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APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY ■

EDITED BY

WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. LI

MAY TO OCTOBER, 1897

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1897

COPTBIOHT, 1897,

Bt d. appleton and company.

L I B R A R Y I 30

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'XMO^ism'imwim'iiiimmmimim

JAMES NASMYTH.

APPLETONS'
POPULAK SCIEI^
MONTHLY.

^

MAY, 1897.
KOREAN INTERVIEWS.

By EDWAEU S. MOKSE.

DURING my residence in Japan I sought many interviews
with Korean students, attaches of the Korean legation, and
others, and in journalistic fashion asked them many questions
concerning their country, people, habits, manners, customs, etc.
At that time I found no Korean who understood English, but the
younger men were studying Japanese, and so through them, by
the aid of a Japanese interpreter, I managed to ask many ques-
tions of the older men. Since my return a number of oppor-
tunities have occurred — meeting Koreans who spoke English, and
for several months I had a Korean as house companion. The
information thus gained was not originally intended for publica-
tion, but for comparison with similar material of a cognate but
far more advanced people, the Japanese.*

I may say here, though not as an excuse for any errors which
may doubtless occur, that my questions could not have been more
carefully asked, or the answers more promptly recorded, had I
been on Korean soil. It is also proper to state that in every case
the information was derived from Koreans of official position,
and therefore the statements, so far as their own class is con-
cerned, ought to be reliable.

* It is an extraordinary fact that in the late war with China the Japanese, single-handed,
overawed the Koreans, a hostile nation of at least eight million people, drove every Chi-
nese soldier out of the country, and, had it not been for the interference of three powerful
European nations, would have held the Regent's Sword, and would have supported the
young Korean party in its patriotic efforts to regenerate that poor country. That the
Koreans could not make the faintest stand against the Japanese, though aided by Chinese
armies, leads one to wonder what manner of people are the Koreans, and this is my reason
for publishing the following memoranda, disjointed and fragmentary as they are.

TOL. LI. — 1

2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Family Relations. — The relations between the father and
son are very strict, as between the king and the subject. If the
son enters the room where the father is sitting, he must meekly
stand with hands together until invited by his father to be seated ;
in sitting, he must lean forward in a humble attitude ; he can not
rise again without permission. He sweeps his father's room,
makes his bed, and rises early to perform these menial serv-
ices ; he often gets up at midnight in solicitude for his parent's
comfort. Filial love prompts these attentions, for fear the serv-
ants may grumble and cora])lain and thus bring disquiet to the
parent. In summer the son fans his father and attends minutely
to every want ; this same attention and respect are shown to his
father's friends. Seasonal changes of clothing are not made until
the parent's consent is given. It is considered exceedingly im-
proper to cough, sneeze, eructate, or spit before old men. Boy-
hood continues until the fifteenth year, or until marriage ; up to
this time the hair hangs behind in a long queue ; when manhood
is assumed the hair is tied in a knot on top of the head. All the
possessions of the children, as well as their earnings, belong to
the father, and no matter how much the son may have the father
can claim it all. If, however, the son lives in a separate house,
he has the use of his earnings as well as his wife's dower ; but if
the father has no money, he may sell his son's house over his head
and take all. Old men will not allow their sons to drink intoxi-
cating liquors. From all that I could learn, the son is in abject
enslavement to his father. After the death of the father the
property goes to the oldest son. Brothers are very devoted to one
another, and aid in supporting the less fortunate among them.

The daughters have a much easier time ; they do nothing but
eat and dress ; they jest with their father and brothers, scold
them, and act with great familiarity ; indeed, all my inquiries
about their behavior brought out the fact that they act like
spoiled children.

Virtue is rarely lost among the more favored classes. Male
and female servants do not sit down together or work in the same
apartment. The wife is absolute mistress of the female servants.
The apartments of the female servants are under a separate roof,
and male servants never enter these apartments, though their
duty is to clean the yard and garden belonging to the female
servants. Servants are inherited by successors in the family ;
they are bought and sold. Loyal servants work and support their
masters when they become poor. Masters can and do free their
servants.

Education. — The higher classes employ private teachers.
Children at the age of five or six begin the study of Chinese
characters ; they are provided with books for composition. Five

KOREAN INTERVIEWS. 3

rules of conduct are drilled into tliem ; these are : To obey the
father, respect the elder brother, be loyal to the king, be respect-
ful to the wife, and be true to friends. These rules are strictly
Confucian. After these rules are firmly fixed in the minds of
the pupils they are taught to compose letters ; next comes the
study of history ; after these studies Confucius and the Chinese
classics are taken up, and finally the art of poetical composition.
These studies go on through life. A gentleman will study classics
in winter, composition of poetry in spring, and in summer study
those subjects which will fit him for official duties. The king
appoints judges to examine candidates for office ; the number
appointed may be three, seven, or twelve. The student for ex-
amination is locked up in a room for three days without books.
The subjects usually selected for examination are from ancient
poetry and classics, as follows : 1. Long- word poetry of seven
words. 2. Short- word poetry of six words. 3. Problems in clas-
sics. 4. Clearing up doubts in classics. 5. Criticising famous
men of olden times. 6. Considering what system of morality is
best to correct or modify bad customs. 7. Suggesting what kind
of military organization is best to defend and control the coun-
try. In these various examinations it is claimed that poetry
reveals one's nature, that problems in classics show one's knowl-
edge, that clearing up doubts in classics demonstrate one's powers
of decision, that criticising famous men indicates one's knowledge
of persons, that judging of the best system of morality and decid-
ing as to the best kind of military organization displays one's
mental attributes.*

In olden times Korea had public schools ; for centuries it has
had none. Private schools are kept in private houses ; no special
school building is known in the land. In many Confucian tem-
ples free classes are supported by the priests, but only Confucian
doctrines are taught. Buddhists have no schools, but have stated
times of teaching and expounding.

Position op Women. — The condition of women in Korea is
unhappy and degraded to the last degree. Among the more
favored classes the women are kept as prisoners within the house ;
in rare instances they may visit relatives. This seclusion begins
after a girl reaches the age of ten or twelve. Four or five hundred
years ago they had greater freedom. The women often refer to
these times, and the intelligent classes express sympathy and pity
for their present unfortunate condition. The seclusion of the
women from the men is so strict that it is customary in the cities

* The swindling and thieving character of Korean officials, their torturing and murder-
ing subjects without trial, and the degradation and helplessness of Korea to-day, stand in
curious contrast to this ennobling list of studies and examinations, and indicate a depth of
hollow pretense and hypocrisy which is simply appalling.

4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

for the thatcher, before climbing to the roof, to shout in loud
tones, " The thatcher is coming ! the thatcher is coming ! " so that
the women in neighboring compounds may have a chance to run
to cover.

Women are confined to domestic labor. Among the lower
classes the husband has a right to beat his wife. There is no law
for women. If she commits a crime, such as a personal assault
or theft, she is not punished, but her husband is. A woman can
pass in front of the king's procession, and the king must wait.
The women are considered greater than men in trivial things.

Customs. — The chopstick is evidently not so commonly used
in Korea as in Japan or China. A spoon is used for soup and all
other forms of liquid food ; even rice is eaten with a spoon. Dry
food, however, is eaten with the chopstick. Guests of high rank
sit midway between the two ends of the table. If two guests are
present, they sit side by side. When at table the Koreans remain
silent and eat very slowly. In passing food both hands must be
used in holding the dish, as in Japan. In summer the meals are
usually at seven, one, and eight o'clock. Dinner is at midday,
though there is very little difference in the character of the
meals. Salxe is drunk at every meal.

The relation between master and servant is supposed to be the
same as that between father and child. The servants help the
master through the yard to his house and up the steps, and this
attention is given whether the master stands in need of assistance
or not. At dinner a servant ties a big napkin about the master's
neck.

The Koreans have no music at weddings or funerals. (Con-
trary to this information. Carles records loud chanting at funer-
als.) On birthday festivities and times of feasting music is
heard. They have battle songs and love songs.

The Koreans never tattoo or wear earrings, though in the west-
ern part of the peninsula prostitutes are sometimes seen with ear-
rings. Women use paint for facial decoration. Men and women
wear finger rings, but this custom is not very common with men.

An extraordinary feature is seen in the dress of women of the
lowest classes, in the fact that the breasts are fully exposed. An
abbreviated jacket drops from the neck to the upper part of the
breast, while the waist of the skirt portion comes up just under
the breast. The exposure of this part of the body seems all the
more singular when it is considered that Koreans never go bare-
footed ; even coolies working in the city do not go barearmed or
barelegged. Women rarely wear a comb in the hair. Men and
women do up their own hair.

Among the middle and higher classes it is considered improper
to speak of money, and for this reason mathematics is not taught.

KOREAN INTERVIEWS. 5

All openings in the house must be square. An arched door-
way or window is not allowed except in the emperor's palace.
There is a prohibitory law against decorating in any way the
outside of a house, nor can the people build a house of over one
story. Streets are named after trees, famous men, historical events
which have happened on the ground, and attributes. Thus there
is a Happy Street, Blessing Street, Virtuous Street, etc.

For centuries the fishermen of Korea have been accustomed to
pour oil on the water to make the sea calm. The Japanese also
follow the same practice.

Makriage. — Koreans never marry cousins or any one de-
scended from the same ancestors, or even any one of the same
name. One of the most famous of Korean kings, Seijong Dai-
wang, four hundred years ago, said that intermarriages would
cause the race to become extinct. It was this same king who in-
vented movable type made of iron. Marriages are arranged by
the parents. The bridegroom does not see the bride until the
wedding. The groom goes to the bride's house and escorts her
to his own house; after reaching the house they bow to one
another standing. The bride then bows to the groom's father
and mother and other relatives. She then offers wine and fruit
to the groom's parents, and this represents a form of tribute.
The relatives of both parties then have a great feast. When the
groom goes to the bride's house he carries a paper from his
father to the father of the bride, upon which is written, " I have a
son, you have a daughter." He also carries with him two pieces
of silk — one red, the other blue — each piece sufficient for a suit or
dress. The red silk is wrapped in blue paper and tied with a red
cord, while the blue silk is wrapped in a red paper and tied with
a blue cord. The cords are tied in a peculiar knot called the
" same-mind knot." Blue signifies the male principle, and red the
female principle. This silk constitutes the wedding present, and
is known as the " first cloth of ceremony silk," meaning the first
present of her future husband. Dresses are afterward made of
these pieces. When the wife dies the letter from her husband's
father, above mentioned, is buried with her.

The first son derives his name from both parents ; thus, if the
father's name is Kum Pak and the mother's name is Chul Hei,
then the boy's name will be Kum Hei. A boy may marry as
young as fifteen years — that is, the ceremony may be performed
then — but he does not live with his wife until he is eighteen.
They may see each other, however.

Adultery is punished by fining both parties. For rape the
offender is heavily fined and exiled for three years. Prostitution
is recognized by the Government. Adulterers are often forced to
be cooks in prisons and otherwise severely treated. Concubines

6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are allowed by law, but the practice is considered bad, as it is
liable to break up tbe family relations, and the finger of scorn is
often pointed at the man. Rich men have concubines in secret.

Widows of higher classes never marry, though four hundred
years ago they had the privilege of marrying again. This prohi-
bition does not extend to the lower classes. Divorces are not per-
mitted, but separation takes place in case of adultery ; the man,
however, can not marry again. Marriage with a slave girl is
considered a great disgrace, and the friends of one who commits
such an offense desert him. Children born of such a union, how-
ever, are not regarded with reproach.

Manners, Habits, etc. — The Chinese practice of medicine is
in full force ; the lower classes rarely employ a doctor, but ask
the advice of gypsies. The people believe that all sickness is
caused by evil spirits. Blind people find employment as devil
expellers.

The liquors drunk are distilled and fermented from rice, cor-
responding to the Japanese sochiu and sake. An impure wine is
made from oats ; there is also a malt wine resembling ale. Liq-
uors, cordials, or wines are made from' bamboo, honey, peach,
and pear mixed with sake. A wine is made out of the new
twigs of the pine ; there is also a wine called the hundred floiver
luine.

A Korean gentleman of high rank assured me that it was con-
sidered impolite for children to say " Thank you " to their parents.
Parents never thank their children, and at table the expression
is not heard. The children eat at a separate table from their
parents. It is considered impolite to smoke in the presence of
another without asking permission and offering tobacco.

As an illustration of the rigid lines of propriety, a young man
in the family is chided if he undertakes to make any addition or
improvement to the house ; he is told that such work is for the
carpenter or cabinet-maker. He must attend to his books; he
can not even invent or suggest any device.

Five hundred years ago the Koreans had paper money ; this
was very thick, and varied in size according to the denomination.
Until within a hundred years they had gold and silver coins, len-
ticular in shape, like the checkers used in the game of "go."
The coinage was abandoned by the Government on account of
the extensive counterfeiting. The nobles now use these coins as
checkers for " go."

The iron horseshoe was invented by a Korean general who
fought against the Japanese invaders in 1596; before that time
straw horseshoes were used, as in Japan.

It is customary to build large bonfires near pine forests, to
attract and destroy moths, thus preventing destruction of forests.

KOREAN INTERVIEWS. j

Religion and Morals. — The general Government supports
Confucian temples. In one temple there are over two hundred
Confucian philosophers. Every county has its temple, with
twenty or thirty Confucians. The Government stands in fear of
these men, for they vigorously protest if rulers err in any way,
and more particularly if their allowance is abbreviated. Con-
fucius forbade the study of curious things as disturbing to the
mind, and this ridiculous idea has grown into a superstition, and
thus a man is prevented from preserving any relic dug from the
ground for fear of a ghost following it. Previous to the four-
teenth century the country was strongly Buddhist; since that
time Confucian doctrines have spread from China, and within
four hundred years Buddhists have been expelled from all cities
and towns, and their temples have been destroyed. The priests
can not even live in the villages, but must live in the mountains
away from the villages. A certain Buddhist monument, thirty
feet in height, was so beautiful that even Korean bigotry would
not destroy it; it was cut halfway down, and the upper half was
placed on the ground near the monument's base.

Pupils of Confucius are taught that if struck on one cheek
they must turn the other, and if spat upon they must let it dry,
for wiping it away would signify anger. Friendship is believed
to be more faithful among Koreans, and the people are supposed
to be more truthful than the Chinese or Japanese.

Burial. — The body when buried must be clothed in a shroud
made of native cloth ; this differs but slightly from the usual
dress. A burial service is held, but no religious ceremony. Poor
people hire a hearse, but a rich man will have a special one con-
structed. If the deceased cared for any special objects, these are
buried with him — books, for example. The grave is dug to the
depth of six feet. This depth is fixed for all. Books are pub-
lished describing the forms of burial. The expenses of a funeral,
with the construction of a tomb, a new hearse, etc., are often very
great. The body may be kept in the house from three days to
three months. Confucian doctrines enjoin a mourning period of
three years, during which time no work is done. The king
mourns seven days. A prominent feature of the mourner is a hat
of large size, which comes down to the shoulders, thus concealing
the face. The mourning color is yellow ; it was formerly white.
The clothing is always made of flax. No one ever accosts or
interrupts a mourner on the street, and Jesuit priests often use
the mourners' habiliments as a disguise.

Operative. — Among the various trades and occupations are
those coming under the definition of silver- and goldsmiths, iron
and bronze workers, builders and architects, wrights of various
kinds, masons, decorators, artificers, weavers, saddlers, butchers,

8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

curriers, salt makers, a few seal engravers, plowmen, cattle and
swine drovers, special thatcliers and tilers, no barbers, but hair-
dressers, dyers, tanners, carpenters and cabinetmakers, and these
latter go by the name of large and small carpenters. Craftsmen
are not allowed to sell raw material ; the lumber dealer, for exam-
ple, would prevent a carpenter from selling even a board. There
are also stone polishers, paper pasters, and tailors who make cloth-
ing by quantity. As in this country, such clothing is not consid-
ered as good as custom-made clothing. Women make their own
clothing. Boys are not commonly employed, but are sometimes
seen on the streets as peddlers. In Japan, on the contrary, boys are
everywhere employed, and in all occupations, thus adding to the
industrial strength of the nation. Men make shoes, though this is
considered a mean occupation. Sandals are made by monks. As
with us, there is a localization of industries and trades. A system
of apprenticeship exists. In the first year's service the apprentice
is fed, in the second year he receives half pay, and in the third
year full wages are paid him ; in the fourth year, if skillful, he
becomes a partner in the work, or goes off by himself, the master
helping him. The Government builds long markets in which are
shops for special merchandise, such as silk, cotton, shoes, paper,
etc. These are hired by merchants on perpetual lease, and the
merchant who thus rents a shop receives all the trade in his
specialty. Thus every one dealing in cotton must come to the
cotton shop. A shop thirty or forty feet long will sell for five
thousand dollars. Traders are accustomed to borrow capital from
the nobles, upon which they pay interest. There are a great many
guilds, which are called Brotherhoods in Trading. Partnerships
are common. In the guilds, if one meets with a loss or failure all
the others help make up the loss ; in partnerships this is not so.

Public work is done by the co-operation of villages. In S^oul
public work is done by the general Government, the city, how-
ever, collecting taxes for the work. If the people volunteer to do
the work, no taxes are imposed. If the municipality does the
work, then continuous taxes are collected ; if the Government
does it, the city is taxed for it. In the country, five days' work
on public improvements is considered an equivalent for the tax.

In farm work no distinction is recognized between the sexes.
Female domestics are employed in spinning, weaving, sewing, and
universally in cooking ; women even of high rank may cook with
propriety ; indeed, such service is considered quite legitimate for
women of all ranks. Men never become cooks. In certain dis-
tricts women make hats and straw mats. In the western part of
the country silk is made, in the northern part linen, while in the
southern part cotton is made. This kind of work is all done by
women. 'A

KOREAN INTERVIEWS. g

Regulative. — Co-operations are not hereditary, excepting
those connected with the soil, such as mining, brick, tile and
pottery kilns, etc. Farm labor is done by freemen and serfs.
Serfs are called tributary slaves. The Government pays for its
labor. During the times of great depression the Government
orders certain work to be done as a relief to the people. Three
kinds of public work are done — namely, by the Government, by
the city, and by the people. For example, the people living near
a river embankment may plant trees upon it (usually the willow,
pine, or elm). Serfs in government employ work eight hours a
day. In the Department of the Interior, and other departments,
the king appoints a secretary or head officer, who in turn employs
the subordinates. As an illustration of the shameful waste of
time, it is customary for a force of employees to work by install-
ments : thus, if thirty serfs are employed, ten of these work for
three days only, then another lot of ten continues the work for
three days, and finally the third set of ten takes up the work for
the same time ; thus, each set of ten have a week's vacation fol-
lowing three days' work. What wonder that the people are
among the poorest on earth ! There are two kinds of serfs, a
higher and a lower kind. The higher serfs take their vacation in
precisely the same way. The chiefs of departments have under
their control not only various clerks, but also serfs who accom-
pany the chiefs to their houses, and the chiefs may employ them
on their own private work. There are no lawyers. Judges there
are, and these are appointed by the king.

The commercial ways are very low. In some respects the
methods are like those of nomadic tribes. Peddlers are called
burden merchants, and travel through the country ; if they have
means they will buy their food ; if not, they beg. They have no
house or home, but with their families are traveling all the time.
These people have very severe laws among themselves. Adultery
is punished with death. When this crime is detected a letter is
circulated among them. Hundreds assemble, and each one strikes
the adulteress with a stick or club. They are very kind and
polite among themselves. In many respects they resemble our
gypsies, but are true Koreans, and are considered the lowest class.
There are the other kinds of merchants who have no shops, but
assemble in small towns on every fifth day to buy and sell. This
is derived from an old Chinese custom. The higher classes of
merchants have shops. Pawnbrokers abound, and auctions are
common.

Festivals. — The last day of the old year and the first week of
the new year are given up to festivities. The fifteenth day of the
first month is called the New Moon holiday. A particular kind
of food is made at this time, consisting of dates, chestnuts, honey.

lo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and cake rice (a peculiar kind of rice) boiled together. This food
18 called medicine food, and is supposed to be prophylactic and
also to strengthen the brain. In the country, torches are lighted
to welcome the moon, and people assemble in great numbers to
catch the first glimpse of the moon, as it insures happiness. This
day is also observed as All- Fools' Day. A favorite trick is to
attach a flower secretly to some one's clothing.

In the second month, usually on the sixteenth, Butterfly holi-
day occurs. The third day of the third month is observed as the
Flower holiday. On this day young men make cake of flowers
mixed with wheat and rice, and this is fried ; they also cook fish,
and other articles of food.

The eighth day of the fourth month is called by the Buddhists
the Washing-day of Buddha. Households have a lantern for each
person, and these are supplied with oil lamps instead of candles,
as candles are made of ox fat or honeycomb, and Buddha forbids
the killing of animals. Oil for lamps is always a vegetable oil.
The lower classes attend church on this day and sacrifice to Bud-
dha. A cake is made of black beans, and this was formerly deco-
rated with flowers ; now this is rarely done, though artificial
flowers are sometimes used for this purpose. At this time forms
of animals are made of meal or lime and sold to the children.

The fifth day of the fifth month is called Swinging Day, and
is derived from China. Swings are suspended from trees and
frames, and everybody indulges in the sport. Boys put on their
new clothes at this time. The root of the flag is cut with a slop-
ing edge which is colored red, and this is worn in the hair to
ward off calamities. (The Japanese have a holiday at this time,
but have no idea of its derivation.)

The sixteenth day of the sixth month is observed as Hair-
washing Day. Everybody observes the day except the laborer.
At this time wheat cake and macaroni are eaten.

The seventh day of the seventh month is observed as a general
holiday, and cake and macaroni are eaten. The holiday is based
on the following story: Two stars in heaven were married; one
was the daughter of God. Before marriage she was very indus-
trious, but after marriage she became negligent and idle, and
God, becoming angry, banished her to the eastern part of the
Milky Way, while the male star was sent to the western part of
the Heavenly River, as the Japanese call it. The woman had
to weave, and the man had to attend cows. The female star is
called the Weaver, while the male star is called the Patroller.
They are allowed to meet once a year on this day. If it rains
during the evening of that day it is interpreted as being caused
by the tears of separation.

The fifteenth day of the eighth month is the Harvest holiday.

KOREAN INTERVIEWS. ii

It forms a great festival for the farmers, and is mucli like a New-
England Thanksgiving Day. Gentlemen go to the country to see
the festival, have food and wine, and generally get hilarious.

The ninth day of the ninth month is observed because the
maple trees turn red and yellow flowers are in bloom. Poetry is
written about the day and its beauties.

The tenth day of the tenth month is observed by every one
making cake in the evening. Each one makes a number of cakes
and presents them to all his friends. Friendship is supposed to
be bound and strengthened by these gifts. Gentlemen engage in
this pastime, and it is also a great day for the farmers.

On the eleventh month, at the winter solstice, a drink is made
of red beans, and on this day sacrifice to ancestors is made.

On the twelfth day of the twelfth month people go hunting.
Young men also call on the old men, who offer food and give
good advice, and will say, " One year older, one year more." On
this day the young man can sit down in the old man's presence
and will listen respectfully to his advice.

Besides these stated festival days parties are often given, and
if ten are invited, for example, provision must be made for three
hundred, as each invited guest is accompanied by many servants,
high and low. A large table is provided for each guest, and this
is heaped with food and fruit, of which little is eaten, as most of
it is given to the low servants, special tables being provided for
the high servants. An ordinary party of this kind may often
cost a thousand dollars.

A certain kind of picnic is called a " one-dish party.'' This is
for men only, and each man brings to such a picnic a dish of
some one kind of food sufficient in quantity for all.

Games. — The Koreans have dice, and cards of two kinds, with
which several games are played, one being a gambling game,
which is forbidden by law. They have chess, and " go," a pecul-
iar game with four sticks, and also many puzzles. Children play
ball by patting and bouncing it on the ground, have whipping
tops, and fly kites. A portion of the kite string has broken glass
stuck to it, and by this device they are enabled to cut the strings
of other kites. (In Japan a device holding a sharp cutting edge is
employed for the same purpose.) Children also play jackstones,
using seven balls and having many ways of picking them up ;
these ways have their special names, such as " Hatch the chicken,"
" Laying eggs," " Making the kitchen," " Sawing wood," " Win-
nowing wheat," " Collecting eggs," " Striking ground," " Wear-
ing the hat," etc. " Pease porridge hot " and " Cat's cradle " are
also common ; this last is called " Thread dipping."

Superstitions. — It is believed that if a cat approaches a dead
person the body will stand upright. In such a case it must be

12 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

knocked down with a broom from the left. In Japan a similar
superstition prevails. In eating rice (which is always eaten with
a spoon), if the first spoonful is accidentally spilled it is a sign of
bad luck. My informant's father often did this, and purposely
challenged other superstitions as well, to show his contempt for
them. In parties meeting together it is desirable to have an odd
number, as in two, four, six, etc., there is an end, while in three,
five, seven, and the like, there is no end ; hence thirteen at the
table is considered a lucky number. If a bride, in coming to her
husband's house, stops on the threshold, it is a sign of bad luck.
A horseshoe fastened over the door is to invite good luck. Bad
dreams are, as with us, neutralized by saying that dreams go by
contraries. If the hat is blown off by the wind it is a sign that
something will be lost. In occux)ying a new house it is customary
to have a woman, either the wife or a servant, enter first, carrying
a bunch of matches ; this insures prosperity, as a flame burning
up. To avert infectious diseases, it is believed that a paper ob-
tained from a priest and fastened over the door will be effective.
A fierce face carved out of wood and placed over the door will
drive away diseases which are supposed to be brought by the
devil; also the burning of strong incense will have the same
effect. Nothing can be removed from the house structure with-
out vigorous protest from the womenfolks. (The women in
Korea, as elsewhere, are the conservers of superstition. Old
women, even in the higher classes, are superstitious, though there
are some exceptions.) If the removed portion is to be replaced
by other structures, then no objection is made, but to take any-
thing away from the house structure without substituting some-
thing else is considered a bad omen. If a coal gathers on the
lamp wick, it is a sign that one is to receive money, or some lucky
windfall ; so fixed is this superstition that many will not remove
the coal. In Japan also this is considered a good omen. If the
ear itches, it is a sign that some one is talking about you. If the
chin itches, it is a sign that candy or cake will come as a gift. If
one dreams of a Buddhist priest, it is a sign of being poisoned. A
certain bird singing in a tree near the house presages the coming
of a guest. If an owl hoots near the house, it is a sign that the
master will soon die. If a fragment of tea floats vertically in the
cup, it is a sign that a guest will come. If a candle is lighted in
the middle of supper, it is a sign that the boys will get fierce
wives. If money is found, it is considered a sign of bad luck, as
it is gained without labor; an unexpected calamity will occur
unless the money is spent before entering the house. If one acci-
dentally places his spoon on the table upside down, it is a bad sign.
If one's boot is upside down, it is considered bad ; one will remain
in the house if this happens rather than risk the consequences,

KOREAN INTERVIEWS. 13

whicli are, that he will lose something or be insulted. If both
boots are wrong side up, it means nothing.

When lying down to sleep it is considered best to have the
head directed toward the south. The head pointing toward the
north is considered very bad. If the head is directed toward the
south, it indicates longevity ; to the east, happiness ; to the west,
success ; to the north, short life. If one eats during lunar or solar
eclipses sickness will follow. In Japan it is considered proper to
remain indoors during eclipses. In Korea drums are vigorously
beaten, to drive away the assailant of the sun or moon. This is a
Chinese idea. An eclipse is observed by its reflection in a vessel
of water. In Japan the same thing is done, because it is consid-
ered impolite to look directly at the eclipse. Shooting stars are
supposed to be the excreta of stars. Farmers have an idea that
the moon is trying to catch the sun, and if the moon ever over-
takes the sun they will both fall to the earth, pressing the sur-
face below the water, and thus the world will come to an end. A
country philosopher told one of my informants that the sun was
many hundred times larger than the earth, that the moon was
three times larger than the earth, and that all the stars were
much larger than the earth. Lightning is supposed to be the
result of God looking angry, while thunder is supposed to be God
scolding. It is considered rude to lie down when God is scolding.
The lower classes believe that if insanity occurs three or four times
in a year it is an indication of the devil's work. Gypsies are called
in to drive the devil away by incantation. Intelligent doctors
look upon insanity as the result of physical disease — namely, that
the fire of the heart burns in excess. They also believe that some
hearts are chilled, and that other hearts are empty. Cases of in-
sanity are not common, and cases of idiocy had never been seen
by my informant, though he had heard of instances. It is be-
lieved that when a certain river becomes filled with sand Korea
will become powerful, and so it is a custom with many people in
passing this river to throw in sand. The true-lover's knot is the
same as ours. A ring around the moon is a sign that it will rain ;
the larger the ring the sooner the rain will come. The accidental
breaking of a mirror is a sign that death will occur in the family.
After the birth of a child persons can not enter the house for
three days, nor can animals be killed for three days.

If a man's eyes have more white than black he will become
foolish. Tapering or pointed fingers are looked upon as indicat-
ing dexterity. A long arm is considered an indication of wisdom,
and its owner will occupy a high official position. In Japan the
same peculiarity indicates a thief, which may be regarded as only
another name for a Korean official. A large eye is a sign of short
life. Physiognomists interpret many features of the face ; thus a

14 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

curved line extending from the lobe of the nose on each side is a
sign of starvation.

Palmists also exist in Korea ; thus the line of life in the left
hand indicates long life, as it does in our palmistry ; the same
line in the right hand, however, indicates position. A line corre-
sponding to our line of heart in the left hand indicates riches,
while the same line in the right hand indicates power. The num-
ber of wrinkles at the base of the little finger, on the outside in
the left hand indicates the number of brothers one will have,
while in the right hand it indicates the number of sons to be
expected. Other lines occur in the palm of the hand between the
line of life and the line of heart, and these often have a fanciful
resemblance to some Chinese character. A combination of these
lines resembling the character for water is considered most pro-
pitious, because water is unlimited, and man can not do without
it. Here the Korean chiromancer is far ahead of his Occidental
brother in idiocy, for he can make out many ideograms in the
fortuitous wrinkles in the center of the palm.

A familiarity with the language would undoubtedly reveal
many peculiarities of expression; thus, for "Excuse me," they
say " Do not blame me." " Naked truth " is called " Blood truth."
Where we say " Neither hay nor grass," the Korean says " Neither
calf nor colt." A house fly is called parri which means slan-
derer; the connection is obscure till it is explained that a fly
leaves a light spot on a dark surface and a dark spot on a light
surface. Among the sayings is " Rare as a white-headed crow " ;
in Japan it is a " horse's horn " ; with us it is " hen's teeth." A
mean man is one who gets his smoke by asking for a light from
another man's pipe. In Japan the same expression occurs ; also
in Japan a mean man is one who finds his clogs in the dark by
rapping his friend's head ; the light emitted from such a blow is
supposed to illuminate the vicinity. Our expression " The devil
is always near when you are talking about him " is rendered in.
Korean " Even the tiger comes " ; in Japan it is said " his shadow
appears." A stupid fellow in Korea is called a " pumpkin face " ;
in Japan, a " pumpkin fellow" ; with us he is a " pumpkin head."

Miscellaneous. — Twins at a birth are not uncommon, but
triplets are very rare. When the latter event occurs the Govern-
ment makes a present of money to the amount of fifty dollars to
the parents, besides furnis'iing rice for two months.

A Korean gentleman told me that when he first saw the Jap-
anese he regarded them as savages, but was much struck with the
convenience of their dress. Another informed me that his father
sent him into the country to learn farming, at the same time
instructing the farmer who was to have the care of him to pro-
vide only the ordinary food of the farmhouse. The young man's

KOREAN INTERVIEWS. 15

mother, however, used to send him secretly nice food and deli-
cacies.

Among ignorant people the impression of the hand is signed
as an autograph to legal documents, but never to marriage docu-
ments.

Human statues are not made at the present time, but in olden
times figures of large size were sculptured in wood and stone.

Reddish hair and beard and blue eyes are not unknown ; my
informant had seen a number of such cases.

The classes of the people in Korea rank much as they do in
Japan ; they are in the following order : 1. Nobles. 2. A class
like the Japanese samurai, which is inherited. 3. Soldiers. In
Japan the teachers would come third, but they have no rank in
Korea. 4. Farmers. 5. Merchants. 6. Coolies. 7. Butchers, ped-
dlers, and gypsies.

Suicide is uncommon. When it occurs it is among the coun-
try people. Forms of suicide are usually hanging, the taking of
poison, inhaling fumes of charcoal, and cutting the throat ; the
most usual form is that of hanging. My informant had never
heard of more than four or five instances of suicide. Infanticide
is not known. People in the western part of Korea often kill
each other in fights. A curious story was told me by a Korean,
who vouched for its truth. Two men, strangers to each other,
were stopping at a hotel ; one of them went away forgetting to
pay his bill ; the other paid his bill, and, on leaving, the landlord
demanded pay for the one who had defaulted, supposing him to
be his friend. This he refused to do, and a dispute over the mat-
ter led to a fight, in which the landlord was accidentally killed.
The man who had forgotten to pay heard of the row and murder,
and hastened back and inquired of the other why he killed the
landlord. Explanations followed, and the forgetful man, in re-
morse at having been the cause of such a tragedy, killed himself ;
whereupon the survivor, in horror at having caused the death of
two, immediately committed suicide.

A brutal sport is not uncommon wherein men engage in stone-
throwing, and a number are often killed outright. It is consid-
ered a great feat if one can catch a stone and return it. They
also fight with sticks and clubs. Boys imitate the men in these
kinds of fights.

The Koreans regard their country as possessing eight remark-
able objects : 1. An artificial pond thirty miles in length. 2. A
mountain known as Kumgansan, having twelve thousand peaks
of white stone. This may be the mountain known as Pak-tu, or
White Head, which is likened to a piece of porcelain with a scal-
loped rim. The flora is said to be white, and the mammals white-
haired. (If true, a case of protective coloration.) 3. A hole in

i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the mountain from whicli the wind constantly blows. 4. A build-
ing in the southern part of Korea which has one room having
the dimensions of one thousand squares ; one square has the
dimension of seven feet each way ; the floor equals an acre in
extent. 5. A beach composed of water-worn stones assuming the
shapes of wild beasts, cattle, mountains, and other forms. (Ob-
jects of this kind are often seen mounted on little teakwood
stands in Japan and China.) 6. A river called by a Korean name
which means " against sand " — in other words, it is believed that
the water flows in one direction while the sand runs in an oppo-
site direction. 7. A flute one thousand years old, and only one
man has been known who could play on it. 8. A stone Buddha.

An examination of Korean objects of manufacture, as exhib-
ited in the United States National Museum, and in the Museum
of the Peabody Academy of Science in Salem, will convince one
of the degraded condition of the people. The rude musical in-
struments, rude pottery, rough work generally, and the almost
complete absence of all industrial art handwork, testify to the
alarming decay of the nation. Flanked as Korea is by China on
the one hand and Japan on the other, with their advanced indus-
tries and skillful art handwork, and possessing, as Korea does,
the records of a great past, the degradation and decay that have
come upon the nation must have come about through their own
fault. Repeated demands for an explanation of these conditions
only brought out the answer that a noble could ruthlessly claim
from the artisan any work he might do, and this without recom-
pense. As a result, all ambition is crushed, and the workman
dares not attract the attention of these official sharks by fabricat-
ing anything of special excellence. From hand to mouth they
live ; the masses are in abject poverty, and the only comforts
they appear to command are heat and tobacco. The corruption
of the official class makes Tammany officials seem like white-
robed angels.

Conclusion. — If my various questions have been correctly
answered, one may glance at the preceding statements and realize
in how many ways the habits and customs of the people prevent
work, discourage industry, and in a surprising number of in-
stances encourage the survival of the unfittest. The appalling
waste of time, the degrading habits of life, and the avarice and
oppression of the official class illustrate in a forcible manner the
result of unnatural selection. When one learns, for example, that
custom, following Confucian doctrines, commands an industrious
brother to waste his energies in supporting a number of idle, dis-
solute brothers, thus permitting them to survive to transmit their
lazy and vagabond tendencies, one can easily understand the
present degradation of the people.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 17

Despite these lamentable conditions, there is a leaven in the
nation which may work for regeneration if the accursed and ster-
ilizing effects of Chinese influence and dominion can be rooted
out of the land. I have met Koreans of the highest character,
noble, unselfish, possessing every lovable trait and animated by
the highest patriotism, and these men may yet be heard from in
the councils of the nation.

♦»»

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

(Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.)
By WILLIAM Z. EIPLEY, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TF.CHNOLOGY ; LECTURER IN
ANTIIROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

IV.— STATURE.

THE average stature of man, considered by racial groups or
social classes, appears to lie between the limits of four feet
four inches and five feet ten inches, giving, that is to say, a range
of about one foot and a half. The physical elasticity of the spe-
cies is not, however, as considerable as this makes it appear. The
great majority of the human race is found restricted within much
narrower limits. As a matter of fact, there are only three or four
groups of really dwarfed men, less than five feet tall. Our map
of the world shows a considerable area inhabited by the diminu-
tive Bushmen in South Africa, and another large body of dwarfs
occurs in New Guinea. The line of demarcation in the first case
between the yellowish African Bushmen and the true negroes is
very sharp ; but in the East Indies the very tall and light Poly-
nesians shade off almost imperceptibly in stature through Mela-
nesia into the stunted Papuans. Other scattering representatives
of true dwarf races occur sporadically throughout the Congo
region and in Malaysia, but their total number is very small. On
the whole, considerably more than ninety- nine per cent of the
human species is above the average height of five feet and one
inch ; so that we may still further narrow our range of variation
between that limit and five feet ten inches. We thereby reduce
oiir racial differences of stature to about nine inches between
extremes. These variations in size, it will be observed, are less
than those which occur among the lower animals within the same
species. Compare, for example, the dachshund, the St. Bernard,
the Italian greyhound, and the smallest lapdog, and remember
that they are all ascribed to the same species ; or that the Shet-

TOL. LI — 2

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 19

land pony and the Percheron horse are likewise classified together.
These abnormities are, to be sure, partly the result of artificial
selection by man ; but the same variation holds to a considerable
extent among the wild animals.

The bodily height of a group of men is the resultant of a num-
ber of factors, many of which are as purely artificial as those con-
cerned in the domestication of animals. These causes are quite
as truly social or economic as they are physical or physiological.
Among them we may count environment, natural or artificial
selection, and habits of life. Beneath all of these, more funda-
mental than any, lies the influence of race which concerns us
ultimately. This is overlaid and partially obscured by a fourth
peculiarity manifested as a result of the sportiveness of Nature,
whereby a large number of variations are due to chance, seem-
ingly not caused by any distinct influences whatever. By scien-
tific analysis we may eliminate this last factor, namely, chance
variation. The first four causes besides race are more important
and deserve consideration by themselves.

Among savages it is easy to localize the influence of environ-
ment, as it acts directly through limitation of the food supply.
In general, the extreme statures of the human species are found
either in regions where a naturally short race, like the Bushmen
of South Africa, are confined within a district of great infertility
like the Kalahari Desert ; or, on the other hand, where a natu-
rally tall race, like the Polynesians in the Pacific Ocean, enjoys
all the material bounties which Nature has to bestow. It is prob-
able that the prevalent shortness of the Eskimo and other inhab-
itants of the arctic regions is largely due to this factor. It is also
likely that the miserable people of Terra del Fuego are much
shorter than the Patagonians for the same reason. Scarcity or
uncertainty of food limits growth. Wherever the life conditions
in this respect become changed, in that place the influence of
environment soon makes itself felt in the average stature of the
inhabitants. Thus the Hottentots, physically of the same race as
the Bushmen, but inhabiting a more fertile region, and, more-
over, possessed of a regular food supply in their flocks and
hefds, are appreciably taller from these causes alone. All the
aborigines of America seem to be subject to this same influence
of the fertility of their environment. In the Mississippi Valley,
for example, they are much taller than in the desert lands of
Arizona and New Mexico. In the mountains on either side of
the Mississippi basin, they are as a rule distinctly shorter, al-
though living the same life and belonging to the same race. The
Creeks and the Iroquois exceed the Pueblos by several inches,
probably because of the material bounty of their environment ;
and where we find a single tribe, such as the Cherokees, inhabit-

20

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing both the mountains and the plains, we find a deficiency of
stature in the mountains quite marked by comparison.*

Among civilized peoples this direct influence of environment
acts likewise through the food supply to affect the stature of any
given group of men. Thus, in Europe as a rule, it may be said
that, as among the aborigines of America, the populations of
mountainous districts are shorter than those which enjoy the fer-
tility of the plains and the river basins, f Wherever the geology
of a district has produced a soil which yields with difficulty to

STATURE

After Colli gnon

cultivation, or where the climate is unfavorable to prosperity, the
influence is reflected in the physical stature of the population.
All over Europe we may locate such "misery spots," one of
which will, however, serve as an example. It is depicted in the
accompanying map.

This spot is likewise indicated in the south central part of
France upon our general map for Europe, on page 30, by a small
black- dotted area. This means a general average stature of five
feet and two to three inches — a low level not elsewhere touched

* Dr. Boas, in Veihandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen Gesellschaft, Sitzung
von Mai 18, 1895, gives fine details on the American aborigines.

f Ranke, in bis Beitriige ziir pbrsiscben Anthropologic der Bayern, finds the mountaineers
taller in bis country ; but Dr. T,ivi proves the opposite for Italy. Vide also Der Meuscb, ii,
p. 126.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 21

in France save in a little spot to the southwest of this, where
similar conditions prevail. Here in Limousin there is a barren
range of low hills which lies along the dividing line between the
departments of Dordogne, Correze and Haute-Vienne, about half-
way between Pdrigueux and Limoges. The water courses on our
map show the location of these uplands. They extend over an
area about seventy-five miles long and half as wide, wherein
average human misery is most profound. Dense ignorance pre-
vails. There is more illiteracy than in any other part of France.
The contrast in stature, even with the low average of all the
surrounding region, is clearly marked by the dark tint. There
are sporadic bits of equal diminutiveness elsewhere to the south
and west, but none are so extended or so extreme. Two thirds of
the men are below five feet three inches in height in some of the
communes, and the women are three or more inches shorter even
than this. One man in ten is below four feet eleven inches in
stature. This is not due to race, for several racial types are
equally stunted in this way within the same area. It is primarily
due to generations of subjection to a harsh climate, to a soil
which is worthless for agriculture, to a steady diet of boiled
chestnuts and stagnant water, and to unsanitary dwellings in the
deep, narrow, and damp valleys. Still further proof may be
found to sho'sv that these people are not stunted by any heredi-
tary influence, for it has been shown that children born here, but
who migrate and grow up elsewhere, are normal in height ; while
those born elsewhere, but who are subject to this environment
during the growing period of youth, are proportionately dwarfed.*
We have referred in the preceding paragraph to another
similar "misery spot" to the southwest of the Limousin hills.
It is dotted black upon the map of Europe. The cause is here
the same. The department of Landes derives its name from the
great expanse of flat country, barely above the sea level, which
stretches away south of Bordeaux. There is no natural drainage
slope. The subsoil is an impervious clay. In the rainy season,
water accumulates and forms stagnant marshes, covered with
rank vegetation. At other times the water dries away, and the
vegetation dies and rots. Malaria was long the curse of the land.
Government works are to-day reclaiming much of it for culti-
vation and health, but it will be generations before the people
recover from the physical degeneration of the past. Influences
akin to these have undoubtedly been of great effect in many
other parts of Europe, especially in. the south of Italy, in Sardinia
and Spain, where the largest area of short statures in Europe
prevails to-day.

* CoUignon in Memoires de la Societe d'Anthropologie, series iii, vol. i, fasc. 3, pp. '61 seq.

22

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Environment thus acts directly upon stature througli the food
supply and economic prosperity. The second modifying influence
lies in so-called artificial selection — a cause which is peculiarly
potent in modern social life. The eflSciency of this force depends
upon the intimate relation which exists between bodily height
and physical vigor. Other things being equal, a goodly stature
in a youth implies a surplus of energy over and above the amount
requisite merely to sustain life.* Hence it follows that, more
often than otherwise, a tall population implies a relatively healthy
one. Our double map, covering the westernmost promontory of
French Brittany, shows this most clearly. In the interior can-
tons, shorter on the average by an inch than in towns along the
seacoast, there is a corresponding increase of defective or degen-

STATVRE AN,. HE/\LTH
^^ FIN15TERRE

AFTER CHASSAGNE

0-29
8-69

erate constitutional types. The parallelism between the two maps
is broken in but three or four instances. The map, in fact, illus-
trates the truth of our assertion far better than words can ex-
press it.

This relation between stature and health is brought to con-
crete expression in the armies of Europe through a rejection of
all recruits for service who fall below a certain minimum stand-
ard of height, generally about five feet. The result of this is to
preclude the possibility of marriage for all the fully developed
men, during their three years in barracks ; while the undersized
individuals, exempted from service on this account, are left free
to propagate the species meanwhile. Is it not apparent that the
effect of this artificial selection is to put a distinct premium upon
inferiority of stature,- in so far as future generations are con-
cerned ? This enforced postponement of marriage for the normal
man, not required of the degenerate, is even more important than
at first sight appears. It implies not merely that the children of

* The two maps by Chassagne on Brittany are given in Revue d'Anthropologie, series ii,
vol. iv, p. 440.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 23

normal families are born later in life — that would not be of great
moment in itself — it means far more than this. The majority of
children are more often born in the earlier half of married life,
before the age of thirty-five. Hence a postponement of matri-
mony means not only later children but fewer children. Herein
lies the great significance of the phenomenon for us. Standing
armies tend in this respect to overload succeeding generations
with inferior types of men. This selection is, in operation, akin '
to the influence which Galton has invoked as a partial explana-
tion for the mental darkness of the middle ages. This he ascribes
to the beliefs and customs by which all the finer minds and spirits
were withdrawn from the field of matrimony by the Church,
leaving the entire future population to the loins of the physically
robust and adventurous portion of the community. Mind spent
itself in a single generation of search for knowledge ; physique,
bereft of intellect, was left to its own devices among the common
people.

The intensity of this military selection, potent enough in time
of peace, is of course highly augmented during the prosecution
of a war. At such periods the normal men are not only isolated
for an indefinite period ; their ranks are permanently decimated
by the mortality at the front. The selective influence is doubly
operative. Fortunately, we possess data which appear to afford
illustration of its effects. Detailed investigation in various parts
of France is bringing to light certain curious after-effects of the
late Franco- Prussian War. We do not always fully realize what
such an event means for a nation, quite irrespective of the actual
mortality, and of the direct economic expenditure. Every family
in the land is affected by it ; and the future bears its full share
with the contemporaneous population. In France, for example,
during the year of the war, there were seventy-five thousand fewer
marriages than usual. In 1871, upon its conclusion, an unprece-
dented epidemic of them broke out, not equaled in absolute
numbers since the veterans returned from the front in 1813, on
the cessation of hostilities at that time.

Two tendencies have been noted, from the comparison of the
generations of offspring severally conceived before, during, and
after the war. This appeared in the conscripts who came before
the recruiting commissions in 1890-'92, at which time the chil-
dren conceived in war times became, at the age of twenty, liable
for service. In the population during the progress of the war
the flower of French manhood, then in the field, was without pro-
portionate representation. There must have been an undue pre-
ponderance, not only of stunted men, rejected from the army for
deficiency of stature alone, but of those otherwise physically un-
fitted for service. Hence, the population born of this time ought.

24 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

if heredity means anything, to retain some traces of its relatively
degenerate derivation. This is indeed the case. In Dordogne this
contingent included nearly seven per cent more deficient statures
than the normal average. Quite independently, in the distant
department of Herault, Lapouge discovered the same thing. He
found in some cantons a decrease of nearly an inch in the average
stature of this unfortunate generation, while exemptions for de-
ficiency of stature suddenly rose from six to sixteen per cent.*
This selection is not, however, entirely maleficent. A fortunate
compensation is ajfforded in another direction. For the gener-
ation conceived of the men returned to their families at the close
of the war has shown a distinctly upward tendency almost as well
marked. Those who survived the perils and privations of serv-
ice were presumably in many cases the most active and rugged ;
the weaker portion having succumbed in the meanwhile, either to
wounds or sickness. The result was that the generation con-
ceived directly after the war was as much above the average,
especially evinced in general physique perhaps more than in
stature, as their predecessors, born of war times, were below the
normal.

Another illustration of the operation of artificial selection in
determining the stature of any given group of men appears in
the physique of immigrants to the United States. In the good old
days when people emigrated from Europe because they had seri-
ously cast up an account and discovered that they could better
their condition in life by coming to America — that is, before the
days when they came because they were overpersuaded by steam-
ship agents, eager for the commissions on the sale of tickets, or
because of the desire of their home governments to be rid of
them — in those days investigation revealed that on the average
the immigrants were physically taller than the people from whom
they sprang. This difference, in some instances, amounted to
upward of an inch upon the average. Among the Scotch, a
difference of nearly two inches was shown to exist by the meas-
urements taken during our civil war. These immigrants were a
picked lot of men — picked, because it required all the courage
which physical vigor could give to pull up stakes and start life
anew. This law that natural emigrants, if I may use the term,
are taller than the stay-at-home average was again exemplified
during the civil war in another way. It was found that recruits
hailing from States other than those in which they were born
were generally taller than those who had always remained in the

* For further details, vide the excellent analysis by Dr. CoUignon, in M6moire8 de la
Societe d'Anthropologie, Paris, series iii, vol. i, p. 36 seq., and Dr. Lapouge, in Les Selec-
tions Sociales, pp. 208 and 234 scq. A most noteworthy treatise in many ways. Vide also
Bulletin de la Societe Languedocienne de Geograpliie, xvii, p. 3c5 scq.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 25

places of their birth — that is to say, here again physical vigor
and the adventurous migratory spirit seemed to stand in close
relation to one another.*

In times of peace, perhaps the most potent influence of this
form of artificial selection bears upon the differences in stature
which obtain between different occupations or professions. The
physically well developed men seek certain trades or occupations
in which their vigor and strength may stand them in good stead :
on the other hand, those who are by nature weakly, and coinci-
dently often deficient in stature, are compelled to make shift with
some pursuit for which they are fitted. Thus, workers in iron,
porters, firemen, policemen are taller, as a class, than the average,
because they are of necessity recruited from the more robust por-
tion of the population. In marked contrast to them tailors,
shoemakers, and weavers, in an occupation which entails slight
demands upon the physical powers, and which is open to all, how-
ever weakly they may be, are appreciably shorter than the aver-
age. Moreover, certain diseases fall upon this second class in a
way which tends still further to lower the average stature among
them. Thus, consumption is uncommonly prevalent in these par-
ticularly sedentary industrial classes, and it is also more common
among tall youths. It seems, therefore, that this disease weeds
out, as if by choice, those who within this relatively stunted class
rise above its average. As an extreme example of this selective
influence exercised in the choice of an occupation we may in-
stance grooms, who as a class are over an inch shorter than the
British population as a whole. This is probably because men
who are light in build and short in stature find here an opening
which is suited to their physique. Their weight may neverthe-
less be often greater than the stature implies, because of an in-
crease which has taken place late in life.

The final effects of this influence of artificial selection are
highly intensified by reason of the fact that, as soon as the choice
of occupation is once made, other forces come into play which
differentiate still further the stature of the several classes. This
is the last of our modifying influences upon racial stature, name-
ly, the effect of habits of life or of the nature of the employment.
Thus, the weakly youth who enters a sedentary occupation imme-
diately becomes subjected to unfavorable circumstances as a

* For most of the examples of social and economic diiferences in stature, I am in-
debted to Dr. Beddoe for his superb work On the Stature and Bulk of Man in Great
Britain ; to the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association for the Advancement
of Science, report of 1 883 ; to Roberts's Manual of Anthropometry ; and to our American
results given in Gould's Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of
American Soldiers, 1869; and Baxter, in Medical Statistics of the Provost-Marshal-Gener-
al's Bureau, 18*75.

26

POPULAR SCIJiJNCE MONTHLY.

result of his choice. If he chooses to take np the tailor's trade
because he is physicaly unfitted for other pursuits, all the influ-
ences of the trade tend to degenerate his physique still further.
Among these we may count the cramped position in which he
works, the long hours, the unsanitary surroundings, etc. An
active life conduces to growth and vigor, especially an active life
in the open air. Denied all these advantages, everything oper-
ates to exaggerate the peculiarities which were due to natural
causes in the preceding generation alone. This direct influence
of the nature of the employment is probably the second principal
cause of the great differences in stature which we observe among
the several social classes in any community. At the head stand
the liberal professions, followed in order, as our table shows,
by the farmers and the commercial group, then by the industrial

Average Stature in Inches (Great Britain).

No. of

Qbeerva-

tions.

Age (males).

Professional
class.

Commercial
class.

INDUSTRIAL CLAS8.

Country.

City.

3,498

592

1,886

15 years.
23 ■ "
30-40 "

63-6

68-7
69-6

62-2
67-4
67-8

61-8
67-4
67-6

61-3
66-4
66-8

Averagea by Occupations.

No. of
observa-
tions.

. Occapation.

stature (inchts).

Weight (pounds).

174

Miscellaneous outdoor

67
67
67
67
66
66
66

6
3
1
1
9
7
5

142-0

242

Clerks

lSG-7

834

Laborers

140-0

209

Iron- workers

140-0

135

Tailors and shoemakers

134-5

235

Miscellaneous indoor .

1 32 - 5

101

Grooms . . .

138-7

open-air classes, and finally by those who are engaged in indoor
and sedentary occupations. The difference between these last
two — namely, those who work in the open air and those who are
confined within doors — amounts in Great Britain to upward of
one half an inch upon the average, if we consider masons, carpen-
ters, and day laborers as typical of the first class, and tailors and
shoemakers of the second. As our table shows, the differences
during the period of growth often amount to upward of two
inches, greater among girls than among boys. As an extreme
example of divergencies of this kind, we may instance a difference
of seven inches between boys of fourteen in the well-to-do classes
and those who are in the industrial schools in Great Britain.
Later in life this disparity becomes less, as it appears tnat the

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 27

influence of factory life is more often to retard growth than to
cause a complete cessation of it.

Interesting deductions might also be drawn from the relation
of the height to the weight in any class, by which we may deter-
mine to some degree when and how these degenerative influences
become effective. Thus clerks, as a class, are above the average
stature, but below it in weight. This follows because these men
are recruited from a social group where the influences during the
period of growth are favorable. The normal stature was attained
at this time. The unfavorable circumstances have come into play
later through the sedentary nature of the occupation, and the re-
sult is a deficiency in weight. The case of grooms given above
is exactly the reverse of this, for they became grooms because
they were short, but have gained in weight afterward because
the occupation was favorable to health.

These differences in stature within the community offer a co-
gent argument for the protection of our people by means of well-
ordered factory laws. The Anthropological Committee of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science delares, as a
result of its detailed investigation, that the protection of youth
by law in Great Britain has resulted in the gain of a whole year's
growth for the factory children. In other words, a boy of nine
years in 1873 was found to equal in weight and in stature one of
ten years of age in 1833. This is nature's reward for the passage
of laws presumably better than the present so-called " beneficent "
statute in South Carolina which forbids upward of eleven hours'
toil a day for children under the age of fourteen. In every coun-
try where the subject has been investigated — in Germany, in
Russia, in Austria, Switzerland, or Great Britain — the same influ-
ence is shown. Fortunately, the advance out of barbarism is
evidenced generally by a progressive increase in the stature of the
population as an accompaniment of the amelioration of the lot of
the masses, which is certainly going on decade by decade, abso-
lutely if not relatively. There is no such change taking place
among the prosperous and well-to-do. It is the masses which
are, so to speak, catching up with the procession. It offers a
conclusive argument in favor of the theory that the world moves
forward.

One of the factors akin to that of occupation which appears
to determine stature is the unfavorable influence of city life. The
general rule in Europe seems to be that the urban type is phys-
ically degenerate. This would imply, of course, not the type
which migrates to the city on the attainment of majority, or the
type which enjoys an all- summer vacation in the country, but the
urban type which is born in the city, and which grows up in such
environment, to enter a trade which is also born of town life.

z8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The differences in stature which, are traceable to this influence of
city life are considerable. The town population of Glasgow and
Edinburgh offers an extreme example wherein the average stature
has been found to be four inches less than the average for the
suburban districts. The people, at the same time, are on the
average thirty- six pounds lighter. Dr. Beddoe, the great author-
ity upon this subject, concludes his investigation of the population
of Great Britain by this statement : " It may therefore be taken
as proved that the stature of men in the large towns of Britain
is lowered considerably below the standard of the nation, and as
probable that such degradation is hereditary and progressive."

On the other hand, it must be confessed that this unfavorable
influence of city life is often obscured by the great social selection
which is at work, as we shall hope to show later, in the deter-
mination of the physical type of the population of great cities.
While the course of the town type by itself is downward, often-
times the city attracts another class which is markedly superior,
in the same way that the immigrants of the United States have
been distinguished in this respect. Taking London as a whole,
the stature of its people is apparently above the level of the
surrounding districts, despite the unfavorable influences of urban
life. At the same time the suburban counties about London are
marked by a standard below the average. This follows, probably,
from the great selective process by which all of the better types
of the rural population are continually being drawn off into the
vortex of city life. The effect of it is, of course, to increase the
average stature of the town population, taken as a whole.

It would be interesting to inquire in how far the relative
height of the sexes is due to a similar selective process. Certain
it is that among us, in civilization, women average from three to
four inches below men in stature, a disparity which is consider-
ably less among primitive peoples. Dr. Brinton has invoked as a
partial explanation, at least, for this, the influence of the law of
sexual division of labor which obtains among us. This law com-
mands, in theory, that the men should perform the arduous phys-
ical labor of life, leaving the more sedentary portion of it to the
women. If the conscious choice of mates had followed this tend-
ency, its effect would certainly be unfavorable to the development
of an increasing stature among women, while it might operate to
better the endowment of men in that respect. It is impossible,
in the time at our command, to follow this out. Probably this
difference of stature between the sexes is partially due to some
other cause which stops growth in the woman earlier than in the
man. The problem is too complex to follow out in this place.

From the preceding array of facts it will appear that in stature
we have rather an irresponsible witness in the matter of race. A

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 29

physical trait so liable to disturbance by circumstances outside
the human body is correspondingly invalidated as an indication
of hereditary tendencies which lie within. We are compelled
for this reason to assign the third place to this characteristic
in our series of racial tests, placing it below the color of the hair
' and eyes in the scale. This does not mean that it is entirely
worthless for our ethnic purposes. There are many clear cases
of differences of stature which can be ascribed to no other cause ;
but it bids us be cautious about judging hastily. It commands
us to be content with nothing less than hundreds of observations,
and to rigidly eliminate all social factors. The best way to do
this is to take the broad view, by including so many individuals
that locally progressive and degenerative factors may counter-
balance one another. Turning back to our world map of statures,
it will at once appear that we can not divide the human species
into definite continental groups characterized by distinct pecul-
iarities of stature. The so-called yellow Mongolian race comprises
both tall and short peoples. The aborigines»of America are, as a
rule, tall ; but in the Andes, the basin of the Columbia River, and
elsewhere they are quite undersized. The only two racial groups
which seem to be homogeneous in stature are the true African
negroes and the peoples of Indonesia and the Pacific. In Africa
the environment is quite uniform. In the other cases racial
peculiarities seem to be deeply enough ingrained to overcome the
disturbances due to outward factors. The Malays are always and
everywhere rather short. The Polynesians are obstinately in-
clined toward tallness. With these exceptions, racial or heredi-
tary predispositions in stature seem to be absent. Let us turn to
the consideration of Europe by itself, and inquire if the same rule
holds here as well.

The light tints upon this map * indicate the tall populations ; as
the tint darkens, the people become progressively more and more
stunted. Here again we find that Europe comprehends a very
broad range of variations. The Scotch, with an average height
of five feet and ten inches, stand on a level with the tall Polyne-
sians and Americans, both aboriginal and modern white. At the
other extreme, the south Italians, French, and Spaniards, range
alongside the shortest of men, if we except the abnormal dwarf

* This map is constructed from a great number of detailed local investigations, the re-
sults of which have been, as far as possible, correlated and reduced to a common base.
Many serious difficulties have to be overcome, and the final result must be regarded as
merely approximate. For example, some observers have studied the entire population of
districts ; others draw their figures from the army alone, from which, of course, all the
abnormally short men have been eliminated. Some give averages alone ; others- work by
percentile grades. To be sure, these two methods give parallel results ; but how discover
the average from them ? Complete details will be published in due season.

30

POPULAR SCI EN CI] MONTHLY.

races of Africa. From one to the other of these limits there is a
regular transition, which again points indubitably to racial law.
Two specific centers of tall stature appear, if we include the minor
but marked tendency of the Dalmatians and Montenegrins along

Average Stature

Inches Metres

70 5-693 [m 1.79-1.76
69 3-68 1! I 1.76-1.73
681-669

1.73-1,70
669-657*H 170-1.67
65 7-64 6 gg^ 167-1.6+
64- 6-63.4^ 164-1.61
634-6ZzHH 161-158
6ZZ-6I0HI 1.58-1.55

ly^ /? recit

the Adriatic Sea. The principal one lies in the north, culminat-
ing in the British Isles and Scandinavia. In Britain, economic
prosperity undoubtedly is of importance, as the level of material
comfort is probably higher than on the Continent. With this
exception it appears that the Teutons as a race are responsible

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

31

for the phenomenon. Wherever they have penetrated, as in
northern France, down the Rhone Valley, or in Austria, the
population shows its effects.

Central Europe is generally marked by medium height. The
people tend to be stocky rather than tall. The same holds true
as we turn to the Slavic countries in the east of Europe. Across
Austria and Russia there is a progressive although slight tend-
ency in this direction. The explanation of the extreme short
stature of southern Europe is more problematical. Our map
points to a racial center of real diminutiveness, at an average of
five feet and one or two inches. Too protracted civilization, such
as it was, is partly to blame. Some authorities, notably Lapouge

^,

'A//(

^ CO 7^

'O/v t

Eastern Bovndary
or Celtic Speech

N OR D

^

Percent

UNDER.
1^6 METERS
(5ft i^Wi)

, -4

□ 4-6

\\Z-\A

14-17

'■■:^:Kl

STATV/RE

LOWER

AFTER BROCA

BRITTANY

(1S50-59)

and Fallot, even assert that naturally the people are as tall as
the Alpine populations. Northern Africa certainly favors this
view. We must await further investigation on this point, rest-
ing content with the fact, whatever the cause may be, that the
average stature is exceedingly low to-day.

We may demonstrate the innate tendency of the Teutonic
peoples toward tallness of stature more locally than by this con-
tinental method. We may follow the trait from place to place,
as this migratory race has moved' across the map. Wherever
these " greasy seven-foot giants," as Sidonius Apollinaris called
them, have gone, they have implanted their stature upon the
people, where it has remained long persistent thereafter. Per-

32 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

haps tlie clearest detailed illustration of the expression of this
racial peculiarity is offered by the people of Brittany. Many
years ago observers began to note the contrasts in the Armorican
Peninsula between the Bretons and the other French peasantry ;
and especially the local differences between the people of the
interior and those fringing the seacoast. The regularity of the
phenomenon is made manifest by the preceding map. This is
constructed from observations on all the youth who came of
age during a period of ten years from 1850-'59. There can be no
doubt of the facts in the case. It has been tested in every way.
Other measurements, made twenty years later, are precisely paral-
lel in their results, as we have already seen in Finisterre.*

The average stature of the whole peninsula is low, being only
about five feet and five inches ; yet in this " tache noire " it de-
scends more than a full inch below this. This appreciable differ-
ence is not wholly due to environment, although the facts cited
for Finisterre show that it is of some effect. Tlie whole penin-
sula is rocky and barren. The only advantage that the people on
the coast enjoy is the support of the fisheries. This is no insig-
nificant factor, to be sure. Yet we have direct proof beyond this
that race is here in evidence ; this is afforded by other physical
differences between the population of the coast and that of the
interior. The people of the littoral are lighter in hair and eyes,
and appreciably longer -headed; in other words, they show traces
of Teutonic intermixture. In ancient times this whole coast was
known as the "litus Saxonicum," so fiercely was it ravaged by
these northern barbarians. Then, again, in the fifth century,
immigrants from Britain, who in fact bestowed the name of Brit-
tany upon the country, came over in hordes, dispossessed in Eng-
land by the same Teutonic invaders. They were probably Teu-
tonic also; for the invaders of Britain came so fast that they
literally crowded themselves out of the little island. The result
has been to infuse a new racial element into all the border popu-
lations in Brittany, while the original physical traits remain in
undisturbed possession of the interior. The Normans to the
northeast are, on the other hand, quite purely Teutonic, espe-
cially marked in their height. In this case environment and
race have joined hands in the final result, but the latter seems
to have been the senior partner in the affair.

One more detailed illustration of the persistence of stature
as a racial trait may be found in the people of the Austrian
Tyrol, familiarized to us in the last paper. Unfortunately, our

* Dr. Chassagne has maps almost identical with this, for the period 1874-'78. Vide
Revue d' Anthropologic, second series, vol. iv, p. 439 seq. Our map is adapted from
Broca's original results in Meraoires de la Societe d'Anthropologie, Paris, series one, vol.
iii, p. 186 seq.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

33

present map is constructed by different districts, so that we can
not compare valley with valley, as it would be most profitable
to do. We have to be content with more general results. For
purposes of orientation we have reproduced upon this sketch the
rivers shown upon our map in the preceding paper, so that certain
comparisons may be drawn. We have already seen that the lower
Inn Valley (uppermost in our map) was a main channel of Teu-
tonic immigration into a primitively broad-headed Alpine coun-
try by race. On the south up the Adige Valley by Trient came
the second intrusive element in the long-headed brunette Medi-

^(\\J^R\A^

^•^ ^ STATVRE

AFTER. TOLDT
least mn

~^gr

AvsTRiAN Tyrol

terranean peoples. This map at once enables us to endow each of
these with its proper quota of stature ; for the environment is
quite uniform, considered as in this map by large districts cover-
ing valley and mountain alike. Each area contains all kinds of
territory ; so that we are working by topographical averages, so
to speak. Moreover, the whole population is agricultural, saving
a few domestic industries in the western half. Such differences as
arise must be therefore in large measure due to race. The regular
transition from the populations at the northeast, with generally
a majority of the men taller than five feet seven inches, to the

TOL. LI. 3

34 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Italian slopes, where less than one fifth attain this moderate height,
is sufficient proof.* The progressive decline goes on still further
as we go south, as our map of Europe has indicated, away down
to the toe of Italy's boot. Could demonstration in mathematics
he more certain that here in the Tyrol we have a case of an in-
crease of stature due to race alone ? One of the most persistent
traits of the Teuton is his bodily height. We in America, among
the tallest people in the world, owe much of our advantage in this
respect to our Teutonic lineage. The rest is due to the high level
of prosperity enjoyed by the people in the United States as a
whole.

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE.

By franklin SMITH.
PART SECOND.

I HAVE already shown how modern trade and professional cor-
porations are a reversion to feudal corporations, which were
the natural and spontaneous product not of legislative wisdom
and philanthropy, but of chronic disorder, and how, for a time,
they provided security for despised and plundered toilers, and
promoted the growth of civilization. While pointing out the
astonishing absurdity involved in the revival of such obsolete
institutions in an age devoted almost exclusively to industrial
life — a life based upon peace and the largest liberty compatible
with justice— I described some of their more flagrant economic
evils, the inevitable fruits of their alliance with the state and of
their establishment of despotic monopolies. I shall now give an
account of some of their moral evils, the fruits also of the same
despotism ; and though it will, as before, be confined chiefly to the
plumbers, because they are the most powerfully organized and
the most completely protected, it applies with like fidelity to all
other trade and professional corporations sheltered behind a stat-
ute or a code of tyrannical rules and regulations.

An optimistic essayist of the National Association of the Mas-
ter Plumbers may boast that " protection has not only elevated
the trade and eliminated from our ranks the incompetent and
unworthy," but has "■ reached out and enhanced man's highest
good, and given humanity the greatest benefactions of the age."
He may boast also that in consequence of these noble fruits of
protection, " the plumber receives the esteem, respect, and honor

* Details are given in Mittheiluugen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, vol.
xxi, 1891, p. 69 se^.

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 35

of his fellow-men, and enjoys tlie dignity and consideration given
to the learned professions about him." * But the destruction of
personal liberty and the establishment of a monopoly in labor and
trade did not confer these blessings upon the corporations of the
middle ages ; they have not conferred them upon their modern
successors. Brief as their history is, it discloses all the traits of
their predecessors in embryo or in an advanced state of growth.
They have not transformed human nature ; they have not made it
more honest, generous, or sympathetic. All they have done is to
add another to the countless demonstrations that the reform of
human society is not to come from legislation. They have pro-
voked strife ; they have stimulated deception ; they have favored
incompetency and dishonesty; they have discouraged character
and excellence; they have created false hopes; they have pro-
duced indifference to the very dangers they were designed to
guard against.

The honest plumbers that expected most from this kind of
legislation have suffered the greatest disappointment. The
making of master plumbers, said Mr. Edward Braden, of San
Antonio, Texas, at the Cleveland convention, " is a Herculean job.
They love to go to conventions, have a good time, and even ridi-
cule any advancement or strict enforcement of the sanitary
laws." f So great does the task appear to be, and so vast is the
work still to be done, that it must long remain incomplete. More
than that, unless a different course is pursued, it must always
remain incomplete. " It would seem," says another plumbing
authority, " to be a safe assertion that too many [plumbers] do
not have a true conception of the dignity of their calling. Their
dominant idea is to do the cheapest work without much thought
of the moral obligations resting upon them to guard in every
way in their power the health of all concerned." X The president
of the Milwaukee convention complained that "in several in-
stances parties, after becoming members of the National Associa-
tion," have " endeavored to use their membership to keep other
practical and worthy plumbers out." * Not finding the time ripe
for such mediaeval proscription, some of them have preferred to
forego the benefits of the association. Other plumbers, equally
oblivious to the " dignity of their calling," have been dishonest
enough to conspire with the jobbers and consumers to violate the
sanctity of the Baltimore resolutions. One of the more striking
cases was the collusion of a plumber and jobber in one State with
a consumer in another several hundred miles away. | " Many

* Proceedings, Cincinnati, 1891, pp. 129, 131. f Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 96.
X Proceedings, Wasiiington, D. C, 1892, p. 80. * Proceedings, Milwaukee, 1893, p. "71,
I Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 145.

36 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

contractors/' says the account of another case, which duplicates
almost literally the experience of the Parisian marchands de
Veau* showing again how independent of time and space, of
feudal despotisms and despotic republics human nature is, "in-
duce journeymen plumbers to take out licenses so that they
can give the money to the journeymen and get the goods at
plumbers' prices. Too often they do not go through the for-
mality of having the money pass through the journeymen's
hands. " It is to be regretted," adds the account mournfully,
" that some supply houses sell to such so-called plumbers when
they know the circumstances." f

As in the past, so to-day, the desperate attempt made to fence
off trades and professions with the barbed wire of legislation,
and to grant admission to the sacred circles of monopoly only to
those that meet official standards of excellence, has led to the
creation of absurd and arbitrary distinctions and provoked fierce
anger and contention. Already the opticians of Pennsylvania
distinguish between opticians, dioptricians, and ophthalmotri-
cians, J thus reminding one of the five kinds of hat makers in old
France, and when they come to get a law enacted for their pro-
tection, these distinctions will doubtless be perpetuated in the
statutes, to the instruction and amusement of some future Mon-
tesquieu. In the bill that the New York opticians have framed
the line is drawn with scrupulous care between " dispensing op-
ticians," who sell the products of the industrial skill of others,
and " refracting opticians," * who dispose of the products of their
own skill. But hardly had the measure been published before
there was a quarrel, or rather a series of quarrels, that rivaled
any that the regulations of the French hat makers stirred up.
There was, first, the fight between the regular physicians, who
claim, by virtue of their diplomas from medical colleges, the
right to prescribe for optical defects, and the oculists and opti-
cians, who want to establish a monopoly of this business. Next
came the fight between the oculists, who assert that they alone
have the requisite knowledge and skill to practice their profes-
sion, and the " refracting opticians," who insist that they are just
as competent to prescribe in certain cases. " When it is remem-

* " II est vrais que I'on employoit . . . bien de ruses pour eluder les lois ripoureuses
imposees au commerce par le hanse. Les contrebandiers trouvoient dans le corps meme des
marchands de I'eau des hommes assez complaisans pour etre les compagnons Idgaux des
speeulateurs etrangers, et qui, dans le fait, se contentoient de preter leur nom, sans prendre
aucun part h, la speculation. Lorsque cette fraude etoit d6eouvert, le prevot de Paris
condamnoit les marchands k I'expuLsion de la comnmnautc de hanse." (Reglemens sur les
Arts et Metiers de Paris. Introduction. Par G.B. Depping, p. xxxiii.)

+ Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 37.

X The Optical Journal, vol. ii. No. 8, p. 335. « Ibid., vol. ii. No. 10, pp. 391-393,

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 37

bered that certain oculists/^ says tlie president of the New York
State Optical Society, disclosing the bitter spirit that animates
these two classes of " philanthropists " and " benefactors," " have
elected to assault even skilled opticians by calling them quacks,
charlatans, and fiery-eyed ignoramuses, we are certainly justified
in refuting their allegations in a more gentlemanly and profes-
sional way." * Finally came the smothered conflict between the
" dispensing opticians " and the " refracting opticians," who, al-
though united for relentless war on the oculists, have widely
divergent notions as to the character and limits of their own
professional skill.

The same belligerent spirit exists between the plumbers and
kindred trades. " A practical plumber, one who is concerned
about elevating his profession," says a report from Delaware,
" finds it exceedingly difficult in the small towns to compete
with the tinsmith and hardware men." f The same complaint
comes from Kentucky. " Nearly all of the plumbing in the
smaller towns," it says, is " done by tinners, hardware men,
machinists, and even ' nigger ' blacksmiths." | Could anything
be more provocative of indignation and resistance in men pos-
sessed of a high spirit and noble aims ? Afflicted as the feudal
corporations were with illegitimate competition, they did not
have to meet upon the field of honorable labor the ignoble rivalry
of " niggers." The vice-president of the Oregon Association men-
tions as a particularly flagrant example of the unfair competition
that the " honest plumber," one " concerned about elevating his
profession," has to struggle against, a firm that advertises " Hard-
ware, stoves, and ranges, sanitary plumbing, tin and sheet- iron
work, groceries, provisions, and cord wood." " And still," he adds,
as though recounting a miracle, but showing that honest work
may be done without laws and ordinances, " these parties do a good
job of plumbing." * Passing from the country to the city, where
the evolution of industry has gone further and the lines that
separate one trade or profession from another have become more
distinct, the conflicts between plumbers and other occupations are
more bitter and relentless. || A stone mason is not permitted to
build a drain under a house nor connect it with the sewer. With-
out the risk of arrest and prosecution a steam or gas fitter can
not put in a water or waste pipe. To the hardware man is denied

* The Optical Journal, vol. ii, No. 4, p. 119. »

f Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 52.

X Ibid., p. 58. * Ihid., p. 64.

II The I'ecent quarrel between the pUunbers and gasfitters in New York city, which at
one time threatened very serious consequences, grew out of the absurd question, decided by
President Setli Low, who was made arbitrator, as to which trade had the righ*; to put in the
thermostatic attachment to radiators.

38 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the riglit to connect tlie range he has sold with the water system
of his patron's house.*

Although this intolerable despotism continues to grow by
what it feeds on, and its complete abatement is not likely to come
soon, there are not wanting some faint signs of revolt. The hard-
ware men of Buffalo, N. Y., have refused to submit to it, and are
engaged in a hot fight against the tyrants of the wrench and
soldering iron, f As already indicated, the opticians of the State
are also in rebellion against the oculists, having discovered in the
benevolent legislation of these " social reformers " an attempt to
enslave them. " Let us," says the president of the State Optical
Society just quoted, summoning his followers to arms and defend-
ing his course with an argument equally cogent against all other
assaults on personal liberty, " concentrate with the fearless deter-
mination to throw off the yoke which some oculists are so deter-
mined to have us wear by relegating us to a position of abject
dependence upon them, and thus exposing ourselves to the exer-
cise of a power which might, in a moment of emergency, make
perjurers of all who lack the fortitude to resist it." X

But futile as has been the attempt to create the honest and
competent plumber and to make him a national blessing, the
effort to find the honest and competent official to enforce legis-
lation and to rescue the public from the dangers of imperfect
work has not been less prolific of disappointment. When I say
that the failure has been signal and inevitable, I do not express
the opinion deduced from first principles nor from every experi-
ment with the black art of the lawmaker since its first dicovery.
I express only the honest and unpremeditated convictions that
plumbers themselves have reached. Even Mr. Spencer has scarcely
described more vividly and effectively the political entanglements,
the industrial paralysis, and the moral enervation that follow the
practice of this system of modern magic. " It does seem impossi-
ble," said a Syracuse delegate at a State convention of master
plumbers, after listening to a melancholy tale of the neglect of

* So intolerant have some plumbers become that it has been proposed to pass "a law
making it a criminal offense for a person to hang out a sign, handle tools, or construct any
part of plumbing work." (Remarks of Mr. Hosford, of New York. Proceedings, Pitts-
burg, 1889, p. 105 ) A less intolerant but equally absurd and despotic proposition is that of
the Michigan dentists. In a State Convention last year they passed a resolution in approval
of an act for the appointment of a State dental examiner, whose duty should be to inspect
the teeth of all children, and enforce such regulations as might be necessary to preserve the
molars and bicuspids of the public. (Chicago Times-Herald, June IG, 1896.)

f Buffalo Courier, November 12, 1896. As further proof of the unselfish spirit that
animates the plumbers of Buffalo, it may be said that for the work of connecting a range
with the water pipes they charge from eight to twelve dollars. The hardware men claim
that it is worth only three or four dollars.

\ The Optical Journal, vol. ii. No. 4, p. 120.

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 39

examining boards to do their duty, " to keep politics out of exam-
ining boards." * But the same trail is just as visible elsewhere.
" You think it is the Board of Health," said an Albany delegate,
showing how other officials have shirked their duty. " We have
been there and made our complaint. They inspect the work
brought to their office, they say. I have been to the corpo-
ration counsel and can not get any satisfaction. I have been to
the district attorney and to the justice of the police court. They
laugh at us." f This is the experience always had with the ma-
chinery invented to enforce the laws of any despot, be he French
or American. The men that refuse to submit to them are too
influential to be antagonized with impunity.

Even if public officials possessed the Spartan virtue of Boy-
leau, who, according to the Sire de Joinville, yielded to no influ-
ence " de parenfe, ni d'ainys, ni d'or, ni d'argent " ; J even if they
were to enforce the law with Draconian rigor, it could and would
be evaded. "' There are many ways of killing a cat besides chok-
ing him with butter,' " said Mr. Firmin at the Philadelphia conven-
tion, " and the law may be obeyed, while it is at the same time
practically evaded and violated. No matter," he added, speaking
with a professional knowledge that a layman would not presume
to question, " how impartial, honest, and competent an inspector
may be, in the very nature of things there are one hundred and
one ways of putting his eyes out." * Could some legislative
genius discover a way to prevent this loss of sight, protection
from incompetent or dishonest plumbers would still be impos-
sible. " There are a great many things," said Mr. Edward Schus-
ter, of St. Louis, at the same convention, " necessary to a first-
class job, which do not come under his supervision and which he
is not responsible for, and yet they are of so much importance that
they can not be omitted." || Of what use, then, is a plumbing
law ? Of what use also are inspectors ?

Still, the bottom of the Pandora box, which " philanthropists "
and " benefactors " have stuffed with the evils of such legislation,
has not yet been reached. While it does not benefit the honest
plumber, it often screens the dishonest one. Here again I do not
trust to the conclusions drawn from the doctrine of laissez-faire,
nor from the unsupported assertions of prejudice. My statements
are none other than those of the master plumbers themselves.
" Plumbers imagined," said Mr. Dent Yates at the Detroit con-
vention, " that the strictest ordinances (a few of which would
make the framers of the Rhode Island blue laws weep with

* Unpublished Proceedings, Buffalo, 1894, p. 59. f Ibid., pp. 55, 56.
:[: Biographie Universelle, vol. v, p. 436.

* Proceedings, Philadelphia, 1896, p. 91. || Ibid., p. 94.

40 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

envy) would be a big bonanza. . . . But some of the self- same
ordinances, designed to protect tlie good, conscientious plumber,
have here and there acted as a screen for the quack plumber
and fat for the ward bummer and the grog-shop politicians." *
Is this not saying, as was once said to a French despot, that
for every oflSce he was pleased to make God was pleased to
make a fool to fill it ? With a touch of bitter disappointment
over honest toil gone for naught, Mr. Firmin declared, in the
essay quoted from already, that the plumbers that had "endeav-
ored to be just to their fellow-men," that had " given their best
thought " to " devising improved methods of practical sanita-
tion," that " could point to the improved standard of plumbing as
a part of their labors," had " not been rewarded in anything like
a just ratio. ... I might," he added in a tone of deeper disap-
pointment, "even say in an everyday dollars-and- cents view,"
that they " have not directly benefited at all." f

The most serious evil remains to be mentiolied, for it falls
upon the very persons whose benefit is, in the eyes of the "philan-
thropists" and "benefactors," its sole justification. Instead of
making them more alert to protect themselves from the dangers
that assail them and to secure the services of the most expert to
aid them in this difficult task, it creates in them a state of indif-
ference. Conscious that benevolent statesmen have made laws
to keep them from harm, they fancy that it is no longer needful
for them to take thought of the morrow. Plumbers themselves,
with all their ardent faith in legislation, have not been able to
shut their eyes to this peril. More than once have the thought-
ful among them called attention to "overconfidence on the part
of the architect and the general public" in "the cure-all-ism of
the plumbing law." " This danger is at once serious to the public
and to ourselves as business men," said the Sanitary Committee
at the Philadelphia convention. J " We found," said Mr. Firmin,
also, " that the public has come to rely to a dangerous degree
upon plumbing laws. . . . The danger lies," he added, "in the fact
that the public believe that all plumbers, by virtue of the law's
operation, are compelled to produce equal and certain results, and
that if they have a certain piece of work to be performed it will
make no difference whether they give the job to Jones or Brown.
. . . Therein they fall into error, injuring themselves, as well as
the honest plumber. They remove the incentive to progression
and honesty." The Sanitary Committee takes the same view in
almost the same words. "There has arisen a belief," it says,
" that now it is not necessary to use care in the choice of your

* Proceedings, Detroit, 1894, p. 169.

f Proceedings, Philadelphia, 1895, p. 91. % Ibid., p. 43.

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 41

plumber, since he is by law compelled to comply -with modern
sanitary principles and mechanical arrangements. Never was a
greater error committed by the public," with "far-reaching re-
sults for evil." * This, however, is only an expression of the
truth that the public must, in spite of all supervision, look after
itself.

But, like a nobler sentiment, faith in the efficacy of legisla-
tion for the cure of all social ills, including those from incom-
petent barbers and horseshoers, "springs eternal in the human
breast." It is not enough that such a law as the plumbing law
can not be enforced ; that, even if it were enforced, it would not
yield the benefits that its framers anticipate; that, instead of
favoring the honest plumber, it favors the dishonest one, and
enables the unscrupulous j)olitician to bribe or coerce constitu-
ents; that, instead of promoting the interests of the public, it is
a detriment to them, producing a false sense of security perilous
to health — it is still proposed to follow to the death the same ignis
faiuus. To be sure, the most advanced "philanthropists" and
'' benefactors " do not propose to enact more rigorous municipal
regulationsor more elaborate State laws. These have failed. But
they propose to resort to the great panacea of periodic inspection
and national legislation. Preparing the way for the exercise of
the last hope of the apostles of benevolent despotism, the Sani-
tary Committee of the Philadelphia convention declared that "no
matter how thorough and complete" a piece of plumbing may
have been done, " Nature, assisted by use, abuse, and neglect, will
render that which was perfect most imperfect." f It then pro-
ceeds to urge with fitting solemnity "the very great impor-
tance of legislative action looking to and providing for periodic
expert examination of sanitary appliances." That is to say, since
people can not be trusted to keep their plumbing in order, the
State must, like a policeman, compel them to do so. "A system
of laws emanating from Congress," says an authority quoted with
approval by the same committee on another occasion, after point-
ing out, among other things, that "the laws enacted by State and
local authorities are continually subject to change according to
the whim of any petty politician who sees his self-aggrandizement

* Proceedings, Philadelphia, 1895, pp. 43, 44. "The committee did not believe, how-
ever, that national legislation on the subject was desirable. It said: 'In the nature of
things, it is impossible to form laws which would be equally appropriate to all sections of
the country ; that which would be best suited to the needs of Michigan would prove most
faulty for Louisiana. A system approaching perfection as applied to California would be
ridiculous if applied to Maine ' (p. 43). But, as shown in the text, this sensible view was
repudiated by the committee in the following year. It was crushed under what Mr. Spencer
has fitly characterized as the momentum of the socialistic movement."

f Ibid., p. 44.

42 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

in any movement that may please a portion of liis constituency,"
"would obviate all such trouble. . . . Such laws would be en-
forced by the State and local boards of health, and, in case of their
failure or neglect, such attention and assistance from the national
powers should be given as the circumstances of the case may
require." * That is to say, again, a defective principle inopera-
tive on a small scale can be made a success on a large one. Al-
though a despotic local law can not be enforced, a despotic na-
tional law will be scrupulously observed. If local officials can be
blinded in " one hundred and one wavs," national officials are sub-
ject to no such impairment of vision.

II.

But this is only a fresh illustration of the pathetic faith of the
chronic invalid, ever on the search for a new pill or a new tonic.
A change from one despotism to another, or from one set of offi-
cials to another, will not deliver society from the defects of human
nature. Much less will that blessing come from the increase of
despotism and the multiplication of officials. Such quackery has
been tried from the dawn of Greek democracy down to the latest
product of popular sovereignty — the Brazilian Republic. It has
failed ; it must inevitably fail. It violates a law of social devel-
opment as immutable as the law of gravitation, one that punishes
those that fail to heed it with equal certainty and severity. I
refer to the law set forth by Mr. Spencer that the more peaceful
and industrious a nation becomes, the less is its need of the re-
straints of either custom or legislation. But of this matchless
induction of modern science the social reformers of to-day have
no conception. They act upon the assumption that the world has
made no headway in a thousand years ; that men are still barba-
rians and require the shackles of an age of disorder ; that there
must be the official mechanism of an old French or Prussian
despotism, which had no other use than to recruit and drill troops
and to wring taxes from despised and impoverished toilers. But
since the days of feudal chaos humanity, despite the obstacles
thrown in its path by ignorance and interest, has gained ground.
Men have outlived the rules and regulations of a military despot-
ism. They do not pay homage to the occupant of a throne, sur-
rounded by courtiers as intent on the plunder of subjects as sol-
diers on the plunder of enemies. Their allegiance is to another
ruler, which, though less regal, is not less powerful ; it is con-
science, the embodied restraints that come of peace, sympathy,
and culture.

* Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 31.

REVERSIONS IX MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 43

If the obedience due this ruler of the modern industrial world
is imperfect, the reason is not difficult to discover. It is because
his reign has been brief, and human nature is still crude. Too
many vestiges of countless ages of conflict cling to the brain of
man. Too much misdirected effort is made to fit the institutions
of murder and pillage to times of peace and industry. Obsolete
as a battle axe or a coat of mail, they do not extinguish the traits
inherited from savage ancestry ; they only stimulate and perpetu-
ate them. No matter whether they be tried under the despotism
of a French feudal monarchy or under the popular sovereignty of
the American Republic, the effect is identical. They engender the
same greed, the same hypocrisy, the same deception, the same
contention. No abridgment of liberty that philanthropists or
statesmen may deem essential to the safety of modern civilization
will permit them to realize their Utopian dream. The millennium
lies in another direction — in the direction of greater liberty. As
society becomes more and more complex, with wants so great and
varied as to pass the knowledge of any benevolent despot ruling
by divine right, or any group of despots ruling by virtue of uni-
versal suffrage, individuals must be allowed more and more to
control their own destiny, and to take the consequences, good or
bad. Whatever government they may need to direct their count-
less enterprises for the supply of those wants and for the regula-
tion of their relations with one another and with the public, must
not be the product of political selection, but of industrial selec-
tion ; it must not be the choice of ward bummers and complaisant
citizens that register the will of an unscrupulous and irresponsible
demagogue, ambitious to exercise a power that decent people re-
fuse him, but of the men that have staked their fortunes in busi-
ness, whose success or failure is dependent upon the wisdom of
their action. Not the least fit, but the most fit, will then admin-
ister the affairs of the world. With the continuance of peace
and industry they will not be the greatest fools or knaves, now
so often charged and unhappily so often proved, but the wisest
and most upright. Civilization will not then go backward, as it
now threatens to do, but it will go forward, as it did with the
enlargement of liberty that has been the most splendid achieve-
ment of the last four centuries of thought and effort.

