not be said that any
electrometer enables us to perceive the approach of a storm one
whit earlier than we are able to do by careful watching of the
clouds. As regards forecasting thunder-storms, this can be done
in a general sort of way ; but it is not practicable to predict which
villages or parishes, or even counties, will be visited. When the
daily weather charts are drawn, if we find that there is an uneven-
ness in the isobaric lines — that is, if these are wavy, or bulge out
irregularly — we know that thunder-storms are likely to burst
somewhere or other over the country, but that is all we can say.
At each station the barometer is unsteady— the mercury moving
up and down in the tube — during the actual continuance of the
storm ; but this oscillation of the mercurial column has nothing
to do with the irregularity in the isobaric lines above mentioned.
Forecasting these storms is, therefore, always an uncertain and a
thankless task, for local success is rarely attained.

Among the earliest symptoms of the approach of a thunder-
storm is the appearance on the western horizon of a line of cumu-
lus (" wool-pack ") clouds, exhibiting a peculiar turreted structure.
I say on the western horizon, for most of our changes of weather
come from that quarter, and it has been proved that thunder-
storms, like wind-storms, advance over the country, generally,
from some westerly point. This bank of clouds moves on, and
over it appear first streamers and then sheets of lighter upper
cloud — cirrus, or " mare's-tail " — which spread over the sky with
extreme rapidity. The heavy cloud mass comes up under this
film, and it is a general observation that no electrical explosion or
downfall of rain ever takes place from a cloud unless streamers
of cirrus, emanating from its upper surface, are visible when the
cloud is looked at sideways from a distance.

Thunder-storms are generally accompanied by falls of hail as
well as rain, and these hailstones assume the form of lumps of ice
— some even as large as hens' eggs, and weighing several ounces,
having been known to fall. The stories of masses of hailstones,
weighing many pounds, having been found after storms, are ex-
plained by the fact that the hailstones, after they have fallen,
may have frozen to each other and formed a solid lump on the
ground. Large hailstones are composed of alternate layers of
clear crystalline and white porous ice, and many of them consist
of an aggregate of smaller hailstones which have attached them-

540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

selves to one stone as a nucleus, and then the mass so formed has
received external coatings of ice. The compound structure of
such stones becomes manifested when the mass gradually thaws.
In some cases these stones are coated with crystals of ice in six-
sided prisms and pyramids, as perfectly formed as the specimens
of quartz or calc-spar crystals which are to be seen in mineral col-
lections. It is very hard to believe that such beautifully formed
crystals as these can be the product of any instantaneous process
of formation.

It is these heavy blocks of ice which do the greatest amount
of damage, as naturally a lump, weighing even an ounce, is a
formidable missile when it falls from a height of even a thousand
feet. When these falls are about to take place, observers have
reported that a peculiar rattling sound is heard in the atmosphere,
evidently from collisions between these stones striking one an-
other in their fall. A very careful observer, who was overtaken
by one of these falls in the Caucasus, near Tiflis, states that it oc-
curred immediately after an ordinary hail-shower, and that he
could see the successive showers marching over the country, and
noticed that, between the last edge of the falling hail and the
front edge of the falling ice-blocks, there was a distinct break,
through which he could see the sun shining on the hills in the
background. It was on this particular occasion that the best
specimens of crystal-bespangled hailstones have been recorded and
sketched, but others have been reported from Natal, and quite
recently from Philadelphia, October 1, 1889. When such a visita-
tion of ice-lumps takes place, the entire crops of the district af-
fected by it are destroyed. Such a storm passed over Richmond
in August, 1879, and in five minutes some ten thousand pounds'
worth of damage was done, principally to conservatories. Natu-
rally, Kew Gardens were among the principal sufferers.

It is a problem as yet unsolved to account for the suspension
in the atmosphere of such objects as these hailstones, which fre-
quently weigh much over an ounce. A recent theory, which
seems to carry some probability with it, supposes that in the
heart of every hail-cloud there is a whirlwind, or what is usually
but erroneously termed a " tornado." It is well known that such
disturbances exert a prodigious lifting power, raising heavy ob-
jects, such as carts, house-roofs, and even trees, and transporting
them to considerable distances. The theory is, that when a drop
of water in such a cloud is congealed it is carried round and
round in the vortex and lifted up, more moisture being condensed
and frozen upon it at each gyration, until at last it is thrown out
and falls. This would account for the alternate layers of which I
have already spoken, but will not account for the formation of
crystals, a growth which usually requires a considerable time.

THUNDER-STORMS. 541

Thunder-storms have been scientifically studied in various
countries, and the broad fact has been elicited that they travel
over the earth's surface like wind-storms, but at a higher velocity.
To give an idea of this, I may quote some statements made be-
fore the Royal Meteorological Society last June, in relation to
the storm of the 2d of that month. This storm progressed from
Wiltshire to Edinburgh, over a distance of four hundred miles, at
a nearly uniform speed, the rate of travel being about fifty miles
an hour. This is an unusually rapid rate of advance for a wind-
storm over these islands. I am not speaking of the velocity of
the wind in the storm, but of the velocity of the storm system as
a whole. In this storm many of the hailstones which were col-
lected weighed over an ounce. Some at Docking, near King's
Lynn, were said to be three inches in diameter, and to weigh
three and a half ounces. One was weighed at Barden Mill, near
Tunbridge Wells, and was said to turn the scale at half a pound.
As regards the incessant character of the lightning in London,
one observer at Highgate counted twelve hundred and forty-four
displays during the two hours ending at 11.10 P. M., giving an
average of over ten per minute. Another observer, at Westgate-
on-Sea, gave a much higher figure for frequency ; his attempt to
count breaking down at the very high number of one hundred
and thirty-one per minute.

Thunder-storms are much more frequent in low latitudes than
in high. In some tropical countries they are said to occur regu-
larly every afternoon. At Rio the story was that at certain sea-
sons, in issuing invitations to afternoon parties, it was usual to
specify whether guests were to assemble before or after the
thunder-storm. In Abyssinia, D'Abbadie gives, as the average of
four years, 410*6 as the annual number of these storms. Many of
these, however, consisted of only one or two flashes of lightning.
It was formerly believed that such storms never were noticed in
the arctic regions, but this is not the case, for one was experi-
enced at Bell Sound, Spitsbergen, in 78° north latitude, in August,
1873 ; and a succession of thunder-storms was reported for several
days in July, 1870, on the west coast of Nova Zembla. At any
rate, in such high latitudes they are very rare.

Thunder-storms are generally divided into two groups — heat
thunder-storms and cyclonic thunder-storms. The former are the
summer type, while the latter occur principally in autumn and
winter. We may also say that the former are essentially conti-
nental, while the latter are characteristic of the ocean or island
climate. In Iceland all the thunder-storms are of this latter type,
and occur in winter. The same conditions show themselves on the
British Atlantic coasts, where there is a decided maximum of fre-
quency of such storms in winter, even in the latitude of the south-

542 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

west of Ireland, at Valencia. These circumstances are accounted
for by the fact that thunder-storms are always associated with
great differences of temperature in adjacent masses of air. Such
conditions are most likely to occur in hot climates, where the soil
gets excessively heated in the daytime, while the air at some dis-
tance above it is cool. In cold climates they occur in winter,
where a shift of wind from southwest to northwest is sometimes
accompanied by a sudden fall of temperature of 15° or even 20°.

We of the British Islands owe our comparative immunity from
thunder-storms to our damp climate. The fact is well known that
it is comparatively difficult to perform any electrical experiments
in these islands, and that all apparatus must be kept constantly
in front of a fire in order to prevent moisture being deposited on
it. Accordingly, we must suppose that the electrical disturbances
which would give rise to explosions and severe storms in France
or Germany may pacify themselves comparatively quietly in our
atmosphere, and at most only give rise to phenomena of a very
moderate character.

I must now say something about the actual lightning flash,
which is neither more nor less than a violent electric spark. Three
different forms of lightning are generally admitted to exist : (1)
The actual flash, or what is commonly called " forked lightning."
(2) " Sheet lightning," which usually is the illumination of the
sky by a lightning flash which takes place below the horizon. (3)
" Globular lightning."

1. As to the term "forked lightning" the representations
of it given by artists, which resemble the so-called thunder-
bolts placed in the hand of Jupiter, are quite absurd. The flash,
when photographed, exhibits itself as a line which is continually
changing its course, and is described as "intensely crooked"
by a very careful observer. It never proceeds for a time in a
straight line, and then, turning at a sharp angle, going on farther
in an equally straight line, as is represented in pictures. The
forking of it is very marked, and this occurs by side flashes pass-
ing off from the main track, and eventually losing themselves,
like the ramifications of tree-roots. Occasionally the lightning
appears to start from a point from which several flashes diverge
in different directions.

2. " Sheet Lightning." — Whenever a flash passes from cloud to
cloud, or from cloud to earth, the light produced by it illuminates
the sky in the neighborhood, and the more intense the flash, the
more brilliant and extensive the illumination. At times sheet
lightning has been proved to emanate from an ordinary storm dis-
tant more than a hundred miles from the point of observation. It
is, however, maintained, and apparently with good reason, that
occasionally lightning of the " sheet " type, such as what is called

THUNDER-STORMS. 543

" summer lightning," takes place without any thunder ; so that,
in such cases, no actual thunder-storm is in progress.

3. " Globular Lightning." — This is a rare phenomenon, and one
which no one has as yet been able to produce in the laboratory,
whereas the phenomena of the two previous types are easily pro-
duced. The general description of the occurrence is that a lumi-
nous ball is seen, moving very slowly, not touching any object,
and eventually breaking up with a violent explosion and the ap-
pearance of several flashes of ordinary lightning. It is reported
that persons have gone out from a house into a street to follow
such a ball and watch its movements, so that the occurrence must
have lasted at least a number of seconds. Ordinary lightning, as
is well known, is practically quite instantaneous. The size of the
ball on different occasions has varied from that of an orange to
that of a large glass lamp-globe, or even larger. Many physicists
refuse to believe any accounts of this manifestation of the elec-
trical discharge, but the reports of it are too numerous and cir-
cumstantial for us to consider them to be entirely baseless.

There is another way of classifying lightning flashes, and that
is as to their color. The seven colors of the solar spectrum are
well known, but the spectrum of the electric spark differs mate-
rially from the solar spectrum. It exhibits rays which extend far
beyond the extreme violet of the solar spectrum. We see, there-
fore, that in the light of lightning a wide range of color is pos-
sible. If any of my readers have ever watched a storm carefully,
they must have noted that some of the flashes were bluish, others
reddish, etc. It is generally the blue tints which accompany the
most destructive strokes.

Some attempts have been made to estimate the actual force
exerted by a lightning flash. The late Mr. de la Rue constructed
a magnificent electrical battery of many thousand cells. From
experiments with this, the number of cells being raised to 15,000,
and the " potential " of each being rather over one " volt," it was
found that 9,700 " volts " — say 9,500 cells — were required to pro-
duce a discharge through one centimetre ('3937 inch). Starting
from these data, the electro-motive force requisite to produce a
flash of lightning one mile (63,360 inches) in length, at ordinary
pressures, is 1,480,570,000 volts, practically given by a battery of
fifteen hundred million cells.

A flash a mile in length is nothing very extraordinary, and it
is therefore not to be wondered at that experiments to bring
electricity down from the clouds are very dangerous, and have
frequently had fatal results. Soon after Franklin, in the last
century, had made his famous experiment with a kite, and proved
that electricity existed in a thunder-cloud, natural philosophers
generally began to imitate him. One of them in St. Petersburg, a

544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prof. Richmann, arranged an apparatus to collect this electricity.
On the first occasion of a storm he went to his laboratory to ob-
serve the effects. A ball of fire was seen to leap from the appa-
ratus to his head, and he fell lifeless.

A flash of lightning really consists of a discharge between two
objects, say two clouds, or a cloud and the earth, oppositely elec-
trified, the charges on which suddenly combine, with the mani-
festation of light and heat. Lightning conductors are contrivances
by which the electricity of the earth is allowed to escape quietly
into the atmosphere, where it meets with electricity of the oppo-
site character from the clouds, and the two neutralize each other
quietly, without any explosive discharge, or, in other words, with-
out lightning. I need not go back to the first principles of elec-
trical science and explain why it is that electricity passes most
easily through metals, and escapes with greater freedom from
sharp points than from rounded knobs. Assuming these ele-
mentary facts, I may say that on any object, such as a house or
other building, the electricity tends to accumulate itself on all
projecting portions of the roof, etc., and especially on the highest
points of it. The ideal complete lightning-rod system would call
for a sharp-pointed copper rod erected at each of these projecting
pinnacles, and rising above it, and would then connect all these
separate points by copper rods, and eventually carry down a stout
copper rod to the earth. Care must be taken that due attention
is paid to certain main precautions : (1) The point of the conductor
must be kept sharp ; (2) the section of the conducting rod must
be sufficient to allow the electricity to pass along it ; (3) the rod
must be perfectly continuous ; and, lastly (4), the rod must be effi-
ciently connected with the ground.

1. The sharpness of the point is insured by gilding it or coating
it with some metal which resists oxidation. -

2. As to the section of the rod, a bar half an inch in diameter
is sufficient for all ordinary buildings. Bars are not usually em-
ployed, as it is difficult to bend them over cornices, etc. ; accord-
ingly, either wire ropes or tapes are taken. The wire ropes are
more liable to corrosion from wet getting in between the strands
than are tapes, so that the latter are generally preferred.

3. The continuity of the metallic connection from the highest
point of the rod to the ground can only be secured by having as
few joints as may be, and by making those joints as true and firm
as possible by soldering. The joints should be examined from
time to time, for it is often found, on examination of old con-
ductors, that while the copper wire or tape is quite sound along
its straight reaches, at the bends or joints corrosion has set in.
As a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, a corroded con-
ductor, such as has been described, is perfectly useless.

SKETCH OF RUDOLPH KOENIG. 545

4. The Earth Connection. — It is not easy in all cases to insure
that this is satisfactory. Electricity will not pass at all so easily
into dry earth as into wet earth, and merely plunging the end of
the rope or tape into wet earth is not sufficient. The conductor
from the building should be soldered at its end to a large sheet of
copper, say at least two square yards in area, buried in damp soil,
or else soldered to the water or gas mains, so as to insure that a
large surface of metal is in contact with damp earth.

Supposing that the whole system of protection against damage
from lightning has been properly planned, the work should be
carefully tested after its completion, because injury to it often
occurs at the very last, owing to accidental causes, or to the care-
lessness of workmen. Conductors should also be examined from
time to time, throughout their whole length, to make sure that
all the joints are sound. Care should also be taken that the earth
in which the terminating plate is buried is kept thoroughly moist.
If any of these particulars be neglected, the conductor will be
practically useless, and will afford no protection to the structure.
— Abridged from Longman's Magazine,

•+ * ♦■

SKETCH OF RUDOLPH KOENIG.

Br Professor W. LE CONTE STEVENS.

IN examining the personal records of men who have contrib-
uted to the advancement of human knowledge, one of the
features most frequently noticed is the necessity to meet adversity
in early life. Perhaps it is but little less frequently the case that
they are compelled throughout life to content themselves with a
minimum of pecuniary reward for the mental work which meets
due appreciation only after its final close. The thirst for dis-
covery, the craving after truth, apart from all considerations of
emolument, exist germinally in every young human being ; but
the rewards that the world gives for brain-work, other than what
is directed toward the discovery of truth, are sufficient to deter-
mine most men and keep them occupied in fields other than
scientific. Native bent, if fortified with force of character, finds
its channel in time, whatever may be the accidents of childhood ;
and uncongenial occupation has been the lot of many who have
used it as the basis of future renown.

Quite a number of those who have achieved distinction in
physical science have, in early life, or throughout life, given a
considerable share of attention to the mechanical details involved
in constructing the instruments needed for investigation. New-
ton began in youth the making of machines, and his skill as a

VOL. XXXTII. 39

546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

practical optician was only less remarkable than his genius as a
mathematician. Herschel practiced music as a profession, while
giving all his spare time to the grinding of telescope mirrors and
to observational astronomy. Ruhmkorff wandered to Paris as a
boy of sixteen, and became a porter in the laboratory of a French
physicist. In time his name became known wherever the induc-
tion coil is used, whether in the investigations of the physicist or
in the operations of commercial electricity. Wheatstone adopted
the vocation of a maker of musical instruments in preference to
grinding Greek and Latin verses at school. This work he contin-
ued for many years, achieving world-wide distinction as an original
investigator in acoustics, and afterward in optics and electricity.

Younger than Ruhmkorff and Wheatstone, but amply worthy
of being classed with them, is Rudolph Koenig, the most distin-
guished living inventor and mechanician in the domain of acous-
tics. He was born on the 26th of November, 1832, in Koenigs-
berg, Prussia. His father was teacher of mathematics and
physics in the city gymnasium, where the son as pupil received
the usual high-school training, corresponding in some particulars
to the academic work in most American colleges. He exhibited
much aptitude in physics as well as music ; but, being compelled
to depend upon his own resources, he went to Paris at the age of
nineteen years, to devote himself to the construction of stringed
instruments. Here he worked for several years under the direc-
tion of the celebrated violin-maker Vuillaume, but at the same
time devoted such leisure as he could command to the study of
mechanics and physics.

Quite naturally acoustics was the branch of physics which
presented most attraction to the young mechanician, and in time
it claimed his almost undivided allegiance. Meanwhile his suc-
cess was such as to warrant him in undertaking business on his
own account, so that in 1858 he fitted up a working place for the
construction of acoustic apparatus, and in 1859 he issued his first
catalogue, containing descriptions and illustrations of the various
instruments made by him. Some of these were improvements
upon instruments already in use, but many were new, the out-
come of Koenig's own ingenuity. This catalogue formed the
basis of the subsequent expansions which appeared in 1865, 1873,
1882, and 1889. The last is a volume of one hundred pages, with
descriptions of two hundred and seventy-two instruments, in
French, English/and German, and including probably everything
that is employed in modern acoustic investigation.

It was in 1862 that Koenig began to be known to the scientific
world as an investigator. An International Exhibition was held
during that year in London, and the indefatigable instrument-
maker was present, not merely for the purpose of displaying the

SKETCH OF RUDOLPH KOENIG. 547

products of his labor, but to use these in the presence of physi-
cists and to show practically the value of the graphic method of
studying harmonic motion which had grown almost to perfection
in his hands. The mathematical analysis of wave-motion had
been abundantly brought out in technical treatises. Dr. Thomas
Young, in the beginning of the present century, had pointed out
the method by which a tuning-fork might be made to trace a
record of its own vibrations, and his hint was put into practice
nearly half a century afterward by Wertheim and Duhamel.
But Koenig was the first to apply this method systematically to
the registration of not only simple vibrations but also compound
harmonic motion ; and a large variety of such phonograms exe-
cuted Avith apparatus of his device, and accompanied with the
tracings of the corresponding theoretical curves, attracted much
attention at the exhibition. The method has since been adopted
in a number of other fields, notably in physiology for the analysis
of animal motion, and in general physics for the measurement of
minute intervals of time.

At the same exhibition in 1862 Koenig exhibited a wholly new
method of making the effects of sonorous vibration easily visible
by utilizing the delicate sensitiveness of flame to variations of
atmospheric pressure. Four years earlier some noteworthy exper-
iments had been made in America by Le Conte on the effect of
such vibrations upon naked gas-flames ; but no development had
thus far been evolved from them. Koenig devised the manomet-
ric capsule through the medium of which the pressure at the out-
flowing jet is modified at will by sound-waves conducted to an
elastic membrane. The motion of this produces pulsations in the
gaseous fuel, and their effect on the flame is observed by looking
at its image reflected from a revolving mirror. This beautiful
method has been applied by its originator with much success to
the study of the interference of sound, and to the investigation of
the quality of musical sounds. No two vowels can be sung in
succession to the delicate flame without impressing on it their
separate individuality ; and the eye is thus permitted to compare
differences which the ear may recognize but not analyze. To see
one's own voice in a mirror, to watch the successive phases of mel-
ody and harmony, to see two sounds interfering and producing
visible silence— these are some of the revelations of the manomet-
ric flame.

This remarkable exhibition of Koenig's originality brought
him prominently into notice everywhere. A detailed description
of his work was published soon afterward by Prof. Tisko in Vi-
enna, and from that day to this he has had no rival in the field
which he had made his own. In every university where acoustics
is taught Koenig's apparatus is the standard. Honors also were

548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

soon accorded in acknowledgment of his merit. Among these
may be mentioned a gold medal, in I860, from the Societe d'En-
couragement at Paris ; a gold medal, in 1867, from the Interna-
tional Exhibition at Paris ; in 1868 the honorary degree of Doctor
of Philosophy, from the university of his native city, Koenigs-
berg ; and, in 1876, a medal from the Centennial Exhibition at
Philadelphia. Before scientific assemblies he has been called
upon to give the results of his investigations, including in them
the Assembly of German Naturalists, in 1868, at Dresden; the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1876 at
Buffalo, and again in 1882 at Montreal ; and the Electrical Exhi-
bition at Paris in 1881, when he was specially visited by a large
company of the most renowned of living physicists, including
Helmholtz, Kirchhoff, Du Bois - Reymond, Clausius, Quincke,
Mach, Kundt, Pahlzon, and Sir William Thomson.

The scientific papers of M. Koenig have been published almost
entirely in the Annalen of Poggendorff and of Wiedemann. Most
of these have been translated into French and published, in 1882,
in a volume entitled Quelques Experiences d'Acoustique. To give
an adequate idea of what is included in them would be impossible
without going into detail. The volume includes a full account of
Koenig's application of the graphic method and that of manomet-
ric flames. Both these methods are applied in an exhaustive in-
vestigation of the beat tones which result from the combination
of two or more primary tones. Helmholtz discussed " differential
tones " and " summation tones," whose existence was inferred
from the results of mathematical analysis ; and certain phenom-
ena seemed for a time to confirm the conclusions of the great Ger-
man physicist. But Koenig subsequently applied the most patient
care and consummate skill in the experimental examination of
these phenomena. Without detracting at- all from the credit due
Helmholtz for his splendid researches, it may now be safely said
that Koenig's experiments have shown that differential and sum-
mation tones are due exclusively to the beats which the ear
perceives when impressed simultaneously by systems of waves
differing in length. The effect is physiological, and such combi-
nation tones are not at all re-enforced by resonators like the sepa-
rate primaries that enter into combination. It is not necessary
that beating tones shall be nearly in unison, as is stated in so
many of the text-books.

The subject of musical quality was long an unsolved enigma
for physicists. The principle underlying its explanation was
foreshadowed early in the present century by the French mathe-
matician Fourier, and soon afterward applied to acoustics by
Ohm, whose name is now so familiar in connection with electricity.
But to Helmholtz is due the full experimental proof that the

SKETCH OF RUDOLPH KOENIG. 549

quality of every musical sound is determined "by the number,
orders, and relative intensities of the upper partial tones which
accompany the fundamental whenever any ordinary instrument
is sounded. Every such compound tone can be graphically rep-
resented by its own curve, the form of which may be varied not
only by varying the elements just mentioned, but also by varying
the phases in which the separate components are joined together.
Helmholtz endeavored to test the influence of change of phase in
using his apparatus for acoustic analysis, but the results were
negative, and his conclusion was, that variation in phase has no
physiological effect. Koenig has since attacked this problem, em-
ploying wave-sirens of his own invention, by which he has estab-
lished quite conclusively the existence of this fourth element of
musical quality. . . . The wave-siren may be briefly described as
an apparatus in which a blast of air is forced through a narrow
cleft against the edge of a moving plate or disk on which a series
of determinate wave-forms have been cut. Each sinuosity, as it
passes the cleft, interrupts the egress of air, so that a series of
compound pulses are propagated whose grouping is determined
by the form of the curved edge. The pitch is determined by the
speed of rotation and the wave-length cut in the metal, through
either the convex surface of a cylinder which rotates on its axis,
or the edge of a disk which rotates about its center. A number
of such wave-forms, each with its own wind-cleft, may be operated
at the same time, with the same speed and with the same pressure
of air at each cleft. They may be arranged to either coincide or
differ in phase to any required extent. By the use of this new
instrument Koenig has found that the complex sound obtained
by the composition of a series of harmonics, of even as well as odd
orders, quite independently of their relative intensity, has always
its maximum of strength and its greatest acuteness of quality for
a difference of phase of a fourth of a wave-length ; the minimum
of strength, and the softest quality, for a difference of phase of
three fourths of a wave-length. It may be said that, if changes
in the number and relative intensity of the harmonics produce
differences of quality, such as are observed in instruments belong-
ing to different families, or such as the human voice shows in the
different vowels, the changes due to difference of phase between the
same harmonics are yet capable of producing differences of quality
at least as sensible as those which are noticeable in instruments of
the same kind, or in the same vowels sung by different voices.

All musicians are able to perceive the general smoothness or
roughness of a combination of sounds ; but the analysis of the
combination requires exquisite sensitiveness of ear for the detec-
tion of variation in both pitch and harmony. In the tuning of
the standard forks which are issued from Koenig's laboratory, his

55o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ear is usually found to be a sufficient guide, and at standard tem-
perature these are rarely if ever found to deviate by more than a
fraction of a single vibration from the value stamped upon them.

"Within the last year Koenig has published two important pa-
pers : the one on beat tones due to the excitement of two separate
motions of vibration on the same body ; the other on tones due to
the composition of waves of unlike form. These papers have an
important bearing on the theory of musical quality. Their author
is not yet sixty years old, and it is reasonable to expect from him
many more contributions to the science of acoustics before old
age interferes with the acuteness of his wonderfully accurate mu-
sical ear, or diminishes his power to do good work.

The following is a list of the principal contributions of M.
Koenig to science, with their dates and the names of the period-
icals in which they first appeared. The titles are translated into
English, and the length of each article is approximately indicated
by the number of pages covered :

1. On the Application of the Graphic Method to Acoustics. (Cosmos, 1862,
pp. 27.)

2. Apparatus for the Measurement of the Velocity of Sounds at Small Dis-
tances. (Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences, October 13, 1862, pp. 2.)

3. Experiments relating to Wheatstone's Explanation of Chladni's Figures.
(Comptes Rendus, March 27, 1864, pp. 7.)

4. A New Stethoscope. (Poggendorff's Annalen, 1864, pp. 2.)

5. Experiments to determine the Influence of the Movement of a Source of
Sound on Pitch. (Koenig's Illustrated Catalogue, 1865, p. 1.)

6. On the Fixed Notes characteristic of Vowel Sounds. (Comptes Rendus,
April 25, 1870, pp. 5.)

7. Manometric Flames. (Poggendorff's Annalen, 1872, pp. 36.)

8. A Tuning-Fork of Variable Pitch. (Poggendorff's Annalen, 1876, pp. 2.)

9. On the Phenomena produced by the Concurrence of Two Sounds. (Poggen-
dorff's Annalen, 1876, pp. 62.)

10. On the Origin of Beats, and the Beating Sounds of Harmonic Intervals.
(Wiedemann's Annalen, 1881, pp. 14.)

11. Description of an Apparatus for Lecture Demonstration of Beating Sounds.
(Wiedemann's Annalen, 1881, pp. 4.)

12. Researches on the Difference of Phase existing between the Vibrations of
Two Associated Telephones. (Journal de Physique, May, 1879, pp. 5.)

13. Researches on the Vibrations of a Normal Fork. (Wiedemann's Annalen,
1880, pp. 21.)

14. Harmonic Vibrations excited by the Vibrations of a Fundamental Sound.
(Wiedemann's Annalen, 1880, pp. 13.)

15. A Method for observing the Air Vibrations in Organ-Pipes. (Wiedemann's
Annalen, 1881, pp. 12.)

16. Remarks on Musical Quality. (Wiedemann's Annalen, 1881, pp. 26.)

17. On Beats and the Beat Tones of Two Vibratory Motions excited in the
Same Body. (Wiedemann's Annalen, 1890, pp. 8.)

18. On Composite Tones, with Waves of Unlike Form. (Wiedemann's Anna-
len, 1890, pp. 9.)

CORRESP ONBENCE.

55i

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE PROHIBITION LAWS OF IOWA.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

SIR: In the May (1890) number of the
Monthly Dr. W. A. Hammond, in his
article on Sumptuary Laws, makes state-
ments with reference to the prohibitory
liquor laws of Iowa which are not only mis-
leading but incorrect.

It is not an offense under our law " for
one person to ask another to take a drink."
It is not contrary to law in Iowa to give in-
toxicating liquor to an adult person not in-
toxicated nor in the habit of becoming so,
when such gift is made without any consid-
eration being received or expected in return,
and without subterfuge or attempt to evade
the provisions of the code. The act of giv-
ing intoxicating liquors, except to minors or
habitual drunkards, is not prohibited by
statute, and the Supreme Court has decided
that the simple act of giving is no offense
(State vs. Hutchins, 74 Iowa Rep., p. 20) ; and
so in the case supposed by the doctor there
is neither a violation of the letter nor the
spirit of the law.

It may be added, however, as pertinent
to the point made by the doctor, that Iowans
may legally obtain all the liquor they want
by importation from other States ; and that,
notwithstanding the most stringent laws
against its manufacture and sale within the
State, it is not difficult to purchase any kind
of liquor either by the drink or by the bot-

tle ; and that it is at least doubtful if the
drink habit is decreasing.

James H. Trewin.
Lansing, Iowa, May 12, 1S90.

EVIDENCES OF GLACIAL ACTION IN
VIRGINIA.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : The interesting article in your June
number, by the Hon. David A. Wells, on
evidences of glacial action in southeastern
Connecticut, recalls to my recollection the
fact of similar evidence in the State of Vir-
ginia. Slightly north of latitude 38°, in the
extreme southeast corner of Orange County
(my native county), on a farm — originally,
and I presume still, known by the name of
Wood Lawn, or -the Minor Farm — are two
large bowlders, similar to those described by
Mr. Wells. One of these bowlders is split
in half ; one half retains an erect position,
while the other lies prostrate, forming a
large, flat table. I speak of them as they
appeared many years ago, although I pre-
sume their appearance is the same to-day.
There are other bowlders of a like character
in that vicinity, and, if they were visited and
described by one competent to do so, a very
interesting article might be written, and
perhaps prove a valuable addition to the
science of glacial action.

Francis Minor.
St. Louts, June, 1890.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

MR. SPENCER'S PLACE IN PHILOSOPHY.

AS we had occasion not long ago to
remark, the philosophy of evo-
lution is a great stumbling-block and
rock of offense to transcendentalists —
that is to say, to people who want a
philosophy founded on emotion and
soaring beyond all experience into the
region of the absolute. If such people
do not like the evolution philosophy, it
is natural that they should dislike the
evolution philosopher par excellence,
Mr. Spencer. His name seems to send
a chill through those whose ambition it
is to discover truth by some royal road
of a priori assumption ; and now and
again these persons take courage to ex-

press all the repugnance they feel to
what they regard as his desolating doc-
trines. Occasionally, also, though not
very often, an attempt is made to show
that Mr. Spencer is not so much of a
philosopher after all — only a kind of
all-round writer on a great variety of
subjects, in not one of which he has
any superior competence. Many of our
readers will remember that some weeks
ago a certain person wrote to the New
York Times to express his own low
estimate of the value of Mr. Herbert
Spencer's philosophical work, and his
grave doubts as to the rank assigned
to hi in in the world of thought by
really competent judges. This gentle-

552

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

man, who modestly signed " Outsider,"
had not been able to find that mathe-
matical specialists thought very highly
of Mr. Spencer as a mathematician, or
that specialists in biology ranked him
high as a biologist, or that men eminent
for their historical knowledge regarded
him as an authority in their special de-
partment, and so on and so on. Evi-
dently this writer had somewhat sin-
gular notions as to what was required
to make a philosopher. Not only is it
impossible that Mr. Spencer should be
a specialist in all the branches of knowl-
edge upon which his system has a bear-
ing, but it is quite unnecessary that he
should be such in even one branch. His
specialty consists in his power of co-ordi-
nating the general results of different
lines of inquiry ; and his claim to rank
as a philosopher depends on the success
with which he has accomplished this task.
All that can properly be demanded of
Mr. Spencer, or any philosopher, is that
he shall not misunderstand or misstate
the results of the special sciences with
which he may have to deal. If " Out-
sider " had been in a position to declare
that mathematicians had examined Mr.
Spencer's work, and found it very faulty
on the mathematical side ; that biolo-
gists, in like manner, had found it weak
on the biological side; and that in gen-
eral his system was, to a serious extent,
based upon erroneous conceptions of
special facts and laws, he would have
made a very damaging criticism. He
did not pretend, however, to be in a
position to do anything of the kind;
but simply attacked Mr. Spencer for not
being, what no one man could possibly
be, a specialist in half a dozen sciences
at once.

The principal result of " Outsider's "
attack was that a number of persons
came forward, many over their own
signatures, to vindicate Mr. Spencer;
and so effectually was the work done,
and such a revelation did the whole
controversy afford of the hold Mr. Spen-
cer had upon the thinking men of this

country, that a very suspicious person
might have conjectured that " Out-
sider's " secret object had been to get
as much good said of Spencer as pos-
sible, and bring him and his works into
greater prominence than ever. The per-
sonal interest which we have for years
felt in the great English philosopher —
an interest which the sketch of the late
Prof. Youmans, published a couple of
months ago in this magazine, will in
some measure explain — led us to at-
tempt in the columns of the Times a
concise yet comprehensive statement of
the testimonies that had been borne to
the value of his scientific and philo-
sophical work by the very highest au-
thorities. "Outsider " had asked what
the specialists thought of Mr. Spencer ;
we had no difficulty in showing what
the men who commanded the widest
view of the fields of philosophy and
science, and who in that sense were the
specialists by whom his work should be
tried, thought of him. In philosophy,
the names cited were such as Lewes,
McCosh, J. S. Mill, Morell, and Ribot ;
in biology, such as Mivart, Ray Lankes-
ter, Huxley, Darwin ; and in general
science and history, Masson, Proctor,
Tyndall, Grant Allen, Leslie Stephen,
and Tylor. All of these, at one time or
another, have in the amplest manner
borne testimony to Spencer's philosoph-
ic genius, to the acuteness of his thought,
the depth of his insight, the fertility of
his methods, the sagacity of his judg-
ment, the keenness and truth of his sci-
entific perceptions— one remarking upon
this quality or group of qualities, and
another upon that. As further evidence
of the impression Mr. Spencer has made
upon his age, we gave the leading facts
relating to the reproduction of his works
in foreign countries and their transla-
tion into foreign tongues. In Russia, in
Italy, in France, in Germany, Spencer's
works may be read in the national
tongue, and have powerfully molded
philosophical opinion. The facts thus
brought forward were not far to seek :

EDITOR'S TABLE.

553

an j one even moderately acquainted
with the course of modern thought can
hardly fail to know that these things
are so ; and it is difficult to understand
how a writer vouched for by the Times
as a person of very superior acquire-
ments could have managed to remain
ignorant of them. Possibly he is one of
those "specialists1' whose information
is so very special that virtually they
may be said to go about with blinkers
over their eyes that shut out all side
views. But in that case the man who
wears the blinkers should not constitute
himself a judge of what he does not and
can not see.

Another objection which our critic
raised was that the laws of evolution
embodied in Mr. Spencer's system had
never served as the basis for prediction,
and so far lacked full confirmation. This
criticism was singularly pointless. Pre-
diction, in the sense understood in the
sciences say of astronomy and chemistry,
is not to be expected in connection with
a general system of philosophy — the aim
of which is to correlate diverse phenom-
ena under a few very general laws. In
another sense Mr. Spencer's system does
lend itself to prediction, inasmuch as it
has traced for us the laws of develop-
ment of the individual mind and of so-
ciety, and so far enabled us to anticipate
what would fall under our observation in
newly discovered societies — could there
be such — given one or two leading facts
as to their environment and the stage of
civilization they had reached. We credit
the science of geology with a power of
prediction when the geologist in an Old
Red-sandstone country is able to say posi-
tively that there is no use in prospect-
ing there for coal. Why not allow the
evolutionist equal credit if he is able to
say beforehand of a given community
that the mathematical faculty will be
found to be very feebly developed in
it, but that the poetic may be found
to have made some advance ; or if, tak-
ing two widely separated stages of a na-
tion's history, he is able in a general way

to fill in the intervening course of events,
very much as Mendeleef describes a cer-
tain set of elements yet to be discovered?

•When Mr. Spencer says, " With the
repression of militant activities and de-
cay of militant organizations will come
amelioration of political institutions
as of all other institutions," he makes
a prediction founded on the general
principles of his system — a predic-
tion in which many who take their
ideas from poetry and romance might
not be disposed to concur. It remains
to be seen whether the evolutionist is
right, or whether those are right who
hold that without war the higher civic
and personal virtues would decline and
wither. The difference between the
two opinions is that the one is founded
on a long course of study, and is cor-
related with a multitude of established
facts ; while the other is rather a mat-
ter of sentiment than of reasoned con-
viction.

We do not intend, however, to pur-
sue further a controversy which was
carried on to considerable length in the
columns of the Times, and which de-
veloped so much of sympathy with, and
so little of decided opposition to, Spen-
cer as to cause the editor of that paper
to exclaim, " Where are the foes of
Spencer?" and to express his surprise
at the backwardness of certain persons,
who are supposed to regard the doctrine
of evolution as false and dangerous in
the extreme, in availing themselves of
the opportunity of stating and defending
their convictions. It remains but to say
that the value of the synthetic philoso-
phy is not bound up with the accuracy
of every scientific or historical state-
ment its author may have made, nor yet
with the absolute solidity of his meta-
physics. It is a great colligation of the
laws of life and development. It teach-
es us to understand the world and hu-
man society, and gives to every one who
studies it a superior power of discern-
ment in many fields of observation.
The evolutionist can predict in this sense

554

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

at least that, in a broad way, he knows
what to expect, and does not look for
grapes from thorns or figs from thistles.
He sees cause and effect, action and re-
action everywhere, not like some spe-
cialists in certain selected spheres exclu-
sively. He believes in orderly progress,
knowing that great processes of devel-
opment can not be very materially has-
tened.

In the field of education the views
derived from the general theory of evo-
lution have been found of the very great-
est value ; and were education to-day
free from the trammels of politics, and
were it commanding — as, but for its con-
nection with the state, it would com-
mand— the best thoughts and the best
energies of a host of freely competing
educators, the improvement in educa-
tional methods directly due to the new
views would be most conspicuous.

The evolutionary philosophy is a
practical one, and it is to-day on trial ;
its principles are more or less penetrat-
ing and permeating the community ;
and the more they do so, the more they
are confirmed by experience, and be-
come impressed on the mental habits
of individuals. Of what competing phi-
losophy can the same be said ? It is
to this growing experience of the race,
therefore, that appeal must be made if
the validity of the general theory is to
be questioned.

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Evolution of Man and Christianity.
By the Rev. Howard MacQueary. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 410.

The assertion of Prof. Le Conte, which
furnished the motive, as the author avers,
for this book, that we are on the eve of the
greatest change in traditional views that has
taken place since the birth of Christianity —
a change involving a reconstruction of Chris-
tian theology — is verified by events which
have taken place during the current year in
the official centers of the most orthodox
Protestant bodies. The debate in the Con-
gregational churches about future probation ;

the creed revision which has been resolved
upon by the Northern Presbyterian Church ;
the provision by the English Presbyterian
Church of a place for those who believe in
the evolution and extreme antiquity of man ;
and the retention of Professors Dods and
Bruce by the Free Church of Scotland after
their persistent avowals of doctrines far more
novel to the Calvinistic theology than those
for which Prof. Robertson Smith was deposed
seven years ago, are signs the meaning of
which can not be mistaken. The ris;ht to
criticise the Bible as any other book is criti-
cised ; to investigate phenomena regarded by
the Church as supernatural in the same way
that ordinary phenomena are examined ; and
to probe the foundations of Christian faith
to the bottom, has asserted itself there and
has commanded a hearing. Modern theol-
ogy can hardly be blamed for the existence
of errors which were ingrafted upon it dur-
ing the ages of darkness and ignorance ; but
it ought to have been more prompt to recog-
nize these errors and correct them, rather
than by cherishing them till their absurdity
was universally seen to have given temporary
advantages to the enemies of Christianity.
Professing, as it does, to seek the truth as
science is doing, it should welcome every
effort to make the truth more clear ; and
even mistaken searchings for truth are bet-
ter than persistent adherence to what has
been proved false. Science, the friend and
devotee of truth, can never do more than es-
tablish and make more accessible to men
the truth in religion ; and it is behaving as
the truest ally of religion when it throws the
light of a better and more exact knowledge
upon dogmas that were conceived by men
when their sources of information were
scanty and imperfect or did not exist.

The author of The Evolution of Man and
Christianity is a clergyman of apparently
good standing in the Protestant Episcopal
Church. He goes further in the criticism
and analysis of doctrine than any other au-
thor who has written from within the Church.
He believes that a recasting of theological
thought is necessary to meet the advance
that has been made in physical science,
which is destined profoundly to modify our
idea of miracles; biblical criticism, which
has cast new views on the origin and char-
acter of the sacred books; and the social

LITERARY NOTICES.

555

movement, which, assuming an anti-Church
attitude, is leading the people into unbelief ;
and he here lays down the lines along which
he thinks the revision should be made. The
points of evolution and the antiquity of man
have already been conceded by the best
thinkers in the Church, but Mr. MacQueary
has outrun them by applying evolution to
the soul as well as to the body of man. The
doctrine of the fall of man is rejected as
irrational and contrary to the theory of evo-
lution, yet our progenitor sinned, or freely
violated moral, divine law, and transmitted
to us an inheritance of corrupt habits ; but
Jesus, by what he taught, did, and suffered,
has more than repaired the evil which re-
sulted from Adam's transgression. The
books of the Bible are believed to be works
of slow growth, or collations made from
documents or notes left by earlier writers ;
but " even the most radical skeptics admit
that the books of the New Testament fur-
nish us the essential facts of our Lord's life
and teachings." The question as to the mira-
cles is made one of evidence ; the scientific
man does not deny the possibility of any-
thing. The author believes in prayer and
Providence and in miracles, or that God has
actually wrought extraordinary events. Some
of the recorded miracles are treated as cases
of faith-healing, some as invested with a po-
etical significance, and some as exaggerated
versions of older traditions. The resurrec-
tion is believed to be spiritual and not of
the earthly body, and the resurrection of
Jesus and his forty days' sojourn with his
disciples is interpreted as an investment with
a spiritual body like that described in St.
Paul's chapter on the resurrection. The
miraculous birth of Jesus from a virgin,
though its possibility is not denied, is re-
garded as " a poetic description of a great
fact." The theory of verbal inspiration is
treated as of heathen origin and as contra-
dicted by the Bible itself ; but insomuch as
God has sent religious as well as philosoph-
ic and poetic geniuses into the world, who,
though not absolutely infallible, are infalli-
ble so far as they discover and reveal truth,
we have inspiration. The doctrine of the
Trinity is traced back to extremely ancient
times, and may be looked upon as a sym-
bolic description of the manifold Infinite
Spirit of God. The divinity of Christ is re-

solved into " the closest and most vital union
of the Spirit of Jesus with the Divine Spirit
from whom it sprung," so that " he was the
divine under the limits of humanity." In-
stead of the Calvinistic doctrine of the atone-
ment, which is exploded by evolution, showing
its inconsistency with any true idea of God,
we are shown Jesus saving his people from
their sins, " first by setting them an example
of perfect obedience to God's will, and then
by assigning a motive to virtue strong enough
to enable men to live soberly, righteously,
and godly. That motive is the fatherly love
of God toward man, which love was mani-
fested in the mission and person of Jesus."
Heaven and hell are believed to be spiritual
conditions, not places; future punishment,
though real, to be limited by the possibility
of the ultimate recovery of the soul by in-
finite power, wisdom, and love. Immortality
is accepted. The author's purpose has been,
not to stir up bitter controversy, but to help
those who are troubled by the difficulties of
traditional and popular theology to a plane
of thought where all will be made more clear
to them ; and he anticipates as the result of
previous discussions an elevation and puri-
fication, a dematerialization and spiritualiz-
ing of our views on all the subjects involved.
"While no one may be ready to accept all
the author's conclusions as he states them,
the book must be hailed as an earnest and
honest attempt to reflect the light of science
and modern research on the most difficult
points of Christian doctrine, and to make
the way more easy for their acceptance in
their true sense. "Whatever may be the fate
of his particular views, his essay will tend
to stimulate thought, and that in the direc-
tion of freeing religion from the excres-
cences which traditional superstition has
fastened upon it.

The Physical Properties op Gases. By
Arthur L. Kimball. Boston: Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. Pp. 238. Price, $1.25.

Regarding imitation as the most sincere
praise, the International Scientific Series has
received two very hearty indorsements lately,
by the announcement of two series of scien-
tific books, which follow its plan in part.
One of these originates in England, and is
also published in this country ; the other is
the Riverside Science Series, of which the

556

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

second volume is now before us. The pub-
lishers describe the latter series as a collec-
tion of books setting forth the achievements
of scientific and mechanical skill at the pres-
ent day. The volumes arc intended to be as
free as possible from technical terms, and to
deal but little with matters of theory. Prof.
Mcndenhall's Century of Electricity, already
issued, has been made the first volume of
the series. Mr. Kimball's book is devoted
to that department of physics usually known
as pneumatics. It gives the properties of
gases, and the current theories in regard to
their constitution and behavior, in language
that is readily understood and free from
mathematics. A chapter is devoted to Geiss-
lcr tubes and the phenomena of the radiant
condition of matter as developed by Prof.
Crookes. The text is illustrated with about
forty cuts of .apparatus.

The Unknown God ; or, Inspiration among
Pre-Christian Races. By C. Loring
Brace. New York : A. C. Armstrong &
Son. Pp. 336. Price, $2.50.

The author accepts the "modern meth-
od " of studying ethnic or heathen religions,
by looking for what is good in them rather
than searching for their defects or trying to
show their inferiority to the highest — or his
own — religion. He inquires how the man of
other races and times regarded the problems
of the universe ; what was his conception of
the primeval cause, how he considered his
relation to it, and how far that relation af-
fected his daily life and practical morals.
In pursuing this study he expects to find
with man in all ages and races some evi-
dences of the inspiration of the Divine
Spirit. Dealing first with the Hamitic and
Semitic races, a period is found in Egypt in
which a belief in the one God existed in the
minds of the scholars and priests. Then,
among the Semitic tribes of the valley of the
Euphrates, the penitential psalms and pray-
ers of the Accadians are stamped with a
monotheistic spirit. Among the Aryan
races the belief in God and a future judg-
ment is discovered in the mysteries of the
Greeks, and the faith in a spiritual God or
Zeus is discerned in their early poetry, before
the idea had been degraded by the myth-
making fancy. " The evidence from the
Greek dramatists and many of the ancient

writers is here overwhelming that one spirit-
ual God was at certain periods adored by
considerable numbers of the Greek race."
Similar evidences are found in the religion
of Plato and Socrates, and of the Stoics.
Monotheism and moral purity are found to
be marked characteristics of the Persian
religion of Zoroastrianism. The old Vedic
hymns furnish the proof of Hindoo monothe-
ism in the worship of Varuna, the heaven-god.
The fullest descriptions are devoted to the
Buddhist faith, which the author regards as
" in a high degree inspired, and as an instru-
ment in the hands of Providence for the ele-
vation and purification of Asia." The final
chapter is on the biblical argument for the
inspiration of the heathen. The work is not
designed for an attack on the heathen re-
ligions, or as a defense of Christianity ; but
rather to show what great truths have in-
spired the pious heathen of the past.

Midnight Talks at the Club. Reported
by Amos K. Fiske. New York : Fords,
Howard & Hulbert. Pp.298. Price, $1.

The " talks " which this little volume
contains embody earnest and more or less
conflicting opinions on some of the more
serious subjects which are being discussed
at the present time. It is not the purpose
of the book to put forth judgments of start-
ling novelty, and many readers will find in
the utterances of one or another of the
speakers represented simply their own views,
though they may never have expressed them
in the same way, or, in fact, at all, or per-
haps were never quite conscious before that
they held these views. The first subject
discussed is temperance ; from that the talk
goes to the lack of practical work by the
churches, and is led through the question of
Sunday observance up to a discussion of re-
ligion in general. Political immorality is
the subject of the next conversation, and the
somewhat allied topic of the Irish Americans
comes up for attention later. Most of the
talks which follow concern religious matters,
such as superstition and worship, the Script-
ure fetich, the teachings of Moses and the
prophets, and the usefulness of religious de-
lusion. Other fields are entered in discus-
sions of the value of human evidence and
the power of personality. Throughout the
volume the modern progressive views are

LITERARY NOTICES.

557

the ones most fully presented, and the tone
of the book is against submission to preju-
dices, and favors the recognition of whatever
good there is in every institution, opinion, or
person.

Studies in IIegel's Philosophy of Religion.
With a Chapter on Christian Unity in
America. By J. MacBride Sterrett,
D. D. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
Pp. 348. Price, $2.

Hegel, the author says, is recognized as
a thinker whose comprehension of thought
and its method no student of philosophy
can fail to acknowledge as great among the
greatest. He was radically and throughout
a theologian. All his thought began, con-
tinued, and ended in that of divinity. He
tried in his Philosophy of Religion to satisfy
man's demand to know what there is in re-
ligion ; to discover and state its speculative
idea. " But with him the speculative was
both vital and practical — the very life of
the spirit throbbing through all the tangled
mass of varied religious phenomena in the
world's history." His whole logic is inter-
preted as being but " his explication of the
nature and activities of God immanent in
the actuality and order of the world, and
transcendent as its efficient and final cause."
Agnosticism, both atheistic and Christian, is
repudiated throughout. " God knowable be-
cause self -manifesting, and man in duty
bound to study this knowledge, are with
Hegel self-evident and demonstrable prin-
ciples." While he is regarded as a pan-
theist, in the Christian sense, his doctrine
of God is the Christian and not the deistic
or pantheistic doctrine. " In him all finite
beings find, not lose, their reality." Hegel's
philosophy at his death had pervaded uni-
versities, state, and church, and for ten years
afterward remained the foremost intellectual
phenomenon of the time. But the interpret-
ers of his system, each seeking in it his own
dogma, and finding it, have succeeded in dis-
membering it into parts whose various as-
pects have seemed to various types of mind
to be the whole system. While in Germany
it has almost ceased to exist as a professed
system, its spirit and method have become in-
extricably entangled with the whole thought
and culture of the countrv, and are the leav-
en at work in its current philosophy. In
Great Britain it has also greatly influenced

philosophic thought, though accepted and
expounded as a system by none. In Eng-
land and America the interest in negel is
chiefly owing to the relation of his thought
to religion and to Christianity. His thought
attracts Christian thinkers seeking for in-
tellectual comprehension of religious expe-
rience, faith, and fact3. They are drawn to
him "because they find him thinking weight-
ily on the same " subjects ; and yet the chief
opposition to the study of Hegel " comes from
the odium thcologicum of Christian teachers."
But the students of the Hegelian philosophy
disclaim being what the term Hegelian, either
in the popular or scientific sense, would im-
ply, for they are mastering and using his
method, rather than accepting all the re-
sults which that method yielded to him. In
Dr. W. T. Harris's opinion, no other work
better deserves translation into English than
the Philosophy of Religion. But any real
translation of it would be inadequate, and
would need a further translation into expos-
itory paraphrase. Dr. Sterrett, therefore, in-
stead of a translation, offers " studies " of
his system. The purpose of the volume
throughout is apologetic. " It is written
with faith and in the interest of ' the faith,'
though demanding an almost antipodal orien-
tation or point of view to that of both deistic
orthodoxy and ecclesiasticism." Pertinently
to the latter feature of his course, the author
well says that "it is mere time-serving to
manufacture evidences when there are none.
It is as useless as it is wrong to attempt the
'hard-church' method of overriding reason
and conscience with the mere weight of an
uncriticiscd authority. It is both anti-the-
istic and anti-Christian to profane the secu-
lar in the interest of the sacred."

Organic Evolution as the Result op the
Inheritance of Acquired Characters
according to the Laws of Organic
Growth. By Dr. G. H. Theodor Eimer.
Translated by J. T. Cunningham. Lon-
don and New York : Macmillan & Co.
Pp. 425. Price, $3.25.

The translator of this work explains, as
his reason for presenting it to the English-
reading public, that he had become dissatis-
fied with the " uncritical acceptance " ac-
corded to Prof. Weismann's theories of
heredity and variation by many English evo-
lutionists. He was inclined to attach more

558

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

importance to the causes of variation than
to any of the other problems considered by
Darwin, among which functional activity and
external conditions seemed the most pow-
erful. He was thus led to believe that a
deeper insight into the phenomena of evo-
lution would ultimately be obtained by pur-
suing the line of inquiry suggested by La-
marck, than by continually searching for
new instances of adaptation to be explained
by the Darwinian formula. While in this
frame of mind he was u delighted to find "
that Weismann had to contend with a for-
midable opponent in his own country, and
concluded that he could not for the present
oppose the progress of his views more effect-
ively in England than by publishing a trans-
lation of Prof. Eimer's arguments. It had
seemed to this author long ago to be of the
greatest importance to undertake an investi-
gation of the question whether the modifica-
tion or variation of the species of animals is
not governed by definite laws. The Darwin-
ian theory suggested none. The investiga-
tion of the laws of variation included the
question of the causes of variation. There
was likewise a gap in the Darwinian theory
where these should be explained. The prin-
ciple of utility, the selection of the useful in
the struggle for existence, did not explain
the first origin of new characters, but only,
and that partially, the progress and the
gradually effected pre-eminence of those
characters. If we could know, the author
assumed, all the natural laws which have
operated in the evolution, and which operate
in the existence of a single animal or a sin-
gle plant, we should understand the laws of
the organic world altogether. Applying this
principle, the unreserved study of a single
species of animal, the author declares, led
him to the discovery of a whole series of
laws, which the extension of the investiga-
tion to other species showed to hold good
generally. This animal was the wall-lizard
(Lacerta muralis ccerxdea), a species of re-
markable variability, with which he became
acquainted on the rocks of Capri. The re-
sult of his researches, which were extended
to various classes of animals, "was the recog-
nition of the dominion of laws in the process
of variation, not only of the lizard, but also
in the most diverse tribes of the animal
kingdom ; these laws holding firstly in the

variations of marking, previously regarded as
quite indifferent, unimportant, or fortuitous,
but also applying to other characters. I was
able to demonstrate that variation every-
where takes place in quite definite direc-
tions which are few in number, and I was
able on the basis of my observations to put
forward the view that the causes which lead
to the formation of new characters in or-
ganisms, and in the last result to their evo-
lution, consist essentially in the chemico-
physiological interaction between the mate-
rial composition of the body and external
influences. Finally, I succeeded, through the
facts I established, in referring the separa-
tion into species, ... in connection with
the rest of my views, to natural causes."
Previously to presenting these results in the
present volume, a brief review is given of
the newest theories concerning evolution.
The translator has endeavored to make his
work sufficiently English to be readable, and
to preserve the full force and exact signifi-
cance of Prof. Eimer's expression.

A Short Course of Experiments in Physi-
cal Measurement. By Harold Whiting.
In Four Parts. Part I: Density, Heat,
Light, and Sound. Cambridge: John
Wilson & Son. Pp. 278.

The course of laboratory work which this
book is to comprise covers the ground of
both the " minimum " and the " maximum "
requirements in physics for admission to
Harvard College, and it is intended also to
serve as a preparation for courses in me-
chanical and electrical engineering in other
institutions. Mental training is the chief
object aimed at, through the care required,
and the practice in inductive and controlled
methods secured. The policy of the book is
rather " to show how comparatively accurate
results may be obtained by rough apparatus,
than to explain the use of instruments of
precision, which in the hands of a student
are apt to give erroneous results." The au-
thor states that not so much mathematics is
involved in these experiments as would ap-
pear from a first glance, because many proofs
are given in full here which in most text-
books have been taken for granted. The
volume is illustrated with many cuts of ap-
paratus. The second, third, and fourth parts
are to contain experiments in other depart-
ments of physics.

LITERARY NOTICES.

559

Laboratory Manual of Experimental
Physics. By Albert L. Arey, C. E.
Syracuse : C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 200.
Price, 75 cents.

Neglect of experimental science-teaching
will not be much longer excusable for lack
of suitable laboratory manuals. Mr. Arey's
book consists of brief directions for seventy
experiments in the several departments of
physics, with suggestive questions as to
what is shown by each experiment. The
right-hand pages are left blank, or contain
forms for entering the results of observa-
tions. The experiments are adapted to pu-
pils in secondary schools, and are character-
ized by involving measurements, the author
being convinced that " vastly greater mental
discipline will be derived by the student
from quantitative experiment " than from
qualitative. It has been a part of the au-
thor's plan, also, to devise inexpensive appa-
ratus with which results may be obtained
sufficiently accurate to point conclusively to
the law under consideration. Directions for
making many pieces of this apparatus are
appended to the book. The text is illus-
trated with fifty-six figures.

The Chemistry op Paints and Painting.
By A. H. Church, F. R. S. London :
Seeley & Co., Limited. Pp. 310. Price,

$1.75.

Artists are supplied in this volume with
a great deal of practical knowledge concern-
ing the chief chemical and physical charac-
ters of the materials and processes that they
use. There are other books that treat of
the pigments employed, but this deals also
with painting-grounds (paper, plaster, stone,
wood, and canvas), with vehicles and var-
nishes, and with methods and results. In
describing the materials which artists use,
the sources from which they are obtained
are told, and in many cases the mode of pre-
paring them is given. Tests for purity and
genuineness, that take but little time or ap-
paratus, have also been inserted. Chapters
that will contribute to the durability of the
artist's work are those on the permanency
of pigments, and the conservation of pict-
ures and drawings. Exact knowledge in re-
gard to permanency is furnished in the chap-
ter containing results of trials by Mr. F. W.
Andrew, Prof. Rood, Prof. Hartley, and by
Dr. Russell and Captain Abney, as reported

to the South Kensington Museum. The vol-
ume is adequately indexed, and its mechani-
cal work is excellent.

The True Grasses. By Eduard Hackel.
Translated from Die naturlichen Pflanz-
enfamilien, by F. L. Scribner and Effie
A. Socthworth. New York : Henry
Holt & Co. Pp. 228.

Prof. Hackel's monograph on the
grasses, here translated, was contributed to
the great German work on the Natural
Families of Plants, edited by Drs. Engler
and Prantl. The book consists of a botani-
cal key to the Graminece, through which are
interspersed full descriptions and cuts of
the economically important species. The
grass family includes a large number of
plants which are of great value as furnish-
ing food for man and for his domestic ani-
mals, as well as supplying a great variety of
products used in the arts and in medicine.
Among these are Indian corn, sugar-cane,
bamboo, the grains, and the fodder grasses.
The opening chapter gives an account of
the general structure, morphology, and phys-
iology of the Graminece. The translators
have added an introduction, giving an ex-
ample of how a botanical key is used, a full
glossary, and an index, in order to make the
volume more useful as a text-book in agri-
cultural colleges. The illustrations number
over a hundred.

Evolution, Antiquity op Man, Bacteria,
etc. By William Durham, F. R. S. E.
Edinburgh : Adam & Charles Black. Pp.
127. Price, 50 cents.

The Messrs. Black issue this little volume
as the first of a series under the general title
Science in Plain Language, the design of
which is to impart the general results of
scientific investigation in common language,
and without a great deal of detail. The
book consists of about twenty short articles
grouped under four heads. Those in the
first group deal with evolution and primeval
man, those in the second are devoted to the
lowest living organisms, the third contains
papers on color in plants and animals, and
in the fourth various movements in plants
are described. Each essay is complete in
itself, yet their subjects are so selected that
they are all connected, and all unite to form
a general picture of the evolution and gen-
eral phenomena of life.

560

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A Bibliography of the more Important
Contributions to American Economic Ento-
mology has been prepared by Samuel Hen-
shaw for the Department of Agriculture.-
Parts I, II, and III, already issued in one
volume, contain the more important writ-
ings of Benjamin D. Walsh and Charles V.
Riley. Those by B. D. Walsh number 385
titles, those by Walsh and Riley jointly are
478, while the writings of Prof. Riley alone
number 1,555. A general index to the list
and indexes of new names proposed are ap-
pended to the volume.

The seventh edition of Bloxam's Chemis-
try (Blakiston, $4.50) follows the sixth after
an interval of only two years. It has been
revised and edited by Prof. John 31. Thom-
son and Arthur G. Bloxam, who give the
following statement in the preface as to the
changes they have made : " In the Organic
division of the book an attempt has been
made to give concise accounts of more mod-
ern research — such as Raoult's method for
the determination of molecular formula,,
and Fischer and Tafel's investigations on
the synthesis of sugars. In the same divis-
ion the Chemistry of Vegetation has been
in a great measure rewritten to suit more
modern views. Those portions of the book
relating to Explosives, to which the work
to some extent owes its reputation, have
been revised, and are treated of as fully as
possible within the limits of a general text-
book." The volume has been increased in
length about ten pages.

A second edition of The Microtomisfs
Vade-mecum, by Arthur B. Lee, has been
issued (Blakiston). It is much larger than
the original English edition, and in fact is
not based upon that, but upon the French
work with a different title, by Lee and Hen-
neguy, published two years later. Besides
including the important advances made in
its field since 1885, the present Vade-mecum
differs from the first in being much less his-
torical and much more critical. The sub-
jects of most importance in a technical man-
ual have been treated more fully, and those
which are less important, or whose best
place is elsewhere, have been thrown into
the background. Among the chapters that
have been extended are those on fixing, im-
pregnation methods, paraffin and celloidin
imbedding, and the special methods of em-

bryology, of cytology, and of neurology.
The volume has an index, and its paper
and print are excellent.

A Clinical Study of the Skull — the tenth
of the Toner Lectures — by Dr. Harrison
Allen, is a contribution to the morphologi-
cal study of diseased action. The materials
on which it is based were found in the Col-
lections of the Academy of Natural Sci-
ences of Philadelphia and of the College
of Physicians, Philadelphia, which together
contain more than nineteen hundred speci-
mens of skulls. Washington : Smithsonian
Institution.

The March Bulletin of the Connecticut
Agricultural Experiment Station is a paper
on Fungicides, or applications for such dis-
eases as the black rot and the mildew of the
grape, by Roland Thaxter. The applications
recommended are Bordeaux mixture — sul-
phate of copper and quicklime, with water —
and ammoniacal carbonate of copper ; which
are sprayed over the plants. The treatment is
most effectual when it is applied preventively.

The second year's work of the Agricult-
ural Experiment Station of the University
of Illinois, ending July 1, 1889, comprised
analyses of fodders and of various food
products, with numerous items of new work
taken up from time to time. Four bulletins
were issued, reporting experiments upon
oats, upon corn, experiments with ensilage,
and experiments of the effects upon the hay
of cutting certain grasses and clovers at dif-
ferent periods of growth. Bulletin No. 7,
November, 18S9, is upon the Biology of En-
silage; and Bulletin No. 8, February, 1890,
records a series of field experiments with
corn.

The work of the Massachusetts State
Agricultural Experiment Station, as pre-
sented in its report of 1889, was carried on
in the same principal lines of investigation
as in preceding years. A very important
part of it is represented in the investigations
of fungoid diseases by Prof. Humphry. To
the experiments for determining the cost of
feed for the production of beef and pork
were added similar ones respecting beef and
mutton. Laboratory work was especially
large, and extended in various directions.

References to the Constitution of the
United Stales, which has been prepared by

LITERARY NOTICES.

561

William E. Foster for the Society for Politi-
cal Education, might be described as a bib-
liography. The references are historical —
to the antecedent influences, the framing
and adoption of the Constitution, and Con-
stitutional History since 1789 — and cite nu-
merous papers and books on each branch of
the subject. In the Appendix are given the
constitutional interpretations since the civil
war affecting the question of national or
State supremacy.

Letters from Waldegrave Cottage, by the
Rev. George W. Nichols, is a collection of
reminiscences, portrayals of eminent or
lovable men, and rural sketches, which,
published first in a monthly magazine, are
gathered up into a single volume. The au-
thor claims descent from the Earl of Walde-
grave, and is able to point to the graves of
ancestors among the venerable tombs of
Trinity and St. Paul's churches, New York.
The essays include sketches of life, scenes,
and persons at various places in Connecticut
and Massachusetts, Yale College, Brooklyn,
N. Y., etc., notices of famous divines and
men eminent in the life of society and the
State, and other items of personal reminis-
cence such as usually furnish pleasant read-
ing even to strangers ; and there is an air
of repose about the whole that is refreshing
to the reader vexed with the controversies
of the day. (Exchange Printing Company,
New York.)

The historical novels published by TV. S.
Gottsberger form an attractive-looking de-
partment in the library, and the promise
offered by their neat exteriors is usually
more than fulfilled when they are read.
They include pictures of Oriental antiquity,
the classical period, the middle ages, and
heroic or romantic episodes of later times,
sketched by the master artists in their re-
spective fields. Among the latest of these
publications is Nero, by the German Ernst
Eckstein, one of the most famous and most
prolific of the writers of this class. Its spe-
cial effort is to describe how Nero, from the
gentle and noble character he is said to have
been by nature, became transformed into the
inhuman monster of whom such incredible
tales are told. This purpose leads to the
more comprehensive treatment of the sepa-
rate stages of development rather than the
excesses of the matured criminal. — In Joshua,
vol. xxxvn. — 40

Dr. Gcorg Ebers has attempted to treat the
wanderings of the Israelites during and after
the Exodus in the form of a romance. In
it he has made use of his own observations
in the field covered by the wanderings, and
of the latest results of archaeological explo-
rations in the Nile Delta ; and in the " scen-
ery of the drama " he has copied as faith-
fully as possible from the landscapes he be-
held in Goshen and on the Sinai Peninsula.
For the incidents he has relied on the Bible
and Egyptian records. — Ekkehard, a Tale
of the Tenth Century, has been written by
Herr Joseph Victor von Scheffel, in the be-
lief that a union of history and poetry,
for working purposes, would be detrimental
to neither. The materials from which it is
composed are derived from the tales of the
monastery of St. Gall, begun by the monk
Ratpert, and continued to the end of the
tenth century by Ekkehard the Younger,
contained in the folios of the Monumenta
Germanica, which are described as being, in
spite of much naivete and awkwardness,
" charming stories, made up of traditions of
older comrades, and accounts of eye and ear
witnesses." Quite unconsciously, the author
adds, " these annals carry us far beyond the
boundaries of the cloister walls, presenting
the life and aims, the culture and customs
of the Alemannia of that period with all
the fidelity of a picture painted from na-
ture."

The Truth-seeker Company publishes a
symposium on the question of the Existence
of a Positive, Constructive Side to Free
Thought, to which some twenty of the most
prominent representatives of the school
described as freethinkers are contributors.
Besides the direct question, the character
and scope of the constructive side are con-
sidered by those who answer affirmatively,
or the reason why there is no such side if
the answer is negative.

In his paper on Etruscan and Libyan
Names ; a Comparative Study, Dr. D. G.
Brinton seeks evidence of affinity between
the race of which the Berber tribes of the
present are the representatives and the an-
cient Etruscans. In a former paper (Octo-
ber, 18S9) he supported his theory by com-
parison of physical traits, customs, arts, and
language ; in the present one he carries out,
to a limited extent, a comparison between

562

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the proper names preserved in the oldest
Libyan monuments and a series of similar
names believed to be genuine Etruscan.

In its third edition, the Directory of
Writers for the Literary Press, compiled by
W. M. Griswold (the author, Bangor, Me.,
$1), has been expanded to fifty-nine pages.
It gives the full names of writers, their ad-
dresses, professional positions, date of birth,
and subjects on which they write. The ad-
dresses of the chief American and English
periodicals, literary clubs, and colleges are
also included in the directory. A list of
authors recently dead is appended.

A number of special papers by Dr. Edgar
A. Mcarns on the natural history of the
Western Territories and other localities tes-
tify to his industry and carefulness in that
study. Description of Supposed New Species
and Subspecies from Arizona gives ten spe-
cies and some subspecies of rodents (a squir-
rel, a musk-rat, mice, hares, etc.), with de-
tailed measurements and characteristics. A
paper on Arizona Mountain Birds furnishes
illustrations of a feature which the author
desires to emphasize, of the extension of the
Alpine flora and fauna of the Rocky Mount-
ains southward into this Territory, where they
appear on the mountains, with characters
changing according to the altitude, " like
islands in a region of more southern aspect."
Other papers include a list of the Birds of
Fort Klamath, Oregon, collected by Lieuten-
ant Willis Wittich, annotated and added to ;
and an A ddendum to a list of the Birds of
the Hudson Highlands, with annotations. A
welcome feature of these papers is that good
English names are given for all the species.
Two other papers, relative to Dr. Mearns's
work, are published by the Herbarium of
Columbia College. They are a list of the
plants collected by him at Fort Verde and
in Mogollon and San Francisco Mountains,
by N. L. Britten ; and the General Floral
Characters of those regions, by H. H.
Rusby.

In a Tuhe-building Spider, Mr. W. L.
Poteat, of Wake Forest College, N. C, pub-
lishes some interesting notes on the archi-
tectural and feeding habits of Atypus niger.
In asserting that " quite unaccountably
American naturalists have taken compara-
tively little interest in spiders," the author
seems to overlook the voluminous contribu-

tions of McCook, which have been acknowl-
edged to be among the most valuable that
have been made ; the more modest but very
intelligent and original researches of the
Peckhams; and the work of other authors
whose papers have come to us from time to
time — all showing that the subject has not
been neglected.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agriculture, United States Department of. Treat-
ment of Plant Diseases. Pp. 23.

Bainton, George. The Art of Authorship. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 355. $1.25.

Barus, Carl. Therm o-Electric Measurement of
High Temperatures. Washington: U. S. Geologi-
cal Survey. Pp. 313.

Boston Society of Natural History. Correspond-
ence relating to the Nampa Image. Pp. 36.

Clarke, F. W. Work done in the Division of
Chemistry and Physics, 18S6-"87. Washington : U.
S. Geological Survey.

Dawson, G. M. Larger Unexplored Regions of
Canada. Pp. 12, with Map.

De Guimps, Roger. Pestalozzi, his Life and
Work. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 438.
$1.25.

Dodel, Arthur. Instruction in Drawing. Bos-
ton : The Prang Educational Company. Pp. 84.

Fontaine, W. S. Potomac, or Youngest Mesozoic
Flora. Washington: U. S. Geological Survey. Two
volumes. Pp. 377, and ISO Plates.

Foster, Michael, and others, Editors. The Jour-
nal of Physiology. Vol. XI, No. 3. Cambridge,
England. Pp. 104, with Plates. $5 a volume.

Frazer, Persifor. The Philadelphia Meeting of
the International Congress of Geologists. Pp. 10.

Fredericq, Paul. Study of History in Germany
and France. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University.
Pp. 118. $1.

Fullerton, G. S. Sameness and Identity. Phila-
delphia : University of Pennsylvania. Pp. 156.

Gardener, Helen H. A Thoughtless Yes. New
York : Belford Company. Pp.231.

Geddes, Prof. Patrick, and Thomson. J. Arthur.
The Evolution of Sex. N ew York : Scribner &
Welford. Pp.332. $1.25.

Gunton, George. Evolution of the Wages Sys-
tem. Boston: J. H. West. Pp.16. 10 cents.

Halsted, Byron D., New Brunswick, N. J. Rusts,
Smuts, Ergots, and Rots. Pp. 19, with Plates. —
Stamens of Solanaceae. Pp. 4, with Plates.

Hay, Robert. Geological Reconnaissance in
Southwestern Kansas. Washington : U. S. Geologi-
cal Survey. Pp. 48, with Map.

Heath, D. C, «& Co. Catalogues of Publications
and of Modern Language Texts, 1S90. Pp. 150
and 58.

Hensoldt, Dr. H., New York. Crystallogenesis.
Pp. 16.

Heydenfeldt, S., Jr. The Unison of the Con-
scious Force. San Francisco : W. Huston & Co.
Pp. 30.

Iowa College. Grimnell, Catalogue, 1889. Pp. 60.

Kimball, John C. Evolution of Arms and Armor.
Boston : J. H. West. Pp.32. 10 cents.

Kirk, Edward C, Philadelphia. The Manual
Training Idea in Dental Education. Pp. 26.

Knowlton, F. H. Fossil Wood and Lignite in
the Potomac Formation. Washington : U. S. Geo-
logical Survey. Pp. 52, with Plates.

Ladies' Health Protective Association of New
York. Report for 18S3 and 18S9. Pp. 23.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

563

Lewis, T. H., St. Paul, Minn. Effigy Mound in
Iowa. Pp. 3.

Linnaean Society, New York. Abstract of Pro-
ceedings for 1SS9-1 WO. Pp. 20.

Little, William. Letter on Timber. Montreal :
John Lovell os Son. Pp. 42.

Mack, C. S.. M. D. Philosophy in Homoeopathy.
Chic.igo : Gross & Delbridge. Pp. 174.

MacQueary, Eev\ Howard. Evolution of Man
and Christianity. New York : D. Appieton & (Jo.
Pp. 410. $1.75

Mantegazza, Paolo. Physiognomy and Expres-
sion. Eew York: Scribner & Welford. Pp. 327.
$1.25.

Mercier, Charles. Sanity and Insanity. New
York : Scribner & Welford. Pp. 395. $1.25.

Minnesota, University of. Catalogue for lS89-,90,
etc. Pp. 143.

Montillot, Louis. L'Amatenr d'Insects (The
Amateur of Insects). Paris : Bailliere. Pp. 352.

Newberry, J. S. Palaeozoic Fishes of North
America. Washington : U. S. Geological Survey.
Pp. 228, with Fifty-three Plates.

New York State Board of Charities. Twenty-
eeventh Annual Report. Pp. 411. — Report on the
Care of Dependent Children. Pp. 77.

Ontario, Report of Royal Commission on Mineral
.Resources. Toronto : Warwick & Sons. Pp. 566,
with Map.

Ott, Isaac, M. D Malarial Fever. Pp. 64.

Owen, Edmund. Manual of Anatomy. New
York : Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 526. $3.50.

Powell, J. W., Director. Report of United States
Geological Survey, ISSfr-'ST. Two volumes. Pp.
1,060, with Plates.

Remsen, Ira, Editor. American Chemical Jour-
nal, June, 1890. Baltimore. Pp. 76. 50 cents. $4
per volume.

Ryder, John A. Origin of Sex, eta Pp. 50.

Savage, M. J. The Jericho Road. Pp. 17.—
Answer to a Letter. Pp. 16. — The Many-windowed
House of Life. Pp. 14. Boston : Q. H. Ellis. 5
cents each.

Skilton. James A. Evolution of the Mechanic
Arts. Boston : J H. West. Pp. 24. 10 cents.

Smith, Alexander. Dreamthorpe. Rochester,
N. Y~. : George E. Humphrey. Pp. 352. $1.25.

Spencer, Prof. J. W. Iroquois Beach (Lake
Ontario). Pp 14.— Ancient Shore Phenomena near
the Great Lakes. Pp. 24.

Stevens, W. Le Conte. Microscope Magnifica-
tion. Pp. 12.

Sullivan, J. W. Ideal Kleptomania. New York :
Twentieth Century Publishing Company.

Sutton, J. Bland. Evolution and Disease. New
York: Scribner & Welford. Pp. 2S5. $1.25.

Thayer, E. H. The Mortgage Foreclosed. Chi-
cago; Belford- Clarke Company. Pp. 282.

Thornton, John. Advanced Physiography.
New York : Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 342.
$1.40.

Thurston, Robert H. Heat as a Form of Energy.
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
Pp. 261. $1.25.

Unwin, W. Cauthorne. Elements of Macnine
Design. London and New York : Longmans, Green
& Co. Pp. 459. $2.

Wahl, W. H., Philadelphia. Electro-Deposition
of Platinum. Pp.14.

Wentworth, G. A. A School Algebra. Eoston :
Ginn & Co. Pp. 362.

Wheelbarrow. Articles and Discussions on the
Labor Question. Chicago : Open Court Publishing
Company. Pp. 303. $1.

Woodward, Prof. C. M. The Educational Yalue
of Manual Training. Boston, etc. : D. C. Heath &
Co. Pp.95.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Instruction by Experimental Methods. —

As • represented by Prof. J. F. Woodhull to
the American Institute of Instruction, the
New York College for the Training of Teach-
ers has model classes of pupils in all grades
to which apprentice teachers are assigned at
stated hours to give experimental instruction
in science. In the primary and grammar
grades the experiments are performed by the
teachers in presence of the pupils, after
which the pupils are questioned concerning
what they have observed. They are also al-
lowed to examine the objects closely in hand.
Familiar, every-day objects, which are con-
venient for manipulation are used. The pur-
pose is not to load the children with facts,
but to arouse their curiosity and beget in
them inquiring habits of mind. In the high-
school department, systematic scientific in-
struction is begun for the purpose of devel-
oping careful habits of experimenting, ob-
serving, and reasoning. Familiar objects or
home-made apparatus are preferred for the
experiments, both because most of the high
schools are not in a position to purchase
elaborate apparatus, and because they are
believed to be more fit for the purpose. The
apparatus in the markets is considered insuf-
ficient, " because most pupils of high-school
age fail to comprehend the machines, and
their minds are confused by them with ref-
erence to the principles." The pupils are
taught to construct their own apparatus so
far as there seems to be educational value in
that kind of work ; and in most cases such
constructions have fulfilled their purpose
better than the conventional apparatus. They
are not intended to illustrate the apparatus
of the markets, or to serve as a cheap sub-
stitute for it, but to illustrate scientific prin-
ciples, for which imitations of " show-case "
apparatus are not required. Of course, no
attempt is made in this system to teach the
whole of science or to cram with facts ; but
" to show the pupil how to study nature so
that through life he may go on to acquire
knowledge." Mr. Woodhull's conclusion is
that " patience and a love for the work are
the most essential qualifications for the
teacher ; with these and with freedom from
unnecessary restraints, however meager other
equipments may be, science may readily be

564

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

taught in the common schools by experi-
mental methods." The American Institute
of Instruction substantially approved Mr.
Woodhull's position, and resolved that in-
struction by experimental methods should be
given in schools of all grades ; in the pri-
mary and grammar grades it should take the
form of observation lessons calculated to de-
velop the spirit of investigation ; and in the
high school " it should undertake to give a
thorough training in scientific methods of
studying nature rather than a comprehensive
knowledge of the whole realm of natural sci-
ence."

Mounds of the Mississippi Basin. — The

mounds of the Mississippi basin are described
by Mr. T. H. Lewis, of St. Paul, as being of a
magnitude and extent calculated to surprise
those who have not examined them. There
are thousands of them in Mississippi and
Arkansas, and probably thousands in Min-
nesota. The author's own personal surveys
in Minnesota now exceed one thousand, and
the localities of at least as many more are
known. The mounds in Mississippi — in the
bottom-lands — are burial-mounds, and in addi-
tion to human remains usually contain earth-
en vessels and pipes of all sizes and shapes,
with occasionally flint and stone implements
and articles of copper. The clay mounds of
Arkansas and of the bluffs alon? the Missis-
sippi seldom contain any implements or pot-
tery. Temple mounds are always associated
with mounds of other forms, and are never
isolated. They have approaches or graded
roadways built to the summit, and generally
have aprons or terraces on their sides. Small-
er mounds having the same forms were used
for burial purposes. Platform mounds are
another class of temple mounds, and have
from one to four approaches. Some of
them are also known to contain human re-
mains. Of a class of mounds called hearth
mounds the purpose is difficult to determine.
They hardly ever reach four feet in height,
and the hearth is covered with earth from
three inches to two feet in depth. The
hearths vary in thickness from one and a
half to thirteen inches. The low flat mounds
of Minnesota and Dakota are often regarded
as the remains of dwelling-houses of the ab-
origines. The theory is that poles were set
up and sods were afterward placed upon the

outside ; and that the poles having rotted
away, the structure fell to the center, and
in the course of a few years the top became
leveled by the accumulation of dust and
vegetation, so that a mound was formed.
The Indians used the mode of structure de-
scribed ; but it could hardly have been ap-
plied in these mounds, for such a structure,
having once fallen, would have become an
irregular mass with a concave top, and an
opening on the side where the entrance had
been — presenting a different appearance
from the mounds. None of the mounds of
Minnesota, in the author's opinion, were suit-
able for use as the base of pueblos ; and he
finds no evidence that the large flat mounds
of the lower valley were of that character.

The Australasian Scientific Association.

— The Australasian Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science met in Melbourne early
in January. Baron von Mueller was presi-
dent. The roll of membership included a
thousand names, and more than six hundred
were in actual attendance. The president's
address dealt with the past and future of
Australasian science ; and the addresses of
the presidents of sections were in many
cases on subjects of particular interest in
Australia. The most important of the com-
mittee reports was that on the census of the
known minerals of the Australian colonies.
A project for establishing and endowing a
central biological station at Port Jackson
was started. A report was presented on the
Polynesian races and Polynesian bibliogra-
phy. New special committees were ap-
pointed to investigate and report on the sub-
jects of wheat-rust ; the manner of laying
out towns ; the preparation of geological
maps; the arrangement of museums; the
fertilization of figs ; Australian tides ; and
the present state of knowledge of Austral-
asian paleontology. The next meeting is to
be held in Christ-church, New Zealand, with
Sir James Hector as president and Prof.
Hutton as secretary ; and the next in Hobart,
Tasmania.

An Arizona Sqnirrel. — A rare squirrel,
new to the Territory of Arizona, is described
by Mr. Edgar A. Mearns as the round-tailed
spermophile (SpwmopMlus tereticaudics,
Baird). It is the most abundant and

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

565

characteristic mammal of the torrid, sandy,
desert region south of the Gila River, where
it lives in immense colonies in chambers ex-
cavated under the greasewood-roots. Such
sites seem to be selected for the sake of the
support afforded by the fine roots of the
greasewood for the domes of their habita-
tions. Without some such support the light
and loose soil would cave in at once.
Large, low mounds are formed over the bur-
rows in which many holes are provided for
ingress and egress. In some parts of Ari-
zona these mounds are frequently seen in
open, grassy places, and are usually large
and high. The animals are shy ; they sit up
erect at the entrance of their burrows, like
prairie-dogs, and like them dodge in at the
sight of a stranger. When surprised away
from home they try to skulk unobserved to
their holes, nervously glancing at the ob-
server. But they become less shy when ac-
customed to the neighborhood of man. Mr.
Mearns adds to his description in curiously
learned language which becomes expressive
when translated, that " although eminently
fossorial, this animal is endowed with latent
scansorial proclivities, which are brought
out by the sight of food in elevated situations.
In other words, they will climb for mesquite-
beans."

The Circle of Civic Evolution.— The mod-
ern, civilized state is developed, in Mr. John
A. Taylor's view, as expressed in his address
on its Evolution, from the germ that lay dor-
mant in the rude elements of government
that existed in the past — as the Cologne Ca-
thedral, completed only a few years since,
has been built in exact fulfillment of the con-
ception of its unknown architect, six hundred
years ago. Our American commonwealth,
based on the idea of government by the
governed, expressed at its birth the highest
type to which the state had then evolved.
This evolution, from all the attempts at gov-
ernment in the past, has been inseparably
accompanied and verified by the continual
uplifting and expansion of manhood as a
type. Now we find that evils have been de-
veloped within our system which threaten its
existence, and appear to be dragging down
" manhood as a type " : they are most con-
spicuously manifested in the cities, but ex-
ist through the whole political body. They

are very numerous, but may be generalized
under the terms corruption and bossism.
Public interests are made an affair of trade,
and are openly used for private advantage ;
and no measure, however important and
beneficial, can be secured unless it can be
made profitable to the ring of practical politi-
cians. Everything has fallen into the hands
of the leaders of the great political parties,
who manage the parties and the community
alike at their will, while the people appear
to look on helpless. If the people are com-
petent to govern, as our Constitution sup-
poses, why do they not right matters ? Mr.
Taylor's answer to this question is not wholly
confident ; but he suggests that the rapid
advance we have gone through in wealth and
invention, with our constantly changing en-
vironments, hav.e engendered problems of
which the framers of our Constitution never
dreamed ; and that, having delegated our
right of choice to the politicians, we have
reached an epoch in the evolution of the
state when the art and science of govern-
ment are left in abeyance, and the best
thought and effort of our time are given to
other pursuits. Yet he has hope for ofer gov-
ernment, and offers the suggestion that " at
some time, perhaps in the far-distant future,
the state will have evolved into an entity of
purely delegated as distinguished from rep-
resentative powers " — which will look much
like a return to monarchy and lords.

Judge-made Law. — Mr. Rufus Sheldon,
in his paper on the Evolution of Law, argues
that so much of the law as is defined by the
decisions of the courts is made by judges.
" That judges make law," he says, " is not
explicitly stated in the text-books. In fact,
it is not generally admitted that they have
any part in law-making ; the theory being
that there is somewhere a store of ready-
made law, consisting of rules and precedents,
where the judges somehow find what they
want after the lawyers have searched for it
in vain, and then expound and apply it with
plenty of comment and obiter dicta, but no
addition." But it often occurs that, if any
determination of right or liability is made,
it must be made by the court ; as must hap-
pen in every instance where judgment is
given in a case different from any to be
found in the reports — and just in proportion

566

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to the difference of the circumstances from
those of any previous case is the amount of
new law made. So the law increases, fol-
lowing civilization as it advances, till at last
the total becomes an enormous bulk of judge-
made laws ; the result of the progressive de-
duction of rules and principles by a process
of distinguishing by small variation, varia-
tions from previous cases similar, but not
identical ; so that, when a decision is made,
some increment is added to the body of the
law, or substitution of new for old is made,
even to such a degree that at last, by the
slow process of disintegration, the old law
is reversed. " A distinctive characteristic
of legislation is that it is supreme over all
other methods of law-making. Its advan-
tage is that it can make the will of the peo-
ple effective much more directly and expe-
ditiously than the other agencies. Many are
the cases in which legislation has swept away
the cobwebs of legal subtlety, simplified tech-
nical laws, and cleared from the path of
progress the obstacles of precedent and
form."

Tests and Characteristics of Rabies. —

Rabies, says Dr. Armand Ruffer, is a spe-
cific infectious disease, the first origin of
which is unknown. But we know that now-
adays it never occurs spontaneously, and
that, wherever it appears, it may be traced
to the bite of a rabid animal or the acci-
dental introduction of rabic virus through a
scratch or cut. Climate seems to have no
influence, or very little, on its production.
That heat has little to do with it is shown by
the fact that it occurs in cold as well as in
hot climates. In temperate climates, cases
occurring among dogs appear to be as com-
mon in winter as in summer. Cruelty may
also be excluded as a cause of rabies. Dogs
may be teased and provoked to bite in
anger, but, though mad dogs, they are not
rabid dogs. The chief propagator of the
disease is the dog; but he does not
always, at first, exhibit the symptoms re-
garded as characteristic of it. He is not
usually afraid of water, and the first symp-
toms, instead of signs of fury, usually simu-
late an increase of affectionate sentiments.
Even at this stage, however, the saliva al-
ready contains the virus, and is dangerous.
Later on, the victim becomes sullen and

morose, with a very characteristic bark, bit-
ing every dog he comes across, and fre-
quently runs away, snapping at animals or
■ men as he meets them, till he dies exhausted,
perhaps sixty or seventy miles from home.
The dumb variety of rabies, which is char-
acterized by the symptoms of paralysis, is
equally common and dangerous with the
furious form. The virus is the same, but
gives rise to different symptoms. Rabies is
also propagated by wolves where they are
numerous ; and it may be met with in foxes,
horses, sheep, and cattle which have been
bitten by rabid animals, but is seldom com-
municated from them. The cat is danger-
ous, but not so dangerous as the dog, be-
cause her disposition is to seclude herself.
Some erroneous notions prevail as to the
manifestations of the disease in man. As a
matter of fact, in many cases the patient is
calm and conscious, and attacks of excite-
ment are rare. The foaming at the mouth
is caused by inability to swallow the saliva.
The changed voice is a result of dryness and
spasms of the throat. A patient may oc-
casionally bite the attendants during a par-
oxysmal attack of fury, but in the majority
of cases he does not try to injure those near
him, and hardly ever tries to bite. Some-
times there are no attacks of excitement,
while the affectionate sentiments are often
greatly exaggerated. The supposed fear of
water is really only an inability to drink, the
reaction of which may induce spasms of the
throat. The majority of persons who die of
hydrophobia die within four months, and
ninety-nine per cent of them within a year,
after the introduction of the poison. Cases
of persons who recover after the first symp-
toms of the disease appear are extremely rare,
if there are any. Of remedies there are
none that are reliable, unless M. Pasteur's
comes from the test triumphant.

Interesting Geological Formations in
Kansas. — The March number of the Bulletin
of the Washburn College (Kansas) Labora-
tory of Natural History consists of a paper
by F. W. Cragin on the Cheyenne Sandstone
and the Neocomian Shales of Kansas. The
Cheyenne sandstone, resting unconformably
on the Triassic of a few counties of southern
Kansas, is so called for the present in de-
fault of precise knowledge of its stratigraph-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

567

ic and paleontologieal equivalency. It con-
tains fossils related to those of the Purbeck
dirt-beds of England. It is overlaid by the
Neocomian, which extends also into other
counties, and is distinguished by its horizon
of dark, slate-colored shale. This formation
was first remarked by Prof. Jules Marcou
in the Indian Territory some thirty -five
years ago, but has received little attention,
and is still very imperfectly known. Its
thickness is variable, but probably nowhere
exceeds one hundred and fifty feet. It is
the same as the formation called by some
geologists Comanche ; but the term Neoco-
mian is preferred on account of its ref era-
bility to a European chronological equivalent.

The Work of a Complete State Univer-
sity.— The Coming of Age of State Univer-
sities is the title of the charter-day address
of President T. C. Chamberlin, on the twen-
ty-first anniversary of the University of Ne-
braska, in which the work of the complete
State University is delineated. Such an in-
stitution will educate all its constituents in
all varieties of useful knowledge — with a
view to the common rather than to the in-
dividual good ; it will endeavor to develop
scholarship in its highest and most refined
expressions, as well as in its more material
and commercial phases — not for the sake of
the scholar as such, but for the ultimate re-
finement and elevation of the common life
of the whole people ; it will promote a gen-
erous spirit of inquiry, a trained habit of
investigation, an attitude of impartiality
toward evidence, and a supreme regard for
truth ; will endeavor to serve all other parts
of the public educational system by furnish-
ing fresh knowledge, amply trained teach-
ers, and the inspiration of higher educational
opportunities ; and will encourage, as an in-
herent factor and ultimate end of its efforts,
those sentiments of regard for the common
interests, those patriotisms of every-day life,
that constitute the soul of superior citizen-
ship.

Four Commencement Days* — In human
life, says Dr. J. M. Bodine, in a valedictory
address to the graduating class of the Medi-
cal Department of the University of Louis-
ville, are four great commencement days —
when we begin to be, when we begin to

learn, when we begin to practice, and when
we enter the existence beyond the grave.
On the third of these days the author ad-
vises his students, if business does not come
at once — " devote yourself to reading, and
use every opportunity to do something pro-
fessional. . . . See every operation, autopsy,
and pathological specimen you can. Study
botany in the fields, chemistry in the labora-
tory, and look into the invisible with your
microscope. If seen thus engaged, the peo-
ple will credit you with seriousness in your
profession, and your employment, without pa-
tients, will be your best advertisement. . . .
The route to preferment does not lie through
the salons of society, the village sports, and
is far away from the drink-shop. By com-
placency in yielding to the social and sport-
ive, you will get the name of ' good fellow,'
but when life is trembling in the parted
scales sobriety and skill are at a premium.
You must learn to labor and to wait. But,
while waiting, work for knowledge and
watch for opportunity. Win by applica-
tion ; woo by merit. ... Be able to do
something better than those around you,
and the call to do it is certain."

Mountains of Arizona. — The region of
the San Francisco and Mogollon Mountains
of Arizona and New Mexico, as described
by Dr. H. H. Rusby, comprises an elevated,
open, somewhat barren table-land ; a still
more elevated forest belt; and a low, des-
ert, mostly sandy plain. The table-land is
traversed by a number of profound canons,
with precipitous walls a mile or more in
height, and by many others of less depth,
and is a never-ceasing source of surprises to
Eastern visitors. " During the greater part
of the year the surface is dry and desolate,
of an ashy-gray color ; but immediately
upon the occurrence of the annual rains it
changes with marvelous rapidity. Within
three days after the first important show-
ers, a distinct tinge of green is perceptible.
In a week the surface is of an almost uni-
form light green ; and in from ten days to
two weeks it presents an appearance of great
luxuriance. From this time on, until the oc-
currence of killing frosts, it is a paradise for
the collector." The San Francisco Forest
consists almost wholly of the Pinus ponde-
rosa, and is one of the most beautiful for-

568

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ests in existence, its effect being heightened
by contrast with the neighboring deserts,
from which it must be entered. It is also a
very important timber resource. The San
Francisco Mountains, in which it rises, have
an elevation of about nine thousand feet, or
some twenty-five hundred to three thousand
feet above the general level, and give strik-
ingly apparent evidence of their volcanic ori-
gin. Everywhere through the forest we en-
counter beautiful open parks, from a few
acres to several miles in ai'ea ; and in these
the permanent water-supplies are usually
found. The soil underlying the forest con-
sists, for the most part, to a great depth,
of loose volcanic rock, upon the surface of
which no stream can form a permanent bed.
The water-courses, therefore, are far beneath
the surface, but reappear occasionally to form
living pools of water, often a hundred yards
or more in diameter. But during the heavy
rains even this porous soil is not sufficient
to absorb the entire fall of water, and it
runs off through the hollows, washing out
the loose material to form ravines and small
canons.

Ancient Peruvian Cloths. — Some textile
fabrics of ancient Peru, in the collection of
Mr. E. A. Barber, of Philadelphia, as de-
scribed by Mr. W. Holmes, attest the high
standard of taste and mechanical art which
that people had reached. Most of the cloths
and ornamented garments were wrapped
around the dead, and may now be unfolded
from the mummies. Others are contained in
rolls, baskets, nets, and vases. The articles
were chiefly of wearing apparel, and included
caps, richly colored bands, and pendent or-
naments for the head ; mantles, shirts, gir-
dles, sashes, and a variety of wraps for the
body ; braided sandals for the feet ; blank-
ets, hangings for doors and walls, shel-
ter-cloths, ceremonial fabrics and banners,
mats, baskets, bags, slings, nets, and other
articles. Elaborate ornamental figures were
woven into the cloths, and many were fur-
nished with textile appendages. Some of
the articles were woven whole, but it was
customary to weave a garment in parts
which were afterward stitched together.
There was no cutting and fitting, or " weaving
by the yard." All the specimens are purely
American in character, with no suggestions

of Spanish or other foreign influence. Ani-
mal and vegetable forms appear in the deco-
rations, but animal forms predominate. The
• colors of the figures usually bore no refer-
ence to the colors of nature, but were chosen
for their effect in the decoration. Great
cleverness was shown in introducing the ir-
regular forms of nature into geometric out-
lines without destroying them. A human
figure "decked in plumes and clothed in
garments of elegant patterns and varied
colors " introduced in ;' a magnificent piece of
gobelins," " is a triumph of skill and taste."
In many pieces the figures were shown as
transparencies when held up to the light.
The people were exceedingly fond of fringes,
"and some of their tasseled garments are
marvels of elaboration." Great skill was
shown in the manufacture of very attenu-
ated articles, such as bands and cords. Ani-
mal figures were woven or knitted in the
round, and colored in fair and close imita-
tion of nature. Embroideries have been
found of excellent quality and most pleas-
ing design. Devices were used in dyeing, by
means of which spots arranged in simple
patterns were left uncolored ; and painting
on fabrics was extensively practiced.

Nursing as against Artificial Feeding. —

Soxhlet remarks that, according to Lister's
experiments, cow's milk, while in the udder,
is free from those organisms which cause
its decomposition after milking. The sub-
stances which cause fermentation of milk
come from the outside, from the air or from
matters with which it comes in contact. So,
likewise, human milk, while in the mother's
breast, contains no generators of fermen-
tation. By suckling, the mother's milk is
transmitted almost directly into the digest-
ive organs of the child. In natural nursing,
then, the child is fed germless milk ; but, by
the artificial method, with milk tainted by
substances causing fermentation, and which
frequently has already entered into a state
of decomposition. The difference in the na-
ture of this food as directly and as indirectly
given is illustrated by the fact that calves
fed from the pail, whether on the milk of
the mother cow or on mixed milk, frequently
suffer from diarrhoea during the first weeks,
the best remedy against which is to allow
them to suck the cow directly. We are

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

569

brought to the conclusion that, within cer-
tain limits, the substance of the food is of
comparatively less importance than the con-
ditions and manner of feeding and the de-
gree of pollution through germs of fermen-
tation.

Requisites of a Real Education. — In an

address before the Teachers' Association of
the McGill Normal School, Montreal, Prof.
Wesley Mills, explaining his educational
creed, assumed that the need of knowledge,
or realization, is infinitely greater than the
needs of expression, as witness the whole
creation below man. An individual may be
educated, though unable to read a sentence,
write a line, or add up a column of figures.
As a matter of fact, many men have be-
come eminent among their fellows who could
not do any of these things. Why has this
been so ? The reason is plain. These men
understood the forces of nature, though they
could not in all cases have stated their
knowledge in our conventional forms of ex-
pression. The art and science of expression
should be taught in schools, but should be
subordinated to the acquisition of the knowl-
edge of things. The moral and social na-
ture of man should receive greater attention.
The teaching of religious doctrines and the
observance of religious forms are not prac-
tical in the public schools, but ethics by pre-
cept and example should be prominent from
the day a child enters the school. A rever-
ence for all kinds of truth should ever be
impressed. Only one system of education —
the Kindergarten — has ever met the nature
of the child even fairly. The laboratory of
the college is only the modified Kindergarten.
Why is not the public-school teaching more
like one of these ? Because we have mis-
taken forms for knowledge and words for
things, to a lamentable extent. "As our
schools are now constituted, I must deliber-
ately declare it as my conviction that they
tend rather to quench than to excite a love
for nature and a real knowledge of things,
and to disgust young minds thirsting for a
contact with realities. ... I have known
children that did not go to school till seven
years of age, who had prior to that period
learned to be good observers of what was
going on around them, lose all love for natu-
ral objects after being at school a couple of

years ; and I do also know to my sorrow
that many of the young men that enter our
colleges neither know how nor care to ob-
serw. They prefer not to look Nature di-
rectly in the face, but try to see her through
the medium of books, lectures, etc., and for
this our school system is largely responsible."
One of the remedies proposed for this evil
is the simplification of the too ambitious
school programmes. Abstract subjects, like
history and grammar, should be left for
future years. They take up the time that
might be devoted to, developing the intelli-
gence through cultivation of observation and
stirring the mind with the results of the ex-
ercise of the senses. Childhood is not the
period of life for developing abstract no-
tions, but for acquiring concrete ones. While
in the abstract it is true that a knowledge
of French, Latin, Greek, etc., may help to
make one a better English scholar, the idea
that an amount of these languages that
would be of any value can be taught to the
average pupil, without the neglect of other
important work, is a delusion. The school
should aim to enable the child to speak and
write its mother-tongue readily, clearly, and
elegantly. This will not be accomplished by
teaching English grammar or foreign lan-
guages, but by contact with good models and
practice. " Time is now frittered away on
so many subjects that nothing is well done,
and with the most disastrous effects on the
habits of the learner. Our schools are
dreadfully bookish."

Scientific Missions in the Olden Time.—

The institution of missions abroad with sci-
entific aims began in France, according to
Dr. Henry, practically in the reign of Francis
I. Among the earlier ventures of this class
was that of the apothecary to Henri IV, who
went all over the globe in search of the
peculiar products of each country, especially
medicinal and food plants. Earlier than he
was the explorer who went to Brazil to
study dyeing-woods. Among the most fa-
mous of the expeditions were those of Con-
damine, Dombey, Bougainville, and La Pe-
rouse. There are still in the archives of
the Ministry of the Marine copies of the in-
structions given to travelers and navigators
in past centuries — "positively models of
their kind, which could not be followed too

57°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

closely now." A botanical collection made
by Paul Lucas, in the reign of Louis XIV,
is mentioned by Prof. Bureau as still exist-
ing in the Museum of Natural History in
Paris. Tournefort was sent by this king on
a botanical expedition to the Levant, with
very precise instructions — among others, to
collect and observe the plants mentioned by
the ancients. He formed a complete herba-
rium ; and the artist Aubriet, who accom-
panied him, brought back a large collection
of colored sketches. Both of these are pre-
served in the museum.

Primitive Marital Customs. — The pro-
verbial hostility of a man or woman to a
mother-in-law may be a survival from a so-
cial custom of our primitive ancestors simi-
lar to one which exists now among uncivil-
ized peoples. This is the quaint and some-
what comic point of barbaric etiquette be-
tween husbands and their wives' relatives,
and vice versa ; they may not look at one
another, much less speak, and they even
avoid mentioning one another's names.
Among the avoidance customs cited by Mr.
E. B. Tylor, in a recent essay, is that de-
scribed by John Tanner, the adopted Ojibwa,
who tells of his being taken by a friendly
Assinaboin into his lodge, and seeing how, at
his companion's entrance, the old father-in-
law and mother-in-law covered their heads
with their blankets till their son-in-law got
into the compartment reserved for him, where
his wife brought him his food. Another
comes from Australia. Mr. Howitt relates
that he inadvertently told a native to call his
mother-in-law, who was passing at some lit-
tle distance ; but the black fellow sent the
order round by a third party, saying re-
proachfully to Mr. Howitt, "You know I
could not speak to that old woman." This
custom is not a rare one, for Mr. Tylor finds
it to be practiced by sixty-six peoples in
various regions, or more than one sixth of
the peoples of the world, and he points out
a relation between it and the customs as to
place of residence after marriage. Another
odd practice of certain savages is that of
naming the parent from the child. Thus
when Moffat, the missionary, was in Africa,
he was spoken to and of, according to native
usage, as Ra-Mary— i. e., father of Mary.
Among the Kasias of India, Colonel Yule

found the same rule ; for instance, there
being a boy named Bobon, his father was
known as Pabobon. There are above thirty
peoples spread over the earth who thus name
the father, and, though less often, the
mother. Mr. Tylor finds this practice to be
closely connected with the custom of the
husband residing in his wife's family. The
couvade, which has been a favorite subject
of ridicule for centuries, consists in the
father, on the birth of his child, making a
ceremonial pretence of standing in a relation
to it similar to that of the mother. He is
nursed and taken care of, and performs such
rites as fasting and abstaining from certain
kinds of food or occupation, lest the new-
born should suffer thereby. This custom is
known in the four quarters of the globe.
How sincerely it is still accepted appears in
a story of Mr. Im Thurn, who on a forest
journey in British Guiana noticed that one
of his Indians refused to help haul the ca-
noes, and on inquiry found that the man's
objection was that a child must have been
born to him at home about this time, and he
must not exert himself so as to hurt the in-
fant. In the Mediterranean district the cou-
vade has prevailed even into modern times.
In the Basque country, Zamacolo, in 1818,
mentions as but a little time since that the
mother used to get up and the father take
the child to bed. " Knowing the tenacity of
these customs," says Mr. Tylor, " I should
not be surprised if traces of couvade might
be found in that district still." He accepts
the interpretation of Bachonan that the cou-
vade was originally an acknowledgment of
paternity.

Ancient Men of the Potomac. — Prof.
Otis T. Mason's survey of the archaeology of
the Potomac region covers that part of the
valley which is situated below the rapids of
the several tributary streams that mark the
limits of tide-water. In the fresh-water por-
tion of the lower Chesapeake drainage — the
region between salt water and the cataracts
— stone implements are found in the great-
est profusion. It is easy to account for this
when it is remembered that the country fur-
nished abundant natural fruit supply. To
one accustomed to exploration among the
mounds of the Ohio Valley or in the West
Indies, the stone implements are in appear-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

57i

ance disappointing. While here and there
polished axes are found, the polished imple-
ment is the exception, not the rule, especial-
ly on higher ground. Again, comparing the
chipped implements with those from regions
abounding in flint, obsidian, and the finer
varieties of the silex group, a large collec-
tion of them has a somewhat rude appear-
ance. All this is due, however, to the mate-
rial. The ancient Potomac dweller was re-
stricted to bowlders of quartzite found in
quantities inexhaustible all over his area, to
veins of milky quartz outcropping here and
there, and to an occasional quarry of soap-
stone. Types of pottery and impressions of
woven fabrics contribute to our knowledge
of the degree of advancement which the
people had reached, and cast light on the
tribal distributions. The most serious prob-
lem that faces the archaeologist in this area
has been proposed by Mr. Thomas Wilson,
in the evidence of the existence of two pe-
riods of occupation — the one Palaeolithic and
ancient, and the other Neolithic and modern.
While the camp-sites along the water-courses
yield abundance of finely chipped arrow-
heads, spear-heads, knives, polished imple-
ments, soapstone vessels, and pottery, the
hills back from the river are wanting in the
smaller, finer forms, but abound in coarser,
flaked arte/acta, mixed with broken imple-
ments and spalls.

The American Association. — The thirty-
ninth meeting of the American Association
will be held in Indianapolis, beginning
Wednesday, August 20th. The general
sessions and the meetings of the sections
will be held in the new and commodious
State-House, where also will be the offices of
the Local Committee and of the Permanent
Secretary. The hotel headquarters of the
Association will be at the Denison House,
and the preliminary meeting of the Council
will be held there on Tuesday, the 19th. In-
terest will be added to this meeting by the
fact that it will mark the fiftieth anniversary
of the organization of the Association of
Geologists and Naturalists, the parent of the
American Association. The sessions will
continue till Tuesday evening, the 26th, and
a meeting of the Council will be held Wednes-
day, the 27th; Saturday, the 23d, will be giv-
en to excursions ; and the excursions, after

the close of the meeting, will extend to Au-

gust 30th.

The officers-elect for the meeting of 1890
are: ,

President. — George L. Goodale, Cam-
bridge, Mass.

Vice-Presidents. — A, Mathematics and
Astronomy — S. C. Chandler. B, Physics —
Cleveland Abbe. C, Chemistry — R. B.
Warder. D, Mechanical Science and En-
gineering— James E. Denton. E, Geology
and Geography — John C. Branner. F, Bi-
ology— C. S. Minot. H, Anthropology —
Frank Baker. I, Economic Science and
Statistics — J. Richards Dodge.

Permanent Secretary. — G. W. Putnam.

General Secretary. — H. Carrington Bolton.

Secretary of the Council. — James Loudon.

Secretaries of the Sections. — A, Wooster
W. Beman ; B, W. Leconte Stevens ; C, W.
A. Noyes ; D, M. E. Cooley ; E, Samuel Cal-
vin ; F, John M. Coulter ; H, Joseph Jastrow ;
I, S. Dana Horton.

Treasurer. — William Lilly.

Auditors. — Henry Wheatland, Thomas
Meehan.

A Papuan Bridge. — A native suspension
bridge, crossing the Yanapa River, is de-
scribed by Sir William MacGregor, British
Administrator of New Guinea, as being, con-
sidering its locality and the primitive situa-
tion of the inland natives of the district, a
remarkable structure. Advantage is taken
of the narrowing of the river by the projec-
tion of a rocky point, so that the bridge is
only about seventy yards long. At one end
it is chiefly supported by a large banyan-tree,
whence it starts at an elevation of about fifty
feet above the pool below. It descends then
in mid-stream to about twelve or fifteen feet
from the water, and rises to about twenty
feet on the right bank. It is then suspended
to a tree not strong enough to hold it firmly.
The tree is, therefore, supplemented by a
post put in the ground, and this is again
strengthened by a cross-bar against the tree,
fixed by stays extending backward to trees
behind. The material of the structure is rat-
tan cane. Fifteen canes are used to form sup-
ports, those not long enough to cross the river
having been built up by knotting. The floor
of the bridge is formed of four of these canes.
Above the floor are two " guard lines " on

572

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

each side at intervals of two feet six inches
and two feet three inches, kept in position by
split cane worked in a kind of basket-fash-
ion. The whole would present, in transverse-
section, nearly the shape of a somewhat
rounded V about five feet high and three and
a half feet wide at the top. The top strands
are kept apart by a cross-stick, the ends of
which are tied to the top of each strand.
Suitable platform approaches have been
built at the ends, and the whole structure is
strong and graceful.

Fine Art in the Workshop. — In a dis-
cussion of the relation of the fine arts to the
applied arts, Mr. Edward C. Robins insists
that the workshop is the place for applying
those principles of beauty in art which are
not taught there, but may be taught in the
technical school, and which are necessary to
give the worker the intelligence required to
enable him to profit by the opportunities
which the workshop alone adequately sup-
plies to the handicraftsman. To secure the
inculcation of these principles the natural
and instinctive love of children for image-
ry, for stones, for penciling and coloring,
for deft fingering should never cease to be
cultivated; and every school should teach
drawing as it teaches reading, singing, or
ciphering. The free use of the pencil is of
incalculable value in every sphere of life.
Elementary knowledge is not enough, and the
process should be carried on till proficiency
results ; and this can not be in the arts con-
nected with architecture unless it culminates
in complete mastery of decorative design and
drawing from natural forms and the living
model, as well as the practice of geom-
etry and perspective. The pre-eminence of
France in art generally, and its application
to industry, seems to have resulted from the
recognition of this important preliminary
training.

Local Magnetism and Geological Struct-
ure.— The Relation between the Geological
Constitution and the Magnetic State of the
United Kingdom was discussed in a paper
at the British Association, by Prof. A. W.
Riickes and T. E. Thorpe. Having noticed
certain abnormal variations in declination
depending on the geological character of the
district as engendering local or regional dis-

turbing forces, the authors outlined two
principal theories which had been proposed
to account for the phenomena. Many ig-
neous rocks and wholly basaltic rocks con-
tain magnetic oxide of iron, and the devia-
tions of the needle may be explained by the
presence of such rocks, either visible on the
surface or concealed beneath it. The other
explanation associates the deflections of the
needle with disturbances of the earth's cur-
rents of electricity produced by irregularities
in the geological constitution of the country,
especially with geological faults. The au-
thors were of the opinion that on the whole the
theory of the action of magnetic rocks agrees
best with the observed facts ; and they
showed that the United Kingdom can be
divided into a number of magnetic districts,
in which the directions of the disturbing
forces are evidently closely connected with
the geological constitution.

The Eyes and Headaches.— Headaches

are usually associated with disorders of the
system or of important organs. It is pointed
out, however, by Dr. J. J. Chisholm, in a
paper on Persistent Headaches and how to
cure them, that a large number of head dis-
comforts occur in which no acute inflamma-
tory condition exists, and no fault can be
found with the general health. In many of
these cases, especially in such as are relieved
by stopping work, the cause of the disorder
may be traced to the eye. This may be the
case even when no pain is felt in the eye
itself, and where no weakness of vision has
been detected. The true headache eye is
known as an astigmatic one, or one in which
the light, through defective change of the
lenses, fails to be concentrated to a point on
the retina. It is a frequent product of the
schools as they are now managed. Aside
from abandoning the use of the eyes, which
is impossible, the only remedy for the astig-
matic headaches is found in wearing suitably
chosen glasses.

Musical Visions. — The story is told in
Nature of a young woman who has distinct
visions of various objects at the sound of dif-
ferent musical instruments. The playing of
the oboe calls to her eye a white pyramid or
obelisk running into a sharp point, the pro-
portions of which vary with the qualities of

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

573

the note. All the notes of the cello, the
high notes of the bassoon, trumpet, and
trombone, and the low notes of the clarionet
and viola suggest a flat undulating ribbon of
strong white fibers. The tone of the horn
calls up a succession of white circles of grad-
uated size, overlapping one another. The
circle and the ribbon float past her horizon-
tally, but the point of the obelisk seems to
come at her. In an orchestra, when the
violins strike up, after the wind band has
been prominent for a time, she sees often a
shower of bright white dust or sand. If she
knows the scoring of a piece well, the vari-
ous effects slightly precede the instrument
they belong to; but the objects are vague
and faint till the sound begins. Sometimes,
if an oboe passage has an intense or yearn-
ing character, the white point comes so near
her, and moves so rapidly, that she thinks it
must wound her.

Who Should study Chemistry. — In an

article in which it is shown what small re-
muneration is obtained for ordinary chemical
work in England, the editor of The Chemical
News says : " It must not, however, be sup-
posed that we are seeking to dissuade the
young from the study of chemistry alto-
gether. To three classes, who we would fain
hope are becoming more numerous, we must
recommend it most strongly. In the first
place, to all who aim at reaching something
higher than a mere board-school grade of
mental culture, we should recommend it,
quite irrespective of possible material bene-
fits, as a means of intellectual training.
Chemistry teaches us the important arts of
close and accurate observation, and of draw-
ing correct inferences from the facts recog-
nized. These important arts can never be
mastered by the most prolonged study of
classics and mathematics. Hence, if we re-
gard education as intellectual discipline
rather than the mere absorption of a num-
ber of facts, we shall find some one of the
branches of natural and physical science ab-
solutely essential and indispensable. And
under most circumstances chemistry will
prove the most appropriate subject. An-
other class which we should like to see
largely recruited consists of men in inde-
pendent circumstances who have the lei-
sure needed for taking in hand those many

scientific problems which are often neglected
because they are not immediately remunera-
tive. Such men too commonly waste their
time in dissipation, in the pursuit of more
"wealth, or in making mischief. Now, if they
possess the needful ability, we. had much
rather see them at work in the laboratory.
The last class to whom we would especially
recommend a thorough study of chemical
principles are those who are looking for-
ward to employment in the chemical arts,
whether as proprietors, managers, foremen,
etc. It is a misfortune when men who oc-
cupy such positions depend merely upon rule
of thumb and traditional recipes. If these
three classes do what we believe is their
duty, our national manufactures and our
national habits of thought will alike under-
go a needed improvement."

Marriage Ages in England. — For the last
seventeen years the persons who have mar-
ried in England have been older each year.
In 18*73 the men who married averaged 25"6
years of age, and the women 24*2 ; in 1888
the averages were respectively 26-3 and 24*7
years. The mean age at marriage in the
professional and independent classes is seven
years more advanced for men and four years
more advanced for women than among min-
ers— in fact, generally speaking, the higher
the class the later the age at which marriage
is contracted. These results were presented
to the Royal Statistical Society in a recent
paper by Dr. William Ogle, who said further
that more persons remain permanently celi-
bate in the upper than in the working
classes. He had found that fewest men ab-
stained altogether from matrimony among
shopkeepers, to whom wives were almost a
necessity. Next to them came the mechanics
and laborers, while the professional and in-
dependent class had a proportion of perma-
nent bachelors far above the rest.

Healthfnl Walls and Ceilings.— A requi-
site to the healthful condition of ceilings and
walls, according to Prof. R. C. Kedzie, is the
preservation of their respiratory quality, or
of a degree of porosity that will permit a
free transpiration of air through them.
While this exists unimpaired, impurities
lodging upon them are naturally consumed,
and they remain clean and wholesome ; what-

574

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ever tends to obstruct transpiration promotes
the accumulation of impurities. For this
reason, even paint, though it may be intrin-
sically harmless, is objectionable. Paper is
positively objectionable, because itself col-
lects impurities and retains them ; the sub-
stances with which it is prepared and deco-
rated do the same ; and the paste with which
it is attached responds to all dampness and
atmospheric influences, and readily becomes
moldy. Kalsomine is faulty, because it is
prepared with glue, and that, besides stop-
ping the pores in the plastering (or " strang-
ling the wall "), is liable to decay. No wall
coating can be more healthful than a lime-
wash. But, since that is inconvenient on ac-
count of its rubbing off, an excellent sub-
stitute is recommended by Mr. M. B. Church
in calcined plaster of Paris, which hardens
at once, forming a fixed shell of perfect
porosity.

NOTES.

A Correction. — By a slip of the pen
which also escaped notice in the proof-read-
ing, Prof. Weismann is made to say twice in
the second paragraph of page 357 of our
July number " cerebellum " where " cere-
brum " was intended. Read — " if, again, we
were able to remove all the other parts of
the cerebrum," etc., and " with the rest of
the cerebrum was taken, etc."

The meeting of the British Association
for 1890 will be held at Leeds, September
3d to 10th, under the presidency of Sir
Frederick Abel. The sectional presidents
will be : A, Dr. J. W. L. Glaisher ; B, Prof.
T. E. Thorpe; C, Prof. A. H. Green; D,
Prof. A. Milnes Marshall ; E, Sir R. Lam-
bert Playfair ; F, Prof. Alfred Marshall ; G,
Captain A. Noble ; H, Dr. John Evans. Even-
ing addresses will be given by Mr. E. B.
Poulton on Mimicry ; Prof. C. Vernon Boys
on Quartz Fibers and their Applications ;
and Prof. Perry will lecture to the working
classes on Spinning Tops.

A new food is described in the Kew Bul-
letin as used by the poorer classes in north-
ern India. It is called phog, and is made
from the flowers of the plant Calligonum
polygonoides. They are eaten mixed with
flour, or separately with salt and condiments
They are rich in nitrogenous compounds, and
somewhat resemble the seeds of the edible
amaranths and buckwheats, only that in
them sugar replaces starch.

A visible illustration of the figures pro-
duced by sound-waves has been devised by
Mrs. Watts Hughes, in what she calls " voice-

figures." They are practically Chladni's
figures, produced in a viscid medium. Semi-
fluid paste is spread over an elastic mem-
brane stretched over the mouth of a receiver.
A single note sung into the receiver throws
the paste into waves and curves. The pat-
terns formed are photographed immediately
after production, or are transferred as water-
color impressions while the membrane is still
vibrating. Perhaps the most interesting
figures are the " daisy forms," in which " the
number of petals increases as the pitch of
the note that produces them rises."

Mr. Albert Koecele, who was dispatched
to Australia under the direction of the En-
tomologist of the Agricultural Department to
obtain natural enemies of the " fluted scale "
of the orange (leery a purchasi), brought
home an insect, the cardinal vedalia, which
has proved very efficient. It has already
multiplied to such an extent as to rid several
groves from Icerya, and is looked upon as
promising immunity in the near future for
the entire State of California. In fact, Dr.
Riley fears that it will do its work so well
as to leave no field for other insects which
Mr. Koebele procured, and which it is de-
sirable to cultivate for the sake of having a
variety.

In a paper in the Connecticut Pharma-
ceutical Association, Mr. D. G. Stoughton
appears to have arrived, by a way of his
own, at the conception of the identity of
electricity with the other physical forces,
heat and light, now demonstrated by Mr.
Hertz's experiments. He regards them as
resultants of the obstruction of ether motion
by matter. Molecular motion, intense within
the sun, is supposed to be transformed at
the confines of the gaseous envelope sur-
rounding that body into ether motion, which,
passing through the ninety million miles of
ether to the confines of our atmosphere, is
obstructed by the molecules of atmosphere,
and gives rise, according to the measure
of the obstruction, to electricity, light, and
heat.

Holmgren's test for color-blindness is
the one recommended by those who have
given the subject most attention. There
are three parts to the test, which consist in
picking out from a lot of wools all those
skeins that match given ones in color. A
pale green is the test-color first used, then a
dilute purple, and finally a bright red. The
person is not required to name any colors, as
this is a different matter from distinguishing
them.

A writer in Le Monde de la Science et
de l'Industrie recommends, as an excellent
insoluble plastic material, a mixture of
cheese or casein or albumen and lime, well
worked up. It is insoluble in hot water.
Artistic effects may be obtained by molding,
and it is easily colored.

NOTES.

575

A mode of filling teeth that has recently
been made practical in England is by inlay-
ing porcelain. The cavity is made perfectly
cylindrical, and a bit of specially manufact-
ured porcelain is turned to the exact size to
fit it. The inlay is then secured in its place
with sandarac varnish or very fluid white
filling. After this is set, the surface of the
inlay is ground to a proper contour and pol-
ished. An oblong cavity can be filled by
inserting two inlays. Of course, this method
can not be used, nor is it specially desirable,
for all cavities, but few will deny that a fill-
ing which matches the natural tooth in color
is far less conspicuous, and more agreeable
to see, than the glaring patches of yellow
metal, which are only excusable as saving a
worse disfiguration.

The sum of six hundred dollars has been
appropriated by the National Academy of
Sciences for the construction of apparatus
to aid Prof. Cattell in his researches on the
time of cerebral operations. With the co-
operation of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Prof.
Fullerton, Prof. Dalley, and others, researches
are in progress at the University of Pennsyl-
vania on the rate at which impulse travels
in motor and sensory nerves and in the spinal
cord, the time of reactions and of more
purely mental processes, memory and the
amount forgotten in a given time, the time
of bodily and mental processes in diseases
of the nervous system, and in other direc-
tions.

The effects of steam in the destruction
of bacteria do not depend, according to the
researches of Yon Esmarch, so much upon
the temperature as upon the degree of satu-
ration of the steam. If there is air with it,
the power of destroying organic germs is
very much diminished.

A committee has been formed in Paris
for the erection of a statue of the late M.
Boussingault.

During some experiments as to the tem-
perature of snow at different depths, it was
found that very little variation occurs in the
lowest layer, next the ground, while the tem-
perature of the upper layer is considerably
higher.

A novel aspect of bacterial life is sug-
gested by A. de Barry in his Comparative
Morphology of the Microfungi. Writing of
Bechamp's theory of the microzymes, the
author says that these minute bodies not
only develop independently after the death
of the parent organism, but enjoy an almost
unlimited duration of vitality, since they
may lie during entire geologic periods in
such a rock as chalk, and yet retain the
power of development.

Dr. R. Assmann, in a communication to
Das Wetter, namss, with especial reference
to influenza, as the climatic conditions favor-

able to the dispersion of organisms in the
air : Dryness of the ground and absence of
snow ; infrequent rain and that light ; pres-
ence of fogs or low clouds; and predomi-
nance of high barometric pressures, with
imperfect intermingling between the strata
of the air.

Celluloid artificial eyes are cheaper than
those of glass and have a good appearance ;
but Dr. Meurer, of Lyons, states that after
three or four months they are liable to cause
serious irritation, probably as a result of
some chemical change. He has repeatedly
seen this inflammation allayed by simple an-
tiseptic treatment after the removal of the
celluloid, reappearing,, however, as soon as
the old eye was put in again, but remaining
absent if a glass eye was substituted.

The Scientific Publishing Company, New
York, announce as in preparation Systematic
Mineralogy, based on a Natural Classifica-
tion, by Dr. T. Sterry Hunt.

The French Association for the Advance-
ment of Science will hold its nineteenth an-
nual meeting at Limoges, from August 7th
to 14th. A number of English scientists
have been invited, who will be guests of the
municipality of Limoges.

In a recent article on cyclones, Mr. H.
Habernicht shows that, if the globe were
covered with water, the general circulation
of the air would be very regular. He states
as the primary cause of cyclones the ob-
struction offered to the wind by the conti-
nents to the east and west of the Atlantic ;
and, secondly, the constant high barometric
pressure over the continent and in the arctic
regions during the winter.

Dr. Fitch, former State Entomologist of
New York, gives a remarkable instance of
the long imprisonment of insects without
loss of life. In 1786 a son of General Put-
nam, residing in Williamstown, Mass., had
a table made from one of his apple-trees.
Many years afterward the gnawing of an
insect was heard in one of the leaves of this
table. The noise continued for a year or
two, when a large, long-horned beetle made
its exit therefrom. Subsequently two more
beetles issued from the same table-leaf, the
first one coming out twenty and the last one
twenty-eight years after the tree was cut
down.

Some recent explorations in the famous
Adelsberg cave, Carniola, Austria, show that
the Ottaker cave discovered last year is a
continuation of the larger one. The explo-
ration was made by a party of Adelsberg
citizens and occupied six hours. It was
necessary to use a boat several times. The
explorers think the cave very much larger
than was formerly supposed.

It is proposed in Paris to name a new
street after Darwin.

S76

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

At a recent meeting held at Madrid, to
consider the celebration of the four-hun-
dredth anniversary of the discovery of Amer-
ica by Columbus, a grand committee was
elected which will act in concert with the
Spanish Government, and a committee previ-
ously appointed, and presided over by the
Duke of Veragua, a lineal descendant of
Columbus, and the present Minister of Pub-
lic Works. It is proposed that the cente-
nary shall be celebrated, if possible, at Ma-
drid. Genoa is also making preparations to
celebrate the same event.

The annual address of Mr. Charles F.
Cox, as President of the New York Micro-
scopical Society, is published in the Journal
of the Society for April, 1890. The subject
is Protoplasm and the Cell Doctrine, and the
essay is a historical account of the develop-
ment of scientific views in this field.

A bill has been introduced by Sir Henry
Roscoe in the British House of Commons
authorizing the Board of Managers of any
public elementary school to provide techni-
cal instruction for its pupils at any suitable
place, attendance at which shall be deemed
to be attendance at the public elementary
school.

The influence of ground-water and shal-
low wells in relation to public health is dis-
cussed in a recent paper by Dr. W. B.
Featherstone. A considerable number of
diseases are shown to be associated with
defects in ground-water and its impurities,
as well as of shallow well water; but the
exact amount of influence exercised by these
properties on the production and spread of
disease has yet to be measured.

Wood-stone is the name of a new com-
pound material composed of sawdust and
calcined magnesia. The mixture, having
been well worked up with water, is put into
molds and pressed into whatever shape may
be desired. It is incombustible and imper-
meable to water, is susceptible of a fine
polish, and is adaptable to numerous uses.

OBITUARY NOTES.

Dr. Herman Shfltz, Director of the Ob-
servatory and Professor of Astronomy at
Upsala from 1878 to 1888, died in Stockholm
May 8th. Of his numerous astronomical
publications, the best known is Micrometri-
cal Observations on five hundred nebula?,
which was published in England in 1874.

Prof. W. K. Sullivan, President of
Queen's College, Cork, well known as a chem-
ist, died May 12th, aged sixty-eight years.
He succeeded Sir Robert Kane to the presi-
dency of the college in 1872.

Mr. John Gunn, of Norwich, an English
geologist of local reputation, died during the

last week in May, in his eighty-ninth year.
He was regarded as the chief authority on
the formation known as the Cromer Forest
Bed, and a most indefatigable and success-
ful collector of its organic contents, and
had an extensive knowledge of all the geo-
logical formations of East Anglia. He
was also interested in antiquarian research.
He made a fine collection of fossils illus-
trating especially the Pliocene mammalian
life of England, and presented it to the
Norfolk and Norwich Museum, where it oc-
cupies the " Gunn Room."

Mr. W. S. Dallas, Assistant Secretary,
etc., to the Geological Society of London,
and editor of its Quarterly Journal, died
May 28th, aged sixty-six years. In early
life he became interested in zoology, more
particularly in the study of insects, relative
to which he published many papers in the
Transactions of the Entomological Society.
In 1851-52 he published a catalogue of the
hemipterous insects in the British Museum,
and in 1856 a Natural History of the Ani-
mal Kingdom. His later labors were in the
direction of scientific literature rather than
of original research — of translating, editing,
etc.

The death is announced of Dr. F. Solt-
nedel, Director of the Botanical Station at
Samarang, in Java. He was conspicuous in
the field of applied botany.

Dr. Karl Jacob Loenig, Professor of
Chemistry at the University of Breslau, and
author of several eminent works on chemis-
try, died March 27th, in his eighty-eighth
year.

Victor, Ritter von Zepharotich, Pro-
fessor of Mineralogy at the German Univer-
sity of Prague, died February 24th. He was
author of the Mineralogical Dictionary of the
Austrian Empire, and of many valuable min-
eralogical and crystal lographical works. He
was fifty-nine years of age.

Dr. Kap.l Emil von Schafhautl, Pro-
fessor of Geology, Mining, and Metallurgy in
the University of Munich, died in February
last, in the eighty-seventh year of his age.
He was an eminent physicist and geologist,
and a theoretical musician of some note, and
was keeper of the geognostic collection of
the Bavarian state, and a member of the
Academy of Sciences.

The death is announced of M. Soret, an
eminent chemist and physicist, of Geneva,
Switzerland. He was associated with Reg-
nault in his researches on vapors and de-
terminations of the specific heats of the
gases. He afterward published in Switzer-
land a work on the density of ozone, and
investigated the rotatory polarization of
quartz. Another of his publications relates
to the cause of the blue coloration of the
Lake of Geneva.

THOMAS CORWIN MEXDEXHALL.

THE

*

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

SEPTEMBER, 1890.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE.

X. THE FALL OF MAN AND ANTHROPOLOGY.

By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D., L. H. D.,

EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

PART I.

IN the previous chapters we have seen how science, especially
within the past few years, has thoroughly changed the intel-
ligent thought of the world in regard to the antiquity of man upon
our planet ; and how the fabric built upon the chronological in-
dications in our sacred books, first, by the early fathers of the
Church, afterward by the mediaeval doctors, and finally by the
reformers and modern orthodox chronologists, has virtually dis-
appeared before an entirely different view forced upon us, espe-
cially by Egyptian studies, Geology, and Archaeology.

In this chapter I purpose to present some outlines of the work
of Anthropology, especially as assisted by Ethnology, in showing
what the evolution of human civilization has been.

Here, too, the change from the old theological view based upon
the letter of our sacred books to the modern scientific view based
upon evidence absolutely irrefragable, is complete. Here, too, we
are at the beginning of a vast change in the basis and modes of
thought upon man — a change far more striking than that accom-
plished by Copernicus and Galileo when they substituted for a
universe in which sun and planets revolved about the earth, a
universe in which the earth is but the merest grain or atom re-
volving with other worlds, larger and smaller, about the sun ; and
all these forming but one among innumerable systems.

Ever since the beginning of man's effective thinking upon the
great problems around him, two views have existed regarding the
life of the human race upon earth, each utterly opposed to the
other. The first of these is the belief that man was created " in
the beginning," a perfect being, endowed with the highest moral

VOL. XXXVII.-

578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and intellectual powers, but that there came a " fall," as the re-
sult of which came into the world evil, toil, sorrow, and death.

Nothing could be more natural than such an explanation of
the existence of evil, in times when men saw everywhere miracle
and nowhere law. It is, under such circumstances, by far the
more easy explanation, for it is in accordance with the appear-
ances of things : men adopted it just as naturally as they adopt-
ed the theory that the Almighty hangs up the stars as lights in
the solid firmament above the earth, or trundles the sun behind
a high mountain at night, or wheels the planets around the earth,
or flings comets as " signs and wonders " to scare a wicked world,
or allows evil spirits to control thunder, lightning, and storm, and
to cause diseases of body and mind, or that he opens the " win-
dows of heaven " to let down " the waters that be above the heav-
ens," and thus to give rain upon the earth.

A belief, then, in a primeval period of innocence, physical per-
fection, and intellectual strength, from which men for some fault
fell, is perfectly in accordance with what we should expect.

Among the earliest known records of our race we find this
view taking shape in the Chaldean legends of war between the
gods, and a fall of man ; both of which seemed necessary to ex-
plain the existence of evil.

In Greek mythology perhaps the best-known statement was
made by Hesiod : to him it was revealed, regarding the men of the
most ancient times, that they were, at first, " a golden race," that
" as gods they were wont to live, with a life void of care, without
labor and trouble ; nor was wretched old age at all impending, but
ever did they delight themselves out of the reach of all ills, and
they died as if overcome by sleep ; all blessings were theirs ; of
its own will the fruitful field would bear them fruit, much and
ample, and they gladly used to reap the labors of their hands in
quietness along with many good things, being rich in flocks and
true to the blessed gods." But there came a " fall " caused by hu-
man curiosity. Pandora, the first woman created, received a vase
which, by divine command, was to remain closed ; but she was
tempted to open it, and troubles, sorrow, and sickness in every
form escaped into the world, hope alone remaining.

So, too, in Roman mythological poetry, the well-known picture
by Ovid is but one among the many exhibitions of this same be-
lief in a primeval golden age — a Saturnian cycle — one of the con-
stantly recurring attempts, so universal and so natural in the
early history of man, to account for the existence of evil, care,
and toil on earth by explanatory myths and legends.

This view we also find embodied in the sacred* tradition of the
Jews, and especially in one of the documents which form the im-
pressive poem beginning the books attributed to Moses. As to the

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 579

Christian Church, no word of its Blessed Founder indicates that it
was committed by Him to this theory, or that He even thought it
worthy of his attention : how it was developed it does not lie with-
in the province of this chapter to point out ; nor is it wortli our
while to dwell upon its evolution in the early Church, in the mid-
dle ages, at the Reformation, and in various branches of the Prot-
estant Church; suffice it that, though among English-speaking
nations, by far the most important influence in its favor has come
from Milton's inspiration rather than from that of older sacred
books, no doctrine has been more universally accepted," always,
everywhere, and by all," from the earliest fathers of the Church
down to the present hour.

On the other hand, appeared at an early period the opposite
view— that mankind, instead of having fallen from a high intel-
lectual, moral, and religious condition, has slowly risen from low
and brutal beginnings. Among all the statements of this theory
one is especially noteworthy ; that given by Lucretius in his great
poem on The Nature of Things. Despite its errors, it remains
among the most remarkable examples of prophetic insight in the
history of our race. The inspiration of Lucretius gave him almost
miraculous glimpses of truth ; his view of the development of civ-
ilization from the rudest beginnings to the height of its achieve-
ments is a wonderful growth, rooted in observation and thought,
branching forth into a multitude of striking facts and fancies ;
and among these is the statement regarding the sequence of in-
ventions :

" Man's earliest arms were fingers, teeth, and nails,

And stones and fragments from the branching woods:
Then copper next ; and last, as latest traced,
The tyrant, iron."

Thus did the poet prophesy one of the most fruitful achie^
ments of modern science, the discovery of that series of epochs
which has been so carefully studied in our century.

Very striking, also, is the statement of Horace, though his id
is evidently derived from Lucretius. He dwells upon man's first
condition on earth as low and bestial, and pictures him lurking
in caves, progressing from the use of his fists and nails, first to
clubs, then to arms which he had learned to forge, and, finally, to
the invention of the names of things, to literature, and to laws.*

During the mediaeval ages of faith this view was almost en-
tirely obscured, but at the revival of learning in the fifteenth
century it reappeared; and in the first part of the seventeenth

*For the passage in Hesiod, as given, see the Works and Days, lines 109-120, in
Banks's translation. As to Horace, see the Satires, i, 3, 99. As to the relation of the
poetic account of the Fall in Genesis to Chaldean myths, see Smith, Chaldean Account of
Genesis, pp. 13, 17. For a very instructive separation of the Jehovistic and ElolnVtic parts

58o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTLHY.

century we find that among the' crimes for which Yanini was
sentenced at Toulouse to have his tongue torn out and to be
burned alive was his belief that there is a gradation extending
upward from the lowest to the highest form of created beings.

In the eighteenth century we find this same idea of an up-
ward progress, especially through the three ages of stone, bronze,
and iron, cropping out in scientific form still more definitely from
beneath the vast mass of theological reasoning in Germany,
France, and England.

The investigations of the last forty years have shown that Lu-
cretius and Horace were inspired prophets : what they saw by
the exercise of reason illumined by poetic genius has been now
thoroughly based upon facts carefully ascertained and arranged ;
until Thomsen and Nilsson, the northern archaeologists, have
brought these prophecies to evident fulfillment, by presenting a
scientific classification dividing the age of prehistoric man in
various parts of the world between an old stone period, a new
stone period, a period of beaten copper, a period of bronze, and a
period of iron ; and arraying vast masses of facts from all parts
of the world, fitting thoroughly into each other, strengthening
each other, and showing beyond a doubt that, instead of a fall,
there has been a rise of man from the earliest indications in the
Quaternary or even, possibly, in the Tertiary period.*

The first blow at the fully developed doctrine of " the fall "
came, as we have seen, from geology. According to that doctrine,
as held quite generally from its beginnings among the fathers
and doctors of the primitive Church down to its culmination in

of Genesis, with the account of the " Fall " as given in the former, see Lenonnant, La
Genese, Paris, 1883, pp. 166-168. Of the lines of Lucretius —

"Anna antiqua, manus, ungues, dentesque fuerunt,
Et lapides, et item sylvarum fragmina rami,
Posterius ferri vis est, aerisque reperta,
Sed prior aeris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus " —

the translation given is that of Good. For a more exact prose translation, see Munro's
Lucretius, fourth edition, which is much more careful, at least in the proof-reading, than
the first edition. As regards Lucretius's prophetic insight into some of the greatest con-
clusions of modern science, see Munro's Translation and Notes, fourth edition, Book V,
Notes II, p. 335. On the relation of several passages in Horace to the ideas of Lucretius,
see Munro as above.

* For Vanini, see Topinard, Elements d' Anthropologic, p. 52. For a brief and careful
summary of the agency of Eccard in Germany, Goguet in France, Hoare in England, and
others in various parts of Europe, as regards this development of the scientific view dur-
ing the eighteenth century, see Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, Paris, 1885, chap. i. And for
a shorter summary see Lubbock, Prehistoric Man. For the statements by the northern
archaeologists, see Nilsson, Worsaae, and the other main works cited in this article. For a
generous statement regarding the great services of the Danish archaeologists in this field,
see Quatrefages, Introduction to Cartailhac, Les Ages Prehistoriques de l'Espagne et du
Portugal.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 58i

the minds of great Protestants like John Wesley, the statement
in onr sacred books that " death entered the world by sin " v.
taken as a historic fact, necessitating the conclusion that, bofc.ro
the serpent persuaded Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit, death on
our planet was unknown. Naturally, when geology reveal. <1 in
the strata of a period long before the coming of man on earth, a
vast multitude of carnivorous tribes fitted to destroy their fellow-
creatures on land and sea, and within the fossilized skeletons of
many of these the partially digested remains of animals, this doc-
trine was too heavy to be carried, and it was quietly dropped.

But about the middle of the nineteenth century the doctrine
of the rise of man as opposed to the doctrine of his " fall " re-
ceived a great accession of strength from a source most unex-
pected. As we saw in the last chapter, the facts proving the groat
antiquity of man foreshadowed a new and even more remarkable
idea regarding him. "We saw, it is true, that the opponents of
Boucher de Perthes, while they could not deny his discovery of
human implements in the drift, were successful in securing a ver-
dict of " not proven " as regarded his discovery of human bones ;
but their triumph was short-lived. Many previous discover i-
little thought of up to that time, began to be studied, and others
were added which resulted, not merely in confirming the truth re-
garding the antiquity of man, but in establishing another doctrine
which the opponents of science regarded with vastly greater dis-
like— the doctrine that man has not fallen from an original high
estate in which he was created about six thousand years ago ; but
that, from a period vastly earlier than any warranted by the
sacred chronologists, he has been — in spite of lapses and deteri-
orations here and there — rising.

A brief review of this new growth of truth may be useful. As
early as 1835 Prof. Jaeger had brought out from a quantity
Quaternary remains, dug up long before at Cannstadt, near Stutt-
gart, a portion of a human skull, apparently of very low type. A
battle raged about it for a time, but this finally subsided, owing to
uncertainties arising from the circumstances of the discovery.

In 1856, in the Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf, among Quater-
nary remains gathered on the floor of a grotto, another skull was
found bearing the same evidence of a low human type. As in the
case of the Cannstadt skull, this again was fiercely debated, and
finally the questions regarding it were allowed to remain in sus-
pense. But new discoveries were made: at Eguisheim, at Brux,
at Spy, and elsewhere human skulls were found of a similarly low
type ; and while each of the earlier discoveries was open to debate,
and either, had no other been discovered, might have been con-
siderd an abnormal specimen, the combination of all these showed
conclusively that not only had a race of men existed at that remote

582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

period, but that it was of a type as low as the lowest, perhaps be-
low the lowest, now known.

Research was now redoubled, and, as a result, human skulls
and complete skeletons of various types began to be discovered in
the ancient deposits of many other parts of the world, and espe-
cially in France, Belgium, Germany, the Caucasus, Africa, and
North and South America.

But soon began to emerge from all these discoveries a fact of
enormous importance : The skulls and bones found at Cro Mag-
non, Solutre, Furfooz, Grenelle, and elsewhere, were compared,
and it was thus made certain that various races had already ap-
peared and lived in various grades of civilization, even in those
enormously remote epochs ; that even then there were various
strata of humanity ranging from races of a very low to those of a
very high type ; and that upon any theory, certainly upon the
theory of the origin of mankind from a single pair, two things
were evident : first, that long, slow processes during vast periods
of time, must have been required for the differentiation of these
races, and for the evolution of man up to the point where the bet-
ter specimens show him, certainly in the early Quaternary and
perhaps in the Tertiary period ; and, secondly, that there had
been from the first appearance of man, of which we have any
traces, an upward tendency.*

This second conclusion — the upward tendency of man from
low beginnings — was made more and more clear by bringing into
relations with these remains of human bodies and of extinct ani-
mals the remains of human handiwork. As stated in the last
chapter, the river-drift and bone-caves in Great Britain, France,
and other parts of the world, revealed a progression, even in the
various divisions of the earliest Stone period ; for, beginning at
the very earliest strata of these remains, on the floors of the cav-
erns, associated mainly with the bones of extinct animals, the cave
bear, the hairy elephant, and the like, were the rudest implements ;

* For Wesley's statement of the amazing consequences of the entrance of death into
the world by sin, see citations from his sermon on The Fall of Man in my chapter on Geol-
ogy. For Boucher de Perthes, see his Life by Ledieu, especially chapters v and xix ; also
letters in the appendix ; also Les Antiquites Celtiques et Autediluviennes, as cited in pre-
vious chapters of this series, For an account of the Neanderthal man and other remains
mentioned, see Quatrefages, Human Species, chap, xxvi ; also Mortillet, Le Prehistorique,
Paris, 1885, pp. 232 et seq., also other writers cited in this chapter. For the other discov-
eries mentioned, see the same sources. For an engraving of the skull and the restored human
face of the Neanderthal man, see Reinach, Antiquites Nationales, etc., vol. i, p. 138. For
the vast regions over which that early race spread, see Quatrefages as above, p. 307. See
also the same author, Histoire Generale des Races Humaines, in the Bibliotheque Ethno-
logique, Paris, 188*7, p. 4. In the vast mass of literature bearing on this subject, see Qua-
trefages, Dupont, Reinach, Joly, Mortillet, Tylor, and Lubbock, in works cited through
these chapters.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 583

then, in strata above these, sealed in .the stalagmite of the cavern
floors, lying with the bones of extinct animals, some of them more
recent, stone implements were found, still rude, but, as a rule, of an
improved type ; and, finally, in a still higher stratum, associated
with bones of animals like the reindeer and bison, which, though
not extinct, have departed to other climates, were rude stone im-
plements, on the whole of a still better workmanship. Such was
the foreshadowing, even at that early rude Stone period, of tin-
proofs that the tendency of man has been from his earliest epoch
and in all parts of the world, as a rule, upward.

But this rule was to be much further exemplified. About
1850, while the French and English geologists were working
more especially among the relics of the drift and cave periods,
noted archaeologists of the North, Forchammer, Steenstrup, and
Worsaae, were devoting themselves to the investigation of cer-
tain remains upon the Danish Peninsula. These remains were
of two kinds : first, there were vast shell-heaps or accumulations
of shells and other refuse cast aside by rude tribes which, at some
unknown age in the past lived on the shores of the Baltic, prin-
cipally on shell-fish. That these shell-heaps were very ancient was
evident ; the shells of oysters and the like found in them were far
larger than any now found on those coasts ; their size, so far from
being like that of the corresponding varieties which now exist in
the brackish waters of the Baltic, was in every case like that of
those varieties which only thrive in the waters of the open salt
sea : here was a clear indication that at the time when man formed
these shell-heaps those coasts were in far more direct communica-
tion with the salt sea than at present, and that sufficient time
must have elapsed since that period to have wrought enormous
changes in sea and land throughout those regions.

Scattered through these heaps were found indications of a
grade of civilization when man still used implements of stone,
but implements and weapons, which, though still rude, showed a
progress from those of the drift and early cave period ; some of
them, indeed, being of polished stone.

With these were other evidences that civilization had pro-
gressed. With implements rude enough to have survived from
early periods, other implements never known in the drift and
bone caves began to appear, and though there were few if any
bones of other domestic animals, the remains of dogs were found ;
everything showed that there had been a progress in civilization
between the former and this Stone epoch.

The second series of discoveries in Scandinavia was made in
the peat-beds ; these were generally formed in hollows or bowls
varying in depth from ten to thirty feet, and a section of them,
like a section of the deposits in the bone caverns, showed a grad-

584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ual evolution of human culture. • The lower strata in these great
bowls were found to be made up chiefly of mosses and various
plants matted together with the trunks of fallen trees, sometimes
of very large diameter ; and the botanical examination of the low-
est layer of these trees and plants in the various bowls revealed a
most important fact : for this layer, the first in point of time, was
always of the Scotch fir — which now grows nowhere in the Danish
islands, and can not be made to grow anywhere in them — and of
plants which are now extinct in these regions, but have retreated
within the Arctic Circle. Coming up from the bottom of these
great bowls there was found above the first layer a second, in
which were matted together masses of oak-trees of different vari-
eties ; these, too, were relics of a bygone epoch, since the oak has
almost entirely disappeared from Denmark. Above these came a
third stratum made up of fallen beech-trees, and the beech is now
the most common tree of the Danish Peninsula.

And now came a second fact of the utmost importance as con-
nected with the first : scattered, as a rule, through the lower of
these deposits, that of the extinct fir-trees and plants, were found
implements and weapons of smooth stone ; in the layer of oak-
trees were found implements of bronze ; and among the layer of
beeches were found implements and weapons of iron.

The general result of these investigations in these two sources,
the shell mounds and the peat deposits, was the same : the first
civilization evidenced in them was marked by the use of stone
implements more or less smooth, showing a progress from the
earlier rude Stone period made known by the bone caves ; then
came a later progress to a higher civilization, marked by the use
of bronze implements ; and, finally, a still higher development
when iron began to be used.

The labors of the Danish archaeologists have resulted in the
formation of a great museum at Copenhagen, and on the speci-
mens they have found, coupled with those of the drift and bone
caves, is based the classification between the main periods or divis-
ions in the evolution of the human race above referred to.

It was not merely in Scandinavian lands that these results
were reached; substantially the same discoveries were made in
Ireland and France, in Sardinia and Portugal, in Japan and in
Brazil, in Cuba and in this country ; in fact, as a rule, in nearly
every part of the world which was thoroughly examined.*

* For the general subject, see Hortillet, Le Prehistorique, p. 498, et passim. For exam-
ples of the rude stone implements, improving as we go from earlier to later layers in the bone
eaves, see Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, chap, vii, p. 1S6 ; also Quatrefages, Human
Species, New York, 1879, pp. 305 et seg. An interesting gleam of light is thrown on the
subject in De Baye, Grottes Prehistoriques de la Marne, pp. 31 et seq. ; also Evans, as cited
in the previous chapter. For the more recent investigations in the Danish shell-heaps, see

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 585

But from another quarter came a. yet more striking indication
of this same evolution. As far back as the year 1820 there were
discovered, in the Lake of Zurich, piles and other antiquities indi-
cating a former existence of human dwellings, standing in the
water at some distance from the shore; but the usual mixture of
thoughtlessness and dread of new ideas seems to have prevaile
and nothing was done until about 1853, when new discoveries of
the same kind were followed up vigorously, and such men as Riiti-
meyer, Keller, and Troyon showed not only in the Lake of Zurich,
but in many other lakes in Switzerland, remains of former habi-
tations, and, in the midst of these, great numbers of relics, exhibit-
ing the grade of civilization which those lake-dwellers had attained.

Here, too, were accumulated proofs of the upward tendency of
the human race. Implements of polished stone, bone, leather, pot-
tery of various grades, woven cloth, bones of several kinds of
domestic animals, various sorts of grain, bread which had been
preserved by charring, and a multitude of evidences of progress
never found among the earlier, ruder relics of civilization, showed
yet more strongly that man had arrived here at yet a higher stage
than his predecessor of the drift, cave, and shell-heap periods, and
had gone on from better to better.

Very striking evidences of this upward tendency were found
in each class of implements : as by comparing the chipped flint
implements of the lower and earlier strata in the cave period witli
those of the latter and upper strata we saw progress, so, in each of
the periods of polished stone, bronze, and iron, we see a steady
progress from rude to perfected implements ; especially is this
true in the remains of the various lake-dwellings, for among these
can be traced out constant improvements in means of subsistence
and in ways of living.

Incidentally, too, a fact— at first sight of small account, but
on reflection exceedingly important— was revealed. The earlin-
bronze implements were frequently found to imitate in various
minor respects implements of stone ; in other words, forms were
at first given to bronze implements natural in working stone, but
not natural in working bronze. This showed the direction of the
development— that it was upward from stone to bronze, not down-

Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, pp. 303, 304. For these evidences of advanced civili-
zation in the shell-heaps, see Mortillet, p. 49S. He, like Nilsson, says, that only the bones
of the dog were found ; but compare Dawkins, p. 305. For the very full list of these dis-
coveries, with their bearing on each other, see Mortillet, p. 499. As to those in Scandina-
vian countries, see Nilsson, The Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia, third edition, with
Introduction by Lubbock, London, 186S ; also the Pre-History of the North, by Worsaae
English translation, London, 18S6. For shell-mounds and their contents m the Spanish
Peninsula, see Cartailhac's greater work already cited. For summary of such discoveries
throughout the world, see Mortillet, Le Prebistorique, pp. 497 el scq.

5 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ward from bronze to stone ; that it was progress rather than
decline.

These investigations were supplemented by similar researches
elsewhere. In many other parts of the world it was found that
lake-dwellers had existed in different grades of civilization, but
all within a certain range, intermediate between the cave-dwellers
and the historic period. To explain this epoch of the lake-dwell-
ers history came in with the account given by Herodotus of the
lake-dwellings on Lake Prasias, which gave protection from the
armies of Persia. Still more important, Comparative Ethnography
showed that to-day, in various parts of the world, especially in
New Guinea and West Africa, races of men are living in lake-
dwellings built upon piles, and with a range of implements and
weapons strikingly like many of those discovered in these ancient
lake deposits of Switzerland.

In Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Scotland,
and other countries, remains of a different sort were also found,
throwing light on this progress. The cromlechs, cranogs, mounds,
and the like, though some of them indicate the work of weaker
tribes pressed upon by stronger, show, as a rule, the same upward
tendency.

At a very early period in the history of these discoveries, vari-
ous attempts were made, in the supposed interest of Scripture, to
break the force of such evidences of the progress and develop-
ment of the human race from lower to higher. Out of all the
earlier efforts two may be taken as fairly typical, for they exhibit
the opposition as developed under two different schools of theol-
ogy, each working in its own way. The first of these shows great
ingenuity and learning, and is presented by Mr. Southall, in his
book, published in 1875, entitled The Recent Origin of the World.
In this he grapples first of all with the difficulties presented by
the early date of Egyptian civilization, and the keynote of his
argument is the statement made by an eminent Egyptologist, at a
period before modern archaeological discoveries were well under-
stood, that " Egypt laughs the idea of a rude stone age, a polished
stone age, a bronze age, an iron age, to scorn."

Mr. Southall's method was substantially that of the late excel-
lent Mr. Gosse in geology. Mr. Gosse, as the readers of these
chapters may remember, felt obliged, in the supposed interest of
Genesis, to insist that the only safety was in believing that, six
thousand years ago, the Almighty, for some inscrutable purpose,
in a moment, set Niagara pouring very near the spot where it is
pouring now ; laid the various strata, and sprinkled the fossils
through them like plums through a pudding ; scratched the glacial
grooves upon the rocks, and did the vast multitude of things, little
and great, in all parts of the world, required to delude geologists

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 587

of modern times into the conviction that all these things were the
result of a steady progress through long epochs. On a similar
plan, Mr. Southall proposed, at the very beginning of his book, as
a final solution of the problem, the declaration that Egypt, with
its high civilization in the time of Mena, with its races, classes,
institutions, arrangements, language, monuments — all indicating
an evolution through a vast previous history — was a sudden crea-
tion which came fully made from the hands of the Creator. To
use his own words, " The Egyptians had no stone age, and were
born civilized."

There is an old story that once on a time a certain jovial King
of France, making a progress through his kingdom, was received
at the gates of a provincial town by the mayor's deputy, who
began his speech on this wise : " May it please your Majesty, there
are just thirteen reasons why his honor the mayor can not be
present to welcome you this morning. The first of these reasons is
that he is dead." On this the king graciously declared that this
first reason was sufficient, and that he would not trouble the
mayor's deputy for the twelve others.

So with Mr. Southall's argument : one simple result of scien-
tific research out of many is all that it is needful to state, and this
is, that in these later years we have a new and convincing evi-
dence of the existence of prehistoric man in Egypt in his earliest,
rudest beginnings — the very same evidence which we find in all
other parts of the world which have been carefully examined.
This evidence consists of stone implements which have been found
in Egypt in such forms, at such points, and in such positions that
when studied in connection with those found in all other parts of
the world, from New Jersey to California, from France to India,
and from England to the Andaman Islands, they force upon us
the conviction that civilization in Egypt, as in all other parts of
the world, was developed by the same slow process of evolution
from the rudest beginnings.

It is true that men learned in Egyptology had discouraged
the idea of an earlier stone age in Egypt, and that among these
were Lepsius and Brugsch; but these men were not trained
in prehistoric archaeology; their devotion to the study of the
monuments of Egyptian civilization had evidently drawn them
away from sympathy, and indeed from acquaintance with the
work of men like Boucher de Perthes, Lartet, Mlsson, Troyon,
and Dawkins. But a new era was beginning : in 1807 Worsaae
called attention to the prehistoric implements found on the bor-
ders of Egypt ; two years later Arcelin discussed such stone im-
plements found beneath the soil of Sakkara and Ghizeh, the
very focus of the earliest Egyptian civilization ; in the same year
Hamy and Lenormant found such implements washed out from

5 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the depths higher up the Nile at Thebes, near the tombs of the
kings ; and in the following year they exhibited more flint imple-
ments found at various other places. Coupled with these discov-
eries was the fact that Horner and Linant found a copper knife
at twenty-four feet and pottery at sixty feet below the surface.
In 1872 Dr. Reil, director of the baths at Helouan, near Cairo,
discovered implements of chipped flint ; and in 1877 Dr. Jukes
Brown made similar discoveries in that region. In 1878 Oscar
Fraas, summing up the question, showed that the stone imple-
ments were mainly such as are found in the prehistoric deposits
of other countries, and that Zittel, having found them in the
Libyan Desert, far from the oases, there was reason to suppose
that these implements were used before the region became a des-
ert and before Egypt was civilized. Two years later Dr. Mook,
of Wiirzburg, published a work giving the results of his investi-
gations with careful drawings of the rude stone implements dis-
covered by him in the upper Nile Valley, and it was evident that,
while some of these implements differed slightly from those before
known, the great mass of them were of the character so common
in the prehistoric deposits of other parts of the world.

A yet more important contribution to this mass of facts was
made by Prof. Henry Haynes, of Boston, who in the winter of
1877 and 1878 began a very thorough investigation of the subject,
and discovered, a few miles east of Cairo, many flint implements.
The significance of Haynes's discoveries was twofold : First, there
were, among these, stone axes like those found in the French
drift-beds of St. Acheul, showing that the men who made these in
Egypt were passing through the same phase of savagery as that
of Quaternary France ; secondly, he found a workshop for mak-
ing these implements, proving that these flint implements were
not brought into Egypt by invaders, but made to meet the neces-
sities of the country. From this first field Prof. Haynes went to
Helouan, north of Cairo, and there found, as Dr. Reil had done,
various worked flints, some of them like those discovered by M.
Riviere in the caves of southern France ; thence he went up the
Nile to Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes, began a thorough search
in the Tertiary limestone hills, and found multitudes of chipped
stone implements, some of them, indeed, of original forms, but
most of forms common in other parts of the world under similar
circumstances, some of the chipped stone axes corresponding
closely to those found in the drift-beds of northern France.

Nothing in its way can be more perfect than the modest mono-
graph in which Prof. Haynes records these researches, and the
photographs of these chipped flint implements show conclusively
that, long ages before the earliest period of Egyptian civilization
of which the monuments of the first dynasties give us any trace,

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 589

mankind in the Nile Valley was going through the same slow
progress from the period when, standing just above the brutes, he
defended himself with implements of rudely chipped stone.

But in 1881 came discoveries which settled the question en-
tirely. In that year General Pitt-Rivers, a Fellow of the Royal
Society and President of the Anthropological Institute, and J. F.
Campbell, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of England,
found implements not only in alluvial deposits, associated with
the bones of the zebra, hyena, and other animals which have since
retreated farther south, but, at Djebel Assas, near Thebes, they
found implements of chipped flint in the hard, stratified gravel,
from six and a half to ten feet below the surface ; relics evidently,
as Mr. Campbell says, a beyond calculation older than the oldest
Egyptian temples and tombs." They certainly proved that Egyp-
tian civilization had not issued in its completeness, and all at once,
from the hand of the Creator in the time of Menes. Thus was
ended the contention of Mr. Southall.

Still another attack upon the new scientific conclusions came
from France, when in 1883 the Abbe Hamard, Priest of the Ora-
tory, published his Age of Stone and Primitive Man. He had
been especially stirred up by the arrangement of prehistoric im-
plements by periods at the Paris Exposition of 1878 ; he bitterly
complains of all these as having an anti-Christian tendency, and
rails at science as " the idol of the day." He attacks Mortillet, one
of the leaders in French archaeology, with a great display of con-
tempt ; speaks of the " venom " in books on prehistoric man gen-
erally ; complains that the Church is too mild and gentle with
such monstrous doctrines ; bewails the concessions made to science
by some eminent preachers, and foretells his own martydom at
the hands of men of science.

Efforts like these accomplished little, and a more legitimate
attempt was made to resist the conclusions of archaeology in
Egypt by showing that knives of stone were used in obedience to
a sacred ritual in Egypt for embalming and in Judea for circum-
cision, and that these flint knives might have had this later origin.
But the argument against this view was triple : First, as we have
seen, not only stone knives, but axes and other implements of
stone similar to those of a prehistoric period in western Europe
were discovered ; secondly, these implements were discovered in
the hard gravel drift of a period evidently far earlier than that of
Menes ; and, thirdly, the use of stone implements in Egyptian and
Jewish sacred functions, so far from weakening the force of the
arguments for the long and slow development of Egyptian civili-
zation from the men who used rude flint implements to the men
who built and adorned the great temples of the early dynasties, is
really an argument in favor of that long evolution. A study of

59o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

comparative ethnology has made it clear that the sacred stone
knives and implements of the Egyptian and Jewish priestly ritual
were natural survivals of that previous period. For sacrificial or
ritual purposes, the knife of stone was considered more sacred
than the knife of bronze or iron, simply because it was ancient ;
just as to-day in India, Brahman priests kindle the sacred fire, not
with matches or flint and steel, but by a process found in the
earliest, lowest stages of human culture — by violently boring a
pointed stick into another piece of wood until a spark comes ; and
just as to-day, in Europe and America, the architecture of the
middle ages survives as a special religious form in the erection
of our most recent churches, and to such an extent that thousands
on thousands of us feel that we can not worship fitly unless in the
midst of windows, decorations, vessels, implements, vestments, and
ornaments, no longer used elsewhere, but which have survived in
sundry branches of the Christian Church, and derived a special
sanctity from the fact that they are of ancient origin.

Taking, then, the whole mass of testimony together, even
though a plausible or very strong argument against single evi-
dences may be made here and there, the force of its combined mass
remains, and leaves both the vast antiquity of man and the evolu-
tion of civilization from its lowest to its highest forms, as proved
by the prehistoric remains of Egypt and so many other countries
in all parts of the world, beyond a reasonable doubt.*

* For Mr. Southall's views, see his Recent Origin of Man, p. 20, and elsewhere. For Mr.
Gosse's views, see his Omphalos as cited in the chapter on Geology in this scries. For a
summary of the work of Arcelin, Hamy, Lenormant, Richard, Lubbock, Mook, and Haynes,
see Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, passim. As to Zittel's discovery, see Oscar Fraas's Aus dem
Orient, Stuttgart, 187S. As to the striking similarities of the stone implements found in
Egypt with those found in the drift and bone caves, see Mook's Monograph, Wurzburg,
1S80, cited in the last chapter of this series, especially Plates IX, XI, XII. For even more
striking reproductions of photographs showing this remarkable similarity between Egyptian
and European chipped stone remains, see H. W. Haynes, Palaeolithic Implements in Upper
Egypt, Boston, 1S81. See also Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, chap, i, pp. 8, 9, 44,
102, 316, 329. As to stone implements used by priests of Jehovah, priests of Baal, priests
of Moloch, and priests of Odin, as religious survivals, see Cartailhac, as above, 6 and 7 ;
also Lartet in De Luynes, Expedition to the Dead Sea ; also Nilsson, Primitive Inhabit-
ants of Scandinavia, pp. 96, 97. For the discoveries by Pitt-Rivers, see the Journal of the
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland for 1881, vol. xi, pp. 382 et seg. ;
and for Campbell's decision regarding them, see ibid., pp. 396, 397. For facts summed up
in the words, " It is most probable that Egypt at a remote period passed like many
other countries through its stone period," see Hilton Price, F. S. A., F. G. S., paper in the
Journal of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland for 1884, p. 56. Speci-
mens of palaeolithic implements from Egypt — knives, arrow-heads, spear-heads, flakes, and
the like, both of peculiar and ordinary forms — may be seen in various museums, but espe-
cially in that of Prof. Haynes, of Boston. Some interesting light is also thrown into the
subject by the specimens obtained by General Wilson and deposited in the Smithsonian In-
stitution at Washington. For the Abbe Hamard's attack, see bis L'Age de la Pierre et
1'Eomme Primitif, Paris, 1883 — especially his preface.

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 591

COMMON SENSE APPLIED TO THE TARIFF

QUESTION.

By EDWARD ATKINSON.
II.

« TTTE are at the parting of the ways." Any one who takes the
V V ground that the main object which should be kept in view
in placing taxes upon foreign imports may rightly be an attempt
to establish any and every branch of industry, great and small,
without regarding the use to which imports are to be put, and
without any consideration of the temporary obstruction to other
branches of industry which must follow any interference with
the natural course of trade, may take his own way ; he will have
no further interest in this essay. Such men may separate them-
selves under the guidance of their chosen leaders, for such influ-
ence upon the question of taxation as they may be capable of ex-
erting. Their position is a very plain one, and it has been rightly
named by its chief exponent, the chairman of the Committee of
Ways and Means, the method of "protection with incidental rev-
enue" May it not be held that this method is inconsistent with
the public welfare and that it is contrary to the very principle of
law which has been established by the Supreme Court of the
United States in the case of the Loan Association vs. Topeka ?

In this case, Justice Miller, on behalf of the court, stated this
fundamental principle of law as follows : " To lay with one hand
the power of the Government on the property of the citizen, and
with the other bestow it on favored individuals to aid private
undertakings, and to build up private enterprises, is none the less
robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called
taxation. This is not legislation ; it is a decree under legislative
forms. . . . Beyond a cavil there can be no lawful tax which is
not laid for a public purpose."

I think it must be clear to every unprejudiced mind that the
theory of Mr. McKinley, of "protection ivith incidental revenue"
is in fact forbidden by this dictum of the Supreme Court. It can
only be justified by a legal subterfuge, to wit, that a public pur-
pose or necessity exists which justifies doing away with the
revenue duty on sugar, thereby depriving the Government of all
revenue from that source, and continuing to tax the people in
order to pay a bounty to the sugar-planters. The bounty to
sugar-planters must be justified, if justified at all, upon the
ground that public necessity requires the production of sugar
within the limits of our own country, although sugar can be
procured at less cost in exchange for wheat, cotton, and oil. If

592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not so justified, the tax from which the bounty is to be "bestowed
upon private individuals to aid .private enterprises becomes none
the less robbery because it is done under the forms of law, and is
called taxation."

This proposition brings the effect of this theory of protection
directly into view; one may well ask why the same method
should not be adopted to promote other branches of industry.
It is admittedly more important that this country should make
its own iron than that it should make its own sugar, and the
heavy duties on iron and steel have been justified upon the
ground that it is for the public interest to make this country
independent of all others in the production of iron. It is now
independent, whether we will or no ; we are consuming thirty-five
to forty per cent of the iron of the world and no other country
could possibly supply us. On the plea that this branch of industry
should be sustained, the consumers of iron and steel in this coun-
try have paid a sum in excess of the price paid by the consumers
who have been supplied by Great Britain and Germany, ranging
from $50,000,000 to $80,000,000 a year for the last ten years. The
excess of price has not been paid over to the workmen by the
owners of the mines and works, it has been bestowed upon private
individuals to aid private enterprises. One has only to examine
the average wages of the workmen in the iron mines and works
of this country to be convinced that they are much less than the
wages of those who are engaged in the conversion of crude iron
and steel into machinery, tools, beams, bars, and other forms for
use. If it were proposed to remit all duties upon iron and steel,
and to pay a bounty to the producers of these crude metals, equal
to the excess of price which we have paid for the last ten years,
would not that bring the case directly under the law as laid down
by Justice Miller ? If under such circumstances it would come
directly under the law, why does not the case come indirectly under
the law, provided a case could be made up to test the question in
court ? It might be difficult, as a matter of practice, to bring the
case into court, but I am inclined to think that if this policy of
protection with incidental revenue were to be forced into effect by
the votes of a temporary majority of the Congress of the United
States, a way might be found to bring this subject before the Su-
preme Court and to abate this evil by a decision of the court.
That is the way by which many of the abuses of the taxing power
have been prevented, but the remedy can be more easily applied
through legislation. The present tax upon the import of tin
plates is purely a revenue measure, because no one makes such
plates in this country. The object of raising this tax to twice the
rate now levied is that " a bounty may be bestowed upon private
individuals in order to aid them in the private enterprise" of

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 593

making tin plates. The income of the tax has been asked for this
purpose — it has been granted by the majority of the Committee
of Ways and Means for this purpose — it is consistent with the so-
called principle of protection with incidental revenue, and not a
man who has voted for this measure in the House of Representa-
tives can deny that, under the ruling of the Supreme Court, this
method " is not legislation ; it is a decree under legislative forms,
and is none the less robbery because it is called taxation."

On the other hand, almost all the advocates of the theory of
protection according to the principles of its founders — viz., tem-
porary support during the period of the infancy of any art — may
now be ready to join with the reasonable advocates of freer trade
in coming to an agreement upon a measure which would be con-
sistent with existing conditions, and also consistent with common
sense. All admit, as Sir Robert Peel did, that we can not apply
the absolute theory of free trade at the present time. But we can
lay aside our prejudices ; we can treat the whole subject in a
judicial way ; we can adopt a measure of tariff reform which
shall lead in due season to such free trade as may be consistent
with the necessity of deriving a revenue from duties upon im-
ports, the subjects of taxation being selected with a view to the
least burden upon consumers.

We may now take up the right method of bringing an agree-
ment on method into practice and thereby giving the necessary
direction to our legislators, who are all seeking for guidance
among their constituents. How can we expect legislators to
make good laws if their constituents do not .themselves know
what kind of laws they want ?

When this subject is thus approached in a judicial way, there
are two lines of preliminary research and two sets of facts of
which full cognizance must be taken :

The home market of this country rests for its development,
its stability and its profit, upon the prosperity of the great mass
of the consumers of this country who are working people busily
occupied for gain in all the arts of life ; of whom a vast majority
are "working people" even in the narrow sense in which that
term is commonly used. The census of occupations of those who
are engaged in gainful pursuits is doubtless about as accurate as
the enumeration of the population itself. Those who are thus
occupied for gain and who do all the work of production and dis-
tribution, and who enjoy greater or less abundance in their con-
sumption according to their larger or lesser share of the joint
annual product, number one in three of the whole population, dis-
regarding fractions. They are listed under different heads, viz. —
four general classes, and a great many sub-classes under each of
the general heads. The proportions under the four general classes

vol. xxxvii. — 42

594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

have not varied much for several decades. According to the cen-
sus of 1880, the total number of all who were occupied for gain
was 17,400,000 out of 50,000,000. (I will omit fractions in dealing
with these figures.) A little over twenty-three per cent, number-
ing about 4,000,000, were occupied in professional and personal
service. There can, of course, be no direct foreign competition
with this class through the import of products. Ten and four
tenths per cent, numbering a little over 1,800,000, were occupied in
trade and transportation ; there can be no import of foreign prod-
ucts to compete with this class ; it matters not to them what they
move or what they may deal in. Forty-four per cent, numbering
a little over 7,600,000, were occupied in agriculture as farmers and
farm laborers, fruit cultivators, shepherds, and the like ; and,
lastly, twenty -two per cent, numbering a little over 3,800,000,
were occupied in the manufacturing and mechanic arts and in
mining. All who could or can be subjected to any change in the
direction of their industry by alterations in the tariff policy of
this country are substantially included in the two latter classes —
i. e., in agriculture and manufactures.

According to the valuation of the products of agriculture,
which was carefully revised by the Department of Agriculture
after the census had been taken, the total value of the product
of this great body of farmers and farm laborers, numbering
7,000,000, was a little under $4,000,000,000 ; that part of the prod-
uct which consisted of sugar, tobacco, hemp, flax, wool, fruits,
and the like, or of any other articles which could be in any part
imported from abroad, came to less than $200,000,000 — or less
than five per cent of the total. It follows that not exceeding
350,000 to 400,000 of all who were occupied in agriculture could
be subjected to any adverse influence by changes in the tariff,
even if a larger proportion of these necessary articles were im-
ported free of duty than had been imported while subject to duty ;
this estimate by persons being made in ratio to the relative value
of different products.

In this consideration we of course leave out the Dominion of
Canada. Owing to the difference in climate and to our advantage
of position, there is a considerable exchange of products of agri-
culture between us and our neighbors in Canada ; the amounts
about balance. On the whole, we supply Canada with a rather
larger part of the products of agriculture than they can supply
to us. But the total traffic is relatively a very small part of our
commerce, and may be wholly set aside, especially since the advo-
cates both of protection and of freer trade are coming together
in sustaining reciprocity among the nations on the American con-
tinents, especially with Canada.

On the other hand, in 1880, seventeen per cent of the value of

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 595

the product of agriculture found its home market only by sale for
export to foreign countries ; since then the proportion of exports
has diminished ; exports now range from ten to fifteen per cent in
value of the total product of agriculture, varying with the rela-
tive supply and demand. It therefore follows that there is a
vastly greater proportion of farmers and farm laborers whose
home market depends upon the export trade than there are of
those who might possibly be harmed even if, through imports of
foreign articles of like kind, the demand for their own product
were reduced.

When we take up the fourth class, manufacturing and me-
chanic arts and mining, one's judgment may vary as to the pro-
portion whose home market depends upon export and the propor-
tion whose product could be in part imported from a foreign
country. In a rough and ready way it may be said that about
one half the total number under this head of 3,800,000 were me-
chanics engaged in building trades or in other arts which can not
be conducted on the factory principle, and which can not be inter-
fered with or affected to their detriment by any import from any
foreign country, but may be greatly benefited by the removal of
taxes from the materials on which they work.

It is not worth while at this time to enter into the details of the
classification of the other half of this number. Let it be admitted
that there are about 1,900,000 to 2,000,000 people more or less, each
of whom supports two others who are occupied distinctly in the
manufacturing and mechanic arts, a part of whose work may be
promoted by a tariff, and a part of whose work might perhaps be
adversely affected by injudicious or revolutionary changes in the
tariff policy of the country. The main point of this analysis is
to call attention to the fact that at least eighty per cent, and
probably more, of all who are occupied for gain in this country,
have no direct interest in the tariff question except as consumers ;
while the remainder, about evenly divided between producers and
consumers, may be affected more or less by changes in the tariff
system to their benefit, or to their injury by injudicious or revo-
lutionary changes.

There are probably twelve to fifteen hundred thousand per-
sons occupied mainly in agriculture, but partly in the mining,
mechanic, and manufacturing arts, whose home market depends
absolutely on sales for export, and about ten to twelve hundred
thousand occupied mainly in manufacturing and mining but in
lesser proportion in agriculture, whose product would be in part
imported if all duties on their products were abated. The reduc-
tion or abatement of duties on imports would necessarily promote
exports, but how much imports would be increased or diminished
can not be determined until the effect of the removal of duties on

596 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

crude or partly manufactured materials shall have given our do-
mestic manufacturers an even chance to compete with others.

If it be admitted that the number of persons who are occupied
in branches of agriculture, in manufactures, and in mining, whose
home market depends wholly upon sales for export to other coun-
tries, exceeds the number of those who are occupied in any branch
of domestic production of which a part might be imported under
other conditions, then it follows of necessity that the only effect of
duties upon imports has been or is to give a different direction to
domestic industry from that which it would otherwise have taken.
By such a course we do not add anything to or take away any-
thing from the work that is to be done, but we do or may dimin-
ish the value of the domestic product from which all wages and
profits are alike derived, by restricting its market, thus diminish-
ing both general wages and profits in the attempt to increase
them in specific directions. If the import of foreign goods, either
crude or manufactured, is obstructed, then it follows of neces-
sity that the export of the products of the farm and of the
mine is to that extent obstructed, because we buy our foreign
goods in exchange for food that we can not consume, for cotton
that we can not spin, and for oil that we can not burn. " But,"
some one says, " if these foreign goods were manufactured at
home, there would then be the same market for the product of
the farm, the mine, and the forest, within the limit of our country,
that now exists abroad." That view of the matter opens a very
complex question. One can neither admit nor deny that position,
because we have no experience to guide us. If, however, we did
make the finished goods which we import into this country, the
work in the factories in which they would be made would give
employment to a very much less number of laborers than are
engaged in the product of wheat and cotton which we now ex-
change for them. The home market which would be established
in this artificial way would not take up anything like the quan-
tity of products of the farm, the mine, and the forest that is now
exported.

To show the absurdity of this conception, I can not do better
than to quote from Mr. Butterworth/s late speech. Having laid
down his base-line principle with reference to the revision of the
tariff, viz., that of reduction, he says : " Otherwise we should have
five gentlemen, honorable and learned gentlemen, arbitrarily shuf-
fling and disarranging, according to their own partially enlight-
ened judgment, the more than fifty thousand industries of sixty
millions of people, scattered over a vast continent, affecting
directly and indirectly every home in the land, and having to do
with all the nations of the earth."

Is it not a simple absurdity to expect the men whom we elect

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 597

to Congress, whose capacity or whose want of capacity we all
know ; many of whom we would never choose to manage a sin-
gle large corporation, bank, or other commercial enterprise — to
be able to choose and direct the occupations of this people ? Are
such men as our members of Congress to be empowered to say to
us, This branch of work you shall do, and that branch of work
you shall not do ? What an absurdity ! As if the people were
not more competent than any Congress that ever existed, and more
capable of managing their own affairs than the average member.

Again, what could be more absurd than the bugbear which is
held up to us, of a community which would be exclusively devoted
to agriculture, as the penalty for doing away with protection to
domestic industry ? Such a community never existed upon this
continent except in the slave States. There, owing to slavery, we
had a community almost wholly devoted to agriculture, and this
was due to the coercion of law and the attempt to direct and con-
trol the labor of a great community by statute.

The first pamphlet ever printed by the writer, on Cheap Cotton
by Free Labor, was devoted to an economic review of the slave sys-
tem of labor. In that and in other articles I treated the system
purely from the economic standpoint ; I ventured to predict the
changes which would come whenever the attempt to direct the
labor of the community by the force of slavery should be removed.
When the economic history of the present generation shall be
written, it will give a picture of the most wonderful industrial
revolution that has ever been witnessed, and it will do away for-
ever with the conception that infant industries require even tem-
porary support from the Government.

Witness the conditions. In 1865 the people of the Southern
States were subjected not only to a revolution of institutions but
of ideas. A considerable part of the most effective brain-power of
the South was disfranchised as a penalty for having taken part in
the rebellion, while the franchise was given to the most ignorant
portion of the community. I fully justify the enfranchisement
— the protection of the ballot was necessary to the black citizens
of the United States — but I have never justified the disfranchise-
ment. The result was as bad as it could be. We all know the
history of what had been miscalled " carpet-bag " governments.
They were not " carpet-bag " governments in any single State,
so far as I can find out. The Northern men who took part in the
readmission of the Southern States brought to their aid the best
constitutional lawyers, and the organic laws of these States were
most admirably framed and carried through by them. It was in
specific legislation under these organic laws that the abuses hap-
pened; and, so far as I can learn, there was not one single in-
stance or not one single law called into existence under these

598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

conditions, in which the majority of white men were not South-
ern born and Southern bred in each so-called " carpet-bag Legisla-
ture." If, then, the ignorant blacks were led to pervert the trust
that was imposed upon them, they were not led thereto by the
Northern " carpet-baggers."

The very necessities of society made it necessary that this per-
version of the powers of government should be stopped. It was
done ; and the old colored man at the Capitol in South Carolina
explained the case in a single phrase when I asked him why the
Republican Governor had been thrown out and Wade Hampton
elected the year before ; his answer was, " Yer can't put igmance
top o' 'telligence and make it stay dar." It might be wise for
those who are pressing the " Force bill " in the present Congress
to take counsel from this old colored man. No force bill can
" put ig'nance on top o' 'telligence and make it stay dar," but the
enactment of such a measure will make it very plain that intel-
ligence must displace ignorance of the present conditions of the
South in many of the seats in the present House and Senate.

Under these adverse conditions — with that element of property
which had been the main-stay of its citizens totally destroyed, its
railway system torn up, its fields devastated, its fences burned, and
many of its most important mills and works utterly destroyed ;
without capital, without inherited skill or aptitude — the South en-
tered upon new fields of industry, exposed to the absolutely free
and unrestricted competition of the Northern farmers, the North-
ern miners, the Northern manufacturers and the Northern ar-
tisans and mechanics in every branch of work.

No one can yet measure the progress which has been made in
all the arts and industries which are necessary to civilized life in
that great Southland. I have lately been on a hasty trip as far as
New Orleans ; I have witnessed the progress of white and black
alike ; progress upon the farm, in the field, in the great factory,
in the workshop ; progress in better conditions of life, in higher
wages and in lower cost, in every town and city and wherever the
railway has penetrated. It is a complete proof that diversity of
employment establishes itself in spite of legislation and in spite
of every bad form of taxation.

If you will glance over the analysis of the occupations of the
people of the several States in the census of 1880, limiting your
observation to those which had not been subject to the indignity
of slavery, you will find that in a very short time after a State or
Territory is open to settlement a certain balance of occupations
establishes itself. Where the land is poor, as in New England,
the larger number will be occupied in the manufacturing and
mechanic arts ; where the land is good, and the connection with
the markets established, there may be for a time an excess in

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 599

agriculture as compared with other occupations ; but after the
normal conditions have become established by long settlement, as
in Ohio, for instance — a State midway between the great prairies
of the West and the factories of the East — we find that, although
there is almost nothing produced in Ohio which could be imported
from any foreign country, except a little wool and a little pig-iron
— the two together constituting a small proportion of the product
of the State and giving employment in 1880 to only thirty-two
thousand out of one million persons then occupied for gain, rat-
ing persons in ratio to the relative value of products — the balance
of occupations is about the same as that which has established
itself on the average throughout the country. That average is
forty to forty-five per cent in agriculture ; ten to eleven per cent
in trade and transportation ; twenty to twenty-four per cent in
professional and personal service ; twenty to twenty-four per cent
in manufacturing and mechanic arts and in mining.

The error which Mr. Gladstone has made in his article in the
North American Review, to which Mr. Blaine replied, is of this
nature. If I read his article correctly from his standpoint, I think
he holds to the mistaken idea that the conditions of this country
are more especially adapted to agriculture than to the manufact-
uring arts. A greater mistake could not be made. We possess
greater advantages in our natural conditions and resources for
the establishment of the mining industry, the mechanic arts and
manufacturing, than we do in agriculture ; and it is only due to
our own blunders that we do not take the paramount position in
the world in all these arts.

On the other hand, the reply of Mr. Blaine is full of yet more
gross errors ; not errors of opinion, but errors in the statement of
facts. A more mistaken or erroneous statement of the course
of economic history not only in Great Britain but also in this
country, could hardly have been compiled than is found in Mr.
Blaine's reply to Mr. Gladstone. A complete review of these two
articles remains to be written.

So much for the analysis by persons. Now, if we adopt the
theory so well laid down by Sir Robert Peel, after he had become
convinced of the necessity of tariff reform, that if our condition
had not been changed by our long persistence in a high tariff
policy, we might choose the subjects from which to derive our
revenue so as to interfere in the least degree either with com-
merce, agriculture, or manufactures — then the collection of our
necessary revenue either from customs or from excise, or both,
would become a very simple matter.

Let us for a moment take up this subject as a matter of theory
and not of condition. Let us investigate our resources, and lay
out an ideal method for collecting the national revenue wholly

600 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from articles of voluntary rather than of necessary use, exempting
everything that enters into the. process of domestic industry, and
taxing only those articles of which consumers may even be de-
prived of some part on account of the cost, and yet not be in any
degree harmed or prevented from doing the most effective work of
which they are capable ; our object being to leave them free, so as
to be able to obtain the largest annual product either by the appli-
cation of the labor of the people of the country to its own re-
sources, or indirectly by devoting their labor and capital to ex-
changing their own products for articles of necessity which may
be of foreign origin, thus securing every article of necessity at
the lowest cost, whether of foreign or of domestic origin. We
could then raise all the necessary revenue from spirits, wines,
beer, sugar, tea, coffee, silks, the finer textile fabrics of wool and
cotton, laces, embroideries, furs, and fancy goods.

In order to apply this theory to our present condition, we may
take as our basis the estimates of the Secretary of the Treasury
for the ensuing fiscal year ; but in so doing we must bear in mind
that there has scarcely been a single estimate of prospective reve-
nue submitted by any Secretary for the last twenty-five years
which has not been exceeded in result ; we must also bear in
mind, in considering estimates of expenditure, that the recommen-
dations of the Secretary of the Treasury have been more apt to
be cut down by Congress than to be increased. At the present
time, however, when our legislators are so anxious to dispose of
a surplus in order that they may not be called upon to reduce
taxation, we may find an exception to this latter rule ; but for the
purposes of study the ordinary conditions may be applied to the
present case.

I might have attempted to lay down the basis for an act for
the collection of our national revenue consistently with theory ; of
course, our condition will not permit the immediate application of
this theory in its full force on account of our present conditions.
A beginning, however, may be made ; and, as the effects of the
changes upon the progress of the country are developed, the work
can proceed more and more rapidly.

No one can yet venture to forecast the prosperity of this coun-
try which would ensue the moment all crude and partly manu-
factured materials which are necessary in the main processes of
our domestic industry were made free from duties, and were there-
fore supplied to our domestic manufacturers on even terms with
our competitors in other countries. As one can not forecast the
beneficial effect of the removal of these taxes, so no one can measure
the injury which has been inflicted in consequence of the higher
price of iron, steel, copper, lead, and other metals, of wool, chemicals
and dye-stuffs, through this long term of high-tariff obstruction.

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 601

The true change may now be readily brought about, because
the masters of the art of converting ore into iron have become
aware that, owing to the scarcity of the fine ores suitable for the
Bessemer metal, and of coal suitable for coking in Great Britain,
the paramount control of the metal industry is passing to this
country ; it needs only the maintenance of the prices on the other
side without a reduction of our own, to put us in a position of ad-
vantage for converting the crude metals into the higher forms in
which ten or twenty men may be called for as compared to one
in the production of pig-iron, copper, lead, and zinc. The pros-
perity which would ensue, as it did in Great Britain, after similar
changes in the tariff were made, would tend to increase the con-
suming power of our own people in respect to the dutiable goods
from which we should still derive a constantly increasing reve-
nue. In this way we might gain a true protection to our domes-
tic industry and the development of our home market ; we might
then take the paramount position in manufacturing arts as well
as in agriculture to which we are entitled and yet enjoy the full
benefit of low price and high wages.

I have endeavored to bring out this point very conspicuously,
because many persons have looked upon those who are stigmatized
as free-traders as if they advocated radical and injudicious changes
in our revenue system, such as would launch us upon free trade
without warning and without preparation. It is time to lay aside
such prejudice with regard to those who advocate tariff reform in
the direction of freer trade. I can not name a man among my as-
sociates in the study of these economic questions whose views are
not substantially like my own and who is of any considerable in-
fluence or importance either as a student, economist, or legislator
—not one who would not deprecate radical and revolutionary
changes and who would not be guided by the most conservative
ideas in the measures by which an ultimate but very profound
change in our fiscal system would be brought about.

So far as one may judge by the course which has been taken
in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, and by the
position taken by ex-President Cleveland, the advocates of tariff
reform and reduction first declared their adhesion to this proposed
method by putting wool, hemp, flax, and many other articles
which are most important products in the specific States from
which they have been elected at once into the free list. May not
men like the representatives from Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee,
and Arkansas, who led off in the Committee of Ways and Means
in taking off the taxes from wool, hemp, and flax, well be sus-
tained in the brave stand which they have taken and on the lines
on which they have carried their constituents with them ? These
men have also been willing, even eager, to grant rates of duty

602 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on finished fabrics, snch as might allay the fears of those who
have been so long sustained by high duties that they dread any
change. This is a reasonable method. The matter of importance
is that we should be headed in the right direction. The time cov-
ered in the process of change may well correspond substantially
with the life of the existing machinery which has been put at
work at the high cost due to past and present conditions. All the
machinery in our textile factories has cost at least fifty per cent
if not seventy-five per cent more than that of our competitors in
England, France, and Germany, on account of the tax upon mate-
rials of which that machinery is made. The life of machinery
which is used in modern manufacturing ranges from ten to twenty
years, averaging perhaps fifteen years. If the relief could at once
be given by a removal of the duties upon crude and partly fin-
ished materials, with very moderate reduction on the finished
goods, we should probably repeat the experience of Great Britain,
and we should find, as Gladstone put it, that " the road to free
trade is like the road to virtue ; the first step the most painful,
the last step the most profitable."

The manufacturers of England were formerly so afraid of pau-
per labor, so called, that when the proposition for the union of
Ireland with England was pending, the purport of which was of
course to bring Ireland under the same tariff system as that of
England, they sent memorials to Parliament in opposition to the
union, on the ground that they would be ruined by the cheap
labor of Ireland. Of course, they were disappointed ; they were
not obliged to disturb or stop the factories of Lancashire and of
Yorkshire, or to move them across the Channel. The manufact-
urers of England soon found out that the low-priced labor of
people verging on pauperism is the dearest and not the cheapest
labor that can be offered.

I will now close this over-long treatise upon the Method of
Tariff Reform by submitting what may be called a practical
budget. The figures are based upon the actual accounts of the
Treasury of the United States, and upon what is hoped may be
the maximum expenditure that will be warranted even by the
present Congress.

First let me call attention to a few facts. Let us suppose that
the civil war were ended — I mean the financial war, which will
not be ended until the last dollar of debt shall have been paid and
the last pension shall have fallen in. There are certain necessary
annual appropriations which must be met year by year. How
could we meet them with the least interference with the freely
chosen pursuits of the people, and yet with due regard to the con-
ditions in which we are ? The ordinary expenses consist of, first,
the cost of the civil service, legislative, judicial, consular, and the

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 603

like, and the cost of the collection of revenue ; second, the support
of the army and the construction of fortifications ; third, the sup-
port of the navy, without expensive appropriations for construc-
tion ; fourth, the deficiency in the postal service ; fifth, the interest
on the public debt ; sixth, the support of the Indians ; and seventh,
the miscellaneous expenses. The sum of these regular or normal
expenditures, aside from war obligations, according to the esti-
mates submitted by the Secretary of the Treasury for the next fis-
cal year, which estimates until now have been more apt to be cut
down than increased by Congress, amount to less than $200,000,-
000. We may set off a tax against each branch of expenditure,
and the conclusion which we reach is rather singular.

Omitting fractions, the internal revenue from whisky more
than pays the cost of the civil government. The excess added to
the tobacco tax more than suffices to pay the army expenses and
fortifications. The navy floats on beer, with a part of the beer
tax to spare and carry forward. The income from the Indian
trust funds meets the cost of the Indian Department. The mis-
cellaneous permanent receipts of various kinds more than cover
the miscellaneous permanent expenses ; while the sugar tax and
the revenue derived from imported liquors and tobacco cover the
postal deficiency and the interest on the public debt, with $10,-
000,000 to spare.

Were it not for pensions and sinking funds, our pleasant vices,
with the tax on sugar added, would support the Government on a
very adequate scale, not very economically administered, and with
a margin for contingencies of more than $10,000,000 to spend on
rivers and harbors.

This is only one way of putting the case. It shows how easily
we could cover all the normal or peace expenditures of the Gov-
ernment by taxing nothing but spirits, beer, tobacco, and sugar.
But we are subject to war expenses and we must continue some
war taxes for a term of years. We may therefore make up two
accounts :

War Expenses : ^°- 1'

Current annual pensions, $65,000,000; arrears, $35,000,000 $100,000,000

Interest on war debt 31,500,000

Sinking fund 48,500,000

Total war expense $180,000,000

' War Taxes :

Internal tax on whisky $78,000,000

Internal tax on beer 27,000,000

Internal tax on tobacco 33,000,000

Duties on sugar and molasses 60,000,000

Elasticity in next fiscal year 2,000,000

Total war taxes $200,000.000

Excess of war revenue carried forward $20,000,000

6o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

No. 2.
Peace Expenditures :

Civil service ' $66,000,000

Army and fortifications 37,000,000

Navy 25,000,000

Indians 6,000,000

Postal deficiency 7,000,000

Miscellaneous , 21,000,000

Rivers and harbors 10,000,000

Total $173,000,000

Peace Revenue on Present Basis :

Brought forward from the war taxes $20,000,000

Miscellaneous permanent receipts, omitting so-called profit on silver

coinage 30,000,000

Customs revenue on basis of calendar year ending December

31, 1889 $230,000,000

Less sugar assigned to war expenses 60,000,000

170,000,000

Total $220,000,000

Surplus available for reduction of taxation 47,000,000

On reference to the table of the revenue derived from imports,
sorted according to their kind, given in the first part of this trea-
tise, it will be found that —

Aside from sugar, necessary articles of food have been taxed annually be-
tween $10,000,000 and $12,000,000

Articles in a crude condition necessary in the processes of domestic industry.

$13,000,000 to 14,000,000
Articles partly manufactured which are necessary in the pro-
cesses of domestic industry $23,000,000

Less some duties which are imposed in order to adjust other

duties to the internal taxes, etc 3,000,000

■ 20,000,000

Total $46,000,000

All this revenue can be spared. All these taxes are a useless
burden upon domestic industry. This relief can be given within
the surplus proved to exist, if this Congress does not waste the
substance of the people in order to prevent a reduction of taxa-
tion.*

Of course, one can not enter into details in a magazine article.
Judgment would be required in abating the duties upon crude
and partly manufactured materials. Under these headings there
may be a very few articles which it may be necessary to move

* Since this treatise was first prepared for submission to a private club, the dependent
pension bill has been passed, which may increase the current annual obligation to $100,-
000,000 a year. If common sense ruled in fiscal legislation, a duty on tea and coffee would
have been imposed to meet this increased obligation. But even this new burden will not
prevent the application of this budget within two or three years by the next Congress —
such is the elasticity of our revenue, in spite of all the stupidities of partisan legislation.

COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 605

into another class, or on which, duties would have to be main-
tained because of their close relation to finished products of a very
similar kind. So long as we maintain a duty upon spool cotton,
for instance, it would not be safe or judicious to remove all duties
upon fine cotton thread which could be imported in the skein and
reeled here. But these are all small matters of detail. Suffice
that the revenue which is now derived from spirits, tobacco, beer,
and sugar, from silks, furs, and fancy goods, and from laces, em-
broideries, and the fine textile fabrics which are articles of luxury
rather than of utility, is so large that it would suffice to meet all
the ordinary and all the extraordinary expenditures of the Gov-
ernment.

But there is another element to be considered. When a reform
of the English tariff was laid down on these lines under the direc-
tion of Sir Robert Peel, even he could not anticipate the prosper-
ity which would ensue from the removal of the little petty ob-
structions to the commerce of the globe, which had yielded only a
small part of the customs revenue. He expected a deficiency in
the revenue from the duties on imports in consequence of the
abatement of the duties on the articles made free ; and to meet
this expected deficiency he carried a temporary income tax for
three years, beginning in 1842 to end in 1845. But such was the
stimulus given to industry, trade, and commerce with all the
world, that the revenue on dutiable imports soon rose to the same
amount that had been yielded before the reform. By 1845 the
previous deficiency in the revenue had been surmounted and the
Treasury of Great Britain had a surplus to dispose of for the first
time in many years.

But the lesson had been learned. Opposition to tariff reform
almost ceased ; in 1845 another list of articles of more importance
was added to the free list. Still it could not be conceived that
the revenue would not be diminished and the income tax was
again imposed for the term of three years. But again the revenue
from dutiable imports increased rapidly, again the consuming
power of the people had increased with their prosperity. Then
came the Irish famine. The corn laws went by the board by Or-
ders in Council, afterward justified by act of Parliament. The
prosperity of England went forward by leaps and bounds. And
in 1853 Gladstone completed the work that Peel had begun.

We have yet to learn how to increase the public revenue by the
abatement of obnoxious and obstructive taxation ; even the sim-
ple system which is herein presented, under which even an excess-
ive expenditure can be met by a very simple system of taxation,
under which every necessary article in our domestic manufact-
ures will be free could it be put in force, would be immensely dis-
appointing, and in the same way in which Peel and his coadjutors

606 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

were disappointed. The mass of the people, who are the great
consumers both of domestic and of foreign products, would gain so
much in their consuming power as to cause the revenue from du-
tiable imports to become greater than it had ever been before,
even if we take off fifty million dollars of taxes now derived from
such foreign imports as have been named above.

Again, while the ordinary expenditures of the Government
may increase with the population, the burden of interest and of
pensions will soon rapidly diminish ; therefore I am justified in
predicting that if this policy should be adopted and continue for
fifteen years or during the life of existing machinery, in which
interval all our processes of manufacturing would be readily
adapted to the new conditions at a diminishing cost, we might
then, if we chose, relieve every article of import from foreign coun-
tries from taxation, except spirits, beer, tobacco, and sugar, and
perhaps relieve sugar by substituting some other less onerous tax,
as the people of Great Britain have done within a very few years.

We might come to these conditions sooner if it were expedi-
ent, provided the mass of the people could be persuaded to put a
moderate duty on tea and coffee as a substitute for duties on some
other commodities. This, however, can hardly be expected ; the
great objection to the present removal of the duty on sugar is
that, once off, it would be difficult to put it on again even if the
public should become convinced that they had better put a tax
on sugar than on wool, hides, lumber, leather, tin plates, salt fish,
potatoes, and other articles of like kind.

Strange as it may seem, a small part of the members of the
Senate and House of Representatives seem to believe that the
dogma of " protection with incidental revenue " has some founda-
tion in right and justice — notably the author of this catch- word
or phrase, who has been pushed into temporary prominence as
Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means by the very
sincerity of his convictions.

The greater part of the support of this measure is, however,
given by the mis-representatives of their respective States, who
can only be designated as political lacqueys or time-servers, many
of whom are known to vote against their own convictions.

It happens that most of the representatives on the Democratic
side who have not heretofore agreed with the majority of their
own number upon this question, have either been removed by
death or by failure to be re-elected. Hence comes the necessity
for a choice of parties, if this question is to be the paramount one
in politics. It is a pity, even a shame, that a plain, practical busi-
ness question can not be taken out from party politics to be settled
on its merits. What is there that we can do to bring this about ?
This is a meeting of representative business men who have here-

SOME NATIVES OF AUSTRALASIA. 607

tofore voted, some with, one party, some with another. Some are
called protectionists, some are classed as free-traders, yet all may
come to a practicable agreement on practical methods of tariff
reform. If that agreement could be brought into effect both,
here and elsewhere, to the end that every candidate for election
to Congress or to the Senate of the United States, whether named
Republican or Democratic, would be given to understand that his
election would depend upon his giving his support to methods of
tariff reform which are consistent with common sense, such as I
have attempted to bring before you, we might feel perfectly sure
that the average candidate on either side would hasten to get the
benefit of the first conversion to these views.

In the great struggle by which personal liberty was estab-
lished, the men at arms knew no difference between Republican
and Democrat. Loyalty to the principle of liberty was the sole
test by which men were justified or condemned. May we not es-
tablish the same test in the struggle for relief from the burden of
obstruction and destructive taxation ?

When in the fullness of time, with due preparation, with care-
ful consideration, and with consistent regard to all existing con-
ditions, the object may be attained which is aimed at by every
intelligent protectionist, tariff reformer, and free-trader alike ;
when all the conditions precedent have been safely established on
the lines upon which we may now enter — we may begin the next
century free from slavery, free from debt, free from destructive
taxation, free from the cruel burden of great standing armies and
navies. Then may the people of Massachusetts and all her sister
States conduct their work and serve all nations as they serve
themselves, sustained and governed by the principle which is en-
graved upon her own great seal :

Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem.
[Concluded. ]

■♦♦»

SOME NATIVES OF AUSTRALASIA.*

By ELISEE KECLUS.

SHAKEN collectively, the Dayak populations differ from the
-■- civilized Malays by their slim figure, lighter complexion,
more prominent nose, and higher forehead. In many communi-
ties the men carefully eradicate the hair of the face, while both
sexes file, dye, and sometimes even pierce the teeth, in which are
fixed gold buttons. The lobe of the ear is similarly pierced for
the insertion of bits of stick, rings, crescent-shaped metal plates,

* From Oceanica, the fourteenth volume of Reclus's great illustrated work on The Earth
and its Inhabitants, now in course of publication by D. Appleton & Co.

6o3 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and other ornaments, by the weight of which the lobe is gradually
distended down to the shoulder. In several tribes the skulls of
the infants are artificially deformed by means of bamboo frames
and bandages.

The simple Dayak costume of blue cotton with a three-colored
stripe for border is always gracefully draped, and the black hair
is usually wrapped in a red cloth trimmed with gold. Most of
the Dayaks tattoo the arms, hands, feet, and thighs, occasionally
also the breast and temples. The designs, generally of a beauti-
ful blue color on the coppery ground of the body, display great
taste, and are nearly always disposed in odd numbers, which, as
among so many other peoples, are supposed to be lucky. Amulets
of stone, filigree, and the like, are also added to the ornaments to
avert misfortune. In some tribes coils of brass wire are wound
round the body, as among some African peoples on the shores of
Victoria Nyanza.

Many Dayak tribes are still addicted to head-hunting, a prac-
tice which has made their name notorious, and which but lately
threatened the destruction of the whole race. It is essentially a
religious practice — so much so that no important act in their lives
seems sanctioned unless accompanied by the offering of one or
more heads. The child is born under adverse influences unless
the father has presented a head or two to the mother before its
birth. The young man can not become a man and arm himself
with the manclau, or war-club, until he has beheaded at least one
victim. The wooer is rejected by the maiden of his choice unless
he <?an produce one head to adorn their new home. The chief
fails to secure recognition until he can exhibit to his subjects a
head secured by his own hand. No dying person can enter the
kingdom beyond the grave with honor unless he is accompanied
by one or more headless companions. Every rajah owes to his
rank the tribute of a numerous escort after death.

Among some tribes, notably the Bahu Trings, in the north-
ern part of the Mahakkam basin, and the Ot-Damons of the up-
per Kahajan, the religious custom is still more exacting. It is
not sufficient to kill the victim, but before being dispatched he
must also be tortured, the corpse sprinkled with his blood, and his
flesh eaten under the eyes of the priest and priestesses, who perform
the prescribed rites. All this explains the terror inspired by the
Dayaks in their neighbors, and the current belief that they are
sprung from swords and daggers that have taken human form.
With the gradual spread of Islam the Dayaks of the British
and Dutch possessions are slowly abandoning their bloodthirsty
usages. At the same time the head-hunters themselves, strange
to say, are otherwise the most moral people in the whole of In-
donesia. Nearly all are perfectly frank and honest. They scru-

SOME NATIVES OF AUSTRALASIA.

609

Fig. 1. — Dayak Types, Borneo.

pulously respect the fruits of their neighbors' labor, and in the
tribe itself mnrder is unknown.

The population of New Guinea, variously estimated at from
half a million to two millions, comprises a very large number of
groups differing greatly from each other in stature, complexion,

vol. xxxvii. — 43

610 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

shape of the skull, and other physical features, as well as in their
usages and mental qualities. Several tribes approach the Indo-
nesian type, as found in Borneo and Celebes, while others re-
semble the Malays, and are described by travelers as belonging
to this race. But, although there is no ethnical uniformity, as
seemed probable from the reports of the early explorers, the Pap-
uan element, whence the great island takes the name of Papuasia,
certainly predominates over all others.

On the whole the Papuans are somewhat shorter than the Poly-
nesians, the average height being about sixty-two to sixty-four
inches. They are well proportioned, lithe, and active, and display
surprising skill both in climbing trees and in using the feet for
prehensile purposes. Most Papuans have a very dark skin, but
never of that shiny black peculiar to the Shilluks of the White
Nile, the Wolofs of Senegal, and some other African peoples.
The eyebrows are well marked, the eyes large and animated, the
mouth large but not pouting, the jaw massive. Among the
northwestern Papuans, regarded by Wallace as representing the
type in its purity, the nose is long, arched, and tipped downward
at the extremity, and this is a trait which the native artists never
fail to reproduce in the human effigies with which they decorate
their houses and boats. Another distinctive characteristic of nu-
merous tribes is their so-called mop-heads, formed by superb
masses of frizzly hair, no less abundant than that of the Brazilian
Cafusos, and, as in their case, possibly indicating racial inter-
minglings.

However backward they may be in other respects, most of the
Papuans are endowed with a highly developed artistic feeling, and
as carvers and sculptors they are far superior to most of the Ma-
layan peoples. Having at their disposition nothing but bamboos,,
bone, banana-leaves, bark, and wood, they usually design and
carve with the grain — that is, in straight lines. Nevertheless,
with these primitive materials they succeed in producing ex-
tremely elegant and highly original decorative work, and even
sculpture colossal statues representing celebrated chiefs and an-
cestors. Thanks to this talent, they are able to reproduce vast his-
toric scenes, and thus record contemporary events. Numerous
tribes have their annals either designed on foliage or depicted on
rocks in symbolic writing. The skulls of the enemies slain in
battle, which are carefully preserved to decorate the houses, are
themselves often embellished with designs traced on masks made
of wax and resin. On the banks of the Fly River these skulls
are also used as musical instruments.

The island of Tasmania has already been completely " cleared "
by the systematic destruction of its primitive inhabitants, who
were estimated at about seven thousand on the arrival of the

SOME NATIVES OF AUSTRALASIA.

61 1

§
P

o

w

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&

o

m

m

o

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eu

D

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—

6l2

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

whites, and who were said to be of a remarkably gentle and
kindly disposition. On December 28, 1834, the last survivors,
hounded down like wild beasts, were captured at the extremity of
a headland, and this event was celebrated as a signal triumph.
The successful hunter, Robinson, received a government reward
of six hundred acres and a considerable sum of money, besides a
public subscription of about eight thousand pounds.

The captives were at first conveyed from islet to islet, and
then confined to the number of two hundred in a marshy valley
of Flinders Island, washed by the stormy waters of Bass Strait.
They were supplied with provisions and some lessons in the cate-
chism ; their community was even quoted as an example of the

Fig. 3. — Lalla Rookh, the La^t Tasmanian.

progress of Christian civilization. But after ten years of resi-
dence in this place of exile more than three fourths of the natives
had perished. Then pity was taken on them, and the twelve sur-
viving men, twenty-two women, and ten children, nearly all half-
breeds, were removed to a narrow promontory at Oyster Cove,
near Hobart, and placed under some keepers, who enriched them-

SOME NATIVES OF AUSTRALASIA. 613

selves at their expense. In 1800 the Tasmanian race was reduced
to sixteen souls ; in 18G9 the last man perished, and in 187G
" Queen " Truganina, popularly known as Lalla Rookh, followed
her people to the grave. But there still survived a few half-
castes, and in 1884 a so-called " Tasmanian " woman obtained a
grant of land from the Colonial Parliament.

The Fijians present affinities both with the western Melane-
sians and eastern Polynesians, and are at least partly of mixed
descent, although the majority approach nearest to the former
group. They are tall and robust, very brown and coppery, some-
times even almost black, with abundant tresses intermediate be-
tween hair and wool. Half-breeds are numerous and are often
distinguished by almost European features. Till recently they
went nearly naked, wearing only the loin-cloth or skirt of vege-
table fiber, smearing the body with oil, and dyeing the hair with
red ochre. The women passed bits of stick or bark through the
pierced lobe of the ear, and nearly all the men carried a formidable
club; now they wear shirts, blouses, or dressing-gowns, or else
drape themselves in blankets, and thus look more and more like
needy laborers dressed in the cast-off clothes of their employers.
They display great natural intelligence, and, according to Williams,
are remarkable for a logical turn of mind, which enables Europeans
to discuss questions with them in a rational way. Their gener-
osity is attested by the language itself, which abounds in terms
meaning to give, but has no word to express the acts of borroAving
or lending. Compared with their Polynesian neighbors, they are
also distinguished by much reserve. Their meke,ov dances, al-
ways graceful and marked by great decorum, represent little land
or sea dramas, sowing, harvesting, fishing, even the struggles be-
tween the rising tides and rocks.

Cannibalism entered largely into the religious system of the
Fijians. The names of certain deities, such as the "god of
slaughter," and the " god eater of human brains," sufficiently at-
test the horrible nature of the rites held in their honor. Religion
also taught that all natural kindness was impious, that the gods
loved blood, and that not to shed it before them would be culpa-
ble ; hence those wicked people who had never killed anybody in
their lifetime were thrown to the sharks after death. Children
destined to be sacrificed for the public feasts were delivered into
the hands of those of their own age, who thus served their appren-
ticeship as executioners and cooks. The banquets of " long pig " —
that is, human flesh — were regarded as a sacred ceremony from
which the women and children were excluded ; and while the men
used their fingers with all other food, they had to employ forks of
hard wood at these feasts. The ovens also in which the bodies
were baked could not be used for any other purpose. Notwith-

614

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

standing certain restrictions, human flesh, was largely consumed,
and in various places hundreds of memorial stones were shown
which recalled the number of sacrifices.

tSSJJ

r.v.v/r.

WW

Mm

m>§fm

■X,'

,„ .ft

•hi.

■■:■■/■'

:.- <

■7

.'.•■■" " '■".'■•^

-I'vi'^^p)^^:*

Fig. 4. — Tattooed Native of the Marquesas Islands.

From the ethnical standpoint Polynesia forms a distinct domain
in the oceanic world, although its inhabitants do not appear to be
altogether free from mixture with foreign elements. The vestiges
of older civilizations differing from the present even prove that

SOME NATIVES OF AUSTRALASIA. 615

human migrations and revolutions have taken place in this region
on a scale large enough to cause the displacement of whole races.
The curious monuments of Easter Island, although far inferior in
artistic work to the wood-carvings of Birara and New Zealand,
may perhaps be the witnesses of a former culture, no traditions of
which have survived among the present aborigines. These mon-
uments may possibly be the work of a Papuan people, for skulls
found in the graves differ in no essential feature from those of
New Guinea.

The Polynesians, properly so called, to whom the collective
terms Mahori and Savaiori have also been applied, and who call
themselves Kanaka, that is, " men/' have a light-brown or coppery
complexion, and rather exceed the tallest Europeans in stature.
In Tonga and Samoa nearly all the men are athletes of fine pro-
portions, with black and slightly wavy hair, fairly regular feat-
ures, and proud glance. They are a laughter-loving, light-hearted
people, fond of music, song, and the dance, and where not visited
by wars and the contagion of European " culture/' the happiest
and most harmless of mortals. When Dumont d'Urville ques-
tioned the Tukopians as to the doctrine of a future life, with re-
wards for the good and punishment for the wicked, they replied,
" Among us there are no wicked people."

Tattooing was wide-spread, and so highly developed, that the
artistic designs covering the body served also to clothe it ; but
this costume is now being replaced by the cotton garments intro-
duced by the missionaries. In certain islands the operation lasted
so long that it had to be begun before the children were six years
old, and the pattern was largely left to thev skill and cunning of
the professional tattooers. Still, traditional motives recurred in
the ornamental devices of the several tribes, who could usually
be recognized by their special tracings, curved or parallel lines,
diamond forms, and the like. The artists were grouped in schools,
like the Old Masters in Europe, and they worked not by incision
as in most Melanesian islands, but by punctures with a small,
comb-like instrument slightly tapped with a mallet. The pig-
ment used in the painful and even dangerous operation was usu-
ally the fine charcoal yielded by the nut of Aleurites triloba, an
oleaginous plant used for illuminating purposes throughout east-
ern Polynesia.

In Samoa the women were much respected, and every village
had its patroness, usually the chief's daughter, who represented
the community at the civil and religious feasts, introduced
strangers to the tribe, and diffused general happiness by her
cheerful demeanor and radiant beauty. But elsewhere the wom-
en, though as a rule well treated, were regarded as greatly in-
ferior to the men. At the religious ceremonies the former were

6i6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

:<•.:•:•:•. -.:

WW

■■■■ ;>■ ti-u-

■:f!!«:!«!i

:ii!iiiii!t:iti

iiiiiiijiiiiiii

"'iliiiiiiiiii

(nmiiHtn'iu.i, ■;::;:.

ijiiiiiiitin i

:::.::::::::;: :::...,„,..., . ■ .,,„,,„,,,; ;„,,:. '!'M:,';;;--;i.;

W3&^W%\

Fig. 5. — Samoan Womkn.

SOME NATIVES OF AUSTRALASIA. 617

noa, or profane ; the latter ra, or sacred ; and most of the interdic-
tions of things tabooed fell on the weaker sex. The women never
shared the family meal, and they were regarded as common prop-
erty in the households of the chiefs, where polygamy was the rule.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, infanticide was systemati-
cally practiced ; in Tahiti and some other groups there existed a
special caste, among whom this custom was even regarded as a
duty. Hence, doubtless, arose the habit of adopting strange
children, almost universal in Tahiti, where it gave rise to all
manner of complications connected with the tenure and inherit-
ance of property.

In Polynesia the government was almost everywhere centered
in the hands of powerful chiefs, against whose mandates there
was no appeal. A vigorous hierarchy separated the social classes
one from another, proprietors being subject to the chiefs, the poor
to the rich, the women to the men ; but over all custom reigned
supreme. This law of taboo, which regulated all movements and
every individual act, often pressed hard even on its promulgators,
and the terrible penalties it enforced against the contumacious
certainly contributed to increase the ferocity of the oceanic popu-
lations. Almost the only punishment was death, and human
sacrifices in honor of the gods were the crowning religious rite.
In some places the victims were baked on the altars, and their
flesh, wrapped in taro-leaves, was distributed among the warriors.

Yet, despite the little value attached to human life, the death
of adult men gave rise to much mourning and solemn obsequies.
Nor was this respect for the departed an empty ceremonial, for
the ancestors of the Polynesians were raised to the rank of gods,
taking their place with those who hurled the thunderbolt and
stirred up the angry waters. A certain victorious hero thus be-
came the god of war, and had to be propitiated with supplica-
tions. But the common folk and captives were held to be " soul-
less," although a spirit was attributed to nearly all natural
objects.

In his book on The Cradle of the Aryans, Prof. Rendall takes the position
of an independent critic. Reviewing the theories that have been offered, and the
arguments, both in favor of an Asiatic and of a European origin, he concludes that
the portion of the white race to which the Indo-European languages properly be-
long had its first home in southern Scandinavia, and is best represented by the
Swedes and Norwegians of the present day. Father Van den Gheyn, on the other
hand, in his recently published pamphlet, L'Origine Europeenne des Aryas,
sums up the discussion from the point of view of the old theory of a home in the
basin of the Oxus and Jaxartes. M. Reinach, reviewing his book, opposes the
idea of a European home, but commits himself no further than to say that the
spot is ;' somewhere in Asia."
vol. xxxvii. — 44

618 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

KING BOMBA'S PHILOSOPHICAL CATECHISM.

By Peof. E. P. EVANS.

THE proper education of a prince and heir to the throne has
been regarded from time immemorial as one of the most
perplexing problems of pedagogics. Especially in the past ages
of absolutism, when the monarch was the source of all authority,
it was a matter of immense importance that the man whose will
was to be the law of the land, and upon whose merest whim the
weal or woe of a whole people depended, should, as a child, be
trained up in the way he should go, and, as an adult, should not
be permitted to depart from it.

In the Orient, where the sovereign was revered as a demi-divine
incarnation and plenipotentiary delegate from heaven for the ad-
ministration of justice on earth, he was also supposed to be super-
naturally endowed with wisdom from on high — a pleasing fiction,
which still survives in the claims of kings to wear their crowns
and wield their scepters "by the grace of God." As a natural
sequence of this theory, scions of royal stock were confided to
members of the sacerdotal order for their education. In India
the Brahman claimed for his caste all posts of honor and emolu-
ment in the realm, and all positions of influence near the person
of the ruler. Not only was it deemed essential to the power and
permanence of the dynasty that he should perform the duties of
court priest (puroliita), but he also arrogated to himself the func-
tions of court fool (vidusliaka) ; in his overweening ambition and
insatiable greed of supremacy, he could bear no rival near the
throne, even though the competitor were a man of motley.

It was likewise the privilege of the Brahman to be pedagogue
in perpetuity to the royal family. His son or some member of
his caste was as sure of succeeding to the ferule as the king's son
or some prince of the blood was of inheriting the scepter ; and,
judging from what we know of the manuals of instruction, in
which his teachings were embodied, he was eminently worthy of
his high office. Thus the Hitopadesa" was composed or rather com-
piled by Vishnu Sarman for several young princes who were his
pupils ; and it would be difficult to find in the whole vast range
of didactic literature any work containing in the same compass
a greater sum of homely wisdom and a larger number of pruden-
tial maxims and ethical rules for the conduct of life than are com-
pressed into this little treatise on deportment, or nitividyd, a word
which the modern masters of this science would translate by
savoir vivre. This Kind Counsel, as the title Hitopadesa" sig-
nifies, is illustrated and enforced by a series of fables and kindred

KING BO MBA'S PHILOSOPHICAL CATECHISM. 619

stories, skillfully woven together into a consecutive narration,
which has remained for centuries the unsurpassable model of all
productions of a like character. In Greek literature we have
Xenophon's Cyropsedia, which gives an imaginary picture of the
education of the elder Cyrus, in order to present the ideal of a
prince whose moral and intellectual faculties have been devel-
oped according to the principles of the Socratic philosophy. Less
worthy of note, and yet not devoid of significance, is the De de-
mentia ad Neronem Csesarem of Seneca, whose imperial pupil
Nero does not redound to his credit as a tutor, and whose own
conduct did not always exemplify his fine ethical maxims. In
the sixteenth century Duke Julius, of Brunswick, began with his
Deutscher Fiirstenspiegel the fabrication of those moral mirrors
in which princes are enabled to see themselves as others see them.

The Prince of Machiavelli is a different kind of production,
being less a pedagogical than a political treatise — not so much an
exposition of ethical principles as an enforcement of practical
policy. It is the final, energetic effort of a sincere patriot to
rescue his country from the demoralizing and disintegrating in-
fluences, aristocratic, democratic, and hierarchical, which made it
the prey of factions from within and foreigners from without. If
the remedy prescribed is drastic, the disease was also desperate.

Of all modern works belonging to the class under consideration,
The Adventures of Telemachus, written by Fenelon for the in-
struction and guidance of the grandsons of Louis XIY, holds per-
haps the highest place in literature. But the ideal of conduct,
which the Archbishop of Cambrai here offers for imitation, is so
pure and exalted, that the king regarded the book as a satire on
his reign and forbade its publication. It was also the common
opinion of his courtiers that Calypso was the Marquise de Monte-
span, Antiope the Duchesse de Bourgogne, and Sesostris no less a
personage than the Grand Monarch himself. "No one, nowadays,
in reading Fenelon's masterpiece of fiction, thinks of the didactic
purpose for which it was written ; we are attracted solely by the
charm of style and the perfection of artistic form which have
made it classic.