The eager haste with which men of fixed notions are apt to rush to con-
clusions is portrayed rather than caricatured in Lord Houghton's version
of the debate between Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in the Brit-
ish Association in 1860, which Sir E. Grant Duff quotes in his Notes from
a Diary. As the story is told, Mr. Huxley asserted that the blood of guinea
pigs crystallizes in rhombohedrons. "Thereupon the bishop sprang to his
feet and declared that 'such notions lead directly to atheism.' ''

44 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

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

CORnESPONDANT DE l'iNSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETC.

VII. — RULES OR MAXIMS ESSENTIAL TO AN ADMINISTRATION OF
RIGHTFUL TAXATION UNDER A CONSTITUTIONAL OR FREE GOV-
ERNMENT. PART II.

IN continuance of tlie discussion entered upon in the preceding
part of this chapter, as to whether under a constitutional and
free government, and in virtue also of the natural and inalien-
able rights of the people governed, a state has a lawful right to
levy and expend taxes in furtherance of private interests, more
especially by way of bounties, the following additional points
may be worthy of consideration :

Probably no better exposition of the limitation on the exer-
cise of the taxing power incumbent on a free government pro-
fessing a regard for the rights of the people, and more especially
on the Federal Government of the United States, under its Con-
stitution, in respect to the granting of payment of bounties for
the promotion of the private interests of any of its citizens, can be
found than the following, accredited to Justice Thomas M. Cooley :

''It is not in the power of the state, in my opinion, under the name of
a bounty, or under any other cover or subterfuge, to furnish the cajjital to
set private parties up in any kind of business, or to subsidize tlieir business
after they have entered upon it. A bounty law of which this is the real
nature, is void, whatever may be the pretense on which it may be enacted.
The rig-ht to hold out pecuniary inducements to the faithful performance
of public duty in dangerous or responsible positions stands upon a different
footing altogether ; nor have I any occasion to question the right to pay
rewards for the destruction of wild beasts and other public pests, a provision
of this character being a mere police regulation. But the discriniination by
the state between different classes of occupations, and the favoring of one
at the expense of the rest, whether that one be farming or banking, mer-
chandising or milling, printing or railroading, is not legitimate legislation,
and is an invasion of that equality of right and privilege which is a maxim
in state government. When the door is once open to it there is no line at
which we can stop and say with confidence that thus far vpe may go with
safety and XDropriety, but no further.

"Every honest employment is honorable; it is beneficial to the public;
it deserves encouragement. The more successful we can make it the more
does it generally subserve the public good. But it is not the business of
the state to make discriminations in favor of one class against another, or
in favor of one employment against another. The state can have no favor-
ites. Its business is to protect the industry of all, and give all the benefits
of equal laws. It can not compel an unwilling minority to submit to tax-
ation in order that it may keep upon its feet any business that can not
stand alone."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 45

A brief historical retrospect is here pertinent to this subject.
The payment of bounties from the proceeds of taxation, or rather
of exaction, is a relic of the commercial methods of the middle
ages. They were, however, regarded as legitimate fiscal expedi-
ents for the encouragement of trade and domestic industries dur-
ing the whole of the last (eighteenth) century ; but since then,
under the influence of a higher civilization and modern economic
ideas, have been almost entirely discarded from the fiscal systems
of the leading commercial nations until within a comparatively
recent period, when they have been revived and made mainly
applicable to the production and sale of a single one of the world's
great commodities — namely, sugar ; * and the history of this
experience constitutes a most interesting and instructive chapter
in economic history.

Although the practice of stimulating the production of beet-
root sugar in Europe through high protective duties on imports
and export bounties dates back to the first quarter of the century,
the present complicated and curious state of affairs is really due
to a method of taxing beet sugar by Germany which was adopted
in 1869. The idea involved in this method was, in brief, to collect
an excise or internal -revenue tax on all sugar produced, and give
a bounty on so much of the domestic product as was exported or
sold to the people of other countries. The other states of conti-
nental Europe, finding the markets of their own product of beet-
root sugar everywhere supplanted by the German sugars, and
their domestic manufacturers being thereby brought to the verge
of ruin, made haste to follow the example of Germany, until the
policy of Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, and
Russia seems to have been to stimulate their domestic product
of sugar to the greatest extent, and then enter into competition
with each other to see which of them could sell cheapest to for-
eigners at the expense of their own people. The general result
is, that the great beet-sugar industry of Europe has been estab-
lished and is now conducted on what may be regarded as an arti-
ficial basis, and one not inaptly characterized as a most ingenious
method for entailing money losses on the mass of the people of
the countries above mentioned.

The immediate sequence of this policy has been an enormous
increase in the beet-sugar product on the Continent of Europe —
i. e., from 2,323,000 tons in 1885-'86 to nearly 5,000,000 (4,789,000)
tons in 1895-'96 — with such a reduction in price that the whole
sugar industry of Europe is seriously depressed, with a general

* The policy of payment of bounties for the encouragement of shipping and of ship-
building enterprise has also, to a limited extent, been established, more especially by the
two Governments of France and Italy.

46 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

complaint on the part of producers that the amount received by
tliem does not cover the cost of production. Under such a condi-
tion of affairs, the German Parliament (Reichstag), in May, 1896,
accepting a popular declaration that " sugar was the last and only
agricultural product in which there remained any profit for the
German farmer, and that whatever skillful legislation could do
to preserve and protect that industry should in justice to the
suffering landowners be given a prompt and thorough trial,"
passed an act increasing the bounty on the export of sugars to an
extent assumed to be sufficient " to enable German exporters to
compete against all comers in foreign markets"; advancing the
import duty on sugars to a prohibitory degree ; and fixing an
internal-revenue tax on sugars to such an extent as to yield a net
income to the state in excess of its disbursements on account of
bounties on exports. The effects of the new statute have now
become apparent and ominous. The foreign sugar market has
responded to the increased bounty export by a proportionate
decline in price ; and a movement now finds favor to petition the
Reichstag to make certain amendments in the existing statute
so as to restrict instead of stimulating production, and to invite
international negotiations for the gradual abolition of all export
bounties, which have been proved to be simply a burden on the
treasury, which pays them for the benefit of non- producing for-
eign countries.

The present burden which the sugar-bounty system entails
upon the taxpayers of Europe is estimated at about $25,000,000
per annum, while the excise tax on sugar in Germany, France,
and Austria is said to amount to $100,000,000 per annum. On
the sugar consumed by the people of the continental nations of
Europe which have adopted the bounty policy there is no bounty,
but on the contrary an excise tax ; the result of which legislation
is to make exported sugars very cheap and home consumption
abnormally dear. This is demonstrated by reference to the sta-
tistics of the comparative consumption of different countries.
Thus in England, whose policy since 1874 has been to give her
people sugar free of taxation, the per capita consumption has risen
from fifty-six pounds in that year to eighty-six pounds in 1896;
while the saving to the British people from the reduction of the
cost of this one item of their living has been estimated to be at
least £6,000,000 ($30,000,000) per annum. The great reduction in
the price of sugar has also given a remarkable impetus to the
British industry of manufacturing sweets, in the form of confec-
tionery, preserves, jams, marmalades, etc., which last to a consid-
erable extent have undoubtedly supplanted the use of butter. The
present annual average consumption of sugar in Germany is re-
ported to be about twenty- seven pounds 2^^^ capita. In France

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 47

the declining consumption of sugar has been made the subject of
recent debate in the Chamber of Deputies, where the question was
pertinently asked by one of the deputies (M. Mery) if the object
of the existing governmental policy in respect to sugar "was
mainly to produce it or to have and enjoy it." The Agricultural
Society of France has also recently unanimously indorsed a de-
mand of the French sugar makers and refiners that the Govern-
ment should increase the present bounty on the export of sugar
to an extent equivalent to the combined or aggregate bounties
allowed in Austria and Germany.

So much, then, for nearly half a century's experience on the
part of the leading continental nations of Europe in attempting to
regulate the production, price, and consumption of sugar through
a system of bounties.

Practical experience in respect to the employment of bounties
also leads to a deduction, which may be almost regarded in the
nature of a principle, that when bounties are employed for the
promotion of some public good, the object sought eventually be-
comes subordinate to the opportunity which an unnatural and
unprincipled perversion of the bounty provisions affords for the
promotion of private rather than public interests. The following
illustrations, though somewhat comical in their nature, serve to
sustain this proposition :

In the early years of the present century the State of Con-
necticut, having in view the promotion of its agricultural inter-
ests, offered a premium on the destruction of the crow; to be
paid on the production of the head of the bird to the proper
authorities. Thereupon the sons of the farmers, desirous of
earning a little money, then much more difficult to obtain than
at present, diligently searched the woods for the nests of crows,
from which at the proper time the eggs were transferred to sit-
ting hens, by whom they were hatched and the resulting off-
spring brought up until their heads became available for presen-
tation and procurement of the bounty. A summary of the general
results of such experience would be somewhat as follows : First, a
perversion of the legitimate industry of the hen ; second, an ele-
mentary lesson for young persons in perpetrating frauds against
the State ; third, an impairment of the agency of a bird, whose
habits have been proved by subsequent scientific investigations
to be beneficial rather than detrimental to the interests of the
farmers. Again, in the early history of one of the Northwestern
States of the Federal Union a bounty was offered, at the request
of the farmers, for the heads of little burrowing animals known
as " gophers," which attracted little attention till the experience of
several years showed that the disbursements of the State on this
account had become abnormal and were rapidly increasing. In-

48 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

vestigation then proved that the raising of gophers by citizens of
the State for the procurement of bounties had become a regular
industry. A like experience in British India is also worthy of
note. Some years since the Government, with a view of arrest-
ing the mortality among its native population from the bites of
poisonous serpents, offered a bounty on their proved destruction ;
when it was found that for the sake of obtaining the bounties the
cultivation of the " cobra " and other like snakes had been actu-
ally entered upon.

Third. The sphere of taxation should he limited to persons,
property, and business exclusively witliin the territorial jurisdic-
tion of the taxing power. It would seem to be in the nature of a
self-evident proposition, although in fact it is by no means so re-
garded, that the power of every state or government to tax must
be exclusively limited to subjects within its territory and legal
jurisdiction. "All subjects," says Chief- Justice Marshall, in giv-
ing the opinion of the Supreme Court in the case of McCullough
vs. Maryland (4 Wheaton, 431), "over ivhich the sovereign poiver
of the state extends are objects of taxation; but those over luhich
it does not extend are, on the soundest principles, exempt from
taxation." And again, " the sovereign power of the state extends
to everything which exists by its oicn authority or is introduced
by its permission." "Every nation,^' says Wheaton, ''possesses
and exercises exclusive sovereignty and jurisdiction throughout
the full extent of its territory. It follows, from this principle,
that the laws of every state control, of right, all the real and per-
sonal property within its territory. The second general principle
is, that no state can, by its laws, directly affect, bind, or regulate
property beyond its own territory. This is a consequence of the
first general principle ; a different system, which would recognize
in each state the power of regulating persons or things beyond its
territory, would exclude the equality of rights among different
states, and the exclusive sovereignty which belongs to each of
them." (Wheaton's International Law, chap, ii, § 3 ; Foelix Inter-
national Prisd, §§ 9 and 10.) And in a decision of more recent
date (State Tax on Foreign-held Bonds, 15 Wallace, 30G, 328), the
United States Supreme Court said : " The power of taxation, how-
ever vast in its character and searching in its extent, is necessarily
limited to subjects 2vithin the jurisdiction of the state. Property
lying beyond the jurisdiction of the state is not a subject upon
which her taxing poiver can be legitimately exercised. Indeed, it
would seem that no adjudication should be necessary to establish
so obvious a proposition."

The principle under consideration has also been made the sub-
ject of adjudication by the United States Supreme Court in a case
of historic as well as of legal and economic interest. In Septem-

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 49

ber, 1814, the country being then at war with Great Britain, the
town of Castine, in Maine, was captured by the British forces, and
remained in their exclusive possession until after the ratification
of peace in 1815. During this period the British Government
exercised all civil and military authority over the place, estab-
lished a custom house and allowed merchandise to be imported,
some of which remained in Castine after it was evacuated by the
enemy. On the re-establishment of the authority of the United
States, the American collector of customs for the district, claim-
ing a right on the part of the United States to Federal duties on
the goods in question, demanded payment of the same from the
owners or importers ; and, the claim being resisted, the case went
up to the United States Supreme Court, which with complete
unanimity gave judgment, through Justice Story, for the owners
or importers in the following language :

" We are all of the opinion that the claim for duties can not
be sustained. By the conquest and military occupation of Cas-
tine, the enemy acquired that firm possession which enabled him
to exercise the fullest rights of sovereignty over that place. The
sovereignty of the United States was suspended, and its laws
could no longer be enforced there, or be obligatory on the inhab-
itants who remained there and submitted to the conquerors. By
the surrender the inhabitants passed under a temporary allegiance
to the British Government, and were bound by such laws and such
only as it chose to impose. From the nature of the case, no other
laws could be obligatory on them ; for where there is no protection
or allegiance, or sovereignty, there can be no claim to obedience."

Taxes, therefore, are necessarily the creation of each state, and
no self-respecting Government ever permits any other Govern-
ment to interfere with its tax laws or their execution, and a
toleration of such interference in any degree presupposes de-
pendence, subjection, or absence of independence. An obvious
CO- relation of this proposition, and also a matter of fact, is that a
violation of the tax or revenue laws of one country has never
been regarded as an offense or crime in any other country ; and
the Euglish courts have held that contracts to evade the customs
laws of a foreign country are not illegal. Hence, also, offenders
in this respect are never taken into account in extradition treaties
between different nations and their governments. Some years
ago a United States district attorney in New York procured
through the Department of State at Washington the extradition
of a person from England on the. charge of forgery. On his
arraignment before a United States court it transpired that the
offense committed was the manufacture and use of fraudulent
invoices, to which forged or fictitious names had been attached,

for the purpose of evading the payment of United States customs
VOL. Li, — 4

50 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or taxes on certain imports ; and that the intent of the prosecu-
tion was punishment, not for forgery in the ordinary sense of the
term, but for smuggling, for which latter offense there was no
precedent that extradition had ever been granted by any country.
The attention of the British Government having been called to
the case, a request was preferred by it to the authorities in Wash-
ington that the trial of the accused should be discontinued, on
the ground that a fugitive from justice, when surrendered by a
country in which he had sought refuge, should not be tried for
any offense other than the one specified in the extradition de-
mand, and for which extradition was granted. Compliance with
the request being refused, although as a matter of fact the trial
was discontinued, the British Government took occasion, when
extradition was next demanded of her by the United States —
which happened to be the case of a former well-known citizen of
Boston who had committed forgery in the sense that constitutes
a crime in all countries — to refuse it, although the offender had
in the first instance been arrested in England and was in custody ;
and for many years subsequent and for reasons above given there
was no extradition in force between the United States and Great
Britain and her colonies, with the result of making Canada an
Alsatia, or place of safe refuge, for all criminals of the former
country.

All, therefore, that any government can legitimately ask of
another government in respect to taxation is, that its subjects or
citizens residing in such foreign state shall not be there discrimi-
nated against because they are foreigners ; but shall be treated in
exactly the same manner as the subjects or citizens of the taxing
power and their property are treated — no better and no worse. If
foreigners feel aggrieved, they must first exhaust all the remedies
against unjust taxation provided by the institutions of the taxing
country ; as foreign importers, for example, aggrieved by rulings
or appraisements at the custom houses of any country, must first
appeal for redress to the courts of such country. A recent event
of great economic and legal importance is also worthy of narra-
tion and consideration in this connection.

A board of appraisers and assessors charged with the duty of
assessing, for the purpose of taxation, the property in Ohio of tele-
graph, telephone, and express companies, discharged the duties
incumbent upon it — taking an express company for example — in
the following manner : First, by determining the value and lia-
bility to taxation of the real estate of the company situated in
Ohio ; second, the personal property, including moneys and
credits, owned by the company in Ohio, and the value thereof ;
third, the gross receipts during the taxing year of the company in
Ohio, from whatever sources derived. It was conceded that the

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 51

returns made by the company to the above officials were correct,
and that the aggregate value of the items included in such re-
turns liable to taxation in 1895 — the same as other like property
in the State — was $42,065. The board of appraisers and assessors
added, however, to this amount the sum of $491,030, making the
aggregate of the tax liability of the express company $533,095 ;
and based their action not on any belief or pretense that any con-
siderable amount of real or personal property within the terri-
torial jurisdiction of the State had been discovered which had
hitherto escaped taxation, but that sources of reported value
which were entirely outside of the territory and beyond the juris-
diction of the State of Ohio — when they constituted a part of the
value of the capital or franchise of a corporation located and
established in some other State for the purpose of carrying on
business, and that business " interstate commerce " entirely within
the control of the Federal Government — might be added to the
intrinsic value of property within the State ; thereby assessing
not only property ivithin the State of Ohio, but a proportion also
of all property situated luitliout its territorial boundaries. The
question involved was therefore the constitutionality of extra-
territorial taxation ; and the case, after consideration by State
and United States Circuit Courts, was finally brought before the
United States Supreme Court. Here, notwithstanding the cita-
tion of numerous former opinions and judgments of the court
wholly adverse to the constitutionality of the principle on which
was based the assumption and action of the State of Ohio, the
court by a majority of one held to a contrary view ; and gave
judgment in support of the State assessments on the express com-
pany. It is clear, therefore, that the State of Ohio has been justi-
fied, for the time being, in an attempt to tax something that it
calls property, but which is neither tangible nor visible ; that has
no intrinsic or essentially inherent value ; and which procedure,
if generally accepted and put in practice by other States, would
antagonize all formerly accepted theories and legal decisions in
respect to extra-territorial taxation, and ultimately destroy all in-
terstate commerce between the several States of the Federal Union.
An Implied but Fundamental Reciprocal op Taxation.
— Notwithstanding the absence of any warrant for assuming that
there was ever any real or implied contract, whereby a State in
its beginning or development agreed to give a certain amount of
protection to life and property in return for an equivalent in
money, goods, or services of its citizens — an assumption which
has been characterized as the " commercial theory of taxation " * —

* " The right of a state to take the citizen's property must be put on higher ground if
it is to stand on perfectly safe ground. Of course, such higher ground is not to be found

52 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it is nevertlieless true that the "co- relative" or "reciprocal" of
taxation is protection ; or, in other words, according to the polit-
ical theory of our governments, national and State, and in fact of
every government claiming the title to be free, taxes may be
legitimately assumed to be the compensation which persons and
property pay the State for protection. This assumption, it is be-
lieved, has been indorsed and accepted by every writer of repute
on economic subjects who has discussed taxation from the time
of Montesquieu down to a very recent period ; * and in the re-
peated instances in which this matter has come before the courts
for adjudication, the highest judicial authorities have uniformly
given judgment or expressed opinions to the same effect. In con-
firmation of these statements the following citations are sub-
mitted :

"Where there is no protection," said Judge Story (in the case
of the United States vs. Rice, 4 Wheaton, 27G), "there can be no
claim to allegiance or obedience." Again the same eminent au-
thority (in the case of Miles vs. Duryea, Cranch, 481) thus strongly
expresses himself : " It is an eternal principle of justice that juris-
diction can not be justly exercised by a State over property that
is not within reach of its process — that is, property which it can
not protect."

" Taxes are a portion whicli each individual gives of his prop-
in the pretense that the right in question is the simple right of might ; that the ruling
power, whether monarch or majority, is physically able to take and apply as it chooses all
that the individuals ruled over called their own ; and that because it can, it morally may,
take whatever part it thinks fit. With simple ethics the leviers of taxe«, whenever they
are a distinct class, are wont to content themselves. But whatever countenance they have
received from such moral philosophers as venerate successful force, the principle will hardly
serve those who study the matter as taxpayers." — Theodore Bacon.

* " The philosophy of our plan of voluntary political association is, that all individuals,
and all the values within a community, shall aggregate into one mass all the power which
they separately contain, which sum total shall constitute a sovereignty of the whole. Thia
sovereignty — the soul of the State, which can not be impaired and the State survive — re-
flects back upon its constituents, in detail, all that it has received from them. What it re-
ceives, and what it returns, is of two kinds, as to both source and object, viz., individual
service to the Government, and protection to the individual from it. Thus, in his indi-
vidual capacity, a man is bound to perform military service, and the State, by the military
arm, is bound to protect him from invasion. He is bound to do jury duty, and the authori-
ties are bound, upon his demand, to provide him a jury. He is bound to aid the sheriff, and
the sheriff is bound to execute process in his favor by posse comtfaius, if necessary. These
personal services correspond to those which in feudal times the mesne lord, holding a frank
tenement, owed the lord paramount. They can not be compounded for, for their value
consists in their being rendered in kind. J7ieir performance is the onlij price which the
citizen pays for his citizenship. The terms are not only consistent and harmonious with our
general scheme of government, but are highly politic. To all political privileges we admit
each one by virtue of his being a man, free born, and of lawful age ; we ask him nothing
concerning his property, unless his property asks something from us." — Lowrey.^ Argument,
Hew York Assemblij, 1862.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 53

erty, in order to secure and have the perfect enjoyment of the re-
mainder. Governments are established for the protection of
persons and property within the limits of the state, and taxes
are levied to enable the government to afford and give such pro-
tection. They are the price and consideration of the protection
afforded." (Ingersol, J., Circuit Court of the United States, Duer
vs. Small.)

" There is nothing poetic about tax laws. When they find
property, they claim a contribution for its protection." (Lowrie,
Chief Justice, Tinley vs. The City, etc., 33 Peun., 381.)

Montesquieu, writing with the monarchical institutions of
France mainly or solely in view, discusses this subject in his
Spirit of Laws (book xxxi, chap, i), as follows : " The public
revenues are a portion that each subject gives of his property,
in order to secure or ejijoy the remai^ider."

"The right to tax an individual results from the general pro-
tection afforded to himself and his property." — Vattel, Law of Na-
tions, hook i, chap. xx.

" Property and law (i. e., government or the state) are born
together and die together. Before laws were made, there was no
property ; take away laws, and property ceases." — Bentham, The-
ory of Legislation.

The principle here involved is also clearly and succinctly
further expressed in the following citations :

" Taxation " is, in any view, taking private property for public use, and it
can not be so taken without an equivalent, both as to the Government or
the citizens. It is not competent to convert private property to public use
by way of taxation, and without compensation, any more than by any
other mode.

Taxation (if anything in the nature of principle is assumed as its basis)
therefore implies that the government imposing it will return an equiva-
lent. But to return an equivalent in the form that was taken, namely,
money, would be stultification. The only equivalent that a government
can return, and the only one, in truth, that justifies taxation, is in the na-
ture of a guarantee that the pei-son. property, or business on which the tax
is imposed shall have all the rights which the civilization of the state repre-
sents, or, in other words, "protection." — Redfield.

" If it were practicable to do so," says Justice Cooley, " the taxes levied
by any government ought to be apportioned among the people according
to the benefit which each receives from the protection the government
affords him. This is upon the assumption, never wholly true in point of
fact, but sufficiently near the truth for the practical operations of govern-
ment, that the benefit received from the government is in proportion to the
property held or the revenues enjoyed under its protection." — Cooley, On
Taxation, pp. lJf-17.

Notwithstanding this preponderance of opinion, argument,
and legal decisions in favor of the correlation of taxation and

54 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

protection, the truth of this assumption has been called in ques-
tion in recent years, and even wholly denied by some economic
and legal authorities. Thus, in most of the States of the Federal
Union (but not in other countries), sovereignty in respect to taxa-
tion is assumed, or enacted to embrace " goods, chattels, money,
and effects, wherever they are ; ships, public stocks and securi-
ties, stocks in turnpikes, bridges, and moneyed corporations, luith-
in or ivithout the State" ; and where the administrators of the law
tax residents for personal property, even of a visible, tangible
character, having a situs in another State or country ; and, by
another irreconcilable rule, tax non-residents for all of their per-
sonal property having a sittis within the State. (Massachusetts
Statutes.)

Such antagonism would seem to be wholly due to an inade-
quate comprehension of the subject. It is assumed, for example,
that there can be no necessary reciprocity of the nature indicated
between the State and the subjects of taxation, because, in the
case of subjects — persons, property, and business — upon which no
tax is levied, there can be no correlation, and therefore no claim
whatever for protection ; and in illustration and support of this
proposition it is pointed out that churches and other public insti-
tutions, specifically exempt from taxation, need and receive as
much protection from the State as structures used for dwellings
and stores, and that tramps, who have nothing to pay with, are
equally entitled to invoke and use the power of the State for pro-
tection as those who are taxed for millions. " So also the busi-
ness that is not taxed at all, it is said, can no more be plundered
with impunity than that which is taxed the heaviest." * The
error in all this reasoning is fundamental, and arises from a fail-
ure to comprehend that in every civilized state every person or
thing is taxed, either directly or indirectly, by the diffusion of
taxes, and that it is not possible to name anything in such a state
that is exempt from taxation ; that the primary purpose for which
the state exists is to afford protection to persons and property ;
that it — the state — practically ceases to exist when it is unwilling
or unable to afford such protection ; and that, even if willing, it
could not protect, except through the ability that comes to it
through the possession of the power and the exercise of taxation.

Fourth. Taxes should he reasonable, regular, and not arbitrary
as respects method, time, and place of assessment and payment,
and, above all, proportional.

The justice and the necessity of these conditions as essentials
of a true system of taxation ought to command universal assent

* The claim or argument in defense of extra territorial taxation will be more fully con-
Bidered hereafter.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 55

without argument. Adam Smith held to the opinion, " founded,"
as he says, " on the experience of all nations, that the certainty of
what each individual ought to pay is, in taxation, of so great im-
portance that a very considerable degree of inequality is not near
so great an evil as a small degree of uncertainty." The evil of
uncertainty does not, however, often characterize the tax systems
of the United States, except in the case of taxation by the Federal
Government of imports, when rates (customs) are sometimes held
for considerable periods in abeyance by reason of political an-
tagonisms of legislators. One of the most remarkable exam-
ple of this occurred during the months from December, 1893, to
August, 1894, when the uncertainty as to the prospective rates on
imported merchandise occasioned great stagnation of business in
the United States, with inevitable great contingent losses. An-
other even more striking illustration of the evils of uncertainty
in taxation is to be found in the recent (1897) proposition to sub-
ject merchandise, imported in strict conformity with established
laws and rates at the time of importation, to the retroactive inci-
dence of increased taxes, not certain but prospective in respect to
rates, and not enacted or embodied in the form of statute laws.
Such action is in the nature of an arbitrary fine or penalty, and
not taxation, and probably does not find a parallel in the history
of any civilized nation, and would not now be tolerated in any of
the most despotic governments of Europe.

The term pr^oportional, which is largely used in constitutional
provisions and in statutes relating to taxation, has, however, a
meaning so much broader and of such greater significance than
is generally attributed to it by law-makers and even law inter-
preters, that it is worth while to institute an inquiry and endeavor
to understand clearly what it does mean. Scientifically consid-
ered, it means the making of the burden of taxation equal upon all
subjects of immediate competition. This principle is one of the
prime essentials of taxation, and when it is violated the act of
taking, or the enforced contribution, is not entitled to be consid-
ered taxation, but becomes at once an arbitrary spoliation or con-
fiscation. Thus, to illustrate: Suppose it were proposed to tax
the stock in trade of red-haired men five per cent, and those of
red-nosed men ten percent; or, as was provided in the income-
tax law enacted by the Congress of the United States of 1894,
which exempted incomes below four thousand dollars per annum
from taxation and taxed all above that sum two per cent ; or to
do as actually once was done in England, under an income-tax
law enacted in 1691, tax Catholics at rates double those imposed
on Protestants ; it seems clear that such transactions could not
involve any principle or be regarded in any other light than the
mere arbitrary and despotic exercise of power; or the making of

56 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the possession of a red nose or red hair, or the result of enter-
prise, skill, economy, or the fortuitous circumstance of birth or
belief, the occasion for inflicting a penalty. Yet this was what
substantially was done in the middle ages, when nobles were ex-
empt from taxation because they were nobles, and the common
people were taxed because they were villains or bondmen ; when
Jews were assessed because they were not Christians, and Catho-
lics because they were not Protestants.

It would seem to be clear, therefore, that a tax that is not
levied proportionally or, what is the same thing, equally and uni-
formly upon all subjects in the same field of competition — as, for
example, upon all persons engaged in the same business or profes-
sion, or upon all property of the same kind and all profit or
income (less exemptions in the nature of charities) in the same
ratio — is a discriminating exaction, without claim to either jus-
tice or equality, inasmuch as to the same extent that some are
favored by the discrimination others are inevitably plundered or
crushed. It is also well to remember that when the term " uni-
formity" in respect to taxation is used, as it often is, in the place
of "proportionality," the meaning is .essentially the same; and
that uniformity of taxation does not consist in the payment of
the same amount by each taxpayer, but that the proportion of
the value of each particular class or subject which each person
pays in taxation to the state shall be everywhere the same.

In the soundings which have been made at great depths in the
ocean for telegraphic or other purposes, the sounding line has not
infrequently brought up from the bottom small chambered shells
or other minute animals of exquisite organization and structure ;
and the question naturally arises. How can these minute organ-
isms live and flourish under the enormous pressure that in some
instances must be exerted upon them of at least three tons to the
square inch ? The explanation is to be found in the circum-
stance that the pressure is everywhere equalized, being as much
from within outward as from without inward, and thus an equi-
librium is maintained, under which development goes on and
existence is made possible ; and it is in preserving this equilib-
rium, this equalization of pressure, that constitutes the very
essence of correct taxation.*

Another point worthy of attention in connection with this sub-
ject is, that forms of taxation which were not authorized with any
purpose of making them unequal in their incidence or burden,
not infrequently (as is especially the case in the United States)
become so by reason of extraneous circumstance ; inasmuch as
every tax which popular sentiment, year after year, will not allow

* Speech of Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the British Exchequer, afterward Lord Sherbrooke.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 57

to be equally enforced, is, to the extent that it is enforced, a dis-
criminating tax of the most unjust and unequal character. Under
the internal revenue laws of the United States as they existed not
many years ago, there was a very striking example of this char-
acter in the case of the tax on matches, to which more particular
reference will be made hereafter, and one worthy of notice still
exists, in the case of the tax on negotiable securities (or instru-
ments)— as railroad and other corporate bonds — which the laws of
every State in the Federal Union make subject to taxation ; inas-
much as it is notorious that such taxes are not paid by the great
majority of the citizens who own such securities, but are paid as a
rule by guardians, trustees, and executors, who are obliged to in-
ventory them in probate offices ; with the result that widows,
orphans, and minors are plundered and crushed ; while those who
evade the tax, through the utter inability of the State to collect
it, are rewarded for their evasion in an increased rate of interest.
Uniformity or proportionality in taxation is, therefore, one of the
fundamental principles of every free and just government ; and
the safety of all tax-payers against the grossest abuses demands
that in taxing any class or locality the principle of equdlity of rate
should be kept sacred and inviolate.

The Constitution of the United States requires that " all duties,
imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United
States " ; and the question as to what constitutes uniformity of
taxation under this provision has repeatedly come before the
courts — Federal and State — for the purpose of definition, and
so has become invested with a degree of historical interest. A
natural inference, at first thought, would be, that under this pro-
vision of the Federal Constitution all property subject to taxation
must necessarily be taxed at the same rate or ratio — that is, if
horses, wagons, and land are taxed, then the same per cent of value
must be assessed upon the horses and wagons as upon the land ;
and if some eight hundred per cent is assessed upon distilled
spirits — whisky — (as is the case in the United States at the present
time) every other commodity from which it was proposed to raise
revenue ought to be taxed in the same proportion. In like man-
ner under the customs, all imports — liquors and pig iron, for ex-
ample— would have to be subjected to one rate of duty. This dif-
ficulty, so far as the Federal Government is concerned, has been
obviated by an assumption, which the courts have sustained, that a
tax " is uniform within the meaning of the constitutional require-
ment if it is made to bear the same percentage over all the United
States" — that is, it must be uniform as regards any particular
article in all places ; that whisky or any other commodity, for
example, shall not be subjected to Federal taxation at one rate in
one State and at a different rate in another State, but that differ-

58 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ent articles may be subjected to different rates, provided tliey are
■uuiform as between different places and different States ; as it
obviously " could not have been the intent of the framers of the
Constitution that the Government in raising its revenues should
not be allowed to discriminate in respect to articles which it de-
sired to tax." *

In the case of the several States of the Federal Union, to which
the Federal constitutional requirement in respect to uniformity
of taxation does not apply, the same question — i. e., as to what
constitutes uniformity — has been also a troublesome one, but dif-
ferent in its manifestation. The provisions relating to taxation
in the Constitutions of these several States generally start with
the idea, expressed or implied, that taxes must be uniform ; and a
strict construction of this language in a tax statute, operative
in only one State, and where the Federal limitation of uniformity
as respects place does not apply, might be construed as restrain-
ing the authorities of a State from imposing any different rate of
taxation on the manufacture or sale of liquors and the manufac-
ture and sale of other merchandise, or on the laud and the busi-
ness of the agriculturist. These difficulties in the way of con-
struction have, however, been largely obviated by recognizing
that when in the statute of a State the words " taxes must be uni-
form " are used, the word " uniform " does not mean, as in the
Federal Constitution, uniformity as to "place," but uniformity
" with regard to the subject of the tax"; an interpretation in full
conformity with the principle before enunciated, that uniformity
of taxation consists in the making of the burden of taxation equal
upon all subjects which are in the same field or sphere of compe-
tition ; or, as has been also expressed by Justice (S. F.) Miller, "dif-
ferent articles may be taxed at different amounts, provided the
rate is uniform on the same class everywhere, with all people and
at all times. Take, for instance, the case of a license : if every-
body in any particular class is required to pay a certain license —
if all lawyers are taxed twenty-five dollars a year, all merchants
one hundred dollars, and all saloonkeepers two hundred dollars —
then the license taxation is uniform, because it imposes the same
burdens upon every man of the same class, who comes within a
circle of well-defined limits. . . . This interpretation," he adds,
" may be a little strained, but probably it has arisen from the ne-
cessity of enabling the Legislatures to levy taxes according to
common sense, if not altogether with regard to strict uniformity." f

The opinions expressed by the State courts of the United
States when this question of uniformity of taxation has been

* Lectures on the Constitution of the United States, Justice Miller, pp. 240, 241.
f Miller (Justice S. F.), ibid.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

S9

practically brouglit before them, is indicated by reference to the
following decisions :

The Constitution of the State of Pennsylvania provides (Article IX, sec-
tion 1) that " all taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of subjects
within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax, and shall be
levied and collected under general laws." In June, 1885, an act was passed
by the Legislature imposing a tax of three mills on the dollar on mortgages,
moneys loaned or invested in other States, money capital in the hands of
individual citizens, and other classes of property. The act did not extend
to corporations, which were taxed at a similar, in some cases at a higher
rate, under a statute of 1879. The act of 1885 was opposed on the ground
that it violated the constitutional rule of uniformity, but it was declared
valid by the Supreme Court of the State, which held that substantial uni-
formity had been obtained.

A decision in New Jersey turned upon a constitutional jirovision that
" property shall be assessed for taxes vnider general laws and by uniform
rules, according to its true value." In 1884 the Legislature of the State
passed an " act for the taxation of railroads and canals," which imposed
a tax upon the lands and tangible property used by railroad and canal
companies and their franchises, and touching no other property. The
constitutionality of this law was questioned by most of the leading com-
panies, but was affirmed by the State Court of Errors and Appeals, which
held that as the law was a general one, framed in general terms and re-
stricted to no locality, it operated equally upon a whole class of property,
whose characteristics enabled it to be dealt with separately. The court
further declared, that as a previous act had secured the companies against
being required to pay more than their full share of tax, a substantial uni-
formity was thus secured.

These and other like decisions of the State courts of the United
States show that in order to sustain a tax law under the require-
ment of generality or uniformity it is not necessary that all prop-
erty should be taxed, and that a State has the right to select prop-
erty for taxation at its discretion. Of course, discrimination may
result from the exercise by the State of the power of dividing the
objects of taxation into classes, but while persons of the same
class and property of the same kind are subjected to an equal
burden, the constitutional requirements as to uniformity seem to
be satisfied.

The fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United
States, which prohibits any State from depriving any person of
property " without due process of law," is also in conformity with
the principle enunciated in the above citations ; for taxation
without jurisdiction, and therefore without the possibility of the
correlative return of any protection as compensation, would obvi-
ously be an arbitrary exaction and not due process of law. But
if property is otherwise (than by taxation) taken by the Govern-
ment (as by the so-called law of " eminent domain "), full and
fair pecuniary return must be made for its value. This is a prin-

6o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ciple as old at least as constitutional government, and is so impor-
tant that it is incorporated in the fundamental law of every State
in the Federal Union. Article V of the Constitution of the
United States also provides that private property sliall not be
taken for public use without due compensation. It is clear,
therefore, that there must be a line between the taking of private
property for public use by the law of eminent domain and by
taxation. But how can that line be drawn except by the rule
that rightful taxation means uniformity of burden on com-
peting vocations and competing property ? The following de-
cision by the Supreme Court of New Jersey is clearly in con-
formity with this conclusion: "A tax," it said, "upon the
persons or property of A, B, and C individually, whether desig-
nated by name or in any other way, which is in excess of an
equal apportionment among the persons or property of the class
of persons or kind of property subject to taxation, is, to the ex-
tent of such excess, the taking of private property for a public
use without compensation. The process is one of confiscation
and not taxation." (Township Committee of Reading, 35 N. J.,
p. Qi}, 1873.)

Fifth. Taxation should not he employed as an agency or for
the purpose of enforcing morality, or as an instrumentality for
correction or punishment.

The punitive or moral idea has probably always entered to
some extent as an element in all those taxes which have been
levied on luxuries, and more especially on all those forms of
luxury which are regarded as frivolous or as mere insignia of
wealth and title, such as hair powder, wigs, coats of arms, car-
riages, etc. But when a government assumes to inquire what
are the articles the consumption of which is prejudicial to the in-
terests and well-being of its people, and then embodies the results
of such inquiries into its measures of revenue ; so that while pro-
viding means for the support of the state it also prescribes how
the citizen ought to live, dress, eat, or drink, the result is always
ineffectual for purposes of revenue, and far more so for the pro-
motion of morality. Examples illustrative and confirmatory of
these conclusions are so numerous as to make a selection of them
not a little difficult. The following have been cited by the late
Sir Morton Peto : "A tax on dice in Great Britain, repealed in
18G2, had the ludicrous result of producing for many years a reve-
nue of five shillings per annum from a license of thirty to forty
pounds a year on the business of manufacturing them. Another
provision of law was that every person having dice unstamped by
the revenue officials in his possession was liable to the penalty of
five pounds for each pair ! But stamped dice could not be ob-
tained. Every one who wanted dice, even cabinet ministers and

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 6i

revenue officials, purchased square pieces of ivory for a few pence
and marked them for themselves. As regards packs of cards, the
regulations imposed by a number of complicated acts of Parlia-
ment were so stringent that legally cards could scarcely be made
or sold. Nevertheless for many years cards were hawked about
the streets unstamped and without a license ; and the manufac-
ture of cards for exportation was so flourishing that nearly half a
million packs were estimated to be surreptitiously made for ex-
portation at the time the obnoxious taxes were repealed."

Sixth. No tax should he levied the character and extent of
which offer, as human nature is generally constituted, a greater
inducement to the taxpayer to evade rather than pay.

The justification and wisdom of the above maxim find sup-
port in a lesser degree from argument than from experience,
although the deductions from abstract reasoning ought alone
to constitute its sufficient indorsement. It has been pointed out
by Herbert Spencer that ideal men are possible only in an ideal
state ; and, conversely, that a perfect social state is possible only
when every unit has achieved perfection. As this condition has
not been attained, and until the "millennium" arrives is not
likely to be, the inference is legitimate that a large proportion of
mankind are not " decently honest," inasmuch as in every variety
of business where opportunity for the perpetration of fraud exists,
much labor is expended in guarding against dishonesty. This is
specially exemplified in the case of railroads, " where tickets have
to be dated, punched, and carefully collected to prevent their
being used again by the masses."

But it is in matters of taxation that the largest amount of irre-
futable evidence is to be found in support of the above maxim.
Thus in the case of smuggling or the evasion of duties on im-
ports, the experience of all governments and of almost all coun-
tries is to the effect, that when sufficient inducement in the way
of gain from a violation of the law is offered, such statute can
not be executed even when penalties as severe as death have been
made contingent on individual arrest and conviction. But it
has been reserved for that nation whose people claim to be the
most law-abiding and intelligent, to furnish the most confirma-
tory evidence on this subject — namely, the United States— the
Congress of which in 1865 imposed a tax on distilled spirits
amounting to more than fifteen hundred per cent on the then
average prime cost of production. The result was, that the
Government was only able in 1868 to collect the tax on less than
seven million gallons out of an annual product of certainly not
less than fifty million gallons; which last, sold as it undoubt-
edly was at the current market price (tax included), left to the
credit of popular corruption at least $80,000,000.

62 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The United States is confessedly one of the most powerful of
nations and governments, but its entire military force can not
crush the illicit traffic in refined opium, under a temptation of the
realization of six dollars contingent on every pound of this com-
modity that is successfully smuggled into the country.

4t»

THE BUBONIC PLAGUE.

By victor C. VAUGHAN,
pb0fe8s0k of hygiene in the university of michigak.

THOSE twin monsters of human misery, Famine and Disease,
are now holding high carnival in India. Death follows in
their wake and gathers in a rich harvest. Appeals to the chari-
table of the world are being made, and the civilized nations of
Europe and America are looking apprehensively toward the East.
The great plague, which has confined its ravages for the most
part to certain limited districts of Asia for the past two hundred
years, seems to have grown strong enough to threaten to take a
journey abroad. The black death has unfurled its banner in
the face of modern civilization. For a period of more than a
thousand years this disease once held dominion over Europe.
The story of the horrors of the fourteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies has seemed a history of a past so remote that it has been
nearly forgotten save by those especially interested in the prog-
ress of medicine. Is history to repeat itself in this form of
human suffering ? What is the bubonic plague ? Do we know
anything of its specific cause, of its methods of invasion, of
the means necessary to combat it ? These are questions which
I have thought might at this time be of more than passing
interest.

Oribasius was physician and friend of Julian the Apostate,
and lived in the fourth century of our era. He wrote a medical
encyclopfedia, composed principally of extracts from older med-
ical authors. This encyclopsedia remained unknown in the Vati-
can Library until the early part of the present century, when it
was discovered by that indefatigable student of old manuscripts.
Cardinal Mai. In the forty-fourth book of this collection there
is a note from Rufus, who states that the physicians of the time
of Dionysius were acquainted with a disease which is described
as " Pestilentes hubones maxime letales et acuti, qui maxime circum
Libyam et Egypium et Syriam observantur." There follows a
description of this disease sufiBciently accurate to leave no doubt
that it was identical with the bubonic plague. Now, this Dio-
nysius lived about three hundred years before Christ. There is

THE BUBONIC PLAGUE. 63

therefore no doubt that the plague has been known for more
than two thousand years.

The next authentic account of the plague is that of the epi-
demic of the sixth century. The disease at this time was first
recognized in Lower Egypt, from which country it extended into
Europe by two routes. It was brought from the north coast of
Africa, and it also extended through Palestine and Syria, and by
this way into Europe. This disease became pandemic and spread,
according to the chroniclers of the time, to the "ends of the
habitable world." It prevailed in an active form for about sixty
years, showing great virulence in certain localities. According
to Warnefrid, " it depopulated towns, turned the country into a
desert, and made the habitations of men to become the haunts of
wild beasts." Hirsch says : " It is impossible to decide whether
this outbreak of plague in the second half of the sixth century
was the first general diffusion of the disease on European soil, or
whether it had been epidemic there before, and if so, to what ex-
tent. What is certain is that this outbreak gave it firm hold in
Europe, and that it kept its dominion there for more than a
thousand years."

It is an interesting fact that this pandemic occurred during the
reign of Justinian the Great, the most illustrious emperor of the
Eastern Roman Empire. This man, who did so great a service to
the world in the codification of the Roman laws, seems to have
been both wise and unwise. He is said to have been so filled
with Christian ardor that he forcibly baptized more than seventy
thousand pagans in Asia Minor alone ; and yet he was a pagan by
birth, and there is reason for believing that he died a j^agan. He
is known as the great legislator, and yet he oppressed the people
to the verge of starvation by the imposition of unjust taxation,
and by granting monopolistic privileges to a few. On one side
he instituted just reforms and on the other he fell into reckless
and extravagant expenditures. He built the great cathedral of
St. Sophia, now a Turkish mosque and one of the architectural
wonders of the world, with a treasury filled with the sighs and
tears of his overtaxed subjects. I mention these facts in order to
show that the spread of the plague occurred at a time when the
masses of the people were ox3pressed by wrong and broken by
burdens too heavy to carry.

From the time of Justinian on, for more than ten centuries, as
has been stated, the plague raged, sometimes with more, some-
times with less, severity, in Europe. The historians of the time
generally content themselves with a statement of its most violent
outbursts and an enumeration of its victims. The numbers given
must, in many instances at least, be gross exaggerations. It is
possible, also, that other diseases, especially smallpox, were in-

64 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

eluded in these accoTints, but, as Hirscli states, the bubonic plague
takes at any rate a foremost place among the great epidemic dis-
eases of those times.

The same author says: "There is only one of the epidemics of
the plague in the middle ages that has arrested the attention of the
chroniclers, poets, and physicians of those days ; and that interest
was awakened by the enormous diffusion theat it reached over the
whole of the then known world, by its victims reckoned in mil-
lions, and by the shock to the framework of society which it
brought with it and left behind it. This disastrous pestilence,
known everywhere under the name of black death, as one of the
great events of the world's history, has fixed the attention of
writers in a high degree, and has been thought worthy to be
painted in minutest details and in the most vivid colors."

Several accounts of the plague of the fourteenth century have
become classical. Among them I may mention that of Boccaccio,
which begins as follows : " In the year, then, of the fruitful na-
tivity of our Lord, 1348, there hapjjened at Florence, the fairest
city in all Italy, a most terrible plague ; which, whether owing to
the influence of the planets, or that it was sent from God as a just
punishment for our sins, had broken out some years before in the
Levant " ; and concludes thus : " Between March and July follow-
ing it is supposed, and made pretty certain, that upward of a
hundred thousand souls perished in the city only ; whereas, be-
fore that calamity, it was not supposed to have contained so many
inhabitants. What .magnificent dwellings, what noble palaces
were then depopulated to the last person! What families ex-
tinct ! What riches and vast possessions left, and no known heir
to inherit ! What numbers of both sexes in the prime and vigor of
youth, whom in the morning, neither Galen, Hippocrates, nor
JEsculapius himself but would have declared in perfect health —
after dining heartily with their friends here, have supped with
their departed friends in the other world ! "

This epidemic, like all others of the plague, spread from the
East to the West. It prevailed in the Crimea in 1346, reached Con-
stantinople in 1347, and, as we have seen by this quotation from
Boccaccio, began its devastations in Florence in 1348, and by the
beginning of 1350 it had spread all over the continent of Europe
and the adjacent islands. Hecker places the number of deaths
from this epidemic at no less than twenty-five millions, or about
one fourth of the inhabitants of that part of the globe at the
time. Hirsch believes that this estimate was not too high.

The history of the fifteenth century is dotted with notes of
local epidemics, and at this time physicians begin to report more
accurately and in greater detail the characteristic symptoms and
the course of the disease. It was at this time that exanthematic

THE BUBONIC PLAGUE. 65

typlms was recognized as a distinct disease, and distinguished
from the other pests of the medical profession.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the bubonic
plague seems to have prevailed as an endemic disease in Europe.

There was scarcely a year during these two centuries that this
disease did not assume alarming proportions at some place on
that continent. The last visitation in England is known as the
Great Plague in London, which occurred in 1665. This has been
very graphically described by De Foe, and has been the basis of
the thrilling story by Ainsworth entitled Old St. Paul. During
the last quarter of the seventeenth century the plague seems to
have gradually receded toward the East.

During the eighteenth century it repeatedly threatened to ex-
tend over Europe, but seldom reached farther than Turkey and
the immediately adjacent territory to the north. However, there
were as many as eighteen distinct and severe epidemics in Con-
stantinople during that time.

Up to 1841 the plague occasionally became epidemic in the Bal-
kan Peninsula, and there was an outbreak in the province of
Astrakhan in the winter of 1878-79. Since the last-mentioned
years it has not appeared in Europe, but has continued in certain
parts of Asia. In 1894, just before the beginning of the Chinese-
Japanese War, it appeared in a virulent form at Hong Kong.
The Japanese Government sent Kitasato and the French sent Yer-
sin to study this disease according to the latest methods of bac-
teriological research. Both of these men were eminently quali-
fied for the work of their mission, and independently each soon
succeeded in isolating the specific bacillus. It is found in the
faeces, in the contents of the swollen glands, and in the blood. It
consists of rods with rounded ends, which take stains more
markedly at the extremities than in the middle. Sometimes the
germ seems to be surrounded with a capsule. In beef tea it grows
in chains and forms a viscid deposit on the walls and bottom of
the tube. It also grows on blood-serum and agar. On potatoes it
does not grow at ordinary temperature and only feebly at 38° C.
It shows but little motility and grows most abundantly at the
temperature of the body.

The bacillus is pathogenic to guinea pigs, rabbits, rats, and
mice, and it is stated that at times of the existence of an epidemic
of the plague some of these animals acquire the disease, and it
has been suggested that they may act as agents in its spread.
In the above-mentioned animals the first symptoms manifest
themselves usually within from one to two days after inocu-
lation. The animal becomes apathetic, the eyes are watery,
the temperature rises, and death, preceded by convulsive move-
ments, comes on within from two to five days. The tissue around

VOL. LI. — 5

66 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the point of inoculation is inflamed and infiltrated with a bloody,
gelatinous exudate. The spleen is enlarged and sometimes the
lymphatic glands are swollen. The bacillus is found in the blood
and in all the organs.

Mice and guinea pigs fed with pure cultures or with tissues
containing the germs die with the symptoms mentioned above.
Kitasato found the bacilli in a dead mouse from a plague- stricken
house. He also inoculated animals with dust gathered from such
houses, and one of these died with symptoms of the plague, and
the bacillus was found in its body. In certain parts of Asia
the disease is, according to Cantline, known as " rat plague," thus
indicating an extensive infection of these animals.

Cantline makes the following statement concerning the sus-
ceptibility of rats to the disease : " On all hands rats are reported
to behave peculiarly and with a wonderful constancy. Before, or
it may be during an epidemic of plague, or before the individuals
in any particular house in an infected locality are stricken, the
rats leave their haunts and seek the interior of the house. They
become careless of the presence of man, and run about in a dazed
way with a peculiar limping jerk or spasm of their hind legs.
They are frequently found on the bedroom floor or on the tables,
but not infrequently their death is known by the putrefactive
odor of their decomposition arising from beneath the flooring.
So pertinent has this rat affection become, that during the epi-
demic in Macao in 1895 the Chinese and Portuguese left their
houses when the diseased rats invaded their premises. The cause
of the rats' behavior is undoubtedly disease, and the symptoms
tally wonderfully with plague symptoms of man. Dr. Rennie
examined them carefully in Canton, and noted the following post-
mortem appearances : (1) The stomach was distended and filled
with particles of food, sand, and indigestible substances, and the
mucous membrane was red and inflamed toward the pyloric end ;
(2) the liver was much enlarged and congested, and contained
ova of tfenia and distoma ; (3) there was congestion at the base
of the lung present in about forty per cent ; and (4) glandular
enlargement was present in thirty per cent of those examined.
There is no doubt now that the disease in the rat and man is
identical. The bacillus of plague has been met with in every
case of rat disease of this description when it has been searched
for. The infection of the rat is raised from being a mere popular
belief into one of scientific precision, and we must now accept the
rat, at any rate, as one animal liable to the plague. Whether the
rat is affected previously to, coincidently with, or subsequently to
man being attacked is open to question. Is the disease among rats
a forerunner of its outbreak in man, and, if so, are they a means
of infection ? These are, of course, two separate questions."

THE BUBONIC PLAGUE. 67

Exposure of the bacillus in thin layers to the direct action of
sunlight destroys it after from three to four hours, but to accom-
plish a like result from exposure to diffuse light as many days are
necessary. The germ is killed by an exposure to a temperature
of 80° C. for thirty minutes and at 100° C. within a few minutes.
Spore formation has not been observed.

There is some reason for believing that there is a pseudo-
bacillus of the plague as there is one of diphtheria. In his studies
of the soil of the infected districts of Hong Kong, Yersin found a
bacillus that resembled that obtained from persons with the dis-
ease, both morphologically and in its growth on culture media,
but it was without effect upon mice and guinea pigs. He also
observed great differences in virulence in the germs obtained
from the sick ; some of these were without effect upon the above-
mentioned animals. There were, moreover, observable varia-
tions in the size of the bacilli found in the bodies of the sick
and dead.

The studies of Yersin and Kitasato were interrupted by the
war between China and Japan, and a much more thorough knowl-
edge of the bacillus and the disease caused by it will probably
soon be in our possession.

I will now consider some of the characteristic symptoms of the
disease. It is undoubtedly a septicemia, or form of blood-poi-
soning. As has been stated, the bacillus is found in the blood
and in all the organs. It is customary to describe the disease
under two forms. The milder epidemics are known under the
name of pestis minor. In this form the glands of the groins and
armpits swell and either suppurate or undergo resolution. There
is moderate fever, although in exceptional cases the temperature
may reach 104° F. The disease usually continues from ten to
twenty days, and may last for from four to eight weeks. Pestis
minor sometimes precedes and at other times follows the more
severe forms of the disease. The former was the case in the
epidemics in Mesopotamia in 1873 to 1878, and in Astrakhan
in 1878.

Foder^, as quoted by Cantline, makes the following statement
concerning pes^t's minor : " In the Levant and in the Marseilles epi-
demics of 1820, cases were to be seen which were not ushered in
by any alarming symptoms, and where the natural functions were
undisturbed, and where buboes and carbuncles appeared without
fever, or only with slight fever, or the buboes went on to a healthy
suppuration more or less prompt, or even disappeared and went
on to resolution without the help of art, without any inconven-
ience, and with a perfect integrity of all the functions. This state
is comparable to benign smallpox, during which children play to-
gether and walk in the streets without any precautions, no care

68 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

being taken of their treatment, and yet terminating favorably.
It is the benign plague of authors, which is observed when the
disease commences and when it is at its end, though it is rarely
seen in the middle period, which is entirely devastating, but it is
not less plague, and it no less merits the attention of physicians
and magistrates."

In pestis major there is a prodromal stage, accompanied by
aching in the limbs, shivering, and a high degree of nervousness.
The patient seems to be unable to quickly comprehend questions.
There is a staggering gait similar to that of alcoholic intoxication.
There is intense headache, with thirst and great pain in the epi-
gastrium. The eyes become red ; the tongue dry, swollen, fissured,
and sometimes black, and at other times covered with a thick
white coat. Coma may set in and death result before there is any
marked elevation of temperature. In some cases, however, the
temperature may reach 107° F. during the twenty-four hours pre-
ceding death.

In the cases less rapidly fatal there are glandular swellings.
These occur in the groin in about fifty per cent of the cases, in
the armpits in about thirty-five per cent, and less frequently in
the neck and other localities. One peculiarity of the graver form
of the disease is the occurrence of stablike pains in various por-
tions of the body. This symptom gives rise to the superstition
among the ignorant that the victim is wounded by invisible
arrows shot from the bow of some demon. Suppuration of the
buboes with free discharge has been regarded as a favorable
symptom. The skin is sometimes covered with livid petechias,
w^hich become very dark after death. This condition gave rise
to the term black death, which has been applied to certain epi-
demics. Large carbuncles may form in various parts of the body,
and these are regarded as a very unfavorable sign.

A highly fatal form of the disease is accompanied by haemor-
rhages from the lungs. This was a noticeable feature of the pan-
demic of the sixteenth century, and it was also observed in the
recent outbreak along the Volga. Such haemorrhages indicate a
grave form of intoxication, and have been observed in the severer
forms of other acute infectious diseases, such as smallpox.

The virulent form of the plague is often very rapid in its
action, sometimes destroying life in a few hours, but the majority
of fatal cases terminate about the fifth day. During an epidemic
at Bagdad it was said that those who lived until the seventh day
were safe, but, according to Colvill, four per cent of the fatal cases
terminated after the tenth day.

The mortality from the plague in its virulent form is probably
as great as or greater than any other of the acute infectious dis-
eases. In many epidemics it may be more than ninety per cent.

THE BUBONIC PLAGUE. 69

Hecker gives the following statement, which must be an ex-
aggeration, concerning the mortality of the black death : " Cairo
lost daily, when the plague was raging with its greatest violence,
from ten to fifteen thousand. In China more than thirteen mil-
lions are said to have died. India was depopulated. In Caramania
and Csesarea none were left alive. On the roads, in the camps, in
the caravansaries, unburied bodies alone were seen. Twenty-two
thousand persons and most of the animals were carried off in
Gaza within six weeks. Cyprus lost almost all its inhabitants,
and ships without crews were often seen in the Mediterranean, as
afterward in the North Sea, driving about and spreading the
plague wherever they went on shore. It was reported to Pope
Clement that throughout the East, probably with the exception
of China, 23,840,000 people had fallen victims to the plague."

Probably the most constant pathological lesion found after
death from this disease is an enlargement of the lymphatic glands.
The disease may run so rapid a course that the enlargement of the
glands is not observable during life, but, according to recent and
competent observers, changes in these tissues will be found in the
great majority of cases. This has led Cantline who studied the
disease at Hong Kong in 1894, to propose for it the appellation of
" malignant polyadenitis." The same authority offers the follow-
ing definition : " Plague or malignant polyadenitis is an acute
febrile disease of an intensely fatal nature, characterized by in-
flammation of the lymphatic glands, marked cerebral and vascu-
lar disturbances, and by the presence of a specific bacillus."

Geographically the plague has been known as far east as the
island of Formosa, where it now prevails ; as far west as Ireland ;
as far north as Norway ; and there is no definite information con-
cerning its extension southward in Africa. It has never been
known in the western hemisphere, but this is only due to the fact
that up to the present time there has been no opportunity of its
importation to this half of the world.

In this connection the following quotation from Hecker may
be of interest : " The inhabitants of Iceland and Greenland found
in the coldness of their inhospitable climate no protection against
the southern enemy who had penetrated to them from happier
countries. The plague caused great havoc among them. Nature
made no allowance for their constant warfare with the elements
and the parsimony with which she meted out to them the enjoy-
ments of life. In Denmark and Norway, however, people were so
occupied with their own misery that the accustomed voyages to
Greenland ceased. Towering icebergs formed at the same time
on the coast of east Greenland, in consequence of the general con-
cussion of the earth's organism, and no mortal from that time for-
ward has ever seen that shore or its inhabitants."

70 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

There is no known racial immunity to this disease. It is alike
fatal to Mongolians, Africans, and Europeans. It has prevailed
in the marshes along the Euphrates and on the Himalayas ; in
densely populated cities and in sparsely settled rural districts ; on
the sands of Egypt and amid the snows of Norway.

Climate and season have been studied in order to establish be-
tween them and the plague a causal relationship. Epidemics have
followed prolonged droughts, and have prevailed during rainy
seasons. The wind may blow where it listeth, but the bacillus
heedeth it not. The epidemic at Hong Kong in 1894 appeared
after a prolonged season of dry weather. Rain was anxiously
looked for — probably prayed for. It was said. All will be well
when the rain comes. At last the rain did come, and with it the
disease seemed to be refreshed and the number of deaths was mul-
tiplied. The attempt to find in meteorological conditions a cause
for our ills is a relic of the superstition of ages when it was be-
lieved that disease was sent from heaven to afflict man for his
sins, and was due to the anger of the gods.

Overcrowding is undoubtedly a factor in the distribution of
this disease, as it is of all other infectious diseases, simply because
it renders transmission of the germ from one to the other more
speedy and certain ; but that the disease can be due to overcrowd-
ing is, in the present state of our knowledge, an absurdity.

Poverty and famine are factors in the propagation of the dis-
ease. Want of proper food renders the individual more suscep-
tible. This has been demonstrated in case of more than one in-
fectious disease by experiments upon the lower animals. Priva-
tion has always been associated with the most notable outbreaks
of the plagues. As stated in the beginning of this paper, famine
and disease are twin brothers, inseparable. Where one of them
dwells there the other may be found. This is undoubtedly the
reason why this disease has always found a home in the Levan-
tine. Cantline says : " In the densely packed cities of Asia the
poor exist forever on the fringe of destitution, and the least rise
in the price of food brings scarcity, so that the term, ' the poor
man's plague,' holds good for all time."

There has been much written concerning the period of incuba-
tion of this disease, but necessarily all is indefinite. Because a
well man comes in contact with a sick one on a certain day, and
manifests the first symptoms of the disease ten days later, does
not prove that the period of incubation is ten days. The well man
may have carried on his person the bacillus from the sick-room,
and any time subsequent thereto it may have been introduced into
the body. All that is said about the period of incubation of the
infectious disease is based on the old theory — long since exploded
— that the well man breathes in the miasm at the time of his com-

THE BUBONIC PLAGUE. 71

ing into the presence of tlie sick one, while the truth is he may-
carry the germ under his finger nails or elsewhere about him, and
there is no telling when it may first find its way into his body.
We can determine the period of incubation in the lower animals
by inoculation, and here we know that it varies greatly with the
method of inoculation, the virulence of the germ, the number of
germs introduced, and the susceptibility of the animal. All that
may be said about the period of incubation in man is of but little
value. The same is largely true concerning the extent to which
the disease is contagious. In the epidemic of 1835 in Egypt only
one of the French physicians who attended the sick contracted
the disease. Bulard, who did not believe the plague contagious,
wore for two days a shirt taken from the body of a dead man.
He remained well, and thought that by this he had demonstrated
the truth of his theory. Such experiments demonstrate nothing.
There is no evidence that any of the bacilli were on the garment,
or that, if they were, they were introduced into his body. During
the epidemic in Hong Kong, fifteen European physicians and a
number of Chinese medical students cared for the sick in the hos-
pital, and none acquired the disease. This only shows that with
care and cleanliness the sick may be attended without danger of
infection of the attendants. Hundreds of bacteriologists in labo-
ratories are daily handling the most virulent cultures of the diph-
theria bacillus, and the first case of infection from this source has
yet to be reported. This does not prove that these bacilli are not
pathogenic to man, or that these men are insusceptible to the dis-
ease. Because an expert handles the most venomous serpents
without being bitten, does not prove that the bite of these reptiles
is harmless.

The exaggerated idea of the contagiousness of the plague held
by some of the older writers is exemplified in a graphic way by
the following quotation from Hecker : "Every spot which the
sick had touched, their breath, their clothes, spread the conta-
gion ; and, as in all other places, the attendants and friends who
were either blind to their danger or heroically despised it, fell a
sacrifice to their sympathy. Even the eyes of the patient were
considered as a source of contagion which had the power of act-
ing at a distance, whether on account of their unwonted luster or
the distortion which they always suffer in plague, or whether in
conformity with an ancient notion, according to which the sight
was considered as the bearer of demoniacal enchantment.''

The plagues of the middle ages were undoubtedly spread by
the processions of the Brotherhood of the Cross. These fanatics
went, sometimes in great numbers, from place to place, praying
for the sins of the world, and scourging themselves with leathern
straps armed with points of iron.

72 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The horrors of the plague of the fourteenth century have been
depicted by Hecker and others. The moral depravity brought to
light by this great epidemic is hardly credible. Many believed
themselves poisoned, and suspicion fell upon the Jews, who have
so often been treated by Christians with barbaric cruelty. Under
the torture confessions were made, and then began the whole-
sale slaughter of the children of Abraham. In Basle, the whole
Jewish population was brought together in a wooden building
constructed for the purpose and burned. "At Strasburg two
thousand Jews were burned alive in their own burial ground.
... At Eslingen the whole Jewish community burned them-
selves in their synagogue ; and mothers were often seen throw-
ing their children on the pile to prevent their being baptized,
and then precipitating themselves into the flames. ... In all the
countries on the Rhine these cruelties continued to be perpe-
trated during the succeeding months; and after quiet was in
some degree restored, the people thought to render an acceptable
service to God by taking the bricks of the destroyed dwellings
and the tombstones of the Jews to repair churches and to erect
belfries."

Knowing, as we now do, the specific cause of the plague, we
may easily predicate the modes of its distribution. Anything
that carries the bacillus may be an agent of its transmission from
one person to another, or from one country to another. It is need-
less to dwell upon this point.

Is there danger of the plague being imported to this coun-
try ? Yes, there is danger, but this being foreseen may be eas-
ily avoided. Thorough inspection of persons and disinfection
of things from infected districts will keep the disease out of
Europe and America. Only by the most gross carelessness could
the plague be permitted to enter either of these continents. The
method of disinfecting the mails from the Orient, as practiced
by the English, is wholly inadequate, and the American authori-
ties should redisinfect all such matter coming from the infected
districts of India.

On the occasion of the opening of the Davy Faraday Research Labora-
tory at the Royal Institution, London, Dr. Ludwig Mond observed that if
Great Britain had distinguished itself in one way more than another in
that glorious rivalry with other nations for extending our knowledge of
natural phenomena and our power over the forces of Nature, it had -been
by the large number of contributors to our knowledge who on the Conti-
nent would be called amateurs in science— men who devoted their lives to
the study and advancement of science from pure love of the subject. He
need only instance the names of Cavendish, Joule, and Darwin to say that
they included men of the very highest rank.

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION IN MASSACHUSETTS. 73
HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION IN MASSACHUSETTS.

By CHARLES LIVY WHITTLE, M. E.

IN the course of time there have been many changes in the
method of transporting merchandise from town to town and
from one country to another. Here, as in everything else, we see
the gradual evolution of transportation, at first by man or beast,
and finally by steam and electricity. Early man used himself as
a beast of burden, and finally the ox and other animals were
made to do service in his stead. With every improvement in
method came a wider and wider range of trade and its consequent
benefits. Efforts to improve the means of transportation resulted
in the early invention of carriage by water. Hence we see the
maritime peoples were the first to attain any considerable com-
mercial prominence.

At the time this country was settled the lack of adequate
means of moving commodities, excepting by water, led to the
settlement of lands bordering the ocean, streams, and lakes, while
equally good lands, not in close vicinity to water, offered but little
attraction to the settler. Gradually the frontier was pushed far-
ther westward ; the narrow and obscure Indian trails were trans-
formed into paths for horses and eventually became carriage
roads. Before the railroad was devised public roads that pos-
sessed any claims to excellence were limited to the more popu-
lous States bordering the Atlantic coast. It is without doubt
true that, had not transportation by rail been invented until the
present time, the public roads of this country would be in a far
more satisfactory condition than we find them to-day. With the
advent of the locomotive came the withdrawal of active interest
in the character of our highways. All the energies of our people
were devoted to extending and perfecting the vast network of
railroads that cross and recross the United States. Railway con-
struction has now reached an equation of demand and supply,
a,nd we once again see the Commonwealths awakening to the im-
portance of good roads, many communities vying with one an-
other in their efforts to lead the States and earn a reputation for
the excellent character of their highways.

The natural conservatism of the farming element of our peo-
ple has been a difiicult feature of the problem of arousing public
interest in better roads to overcome in the past. The farmer has
had but few object lessons in what a road should be. Adding to
this the objections he has to an increase of taxation, we perceive
the difficulties that stand in the way of educating the people up
to the point of appreciating the numerous advantages that would
accrue to them with a system of highways properly constructed

VOL. LI. — 6

74 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and maintained. Little attention has been paid by the rural
dweller to the arguments in favor of good roads. His line of
reasoning is that roads that were satisfactory to his father and
grandfather are good enough for him. In vain has he been told
that, with good roads all the year round, the farmer and mer-
chant come into closer communication ; that he can sell his stock
and grain when prices tempt him, instead of being dependent
upon a favorable state of the road ; that he can buy his supplies
on rainy days, and increase his number of perishable crops,
which are of uncertain value with bad roads, but become of cer-
tain value when impassable ways cease to cause spasmodic trans-
portation.

To-day State roads are furnishing the farmer the much-needed
object lessons — roads which by their general excellence through-
out the year are causing, as in some counties in New Jersey, a
marked increase in farm values. Other States, as Massachusetts,
are building highways with State money, one fourth of which is
eventually returned to the State by the county traversed by the
way, while the legislative enactments of other States require a
portion of the expense to be borne by the county in which the
road lies, and by the freeholders whose property immediately
abuts the improved roads. The mutual benefit derived from im-
proved highways by all classes of people is now generally recog-
nized in the more thrifty States, and from now on we may expect
with surety the gradual development of our highways until the
principal thoroughfares of the country come up to the required
standard of excellence.

Travelers have described the celebrated Peruvian military
road, leading from Cuzco to Quito, that was constructed long be-
fore the time the Spaniards conquered that country, about 1544.
This road is variously estimated at fifteen hundred to two thousand
miles in length, passing over deep caiions and across high moun-
tain ranges. Large sandstone blocks formed the foundation, and
this was covered with a native cement of a bituminous nature,
forming a very smooth surface possessing great durability. Some
portions of the road are still in an excellent state of preservation.
The Romans also constructed over ten thousand miles of paved
ways ; but none of these ancient builders understood the prin-
ciples made use of to-day.

The art of building the type of road known as the modern
highway is not a new one. The second decade of this century in
England witnessed the first examples of turnpikes constructed on"
scientific principles in that country as enunciated by Macadam.
Like many discoveries, the first and one of the most important
principles involved is one that we should expect would have been
discovered and put in general practice long before 1816. At that

76 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

time it was the custom in Great Britain, as elsewhere, to build
roads very largely of clay or gravel. Macadam observed that
gravel never afforded a good, compact wearing surface until a
large amount of traffic had passed over it, when it became hard-
ened and cemented together. He sought an explanation of this
phenomenon, and learned that when the pebbles were broken
under the impact of heavy wheels they soon consolidated into a
firm mass. Here was the great principle : angular stones solidify
underpressure; rounded stones do not.* Amplifying this prin-
ciple, he built up a complete system of road building which is
in use to-day, as best shown in Switzerland and France, in Eng-
land, and in other foreign countries, and is being revived so gen-
erally in this country at the present time, where the farmer is
learning its advantages in the appreciation of land values, and
where the bicyclist promotes the cause as the advance agent of
good roads.

As defined by Macadam, a good road should be a hard, some-
what elastic surface to receive the wear of all kinds of traffic at
every season of the year and during the greatest vicissitudes of
weather, which shall also serve as a roof to that part of the road
lying below. To use his own words, " A road ought to be con-
sidered as an artificial floor, forming a strong, smooth, solid sur-
face, at once capable of carrying great weights, and over which
carriages may pass without meeting any impediment." In order
to realize such a surface it is necessary that the substructure of
the road should be kept free from water, since, by the alternating
freezing and thawing of the water, the wearing surface of the
broken stone is disrupted, the water is offered a passageway
through it, and the road becomes rough and difficult to travel.

It was the custom of Macadam, after the engineering work
was completed and the subgrade established, to spread on a layer
of stone to a depth of ten inches and to roll this surface with a
heavy roller drawn by horses. These stones were broken by hand
with small hammers, frequently a whole family working together,
and were broken small enough to pass through a three-inch ring,
or were not to have a maximum weight of over six ounces. A
family of five people could break several tons per day. Side
ditches were excavated where necessary, so that at no season of
the year could water penetrate to the substructure of the road.

In 1816 Macadam began the construction and maintenance of
one hundred and eighty miles of turnpike in Bristol District,

* It is not improbable that Macadam was acquainted with the Napoleonic military roads
constructed in France about 1775, wliicli involved the piinciple of a thin layer of broken
stone placed on a rock foundation. These roads were the invention of Tresaguet, a French-
man, at about this time, and to him seems to be due the credit of first constructing wliat is
now known essentially as the Telford system.

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION IN MASSACHUSETTS jj

England.* A modification of this system was adopted by Thomas
Telford about this time, which substituted a layer, or foundation,
of irregular broken stone, set up on edge on the subgrade. Nine
inches was the maximum dimension of these fragments. The
rough surface thus made was smoothed down by going over it
and breaking off the tops of the blocks with small hammers and
packing the pieces thus obtained between the large blocks. This
surface was then rolled as before. Telford built the celebrated
Holyhead road, extending from Holyhead through North Wales
to Shrewsbury — a road that served as a model at the board of
inquiry appointed by Parliament in 1823. Each system had its
partisans, and to-day the best features of both methods have been
adopted under different conditions, dependent upon the character
of the ground over which the road passes.

In 1892 the State of Massachusetts appointed a commission to
investigate and report upon the character of the highways of the
State, and to point out the trend that legislation should take in
the matter of framing laws appropriating a yearly sum of money
for the construction of State roads, and defining the powers of the
Highway Commission to be appointed under the same act. This
commission made its first report in 1893, and, on June 20, 1894, the
Legislature appropriated the sum of three hundred thousand dol-
lars for this purpose, to be used at the discretion of the Highway
Commissioners the ensuing year. This commission appoints its
own chief engineer, who has ultimate authority with the commis-
sion in the settlement of all questions that arise in connection
with the work.

The laws enacted at this time do not place the initiation of
State roads directly in the hands of the commission, but make
the commissioners the tribunal to which all petitions made by
towns, cities, or counties of the State are referred for action. It
is a part of the policy of the commission not to allow a random
construction of isolated stretches of road, but to make all ways
constructed fit into a general scheme that shall have for its object
a system of thoroughfares traversing the State that shall benefit
the greatest number of municipalities and the State as a whole.

The method of procedure, as defined by the statute of 1894, is as
follows : The selectmen of any town, the aldermen of any city, or
the county commissioners must first file a petition with the High-
way Commissioners, accompanied by a plan and profile of the
road. Plans are then prepared by the chief engineer and sub-
mitted to the commission for its approval. It is a part of the set-

* Although one of tlie earliest pieces of work on a large scale that was ever attempted,
the report of the board of inquiry, referred to above, showed that similar roads had been
built in Sweden previous to 1823.

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HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION IN MASSACHUSETTS. 79

tied policy of the commission to reduce all grades to a maximum
of five feet in one hundred — called a five-per-cent grade. After
courses and distances are plotted, and the necessary data obtained
for determining the quantity of the various materials used in the
construction of a road, a conference is held between the peti-
tioners and the State commissioners, in order to ascertain if a
contract for the construction of the road is to be made by the
municipality, and, if so, at what price it is to be done. In case
the city or town authorities are unwilling to contract for the
work upon the prices agreed, the commission advertises the same,
and it is let to the lowest responsible bidder, subject to the ap-
proval of the Governor and Council. It is the custom in award-
ing competitive contracts to require the contractor to furnish
bonds : one insuring a faithful completion of the work ; the other
to safeguard the interests of the town or city in case damage
results from accidents during the building of the way. Upon the
contract being made and a notification being received that the
municipality or contractor is ready to proceed with the work, the
commission appoints a resident engineer, who has personal charge
of the work of construction, subject only to the supervision of
the chief engineer.

Now comes the period of actual construction, and the first step
in advance is the excavation and filling the road to the required
subgrade. In general the subgrade is about nine inches below
the finished grade ; but the extent of excavation differs widely in
actual practice, owing to the different treatment necessary as
determined by the varying character of the ground. The sub-
grade established and rolled, broken stone is then added to a
depth of six inches, the fragments varying in size from one and
a quarter to two and a quarter inches in their longest dimen-
sion. This is then rolled with a steam roller until thoroughly
compacted (Plate I). A second layer of broken stone, three
inches thick, is next spread upon the road, the pieces ranging in
size from one half to one and a quarter inch. This is then
rolled as before, and a finishing coating of screenings, put
through a half-inch mesh, is then added to a depth of half an
inch. Water is now turned on until the broken stone is well wet
down, when the final rolling is done, and the surface becomes
firmly and smoothly knit together (Plate II). In the foreground
of this picture the second layer of broken stone is seen. The main
part of the road is in its completed state, having just been com-
pacted with the steam roller. Some modifications are made in
these steps of the process, depending upon the quality of the
stone used and the amount and kind of travel to which the road
is to be subjected. As pointed out by Macadam, it is not wise to
place a layer of broken stone directly upon a subgrade of granite

8o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or other rock existing as a ledge. Owing to the loss of the ele-
ment of elasticity, the road would soon become weakened in its
coherency, and the rate of wear would be much increased. It is
therefore customar}^ to excavate, when a cut in rock is necessary,
some four inches below subgrade, and to fill in to subgrade with
gravel on which the broken stone is placed as before.

Another modification is practiced when clayey, wet ground is
encountered. Under these circumstances it is generally best to
excavate some sixteen inches below the finished grade and spread
on a layer of gravel four inches deep. Upon this Telford founda-
tion is laid by hand to a depth of eight or ten inches and care-
fully rolled (Plate III). A layer of broken stone is then put on,
and a finishing coating of screenings is added as before.

As to the character of the roads already constructed in Massa-
chusetts, Prof. N. S. Shaler, of the Highway -Commission, in-
formed the writer that, in his opinion, they are in no way inferior,
in so far as quality and durability are concerned, to the celebrated
Swiss roads.

So well pleased are the people of Massachusetts with the State
roads already constructed, and so active are they in the cause of
good roads, that the Legislature appropriated the additional sum
of four hundred thousand dollars for highway construction dur-
ing the year 1895 and five hundred thousand dollars in 1896.

At first glance it would seem that the engineering skill neces-
sary to construct a Macadam road would not be of a particularly
high order ; and yet the problems involved in building roads in
the latitude of Massachusetts, where great variations exist in the
character of the soil, owing to the glacial conditions that once
existed here, call for engineering ability of a peculiar kind, as
well as an extended experience in the treatment of special cases
and the economical application of the materials at hand.

As an adjunct of the Highway Commission, a laboratory has
been established in Cambridge, where the systematic study of
road materials is carried on. It has come to be generally recog-
nized that materials which possess the necessary qualities for a
good road stone are both limited in kind and in quantity. It is
the object of these laboratory investigations to classify the road
stones of the State in the order of their fitness for this purpose,
and to prepare a map showing the area and location of the most
desirable varieties. Here are investigated the questions of the
rate of wear of stones under impact, and the cementing and re-
cementing value of the powdered rock on which the life of the
road depends in a large measure. The hardness and toughness
also come within the scope of the experimental work. Experi-
ment has shown that a stone must possess certain all-around
properties in order to come up to the desired standard. For

82 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

example, ({uartz or quartzite has a hardness of seven in a scale of
ten, and for this quality alone it is best suited for road building
of any rock of common occurrence ; but it does not possess any
cementing power or elasticity whatever, and is therefore of little
use for Macadam work. As a result of long trial on roads in
England and on the Continent, it is found that the stone best
suited for road metal must possess toughness and cementing
qualities and as great a resistance to abrasion as is possible in a
stone having the first two properties. It is an important fact
that experimental investigation in the laboratory has pointed
scientifically to the same conclusions that have been obtained
from the severe test of long experience in actual use.

The most important road stones are known under the common
names of " trap " or " dike stones." They are usually of a dark-
green color, are fine-grained, and are composed essentially of the
minerals pyroxene or hornblende and feldspar, the individual
minerals often not being visible to the unaided eye. Geologically,
they are rocks that have been forced up through fissures in the
earth's crust from great depths, where they existed in a melted
condition. Rocks of this kind are very numerous in eastern
Massachusetts and generally throughout the old mountain ranges
of the United States. The road engineer, however, has other
materials besides quarry stone, which, though not possessing so
many good qualities, nevertheless make excellent road metal
under proper conditions. Among these may be mentioned the
blue glacial gravels, kame gravels, beach pebbles, and field stones.

Another rock in common use in various parts of New Eng-
land is granite (a mixture of the minerals quartz and feldspar)
and the allied rock, gneiss. Both these rocks are normally coarse-
grained, possessing a hardness, as measured by that of their com-
ponent minerals, a little under seven. In its use as broken stone
granite has certain advantages over quartz alone, in that the
feldspar, when pulverized or decomposed by the action of the
weather, has considerable cementing value ; but the decomposi-
tion of the feldspar liberates the quartz, and the physical difl^er-
ences in the matter of hardness, cleavage, etc., between the quartz
and the feldspar promote differential wear of the stone as well as
other defects. Granite, however, is an important road stone, and
is far superior to such rocks as limestones, slates, or marbles,
which, owing to their softness, are rapidly worn out.

The production of broken stone has now assumed such im-
portance that several concerns in Massachusetts are making a
regular business of furnishing all sizes to the State or munici-
palities. Broken stone, as a commercial commodity, is now sold
on the cars at about one dollar to one dollar and seventy cents
per ton for the best quality of trap.

DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 83

THE DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL

SCIENCES.

. By FREDERICK STARR.

THE scientific work of our Government bureaus and of the
great universities of our country is of supreme importance
and justly arouses the pride of every American. It is not likely to
be overlooked. The work of local societies is less imposing, but
is of the highest importance and calls for more than a passing
word. In many American cities there are organizations of per-
sons who are intelligently interested in science. These hold regu-
lar meetings for discussion, publish papers as new contributions
to science, and gather museum collections which serve as object
lessons to the public. Few persons realize how much such local
organizations, supported by private means and personal enthusi-
asm, are doing for the cause of science. To make known the
story of some of these academies of science and to sketch their
work is the purpose of the series of articles of which this is the
first. To present their achievements and their claims to respect
and assistance is a task which the author gladly undertakes,
being one of the many students who have been helped and en-
couraged by them.

The choice of the Davenport Academy of Science as the sub-
ject of this first article is simply from convenience. In some
respects the story of its origin and development is typical, in
others unusual. There is rather more of personality in it than in
most, for the Davenport Academy has had a peculiar environ-
ment. When it was organized the city of Davenport was in the
" far West " ; opportunities for literary and scientific work were
meager ; the town itself was small, commercial, unsympathetic.
That any organization of its kind so far from other centers
should exist and thrive was astonishing.

In 1867, on December 14th, four gentlemen — Messrs. L. T. Eads,
A. U. Barler, A. S. Tiffany, and W. H. Pratt — met in a business
office to organize a natural history society. No one of the four
was a professional scientist ; all were busy men ; none of them was
really wealthy. They added names enough to their own to sup-
ply officers and a board of trustees, drew up a constitution and
by-laws, and then and there became an actual society. Thereafter
regular meetings were held and topics of more or less scientific
importance were discussed. Before a year had passed the mem-
bership had grown to more than fifty, and the attendance at the
meetings indicated continued interest. A cabinet of natural his-
tory was begun and a place for its display was secured in the
rooms of the Davenport Library Association. The first sign.

84

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

however, that the organization was really purposing to advance
the sum of human knowledge was given when the academy ar-
ranged for the scientific observation of the solar eclipse of August
7, 1869. The undertaking was a somewhat serious one for the
little group of workers. Money had to be secured and subscrip-
tion lists were passed. Arrangements were made for photograph-
ing, and during the two hours of the shadow three dozen negatives
were made, of which twenty were fairly good. From them sets

of prints were made, some of which were sold to repay expenses,
others of which were sent to foreign societies. It was the first
exchange contact of the academy with the scientific world.

In July, 1873, the academy, now nearly six years old, rented
" a small back room," into which it put three or four cases for its
collection and where for the first time it felt itself at home. The
next year more commodious quarters were obtained in the Odd-
Fellows' Building. Increasing activity showed itself by weekly
conversaziones of a popular kind in addition to the regular meet-
ings, by the purchase of a geological library, and by field work in

DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 85

local archaeology. More room was necessary, and the lady mem-
bers— for lady members had been determined to be a good thing
— bestirred themselves to secure and furnish a second room.
This was progress, but greater things were in mind. Even as
early as March, 1873, there was talk of buying property or a
building. At that time a combination scheme was in mind, the
Library Association, Horticultural Society, and academy uniting
in the purchase. Fortunately, the plan failed. On Washington's
birthday, 1877, Mrs, Newcomb donated a building lot to the
academy. The fever to build was fanned. Before the year ended
plans were drawn up and the building erected. Just one year to
a day from the donation of the land the building was opened.

The first president of the academy was Prof. David Sylvester
Sheldon.* He was born in Vermont, December G, 1809. At six-
teen years of age he went to Castleton Academy, and three years
later to Middlebury College, where he was graduated in his
twenty-third year. Studying theology at Andover, he never
preached, but entered the vocation of teaching. For a time he
was principal of the academy at Bennington, Vt., then taught at
Potsdam, N. Y., and still later at Northampton, Mass, At thirty-
nine years he had lost health and was compelled to travel in the
South. Going West later, he settled at Burlington, Iowa, in 1850.
When forty- four years old he accepted the chair of Natural Sci-
ence in Iowa College, then located at Davenport. Later on the
college removed to Grinnel, but Prof. Sheldon remained in Dav-
enport, where subsequently he took a professorship in Griswold
College, retaining it until his death in 1886. Prof. Sheldon was
an inspiring teacher, a man of excellent thought, and of kind and
lovely character. He was an ardent collector and student, but
not a writer. Local zoology and botany occupied much of his
attention, and the remarkable collection of fresh-water Unios
which he made greatly delighted Louis Agassiz. In his botanical
field work, the afterward eminent botanist Sereno Watson, then a
young man, was associated with him. When the Academy of

* The list of presidents of the academy is as follows :

186'7.— Prof. D. S. Sheldon. I 1884.— H. C. Fulton.

1868-'69-'70- Yl-'7:2-'73-"74.— Dr. C. ! 1885-'86.— Charles E. Putnam.

C. Parry. 1887-88.— Charles E. Harrison.

1875.— Dr. E. H. Hazen.
1876.— Prof. W. H. Barris.
1877.— Rev. S. S. Hunting.
1878. — Dr. R. J. Farquharson.
1879. — Mrs. Mary L. D. Putnam.
1880.— Prof. W. H. Pratt.
1881. — J. Duncan Putnam.
1882.— Dr. C. H. Preston.
1888.- E. P. Lynch.

1889- 90.— Dr. Jennie McCowen.

1891. — James Thompson.

1692. — James Thompson (died night of
his election, Dr. William L. Allen,
1st Vice-President, acting President
1892).

1893-'94.— Dr. William L. Allen.

1895-96.— Edward S. Hammatt.

86

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Science was organized, Prof. Sheldon, then a man of sixty years,
was urged to be president. He retained the office only a few
months, but up to the last week of his life he was the academy's
trusted counselor, constant supporter, and faithful friend.

Fortunately, there was then in Davenport one who was a pro-
fessionally scientific man — Dr. C. C. Parry. For more than six

Fig. 2. — David Sylvester Sheldon.

Fig. 3. — Charles CHRisioruEB I'aruy.

years he was president of the academy. From the start he held
the idea that the academy was called to a higher purpose than to
supply pastime to a few townspeople. Charles Christopher Parry
was born in Admington, Gloucester, England, August 28, 1823.
When he was but nine years old his parents came to this country,
settling in Washington County, New York. Educated at Union
College, Schenectady, he studied medicine at Columbia College.
He settled in Davenport in 1846. There he was a diligent student
of the local flora. Later on he examined the mountain flora of
California, Colorado, and Mexico. He was official botanist of the
Mexican Boundary Survey. Later he held official positions in
the Department of Agriculture and as special agent of the For-
estry Department of the census of 1880. His journeys to every
part of our great Western mountain region were extensive and
scientifically productive. He was the discoverer and describer of
many new species of plants and of several important genera. His
name is associated with that of Torrey and Gray both in geogra-
phy and on the pages of botanical literature. A man of energy,
convictions, and heart, he was the very one to shape and mold a

DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 87

young society's work. In one of his presidential addresses before
the academy, Dr. Parry emphasized the importance of three
things to be held constantly in mind toward which to work.
These were (1) a home, (2) a complete local collection, (3) publica-
tion. These three aims have ever been before the academy. We
have seen how they gained the first ; the second has been in view
from the very inception of the society ; the third began early to be
agitated.