Very different in this respect is the notorious Philosophical
Catechism collaborated by King Ferdinand II and Monsignore
Apuzzo, Archbishop of Sorrento, for the use of the Hereditary
Prince and of the Most Faithful People of the Two Sicilies. This
book, which appeared in 1850, was written to justify the perfidies
and perjuries of King Bomba, and also, ad usum DelpMni, to in-
culcate and perpetuate the principles of monarchical absolutism.

After the suppression of the Revolution of 1848, and the ab-
rogation of the reforms which this movement had temporarily
effected, the sovereign of the Two Sicilies began to manifest an

6zo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

extraordinary interest in diffusing what lie deemed useful infor-
mation among his benighted subjects. He made a Collection of
Good Books in favor of Truth and Virtue, in which the doctrine
of the divine right of kings and the duty of passive obedience on
the part of their subjects were taught in the most emphatic terms.
These cheaply printed pamphlets and little volumes were scat-
tered broadcast over the country ; but as the great majority of
the people were unable to read them, owing to the general illit-
eracy which his system of government had produced, the priests
were instructed to communicate the contents of them to their
parishioners, and to make the ideas contained in them the subject
of frequent discourse. His Majesty also caused to be published a
New Philosophic-Democratic Vocabulary indispensable to every
one who desires to understand the New Revolutionary Language,
in which the logic of the Holy Office is combined with the rhetoric
of the barracks and of Billingsgate to heap contempt upon liberal
opinions. But the famous series reaches its climax in the afore-
mentioned Catechism, the capolavoro of Monsignore Apuzzo, who,
to the exercise of his archiepiscopal functions, added the sinecure
of Superintendent of Public Instruction and the confidential post
of tutor to the crown prince.

In the preface the author addresses himself directly to "princes,
bishops, magistrates, instructors of youth, and all men of good-
will," and enjoins upon them to use their authority, their money,
and their influence to secure the widest possible distribution of
his work. Those who have control of the public funds in the
cities of the realm, he says, should apply them generously and
systematically to this worthy end, and assures these officials that
God will bless their pious embezzlements.

The following is a translation of the first chapter, which treats
of Philosophy :

Disciple. What is philosophy ?

Master. It is the science of truth, or rather the science which
teaches us to distinguish truth from error.

" D. Is it necessary to teach this science to very young per-
sons ?

" M. It would not be necessary, since they would learn it grad-
ually from experience and from the words and writings of honest
and wise men ; but at the present time it is necessary that Chris-
tian teachers should begin early to instruct their pupils in the
true philosophy, in order that they may not learn from others a
perverse and false philosophy.

" D. Why is it that some persons wish to teach a wicked phi-
losophy, and desire to diffuse error rather than truth ?

" M. Because they are vicious and bad, and wish that all other
men should become vicious and bad.

a
it

KING BOMB A' S PHILOSOPHICAL CATECHISM. 621

te

D. Who are those who teach a false and perverse philosophy ?
M. They are the liberal philosophers.

" D. Would it not be well to massacre all these corrupters and
deceivers of the human race ?

" M. No, my son ; we should detest their errors, but should
regard their persons with the eye of charity, pray God to convert
them, pardon the offenses which they commit, do good to them,
and succor them in their necessities. These are the doctrines of
Christianity, and we should show what a difference there is be-
tween the followers of the liberal philosophy and the followers of
the gospel.

" Z>. What are the effects of the doctrines taught by the liberal
philosophers ?

" M. They cause the decay of religion, bring disaster upon the
state, produce the slaughter of war, the weeping of mothers, and
the general misery of the people, as may be seen in all those coun-
tries whose inhabitants have let themselves be led astray by these
fatal and foolish notions. And, above all, they cause the eternal
damnation of souls, because he who lives contrary to the law of
God on earth can not expect anything but hell in the next world.
D. Are all liberals wicked in the same degree ?
M. Not all, my son, because some are willful deceivers, and
others are wretchedly deceived ; nevertheless, they all go the
same way, and, if they do not turn from this path, will all reach
the same goal.

D. How are liberal philosophers to be recognized ?
M. When you see any one who keeps away from the sacra-
ments and the religious services, who does not go to church, or, if
he sometimes goes there, acts irreverently and disrespectfully,
who ostentatiously neglects to take off his hat before the images
of Jesus Christ and the saints, and is ashamed to be seen making
the sign of the cross ; when you hear any one joking about heaven
and hell, speaking evil of the prince or of the government, derid-
ing priests and friars and ecclesiastical persons ; when, finally,
you perceive any one who is glad to learn of the progress of rebell-
ions and the success of rebels, and who disapproves of the vigor-
ous acts of the legitimate authorities, and receives with signs of
sorrow news favorable to the preservation of religion, of the sov-
ereign power, and of public tranquillity — then you can say for
certain that all these are liberal philosophers.

" D. Are all those who wear whiskers and full beards liberal
philosophers ?

" M. Not all, because many people merely follow the fashion
in wearing the beard.

" D. Are not young men, then, permitted to follow the fashion ?

" M. When the fashions are neither obscene nor ridiculous,

622 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

each, one is free to follow them if he sees fit, provided, however,
that such or such a fashion may not be generally recognized as
a mark of adhesion to a bad class. The garb of a hangman or
of an assassin may not be scandalous in itself, but no honorable
and respectable man would clothe himself as an assassin or hang-
man in order to be in fashion. In like manner "wise and Christian
persons ought to be ashamed to imitate in their apparel the liber-
als and liberal philosophers, and, for this reason, whoever nowa-
days under the pretext of adapting his dress to the mode plasters
his face with those demi-periwigs, shows signs of little honesty,
or at least of little sense."

This is a fair specimen of the puerility of the archbishop's rea-
soning. He then proceeds to discuss the origin and nature of hu-
man society, which, he maintains, is a divine institution, and began
to exist essentially in its present constitution with the creation
of man. The theory of a primitive state of savagery, out of which
the race was gradually evolved, he denounces as a figment of the
imagination, having no more reality than the dog with seven
heads or the sea-creature half fish and half maiden described by
the poets. " Modern philosophers, for their own base ends, have
feigned to believe in such a state of nature, as they call it, whereas
it should be called a state contrary and repugnant to nature."
The moral which the Right Reverend Apuzzo draws from his
doctrine is, that society being an institution established by God,
man has no right to change it under the pretext of reform or by
the force of revolution, thus impiously endeavoring, by overturn-
ing the thrones of divinely appointed kings, and subverting the
social, civil, and religious arrangements which God has ordained,
to improve upon the wisdom of the Omniscient.

As regards liberty, he says it would be madness and blasphemy
to maintain that the freedom of the gospel has anything in com-
mon with the freedom preached by modern philosophers. What
the redemption of Christ freed man from was the condemnation
and slavery of sin, and from the dominion of the devil. " Before
his advent, demons tormented and afflicted the human race in a
thousand ways, but Jesus Christ so effectually released mankind
from that scourge, and so conquered the power of hell, that nowa-
days one scarcely knows that there are any such creatures as de-
mons." Was ever any utterance of even the clerical mind more
naive than this ! All aspirations and struggles for a freedom
differing from his definition of the freedom of the gospel he de-
nounces as destructive of human happiness and offensive to the
Saviour of the world.

In the chapter on equality, we are told that men are tall, short,
smart, stupid, learned, ignorant, virtuous, vicious, rich, poor,
strong, and feeble, and that it is therefore impossible for them

KING BOMBA'S PHILOSOPHICAL CATECHISM. 623

to be all equal. Equality before the law, with which liberal phi-
losophers seek to flatter the vanity and excite the passions of the
populace, is also a chimera. To punish all persons equally for
the same overt acts would be manifestly unjust. Throwing a
handful of mud at a common laborer should not be visited with
as severe a penalty as throwing a handful of mud at a nobleman,
because in the case of the laborer the act only occasions a slight
inconvenience, while in the case of the nobleman it involves a
grievous insult. By such plausible but wholly impertinent illus-
trations the shrewd archbishop seeks to shirk the main principle,
and to impose upon the simple-minded, who may not have wit
enough to detect the fallacies of his reasoning, and to perceive
that equality before the law does not imply the necessity of ignor-
ing all circumstances, motives, and effects attending a culpable
action. He admits, in conclusion, that all men should be equal in
the eye of justice, but asserts that " such an equality is already
enjoyed by the inhabitants of the whole civilized world, so that
there is no need of the liberal philosophers wasting their breath
in proclaiming it." If some persons now and then suffer wrong,
" this is due to the wickedness of the human heart, and not to any
defects of institutions and laws." That it is, however, the object
of laws and institutions to restrain the wickedness of the human
heart, and that so far as they fail to do this they are defective, is
a point wholly ignored.

After the close of the Franco-German War, the cities of the
fatherland began to grow with unwonted rapidity, and many per-
sons of the baser sort became owners of urban habitations, and in
their pride of acquisition waxed exceedingly arrogant. A citizen
of Munich, who had suddenly risen from the low estate of a handi-
craftsman to the dignity of a householder, posted up in the lower
halls of his tenements a long list of printed rules and regulations
to be observed by his tenants, who were not only informed when
they must clean and light the stairs, and when they might or
might not play on musical instruments, but also received definite
and minute instructions touching their personal relations to him-
self, how they must greet him in passing, and must treat him with
proper respect on all occasions. Having specified all the cases
which he could think of, and fearing lest any loophole should be
left by which obligations might be evaded, he laid down, in a con-
cluding paragraph, the following general principle : " In short,
the tenant has no rights, but only duties."

According to Monsignore Apuzzo, God has regulated the uni-
verse on the same principle, and man has no rights in opposition
to the sovereigns who rule over him, but only duties toward them.
" The law of God commands kings and rulers not to be tyrannical
and not to oppress their subjects unnecessarily, and thereby guar-

624 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

antees to the people all the liberty they can enjoy without dis-
turbing the social order." But. as the sovereign alone is to decide
what degree of oppression is necessary, and as there is no means
of enforcing the law of God in case he sees fit to violate it, this
guarantee of the liberty of the people seems to be of the slenderest
and filmiest texture.

" The people of themselves have no right to determine what
shall be the constitution and fundamental laws of the state, since
this would be a limitation of sovereignty, which can not be con-
ditioned and circumscribed except by itself, otherwise it would
not be that supreme power established by God for the good of
society." Even if a king has sworn to observe the constitution
of the realm, he may set it aside if he finds it prejudicial to the
exercise of his sovereignty and injurious to the highest interests
of the state. " An oath can never be permitted to become a bond
of iniquity, or a cause of harm to the people. Besides, the head
of the Church has been authorized by God to absolve consciences
from oaths, whenever he thinks there are good reasons for doing
so. Even if a monarch should violate the constitution and laws
of the country inconsiderately and without just cause, universal
contempt and censure would be the only possible penalty for such
an act. The supreme power may be praised or blamed, but can
not be judged or condemned by any other power, since it is su-
preme. The people must accept the result with resignation, and
will lose nothing thereby, because the fundamental laws are the
work of man, but the sovereign power is the work of God.

" D. But suppose the king burdens his subjects with enormous
taxes and squanders the money of the state, would not the revolt
of the people be justifiable ?

" M. No, it would not be justifiable, because the people have no
right to judge of the necessities and expenditures of the sovereign,
and the Holy Spirit through the mouth of Saint Paul has com-
manded the people to pay tribute, but has nowhere said that they
should audit the accounts of kings.

* D. When the king cruelly abuses and does not respect the
lives and blood of his subjects, would not revolt and revolution
be justifiable ?

" M. Not at all, because the people are not judges and avengers
of injuries done them by private persons, and much less of those
inflicted upon them by princes whom God has appointed to rule
over them."

As regards freedom of opinion, every man is at liberty to enter-
tain whatever opinions he pleases, and the government can not
persecute him on this account, because it has no means of know-
ing his opinions. But when these secret thoughts and judgments
of the mind are expressed in words, whether spoken or written,

KING BOMBA'S PHILOSOPHICAL CATECHISM. 625

they cease to be mere opinions and become overt acts, and are, as
such, subject to the scrutiny and control of the public authorities.
It is not only the right but also the duty of the supreme power to
prevent the promulgation and to punish the diffusion and propa-
gation of false and pernicious opinions, which imperil the existing
religious, political, and social institutions. " God did not endow
men with speech in order that they might utter absurdities and
blasphemies, nor favor the invention of printing in order that it
might serve to excite scandals, spread abroad impiety, and stir
up the people against the powers that be, which are ordained of
him." What kind of opinions are dangerous and injurious, it is,
of course, for sovereigns, aided and advised by sacerdotal coun-
selors to decide, and from their decision there is no appeal.

The most perfect form of civilization, according to Monsignore
Apuzzo, is the mean between extreme ignorance and excessive
knowledge. " Of course it is not meant to inculcate absolute
ignorance, and to imply that men of the lower classes should live
like beasts and blocks of stone, but that each person should be
taught what is suitable to his class, and avoid that superfluity
which can only prove harmful and troublesome to him. The
Holy Spirit says through the mouth of Saint Paul that one
should not know more than is convenient, and should be content
to know with moderation, * non plus sapere quam oportet sapere
seel sapare ad sobrietettem ' ; and these words of the apostle are
addressed not only to the learned, but to men of all classes. For
laborers and peasants, moderation consists in knowing the cate-
chism and the vocal prayers, and nothing more. For mechanics
and shopkeepers, moderation consists in knowing how to read,
write, and cipher a little, and nothing more. For the professional
classes, moderation consists in studying merely what pertains to
their professions ; and for the higher classes, moderation consists
in learning what they can, provided they do not abuse the teach-
ings of man by setting them in opposition to the teachings of
God. This is what is called knowing soberly, and these are the
limits within which the spread of learning, culture, and enlighten-
ment must be kept."

These are the views of a man who was the highest ecclesias-
tical dignitary and the Superintendent of Public Instruction in the
kingdom of the Two Sicilies under Ferdinand II ; and this is the
sort of sophistical stuff with which the crown prince, who after-
ward ascended the throne as Francis II, was systematically
crammed. His education was entirely in the hands of Jesuits, and
it was in this wise that they carried it on. No wonder that, as
king, he was a gloomy and narrow-minded bigot, the helpless
puppet of priests, utterly alien to the prevailing spirit of the age
and the noblest aspirations of his time, and that Garibaldi's mere

VOL. XXXVII.

626 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

presence in southern Italy sufficed to cause his scepter to fall from
his impotent grasp.

In the concluding chapters of his Philosophical Catechism our
author ridicules love of country as a shallow sentiment, censures
patriotism as sedition, burns holy incense under the noses of the
score of petty potentates who were then the curse of Italy, praises
foreign domination, extols the " loyal and Christian " house of
Hapsburg, and even invokes the blessing of heaven upon the
Austrian soldiers, and has the impudence to assert that there is
not a foot of soil in the whole peninsula that has not been freed
and saved by them.

The rapid march of events since 1860 has now made it seem
almost incredible that such a work, worthy of the darkest period
of the middle ages, should have been written, approved by the
Church and the state, and circulated as a public document in
southern Italy less than fifty years ago.

It is at present almost impossible to obtain a copy of the origi-
nal volume ; but the people of the Two Sicilies had no sooner
achieved their independence than the liberal party at Naples re-
printed it as a monument to the deposed Bourbon dynasty — a
monument that performs the functions of a pillory.

-♦♦♦-

WILD HORSES.

By Dr. EDOUARD L. TROUESSAET.

THE primitive stock of the domestic horse has until recently
been considered wholly extinct. A few more or less numer-
ous herds of horses called tarpans are living in a state of free-
dom in the steppes of central Asia, but they are the descendants
of domestic horses that have become wild, and do not differ much
more from the domestic races of the same country than the half-
wild horses of the Landes and of La Camargue, in the south of
France, differ from the horse of Tarbes or the Pyrenees.

There are also found in the Asiatic steppes bands of really
wild animals, the hemiones, onagras, or fertile mules of the
ancients, which are not true horses, but, notwithstanding their
shorter ears, more resemble the ass and mule. They are widely
scattered in Asia and form three distinct species, of which the
best known is the Indian hemione (Equus hemionus, var. ona-
ger), the onagra of Pallas and the ancients, the glior kliur of the
Hindoos, the gliour or kherdecht of the Persians, and the koulan
of the Kirghiz — a species common in zoological gardens, where it
is easily bred.

It inhabits the Cutch or Indian Desert and the steppes of Tur-

WILD HORSES. 627

kistan, where the caravans going from Persia to Yarkand often
meet numerous droves of these animals. Farther north and
east, on the central plateau of Asia, lives the hemione of
Thibet (Equus hemionus proper), the hiang or disightai of the
Thibetans, which much resembles the preceding animal. Then in
the southwest, in the Desert of Syria and the north of Arabia, is
found the hemippus (Equus hemippus or E. hemionus Syria-
cus), with shorter ears and more elegant forms than the preceding
animals. Prof. Henri Milne-Edwards was of the opinion that the
three races of hemione were only local varieties of a single spe-
cies (Equus hemionus).

North of the central plateau of Asia, the steppes of Turkistan
are prolonged so as to form the Desert of Gobi, and again farther
east into the Desert of Dzungaria. This region, situated immedi-
ately south of Siberia, from which it is separated by the valley
of the Amoor, and north of the Thian-Shan Mountains, which
separate it from China, remained almost entirely unexplored till
the time when it passed from the dominion of the Chinese to that
of the Russians. In this desert region the celebrated traveler
Prejevalski discovered in 1881, during his last journey into cen-
tral Asia, a wild horse distinct both from the tarpan and from
the different varieties of the hemione.

The wild horses of this species, called kertag by the Kirghiz
and takM by the Mongols, live in small herds of from five to
fifteen individuals, under the direction of an old stallion. They
are very suspicious, and rarely allow themselves to be approached
within gunshot. They are extremely swift and easily escape the
best-mounted hunters. After several fruitless pursuits, Prejeval-
ski succeeded in bringing down a three-year-old stallion, whose
remains are now to be seen in the Museum of the Academy of Sci-
ences of St. Petersburg, and which is the type of the Equus Pre-
jevalskii of the naturalist Poliakoff.

The wild horse of Dzungaria is an animal the size of the
hemione and more robust in its proportions, in which it resem-
bles the pony. Its head is large, with ears smaller than those
of the hemione, the shoulders thick, especially in the male, the
limbs robust and stubbier than those of the hemiones and the asses.
The mane is short and straight, and the moderately long tail is
terminated by a tuft of long hairs in much more abundant supply
than in the tail of the hemiones. It has warts on the hind-
legs as well as on the fore-legs — a peculiarity of the horse, dis-
tinguishing it from the other species of the genus, which have
warts only on the fore-legs. The hoofs are full like those of
the horse, and not compressed as in the other species ; and the
lower parts of the legs are furnished with long hairs falling to
the crown of the hoof, a feature which the hemiones lack. Like-

628

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wise characteristic is the color of the pelage, a pale gray, almost
white, passing into dun on the head and neck, and blending insen-
sibly on the flanks with the pure white of the belly and limbs.
The mane, the brush of the tail, and the long hairs of the lower
legs and hoofs, are black. There is no trace of the dark dorsal
stripe running from the mane to the tail which is characteristic
of the hemione. The hairy covering is long and undulating,
especially in the rigorous winter of that northern region.

The external appearan.ce of the animal, as may be inferred
from our drawing (Fig. 1), is very like that of the small horse or

Fig. 1. — Dzungarian Wild Horse (Equus Prejevalskii).

pony. It has been assumed, principally on the ground of the
form of the tail, that Prejevalski's horse is a hemione. This opinion
does not appear to us tenable; it is evidently founded on a beg-
ging of the question, because we have so far been ignorant of the
real form of the tail of the primitive horse. The study of other
wild species of the genus seems to indicate, on the other hand,
that the brush form is characteristic of all the wild horses, the
plumy tail and mane being acquisitions of domesticity, like the
drooping ears of dogs, pigs, and goats. The tail of Prejevalski's
horse is, moreover, more brushy than that of the hemiones. Proofs
of another kind are derived from paleontology. There are among
the representations of Equidce of the Quaternary epoch, engraved
by primitive men on reindeer-horn and ivory, discovered by M.
Piette in the caves of the south of France, some very clearly rep-
resenting a horse with a brush tail and short ears like those of
the Prejevalski horse.

WILD HORSES.

629

Furthermore, the light-colored and uniform coating, without
the dorsal stripe and not separated, by a darker tint from the
white of the lower parts ; the plump shape of the hoofs, and the
long hairs of the lower legs, are so many characteristics separat-
ing the Prejevalski horse from the hemiones and allying it with
the horse.*

It is therefore reasonable to assume, with Poliakoff, that the
wild horse of Dzungaria is the true primitive horse, and repre-
sents the original stock of all the domestic races. That naturalist
has compared the skull of this horse with those of the remains of
horses in the European Quaternary, and has been led to believe
in as complete an identity as possible between the two types. We
know, from the researches of Nehring on the Quaternary fauna

■ -.: ^:- ■::■:. .. £vi'#$|

— =: '•' -^^agg^' _ IF

^r^""*

nuA'.mt

Fig. 2. — Syrian HEMipprs (Eqmis hemippus).

of central Europe, that the existing fauna of the Asiatic steppes,
which is characterized by the presence of the saiga, the jerboa,
and the souslik, extended into Germany and the north of France.
Two species of Equidce- form a part of this fauna — the hemione
(Equus hemionus) and the wild horse (Equus cdballus feru-s),
which is probably identical with Equus Prejevalskii.

The wild horse of Dzungaria is, of all the species of the genus,
the one of most northern habitat. This fact explains why the
domestic horse supports so well the winters of northern Europe,

* According to Herodotus, there were in his time wild horses in Scythia, on the banks
of the Hypanis, which were white, like Prejevalski's horse. The Asiatic tarpans are never
of as clear a color.

630

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

while the ass is hard to raise in the north of France, and can not
live in Sweden. Furthermore, wild horses were still living, in
the sixteenth century, in the Yosges Mountains, as was said by
Elisee Roesslin, of Haguenau, in a book published at Strasburg
in 1593 : "Among the animals that are met in the Vosges, first to
be noticed, which would be a marvel in many countries, are the
wild horses. They keep in the forests and the mountains, pro-
viding their own support, and breeding and increasing at all sea-
sons. In winter they hunt for a shelter under the rocks, feeding,
like large game, on the brooms, heaths, and branches of trees.
They are wilder and more savage than are the deer of many
countries, and as hard to capture as they. Men become masters
of them, as with the deer, by the aid of the lakes. When they
have succeeded in taming and subduing them — a long and difficult
task — they have horses of the best quality. These horses with-
stand the severest cold and are satisfied with the coarsest food.
Their walk is sure, their footing firm and solid, because they are
accustomed, like the chamois, to run over the mountains and leap
the rocks. If the Vosges support wild horses, while the Black

Forest has no such animals,
they owe the privilege to
their northern exposure,
their sterility, and the
prevalence of fierce north
winds." Wild horses exist-
ed at the same time in the
Swiss Alps and in Prussia
(Erasmus Stella, 1518), and
their . flesh was eaten as in
the Quaternary epoch. Un-
fortunately, no description
or picture of these animals
is left us ; and although
Bishop Fortunat speaks of them as onagras, he was most probably
speaking of horses that had become wild — the tarpans — and not
real wild horses like Equus Prejevalskii.

The engraving we give of the Prejevalski horse was made
from the type of the species in the Museum of the Academy of
Sciences of St. Petersburg, and has been obtained from Prof.
Eugen Buchner, director of the museum. It is a reproduction
of the figure accompanying Poliakoff's memoir in the publications
of the Russian Imperial Geographical Society.

We also give, for comparison, the figure (2) of a species of he-
mione, the Syrian hemippus (Equus liemippus), purposely chosen
because it is the species most like the horse in its elegant form
and the small size of its ears. This picture is an exact copy of a

Fig. 3. — Fac-simile of an Engraving on Bone,
representing a horse with a brush tail and
Erect Mane. (Cave of Lorthet-Fouilles, by M.
Piette.)

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND OF SCIENCE. 631

vellum in the museum, painted from life by M. Bocourt, and rep-
resents one of two individuals brought from Damascus in 1855,
by M. Bourgoing, which lived for some time at the menagerie of
the Paris Museum. — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly
from La Nature.

-*■-—•-

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND THE LIGHT OF

SCIENCE.

By Prof. T. H. HUXLEY, F. R. S.

THERE are three ways of regarding any account of past
occurrences, whether delivered to us orally or recorded in
writing.

The narrative may be exactly true. That is to say, the words
taken in their natural sense, and interpreted according to the rules
of grammar, may convey to the mind of the hearer, or of the
reader, an idea precisely correspondent with one which would
have remained in the mind of a witness. For example, the state-
ment that King Charles I was beheaded at Whitehall on the
30th day of January, 1649, is as exactly true as any proposition
in mathematics or physics ; no one doubts that any person of
sound faculties, properly placed, who was present at Whitehall
throughout that day, and who used his eyes, would have seen the
king's head cut off ; and that there would have remained in his
mind an idea of that occurrence which he would have put into
words of the same value as those which we use to express it.

Or the narrative may be partly true and partly false. Thus,
some histories of the time tell us what the king said, and what
Bishop Juxon said ; or report royalist conspiracies to effect a res-
cue ; or detail the motives which induced the chiefs of the Com-
monwealth to resolve that the king should die. One account de-
clares that the king knelt at a high block, another that he lay
down with his neck on a mere plank. And there are contempo-
rary pictorial representations of both these modes of procedure.
Such narratives, while veracious as to the main event, may and
do exhibit various degrees of unconscious and conscious misrep-
resentation, suppression, and invention, till they become hardly
distinguishable from pure fictions. Thus, they present a transi-
tion to narratives of a third class, in which the fictitious element
predominates. Here, again, there are all imaginable gradations,
from such works as Defoe's giiasi-historical account of the plague
year, which probably gives a truer conception of that dreadful
time than any authentic history, through the historical novel,
drama, and epic, to the purely phantasmal creations of imagina-

632 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tive genius, such as the old Arabian Nights or the modern Shav-
ing of Shagpat. It is not strictly needful for my present purpose
that I should say anything about narratives which are professedly
fictitious. Yet it may be well, perhaps, if I disclaim any intention
of derogating from their value, when I insist upon the paramount
necessity of recollecting that there is no sort of relation between
the ethical, or the aesthetic, or even the scientific importance of
such works, and their worth as historical documents. Unques-
tionably, to the poetic artist, or even to the student of psychology,
Hamlet and Macbeth may be better instructors than all the books
of a wilderness of professors of aesthetics or moral philosophy.
But, as evidence of occurrences in Denmark, or in Scotland, at
the times and places indicated, they are out of court ; the pro-
foundest admiration for them, the deepest gratitude for their
influence, are consistent with the knowledge that, historically
speaking, they are worthless fables, in which any foundation
of reality that may exist is submerged beneath the imaginative
superstructure.

At present, however, I am not concerned to dwell upon the im-
portance of fictitious literature and the immensity of the work
which it has effected in the education of the human race. I pro-
pose to deal with the much more limited inquiry, Are there two
other classes of consecutive narratives (as distinct from state-
ments of individual facts), or only one ? Is there any known his-
torical work which is throughout exactly true, or is there not ?
In the case of the great majority of histories the answer is not
doubtful : they are all only partially true. Even those venerable
works which bear the names of some of the greatest of ancient
Greek and Roman writers, and which have been accepted by gen-
eration after generation, down to modern times, as stores of un-
questionable truth, have been compelled by scientific criticism,
after a long battle, to descend to the common level, and to confess
to a large admixture of error. I might fairly take this for grant-
ed ; but it may be well that I should intrench myself behind the
very apposite words of a historical authority who is certainly not
obnoxious to even a suspicion of skeptical tendencies :

Time was — and that not very long ago — when all the relations of ancient au-
thors concerning the old world were received with a ready belief; and an unrea-
soning and uncritical faith accepted with equal satisfaction the narrative of the
campaigns of Caesar and of the doings of Romulus, the account of Alexander's
marches and of the conquests of Semiramis. We can most of us remember when,
in this country, the whole story of regal Rome, and even the legend of the Trojan
settlement in Latium, were seriously placed before boys as history and discoursed
of as unhesitatingly and in as dogmatic a tone as the tale of the Catiline conspiracy
or the conquest of Britain. . . .

But all this is now changed. The last century has seen the birth and growth

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND OF SCIENCE. 633

of a new science — the science of Historical Criticism. . . . The whole world of
profane history has been revolutionized. ... *

If these utterances were true when they fell from the lips of a
Bampton lecturer in 1859, with how much greater force do they
appeal to us now, when the immense labors of the generation now
passing away constitute one vast illustration of the power and
fruitfulness of scientific methods of investigation in history, no
less than in all other departments of knowledge !

At the present time, I suppose, there is no one who doubts that
histories which appertain to any other people than the Jews, and
their spiritual progeny in the first century, fall within the second
class of the three enumerated. Like Goethe's Autobiography,
they might all be entitled Wahrheit und Dichtung — Truth and
Fiction. The proportion of the two constituents changes indefi-
nitely ; and the quality of the fiction varies through the whole
gamut of unveracity. But " Dichtung " is always there. For the
most acute and learned of historians can not remedy the imper-
fections of his sources of information ; nor can the most impartial
wholly escape the influence of the " personal equation " generated
by his temperament' and by his education. Therefore, from the
narratives of Herodotus to those set forth in yesterday's Times,
all history is to be read subject to the warning that fiction has its
share therein. The modern vast development of fugitive litera-
ture can not be the unmitigated evil that some do vainly say it is,
since it has put an end to the popular delusion of less press-ridden
times, that what appears in print must be true. We should rather
hope that some beneficent influence may create among the erudite
a like healthy suspicion of manuscripts and inscriptions, how-
ever ancient ; for a bulletin may lie, even though it be written in
cuneiform characters. Hotspur's starling, that was to be taught
to speak nothing but " Mortimer " into the ears of King Henry IV,
might be a useful inmate of every historian's library, if " Fiction "
were substituted for the name of Harry Percy's friend.

But it was the chief object of the lecturer to the congregation
gathered in St. Mary's, Oxford, thirty-one years ago, to prove to
them, by evidence gathered with no little labor and marshaled
with much skill, that one group of historical works was exempt
from the general rule ; and that the narratives contained in the
canonical Scriptures are free from any admixture of error. With
justice and candor, the lecturer impresses upon his hearers that
the special distinction of Christianity, among the religions of the
world, lies in its claim to be historical ; to be surely founded upon

* Bampton Lectures (1859), on The Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture
Records stated anew, with Special Reference to the Doubts and Discoveries of Modern
Times, by the Rev. G. Rawlinson, M. A., pp. 5, 6.
vol. xxxvn. — 46

634 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

events which have happened, exactly as they are declared to have
happened in its sacred books ; which are true, that is, in the sense
that the statement about the execution of Charles I is true. Fur-
ther, it is affirmed that the New Testament presupposes the his-
torical exactness of the Old Testament ; that the points of contact
of " sacred " and " profane " history are innumerable ; and that
the demonstration of the falsity of the Hebrew records, especially
in regard to those narratives which are assumed to be true in the
New Testament, would be fatal to Christian theology.

My utmost ingenuity does not enable me to discover a flaw in
the argument thus briefly summarized. I am fairly at a loss to
comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian
theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of
the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or
Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history ; the iden-
tification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the
interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have
no evidential value unless they possess the historical character
assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made ;
if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh ; if the
" ten words " were not written by God's hand on the stone tables ;
if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus ; the
story of the deluge a fiction ; that of the fall a legend ; and that
of the creation the dream of a seer ; if all these definite and de-
tailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as
history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome — what
is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less
clearly enunciated ? And what about the authority of the writers
of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have
not merely accepted flimsy fictions for ' solid truths, but have
built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary
quicksands ?

But these may be said to be merely the carpings of that carnal
reason which the profane call common sense ; I hasten, therefore,
to bring up the forces of unimpeachable ecclesiastical authority
in support of my position. In a sermon preached last December,
in St. Paul's Cathedral,* Canon Liddon declares :

For Christians it will be enough to know that our Lord Jesus Christ set the
seal of his infallible sanction on the whole of the Old Testament. He found the
Hebrew canon as we have it in our hands to-day, and he treated it as an authority
which was above discussion. Nay, more : he went out of his way — if we may
reverently speak thus — to sanction not a few portions of it which modern skepti-
cism rejects. When he would warn his hearers against the dangers of spiritual

* The Worth of the Old Testament, a Sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral on the
Second Sunday in Advent, December. 8, 1889, by H. P. Liddon, D. D., D. C. L., Canon and
Chancellor of St. Paul's. Second edition, revised and with a new preface, 1890.

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND OF SCIENCE. 635

relapse, he bids thera remember "Lot's wife."* When he would point out how
worldly engagements may blind the soul to a coming judgment, he reminds them
how men ate, and drank, and married, and were given in marriage, until the day
that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroy ed them all.f If
he would put his finger on a fact in past Jewish history which, by its admitted
reality, would warrant belief in his own coming resurrection, he points to Jonah's
being three days and three nights in the whale's belly (p. 23). $

The preacher proceeds to brush aside the common— I had
almost said vulgar — apologetic pretext that Jesus was using ad
hominem arguments, or " accommodating " his better knowledge
to popular ignorance, as well as to point out the inadmissibility
of the other alternative, that he shared the popular ignorance.
And to those who hold the latter view sarcasm is dealt out with
no niggard hand :

But they will find it difficult to persuade mankind that, if he could be mis-
taken on a matter of such strictly religious importance as the value of the sacred
literature of his countrymen, he can be safely trusted about anything else. The
trustworthiness of the Old Testament is, in fact, inseparable from the trustwor-
thiness of our Lord Jesus Christ ; and if we believe that he is the true Light of
the world, we shall close our ears against suggestions impairing the credit of those
Jewish Scriptures which have received the stamp of his divine authority (p. 25).

Moreover, I learn from the public journals that a brilliant and
sharply-cut view of orthodoxy, of like hue and pattern, was only
the other day exhibited in that great theological kaleidoscope, the
pulpit of St. Mary's, recalling the time so long passed by, when a
Bampton lecturer, in the same place, performed the unusual feat
of leaving the faith of old-fashioned Christians undisturbed.

Yet many things have happened in the intervening thirty-one
years. The Bampton lecturer of 1859 had to grapple only with
the infant Hercules of historical criticism ; and he is now a full-
grown athlete, bearing on his shoulders the spoils of all the lions
that have stood in his path. Surely a martyr's courage, as well as
a martyr's faith, is needed by any one who, at this time, is pre-
pared to stand by the following plea for the veracity of the
Pentateuch :

Adam, according to the Hebrew original, was for two hundred and forty-three
years contemporary with Methuselah, who conversed for a hundred years with
Shem. Shem was for fifty years contemporary with Jacob, who probably saw
Jochebed, Moses's mother. Thus Moses might, by oral tradition, have obtained
the history of Abraham, and even of the deluge, at third hand ; and that of the
temptation and the fall at fifth hand. . . .

If it be granted — as it seems to be — that the great and stirring events in a
nation's life will, under ordinary circumstances, be remembered (apart from all
written memorials) for the space of one hundred and fifty years, being handed
down through five generations, it must be allowed (even on mere human grounds)

St. Luke, xvii, 32. \ Ibid., 27. \ St. Matt, xii, 40.

6$6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that the account which Moses gives of the temptation and the fail is to be depended
upon, if it passed through no more than four hands between him and Adam.*

If " the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ " is to stand
or fall with the belief in the sudden transmutation of the chemi-
cal components of a woman's body into sodium chloride, or on
the " admitted reality " of Jonah's ejection, safe and sound, on the
shores of the Levant, after three days' sea- journey in the stomach
of a gigantic marine animal, what possible pretext can there be
for even hinting a doubt as to the precise truth of the longevity
attributed to the patriarchs ? Who that has swallowed the camel
of Jonah's journey will be guilty of the affectation of straining at
such a historical gnat — nay, midge — as the supposition that the
mother of Moses was told the story of the flood by Jacob ; who
had it straight from Shem ; who was on friendly terms with Me-
thuselah ; who knew Adam quite well ?

Yet, by the strange irony of things, the illustrious brother of
the divine who propounded this remarkable theory has been the
guide and foremost worker of that band of investigators of the
records of Assyria and of Babylonia who have opened to our
view, not merely a new chapter, but a new volume of primeval
history, relating to the very people who have the most numerous
points of contact with the life of the ancient Hebrews. Now,
whatever imperfections may yet obscure the full value of the
Mesopotamian records, everything that has been clearly ascer-
tained tends to the conclusion that the assignment of no more
than four thousand years to the period between the time of the
origin of mankind and that of Augustus Csesar is wholly inad-
missible. Therefore, that biblical chronology, which Canon Raw-
linson trusted so implicitly in 1859, is relegated by all serious crit-
ics to the domain of fable.

But if scientific method, operating in the region of history, of
philology, of archaeology, in the course of the last thirty or forty
years, has become thus formidable to the theological dogmatist,
what may not be said about scientific method working in the prov-
ince of physical science ? For, if it be true that the canonical
Scriptures have innumerable points of contact with civil history,
it is no less true that they have almost as many with natural his-
tory ; and their accuracy is put to the test as severely by the latter
as by the former. The origin of the present state of the heavens
and the earth is a problem which lies strictly within the province
of physical science ; so is that of the origin of man among living
things ; so is that of the physical changes which the earth has un-
dergone since the origin of man ; so is that of the origin of the
various races and nations of men, with all their varieties of lan-

* Bampton Lectures, 1859, pp. 50, 51.

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND OF SCIENCE. 637

guage and physical conformation. Whether the earth moves
round the sun or the contrary ; whether the bodily and mental
diseases of men and animals are caused by evil spirits or not ;
whether there is such an agency as witchcraft or not — all these
are purely scientific questions ; and to all of them the canonical
Scriptures profess to give true answers. And though nothing is
more common than the assumption* that these books come into
conflict only with the speculative part of modern physical science,
no assumption can have less foundation.

The antagonism between natural knowledge and the Penta-
teuch would be as great if the speculations of our time had never
been heard of. It arises out of contradiction upon matters of fact.
The books of ecclesiastical authority declare that certain events
happened in a certain fashion ; the books of scientific authority
say they did not. As it seems that this unquestionable truth has
not yet penetrated among many of those who speak and write on
these subjects, it may be useful to give a full illustration of it.
And for that purpose I propose to deal, at some length, with the
narrative of the Noachian Deluge given in Genesis.

The Bampton lecturer, in 1859, and the Canon of St. Paul's, in
1890, are in full agreement that this history is true, in the sense
in which I have defined historical truth. The former is of opinion
that the account attributed to Berosus records a tradition —

not drawn from the Hebrew record, much less the foundation of that record;
yet coinciding with it in the most remarkable way. The Babylonian version is
tricked out with a few extravagances, as the monstrous size of the vessel and the
translation of Xisuthros ; but otherwise it is the Hebrew history down to its mi-
nutim (p. 64).

Moreover, correcting Niebuhr, the Bampton lecturer points out
that the narrative of Berosus distinctly implies the universality
of the flood :

It is plain that the waters are represented as prevailing above the tops of the
loftiest mountains in Armenia — a height which must have been seen to involve
the submersion of all the countries with which the Babylonians were acquainted
(p. 66).

I may remark, in passing, that many people think the size of
Noah's ark " monstrous," considering the probable state of the art
of ship-building only sixteen hundred years after the origin of
man ; while others are so unreasonable as to inquire why the
translation of Enoch is less an extravagance than that of Xisu-
thros. It is more important, however, to note that the univer-
sality of the deluge is recognized, not merely as a part of the

* For example, it appears to me to pervade and vitiate Mr. Wilfrid Ward's argument
in the last number of this review.

638 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

story, but as a necessary consequence of some of its details. The
latest exponent of Anglican orthodoxy, as we have seen, insists
upon the accuracy of the Pentateuchal history of the flood in a
still more forcible manner. It is cited as one of those very narra-
tives to which the authority of the Founder of Christianity is
pledged, and upon the accuracy of which " the trustworthiness of
our Lord Jesus Christ " is staked, just as others have staked it
upon the truth of the histories of demoniac possession in the
Gospels.

ISTow, when those who put their trust in scientific methods of
ascertaining the truth in the province of natural history find
themselves confronted and opposed on their own ground by eccle-
siastical pretensions to better knowledge, it is, undoubtedly, most
desirable for them to make sure that their conclusions, whatever
they may be, are well founded. And, if they put aside the un-
authorized interference with their business and relegate the Pen-
tateuchal history to the region of pure fiction, they are bound to
assure themselves that they do so because the plainest teachings
of nature (apart from all doubtful speculations) are irreconcilable
with the assertions which they reject.

At the present time it is difficult to persuade serious scientific
inquirers to occupy themselves, in any way, with the Noachian
Deluge. They look at you with a smile and a shrug, and say
they have more important matters to attend to than mere anti-
quarianism. But it was not so in my youth. At that time, geol-
ogists and biologists could hardly follow to the end any path of
inquiry without finding the way blocked by Noah and his ark, or
by the first chapter of Genesis ; and it was a serious matter, in
this country at any rate, for a man to be suspected of doubting
the literal truth of the diluvial or any other Pentateuchal history.
The fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Geological Club
in 1825 was, if I remember rightly, the last occasion on which the
late Sir Charles Lyell spoke to even so small a public as the mem-
bers of that body. Our veteran leader lighted up once more, and,
referring to the difficulties which beset his early efforts to create
a rational science of geology, spoke with his wonted clearness and
vigor of the social ostracism which pursued him after the publi-
cation of the Principles of Geology, in 1830, on account of the
obvious tendency of that noble work to discredit the Pentateuchal
accounts of the creation and the deluge. If my younger contem-
poraries find this hard to believe, I may refer them to a grave
book, On the Doctrine of the Deluge, published eight years later,
and dedicated by its author to his father, the then Archbishop of
York. The first chapter refers to the treatment of the Mo-
saic Deluge, by Dr. Buckland and Mr. Lyell, in the following
terms :

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND OF SCIENCE. 639

Their respect for revealed religion has prevented them from arraying them-
selves openly against the scriptural account of it — much less do they deny its truth
— but they are in a great hurry to escape from the consideration of it, and evi-
dently concur in the opinion of Linnaeus, that no proofs whatever of the deluge
are to be discovered in the structure of the earth (p. 1).

And after an attempt to reply to some of Lyell's arguments,
which it would be cruel to reproduce, the writer continues :

When, therefore, upon such slender grounds, it is determined, in answer to
those who insist upon its universality, that the Mosaic Deluge must be considered
a preternatural event, far beyond the reach of philosophical inquiry ; not only as
to the causes employed to produce it, but also as to the effects most likely to result
from it ; that determination wears an aspect of skepticism, which, however much
soever it may be unintentional in the mind of the writer, yet can not but produce
an evil impression on those who are already predisposed to carp and cavil at the
evidences of revelation (pp. 8, 9).

The kindly and courteous writer of these curious passages is
evidently unwilling to make the geologists the victims of general
opprobrium by pressing the obvious consequences of their teach-
ing home. One is, therefore, pained to think of the feelings with
which, if he lived so long as to become acquainted with the
Dictionary of the Bible, he must have perused the article Noah,
written by a dignitary of the Church for that standard compen-
dium and published in 1863. For the doctrine of the universality
of the deluge is therein altogether given up ; and I permit myself
to hope that a long criticism of the story from the point of view
of natural science, with which, at the request of the learned theo-
logian who wrote it, I supplied him, may have in some degree con-
tributed toward this happy result.

Notwithstanding diligent search, I have been unable to dis-
cover that the universality of the deluge has any defender left, at
least among those who have so far mastered the rudiments of nat-
ural knowledge as to be able to appreciate the weight of evidence
against it. For example, when I turned to the Speaker's Bible,
published under the sanction of high Anglican authority, I found
the following judicial and judicious deliverance, the skillful word-
ing of which may adorn, but does not hide, the completeness of
the surrender of the old teaching :

"Without pronouncing too hastily on any fair inferences from the words of
Scripture, we may reasonably say that their most natural interpretation is that
the whole race of man had become grievously corrupted since the faithful had
intermingled with the ungodly ; that the inhabited world was consequently filled
with violence, and that God had decreed to destroy all mankind except one single
family ; that, therefore, all that portion of the earth, perhaps as yet a very small
portion, into which mankind had spread was overwhelmed by water. The ark
was ordained to save one faithful family; and lest that family, on the subsidence
of the waters, should find the whole country round them a desert, a pair of all the

640 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

beasts of the land and of the fowls of the air were preserved along with them, and
along with them went forth to replenish the now desolated continent. The words
of Scripture (confirmed as they are by universal tradition) appear at least to mean
as much as this. They do not necessarily mean more.*

In the third edition of Kitto's Cyclopaedia of Bibical Literature
(1876), the article Deluge, written by my friend the present distin-
guished head of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, extin-
guishes the universality doctrine as thoroughly as might be ex-
pected from its authorship; and, since the writer of the article
Noah refers his readers to that entitled Deluge, it is to be sup-
posed, notwithstanding his generally orthodox tone, that he does
not dissent from its conclusions. Again, the writers in Herzog's
Keal-Encyclopadie (Bd. X, 1882) and in Riehm's Handworterbuch
(1884) — both works with a conservative leaning — are on the same
side ; and Diestel,f in his full discussion of the subject, remorse-
lessly rejects the universality doctrine. Even that stanch oppo-
nent of scientific rationalism — may I say rationality ? — Z6ckler,J
flinches from a distinct defense of the thesis, any opposition to
which, well within my recollection, was howled down by the or-
thodox as mere " infidelity." All that, in his sore straits, Dr. Zock-
ler is able to do, is to pronounce a faint commendation upon a par-
ticularly absurd attempt at reconciliation, which would make out
the Noachian Deluge to be a catastrophe which occurred at the
end of the Glacial epoch. This hypothesis involves only the trifle
of a physical revolution of which geology knows nothing ; and
which, if it secured the accuracy of the Pentateuchal writer about
the fact of the deluge, would leave the details of his account as
irreconciliable with the truths of elementary physical science as
ever. Thus I may be permitted to spare myself and my readers
the weariness of a recapitulation of the overwhelming arguments
against the universality of the deluge, which they will now find
for themselves stated, as fully and forcibly as could be wished,
by Anglican and other theologians, whose orthodoxy and con-
servative tendencies have, hitherto, been above suspicion. Yet
many fully admit (and, indeed, nothing can be plainer) that the
Pentateuchal narrator means to convey that, as a matter of fact,
the whole earth known to him was inundated ; nor is it less obvi-
ous that unless all mankind, with the exception of Noah and his
family, were actually destroyed, the references to the flood in the
New Testament are unintelligible.

But I am quite aware that the strength of the demonstration
that no universal deluge ever took place has produced a change of
front in the army of apologetic writers. They have imagined that

* Commentary on Genesis, by the Bishop of Ely, p. 77. f Die Sintflut, 1876.

X Theologie und Naturmssenschaft, ii, 784-791 (1877).

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND OF SCIENCE. 641

the substitution of the adjective partial for universal will save
the credit of the Pentateuch, and permit them, after all, without
too many blushes, to declare that the progress of modern science
only strengthens the authority of Moses. Nowhere have I found
the case of the advocates of this method of escaping from the dif-
ficulties of the actual position better put than in the lecture of
Prof. Diestel to which I have referred. After frankly admitting
that the old doctrine of universality involves physical impossibili-
ties, he continues :

All these difficulties fall away as soon as we give up the universality of the
deluge, and imagine a partial flooding of the earth, say in western Asia. But
have we a right to do so? The narrative speaks of "the whole earth." But what
is the meaning of this expression? Surely not the whole surface of the earth ac-
cording to the ideas of modem geographers, but, at most, according to the con-
ceptions of the biblical author. This very simple conclusion, however, is never
drawn by too many readers of the Bible. But one need only cast one's eyes over
the tenth chapter of Genesis in order to become acquainted with the geographical
horizon of the Jews. In the north it was bounded by the Black Sea and the
mountains of Armenia ; extended toward the east very little beyond the Tigris ;
hardly reached the apex of the Persian Gulf; passed, then, through the middle of
Arabia and the Red Sea; went southward through Abyssinia, and then turned
westward by the frontiers of Egypt, and inclosed the easternmost islands of the
Mediterranean (p. 11).

The justice of this observation must be admitted, no less than
the further remark that, in still earlier times, the pastoral He-
brews very probably had yet more restricted notions of what con-
stituted " the whole earth." Moreover, I, for one, fully agree with
Prof. Diestel that the motive, or generative incident, of the whole
story is to be sought in the occasionally excessive and desolating
floods of the Euphrates and Tigris.

Let us, provisionally, accept the theory of a partial deluge,
and try to form a clear mental picture of the occurrence. Let
us suppose that, for forty days and forty nights, such a vast
quantity of water was poured upon the ground that the whole
surface of Mesopotamia was covered by water to a depth cer-
tainly greater, probably much greater, than fifteen cubits, or
twenty feet (Gen. vii, 20). The inundation prevails upon the
earth for one hundred and fifty days ; and then the flood gradu-
ally decreases, until, on the seventeenth day of the seventh month
the ark, which had previously floated on its surface, grounds upon
the "mountains of Ararat" * (Gen. viii, 34). Then, as Diestel has
acutely pointed out (Sintflut, p. 13), we are to imagine the further
subsidence of the flood to take place so gradually that it was not
until nearly two months and a half after this time (that is to say,

* It is very doubtful if this means the region of the Armenian Ararat. More probably
it designates some part, either of the Kurdish range or of its southeastern continuation.
vol. xxxvii. — 47

642 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on the first day of the tenth month) that the " tops of the mount-
ains " became visible. Hence it follows that, if the ark drew even
as much as twenty feet of water, the level of the inundation fell
very slowly — at a rate of only a few inches a day — until the top
of the mountain on which it rested became visible. This is an
amount of movement which, if it took place in the sea, would be
overlooked by ordinary people on the shore. But the Mesopota-
mian plain slopes gently, from an elevation of five hundred or six
hundred feet at its northern end, to the sea, at its southern end,
with hardly so much as a notable ridge to break its uniform flat-
ness, for three hundred to four hundred miles. These being the
conditions of the case, the following inquiry naturally presents
itself : not, be it observed, as a recondite problem, generated by
modern speculation, but as a plain suggestion flowing out of that
very ordinary and archaic piece of knowledge that water can not
be piled up in a heap like sand ; or that it seeks the lowest level.
When, after one hundred and fifty days, " the fountains also of
the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain
from heaven was restrained " (Gen. viii, 2), what prevented the
mass of water, several, possibly very many, fathoms deep, which
covered, say, the present site of Bagdad, from sweeping seaward
in a furious torrent ; and, in a very few hours, leaving, not only
the " tops of the mountains," but the whole plain, save any minor
depressions, bare ? How could its subsidence, by any possibility,
be an affair of weeks and months ?

And if this difficulty is not enough, let any one try to imagine
how a mass of water several, perhaps very many, fathoms deep,
could be accumulated on a flat surface of land rising well above
the sea, and separated from it by no sort of barrier. Most people
know Lord's Cricket-ground. Would it not be in absurd contra-
diction to our common knowledge of the properties of water to
imagine that, if all the mains of all the water- works of London
were turned on to it, they could maintain a heap of water twenty
feet deep over its level surface ? Is it not obvious that the water,
whatever momentary accumulation might take place at first,
would not stop there, but that it would dash, like a mighty mill-
race, southward down the gentle slope which ends in the Thames ?
And is it not further obvious, that whatever depth of water might
be maintained over the cricket-ground, so long as all the mains
poured on to it, anything which floated there would be speedily
whirled away by the current, like a cork in a gutter when the
rain pours ? But if this is so, then it is no less certain that Noah's
deeply laden, sailless, oarless, and rudderless craft, if by good
fortune it escaped capsizing in whirlpools, or having its bottom
knocked into holes by snags (like those which prove fatal even
to well-built steamers on the Mississippi in our day), would have

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND OF SCIENCE. 643

speedily found itself a good way down the Persian Gulf, and not
long after in the Indian Ocean, somewhere between Arabia and
Hindostan. Even if, eventually, the ark might have gone ashore,
with other jetsam and flotsam, on the coasts of Arabia, or of Hin-
dostan, or of the Maldives, or of Madagascar, its return to the
" mountains of Ararat " would have been a miracle more stupen-
dous than all the rest.

Thus, the last state of the would-be reconcilers of the story of
the deluge with fact is worse than the first. All that they have
done is to transfer the contradictions to established truth from
the region of science proper to that of common information and
common sense. For, really, the assertion that the surface of a
body of deep water, to which no addition was made, and which
there was nothing to stop from running into the sea, sank at the
rate of only a few inches or even feet a day, simply outrages the
most ordinary and familiar teachings of every man's daily expe-
rience. A child may see the folly of it.

In addition, I may remark that the necessary assumption of
the " partial deluge " hypothesis (if it is confined to Mesopotamia)
that the Hebrew writer must have meant low hills when he said
"high mountains" — is quite untenable. On the eastern side of
the Mesopotamian plain, the snowy peaks of the frontier ranges
of Persia are visible from Bagdad,* and even the most ignorant
herdsmen in the neighborhood of " Ur of the Chaldees," near its
western limit, could hardly have been unacquainted with the
comparatively elevated plateau of the Syrian Desert which lay
close at hand. But, surely, we must suppose the biblical writer
to be acquainted with the highlands of Palestine and with the
masses of the Sinaitic Peninsula, which soar more than eight
thousand feet above the sea, if he knew of no higher elevations ;
and, if so, he could not well have meant to refer to mere hillocks
when he said that " all the high mountains which were under the
whole heaven were covered" (Gen. vii, 19). Even the hill-country
of Galilee reaches an elevation of four thousand feet ; and a flood
which covered it could by no possibility have been other than uni-
versal in its superficial extent. Water really can not be got to
stand at, say, four thousand feet above the sea-level over Pales-
tine, without covering the rest of the globe to the same height.
Even if in the course of Noah's six hundredth year some prodi-
gious convulsion had sunk the whole region inclosed within " the
horizon of the geographical knowledge * of the Israelites by that
much, and another had pushed it up again, just in time to catch
the ark upon " the mountains of Ararat," matters are not much

* So Reclus (Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, ix, 386), but I find the statement doubted
by an authority of the first rank.

644 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mended. I am afraid to think of what would have become of
a vessel so little seaworthy as , the ark and of its very numerous
passengers, under the peculiar obstacles to quiet notation which
such rapid movements of depression and upheaval would have
generated.

Thus, in view, not, I repeat, of the recondite speculations of
infidel philosophers, but in the face of the plainest and most com-
monplace of ascertained physical facts, the story of the Noachian
Deluge has no more claim to credit than has that of Deucalion ;
and, whether it was or was not suggested by the familiar ac-
quaintance of its originators with the effects of unusually great
overflows of the Tigris and Euphrates, it is utterly devoid of his-
torical truth.

That is, in my judgment, the necessary result of the application
of criticism, based upon assured physical knowledge, to the story
of the deluge. And it is satisfactory that the criticism which is
based, not upon literary and historical speculation, but on well-
ascertained facts in the departments of literature and of history,
tends to exactly the same conclusion.

For I find this much agreed upon by all biblical scholars of re-
pute, that the story of the deluge in Genesis is separable into at
least two sets of statements ; and that, when the statements thus
separated are recombined in their proper order, each set furnishes
an account of the event, coherent and complete within itself, but
in some respects discordant with that afforded by the other set.
This fact, as I understand, is not disputed. Whether one of these
is the work of an Elohist and the other of a Jehovist narrator ;
whether the two have been pieced together in this strange fashion
because, in the estimation of the compilers and editors of the Pen-
tateuch, they had equal and independent authority, or not; or
whether there is some other way of accounting for it, are questions
the answer to which do not affect the fact. If possible, I avoid a
'priori arguments. But still, I think it may be urged, without im-
prudence, that a narrative having this structure is hardly such as
might be expected from a writer possessed of full and infallibly
accurate knowledge. Once more, it would seem that it is not ne-
cessarily the mere inclination of the skeptical spirit to question
everything, or the willful blindness of infidels, which prompts
grave doubts as to the value of a narrative thus curiously unlike
the ordinary run of veracious histories.

But the voice of archaeological and historical criticism still has
to be heard ; and it gives forth no uncertain sound. The marvel-
ous recovery of the records of an antiquity, far superior to any
that can be ascribed to the Pentateuch, which has been effected
by the decipherers of cuneiform characters, has put us in posses-

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND OF SCIENCE. 645

sion of a series, once more, not of speculations, but of facts, which
have a most remarkable bearing upon the question of the trust-
worthiness of the narrative of the flood. It is established that,
for centuries before the asserted migration of Terah from Ur of
the Chaldees (which, according to the orthodox interpreters of
the Pentateuch, took place after the year 2000 B. a), lower Meso-
potamia was the seat of a civilization in which art and science
and literature had attained a development formerly unsuspected,
or, if there were faint reports of it, treated as fabulous. And it is
also no matter of speculation, but a fact, that the libraries of these
people contain versions of a long epic poem, one of the twelve
books of which tells a story of a deluge which, in a number of its
leading features, corresponds with the story attributed to Berosus,
no less than with the story given in Genesis, with curious exact-
ness. Thus, the correctness of Canon Rawlinson's conclusion,
cited above, that the story of Berosus was neither drawn from the
Hebrew record, nor is the foundation of it, can hardly be ques-
tioned. It is highly probable, if not certain, that Berosus relied
upon one of the versions (for there seem to have been several) of
the old Babylonian epos, extant in his time ; and if that is a rea-
sonable conclusion, why is it unreasonable to believe that the two
stories, which the Hebrew compiler has put together in such inar-
tistic fashion, were ultimately derived from the same source ? I
say ultimately, because it does not at all follow that the two ver-
sions, possibly trimmed by the Jehovistic writer on the one hand,
and by the Elohistic on the other, to suit Hebrew requirements,
may not have been current among the Israelites for ages. And
they may have acquired great authority before they were com-
bined in the Pentateuch.

Looking at the convergence of all these lines of evidence to the
one conclusion — that the story of the flood in Genesis is merely a
Bowdlerized version of one of the oldest pieces of purely fictitious
literature extant ; that whether this is or is not its origin, the
events asserted in it to have taken place assuredly never did take
place ; further, that, in point of fact, the story, in the plain and
logically necessary sense of its words, has long since been given
up by orthodox and conservative commentators of the Established
Church — I can but admire the courage and clear foresight of the
Anglican divine who tells us that we must be prepared to choose
between the trustworthiness of scientific method and the trust-
worthiness of that which the Church declares to be divine au-
thority. For, to my mind, this declaration of war to the knife
against secular science, even in its most elementary forms ; this
rejection without a moment's hesitation of any and all evidence
which conflicts with theological dogma, is the only position which
is logically reconcilable with the axioms of orthodoxy. If the

6^6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Gospels truly report that which an incarnation of the God of
Truth communicated to the world, then it surely is absurd to
attend to any other evidence touching matters about which he
made any clear statement, or the truth of which is distinctly im-
plied by his words. If the exact historical truth of the gospel is
an axiom of Christianity, it is as just and right for a Christian to
say, Let us " close our ears against suggestions " of scientific crit-
ics, as it is for the man of science to refuse to waste his time
upon circle-squarers and flat-earth fanatics.

It is commonly reported that the manifesto by which the
Canon of St. Paul's proclaims that he nails the colors of the
straitest biblical infallibility to the mast of the ship ecclesias-
tical, was put forth as a counterblast to Lux Mundi ; and that
the passages which I have more particularly quoted are directed
against the essay on The Holy Spirit and Inspiration in that col-
lection of treatises by Anglican divines of high standing, who
must assuredly be acquitted of conscious "infidel" proclivities.
I fancy that rumor must, for once, be right, for it is impossible to
imagine a more direct and diametrical contradiction than that be-
tween the passages from the sermon cited above and those which
follow :

What is questioned is that our Lord's words foreclose certain critical positions
as to the character of Old Testament literature. For example, does his use
of Jonah's resurrection as a type of his own, depend in any real degree upon
whether it is historical fact or allegory ? . . . Once more, our Lord uses the time
before the flood, to illustrate the carelessness of men before his own coming. . . .
In referring to the flood he certainly suggests that he is treating it as typical, for
he introduces circumstances — " eating and drinking, marrying and giving in mar-
riage"— which have no counterpart in the original narrative (pp. 358, 359).

While insisting on the flow of inspiration through the whole
of the Old Testament, the essayist does not admit its universality.
Here, also, the new apologetic demands a partial flood :

But does the inspiration of the recorder guarantee the exact historical truth
of what he records ? And, in matter of fact, can the record, with due regard to
legitimate historical criticism, be pronounced true ? Now, to the latter of these
two questions (and they are quite distinct questions) we may reply that there is
nothing to prevent our believing, as our faith strongly disposes us to believe, that
the record from Abraham downward is, in substance, in the strict sense historical
(p. 351).

It would appear, therefore, that there is nothing to prevent
our believing that the record, from Abraham upward, consists
of stories in the strict sense unhistorical, and that the pre-
Abrahamic narratives are mere moral and religious "types'
and parables.

I confess I soon lose my way when I try to follow those who

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND OF SCIENCE. 647

walk delicately among " types " and allegories. A certain passion
for clearness forces me to ask, bluntly, whether the writer means
to say that Jesus did not believe the stories in question, or that he
did ? When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that * the flood
came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the deluge
really took place, or not ? It seems to me that, as the narrative
mentions Noah's wife, and his sons' wives, there is good scriptural
warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and
were given in marriage ; and I should have thought that their
eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in
the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what
sort of value, as an illustration of God's methods of dealing with
sin, has an account of an event that has never happened ? If no
flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more
worth than the cry of " wolf " when there is no wolf ? If Jonah's
three days' residence in the whale is not an " admitted reality,"
how could it " warrant belief " in the " coming resurrection " ? If
Lot's wife was not turned into a pillar of salt, the bidding those
who turn back from the narrow path to u remember " it is, mor-
ally, about on a level with telling a naughty child that a bogy is
coming to fetch it away. Suppose that a conservative orator
warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes,
lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre ;
what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he,
personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the
deeds attributed to him ?

Like all other attempts to reconcile the results of scientifically
conducted investigation with the demands of the outworn creeds
of ecclesiasticism, the essay on Inspiration is just such a failure
as must await mediation, when the mediator is unable properly
to appreciate the weight of the evidence for the case of one of the
two parties. The question of "inspiration" really possesses no
interest for those who have cast ecclesiasticism and all its works
aside, and have no faith in any source of truth save that which is
reached by the patient application of scientific methods. Theories
of inspiration are speculations as to the means by which the au-
thors of statements, in the Bible or elsewhere, have been led to say
what they have said — and it assumes that natural agencies are in-
sufficient for the purpose. I prefer to stop short of this problem,
finding it more profitable to undertake the inquiry which natu-
rally precedes it — namely, Are these statements true or false ? If
they are true, it may be worth while to go into the question of
their supernatural generation ; if they are false, it certainly is
not worth mine.

Now, not only do I hold it to be proved that the story of the
deluge is a pure fiction ; but I have no hesitation in afiirming the

648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

same thing of the story of the creation.* Between these two lies
the story of the creation of man and woman and their fall from
primitive innocence, which is even more monstrously improbable
than either of the other two, though, from the nature of the case, it
is not so easily capable of direct refutation. It can be demonstrated
that the earth took longer than six days in the making, and that
the deluge, as described, is a physical impossibility ; but there is
no proving, especially to those who are perfect in the art of clos-
ing their ears to that which they do not wish to hear, that a
snake did not speak, or that Eve was not made out of one of
Adam's ribs.

The compiler of Genesis, in its present form, evidently had a
definite plan in his mind. His countrymen, like all other men,
were doubtless curious to know how the world began ; how men,
and especially wicked men, came into being, and how existing
nations and races rose among the descendants of one stock ; and,
finally, what was the history of their own particular tribe. They,
like ourselves, desired to solve the four great problems of cos-
mogeny, anthropogeny, ethnogeny, and geneogeny. The Penta-
teuch furnishes the solutions which appeared satisfactory to its
author. One of these, as we have seen, was borrowed from a
Babylonian fable ; and I know of no reason to suspect any differ-
ent origin from the rest. Now, I would ask, is the story of the
fabrication of Eve to be regarded as one of those pre-Abrahamic
narratives, the historical truth of which is an open question, in
face of the reference to it in a speech unhappily famous for the
legal oppression to which it has been wrongfully forced to lend
itself ?

Have ye not read, that he which made them from the beginning made them
male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother,
and cleave to his wife ; and the twain shall become one flesh ? (Matthew, xix, 5).

If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth
verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of lan-
guage ? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with
the story of the fall, as a " type " or " allegory/' what becomes of
the foundation of Pauline theology ? —

For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

* So far as I know, the narrative of the creation is not now held to be true, in the
sense in which I have denned historical truth, by any of the reconcilers. As for the at-
tempts to stretch the Pentateuchal days into periods of thousands or millions of years, the
verdict of the eminent biblical scholar, Dr. Riehm (Der biblische Schopfungsbericht, 1881,
pp. 15, 16), on such pranks of "Auslegungskunst " should be final. Why do the reconcilers
take Goethe's advice seriously ? —

" Im Auslegen seyd frisch und munter !
Legt ihr's nicht aus, so legt was unter.'"

THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND OF SCIENCE. 649

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians,
xv, 21, 22).

If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than
Prometheus, and if the story of the fall is merely an instructive
" type," comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what
value has Paul's dialectic ?

While, therefore, every right-minded man must sympathize
with the efforts of those theologians who have not been able
altogether to close their ears to the still, small voice of reason, to
escape from the fetters which ecclesiasticism. has forged, the
melancholy fact remains, that the position they have taken up is
hopelessly untenable. It is raked alike by the old-fashioned artil-
lery of the churches and by the fatal weapons of precision with
which the enfants perdus of the advancing forces of science are
armed. They must surrender, or fall back into a more sheltered
position. And it is possible that they may long find safety in such
retreat.

It is, indeed, probable that the proportional number of those
who will distinctly profess their belief in the transubstantiation of
Lot's wife, and the anticipatory experience of submarine naviga-
tion by Jonah ; in water standing fathoms deep on the side of a
declivity without anything to hold it up ; and in devils who enter
swine, will not increase. But neither is there ground for much
hope that the proportion of those who cast aside these fictions
and adopt the consequence of that repudiation, are, for some gen-
erations, likely to constitute a majority. Our age is a day of com-
promises. The present and the near future seem given over to
those happily, if curiously, constituted people who see as little
difficulty in throwing aside any amount of post-Abrahamic script-
ural narrative, as the authors of Lux Mundi see in sacrificing the
pre-Abrahamic stories ; and, having distilled away every incon-
venient matter of fact in Christian history, continue to pay divine
honors to the residue. There really seems to be no reason why the
next generation should not listen to a Bampton lecture modeled
upon that addressed to the last :

Time was — and that not very long ago — when ail the relations of biblical au-
thors concerning the old world were received with a ready belief ; and an un-
reasoning and uncritical faith accepted with equal satisfaction the narrative of the
captivity and the doings of Moses at the court of Pharaoh, the account of the
apostolic meeting in the Epistle to the Galatians, and of the fabrication of Eve.
We can most of us remember when, in this country, the whole story of the Exodus,
and even the legend of Jonah, were seriously placed before boys as history, and
discoursed of in as dogmatic a tone as the tale of Agincourt or the history of the
Norman Conquest.

But all this is now changed. The last century has seen the growth of scien-
tific criticism to its full length. The whole world of history has been revolution-

650 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ized, and the mythology which embarrassed earnest Christians has vanished as an
evil mist, the lifting of which has only more fully revealed the lineaments of infal-
lible truth. No longer in contact with fact of any kind, faith stands bow and
forever proudly inaccessible to the attacks of the infidel.

So far the apologist of the future. Why not ? Cantabit
vacuus. — Nineteenth Century.

■♦•»

A LITTLE BOYS' GAME WITH A BALL. -

By HENEY J. PHILPOTT.

A YEAR or two ago there went the rounds of the daily papers
a few verses intended to express the feelings of an elderly
lady from the country when her city folks had taken her to see
the national game. It was all very interesting and funny, but
may be summed up in her of tenest-repeated couplet :

" Jist a passel o' big men a-playin'
A little boys' game with a ball " —

which was a true bill. But how came these men to be playing
this little boys' game ? Here steps in the student of sociology,
and offers explanations in abundance. The truly great philoso-
pher of this and all generations is the man who for the first time
considers unconsidered trifles. Herein lies the greatness of Her-
bert Spencer.

In this matter we all have a duty which most of us are likely
to forget. We should record for the benefit of the coming phi-
losopher, who by the process of evolution is sure to have a finer
and more effective brain than ours, certain facts which seem triv-
ial to us, but which may be of transcendent importance to him.
What if our predecessors had scrupulously done likewise ? How
much more satisfactory would have been our nineteenth-century
philosophy !

Hit or miss, I propose to describe a few of the ball-plays I
learned as pupil and teacher in country schools within twenty
miles of the Mississippi River, and about half-way between St.
Louis and St. Paul. I shall not be deterred by the reflection that
others may be able, if they would, to describe a greater variety of
ball-games.

Did you ever stop to think how much of human life there is
consumed in games of ball ? A marble is a ball. So is a billiard-
ball, a croquet-ball. So — did you ever think of it ? — are shot and
shell, though their elongation in modern military engineering has
made war less truly than it used to be

"Jist a passel o' big men a-playin'
A little boys' game with a ball."

A LITTLE BOYS' GAME WITH A BALL. 651

Perhaps the first thing that boys in their games ever did with
a ball was to hit other boys with it. At any rate, their games in
my time have been made of such simple elements as the effort to —

1. Hit somebody. 2. Hit a target. 3. Hit another ball, as in
marbles. 4. Catch the ball. 5. Bat the ball. 6. Run to a goal,
or out of reach of the ball, before being hit or " crossed out."
And, of course — 7. Prevent the enemy from accomplishing any
of these things.

Ball-games are products, and pretty good illustrations, of the
process of evolution. Hence it is fitting to proceed in their dis-
cussion as Nature proceeds in evolution — from the simple to the
complex. We can beat Haeckel at this. He can not bridge the
gap between life and not-life, but we can go back of all ball-games
to a primordial ball-playing which is not a game at all. When a
number of boys engage in indiscriminately hitting one another,
they often enjoy the excitement, but they are not playing a game.
They begin to play a game when they introduce forfeits, or re-
wards, or both.

The commonest forfeit is that of the right to play — that is, the
player who misses is u out " for the remainder of the game or inn-
ing. The moment this was introduced, what was called " sock-
ball " became a real game. There were no bases, no bats, no any-
thing except a lot of boys, and a ball with which they were trying
to hit one another. But if one threw and missed, or his ball was
caught, he was out. When all but one, or an agreed number,
were out, the game was ended, and a new one was started. Of
course, the last boy could not be put out, for there were no players
for him to throw at and miss. He won the game, and his reward
was the first throw on the new game.

The game of "hole-ball," or " wibble-wobble," retained these
features, and added a hole in the ground large enough to nicely
hold the ball. The reward of the winner was not the first throw,
but the privilege of placing the ball in the hole and naming the
first thrower, who had the advantage of a throw before the play-
ers had time to scatter — for, of course, they all stood close by the
hole until the name was called, each thinking it might be his own.
It required considerable alertness to be ready to instantly do
either one of two things — seize and throw the ball, or run away.
Faculties were called into exercise which, if duly cultivated, help
to make success all through life. They are the faculties needed
by the general, who may at any moment be forced to fight or
forced to retreat. As the game proceeds, the players come back
to the hole every time one goes out on a miss or a catch, and the
one who is missed or catches the ball puts it in the hole and names
the next thrower, and so on until all but one are out. The hole
serves constantly as a base of operations, and the player who at

652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

any time is hit, and must therefore try to hit a fellow, may throw
from where he finds the ball on the ground, or from any point be-
tween there and the hole. That was our rule, at any rate.

The hole was sometimes replaced by the boys' hats, and the
owner of the hat into which the ball was dropped was the next
thrower. This was called " hat-ball." A new feature was some-
times introduced. A single miss did not put the player out. For
each miss he put a chip or pebble into his hat for a counter, called
a " pig." When he had accumulated an agreed number of pigs,
he was out.

Retaining all these features except the hats, the game of " roll-
a-hole " went back to the hole in the ground ; but, instead of a sin-
gle one, there was a row of them — as many as there were players.
The ball was rolled along the line of these holes, and would stop
in one of them. Thus the thrower was chosen by lot, and not by
discrimination ; though, of course, this was not always true if the
ball-holder was dishonest, and had any desire to discriminate.
He was closely watched, and often accused of unfairness. It is
ever thus.

I do not recall any other games of this class that we played.
The most popular of them was the one called " wibble-wobble " in
our school, and " hole-ball " wherever else I have seen it. Hat-
ball and roll-a-hole may be higher forms, the latter seeming to me
to be the last of its line.

There is an allied line of games which reached a more interest-
ing development. The simplest form of it that I have seen was
called " draw-base " by the boy who brought its traditions to our
school. Here for the first time the players were divided into two
opposing teams, and bases were introduced. These bases were
two, facing each other, and the ball was thrown from one base to
the other in the effort to hit one of the opposing players, all of
whom were standing on the bases. A player who was hit, unless
he caught the ball, was not put out, but became an active recruit
in the ranks of his late enemies. When one base was in this way
emptied of its players, the game was over. Played with a com-
mon ball, this game was voted extremely stupid, and was rarely
indulged in. But with snow-balls it formed a large part of the
winter's sport. Played with a number of balls, inside a high in-
closure, so that the balls would not have to be chased, it might be
made quite exciting.

Sometimes the two bases were on opposite sides of the school-
house, over which the ball had to be thrown to and fro until
caught, before anybody could be hit with it. Whenever it was
caught, the two teams changed sides of the school-house, and it
was while this exchange was going on that the hitting had to be
done. A player could not be hit after he reached " home." As in

A LITTLE BOYS' GAME WITH A BALL. 653

" draw-base/' the game kept on until one team swallowed up the
other. I always heard this game called "ante-over." It was
usually played by the small boys and the girls, the latter catching
the ball in their aprons. The point was to get around the house
and hit some of the other side before they knew the ball had
been caught. The bulls and bears of Wall Street make a similar
use of monopolized information.

Retaining the bases, and the division into teams or sides, the
game of " bull-pen " went away beyond the last two in complexity
and interest. It was one of our great games, and the largest boys
delighted in it. It furnishes us a step in evolution which we can
partly illustrate by a diagram. In the games of draw-base and
ante-over there are two parallel bases, thus :

The players all stand on bases,
and they all stand on an equality.
There is no specialization of duties
or privileges. In bull-pen the two
bases are subdivided into half as
many as there are players, and they
are arranged into the circumference
of a ring, as shown below.

One player stands on each base.
These are the winners of the last preceding game — the " ins." The
bases are positions of honor. The outs are a disorganized rabble,
roaming about inside the ring. Here is differentiation as Well as
division. Here is a plain case of evolution.

As in ante-over, the ball must be caught by some player before

he can hit anybody with it —
*——— unless he has just been hit

himself. In fact, it is not
"hot" at the beginning of
the game until it has passed
three times around the bases
and been caught each time at
every base. After that, any
baseman who catches it may
throw at anybody inside the

/ \

ring, who, if hit, must get the
ball, and, without going out-

\ " side the ring, must try to hit

some baseman. The basemen
have the privilege of running as far away as they please in order
to avoid being hit.

In one respect the two sides stand on an equality. The player
who misses, or whose ball is caught by the enemy, is out, and ex-
cluded from the rest of the inning. If the basemen are all out

654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

first, the other side gets the bases for an inning. If the men in
the ring are all out first, they must go back into the ring for
another inning. It is possible for one side to hold the bases all
day, but in practice the honors are pretty evenly divided.

When all the basemen but one are out, he may choose a part-
ner, and they " smuggle " the ball. They conceal it under the coat
of one, and both hold their hands under their coats as if they had
it. Then they run the bases, and the enemy, not knowing which
of the two has the ball, may be stolen upon and hit. But at any
time a baseman can throw only from a base.

This is, so far as I know, the highest development of this class
of ball-games. We have traced their natural history from the
wanton hitting of one boy by another, through the hole-ball
games, in which there are no bases and no sides, and the base-
games in which there are two sides standing equal, on two bases,
to the numerous bases occupied by one side as a token of victory.
We have not yet encountered one of the most important instru-
ments of ball-playing — the bat. This mighty engine of human
amusement, whether in the form of a billiard-cue or a croquet-
mallet, or what not, brings about radical variations in the game.

There is so much pleasure in the mere batting a ball that
many a boy will amuse himself at it entirely alone for hours. He
will gently toss the ball upward and as it comes down bat it
either upward or horizontally. He will throw it against the barn-
side and bat it on the rebound. He will lay the bat across a ful-
crum and the ball upon one end of it, and then, striking the other
end with his father's axe, drive the ball out of sight into the blue
sky, catching it as it comes down. When several play at this,
the privilege of striking being earned by catching the ball, the
game is called " sky-ball."

If he can get another boy to toss up the ball, and he strikes it
upward, the game used to be called " tip-e-up."

If the pitcher throws horizontally, a nameless and stupid game
is produced. The pitcher earns the bat by catching the ball when
struck. This was always so hard to do, in my experience, that the
bat generally seemed in danger of becoming a hereditary posses-
sion of the batter.

It was much more fun to throw the ball against the barn, and
standing behind the batter put him out by catching the ball when
he struck at it and missed it on the rebound. This we called
" barn-ball."

It was still better to divide the work of pitching and catching.
There is division of labor, as the economists call it, in any batting
game. There is also distinction of rank, the bat being always a
token of victory — something to be struggled for and won. In all
two-handed games the pitching, catching, fielding, etc., are all

A LITTLE BOYS1 GAME WITH A BALL. 655

done by a single player. In a three-handed game the work is
further divided, there being now a batter, a pitcher, and a catcher.
This we used to call " one old cat " The three players occupied
the same positions now held by the same three players in the
great American game.

Bases were now introduced. When the batter had struck the
ball three times, he must run to the pitcher's base before the ball
was thrown across his path in front of him. Otherwise he was
out, and the player who " crossed him out " got his bat. There
were, therefore, three ways of securing his bat : by catching the
ball when he had struck it, by catching it when . he had struck at
it, and by crossing out when he ran bases. And there were two
players at work trying to accomplish the object. The batter's
life was rendered far less easy by these new features. Of course,
every time the batter ran, the pitcher and catcher, instead of
changing places, changed occupations.

If another batter was added, the two occupations of pitcher
and catcher merged back into one. This was " two old cat." Its
rules were usually the same as in the preceding game ; but some-
times, instead of " every fellow for himself," it was " one out, all
out." It was then a game of partners, like whist.

There was also " three cat," or " three-cornered cat," and even
" four cat." The rules were the same.

One important difference between the batting and the hitting
games was that, in the former, the complexity of the game in-
creased with the number of players, while, in the latter, the sim-
plest games were those in which the whole school could join. Up
to eight players, the simple " old cat " games were the common-
est. With more players than eight we usually played "town-
ball." It was plainly evolved out of the cat games, for it retained
all their rules. And it forms a connecting link between them and
base-ball. But it resembles " one cat " more than any of the other
forms of cat-ball. It might be called a lateral branch of the cat
family, just as the lion and the tiger are related to the common
cat. In ball-games the cat family had two principal lines of evo-
lution. Along one line it bloomed into two, three, and four cat,
and along the other line into town-ball, the professional base-ball,
and one or two other allied forms.

Along the first line there was a mere cumulation of cats. All
that is implied by this expression is that there was a multiplica-
tion of batting bases. After " one cat " there was just one batter
and one catcher to each batting base.

In the other line we revert to the single batting base, regard-
less of the number of players. Even in " one cat " there were two,
which were used alternately by the batter. His run was from one
batting base to the other. Every time he ran, his former pitcher

6S6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

became his catcher, and his catcher, pitcher — just as in the lower
animals the same organ often has various functions to perform by-
turns. Just so, too, in rude societies, trades afterward widely
separated may be united in the same person — as, for instance, the
professions of barber and physician used to be united.

In the town-ball games, the pitcher was always pitcher until
the game was ended or his arm was tired. The catcher was
always catcher one game through, unless his hands blistered or
his incompetency became apparent. In the professional games
these two have permanent and well-paid positions. All the ad-
vantages mentioned by economists as resulting from " division of
labor " are here illustrated.

In these games the conspiracy against the batter's peace of
mind reaches appalling proportions. The conspirators are an or-
ganized band of indefinite numbers. Their lives are consecrated
to the single end of putting him out. Even in "town-ball" one
man has nothing to do but pitch him deceptive balls. Another
has nothing to do but catch the balls he misses or only " ticks " or
knocks foul. All the rest are scouring the field for his " flies," or
stopping his " grounders " and crossing him out.

To add to his burdens, he is forced to run four bases instead of
one. It was sufficient for any one of his numerous enemies to
throw the ball across his path between him and the base to which
he was running. This hardship is somewhat mollified in profes-
sional base-ball.

In " town-ball " there was as yet no distinction between base-
men and fielders. After the pitcher and catcher had been selected,
the others on that side went where they pleased; and they did
not get the bat until they had put all the batters out. Nay, when
all but one had been put out, he could sometimes call back to his
assistance any one he chose of his slaughtered comrades ; and he
often had a rubber ball which, if he did not burst it, he could
drive to the other side of the hay-field.

The professional batter has to contend with a curved ball, and
go out when three of his comrades are out. But, on the other
hand, the ball has to be pitched to him within definite limits, and
he has to be touched with it when running.

Except mechanical details and minor rules changeable from
year to year, these are all the differences between town-ball and
base-ball. The rules were not so strict in the former, and there
was no umpire to enforce them. They were often adopted by
unanimous consent at the beginning of the game. One rule, often
but not always adopted, was that the batter who knocked the ball
over the fence was out. Another was that, when all the batters
but one were out, one might be called back to " run bases." He
had to make home runs — three of them within a maximum limit

A LITTLE BOYS1 GAME WITH A BALL. 657

of nine strikes. This was the most exciting part of the game, but
was not a standing privilege.

Our good town-ball players developed into good base-ball
players, and took to it quite naturally. In fact, the two might
almost be called the same game under different names and at dif-
ferent ages. I believe it is quite common to speak of them in that
way. Our town-ball was probably called base-ball in that part of
the country where the game first began its rapid development ;
but, by the time the developed game had reached us, it was so dif-
ferent that for some years the two games were played side by
side, each retaining its old name.

What caused this sudden development ? The ingenuity and
the wrangling of the boys had refined the game until adult men
all at once saw the merit in it. Up to this point its rules had
been wrought out and fought out on the vacant town lot or in the
meadow surrounding the country school. It was pretty well un-
derstood that, unless fair rules were agreed on and held to, some-
body would get hurt. The cry of " 'Tain't fair ! " would be raised
and persisted in by the party infringed on. The other boys would
soon tire of having the game delayed ; and many a time have I
seen them stop right there and adopt a new rule covering the
case. It was always, as in the affairs of men, the courage and
determination of the oppressed which brought about evolution
and progress. It was the necessity of admitting reasonable claims
and adopting acceptable rules in order to keep the peace and save
time and strength.

When by these processes of ingenuity, goaded on by conflict,

the boys had made it really a fine game, the men took hold of it

and pushed it forward more rapidly, as men ought. They held

their quarrels and set their rules in hotel parlors. They are still

at it ; and I should not like to say that many legislative bodies

are engaged in business either more harmless or more profitable.

Certainly a good many persons recuperate in worse ways than

watching

" Jist a passel o' big men a-playin'

A little boys' game with a ball."

Mistakes in orientation usually result from some incidental and temporary
bewilderment, which may, under peculiar circumstances, overtake any one. In-
stances are cited by Sir Charles Warren in which they are chronic. Erroneous
conceptions formed by children as to distances and positions may grow up with
them undetected till near their maturity. Then, when the defect is revealed, it
will be too late to apply any other remedy than to recognize it, and make such
allowance for it as is possible. Probably few persons have grown up without
forming some errors of the kind which they have found it impossible to get rid of.
The defect may account for some of the accidents that occur on railways and
shipping.

vol. xxxvn. — 18

6 5- 3

THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

THE AFRICAN PYGMIES.

By A. WER>~EE.

"V"~OT the least interesting of the discoveries made by Mr. Stan-
-^ ley on his latest expedition is that of the Wambatti — the
: tribe living between the upper Arnhwimi and the Xepoko.
It has long been a well-known fact that the Pygmies of Homer.
Herodotus, and Ktesias — those of whom Pliny speaks as " dwell-
ing among the marshes where the Xile rises " * — are something
more than mere mythical beings : and almost every exploration
of any importance undertaken of late years has thrown fresh

light on the existence of a primitive African race, of whom the
Wambatti, Akkas, Obongo, Watwa, and Bushmen are, in all
probability, scattered fragment-.

A glance at the accompanying rough map will show how
numerous are the tribes — usually designated dwarfs or pygmies —
whose marked resemblance to each other, and marked difference
from the people among whom thev are scattered, are recognized

* Hli: Nat, vi, 35.

THE AFRICAN PYGMIES. 659

facts. The physical characteristics in which, broadly speaking,
they all agree, are their small stature, their light-yellow or red-
dish-brown color, and the peculiar character of the hair, which is
woolly, but, instead of being, as in the negro, evenly distribu:
over the scalp, grows in small tufts—" cheveux plant^s en pin-
ceaux de brosse," as Emin Pasha puts it in speaking of the Akkas.*
This appearance, according to Prof. Yirchow, is not due to the
fact that the hair grows on some spots and not on others, but t
peculiarity in the texture of the hair itself, which causes it to roll
naturally into closely curled spiral locks, leaving the intervening
pieces of scalp bare. Be this as it may, this growth is the su:
and most permanent characteristic of the Pygmy, or, as some
prefer to call them, the Hottentot-Bushman race.f

The name of dwarfs, applied by some to these people, has be
objected to as implying deformity or arrested growth, and there-
fore conveying a wrong impression. Xothing of the kind can be
said of the African Pygmies, who, though of short stature, are
well-shaped people of perfectly normal formation. It is true that
the Hottentots and Bushmen show certain strange anatomical
peculiarities ; but these may be said to be more or less accidental,
being, in part at least, the result of special and unfavorable con-
ditions of life.

The Pygmies are nomadic in their habits, I and neither ke-p
cattle nor till the ground, but live by hunting and snaring wild
animals and birds, or, under the most unfavorable circumstan ■:
on wild fruits, roots, and berries. Their weapons are always bows
and arrows, the latter usually poisoned — the resource of the weak.
They have no fixed abode, and, if they build shelters at all, only
construct rude huts of branches. They have no government, nor
do they form regular communities ; they usually wander about,
like our gypsies, in hordes composed of a few families each. This,

* Transactions of the Berlin Anthropological Society for 1?;

f Prof. Flower, however, thinks that differences between the Akkas and Bushnen are
so radical as to preclude the possibility of regarding them as members of the same race.
lie lays special stress on the yellow complexion and " peculiar oblong form of the skull."
which is especially distinguished from that of the Akkas by the absence of prognathism;
also on the M special anatomical characters " alluded to later on. But it seems to be the
case that modern research tends to show that environment and conditions of fife
act far more quickly in the production of racial peculiarities than was formerly supposed.
There are instances, e. g., on record of the children of white, or at mc = : txwny ;
born in a hot. damp locality (to which the latter had migrated from a dry c :~g P05*"

tivelv black. The Bushmen have been isolated to such a deirree from their more r.
congeners, and the struggle for existence has been in their case so seve- 7 '

well have developed striking differences. It should be noted that their habitat is dry,
while that of the Akkas is extremely hot and damp.

X Les Akkas ne forment point un peuple compact ; il n'y a pas un pays aux Akkas ;
comme les voices des oiseaux, ils sont un peu partout. — Eiax Fasha.

660 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

however, depends on the nature of the country — in the parched
deserts of the south they are not even united to this extent.
Sometimes they are to a certain extent dependent on more power-
ful tribes, who afford them protection in return for certain serv-
ices. Their notions of the Unseen, when they have any, would
appear to be of the very crudest. Their languages seem to be
distinct from others, related among themselves, and very peculiar.
This is a point to which I shall revert later on.

Leaving aside the classical writers,* the earliest reference to
the Pygmies occurs in the narrative of Andrew Battell,f who
spent three years in the kingdom of Loango during the first dec-
ade of the seventeenth century. He says :

To the north-east of Hani Kesock are a kind of little people called Matimbas,
which are no bigger than Boyes of twelve yeares olde, but verie thicke, and live
onely upon fleshe, which they kill in the woods with their Bowes and Darts.
They pay tribute to Mani Kesock, and bring all their Elephants' teeth and tayles
to him. They will not enter into any of the Marombos' houses, nor will suffer
any to come where they dwell. And if by chance any Marombo, or people of
Loango passe where they dwell, then they will forsake that place and go to
another. The Women carry Bow and Arrowes as well as the men. And one of
these will walk in the Woods alone, and kill the Pongo with their poysoned Ar-
rowes.

The Flemish geographer Dapper, writing in the seventeenth
century, refers to the Pygmies in the following passage :

Before the King's cloth sit some Dwarfs, with their backs towards him ;
Pigmies indeed in stature, but with heads of a prodigious bigness ; for the more
exact deforming whereof they wear the skin of some Beast tied round about
them. The Blacks say there is a Wilderness where reside none but men of such
a stature, who shoot those Gigantick Creatures, the Elephants. The common
name of these dwarfs is Bakke-Bakke ; but they are also called Mimo's.J

These Bakke-Bakke (whose name reminds us of Akkas, Tikki-
Tikki, and Wambatti, and possibly Batwa) seem at first sight to
come under the heading of true dwarfs, or natural malformations ;
but the disproportioned heads may be an accidental mistake mag-
nified by report. The other items of the account tally with the
descriptions of Battell and others — the skins of beasts, worn " for
the more exact deforming of the head," are probably the leopard
and monkey skin caps worn among many of the Congo tribes at
the present day.

* An excellent summary of what is said by these, and also of modern discoveries up to
1871, is given in an article, Ueber Zwergvolker in Africa (to which I have been greatly
indebted in the preparation of this paper), in Petermann's Mittheilungen for that year.

f Purchas, vol. ii, p. 983.

\ Description of the Kingdom of Lovango, or the Countrey of the Bramas in Nether
Ethiopia. (Africa: Collected and translated from most authentick Authors. By John
Ogilby, Esq. 1670.)

THE AFRICAN PYGMIES. 661

De Commerson, who accompanied Bougainville on his voyage
round the world, and visited Madagascar in 1771, heard of a small
race in the interior of that island, called Kimos or Quimos, and
actually saw one woman — a slave in the household of the gov-
ernor of the French settlement, the Comte de Modave. De Modave
collected all the information he could about the Quimos from
native chiefs, but never succeeded in reaching the valleys where
they were said to live, or meeting with any, except the slave-
woman before mentioned, who may or may not have been a typi-
cal specimen. Ellis and other missionaries, in later times, heard
of these people under the name of Vazimba, but never appear to
have seen them ; and it may be doubted whether any of them ex-
ist at the present day. The native statements preserved by De
Commerson and De Modave would, if true, show the Quimos to
have been in some respects physiologically different from the rest
of mankind ; but these statements — and rightly so, in the absence
of further evidence — are treated by both gentlemen with extreme
caution. For the rest, the description of the Comte de Modave's
Quimo slave might very well stand for the portrait of the average
Bushwoman.

Captain Boteler, who was on the east coast of Africa, between
the years 1821 and 1826, heard of a tribe of small people, living in
the interior, called Waberikimo ; and reports of these seem at dif-
ferent times to have reached Zanzibar. The native information
on this point was somewhat vague ; but from all accounts they
would appear to be the same as the Doko, of whom Dr. Krapf re-
ceived a description in 1840 from a slave of the name of Dilbo, a
native of Enarea. The Doko were said to live in the Galla coun-
try ; they were small in stature, and of a dark olive color. They
lived on fruits, roots, mice, and wild honey, and were unacquaint-
ed with the use of fire. They had neither weapons, houses, nor
temples, nor even, like the Gallas, sacred trees. Yet they had
some notion of a Supreme Being, to whom, under the name of Yer,
they sometimes addressed prayers, " in moments of sadness and
terror," said Dilbo. There is a certain pathos in what follows ;
but we must remember that it was filtered through the imagina-
tion— perhaps elicited by the leading questions — of a kind-hearted
German with a touch of poetic mysticism about him. " In their
prayer they say : ' Yer, if thou dost really exist, why dost thou
let us be slain ? We ask thee not for food or clothing, for we only
live on snakes, ants, and mice. Thou hast made us, why dost thou
let us be trodden down ? ' "

The Doko had neither chiefs nor laws; they "lived in the
woods, climbing trees for fruit, like monkeys " ; but diseases were
unknown among them, and they were much liked as slaves in
Enarea, being docile and obedient.

662 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Dr. Krapf again heard of the Doko in Ukambani and at Bara-
wa, and at the latter place even saw a slave corresponding to
Dilbo's description. Father Le*on des Avanchers, a French Roman
Catholic missionary, heard of them from the Somalis in 1858,
under the name of " Tchin-Tchelle' " (which is, being interpreted,
Quel miracle /). In 1864 he saw some of them for himself in the
kingdom of Gera (north of Kaffa, in Abyssinia), and described
them in a letter to M. d'Abbadie, published in the Bulletin of the
Paris Geographical Society. The word Doko may be another form
of the Swahili mdogo (= small), but this has been disputed.

Proceeding in geographical rather than in chronological order,
we come next to the Akkas, with whom Colonel Long's Tikki-
Tikki * would seem to be identical. They were first heard of,
vaguely, by Petherick, in 1854; but the first real announcement
of their existence to the civilized world was made by Dr. Schwein-
furth in 1871. They live in the Monbuttu country, which lies
south of the Bahr-el-Gazal and west of the Equatorial Province
of Egypt. Dr. Schweinfurth's account has been ably supple-
mented by Dr. Felkin and Emin Pasha, the latter of whom enjoyed
ample opportunities for studying them during the twelve years he
spent in Central Africa, and in 1886 communicated to the Berlin
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie a very valuable and interesting paper
on the subject, accompanied by detailed measurements. He in-
sists on the distinction between the Akkas and real dwarfs (i. e.,
persons whose growth has been arrested by pathological or other
causes), of whom he saw several at Mtesa's court. " Tout au con-
traire, les Akkas sont une race qui n'offrent aucun signe patho-
logique, mais qui, forme's a point, de'pre'cieraient bien vivement les
epithetes de ' race de'chue/ de peuplade voue*e a rextinction, dont
on a bien voulu les gratifier." They live in bands composed of a
few families each, putting up the rough shelters of reeds and
branches which form their temporary camp in the woods, near
some running stream, and usually within reach of a Monbuttu or
Momvu village. They are good marksmen, and kill even ele-
phants and buffaloes, bartering with the villagers the meat they
do not require for themselves, in return for grain, oil, native beer,
and other necessaries. The Monbuttu, moreover, obtain from
them all the skins and feathers used by them for clothing and
ornament; and any chief who should refuse hospitality to the
Akkas would not only forfeit these supplies, but draw down the
speedy vengeance of the little people the first time he or any of his
tribe ventured into the forest alone. The Akkas are cannibals,
and make no secret of the fact; those personally known to Dr.
Schnitzer "savaient parfaitement me dire quelle part du corps

* Central Africa. By Colonel C. Chaille-Long. London, 1S76. Pp. 263 et seq.

THE AFRICAN PYGMIES, 663

humain soit la plus savoureuse." * The average height of some
thirty individuals measured by the pasha was 1*36 metre. They
are usually of a lighter brown than the Monbuttu, but the differ-
ence of coloring is rather in the tone than in the shade — in other
words, the Akkas are of a red-brown, the Monbuttu of a yellow-
brown.f Their hair is black-brown or quite black, growing in
tufts, as already described, short and very woolly, and too scanty
to be made into the ornamental coiffures so much in vogue among
the Africans. There is an abundant growth of hair all over the
body, and " it can not be denied that the mouth resembles that of
certain apes." This is noteworthy when contrasted with Dr.
Wolf's remark on the Batwa, " Irgend welche pithecoide Merk-
male waren nicht vorhanden." The Monbuttu frequently inter-
marry with the Akkas, and half-breeds are far from uncommon.
Two Akkas were sent to Italy by Signor Miani, one of whom, we
believe, is still living at Yerona.

The Wambatti, first made known to the world by Mr. Stanley's
. narrative, live farther west than the Akkas, from whom they do
not appear to differ materially — unless it be in the " spiteful and
venomous " disposition evinced by their unprovoked attacks on
the expedition ; whereas the Akkas, though dangerous on provo-
cation, are tolerably peaceable when well treated.

Within the great horseshoe bend of the Congo, and apparently
ranging over a vast extent of country, dwell the Watwa or Batwa.
Mr. Stanley first heard of them in 1876, from Rumanika of Kar-
ragwe*, and, later on, at ISTyangwe', from Abed bin Jumah, who, in
a singularly picturesque and graphic narrative, recounted the
tragic history of Sheik Mtagamoyo, the cruel and dauntless — how
he fitted out a strong caravan for the country of the dwarfs, ex-
pecting to make his fortune in ivory, and went back poorer
than he came. J Stanley did not himself come in contact with
these Watwa, except in the person of a single individual who was
brought in by his men at Ikondu, on the upper Congo or Lualaba
River.* He measured three feet six inches and a half in height,
was " light chocolate " in complexion, and carried a bow and poi-
soned arrows.

Mr. H. H. Johnston, || in 1883, saw two slaves among the Ba-
yansi, near the Kwa River, who probably belonged to this race.

* Thus differing from Wmwood Reade's Fan acquaintance, who assured him that, con-
sidered as a dish, man was " all alike good."

f " Tandis que les Akkas appartiennent aux peuples negres dont le fond du noir est rouge,
les Mombouttous montrent un brun ou noir au fond jaune." This appears to contradict
the general tenor of what has been said about the Pygmy races, but it is probable that no
hard-and-fast rule can be laid down as to color.

t Through the Dark Continent, pp. 390-393.

* Ibid., pp., 435, 436. fl The River Congo, p. 215.

664 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

More extended observations were made in 1885 by the late Dr.
Ludwig Wolf, who accompanied Lieutenant Wissmann's expedi-
tion, and spent some time in the Kassai region. He says that the
Batwa in some places live side by side with the Bakuba — in others
they have settlements of their own, hidden away in the dense
forest. They are most numerous about the parallel of 5° south.
Each sub-chief of the Bakuba has a Batwa village assigned to him,
whose inhabitants supply him with palm- wine and game. The
independent Batwa of the forest sometimes offer dried meat in ex-
change for manioc or maize to the Bakuba, at periodical markets
held on neutral ground. Dr. Wolf experienced some difficulty in
obtaining accurate measurements ; but the first series of those he
was able to record gave 1*44 * metre as a maximum, and 1*40 m. as
a minimum. On a later occasion he found that the heights ob-
tained ranged between 1*30 m. and 1*35 m. — which last figure is
somewhat less than that given for Stanley's dwarf.

Dr. Wolf was disposed to think that there is in this respect
little if any difference between the Batwa and the Bushmen. For
the rest, he says that they were in general tolerably well formed,
" und machten durchaus den Eindruck des Normalen." The skull
was not markedly prognathous, and no ape-like peculiarities were
noticeable. They followed no particular custom in the disposal of
their dead, and were, like other Africans, firm believers in witch-
craft, f

According to Major Wissmann, these Batwa hunt with dogs,
and, indeed, possess a superior breed of greyhounds.

Mr. C. S. Latrobe Bateman, in Under the Lone Star, speaks of
two nomadic tribes — the " Batwa Bankonko " and the " Batwa
Basingi" — the former of whom were the terror of the Bakete,
who, to obtain protection from them, became tributary to the Ba-
kuba. He makes no mention, however, of their racial pecul-
iarities.

The Obongo, discovered by Du Chaillu in 1865, inhabit the
Ashango country, in the mountains south of the Ogowe\ They
were " stoutly built, like chimpanzees," with broad chests and mus-
cular limbs ; some of them were not more than four feet in height,
others from four feet two inches to four feet seven inches. They
were " of a dirty-yellow color," with hair growing in tufts ; and
lived in the same sort of relation to the Ashangos as the Batwa to
the Bakuba. A full description of their settlement and its little
circular huts made of branches may be found in Du Chaillu's
Ashango-Land.];

The same people were seen by Dr. Lenz, when he ascended the

* About four feet nine inches and a quarter.

f Transactions Berlin Antlirop. Soc, 18S6. \ Pp. 315 sqq.

THE AFRICAN PYGMIES. 665

Okanda (a tributary of the Ogowe*) in 1874. He found that they
were called " Babongo," and also " Vambuta " (Wambatti ?),
though their real name appeared to be Bari or Bali. As he did
not penetrate farther than 12° east, he did not reach their actual
dwelling-places, which were said to be a fortnight's journey be-
yond that point, though he saw and measured a considerable num-
ber of individuals. His measurements range between 1*32 and
1*42 metre, and he particularly notices the contrast between their
round huts and the rectangular style of architecture prevailing in
the district.*

Somewhere to the north of these, perhaps, may be placed the
Kenkob and Betsan, of whom Dr. Koelle, the learned author of
the Polyglotta Africana (1854), heard at Sierra Leone. He ob-
tained his information from two liberated slaves, one of whom, a
man named Yon, was a native of a country called Bayon, supposed
to lie about 5° north, and between 12° and 13° east. This man de-
clared that four days' journey eastward from his home there was
a great lake called Liba, on whose banks lived the Luf um tribe,
" tall, strong, and warlike ; clad in black monkey-skins, and fight-
ing with spears and arrows. Near Luf um," the account continues,
" and also on the shores of the Liba, is another people, called Ken-
kob, only three or four feet high, but very stout, and the most ex-
cellent marksmen. They are peaceful, live on the produce of the
chase, and are so liberal that if, e. g., one has killed an elephant, he
would give the whole of it away."

Another man, whose home was to the northwestward of Bayon,
gave Dr. Koelle a very similar account of a tribe called " Betsan,"
living " on the river Riba,f which comes from Bansa and goes to
Bambongo." These, too, are successful hunters, and are also said
to make bark cloth for themselves, whereas Du Chaillu's Obongo
wore nothing but the cast-off grass cloths of the Ashangos. The
Betsan sometimes exchange their venison for millet, etc., in the
Rufum country. " They do not cultivate the ground, but are con-
stantly on the move, changing their abode every six or twelve
months. Their houses can be easily built, taken down, and even
carried along with them, consisting as they do of the bark of a
large tree. The Betsan hunt monkeys, baboons, wild hogs, deer,
elephants, etc." \

I can suggest no affinity for the names here given to the Pyg-
mies, unless Kenkob contains a possible reminiscence of " Khoi-
Khoi," or * Koi-Koib," the tribal name used by the Hottentots
among themselves. It is utterly unlike a Bantu word, and may be
a relic of the language originally common to all the Pygmy tribes,

* See Petermann's Mittheilungen for 187T (p. 108) ; also Dr. Lenz's paper in the Trans-
actions of the Berlin Geographical Society.

f Evidently the same as Liba ; as Rufum-Lufum. \ Polyglotta Africana, p. 12.

666 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which many of them seem to be losing. Bambongo, on the other
hand, distinctly suggests Obongo, and may have originated the
latter name (which, as the variant 2?abongo shows, seems to be
Bantu) — the Kenkob adopting it from the district where they
had sojourned. Or, again, it may be a tribal name, reported to
Dr. Koelle's informant as that of a district.

Turning to southwestern Africa, we find that Major Serpa
Pinto,* in 1878, met with a tribe called " Mucassequeres," living in
the forests between the Cubango and Cuando, while the open coun-
try is occupied by the Ambuellas. These people have " eyes very
small and out of the right line, cheek-bones very far apart and
high, nose flat to the face, and nostrils disproportionately wide."
Their hair is crisp and woolly, growing in separate patches, and
thickest on the top of the head. Unlike the Obongo, they build no
kind of shelter, but, like them, are skilled in the use of bows and
arrows, and live on roots, honey, and game. In color they are " a
dirty yellow, like the Hottentots, while the Ambuellas are black,
though of a Caucasian type of feature."

Farther south, near the borders of the Kalahari Desert, Serpa
Pinto found a tribe similar in most respects to the Mucassequeres,
but deep black, and known by the name of Massaruas. These
(who are less savage than the Mucassequeres) are probably a tribe
of Bushmen, very much resembling, if not identical with, the
M'Kabba, or NTchabba, brought by Signor Farini from the Kala-
hari Desert. These last were carefully examined by Prof. Vir-
chow, and described by him in a paper read before the Berlin
Anthropological Society, March 20, 1886.

We have now to notice the section of the Pygmy race with
which Europeans have come most in contact — the Hottentots and
Bushmen. The Hottentots (as they are now known to us, their
real name for themselves being " Khoi-Khoi" f) represent prob-
ably the highest development of the race, and differ notably from
its other members in being a pastoral people. When Van Rie-
beek landed at the Cape in 1652 they existed in great numbers,
roaming the country with large herds of cattle. Kafir wars and
Dutch "commandoes," with other causes, have so far thinned
them out that few if any genuine " Cape Hottentots " now exist,
their place being taken by the Griquas and other tribes of mixed
race. Two cognate tribes, the Korannas J and Namaquas, still
exist, but in diminished numbers.

* How I crossed Africa, vol. ii, pp. 320 sqq.

f Or Koi-Koib (" men of men"), according to Dr. Cust. The Kafirs call them " Lawi."
" Hottentot " is merely a nickname given by the early Dutch settlers, who declared the
natives spoke an unintelligible language, consisting only of sounds like hot and tot.

% Some ethnologists are inclined to look on the Koranna tribe as a cross between Hot-
tentots and Bushmen.

THE AFRICAN PYGMIES. 667

That keen observer, Moffat, as long ago as the first decade of
this century, noticed the distinct and peculiar characteristics of
the Hottentots, and recognized their racial identity with the Bush-
men. He speaks of "that nation, which includes Hottentots,
Korannas, ISTamaquas, and Bushmen/' and describes them, as a
whole, as " not swarthy or black, but rather of a sallow color, and
in some cases so light that a tinge of red in the cheek is percepti-
ble, especially among the Bushmen. They are generally smaller
in stature than their neighbors of the interior ; their visage and
form very distinct, and in general the top of the head broad and
flat ; their faces tapering to the chin, with high cheek-bones, flat
nose, and large lips." He further notes that the first three speak
languages which are mutually intelligible, while that of the Bush-
men, though cognate, is quite distinct. Writing (after his return
to England) in 1842, when as yet the Akkas and Batwa were un-
known to science, he suggests that, "when the sons of Ham
entered Africa by Egypt, and the Arabians by the Red Sea, the
Hottentot progenitors took the lead and gradually advanced, as
they were forced forward by an increasing population in their
rear, until they reached the ends of the earth." He further re-
marks, "It may also be easily conceived by those acquainted
with the emigration of tribes that, during their progress to the
south, parties remained behind in the more sequestered and iso-
lated spots where they had located while the nation moved on-
ward, and research may yet prove that that remarkable people
originally came from Egypt." In corroboration of this theory he
mentions having heard from a Syrian who had lived in Egypt of
slaves in the Cairo market, brought from a great distance in the
interior, who spoke a language similar to that of the Hottentots,
and were not nearly so dark-colored as negroes in general. These
must certainly have been Akkas.*

As for the Bushmen, we have pretty full accounts of them
from various sources. Moffat has much to say about them — too
much to quote in full — which may be found in the first and fourth
chapters of his Missionary Labors in South Africa, and is supple-
mented by Livingstone in the Missionary Travels.

Mr. Alfred J. Bethell (in a letter to ,the Standard which ap-
peared on April 26, 1889) says that the Bushmen proper are now
" nearly if not quite extinct," the people now so called being out-
casts from the Matabele, Bamangwato, and other Bantu com-
munities. Mr. A. A. Anderson,! however, who extended his

* Winwood Reade's remark (African Sketch-Book, vol. ii, p. 528), written in 1S73 or
earlier, is worth notice : " His (Du Chaillu's) discovery of the Dwarfs {who are certainly
Bushmen) is an important contribution to the ethnology of Africa."

f Twenty-five Years in a Wagon in South Africa, vol. i, pp. 235, 282, etc. ; vol. ii,
p. 74.

668 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

journeys far beyond the northern limits of the Transvaal, makes
frequent mention of them and discriminates four distinct types,
noticing especially a very light-colored variety only found in the
Drakensberg Mountains and the ranges west of them. There
seems to be a tradition of hostility between the Bushmen and
Hottentots, and the difference between them in pursuits and hab-
its has always been sharply marked ; but the fact of their affinity
has seldom or never been questioned. Moffat distinctly states
his belief (supported by the analogy of the Balala or outcast
Bechuanas) that they are the descendants of Hottentots driven
by want and the hostility of stronger neighbors into the desert.
Generations of perpetual living on the edge of starvation have
made of them the gauntest and skinniest of shapes — seemingly
designed by Nature to show what human beings can endure in
that line and live — and developed in them, in spite or because of
their physical weakness and insignificance, a cunning and an inti-
mate knowledge of nature that to the savage mind seems little
short of superhuman. Some of the Kafirs believe that the Bush-
men can understand the language of the baboons, and countless
instances of their skill in tracking game and finding water are
on record. They possess a wonderful gift of mimicry, can imi-
tate to the life the action of any man or animal, and have a pas-
sionate love of music. They can evolve from their primitive
instruments — the gorali, with its catgut and quill, or the hollow
gourd-shell, with strings stretched across it — plaintive melodies
of a surprising sweetness, very different from the hideous iinta-
niarre of horns and tomtoms which delights the heart of the
average African. Moreover, having a quick ear and a retentive
memory, they will pick up and repeat any civilized tune once
heard — whether the Chorales of the German Mission or the more
secular ditty sung by the wandering traders. Their poisoned
arrows, and their noiseless, furtive ways of coming and going,
inspire the stronger races with a vague dread of them, strength-
ened no doubt by that uncanny something which, as Mr. F. Boyle
remarks, " makes a Bush-boy resemble a bird the more, the more
he shows a simian intelligence."

"We have thus, in a hasty and imperfect manner, surveyed the
known fragments of the aboriginal African race. We have seen
that they resemble each other to a great extent in physical con-
formation and in manners and customs ; the differences being for
the most part due (like the extremely poor development and de-
graded way of life of the Bushmen) to differences in habitat and
environment. The Hottentot and San or Saab (Bushman) lan-
guages we have seen to be related, though distinct ; and they are
radically different from every known Bantu tongue. Some have
even denied that they are articulate speech at all. The peculiarity

THE AFRICAN PYGMIES.

669

of the " clicks " lias often been insisted on ; * another distinguish-
ing characteristic is the existence (at least in the Hottentot lan-
guage) of grammatical gender— a feature wholly absent from the
Bantu tongues. The Bushman language is said to be monosyl-
labic. The Hottentots, however, now mostly speak Dutch — or
that variety of it to be heard at the Cape — and probably both lan-
guages are on the way to extinction. It is said that " a mission-
ary, being invited by the Government to send books in the Kora \
dialect to be printed, remarked that his experience was that it
was easier to teach the young to read Dutch, and that the old
could not learn at all." J

An examination of the list of Batwa words collected by Dr.
"Wolf, as compared with his Baluba and Bakuba vocabularies,
and the Congo and Swahili languages, has convinced me that the
Batwa, if they have not adopted and modified the speech of their
neighbors, have at any rate adopted a great many Bantu words
into their own. The numbers up to ten, for instance, are identical
(with slight differences of pronunciation) in the Batwa and Baluba
languages. But as yet the materials for comparison are too
scanty for any definite statement to be made. The few words
elicited from the dwarf met by Stanley were, as Mr. Johnston
points out, decidedly Bantu ; but we need not conclude from this
that the Pygmy race consists merely of outcast and degenerate
Bantus. What more likely than that a small and isolated tribe,
who, like the Batwa, frequently had friendly intercourse with
surrounding and more powerful tribes, should, to a certain extent,
adopt the language of the latter ?

Surveying the Pygmy race as a whole, we find them — shorn of
the mythical and magical glamour with which distance and mys-
tery had invested them — not so very different, after all, from
other human beings, but still sufficiently interesting. There is a
shock of disillusion in passing from the elves and trolls of a past
age — not to mention Alberic of the Mbelung's Hoard — to the
worthy but prosaic Lapps of the present day ; and the " little peo-
ple " of whom Bwana Abed entertained such a vivid and unpleas-
ant recollection were doubtless minimized in stature by the retro-
spective imagination. No well-authenticated adult Mtwa, Akka,
or Mbatti seems to be much less than four feet six inches ; while
Dr. Petermann thinks that the Pygmies, on the whole, run about
a head shorter than the average negro. This may be disappoint-
ing to those who are ever on the lookout for the marvelous — by
which they mean the abnormal — but the facts as they stand pre-

* Some of the Kafir languages possess these clicks, but they have undoubtedly been
borrowed.

f Spoken on the Orange River.

% Modern Languages of Africa. By R. N. Cust.

67o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sent quite sufficient food for thought to a more rational frame
of mind.

I can not attempt to deal with the origin of the Pygmy race,
or its relationship to the Andamanese and the Veddahs of Ceylon,
who are said to have some characteristics in common with them.
But it seems clear that they were once spread over a great part
if not the whole of the continent ; that they were broken up and
partially exterminated by the advent of the stronger dark races ;
and that, as a race, they are passing away. It is interesting to
look at an analogous case in Europe. A race of small stature,
slight frame, and comparatively low type, scarcely, if at all, ad-
vanced beyond the hunter stage, occupied the British Islands and
the northwestern part of the continent. They were partly mas-
sacred or enslaved, partly driven into the mountains by their
Celtic conquerors; and in the lonely recesses of the hills and
woods — what with their weakness and their strength, their cun-
ning and their skill in metals, their music and their underground
dwellings, and their strange, uncanny wisdom — a growth of legend
and poetry sprang up about them, till they were no longer known
save as elves, gnomes, trolls, or " Good People," whom one dared
not name.

It is somewhat suggestive, as bearing on the question of the
original immigration into Africa, to note that there was, as late
as the sixteenth century, a Pygmy tribe living in Arabia, who
may well have been a detachment left behind when the main body
crossed the Isthmus of Suez. So far as I am aware, the only au-
thority for this fact is Lodovico di Bartema, otherwise known as
Ludovicus Wertomannus, whose narrative of a visit to Mecca
(about 1500) is contained in vol. iv of Hakluyt's Voyages. This
account runs thus :

In the space of eyght dayes we came to a monntayne which conteyneth in
circuit ten or twelve myles. This is inhabited with Jewes to the number of fyve
thousand or thereabout. They are very little of stature, as of the hyght of five
or sixe spannes, and some muche lesse. They have small voyces like women,
and of blacke colour, yet some blacker than other. They feede of none other
raeate than goates' fleshe. They are circumcised, and deny not themselves to be
Jewes.

This last sentence, apparently, contains the evidence for their
Judaism. It is now well known that the rite in question is com-
monly practiced in Africa, and by the Hottentots, among others.
What has become of these " Jewes " does not appear. Probably
they have gone the way of nearly all the Bushmen. Will the
Akkas and the rest follow them ? As a race they are doomed to
pass away ; yet this need not imply — we hope it does not — that
they are to be massacred, or starved out of existence. It was long
believed that the Celtic Britons had been utterly exterminated

THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 671

•

(except in Wales and Cornwall) by the Teutonic invaders, whom
the older school histories taught us to consider as our exclusive an-
cestors. When the existence of the -older, dwarfish, Euskarran or
Neolithic race was discovered, it was at first supposed that they
had in like manner been made a clean sweep of by the Celts. Re-
cent researches have made it probable that this was by no means
the case ; indeed, Mr. Grant Allen thinks that there is a consider-
able Euskarran element in the English population of to-day. The
black-haired aborigines — what was left of them — gradually amal-
gamated with the light-haired and blue-eyed Celts ; and these were,
in turn, absorbed by the English properly so called. And we have
seen that the Griquas and other mixed races exist in Cape Colony,
some, at least, of whom have shown themselves capable of being
respectable and useful in their generation ; and it is at least pos-
sible that these mixed races may survive, and in time amalgamate
with the Bantu.— The Gentleman's Magazine.'

«» » »

THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS.

By the COUNT GOBLET D'ALVIELLA.

I.

MEN, to communicate their thoughts, address themselves some-
times to the ear, by speech, song, or music ; sometimes to
the eye, by gesture, drawing, and the plastic arts generally, includ-
ing writing. These modes of expression may have an imitative
character, as when a savage describes an animal by its cry, or as
in a photograph ; but even then they have a symbolical bearing,
in that they recall only some of the features of the original, and
leave the rest to the imagination or to memory. We might define
a symbol as a representation which does not aim to be a reproduc-
tion. Reproduction supposes that the representative sign is iden-
tical with, or at least like, the object represented ; symbolism de-
mands only that one may recall the other, by a natural or conven-
tional association of ideas. In this sense there is nothing that
may not furnish matter for a symbol. We live among symboli-
cal representations, from the flags over our public buildings to the
bank-note in our strong-box ; symbolism is mingled with all our
intellectual and social life, from the morning hand-shaking to the
applause we give to the actor in the evening. Our arts are sym-
bolical, even when they are believed to be only servile imitations
of nature. We speak and write in symbols — and even think in
them, according to the philosophical systems that are based on
our impotency to grasp the reality of nature.

Sentiment, particularly religious sentiment, recurs most largely

672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to symbolism in order to enter into a more intimate communication
with the being or abstraction which it desires to approach. Hence
we everywhere see men either adopting natural or artificial ob-
jects that remind them of the great absent one ; imitating system-
atically the acts and gestures they assign to it ; or objectizing, by
processes as various as significant, all the shades of feeling which
it inspires in them, from the deepest humility to the most ardent
love. Hence the extreme diversity of symbols, which may be
divided into two classes, as they consist in acts or rites, or in
objects and emblems. "We shall occupy ourselves here with the
second category, or rather with the figured representations which
it has inspired, and which past generations have transmitted to us
as material vestiges of their faiths. Studies in comparative sym-
bology fell, toward the second half of the century, into a discredit
which is accounted for by their previous history. Syntheses pre-
mature as they were brilliant, built up with insufficient and defect-
ive materials by the rationalistic school, were succeeded, about
fifty years ago, by the system, more philosophical than historical,
which found, in all the religious practices of antiquity, the dis-
guised or transfigured reflection of a profound primitive wisdom.
These theories all having given way under the contradictions
brought against them by discoveries in archaeology, ethnography,
linguistics, etc., a reaction ensued as extreme as the former in-
fatuation. A disposition appeared to banish hypothesis entirely
from all research into the origin and significance of symbols ; as
if hypothesis — provided it is not treated as an assured fact — were
not an essential factor of all scientific progress.

But the situation has greatly changed within thirty-five years.
Data permitting comparison under all desirable conditions of
authenticity, of the figured representations of different peoples,
have accumulated in such proportions that the principal obstacle
will lie hereafter in their multiplicity and dissemination. Exca-
vations of ancient monuments in Asia and Africa, the archaeologi-
cal collections of even the smallest states, the societies devoted to
every special branch of the subject, and the studies of the whole,
directed from the most varied points of view, have made the tasks
relatively easy of students who would follow the traces and eluci-
date the meaning of the principal symbols. On the other hand,
the deciphering of inscriptions, the classification and interpreta-
tion of written documents, and the general advance of history, of
religious history in particular, by informing us concerning the
beliefs of peoples, enable us the better to define the relation of
their symbols with their myths and their ceremonies, at the same
time that a more exact knowledge of the social and geographical
medium in which the symbols originated assists us in tracing the
origin of the images which have given body to the ideas.

THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 673

After this there are no reasons why we should not reach as posi-
tive results in the study of symbols as in the study of myths. The
comparative examination of myths long ago assumed a scientific
phase, both with Mr. Max Muller and the linguistic school that is
correlating the traditions of nations speaking allied languages, and
with Mr. Andrew Lang and his fellow ethnographers who are
comparing the mythologies of all known peoples. Now, the myth,
which we may define as a dramatization of natural phenomena
or of abstract events, offers more than one common trait with the
symbol. Both rest on reasoning by analogy, which in the one
case creates a figurative story, and in the other a material image.
There is, however, the difference that in the symbol we are aware
of a distinction between the image and the being or object repre-
sented by it, while an essential character of the myth is that the
story shall be supposed to be conformable to the reality. But it
is easy to see that both are frequently formed by the aid of the
same processes and are transmitted by the same ways.

At all events, there are religions that we can not explain unless
we endeavor to supplement the insufficiency of the texts by the
study of the figured monuments ; and there is an increasing dis-
position among students of particular religions to make use of
the texts to prove the symbols, and of the symbols to prove the
texts — as in M. Senart's recent works on the history of Buddhism ;
MM. Gaidoz's and Al. Bertrand's on the symbols of ancient Gaul ;
those of M. J. Menant on the engraved stones of upper Asia ; and
those of M. Ch. Lenormant, Clermont-Ganneau, Ledrain, and Ph.
Berger on the figured representations of the Semitic religions.
These labors are the best demonstration of the services which the
interpretation of symbols can render to the history of religions,
provided we observe all the rigor of scientific methods.

It is not necessary to insist here upon the interest which the
study of symbolism offers, aside from the services which it may be
called upon to render to archaeological science. Representation
by symbolism is, in literature, religion, and art, a necessity of
the human mind, which has never been able to content itself with
pure abstractions, or to restrict itself to the external shape of
things. Under the material and often incoherent forms by
which past generations have expressed their aspirations and
their faith, we can discern the beating of a heart, the appeal of a
soul to other souls, a mind that seeks to embrace the infinite in
the finite, to objectize, under features furnished by Nature or the
imagination, its conceptions most approaching a reality indis-
cernible in its plenitude. The symbols which have attracted in
the highest degree the veneration of multitudes have often been
indeed absurd and gross representations of gods ; but what have
the gods themselves ever been, except symbols more or less imper-

vol. xxxvii. — 49

674 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

feet of the Being, superior to all definition, which the human
mind has discerned more clearly according to its development,
through and above them all ?

It seems as if the variety of symbols should be without limits,
as are the combinations of the human imagination. But we not
rarely find the same symbolical figures among the most distant
peoples. Such coincidences can hardly be explained as matters of
chance, like the combinations of the kaleidoscope. Aside from the
case of symbols found among peoples belonging to the same race,
which can be traced back to the common cradle, there are only two
possible explanations of them. The images have either been con-
ceived separately, by virtue of some law of the human mind, or
they have passed from one country to another by borrowing.

There is a symbolism so natural that, like certain implements
peculiar to the Stone age, it does not belong to any particular race,
but constitutes a characteristic trait of mankind at a certain phase
of its development. Of this class are representations of the sun
by a disk or radiating face, of the moon by a crescent, of the air by
birds, of water by fishes or a broken line, of thunder by an arrow
or a club, etc. We ought, perhaps, to add a few more complicated
analogies, as those which lead to symbolizing the different phases
of human life by the growth of a tree, the generative forces of
nature by phallic emblems, the divine triads by an equilateral
triangle or, in general, by any triple combination the members of
which are equal, and the four principal directions of space by a
cross. How many theories have been built up on the presence of
the cross as an object of veneration among nearly all the peoples
of the Old and New Worlds ! Roman Catholic writers have justly
protested, in recent years, against attributing a pagan origin to
the cross of the Christians because there were cruciform signs in
the symbolism of religions anterior to Christianity. It is also
right by the same reason to refuse to accept the attempts to seek
for infiltrations of Christianity in foreign religions because they
also possess the sign of redemption.

When the Spaniards seized Central America, they found in the
native temples crosses which passed for the symbol sometimes of
a deity at once terrible and beneficent, Tlaloc ; at other times of a
civilizing hero, white and bearded, Quetzacoatl, who, according
to the tradition, came from the East. Thev concluded that the
cross had been brought to the Toltecs by Christian missionaries
of whom the trace had been lost ; and, as there must always be
some known name to a legend, they gave the honor to St. Thomas,
the legendary apostle of all the Indies. Although there were men
to defend this theory in the last Congress of Americanists, it may
be regarded as definitely rejected. It is now established that the
pre-Columbian cross is a wind-rose representing the four princi-

THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 675

pal directions from which rain comes, and is thus the symbol
of the god dispenser of the celestial waters. If the Toltec cross
could be related with a similar figure of the Old World, it would
rather be the cross of ancient Mesopotamia — where that sign was
also adopted to symbolize the four directions of space, and by ex-
tension the sky, or the god of the sky, Anou. But it would have
to be established first that direct or indirect relations could have
existed between the religious art of Mesopotamia and that of
ancient America. To remove this hypothesis — even if we refuse
to admit the development of a pre-Columbian civilization — it is
only necessary to reflect upon the number of centuries that sepa-
rate the American races from the great empires of the Euphrates
and the Tigris. It would be wiser to see in the coincidence the
simple result of two courses of reasoning identical in their sim-
plicity.

On the other hand, we can not contest the facility with which
symbols have been transmitted. Current products of industry,
favorite themes of artists, they have passed continually from one
country to another with articles of exchange and objects of adorn-
ment: witness the specimens of Hindoo, Chinese, and Japanese
symbolical works and iconography which have come to us with
the potteries, ivories, cloths, and all the curiosities of the extreme
East. Soldiers, sailors, and travelers of every profession in former
days could not start on a journey without taking in some form or
another their symbols and gods, of which they carried the knowl-
edge to a distance, bringing back in return those of the foreigner.
Slavery would likewise favor the importation of symbols by the
intervention of innumerable captives whom the fortunes of war
or the hazards of piracy brought and caused to flow in from the
most distant regions without taking away from them the remem-
brance of their gods or their worship. Coins, also, have never
been wanting to carry to enormous distances the symbols of the
nations which issued them : Gallic pieces are only counterparts of
the Greek coinage of Philip and Alexander; and pieces rudely
imitating Bactrian money have been found in the tumuli of Scan-
dinavia.

Nothing, except perhaps a superstition, is as contagious as a
symbol; much more contageous should both be when they are
united — as they usually were with the people of antiquity, who
seldom adopted a symbol without attaching to it the value of a
talisman. Even now there are tourists who come back from Naples
with a coral charm hung, according to their sex, from the bracelet
or the watch-chain. Do they really believe that they find a defence
against the evil eye in this Italian survival of an ancient Chal-
dean symbol ? To many among them it is certainly only a local
curiosity, a souvenir ; but there are some in v the number who

676 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

allow themselves to be influenced, unconsciously perhaps, by the
Neapolitan superstition. " It can do no harm, and may do some
good," they might be tempted to reply to you, as some gamblers do
when you jest with them concerning their fetiches. This kind of
reasoning is quite general among polytheistic populations, where
every one thinks it good to do homage to other peoples' gods, and
to unknown gods as well as his own ; for who knows which one
he may not need in this world or the next ? Egyptian scarabs are
found by the thousand, from Mesopotamia to Sardinia, wherever
the armies of the Pharaohs or Phoenician ships have gone. Every-
where, also, in these regions, native scarabs have been collected,
made in imitation of those of Egypt, and reproducing with greater
or less exactness the symbols which the engravers of the valley
of the Nile lavished upon the faces of their amulets. So also, long
before the diffusion of coins, pottery, and jewels, the figurines of
Greece and Etruria furnished all central and western Europe with
divine types and symbolical images.

Are there any indications that permit us to distinguish wheth-
er like symbols have been engendered separately or are derived
from the same source ? The complexity and oddness of the forms,
when they exceed certain limits, go to sustain the second of these
hypotheses. The double-headed eagle of the old German Empire
has now passed into the arms of Austria and Russia. The English-
men Barthe and Hamilton were surprised when, traveling in Asia
Minor some fifty years ago, they discovered a two-headed eagle
of the same pattern engraved among religious scenes in the bas-
reliefs of Pteria, which went back to the ancient Hittites. It is
hard to suppose that a representation identical in features, so con-
trary to the laws of nature, was spontaneously imagined in both
instances. M. Longperier furnished a solution to the riddle when
he pointed out that the two-headed eagle did not replace the one-
headed eagle on the arms of the empire till after the expedition
of Frederick II to the East ; that it figured at the beginning of
the thirteenth century on the coins and banners of the Turkoman
princes, then masters of Asia Minor. The latter adopted it as the
symbol of all power, perhaps to figure the hamca, the fabulous
bird of the Mussulman traditions, which carries off buffaloes and
elephants as the kite carries off mice. Thus the Turkish race,
M. Perrot observes, saw the entrance to the West closed at Le-
panto and Belgrade by the eagle which had led it triumphantly
on the banks of the Euphrates, and the image of which it also
had borrowed from the sculptures cut by its predecessors on the
rocks of Eniuk and Jasilikaia.

If sufficient indications can not be drawn from the form, iden-
tity of signification and use may give strong presumptions respect-
ing the affiliation of symbols. It is not surprising that the Hindoos

THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 677

and Egyptians should both have adopted as the symbol of the sun
the lotus-flower, which opens its petals to the dawn and infolds
them on the approach of night, and which seems to be born of
itself on the surface of the still waters. But the hypothesis of a
borrowing becomes much more probable when, in the iconography
of both peoples, we see the flower at once serving as a support to
the solar gods — as Horus or Vishnu — and figuring in the hands of
the goddesses associated with those gods — Hathor or Lakshmi, the
Venuses of Egypt and India. The probability at last changes
into a half-certainty when we find the lotus employed on both
sides to render the same shade of thought in the rather indirect
applications of solar symbolism. With either, the plant represents
less the sun itself than the solar matrix, the mysterious sanctuary
to which the sun retires every night to draw from it a new life.

We do not know and shall probably never know how the first
communications of ideas were made between Egypt and India,
But we can, by comparing monuments, discover some of the inter-
mediate steps of the route which the symbolism of the lotus fol-
lowed toward the East. Thus, in the sculptures of Phoenicia we
find goddesses holding lotus-cups in their hands, and in the Per-
sian bas-relief of Tak-i-Bustan the solar god Mithra is seated on
the opened flower of the plant. Among the Mesopotamians and
the Persians it is not rare to see this flower adorning tall trees, in
which it is easy to recognize the sacred tree of the Semites or the
Iranian tree that secretes the liquor of immortality. On a patera
of Phoenician workmanship, found at Anathontis, the flowers of
the lotus, borne by these conventional trees, are gathered in one
hand by persons clothed in the Assyrian style, holding a key of
life in the other hand. While the rosy lotus of the Egyptian
monuments does not now grow wild anywhere in the valley of
the Nile, it is, by a curious coincidence, preserved in the flora as
well as in the symbolism of India.

One of the most frequent forms of the cross is called the gam-
ma cross, because its four arms are bent at a right angle so as to
form a figure like that of four Greek gammas turned in the same
direction and joined at the base. We meet it among all the
peoples of the Old World, from Japan to Iceland, and it is found
in the two Americas. There is nothing to prevent us from suppos-
ing that in the first instance it was spontaneously conceived every-
where, like the equilateral crosses, circles, triangles, chevrons, and
other geometrical ornaments so frequent in primitive decoration.
But when we see it, at least among the peoples of the Old Conti-
nent, invariably passing for a talisman, appearing in the funeral
scenes or on the tombstones of Greece, Scandinavia, Numidia, and
Thibet, and adorning the breasts of divine personages — of Apollo
and Buddha — without forgetting certain representations of the

6-3 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Good Shepherd in the Catacombs, we can not escape the convic-
tion that, in significance if not in form, it proceeds from a single
source. This assertion seems to be confirmed in the class of
monuments in which it is met. It appears, in fact, from pre-
historic times among the people originating in the basin of the
Danube, who colonized on either hand the shores of the Troad
and of northern Italy ; thence it extends, with the products of
that ancient civilization, on one side to the Greeks, Etruscans,
Latins, Gauls, Germans, Bretons, and Scandinavians, and on the
other side to Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Persia, India, and finally
to China and Japan.

It is not always necessary, for two figures to have the same
origin, that they should have the same primitive signification.
Sometimes it happens that a symbol changes its meaning in
changing its country. It may possibly preserve only a general
value as a talisman or amulet, like those crucifixes, degraded into
fetiches, which are the only vestiges of the Christianity left among
certain tribes of the Congo by the Portuguese domination of the
last century. Sometimes, again — especially in the case of an
image proper — its new possessors will seek to explain it to them-
selves by some more or less ingenious interpretation, and will thus
restore to it a symbolical bearing, although by means of a new
conception. The rising sun has often been compared to a new-
born child. The comparison led the Egyptians to represent Horus
as a child sucking its finger. The Greeks fancied that he was put-
ting his finger to his lips to admonish the initiated to be discreet,
and made of the representation a figure of Harpocrates, the god
of silence.

Such changes of sense may also be reconciled with knowledge
of the primitive significance. It is a pleasant thing to find every-
where the image or idea we are fond of. The Neo-Platonists be-
lieved in good faith that they could distinguish representations
of their own doctrines in the symbols as well as in the myths of
all the contemporary religions. The early Christians saw a cross
in every figure that presented an intersection of lines — in the
anchor, the mast and its yard, the standard, the plow, the man
swimming, the bird flying, the praying man with outstretched
arms, the paschal lamb on the spit, and the human face, where
the line of the nose is crossed by that of the eyes. When the
Serapeum at Alexandria was demolished, the Christian authors of
the time related that a number of ansated crosses were found.
They themselves observed that the figures were the same as the
ancient Egyptian symbol of life, but that did not keep them from
seeing in them a prophetic allusion to the sign of the redemption.
Sozomenus adds that the fact provoked numerous conversions
among the pagans.

CAN THE MOSQUITO PEST BE MITIGATED? 679

It may also happen that the significance of a foreign symbol is
knowingly modified, in order to adapt it to an idea or a faith pre-
viously destitute of all material expression or restricted to a few
rudimentary representations. When the Persians had possessed
themselves of Mesopotamia, they appropriated to themselves
nearly all the imagery of the conquerors, in order to give form
to their own religious conceptions, which the absence of a national
art had left without any well-defined plastic representations. So,
when the Christians began to reproduce on the walls of the Cata-
combs the scenes of the Old Testament and the parables of the
New, they borrowed their primary models from classical and
mythological art. Mercury Criophorus furnished the type of the
Good Shepherd. Orpheus taming the wild beasts became a sym-
bol of Christ and his preaching. The Christian holding to a cross
to overcome temptation was represented by Ulysses tied to the
mast of his ship, in order to resist the songs of the sirens. By an
ingenious application of a myth which paganism has already
spiritualized, Psyche offered the figure of a human soul to Love,
whose place was taken by an angel. The religions of Gaul and
India furnished examples of like assimilations from the time they
came in contact with the symbolism of more advanced nations. —
Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue des
Deux Mondes,

-♦♦♦-

CAN THE MOSQUITO PEST BE MITIGATED?*

THE annoyances caused by flies and mosquitoes have invited
the special attention of Dr. Robert H. Lamborn, and prompted
him to efforts to secure such study of their life histories and of
their natural enemies as might lead to the discovery of some prac-
ticable means of mitigating their depredations. In 1889 he ad-
dressed a circular letter to the working entomologists of the
country, offering prizes for essays containing original investiga-
tions regarding methods of destroying these pests. He had espe-
cially in view the utilization of the dragon-fly — a harmless insect,
but at the same time exceedingly voracious and very fond of mos-
quitoes— and the possibility of propagating it artificially in places
where mosquitoes abound. The results of the correspondence he
had on the subject are published in this interesting book of stud-
ies, which, while it fails to verify the hopes which Dr. Lamborn
entertained respecting the dragon-flies, does not fail but is encour-
agingly successful in pointing out some methods of considerable

* Dragon-Flies vs. Mosquitoes. Studies in the Life History of Irritating Insects, their
Natural Enemies and Artificial Checks. By Working Entomologists. With an Introduc-
tion by Robert H. Lamborn, Ph. D. New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1890.

680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

probable efficiency for reducing the numbers of the hosts of these
enemies of mankind. The prizes were awarded by a committee
consisting of Drs. H. C. McCook and J. S. Newberry — the first
prize to Mrs. Eugene Aaron, of Philadelphia, for an essay on
The Dipterous Enemies of Man ; and the second prize equally
divided between Messrs. Archibald C. Weeks and William Beuten-
muller, of New York, for papers on The Utility of Dragon-Flies
as Destroyers of Mosquitoes and on the Destruction of the Mos-
quito. These, with other contributed papers, are embodied in the
volume. From Mrs. Aaron's essay we learn that the Culicidce*, or
mosquitoes, breed in stagnant water, and have been observed
living, in all stages of growth, in the most insignificant pud-
dles— as " in a puddle of water, eight inches square and one inch
deep, made by the rain in an iron pulley in a foundry -yard. They
are also to be observed teeming to overcrowding in the hoof -holes
in boggy cow-pastures. But the shallows occasionally overflowed
and replenished by rivulets in swamps, the stagnant pools formed
by ditches without outlets, and the vastly more numerous murky
pools made by the joining of tufts of grass in marshes, are the
usual breeding-places in the rural districts. In village and urban
localities rain-tanks, undrained gutters, badly paved, damp by-
ways, and garden ditches are the most fruitful places for recruit-
ing their numbers. These surroundings are selected by the female
with a view to the fact that from three to four weeks will be
required to perfect the changes from the egg to the imago ; and
they must be situated so as to receive sufficient water from rain
or outside overflow to replenish the evaporation or soaking
into the ground. In this selection the female shows the usual
instinct which is so noticeable in insect economies." When
hatched, they hug the sides of pools and shallow margins, and,
spending most of the time at the surface with the orifice of
the air -tube just in contact with the air, are not usually
found at great depths. They are easily frightened by any stir or
motion from above, but pay little attention to any dangers that
may menace them from the water. Very little is known of their
feeding habits ; but the statement that they are scavengers, feed-
ing on decaying substances in stagnant water, has not been con-
firmed or disproved. They have been observed to feed on minute
animals, and to destroy young trout. They go through several
transformations, and reach a curious shape in the pupa, which —
the head, thorax, legs, and wings, all being folded in one mass,
and the abdominal segments being left free for the purpose of
navigation — has a top-heavy and clumsy appearance, although it
is quite as active as the larva. After the insect has matured and
has begun its flight, the principal objects in its remaining brief
existence " are the search for the desired mate and the duties of

CAN THE MOSQUITO PEST BE MITIGATED? 681

reproduction. To suppose that the tormenting of man occupies
any considerable time in the mosquito economy is certainly a mis-
take. It is only the female which can thus make our lives miser-
able/' They are local in their range, and the supposition that
they can be carried long distances by the wind is declared a mis-
take. House-flies are omnipresent with us, while mosquitoes appear
only in spots. According to Packard, " fresh horse-manure, with
plenty of heat and moisture, furnishes the best food for the young
maggot. From a hundred to a hundred and fifty eggs are de-
posited in irregular, loose sacs, usually within eighteen hours, and
hatching in twenty-four hours or less. The maggots molt twice ;
the three stages of larval development being of the following
periods : first stage, one day ; second stage, from twenty-four to
thirty-six hours ; third stage, three or four days. To this maxi-
mum period of seven days is to be added the same length of time
for the pupal life ; thus it will be seen that fifteen or sixteen days
are required for the entire development from egg to imago."

The expediency of trying to exterminate them is more than
doubtful, for, according to the same author, " it should be remem-
bered that flies have an infancy as maggots, and the loathsome
life they lead as scavengers cleanses and purifies the August air,
and lowers the death-rate of our cities and towns. Thus the young
of the house-fly, the flesh-fly, and the blow-fly, with their thousand
allies, are doing something toward purifying the pestilential air
and averting the summer brood of cholera, diphtheria, and typhoid
fevers which descend like harpies upon the towns and cities. It is
a useful species, to which man owes more than he can readily esti-
mate, and with which he can dispense only when the health of our
cities and towns is looked after with greater vigilance and intelli-
gence than is perhaps likely to be the case for several centuries to

come."

Mosquitoes, therefore, are entitled to exclusive attention in the
exterminating effort.

Mrs. Aaron has a poor opinion of the efficiency of the dragon-
flies, or Odonats, as mosquito-destroyers. They become rarer about
the time that the mosquitoes are most numerous. In the matter
of flight they are very local, and it seems impossible to conceive
that they could ever be brought to frequent deep woods or city
streets where mosquitoes abound. The author's observations of
their feeding habits lead her to believe that they prefer robust,
meaty insects, and that studies of their appetites in confinement
are misleading. The habit of migration among them will also
militate against their efficiency as mosquito-destroyers.

Other writers find that they are capable, in natural conditions,
of working great havoc among mosquitoes, but doubt the utility
of efforts to improve on nature in the matter. Captain C. B. N.

682 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Macauley, U. S. Army, relates that, in a mosquito-infested region
of Montana, he was told how the mosquitoes had disappeared, as
if by magic, on the sudden appearance of a brood of devil's-darn-
ing-needles or dragon-flies of rather large size. The agency of
this insect in the matter was corroborated by the evidence of
squaw-men and Indian traders, who said that the flies did not ap-
pear every mosquito year, but, when they did, they came in droves
and cleared the mosquitoes out. They were called "mosquito-
hawks." The captain himself afterward had an opportunity of
observing them at work, and to determine that they were dragon-
flies. " I noticed," he says, " that they flew in an irregular kind
of skirmish-line, moved slowly, and every now and then made
what he described as short l dabs ' at apparently nothing. Mr.
Heistand said that ' each one of these dabs means a mosquito.' I
was curious to see how deliberate they were about it, and how
fairly aligned the skirmish-line was. They appeared somewhere
about 11 a. m., and when I went into the post later I crossed the
parade-ground and saw detachments of about half a dozen flying
slowly about. They stayed at about an average of three feet from
the ground. I do not know how late they kept it up or how early
they began. They stayed until all the mosquitoes appeared to be
gone." Dr. Lamborn also tells how his own attention was drawn
to the subject. It was while he was in the forests of Lake Supe-
rior, railroad-building. " Sitting in camp while supper was being
prepared, I often, with a sentiment of gratitude, looked through
my mosquito- veil at the dragon-flies that collected in the open
spaces among the pine-trees. They darted from side to side like
swallows in a meadow, but with amazing rapidity, and at every
turn, the natives assured me, ' a mosquito ceased from troubling/
Afterward I happened to observe an entomologist feeding a
dragon-fly that had eaten thirty house-flies in rapid succession
without lessening his voracity. What thought could be more
natural than the one that came to me, that an artificial multipli-
cation of dragon-flies might accomplish a mitigation of the mos-
quito pest ? "

Mr. Beutenmuller, of the Museum of Natural History, New
York, avers that "the dragon- flies (Odonata), especially the
JEscliinus, Gomphina, and Libellulina, are the natural enemies
of the mosquitoes ; they are voracious — they sometimes appear in
great numbers, and, as a matter of fact, the mosquito disappears
before them, while their breeding-grounds are, in many respects,
similar, so far as fresh and brackish water habitats are concerned ;
and, finally, in the metamorphosis of the dragon-fly we meet con-
ditions which introduce it in antagonism to the mosquito at the
same stages of development." The dragon-fly, however, prefers
sunlit areas, and will not live in the woods.

CAJV THE MOSQUITO PEST BE MITIGATED? 683

Tliese are tlie conditions in nature. But the attempts to sub-
ject dragon-fly life to the rules of art do not appear to have been
successful. Mr. Weeks tried earnestly and most intelligently to
raise the insects artificially on his father's farm on Long Island
and in his house in Brooklyn, and failed to obtain any results
worth boasting about. He finds that they are diurnal, working
in the sun, and never present at night, when the mosquitoes are
busiest; that they are short-lived, and frequently destroyed in
large numbers by heavy showers and winds ; that, with few ex-
ceptions, they confine themselves to the vicinity of their place of
birth, and, if removed therefrom, quickly return — hence, can not
be colonized ; and he concludes that " an attempt to destroy flies
and mosquitoes by the artificial propagation of dragon-flies or
any other insect would be unprofitable, unadvisable, and imprac-
ticable."

Mr. Beutenmuller thinks that positive statements can not
yet be made respecting the expediency of artificially breeding
dragon-flies for use against the mosquito. Differences in the
habits of the two insects are against the scheme. Dragon-flies
seek open places and the sun, while the mosquito finds hiding-
places in the woods and in tall grass. " Under these circum-
stances the dragon-fly will not find its prey. Great numbers will
escape ; only those encountered in its busy flight through the air
will be captured, for the dragon-fly does not hunt for its booty
nor scour the forbidden shadows of woods and forests, and at
nightfall the mosquito will elude his pursuer and rise to his
murderous intent." But the dragon-fly "may, in some genial
locations, suit the elements of the question and be of practical
service ; it may, indeed, be more widely beneficial than we sus-
pect."

Of other means of keeping down mosquitoes, Mrs. Aaron
recommends flushing the breeding-places with water, draining
swamps, creating active artificial currents, encouraging fish, and
spraying their hiding-places with petroleum. Mr. Weeks has
faith in the enforcement and observance of sanitary laws and the
encouragement of birds. Mr. Beutenmuller advises the use of
lanterns so arranged as to attract and destroy the mosquitoes,
with pans of kerosene or other strong mixtures for their destruc-
tion, which may be placed around houses and hotels and in
marshes, general and scientific drainage of swamps ; encourage-
ment of fish and waterfowl ; and, where the conditions are favor-
able, the use of coal-oil in the waters of estuaries of rivers and on
the rain-invaded areas of deep woods for destruction in the larval
stages. Astringents, like logwood or alum, will also prevent the
growth of the mosquito in its incipient stages. Dr. H. C. McCook
thinks it might be well to call spiders into service.

684 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The most generally effective of these remedies seem appar-
ently to the authors in the book to be petroleum spraying and
draining. A very little petroleum, spreading itself in a minute
film over the water surface, will go a great way in destroying
the larva?. Drainage also promises to be very efficient. " It goes
even farther back than the larval stage, for it precludes the in-
cipient acts of the mosquito at propagation. It robs her of the
congenial nidus for the development of her eggs." The question
can, however, only be satisfactorily settled by a concerted move-
ment over wide tracts of land. " The arrest of the plague in one
portion of the country when the next section makes no effort to
suppress its own contingent can only lead to discouragement and
ridicule." Against the house-fly the most promising measure of
offense is the encouragement of the fungus that destroys it, which
is identical with the yeast-plant ; but, as flies seem to do as much
good as harm, it will probably be wisest to leave them alone.

■4>»

SLAVONIAN FAIRIES.

By Dr. FEIEDEICH S. KEAUS.

IN my studies in South-Slavic folk-lore, I have frequently come
in contact with the Vila superstition, but only recently under
conditions in which I could make a full investigation of it. The
native literature on the subject is immense, but so confused
and indefinite that an adequate examination of it would consti-
tute a very serious task. The only way to obtain a satisfactory
degree of knowledge in the matter seemed to be to sojourn at
places where the population was relatively pure, and become ac-
quainted with the living beliefs of the people. This I have done,
having resided at five places, and searched out their popular tra-
ditions as one would suck an orange. Especially with regard to
the Vilas have I got enough to make a book ; I shall here give
only a short chapter from it, including a part of what I learned in
the single village of Pleternica. This village lies at the foot of a
mountain on the right bank of the Orliava River, about three
hours from Brod on the Bosnian frontier. The present village is
not more than one hundred and thirty years old. In it the estates
lie scattered among the hills, each on an elevation by itself, and
each a fortified post. The people are engaged in farming, herd-
ing, and robbery. The practice of robbery is an inheritance from
Turkish times. A large part of the population, who had been
Mohammedan, had embraced Roman Catholicism in order to keep
their property. Some of the families still boast their Moham-
medan extraction. Many Catholics have recently come into the

SLAVONIAN FAIRIES. 685

place from Bosnia, and it has about fifteen hundred inhabitants.
The people can all read and write, are neat, enterprising, indus-
trious, and well off ; but, notwithstanding their good schools, they
stick to their old, pre-Christian superstitions.

The Yilas, which occupy the greatest space in the popular lore,
are female beings of the same kind as the fairies or wood-nymphs
of the Germanic nations. The etymology of the name is uncer-
tain, but it is supposed to mean " rustic " ; and the Vilas are there-
fore spirits of the wood. The belief in them controls all the in-
cidents of the peasant's life. The spirits are supposed to appear
rarely alone, but usually in companies of two, three, five, or
seven. They are distinguished by an extraordinary, maidenly
beauty, clear complexion, slender stature, and dark, wavy hair
descending to the ankles. They move lightly and freely through
the air, being winged, although their wings are usually invisible.
They can also lay their wings aside. Their dress is simple, and
includes a crown of pearls on the head inclasping the floating
hair ; a long white robe, such as is worn by the peasant women at
their work, reaching to the ground, without any outer garment ;
and a girdle of red silk.

They enjoy everlasting youth, are acquainted with divination
and healing, have access to all the treasures of the earth, and can
at will produce love or hatred in the children of men. They are
particularly friendly to deer, horses, sheep, and godly men. They
can assume the form of the gray mountain wolf. Under some
circumstances they are pettish, evil, and vengeful ; they teach
children to steal ; but sometimes, out of pity, take forlorn orphans
under their care. They prefer to live upon or in trees, especially
favoring the linden and nut trees; travel in the clouds or in
whirlwinds ; dance on hillocks, in green fields at springs, on roofs,
and under isolated trees, accompanying the exercise with songs,
and are distinguished by a clear, penetrating cry.

Their ordinary occupations are milking does, combing their
hair with golden combs, washing their robes, and bathing in clear
streams under the shadows of the overhanging trees. If a person
wants to see Vilas or enjoy their presence, he must, if he is not
gifted with the second-sight, put on his clothes wrong-side out.
Children born on Tuesday or Sunday have the second-sight ; but
the Vilas never show themselves to children born on Friday or
to red-haired men. Really faithful and Vila-fearing men care-
fully avoid speaking their name. They say "she," "that one/'
or, in case of more than one — two, for example — " those two."

The Vilas are supposed to be voluptuous creatures, and to lead
lives that would not be regarded, according to our views, as moral.
They bear only female children, which take after the mother.
Whoever has enjoyed their favors can never afterward love a

686 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mortal woman. But one can rarely count on the endurance of
their love, or be happy with it, and at last the chosen one will try
to escape them. They are also sometimes accustomed to take
men into their society; but one who has once associated with
them, willingly or unwillingly, can never get rid of them, and
must at last pay for his mistake with his life. He is strangled or
torn to pieces, or, if a lighter punishment is administered, he is
made blind or lame. The Vilas are able to call back to life men
that they have slain, and also to lift the disabilities they may
have inflicted upon any one. If a man succeeds in robbing a Vila
of her wings, he acquires full power over her. If she loses her
crown and her robe, she only suffers a separation of some time
from the society of her playmates.

Three stories that were told me give some insight into the
customs of the Vilas. As the peasant Adam Odvorcie was driving
along, he came to a hill where seven Vilas were dancing. As he
drove by, they came down and frightened the horses so that they
ran away, leaving him in the road. He waited till the Vilas went
away. A little farther along he saw seven of them washing their
clothes. Reza Barjanovie relates that, in the summer of 1887, as
she was sitting under a nut-tree in the yard with her mother-in-
law, they heard dancing and singing on the hill back of the house.
All at once there arose a whirlwind and drove through the yard,
striking them forcibly. They were much frightened, and, while
trying to consult as to what had best be done, the mother-in-law,
accidentally looking up at the roof, exclaimed : " Look ! there are
Vilas up there ! " She said again to Theresa : " Look, daughter !
the Vilas are dancing on our roof ! * At that moment the Vilas
disappeared. Both women have the second-sight. They often go
to the woods in the morning and have opportunities to see much
that is uncanny.

Koprivce Vic, an octogenarian of Pleternica, wrote me on the
25th of April, 1887, in his own handwriting, of the following ad-
venture he had had with the Vilas : " Several years ago, in the
old times, I was going into the mountains with my grandfather.
It was late in the fall, and I was helping him drive the oxen
through the plum orchard to the pasture. We perceived them
away off, stamping with stamps, washing their robes. The nearer
we came to them the more distinct grew the stamping. We were
about to turn back, but took heart and went to within a few
yards of them. Two of them were washing robes. We saluted
them in the name of God. The huo rose, threw their stamps over
their backs, and let their hair fall to the ground. "When we had
gone a little farther, one said to the other, ' What shall we do to
them ? ' Said the other, ' Nothing, for they saluted us in the
name of God, and we shall have to let them go.' Upon this we

SLAVONIAN FAIRIES. 687

returned to the orchard and lay down under a plum-tree. Grand-
father fell into a sleep, and it took him by the hair and began to
beat his head against the tree. We jumped up forthwith and
ran into the cellar."

The truest and firmest friendships for mutual help in peace or
suffering are concluded among the South-Slavic peasantry by the
confirmation of an elect brotherhood or sisterhood. Obviously a
connection of that kind with such powerful beings as the Vilas
must be considered exceedingly precious. In the sagas and heroic
songs of the people every great champion has a sworn sister among
them. How such privileges are obtained was as unknown to me
as to every other writer on the subject, for the people, if they
know, will not willingly give up such a secret to every ques-
tioner ; but Mother Eve, of Pleternica, who keeps all these tradi-
tions of the past living in her mind down to the present day, told
it all to me. The fact that it is so fresh in her recollection is evi-
dence that the cult still exists. The time of the telling was Feb-
ruary 28, 1888.

If a person wishes to contract this relationship, he must take
a horse's hoof, a piece of skin cut from under the hoof, and two
or three hairs from the mane, the tail, and the head of the horse.
He must also take a new broom that has never been swept with,
and the price of which he has not beaten down in buying, and
must provide himself with some horse-dung. Then, on the first
Sunday in the new moon, he must go into the yard, sweep a circle
around himself, and in the middle of the circle put the hoof and
the other things he has taken from the horse, and, standing with
the right foot on the hoof, with both hands brought together by
the palms, call three times between the hands, three times turn
around with the hoof, and utter the formula : " Sister Vila ! I
seek you over nine fields, nine meadows, nine brooks, nine woods,
nine hills, nine mountain-peaks, nine ruined towers ! Come to me
and let me swear brotherhood with you ! "

When the Vila appears, the person performing the conjuration
says : " Sister Vila ! I have found you now, and am your chosen
brother ! "

The conjuring person again blows three times through his
closed hands and continues: "Sister Vila! give me your help
whenever I call upon you, and help those whom I would help."

He must next name the person whom he holds dearest in life :
if a man, the maiden of his choice ; if a woman, the man. After
which he adds : " Sister Vila ! I conjure you by the living God
and the sister Vilas that I may have what is mine from the
beginning of the world." The rising sun is meant by " the liv-
ing God."

By contracting this relationship one may assure himself of

688 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the assistance of the Vilas, and may also become more or less of
their kind and acquire various arts from them. Men thus some-
times obtain the mystic power of changing themselves at pleasure
into an animal, as a horse or a wolf, and of doing much mischief.
Wizards and medical practitioners, men and women, boast of their
relationship and ascribe their skill to it. A dwarfish herdsman,
about forty years old, living in a cave in Odvorci, is distinguished
as a cheiromancist, and can tell from the lines of the hand what
herbs are good for a patient. He asserts that the Vilas had him
under instruction for seven years. A Bracara lives at Petersdorf,
to whom suffering Mohammedans come from Bosnia and pay two
golden ducats for a cure. He gets such prices because he pro-
fesses to be able in serious cases to hold consultations with the
Vilas.

Toma Miemkovic, of Pleternica, told me the following story of
a woman changing into a wolf, vouching for its truth, because, as
he pretended, he had himself seen the person in question. There
lived a very rich man at Trapari, who possessed a great flock of
sheep, over which he put two shepherds and six dogs. Every day
a wolf appeared, ate up a sheep, and vanished, without any one
being able to see it. The overseer raged, and the sheep kept disap-
pearing till three fourths of them were gone. At last he became
desperate, when he was told by some one that there was no real
wolf, and was advised to get up early in the morning, put on all
his clothes, from his shoes to his cap, wrong-side out, drive the
sheep to the brook in the pasture, climb a tree and wait ; by means
of which he would be able to find out who the wolf was. He fol-
lowed this counsel. About noon an old woman of the neighbor-
hood came down with a pail on her head and drew water from
the brook. Then she lay on the grass, turned three somersaults,
changed into a wolf, seized the fattest wether — a four-year-old —
and ate him, wool, entrails, hoofs, and all. The man was on the
point of shooting her from the tree, but, as he knew her, thought
it better to punish her well at home. After the wolf had eaten
the sheep, it executed three more somersaults and turned back
into the old woman. The overseer came down from the tree and
chastised her well ; and, when her sons heard what she had been
doing, they cudgeled her so thoroughly that she could hardly bear
to have anything touch her. From that time on she never changed
into a wolf, or ate any more strange sheep.

The womanly nature of the Vilas appears in their insatiable
revenge for scorn of their love. The following story corresponds
with the legend of the youth who knew no fear. The outcome in
the present case is the discomfiture of the rash man ; for, instead
of the usual ghost, Vilas appear as the spirits of revenge.

There was once a Magyar who was so handsome that one could

SLAVONIAN FAIRIES. 689

hardly admire him enough. The Vilas took him away and taught
him for twelve years to dance, but he would not and could not
learn. On the first day of the thirteenth year, about eleven o'clock
in the morning, he escaped from them, took refuge in a wood, and
hid in a large, hollow oak-tree. About eleven o'clock at night
the Vilas came up to him like clouds, and tried to get him away.
They called to him : " Come, love, to us ; don't be afraid." But he
would not answer. At daybreak he started again on his road, and
came to a pasture where some herdsmen were watching swine.
He asked them to protect him. They gave him something to eat
and drink. He lay down, and they posted themselves in a circle
around him. The Vilas came again about midnight and asked
him to go with them, but he refused. In the morning he paid the
herdsmen well for their care, went on, came to an inn, and asked
for a lodging. The landlord answered that he could not accom-
modate him, for he had only one chamber, which no one dared to
sleep in, for whoever spent a night in it never lived to see
another day. The Magyar replied : " I am not afraid ; only give
me enough smoking-tobacco, candles, a table, a chair, and a bundle
of kindling-wood. You need not trouble yourself about me." He
lit the candles, sat down, and went to smoking. The Vilas came
about ten o'clock, alarming the whole house, and cried to him,
" Ah, now we have caught you ! " and they carried him off and
made a male Vila of him.

The dances, to which persons allied by sworn brotherhood are
admitted, take place in the night-time. The participants must not
talk of the matter, under penalty of death. The Podborje Hill, at
the baths of Daruvar, at the foot of which is a church of the old
believers, was recognized some thirty years ago as a place where
such dances were held.

A young woman of fifteen, in Drenovci, was accustomed to go
out every night, as soon as her husband was asleep, and soar
around with the Vilas. On one of these occasions the husband
awoke, and, not finding his wife at his side, remained awake till
she came back at dawn. In the morning he asked her if she had
slept well. She said no, she had had a restless night. The next
evening she went out again with the Vilas. The husband lay
awake, and on her return at dawn asked her where she had been.
She made no answer, but was found dead in the morning.

Whatever once comes into the possession of the Vilas is lost to
men; and if a man gives an unsuitable thing to them, he will
have to suffer for it. A peasant girl told my mother that, when
her little Catherine was fretful and could not sleep, she took her
in the evening, when the cattle were coming home, into the front
yard, gave her a swing, and said, " God and the Virgin help us.
The Vila marries their son and invites Catherine to the wedding.

VOL. XXXVII. — 50

690 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Catherine can not go, but sends her moaning there " ; and the child
would cease to fret.

The Vilas play a subordinate part in many other stories, and
occasionally appear mixed up with religious ideas in such a way
that a course of comparative studies would be necessary to make
them clear. — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from
Das Ausland,

•»*♦»

SKETCH OF THOMAS CORWIN MENDENHALL.

By GEOEGE 1LES.

AMERICA is rich in men who have proved how much more
decisive in a career of usefulness is nature than nurture,
the instinct for acquiring knowledge than facilities for instruc-
tion, a worthy ambition to render service to one's fellows than all
the means and agencies which wait upon circumstances ordinarily
and often ignorantly called favorable. Such a man is the subject
of this sketch.

Thomas Corwin Mendenhall was born on October 4, 1841,
near Hanoverton, Ohio. On his father's side he is of Quaker
stock, tracing his descent from Benjamin Mendenhall, who emi-
grated from Wiltshire, England, with William Penn, and settled
in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Young Mendenhall's school-
ing was of the scanty kind afforded by small country villages
more than a generation ago ; defective though it was, it developed
in him at an early age a fondness for the study of mathematics
and the natural sciences. He gradually won for himself an edu-
cation which his opportunities would have denied to a less sturdy
spirit.

Among the most important influences working for his mental
development in boyhood was the encouragement of his father, who,
while he had enjoyed only limited opportunities for educational
training, was an earnest, thoughtful man, and fond of reading.
From him, along with the conviction that there must be an ante-
cedent cause for every effect, he derived a disposition to investigate
causes and inquire after reasons. ' Another impulse, which must
have had a very considerable effect upon the determination of his
future career, was given him by one of his teachers in the old log
school-house — a good Quaker lady, who had a way of setting her
pupils to making simple experiments, and thus, as he has said to
us, directed the first physical laboratory that he ever entered.
She taught him that a ray of light was bent in passing from one
medium to another of different density, by means of the- old and
familiar experiment with the coin and tin cup. On another occa-
sion, by darkening the windows, except for a small opening in the

SKETCH OF THOMAS OORWIN MENDENHALL. 691

corner of one of them, with the shawls of the girls, she showed
how an image of the big boys jumping from a " spring-board "
outside was projected on the roughly plastered ceiling. Such ex-
periments and illustrations made a great impression on him, as
they undoubtedly did on his fellow-students, and, we may assume,
produced lasting influences that varied in each according to the
bent of his mind. Young Mendenhall read also with great eager-
ness the small volume of Comstock's Natural Philosophy which
fell into his hands about this time, and was allowed to draw the
cuts of levers, pulleys, etc., on the blackboard at school. He ex-
perimented on the law of the lever when, with the other boy who
had been detailed with him for the duty, bringing water from a
distant spring to the school-house, the pail was carried between
the two on a stick. He had a taste for mechanical operations and
was something of an inventor, and was especially fond of mathe-
matical studies. Of the few books in the small family library
Chambers's Information for the People was his favorite, and he
read and reread it till he nearly knew it by heart. In astronomy
he made his first observation by means of a semicircle of wood
which he had roughly graduated and mounted in the meridian,
and on which the line of collimation was determined by two pins
at the extremities of the diameter. When about eleven years old
he made an unsuccessful trial of Foucault's experiment to prove
the rotation of the earth, of which he had read in a newspaper.
When it became necessary for him, at an early age, to care for
himself, he continued his studies at odd times as he found oppor-
tunity, still attending school as regularly as he could. Rainy
days on the farm were eagerly made use of for reading and study.
Studies in algebra were carried on while he was employed in a
saw-mill, and the problems were worked out on loose boards with
chalk. " More than to all other sources, however," Prof. Menden-
hall remarked, " I am indebted to the friendly advice, encourage-
ment, and assistance of teachers and others with whom I came in
contact. To be made to think that I could do something or had
done something by a word of kindness or congratulation was to
be helped along immensely."

Remembering the waste of time, the discouraging, because
useless, difficulties of his youthful struggle, Prof. Mendenhall has
ever been a faithful advocate of bringing the highest education
and the best scientific culture within the reach of every seeker of
it. His proficiency in science soon developed itself in the perfect
form needful to one who would successfully teach. In 1873, on
the organization of the Ohio State University, he was elected to
the chair of Physics and Mechanics, which he held until 1878,
when he accepted the professorship of Physics in the Imperial
University of Japan at Tokio. While in Japan he organized a

692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

special course in physics, and established a physical laboratory in
connection with the science department of the university. In
addition he founded a meteorological observatory, which after
his departure was merged into the general meteorological system
established by the Japanese Government. Prof. Mendenhall
furthermore carried out an investigation on the force of gravity
at the sea-level and on the famous Japanese extinct volcano
Fujinoyama. His measurements of the figure of the mountain and
of its density enabled him to deduce a value for the mass of the
earth which agrees very closely with that of Francis Baily as ob-
tained by the Cavendish method. About this time he also made
a series of elaborate measurements of the wave-lengths of the
principal Fraunhofer lines of the solar spectrum by means of a
large spectrometer, then one of the best in existence. This work
was done before Prof. Plenry A. Rowland had produced his
famous diffraction gratings, but some fine specimens of Lewis M.
Rutherfurd's rulings were used. No precise measurements of
these rulings were undertaken ; hence Prof. Mendenhall's results
were only valuable as ascertaining the relative spaces of the vari-
ous portions of the spectrum ; as such they rank among the best
given to the world previous to the recent researches with gratings
of accurately known and more minute division.

Japan is a land of frequent earthquakes, and Prof. Mendenhall
soon became interested in studying their phenomena. That this
study on his part and that of others might be systematic and co-
operative, he aided in founding the Seismological Society of
Tokio. While ardent in his university work and an unsparing
toiler in diverse fields of original investigation, Prof. Mendenhall
felt that he had a duty to men and women who could not enter
his classes nor read the scientific memoirs he was writing. With
Prof. Edward S. Morse, then in Japan, and others, he gave lect-
ures on scientific themes to popular audiences in the temples and
theatres of Tokio. So thoroughly was an intelligent curiosity
thus aroused in the city, that soon a public lecture hall was estab*
lished — the first in the Japanese Empire.

In 1881 Prof. Mendenhall returned to the United States and
resumed his chair at the Ohio State University. In the following
year he organized the Ohio State Weather Service, of which he
was director until 1884. While holding this office he devised and
put into operation a system of weather-signals for display upon
railway trains. This system was generally adopted throughout
the United States and Canada ; in 1887 it was superseded by a new
code introduced by the Chief Signal Officer. In the United States
Signal Service at Washington Prof. Mendenhall received an ap-
pointment in 1884. Here he organized and equipped a physical
laboratory in connection with the office of the Chief Signal Officer,

SKETCH OF THOMAS CORWIN MENDENHALL. 693

and inaugurated systematic observations of atmospheric electrici-
ty. One of the results of his work was proof that rain precipi-
tation is the cause rather than the -effect of electrical discharges
in the atmosphere. He concurrently investigated the methods
for ascertaining ground temperatures, inventing improved forms
of apparatus. Pursuing a line of inquiry begun in Japan, he es-
tablished the systematic gathering of data regarding earthquakes
from stations scattered throughout the United States. Immedi-
ately after the earthquake of August 31, 1886, he visited Charles-
ton, and made a report upon the agitation with a co-seismic chart
showing the disturbed area. It seems probable that, before many
years elapse, the phenomena of earthquakes will have sufficiently
yielded their secrets to enable predictions of their occurrence to
be made, following up and perfecting the methods by which the
Weather Bureau now issues its forecasts. In this branch of
science, as important as it is difficult, Prof. Mendenhall has done
invaluable work as a pioneer. After two years' service of the
Government, he resigned, to accept the presidency of the Rose
Polytechnic Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana. His new respon-
sibilities were discharged with marked success; he brought to
them rare address, tact, and executive ability. The Institute,
young as it was, soon had an assured place among the leading
technical schools of the country. That it supplies an educational
need in the flourishing city in which generosity has placed it
came out plainly at its commencement exercises last year. On
that occasion Prof. Mendenhall was able to say that every mem-
ber of the graduating class had secured an engagement and was
fairly launched upon his life-work.

In July, 1880, Prof. Mendenhall was nominated by the Presi-
dent to fill the superintendency of the United States Coast and
Geodetic Survey, one of the most important scientific appoint-
ments in the country, and which has been held by men of the
stamp of Alexander Dallas Bache, Benjamin Peirce, and Julius E.
Hilgard. Prof. Mendenhall succeeds to their fame, but also to
administrative duties which have grown more onerous with every
year of the survey's history. He has nevertheless an opportunity
for scientific work which his energetic and organizing mind is not
likely to leave unimproved. His interest in the gravitation work
which the survey has carried on for several years has led to the
formation of new plans for its more rapid and vigorous prosecu-
tion. For some time past the survey has been engaged in the
study of terrestrial magnetism ; its researches in this direction are
being actively pressed forward, one aim being to locate the north
magnetic pole with precision. In geodesy the survey is steadily
advancing the great transcontinental system of triangulation, and
some new contributions of importance toward our knowledge of

694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the earth's figure are likely to be presented at an early day. As
Superintendent of Weights and Measures, Prof. Mendenhall enters
upon another field of duty for which his work in the past has
been a preparation. He has long borne a prominent part among
the teachers who have pressed and still continue to press the met-
ric system upon the American public. He is an active member of
the American Metrological Society, and has repeatedly, on the
platform and through the press, taken occasion to impeach the
current irrational medley of pounds avoirdupois and troy ; of
grains, gallons, feet, and bushels.

Prof. Mendenhall has uncommon gifts as a lecturer ; his mas-
terly expositions of physical themes continue to be given despite
the pressure of official duties. At the Cooper Institute in New
York, the Lowell Institute in Boston, the Peabody Institute in
Baltimore, the Mechanics' Institute in Cincinnati, the Brooklyn
Institute, and in other of the chief popular lyceums of the
country, he has been greeted by large audiences. The honorary
degree of Ph. D. was conferred on him by the Ohio State University
in 1878, and that of LL. D. by the University of Michigan in 1887.
In the latter year he was chosen a member of the National Acad-
emy of Sciences. He was elected a member of the American As-
sociation for the Advancement of Science at the Indianapolis
meeting in 1871, and was advanced to the grade of Fellow in 1874.
In 1882, at the Montreal meeting, he presided over the Section of
Physics. His address on that occasion was a forcible plea for
physics in education, presenting a judicious view of the value of
guidance when students attempt original research. In 1888 he
was chosen President of the Association, and in that capacity at
last year's meeting, in Toronto, won golden opinions on all hands.
At the approaching meeting in Indianapolis he will, it is under-
stood, take for the theme of his address, as retiring president,
The Relation of Science and Scientific Men to the General
Public.

In 1887 he contributed the first volume to The Riverside
Science Series, A Century of Electricity. A revised and enlarged
edition of this capital popular treatise has been issued this year.
From among his numerous contributions to scientific publications
we select : On the time required to communicate impressions to
the sensorium and the reverse, American Journal of Science, 1871 ;
On the heaping of liquids, American Journal of Science, 1873;
An improvement on Bunsen's method for specific gravity of
gases, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, 1878; Temperature and index of refraction,
American Journal of Science, 1876 ; Co-efficient of expansion of
a diffraction grating, American Journal of Science, 1881 ; Mem-
oirs of the. Scientific Department of the University of Tokio, Ja-

SKETCH OF THOMAS COR WIN MENDENHALL. 695

pan : (1) Report on the meteorology of Tokio, 1879 ; (2) Report on
the meteorology of Tokio, 1880 ; (3) Measurement of the force of
gravity at Tokio and the summit of Fujinoyama, 1881 ; (4)
Wave-length of some of the principal lines of the solar spectrum,
1881 ; The influence of time on the change in resistance of carbon
under pressure, American Journal of Science, 1882 ; Differential
resistance thermometer, American Journal of Science, 1885 ; Re-
port on the Flood Rock explosion, Science, October 1885 ; On the
electrical resistance of soft carbon under pressure, American
Journal of Science, 1886 ; On characteristic curves of composi-
tion, read at the American Association for the Advancement of
Science meeting, 1886, published in Science, March 1887; Seis-
moscopes and seismological investigations, read at the meeting of
the National Academy of Sciences, 1887, published in American
Journal of Science, 1888 ; On an improved form of quadrant elec-
trometer, read at the meeting of the National Academy of Sci-
ences, 1888; On the intensity of earthquakes, with approximate
calculations of the energy involved, Proceedings of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, 1888 ; On globular
lightning, American Meteorological Journal, 1890. A memoir of
researches in atmospheric electricity, read before the National
Academy of Sciences in 1888, is now in course of publication.

In the attempt to measure the duration of a flash of lightning, Mr. A. C. Ray-
nard, in Knowledge, regards a recurrent flash as " a very complicated succession
of discharges lasting for an appreciable part of a second. The giant discharges
which take place during a storm, between irregularly shaped and badly conducting
masses, differ materially in character from the flashes produced in a laboratory
between good conductors. In the laboratory the whole flow takes place at once.
In nature there seems to be a flow or rash succeeded by a dribble, which ceases
or nearly ceases, and commences again and again, flow after flow rushing down
the same path until the potential along the line of discharge is realized." The ap-
pearance of "ribbon-flashes" in some of the photographs is supposed to be due to
unsteadiness or imperfections in the instruments.

The present greater proportion than formerly existed of men who are active
and vigorous after passing seventy years of age, and all the way even up to ninety,
denotes one of the brighter phases of our civilization. The fact that such vigor is
associated with different physical types, both suggests that there may be a general
origin for it, and feeds the hope that it may partly depend on personal conduct.
Dr. B. W. Richardson advises that the preparation to secure long life may begin
with the training of children, by protecting them against mental disturbance as
well as physical hardship ; and may be carried out in more mature life by com-
bining, with hygienic living, healthful activity of mind with lively interest in all
things that make for good, while restraining or avoiding passion, undue excite-
ments, and unlovely qualities.

696 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

r

EDITOR'S TABLE.

TARIFF LEGISLATION.

THE tariff question is one that will
not down. So long as the govern-
ment of any country interposes arbitrary
obstacles to the activity of the people, so
long as it undertakes to make artificial
channels for industry, to open markets
here and close them there, to dictate
the prices at which goods shall be sold
— so long, in a word, as it assumes the
prerogatives of an all-wise Providence in
directing the affairs of individuals and
showing them how to be happy — so long
will there be " a doleful song steaming
up " of the ignorance, incapacity, and
injustice that mark its action. "We en-
deavored to show, a couple of months
ago, that a policy of protection, as it is
called, naturally and inevitably allies
itself with fraud and extravagance in the
Government, and we do not think the
demonstration can easily be refuted.
The essence of the protective system is
that the Government or the Legislature
undertakes to make higher prices for
goods by shutting out competition from
abroad. Is it to be supposed for one
moment that the people for whom a
favorable price is thus to be made will
not give pecuniary support to the party
that so arranges things for their benefit ?
Is it not perfectly known that election
funds are provided in this way, and that
the taxing power is thus virtually put
up to sale? The crowning disgrace of
the worst days of the Roman Empire
was that the supreme power in the
state was made a matter of bargain and
sale with a corrupt soldiery. We are
far removed from the days of the Roman
Empire ; but how far are we removed
from its methods? The question is a
serious one.

We publish in this number of the
Monthly the conclusion of a carefully
prepared article by Mr. Edward Atkin-

son bearing on this subject, the first part
of which will be foundin the August num-
ber— an article which we trust will re-
ceive the attention it merits. Take one
statement that Mr. Atkinson makes —
and he is a writer who is known to be
careful about his facts : " On the plea
that this branch of industry" (production
of iron) " should be sustained, the con-
sumers of iron and steel in this country
have paid a sum in excess of the price
paid by the consumers who have been
supplied by Great Britain and Germany,
ranging from $50,000,000 to $80,000,000
a year. The excess of price has not been
turned over to the workmen by the
owners of the mines and works." Not
at all ; the workmen have been left to
compete as savagely as they chose with
one another, and with a constant stream
of new-comers ; and the manufacturers,
profiting thus by cheap labor, have been
enabled to carve huge fortunes for them-
selves out of the excess in price secured
to them by the Legislature. It is no
wonder if want of gratitude for such
big mercies struck Chairman Eoster as a
most hideous crime; but such ingrati-
tude is the exception rather than the
rule, and would chiefly manifest itself
when the monopoly seemed secure
against attack; a little danger would
develop " barrels " of gratitude.

The misery is that we have a manu-
factured and altogether falsified public
opinion on this subject — a public opin-
ion, we fully believe, which, has not at-
tained its present consistency without
much not altogether disinterested advo-
cacy. What is the use of having the
" sinews of war " if you do not employ
them? Money speaks in more senses
than one ; the chamber of Danae is not
the only sanctum that has been violated
by a shower of gold. Be this as it may,
however, certain it is that the public at

EDITOR'S TABLE.

697

large have very erroneous ideas as to
the actual results of a protective policy.
Most think that, in some mysterious
way, protection confers a benefit upon
all. It is notorious that in many " pro-
tected " occupations wages are at a
minimum ; it is certain that multitudes
suffer from their enforced exclusion
from foreign markets ; and it is a con-
spicuous fact that private fortunes are
on the increase both in number and in
average amount : yet still the delusion
is cherished that protection is making
the nation, as a whole, richer and more
prosperous. Mr. Atkinson says dis-
tinctly that " there is a vastly greater
proportion of farmers and farm laborers
whose home market depends upon the
export trade than there is of those who
might possibly be harmed if, through
imports of foreign articles, the demand
for their own products were reduced."
He ridicules, and with good reason,
the idea that Congress is fit to choose
occupations for the people. " What an
absurdity!" he exclaims. "As if the
people were not bigger than any Con-
gress that ever existed, and could not
manage their own affairs vastly better
than the average member." "With all
respect to our valued contributor, we
do not think he strikes quite the right
note here. There is no need to flatter
the people at the expense of Congress,
which, after all, is elected by the votes
of the people, and contains just as much
wisdom and patriotism as the people
care to put into it. The point is not
that the people are wiser on the aver-
age than Congress, for that is not cer-
tain; but that no individual is wise
enough to undertake to interfere with
the natural laws of supply and demand,
or to substitute artificial adjustments of
his own devising for those naturally ex-
isting in the economic sphere. We
would not trust all the wisdom in the
country to undertake such a task. There
is this, too, to be considered : that each
private individual feels for himself the
pressure and influence of surround-

ing conditions upon his business, and
adapts himself thereto as best he can ;
whereas the Legislature deals with busi-
ness generally — the business of the
whole country — upon more or less ab-
stract principles. In this sense the
action of the average individual is apt
to be wiser than the action of Congress
— not because he is wiser than the aver-
age Congressman, but because he is deal-
ing with a problem more or less level
with his powers, whereas Congress un-
dertakes to deal with one wholly be-
yond its powers.

A strong point made by Mr. Atkin-
son is his demonstration that even
" infant industries " do not need to be
nursed by a tariff when they are prop-
erly located and have large markets
open to them. The instance he cites is
that of our own iron and other manu-
facturing interests in the Southern
States. On the principles we constant-
ly hear maintained by protectionists,
the manufacturing industries of Penn-
sylvania and Massachusetts should have
crushed out any attempt at compe-
tition in the South, the latter being
unable to "protect" itself by a tariff;
but nothing of the kind has happened,
and Southern industries are yearly in-
creasing in volume and importance.
This is an argument to which there is
no answer. If the industries of the
South could maintain and develop
themselves in the face of the competi-
tion of heavily subsidized industries,
commanding vast capital and fully
organized, in the North, will any one
pretend that our national industries, so
far as they were in any way suited to
the country, could not have maintained
and developed themselves in the face
of foreign competition ?

We can not but believe that the
common sense of the country will see
before long that this, the youngest of
nations, instead of leading the van in
the application of sound and progressive
principles of economic policy, has been
hugging to its bosom the narrowest

698

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

and most unenlightened principles of
an antiquated state-craft. While the
spread of knowledge and the improve-
ment in means of communication are
drawing men together, and more or
less effacing the lines of separation
between nation and nation, this coun-
try, which, having received, in point of
territory and material resources, the
fairest and richest heritage of all, might
have been expected to show the bright-
est example of good feeling and hospi-
'tality to other peoples and governments,
has apparently considered it its mission
to antagonize as far as possible the uni-
fying influence of the modern spirit, to
counteract the work of science in draw-
ing the nations together, and to promote
to the extent of its power a regime of
international exclusiveness and jealousy.
Shall we not some day wake up to a
sudden shame of our conduct as a peo-
ple in this matter? Shall we not some
day be led to feel that we owe the world
a better example ? "What is the use of
endowing colleges and teaching the
rising generation how to subdue the
forces of nature, if, after the forces of
nature have been subdued, and the life-
giving and health-giving currents of
international intercourse are prepared
to flow in full tide of beneficent activ-
ity, we empower a lot of politicians
at Washington to place artificial ob-
stacles and resistances in the way of
our commerce ? The thing is really
too absurd — philosophy and religion
alike proclaiming the solidarity of
human interests, science showing how
natural obstacles to intercourse may
be reduced to a minimum, while poli-
tics— flouting all the teachings of re-
ligion and philosophy, handicaps the
achievements of science and insists on
the perpetuation of a semi-barbarous
regime of international hostility. Does
any one say the word " hostility " is
too strong? It is not too strong. What
more hostile thing can we do to any
one than to refuse intercourse with
him? What deadlier or crueller form

of hostility is there than the " boycott " ?
Of course, in boycotting others, we boy-
cott ourselves ; for, big as we are, we
are not the whole world. What Mr.
Atkinson is striving to show is the in-
jurious effect of the boycott upon our-
selves. We heartily wish him success
in his patriotic labors ; but we could
wish also that a more generous senti-
ment might come and help to lift us out
of our present false and retrograde
position.

Our biographical sketch this month
is devoted to Prof. T. C. Mendenhall,
Superintendent of the Coast Survey and
retiring President of the American As-
sociation for the Advancement of Sci-
ence. As the author of the sketch
rightly observes, we have in this gentle-
man a typical specimen of that class of
Americans who, by the determined cul-
tivation and development of their natu-
ral gifts, have arrived at the highest
distinction. Many perhaps will consid-
er the surroundings of Prof. Menden-
hall's boyhood as unfavorable to his be-
coming eminent ; but there is an element
in his early school training, common-
place as that may appear, which to our
mind was decidedly favorable, because
it contributed directly to the formation
of those habits of observation and inde-
pendent thinking which are conspicuous
in the characters of able men. Deriving
from his father an inquiring turn of
mind, the boy was fortunate enough to
fall into the hands of a teacher who was
an interested observer of physical phe-
nomena, and who was in the habit of
occasionally varying the school-work by
such simple experiments as were within
the means at her command. Insignifi-
cant as this episode may appear to many,
it was well calculated to arouse the in-
terest and fix the attention. The native
curiosity of the childish mind was stim-
ulated, and observation, experiment, and
reasoning on his own account were the
natural result.

LITERARY NOTICES.

699

Under the system of public-school
administration that now prevails, espe-
cially in our large cities, this Quaker
lady would not have been allowed to
break the tedious routine of book-study
with any such diversions. Any attempt
on her part to observe the individual
aptitudes of her pupils, to foster them,
and qualify the boys to put their facul-
ties to the best use of which they were
capable would have been frowned down
as inconsistent with the true purposes of
the school. On the other hand, she
would have been compelled, under pen-
alty of dismissal, to put them all through
an identical Procrustean drill, which
tends to dull the faculties, suppress the
aptitudes, and destroy that individuality
of character in which alone resides the
possibility for the highest usefulness of
the man.

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Art of Authorship. Compiled and
edited by George Bainton. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. Pp.355. Price, $1.25.

This book is described in its sub-title as
Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work,
and Advice to Young Beginners, personally
contributed by Leading Authors of the Day ;
and, rightly used, it may be of great assist-
ance to all persons who desire to write well.
The compiler, seeking material for illustrat-
ing a lecture on the Art of Composition and
Effective Public Speech, bethought himself
to secure, if possible, personal experiences
and counsels from a few of the leading writ-
ers and speakers of the day. The volume is
the outcome of that effort. Replies are pub-
lished from one hundred and seventy-nine
English and American authors — poets, nov-
elists, essayists, historians, and scientific
writers — each giving an account of his lit-
erary history, methods in composition, or his
impressions of what constitutes good writ-
ing, and how the object is attained. Many
of the contributors compress their views
into a sentence or even a maxim ; and there
is a singular unanimity in the conclusion
which they all reach. The whole lesson of
this book of the experiences of more than a
hundred and seventy-five successful authors

may be expressed by saying that the art of
good writing consists in having something to
say .and saying it in the clearest manner pos-
sible. A few of the expressions of repre-
sentative authors in different fields may be
quoted. The compiler has attempted to
classify the observations under such head-
ings as Good Writing : a Gift or an Art ?
Methods, Conscious and Unconscious ; On
Literary Style ; The Strength of Simplicity ;
A Protest against Obscurity ; and Truthful-
ness to One's Self ; but the divisions so blend
into one another, and all cluster so immedi-
ately around the single principle already
stated, that we have found it impossible to
keep the lines distinct. Prof. Huxley would
advise the young writer, rather than ape the
great writers, to make his style for himself,
as they did. They were great " because, by
dint of learning and thinking, they had ac-
quired clear and vivid conceptions about one
or other of the many aspects of men and
things ; . . . because they took infinite pains
to embody those conceptions in language ex-
actly adapted to convey them to other minds ;
. . . and because they possessed that purely
artistic sense of rhythm and proportion which
enabled them to add grace to force, and,
while loyal to truth, make exactness sub-
servient to beauty." To Prof. Tyndall, to
think clearly is the first requisite ; next, to
express clearly in writing what he thinks.
But this is not enough, and, with a good
ear, sound judgment, and a thorough knowl-
edge of English grammar, one must have a
peculiar sensitiveness to the charm of a good
style. The only tendencies that enable Mr.
Francis Galton to write intelligibly u are a
great desire to be clear in thought and dis-
tinct in expression, and an inclination to
take much pains." He has, further, a clear
appreciation of good and clear writing by oth-
ers, and a love of getting at the exact mean-
ing of words. Sir John Lubbock thinks that
"there is no better way to improve one's
style than by the study of the greatest mas-
ters of English." Grant Allen attaches much
importance to the average classical edu-
cation, and looks out deliberately for the
most graphic and interesting way of putting
things. John Burroughs believes that " ear-
nestness is the great secret of forcible com-
position." Mr. Lowell has formulated the
rule that every sentence must be clear in

700

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

itself and never too long to be carried, with-
out risk of losing its balance, on a single
breath of the speaker. Mr. Stedman would
advise the literary aspirant that the first thing
is to have " something he must say or ex-
press, and then he will say it in his natural
and special way ; and his way forms his
style, and his style is thus the man." Mr.
R. D. Blackmore, author of Lorna Doone,
first makes sure what he means, then ar-
ranges the words in straight order without
waste, and then looks at them, with a stran-
ger's mind, to learn whether he would take
them as himself had done. Mr. Edward
Dowden regards as the most important thing,
in writing narrative, " to discover and then
conceal a rational order in the sequence of
topics." In many cases the " logic " would
be one of the emotions rather than of the
intellect. Mr. F. Marion Crawford advises
boys to cultivate style by taking pains about
their letters. Mr. Thomas Hardy's impres-
sion is that if one "has anything to say
which is of value, and words to say it with,
the style will come of itself."

Semitic Philosophy : Showing the Ultimate
Social and Scientific Outcome of Original
Christianity in its Conflict with Surviv-
ing Ancient Heathenism. By Philip C.
Friese. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co.
Pp. 246.

The speculative theories of the Semites
are not discussed in this work, as might be
supposed from its title. It is named Semitic
to distinguish it from " the philosophies of
Greece and Rome and the Orient," and be-
cause the author of its great revival was a
Semite. "We learn that it is " the Christian
doctrine of the kingdom of God," and that
this formula implies a philosophy "all of
which may be grasped into the one first
principle as the uniformity of the uniformi-
ties of God's action." Christ did not intrust
this precious system to writing because lan-
guage is defective, but he " referred its keep-
ing" to a better vehicle of thought, "the
sensuous ideas." These are explained as
possessing magnitude, color, motion, and
relative place ; superior to the differentials
of mathematics, in that they are qualitative
as well as quantitative, and, to cap the cli-
max, they are " constructed, like the rest of
the body, by man's spirit " ! In spite of the
inefficiency of. language, Mr. Friese gives us

"An Ideal Written Social Constitution,"
and describes in another chapter a general
social reformation. Whether we agree or
not with his remedies and conclusions, he
fully persuades us that words are poor in-
struments, and a snare for the unwary.

Monographs of the United States Geologi-
cal Survey. Volume XV. The Potomac
or Younger Mesozoic Flora. By Will-
iam Morris Fontaine. Part I, Text ; Part
II, Plates. Washington. Pp. 377, Plates
180.

In his introduction the author states that
the formation whose flora he describes was
for a long time included in the so-called
Trias of the Atlantic slope. Prof. W. B.
Rogers, however, early recognized the differ-
ence between this group of strata and most
of the Mesozoic of Virginia. Nearly all the
plants described in this work were collected
by the author in Virginia ; the few others
were obtained from Maryland. The extent
of the ground that Prof. Fontaine has ex-
amined makes him confident that the fossils
herein described give a fair notion of the
flora of the "Potomac" period. He gives
the locations of the places in which plants
have been found, and describes the mode of
occurrence of the specimens. He describes
also the location and geology of the Potomac
beds. The botanical descriptions of the spe-
cies to the number of three hundred and sixty-
five occupy the greater portion of the volume
of text. A series of tables, comparing the
Potomac plants with previously described
fossil floras, are appended by permission of
Prof. Lester F. Ward, by whom they were
prepared, for his own use.

Bulletins of the United States Geological
Survey. Xos. 5-i, 55, 56, and 57. Wash-
ington.

The first of these four bulletins is a vol-
ume of over three hundred pages by Carl
Barus, entitled On the Thermo-electric Meas-
urement of High Temperatures. In the in-
troduction a general account of methods of
pyrometry is given. The first chapter deals
with the degree of constant high tempera-
ture attained in metallic vapor baths of
large dimensions. The calibration of elec-
trical pyrometers, by the aid of fixed ther-
mal data and by direct comparison with the
air thermometer, is fully described. A chap-

LITERARY NOTICES.

701

ter is devoted to certain pyro-electric prop-
erties of the alloys of platinum, and the
pyrometric use of the principle of viscosity
is set forth at length. The monograph is
copiously illustrated with cuts of apparatus,
charts, and diagrams.

No. 55 is a Report of Work done in the
Division of Chemistry and Physics, by Frank
W. Clarke, Chief Chemist. It embraces pa-
pers recording examinations of a number of
minerals, and miscellaneous analyses of va-
rious minerals and waters.

No. 56 is a paper on Fossil Wood and
Lignite of the Potomac Formation, by Frank
H. Knowlton, giving a history of the study
of the internal structure of lignites, and sys-
tematic descriptions of silicified species.

No. 57 is a A Geological Reconnaissance
in Southwestern Kansas, by Robert Hay. It
gives an outline of the geological features of
the region, incidentally touching upon points
that have an economic bearing. The paper
Is accompanied by a geologic map of south-
western Kansas, and by diagrams of sections
and buttes.

Pestalozzi, his Life and Work. By Roger
de Guimps. Authorized Translation by
J. Russell, with an Introduction by the
Rev. R. H. Quick. New York : D. Ap-
pleton & Co. Pp. 488. Price, $1.50.

It is very proper that the Life of Pesta-
lozzi should be the first biographical work
to be incorporated in the International Ed-
ucation Series. No one, perhaps, of the
devoted men who have labored for the ad-
vancement of education has singly contrib-
uted more to its improvement or left a
broader mark upon its after-course than he.
It is to him, says the author of this work,
that we owe the reform of elementary edu-
cation— a reform, however, which, notwith-
standing the progress already made, is far
from complete ; and his history must, above
all, be a history of the great idea which, in
its successive stages, he sought to put into
practice. This idea was the education of all
the people, and that by drawing out their
faculties. The conception of a learned edu-
cation had already been worked out before
his time, but this could only be for the few.
Pestalozzi's life was an effort to realize his
idea of the extension of the privileges of
education. It was, Dr. Harris remarks, " a
succession of experiments, each ending in a

failure of some sort. These failures are
followed by a period of depressive reflection,
in the course of which Pestalozzi seems to
become conscious of the personal weakness
or unwisdom that had caused his plans to go
wrong. He puts the fruits of his experience
into a treatise, and is inspired to begin again
a new experiment." These experiments and
reflections are set forth in detail in Baron
de Guimps's vivid memoir, which is prepared
very largely from Pestalozzi's letters. His
first experiments were made with his son,
upon whom he intended to apply Rousseau's
ideas. But he was compelled at every step
to stop and fall back upon his own observa-
tions and the memory of the teachings of
his mother, who had devoted herself with
complete abnegation to the education of her
children. " Struck by the child's natural
need of continual activity, and by the abun-
dance and versatility of its physical, moral,
and intellectual faculties, it occurred to him
that by guiding all these powers aright, and
by varying work in such a way as to prevent
fatigue, it would be possible to teach chil-
dren not only to earn their bread, but to
cultivate their intellectual and moral nature
at the same time." So he projected his ag-
ricultural and manual labor institution at
Neuhof, the close of which, after five years,
was followed by the publication of a series
of works in which his ideas were presented
free from all foreign alloy. The results
of his succeeding experiment at Stanz, as
summed up by Morf , show forth the essential
principles upon which the general reform of
elementary education in the present century
has been conducted. His career at Burgdorf
is chiefly remarkable for the illustrations it
afforded, in his method and in the books he
made there, of the doctrine of sense-impres-
sions as the foundation of instruction. The
lamentable failure at Iverdun left Pestalozzi
at eighty years of age with his hopes disap-
pointed and his illusions dispelled. But it
did not break his courage or stop his ac-
tivity. He immediately set himself to work,
and wrote the Song of the Swan, one of his
most remarkable books ; the Experiences of
my Life, in which he blamed himself for all
his misfortunes ; a fifth part of his Leonard
and Gertrude, and a supplement to his Book
for Mothers. The story of his life, the tell-
ing of which is invested with a great deal of

JQ2

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

interest, is followed by a chapter of Personal
Recollections by the author, who was one
of Pestalozzi's pupils at Iverdun; and by
accounts of his Religion, his Philosophy, and
his Elementary Method, and of Niederer's
Collaboration.

Report of the Royal Commission on the
Mineral Resources op Ontario and
Measures for their Development. To-
ronto : Warnick & Sons. Pp. 566.

The plan of the commission in outlining
its work included inquiry into the geology of
the province, with special reference to its
economic minerals ; description and maps of
the working mines and important undevel-
oped mineral resources ; trade in mineral
products ; information and suggestions on
the subject of mining laws and regulations ;
and inquiry into the best means of pro-
moting metallurgical industry. Its methods
included examination of witnesses and per-
sonal visitation of important districts and
places. A section of the report on the ge-
ology of the province includes a systematic
account of each of its rock formations, with
such a sketch of the general geological feat-
ures of North America beyond Ontario as was
necessary to make the description more com-
plete and intelligible. In it the entire re-
sults of the geological surveys, otherwise
scattered through many volumes of reports,
are summarized and made accessible. The
evidence that Ontario possesses great min-
eral wealth is abundant and is constantly ac-
cumulating. There are iron ores, gold, ga-
lena, arsenic, mica, fibrous serpentine, apa-
tite, granite, and plumbago in the central
and eastern counties ; copper and nickel
mines in the Sudbury district ; gold-bearing
quartz, copper, and nickel in the town-
ship of Denison ; gold and silver bearing
veins, iron, copper, galena, and "immense
quarries of marble" along the north shore
of Lake Huron ; gold, silver, copper, iron,
galena, plumbago, zinc, granite, marble, ser-
pentine, and sandstone north of Lake Su-
perior; a rich silver district west of Port
Arthur, and beyond this district gold-bearing
quartz, magnetic iron ore, and what is be-
lieved to be a continuation of the Vermilion
iron range of Minnesota; and gold-bearing
veins in the islands of the Lake of the
"Woods. A practical business basis has been

reached in the development of a number of
the minerals, as, for example, in the produc-
tion of salt, petroleum, phosphate, mica, ce-
ment, gypsum, and building stones, and in
the manufacture of brick, terra-cotta, tile,
and sewer-pipe. Silver, copper, and nickel
mines are worked with much skill and en-
ergy ; iron-mining has been intermittent, but
has good prospects ; and it is confidently
hoped that gold-mining will become one of
the established industries of the country.

Glimpses of Fifty Years : The Autobiog-
raphy of an American Woman. By
Frances E. Willard. Introduction by
Hannah Whitall Smith. Chicago : Wom-
an's Temperance Publication Associa-
tion. Pp. 700.

The journals in this voluminous record
are psychologically a contrast to the diary of
Marie Bashkirtseff. "I have the desire of
living upon this earth by any means in my
power," wrote the young Russian artist, con-
sumed by feverish thirst for fame. Twen-
ty years earlier, a girl upon the Wisconsin
prairie, struggling with aspiration, cried out,
"What is it — what is it that I am to be,
0 God ? " In this effort to be — not merely to
be celebrated at any cost — there are no mor-
bid yearnings for sensation, but a healthful
striving for extended usefulness.

Miss Willard views her life in six
phases : The welcome child, the happy stu-
dent, the roving teacher, the tireless travel-
er, the temperance organizer, and the woman
in politics. Three chapters descriptive of
her girlhood, passed on a farm in Rock
County, Wisconsin, give attractive sketches
of pioneer life happily conditioned. There
were no schools in this district, nevertheless
the family was well educated. The mother
had been a school-teacher, and was well
read ; the father was a student of Nature,
and trained the children to observe the ways
of birds and butterflies, the habits of go-
phers, squirrels, and ants ; to know the vari-
ous herbs, and what their uses were ; to no-
tice different grasses, and learn their names ;
to tell the names of curious wild flowers.

Very naturally the daughter became in
later years " Preceptress in Natural Sci-
ences." Her girlish habits show an early
distaste for ordinary feminine occupations.
Her life, as a student at Milwaukee College
and the Northwestern Female College, is de-

LITERARY NOTICES,

7°3

scribed with enthusiasm, and her subsequent
experiences as teacher in eleven schools, end-
ing as Dean of the Woman's College at
Evanston, are vividly given with interesting
details. Miss Willard was by nature, howev-
er, neither a student nor a teacher. Routine
was distasteful to her, and patient interro-
gation of Nature or life was foreign to her
restless disposition. The opportunity for
extensive travel with a friend accorded with
her desires, and two years were spent abroad
journeying over Europe, Syria, and Egypt.
Shortly after her return she was invited to
lecture upon her foreign gleanings, and soon
drifted into public speaking. The latter and
larger half of the book is devoted to the or-
ganization of the W. C. T. U., temperance
talks, political speeches, reports of conven-
tions, eulogies of men and women, and dis-
sertations on problems social, industrial, and
sanitary. It is to be regretted that these
questions are too exacting and tumultuous
to be satisfactorily laid to rest. It may be
that the failure to give approximate solu-
tions is connected with the mathematical
inability which troubled Miss Willard as a
teacher, and which is very conspicuous in the
arrangement of her book. Her logical hori-
zon is indicated by the following estimate of
" one of the kings of the nineteenth century " :
"Meeting the skepticism of science with its
own ' scientific method,' he proves that, if a
man die, he shall live again ! " But it must
be remembered that we are told, in the in-
troduction to this encyclopedic volume, that
it is " a home book, written for her great
family circle, to be read around the evening
lamp by critics who love the writer, and who
want to learn from her experience how to
live better and stronger lives." This indul-
gent jury of half a million readers will doubt-
less render a verdict of unanimous praise, but
an even larger audience may be unexpectedly
entertained by this life-story, and find it
worthily called " an object-lesson in Ameri-
can living."

The Student's Atlas. By Richard A.
Proctor. London and New York : Long-
mans, Green & Co. Price, $1.50.

In this little work, which was issued just
before Prof. Proctor's death last year, the
originality of its author is strongly evident.
In most atlases, the different divisions of

the earth are represented on different scales
and often on different projections, so that
the ideas they convey as to the shape and
relative positions of the various land areas
are far from correct. The oceans generally
are not mapped at all, so no idea is given of
the tracks of vessels across them, nor of
the directions from each other of different
parts of their shores. Prof. Proctor has
avoided these defects in his atlas by depict-
ing the whole surface of the globe on twelve
maps, each representing the part of the sur-
face of a sphere corresponding to one side
of an inclosed dodecahedron. The maps
are all on one scale and a uniform projec-
tion, and each occupies a double octavo page.
There are also two index maps, which show
the connection between the maps of the
series. A brief description of each map is
given in the introduction, and on the pages
between the maps, usually left blank, Prof.
Proctor gives the number and chief contents
of the map on the other side of the leaf.

The Economic Basis op Protection. By
Simon N. Patten, Ph. D. Philadelphia :
J. B. Lippincott Company. Pp. 144.
Price, $1.

We have wondered why some adherent
of protection did not get out a book of this
sort ; for, in view of the pronounced tend-
ency of free-traders to base their creed on
fundamental principles, the neglect of pro-
tectionists to do the same looks like a con-
fession that protection has no principles on
which to stand. But now Prof. Patten has
undertaken to give briefly the reasons for
the faith that is in him. He asserts that
free-traders take as their ideal a society in a
" static " condition, while for a society in a
"dynamic" or progressive state, which is
the actual condition of America, protection
is the only admissible policy. He maintains
that a locality should not be encouraged to
devote itself to the exclusive production of
the commodity which it can yield best, be-
cause the surplus must pay the cost of long
transportation to a market. A variety of
things should be produced, and only such
quantities of each as can be consumed in
the vicinity. Although not so large a gross
result could be obtained in this way as by
devoting the productive power of the com-
munity to a specialty, the author evidently

7°4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

believes that the net return would be great-
er. Many of our raw materials come from
countries where industry is irregular and in-
effective, and Prof. Patten argues that we
should make ourselves independent of such
sources of supply. He says that skill and
capital employed in an orderly community
will generally outweigh climatic and other
natural advantages in an uncivilized coun-
try. As an instance he mentions the pro-
duction of sugar in Germany from beets in
competition with the cane-sugar of Cuba.
Wool, he says, will be high in price while it
remains the exclusive product of regions dis-
tant from the markets, and can only become
cheaper when farmers in highly civilized
communities take to raising sheep in con-
nection with their agriculture. Prof. Patten
maintains that trade between merchants of
different countries which is profitable to the
individuals is not necessarily profitable to
the countries. Supposing a pound of coffee
in Brazil would buy three pounds of sugar,
while if taken to Cuba it would buy four
pounds. In this case a trade profitable to
dealers would spring up, and Prof. Patten
asks whether such a commerce is so bene-
ficial that the loss of it would work perma-
nent injury to both nations. This, he says,
is a matter of dispute. There are many
other things in the book that friends of
free trade will regard as matters of dispute,
which are not so designated by the author.
The volume is adapted to provoke discus-
sion, and perhaps the more so because its
small size prevents the insertion of facts and
figures in support of the author's positions.

Eighth Annual Report of the United States
Geological Survey, 1886-'87. By J. W.
Powell, Director. Washington. Parts I
and II. Pp. 1095.

In this report the director gives a full
description of the business organization of
the Survey, comprising the division of dis-
bursements and accounts, the division of
illustrations, the division of library and doc-
uments, and the editorial and miscellaneous
division. During the year covered by the re-
port, an aggregate area of 55,684 square miles
had been surveyed during the field season
and mapped during the office season. Topo-
graphic work was pushed forward vigorously
in Massachusetts, at the joint expense of the
State and Federal Governments, and the sur-

veys of that State and of New Jersey are
now practically completed. The survey of
the District of Columbia and contiguous parts
of Virginia and Maryland was finished, work
was prosecuted in the southern Appalachian
region with a large force, and extensive
tracts were surveyed in the Western States
and Territories. During the year geologic
investigations were carried on by Prof. Pum-
pelly on the Archaean rocks of New England,
by Prof. Irving among the iron-bearing and
copper-bearing rocks of Lake Superior, by
Prof. Shaler on the tide-marshes of the Atlan-
tic coast, and by Mr. Gilbert on the structure
of the Appalachian Mountains. Mr. Wood-
ward made a careful resurvev of Niagara
Falls, and investigations in glacial geology
were carried on under Prof. Chamberlin.
The combined investigations of the general
geologic structure, and of the coal, oil, gas,
etc., of Montana were somewhat crippled by
the long illness and finally by the conse-
quent resignation of the veteran geologist,
Dr. Ferdinand V. Hayden, but during the lat-
ter part of the year the work was carried on
by Dr. Peale. Other fields in which work was
prosecuted are the Yellowstone National Park
by Mr. Hague, the structural and mining ge-
ology of Colorado by Mr. Emmons, the vol-
canic deposits of California and Oregon by
Captain Dutton, the iron-ore and marl beds
of northern Mississippi and Louisiana by
Mr. Johnson, and the Quaternary deposits
of the coastal plain between North Carolina
and New York under Mr. McGee. The area
affected by the Charleston earthquake was
also examined, and Mr. Becker completed
his report on the quicksilver mines of the
United States. Work in paleontology was
carried on by Prof. Marsh, Mr. Walcott, Dr.
Dall, Prof. Ward, and Mr. Scudder. One of
the most important events of the year in
systematic geology was the discovery by Dr.
White and Mr. Hill of a great series of Cre-
taceous strata in Texas underlying the rocks
hitherto regarded as the base of the Ameri-
can Cretaceous, and corresponding in many
respects with the Lower Cretaceous deposits
of Europe. Chemical work was carried on
by Prof. Clarke, Mr. Chatard, and Messrs.
Gooch and Whitfield. Mr. Day continued
the collection of mining statistics. Several
miscellaneous researches were also in prog-
ress. The report of the director is supple-

LITERARY NOTICES,

705

mented by administrative reports from the
heads of divisions, which give further de-
tails concerning the work of the year. The
following papers also accompany the direct-
or's report : Quaternary History of Mono
Valley, California, by Israel C. Russell ; Ge-
ology of the Lassen Peak District, by J. S.
Diller ; The Fossil Butterflies of Florissant,
by Samuel H. Scudder ; The Trenton Lime-
stone as a Source of Petroleum and Inflam-
mable Gas in Ohio and Indiana, by Edward
Orton ; The Geographical Distribution of
Fossil Plants, by Lester F. Ward ; Summary
of the Geology of the Quicksilver Deposits
of the Pacific Slope, by George F. Becker ;
and The Geology of the Island of Mount
Desert, Maine, by Nathaniel S. Shaler.

Johns Hopkins University Studies in His-
torical and Political Science. Eighth
Series. Edited by Herbert B. Adams.
Baltimore. Published monthly.

The first subject treated this year in
these studies was The Beginnings of Ameri-
can Nationality, by Albion W. Small, of
which Chapters I, II, and most of III are
given, forming a double number. (Price,
one dollar.) The scope of this inquiry com-
prises the constitutional relations between
the Continental Congress and the colonies
and States from 1774 to 1789. Chapter II
tells the composition and organization, and
the acts of the Congress of 1774, and the
corresponding acts of the colonies ; while
Chapter III gives a similar history of the
Congress of 1775. A ten-page paper on
The Needs of Self-supporting Women, by
Miss Clare de Graffenreid, is included in the
same pamphlet.

Part III of the current series contains
an essay on Local Government in Wisconsin,
by David E. Spencer, together with a sketch
of The Enoch Pratt Free Library in Balti-
more, by Lewis H. Steiner. (Price, twenty-
five cents.)

Spanish Colonization in the Southioest is
treated in Part IV, by Frank W. Blackmar.
(Price, fifty cents.) This is an account of
the efforts of Spain, by military, religious,
and civil means, to colonize and secure con-
trol of California and the territory north
of Mexico. It embraces a sketch of the
celebrated mission system employed to Chris-
tianize the Indians of Upper California.

A double number is devoted to The Study
vol. xxxvii. — 51

of History in Germany and France, by Paul
Fredericq, being translations by Miss Henri-
elta.Lconard of two papers by Prof. Frede-
ricq, of Ghent. (Price, one dollar.) In these
papers the methods of the professors, the
cources that they prescribe, and even their
personal appearance and the habits of the
students, are given in detail, and in a fa-
miliar and often amusing style. At one of
the lectures in the University of Berlin,
Prof. Fredericq saw a listener using an ear-
trumpet, and he tells us all about the queer
contrivance in a foot-note. Among the mas-
ters of historical teaching whom he heard
lecture in Germany were Treitschke, Droy-
sen, Curtius, Pauli, Waitz, and Von Sybel.
He also called upon Von Ranke, who no
longer lectured. . In Paris he heard MM.
Alfred Maury, Paul Meyer, Victor Duruy,
Monod, and Lavisse. In the same pamphlet
with these papers is included a sketch of
Early Presbyterianism in Maryland, by Rev.
/. William Mcllvain.

National Health. Abridged from The
Health of Nations. A Review of the
Works of Sir Edwin Chadwick, K.C. R
By Benjamin Ward Richardson, M. D.,
F. R. S. London and New York : Long-
mans, Green & Co. 1890. Pp. 320.
Price, $1.50.

The demand for an inexpensive form of
Sir Edwin Chadwick's writings led to the
preparation of this volume. Selections have
been made from the subject-matter of Health
of Nations, omitting explanatory paragraphs,
chapters relating to police regulation, poor-
law administration, and historical accounts
of sanitary effort. The essays have been
rearranged and well classified in four parts :
health in the dwelling-house ; health in the
school ; health in the community ; and health
in the future. Under the first head the con-
struction and economy of sanitary dwellings
is considered, and the best mode of drain-
age, ventilation, warming, and securing free-
dom from dampness. The value of soft
water is urged, and roof-gardens are recom-
mended for crowded districts. The benefit
of healthful homes is shown in the establish-
ment of improved dwellings for working
people in London, where the death-rate has
been reduced in some localities from forty-
two to eighteen per thousand.

The half-time system in education, which

yo6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Mr. Chadwick originated, is explained in
Part II. This combination of mental and
manual training we are beginning to recog-
nize as a better educational method than
mere cultivation of intellectual faculty. Mr.
Chadwick states as a result of trial, " where
there have been good approximations to the
proper physiological as well as psychological
conditions, as in the half-time industrial
district schools, epidemic diseases have been
banished and the rate of mortality reduced
to one third of that which prevails among
the general community." Among the more
important subjects discussed in Part III are :
practical remedies for intemperance, health
versus war, and the "connection of bankruptcy
with ill health. In the closing chapters the
financial outcome of better sanitation is
figured ; the lowering of the death-rate re-
sults in curtailment of funeral expenses, sav-
ing of labor and reduction of outlay in po-
lice and penal administration.

The dominant idea of the book is that
prevention of disease, poverty, and crime is
more economical than cure. It is singularly
free from dogmatic assertion, and every
practical suggestion is founded upon close
observation or supported by careful study of
statistics. Dr. Richardson has performed no
slight labor in rendering this work accessi-
ble ; it occupies less than half the space of
Health of Nations, presents the biographical
sketch in a shorter form, and contains an
autotype portrait of the eminent sanitarian.

Advanced Physiography. By John Thorn-
ton, M. A. London and New York :
Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 342. Price,

$1.40.

The scope of this volume has been made
to conform to the syllabus for the advanced
stage of physiography of the Science and
Art Department of the Museum at South
Kensington, London. The matter that it
includes falls largely in the field to which
the name New Astronomy has been given.
In the words of the preface : " It is con-
cerned more with the physical and chemical
constitution of the heavenly bodies than
with their exact positions and movements,
as discussed in the older department of
astronomy. This older branch, however, has
not been entirely neglected." Nearly all the
contents of the book could be included un-
der the heading astronomy, though there

are chapters dealing with atmospheric and
oceanic movements, terrestrial magnetism,
measurement of the surface, size, and shape
of the earth, secular cooling of the earth,
and secular changes of climate. An appen-
dix contains several tables, a number of
paragraphs relating to the formation and
the analysis of rocks, and a list of examina-
tion questions. Physiography in the title
of this book is not equivalent to physical
geography as it is often intended to be else-
where. All the chapters are fully illustrated,
especially those relating to spectrum analy-
sis and to the constitution of the sun. A
colored plate of spectra is also inserted.

Monographs of the United States Geologi-
cal Survey. Volume XVI. The Palaeo-
zoic Fishes of North America. By John
Strong Newberry. Washington. Pp.
340. Plates, 53.

The matter of this monograph is ar-
ranged with the design of representing the
progress of fish-life in North America during
the golden age of the fish tribe, as illustrated
by the large amount of material that has
come into the author's hands. He has under-
taken to give references to all notices of our
older fossil fishes hitherto published, and has
added to them descriptions and figures of all
the new forms that he has met with. The
new material described has an important
bearing upon some general questions as to
the origin and development of fish-life on
the earth which are referred to as they come
up in the chronological arrangement of the
descriptions. The fishes are described in
the order of their geological systems, begin-
ning with the oldest. The review stops at
the top of the Coal Measures, as no Permian
fishes from this country have ever come un-
der the author's observation.

The subject taken by the president, Les-
ter F. Ward, for his address at the tenth an-
niversary meeting of the Biological Society,
of Washington, was The Course of Biologic
Evolution. In opening, Mr. Ward spoke of
the common error in regard to evolution,
which puts every form of creature that lives
or ever has lived among the direct ancestors
of the human species. The course of biologic
evolution has been rather like the branching
growth of a tree, and Mr. Ward sets forth
some of the laws in accordance with which

LITERARY NOTICES,

707

this development takes place. The first is
the extinction of trunk lines of descent, by
virtue of which a trunk sends up a branch
which is capable of higher progress than the
trunk itself, and in time comes to be regard-
ed as the trunk. This in turn sends up a
branch by which it is overtopped and super-
seded as the trunk of the ever-branching sys-
tem. Another law is that of persistence of
unspecialized types, instances of which are
the persistence of low forms of articulates,
mollusks, and reptiles with the dominant
types of animals, while the higher forms of
these orders have been extinguished by com-
petition with these dominant types. Turn-
ing to the vegetable kingdom, Mr. Ward
points out by what steps development has
proceeded in this field from its earliest be-
ginnings in cryptogamic life to its highest
and latest expression in the gamopetalous
dicotyledon. He then considers the influ-
ence in' the modification of structure exerted
by extra-normal causes — i. e., such as produce
characters that are of only indirect use to
the organism. The doctrine of natural se-
lection has been severely criticised of late
years, and the best way of defending it, Mr.
Ward believes, is to take the ground that
fortuitous variation goes on at all times, in
many directions, and to great lengths, with-
out any perceptible change in the degree of
adaptation which the varying forms have to
their environment. No beneficial effect need
be felt until well-formed varieties have been
developed. Among extra-normal influences
in the vegetable kingdom are showy and
fragrant flowers, and bright-colored and
pleasant-flavored fruits. Another important
influence of this class comprises the causes
which in many cases make one sex differ so
widely from the other.

An address was given by Dr. Byron D.
Halsted, State Botanist of New Jersey, be-
fore the New Jersey Board of Agriculture
last winter on the subject of Rusts, Smuts,
Ergots, and Rots, in which he described some
of the diseases that seriously affect field-
crops, vegetables, and fruit, and named rem-
edies that have proved successful in com-
bating them. The paper comes to us in
pamphlet form. It is free from botanical
technicalities, and hence can be understood
and used by any intelligent farmer. A list
of the fungi most injurious to New Jersey

farm-crops is appended, together with four
plates in which many of them are figured.

,Part VII of Volume I of the Records
of the American Society of Naturalists con-
tains a list of members, with their profes-
sional positions and addresses, and a record
of the eighth meeting of the society, held in
New York, December 27 and 28, 1889. The
president, Prof. Goodale, of Harvard, took
Science in the Schools as the subject of his
address, and suggested as a means of se-
curing genuine science study in the lower
schools the preparation of a book on phys-
ical geography, the part relating to each
tributary science to be made by a master of
the science, and the whole to be co-ordinated
by a master in pedagogics. An outline of lab-
oratory work in each of the sciences should
be included, some one of which should be se-
lected by the teacher for his pupils to become
practically acquainted with. Since the last
meeting of the society, the addition of sci-
ence to the requirements for admission to
college, and to the general course of study
in common schools, has been urged in the
name of the society by Prof. William N. Rice
and other members before various educa-
tional associations. The officers elected for
the present year include Prof. H. Newell
Martin, president, and Prof. Henry H. Don-
aldson, of Clark University, secretary.