The election of a schoolboy to membership in a scientific soci-
ety might seem to mean little, but to the Davenport Academy it
meant much. One of the charter members of the academy. Prof.
Pratt, was writing teacher in the public schools, giving instruc-
tion from building to building. At times he told the scholars to
write anything they might have in mind on slips of paper and to
hand them in to him. On one such occasion a boy not fourteen
years of age wrote the words Davenport Academy of Natural Sci-
ences. On inquiry. Prof. Pratt found that the boy had read of the
academy in the newspapers and wanted to know what it was.
When told of the meetings and collecting excursions he desired
to become a member, but only if his mother could become one
also. The question of lady members had not before been raised,
but now posed it was soon solved.
J. Duncan Putnam and his mother
were elected to membership, June
2, 18G9. The ardent enthusiasm
of the schoolboy and the moth-
er's love were to do more for the
academy than the few members
voting at that meeting could real-
ize. It was this mother's interest
that led to the second rented room,
to the donation by ladies in 1875
of new cases and carpets, to the
gift by a woman in 1877 of the
lot, and to much of the energy and
interest displayed by the towns-
people since. It was the boy's
enthusiasm and the mother's love
that led to the publication. Im-
pelled by Dr. Parry's words and
his own feeling of its importance,

J, Duncan Putnam on November 26, 1875, then a boy of nineteen,
urged the academy to publish Proceedings. A committee was
appointed to look into the matter and to devise means if possible
to carry out the plan. December 20th a company of ladies — the
Women's Centennial Association — agreed to see that the first

Fig. 4. — J. Duncan Putnam.

88

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

volume of Proceedings, covering the years 18(J7-'75, should be
printed. It was no easy task. Entertainments were given and
other ways of raising money devised. A fire interfered seriously,
but at last the handsome octavo volume was printed and turned
over to the academy. The volume formed part of the display of

women's work and achievement
at the Centennial at Philadelphia
in 1876. The happy result of
publication upon the academy
was immediately apparent. The
Proceedings were sent to all parts
of the world, and the library of
the academy has grown almost
entirely out of its exchange. The
publication has not only benefited
the scientific world by making
known valuable original work,
but it has made the academy
widely known. The Proceedings
have been continued up to the
present time, and Volume VII is
now in progress. During his life-
time the Proceedings were ever
in J. Duncan Putnam's mind.
Volume II was due to him, and
early in 1881 he offered to turn over to the academy a complete
printing outfit and to personally superintend the publication of
Volume III. He did not live to complete it, and that volume is
a memorial volume, the final bringing out of which is due to Mrs.
Putnam. Since her son's death this lady's great desire in connec
tion with the academy has been to see the publications continued.
Her energy has never flagged, and finally she has seen the future
of the Proceedings assured.

One of the notable papers in the first volume of the Proceed-
ings dealt with the archaeological treasures found by the acad-
emy's workers in the mounds of Iowa and Illinois, not far from
the city. Local archaeology began to attract the academy's atten-
tion about 1873. A little group of interested students did the
work of exploration mainly at their own expense and often with
their own hands. Important objects had been found. In 1874
the academy published a series of seventeen photographs of seven
mound-builder skulls. At the 1875 meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Robert James
Farquharson represented the academy and read a paper upon
these finds. It was this paper to which reference is made above.
Its author was no common man. Born of a Scotch father and a

Fig. 5.— Mks. M. L. D. Putnam.

DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 89

Kentucky mother at Nashville, Tenn., July 15, 1824, he was a
graduate of the University of Nashville in 1841. At that time
Dr. Gerard Troost was connected with that institution, and young
Farquharson was profoundly impressed by him. Graduating in
1844 in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Farqu-
harson settled as a practitioner in New Orleans in 1845, and in
1847 was appointed assistant surgeon in the United States Navy.
Resigning in 1855, he returned to Nashville and married there.
Through the war a strong Unionist, he was in hospital service,
and at its close removed to Arkansas. In 1868 he went to Daven-
port. He joined the academy in its first year, and for twelve
years was an important factor in its work. In 1880, being ap-
pointed to the State Board of Health, he removed to Des Moines,
where he resided until his death in 1884. Unusually modest,
quiet, and unassuming, Dr. Farquharson was a profound thinker
and an original investigator. Among his notable studies was an
interesting investigation upon Leprosy in Iowa.

In this same first volume were several important entomo-
logical papers by J. Duncan Putnam. Mr. Putnam's election
has already been mentioned and his interest in the Proceedings
described. In the history of
American entomology there are
no more devoted workers. Al-
though dying when most men
begin work, he had accomplished
more than many who live long.
He was born at Jacksonville, 111.,
October 18, 1855, his mother be-
ing the daughter of the second
Governor of Illinois. When a
boy of eleven years he began col-
lecting insects, and three years
later was a serious student of his
gatherings. He joined the soci-
ety in 18G9, and at fifteen years
of age, in 1871, was its recording
secretary. . In 1872 he took a
three months' trip into Colorado,
where he met John Torrey and
Asa Gray, with whom he formed

a lasting friendship. In 1873 he was appointed meteorologist on
the Jones Yellowstone Exploring Expedition, which was in the
field for five months. Returning home, he continued his prepa-
ration for Harvard College, but was obliged to give up all hope
of a collegiate course on account of failing health. It was in
December of that year that his first hsemorrhage of the lungs

VOL. LI. — V

Fig. 6. — Eorebt James Faequhabson.

9°

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

occurred. Although knowing perfectly what lay before him, the
young man kept unflinchingly onward. Wrapped up in his loved
science and toiling like a strong man in the service of the acad-
emy which had won his boy-heart, he kept happily and whole-
somely busy to the very end. His labor in a loved cause no doubt

prolonged his life, but at last,
December 10, 1881, the long-
expected summons came. The
monument of that young life
consists of a series of papers,
chiefly entomological, of no mean
merit — and the academy. In 1872
Duncan Putnam found his first
specimen of Galeodes. This be-
longs to the family SolpngidcB,
a curious group related to the
spiders and scorpions. From that
date on his interest centered up-
on this little-known and curious
group. To so good profit did he
labor that even now in our latest
general authoritative work on
^^ ^^ ^K- ^^^^™ insects Prof. Comstock names

P^L l«™n*™n-™»^JHBH[ Putnam as the chief authority.

Fig. 7.-Cai>tain Wilfred P. Hall. The results of his Study WerC not

fully ready for publication at
the time of his death, but Prof. Herbert Osborne put them in
shape for the printer. They comprise one brief paper — Notes on
Solpugidse, an important Bibliography, and data for a Mono-
graph upon the American Galeodidse. All of this material, beau-
tifully illustrated by the author's own drawings, was published
in the memorial volume of the Proceedings. Besides the material
upon the Solpugidm, Mr. Putnam's work includes a score of im-
portant papers which were printed in the Proceedings, Popular
Science Monthly, United States Government reports, etc. The
whole motive in J. Duncan Putnam's work was to do what ought
to be done. As he himself once said," If others are unwilling to do
what ought to be done, I must." No one outside his family knew
him better than Dr. Parry, who said of him : " Though over thirty
years his senior in the broad field of Nature, we occupied the
same level. Always respectful to my personal wishes or sugges-
tions, never flinching from any imposed duty, always cheerful,
hopeful, and zealous, he proved a companion worthy of the high-
est regard, which he never forfeited either by word or deed." By
his activity in field work Mr. Putnam gathei-ed a collection of
twenty-five thousand specimens, representing more than eight

DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 91

thousand species of insects. Some of these were type specimens
from which he had himself described new species. This whole
collection, together with his entomological library, was turned
over by his parents to the academy, upon certain conditions
securing its proper care and integrity, June 25, 1880.

The archaeological work of the academy has been done in two
localities. Among Davenport residents who have been interested
in the academy is Captain Wilfred P. Hall, better known as "the
old man of the skiff." Captain Hall through a long series of
years made great journeys on the Mississippi and its tributary
streams in a little boat. Among the Arkansas mounds he made
extensive diggings and collected many beautiful and valuable
relics. The district is a rich one, especially in objects of pottery
and shell. When fine specimens were found in private hands,
the captain would secure them by purchase or exchange. In his
barter, books, including dictionaries, were of special use. After
every trip Captain Hall brought back new and interesting mate-
rial, until the academy's collection was one of the finest, if not the
best, from that district. It was this collection that supplied the
better part of William H. Holmes's important paper upon the

Fig. 8. — Pottery from Arkansas Mounds.

Ancient Pottery of the Mississippi Valley.* Captain Hall's col-
lection is still one of the strongest features in the academy's
museum, and the old skiff in which he traveled so many thou-

* Proceedings, vol. iv. Expanded to cover a larger field and under another title ia
annual report, Bureau of f^thnology.

92

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sands of miles is still preserved on the academy's grounds. The
other region archieologically explored by the academy is the local

field immediately around
Davenport. In the inves-
tigations here some most
important facts regard-
ing mound construction
and burial have been se-
cured and curious and
valuable relics found.
Among these local relics
are skulls, objects of shell,
carved stone pipes, cop-
per axes wrapped in cloth
(the structure of which
has been preserved by
impregnation with salts
of copper produced by at-
mospheric action), and
stone tablets bearing in-
scriptions or pictorial de-
signs. None of these
relics have attracted so
much attention as two of
the stone pipes, called
from their shape "ele-
phant pipes," and the tab-
lets, which are three in
number, two of black
slate and one of lime-

Fic. ;».-CuPPK,i AxLs WRAPPED IX Cluth. stone. About the authen-

ticity of these five objects
a bitter controversy has waged. The matter first appeared within
the academy August 29, 1884, when attention was called to an
article by H. W. Henshaw in the Second Annual Report of the
Bureau of Ethnology. In this article the authenticity of the
elephant pipes was seriously impugned. A committee was ap-
pointed to look into the charge and meet it. A somewhat acri-
monious discussion, in which many took part, was conducted in
various periodicals. Mr. Charles E. Putnam, father of J. Duncan
Putnam, and president of the academy, prepared a vindication,
which was published as an independent pamphlet, and later re-
published with an appendix of congratulatory letters from various
archaeologists. While this is not the proper place for discussing
the authenticity of these specimens, it may not be out of place for"
the writer to say that to his judgment no substantial argument

DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 93

by the opposition demonstrates either the falsity of the specimens
or fraud on the part of the academy. A careful examination of
the objects themselves by a disinterested and impartial commit-
tee has never been made. Until it has been, every expression of
opinion can only be personal.

Up to the year 1883 there was no paid office in connection with
the academy. Early in 1883 the heavy labors devolving upon
the curator were emphasized, and the payment to him of a salary
was uged. Toward the end of that year the modest sum of five
hundred dollars was voted as salary, the incumbent being Prof.
W. H. Pratt, one of the original four of 1867. At about the same
time the financial condition of the academy made a vigorous efl^ort
on the part of its friends to relieve it from debt quite necessary.
There was a little balance of indebtedness upon the building and
other obligations had arisen. An appeal was made to the city,
and a citizens' meeting was held on April 24, 1883. At that
meeting twelve hundred and ninety dollars was subscribed, and,
by a short canvass among the citizens, that sum was raised to
twenty-nine hundred and sixty dollars, more than enough to pay
all debt. The surplus, amounting to nearly one thousand dollars.

Fig. 10. — Slate Tablet, Davenport.

was set apart toward a permanent fund, the interest only on which
was to be available.

Just at this time of favorable financial condition came the
attack upon the elephant pipes. Whether this was intended to
harm the academy or not, it had that result. The society was
already weakened by loss of active members. Death or removal
had taken from the academy Sheldon, Putnam, Parry, and Far-

94

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

quharson. Interested and self-sacrificing members remained, but
they were not professional scientists. The attack surprised some,

disgusted others, dis-
couraged more. A few-
brave workers kept
their hands on the
work. Among them
the curator was inde-
fatigable. The care of
the collections was but
a small part of his la-
bors. Besides that he
had many of the cares
of correspondence and
of the library. He it
was who encouraged
the young members of
the Agassiz Associa-
tions. To make the
academy useful to a
larger company than
its own membership,
he organized and de-
livered courses of pop-
ular lectures to the children of the public schools; these were
given at the academy, and were illustrated by its collections.
Classes from the different schools had their set times for these
lectures, and the result of them was encouraging. The experi-
ment might well be tried at other places.

While not directly an academy enterprise, it is certain that its
work and influence led to the holding of the second annual con-
vention of the Agassiz Associations of the United States at Daven-
port in 1886. There were then two flourishing chapters of the
" A. A." in the city, one at the high school and the other in the
grammar schools ; the combined membership was about seventy.
That the active young members of these chapters drew a large
amount of their interest from the academy is beyond doubt. The
meeting at Davenport was a great success, and young scientists
throughout the United States were stimulated by it.

With the death of Charles E. Putnam and the later removal
of the patient curator to Minneapolis, the little force of workers
was still further reduced. The one thing that held the organi-
zation together beyond all others was the publication with the
mother love, erecting a monument, behind it. In 1886 the publi-
cation fund was begun with a gift from Charles Viele, of Evans-
ville, Indiana, of fifty dollars. From that time the idea of keep-

Fio. 1

liLKT, DaVEXPOKT.

DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 95

ing the Proceedings alive was foremost in mind. Mrs. Putnam
exercised every energy to secure the funds. The curatorship had
passed from Prof. Pratt to Prof. Barris, whose important papers
on local geology are a valuable part of the Proceedings. Leav-
ing to him all the curator's duties and more, she devoted herself
to this. In 1895 she saw her desires gained : a bequest of ten
thousand dollars was left in that year by Mrs. Mary P. Bull as a
permanent publication fund, a memorial to Charles E. and J.
Duncan Putnam.

With this substantial encouragement the academy now looks
forward with increasing hope. Much needed improvements have
just been made in building and cases ; books have been rearranged
in the library ; much needed binding of pamphlets and magazines
has been done. The membership is increasing, and when the
faithful few long toilers are gone new recruits will be ready.
Definite plans of growth and development are shaping themselves.
An effort is making to raise the permanent endowivent fund to
fifty thousand dollars. When
that is done a paid secretaryship
can be established to direct and
organize the work. Then, with
permanent publication secured
and direction and activity in-
sured, an effort will be made to
complete the building. The edi-
fice already constructed is only
the rear part of a far more ex-
tensive one. On the lot before
it is ample space for a large and
imposing structure. The pres-
ent building is of brick, and is
in two stories. The dimensions
are shown on the accompanying
ground plans. The front door
opens on a central hallway, on
either side of which is a small,
square room. One of these is the
office and workroom of the cura-
tor ; the other contains the Put-

nam entomological collection and library, and is used for the regu-
lar monthly meetings of the academy. Behind these rooms is the
main museum hall. It consists of a ground floor, with a second-
story gallery running around its four sides. On the main floor
are the collections in natural history, representing all depart-
ments, and particularly rich in local zoology and geology. Here
are the results of the field work of Sheldon, Pratt, Barris, and

■X

Fig. rj. — Charles E. Putnam.

96

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Pilsbry, not to mention many other local collectors. Here are
Captain Hall's collections from Arkansas, and the tablets, pipes,
copper axes, and other notable specimens from the local mounds.

In the gallery are collections of
minerals and an extensive series
of stone-age tools and weapons.
In front of this gallery and over
the hallway and two front rooms
of the lower story is the library,
which can be used as a hall for
a reasonably large audience.
The library is one of the best
devoted to science in the West,
and has been chiefly secured in
exchange for the Proceedings.
Nominally it contains more than
forty thousand volumes ; but
this number must be considera-
bly reduced, as latterly single
issues of periodicals have been
catalogued under distinct num-
bers. With all reductions made,
however, the library is impor-
tant. Publications in twenty-
two different tongues are on its exchange list.

Among the most recent subjects in which the academy has
interested itself is an archaeological study of the State of Iowa,
planned by the writer. The plan involves several distinct pieces
of work :

1. The preparation of a hibliograpliy of Iowa antiquities.

2. The publication of a summary of Iowa archaeology.

3. Organization of field work throughout the State.

4. Publication of a final report and an archaeological map.

5. Preparation of a series of diagrams and casts of an edu-
cational character for distribution to the higher institutions of
learning in the State.

The first two parts of the plan have been accomplished, and
the academy is now endeavoring to carry out the third. While
the academy has given and is giving considerable attention to
archaeology, it is not neglecting other lines of science, and papers
of importance in geology, botany, and entomology are in its hands
for publication in the near future.

Thirty years is not a long time, even in America. In Decem-
ber, 18!»7, the academy will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary by
a special meeting. It may then look back with pride over its rec-
ord. From a membership of four meeting in an office, it has grown

Fig. 13.— \V. II. r

KATT.

98 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to one of scores meeting in its own home; it has a neat building
free of debt ; it pays a curator a regular, if small, salary ; it has
something toward a permanent endowment fund ; with six credit-
able volumes of Proceedings, it has a permanent invested fund of
ten thousand dollars to perpetuate their publication ; it owns a
valuable museum, which is open free to the public, and acts as a
constant incentive to develop scientific interest. And all this has
oeen done by the academy in a small town in the West, without
the assistance of any particularly wealthy patrons.

-♦♦♦-

SOURCES OF THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY.*

By E. W. scripture,
yale university.

PSYCHOLOGY did not begin with the development of its
own methods or in the psychological laboratory ; on the
contrary, it has been largely the product of other sciences. In
most cases the first impulse to the investigation of psychological
phenomena was given by the discovery of sources of error in the
other sciences which were due to the scientist himself.

In astronomy Tycho Brahe did not accept his instruments as
being correct, but determined their errors ; it was not, however,
until centuries later that a suspicion arose concerning the possi-
bility of errors in the observer himself.

Astronomers have to record the time of the passage of heav-
enly bodies across parallel lines in the telescope. When the star
is about to make its transit the astronomer begins counting the
beats of the clock. As the star approaches and passes the line he
fixes in mind its place at the last beat before crossing and its
place at the first beat after. The position of the line in respect
to these two places gives the fraction of a second at which the
transit occurred.

In 1795 the British astronomer royal found that his assistant,
working with another telescope at the same time, was making his
records too late by half a second. Later on, this amounted to
0"8 second. This difference was large enough to seriously disturb
the calculations, and, as the astronomer did not suspect that he
himself might be wrong, the blame was laid on the assistant.!
In 1820 Bessel X systematically compared his observations with

* From a forthcoming work, The New Psychology (London, Walter Scott ; New York,
Scribner).

•f Greenwich Astronomical Observations, 1795, vol. iii, pp. 319, .^89.

X Astronom. Bcobacht. d. Sternwarte zu Kiinigsberg, Abth. VIII, p. iii; Ahth. Xf, p
iv; Abtb. XVIIl, p. iii.

SOURCES OF THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 99

those of another observer for the same star. They found a differ-
ence of half a second. Later he made similar experiments with
Argelander and Struve, with the result of always finding a per-
sonal difference.

Bessel sought for the cause of this " personal equation " by
varying the conditions. He first made use of the sudden disap-
pearance or reappearance of a star instead of steady motion. The
personal difference was much decreased. This seemed to indicate
that the trouble lay in comparing the steady progress of the star
with the sudden beat of the clock. The next step was to change
the beats, with the result that for Bessel the observations were
made later with the clock beating half seconds than with one
beating seconds, whereas Argelander and Struve showed no par-
ticular change. One other point was investigated — namely, the
effect of the apparent rate of the star; within wide limits the per-
sonal equation was not changed.

About 1838 the personal equation began to receive regular
notice in astronomical observations, as appears in the publica-
tions of Airy * and Gerling of that year.f

It was natural to wish for a comparison of the astronomer's
record with the real time of transit. At the suggestion of Gauss,
an artificial transit was arranged by Gerling, the object observed
being a slow pendulum. This is probably the first measurement
of a reaction time. In 1854 Prazmowski X suggested an apparatus
carrying a luminous point for a star and closing an electric cir-
cuit at the instant it passed the line ; a comparison of the true
time with the astronomer's record would give the real amount of
his personal equation. From this time onward various forms of
apparatus were invented and numerous investigations were car-
ried out. The astronomers found that in such observations
sometimes the star was seen to pass the line too soon, sometimes
too late, and that the error varied with every variation in the
method of observing and in the mental condition of the observer.*

Let us turn for a moment to another science. The new physi-
ology, begun by the pupils of Johannes Miiller, in which the
phenomena of life were to be explained by physical and chemical
processes, had undergone a remarkable development. Du Bois-
Reymond had taught how to apply the experimental methods
and apparatus of physics to the study of physiological processes.
Soon after this Helmholtz measured the velocity of nervous
transmission (1850), an experiment that Johannes Miiller had

* Greenwich Astron. Observations, 1838. p. xiii.
+ Astron. Nachfichten, 1838, vol xv, p. 249.

\ Comptes rendiis, 1854, vol. xxxviii, p. 748.

* For the history of the personal equation, see Sanford, Personal Equation, Am. Jour.
Psych., 1888, vol. ii, pp. 3, 271, 403.

loo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

considered hopeless. This involved the construction of the myo-
graph and the application of Pouillet's method of measuring
small intervals of time.

The nerves, however, are only the peripheral portions of the
nervous system ; the desire lay near to measure the time occupied
by the brain processes. Such measurements have been (and still
are at the present day) impossible by direct physiological methods.
It was, however, a sufficiently settled fact that the brain processes
are closely accompanied by mental processes. This consideration
led to the employment of the time-methods on living human be-
ings. The stimulus was applied to the skin, to the eye, or to the
ear, and the time required for the subject to respond by a muscu-
lar movement was measured. Since the subject could tell what
he experienced under different variations of the experiment it was
found possible to measure the time of sensation, of action, etc.
The physiological processes corresponding to these mental pro-
cesses were to some extent known. It was soon discovered, how-
ever, that other mental processes — e. g., discrimination, associa-
tion, etc. — could be introduced in such a way as to be measured.

Beginning with 1865, Donders made a systematic attack on the
problem of psychological time- measurements, and was soon fol-
lowed by Exner. Helmholtz had already directed the experi-
ments of his pupil Exner in measuring the time of sensation, and
in 1877 the work of Auerbach and von Kries appeared from his
Berlin laboratory.

The interest of the physiologist lay, however, mainly in the
deductions to be drawn concerning brain action. Even from the
simpler forms of reaction time the amount of physiological knowl-
edge to be obtained is small, and for the more complicated forms
it is zero. It was natural, therefore, for physiology to pursue the
subject not much further.*

Thus the two sciences of astronomy and physiology discovered
and developed the methods of investigating mental times ; the
further development was the task of psychology.

Another source of the new psychology is to be found in the
physiological study of the sense organs. The most obvious
method for determining the functions of the nerves and end organs
of the skin — the nose, the ear, or the eye — is to ask the living sub-
ject what he feels when various stimuli are applied. In this way
there has arisen a large body, of knowledge concerning the sen-
sory functions of the nervous system. In this form, however, the
problem is a purely psychological one. To inquire if the skin

* For the historieal account of experiments on reaction time, see Buccola, La Icgge del
tempo nci tVnoiiieni del ])ensieio, Milano, 188:5, and Rihot, La Psychologie allemande con-
temporaine, Paris, 1885 ; for a summarv, with literature, see Jastrovv, Time Relations of
Mental Phenomena, New York, 1890.

SOURCES OF THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. loi

" feels " heat is, from a physiological point of view, an indirect
question. Physiologically, the nerves of the skin may respond to
heat by some chemical process ; that they do so respond may be
inferred on the hypothesis of a correspondence between the occur-
rence of a sensation of heat and the action of the nerve. The di-
rect question is one of psychology ; it is asked by physiology for
its own purposes, and the psychological data are collected as long
as they are of use in this way. Physiology, however, is " physics
and chemistry of the body," and as soon as psychological data
cease to afford physical deductions the interest of the physiologist
generally ceases. The study of the psychology of sensation and
action, however, has formed and still forms an important portion
of physiology.

Historically considered, the study of the sensations of the skin
received its first great impulse from Ernst Heinrich Weber's
monograph, Tastsinn unci Gemeiiigefiilile* This has been fol-
lowed by the work of a host of investigators from the labora-
tories of Ludwig, Du Bois-Reymond, and their pupils.f

The physiology of the eye originated much of the psychology of
sight. Concerning the functions of the optical system, physiology
can scarcely be said to have gone beyond the dioptrics of the eye.
Nearly all further knowledge consists of deductions from the
mental experiences of the subject. For example, physiology
knows almost nothing concerning the functions of the retina.
Psychologically, however, the color sensations and their combi-
nations can be accurately measured. It is true that the investi-
gations of color vision have been and are mainly carried out by
physiologists and physicists ; but the point of view has become
primarily a purely psychological one. This is strikingly exempli-
fied in the researches of Konig, from which physiological deduc-
tions are practically excluded. For the various other phenomena,
such as those of the optical illusions, of monocular and of binocu-
lar space, we have at present no hope of anything beyond a
psychological knowledge, and the investigations of Hering, Helm-
holtz, and others can be regarded as direct contributions to psy-
chology.

There is a third science whose influence is to-day the strongest
of all. Physics is theoretically the co-ordinate science to psychol-
ogy. Every direct experience has an objective, or physical, and
a subjective, or psychical, side. Again, the fundamental science
of Nature is physics, that of Mind is psychology. Practically,
however, psychology receives from the most powerful science

* Wagner's Handworterbuch d. Physiologie, 1851, vol. iii (2), p. 561 ; also separate.

f For summaries and references, see Funke und Hering, Physiologie der Hautem-
pfindungen und der (iemeingefiihle, Herrman's Handbuch der Physiologie, 1880, vol. iii (2),
p. 287; and Beaunis, Nouveaux elements de physiologie humaine, vol. ii, Paris, 1888.

102 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of modern times an invaluable protection and an uninterrupted
series of scientific gifts. The photometry of Lambert led not
only to the methods of modern technical photometry but also
to the measurement of our sensations of light, while the law of
relativity of sensations had been — before Fechner — established
for lights by Bouguer, Masson, Arago, Herschel, and Steinheil.
The study of the errors of observation in physics and astronomy
has led not only to the science of physical measurements, but also
to that of psychological measurements. Newton, Young, and
Maxwell began not only the science of ether vibrations, but also
the science of sensations of color. The laws of mechanics apply
not only to inanimate objects but also to the results of our own
volitions. In fact, in every department of psychology, progress
has been and still is closely dependent on the achievements of
physics and technology.

Psychology has not only received most of its methods and
much of its material from physics ; it has for the first time in
history reached through physics a definite conception of its own
problem. The older psychology and philosophy had always main-
tained the necessity of directly investigating the facts of con-
sciousness. The standpoint was simple enough, but, as no scien-
tific methods of doing so were developed, the whole problem
remained vague and unsatisfactory. Among the proposals for a
better state of affairs was that of first investigating the nervous
system and then deducing psychological laws therefrom. The
brain was to be accurately mapped out into faculties, the paths of
nervous currents were to be traced along various fibers, and the
interaction of nervous molecules was to be known in every par-
ticular ; it was even expected that various cells could be cut out,
with a memory or a volition snugly inclosed in each. In other
words, there was to be no psychology except on the basis of a
fully developed brain physiology. Unfortunately, very little has
been ascertainable concerning the finer functions of the nervous
system. Aside from a general knowledge that the cerebellum
has to do with co-ordination of movements, the convolutions of
Broca have to do with speech, and similar facts, nothing of even
the remotest psychological bearings has been discovered concern-
ing the functions of the brain. The roseate hopes of those who
expected a new psychology out of a " physiology of mind " were
totally disappointed. In the effort for something new, however,
the psychologist supplied the data concerning the " molecular
movements" in the brain out of his own imagination ; the famil-
iar facts of mind were retold in a metaphorical language of " nerve
currents," " chemical transformation," etc., of which not one par-
ticle had a foundation in fact. The physiology of mind started
with an impossibility and ended with an absurdity.

SOURCES OF THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 103

It is to be noted that these statements refer to investigations
of and speculations on the brain for psychological purposes. For
physiological purposes the case is utterly different. The develop-
ment of brain anatomy and of the knowledge concerning the
localization of cerebral functions are among the greatest achieve-
ments of modern times.*

Moreover, the collection of facts and the development of
theories of the nervous activities accompanying mental phe-
nomena has given rise to the science of physiological psychology.!

With these sciences, however, the psychologist has compara-
tively little to do. The study of brain function has not con-
tributed a single fact to our knowledge of mental life ; the deduc-
tions of physiological psychology concerning nervous function
have begun with the facts of experimental and observational
psychology, and are still so unsettled as not to allow additional
deductions backward.

While this was going on, physics had through Helmholtz, J
Mach,* and others gradually come to a clear understanding of
the relation of its facts to the immediate facts of consciousness.
Direct experience as present in our sensations was accepted as
supplying the facts of physics. For example, in measuring the
length of a bar, a visual sensation, the scale of measurement, was
applied to another visual sensation, the bar. Indeed, as was
clearly recognized, every direct measurement of physics was
primarily a comparison between sensations — in other words, a
psychological measurement. From this combined measurement
the physicist reduced as much as possible the psychological ele-
ments ; it was but a step for the psychologist to reduce the phys-
ical elements in order to have a psychological measurement. ||
This step made psychology for the first time a science in the

* For a historical sketch and an account of the latest remarkable discovery, see Flechsig,
Gehirn und Scale, Leipzig, 1896.

f As a representative work see Exner, Entwurf zu einer physiologischen Erklarung der
psvchischen Erscheinungen, i. Theil, Lepzig, 1894. For a convenient sumraarv see Ziehen,
Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologic, second edition, 1893, also translated.

X Helmholtz, Ueber das Ziel und die Fortschritte der Naturwisseaschaft, Populiire wiss.
Vortrage, Braunschweig, 1871. Helmholtz, Die Thatsachen in der VVahrnehmung, Leipzig,
1879.

* Mach, Die Mechanik in ihrer Eutwickelung, Leipzig, 1883, second edition, 1889; also
translated into English, Chicago, 1895 (Mach's earlier monographs are mentioned in the
preface). Mach, Beitrage zur Analyse der Empfindungen, p. 141, Jena, 1886.

II The psychological standpoint has been clearly stated by Wundt, Uel)er die Messungen
psychischer Vorgange, Philos. Studien, 1883, vol. iv, p. 1 ; Weitere Bemerkungen iiber psy-
chische Messungen, Philos. Studien, p. 463 ; Ueber die Entheilung der Wissenschaften,
Philos. Studien, 1889, vol. v, p. 1 ; Ueber die Definition der Psychologic, Philos. Studien,
1896, vol. xii, p. 1 ; Ueber naiven und kritischcn Realismus, Philos. Studien, 1896, vol. xii,
p. 307. I have followed Wundt in The Problem of Psychology, Mind, 1891, vol. xvi, p.
305 ; Psychological Measurements, Philosophical Review, 1893, vol. ii, p. 677.

104 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

full meaning of the term, with all the previous achievements of
physics for its use.

With a real science of the facts of consciousness at hand, the
attempt at a " mental physiology " appears as absurd as an at-
tempt to establish a science of meteorology from the twitterings
of the birds — especially when the birds are imaginary ones. The
physicists have thus not only given to the new psychology its
basis, but have also freed it from the rubbish of an overheated
imagination.

There is still another source which we must consider, namely,
the old psychology. By the " old psychology " we mean psychol-
ogy before the introduction of experiment and measurement ; in
its last forms it is the psychology of the Herbartians or of the
English associationalists.

We have already seen how the fundamental method, that of
observation, was established by the old psychology. The method
of direct observation of mental life is the only possible one, and
until it had received a firm basis any science of psychology was
impossible. As has been explained in Part I, all the other
methods of psychology are only refinements of this method.
The new psychology is thus merely a development on the basis
of the old ; there is no difi^erence in its material, no change in its
point of view, and no degeneration in its aim. What the old
tried to do, namely, to establish a science of mind, and what it
did do, as far as its means allowed, the new psychology with
vastly improved methods and facilities is striving to accomplish.

This close connection, however, must not involve us in a false
estimation of the direct results accomplished by the old psychol-
ogy. The method of unaided observation was applied to exhaus-
tion, and the later works contained little more than the earlier
ones. Indeed, the final sum total of psychological knowledge
acquired by this method can be stated to be a mass of ingenious
speculations, of endless discussions, and of true and untrue facts ;
even such achievements as the laws of association have, in the
light of newer methods, been shown to be merely superficial
arrangements of facts. It has been claimed that unaided ob-
servation has yielded valuable storehouses of facts, and it fur-
nishes a special satisfaction to some people at the present day
to point out guesses of this older psychology forestalling achieve-
ments of the newer science. Among the clever observations con-
cerning facts of mental life and the ingenious guesses at their
laws, there are and must be some which are ultimately found
to be partially or wholly correct. As Helmhoitz remarks: "It
would be a stroke of skill always to guess falsely. In such a
happy chance a man can loudly claim his priority for the dis-
covery ; if otherwise, a lucky oblivion conceals the false conclu-

SOURCES OF THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 105

sions. The adherents of such a process are glad to certify the
value of a first thought. Conscientious workers, who are shy at
bringing their thoughts before the public until they have tested
them in all directions, solved all doubts, and have firmly estab-
lished the proof ; these are at a decided disadvantage. To settle
the present kind of questions of priority only by the date of
their first publication, and without considering the ripeness of
the research, has seriously favored this mischief.

" In the type-case of the printer all the wisdom of the world is
contained which has been or can be discovered ; it is only requi-
site to know how the letters are to be arranged. So, also, in the
hundreds of books and pamphlets which are every year published
about ether, the structure of atoms, the theory of perception, as
well as on the nature of the asthenic fever and carcinoma, all the
most refined shades of possible hypotheses are exhausted, and
among these there must necessarily be many fragments of the
correct theory. But who knows how to find them ?

" I insist upon this in order to make clear to you that all this
literature, of untried and unconfirmed hypotheses, has no value
in the progress of science. On the contrary, the few sound ideas
which they may contain are concealed by the rubbish of the rest ;
and one who wants to publish something really new — facts — sees
himself open to the danger of countless claims of priority unless
he is prepared to waste time and power in reading beforehand a
quantity of absolutely useless books, and to destroy his reader's
patience by a multitude of useless quotations." *

In order to give a psychological illustration, I will refer to the
case of mediate association of ideas. f The existence of such asso-
ciations was discovered in the course of an extended experimental
investigation of the manner in which ideas were associated. It
was proved, for the first time, that such associations are made.
A single personal observation of this sort is to be found in
Hamilton's works. A still earlier one is reported from Hume,
and a favorable perusal of the works of Aristotle would probably
reveal something similar. Such cursory observations, fruitless
and unconfirmed, do not entitle the makers to any special credit.
The credit of an experimental discovery remains with the dis-
coverer, regardless of previous guesses that may have hit the
truth.

The debt of the new psychology to the old psychology of the
past does not involve any claims by the " sensation-psychology "
of the present. Among the pupils of the old psychology there

* Helmholtz, Popular Lectures, Second Series, p. 228. New York, 1881.
f The idea, C, follows a totally unrelated idea, A. A and C had previously been inde-
pendently associated with B, but now B is not thought of, or is entirely forgotten.
VOL. LI. — 8

io6 POPVLAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

were necessarily many who grew up in ignorance of tlie new, or
who did not learn of its existence until too late for changing the
mode of thought. Just as the old psychology led to an improved
science on the part of the progressive men, so it led to a degener-
ated form on the part of the others. Unable to grasp and to
apply the methods of true science, these men can not even under-
stand what the new is all about; and in their attempt to do some-
thing new they have fallen into the absurdities of " psychical re-
search," or " experimented " with spiritualistic mediums, or gath-
ered " statistics " concerning ghosts, or interviewed the several
personalities of the hypnotic subject.

The older psychology, with its traditions and its dignity, was
a discipline to be treated with filial consideration and respect;
but the latest " sensation-psychology," plunged in the dregs of all
the mysticism and superstition of the middle ages, not only con-
tributes nothing to the progress of science, but arouses in opposi-
tion to it all the ghosts of the witches' caldron.

Summarizing, we are entitled to say that the new psychology
is the old psychology in a new phase of development ; that the
impulses to this development came from physics, physiology, and
astronomy ; and that the resulting application of the best meth-
ods of modern science to the great problems handed down from
the past is what makes the new psychology a true science worthy
of its origin.

THE LATENT VITALITY OF SEEDS.

By M. C. de CANDOLLE.

SEEDS that remain in keeping without losing the faculty of
germination are said to be in a state of latent life. The term
is not exact, for it leaves us still to ask whether the life of the
seeds is completely stopped, or is simply slackened in its activity
— questions to which the same answer can not be given under all
circumstances. It may be that a seed will continue to respire
without producing any formation of new histological elements,
when a loss of substance results to the plantule it contains which
is compensated for by the assimilation of reserve materials from
the energides, or living protoplasmic masses of the cells. A plant-
ule may be supposed to live in this way for a considerable time
if the temperature is favorable and the seed and the surrounding
air are not too dry. Under these conditions the latent life may
be considered one of slackened activity.

An experiment by MM. Van Tieghem and Bonnier proves
that seeds may retain their vitality for a considerable period in
this condition. Three lots of peas and beans were left — one in

THE LATENT VITALITY OF SEEDS. 107

the open air, a second in a sealed glass tube containing common
air, and a third in a sealed tube containing pure carbonic-acid
gas. At the end of two years the seeds of the first lot had per-
ceptibly increased in weight, and nearly all germinated ; those
kept in confined air had increased less in weight, and fewer of
them germinated ; the air inclosed with them in the tube had
changed in composition, having lost oxygen and gained carbonic
acid. Of those sealed up in carbonic acid, the weight had not
changed, and none germinated.

While these results show that the seeds continued to lead a
retarded life in open and in confined air, it is possible that the
retarded life was only of short duration, and that it had ceased,
before the end of the experiment, to give place to a complete
stoppage of respiration, assimilation, and life. But to admit this
we have to suppose that the protoplasm in seeds in latent life
finally becomes wholly inert, while it preserves its composition
and its internal chemical structure. This view seems to be con-
firmed by a number of experiments and observations which I am
about to describe.

I have already several times related experiments that prove
that seeds may be subjected to a very intense cold for many
hours in succession without losing their germinating faculty. A
recent experiment of this sort, made with M. Raoul Pictet's appa-
ratus and under his direction, proves that some peas and beans
and fennel seeds germinate quite well after having endured for
four days a temperature of — 200° C. (— 328° F.). The seeds had
not undergone any previous desiccation, and no precautions were
taken to adjust the depression of temperature. Others of M.
Pictet's researches have demonstrated that the chemical reac-
tions which take place at ordinary temperatures cease to be pro-
duced at very low temperatures, like those reached in the experi-
ments just mentioned. If this is so, we may suppose that the
protoplasm of seeds exists during these experiments in a condition
of complete inertia, without either respiring or assimilating. In
other words, life is then really stopped ; yet this does not prevent
their vegetating anew when the conditions of temperature and
moisture permit it. The seeds in these experiments were cooled
so very rapidly that it is natural to suppose that their protoplasm
was already quite inert before the test began. It would be hard
otherwise to explain its complete indifi'erence to abrupt variations
of temperature, which would certainly have been more harmful
if they affected protoplasm still active.

Another experiment I have recently tried casts more light on
this point. "Wrapping seeds of wheat, oats, fennel, and the sensi-
tive plant in packages of tinned paper and inclosing the whole in
a sheet- iron box, hermetically sealed, I placed them under the

io8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cover of a wooden box in a compressed-air refrigerator for
meats, where they were exposed for a hundred and eighteen
days to repeated but not continuous refrigerations, most of
which lasted twenty hours each. The lowest temperature reached
was - 53-89° C. (- 65° F.) ; the highest, - 3778° C. (- 36° F.) ; and
the mean, — 41*93'' C. (— 43*4° F.). After each refrigeration the
temperature rose to that of the interior of the receiver, but slowly,
while the refrigerations were rapid.

After the conclusion of the experiment, when taken out of the
refrigerator and planted, the wheat, oats, and fennel came up
promptly; only thirteen out of sixty seeds of sensitive plants
germinated, and of lobelia seeds, which were too small to be
counted, only ten. The failures of the sensitive-plant seeds could
not all be attributed to the cold, for others of the same species
which were not refrigerated did but little better. The lobelia
seeds were, however, certainly killed by the cold, for the control
seeds germinated abundantly. It is safe, too, to infer that seeds
can remain inert and unharmed in a medium unsuitable for respi-
ration, provided nothing is present to injure their protoplasm
through chemical action. Such a medium, for example, would be
an atmosphere of carbonic acid.

I desired to ascertain the effects on germination of keeping
seeds in vacuum. The most obvious way of trying this experi-
ment, by the formation of a barometrical vacuum, was liable to
the objection that the abrupt removal of the air and moisture
might disturb the tissues and modify the structure and compo-
sition of the protoplasm of the seeds, and thereby produce a
complication of results. I therefore tried another way, by im-
mersing them in mercury under such precautions that no air
could reach them other than what they contained within them-
selves. The results agreed substantially with those obtained by
refrigeration, and go to confirm the view that seeds can continue
to subsist in a condition of complete vital inertia, from which
they recover whenever the conditions of the surrounding medium
permit their energides, or the living masses of their cells, to re-
spire and assimilate.

At first sight, this return to life resembles the resumption of
motion by a machine that has been resting when it is put into
communication with its motor — a comparison which has been
often made. But the phenomena are not of the same nature in
the two cases, and the energides, of which the total constitutes
the living individual, are not machines in the usual sense of the
word. For a machine works without changing its structure,
while the energides segmentate after they have grown, and their
segmentations operate in their turn as energides. This is because
the matter assimilated by living protoplasm augments its mass

THE LATENT VITALITY OF SEEDS. 109

without diminislimg its energy. For it to be so, this mass must
evidently continually receive new portions of energy, and this
can come only either from the surrounding medium or from the
reactions that go on in the protoplasm itself. In the former case
the agency consists of radiations of different sorts, and is of a
purely physico-chemical order ; while this can not be in the sec-
ond case. In fact, the life of protoplasm is manifested by move-
ments which are combined in such a way as to produce an orien-
tation of its parts according to certain structural dispositions
succeeding one another in a determined order; phenomena to
which ordinary physico-chemical actions never give rise. We
are therefore necessarily led to suppose the existence of a special
class of reactions of which assimilated matters become capable
only after their absorption into this special medium, living and
pre-existing protoplasm, into which they penetrate.

Under this relation we might, in a certain way, compare as-
similation to what occurs when combustible matter takes fire on
being heated in a furnace in which a combustion is already going
on, and is kept up by the new matter. So, one might say, it is
only after having been previously put into a special condition by
their mixture with protoplasm that assimilable substances react
among themselves in such a way as to produce a new quantity of
living matter. So one may suppose that protoplasm in the condi-
tion of latent life, having become inert but retaining the faculty
of reviving, resembles those mixtures formed of substances that
do not react except under certain conditions of temperature or
other influences, and which, so long as those conditions are
not fulfilled, continue indefinitely in contact without combining.
Such, for example, are explosive mixtures.

The presence of assimilable matter in protoplasm or within
its range is not sufficient for the production of the phenomena of
assimilation and orientation. Certain conditions of temperature,
moisture, and aeration have to be realized. As long as they are
not realized, and if nothing occurs to change the composition or
structure of the energides, they will remain inert, while they re-
tain the faculty of evolving anew when the circumstances become
favorable again.

Such condition of chemical and vital inertia may probably
endure for a long time, possibly indefinitely. This, as it seems to
me, is at least the only way of accounting for the preservation
of seeds during very many years. Cases are in fact known where
seeds have germinated after so prolonged a rest that it is impos-
sible to assume that they have lived during the interval even a
retarded life. We cite a few examples. M. A. P. de Candolle *

* Physiologic, p. 621.

no POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

speaks of seeds of the sensitive plant that germinated after more
than sixty years of rest. Girardin * saw beans germinate that
were taken from Tournefort's herbarium, where they had been
kept more than a hundred years.

In 1850 Robert Brown, out of curiosity, sowed some seeds from
the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, of which they had formed a
part for more than a hundred and fifty years. He succeeded in
making several of them germinate, particularly a seed of Nelum-
hium speciosum. The plant has been preserved in the galleries
of the British Museum.f where I saw it a few years ago.

The pretended germination of wheat from mummies is said to
be a fable. It seems, besides, that wheat was always sterilized
before being introduced into the sarcophagi, so that the possi-
bility of its being brought to life again was excluded in advance.
On the other hand, various well- verified facts have demonstrated
that seeds may preserve their faculty of germinating after an ex-
tremely prolonged abode underground — that is, when sheltered
from atmospheric influences. The most extraordinary case of
this kind was observed a few years ago by Prof, de Heldereich, I
director of the Botanical Garden at Athens. While herborizing
around the mines of Laurium, this naturalist discovered, in 1875,
a glaucium, which he unhesitatingly considered a new species,
and described under the name of Glaucium serpieri. The plant
had just made its appearance on a tract from which had recently
been removed a thick bed of scoria produced in the workings of
the mines by the ancients, or at least fifteen hundred years ago.
Unless we assume a spontaneous generation, this glaucium must
be regarded as a species which existed formerly in the place, the
seeds of which had been preserved intact under the protection of
the ground and the scoria that covered them.

Many instances are mentioned in which the opening of deep
trenches or the clearing of forests has been followed by the ap-
pearance of species formerly unknown in the place. Prof. Peter,
of Gottingen,* has very recently made a long series of method-
ical researches, the results of which are of great interest. His
method consists in collecting specimens of forest earth, the age
and all the anterior conditions of which are fully known. He
cultivates them, taking all precautions against introducing for-
eign seeds. These specimens of earth are always taken from

* Sur la propriete qu'ont certaines espfeces de graines de conserver longtemps leurs
vertues germinatives.

f See Gartenflora, 1873, p. 323.

X These facts have been recently confirmed by Mr. W. Carruthers, director of the bo-
tanical galleries in the British Museum.

* Nachrichten v. d. ktinigl. Gesellschaft dcr Wissenschaften u. d. Georg- Augustus
Universitiit zu Gottingen, November, 1893, and December, 1894.

THE LATENT VITALITY OF SEEDS. in

thickly shaded spots, destitute of all other vegetation except the
moss that carpets the surface of the soil. Holes are dug under
this moss, from which the earth is taken at depths successively
of eight, sixteen, and twenty-four centimetres. The specimens
taken from these several depths are cultivated separately. The
cultivations, prolonged for more than three months, have all ulti-
mately given rise to plants the seeds of which must of neces-
sity'' have remained under the earth for a greater or less length
of time.

M. Peter has carefully indicated in detail the plants that cor-
responded to each of the specimens of earth on which he operated.
It resulted from the experiments that the specimens of earth from
very old forests gave plants of the woods, while those from forests
of more recent date yielded species the nature of which was mani-
festly related to the previous disposition of the soil — that is,
plants of the fields or the meadows, according as forestation had
replaced one or the other of these methods of cultivation. While
he is extremely reserved as to the probable duration of the abode
of the seeds in the soil, M. Peter concludes in these words : " Al-
though the experiments in cultivation just described do not fur-
nish a solution to the question of the length of time during which
seeds at rest preserve their faculty of germinating, the conclusion
results from this demonstration that for many field and meadow
plants this duration may considerably exceed a half century."

These researches of M. Peter's deserve careful attention, and it
is to be hoped that they will, without delay, be imitated in other
countries and different kinds of land, for they may reveal very
important facts in biology and prehistoric botanical geography.
Alphonse de Candolle * insisted a few years ago on the desira-
bility of making soundings beneath the snows of the Alps with
a view of recovering vestiges of the vegetation anterior to the
Glacial period. It is to be regretted that no one has carried out
this idea, for the facts I have just summarized almost permit us
to hope that research of this kind may lead to the recovery of
still vital seeds dating from very remote epochs. — Translated for
the Popular Science Monthly from the Eevue Scientifique.

The managers of the Cornell University Experiment Station Extension
Work are able to draw comfort even from seemingly the most unpropitious
conditions. They represent that they have been greatly aided in their mis-
sion of extending the knowledge of plain facts and enforcing their mean-
ing " by the hard times and multitudes of bugs and special difficulties.
These things have driven people to thinking and to asking for infor-
mation."

* Extract from the Archives des Sciences physiques et naturelles.

112 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

STRANGE PERSONIFICATIONS.

By M. TH. FLODRNOY.

WHILE cases of colored audition and visual schemes are
quite frequent, we have fewer instances of that special
kind of synopsy which I call personification, because it consists,
in its typical form, in the concrete representation of a personage
— sometimes of an animal or a thing — being regularly awakened
by a word that has no comprehensible relation with its curious
associate. This sort of personification in its marked degrees is
rare, and in the few instances that have come under my knowl-
edge has been applied to the days of the week.

In M. E. F , student in letters, nineteen years old, the fig-
ures of persons of very definite pose and occupation are provoked
by various suggestions ; among others, by those of the days of
the week. Monday and Tuesday are to him a young man of
serious aspect, with his forefinger on his eye — dark weather.
Wednesday is a young man in the act of stealing something
behind him, stooping down and putting his arms between his legs

to take it. M. F does not see what this man takes, and does

not know what it is ; dark weather. Thursday is a man turning
the knob of the kitchen door to go through that room to the next
one. Friday is a man selling something on a wagon, which he

holds with his hands. The object is indistinct, and M. F does

not know what it is, but in his mind the man is the Wednesday
man, and is selling the thing he stole on that day. The weather
is clear. Saturday is a man falling against a door and putting
both hands forward to push himself back, falling again, and so
on several times. He is doing this for amusement. Sunday is a
man buttoning his cuffs, and the weather is fine.

It will be seen that in respect to their psychological nature
these personifications are a triple mixture of visual representa-
tions, of interpretative ideas (the idea of Wednesday's man steal-
ing an object which is the same unknown thing that he sells on
Friday, etc.), and of general impressions corresponding with the
weather that is prevailing — except Thursday and Saturday,
which have no weather assigned to them. The visual represent-
atives of mental images do not take on the character of hallu-
cinations, but remain simple mental images. These personages
have no color, and their dress is extremely indefinite, but their

figures are very sharply defined. M. F distinguishes all these

details, and perceives clearly the expression, which is always
serious (with the exception of Wednesday, who laughs while he
is stealing his object). The localization of these visual images is
not less precise. The man of Monday, for example, appears to

STRANGE PERSONIFICATIONS. '- 113

M. F always outside of him, but very near — hardly a yard

away ; he is and always has been of the same size as he, from
which he concludes that they have grown up together. The man
of Wednesday and Friday, on the other hand, is always seen at a
considerable distance — more than fifty yards.

M. F does not personify any figure or number, except 14,

which represents itself to him as an accountant sitting at his
desk, writing. Of the months and seasons, only autumn is per-
sonified, as the same sad-looking man with his finger on his eye
who represents Monday and Tuesday.

Most of the common nouns are associated with personifica-
tions, or rather were ; for the phenomena were formerly much

more numerous and persistent than now. M. F does not

recollect having ever had such visions for isolated syllables, arti-
cles, pronouns, and other words without special significance ; yet,
at an age when he knew nothing of the gender of words or of sex,
the letters of the alphabet called up — some (A, B, C, D, etc.) the
image of a pair of trousers, and others (as H, M, N, R, etc.) of a
robe. Words of a positive significance invoked representations
largely independent of their real sense. Bottle, for instance, in-
voked and still invokes the image of a large woman, laughing,
sitting on a little backed bench, with a table in front of her, but
no other suggestion of a bottle in the vision. Shark {requin) is
personified in a large horse stationed near the subject and by the
side of a load of hay.

These parasitical representations, grafted on the word and
always accompanying it, were often considerable impediments
to conversation and reading. Now, with a few exceptions — such
as the days of the week, the figures of which are still very intense
— the images do not rise in the course of conversation or of an
interesting reading, but they appear readily enough on reflection
or when the book is a dull one. The relations of the personifica-
ti^n and of the real idea are reversed in this way: Formerly the
induced representation preceded the thought of the proper mean-
ing ; now it comes after it or remains latent, except in a few
instances — as, for example, shark, where the image of the load of

hay and the horse appears before the idea of the fish. M. F

believes that his personifications reached their greatest intensity
in his childhood, when he was seven or eight years old, and that
they have progressively diminished since he was twelve. He
formerly thought that as a rule everybody had similar impres-
sions, but he was met with surprise and ridicule when he spoke
of them to others.

M. F can say nothing of the cause of these curious phe-
nomena ; he finds them as far back as his recollection can reach,
almost unvarying in intensity and inexplicable. A very small

VOL. LI.

114 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

number permit glimpses into their origin ; it is, for example,
probable that habitual or verbal associations have had a part in
suggesting the likeness of Sunday to a person buttoning his cutfs,
and of Friday {vendredi) to a man selling {qui vend) something
placed upon a van. The masculine or feminine character of tlie
dress attributed to the letters seems to be suggested by the pro-
nunciation (&, masculine ; m, feminine, etc.). In like manner, the
personification of the word college may be explained as a youth
wearing a large white collar {col) turned back on his jacket as
children's collars are. So the word cat {chat) brings up the image
of a cat with a twist in its mouth, as if it were laughing, because,

perhaps, M. F had an impediment in his speech in childhood

which caused him to make a face when he tried to pronounce the

letters ch. But, while M. F regards these explanations as

very plausible, they are still only hypotheses to him ; for he has
no precise conviction, no sure recollection that such were indeed
the causes of his inductions in these cases. The special incidents
to which these speculations apply are relatively very few, and
his speculations as a whole are entirely enigmatical.

Perhaps their origin will become a little less obscure if we
make account of the exaggeration which follows a process in

M. F that is familiar to us all in a lower degree. When we

hear somebody we do not know spoken of, or when the author in
a romance introduces a new character, we spontaneously form an
idea of his appearance and moral qualities which is not exclu-
sively based on what we are told of him, but in which our fancy
involuntarily participates to a considerable extent. Yet this idea
usually remains vague and indecisive till more ample information
comes to it, susceptible of being modified and enriched according

to the course of events. With M. F this fanciful anticipation

of the facts operates with exceptional promptness, while the im-
ages it engenders are distinguished by a rare persistence. A
proper name is enough to call up in him, without any known rea-
son, a complete and precisely defined figure, which thenceforth
continues so fast attached to the name that meeting with the per-
son himself does not dissociate it. Thus, M. F conceived the

two Coquelins, before he had seen them, by virtue of their iden-
tity of name, in exactly the same form and with identical heads.
He was much surprised not to see me wearing the full black beard
he had immediately given me the first time I was spoken of to
him. I supposed the beard belonged to another person of his ac-
quaintance whose name had some similarity in sound with mine;
but he did not think this was the case, and could not give any ex-
planation of the fact. He can not even tell whether it is the audi-
tive perception of the name, or its appearance when written, or
its articulation, or a mixture of all these that induces his personi-

STRANGE PERSONIFICATIONS. 115

fications. This shows how unknown and mysterious are those
associations with, which the creative activity of the imagination
is fed, which a single word suffices to bring into play, and of which
a notorious consequence is the well-known importance attached
by novelists to the choice of names for their heroes.

The rapidity of the evocation of the images and their tenacity
when they are once formed appear especially marked in the ideas

M. F conceives of the characters in a book. From the first

two or three lines relative to a character he sees him rise in his
mental vision, often very different from the description given by
the author. A person described as blond, for example, appears
brown to him. The representation, however, persists firmly, and
the reading of the story does not modify it. No matter if the
little girl of the first pages does grow and change her character
in the course of the volume — she always continues to him the
little girl of the beginning. When he reads the book a second
time, after the lapse of a few months, the identical personifica-
tions appear again unchanged. It is not so with the pictures of
places, likewise arbitrary and inexplicable, which M. F asso-
ciates spontaneously with every scene he reads about, and also, in
a smaller degree, with stories told him. These pictures, which
are usually recollections of childhood without connection with
the subject of the reading — a description of a mountain, for in-
stance, suggests the recollection of a plain — have some degree of
permanence in that they do not vary from one day to another
during the time he is occupied with the book ; but when he takes
up the volume again some time afterward he finds that they have
changed. He remembers very well on every occasion the image
of the place which he had before, and finds that the story now
calls out another. This variability of local images, in opposition
to the fixedness of personations proper, points to their greater
immediate dependence upon the subjective dispositions of the
movement,*

These details seem to me, if not to exptain the inexhaustible
phantasmagoria of M. F 's personifications, at least to illus-
trate the special kind of imagination under the dominance of
which they spring forth. This imagination is characterized by
the union of two properties akin to those of sealing wax : great
docility in receiving an impression at the right moment, and —
that moment once past — an equal rigidity which opposes itself to
any further modification of the impression. Novelty, emotional
excitement, or a happy concourse of circumstances, accomplishes

* For analogous examples of curious evocatioms, but apparently inconstant, induced by
reading or thought, see M. Pilo's Coatributo alio studio dei fenomeni sinestesici. Belluno,
1894, pp. 7, 8.

ii6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

here what heat does for sealing wax, and permits the fixation of
the group of images, disordered as they may be, that burst out at
the opportune moment. But while we can expose the wax again
to the fire, these curious products of fancy do not bear remelting,
and the ideas or the cerebral cells continue fixed in the fortuitous
relations that were contracted at that privileged instant. How
else can we account for associations so absurd and at the same
time so persistent as that of a day of the week with a person steal-
ing or selling some indefinite thing ? We can not reconstitute
the striking incident or the collection of unforeseen relations and
subtle analogies which accomplished the soldering of two such

heterogeneous things in M. F 's mind ; but it is supposable that

the operation is effectuated at once, and that the initial plasticity
was immediately spent; for the thing stolen and sold continues
always indistinct, in spite of the natural curiosity which would
ultimately have precisely identified it, if the activity of the im-
agination had retained the slightest hold upon it.

The same remark may be applied to the other incomprehen-
sible details abundant in M. F 's personifications. We might

speak of fragments of dreams suddenly registered and riveted for-
ever to the words which the caprices of the nocturnal imagina-
tion had momentarily brought into relations with them. The
dissociation of words from their usual sense and their application
to other images by virtue of a connection which the dreamer
clearly feels and finds quite natural, but which vanishes on awak-
ening to give place to the opposite feeling of complete incoher-
ence, are in fact a frequent feature of dreams. In the personifi-
cations the images attached to the words independently and
outside of their proper sense are nearly always as arbitrary as
the dream, but permanent, and the connection is felt by the sub-
ject, although he himself knows that it is irrational and inex-
plicable.

The physiological conditions of this singular process are still
unknown to us. No evidence of heredity has been brought to

light in the particular case. Still, the fact that M. F has

never met an echo in his family when he speaks of his impres-
sions does not prove that his parents have not in their infancy
experienced similar phenomena, which have disappeared and been
forgotten in older life. — Translated for the Popular Science
Monthly from L'Annee Psychologique.

An amusing story is told in liis Notes from a Diary by Sir E. Grant Duff
of the London Metaphysical Society, now defunct. It is to the effect that
Sir John Simeon, after one of the society's early meetings, rushed up to one
of the members and asked, with the appearance of great anxiety, " Well, is
there a God ? " " Oh, yes," was the reply, " we had a very good majority."

SKETCH OF JAMES N AS MYTH. 117

SKETCH OF JAMES NASMYTH.

JAMES NASMYTH was pre-eminently a self-made man.
Though, taught in the schools, he worked out his own way
without regard to the teaching he had received, and by methods
peculiarly his own. He was a master engineer, an astronomer
whose discoveries and conclusions attracted the attention of
learned societies and were admired by the great, and a successful
manager of men. " There can be no doubt," says Nature, in a
sketch of him, "that he stands in the front rank of those who
have advanced the material interests of mankind by the applica-
tion of science to industrial methods,"

Mr. Nasmyth was born in Edinburgh, August 19, 1808, the
next to the youngest child of a family of eleven, and died in Lon-
don, May 7, 1890. He was the son of Alexander Nasmyth, an
artist of considerable distinction, and reckoned in his ancestry
two or three successive generations of architects and builders.
Mention is made of his exercise of his observing powers in very
early infancy. The conditions of his childhood life, although it
was passed in the city, gave him opportunities to become ac-
quainted with l^ature. Many workshops were in operation near
Calton Hill, where the nurses took the children to play, and he
was one of the throng of little boys who were interested in
watching the proceedings of the workmen. Having tools at
home in his father's shop, he tried to imitate what he had seen
done. He became skilled in making things for himself, and was
called " a little Jack of all trades." He was taught by his eldest
sister, then sent to a teacher of such a character that he con-
tracted " a hatred against grammatical rules," and was enrolled
in the Edinburgh High School in 1817. The teaching here was
of the old routine sort, and aroused little interest in the pupil ;
but he did his tasks punctually and cheerfully, "though they
were far from agreeable."

A different condition prevailed in the shop, where his father
directed his attention to the action of the tools and to all the pro-
cesses required for turning out the best work ; and gradually he
had planted in his mind "the great fundamental principles on
which the practice of engineering in its grandest forms is based."
Nasmyth became famous in the school for the perfect spinning
tops, or " peeries," he could make, for his accurate construction of
kites, and for his paper balloons. He cast, bored, and mounted
small brass cannon, and made guns of cellar keys. With the fine
steels he made he was able to buy the monitors off from the too
strict enforcement of the assigned tasks. But he learned little of
what the school taught — " a mere matter of rote and cram." He

ii8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

formed intimacies with fellow-pupils that proved of value to him:
with a youth whose father had a foundry, where he spent profit-
able hours, and with another whose father had a special genius
for practical chemistry, and made colors and white lead ; signals
were arranged with this boy, so that when anything particular
was going on at the laboratory Nasmyth was notified of it; and
the boys made their own reagents, and acquired considerable skill
in producing various substances.

Nasmyth left the high school at the end of 1820, not much the
better for his small acquaintance with the dead languages, but the
mathematical studies had developed his reasoning powers. He
practiced accuracy in drawing, made his own tools and chemical
apparatus, and interested himself in the volcanic geology of Edin-
burgh. He attended the Edinburgh School of Arts from 1821 to
1826, and at seventeen years of age he was constructing steam en-
gines of different designs and for various purposes. He heard the
lectures at the university on chemistry, geometry and mathemat-
ics, and natural philosophy. He established a brass foundry in his
bedroom, but did his heavier work at George Douglas's foundry,
for which he made an engine to drive the lathes, the operation of
which had such an enlivening effect on the workmen that the pro-
prietor affirmed that the output was nearly doubled for the same
wages. He made an expansometer or instrument for measuring in
bulk all metals and solid substances, which so pleased Dr. Brewster
that he described and figured it in the Edinburgh Philosophical
Journal. He experimented upon steam carriages for highways,
and hit upon a device for increasing the draught of the engine
chimney by the use of waste steam that George Stephenson had
adopted, and which has given the locomotive its efficiency.

When it became possible, Nasmyth went to London to visit
Henry Maudsley, the great manufacturer of machines, and seek
employment in his establishment there. Maudsley's experience
with pupil apprentices had not been pleasant, and he was not
at first willing to employ him; but when the young man said he
would consider himself fortunate if he could even be employed
to clean the ashes from the furnaces, Maudsley answered, " So you
are of that sort, are you ? " and his heart was opened at once.
Nasmyth exhibited his drawings the next day, and Maudsley
instituted him his assistant workman, or private secretary, as no
apprenticeship was needed in his case. His first work was on a
machine fpr generating "original screws"; next, in connection
with the construction of two small models of engines, he invented
a device for exactly reducing bolt-nuts. Being given a month's
vacation in the fall of 1830, he went to Liverpool to witness the
X)erformance of George Stephenson's locomotive, " The Rocket."
With the desire to see all he could on his return of the mechan-

SKETCH OF JAMES N A SMYTH. 119

ical, architectural, and picturesque, lie determined to walk lei-
surely back to London. He was impressed with the pretty sur-
roundings of Manchester, especially as seen from the Patricroft
Bridge ; visited the cotton mills, and continued his walk to Lon-
don, occupied with the thought of settling down in the busy
neighborhood he had just left.

Mr. Maudsley died in February, 1831, and Mr. Nasrayth con-
tinued to work with his partner, Mr. Field, till the latter part of
that year, when, in the twenty-third year of his age, he decided
to go into business for himself. Mr. Field was pleased with his
intention, and gave him facilities for starting. He went to Edin-
burgh and set up a small temporary shop, where he made himself
a set of engineering tools. He subsequently chose Manchester as
his permanent place of business. He found a shop in an eligible
situation, with convenient appurtenances, but in a building occu-
pied by other tenants. The time of his starting in Manchester
was an auspicious one for his business. Workmen of all kinds
were short of the demand, and, taking advantage of the scarcity,
were disposed to be careless, irregular, and insubordinate, and
machine tools, which would not get drunk or go on strike and
were unfailingly regular and accurate, were in great request.
Mr. Nasmyth got his full share of the work of supplying these
tools : planing machines, slide laths, drilling, boring, and slotting
machines, and others ; and orders pouring in upon him, his flat
became loaded with work. He having constructed an engine that
was almost too large for the shop, one end of the beam, while it
was being taken apart for shipment, crushed through the floor,
disturbing the tenant below, and it had become evident that he
needed a larger shop. He found a site within the very landscape
that had attracted his attention years before, as he was resting at
the Patricroft Bridge. He built there the celebrated Bridgewater
Foundry, and took in Mr. Holbrook Gaskell as a partner. Ob-
serving the inconvenience and danger attending the operation of
the foundry ladle then in use, he invented the screw safety ladle,
with which, he says, some twelve or sixteen tons of molten iron
could be decanted " with as much neatness and exactness as the
pouring out of a glass of wine from a decanter."

The maxim of the Bridgewater Foundry, " Free trade in abili-
ty," was put in force early in its operation. By this maxim was
meant promotion of the workmen according to the skill and
activity they displayed, without regard to the kind of apprentice-
ship they had served. This conflicted with the rule of the trades
unions, which required a seven years' apprenticeship, and the in-
evitable strike and picketing occurred. Workmen were brought
from Scotland, the trades unions were conquered, and the foundry
continued to practice and exemplify its maxim unmolested. The

120 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

practice was "to employ intelligent, well-conducted young lads,
the sons of laborers or mechanics, and advance them by degrees
according to their merits. They took charge of the smaller ma-
chine tools, by which the minor details of the machines in prog-
ress were brought into exact form. ... A spirit of emulation was
excited among them. They vied with each other in executing
their work with precision. Those who excelled were paid an
extra weekly wage. In course of time they took pride not only
in the quantity but in the quality of their work, and in the long
run became skillful mechanics. . . . The best of them remained
in our service, because they knew our work and were pleased with
their surroundings ; while we, on our part, were always desirous
of retaining the men we had trained, because we knew we could
depend upon them."

The rapid extension of railroad construction, and the orders
that consequently came in, led to much attention being given at
Bridgewater to the building of locomotives, for which the machine
tools used there gave great advantages. The Great Western Rail-
way Company ordered twenty large engines, offering to add £100
to the contract price of each if they proved satisfactory. The
premiums came, and with them a letter from the board of direct-
ors of the company offering to stand as references as to the
quality of Messrs. Nasmyth and Gaskell's work. The Great
Western Railway Company having successfully dispatched its
steamship Great Western between Bristol and New York, and
having elected to construct another steamer, the Great Britain,
procured tools for making the engines from the Bridgewater
Foundry. They were perplexed, however, about the forging of
the intermediate paddle shaft, which was to be of a size never
before attempted. They applied to Mr. Nasmyth, and he devised
the steam hammer, the most famous of his inventions — an instru-
ment with which, as he says in his autobiography, the workman
might, "as it were, think in blows. He might deal them out
on to the ponderous glowing mass and mold or knead it into
the desired form as if it were a lump of clay ; or pat it with gen-
tle taps, according to his will, or at the desire of the forgeman."
All was going well for setting the hammer in operation, when
the plan of the vessel was changed by the introduction of the
screw propeller, which rendered the immense shaft unnecessary.
No patent was taken out for this invention, but the drawings of
it were kept in the shop, open to the inspection of visitors.
Among those who looked at them were M. Schneider, and M.
Bourdon, his foreman, of the great iron works at Creuzot, France.
A few years afterward, when Mr. Nasmyth visited Creuzot, he
admired the excellence of a certain piece of machinery, and asked
M. Bourdon how the crank had been forged. M. Bourdon

SKETCH OF JAMES NASMYTH. 121

replied, " It was forged by your steam hammer/' Mr. Nasmyth.
was then taken to the forge department, where he saw this
" thumping child of his brain," which for him had existed only
in his books, at work. The foreman had recollected the draw-
ings, and embodied them substantially in the machine. Mr. Nas-
myth at once secured a patent, introduced some improvements,
and made the construction of the steam hammers a branch of his
business. Though he was prompt enough in explaining to them
the merits of his invention, it took considerable time to arouse
the official minds of the Lords of the Admiralty, "who are very
averse to introducing new methods of manufacture to the dock-
yards." But after he had furnished hammers to the principal
manufacturers of England and had sent them abroad, these digni-
taries learned in the course of three years that a new power in
forging had been introduced. A deputation visited the foundry
to see the invention, and were pleased and "astonished at its
range, power, and docility." An order came for a hammer for
the Devonport Dockyard. Their lordships were present when
the hammer was started, and Mr. Nasmyth " passed it through its
paces," He made it break an eggshell in a wineglass without
injuring the glass. It was as neatly effected by the two-and-a-
half-ton hammer as if it had been done with an <dg^ spoon. Then
" I had a great mass of hot iron swung out of the furnace by a
crane and placed upon the anvil block. Down came the hammer
on it with ponderous blows. My lords scattered and flew to
the extremities of the workshop, for the splashes and sparks of
hot metal flew about. I went on with the hurtling blows of the
hammer and kneaded the mass of iron as if it had been clay."
Orders followed to supply all the royal dockyards with a com-
plete equipment of steam hammers.

The extension of the docks at Devonport called for an immense
amount of pile driving. The contractor for the work had wit-
nessed the operation of the steam hammer, and asked Mr. Nas-
myth if the principle could not be applied to the pile driver.
Such a pile driver was constructed. It was tested. Two piles
of equal length and diameter were selected, one to be driven with
the new machine and the other in the old way. The result was
four minutes and a half with the former to twelve hours with the
latter; and the steam-driven piles were hardly bruised, while the
others suffered in the usual way.

Mr. Nasmyth had the satisfaction of seeing many of his me-
chanical notions adopted by rival or competing machine con-
structors, with or without acknowledgment. By the steady appli-
cation of the rule of " free trade in ability " the factory was kept
above trouble with the trades unions, being always able to find
competent and interested hands to take the place of those who

122 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

might be disposed to go out on strike ; and it was a source of the
greatest pleasure to the proprietor, "when looking round the
warehouses and factories, to see the intelligent, steady energy
that pervaded every department, from the highest to the lowest.'*
Other features of the Bridgewater factory were the manufacture
of small engines for various purposes, in which a large business
was done ; the utilization of waste steam for heating and drying;
improvements effected in calico-printing machinery; the furnish-
ing of machine tools to the Woolwich Arsenal, which Mr. Nas-
inyth had found, when he inspected it, " better fitted for a museum
of technical antiquity than for practical use in these days of rapid
mechanical progress " ; and the supply of rope-making machinery
— a new line of work — to the Russian Naval Arsenal at Nikolaiev,
on the Black Sea.

In 1854 Mr. Nasmyth took out a patent for puddling iron by
means of steam, in which the superfluous carbon was removed by
the oxygen arising from the decomposition of the steam. About
a year afterward Mr. Bessemer brought out his invention for
effecting the same purpose by a blast of air, and it totally eclipsed
Mr. Nasmyth's process; but Mr. Nasmyth consoled himself with
the thought that he was a kind of pioneer of the invention, and
]\Ir. Bessemer offered him a third share of the interest in it. But
Mr. Nasmyth " was just then taking down his signboard and
leaving business," and thankfully declined the offer. He bought
a place near Penshurst in Kent, and naming it Hammerfield, after
his hammers and the family crest, retired to it in 1857, when he
was forty-eight years old, and spent the rest of his life there.

Here he indulged himself with complete freedom in the study
of astronomy, in which he had been engaged as an avocation for
many years. He had made a very effective six-inch reflecting tele-
scope as early as 1827, and had instructed Mr. Maudsley in the art
three years later. He then made a speculum ten inches in diameter
— composing the alloy himself — of such quality as evoked admii-a-
tion from Mr. Lassell, and cast a thirteen-inch speculum for Mr.
Warren de la Rue, whose interest in astronomy had been awak-
ened by witnessing his processes. W^ith his ten-inch telescope he
began observations in a general way, which gradually became
particular. In time he substituted for this a twenty-inch reflector
with improvements that made it more convenient to use, and in
1843 began his systematic researches on the moon, making care-
ful drawings in black and white of the features that attracted
attention, and thereby training his eye for more accurate observa-
tion. A series of these drawings, with a large map of the whole
visible surface of the moon, was first exhibited at the Edinburgh
meeting of the British Association in 1850, and afterward at the
Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851 — where, besides a council

SKETCH OF JAMES NASMYTH. 123

medal for his steam hammer, Mr. Nasmyth was given a compli-
mentary notice for the lunar pictures — and to the Queen and
Prince Consort personally. In the course of his astronomical
observations he turned to consider the causes of the sun's light
and other phenomena of light and heat. In May, 1851, he sent a
communication to the Astronomical Society embodying his views
that the light of the sun was simply the result of an action on
that body of ethereal matter distributed through space unevenly,
so that its intensity would vary as the system passed through dif-
ferent regions ; that variability in stars might be thus accounted
for ; and that our Glacial period was produced by the solar system
passing through a region deficient in power of luminosity. Mr.
Nasmyth found afterward that these views were paralleled ia
some features of the theory of the sun enunciated by Dr. Siemens
in 1882. He delivered a lecture on the Structure of the Lunar
Surfaces before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society in 1858, and
in 1874 brought out his book on Tlie Moon considered as a
Planet, a World, and a Satellite — a work which at once made its
mark in selenological literature. He busied himself also with
the study of the spots on the sun, and made the novel discovery
of the willow-leaved structure of the solar surface, which at-
tracted universal attention among astronomers. Sir John Herschel
complimented him upon it in his Outlines of Astronomy ; the
astronomers at Greenwich made observations that confirmed it ;
and Father Secchi was trying to illustrate it by sprinkling rice
grains over a blackboard covered with glue at the very moment
Nasmyth was introduced to him by their fellow- astronomer Otto
von Struve. We should mention, too, in connection with his
astronomical studies the paper which he presented to the Royal
Astronomical Society about 1851 on the Rotatory Movements of
Celestial Bodies, which was suggested by the motion of that kind
acquired by water running out" of the bottom of a basin. Mr.
Nasmyth was also interested in microscopy, and studied twenty-
seven forms of infusoria in the water of the Bridgewater Canal ;
in photography, and made models of parts of the moon's surface
and photographed them ; in the origin of the form of the Pyra-
mids, which he attributed to the appearance of the sun's rays
streaming through clouds; and to the derivation of the cunei-
form characters from the shapes of the impressions made by
striking soft clay with the corner of a parallelogram-shaped
instrument. He wrote Remarks on Tools and Machinery in
Baker's Elements of Mechanics (1858).

124

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gxXltor's Sa:blje,

SOCIAL NEEDS.

IF the word "socialist" could be
defined as one who concerns him-
self with the interests of society, who
makes those interests his own, then
it would be well if we were all "so-
cialists." So long, however, as it
means a person who wishes to trans-
fer to everybody the authoritative
direction of everybody else's busi-
ness and the control of everybody
else's property, we must leave the
use of the term to those who accept
responsibility for the advocacy of
such ideas. Meantime, it is a matter
for the daily consideration of all men
of good will what are the most press-
ing social needs of the hour, and how
they can best be met.

Among the phenomena of our
time in this country there is none,
we think, more striking than the
great development of our institu-
tions of learning. Partly through
public grants and partly through
private donations, the means avail-
able for higher education have with-
in the last quarter of a century, even
within the last dozen years, been
enormously increased; and, as has
lately been remarked, there will
shortly be little need for American
youths to repair to foreign universi-
ties in order to obtain the latest and
best results of research in almost any
department of knowledge. In other
words, this country is already well
equipped for the formation of a cul-
tured and learned class, and is yearly
increasing its facilities and resources
in that direction. This is true even
in regard to branches of scholarship,
such as the classical languages and
philology, which might be thought
less likely to awaken interest in a new
and democratic community. What-

ever advantage, therefore, can come
to us from a liberal provision for the
higher learning we may consider as
already assured.

That culture and learning are de-
lightful and profitable possessions no
one, we think, but an extremely un-
cultivated and narrow-minded person
would deny: but, taking what may
be called a sociological view of the
subject, we have sometimes been led
to wonder whether the immense sums
of money which have been appro-
priated of late to university purposes
have really been bestowed in the
manner most useful to the country
at large. A day or two ago our ej'e
fell upon the following observations
in one of our most valued contem-
poraries: "In truth, one of the most
startling things in connection with
our collegiate education is its failure,
as a rule, to prevent the graduate,
when he enters politics, from sinking
mentally to the existing political
level. This has been the history of
the larger number of what are called
our 'gentlemen in politics.' They
rarely spend a year with politicians
without adopting their standards and
their view of civilization." Most per-
sons, w^e imagine, can confirm this
from their own experience. But, if
the scholar sinks through contact
with the politician, how are we to
explain the low level at which the
latter lives? With whom is he in
contact on the other side? There is
only one answer: With "the people."

This makes us reflect. Millions
are being given for the endowment
of the higher learning — that is, for
the creation of a learned class. What
is that learned class going to do for
the rest of the community ? The
members of it will make, no doubt,

EDITOR'S TABLE.

125

delightful society for one another;
but, from the wider sociological
standpoint, what function are they
going to fulfill? Will they in any
powerful and eilective manner help
to sustain and strengthen the ideality
of less favored classes ; or will they
live their lives apart, each in his own
little "palace of art" constructed by
the spirit of self-love and exclusive-
ness? If they can be counted on to
do the former, then the millions are
most wisely expended; but if the
latter is to be the outcome, then, be-
yond all doubt, the millions might
have been better applied. We be-
lieve in natural differentiations, but
not in artificially created distinc-
tions; and unless our highly edu-
cated class can accept and discharge
some social ministry that will have
the effect of communicating to others
some share in what they have ob-
tained themselves, it seems to us that
this vast expenditure of money for
higher education may lead to social
results of a rather undesirable kind.
The university graduate, as we have
seen, is cutting a very poor figure in
politics. The politicians by profes-
sion will not let him do otherwise;
and he seems to have no power what-
ever of appealing to or influencing
the people against the politicians.
The reason why he is thus powerless
— admitting, what x^erhaps there is
no reason to admit in some cases,
that he has any ideal of his own
above the common — is that the life
of the people is almost untouched by
any kind of ideality, and that the
popular habit of mind is opposed to
the recognition of any leadership
based upon superiority of mental or
moral endowment. We are thus
led to the unwelcome conclusion
that there is but little diffusion of
culture in any true sense among the
people, and that it is the general lack
of it, and the absence of any interest
in larger questions, which give to

our politics that character of dreari-
ness and pettiness, not to mention a
constant tendency to corruption,
which all careful observers have
noted.

One careful observer has lately
consigned his observations to the
pages of the Atlantic Monthly ; we
refer to the article contributed to the
March number of that periodical by
Mr. Francis C. Lowell, under the title
of Legislative Shortcomings. It is
of the Massachusetts Legislature, in
which he had two years' experience,
that Mr. Lowell speaks. "The first
object," he says, of a member elected
thereto, " is to secure the passage, or
more rarely the defeat, of some legis-
lative measure of only local impor-
tance. . . . Occasionally, but not
often, this measure is an iniquitous
job. Usually the member has no
pecuniary interest in it, and often it
is little more than a matter of legis-
lative routine. Even when it is un-
wise, it is frequently nothing worse
than a piece of legislative f ussiness ;
or perhaps it was devised to meet
some local demand, and is objection-
able only on account of the bad pre-
cedent it establishes; such, for ex-
ample, as acts to enable a particular
town to subsidize a steamboat or a
variety show for the convenience or
amusement of its summer visitors.
... If the member's pet measure is
not a local matter, but an act of gen-
eral importance, he runs the risk of
being deemed a crank. If he should
strenuously seek the passage of sev-
eral measures, really important, he
would be thought wholly devoid of
common sense, and his influence
would soon disappear." Then, in
order to get his own little bill passed,
the member, Mr. Lowell tells us, has
to trade his vote — that is to say, he
must vote for other men's bills, be
they good or bad, if he wishes them
to vote for his. If he should fail to
do this, ''his constituents, without

126

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

regard to party or coBtlitiou, -would
probably deem him faithless to his
principal duty."

If such things are done in the
green tree of Massachusetts, what
may we expect in the drier wood of
less happily conditioned States ? The
Atlantic Monthly would render a
great service if, taking this article of
Mr. Lowell's as the first of a series,
it would give us a dozen or so of
similar studies of other State Legisla-
tures. Nothing would more efi'ectu-
ally hold up to us a mirror in which
to see our true social and political
status. Meantime let us first ask how
such a condition of political intelli-
gence as Mr. Lowell depicts tallies
with the vast apparatus we already
command, and the vaster we are
daily acquiring, for the promotion
of higher learning. When do our
learned men propose to swoop down
from their heights with culture in
their wings for the help and inspira-
tion of the masses of their country-
men ? Or is this a matter which
they think may safely be left to the
common schools ?

In this uncertainty as to what the
learned classes are going to do for the
commonwealth, we sometimes won-
der whether it might not be possible
to divert advantageously to purposes
of popular culture some portion of
the wealth which is now finding its
way in lavish streams to already
well -endowed seats of learning.
How the money, if available, could
best be applied is an interesting ques-
tion as to which we should be glad to
receive suggestions from our readers.
We have more than once heard re-
gret expressed — and we share the
feeling ourselves — at the almost com-
plete disappearance of the lecture
system which was doing so much
useful work a generation ago. The
newspaper has superseded the plat-
form; and yet the platform, we do
not hesitate to say, was a more civil-

izing force in some respects than the
newspaper. For one thing, it "ut-
tered nothing base," which is more
than can be said for the newspaper.
It gave the people high thoughts, in-
teresting ideas, pure sentiments, and
useful knowledge. It was not occu-
pied with idle gossip, or mean per-
sonalities, or the criminal side of life.
It is not fully replaced even by good
books and papers. As Prof. Corson
says in his interesting little book on
The Aims of Literary Study: "The
intellectual coeflicient can be appre-
hended through silent reading; the
main object of vocalization is to ex-
hibit the spiritual coefficient, which
is indefinite to the intellect, and
needs to be vocally rendered as much
as a musical composition needs to be
vocally or instruraentally rendered."
There was. moreover, a certain social
stimulus afforded by the lecture sys-
tem which the private reading of
even good literature does not supply.
We conceive, therefore, that a
wealthy man. desiring to benefit the
people at large, might with great
advantage establish not lectureships
but rather readerships. The litera-
ture of to-day and of past days con-
tains ample material for the instruc-
tion and delight of popular audiences
if read aloud by a properly trained
elocutionist. Our idea would be to
have such readings entirely free, ex-
cept that local expenses in the way
of hall hire, etc., might be met by
the locality; and we should further
propose that the reader should in
each place that he visited give a
course of lessons, also free, in cor-
rect reading. For the results which
might be expected to accrue from
such measures we would refer to the
little work by Prof. Corson already
mentioned, and to another by the
same author entitled The Voice and
Spiritual Education. If Prof. Corson
is right, culture, no less than faith,
comes mainly by hearing; and an

EDITOR'S TABLE.

127

agency, therefore, by which the best
literature of the day and of all days
should be brought home to people's
hearts through the tones of a sympa-
thetic human voice could not fail, in
course of time, to produce very bene-
ficial effects both mental and moral.
Within the household itself nothing
is more humanizing than good read-
ing (aloud) ; and this would be pro-
moted by such public readings and
such instruction as we have in view.
We hear not infrequently of gifts of
a million dollars or more to a single
university; and we think it is time
that something should be done for
those who have no opportunity to
become very learned, but whose
minds might by proper effort be at-
tuned to what is best in literature,
and thus raised above the dreary level
of commonplace ideas and petty per-
sonal concerns.

SPENCEB AND DARWIN.

A COUPLE of years ago, as some
of our readers will remember, a book
was published under the title of
From the Greeks to Darwin, in which
the history of the doctrine of evolu-
tion was sketched, or at least pur-
ported to be sketched, from the earli-
est times down to our own day. The
most remarkable thing about the
book was that, of set purpose, it
ignored the greatest thinker on evo-
lutionary lines that the world had
ever seen ; we mean, of course, Her-
bert Spencer. This omission was
duly noticed in our columns at the
time, and there is no need to go over
the ground again. What we wish
to say to-day is that, if Mr. Spencer's
position in relation to the doctrine
of evolution needed any vindication,
it has received it in ample measure
in Mr. Edward Clodd's recently pub-
lished book, Pioneers of Evolution,
and in the article by Mr. Grant Allen

contributed to the Fortnightly Re-
view and republished in our last
number. No one can read either the
one or the other without feeling that
to discuss evolution in its broader
aspects without making due mention
of Spencer is like narrating the dis-
covery of America with but slight
mention of Columbus. To Mr.
Spencer we owe a rational and sys-
tematic statement of the doctrine of
universal evolution; to Darwin we
owe an original and lucid explana-
nation of the natural process by
which species are modified and new
species formed. The latter was in-
deed a most solid and substantive
piece of work, but it did not furnish
the general formula of evolution,
which but for the labors of Herbert
Spencer would still be to seek. It
was Darwin himself who said of
Spencer : " I suspect that hereafter
he vrill be looked upon as by far the
greatest living philosopher in Eng-
land ; perhaps equal to any that have
lived."

We feel how times have changed
when to be recognized as a potent
contributor to the establishment of
the doctrine of evolution is one of
the highest honors, if not the high-
est honor, which a philosophical
thinker can enjoy. When Darwin
published liis Origin of Species, and
for some years later, his name was
cast out as evil ; to-day it is difficult
to keep an admiring public from
claiming for him the authorship of
that much wider scheme of evolu-
tion for which Mr. Spencer properly
stands sponsor. The record, how-
ever, is very clear, and no one needs
to be in error as to the respective
achievements of the two men. Both
have done great work for the intel-
lectual emancipation of mankind,
and the names of both will go down
with glory to posterity.

128 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

^titxiXiiit %iXtxKXxxxz.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

The first volume of the Story of the West Series dealt with a class that
is becoming smaller and weaker, the second concerns one that is growing
larger and stronger.* The miner, however, is changing his characteristics
hardly less rapidly than the Indian, hence it is none too early to put his
picturesque past on record. Mr. Shinn takes the development of the great
Comstock Lode of Nevada as typical of all the various phases of mining,
from the scratching of the prospector to the stupendous feats of the en-
gineer— as typical also of the leap into bonanza and the sinking into bor-
rasca. The Mormons made the first notable efforts to settle the region that
is now Nevada, but the growth of the mineral interests soon took it out of
their control. In describing the placer mining and the first quartz pro-
specting that preceded the discovery of the Comstock Lode, Mr. Shinn in-
troduces some of the restless pioneers that gave the mining camps of the
period their rough and picturesque character. After the great discovery
was made in 1859, came the rush across the Sierras which brought other
choice spirits who figure in the eai'ly times of Virginia City. There were
the industrious and unfortunate Grosh brothers; the bombastic, scheming,
and ineffective Comstock who gave his name to the great Lode ; drunken
"Old Virginia," who christened Virginia City with an accidentally broken
bottle of whisky; the wily gamblers and their often hard-working but
reckless victims; enterprising traders and energetic teamsters; while the
nationalities represented included Irishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Cana-
dians, Mexicans, Indians, and Jews. Mr. Shinn shows us the trails almost
impassable with snow or mud along which a constant stream of pilgrims
was toiling, the crowded public houses, the conglomeration of huts, tents,
and dug-outs that made up a mining camp, and the abandoned pits and
shafts which often entrapped straying animals and men. Passing from
these primitive scenes, he shows us the various phases of the great industry
which mining has become in our western country. He tells us how the
crude methods of treating ores used by the early prospectoi'S were suc-
ceeded by the arrastra, and this by the stamp mill ; how some great me-
chanical problems were solved, such as timbering the wide Comstock Lode
and bringing the water supply of Virgina City through a fourteen-mile
flume and seven-mile siphon from Hobart Creek, and how the freighters,
stage-drivers, and lumberers made money by letting the mines alone and
devoting themselves to dependent industries. Mining litigation and stock
speculation each have a chapter. We have an account of the days of the
great bonanza, in which the operations of Mackay, Fair, Flood, O'Brien,
and others are described. Perhaps the greatest engineering feat that
figures in the story is the Sutro Tunnel— the "coyote hole." as contemptu-
ous opposition termed it. In conclusion we are told what a present-day
mine is like, both above and under ground, and what sort of men now
make up its community. The volume is illustrated with many fittingly
picturesque views.