A detailed examination of The Marine
Climate of the Southern California Coast
and its Relations to Phthisis has been pub-
lished in a pamphlet by P. C. Rcmondino,
M. D., of San Diego. In passing from the
islands off the coast to the mountains and
down into the desert beyond, the author dis-
tinguishes six varieties of climate that are
met with. Three of these have more or less
of a marine character, while the others are
land climates, but none of them can be called
moist. Dr. Remondino tells what are the
prevailing temperatures, quantities of air-
moisture, character of the seasons, weather,
etc., in different parts of the region he de-
scribes, and bears confident testimony as to
the benefits that consumptive patients may
expect from the dry and equable air of the
coast, or the foot-hills, or the mountains of
southern California.

Bulletin No. 22 of the Department of
Agriculture consists of Reports of Observa-
tions and Experiments in the Practical Work

708

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of the Division, by a number of agents. It
comprises reports on methods for destroying
the red scale of California, by D. W. Coquil-
lett ; on insects of the season in Iowa, by
Herbert Osborn ; on insects affecting grains,
by F. M. Webster ; on California insects in
general, by Albert Koebele ; on Nebraska
insects, by Lawrence Bruner ; and entomo-
logical notes from Missouri for the season
of 1889, by Mary E. Murtfeldt.

The address of William L. Dudley, before
the American Association at Toronto last
year was on The Nature of Amalgams. It
is now published as a pamphlet, and is mainly
occupied with a history of discoveries relat-
ing to the chemistry of amalgams. It con-
tains a bibliography of the subject, occupying
eleven pages.

In a paper on The Cradle of the Semites,
read before the Philadelphia Oriental Club,
Dr. D. G. Brinton brings together the evi-
dence tending to show that the progenitors
of the Israelites were of a blonde type, and
came to Asia from northwestern Africa.
Prof. Morris Jastrow, Jr., replied to this in
a paper directed to showing the insecurity
of some of the grounds that Dr. Brinton had
taken. The two essays are published in a
pamphlet together.

A table of Poisons and their Antidotes
has been issued by The National Druggist
(Druggist Publishing Company, St. Louis). It
is printed on one side of a sheet of strong ma-
nila paper, and its directions are brief and
clear. It would be somewhat more useful
to unscientific persons if it stated that so-
dium and magnesium sulphates are also
known respectively as Glauber's and Epsom
salts, and if it avoided such words as emeto-
cathartic.

The Report of the Commissioners of the
State Reservation at Niagara, for October,
1888, to September, 1889, records the doings
of the commission during the year desig-
nated, and their recommendations for future
work. G. K. Gilbert's History of the Ni-
agara River, noticed in the July number of
this magazine, is published in the same
pamphlet. The commissioners have issued
also a folded sheet containing suggestions
to visitors, and a map of the vicinity of the
falls.

Students of political science now have
an opportunity to compare a translation of

TJie Federal Constitution of Germany (Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, 50 cents) with the
Constitution of the United States. The
translator is Prof. Edmund J. James, who
has based his version on the one printed in
the Government report on Foreign Relations
for 1877. A detailed table of contents is
prefixed to the document, and a historical
introduction, which is essentially a transla-
tion of the corresponding section in Von
Ronne's Verfassung des deutschen Reichs.

Among its Circulars of Information for
1890, the Bureau of Education has issued
English- Eskimo and Eskimo- English Vocab-
ularies, compiled by Ensign Roger Wells, Jr.y
U. S. N., and Interpreter John W. Kelly.
These vocabularies contain 11,318 words,
and are preceded by twenty pages of Memo-
randa concerning the Arctic Eskimos in
Alaska and Siberia, by John W. Kelly.
These memoranda embrace traditions, bits
of history and description, customs and su-
perstitions of the Eskimos. Two maps are
contained in the pamphlet.

The School Algebra of Prof. G. A. Went-
worth, of Phillips Exeter Academy, is in-
tended to present a thorough and practical
treatment of the principles of elementary al-
gebra. It covers sufficient ground for ad-
mission to any American college ; and it
and the author's college algebra are enough
to occupy the time given to the subject in
our best schools and colleges. The prob-
lems are carefully graded, mostly new, and
either original or selected from recent ex-
amination papers. The early chapters are
quite full ; and the introductory chapter pre-
sents a free discussion of the principles
with which the student beginning algebra
ought to be acquainted.

Dreamthorpe, a Book of Essays written
in the Country (George P. Humphrey, Roch-
ester), is a reprint of some of the prose writ-
ngs of Alexander Smith, who wrote but little,
but that little, whether the prose or poetry
of it, of such a character as to cause regret
that he did not write more, and to give him
a place among English classic authors. The
title of the work suggests that the essays
were written from the domain of fancy ; they
certainly embody the author's own thoughts,
and not what he borrowed from another.
In style they are of the very best English.
Some of them are purely literary ; others

LITERARY NOTICES.

709

are on such subjects as The Fear of Death
and Dying, A Lark's Flight, The Importance
of a Man to Himself, Books and Gardens,
and Vagabonds.

A series of philosophical papers has been
added to the publications of the University
of Pennsylvania, under the editorship of
Profs. Fullerton and Cattell. The first num-
ber of the series is a thick pamphlet by
Prof. George Stuart Fullerton, entitled On
Sameness and Identity. In the first part of
the essay the author enumerates and de-
fines at length seven kinds of sameness, and
then proceeds to discuss the samenesses of
the real self. He states that " men use the
word identity to mark certain kinds of same-
ness in which there is little or no conscious-
ness of duality." A second division of the
paper is a critical presentation of the ways
in which various philosophers have dealt
with sameness.

An essay on Maimonides, giving an ac-
count of his philosophy, has been published
by Rabbi Louis Grossmann, D. D. (Putnam,
25 cents). In a rough classification Dr.
Grossmann would put Maimonides with phi-
losophers of religion, since he devoted spe-
cial attention to the relation between meta-
physics and Jewish theology. While cred-
iting Maimonides with great philosophical
insight, Dr. Grossmann is not blind to his
limitations, and points out several errors
which hampered him in common with his
contemporaries.

An autobiography of rare interest is pre-
sented in The Life of George H. Stitart,
written by himself, and edited, at his re-
quest, by Prof. Robert Ellis Thompson, of
the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Stuart's
life was associated with some of the most
exciting events of our recent history. As
the editor characterizes his career, it "ex-
tends through a memorable half-century
of our country's history, and touches more
or less closely upon all the great religious
and philanthropic movements of that time.
While he has not taken any part in political
life or sought any eminence in that field, he
has been brought into contact with many of
our public men, from the anti-slavery group
of half a century ago, to Lincoln, Grant,
and the national leaders of our own time.
. . . On the other hand, he has occupied al-
most a unique position in our ecclesiastical

life, as representing that spirit of unity which
has been awakened in the American churches
duping and since the war." Mr. Stuart was
born in County Down, Ireland, and came to
the United States in 1831, when about fif-
teen or sixteen years old. In 1836 he heard
one of Mr. Gough's temperance addresses,
and from that moment became an upholder
of every measure for temperance. He was
among the first to join the anti-slavery
movement. When the question of the union
of Presbyterian churches came up, he did
his best to advance it. He was instrumental
in introducing the Young Men's Christian
Association into the United States and iD
extending its organization. Early in the
civil war he saw a place in the matter of
care for the condition of the soldiers which
the Sanitary Commission, admirable as its
organization was, could not wholly fill, and
called the Young Men's Christian Associa-
tion to the institution of the Christian Com-
mission, and became its president. In this
position he was brought into relations with
the officers of the Government and the army
and with the soldiers. When General Grant
was chosen President, Mr. Stuart was given
the first invitation to be Secretary of the
Treasury. The condition of his health pre-
vented his accepting the office, but he was
one of President Grant's most trusted coun-
selors, and assisted him in his efforts to
have the Indians dealt honestly with. He
died in March, 1890. His autobiography,
besides delineating himself, is a picture of
the times in which he lived, and derives
further interest from incidental notices of
men eminent in the State, the Church,
and philanthropy with whom he had rela-
tions.

A number of articles and addresses have
been published by Prof. Charles S. Mack,
M. D., in a small volume under the title Phi-
losophy in Homoeopathy (Chicago : Gross &
Delbridge). The purpose of the book is to
furnish students of homoeopathy and the
general public with arguments on which to
rest a belief in homoeopathic treatment. One
of the chapters is an address to some stu-
dents in an allopathic medical college, in
which a list of questions submitted by the
students are answered. An appendix con-
tains an essay on the treatment of criminals,
and a discussion of an article by one Do

710

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Charms, suggesting an affinity between ho-
moeopathy and Swedenborgianism.

A paper by G. W. Hambleton, M. D., on
The Suppression of Consumption, to which
we called attention some months ago, when
it was published in Science, has been re-
printed in a neat pamphlet, with flexible
cloth covers (N. D. C. Hodges, 40 cents). It
forms the first number of a series to be called
Fact and Theory Papers. Dr. Hambleton
maintains that consumption is produced by
causes that check free respiration and by
dusty air, and the first aim of his treatment
is to secure the breathing of a full supply
of pure air.

Count Tolstoi's Kreutzer Sonata, trans-
lated by Benjamin R. Tucker and published
by him in Boston, is a story of a man's ve-
hement passion for his own wife, and his
consequent jealousy. These feelings become
ungovernable upon hearing the performance
of the music which gives the story its title,
and events following this incident prompt
the sufferer to murder. The author's inten-
tion, though his method may be mistaken, is
to teach a salutary moral lesson.

The First Annual Report of the Agri-
cultural Experiment Station at Cornell Uni-
versity covers the eight months from April
30, 1888, to the end of the year. The re-
ports of the director and other officers relate
mostly to the business of organization. In
transmitting the report to the Governor of
New York, Prof. C. K. Adams, President of
Cornell University, states that, in organizing
the station, the trustees of the university
availed themselves in every practicable way
of the large resources already forming a
part of the College of Agriculture. The
completeness of this outfit decided the trus-
tees to use the expenditure for buildings
provided for by the Hatch Act in erecting a
building for the careful study of noxious in-
sects. Appended to the report are the four
Bulletins^ which were also issued separately
during the year. The chief topics treated
in these Bulletins are an Experimental Dairy
House, Experiments in feeding Lambs, The
Insectary of Cornell University, and Grow-
ing Corn for Fodder and Ensilage. All of
these papers are illustrated.

Under the title of How to remember
History, the J. B. Lippincott Company pub-
lish a Method of memorizing Dates, with a

summary of the most important events of
the last four centuries, by Virginia Conser
Shaffer. Each century is represented by
a chart, and the chart is divided into a
hundred squares, one for each year. Each
square is divided into five subdivisions,
answering respectively to events in war and
peace ; in politics, social and religious life ;
in literature, science, and art ; miscellaneous
events ; and deaths. Different countries are
represented by devices of color. When the
date of any event is to be fixed, it is noted
by filling, in the square standing for the
year, the subdivision corresponding with the
character of the event, with the color or colors
corresponding with the country or countries
to which the event relates. To the charts,
which are given as specimens of what may
be done, texts are appended, embodying a
chronological table of the events represented,
and reading accounts of the same events of
considerable fullness. The plan is capable
of indefinite modification and enlargement.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Abel, Mrs. Mary Hinman. Practical Sanitary
and Economic Cooking. Rochester, N. Y. : Ameri-
can Public Health Association. Pp. 190.

Armas y Cardenas, Jose de. Medico-legal Ob-
servations on the Case of Don Esteban Verdu (in
Spanish). Habana. Pp. 32.

Bean, Tarleton H. New Fishes collected off the
Coast of Alaska, etc. Washington : Smithsonian
Institution. Pp. 8.

Browning, Oscar. Aspects of Education. New
York : Industrial Education Association. Pp. 48.
20 cents.

Childs, George "W. Recollections of General
Grant. Philadelphia : Collins Printing House. Pp.
104.

Chisholm, George G., and Leete, C. H. Long-
man's School Geography for North America. New
York: Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 3S4. $1.25.

Coast, IT. 8., and Geodetic Survey. Chart Cor-
rections of the Coast.

Cox, Charles H. Protoplasm and Life. New
York : N. D. C. Hodges. Pp. 67. 75 cents.

Crooker, Joseph Henry, Madison, "Wis. Differ-
ent New Testament Views of Jesus. Pp. 70. — The
Bible and the Public Schools, or Dr. Bascom and
the Supreme Court. Pp. 18.

Dall, William H., U. 8. National Museum. New
Species of Land Shell from Cuba (Vertigo Cubana).
Pp. 2.

English, George L. & Co., Philadelphia. Cata-
logue of Minerals for sale. Pp. 100.

Fall. Prof. Delos, Albion, Mich. Sanitary Sci-
ence. Pp. 10.

Gilbert, Charles H. Preliminary Report on
Fishes collected bv the Steamer Albatross on the Pa-
cific Coast of North America. Washington : Smith-
sonian Institution. Pp. 78.

Goode. G. Brown. Museum-History and Muse-
ums of Historv. Pp. 22.— Origin of the National
Scientific and Educational Institutions of the United
States. Pp. 112. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
—The Literary Labors of Benjamin Franklin. Phil-
adelphia. Pp. 21.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

711

Gurney, E. H. Reference Handbook of English
History. Boston : Ginn & Co. Pp.114. 85 cents.

Hale, Horatio. British Association Keport on
North American Ethnology. London. Pp. y7, -with
Plates.

Howard, George E., University of Nebraska.
Development of the Kings Peace and the English
Local Peace-Magistracy. Pp. 65.

Howe, H. M. The Metallurgy of Steel. New
York : Scientific Publishing Company. Pp. 380.
$10.

Hyde, E. W. The Directional Calculus. Bos-
ton : Ginn & Co. Pp. 247. $2.15.

Iowa, State University of. Bulletin from the
Laboratories of Natural History. Vols. Ill and IV.
Iowa City. Pp. 130, with Plates.

Jones, Hon. John P., United States Senate.
Speech on the Free Coinage of Silver. Pp. 116.

Jordan, David Starr. Catalogue of Fishes col-
lected by the United States Fish Commission Steam-
er Albatross. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.

Jordan, David Starr, and Evermann, B. W. New
Species of Fish from Tippecanoe River, Ind. Pp. 4.

Kiddle. Henry. A Text-Book of Physics. New
York: William Wood & Co. Pp. 2S8. $1.

Lesquereux, Leo. Eemarks on some Fossil Re-
mains considered as Peculiar Kinds of Marine Plants.
Washington : Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 12, with
Plate.

Lewis, T. H. Ancient Fireplaces on the Ohio.
Pp.5.

Loti, Pierre. Earahu. New York : W. S. Gotts-
berger & Co. Pp. 296.

Lucas, Frederic A. Catalogue of Skeletons of
Birds collected by the Steamer Albatross. Wash-
ington: Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 4.

McGill Universitv, Montreal. Annual Calendar
of the Faculty of Medicine. Pp. 108.

Mackay, A. H., Halifax, N. S. Fresh-water
Sponges of Canada and Newfoundland. Pp. 12,
with Plates.

Mohr, Charles, Mobile, Ala. The Medicinal
Plants of Alabama. Pp. 17.

Moll, Albert. Hypnotism. New York: Scribner
& Welford. Pp. 410. $1.25.

Montgomery, D. H. The Leading Facts of Amer-
ican History. Boston : Ginn & Co. Pp. 359 + liii.
$1.10.

Myerovitch. The Origin of Polar Motion. Chi-
cago : Rosenberg Brothers, Printers. Pp. 32.

Nebraska, University of University Studies.
Vol. I, No. 3, July, 1S90. Lincoln. Pp. 104.

New Jersey. Annual Report of the State Geolo-
gist for 1889. Pp. 112.— Final Report, Vol. II. Min-
eralogy, Botany, Zoology. Pp. 642.

New York Agricultural Experiment Station's
Bulletins, Nos. 19 and 20 (New Series). Pp. 40.

North, S. N. Dexter. Bulletin of the National
Association of Wool Manufacturers. Quarterly.
Pp.20. 50 cents.

Payne, F. F., Toronto, Ontario. The Eskimo of
Cape Prince of Wales, Hudson's Strait. Pp. 3.

Pickard, J. L. School Supervision. New York :
D. Apple ton & Co. Pp. 175. $1.

Pyat, Felix. The Rag-Picker of Paris. Boston :
Benjamin R. Tucker. Pp. 317.

Ridgway, Robert. The Genus Xiphocolaptes of
Lesson. P. 1.

Sociedad de Fomente Fabril, Santiago, Chili.
Monthly publication. Pp. 48. 40 cents.

Sutton. J. Bland. Evolution and Disease. New
York : Scribner & Welford. Pp. 285. $1.25.

Tittmann. O. H. Table for the Reduction of
Hydrometer Observations of Salt- Water Densities.
Washington : Coast Survey. Pp. 3.

Townsend, George Alfred. Mrs Reynolds and
Hamilton. New York : F. Bonaventure. Pp. 276.
50 cents.

Wheeler, Captain George M. Report upon United
States Geographical Surveys west of the One Hun-
dredth Meridian. Washington : Government Print-
ing-office. Pp 771, with Maps.

White. Charles A. Mesozoic Fossils from Islands
of the Strait ot Magellan.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

The Water-Supply of Memphis.— The

city of Memphis, Term., now possesses a
complete supply of pure water, which forces
itself through artesian wells from a depth
of about four hundred feet below the sur-
face. The artesian source was discovered in
1887 by Mr. R. C. Graves, of the Ice Com-
pany, who, seeking water suitable for the
manufacture of ice, made borings to the
depth of three hundred aud fifty-four feet.
There he struck 'water, which at once rose
to the surface and spouted up in a gushing
fountain. This source has since been util-
ized in numerous private wells of hotels and
manufacturing establishments and in the
public supply of the city. It lies in a stra-
tum of "water-bearing sand," nearly eight
hundred feet thick, which is reached after
boring through the one hundred and forty-
five feet of hard, impervious clay that forms
the " bed-rock " of the region, and furnishes
a permanent bottom to the Mississippi River.
Above this is a stratum of gravel twenty
feet thick, topped by the bluff formation
of loess that constitutes the surface of the
region and gives character to it. These
formations extend a considerable distance
to the eastward, and there outcrop one
after the other — the water-bearing sand,
which is sandwiched between the clay already
mentioned and another clay below it, being
represented by a tract twenty miles across
and of indefinite length, which may be seen
in Fayette and other counties along its line
down into Mississippi. This region, on
which is gathered the water that percolates
to the wells of Memphis, is, in its general
surface, about three hundred feet above high
water of the Mississippi. In May, 1S89,
there were fifty-seven bored wells in Mem-
phis, five of which only reached the water-
bearing sand, while the others went down to
depths of from three hundred and fifty to four
hundred feet and more. They are included
within an area three miles long and one
mile wide. The average depth of the thirty-
two wells through which the water-supply is

712

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

furnished is about four hundred feet. They
are all connected by a tunnel, five feet in
diameter inside, and walled with brick,
which has been constructed in the impervi-
ous clay seventy-six feet below the upper
limit of artesian flow. From the " wet cham-
ber " of this tunnel, in which the water is
collected, it is pumped for distribution over
the city. The character of the water is
shown by the most careful tests to be of the
best.

Science in Iowa. — The paper of most
general interest in the Proceedings of the
Iowa Academy of Sciences for 1887, 1888,
and 1889, is the annual address for 1888 of
President Herbert Osborn. It reviews what
has been accomplished in Iowa in the vari-
ous fields of science, and gives a forecast of
the directions in which work in the future
may be conducted with most immediate ad-
vantage. The first Iowa Academy of Sciences,
which existed from 1875 to 1884, was the
means of encouraging investigation in many
parts of the State, and secured the publica-
tion of a number of valuable papers. The
present Academy, of which R. Ellsworth Call
is secretary and treasurer, was organized in
1887. Besides this body, the Iowa Assem-
bly of the Agassiz Association, the State
Agricultural and Horticultural Societies,
Agricultural College and "Weather Service
are mediums for scientific publication on
subjects appertaining to their respective
spheres. Anthropological work has been fur-
thered by the Davenport Academy of Sciences.
Much has been done by the geological sur-
veys and by individual naturalists from 1819
on. Continued geological studies and the
development of the weather service are in-
dicated as the leading iines on which future
scientific work may be prosecuted. The
proceedings of the three years covered by
the volume contain many excellent special
papers.

Uses of Slag.— -The slags produced in
iron-making vary in composition according
to the ore that is used, but are all alike in
that their chief constituents are silica, lime,
and alumina. From the chemist's point ©f
view they are a kind of impure glass, and
they in so far resemble glass that when rap-
idly cooled they are apt to fly to pieces. The

uses to which slag has been longest put are
the production of slag-sand by running the
molten material into water and the prepara-
tion of bricks and mortar from it ; and the
casting of it into blocks, which are chiefly
used in paving. The regular, smooth sur-
face of these blocks is an objection to their
use ; but this is obviated, and the ideal
cleavage surface is obtained by casting them
double with a notch around the middle,
where they are broken by a sharp blow.
Besides being toughened and more dense,
the slag, when annealed, has a strong affini-
ty for Portland cement, and unites with it
into a concrete of remarkable toughness,
which is one of the best pavement materials
of its class. The slag, broken by machinery,
is largely used in England for road-making ;
for this purpose, the material should con-
tain about equal proportions of lime and
silica and seven or eight per cent of alumina.
" Slag- wool," or " silicate cotton," is ob-
tained by turning a jet of steam or an air-
jet upon the stream of molten slag as it
issues from the furnace. By this the slag
is dispersed or broken up into countless
small, bead-like particles, each of which, as
it flies away, carries behind it a delicate
thread of finely drawn or "spun" slag. This
substance has several valuable properties. It
is extremely light, and absolutely fire-proof ; is
a non-conductor of heat and sound ; and is
so porous that it will absorb large quantities
of water, and readily retains the same for a
considerable time. The last property is im-
portant in the use of the substance as a fire-
proofing material ; for, when water is pumped
into a burning building, it is held by the
slag-wool as by a vast sponge, and will evolve
steam sufficient in itself to extinguish the
flames, or at least assist powerfully in doing
so. It is also an antiseptic ; and this prop-
erty, in conjunction with its great porosity,
seems to render it specially applicable for
medical purposes. Slag cements are pre-
pared largely at several factories on the
continent of Europe. To make them, the
slag-sand, dried, is ground fine, mixed with
slaked lime, and stamped, and the whole
intimately mixed in a " homogenizer " of
special construction. The slag cement is
lighter than Portland cement, takes longer
to set, and is cheaper. It is held in great
favor in Germany, though it is not, perhaps,

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

713

so good in all respects as Portland cement.
Another kind of slag — the Thomas, or
" basic slag," produced in making steel — is
remarkable for its richness in phosphoric
acid, and is coming into use as a fertilizing
material. The demand for it in Germany
already exceeds the whole available produc-
tion of the country, and it is imported from
Great Britain and Austria.

The Formation of a New Island. — An

interesting account of the newly emerged
volcanic island of the Tonga group is given
by Mr. J. J. Lister in the Proceedings of the
Royal Geographical Society for March. It
has received the name of Falcon Island, and
was formed by an eruption in 1885. It
was visited during its formation by some na-

moth and small sand-piper constituted the
animal population. The island will probably
have disappeared in a few years, unless
another eruption occurs, as the waves are
rapidly wearing the shore line away.

The Unselfishness of Doctors.— Dr. Robert
G. Eccles, in a lecture on the Evolution of
Medical Science, delivered before the Brook-
lyn Ethical Association, pays a just tribute
to the unselfishness of the medical profes-
sion. Medicine, he says, "in all ages has
attracted into its ranks the most self-sacri-
ficing members of society. As a science, it
was born in altruism. To this day it offers
the greatest opportunities of any depart-
ment of life for the practice of the most
ennobling graces of character. These con-

Falcon Island.

tives of the group, who say that the center of
action was wholly on one side of the present
island ; showing that in all probability the
wind played an important part in determin-
ing its position. The uncovered portion lies
approximately northwest of the supposed
center. It consists of two parts : a conical
mound at its southern end, about one hun-
dred and fifty-three feet high, and a flat
extending to the northward, which is from
ten to twelve feet above high water. There
is a considerable shoal area north of the flat,
but at the base of the higher portion the
water deepens rapidly. The soil of the
island consists of a fine-grained, dark-gray
material arranged in strata. The strata are
marked by difference in color and the vary-
ing thickness of the salts which have crys-
tallized on them. The soil below the sur-
face was found still hot ; the temperature at
a depth of seven feet being 100° Fahr., while
at the surface it was only 74°. With the
exception of two young cocoanut-trees, which
seemed not very hardy, there was no vege-
tation but a few bunches of grass ; and a

stitute a primary cause of its evolution. . . .
Medical men stand alone in the earth among
all others, striving with their whole might
to extinguish their own business. They
preach temperance, virtue, and cleanliness,
knowing well that, when the people come to
follow their advice, their occupation, like
Othello's, will be gone. They establish
Boards of Health, to arrest the spread of
disease, while well aware that such sanitary
measures steal money from their purses.
How well they succeed is shown by official
statistics. . . . Nobody ever fails to send
for a physician in typhus fever. Only six
persons in a million die of this disease.
Many more used to die when no effort toward
its suppression was made. "Whooping-cough
seldom frightens patients, and neighborly old
ladies of both sexes give advice. As a con-
sequence, 428 in a million die of this disease.
Measles, being a little more serious, needs the
doctor oftener, and only 341 in a million die.
Scarlet fever is still more alarming, so that
medical advice is more in demand, and 222
in a million die of it. Diphtheria frightens

7H

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

still more, thus assuring the doctor's pres-
ence oftener, and 168 in a million die. It is
thus with every disease : the fewer it kills
the more people fear it, because, if they did
not fear it, they would play the fool, and
give it a chance to kill more people. If
bakers, grocers, dry-goods men, carpenters,
tailors, and members of all other lines of
business, gave as much of their labor in
charity as doctors do, poverty would instant-
ly be wiped from the earth."

Dragon-flies and Mosquitoes. — A study
of practicable methods of getting rid of the
nuisances of flies and mosquitoes has been
set on foot by Mr. Robert H. Lamborn, of
New York, aided by Mr. Morris K. Jessup ;
and the first fruits of the effort will shortly
appear in the publication of three essays,
for which prizes have been awarded. Mr.
Lamborn, having been struck with the vo-
racity of dragon-flies, and their activity in
destroying mosquitoes and flies, invited at-
tention to the investigation of their life his-
tory, and of the possibility of propagating
them and applying them directly to the
destruction of the noxious insects. The in-
vestigations showed that under natural con-
ditions dragon-flies were among the most
formidable enemies that the offensive insects
had to encounter ; but the results as to the
practicability of artificial propagation and
application were not encouraging. Mrs.
Aaron, of Philadelphia, to whom the first
prize was awarded, found that, as they do
not breed in the same waters as the mos-
quito, they would have to be produced on
an enormous scale and then taken to the
mosquitoes; and that the artificial breeding
of them is attended with great difficulties.
Mr. Archibald C. Weeks, of Brooklyn, made
experiments in breeding them artificially,
and failed. They can not, moreover, be
kept in houses and cities without changing
their habits. Mr. William Beutenmuiler, of
the American Museum of Natural History,
finds that dragon-flies are the natural enemy
of the mosquito in its various forms and of
flies, and that those insects disappear before
them, but concedes the difficulty of raising
them artificially. These experiments do not
dispose of the question of our calling dragon-
flies into service. Early efforts usually fail of
the success that follows patient persistence.

Much may be accomplished at once by en-
couraging the natural multiplication of the
Libellulidce ; and future effort may yet de-
velop a practicable way of raising them arti-
ficially. Other remedies are suggested which
seem efficient and more immediately practi-
cable. Among them are the cultivation of
the yeast-fungus, which is fatal to flies, and
attacks them frequently ; fish-planting ; thor-
ough draining of spots where water can stand ;
and insecticides, one of the most efficient of
which is kerosene. One drop of oil applied
to a pool having ten square inches of sur-
face cleared it very quickly of all life ; and
three dollars' worth of crude oil will be
sufficient to apply to a mosquito-pond of a
hundred acres five times in a season. Spray-
ing petroleum on compost-heaps and other
breeding-places is equally effective to pre-
vent the development of flies.

Walking-Sticks and Tmbrella-Handles.

— The art of making walking-sticks and um-
brella-handles has been greatly developed
during the last forty years. Formerly, only
a very few native woods and some foreign
species were used for these purposes.
Twenty years ago the first collection illus-
trating the materials used was presented by
a London firm to the museum at Kew. The
collection has been completed by a supple-
mentary one from the same house, and in its
later form exemplifies many points in the
advance of the art. There is now hardly
any limit to the material that can be turned
to account for the purposes under considera-
tion, and manufacturers keep a keen look-
out for new sources of material, and novel-
ties in sticks and fashion. The cultivation
of sticks for the market has been taken
up as a business at some places in conti-
nental Europe, and special attention is often
paid to making the roots grow into shapely
forms for the handles. A London manufact-
uring establishment, the floor space of which
nearly covers an acre, have extensive store-
houses filled with native and foreign sticks,
from which stock is drawn, as it is wanted,
for the shops. These, as they grow, are
often very crooked, and have to be straight-
ened. A heap of sand is provided on the
top of a very hot stove, into which the
sticks are plunged, and kept till they have
become pliable. " The workman then takes

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

715

the crooked stick while it is still hot and
inserts it in a notch cut in a stout board,
placed at an angle inclined from him,"
where he bends and strains it. "When it has
become perfectly straight it is thrown down
to cool, after which it becomes rigid and per-
manent in its lines. Heat is an important
element in this matter, and produces differ-
ent effects on the several kinds of wood, the
degree of heat necessary to straighten one
kind of stick being often sufficient to spoil
another kind. The same power which makes
a crooked stick straight is applied to make
a straight one crooked ; so we find that the
rigid stems of bamboos, partridge canes, and
all the various kinds of sticks that are re-
quired to be curled or twisted, are by the
application of heat made to assume almost
any shape or form. Thus we often see
ladies' sun-shade handles twisted and even
tied into double knots. By far the largest
number of sticks used are those known as
natural sticks — that is, saplings of trees or
climbing plants, when the roots have suffi-
cient character to form handles or knots.
These are always more in demand than sticks
cut from solid wood. ' The finished canes
are sometimes mounted with precious metals,
stones such as onyx, jasper, marbles, even
precious stones, ivory, and horns of all
kinds.

Microscopic Structure of Stone. — The

investigation of the minute structure of min-
erals and rocks is recommended by Dr. H.
Hensoldt as the application most eminently
adapted to afford pleasure and satisfaction
to the lover of the microscope. It presents
an exceeding complexity of forms and a
most wonderful display of colors, and offers
a field as yet almost untrodden and affording
endless opportunities for research. "Espe-
cially striking and lovely is the appearance
of many of the volcanic or igneous rocks,
when reduced to thin sections, and examined
under the microscope. The dullish green
lava, called pitch-stone, which is found in
dikes on the island of Arran, on the west
coast of Scotland, exhibits under the micro-
scope whole forests of fern-trees, garlands,
leaves, and flowers of marvelous magnificence.
A certain granite from Cornwall contains
needle-shaped crystals of tourmaline, radiat-
ing star-like from a common center. Ba-

salts, obsidians, porphyries, serpentines from
various localities, show labyrinths of multi-
colored crystals resembling rows of pillars,
turreted castles, and fairy caves, glowing in
all the tints of the rainbow. The sediment-
ary or stratified rocks, while they can not
under the microscope equal their Plutonic
rivals in brilliancy of color or gorgeousness
of crystalline display, make up for this de-
ficiency by other features of interest, com-
pensating the inquirer with revelations of a
different character, but none the less re-
markable. Many marbles and limestones
are found to be literally composed of foram-
inifera, the tests of rhizopods, resembling
tiny shells of the most delicate and beauti-
ful forms. . . . Thin sections of almost any
piece of flint exhibit under the microscope
quite a little world of curious organic re-
mains, such as sponge spicules, xanthidia,
small fragments of coral, and the foraminif-
era already mentioned, furnishing very strong
evidence that the flints are silicified fossil
sponges. . . . This branch of study, though
barely thirty years old, has already contrib-
uted such a vast deal of new information
to natural science that it has, in more than
one respect, revolutionized our old-fashioned
conceptions of geological research."

Asphalt in Building Construction. — Some
interesting examples of recent new uses of
this substance are given in a paper with the
above title by Mr. T. H. Boorman, published
in Architecture and Building. The writer
says : " From the cellar to the roof, asphalt
has been used where the requirements have
been water and fire proof floors. Its prin-
cipal merits are its utter imperviousness to
water or damp, and its elasticity, whereby
cracking, especially from the influence of
frost, is prevented. Also from a sanitary
point of view the advantages of asphalt are
incontestable, for it possesses great antisep-
tic properties, and, owing to its having no
joints, it is impossible for particles of animal
or vegetable matter to lodge in crevices and
putrefy. It greatly promotes cleanliness, as
it can be easily washed, and for this reason
is invaluable in hospitals, breweries, stables,
etc. Asphalt first appears in your specifica-
tions as under the item of 'damp course.'
It is advisable to lay throughout the walls
on the grade of the cellar-floor half an inch

716

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of asphalt, with a lap of about two inches
on the inside, so allowing a connection with
the asphalt finish of the cellar-floor and her--
metically sealing the house from damp, nox-
ious gases, and vermin. In residences you
will probably consider you have done your
duty by asphalt if you have thus specified
for your damp course and cellar-floor ; in the
latter, by the way, three fourths of an inch
of asphalt on three inches of hydraulic ce-
ment concrete will serve the desired purpose
of a durable damp-proof floor. The yards of
city residences are now frequently laid with
asphalt, the material being peculiarly adapt-
ed to the roller-skates and tricycles of the
younger members of a family. From a build-
ing, then, in which only one floor, the cellar,
is required to be of asphalt, let us consider
where every floor and the roof can be of this
material ; in printing-houses, lithographing
establishments, breweries, sugar - refineries,
and slaughter-houses, you will often find this
material used throughout. This year, how-
ever, sees a novelty in construction with as-
phalt. Theophilus P. Chandler, Jr., archi-
tect, of Philadelphia, is using rock asphalt on
every floor of a large apartment-house ; the
carpets will lie on the asphalt, being fast-
ened down to narrow strips of wood set
against the partitions when the asphalt is
laid. Now, I fancy I hear you say, ' Well,
asphalt is not pleasant in appearance.'
Why, gentlemen, the mayor's private office
in the great City Buildings of Philadelphia,
the greatest municipal edifice in the country,
is laid with asphalt with a border of colored
tiles."

Some People of New Guinea. — Of the
natives of the neighborhood of the Owen
Stanley Range, New Guinea, Sir William
MacGregor says that their features are de-
cidedly good, and their faces indicate more
character and strength than those of the
average coast men. The cheek-bones in
some are rather broad and prominent. The
nose is generally of the Semitic type. They
possess all the volubility of the Papuan race,
and are less shy than tribes that have seen
more of white men, but are apparently su-
perstitious and easily frightened. " They in-
formed us that they used both the bow and
the spear, but we never saw one of them
with a weapon, and I could not induce them

to bring any to camp; not, as it appeared,
as if they mistrusted us, but seemingly
doubting whether it would not be misunder-
stood should any of them with arms in their
hands meet any of our party away from
camp." They always left the camp before
nightfall. They would exchange food for
salt, beads, and cutlery, but did not care
much for tobacco, growing a good quality
of their own. They also cultivate peas,
beans, yams, sweet potatoes, and several
varieties of bananas, and have abundant
food.

Origin of the American Indian. — Prof.
F. W. Putnam, in an address before the
Archaeological Association of the University
of Pennsylvania, said, in reference to the
origin of our Indians, that two well-defined
groups of races are found in America. They
have entirely different-shaped skulls. One
group starts in Mexico and reaches to Peru.
They are a short-headed people. They ex-
tended across from Mexico along the Gulf
coast, up the Mississippi Valley and along
the southern portion of the Atlantic coast,
not crossing the Alleghanies and not being
found north of the Great Lakes. They were
the people that built the mounds and founded
the civilization of Mexico and Peru. Another
race, a long-headed people, inhabited the
northern part of the country, and were the
authors, among other articles, of certain
objects found in Wisconsin. These two
races have ,met and mingled, and the result
is the American Indian.

Results of M. Pasteur's Anti-rahic Treat-
ment.— M. L. Perdrix's report of the anti-
rabic vaccinations at the Pasteur Institute
since 1886 divides the cases treated into
three classes : those of persons bitten by
dogs ascertained experimentally to be mad ;
of persons bitten by dogs decided by veteri-
nary examination to be mad ; and of persons
bitten by dogs supposed to be rabid. The
proportion of deaths after treatment is
shown by the tables to be very small ; for a
total of 7,893 cases of all the classes, it was
0-67 per cent; but the proportion has de-
creased from year to year ; it having been
0-94 per cent in 1886, 0'73 in 1887, 0*55 in
1888, and 0'33 in 1889. The decrease is at-
tributed to a better appreciation of the grav-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

7i7

ity of the cases and a more judicious propor-
tioning of the measure of treatment to that
feature. The gravity of the case appears to
vary somewhat according to the part of the
body that is bitten. The most dangerous
bites were in the head, with which the mor-
tality was 2"36 per cent; next were the
hands, 0*69 per cent ; and last the body and
limbs, 0'27 per cent. The inferior gravity of
the last class of bites may, perhaps, be at-
tributed to the action of the clothing in wip-
ing the animal's teeth.

The Unexplored Regions of Canada. —

It is commonly supposed that all parts of
Canada have been explored and are known.
Mr. G. M. Dawson thinks that this opinion
is not correct, and that the clearness of the
maps, on which it is chiefly founded, is due
to their makers having assumed for regions
of considerable extent what has not been
verified. Probably but little of the regions
which are really unknown is agriculturally
or climatically attractive ; but they may con-
tain mineral wealth, and some of them may
in time have value for cultivation. In mark-
ing out the districts which he regards as
unexplored, the author takes no notice of
comparatively small tracts of country lying
between explored regions, or of any having
an area of less than 7,500 square miles ;
and he also omits the arctic islands lying to
the north of the continent. With these
limitations he enumerates and defines six-
teen distinct regions in the Dominion con-
cerning which definite and satisfactory in-
formation is wanting, varying in area from
7,500 square miles to 289,000 square miles.
In all, it may be stated that " while the en-
tire area of the Dominion is computed at
3,470,257 square miles, about 954,000 square
miles of the continent alone, exclusive of
the inhospitable detached arctic portions, is
for all practical purposes entirely unknown.
In this estimate the area of the unexplored
country is reduced to a minimum by the
mode of definition employed. Probably we
should be much nearer the mark in assum-
ing it as about one million square miles, or
between one third and one fourth of the
whole. Till this great aggregate of unknown
territory shall have been subjected to ex-
amination, or at least till it has been broken
up and traversed in many directions by ex-

ploratory and survey lines, we must all feel
that it stands as a reproach to our want of
enterprise and of a justifiable curiosity. In
order, however, to properly ascertain and
make known the natural resources of the
great tracts lying beyond the borders of
civilization, such explorations and surveys
as are undertaken must be of a truly scien-
tific character."

Crystallization seen in the Act.— The
process of crystallization as observed under
the microscope is described by Dr. H. Hen-
soldt in a paper on crystallogenesis. The
commencement of the operation is always
signaled by the sudden appearance, in the
previously clear and colorless field, of innu-
merable dark points, which, in an incredibly
short time, augment in volume, till a diame-
ter of perhaps j^-G of a millimetre is reached.
It is then observed that the particles are
spherical in outline, and that their darkness
is only an optical illusion, caused by a broad
diffraction-ring, for in reality they are quite
transparent. They are evenly distributed
over the field, and their " growth " — a kind
of spontaneous swelling, which can be plain-
ly followed — is uniform and simultaneous.
The particles then appear to become sud-
denly endowed with polarity ; they change
their positions, roll about like billiard-balls
in every direction, yet always in straight
lines. For a moment all seems confusion,
but behold ! some invisible " floor-master "
is asserting his authority, and in another
instant we have the first manifestation of a
symmetry destined to culminate in that
perfect crystalline regularity which has ex-
cited the wonder of all ages. The globules,
originally scattered all over the field, are
now arranged in lines or rows, like so many
strings of beads. Some of these rows con-
sist of only three or four globules, in others
we can count ten, fifteen, twenty, or more;
and it would seem as if each spherical body
was surrounded by a delicate film or pellicle,
which prevents the dissipation of the inter-
nal molecular forces. A series of rapid
changes is now inaugurated, which can be
followed only with the greatest difficulty.
The globules in each line, by a sudden and
simultaneous movement, unite and form solid
rods, and there are grounds for believing
that this solidification is due to the ruptur-

718

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing of the mysterious pellicle referred to.
"Within a quarter of a second after the for-
mation of the rods (which are of uniform
thickness, however much they may vary in
length), we observe a general commotion
among them. Each now appears to act as
a separate bar-magnet, and while some unite
at right angles, others range themselves in
close contact side by side, and form a sym-
metrical wall. Layer is piled on layer ; each
little rod falls mechanically into its proper
place ; and before we have time to realize
the strangeness of the spectacle, the field is
studded with little cubes of exquisite brillian-
cy. What we have seen here in an evapo-
rating drop of chloride of sodium may be
observed in any other saline substance which
we allow to crystallize under the microscope,
with the sole difference that the diameter of
the globules and the form of the ultimate
crystals vary according to the nature of the
substances employed.

The Genuineness of the "Xampa Im-
age."— The Boston Society of Natural His-
tory had a discussion a few months ago re-
specting the " Nampa image," or the little
human figure of clay that was found in bor-
ing a well at Nampa, Idaho, in August, 1889.
Prof. Wright produced letters and state-
ments substantiating the genuineness of the
discovery and certifying to the eye-witnesses
of the fact as men of unimpeachable intel-
ligence and integrity. A report by Mr.
Albert Allen Wright, on his examination of
the image as to the material of which it is
made and its appearance, stated conclu-
sions favorable to its antiquity. Prof. G.
F. Wright regarded the direct evidence as
of as high order as could well be obtained.
"There was no sensational publication in
the papers, nor has there been any sug-
gestion of mercenary motives. There were
no archaeologists or scientific men on the
ground to be humbugged. Apparently the
image would have disappeared and dropped
out of notice but for the fortunate chance
which brought it to the attention of Mr.
Adams, when his own mind was interested in
that class of subjects. The evidence is most
direct as to the impossibility of the image's
having fallen into the well from the surface,
or of its having been put in by design."
Much weight is also attached to Prof. F. F.

Jewett's opinion as to the character of the
iron oxide on the image. " It seems in the
highest degree improbable," Prof. Wright
adds, " that any one should have manufact-
ured such an object on the spot, and been
so successful in meeting all the conditions
present. I am, therefore, prepared to ac-
cept without further question the genuine-
ness of the image, and shall look for further
confirmation as time elapses." Prof. Put-
nam spoke of natural evidences which the
image afforded of its age. Prof. H. W.
Haynes said that he regarded the image as
a most important evidence of the antiquity
of man in America.

NOTES.

Prof. J. W. Spencer has extended the
observations of Mr. G. K. Gilbert on the old
beach surrounding Lake Ontario at a dis-
tance of several miles from the shore of the
present lake. He has traced it along the
Canadian side, and at the eastern end, where
Mr. Gilbert had not been. For the ancient
body of water that occupied the basin
bounded by this beach, he proposes the
name Lake Iroquois. The gravel ridges
forming the several portions of this beach
were used by the Indians for their trails, as
they afforded dry pathways through a country
elsewhere often muddy. The fact that some
parts of this beach are higher than others is
explained by the warping of the crust since
the beach was formed.

It is contended by Mr. Alexander Bow-
bronicki that an unhealthy town has no
other meaning than a proportionate accumu-
lation of decaying or putrescible matter.
Thus, in Manchester, England, the causes of
mischief are overcrowded streets, badly
kept; surface impurities in streets, yards,
and corners ; and sewers of such construc-
tion as admits of their structure becoming
sodden and of their charging the surround-
ing subsoil with filth, whereby the atmos-
phere is contaminated by the escape of the
foul air through the ventilating holes. The
author believes that sewers are to protect
the subsoil against contamination from the
surface and to maintain as steadily as pos-
sible the level of the subsoil water, rather
than to remove superficial and closet foul-
ness ; and that that should be disposed of
by the pail system.

A complete account of Prjevalski's zoo-
logical observations and discoveries during
his expeditions to central Asia is in course
of publication in Russian and German text,
at the expense of the Imperial Crown Prince
Nicholas of Kussia.

NOTES.

719

Dr. J. Walter Fewkes has described in
The American Naturalist some specimens of
excavations made in rocks by sea-urchins,
which he observed at Grand Manan, New
Brunswick. Other places where such exca-
vations have been found are Florida, the
West Indies, Panama, California, the Medi-
terranean, coasts of the British Isles and
France, and Australia. The holes, which are
occupied by the animals, are never deeper
than the thickness of the urchins' bodies,
and are very smooth. It has been suggested
that the holes are worn by the spines of the
animal, or perhaps chiseled out by its teeth,
and Dr. Fewkes adds that perhaps motions
of the animals caused by waves aid the pro-
cess of erosion. Another recent paper by
Dr. Fewkes describes some Californian Me-
dusa, with plates.

A writer in the North China Herald of
Shanghai asserts that the climate of Asia is
growing colder, and its tropical animals are
slowly retreating southward. In proof of
this he quotes evidences, historical and ref-
erential, of the former existence of ele-
phants, tigers, and leopards in China. Tigers
and leopards are, however, not yet extinct
in China, and are common enough in Corea.
The bamboo, it is said, formerly grew natu-
rally in parts of the country where it now
has to be taken care of.

The Central Park Menagerie had 907 an-
imals on exhibition during 1889, represent-
ing 242 species, 164 genera, and 71 families.
The most notable additions to the collection
were, by gift or exchange, a three-toed sloth,
an American civet-cat, very seldom seen alive
in zoological collections, and a pair of young
elks ; and by birth a sea-lion, two nylghaie
antelopes, and one hippopotamus. The last
died four days after birth. The principal
cause of death among the animals was con-
gestion of the lungs.

" To get rid of the timber," the answer
given to an inquiry from the Michigan State
Forestry Commission respecting the timber
policy of the State of Arkansas, is made by
Mr. William Little the text of a letter to the
Montreal Board of Trade on the importance
of preserving the timber. The interests of
the United States and Canada in this mat-
ter are substantially the same. Having
shown that the forests of the continent are
on the verge of extinction, and having
pointed out the lesson that the people of
the United States will shortly be taught, if
our political bosses impose a restrictive duty
on Canadian lumber, the author warns his
countrymen that if they continue stocking
our saw-mills with logs taken from this al-
ready too scanty supply, and keep warring
on their forests, they will soon be able to
" get rid of their timber," and to get rid at
the same time of the most valuable property
they ever had or may ever expect to have in
their country.

A group of papers from the Journal of
Mycology on The Treatment of Plant Dis-
ease is published in a separate pamphlet
by Jhe Section of Vegetable Pathology of
the United States Department of Agricult-
ure. The relation of Mr. A. A. Crozicr's
experiments on the effects of certain fungi-
cides upon the vitality of seeds shows that
soaking in blue vitriol and in copperas tends
to retard germination. Prof. Byron D. Hal-
sted contributes an investigation of the scald
and gall fungus of the cranberry. Other
papers, by different authors, relate chiefly
to other fungoid diseases and to the qualities
of fungicides.

Six scholarships have been established
in the Missouri Botanic Garden to provide
six years' courses of theoretical and practi-
cal instruction for young men desirous of
becoming gardeners.

Although there is a wide enough field
for platinum-plating in the making of vari-
ous kinds of instruments and apparatus,
such great difficulties attend the process
that it has never been made a commercial
success. In the first place, the metal tends
to separate from its salts in the spongy
form instead of forming a firm, hard coat-
ing. Then, too, platinum is so insoluble
that plates of it can not be used for keep-
ing up the strength of the bath. Mr. Will-
iam H. Wahl has communicated to the Frank-
lin Institute a method of depositing platinum
by which these difficulties are largely avoid-
ed. For keeping up the strength of the bath
he uses platinum hydrate, which dissolves
freely in aqueous solutions of the alkaline
hydrates, forming platinates. These plati-
nate solutions conduct electricity freely and
yield bright, reguline, and adherent deposits
of the metal.

On the French coast of Croisic may be
seen thousands of little sea-urchins ensconced
in cavities in the granite rock, the openings
of which are too small to permit their in-
gress or exit. The animals, it is not doubted,
make and widen the holes for themselves,
but the question how has not been answered.
Chemical solution of the rock does not seem
possible, as no sufficiently strong acid is
found in the animal. M. John has recently
explained it by mechanical action. With
the so-called lantern of Aristotle, a curious
formation with which the animal breaks
up the hard substances on which it feed?,
it probably bites the rock ; the sucker-feet
are attached, and a rotary motion is im-
parted to the body, the spines and the lan-
tern slowly wearing down the surface of the
rock.

A report of the first systematic attempt
to determine whether beets can be raised
successfully for sugar in Nebraska is given
in Bulletin No. 13 of the State Agricultural
Experiment Station. Beets had been raised

720

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on the Industrial College farm that yielded
over fifteen per cent of sugar, when, in the
spring of 18S8, the people around Grand
Island undertook to demonstrate that beets
could be raised there rich enough in sugar to
warrant investment in a sugar plant. The
result was satisfactory, and the experiment
was extended through the whole State for
the season of 1889. The results are de-
tailed in the Bulletin.

The natural result has followed the offer
by the Government of India of rewards for
the heads of snakes. The Chief Commis-
sioner of the Central Provinces reports that
the natives there are beginning to breed and
raise poisonous snakes for the sake of get-
ting the head-money offered.

A monument to M. J. C. Houzeau was to
be unveiled at Mons on the 2d of June.

OBITUARY NOTES.

Sir Edwin Chadwick, whom an English
paper styles the " father of modern san-
itary science," died in London, July 5th,
ninety years old. He was born in 1 800, near
Rochdale, of an old family, famous for the
long lives attained by some of its members,
lie was admitted as a barrister in 1830, and
also engaged in literary work ; and, from
the appearance of an article on Life Assur-
ance in the Westminster Review, his life is
most largely a record of efforts to improve
the conditions of health. Among the direct
or indirect fruits of his activity were the
establishment of industrial schools for des-
titute children; provisions for the care of
aged poor and infirm ; reforms in workhouse
systems; the ten-hour law; the half-time
system for children ; the first sanitary com-
mission ; and the establishment of the Regis-
trar-General's office. He was a permanent
Commissioner on the Local Government
Board ; did good service in Crimean and In-
dian questions ; and was President at differ-
ent times of Sanitary Congresses, of the
Society of Sanitary Inspectors, and of the
Economical Section at meetings of the Brit-
ish Association. On the 2d of March, 1889,
his ninetieth birthday, he was given a dinner
by the Association of Sanitary Inspectors.
A little before this time he was made a
Knight of the Bath.

General John Charles Fremont died in
New York, July 13th, in his seventy-eighth
year. The political and military incidents
of his later life have somewhat obscured the
recollection of what he did for the advance-
ment of knowledge in the earlier period of
his career. The region of the Rocky Mount-
ains was then practically unknown. He un-
dertook in 1842 to explore it and open an
overland route to the Pacific. In 1843 he
led an expedition up the vallev of the Platte,
explored the Great Salt Lake, etc., to Fort
Vancouver, near the mouth of the Columbia

River. On the return journey he came back
through the Great Basin and the South Pass.
.In 1845 he conducted an expedition to ex-
plore the Sierra Nevada, in California, in
connection with which he became engaged
in military and political complications. In
1853 he led a party at his own expense to
the Pacific, by a new route, near latitude
38° north. Full accounts of his discoveries
were published in his reports to the Gov-
ernment and in other books; and though
the regions he visited are familiar enough
now, the works had then all the freshness of
novelty. For his services as an explorer he
received gold medals from the King of Prus-
sia and the Royal Geographical Society.

Sir Warington Smyth, Professor of
Mining at the Royal School of Mines, Jer-
myn Street, London, died June 19th, in the
seventy-third year of his age. He was born
in Naples ; spent his early boyhood in Italy ;
was sent to the English schools and was
graduated from Cambridge ; took a prominent
position as a scientific authority on mining ;
was appointed in 1851, on the nomination
of Sir Henry De la Beche, lecturer on min-
eralogy and mining ; was made mineral sur-
veyor to the Duchy of Cornwall and in-
spector of crown mines ; and was invariably
consulted by the Government on mining
matters. His contributions to geological
journals, reports, etc., were numerous, but
have not been collected. He was the author
of a Rudimentary Treatise on Coal and Coal-
Mining, and of a Book of Travels.

Mr. W. Kitchen, for fifteen years Hun-
terian Professor of Comparative Anatomy in
the Royal College of Surgeons, and Presi-
dent of the Royal Microscopical Society in
1871 and 1872, died early in July. He was
distinguished by his investigations on the
minute foraminifera and the morphology of
the vertebrate skull.

Patrick Barrt, one of the most dis-
tinguished American horticulturists, died at
his home in Rochester, N. Y., in June. He
was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1816, and
came to America when twenty years old.
He was especially interested and efficient in
pomology, and his Fruit Garden has long
been one of the most valuable standard
works on that subject. He was for more
than thirty years President of the Western
New York Horticultural Society, and was a
member of the Board of Control of the
State Agricultural Experiment Station. He
was for several years editor of The Horti-
culturist, when it was the leading periodical
in that branch, and afterward horticultural
editor of the Genesee Farmer. "As an au-
thor and editor," says Garden and Forest,
" he always had some instructive message,
and he always delivered it in a way that com-
pelled attention " ; and " it might be said that
his influence has reached every orchard and
garden of the country."

RENE DESCARTES.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

OCTOBER, 1890.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE,

X. THE FALL OF MAN" AND ANTHROPOLOGY.

#

By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D., L.H. D.,

EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

PART II.

WE have seen that, closely connected with the main lines of
investigation in Archaeology and Anthropology, there were
other researches throwing much light on the entire subject. In a
previous chapter we saw especially how Lafitau and Jussieu were
among the first to collect and compare facts bearing on the natural
history of man, gathered by travelers in various parts of the earth,
thus laying foundations for the science of Comparative Ethnology.
It was soon seen that Ethnology had most important bearings upon
the question of the material, intellectual, moral, and religious evo-
lution of the human race ; in every civilized nation, therefore, ap-
peared eminent men who began to study the characteristics of va-
rious groups of men as ascertained from travelers, and to compare
the results thus gained with each other and with those obtained
by Archaeology.

Thus, more and more clear became the evidences that the tend-
ency of the race has been upward from low beginnings. It was
found that groups of men still existed possessing characteristics of
those in the early periods of development to whom the drift and
caves and shell-heaps and pile-dwellings bear witness ; groups of
men using many of the same implements and weapons, building
their houses in the same way, seeking their food by the same
means, enjoying the same amusements, going through the same
general stages of culture ; some being in a condition correspond-
ing to the earlier, some to the later periods.

From all sides thus came evidence that we have still upon

vol. xxxvu. — 52

722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the earth examples of all the main stages in the development of
human civilization ; that from the period when man appears little
above the brutes, and with little if any religion in any accepted
sense of the word, these examples can be arranged in an ascending
series leading to the highest planes which humanity has reached ;
that philosophic observers may among these examples study ex-
isting beliefs, usages, and institutions back through earlier and
earlier forms until, as a rule, the whole evolution can be easily
divined if not fully seen. Moreover, the basis of the whole struct-
ure became more and more clear ; the declaration that " the lines
of intelligence have always been what they are, and have always
operated as they do now — that man has progressed from the
simple to the complex, from the particular to the general."

As this evidence from Ethnology became more and more
strong, its significance to Theology aroused attention, and natu-
rally most determined efforts were made to break its force. On
the Continent the two great champions of the Church in this field
were De Maist're and De Bonald ; but the two attempts which
may be especially recalled as the most influential among English-
speaking peoples were those of Whately, Archbishop of Dublin,
and the Duke of Argyll.

First in the combat against these new deductions of science
was Whately. He was a strong man, caring little for conven-
tionalities, whose breadth of thought and liberality in practice
deserved all honor ; but these very qualities drew upon him the
distrust of his orthodox brethren, and while his writings were
powerful in the first half of the present century to break down
many bulwarks of unreason, he seems to have been constantly
in fear of losing touch with the Church, and therefore to have
promptly attacked some scientific reasonings, which, had he been
a layman, not holding a brief for the Church, he would probably
have studied with more care and less prejudice. He was not
slow to see the deeper significance of Archaeology and Ethnology
in their relations to the theological conception of " the fall," and
he set the battle in array against them.

His contention was, to use his own words, that " no community
ever did or ever can emerge unassisted by external helps from a
state of utter barbarism into anything that can be called civiliza-
tion " ; and that, in short, all imperfectly civilized, barbarous, and
savage races are but fallen descendants of races more fully civ-
ilized. This view was urged with his usual ingenuity and vigor ;
but the facts proved too strong for him : they made it clear, first,
that many races were without simple possessions, instruments, and
arts which never, probably, could have been lost if once acquired —
as, for example, pottery, the bow for shooting, various domesticated
animals, spinning, the simplest principles of agriculture, house-

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 723

hold economy, and the like ; and, secondly, it was shown as a
simple matter of fact that various savage and barbarous tribes
had raised themselves by a development of means which no one
from outside could have taught them ; as in the cultivation and
improvement of various indigenous plants, such as the potato and
Indian corn among the Indians of North America ; in the domesti-
cation of various animals peculiar to their own regions, such as
the llama among the Indians of South America ; in the making
of sundry fabrics out of materials and by processes not found
among other nations, such as the bark cloth of the Polynesians,
and in the development of weapons peculiar to sundry localities,
but known in no others ; such as the boomerang in Australia.

Most effective in bringing out the truth were such works as
those of Sir John Lubbock and Tylor ; and so conclusive were
they, that the arguments of Whately were given up as untenable
by the other of the two great champions above referred to, and an
attempt was made by him to form the diminishing number of
thinking men supporting the old theological view on a new line
of defense.

This second champion, the Duke of Argyll, was a man of
much knowledge and strong powers in debate, whose high moral
sense was amply shown in his adhesion to the side of the Ameri-
can Union in the struggle against disunion and slavery, despite
the overwhelming majority against him in the high aristocracy to
which he belongs. As an honest man and close thinker, the duke
was obliged to give up completely the theological view of the an-
tiquity of man. The whole biblical chronology as held by the
universal Church, " always, everywhere, and by all," he sacrificed,
and gave all his powers in this field to support the theory of " the
fall." Noblesse oblige ; the duke and his ancestors had been for
centuries the chief pillars of the Church of Scotland, and it was
too much to expect that he could break away from a tenet which
forms really its " chief corner-stone."

Acknowledging the weakness and insufficiency of Archbishop
Whately's argument, the duke took the ground that the lower,
barbarous, savage, brutal races were the remains of civilized races
which, in the struggle for existence, had been pushed and driven
off to remote and inclement parts of the earth where the condi-
tions necessary to a continuance in their early civilization were
absent; that, therefore, the descendants of primeval, civilized
men degenerated and sank in the scale of culture. To use his own
words, the weaker races were " driven by the stronger to the
woods and rocks," so that they became "mere outcasts of the
human race."

In answer to this, while it was conceded, first, that there have
been examples of weaker tribes sinking in the scale of culture

724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

after escaping from the stronger into regions unfavorable to civ-
ilization, and, secondly, that many powerful nations have declined
and decayed, it was shown that the men in the most remote and
unfavorable regions have not always been the lowest in the scale ;
that men have been frequently found "among the woods and
rocks " in a higher state of civilization than on the fertile plains,
such examples being cited as Mexico, Peru, and even Scotland ;
and that while there were many examples of special and local
decline, overwhelming masses of facts point to progress as a
rule.

The improbability, not to say impossibility, of many of the
conclusions arrived at by the duke appeared more and more
strongly as more became known of the lower tribes of mankind.
It was necessary on his theory to suppose many things which our
knowledge of the human race absolutely forbids us to believe : for
example, it was necessary to suppose that the Australians or New
Zealanders, having once possessed so simple and convenient an art
as that of the potter, had ]ost every trace of it ; and that the same
tribes, having once had so simple a means of saving labor as the
spindle or small stick weighted at one end for spinning, had given
it up and gone back to twisting threads with the hand. In fact, it
was necessary to suppose that one of the main occupations of man
from " the beginning " had been the forgetting of simple methods,
processes, and implements, which all experience in the actual
world teaches us are never entirely forgotten by peoples who
have once acquired them.

Some leading arguments of the duke were overthrown by sim-
ple statements of fact. Thus, his instance of the Eskimo as
pushed to the verge of habitable America, and therefore living in
the lowest depths of savagery, which even if it were true by no
means proved a general rule, was deprived of its force by the
simple fact that the Eskimo are by no means the lowest race on
the American continent, and that various tribes far more cen-
trally and advantageously placed, as, for instance, those in Brazil,
are really inferior to them in the scale of culture. Again, his
statement that "in Africa there appear to be no traces of any
time when the natives were not acquainted with the use of iron "
is met by the fact that from the Nile Valley to the Cape of Good
Hope we find, wherever examination has been made, the same early
stone implements which in all other parts of the world precede
the use of iron, some of which at least would not have been made
had their makers possessed iron. The duke also tried to show
that there were no distinctive epochs of stone, bronze, and iron,
by adducing the fact that some stone implements are found even
in some high civilizations. This is indeed a fact. We find some
few European peasants to-day using stone mallet-heads ; but this

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 725

proves simply that the old stone mallet-heads have survived as
implements cheap and fairly effective.

The argument from Comparative Ethnology in support of
the view that the tendency of mankind is upward has received
strength from many sources. Comparative Philology shows that
in the less civilized, barbarous, and savage races childish forms
of speech prevail ; — frequent reduplications and the like, of which
we have survivals in the later and even in the most highly devel-
oped languages. In various languages, too, we find relics of
ancient modes of thought in the simplest words and expressions
used for arithmetical calculations. Words and phrases for this
purpose are frequently found to be derived from the words for
hands, feet, fingers, and toes, just as clearly as in our own lan-
guage some of our simplest measures of length are shown by their
names to have been measures of parts of the human body, as the
cubit, the foot, and the like, and therefore to date from a time
when exactness was not required. To add another out of many
examples, it is found to-day that various rude nations go through
the simplest arithmetical processes by means of pebbles. Into
our own language through the Latin has come a word showing
that our distant progenitors reckoned in this way. The word
calculate gives us an absolute proof of this. According to the
theory of the Duke of Argyll, men ages ago used pebbles (calculi)
in performing the simplest arithmetical calculations because we
to-day "calculate " No reduction to absurdity could be more
thorough. The simple fact must be that we " calculate " because
our remote ancestry used pebbles in their arithmetic.

So, too, Comparative Literature and Folk-Lore show childish
modes of viewing nature and childish ways of expressing the
relations of man to nature among peoples of a low culture to-
day, such as clearly survive from a remote ancestry ; note-
worthy among these are the beliefs in witches and fairies, and
multitudes of popular and poetic expressions in the most civilized
nations.

So, too, Comparative Ethnography, the basis of Ethnology,
shows in contemporary barbarians and savages a childish love of
playthings and games, of which we have many survivals.

All these facts, which were at first unobserved, or observed as
a matter of no significance, have been brought into connection
with a fact in Biology acknowledged alike by all important schools,
by Agassiz on one hand and by Darwin on the other — namely,
as stated by Agassiz, that " the young states of each species and
group resemble older forms of the same group," or, as stated by
Darwin, that " in two or more groups of animals, however much
they may at first differ from each other in structure and habits,
if they pass through closely similar embryonic stages, we may

7 26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

feel almost assured that they have descended froni the same parent
form, and are therefore closely related." *

The history of Art, especially as shown by Architecture, in the
noblest monuments of the most enlightened nations of antiquity,
also gives abundant proofs of this same upward tendency from
the rudest and simplest beginnings. Many columns of early Egyp-
tian temples or tombs are but bundles of Nile reeds slightly con-
ventionalized in stone : the temples of Greece, including not only
the earliest forms, but the Parthenon itself, while in parts show-
ing an evolution out of Egyptian architecture, exhibit frequent
reminiscences and even imitations of earlier constructions in wood :
the mediaeval cathedrals, while evolved out of Roman and Byzan-
tine structures, constantly show unmistakable survivals of prehis-
toric construction, f

So, too, History has come in, illustrating the unknown from

* For the stone forms given to early bronze axes, etc., see Nilsson, Primitive Inhab-
itants of Scandinavia, London, 1868, Lubbock's Introduction, p. xxxi ; and for Plates, see
Lubbock's Prehistoric Man, chapter ii ; also Cartailhac, Les Ages Prehistoriques de
l'Espagne et du Portugal, p. 227 ; also Keller, Lake Dwellings ; also Troycn, Habita-
tions Lacustres; also Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Great Britain, p. 292; also Lubbock,
p. 6 ; also Lyell, Antiquity of MaD, chap. ii. For the cranogs, etc., in the north of Europe,
see Munro, Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings, Edinburgh, 1882. For mounds and greater
stone constructions in the extreme south of Europe, see Cartailhac's work on Spain and
Portugal above cited, Part III., chap. iii. For the source of Mr. Southall's contention,
see Brugsch, Egypt of the Pharaohs. For the two sides of the question whether in the
lowest grades of savagery there is really any recognition of a superior power, or anything
which can be called, in any accepted sense, religion, compare Quatrefages with Lubbock, in
works already cited. For a striking but rather ad captandum effort to show that there is a
moral and religious sense in the very lowest Australian tribes, see one of the discourses of
Archbishop Vaughan on Science and Religion. For one out of multitudes of striking and
instructive resemblances in ancient stone implements and those now in use among sundry
savage tribes, see comparison between old Scandinavian arrow-heads and those recently
brought from Tierra del Fuego, in Nilsson as above, especially in Plate V. For a brief and
admirable statement of the arguments on both sides, see Sir J. Lubbock's Dundee paper,
given in the appendix to the American edition of his Origin of Civilization, etc. For
the general argument referred to between Whately and the Duke of Argyll on one side and
Lubbock on the other, see Lubbock's Dundee paper as above cited ; Tylor, Early History
of Mankind, especially p. 193; and the Duke of Argyll, Primeval Man, Part IV. For
difficulties of savages in Arithmetic, see Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, New York,
1889, pp. 459 et seg. For a very temperate and judicial view of the whole question, see
Tylor, Early History of Mankind, chap, vii., especially pp. 188-191, also chap. xiii. For a
brief summary of the scientific position regarding the stagnation and deterioration of races,
resulting in the statement that such deterioration " in no way contradicts the theory that
civilization itself is developed from low to high stages," see Tylor, Anthropology, chap. i.

f For striking examples of the testimony of language to upward progress, see Tylor,
chap, xii ; as to evolution in Architecture, and especially of Greek forms and ornaments out
of Egyptian and Assyrian, with survivals in stone architecture of forms obtained in Egypt
when reeds were used, and in Greece when wood construction prevailed, see Fergusson's
Hand-Book of Architecture, vol. i, pp. 100, 228, 233, and elsewhere ; also Ottfried Muller,
Ancient Art and its Remains, English tranlation, London, 1852, pp. 21 9, passim.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 727

the known — the development of man in the prehistoric period
from his development within historic times. Nothing is more
evident from history than the fact that weaker bodies of men
driven out by stronger do not necessarily relapse into barbarism,
but frequently rise, even under the most unfavorable circum-
stances, to a civilization equal or superior to that from which they
have been banished. Out of very many examples showing this
law of upward development, a few may be taken as typical. The
Slavs, who sank so low under the pressure of stronger races that
they apparently gave the modern world a new word to express
the most hopeless servitude, have developed powerful civilizations
peculiar to themselves ; the barbarian tribes who, ages ago, took
refuge amid the sand-banks and morasses of Holland, have de-
veloped one of the world's leading centers of civilization; the
wretched peasants who about the fifth century took refuge from
invading hordes among the lagoons and mud-banks of Venetia,
developed a power in art, arms, and politics which is among the
wonders of human history ; the Puritans, driven from the civili-
zation of great Britain to the unfavorable climate*, soil, and circum-
stances of early New England ; the Huguenots, driven from France,
a country admirably fitted for the highest growth of civilization,
to various countries far less fitted for such growth; the Irish
peasantry driven in vast numbers from their own island to other
parts of the world, on the whole less fitted to them — all are proofs
that, as a rule, bodies of men once enlightened, when driven to
unfavorable climates and brought under the most depressing cir-
cumstances, not only retain what enlightenment they have, but
go on increasing it. Besides these, we have such cases as those of
criminals banished to various penal colonies from whose descend-
ants has been developed a high civilization ; and of pirates, like
those of the Bounty, whose descendants, in a remote Pacific
island, became sober, steady citizens ; thousands of examples show
the prevalence of this same rule — the rule that men in masses do
not forget the main gains of their civilization, and that their tend-
ency is upward.

Another class of historic facts also testifies in the most strik-
ing manner to this same upward tendency — the decline and de-
struction of various civilizations brilliant but hopelessly vitiated.
These catastrophes are seen more and more to be but steps in this
development. The crumbling away of the great ancient civiliza-
tions based upon despotism, whether the despotism of monarch,
priest, or mob — the decline and fall of Roman civilization, for ex-
ample, which, in his most remarkable generalization, Guizot has
shown to have been necessary in the development of the richer
civilization of modern Europe ; the terrible struggle and loss of
the Crusades, which once appeared to be a mere catastrophe, but

7z8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are now seen to have brought on the downfall of feudalism, and
the centralizing, civilizing monarchical period ; the French Revo-
lution, once thought a mere outburst of diabolic passion, but now
seen to be a transition from the monarchical to the constitutional
epoch — all show that even wide-spread deterioration and decline,
even indeed the greatest political and moral catastrophes, so far
from leading to a fall of mankind, tend in the long run to raise
humanity to higher planes.

Thus, then, Anthropology and its handmaids Ethnology, Phi-
lology, and History, have wrought out, beyond a doubt, proofs of
the upward evolution of humanity since the appearance of man
upon our planet.

And these researches have not been confined to progress in
man's material condition. Far more important evidences have
been found of upward evolution in his family, social, moral, in-
tellectual, and religious relations. The light thrown on this sub-
ject by such men as Lubbock, Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Buckle,
Draper, Max Miiller, and a multitude of others, despite mistakes,
haltings, stumblings, and occasional following of delusive paths,
is among the greatest glories of the century now ending. From
all these investigators in their various fields, holding no brief for
any system sacred or secular, but seeking truth as truth, comes
the same general testimony of the evolution of higher out of
lower. The process has been indeed slow and painful, but this
does not prove that it may not become more rapid and less fruit-
ful in sorrow as humanity goes on.*

While, then, it is not denied that many instances of retrogres-
sion can be found, the consenting voice of unbiased investigators
in all lands has declared more and more that the beginnings of
our race must have been low and brutal, and that the tendency
has been upward. To combat this conclusion by examples of de-
cline and deterioration here and there, has become impossible : as
well try to prove that, because in the Mississippi there are eddies
in which the currents flow northward, there is no main stream
flowing southward ; or that, because trees decay and fall, there is
no law of upward growth from germ to trunk, branches, foliage,
and fruit.

A very striking evidence that the theological theory had be-
come untenable was seen when its main supporter in the scien-
tific field, Von Martins, in the full ripeness of his powers, publicly
declared his conversion to the scientific view.

Yet, while the tendency of enlightened human thought in re-
cent times is unmistakable, the struggle against the older view is

* As to. the good effects of migration, see Waitz, Introduction to Anthropology, Lon-
don, 1863, p. 345.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 729

not yet ended. The bitterness of the Abbe* Hamard in France
has been carried to similar and even greater extremes among sun-
dry Protestant bodies in Europe and America. The simple truth
of history makes it a necessity, unpleasant though it be, to chroni-
cle two typical examples in our own land and time.

In the year 1875 a leader in American industrial enterprise
created at the capital of a Southern State a university which bore
his name. It was given into the hands of one of the religious
sects most powerful in that region, and a Bishop of that sect be-
came its President. To its chair of Geology was called Alexan-
der Winchell, a scholar who had already won eminence as a
teacher and writer in that field, a professor greatly beloved and
respected in the two universities with which he had been con-
nected, and a member of the sect which the institution of learning
above referred to represented.

But his relations to this Southern institution were destined to
be brief. That his lectures at the Vanderbilt University were
learned, attractive, and stimulating even his enemies were forced
to admit ; but he was soon found to believe that there had been
men earlier than the period assigned to Adam, and even that all
the human race are not descended from Adam. His effort in this
was to reconcile science and Scripture, and he was now treated by a
Methodist Episcopal Bishop in Tennessee just as, two centuries be-
fore, La Peyrere had been treated for a similar effort by a Roman
Catholic Vicar-General in Belgium. The publication of a series
of articles on the subject, contributed by the professor to a North-
ern religious newspaper at its own request, brought matters to a
climax, for, the articles having fallen under the notice of the lead-
ing Southwestern organ of the denomination controlling the Van-
derbilt University, the result was a most bitter denunciation of
Prof. Winchell and of his views. Shortly afterward the professor
was told by Bishop McTyeire that " our people are of the opinion
that such views are contrary to the plan of redemption," and was
requested by the bishop to quietly resign his chair. To this the
professor made the fitting reply : " If the board of trustees have
the manliness to dismiss me for cause, and declare the cause, I
prefer that they should do it ; no power on earth could persuade
me to decline."

" We do not propose," said the bishop, with quite gratuitous
suggestiveness, " to treat you as the Inquisition treated Galileo."

" But what you propose is the same thing," rejoined Dr. Win-
chell. " It is ecclesiastical proscription for an opinion which must
be settled by scientific evidence."

Twenty-four hours later Dr. Winchell was informed that his
chair had been abolished, and its duties, with its salary, added to
those of a colleague ; the public were given to understand that

7 3o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the reasons were purely economic ; the banished scholar was
heaped with official compliments, evidently in hope that he would
keep silence.

Such was not Dr. Wincheirs view. In a frank letter to the
leading journal of the university town he stated the whole mat-
ter. The intolerance-hating press of the country, religious and
secular, did not hold its peace. In vain the authorities of the
university waited for the storm to blow over. It was evident, at
last, that a defense must be made, and a local organ of the sect,
which, under the editorship of a fellow-professor, had always
treated Dr. Wincheirs views with the luminous inaccuracy which
usually characterizes a professor's ideas of a rival's teachings,
assumed the task. In the articles which followed, the usual sci-
entific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to be " absurd,"
" vague and unintelligible," " preposterous and gratuitous." This
new champion stated that " the objections drawn from fossilifer-
ous strata and the like are met by reference to the analogy of
Adam and Eve, who presented the phenomena of adults when
they were but a day old, and by the flood of Noah and other cata-
clysms, which, with the constant change of nature, are sufficient
to account for the phenomena in question " !

Under inspiration of this sort, the Tennessee Conference of the
religious body in control of the university had already in October,
1878, given utterance to its opinion of unsanctified science as fol-
lows : " This is an age in which scientific atheism, having divested
itself of the habiliments that most adorn and dignify humanity,
walks abroad in shameless denudation. The arrogant and im-
pertinent claims of this science, ' falsely so called/ have been so
boisterous and persistent, that the unthinking mass have been
sadly deluded ; but our university alone has had the courage to
lay its young but vigorous hand upon the mane of untamed
Speculation and say, ' We will have no more of this/ "

It is a consolation to know how the result, thus devoutly
sought, has been achieved, for in the " ode " sung at the laying of
the corner-stone of a new theological building of the same uni-
versity, in May, 1880, we read :

" Science and Eevelation here
In perfect harmony appear,
Guiding young feet along the road
Through grace and nature up to God.

It is also pleasing to know that while an institution calling
itself a university thus violated the fundamental principles on
which any institution worthy of the name must be based, another
institution which has the glory of being the first in the entire
North to- begin something like a university organization — the
State University of Michigan — recalled Dr. Winchell at once to

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 731

his professorship, and has honored itself by maintaining him in
that position, where, unhampered, he has ever since been able to
utter his views in the midst of the largest body of students on the
American continent.

Disgraceful as this history was to the men who drove out Dr.
Winchell, they but succeeded, as various similar bodies of men
making similar efforts have done, in advancing their supposed
victim to higher position and more commanding influence.*

A few years after this suppression of earnest Christian thought
at an institution of learning in the western part of our Southern
States, there appeared a similar attempt in sundry Southeastern
States.

As far back as the year 1857 the Presbyterian Synod of Missis-
sippi passed the following resolution :

"WTiereas, We live in an age in which the most insidious at-
tacks are made on revealed religion through the natural sciences,
and as it behooves the Church at all times to have men capable of
defending the faith once delivered to the saints ;

"Resolved, That this presbytery recommend the endowment of
a professorship of Natural Science as connected with revealed re-
ligion in one or more of our theological seminaries."

Pursuant to this resolution such a chair was established in
the theological seminary at Columbia, S. C, and James Woodrow
was appointed professor. Dr. Woodrow seems to have been ad-
mirably fitted for the position — a devoted Christian man, accept-
ing the Presbyterian standards of faith in which he had been
brought up and at the same time giving every effort to acquaint
himself with the methods and conclusions of science. To great
natural endowments he added constant labors to arrive at the
truth in this field. Visiting Europe, he made the acquaintance of
many of the foremost scientific investigators, became a student in
university lecture-rooms and laboratories, an interested hearer in
scientific conventions, and a correspondent of leading men of sci-
ence at home and abroad. As a result he came to the conclusion
that the hypothesis of evolution is the only one which explains
various leading facts in natural science. This he taught, and he

* For Dr. Winchell's original statements, see Adamites and Pre-Adamites, Syracuse,
N. Y., 1878. For the first important denunciation of his views, see the St. Louis Christian
Advocate, May 22, 1878. For the conversation with Bishop McTyeire, see Dr. Winchell's
own account in the Nashville American, June 16, 1878. For the curious reply from Dr.
Winchell's colleague, see the Nashville Christian Advocate, July 12, 1878 ; and for the
further development of the matter, see the Nashville American of July 19, 1878. For the
further course of the attack in the denominational organ of Dr. Winchell's oppressors, see
the Nashville Christian Advocate, April 26, 1879. For the oratorical declaration of the
Tennessee Conference upon the matter, seethe Nashville American, October 15, 1878; and
for the " ode " regarding the " harmony of science and revelation " as supported at the uni-
versity, see the Nashville American, May 2, 1880.

732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

also taught that such a view is not incompatible with a true view
of the sacred Scriptures.

In 1882 and 1883 the board of directors of the theological semi-
nary, in fear that " skepticism in the world is using alleged dis-
coveries in science to impugn the Word of God," requested Prof.
Woodrow to state his views in regard to evolution. The professor
complied with this request in a very powerful address, which was
published and widely circulated, to such effect that the board of
directors shortly afterward passed resolutions declaring the theory
of evolution as defined by Prof. Woodrow not inconsistent with
perfect soundness in the faith.

In the year 1884 alarm regarding Dr. Woodrow's teachings
began to show itself in larger proportions, and a minority report
was introduced into the Synod of South Carolina declaring that
" the synod is called upon to decide not upon the question whether
the said views of Dr. Woodrow contradict the Bible in its highest
and absolute sense, but upon the question whether they contradict
the interpretation of the Bible by the Presbyterian Church in the
United States."

Perhaps a more self-condemnatory statement was never pre-
sented, for it clearly recognized, as a basis for intolerance, at
least a possible difference between " the interpretation of the Bible
by the Presbyterian Church " and the teachings of " the Bible in
its highest and absolute sense."

This hostile movement became so strong that, in spite of the
favorable action of the directors of the seminary, and against the
efforts of a broad-minded minority in the representative bodies
having ultimate charge of the institution, the delegates from the
various synods raised a storm of orthodoxy and drove Dr. Wood-
row from his post. Happily, he was at the same time professor in
the University of South Carolina in the same city of Columbia,
and from his chair in that institution he continued to teach natu-
ral science with the approval of the great majority of thinking
men in that region ; hence, the only effect of the attempt to crush
him was, that his position was made higher, respect for him deeper,
and his reputation wider.

In spite of attempts by the more orthodox to prevent students
of the theological seminary attending his lectures at the univer-
sity, they persisted in hearing him; indeed, the reputation of
heresy seemed to enhance his influence.

It should be borne in mind that the professor thus treated had
been one of the most respected and beloved university instructors
in the South during more than a quarter of a century, and that
he was turned out of his position with no opportunity for careful
defense, and indeed without even the formality of a trial; well
did an eminent but thoughtful divine of the Southern Presbyte-

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 733

rian Church declare that " the method of procedure to destroy
evolution by the majority in the Church is vicious and suicidal,"
and that " logical dynamite has been used to put out a supposed
fire in the upper stories of our house, and all the family in the
house at that." Wisely, too, did he refer to the majority as " sow-
ing in the fields of the Church the thorns of its errors, and cumber-
ing its path with the debris and ruin of its own folly."

To these recent cases may be added the expulsion of Prof. Toy
from teaching under ecclesiastical control at Louisville, and his
election to a far more influential chair at Harvard University ;
the driving out from the American College at Beyrout of the
young professors who accepted evolution as probable, and the rise
of one of them at least, Mr. Nimr, to a far more commanding posi-
tion than that which he left — the control of three leading journals
at Cairo ; the driving out of Eobertson Smith from his position at
Edinburgh, and his reception into the far more important and in-
fluential professorship at the English University of Cambridge ;
and multitudes of similar cases. From the days when Cotton
Mather drove out Henry Dunster, the first President of Harvard
College, for "falling into the briers of Antipedobaptism " until
now, the same spirit is shown in all such attempts. In each we
have generally on one side a body of the older theologians who,
since their youth, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing,
sundry professors who do not wish to rewrite their lectures, and
a mass of unthinking ecclesiastical persons of little or no impor-
tance save in making up a retrograde majority in an ecclesiastical
tribunal ; on the other side we have as generally the thinking,
open-minded, devoted men who have listened to the revelation of
their own time, as well as of times past, and who are evidently
thinking the future thought of the world.

Here we have survivals of that same oppression of thought
by theology which has cost the modern world so dear ; the system
which forced great numbers of professors, under penalty of depri-
vation, to teach that the sun and planets revolve about the earth ;
that comets are fire-balls flung by an angry God at a wicked
world ; that insanity is diabolic possession ; that anatomical in-
vestigation of the human frame is sin against the Holy Ghost ;
that chemistry leads to sorcery ; that taking interest for money is
forbidden by Scripture ; that Geology must conform to ancient
Hebrew poetry. From the same source came in Austria the rule
of the " Immaculate Oath," under which university professors,
long before the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was defined
by the Church, were obliged to swear to their belief in that dogma
before they were permitted to teach even Arithmetic or Geom-
etry : in England, the denunciation of inoculation against small-
pox ; in Scotland, the protests against using chloroform in child-

734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

birth as " vitiating the primal curse against woman " ; in France,
the nse in clerical schools of a historical text-book from which
Napoleon was left out ; and, in America, the use of manuals in
which the Inquisition is declared to be a purely civil tribunal, or
the Puritans tolerant.

So, too, among multitudes of similar efforts, abroad we have
during centuries the fettering of professors at English and Scotch
universities by test oaths, subscriptions to articles and catechisms
without number. In our own country we have had in a vast
multitude of denominational colleges, as the first qualification for
a professorship, not ability in the subject to be taught, but fidelity
to the particular shibboleth of the denomination controlling the
college or university.

Happily, in these days such attempts generally defeat them-
selves. The supposed victim is generally made a man of mark
by persecution, and advanced to a higher and wider sphere of
usefulness. As regards withstanding the march of scientific
truth, any opposing Conference, Synod, Board of Commissioners,
Board of Trustees, or Faculty, is but as a nest of field-mice in the
path of a steam plow.

The harm done to religion in these attempts is far greater
than that done to science; for thereby suspicions are widely
spread, especially among open-minded young men, that the ac-
cepted Christian system demands a concealment of truth, with
the persecution of honest investigators, and therefore must be
false. Well was it said in substance by President McCosh, of
Princeton, that no more sure way of making unbelievers in
Christianity among young men could be devised than preaching
that the doctrines arrived at by the great scientific thinkers of
this period are opposed to religion.

Yet it is but justice here to say that more and more there is
evolved out of this past history of oppression a better spirit which
is making itself manifest with power in the leading religious
bodies of the world. In the Church of Rome we have to-day
such utterances as those of St. George Mivart, declaring that the
Church must not attempt to interfere with science; that the
Almighty in the Galileo case gave her a distinct warning that the
priesthood of science must remain with the men of science. In
the Anglican Church and its American daughter we have the acts
and utterances of such men as Archbishop Tait, Dean Stanley,
and many others, proving that the deepest religious thought is
more and more tending to peace rather than warfare with sci-
ence ; and in the other churches, especially in America, while there
is yet much to be desired, the welcome extended in many of them
to Alexander Winchell, and the freedom given to views like his,
augur well for a better state of things in the future.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 735

From the science of Anthropology, when rightly viewed as a
whole, has corne the greatest aid to* those who work to advance
Religion rather than to promote any particular system of Theology ;
for Anthropology and its subsidiary sciences show more and more
that man, since coming upon the earth, has risen, from the period
when he had little, if any, ideas of a great power above him,
through successive stages of fetichism, shamanism, and idolatry
toward better forms of belief, making him more and more ac-
cessible to nobler forms of religion. The same sciences show,
too, within the historic period the same tendency, and especially
within the events covered by our sacred books, a progress from
fetichism, of which so many evidences crop out in the early Jew-
ish worship as shown in the Old Testament Scriptures, through
polytheism, when Jehovah was but " a god above all gods,"
through the period when he was " a jealous God," capricious and
cruel, until he is revealed in such inspired utterances as those
of the nobler Psalms, the great passages in Isaiah, the sublime
preaching of Micah, and, above all, through the ideal given to the
world by Jesus of Nazareth.

Well indeed has an eminent divine of the Church of England
in our own time called on Christians to rejoice over this evolution
" between the God of Samuel, who ordered infants to be slaugh-
tered, and the God of the Psalmist, whose tender mercies are over
all his works ; between the God of the Patriarchs, who was always
repenting, and the God of the Apostles, who is the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever, with whom there is no variableness nor shadow
of turning ; between the God of the Old Testament, who walked
in the garden in the cool of the day, and the God of the New Tes-
tament, whom no man hath seen nor can see ; between the God of
Leviticus, who was so particular about the sacrificial furniture
and utensils, and the God of the Acts, who dwelleth not in tem-
ples made with hands ; between the God who hardened Pharaoh's
heart, and the God who will have all men to be saved ; between
the God of Exodus, who is merciful only to those who love him,
and the God of Christ — the heavenly Father' — who is kind unto
the unthankful and the evil."

However overwhelming, then, the facts may be which Anthro-
pology and its kindred or subsidiary sciences may, in the interest
of simple truth, establish against the theological doctrine of " the
fall " ; however completely they may fossilize various dogmas,
catechisms, creeds, confessions, " plans of salvation " and * schemes
of redemption," which have been evolved from the great minds of
the theological period; science, so far from making inroads on
religion, or even upon our Christian development of it, will
strengthen all that is essential in it, giving new and nobler paths
to man's highest aspirations. For the one great legitimate, scien-

736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tific conclusion of Anthropology is that more and more a better
civilization of the world, despite all its survivals of savagery and
barbarism, is developing men and women on whom the declara-
tions of the nobler Psalms, of Isaiah, of Micah, the Sermon on the
Mount, the first great commandment, and the second, which is
like unto it, and St. James's definition of " pure religion and
undefiled," can take stronger hold for the more effective and
more rapid uplifting of our race.*

•♦•»

BARRIER BEACHES OF THE ATLANTIC COAST.

By FREDERICK J. H. MERRILL, Ph. D.

FROM Cape Cod to Cape Florida, our coast is fringed with
barrier beaches. They are the reefs of sand which protect
the mainland shore from the storm-waves of the ocean. Isolated
and uninhabited were most of these sea-born barriers for a long
period in the history of our country, but the need of a breathing-
place on the part of the thousands who inhabit our crowded
cities has caused, within a few years, a great transformation.
Railroad and turnpike bridges have been built, connecting many
of them with the shore. Hotels and cottages, club-houses and
bathing-houses, in short, buildings for every purpose which con-
tributes to the pleasure and comfort of man have sprung up, as
it were by magic, on the south shore of Long Island, on the coast

*For the resolution of the Presbyterian Synod bf Mississippi in 1857, see Prof. Wood-
row's speech before the Synod of South Carolina, October 27 and 28, 1884, p. 6. As to
the action of the Board of Directors of the Theological Seminary of Columbia, see ibid. As
to the minority report in the Synod of South Carolina, see ibid., p. 24. For the pithy sen-
tences regarding the conduct of the majority in the synods toward Dr. Woodrow, see the
Rev. Mr. Flinn's article in the Southern Presbyterian Review for April, 1885, p. 272 and
elsewhere. For the restrictions regarding the teaching of the Copernican theory and the
true doctrine of comets in the German University, see various histories of astronomy, es-
pecially Madler. For the immaculate oath (Immaculaten Eid) as enforced upon the Aus-
trian professors, see Luftkandl, Die Josephineschen Ideen. For the effort of the Church in
France, after the restoration of the Bourbons, to teach a history of that country from which
the name of Napoleon should be left out, see Father Loriquet's famous Histoire de France
a l'Usage de la Jeunesse, Lyon, 1820, vol. ii; see especially table of contents at the end.
The book bears on its title-page the well-known initials of the Jesuit motto A. M. D. G.
(Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam). For examples in England and Scotland, see various English
histories, and especially Buckle's chapters on Scotland. For a longer collection of exam-
ples showing the suppression of anything like unfettered thought upon scientific subjects
in our American colleges, see Inaugural Address at the Opening of Cornell University by
the author of these chapters. For the citation regarding the evolution of better and nobler
ideas of God, see Church and Creed : Sermons preached in the Chapel of the Foundling
Hospital, London, by A. W. Momerie, M. A., LL. D., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics
in King's College, London, London, 1890.

BARRIER BEACHES OF THE ATLANTIC COAST. 737

of New Jersey, Virginia, and the Carolinas, on the famed sea-
islands of Georgia, and on the coast of eastern Florida.

Much alike are these peninsulas and islands wherever we view
them along the coast. The chief variation is in the vegetation
which clothes them. The beaches of Long Island are almost
barren, but from New Jersey southward many are covered with
dense forests which vary in their trees according to the latitude.
At Sandy Hook, oaks, red cedars, hollies, maples, and sassafras-
trees grow in wonderful luxuriance. On Seven-Mile Beach and
Holly Beach the swamp magnolia abounds among the others.
In the Carolinas the palmetto appears, often ragged in outline
and blighted by the winter frosts. In northern Florida the pal-
mettos are more numerous and show the influence of a warmer
climate, while on the southern extremity of the zone of barrier
beaches the cocoanut palm, planted by accident or design, rears
its leafy crown in luxuriant verdure.

It is not the design of the writer to describe in detail the
beaches of the Atlantic coast, but rather to consider their history
and mode of growth. As it has been his fortune to spend much
time on the sea-shore of New Jersey, he proposes to discuss the
barrier beaches of that State as types of their genus.

They are sandy islands and peninsulas, from two to twenty
miles in length and from half a mile to a mile in width, separated
by inlets and usually divided from the mainland by an interval
of several miles, in which are broad expanses of salt meadow,
fringing and separating a series of channels, bays, and sounds.

The beaches which are now in their highest state of develop-
ment are Sandy Hook, Seven-Mile Beach, and Holly Beach near
Cape May. These typical examples of the sea-born barriers are
much alike in structure, and consist of four principal divisions.
The first division, or interior, is an undulating area covered with
heavy timber, of which the size suggests its age. Immense hollies,
oaks, pines, and red cedars abound, many of the first measuring
two feet in diameter, and some of the latter attaining a circum-
ference of four or five yards. The sassafras grows in remarkable
luxuriance and immense grape-vines are everywhere to be seen,
overhanging a dense undergrowth. In spring and summer the
ground is covered with fragrant blossoms ; columbines, violets,
pinks, orchids, and a host of other flowers lend their bright colors
to enhance the varied greens of the foliage. This is the beach
primeval. Skirting it seaward is the second division, which bears
smaller timber. Low cedars, hollies, and pines are here the chief
forms of arboreal vegetation, and fewer flowering plants are seen.
This zone is of later formation, and its trees are younger than
those of the first. Adjoining it is the third division, which con-
sists of a belt of undulating dunes a few hundred feet or yards

TOL. XXXVII. — 53

738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in width, and bearing the mossy Hudsonia or scrubby bushes of
beach plum and wax-myrtle, or in some places, especially on the
outer row of dunes, only supporting a meager growth of beach
grass. Frequently, between two rows of dunes, an expanse of
salt meadow occurs, or a sand flat bearing stunted forms of
plant life. With this third division ends the domain of vegeta-
tion, succeeded by the sloping strand upon which the tide rises
and falls. The sand-bar, exposed at low water at the extremity
of the beach, is constantly increased in length and height by the
action of the currents, and the process of beach formation is
here continually in progress.

As the tide falls, the sand laid bare is rapidly dried by the
wind and carried above high- water mark. Then, safe beyond the
reach of the waves, the minute particles are borne still farther
from the water, and striking against some piece of drift-wood,
bush, or tuft of grass, quickly build a hillock, which grows larger
and larger as more sand falls upon it, and a dune is formed many
feet in height. The material of which these dunes are composed
is never at rest, but flies hither and thither with the wind, and a
hillock ten or fifteen feet high to-day may noiselessly be taken
down to-morrow and rebuilt a hundred yards away. In time, as the
beach grows seaward and the dunes increase in number, those of
earlier formation, which are somewhat protected from the breeze,,
catch a few seeds, and tufts of grass begin to grow upon them.
Still later, the mossy Hudsonia or some starveling wax-myrtle
finds a little sustenance, and as years elapse the dunes become so
thickly covered with vegetation that under the protection of the
seaward hillocks they retain their form with comparatively little
change.

Thus have the beaches grown. First a sand flat built by ocean
waves and currents ; then a series of low, shifting dunes ; next
sheltered hillocks, on which grasses and shrubs fasten their pro-
tecting roots ; succeeding the latter a growth of small cedars and
pines ; and, finally, as centuries roll on, majestic forest trees raise
their spreading tops and shelter a dense undergrowth.

These few words suffice to describe the beaches' growth, their
physiology ; but many pages might be written upon their history,
the details of their development, their changes and their decay.
Unfortunately, the records are but incomplete. From the memo-
ries of old men we can glean some facts in regard to the former
condition and extent of certain beaches and concerning marked
changes in them which have been notable events to men of quiet
lives. In a few instances, surveys were made a century or two
ago which can be compared with those of to-day. At present we
can watch the changes which occur from year to year. As geo-
logical science advances we can speculate concerning the past on

BARRIER BEACHES OF THE ATLANTIC COAST. 739

the basis of present knowledge and observation. We have little
accurate information, but, after all," we have much, that is inter-
esting.

The beach of Sandy Hook forms the northern extremity of the
New Jersey sea-coast. Previous to 1778 it was connected with
the base of the Navesink Highlands by a sandy isthmus, the
mouths of the ISTavesink and Shrewsbury Rivers being open to
the east ; but from that date until about 1830, and from 1818 until
1889, it has been united with the mainland at Monmouth Beach
by a narrow strip of sand.

According to records in the office of the Surveyor-General of
East Jersey and in that of the United States Coast Survey, the
point of Sandy Hook advanced northward about one mile between
1685 and 1885. The lighthouse was built about 1764 near the wa-
ter's edge, and the ground on which it stands had then existed for
only fifteen years as a portion of terra firma.

In 1844 the point was about two hundred and fifty yards north
of its present limit. Since that date it has receded slowly toward
the south, and toward the west has extended a quarter of a mile.
"We have no evidence concerning the date of formation of the old
"Hook" which existed before 1685. It is now well marked by
immense forest trees, which exceed in height and size of trunk
any of their species known to the writer in the neighborhood of
New York.

The rapid growth of Sandy Hook is due to a current which
flows northward from the vicinity of Manasquan, carrying with
it a great quantity of sand removed from the water front of As-
bury Park, Long Branch, Seabright, and that vicinity, which is
dropped along the border of the " Hook " and its extremity. The
investigations of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
have shown that the ebb and flow of the tides from and to New
York Bay produce this current by drawing a stream of water
through False Hook Channel, which lies between Sandy Hook
and a submerged bar called False Hook half a mile to the east.
The stream flows northward more than seven hours out of twelve,
and from this fact property-owners in the neighborhood of Long
Branch may appreciate what becomes of their real estate when it
disappears during the storms. If there were any means of iden-
tifying the soil, it might all be found on the rapidly growing
point of Sandy Hook.

About 1778 a channel was opened across the narrow isthmus
which united Sandy Hook with the base of the ISTavesink High-
lands, and a new passage being thus afforded for the tidal cur-
rents of the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers, the old Shrewsbury
Inlet, which formed the common mouth of those two estuaries,
was gradually closed by the northward extension of the sand-spit

74o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which, formed the southern limit, and in 1810 became impassable.
The barrier thus formed existed until 1830 or 1831, when it was
broken through and a second inlet was created. By a change in
the tidal currents, due to the formation of this new inlet, the isth-
mus which formerly connected Sandy Hook with the Highlands
of JSTavesink was again brought into existence and remained until
1835. An artificial channel was then cut through it, and this be-
ing gradually deepened and widened by the ebb and flow of the
tides, has ever since remained open. The second Shrewsbury
inlet closed in 1840 near Island Beach, having moved northward
nearly three miles during its existence of nine or ten years. In
1837 or 1838 the third and last inlet opened near the present Belle-
vue Hotel, and afforded a better channel for navigation than
the second inlet, which it followed in its northward course and
survived by about eight years. From 1818 until September, 1889,
no inlet has been opened ; but this fact is due rather to the efforts
of the railroad company to maintain its road-bed than to a dimi-
nution of the tendency of the waves and tidal currents to open a
passage.

The facts and dates concerning the Shrewsbury Inlets have
been obtained chiefly by inquiry from old fishermen and sailors
who have spent their lives on or near the waters of the Navesink
and Shrewsbury Rivers. Coming from a number of independent
sources, they agree very closely, and those here given may be ac-
cepted as worthy of credence. The tendency of the inlets to work
northward, periodically closing and reopening farther south, has
been observed in all those between Point Pleasant and Sandy
Hook, especially in those of Manasquan and Shark Rivers. Be-
tween Point Pleasant and Cape May, however, all the inlets are
moving southward.

From Monmouth to the head of Barnegat Bay there is no beach
similar to that of Sandy Hook. Instead of a sand-reef separated
from the main land by a navigable channel, there is only the slop-
ing strand adjoining, as at Long Branch, the foot of an upland
bluff, or as at Spring Lake, Seagirt, and Point Pleasant, with its
crest on a level with the surface of the upland. Between Bay
Head and Cape May, however, there are twelve beaches, mostly
well developed and preserved, and named respectively Squan,
Island, Long, Island or Little, Brigantine, Absecon, Peck's, Lud-
lani's, Seven Mile, Five Mile or Holly, Two Mile, and Poverty.
The majority of these, however, do not show the high degree
of development exhibited by Seven-Mile and Five-Mile Beaches.
Some appear to be only in the earlier stages of growth, while
others have passed their prime and are now yielding to the at-
tacks of wind and wave.

These agents have been hitherto considered only with reference

BARRIER BEACHES OF THE ATLANTIC COAST. 741

to their constructive effect on the beaches, and it now remains to
consider their destructive action.

When the wind blows from the west it carries back to the sea
much of the sand which the east wind had piled up in dunes, and,
but for the fact that the latter wind prevails, the sand-hills would
not long exist. By a surplus of constructive action, however, the
beaches are all moving to the west. Year after year sand is re-
moved from their eastern margin by the winter storms, and car-
ried north or south according to the direction of the prevailing
current. The winds from the ocean drive the dunes westward,
and, with the possible exception of Sandy Hook, all the beaches
are now underlaid by an old salt meadow, originally formed in
sheltered waters on their west side. In this turf, when exposed
during an unusually low tide, the footprints of cattle are seen in
many places, made, it is claimed, when the salt meadow was a
pasture and lay on the shoreward side of the beach. This west-
ward recession has, in many cases, amounted to more than a mile
within two centuries.

On many of the beaches south of Point Pleasant the westward
progress of the dunes has been made over and through the native
forest. As a result of this, gnarled cedars, dying and dead, are
found among the dunes ; and in many cases stumps may be seen
in the sand within reach of the tide.

Near the northern end of Seven-Mile Beach, at the time of the
writer's visit in 1885, an immense dune forty feet in height and
half a mile in length had been for many years encroaching stead-
ily upon the dense forest. The tree-tops here projected above the
summit of the ridge like the heads of drowning men above the
waves; while on the outer flank of the overwhelming mass of sand
the gnarled, skeleton trunks of those which had perished in it
stood bare and grim, showing with dreary grayness the fate of
the earlier victims of which the ragged and wave-worn stumps
alone remained. A more desolate scene the writer has never wit-
nessed.

At Long Branch the wear of the coast has been very great.
According to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, a
strip of land varying from three hundred to five hundred feet in
width was removed between Deal Beach and Monmouth during the
twenty-seven years preceding 1868. In the vicinity of Seabright
the amount of wear was a little less than two hundred feet during
that period. Of late years the rate of recession has been dimin-
ished in the neighborhood of Long Branch by the means of arti-
ficial protection employed, but near Seabright the shore line is
said to have receded at least two hundred feet during the past
quarter of a century. At Cape May the wear of the shore has
been continuous except where the land is protected by jetties or

742 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a stone sea-wall, the rate of encroachment varying from ten to
thirty feet a year.

Besides these alterations produced in the beaches by their
westward progress, the variations in the positions of the inlets
and the subsidence of the coast have caused many important
changes. The history of the Shrewsbury Inlets has already been
given ; it remains to mention a few of those south of Point
Pleasant.

Squan and Island Beaches, which now form a peninsula about
twenty miles long, terminating at Barnegat Inlet, were separated
from 1750 to 1812 by Cranberry Inlet, which was nearly opposite
the mouth of Tom's River. Since 1812 near the site of this old
inlet there have been others of brief duration, and one is said
to have existed before 1755 opposite the mouth of the Metede-
conk River, which separated Squan Beach from the mainland.

The old Barnegat Lighthouse is said to have stood nearly six
hundred yards north of the present south shore of the inlet, at a
point now occupied by the center of the channel. In 1855 the
old tower was at the water's edge, so that the inlet has moved
southward approximately twenty yards per year.

Absecon Inlet, which separates Brigantine Beach from Abse-
con Beach, has encroached upon the latter about four hundred
yards in twenty years ; and the ocean front of that portion of Ab-
secon Beach which is occupied by Atlantic City extended in 1855
nearly half a mile farther east than it did in 1885. About 1875
jetties were built which arrested the action of the tidal currents,
and, the wear of the shore being thus prevented, a considerable
area was restored.

Submerged tree-stumps and other evidences of a subsidence of
the coast may be found on the beaches and the salt meadows, but
a detailed enumeration of them would be beyond the scope of the
present article.

In Cape May County the depression has not been less than
twenty feet, and has possibly been much greater. The evidence
of some old buildings on the shore of Delaware Bay suggests a
subsidence of about four feet during the last two centuries.

It is doubtful whether depression alone has caused the wear of
the coast. A comparison of the present outline of Holly Beach
with that determined by a survey in 1772 shows an accretion on
the south and east, since the latter date, more than three and a
half miles long and averaging three eighths of a mile in width,
and on many other beaches a similar growth has taken place.
During the past five years the ocean has rapidly encroached upon
these beaches, while the subsidence of the coast, so far as we
know, has been uniform throughout the past two centuries. It
would appear, therefore, that the growth and decay of the beaches

BARRIER BEACHES OF THE ATLANTIC COAST. 743

are more dependent upon the action of the ocean currents and
winds than upon other agencies. Unquestionably the depression
of the coast renders the beaches more subject to overflow and
erosion by the waves and currents; but the evidence at many
points shows that the latter are capable of forming large areas of
beach where the conditions of their existence and action favor
construction rather than destruction. While these currents act
as at present, the cost of preventing the ravages of the sea, by
the methods commonly in use, would probably be much greater
than the value of the land protected, for the fine sand is so
unstable when wet that bulkheads and breakwaters are quite
ephemeral.

After an extended examination of the various systems of shore
defense in use between Sandy Hook and Cape May, it appears to
the writer that the only effectual means of protection is the con-
struction of jetties extending far enough from the shore to inter-
cept the currents which carry away the sand loosened by the
waves. Such jetties have added a large area to the territory of
Atlantic City, and have protected the shore at Cape May ; no
doubt they would be effective everywhere if properly constructed.

The experience of the past ten years on the New Jersey coast
shows conclusively that the ocean front is not fit for building pur-
poses, for it is impossible to protect a house near the water's edge
from injury or destruction in the heaviest storms. The height
and force of the waves in such a tempest as that of September 10
and 11, 1889, render them irresistible to any body or structure
which nature or art has yet produced, and anything within their
reach must suffer. The immediate water-front is only available
for parks ; and, if devoted to this use, when protected from the
erosive action of the currents by suitable jetties, would remain a
neutral ground which, in fair weather, would afford numberless
attractions to the occupants of dwellings placed far enough from
the strand to be out of reach of the storm-waves.

Property-owners along the ocean front of the beaches have
generally made the mistake of supposing that the domain of the
Atlantic was bounded by the high-water mark of the spring tides.
Any one who should build a dwelling on the strand below ordi-
nary high- water mark would be considered lacking in common
sense, yet it is scarcely less foolish to build within reach of the
storm-waves. It is, of course, true that many cottages are now
much nearer the water's edge than they were a few years ago.
This is due to the wear of the shore by currents already described
as flowing parallel to it and removing the sand which the waves
have loosened. If the action of these currents should be stopped
— and there is good evidence to show that a system of jetties
would intercept them and cause them to drop their stolen load of

744 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sand — the wear of the shore would be arrested and the yearly en-
croachments of the ocean would cease.

With regard to the inundation of Atlantic City by the sea in
the great September storm of 1889 it should be said that this
catastrophe ought not to be considered very wonderful, since the
greater portion of the city is less than ten feet above mean tide,
and the highest point recorded by the New Jersey State Survey
is only thirteen feet above that level. As ordinary tides rise a
foot above this plane, and spring tides nearly two feet, it is evi-
dent that a prolonged easterly storm would soon cause a consider-
able area to be overflowed. Since the bays and channels which
lie between the beach and the mainland are almost completely
landlocked and the inlets are relatively narrow, the water-level is
soon raised to a height of two or three feet above the meadows,
and this is sufficient to cover most of the railroad tracks. To be
sure, no such inundation as the recent one has occurred since At-
lantic City became a place of importance, nor do the old residents
on the coast remember such a storm in former years ; but it is
evident that, while the beaches were uninhabited, such a storm as
the one in question would attract less attention, since it would
cause little if any loss of property.

The genesis of the beaches is still a matter for speculation, but
it may be safely affirmed that they originated as sand-bars, formed
under water by wave and current action. How these bars were
brought above water, so that the wind could exert its constructive
power, is uncertain. A plausible hypothesis is, that while the
ocean was breaking on the mainland shore and forming the
Quaternary terraces, which may be seen there, sand-bars were
made under water, and that the continental elevation which raised
these terraces to their present position from twenty-five to eighty
feet above tide, brought these sand-bars above water into a hori-
zon of ^Eolian action. Once above the sea, the beaches would
maintain their existence. A continued elevation of the coast
would add to their seaward extent and a depression would cause
a westward recession until they were brought to rest by contact
with the mainland shore. In New Jersey the latter condition
may be observed between Long Branch and Point Pleasant and
also at Cape May.

So far as it is known to the writer, the only way in which a
beach can be entirely destroyed is by an inlet shifting its position.
In this case the beach obliterated is replaced by the extension of
an adjacent beach.