♦ The story of the Mine By Charles Howard Shinn. Illustrated. New York : D. Appleton &
Co. Pp. 272, limo. Price, gl.50.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 129

Judging^ from the account of Mr. Loomis, there is much enjoyment to be
had incidentally from a scientific expedition to a strange land.* Merely
passing over unfamiliar ground and observing its natural features, its in-
habitants in their everyday aspect, and its ordinary sequence of events has
its interest. But when the traveler is engaged in operations that are enough
out of the common to appear somewhat weird to the non-scientific native
and arouse his active curiosity, traits are brought out that do not appear to
the ordinary visitor. A more realizing sense of the physical, political, and
industrial condition of a strange land, too, is obtained when one has to
accomplish a definite piece of work with the means that it affords than,
when one is concerned merely with passing through it. Personal equa-
tion is quite as much a factor in books of travel as in scientific observa-
tions. How much we prefer the writer who jots down the points that we
take an interest in and answers the queries that arise in our minds as we
follow his narrative ! The reader with scientific tastes especially will enjoy
Mr. Loomis's book. It describes the journey of the United States Scien-
tific Expedition to West Africa in 1889-*90, the preparations for viewing
the eclipse of the sun, and the return. After crossing the Atlantic, stops
-were made at the Azores, Cape Verd Islands, Sierra Leone, and on the
Gold Coast before the destination of the expedition — Saint Paul de Loan da
— was reached. On the return, Cape Town, the diamond mines of Kim-
berley. Saint Helena, Ascension, and Barbados were visited. The book
gives abundant evidence that our author, in addition to his ability to record
matters of exact observation, is not without a realizing sense of the beauti-
ful and inspiring in Nature. The volume is handsomely printed, and is
copiously illustrated with reproductions of photographs taken by members
of the expedition.

Another careful study of a special field has been added to the Criminol-
ogy Series. t The habitual criminal presents a much more serious problem
than the occasional offender. Criminal habits, like most others, are formed
in youth ; hence any diminution that can be secured in the amount of
juvenile crime will tend to reduce the most troublesome class of criminals.
At present the author's study, of statistics and other pertinent facts indi-
cates that juvenile crime is increasing in both Europe and America. Its
distribution agrees substantially with that of adult crime. While the bulk
of juvenile criminals are boys, Mr. Morrison finds that "female offenders
are rather more likely to descend into the ranks of habitual criminals than
male offenders." He accounts for this largely from the fact that " females
are, as a rule, later in being subjected to reformative discipline than males,
with the ultimate result that this discipline is less effective when at last it
has to be resorted to. It is therefore," he continues, " no real kindness to
female children, when they exhibit symptoms of habitual delinquency, to
allow these symptoms to develop unheeded." As to the kinds of crime
committed by children, our author finds that petty theft and vagabondage
are by far the most prevalent, mental and physical immaturity making it
impossible for the young to be serious offenders against either person or

♦ An Eclipse Party in Africa. By Eben J. Loomis. Elustrated. Boston: Roberts Bros. Pp.218,
8vo. Price, $4.50.

t Juvenile Offenders. By W. Douglas Morrison. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 317, ICmo
Price, $1.50.

VOL. LI. — 10

130 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

property. It appears that most juvenile criminals are undersized and
sickly, and many have a feeble intellect, bluntness of feeling, or unstable
will. The operation of heredity has fastened these defects upon them, as a
rule, so that they must be regarded as belonging to a decadent class. Be-
sides the production of such disabilities the influence of parents often oper-
ates to rear young criminals through the conditions and associations of the
home. From this examination of the production of juvenile crime our
author turns to consider measures of repression. He finds that the plan of
suspended sentence is very promising, especially with first offenders. A
fine which may be paid in installments, or, in other words, a sentence to
compulsory labor without imprisonment, also commends itself to him, but
he has little faith in the eflScacy of corporal punishment, in spite of the
recent advocacy of it. Ordinary imprisonment, which he discusses in con-
siderable detail, he also finds unsuitable for the young. The corrective
institutions that have become numerous of late years seem to him to go to
the root of the difficulty, as they aim to correct the defective physical and
moral condition of the juvenile delinquent, and thus aid him to keep from
future lapses. Mr. Morrison urges more intelligent supervision of inmates
after their discharge from such institutions, which could be combined with
conditional release before the expiration of the term of commitment. The
book can not fail to be of service to all who have to deal with vicious tend-
encies in the young.

It is a long step from the time when prehistoric man fashioned his rude
weapons and battled with the rhinoceros and cave bear to the era of such a
civilization as that of the Akkads, depicted for us by Mr. Anderson.* To
these early Chaldeans Babylon and Assyria were indebted for their cunei-
form characters and much of their culture. At Lippur, 3800 B. c, they
possessed an extensive library. Some of their works on astronomy, being
unearthed three thousand years later, proved sufficiently new to be studied
by the Assyrians. In art they showed more skill than succeeding nations,
and also made considerable progress in science, being acquainted with the
sidereal year and reckoning the latitude of stars. They used the clepsydra,
lever and pulley, lenses, and possibly telescopes, since tablets have been
found apparently referring to the four moons of Jupiter.

It is almost incredible that the name and memory of a nation so exten-
sive as to include all of Asia Minor and northern Syria, and powerful
enough to be courted by Egypt in the time of the great Sesostris, could be
blotted out of history for two thousand years. Yet this is tho care in re-
gard to the empire of Khita. and the story of her greatness has to be inter-
preted anew for us from the walls of Thebes and Egyptian temples. The
Hittite inscriptions which are found in Asia Minor are as yet a riddle to
scholars.

Other of the ancient civilizations happily did not fall into such oblivion,
and concerning the distinctive features of each of these— Babylonia, Egypt,
Phoenicia, the Hebrews, the Arabs, and ancient Persia — the author dis-
courses ably and graphically.

* Ttie story of Extinct Civilizations of the East. By Robert E. Anderson. New York : D. Apple-
ton & Co. Pp. :>13. Price, 40 conts.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

131

GENERAL NOTICES.

The strong efforts now being made to
develop a vehicle that shall propel itself, and
the measure of success already achieved,
promise the early attainment of an advance
in locomotion as great as that afforded by
the introduction of the safety type of bicycle.
A good idea of the mechanical principles that
are being employed in the solution of the
problem may be gained from a translation of
a recent book by a French engineer.* Of
the four kinds of motor that have been ap-
plied to self-propelling vehicles — steam, elec-
tric, compressed air, and naphtha — the au-
thor has by far the most hopes of the last,
and gives most space to this type in his book.
His early chapters are devoted to a state-
ment of the mechanics of steam and other
gases, and he gives here also the theory of
the electric motor. In describing the vari-
ous systems of steam traction he gives first
place to the SerpoUet generator — the only
generator of steam allowed for traffic in the
large cities of France. Other steam motors
that find place here are the Le Blant, De
Dion & Bouton, Bollee, Filtz, Rowan, and
Francq. Compressed-air autocars are repre-
sented by the Popp-Conti tramway and the
Mekarski system. M. Farman is naturally
most familiar with motor wagons of European
origin, but he has inserted such accounts as
were accessible to him of the American types.
Among petroleum motors he ranks as king
the one invented by the German Daimler,
which is employed in the carriages of Pan-
hard & Levassor, Peugeot, Gautier, and other
builders. He gives a full description of this
and describes also the Roger car with the
Benz motor, the Gladiator auto-cycles, the
Duryea, Kane-Pennington, Tenting, and Dela-
haye cars, and several machines so far used
only for agricultural or other industrial pur-
poses. Electric carriages are represented by
the Jeantaud, Morris & Salom, and Bogard.
His concluding chapter deals with lubrica
tion, tires, bearings, and other details. Over
a hundred carefully drawn figures and dia-
grams illustrate the volume.

The notes which the reader will find
in Miss Merriani's attractive volume were

* Autocars. By D. Farman. New York: The
Macmiilan Co. Pp. 249, 12mo. Price, $1.50.

taken at Twin Oaks in southern California.*
The author is a bird enthusiast who, before
going to the Pacific coast, had known only
the birds of New York and Massachusetts.
" Every morning right after breakfast " she
has her horse brought round, and together in
silent sympathy she and Canello, the faithful
patient little broncho, go the rounds of the
valley, getting acquainted with the birds as
they come from the south. Canello liked
well to " watch birds in the high alfalfa un-
der the sycamores, but when it came to stand-
ing still where the hot sun beat down through
the brush and there was nothing to eat, his
interest in ornithology flagged perceptibly."
Then after dinner the author strolls through
the trees to get a nearer view of the nests.
The white egret, the green heron, the spotted
sandpiper, the valley quail, are as fascinating
to Miss Merriam as are the ants to Sir John
Lubbock. Her description of all the birds is
marked by a charming simplicity and by a
beautiful use of English. She is in touch
with Nature, with an eye for color, an ear
atune to melody, and intellect clear and clean.
It is a pity that we have not more such books
as this and more such women as the author-
ess. We can imagine no better mental tonic
than a ride on horseback in the early morn-
ing while the dew is on the grass, with the
authoress as a chaperon and teacher of bird
lore, for the weary city woman who needs to
be lulled back to rest and get mental and
physical health on the bosom of Mother Na-
ture.

Prof. Ramsay, who was associated with
Lord Rayleigh in the remarkable discovery
of argon, has written a popular historical
sketch of the several investigations that have
given us our present knowledge as to what
air is composed of.f He begins with the
work of Robert Boyle, who published about
1650 his Memoirs for a General History of
the Air, and proceeds with the less known
labors of John Mayow and Stephen Hales.

* A-Birding on a Bronco. By Florence A.
Merriam. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
Price, $1.25.

t The Gases of the Atmosphere. By William
Ramsay, F. R. 8. London and New York : The
Macmiilan Co. Pp. 240, 12mo. Price, $2.

132

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

From some pai=sa{res in their writings it
would seem that each of these worthies came
within a step or two of discovering all the
main facts relating to the composition of the
air, but each failed to look quite far enough
in the right direction. Boyle, it appears, rea-
soned shrewdly from imperfect observations ;
Mayow died young ; while Hales accumulated
many and definite experimental facts, but
lacked the ability to make use of them. All
were hampered by the current errors of their
time, among which the chief were the inabil-
ity to distinguish one gas from another, lack
of attention to gain or loss of weight, and
above all erroneous ideas regarding combus-
tion. Prof. Ramsay shows how the phlo-
gistic theory, which came up about the end
of Boyle's life, interfered with the researches
of his successors — Black, Rutherford, Priest-
ley, and Cavendish — until it was overthrown
by Lavoisier. We are told something about
the achievements of each of these men,
and the account is made more interesting by
including descriptions and portraits of the
men themselves. After Cavendish little ap-
parently remained to be done but to make
more exact determinations of the constitu-
ents that had been found in the air. But in
the course of some investigations in 1892
Lord Ray leigh noticed that nitrogen prepared
from ammonia is somewhat lighter than at-
mospheiic nitrogen. A i-esearch undertaken
to find the reason for this difference brought
out the existence of the inert argon. The
circumstances of the discovery and the rea-
soning which led to it are set forth by Prof.
Ramsay, who adds chapters giving the prop-
erties of argon and its po.-ition among the
elements. The author has succeeded well in
keeping his book within the comprehension
of the persons without special scientific train-
ing for whom it was written.

Prof. Crockett's Elements of Plane and
Spherical Trigonometry* by a mathemati-
cian of note who is Professor of Mathemat-
ics and Astronomy in the Rensselaer Poly-
technic Institute, has been prepared for the
use of beginners in the study. Assuming
that a high degree of proficiency can not be
expected from such students, the author, not

* Elements of Plane and Spherical Trigonome-
try, with Tables. By C. W. Crockett. American
Book Company. Pp. .^11. Price, $1.25.

striving after original demonstrations, has
limited himself to the selection of simple
proofs of the formulas, to which geometrical
proofs have in many cases been added. The
definitions and explanations are admirably
clear and concise. The numerical examples
have been computed by the author, with spe-
cial attention to correctness in the last deci-
mal place. The tables are a special feature,
are printed from differentiated type, and on
paper of a different tint from the text, so as
to make them easier to turn to. They give
five places, while the angles in the examples
are given to the nearest tenth of a minute.
We find the book lucid and convenient.

The recent book of Prof. Keasbey * on the
Nicaragua Canal urges frankly and emphatic-
ally the choice of the Nicaragua route for a
canal across Central America, and the assump-
tion by the United States of a dominant posi-
tion in the political control of this water way.
The author opens his discussion with a brief
description and comparison of the ten or
twelve more or less distinct routes that have
been proposed, expressing the decided con-
viction that the Nicaragua and Panama routes
are the only two worth considering, with the
advantage on the side of the former. The
greater part of the volume is devoted to a
history of the attempts that have been made
to construct canals in this region and to ob-
tain political control of the territory through
which they would pass. The record begins
with the first Spanish explorations, and men-
tions canal projects of Spanish engineers
formed before 1550. A chapter on the Eng-
lish freebooters opens an account of the
struggle between England and Spain, lasting
into the early part of the present century.
The term from 1815 to 1865 Prof. Keasbey
characterizes as a period of private initiative
in canal projects. Two events in this divi-
sion of his record which have an important
bearing on the idea of cutting the American
isthmus are the enunciation of the Monroe
doctrine and the execution of the Clayton-
Bulwer treaty. The time since 1865 he de-
scribes as a period of governmental activity
in this matter, and he closes his chronicle of
recent events by givmg his view of the po-

* The Nicaragua Canal and the Monroe Doc-
trine. By Liudley Miller Keasbey. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 622, Svo. Price, $3.50.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

13?

litical, the technical, and the diplomatic situa-
tions of to-day with regard to the two chief
routes. In his concluding chapters he argues
for the construction of a canal as of tran-
scendent importance to the economic develop-
ment of America, and gives his reasons why
the United States should control the passage.
The volume is carefully indexed and contains
four maps.

Among the papers accompanying the Re-
port of the United States Commissioner of
Education for 1894- 95 are two dealing with
important subjects connected with the edu-
cational system of Great Britain. One of
these is the question of religious instruction
in the free schools, and the other is the or-
ganization of secondary education as shown
by the report of a royal commission. The
legal aspects of the Manitoba school case are
given in another contribution. Foreign mat-
ters of interest treated in other papers are
the university education of women in Eng-
land, the educational status of women in
various countries, and English teaching on
the history of the American Revolution. Of
domestic interest are the chapters on teach-
ers' pensions, Chautauqua education, and
early educational history in the United States.

The book on Alternating Currents aytd Al-
ternating Current Machinery, by Profs. Du-
gald C and John P. Jackson, forms Volume
II of their textbook on Electromagnetism
and the Construction of Dynamos (Macmil-
lan, $3.50). The authors have followed in it
methods that have been found advantageous
in teaching other branches of engineering.
The volume is designed to present the fun-
damental phenomena of alternating currents
as met with in engineering practice, and to
point out their controlling principles and ap-
plications. Descriptions and illustrations of
commercial machinery are not included per
se, though where practical data may be use-
ful in illustrating deductions in the text they
are copiously used. For the fuller information
of the reader, a large number of references
are given in footnotes. In the chapters on
polyphase currents the authors could not
hope to supply a list of references that would
remain long adequate, as material of over-
shadowing importance is being constantly
published. Descriptions of experiments hav-
ing only historical interest have been care-

fully excluded. In the use of mathematics
the authors have sought to avoid presenting
unnecessary formulas on the one hand, or
giving results without reasons on the other.
Numerous original demonstrations of the
standard formulas have been introduced and
a few additions have been made to the no-
menclature. The volume contains over three
hundred diagrams and other figures, and is
adequately indexed.

In a neatly printed little pamphlet ff.
Edwin Lewis has discussed The Philosophy
of Sex scientifically, delicately, and impres-
sively. His chapter on Reproduction and
the Origin of Sex and that on the Nature
and Relation of Sex lead up to an earnest
appeal for sexual purity, which can not fail
to help well-intentioned persons who are
weak or thoughtless or who do not know
where to turn for guidance. (Vermont Medi-
cal Publishing Co., Burlington, 85 cents.)

Much out of the common run of text-
books is Numhtr and its Algebra, by Arthur
Lefevre (Heath, $1.25). It deals with the
theory of numerical operations, and is de-
signed to be introductory to a collegiate
course in algebra. It thus bears a similar
relation to algebra that the chapters on
chemical philosophy in books on chemistry
bear to their main subject. The mathemat-
ical operations whose natures are explained
range from counting up to work with radi-
cal surds, undetermined coeflScients, roots of
integral and quadratic equations, radix frac-
tions, and functions. The several chapters
are based on lectures which the author has
given for a number of years to his univer.sity
students with the especial design of aiding
the large part of them who were preparing
to teach, hence pedagogical applications will
be found throughout the book. "Plainly
the first step," says the author, " to the un-
derstanding of the algebra of number is to
understand the nature and laws of number.
It is hoped that these lectures have been a
fairly adequate guide and stimulus to this
step. After masteiing what may be called
the vocabulary of the language (proficiency
in this matter has been assumed), the next
step is to grasp the idea of algebraic /orm.
In the study of algebra this should be the
main standpoint. It is only by following out
the problems which arise in a systematic

134

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

study of algebraic form that the modern de-
velopments of pure algebra, or its applica-
tions to geometry, can be rightly compre-
hended."

From the Department of Agriculture we
have received /wAr^-^s affecting Dome-tiic Ayi-
imals, an account of the species of impor-
tance in North America, by Herbert Osborne,
Professor of Zoology and Entomology, Iowa
Agricultural College. This report gives, in
about three hundred pages, a description of
all the parasites the stock raiser has to con-
tend with. After an introductory chapter on
parasites in general, the following six chap-
ters deal with the various pests in detail.
The seventh chapter tells of remedies and
preventive treatment. Classified lists and a
bibliography complete the pamphlet. The
report represents the result of investigations
carried on at intervals since 1885. In the
words of L. 0. Howard, entomologist to the
department, it " will form an excellent text-
book of the subject, and is a work which
should be in the hands of all stock raisers."
It is fully illustrated by plates and cuts.

Observations on the Fur Seals of the Pri-
biloff Island* — Preliminary Report by David
Sta/rr Jordan, Commissioner in charge of

Fur-seal Investigations for 1896-

-brings

some interresting data as to the condition
and the fishery of seals on a little cluster of
islands in the Bering Sea. Under different
headings it describes the islands, the rooker-
ies, habits and breeding of the seal, and the
different modes of killing, and their effects.
A number of statistical tables put these dif-
ficult investigations on a scientifically accu-
rate basis ; and a map appended to the pam-
phlet locates the routes of the seal under
way.

The February number of the Expositor,
a theological magazine, opens with a rather
searching criticism of Ian Maclaren's The
Mind of the Master, by the Lord Bishop of
Derry and Raphoe. He points out what to
him seem numerous errors of interpretation
of the Gospels ; and from his Anglican
point of view the Rev. John Watson's broad
if not exactly new proposition — that of sub-
stituting the Sermon on the Mount for the
creeds of Christendom — would mean a giv-
ing over of Christianity altogether. Among
the other papers of interest to lay readers

may be mentioned Christian Perfection, by
the Rev. Joseph Agar Beet ; John's View of
the Sabbath Rest, by the Rev. George Mathe-
son ; and The Priest of Penitence, by the
Rev. E. N. Bennett. Among the reviews a
large space is given to books on social topics.
Two of these reviews are by Prof. Richard
T. Ely, and one by Prof. William Adams
Brown.

The Analytic Keys to the Genera and
Species of North American Mosses, prepared
by Charles M. Barnes, and published by the
University of Wisconsin, is a new edition
and enlargement of a Key to Genera pub-
lished for free distribution in 1886, and Keys
to Species published in 1890, and is intend-
ed to serve the same purpose as they — of
furnishing a convenience to students rather
than to present a critical study of North
American mosses. It includes, therefore, a
very large number of new species that have
been described since 1890. For the beuefit
of amateurs, though specialists may not
need them, collected descriptions are ap-
pended of all species not found in Lesque-
reux and James's Manual. The attempt is
made to include all the species reported or
described as belonging to our flora, unless
later study of the genus has shown the addi-
tion to be untenable ; and such special stud-
ies are cited in the Keys. Pains have been
taken to include as many of the barren and
insufficiently described species as possible,
in order that they may be recognized, if
they exist, or may be referred to their proper
place. Varieties are not discriminated, l)ut
inquiry into the subject is suggested. The
work of preparing this edition has been
largely done by Mr. de F. Ueald, with the
co-operation of the author.

Prof. G. Frederick Wrighfs comprehen-
sive and fully illustrated account of The Ice
Age in North A merica, which first appeared
in 1889, reached its fourth edition in 1896
(Appletons, $5). Detailed work upon the
glaciated areas has been going on actively
since the third edition came out, but Dr.
Wright finds no occasion to modify mate-
rially his original statements, either of fact
or of theory. In his preface to the new
issue he gives a list of papers in which the
results of this recent work have been em
bodied, accompanying it with notes on the

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

135

contents of many of the papers. He inserts
also a map prepared by Mr. Warren Upham
showing the three stages in which Prof.
T. C. Chamberiin has classified the glacial
formations of North America and the later
lines of recession toward the northeast.
Prof. Wright sees many open questions in
glacial geology " inviting the continued atten-
tion of local observers and promising to all
interesting and important discoveries."

The Report of the Neio York State Board
of Charities for 1895 gives evidence of a

year of active work. The report proper is
accompanied by a large number of special
reports of inspections by one or more mem-
bers of the board, made to ascertain the gen-
eral condition of the several hospitals, alms-
houses, children's homes, and other charitable
institutions in the State or to investigate
alleged abuses. Institutions found to be in
good condition are cordially praised, and de-
fects are unhesitatingly condemned. The
ordinary operations of the institutions under
the supervision of the board are fully shown
in tables.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins |
and Reports. Cornell University : The Pistol-
case-Bearer in Western New York. By M. V.
Slingerland. Pp. 17; A Disease of Currant
Cants. By E. J. Durand. Pp. 16 —Michigan :
Bacte ia: What they Are and what they Do ; and
Eopiness in Milk. By C. E. Marshall. Pp. 44.—
New Jersey : Report of the Botai icsl Department
for lf<96. By Bvron D. Halsted. Pp. 136 —New
York : Director's Report for 1896. Pp. 30 ; The
Cucumber Flea-beetle as the Cause of " Pimply "
Potatoes. By F. C. Stewart. Pp. 10 ; Economy
in using Fertilizers for raising Potatoes. By L L.
Van Slyke. Pp. 14.— Ohio : Potatoes (Cultural
Notes, etc). Pp.16 ; Beet-sn gar Production. Pp.
32 • Investigations of Plant Diseases in Forcing-
hou e and Garden. Pp. 26 : Newspaper Bulletm
on Black Knot, etc. Pp. 2.— Purdue University :
Ninth Annual Report. Pp. 61.— United States
Department of Agriculture : The Carbohydrates
of Wheat, Maize, Flour, and Bread ; and the Ac-
tion of Enzymic Ferments. By W. E. Stone.
Pp. 44 ; Grasses and Forage Plants of the Rocky
Mountain Region. By P. A. Rydberg and C. A.
Shear. Pp. 48.

America and the Americans from a French
Point of View. New York : Charles Scribner's
Sons. Pp. 273. $1.25.

Angot, Alfred. The Aurora Borealis. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. (International Scien-
tific Series.) Pp. 264. $1.75.

Balch, E. S. Ice Caves and the Causes of Sub-
terranean Ice. Philadelphia. Pp. 18.

Baldwin, Joseph. School Management and
School Methods. New York : D. Appleton &
Co. (International Education Series.) Pp. 395.
$1.50.

Baskett, J. N. The Story of the Birds. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. (Appletons' Home-
Reading Books.) Pp. 268. 65 cents.

Bell, Louis. Electric Power Transmission.
New York : The W.J. Johnston Company. Pp.
491.

Bulletins. United States Department of La-
bor. March, 1897. By C. D. Wright and O. W.
Weaver. Pp. 236.— State Library, New York:
LegislKtion by States in 1S96. Pp. 110.— Geo-
graphical Club of Philadelphia: A Trip to Manika
Land. By J. E. Farnum. Pp. 10.— Pasteur In-
stitute ((iuarterly), Paul Gibier, Editor. Pp. 38.

Burgess, John W. The American History
Series, Middle Period, 1817-18.58. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 544. $1.75.

Christiansen, Dr. C. Elements of Theoretical
Physics Translated by W. F. Magie. New
York : The Macmillan Company. Pp. 339.
$3.35.

Columbia Urdversity, New York. President's
Annual Report, 1896. Pp. 89.

Conn, H. W., and Esten, W. M. Bacteria in
the Dairy. (Two Papers.) Middletown, Conn.
Pp. 36.

Duclaux, E. Atmospheric Actinometry and
the Actinic Constitution of the Atmosphere.
Smithsonian Contributions. (Hodgkins Fund.)
Pp. 48.

Elliot, D. G. Catalogue of Birds obtained by
the Expedition into Somanliland. Chicago : Field
Columbian Museum. Pp. 38.

Gamble, Eliza Burt. The God Idea of the
Ancients, or Sex in Religion. New York : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp .3.39.

Greenleaf, J. L., New York. The Times and
Causes of Western Floods. Pp. 10.

Hollick, Arthur. Geological Notes, Long Is-
land and Block Island. New York : Columbian
University.

Hopper, Dr. M. S. Origin of the Tobacco
Habit. Pp. 6.

Hughes, J. L. Froebel's Educational Laws
for all Teachers. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
(International Education Series.) Pp. 296. $1.50. '

Huntington, A. K , and McMillan, W. G.
Metals, their Properties and Treatment. New
York : Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 562. $2.50.

Interstate Commerce Commission. Eighth
Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways.
Washington. Pp. 6'J7.

Kofoid, C. A.Plankton. Studies in the Illinois
State Laboratory of Natural History. Pp. 25,
with plates.

McAdie, Alexander. Equipment and Work of
an Aero-physical Observatory. Smithsonian Mis-
cellaneous Collections. (Hodgkins Fund.) Pp.
82.

Maxwell, Sir Herbert. Robert the Brace.
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. (Heroes of
the Nations.) Pp. 387. $1.-50.

Mayer, Alfred G. On the Color and Color pat-
terns of Moths and Butterflies. Boston Society
of Natural History. Pp. 96, with 10 plates.

Mearns, E. A. Preliminary Diagnosis of New
Mammals. United States National Museum.
Pp. 4.

Merrill, George P. A Treatise on Rocks,
Rnck-weathering, and Soils. New York : The
Macmillan Company. Pp. 411. $4.

Peet, Stephen D. The History of Explorations
in the Mississippi Valley. Pp.31.

Pellegrini, Pietro. I Diseredati e loro Diritti
(The Disinherited and their Rights). Borgo a
Mozzano, Italy. Pp. 205.

Price, Sadie F. The Fern Collector's Hand-
book and Herbarium. New Yf rk ; Henry Holt
& Co. 72 plates, with botanical indexes, etc.

136

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Reports. Home for Aged Jews of Chicago,
1894-1896. Pp. 62.— Perkins Institution and Maw-
eachu^etts School for the Blind. Year ending
August 31, 1896. Pp. 274.

Ridgway, Robert. Birds of the Galapagos
Archipelago. United States National Museum.
Pp. 11-2.

Scott, William B. An Introduction to Geol-
ogy. New York : The Macmillan Company. Pp.
573. $1.90.

Setchell, William A. Laboratory Practice for
Beginners in Botany. New York : The Macmil-
lan Company. Pp.190. 90 cents.

Sharpe, R. W. Coutribulion to a Knowledge
of the North American Fresh- water Ostracoda.
Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History.
Urbana. Pp. 7'3, with plates.

Starr, Frederick. Stone Images from Taras-
can Territory, Mexico. Pp. 4, with 3 plates.

Stone, W. E., and Balrd, ^W. H. The Occur-
rence of Raflinose in American Sugar Beets.
Purdue University. Pp. 9, with plate.

Tarr, Ralph S. Elementary Geology. New
York : The Macmillan Company. Pp.499. $1.40.

Tubeuf, Dr. Karl Freiherr. Diseases of Plants
induced by Cryptogamic Parasites. English edi-
tion, bv W. G. Smith. New York : Longmans,
Green & Co. Pp. 598.

Walsingham, Lord, and Dnrrant, John n.
Rules for regulating Nomenclature (in Entomol-
ogy). New York : Longmans, Green & Co. Pp.
18. 20 cents.

Wines, F. H., and Koren, John. The Liquor
Problem in its Legislative Aspects. Boston and
New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 342.

Work in Anthropology at the University of
Chicago. Pp. 8.

vagmciits of ^cizntt*

Horticultural Extension ScJioois. — Ex-
periments in methods of extension teacliing
as applied to horticulture have been made
by Prof. L. H. Bailey in connection with
the Cornell University Experiment Station,
through itinerant or local experiment, read-
able expository bulletins, the itinerant horti-
cultural school, elementary instruction in rural
schools, and correspondence and reading
courses. The greatest good as yet accom-
plished seems to have come through the bul-
letins. These have taken the form of sur-
veys of the status of certain industries, with
especial attention given to floriculture and
ornamental gardening. Besides the consecu-
tive teaching of horticultural schools, Nature
study and object lessons were taught in a
series of schools, with the object, besides
imparting specific horticultural information,
of awakening closeness of observation and
careful reasoning from it on the part of the
attendants. Observation lessons constituted
one of the most useful exercises in connec-
tion with these schools. Small objects, like
leaves or roots or flowers or seeds, were put
in the hands of all the attendants, and after
they had examined them for a few minutes
the instructor began to ask questions con-
cerning them. This exercise drilled every
participant in observation and in drawing
proper inferences from what he saw, and was
productive of the greatest interest and good.
Such schools serve better as the culmina-
tion of a series of extension efforts than as

a primary or preliminary means of awaken-
ing the rural communities. Another series
of lessons had the determination of the man-
ner in which pupils could be reached by
means of object-lesson teaching, and the
amount of interest they would be likely to
manifest in agricultural matters in case it
should ever be found desirable to introduce
such teaching as a part of the distinct school
work. The conclusion is drawn by Prof.
Bailey, from this experimental work, that the
farmers, as a whole, are willing and anxious
for education. They are difBcult to reach,
because they have not been well taught, not
because they are unwilling to learn.

Effect of Veils on Eyesight. — In experi-
menting upon the effect of the wearing of
veils upon the eyesight. Dr. Casey A. Wood,
of Chicago, selected a dozen typical speci-
mens of veils and applied the ordinary tests
of ability to read while wearing them. These
tests showed that every description of veil
affects more or less the ability to see dis-
tinctly, both in the distance and near at hand.
The most objectionable kind is the dotted
veil. Other things being equal, vision is
interfered with in direct proportion to the
number of meshes per square inch. The
texture of the veil plays an important part
in the matter. When the sides of the mesh
are single, compact threads, the eye is much
less embarrassed than when double threads
are employed. The least objectionable veil

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

137

is without dots, sprays, or other figures, but
with large, regular meshes made with single,
compact threads. Eve troubles do not ne-
cessarily result from wearing veils, for the
healthy eye is as able as any other part of
the body to resist the strain they impose
upon it. But weak eyes are hurt by them,
and prudence should teach not to strain
healthy eyes too much.

Domestication of tlie Egret. — A resolu-
tion was adopted at the International Zoologi-
cal Congress held in Leyden in 1895, favor-
ing measures for the preservation and do-
mestication of the egret. Under present
conditions the bird, so highly prized for its
plumes, is undergoing rapid extermination.
M. J. Forest, the author of the Leyden reso-
lution, is confident that the domestication of
the egi'et herons will be found as practicable
as that of the ostrich has proved to be. The
little egret, or garzette, in particular, has
already shown itself quite susceptible to the
taming process. In a heronry established
at Tunis in 1873, a flock of thirty young
birds has increased to about four hundred.
The establishment contains a pool and trees,
and cost less than twenty-eight hundred dol-
lars. It was stocked in the beginning with
captured wild birds, whose disposition and
capacity to breed did not seem to be affected
by their captivity. The proprietor repre-
sents that he gets six or seven dollars a year
from each bird, plucking the plumes twice a
year, in June and October, besides the in-
crease of the flock. The capacity of the
large egret for domestication is not so well
established ; but a specimen of this bird,
which had been captured wild and then tamed,
was sent to the Jardin d^ Avclhnatation in
Paris from Guiana in 1853; and several
travelers— Paul Marcoy, Thouar, the lamented
Crevaux, and Ehrenreich — mention having
seen in Paraguay and along the Amazon
numerous domesticated birds, herons and
grebes among them, living in the Indian
villages on whatever they could find to eat
there. Herons bearing ash-gray plumes are
kept in some of the larger houses of Bagdad.

Inventing a Match. — The credit of the
invention of chemical matches is claimed for
various persons in different countries — for
Friedrich Kamrer in Germany, Roemer and

Preschel in Austria, Ironvi and Moldenhauer
in Hungary, Ivan Worstakoff in Russia,
Watt and Isaac Holden in England, and
Charles Lauria in France. The one thing
agreed upon is the date — 1833. For Lauria
the claim is made by M. Jacques Boyer that
he thought about the matter in 1827, when
he saw Gay-Lussac's hydrogen tinder box
at Lyons in 1827, and had made a practical
match before 1833. Immediately after wit-
nessing Gay-Lussac's experiment he began
to look for a fulminating powder which would
enable him to realize the dream he had con-
ceived, and while still in this search saw
his professor of chemistry, Nicollet, produce
the detonation of powdered sulphur and
chlorate of potash. Then he thought that
if he could incorporate phosphorus with this
mixture he might produce the blaze he
wanted. He had no apparatus but a few
sticks of sulphur-tipped pine and some glass
tubes. He had got some parcels of sulphur
and chlorate from the college laboratory at
Dole, and having obtained a little phosphorus
from a pharmacy, he proceeded to melt hia
mixture. As he was inexperienced and awk-
ward at the work, he suffered a number of
accidents, in which his bed curtains proved
readier to take fire than his matches. At
last he dipped the end of one of his sul-
phured sticks into the chlorate slightly
warmed. Some of the chlorate adhered,
and, rubbing his half-finished match on the
wall where a trace of phosphorus had found
its way, the stick blazed up at once. Lauria
called his comrades and the principal of the
college to witness his achievement, and en-
joyed a kind of triumph. He made a few
improvements in his invention, added a little
gum arable to his mixture to make it more
adhesive, and had what is in principle the
match of to-day. His fellow-students amused
themselves with the matches. Prof. Puttenay
made some for his own use, and they found
their way into a cafe at Dole, but the effort
to find a more general market for them did
not succeed.

Young Animals at School. — A new the-
ory of the sports of young animals put forth
by Prof. Groos, of the University of Giessen,
holds that they are a preparation for after-
life, for the adaptation of the faculties for
the sterner purposes of maturity, and are in

138

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

effect dependent upon the necessity of modi-
fying instincts. The higher an animal may
be in the scale of life, the author assumes,
the more varied become its relations to sur-
rounding things and the less suited to vary-
ing circumstances becomes a mechanical and
rigid instinct. If, however, there is a period
of youth during which inherited instincts
may be used merely as a vehicle for redun-
dant energy, an opportunity is afforded for
modification and alteration of the rigid sys-
tem. The instinct of a creature with prac-
tically no period of youth, as with insects,
must be complete and ready for use. The
mammal or bird, however, passes through a
period of youth " during which it has no im-
mediate duties to perform and is cared for
by its parents. In this time it plays with its
instincts, learns to fly or to run and jump, to
recognize its kind, to distinguish between the
palatable and unpalatable, to make and un-
derstand call notes or cries of alarm ; in a
thousand ways to suit each occasion with its
action and deserve a place in the hierarchy
of intelligent beings." The games and
sports earliest to appear in animals and most
universal are classed by Prof. Groos as those
of experiment and curiosity. "Young crea-
tures play with everything that attracts their
attention. They try their teeth or their
claws on every available object. They taste
and smell, rush and tumble about, collect in
heaps or scatter everything they are able to
reach, and, indeed, make attempts on the
unattainable. The greater the intelligence
of the adult animal the more surprisingly the
young animal treats its surroundings in the
spirit of an empirical philosopher. A young
monkey observed by a sister of the late
Prof. Romanes discovered for itself that the
handle of a hearth brush was screwed into
a socket. It succeeded in unscrewing the
handle with ease, and after long experiments
discovered that only one end twisted in a
particular direction would fit into the socket.
Another young monkey, chained just beyond
the reach of a fire, found out how to tear
strips from a newspaper and roll them up
into tapers sufficiently long to reach the
flames. By some such fertile employment
of curiosity the professor thinks that the an-
cestors of man may have gained their mas-
tery over fire." Skill in flying is attained by
considerable practice, and " in mammals the

exercises of the young bear a definite rela-
tion to adult habit. Mountain-living crea-
tures, like kids and chamois, continually
practice standing jumps, springing vertically
into the air. . . . Gazelles, on the other hand,
which have to jump watercourses and gul-
lies on the Veldt, confine their youthful en-
thusiasm to practice of the running jump.
Similarly the play of tiger cubs with balls or
with the tail of their mother, and the wrest-
ling and mimic combats of other carnivo-
rous young, all exhibit an instinctive bias by
which the restless zeal of youth is disci-
plined for the real purposes of maturity."

Seals and their Pnps, — A fur seal has
none of the altruistic instincts of some other
animals, for it will never feed any pup but
her own. Not a very affectionate mother at
best, she yet unerringly knows her nursling's
voice, and he in turn learns to find her. When
they meet and recognize each other at meal
time, it is easy to see that they belong to-
gether. Her duty done, however, she lets it
shift for itself till the next feeding time.
She instantly knows any little hungry in-
truder that is stealing up to her to get a
meal on the sly. She cuffs and bites, until
the starveling, intimidated, slinks away to
die. These orphaned younglings are the
fruit of the indiscriminate " pelagic " seal-
ing. Their mother being killed, and they
unable to obtain another nurse, they perish
by the thousands. A United States report
estimates the number for 1896 at 20,331.

The Last Resting Place of Pastenr. — On

December 26, 1896, the remains of Pasteur
were borne to their final resting place, a
crypt at the Pasteur Institute. On the stone
is inscribed a sentence from his reception
speech at the Academy : " Ueureux celui qui
porte en soi un dieu, un id6al de beaute, et
qui lui obeit — ideal de I'art, ideal de la, sci-
ence, ideal de la patrie, ideal des vertus de
I'evangile " (" Happy he who bears within
him a god, an ideal of beauty, and follows
it — an ideal of art, an ideal of science, an
ideal of patrioti.sm, an ideal of the Chris-
tian virtues "). Many men of science and
thinkers of note, both French and foreign,
were present, and deputations and wreaths
were sent by scientific societies. A service
at Notre Dame, where the remains had been

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

139

reposing for the last fifteen months, was
followed by the ceremonies at the crj'pt.
M. J. B. Pasteur said to the council of the
institute, in behalf of the family, " I intrust
to you this tomb which we have raised to
our father in this institute which he loved so
dearly." Addresses were delivered by M.
Rambaud, Minister of Education, and M.
Baudin, President of the Municipality, and
an address by M. Legouve was read by M.
Gaston Boissier.

Bachelor SealSt — The young male seals,
commonly called " bachelors," are very much
like the females in size and color. During
the breeding season they are not permitted
by the bulls to enter the rookeries, hence
they herd together separately on the so-
called "hauling grounds." Unlike their
seniors, who in the " harems " are busy
founding families, these young bachelors
have no fixed place of abode, but range at
will over a large area of ground, usually
sand beaches near the rookeries. Known
also as " killable " seals, they are driven
from their haunts and killed with clubs at
about three years of age, the time when their
fur is at its best. Small four-year-olds and
large two-year-olds, being about the same size
as the bachelors, are also hunted. Among
these herds may sometimes be found bulls
from four to six years old, who, being too
cowardly to assert themselves in the harems,
are forced to keep company with these young-
sters. Another mode of hunting them is
called " pelagic sealing," which means kill-
ing them in the open sea wich firearms, or
with the spear and club. In order to digest
their food, they lie sleeping on the surface
of the water, and the hunter finds it easy
enough to steal up in his boat and spear the
defenseless animal. This is really wholesale
slaughter, for the hunter indiscriminately
kills whatever lies in his way, even the nurs-
ing mothers, thus leaving the pups to die of
starvation.

Nationality and Scenery. — In the intro-
duction to an article in the Deuhche Rund-
schau descriptive of the German landscape,
Herr Friedrich Ratzel shows by a few well-
directed allusions how the intrinsic charac-
ter of the scenery of a region, even in its
apparently most natural features, is affected

by the nationality that occupies it, and re-
flects the character of that nationality. The
allusions are local, but the principle they
illustrate is general. A country with such a
history as Germany's can have no purely
natural landscape. The people and their
land are the resultant of a long material de-
velopment. When the Romans knew Ger-
many— a barbarian region with few inhabit-
ants— the works of man were less in evidence,
and Nature prevailed. The effects of cultiva-
tion have worked in two principal directions :
First, the woods are cleared up, the water is
confined within limits, the habitations of
men are multiplied and enlarged and made
more durable, and new plants and animals
are brought in. Then uncontemplated
changes step in, which proceed of them-
selves from the works of cultivation. With
the drying of the soil the climate is modi-
fied. The introduction of new plants and
animals imposes new features upon the con-
ditions of life. Where before only stretches
of heath, moor, and swamp formed natural
openings in the predominant forest, exten-
sive woodless regions arise through the la-
bors of man, from which the shade-loving
plants and animals that were protected by
the forest gloom disappear, and other inhab-
itants are at home in the cultivated fields.
The variations in the particular shaping of
these changes are more especially marked
where the boundaries run through mountain
regions. In the Saxon Erzgebirge the for-
ests have lost all their wildness, and planta-
tions of firs and oaks grow in regular order,
all nearly of a height, with no trees towering
into prominence, and the mountain has the
trimmed and symmetrical appearance of a
nursery. The brooks are tamed, dammed,
and made to earn their right to be as the
servants of the mills. Passing over the
mountains and going down the Bohemian
side, we are in the woods again, with the
valleys free and irregular, and the brooks
running according to their own will. The
contrast is seen again, but less marked, in
going up from Bohemia and down into Ba-
varia. Within Germany itself the garden-
tilled plots near the industrial centers and
the little rectangular holdings of the south-
western and middle districts, each distinctly
marked off from its neighbor, and making
the whole look like a party-colored checker-

140

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

board, impress one very differently from the
immense fields devoted to single crops and
the commodious barns of the north. Other
differences may be seen on the upper Rhine,
where the inhabitants of both sides were
originally the same people, but have been
subjected to different influences in the course
of their history. The French have made
their marks all over the Alsatian territory
and in the towns cf quite another character
from the native German aspects of the
Baden side.

A Snrvival of Torture. — Although the
practice of torture to extract evidence was
formally abolished in 1789, the spirit of the
Inquisition has not yet died out in the conti-
nental countries of Europe. This is shown
now and again in criminal cases. But not
the convicts only are treated with the utmost
severity. The mere suspicion of crime is
enough to make a man's life miserable. He
practically loses all civil rights, and finds
himself at the mercy of an interrogating
magistrate with full power to extract a con-
fession, by moral suasion if possible, by more
forcible means if need be. Subjected to a
prolonged and tortuous system of cross-ques-
tioning, the accused often completely break
down mentally and confess at random what-
ever has been suggested to them, much in
the manner of the trials for witchcraft in
our own Puritan New England. A case
creating quite a sensation in Paris some
thirty years ago was that of a woman who
under this fire of interrogation admitted hav-
ing killed her newborn infant, two months
even before the birth of the child. If the
culprits are suspected of obstinacy in an-
swering, all sorts of expedients are used to
make them more compliant, such as making
their diet unpalatable, or altogether with-
holding food and water, and penning up in
close, dark quarters.

Prof. Cannlzzaro's Jnbilec. — The seven-
tieth birthday of Prof. Stanislas Cannizzaro
was celebrated on November 21, 1896, amid
a concourse of the most distinguished scien-
tists and other men of note of Rome. He
was presented with a gold medal and a bust
of himself in bronze, and received innumer-
al)le letters, telegrams, addresses, and perga-
menus from the leading scientific societies of

the world. Prof. Semeraro, Rector Magnifi-
cus of the Roman University, said in his
address : " His greatest glory lies in the fact
that most of the professors now teaching
in Italian universities have been his pupils.
The pressure of business as vice-president
of the Senate and member of the Superior
Council of Public Instruction, and many oth-
ers, never were pretexts to him for overlook-
ing the modest duty of a teacher." Hon.
Galimberti, presenting him with the Grand
Cordon of the Crown of Italy, said : '" Your
name is worthy of being joined with those
of Galileo, Torricelli, Volta, and Galvani.
To Emanuel Kant, who, in his absolute sen-
tence, considered chemistry as a union of
empirical knowledge, you replied half a cen-
tury ago, pronouncing among the confusion
of doctrines immovable ideas and true laws
that render chemistry an exact science, for it
lies now on mathematical truth." Cannizzaro
replied in an interesting speech. Referring
to the combination of the functions of teacher
and investigator, he said : " Had I not been
a teacher, my publications would not have
appeared, and I should have continued to
disseminate science of new carbon com-
pounds. I bring here Lord Kelvin's exam-
ple, who, in his last jubilee, spoke of the
utility he had found by the continued con-
ferences with his pupils."

Some Antipathies of Animals. — A num-
ber of very curious featuries in the antipa-
thies of animals are pointed out in an article
on the subject in the London Spectator.
There are permanent hereditary antipathies,
like those of cats against dogs, and purely
instinctive, inexplicable antipathies, which
are naturally the least common, but of which
there are marked and definite examples. Of
such is the disgust which tlie camel excites
in horses. These animals " have been asso-
ciated for centuries in the common service
of man, and early training makes the horse
acquiesce in the proximity of the creature
which disgusts him. Otherwise, it is far
more difficult to acctistom horses to work
with camels than with elephants, precisely
because the repugnance is a natural antipa-
thy and not a reasoned fear." They get
used to the sight of an elephant, but the
smell of a camel disgusts and frightens them.
English horses that have never seen a camel

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

141

refuse to approach ground where they have
stood. For this reason a traveling menage-
rie was recently refused permission to en-
camp on a village green, although the people
would have been glad to see the show, but
because the presence of the camels would
interfere with the customary use of the place
for a market, by engendering difficulties
when the next attempt should be made to
drive horses upon it. Yet, at a performance
of two bears in London, one of the horses of
a four-in-hand almost touched one of them,
without himself or any of the team showing
any nervousness over the matter. The hatred
of cattle for dogs is supposed to have been
inherited from the days when their calves
were constantly killed by wolves or wild
dogs. But " why the horse not only does not
share this antipathy, but, on the contrary,
loves a dog, it is difficult to explain." The
dislike of the cat family for dogs likewise
probably dates from the time when the wild
dogs hunted and destroyed their whelps.
" There is much probability in this conjec-

ture, for it is the dog, and not the wolf,
which the tiger so intensely dislikes, and it
is only the packs of wild dogs, not wolves,
which would venture to kill a cub. Leopards,
which naturally live in branches of trees, sim-
ply look on dogs as a favorite article of food ;
and the puma of the pampas, which inhabits
a country where the wild dog is unknown, is
also a great dog-killer. The dogs, on their
part, seem quite aware of the difference of
view on the part of the various cats ; they will
mob a tiger and hunt all tiger-cats. But they
all seem to fear the leopard, and by nature
to fear the puma, though in North America
they can be trained to hunt it. It was re-
cently noticed that a large dog, which found
its way to a point opposite the outdoor cages
of the lion-house at the Zoo, crept under-
neath a seat as soon as the puma caught
sight of it, and exhibited signs of the utmost
nervousness and fear." The antipathies of
most animals find a climax " in the com-
mon and intense horror of the poisonous
snake."

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

The Municipal Administration Commit-
tee of the Reform Club of the City of New
York has secured Mr. Robert C. Brooks as
its secretary, who has established his office
at the University Settlement House, 26 De-
lancey Street ; has begun the collection of a
working library, which is rapidly growing ;
and has practically completed a bibliography
of Municipal- Administration, of twenty-five
hundred manuscript pages, comprising a sub-
ject index and another list, arranged alpha-
betically and containing nine thousand en-
tries referring to thirty four hundred articles
in American, English, French, German, Italian,
and Spanish publications, with the names of
twelve hundred writers. It has more recently
begun the issue of a quarterly magazine called
Municipal Affairs, the first number of which
contains the bibliography. It is working
earnestly to enlist those who are willing to
aid in propaganda work — chiefly by holding
meetings, at which questions of municipal
polity are discussed by competent speakers.

The importance is insisted upon by
Thomas A. Williams, in a paper on the
Grasses and Forage Plants of the Dakotas,
of making every effort to preserve the native

grasses. They are naturally adapted to the
conditions that prevail in the region, and it
is very improbable that introduced forms
can be had to take their places satisfacto-
rily for many years to come. Climatal evi-
dences are abundant to prove that some of
the native forms will flourish under condi-
tions that would kill the common cultivated
ones ; and the prolonged dry weather of the
later summer, which would be destructive to
cultivated species, simply cures these native
ones on the ground, so that cattle can forage
on them in winter as if they were hay. The
importance of these grasses is illustrated by
the immense shipments from the Dakotas of
stock which have had no other feed than that
growing naturally on the prairies. Many of
the most valuable of these grasses are much
benefited by judicious irrigation, even though
it be only slight.

An expedition is fitting out by the Amer-
ican Museum of Natural History, with the
aid of Mr. Morris K. Jesup, for the system-
atic study of the peoples inhabiting the
coasts of the North Pacific Ocean between
the Amoor River in Asia and the Columbia
River in America. The exploration is to be

142

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

prosecuted during six years, and to include
both the Asiatic and the American coasts.
Its primary object is to search for light con-
ceruing the origin of the American race and
its relations to the races of the Old World,
concerning which, in the absence of all defi-
nite knowledge at present, a confusion of
opinions exists. The characteristics of the
American races have been studied to a con-
siderable extent by the Russian missionary
Ycmiaminoff, Dall, and others, in Alaska
and the Aleutian Islands ; Murdoch among
the Eskimos of Point Barrow, and Boas
under the auspices of the British Associa-
tion in British Columbia ; but, as Dr. Boas
observes, very much remains to be done
in those districts ; while of the correspond-
ing region in Asia, notwithstanding the few
investigations that have been published, the
types of man, languages, customs, and my-
thology are practically unknown.

Among the interesting jubilees celebrated
during 1896 was that of the York Retreat in
England. In 1792 William Tuke, a member
of the Society of Friends, became convinced
that the methods of treatment of the insane
which prevailed at that time were unneces-
sarily harsh ; they were treated more like
wild beasts than as human beings. William
Tuke therefore conceived the idea of found-
ing an institution where sufferers from men-
tal disease could be treated in a manner
more in accordance with humanity and with
sound therapeutic principles. The necessary
support was after a time obtained, and the
"Retreat" was opened in 1796. It was the
first institution in England where the in-
sane were treated m a humane and rational
manner.

Mr. B. N. Brough affirms, in a lecture on
deep mining, that the greatest depth yet
reached in mines is 4,900 feet at the Red
Jacket shaft of the Calumet and Hecla
mine, in the Lake Superior district. The
Tamarack mine, in the' same district, 4,450
feet, is the only other mine going below
4,000 feet in depth. Four mines in Ger-
many, two in Belgium, and one in Austria-
Hungary are between 3,500 and 4,000 feet
deep. The deepest British mine is the Pen-
dleton, near Manchester, 3,474 feet deep ;
and the deepest in Scotland is the Niddrie,
at Porto Bello, 2,010 feet. The products of

the mines are now lifted with ropes of cru-
cible steel wire, of which a flat rope is men-
tioned weighing only 8 '2 pounds per foot,
which had a tensile strength of eighty-nine
tons per square foot, and lasted twelve
months while used for raismg loads of eleven
tons from a depth of 3,117 feet. At the
deep mines of Calumet the cage, carrying
six tons, was lifted at the rate of a mile in a
minute and a half. In England the speed
has been as great as fifty-seven miles an
hour. The increased cost of sinking these
deep mines is believed not to be very appre-
ciable where the output is considerable. At
Tamarack the cost of increasing depth was
more than compensated by the increased
output and improved machinery.

The most important events in last year's
history of the astronomical observatory of
Harvard College were the erection of the
Bruce photographic telescope in Peru, and
the establishment of a series of circulars,
which furnish a prompt means of announc-
ing discoveries. Twenty-five hundred and
eight photographs were taken with the eight-
inch Draper telescope, and twenty-seven hun-
dred and seventy in Peru with the eight-
inch Bache telescope ; and " there is probably
no star brighter than the thirteenth magni-
tude in any part of the sky from the north
to the south pole that does not appear on
one or more of these plates." The attempt is
made to photograph all the regions in which
variables are discovered at least once a
month. In Mrs. Fleming's examinations of
the spectra photographed, a large number of
objects having peculiar spectra have been
discovered. Two new stars have been found
in the constellations Carina and Centaurus.
The photographs of one of the new variable
stars show a very peculiar spectrum and
changes of light unlike those of any star
hitherto discovered. Meteorological obser-
vations were continued at La Joya, 4,150
feet above the sea ; Arequipa, 8,060 feet ;
Alto de los Huesos, 13,300 feet ; Mont Blanc
station on El Misti, 15,600 feet ; El Misti,
19,200 feet; and Cuzco, 11,000 feet.

A WORK by M. Meguin on the Bacteria of
Dead Bodies is reviewed in a recent issue of
the British Medical Journal : " As a result
of this work it is now possible to determine
in a most accurate manner the time of death

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

143

of an individual by an examination of the
cadaver and of the successive generations of
insects which are found inhabiting it. The
author has established the important fact
that these successive inhabitants always ar-
rive in the same order from the time of
death to that of complete disintegration of
the body. . . . The importance of this work
from a medico-legal point of view can not be
overestimated, and that it is capable of prac-
tical application the author shows by a num-
ber of interesting cases."

NOTES.

The presidents of sections of the British
Association, nominated for the coming meet-
ing at Toronto, are : Section A, Mathemat-
ical and Phvsical Science, Prof. A. R. For-
syth, r. R. S. ; B, Chemistry, Prof. W.
Ramsay, F. R. S ; 0, Geology, Dr. G. M.
Dawson, C. M. G. F. R. S. ; D, Zoology, Prof.
L C. Miall, F. R. S.; E, Geography," Mr. J.
Scott Keltic; F. Economic Science and Sta-
tistics, Prof. E. C. K. Gonner ; G, Mechan-
ical Science, Mr. G. F. Deacon; H, Anthro-
pology, Prof. Sir W. Turner, F. R. S. ; I, Phys-
iology, Prof. M. P'oster, Sec. R. S. ; K, Botanv,
Prof. H. Marshall Ward, F. R. S. The even-
ing discourses will be delivered by Prof.
Roberts-Austen, C. B., F. R. S., and Prof.
John Mihie, F. R. S.

A BANQUET was recently given by scien-
tific men of France to Mme. Clemence Rover
in celebration of her seventieth birthday.
She is eminent in the study of the mental
traits of animals ; translated Darwin's work
into French ; is an advocate of evolution ;
and is the author of articles on the Mental
Faculties of Monkeys, and Animal Arithme-
tic, which were published in the Popular
Science Monthly several years ago.

Mr. Herbert Spencer was offered the
honorary degree of Doctor of Science by the
authorities of the ITniversity of Cambridge,
but, adhering to his uniform practice, from
which he says he can not depart, has de-
clined it.

The Emperor of Germany has just deco-
rated Dr. Rous, the discoverer, with Dr.
Behring, of the vaccine against diphtheria.
Two years ago Pasteur refused a similar
honor, for reasons of his own. Dr. Roux,
although the intimate friend and successor
of the great scientist, did not allow his loy-
alty toward his master to stand in the way
of accepting this mark of recognition from
the foreign potentate.

The Paris Academy of Sciences has
awarded an Arago medal to Lord Kelvin, on
the occasion of the jubilee of his professor-
ship in Glasgow University. In conferring

it, M. Cornu. the president, touching on the
testimonies coming from all parts of the
world, said : " Nothing is more consoling
for the future than the spectacle of these
honors rendered by delegates of all nations
to great men of science like Kelvin and Pas-
teur, who so worthily represent science in
its loftiest and at the same time most be-
neficent aspect."

According to the Times, the Government
intends to introduce next session a bill to
promote free vaccmation throughout Eng-
land, following continental methods. A
small committee, headed by Dr. Thorne
Thome, of the Local Government Board, has
investigated these methods in Paris at the
Institut Vaccinal and the Academic de Mede-
cine, and in Brussels at the Ecole de Mede-
cine, and at Dr. Janssen's vaccination de-
partment under the municipality of the city.
They intend also to investigate the modes of
procedure in Germany.

Edward D. Cope, Professor of Zoology
and Comparative Anatomy in the School of
Biology at the University of Pennsylvania,
died in his museum in Philadelphia, April
12th, aged about fifty-seven years. The
illness which took him away was one from
which he had been a sufferer for many years.
He delivered his last lecture at the university
two weeks before his death, had been able
to attend to some scientific work the Wednes-
day previous, and his condition had been
alarming only for four days. A sketch of
his life and work to that time, and a portrait,
were given in the Popular Science Monthly
for May, 1881. He was presiding officer of
the Biological Section of the American Asso-
ciation in 1884, and was president of the
Buffalo meeting of the association in 1896.
His later publications since cur sketch have
been: Origin of Man and other Vertebrates,
1885; Tertiary Vertebrates, 1885; The En-
ergy of Life Evolution, and how it has Acted,
1885; The Origin of the J'ittest, 1886 ; and
The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution,
1896. Prof. Cope was most eminent in
paleontology, but was distinguished in many
other branches of biology.

Prof. James Joseph Sylvester, of the
University of Oxford, died in London, March
15th, in the eighty-third year of his age. He
was born in Loudon, September 3, 1814,
was graduated from St. John's College, Cam-
bridge, in 1837, as second wrangler, was
appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy
in the LTniversity of London, and in 1841
became a professor in the LTniversity of Vir-
ginia. He did not, however, remain there
quite a year, but returned to London, found
employment as an actuary and conveyancer,
and was called to the bar in 1850. He was
appointed Professor of Mathematics in the
Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, retired
from this position in 1862, and was appointed
Professor of Mathematics in Johns Hopkins

144

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

University. Here his abilities seemed for
the first time to have free scope, and his
career was brilliant. He established the
American Journal of Mathematics, through
which and by his personal teaching and in-
fluence he gave a great vitality to mathemat-
ical study in this country which still pervades
it. In 1883 he was elected Savillian Pro-
fessor of Mathematics in the University of
Oxford, where he repeated the success he had
achieved at Johns Hopkins and exerted as
potent an mfluence.

Prof. Henry Drcmmoxd, who died in
March, 1897, was best known to scientific
and the religious circles by his book on Nat-
ural Law in the Si)iritual World, which
touched upon points in which both were in-
terested. His later volume, a collection of
Lowell Lectures, on the Ascent of Man, also
went into both fields. These books, how-
ever, well intentioned and readable as they
were, were subjected to adverse criticism
from both sides. In 1879 he accompanied
Sir Archibald Geikie in a geological tour in
the Rocky Mountains, and afterward visited
the Scotch mission stations in East South
Africa. A result of this visit was a very
interesting book on Tropical Africa.

Mr. Sidney Walker, fellow of the Royal
Astronomical Society since 1873, whose death
was recently announced, read several papers
on nebulae before the society, and contributed
an article on the distribution of the stars in
the southern hemisphere to the Monthly No-
tices for 1878. He made two very fine maps
showing the distribution of the nebulae and
clusters in Dr. Dreyer's catalogue.

M. Antoine T. d'Abbadie, a member of
the French Academy of Science since 1857,
in the Section of Geography and Navigation,
died in Paris, after a long illness, March 20th,
in his eighty-seventh year. His scientific
work included exploration, astronomy, geod-
esy, physics, and numismatics. In 1893 he
bequeathed to the Academy, reserving a life
interest to his wife, the chateau of Abbadie,
in the Pyrenees, which yields an annual
revenue of 20,000 francs, and bank shares
yielding 15,000 francs. He was one of the
earlier explorers of Abyssinia, observed the
eclipse of the sun of 1882 in Santo Domingo,
and published important works on geograph-
ical exploration and geodesy.

Prof. Charles To.mlinson, who died Feb-
ruary 14th, in his eighty-ninth year, was on
the Council of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the
Royal Society, a fellow of the Chemical So-
ciety, and one of the founders of the Physical
Society. For a number of years he was lec-
turer on Experimental Science at King's Col-
lege, and was examiner in physics to the
Birkbeck Institution. He held the Dante
lectureship at University College, 1878-'80.
He wrote many bandy text-books on natural

philosophy, meteorology, and natural history,
and contributed largely to the Transactions
of the Royal and Chemical Societies. In
1854 he edited Tomlinson's Cyclopaedia of
Useful Arts, Mechanical and Chemical, Manu-
factures, Mining, and Engineering. He com-
piled the lives of Smeeton, Cuvier, and Lin-
n;cus, and the notices of scientific men in
The English Cycloptedia of Biography.

Among the men of science abroad who
have died are Dr. Nikolai Zdekaner, St.
Petersburg, member of the Imperial Acad-
emy of Sciences, and known for his work in
behalf of hygiene and knowledge of epidem-
ics ; Hcrr Alois Rogenhofer, formerly Curator
of the Imperial Natural History Museum in
Vienna ; Dr. Hermann von Noerdlinger, for-
merly Professor of Forestry in Tiihingen Uni-
versity ; Dr Luigi Calori, Professor of Anat-
omy in the University of Bologna ; Dr. J.
D. E. Weyer, Professor of Mathematics and
Astronomy in the University of Kiel ; and
M. Vivien de St. Martin, famous for his re-
searches in ancient geography.

The death is announced of Mr. Henry
Boswell, a noted bryologist. Beginning his
botanical studies with flowering plants, he
later on turned his attention to the study of
mosses, both British and foreign, and made
a fine collection.

It seems certain that eels, while not ex-
actly amphibious, venture to spend consider-
able intervals of time on the land, away from
water. A German zoologist, Herr Frenzel,
as well as several other persons, recently ob-
served a young eel, about five inches long,
concealed in the network of the superficial
roots of a bush. It had come from a pond
about fourteen feet away, and six feet lower
down, and must have exerted vigorous ef-
forts to climb the bank.

A CONSIGNMENT of the American craw-
fish ( Cambarus affinu) has been received at
the French agricultural station Fecamp, for
acclimatation and propagation. These crus-
taceans are said to have been taken from the
waters of the Potomac. They are sought
because they appear not to be subject to the
disease which has carried away most of the
crawfish in the rivers of France, and are in-
tended to make up for the loss occasioned
thereby.

One of the latest papers of the late Sir
Benjamin Ward Richardson set forth the
qualities of organic membranes as insulators.
Experiments were cited by the author going
to show that various membranes of the ani-
mal body, in addition to performing the
functions usually ascribed to them, are also
electrical insulators, and by their presence
confine and render useful the vital force
that is developed in the organs they sur-
round.

'//.''■'//■'//■i,„l,

KTCHAKH OWKN.

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

JUNE, 1897

EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HEAVY GUN.

By W. LE CONTE STEVENS,

PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS IN RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE.

DURING the last half of the nineteenth century, a period of
extraordinary fertility in the industrial application of all
departments of physical science, it would be remarkable if great
progress were not made in the development of the materials of
warfare, both offensive and defensive. It is true there have been
few great wars during the half century just closing, fewer than
during the corresponding previous period, when Napoleon made
all Europe his chronic battle ground. But with progress in the
arts of peace there comes progress in machinery of all kinds.
Guns are machines which happily we are not often called upon
to use in deadly earnest. The degree of perfection with which
a machine does deadly work serves as a powerful argument to
induce caution before bringing it into use. If the civilized world
ever attains the millennium of freedom from warfare, it will not
be because the philosophy of good will to men has triumphed,
but because war is too terrible and costly for any nation to risk
the sure and swift destruction it brings upon the vanquished.
Patriotism will not be extinguished, but it will be tempered
with the spirit of rational compromise. During the thirteen
years of Napoleon's leadership his wars cost France one billion
dollars. During the four years of civil war in America the cost
to the Government of the United States was about four billion
dollars, apart from treasures expended in vain by the Confederate
States. The American civil war was thus at least a dozen times
more expensive per year than war was during the time of
Napoleon.

VOL. LI. — 1 1

146 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

With tlie construction and use of the materials employed in
modern warfare none but the professional military engineer can
be reasonably expected to attain much familiarity. But all have
an interest in national preparation for contingencies, and even to
the nonprofessional it may be an engaging study to trace in out-
line the evolution of the cannon as now made at great armories
like that at Watervliet, near Troy, New York.

It would be only repeating an oft-told tale to show that our
remote human ancestors were all savages, and that the normal
condition of society among them was that of warfare. What
were the earliest weapons employed we can only conjecture. If
we disregard the long and for the most part unknown period
that preceded the beginning of definite human records, we find
that when these records began man was already acquainted with
the ruder processes of metallurgy. But there are no indications
that during the age of universal savagery metal was used to any
great extent for projectile purposes. Arrows and javelins were
early and abundantly employed, and the use of the sling was
undoubtedly common among the Israelites long before the
dramatic duel between David and Goliath. The Romans in
conducting their sieges employed the catapult and ballista for
the projection of large arrows and stones ; but from the vague
description of these instruments we can glean little more than
that they were probably immense crossbows. They were un-
wieldy, but powerful enough to project stones, each as heavy as
an ordinary man, over a distance of a hundred yards. During
the first dozen centuries of the Christian era there was but little
improvement over Roman methods of warfare.

That the elastic force of hot gas suddenly evolved should be
substituted for that of a stout cord under great tension could not
have been possible without the previous discovery of the means
by which such gas could be appropriately generated. There is
no probability that we will ever learn definitely the true history
of the invention of gunpowder. Quite probably it was inde-
pendently invented by different persons at different times. There
can be little doubt that the knowledge of its composition existed
at a very early date among some of the inhabitants of India,
where the rich soil under a tropical sun has during many centu-
ries been leached for the puri)Ose of procuring niter. Assuming
the presence of this salt in abundance, it would hardly be possible
for one who handles it to remain long ignorant of its capacity to
explode when sufficiently heated in contact with charcoal, sul-
phur, or any other kind of fuel. It is not surprising that some of
the earlier alchemists should be credited with the preparation of
gunpowder. It has been common to attribute its invention to
Roger Bacon, whose life lasted through the greater part of the

EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HEAVY GUN.. 147

thirteenth century. But his language is characteristically vague ;
for, in regard to the mixing of saltpeter with sulphur and another
undefined substance,
he merely says, "You
will thus make thun-
der and lightning if
you know the method
of mixing them."

Another claimant to
the invention of gun-
powder was the Ger-
man monk, Berthold
Schwartz, who is said
to have ground togeth-
er in a mortar a mix-
ture of niter, charcoal,
and sulphur. Acci-
dentally allowing fire
to come into contact
with the mixture, an
explosion ensued. The
pestle was projected
from the mortar and
from the hand of the
surprised alchemist.
This suggested the use
of the uncanny sub-
stance for military purposes, and the mortar was subsequently
made on a larger scale for the special purpose of propelling pro-
jectiles.

The determination of the proper percentages of niter, carbon,
and sulphur in gunpowder implies a knowledge of the quantita-
tive laws of chemistry. It is not to be supposed, therefore, that
the earlier users of this explosive were able to make powder
equal in quality to that of modern times, or that they knew how
to adjust its granulation to the special purposes intended under
varying circumstances. The Saracens seem to have introduced
it into Spain for pyrotechnic purposes about the same time that
Schwartz made his suggestion regarding its most important
practical application. Its first definitely known use was for
cannon. These were called " bombards," on account of the noise
occasioned by firing.

The primitive cannon was a rude tube made up of iron bars
hooped together, edge to edge, like' the staves of a cask. It was
by no means readily portable, and was not provided with any
wheeled carriage. As an offensive weapon its natural place was

EoGER Bacon. Born near Ilchester, about 1214;
died probably at Oxford in ] 292.

148

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" MoNS Meg " Cannon at EinNBrRoii.
Caliber, twenty inches. Made in 1486 at Mons, Brittany.
The arrangement of hoops around staves is shown
at the part injured Viy its bursting in 1682.

on shipboard ; as a defensive weapon, upon the wall of a besieged
town. This iron barrel was firmly fastened down upon a hori-
zontal bed or to a fixed framework of timber. The balls shot
from it were of stone. Since there was no provision for aiming,
it can be readily conceived that the enemy might be equally safe
or unsafe at a variety of points in front of such an ostensible
engine of destruction.

Small cannon, intended for transportation on land, were un-
doubtedly constructed early in the fourteenth century. They
were used by the English, possibly as early as 1327, in battle with
the Scotch, and certainly against the French in 1346, at the battle

of Crdcy. There is noth-
ing to indicate that on
this occasion any one was
killed or wounded by a
cannon. The sole func-
tion was that of fright-
ening the enemy. Nor
have we any record of
the method of support-
ing or transporting such
field artillery. It was rather as heavy artillery that cannon found
their chief earlier use, and they were soon made of such size as to
be quite comparable in this respect with modern guns. One of
these bombards, made in Belgium in 1382, weighs about sixteen
tons, is more than eleven feet long, and its caliber is about two
feet. It is still kept on exhibition in the city of Ghent. Another
is the " Mons Meg," made in 1486 at Mons in Brittany. It was
captured by the Scotch, and is now kept at Edinburgh.

A gun somewhat similar in construction to that in Ghent was
dug up about forty years ago from the bed of a river in Bengal,
and now stands on exhibition in the city of Moorshedabad. It
was made of wrought iron, was more than twelve feet in length,
and about seventeen inches in caliber. That the forging of iron
on so large a scale was accomplished at such a time and in such a
place indicates a marked degree of progress in metallurgy in the
far East, and adds force to the thought that cannon may have
been in use in Asia long before they were ever employed in
Europe.

During the siege of Constantinople, in the fifteenth century,
according to Gibbon, the Turks employed cannon with which
stone balls, each six hundred pounds in weight, were projected,
and the walls of the city were thus breached. Von Moltke men-
tions such a gun at the same place, twenty-eight inches in diam-
eter at the muzzle, with which a ball more than fifteen hundred
pounds in weight was projected by a charge of one hundred

EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HEAVY GUN. 149

pounds of powder. For some of these ancient Turkish cannon
the diameter of the stone shot was as much as a yard, while the
length of the gun was only five yards.

It is not therefore so much in the size of heavy ordnance as in
its efficiency that we of to-day are warranted in claiming much
superiority over our ancestors. The plan of hooping iron staves
together gradually gave place to that of molding guns, sometimes
in cast iron, sometimes in bronze. Wrought iron also came ex-
tensively into use for the purpose of gun construction. The gun
was made up of a succession of short forged tubes jointed to-
gether. Over each joint a ring was shrunk on while hot, for the
sake of strengthening the whole. Many guns made in this way
during the sixteenth century are still to be seen in European
museums.

The use of breech-loading cannon is of considerable antiquity,
despite the great difficulty that has been experienced in securing
safety in their use. Among the earliest breech-loading devices
was that of a short movable tube or chamber, closed at one end.
This was loaded to its muzzle and then inserted into the breech of
the large tube. It was propped behind with a heavy block of
wood or iron, and firmly wedged into position before firing. It
is readily seen that with such loose fittings much of the force of
the powder was wasted. None of these guns were provided with
any facilities for adjustment in aiming. The stone projectile
was but poorly fitted to the size of the bore. Not only did much
of the expanding gas escape without doing useful work, but the
strength of the gun was never sufficient to warrant a charge of
powder large enough to send the projectile more than a few hun-
dred yards.

In course of time it became evident that greater efficiency was
attainable by the use of smaller cannon and more accurate fitting.
The clumsy and unmanageable heavy guns were discarded, and
their places supplied by guns many of which were small enough
to be carried by a single man. The introduction of the musket
was merely one phase in the fluctuation of the waves of custom, a
reaction after many unhappy experiences in the use of large can-
non which had been inefficient and often more dangerous to the
user than to the enemy. The musketeer with his burdensome
flintlock became more important than the cannoneer in field work.
A variety of forms of small cannon came into use, all of which
were, like the muskets, smooth-bored, muzzle-loading arms, made
of cast metal of one kind or another. Iron balls were substituted
for those of stone, and about the beginning of the present century
a weight of eighteen or twenty pounds was deemed best for most
artillery purposes. War ships were equipped with armaments
sometimes in excess of a hundred small cannon. Custom had

150 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fluctuated to the other extreme, but at this stage of evolution
guns had become well differentiated into two classes, the musket
and pistol being representatives of the one, while the portable
cannon was a type of the other. Each was crude in comparison
with the war machines of to-day, but efficient enough to make
Napoleon the terror of Europe. This warrior's celebrated remark
that " God is on the side of the heaviest artillery " was an indi-
cation of his view that the limit had not been reached, and that
the art of cannon construction was enough developed to warrant
the making of yet larger guns.

In the War of 1818 an American officer, Colonel Bomford, in-
troduced a large cast-iron gun, intended specially for seacoast
defense by firing bombshells at long range. Up to this time
cannon had been made with little or no provision for the varia-
tion of stress in different parts of the gun due to the exploding
powder. It was known that this stress must be greatest around
the seat of the charge, but no experiments had been made to de-
termine even roughly the rate of decrease, although methods
were already in use for ascertaining the initial velocity of the
projectile shot forth. Bomford bored a hole into the side of a
cannon and screwed into this a pistol barrel, with a bullet in-
serted. A definite charge of powder being exploded in the can-
non, the velocity of the pistol bullet gave a measure of the pres-
sure at that point. A series of holes being made in succession
from muzzle to breech, the corresponding velocities of the dis-
charged bullets gave an indication of the relative strengths needed
to resist explosion and the thickness of metal required. The form
of gun was therefore modified to suit the stress, and greater
strength in proportion to weight was thus secured. To this im-
proved gun he gave the name of columbiad. This style of gun
was soon adopted in Europe, and long continued to be a standard.

But there were inherent weaknesses due to the very fact of
employing cast metal. Assume a mass of hot liquid iron poured
into a mold to form a solid cylinder, the central part of which is
to be afterward bored out. The exterior surface cools first and
becomes a rigid solid, while the whole mass has contracted but
little. Gradually the interior hardens and crystallizes, but nor-
mal contraction is prevented by the rigidity of the exterior shell.
The condition of the mass is much like that of a Rupert's drop of
glass, which breaks into fragments as soon as the outer shell is
broken. The weakest part of the cylinder is the axial region,
which is removed by being bored out ; but still the weakest parts
of the completed gun are its inner surface and breech, the very
parts against which the greatest force of the exploding charge is
exerted. With such a gun the limit of safety is exceedingly un-
certain. The vibration due to discharge weakens the cast iron.

EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HEAVY GUN.. 151

and the gun becomes dangerously weak after but little use.
Nevertheless, this method of construction did not begin to receive
modification of any great importance until about fifty years ago.
In 1846 these smooth-bore, cast-iron columbiads varied in caliber
from eight inches to twenty inches, and in weight from four tons
to fifty-seven tons. The projectiles were spherical iron balls, from
sixty-eight to one thousand pounds in weight, the charge of pow-
der never exceeding one sixth of the weight of the ball.

Between 1850 and 1800 Major Rodman, of the United States
Army, conducted an epoch-making series of experiments on the
improvement of gunpowder and the method of casting iron guns.
Dahlgren, about the same time, modified the form of gun, giving
it great thickness at the breach and as far as the trunnions, with
rapidly diminishing di-
ameter thence to the muz-
zle. This form has often
been compared to that of
a champagne bottle. The
contrast between this and
the older forms is well
shown by comparing the
" Tsar cannon," a thirty-
inch gun of the seven-
teenth century, now in
the arsenal at Moscow,
with the United States

fifteen-inch columbiad, as improved by Dahlgren. Accepting the
proportions thus established, Rodman devised the method of
"hollow casting" and cooling from the interior. The melted
iron is poured into a vertical mold, the axis of which is occupied
by a hollow core. Through a pipe in this cold water is conveyed
to the bottom and conducted away at the top after being warmed
by the surrounding hot metal. The hardening of this begins
thus at the inner surface where the greater strength is needed.
The exterior surface of the mold is at first strongly heated from
without and this heat gradually diminished, while the flow of
water is continued many hours or even days. The cast iron thus
goes through a process much like the tempering and annealing of
steel. As the metal gradually cools the inner surface becomes
strongly compressed, and the outer surface is left in a state of
tension. The condition is the exact reverse of that brought about
by the older process of solid casting and subsequent boring. The
great improvement in strength secured by this process is indi-
cated by Rodman's testing of two columbiads of the same size,
material, and form, made at the same time, the one by hollow
casting, the other by solid casting. The solid-cast gun burst at

The Tsar Cannon at Moscow.
Calilier, thirty inches. Seventeenth century.

152

POPULAR SCIEiVCE MONTHLY.

Rodman Fifteen-inch Gun.

the eiglity-fif til round, the hollow-cast at the two hundred and fifty-
first round. Its endurance was thus three times that of the other.
Rodman's process was of fundamental importance, because it
established experimentally the principle of initial exterior exten-
sion and interior com-
pression. This princi-
ple is applied in all gun
construction to-day, al-
though the use of cast
iron has been wholly dis-
carded. Like many other
ideas of great importance
in the history of inven-
tion, it seems to have
been evolved independ-
ently by several claimants. The names of Blakely, Whitworth,
Armstrong, Longridge, Brooke, Treadwell, and Parrott are at
once called to mind. To describe their inventions and discuss
conflicting claims would require a volume. The discovery of such
an important principle, followed by the outbreak of the American
civil war, gave an impetus to the improvement of ordnance which
was felt over the entire world.

Hitherto the materials used in gun construction were cast iron,
wrought iron, and bronze, this last being an alloy of copper with
ten per cent of tin. In tenacity bronze is superior to cast iron,
but it is softer, more fusible, and more expensive. Cast iron is
moderately fusible, but not fixed in composition, having a vari-
able amount of carbon, silica, and other impurities diffused
through its mass. Its properties are correspondingly variable,
but it is in general hard, brittle, and more or less crystalline.
Wrought iron is the result of oxidizing out all of the carbon by
puddling, then squeezing out the silica, and rolling so as to de-
velop a fibrous in place of crystalline structure. It is much more
tenacious than cast iron, almost infusible, but capable of ready
welding and forging. The admixture of carbon seems to confer
the property of fusibility.

Steel is the product of the recombination of pure wrought iron
with a very small percentage of carbon and sometimes of man-
ganese or nickel. Like cast iron, it is fusible ; like wrought iron,
it can be readily forged ; and it is superior to each in elasticity
and tenacity. The idea long ago suggested itself that steel ought
to be the best material for the construction of cannon. But the
practical obstacle was the great difficulty of securing large enough
forgings of steel, and this of sufficiently good quality. Only since
1860 have the methods of steel manufacture been so improved as
to make this metal available on a large scale.

100,000

90,000

80,000

EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HEAVY GUN 153

So important is the relation between cast iron, wrought iron,
and steel that it may be well to illustrate this by the use of a dia-
gram due to Professor Merriman. Assume that short rods of these
materials, each of the same length and one square inch in cross-
section, are subjected to great stretching force by the use of a test-
ing machine. As this force increases up to the elastic limit of six
thousand pounds, the cast-iron rod becomes elongated proportion-
ally. It breaks suddenly when the stress reaches twenty thousand
pounds. At this limit of tenacity the rod has been increased in
length less than one per cent, as shown in the diagram. The
wrought iron becomes lengthened at a less rapid rate, reaching
its elastic limit for a stress of about twenty-five thousand pounds.
In each case, up to the elastic limit, if the stretching force be re-
moved the rod will recover its former length and condition. On
further increasing the stress, the wrought iron stretches at a
more rapid rate, and bears a stress as great as fifty-eight thousand
pounds. If now the force be withdrawn the iron remains in its
deformed condition, the lengthening being about twenty-two per
cent. On again apply-
ing the stress there is
further rapid length-
ening up to twenty-
five per cent, this
yielding causing a de-
crease of stress till
the rod breaks at a
limit below fifty-eight
thousand pounds.
The elastic limit and
the breaking limit are
thus widely different.
In the case of steel
the elastic limit is
not reached until the
stress becomes fifty

thousand pounds. Its elastic limit is thus double that of wrought
iron. Further increase of stress now causes the steel to increase
its rate of stretching, and permanent strain results. Its breaking
limit, one hundred thousand pounds, is nearly double that of the
wrought iron, and is reached when the yielding attains fifteen per
cent. This is not much more than half of the twenty-five per
cent of yielding of the wrought iron.

The figures just given are only averages. Cast iron has been
made with a tenacity in excess of forty thousand pounds, while
that of steel may vary in different specimens from sixty thousand
to three hundred thousand pounds. This wide range shows that for

a

u 70,000

<» 60,000

m 50,000

40,000

3
o

a

a 30.000

20,000

10,000

^

^^^

y^

^

/

1

\vo» --'

-^

'"^x

^iii^

y^

fl

1 Iss

U^'^

10 15

Per Ceut. of Elougation

20

25

Curves showing Tensile Strength of Timber, Cast Ikon,
Wkought Ikon, and Steel.

154- POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the construction of a heavy gun, if steel be employed, the utmost
care should be exercised to secure that of the highest grade pos-
sible, in order to withstand the enormous tension due to explosion.
As soon as this tension becomes equal to the limiting measure of
elasticity for the steel, the wall must yield, even if the thickness
of the gun were infinite. Since the breaking limit, or ultimate
tenacity, of cast steel has just been seen to be, on an average, at
least five times that of cast iron, it follows that, with the same
diameter and thickness of metal and the same weight of projec-
tile, a steel gun warrants the use of a charge of powder of the
same quality five times as great.

Professor Treadwell showed in 1856 that, if we assume a gun to
be made up of a large number of uniform, cylindrical, concentric
layers of metal, then the resistance of each layer to the bursting
force of explosion will vary inversely as the square of the diame-
ter. The stress, therefore, decreases at a rate very similar to that
of the radiation of heat or light. If the wall of the gun be under
no initial stress of any kind, its inner portion must have great
resisting power, and very little is gained by thickness of wall
much in excess of the diameter of the bore. Treadwell therefore
proposed a plan of construction by which a cast-iron tube of only
moderate thickness should be re-enforced by a series of layers of
encircling wrought-iron hoops. These should be shrunk on while
hot, so that, after cooling, the cast iron tube is strongly com-
pressed while the wrought-iron hoop becomes stretched. The
force of compression is thus added to the ordinary strength of
the cast iron to resist explosion. With various modifications this
plan has been carried out by most gun constructors during the
last forty years. During the civil war it was applied with great
success by R. P. Parrott, of West Point, and by Blakely, Arm-
strong, and Whitworth in England.

It is perhaps impossible to say what inventor was the first to
introduce the use of rifled cannon. They have now entirely
superseded smooth-bore guns. The Parrott rifled cannon, made
of cast iron according to the Rodman plan and re-enforced around
the chamber with a hoop of wrought iron, was the most generally
serviceable gun employed during the late war, more than two
thousand of them coming thus into use. The largest of these was
twelve feet in length, with a bore ten inches in diameter, its
weight being about twelve tons. A charge of twenty-five pounds
of powder was employed to project a shot weighing two hundred
• and fifty pounds. The cost of its construction in 1863 was forty-
five hundred dollars.

These details are given for the sake of subsequent comparison
with the rifled cannon of to-day. For twenty years after the
close of the war there was a period of stagnation in America, so far

EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HEAVY GUN. 155

as development in ordnance was concerned. Our coast defenses
continued to be provided with, nothing better than the Parrott
rifles and smooth-bore Rodman guns which had been in use dur-
ing the war. Meanwhile there had been great progress in Europe,
particularly in France and Germany. In 1885 a commission ap-
pointed by Congress reported the necessity for heavy expenditure
of money in order that this country be put into a condition of
reasonable readiness to repel foreign invasion. During the last
ten years appropriations to the amount of twenty million dollars
have been made to meet these needs, and the work of rehabilita-
tion is now well started.

The rifled gun of to-day, as finished at the Watervliet Arsenal,
is constructed almost wholly of steel. This is of the best quality
that can be produced on a large scale in American foundries. It
is made by the " open-hearth " process, for the most part at Mid-
vale and Bethlehem in Pennsylvania. The forgings, after under-
going thorough official inspection and careful testing, are sent to
the great gun shops at Watervliet. Here the various parts com-
posing a gun are worked up, assembled together, and finished.
Before assignment for government service each gun is subjected
to a searching test, more severe than should reasonably be ex-
pected in actual use.

The largest gun thus far designed at Watervliet is a rifle of
twelve-inch bore, forty feet in length, and fifty-seven tons in
weight. From such a gun an elongated steel-pointed projectile,
weighing one thousand pounds, or as much as an ordinary horse,
is shot with a charge of five hundred and twenty pounds of
powder. It receives an initial velocity of two thousand feet per
second, and would penetrate through rather more than two feet
of steel armor plate put in front of the muzzle. If shot into the
air at the proper elevation it would pass over a range of nearly
nine miles. Such a missile, thus fired from the lower end of New
York city, would pass over Central Park into the district beyond
Harlem River. This range would be covered so quickly that the
shot would reach its destination several seconds before the sound
of the explosion is heard at the same point. The initial energy of
the projectile would be sufficient to lift a weight of twenty-seven
thousand tons through a height of one foot. If this weight were
that of a spherical mass of gold, the heaviest popularly known
metal, its diameter would be nearly forty-six feet, and its value
eighteen billion dollars. This is more than a dozen times the
value of the total gold production of the world during the last
twenty years.

The cost of such a gun is about sixty thousand dollars ; that
of the charge of powder, one hundred and seventy-five dollars ; of
the armor-piercing projectile, three hundred and fifty dollars.

156

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

JAC^^'''

The cost of a single discliarge thus exceeds five hundred dollars.

But this is not all. So great is the wear and tear of each dis-
charge upon the

ST4GEsoFTHE/4ssEMBM6E_^ bore that after two

hundred and fifty-
rounds the gun be-
comes unfit for fur-
ther use until it is
relined by the in-
sertion of a new
rifled tube within
the original tube,
the old rifling hav-
ing been removed.
The gun will then
stand two hundred
and fifty more
rounds. Assuming
six hundred rounds
for the entire life
of the gun, each
round thus costs
one hundred dol-
lars in wear and
tear, in addition to
the five hundred
dollars' worth of
material used in
loading. Such a
gun as this is but

■Sectional Diagram, showing compression of tube and extension ^ Single Smail Cie-
of hoops after assemblage of the compoDeut parts of a gun. ment ill the COSt

of a modern war.
Several of them, besides a number of smaller guns, are usually
placed on every large armor-clad battle ship. The cost of this
with its equipment mounts up into millions of dollars. Neverthe-
less, it has been necessary to coin into our language the word
*' jingo," to designate the bragging noncombatant who clamors
for war because of the fancied stimulus which it is supposed to
give to patriotism and prosperity. On comparing this gun with
the largest Parrott rifle of thirty years ago we see that its length
is more than three times, its weight nearly five times, and its cost
thirteen times as great. For the cast-iron Parrott gun the charge
of powder weighed about one tenth as much as the projectile.
For the modern steel gun this ratio is raised to one half, with
corresponding increase of destructive energy.

EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HEAVY GUN. 157

Passing now to the construction of the modern gun, a longi-
tudinal section shows an inner tube rifled within and slightly-
enlarged at the breech end of the bore. Around this is a long
tubular jacket extending from the breech two thirds of the length
of the gun. Around this jacket is a series of compressing hoops^
and around this a second or outer series of the same. Originally
the interior diameter of the jacket is a little less than the exterior
diameter of the tube. By heating the jacket suflBciently it is
made to expand until it can be slipped over the cold tube, which
becomes enormously compressed by the subsequent cooling of the
jacket. In like manner the first hoop is too small to be slipped
over the cold jacket except when heated for this purpose. The
same remark applies to the second hoop. The final result, as
shown by the cross-sectional diagram on opposite page, is that the
diameters of the tube, both internal and external, are permanently
diminished by the compression of the jacket, while those of the
hoops are permanently increased. Their contractile force is not
sufficient to compress the jacket, which is itself resisting the
enormous reacting force of the compressed tube within. Th&
hoops therefore serve to re- enforce the jacket by their own tend-
ency to contract from the enlarged condition in which they were-
applied while hot. They are in a state of permanent tension.
The scale of differences exhibited in the diagram is greatly ex-
aggerated to make these perceptible. The longitudinal diagram
shows by curves how the expansive force of the exploding powder
diminishes from breech to muzzle, how the yet greater elastic

cutive or tuisTtc ntiisTJtHcz

Curves showing Decrease of Elastic Eesistance, Powder Pressure, and Increase ob

Projectile Velocity.

resistance of the steel components, after they are assembled
together, is adjusted to resist this expansive force, and how the
velocity of the projectile increases' from breech to muzzle.

All rifled guns built in America at present, whether for sea-
coast, siege, or field artillery, are breech-loading. Many futile-

158

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

experiments were made before a successful breecli-loadiiig mech-
anism, was perfected. An explanation of either of the two modern
systems would be beyond the scope of the present discussion. It

TwKLVE-iNcn Rifle, with Bkeech-loading Mechanism Closed.

may be sufficient to say that the system in use in America is sub-
stantially that of the French, an interrupted screw which fits into
the breech and is provided with an efficient gas check. This is so
constructed that the mere fact of explosion tightens the gas check
and effectually prevents the escape of hot gas between the threads
of the screw.