Of the beaches south of New Jersey not enough is known to the
writer to permit of a detailed biographical sketch. Their form and
structure show that they have been subject to the same formative
agencies and vicissitudes as those already described. In addition

ANCIENT D WELLING $ OF THE BIO VERDE VALLEY. 745

to the Georgia sea-islands of ante-helium fame, may be mentioned
as familiar examples the barriers which in Virginia and North Car-
olina separate Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds from the ocean ; in
Florida, Amelia Island on which is bnilt the city of Fernandina ;
Anastasia Island, in front of St. Augustine ; and the beaches which
separate Halifax and Indian Rivers from the Atlantic. The last-
named rivers are the lagoons which separate the barriers from the
mainland shore. Lake Worth is one of these lagoons, of which
the inlet has been closed.

To what extent the Florida Keys may be included in the cate-
gory of barrier beaches must be decided by future investigation.
Key West is evidently a wave-built sand-bar composed of frag-
ments of coral, molluscan shells, and foraminifera, and it seems
likely that Cayo Largo and others of that type may be of similar
origin. The coquina deposits of the vicinity of St. Augustine are
also wave-formed.

The hypothesis of Prof. Louis Agassiz, that the Florida Keys
are all of organic origin — i. e., that they were formed by the growth
of coral reefs — may be true so far as the determination of their
location and direction. A submerged reef of coral may have
formed a nucleus on which the waves and currents deposited a
load of calcareous sand, but the superficial portion is evidently
similar in origin to that of the beaches farther north.

Barrier beaches are found on all the sea-coasts of the world
where opportunity for their growth has been afforded, and those
of New Jersey may be regarded as types of these formations in all
their essential features.

-♦•»-♦-

ANCIENT DWELLINGS OF THE RIO VERDE VALLEY.

By EDGAR A. MEARNS,

ASSISTANT SURGEON, V. S. A.

AS an officer of the medical department of the United States
- Army, the writer was assigned to the military department
of Arizona in 1884, and took station at Fort Verde, in the central
part of that territory, in March. Strange were the sensations
that we experienced on the morning succeeding our arrival, as
we looked for the first time upon the broad valley of the Rio
Verde, hemmed in by rugged mountains on the west, and terraced
limestone cliffs with intervening mesas on the east. To the
northward Beaver Creek poured its turbid flood into the Verde,
whose banks were filled to overflowing by the waters sent down
by the melting snow upon the distant Mogollon Mountains.
Eighty miles to the north, beyond the ruddy cliffs of the " Red
Rock Country," San Francisco Peak, the highest point and most
prominent landmark in the territory, gleamed in snowy white-

TOL. XXXYII. 54

746 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ness. Indeed, it retained its snow-cap far into the hot summer
months. The general course of the river at this point is a little
east of south. The eye vainly followed its winding course for
miles in either direction in quest of village or solitary dwelling.
Not a human habitation could be seen. The handful of soldiers
mounting guard upon the parade, to the music of trumpet, fife, and
drum, but emphasized the solitude of the place. Trees marked
the sinuous course of the stream, but the rest of the valley was
bare of vegetation save patches of rnesquite-bushes in the alluvial
river-bottom, the ever-present cactus, aloe, and yucca, and a low
growth of intermingled weeds and grasses, whose blended hues
imparted to the valley a yellowish color. Dwarfed cedars and
pinons barely existed upon the arid slopes of the Black Hills
range, bounding the valley upon the west, and tall pines crowned
their level summits.

I said there were no human habitations in sight ; but closer
scrutiny revealed stone edifices, erected by the hand of man, occu-
pying commanding points upon the opposite side of the valley ;
huge piles of masonry, whose ruined walls still stand to a consid-
erable height. Below these, emerging upon narrow ledges, in the
face of the nearest cliffs, were lines of black holes, which I was
told were entrances to the cave-dwellings of an extinct race of
men. From the hospital piazza a view was obtained of a still
more wonderful structure. In the vertical side of the canon,
through which Beaver Creek flows, a large building four or five
stories high had been built by this people, whose only history is
written in monumental ruins.

Before our departure from Fort Verde in 1888 three railroads
had penetrated toward the heart of the wilderness by which we
were surrounded. Settlers were thronging in to engage in lum-
bering, mining, or stock-grazing in the mountainous portions, or
to cultivate the soil of the irrigable valleys. Already the valley
of the Verde begins to assume somewhat of the appearance that
it presented centuries ago, when irrigated and cultivated by the
populous cliff-dwellers. Again the Indian corn rustles in the
broad fields in autumn, and golden pumpkins and squashes clus-
ter beneath the stalks. Childish voices are borne on the breeze :
a new cycle begins.

Curiosity concerning the people whose stone buildings chal-
lenge attention from most of the prominent points along the Verde
River and its tributary streams led me to pay some attention to
the study of archaeology, and to form a collection of such relics as
might shed light upon the history and habits of the builders.*

• This collection, comprising several thousand specimens, has been donated to the
American Museum of Natural History, New York. The human skeletons and crania will
be sent to the Army Medical Museum at Washington.

ANCIENT D WELLING S OF THE RIO VERDE VALLEY. 747

On turning to the fourth volume of Hubert H. Bancroft's Na-
tive Races of the Pacific States, which is devoted to the study of
antiquities, I was surprised to find that the extensive ruins of the
Verde were at that time (1875) undescribed and unknown, save
through vague accounts received from Mr. Leroux and other
guides and trappers. On page 636 we read : " These ruins are not
very far from Prescott in the north and Fort McDowell in the
south ; and I regret not having been able to obtain from officers
in the Arizona service the information which they must have ac-
quired respecting those remains, if they actually exist, during the
past ten or fifteen years." Some of these ruins have since been
examined by archaeologists accompanying Government surveying
parties, and models of several of them are to be seen in eastern
museums ; but no exhaustive account of them has ever been writ-
ten, nor have any been more than superficially explored.

The writer has availed himself of the opportunity afforded by
numerous tours of field-service and authorized hunting expedi-
tions, amounting in the aggregate to several thousand miles of
travel, to examine most of the principal ruins in the territory,
from the famous Casa Grande of the Gila itself to the smaller
casas and caves on the head-waters of its tributaries. Although
highly diverse in form, style, material, and location, it is evident
that these buildings belonged to a single race. This is shown by
the similarity of products and identity of habits, as well as by the
relation of the dwellings to each other. The implements and pot-
tery found in the rude caves of the Upper Verde are identical with
those which Mr. Cushing has recently obtained from the immense
casas grandes of Salt River. In all, the food substances and mode
of agriculture are essentially the same. Again, the proudest casas
grandes are built on the summits of cliffs whose sides are honey-
combed with cave-dwellings, thus combining in a single commu-
nity the most diverse styles of habitations.

Only the aboriginal monuments of the Verde region will here
receive attention. They are uniform with those of the rest of the
Gila Basin. In fact, little violence would be done by uniting all
of our southwestern ruins with those of the northern tier of Mexi-
can States into a single group. They were the work of substan-
tially the same people.

The accompanying map indicates the location of only such
remains as are personally known to the writer. Detailed descrip-
tions of all of them would prove tedious to the reader and exceed
our present limits.

The walled buildings are of two kinds — those occupying natural
hollows or cavities in the faces of cliffs, and those built in exposed
situations. The former, whose walls are protected by sheltering
cliffs, are sometimes found in almost as perfect a state of preserva-

748

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Map of the Verde Valley, showing its Ancient Dwellings.

tion as when deserted by the builders, unless the torch has been
applied. The latter, or Pueblo style of architecture, usually occu-
pying high points and commanding a wide extent of country, are
in a ruined state, although walls are commonly standing to the
height of one or more stories, with some of the timbers intact.

ANCIENT D WELLING S OF THE RIO VERDE VALLEY. 749

Another and very common form of dwellings is the caves,
which are excavated in the cliffs by means of stone picks or other
implements. They are found in all suitable localities that are
contiguous to water and good agricultural land, but are most nu-
merous in the vicinity of large casas grandes. Most of them are
in limestone cliffs, as the substratum of sandstone is not as com-
monly exposed in the canons and cliffs, but many cavate dwell-
ings are in sandstone.

The additional remains observed by me are mounds in the
vicinity of ancient dwellings, extensive walls of stone and mortar,
large quantities of stone implements and fragments of broken
pottery, acequias or irrigating ditches, ancient burial grounds,
and hieroglyphic inscriptions on stones and cliffs — the last two
to be doubtfully referred to the cliff-dwellers..

Fig. 1. — Casa Grande in Kight Bluff of a Canon entering the Verde Eiver from the
East, about twelve miles southeast of Fort Verde.

Of the cliff-houses, as contradistinguished from those of Pueblo
pattern, many excellent examples are found in the Verde region.
One, into which I was probably the first white man to set foot, is
built in the right wall of a deep canon, between Hackberry Flat
and the Rio Verde. It was found when searching for a still larger

75°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 2. — " Montezuma's Castle."'

ANCIENT DWELLINGS OF THE RIO VERDE VALLEY. 751

and rnore nearly perfect building near the same locality, which an
old settler had found many years ago. There are many others on
Beaver Creek, and in the " box canons " of the Upper and Lower
Verde.

The building known as "Montezuma's Castle," on the right
bank of Beaver Creek, in sight of and three miles from Fort
Verde, is (perhaps excepting a building near Salt River) the finest
that I have seen, and typical of this class of structures. This casa,
doubtless a fortress, is fitted into a natural depression, high up in
a vertical limestone cliff, the base of which is distant three hun-
dred and forty-eight feet from the edge of the stream and about
forty feet above it. The casa is accessible only by means of lad-
ders, its lowest foundations being forty-two feet above the bottom
of the cliff. The post quartermaster of Fort Verde has provided
four substantial wooden ones, which make the ascent easy from
one narrow ledge to the next. After ascending three ladders a
ledge is reached upon which six cave-rooms open (Fig. 3).

On a ledge eight feet below this one, and eighty feet to the
northeast, are two cave-dwellings, neatly walled up in front, with
a well-made window in each for entrance. There are many other
cave-dwellings in the cliff, at either side of the casa, long lines of
them extending toward the southwest. One or two isolated cham-
bers, walled in front and windowed, may be seen far up the side
of the cliff, where they are altogether inaccessible. These, to-
gether, constituted the settlement.

Ascending the fourth ladder (Fig. 6, z), the casa is reached.
The foundation rests upon cedar timbers laid longitudinally upon
flat stones on the ledge. The projecting ends of these timbers
show plainly the marks of stone axes used in cutting them. The
front wall (Fig. -4, a b) is a little over two feet wide at the bot-
tom and thirteen inches wide at the top. It leans slightly in
toward the cliff. One part of this wall (Fig. 5) rests on what ap-
pears to be a very precarious footing, although it has stood for
centuries. The timbers are so placed that in the middle they
project beyond the edge of the ledge.

The casa is entered at a projecting angle (Fig. 6, c), through a
window of sub-Gothic form (Fig. 7), measuring three feet and
three inches in height by two feet and four inches in width at
the bottom. This small apartment (Fig. 6, a) is smoothly plas-
tered within, and blackened by fire. The plastering bears finger-
marks and impressions of the thumb and hand, showing that it
was laid on and smoothed by the hands. The roof is formed by
willows laid horizontally across eleven rafters of ash and black
alder ; upon this a thick layer of reeds is placed transversely, and
the whole plastered on top with mortar, forming a floor to the
chamber above it. The rafters are peeled, except one or two that

~52

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 3.

J^edcje, witf) cliff
cparrpbers, below the C0.S&

iofee

r-

Fig. 4.

ggzg^ggZgz

e)ectior) of wall.

\ofeet '

Showing foundation subborT.

Fig. 5.

Plfcrj of 1st floor of C^S^.

lofcet.

were evidently taken dry. They average about fifteen inches in
circumference, and were set into the walls at the time the latter
were built. They were burned off flush with the wall outside.

ANCIENT DWELLINGS OF THE RIO VERDE VALLEY. 753

Some of them show hatchet-marks, where branches were lopped
off. From this room the only means of exit, except the window
by which it was entered, is a small hole in the ceiling, just within
the entrance (Fig. 8, x), measuring thirteen by eighteen inches,
and bordered by flat stones laid upon the reed layer of the roof.
These stones are smoothly polished by the hands of the dwellers
in passing back and forth, as this was apparently the only means
of entering the seventeen apartments above it. The traveler in
this region is quite certain of being entertained by exaggerated
stories about gigantic human skeletons having been discovered in
the ruined casas grandes ; but if he be a good-sized man, and pos-
sessed of the usual amount of adipose tissue appertaining to the
age of threescore years, he will become skeptical thereof when
he comes to squeeze himself through the narrow portals of the
ancient halls of Montezuma's Castle.

Except a store-room, another small room (Fig. 6, 6), separate
from the one just described, is all that remains on the first floor.
It can only be entered through a small scuttle in the floor of the
room over it (Fig. 8, t).

The first and second stories occupy an outer ledge, lower than
the rest of the casa. The great outer wall of the upper stories
(Fig. 8, c) is founded upon a ledge in the rear of the second floor,
forming its back wall.

The second story is much more spacious than the first. The
roof of the latter brings the building to the level of another ledge,
which, extending laterally in each direction, serves as a floor for
additional rooms. This story is composed of a tier of four rooms,
bounded behind by the most massive wall of masonry in the
whole casa, which, as previously stated, rests on a ledge even with
the floor of the second story. This arrangement, besides giving
more room to the stories above, secured the greatest amount of
stability to this wall, which is the most important in the struct-
ure. It is twenty-eight feet in height, rising to the fifth story,
around the front of which it forms a battlement four and a half
feet high. It leans slightly toward the cliff, and is strongly curved
inward, though not symmetrically. The chord of the arc de-
scribed by the top of the wall measures forty-three feet, and the
greatest distance from chord to circumference eight feet. As the
wall is built against the cliff, there is no way of ascertaining its
thickness at the bottom. It is fourteen inches wide on top.

The third floor (Fig. 9) comprises the most extensive tier of
rooms in the structure, extending across the entire alcove in the
cliff in which the casa is built.

The balcony above rooms C and D of the second story, as
stated, had a battlement around it, which is still intact where
supported by the wall of room G. A portion of the flooring has

754

THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY

Fig. 8. JP] ^ Qf 2^FW.

V °f

Fig. 9. P/an of 3& Floor

io feet

/

Plan of «*** FlooS

JO

feet

10 feet.

Fig. 11.

10 f

FUr, of 5"> Floor.

ANCIENT DWELLINGS OF THE RIO VERDE VALLEY. 755

broken down into room D of the second story. 2Iet cites and
grinding-stones were of frequent use in its construction ; this and
other appearances lead us to the conclusion that this remarkable
structure was not built at one time, but grew up gradually from
successive building. The caves in the cliff were probably first
inhabited and the casas subsequently erected.

When taking the dimensions of room G on this floor a singu-
lar incident occurred. Mr. Daniels, my assistant, discovered a
stone axe lying between the two timbers which formed the lintel
of the window, the latter having been splintered by a bullet, which
also struck the axe and loosened it in its position. Thus a care-
less shot, aimed at the building by some passing hunter, put us
in possession of an interesting relic.

The apartments of the fourth floor (Fig. 10) are rather neater
in construction than the rooms below, but they are otherwise so
nearly alike that a detailed description would involve a needless
and tiresome repetition of details. The door-ways are neatly exe-
cuted, each having four good-sized lintel-pieces.

The fifth story can only be reached by climbing up through a
small hole in the ceiling of room O, similar to that in room A of
the first floor. This, the uppermost story (Fig. 11), consists of a
long porch or gallery, having a battlement in front and an ele-
vated backward extension on the right, with two rooms (R and S)
filling the corresponding space on the left. The two rooms on
this floor are roofed by the rocky arch of the cliff, and are loftier
than the lower chambers.

It is said that only a few axes, metates, and other stone imple-
ments, with broken vessels of pottery, were found in this build-
ing when first explored by the whites. Upon my first visit, in
1884, it was evident that nothing more than a superficial exami-
nation had ever been made. In 1886 I caused the debris on the
floors to be shoveled over. This material consisted of a quantity
of dust and broken fragments of pottery and stone implements,
together with an enormous accumulation of guano from bats
that inhabited the building. This accumulation, in the largest
room of the top floor, was four feet in depth. As no one had
ever disturbed it, the floor was found in exactly the same condi-
tion in which it was left by the latest occupants. In front of the
entrance the remains of a fire was found, and a goodly bundle of
fagots lay against the wall at a convenient distance. An earthen
vessel contained food, and a small basket of mesquite-seeds stood
hard by. On further search, a large spoon of sycamore wood and
some gourd cups were found. A large metate and grinder,
weighing upward of a hundred pounds, proved to be a trouble-
some acquisition to our collection ; but the labor expended in get-
ting it safely down to the ground served to increase our respect

756

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for those who carried it up. Shells and shell ornaments were
secured, as well as paints of various colors. Some oven-shaped
cupboards were built along the wall, containing remains of mes-
cal, Spanish bayonet, nuts of the pinon-pine, and other food sub-
stances ; and corn-cobs were found in abundance.

ANCIENT D WELLINGS OF THE RIO VERDE VALLEY. 757

In other parts of the building several bone implements, includ-
ing a corn-shucker and a handsomely wrought marlin- spike, fash-
ioned from the leg-bone of deer, were obtained. Scalps or head-
dresses were also unearthed. Indeed, the materials here found
formed quite an extensive collection, including numerous food
articles, bones of various animals, pieces of cloth, matting and
basket-work, ropes and cords of cotton and yucca, sticks for fire-
making, knitting or weaving, and many other uses.

None of the ancient buildings of this region exceed this one in
picturesque grandeur, although many are more extensive. Its
very location excites admiration and inspires respect for those
who built it, whatever may have been the motive which prompted
to the selection of such a site ; nor is it lacking in architectural
beauty. Its existence proves its great strength.

Of the ruined pueblos, an extensive group of buildings on the
left bank of the Verde River, six miles northwest of Fort Verde,
Arizona, may be fairly considered a representative example.
This pueblo consisted of two terraced buildings surmounting a
limestone cliff. The larger one, in which I have made some ex-
ploration, faces the Verde, the other fronting on a side canon to
the south ; the walls of the latter, as well as the face of the cliff,
contain numerous cave-dwellings, in which sundry articles of
pottery and basket-work, as well as stone tools, were exhumed.
The accompanying plan (Fig. 12) exhibits the relations of these
structures. This ruin, which does not differ materially from
many others in the Verde region, is quite similar to the inhabited
villages of the Moquis of Eastern Arizona and the modern pue-
blos of New Mexico. As it was conveniently accessible from the
fort, I made it the subject of some research, and caused consider-
able excavations to be made in parts of the larger building, and
also in the caves of the adjacent canon.

The larger edifice had been three stories in height in front,
where it rested upon the level rock, thence terraced down the
slope of a ravine behind it, the lower tiers of rooms having ap-
parently, been but a single story in height. Previous to my first
visit the front of the building had been thrown down over the
cliff by the white settlers to supply material for repairing an old
acequia, which has since served the whites, as it did the cliff-
dwellers of old, with water for irrigating purposes. Several of
the ranchmen in the vicinity called my attention to articles made
of pottery, and a varied assortment of interesting relics, which
they had secured when tearing down the ruin, in which they
claimed to have discovered dozens of human skeletons, one of
gigantic stature (the usual story), and a quantity of burial urns
and other vessels of pottery and stone. These accounts were in
some measure substantiated by the abundance of broken pottery,

75*

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rough mortars, metates, and stone implements to be seen in the
walls of the new acequia. The writer, whose appetite for discov-
ery had been whetted by his surprising success when excavating
in the high tier of cave-dwellings in the frowning cliffs of Clear
Creek, eleven miles to the southeast, immediately commenced an
examination of this majestic pile of ruined walls, forming a
mound two hundred and eighty feet in length by one hundred feet
in width, having an average depth of seven or eight feet. The
walls are now standing to that height, the lower rooms being
filled with the debris of the fallen upper stories. The building
had been destroyed by fire, three layers of charcoal in the rub-

Fig. 13. — Metate and Grinding-Stone from Casa Grande of the Middle Verde, five

miles north of fort verde.

bish corresponding to the roof and ceilings, which were evidently
constructed of wood, reeds, and grass. Nearly all the inflammable
materials had been destroyed, while many bone implements, and
even some of stone, had been cracked and charred by the fire ;
and the greater part of the pottery, of which a large quantity was
unearthed, had been broken bv the fallen walls.

The labor of removing the debris from the rooms proved
rather slow and difficult. As most of the pottery and implements

ANCIENT DWELLINGS OF THE RIO VERDE VALLEY. 759

Fig. 14. — Shell Ornaments, Arrow- Points, and Stone from a War-Club, from various

parts of the Verde Valley.

were found upon the ground floor, the excitement of the quest in-
creased proportionately as the bottom was approached. The
standing walls were found to be from one and a half to three

760

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and a half feet in thickness, sometimes plastered on the inside.
The upper walls were doubtless of adobe, as the mined pile con-
tains a large quantity of that material. There is a natural stone-
qnarry in the rear of the buildings.

The rooms were spacious and the floors smoothly plastered.
Beneath them were found vaults, plastered within, containing

Fig. 15. — Ladle from Ruins near the Verde River.

human skeletons. In one room, ranged along two sides, close to
the substantial partition walls, were tombs devoted exclusively to
the sepulture of infants and children. The vaults were covered
with large, flat stones, some of which were painted red. In one
of them an olla was found, with the skeleton of an infant. The

Fig. 16. — Ancient Pottery from the Verde Valley.

bodies apparently had not been incased in burial clothes, as was
the case with those found in the burial caves of Clear Creek, as
well as some of the adult skeletons exhumed from other parts of
this building.

This casa proved quite productive in mineral and bone mate-
rial, but most of the more perishable articles had been destroyed.

ANCIENT DWELLINGS OF THE RIO VERDE VALLEY. 761

Of stone implements, the nictates, used for grinding maize, form
an exceedingly interesting set of specimens, exhibiting consider-
able variation in size and form. The greater number were of the
hard, porous, gray scoria known as malpais, a material well adapt-
ed for grinding. Others were hewn out of sandstone, varying
in color from red to creamy white. The manner in which they
are fashioned with no better tool than another stone speaks in
eloquent praise of the skill and indefatigable patience of these
aboriginal workmen. A series of these primitive stone mills
may be seen in the writer's collection at the American Museum.
Grooved stone axes and hatchets were numerous, and likewise
exhibit an unusually wide range of variation in size, shape, ma-
terial, and workmanship. Several of them are, in form and finish,
scarcely inferior to the modern articles. Some of the picks and
hammers were also models of the handicraft of the stone age.
Not the least interesting were stone wedges (doubtless intended
for splitting timbers) and agricultural tools. There was also a
large assortment of stone knives, resembling in shape the chop-
ping-knife of modern housewives. Heavy malls, pipes of lava,
whetstones, polishing-stones, and other implements whose use is
not apparent, were obtained^ besides mortars and pestles, stone
vessels, and plates or platters of volcanic rock. Besides such
articles of domestic use, there were the implements of warfare
and the chase, including rounded stone hammers, mostly of sand-
stone and scoria, grooved for attachment to a handle by means of
a hide thong ; also grooved stones used in arrow-making, spear-
heads and arrow-points of obsidian or agate, and flints from the
war-club (maquahuitl).

Pigments — red, blue, gray, and black — were found ; also a
heavy, black powder, and the usual chipped pieces of obsidian
(volcanic glass) and agate, together with ornamental pebbles, etc.
Nor were ornaments lacking, such as amulets of shells and rings
of bone and shell. Several heavy pieces of obsidian, which were
probably transported from New Mexico, were doubtless kept in
stock for the manufacture of knives and weapons. A heavy
block of red catlinite, or "pipe-stone/* of which small fetiches
found in several localities were made, extends the commerce of
this people to the region of the Upper Missouri, where the only
known quarries of this material exist ; and sea-shells, doubtless
from the Pacific, are of equal interest, as showing the extent of
traffic to the westward.

In several rooms large earthenware vessels were uncovered,
which, although broken, were still held in position by the press-
ure of their contents and the earth surrounding them ; fine root-
lets also penetrated the cracks and formed a meshwork serving
to hold them together. The largest were of coarse material and

vol. xxxvii. — 55

762 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

had a capacity of about thirty gallons. Some of the smaller pieces
were unbroken, and, although unglazed, were smoothly finished
and decorated in colored patterns with rare taste. There were
ladles or dippers, shallow saucers, graceful ollas, and vases dis-
playing much artistic feeling in their conception and execution.
One room appeared to have served as a store-room for earthen-
ware utensils, some of which were found in nests, contained one
within another, the smaller specimen measuring but one and one
fourth inches in diameter. A few perforated discs of pottery, re-
sembling wooden ones from cliff and cave dwellings, were noted.

Numerous tools of bone, chiefly such as were employed in the
manufacture of ropes, neatly carved from the bones of deer or
antelope, were among the relics found. Various food substances
were examined, including bones, teeth, or horns (usually charred
by fire) of elk, mule-deer, antelope, beaver, spermophile, pouched
gopher, wood-rat, muskrat, mice, cotton-tail and jack-rabbit, tur-
key, serpent, turtle, and fish. A sandal of yucca, differing in design
from that taken from the wall of Montezuma's Castle, and several
pieces of human scalps, complete the list of relics from this casa.

There are many ruins of the class just described in the Verde
region, as indicated on the accompanying map. Among them are
several conspicuously perched on the summits of high, isolated,
flat-topped buttes on the Rio Verde and on Oak, Beaver, and
other tributary creeks ; others are built on the precipitous edges
of table-lands bordering canons in which streams flow ; while
some occupy lower positions in the valleys. It would appear,
from the location of some of these casas grandes, that the water
supply has diminished or otherwise greatly altered since they
were occupied, as there is now no water to be found within several
miles of them. Cisterns were doubtless utilized, but must have
proved inadequate to supply the needs of so large a population.

These pueblos frequently inclosed an open square or court.
There is such a one on Oak Creek, built on a bluff butte, level
on the top, which is one hundred and twenty-five feet above the
surrounding mesa. The building is subrectangular in shape,
conforming to that of the summit of the butte, the sides of which
are precipitous. Other villages, perhaps less prosperous on ac-
count of their inferior advantages for agriculture, are to be seen
in many localities, which were evidently but one story high. Such
is the case with a pueblo built on the point of a mesa east of the
Lower Verde settlement.

Furnaces, probably used for firing pottery, were discovered in
some of these ruins. There is a very perfectly preserved one in a
ruin on the right bank of Oak Creek, close to its junction with
the Verde River, having walls standing to the height of fifteen to
twenty feet.

THE "EARTHLY TABERNACLE." 763

Large pits are often seen in the vicinity of casas, whence the
material nsed in making mortar was taken. The mortar used is
of excellent quality, resembling fire-brick.

In concluding this brief sketch of the ancient remains of the
Verde Valley, I would remark that they still present the most in-
viting field for the researches of the student of American anthro-
pology and the included sciences of archaeology and ethnology.
From a merely superficial examination of their works much infor-
mation has been derived concerning these remarkable cultures of
our southwestern territory. In order that our knowledge of
them may become as comprehensive as the material procurable
for study will permit, it is desirable that a systematic exploration
of these ruins be undertaken at once, either through private enter-
prise or by some one of the educational institutions of our coun-
try, before the treasures contained in them become scattered
through the curiosity of unscientific relic-seekers. The writer's
experience proves that an enormous mass of information and a
large collection of valuable specimens would result from such an
examination. Once possessed of these collected facts, it remains
but to construct them by synthesis into a positive knowledge of
much that relates to these people, than whom none are more in-
teresting to the American anthropologist.

•»*»

THE " EARTHLY TABERNACLE."

By OLIVE THOENE MILLEE.

HOW to dispose of the earthly tabernacle after the spirit de-
parts has always been a question of importance to the liv-
ing. Some of the most imposing buildings in the world have
been tombs; the pyramids of Egypt, and the Taj Mahal, that
" dream in marble," will occur to every one. The widely preva-
lent notion that the dead require the conveniences needed in life,
has preserved to us many relics of nations passed away, and to
the habit of lavishing ornament upon places of burial we owe
some of our finest specimens of early art. Even to this day, and
in this Christian country, we attach an importance to the place
and the manner of burial that seems hardly consistent with our
professed belief that, in the words of the poet —

" "What the women lave
For the last sleep of the grave,
Is a tent that I am quitting ;
Is a garment no more fitting ;
Is a cage, from which at last
Like a bird my soul hath passed."

764 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The sentiment, however, did not begin nor does it end with ns.
So far back as we find traces of man upon earth, so far also do we
discover signs of his treatment of the empty " cage " ; and down to
this year of grace 1890 the customs of humanity are as varied,
as curious, and as interesting as at any period in the world's
history.

In glancing over the subject, we find a noteworthy fact, that,
whether the " garment no more fitting " be buried or burned,
mummified, cast away, or eaten, some part of it is in almost every
case preserved. With many peoples the chosen relic is the skull,
which in Australia is made into a drinking-cup and kept for a
memento as well as a common convenience by the next of kin ;
in some parts of Polynesia the skull of the " dear departed " is
hung around the neck of a widow by a cord, and worn during
the rest of her life ; and in one of the Kingsmill Islands it is
oiled, decorated with flowers, and daily presented with food.

In some races the affectionate care of the survivors extends to
all the bones, which are distributed among the friends, each one
of whom mourns over his one bone as if it were the whole body.
Again, they are arranged in various fanciful ways : tied in a
bundle and painted red, by one tribe ; packed in a basket deco-
rated with beads with the skull for a lid, by another ; hung
from the roof, or placed in an urn, or wrapped in .bark and
carried with the tribe ; or, finally, painted in stripes and dried
in smoke.

Alexander the Great — as history tells us — was preserved in
honey, and some of the royal Britons in wax ; but the most famous
embalmers, as we all know, were the Egyptians. Would they
have taken so much pains, I wonder, if they had suspected they
were preparing curios for the museums of impertinent nations
yet unborn ? Perhaps the most peculiar mode devised by man is
the preservation of rich Thibetans in the form of cakes. The
empty " hut," being reduced by fire to ashes, is mixed with wheat-
flour and kneaded into cakes of graduated size, piled in a pyramid,
and deposited in a small tower of suitable form.

Nearly all people cherish, in one way or another, the bones of
their friends, and they may be conveniently divided into two
great classes — those who take measures to dispose of the more
perishable covering, and those who leave the work to the slower
processes of Nature. Among the first named are some exceed-
ingly strange customs : as that of the Caribs, who hang the empty
case in water infested by extremely voracious little fishes, and in
a few hours draw up the skeleton perfectly cleaned, paint it red,
and hang it under the roof of the hut ; and, perhaps even less
agreeable, that not long ago in vogue among the Thibetans and
others, of keeping a race of sacred dogs for the special business

THE "EARTHLY TABERNACLE." 765

of quickly disposing of the cast-off human garment ; and, again,
the habit of the ancient Persian, who invited wild beasts to the
feast, and considered their speedy acceptance a special honor ;
most repulsive of all, some tribes of Tartars, and the Fans, an
African people, who take upon themselves the delicate task of
disposal — with pleasure, it is said. With this latter group must
also be placed the ancient Irish and Briton, and many South
American Indians. Most interesting of the practices of " living
sepulchres " is that of the Parsees of India, whose famous Towers
of Silence are well-arranged buildings where the necessary work
is done quickly and unseen of men, by vultures " sent by God/'
as they say, and the bones preserved in one great central well
together.

The most widely extended fashion of forcibly resolving the
body into its elements is by burning, which has been in use almost
from the beginning of man's life on this planet, and is to-day rap-
idly growing into favor with enlightened peoples. Before the ad-
vent of Christianity it was the nearly universal practice. The
Greeks and Romans, the Etrurians, Hindoos, Siamese, Germans,
Scandinavians, and Saxons, and many Indian tribes of the West-
ern world, all burned their dead with more or less ceremony, and
some of them do still. Certain Australians put the body in a hol-
low tree, and make of that a funeral pile ; the Gualala of Califor-
nia burn the departed to prevent their becoming grizzly bears ;
and the Semels, another tribe, glorify their chiefs by great pyres
heaped with finery and valuables, sometimes several hundred
dollars' worth.

To the cremationists must be added many peoples of Asia,
among whom the fashion is still in full vigor. Some races, both
savage and civilized, sacrifice the living on the funeral pile, the
victims being, of course, the helpless wives and servants. Most
of them are merciful enough to strangle or otherwise kill the
doomed ones, but it was reserved for the " mild and gentle Hin-
doo " to invent and carry out the most cruel and brutal custom
on record.

Of the races who let Nature do the work at her leisure, per-
haps the most striking are those who wall up the door and leave
the deceased in possession, since this comes the nearest we can
hope to get, to taking our riches with us. Such were the ancient
Peruvian Incas, whose palaces were closed and deserted with all
their treasures in them, although the dried and preserved body
took its place with its ancestors in the Great Temple of the Sun,
and the dying Eskimo left in his snow hut, with food and light
at hand, free to depart when he chose.

Unique among men is one who saves his friends trouble by
burying himself. The aged Australian, feeling death approach,

766 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

seeks out a hollow tree, climbs it, drops down inside, and is from
that moment numbered among those who have " passed on."

Other methods are observed by the red men. Some of them
are exposed to the winds of heaven, upon platforms raised on
poles, as our own Dakotas, Blackf eet, Mandans, and some Sioux ;
others are placed in trees, like the Ahts of Vancouver's Island,
where the height of the body indicates the social position of the
departed ; and not a few simply lay the cast-off " garment " on
the bosom of its Mother Earth for the winds and storms to dis-
pose of. In one place the body, in a canoe, is committed to the
" mother of all things," the sea ; and among the Hindoos it is often
devoted to the sacred Ganges, lying on a platform with candles
at the corners.

The largest number of civilized people, including all Christen-
dom, bury in the earth, and, far less wise than the simple Indians
whose ways we scorn, endeavor to keep as long as possible the
" shell from which the pearl is gone " from its natural and much-
to-be-desired fate, dispersal into the elements. This custom of
burial arose partly from the desire of Christians to imitate the
dead Christ, who — as a Jew — was buried ; partly from a belief in
the resurrection of the body, and also influenced, no doubt, by
the difficulty during the early persecutions of performing Chris-
tian rites at a burning which must necessarily be public.

The curious and peculiar manners connected with burial in
the earth are almost numberless, and edifying in the extreme.
The position differs : some sit as in life, and others are held stand-
ing, though most lie naturally. The direction of the head varies.
Many of our Indians turn the face to the west, toward their
" happy land " ; a few turn to the east. The dead Japanese heads
toward the north, for which reason the living never sleep that
way, and, to avoid the chance of it, carry a compass, or mark its
points on their houses. The Bongos of Africa carry the distinc-
tions of sex into the grave, and set the faces of men to the north
and of women to the south ; while the Niam-Niam, a neighbor-
ing tribe, consider the east the point of honor, and the west good
enough for the weaker sex. Quaintest of all is the burial of an
aged clergyman, a life-long pastor in an old-fashioned village on
Long Island, who is laid with his feet toward his congregation,
so that on the last day, when the trump shall sound, he may rise
facing them as usual, and prepared to lead them, a united flock —
his flock — into the Kingdom.

Urn burial has attracted much attention since it was brought
prominently before the world at the Vienna Exposition some fif-
teen years ago. There had been a spasmodic revival of interest
in this manner of disposal of the body both in France and Italy,
but nothing of importance till this exposition. A warm convert,

THE "EARTHLY TABERNACLE." 767

Sir Henry Thompson, of England, wrote enthusiastic articles for
the leading journals, and an earnest- controversy was kept up for
some time. The result has been discussion all over Europe and
America, the establishment of cremation societies, and the build-
ing of crematories, for the new method differs greatly from the
ancient fashion of burning on funeral pyres. The pyre, however,
is still in use in India and other parts of the world, reaching its
utmost extravagance in Siam, where bodies of the royal family
are burned in gorgeous and elaborate temples built of wood and
inflammable materials, but adorned and decorated, painted and
gilded, to exactly represent their finest architecture.

There are many things to commend cremation aside from the
pretty Indian fancy that fire, the purifier, completes the deliver-
ance of the soul from its long-time prison of flesh, and by the
smoke and ascending heat forms a path on which the spirit as-
cends to its home in the skies, or, as one tribe has it, the soft,
warm chariot conveys the released and purified soul toward
the sun.

We, of course, scoff at this, but there are potent arguments
that should influence even our profound wisdom — sanitary rea-
sons, the health of the living; economical reasons, the much-
reduced expense ; even sentimental reasons, the possibility of pre-
serving the remains from desecrating touch. Most powerful of
all in its favor is the prevention of premature burial. All these
are on the side of cremation, and against it is but one — sentiment.
It seems more beautiful to lay our friends to rest, softly pillowed,
shrouded in satin, inclosed in rose-wood, covered with flowers, and
of anything beyond we refuse to think. We erect the imposing
marble, set out the blossoming plant, and carry flowers to the
spot. The cemetery appeals more strongly to the sentiment than
does the crematory. I find no fault with sentiment, but I say it
will more appropriately cling around an urn containing the pure
ashes of what was once a loved form than about the unmention-
able and unimaginable horrors covered by our flowers.

Moreover, it is to be regretted that we can not rise to the
height of Christian philosophy attained by one we call "heathen,"
and embodied in a poem, some lines of which are quoted above,
with a few more of which I will close :

"Loving friends! be wise, and dry

Straightway every weeping eye.

What ye lift upon the bier

Is not worth a single tear.
• «...»

Cease your tears, and let it lie ;
It was mine, it is not I."

768 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

LIQUOR LAWS NOT SUMPTUARY.

By Rev. GEOKGE F. MAGOUN, D. D.,

EX-PKESIDENT OF IOWA COLLEGE.

THE recent article * of William A. Hammond, M. D., on Sump-
tuary Laws and their Social Influence consists of two parts —

(1) an attempt to confound laws prohibiting the common sale of
alcoholic beverages with obsolete " sumptuary " legislation, and

(2) certain criticisms in the same strain upon such laws in Iowa
and Minnesota, and upon the New York and Michigan laws
against the selling of cigarettes to minors. As no pretense is
made of showing that the latter are " sumptuary," or that it is a
tendency to luxury and expense which makes them a dead letter
in the city of New York and elsewhere, they may be at once dis-
missed from consideration. f A long-time resident of Iowa has
something to say in defense of the stigmatized statutes of his
adopted State.

The sweeping assertion of Dr. Hammond is in the following
terms :

" The laws which several States have enacted relative to the
manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors are true sumptuary laws,
notwithstanding the fact that it is claimed by their adherents that
they are measures which every independent State having a regard
for the welfare of society is in duty bound to enforce." The first
example given to sustain this is a law of Iowa, referred to (after
descriptions of the sumptuary laws proper of Sparta, Rome, and
England) thus :

" In our own country the experiment has been tried with as
much thoroughness and with practically as little result as has
attended the attempt by other nations " [i. e., to forbid the people

* Popular Science Monthly for May, pp. 33-40.

t The following is credited in the public journals to Science : " In an experimental
observation of thirty-eight boys, of all classes of society and of average health, who had
been using tobacco for a period ranging from two months to two years, twenty seven
showed severe injury to the constitution and insufficient growth ; thirty-two showed the
existence of irregularity of the heart's action, disordered stomachs, coughs, and a craving
for alcohol ; thirteen had intermittency of the pulse, and one had consumption. After
they had abandoned the use of tobacco, within six months' time one half were free from all
their former symptoms, and the remainder had recovered by the end of the year."

It is certainly supposable that intelligent law-makers could enact a statute to prevent
the sale of tobacco to boys from a humane and public-spirited motive without thinking of
the pennies saved to the boys ; and if the enforcement of the law saved their pennies, so
much the better for the boys and no worse for the law. Any good citizen is therefore at
liberty to hope for such a law and such enforcement as prevents the sale. As to these and
a more recent law in New York, it might be instructive to know from the legislators whether
they really enacted them from " sumptuary " considerations.

LIQUOR LAWS NOT SUMPTUARY. 769

* to wear, to eat, and to drink what they please "]. " As early as
the year 1639 we have the prototype'of that curious law enacted a
few years ago in the State of Iowa, which prohibits one person
from inviting another to take a drink, or treating, as it is called."

A citation is then made from the records of the colony of Mas-
sachusetts of a statute for which four reasons are alleged, one of
them being " much waste to the good creatures." This, and this
alone, is a sumptuary reason. But the law cited — if it be one — is
not simply and distinctively sumptuary, though such laws were
passed by that and other colonies. For example, Virginia, in
1662, enacted the following :

" An Act * prohibiting the importation of unnecessary Commod-
ities. Whereas, the low price of tobacco will hardly supply the
urging and pressing necessities of the country, etc., ... Be it en-
acted that no strong drink of what sort soever, nor silke stuffe in
garments or in peeces (except for whoods and scarf es), nor silver
or gold lace, nor bone lace of silk or thread, nor ribbands wrought
with silver or gold in them, shall be brought into this country to
sell, after the first of February next ; under penalty of confisca-
tion," etc.

So Massachusetts enacted in 1634 as follows :

" The Court, taking into consideration the greate, superfluous,
and unnecessary expences occasioned by reason of some newe and
immodest fashions, as also the ordinary weareing of silver, golde,
and silke laces, girdles, hatbands, etc., hath therefore ordered that
noe person, either man or woman, shall hereafter make or buy
any apparell, either woollen, silke, or linnen, with any lace on it,
silver, golde, silke or threed, under the penalty of forfeiture,"
etc. Subsequent provisions forbid any one to make " slashed
cloathes," but allowed men and women "to weare out such ap-
parell as they are nowe provided of (except the immoderate
greate sleeves, rayles, longe-wings, etc.)." In 1636 a law was passed
against making or selling any bone lace. In 1641 the General
Court, noting excesses prevailing against enactment, ordered the
constables of every town to see to its enforcement, f

Upon the face of them these are characteristically, simply,
and only sumptuary prohibitions. Their one, immediate, and
sole object is the prevention of private waste and expense. So
Dr. Johnson, a century and a half ago, defined this class of
statutes : " Sumptuary [sumptuarius, Lat.] : Relating to ex-
pense ; regulating the cost of life." He quotes Bacon, a century

* Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull says : " This law is crossed with a pen on the MS. record :
Jefferson ' conjectured it was negatived by the Governor.' "

f That notorious liar, Rev. Samuel Peters, in his Blue Laws declares the penalty in Con-
necticut for wearing lace was " at £300 estate " — about as true history as the rest of his
writings.

vol. xxxvii. — 56

77o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

earlier, on " removing want and poverty " through. " the repressing
of waste and excess by sumptuary laws." The definition has never
changed down to our day. (Cf. Webster, Worcester, and others.)
So Skeat's Etymological Dictionary — "relating to expenses (L.).
It is rather Englished from Latin, sumptuarius, belonging to ex-
penses, than borrowed from the French. Formed from crude
form of sumptus, expense, cost " [so "sumptuous"]. It is there-
fore simply evidence of lack of discrimination to call any law a
sumptuary one whose object is not the prevention of cost, ex-
pense, and waste. One might as correctly pronounce the procla-
mations in the colony of New York against any but the Dutch
Reformed worship (1656, 1662), or those of Virginia against
absence from the Episcopal service (1623, 1652), or those of Mary-
land against blasphemy and denying the Trinity, and using
anything in public worship save the Book of Common Prayer
(1649, 1700), sumptuary laws as those of to-day against the
traffic in intoxicating beverages. They have nothing in common.
The colony of Maryland provided that "every ordinary keeper
that shall demand or take above 10 lbs. of tobacco for a gallon of
small beer, 20 lbs. of tobacco for a gallon of strong beer, 4 lbs. for
a lodging, 12 lbs. for a peck of Indian corn or oats, 6 lbs. for a
night's grass for a horse, 10 lbs. for a night's hay or straw, shall
forfeit for every such offense 500 lbs. of tobacco." It would be an
unnecessary blunder to assert that this had nothing to do with
restraining what was deemed undue cost of living and traveling.
But Maryland enacted the same year (1699) that "No inhabitant
of this Province shall sell without license any cider, quince
drink, or other strong liquor, to be drunk in his or her house,
upon penalty of 1,000 lbs. of tobacco for every conviction." Is
the reason and principle of this the same with the reason and
principle of measures adopted to keep down prices, such as sev-
eral colonies adopted — e. g., that just cited, restraining innkeepers
from overcharges ? Both are prohibitory. But is the restraint
of unlicensed liquor-selling fitted to lower the prices of intoxicat-
ing drinks, or — other things being equal — does the cost of a license
to sell tend to raise prices ? If, then, this latter Maryland law could
not have been sumptuary, has not the free sale of intoxicants
been repressed, whether by license or prohibition, for other reasons
r- viz., those of public policy— that is to say, the duty of "every
independent State " to have " a regard for the welfare of society " ?
But this is just what Dr. Hammond takes it upon himself to say
has not influenced the legislation of certain great commonwealths,
East and West, forbidding the sale and manufacture of alcoholic
beverages. Is it quite sure that he knows their ends and motives
better than they know them themselves ?

The point will be made still clearer — if this is possible — by

LIQUOR LAWS NOT SUMPTUARY. 771

noting the ancient colonial legislation against liquor-selling, and
judgments against drunkenness. 1630, Massachusetts : " It is
ordered that all Rich: Cloughe's strong water shall presently
be seazed upon, for his selling greate quantytie thereof to severall
men's servants, which tvas the occasion of much disorder, druncTce-
nes, and misdemeanour." If we are to believe Dr. Hammond,
" the Massachusetts Court of Assistants and General Court," who
passed this order, either did not know why they passed it, or
deliberately falsify the record, giving certain fictitious reasons
for their action in place of the one constant, true one for all
such action, known to Dr. Hammond now, but absent from the
history of the case. This is reconstructing history with a ven-
geance. For our own part, we prefer to believe the Massachusetts
actors and witnesses themselves. 1632 : " It is ordered that the
remainder of Mr. Allen's stronge water, being estimated about
two gallands, shall be delivered into the hands of the deacons of
Dorchester, for the benefit of the poore there, for his selling of it
dyvers tymes to such as were drunke with it, hee knowing thereof."
Neither the recording officer, nor the Dorchester deacons, nor the
General Court, seem to have known that the real reason here was
that those who made themselves drunk could not afford the ex-
pense !

Dr. Hammond gives a couple of instances of colonial pun-
ishment of drunkenness. Here are others. 1633. Massachusetts:
Robert Coles fined £10 for " abusing himself shamefully with
drink," and enjoined to stand with " A Drunkard " in great let-
ters on a white sheet on his back, " soe longe as the Court thinks
meete." [The penalties for repetition next year — disfranchise-
ment, etc. — referred to by Dr. Hammond, were remitted, May, 1634,
on submission and testimony of good behavior.] T. Hawkins and
John Vauhan fined 20s for a similar offense and selling " strong
water, contrary to an order of Court." In 1643 and 1650 the colony
made the harboring of drunkards penal. But there is not the
slightest evidence that the proceedings in these cases were for
sumptuary reasons. 1639 : Wm. C was fined 40s. "for misde-
meanor in drinking, and corporal punishment remitted upon his
promise to avoid such occasions." The same year, in New Haven,
John Jenner, " accused of being drunk, was acquitted, it appear-
ing to be of infirmity, and occasioned by the extremity of the
cold." " Mr. Molenour, accused, but not clearly proved, was res-
pited." It could hardly have been the object in these cases to pre-
vent the expenditure for the liquor, or to dictate what the persons
concerned should or should not drink ! Nor when Thomas Frank-
land was punished " for drinking strong liquors to excess and en-
tertaining disorderly persons into his cellar to drinking meetings."
The First Code of Connecticut, 1650, mentions "divers abuses that

772 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fall out by several persons that sell wine and strong water, as well
in vessels on the river as also in several houses " ; and the Orders
of the General Court of Massachusetts, 1643, forbidding continu-
ance " above half an hour at a time in any common victualing-
house " for the purpose of tippling, justifies this " for the prevent-
ing that great abuse which is creeping in by excess in wine and
strong waters." Were these bodies entirely mistaken in supposing
they were actuated by " a regard for the welfare of society M in-
stead of sumptuary considerations ? On the other hand, in 1637
the record " it hath appeared unto this Court (Mass.), upon many
sad complaints, that much drunkenness, waste of the good creat-
ures of God, mispence of precious time, and other disorders have
frequently fallen out in the inns and common victualing-houses,"
includes sumptuary considerations, with others (as did the prohi-
bition two years later, cited by Dr. Hammond), as reasons for
regulating the price of liquors and meals at inns.* Need any one
confound this with laws simply to prevent drunkenness ? Per-
haps the confounding of these two different things has arisen
from the mendacious forgery of Peters (Blue Laws, 26). "A
drunkard shall have a master appointed by the selectmen, who
are to debar him from the liberty of buying and selling " (pub-
lished in 1781). Under the head of " Innkeepers," etc., the New
Haven Laws and the First Connecticut Code provide penalties,
ten shillings or less, for drunken behavior, etc., at inns, and for
the " disorder, quarreling, or disturbance " resulting. And here
the colonies — the Northern ones, for those of the South seem to
have laid no such restriction — followed the laws of England ; for
example (4 James I, ch. 5) " Every person convicted of drunken-
ness shall forfeit, for every such offense, five shillings; and if
unable to pay, shall be set in the stocks six hours." The law of
Minnesota against drunkenness may be more severe in amount of
penalty — " from ten to forty dollars for the first offense "■ — but is no
more " sumptuary " than the old statute of James I — no more so
than the French and German military prohibition of tobacco. Is
it the expenditure made by the soldiers for cigars or cigarettes
that these army orders are intended to prevent, or the unfitting of
their nerves and muscles for military service ? What an absurd
bugbear the word " sumptuary " is, to be sure !

We can now readily see that the law of Iowa, twice referred
to by Dr. Hammond, is not a sumptuary law at all ; did not have
for its prototype the partly sumptuary colonial enactment of Mas-
sachusetts of 1639, or the previous one of 1636 ; and is intemper-

* In an age when prices, wages, and expenses were regulated frequently by law, mixed
regulations of this kind would naturally at times be passed ; at present, when we have
nothing of the kind, they would not be, and those of a totally different character can not
be made such by construction or assertion. Cf. Maryland law, 1699, above.

LIQUOR LAWS NOT SUMPTUARY. 773

ately stigmatized as "the height of human folly." One would
think from his description — "it is -made a penal offense for one
person to ask another to take a drink "• — that even in the "castle"
of one's own home one can not do this in any circumstances — so
eager are the low a law-makers to forbid the people " to wear, to
eat, and to drink what they please." Passing the flippant tone in
which it is asserted that a man who, " in the sanctity of his own
house, gets quietly drunk and goes to bed," " has injured no living
being but himself," it is to be said that there is nothing whatever
in the penal features of the prohibitory statutes of Iowa that has
anything to do with the " sideboard " in a private house.

It strikes one rather oddly, on the score of logical concinnity,
that the prevention of a man's being " treated " to liquors, without
any expense to himself, should be argued against as a " sumptu-
ary " measure, whether the giving away of the liquors is done in
a saloon or a parlor. A prejudice in favor of the free use and
sale of intoxicants may indeed prevent one from seeing a ludi-
crous fallacy here.

A prohibition of giving away liquors to Indians, minors, and
persons who are already intoxicated is quite an old affair in the
Code of Iowa. It stands under the title " Offenses against Pub-
lic Policy." To persons who have lived in States or Territories
where Indians still linger it will be very clear at once what " pub-
lic policy " has to do with it, and that the sumptuary question
has nothing. A general provision years since against evasions
required courts and juries to construe the whole chapter concern-
ing intoxicating liquors " so as to cover the act of giving as well
as selling by persons not authorized." Is not this according to
public policy, anyway ? Artful sales by pharmacists for other
purposes than medicine were carefully provided against. Selling
to voters within a mile of the polls during an election was forbid-
den, and the purity of elections further protected by forbidding
to give them any intoxicants, including ale, wine, and beer. Is
this any more sumptuary than making the sale unlawful within
three miles of the State Agricultural College (save for sacrament-
al, mechanical, medical, or culinary purposes), or within a hun-
dred and sixty rods of any agricultural fair ? On the other hand,
all this was so far from interfering with the right of the people
to drink what they please that the Iowa Supreme Court had de-
cided that the act of giving is not in itself unlawful, that the
keeping of liquors without intent to sell unlawfully is not affected,
nor the character of liquors as property. " The statute," said
Judge Beck, of the Supreme Court, in one case, " does not forbid
the simple act of giving when no consideration, reward, or pay-
ment was given or promised, and none expected, and which was
not intended as a subterfuge to conceal unlawful sales and evade

774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the penalties of the law." These things are recited to show the
spirit of the legislators and judiciary of a prominent prohibition
State. On these principles later enactments are founded.

But evasions of the law and the making of drunkards thereby,
continuing to be found in a state of intoxication (in the presence
of others, of course, not quietly sleeping off a debauch alone " in
the sanctity of [one's] own house "), was more recently made a mis-
demeanor, punishable with ten dollars fine or thirty days in the
county jail. That the object was not to prevent the drunken per-
son's loss (" injuring no living being but himself " — were this in
ordinary cases possible) — is evident from the remission of the
penalty on his informing against the vender who has defied law
and injured the welfare of society ; so little concern has the pro-
hibition for cost or waste on the part of the person buying and
getting drunk. To prevent another evasion, it was also in recent
years made a misdemeanor to keep a club-room " in which intoxi-
cating liquors are received or kept for the purpose of use, gift,
barter, or for distribution or division among the members of any
club or association by any means whatever." The object of this
must be clearly beyond the power of any one ever so prejudiced
to misrepresent. In keeping with this, the buying by a third per-
son to treat an intoxicated person made the seller, not the third
person who met the expense, liable at law.* Also, the interpreta-
tion of the law was made to cover " alcohol, ale, wine, beer, spirit-
uous, vinous, and malt liquors, and all intoxicating liquors what-
ever," their evil effects — and not their cost, or the waste of money
upon them — being alone in view. Still later, in 1888, the Iowa
General Assembly, to prevent other evasions still practiced with
perverse ingenuity and against the weal of the commonwealth,
enacted what, I suppose, has called out the effort of Dr. Ham-
mond to stigmatize all our j>rohibitory legislation as sumptuary.
It was this :

" After this act takes effect no person shall manufacture for

* Some anti-prohibitionists, for example, the present Democratic anti-prohibition Gov-
ernor of Iowa — the only State officer of this description, and the first one elected for about
a generation — favor summary, or even severe, dealing with drunken persons. Prohibition-
ists agree with them in this substantially, and in not interfering with their personal right
to buy, while they differ with them as to repressing the sale by others openly, which is the
chief source of drunkenness.

The public prints within a few days contain the following, which an experienced army
surgeon will hardly pronounce ll sumptuary " !

" The military commission of the Austrian army have established a law that the offense of
intoxication should be pxmished the first time by a public reprimand. The second offense
by several days' imprisonment in the guard-house. The third offense is evidence that tho
victim is suffering from a chronic disease, and he is placed under constant surveillance. His
pay is taken out of his hands, and every means used to prevent him from getting money to
secure spirits."

LIQUOR LAWS NOT SUMPTUARY. 77S

sale, give away, exchange, barter, or dispense any intoxicating
liquor for any purpose whatever, otherwise than as provided in
this act. Persons holding permits as herein provided shall be
authorized to sell and dispense intoxicating liquors for pharma-
ceutical and medicinal purposes, and wine for sacramental pur-
poses, but for no other purposes whatever."

I hope the terms of this statute make it sufficiently evident
that the men who made and passed it were absolutely in down-
right earnest to suppress the wretched traffic in drunkard-making
beverages, and I have not a word of apology to offer for them.
This measure, to use Cromwellian phraseology, is one of " root-
and-branch " extermination of a sore and fearful evil. But along
with it should go the statement that this is but half of their legis-
lation on the subject, the other half — known as the " Pharmacy
Act " — being permissive of the sale of the same intoxicants, for the
lawful purposes above named, by pharmacists, under restrictions.
Some of these were by the last General Assembly relaxed, with
no effect, however, upon the other half of the law, prohibiting
sales of beverages by other persons. Step by step that has been
allowed by law and that forbidden which long and disastrous ex-
perience showed might or must be. I am authorized to declare
that neither this nor any other statute of Iowa is " sumptuary " in
character or intent. I do not claim that all of them are perfect
for their ends, but only that — a simple fact — this is in no instance
among their ends. The giving away of means of intoxication in-
cluded in the last recited statute (22 Gen. Assembly, chap. 71, § 1)
is forbidden simply and solely to prevent evasions. Doubtless it
will be condemned by those who are willing the risk of promoting
drunkenness should be incurred by a liquor traffic more or less
free ; but, after this patient exhibition of authoritative facts, it
should be forever impossible for any intelligent and candid man
to stigmatize it as " sumptuary." *

After this refutation of its main contention, minor points, made
in the same spirit in the article here criticised, hardly require no-
tice. That "no one is safe under such a law "as that of Minne-
sota from arrest and penalty on the charge of his being drunk,
will call out a smile among the sober people of that good State.
That every law of this tenor is quite or " almost a dead letter " is
— within the ordinary and daily observation of citizens in States
where they are in force — absolutely contrary to fact. At the time
of this writing the retail of drinks manufactured in other States
is suddenly and notoriously increasing under the " original pack-
ages " decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. This

* No laws against the evasion of a statute can possibly be " sumptuary," unless the
original statute is such, which in this case is not, as we have shown at large.

776 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

unhappy change is proof plenary of the wide departure from
truth, among ' other things, of assertions that sales were all the
while going on, which have been suppressed and only now re-
sumed. Such assertions have come chiefly from persons residing
elsewhere, in the face of the testimony officially given by the Gov-
ernor of Iowa, judges, and other State officers. That there are
other offenses against society unpunished and unforbidden is
nothing to. the purpose as to why liquor-selling is forbidden. If
advocates of temperance argue, in the way of philanthropic moral
suasion, that " those who indulge in alcoholic liquors or tobacco
spend money which could otherwise be more profitably used," it
is just what they should do ; but in not even the smallest measure
does it go to prove that laws devised for other objects were in-
tended, after all, though their authors do not know it, to prevent
this spending of money. If they have this effect incidentally,
so much the better for the money spenders and no worse for the
law. Any good " social influence " of a Code of Criminal Pro-
cedure which provides penalties for such " Offences against Pub-
lic Policy" Dr. Hammond is precluded from recognizing by his
assertion that they are null and void. What, then — should such
offenses go scot free ? "What crimes, then, should be punished at
all ? His boast of evading the law of Rhode Island " at a promi-
nent hotel n by a trick — be it professional or unprofessional — with
impunity * is certainly very good evidence that the law did not
prohibit the private act of drinking, but the public act of selling.
Does any law anywhere interfere with liberty of buying, save in
the harangues of Personal Liberty Leagues ? Prohibitionists
everywhere disclaim such interference, but claim the right of
" every independent State " to suppress the common and public
sale of anything deemed detrimental to " the welfare of society."
Any argument against this has little weight, save with those who
subordinate this " welfare " to personal convenience, and, more-
over, goes too far in that it sanctions the open sale of powder and
dynamite by anybody who sets up his " personal liberty " in this
regard. The real objection of the free-sale advocates is to the
actual obstacle " to get any kind of liquor a person wants " in any
kind of "packages," and " as many more on the same terms," i. e.,
by some unlawful evasion — which obstacle is denied in the same
breath to exist ! One horn or the other of the dilemma the advo-
cates of free sale should now choose, after so long playing pen-
dulum between the one and the other.

It is not a little surprising that under the head of " social in-
fluence " a stronger denial than this self-contradictory one is not
made. It is here suggested gratuitously to the liquor interest.

* Popular Science Monthly, May, p. 38.

LIQUOR LAWS NOT SUMPTUARY. 777

"When its advocates assert that those who are determined to have
intoxicating beverages will get them, by hook and by crook, spite
of all safeguards with which the public weal surrounds itself (an as-
sertion equally strong against powder and dynamite laws, etc., and
equally weak), they almost say, but not quite, that those are least
prevented from buying who most need to be. This is quite true ;
but it is an inevitable incident, not of law, but of universal human
perversity. There is no help for it save by making men perfect at
once. In a prohibition State moderate drinkers will refrain from
buying, while abandoned drunkards will buy through the unman-
liest, the meanest, and basest expedients. So much the better for
the moderate drinkers, anyway and at least, and no worse for the
law. A multitude of such persons in Iowa and Kansas to-day
praise the laws that protect them from their lower selves. Even
our German fellow-citizens, with habits and prejudices brought
from " Fatherland," very numerously do the same. But this alone
is not the extent of public good secured. Hardened criminals of
any sort, whom no law can reach, would soon disappear from
natural causes were not their ranks replenished. The drunkards
who will lie and cheat, and generally degrade themselves for the
means to get drunk, in like manner would soon die out if not re-
formed. But they are replaced by new recruits from the moderate
drinkers alone; and if these largely respect prohibitory laws,
though the unhappy beings whom they are on the way to join do
not, there will ere long be few to break these laws at all. Unwit-
tingly, the assertion of liquor men that such laws are a "dead
letter," so far as it is true — and this is far less than is asserted —
only suggests another defense of these laws from their widely
experienced " social influence."

One sometimes wonders why license laws, as well as prohibit-
ory ones, are not denounced as " sumptuary " ! The fact is, that
their natural tendency is to increase the expense of both intem-
perance and moderate drinking — the liquor-vender charging more
for what he sells to cover his expense for a license. This might
in some small measure lessen buying, and expense with it, on the
part of those who can least afford to buy. Would any one pretend
that this is the object of license laws, rather than to balance the
notorious injury done by the traffic to the State, by putting the
license fees into its treasury ? There is one obvious and nearer
reason for not misrepresenting license laws as "sumptuary," viz.,
that however thoroughly enforced they may be, the means of
securing the effects of intoxicating drinks, moderate or immoder-
ate, are openly obtainable. Under prohibition, as well enforced,
they are not.

It is to be noted that, if the Iowa Legislature had not provided
by further legislation against evasions of its statutes (through

778 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

such subterfuges as club-room arrangements, treating, exchange,
barter, etc.), there might be some pretense that it is expense to the
drinker which the Iowa law originally intended to prevent. But
this can not be the object when the drinker is at no expense. And
so the very statute preventing evasions assailed by Dr. Hammond
goes to overthrow his contention, since the reason for preventing
them can not be "sumptuary." There is an old saying about
hoisting one's self with " his own petard."

«•»

THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS.

By the COUNT GOBLET D'ALVIELLA.

II.

SYMBOLS may differ in aspect and yet be connected with one
another by a more or less direct affiliation. This thought
leads us to examine the causes which may change the forms of
symbolical representations. There is first a tendency to reduce or
simplify the figure, in order to confine it to a smaller space or to
diminish the labor of the artist — especially when the figure is
complicated and frequently used. In all the systems of writing
in which the characters began as hieroglyphics, we have only to
scratch the letter to find the hieroglyphic symbol. Thus our
vowel A was originally the head of an ox, and that in its turn
represented the whole animal, according to the popular rule that
in symbols and sacrifices a part may stand for the whole. So,
likewise, in the signs of the zodiac, the lion is simply represented
by his tail. At other times, again, additions and embellishments
are dictated by aesthetic considerations. That was the case with
most of the symbols adopted by Greece, whose art, so strongly
original, never adopted foreign types without impressing pro-
found and felicitous modifications upon them.

The caduceus did not always present the classical form of two
serpents symmetrically entwined around a winged rod. On the
oldest monuments it is a stick the knotty head of which forks
into two branches that curve round till they recross one another,
then diverge and approach again, so as to form a figure 8 placed
at the end of a rod and open at the top. The poems of Homer
disclose to us an epoch still more remote, when a simple flowering
rod with three leaves was attributed to Mercury. In seeking an
explanation of these transformations, we suppose that the first in
date was probably due to the influence of the Phoenicians, who
left on their steles, especially in Libya, the representation of nu-
merous caduceuses formed of a circle placed upon a stick and sur-
mounted by a crescent. It is open to discussion whether the sec-

THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 779

ond modification — which was justified after the event by the
legend of Mercury throwing down his rod between two fighting
serpents — reveals a symbolic intent, or is due, as most of the
learned think, to a fancy of Greek art. But, in either case, the
innovation made it possible for the caduceus to be preserved in
modern symbolism to represent the two ever-present attributes of
Mercury — Industry and Commerce. In like manner it has been
perpetuated in India, where it was introduced by the Greeks, till
our time; and M. Guimet observed numerous examples of it
among the votive offerings in some of the Vishnuite temples.
Nothing is lost in symbolism that is worthy to live and can be
transformed.

Symbols are also subject to the law of the struggle for exist-
ence. It was artistic perfection that secured the longevity of the
thunderbolt — another figure which was long believed to be of
Hellenic origin- Nearly all peoples have represented the fire
from the sky by an arm, sometimes also by a bird of strong and
rapid flight. It was symbolized among the Chaldeans by a tri-
dent. Cylinders going back to the most ancient ages of Chaldean
art exhibit a water- jet gushing from a trident which is held by
the god of the sky or of the storm. The Assyrian artist who first,
on the bas-reliefs of Nimroud or Malthai, doubled the trident or
transformed it into a trifid fascicle, docile to the refinements and
elegancies of classic art, by that means secured for the ancient
Mesopotamian symbol the advantage over all the other representa-
tions of thunder with which it could compete. The Greeks, like
the other Indo-European nations, seem to have represented the
storm-fire under the features of a bird of prey. When they re-
ceived the Asiatic figure of the thunderbolt, they put it in the
eagle's claws and made of it the scepter of Zeus, explaining the
combination, after their habit, by the story of the eagle bringing
thunder to Zeus when he was preparing for the war against the
Titans. Latin Italy transmitted the thunderbolt to Gaul, where,
in the last centuries of paganism, it alternated, on the Gallo-Roman
monuments, with the two-headed hammer. It is also found on
amulets of Germany, Scandinavia, and Brittany. In the East it
penetrated to India, following Alexander, where it is found com-
peting with other symbols having the same significance. Siva,
who succeeded Zeus on the coins of the Indo-Scythian kings, after
the light of Grecian civilization was extinguished in the North-
east and in India, holds in his hand sometimes the thunderbolt and
sometimes the trident ; and while the latter remains exclusively
the arm of the god in the later imagery of the Hindoo sects, the
thunderbolt found its way to the Buddhists, who carried it with
their symbolism to China and Japan. It is still met under the
form of the dordj, a little bronze instrument in the shape of a

78o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

double fascicle of six or eight arrows, which, held between the
thumb and forefinger, is used by the lamas and bonzes in blessing
the faithful and exorcising demons.

By the side of the improvements due to the aspirations of
artists must be placed the deformations produced by the ignorance
or unskillfulness of copyists. Sometimes a new type springs from
these deteriorations to succeed the old one in somewhat the same
manner as in the dissolving views, where the outlines of two pict-
ures succeeding one another are confounded into an indistinct
image which is neither one nor the other. The ansate cross of
the Egyptians seems thus to have engendered certain types of the
Ephesian Diana, with veiled face, arms half opened, and body in-
closed in a sheath ; as also the sacred triangle of the Semites, fre-
quently surmounted by a disk and two horizontal bars, inspired
in the Greeks, according to Francois Lenormant, representations
of Harmony or of Aphrodite under the form of a cone crowned
with a tiara and supplied with two rudimentary arms. As a
counterpart to these metamorphoses changing a linear symbol
into a representation of the human figure, may be cited some
images sculptured on the paddles of the New-Irelanders, which
were exhibited at the meeting of the British Association in 1872.
There was revealed in them a series of deformations gradually
changing a human face into a crescent couchant on the point of
an arrow. Except for the presence of the intermediate forms, no
one would have inferred the relationship of the extreme terms.

When the symbol is composed of several images grouped to-
gether, there is no reason why it should not keep its physiognomy
as a whole, although one or more of its constituent elements may
be modified, the better to answer to the religious traditions, the
national preferences, and the geographical peculiarities of a new
medium. Thus the lily, as M. de Gubernatis remarks in his
Mythologie des Plantes, has taken the place of the lotus in the
symbolic combinations borrowed by the West from the East.
One of the most characteristic examples of these local variations
with persistence of the type is presented to us by the figured rep-
resentations of the sacred trees, in which we believe we can recog-
nize the tree of life which is mentioned in both the Semitic and
the Aryan traditions. From the most remote antiquity, the Chal-
deans gave it the appearance of the date-palm, sometimes attended
by a vine or an asclepiad similar to the plant that yields the soma
of the Hindoos. The Assyrians made of it a wholly conventional
tree, in which palm-leaves were associated with a cone-fruit, and
the horns of the wild goat formed a kind of capital to the trunk.
The Phoenicians exaggerated the artificial character of the repre-
sentation by grafting the flowers of the lotus upon it. The Greeks
introduced it into their ornamentation under the abbreviated

THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 781

form of the palm-leaf or acanthus. The Persians adopted it with
the conventional physiognomy which the Assyrians had impressed
upon it, and it was thus carried to India, where the Buddhists
substituted for it the sacred fig-tree of Buddha. On the other
side, the Persians bequeathed it to the Arabs, who, stripping it of
its religious signification, retained it as an ornament in the deco-
ration of their jewels and cloths. Finally, reaching Europe in the
middle ages, with cloths of Oriental origin, it was reproduced
among the sculptures of some churches, where it represented
sometimes the tree of the cross, sometimes, by a curious coinci-
dence, the tree of life of the biblical traditions. In all these va-
riations of the same theme, the plant constitutes only a part of
the symbol. That is completed and characterized by the presence
of two personages confronting one another — genii, demons, wild
or fanciful animals, monsters half beast and half man, between
which the sacred tree raises its stem or spreads its branches.
Nothing more is needed to establish the affiliations of this complex
image which brings into connection, through many thousand
years, the Chaldean cylinders and the medallions of the Javanese
pagodas, the Greek capitals of the Didymeon and the Christian
tympans of Calvados and Gloucestershire.

A frequent cause of alteration, to which sufficient attention
has not yet been given in the study of symbols, is the attraction
which some figures exercise upon others. We can almost an-
nounce under the form of a law that when two symbols express
the same idea or near ideas they manifest a tendency to combine
so as to engender an intermediate type. For want of understand-
ing that a symbol can thus be connected with several figures very
different in origin and aspect, many archaeologists have lost their
time in disputing upon the origin of an image or of a sign which
each of the parties had reason to connect with a distinct anteced-
ent— like the knights in the legend who broke lances over the
color of a shield of which one saw one side of one color and the
other the reverse of another color.

Examples of such real symbolic transmutations are too numer-
ous to be recited here. A simple and salient form of them is
given in the wheel, which, possessing the double advantage of
having a circular form and of implicating the idea of motion, is
one of the most frequent symbols of the sun. When that star was
likewise symbolized by an open flower, the effort was often made
to fuse the two images. Thus, in the bas-reliefs of Buddhist India
we find wheels the spokes of which are replaced by lotus-petals ;
while in the island of Cyprus there are coins bearing roses the
leaves of which are encircled by twisted rays, or arranged in the
form of a wheel. The special amulet of the Gauls, the solar
rouelle, easily furnished, on the advent of Christianity, the

782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

chrisme or monogram of Christ (X and P interlaced) by the sim-
ple addition of a loop.* In a similar way the chrisme becomes
the ansated cross or key of life, through a series of transforma-
tions which are found among the inscriptions of the island of
PhilEe.

It is not even necessary that the symbols thus combined shall
originally have possessed the slightest analogy of forms. There
are certainly not many traits common to the different images of
the sun in the valley of the Nile, where it is represented, accord-
ing to the districts, as a radiating disk, a hawk, a goat, etc. But
the Egyptians not only succeeded in condensing all these figures
into the winged globe of their pylons and their cornices, but they
also contrived to give the strange amalgamation the features of
another solar animal, the flying scarabseus. When the winged
globe passed from Egypt into Asia, the Assyrians in turn inclosed
in the Egyptian disk the figure of their god Assur, which they
represented as a winged genius, and till then the ancient sacred
bird of Chaldea, which, according to M. Menant, contributed with
the Mesopotamians to form the definite type of their winged disk,
was not. Some of the coins of Asia Minor help us to comprehend
the different processes by the aid of which the two symbols could
thus be combined, if not also the principal stages of the operation
by which they produced a third. The sun was often symbolized
in Asia Minor by a triscele — that is, a disk around which radiated
three legs joined at the thigh ; at other times it was represented
there, as in Egypt, by animals like the lion, the boar, the eagle, the
dragon, and the cock. A coin of Aspendus in Pamphylia shows
the cock in the field, by the side of the triscele ; other pieces of
the same origin show the triscele placed over or joined to the body
of the animal without its losing its natural appearance. Finally,
in a Lycian coinage, in the British Museum, the two symbols, at
first placed together, then joined, are literally fused into one an-
other ; the three legs of the triscele are metamorphosed into three
cocks' heads, which are grouped in the same way around a center.

Most frequently the symbolical syncretism is conscious and
premeditated, whether the matter be one of the union for greater
efficacy of the attributes of several divinities into a single talis-
man, or one of affirming, by the fusion of symbols, the unity of
the gods and the identity of cults. Of such character were the
talismans called panthei, with which the Gnostics endeavored to
condense the divine symbols supplied by the principal religions

* M. Gaidoz, in his book on the Gallic God of the Sun and the Symbolism of the Wheel
(Le Dieu Gaulois du Sohil et la Syrnbolisme de la Roue), defines the chrisme as " a wheel
with six rays without the circumference, and with a loop on the top of the staff in the mid-
dle." It should be added that even in the catacombs the chrisme is sometimes drawn within
a circle.

THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 783

of their time. Of a higher order of ideas was the symbol adopt-
ed by the Brahmanists of the New- Dispensation — the Brahmo-
Somaj — who presumed to fuse all the existing sects of India into
a new religion, founded exclusively on conscience and reason.
The pediments of their temples bear a design in which the mystic
syllable of the Brahmans, Aum, is interlaced with the Mussulman
crescent, the Sivaite trident, and the Christian cross. It also fre-
quently happens that this confusion of symbols is not at all sys-
tematic. By virtue of reproducing certain forms,, the eye and the
hand seem to be assimilated to them to such a degree that they
are not able to rid themselves of the obsession when they attack
new themes. There is a symbol of this kind, engraved on Phoeni-
cian gems or painted on Cypriote vases, which recalls the winged
disk of Asia, the sacred tree of the Assyrians, and some of the
Greek thunderbolts. One can not turn the leaves of the descrip-
tion of the Buddhist bas-reliefs of Boro Boudour, in the island of
Java, published under the direction of the Dutch Government,
without being struck, at almost every page of the Atlas, by the
appearance of some curious figure which presents at once remi-
niscences of the Hindoo lotus, the Assyrian horns, the Greek
thunderbolt, the Buddhist fig-tree, and the Egyptian globe with
the Urseus. Such heteroclite mixtures have, moreover, been cus-
tomary in Oriental symbolism. Sir George Birdwood, an author
among the best versed in the industrial arts of modern India, has
recently shown that in the Hindoo art, in which all the details
have a symbolical bearing, certain decorative themes are com-
bined and exchanged with the disorder of a dream, without re-
gard to the distinction of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, or
of the organic and inorganic worlds.

In most of the examples that I have cited it is easy to dis-
cover by what ways the symbol was transmitted from one people
to another. Under this relation the migration of symbols rises
directly from what may be named the history of commercial re-
lations. Whatever may be the resemblance of form and signifi-
cation between two symbolical figures, found among peoples of
distinct origin, it is proper, before asserting relationship, to de-
termine the probability, or at least the possibility, of interna-
tional relations that may have served as a vehicle for them. This
point fixed, it remains to be determined which has been the bor-
rower and which the lender. Thus, why was it not the Hindoos
who communicated the thunderbolt to Mesopotamia, the Phoeni-
cians who received the caduceus from Greece ? Here our advan-
tages over preceding generations appear. There was a time
when we might indistinctly place in India the origin of the gods,
myths, and symbols that are scattered all over the world ; another
when it would have had a bad air not to give Greece credit for

784 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

all intellectual and religious creations that had any moral or
artistic value. But the investigations of the last half -century
have given positive bases for the ancient history of the East ; and
that in turn permits us to restore to their true plane in the per-
spective of the ages the principal centers of artistic culture which
have reacted upon one another since the beginning of civilization.

There may be differences of opinion as to whether the Ionic
capital borrowed its volutes from the horns of the ibex or the
half-opened petals of the lotus. There may be discussion as to
whether Ionia received it directly from Golgos on the Phoenician
vessels, or from Pteria with the caravans of Asia Minor. But
no one who has observed its presence on the monuments of Khor-
sabad and Koyoundjik will refuse to locate in Mesopotamia the
point of its departure toward the ^Egean Sea. This is only an
example of the types and motives the development to importance
of which is doubtless due to the autonomous inspirations of Greek
genius, but the origins of which are to be sought in Phrygia,
Lycia, Phoenicia, and beyond, in the valleys of the Tigris and the
Nile. In India, likewise, the most ancient works of sculpture and
carving — wherever they do not attest a direct influence of Greek
art — associate themselves with the monuments of Persia by the
adoption of motives in some way classic in the Persepolitan archi-
tecture— like the capitals formed of animals sometimes affronted,
sometimes backed ; which are, as a plastic signature, in the former
case of Assyria, in the second case of Egypt. In fact, when we
depart from Greece or India, or even Libya, Etruria, or Gaul,
we always come at the end, stage by stage, upon two grand cen-
ters of artistic diffusion, partially irreducible to one another —
Egypt and Chaldea ; but with this difference between them : that
about the eighth century before our era, Mesopotamia went to
school to the Egyptians, while Egypt never went to school to any
one. Now, symbols have not only, as we have shown more than
once in the course of this study, followed the same routes as
purely decorative themes, but they have also been transmitted in
the same fashion, at the same times, and, we might say, in the
same proportion. I am far from disputing that there may have
been independent and autonomous centers of creation among
nearly all peoples. But, besides autochthonous types, we find
everywhere the deposits of a strong current whose more or less re-
mote origins lay in the symbolism of the shores of the Euphrates
and the Nile. In short, the two orders of importations are so con-
nected that in writing the history of art we write in great part the
history of symbols, or at least of their migrations — as is exem-
plified in the studies of MM. Perrot and Chipiez in the history of
ancient art.-

A distinction, however, should be observed, in researches rela-

THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 785

tive to symbols, that form is not all. It is the intention that
makes the symbol, and by this symbolism is dependent upon psy-
chology, at the same time that its history deserves a place by
itself in the general picture of the development of human civiliza-
tion. A word is to be said from this point of view concerning
other migrations ; those in which a symbol passes, no longer from
one country to another, but, upon the same soil, from one religion
to the one that succeeds it. In the most frequent case, it is popu-
lar pressure that introduces into the new civilization symbols
consecrated by long veneration. Sometimes the innovators them-
selves use the advantages offered by symbolism to disguise the
novelty of their doctrine under ancient forms, and, when neces-
sary, to transform into allies emblems or traditions which they
are not able to destroy by a direct attack. . Thus Constantino
chose as his standard the Labarum, which could be claimed at
once by the worship of Christ and by that of the sun. The same
policy was attributed to the first king of Norway. According to
an old song of the Shetland Islands, Hakon Adalsteinfostri, com-
pelled to drink to Odin at an official banquet, drew the sign of the
cross on his cup, and, when his guests reproached him for it, told
them that it was the sign of the hammer of Thor. We know, in
fact, that in German and Scandinavian countries the cross of
Christ was more than once disguised under the form of a two-
headed hammer, and that in more than one inscription in Egypt
it put on the appearance of the key of life.

Such symbolical adaptations have been especially frequent in
Buddhism, which has never been restrained from adopting the
symbols and even the rites of anterior or neighboring religions.
In some of its sanctuaries it has gone so far as to carve the cere-
monies of the worship which natives of India gave to the sun,
fire, and serpents, and connect such rites with its own traditions.
The solar wheel thus became the wheel of the law ; the sacred
tree represented the tree of knowledge under which Sakya-Muni
attained perfect illumination ; the serpent Naza was transformed
into a guardian of the footprints of Vishnu, which were afterward
attributed to Buddha. Some years ago the remains of a Buddhist
sanctuary were discovered at Bharut, in which the bas-reliefs
represented emblems and religious scenes, accompanied by in-
scribed legends. The news gave great joy to the Anglo-Indian
archaeologists. They expected to be given interpretations of
Buddhist rites and symbols, formulated by the Buddhists them-
selves one or two centuries before the Christian era. But a closer
examination showed that the shrine was only an ancient temple
of the sun, which had been taken possession of by the Buddhists.
They were satisfied to put over the pictures of solar worship in-
scriptions connecting them with their own faith.

vol. xxxvn. — 57

786 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It has been said that religions change, but worship continues
the same. The assertion in this shape is too absolute ; but it is
certain that every religion preserves in its rites and symbols sur-
vivals from the whole series of previous religions. And this does
it no harm. The important thing is, not the leather bottle, but
the wine that is poured out of it ; not the form, but the thought
that animates it and goes beyond it. "When Christians and Bud-
dhists respectively concentrate upon their Master the principal
attributes of the sun, beginning with the nimbus, the prototype
of which goes back to the aureoles engraved upon the Chaldean
monuments, they do not suppose themselves to be giving homage
to the star of day. They only intend, in reality, to reflect upon the
venerated face of their founder the symbol which has from time
immemorial formed an image of the celestial glory, and which
also, in contemporary cults, specially characterized the highest per-
sonification of divinity. We are reminded of the answer which a
father in the Church gave to those who accused the Christians of
celebrating the day of the sun : " We solemnize this day, not, like
the infidels, on account of the sun, but on account of him who
made the sun." Constantine went further when he composed a
prayer for his legions to recite on Sunday that could satisfy at
once, as M. V. Duruy remarks, the worshipers of Mithra, Serapis,
the sun, and Christ. Symbolism may ally itself with the most
mystic tendencies, but, like mysticism, it is a powerful auxiliary
of the religious sentiment against the immobility of dogma and
the tyranny of the letter. M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu has shown,
pertinently to this point, how in Russia the conservative ritual-
ism of the old believers has been able, by means of the symbolical
interpretation of texts and ceremonies, to attain liberty of doc-
trines and, in certain cases, a complete rationalism, without break-
ing with the traditional forms of Christianity or of the Eastern
Church.

There comes a time when religions which make an important
factor of the supernatural find themselves in conflict with the
progress of knowledge, and especially with a growing belief in a
rational order of the universe. Symbolism then offers them a way
of safety which they have more than once taken advantage of to
keep pace with their times. If we take peoples in an inferior de-
gree of religious development, we find them having fetiches — that
is, beings and objects arbitrarily invested with superhuman facul-
ties ; then idols, or fetiches carved into resemblance of a man or
an animal ; but we rarely discover symbols among them, for they
imply both the desire to represent the abstract by the concrete and
the consciousness that there is no identity between the symbol
and the reality for which it stands. When the mind opens to the
notion of abstract or invisible gods, it can preserve its veneration

THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 787

for its ancient fetiches, which are thenceforth regarded as repre-
sentative signs of the divinities. Finally, when we come to con-
ceive a Supreme God, of whom the old divinities are simply min-
isters or hypostases, the ancient figurative representations may
still have a place, provided they are put in relation with the quali-
ties or attributes of the superior being into which the divine
world resolves itself. This is an evolution of which traces are
observed almost everywhere in ancient polytheism. Dogmas and
sacraments can always, on their side, be brought by symbolism
into an interpretation harmonious with the progress of knowl-
edge and reason. Such is the task to which are devoted — after
Schelling and Hegel in Germany, and Coleridge and Maurice in
England — a notable fraction of Protestant theologians, with a suc-
cess which would doubtless have been greater if the school had
not broken with the laws of historical truth by persisting in
projecting into the past interpretations inspired by the present.

A religious condition may be conceived in which all cults be-
come purely symbolical. There will be nothing to hinder their
preserving with a pious care the rites and traditions of their
heritage ; only they will make of them particularly symbols of
the truths common to all religions, and will consequently be able
to treat one another — as we see in the rites of certain churches —
as local forms and equally legitimate in the universal religion.

Such a syncretism looks, at first sight, to be very far from us.
It would imply that all religions have their share of the truth, but
that none possesses it all. This is hardly the language of the
larger contemporary churches, if we may judge by those that
touch us most nearly. But it must be observed that, in practice,
their adepts live among one another as if the divergence in doc-
trines were reduced to a diversity of symbols. At times we see
their chiefs — a thing unheard of in former centuries — co-operat-
ing on a footing of equality in works of philanthropy or social
peace, as if they recognized that charity and justice afford a com-
mon ground for religious activity. Lastly, the attribution of a
relative value — or symbolic, which is the same thing — to all cults
indistinguishably may serve hereafter as a basis for the normal
relations of the state with the churches in the countries which are
under the influence of modern law. Let this idea, already an-
chored in our laws and our customs, be accepted in our conscious-
ness, and for the first time in history the world will be able to
enjoy a religious peace, founded not on the unity of forms and
formulas, but upon the admission of what, under variety of sym-
bols, is true and fruitful in all religions. — Translated for The
Popular Science Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes.

788 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

MOTHERS AND NATURAL SCIENCE.

By MAEY ALLING ABER.

A ROBIN teaches its own young to fly ; a human mother often
leaves the training of her babies exclusively to others. The
bond of nature between the mother and child puts a premium
on all that the mother does, and her constant association is an
opportunity for understanding the peculiarities and needs of the
child such as no ordinary teacher ever obtains.

As one's finger may trace in the yielding soil a channel for the
outflow of a tiny spring, and at its fountain-head determine the
course of a river, so, in the earliest years, the mother may, with
little effort, give direction to the energies of the child. The
mother's capacities, education, and circumstances may not permit
her to accompany the child far on its course, or to contribute
much to the current of its intellectual life ; but let her give the
direction and all the powers of nature will conspire with the
child's inborn force to increase the volume and strength of the
on-rushing stream.

To claim for natural-science studies the mother's power of
direction, to show why mothers should interest their children in
these studies, and to suggest how they may do so, is the purpose
of this paper.

What mothers may do to interest children in natural science
is a question which has but one answer — they may do everything ;
what mothers can do has as many answers as there are mothers.
Between the may and the can is but one barrier — difficult to
destroy — the mother's own habits of thought. Not ignorance, not
scarcity of materials, not want of books — not all of these combined
need long block the way of any mother whose mind still has the
suppleness and sincerity of childhood ; for the door into this king-
dom of nature, like that into the kingdom of righteousness, is the
simplicity of childhood.

It would be well, in these days of the supremacy of the mate-
rial life and of increasing demands for applied science, if young
women who are pursuing courses at our colleges would more often
elect science studies, that they may be ready, by power to teach
and by assistance and appreciation given to others, to further the
introduction and pursuit of science studies in all lower schools ;
and to do this in a manner which shall help to put science in its
true place as the handmaid, and not the destroyer, of religion.

But it is to those who have passed their school and college
days that this paper must be addressed. As no body gets so stiff
that proper treatment can not restore some of its lost pliancy, so

MOTHERS AND NATURAL SCIENCE. 789

no mind is so helplessly set that it can not be drawn forth and di-
rected into other molds. What a mother can do to interest her
children in natural science depends npon her power to direct
herself and to master the conditions of her life. Suppose that
power is sufficient, how shall she begin ? A mother may think
that she needs trained guides, lest she make mistakes and waste
precious time and strength. She may wish to know what mate-
rials to collect, what books to buy, when and where to get the
materials and books, how much time and money they will cost, and
what she is to do with them when obtained. Every mother has a
right to ask these questions of any one who urges her to under-
take to awaken in her children a vital interest in Nature's phe-
nomena ; but all that the writer of this paper can hope to do is to
give suggestions which may lead a mother to find elsewhere the
definite answers required.

A mother may begin to study with her children the ever-
changing phenomena that surround daily life. The house is
full of lessons. Various departments of science have contributed
to its building and furnishing. There is scarcely an industry that
is not represented in some room ; the kitchen is a laboratory in
which the truths of chemistry and physics are illustrated, and
the table is supplied with gifts from the three kingdoms of na-
ture; and to produce these, to transport them, and to prepare
them for use, numberless natural agents have worked tirelessly
and long. And out of doors — Nature's phenomena — where are
they not ? The snow and rain bring them ; the ice locks them
across the pond and the south wind picks the lock, the breezes
blow them, the birds sing them, the brooks murmur them ; every
tree and flower, every stone and clod wait to tell their story ; the
waves wash their treasures to the shore ; the rainbow is their ex-
pression ; the glories of morning and evening write them on the
sky ; the sunlight comes and goes, bringing the wonders of night
and day, of storms and seasons; and all night the stars speak
of times and spaces our mathematics can not yet compute, and of
events before which our short earth-lives shrink into nothing-
ness.

What shall a mother take from this vast store to give to her
children ? Before answering this question it is proper to consider
what purpose natural-science studies may serve in the education
of a child ; and to do this, the objects of education itself must be
known. The supreme object of education is, without doubt, the
development of the individual to the utmost limits his conscious-
ness can grasp in this earth -life ; some of the lesser objects are
a vocation and success in it, pleasant social relations, ability to
help the unfortunate, interest in national affairs, and a love of
the virtues ; and all these may be included under the expression

79o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to be a good citizen. These objects imply health and industry,
that the man or woman may be a producer and not a consumer
only; sufficient intelligence to recognize and perform duties to
one's self, to one's neighbors, and to the State ; speech which is
honorable and pure ; and deeds which inculcate respect for the
laws. Besides these, a mother may wish her child to acquire those
graces of mind and heart that are difficult to define in words, but
whose presence or absence is easy to feel in a man or woman ; those
graces which lift their possessor above the power of petty pas-
sions, of foolish conventionalities, above even the necessity to for-
give injuries.

Emerson, in speaking of Lincoln, said : " His heart was as
great as the world, but in it there was no room for the memory
of a wrong." From the days of early manhood to the crowning
act of his life, what a succession of kindly deeds are found in Lin-
coln's history ! As the mind dwells on them, the great Proclama-
tion is seen to be but the consummate flower on a plant which
could bear no other. Such men do not fail when the time for great
action comes. They do without fear what lesser men shrink from,
or dally with, until the time for action has passed. No small
soul, no life full of petty motives, ever rises to a great emergency.
To one who meets the details of every-day life with a vain, selfish
spirit the great occasion may come ; but his will not be the honor
of seeing it and of using it worthily. So, if a mother would have
her children become men and women of the larger type, she must
look well to " the reiterated choice of good or evil which gradu-
ally determines character."

What can natural sciences do toward this character-building ?
Have not studies other uses ? Yes ; but, while serving other uses,
a study which does not mold character is of small value. This
character-building receives little or no consideration in much that
passes for education — a mistake from which the whole after-life
of the child suffers. There is at present a " craze for informa-
tion," as though to be a store-house of facts were a thing desir-
able in itself. Information so assimilated as to be a source of
ready power in thought and conduct is a great good, but unless
so available it is of little value. The mere desire for getting in-
formation might well be called intellectual avarice, for he who
seeks this alone is almost as useless and miserable as the more
sordid hoarder of money. Also, there is an idea, somewhat cur-
rent in these days, that for children study should be transformed
into play. I must protest against any such notion. Hard, pa-
tient, honest work is needed. The child who plays at his studies
will play at life, play at everything, and will probably carry
from cradle to grave the deception that whatever does not fur-
nish him amusement is of no value, that work belongs of right

MOTHERS AND NATURAL SCIENCE. 79i

only to those miserable beings who have little capacity for amuse-
ment. There should be much delight in study, but there will be
disagreeable drudgery as well, and any training is false which
does not teach the child to do the drudgery promptly and faith-
fully. A mother who saves her child from disagreeable tasks
does him the grave injury of sending him forth into adult life
without the fixed habits which will enable him to meet its re-
sponsibilities with ease and dignity.

Now, for all this development of a child into a worthy man or
woman natural-science studies have peculiar fitness. To secure
and preserve health, considerable knowledge of these studies is a
necessity ; and their relations to preparation for self-support are
obvious. In the proper pursuit of natural-science studies the
capacities for accurate observation, for painstaking experiment,
and for unbiased sincerity are developed ; and without these ca-
pacities there can be no true progress in them. A slight preju-
dice introduced as a factor in estimating the results of a series of
observations will vitiate the result, and may ruin the value of
the whole work. Natural-science studies are as exact as mathe-
matics in demanding obedience to their own laws. Reflection
upon these considerations will show their value for intellectual
development and training. The moral and spiritual influence of
these studies is not less great. A child learns to be truthful in
the presence of truth that never swerves ; learns to be gentle when
at work where one rude touch may destroy the labor of weeks ; to
be brave when he sees the struggle which everything in Nature
makes for its own development ; to be patient in waiting for Na-
ture's slow processes ; persevering when he sees that she gives up
her secrets after repeated efforts only, often to be made under cir-
cumstances appalling to a spirit less mighty than her own ; mod-
est when he and his little come into daily comparison with her
and her abundance ; obedient when he sees that obedience to law
brings beauty, pleasure, and life, and disobedience brings deform-
ity, sorrow, and death ; reverent before the majesty and power
and glory of Him who is the life of Nature ; generous, because
she pours out her whole wealth to-day, never fearing that the
morrow will not care for itself ; joyous, because above all her
struggle and pain rises a perpetual paean of triumph.

If convinced that natural-science studies have special fitness
for the training of children, with what study shall a mother begin
to work ? Although Nature herself indicates an order which may
be pursued with advantage, this order is not so important that it
need be attempted where conditions do not favor it. This order
takes, first, rocks and soils, with enough of chemistry and physics
to explain some processes of soil and rock making ; second, plants,
as depending on soil, air, and sunlight ; third, animal life ; and

792 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fourth, man's structure. After this order has been observed
through an elementary course — just enough to give a hint of the
cycle of change from the rock world through the soil, plant, and
animal, back to soil and rock again, to show the intimate de-
pendence of Nature's kingdoms and processes — these studies may
be carried on together, a few weeks of each year being devoted to
each one. This may be done until the student has reached the
years when he may wisely devote himself to one branch as a
specialty. Attention to the whole cycle of Nature is not incon-
sistent with thoroughness, since the little that is selected from
each part may be thoroughly studied. A little work well done is
of more value than to run over the whole field superficially, not
only to the contents of the child's mind, but to his growth in
character.

It matters little where one begins, so that the study be honest
and thorough. Any beginning will lead everywhere else, for,
though there are straight roads for the specialists to follow, the
whole field is covered by a most intricate network of roads. A
mother may begin where her present knowledge is least liable to
blunder. If she had a fondness for physics in her school days,
let her take that. Let her teach her child the laws of mechanics
as illustrated in his daily life and observations. Let her teach
him to drive a nail properly, and she teaches him to avoid the
working of the law of the wedge ; teach him how the windows
are hung, and she introduces him to weights and pulleys ; show
him a man unloading a barrel of flour at the door, and she shows
him the inclined plane ; in teaching him to use a pair of scales,
a can-opener, a claw-hammer, a nut-cracker, she teaches him the
use of levers. The wheel and axle may be taught from the well
or the clock.

The properties of bodies and the laws of expansion and con-
traction find abundant illustration in the daily life. Let the child
fill an old jug with water, cork it tightly, and set it out of doors
some cold night. The break found the next morning will not be
forgotten. Then take him to a neighboring ledge of rock, show
him its cracks filled with ice, and he will not be slow to draw the
lesson of how the strong rocks are broken asunder. Then show
the child the tiny snow-flake with its six crystal arms, so delicate
that you hold your breath lest they vanish while you look ; and
lead him to see that the jug and the mighty ledge of rocks are
broken by these fairy creatures. What tale in mythology or
folk-lore is more wonderful than this ? In every drop of water
is the fairy crystal spirit, but it can not embody itself where
heat is. Cold is its good genius ; and when cold comes, the fairy
spirit works., throwing out one dainty spar after another and in-
terlacing them with threads more delicate than those in our finest

MOTHERS AND NATURAL SCIENCE. 793

laces ; and the fairy spirit has a body ; the crystal exists. But if
the water is confined and has not room enough, why, these frail
things break the bond, break the jug, break the giant rocks. If
this story is well taught, the child's soul will bow before it in
reverence. He will learn, too, one old but great lesson which may
be applied in human affairs — " In union there is strength." The
single ice crystal seems powerless ; the many do mighty work.

If a mother is fond of chemistry, she has no less a field of work
from the combustion of fuel and the burning of the evening lamp
to the whole process of cooking, digesting, and assimilating food.
Here, too, comes the question of the purity of air, water, and
foods. A child may be taught to detect some impurities in all
these, and also to test the safety of the colors in wall papers and
in the fabrics used for clothing and furniture. These are but a
few of the many topics close at hand for every mother fond of
chemistry. Through all of this work in chemistry the mother
has admirable opportunity to impress on the mind of the child
the great economy of Nature. As the child sees the wax of the
evening candle gradually disappear, he may be made to under-
stand, by a few simple experiments, that some portion of the air
is uniting with the wax ; that invisible watery vapor and gas are
produced and pass into the air ; and that soot is given off. She is
then prepared to believe Nature's great law — change, but no loss.
The child, once impressed by this law, will find abundant illustra-
tions of it, and will seek to know and understand the changes
which produce the seeming losses so constantly occurring.

Perhaps some mother has a preference for astronomy. In
warm evenings the little ones may sit out awhile to listen to sto-
ries about the stars. No subject is more delightful to a child.
The little of the great truths which he can grasp will awaken and
broaden his young mind and fill his tiny heart with noble and
poetic sentiments.

Botany, zoology, and physiology will suggest fields of work as
boundless as they are interesting. It is not necessary to suggest
special lines of work in each ; but let me urge that the intimate
relations of everything studied to the life of man should be kept
before the child, so as to cultivate that sympathetic interest which
tends to produce gentleness and humanity toward all things. The
song-bird rids his garden of insects, and the pretty wayside flower
furnishes him medicine. By invisible but real bonds the life of
man is united to the lowest animal and the smallest plant.

While it does not greatly matter where a mother begins, it
does matter that, as she goes on, the child see relations clearly.
Hence arrange the work in logical sequence, and branch off soon
into other fields, that the little mind may have a natural, broad
base on which to arrange its treasures of knowledge. All this,

794 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

too, must be varied according to the age and tastes of the child.
Rightly presented, any one of the subjects named will soon win
the respect, love, and enthusiasm of any child not hopelessly
spoiled by too early dissipation in artificial social life. Such
studies are one of the best correctives of this evil, and I have seen
them cure some painful cases of it.

To a school where I was teaching there once came a child of
nine, with manner and face plainly stamped with artificial life,
and for weeks her teachers despaired of ever seeing any genuine,
simple feeling. The child did not for a moment lose a painful
self -consciousness which did not forget to air her charms at the
entrance of a visitor, or when she wore a new article of apparel,
as she frequently did. The first time she was asked to make a
bill of materials which she might buy — materials of any kind —
simply to show how bills are written, her bill began :

To one pink satin ball dress $80,

" one pair white kid boots $15,

and proceeded through eight or ten similar items of fancy and
expensive dress. After our first vacation of one week this child
returned with a glad, eager look on her face, and, going close to
her teacher, said : " I am so glad school has begun again. There
is nothing interesting going on at home." From that day her
manner gradually changed ; she came to love the stones, flowers,
and animals wmich we studied, and her face lost its blank, soulless
look and became sweet and gentle. This change in expression
was so marked as to be spoken of by a frequent visitor.

Materials for study in any department of natural science are
so abundant that it seems almost unnecessary to touch upon this
topic. The greater abundance of botanical and zoological mate-
rial in summer invites to those studies at that season, while phys-
ical and chemical studies may quite as well receive attention in
winter ; but with care and a small outlay in money any of these
studies may be pursued at any season. A window garden, where a
child may plant seeds at varying intervals and then pull them up
and examine the whole plant at different stages of growth, is pos-
sible at any season ; but this had better be done in early spring,
when the vegetation starting out of doors increases the interest of
the child and supplements his work.

The preservation of materials and the formation of collections
are important. Encourage the child's efforts in this direction.
Let the boys and girls make shelves, boxes, or cabinets in which
to keep the collections. A set of wood-working tools and ability
to use them will be a useful adjunct to natural-science study.

"Whatever a child collects should be received with a smile of
encouragement, no matter how worthless it is, until he has gained
some power of discrimination. Let a mother refrain from show-

MOTHERS AND NATURAL SCIENCE. 795

ing disgust or fear of any natural object — even of toads, spiders,
and snakes — lest she foster in the child the common superstitions
which attach harm to innocent creatures. And if the child brings
a handful of frogs' eggs, sticky and dripping, the mother had bet-
ter not say, " Now go away and throw those horrid, dirty things
out ; I will not have the house filled up with them " ; and proceed
to chide him for soiling his clothes and dripping water on the
carpet. Let her show the child she is pleased with what he has
done ; get a jar in which to put the eggs, call the child's attention
to the tiny dark spot in each egg, awaken his interest by telling
him how the eggs were deposited and why they are fastened
together in such a gelatinous mass, and that if he keeps them and
gives them fresh water, a little animal may come out of each one.
This will keep alive the spirit of investigation ; and, after all this
has been done, she may show the child how he might have kept
from soiling his clothes and the carpet. A mother should never
make fun of a child or laugh at his preferences, but try to enter
into the child's thought and feeling, and, having done this, she
may lead him to what she wishes. She should be patient, too ;
for, while the child's perceptions are often more keen and true
than hers, he will find it hard to follow her reasoning processes
and to see relations which are very simple to her. A mother
should teach kindness by her own treatment of helpless creatures.
Let her not crush the insect in the house, nor pull the weed from
the garden with anger or impatience, but teach her child respect
and kindness for all life until he has reached years when he can
clearly distinguish between necessity and cruelty.

Be glad when questions are asked ; hail them, if they grow nat-
urally from the lessons, as the dawn of a good day for the child.
Never say — as many a mother and, alas ! many a teacher does in
answer to a child's question — " Oh, that is too hard for you ; you
must wait until you are older." Is it surprising that children so
treated lose courage and go through life thinking of every new
difficulty, " Oh, that is too hard for me." There is a simple side
to every subject ; and if a child comprehend not a tenth of what
is said, he is helped and satisfied by the effort to treat him as an
intelligent being. If the child can not answer the mother's ques-
tions or his own, he should, if possible, be sent to Nature herself
to find the answer, the mother giving only so much help as to di-
rect his attention and insure his finding the answer within a rea-
sonable time.

The child himself should handle the objects, manipulate the
materials in experiments, make and record observations, and so
learn to give accurate attention, and to keep exact accounts of
what is seen, to use his own hands and eyes, to do. He who can
do as well as think is twice armed against poverty or misfortune.

796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Accidents may be turned to account, not only to teach how to
avoid them, but the immutability of Nature's laws. The sooner a
child finds that Nature never forgives a sin against her, the better
for his health and happiness. I know one mother who has taught
her child to see the relation between headaches and candy ; and
so well he understands it that now, at ten years of age, he does
not overindulge, although the favorite sweets stand always on
the library-table within his reach.

Take advantage of any unusual phenomena. The last transit
of Venus was a chance offered not again in the lives of ourselves
or our children, and every one might have seen it through a
piece of smoked glass. A recent railroad-cut exposed fine ex-
amples of ripple marks, which will soon be buried from sight
by falling earth. After some storms there are exceptional oppor-
tunities for lessons in physical geography and geology. Such
chances are of more value than many things for which we put
them aside.

The relation of natural-science studies to health and to the
mental and moral culture of children has been suggested. Their
industrial uses are familiar to all ; so intimately are they connect-
ed with the life of man that knowledge of any branch makes one
more capable in the conduct of his life. The relations between
these studies and the great workshops of the world may with ad-
vantage be pointed out until the child feels the mighty pulse of
the world's work and acknowledges his debt of service and brother-
hood to all men. The habits of mind produced by continual con-
tact with things, forces, phenomena, and laws promote clearness
of insight and ability to look over a wide field, and to gather the
facts necessary to form right conclusions. . These are the habits
which give success in business.

Another important advantage in the study of the natural
sciences is found in their relation to invention. The emancipa-
tion of man from continuous manual toil is the prophecy which
Science has already uttered ; and she but waits the men to put
her forces at work in the right ways to fulfill this prophecy. A
child rightly started has before him the possibility of doing some
of this needed work, and so adding to the sum of human knowl-
edge and comfort. If he does not do this, he will have the under-
standing which will appreciate and encourage the labor of others;
and if his pursuits early lead him quite away from the impetus
to those studies which his mother may have given in childhood,
still her labors will be rewarded by the increased enjoyment
which touch with Nature adds to any life.

For mothers who have acquired little or no knowledge of nat-
ural science, it may be well to indicate some of the best sources
of information and direction. For the most elementary works,

MOTHERS AND NATURAL SCIENCE. 797

Appletons' Science Primers and Ginn & Co.'s Guides to Science
Teaching are among the best. For more advanced standard
books, the works of Dana, Le Conte, and Geikie in geology, of
Dana and Brush in mineralogy, of Gray and Bessey in botany,
of Packard and Huxley in zoology, of Huxley and Martin in
physiology, of Remsen in chemistry, of Meyer and Wright and
of Ganot in physics, of Newconib and Young in astronomy, are
among the best.

Better than books are the collections of a well-arranged mu-
seum if they are by good fortune accessible. If possible, use them
with the children, not for the amusement of an idle hour, but as
teachers speaking more directly from Nature's heart than books
can do. Also better than books is contact with a living teacher
and association with others interested in the same work. Such
help may be sought with assurance that one will seldom fail of
kindly welcome and of all possible assistance. The Agassiz As-
sociations, whose president is Mr. Harlan H. Ballard, whose head-
quarters are at Pittsfield, Mass., will furnish any mother with the
opportunity of putting herself in contact with workers in this
field, and of getting invaluable aid and inspiration.

Thus far in this paper the benefit of the study of natural sci-
ence to the child only has been considered. But what of the
mother ? Truly, what increases the well-being of the child must
increase hers also ; but is there no personal gain to her apart from
her child ? Will it be nothing to be introduced to Nature, and to
become a welcome guest where one has been a comparative stran-
ger ? Will it be nothing to leave the artificial and conventional,
where so many masks are worn, and make friends with Nature,
who cares nothing about dress, income, or pedigree ?

Few mothers have not felt the renewal of youth which comes
when in the woods, on the mountain, by the shore; have not
found their cares slipping insensibly from them when gazing into
the depths of the sky, listening to the murmur of a brook, or in-
haling the sweet breath of the summer wind. Let me assure
these mothers that every step in the study of any natural science
will open more wide the door through which Nature will pour
such healing balm.

0 mother, tired with housekeeping, give your family simple,
uncooked fruit for dessert ; let puddings and pies go unmade, and
give the time so saved to the pursuit of enduring pleasures ; finish
the little dress with a few less ruffles, and fashion for your child's
mind a garment which can not fade or grow old ; make fewer calls
on your fashionable friends and more to the wood-lot, the open
meadow, and the running brook ; lay aside the latest novel, and go

" Eead what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God " ;

798 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

do not stop to gossip about the newest scandal, yonr neighbor's
new bonnet, or forthcoming party, but pause and bend your ear
in the quiet places where the secrets of all life are told.

You have many hindrances in fashion and conventionalities.
Do you wish you could stop and live differently — live more sim-
ply ; wish you could offer family and guest alike simple bread,
vegetables, and fruit without the fuss of the many courses and
interminable combinations which consume time and often ruin
the digestions and tempers of those who partake of them ; wish
you could get a few simple, artistic patterns for your own and
your children's garments, and use them year after year without
all this harassing discussion of what is style and fashion ; wish
you need go to no large parties, or ever give any, but let the few
chosen friends come when they desire and take you and your
home life as they find them ? Do you wish all these ? Then prove
the desire by making them all true. But you answer, " I can not
unless everybody else does." 'Tis the old story of " foxes and
tails." We actually follow the maxim, "your conscience, not
mine " ; and forever is asked not, Is it right ? but "What will they
think ?

Why not make these radical changes ? Every step of progress
was once a difference which some brave spirit bore alone. Instead
of fearing to be different, one may be proud and thankful to have
found a better way to live : " The great world will come round
to you."

♦»»

COTTON-SPINNING SOUTH AND NORTH.

By HENRY V. MEIGS.

IN The Popular Science Monthly for January, 1890, appeared an
article from the pen of Mr. Edward Atkinson, under the title
The Future Situs of the Cotton Manufacture of the United States.
In this essay Mr. Atkinson writes of what he understands to a re-
markable degree, but I am confident that in some particulars there
is a more favorable outlook for cotton manufacturing in the South
than he is aware of.