The largest and most celebrated gun factory in the world is
that of Krupp, at Essen in Germany, near the Belgian border.
Besides monopolizing the construction of guns for the German
Government, this factory has supplied a great number to most of
the leading powers of Europe. It was established in 1818, and
from the very outset attention was concentrated upon the making
of steel. The first finished piece of artillery in cast steel was made
in 1847. This was a small field gun capable of projecting a ball
of only three pounds. The manufacture of steel at these works
has since been so perfected that Krupp can now be scarcely said
to have an acknowledged rival in the world. His magnificent
display at the Chicago Exposition was seen and admired by many
thousands of visitors. Among these exhibits was a steel rifle
forty-two centimetres (1G"54 inches) in caliber, and thirty-three
calibers (forty-six feet) in length. Its weight is one hundred and
twenty tons, or a little more than double that of the twelve-inch
rifle at Watervliet. With a charge of nine hundred pounds of
powder it gives an initial velocity of two thousand feet per second
to a projectile weighing twenty-two hundred pounds, whose ini-
tial energy is thus sixty thousand foot tons. When fired at an
elevation of about eleven degrees it sends this projectile to a dis-

EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HEAVY GUN. 159

tance of five and a lialf miles, and it pierces through armor a yard
thick at a distance of a mile and a quarter. Another rifle, twenty-
eight centimetres (eleven inches) in caliber and forty calibers
(thirty-seven feet) in length, when elevated forty degrees sends a
seven hundred and sixty pound projectile over twelve and a half
miles. This is the distance from the Battery to Fordham in New
York city. The shot reaches an extreme height of a trifle over
four miles. It could thus be easily made to clear the highest
mountain peak in North America.

The j^ower of endurance of a gun diminishes raj^idly with in-
crease of projectile power. The life of the American twelve-inch
rifle has been given as only five hundred or six hundred rounds,
while a field gun of modern make may be fired thousands of times
if used with reasonable care. Within the next two years a new
rifle of sixteen-inch caliber will be constructed at Watervliet.
This is nearly equal in size to the monster Krupp gun at Chicago.
Such immense guns can be employed only for seacoast defense.
In handling them complex machinery is necessary, not only for
moving and adjusting the gun but for loading it. No group of
soldiers could without machinery lift and put into place a projec-
tile weighing a ton. It seems doubtful whether any real advan-
tage can be gained by going beyond the limits of size already

Twelve-inch IJifle, with Breech-loading Mechanism Open.

reached. The difiiculty at present is not confined to that of ma-
nipulation, but extends to the quality of the forgings made on
so large a scale. Krupp makes his guns entirely of " crucible "
steel, such as is employed for cutlery. Made by this method,
steel is indeed the most uniform in composition, but nowhere
outside of the Krupp works has it been manufactured on a
scale large enough for great gun forgings. In France, in Eng-
land, and in America, the " open-hearth " process is depended

i6o

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

upon, which yields a high grade of steel ; but in uniformity of
composition and elasticity it can scarcely be equal to the more
expensive crucible steel. This perhaps may at present be only a
matter of opinion. On such a point no definite and final conclu-
sion should be reached without a series of comparisons such as
can not be accomplished in a day.

An unfortunate mishap which occurred at Water vliet in 1895
may have some bearing in this connection. In assembling the
parts of a forty-caliber twelve-inch rifle, the tube was, as usual,
rested vertically upon its breech end, and the heated, jacket was
let down over it. The heating had been insufficient to secure all

KkUPP SiXTEEN-lNCH GdN, MOUNTED ON CoAST CaKKIAGE.

Weight of gun, seventy-one tons.

the expansion needed, and as a result the cooling jacket gripped
the tube before quite reaching the final position intended. An
interesting problem was now presented, that of separating the
tube and jacket after they had become thoroughly cool, and com-
pleting the process which had been so unexpectedly interru])ted.
The gun was provided with the inlet and outlet tubes such as
Rodman employed to secure a continuous flow of water in hollow
casting, and the exposed part of the tube below the edge of the
jacket was inclosed in a bag of asbestos cloth through which a
stream of cold air could be transmitted. The gun with its adher-
ent jacket and these adjuncts was let down into a furnace so as
to heat the jacket. Immediately a flow of cold water was started
through the tubes, and of cold air through the bag, while the
inclosing jacket was soon raised to a temperature estimated to be
1100° F., which was maintained for several hours. The experi-
ment proved unsuccessful. It was subsequently repeated twice
with slight modifications, but all in vain. To test the correctness
of the theory thus applied, a " dummy " was constructed, its parts

THE SILENT CITY OF THE MUIR GLACIER, 161

assembled together firmly, and the experiment of separating them
was rewarded with prompt success. On account of the magnitude
of the large gun it had been impossible to heat it with perfect uni-
formity from without, while no such difficulty was experienced
with the much smaller dummy. A series of measurements upon
the large gun revealed the fact that during the first experiment it
had become warped, and the diameter of the tube had been dimin-
ished in varying degrees at different parts.

Whether such results as these would have been brought about
had the materials been of the best quality of crucible steel instead
of open-hearth steel can not be answered positively. The larger
the gun the greater is the danger of such mishaps. It is left to
coming experience to determine which is to be the steel of the
future for gun construction.

THE SILENT CITY OF THE MUIR GLACIER.

By DAVID STARK JORDAN,

PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD JUNIOK UNIVERSITY.

MR. RICHARD G. WILLOUGHBY is a mining prospector
and " promoter," resident in Juneau, Alaska, a man whose
vocation enables him to see some wonderful things. In June, 1888,
according to his statement, Mr. Willoughby beheld an extraor-
dinary mirage from the surface of the Muir Glacier. It was the
apparition of a great city of tall houses of brick and stone, plainly
shown in the air under the influence of some powerful refraction.
Behind the city was a river in which shipping was faintly shown.
In the foreground the leafless branches of tall elm trees were
clearly traceable. In the center of the city was a large edifice
with several towers, and on some of these towers the presence of
scaffolding showed that building was still going on. This mirage
was seen by him several times from year to year, and on the
unfinished building the stages in the process of erection each
season could be distinctly followed.

Mr. Willoughby sent to San Francisco and secured a camera
with a number of highly sensitized plates of the usual commer-
cial sort in order to photograph the apparition. This he suc-
ceeded in doing but once successfully. The necessary exposure
was a very long one, because of the unsubstantiality of the object.
The one negative, however, gave a fairly clear print. Copies
were at once made, and R. G. Willoughby's Silent City (seventy-
five cents each) was added to the wonders of Alaska. I present
herewith a copy of this picture bought by me in Sitka in 180().
The picture is not quite the same as the original edition of 1888.

VOL. LI. 12

i62 POPULAR SCIENCP: MONTHLY.

The scene is exactly identical, but the card has been reduced in
size by the omission of superfluous sky. It has been rendered
much fainter and more ghostlike than the original, and is perhaps
taken from a new negative in which the lines of the houses and
gravel walks have been purposely made less distinct.

The original edition has the following on the back of the
card:

" The Glacial Wonder of the Silent City.

" For the past fifteen years Prof. Richard Willoughby has
been a character in Alaska as well known among the whites as
he has been familiar to the natives. As one of the early settlers
of old Fort Wrangel, in which his individuality was stamped
among the sturdy miners who frequented the then important
trading port of Alaska, he has grown with the Territory and is
to-day as much a part of its history as the totem poles are iden-
tified with the deeds of valor or commemorative of the past tri-
umphs of prominent members of the tribes which their hideous
and mysterious characters represent.

" To him belongs the honor of being the first American who
discovered gold within Alaska's icy-bound peaks, but his greatest
achievement from a scientific standpoint is his tearing from
the glacier's chilly bosom the ' mirages ' of cities from distant
climes.

" After four years of labor amid dangers, privations, and
sufferings, he accomplished for the civilized world a feat in
photography heretofore considered problematic.

" It was on the longest day of June, 1888, that the camera took
within its grasp the reproduction of a city remote, if indeed not
altogether within the recesses of another world. The

silent city

is here presented for the consideration of the public as the wonder
and pride of Alaska's bleak hills, and the ever-changing glaciers
may never again afford a like opportunity for the accomplish-
ment of this sublime phenomenon."

The picture attracted much attention and met with an encour-
aging sale. The skeptical bought it as an original document in
the natural history of mendacity. The credulous regarded it as
a wonder not surpassed by the gigantic glacier itself. The dis-
cussion arose in the newspapers as to whether some distant city,
as Montreal, could have been brought into view by the freaks of
the marvelous Alaskan atmosphere. Many who thought this
impossible leaned to the belief that in the heart of Alaska or in
British Columbia there is some great settlement of civilized men,
as yet undiscovered by geographers. To those who held this
opinion neither the nearness of the houses to the observer nor the

16+ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

peculiarities of the vegetation (leafless elm trees in midsummer)
nor the tiles on the chimneys offered any difficulties. The obvious
but commonplace explanation was that of the few only. Even
now, every summer, some account of the marvel goes the rounds
of the newspapers. I am told that in 189G a company of people
encamped for some time on the glacier, in hopes of seeing this
great wonder of Nature.

They did not see it, unfortunately, but others had better
success, and these lucky ones have recently substantiated their
account by their affidavits. An affidavit in Juneau costs but a
drink of whisky, the usual price along the Northwest coast, a fact
of which one great nation of our day has not been slow to profit
in connection with an International Tribunal of Arbitration. As
the sale of photographs declines, more persons will probably be
granted a sight of the Silent City, and there will arise anew series
of affidavits and newspaper stories.

It is hardly necessary to call the attention of the intelligent
reader to the absvirdities involved in Mr. Willoughby's story and
in the photograph which is its financial justificaion. But there
are many persons, not without education and culture, who believe
without the least question any tale which is uncanny or which
seems outside the ordinary run of things. In vain does Science
protest that the natural order is the only order there is, that all
contradictions to it are either so in appearance only or else are
deceptions or frauds.

An interest in human psychology led Dr. Charles H. Gilbert,
then acting as naturalist on the Albatross, to investigate Mr.
Willoughby's methods of photography. He learned from Mr.
Willoughby that the plates used were of the ordinary sort, but
that the mirage required a very long exposure to set the x>icture.
Mr. Willoughby had had no previous knowledge of photography,
and had never tried to reproduce anything except mirages. The
chemicals used in developing the negative he would not describe.
It was a secret process. The exposed plates had to be soaked for
three months in the secret compound before the picture would be
fixed. This soaking took place in the open daylight, no dark
room being required, nor did Mr. Willoughby seem aware of the
ordinary function of the dark chamber in photography.

The original negative, examined by Dr. Gilbert, was a very
old, stained, and faded plate, apparently a negative which had
been discarded because underexposed.

Prof. William H. Hudson, of Stanford University, who lived
for a time in Bristol, England, recognizes the picture as a view
of that city from Brandon Hill, above the town. The picture
must have been taken some twenty years ago, because Prof.
Hudson distinctly remembers the scaffolding around the towers

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 165

of Bristol Cathedral at that time while the building was being
repaired. The hotel and the church to the left of the cathedral
are also recognized by him.

A more transparent fraud could hardly be devised, but its very
imbecility assures its success. We may be certain that for many
years to come the " Silent City " will be the " wonder and pride of
Alaska's bleak hills," and tourists eager to " pierce the veil " will
speculate on the probability of its being " perhaps altogether
within the recesses of another world."

Thus it comes about, as I have elsewhere said, that " there is
no intellectual craze so absurd as not to have a following among
educated men and women. There is no scheme for the renova-
tion of the social order so silly that educated men will not invest
their money in it. There is no medical fraud so shameless that
educated men will not give it their certificate. There is no non-
sense so unscientific that men called educated will not accept it
as science."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

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

COERESPONDANT DE l'iNSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETC.

VIII. — NOMENCLATURE AND FORMS OF TAXATION.

THE most simple form of taxation is a poll or capUation tax.
Both terms may be regarded as identical in use and meaning,
but the former is probably more frequently used in tax treatises
and discussions.

What is a Poll Tax ? — In a strictly economic sense the es-
sential requisite of a " poll " or " head " tax is that it be laid on all
polls or heads, and be unvarying in amount. A varying poll tax
would be an arbitrary exaction, and would not be sustained for a
moment as a proper exercise of the right of taxation, if laid with-
out reference to a man's ownership of property. So soon, how-
ever, as the amount of the tax exacted is made dependent upon
the amount of the property owned, the tax ceases to be a varying
poll tax, and becomes a tax on the property itself. The popular
idea of a poll tax in the United States is an annual tax, small in
amount, uniform as respects rate, and applicable only to adult
male persons. Such conceptions are not, however, in accord with
historical experience, which is to the effect that uniformity in as-
sessment has never been an essential or even usual feature of this
form of taxation, but as a rule the tax has been intentionally rated
to the person assessed according to his rank and station and sup-
posed property. The " poll " or " capitation " tax of history has,
therefore, been rather an " income " than a per capita tax ; and the

i66 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

poll tax of the United States finds few precedents in history. Un-
der the Byzantine Empire a so-called universal poll tax was sub-
stituted in lieu of almost all the tithes, customs, and excises which
had before been relied on for revenue ; and this substitution and
its influence was regarded by Hume as one of the chief causes
of the decadence of the Roman state (see page 584, voh xlviii,
March, 1896).

The first so-called poll tax in England was granted in 1377,
and from that date down to the time of Queen Anne was an im-
portant source of revenue, and, not being uniform, except in its
incidence per capita, gave rise to great popular dissatisfaction,
both by reason of its amount and inequality, and also by the in-
quisitorial methods employed for its assessment and collection.
At first (1377) the rate was fourpence on every head, male and
female, above fourteen years of age. Subsequently, under the
reign of Richard II, in order to avoid the unfairness of subjecting
all — rich and poor, noble and serf — to such a uniform tax, a more
equitable system was introduced, the taxpayers being classified
by reference to rank, condition of life, and property, the rate
ranging from six pounds thirteen shillings for dukes and arch-
bishops, to two pounds for barons and knights, and three shillings
fourpence on those of " least estate." The retention of the former
uniform rate of fourpence on all married laborers and upon all
single men and women above fourteen years of age, who were
presumed to be without estate, was, however, a cause of great dis-
satisfaction among the masses, and the attempt to collect it un-
doubtedly constituted the prime cause of the famous " Wat Tyler
rebellion " of 1381. In the case of the last poll tax authorized in
England under Queen Anne a like attempt at classifying persons
was continued ; the rate commencing at one shilling per annum on
all persons worth more than fifty pounds, and rising to ten pounds
for peers of the realm, both spiritual and temporal. One curious
provision of this final enactment was, that in all cases Catholics
were to pay double the rate imposed on Protestants. Bachelors
and widowers without children were also subjected to special
rates. Some writer has remarked that such exactions could only
have been designed and authorized by a government of misan-
thropes ; for if one with a view of escaping them abandoned
single blessedness, he only involved himself in greater difficul-
ties ; for there was a tax upon marriages, a tax upon births, and,
if the health of the victim broke down under these exactions, a
sum varying from three to thirty florins, according to his station,
had to be paid before his sorrowing relatives could bury him.
These taxes on marriages were enforced in England from 1G95 to
1705, and during the first five years of their continuance yielded
an average annual revenue of about two hundred and fifty thou-

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. . 167

sand dollars. It was noted that their continuance had the unde-
sirable effect of increasing the number of marriages by irrespon-
sible persons, and in a manner devoid of all solemnity. The rates
imposed in England as late as 1706 on bachelors and widowers
contracting marriage varied according to the class in life to
which they belonged ; from thirty pounds to twenty-five pounds
on the elder sons of the higher orders of nobility to twelve shil-
lings on persons possessed of an income of fifty pounds per annum.

Within a very recent period a petition, numerously signed, has
been presented to the French Chamber of Deputies asking that a
special tax on bachelors be established in France, and recalls the
fact that the French revolutionary Convention of 1789, and some
of the old republics, established such a tax. The petition further
stated that the number of bachelors in Paris is nearly half a
million, while the number of married men is not more than 379,-
000 ; and " that such a tax ought to be doubly welcome in France :
first, because it will increase the declining population of the state
by inducing bachelors to marry ; and, secondly, because it will
help to make up a growing deficiency in the national budget,"
In Switzerland, in the assessment of an income tax and taxes on
dwelling houses, certain deductions allowed to married persons
with families, are not allowed to bachelors or childless married
people.

Legislation looking to the taxation of bachelors has also been
seriously proposed of late in several of the States of the Federal
Union. In Illinois, for example, a bill has been introduced in its
Legislature imposing a uniform tax on all single men, sound in
mind and body, above thirty-two years, who are not able to show
that they have proposed marriage three times — and been rejected.
The proceeds of the tax are to go toward establishing a home for
worthy and indigent single women above the age of thirty-eight.

A Missouri bill makes the tax progressive, increasing by suc-
cessive increments as the bachelor persists in his state of single
blessedness.

In modern times (1848) an English Governor of Ceylon — Lord
Torrington — undertook to repeat the experience of his country-
men of near five centuries before, by imposing a poll tax of three
shillings per annum, or one week's labor, valued at three shil-
lings, from every man, rich or poor, in the colony. This exaction,
in point of inequality, was worse than the poll tax of Wat Ty-
ler's time, inasmuch as it made the average income of the poorest
laborer the standard according to which the rate of taxation was
to be established for all. There was also another curious feature
connected with this experience. The Cingalese priesthood were
held liable to pay this tax, either in money or a week's work,
when their religion required that they must neither perform

i68 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

work nor possess property. The result was a revolt attended
with much bloodshed, an abandonment of the tax, and the recall
of the Governor.

In one of the states of Central America a poll tax was recently-
required to be paid monthly ; all adult male inhabitants of the
several towns and cities being obliged to present themselves at
the municipal treasuries and pay their dues in person.

In the colonial period of our history the poll tax was enacted
by nearly all the North American colonies at one time or another.
In Virginia and Maryland it was for a long time the only direct
tax ; and in the latter State it was imposed upon all free men and
free women, and upon all free children over twelve years of age ;
and was rendered particularly odious and burdensome from the
circumstance that its payment was required in tobacco, a given
number of pounds to the head, the value of which commodity
was not constant, but varied with supply, which at times was in-
tentionally restricted, with the intent of augmenting its market
price. There was, however, another side to this experience. The
poll tax in the two States named was almost a measure of neces-
sity. Land was of small value, for there was in the new colo-
nies little distinction between improved and unimproved lands.
Slaves were not taxable as personal estate, but belonged to the
land and figured as real property ; and the personal estates of the
planters were comparatively small. Polls were therefore the most
available measure of taxation, and tobacco was the currency of
the day. All bills and charges were made out in so many pounds
of tobacco; all lawyers' and court fees were so determined; the
parish and county levies were fixed in weights of tobacco ; and
the minister drew as his salary so many pounds of tobacco from
each parishioner, without respect to the market value of the crop.
It accordingly happened that a poll levy might be excessive one
year and nominal the next ; with lawyers, ministers, and clerks
rejoicing in abundant means one season and reduced to starva-
tion point the next. Unequal, in proportion to wealth of the
payer, as such a poll tax was, its inequality was furthermore
greatly aggravated by fluctuations in the exchangeable value of
the medium in which it was payable.

During the colonial period also, in North America, men's per-
sons were included in the schedules of property made in reference
to taxation ; and instead of having a fixed sum, as was subse-
quently the rule in assessing a poll tax, the value of the poll was
rated according to the earning capacity of the individual ; and if
he was old and infirm, or in any way disabled, the value of the
poll was placed at a small amount.

Possibly by reason of English and American colonial experi-
ences, and perhaps from an infiltration as it were, down through

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 169

the ages, of the fact that in Greece and Rome the poll tax was
exacted only of the people of subjugated provinces, and was there-
fore regarded as a mark of inferiority or slavery, this tax in
modern times has not been in accord with public sentiment, and
in most countries has now been abandoned. The last poll tax in
England was enacted in 1689. Like all its predecessors, it was
always unpopular and was regarded as unsuited to the people of
England. It was repealed in 1698, and " henceforth this form of
tax passed into the list of taxes tried and never again to be im-
posed in England. What minister," said Henry Fox in 1748,
" would presume again to suggest the hated hearth money of the
Stuarts, or the poll taxes of the reign of William III ?" (Dowell,
Taxation in England, vol. ii, p. 49.)

In the United States the poll tax formed, in 1895, a part of the
tax system of twenty-six of the States and Territories, and was
not recognized in twenty others, and in some of the latter its levy
is prohibited by constitutional provisions. In New York a gen-
eral law for the incorporation of villages confers upon its trustees
the power to raise money by levying a poll tax.

From a theoretical or purely economic point of view the pres-
ent popular opposition and adverse sentiment to the poll tax
in the United States do not seem to be warranted by any very
good reasons. The arguments made use of by those opposed to
its continuance are not derived from old-time precedents, or war-
ranted by the experience of foreign countries, inasmuch as its
assessment in the States of the Federal Union has always been
inconsiderable in amount, and has rarely involved in its col-
lection any inquisitorial or arbitrary measures. The one most
deserving of attention has been, that it practically imposed a
property qualification upon the right of suffrage by making its
payment a prerequisite to the act of voting, a money payment of
even so small a sum as two dollars per annum in Massachusetts
and one dollar in Connecticut being regarded in that light. But
in answer to this it may be said that paupers are disfranchised
not because they are vicious or illiterate, but, because of their
inability to support themselves or aid in supporting the State, it
is held that they ought not to be allowed a voice in the govern-
ment of the State. To be consistent, therefore, the advocates of
the abolition of the poll tax as administered in New England
ought also to connect with it — i. e., its abolition — an extension of
suffrage to the inmates of poorhouses who, otherwise qualified for
its exercise, are now debarred from it exclusively by a lack of
property qualification. On the other hand, a leading argument in
favor of its continuance is that the majority of citizens who pay
no direct State taxes upon property of any kind, but who are self-
supporting and not paupers, ought not to be exempt from directly

VOL. LI. 13

170 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

contributing to the support of the government, and this argu-
ment may be amplified and illustrated as follows : Thus, there is
no citizen, be he ever so humble, who is not vitally interested in
the preservation and welfare of the civil society of which he is a
member ; and it is of the first importance, more especially as the
tendency of the age seems to be antagonistic, that each member
of society should be encouraged to realize at all times his personal
interest in the well-being of the State. To the rich man society
comes and exacts a contribution in some proportion to his means,
and as a consequence he has inducements to directly interest him-
self in the fiscal management of the government. To the poor
man, who is otherwise rarely directly confronted with the tax
gatherer, society comes also, and, in common with all citizens of
a certain age, asks a very small annual contribution for the sup-
port of the State, because each citizen is interested in its exist-
ence and welfare, has a measure of responsibility resting upon
him, and should be made to realize that responsibility. In the
fact, therefore, that the poll tax touches directly every citizen and
is an effective agency for awakening him to a sense of his polit-
ical duties and responsibilities, and so better qualifies him for the
exercise of the right of suffrage, is to be found the true reason
for the incorporation of a small annual poll tax into every cor-
rect system of State taxation.

As has already been pointed out, a poll tax, having regard
solely to the person and not to his property, is the only tax to
which the term 'personal can be rightfully applied. It is the
essence also of every free and just government that every person
— the most humble as well as the most exalted — is equal before
the law, and has a right to invoke the sovereignty of the State
in all its fullness for the protection of his person. Keeping these
two points in view, it would further appear that a poll tax as-
sessed equally upon all citizens, and free from all discrimination,
represents the most perfect equality of service, and is the only
tax which a citizen can pay which can be regarded in the light of
a reciprocal for the service which the State renders to him in pro-
tecting his person, all other taxes being in respect to property or
business.

As the Constitution of the United States also excludes from
representation " Indians not taxed," it would seem to imply that
its authors regarded the exercise of suffrage by a citizen that was
not a pauper and paid no direct tax, as an anomaly not likely
to occur under a government founded upon equal public rights
and responsibilities, and also that a citizen who did not pay any
direct tax to the State was not likely to have any more correct
idea or measure of his true relation to the State than a wild
Indian.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 171

If, however, public sentiment in any community is so adverse
to the levy of moderate poll taxes that their collection is not and
can not be enforced with any degree of uniformity and equality, as
is reported to be the case in many States, then the advisability of
their abandonment can not well be questioned, for the want of
respect for all law, which always results from the maintenance
upon the statute book of any law which a community will not
regard or permit to be enforced, is an evil that far outweighs any
possible good that can come from its continuance. Furthermore,
the statement is probably warranted that in no instance in history
has it been possible to enforce a permanent tax against which by
common consent the public has revolted.

In considering the feasibility of its continuance it should not
be overlooked that the tax upon property can be collected because
the State holds a confiscatory power over the property to the ex-
tent of the tax. But the tax upon the non-property-holding polls
can not be collected except through the consent of the assessed
person, unless resort is had to the old law of imprisonment until
payment is made — a remedy not likely to find favor.

The recent experiences of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania
are especially worthy of note in this connection. The Constitu-
tion of Massachusetts, adopted during the Revolution, limited the
suffrage to " every male inhabitant of twenty-one years of age
and upward, having a freehold estate within the Commonwealth
of the annual income of three pounds, or any estate of the value
of sixty pounds." This restriction was abolished in 1821, but
payment of a poll tax was still required before a man could vote.
In recent years, however, this form of taxation has become so un-
popular in this State, mainly by reason of a general belief that
politicians, without distinction of party, were in the habit of col-
lecting and disbursing large sums for the purpose of influencing
or bribing voters by payment of their poll taxes, that in 1891 an
amendment to the Constitution of the State was adopted which,
while retaining the previous obligation of the payment of an an-
nual poll tax, abolished such payment as a prerequisite for vot-
ing. The result was that before the adoption of this amendment
from fifty-two to fifty-nine per cent of the poll tax due in the city
of Boston was collected year by year ; but since then the percent-
age of collection has fallen below forty-four per cent. Many of
the city's own employees figure among the delinquents, and it has
been found necessary to place hundreds of poll bills in the hands
of the city treasurer for the deduction of the amount due from
their wages. Leaving out the persons who can not pay without
great sacrifice, it is stated that Boston is still losing above one
hundred thousand dollars yearly in revenue from failure to col-
lect the taxes upon polls that can and should pay. And this, in a

172 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

modified form, is probably the situation throughout the State of
Massachusetts.

In Pennsylvania the State Constitution makes the payment of
a State or county tax, at least one month before election, a pre-
requisite to the exercise of suffrage ; and as the poll tax involves
the smallest amount of tax that a citizen could pay, it was ex-
pected that almost every man would pay it. But, in point of fact,
it was found that thousands of citizens neglected to do so, and the
political campaign committees, irrespective of party, recognizing
this fact, have adopted the policy of furnishing voters whom they
desired to influence with receipts for the payment of their poll
taxes ; and this practice has attained to such magnitude in recent
years, that the two leading party organizations in the city of
Philadelphia alone purchased in the year 1894 over ninety-five
thousand such receipts. Obviously this is a form of bribery which
is forbidden by the spirit if not by the letter of the law ; and to
meet such a situation of affairs the Legislature of Pennsylvania
has recently (1897) enacted a law forbidding the payment of a poll
tax by any other person than the elector against whom such tax
is assessed.*

Neither of the judicial authorities above referred to seem to
have grasped the great principle essential to the continuance of
every truly free state — that the poiver of taxation should not he in-
voked for police purposes, hut be strictly limited to the raising of
revenue to meet legitimate state expenditures.

* During the American colonial period some attempts were made to compel the exercise
of suifrage by imposing a fine on citizens neglecting to vote at regular elections ; the fine
imposed in Maryland on citizens in default of such action having been one hundred pounds
of tobacco. But since the adoption of the Federal Constitution no legislation of like
character is believed to have taken place in any of the States until 1889, when Kansas City
adopted a charter provision imposing a tax of two dollars and a half on each citizen who
should fail to vote at a general election. This provision coming up for review before the
State courts of Missouri, was affirmed in the first instance by a Superior Court judge, who
took the ground that " in the enlightenment of the present age it is in the power of the State
to compel its voters to exercise the election franchise, and if the State can do so the city is
invested with the same power." After enumerating many things of an arbitrary nature that
are done to maintain good municipal government, the judge said that he could see no legal
objection to the use of the taxing power for the purpose of securing a full and perfect ex-
pression of public sentiment and the election of competent and worthy men to public offices.
The position was an advanced one, he admitted, but not an unreasonable one, in view of the
fact that " the highest type of government is attained when every voter casts his vote, and
that vote is counted just as it is cast." On an appeal to the Supreme Court of the State, the
provision was, however, declared unconstitutional, the language of the decision being as
follows : " Taxes may be levied," it said, " in money or in services having a money value to
the public, and he who pays in money does not necessarily have to pay more or less than
he who pays in services, and vice versa, and it is upon this principle that these taxes are
upheld ; but who can estimate the money value to the public of a vote ? It is degrading
to the franchise to associate it with such an idea. The ballot of the humblest in the land
may mold the destiny of the nation for ages."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 173

"The man who will not buy a tax receipt, but expects his
party to purchase it for him, is a bad citizen. He is, in effect, a
person who is bribed, and who holds the value of his vote at a
very small sum." — Philadelphia Times.

Of other terms employed to indicate different forms or meth-
ods of taxation, and a clear understanding of the meaning of
which is essential to any correct discussion of the subject, the
following are the most important :

Direct and Indirect Taxes. — Taxes are generally charac-
terized or classified as being either direct or indirect j but these
terms, although in common use, are somewhat indefinite, owing
to the inability of economists to agree as to their exact meaning ;
while in the United States this indefiniteness has been increased
by the circumstance that its Supreme Federal Court has felt com-
pelled by the language of the Federal Constitution to assign to
the term " direct" as applicable to taxation, a " legal " rather than
an economic definition.

In a general sense the term direct is applied to those taxes
which are demanded from the particular persons whom it is
intended or desired shall pay them ; and indirect to those which
are demanded from a person with the expectation and intention
that he shall indemnify himself for payment of the same at the
expense of some other person.* There is, furthermore, a marked
distinction, founded on sound philosophy, between a direct and
indirect tax, which, if concisely expressed, will constitute two
unimpeachable definitions. Thus an indirect tax, whoever may
first advance it, is paid voluntarily and primarily (in the sense of
ultimately) by the consumer of the taxed article. On the other
hand, a direct tax has always in it an element of compulsion ; not
necessarily on the person who advances the tax in block, but on
the person who is compelled to use or consume the taxed property

* " In the assessment of indirect taxation, and such as is intended to bear upon specific
classes of consumption, the object itself is alone attended to without regard to the party
who may incur the charge. Sometimes a portion of the value of the specific product is
demanded at the time of production — as in France, in respect to the article of salt. Some-
times the demand is made on entry, either into the State, as in the duties of import ; or
into the towns only, as in the duties of entry. Sometimes the tax is demanded of the con-
sumer at the moment of transfer to him from the last producer — as in the case of the stamp
duty, and the duty on theatrical tickets in France. Sometimes the Government requires a
commodity to bear a particular mark, for which it makes a charge — as in the case of the
assay mark on silver and a stamp on newspapers. Sometimes it monopolizes the manufac-
ture of a particular article or the performance of a particular kind of business — as in the
monopoly of tobacco and the postage of letters. Sometimes, instead of charging the com-
modity itself, it charges the payment of its price — as in the case of stamps on receipts and
mercantile paper. All these are different ways of raising a revenue by indirect taxation ;
for the demand is not made on any person in particular, but attaches upon the product or
article taxed." — M. Jean Say, Treatise on Political Economy, 1821.

174 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or its product. For example, there is nothing compulsory or un-
equal in an ordinary license tax. If the license is high, no one is
compelled to engage in a business covered by its legal require-
ment ; and few persons will until the average profits of the taxed
business by the regular laws of competition finally reach the
average profits of other like employments or investments. A tax
on commodities like whisky, tobacco, fermented liquors, oleo-
margarine, playing cards, dice, and the like, can always be avoided
as a primary tax, or can be paid at discretion. But there is
nothing voluntary in the payment of a tax upon all real or per-
sonal property, or on the income of such property. Human
beings can not subsist without some forms of personal property,
and therefore a tax upon all personal property or its income is of
necessity compulsory and not voluntary. Any general assess-
ments of personal property on or by reason of its income, as well
as assessments on real estate, are unavoidable in their nature, and
therefore, from a philosophic or economic point of view, are
typically direct taxes. (See Alexander Hamilton's brief in the
Carriage case, Hamilton's Works, vol. vii, p. 848.)

The presence or absence of the principle of compulsion as con-
stituting the essential difference between a direct and an indirect
tax has not, it is believed, been before recognized by economists.
And yet it is clearly involved or comprised in the definitions
given by acknowledged authorities on the subject. Thus M.
Leroy Beaulieu, in his Traite de la Science des Finances, charac-
terizes those taxes " as direct which the legislator intends should
be paid at once and immediately by him who bears their burden.
They strike at once his fortune or his revenue, and every interme-
diary between him and the treasury is suppressed." McCulloch
(Principles of Taxation) describes a tax " to be direct when it is
immediately taken from property," and indirect " when it is taken
from its owners by making them pay for liberty to use certain
articles or exercise certain privileges." M. Say defines a direct
tax to be the " absolute demand of a specific portion of an indi-
vidual's real or supposed revenue." (Political Economy, p. 461.)

In the assessment of direct taxes a proportionality is generally
sought between the person who pays and the value of his prop-
erty, or ability to pay. Thus, in the taxation of watches, which
are popular subjects for direct taxation, the proportionality be-
tween the owner who pays and the amount of property rated is
recognized and maintained, by imposing, as in the city of Phila-
delphia, a tax of one dollar on watches of gold and one of seventy-
five cents on watches of silver. In the assessment of indirect
taxes the maintenance of any proportionality between the tax-
j)ayer and his fortune is not regarded. The idea of a jiersonal
assessment, which is characteristic of direct taxes, furthermore

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 175

does not apply to indirect taxes, and the person upon wliom the
incidence of siicli taxation primarily falls may be regarded as ad-
vancing rather than paying the tax, which is ultimately paid by
a consumer, not as a tax, but as a part of the market price of a
commodity.

In other words, the general effect if not the avowed object of
an indirect tax is to place its burden in a roundabout way on the
person who ultimately bears it. Taxes on imports, or customs
dues ; most internal revenue taxes ; " octroi " taxes, or taxes
levied by municipalities on commodities — mainly articles of food
— brought within their limits from without ; stamps and fees for
registering or verifying documents, are typical examples of in-
direct taxation.

The objections to this form of taxation are so great as to
warrant their characterization as evils. In the first place, they
prevent the taxpayer from knowing what he pays, by mixing up
the price of an article with the tax, as has been already noticed.
Secondly, they enhance the cost of a commodity to the consumer
to a degree (often largely) in excess of the original burden of the
tax. Thus, if an importer of sugar, salt, wool, coal, or metals
pays taxes on these commodities when they enter the territory of
another country (as, for example, that of the United States), he
adds them to the first or invoice cost of the importation. On this
aggregate he calculates and adds interest and profits when he
sells to a wholesale dealer ; and this process is repeated by every
smaller dealer or retailer through whose hands the commodities
pass on their way to final consumption ; and as the number of
such intermediaries is greatest in the case of articles sold by
small retailers, the final burden of the tax is greatest on the very
poor, whose necessities compel them to buy in very small quan-
tities.* There is thus a very real and close connection between
indirect taxation and pauperism.

In dealing ^ith the relative influence of direct and indirect
taxation, Mr. Gladstone, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, took
the position in a parliamentary discussion in 1859 that " the dis-
tinction between them involves the question between rich and

* Some years since, at the instance of the writer, the late Charles L. Brace instituted
an examination to determine the difference in price to individual consumers of coal bought
in comparatively large and small quantities. He reported that as a rule, when coal could
be delivered at private residences in the city of New York (at the time when the investigation
was made) for four dollars and a half per ton, its cost to the people whose poverty com-
pelled its purchase by the " bucketful " was at least twelve dollars per ton. And yet when
subsequently a philanthropic capitalist proposed to remedy this grievance of the poor by
selling coal bought in small quantities at greatly reduced rates, his attempt did not meet
with the full approval of the people whom he desired to serve, by reason of an inference
by them that the project must in some way be a scheme for the promotion of private gain
rather than public good.

1/6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

poor. All classes pay indirect taxation : the middle and wealthy
pay direct ; but indirect taxes press much more seriously on the
laboring population."

An instructive comparison of the method and influence of
direct and indirect taxation may be instituted by supposing the
two systems to be put into practical operation under similar cir-
cumstances, for effecting a purpose which all are willing to admit
is most desirable or necessary. For example, a town meeting is
held to provide means for building a bridge. The direct and
honest way would be to assess and levy an equitable tax, ade-
quate to provide for the proposed expenditure, on the property of
the citizens of the town. An indirect way, as exemplified by the
tariff (omitting the complicated machinery for appraising mer-
chandise), would be to provide that the storekeepers of the town
should charge, on account of the proposed expenditure, an excess
over general prices to the extent of two cents a pound on sugar,
twenty-five cents more per yard on woolen cloth, five cents more
for each tin pail or cup, and, keeping an account, return the
results of the extra prices paid on the above-mentioned and other
like commodities by their consumers, to the town treasury.
Would it not be evident that under such a method of procedure
the wealth of the town would in a great degree escape taxation
for the construction of the bridge, and that its expense and bur-
den would fall mainly upon the poor ; inasmuch as the average
amount of consumption of sugar, cloth, and tin by the citizens of
the town, and the average per capita taxation contingent on the
same, would have no just or uniform relation to their ability to
pay for the same ? A man with ten thousand a year income will
not probably consume ten times as much sugar as one with one
thousand a year.

In the case of imported commodities charged with import
duties, not only is the price of the imported commodity enhanced
directly by the duty, but the price of a much larger quantity of
competing product of domestic origin is increased to approxi-
mately the same extent. Thus, in the case of iron and steel, the
average difference in the prices of these commodities in England
and the United States during the ten years from 1878 to 1887 in-
clusive, occasioned by the imposition of indirect customs taxes
by the latter country on such a comparatively small proportion
of its domestic consumption as was imported, increased the cost
of the total consumption of these products in the United States
during the period mentioned, to the extent of at least $550,000,000.
Such an increase represented an average of $55,000,000 per annum
in excess of the cost of a like quantity to consumers in Great
Britain during the same period ; an aggregate, according to the
census data of 1880, in excess of the entire capital invested in the

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 177

iron and steel industries of the country, including all its mines of
both coal and iron.

An incident also illustrative of the character of an indirect
tax was afforded some years ago when it was proposed in Wash-
ington to ex-Governor Warmoth, of Louisiana, as representa-
tive of the sugar-producing interest of that State, to substitute a
bounty on domestic sugars in place of the protection afforded by
the then tariff (taxation) on the importation of foreign sugars.
The suggestion was repelled with no little warmth, on the ground
that such a substitution would be most prejudicial to the domestic
sugar industry. " The people," he said, " know that a bounty is a
tax, and as soon as they found out its amount would insist upon
its repeal, and thus the sugar interest would lose both the protec-
tion of the tax on foreign competitive imports as well as the
bounty." How far subsequent events harmonized with this fore-
cast by Mr. Warmoth is worthy of brief notice in this connec-
tion. Congress in 1891 entirely repealed all the tariff (tax) on the
importation of raw sugars, and to compensate the domestic pro-
ducers of sugar for the abrogation of the protection which had
been previously given them, authorized the payment by the Fed-
eral Government of a bounty of from one and three fourths to
two cents per pound on their product. In a little more than four
years subsequently, when the effect of the bounty — aggregating
over $30,000,000 and representing nearly the whole cost of produc-
ing the sugar entitled to bounty — had been fully recognized by
the public. Congress repealed the act authorizing its payment
without restoring the former protective duties; and with such
a pronounced approval of its action on the part of the people of
the United States as to render it almost certain that no Congress
will hereafter authorize the direct payment of bounties by the
Federal Government for any purpose.*

The Relative Burden on Taxpayers of Direct and Indi-
rect Taxation. — Any discussion of this subject would be incom-

* The fundamental question involved in this sugar-bounty matter has never been passed
upon directly by the Supreme Court of the United States ; but the disbursement of the
money voted by Congress for the payment of the sugar bounties having been withheld by
the Comptroller of the United States Treasury on the ground that the appropriation was
unconstitutional, the case came up before the United States Court of Appeals of the Dis-
trict of Columbia, which sustained the opinion of the Treasury official, and was adverse to
the claim that " the general welfare " clause of the Constitution might be stretched to
encourage the production of a commodity by a bounty. " If to Congress be conceded," it
said, " the power to grant subsidies from the public revenues to all objects it may deem to
be for the general welfare, then it follows that this discretion renders superfluous all the
special delegations of power contained in the- Constitution, and opens a way for a flood of
socialistic legislation, the specious plea for all of which has ever been ' the general wel-
fare.' " For further notice of this celebrated case see Chapter VII, Popular Science
Monthly, p. 518.

178 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plete that failed to notice the estimates of the relative burden on
taxpayers of direct and indirect taxation by persons well quali-
fied by study, and administrative tax experience, to express an
opinion.

It is not a matter of dispute that the cost of collecting di-
rect taxes is, as a rule, much less than is the case with indirect
taxes, and that of the receipt contingent on the former the largest
proportion accrues to the Government. Thus in Prussia, where
the administration of taxation may be characterized generally as
despotic, the cost of raising revenue from direct taxes has been
reported at four per cent and of indirect at twelve per cent. Under
a direct tax system everybody knows how much he really pays,
and if he votes for war or any other expensive national luxury, he
does it with his eyes open to what it costs him. If all taxes were
direct, taxation would be much more apparent than at present,
and there would be a continuous popular demand, which at pres-
ent there is not, for economy in public expenditures.

In England it has been estimated that for eveTj fifty millions
of indirect taxes paid into the exchequer, seventy millions are
finally taken from consumers ; and M. Guyot,late French Minister
of Public Works, has recently shown by a series of statistical dia-
grams, that the octroi system of indirect taxation in France adds
on an average twenty per cent to the cost of goods to consumers
over and above the tax.* In New Zealand, where a compara-
tively small population and limited and definite sources of revenue
have afforded extraordinary facilities for making an analysis, an
expert has recently calculated that for every million and a half
collected through the customs the people of that colony have paid
not less than a million and two thirds.

In 1851 a committee of the Liverpool (England) Financial Re-
form Association published a statement, that a careful investiga-
tion instituted by it showed, that the difference between the
net amount paid into the exchequer from indirect taxes and the
gross amount taken through or in consequence of this system
from the taxpayers, was not less than an average of thirty-seven
per cent ; and added that the evidence that had led to this con-
clusion "can neither be controverted as matter of fact, nor
strengthened as a matter of argument."

In 1846 Hon. Robert J. Walker, then Secretary of the Treasury,
in accordance with instructions from the United States Senate to
report the extent to which the price of domestic products was
enhanced by the then existing duties imposed on the import of

* It seems incredible, he is reported as graphically saying, " that Frenchmen, usually
80 sensitive to ridicule, can quietly submit to be ' sweated ' and ' plucked ' like fowls, with-
out crying out against this antiquated method of indirect taxation only so long as they are
kept blind to the tax."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 179

competing commodities, submitted the following statement : " Tlie
revenue from imports last year exceeded twenty-seven millions of
dollars, of which, twenty-seven millions are paid to the Govern-
ment upon imports, and forty- four millions in enhanced prices of
similar domestic articles. This estimate is based upon the posi-
tion that the duty is added to the price of the import and also
of its domestic rival. If the import is enhanced in price by the
duty, so must be its domestic rival, for, being like articles, their
price must be the same in the same market." (Senate Document,
First Session, Twenty-ninth Congress, 1845-'46.) *

In a debate in the Constitutional Convention of the State of
New York in 1867-'68, the late Hon. George Opdyke, a member,
and one of the best economic and fiscal authorities of his time,
stated that his investigations had led him to the conclusion that
consumers of imported articles in the United States are " charged
with at least fifty per cent in addition to the duties actually
received by the Government."

As the result of a careful study of the subject, based on the
rates of duty imposed by the tariff law of March, 1883, Hon. Wil-
liam H. Springer (for a long time a prominent member of Con-
gress) was led to the conclusion that the average increase in the
prices of domestic commodities due to the duties imposed on the
import of competitive products had not been less than $556,000,000
for every year of the twenty years next precedent to 1883, "mak-
ing an aggregate of over eleven billions of dollars, not one dollar
of which went into the national Treasury." (See North American
Review, vol. cxxxvi. No. 319.)

The experience of the indirect taxation of commodities also
shows that they favor the concentration of business in a few
hands, or the creation of monopolies. Of this the experience of
the internal revenue system of the United States has furnished
some curious examples. Thus a tax was imposed in 1864 on
matches at the rate of one cent per package of one hundred or
less ; and, although comparatively insignificant, it yielded at one
time, by reason of the immense number of matches consumed, an
annual revenue of over $3,500,000, which sum the manufacturer
was obliged to advance by purchasing and affixing stamps to each
package as a prerequisite to selling. To manufacturers furnish-
ing their own design for the stamp, the Government allowed a
discount of ten per cent on stamps of an aggregate value in excess
of five hundred dollars purchased at any one time, and sixty days'
credit to such manufacturers as could offer satisfactory security

* This estimate was founded on an apparently careful investigation of the prices " of
sixteen leading domestic articles and the manufactures thereof, similar to those on which
the present duties (1845) are imposed."

i8o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

(i. e,, in tlie form of United States "bonds) for their payments.
Under such circumstances small manufacturers with a limited
capital were crushed, and the business of manufacturing concen-
trated in a very few firms, which raised the retail price of matches
to an extent considerably in excess of the amount of the tax. In
later years (1883), when it was proposed to repeal this tax, the sin-
gular spectacle was afforded of the larger manufacturers strenu-
ously exerting themselves to influence Congress to prevent the
repeal, and asking that they might continue to be taxed. Their
efforts were, however, unavailing. The tax was abolished, and
the retail price of matches immediately declined more than fifty
per centum — i. e., from fifteen cents to six cents for six boxes.

Many years ago the late Henry C. Carey characterized indirect
taxation in the following forcible and figurative language : " The
whole system of indirect taxation," he said, " is mere petty
larceny. It is an attempt to filch that which can not be openly
demanded. It is one of those ' inventions ' of man by which the
few are enabled to grow rich at the expense of the many, and is
therefore greatly favored by that class of men who prefer living
by the labor of others to living by their own. The man who
plunders a city is of the same species with the highway robber.
The one who imposes indirect taxes is of the same species with
the chevalier d'indusfrie. All belong to the genus of great men.
All are equally destitute of manly or generous feeling. The
plunderer of cities selects those which are weak and defenseless,
and the collector of indirect taxes selects the commodities used
by poor men who can not defend themselves; and where the
system most prevails, men are most weak and cheap and food
most dear.^' * (H. C. Carey, Past, Present, and Future, pp. 4G4,
465, Philadelphia, 1848.)

* " So long as it (indirect taxation) shall be permitted to exist, depopulation, and the
system of large revenues, raised by means of indirect taxation, to be squandered by those
who live by managing the affairs of others, must continue. So long as it exists, the planter
and farmer must continue to give a large portion of their small product in exchange for a
small quantity of clothing. So long as it exists, every attempt at the establishment of
freedom of trade must be a failure. With its correction, every obstacle to the establish-
ment of perfect freedom will disappear, and the tariff will pass out of existence. The
interest of every farmer and planter, and of every laborer and mechanic, is directly con-
cerned in the adoption of a measure that shall be calculated to promptly produce the effect
desired — i. e., repeal of indirect taxation — but it is not more his interest than his duty.
So long as the present system shall continue, trade of every kind must be subject to violent
fluctuations which enable the few to enrich themselves at the expense of the many, and
enable gambling speculators to live in palaces and ride in coaches by aid of indirect taxa-
tion levied upon the hard-working mechanic and honest trader, ruined by changes in the
value of their property. It is, therefore, the bounden duty of every man desirous to pro-
mote the great cause of morality, justice, and of truth, to unite his efforts with those of his
neighbor for the early accomplishment of this great object." — //. C. Caret/, Past, Present,
and Future, pp. Ji.71, 472, Philadelphia, I84S.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 181

And yet Mr. Carey's name, more than that of any other citizen
of the United States, is identified with a system of raising revenue
which is based exclusively on indirect taxation.

Mr. Henry George, in one of his essays, also thus forcibly
makes clear a leading characteristic of the indirect taxes levied
by the Federal Government: " Propose," he says, "to abolish, or
even reduce, one of these taxes, and Washington will be filled
with lobbyists begging and working for its extension. What
does this mean ? It means that these taxes yield revenue to
private parties as well as to the Government."

Carlyle was not far out of the way in characterizing legisla-
tors who advocate indirect taxation as having a purpose, " that
those who are not hungry should suppress those who are. The
pigs are to die — i. e., be subject to taxation — no conceivable help
for that ; but we, by God's blessing, will at least keep down their
squealing ! "

The question of the relative merits of the two systems of tax-
ation under consideration, has long been — since the days of
Jeremy Bentham — a subject of discussion, with a trend of popular
sentiment unmistakably in favor of indirect, or it should rather
be said in opposition to direct taxation.*

What satisfactory explanation can be given for a conclusion
so clearly adverse to public interest ? John Stuart Mill has
attempted it as follows : " The feeling is not grounded on the
merits of the case, and is of a puerile kind. An Englishman
dislikes not so much the payment as the act of payment. He
dislikes seeing the face of the tax collector and being subjected
to his peremptory demand. Perhaps, too, the money which he is
required to pay directly out of his pocket is the only taxation
which he is quite sure that he pays at all. That a tax of two
shillings per pound on tea, or of three shillings per bottle on
wine, raises the price of each pound of tea and bottle of wine
which he consumes by that and more than that amount can not

* " We find, as the result of our examination and contrast, that direct taxation is, in
every essential feature, vastly superior to our present method ; that the former accords
with justice, economy, and all the other requirements of a sound policy; while indirect taxa-
tion violates every principle on which legislation should be based. It must be owned, how-
ever, that notwithstanding the weighty objections to the one and the economy and perfect
fairness of the other, there are few of our citizens who are desirous of making the proposed
change. Direct taxation is a phrase that grates on the nerves of all. Men start at its
sound as though it was a portent of evil ; something which had impressed them with deadly
fear. They seem to regard it as deeply imbued with the spirit of tyranny, to say the least,
if not as the most forbidding impersonation of that monster. So unpopular is this method
of taxation, that an aspirant for public station or honors would as soon think of committing
high treason as propose or advocate it ; and if his ambition ^ ere bounded by the present,
he would be right, for he could not more effectually destroy his popularity." — Treatise on
Political Economy, by George Opdyke.

i82 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

indeed be denied. It is the fact, and is intended to be so, and he
himself is perfectly aware of it ; but it makes hardly any impres-
sion on his practical feelings and associations, serving to illustrate
the distinction between what is merely known to be true and
what is felt to be so."

Mr. Mill also expressed the opinion that men's minds are so
little guided by reason on this subject that if it was attempted to
raise all the imperial revenue of Great Britain by direct taxation,
the dissatisfaction on the part of the people at having to pay so
much would be extreme.

Speaking on this subject in the House of Lords in 18G0, the
Earl of Derby said that " by making the whole revenue of the
United Kingdom depend upon direct taxation the pressure would
be so odious that wars would be avoided, because no party would
incur the odium of carrying them on."

There can be no doubt that high direct taxes, making evident
to the most unobservant citizen the excess of burden imposed
upon him, have been the prime cause of the repudiation of public
debts in the United States, and the arrest or ruination of internal
improvements of great importance.

Mr. George Opdyke, in his Treatise of Political Economy,
advanced the idea that the phenomenon of preference for indirect
taxation in the United States might be accounted for in part by
the fact, that the unjust manner in which taxes were levied by
Great Britain on her American colonies engendered in the public
mind of their people " a deep-seated hatred of every form of taxa-
tion ; and the direct being its most visible or sensible form, it has
been mistaken for the worst — an impression that was strength-
ened when the most unpopular of our Presidents (the elder
Adams) recommended this policy, and when the opposing polit-
ical party, seizing the occasion to profit by public prejudice,
represented it as the worst form of tyranny." *

An economic phenomenon in connection with this subject goes
far to support the idea that political economy can not be an exact
science, inasmuch as it is largely or wholly based on human
action, concerning which nothing certain and invariable can be

* An acute economic student and observer writes as follows on this subject : " I have
been very much struck by the apathy of taxpayers to the increase of taxes in their most
direct form. Take Philadelphia, for example. Nearly every man o\vna a house there,
and yet there seems to have been no objection to the grossest municipal extravagance,
entailing heavier and heavier burdens every year. The city to-day levies about ten times
as much per head as it did thirty or forty years ago. The exact figures would be easy to
get, and would certainly point a moral adverse to your view that direct taxation is twin
brother to public economy. I am inchned to look for an explanation to the fact that real
estate values have steadily risen, so that after all the increase of taxation has been easily
met."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 183

predicated. Thus the argument and evidence are complete that
it is not a wise, humane, or perhaps a moral policy for a state
created or maintained for the purpose of promoting the interests
of its people to adopt a system of indirect taxation for the raising
of revenue ; and, furthermore, that it is contrary to human nature
for a people to desire or be willing to pay more for any service or
commodity than it is intrinsically worth ; or, what is the same
thing, perform more work in return for the same than is a fair
equivalent. And yet both governments and the people in all
countries and at all times (including the present) have shown a
preference for this system of taxation over any other.

One explanation of this curious inconsistency is as follows:
It is and ever has been the aim of all governments to avoid re-
sponsibility and occasion for popular criticism in respect to their
financial policy ; and a direct tax is an annual reminder to their
citizens or subjects of the burden of government, and prompts
them to hold the government to a strict accountability. Under a
free or popular form of government a general system of direct
taxation would practically call for an annual judgment of the
voters on the fiscal policy of an administration in power, and such
a tightening of the purse-strings as would reverse such policy in
case of its popular disapproval. But with a system of indirect
taxation, as a tariff on imports, a government can undertake the
most unnecessary and extravagant measures and obtain revenue
sufiicient to defray its contingent exiDenditures without general
popular disapproval.

Indeed, the best defense that can be offered for the continued
resort to indirect taxation is, that with the present large demands
on the part of all civilized states for revenue to meet increasing
fiscal obligations, mainly incurred for war expenditures, past and
present, and the unwillingness of the people to pay direct taxes,
it would be practically impossible to maintain the modern gov-
ernment without large contributions from people of limited re-
sources ; and that this purpose can only be accomplished by taxing
them indirectly. On the other hand, it may be replied that if
direct taxation was alone made the agency for obtaining revenue,
unnecessarily large expenditures through the resistance of the
masses would not be possible. In like manner, if the present in-
direct taxes levied on imports by the United States were to be
replaced by direct taxes, collected in money or in kind from pur-
chasers for final consumption, on whom the burden in both cases
finally rests — if every person buying silk or sugar were stopped
by a government tax gatherer at the door of the place of purchase
and thirty per cent of his purchases taken in kind in one case
and fifty per cent in the other in payment for taxes, it is safe to
say that such a system would not continue operative any longer

i84 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

than would suflfice for the people, througli legal methods, to com-
pel its modification. One explanation — i. e., of inconsistency —
on the part of the people who pay taxes is, that although the
benefits derived from the institution of government (which practi-
cally can not exist without taxation) are of the first importance,
they are not so very obvious, nor so striking, as to be readily
recognized and appreciated by the masses, who are accordingly
apt to look with complacence upon a direct (personal) demand
for a tax in the light of a compulsory payment, for which no
equivalent is returned. Indeed, this feeling is so strong that it
has become an almost popular maxim in all countries that " there
is nothing which a person so hates to do as to pay taxes," in case
they are direct. But by the ingenious plan of taxing articles on
which incomes are expended, rather than openly demanding a
portion of the income itself, the amount of taxation is concealed
from the mass of taxpayers, and its payment is made to appear
in some measure voluntary. The indirect tax being generally
advanced rather than paid, as has been already shown, in the first
instance by the importers, the ultimate purchasers for consump-
tion confound the tax with the natural price of the commodity.
No separate demand being made upon them for the tax, it es-
capes their consideration, and the article which they receive
seems the fair equivalent of the sacrifice made in acquiring it.
Indirect taxes have also the advantage of being paid by degrees,
in small portions, and at a time when the commodities are
wanted for consumption, or when it is most convenient for the
consumer to pay them." *

In the attempt, furthermore, of civilized rulers to maintain a
civilized government over an uncivilized people, there seems to be
no practical method of compelling such a people to help maintain
a proper and desirable government except through a resort to in-
direct taxation. Thus, in British India, a country of low civiliza-
tion, small accumulation of wealth, and under such climatic con-
ditions as necessitate the minimum of clothing, shelter, and food,
the only way by which the mass of the native population can be
compelled to contribute anything whatever, apart from a tax on
land in the form of rent, toward the support of a government
whose beneficent and civilizing influence has become a matter of
history, is by the taxation of salt, the consumption of which is
a necessity to all, and the production and distribution of which
can in a great measure be controlled.

In the British island and colony of Jamaica, populated mainly
by emancipated blacks and their descendants (557,132 out of a
total of 580,804 in 1881), who own little or no land, and consume

* J. R. McCulloch. Taxation and the Funding System.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 185

little of food other tlian what is produced almost spontaneously,
the problem of how to raise revenue by any form of taxation for
defraying the necessary expenditures of the Government has been
one of great embarrassnient. For the year 1884 these expenditures
averaged three dollars and forty cents per head of the entire
population, and of this amount an average of about fifty cents per
head could only be obtained from any internal taxation, and this
mainly through the indirect agency of licenses and stamps, and not
by any direct assessment. The balance of required revenue was ob-
tained from a special tax on some set manufacture, and from export
and import duties. A similar state of affairs in Mexico, heretofore
noticed somewhat in detail (see vol. xlix, No. 1, pages 45, 46), would
also seem to necessitate a resort to a system of indirect taxation.

It is interesting to note, in connection with this subject, that
while the States and municipal governments of the Federal Union
derive their revenues almost entirely from direct taxation, the
national revenues flow almost wholly from indirect taxes on com-
modities or personal property.

Attention is here also particularly directed to a fact that has
almost entirely escaped the notice of economic and fiscal authori-
ties and writers, and that is the remarkable change that has taken
place within the last fifty years in the British tax system, where-
by, through an extensive substitution of direct for indirect taxa-
tion, the burden of tax incidence has been shifted to a great extent
from the community at large to the propertied classes. Thus, in
1841-'42, indirect taxes yielded seventy-three per cent and direct
taxes twenty-seven per cent of the total imperial revenue, but in
1895-'96 indirect taxes yielded fifty-two per cent and direct taxes
forty-eight per cent. Is not the inference warranted, that in the
change in the incidence of British taxation above noted is to be
found at least a partial explanation of the remarkable and pro-
gressive increase, in comparatively recent years, in the consump-
tion of the various commodities that enter into the living of the
laboring classes of Great Britain, and is it not also singular that
the above facts and their possible inference do not as yet seem
to have attracted the attention of those most interested in social
economics ?

[7'o be continued.^

The Mazamas is the name of a society of mountain climbers organized
on the summit of Mount Hood in 1894 for the promotion of mountain ex-
ploration, the protection of forests and scenery, and the acquisition and
dissemination of knowledge concerning these things. The qualification
for membership is the ascent of a recognized snow-cap peak. The meeting
at which the society was organized was attended by 193 people, who as-
cended 11,225 feet for the purpose.

VOL. LI. — 14

186 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SUICIDE AND THE ENVIRONMENT.

By ROBERT N. REEVES.

IN the discussion of the increase of suicide in the United States,
a great deal has been said in the consideration of the act as a
crime, but little, comparatively, in reference to its causes or to
those preventives which society has power to enforce. Dr. D. R.
Dewey, who some years ago made a careful study of the ques-
tion as it related to the New England States, declared that since
the year 1860 suicide had increased in those States to the extent
of thirty-five per cent. This percentage, with but slight varia-
tions, will probably apply to all other States of the Union where
there is great industrial and commercial activity.

Suicide is so violent a reversal of that strongest instinct of
Nature — the instinct of self-preservation — that its causes and
preventives will always be the subject of deep and careful in-
vestigation. If it is on the increase, there must be causes for its
increase, and these causes being ascertained, it is then our duty to
devise means for its prevention. Insanity, heredity, financial re-
verses, and domestic complications may be direct incentives to
suicide, but back of them all is the real cause — the growth of a
nervous, disordered temperament in the American people. The
steady habits of our colonial ancestors no longer satisfy us, and,
as a consequence, those amusements, those ventures and schemes
which excite the mind and nervous system to the highest degree
are becoming more and more prominent. This, no doubt, is the
fundamental cause of all suicide. But it is only with the direct
incentive that society is capable of dealing, and these direct
causes are so numerous and varied that it is almost impossible
to classify them with any degree of accuracy. The individual
may be impelled to self-destruction by circumstances, by an
innate craving or instinct, by an uncontrollable impulse, by the
unhealthy reasoning of a disordered intellect, and by many
other influences. Suicides may therefore be divided into two
great classes — those in which reason is called upon to decide
between life and death, and those which are due to impulse or
insanity. In the former class the self- destroyer has, after reason-
ing upon his condition, come to the conclusion that death is the
most acceptable of impending evils. In this class may be placed
all those suicides due to sickness, financial embarrassment, un-
gratified ambition, the desire to escape justice, and causes of a
like nature.

Among the second class, or those self-murders which are the
direct or indirect outcome of insanity, may be included all cases
of persons who are impelled to destroy their lives when insane, of

SUICIDE AND THE ENVIRONMENT, 187

those who commit the act on some trivial cause or provocation or
from imitation, of those who while sane give way to sudden im-
pulse, and of those who, after a longer or shorter struggle, suc-
cumb at their own hands to a growing impulse. Civilization,
drunkenness, imitation, and hereditary propensities are account-
able for much of the self-destruction prevalent ; and so, to a
greater or less extent, are age, sex, the state of health, and daily
occupations of the victim.

Attempts have been made to prove that climate has an effect
upon the rate of suicide, but these attempts have never done more
than show that the temperate regions have the highest ratio.
This, of course, is not due to the climate, but to the more compli-
cated civilization, the greater physical and mental wear, and the
more extensive interference with natural laws met with in the
temperate regions. While it is true that climate exerts but little
influence over the rate of suicide, the seasons, on the contrary, do
strongly affect it. The popular belief is that suicide is more fre-
quent during the months of winter and spring. This, however, is
incorrect. Cold, wet, damp weather does not, as so many people
suppose, promote despondency and suicide. Strange as it may
seem, at that period of the year when the sufferings of the poor
and the sick are least, when employment is most readily obtained,
when the pleasure of living should be at its highest, suicide is
most frequent. May, June, and July, the months of song and sun-
shine in all countries, give the greatest number of self-murders.
For this there is no satisfactory explanation, unless we accept that
of the medical fraternity, which is that during the period of early
summer the organism is working at a higher tension, every func-
tion of mind and body is more active than at any other period
of the year, and consequently there is greater liability to sudden
physical and mental collapse.

The sad fact that suicide and education increase at an equal
rate is now generally admitted. Civilization does not free hu-
manity from grief, disgrace, and disappointment ; but wherever
civilization is highest the struggle for existence is fiercest, life is
most artificial, and there the most failures of the human race are
met with. There was a time in Roman history when suicide was
almost epidemic. It was when the great republic had reached its
acme of civilization — when poetry, art, and eloquence were tri-
umphant. It is probable that the proportion of suicides due to
mental derangements is increasing, but how rapidly can never be
exactly determined. Morselli says that about one third of all
suicides may be attributed to insanity.

Many people, however, anxious to stamp the act with reproba-
tion, declare that every suicide is insane. This is wrong. While
those who bring about their self-destruction may have acted

i88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wrongly or unwisely, we have not the right to declare them all
insane. It is true that many persons brood over their troubles
until everything loses proportion, their minds become unbalanced,
and in such a state they kill themselves. In such cases the act
may be correctly attributed to insanity. But what are we to say
of those who are to all appearance rational and yet are the victims
of sudden or growing impulses ? Such people are not voluntary
agents, and yet they can not be called insane. They are abnormal.
There is a fatal defect in their organization which is incompatible
with their survival under natural conditions. This defect may
give rise to sudden impulses or may cause a growing gradual
propensity which terminate in the final tragedy. Instantaneous
impulses are often brought about by the slightest circumstances.
Thus, gazing steadily at the wheels of an approaching train or
looking down from some great height may produce a delirium, a
distention of the blood-vessels of the brain, that instantly para-
lyzes the will of the victim.

In the consideration of those propensities which are of gradual
growth we are confronted with an extremely difficult problem.
We know that a great many of those who ultimately destroy
themselves fight for years against the impulse. How are we to
account in such cases for the persistence of the tendency toward
suicide, which seems to be a part of their nature, a part which
draws them instinctively to death just as the normal creature is
drawn to a desire to live ? For such cases heredity may be in a
great measure responsible. It is clear that hereditary influences
may reveal their force in the suicidal impulses as in many other
of the problems of life.

Whole families have been known to kill themselves. There
are a great many human beings who by nature are predisposed
to self-destruction, and only wait through life for a calamity
sufficiently great to prompt them to the act. They are victims of
their own faulty organizations.

Individual temperament may have a great deal to do with the
question of suicide. In America the population is largely com-
posed of the various European races, and although these are liv-
ing under the same conditions, each nationality retains its own
peculiar rate of suicide. Drink and crime are responsible for a
large proportion of the daily self-murders. Drunkenness, the
most active agent of degeneration known, is directly responsible
for those which occur during a period of nervous depression fol-
lowing a debauch. Among the criminal classes suicide is quite
common, but it is among the petty and not the grave offenders
that it occurs. Poverty and disease are also strong incentives to
self-destruction. Suicide is often regulated by the price of bread.
Life has few pleasures for the homeless and friendless. Death to

SUICIDE AND THE ENVIRONMENT. 189

them is often a welcome friend, a happy relief from walking the
streets hungry.

How many suicides are directly attributable to disease can not
be stated with exactness, but it may be said, nevertheless, that at
the present time, with our advanced skill in surgery and medicine,
suicide from disease is undoubtedly on the decrease. Of all sui-
cides there are none to be pitied more than those who kill them-
selves to escape the racking pain of an incurable illness. For
the victim of this sort there is no hope. Another class of sui-
cides, which closely resemble those caused by disease, includes
those due to infirmity. Often persons smitten with blindness, or
who have met with some terrible accident, in a fit of discourage-
ment kill themselves. Those blind or deformed from birth, how-
ever, seldom resort to suicide. Not knowing the pleasure of sight
or limb, they go through life contented.

The theory that we hold more strongly to life as we approach
its natural conclusion is contradicted by statistics, which every-
where show that the last half of life exhibits a great increase in
the rate of suicide. And here it may be pointed out that as to the
age of greatest frequency, suicide and crime are diametrically op-
posed. While suicide attains its highest rate after the prime of
life is past, crime, on the contrary, reaches its highest point be-
tween the ages of twenty and thirty years. We remark, further,
the alarming increase in late years of what is called child-suicide.
It is here that education strongly asserts itself as a true and ex-
citing factor, for it has been shown that in those countries where
what we are pleased to call education is rigorously forced upon
children, there child-suicide is most frequent. And for this sys-
tem of forced education there is no excuse. It is terrible in its
consequences. To increase the strain to just below the collapsing
point is not to educate. It only serves to fill the world with nerv-
ous, neurotic, morbid beings.

Another cause of the increase of child-suicide is the fear of
physical punishment. Instances of children destroying them-
selves because of punishment or the fear of threatened punish-
ment are constantly recorded in the public prints. Repeated
cruel punishments will often extinguish, even in the healthy
child, the love of life so characteristic of youth. What, then, are
we to expect of poor, devitalized children subjected to the cruel-
ties of barbaric parents ?

At the present day man is much more prone to suicide than
woman. This is true of man in regard to epilepsy, crime, and
other marked signs of degeneration. But it has been observed
that as woman approaches man in her mode of life she also
becomes more familiar with those abnormal conditions which
have previously been peculiar to man. The comparative immu-

190 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nity of woman from self-destruction in the past has depended
greatly upon the relatively less harassing part she has taken
in the struggle for life. To-day it is different. Now woman
occupies the fields of art, literature, finance, and even politics,
and, as she goes deeper into these vocations, she must expect to
suffer the consequences. Already it is noticeable that feminine
suicide is not now entirely due to the sentimental causes of dis-
appointed love, desertion, and jealousy, but to those trials of
a more material order such as have led men to the act of self-
destruction.

Imitation far exceeds any other of what are called "trivial
causes " of suicide, and asserts itself more in woman than in man.
It is much more common than is supposed. When self-destruc-
tion becomes epidemic, as it sometimes does, its prevalence very
largely depends upon imitation. It is said that many years ago
the wail of Thomas Hood over The One More Unfortunate
brought many a sentimental person to a watery grave in the
Thames. And in our own day the vivid representation of suicide
upon the stage under conditions appealing forcibly to the imagi-
nation has been known to be followed by the self-imposed death
of persons whose conditions resembled closely those of the suicide
in the drama.

The daily papers are largely responsible for this class of sui-
cides. It can scarcely be doubted that the general diffusion of
newspaper reports familiarizes too much the minds of the people
with suicide and crime. A single paragraph, a chance expression,
a cause given which resembles that of the circumstances sur-
rounding the reader, seizes the imagination, and in a morbid
excitement the desire to repeat the act is born. Newspaper re-
ports further promote suicide by inflaming the passion for the
notoriety which will be conferred upon the perpetrator through
their accounts of the act.

Has city life any influence over the proportion of suicides ?
This question must be answered in the affirmative. Where the
population is dense and the laws of health are neglected, where
dirt is common and vice flourishes, where the poor are concen-
trated, and where fortunes are made and lost in a day, will always
be found the highest rate of suicide. It is in the poorer districts
of our large cities that suicide is most frequent. In these dis-
tricts the deprivations of light and air, the poverty, the diseased
conditions about them, render the poor moody, morbid, and de-
spondent, and raise in their minds a feeling that life is not
desirable.

What can society do to prevent suicide among the poor ? The
obvious method would be to render their conditions more enjoy-
able by giving them ampler provisions for pleasure and recrea-

SUICIDE AND THE ENVIRONMENT. 191

tion, making tlieir surroundings more cleanly and agreeable, and
by faithfully executing thorough, and most effective sanitation.
Proper sanitary and hygienic measures have a wonderful effect
in renewing the vitality of our people. They are powerful agents
for improving morality.

There probably never will be a time when suicide will be
unknown in the world, but there are many preventives that are
of value to-day. Religion has in the past been a powerful pre-
ventive. But this fear dies out as religion becomes broader.
The fear of future punishment on account of self-imposed death
is not now the preventive of suicide that it was fifty or a hundred
years ago. The moral influences of family life naturally have a
tendency to decrease suicide. Thus it has been found that in a
million of husbands without children there were four hundred
and seventy suicides, and in the same number with children there
were but two hundred and five. Of a million wives without chil-
dren one hundred and fifty-seven committed suicide, as against
forty- five with children ; widowers without children, one thousand
and four ; with children, five hundred and twenty- six ; widows
without children, two hundred and thirty-eight ; with children,
but one hundred and four. These figures are eloquent pleaders
in favor of family ties as conservators of life. They prove dis-
tinctly that man must love in order to live.

Laws prescribing punishment for suicide are solecisms. If we
wish to prevent suicide we must change conditions for the better,
not for the worse. Suicide is beyond the reach of the criminal
code. Its prophylactic must be founded, not upon a statute, but
upon a wise and judicious management, medical, moral, and
philanthropical, of those unfortunate enough to attempt their
lives. It would be far better and more humane to sweep away
all legislation upon the subject so far as it relates to the indi-
vidual, and even take for granted that every person is insane who
attempts suicide, than to punish their attempts by imprison-
ment. If the victim is insane, efforts should be made to restore
reason ; and if failure is met with, a sanitarium should be pro-
vided. Those who are sane should be reasoned with, calmed, and
assisted.

Our hearts should be filled with tender compassion for those
whose lives have been such as to become valueless to them. We
should pity them. In the gentlest language possible we should
condone and not condemn their act ; for it is only with a spirit
of sympathy and not of vindictiveness that we can hope to study
with profit the causes and preventives of suicide.

192 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

[Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.)

By WILLIAM Z. EIPLEY, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ; LECTURER IN
ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

Y.— THE THREE EUROPEAN RACES.

IT may smack of heresy to assert, in face of the teachings of all
our text-books on geography and history, that there is no sin-
gle European or white race of men ; and yet that is the plain truth
of the matter. No continental group of human beings with greater
diversities or extremes of physical type exists. That fact accounts
in itself for much of our advance in culture. We have already
shown in the preceding papers that entire communities of the
tallest and shortest of men as well as the longest and broadest
headed ones are here to be found within the confines of Europe.
Even in respect of the color of the skin, hair, and eyes, responsi-
ble more than all else for the misnomer " white race," the greatest
variations occur. To be sure, the several types are to-day all more
or less blended together by the unifying influences of civilization ;
there are few sharp contrasts in Europe such as those between the
Eskimo and the American Indian or the Malay and the Papuan
in other parts of the world. We have been deceived by this in
the past. It is high time for us to correct our ideas on the subject,
especially in our school and college teaching.

Instead of a single European type there is indubitable evidence
of at least three distinct races, each possessed of a history of its
own, and each contributing something to the common product,
population, as we see it to-day. If this be established it does away
at one fell swoop with most of the current mouthings about Ar-
yans and pre- Aryans; and especially with such appellations as
the " Caucasian " or the " Indo-Germanic " race. Supposing for
present peace that it be allowed that the ancestors of some peoples
of Europe may once have been within sight of either the Caspian
Sea or the Himalayas, we have still left two thirds of our Euro-
pean races and population out of account. As yet it is too early
to discuss the events in the history of these races ; that will claim
our attention at a later time. The present task before us is to
establish first of all that three such racial types exist in Europe.

The skeptic is already prepared perhaps to admit that what we
have said about the several physical characteristics, such as the
shape of the head, stature, and the like, may all be true. But he
will continue to doubt that these offer evidence of distinct races
because ordinary observation may detect such gross inconsisten-

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY Ot EUROPE.

193

cies on every hand. Even in the most secluded hamlet of the
Alps, where population has remained undisturbed for thousands
of years, he will be able to point out blond-haired children whose
parents were dark, short sons of tall fathers, and the like. Our
portraits of four Corsicans chosen at random offer a case in point.
The people of this rocky island are as highly individualized as
any in Europe. They offer the purest examples of the southern
or Mediterranean type of Europeans ; and yet these four men are
quite different from one another. As the indexes show, the heads
are quite unlike in their proportions. The man on the right is
apparently broader-faced than either of the fellows next him,
although he is relatively much longer-headed than either. The
four vary considerably in the color of the hair and eyes. Nor in
stature is there any greater apparent similarity. Such diversities

72-3. 80-8. 80-1.

Cephalic Index of Corsican Peasants.

^5.

confront us on every hand even in this retired corner of Europe.
What may we not anticipate in less favored places, especially in
the large cities ?

Traits in themselves are all right, our objector will maintain :
but you must show that they are hereditary, persistent. More
than that, you must prove not alone the transmissibility of a single
trait by itself, you must also show that combinations of traits are
so handed down from father to son. Three stages in the develop-
ment of our proof miist be noted : first, the distribution of separate
traits; secondly, their association into types; and, lastly, the hered-
itary character of those types which alone justifies the term races.
We have already taken the first step : we are now entering upon
the second. It is highly important that we should keep these dis-
tinct. Even among professed anthropologists there is still much
confusion of thought upon the subject — so much so, in fact, that
some have, it seems to me without warrant, abandoned the task
in despair. Let us beware the example of the monkey in the
fable. Seeking to withdraw a huge handful of racial nuts from
the jar of fact, we may find the neck of scientific possibility all
too small. We may fail because we have grasped too much at
once. Let us examine.

VOL. LI. 15

194 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

There are two ways in which we may seek to assemble our
separate physical traits into types — that is, to combine character-
istics into living personalities. The one is purely anthropologi-
cal, the other inferential and geographical in its nature. The
first of these is simple. Answer is sought to a direct question.
In a given population, are the blondes more often tall than the bru-
nettes, or the reverse ? Is the greater proportion of the tall men
at the same time distinctly longer-headed or otherwise ? and the
like. If the answers to these questions be constant and consistent,
our work is accomplished. Unfortunately they are not always so,
hence our necessary recourse to the geographical proof : but they
at least indicate a slight trend, which we may follow up by the
other means.

Let it be boldly confessed at the outset that in the great num-
ber of cases no invariable association of traits in this way occurs.
This is especially true among the people of the central part of
Europe. The population of Switzerland, for example, is persist-
ently aberrant in this respect ; it is everything anthropologically
that it ought not to be. This should not surprise us. In the
first place, mountainous areas always contain the " ethnological
sweepings of the plains," as Canon Taylor puts it. Especially is
this true when the mountains lie in the very heart of the conti-
nent, at a focus of racial immigration. Moreover, the environ-
ment is competent to upset all probabilities, as we hope to have
shown. Suppose a brunette type from the south should come to
Andermatt and settle. If the altitude exerts an influence upon
the pigmentation, as we have sought to prove ; or if its concomi-
tant poverty in the ante-tourist era should depress the stature,
the racial equilibrium is as good as vanished in two or three
generations. It is therefore only where the environment is sim-
ple ; and especially on the outskirts of the continent, where migra-
tion and intermixture are more infrequent, that any constant and
normal association of traits may be anticipated. Take a single
example from many. We have always been taught to regard the
Teutonic peoples — the Goths, Lombards, and Saxons — as tawny-
haired, " large-limbed giants." History is filled with observations
to that effect from the earliest times. Our maps have already
led us to infer as much. Nevertheless, direct observations show
that tall stature and blondness are by no means constant com-
panions in the same person. In Scandinavia, Dr. Arbo asserts, I
think, that the tallest men are at the same time inclined to blond-
ness. In Italy, on the other edge of the continent, the same
combination is certainly prevalent.* Over in Russia, once more
on the outskirts of Europe, f the tall men are again found to be

* Livi. Anthropometria Militare, pp. 74, 76. f Globus, vol. xlii, 1892. p. 337.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 195

lighter complexioned as a rule. Dr. Beddoe asserts that in
Britain it is more often true than otherwise.* But if we turn to
central Europe we are completely foiled. The association of stat-
ure and blondness fails or is reversed in Bavaria, in Baden, along
the Adriatic, and in upper Austria and Salzburg, as well as among
the European recruits observed in America during our civil war.
In Wiirtemberg alone have we assurance that the relation holds
good.f It seems to me significant, however, that when the asso-
ciation fails, as in the highlands of Austria, where the environ-
ment is eliminated, as in lower Austria, the tall men again become
characteristically more blond than the short ones. In this last
case environment is to blame ; in others, racial intermixture, or it
may be merely chance variation, is the cause.

In order to avoid disappointment, let us bear in mind that in
no other part of the world save modern America is such an amal-
gamation of various peoples to be found as in Europe. History,
and archaeology long before history, show us a continual picture
of tribes appearing and disappearing, crossing and recrossing in
their migrations, assimilating, dividing, colonizing, conquering,
or being absorbed. It follows from this that, even if our environ-
ment were uniform, our pure types must be exceedingly rare.
Experience proves that the vast majority of the population of
this continent shows evidence of crossing. Thus, in Germany, of
six million school children observed on a given day, not one half
of them showed the simple combination of dark eyes and dark
hair or of light eyes and light hair. In the British Isles it appears
that over thirty per cent of persons measured have fair eyes and
dark hair — in other words, that the hair and the eyes do not ac-
company one another in type. Of four hundred and eighty-six
students of the Institute of Technology, sixty-five per cent of
them were of this mixed type. Even among the Jews, less than
forty per cent of them are characterized by the same tinge of hair
and eyes ; so that in general we can not expect that more than
one third of the population will be marked by this simple and
single combination. We need not be surprised, therefore, that
if we next seek to add a third characteristic, say the shape of the
head, to this combination of hair and eyes, we find the propor-
tion of pure types combining all three traits in a fixed measure
to be very small indeed. Imagine a fourth trait, stature, or a

* Stature and Bulk of Man in the British Isles, p. ITl. The opposite is perhaps true
in Scotland (Topinard, Elements, p. 491).

f Ranke. Phjsische Beitrage zur Anthropologic Bayerns, p. 195 stq. ; and Der Mensch,
ii, p. 124. Ammon, in Sammlung gemeinverstandlieher, wissenschaftliche Vortrage, Series
V, vol. ci, p. 14. Mittheilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, xxv, p. YO.
Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, Supplement, 1884, p. 26. Baxter, op cit., vol. i, pp. 23, 38.
Von Holder, Zusammenstellung der in Wiirtemberg vorkommenden Schiidelformen, p. 6.

196 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fifth, nose, to be added, and our proportion of pure type becomes
almost infinitesimal. We are thus reduced to the extremity in
which my friend Dr. Ammon, of Baden, found himself when I
wrote asking for photographs of a pure Alpine type from the
Black Forest. He has measured thousands of heads, and yet he
answered that he really had not been able to find a perfect speci-
men in all details, as all his round-headed men were either blond,
or tall, or narrow-nosed, or something else that they ought not
to be.

Confronted by this situation, the tyro is here tempted to turn
back in despair. There is no justification for it. It is not essen-
tial to our position that we should actually be able to isolate any
considerable number, nor even a single one, of our perfect racial
types in the life. It matters not to us that never more than a
small majority of any given population possesses even two phys-
ical characteristics in their proper association ; that relatively few
of these are able to add a third to the combination ; and that al-
most no individuals show a perfect union of all traits under one
head, so to speak, while contradictions and mixed types are every-
where present. Such a condition of affairs need not disturb us if
we understand ourselves aright. We should indeed be perplexed
were it otherwise.

Consider how complex the problem really is ! We say the peo-
ple of Scotland are on the average among the tallest in Europe.
True ! But that does not mean that a great number of medium
and undersized persons do not occur among them. We may illus-
trate the actual condition best by means of the accompanying dia-
gram.* Three curves are plotted therein for the stature of large
groups of men chosen at random from each of three typical parts
of Europe. The one at the right is for the tall Scotch, the middle
one for the medium-sized northern Italians, and the one at the left
for Sardinians, the people of this island being among the shortest
in all Europe. The height of each curve at any given point indi-
cates the percentage within each group of men which possessed the
stature marked at the base of that vertical line. Thus eight per
cent of the Ligurian men were five feet and five inches tall (1'65
metres), while nine per cent of the Sardinians were fully two
inches shorter (1*60 metres). In either case these several heights
were the most common, although in no instance is the proportion

* The curve for the Scotch, taken from the Report of the Antliropometrie Committee of
the British Association for the Advancenient of Science for 1883, has been arhitraiily cor-
rected to correspond to the metric system employed by Dr. Livi in the other curves. A
centimetre is roughly equal to 0'4 of an inch. It is assumed that in consequence only 0-4
as many individuals will fall within each centimetre class as in the groups of stature differ-
ing by inches. The ordinates in the Scotch diagram have therefore been reduced to U"4 of
their height in the original curve.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

197

considerable at a given stature. There is, however, for each coun-
try or group of men some point about which the physical trait
clusters. Thus the largest percentage of a given stature among
the Scotch occurs at about five feet nine and a half inches. Yet
a very large number of them, about five per cent, fall within the
group of five feet seven inches (1"70 metres)— that is to say, no taller

IS

-I

0 METERS I 55

INCHES, ^ „ 1 +
ABOVE S FT.

160

3 +

165
5 +

1.70
7 +

175
9*

1.80
11 +

1.85
li-r

METEK 190

than an equal percentage of the Ligurians — and even in Sardinia
there is an appreciable number of that stature. We must under-
stand therefore, when we say that the Scotch are a tall people or a
long-headed or blond one, that we mean thereby not that all the
people are peculiar in this respect even to a slight degree, but
merely that in this region there are more specimens of these spe-
cial types than elsewhere. Still it remains that the great mass of
the people are merely neutral. This is a more serious obstacle
to overcome than direct contradictions. They merely whet the
appetite. Our most difficult problem is to separate the typical
wheat from the noncommittal straw ; to isolate our racial types
from the general mean of the continent.

We have now seen how limited are the racial results attain-
able by the first of our two means of identification — that is, the
purely anthropological one. It has appeared that only in the
most simple conditions are the several traits constant and faith-
ful to one another in their association in the same persons. Nor
are we justified in asking for more. Our three racial types are
not radically distinct seeds which, once planted in the several parts
of Europe, have there taken root ; and, each preserving its pecul-
iarities intact, have spread from those centers outward until they

198 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

have suddenly run up against one another along a racial frontier.
Such was the old-fashioned view of races in the days before the
theory of evolution had remodeled our ways of thinking, when
human races were held to be distinct creations of a Divine will.
We conceive of it all quite differently. These types for us are all
necessarily offshoots from the same trunk. The problem is far
m.ore complex to us for this reason. It is doubly dynamic. Up-
building and demolition are taking place at the same time. By
our constitution of racial types we seek to simplify the matter — for
a moment to lose sight of all the destructive forces, and from ob-
scure tendencies to derive ideal results. "VVe picture an anthro-
pological goal which might have been attained had the life con-
ditions been less complicated.

Are we in this more presumptuous than other natural scien-
tists ? Is the geologist more certain of his deductions in his res-
toration of an ideal mountain chain from the denuded roots which
alone bear witness to the fact to-day ? In this case all the super-
structure has long since disappeared. The restoration is no less
scientific. It represents more clearly than aught else the rise and
disappearance, the results and future tendencies of great geologi-
cal movements. We take no more liberties with our racial types
than this geologist with his mountains ; nor do we mean more by
our restorations. The parallel is instructive. The geologist is
well aware that the uplifted folds as he depicts them never existed
in completeness at any given time. He knows full well that ero-
sion took place even as lateral pressure raised the contorted strata ;
that one may even have been the cause of the other. If indeed
denudation could have been postponed until all the elevation of
the strata had been accomplished, then the restoration of the
mountain chain would stand for a real but vanished thing. This,
the geologist is well aware, was not thus and so. In precisely the
same sense do we conceive of our races. Far be it from us to
assume that these three races of ours ever in the history of man-
kind existed in absolute purity or isolation from one another. As
soon might the branch grow separate and apart from the parent
oak. No sooner have environmental influences, peculiar habits of
life, and artificial selection commenced to generate distinct vari-
eties of men from the common clay ; no sooner has heredity set
itself to perpetuating these ; than chance variation, migration, in-
termixture, and changing environments, with a host of minor dis-
persive factors, begin to efface this constructive work. Racial up-
building and demolition, as we have said, have ever proceeded
side by side. Never is the perfect type in view, while yet it is
always possible. " Race," says Topinard, " in the present state of
things is an abstract conception, a notion of continuity in discon-
tinuity, of unity in diversity. It is the rehabilitation of a real

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 199

but directly unattainable thing." In tbis sense alone do we main-
tain that there are three ideal racial types in Europe to be dis-
tinguished from one another. They have often unfortunately
dissolved in the common population ; each trait has gone its own
way ; so that at the present time rarely, if indeed ever, do we dis-
cover a single individual corresponding to our racial type in every
detail. It exists for us nevertheless.

Thus convinced that the facts do not warrant us in expecting
too much of our anthropological means of isolating racial types,
we have recourse to a second or inferential mode of study. In
this we work by geographical areas rather than by personalities.
We discover, for example, that the north of Europe constitutes a
veritable center of dispersion of long-headedness. Quite independ-
ently we discover that the same region contains more blond traits
than any other part of Europe ; and that a high average stature
there prevails. The inference is at once natural that these three
characteristics combine to mark the prevalent type of the popula-
tion. If one journeyed through it, one might at first expect to
find the majority of the people to be long-headed and tall blondes;
that the tallest individuals would be the most blond, the longest-
headed most tall, and so on. This is, as we have already shown,
too good and simple to be true, or even to be expected. Racial
combinations of traits indeed disappear in a given population, as
sugar dissolves, or rather as certain chemical salts are resolved
into their constituent elements when immersed in water. From
the proportions of each element discovered in the fluid, quite free
from association, we are often able to show that they once were
united in the same compound. In the same manner, we, finding
these traits floating about loose, so to speak, in the same popula-
tion, proceed to reconstitute types from them. We know that the
people approach this type more and more as we near the specific
center of its culmination. The traits may refuse to go otherwise
than two by two, like the animals in the ark, although they may
change partners quite frequently ; and they may still manifest dis-
tinct aflinities one for another nevertheless.