First, as to the matter of sufficient humidity in the air, which,
as he truly says, is so essential to success, especially in the manu-
facture of the finer numbers of yarn. An old gray-headed carder
once told me that in his early experience in Scotland he was very
much annoyed by the refusal of the drawing-frame slivers to fall
into the eight, ten, and twelve inch cans supplied for their recep-
tion. This was before the invention of the pressing rollers, which
force the slivers down where they should go. In his vexation one
day, having a belt-awl in his hand, he raised his arm and plunged

COTTON-SPINNING SOUTH AND NORTH. 799

the awl into the bottom of a thin steani-pipe which passed over-
head. A jet of steam rushed out right down upon the refractory-
sliver, and, to his astonishment, down it went right into the can.

I have myself seen these same disobedient slivers fly all around
a man's neck and shoulders and adhere there, to the great dis-
gruntlement of foreman and hands. At the same old mill, above
Columbus, the second if not the first mill built in the State of
Georgia, the machinery was second-hand, brought from some
Northern State. The spindles (fliers) were very ancient. Some-
times when they had a fair chance in fine weather they did pretty
well, and at other times they would vex a saint. The very mo-
ment the sun sank behind the crest of the Alabama hills, however,
there commenced an improvement in the action of these old spin-
dles. Soon the room was in order ; the boys and girls who at-
tended the frames had a little time to "clean up," and their task
was a light one for the rest of the evening. It seemed to me that
the change was due to the humidity of the air inside, when the
dampness of the falls right at the side of the mill was saved from
evaporation by the withdrawal of the hot and drying sun-rays.

Mr. Atkinson writes wisely and well upon the subject of com-
parative humidity in different sections, and only alludes to means
of artificial correction. Does it not seem probable that, with an
efficient hygrometric testing apparatus, and with steam always at
command capable of being admitted to a part or the whole of a
department, the condition of the inside air, in this respect, may be
kept almost uniform ? The expense would be small, and the fore-
man, after being instructed, might be left to control the humidity
of his room, as he is left to control its temperature. It appears to
me that this consideration tends to make all manufacturing pro-
cesses independent of climatic peculiarities.

Mr. Atkinson's remarks as to the coarser work of the Southern
mills are all correct and go right to the root of the matter, but the
inevitable changes to finer work have already commenced here,
compelled, as they are at the North and East, by Southern as well
as Northern competition. I was told years ago that a Northern
manufacturer said that he could afford to pay ten thousand dol-
lars per annum to get rid of the competition of one Southern mill
on the same line of goods as those he was making.

Mr. Atkinson seems to have reached correct results, in his
estimate of the comparative cost of raw cotton in Northern and
Southern mills, but he does not allude to all the points that deserve
consideration in respect to the ultimate cost of cotton in the
goods. A Northern spinner recently mentioned his estimated waste
at sixteen and three tenths per cent, but subsequently wrote me
that he thought it was then about fourteen per cent. I think that
Northern spinners usually estimate it at sixteen per cent. Even

800 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fourteen per cent seems a very large wastage from " middlings,"
the grade my correspondent uses ; which. I attribute to his using
the Gulf and Southwest cottons — from Texas, Louisiana, Missis-
sippi, etc., made mostly by negro labor — in preference to cottons
from the upper counties of this State (Georgia), made largely by
white people — the farmers, their wives and children, who cer-
tainly handle the fleecy staple with far more care. The cotton
marketed at Marietta, in Cobb County, about twenty-five miles
above Atlanta, is generally beautifully white and clean. It is grown
much more abundantly than before 1860, and almost always by the
aid of fertilizers, which hasten the maturity of the cotton, so that
the crop of that part of the country is much sooner prepared for
market than in the lower counties, where it was often plowed in
to make way for the new crop. The prejudice in favor of the Gulf
cotton has always seemed to me to be unfounded, though I know
it to prevail in Old as well as in New England, and generally in
the North. These Northern spinners have often bought uplands
in New Orleans, shipped from Columbus and Macon in this State.
An old planter, who had also been a large cotton-buyer and a
manufacturer as well, always combated this idea. When the yarn
has fourteen to twenty turns of twist to the inch of length, it will
certainly fulfill all the necessary conditions as to twist, as well as if
the fibers were half as long again as they are. American spinners
use a much higher grade of cotton for low numbers than the
English spinners, to which I attribute the statement made to me
by a Georgian of very high intelligence, who spent a number of
years in China, and said that the Chinese greatly preferred
American to English cloth, and I believe he said yarn also.

There is also, in my judgment, a very considerable advantage
which the Southern spinner enjoys over his outside competitors ; in
that he receives his cotton in the loosely packed planter's pack-
age, measuring in depth twenty-eight to thirty-six inches, while
his competitors receive the same staple from the compresses, in
which the bale is squeezed down to a thickness of eight or ten
inches under hundreds of tons of pressure. It must be brought
into a flocculent state again before it can be carded and spun.
Does it not go without saying that the loosely packed cotton in
the planter's bale will require less violent tearing to restore its
lightness and elasticity than that which has been packed for
months under the compress with its enormous power ? I have
seen myself, often, cotton "in the seed" brought to the mill,
weighed in two and four-horse wagons, without any baling at all,
ginned in the mill, and spun at once.

Now as to some other points. Suppose that I build two mills
for myself (to insure the same management exactly). Let them
be exact counterparts of each other, except that the machinery of

COTTON-SPINNING SOUTH AND NORTH. 801

one is propelled by water at Augusta, and that of the other by
steam north of the Potomac. Let both mills be required to pro-
duce the yarn from 4,000 bales of raw cotton, each weighing 480
pounds. The annual consumption will then be, in each mill,
1,920,000 pounds. With waste estimated at fourteen per cent, the
quantity sent to the waste-pile will be from each mill 268,800
pounds, and each will yield the same amount of net yarn — viz.,
1,657,200 pounds.

For my Augusta mill I buy a water-wheel or wheels of say
200 horse-power, and rent my power from the Augusta Canal Com-
pany. The rent charge is five and a half dollars per horse-power
per annum ; so that for 200 horse-power I will have to pay $1,100
for a year. My water-wheels will certainly cost less than a 200
horse-power engine, with its engine-room, boiler-house, stack, coal-
bunkers, etc. But let us claim no advantage in first cost of
power. I start my Augusta mill by simply giving a few turns to
an eighteen-inch wheel on top of my gate-shaft, and it requires no
attention until the rest-time arrives about noon, when the same
number of turns in the opposite direction shuts off the water and
all is at rest. At Columbus, Ga., at the Eagle and Phoenix Manu-
facturing Company's mill No. 1, our water-wheels of 112 horse-
power each made eighty-four revolutions per minute. So you
perceive I get a higher first speed from water-power than I
would like to exact from a steam-engine of the same power.

In this section of country it is almost true to say that the
motion of the water-wheel is never impeded by ice, as it is
elsewhere. "Water-power is not considered by some as being as
steady a power as steam. I think this must be a superstition.
The water-wheel has a continuous circular motion. The steam-
engine changes rectilineal into circular motion at every revolu-
tion, and if with only one cylinder, at every half revolution. How
can a revolution with one or two dead points be as continuous as
a circular motion without any dead points ?

Next I go to start my steam mill — exactly like the other except
as to power. I must hire a costly engineer, for I can not trust my
fine engine and my dangerous high-pressure boilers, with all the
interests dependent upon their continuous action, to a Jack Leg.
I must hire firemen and coal-handlers, for I would need three,
four, or five tons of coal daily, and its handling is laborious and
must be paid for. Then I must buy, let us say, three tons of coal
per day at a minimum for three hundred and ten days — say nine
hundred tons yearly. For my water-wheel a few tons or a few
cords of wood will keep me and my hands comfortable and my
machinery protected. Are these differences insignificant ? Sup-
pose both my mills last twenty years, and that they both run all
the time. I have to buy in the twenty years eighteen thousand

VOL. XXXVII. — 58

802 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tons of coal for one mill and a few cart-loads for the other. If
my engineer and firemen and coal-handling cost me in all $5 per
day, I must pay out for this charge $1,550 per annum, and in
twenty years $31,000. So, for these two items, I have to pay in
twenty years $85,000 for one mill, while the other costs me for the
same items nothing. It really seems as if " a masterly inactivity "
is the true policy when one considers the propriety of starting
the cotton manufacture at the North with steam ; but, on the
contrary, a very masterly activity at Augusta, Ga., and at many
other points in this favored land of " Dixie."

Our mild climate and short winter enable the operatives to
make themselves comfortable at little expense for fuel and cloth-
ing. They swarm to all new mills that are inaugurated, and
think they are fortunate to find work. We have few strikes
here ; hardly any in my experience of nearly fifty years. The
relations between the employed and the employers are almost
always of a kindly character. If we had twice as many mills at
work to-day in the South as we now have, employe's could be
found to take every position except for a time some especial de-
partments of the work.

I have to buy 4,000 bales (1,920,000 pounds) of raw cotton for
each of my mills. For the Augusta mill I pay probably fifteen
cents per bale to get it from the Augusta market to my mill on the
canal — say $600 in all. For my other mill I have to pay a small
drayage here, and fifty-five cents per hundred pounds to get it
from Macon (if bought here) to, let us say, Philadelphia ; 1,920,-
000 pounds, at fifty-five cents per hundred pounds, costing me for
freight alone $10,560 against $600 for my Augusta mill. If the
same prices and the same rates should continue, my twenty years
would net me an outlay for freights alone, without drayage,
$211,200 against my Augusta drayage of $12,000, leaving a bal-
ance of $199,200 against my Northern steam mill as compared
with my Augusta water mill ; and adding the power items as
above estimated, viz., $55,000 for twenty years, there has grown
up a balance against steam of $254,200. It thus appears that, if
both mills should endure for twenty years, I would have made a
quarter of a million dollars more by staying at home than by
wandering out in search of pastures new.

The account seems to be growing very large against my steam
mill, but I am compelled to bring up other items against it. For
instance, I buy the same quantity of cotton for each mill, and I
choose to take fourteen per cent as the measure of waste in both
mills, not quite believing that it should be so much. But the com-
parison is fair, as the amount is the same in both suppositions.
Fourteen per cent of 4,000 bales is 560 bales, which I haul to my
mill at Augusta at fifteen cents per bale drayage, or $84 in alb

COTTON-SPINNING SOUTH AND NORTH. 803

and my waste goes to the waste-pile in Augusta. But I can not
send my 560 bales of waste to Philadelphia so cheaply, but must
pay the same rate as on raw cotton. My 560 bales weigh 268,800
pounds, and on this I pay fifty-five cents per hundred pounds to
Philadelphia, or $1,478.40. Suppose this process to continue for
a twenty years' life of the mill at the same rate of freight. At
the end of twenty years I will have paid out to the Transpor-
tation Company $29,500 instead of $1,680 for my Augusta waste
account.

I think, with Mr. Atkinson, that some very enthusiastic South-
ern spinners overrate the advantage the Southern spinner has in
this respect. I doubt if it will average more than one half cent *
per pound to the Northern than to the Southern spinner; and
there are some very serious considerations, such as higher rates of
interest, the absence of construction and repair shops, etc., which
may considerably reduce any advantage we have now in cotton
price. We are also at a greater distance from the large consum-
ing markets, but the freight charge on the finished product is
lower than on the raw material.

Last spring I was asked by a spinner what I thought would
be the cost of changing half his spinning capacity from sixteen
and twenty to number forty yarns. This is what must come in
the not very distant future ; and as the South advances to forty,
the North must go to sixty, eighty, etc. The product of Southern
mills can be made as perfect as that of any other section. Why
not ? The skill may be as great here as elsewhere, except for
those branches of the work which are not yet attempted, but
which will come in time.

Mr. Atkinson writes disparagingly of the longer working time
in Southern than in Northern mills. He probably had not heard,
when he penned his essay, that the Legislature of Georgia, at its
last session, fixed the working time in cotton-mills at eleven hours
per day. Many working folks North are clamoring for eight
hours per day. I do not think eleven hours too much for a day's
work in a comfortable mill, done by young people who can not
elsewhere find occupation to give them home and subsistence. I
do not think it injures them any more than ten hours would, and
my experience teaches me that it is better to give them in their
destitution the opportunity they are so glad to embrace. The
mill working -day in Pennsylvania is, I believe, of ten hours'
length. Here is another point of advantage which my Augusta
mill has over my Philadelphia mill. I have ten per cent more
working time, and of course produce eleven pounds of yarn in

* As this article goes to press the Macon Telegraph quotes middlings in Macon at 10J-
cents, and in Philadelphia at llf cents, both on the same date — August 27th.

804 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Georgia, while I make only ten pounds in Philadelphia. Is it
not evident that to make my Philadelphia mill equally efficient
with the other, it should have ten per cent more opening and
carding power, more drawing, slubbing, roving, spinning, and
finishing apparatus ? Some people say that ten hours make as
good an output as eleven ; but don't they forget that the product
depends upon the spindle revolutions at last ? While the spindle
revolves at normal speed, the twist must perforce go into the yarn.

A mill has just commenced operation here, in the outskirts of
Macon, with English cards of fifty inches diameter and forty
inches wire surface, with top flats instead of rollers. They turn
off a little more than twenty pounds each per hour — two hundred
pounds and more per day. The card-room machinery is of Eng-
lish make and functions admirably. The spinning machinery is
of American make and is A No. 1. The product is very large, and
the demand for it so great that I was informed recently that the
mill was operated until 9 p. m. Most managers prefer American
machinery. I do not, for the carding department. The American
Robbeth spinning-frame seems to be almost beyond any further
improvement. There is no objection to it, as far as I know, except
that its cost is so great compared with the English cost of the
same machine. I am told that these American spindles cost this
Macon Company $3.30 each, while I have among my papers pro-
posals for the same spindle in England at eight shillings (about
$1.92 each). Most of the practical and skillful foremen are men
of Northern training, and have very strong predilections for the
machines they have been accustomed to, and many of them are
only operators of mills, not constructors or owners. One gentle-
man said in my hearing some years ago, " No man can make
money in this country with English machinery." I reminded him
(it was in 1880) that the English had built forty millions of spin-
dles for their own mills, and probably as many more for the rest
of the world, while the United States had then only about ten
millions; that some of the brightest intellects of England had
been engaged for more than a hundred years in the invention,
the construction, the operation, and the improvement of cotton-
working machinery, and that they might be supposed to have
reached results at least comparable with American results. He
said no more.

Is it not ridiculous that people of sense say, after so long " pro-
tection," that they can not compete in price with English ma-
chinists— especially now, when I see the statement made that
American iron can be sold in England from five to six dollars per
ton cheaper than the English can make it at home ? The manu-
facturers of the North and East generally seem to be unable to
conquer their prejudices in which they have been indoctrinated

COTTON-SPINNING SOUTH AND NORTH. 805

from their youth up. How forcibly Daniel Webster appealed to
them to conquer their prejudices ! *

I have been informed that some people at the North anticipate
a scarcity of operatives for newly inaugurated mills in the South,
but the idea is new to me. In truth, so highly do I estimate the
desirableness of this occupation, especially to the women and girls
of these Southern States, that it has always appeared to me that
this class of persons, if they understood the matter, would " cry
aloud " for the repeal of the duty on imported cotton machinery ;
not on goods to be made in such mills, but on the machinery with
which to make the goods. This duty is thirty -five per cent on the
cost of the iron and forty-five per cent on the cost of the steel used
in machine construction. Why should our machinists have this
great prop to their business, while farmers, miners, and other
workers indirectly pay the duties thus imposed ? The farmers of
the West pay under our system $345,000,000 annually, without
any good to anybody. I quote from a remarkable treatise I read
some years ago, by Alfred Mongredien, an English writer : " But
this is called ' protection ! ' Phoebus ! what a name ! Protection
for the very few American machine-builders, but destitution for
hundreds of thousands of poor women and children who long for
work but can not obtain it because the machinists are so much
( protected' that would-be mill projectors can not afford the high
prices demanded for machines."

Just think of sulphate of quinine ! A few years ago it was
sold at six dollars per ounce at wholesale. The duty was repealed,
and I understand that it can be bought now at some forty-five
cents per ounce. Six dollars under protection; forty-five cents
with competition open to the world. So with cotton-machinery :
$1.92 per spindle in England, $3.30 per spindle at home ! *

* As I conclude this paper I am handed the inclosed slip, right to the point :
" Can not stand Southern Competition. — Baltimore, March 29th. The cotton manu-
facturers of Baltimore are alarmed at the progress of the South in that branch of the na-
tional industry. One of them said to-day : ' We never cared for New England competition ;
it never cost us a thought. We sold, and still sell, more goods in Boston than we do in
Baltimore. But it is the South that is hurting us. Since the opening of the cotton-mills
in Atlanta, Ga., and other places in the South, our trade has fallen off twenty-five per cent.
It is a mistake to suppose that those cotton-mills are hurting the New England mills. It
is Baltimore that is suffering from their competition. They have the advantage of being
right at the cotton-fields ; they have unlimited water-power, and they have labor as cheap
as and even cheaper than we can have it here. The children they employ work seventy-
two hours a week, while the law here allows children to work only sixty hours a week. Of
that, however, we do not complain, as we would not care to have the children work more
than sixty hours.'

" The amount invested in cotton manufacture here is about $5,250,000, and the annual
product of the mills amounts to $7,250,000. Over 5,000 hands are employed, who receive
annually about $1,600,000 in wages. The cotton manufacturers of Baltimore held a meet-
ing last night to discuss the situation."

8o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

INVISIBLE ASSAILANTS OF HEALTH.

By SAMUEL HART, M. D.

IN the natural competitive strife for existence among all or-
ganic beings, man had formerly recognized the fact that he
was in direct antagonism with opponents which were formidable
in proportion to their size, strength, and ferocity; and against
whose aggressions he was to measure force, guided by his best in-
telligence. It has been, of course, a matter of common observa-
tion from most primitive times that some mysterious, invisible
influence was constantly at war upon human life, but whose na-
ture and intent were believed to be beyond permissible human
ken. Scarcely a ray of light seems to have been shed upon this
occult cause of human destruction until the present century ; in-
deed, until within the last score of years. It is true, microscopy
had been gradually unveiling to our astonished vision a new
world, teeming with life of incalculable activity and scientific
importance. But only recently have improved instruments and
methods transformed a former invisible field into a true vivarium
of beings, each having its distinctive size, color, form, require-
ment for food and place, with its cycle of birth, life, and death
peculiar to its species.

It is now understood that our material world, with its visible
occupants, is supplemented by and interdependent with myriads
of micro-organisms, permeating or enveloping all matter, and
whose relation to organic life is essentially cosmical. In some of
their multifarious forms they are the direct and only means and
medium of transformation of material from its cruder form into
the appropriate food for all organic beings ; apparently having
the power of wresting atom from atom in the mineral world in
order to render it available for themselves as well as for plants
and animals ; thus performing a work purely beneficent and es-
sential. Other forms of minute organisms are employed in the
mutations of nature in undoing the work of the former ; and, as
if endowed with a spirit of maleficence, are occupied solely with
the work of decomposing all organic substances, inducing decay
and death.

These bodies are of the so-called low forms of life ; impelled
by natural necessities to provide for themselves where and as
best they may. They are of independent vitality, each individual
having its definite organization and requirement as to kind of
food, temperature, and amount of light and air. They belong to
distinct species, and are reproduced in kind, with as much exacti-
tude in size and form as are the large plants and animals, both of
which natural divisions they represent.

INVISIBLE ASSAILANTS OF HEALTH. 807

They increase with such amazing rapidity that, unless limited
by want of nutriment and favorable environment, a single species
would in a few years occupy the earth's surface to the exclusion
of all other life.

Many species are of wonderful vitality and tenacity of life,
and resist the extremes of temperature, of boiling and freezing.
Others may be dried to an entire suspension of vitality for
months and years ; wafted here and there by the winds until, un-
der favoring circumstances, they renew their wonted activity.
Scattered on the snow of the hill-side, and carried down with the
spring freshet, miles away, they may be swallowed with the
water by some unfortunate individual, and perhaps prove their
presence and their source by inducing in him an infectious dis-
ease of their specific kind.

The microbes may be captured, and cultivated on beds of gela-
tin, albumen, sugar, and in broth of meats ; and under skillful
management be made to furnish flourishing colonies and speci-
mens of the highest degree of development. Or they may be
starved and chilled to such helpless weakness and attenuation as
to seem to lose their specific characteristics. Those we are con-
sidering are among the most minute bodies within the possible
scope of microscopy. This, and their perfect transparency, have
heretofore seemed an insurmountable hindrance to our further
knowledge of them. But the discovery of their strong affinity
for certain of the intense coloring matters has been fortunate
and timely, furnishing a key to brilliant developments, since it
is found that certain species show a predilection for special col-
ors ; and a particular part of the microbe, as its membrane, or its
contents, may unite with the color, while other parts may totally
reject it — thus giving, not only outlines, but illuminated inter-
nal structure, otherwise invisible and unknown.

The extreme minuteness, then, of these bodies has heretofore
been the bar and hindrance to our better knowledge of them.
But already we have been able to peer downward and inward,
from gross visible matter, through organs, tissues, cells, nuclei,
nucleoli, and granules, until, in the so-called structureless proto-
plasm, our present hunting-ground and limit, we seem to have
reached the confines of the inorganic molecule and atom, which
are subject to chemical instead of physiological law. The modern
discoveries in this microcosmic realm, and the demonstration of
the causative relation of micro-organisms to disease, upon which
the "germ theory of disease " depends, stands so conspicuously
as a scientific success, and is a step so important toward the alle-
viation of suffering, the prolongation of life, and enhancement of
human happiness as to be the subject of universal congratulation.

In order to comprehend the importance of this subject, it must

808 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be assumed that each of the long list of diseases known as infec-
tious is caused by its own specific virus, and that no other ma-
terial or combination of agencies can produce it. This fact is
universally recognized. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated
in a large proportion of these diseases that the essential principle
of infection in the virus is the living germ called the pathogenic
microbe.

The literally vital relation of microbic to human life can be
observed in the following general statement : The pathogenic mi-
crobes cause four fifths of all diseases of the human family ; they
destroy more lives than war, famine, fire, murders, shipwreck,
and all other casualties ; and they actually abbreviate the aver-
age natural term of human life by three fourths, and constantly
depress the health average of the world's population far below its
natural standard.

They are an insidious but powerful and relentless enemy to
human kind, holding sway over a large part of the most beauti-
ful and fertile portions of the earth, excluding man at the peril of
his life; while, as if with malicious discrimination, ferocious
animals and venomous reptiles find there their congenial home,
and vegetation reaches its acme of luxuriance. Like some dia-
bolical spirit, in the form of the epidemic, it leaves its native
habitat, and with insatiate malignity, sometimes with slow but
irresistible progress, and again by rapid flight, passes all barriers
of mountain, sea, and distance in its pursuit of man, its only
known object, and whose destruction is its only visible effect.
This is shown in Asiatic cholera, the plague, yellow fever, and the
lesser scourges. The strife for possession in some coveted regions
has been progressing for ages. Man may advance his outposts
under the favoring light of sunshine, but must retreat, or fortify
himself against the dangerous shades of night, until, by slow de-
grees, advantages are gained over the invisible enemy.

The Italian Pontine marshes, the jungles of India, the banks
and shores of the tropics, our own Southern lowlands and fertile,
new prairies are the strongholds of Bacillus malarial.

"The pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the sickness
that wasteth at noonday," are known to be the work of the armies
of the microbes.

Some of the means and methods of the micrologist, in his re-
searches, must be mentioned. His outfit is extensive and novel.
It includes the best known microscopes and a well-constructed
incubator with heater and thermometer, numerous test-glasses,
beakers, filters, acids, alkalies, deep-colored dyes, and a good sup-
ply of prepared cotton.

In studying the life history of his microbes he will require a
well-supplied commissariat. He must be a professional caterer

INVISIBLE ASSAILANTS OF HEALTH. 809

and a bountiful feeder. He must have fluids, semi-fluids, and
solids, broths of various meats, peptonized food, the serum of
blood, a la Koch, and Pasteur's favorite recipe with the French
refinement : Recipe, 100 parts distilled water, 10 parts pure cane
sugar, 1 part tartrate of ammonium, and the ash of 1 part of yeast.
Among the substantial must be found, boiled white of egg,
starch, gelatin, Japan isinglass, and potato— the last, from South
as well as North America.

The appointments of his cuisine, and the extreme care and
delicacy of manipulation required, will be shown in the prepara-
tion of a broth for the cultivation of a particular species of mi-
crobe. First, let it be remembered, all our surroundings are
swarming with micro-organisms, a thousand times more numer-
ous than the locusts of Egypt, and to exclude them from the
kneading-troughs of the micrologist requires all the knowledge
of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. A matter of the
first importance, then, is that everything connected with the cul-
tivation of microbes must be sterilized ; which means that every
microbe not wanted for observation must be destroyed ; and no
exorcism except by fire or the strongest antiseptics is found
available. The preparation of a nutrient material for the culti-
vation of selected germs, according to Klein, will illustrate :

Place in a glass beaker fresh meat and water, equal weights ;
boil one hour ; strain through a sterilized filter ; after allowing
the bouillon to stand for five hours, boil and filter as before.
When cool, place in preserving glasses which have been sterilized
by the flame of gas or the hot oven ; then close by sterilized cot-
ton, and boil again for over thirty minutes, and cover the mouth
of the glass with an inverted beaker, one half filled with sterilized
cotton, in order to effectually exclude the germ-laden air. Boil
again the next day, and, when cool, place in an incubator for
twenty -four hours at a suitable warmth, in order to hatch into life
some possible germ of salamander endurance ; and, finally, boil
again for more than thirty minutes, in order to destroy this last
suspected germ. If everything has been skillfully done, we have
now a culture fluid exactly suited to the growth and development
of a certain kind of germ only. These numerous steps and pre-
cautions for food-making may appear useless and absurd, but a
little haste or a false step would undo the work of many days, and
only this extraordinary attention to every detail has, after years
of investigation, attended with acrimonious discussion among
scientists, finally and forever settled the question of " spontaneous
generation/' as if in reassertion of the law that every living thing
shall bring forth after its kind.

The method of demonstrating the germ cause of disease is as
follows : Using only sterilized test-tubes, forceps, pipettes, cotton,

810 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

etc., take a particle of virus, known or supposed to contain patho-
genic microbes, from a person suffering from an infectious disease,
insert it by a delicate glass pipette through, the sterilized cotton
plug of a test-tube containing some of the prepared culture mate-
rial, and deposit it there. Then place the tube in an incubator,
warmed to the required degree, and let it remain for the number
of hours suited to the peculiar requirement of its germ contents.
By this means a vigorous progeny of one kind of microbe is
obtained, while the tendency is to eliminate other kinds whose
requirements are different.

But to further insure the. exclusion of the ubiquitous horde,
take out carefully a little colony of the vigorous microbes of the
first culture through the cotton covering and place it in a new
culture-tube with the same precautions as before, and so on, until,
through high feeding of our test microbes and the adverse treat-
ment of the others, we have, by microscopic tests, the thorough-
bred, vigorous, and, may be, deadly microbe, which may be seen
and every characteristic noted as to size, form, coloring, manner
and time of development, all of which enable the observer to fix
its classification. But the crucial test as to the relationship of a
certain species of microbe to a particular disease is made as fol-
lows : Take, as above, the microbes from an individual suffering
from a well-known infectious disease, cultivate them to complete
isolation and perfection, and introduce them by inoculation into
the blood or tissues of a healthy person. Here they must undergo
a period of development or incubation, requiring just the number
of days and hours as in the culture-tube. This fully developed
disease must be strictly the same as that which furnished the test
germs.

In making these experiments with the virus of dangerous
diseases the human subject can not, of course, be deliberately
employed ; but casual inoculations and infections furnish oppor-
tunities for exact observation. A few enthusiastic pathologists
and would-be martyrs have submitted to inoculations which have
proved of scientific value. The inferior animals furnish much
valuable material in this line, although they are entirely exempt
from many diseases belonging to man ; while in the human sub-
ject there seems a greater general susceptibility to microbic in-
fection.

Founded upon the knowledge of the natural history of the
pathogenic microbes has come the only scientific and satisfactory
classification of the infectious diseases. It may be stated, as a
rule, that the virus of infectious diseases originates either in the
bodies of diseased living beings or in decomposing organic mat-
ter. When the germs of the virus mature in the living being,
ready for reproduction in another person, they produce the acute

INVISIBLE ASSAILANTS OF HEALTH. 811

*

contagious diseases, including small-pox, chicken-pox, scarlet fe-
ver, typhns fever, relapsing fever; measles, miliary fever, influ-
enza, whooping-cough, and hydrophobia.

In another class, called miasmatic contagions, the germs are
propagated in diseased persons, but, as a law of their further de-
velopment, they must undergo one stage of change outside of
the body, in some decomposing organic matter, before they can
again produce their peculiar disease in a healthy person, except
by inoculation. To these miasmatic contagious diseases belong
typhoid fever, yellow fever, cholera, diphtheria, acute consump-
tion, cerebro-spinal meningitis, and erysipelas. When the virus
originates entirely in decomposing vegetable matter, we have the
malarious diseases : intermittent fever, remittent fever, continued
malarial fever, pernicious fever, dengue fever, and chronic mala-
rial infection.

Adopting this classification gives practical advantages with-
out waiting for the demonstration of the particular microbes of
each disease or their modus operandi. It is sufficient practically
to know that the whole list of infectious diseases is accounted
for under well-known laws of microbic generation. Indeed, the
pathogenic cause may simply be called a virus ; reserving only
a distinctive character for each of the classes mentioned, viz. :

1. A virus which reaches full development in the diseased
person, ready for infection in another, as in the small-pox class.

2. A virus which must be produced in the diseased person, but
is not transmissible to another until after undergoing further
development outside of the body ; and usually in some decompos-
ing organic matter. This is true of the typhoid-fever class.

3. Where the virus originates invariably in decomposing or-
ganic matter, and, after infecting the human subject, is never
transmissible directly from one individual to another. This is
the malarial class, including all the intermittent fevers, or the
agues of slight degree as well as dangerous remittents and perni-
cious fevers, the intermittent neuralgias, and the " dumb agues."

Numerous other and very extensively prevalent diseases are
known to be of microbic origin ; among them pneumonia, rheuma-
tism, tetanus, rabies, and the venereal in its numerous forms and
phases.

Aside from the advantage of a scientific classification of dis-
eases is that gained in the matter of prevention as well as cure ;
in both of which much has already been realized.

The means and manner of action of microbes in their destruc-
tion of life and health are various, and in some instances, as yet,
obscure. As a prerequisite to their infectious development they
must gain access to the blood or tissues through the cutaneous
exterior or the mucous interior of the body ; each species having

812 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

its peculiar site for ingress, its locality for operation, and its pe-
culiar way of accomplishing the destructive work. Some produce
harmful if not fatal changes in the blood by appropriating some
of its vital qualities, leaving the system robbed and impoverished.
Others seem to obstruct the minute vessels by their immense
numbers, and thus do harm in a mechanical way. Some attack
the blood-cells, penetrate their walls, and absorb their contents.
Another and most important action of microbes is the production
of poisons of deadly intensity, tending not only to the destruction
of the infected person, but of themselves as well.

These products of the pathogenic germs, called ptomaines,
seem to be the means of the suicidal limitation of germ-life in
certain instances — where, having gained access to the healthy
tissues, they nourish for a time, destroying as they go ; but pres-
ently they lose their vitality, poisoned by their own venom,
which may be sufficient in quantity and intensity to destroy the
individual infected. This fortunate tendency to self-destruction
of microbic life seems to belong to the infectious diseases.

A remarkable and important fact here is the exemption ac-
quired by the individual once having a disease from all future
attacks. The explanation is as yet difficult. By some patholo-
gists it is supposed that the change in the system is due to the
permanent retention of a sufficient amount of the ptomaines gen-
erated by the first microbic invasion to prevent a reintroduction
of the same species. In that case the ptomaine would prove no
hindrance to the successful attack of other species. Some sup-
pose that an essential nutritive principle in the system becomes
completely consumed by the first attack, and may never be repro-
duced to support a second one. But recent, observations on the
behavior of certain cells furnish a means, at once the most plaus-
ible and remarkable, for explaining the acquired disease-immu-
nity, as well as a variable degree of original protection. These
cells, called leucocytes and phagocytes, seem possessed of an in-
stinctive, independent existence and behavior, suggestive of in-
tellection. They are capable of locomotion, and a change of size
and form — being constructed of elastic cell- walls of most filmy
attenuation.

Their purpose, in part at least, seems to be to protect the sys-
tem from harm within the blood, organs, and tissues. They are
found where they may render the most ready and efficient serv-
ice, particularly in the blood and in the air-cells and bronchioles
of the lungs. Like a light guard in peaceful times, they are not
conspicuously numerous ; but in time of an attack they present
themselves in great numbers and efficiency, and their energy
in defense seems increased by any opposition not quite over-
whelming.

INVISIBLE ASSAILANTS OF HEALTH. 813

The means of aggression or defense, as well as of sustenance,
of the phagocyte, is by attaching itself to a particle of matter,
and gradually surrounding and incasing it in its membranous
walls until it is literally swallowed. If the particle should be a
microbe, rich in protoplasm, it would be digested by the vora-
cious and omnivorous phagocyte ; but if of mineral origin, as dust
of coal or sand inhaled by the lungs, it would be carried to the
surface or to a safe receptacle, where the cell, having performed
its mission, deposits itself, still incasing its burden. The phago-
cytes seem to meet whole broods of infective microbes which may
have invaded the body, and destroy them, and, as it were, gradu-
ally acquire and permanently retain such efficiency as in future
invasions of the same species to prevent any harmful action.
The contest between these opposing forces does not always ter-
minate with regularity as to time, as in the acute infectious
diseases, but may become chronic, and the time and result un-
certain.

In the slow, malarial diseases, according to this theory, the
phagocytes finally acquire a domination more or less complete
over the Bacilli malarial ; and this occurs not because the mala-
ria has become less virulent, but because the phagocytes have
acquired unwonted potency during the contest. This acquired
domination of the phagocytes over one species of microbe seems
not to be available against the inroads of other species. The
exemption acquired in diphtheria and some other diseases seems
partial as to degree and uncertain as to time.

One dreadful example of the failure of self-limitation of dis-
ease is found in hydrophobia. Here there is no natural stay or
check to its fatality, and, although the most distinguished pa-
thologists have given this question their best attention for many
years, it seems questionable whether any life has ever been saved
from hydrophobia. Large numbers of persons have been treated
by inoculation for supposed hydrophobia, many of whom died,
and the symptoms proved the hydrophobic cause ; while in those
who recovered no positive demonstration of true hydrophobia
could be made, and the question of curability or prevention by
inoculation remains undetermined.

M. Pasteur, the wizard micrologist, claims success in his bat-
tles with the rabies germs, and his brilliant achievements in other
fields lend encouragement to expectant humanity. Jenner's vac-
cine discovery, by which millions of lives have been saved,
encourages the sanguine belief that the principle of inoculation
will, ere long, be made available for the preservation of countless
human lives.

The method of M. Pasteur has been to obtain some of the
positively fatal virus from the brain of a person or animal which

8 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

had died from hydrophobia, and to reduce the germs through
numerous generations by a system of modifying treatment until
they have lost, in some degree, their fatal virulence, while at the
same fime they may have retained a protective activity within
the limits of safety.

In the warfare with the pathogenic microbes the idea of em-
ploying certain species as our allies, and opposing them against
the very dangerous ones, is brilliant, and there are many facts
encouraging the belief that the kingdom of the microbes may
be further divided against itself, through the natural voracity of
its numerous clans. Surely any tactics and every means, agres-
sive and defensive, must be made available against an enemy so
insidious and so formidable.

-♦♦♦-

THE EVOLUTION OF CHEMICAL TRUTH.

By M. LOUIS OLIVIER.

IN" his Lectures on Chemical Philosophy, J. B. Dumas has
taken notice of the "singular contrast which is to be re-
marked among ancient peoples between the nourishing condition
of industrial chemistry and the entire absence of theoretical
chemistry." Empiricism, commanded by the necessities of ma-
terial life, had, in fact, to precede the disinterested speculations
of the reasoning powers. In this way the Phoenicians and Egyp-
tians made discoveries of great significance in the arts of metal-
lurgy, glass-working, and dyeing, without being guided by any
scientific light. They interpreted them in a' mystical sense, con-
formable to their religious conceptions of nature. Whatever we
may think of their theories, we can not forget the positive bases of
them ; for the rational science of our century has been derived
from their observations, winnowed by the ages. The facts have
resisted the assaults of time, while the magic, the theurgic doc-
trines, found to be sterile, have gradually disappeared to give
place at last to the fruitful idea of natural laws. It was a cu-
rious metamorphosis, in which astrology, alchemy, and the old
medicine predicating the virtues of stones and talismans, mark the
transition from the ancient to the modern mind.

It is with great interest that we follow with M. Berthelot * the
evolution that has thus taken place in chemistry from the ancient
Orientals to the Greeks, and from them to us ; for it is associated
with the development of philosophical ideas, consequently with
the history of the human mind. From the time when alchemy

* Les Origines de l'Alchimie (Origins of Alchemy).

THE EVOLUTION OF CHEMICAL TRUTH. 815

in a somewhat sudden fashion made its appearance in the world,
till the moment of the fall of the Roman Empire, we know very
nearly what it was, but are hardly certain whence it came. The
study of which we are about to give an account assigns for it a
triple origin: the industrial processes of the ancient Egyptians,
the speculative theories of the Greek philosophers, and the mystic
reveries of the Alexandrines and Gnostics. This conclusion is
derived from the attentive examination of documents that have
not been studied before with this point in view ; among which are
Lepsius's memoir on the metals in antiquity, Egyptian papyruses
in Paris and Leyden, and Greek manuscripts in the French
National Library and St. Mark's Library in Venice. M. Ber-
thelot has compared with these texts, on one side, the beliefs of
the first alchemists concerning the origin of their art; and, on
the other, their positive knowledge, as well as the theories ac-
cepted in the second and third centuries of the Christian era.
The deductions from these different sources are quite concordant.

Zosimus the Panopolitan, " the oldest of authentic chemists,"
wrote, three hundred years after Christ, that "the Scriptures
teach that there is a certain race of demons that have commerce
with women. Hermes has spoken of them in his book on nature.
The ancient and holy Scriptures relate that certain angels, smit-
ten with love for women, came down upon the earth and taught
them the works of nature; on this account, they were driven
from heaven and condemned to perpetual exile. From this inter-
course sprang the race of giants. The book in which they
taught the arts is called Cliema, whence the name Cliema, which
is applied to the most excellent art." This idea of sinning angels
who revealed the occult arts and sciences to mortals, is found in
several countries. It is " in harmony with the old biblical myth
of the tree of knowledge placed in the garden, the fruit of which
when eaten brought about the fall of man."

The Theban papyruses at Leipsic attribute the same mystical
character — a kind of seal of its Eastern origin — to alchemy. It
was Hermes Trismegistes who made known practical metallurgi-
cal processes, the hermetic science, the mysterious art of transmu-
tation. The Egyptian priests, who were instructed in it, had to
take an oath to keep the secret of it. This custom was preserved
among the Neoplatonists and magicians of the fourth century
and the alchemists of the middle ages and the Renaissance.

Many of the traditions held in honor among the alchemists
seem to have been borrowed from the Theban priests. The num-
ber four was sacred with both. The philosopher's stone was
called the Egyptian stone in the middle ages. The alchemic sign
for water was the hieroglyph for that substance. The sign for
tin, which has been transferred to the metal mercury, was also

816 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the hieroglyph for the planet Mercury ; and a similar identity is
observable between the sign for gold and the hieroglyph for the
sun. Osiris was the synonym for lead, sulphur, etc.

This mystic relationship of the metals and the planets goes
back to the Babylonians, and the idea was perpetuated. Pindar
mentioned the relation between gold and the sun ; and Proclus, in
his commentary on the Timseus, wrote, " The sun produces gold,
the moon silver, Saturn lead, and Mars iron."

The symbol for the philosophical egg appears to have origi-
nated in Chaldea, and to have been introduced thence into Egypt.
So was the idea of the microcosm made in the image of the macro-
cosm. Thus the Babylonians and the Greeks of Egypt, as well as
the Alexandrians and the Chinese, held to these aphorisms, after-
ward so dear to the alchemists, concerning the generation and
transmutation of metals, the panacea, and the elixir of long life.

Traces of Jewish traditions, mingled with Eastern fables, can
be found in some of the alchemic beliefs of about the eleventh
century. Several papyruses mention important receipts as in-
cluded in the pretended Secret Book of Moses ; a Greek manu-
script of St. Mark's represents Mary the Jewess, to whom the
invention of the water-bath is attributed, as saying: "Do not
touch the philosopher's stone with your hands ; you are not of
our race, you are not of the race of Abraham." According to
Zosimus, the sacred art of the Egyptians and the power of gold
that resulted from it were delivered to the Jews by a fraud, and
they revealed them to the rest of the world.

This confluence of the Chaldo-Egyptian and Jewish sources of
alchemy took effect in the first three centuries of Christianity, or
at the time when Gnosticism was flourishing at Alexandria. The
first alchemists seem, in fact, to have nearly all fallen under
the influence of Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. The symbolical
forms of universal life, the allegorical figures in which the phil-
osophical sense of things was hidden, were abundant in their
writings ; and here and there in them we meet all sorts of Gnostic
signs, from the image of the world without beginning or end,
represented by the dragon Uraboros, a serpent biting his tail, to
the eight-rayed stars and magic circles of Cleopatra's " chryso-
paeus." The introduction of Gnostic ideas into the theories of
the alchemists undoubtedly accounts for their inclination to ex-
plain the hidden properties of nature by signs of double or triple
meaning.

The same tendency is evident in the Greek alchemists, whose
memory has been preserved by the ancient manuscripts. The St.
Mark's manuscripts cite as among the most famous of these, after
Hermes, John, Arch-priest of Thutia, and Democritus, the cele-
brated philosopher of Abdera. But they also introduce to us

TEE EVOLUTION OF CEEMICAL TRUTE. 817

Zosimus, the experimenter, the historian and biographer of Plato,
Olympiadorus, and Stephanus, authors of important memoirs on
the art of making gold. For that purpose they employed, accord-
ing to the manuscripts, a projecting powder endowed with the
mysterious power of impregnating bodies. This powder was pre-
pared in the Thebaid, at places which, according to Agatharcides,
were centers of metallurgical enterprises.

In the ninth century all the documents are found in the hands
of the Arabs, who became the depositories and continuers of
Grecian science. Mussulman civilization has handed down to us
the history of the mythic alchemists, their mysterious formulas,
and the practices which they adopted for blanching and yellowing
metals — that is, for changing them into silver and gold. In their
conceptions of matter, the Arabs of Spain and Syria followed in
part the philosophical systems of pagan Greece; and their au-
thors freely quoted Aristotle, Heraclitus, Xenocrates, Diogenes,
and Democritus. The story of their doctrines and brilliant dis-
coveries is told in all histories of chemistry.

M. Berthelot's detailed review of the positive facts which
alchemy received from antiquity makes it manifest that Egypt
left an inestimable treasure to the world. The priests of Thebes
and Memphis made great advances in the knowledge of the art of
extracting metals, of forming alloys, and of making vessels and
tools out of them. They distinguished crude gold from refined
gold, and could work that metal up into a variety of articles.
They fed the hope that they might be able to obtain it by color-
ing asemon, or silver, yellow. Of the latter metal they made
money, the value of which was guaranteed by an impressed im-
age. They extracted gold and silver from electrum, a mineral
containing both substances, but which presented to their eyes the
appearance of a metal like them. This was what led them to the
notion of transmutation.

The Egyptians designated as cTiesbet several kinds of blue
or green sapphires colored with cobalt or copper. They made in-
crustations, amulets, necklaces, and various ornaments of them.
They succeeded in compounding an artificial chesbet resembling
the natural stone. A fact worthy of remark in the matter is,
that this was done by " the assimilation of a colored substance, a
precious stone, an enamel, a vitrified color, with metals." This
assimilation suggested the new idea of dyeing ; " for the imitation
of the sapphire rests on the coloring of a large mass, colorless
by itself, but constituting the vitrifiable basis, which we dye by
the aid of a small quantity of coloring matter. With enamels
and colored glasses thus prepared, the natural precious stones
were reproduced ; they were covered with figures, with objects of
earth or stone, and were incrusted with metallic objects."

vol. xxxyn. — 59

818 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Among the minerals and metals known to the Egyptians are
also mentioned the emerald, malachite, copper in alloys, iron, lead,
tin, and mercnry, the mobility of which caused it to be regarded
as living; whence the name quicksilver. Their tinctorial art
included dyeing in yellow, white, and black ; and they could also
dye purple by means of alkanet and archil. All these changes
brought about in the appearance of bodies seemed to be modifi-
cations of their properties, and consequently to legitimize the
expectation of effecting transmutation. We should, however,
recollect that the idea of the fixedness of the properties of bodies
is wholly modern. Even Bacon wrote in the seventeenth century :
" Observing all the qualities of gold, we find that it is yellow,
very heavy, of a certain specific gravity, malleable, and ductile to
a certain degree ; and whoever is acquainted with the formulas
and processes necessary to produce at will the yellow color, the
high specific gravity, the ductility, and knows, also, the means
of producing these qualities in different degrees, will perceive
the means and be able to take the measures necessary to unite
these qualities into a definite body ; and from this will result its
transmutation into gold." This was, in fact, the dream and the
mastering passion of the alchemy of the middle ages and the
Renaissance.

These conceptions were very ancient, and must be looked for
in their original forms in the Greek philosophy. The germ of
the doctrine of transmutation is in the Tirnseus. It rests on the
idea of primitive matter, the indifferent supporter of all the qual-
ities that can be heaped upon it. Plato insists upon the idea,
which he regards as fundamental, that " the thing which re-
ceives all bodies never comes out from its ■ own substance. It is
the common basis of all the different substances, and is deprived
of all the forms which it would receive otherwise." The primary
matter was supposed to be composed of fire, which made it visi-
ble, earth, which made it tangible, air, and water, which assured
the union of the earth and the fire — these four elements being
formed of minute corpuscles, susceptible of changing into one
another ; for we see, says Plato, " that water, in condensing, be-
comes stone and earth, and in melting and dividing itself up,
becomes wind and air. Air inflamed becomes fire ; fire, condensed
and extinguished, resumes the form of air ; air, thickening,
changes into mist, and then flows as water ; and from water are
formed earth and stones."

All bodies were believed to be the seat of a transformation of

this kind. Under the influence of this thought, Proclus wrote,

' Things being never able to preserve a nature of their own, who

shall dare affirm that one of them is this rather than the other ? "

It is, therefore, by virtue of a necessary law of nature that bodies

THE EVOLUTION OF CHEMICAL TRUTH. 819

are modified, and transformation is possible. This determinist
conception was afterward mingled in the minds of the alchemists
with Oriental mysticism; but it must be remarked that it pre-
sented, in the Greek philosophers Thales, Anaximenes, Heracli-
tus, Empedocles, Plato, and their immediate heirs, a really sci-
entific character. Michael Psellus was faithful to their doc-
trine when he wrote to the Patriarch Xiphilin, in a letter which
was used as the Preface to the Collection of the Greek Alchemists :
" The changes of nature are made naturally,, not by virtue of
an incantation or a miracle, or of a secret formula. There is an
art of transmutation. . . . You want me to teach you the art that
resides in fire and furnaces, and which produces the destruction
of substances and the transmutation of their natures. Some be-
lieve that this is a secret knowledge, gained by initiation, which
they have not tried to reduce to a rational form ; which seems to
me an enormous error. For myself, I try first to learn the causes,
and to deduce from them a rational explanation of the facts. I
sought it in the nature of the four elements, from which every-
thing comes by combination, and to which everything returns by
solution."

From Greece alchemy then received, with the idea of a pri-
mary matter and the system of atoms, a whole contingent of
rationalistic notions which subsequently modified more or less
Christian mysticism and the traditions of the East. The effort
of the alchemists of the middle ages to divest the metals of their
individual qualities in order to reach the primitive matter, the
mercury of the old philosophers, was then in harmony with Pla-
to's metaphysics. But, in the operations they performed for that
end, they could only determine the indefinite transformation of
the elements, and they represented the mysterious process under
the symbolical form of a ring-serpent which has neither begin-
ning nor end. This hopeless picture of chemistry did not cease to
be true till the end of the last century. By introducing the bal-
ance into laboratories, Lavoisier demonstrated that the weight of
metals is invariable, and, in a general way, that the origin of all
chemical phenomena lies in the reactions of a small number of
undecomposable bodies, the weight and properties of which are
constant.

This great discovery sapped the alchemic doctrine of the trans-
mutation at its very foundations. It is, however, still permissi-
ble to ask if the present elements, as yet undecomposed, are really
simple bodies. If Prout's hypothesis that they are polymers of
hydrogen could be demonstrated, the hope of passing from one to
the other would be entirely legitimate. But the recently carefully
made determinations of the equivalents of simple bodies by Du-
mas and Stas have weakened that theory. The laws of specific

820 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

heat, moreover, do not permit us to see in onr present simple bodies
polymers of the same substance comparable to known polymers.
The specific heat of the last increases, according to Woestyn's law,
with the complex structure of their molecule, while the specific
heat of simple bodies varies, according to Dulong and Petit's law,
inversely as their equivalents.

We may, nevertheless, conceive the unity of matter in another
sense. Some chemists oppose to Prout's hypothesis a new and
more comprehensive one, which consists in regarding the elements
as states of stable equilibrium in which matter exhibits itself.
" In this order of thought," says M. Berthelot, " a body reputed
simple could be destroyed but not decomposed in the ordinary
sense. At the moment of destruction it would at once transform
itself into one or several other simple bodies, identical with or
resembling the existing elements. But the atomic weights of the
new elements could not offer any commensurable relation with
the atomic weight of the primary body from which they are pro-
duced by metamorphosis. More than this: by working under
different conditions we might see appear sometimes one system,
sometimes another, of simple bodies, developed by the transforma-
tion of another element. Only the absolute weight would remain
invariable in the course of the transmutations."

Even under this hypothesis the hope of forming simple bodies
need not seem chimerical. Unfortunately, we have no more rea-
sons for encouraging it than for condemning it. All that can be
said respecting it is that the present condition of science does not
allow us to discern any method that will lead to the end. Would
it not be wiser, then, to make our theories more complete rather
than venture into this darkness without a guiding thread ? It is
no mystery to any one that they greatly need improvement. The
imponderable fluids have only just passed away ; the ether, too,
seems to be already withdrawing, taking along with it, perhaps,
the atom of the chemists ; and does it not seem that everything is
about to be explained by motion ?

M. Berthelot discusses these questions with his well-known
vigor and originality. His work, erudite and pointed, is par-
ticularly instructive to the thinker. He in fact restores to our
view the affiliation of the systems that were conceived at the
birth of chemistry, and which have been revived at our time in
the effort to resolve the eternal problem of the constitution of
matter. — Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from the
Bevue Scientifique.

IRRIGATION IN CHINA. 821

IRRIGATION IN CHINA.*

By GENEEAL TCHENG KI TONG.

I PURPOSE to describe what has been accomplished in utiliz-
ing the natural waters in our country, where for four thousand
years we have sought to get all we could out of them. By means
of economical utilization our lands, notwithstanding the extraor-
dinary multiplication of our people, have furnished us ample
supplies of food. One of our proverbs says, u Always have chil-
dren ; Providence, which brings them to light, will not let them
die of hunger." You never see insects, creatures of nature as we
are, dying of hunger ; why should men suffer more from it than
these little ones ? Every one, therefore, ought to find support on
the ground he lives upon ; but to do this we must take advantage
of all the circumstances. If the ground is not sufficient for our
wants, we should add to it the fruitfnlness of water, subjected to
our use. While the Western people have done much to utilize
water wherever it seems available, there are, to my view, many
defects in their management. I believe water is made to be used
everywhere, and yet, notwithstanding the progress of science, this
rule is not always conformed to in the West. With all their engi-
neering works, well-water fails in the large cities, and that from
the rivers has to be used. It is impure, and consequently un-
wholesome. In China, where we have had the same difficulty to
contend with, we applied the remedy long ago by always boiling
such water previous to using it — applying the anti-microbic
remedy before the existence of microbes had been scientifically
determined.

The efforts of our ancestors to subject the waters to their use
date from an enormous antiquity ; I have documents that show
how this was done forty centuries ago. Notwithstanding the nu-
merous modern inventions to facilitate the labor and manipula-
tion, we have resolved the most difficult problems in such a manner
that nothing can be shown to this day that surpasses what has
been accomplished among us by the most primitive methods. By
virtue of our system of irrigation our fields give us three crops a
year without asking for any intervals of rest. Our liberally
watered land is like a peasant woman ignorant of the refine-
ments and weariness of the society woman, whose children fol-
low one after another in the regular order of nature. This com-
parison may seem a little vague ; but in China we believe that
the sky is masculine and the earth feminine ; that the one acts
and the other produces ; and that all fertility is the result of the

* An address, delivered July 26, 1889, before the Congress for the Utilization of Waters.

822 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

close union of these two constituent elements of our world. That
is the fundamental idea of our agricultural and hydraulic phi-
losophy.

The distribution of water by canals dates, in China, from the
fabulous epoch. Having been carried on before letters and liter-
ature existed, we do not know what method was at first employed.
In the year 2300 B. c, according to our annals, in the reign of the
Emperor Yao, China was visited by a deluge extending over the
whole empire. It lasted nine years, during which the whole
country was a submarine domain. The waters of this flood were
drained away by the enterprise of the Emperor Yu, our Noah,
who employed seven years in dividing the country into nine
regions, separated from one another by artificial water-courses
which were like natural frontiers. After the water had been
withdrawn he had the qualities of the lands of each province
examined, and the products ascertained which they could afford ;
established the unit of land measure, and fixed nine classes of im-
posts, graduated according to the fertility of the lands and their
situation. The conditions thus established lasted ten centuries.

In 1100 b. c. the prime minister of the Emperor Wou-Weng,
Tcheou-Kung, constructed norias, or hydraulic machines of sim-
ple design and working, by which water was raised to a height to
which it had never been carried before, and made reservoirs and
canals for irrigation. Water was conducted, by means of ma-
chinery, from the wells to the dry hill-tops, and water provision
was assured for times of drought. Agriculture, in consequence,
flourished. Other measures of Tcheou-Kung comprised the pro-
mulgation of laws respecting the boundaries of properties and the
prevention of trespasses. The fields were divided into squares
called wells, from their resemblance to the Chinese character sig-
nifying a well, surrounded and furrowed by ditches so arranged
that eight farmers, each tilling his own tract, united in cultivat-
ing the ninth, interior tract, which belonged to the state, and the
produce of which paid their rent.

The system succeeded to a marvel. Each tenant was proprie-
tor of about fifteen acres, the whole product of which belonged to
him, while the state was really proprietor of the whole, and had,
as a landlord, the income of the ninth tract. Besides this, each
farmer had some 3,350 square metres of ground for his farm-yard
and his mulberry-trees. Thus he always enjoyed a surplus of
provision, of pork and poultry for food, and silk for clothing. No
one at this time was richer or poorer than another, but a com-
plete social equality existed, and every one, they say, was satis-
fied. The dynasty under which this system was established fell
into decay about 600 B. c, when a period of feudal oppression set
in that lasted for two hundred years. At the end of that time

IRRIGATION IN CHINA. 823

Prince Houan-Kung, having obtained the supremacy in the king-
dom of Tchi, returned to the system of Tcheou-Kung in a modi-
fied form. He appointed a minister and other officers of waters,
who visited all parts of the country and attended to the execution
of the works needed to prevent the visitation of the two great
scourges of drought and floods. By these energetic measures
the kingdom of Tchi was made the richest state of the time.
When the Emperor Tsing-Tse-Houang, B. c. 250, reunited the
Chinese Empire, he made the lands free to all, and imposed a tax
instead of the cultivation of the ninth for the state. Previous to
this he had constructed the Tcheng-Ko Canal, to conduct water
from the King Eiver to the Pe Mountain, by the aid of which
some nine hundred thousand or one million acres of formerly
sterile land were made fertile, so as by its increased wealth great-
ly to aid him in transforming his kingdom into an empire. Un-
happily, he was dazzled by his great success. He allowed the
canals to be neglected, and the country in consequence fell from
its high estate of prosperity ; and, as it is related in one of our
historical books, " the dynasty of Tcheou, who founded the meth-
od of well -lands, survived for eight hundred years, with a happy
people and prosperous landholders. Tsing followed an opposite
policy, neglecting the canals ; and his family only reigned for
two generations, because so many of his people were ruined and
their hearts were turned away from it." Thus the utilization of
the waters had become a great political factor. This is not
strange, because the Chinese are eminently an agricultural people.
The system of Tsing was continued, except that the rate of taxa-
tion was reduced, under the Han dynasty, which arose 202 B. c.
But after about three hundred and fifty years a series of inunda-
tions— the first that had occurred in two thousand years, or since
Yu's time — began in the Yellow River and resisted all attempts
to check them until a thorough method was adopted, under the
direction of a special minister of hydraulic works. At the same
time the productiveness of the land reached by the new canals
was greatly increased. In the regions distant from the rivers
irrigating wells were dug, and a period set in of activity in hy-
draulic works and general use of water which has not been sur-
passed.

The success of the proprietors who enjoyed the advantages of
the irrigation works encouraged others to construct similar ones,
each according to his means and for the advantage of his ten-
ants. This method differed from that of Tcheou. The distribu-
tion of the lands was more unequal, but the regulation of the
waters had been so perfected that the agriculture of the kingdom
received a decided impulse ; and China still has reason to thank
the authors of the transformation for the permanent benefits it

824 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

has conferred. The works were extended and added to from time
to time, and the construction of the canal Pe gave origin to a
popular song celebrating the benefits derived from canalization.
The transportation of rice by these artificial channels dates from
the third century, when the Emperor Min-Te had a canal con-
structed which added more than 300,000 acres of land to cultiva-
tion and was used for the transportation of arms and provision.
From this time there was more than enough food in China.

The efforts of the Thangs in the sixth century were less re-
markable than those of their predecessors, because the more im-
portant enterprises had already been executed. The most note-
worthy of these was the excavation of a lake in 624 A. D. by the
celebrated poet Pe Ku I, who was also a prefect. It was supplied
by the Tsien Tang River, and watered a space of between 90,000
and 100,000 acres. The dam was solidly built, but permitted the
water to filter through in such a way as to fall slowly on the land
below the level of the lake. The bank, planted with peach-trees
and weeping willows, became a favorite promenade for literati
and poets. The lake was crossed by six bridges, beneath which
the flowers of the lotus waved, and the promenade was the first
water-side pleasure-walk that existed in China. This lake was
enlarged under the Sung dynasty by the poet Sou-Tong-Pao, who
added what is called the outer lake. New dams were built, and
travelers who resort to the lake are still able to admire the beauti-
ful as well as useful work of the two great poets, who enjoyed
also the rare privilege of being great engineers.

The Sung dynasty, in the ninth century, desiring largely to
extend the system of canals, created a new department, at the
head of which was placed a minister called the Governor of the
Waters. Besides this, a superintendent of the transportation of
rice was appointed to administer the northern provinces of the
Yellow River, to whom were assigned the study of the regimen of
the waters and the food-needs of the provinces, the classification
of productive lands according to their value and position, and the
supervision of the mulberry culture. This was the second period
of Chinese agricultural prosperity. Another improvement was
introduced in the tenth century, when sluice -dikes were in-
vented which could be closed in times of flood and opened in
dry seasons.

An overflow of the Tai Hu River in the province of Su Chiu,
in 1160, moved the censor Li Kie to propose three projects to the
throne : To make sluices and dams ; to establish competitions
among officers and others in plans for hydraulic works ; and to
take advantage of the fall and winter seasons of low water, when
the people were not engaged on their farms, to employ them in
constructing the works. The propositions were accepted, and the

IRRIGATION IN CHINA, 825

works constructed in pursuance, of thern proved to be of great
practical value.

The first emperor of the Ming dynasty, in 1360, gave orders to
have the obstructed canals restored and reopened, so as to show
that his first act was to think of the food and clothing of his peo-
ple. "When another flood occurred in the reign of Yung Lo, the
work of repairing damages and providing permanently against
future disaster was carried on day and night under the direction
of the Minister of Finance, who mingled with the people and
shared their labors. Under another emperor the very difficult
and expensive works of what is called the "canal of multiple
benefits " were completed, so as to furnish water to more than a
million acres. The present dynasty, besides continuing the work
of maintaining the canals, has published,- under the Emperor
Kien Lung, in 1737, a grand encyclopaedia of agriculture and hor-
ticulture in seventy-eight volumes. The preparation of the work
was intrusted to agriculturists and literati, who were careful to
announce in the introduction that they had no intention of pro-
mulgating new ideas, but only to collate the most valuable methods
and observations contained in the former works of the wise men
of the empire. This cyclopaedia is a store-house of valuable in-
formation concerning the utilization of water, and demonstrates
the advance which the Chinese had made in extreme antiquity in
that important branch of agriculture.

My country is essentially agricultural, and, in order that
agriculture might prosper, we have applied ourselves, as you see,
to give the land drink. The Emperor Yu, after he had delivered
us from the flood, planned courses of water to flow over the land,
as the Creator has furnished us with vein's carrying the blood
through our bodies. Confucius, speaking of Yu, said that all his
efforts could be summarized in the creation of the canals. They
were the motive force of the empire, and also an effective means
of diminishing the destructive action of torrents and avoiding in-
undations. These prosperous times have continued the model and
the ideal of China. The successors of Yu, whenever they devi-
ated from the road that he marked out, saw all their dynasties
extinguished in consequence of disasters caused by their neglect.
The people have contributed their part to the depreciation of the
water system. They have set water-plants on the water-sides to
strengthen the marshy soil and gain new tracts of land, whereby
the fields have been enlarged at the expense of the canals, while
the farmers have not taken heed of the contraction of the liquid
arteries. Then, in time, the water, not having sufficient outlet,
would overflow. Our efforts are now devoted to making such
things impossible, and to preventing the canals being obstructed
by the encroachments of the land.

826 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But while our farmer has the fault of trying to get too much
out of water's-edge plantations, he is distinguished by many
economical qualities. He has infinitely multiplied the tranches
of the artificial rivers that the wisdom of our emperors and their
ministers has created; rich in numerous children, he has used
their hands to subdivide the ditches and drain them through
thousands of irrigating rills ; and, in consequence of the constant
presence of the precious liquid, he has realized prodigies in crops.
Water permits him to Use natural manure diluted to the fifteenth,
according to the precepts of our sages, and to return to the land
what man has taken from it. Water, always abundant, has fur-
nished the means of applying the method of transplanting to the
cultivation of wheat, and thereby getting larger returns ; and it
has made the constitution of small properties possible, and ex-
treme subdivision of the land by which an intensive cultivation is
secured for the smallest parcel. It is true that other factors, the
patience of our peasantry, the wise organization of our mutual
banks, and our inveterate habit of spending our money on the
ground, have contributed much to our agricultural prosperity ;
but all these would have amounted to little in comparison if they
had not been supplemented by the vast irrigating works.

I will add that without these gigantic works the Chinese
could never have reached the high degree of perfection they
have attained in one of the most important of their industries —
pisciculture. Through the abundance of water everywhere, my
countrymen, instead of being satisfied to cover the sea, rivers,
and lakes with their fishing-boats, have been able to devote them-
selves extensively to the raising of fish. The spawn is carefully
collected wherever it is found ; instead of abandoning it to the
channels of the rivers, the watchful shore-dweller puts it under
protection wherever a suitable supply of water is to be found.
The irrigation reservoirs are swarming with young fish. The
fallow rice-fields, dammed and flooded in winter, are alive with
wriggling carps ; and even the rain-water cistern is turned into a
breeding-pond.

This economical management permits us, without piscicult-
ural societies, to stock the rivers with millions of fry, and to add
a considerable variety of fish to our bills of fare, a part of which
is consumed fresh, while the rest, salted or dried, is dispatched
into all parts of the empire and sold at a moderate but always
remunerative price.

As a whole, our system of water regulation may be regarded
as one of the greatest achievements of the intelligence and labor
of men. To it China owes very largely the comfortable condition
of its innumerable inhabitants. It is not perfect, for it still
leaves much to be desired ; but we know well what is wanting,

BICE AND ITS CULTURE. 827

and what must be done to supply it. If we had fancied that there
were no defects in it, recent events, including the irresistible and
disastrous overflows of Yellow River, would have demonstrated
the contrary. They teach us that unceasing vigilance must be
exercised in keeping the artificial waterways open, and that ad-
ditional works are needed to make the system complete.

A difficulty resulting from the special character of our social
organization stands in the way of the execution of new works.
The whole of our territory is under cultivation. There is not a
corner of the land capable of producing a crop that has not been
devoted to some profitable occupation. To construct new canals,
enormous sums additional to the expense of labor — very consider-
able at the cheapest wages — would have to be applied to the
indemnification of dispossessed proprietors. • There is also consid-
erable diversity in the plans that are under consideration. Some
favor the addition of new canals to the old ones. Others prefer
vast basins, artificial lakes for the storage of the water of freshets,
whence it may be drawn when wanted, to distribute over the
country fertility instead of desolation. Formidable as the ob-
stacles to immediate execution may be, we can foresee the time
when these great works, indispensable to the completeness of our
hydraulic system, shall have been brought to a good end. Then
China, endowed with the grandest system of water distribution
that the world has ever seen, will have nothing to do but to keep
up the good condition of the work of the ancients with its modern
additions. — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the
Revue Scientifique.

-+—-+-

1
RICE AND ITS CULTURE.

By L. W. EOBARTS.

THE rice-plant (Oryza sativa) is a member of the grass family,
and furnishes one of the most valuable grains known to eco-
nomical science. It is cultivated, by the aid of abundant irriga-
tion, in numerous varieties in most warm countries, and in the
East Indies and China constitutes the principal food of hundreds
of millions of human beings. The grain is also applied to me-
chanical uses in the arts, and the straw is one of the most highly
prized materials of that class.

Ages before the discovery of America rice was cultivated in
India, and is of volunteer growth in many parts of that country,
" but principally on river-banks, where the seed was perhaps let
fall." There is a wild rice preferred by the wealthy of Hindo-
stan, but, on account of its small yield, it is not much grown.

There is no certainty of the place of the nativity of this valu-

828 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

able grain. The Chinese have much improved it by selection,
which practice was in early years enforced by an imperial edict
requiring the planting of only the largest grains. The most valu-
able variety grown in this country was secured by a South Caro-
lina planter, who, upon observing some notably long grains upon
a head, secured them, and so obtained the kind called the long
grain. In the island of Ceylon there are one hundred and sixty-
one varieties.

Various accounts are given of the introduction of rice into this
country : one, that it was brought from the island of Madagascar
toward the close of the seventeenth century, and planted in a gar-
den in what is now one of the most thickly settled parts of the
city of Charleston ; and from this came the seed " that has made
South Carolina the great rice-growing State." Another account
claims that it was first grown in Virginia by Governor Berkeley,
of unenviable fame, as early as 1647.

There are three varieties in the rice-growing States : 1. " White
rice, valued for its earliness and for growing upon uplands, the
husk cream-colored, and an ounce containing nine hundred and
sixty grains. 2. The gold-seeded, with a deep-yellow husk, and
large, fine white grain, eight hundred and ninety-six grains to the
ounce. 3. The long grain, a sub-variety of the gold seed, having
eight hundred and forty grains to the ounce ; the grains are longer
than any other, ^nd it is the most valued for cultivation : for home
use a long-awned variety, called the white seed, is often sown."

It is of the rice-fields of the tide-lands of the Georgia and Caro-
lina coast, and of the adjacent islands, that we would speak. To
those who have never been among them, these rice plantations
would afford much that is both novel and interesting. This ever-
green region, where the plaintive notes of the whippoorwill and
song of the sweet-throated mocking-bird float up through the
moss-covered trees ; and negroes, fever and ague, rice-birds and
alligators abound, would indeed seem to be a new world to our
Northern brethren, and the picturesque effects charm the eye of
the stranger artist. The rice-field darkey is himself a distinct
type, totally different in both aspect and dialect from the negroes
of the interior ; and a not uninteresting sight is the force, as with
song and shout they take their way along the embankment to the
rice-field. Their ancestors for generations back, or, as they would
tell you, " mi f arrar an' mi granf arrar," have lived and labored in
these malarial regions, and they accept chill and fever and other
infelicities incident to these localities as unavoidable evils, plod-
ding on with no higher aim nor hope, careless for the future, and
not over-anxious for the present. The cost of living is small, as
not many nor very warm garments are considered necessary, and
the rice-field darkey's ideas of a wardrobe are extremely limited,

RICE AND ITS CULTURE. 829

from both, blissful ignorance and choice. Fish and game are
plentiful, and in these regions a heavy diet is to be indulged in
only at great risk. Free labor is found to be more remunerative
than slave, inasmuch as the idle or inefficient can be dismissed ;
and the rice-planter of to-day has not necessarily the care of the
sick nor the doctor's bills of the ante-bellum time, when the very
best physicians were employed. Then, again, there is the wonder-
ful relief from anxious care ; and the providing in every way for
the wants of a large plantation of negroes, great and small, was
no sinecure.

The best rice-lands are on the banks of rivers, for the con-
venience of flooding by the opening of the tide-gates, and also of
conveying the grain to the mills. They must be so situated as to
escape the salt and brackish water, but be below the reach of fresh-
ets, which are often most disastrous. They are alluvial lands,
composed principally of decomposed vegetable matter, and when
dry have the appearance of soot. Good crops can be made on
other low lands, if so lying that they may be drained and flooded
at will. These plantations have been and still are valuable pos-
sessions. It costs no inconsiderable sum to get them in order
for planting, though less than formerly, as the planter of to-day
cultivates fewer acres. The land is regularly laid out by a com-
plete system of embankments and ditches, forming independent
fields — the size of the fields being limited by the number of hands
that can finish one day's necessary work of cultivation in a day,
usually from fourteen to twenty acres.

The plantations are surrounded by a dam or levee, with flood-
gates and trunks, through which they are irrigated from the river.
They are divided in squares, banked in, with a large ditch near
the banks, which receives the water from the trunks for irriga-
tion through smaller ditches fifty feet apart, through which the
fields are also drained at ebb-tide.

Rice Culture. — Early in the winter the water is all drawn
off, that the banks may be strengthened, ditches mended, and the
ground plowed or hoed. In warm changes the water is again
turned on. In March drains are cleansed, ground kept dry, clods
broken up, and all made smooth with harrow or hoe. In April,
and until about the middle of May, the grain is sown in trenches,
a four-inch trenching-hoe being used, running at right angles to
the ditches, and about sixteen inches apart. By some the fields
are cross-plowed, and the grain dropped at the intersections. The
seed is very carefully selected, and sometimes, in order to se-
cure only the fullest grains, the rice is thrashed by hand over a
log or barrel. The seed, when sown, is lightly covered, and the
water turned on and kept upon the field from four to six days,
until the grain swells and begins to sprout. If the seed is not to

8 3o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

be covered, it is mixed with, clayey water and dried, when a suffi-
cient quantity of clay adheres to prevent the grains floating off
when flooded. With the first method the water is again turned
on in the " sprout-flow," when the plants sprout " and appear like
needles above the ground " ; with the latter one flooding is suffi-
cient. When the water has been on the sprout from four to six
days, it is again drawn off ; and when the plants are six weeks old,
they are lightly hoed, and the hoeing is repeated in ten days.

Now comes the stretch-flow, when the young plants, several
inches high, are flooded for two weeks and helped in their strug-
gle for light and air, and, strengthened and invigorated by their
native element, grow apace ; water kills the weeds, but nourishes
the rice. The water is now put down to the " slack-water " gauge,
and if, as is generally the case, the plants are longer than the
water is deep, the upper leaves float " in long, waving lines upon
the surface " — a pretty, refreshing picture, once seen not soon for-
gotten. The water is gradually drawn off, and eight days after,
when the field is dry, the ground is deeply hoed.

Volunteer rice, which is treated as a weed, often springs up
with the regular crop. It is both hardy and prolific, and a great
pest to the rice-planter. It can generally be removed by the hoes ;
then again it necessitates replowing and sowing, while sometimes
the fields have to be thrown into dry crops for a year or two, or
to remain flooded for that length of time. When harvested with
the white, this red or volunteer rice greatly reduces its grade,
and also renders it unfit for seed.

At hoeing-times a picturesque scene is presented, with say from
fifty to one hundred men and women abreast, busily plying their
hoes ; the former in the utmost neglige of a laborer, and the latter
with short, scant homespun dresses and leggins, all with broad-
brimmed straw hats, or, in the case of the women, the head ker-
chiefs of the olden time. In the mouth of each is a stick, on the
end of which is stuck, and smoking, a small piece of the punk
taken from the heart of the oak. This smoke is for the purpose
of driving away the myriads of " pesky " sand-flies that are more
than enough to drive one wild, sometimes so thick that they have
been known to cast a shadow. A young man, whiling away a
summer holiday by a visit to the rice-field, essaying the same but
to him untried expedient, and not understanding the manner of
procedure, kept puffing away as if smoking a cigar, and soon had
the punk in a bright blaze, so that he suffered the unpleasant
consequences that await the inexperienced ; there is something to
be learned even from an ignorant rice-field darkey.

But in writing of rice and rice-fields I must not forget to give
some prominence to the ravaging army of birds that feast upon
the tender sprout and ripened grain, sometimes almost or quite

RICE AND ITS CULTURE. 831

appropriating the crop. The rice-bird proper of Georgia and Caro-
lina (Emberiza oryzivora), the reed-bird of the Middle States, and
the bobolink of the North and West, is one and the same. It is
abont the size of a sparrow, and, while of grave and somber color-
ing during some months of the year, again decks itself in livelier
plumage ; and the quick, merry songs which enliven the grassy
meadows during the breeding season, give place later to a " short,
sharp chirrup." They are migratory, spending their winters
mainly in the Western Isles. They come to the Southern States
in early spring, leave, and return to the rice-fields in September
and October. Continual war is waged against them by the rice-
planter, and they are annihilated by the hundreds by the rusty
muskets of the old darkey and the army of negro women ; and
one-garmented, short-skirted, dirt-besmeared urchins, who, by dint
of " cracking " whips, and a continual switching at them, manage
to at least mitigate the evil and give the persecuted rice a chance
to grow. These little darkeys are sometimes negligent, and one
of the old " drivers " used to say, " I gie um a licking, sah, f o dey
go in fuh mek show ob dere bein' fateful."

Then, again, the rice-bird falls at the hands of the rapacious
sportsman, who frequently by one shot puts an end to a half-
dozen dozen little lives ; and sometimes weary of gathering the
plump little mouthfuls, so fat that they have been known to burst
in falling, leaves many in the field, at the same time bearing home
with him far more than " f our-and-twenty " rice-birds to be "baked
in a pie."

But to return to our more special subject. When the plant
shows a joint the last hoeing is given, and the crop is " laid by "
by the opening of the flood-gates, and turning on of the "joint
water " or " harvest-flow," for the support of the plants, the field
remaining under water until the grain is fully ripe, which may be
two months. When matured, a few days before harvesting, the
field is finally drained, and the ditches cleansed by the " succeed-
ing tide."

Harvest. — The rice is cut with sickles, the use of heavy ma-
chinery being impracticable in a rice-field. The crop is now left
to dry ; but the day after cutting, when free from dew, is tied in
bundles, which are piled in ricks or upon platforms on the canals
and rivers, so arranged as to shed the rain, until taken off by the
barges to the thrashing-mills ; these flats carry each the harvest
of from five to seven acres.

After Harvest. — Now comes the gala day of the rice-field
laborer, when the crop is being taken to the mill to be thrashed.
The barges are numbered, say from one to ten, and great are the
excitement and rivalry of the men in command, the same state of
feeling pervading the whole force. With flags flying they bend

832 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

their full energies in the race from .the fields to the mill, and long
and wild are the exultant cries from the captain and crew of the
barge that first moors at its destination and wins the prize offered
by the planter. After this great exertion the careful master of
the ante-bellum time generally dealt out to his slaves the expected
grog, and required a bath and change of clothing.

Thrashing, etc. — This is done by machinery : a thrasher much
used was invented by Calvin Emmons, of New York. It separates
the grain by tooth-beaters, which make from seven hundred and
fifty to eight hundred revolutions per minute. The barge con-
taining the bundles of rice passes under the mill, and its load is
elevated by hooks to the floor above. When thrashed, if the crop
is small, about five thousand bushels, it is put in sacks ; but if
large, say about forty thousand bushels, the paddy or rough rice
is poured down a flume from the mill to the hold of the schooner
in waiting, and is next taken to the cleaning-mill, which is fre-
quently owned by the speculator that purchases it ; and, when
the grain is hulled, he in his turn sells it to the merchant.

By the old method the chaff was removed by pounding in
hand-mortars hollowed out of pitch-pine blocks ; it is now hulled
by steam-power. When ready for market, the rice is put into
barrels holding about six hundred pounds. The average of sev-
eral analyses of rice gives — of albuminoids, 7*5 ; carbohydrates,
76*5 ; water, 14*6 ; ash, 6*5. Rice constitutes the food of almost
one third of the human family. It is used in rice-meat and vari-
ous aromatics, fermented and distilled into arrack, molded into
models and busts, and is employed in paper-making, cement, and
starch ; the chaff, broken rice and dust, makes valuable food for
cattle ; the straw is sold for forage and bedding, and is also used
in the manufacture of bonnets, while the Southern housewife can
tell of the use of rice-flour in the making of delightful breads.

The total rice crop in 1870, according to the Federal census, was
73,635,021 pounds, a decided falling off from 215,313,497 pounds in
1850, and 187,167,032 in 1860. The yield for 1879 was better, being
110,131,372 pounds. Charleston, S. C, is the great rice market of
the United States. The American grain is much preferred to the
imported, and, as the demand is far greater than the supply, there
is still ample room for the rice-planter.

It is observed, in Dr. G. M. Humphrey's book on Old Age, that the fertility of
long-lived persons is above the normal, aDd in some continues to an advanced old
age. The effect of the combination of conditions must be to give the stock of
long-lived people an advantage in the race for existence, so that one would expect
their number, in proportion to the rest of ihe population, rapidly to increase.
This may help to account for the greater number of aged people, and the pro-
longed continuance of vigor among them.

SKETCH OF RENfi DESCARTES. 833

SKETCH OF RENE DESCARTES.

PROF. HUXLEY, comparing the thoughts of men to the
leaves, flowers, and fruit upon the branches of a few great
stems bearing the names of the half-dozen men of strongest and
clearest intellect, is of the opinion that " the thinker who more
than any other stands in the relation of such a stem toward the
philosophy and the science of the modern world is Rend Descartes.
I mean," he adds, " that if you lay hold of any characteristic prod-
uct of modern ways of thinking, either in the region of philoso-
phy or in that of science, you find the spirit of that thought, if
not its form, to have been present in the mind of the great
Frenchman."

The London Spectator, reviewing Prof. Mahaffy's life of the
philosopher, regards him as presenting the spectacle of a twofold
life. " He was a man of society ; he was a philosopher — the two
were so completely distinct that they never came into collision.
On the one side, he was inflexible, a pillar of intellect never devi-
ating by a hair-breadth from rigid perpendicularity ; on the other,
he was all things to all men. For his intellect, the law was rejec-
tion of authority, assertion of absolute freedom ; for the rest of
him — for the man, distinguished from the philosopher — the law
was courteous compliance all round."

Rene Descartes was born at La Haye, Touraine, France,
March 31, 1596, and died in Stockholm, Sweden, February 11, 1650.
He was the second son and third child of Joachim Descartes, who,
having done some military service, had purchased a commission
that gave him a place in the demi-noblesse. He inherited from
his mother, who died at his birth, a feeble constitution, the marks
of which he bore through life, and by reason of which the doctors
predicted that he would die young ; was baptized and brought up
in the Roman Catholic faith ; and betrayed from early infancy an
insatiable curiosity and a disposition to inquire into the causes of
things, which led his father to call him his philosopher. At eight
years of age he was sent to the College of La Fleche, of the Jesuits,
where he was remarked for his studious habits and the rapid prog-
ress he made in the knowledge of the ancients and in history.
His delicate health seems to have contributed to his advance in
scholarship, inclining him more to study than children of robust
constitutions, and securing his exemption from morning duties,
whereby he acquired the habit of meditating in bed. In that
position a great part of the real work of his life was done. He
accounted for his fondness for books by suggesting that the read-
ing of good books was like a conversation with the brightest men

VOL. XXXVII. — 60

834 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of past times, but superior to ordinary conversation because the
speakers presented only their best thoughts.

Besides the text-books of the school, he was fond of reading
such books as treated of curious and rare knowledge, and he had
a high esteem for eloquence and poetry as gifts of genius rather
than fruits of study. Those who can give clear and forcible
expression to their thoughts, he said, though they spoke in Bas
Breton and had never learned rhetoric, could always exercise the
most persuasive power ; and those who have the most pleasant
fancies, and can express them most gracefully and with pertinent
illustration, will not fail to be the best poets, though they have
never studied the poetic art.

As the breadth of his knowledge enlarged, he grew more dis-
posed to estimate the value of what he studied by its capacity of
being made useful in life. He perceived the deficiencies of the
logic and morals and of the physics and metaphysics that were
taught in the college, and gained an increasing appreciation of
the merits and beauty of the mathematical sciences. One of his
first steps after leaving the college, he informs us in his Discourse
on Method, was to discard his books, with all that he had learned
that was uncertain, and to admit thenceforth only what seemed
to have been demonstrated by reason and experiment. He there-
fore framed the method of examination and doubt, which, al-
though he failed in very many instances to be true to it, has since
become the great principle of positive science. He did not, how-
ever, he says, " imitate the skeptics, who doubt only for doubl-
ing's sake, and pretend to be always undecided ; on the contrary,
my whole intention was to arrive at certainty, and to dig away
the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay
beneath/'

After leaving the college, at the age of sixteen, he returned
to his father, and in the next year went to Paris to participate in
the social life of the capital and continue his studies. He renewed
his school-day friendship with Marin Mersenne, now become Pere
Mersenne, of the Minim Friars, forming what proved to be a last-
ing alliance, and became associated with Claude Mydorge, one of
the foremost mathematicians of France. Giving up the social
side of his life, he withdrew for retirement and study to a secluded
quarter. There is reason to believe that he made at this time
some of his important geometrical studies, but he was not ready
to publish them. A military career afforded at this age the most
feasible means of getting the broadest views of life, and Des-
cartes, in May, 1617, when twenty-one years of age, set out for
the Netherlands and entered the service of Prince Maurice of
Orange. Two years later he joined the forces of the Duke of
Bavaria in the war between the house of Austria and the Protes-

' SKETCH OF RENE DESCARTES. 835

tant princes. While in garrison .at Breda, he saw one day a pla-
card in Flemish to which the attention of a considerable crowd
had been attracted. It was the statement of a mathematical
problem, to which the author, after the fashion of the times,
invited solutions. Not understanding the language in which it
was written, Descartes asked one of the bystanders to translate
it to him. This man was Beeckman, Principal of the College of
Dort, himself a mathematician. Surprised to find a young soldier
interested in such a matter, Beeckman explained the terms of the
challenge with his most learned air. Descartes said at once that
he would solve the problem, and brought the solution to Beeck-
man on the next day, having mastered it in less than an hour.
The winter of 1619 was spent in quarters at Neuburg, on the Dan-
ube, to a large extent in study, and was, according to Dr. William
Wallace, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the critical period of
Descartes's life. "Here, in his warm room, he indulged those
meditations which afterward led to the Discourse on Method. It
was here that, on the eve of St. Martin's day, he { was filled with
enthusiasm, and discovered the foundations of a marvelous sci-
ence/ He retired to rest with anxious thoughts of his future
career, which haunted him through the night in three dreams,
that left a deep impression on his mind. ' Next day/ he continues,
' I began to understand the first principles of my marvelous dis-
covery/ " In the next year he sought out the Rosicrucians, to
obtain some knowledge of their supposed mystical wisdom, but
without success. Descartes retired from military life upon the
defeat and death of Count Bucquoy at the hands of Bethlen
Gabor's revolted Hungarians in 1621.

During his career in the army, Descartes composed a Latin
treatise on music, which he intrusted to Beeckman. It was sur-
reptitiously copied, and was published without the knowledge of
the author in 1618. It seems to have been considerablv successful,
and was reprinted several times and translated into English and
French. But Beeckman's treachery cost him Descartes's friend-
ship. Among other writings of this period, unpublished or lost,
but mentioned in the catalogue prepared by Chanut on the order of
Queen Christina of Sweden, are General Considerations on Science ;
a fragment on Algebra ; Democritia, or Fugitive Thoughts ; Ex-
periments, or a Collection of Observations; and a collection of
mathematical speculations entitled Parnassus. Descartes contin-
ued his travels in a private way, having in view, as he expressed
his purpose, to look into the courts of princes, to become acquaint-
ed with men of different humors and different conditions, to in-
form himself concerning the natural products of different climates
and the various civil usages and customs observed among differ-
ent peoples ; and to seek in the great book of the world knowl-

836 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

edge that could not be acquired elsewhere. From his observations
he gained the great advantages of learning to believe nothing
lightly, and not to hold obstinately to the things which example and
habit had accustomed him to believe. He visited Holland, France,
Italy, Switzerland, the Tyrol, Venice, and Rome. At Venice he
witnessed the ceremony of the wedding of the Doge with the Adri-
atic. He made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Loretto.

Returning to France, Descartes entertained for a time the
thought of purchasing a position as lieutenant-general of the
province, at Chatellerault, but the legal chicanery connected with
the office was not to his taste, and he gave up the scheme. He
then took lodgings in Paris, and lived in the style of a modest
gentleman at ease. He gathered a few friends around him, among
whom were Mersenne and Mydorge, who were interested in the
problems of the refraction of light ; and together they experi-
mented in the grinding of lenses. With others who came to wit-
ness the experiments, the house became a kind of academy, and
too busy a resort to favor Descartes's studies. Meetings of literary
men and students had become common in Paris, the more impor-
tant ones being held with the Papal nuncio and Cardinal Riche-
lieu. Descartes, urged by his friends, attended them frequently.
He had, in his reflections on the choice of a position, become con-
firmed in the thought that he should not confine himself to any
business, but should devote his life to the cultivation of the
reason, and to advancement by every possible means in the knowl-
edge of the truth according to the method which he had pre-
scribed. At one of the meetings Cardinal de Bdrulle was struck
by a remark of Descartes's that the true art of memory was not to
be gained by technical devices, but by a philosophical appreciation
of things. He was thereby prompted to urge upon him a plan of
life in almost exact accord with his conviction.

His associations in Paris, with their distractions not being
favorable to the close attention which he sought to exercise to
qualify himself for the execution of his purpose, Descartes deter-
mined to retire to some place where he could be alone and could
pursue his studies untrammeled. He went to Holland, where he
found variety and congenial retreats during the period from 1629
to 1649 in thirteen different places, and where he composed or re-
vised most of his works. In the choice of these residences he
seems to have been influenced, according to Mr. Wallace, by the
two considerations of the neighborhood of a university or college,
and the amenities of the situation. He appears to have also had
a decidedly religious inclination. He found Franeker, the seat of
a university, very agreeable, because it afforded him opportunity
for attending mass, and gave him freedom in the religious exer-
cises on which his attention was apparently most fixed during the

SKETCH OF RENE DESCARTES. 837

first nine months of his residence. He wrote from Amsterdam
to Balzac, who had expostulated with him for having withdrawn
himself from the world : " In this great city where I am, there
being no one except myself who is not in trade, every one is so
intent on his specnlations that I might stay here all my life
without being seen by any one. I walk out every day amid the
confusion of a great people with as much freedom and peace as
you could have in your garden walks, and I pay no more attention
to the men who pass before my eyes than you would to the trees
in your woods and the animals feeding there. Even the noise
they make works no more interruption to my thoughts than would
the rumbling of a brook." He resumed his studies in dioptrics.
Observations on parhelia gave the origin to his treatise on
Meteors. He entered with great ardor upon the study of medi-
cine and anatomy, and visited the butchers' shops every day to
witness the slaughter of animals, of which he brought parts
home to his rooms to be dissected at his leisure. His corre-
spondence with Pere Mersenne abounded in mathematical prob-
lems which the two exchanged with each other. He studied
astronomy and composed his Traite' du Monde, in which he avowed
the doctrine of the motion of the earth. On learning, however,
of the condemnation of Galileo, he suppressed this book, saying,
in a letter to Pere Mersenne : " All the things I have explained, al-
though I believe them to be supported by very certain and very
evident demonstrations, I would not for the world maintain
against the authority of the Church. . . . My desire to live in quiet
and continue the retired life I have begun makes me more con-
tent to see myself delivered from the fear of having gained more
fame than I wished for by my writing, than sorry for having
lost the time and trouble that I have taken in composing it."

Descartes made three visits to France during his residence in
Holland. The first was in 1644, to settle family affairs after the
death of his father in 1640 ; the second was signalized by an award
to him of a pension secured by Cardinal Mazarin of three thou-
sand francs, in consideration of the advantages which his investi-
gations had conferred upon mankind, and to aid him in continu-
ing them ; the third visit ended in disappointment, for the sub-
stantial results anticipated from it were nullified by the breaking
out of the civil war of the Fronde. During the second of these
visits he is said to have met Pascal, and suggested to him the
thought of experimenting on the weight of the air. A visit was
made to England for the investigation of magnetic phenomena,
and in 1634 Descartes took an excursion into Denmark.

A controversy in 1638 with Fermat concerning that author's
book on Maxima and Minima, and on tangents, engaged the
friends of both parties, and resulted in a friendship between the

838 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

chiefs. Descartes had other discussions — with Petit on dioptrics,
Morin on light, Beaugrand on geostatics, Roberval on the line
described by a nail on the outside of a wheel in motion, and with
Voet, Professor of Theology at Utrecht. The last controversy,
which was brought on by Voet's criticisms of the indiscreet utter-
ances of Descartes's disciple, Regius, resulted in Descartes being
summoned before the magistrates of Utrecht on charges of irre-
ligion and slander. He escaped the threatened prosecution by
claiming the protection of the French ambassador and the Prince
of Orange. An order forbidding all mention of the name of Car-
tesianism at the University of Leyden was likewise annulled by
direction of the Prince of Orange.

Queen Christina of Sweden, interested in her way, although
she was not yet twenty years old, in matters of literature and
philosophy, having heard of the great fame of Descartes, conceived
a desire to become acquainted with him. He was drawn into a
correspondence with her through Chanut, the French ambassador
to Sweden, to whom he sent a dissertation on Love, which was
intended for her. He followed this with an essay on the Chief
Good, addressed directly to the queen. Finally, she invited Des-
cartes to go to Sweden and give her lessons in philosophy. Des-
cartes acceded to the request after considerable hesitation. He
reached Stockholm in October, 1649. The queen was very exact-
ing in her demands on the philosopher, and required, among
other things, that he attend upon her every morning at five
o'clock. The hardship of this duty, which did violence to his
life-long habit of lingering in bed, with other incidents of his
life at the Swedish capital, combined with the rigor of the
winter climate, were too much for Descartes, and entailed upon
him a pneumonia, from which he died.

The written works of Descartes were collected and published
in Latin in 1670-^83. A selection from them was published in
Paris in 1843, and a collection of his moral and philosophical
works in 1855.

The earliest work was the Discourse on the Method of Reason-
ing Well and Seeking the Truth in Science, which, besides the
exposition of general principles, according to the description in
the title, contains treatises on Dioptrics, Meteors, and Geometry,
the general scope of which is indicated by their titles. The cen-
tral propositions of the whole Discourse, according to Prof. Hux-
ley, are : " There is a path that leads to truth so surely that any
one who follows it must needs reach the goal, whether his capacity
be great or small. And there is one guiding rule by which a man
may always find this path and keep himself from straying when
he has found it. This golden rule is, Give unqualified assent to
no proposition but those the truth of which is so clear and dis-

SKETCH OF REN& DESCARTES. 839

tinct that they can not be doubted." Descartes attached less
importance to the geometrical 'and mathematical methods of
which he was the inventor than to his moral and metaphysical
speculations. But, while the latter have been sifted and riddled
in discussion, and have suffered under the revolutions of thought,
the mathematical principles he established and the methods he
introduced remain. In geometry he gave demonstrations of gen-
eral principles, under which solutions adapted to one problem
could be applied to all like it. In algebra, for the old clumsy
notation and nomenclature, always suggesting material relations,
he substituted the beautiful, convenient system, purely abstract,
by the aid of which that branch of the science has marched to
almost universal application and perfection. And in the applica-
tion of algebra to geometry, he introduced the method of abscissas
and ordinates, by means of which any curve and any condition
of form can be computed by a process as beautiful as it is direct.

The Meditations on the First Philosophy, which appeared in
manuscript in 1640, consists of six parts, in the first of which the
author expounds his philosophy of doubt; in the second, he
reaches the certainty of his own being, through the use of his
famous maxim, cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) ; in the
third, he deduces an argument to prove the existence of God from
the idea of an infinite and sovereignly perfect being ; in the fourth,
he draws a distinction between speculative reasoning, for which
the light of nature is sufficient, and doctrines of faith and the con-
duct of life, which rest on another foundation ; in the fifth, he
explains the corporeal nature, and brings forward another argu-
ment for the existence of God ; and in the sixth he treats of the
distinctions between intellect and imagination, the difference yet
intimate connection of soul and body, errors of the senses and the
means of avoiding them, and the reasons upon which we can con-
clude concerning the existence of material things, which he, how-
ever, regarded as inferior to the evidence on which we predicate
the existence of God and the soul. The book in this form was
submitted to the criticisms of a number of distinguished students,
whose objections were printed and bound with the main treatise
when it was published in 1641, and with them the replies of the
author, considerably swelling the bulk of the volume.

The Principles of Philosophy, 1644, contained an exposition of
the principles of knowledge as developed in the Meditations ; an
explanation of the primary laws of nature, the properties of mat-
ter, space, motion, etc. ; the system of the world, the sky, and
celestial bodies ; and a treatise on the Earth. The statement of
the three laws of nature, the seven secondary laws of impact
(which are pronounced by later science to a large extent incor-
rect), and the famous theory of Vortices, by which Descartes at-

840 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tempted to account for the structure of the universe, are contained
in this work. The first of the three laws affirms that every body,
so far as it is unaffected by extraneous causes, always perseveres
in the same state of motion or rest ; and the second that simple or
elementary motion is always in a straight line. " These doctrines
of inertia, and of the composite character of curvilinear motion,"
says Mr. Wallace, " were scarcely apprehended even by Kepler or
Galileo; but they follow naturally from the geometrical analysis
of Descartes." He taught that extended matter has no limits to
its extent, though the power of God has divided it by lines dis-
criminating its parts in endless ways. He denied the possibility
of a vacuum, and the existence of atoms or ultimate particles, and
regarded matter as uniform in character throughout the uni-
verse— all of which views are consistent with what may be logi-
cally deduced from the results of the latest investigations. In the
universe packed with matter, no particle can move unless all the
others move too. Hence we have universal motion, taking the
form of " a host of more or less circular movements, and of vortices
or whirlpools of material particles, varying in size and velocity."
These vortices, which were supposed to give rise to three kinds of
matter and to the phenomena of radiating light, were made to
account for the existence and motions of all the stars and systems,
the sun and planets, and the earth. Descartes applied his vorti-
cellar theory not only to all the phenomena of physics, but also to
those of organic life, including that in animals and man ; whence
he ventured to show that man and the animals are really ma-
chines, with the single difference that man has a rational soul,
while the animals have not. In the Treatise on Man and the
Formation of the Foetus, which was published after his death,
Descartes expounded the doctrine of animal spirits. Other works
are the Treatise on the Passions of the Soul, which was translated
into French for Madame Elizabeth, Princess Palatine ; and the
Rules for the Direction of the Mind, a posthumous work. Des-
cartes was never married, but he is believed to have had a natural
daughter, Francine, who died when she was five years old. He is
described as having been " a little man, with a large head, project-
ing brow, prominent nose, and eyes wide apart, with hair coming
down almost to his eyebrows," and feeble voice, and as usually
dressed in black.

On his death, Queen Christina wanted him buried with the
kings of Sweden ; but Chanut, who is supposed to have carried
out his wishes, had his body modestly interred in the cemetery of
the Orphans' Hospital, where Catholic foreigners were usually
buried. Thence his remains were a few years afterward trans-
ferred to France, where, after several changes, they were finally
deposited, in 1819, in the Church of Saint Germain des Pres.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

841

EDITOR'S TABLE.

SIR WILLIAM DAWSON OK EVOLUTION.

SIR WILLIAM DAWSON, the well-
known Canadian geologist, has
brought out, under the auspices of the
Religious Tract Society of London, Eng-
land, a work entitled Modern Ideas of
Evolution as related to Revelation and
Science. The title of the book, we must
say at the outset, seems to us a little
peculiar. Any idea of evolution (as the
term is now understood) must, if con-
sidered at all, be considered in relation
to science ; but how to consider it in
relation to revelation is not, to our
mind, easy to understand. How are
ideas of evolution to be brought into
direct relation with revelation as a sub-
stantive fact? If revelation is a sub-
stantive, self-evident fact, then there is
no use in bringing any ideas of evolu-
tion into comparison with it. The Arab
leader who burned the library at Alexan-
dria did not want to compare any of the
books contained therein with the Ko-
ran, but summarily said: "They either
agree with the Koran or disagree with
it. If they agree with it, they are su-
perfluous ; if they disagree with it, they
are noxious : in either case burn them."
In like manner, no one who reads the
laws of nature in the blaze of an all-
sufficient revelation will want any other
light. Had Sir William spoken in the
title of his book of bringing " ideas of
evolution" into relation with '■'•ideas of
revelation," the proposition would have
appeared a more hopeful one, and would
have contained a certain suggestion of
fair play; but to bring mere "ideas"
on the one side into direct contact with
the most absolute and commanding re-
ality on the other, seems — well, not
quite the right thing to do. Give the
" ideas of evolution " a chance ; let
there be something to " umpire."

Sir William Dawson has written this
book for a select circle of readers — a

wide one possibly, but select neverthe-
less— readers who appreciate such a de-
scription of Darwin as the following :
"Darwin, as he sits in marble on the
staircase of the British Museum, repre-
sents a noble figure, made in the image
of God, and capable of grasping men-
tally the heaven above as well as the
earth beneath. As he appears in his
recent biography, we see the same man
paralyzed by a spiritual atrophy, blinded
and shut up in prison and chained to
the mill of a materialistic philosophy
where, like a captive Samson, he is
doomed to grind all that is fair and
beautiful in nature into a dry and form-
less dust." It is needless to say that a
reader at aH accustomed to scientific
method would wish to know exactly
what is meant by ability to " grasp
mentally the heaven above as well as
the earth beneath." Darwin, it seems
to be admitted, grasped the earth be-
neath : in order to grasp the heaven
above — interpreting tbe words in a nat-
ural sense — he would have had to be an
astronomer in addition to being a great
biologist and naturalist. The writer,
however, does not use the words in
their natural sense : by the " heaven
above" he means some supernatural
order of facts ; but could he, as a scien-
tific man, tell us of any one who to his
positive knowledge had " grasped the
heaven above" in that sense? When
Darwin grasped the earth beneath he
could tell us what he grasped, and the
world is vastly the richer to-day for the
positive knowledge imparted by him in
regard to terrestrial facts. But could
Sir William Dawson himself enrich the
world by imparting what he has grasped
of "the heaven ab»ve " ? What does
he know about it that he can communi-
cate in distinct speech ? If he has any
such information, it would vastly surpass
in interest anything he can tell us about

842

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the Eozoon canadense ; but we venture
to say that, in spite of his slur upon
Darwin for not having grasped this kind
of knowledge, he does not himself pos-
sess one particle or scintilla of it that he
could teach as fact to any human being.

Then what are we to say about the
accusation against Darwin of grinding
" all that is fair and beautiful in nature
into a dry and formless dust " ? All
that we can say of it is that it is false,
and, as coming from a man of recog-
nized scientific position, deplorable.
Nature to Darwin was full of interest to
the last ; and few men have done more
than he to awaken an interest m and
love of nature in others. We have only
to read his correspondence with the
foremost naturalists of the time to see
what a center of interest he was to
them, and what a living thing the study
of nature under his guidance, or upon
lines indicated by him, had become. The
fact is that organic nature was never so
interesting a subject of study as it is
to-day ; and few will deny that this is
due, in large measure, to the influence
of Darwin — the man who is now ac-
cused of turning " all that is fair and
beautiful in nature into a dry and form-
less dust." When people who claim to
"grasp the heaven above" indulge in
such unfounded and uncharitable re-
marks about their intellectual superiors,
one is apt to wonder whether their pre-
hensile powers have really been exercised
to the best advantage.

That Sir William Dawson did not
write this book for a scientific public is
evident by many signs. When he speaks
of standing near to the "treacherous
margin " of the evolution philosophy
and rescuing a few grains of truth, he
writes — there is but one expression for
it — utter nonsense. Imagine for one
moment a scientist, a philosopher, steal-
ing gingerly to the edge of a system
of philosophy and putting out a timor-
ous hand to clutch a grain of truth,
whirling, as it were, in a vortex ! Im-
agine the scientist, the philosopher,

dreading to be sucked in, and quickly
retreating with his rescued grain to a
safer footing ! Again, when he tells us,
in effect, that the controversy between
Huxley and Harrison supplies " an evi-
dence of the need of a divine revelation,"
we are persuaded that such an utter-
ance could only have been intended for
very shallow minds. More need for a
revelation, we should say, if Harrison
and Huxley agreed, for how should we
know that they were not both in error ?
When they disagree, there is at least a
probability that the errors of the one
will more or less cancel those of the
other, and that some residuum of truth
will be left behind. It is hard to see
how truth could be established except
by conflict, or how minds could develop
except through contact and collision
with other minds. Think what a lot of
simpletons we should become if, as often
as a difference of opinion arose, instead
of being left to weigh the arguments on
either side, we were at once to hear an
authoritative voice deciding the whole
question ! It will greatly please most of
the readers of this book to be told that
Darwin took a very " unscientific " po-
sition in " enthroning chance or acci-
dent or necessity as Lord and Creator " ;
and it will not trouble them in the least
to remember — if they do remember —
that, on the immediately preceding page,
it was stated that " Darwin's natural
turn of mind and his scientific training
were not of such a character as to lead
him to seek for ultimate causes; he was
content with a modal evolution (i. e.,
with evolution considered and treated
as a method) ; he took matter and force
as he found them." The two statements
are in obvious conflict, and the one on the
earlier page is the correct one. Darwin
did not enthrone chance ; he took matter
and force as he found them ; and to us his
position appears entirely scientific. Her-
bert Spencer, by a long course of reason-
ing, arrives at the conclusion that the
First Cause is inscrutable. Darwin as-
sumed as much without going through

EDITOR'S TABLE.

843

any troublesome logical process. Nobody
in this world, except perhaps some su-
perstitious gambler, ever " enthroned "
chance, and even he is imposed upon
by words.

One is compelled to ask the question
whether the author is as inapt at philo-
sophical reasoning as his book indi-
cates, or whether he has simply put
aside his philosophy in order that he
may not affright the babes to whom it
is his evident purpose to minister. He
tells us that it is " a striking inversion of
ordinary probabilities " to suppose that
the environment can influence the de-
velopment of organisms; that inanimate
nature can " rule, determine, and ele-
vate that which lives and wills." Does
not the law of gravitation rule and de-
termine in a very great degree nearly
all the phenomena of human life ? Does
not diet determine the quality of the
blood, and the quality or condition of
the blood influence thought? Is not
civilization largely a matter of climate
and general physical conditions? The
world might have been much better
than it is, we are told, if it had pleased
God " to produce a superior race of be-
ings." This is Sir William Dawson's
dictum : we know nothing about such
matters; all we know is that no race
superior to man has been produced ; and
we are disposed to conclude that man,
as he is and has been, stands in definite
relation to the condition of things on this
planet. That a being of infinite power,
who might have done better, should have
been content with doing worse, is an
idea which we prefer to leave to the
contemplation of the author. Another
example of what may well be called
baby philosophy is where, speaking of
the idea that there may be among the
organs of the body a certain struggle
for existence and pre-eminence, our au-
thor declares it to be " revolting to com-
mon sense and hideous to right feeling."
What has a student of science to do with
any idea put forward as scientific except
to bring it, if possible, to the test of

facts ? To us it is no more " revolting "
or "hideous" that there should be a
struggle for existence going on between
the different cells of our body than that
the movement of the earth in its orbit
should be the resultant of two antago-
nistic forces, or that our social system
should be the result of the competing
activities of its individual members.
" On this view,." says our author, " the
mechanism of an animal ceases even to
be a machine, and becomes a mere mass
of conflicting parts thrown together at
random, and depending for its continued
existence on a chance balance of exter-
nal forces." Does the solar system
cease to be a machine because it is con-
trolled by the rival laws of gravitation
and inertia — because the planets are
acted upon at once by a centripetal and
centrifugal force ? Does the social
organism cease to be a machine because
its balance is maintained by the self-
seeking and mutually -limiting activities
of its members ? To talk of u a chance
balance of external forces" is irrelevant
and meaningless. What we know is that
there is a balance, that it has endured
long enough for the development of an
infinite number of organic forms in
adaptation to it, and that there is no
apparent reason why it should not con-
tinue. That is all any one who is de-
termined not to transcend the facts can
say. We have not space to examine
the more detailed reasonings of the au-
thor of this book ; but its general phil-
osophic tone may be correctly judged
from what precedes. It is not a book
that will enhance the reputation of the
Canadian scientist.

THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION.

The meeting of the American Asso-
ciation just held at Indianapolis may be
regarded as one of the best of recent
years. The attendance was up to a
good average in numbers and embraced
a good many distinguished names, both
among the older and newer generations

344

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of workers. Ample accommodations
were provided in the new State-Honse,
where all the meetings could be held
under a single roof. The citizens of
Indianapolis, who as a community are
busy in turning the achieved results of
science to profit, were enthusiastic in
welcome and kindnesses.

The more noteworthy papers, includ-
ing the official addresses, well befitted
the name of the body, and were true to
its declared purposes of promoting in-
tercourse between students and encour-
aging more active and more systematic
research ; and a considerable proportion
of them were at the same time happily
adapted to the average intelligence of a
public audience and in the direction of
popular questionings.

Retiring President Mendenhall treat-
ed in his address of the relations that
exist and should exist between scien-
tific students and the public. While he
sought to determine how far men of
science are responsible for any lack of
cordiality that may exist, he demon-
strated to business men, by means of a
very happy illustration, that they are
enjoying direct benefits from the results
of abstract research to a far greater ex-
tent than they realize or imagine. His
remarks, on both sides of this subject, de-
serve particular attention. Vice-Presi-
dent Branner, considering the relations
of State and National Geological Sur-
veys, endeavored to sketch a plan of
combined action, under which the party
of either side could do the work proper
for it without encroaching upon the
field of the other, and room be left
for individual research. Vice-President
Dodge, in the Economic and Statistical
Section, set forth in a pleasant light the
advantages enjoyed by the producing
classes in the United States in relation
to the standard of living. In relating the
present condition of knowledge respect-
ing the variable stars, Prof. Chandler
had a subject that involves research of
the highest order, of which at the same
time every one desires to be informed.

In a large number of the sectional pa-
pers, too, the sober dignity of the sci-
entific method was combined with adap-
tation to the tastes of hearers of a prac-
tical turn.

Societies outside of the sections and
complementary to them continue to
grow around the Association. The meet-
ings of the Society for the Promotion of
Agriculture were lively and practical;
those of the Geological Society were
more technical in tone. The Entomo-
logical Club insisted on the extension
and enlargement of the study of insects.
An Ornithological Society was formed,
and went at once to talking about birds.
The Botanical Club held its eighth an-
nual meeting. Prof. Britton, under in-
structions from the Toronto meeting,
gave an account of the present state of
systematic botany in North America.
A National Chemical Society was pro-
jected.