The apparent inference is not always the just one, although it
tends to be. Suppose, for example, that one observer should
prove that sixty per cent of ten thousand natives of Holland were
blondes : and another, studying the same ten thousand individuals,
should prove that a like proportion were very tall — would this of
necessity mean that the Hollanders were mainly tall blondes ?
Not at all ! It might still be that the two groups of traits merely
overlapped at their edges. In other words, the great majority of
the blondes might still be constituted from the shorter half of the
population. Only twenty per cent need necessarily be tall and
blond at once, even in this simple case where both observers stud-

200 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ied the same men from different points of view. How much more
confusing if each chanced to hit upon an entirely different set of
ten thousand men! This, be it noted, is generally the case in
practice. Nevertheless, although there is always danger in such
inferences, we are fortunate in possessing so many parallel inves-
tigations that they check one another, and the tendencies all
point in one direction.

These tendencies we may discover by means of curves drawn
as we have indicated above in our diagram. By them we may
analyze each group in detail. Every turn of the lines has a mean-
ing. Thus, the most noticeable feature of the Sardinian curve of
statures is its narrowness and height ; the Ligurian one is broader
at the base, with sloping sides ; and the Scotch one looks as if
pressure had been applied at the apex to flatten it out still
farther. The interpretation is clear. In Sardinia we have a
relatively unmixed population. Nearly all of the people are
characterized by statures between five feet one inch (1'56 metres)
and five feet five inches (1"65 metres). They are homogeneous, in
other words : and they are homogeneous at the lower limit of
human variation in stature. The curve is steepest on the left side.
This means that the stature has been depressed to a point where
neither misery nor chance variation can stunt still further ; so
that suddenly from seven per cent of the men of a height of five
feet one and a half inches [more frequent than any given stature
in Scotland] we drop to two per cent at a half inch shorter stat-
ure. A moment's consideration will show that the narrower the
pyramid, the higher it must be. One hundred per cent of the
people must be accounted for somewhere. If they do not scatter
sidewise, their aggregation near the center will elevate the apex,
or the shoulders of the curve at least. So that a sharp pyra-
mid points to a homogeneous people. If they were all precisely
alike, a single vertical line one hundred per cent high would
result. On the other hand, a flattened curve indicates the intro-
duction of some disturbing factor, be it an immigrant race, en-
vironment or what not. In this case the purity of the Sardin-
ians is readily explicable. They have lived in the greatest isola-
tion, set apart in the Mediterranean. A curve drawn for the Irish
shows the same phenomenon. Islands demographically tend in
the main to one or the other of the extremes. If unattractive,
they offer examples of the purest isolation, as in Corsica and Sar-
dinia. If inviting or on the cross-paths of navigation, like Sicily,
their people speedily degenerate into mixed types. For if incen-
tive to immigration be offered, they are approachable alike from
all sides. The Scotch, as we have observed, are more or less
mixed in type, and unequally subjected to the influences of envi-
ronment ; so that their curve shows evidence of heterogeneity.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 201

Scotland combines tlie isolation of the highlands with a great
extent of seacoast. The result has been that in including the
population of both areas in a single curve we find evidence of
impurity in the great variability of stature.

By the second geographical method which we have described,
we constitute our racial types as the archseologist, from a mass of
broken fragments of pottery, restores the designs upon his shat-
tered and incomplete vases. Upon a bit of clay he discovers
tracings of a portion of a conventionalized human figure. A full
third — let us say the head of Thoth or some other Egyptian deity
— is missing. The figure is incomplete to this extent. Near by is
found upon another fragment a representation of the head and
half the body of another figure. In this case it is the legs alone
which lack. This originally formed no part of the same vase
with the first bit. It is perhaps of entirely different size and
color. Nevertheless, finding that the portions of the design upon
the two fragments bear marks of identity in motive or design,
data for the complete restoration of the figure of the god are at
hand. It matters not that from the fragments in his possession
the archseologist can reconstruct no single perfect form. The
pieces of clay will in no wise fit together. The designs, notwith-
standing, so complement one another that his mind is set at rest.
The afi&nity of the two portions is almost as clearly defined as the
disposition of certain chemical elements to combine in fixed pro-
portions; for primitive religion or ornament is not tolerant of
variation.

We copy the procedure of the archseologist precisely. In one
population color of hair and stature gravitate toward certain defi-
nite combinations. Not far away, perhaps in another thousand
men drawn from the same locality, the same stature is found to
manifest an affinity for certain types of head form. It may require
scores of observations to detect the tendency, so slight has it be-
come. In still another thousand men perhaps a third combina-
tion is revealed. These all, however, overlap at the edges. Granted
that an assumption is necessary. It is allowed to the archseolo-
gist. Our conclusions are more certain than his, even as the laws
of physical combination are more immutable than those of mental
association. For it was merely mental conservatism which kept
the primitive designer of the vase from varying his patterns.
Here we have unchanging physical facts upon which to rely. Of
course, we should be glad to find all our physical traits definitely
associated in completeness in the same thousand recruits, were
it not denied to us. The archseologist would likewise rejoice
at the discovery of a single perfect design upon a single vase.
Both of us lack entities; we must be contented with afiinities
instead.

202

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A final step in our constitution of races — that is, of hereditary
types — is to prove that they are persistent ; that like father like
son corresponds to the facts in the case. Of direct testimony
we possess nothing. No single investigator, save perhaps Gal-
ton, has to my knowledge followed down a line from one genera-
tion to another. Anthropologists are human themselves. The
life of man is all too short to cover such tasks. But of indirect
proof we have plenty. We know, for example, that in the north
of Europe, as far back as archaeology can carry us, men of a
type of head form identical with the living population to-day
were in a majority. Likewise the lake dwellers in Switzerland
in the stone age, little more civilized than the natives of Africa,
were true ancestors of the present Alpine race. Prehistoric ar-
chaeology thus comes to our aid with cumulative proof that at all
events traits are hereditary in populations, even if not always so
in men. In truth, we here enter upon a larger field of investiga-
tion than the anthropological one. The whole topic of heredity
opens up before us, too immense to discuss in this place. Suffice
it to say that in the main no question is entertained upon the sub-
ject, save in the special cases of artificially acquired characteristics
and the like.

After this tedious summary of methods, let us turn to results.
The table on this page shows the combinations of traits into
racial types which seem best to accord with the facts. It speaks
for itself.

European Racial Types.

Head.

Face.

Hair.

Eyes.

Stature.

Nose.

Synonyms.

Used by.

1

Teutonic.

Long.

Long.

Very
light.

Blue.

Tall.

Narrow ;
aquiline.

Reihengriiber.
Germanic.
Kymrif.
Aryan. (V)

Germans
French.

2

Alpine
(Celtic).

Round.

Broad.

Light
chest-
nut.

Hazel-
gray.

Medium.

Variable ;
rather
broad ;

Homo Europasus.
Celto- Slavic.
Dissentis.
Arverniau.

liapouge.

French.

Germans

Beddoe.

3

Mediter-
ranean.

Long.

Long

Dark
brown
or bl'k.

Dark.

Short. (V)

heavy.

Rather
broad.

Ligurian.
Homo Alitinus.
Il)eiiiiii.
Ligunan.

Taylor.

Lapoiige

English.

Livi.

The first of our races is perhaps the most characteristic. It
is entirely restricted to northwestern Europe, with a center of
dispersion in Scandinavia. Our portraits, chosen as typical by
Dr. Arbo of the Norwegian army, show certain of the physical
peculiarities, especially the great length of the head, the long
oval face, and the straight aquiline nose. The face is rather
smooth in outline, the cheek bones not being prominent. The
narrow nose seems to be a very constant trait, as much so as the

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

203

tendency to tall stature. Dr. Collignon has even demonstrated it
as a law in France that the relation between the two holds good.
The Teutonic race is also strongly
inclined to blondness. The eyes are
blue or light gray, and the hair flax-
en, tawny, reddish, or sandy. The
whole combination accords exactly
with the descriptions handed down
to us by the ancients. Such were the
Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Van-
dals, Lombards, together with the
Danes, Norsemen, Saxons, and their
fellows of another place and time.
History is thus strictly corroborated
by natural science.

Our second racial type is most per-
sistently characterized by the shape
of the head. This is short and at the
same time broad. The roundness is
accompanied by a broad face, the chin full, and the nose rather
heavy. These traits are all shown more or less clearly in our por-
traits, one from south central France, two from Bavaria, and one
from northern Italy. The side views show the shortness of the

Teutonic Type. Norway, Vaage.
Cephalic Index, 75.

Teutonic Types. Norway, Hedaleii.
Cephalic Index, 76.

head as contrasted with the Teutonic type above described. At
the same time the cranium is high, the forehead straight, some-
times almost overhanging. It seems as if pressure had been ap-
plied front and back, the skull having yielded in an upward direc-
tion. This type is of medium height, decidedly inclined toward
stockiness in build. Its whole aspect is rather of solidity than of

204

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

agility. The color of tlie liair and eyes is rather neutral, at all
events intermediate between the Teutonic and Mediterranean

Alpine Type. Auvergne, Central France.

races. There is a tendency toward grayish eyes, while the hair
is more often brown. In these respects, however, there is great
variability, and the transition to the north and south is very
gradual. Climate or other environmental influence has in these

Alpine Types. Bavaria.

traits eliminated all sharp division lines. These peculiarities aj)-

pear only when the type is found in extreme isolation and purity.

What name shall we apply to this second race, characterized

by its great breadth of head primarily, and which has its main

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

205

center of dissemination in the Alps. For the first three of our
types the task of christening was simple enough. To name this
second one would have been comparatively easy as well, if Csesar
had not introduced his Commentaries by the well-known passage :
"All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgse
inhabit ; the Aquitani, another ; those who in their own language
are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third." The so-called Celtic
question is all involved in this simple statement. Let us reduce it
to its lowest terms. The philologers properly insist upon calling
all those who speak the Celtic language Celts. With less reason
the archaeologists follow them and insist upon assigning the
name Celt to all those who pos-
sessed the Celtic culture ; while
the physical anthropologists,
finding the Celtic language
spoken by peoples of divers
physical types, with equal pro-
priety hold that the term Celt
should be applied to that phys-
ical group or type of men which
includes the greatest number of
those who use the Celtic lan-
guage. This manifestly oper-
ated to the exclusion of those
who spoke Celtic but who dif-
fered from the linguistic major-
ity in physical characteristics.
The practical result of all this
was that anthropologists called
the tall and blond people of
northern France and Belgium,

Gauls or Kymri ; and the broad heads of middle and southwest-
ern France Celts : while Cccsar, as we saw, insisted that the Celt
and the Gaul were identical. The anthropologists affirmed that
the Celtic language had slipped off the tongues of some, and that
others had adopted it at second hand. Their explanation held
that the blond Belgse had come into France from the north,
bringing the Celtic speech, which those already there speedily
adopted ; but that they remained as distinct in blood as before.
These anthropologists, therefore, insisted that the Belgae deserved
a distinctive name: and they called them Gauls, since they ruled
in Gaul, in distinction from the Celts, who, being the earlier in-
habitants, constituted the majority of the Celtic-speaking people.
This was a cross- division with the philologists, who called the
Belgse Celts, because they brought the language, reserving the
name Gaul, as they said, for the natives of that country; but

Alpine Type. Piednioiit, Northern Italy.
Cephalic Index, 91 •2.

zo6

POPULAR SCIEJ^CE MONTHLY.

both philologists and anthropologists alike differed from the his-
torians, who held to Cfesar's view that the Gauls and the Celts
were all one.

Still greater confusion arises if we attempt to discuss the
origin of the people of the British Isles, where this Celtic question
enters again. Thus the people of Ireland and Wales, of Cornwall
and the Scottish Highlands, together with the Bretons in France,
would all be Celtic for the linguist because they all spoke the
Celtic language. For the anthropologist, as we shall see, the

7-

Alpine (Slavic) Types. Middle Eussia.

Breton is as far from the Welsh as in some respects tlie Welsh
are from the Scotch.

It happened that the father of modern anthropology, the illus-
trious Paul Broca, having pre-empted the term Celt for the people
including most of the broad-headed type and its main crosses, all
the anthropologists have followed him. The linguists have re-
fused to yield their side, and still use the name in their own sense.
We shall not seek to solve the question. If we have shown what
confusion may result from the use of this term, we are content.
Our own view is that the linguists and the archaeologists are per-
haps better entitled to the name Celt; but that they should be
utterly denied the use of the word race. Be this as it may, we
shall invent a new term, or rather adopt one from M. de Lapouge,

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

207

Mixed Alpine (Asiatic) Type.
Hungary.

and call the broad- headed type Alpine. It centers in that region.
It everywhere follows the elevated portions of western Europe.
It is, therefore, pre-eminently a
mountain type, whether in France,
Spain, Italy, Germany, or Albania.
By the use of it we shall carefully
distinguish between language, cul-
ture, and physical type. Thus the
Celtic language and the Aryan cul-
ture may spread over the Alpine
race, or vice versa. As, in fact, each
may migrate in independence of the
others ; so in our terminology we
may distinctly follow them apart
from one another. No confusion of
terms can result. It is purely a geo-
graphical name, like the one we have
applied to the third group.

One more matter of racial names
remains for consideration. What
shall we do with the term Slavic, which like Celtic is purely a
linguistic or ethnological term ? Curiously enough, from Poland

to Macedonia, all over eastern Eu-
rope in fact, where the Slavic lan-
guage is in common use, the people
are of the same physical type as the
Alpine race. The distinctive fea-
tures, especially the broad-headed-
ness, are somewhat attenuated, to
be sure ; but anthropologists are
agreed that the two groups are iden-
tical. Our Russian portraits show
the tendency in this direction. In
eastern Europe, however, this type
ceases to be identified with the moun-
tainous areas. Its zone of extension
is widespread over the plains. Shall
we continue to call these people Slavs
from their language, or assign them
to the Alpine group despite this cir-
cumstance ? Or shall we, as in re-
cent vogue, apply the term Slavo-
Celtic to the whole combination ?
The question is still further confused because the Slavic language
linguistically is akin to the Teutonic, although the two physical
types are as wide apart as the poles. If we reject our term Celt,

Mediterranean Type. Corsican.
Cephalic Index, 72 '3 .

208

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Berber, Tunis.
Cephalic Index, 72.

rowness of tlie forehead.

the other, being equally a linguistic term, should go as well.
The only alternative seems to be to apply the term Homo

Alpinus to this broad-headed group
wherever it occurs, whether in moun-
tains or plains, in the west or in the east.
The name is justified by the circum-
stance that its main body occurs in the
Alps, and that its purest types culminate
there as well.

We now come to the last of our three
races, which is generally known as the
Mediterranean or Iberian type. It pre-
vails everywhere south of the Pyrenees,
along the southern coast of France, and
in southern Italy, including Sicily and
Sardinia. Once more we return to a type
of head form almost identical with the
Teutonic. Our portraits of Corsicans on
a preceding page, with the enlargement
of one of the four in the group, show the
exaggerated length of face and the nar-
The cephalic index drops from eighty-
seven and above in the Alps to about seventy-five all along the
line. This is the primary fact to be noted. Coincidently, the
color of hair and eyes becomes very dark, almost black. The
figure is less amply proportioned,
the people become light and rather
agile. It is certain that the stature
at the same time falls to an exceed-
ingly low level : fully nine inches —
more than a head — below the aver-
ages for Teutonic Europe. Authori-
ties are, however, divided as to the
significance of this. It has been
shown that while the average height
is low, a considerable number, and
those of the purest type in other re-
spects, are of goodly stature. It
may indeed be that, as we have
already suggested, too protracted
civilization is responsible for this
diminutiveness. The people of
northern Africa (illustrated by our
portrait), pure Mediterranean Eu-
ropeans, are of medium size in fact. Personally I incline to the
view that culture is to blame, and that the type is normally of

Mediterranean Type. Montiicllier.
C'ephali'" lude.x, 07.

GLOBE LIGHTNING. 209

medium size, although it would be impossible of proof at this
writing.

It would be interesting at this time to follow out the intel-
lectual differences between these three races which we have
described. The future social complexion of Europe is largely
dependent upon them. The problem is too complicated to treat
briefly. In a later paper, devoted expressly to modern social
problems, we may return to it again. Our physical analysis is
now complete. The next task is to trace the origin of nationalities
from the combination of these elements. We shall begin with
the French ; for this single nation is, alone in all Europe, com-
pounded of all three racial elements ; nay, more, we shall be able
to point to a still older population than any of these, living to-day
in France, with an unbroken ancestry reaching back to the pre-
historic stone age.

GLOBE LIGHTNING.

By M. HAGENAU.

OCCASIONALLY in thunderstorms peculiar electrical appa-
ritions occur, similar in destructiveness to ordinary light-
ning, but by no means so transient. Their duration is measured,
not by thousandths of a second, but by whole seconds or even
minutes. They move so slowly that their progress can be accu-
rately followed by the eye. As they generally appear in the
form of glowing spheres, they are known as fireballs or globe
lightning. The first account of this peculiar form of lightning
was given by the celebrated English physicist, Robert Boyle, who
described a ball which suddenly appeared on July 34, 1681, on
the ship Albemarle. The sailors attacked it in vain with blows
and water, but it burned itself out, leaving behind a strong smell
of gunpowder.

In Boyle's time ordinary lightning flashes were thought to
consist of inflamed gas, so that an occurrence like the above did
not appear particularly striking, but later investigators were
unable to make the fireball fit their knowledge and theory of
electricity, and declared it to be a myth. A layman stated that
such a ball appeared in his room during a storm and slowly made
its way to the chimney. The scientific people asserted that it was
an illusion of the senses, and that there were no such things as
fireballs. But the balls continued to appear, in some instances
being simultaneously seen by a number of trustworthy witnesses,
so that their existence had to be admitted.

Let us notice a few well-attested recent cases :

Dr. A. Wartmann has given the Physical Society of Geneva

TOL. LI. 16

2 10 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

an account of a ball which he observed during a very violent
storm on December 20, 1888, at half past six in the evening, while
he was driving from Versoix to Genthod. As he passed the
entrance gate of a large mansion he became aware of a very
bright and persistent illumination, quite different from the inter-
mittent light of the incessant lightning Hashes.

Thinking it was a fire, he turned and saw, about one thousand
feet away, a ball of fire some eighteen inches in diameter. It
floated about half its diameter above the ground, and moved par-
allel with his own course with the swiftness of a hawk, leaving
no trace behind it.

At a point about twenty-five yards ahead of him it burst with
an appalling crash. " It seemed to me," the report concludes, " to
throw out lines of fire. We felt a violent shock, and were blinded
for several seconds. As soon as I could distinguish anything, I
saw that the horses were standing at right angles to the carriage,
with their heads toward the hedge. Their ears drooped, and they
exhibited every symptom of intense fright." At the same time, a
little less than a mile away, a farmer found himself surrounded
by a violet light. He heard a loud explosion, and was thrown
bodily ten feet, alighting on a piece of soft turf, more frightened
than hurt.

On July 1, 1891, a fireball entered a carpenter's cabin near
Schlieben. The carpenter was sitting on the edge of a bed on
which a child was sleeping. A ball of fire sprang suddenly and
with a loud noise from the fireplace to the bed, which was imme-
diately shattered. Then the ball rolled very slowly to the oppo-
site wall of the room, through which, or the floor, it apparently
vanished with another fearful crash without setting fire to any-
thing. The man's wife and another child were sleeping in a sec-
ond bed and the baby in a cradle, all in the same room, but none
of the five persons was wounded or even stunned. All complained
of headache and deafness on account of the heavy sulphurous
vapor which filled the room, but they soon recovered. Some frac-
tures were discovered about the stove and chimney.

Less fortunate were the children in a schoolhouse in Bouin,
France, who were visited by a fireball while at their afternoon
prayers. It was preceded by a shower of lime, wood, and stones.
The ball, which was small, rolled along under the benches, killing
three of the children, and went out through a window pane, in
which it merely made a round hole, whereas all the other panes
were shattered.

On January 2, 1890, a ball appeared in an electro-technical
establishment in Pontevedra, Spain. It was seen to strike the line
wires about nine o'clock in the evening under a clear sky, but no
one could say just how it struck or from what direction it came.

GLOBE LIGHTNING. 211

The ball, which was about as big as an orange, moved slowly
along the wires to the central station and struck the dynamo,
which was running. Before the eyes of the terrified workmen it
sprang twice from the dynamo to the wires and back. Then it
fell from the machine and burst into a shower of sparks without
doing any damage. The electric lamps flickered during its visit,
and the thick copper plates of the switch were melted and welded
in places.

Of especial interest is the appearance of a large number of
balls during a tornado on August 18, 1890, in the French De'parte-
menf Ills et Vilaine. A farmer of Vizy, who was caught by the
storm in the field, saw a fireball fall with great velocity. Panic-
stricken, he threw himself on the ground. The luminous ball
struck the earth, burst with a loud noise, and covered him with
dust.

Dwellers in Vers I'Eau and Samiset saw balls as large as a
man's head and of a vivid red, which moved slowly toward some
barns, where they vanished after setting the haystacks on fire.
In Saint- Claude a great number of balls entered dwellings by the
chimneys. They moved slowly to and fro and escaped through
windows, doors, and walls, after doing more or less damage.
The air in the houses was impregnated with the smell of sulphur
or gunpowder.

The region of the Hochgebirge is especially favorable for the
observation of globe lightning.

Alluard, the director of the observatory on the Puy-de-Dome,
reports that frequently during thunderstorms showers of small
balls of fire are seen falling. On the peak Saentis, in the same
region, where a meteorological station was founded at an ele-
vation of twenty-five hundred and four metres in 1882, some
very remarkable phenomena were observed by a minister named
Studer on June 28, 1885. He and a companion were caught out in
the storm after nightfall. All at once they saw on the ridge ex-
tending from Saentis to the neighboring peak of Altmann flaring
flames and small yellow balls of light. The latter ran along as if
on a wire, approached each other, then exploded and fell down.
A single larger ball of fire hovered over the same ridge, moving
to and fro in a flat parabola with about the speed of a ball thrown
by the hand, except that its velocity was uniform. It was visible
for several minutes. Then there was a frightful explosion, which
seemed to shake the whole mountain to its foundations, and a dis-
play of natural fireworks, " of a magnificence never before wit-
nessed," amazed the spectators.

The telephone wire from the station to the valley glowed with
great brilliancy as far as it could be seen, and waving sheets of
fire extended from it to the ground. Suddenly the whole fiery

212 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mass fell to the earth, the wire melted, and the spectators were
left in total darkness.

The nature of this peculiar form of lightning is not yet under-
stood, although Plants and F. von Lepel have succeeded in pro-
ducing in the laboratory, with the aid of powerful electrical
machines, small balls of fire which, like those of Nature, moved to
and fro for a while and then vanished.

These experiments have suggested the theory that the fireballs
consist of heated air and water vapor. But this theory is insuffi-
cient, and gives no satisfactory explanation of the various phe-
nomena which have been observed. The subject still needs in-
vestigation. It is especially desirable to increase our store of
working material — that is, of observations. Whoever, therefore,
is fortunate enough to have witnessed a display of globe light-
ning should communicate his observations to one of the meteoro-
logical journals. — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly
from Die Gartenlaube, by Laivrence B. Fletcher.

WORLD'S GEOLOGISTS AT ST. PETERSBURG.

By WILLI A.M H. BALLOU.

THE Fifth International Geological Congress at Washington
received an invitation from the Russian government to hold
its seventh session in St. Petersburg. The Sixth Congress at
Ziirich accepted the invitation. By unanimous vote, A. Karpin-
sky. Director of the Committee of Geologists of Russia, was
elected president of the Bureau of Organization ; A. Inostranzew,
vice-president; Th. Tschernyschew and N. Androussow, secre-
taries.

His Majesty the Czar will open the Seventh International
Congress at St. Petersburg on August 17th, and welcome the
visiting delegates to his empire. The Grand Duke Constantino-
vitch will act as Honorary President. Prof. Karpinsky will
doubtless be made President of the congress. Circulars of in-
formation in French have been received by geologists, outlining
the occupations of the delegates, so far as the Russians can arrange
for their pleasure. The sessions will last seven days, preceded and
succeeded by intervals of geological and sight-seeing excursions,
covering the principal areas of Russia.

In many respects this will be the most important of the con-
gresses so far held. The geological map of Europe, which will
probably be printed complete in two years, will be exhibited. Seg-
ments of this map have already been received by geologists, and
will probably have their hearty approval at the congress. The

WORLD'S GEOLOGISTS AT ST. PETERSBURG. 213

committee on geological nomenclature will doubtless make a fair
showing, although beset by many difficulties in harmonizing the
•views of members. A difference of opinion of grave proportions,
which has threatened the life of past congresses, concerns the prob-
able culmination of previous attempts of geologists to get the con-
trol of the organization out
of the hands of officials of the
scientific bureaus of various
governments. The excur-
sions laid out certainly cover
a vast territory, including
the Ural Mountains, Moscow,
Volga River region. Samara
to Kazan, the glacial forma-
tions of Esthonia, Finland,
basin of the Donetz, mineral
waters of Vladikavkaz, Nij-
ni-Novgorod, Kiew, Dnieper
River, to Tifiis and glaciers
by military route of Geor-
gia, Tifiis to Baku, Batoum,
and Kertch, all parts of the
Crimea, Sebastopol, southern
Russian mining region, to the
glacier Guenaldon at Pia-
tigorsk. Lake Gokhtcha,
Mount Ararat, etc.

The International Geolog-
ical Congress was conceived
by the American Association

for the Advancement of Science at the Buffalo meeting, 1876,
when a resolution was adopted, calling for such a congress to be '
held in Paris in 1878. The committee comprised W. B. Rogers,
Dr. James Hall, J. W. Dawson, the late Dr. J. S. Newberry, the
late Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, C. H. Hitchcock, R. Pumpelly, of Amer-
ica ; the late Prof. T. H. Huxley, Dr. Otto Torrell, and E. H. van
Baumhaur, of Europe. Dr. Hall was made chairman of the com-
mittee and Dr. Hunt secretary. Their labors resulted in the first
international congress being held in Paris in 1888. The second
congress was held in Bologna, the third in Berlin, the fourth in
London, the fifth in Washington, and the sixth in Zurich, at in-
tervals of three years.

The geological map of Europe was conceived at the congress
of Bologna, where it was determined that the methods of accom-
plishing the ends of unification in nomenclature and coloring had
become sufficiently understood. It was thought best to select

The Grand Duke Constantinovitcii, President
of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Hon-
orary President of the Congress.

214

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Frof. a. Karpinsky, Director of the Impcriul
Geological Survey aud President of the Bureau
of Organization of the Congress.

Messrs. Beyrich and Hauchecorne,
direction at Berlin ; Prof. Renevier,
retary; Messrs. DauLree, of
France ; Giordano, of Italy ;
A. Karpinsky, of Russia;
Mojsisovics, of Austria-Hun-
gary ; and Topley, of Great
Britain. Professors Dau-
br^e, Giordano, and Topley
have since died. The scale
of the map is one in one mil-
lion and a half. It is divided
into forty - nine sheets of
18-89 by 20-86 inches. These
sheets, when all are com-
pleted, will form a rectangle
11-04 feet high by 12-17 feet
wide. The topographic base
was prepared by Prof. Kie-
pert, of Berlin. D. Reimer
& Co., Berlin, are the pub-

Europe as the subject of the
map because it contained a
great area, practically well
known, the largest number of
geologists, and included the
greatest number of carto-
graphical difficulties. Con-
taining the largest number of
geologists, representing many
nationalities, it was conceded
that any map which could
pass their acceptance would
stand any test of criticism
elsewhere. The inherent puz-
zles of structure in Europe
furnished a fascinating series
of difficult problems for solu-
tion, long and zealously dis-
cussed, with both natural and
artificial intricacies. No bet-
ter area to test the patience
and tax the genius of the con-
gress could have been chosen.
The committee appointed to
prepare the map comprised
of Germany, with power of
of Switzerland, as general sec-

1)h. .Iames Hall, New York State Geologist.

WORLD'S GEOLOGISTS AT ST. PETERSBURG, 215

lishers at their own risk. The
price of the work was fixed
at 125 francs ($35). The vari-
ous national committees sub-
scribed and paid the publish-
ers for nine hundred copies
at the rate of 100 francs each.
The map represents the com-
pletest and most accurate
geological information ob-
tainable, and every step in its
progress has been carefnl-
ly taken, so that the result
forms a consensus of Euro-

last congress at

pean opinion

At the
Ziirich, Switzerland, two
propositions were submitted
by Dr. Persifor Frazer, and
the bureau was ordered to
report on them at St. Peters-
burg, as follows :

" 1. To what extent does
the congress recognize the right of

Prof.

The Late Prof. E. D. Cope, University of
Pennsylvania.

Peesifor Fkazer, Philadelphia Academy
of Sciences.

governmental bureaus as such,
or of any kind of organiza-
tions, to send representatives
to the congress ?

"2. Within what limita-
tions does the congress rec-
ognize the right of such rep-
resentatives, or of only a por-
tion of the members of the
congress coming from the
same country, to choose who
shall be the vice-president
representing their country,
or to take any other steps in
the name of their country
without consultation of all
of their countrymen, mem-
bers of the congress ? "

In these propositions is
said to lie the future of in-
ternational geological con-
gresses. If government offi-
cials are alone to represent

2l6

POPULAR SCIEJSCE MONTHLY.

Prof. C. D. Walcott, Director, United States
Geological Survey.

were declared by the Swiss
council alone eligible and
representative, and were
made vice-president and dele-
gate from the United States,
At present too many mem-
bers of government bureaus
comprise the official roster of
the congress, although the
congress itself is composed of
several hundred of the most
distinguished geologists of
the world, who, if not mem-
bers of a geological survey,
are ignored by those now in
control. This is a situation
which does not commend it-
self to scientific men, many
of whom occupy chairs in
great universities or emi-
nent positions as specialists.
These men think the abuse
has become a flagrant one.

countries and hold office, the
congress at St. Petersburg
may be the last. Formerly
the officers of geological sur-
veys of nations fought the
establishment of the con-
gress. The congresses once
established, the bureaucrats
changed front, got hold of
the machinery through their
representatives, and now
mostly control it. At St.
Petersburg the unofficial ge-
ologists of the world will try
to wrest the direction from
the members of geological
surveys. At Ziirich, for in-
stance, there were present
thirteen of the most distin-
guished geologists of the
United States. Two sala-
ried assistants of the Unit-
ed States Geological Survey

J'u'iF. .1. .1. StI'.vknson, University of New York,
President New Yorli Academy of Sciences.

WORLD'S GEOLOGISTS AT ST. PETERSBURG. 217

If there is an object for the
congress to accomplish, it is
to open its doors and honors
equally to all geologists. It
is thought that if the con-
gress decides that only bu-
reau employees enjoy ex-
clusive privileges and alone
constitute the personnel of
the permanent organization,
which keeps the organiza-
tion alive in session and out,
then the body has simply be-
come a medium of ofhcialism,
a governments' trust, and
should be disbanded. As a
trust, it will simply continue
to extenuate errors and pre-
serve the power of govern-
ment survey directors. The
independent geologists think
the congress has been per-
verted and diverted from its
original high purpose, and that

/

A

Prof. B. K. Emerson, Amherst College.

Prof. C. 11. Hitchcock, Diutmoutli College.

the time has come to rescue it.
They desire it to be the high-
est tribunal of appeal on
purely scientific matters.

The protesting Americans
are led by Dr. Persifor Fra-
zer, of Philadelphia, who is
an able linguist and parlia-
mentarian. He will repre-
sent the American Philosoph-
ical Society, the Philadelphia
Academy of Sciences, and the
editorial staff of the Ameri-
can Geologist. Prof. Giovan-
ni Capellini (Italy), who re-
cently received the Hayden
medal and who will probably
be decorated by the Czar at
this congress, thinks the bat-
tle against officialism already
won. In a recent letter he
states : " The committee of
organization has the good

2l8

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prof. William N. Rice, Wesleyan University.

tervening work of these
committees has been adopt-
ed, clause by clause. When-
ever unsettled questions
were announced they were
either adjourned to subse-
quent sessions, or discretion
was granted to the commit-
tees to mature their own
plans. The committees have
been remarkably successful,
and no attempt has been
made by them to force their
conclusions on the con-
gresses or introduce into
the discussions the narrow
partisanship of particular
schools. Among the men
who have been active in the
unification of coloration are
Profs. Zittel and Hauche-
corne, of Germany; Prof.
Thomas McKenny Hughes,
of England ; Prof. Del-

intention of returning the
congress to the right path,
in conformity with the ob-
ject of its institution, hav-
ing recognized that it has
been entirely deflected from
its path in Switzerland."
While the committee's "in-
tentions" may be good, it
will require something more
powerful to break down offi-
cialism and restore the chair
of a university to its equal-
ity with a membership of a
government bureau.

Two international com-
mittees have been at work
for some years to secure a
uniform nomenclature and
coloration in European geo-
logical science. At each ses-
sion of the congress the in-

Prof. N. II. WiNCHELL, University of Minnesota,
State Geologist.

WORLD'S GEOLOGISTS AT ST. PETERSBURG, 219

walque, of Belgium ; Prof, de Lapparent, of France ; Prof. J.
Szabd, of Hungary ; Profs. Delgado, Choffat, Bensaude, Goncalves,
and de Lima, of Portugal ; Prof. Stefanescu, of Roumania ; Prof.
Mayer-Eymar, of Switzerland ; Profs. Capellini and de Zigno, of
Italy; Prof. Nikitin, of Russia; Prof. Stur, of Austria; Prof.
Vilanova, of Spain ; Prof. Johnstrup, of Denmark ; Prof. Kjerulf,
of Norway ; Prof, van Calker, of Holland ; and Prof. Torrell, of
Sweden.

The committee on the unification of the nomenclature of rocks
comprises Knop, Zirkel, and Rosenbusch, of Germany ; Golliez,
Hutenmal, and Schmidt, of
Switzerland ; Renard and de
la Vallde Poussin, of Bel-
gium ; Behrens and Wich-
mann, of Holland ; Macpher-
son and Gonzalo y Farin, of
Spain ; Bensaude, of Portu-
gal ; Michel-Levy, Barrois,
and La Croix, of France ;
Teall, Geikie, and Judd, of
England ; Brogger, of Nor-
way ; Zujovis, of Roumania ;
Lowinson-Lessing, of Rus-
sia ; Tietze and Tschermak,
of Austria-Hungary ; J. P.
Iddings,Whitman Cross, and
C. R. Van Hise, of the Unit-
ed States; and Barcena, of
Mexico.

A committee will report
on an exhaustive study of
the changes which occur in
glaciers, for which Prince

Prof. Eugene A. Smith, University of Alabama,
State Geologist.

Roland Bonaparte is chair-
man and pays the cost. It is composed as follows : Richter, of
Austria; Fintswalder, of Germany; Reid, of the United States;
Bonaparte, of France; Hall, of England; and Forel, of Switzer-
land.

The original American committee of the International Con-
gresses has been somewhat decimated by death. It comprised
Prof. James Hall, chairman, Albany; Dr. Persifor Frazer, sec-
retary, Philadelphia ; the late Dr. J. S. Newberry, New York ; the
late Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, Montreal ; Prof. C. H. Hitchcock, Han-
over, N. H. ; Prof. Raphael Pumpelly, Newport ; Prof. H. S. Wil-
liams, Yale ; Prof. J. P. Lesley, Philadelphia ; Major J. W.
Powell, Washington ; the late Prof. G. H. Cook, Brunswick, N. J. ;

2ZO

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prof, J. J. Stevenson, New York ; the late Prof. E. D. Cope, Phila-
delphia ; Prof. Eugene A. Smith, Tuscaloosa, Ala. ; Prof. N. H.
Winchell, Minneapolis ; and the late Prof. James D. Dana, New
Haven. Most of those above living will be present at St. Pe-
tersburg, and are nearly all
opposed to the control of
the congress by bureaucrats.
Through the eflforts of the
former personnel of the Unit-
ed States Geological Survey,
the American committee was
abolished at the Indianapolis
meeting of the American As-
sociation for the Advance-
ment of Science, where the
survey staff got temporary
control. At the last meeting
of the Association, at Buffalo,
the following delegates were
appointed to St. Petersburg :
Prof. James Hall, Albany ;
the late Prof. E. D. Cope,
Philadelphia ; Prof. B. K. Em-
erson, Amherst; Prof. C. D.
Walcott, Washington ; and
Prof. W. N. Rice, Middle-
town. These delegates will
soon be made a new Ameri-
can committee, and their number materially increased in the near
future. The delegates of the Geological Society of America will
comprise Prof. J. J. Stevenson, New York University ; Prof.
B. K. Emerson, Amherst College ; and Prof. I. C. White, Morgan-
town, W. Va,

All objects for exhibition bearing the address " Russia, St.
Petersburg Exposition of the International Geological Congress,"'
can go through without having to be submitted to customs in-
spection at the frontier. Russian consuls everywhere have been
instructed to vise passports of geologists presenting membership
cards, which will also facilitate matters at the frontier. Mem-
bers will receive a ticket of first-class transportation on all Rus-
sian and Finland railways. The sessions of the congress will be
held at the Imperial Academy of Sciences.

Accompanying this article is a copy of the official map of the
excursions offered to geologists by the Russian Government,
which has made great sacrifices to entertain its guests. Over six
hundred membership cards have been issued, in consequence of

Pkof. II. S. Williams, Yale College.

WORLD'S GEOLOGISTS AT ST. PETERSBURG. 221

which the committee has decided to exclude from the excursions
all who are not authors of geological publications. It is esti-
mated that the restriction will reduce the number of excursion-
ists to about two hundred people. The cost of the excursions,
reduced to the mere maintenance of individuals, has been fixed

approximately as follows : To the Urals, four hundred francs ; in
Esthonia, one hundred and thirty- five francs; to Finland, fifty
francs ; the great excursion after the congress, six hundred and
sixty-five francs ; to Ararat, two hundred and seventy francs ; to
the glacier Mamisson, one hundred and twenty francs ; to Elbo-
rous or Sebastopol, forty francs additional to general excursion.
Each of the smaller and special excursions have a price estab-
lished, estimated at twenty-one francs per day. The committee

222 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

will refund any overcharges made. These magnanimous reduc-
tions in the cost of travel are due to the personal efforts of
A. Yermolow, Minister of Agriculture, to the proprietors and ad-
ministrations of the districts having works, and to the officers of
municipalities along the routes of the excursions.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION.*

By IlKLEN KENDRICK JOHNSON.

IN 1848 a Woman- Suffrage Convention, called by Mrs. Stanton.
Mrs. Mott, and others, issued a "Declaration of Sentiments,"'
which was an imitation of the famous Declaration of Independ-
ence. It constituted an elaborate indictment of man as the
oppressor of woman, and the suffrage leaders of to-day still hold
to it as their broad exposition of principles. The seventh count
in the indictment was, " He has denied her facilities for obtain-
ing a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her."

Among the resolutions passed in an early suffrage convention
was one demanding " equal rights in the universities," and the
first petition presented by suffrage advocates contained a clause
asking that entrance to men's colleges be obtained for women by
legal enactment. We note that this is far from being a demand
for education for women equal to that given to men in the uni-
versities. Men have founded colleges for women, men and women
have worked together in securing for woman every facility and
opportunity for education of the highest grade ; but the "barrier
of sex" is not broken down in education. Bat few of the older
colleges for men admit women, and those few, so far as I have
learned from conversation with members of their faculties, speak
of the arrangement as an experiment, and give the need for
economy, combined with a desire to assist women, as a reason for
making that experiment. Meantime the knocking at men's liter-
ary portals by suffrage advocates has gone on as vigorously as if
women could obtain education in no other way.

In the first suffrage convention ever held in Massachusetts
these two resolutions were adopted: "That political rights ac-
knowledge no sex, and therefore the word * male 'should be stricken
from every State Constitution " ; and " that every effort to edu-
cate woman, until you accord to her her rights, and arouse her
conscience by the weight of her responsibilities, is futile, and a
waste of labor."

* PVoin Woman and tVie Republic. By Helen Kendrick Johnson. In pre.«s of D.
Appleton & Co.

WOMAN SUFFJiAGA' AIVB EDUCATION. 223

The State in which these sentiments were uttered abounded in
fine schools for girls, among which were Mount Holyoke and
Wheaton Seminaries,

A rapid survey of some of the educational conditions that led
to the state of things existing when suffrage associations were
formed will be in place. Learning seemed incompatible with
worship early in the Christian era. The faith that worked by
love was " to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks fool-
ishness." That great battle between the felt and the compre-
hended, which in this era we have named the conflict between
science and religion, was decided in the mind of the apostle to the
Gentiles when he wrote : " We know in part, and we prophesy in
part ; when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part
shall be done awaj''." He recalled the accusation, " Thou art
beside thyself, much learning hath made thee mad," and he has-
tened to assure the unlettered fishermen and the simple and de-
vout women who were followers of Christ, that " all knowledge "
was naught if they had not love ; that even faith was vain if it
led to the rejection of the diviner wisdom that a little child could
understand.

The great learning of Augustine and the Fathers brought into
the Church pagan speculations of God and morality, as well as
pagan knowledge in art, science, and literature. The Church be-
came corrupted, and a great outcry was made against the learning
itself, which was falsely supposed to be the cause of the degenera-
tion of faith. Symonds says that during the dark ages that
followed upon this first battle between faith and sight, the mean-
ing of Latin words derived from the Greek was lost; that Homer
and Virgil were believed to be contemporaries, and " Orestes
Tragedia" was supposed to be the name of an author. Milman
says that "at the Council of Florence in 1438, the Pope of Rome
and the Patriarch of Constantinople being ignorant, the one of
Greek and the other of Latin, discoursed through an interpreter."
It was near the time of the Reformation that a German monk
announced in his convent that " a new language, called Greek,
had been invented, and a book had been written in it called the
New Testament." " Beware of it," he added, " it is full of daggers
and poison."

But the tradition of the love that book revealed had crept into
the heart of the world, and now awoke. Through what struggles
the "spirit of all truth" promised by Christ was leading, and
would lead the world, the history of civilization can tell. Women
shared in some degree the outward benefits of the revival of
learning. They became in not a few instances doctors of law
and professors of the great universities that sprang up, as well as
teachers, transcribers, and illuminators in the great nunneries.

2 24 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I could give a long and honorable list of names of woman writers
and artists, in many lands, from mediioval to modern times; and
one of the interesting things revealed by such a record would be
the number who were working with or were directly inspired and
helped by a father or a brother. The court had some names of
women who, like Lady Jane Grey, upheld the model of purity
while taking the learning that naturally accompanied wealth.
But elegant letters had again become the associate of moral and
religious corruption in the courts, and the " ignorance of preach-
ing "arose to combat it in Cromwell, the Roundheads, the Dis-
senters, the Covenanters.

Yet sound learning was not to die that Christian truth might
live. Of the band of Pilgrims and Puritans that came first to our
shores, about one in thirty was college bred. While subordinating
book knowledge to piety, they had learned scarcely less the dan-
gers of ignorance. Their first college was founded because of " the
dread of having an illiterate ministry to the churches when our
ministers shall lie in dust." Charles Francis Adams says, in re-
gard to the establishment of Harvard College, " The records of
Harvard University show that, of all the presiding officers during
the century and a half of colonial days, but two were laymen, and
not ministers of the prevailing denomination." He further says
that " of all who in early times availed themselves of such ad-
vantages as this institution could ofl:'er, nearly half the number
did so for the sake of devoting themselves to the gospel. The
prevailing notion of the purpose of education was attended with
one remarkable consequence — the cultivation of the female mind
was regarded with utter indifference."

It was attended with still another remarkable consequence,
the effect of which is felt up to this hour. Only men who were
fitted for a profession were given a college education. It is well
within my memory when it began to be seriously said : " A col-
lege education is good for a boy, whether he intends to follow a
profession or not ; it will make him a better business man, or even
a better farmer." The country girl is now, as a rule, better edu-
cated than her brother. It also happened in those earlier days
that the artist and the musician were expected to attain knowl-
edge by intuition, save in technical branches.

During the first two hundred years of our existence it would
have been almost absurd to expect that women would be exten-
sively educated outside the home. The country was poor, and
struggling with new conditions, and great financial crises swept
over it. There were wars and rumors of wars. Until after 1812-
'15 American independence was not an assured fact. Whatever
may be said of the present, woman's place in America then was
in the home, and nobly did she fill that place. That she had not

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION. 225

been wholly uninstructed in even elegant learning is evidenced
by the share she took in literature and in the discussion of reli-
gious and public matters, and in such personal records as that
of Elder Faunce, who eulogized Alice Southworth Bradford for
"her exertions in promoting the literary improvement and the
deportment of the rising generation." Dame schools were early
established for girls, and here were often found the sons of the
farmer and the mechanic. These were established in Massachu-
setts in 1635. Late in 1700 girls were admitted through the sum-
mer to " Latin schools " where boys were taught in winter, and in
1789 women began to be associated with men as teachers. In 1771
Connecticut founded a system of free schools in which boys and
girls were taught. In 1794 the Moravians founded a school for
girls at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Here were educated the sisters
of Peter Cooper, the mother of President Arthur, and many
women who became exponents of culture.

New England began before this to have fine private schools
for girls, but no great step was taken until Miss Hart (afterward
Mrs. Willard) had become so successful with her academy teach-
ing in her native town of Berlin, Connecticut, and in Hartford,
that three States simultaneously invited her to establish schools
within their borders. She went to Massachusetts, but afterward,
at the solicitation of Governor Clinton, of New York, she removed
her school to Troy in 1821. It was a new departure, and there
was ignorant prejudice to overcome. Governor Clinton, in an
appeal to the Legislature for aid, said, " I trust you will not be
deterred by commonplace ridicule from extending your munifi-
cence to this meritorious institution." They were not deterred.
An act was passed for the incorporation of the proposed institute,
and another which gave to female academies a share of the literary
fund. The citizens of Troy contributed liberally, and the success
of an effort for woman's high education was assured.

As early as 1G97 the Penn Charter School was founded, and it
has lived until to-day. Provision was made " at the cost of the
people called Quakers " for " all children and servants, male and
female, the rich to be instructed at reasonable rates, the poor to
be maintained and schooled for nothing." They also provided
for "instruction for both sexes in reading, writing, work, lan-
guages, arts, and sciences." The boys and girls have been taught
separately, the girls' school being much behind the boys, neither
Latin nor other ancient language forining a part of their curric-
ulum. Friends are just beginning to discuss giving higher edu-
■cation to girls. This is a fact especially significant in our discus-
sion, because it has always been claimed that the Quaker doctrine
that "souls have no sex" led them to place woman on an "equal-
ity " with man before other sects had thought of allowing that

VOL. LI. — IT

2 26 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

they were equals. Lucretia Mott, Susan Anthony, Abby Kelley,
and a great body of the women who adopted the resolution that
set forth the uselessness of educating woman until she could vote,
and who clamored for her entrance to men's institutions, were all
of this sect that has kept its women generally far behind in the
acquisition of knowledge.

In 1845 Mrs. Willard was invited to address the Teachers' Con-
vention that met in Syracuse. She prepared a paper in which
she set forth the idea that " women, now sufl&ciently educated,
should be employed and furnished by the men as committees,
charged with the minute cares and supervision of the public
schools," but declined the honor tendered her of delivering it in
person. Sixty gentlemen from the convention visited her at the
hotel, and at their earnest request she read the essay, which met
with their emphatic approval of the plan she proposed. The em-
ployment of women in the common schools and the system of
normal schools were projected by her.

A teachers' convention was held in Rochester in 1852. Miss
Anthony, though a teacher, was not in attendance upon it, but
she records that she went in and listened for a few hours to a dis-
cussion of the causes that led to their profession being held in
less esteem than those of the doctor, lawyer, and minister. In
her judgment the kernel of the matter was not alluded to, so she
arose and said, "Mr. President." She writes that "at length
President Davies stepped to the front and said in a tremulous,
mocking tone, "What will the lady have?" "I wish, sir," she
said, " to speak to the question." " What is the pleasure of the
convention ? " asked Mr. Davies. A gentleman moved that she
be heard; another seconded the motion; whereupon, she says,
" a discussion, pro and con, followed, lasting full half an hour,
when a vote was taken of the men only, and permission was
granted by a small majority." She adds that it was lucky for her
that the thousand women crowding that hall could not vote on the
question, for they would have given a solid " No." The president
then announced, " The lady can speak." " It seems to me, gentle-
men," said she, " that none of you quite comprehend the cause of
the disrespect of which you complain. Do you not see that, so
long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, min-
ister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, every man
of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he
has no more brains than a woman ? Would you exalt your pro-
fession, exalt those who labor with you. Would you make it more
lucrative, increase the salaries of the women engaged in the
noble work of educating our future Presidents, Senators, and
Congressmen."

Several thoughts arise in regard to this scene, which was so

WOMAJV SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION. 227

strongly in contrast with the conduct of Mrs. Willard or any of
the great educators. Miss Anthony gave no reason for her belief
that the entrance of woman upon the other professions would
raise either the status or the wages of those engaged in the teach-
er's profession, and as a matter of fact it has not done so. It
was not the society that cast scorn at woman's " lack of brains "
which assisted to remove the natural prejudice against her assum-
ing duties that had been deemed unsuited to her physique and her
necessary work.

Meantime, one year before the Rochester meeting was held,
the first college for women had been chartered at Auburn, N. Y.,
under the name of " Auburn Female University." In 1853 it was
transferred to Elmira, and it was formally opened in 1855. It was
placed under the care of the Congregational Church, but its char-
ter required that it should have representative trustees from five
other denominations. Its course of study for the degree A. B.
was essentially the same that was then pursued in the men's col-
leges of the State. It was expected to rely upon endowment,
which put woman's education upon a new and more secure
footing.

Suffrage leaders lose no opportunity to represent the Church
as an enemy to woman's advancement. Nothing can be further
from the truth ; and in striking evidence stand the colleges,
which, while unsectarian in spirit and in method, have been es-
tablished and cared for by special religious denominations. Dr.
Jacobi, in her book Common Sense, takes up the tale and says,
*' The Mount Holyoke Seminary, the immediate successor of that
at Troy, was opened in 1837 by Miss Lyon, in spite of the opposi-
tion of the clergy." Many besides the clergy were opposed to the
plan for which Miss Lyon was endeavoring to raise money. Her
idea that the entire domestic work of the establishment could be
done by pupils and teachers was thought unwise and hopeless;
and it was simply this feature that they disapproved, not the
school itself. In that noble school, where thousands of women
have been educated, a great number have become missionaries.
When a suffrage convention in session in Worcester wrote to Miss
Lyon, asking her to interest herself in the wrongs of her sex, she
answered, " I can not leave my work." Neither was Vassar Col-
lege founded from any impulse or suggestion of suffrage agitators,
but in a spirit exactly the opposite. The real impetus to its found-
ing came from Milo Parker Jewett. He suggested to Mr. Vassar
an endowed college for women, and visited the universities and
libraries of Europe with a plan of organization in mind. Mr.
Vassar gladly accepted this great enlargement upon an idea that
had lain dormant in his own mind, and Vassar College was
founded, Dr. Jewett becoming its first president in 1862.

2 28 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I may claim to have been beside the cradle of Vassar College ;
for when Dr. Jewett resigned the presidency in 1864, my father
named the successor, who was appointed, Dr. John H. Raymond,
his lifelong friend. Dr. Raymond came to Rochester to discuss
a plan of work, and, knowing my father's interest, I was on tip-
toe to hear about the new college. At my earnest solicitation he
and Dr. Raymond and President Anderson permitted me to be
present at their discussions. I learned to comprehend the value
of womanliness to the world by the estimate that those noble edu-
cators put upon it. It was evident that they were arranging for
those for whose minds they felt respect. They made no foolish
remarks about the superiority, inferiority, or equality of the
sexes, and had no contempt to throw upon the old education of
tutor and library and young ladies' seminary. They did not sneer
at the " female mind," but they did talk of the feminine mind as
of something as distinct in its essence from the masculine mind
as the feminine form is distinct in its outlines. To "preserve
womanliness " was a task they felt they must fulfill, or the women
for whose good they labored would one day call them to account.
The dictum so frequently in the mouths of suffrage leaders,
" There is no sex in brain," would have been abhorrent to them.
In their view, there was as much sex in brain as in hand ; and
the education that did not, through cultivation, emphasize that
fact, would be a lower and not a higher product. They laid that
intellectual corner stone in love, and in the faith that the same
womanly spirit which, when there was not college education
enough to go round, had said, " Give it to the boys, because their
work must be public," would find, through the glad return the
boys were making, a way to teach the world still higher lessons
of womanly character and influence. Since that time college after
college has arisen without a dream on the part of the founders,
faculties, or students that " every effort to educate woman, until you
accord to her the right to vote, is futile and a waste of labor," and it
may well be that the women educated in these colleges will decide
that, because political rights do acknowledge sex, therefore the
word "male" should not be stricken from any State Constitution.

Before the committee of the New York State Constitutional
Convention in 1894, Mr. Edward Lauterbach, who was arguing in
favor of woman suffrage, said : " It was only after the establish-
ment of the Willard School at Troy, only after its noble founder,
believing that women and men were formed in the same mold, suc-
cessfully tried the experiment of educating women in the higher
branches, that steps for higher education became generally taken."
If Mr. Lauterbach imagines that Mrs. Willard was in the most
distant way an advocate of woman's doing the same work as man
in the same way, he is unfamiliar with her life and work. Mrs.

WOMAJV SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION. . 229

Willard, in setting fortli her ideal of woman's education, said :
"Education should be adapted to female character and duties.
To do this would raise the character of man. . . . Why may not
housewifery be reduced to a system as well as the other arts ? If
women were properly fitted for instruction, they would be likely
to teach children better than the other sex ; they could afford to
do it cheaper ; and men might be at liberty to add to the wealth
of the nation by any of the thousand occupations from which
women are necessarily debarred." Old-fashioned wisdom, but
choicely good.

In a woman's club, last winter, a New York teacher. Miss
Helen Dawes Brown, a graduate of Vassar College, founder of
the Woman's University Club and also one of the founders of
Barnard College, in a speech said in part : " The young girl who
doesn't dance, who doesn't play games, who can't skate and can't
row, is a girl to be pitied. She is losing a large part of what
Chesterfield calls the ' joy and titivation of youth.' If our young
girl has learned to be good, teach her not to disregard the exter-
nals of goodness. Let our girls, in college and out, learn to be
agreeable. A girl's education should, first of all, be directed to
fitting her for the things of home. We talk of woman as if the
only domestic relations were those of wife and mother. Let us
not forget that she is also a granddaughter, a daughter, a sister,
an aunt. I should like to see her made her best in all these char-
acters, before she undertakes public duties. The best organiza-
tion in the world is the home. Whatever in the education of
girls draws them away from that, is an injury to civilization."

At the close of an article in The Outlook, written by Eliza-
beth Fisher Read, of Smith College, she said, speaking of their
last adaptation of athletics : " From the beginning, the policy of
Smith College has been, not to duplicate the means of develop-
ment offered in men's colleges, but to provide courses and meth-
ods of study that should do for women what the men's courses did
for them. Emphasis has been put, not on the resemblances be-
tween men and women, but rather on the differences. The effort
has not been to turn out new women, capable of doing anything
man can do, from walking thirty miles to solving the problems of
higher mathematics. Instead of this, the college has tried to
develop its students along natural womanly lines, not along the
lines that would naturally be followed in training men."

This sounds strangely like Mrs. Willard, who would be the first
to rejoice in the new education and in the old spirit that it can
develop. Of course, suffrage claims to have the same end in view.
Every college woman must decide for herself where she will stand
on the question. So far, there never has been any open affiliation
between the colleges and the suffrage movement.

230 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Tlie kind of education best suited to the idea of suffrage is a
training in political history and present political issues ; but the
women who have talked loudly and vaguely of the right of suf-
frage for years have been the last to present such knowledge. I
have read their History, attended their conventions, glanced at
their magazines, but never have come upon the discussion of a
single public issue. I think those most familiar with it will bear
me out if I make the statement that their principal periodical, The
Woman's Journal, edited by Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward
Howe, Mr. Blackwell, and Alice Stone Blackwell, has not contained
any presentations of questions of public policy in the past ten
years.

One of the grievances of the suffrage leaders lay in the fact
that the literary women of the country would express no sym-
pathy with their efforts. Poets and authors in general were de-
nounced. Gail Hamilton, who had the good of woman in her
heart, who was better informed on public affairs than perhaps any
other woman in the United States, and whose trenchant pen cut
deep and spared not, always reprobated the cause. Mrs. Stowe
stood aloof, and so did Catherine Beecher, though urged to the
contrary course by Henry Ward Beecher and Isabella Beecher
Hooker. In a letter to Mrs. Cutler, Catherine Beecher said : " I
am not opposed to women's speaking in public to any who are
willing to hear, nor am I opposed to women's preaching, sanc-
tioned as it is by a prophetic apostle — as one of the millennial re-
sults. Nor am I opposed to a woman's earning her own inde-
pendence in any lawful calling, and wish many more were open
to her which are now closed. Nor am I opposed to the organiza-
tion and agitation of women, as women, to set forth the wrongs
suffered by great multitudes of our sex, which are multiform and
most humiliating. Nor am I opposed to women's undertaking to
govern boys and men — they always have, and they always will.
Nor am I opposed to the claim that women have equal rights
with men. I rather claim that they have the sacred superior
rights that God and good men accord to the weak and defense-
less, by which they have the easiest work, the most safe and com-
fortable places, and the largest share of all the most agreeable and
desirable enjoyments of this life. My main objection to the
woman-suffrage organization is this, that a wrong mode is em-
ployed to gain a right object. The right object sought is, to
remedy the wrongs and relieve the sufferings of great multitudes
of our sex ; the wrong mode is that which aims to enforce by law
instead of by love. It is one which assumes that man is the
author and abettor of all these wrongs, and that he must be
restrained and regulated by constitutions and laws, as the chief
and most trustworthy methods. I hold that the fault is as much.

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL. 231

or more, with women than with men, inasmuch as we ha,ve all the
power we need to remedy the wrongs complained of, and yet
we do not nse it for that end. It is my deep conviction that all
reasonable and conscientious men of our age, and especially of
our country, are not only willing but anxious to provide for the
good of our sex. They will gladly bestow all that is just, reason-
able, and kind, whenever we unite in asking in the proper spirit
and manner. In the half a century since I began to work for the
education and relief of my sex, I have succeeded so largely by
first convincing intelligent and benevolent women that what I
aimed at was right and desirable, and then securing their influ-
ence with their fathers, brothers, and husbands, and always with
success."

Miss Beecher, like Mrs. Willard and Mrs. Phelps, made text-
books for the use of her own seminaries, and her Arithmetic,
and Mental and Moral Philosophy, and Applied Theology were
among the educational forces of her day. It is one of the sig-
nificant signs of the times that science and education, as well as
philanthropy, are occupying themselves just now with childhood
and motherhood and housewifery. Mrs. Willard's high ideal of
womanliness is beginning to be set forth by the electric light of
modern thought.

♦♦♦

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL.

By Dr. CHAELES EKNEST PELLEW.
I.

IN studying the history of alcoholic beverages we are at once
brought face to face with the fact that there has hardly been
a nation on the face of the globe which has not used some vari-
ety of stimulant or narcotic. In almost every instance this has
been some form of alcohol, and in a few cases where alcohol has
been unknown, and tobacco, opium, hemp, or some other drug
used in its stead, the introduction of alcohol has been followed at
once by its use and, alas ! its abuse. A curious example of this is
given in the account of Henry Hudson's famous voyage in 1609,.
when he discovered the Hudson River. The Indian chief and
warriors waited for him on the shore of Manhattan Island, pre-
pared to sacrifice to the great " manito in red." He landed, with
a few of his crew, and pouring out some rum into a glass, drank
it to their health, and then passed a cupful round to the Indians.
One after another they shrank from it, evidently fearing that it
contained a deadly poison. At last one, bolder than the rest,
drank it down, and soon began to reel and stagger, and finally
fell. His companions were horror-struck. But soon he recovered

232

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

himself, and described his drink in such glowing terms that they
all begged and implored for their share, and, before Hudson left,
they had all become intoxicated.

In other words, there seems to be a natural craving by man
for some drug which shall " drive dull care away," and, as alcohol
possesses this power, it has been used from the earliest ages and
is still being used by rich and poor, high and low, civilized and
savages, in more or less complete disregard of the evil effects of
overindulgence.

The earliest historical records which have come down to us —
the sacred classics of China, India, Judea, and Persia — all give de-
tails about the use and abuse of alcoholic beverages. The Chinese

Egtptian Vinetaed, with Kesekvoib of Water. (Wilkinson.)

made use both of wine from grapes and of a beer made from rice,
somewhat like the present saki of Japan ; and, if we can believe
their writings, intemperance was not at all confined to the lower
classes, but in many instances proved the disgrace and the ruin
of the reigning dynasties.

The Rig- Veda, or sacred books of the ancient Brahmans, give
us many details about the Hindu drinking customs, which were,
among the upper classes at least, closely connected with their re-
ligious observances. The common people drank a variety of beer,
known as sura, made from rice, barley, honey, and other ingre-
dients. This was cheap and freely used for intoxicating pur-
poses, and was, accordingly, in great disrepute among the priest-
hood and rulers, who made most stringent rules and regulations
against it. But they were full of the praises of the sacred wine,
soma, made from the juice of certain plants, which, after fer-
mentation, was offered as a libation to their favorite gods, Indra,
Vishnu, and others. These deities were supposed to drink soma
freely, and to be highly gratified at the resulting intoxication.
These exercises were particularly pleasant because it was not
necessary, in order to honor the gods, to pour out all the wine
upon the altar, but the act of devotion might be equally well per-

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL.

= 33

Wjne Phess of iSIatting. (Wilkinson.)

formed by the worshipers drinking the libations themselves.
Of course, the pleasant after effects were considered as solely due
to the divine favor,
and not to any in-
gredient common also
to the vulgar sura.

In the Bible we
find frequent refer-
ences to both the good
and the evil effects of
wine. In such marked
contrast do some of

these passages stand that serious effort has been made, by many
well-intentioned moralists, to attribute all the favorable com-
ments— " Wine that maketh glad the heart of man," " Thou hast
put gladness into their hearts since the time that their corn and
wine and oil increased," and the like — to unfermented grape juice
or to the fruit itself, and to apply to the fermented juice, the wine
of our everyday life, only the passages, so well known and so
frequently quoted, of condemnation. Some grounds for their be-
lief exist in the fact that two Hebrew words, yaijin and tirosli,
occurring in the Old Testament, are both translated in the au-
thorized version as "wine," although yayin is almost always
mentioned with scorn and contempt and tirosh with approval.
But this is not always the case. The substances meant by both
words are condemned alike in a chapter in Hosea (Hosea, iv,
2). And, furthermore, it is very doubtful whether the unfer-

Pressing the Grapes and Storing the Wine. (Wilkinson.)

mented grape juice is not mentioned under an entirely different
word, debish, translated as honey. In that hot climate, with no
glass jars and rubber stoppers in which the sterilized grape juice
could be preserved, and with no antiseptics to delay or prevent
fermentation, the fresh grape juice must have been at once boiled

VOL. LI.

-18

234

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

down to a thick sirup, or it would have begun to ferment in half
an hour. That is the present practice in Syria, and the resulting
debs is used to this day as a substitute for honey or sugar for
sweetening purposes. And our respect for the wisdom of King
David and other great men of Judea hardly permits us to think
that their enthusiastic language was used about a sweet, cloying
sirup.

There is no reason at all to doubt that the Greek word otvos,
used in the New Testament, refers to the ordinary fermented
wine ; and, on the whole, it seems evident that in both Old and
New Testament the commendations and denunciations refer to
the use and abuse of alcohol, respectively, rather than to any
specific differences between the beverages employed.

The ancient Egyptians at a very early date discovered the art
of making barley wine, or, in other words, true beer, as well as

V,<«5i!» r-^* ■«*' ■ ■. ' "^ fW ^trf -^ 0>* 3^- T5J
Taking Wine like a Gentleman. (Wilkinson.'*

grape wine. They have left evidences of this, not only in their
writings and in the tales of early travelers like Herodotus, but
also in several remarkable series of mural paintings found on
their monuments. The most interesting of these are at the tombs
of Beni-Hassan, where, some five thousand years ago, the Egyp-
tian artists amused themselves by portraying the scenes of every-
day life in a most graphic manner. We find there pictures of
vineyards, with the vines carefully trained on trellises, and
watered from artificial reservoirs. We find several varieties of
wine presses — some for treading the grapes, some for pressing the
grapes by twisting them tight in a bag. We can see how they
poured the fresh wine into jars for fermentation and storage.
We can watch them drinking their wine like gentlefolk, in the

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL.

235

bosom of their family, with wife by the side and children on the
knee. And, finally, we find pictures of them using wine like
beasts — men being
carried home from
supper on the backs
of slaves ; women
staggering round,
hopelessly and in-
decently intoxicat-
ed. Verily "there

is nothing new Un- After a Supper, (Wilkinson.)

der the sun."

The ancient Persian writings, the Zend Avesta, dating back to
the period of Zoroaster, possibly 4000 to 6000 b. c, contain like
the Rig- Veda many references to a sacred drink, homa, and a
popular drink, hura. Wine seems to have been of somewhat later
discovery, but, once introduced, proved extremely popular. The
lowlanders, living in the rich, warm plains of Asia Minor, were
especially addicted to its iise, and the temperate young prince
Cyrus, coming down from the mountains with his Persian war-
riors, found little difiiculty in routing the effeminate Medes. But
the attractions of luxury proved too strong for them, and, in a
few generations, both rulers and people had badly degenerated.
The famous Xerxes, the Great King, the descendant of Cyrus
and monarch of Asia Minor, left as his epitaph no great record of
valiant deeds, but the sole fact that " he was able to drink more
wine than any man in his dominions." Small wonder, then, that
his forces were so easily routed by the Greeks.

For, of all races that have yet appeared, the Greeks have
been best able to use alcoholic beverages freely and yet with tem-
perance. Their land was
fertile and their crops
varied, and they early
learned how to prepare
intoxicating drinks from
barley, figs, the palm, and
other sources. And their
wines, especially those
from the Greek islands,
have retained their rep-
utation, not for hun-
dreds but for thousands
of years. The vine was
widely cultivated, and valued as one of the greatest gifts of the
gods to man ; and yet, such was their respect for the human
body and such their dread of injuring it by excesses, that we

A Woman Intoxicated. (Wilkinson.)

236

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

find that, in their golden age at least, alcohol was used and not
abused.

Their strongest drink, we must remember, was natural, unfor-
tified wine, containing no more alcohol than our present clarets

Sleeping Dionysos. (From Greek has-reliel' in the Cainpana Colleetiou.)

and hocks. And yet they never drank it pure ; they always
added water to it, or rather, added it to water. Some of their
wines, the Pramnian and Maronian, for instance, were of such
strong flavor as to be mixed in the proportion of one to fifteen
or one to twenty parts of water. The average dilution was one
to five, or one to four. When the young bloods of Athens had a
supper party they would elect a " master of the feast," who sat,
crowned with flowers, at the head of the table, and set the pace
for the festivities. A very festive youth would sometimes at
these occasions order the wine one to three, or even two to three.
To drink wine unmixed — well, that was imaKvOiaraL, to act like a
Scythian, to be a beast and a barbarian.

It is not to be supposed from this that drunkenness was un-
known, but in the golden age of Greece it was both uncommon
and despised. Drinking with them was different from drinking
among other nations ; they drank for exhilaration, not for intoxi-
cation. This can be recognized at once from the character and
position of Dionysos, their god of drink, corresponding to the
Roman Bacchus. No drunken debauchee was he. His statues
represent him as a laughing, innocent child, as a beautiful, grace-
ful youth, as a finely developed adult, and even as a gentle, re-
fined, full-bearded man, the patron of literature and the drama.

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL. 237

For Dionysos was one of the greatest gods of Greece. At the
vintage in the autumn all was fun and jollity, and in his honor
rude, humorous plays were acted by the country people. Hence
developed the " comedy," so named from kw/xos, the country cart
from which the actors at first held forth. In the spring, at the
opening of the new wine, occurred the great Dionysiac festival.
Every one flocked to Athens, from the countryside, from all
Greece, from the whole civilized world ; and there, in the great
Theater of Dionysos, the marble seats of which are still standing
under the walls of the Acropolis, were acted the glorious tragedies
of ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the noblest masterpieces
of ancient literature.

But after Athens and Sparta, and later Thebes, had wasted
their resources and exhausted their energies against each other,
a new and fierce and semibarbarous race came down from the
mountains and conquered the whole of Greece. Under the
famous King Philip of Macedon the weak and scattered clans
united, learned the art of war, and rapidly overthrew the more
civilized and cultivated lowlanders. This marked the end of
Grecian temperance. The Macedonian nobles were always heavy
drinkers, and toward the end of his career they were encouraged
in their habits by the king himself.

Many stories have been handed down to us about the royal
drinking bouts. One, which has passed almost into a byword,

Dionysos, from the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates.
(From The Antiquities of Athens, Stuart and Kevett. 1762.)

relates to a famous philosopher, who brought a lawsuit, in
which he was a party, up before the highest court, the king
himself. The case was heard and the judgment given against
him. "I appeal," shouted the old man. "Whom do you ap-
peal to ? " said Philip, " I am the king ! " "I appeal," said the
other, " from Philip drunk to Philip sober." And the next day

238 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the case was heard over again, and decided in the appellant's
favor.

Another episode, which bade fair to have very serious results,
happened the year before he died. He had recently divorced his

Satyr punishing a Sailor, from the Chokagic Monument.

wife Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, and was cele-
brating his marriage to a new wife, Cleopatra. At the wedding
banquet, where the wine flowed very freely, her uncle Attains
made some insulting remarks about the young prince Alexander,
who at once rose in his place at the table and threw a goblet at
his head. This enraged the king, who sprang from his seat, drew
his sword, and rushed at his son to kill him. But, in his rage and
intoxication, Philip slipped and fell to the ground. Then Alex-
ander, rather unfilially, shouted out : " See now, men of Macedon,
this man, who is preparing to cross from Europe to Asia, can not
step from one couch to another without falling I ''

When Alexander came to the throne, a year later, the im-
provement in manners was but temporary. At first, indeed, the
young king, with his companions in arms, devoted all their ener-
gies to affairs of state and war. Two years after he came to the
throne he crossed the Hellespont, and with a small but picked
army routed the vast, unwieldy hosts of the Great King. In a
few campaigns he conquered Asia Minor, and even led his victo-
rious forces into India. But with success came intemperance, and
his brief and glorious career closed in disgrace.

In the garb of Dionysos, accompanied by a band of drunken
roisterers, he entered Carmania in triumph. At Samarcand, in-
flamed by wine, he killed with his own hand his friend Clitus,
who had saved his life at the battle of the Granicus. At Persep-
olis, in a drunken frenzy, urged by dissolute companions, he set
fire to the famous palace of the Great Kings, and although.

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL.

239

sobered by^the result, he urged his soldiers to the rescue, it burned
to the ground.

His most famous exploit in this line took place, during the
last year of his life, at the tomb of Cyrus, near Pasargadae in
Persia. He attended here the immolation of a famous Hindu
philosopher, Calanus, who had followed him from India, and now,
falling sick, burned himself alive on a great funeral pile. On his
return from the ceremony Alexander asked many of his friends
and chief officers to supper, and that night organized a great
drinking contest, offering a gold crown to the victor. A young
nobleman called Promachus took the first prize, with the respect-
able measure of some fourteen quarts of wine, and others fol-
lowed close behind him. But a cold wind came up that night,
chilling the revelers to the bone, and Promachus and some forty

MONADS IX A DioNTSiAC Frenzt. A great figure of this sort, with splashes of blood on the
garments, was one of the chief ornaments in the Dionysiac Theater. (From the Cam puna
Collection.)

of his competitors died from the effects of cold and drunkenness
combined.

This course of life could not last long. His soldiers mur-
mured, his officers grew unruly, his own strength failed ; and, in
his thirty-second year, after a drinking bout that lasted for two
days and nights, a sudden attack of fever ended his career.

240

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Turning from Greece to Rome, we find the same general
course of events. At first the Romans were a band of fierce
banditti, fighting first for life, then for conquest, against the
surrounding tribes. During the few hundred years that this
struggle continued the Romans were a temperate, a painfully-
temperate race. We read that wine was scarce and poor, and,
such as it was, reserved exclusively for the men, and for men over
thirty. Women were forbidden to use it under pain of death,
for the alleged reason that it was an incentive to licentiousness.
According to Pliny, this last law was by no means a dead letter.
Women were obliged to greet all their male relatives with a kiss
on the mouth, so that it could be told if they had been at the wine
cellar. He quotes the case of one Ignatius Mecenius, who cud-
geled his wife to death for this ofi:ense, about b. c. 700, and was

Delivering Wine. (From a wall paintinfr at Pompeii.)

pardoned by Romulus for the deed ; and he tells of another case,
four hundred years later, where a Roman dame was starved to
death by her relatives for similar reasons.

Later on, when they had conquered most of Italy, wine be-
came more common, and when the Roman arms reached Greece
and Asia Minor the country was flooded with it. We learn from
contemporary writers that manners and customs changed within
one generation. Old Cato used to tell how, at his father's table,
only common Italian wine was served, and. that sparingly, while
the Greek wine was handed round as a great luxury in small
glasses at dessert. And before his death one general, Lucullus,
returning from the East, distributed one hundred thousand gal-
lons of fine Chian wine to the populace.

The later Romans cared more for their wine than for any
other natural or artificial product of land or sea. Pliny mentions
that there were one hundred and ninety-five varieties in general
use, of which about eighty were of fine quality. Common wine
was extraordinarily cheap and abundant, so much so that it was
a jest of the poets that it was less expensive than water. Fine
sweet dessert wines were imported in large quantities from the
Grecian isles, Chios, Samos, Lesbos, Mitylene, and the rest. And

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL. 241

the famous Italian vintages, the strong, fiery Falernian, the rich
Massic, the sweet Alban, the Csecuhan, Setine, Pucine, and others,
sung by Horace and Virgil and Lucretius, held the palm over
all their rivals, and in many respects must have compared favor-
ably with those of the present day.

But most of them would have been spoiled for our tastes by
the curious substances which were added to them, for flavoring or
as preservatives. For instance, both in Greece and Rome it was
a quite common practice to mix honey, and also various spices,
myrrh and aloes and cloves. A more surprising admixture was
that of salt water, which, in small quantities, one to fifty or so,
was believed to greatly improve the flavor of fine wines. Indeed,
most careful directions are given by the old writers about the
quality of this salt water. It must be drawn from the ocean,
some three miles from shore, on a calm day, when the sea was at
rest. Another, and to us barbarous, habit was that of adding
resin or pitch or turpentine, either directly to the wine, or by
smearing the wine vessels before filling them. This is done in
Greece up to the present day, and the modern traveler is asked in
the taverns whether he wishes " foreign wine " or " resined wine " —

oivos e^oTiKOS or otvos peo-tvi^Tiys.

In one respect they were fully our equals. They appreciated
the value of age. We still, some of us, have our wine cellars,
and " lay down " our wines for aging. We smack our lips over
a glass of Chateau La Rose of '70, and think it old ; while " Stuy-
vesant " or " Monticello " Madeira, from the beginning of the
century, is doled out, on rare festal occasions, a few drops at a
time, like a precious elixir.

But in Csesar's day we hear of Hortensius, a well-known
orator, leaving his heir ten thousand casks of good Greek wine in
the cellar of his country house. Plump little Horace, always re-
ferring to his poverty, can still write to a friend and ask him to
visit him at his humble cottage, and take a glass of Falernian
laid down " Consule Planco," some thirty years ago. His patron
Maecenas used to give him wine — Mar si memorem duelli — that
remembered the Marsian war, seventy or eighty years before.
And we learn from Pliny that, in his day, there was still in ex-
istence some of a famous " cru " of wine, made in the consulship
of Opimius, some two hundred years before. This wine, we read,
was only used for flavoring other varieties. It was thick, so that
it had to be dug out with a spoon, and dissolved in water, and
strained before using it, and when the cover was taken off the
jar it emitted a delightful, powerful fragrance which filled the
whole room.

From the fall of the republic on, intemperance and licentious-
ness increased in Rome with rapid strides. Nothing more was

VOL. LI. — 19

242 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

heard of the old laws ; the women drank just as heavily as the
men. All the writers — Pliny, Juvenal, Seneca, Tacitus, Athenajus,
and many more — are full of bitter complaints against the prevail-
ing habits. No order, no decency, was observed at their feasts.
They rapidly became regular drinking bouts, where not only host
and guests, but even the freedmen and slaves, drank themselves
to unconsciousness.

Prizes were commonly offered, at these, to the heaviest
drinkers, and it was customary to use drugs to increase the
normal capacity for liquor. A separate chamber adjoining the
dining room bore the suggestive name of vomitorium. The
emperors themselves did not disdain to encourage these orgies.
Under Claudius a certain Caius Piso was promoted at court for
drinking consecutively for two days and nights. One man,
Torquatus, was actually knighted under the name of Tricongius,
or " Three-gallon Man," for taking that quantum of wine, so it
was said, at a single draught. The populace, the home army, and
the court were all equally intemperate ; and it is no wonder that,
when once the outer defenses of the empire were broken through,
the rest collapsed and fell to pieces before the onslaughts of the
hardier, even if no less intemperate, Northern races.

THE PUBLIC AND ITS PUBLIC LIBRARY.

Bt JOHN COTTON DANA.

THE opponents of the system of free, tax-supported public
schools never have been answered. That they are wrong in
their position is not proved, as so many seem to think, by a sim-
ple reference to the great growth and seeming success of the free
public- school system and its attendant free public library system
in this country. An institution may thrive, may apparently ful-
fill the purpose for which it was designed, and may at the same
time be working great harm to the people who have adopted it
and maintain it and trust in it — a harm which may become appar-
ent only after a long series of years, and apparent at first, even
then, only to the most careful observer. It is a familiar fact that
a great change in governmental policy may not produce its full
effect for many decades. We are still in the dark as to what will
be the final outcome, and especially the final effect on character,
of the free public educational system.

The individualist opponent of that system says that the indi-
vidual is the important thing. He contends that the individual
is happiest when he has the maximum of freedom ; that he best
develops when he most fully reaps the rewards of his own exer-

THE PUBLIC AND ITS PUBLIC LIBRARY. 243

tions and his own self-denials, and most fully receives tlie punish-
ment of his own indolence and his own prodigality — of his own
failure to adjust himself to men and things about him. The mass,
he says, may restrain the individual who would make an attack
on others ; it may refuse to affiliate with the individual who does
not do those things which it thinks he should do. For the mass
to do more than this, he says, is so to restrict individual activity
and to prevent the play of natural forces as to make impossible
the development of the only kind of individuals that can form
the ideal society.

This is stating it crudely. It at least suggests, however, that
the advocate of liberty has on his side some of the arguments
gained from the study of biology and of history. The former
seems to tell us that the fittest have survived in open fight — that
only by this open fight do those more fit appear ; the latter seems
to tell us that the better government governs the least ; that the
only wise thing the ruler, whether king or majority, can do for
the social organism is to let it alone.

If it is of doubtful expediency, then, for the sovereign majority
to take from the individual by force the means wherewith to
maintain a library for the pleasure and edification of all, it is the
part of wisdom to see that that library is made, as far as may be,
the sure antidote to the possible bane of its origin. It must
teach freedom, by its contents and by its administration. It
must cultivate the individual. It must add to the joy of life.
Always it must truly educate.

It is in the light of the preceding, perhaps rather doctrinaire,
remarks that the following notes have been written and should
be read.

The public owns its public library. This fact sheds much
light on the question of public library management. It means
that the public library must be fitted to public needs. It must
suit its community. It must do the maximum of work at the
minimum of expense. It must be an economical educational
machine. It must give pleasure, for only where pleasure is is
any profit taken. It must change in its manner of administration
with the new time, the new relations of books to men and of men
to books. It need not altogether forget the bookworm or the
belated historian, and it can take note here and there of the lover
of the dodos and the freaks among printed things. But its prime
purpose is to place the right books in the proper hands, to get
more joyful and wise thoughts into the minds of its owners. The
means of its support are taken by force from the pockets of the
competent and provident ; this fact should never be lost sight of.
It lives in a measure by the sword. It can justify itself in this
manner of securing its support only by putting into practice the

244 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

familiar theory tliat the state, would it insure its own continn-
ance, must see that all its citizens have access to the stores, in
books, of knowledge and wisdom. It must be open to its public ;
it must invite its public ; it must attract its public ; it must please
its public — all to the end that it may educate its public.

The old-time library was simply a storehouse of treasures.
There were few to read books ; there were few books to be read,
and those few were procured at great cost of labor and time.
They could be replaced when lost or stolen only with great diffi-
culty, if at all, and they were guarded with exceeding care. With
the cheapening of book-producing processes the reasons for this
extreme safe-guarding of books disappeared. Its spirit, however,
is still active. Several causes have combined to keep it alive.
Even to this day there are a few books, relatively very few, which
are of great value and can be replaced only with extreme difficulty
or at great expense. There are also books — first editions, fine
bindings, last surviving copies, and early specimens of printing —
which are rightly much prized by the artist, the antiquarian, the
curio hunter, or the historian of handicraft. These are all most
properly regarded as treasures, and are kept under lock and key.
But the fact that there are a few books which should be carefully
preserved from loss or injury is not sufficient cause for keeping
up in these days a barrier between the public and its library. Set
aside these greatly valued books and the few works highly prized
for certain special reasons which the average library contains,
and there is left the great body of modern books, not expensive,
easily replaced, and of far more importance to ninety-nine in a
hundred of any public library's constituents than all the book
curios the world contains. In any save the very richest and
largest libraries in this country the books which can not be dupli-
cated at a reasonable cost have no proper place. It is with the
modern, inexpensive works that the public library chiefly con-
cerns itself. Its art publications and its rarities of every kind
can easily be disposed of in safety vaults or private rooms. Its
more valuable works of reference can be guarded from any prob-
able mutilation by a little special service. Its main collection,
sixty to eighty per cent of the average library, is what the public
wishes to use. These form any library's real tools in its avowed
purpose of aiding in the education of the community in which it
is placed.

The readers of books, moreover, are no longer few but many,
and have greatly changed their manner of looking at books and
the guardianship of them in the past hundred years. The tax-
paying citizen to-day has his own daily or weekly paper, if nothing
more, and knows well that a printed page is no longer a sacred or
an expensive thing. He walks up to the shelves of the bookstore

THE PUBLIC AND ITS PUBLIC LIBRARY. 245

or to the counter of the news stand and selects his own reading,
Tinder his own rules, in accordance with his own opinion of his
needs, and after an actual inspection of what the shelves can
afford him. He has learned, or is fast learning, that public
library treasures are in the main treasures no longer ; that the
only rational selection of reading is one made after the examina-
tion of many books ; and he is beginning to demand that he be
permitted to come in immediate contact with the volumes he is
invited to read. The public library, whether it be a library which
the people are taxed to maintain or a library which belongs to them
by gift, must, so the demand goes, be managed with as much con-
sideration for its patrons and with as much appearance of faith
in their honesty as the ready-made-clothing house or the book-
store. This demand is seconded by the new view of the functions
of a public library ; it is, in fact, a part of this new view. The
library is no longer looked upon as a storehouse of learning, to be
used by the few already learned ; it is thought of as a factor in
the growth of the community in wisdom, in social efficiency, and
a factor therein second only to the public schools, if second even
to them. It is accordingly widening its business of book distrib-
uting by the addition of the powers possible to it as a laboratory
of general learning. Of books it is as true as of the materials of
chemistry, botany, or biology — and even the non-literary, wayfar-
ing man begins to see this — that only by working among them
and with them can one get out of them their real worth. The
public to-day, in a word, sees the importance — the absolute neces-
sity, in fact — of the laboratory method in that study of books
which underlies, or at least accompanies, the study of all other
things.

In its attractiveness to the would-be student, not to mention
the desultory reader, the library whose resources are open for
examination and selection is far superior to the one which keeps
its patrons on the outside of the delivery counter. The book
buyer finds delight in a personal inspection of the volumes he
would select from. It is by the unrestrained browsing through
a score of inviting volumes that the student, whether beginner or
expert, finds at last the one which meets his case. To all who are
drawn, whether in ignorant questioning or in enlightened zeal, to
visit a collection of books, the touch of the books themselves, the
joy of their immediate presence, is an inspiring thing. Those
who have had experience of both methods testify that the open
library gives more pleasure, encourages reading of a higher
grade, and attracts more readers than the library which is closed
to the public.

The cheapness of books ; the growth of the public's feeling of
ownership in its library, and of the propriety of laying hands on

246 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

its own ; a recognition of the great educational value of the labo-
ratory method in library administration ; and the widening of its
field of work which a library gains by the added attractions of
free access to its shelves — these considerations, save in certain
peculiar cases, seem to decide the question of the proper policy of
the public library toward its public. That more communities do
not now demand the adoption of the system of open shelves in
their public libraries is due largely to the conservatism of library
boards, and to an unreasoning submission to authority on the
part of the reading public. Even the enlightened are slow to ask
for a right before they have exercised it and experienced its ad-
vantages.

These statements of proper library methods will seem to the
reader who is not familiar with public library methods as they
are, simple, commonplace, and self-evident. He may well wonder
why one takes the trouble to repeat them in print. By way of
justification it should be said that the manner of conducting a
public library now in almost universal use in this country is this :
Between the books and the would-be users of them is placed an
insurmountable barrier. At this barrier stand librarian and at-
tendants. The reader or student flounders about in a list of the
library's books until he arrives at a guess — it is often not more
than a guess — at the titles of the books he wishes. A list of these
books he hands over the barrier to the attendant, and of them the
attendant brings him the first one that happens to be in. Perhaps
he wishes to make a study of some subject. Generally, in such a
case, he must make out a list from a brief catalogue of the books
which he thinks may help him, and of the titles of articles which
he surmises will be useful in files of periodicals or proceedings.
This list, handed to the attendant, brings him some of the things
called for. Half of them are probably not what he expected, and
he must try again. Always between him and the sources of in-
formation the personality of librarian or attendant obtrudes itself.
His wants must trickle over a library counter, and then must fil-
ter through the mind of a custodian who is perhaps not very intel-
ligent and is probably not very sympathetic, before they can be
satisfied by contact with the books themselves. In a good many
libraries a few reference books are placed where any one can
reach them. But this is in most cases the limit of the concession,
made to the demand for immediate contact with the library's re-
sources. The new library in Boston has stored the most of its
popular books, the books which the majority of its patrons most
call for, in a dark warehouse, lighted only by artificial light, and
reached, as far as the borrower is concerned, only by mechanical
contrivances which compel a wait of nearly ten minutes for every
book called for. The borrower can not see the books ; he can not

THE PUBLIC AND ITS PUBLIC LIBRARY. 247

even see the person who does see them. He must depend on lists,
telephones, pneumatic tubes, and traveling baskets — and this in
the most expensive and most extensive and most lauded library
in the United States to-day.

What, now, the open- shelf method of administration being de-
cided upon, should be the character of the building in which the
public library is housed ? The storehouse idea must be discarded
at once. What is wanted is a workshop, a place for readers and
students, not a safety- deposit building. The men and women who
visit the library and use it — their convenience and comfort must
be first consulted ; how the books are to be stored is another and
a secondary question. Nor can the monumental idea be for a mo-
ment maintained. The library, if it is to be a modern, effective,
working institution, can not forego the demands of its daily ten-
ants for light, room, and air, and submit to the limitations set by
calls for architectural effects, for imposing halls, charming vistas,
and opportunities for decoration. The workshop, the factory, the
office building, the modern business structure of almost any kind,
these, rather than the palace, the temple, the cathedral, the memo-
rial hall, or the mortuary pile, however grand, supply the exam-
ples in general accordance with which the modern book labora-
tory should be constructed. It is a place, is this book laboratory,
in which each day hundreds and thousands of visitors must, for
ten minutes or as many hours, use their eyes in reading type of
all degrees of excellence and badness. First, then, every sacrifice
must be made to secure all possible daylight in every corner. It
is a place, again, in which many of the daily visitors will wish to
go, at the same time, to the same shelves, the same cases, the same
alcoves, or the same rooms, and the same desks and tables. Space
— well-lighted, well- ventilated floor space — then, should be given
to the public with the utmost prodigality. There is no room left,
unless economy in construction and administration be entirely
disregarded for architectural display, except as it is the natural
outcome of plans based primarily on utility.