The fact that this was the fiftieth
meeting of the Association does not
seem to have received special attention
further than a mention in Prof. Men-
denhalFs address. The fact that the
Association has maintained its vigor and
has prospered during half a century is
evidence that it has had a place of use-
fulness and has filled it. The question
now arises whether, if it would meet the
demands of the future as successfully as
it has met those of the past, it will not
have to adapt itself anew to the changed
conditions of science and the country
and to the present popular demand for
scientific knowledge, which are very
different now from what they were
when it began.

The doors of the Association were
thrown open to members of foreign so-
cieties, who will be admitted hereafter,
with full privileges, without fees; and
provision was made for inviting to the
next meeting representations of the sci-
entific societies of Mexico and Central
and South America. The following
officers were chosen for the ensuing
year :

LITERARY NOTICES.

845

President. — Albert B. Prescott, Ann Ar-
bor, Mich.

Vice-Presidents. — A, Mathematics and As-
tronomy— E. W. Hyde, Cincinnati, 0. B,
Physics— F. E. Nipher, St. Louis. C, Chem-
istry— B. C. Kedzie, Agricultural College,
Michigan. D, Mechanical Science and Engi-
neering— Thomas Grey, Terre Haute. E,
Geology and Geography — J. J. Stevenson,
New York. F, Biology — J. M. Coulter, Craw-
fordsville, Ind. H, Anthropology — Joseph
Jastrow, Madison, Wis. I, Economic Science
and Statistics — Edmund J. James, Phila-
delphia.

Permanent Secretary. — F. W. Putnam,
Cambridge, Mass.

General Secretary. — Harvey W. Wiley,
Washington, D. C.

Secretary of the Council. — A. W. Butler,
Brookville, Ind.

Auditors. — Henry Wheatland, Salem,
Mass. ; Thomas Meehan, Germantown, Pa.

Treasurer. — William Lilly, Mauch Chunk,
Pa.

The meeting for 1891 will be held in
Washington, D. 0.

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Evolution of Sex. By Patrick Ged-
des and J. Arthur Thomson. The Con-
temporary Science Series. New York:
Scribner & Welford. Pp. 322. Price,
$1.25.

The purpose of the Contemporary Sci-
ence Series is to bring within general reach
of the English-speaking public the best that
is known in all departments of modern sci-
entific research. Frank investigations and
clear presentations are promised, in particu-
lar, of all the questions of modern life — the
various social and politico-economical prob-
lems of to-day, the most recent researches in
the knowledge of man, the past and present
experiences of the race, and the nature of
its environment. The first book issued in
this series covers a field in which lie some of
the most difficult as well as most generally in-
teresting of biological questions. The sub-
ject is, therefore, an attractive one both to
trained biologists and to persons without
special training, and the wants of both these
classes of readers have had consideration in
the mode of treating the subject which the
authors have pursued. They undertake to
give an outline of the various kinds of re-

productive processes that occur in the animal
'kingdom, and to point out an interpretation
of these processes in the elemental facts of
biology. They have decided opinions on the
important biological questions now in dis-
pute, which are not always the ones gen-
erally accepted, and especially as regards
the factors of organic evolution. Hence
they are continually joining issue with this
or that evolutionist or physiologist, agree-
ing only in part with any one. Darwin's
theory of sexual selection comes up for
criticism at the very outset, and both this
and Wallace's views on natural selection are
rated as accounting for the acquirement of
secondary sexual characters only in part.
The authors offer, as a broader and more
fundamental explanation of the origin of
sexual differences, that katabolic, or destruc-
tive, changes in living matter prevail in the
male, while anabolic, or constructive, action
characterizes the female. This idea as to
the essential difference between the sexes is
the key to the whole theory of sex relations
held by the authors. Thus, in regard to
what determines sex in the embryo, concern-
ing which over five hundred theories have
been set forth, they say that anabolic, or
favorable, conditions of the environment
tend to cause the production of females,
while katabolic, or severe, surroundings fa-
vor the appearance of males. A consider-
able division of the volume is devoted to a
description of the organs, tissues, and cells
concerned in reproduction, in the course of
which an account is given of the phenomena
of hermaphroditism. In concluding this sec-
tion the theory of sex already alluded to is
fully set forth. The various modes of re-
production which obtain in the animal king-
dom are then described, including partheno-
genesis, which leads to a discussion of the
alternation of one-sexed and two-sexed gen-
erations. The theory of reproduction which
the authors advance is that there is a con-
tinual see-saw between anabolism and kata-
bolism, nutrition and reproduction. Growth
of cell and of organism alike has a limit
which, as stated by Spencer, depends on the
tendency of increase of mass to outrun in-
crease of surface. When anabolism threat-
ens to pass this limit, katabolism acts and
restores the preponderance of surface. Re-
production is continually going on in organic

846

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nature, because on the whole the katabolic
conditions of the environment preponderate
over the anabolic. In conclusion, certain psy-
chological and sociological aspects of sex re-
lations are discussed, namely, the occurrence
of the love of mates and of offspring among
animals, the intellectual and emotional dif-
ferences between the sexes, and the various
proposals for checking increase of popula-
tion. The authors express strong aversion,
based on biological grounds, to the recent
attempts of some women to mold their sex
into the fashion of men. They hold that
the difference between the mental capabili-
ties of women and men is highly beneficial
to the race, and is hence to be fostered and
not obliterated. Each chapter of the work
is followed by a summary of its main points,
and a list of books bearing upon the special
topic under treatment. The authors have
discussed the recently published views of
Prof. Weisman on Heredity, and have taken
account also of Wallace's latest criticisms
on Darwinism. They express regret that
limits of space have made it impossible to
give the botanical side of their subject its
proportionate share of attention, but they
have inserted illustrations of the essential
facts, which they deem sufficient to show
the parallelism of the reproductive processes
throughout nature. A defect of the book is
in its language, which is frequently so in-
volved as to be obscure, and is still oftener
awkward. The volume is illustrated and has
an index.

The Metallurgy of Steel. By Henry Ma-
rion Howe. Vol. I. New York : The
Scientific Publishing Company. Pp. 380,
quarto. Price, $10.

In this work metallurgists are provided
with an account of the most important of
metallurgical industries on a scale which is
seldom ventured upon. Its purpose is to
describe the present practice of steel-mak-
ing in America without attempting to give
the history of the industry. Hence the au-
thor says : " In describing old experiments
and abandoned processes, I have not aimed
to give matter of historic interest, but rather
that which might be useful, whether in de-
terring others from repeating unnecessary
or hopeless experiments, or in guiding them
should processes once unsuccessful become

commercially possible through changed con-
ditions." Most of the first half of this vol-
ume is devoted to the characters of differ-
ent steels, produced by admixtures of carbon,
silicon, manganese, and other metallic and
non-metallic elements. In considering the
effect of carbon on iron, the author presents
both the chemical and the microscopical evi-
dence which goes to show that there are two
conditions of combination of carbon with
iron. In one of the early chapters the pro-
cesses of hardening, tempering, and anneal-
ing are described, and the changes produced
in the metal by these operations are ex-
plained. The absorption of gases by iron
and their escape from the metal, and the
various means taken to prevent the conse-
quent forming of blow-holes and pipes, form
a division of the subject that receives full
discussion. The author considers next the
varieties of stucture shown by the micro-
scope, and the changes of crystallization,
etc., produced by various treatments of the
metal. The operations included under cold
working and hot working are then described,
after which the making of steel is taken up.
A great many varieties of the direct process,
several charcoal-hearth processes, and the
crucible process are described and their re-
sults are compared. The closing chapter is
a description of the apparatus for the Besse-
mer process, including a variety of modifica-
tions. The material of this volume has been
published in supplements to The Engineer-
ing and Mining Journal within the past two
years, during which time new results have
been attained in some departments of the
subject. Some of these — namely, on man-
ganese steel and other special steels, on anti-
rust coatings, and on lead-quenching — are
added in appendixes. In stating the cost of
metallurgical processes, the author has gen-
erally given the quantities of material and
the amount of labor needed for a given work
rather than the expense in dollars and cents,
for the reasons that the former fluctuate less
than the latter, and more managers are will-
ing to tell what quantities of materials they
use than what is their exact cost of produc-
tion. He has inserted a great many refer-
ences to original authorities, for the purpose
of showing that his statements have a solid
foundation, or so that the reader may exam-
ine any special topic more in detail. In re-

LITERARY NOTICES.

847

gard to his use of material already pub-
lished the author says : " Such a work as
this can not, of course, be carried out with-
out much compilation ; but by far the
greater part of the labor has been expended
in the original work of discussing the data
thus compiled, and in acquiring wholly new
data, whether by experimental research or
in prolonged examination of the processes
described. For instance, there are about
two hundred tables in this volume ; of these,
all but about twenty (and most of these
twenty are very small) are either wholly
original or consist mainly or wholly, not of
matter published by others, but of numbers
calculated therefrom." As to revealing trade
secrets, his rule has been to give all the in-
formation about present practice that seems
useful and that he has permission to give,
while trying to conceal the identity of the
establishment at which it exists. This vol-
ume being numbered one, implies another or
more to follow it, but no announcement of
succeeding volumes is made in the one now
issued.

Report upon United States Geographical
Surveys West of the One Hundredth
Meridian, in charge of Captain George
M. Wheeler. Vol. I, Geographical Re-
port. Washington. Pp. 780, quarto, with
Plates and Maps.

This report was practically completed in
June, 1879, but the officer in charge was
prevented, by a press of other duties and by
subsequent prolonged illness, from present-
ing it for publication until 1887. The se-
ries of expeditions covered by the report
was made under the direction of the Chief
of Engineers, United States Army, in 1869,
and in successive years from 1871 to 1879,
inclusive. On the organization of the Geo-
logical Survey in 1879, surveys by the War
Department for military and industrial pur-
poses were discontinued. The results ob-
tained in these expeditions were published
in eight quarto volumes, each devoted to a
special topic, as astronomy, geology, etc. The
present volume gives a brief account of the
expedition of each year, with a summary of
results. In 1871 a party explored the Grand
Canon of the Colorado River in boats, from
Camp Mohave to Diamond Creek. An itin-
erary of this trip is given, to which is pre-
fixed a sketch of earlier explorations along

this river. Some account is given of the
population, industries, irrigation, and land
classification in the regions explored, which
include parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Cali-
fornia, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, and
Oregon. In several appendixes are given
descriptions of the atlas sheets issued as a
part of these reports, an account of the
methods of survey employed, notes on the
survey and disposal of the public lands of
the United States (with map), and consid-
erations on the government land and marine
surveys of foreign nations. The last ap-
pendix is a memoir on discoveries and ex-
plorations on the Pacific Coast of North
America and in the interior west of the Mis-
sissippi from 1500 to 1880. In the first
part of the memoir the explorations between
1500 and 1800 are mentioned, and eleven
curious old maps are reproduced which show
the very iinperfect knowledge of America
that existed during much of this period.
This is followed by an epitome of the me-
moir by Lieutenant G. K. Warren, made in
1858, on the explorations west of the Mis-
sissippi from 1800 to 1857, and by a sketch
of the explorations and surveys from 1857
to 1880. The volume contains three folded
maps and thirty-eight plates, the latter in-
cluding the eleven old maps already men-
tioned, and representing also typical locali-
ties, contours, Indian costumes, etc., in the
country examined.

Physiognomy and Expression. By Prof.
Paolo Mantegazza. The Contemporary
Science Series. New York : Scribner &
Welford. Pp. 327. Price, $1.25.

In this treatise the author takes up the
study of expression at the point where Dar-
win left it, "and modestly claims to have
gone a step further." There is a great deal
of chaff in the literature of the subject ; and
the author, who is one of its most accom-
plished students, has accordingly had the
task set before him of separating once for
all positive observations from the number
of bad guesses and ingenious conjectures
which have hitherto encumbered the study.
His wish, he says, has been " to render to
science what is due to science, and to imagi-
nation what is due to imagination." Be-
sides new facts, the reader is invited to find
in his work facts already known, but inter-

848

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

preted by new theories. A historical sketch
of past studies and treatises on expression
is given. Of authors of the old school, La-
vater is found to have come the nearest to
being scientific. The real science begins
with Camper, from whom the famous facial
angle took its name. But the great anato-
mists and physicists who preceded Darwin
only touched one side of the problem — ex-
pression in its relation to art and the aes-
thetic. Darwin traced the general laws
which govern expression in the whole ani-
mal kingdom ; and in his book, published
only in 1872, expression, in so far as it is a
special branch of comparative biology, as-
serted itself as a new science. In the sci-
ence of the present day we have, on one
side, a study of the human countenance,
which is associated with anatomy and an-
thropology, and, for its application, with all
the plastic sciences ; and, on the other side,
a study of expression, and of expression in
relation to psychology, to comparative eth-
nology, " the applications of which interest
in turn painter, sculptor, and actor," The
present book proposes " modestly to restore
to anthropology and to psychology what be-
longs to either, and to make known the posi-
tive documents which we possess to-day on
the human countenance and on expression."
Two diverse and important functions are ac-
corded to physical expression — it may re-
place or complete language, and it may de-
fend the nerve-centers and other parts of
the body against dangers of different kinds.
Including all living beings in a general view,
we may, according to the author, say that
the expression of emotion augments in in-
tensity and variety as the animal rises to a
higher scale and becomes more sociable.
These two maxims concerning the office and
the development of expression, which we have
selected from the observations in the chap-
ter on the Language of Expression, indicate
the importance and interest of the study.
The first part of the treatise is devoted to
the human face, its several features, and its
comparative morphology; the second part
to the expression of the emotions, in which,
besides what are usually understood under
that term, are included the minor emotions
or feelings, the expression of thought, the
general expressions • of repose and action,
disquietude, etc., and racial and professional

expression, with additional chapters on the
moderators and disturbers of expression,
criteria for the determination of the strength
of an emotion by the degree of expression,
for judging the moral worth of a physiog-
nomy and the intellectual value of a face,
and on the physiognomy of gestures and the
expression of clothes. While the scientific
is predominant in the method of the book,
a kind of literary discursiveness is frequently
indulged in which supplies pleasant reading
supplementary to the solid principles of the
bulk of the text.

Geological Survey of New Jersey. An-
nual Report of the State Geologist
for 1889. Pp. 112.— Final Report of
the State Geologist. Vol. II, Part I.
Pp. 642. New Brunswick : Irving S.
Upson, Assistant in charge of the Office.

The survey was continued through 1889
on the lines planned by Dr. Cook before his
death, which occurred on the 22d of Septem-
ber. A leading object in the work has been,
as heretofore, to develop and make public
the natural products and resources of the
State. The present volume bears evidence,
continuing and additional to that given in
previous volumes, of the success with which
this object has been met. The geodetic sur-
vey was continued during the year, after
having been suspended in 1888, southerly
and westerly from the line — Hammerton-
Newfield — which was reached in 1887. In
a section on the ' archaean rocks, Mr. Frank
L. Nason gives a historical review of what
has been done in the Archaean Highlands
since 1836 ; and continues with a report of
the field-work of the year, descriptions of
the type rocks of the region and their dis-
tribution, studies of the economic value of
rocks, and special notes on the zircon and
molybdenite found there. The section on
Water-Supply and Artesian Wells, by Mr.
C. C. Vermeule, includes accounts of the
measures which have been taken to secure a
water-supply to several cities and towns,
and notes of the observations made in boring
nearly thirty artesian wells in different parts
of the State. The borings of a well at At-
lantic City, to a depth of about 1,400 feet,
show that the Quaternary gravels and sands
are over 200 feet thick, and the strata under
them to 1,225 feet are Miocene, while below
that depth no fossil is yet found distinctive

LITERARY NOTICES.

849

of the Eocene. The second volume of the
Final Report is devoted to the mineralogy,
botany, and zoology of the State ; the first
part comprising the mineralogy and botany.
The minerals — for which, by reason of the
great number of species and varieties, their
rare chemical combinations, and their won-
derful crystalline development, the localities
of New Jersey are famous — are catalogued
by Mr. Frederick A. Canfield, with the aid
of the best collections. The Flora of the
State is divided by Dr. N. L. Britton, who
furnishes the catalogue, into a northern and
a southern, the division between which is
approximately indicated by the glacial mo-
raine. A minor division includes the marine
and coast group of plants, species, and varie-
ties especially characteristic of the sea-
beaches and salt or brackish marshes and
meadows ; and a fourth group is made of
species of especial western distribution,
which, however, have no special significance
in the consideration of the origin of the flora.
In all, 5,641 species and varieties of plants
are catalogued.

Wheelbarrow : Articles and Discussions on
the Labor Question. Chicago : The
Open Court Publishing Company. Pp.
303. Price, $1.

"Wheelbarrow" appears to be both
the title of this book and the pen-name of
the author. The volume is made up of arti-
cles contributed to The Open Court over this
signature, containing also two by Lyman J.
Gage, written in controversy with " Wheel-
barrow " over The Ethics of the Board of
Trade. The articles are intended to present
various topics of the labor question from the
standpoint of a common laborer, which was
the author's position in early life. His auto-
biography prefixed to the volume informs us,
however, that he rose from the occupation
of wheeling gravel on railways through the
grades of country school-teacher and brick-
yard laborer to that of lawyer. He served
in the army during the war with Mexico and
the civil war, and attained the rank of
brigadier-general, and we understand that
he is General M. M. Trumbull, of Chicago.
His portrait is inserted as a frontispiece to
the book. The tone of the " Wheelbarrow "
essays is against the revolutionary schemes
of some who call themselves workingmen,
vol. xxxvii. — 61

and in favor of a manly Independence and a
generous fraternity on the part of laborers,
in their relations with their employers and
with each other. On the money question he
argues for a hundred cents' worth of silver
in the silver dollar; he opposes Henry
George's single-tax idea ; and he charges the
produce brokers with " making bread dear."
The volume contains also three essays on
The Poets of Liberty and Labor, namely,
Gerald Massey, Robert Burns, and Thomas
Hood. The articles are written in simple
and picturesque language, and the views they
contain are enforced by many anecdotes and
fables.

Evolution and Disease. By J. Bland
Sutton. The Contemporary Science Se-
ries. New York: Scribner & Welford.
Pp. 285. Price, $1.25.

The author's purpose in writing this book
has been to indicate that there is a natural
history of disease as well as of plants and
animals. It is difficult to define disease
when our remarks are restricted to the
human family; and it becomes obviously
more difficult when we attempt it, as the au-
thor has done, on a broad zoological basis.
It necessarily follows, he assumes, from the
relations between man and the higher ani-
mals, " that there should be a similarity in
the structural alterations induced by diseased
conditions in all kinds of animals, allowing,
of course, for the differences in environment.
This we know to be the case, and it is clear
that as there has been a gradual evolution
of complex from simple organisms, it neces-
sarily follows that the principles of evolu-
tion ought to apply to diseased conditions if
they hold good for the normal or healthy
states of organisms ; in plain words, there
has been an evolution of disease pari passu
with evolution of animal forms." In view
of the talk of physiological types of diseased
tissues, the author's earlier efforts were di-
rected to searching among animals for the
purpose of detecting in them the occurrence
of tissues which in man are found only
under abnormal conditions. The hypothesis
proved to be true in only a limited sense ; but,
" at the same time, the truth of an opinion
held by nearly all thoughtful physicians —
that disease may in many instances be re-
garded as exaggerated function — was forci-

850

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bly illustrated, and 1 quickly saw that the
manifestations of disease were regulated by
the same laws which govern physiological
processes in general, and that many conditions
regarded as pathological in one animal are
natural in another." This view is enforced
in the successive chapters of the book, in
which — according to the author's plan of
treatment as summarized by himself — the
effects of increased use and disuse of parts
are considered in connection with the grad-
ual change in function of organs, and the
part played by transmission of the effects
of increased use and disuse in producing
vestigial structures in complex organisms.
The tendency of vestigial structures to be-
come diseased, or to give rise to conditions
disadvantageous to the individual, is dealt
with. The transmission of acquired charac-
ters and malformations is discussed. Causes
of disease arising without the organism, and
the relations they bear to inflammation and
fever, are given a chapter. Tumors are
considered in connection with general mor-
bid processes, and the scanty knowledge we
possess of the zoological distribution of dis-
ease is summarized. The illustrations of the
principles have been selected, whenever it
was practicable, from animals other than
man, for the author believes that man has
been studied too exclusively.

Longmans' School Geography for North
America. By George G. Chisholm and
C. H. Leete. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co. Pp. 384. Price, $1.25.

The first feature of this work to be no-
ticed is its departure from the familiar thin
quarto form in which geographies that com-
bine maps and text are made. This volume
contains only text and illustrations, and is
intended to accompany an atlas. An ex-
amination of it will not proceed far before
showing that it differs from the ordinary
geography in something more important than
form. The book aims to set before the
pupil those facts of geography that are
most worth his knowing, and that are most
effective as discipline. Hence all countries are
not described in conformity with a rigid out-
line, but the characteristic features of each
are given especial prominence. The authors
have sought to make the study of geography
something better than a memorizing process
by bringing out the relations of cause and

effect. To aid in this latter purpose, the
general laws of physical geography are stated
in an introduction, and to this chapter are
referred the facts that especially illustrate
the laws. Cause and effect are particularly
developed in the paragraphs on towns,
where it has been sought to show why and
on what basis a town exists in any particular
place. In the description of the natural
features of a region, little regard is paid to
the artificial boundaries of political divisions
and subdivisions. Thus, in the treatment
of North America, which is preceded by a
sketch of North and South America to-
gether, each of the general topics, surface,
climate, life, etc., is dealt with for the whole
continent, the portion of each of these feat-
ures that becomes the share of one or
another country being pointed out later.
In this way are avoided the many repetitions
that would be involved in describing sepa-
rately the geographical characters of the
fifty States and Territories of the United
States. The facts relating to the products
and commerce of a country are also pre-
sented from a national standpoint, and com-
parisons are made with foreign countries.
The work is not confined to North America,
as might be inferred from a hasty reading
of the title ; the other grand divisions of the
globe are treated with more or less fullness
according to their importance to the Ameri-
can pupil. The text is illustrated by seventy
well-selected cuts, but unfortunately the
pictures have such a muddy appearance that
their value is much impaired. In spelling
foreign names the authors have followed the
rules adopted by the Council of the Royal
Geographical Society. The volume is close-
ly printed, and hence contains a great deal
of matter within a moderate compass, and
different sizes and styles of type, cross-refer-
ences, foot-notes, and statistical tables have
been made use of to link the various de-
scriptions into one connected whole.

A Manual of Anatomy for Senior Stu-
dents. By Edmund Owen, M.B., F.R.C.S.
London and New York: Longmans,
Green & Co. Pp. 526. Price, $3.50.

From its title alone one might infer that
this work had about the same scope as
others on the same subject prepared for
medical students, but it has a somewhat pe-
culiar character, owing partly to what it

LITERARY NOTICES.

851

omits and partly to what it takes in. The
author says in his preface : " Most of the
ground has, I am aware, been already cov-
ered, especially as regards so-called surgical
anatomy. But the entire range of anatomy
has not hitherto, I think, been treated from
the point of view of the senior student, who,
having quitted the dissecting-room, is in need
of a volume which shall supply him with
such anatomical information, free of weary-
ing detail, as is essential for his successful
and intelligent work in the medical and
surgical wards and in the special depart-
ments of his hospital." He also says :
" Having always found it impracticable to
draw a hard-and-fast line between facts
which bear upon the science of medicine and
those which chiefly concern the practical
surgeon, I, a surgeon, have presumed in
this Manual boldly to trespass upon the do-
mains of the physician, as well as of the
specialist." This fact makes the book bet-
ter calculated to be of use to American stu-
dents than it otherwise would be, for the
medical profession and the public in this coun-
try have likewise found it " impracticable to
draw a hard-and-fast line" between physi-
cians and surgeons such as exists in England.
Accordingly, there is less minute description
of parts than in manuals for the dissecting-
room, while malformations and disorders,
and the operations which these call for, are
described more fully than is usual except in
the most complete treatises. The style of
the book is clear and concise, the text is
liberally illustrated, and the mechanical
work of the volume is excellent.

Heat as a Form of Energy. By Prof. Rob-
ert H. Thurston. Boston: Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. Pp. 261. Price, $1.25.

Prof. Thurston has produced a book for
the general reader rather than a text-book
for the student. It traces the development
of the science of heat from the speculations
of the ancient philosophers down to the re-
sults of the latest experiments. After stat-
ing the ideas of the philosophers in regard
to heat, the author gives an outline of the
modern science of thermodynamics. In the
next chapter he shows how the transfer of
heat in various ways is an essential feature
in many of the world's important industries,
and in many great operations of nature.

.Most of the latter half of the volume is de-
voted to the development of heat-engines
— machines for transforming heat into me-
chanical energy. The author is evidently
in a favorite field when describing the de-
velopment of the steam-engine, for he de-
votes considerable space to this topic, and
illustrates the account with pictures of sev-
eral successive forms of engines. The book
is the third of the Riverside Science Se-
ries.

The explorations by the United States
Fish Commission steamer Albatross during
the year 1889 covered a considerable extent
of mainland and inland coast waters from
California south of Point Conception to
Washin^on. The new discoveries of fishes
along the shores of California, Oregon, and
"Washington were almost wholly from greater
depths than fifty fathoms. Of the sixty spe-
cies of fishes obtained from the Revillagige-
dos Islands, only about a dozen had been
previously recorded there ; not more than
half were yet known from the mainland ; and
the other half included new forms and shapes
from the islands of the western Pacific and
from the Galapagos. The collections from
the Gulf of California were obtained mainly
along the shores and in the shallower waters
of its northern portion. The deeper waters
of the Gulf have a bottom of blue mud sin-
gularly barren of life. The Preliminary Re-
port of Mr. Charles H. Gilbert on the fishes
collected by the steamer contains descrip-
tions of ninety-two species — all new. The
New Fishes collected off the Coast of Alaska
and the Adjacent Region to the Southward is
the subject of a paper by Mr. Tarleton H.
Bean. Eight of the genera are among the
common forms of the Atlantic, and four of
them are apparently new to science. Other
papers to which the scientific results of the
explorations of the Albatross have given rise
are a Catalogue of Fishes collected at Port Cas-
tine, St. Lucia, by David Starr Jordan, and
a Catalogue of Skeletons of Birds collected at
points along the South American coast, by
Frederic A. Lucas. All are published by
the United States National Museum.

A description of Etheostoma tippecanoe,
a New Species of Fish from Tippecanoe River,
Indiana, is described by David Starr Jordan
and Barton Warren Fvermann, and figured

852

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the Proceedings of the National Museum,
Washington.

The Bulletin from the Laboratories of
Natural History of the State University of
Iowa, Nos. 3 and 4, contains six papers — viz.,
Some New Species of Palaeozoic Fossils, by
S. Calvin ; The Saprophytic Fungi of East-
ern Iowa, and Common Species of Edible
Fungi, by T. H. McBride ; The Loess and its
Fossils, and A New Species of Fresh- Water
Mollusk, by B. Shimer ; and the Pselaphidae
of North America, by Dr. E. Brendel and
H. F. Wickham. Published by authority of
the Regents, at Iowa City.

Among the latest papers left by Prof.
Leo Lesquereuz is one On Some Fossil Re-
mains considered as Peculiar Kinds of Plants,
which appears as one of the publications of
the United States National Museum. It re-
lates to some fossils, one of which, from the
Upper Helderberg limestone, Sandusky, Ohio,
is like a long, flexuous, tubular stem imbed-
ded in a large piece of compact gray lime-
stone. The others, from the Erie shale near
Cleveland, are cylindrical fragments traced
in relief upon gray, hard, yellowish, sandy
shale, or else short, oval, utricular bodies,
rounded at one end, bilobate at the other,
found on large flattened pebbles or lenticular
masses of argillaceous iron ore, locally dis-
tributed in the shale. The author named
the fossils Halymenites Herzeri, Cylindrites
striatus, and Physophycus bilobatus — all new
species.

Prof. A. H. Mackay publishes, as a re-
print from the Transactions of the Royal
Society of Canada, a paper on the Fresh-
Water Sponges of Canada and Newfoundland.
It is intended to be only a synopsis, just
sufficient to indicate the extent to which the
Spongillidse of the Dominion have been ob-
served, and to facilitate further investiga-
tion. After the introductory general ob-
servations on the Spongillidae, ten species are
described, of which Heteromegenia pictoven-
sis, of different lakes in Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland, is declared to be the firmest
and most beautiful of all the fresh-water
sponges in Canada.

The Catalogue of Minerals for Sale by
George L. English <fc Co., Philadelphia (Wil-
liam Niven, New York), fifteenth edition,
June, 1890, is a hand-book and bulletin in
mineralogy as well as a dealers' list. Be-

sides the ordinary catalogue matter, it con-
tains forty pages of accounts, with illus-
trated descriptions, of new minerals. The
catalogue matter itself is of scientific value,
for it includes a complete classified list of all
the species described in Dana's System and
in the appendixes and the more recent ac-
counts in the American Journal of Science.
The pleasant information is given that the
present elaborate catalogue is the result of
a very great increase in the demand for min-
eral specimens.

A new theory of TJie Origin of Polar 31o-
tion is put forward by M. Myerovitch, who
attempts to prove that the motion arises
from the repulsive power of molecules. The
author has published the introduction of his
contemplated book on the subject in advance
of the book itself, for the information of
critics. Rosenberg Brothers, 266 West
Twelfth Street, Chicago, 111.

Zoe, a monthly Biological Journal (Zoe
Publishing Company, San Francisco), is filled
with contributions of natural-history notes
incident and pertinent to the West and the
Pacific slope. In a recent number, Mr. Behr's
paper on the Economy of Nature as Exem-
plified by Parasites gives illustrations of the
danger of reckless interference with the
natural order of affairs. President Jordan
accounts for some apparent anomalies in the
Distribution of Fishes in the Yellowstone
Park. Mr. T. S: Brandegee has some obser-
vations on the alternate defoliation and new
leafing of Fouquieria several times in the
season, according to changes in the moisture
conditions — a fact that is not unknown with
some species on the Atlantic slope. Mr. H.
R. Taylor describes some curious incidents
of individuality in the nesting habits of the
golden eagle.

Among the eight papers in the fifth and
sixth numbers of Studies in the Biological
Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University,
Yol. IY, H. Newell Martin and W. K.
Brooks, editors, we notice as of more ob-
vious general interest those of Prof. Martin
and Julius Friedenwald on the Effect of
Light on the Production of Carbon Dioxide
by Frogs ; of J. C. Hemmeter on -the Effects
of Certain Members of the Ethylic Alcohol
Series on the Isolated Mammalian Heart ; of
Prof. Martin and E. C. Applcgarth on the

LITERARY NOTICES.

853

Temperature Limits of the Vitality of the
Mammalian Heart ; and of S. Watase on the
Morphology of the Compound Eye of Ar-
thropods. The articles requiring it are am-
ply and excellently illustrated.

The Journal of Morphology, No. 3, Vol.
Ill, of which C. 0. Whitman and W. Phelps
Allis are editors, has four articles — viz. : on
the Embryology of the Earthworm, by Ed-
mund B. Wilson ; the Ribs and Median Fins
in Fishes, and The Morphology of the Verte-
brate Skull, by Dr. C. Baur ; and a discus-
sion, by Dr. R. W. Shufeldt, of the posi-
tion of Chamsea (the wren-tit) in the system.
They are well illustrated.

Dr. Michael Foster, in conducting The
Journal of Physiology, enjoys the assistance
of two English co-operators and of Prof.
H. P. Bowditch, Prof. H. Newell Martin, and
Prof. H. C. Wood, in the United States.
Numbers 1, 2, and 3 of Vol. XI contain
thirteen articles relating to bodily tempera-
ture, respiration, salivary secretion, the di-
gestive system, the blood, phonation, the
nervous system, and knee-jerk. Cambridge,
England.

The quarterly University Studies, pub-
lished by the University of Nebraska, for
July, 1890, L. A. Sherman, editor, contains
papers on the Determination of Specific Heat
and of Latent Heat of Vaporization with the
Vapor Calorimeter, by Harold N. Allen ; the
Color Vocabulary of Children, by Harry K.
"Wolfe ; and the Development of the King's
Peace and the English Local Peace-Magis-
tracy, by George E. Howard. The last is
also published separately. In it the au-
thor, who is Professor of History in the
University, traces the idea of the public
peace of the community from the beginning
to the re-establishment of popular self-gov-
ernment in the English shire by the act of
Parliament of August 13, 1888.

The quarterly Bulletin of the National
Association of Wool Manufacturers for
June, 1890, S. N. Dexter North, editor, is
devoted chiefly to questions concerning the
pending Tariff Bill and its effect on woolens.
An article not coming under this description
is a History of Wool-combing in England.

It appears from the Calendar of the Fac-
ulty of Medicine of McGill University, Mont-
real, that the session of 1890 will be its
fifty-eighth, the medical school having been

founded in 1824 and suspended during the
political troubles from 1836 to 1839. The
new building has been found admirably
adapted for making the teaching of the pri-
mary branches practical and thorough. The
session is from October 1st to April, with a
summer session of twelve weeks from the
middle of April. The school was attended
last year by 261 students.

The first number of the first volume of
the Quarterly Review of the United Breth-
ren in Christ, which is intended to repre-
sent the thought of the growing religious
denomination of that name, J. W. Etter,
D. D., editor, appeared in January, 1890.
While its articles are intended to and do
appeal chiefly to churchmen, we notice as
of general interest that of the Rev. J. H.
Pershing on the Conemaugh Cataclysm ; and
as claiming the attention of those who wish
to be acquainted with various sides of
thought, that of Prof. J. P. Landis on Some
Foes of Christianity. The foes described in
this article are Pantheism, Materialism, Ag-
nosticism, Rationalism, and Socialism, which
are grouped as " anti-theistic theories."

In a paper read by Dr. G. Brown Goode
before the American Historical Association,
on Museum History and Museums of History,
a historical review is followed by a state-
ment of the author's ideas of what a muse-
um should contain, what purposes it should
be intended to serve, and bow it should be
arranged and managed. The same author's
address on the Origin of the National Scien-
tific and Educational Institutions of the Unit-
ed States gives a connected view of the growth
of such institutions from their beginning in
the attempt of Mr. Boyle, Bishop Wilkins,
and others to establish in the colony of
Connecticut a society for promoting knowl-
edge. A third address by Dr. Goode was
delivered before the American Philosophical
Society, at the commemoration of the one
hundredth anniversary of the death of Ben-
jamin Franklin, and is on his Literary La-
bors. In it Dr Franklin is presented as one
who, although standing prominently forth as
the only great literary man of America in
colonial days and the first fifty years of the
Republic, had no thought of obtaining for
himself literary fame, but made use of what
he gained to promote the welfare of his
country.

854

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prof. William Watson Goodwin's Syn-
tax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek
Verb appears from the press of Ginn & Co.
in a new edition, rewritten and enlarged
from the editions of 1860 and 1865, and so
modified by the operation of the author's
own criticisms of his earlier effort as to
have become to a great extent a new and in-
dependent work. A great change has in
fact come over the conditions of Greek
scholarship during the interval, so that it
could hardly be adequately represented in its
present state without reconstructing the ex-
position almost from the beginning. As
the author remarks, "few are aware how
modern are many of the grammatical doc-
trines which are now taught in all classical
schools." The writings of the Greek au-
thors are full of refinements of style and deli-
cate distinctions which greatly impede the
progress of the beginner and make the labor
of the advanced student not easy, and on
which the ordinary grammars and lexicons
cast but a dim light. The purpose of Mr.
Goodwin's manual, if we gather it correctly,
is systematically to use the full light of the
most recent scholarship in explaining them.

The Directional Calculus of Prof. JEJ. W.
Hyde (Ginn & Co.) is an effort to introduce
the system of multiple algebra invented by
Hermann Grassmann, and called by him the
Theory of Extension. The author has be-
come convinced of the superiority of Grass-
mann's system to Hamilton's quaternions, in
that it is founded upon and is consistent
with the idea of geometric dimensions ; and
that in it all geometric quantities appear as
independent units. His directional methods
are also believed to be superior to the com-
paratively awkward and roundabout methods
of the Cartesian co-ordinates. "While Grass-
mann's results are all obtained for n- dimen-
sional space, Prof. Hyde has, for greater
simplicity, restricted the discussion to space
of two and three dimensions.

The purpose of Mr. William Boscoe
Thayer's The Best Elizabethan Plays (Ginn
& Co.) is to present specimens of the
work of the five Elizabethan dramatists who
stand highest among Shakespeare's contem-
poraries. The selected works are Marlowe's
Jew of Malta, Ben Jonson's The Alchemist,
Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, Fletcher
and Shakespeare's Two Noble Kinsmen, and

John "Webster's Duchess of Main. The choice
in each case is justified by critical remarks re-
specting the author and his works, with com-
parative estimates of the merits of the latter.
A general view is presented of the develop-
ment of the English drama from its rise in
Marlowe to its last strong expression in Web-
ster. Its development was urged by the impul-
sion of the modern spirit which was remolding
the society of the Renaissance, added to the
great stimulus of the recovered appreciation
of classical antiquity. The great poets of
the Elizabethan age took all nature for their
province. Literary precedents and the con-
ventional rules prescribed by writers of rhet-
orics and grammars did not hamper them.
"Taking the implements at hand — the
tedious moralities and the loosely spun mira-
cle plays — they soon improved upon them,
soon invented a drama-form not so rigid as
to be cramped nor so loose as to be redun-
dant, but articulate like a highly developed
organism and as elastic as the various ma-
terial furnished by nature required. And
for their meter they adopted and perfected
a line susceptible of almost infinite modula-
tions, suited alike to the simplest narration
and to the highest outbursts of passion, and
to the most delicate whisperings of fancy."

The Leading Facts of American History
(Ginn & Co.) is the title of a generally ad-
mirable presentation of this important topic
by D. H. Montgomery. The work is based
on a careful study of the highest recognized
authorities. Its purpose is to present, in a
clear, connected, and forcible manner, the
important events in the history of our coun-
try. The author has aimed to be accurate in
statement, simple in style, and impartial in
treatment. We are glad to observe that
military events and politics do not have the
first places, but that these are given to social,
scientific, and industrial progress, to which
they belong. Another commendable feature
appears in the brief summaries of most im-
portant features attached to each period.

While Mr. Joseph H. Crocker's purpose
in his essay on Different Kcw Testament
Views of Jesus has been solely to state the
facts respecting the single topic indicated in
the title, the author has compiled the paper
from the point of view of the supposition
that each of the authors of the Gospels had
1 his own ideas of the nature, personality,

LITERARY NOTICES.

855

and purposes of Jesus, and that this idea is
manifested in his narrative ; hence that the
Christian church has been divided on these
subjects from the very beginning.

Mr. George W. Childs publishes a book-
let, small enough for the pocket and large
enough to serve for an evening's reading, of
Recollections of General Grant, with an ac-
count of the presentation of the portraits
of Generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan at
the Military Academy, West Point. (Collins
Printing House, Philadelphia.)

The Annual Report of the State Board of
Charities (New York) for 1889, besides the
general account of the charitable institutions
of the State, comprises special reports of
the investigation of the Rochester Orphan
Asylum ; on reformatories ; on the deaf and
dumb ; on the State Soldiers' and Sailors'
Home ; on dependent children ; and on the
condition of children in asylums.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Allen, William Francis, Editor. The Annals of
Tacitus. Books I to VI. Boston : Ginn & Co.
Pp. 444. $1.05.

American Book Company, New York. Health
for Little Folks (Authorized Physiology Series).
Pp. 121.

Ballon, "William E., M. D. A Compend of Equine
Anatomy and Physiology. Philadelphia: P. Bla-
kiston, Son & Co. Pp. 205. $1.

Barnch, Simon, M. D.. New York. The Relation
of Peripheral Irritation to Disease. Pp. 17.

Burr, George L. The Literature of "Witchcraft.
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 66.

Cams, Paul. The Ethical Problem. Chicago :
Open Court Publishing Company. Pp. 99. Cl.ith,
50 cents.

Census Office, Washington. Bulletin on the Pro-
duction of Slate. Pp. 10.

Chittenden, Rev. E. P. The Pleroma : a Poem of
the Christ. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pd.
347. $2.50. y

Day, David T. Mineral Resources of the United
States. Report for 1888. Washington: Govern-
ment Printing-Office. Pp. 652.

Ellis, Havelock. The Criminal. New York :
Scribner & Welford. Pp.337. $1.25.

Fraser, Persifor, Philadelphia. Persistence of
Plant and Animal Life. Pp. 12.

Graham, Douglas, M. D. A Treatise on Massage.
New York: J. H. Vail & Co. Pp. 342. $2.75.

Greely, A. "W. Annual Report of the Chief S to-
nal Officer, United States Army. Washington • Gov-
ernment Printing-Office. 2 volumes. Pp. 389 and
165.

Hale, Edward M., M. D. Toxic, Pathogenetic,
and Therapeutic Properties of the Cactacea. Pp.

Halsted, Byron D. Some Fungous Diseases of
the Spinach. Pp. 15.

Hardy, Arthur Sherburne. Elements of the Dif-
ferential and Integral Calculus. Boston : Ginn & Co.
Pp.239. $1.65.

Hazen, H. A. The Tornado. New York : N D.
C.Hodges. Pp.143. $1.

Hill, Robert T. The Cretaceous Rocks of Texas,
and their Economic Value. Austin. Pp. 36.

Holyoake, G. J. What would follow on the Ef-
facement of Christianity. Buffalo, N. Y. : H. L.
Green. Pp. 15. 10 cents.

Howard, George E., Lincoln, Neb. Evolution of
the University. Pp. 36.

Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station. Inves-
tigation of Milk Tests. Pp. 8. — Experiments with
Wheat. Pp. 16.

Ingersoll, Robert G. The Gods. Buffalo : H. L.
Green. Pp. 40. 10 cents.

James, J. P., Philadelphia. On Variation. Pp.
16.

Kedzie, R. C. Fertilizer Analyses. Michigan
State Agricultural College. Pp. 11.

Kennedy, John. A Stem Dictionary of the Eng-
lish Language. New York and Chicago : A. S.
Barnes & Co. Pp. 282.

Kimball, S. I. Organization, etc., of the United
States Life-Saving Service. Washington : Govern-
ment Printing-office. Pp. 33.

Lamborn, Robert H., Editor. Prize Essays on
Drairon-flies ?■?. Mosquitoes. New York: D. Ap-
pleton & Co. Pp. 202, with Plates. $1.50.

Lathrop, C. C. A Secret Institution. New
York: Bryant Publishing Company. Pp. 339. 50
cents.

Leffmann, Henry. A Compend of Chemistrv.
Philadelphia : P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp.193, fl.

Lewis, T. H. Stone Monuments in Iowa and
Minnesota. Pp. 6.

Lighthall, W. D. Spiritualized Happiness The-
ory. Montreal. Pp. 22.

Litchfield, Mary E. The Nine Worlds. From
Norse Mythology. Boston : Ginn & Co. Pp. 163.
60 cents.

McAdie, A. Tornadoes. Pp. 14.

McCook, H. C. American Spiders and their
Spinning Work. Vol. II. Philadelphia : Academy
of Natural Sciences. Pp. 478.

Minnesota, Public Health in, Monthly Reports of
the State Board of Health. Red Wing. Pp. 8.

Montgomery, Henrv. Aboriginal Monuments in
North Dakota. Pp. 4."

M filler, F. Max. Three Lectures on the Science
of Language, Chicago : Open Court Publishing
Company. Pp. 112. 75 cents.

New England Meteorological Society. Monthly
Bulletins. Pp. 8.

New York Agricultural Experiment Station.
Bulletins Nos. 21 and 22. Pp. 4S and 12.

National Geographic Magazine. Vol. II. Nos.
3 and 4. Washington : National Geographic Soci-
ety. Pp. 60 and 55.

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station. Bulletin
on Food for Milk Production. Pp. 24.— Bulletin,
Technical Series. No. 2. Pp. 100, with Plate.

Packard. A. S. Life History of Drepana Arcu-
ata ; Evolution of Bristles, etc., of Caterpillars. Pp.
80, with Plates.

Photo-Gravure Companv, New York. Sun and
Shade. June and July, 1S90. 16 Plates. 40 cents
each number. $4 a year.

Poor. H. V. and H. W., New York. Introduc-
tion to Poor's Manual of Railroads for 1S90. Pp. 16,
with Map.

Preston, Thomas. The Theory of Light. New
York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 465. $3.25.

Shufeldt, R. W. Osteology of Arctic and Sub-
arctic Water-Birds. Part VII. Pp. 24.

Silver Committee, National Executive. First
Report. Washington. Pp. 10.

Smith. Edgar F. Electro-Chemical Analvsis,
Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. "116.
$1.

Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station, Con-
necticut. Second Annual Report. Pp. 183.

856

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Taft, L. R., Lansing, Michigan. Greenhouse
Construction and Heating. Pp. 27.

Thruston, G. P. The Antiquities of Tennessee.
Cincinnati : Robert Clarke & Co. Pp. 369. $4.

Tratman, E. E. Russell. C. E. Report on the
Substitution of Wood for Metal in Railroad Ties.
"Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp.
363.

United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Monthly Chart Corrections. Pp. 6.

"Waring, George E., Jr. The Sewerage of Co-
lumbus, Ohio. Pp. 24.

Woody, S. E. The Essentials of Medical Chem-
istry. Philadelphia : P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp.

157.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

California and its Mines. — The trustees

of the California State Mining Bureau find
in the increasing demands for their report
evidence that the institution is fulfilling
a public want and is growing in public
favor. The edition of the sixth annual re-
port is exhausted, and that of the seventh
nearly so, while the edition of the eighth was
nearly doubled. A historical fact of much
significance is embodied in the statement
that while in the early days the newspapers
of the State teemed with notices of min-
ing interests which were summarized at
regular intervals in quarterly and annual re-
views, the articles of that kind have been
gradually curtailed as the relative import-
ance of the mines diminished and other in-
terests pushed themselves into prominence,
till now they appear, if at all, as mere items.
Hence the Mining Bureau has become the
only center and the best source of informa-
tion on the subject. A complete review of
the mines and mining operations was given
for the first time in the report for 1888.
Tbe report for 1889 assumes that the whole
country owes very much of its prosperity to
mining. Every State owes that industry
something ; the mid-continental regions al-
most their very existence. Mining invest-
ments are among the most profitable, not-
withstanding an impression to the contrary
prevails. The impression that the gold-mines
of California are depleted below the point of
profitable production is likewise mistaken.
The gold taken out has exhausted but little
of the auriferous wealth of the State, and the
annual production has not heretofore much
exceeded what it may be reasonably hoped to
reach and maintain in the future. Besides
its gold-fields and silver-bearing lodes, Cali-

fornia possesses the more common metals
and minerals in great variety. There is
hardly a county in the State but has valu-
able mineral deposits of one kind or another,
and the distribution of these products is
pronounced remarkable. Fourteen of the
fifty-three counties make a notable produc-
tion of gold, and twelve of gold and silver ;
five produce quicksilver, two borax, two salt,
four asphaltum, two petroleum, three cop-
per, etc. "Were California even poor in the
precious metals, it would yet become a great
mining State. It is asserted in the report
that gold-mining has not yet reached even
the stage of sturdy infancy.

Caprices of Soils. — The system of study-
ing the adaptation of soils to crops has
grown out of the failure of attempts to set-
tle such questions in the laboratory. This
work, as is shown in a Bulletin of the Ohio
Experiment Station, is attended with great
difficulties. "So great is the variation in
natural fertility in soils that appear to the
eye to be identical in composition, that the
results of field experimentation are liable to
be even more misleading than those of the la-
boratory. Take any single acre of ground for
illustration. An open glade in the original
forest may have permitted the wind to sweep
away its winter coverlet of leaves, and they
may have lodged in a thicket of underbrush
adjoining, carrying stores of potash and
phosphoric acid with them. Such a glade
may have been for centuries the pasturing
ground of deer. It would then accumulate
nitrogen, but would lose potash and phos-
phoric acid through an additional channel,
while the thicket would accumulate these in
excess of nitrogen. The growth of a surface-
rooting tree in one spot may have drawn
upon the adjacent surface-soil for supplies
of potash ; that of a tree with a deep tap
root in another may have drawn its sup-
port largely from deeper layers of the soil,
and also have opened a way for drainage.
A slight depression of the soil here may
have received added fertility in the waste
from a slight elevation there, and he who
has studied the soil carefully, especially
where its levels are shown by the melting of
snow when the ground is frozen, will have
detected irregularities of level unsuspected
by the casual observer."

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

«57

Firing Pottery Kilns by Gas.— A new

method of firing kilns by gas has been intro-
duced at one of the Trenton, New Jersey,
potteries by the use of which the expense of
baking the ware is greatly reduced. It is
dependent on the principle of preheating
the air before it enters the kiln, so that a
perfect combustion is secured, with no loss
of heat. Gas generated outside the build-
ing is forced through an underground flue to
the center of the kiln, whence it is carried
by branch channels to the several mouths
around the side of the kiln. There it is com-
bined with air, and combustion takes place.
The heated air then passes upward, and, in-
stead of escaping out of the chimney, it is
drawn down a well-hole through the center
of the kiln and passes down and around the
channel at the base of the kiln in the oppo-
site direction from that in which it entered,
and to near where it entered. After some
time the dampers are reversed, so that the
cold air enters the channel through which
the heated air from the kiln has been pass-
ing toward the chimney, and the heated air
escapes by the opposite passage. The cold
air is thus heated some 1,000 or 1,500 de-
grees by passing through the heated chan-
nel, with the saving of much heat that was
formerly wasted by passing immediately out
of the chimney. The dampers are reversed
every half hour, whereby the cold air is at
every turn passed through a freshly heated
chamber.

Some Advantages of Wild Life. — The

two great point3 of superiority of the native
or savage soldier over the representative of
civilized discipline, says Captain John G.
Bourke, in his An Apache Campaign in the
Sierra Madre, are his absolute knowledge
of the country and his perfect ability to take
care of himself at all times and under all
circumstances. Though the rays of the sun
pour down from the zenith, or the scorching
sirocco blow from the south, the Apache
scout trudges along as unconcerned as he
was when the cold rain or snow of winter
chilled his white comrade to the marrow.
He finds food, and pretty good food too,
where the Caucasian would starve. Know-
ing the habits of wild animals from his
earliest youth, he can catch turkeys, quail,
rabbits, doves, or field-mice, and perhaps

a prairie dog or two, which will supply
him with meat. For some reason he can
not be induced to touch fish, and bacon or
any other product of the hog is eaten only
under duress ; but the flesh of a horse, mule,
or jackass, which has dropped exhausted on
the march and been left to die on the trail,
is a delicious morsel which the Apache epi-
cure seizes upon wherever possible. The
stunted oak, growing on the mountain flanks,
furnishes acorns; the Spanish-bayonet, a
fruit which, when roasted in the ashes of a
camp-fire, looks and tastes something like the
banana. The whole region of southern Ari-
zona and northern Mexico is matted with
varieties of the cactus, nearly every one of
which is called upon for its tribute of fruit
or seed. The broad leaves and stalks of the
century-plant — called mescal — are roasted
between hot stones, and the product is rich
in saccharine matter and extremely pleasant
to the taste. The wild potato and the bulb
of the tule are found in the damp mount-
ain meadows ; and the nest of the ground-
bee is raided remorselessly for its little store
of honey. Sunflower-seeds, when ground
fine, are rich and nutritious. Walnuts grow
in the deep ravines, and strawberries in fa-
vorable locations ; in the proper season these,
with the seeds of wild grasses and wild
pumpkins, the gum of the mesquite, or the
sweet, soft inner bark of the pine, play
their part in staving off the pangs of hunger.
The above are merely a few of the resources
of the Apache scout when separated from
the main command. "When his moccasins
give out on a long march over the sharp
rocks of the mountains or the cutting sands
of the plains, a few hours' rest see him
equipped with a new pair — his own handi-
work— and so with other portions of his
raiment. He is never without awl, needle,
thread, or sinew. Brought up from infancy
to the knowledge and use of arras of some
kind — at first the bow and arrow, and later
on the rifle — he is perfectly at home with
his weapons, and, knowing from past experi-
ence how important they are for his preser-
vation, takes much better care of them than
does the white soldier out of garrison. He
does not read the newspapers, but the great
book of nature is open to his perusal, and
has been drained of much knowledge which
his pale-faced brother would be glad to ac-

858

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

quire. Every track in the trail, mark in the
grass, scratch on the bark of a tree, explains
itself to the " untutored " Apache. He can
tell to an hour, almost, when the man or
animal making them passed by, and, like a
hound, will keep on the scent until he catches
up with the object of his pursuit.

The Pine Belt of New Jersey.— The
"pine belt" of New Jersey is described by
Dr. I. H. Piatt as a strip of land about sixty
miles long by from eight to twenty miles
wide, reaching from a few miles south of
Freehold almost to Yineland. Its soil varies
from a light, sandy loam to clear beach sand.
Its streams, which are sufficient for drainage,
have good banks which they rarely if ever
overflow, and there is no wet meadow. There
are a few peat-bogs, some marl-beds, and
occasionally a cedar swamp, but these feat-
ures are all of very limited extent. The
belt comprises in all about five hundred and
seventy square miles, and has a population
of 14,475 persons. The region has long en-
joyed a local reputation for healthf ulness, and
some parts of it have been mainly settled
by people who have sought it for that reason.
According to the reports of the State Board
of Health, its average death-rate during the
six years, 1883 to 1888, inclusive, was 12*65
per thousand, against 18 '65 per thousand
for the whole State, or 15*07 for the State
excluding cities ; and the death-rate from
consumption was 1*60 against 2*53 and 2*12.
The comparatively low mortality from con-
sumption is the more striking when we
recollect the extent to which the region is
sought by persons in feeble health.

The Month-slitting Botocudos.— A mon-
ograph on the Botocudos of Brazil and their
ornaments has been published by Dr. John
C. Branner, in a reprint from the papers of
the American Philosophical Society. It is
illustrated by photographs showing the man-
ner of wearing the ear- and mouth-plugs
from which the tribe derive their name
(bo(ogue} lip-ornament), the appearance of the
slits when they have been torn, and the
younger members of the tribe who have
ceased to practice the mutilation, or have
reduced it to the simple wearing of earrings.
Mr. John Stearns said, in a paper before the
Royal Geographical Society, on the Explo-

ration of the Rio Doce and its Tributaries,
that the custom of these Indians of slitting
the lower lip for the purpose of inserting a
wooden ornament in it has been described by
visitors to the American coasts from Cabral
down. When Cabral sent a boat ashore in
Brazil to investigate the country, the men
told him on their return that they did not
believe the natives were men, though they
were dressed up in feathers and painted in
colors, for they had two mouths. The In-
dians were accustomed to take out the lip
ornaments, and, while the teeth were grin-
ning from the upper mouth, to push out the
tongue from the lower one. Cook, two hun-
dred and eighty years later, at Prince Will-
iam's Sound, Alaska, heard one of his sailors
say to another, " Come here, Jack, look at the
men with two mouths." A writer of that
period tells of the wife of a great chief at
Sitka, that by a singular motion of the lower
lip she could raise it in such a way as almost
to cover the whole of her face. Mr. Colin
Mackenzie has cursorily followed out the
geographical line of this singular custom,
and has found that it could be traced, with
very few breaks, from Alaska to the coast
of Brazil.

Medicinal Plants. — The pamphlet of Mr.
Charles Mohr, on The Medicinal Plants of
Alabama, besides the list of the plants, with
notes on their distribution and the proper
time of collecting the parts used, contains
some facts of interest respecting the flora of
the State and the home of its medicinal
plants. The flora of Alabama includes a
majority of the plants noted for their re-
medial value which are found in North
America east of the Rocky Mountains. The
plants furnishing drugs of the greatest im-
portance have their home principally in the
woodlands of deciduous-leaved trees in the
northern section of the State. With the
enormous decrease of the forest area north
of the Ohio River that has taken place dur-
ing the last thirty-five years, the supply of
crude drugs furnished by that territory has
been correspondingly reduced. The resources
existing in the more elevated regions of the
South have consequently been resorted to.
Within the past ten or fifteen years North
Carolina has become the center of the most
active trade in this line, which is gradually

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

859

extending farther south, and operations^
have been successfully begun in the northern
section of Alabama. This region offers a
promising field for the enterprise, with the
prospect of supplies to last for a long time to
come. Particularly in the mountainous and
hilly districts, extensive tracts, unfit for the
cultivation of the soil, will probably remain,
if not violently interfered with, in the con-
dition of woodlands. " Thus we find the
interest of the healing art closely connected
with the question of the preservation of the
forests of our country, and the pharmacist
should feel in duty bound to unite his efforts
with those who are already striving to secure
this important object." -

The Doctrine of Spirits in Kew Gninea.

— The natives of British New Guinea, ac-
cording to Mr. H. H. Romilly, believe that
human appetites remain with the spirits of
their deceased friends, just as if the body
had not died. Hence the spirit must be kept
supplied with food and water at the grave
and in the accustomed haunts of the dead
man. But if he has been killed in battle,
the head of one of the enemy's tribe or race
is sufficient ; and if the slayer is a white
man, the spirit can be appeased by payment
in goods. They regard dreams as voices
from the land of spirits, telling them what
to do, for whom to work, from whom to
plunder, and what to steal. When any mis-
chief befalls a place where a white man
happens to be, the blame is laid upon his
attendant spirit, and the injury must be
atoned for — by payment if he is a friend,
or otherwise if not. Certain trees are sup-
posed to have spirits, for which a part of
the food or feasts is set away. It is note-
worthy that all these spirits are malignant
and the savages do not seem able to grasp
the idea of a beneficent spirit. They have
to be overcome by force of arms, blessings,
or cursings, but are most effectively dispelled
by fire. They can not be seen, but use ar-
rows and spears when they are vexed. Sor-
cerers are guarded against by wearing
charms, the character of which is regulated
largely by the fancy of the sorcerer or the
purchaser. Sometimes the charm is a bit of
bark, sometimes it is a fantastically worked
crab's claw; but great faith is reposed in
its potency.

Lepidosirens. — The Dipnoi, one of the
oldest types of water animals, are now rep-
resented by only four species : Lepidosiren
paradoxa, a very rare species inhabiting the
river Amazon; two species of Ceratodus or
Barramunda, plentiful in certain rivers of
Australia; and L. cumectens, which is the
most abundant, being found throughout
tropical Africa. The lepidosiren, or " Afri-
can mud-fish," has a somewhat eel-shaped
body and four limbs, which are round and
taper to a point, being the simplest form of
limb known. The breathing-organs consist
of both gills and lung-like sacs ; the skele-
ton is part cartilage and part bone ; the nos-
trils, of which there are two pairs, are placed
within the opening of the mouth. It is the
organ of smell which determines that the lepi-
dosiren is a fish and not a reptile. In every
fish this organ is a short sac opening only
upon the outer surface of the body ; in every
reptile it is a canal with both an external
and an internal opening. Though lepido-
sirens are without doubt fishes, they spend
a considerable part of their existence out of
the water, as they inhabit shallow waters
which periodically dry up. During the dry
season they inclose themselves in balls of
clay, which are lined with mucus, and have
a small hole at each end to admit air. In
these they remain torpid until the rains refill
their pools. Lepidosirens attain a length of
from three to six feet ; they are carnivorous,
feeding on frogs, fishes, and other aquatic
animals.

Indian Tribes of the Amazon.— Of the

Indian tribes of the Amazonian river Purus,
the Pammarys are described by Dr. P. Ehren-
reich as being pure water-men. Most of their
life is spent in their canoes, and they are
conspicuous by a peculiarity of their skin,
which is covered with black and white spots
that cause many of them to look as if they
were dappled. The same skin affection ex-
ists among other tribes of the western Ama-
zons, and is very mysterious. The Pamma-
rys are industrious collectors of caoutchouc
and copaiva, and have provided themselves
with many European articles of commerce.
The Jamamadis make their homes in the for-
ests ; are without a knowledge of navigation ;
are clever agriculturists ; avoid trade with the
settlers, and seldom leave their dense forests.

86o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

They are still an uncorrupted, hospitable,
frank, natural people. Their principal weap-
on is the blow-pipe, discharging poisoned ar-
rows. The most important nation on the Fu-
nis are the Ipurinas, or Cangiti, who dwell
in numerous hordes, under different names,
in the head- water regions. They are a proud,
warlike race, of vindictive disposition, cun-
ning, and treacherous. They are still part-
ly anthropophagous. Domestic animals are
rarely kept among them ; tobacco is taken
as snuff ; and poisoned weapons are gener-
ally used. In the region of the source of
the Rio Acre other Indian races of great in-
terest to ethnologists dwell, possessing richly
carved huts for ceremonies, stone figures, and
idols. The caoutchouc trade, with its reck-
less gains, exercises a most disastrous effect
upon the Indians ; nevertheless, that element
might become of the highest importance to
the immense but thinly peopled province of
the Amazon, if only a judicious and consci-
entious treatment was adopted as the means
of bringing the aborigines within the bounds
of civilization.

The Pallas Cormorant. — Pallas's Cormo-
rant, or the great spectacled cormorant (Pha-
lacrocorax perspicillatas\ has gone to keep
company with the great auk, as a bird that
has become extinct within the last forty or
fifty years. It is so rare in collections that
only four specimens are known to exist in
museums, no one has its eggs, and no bones
had been found or preserved till Mr. Leon-
hard Stejneger collected a few of them some
years ago on the Commander Islands. It
was reported very abundant on Bering Island
by Steller in 1741, and the only material for
Pallas's description of it was derived from his
observations. The specimens in the British,
St. Petersburg, and Leyden Museums were
obtained from a governor of Sitka, and these
are all that are known to be in existence.
Several pictures of the bird have been pub-
lished. Mr. Stejneger was informed by the
natives of Bering Island that the meat of
this species was more palatable than that of
its congeners, and was used as food in pref-
erence to any other. According to Steller,
the weight of the cormorant varied from
twelve to fourteen pounds, so that one bird
was sufficient for three starving men of nis
shipwrecked crew. The value of the cormo-

rant as food, and its sluggishness, contributed
to its extermination. The bones found bv
Mr. Stejneger have been examined and de-
scribed by Mr. Frederick A. Lucas ; and a
full account of them, with the history of the
bird, is given in a reprint from the proceed-
ings of the National Museum.

Relative Abundance of the Chemical Ele-
ments.— An estimate of the relative abun-
dance of the chemical elements in the atmos-
phere, ocean, and that part of the crust of
the earth which is accessible, has been made
by Prof. F. W. Clarke. Separate calcula-
tions are made for the atmosphere and the
ocean. The estimate of the constitution of
the crust is made from the means of 880
analyses of volcanic and crystalline rocks
from different places of the United States
and Europe. Averaging the whole, the au-
thor finds oxygen constituting 49*98 per
cent ; silicon, 25*30 per cent ; aluminum,
7*26 per cent ; iron, 5*08 per cent ; calcium,
3*57 per cent ; and after these, in order,
magnesium, sodium, potassium, hydrogen,
titanium, carbon, chlorine, bromine, phos-
phorus, manganese, sulphur, barium, nitro-
gen, and chromium. Other substances are
supposed to be present in less proportions
than five one-hundredths of one per cent.
The most surprising feature in the estimate
is the relative abundance of titanium, which
is placed before phosphorus, manganese, and
sulphur. It is, however, rarely absent from
the older rocks ; is almost universally pres-
ent in soils and clays ; and is often concen-
trated in great quantities in beds of iron
ore. Having no very striking characteris-
tics and but little commercial importance, it
is easily overlooked, and so has a popular
reputation for scarcity which it does not de-
serve.

The Summit of Kilima-njaro.— The as-
cent to the summit of Kilima-njaro, the high-
est mountain in Africa, was accomplished
by Dr. Hans Meyer in October, 1S89. The
base of the ice-cap of Kibo was reached at
18,270 feet above the sea. The upper part
of this ascent was extremely toilsome, as the
surface of the ice became increasingly cor-
roded, taking the form which Gussfeldt, on
Aconcagua, in Chili, called nieve penitente ;
honeycombed to a depth of over six feet,

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

861

in the form of rills, teeth, fissures, and pinna-
cles. The travelers frequently broke through
as far as their breasts, with an alarmingly
rapid diminution of their strength. Reach-
ing the summit of the ridge, they found the
precipitous walls of a gigantic crater yawn-
ing beneath them, with the loftiest elevations
in the shape of three pinnacles rising above
the ice on its southern brim. These they
calmly and systematically climbed one after
the other. The central pinnacle reached a
height of about 19,700 feet, overtopping the
others by 50 or 60 feet. Dr. Meyer was the
first to tread this peak, and planted the Ger-
man flag upon it, christening it Kaiser Wil-
helm's Peak. The diameter of the crater
measured about 6,500 feet, and its depth
was about 600 feet. In the southern por-
tion the walls of lava were of an ash-gray or
reddish-brown color, and were free from ice ;
in its northern half the ice sloped downward
from the upper brim of the crater in terraces,
forming blue and white galleries of vary-
ing steepness. A rounded cone of eruption,
composed of brown ashes and lava, rose in
the northern portion of the crater to a height
of about 500 feet, which was partly covered
by the more than usually thick sheet of ice
extending from the northern brim of the
crater. The large crater opened westward
in a wide cleft, through which the melting
water ran off, and the ice lying upon the
western part of the crater and the inner
walls issued in the form of a glacier.

Artists in Humble Work. — Among the
ancient Greeks and the northern Italians of
Renaissance days, says Prof. G. Aitchison,
in a lecture on Decoration, beauty was
adored. Every man who practiced a craft
was as sure of fame, if he followed what we
now call a humble one, as if he followed a
noble one, provided that the articles he made
could be endowed with beauty, and that he
possessed a certain high degree of excellence.
A carpenter, an armorer, a potter, a gold-
smith, a lapidary, or a bronzer, was as cer-
tain to be famous as a sculptor, a statuary,
a painter, or an architect. "We naturally
know less about the ancient Greeks than
about the Italians, though, from Socrates
being a sculptor, we hear something of the
crafts, and we know that Phidias was not
only a sculptor and statuary, . . . but worked

also in ivory and gold. The great Italian
artists were almost invariably craftsmen as
well ; in fact, had begun as craftsmen and
had learned during their apprenticeship pre-
cision in the use of tools and in workman-
ship as well as precision in drawing and
modeling. As a rule, every youth who
wanted to be a painter, sculptor, or archi-
tect, was apprenticed to a goldsmith. Bru-
nelleschi, Michael Angelo, and Benvenuto
Cellini were all brought up as goldsmiths ;
one became an architect, one a sculptor and
painter, and one a statuary and die-sinker ;
Ghirlandaio got his name from the golden
wreaths he made, and Francia . . . signed
his pictures as a goldsmith, while he signed
his goldsmith's work as a painter, and, like
the French artists of the present day, these
artist craftsmen were often excellent shots
and swordsmen as well. If he can invest
the article he works at with the highest
form of beauty, he is just as much an artist
as he who paints a picture, models a statue,
or designs a building."

Messrs. Heilprin and Baker's Survey of
Mexico. — Prof. Angelo Heilprin and Mr.
Frank C. Baker have recently returned from
a scientific expedition to Mexico, which they
undertook in February, 1890, in connection
with the Academy of Natural Sciences of
Philadelphia, and are preparing a paper giv-
ing the results of their explorations. It is
represented that the main purpose of the
expedition — the determination of the physi-
cal relations of the Gulf border — was suc-
cessfully accomplished. The principal vol-
canoes— Orizaba, Popocatepetl, and Ixtacci-
huatl — were ascended ; and more exact
measurements than have been made before
gave Orizaba as the highest of the three, at
a little less than eighteen thousand feet, in-
stead of Popocatepetl. An entirely new view
is taken by the explorers of the structure of
the great central plateau. Instead of being
an integral part of the Cordilleran system
or a volcanic output, it is mostly a flooded
expanse of lava and ash, which has covered
over the Cretaceous system of rocks and
mountains that constitute a nucleus to the
plateau. Immense deposits of fossiliferous
limestone, manifestly a part or continuation
of the Cretaceous system of the United
States, crop out around the borders of the

862

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plateau, and at points within the same,
capped by the covering of lava and ash.
The explorations of Yucatan did not lend
support to the supposition that the banks
have been built up through simple organic
accretion. The evidences of recent uplift
were abundant, and it further appeared that
a gradual subsidence followed the elevation.

Geometry of Aboriginal Mounds. — In his

paper on the Circular, Square, and Octagonal
Earthworks of Ohio, Mr. Cyrus Thomas gives
the results of recent survevs of those works,
and corrects the errors into which Squier and
Davis fell in exaggerating the geometrical
accuracy of the structures. The close ap-
proximation to such regularity in certain of
the square and circular works is admitted
as beyond question ; but none of them are
perfect, while the octagons are less regular.
Their characteristics are pronounced essen-
tially aboriginal. There is nothing in them or
connected with them contradictory to the
theory of their Indian origin except it be the
single fact that a few of them approached
very nearly to true geometrical figures. It
is admitted both that Indians can lay out true
circles of moderate size, and that they are
less able now to perform many things which
necessity formerly compelled them to prac-
tice. No valid reason can be presented why
Indians taught by necessity and practice could
not lay off by the eye and by means at hand
figures with which they were familiar more
correctly than the white man without instru-
ments.

An Indian Ball-Player's Training. — As

described by Mr. James Mooney, the train-
ing of the Cherokee ball-players includes a
course of precautionary measures. "They
bathe their limbs with a decoction of Te-
phrosia Virginiana, or catgut, in order to
render their muscles tough like the roots of
that plant. They bathe themselves with a
decoction of the small rush (Juneus tenuis),
which grows by the roadside, because its
stalks are always erect and will not lie flat
upon the ground, however much they may
be stamped and trodden upon. In the same
way they bathe with a decoction of the wild
crab-apple, or the iron-wood, because the
trunks of these trees, even when thrown
down, are supported and kept from the

ground by their spreading tops. To make
themselves more supple, they whip themselves
with the tough stalks of the wdtaku, or
star-grass, or with switches made from the
bark of a hickory sapling which has grown
up from a log that has fallen across it, the
bark being taken from the bend thus pro-
duced in the sapling. After the first scratch-
ing the player renders himself an object of
terror to his opponent by eating a rattlesnake
which has been killed and cooked by the
shaman. He rubs himself with an eel-skin
to make himself slippery like the eel, and
rubs each limb down once with the fore and
hind leg of a turtle, because the legs of that
animal are remarkably stout. He applies
to the shaman to conjure a dangerous oppo-
nent so that he may be unable to see the
ball in its flight, or may dislocate a wrist
or break a leg. Sometimes the shaman
draws upon the ground an armless figure of
his rival with a hole where the heart should
be. Into this bole he drops two black beads,
covers them with earth, and stamps upon
them, and thus the dreaded rival is doomed,
unless (and this is always the saving clause)
his own shaman has taken precautions against
such a result, or the one in whose behalf the
charm is made has rendered the incantation
unavailing by a violation of some one of the
interminable rules of the gaktunta"

NOTES.

Prof. Hcxley was the recipient of the
Linnaean medal at the anniversary meeting of
the Linnaean Society on Saturday, May 24th.
This medal was instituted three years since,
with a view of conferring honor on distin-
guished biologists. In replying to the presi-
dent, Prof. Huxley said the aim of his life
had been in the words of the motto of the
society: "Naturae discere mores "(to learn
the ways of nature). He had endeavored to
show the fundamental unity of plant life
and of animal life ; to make use of hypothe-
ses as ladders or scaffoldings to be dis-
carded, perhaps somewhat ungratefully, when
no longer of use; and to pursue truth re-
gardless of incidental consequences.

In order to investigate their botanical
and medical knowledge, and the theories
on which their practice is based, Mr. James
Mooney spent several weeks in intimate
association with the Cherokee doctors.
He concluded that the aggregate botanical
knowledge of the whole profession is rep-
resented by about eight hundred species ;

NOTES.

863

but no one doctor knew the names of three
hundred species. Many of the most common
plants and brightest flowers have no Chero-
kee names, for the Indians do not use them
for food or medicine. Yet their country —
the mountain region of western North Caro-
lina— can probably furnish two thousand
species of plants. The Indian has no ap-
preciation of the beauty or fragrance of a
flower.

An extract from a lecture by J. Lewis
Smith, M. D., of Bellevue Medical College,
on Growing Pains, contains some very valu-
able cautions. He says the pains in the
limbs experienced by many children, and
attributed to rapid growth, are very com-
monly slight attacks of inflammatory rheuma-
tism, a dangerous and painful disease when
occurring in an adult.

The practice of cremation in place of
ordinary burial is making steady progress in
Paris, in spite of the opposition to it which
exists in certain quarters. At the new cre-
matorium of the cemetery " Pere-la-chaise "
a furnace is in operation which will re-
duce a body to ashes in less than an hour, at
a cost of about thirty cents for fuel. Since
the establishment of this system in the
French capital twelve hundred unclaimed
bodies of persons who have died in hospitals
have been thus disposed of, besides the
bodies of three hundred of the well-to-do
classes, whose wishes have been thus com-
plied with.

A description is published by T. H. Lewis
of the sculptured figures on a rock of the
Potsdam sandstone on the bank of the Trem-
peleau River, near Trempeleau, Wisconsin.
The figures consist chiefly of representations
of the hand and foot many times repeated,
crescent-shaped figures called canoes, and
what appears to be a fort. They are cut
very smoothly into the rock to the depth of
from a quarter of an inch to an inch, and
are in perfect preservation.

A mixture of sixty parts of chloride of
sodium and forty parts of cryolite or double
fluoride of aluminum and sodium having
been melted at a temperature of from 850°
to 1,100° C, was submitted to electrolysis by
M. Minet. Metallic aluminum flowed out of
the cathode, which was in charcoal, into a
crucible, whence it was extracted at the
close of the operation. The author pro-
duced in this way, in twenty-four hours, 5,250
grains of metallic aluminum.

Prof. Arthur Dodel, of the University
of Zurich, says that he has observed, of his
students in botanic microscopy, that the av-
erage of those from America drew better
than those from Europe of the same age who
competed with them. To this he would add
the circumstance that in America, during the
last two years, the technique of reproduction
has made more progress than in any other

part of the world. For the cause of this
excellence, Prof. Dodel refers to the method
of the instruction in drawing in the primary
and intermediate schools. " It will not be
surprising," he adds, " if this vigilant na-
tion finally surpasses us, and also puts us in
the shade in the field of artistic painting and
sculpture. This I call an enjoyable danger,
and greet it in advance in the interest of the
general welfare of humanity."

The commission appointed to consider
the question of coal-waste in the State of
Pennsylvania has sent out a circular of in-
quiries on topics relating to the investiga-
tion it has undertaken. The questions come
under three categories, of Geological and
Statistical Waste, Waste of Producing and
Marketing, and Ltilization of Coal Waste.
Under the first head are questions relating
to the amount, annual production, and natu-
ral wastes of the coal-beds. The second
heading includes the waste incurred in pre-
paring the coal for market, the amount of
culm, etc. The third head embraces the
Briquette system of preparing the waste for
use; the appliances by which it is utilized
without mechanical preparation ; and the
gasifying processes and use in the destruc-
tion of garbage or cremating work, and in
agricultural experimentation.

Mr. David P. Todd, of the Smithsonian
Institution, has made a report of progress in
an investigation in which he is engaged of
the variations of the elements of terrestrial
magnetism. Since the demonstration that
the direct influence of the sun and the moon
upon the earth, each being considered as
magnets, is inappreciable, all attempts to
construct a theory of terrestrial magnetism
have been confined to causes within the
earth's atmosphere. These efforts — the aim
of which has been to constitute currents by
friction in the earth's crust, or in the at-
mosphere by changes of density and humid-
ity— have failed to account for the periodic
nature of the phenomena. Consequently,
the vast masses of magnetic observations
already accumulated are unconnected by any
proposed combination of natural laws. It
appears, however, that one cause of vital im-
portance has been omitted from the ele-
ments of the problem, namely, the motion of
the earth, as referred to the ether in its
neighborhood ; and the author proposes to
base an explanation of terrestrial magnetism
upon the dynamic effects produced by the
inductive action of the earth in its motions
of rotation and translation through fields of
force — or, by regarding the earth as a cos-
mical dynamo.

Some new and remarkable results are de-
scribed by M. Friedel as following the action
of alkalies and alkaline silicates on mica un-
der the double influence of water and a high
temperature. With potash and the brown
mica called muscovite, numerous crystals of

864

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nephiline were prepared — a mineral which
had never before appeared from manipulation
with water. Better success was had when
soda was substituted for potash ; and in every
case a product of simple and fixed composi-
tion was obtained. Adding a suitable pro-
portion of chloride of sodium, sodalite was
formed, and proved to be of definite compo-
sition, and not, as some mineralogists be-
lieved, a mixture of nephiline and an alkaline
chloride. With mica and silicate of potash
crystalline orthose feldspar was obtained,
and, with a smaller proportion of silicate,
amphigene. The intervention of chloride
of calcium determined the crystallization of
anorthite.

In view of the greatly augmented demand
for camphor for the new uses that have been
found for it in the arts, with consequent en-
hancement of price, it is proposed to use
naphthalin as a substitute for it in anti-moth
applications. It is quite as effective as cam-
phor, and being also equally volatile, leaves
no more permanent smell.

Mr. E. T. Chaplin tells, in the London
Spectator, how, by hypnotizing her, he in-
duced a laying hen, which had manifested
no disposition in that direction, to sit on a
sitting of eggs till seven of their number
were hatched into "healthy, happy little
chickens."

Bisulphide of carbon is recommended
by Mr. A. J. Cook, of the Michigan State
Agricultural Experiment Station, as one of
the very best insecticides. It has been used
with success to destroy the phylloxera on the
grape-vines of France ; is applied to the de-
struction of prairie-dogs in the West ; and has
been used by Mr. Cook with success to de-
stroy ants. A single dose in the habitation
of the animal, or in an apartment, is usually
sufficient. It is exceedingly volatile, and its
vapor reaches everywhere. But it must be
used with great care, for the vapor is very
inflammable and poisonous ; so that a room
in which it is used must be well aired before
one enters or carries a light into it.

A considerable portion of the Second
Annual Report of the Maryland Agricultural
Experiment Station is devoted to the tomato.
The record of the experiments with this fruit
is preceded by a valuable paper on the history
of the tomato, by Dr. E. Lewis Sturtevant.

A quick and easy method for determin-
ing whether or not a fabric is " all wool " is
given in the Lancet. This is to separate
the warp from the woof, and to hold each to
a flame. Wool burns into a shapeless mass,
and no threads can be traced in its ash. If
removed from the fire before it is all burned,
it ceases to blaze ; cotton, on the contrary,
continues to burn steadily, and its ash re-
tains the shape of the thread.

A redwood-tree^ ninety feet in circum-
ference and thirty-three feet in diameter, is

being cut for the Chicago exhibition. The
section to be sent to Chicago will be nine
feet in height and sixty feet in circumfer-
ence, and will weigh sixty-five thousand
pounds. The tree is taken from the forests
of Tulare County, California.

OBITUARY NOTES.

Prof. C. H. F. Peters, Director of the
Litchfield Observatory of Hamilton College,
Clinton, N. Y., died July 19th, in his seventy-
seventh year. He was a native of Sleswick,
and had been in the observatory director-
ship more than thirty years. He was the
discoverer of forty-seven asteroids, his last
discovery in that line being that of Neph-
thys, in August, 1889. He was chief of the
party which observed the total eclipse of
the sun at Des Moines, Iowa, August 7th,
1869 ; and also of the party that observed
the transit of Yenus in 1874 in New Zea-
land.

Charles Grad, an eminent Alsatian stu-
dent of science, died at Logelbach, July 5th,
in the forty-eighth year of his age. He was
one of the earliest contributors to La Na-
ture, and continued his active relations with
that journal as long as his health permitted.
His first scientific papers were in geology.
Many of his contributions related to Alsatian
matters of scientific interest.

William Kitchen Parker, an eminent
English biologist, died suddenly in Cardiff,
Wales, July 3d. He was drawn to the study
of nature and to experimenting on plants
and animals at a very early age ; was the
author of a number of valuable papers
(1856-1873) on foraminifera, and made
communications to the Zoological and Royal
Societies on birds and animals, his last work,
on The Duck and the Auk, having been pub-
lished in the present year. He was a mem-
ber of several scientific societies, British and
foreign ; was for many years a Hunterian
Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons ;
and was the author of books on the Morphol-
ogy of the Skull and on Mammalian Descent.
Two of his sons are Professors of Biology, at
Cardiff and in Otago, New Zealand.

The death is announced of Alexander
von Bunge, Professor of Botany in the
University of Dorpat, at the age of eighty-
seven years. He made a scientific voyage to
China "in 1830; and was principally inter-
ested in the flora of Russia and northern
Asia.

M. Alphonse Favre, formerly Professor
of Geology at Geneva, has recently died, sev-
enty-seven years old.

M. Paul Loye, who recently died in
France, was the author of a memoir on the
physiology of death by decapitation, and had
published short notes on physiological ques-
tions.

INDEX TO VOLUME XXXVII.

VOL. XXXTII. — 62

INDEX.

ARTICLES MARKED WITH AN ASTERISK ARE ILLUSTRATED.

PAGE

Aber, Mary Ailing. Mothers and Natural Science 788

Advantages of Wild Life, Some. (Misc.) 857

Agnosticism, The Affirmative Side of. J. A. Skilton : with Letters from

Herbert Spencer, T. H. Huxley, and Lyman Abbott 217

Agriculture on the Plains. (Corr.). A. E. Harvey 122

Alviella, Count Goblet d\ The Migration of Symbols 671, 778

American Association, The. (Editor's Table) 843

Ancient Dwellings of the Kio Verde Valley.* E. A. Mearns 745

Ancient Men of the Potomac. (Misc.) 570

Animal and Plant Lore. III. Mrs. F. D. Bergen 240

Animals, Recognition of Pictures by. (Misc.) 426

Antiquity of Man, The, and Egyptology. A. D. White 145

" " and Prehistoric Archaeology. A. D. White 289

Apparatus-Making in Education.* M. C. Wilson 345

Architecture, Utilitv in. B. Ferree 202

Arizona, Mountains of. (Misc.) 567

Art, Fine, in the Workshop. (Misc.) 572

Artists in Humble Work. (Misc.) 861

Asphalt in Building Construction. (Misc.) 715

Association, The American. (Misc.) 571

Astronomy on Lake Tanganyika. (Misc.) 427

Atkinson, Edward. Common Sense applied to the Tariff Question 433, 591

Atmospheric Dust. W. Marcet 177

Australasia, Some Natives of.* E. Reclus 607

Avogadro. (Misc.) 141

Ball, A Little Boys1 Game with a. H. J. Philpott 650

Barrier Beaches of the Atlantic Coast. F. J. H. Merrill 736

Beaman, George W. Secondary School Programmes 48

Beet-Sugar in Germany. (Misc.) 430

Bellamy, Miss Elizabeth W. A Queer Pet* 528

Bergen, Mrs. Fanny D. Animal and Plant Lore. Ill 240

Books noticed :

Abbot, Francis E. The Way out of Agnosticism 416

Allen, Alexander V. G. Jonathan Edwards 129

Allen, Harrison. A Clinical Study of the Skull 560

American Society of Naturalists. Records, Vol. I, Part 7 707

Appleton, John H. Laboratory Year-Book 133

866 INDEX.

Books noticed : page

Arey, Albert L. Laboratory Manual of Experimental Physics 559

Bainton, George. The Art of Authorship 699

Barkan, Louis. How to preserve Health 418

Billings, John S. The National Medical Dictionary 130

Blackmar, Frank W. Spanish Colonization in the Southwest 705

" The History of Federal and State Aid to Higher

Education in the United States 135

Bloxam, Charles L. Chemistry : Inorganic and Organic 560

Bonham, John M. Railway Secrecy and Trusts 134

Boole, Mary. Logic taught by Love 419

Brace, C. Loring. The Unknown God 556

Bray, Henry Truro. The Evolution of a Life 135

Brinton, Daniel G. Essays of an Americanist 413

" Etruscan and Libyan Names 561

" The Cradle of the Semites 708

Canadian Institute. Report of the Council for 1888-'89 278

Catalogue of Minerals, for sale by George L. English & Co 852

Childs, George W. Recollections of General Grant 855

" and C. H. Leete. Longman's School Geography for

North America 850

Chisholm, George G. Handbook of Commercial Geography 277

Church, A. H. The Chemistry of Paints and Painting 559

Commissioners of the State Reservation at Niagara. Report for

1888-'89 708

Constitutional History of the United States, as seen in the Development

of American Law 134

Cornell University. First Annual Report of the Agricultural Experiment

Station, 1888 710

" Second Annual Report of the Agricultural Experi-
ment Station 421

Crawley, Edwin S. Elements of Plane and Spherical Trigonometry 418

Crocker, Joseph H. Different New Testament Views of Jesus 854

Crookshank, Edgar M. History and Pathology of Vaccination 275

Dabney, W. D. The Public Regulation of Railways 134

Darwin, Charles. Journal of Researches during the Voyage of H. M. S.

Beagle 271

Davis, Eben H. The Fourth Reading-Book 421

Dawson, J. William. Handbook of Geology 416

Dawson, N. H. R. Report of the Commissioner of Education for

1887-'88 134

Dudley, William L. The Nature of Amalgams 708

Durham, William. Evolution, Antiquity of Man, Bacteria, etc 559

Earl, A. G. The Elements of Laboratory Work 417

Ebers, Georg. Joshua 561

Ecker, Alexander. The Anatomy of the Frog 131

Eckstein, Ernst. Nero 561

Eimer, G. H. T. Organic Evolution as the Result of the Inheritance of

Acquired Characters 557

Existence, The, of a Positive, Constructive Side to Free Thought 561

Ferree, Barr. Primitive Architecture ,. . 421

INDEX. 867

Books noticed :

Fiske, Amos K. Midnight Talks at the Club 55 0

Fitch, J. G. Notes on American Schools and Training Colleges 418

Fontaine, William M. The Potomac or Younger Mesozoic Flora 700

Foster, William £. References to the Constitution of the United States. 561

Fredericq, Paul. The Study of History in Germany and France 705

Friese, Philip C. Semitic Philosophy 700

Fullerton, George S. On Sameness and Identity ft)9

Fyffe, C. A. A History of Modern Europe. Vol. Ill 416

Geddes, Patrick, and J. A. Thomson. The Evolution of Sex 845 '

Gilbert, G. K. The nistory of the Niagara River 420

Goode, G. Brown. The Literary Labors of Benjamin Franklin 853

Museum History and Museums of History 853

" Origin of the National Scientific and Educational

Institutions of the United States 853

Goodwin, William W. Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek

Verb 854

Gould, George M. A New Medical Dictionary 415

Griswold, W. M. Directory of Writers for the Literary Press 562

Grossinann, Louis. Maimonides 709

Guimps, Roger de. Pestalozzi, his Life and Work 701

Hackel, Eduard. The True Grasses 559

Hale, Horatio. Manual of the Oregon Trade Language, or Chinook

Jargon 419

Halsted, Byron D. Rusts, Smuts, Ergots, and Rots 707

Hambleton, G. W. The Suppression of Consumption 710

Heilprin, Angelo. The Bermuda Islands 277

Henshaw, Samuel. A Bibliography of American Economic Entomology.

Parts I, II, and III 560

Hornaday, William T. The Extermination of the American Bison 276

Howe, Henry M. The Metallurgy of Steel. Vol. 1 846

Howland, George. Practical Hints for the Teachers of Public Schools. . 127

Hyde, E. W. Directional Calculus 854

Hubert, Philip G., Jr. Liberty and a Living 129

Illinois, University of. Bulletins of the Agricultural Experiment Station . 560

Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station. Bulletin No. 7 135

" State Board of Health. Monthly Bulletin 1 35

Iowa, State University of. Bulletin from the Laboratories of Natural

History 852

James, Edmund J. The Federal Constitution of Germany, Translation of. 708
Johns Hopkins University. Studies in the Biological Laboratory.

Yol. IV 852

Jordan, David Starr. A Report of Explorations in the Alleghany Region. 420
Journal of Morphology. Vol. Ill, No. 3 853

" Physiology. Vol. XI, Nos. 1, 2, and 3 853

Kansas Academy of Science, Transactions of. Vol. II 418

Kimball, Arthur L. The Physical Properties of Gases 555

Knoflach, Augustin. Sound-English 419

Kunz, George Frederick. Gems and Precious Stones of North America. 414
Langley, S. P. Report of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution

for 1889 133

868 INDEX.

Books noticed : t PAGE

Lee, Arthur B. The Microtomist's Yade-Mecum „ „ « « « . 560

Lesquereux, Leo. On some Fossil Remains 852

McCook, Henry C. American Spiders and their Spinning Work. Yol. I. 132

McGill University. Calendar of the Faculty of Medicine 853

" The Leading Facts of American History 854

Mack, Charles S. Philosophy in Homoeopathy 709

Mackay, A. H. The Fresh-water Sponges of Canada and Newfound-
land 852

MacQueary, Howard. The Evolution of Man and Christianity 554

Mantegazza, Paolo. Physiognomy and Expression 847

Massachusetts Agricultural College. Twenty-seventh Annual Report.. . .135

" State Agricultural Experiment Station. Report for 1889. 560

Mearns, Edgar A. (Zoological and Botanical Papers) 562

Meteorological Observations made on Pike's Peak 133

Meteorological Society, New England, Observations of the, for 1888. . . . 133

Miller, S. A. North American Geology and Paleontology 272

Mills, E. J., and F. J. Rowan. Fuel and its Applications 128

Modern Science Essayist 133

Montgomery, D. H. Heroic Ballads 421

Moorehead, Warren K. Fort Ancient 273

Myerovitch, M. The Origin of Polar Motion 852

National Association of Wool Manufacturers. Bulletin for June, 1890. . 853

Newberry, John S. The Palaeozoic Fishes of North America 706

New Jersey. Report of the State Geologist for 1889 848

New York. Report of the State Board of Charities for 1889 855

Nichols, George W. Letters from Waldegrave Cottage 561

Noel, Edward. Natural Weights and Measures 419

Ostrom, Kurre W. Massage and the Original Swedish Movements 135

Owen, Edmund. A Manual of Anatomy for Senior Students 850

P., G. W. American Whist illustrated 421

Panin, Ivan. Lectures on Russian Literature 278

Patton, Simon N. The Economic Basis of Protection 703

Peckham, George W. and Elizabeth G. Observations on Sexual Selec-
tion in Spiders of the Family Attidae 279

Piatt, James. Money 135

Poisons and their Antidotes 708

Poteat, W. L. A Tube-building Spider 562

Powell, J. W. Eighth Annual Report of the United States Geological

Survey 704

" Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology,

1883-'84 274

Proctor, Richard A. The Student's Atlas 703

Quarterly Review of the United Brethren in Christ 853

Rankin, Francis H. Hygiene of Childhood 413

Remondino, P. C. The Marine Climate of the Southern California

Coast 707

Report of the Royal Commission on the Mineral Resources of Ontario. . 702

Ribot, Th. The Psychology of Attention 275

Richardson, B. W. National Health 705

Richardson, Rufus B. ^Eschines against Ctesiphon 420

INDEX. 869

Books noticed : PAQE

Ridgway, Robert. List of Birds collected on the Island of Santa Lncia, etc. 420

" Review of the Genus Sclerurus 420

" " *" " Xiphocolaptes 420

Salomons, David. Electric Light Installations and the Management of

Accumulators 418

Scheffel, Joseph Victor von. Ekkehard 561

Sensenig, David M. Numbers Universalized 417

Shaffer, Virginia 0. How to remember History 710

Shufeldt, R. W. Remarks upon Extinct Mammals of the United States. 279

Sickels, Ivin. Exercises in Wood- Working 130

Small, Albion W. The Beginnings of American Nationality 705

Smith, Alexander. Dreamthorpe 708

Spencer, David E. Local Government in "Wisconsin 705

Sterrett, J. MacBride. Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion 557

Strasburger, E. Handbook of Practical Botany.-. 276

Stuart, George H., The Life of 709

Sutton, J. B. Evolution and Disease 849

Thaxter, Roland. Fungicides 560

Thayer, William R. The Best Elizabethan Plays 854

Thornton, John. Advanced Physiography 706

Thurston, Robert H. Heat as a Form of Energy 851

Tolstoi, Leo. The Kreutzer Sonata 710

Thorpe, T. E. A Dictionary of Applied Chemistry. Vol. 1 413

United States Department of Agriculture. Bulletin No. 22 707

" Fish Commission. Bulletin for 1887 420

" Geological Survey. Bulletins 54, 55, 56, and 57 700

University of Iowa. Bulletin from the Laboratories of Natural History. 278

University Studies 853

"Walker, Francis A. First Lessons in Political Economy 127

"Ward, Lester F. The Course of Biologic Evolution 706

" The Geographical Distribution of Fossil Plants 278

"Ward, R. H. Plant Organization 418

"Wells, Roger, Jr., and John "W. Kelly. English and Eskimo Vocabu-
laries 708

Wendel, F. C. H. History of Egypt 274

"Wentworth, G. A. School Algebra 708

"Wheelbarrow. Articles and Discussions on the Labor Question 849

"Wheeler, George M. Report upon United States Geographical Surveys. ■

Vol. 1 847

"Whiting, Harold. A Short Course of Experiments in Physical Measure-
ment. Part 1 558

"Willard, Frances E. Glimpses of Fifty Years 702

"Winchell, N. H. Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota. . . 279

Wolff, Alfred R. The Ventilation of Buildings 421

Wood, Alphonso. Lessons in the Structure, Life, and Growth of Plants. 278

Yeo, I. Burney. Food in Health and Disease 415

Young, Charles A. The Elements of Astronomy 131

Zoe 852

Botanic Gardens, The, at Kew. F. A. Fernald 106

Botany, Teaching the " New." (Misc.) 424

8 7o INDEX.

PAGE

Brain, Centers of Ideation in the * B. Hollander 514

Bridge, A Papuan. (Misc.) 571

Brooks, Margarette W. Insect Pests of the House * 333

California and its Mines. (Misc.) , 856

Canada, The Unexplored Regions of. (Misc.) 717

Caprices of Soils. (Misc.) 856

Carlisle, The Lord Bishop of. Wallace on " Darwinism " 75

Cats and their Friendships.* W. H. Larrabee 91

Cements, Natural and Artificial. L. F. Griffin 253

Chemistry, Who should study. (Misc.) 573

Child, Addison. Vitiated Moral Teaching. (Corr.) 408

Chisholm, George G. Commercial Geography of South America, 391

Church, The Lights of the, and the Light of Science. T. H. Huxley 631

Civic Evolution, The Circle of. (Misc.) 565

Clark, The late Henry James. (Misc.) 138

Claypole, Mrs. Katharine B. Recent Glacial "Work in Europe 103

Clayton, H. Helm. Public Schools as affecting Crime and Vice. (Corr.). . . 122

Cloud-Bursts. (Misc.) 281

Coffee in Brazil. (Misc.) 142

Coffin-Nails. (Misc.) 283

Color, Animal, The Uses of. E. B. Poulton 533

Commencement Days, Four. (Misc.) 567

Corporation Law, Concerning. A. G. Warner 323

Cotton-Spinning South and North. H. V. Meigs 798

Crystallization seen in the Act. (Misc.) 717

" Darwinism," Wallace on. The Lord Bishop of Carlisle 75

Dawson, Sir William, on Evolution. (Editor's Table) 841

Descartes, Ren6, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 833

Discovery, The, of Invisible Worlds. H. J. Klein '. 501

Dishes, Odd, of the Olden Time. (Misc.) 284

Doctors, The Unselfishness of. (Misc.) 713

Doctrine of Spirits in New Guinea, The. (Misc.) 859

Earth-Carving, Nature's. (Misc.) 423

"Earthly Tabernacle," The. 0. T. Miller 763

Economics, Practical. (Editor's Table) 123

Education and Crime. A. W. Gould 211

Education, Requisites of a Real. (Misc.) 569

Ennis, Jacob. (Misc.) 137

Evans, E. P. King Bomba's Philosophical Catechism 618

Evolution and the Distribution of Animals. D. S. Jordan 313, 505

Evolution of Chemical Truth. L. Olivier 814

Experimental Methods, Instruction by. (Misc.) 563

Expert Witness, Position of the. (Misc.) 428

Fairies, Slavonian. F. S. Kraus 684

Fall of Man, The, and Anthropology. A. D. White 577, 721

I2TDEX. 87i

PAGE

Fernald, Frederik A. Ancient and Modern Ideas of Hell 489

" Telpherage in Practical Use * 382

" The Botanic Gardens at Kew 106

Ferree, Barr. Utility in Architecture 202

Firing Pottery-Kilns by Gas. (Misc.) 857

Fish-Hook, Evolution of the. (Misc.) 280

Fiske, John. Edward Livingston Youmans : the Man and his Work 1

Flax, Where, is Grown and Manufactured. (Corr.). J. J. Menzies 409

Flowers, Observations upon Doubling of. B. D. Halsted 374

Formation, The, of a New Island.* (Misc.) 713

Fredericq, Leon. Sketch of Theodore Schwann. (With Portrait) 257

Gardening Classes of the Missouri Botanical Garden. (Misc.) 282

Geography, Commercial, of South America. G. G. Chisholm 391

Geological Formations, Interesting, in Kansas. (Misc.) 566

" Survey Work in Minnesota. (Misc.) 423

Geometry of Aboriginal Mounds. (Misc.) 862

Geysers, Soaping. (Misc.) 139

Glacial Action, Evidences of, in Southeastern Connecticut.* D. A. Wells.. . 196

" " in Virginia. (Corr.). F. Minor 551

Glacial Work in Europe, Recent. Mrs. K. B. Claypole 103

Glass-Worker, In the Atelier of a.* C. II. Henderson 157

Gould, A. W. Education and Crime 211

Greenland and the Greenlanders.* E. Reclus 302

Griffin, La Roy F. Natural and Artificial Cements 253

Groff, G. G. Sanitary Work in Great Disasters 459

Hallucinations, A Census of. W. James. (Corr.) 409

Halsted, Byron D. Observations upon Doubling of Flowers 374

Hammond, William A. Sumptuary Laws and their Social Influence 33

Harvey, A. E. Agriculture on the Plains. (Corr.) 122

Hart, Samuel. Invisible Assailants of Health . . . . 806

Headaches, The Eyes and. (Misc.) 572

Hell, Ancient and Modern Ideas of. F. A. Fernald 489

Henderson, C. Hanf ord. In the Atelier of a Glass-Worker * 157

Henshaw Henry W. Missions and Mission Indians of California* 465

Heredity, Human. J. H. Stoller 359

Hill, David J. President Hill's Defense. (Corr.) 265

Hollander, Bernard. Centers of Ideation in the Brain* 514

Honey, Artificial, and Manufactured Science. A. Pringle 70

Horses, Wild.* E. L. Trouessart 626

Huntington, Oliver W. A Talk about Meteorites 366

Huxley, Thomas Henry. The Lights of the Church and the Light of

Science 631

lies, George. Sketch of Thomas Corwin Mendenhall. (With Portrait) 590

Indian, American, Origin of the. (Misc.) 716

Indian Ball-Player's Training, An. (Misc.) 862

Indian Tribes of the Amazon. (Misc.) 859

872 INDEX.

PAGE

Insanity, Causes of. (Misc.) - 138

Insect Pests of the House.* M. W. Brooks 333

Inventions, Half a Century of. (Misc.) 428

Invisible Assailants of Health. S. Hart 806

Irrigation in China. Tcheng Ki Tong 821

James, "William. A Census of Hallucination. (Corr.) 409

Jameson, Charles Davis. The Suspension Bridge. (Corr.) 267

Jordan, David Starr. Evolution and the Distribution of Animals 313, 505

Justice, On. Herbert Spencer 19, 183

Klein, Hermann J. The Discovery of Invisible "Worlds 501

Koenig, Rudolph, Sketch of. (With Portrait.) W. L. Stevens 545

Kraus, Friedrich S. Slavonian Fairies 684

Land Values, Natural Guides to. (Misc.) 283

Lands, Rights on other Men's. (Misc.) 139

Larrabee, William H. Cats and their Friendships* 91

Laundry, Science in the. (Misc.) 428

Law, Judge-made. (Misc.) 565

Lepidosirens. (Misc.) 859

Lias, Brau de St. Pol. Tin and its Native Land * 233

Lightning Shock, Treatment of. (Misc.) 281

Liquor Laws not Sumptuary. G. F. Magoun 768

McCook, Henry C. The Strength of Spiders and Spider-TTebs * 41

Magnetism, Local, and Geological Structure. (Misc.) 578

Magoun, George F. Liquor Laws not Sumptuary 768

Malaria, Trees and. (Misc.) 285

Manatee, Habits of the. (Misc.) . 284

Manual Training, The Educational Value of. (Misc.) 138

Marcet, William. Atmospheric Dust 177

Marital Customs, Primitive. (Misc.) 570

Marriage Ages in England. (Misc.) 573

Maury, Matthew Fontaine, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 400

Mearns, Edgar A. Ancient Dwellings of the Rio Verde Valley* 745

Medicinal Plants. (Misc.) 858

Meigs, Henry V. Cotton-Spinning South and North 798

Meigs, William M. The Mysterious Music of Pascagoula. (Corr.) 410

Mendenhall, Thomas Corwin, Sketch of. (With Portrait.) G. lies 590

Mendenhall, T. C, The Education of. (Editor's Table) 698

Mental Strain. C. Richet 485

Menzies, J. J. Where Flax is Grown and Manufactured. (Corr.) 409

Mercury, Scenes on the Planet. G. V. Schiaparelli 64

Merrill, Frederick J. H. Barrier Beaches of the Atlantic Coast 736

Mesozoic Atlantic Coast Region, The. (Misc.) 140

Meteorites, A Talk about. O. "W. Huntington 366

Mexico, Messrs. Heilprin and Baker's Survey of. (Misc.) 861

Microscopic Structure of Stone. (Misc.) 715

INDEX. 873

PAGE

Miller, Olive Thome. The " Earthly Tabernacle "....... 763

Minor, Francis. Evidences of Glacial Action in Virginia. (Corr.) 551

Missions and Mission Indians of California.* H. W. Henshaw 465

Moral Issue, A. (Editor's Table) 410

Moral Teaching, Vitiated. (Corr.). Addison Child 408

Mosquito Pest, Can the, be mitigated ? 679

Mosquitoes, Dragon-Flies and. (Misc.) 714

Mounds of the Mississippi Basin. (Misc.) 564

Mothers and Natural Science. M. A. Aber 788

Mouth-slitting Botocudos, The. (Misc.) 858

Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. (Misc.) 283

Musical Sense, The, in Animals and Men. A. Weismann 352

Musical Visions. (Misc.) 572

" Narnpa Image," The Genuineness of the. (Misc.) . . .• 718

New Chapters in the Warfare of Science. A. D. White 145, 289, 577, 721

New Guinea, Some People of. (Misc.) 716

Nitrogen, Atmospheric, as Food for Plants. (Misc.) 142

Notes 143, 286, 430, 574, 718, 862

Nursing as against Artificial Feeding. (Misc.) 568

Obituary Notes 144, 287, 432, 576, 720, 864

Object-Studies in Botany. (Misc.) 142

Olives and their Oil. (Misc.) 141

Olivier, Louis. The Evolution of Chemical Truth 814

Ordeal by chewing Rice, The. (Misc.) 427

Paleolithic Implements in the United States. (Misc ) 425

Pallas Cormorant, The. (Misc.) 860

Pascagoula, The Mysterious Music of. (Corr.). W. M. Meigs 410

Pasteur's Anti-Rabic Treatment, Results of. (Misc.) 716

Peruvian Cloths, Ancient. (Misc.) 568

Pet, A Queer.* E. W. Bellamy , 528

Philosophical Catechism, King Bomba's. E. P. Evans. 618

Philpott, Henry J. A Little Boys' Game with a Ball 650

Pike, Voracity of a. (Misc.) 427

Pine Belt of New Jersey, The. (Misc.) 858

Poisoned Arrows, The Nature of. (Misc.) 140

Poulton, Edward B. The Uses of Animal Color 533

Pringle, Allen. Artificial Honey and Manufactured Science 70

Prohibition Laws of Iowa, The. (Corr.). J. H. Trewin 551

Puma, Taming The. (Misc.) 429

Pygmies, The African. A. Werner 658

Rabies, Tests and Characteristics of. (Misc.) 566

Reclus, Elisee, Greenland and the Greenlanders* 302

" Some Natives of Australasia * 607

Relative Abundance of the Chemical Elements. (Misc.) 860

Religion, Why so many Definitions of ? F. N. Riale 348

874 INDEX.

PAGE

Eiale, Frank N. Why so many Definitions of Religion ? 348

Eice and its Culture. L. W. Robarts 827

Richet, Charles. Mental Strain 485

Sanitary "Work in Great Disasters. G. G. Groff 459

Schiaparelli, G. V. Scenes on the Planet Mercury 64

School, Secondary, Programmes. G. W. Beaman 48

Schools, Public, as affecting Crime and Yice. (Corr.). H. H. Clayton 122

Schoolcraft, Henry R., Sketch of. (With Portrait) 113

Schwann, Theodor, Sketch of. (With Portrait.) L. Fredericq 257

Science and Poetry. (Misc.) 425

Science in Iowa. (Misc.) 712

Scientific Association, The Australasian. (Misc.) 564

Scientific Missions in the Olden Time. (Misc.) 569

Scott, Robert H. Thunder-Storms 538

Sharing of Earnings. (Misc.) , 425

Skilton, James A. The Affirmative Side of Agnosticism 217

Slag, Uses of. (Misc.) 712

Soda Salts in Arizona. (Misc.) 285

Spencer, Herbert. On Justice 19, 183

Spencer, Does Mr., inculcate Selfishness? (Editor's Table) 267

Spencer's, (Mr.) Place in Philosophy. (Editor's Table) •. . 551

Spiders and Spider- Webs, The Strength of.* H. C. McCook 41

Squirrel, An Arizona. (Misc.) 564

Staten Island, Contributions to the Geology of. (Misc.) 142

Stevens, W. Le Conte. Sketch of Rudolph Koenig. (With Portrait) 545

Stoller, James H. Human Heredity 359

Summer Courses at Harvard. (Misc.) 423

Summit of Kilima-njaro, The. (Misc.) 860

Sumptuary Laws and their Social Influence. W. A. Hammond 33

Suspension Bridge, The. (Corr.). C. D. Jameson 267

Symbols, The Migration of. Count G. d'Alviella ' 671, 778

Tariff Legislation. (Editor's Table) 696

Tariff Question, Common Sense applied to the. E. Atkinson 433, 591

Tcheng Ki Tong. Irrigation in China 821

Telpherage in Practical Use.* F. A. Fernald 382

Thunder-Storms. R. H. Scott 538

Tin and its Native Land.* B. de St. P. Lias 233

Torres Strait, Holy Things and Toys from. (Misc.) 286

Towers, Leaning. (Misc.) 424

Training in Realities. (Editor's Table) 125

Trewin, James H. The Prohibition Laws of Iowa. (Corr.) 551

Trouessart, Edouard L. Wild Horses* 626

University, The Work of a Complete State. (Misc.) 567

Voice-Figures on Glass. (Misc.) 429

Walking-Sticks and Umbrella-Handles. (Misc.) 714

INDEX. 875

PAGE

Walls and Ceilings, Healthful. (Misc.) 573

Warfare, Submarine, Antiquity of. (Misc.) 426

Warner, Amos G. Concerning Corporation Law 323

Water-Supply, The, of Memphis. (Misc.) 711

Weismann, August. .The Musical Sense in Animals and Man 352

Wells, David A. Evidences of Glacial Action in Southeastern Connecticut*. 196

Werner, A. The African Pygmies 658

White, Andrew D. The Antiquity of Man and Egyptology 145

" The Antiquity of Man and Prehistoric Archaeology 289

" The Fall of Man and Anthropology 577, 721

Wilson, M. C. Apparatus-Making in Education * ' 345

Youmans, Edward Livingston : the Man and his Work. John Fiske 1

END OF VOL. XXXVII.

*