The power of a library lies first in its books. Up to a certain
variable limit, varying with their character and with the time and
the place, quantity of books is of first importance. As the library
supported by compulsory taxation is justified only as it serves to
make the ignorant citizen wise and the wise citizen wiser still, its
first care should be for its supply of tools — its implements for
cultivating wisdom — its books. The library building, as of the
second and not of the first importance, should therefore be eco-
nomical in its construction. It need not be, it should not be,
penurious in its appearance. To a limited extent it may speak to
the passer-by of the generosity of the community, of the respect
in which its builders hold the business of education. But if solid

248 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and plain and manifestly adapted to the purpose for -whicli it is
designed, it can not well escape the attributes of dignity, and,
to the reasoning observer, of beauty. The magnificent pile, to
■which architect and trustee can point the casual passer-by with
pride, which may awe the taxpayer into forgetfulness of the con-
tractor's bills, this has no excuse. It comes, and it promises to
come often ; but it is permitted by the populace in momentary
forgetfulness of the public library's excuse and function, not in
reasoned belief in the utility of bibliothecal palaces.

The free public library building, large or small — and of the
college, university, or reference library the same may be said — so
constructed as to serve thoroughly well the purposes for which
it is intended, exists in theory only. It may be possible to find in
this country a few small libraries in which an honest attempt
has been made, with moderate success, to grapple with the libra-
ry building problem. In the vast majority of cases such light
as experience in library administration is able to throw on the
question of the proper internal arrangement of a library build-
ing— the proper distribution of expenditure in securing room,
light, ventilation, and workableness — has been simply ignored.
Arguments drawn from utility, from comfort of readers and
borrowers, and from economy of administration, have been set
aside. Full rein often, the loose rein always, has been given to
trustees' and architects' desires for architectural effect. This is
the more strange because certain principles of library construc-
tion are well understood and are no longer matters for debate.

Convenient, economical, effective administration of a library
calls for greater ease of access and facility of communication in the
building used than does any other form of business, be it indus-
trial, commercial, official, administrative, or religious. And this
need for ease and speed in intercommunication increases rather
than diminishes with the increase in the size of the library, and in
the number of its patrons. Illustrations of how this general prin-
ciple of library construction has been ignored may be easily found.
To note the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Boston Public
Library is here sufficient. Compare the accommodation possible
for the busy and impatient patron — and the busy and impatient
patron is one of the patrons the modern library should especially
strive to serve — in these ill-adapted structures with that possible,
with a few quite minor changes, in the modern tall office building,
and the point is made clear at once. The whole monumental style
of library architecture is almost of necessity the greatest of handi-
caps on library administration. It may be said, of course, that
it is sometimes advisable to erect first a noble monument, then
to make out of it as good a library as its monumental character
permits. Granted. But it should be thoroughly understood.

THE PUBLIC AND ITS PUBLIC LIBRARY. 249

when such a building is up for consideration, that it is a monu-
ment, not a library. When our architects have fully seized the
modern situation in its demands and its materials ; when the
spirit which put up the lying exteriors of the Chicago World's
Fair buildings, and thereby delayed our architectural emancipa-
tion by many a long day, has begun to die out, it may be pos-
sible to erect a thoroughly useful and entirely workable building
which shall be in every part a library and also an artistic monu-
ment.

The point in the free public library to which the public comes
in the largest numbers is the delivery counter. The public side
of this delivery counter should be a room easy of access from the
street, with cloak and toilet rooms near its entrance ; well lighted,
that catalogues and lists may be easily consulted, and that the
work of the assistants may be done in the main without artificial
light; large enough to accommodate comfortably the greatest
crowd the library expects ever to attract ; and so closed in that
the talk and movement which necessarily accompany intercourse
between visitors and the library staff will not disturb workers or
readers in other parts of the library. A corner of this room, easy
of access from the counter, should be devoted to the information
desk, at which the stranger or the student will get prompt and
courteous and full replies to all questions in regard to the library's
methods and resources, and suggestions in regard to books or
departments to be consulted on any specific topic. Near this in-
formation desk should be the desk at which borrowers' or mem-
bers' cards, permits, etc., are issued. In the delivery room, or in
a room opening from it, should be the catalogue resources of the
library. The delivery counter should be so constructed as to
serve as an aid in the transaction of business — as a means of com-
munication, not as a barrier — between the assistants and the public.
Near to it and easy of access should be the books of the lending
department ; nearest to it, those most used. If for good reason it is
found necessary to forbid the public access to any part of the lend-
ing department, it may prove advisable to place such part at some
distance from the delivery counter, and to move the books to and
fro by means of lifts, belts, or like devices. But any plan by
which the attendant, to whom a request for certain books is made,
is prevented from easy access to them, stands in the way of the
library's educational work, especially where the would-be bor-
rower is himself denied the opportunity to see for himself, in any
department, the books he would select from. If a book asked for
is not in, another of equal or greater value on the same subject
may be in. The borrower, denied access to the shelves, should at
least have, if he wishes it, the benefit of the attendant's knowl-
edge of this fact. A delivery service made up largely of mechan-

250 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ical contrivances may easily put into the hands of the public
several thousand books in a day. It may serve a good purpose iu
so doing. It may find its proper field in performing part of the
book-lending work in any large library. But it certainly can not
compete, from an educational point of view, with a service in
which the attendant puts himself for the moment in the inquirer's
place, and himself goes to the shelves with an intelligent interest
in the inquirer's wants.

Near the counter should be the catalogue room ; and the pri-
vate official catalogue of the library should be open to the public,
if possible. Such an arrangement saves much costly duplication.
It is also desirable to have the information about the library's
books which is stored up in the catalogue room made available
for the public at short notice.

Near the delivery room and not far from the main book room
should be a special room for children, in which may be kept all
juvenile literature, so arranged that the children may make their
own choice from the shelves. This will prove a strong attraction
to the young people, will increase their use of books of the better
class, will free other parts of the library from the disturbance
children necessarily entail, and will save time and labor at the
delivery counter.

The room for reference work, if the whole library is not
thrown open for this purpose, must be not far from the main
book room, must be near the catalogue, and should be near the
delivery counter. It should be so planned that those who come
to the library simply for a book, or to ask a question, or on sight-
seeing, will not be compelled to pass through it.

The retiring rooms and lunch rooms for assistants, the conver-
sation or class rooms for special work, the rooms for rough work
— as mending or binding and the manual part of the preparation
of books for the shelf — the periodical room, and the newspaper
room can all be placed at a distance from the library's real cen-
ter, the delivery counter ; though the last two must be near enough
to the reference room to make it easy for readers in the latter to
consult the current numbers of magazines and journals.

The office of the librarian in charge should be near to the
delivery room, and preferably not far from either catalogue or
reference room.

The books in the public library should be selected with refer-
ence to the people who will use them. The people who make use
of the free public library are, sixty per cent or more of them,
readers of little but the newspapers, the popular magazine, and
novels. The reading room should supply, and generously, the
newspaper and the periodical. The circulating department should
put much thought and much energy into fiction. The fiction

THE PUBLIC AND ITS PUBLIC LIBRARY. 251

shelves, perhaps above all others, should be open to the public.
If they are thus open, the question of how low in the scale of
literature the library must descend in its selection of novels to
attract as many readers as its income will permit it to supply will
almost solve itself. Liberty to go to a collection of novels, em-
bracing the best works of the best writers of all countries ai;d all
ages, will be attraction enough. It will not be necessary to put
on the shelves books of the South worth, the Roe, and the Mary
J. Holmes school to draw to the library the ignorant and inexpe-
rienced. Such readers are wedded to their literary idols, not
because they find them best, but because they know no others.
They will not often take the evidence of expert or of catalogue
that there are other good novels than those of which they have
heard from fellow-readers in their own walk in life. But the
book itself of the unknown writer, placed in easy reach, with
attractive title, cover, and illustrations, will prove irresistible.
Liberty to see, touch, peep into, and taste the new and heretofore
untried will set the known and the unknown on the same plane
in the mind of the inexperienced ; and the unknown, if the better
book and if selected with an eye to the library's constituency, will
gain the day. The horizon of the inexperienced reader will, in
such a library, soon widen. The devotee of mush and slush will,
under her own guidance, following her own sweet will, almost
unconsciously rise to a higher plane. She will be proud to think
that she has found possibilities of pleasure in good authors whom
she herself has had the wit to discover. The fiction list then will
be long, but it will be select. Four to five thousand titles, many
times duplicated, will cover the field.

With the shelves open, with full liberty of choice given, the
obliging attendant will be all the more appreciated. He will
obtrude no opinions and no advice, but will be ready and able to
give both, if asked, or if opportunity offers. He will be supple-
mented with catalogues. And just as the library will make its
fiction department — the department in which it will first reach, by
which perhaps it can alone reach, from sixty to eighty per cent
of its visitors — the most attractive and most carefully adminis-
tered of all, so will it for this department best equip itself with
aids and guides. It will have here catalogues of the most varied
kinds — special lists, descriptive lists, like those of Griswold ; his-
torical lists, like that of the Boston Public Library ; annotated
lists, like that of the San Francisco Public Library ; critical jour-
nals; and books and essays on the novel, its development and
uses. In addition to all these things, it will tell the inquirer in
which novels he can find set forth great historical characters and
the prominent personages of fiction ; in which he will find de-
scriptions of notable scenes and historical events ; in which are

252 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

found rare psychological analyses, striking descriptions that have
become part of the everyday life of the cultivated ; and discus-
sions of social, political, and religious questions; and which
novels will best tell him of life in this city, in that country, on
the sea. In a word, the public's free public library will recog-
nize at last the public's demand for the novel ; will not attempt
to excuse it, to hide it, to make light of it, or to counteract it ;
but will make use of it as an educational force in itself, and as a
point of departure to more serious things. The novel reader is
not a hopeless case. If he be a confirmed novel reader and noth-
ing more, he has at least the reading habit, and in his youth can
in most cases be led from that habit to question and to think.

The reference room of the free public library is in some sort
already here. Not a few libraries recognize the reasonableness
of a demand on the public's part for access to dictionaries, ency-
clopaedias, atlases, gazetteers, and the like. Under the modern
view the whole library becomes, of course, a great reference
room. But the reference department proper, even in the modern
public library, should contain ample accommodations in the way
of desks, tables, writing materials, etc., for the casual inquirer or
the student.

In other departments the wants of the reader, the beginner
in learning, should be first supplied, books for the specialist
being added as rapidly and to as great an extent as actual
demand makes advisable and funds in hand make possible. No
money should be expended on mere literary curios or on histor-
ical knickknacks. The historical society and the antiquarian can
look after these things, and should not have the public purse for
their competitor.

In accordance with the general spirit of the open-shelf method
of administration, great liberality should be shown in the issuing
of library cards. To the library itself for purposes of reference
every one who applies will, of course, be admitted, so he be clean
and reputable in appearance. To become an accredited borrower
of books from the library one should be asked to do no more
than sign some simple form of agreement. This, in addition to
the information which can be obtained from a few questions put
by librarian or assistants, with perhaps a reference to the city
directory, has proved to be enough in actual practice to prevent
the issuing of cards to people who wish them simply to make
way with the library's books. In spite of this fact, the custom
still holds in most libraries of demanding not only the signature
of the person who wishes to become a borrower to an elaborate
contract — this signature to be written at the library itself — but
also the signature of some accredited citizen who agrees to be-
come responsible for the borrower himself. This is entirely

SCIENCE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF EDUCATION. 2^3

unnecessary. The additional clerical work involved in tlie keep-
ing of the two sets of names of borrowers and guarantors of bor-
rowers, together with the labor necessitated by looking them up
in directories and elsewhere, will cost more, save in very excep-
tional cases, than will the books which may be lost through the
adoption of extreme liberality in the issuing of borrowers' cards.
The people's money in this part of its library's administration, as
in every other, should be spent rather in extending and making
more easily accessible to the average citizen the library's re-
sources than in setting barriers of red tape between the books
and the people who own them and wish to use them.

■♦»»•

SCIENCE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF EDUCATION.

By M. p. E. M. BEETHELOT.

THE part performed by science in the general education of the
human mind and the progress of civilization has been often
misconceived by pedagogues, hedged in as they are by the tradi-
tional formulas of classical teaching. I recollect having heard a
conversation some twenty-five years ago between Duruy, then
Minister of Public Instruction, and a general school inspector, in
which Duruy spoke of the importance of the experimental sci-
ences and the necessity of giving them a larger place in the
school course. The inspector, proof against general ideas, and
despising utilitarian results, the importance of which he could
not comprehend, saw nothing in this but a kitchen school, good at
most to teach future dealers in petroleum and coal. It would not
be hard to find similar opinions among some of the blind parti-
sans of classical instruction founded on the study of Greek and
Latin.

Yet, if the material conditions of human life have been
changed — if the accumulation of capital and the increase of the
productive force of man's labor have gradually added to the gen-
eral ease and given workmen a relative independence and rights
which they did not formerly possess, and which are extending
every day for the good of the race — such advance, we should
never cease to recollect, is not due to literary studies or scholastic
or religious or philosophical discussions, but is attributable essen-
tially to the growth of science and to the increase of general
wealth brought about by it.

This immense development of wealth and industry, as well as
the correlative development of the liberal and democratic spirit,
are due, we declare loudly, to the discoveries of modern science.
If the supply of food at the disposal of the human species goes on

2 54 POPULAR^ SCIENCE MONTHLY.

continually increasing, it is not by the effect of logical reasoning
or theological declamation, but by the necessary results of discov-
eries in chemistry, mechanics, and physiology, which have already
transformed agriculture and will transform it still further in a
near future. However slowly peasants may change their tradi-
tional practices, we have taught them how to get from a field in
a given time, with the same amount of labor and expenditure, a
much larger quantity of wheat than the field formerly produced,
and we are, in this matter, still very far from the goal that sci-
ence permits us to set before ourselves. It is in consequence of
the progress of science that everybody, or nearly everybody, in
France now eats the white bread which formerly only richer peo-
ple could get. The number of cattle we raise in our pastures has
increased in no less proportion during the past two centuries, and
always by the application of methods created by science ; and, by
virtue of what those methods have accomplished, animal food has
been made accessible to our workmen and peasants, to whom it
was unknown sixty years ago. By virtue of discoveries in chem-
istry, sugar, a rare and exceptional luxury in the last century, is
now produced in colossal quantities, and has become one of the
usual foods of the people. It would be easy to extend indefinitely
this enumeration of the ameliorations of the conditions of life
achieved through science.

Now all these advances, I repeat, are not due to dialectic or lit-
erary discussions, but to the positive discoveries of the physical,
mathematical, and natural sciences. I do not mean merely prac-
tical discoveries made empirically, but the chief part of this prog-
ress is attributable to the highest theoretical conceptions of the
positive sciences. Thus all the modern industries of metals,
stones, wood, work in materials of every sort, rest upon the gen-
eral discoveries of chemistry and mechanics. So with the im-
mense development of ways of communication, which every one
admires and acknowledges has opened indefinite domains to com-
merce and industry. It has permitted a general distribution of
products and wealth among all civilized peoples, while it has at
the same time tended toward a certain continuity of the ideas
and the intellectual and moral education of the nations. The
last is a capital point, for it is the fundamental characteristic of
science to belong particularly to no sect and no nationality, and
to be the general domain of mankind.

It is important to recollect how this distribution in common
of all the resources of the globe, which has resulted from the
development of the ways of communication, has been realized.
We should never forget that it is through the discoveries of
astronomy that the course of ships across the ocean is directed
with certainty, and that the general plan and detailed map of the

SCIENCE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF EDUCATION. 255

continents and islands can be traced with an exactness hitherto
unknown; that the findings of modern physics have revealed
the theoretical laws of vapors and thermodynamics, which are
applied daily to supplement and multiply man's labor in all in-
dustries ; that the discoveries of chemistry respecting gases, com-
bustion, and the preparation of iron and steel, added to the inven-
tions of rational and applied dynamics, control the fabrication and
operation of our machines, ships, and locomotives. In short, these
marvelous advances have been accomplished through science
alone, and not through a blind empiricism. I will not here dwell
upon the wonderful facilities that have been given to life by such
subtle discoveries of the physics of our time as the electric tele-
graph, the telephone, photography, and electric lighting ; and I
only refer by way of a reminder to the complete modification of
the conditions of war effected through the very recent discoveries
of science concerning explosive matters. I can not, however, pass
in silence over the prolongation of human life, the mean duration
of which has been doubled among civilized peoples during the past
two centuries by the discoveries of physiology, hygiene, and medi-
cine, in which some new advance is marked nearly every day.

All this progress and all this transformation of life have not
been accomplished and will not be continued by chance or acci-
dent, but are the fruits of modern science. And this is why pub-
lic opinion is every day demanding an increasing intervention of
the methods and teaching of science in public instruction. This
participation is, furthermore, not destined to be for the profit of
the community alone, but by a necessary consequence is prima-
rily profitable for individuals to whom, prepared by scientific
instruction in their secondary education, it is all the time opening
new professional careers.

While the necessity of science in secondary education is thus
demonstrated by the most imperative reasons from the material
and social point of view, it must not be supposed that science is
less well adapted to the mental and moral education of the indi-
vidual, and that it can not form minds capable of elevated concep-
tions and develop good citizens.

There are two courses in science corresponding to different
aptitudes, but not contradictory — the mathematical course, deduc-
tive and rational, and the physical and naturalistic direction,
founded on observation and experiment, combined with reason.
Mathematics gives the young man a clear idea of demonstration
and habituates him to form long trains of thought and reasoning
methodically connected and sustained by the final certainty of the
result ; and it has the further advantage, from a purely moral point
of view, of inspiring an absolute and fanatical respect for the
truth. In addition to all this, mathematics, and chiefly algebra and

256 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

infinitesimal analysis, excite to a liigh degree the conception of
the signs and symbols — necessary instruments to extend the power
and reach of the human mind by summarizing an aggregate of
relations in a condensed form and in a kind of mechanical way.
These auxiliaries are of especial value in mathematics, because
they are there adequate to their definitions, a characteristic which
they do not possess to the same degree in the physical and mathe-
matical sciences. There are, in fact, a mass of mental and moral
faculties that can be put in full play only by instruction in math-
ematics ; and they would be made still more available if the teach-
ing was directed so as to leave free play to the personal work of
the student. Mathematics is the indispensable instrument of all
physical research. But the physical sciences introduce new and
most important elements into education. They rest chiefly upon
other methods than mathematics, the teaching of which con-
tributes to the evolution of the child and the manifestation in
him of new faculties no less essential, mentally and morally. I
mean the faculties of observation and experiment, the object of
which is the knowledge of Nature, a thing which, different from
geometry, is not acquired by reasoning. In the physical sciences
we are slaves to a truth which is exterior to us and which we can
not know except by observing it. The teaching of facts is worth
most here, and should be given from the tenderest infancy. On
this side, scientific teaching, and especially natural history, are
necessarj'' from the first years of secondary instruction, and it is a
great mistake, I believe, to postpone it till the later years of study.
Nothing is more suggestive or better fitted to develop the taste for
the knowledge of things and for comparing them than the study
of zoology and botany. Children acquire very early the fancy for
collections, and morphological notions, so useful for the develop-
ment of the arts and sciences, enter their young minds, we might
say, insensibly and without forcing. They acquire at the same
time the general idea of classification, which plays a very impor-
tant part in all human knowledge, and the still more general one
of the harmonious combination of organic systems into living
beings. A delicate aesthetic sentiment thus gently insinuates
itself into their minds.

In order that the elements of the natural sciences may have
their full educational virtue, it is indispensable that they shall
not be presented to children under the form of arid nomencla-
tures, dictated and learned by heart as a kind of task ; a method
very well fitted to give them a disgust for these sciences, which
are, on the other hand, really most interesting and most entertain-
ing. The teaching of natural history should be based on the sight
of the objects themselves.

The teaching of the experimental sciences, such as physics and

SCIENCE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF EDUCATION 257

chemistry, should follow. It can not well be given before the
period of youth, and should be associated with at least an elemen-
tary degree of knowledge of mathematics. Such teaching, prop-
erly presented, is adapted in the highest degree to shaping the in-
telligence and morals of the young man ; because it furnishes him
at once the precise idea of positive truth, that of the fact proved
a posteriori, and the most general notion of natural law, or the
relation between particular facts, which is determined not by rea-
son or dialectics but by observation. Truth thus imposes itself
with the irresistible force of an objective necessity, independently
of our desires and our will. Nothing is better adapted than such
demonstration to give the mind that modesty, seriousness, stead-
fastness, and clearness of convictions which raise it above the
suggestions of vanity or personal interest, and are closely con-
nected with the idea of duty. The habit of reasoning and reflect-
ing on things, inflexible respect for the truth, and the obligation
of always yielding to the necessary laws of the external world,
communicate an indelible stamp to the mind. They accustom it
to respect the laws of society as well as those of Nature, and to
conceive of the rights of another and respect for him as a form,
of one's own duty and of his own personal independence.

Thus science plays a most important part in the mental and
moral education of man. Besides forming useful citizens it
makes men free from the prejudices and superstitions of former
times. It teaches them how to combat the fatal forces of Nature
by labor and will power, resting on the knowledge and direction
of the natural laws, rather than by mystic fancies. Hence science
forms free spirits, energetic and conscientious, more efficaciously
than any literary and rhetorical direction. When scientific edu-
cation shall have produced all its effects, politics too will be trans-
formed, as industry has already deeply been. Both will become,
to use a familiar term, experimental.

Furthermore, and contemporaneously with this recognition of
the laws of phenomena, observation and experiment give power
over Nature. Through this fact, more than any other, youth can
be engaged and drawn by an unconquerable enthusiasm into a
really scientific education. To control physical and moral evil in
industrial as well as economical life, to strive to diminish suf-
fering, poverty, and misery of every kind, and to make the effort
by virtue of the immanent laws of things, was the generous aim
of philosophers of the eighteenth century, and they depended upon
scientific conceptions, as they unceasingly proclaimed, for the at-
tainment of it. The same end should be sought in our new edu-
cation, and thereby science will become fully educational.

Scientific education has therefore its own peculiar virtue, and
it is by a deep misconception of its character and effect that the

TOL. LI. — 20

258 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

assumption has been made of reserving the monopoly of the full
development of the mind for literary instruction. Literary edu-
cation has hitherto found its highest and most efficient formula
in the teaching of the ancient languages. The teaching of the
modern languages is less efficient because modern literary culture
was derived from ancient culture, and is still, in principle at least,
subordinate to it. However brilliant and original our modern
systems may be, they have not produced, in either literature or
the arts, superior models to those of ancient, particularly Greek,
culture. So far, then, as the essential object proposed in secondary
instruction is the formation of cultivated minds, there is no rea-
son for expecting equivalent results from the simple substitution
of the teaching of living for that of the ancient languages. But
a purely literary teaching, even if it preserves its form and inten-
tion, does not adequately meet the needs of modern societies.
Everybody, even the most enthusiastic partisans of literary stud-
ies, demands the addition of a certain amount of scientific teach-
ing as a subordinate affair, comprising at least the elements of
the sciences, to which no cultivated man of our age has a right to
remain a stranger, whatever place he may propose to take in so-
ciety. We may go still further, for it is certain that the formula
of classical literary teaching, even as thus comprehended, is not
adequate to all the careers and fundamental needs of our period.
A very large number of citizens demand another discipline, based
on a more thorough knowledge of the sciences, which have be-
come indispensable for practical life, as well as for the general
direction of society. Human society does not live on art and
literature alone, as it once did ; it now lives more on science and
industry. Hence the necessity for a scientific not less than for a
literary teaching, not only from the practical point of view but
also from that of mental and moral culture, and these should be
given parallel with one another. This scientific teaching should
not be exclusive any more than the literary teaching ; and it
should be complemented by a subordinate literary teaching to
which no cultivated man should be a stranger. The ancient lan-
guages are not indispensable for the realization of this special
kind of literary teaching, because it no longer constitutes the fun-
damental object of the new organism.

Two parallel courses of instruction, endowed with the same
prerogatives — one founded essentially on ancient letters, with the
addition of some scientific culture ; and the other based on sci-
ence, to which some modern literary culture is added — that ap-
pears to me the most desirable formula of our time, and that to
which we are destined to be led by the force of events. — Trans-
lated for the Popular Science Monthly from the author's hook, Sci-
ence et Morale.

SKETCH OF RICHARD OWEN. 259

RICHARD OWEN.*

By President DAVID S. JORDAN.

EIGHTY years ago in America the feeling was becoming gen-
eral that the age of competition was past, and that a new
social and industrial era was about to begin. Benjamin Franklin
held that if every man and every woman should work for three
hours a day at something useful, poverty would be banished, and
each one might spend every afternoon of his days and the whole
afternoon of his life amid the consolations of philosophy, the
charms of literature, or the delights of social intercourse. In
the words of Robert Dale Owen: "Every one looked forward to
the time when riches, because of their superfluity, would cease to
be the end and aim of man's thoughts, plottings, and lifelong
strivings ; when the mere possession of wealth would no longer
confer distinction — any more than does the possession of water —
than which there is no property of greater worth.''

William Maclure, a wise man and a learned geologist in those
days, refused to invest money in the city of Philadelphia, giving
as a reason that " land in cities can no longer rise in value. The
community system must prevail, and in the course of a few years
Philadelphia must be deserted, and those who live long enough
may come back here and see the foxes looking out of the win-
dows."

It is not strange, therefore, that Robert Owen, of Lanark,
fresh from contact with the reforms in the Old World, and full
of projects for the development of the New, found in William
Maclure an ardent disciple and active co-worker.

Owen and Maclure did not overestimate the power of co-opera-
tion in the struggle of humanity with Nature, but they did over-
look the fundamental law of Nature that co-operation means work-
ing together, and equality of reward must imply some degree of
equality of effectiveness. "The fatal error" of the New Har-
mony Community, according to Robert Dale Owen, lay in their
failure to recognize this law. No " industrial experiment," he
continues to say, " can succeed which proposes equal remuneration
to all men, the diligent and the dilatory, the skilled artisan and
the common laborer, the genius and the drudge. . . . Such a plan
of remunerating all alike will ultimately eliminate from a co-
operative association the skilled and industrious members, leav-
ing an ineffective and sluggish residue, in whose hands the ex-
periment will fail, both socially and pecuniarily." In other words,

* So far as I know, Dr. Richard Owen, of New Harmony, was not related to the famous
comparative anatomist in London who bore the same name.

26o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

no comnmnity can succeed in which the drones and the workers
have equal access to the honey cells.

But though the project at New Harmony, judged by the meas-
ure of its founder's purposes, was a failure, still the influence for
good of the men who, as a result of the experiment, became part
of the life of the infant State of Indiana, is incalculable. New
Harmony was located far in the backwoods, in the long- despised
county of Posey, but for a time it was truly the center of Ameri-
can science, and to this day few names in the annals of our
science are brighter than those of Le Sueur, Say, and the Owens.

To gain a just appreciation of the scientific career of Richard
Owen we must consider for a moment the lives of the men of
science whose dreams and projects he shared, and who were the
companions of his youth. It was through the agency of William
Maclure that most of these were drawn to New Harmony. Mac-
lure was a geologist of note and an earnest student of social
science. On leaving Philadelphia he planned to conduct at New
Harmony a school of industry where the arts of the conquest of
Nature should be taught to all. The essence of human progress,
in his thought, was the increase of human knowledge. The
farmer should cease to be a mere tiller of the soil, and should be
trained to make the earth his benefactor. A man is better unborn
than untrained. An unskilled laborer is a deformity, and they
who toil should do so to the best advantage.

William Maclure published fortnightly at New Harmony a
magazine called The Disseminator of Useful Knowledge, contain-
ing Hints to the Youth of the United States, from the School of
Industry. Its motto was, " Ignorance is the frightful cause of
human misery." Its subscription price was one dollar a year in
advance.

This magazine was filled with wise reflections on social and
political matters, having for lighter reading scraps of science and
bits of useful information of every sort.

In the pages of the Disseminator the name of Thomas Say
often appears. Say wrote on the shells of the Wabash. He fol-
lowed Maclure from Philadelphia, and came down from Pittsburg
in a keel boat, along with the notable company famous in the
New Harmony Community as the " boat-load of knowledge."

Thomas Say had been with Long's expedition across the Rocky
Mountains, and had already won fame as a naturalist and traveler.
His papers on shells and insects were widely known. These in-
vestigations he continued at New Harmony. A close and con-
scientious observer, his work bears the stamp of a master mind.
At his death in 1835 it was asserted that " he had done more to
make known the zoology of this country than any other man."
With a touch of his own modesty, one of his friends said that

SKETCH OF RICHARD OWEN. 261

"he will he remembered ever as one who did honor to his country
and enlarged the boundaries of human knowledge." A worthy-
monument stands to his memory over his burial place at New
Harmony.

One of the most attractive of our pioneer naturalists was the
artist, Charles Alexander Le Sueur, who was a native of France,
but had lived for a time in Philadelphia, from which place he
came to New Harmony in the "boat-load of knowledge." But
before leaving France his fame had become widespread. He en-
joyed the friendship and correspondence of Cuvier. He had been
around the world as a naturalist in the celebrated voyage of
Pdron. He was one of the most careful of observers and had
singular skill in drawing and painting animals. The turtles and
fishes were his special subjects of study, and his pictures of them
are among the most lifelike ever published. He had been the
first naturalist to study the fishes of the Great Lakes and the first
to examine the great group of fishes called suckers and buffaloes.
He made large collections of the animals of the Wabash Valley,
which he sent to Cuvier, and which are still preserved in the
museum at Paris. A number of his water- color sketches remain ;
one, a small but very lifelike portrait of the old Governor Francis
Vigo, I have seen in Indianapolis. Le Sueur painted the drop
curtain of the theater at the Community Hall. It represented the
Falls of Niagara, and to heighten the Americanism of the scene
he painted by the side of the Falls that other great wonder of the
New World, the rattlesnake.

When the community disbanded, Le Sueur returned to Phila-
delphia, earning thereafter, it is said, a precarious living by
giving lessons in painting. Afterward he returned to France,
where he became curator of the museum at Havre. Richard
Owen was a great favorite with Le Sueur, and I have already pub-
lished in these pages Owen's account of him and of the days when
as a boy he waded barefooted in the bayous of the Wabash to
gather mussel shells for the naturalist.

Dr. Gerard Troost, a Dutch geologist, was ^Iso a member of
the community, and after leaving it he became State Geologist
of Tennessee. He made a magnificent collection of minerals,
which was purchased, it is said, by a society in Louisville for
thirty thousand dollars.

Dr. Joseph F. Neef, a blunt, plain-spoken, honest man, was the
teacher of New Harmony, and he was a great favorite with his
pupils. He was born in Alsace, and in his early life had been
both priest and soldier. He was a mathematician of great ability.
After leaving the army he became an associate of Pestalozzi in
his school near Yverdun in Switzerland. He was mentioned by
Pestalozzi as an earnest, manly worker who did not disdain to

262 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

occupy himself with the elements of science. Neef left Switzer-
land for Paris to introduce there the system of Pestalozzi. In
Paris he met Maclure, and was induced by him to come to
America. " It is my highest ambition/' said Neef, "to be a coun-
try school teacher amid a hardy, vigorous community." And
this he became in New Harmony.

He was an intimate associate of the Owens. His daughter
Caroline became the wife of David Dale Owen, and Anne the
wife of Richard.

There were besides these, who were a part of the community,
other men of note in science who spent longer or shorter periods
in the community as visitors. Among them was the eccentric,
" mattoed " Rafinesque, whose stay was so short and whose story
80 long that I must pass him by with a word. Sir Charles Lyell
was for a time the guest of the Owens.

Reared among such surroundings, and with such men as
friends and teachers, it is not strange that the sons of Robert
Owen were imbued with a love of Nature, nor that they formed
high ideals of the work they should do in life.

Robert Owen, in accordance with his own theories, gave his
children the. best education which the world could offer, and they
made good use of their opportunities. Robert Dale Owen, the
eldest son, had a strong taste for philosophy and literature, and
was long known as a charming essayist, one of that circle of
writers who gave to the Atlantic Monthly its high literary char-
acter. He too was a part of the " boat-load of knowledge " and
took an active part in the affairs of the community. He be-
came a member of the State Legislature, and exerted a powerful
influence in shaping the school system of Indiana. He must
ever remain one of the prominent figures in the history of the
State.

William Owen, the second son, died early at New Harmony.

David Dale Owen was the third son, and Richard Owen the
youngest of the family. These two were intimately and con-
stantly associated.both in their early education and in their later
work. They were alike in taste and disposition, and, if we can
trust the portraits of David Dale Owen, they were very much
alike in personal appearance. They were born at New Lanark,
in Scotland, David in 1807, Richard in 1810. They studied first
at home under private tutors, and afterward were sent to Hofwyl,
in Switzerland, to the famous school of Emmanuel Fallenberg.
Later they studied chemistry under the famous Dr. Ure in
Glasgow, and in 1827 they came to America together in a sail-
ing vessel, landing at New Orleans. Until 1832, when Richard
Owen was twenty-two years old, he had never been separated
from his brother for a single day.

SKETCH OF RICHARD OWEN. 263

David Dale Owen was especially interested in fossils and min-
erals, and was employed to label and arrange the large collection
of Maclure. A part of the collection became his property, and
formed the nucleus of the famous Owen Museum, containing
some eighty-five thousand specimens. This was purchased by
the University of Indiana for the sum of twenty thousand dol-
lars, but it was in great part lost in the destruction of the mu-
seum building in the disastrous fire of 1883.

David Dale Owen spent most of his life as geologist in the
public service. He was State Geologist of Indiana in 1837. After-
ward he undertook government work in Wisconsin and Iowa.
He spent five years as United States Geologist in field work in
the region beyond the Mississippi. Then in turn he had charge
of the State Surveys in Kentucky, Arkansas, and Indiana. He
was State Geologist of Indiana at the time of his death, in 1860.
His work was admirably and conscientiously performed, and as
first State Geologist of several different States he set a high stand-
ard of public work which few of his successors have been able
to follow. One of the most untiring of workers and most unself-
ish of men, David Dale Owen has left a deep impression on the
history of American geology, and the students in the Geological
Department of the University of Indiana are proud to do their
work in the building named " Owen Hall."

Richard Owen spent much of his early life as a teacher. He
served for a time in the Mexican War, commanding a company
under General Taylor. At the close of the war he became his
brother's chief assistant, and was the first geologist to explore the
northern shore of Lake Superior. For a time he held a professor-
ship in the Western Military Institute in Kentucky, and after-
ward a similar position in a college in Nashville. This position
he resigned to become his brother's successor as State Geologist of
Indiana. While engaged in the survey of the State the civil
war began, and he became lieutenant colonel of the Fifteenth
Indiana regiment, under a commission from Governor Morton.
While in camp he read the proof sheets of his last geological
report. He took part in the battles of Rich Mountain and Green-
briar, and was promoted to the rank of colonel of the Sixtieth
Indiana regiment.

The following facts regarding the war record of Colonel Owen
I quote from an address by Judge R. W. Miers, one of his stu-
dents: "In the winter of 1861-'62 he guarded at Indianapolis four
thousand prisoners captured at Fort Donelson. In the spring of
the following year he was ordered to Kentucky, where his regi-
ment was taken prisoners of war by General Bragg at Mumfords-
ville. Three months later they were exchanged. Although the
regiment was paroled. Dr. Owen was not, nor were his side arms

264 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

taken from him. On the contrary, General Buckner went out
into the field where the regiment was guarded, and thanked
Colonel Owen for his kindness to the four thousand Fort Donel-
son prisoners at Camp Morton. He was treated very politely by
General Bragg, with whom he had become acquainted in the
Mexican War."

Later Owen was in the battle of Arkansas Post, and took part
in the campaigns of Sherman and Grant about Vicksburg. He
was with General Banks in 1863 on the Red River campaign,
and while thus engaged was elected by the trustees of the Uni-
versity of Indiana to the professorship of natural science. He
accepted the position on condition that his place should be tempo-
rarily supplied till the end of the war.

On January 1, 1864, he assumed the duties of his professorship
in the university, which he continued to fill for fifteen years. In
June, 1879, at the age of sixty-nine, he resigned, an increasing
deafness, the result of sunstroke, having made his college duties
burdensome to him. He retired to his estate at New Harmony,
where he lived until March 25, 1890. His death was a tragic one,
caused by accidentally drinking a quantity of arsenical embalm-
ing fluid.

While connected with the university he continued his work
for the United States Geological Survey, exploring New Mexico
and Arizona. During 1869 he traveled widely in Europe and
America.

Of Dr. Owen's work as a teacher I may speak briefly. Under
the present system of elective study he would have been an ideal
teacher, earnest, thorough, and inspiring. Under the old system
his best powers were never called for. He had neither skill nor
taste for the work of drill master. He taught those well who
cared to learn. He believed in large freedom of the student. His
students were on their honor, and those who had no honor abused
their freedom. It was part of the vicious system which prevailed
in our colleges in the last generation that learned men capable of
the highest work, and full of the inspiration which comes from
thorough knowledge, should be compelled to spend their time and
strength in crowding the elements of various subjects upon un-
willing and unresponsive boys. A teacher should have the oppor-
tunity to give the best that is in him, and to give this to those
who are ready and worthy to receive it.

In 1873 Dr. Owen was elected President of Purdue University,
the agricultural and mechanical college of Indiana, established
under the Morrill Act. This position he accepted, but, as after
two years the school still remained unorganized, he never assumed
the duties of the ofiice. He published an interesting report to the
trustees on the proposed method of organization and government

SKETCH OF RICHARD OWEN. 265

of the new School of Agriculture. Its discipline he had planned
to place in the hands of a representative senate of students. The
lower classes were to be divided into sections, each numbering ten
to fifteen, and each section to be under the direct supervision of
some member of the senior class.

Dr. Owen's scientific publications were very numerous. His
favorite subjects were the significance of the contour of continents
and the causes of earthquake action. His mind was especially
attracted to the study of hidden causes in the development of the
earth — that is, to those causes which we have not yet learned to
associate with their effects. This diflBcult line of research involved
a vast amount of reading in every tongue, and the breadth of his
early education made such reading possible. His first important
work, A Key to the Geology of the Globe, was an endeavor to
show that the present features of the earth are all the results of
fixed and demonstrable laws, like those governing the develop-
ment of animals and plants. He believed that the earth was a
great magnet, made so directly or indirectly by the heat of the
sun. As a result of this, he thought that the axis and coast
lines of both continents tend to conform to the axis of the
ecliptic. The angular distance of twenty-three and a half de-
grees, which marks the northward extension of the sun in sum-
mer, he took to be a natural unit of measure in the structure of
the earth.

Whether these relations are real or fanciful I have no means
of knowing. Perhaps in the ultimate progress of science it does
not matter, for many hypotheses must be framed and tested be-
fore we come to the full measure of the laws which regulate the
changes in the earth's crust.

Dr. Owen was a gentle and reverent man, unassuming and un-
selfish in all his relations — a man of perfect courtesy of manners
because of perfect courtesy of thought ; a man whom everybody
loved because his love went out to every one. He was the highest
typve of teacher, of naturalist, of scholar, of soldier even, because
above all his was the highest type of man.*

* The writer once gave a lecture at New Harmony in the old building which had been
the Community Theater. Dr. Owen presided. He was then nearly eighty years of age and
very deaf. He did not hear one word of the lecture, but he had the art of appearing to
hear. To every point the speaker or the audience deemed good he responded with a smile
of appreciation, the expression of perfect courtesy, the courtesy of the " gentleman of the
old school," of which type Dr. Owen was one of the most perfect examples.

266

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

%i^i\ox^s %Mit.

PERNICIOUS LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITY.

THE past winter has probably been
the most remarkable on record
for legislative activity. Although a
considerable number of Legislatures
has not been in session, owing to
the adoption of the biennial system,
those that have been at work appear
to have spared no effort to give evi-
dence of their wisdom and to add
to the enormous volume of statutes
that overwhelm lawyers and judges.
In New York State the phenomenal
record made by the previous Legis-
lature was broken. Over thirty-five
hundred bills were introduced in the
Senate and Assembly, and of these
over a third of them passed both
Houses. Although figures are not at
hand in regard to the activity of
other Legislatures, the newspaper re-
ports of their proceedings leave the
impression that they have not been
less productive.

It is not diflBcult to account for
this remarkable phenomenon. Ever
since the civil war, which gave a
tremendous impetus to legislative
activity both at Washington and at
the capitals of the States, there has
been shown a tendency to rely more
and more upon laws to curb unami-
able traits of human nature and to
improve economic conditions. The
old belief in the potency of Yankee
energy and thrift to overcome the
obstacles of life and of public opinion
to bring wayward people into line
with the best moral thought of the
age has become much weakened.
What has affected it most unfavor-
ably of late is the business paralysis
of the last few years. The result is
that few people entertain the notion
that anything can be done in the di-
rection of either moral or industrial

improvement without the enactment
of some law.

Only a careful inspection of all
the bills introduced and passed would
enable one to make an adequate
analysis of the subjects that have
received legislative attention and
treatment. But the accounts given
of them in the newspapers indicate
clearly enough their general char-
acter and tendency. They show a
growing lack of respect for indi-
vidvxal and corporate freedom and
for the rights of property, especially
the property of rich men. They ap-
pear to be based upon the theory
that progress lies in the direction of
regulating more and more the con-
duct of everybody, and of taking the
money of the people that have it for
the benefit of those less fortunate.
But no argument is needed to show
that this is despotism, although it is
created in the name of the people,
and that it is a reversion to a much
lower state of civilization than the
one to which the American people
are supposed to have reached. Until
this truth is realized, it is probably
too much to expect that there will
be any amendment of this deplorable
evil of over legislation.

The subject that has perhaps re-
ceived the most attention is trusts.
With many legislators it has been a
kind of mania. As a consequence,
a mass of bills has been proposed to
regulate all large combinations of
capital, from railroads and insurance
companies to department stores — a
new object of legislative hostility —
and to increase to the furthest limit
the burden of taxation put upon
them. Although this mania has not
been confined to any particular lo-
cality, Kansas and Oklahoma have

EDITOR'S TABLE.

267

been the worst victims. So unfavor-
able to capital has been some of the
legislation of Oklahoma that the
home offices of insurance and loan
companies outside of the State have
ordered their agents to take no more
business. The possibility of such a
result in New York State had doubt-
less much to do with the modifica-
tion of similar bills at Albany.

Naturally, where there has been
such a shameless disregard of the
rights of corporations, little con-
' sideration has been shown for the
rights of individuals. When a wave
of despotic I'epression passes over a
community it shows no favor ; it
treats all alike. One of the most
characteristic bills of this class is
that compelling school teachers to
contribute a certain percentage of
their salaries to a retirement or pen-
sion fund, to be managed by the
municipalities in which they live.
It is, of course, nothing less than a
step toward the establishment of a
system of civil-service pensions like
the one that now exists in certain
countries in Europe. The legisla-
tion against the wearing of hats by
women in theaters, against playing
football, against the organization of
Greek -letter fraternities in State-
aided institutions, etc., is equally
worthy of the same despotisms.

It would be interesting to speak
more at length of other legislation,
proposed and enacted, such as the
prohibition of gold contracts, the is-
sue of scrip as money by State and
county governments, the payment
of bounties on agricultural products,
and the exemption from taxation of
certain manufacturing industries.
Measures of this kind are sufficient-
ly significant to merit special com-
ment; they illustrate in a striking
manner the growing tendency to in-
terfere with private rights and to
plunder one class for the benefit of
another. Equally significant also is

the New York State lav? to pay to
every indigent family a certain sum
for the care of each child; it is a
practice that can not fail to revive
in this country all the shocking so-
cial and economic evils of the old
English poor law. Finally, it would
be interesting to dwell upon the vi-
cious assaults that have been made
in New York, Illinois, and elsewhere
upon civil -service reform; they in-
dicate the same decadence in public
opinion as to the requirements of good
government that may be observed in
the renewal of archaic legislation in
the field of morals and economics.

But it is only possible to call spe-
cial attention to the efforts made very
generally to provide money to meet
the alarming increase of expenditures
that has followed the large addition
to the duties of the State. Desperate-
ly pressed to discover new sources of
income, legislators have resorted to
many novel and extraordinary ex-
pedients. Of these the most iniqui-
tous is the graduated inheritance tax
enacted in New York and proposed
in other States. Not only does it
violate the fundamental principles
of taxation, namely, uniformity and
equity, but it is likely to serve, like
all iniquitous legislation, as a pre-
cedent to violate still further the
rights of individuals and of property.

THE POSTAL UNION CONGRESS.

The city of Washington is at this
moment the seat of a congress strik-
ingly different in character from
the Congress which we are accus-
tomed to associate with the national
capital. It is a congress of men
chosen for their competence to deal
with a particular subject. It meets
for a business purpose. It will at-
tend to that business. It will attack
difficult work and keep at it till it
is done. It will not be the scene of
vain eloquence, nor yet of party

268

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

maneuvers, and will know nothing
of log-rolling for appropriations.
When its labors are concluded the
result will be recognizable in rules
established, disputed questions set-
tled, methods of procedure im-
proved, distinct advantages gained
for the whole civilized world. It
will afford an example, as previous
congresses of similar nature have
already done, of what can be accom-
plished by the mutual counsel and
concerted efforts of a body of men
chosen expressly for their recog-
nized fitness to deal with the inter-
ests committed to their charge. If
it does not teach a lesson as to the
improvement which might be effect-
ed in legislative bodies could their
members also be chosen on grounds
of fitness and competency for the
work of legislation, it will not be
because the lesson is not sufficiently
on the surface.

The congress referred to, as our
headline shows, is that of the Uni-
versal Postal Union. The formation
of the Postal Union may be regarded
as marking the transition from a
period of semibarbarism in postal
matters— that is to say, from an inter-
national point of view — to a period
of civilization. Prior to 1874 each
nation followed its own devices so
far as postal arrangements were con-
cerned. There was no attempt at
uniformity of postage rates or regu-
lations, and all international rela-
tions were complicated in the highest
degree. The postage charges to no
two countries were the same; or, if
they were the same, it was by acci-
dent. There was no accident, how-
ever, about their being high. It had
not occurred to anybody as yet that
there could be such a thing as cheap
international postage. It seemed to
be an accepted axiom that, if corre-
spondence was carried on across a
frontier, it must be made an expen-
sive affair.

A far-sighted German, however,
the late Herr von Stephan, of Berlin,
conceived the idea of introducing
order into this postal chaos. He did
not see why, if uniform rates could
obtain through the extensive terri-
tories of a single state, uniform rates
might not also be established over
the civilized globe. He saw no sense
in international frontiers in postal
matters. A letter, he held, should be
free to go whithersoever its sender
willed, at the lowest charge compati-
ble with reimbursement of the ex-
pense of conveyance. And as, in
the main, the correspondence which
each country would send to any oth-
er country would be about equal to
what it would receive therefrom, he
saw Jio necessity for international
accounts. The result of the commu-
nication of these ideas to a number of
the leading postal administrations of
the world was the summoning in the
year 1873 of the Berne Conference.
The result of the conference was
the establishment of the Postal
Treaty of Berne, to which the lead-
ing nations of the world were signa-
tories. That treaty established a uni-
form international rate of five cents
for a half-ounce (fifeen gramme)
letter, with a provisional permission
to levy a surcharge up to five cents
more on correspondence addressed
to very distant countries, and subject
therefore to specially heavy " tran-
sit" rates. International accounts
were in the main abolished. There
were still, however, complications,
arising from the fact that a great
many countries were yet outside the
Union, and that accounts had there-
fore to be maintained with these, and
certain debits and credits in connec-
tion with their correspondence to be
passed on to other countries.

As time went on, however, things
simplified themselves gradually.
One by one the outlying countries
fell in ; and at the present time there

EDITOR'S TABLE.

269

is no government on the face of the
earth deserving the name of civilized
that has not adhered to what is justly
styled the " Universal Postal Union."
Nearly all countries have voluntari-
ly abandoned their privilege of sur-
charging letters for remote destina-
tions; so that, broadly speaking, the
whole world may be described as one
postal territory, while a five-cent
stamp is the talisman that will se-
cure for a letter conveyance, from
any point where it can be posted, to
any other at which it can be deliv-
ered by postal agency. For that
very low payment it may go half
round the globe; and if the person
addressed is not there, it may com--
plete the circle in order to find him.
The great empire of China is prepar-
ing to fall in with the scheme, and
has already adopted it to a consider-
able extent. Japan became a full
member of the union many years ago.
The task, therefore, of the postal
unification of the globe may be said
to be all but accomplished. One or
two difficulties in the working of the
system remain to be smoothed away,
and these are engaging the attention
of the present congress. The most
important question is that relating to
"transit" postage. Some countries
are so situated geographically that
they are required to handle far more
coi'respondeuce for other countries
" in transit " than those countries
have any opportunity of handling for
them, while the situation of others,
again, is the exact reverse. France,
Italy, and Belgium are countries of
the first class, a vast volume of coi--
respondence for the continent of Eu-
rope passing through France and
Belgium, and most of the correspond-
ence of Europe with the East passing
through Italy. Great Britain is an
example on the other side, the postal
business it does with foreign nations
far exceeding the use made of its
territory by mails in transit. The

consequence is 'that every year in the
settlement of claims and counter
claims Great Britain has to pay out
nearly half a million dollars more
than she takes in.

Heretofore these claims and coun-
ter claims have been established by
means of statistics taken periodically,
and the question now before the con-
gress is. Can these statistics, which
entail a vast amount of labor, and
more or less impede the postal serv-
ice while they are in progress, be got
rid of altogether ? The German post
office has a scheme by which this
object can be accomplished. The
plan is briefly this: As the taking of
the statistics costs a great deal of la-
bor, which, of course, means money,
it is proposed that countries having
a less claim in the general clearing
than ten thousand dollars a year
should forego it altogether in con-
sideration of getting rid of trouble
and expense to that (supposed)
amount, and that the same amount
should be deducted from all claims
exceeding ten thousand dollars. It
is estimated that the making of these
deductions would decrease the total
amount to be paid by the debtor
countries by twenty-five per cent;
and, taking the latest statistics as a
basis, it is proj^osed simply to assess
each debtor country accordingly,
and pay over to each creditor coun-
try the amount to which it is enti-
tled. If this scheme commends itself
to the congress, the international
postal system will have reached
nearly the acme of simplicity, all
postage accounts, between the differ-
ent countries having been swept
away into the limbo of the obsolete
and the useless.

To how great an extent such an
organization as the Universal Postal
Union makes for civilization and for
international unity it is needless to
point out. It is one phase of the fed-
eration of mankind, and gives ground

270

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to hope that other steps in the moral
unification of the race will follow.
It is satisfactory to think that it is to
a large extent the result of individual
effort. The different governments
of the world have been rather passive
than active in the matter. They
have had the grace— and they de-
serve credit for it— to let the best
heads in their several services co-
operate in developing this great
scheme, which deserves to be regard-
ed as one of the most definitive steps
in advance that civilization has ever
taken. When the proposition was
first made it was not looked upon with
great favor in more than one high
quarter, but, as it did not involve
much expenditure of money, no seri-
ous obstacles were thrown in the way.
The thinkei's who had it in hand soon
showed what could be made of it,
and to-day the world is reaping the
benefit of their labors and their sa-

gacity. As we began by saying, the
congress of this world-wide union
is a congress of the competent— let
us add of the responsible. As it hap-
pens, these are precisely the two ad-
jectives that are least ai^plicable, gen-
erally speaking, to the members of
political assembles elected by popu-
lar vote. As to competence, there is
no need to discuss the matter ; as to
responsibility, it means nothing in
political circles save liability to cen-
sure and rejection on the next occa-
sion, if the representative has not
pushed local interests with sufficient
vigor and sufficient disregard of
wider considei'ations. It would be
vain to look for any sudden change
in the working of democratic insti-
tutions; and yet an object lesson like
that afforded by the Congress of the
Universal Postal Union is one that
should not be wholly lost on reason-
able men.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

Those interested to learn of their paleolithic and neolithic ancestors
will find an interesting account of their conditioning in Prehistoric Man
and Beast.* Although embodying the results of recent geologic and ar-
chaeologic research, the book is not at all technical, but adapted to the pop-
ular reader. If he knows anything of scientific theory, he may be aroused
by the epithets applied to the cherished hypotheses of some writers. The
great ice sheet is called " a myth," the polar ice cap " a monstrous fiction,"
and the astronomical theory of an ice age receives no milder treatment in
the chapter devoted to the discussion of the subject. But, having dealt
as an iconoclast with these favored cults, the author writes of the lore of
fairyland in an opposite fashion. Fairies are not legendary beings, but real
folk, whom scientific people "may no longer dare to despise." The small,
tricky natives of an island off the Schleswig coast were called Pucks, and
even mermen and mermaids had their prototypes in a Finnish people who
dressed in sealskins and were taken by the Shetlanders to be half human.

The record of primeval man is not found in documents produced by
impressionable minds, but is registered in the river gravels, cliff caverns.

* Prehistoric Man and Beast.
Co. Pp. 298, 8vo. Price, 83.00.

By Kev. H. N. Uutchineon, F. G. S. New York : D. Appleton &

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 271

kitchen middens, and long barrows. In these ancient dwelling places the
weapons, utensils, ornaments, burial and hearth stones testify unerringly
as to his mode of life. The degree of skill attained in his handiwork serves
as a basis to differentiate the earlier races from those of later times. Men
of the older stone age fashioned their weapons and tools in the rudest man-
ner from rocks, merely chipping the edges. In the succeeding period, the
neolithic, they had learned how to finish them by grinding; while in the
bronze and iron ages they discovered the use of metals. It is somewhat
remarkable that while it is a disputed point as to whether paleolithic man
possessed a bow, it should be a well-attested fact that his wife used bone
needles and knew how to sew.

These authentic sources of knowledge concerning our early ancestors
are not the only data to be studied. Primitive races exist whose habits
indicate what prehistoric man may have been like, and the author pleads,
" It is sincerely to be hoped they will not be improved off the face of the
earth before we have learned all that they can teach us about the past."

Nothing definite is known concerning the place of man's first appear-
ance on the earth, but probably the northern hemisphere of the Old World
can claim the honor. This may have occurred fifteen or twenty thousand
years ago, but the allowance of eighty thousand odd years is deemed an
unwari'antable waste of time. The volume contains ten full-page illustra-
tions based upon such details as the researches have furnished. Primeval
man, however, is reconstructed without a skull as a model for his features.
This feat must have tested the creative power of the artist, but we are as-
sured that even this has been done acceptably to the archaeologists, and we
can not demur if it does not coincide with our ideal.

About one fifth of Macleod's History of Economics is really history.*
The rest is exposition of basal principles. Macleod declares that economics
should and can be as exact as physical science, and he is putting forth vig-
orous efforts toward making it so. He says that most of the modern econ-
omists' work up to this time has been destructive, but that constructive
labors are now urgently demanded and that the ground has been fully
cleared for them. His present work opens with an essay on the method of
investigation proper to economics. He gives much credit to Bacon for
enunciating the principle that physical inductive science must precede and
guide moral inductive science and protests against Mill's declaration that
induction should not be taken as the method of political economy. Hav-
ing placed economics among the inductive sciences, our author proceeds to
lay down some general principles of reasoning which this position makes
fitting for it. " The fundamental concepts and axioms of every science,"
he says, " must be perfectly general," and " no general concept and no gen-
eral axiom must contain any term involving more than one fundamental
idea." The clarifying of fundamental concepts, in fact, is the chief object
of this treatise. The historical portion comes next. He rejects the insular
idea that political economy began with Adam Smith, and gives to the
French Economists the credit for establishing it as a science, although cer-
tain of its principles had been fixed from time to time before them. He
states the doctrines of the Economists regarding exchanges, money, wealth,

* The History of Economics. By Henry Dunning Macleod. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Pp. GOO, 8vo. Price, $4.50 net.

272 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

productive labor, and other economic concepts, giving also the opinions
held by the Roman and Greek jurists as to what things are wealth. He
then discusses the views of Adam Smith, pointing out what he regards as
Smith's chief merits and chief defects. In a similar manner the economic
doctrines held by Ricardo, Whately, Say, Mill, Bastiat, Perry, and Jevons
are critically examined. He also describes his own contributions to the
science. In pursuance of his conviction that a great part of the confusion
and false teaching in economics is due to lack of clear definitions, he
devotes the remaining three fourths of the volume to setting forth the legal
and scientific bases of the chief concepts of the science. Among these con-
cepts are acceptilation, accommodation paper, banking, capital, currency,
cost of production, credit, debt, exchange, Gresham's law, money, negative
quantities in economics, rent, value, and wealth. Each is discussed with
considerable fullness, particular attention being given to the early history
of the ideas. Macleod is a vigorous and positive writer, and a study of his
pages can not fail to substitute exactness for many hazy economic teach-
ings.

With modesty and excellent taste Mrs. Rogers has presented to the pub-
lic, not a fulsome eulogy, but a view of her husband's life as shown in his
letters, supplemented only by the necessary biographical facts and a para-
graph here and there to explain and connect the matter from his own
pen.* Many of the biographical facts she allows the late Dr. Ruschen-
berger to tell in extracts from his Memorial of the Brothers Rogers. The
son of a physician and professor of science, to whose chair in William and
Mary College he succeeded at the age of twenty-four, William B. Rogers
was early introduced into the field of scientific education, in which he did
masterly work up to the last hour of his life. There was not much money
available for the support of science in the United States during the thirties,
and the teaching and research of Prof. Rogers were carried on with very
limited resources. His means, moreover, were frequently drawn upon for
the benefit of his brothers, who were struggling in the same field with
rather less material success than his. In 1835, at the age of thirty-one,
Prof. Rogers was appointed State Geologist of Virginia, and in the same
year was called to the chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of
Virginia, which he retained until 1853. The geological sm^vey was al-
lowed by the State Legislature to continue for seven years, and furnished
the occasion for undertaking what was Prof. Rogers's most extensive con-
tribution to natural science. The letters exchanged between William and
his brothers reveal something of the turbulence of hot blooded students
and the paralyzing influence of narrow-minded authority with which
many science professors had to contend half a century ago. All the im-
portant discoveries and controversies that mark the history of geology in
this century are discussed or at least remarked upon in these letters. In
the diction of many of the epistles, and especially in that of extracts from
several addresses that are inserted in the volumes, we find all the evidence
that can be given without his living voice as to the powers of oratory with
which Prof. Rogers has been credited. We are especially impressed with
the testimony of these volumes to the ability of their subject as an educa-

* Life and Letters of William Barton Eogers. Edited by his Wife with the aseistance of William
T.Sedgwick. Boston: Iloughton, Mifflin & Co. Two vols., 12mo. Price, $4.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

273

tional organizer. This is shown especially in his Plan for a Polytechnic
School in Boston, and his labors in furtherance of the scheme, which re-
sulted in the establishment of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His grasp of modern educational conditions is shown also in documents
which he presented to the Legislatures of Virginia and Massachusetts in
behalf of the institutions with which he was successively connected. Abil-
ity of the same sort appears in the part that he took in organizing the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Asso-
ciation for the Promotion of Social Science, and the National Academy of
Sciences. His death in 1882 closed a career of marked influence upon the
advancement of science in America.

GENERAL NOTICES.

In order to judge fairly of the key to the
problems of the uuiverse furnished by Mr.
Silberstein,* it is not only necessary for one
with scientific habit of thought to subdue
this mental temperament, but to place him-
self in that receptive frame of mind with
which he should attend a seance or view an
impressionist picture. However easy this
may be for the metaphysician, it is almost
impossible for the physicist or chemist, who,
without his rule of verification, is more help-
less than a rudderless ship at sea.

This comprehensive work is well divided
into four chapters : The Idea of God, The
Creation, Matter and Force, and Universal
Mechanism.

As the conception of a machine precedes
its manufacture by the mechanic, so the uni-
verse in its potential being antedates the
physical universe which is individualized
from it. The abstract concept of the uni-
verse as a whole is absolute intellectuality
or God. This conclusion is reached by the
a priori method of pure reason. The cog-
nition of man, which concerns itself only
with the perception of things manifest to
the senses, is no knowledge at all. It teaches
us nothing of true entities. We observe
bread and man as two diiferent things, and
also that they are mutually convertible. If
they were real existences, " how could they
merge one into the other ? " Hence " we
are forced to assume that the entity of any
compound object as it appears within the
limits of time is not real. . . . Thus the
science of experience and experiments alone,

* The Disclosures of the Universal Mysteries.
By Solomon J. Silberstein. New York : Philip
Cowen, 1896. Pp. 298. Price, $2.
VOL. LI. — 21

of which our naturalists are so proud, and
which they call 'exact knowledge,' is a de-
lusion." All the causes which exist in the
universe are bound up together in the knowl-
edge of the causes. If man knows one
cause, he knows all causes of eternal exist-
ence. Man, however, knows that he does
not know, and in this comprehends the whole
knowledge of the entire universe. He thus
arises to Diviuity itself, and human intelli-
gence is identically the same with the one
absolute knowledge.

In regard to the Creation, we learn that
the universe consists of two kinds of exist-
ence, sensual and intellectual. " The exist-
ence of any Creator before the creation in
time, or behind it in space, is an impossi-
bility." Matter can not contain in itself the
absoluteness of existence. Man as a mate-
rial being is an accident of changeable mat-
ter. The creation of the universe is an
eternal emanation of the Absolute Intellectu-
ality. The essence of the universe vibrates
in spiritual waves. Physical waves, which
appear in various forms of energ}', magnet-
ism, electricity, heat, and light, are contained
in these.

In Matter and Force we are given a resu-
me of the theories of various philosophers
from Thales to Spinoza. Many modern phi-
losophies are considered. They differ from
that of Spinoza only in their names. " One
calls his system Positivism, the other Mate-
rialism, the third Skepticism, the fourth
Evolution, but they are all one in the Spinoza
fanaticism." Among others Newton came,
and through his mistaken theory of gravita-
tion " reduced mankind to a still lower de-
gree of pure wisdom." Chemists have also
led the world astray with their inductions.

274

POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

The law of the union of gases is extremely
repugnant to the author ; " even if proved
by ten thousand mathematical calculations,
it is yet a natural impossibility, because
these calculations are based upon false
axioms."

Under the head of the Universal Mechan-
ism the laws of motion are discussed. The
property of inertia in matter and the first
law of motion are said to be " absolutely
false," while the author promises to " en-
tirely annihilate " the force of gravitation.
Instead of these, he gives us centrality, " a
power of conservation whose impulse is to
keep an atom or a body in its peculiar state
or form." Inertia is accordingly " nothing
else than centrality holding each physical ob-
ject in its chemical bond. . . . Centrality is
an active force, while the force of motion is
passive." Another argument is furnished to
show that " chemical combination has only
to do with the qualities of objects." Even if
the laws of gravitation were correct, " it
would be a natural impossibility that the
moon should have an elliptical motion around
the earth."

Those who prefer the idealistic to the sci-
entific method of explaining the mysteries of
the universe will find the book of interest.

The results of over two hundred experi-
ments on phenomena connected with the X
rays have been collected in a volume by Ed-
loard P. T/iornpsori* The book is designed
for students and workers in electricity, hence
no attempt has been made to render it at-
tractive to the general reader. Many of the
experiments were made before Rontgen's
famous discovery was announced, some dat-
ing back to the time of Faraday, so that
those who made them of course had no idea
of their connection with the X rays. Among
the special points that the experiments bear
upon are the action of a magnet on the
cathode light, photo-electric dust figures,
mutual repulsion of cathode rays in the dis-
charge tube, behavior of cathode rays outside
the discharge tube, effect of the X rays on
various chemicals, and penetrating power of
the X rays. We note the following well-

* ROntgen Rays and Phenomena of the Anode
and Cathode. By Edward P. Thompson and Wil-
liam A. Anthony. New York : D. Van Noatraud
Co. Pp. 190, 8vo. Price, $1.50.

known names among the investigators who.^e
work appears in the volume : Faraday, Davy,
J. J. Thomson, Crookes, Lenard, Rontgen,
Edison, Tesla, and Lodge. The text is illu.s-
trated with a large number of reproductions
of skiagraphs and other pictures.

The authors of Curiosities of Medicine
have been working a very fruitful field, and
doubtless could have gathered an even larger
harvest.* Although medical journals are
constantly reporting curious cases of abnor-
mal formation or of recovery after injury, the
present volume appears to be the first sys-
tematic collection of such material. To the
physician a knowledge of such cases may
often be of service in indicating what hope
there may be for ameliorating similar abnor-
mal conditions that may occur in his practice.
To the layman the collection is one of start-
ling and often rather painful interest. In-
stances of children born joined together, of
which the Siamese twins have long been the
traditional type, are well represented. With
these are classed persons with supernumera-
ry limbs, heads, and other organs. Minor
abnormities present a wonderful variety, in-
cluding albinism, excessive hairiness and
hairlessness, elastic skin, homy growths,
large or small heads, harelip, congenital ab-
sence of limbs, deficient or supernumerary
fingers and toes, tails, extra breasts, and mal-
formations of the internal organs. Abnor-
mal forms and functions in the generative
organs afford a large volume of curious ma-
terial. Celebrated giants and dwarfs and
other anomalies of size furnish material for
a chapter, and there is a group of records of
extraordinary longevity. Idiosyncrasies with
regard to sound, vision, smell, taste, touch,
foods, drugs, etc., endurance of fasting, power
of contorting the body, endurance of pain,
supernormal strength, etc., make up a long
list. Many cases of recovery from unusual
forms of injury to various parts of the body
are recorded here, and there is much inter-
esting material under the head of anomalous
types of disease. The concluding chapter is
a record of historic epidemics. A full gen-
eral index and a bibliographic index are ap-

* Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. By
George M. Gould, M. D., and Walter L. Pyle, M. D.
Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. Pp. 968, impe-
rial 8vo. Price, cloth, $6; half morocco, $7.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

27^

pendcd. The volume is illustrated with near-
ly three hundred figures and a considerable
number of plates.

An address on The Railroad as an Ele-
merit in Education, delivered at the World's
Fair in New Orleans in 1885, by Prof. Alex-
ander Hogg, was widely circulated at the
time, attracted much attention, and was
noticed in the Monthly. It was an honest
and forcible attempt to present the benefits
the railroads have conferred upon society
and the nation, and to antagonize the un-
reasoning populistic prejudice against them.
It showed in a few words appealing directly
to public intelligence that railroads have
cheapened communication and transporta-
tion, have opened remote parts of the coun-
try, making them near and accessible, have
removed the dangers of local famine, have
contributed vastly to the national defense
while removing the necessity of keeping
large standing armies ; and that in view of the
services they render and of what is charged
for like work abroad, their rates are extreme-
ly low. Further, the men who have acquired
the most wealth through railroad manage-
ment have also distinguished themselves by
their benefactions to education and other
contributions to public welfare. This ad-
dress is now republished in a revised and
enlarged form,* with additional chapters re-
viewing the development of the ten years
subsequent to its original publication. Of
these chapters one of the most important is
the one on The Inception and History of
Strikes, the methods of which are shown to
be " wrong in principle and ruinous in prac-
tice."

of grasses and clovers. The present volume
supplements the former one to a certain ex-
tent, but in most respects it is an independ-
ent work. In it the grasses are classified and
described, and each species is illustrated;
and chapters are added on their geographical
distribution, and also a bibliography. In
most cases the generic characters closely fol-
low those given by Bentham and Hooker in
Genera Plantarum. Extracts are given re-
garding the writings of prominent authorities
on the grasses ; and also notes regarding the
tribes and some of the genera. The author
has been permitted to examine, during his
studies for this work, the herbarium of Mich-
igan Agricultural College, all the grasses in
the herbaria of the University of Michigan
and Harvard University (including the grasses
of the late Dr. George Thurber), those of the
Department of Agriculture at Washington,
and those of Prof. F. L. Scribner ; and, him-
self one of our leading botanists, has been as-
sisted by Prof. L. H. Bailey and Prof. S. M.
Tracy in the matter of geographical distri-
bution, L. H. Dewey and A. A. Crozier. The
work is a real addition to our botanical litera-
ture, filling as it does a department that has
not before been completely occupied.

The first volume of Prof. W. J. BeaPs
Grasses of North ^meHcaf was published
ten years ago, and was noticed by us in
November, 1887. It was designed more
particularly for farmers and students, and
comprised chapters on the physiology, com-
position, selection, improving, and cultivation

* The Railroad as an Element in Education.
Revised and enlarged, with New Illustrations.
(Special edition). By Prof. Alexander Hogg,
Superintendent of Schools, Port Worth, Texas!
Louisville, Ky. : J. Morton & Co. Pp. 113.

t Grasses of North America. By W. J. Beal,
Professor of Botany and Forestry in Michigan
Agricultural College. In two volumes. Vol. II.
New York : Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 706. Price, ffis!

Mr. Thomas D. Hawley, of the Chicago
bar, has prepared and published a new sys-
tem of logic,* by which, he claims, reasoning
can be carried on by an infallible process,
even as the interest can be calculated upon a
promissory note. The method consists in
the repeated use of a few processes which
are performed in a mechanical manner, and
the results appear automatically. " Its tools
are a few simple signs— namely, the capital
letters of the alphabet to represent positive
terms, the small letters to represent negative
terms ; the mathematical sign of equality, —
for 'is'; a short prependicular mark, (for 'or,'
and a square for the ' universe of discourse.'
When a square is divided into a proper num-
ber of sections it is called a Reasoning Frame.
By the use of the Reasoning Frame every
proposition which can possibly be made with
the letters used is set before us. We then
eliminate every proposition which is incon-

* Infallible Logic: A Visible and Automatic
System of Reasoning. By Thomas D. Hawley, of
the Chicago Bar. Lansing, Mich. : Robert Smith
Printing Company. Pp 659.

276

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sistent with the given proposition or state of
facts. The uneliminated propositions which
automatieally remain in the ReaFoning Frame
will then give us every iota of truth which
our data will yield." Aside from the signs
and the device of the Reasoning Frame, the
treatise does not appear to differ materially
from other good treatises on the subject.
The author's explanations are fairly clear.
A complete index is an excellent feature.

An unusual and fascinating biography is
that of Sir Richard Burton,* the explorer
and linguist, written by his niece. One does
not know whether to wonder more at the ex-
tent of his travels or at his indefatigable in-
dustry in language study. The titles of sixty
odd books are included in the list of his
works, among them being an entire volume
of the Royal (reogi-aphical Society, transla-
tions of Portuguese and Arabic, and several
grammars of Hindu dialect. His joumey-
ings were equally varied. We find him
dwelling in the far East, in India and Ara-
bia ; later, crossing the Andes and pampas,
in Brazil and Paraguay ; now discovering the
lakes in Central Africa, then investigating
Utah, or exploting the mines of Iceland.
Patient, persistent, undaunted by difficulties,
he was admirably fitted by nature for the
task of exploration. Had he been equally
keen to read humankind, his local success
among men might have been greater. Yet
he may not have lacked discernment, but the
will to be politic. Society is the rather to be
arraigned, if, as we are told, " the habit of
veracity sadly hindered him at times in his
struggle with the world."

There is reason to believe that intellectual
American women have somewhat surfeited
themselves on the long-forbidden fruit of
an education "just like the men's." They
seem now to realize that the idea of a
" woman's sphere " can have its dignity as
well as its limitations, and that the posses-
sion of acute perception, clear reasoning
ability, and high power of application can
be shown in the wholesome and economical
provisioning of a family and the efficient
management of children and servants no less
than in struggles with Greek roots and mathe-

* The True Life of Captnin Sir Richard F. Bur-
ton. Bj Georgiana M. Stisted. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. 419. Price, $2.

matical operations. The household arts are
getting an increased share of attention both
in women's clubs and in women's and coedu-
cational colleges. A book now before us
embodies a course of lectures on home man-
agement delivered in the University of Wis-
consin.* These lectures give a general view
of the field, presenting what might be called
the theory of their subject, and using practi-
cal details merely by way of illustration or
to give definiteness to the views set forth.
After a preliminary chapter on the Statics and
Dynamics of Household Economy, Mrs. Camp-
bell considers first the house. These are
some of the principles that she lays down as
regards building :

The plan of the house includes beforehand not
only all that has been sai i as to location and its
bearingp, but alt^o the settling of the cost and au
intelligent idea of the special family needs. Here
a woman's judgment is absolutely essential. It
is the woman who lives chiefly in the house, and
who, if common sense were brought to bear,
would soon put an end to the type of thing the
average builder offers her. Why should we per-
petually go up and down when going sideways is
so much easier ? Why should we accept stupidly
planned and inadequate closets or no closets at
all, and kitchens in which everything is calculated
to bring the greatest unhappiness to the greatest
number ? The utmost convenience in every inch
of working space should be the law. The differ-
ence between a pantry opening close to the sink
and one at the opposite end of the room may seem
a small matter ; but when it comes to walking
across the room with every dish that is washed,
the steps soon count as miles.

With regard to decoration, she urges the
claims of the simple and elegant as against
the flashy and trashy, and insists that the
adornment of a useful article should never
interfere with its use. Thus she says : " The
pitcher that does not pour well can not be
beautiful, though of gold. . . . The spider-
legged table and its insect family of chairs —
the things that creak when we sit down and
tip over when we get up — these are not
beautiful." Her treatment of domestic in-
dustries in general, the nutrition of the house-
hold, cleaning, and household service is in
the same line. An excellent list of books
for further study is added to each chapter.
Lists of subjects for the use of women's clubs
in studying household economy and iufonna-

* Household Economics. By Helen Campbell.
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sous. Pp. 2S6, 12mo.
Price, $1.50.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

277

tion about clubs that have given some at-
tention to this field are appended.

This monograph * gives, in some eighty
pages, a list of the published maps of Vir-
ginia. The first map, made in manuscript
about the year 1585, bears the name of John
With, a painter who was sent into the colo-
nies by Walter Raleigh to paint the red-
skins and the other curiosities of the new-
found country. Captain John Smith drew up
his famous map in 1608. " In the boundary
dispute between Virginia and Maryland in
ISYS Smith's map was used as an authority,
and prior to that it was the foundation upon
which all the maps of Virginia were con-
structed." From 1608 onward the maps
multiply, down to the last one, a railroad
pocket guide published in 1893. Specimen
reproductions, especially of the quaint older
maps, would have enlivened this catalogue.

The greater part of the Twelfth Atmual
Report of the Bureau of Labor Stalktlcs of
the State of Connecticut is devoted to the
practices prevailing in the various towns and
cities of the State with regard to assessments
for the purpose of taxation. The bureau
has evidently investigated the matter
thoroughly, and has discovered considerable
foundation for the ahvays current rumors as
to inequalities. The information gathered,
including suggestions from local assessors, is
conveniently arranged, and besides its value
within the State may well serve as a guide
and model to officials of other States. The
bureau has also collected the appraised
values of over seven hundred probated
estates, finding them to confirm closely the
figures given by assessors. For purposes of
comparison the tax lav\rs of Connecticut, New
York, and Massachusetts are here printed.
Other investigations whose results are given
in this volume are on the taxation of corpo-
rations, the condition of bakeshops, and the
wages of factory hands.

A wonderful quantity of information con-
cerning the various materials, processes, and
applications of the photographic art is con-
tained in the eleventh American Amiual of
Photography (Scovill & Adams Co., New

* Virfrinia Cartography. A Bibliographical De-
scription. By P. Lee Phillips. Smithsonian Mis
cellaneous Collections.

York ; paper 75, cents ; cloth, $1). The aid
that photography can give in surgery, min-
ing, detecting forgery, etc , is told in special
articles. Directions from which the amateur
can use his prints to make a number of tasty
and pleasing oljjects are another feature.
Work with the X rays and color photography
are two important recent developments that
find place in the volume. There are also
standard formulas, useful recipes, tables of
chemicals, of capacities of lenses, of conju-
gate foci, of enlargement and reduction, of
comparative exposures, etc., lists of photo-
graphic books and patents of the preceding
year, and of American and foreign photo-
graphic societies. There are also a full
almanac for 1897, postal and patent infor-
mation, etc., while the large number of ad-
vertisements add no little value to the book.
The volume contains over three hundred
illustrations from photographs of pleasing
and interesting subjects.

In his Fird Year in German^ Mr. /. Kel-
ler has sought to avoid the defects and com-
bine the advantages of the grammatical and
"natural" methods of teaching the lan-
guage. His method is simple, and includes
practical exercises in which the grammatical
features are explained as they occur. They
consist of progressive reading lessons, trans-
lating from German to English and from
English to German, with explanatory notes,
oral and written exercises, and conversation
exercises, with grammatical paradigms in the
appendix. (American Book Company, $1.)

The Report of the United States Commis-
sioner of Fish and Fisheries for 1892-93 is
accompanied by three special reports of as-
sistants in charge of especial inquiries. One
of these deals with food fishes and the fish-
ing grounds, and reports investigations into.
the physical and other conditions of the in-
land and coast waters of the United States.
Another is occupied with the statistics and
methods of the commercial fisheries, and the
third details the operations of the commis-
sion in propagating and distributing food
fishes. Following these is an extended ac-
count by William A. Wilcox of the Fisheries
of the Pacific Coast, which have recently
grown to importance, especially the catching
of salmon for canning. The whaling and
sealing of the Pacific are also important.

278

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

The volume includes also a report on the
work of the steamer Albatross and a descrip-
tive catalogue of the collections of the Alba-
tross made in 1890 and 1891. A number of
views and other plates illustrate the several
papers. The volume for 1893-94 contains
reports on the same general inquiries as its
predecessor, and among its special papers are
a description of the exhibit of the commis-
sion at the World's Columbian Exposition,
The Whitefishes of North America, The
Fishes of the Missouri River Basin, A Re-
view of the Foreign Fishery Trade of the
United States, and a List of Publications of
the Commission from its establishment.

Volume XXX, Part IV, of the Annals of
the Harvard Observatory is devoted to a Dis
cussion of the Cloud Observations made at the
Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, by H.
Helm Clayton. Mr. Clayton begins with a
historical sketch of cloud nomenclature which
introduces his statement of the new system-
atic nomenclature adopted for the Blue Hill
Observatory. The names devised at Blue
Hill are designed to specify the form, alti-
tude, and origin of the clouds. After con-
sidering briefly the methods of cloud forma-
tion and the relations of clouds to rainfall
and to cyclones, Mr. Clayton gives an ac-
count of the annual and diurnal periods in
the wind and the cloud movements that have
been found from the Blue Hill observations.
Other topics treated are the movements of
the wind and clouds at different heights in
cyclones and anticyclones, cirrus motions,
and the velocity of storms. Some notes on
the use of cloud observations in weather
forecasting are added, and there is an ap-
pendix of tables and diagrams.

G. P. Putnam's Sons are now presenting
to the public Volume II of Books and their
3 fakers duritig the Middle Ages, by George
Haven Putnam. In this new volume Mr.
Putnam recounts the vicissitudes of two
centuries' books and bookmakers — the trials
and triumphs of those first ambitious, de-
termined little companies of printer-pub-
lishers who, confronted ofttimes by the
mighty odds of church and state, yet wield-
ed so bravely and untiringly their new-found
weapon that echoes of their resounding blows
for truth and liberty still ring in the ears of
men. Mr. Putnam dwells with emphasis and

at some length on certain of the early print-
er-publishers of the Reformation period, se-
lecting as representatives of that class the
Kobergers in Nuremberg, Froben in Basel,
the house of Plantin in Antwerp, Caxton in
Bruges and in London, the Elzevirs in Ley-
den and Amsterdam, " and the famous fami-
lies of the Estiennes or Stephani." The au-
thor modestly disclaims attempts at dramatic
arrangement or presentation of his subjects,
saying, as with regard to Luther, that he is
" not concerned with Luther as a Reformer,
as a fighter, or as a Christian hero, but sim-
ply with his work and his relations as an au-
thor " ; nevertheless, there is much that is of
deepest historic and dramatic interest to be
found throughout the book. The volume is
beautifully put together. With its plain, rich
binding of dark red, its uncut linen pages,
and clear type, it is a fitting specimen of
what books and bookmakers have attained
to in this day and age. (Price, $2.50.)

German Scientific Reading, compiled by
H. C. G. Brandt and W. C. Day (Holt), em-
bodies an excellent idea. Students of sci-
ence taking up German, without caring to
linger long over its literature, but wishing to
acquire rapidly the facility of reading Ger-
man scientific prose, will find here an ade-
quate answer to their wants. The extracts,
mostly by well-known German scientists,
have been chosen for the simplicity of their
diction and the value of the information they
impart. Covering a wide range of sciences,
they might prove as interesting reading to a
class of general students as to specialists.
Some twenty pages of descriptive prose, by
those masters of style, Goethe and Hum-
boldt, enliven the book by their literary
quality. The notes are adequate, and the
vocabulary "is intended to contain every
word in the text, simple or compound, liter-
ary or technical." This collaboration of two
specialists, professors respectively of German
and of chemistry, has produced a Reader that
should recommend itself to German teachers
and classes in general.

Another portion of Weisbach's great
work on mechanics, as revised by Hermann,
dealing with The Mechanics of Bumping Ma-
ihintry has been translated (Macmillans,
$3.75). It is designed for the use of engi-
neers and students of engineering ; hence,

S GIENTIFIG LIT ERA TV RE.

279

while it gives some historical information
about early forms of water elevators, it pre-
sents the mechanical side of even the simple
bucket and sweep and the Dutch scoop. It is,
of course, chiefly occupied with a technical
presentation of the theory of reciprocating
and rotary pumps, but gives a chapter to
such additional water-raising machines as
the hydraulic ram, ejectors, injectors, spiral
pumps, and the pulsometer. The machines
described are depicted in nearly two hundred
engravings.

Miss Sadie F. Price's Fern Collector's
Handbook and Herbarium (Holt, $2.25) is in-

tended as an aid in the study and preservation
of the ferns of the northern United States,
including the district east of the Mississippi
and north of North Carolina and Tennessee.
It is a quarto volume, on the right-hand side
of each page of which is given a full-size
representation of some species of fern (sev-
enty-two species being included), while the
opposite page is left blank for the insertion
of a pressed and dried specimen of the
species. The letterpress consists of direc-
tions for preparing and fixing the specimens,
the technical description of the order of
ferns, and the list of illustrations or of spe-
cies illustrated.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bnlletine
and Reports. Cornell University: Mos. 12ii-13C.
Currant and Raspberry Parasites, Sweet Peas,
Uahlias, Experiments with Fertilizers, and Potato
Culture Pp. 120.— Delaware College : Nos. 32, 34.
Combating Anthrax and Plant Diseases. Pp 24
and 22.— Iowa: No. 34. Nine subjects. Pp. 104 ;
Report of the State Board of Health, April. Pi3.
2.) — Massachusetts Agricultural College : Thirty-
fourth Annual Report. Pp. 356 ; No. 43. Elec-
tro-germination. Pp. 32. — New Hampshire : Nos.
40-42. Eighth Annual Report ; Potatoes and To-
matoes. Pp.42. — New Jersey: Nos. 119-121. Ap-
ple-growintr, Potatoes, Cabbage Bug, and Melon
Plant Louse. Pp. 5G.— Ne,v York: Nos. 112, 113,
11.5, and 116. Potatoes, Director's Report, and
Fertilizers. Pp. 150. — North Dakota (Govern-
ment): No. 27. Smut of Grains. By H. L. BoUey.
Pp. 58 ; Climate and Crop Service. Pp. 8.-— Ten-
nessee : State Board of Health Bulletin. Pp.16. —
United States Department of Agriculture : Insects
affecting Stored Vegetable Products. By F. H.
Chittenden ; In.fect Parasitism. By L. O. How-
ard. Pi3. 57; The Clover Mite. Pp. 4; The
Mexican Cotton-Boll Weevil. Pp. 8.— University
of Illinois: No. 40. Various. Pp.24.

Acloque. A. Les Insectes nuisibles (Injurious
Insects). Paris : Felix Alcan. Pp. 192.

Alling-Aber, Mary R. An Experiment in Ed-
ncation. New York : Harper & Brothers.

Bell, Alexander Graham. The Mystic Oral
School. Washington, D. C. Pp. 38.

Cams, Dr. Paul. Homilies of Science. Chi-
cago:, Open Court Publishing Company. Pp. 317.
35 cents.

Clodd, Edward. Pioneers of Evolution. From
Thales to Huxley. New York : D. Appleton &
Co. Pp. 274, with portraits. $1..50.

Cuadrado, Dr. Gast6n Alon o. Introduccion al
Estudio de la Bspectroscopia (Introduction to the
Study of Spectroscopy). Havana. Pp. 39.

Chapman, Frank M. Bird-Life. A Guide to
the Study of our Common Birds. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. 269. $1.75.

Foster, Hon. John W. The Annexation of
Hawaii. Washington. Pp. 16.

Geikie, Sir Archibald. The Ancient Volca-
noes of Great Britain. New York : Macmillan
Company. Two volumes. Pp. 477 and 492.
$11.25.

Grimsley, G. P. Gypsum in Kansas. Wash-
burn College, Topeka. Pp. 27, with 4 plates.

Grosse, Ernst. The Beginnings of Art. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 327, with 3
plates. $1.75.

Harris, William T. Art Education the True
Industrial Education. Syracuse, N. Y.: C. W.
Bardeen. Pp. 77. 50 cents.

Harvard College Observatory. Observations
with the Bruce Photographic Telescope. Pp. 4
text, and 3 photographs.

Kellogg, E. L., & Co., Publishers, New York
and Chicago. Educational P'oundatioi s Vol.

VIII, No. 7. March, 1897. Pp. 67. $1 a year.

Kempster, John. The Blood Relations of the
Soul. London : James Clarke & Co. Pp. 16.
Twopence

Kirke, Ella Boyce. The Study of Oliver Twist
condensed for Home and School Reading. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 348. 60 cents.

Matthews, Washington. Navajo Legends.
Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
Pp. 298. $6.

Morgan, Thomas Hunt. The Development of
the Frog's Egg. New York : The Macmillan
Company. Pp. 192. $1.60.

Murray, Gilbert. A History of Ancient Greek
Literature. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp.
420. $1.,50.

Nichols, Edward L. The Outlines of Physics.
New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 452.
$1.40.

Nichols, Edward L., and Franklin, William 8.
Elements of Physics. Vol. III. Light and Sound.
New iTork : The Macmillan Company. Pp. 201.
$1.50.

O'Shea, John J. The New Political Issue in
Ireland. (Advance sheets.) Pp. 16.

Reports, Proceedings, Bulletins, etc. Central
Indiana Hospital for the Insane : Forty-eighth
Annual Report. Indianapolis. Pp. 51.— College
ol Science, Imperial University, Japan. Vol.

IX, Part 11. Pp. 216, with Plates.— Forestry As-
sociation, American : Proceedings continued.
Pp 75 ; The Forest Reservation Policy. Pp. 8. —
Harvard College : Annals of the Astronomical
Observatory ; Journal of Zone Operations. By
J. Winlock and E. C. Pickering. Pp. 299; Spec-
tra of Bright Stars, discussed by Antonia C.
Maury. Pp. 128. — Massachusetts Institute of
Techuology : Announcement of Summer Courses.
Pp. 12. — Missouri Geological Survey: Biennial
Report of the State Geologist. Jelicrson City.
Pp. 63, with maps.— National Science Club, Wash-
ington, D. C: Proceedings. Pp. 34. — New York
State Library: Legislative Bulletin. No. 8. Pp.
56; Examination' Bulletin. No. 12. Pp. 112.—
New York Academy of Sciences : Fourth Annual
Recei)tion. Pp. 62; New York Public Library:
Bulletins. March and April, 1897. Pp. 44.— Rose

28o

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Polytechnic Institute, Terre Hante, Ind. : Fif-
teenth Annual Catalo<;iie, 1807. Pp. 83.— Smith-
sonian Institution: Report of the Board of Re-
gents for IHO). Pp. 837.— Society for Pgychical
Research: Proceedings. March, 1897. Pp. 20. —
United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries :
Report for 1895. Pp. 590; Illustrations showing
Condition of Fur Seal Rookeries in IBO.'i. and
Method of Killing Seals : to accompany Report
of C. H. Townsend, Assistant Fish Commis-
sioner. 42 plates.

Reprints. Babcock, Warren I.: "From De-
moniacal Possession to Insanity." Pp. 6. —
Bauer, L. A.: On the Distribution and the Secu-
lar Variation of Terrestrial Magnetism. No. IV.
Pp. 8.— Boas, Fran/, : Traditions of the Ts'ets'Sut.
II. Pp. 14.— Bolton, Prof. H. Carrington : The
Language used in Talking to Domestic Animals.
Washington. Pp. 47.— Call, R. Ellsworth: Note
on the Flora of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. Pp.
2.— Diller, J. S. : Crater Lake, Oregon. Pp. 8 —
Fairchild, H. L. : Lake Warren Shorelines in
Western New York and the Geneva Beach; and
Gilbert, G. K. : Old Tracks of Erian Drainage in
Western New York. Rochester, N. Y. Pp. 2<J.—
Grimsley, G. P. : The Study of Natural Palimp-
sests. Pp. 7. — Hollick, Arthur : The Cretaceous
Clay M.irl Exposure at Cliffwood, N. J. Pp. 12,
with plates.— Insect Life. General Index to the
Seven Volumes. Pp. 14.5.— Johnson, Henry L.
E.: Appendicitis, etc. Pp.12; A Case of Pyo-
salpinx, etc. Pp. 4.— Kemp, J. F. : The Leucite
Hills of Wyoming. Pp. 10, and the Geology of
the Magnetites near Fort Henry, N. Y. Pp. C8,
with map.— Mason, Otis Tufton : Influence of
Environment upon Human Industries or Arts.

Pp. IG. — Miller, Gerrit S. : Notes on the Mam-
mals of Ontario. Pp. 44. — Ward, Lester F. : In-
dividual Telesis. Pp. 20.

Schimmel & Co. (Fritsche Brothers). Leip.^ig
and New York. Semiannual Report, April, l89i'.
(Chemical Extracts.) Pp. 5.% with map.

Storer, P. H. Agriculture in some of its Rela-
tions with Chemistry. Seventh edition, revised
and enlarged. New York : Charles Scribner's
Sons. Thieevols. Pp. 62C, 602, 079. $5.

Thayer, Alexander Wheelock. The Hebrews
in Egypt and their Exodus. Peoria : E. S. Will-
cox. "Pp. 315. $1.25.

United States Geological Survey. Geologic
Atlas of the United States. Yellowstone National
Park Folio, Wyoming. Pp. 6 text, 3 views, 4
maps.

United States Hydrographic Oiflce. Classifi-
cation of Clouds for the Weather Observers of the
Office. One-sheet chart.

Vincent. Frank. The Plant World; its Ro-
mances and Realities. New York : D. Appleton
& Co. Pp. 228. 60 cents.

Webster, Arthur Gorman. The Theory of
Electricity and Magnetism. New York: I'he Mac-
millan Company. Pp. 376. S3..50.

Wiedemann, Alfred. Religion of the Ancient
Egyptians. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Pp. 324.

Will'ams, George A. Topics and References
in American Hi-tory. With numerous Search
Questions. Syracuse, N. Y. : C. W. Bardeeu.
Pp. 1<6. $1.

fragments ot ^clcucje.

Large Trees from the Coal Period. — The

approach from the south to La Grange, Ala.,
is marked by the fine view into the valley
of the Tennessee River, three or four hun-
dred feet below, which it presents, and by
the masses of sandstone lying around the
village, where it has been precipitated from
the cliffs above by the wearing away of the
limestone under them. But the most inter-
esting and remarkable feature of the locality,
says Mr. Henry McCalley, in his geological
report of the valley region, and the one for
which La Grange will always be distinguished,
is the profusion of the remains of fossil
plants. Nowhere can one gain better ideas
of the magnificence of the flora of the coal
period than at this place. Trunks of Lepi-
dodendron, two or three feet in diameter, lie
buried and protruding from the debris of the
sandstone. These trunks have in general
preserved their form and are not at all com-
pressed, whereby they show that they stood
erect in the beds that inclosed them. Al-
though stripped of their bark, the scars are
plainly impressed on their surface. Two

very fine specimens of these trunks are in
the cabinet of the Geological Survey at the
State University. One of them represents
the lower part of the trunk, and has two
large roots attached. The other has been
used as a horse block, is about three feet in
diameter and four feet high, and is remark-
able for the impressions of calamites and
other plants of which the sandstone com-
posing it is full. The supposition is drawn
from them that, in the process of petri-
faction, the interior of the trunk was re-
moved by decay or otherwise, leaving a hol-
low cylinder of the outer layers of the trunk,
and that this hollow cylinder was filled up
with sand and fragments of calamites and
other coal plants, which subsequently hard-
ened.

The Moki Indians and their Birds. —

The Moki Indians are described, in Dr. E. A.
Mearns's paper on the names of their birds,
as having a superstititious regard for most
Uving things, particularly as holding serpents
in reverence and a number of birds as sa-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

281

cred, or as looking to them as representing
their clans or secret religious orders. " Ob-
servers of Moki ceremonies have seen large
wooden tablets in their kivas or ceremonial
chambers painted with a green ground, or-
namented with the rain prayer and some one
of the countless Moki gods, and have re-
marked that the little bird in the clouds sug-
gests the thunder bird of the plains Indians."
Bourke remarked upon the constant appear-
ance of feathers, chiefly those of the eagle
and turkey. The Indians will not part, for
any amount of money, with the wands of
eagle feathers used for fanning living ser-
pents at their snake dance, for fear of offend-
ing their bird deity. Sacrificial plumes of
eagle down, attached to little sticks, are
buried in the corners of the field at the
opening of spring. The feathers of the par-
rot, brought up from Mexico, are treasured
in the Pueblos, and will always be found,
according to Bourke, " carefully preserved in
peculiar wooden boxes, generally cylindrical
in shape, made expressly for the purpose.
With them is invariably associated the soft
white down of the eagle. The Mokis have
an especial veneration for the two species of
eagle, which are kept by them in cages, and
are fed largely on field mice and rabbits.
Capt'in Bourke alludes to eagle feathers as
common articles of commerce among these
people, to which they attach a determinate
value, and ascribes the high price placed
upon them by all the sedentary Indians of
Arizona and New Mexico to graver consid-
erations than mercantile.

"Wild Indian Corn," — The question
whether wild Indian corn is growing in Amer-
ica is- raised in Garden and Forest by Robert
P. Harris, who assumes that such a corn
has been found in several regions of this
continent, naturally reproducing itself, and
that it has a character of growth that fits
it for long preservation in a dry climate, al-
though, if planted and cultivated for a few
years, all the characteristics of wildness
gradually disappear. '' The cobs of wild
maize are thin and hard, covered with lines
of mushroom shaped elevations, each having
a wirelike pedicel growing from the top, at-
tached to a glume inclosing a small pointed
grain, or a flat grain smaller than any pop
corn. These kernel husks overlap each other

toward the point of the ear, like the shingles
on the roof of a house. The imbrications
are largest and longest at the butt of the
ear, and gradually become less pronounced as
they advance in distinct rows to the point.
The individual glumes are from an inch to
two inches long, and are much longer than
this where the grains are not fertilized, par-
ticularly if the entire ear is of this character,
as is proved by a specimen in my collection.
Over these imbrications is the outside husk
as we have it in all cultivated corns." Mr.
Harris further says that Indian corn in
its wild state has been found in Arizona,
southern Texas, the valley of Mexico, and
Central America. He has known Rocky
Mountain corn a long period of time ; it has
very small ears. One of the professors of
the University of Mexico has been experi-
menting with the wild corn of the valley,
and has the engraving of a plant that grew
to be about five feet high. Wild corn has
also been grown by the Landreths, near
Philadelphia, to whom it was sent from Ari-
zona. Some found by Dr. Williams, of
Houston, Texas, is a white flint of large
size; but fifteen stalks produced only four
ears, which grew on two of the stalks. The
plant is a very vigorous grower, but it is not
productive, and eight stalks grown in Texas
did not bear a single ear. It may be doubted
whether the evidence is as yet sufficient or
is clear enough to establish that these speci-
mens are really wild corn and not corn that
has escaped from cultivation — the more so,
because Indian corn with glumes to each
kernel is not rare.

Dr. Yersin and Plagnc Yirns.— Nature, of
February 1 8th, brings an interesting account
of Dr. Yersin's discovery of the plague virus
and its antitoxiue, during the epidemic at
Hong Kong in the spring of 1894. His at-
tention being attracted to the extraordinary
number of dead rats lying about in the
squalid Chinese quarters of the city, he
examined them, and discovered immense
numbers of a short bacillus, that could be
easily stained and cultivated in the usual
manner. He found the same bacilli in dif-
ferent organs of plague patients. Noticing
quantities of dead flies in the room where he
carried on his post-mortem examinations, he
investigated this symptom, and established

282

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by experiment that these insects also were
infected, and assisted in the spread of the
disease. He forwarded cultures of his bacil-
lus to the Pasteur Institute at Paris. Ex-
periments made on rabbits and guinea pigs
proved that the dead bacilli, if injected in
sufficient number, are deadly ; smaller quan-
tities, however, act as a vaccine, and protect
the subject against stronger inoculation.
Experiments with larger animals, such as
horses, were equally successful. " That the
most remarkable therapeutic value attaches
to anti-plague serum, as now elaborated at
the Pasteur Institute in Paris, is shown by
the success which has recently followed its
application in undoubted cases of plague at
Amoy, by Yersin, now director of a Pasteur
Institute at Wha-Trang in Annam.

Marriage of the Dead. — Among the many
curious practices that Marco Polo came
across in his travels in the far East, the Tar-
tar custom of marrying the dead deserves
notice. He says : " If any man have a
daughter who dies before marriage, and an-
other man have had a son also die before mar-
riage, the parents of the two arrange a grand
wedding between the dead lad and lass, and
marry them they do, making a regular con-
tract ! And when the contract papers are
made out they put them in the fire, in order
that the parties in the other world may know
the fact, and so look on each other as man
and wife. And the parents thenceforward
consider themselves sib to each other just as
if their children had lived and married.
Whatever may be agreed on between the
parties as dowry, those who have to pay it
cause to be painted on pieces of paper, and
then put these in the fire, saying that in that
way the dead person will get all the real
articles in the other world." This custom is
also noted by other writers, even as late as
the beginning of the eighteenth century. It
is said to have been adopted by Jenghis
Khan, for political reasons, and is named in
his Yasa, published in 1205 a. d.

The Three » R's " of Prchlstorie Man

M. Ed. Piette has published an interesting
discovery in V Aiiihropologie, (vol. vii, 1896,
p. 385). He found in a cave at Mas-d'Azil,
in the department of Ariege, a quantity of
pebbles, rounded, oblong, and flattened, such

as are taken from river beds. They were
variously painted with peroxide of iron ;
some had their whole surface colored, and
others again showed a border around the
margin, or were dotted and striped in dif-
ferent designs. Crosses, serpentine patterns,
and even trees could be traced out. M.
Piette thinks that according to these devices
the pebbles stand for numerals, symbols, pic-
tographic signs, and alphabetic characters.
He gives loose rein to his fancy in interpret-
ing them, especially the last named. He
reaches the startling conclusion that some
are probably syllabic signs, used for inscrip-
tions or in building up words. Twenty- five
colored plates accompany the memoir, and
give food for speculation on these cabalistic
memorials of a bygone era.

Animals on the March. — Among the
animals that take long journeys in great
numbers are the springbok, the American
bison, the musk ox, and, in smaller bodies,
wild horses and the antelopes of the steppes.
Journeying mostly over the plains, they near-
ly always move in a wide front, a way of
marching that gives an equal chance to all in
browsing. Some species of birds also migrate
on foot. The guinea fowls always go in sin-
gle file, a favorite mode of travel in Central
Africa, where paths have to be cut through
the dense scrub or impassable forests. The
European wild geese are the champion walk"
ers among birds. Belying the stigma at-
tached to their name, they show much fore-
thought in their pedestrian expeditions,
which are undertaken either to accompany
their young, or during the molting season.
Uuhastmg, yet unresting, they march ahead
in column, often ten geese abreast, careful
not to jostle their neighbors, with head
erect in the air. From time to time the
leaders give the signal to halt and feed, and
then to " fall in " again and continue on the
road. Abroad, before the days of railways,
dealers in poultry, making use of this march-
ing power, often saved expense by letting the
geese transport themselves. Droves num-
bering nine thousand have walked over the
road from Suffolk to London. At Antwerp
not long ago large flocks were seen marching
up the plank to a steamer bound for Har-
wich, and then gravely descending to the
lower deck to range themselves in an inclos-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

283

ure, quite unwittingly going to their own
death. Animals on the march rarely suffer
from hunger. The quadrupeds, being all
vegetarians, go toward the regions of their
food supply. Birds " feed up" for a time
before their migration, and during their sea
trips live on the fat stoi-ed away on their
bodies. Fish on the march are the most
leisurely of creatures. Floating along with
hardly any efforts of propulsion, and con-
stantly surrounded by their food supply, they
appear the favored among travelers.

Maori Tattooing. — Major-Geueral Robloy,
who has studied the tattooing, or " moko,"
of the Maoris, represents that the custom is
no longer practiced among the men. King
Tawhaio, two years ago, carried to his grave
" one of the last really fine specimens of
moko." Apparently every chief who was
decorated had a special design, and a vari-
ety of beautiful patterns in arabesque arose.
They certainly show, the Athenjeum says,
that a variety of designs can be derived
from the adaptation of scroll work to the
outlines of the human face, and exhibit
much technical skill in dealing with an in-
tractable material. The work was done with
a chisel made of a sea bird's wing bone
or a shark's tooth, a fragment of stone or
hard wood, ground down to a fine edge,
which was driven into the skin by a smart
tap, causing a deep cut and much effusion of
blood, which was wiped away with the flat-
tened end of the mallet or with a wad of
flax. After contact with Europeans, iron
chisels were sometimes used. The associa-
tion of a special design with the individual
tattooed had the advantage of serving as a
means of identification, and this led to the
curious result that Maori chiefs attached as
their signature to deeds and other documents
a facsimile of the moko tattooed on their
faces. It is said that even an enemy would
respect a head conspicuous for a beautiful
moko.

The Caucasus as a Pleasure Resort. —

The Caucasus Mountains are held up by Sir
Douglas Freshfield, who knows them well,
as a desirable pleasure resort and especially
well adapted to a horseback excursion. Pro-
visions are plenty, and the configuration of
the region lends itself to a riding tour.

The Caucasus is suited for general travelers,
for lovers of the picturesque, whether or not
they are painters, as well as for peak-hunt-
ers. If above its snow level its granite
crests, its icy hollows, its hanging glaciers,
and fluted snow slopes impress the intruder
with a sublimity beyond that of the Alps,
its high valleys have attractions for men of
the most various pursuits and hobbies. The
physical geographer will find materials for a
contrast between the features of the Cauca-
sus and those of better-known ranges. For
example, why do so many Caucasian glaciers
fail to fill their valleys and leave a pleasant
dell between the moraines and the mountain
sides ? . . . I am not competent and do not
attempt to act as a guide to the Caucasus
as a whole. My ' Central Caucasus ' bears
to the whole region something of the same
proportion that the Central Alps, between
the Little St. Bernard and the Bernma Pass,
do to the Alpine chain. It is the most im-
portant section, but it is only a section. On
one side, to the east, lie the wild highlands
of Daghestan, the scene of Schamyl's resist-
ance, with their high plateaus cleft by nar-
row ravines, their hill fortresses, and at least
three high glacier groups. On the west stretch
the great forests and granite crests which
hem the tributaries of the Ruban, a region
probably of extraordinary beauty. The gla-
ciers of one of its groups have just been
mapped for the first time by the Russian
surveyors. They are otherwise wholly unex-
plored. The only travelers to penetrate these
fortresses have been Dr. Radde, who has, in
PetermanvUs Mitiheilungen, published an ac-
count of his journeys, a stray botanist or
two, and those indefatigable pursuers of wild
animals, Mr. and Mrs. Littledale, who have
hunted the aurochs in the wilds of the Ze-
lentshuk."

Historical Wampum Belts. — One of the

last papers of the late Horatio Hale was re-
cently communicated to the Anthropological
Institute, London, by Prof. E. B. Tylor, and
related to four historical Huron wampum
belts. To this Prof. Tylor added some re-
marks of his own, which were illustrated
by the exhibition of specimens and lantern
slides. It was explained how the Iroquois
belt might be distinguished from others by
the occurrence of diagonal bands of beads.

284

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

contrasting in color with tiiose forming the
ground. These diagonals are derived from
the diagonal rafters of the peculiar " long
houses " of the Iroquois. Other well-known
conventional symbols represent hearts,
houses, lands, the " peace path," etc. One
of the belts exhibited was itself a historical
record of some mterest, as it depicted a pro-
posal of conversion to Christianity made by
the early Jesuit missionaries to the Indians,
the message being effected by working into
a wampum belt a symbolic group consisting
of the lamb, the dove, and several crosses.
The investigations made by Mr. Hale seem
to show that the " Penn Belt," which is now
in New England, is not a record of the fa-
mous scene depicted by Benjamin West, but
of a more obscure treaty concluded with Iro-
quois chiefs. The intrinsic evidence afforded
by the belt convinced Mr. Hale that it was
made by Iroquois. In this way anthropology
has been able to correct history. The speaker
also illustrated the use of wampum belts as
records in modern times, exemplified by the
annual meeting of chiefs, at which all the
belts are carefully gone over, in order that
events of tribal importance may be kept
green.

Elepliants in a Lninber Yaid. — No work
done by elephants perhaps requires at once
greater intelligence and strength on their
part than that of those which are used in
unloading and piling up timber in the lum-
ber yards of Burmah. The most important
of these lumber yards, at Rangoon, receives
the timber that comes down from the im-
mense forests of the Irrawaddy, with the
great logs lashed together into huge rafts.
The workmen cut the cords, and the task of
the elephants begins. Plunging without hesi-
tation into the muddy waters of the river, they
go at once toward the logs. Each animal se-
lects a stick, pushes it with his trunk to the
shore, picks it up, and lands it, all that his
driver has to do being to indicate what log
he wishes taken. Twelve of these animals,
according to M. Charles Marsillon, eleven
males and one female, work constantly in the
yard. The female is the most intelligent of
all of them. At the sawmill she places the
piece to be cut before the saw. She uses
her trunk as a hand ; takes the boards away
as they are made, and piles them symmetri-

cally in the drying heap. As the sawdust ac-
cumulates and threatens to cover everything
up, she blows it away with her powerful nos-
trils, keeping the place cleared so that the
work can go on unobstructed. When the din-
ner bell rings, nothing — neither threats nor
caresses — can keep her in the yard, industri-
ously as she has worked till then. She seems
to see to it too that her companions also stop.
The elephants return to work immediately
the signal is given. Sometimes one of them
comes upon a stick that is too heavy for him
to handle alone ; and then one of his compan-
ions, perceiving his trouble, will come to his
assistance. It seems to be one of the easiest
things in the world for these animals to ar-
range and straighten the pile of logs when-
ever it begins to take a crooked or uneven
shape. If they are not able to do this with
their trunks, they use their tusks until the
pile is got into order. They work willingly
and with interest, call for help when they
need it, and respoiid to one another's appeals.

Snbstitntos for Glass in Germany, — An

interesting account of glass substitutes is
given in a recent copy of the Journal of the
Society of Arts. Tectorium, which is used in
Germany as a substitute for glass, is a sheet
of tough, insoluble gum — said to be bichro-
mated gelatin — about one sixteenth of an inch
thick, overlying on both sides a web of gal-
vanized iron or steel wire, the meshes of which
are generally about one eighth of an inch
square. It feels and smells similar to the oiled
silk that is used in surgery. It is lighter
than glass, tough, pliant, and practically inde-
structible by exposure to rain, wind, hail, or
any shock or blow which does not pierce or
break the wire web. It may be bent into
any desired form, and when punctured can
be easily repaired. Its translucency is about
the same as that of opal glass, with a
greenish amber color, which fades gradually
to white on exposure to the sun ; so that
while arresting the direct rays of sunshine,
it transmits a soft, modulated light, which
is said to be well adapted to hothouses and
conservatories. It is a poor conductor of
heat and cold. Its surface is well adapted
for printing in oil colors, and is thus valu-
able for decorative purposes. The objec-
tions against it are that it is inflammable, and
is apt to sot ten in warm weather. For hot-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

285

beds and forcing houses the Germans have
another substitute glass called Fensterpappe,
which is a tough, strong manilla paper
which is soaked in boiled linseed oil until it
becomes translucent and impervious to water.
This paper costs wholesale in Germany
about 19s. 66?, per roll one hundred metres
in length by one metre in width. It admits
sufficient light for growing plants, does not
require to be shaded in hot sunshine, is
light, durable, and practically secure against
breakage, and is said to be a hundred
times cheapef than glass. There is a new
product recently patented and placed on the
German market, called Hornglas. It is very
similar to tectorium in appearance and prop-
erties, the two advantages claimed for it be-
ing greater transparency and less liability of
softening under a hot sun.

Animal Traits. — Among the birds in the
" Zoo " at the Hague not commonly found
in menageries is the " rhinoceros bird," or
" buffel pikker," from the Transvaal, which
is described by the natural-history writer in
the London Spectator as a bird of remark-
able habits and unusual plumage. Small
flocks of these birds accompany most, of the
large antelopes, the buffaloes, and the rhi-
noceroses in South Africa, and run all over
the creatures' bodies, picking ofP flies and
insects. When an enemy approaches, the
"buffel pikkers" sit in line with heads
raised on the back of the animal they are
attending, like sparrows on a roof ridge, and
signal the alarm. The plumage is close, uni-
form, and compact, giving the bird an ap-
pearance of being covered with polished
satin rather than with feathers. The mon-
keys have an outdoor house, floored with loose
sand, exactly suitable for a playground agree-
ing with their natural habits, which communi-
cates with their cages by holes through the
wall. The holes fairly represent the rock
crevices in the animals' native hills, and the
monkeys slip through them to the sand, which
they can turn over in search of insects, as they
do at home. When thirsty, they go to the
stone water troughs set in the runs and drink,
standing on all fours, sucking up the water
as a horse does. The elephant in this Zoo
has had to sacrifice his dignity and come
down to playing tricks. It earns small coins
by blowing a mouth organ with its trunk

and grinding a coffee mill. It plays domi-
noes " with laborious care," lifting each piece
from the table and depositing it next that
placed by the keeper, with a very audible
noise.

Canon Core on Evolution and the Fall. —

In a lecture recently delivered at Sheffield,
England, Canon Gore examines the contra-
dictions between the Christian doctrine of
the sudden fall and the scientific doctrine of
the gradual rise of man. " According to the
theory of evolution," he said, "man began
his career at the bottom, emerging from pure-
ly animal life, and slowly struggled upward
to his present level of attainment. Accord-
ing to the Christian doctrine, on the contrary,
he was created perfect, and then subsequent-
ly fell into sin and accompanying misery."
Intellectually, however, the Bible does not
represent primitive man as perfect. His
faculties at the beginning were in a childish
state, and his mastery over the arts and sci-
ences was a gradual acquirement. But it
maintains that man from the first was en-
dowed with a perfected moral feeling for
right and wrong, and that his one act of dis-
obedience not only affected his own life but
also tainted with lawlessness his after-com-
ers. Canon Gore maintains that according
to the third chapter of Genesis man was at
first in direct relation to a divine will, and
could have followed the path of development
pointed out to him. He thereby would have
spiritualized not only his own nature, but by
the simple law of heredity would have fa-
thered a race moving in an altogether higher
moral sphere.

Marsupials and their Skias. — The mar-
supials (the pouch-bearing animals) of Aus-
tralia, the opossums, wombats, kangaroos, and
wallabies (smaller kangaroos), are among the
fur-bearing animals killed in the largest num-
bers. They have been looked upon as pests,
and a premium put upon their heads by the
Government, so that now they are exter-
minated in many parts of the country. Their
skins are not at all estimated at their proper
value, being mostly made up into cheap rugs,
or used for sole leather and japanned boots,
or the hair is scraped off and manufactured
into felt. Yet they would be a valuable ad-
dition to the European fur trade, were the

286

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

animals not constantly killed and the skins
shipped to England in the summer, when the
fur is almost useless. The coat, especially
of the kangaroo, is close and soft like plush,
with beautiful tints of French gray, warm
red, orange, and rose color. The famous
"boxing kangaroo" attracted a good deal of
attention some three years ago. It earned
an immense sum of money, sometimes given
as £20,000. It had not received any special
training ; its keeper timply took advantage
of the fact that a tame kangaroo who knows
its master will always " box " when invited to
do so, putting up his short forearms to ward
ofE any imaginary blows. This kangaroo set
the fashion for the sport, for the animals at
once were sought after for sparring exhibi-
tions, and for a time all the kangaroos in
Europe outside of the menageries nightly
drew crowds to their pugilistic feats. Kan-
garoos easily adapt themselves to the Euro-
pean climate ; they thrive well in the zoo-
logical gardens, and have even been success-
fully kept on private estates in England.
Their graceful poses and their soft, beauti-
fully tinted coats make them objects of gen-
eral attraction.

Roadside Orchards. — The experiment of
planting fruit trees along the sides of pub-
lic highways has been tried with satisfactory
results in several German states and in Aus-
tria, and the products of the plantations
have been the means of adding considerably
to the revenues of the Governments thereof.
In Saxony the profit derived by the state
from that source during fourteen years is
estimated at about four hundred thousand
dollars. Planting of forest trees by the sides
of the roads has been abandoned in Wiir-
temberg, and the plantation and care of fruit
trees are regulated by law. The trees are
placed in the care «f the abutting proprie-
tor under the supervision of the highway
inspector. In Bavaria and the Palatinate
each road man is duplicated by a horticultur-
ist, for whose qualification special instruction
is provided, and who has to pass a competi-
tive examination. In some regions the lines
of the railroads are also planted, and in
others the minor roads and even private
roads. The system has made the most rapid
progress and reached the highest develop-
ment in the grand duchy of Luxemburg,

where special classes are held every year,
under a professor in the agricultural school,
for teaching the inspectors and road hands
the theoretical and practical elements of the
orchardist's art.

The Dalai Lama.— Mr. St. George R.
Littledale, who traveled in Tibet in 1894,
learned from an interpreter that the Da-
lai Lama then reigning was about twenty
years old, and was to come of age in the
succeeding November. The Rajah of Lhasa,
who was acting as regent, would then lose
his power and retire into private life. The
last two Dalai Lamas had died between the
ages of eighteen and twenty, which seemed
to be a peculiarly fatal period in the lives of
these potentates. The present regent had
held office for forty years, and might per-
haps have given interesting details of the
last illnesses of two of his sovereigns. The
Dalai Lama, however often the dignitary
may be reincarnated, never really dies; the
incarnation descends to some infant, whom
it is the business of the lama priesthood to
discover. When found, he is brought to
Lhasa, surrounded by crowds of lamas, who
educate him for the position he is so seldom
allowed to fill. The Dalai Lama of Mr. Lit-
tledale's time was discovered as a baby at
Thokopo, five days from Lhasa. The Teshu
Lama at Shigatze was a boy of twelve or
thirteen, who during his minority was under
the tutelage of Lhasa. When a Tibetan
lama dies, they carry the body to a moun-
tain, cut it to pieces, and the vultures do
the rest. The Dalai Lama is embalmed, and
gold and jewels are inserted into his face.
The three great incarnations — the Dalai
Lama, the Teshu Lama, and the Taranath
Lama — are all equally holy, and their sedan
chairs, when in Lhasa, are each carried by
eight bearers, while the two Chinese manda-
rins are allowed only four bearers apiece.

Qnick Growth of a Myth. — A pertinent
illustration of the way myths and legends
may grow and expand is illustrated by the
story of Alexander (the Great), of which Mr.
E. A. Wallis Budge has published the Syriac
and Ethiopic versions. No instance of the
development of fables, says the Athenaeum's
review of one of these publications, can be
more instructive; for we start from a real

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

287

man, living in the clear light of history,
whose acts were chronicled at the time by
respectable historians. Nevertheless, so
transcendent was his genius, so marvelous
were his deeds, that almost immediately
after his death — probably, indeed, during
his life — popular imagination lays hold of
him, adds adventures, miracles, words of
wisdom, wonders of all sorts, and so trans
forms him into a colossal mythical figure,
which looms through the mists of fable, as
fantastic as Jack the Giant Killer. The
diffusion of the Alexander stories is prob-
ably the widest ever attained by any heroic

legend. " There are versions of them stretch-
ing through all the middle ages in time, and
reaching in space from the Malay Peninsula
to Ireland ; and, as every nation has desired
a popular or home edition, we can even yet
find either complete or partial texts in at
least wenty-three languages." Dr. Budge
describes the process of amplification of the
myth as starting with the distortion and en-
largement of the first tolerably accurate de-
scription, and going on till, " when the hero
has become a mere memory, his name will be
made in each country that adopts the story a
peg on which to hang legends and myths."

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

A BOW and arrows taken from an Egyp-
tian tomb of the twenty-sixth dynasty and
exhibited to the London Anthropological In-
ptitute differ in a very marked manner from
the native Egyptian bows, and are believed
to be of Assyrian origin. The differences
are very evident when a comparison is made
with the typical Egyptian archer's equip-
ment which was found in the same tomb.
The bow is elaborately built up of several
materials, and is therefore to be classed with
the " composite bows," being allied to the
modern Asiatic bows comprised under this
term. The materials of which it is com-
posed are wood (two kinds), dense black
horn, sinews of animals, birch bark, and glue.
The birch bark, which completely enveloped
the bow in a continuous sheath, would of it-
self proclaim the implement to be a foreign
and northern introduction into Egypt, and
the whole character of the weapon bears out
this supposition.

It is related in the Life of Brian Hough-
ton Hodgson, the first great collector of
Buddhist manuscripts, that while seeking for
books in Nepaul he was surprised at the wide
diffusion of literature among the masses.
He attributed it to the knowledge of prirt-
ing which the Tibetans had derived, prob-
ably, from China. " But the universal use
they make of it," he said, " is a merit of
their own. The poorest fellow who visits
this valley is seldom without his religious
tract, and from every part of his dress dan-
gle charms made up in slight cases, whose
interior exhibits the neatest workmanship."
The universal use of writing, as shown by

the abundance of manuscripts, was hardly
less noticeable than the wide diffusion of
printed books. The writing of many of these
ancient manuscripts exhibits fine specimens
of very graceful penmanship ; and they owe
their preservation, the author of the memoir
says, to having been guarded in their wrap-
pings of silks as sacred heirlooms.

The well-known germicidal qualities of
oxygen have led to its recent application in
the treatment of surgical wounds. Exam-
inations of the bacteriological conditions of
affected parts before and after treatment,
says Mr. George Stoker in a recent British
Medical Journal, show that oxygen has a se-
lective action in reference to microorgan-
isms. Whatever may be the connection be-
tween the organisms and the state of a
wound or sore, it seems to be established
that when in a wound treated by oxygen
healing is arrested or retarded, there is al-
ways a corresponding decrease of favorable
and increase of unfavorable micro organisms.
If the strength of the oxygen bath be in-
creased when this condition arises, the char-
acter of the micro-organisms from the wound
is entirely reversed. A long and varied ex-
perience of the oxygen treatment has led
Mr. Stoker to conclude that the method
heals in less time than any other form of
treatment, allays pain, stops foul discharges,
forms a healthy new skin, and is far more
economical than any other form of ti-eat-
ment, both as regards suffering and money.

The scientific merits of archaeology were
well set forth in an address made by Mr.
W. M. Flinders Petrie at the recent annual

288

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

meeting of the Egypt Exploration Fund.
The science had made great advances, one
indication of which was the unexpectedly
large circulation of books on the subject.
There had, too, been a more scientific spirit
shown in its treatment, and problems were
approached simply with the desire to learn
the truth, and not with the expectation of
proving something. The time had indeed
come when archicology was regarded as one
of the elements of a liberal education. It
was now fully recognized that it was not a
mere fad or dilettant amusement, but had
thrown great light on the history of the
human mind.

NOTES.

At the meeting of the Coimcil of the
American Association for the Advancement
of Science, held at Washington April 21st,
Prof. Theodore Gill, as senior vice-president,
succeeded under the constitution to the posi-
tion of acting president, vice E. D. Cope, de-
ceased. Prof. Gill was requested by vote of
the Council to prepare an obituary notice of
President Cope, and to deliver it before the
association at the Detroit meeting in lieu of
the ordinary presidential address by the re-
tiring president, and he undertook to do so.
Prof. Leland 0. Howard was nominated vice-
president for the Section of Zoology (Sec-
tion F), vice G. Brown Goode, deceased.

The observations of Mr. Percival Lowell
at Flagstaff, Arizona, in which he assumes
to have had vastly more distinct views of
the planet's disk than were ever before ob-
tained, indicate that the period of the di-
urnal rotation of Venus is identical with
that of its revolution round the sun.
Hence it has one side constantly turned
toward the sun and the other constantly
averted from it — everlasting burning heat
on one side and never- intermitted cold on
the other.

A PROPOSITION is under consideration in
the English scientific societies for the estab-
lishment, in commemoration of the sixtieth
year of her Majesty's reign, of a Victoria
Research Fund, to be administered by repre-
sentatives of the various scientific societies
for the encouragement of research iu all
branches of science.

The people of Detroit are working ear-
nestly in preparation to give the American
Association a cordial welcome and hospitable
entertainment at its coming meeting there.
A general interest seems to be taken in the
matter, as was exemplified by the recent at-
tendance of an audience of twenty-five hun-
dred persons upon a lecture by the secretary
of the association, Prof. Putnam. The
press is co-operating with the citizens' com-

mittee in making the interest lively, and the
effect is apparent in the subscription lists.
While it is already reasonably certain that
all who go to the meeting will be well and
amply taken care of, the people hope that
their invitation will be responded to by a
large attendance of Americans and English-
men and others interested in science.

The work in anthropology in the Uni-
versity of Chicago, for the present associated
with that in sociology, includes courses in
general anthropology, general ethnology,
prehistoric archaeology (European and Amer-
ican, in alternation), ethnology (the Amer-
ican race), physical anthropology (elementary
and laboratory courses), laboratory work,
Mexican ethnography and archaeology, eth-
nology of Japan, the pueblos of New Mex-
ico, and lectures by Dr. W. I. Thomas on
folk psychology, primitive art, and Slavic
ethnology. Several important collections
are on deposit in the university, represent-
ing Mexican archfcology, the cliff dwellings
and cave house of Utah, the Aleutian Is-
lands and Eskimos, Japan, and the collec-
tion of the International Folklore Associa-
tion.

The Blue Hill Meteorological Observa-
tory, Massachusetts, was established in 1885
by Mr. A. Lawrence Rotch, and is main-
tained by him at his own expense. By
arrangement it co-operates with the ob-
servatory of Harvard College, and its obser-
vations are published, partly at Mr. Rotch's
expense, in the annals of that institution.
Since the land surrounding the observatory
has been taken for a public park, a lease
for ninety-nine years has been taken of the
ground it needs, which will enable its work
to be continued under invariable conditions
of exposure.

The French journal V Anthropologie pub-
lishes an account of the discovery of the
Moi race of tailed men by M. Paul d'Enjoy
in Indo-China. M. d'Enjoy saw only one of
the men, the rest of the village having run
away, but he conversed with this one and
saw where the people lived. The man was
found in a large tree, into which he had
climbed for honey. His climbing was like
that of a monkey, and in coming down he
applied his sole to the bark. The tail is not
the only peculiarity of this race, for their
ankle bones are extraordinarily developed, so
as to resemble the spurs of roosters. The
Mois use poisoned barbed arrows, and are
treated by the natives around them as brutes.

Baron Constantin Ettingshacsen has
died at Graz, aged seventy-one. Beginning
his scientific career as a doctor, he later on
devoted himself to the study of botany and
paleontology. He arranged the paleonto-
iogical collections in the British Museum
(natural history). He wrote many papers
for the Proceedings of the Royal Society, and
for the journals of other learned bodies.

HORATIO HALE.

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE
MOKTHLY.

JULY, 1897.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

(Lowell Institute Lectures^ 1896. )

By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TE0HNOLOGt|; LECTURER IN
ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

VI.— FRANCE— THESTEUTON AND THE|CELT.

SEVERAL reasons combine to make];_France the^most interest-
ing country of Europe from the anthropological point of
view. More is known of it in detail than of any other part of
the continent save Italy. Its surface presents the greatest diver-
sity of climate, soil, and fertility. Its population, consequently, is
exposed to the most varied influences of environment. It alone
among the other countries of central Europe is neither cis- nor
trans-alpine. It is open to invasion from all sides alike. Lying
on the extreme west coast of Europe, it is a place of last resort
for all the westward-driven peoples of the Old World. All these
causes combine to render its population the most heterogeneous
to be found on the continent. It comprises all three of the great
ethnic types described in our last paper, while most countries are
content with two. Nay more, it still includes a goodly living
representation of a prehistoric race which has disappeared almost
everywhere else in Europe.*

* It would be ungracious not to acknowledge publicly my indebtedness to two of the fore-
most authorities upon the population of I'rance — Dr. R. Collignon, of the Ecole Superieure de
Guerre at Paris, and Prof. G. V. de Lapouge, of the University of Rennes in Brittany. In-
valuable assistance in the preparation of this and the following paper has been rendered
by each. No request, even the most, exacting, has failed of a generous response at their
hands.— W. Z. R.

VOL. LI. — 22

zgo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Thirty years ago lay observers began to note differences in
central France between the people of the mountains and of the
plains. As early as 1868 Durand de Gros noted that in Aveyron,
one of the southern departments lying along the border of a
mountainous area, the populations of the region thereabout were
strongly differentiated. On the calcareous plains the people were
taller, of light complexion, with blue or blue- grayish eyes and
having fine teeth. In the upland areas, of a granitic formation,
the people were stunted, dark in complexion, with very poor teeth.
These groups used distinct dialects. The peasants differed in
temperament. One was as lively as the other was morose. One
was progressive, the other was backward in culture, suspicious of
innovations. This same observer noted that the cattle of the two
regions were unlike. On the infertile soils they were smaller
and leaner, differing in bodily proportions as well. He naturally,
therefore, offered the same explanation for the differences of
both men and cattle — namely, that they were due to the influences
of environment. He asserted that the geology of the districts
had affected the quality of the food and its quantity at the
same time, thereby affecting both animal and human life. When
this theory was advanced, even the fact that such differences ex-
isted was scouted as impossible, to say nothing of the explanation
of them. As late as 1889 I found a German geologist, in igno-
rance of the modern advance of anthropology, strongly impressed
by these same contrasts of population, and likewise ascribing
them to the direct influence of environment as did the earlier
discoverer. These differences, then, surely exist even to the un-
practiced eye. We must account for them ; but we do it in an-
other way. The various types of population are an outcome of
their physical environment. This has, however, worked not di-
rectly but in a roundabout way. It has set in motion a species of
social or racial selection, now operative over most of Europe.
This process it is our province to describe in this paper.

Before we proceed to study the French people, we must cast
an eye over the geographical features of the country. These are
depicted in the accompanying map, in which the deeper tints
show the location of the regions of elevation above the sea level.
At the same time the cross-hatched lines mark the areas within
which the physical environment is unpropitious, at least as far
as agriculture — the mainstay of economic life until recent times
— is concerned.

A glance is sufiicient to convince us that France is not every-
where a garden. Two north and south axes of fertility divide it
into three or four areas of isolation. These differ in degree in a
way which illustrates the action of social forces with great clear-
ness. Within these two axes of fertility lie two thirds of all the

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

291

cities of France with a population of fifty thousand or over. The
major one extends from Flanders at the north to Bordeaux in the
southwest. Shaped like an hourglass, it is broadened about Paris
and in Aquitaine, being pinched at the waist between Auvergne
and Brittany. The seventy- five miles of open country which lie
between Paris and Orleans have rightly been termed by Kohl
" the Mesopotamia of France." This district is not only surpass-
ingly fertile; it is the strategic center of the country as well.
At this point the elbow of the Loire comes nearest to the Seine

Elf veXion above jea.
0-2.00 meteri
Z-500
^^ over 5oo
ni riounti-inous

j Primitive
! with infer

in all its course. An invader possessed of this vantage ground
would have nearly all of France that was worth having at his
feet. If the Huns under Attila, coming from the east in 451,
had captured Orleans as Clovis did with his Frankish host at
a later time, the whole southwest of France would have been
laid open to them. The Saracens, approaching from the oppo-
site direction along this axis, had they been victorious at Tours,
could in the same way have swarmed over all the north and
the east, and the upper Rhone Valley would have been within
reach. The Normans in their turn, coming from the north-

292 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

west, must needs take Orleans before they could enter the heart
of the country. Finally, it was for the same reason that the
English fought for the same city in 1429, and the Germans took
it twice, in 1815 and again in 1870. This district, then, between
Paris and Orleans, is the key to the geographical situation, be-
cause it lies at the middle point of this backbone of fertility
from north to south.

The second axis, lying along the river Rhone, is of somewhat
less importance as a center of population because of its extreme
narrowness. Yet it is a highway of migration between the north
and the south of Europe, skirting the Alps ; and it is easily
accessible to the people of the Seine basin by the low plateau of
Langres near the city of Dijon. This renders it the main artery
of communication from Paris to the Mediterranean. Down its
course Teutonic blood has flowed. The culture of the south has
spread into northern Europe in the contrary direction. Such is
the normal exchange between the two climates in human history^
the world over. The great fertility of the Rhone axis, moreover,
is in strong contrast to the character of the country upon either
side. Judged by its population, it merits the important position
we have here assigned to it.

These two axes of fertility divide France, as we have said,
into three areas which exhibit the phenomena of social isolation
in different degrees. East of the Rhone lies Savoy, exceedingly
mountainous, with a rigorous Alpine climate, and of a geologi-
cal formation yielding with difficulty to cultivation. This region
combines two safeguards against ethnic invasion. In the first
place, it is not economically attractive; for the colonist is un-
moved by those charms which appeal to the tourist to-day. We
reiterate, the movement of peoples is dependent upon the imme-
diate prosperity of the country for them. It matters not whether
the invading hosts be colonists, coming for permanent settlement,
or barbarians in search of booty ; the result is the same in either
case. Savoy, therefore, has seldom attracted the foreigner. It
could not offer him a livelihood if he came. In the second place,
whenever threatened with invasion, the defense of the country
was easy. Permanent conquest is impossible in so mountainous
a district. Combining both of these safeguards in an extreme
degree. Savoy, therefore, offers some of the most remarkable ex-
amples of social individuality in all France.

The second area of isolation lies between our two north and
south axes of fertility — that is to say, between the Rhone on the
east and the Garonne on the southwest. It centers in the ancient
province of Auvergne, known geographically as the Massif Cen-
trale. This comprises only a little less than two thirds of France
south of Dijon. In reality it is an outpost of the Alps cut off

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

293

from Savoy by the narrow strip of the Rhone Valley. Much of
it is a plateau elevated above two thousand feet, rising into
mountains which touch three thousand feet in altitude. Its cli-
mate is unpropitious ; its soil is sterile ; impossible for the vine,
and in general even for wheat. Rye or barley alone can be here
successfully raised. At the present time this region is almost
entirely given over to grazing. It has vast possibilities for the
extractive arts ; but those meant nothing until the present cen-
tury. For all these reasons Auvergne presents a second degree

Cephalic Index
France

AND BeLCIVM

87 and 88

'roundheads

After Collionon and tlouzE

16650 OBSERVATIONS

of isolation. It lacks all economic attractiveness; but it is not
rugged enough in general to be inaccessible or completely de-
fensible as is Savoy.

Brittany, or Armorica, the third area of isolation, is perhaps
somewhat less unattractive economically than Auvergne. It is
certainly less rugged. Extending in as far as the cities of An-
glers and Alengon, it is saved from the extreme infertility of its
primitive rock formation by the moisture of its climate. Neither
volcanic, as are many parts of Auvergne, nor elevated — seldom
rising above fourteen hundred feet — it corresponds to our own

294

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Teutonic Type. Blond.
Index, 11.

New England.
For the farmer,
it is more suited
to the cultivation
of religious pro-
pensities than to
productsof amore
material kind. It
is the least capa-
ble of defense of
the three areas of
isolation ; but it
redeems its repu-
tation by its pen-
insular position.
It is off the main
line. It is its re-
moteness from the pathways of inva-
sion by land which has been its ethnic
salvation.

In order to show the effect which
this varied environment, above de-
scribed, has exerted upon the racial
character of the French people, we
have arranged a series of three par-
allel maps in the following pages,
showing the exact distribution of the
main physical traits. For purposes
of comparison certain cities are lo-
cated upon them all alike, including
even the map of physical geography

as well. A cross in the core of
Auvergne in each case ; the Rhine
shown in the northeast ; the loca-
tion of Paris, Lyons, Belfort, etc.,
will enable the reader to keep
them all in line at once.

Earlier in our work we have
seen that the several physical
traits which betoken race vary
considerably in their power of
resistance to environmental in-
fluences. This resistant power is

greatest in the
- head form ;
less so in the
pigmentation
and stature.
As we are
now studying
races, let us
turn to our
most compe-
tent witness
first. It will
be remem-
bered, from a
preceding pa-

per, that we
measure the
proportions of

Alpine Type. Ilautcs Aipes.
Neutral. Inde.\, 96.

Mediterranean Type.
Brunette. Index, 76.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 295

tlie head by expressing the breadth in percentage of the length
from front to back.* This is known as the cephalic index. We
have also seen that a high index — that is, a l)road head — is the
most permanent characteristic of the so-called Alpine race of cen-
tral Europe. This type is bounded on the north by the long-
headed and blond Teutons, on the south by a similarly long-headed
Mediterranean stock, which is, however, markedly brunette. It is
with these three racial types that we have mainly to do in this
paper. Passing over all technicalities, our map of cephalic index
shows the location of the Alpine racial type by its darker tints ;
while, in proportion as the shades become lighter, the pre valency
of long and narrow heads increases.

The significance of these differences in head form to the eye is
manifested by the three portraits at hand. The northern long-
headed blond type, with its oval face and narrow chin, is not
unlike the Mediterranean one in respect of its cranial conforma-
tion. This particular Teutonic type is slightly misleading, from
the mode of dressing the hair, which tends to exaggerate the
width at the forehead. The Alpine populations of central France
are exemplified by rather an extreme type in our portrait, in
which the head is almost globular, while the face is correspond-
ingly round. Such extremes are rare. They indicate the tend-
ency, however, with great distinctness. The contrast between
the middle type and either extreme is well marked. Even with
differences but half as great as those between our portrait types,
it is no wonder that Durand and other early observers should
have insisted that they were real and not the product of im-
agination. They may have erred in their explanations, although
not in their facts.

Recalling the physical geography of the country, as we have
described it, the most patent feature of our map of cephalic index
is a continuous belt of long-headedness, which extends from
Flanders to Bordeaux on the southwest. It covers what we have
termed the main axis of fertility of France. A second strip of
long-headed population fringes the fertile Mediterranean coast,
with a tendency to spread up the Rhone Valley. In fact, these
two areas of long-headed populations show a disposition to unite
south of Lyons in a narrow light strip. This divides the dark-
colored areas of Alpine people into two wings. One of these cen-

* It should not fail of notice that these maps are constructed from averages for each
department as a unit. These last are merely administrative districts, entirely arbitrary in
outline, and entirely in dissonance with the topography of the country. The wonder is
that, in view of this, the facts should still shine out so clearly. Thus all the Rhone depart-
ments lie half up among the mountains on the east. Their averages are therefore repre-
sentative neither of the mountains nor the valleys. Between Dijon and Lyons the depart-
ments completely span the narrow valley, entirely obliterating its local peculiarities.

296 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ters in the Alpine highlands, running up to the north ; the other,
in Auvergne, extends away toward the Spanish frontier. At
the present time let us note that this intrusive strip of long heads
cutting the Alpine belt in two follows the exact course of the
canal which has long united the head waters of the Loire with the
Rhone. It is an old channel of communication between Marseilles
and Orleans. Foreigners, immigrating along this highway, are
the cause of the phenomenon beyond question. %,^

The long-headed populations therefore seem Xo follow the
open country and the river valleys. The Alpine broad-headed
type, on the other hand, is always and everywhere aggregated in
the areas of isolation. Its relative purity, moreover, varies in
proportion to the degree of such isolation enjoyed or suffered.
In Savoy and Auvergne it is quite unmixed ; in Brittany only a
few vestiges of it remain. And yet these few remnants are
strictly confined within the inhospitable granitic areas, so that
the boundaries of the two correspond very closely. The spoken
Celtic tongue has also lingered here in Brittany for peculiar rea-
sons, which we shall soon discuss. The main one is the isolation
of the district, which has sheltered the Alpine race in the same
way. For it is now beyond question that the Breton, the Au-
vergnat, and the Savoyard are all descendants of the same stock.
In nearly every case the Alpine race is found distributed, as Dr.
Collignon says, " by a mechanism, so to speak, necessary, and
which by the fatal law of the orographic condition of the soil
ought to be as it is." In the unattractive or inaccessible areas
the broad-headedness centers almost exclusively ; in the open, fer-
tile plains the cephalic index falls as regularly as the elevation.
So closely is this law followed that Dr. Collignon aflSrms of the
central plateau that wherever one meets an important river eas-
ily ascended, the cephalic index becomes lower and brachycephaly
diminishes.

The two-hundred-metre line of elevation above the sea seems
most nearly to correspond to the division line between types.
This contour on our geographical map is the boundary between
the white and first shaded areas. Compare this map with that of
the cephalic index, following round the edge of the Paris basin,
and note the similarity in this respect. There is but one break in
the correspondence along the eastern side. This exception it is
which really proves the law. It is so typical that it will repay us
to stop a moment and examine. We have to do, just south of
Paris, with that long tongue of dark tint, that is of relative
broad-headedness, which reaches away over toward Brittany. It
nearly cuts the main axis of Teutonic racial traits (light tinted)
in two. This is the department of Loiret, whose capital is Or-
leans. It is divided from its Alpine base of sujjplies by the long-

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

297

headed department of Yonne on the east. This latter district lies
on the direct route over to Dijon and the Rhone Valley. Teutonic
peoples have here penetrated toward the southeast, following the
path of least resistance as always. Why, you will ask, is the
Loiret about Orleans so much less Teutonic in type ? The an-
swer would appear were the country mapped in detail. The great
forest of Orleans, a bit still being left at Fontainebleau, used to
cover this little upland between the Seine and the Loire, east of
Orleans. It was even until recently so thinly settled that it was
known as the Oatinais, or wilderness. Its insular position is for
this reason not at all strange. The Teutons have simply passed
it by on either side. Those who did not go up the Seine and
Yonne followed the course of the Loire. Here, then, is a parting
of the ways down either side of Auvergne.

Another one of the best local examples illustrating this law
that the Alpine stock is segregated in areas of isolation and of eco-
nomic disfavor is
offered by the Mor-
van. This " mau-
vais pays " is a
peninsula of the
Auvergne plateau,
a little southwest
of the city of Dijon.
It is shown on our
geographical map.
It is a little bit of
wild and rugged
country, about for-
ty miles long and
half as wide, which
rises abruptly out of the fertile plains of Burgundy. Its moun-
tains, which rise three thousand feet, are heavily forested. The
soil is sterile and largely volcanic in character ; even the com-
mon grains are cultivated with difficulty. The limit of culti-
vation, even for potatoes or rye, is reached by tilling the soil
one year in seven. This little region contains at the present time
a population of about thirty-five thousand — less to-day than fifty
years ago. Until the middle of the century there was not even a
passable road through it. It affords, therefore, an exceedingly
good illustration of the result of geographical isolation in minute
detail. Its population is as strongly contrasted with that of the
plains round about as is its topography. The people, untouched
by foreign influence to a considerable extent, have intermarried,
so that the blood has been kept quite pure. The region is so-
cially interesting as one of the few places in all France where the

Types in the Morvan.

298 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

birth rate long resisted the depressing influences of civilization.
For years it has been converted into a veritable foundling asylum
for the city of Paris. Its mothers have cared for innumerable
waifs besides their own offspring. This isolated people is strongly
Alpine, as our portraits show, the boy on the right being a pecul-
iarly good type ; the other one has a strain of Teutonic narrow-
headedness from all appearances. Beyond a doubt here is another
little spot in which the Alpine race has been able to persist by
reason of isolation alone.*

The law which holds true for most of France, then, is that the
Alpine stock is confined to the areas of isolation and economic
unattractiveness. A patent exception to this appears in Bur-
gundy— the fertile plains of the Saone, lying south of Dijon. A
strongly marked area of broad-headedness cuts straight across
the Saone Valley at this point. A most desirable country is
strongly held by a broad-headed stock, although it is very close
to the Teutonic immigration route up along the Rhine. Here
we have a striking example of the reversion of a people to its
early type after a complete military conquest. It serves as an
apt illustration of the impotency of a conquering tribe to exter-
minate the original population. The Burgundians, as we know,
belonged to a blond and tall race of Teutonic lineage, who came
to the country from the north in considerable numbers in the fifth
century. The Romans welcomed them in Gaul, forcing the peo-
ple to grant them one half of their houses, two thirds of their
cultivated land, and a third of their slaves. For about a thou-
sand years this district of Burgundy took its rule more or less
from the Teutonic invaders : and yet to-day it has completely
reverted to its primitive type of population. It is even more
French than the Auvergnats themselves. The common people
have virtually exterminated every trace of their conquerors.
Even their great height (shown on our stature map), for which the
Burgundians have long been celebrated, is probably more to be
ascribed to the material prosperity of the district than to a Teu-
tonic strain. One factor contributing to the result we observe
is that the fertile country of the Saone Valley is open to constant
immigration from Switzerland and the surrounding mountains.
The Rhine has drawn off the Teutons in another direction, and
political hatreds have discouraged immigration from the north-
east. The result has been that the Alpine type has been strongly

* It should be noted that this relation does not appear upon our map of head form,
because this represents merely the averages for whole departments. The Morvan happens
to lie just at the meeting point of three of these, so that its influence upon the map is
entirely scattered. Most interesting details are given in Memoires de la Societe d'Anthro-
pologie, Series 3, I, 1894, fasc. 2.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 299

re-enforced from nearly every side, while Teutonic elements have
been gradually eliminated.

Another and perhaps even more potent explanation for this
localization of the Alpine type in Burgundy also lies at hand.
This fertile plain is the last rallying point of a people repressed
both from the north and the south. The general rule, as Canon
Taylor puts it, is that the " hills contain the ethnological sweep-
ings of the plains." This holds good only until such time as the
hills themselves become saturated with population, if I may mix
figures of speech. Applying this principle to the present case, it
appears as if the original Alpine stock in Burgundy had been
encroached upon from two sides. The Teutons have overflowed
from the north ; the Mediterranean stock has pressed up the
Rhone Valley. Before these two the broad-headed Alpine type
has, as usual, yielded step by step, until at last it has become
resistant, not by reason of any geographical isolation or advan-
tage, but merely because of its density and mass. It has been
squeezed into a compact body of broad-headedness, and has per-
sisted in that form to the present time. It has rested here, be-
cause no further refuge existed. It is dammed up in just the
same way that the restless American borderers have at last set-
tled in force in Kansas. Being in the main discouraged from fur-
ther westward movement, they have at last taken root. In this
way a primitive population may conceivably preserve its ethnic
purity, entirely apart from geographical areas of isolation as
such.

What is the meaning of this remarkable differentiation of
population ? Why should the Alpine racial type be so hard
favored in respect of its habitat ? Is it because prosperity tends
to make the head narrow ; or, in other words, because the physical
environment exerts a direct influence upon the shape of the
cranium ? Were the people of France once completely homoge-
neous until differentiated by outward circumstances ? There is
absolutely no proof of it. Nevertheless, the coincidence remains
to be explained. It holds good in every part of Europe that we
have examined — in Switzerland, the Tyrol, the Black Forest — and
now here in great detail for all France. Two theories offer a pos-
sible and competent explanation for it all. One is geographical,
the other social.

The first theory accounting for the sharp differences of popu-
lation between the favorable and unpropitious sections of Europe
is that the population in the uplands, in the nooks and corners,
represents an older race, which has been eroded by the modern im-
migration of a new people. In other words, the Alpine Celts once
occupied the land much more exclusively ; they were the primi-
tive possessors of the soil. From the north have come the Teu-

300 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tonic tribes, from the south the Mediterranean peoples ; in France,
just as in the Tyrol, as we have pointed out in a preceding paper.
The phenomenon, according to this theory, is merely one of ethnic
stratification.

A second explanation, much more far reaching in its progno-
sis, is, as we have said, sociological. The phenomenon is the out-
come of a process of social selection, which rests upon racial or
physical differences of temperament. This theory is advanced by
Ammon of Baden, and his disciple Lapouge in France, in two
very remarkable recent books.* Briefly stated, it is this : In some
undefined way the long-headed type of head form is generally
associatad with an energetic, adventurous temperament, which
impels the individual to migrate in search of greater economic
opportunities. The men thus physically endowed are more apt
to go forth to the great cities, to the places where advancement in
the scale of living is possible. The result is a constant social
selection, which draws this type upward and onward, the broad-
headed one being left in greater purity thereby in the isolated
regions. Those who advocate this view do not make it necessa-
rily a matter of racial selection alone. It is more fundamental.
It concerns all races and all types within races. This is too com-
prehensive a topic to be discussed in this place ; we shall hope to
deal with it later. Personally, I think that it may be, and indeed
is, due to a great process of racial rather than purely social selec-
tion. I do not think it yet proved to be other than this. The
Alpine stock is more primitive, deeper seated in the land ; the
Teutonic race has come in afterward, overflowing toward the
south, where life offers greater attractions for invasion. In so
doing it has repelled or exterminated the Alpine type, either by
forcible conquest or by intermixture, which racially leads to the
same goal.f

Before we proceed further let us examine the other physical
traits a moment. The map of the distribution of brunetteness
shows these several Alpine areas of isolation far less distinctly
than the map of the cephalic index. It points to the disturbing
influence of climate or of other environment. If the law con-
ducing to blondness in mountainous areas of infertility were to
hold true here as it appears to do elsewhere, this factor alone
would obscure relations. Many of the populations of the Alpine
areas should, on racial grounds, be darker than the Teutonic ones ;
yet, being economically disfavored, on the other hand, they tend
toward blondness. The two influences of race and environment

* Natiirliche Auslese beini Meiischen, Jt'ua, 189o. Les Selections Sociales, Paris, 1896.
f For an exceedingly interesting discussion of the action of economic and social forces
in France, vide Auvergne, by T. E. ClifFe-Leslie in Fortnightly Review, xvi, j). 736 sey.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

301

are here in opposition to the manifest blurring of all sliarp racial
lines and divisions. Despite this disturbing influence, the Au-
vergnat area appears as a great wedge of pigmentation penetrat-
ing the center of France on the south. This is somewhat broken
up on the northern edge, because of the recent immigration of a
considerable mining population into this district which has come

BRUNETNES5

France

3k ;X"'*/

Relative

ORDER.
OF

DEPARTMENTS

After Topinard

Zoo.ooo Observations

from other parts of the country. The Rhone Valley appears as a
route of migration of blondness toward the south. Little more
than these general features can be gathered from the map of color,
except that the progressive brunetteness as we advance toward
the south is everywhere in evidence. Were we to examine the
several parts of France in detail we should find competent expla-
nations for many features which appear as anomalous — as, for
example, the extreme blondness upon the southwest coast of
Brittany.

The map of stature still preserves evidence of the threefold
division of the short Alpine people into Savoyards, Auvergnats,
and Bretons. It demonstrates in great clearness the influence of
the Rhone Valley in the production of tall stature. In this case
the process is cumulative, for the fertile valley productive of in-

302

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

creased bodily height is at the same time a highroad of immi-
gration for the Teutonic race, which always carries a tall stature
wherever it goes. The main axis of fertility from Paris to Bor-

Stature

France

to 92.6
to 108

Average about

5FnT3lNCHE&

After Broca

deaux does not appear, for two reasons. The area about Limoges
and Perigueux (see map of cephalic index on page ^Oo), with the
shortest population of all, is the seat of a prehistoric people which
we shall describe in our next paper ; and north of it toward Or-
leans local causes with which we have not time to deal here have
been operative.

Brittany and Normandy are two of the most interesting re-
gions in Europe to the traveler and the artist. The pleasing land-
scapes and the quaint customs all serve to awaken interest. To
the anthropologist as well the whole district possesses a marked
individuality of its own. Within it lie the two racial extremes
of the French people — the old and the new — closely in contact
with one another. Attention was first attracted to the region
because of the persistence of the Celtic spoken language, now
vanished everywhere else on the mainland of Europe — quite ex-

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

303

tinct, save as it clings for dear life to the outskirts of the British
Isles. Here again, we find an ethnic struggle in process, which
has been going on for centuries, unsuspected by the statesmen
who were building a nation upon these shifting sands of race.
This struggle depends, as elsewhere in France, upon the topog-
raphy of the country. The case is so peculiar, however, that it
will repay us to consider it a little more in detail.

The anthropological fate of Brittany, this last of our three
main areas of isolation, depends largely upon its peninsular form.
Its frontage of seacoast and its many harbors have rendered it
peculiarly liable to invasion from the sea ; while at the same time
it has been protected on the east by its remoteness from the eco-
nomic and political centers and highways of France. This coin-
cidence and not a greater purity of blood has preserved its Celtic
speech. Since the foreigners have necessarily touched at separate
points along its coast, concerted attack upon the language has
been rendered impossible. This fact of invasion from the sea has
divided its people not into the men of the mountain distinct from
those of the plain — a differentiation of population, by the way, as
old as the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes. The contrast has
arisen between the seacoast and the interior. The people of the
inland villages contain a goodly proportion of the Alpine stock,
although, as our maps show, it is more attenuated than in either
Savoy or Auvergne. To the eye this Alpine lineage appears in a

^AMNION

Eastern Limit \ *y
Celtic Speech #

(approxjmate)

CEPHALIC INDEX

Normandy and Brittany

roundness of the face, a concave nose in profile, and broad nos-
trils. Along the coast intermixture has narrowed the heads,
lightened the complexion, and, perhaps more than all, increased
the stature. For an example of these contrasts our maps will

304

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

serve as an illustration. We have already made use of one in a
preceding paper. It is reproduced for purposes of comparison.

In view of the nature of these physical changes induced by
ethnic crossing along the seacoast, we must look to the Teutonic
race for the lineage of the invaders. They must, on the whole,
have been light and long-headed. History, in this case, comes to
our aid. The Saxon pirates skirted the whole coast around to the
mouth of the Loire. In fact, they were so much in evidence that
part of it was known to the old geographers as the litus Saxoni-
cum. The largest colony which has left permanent traces of its
invasion in the character of its present population, although

/Eastern Boundary
OF Celtic Speech

O

PERCENT

UNDER.
U56METERS

■ 14--! 7

LOWER

AFTER BrOCA

BRITTANY

C1850-59)

Caesar assured us that he exterminated it utterly, is located in
Morbihan. This department on the south coast of the peninsula,
as our map of coloration of all France shows, is one of the
blondest in all France. Its capital, Vannes, derives its name
from the Venetes, whose confederation occupied this area. Both
Strabo and Diodorus of Sicily asserted that these people be-
longed to the Belga' (Teutonic stock), although modern historians
of Gaul seem inclined to deny it. Our anthropological evidence
is all upon the side of the ancient geographers.

From a different source, although due indirectly to these same
Teutonic barbarians, are derived the physical characteristics of the
people in the north of Brittany, near Dinan, in the valley of the
Ranee. Its location appears upon both of our maps of Brittany.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 305

This little district is very distinct from the surrounding country.
The landscape also is peculiar in many respects. The cottages
are like the English, with hedgerows between the several plots
of ground. All these outward features corroborate the anthropo-
logical testimony that this was a main settlement of the people
who came over from Cornwall in the fifth century, ousted by the
Anglo-Saxons. They, in fact, gave the name Brittany to the
whole district. They spoke the Celtic language in all probability,
but were absolutely distinct in race. They seem to have been
largely Teutonic. The Saxons soon followed up the path they
laid open, so that the characteristics of the present population are
probably combined of all three elements. At all events, to-day
the people are taller, lighter, narrower-nosed, and longer-headed
than their neighbors. A similar spot of narrow-headedness ap-
pears upon our map at Lannion. The people here are, however,
of dark complexion, short in stature, characterized by broad and
rather flat noses. Here is probably an example of a still greater
persistence in ethnic traits than about Dinan, for the facts indi-
cate that here at Lannion, antedating even the Alpine race, is a
bit of the prehistoric population which we promise to identify in
the next paper.

Normandy is to-day one of the blondest parts of France. It is
distinctly Teutonic in the head form of its people. In fact, the
contrast between Normandy and Brittany is one of the sharpest
to be found in all France. The map of cephalic index on page 293
shows the regularly increasing long-headedness as we approach
the mouth of the Seine. In the Norman departments from thirty
to thirty- five per cent of the hair color is dark ; in the adjoining
department of Cotes- du-Nord, in Brittany, the proportion of dark
hair rises from forty to sixty, and in some cases even to seventy-
five per cent. . In stature the contrast is not quite as sharp,
although the people of the seacoast appear to be distinctly taller
than those far inland. The ordinary observer will be able to
detect diflPerences in the facial features. The Norman nose is
high and thin ; the nose of the Breton is broader, opening at
the nostrils. In many minor details the differences are no less
marked.

Normandy, on the whole, is an example of a complete ethnic
conquest. At the same time, while a new population has come,
the French language has remained unaffected, with the exception
of a spot near the city of Bayeux, where the Saxons and Nor-
mans together combined to introduce a bit of the Teutonic tongue.
This conquest of Normandy has taken place within historic times.
It is probably part and parcel of the same movement which Teu-
tonized the British Isles ; for it appears that the Normans were
the only Teutonic invaders who can historically be traced to this

TOL. LI.— 23

3o6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

region. Wherever they left the country untouched, the popula-
tion approaches the Alpine type, being darker, broader-headed,
and shorter in stature. This indicates that the tribes, such as the
Caletes (the city of Caux), the Lexovii (Lisieux), and the Baio-
casses (Bayeux) in Caesar's time were probably of this latter type;
in other words, that the district was Alpine in population until
the Normans came with Rollo in the tenth century. The Romans
appear to have allowed the Saxons to settle at places along the
seacoast, but they had never penetrated deeply into the interior.

The correspondence between the map of Norman place names
and that of cephalic index is sufficiently close to attest to the
value of each. One of the common features of the Teutonic vil-
lage names is " ville," from " weiler," meaning an abode, and not
from "villa," of Romance origin. This suffix appears, for ex-

Place NAMBS
I! 3AXON Brittany and Norhanoy'

Norman
Celtic

ample, in Hacon-yiZZe, or in a corrupted form in 'E.Si,Td\villiers.
Another common ending of place names is hcRuf, as in Marboeuf.
Dr. Collignon has traced out a considerable number of such place
names of Norman origin, all of which point to the Cotentin — that
distinct peninsula which juts out into the English Channel — as a
center of Norman dispersion. Certain it is that Cherbourg, at its
extremity, shows the Norman element at its maximum purity.
Probably this was a favorite base of supplies, protected by its iso-
lation and in close proximity to the island of Jersey, which the
Normans also held. The Saxon colony near Caen was a factor
also which determined this location. The extension of the Nor-
mans to the west seems to have been stopped by the human dike
set up by the English and Saxons about Dinan, and by "Nor-
man Switzerland," the hilly region just east of it. Follow the

FORECASTING THE PRO ORE SS OF INVENTION. 307

similarity between the boundary of long and narrow beads on
our map of cephalic index of Brittany, and the cross-hatched lines
and tints on the map of physical geography of France on page
291. Note how it cuts across diagonally from northwest to south-
east, parallel to the course of the Seine. Here the economic at-
traction in favor of the invasion of Brittany ceased, and at the
same time the displaced natives found a defensible position. Pre-
vented from extension in this direction, the Normans henceforth
turned toward the Seine, where, in fact, their influence is most
apparent at the present time. Paris, the Mecca of all invaders,
toled them away, and Brittany was saved.

-♦♦♦-

FORECASTING THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION.

By WILLIAM BAXTEE, Je.

THE great progress made during the last fifty years in the
domain of science and invention has aroused a very general
desire among intelligent people to know what the future has in
store, and in many cases the desire has become so strong as to
develop prophetic tendencies. Whenever a banquet is given in
commemoration of some scientific event, or upon the anniversary
of some ancient and honorable society, the orator of the evening
is sure to dwell at considerable length upon the great discoveries
that are still to come. By contrasting the extraordinary advances
made during the last century with the comparatively limited
progress of all previous time, and by showing that the rate of
advancement has been continually increasing during the latter
period, he arrives at the conclusion that in the years to come
development will increase in a compound ratio, and the discov-
eries will become so numerous and so great as to dwarf into
insignificance all that has been accomplished up to the present
time.

Writers who dwell upon these glorious achievements of man-
kind in modern times follow the same vein, and make equally
extravagant predictions as to the future. If these writers and
orators would stop when they reach this point in their medita-
tions they would be wise, since it is a self-evident fact that prog-
ress in science and invention has been increasing very rapidly
during the last fifty or sixty years, and certainly there is no rea-
son to suppose that we have reached the end, and that henceforth
development will be very slow; but at this point the spirit of
prophecy seizes them, and they proceed to describe the wonders
yet unseen. It is here that they almost invariably fail. They
would not be satisfied if they assumed that future progress would

3o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be along the lines of possible development — that would be too
commonplace and altogether out of keeping with the ideal of the
greatness of the future achievements of mankind. They must
necessarily assume that what is brought forth hereafter will be
so far in advance of what we now know of as to be revolutionary
in its character, and so much so, in fact, as to consign to the scrap
heap the most perfect devices of the present time. Some of the
means by which these results are to be attained are not capable of
accomplishing such wonders ; others, while of great theoretical
possibilities, are surrounded by certain practical difficulties so
well understood at the present time that we can almost with cer-
tainty say that they will never realize the dreams that are based
upon them. The remainder are problems that can be solved to-
day, and would be if it were not for the fact that it is by no
means certain that their solution would be of any practical value.
The improbability of ever realizing a substantial gain by the
solution of many of the problems upon which jDrophecies as to
the wonders of the future are based is fully appreciated by many
of those who have given the subject careful consideration ; but
those who dream of the revolutionary character of future inven-
tion never take note of such things.

Nearly all those who succumb to the fascination of meditating
upon the changes that may be wrought by inventive genius in
days to come follow the same line of thought. The problems
upon the solution of which their fancy paints its pictures are
always the same, although some contemplate the whole category,
while others only dwell upon a portion thereof. These problems
are aerial navigation, the development of electric energy direct
from coal or some other equally cheap substance, and the utiliza-
tion of the various forces of Nature, such as solar heat, tide and
wave motion, and wind currents. Of these, aerial navigation is
supposed to be by far the most important, obtaining electricity
direct from coal and the others following along in the order in
which they are given above.

As to the utilization of solar heat, tides, wave motion, and
wind currents, it can be truthfully said that they could be util-
ized at the present time if it were considered profitable to do so.
The energy of wind currents, as every one knows, is made avail-
able on a very extensive scale, but always in small units, and this
fact alone shows that it can not compete with the steam engine,
which, according to the prophets, it is sure to supersede. The
energy of tides and wave motion is also utilized to some extent,
and solar engines have been made from time to time.

It can not be said that these unlimited sources of energy are
not brought into the service of man because of our inability to
devise apparatus with which to harness them successfully, for, as

FORECASTING THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION. 309

a matter of fact, a great deal of ingenuity has been displayed in
this direction, and the cost of the mechanism, with reference to
the power recovered, has probably been reduced to nearly as low
a point as is possible. In the matter of simplicity and durability
equally good results have been obtained.

An analysis of the most salient features of these forms of
energy will show why they are not utilized on a more extensive
scale. The power of waves and tides is only available along the
seacoast, where, as a rule, power is not in demand ; furthermore,
any kind of apparatus made to utilize this energy must be very
strong and bulky in comparison with the power it will give, and
as a consequence very costly. In addition to this, the amount
of energy will vary greatly at different seasons ; hence the output
that can be depended upon at all times must be far below the
actual capacity of the apparatus. A further drawback is the
great irregularity of the power, which renders it of little value
unless means are provided for reducing it to a delivery at a uni-
form rate.

Windmills are not so much restricted, as to location, as the
foregoing, but they are very large in comparison to the work they
can do, and, as the velocity of the wind may drop to nearly zero
for a long period of time, their average capacity, taking the year
through, may be exceedingly small.

Solar energy is available everywhere, but the capacity of an
apparatus made to utilize it would be very indefinite and far below
its maximum, owing to the fact that cloudy weather may come at
any time and continue for days or even weeks.

The irregularity of the power derived from these sources can
be overcome by resorting to some form of storage, but this would
not help, except to a limited extent, to increase the average out-
put ; therefore, when the apparatus was working at its full capa-
city, there would be a large surplus of power going to waste. By
increasing the capacity of the storage reservoirs, the average out-
put could be increased, and if the intervals of time during which
the energy developed is little or nothing were short, say two or
three days, and were followed by corresponding intervals of max-
imum output, it would probably be profitable to make the capa-
city great enough to store all the surplus developed at times of
maximum output ; but, as these periods may each extend over two
or three weeks, it is evident that about the best we can do is to
increase the average output slightly by using a greater storage
capacity.

As these natural forms of energy can be obtained without cost,
and the fuel used by a steam engine has to be purchased, it is ap-
parently reasonable to assume that they would constitute a more
economical form of power, but wherever a constant supply is de-

310 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sired it is very doubtful whether the economy of the steam engine
can be superseded by any one of them. It is true that there is
no expenditure for fuel, but the interest on the extra cost of the
plant and the maintenance thereof, as well as the additional space
required, may more than offset this gain ; and the fact that so little
is done in the way of utilizing them would seem to show that up
to the present time their value has failed to make any great im-
pression upon engineers who have looked into the subject. It
does not follow from this that they will never come into use on a
more extensive scale than at present, but it does follow that the
dreams of those who believe that they will eventually supersede
all forms of prime movers that consume fuel will never be real-
ized. Through the increased value of fuel or the reduced cost of
construction of the apparatus, or both, they may become compet-
itors to a greater or less extent, but more than this can not be
expected.

Considering, now, the effects of the solution of the problem of
obtaining electricity direct from coal, it can be said that it is far
more likely to revolutionize the affairs of the world than the utili-
zation of the natural forms of energy ; but it must also be said
that we are not justified, in view of what is now known in rela-
tion to the subject, in assuming that it will ever realize the pre-
dictions of the oversanguine prophets. If we could solve the prob-
lem according to our ideal, all that is expected of it would be
accomplished ; but such a solution is highly improbable, if not
actually impossible. Our ideal battery would be as simple as a
boiler, and be provided with a place where coal could be fed in
and another through which the residue could be removed. In a
boiler, the pressure of the steam, as well as the quantity generated,
can be increased by simply increasing the size of the fire box, but
this simplicity could not be obtained even in our ideal battery,
because the electromotive force would remain the same no matter
how much the size of the cell might be increased. To obtain an
electromotive force high enough for practical purposes it would
be necessary to use a large number of cells, and, to feed these with-
out too much trouble, it would be necessary to devise an auto-
matic feeder capable of operating with a degree of perfection
hardly obtainable without the aid of human intelligence.

It may be permissible to dream of such perfection, but we are
not justified in assuming that it is possible. Electricity can be
obtained from chemical action only when the material acted upon
is in the electric circuit. If two metals are placed in a solution
that can decompose one of them, an electric current will flow in a
wire the ends of which are attached to the two metals. If two
solutions capable of acting upon each other are separated by a
porous partition, and into each a plate attached to a wire is im-

FORECASTING THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION. ^\i

mersed, a current will flow. If in a solution two metals that are
not acted upon are immersed, a current will not flow in a wire con-
necting them. If into this solution pieces of metal or other sub-
stances that will be acted upon are dropped, no current will be gen-
erated, because the chemical action takes place between substances
one of which is not in the electric chain. Coal is not a conductor
of electricity, in the practical sense ; therefore it can not be used
directly in the electric circuit, even if we could find a way to oxi-
dize it satisfactorily ; hence the only probable way of solving the
coal-battery problem is by some indirect process, and this may
introduce complications great enough to entirely offset all the
advantages.

The belief that great development will be made along the lines
discussed in the foregoing is confined to those who possess some
familiarity with scientific matters, but the general run of intelli-
gent people only have a vague idea of what may be expected from
these sources, and the pictures drawn by their imagination in rela-
tion thereto are decidedly hazy ; with them the greatest of all
future achievements is the solution of the problem of aerial navi-
gation. This belief is undoubtedly due to the fact that the theo-
retical limitations are not understood, or are not taken into consid-
eration, and as a consequence the average conception of a perfect
air ship, as well as its movements and velocity, is very different
from the actual possibilities.

The most striking difference between imagination and possi-
bility, in this line, is perhaps in the relation between the size of
the ship and its carrying capacity, the latter being always greatly
magnified. An examination of any considerable number of the
illustrations of flying machines would show this point very forci-
bly. In many of these pictures the force of gravity is treated with
the utmost contempt, the ship being made apparently of sheet iron,
very similar in shape to a submarine torpedo boat, the sustaining
power being obtained by means of one or more moderate-sized pro-
pellers mounted upon vertical shafts, or else equally small aero-
planes. In those designs that display a greater regard for the
laws of Nature, the disparity in the proportions is not so great, but
in all of them it is very decided.

It is evident that with our present knowledge of science there
are only two ways in which an air ship can be kept afloat, one
by the use of a balloon and the other by means of aeroplanes.
In the former the sustaining capacity is small relatively to the
volume, being about one pound for every fourteen cubic feet ; and
with the latter it is small relatively to the surface, being probably
not over one pound to the square foot. From this it can easily be
seen that the carrying capacity, even of a craft of large dimen-
sions, must be small, very much smaller than the popular notion

312

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

would make it. The sketch presented herewith will give a fair
idea of the difference between reality and the general ideal, the
small car shown in solid lines being large enough to carry all the
passengers or freight that the balloon could sustain, and the one
in dotted lines about the size generally shown in illustrations of
air ships. The sketch is not above criticism, since it does not give
the location of the motor or any means for revolving the propel-
ler, but that is a peculiarity of the majority of air-ship pictures,
and the writer may be pardoned for following a common custom,

Diagram showing Difference between Supposed and Actual Carrying Capaoitt

OF Air Ships.

especially as the object of the sketch is only to show the relation
between size and carrying capacity.

That this sketch is not exaggerated can be easily shown. The
balloon is supposed to be one hundred and twenty feet long and
twenty feet in diameter, the taper at each end being forty feet.
From these dimensions it will be seen that the displacement is
about twenty-one thousand feet, and the sustaining capacity
about fifteen hundred pounds. Now, the first thing that any con-
servative engineer would admit would be that the apparatus
could not be constructed within this weight if the same factor of
safety were used as is customary in designing any ordinary struc-
ture ; hence, if any carrying capacity is to be obtained, the weight
and strength of every part must be reduced to a point not re-
garded as permissible in ordinary practice. Following this
course, we can assume the weight of the whole ship at one thou-
sand pounds, which would certainly be light considering its size;
we would then have a net carrying capacity of five hundred
pounds — equal to, say, four men. The car is drawn four foot
square and six feet high, which is ample for four passengers. A
contemplation of the difference between the size of the balloon
and the car is enough to dampen the ardor of the most enthu-
siastic believer in the possibilities of aerial navigation.

It may be claimed that by the use of aeroplanes the size can

FORECASTING THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION. 313

be considerably reduced, but this is doubtful ; and if it can, it
probably would not be any benefit, since, if the area of the planes
is reduced, the pressure must be increased, and this would result
in a less efl&cient application of the energy required to keep the
ship in the air. Another mistaken notion that is accountable in
a great measure for the belief in the wonderful possibilities of
aerial navigation is that great velocity could be obtained. This
assumption is entirely erroneous, and as a matter of fact it can
be easily shown that higher speed can be attained on a railroad.
As is perfectly well known, the principal obstacle that stands in
the way of extraordinary velocity on railroads is the resistance of
the atmosphere, and this would be very much greater in the case
of an air ship owing to the increased size. The cross-section of a
train of cars is less than one hundred and fifty feet, while that of
an air ship of the same carrying capacity would probably be ten
times as great if not more, and the power required to overcome
atmospheric resistance would be in about the same proportion.
From this it can be seen that the energy necessary to propel the
ship, without saying anything about that required to keep it in
the air, would be many times greater than that required to drive
a train of cars at the same speed; hence, as a means of rapid
transit, aerial navigation could not begin to compete with the
railroad.

There is another direction in which the air ship would be
seriously defective, and this is almost always overlooked, and
that is in the matter of making landings. Being a large body, it
would necessarily be unwieldy, and its motion in any direction
could not be arrested in a very short space of time ; therefore it
could not make a landing within a limited area. In a dead calm
it could probably be lowered in nearly a vertical line, and thus
make a landing in a contracted space, but if the wind were blow-
ing even at a moderate velocity the case would be different. As
the wind is always "blowing more or less, and as it frequently
changes its course in a few seconds, the ship would be tossed
about quite lively before it reached the ground. If it came down
at the rate of three hundred feet per minute, which is a high
velocity, and the wind were blowing at the rate of ten miles per
hour, the side drift would be three times as great as the vertical
descent ; and if this were counteracted by imparting a velocity to
the ship equal to that of the wind and opposed to it, the side draught
would be doubled if the direction of the wind should suddenly
reverse. It must therefore be evident that to be able to make a
landing safely, without running the risk of colliding with church
steeples and modern sky-scrapers, it would be necessary to have a
large open space, and in order that the passengers might not have
to walk a large portion of the length of their journey convey-

TOL. LI. — 24

314 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

anceS would have to be provided to transport them from the place
where the ship might land to the station entrance.

It must not be assumed from what has been said in the fore-
going that the writer regards the solution of the problems here
considered as of no special value, for his views are just the oppo-
site of this. The object aimed at has been to show that the won-
derful things that it is expected will be accomplished by the solu-
tion of these problems will never be realized with regard to some
because they are not possible, and are not likely to be realized
by the others on account of inherent defects that the solutions
may bring to light. The coal-battery problem will, no doubt, be
worked out, in some form or other, but who can tell whether the
objectionable features of it will or will not offset all its advan-
tages ? The hot-air engine is a far more perfect converter of
energy, in theory, than the steam engine, but its defects when re-
duced to a practical form are such that it is of no value except
for small power, and this may also turn out to be the case with
the coal battery. The utilization of the energy of tides, solar
heat, etc., is as possible to-day as at any future time; the fact
that they are not utilized is proof that they are not considered as
desirable as other forms of energy. In the future the cost of the
apparatus for harnessing them may be so reduced as to render
them available to a much greater extent than at the present time,
but that they will ever revolutionize the industrial affairs of the
world and drive the steam engine out of use is hardly a remote
possibility. Aerial navigation will, no doubt, be accomplished,
but in the opinion of the writer it will never be used for com-
mercial purposes, simply because it can not, even if developed to
the highest state of perfection, compete with transit on the surface
of the earth, either in speed or cost of transportation. It may be
used in warfare, but more than likely it will be confined to pleasure
purposes.

The higliest value can obviously be given to present research by dii-ect-
ing it chiefly to those departments which are undergoing most rapid changes
and therefore most urgently demand immediate study. The subject is tlius
regarded by Prof. A. C. Haddon, who, trying to put himself at the point of
view of our successors a hundred or a thousand years hence, asks, in Nature,
what they would wish we had done. Studies in the structure, development,
and physiology of animals, polar research and deep-sea research, will not
suffer materially if the pursuit of them is delayed ; but " our first and im-
mediate duty is to earn for science vanishing knowledge ; this .should be
the watchword of the present day." In this category are the study of
native fauna and flora before they are exterminated or crowded out or
mixed with introduced species, and the study of native man before he
is contaminated by contact with civilization. The opportunity for these
studies is diminishing, and once lost can never be recovered.

SOME FACTS ABOUT WASPS AND BEES. 315

SOME FACTS ABOUT WASPS AND BEES.

By Dr. E. W. SHUFELDT.

ONE of the most extensive and at the same time one of the
most interesting groups of insects in the entire range of
entomology is that order which has been created to contain the
ants, bees, and wasps with their numerous allies. This associa-
tion was called the Hymenoptera by Linnaeus, the name having
reference to the fact that the anterior and posterior wings of the
winged forms are, during flight, connected together by a row,
upon either side, of small hooks. This is Kirby's suggestion
(Text-book of Entomology, page 103), but it would seem more
probable that the word Hymenoptera was derived from the Greek
hymen, a membrane, and ptera, wings.

Primarily, this order is divided into the Terehrantia and the
Aculeata. In the first named the ovipositor is employed as a
borer, while in the second it has become modified into a sting.
These two subsections are by various classifiers again divided
into several other divisions, and these again into families, genera,
etc., as in the case of other natural alliances of animals. Both
the habits and structure of the insects included in this group are
characterized by great variety, and the majority of its members
exhibit an extraordinary amount of intelligence, especially this
being true in the case of the ants and wasps. A perfect host of
parasitic insects also belong to this group, attacking both the
larvae and eggs of other insects. Were all the literature extant
that has been devoted to the ants alone got together, it would
form by no means a small library ; but such a library would be
completely overshadowed were it compared with a similar one
collected in the case of bees. Of the common honeybee alone,
Mr. John Hunter, the late Secretary of the British Bee Keepers'
Association, has said : " No nation upon earth has had so many
historians as this remarkable class of insects. The patience and
sagacity of the naturalist have had an ample field for exercise in
the study of the structure, physiology, and domestic economy of
bees ; their preservation and increase have been ob'jects of assidu-
ous care to the agriculturist; and their reputed perfection of
policy and government have long been the theme of admiration,
and have supplied copious materials for argument and allusion
to the poet and the moralist in every age. It is a subject that
has been celebrated by the Muse of Virgil and illustrated by the
philosophic genius of Aristotle. Cicero and Pliny record that
Aristomachus devoted sixty years to the study of these insects,
and Philiscus is said to have retired into a remote wood that he
might pursue his observations on them without interruption. A

3i6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

very great number of authors have written express treatises on
bees, periodical works have been published relating exclusively
to their management and economy, and learned societies have
been established for the sole purpose of conducting researches on
this subject." When we have such facts as these before us one
is enabled to form some estimate as to what the literature of the
entire order Hymenoptera would amount to as a whole.

Nor has the historical naturalist neglected the wasps in his
labors, for the literature upon these remarkable insects is likewise
very voluminous. They constitute the true Hymenoptera acu-

leata, Kirby using the
term Diploptera, divid-
ing them into three
families. Of these, the
social wasps ( Vespidce)
are represented by a
number of genera in
various parts of the
world,containing a host
of interesting species.
Some of these are of
small size, while others
stand among the big-
gest of the entire group.
One form found in
China and Japan meas-
ures two inches across
the wings. Many of
these wasps sting with
great severity, and it
has been related of
Mitchell, the Australian explorer, that he was stung by a species
found in that country, and the pain caused thereby forced him to
scream out with agony. It had the effect of temporarily paralyz-
ing his leg, and the great spot on the limb occasioned by the in-
jected poison did not disappear for at least six months. Many
wasps are brilliantly colored, while the external structural parts
of others are extremely unique. For example, the Ilasaridcs of
Africa and Australia is a family in which the antennae present a
great variety of shapes, some of them even being clubbed, while
others are extremely long and slender. Numerous species of
wasps and hornets are fossorial by habit, either constructing un-
derground burrows for themselves or else occupying those formed
by other insects. Some of these types are very large, some are
small, some are solitary by habit, others live in communities.
We have one big species of fossorial wasp that I have studied at

Fig. 1. — Bumblebee upon Dogwood Flower.

From a photograph taken life-size by Dr. Shufeldt

and considerably reduced.

SOME FACTS ABOUT WASPS AND BEES. 317

various points in the Atlantic coast States. Last spring there
was a large colony of these established beneath the sweeping
limbs of a fir tree near the main entrance to the Smithsonian
Institution. The ground in this locality was riddled with their
burrows. A great many cases of the sting of this formidable
wasp are known to me. Years ago I knew of a case where a pas-
senger upon a Mississippi River boat was stung by one of them
on the back of the neck, and the man died eventually from
the effect of it. The insect was knocked down on the deck at
the time, and was found to be bearing a large cicada in its
mandibles.

Some of the smaller fossorial wasps appear like large ants, the
females being without wings. They also have a sting, and are
clothed with a fine hairy coat, often of a bright yellow or brilliant
vermilion. In New Mexico, in sandy places, I frequently saw
these insects, but never more than one at a time, and only a few
in the course of a day. They have been called " solitary ants "
{Mutilla ?). There are hundreds of species in the world of these
fossorial wasps, some winged, others wingless ; some very small,
others measure three or four inches across the wings {Pepsis,
etc.) ; while many of them exhibit the most wonderful coloring in
metallic blues, greens, reds, and yellow. Nearly all have the
habit of paralyzing other insects by stinging them, then carrying
their helpless victims to their subterranean nests, where they are
buried alive by the side of their eggs, so that when the larvae are
hatched out they find a fresh repast awaiting them in the form of
these living but paralyzed spiders, caterpillars, etc. The " mud
daubers " have the same habits, and we all know them, and how
they, with pellets of mud, build their curious cells against walls
and fences and in all sorts of places about our country houses.
These are great species to paralyze spiders and place them in these
mud cells and sealing them up afterward for the future use of
their young (Pelopoeus). When collecting in New Orleans I fre-
quently did a good day's work in spider collecting by cracking open
these mud nests. Packard also refers to those sand and mud wasps
that dig deep holes in our gravel walks and have the instinct to
sting grasshoppers in one of the thoracic ganglia, thus paralyzing
the victim, in which the wasp lays her eggs ; and the young, hatch-
ing, feed upon the living but paralyzed grasshoppers, the store of
living food not being exhausted until the larval wasp is ready to
stop eating and finish its transformations {Sphex ichneumonea).

In a paragraph above I have referred to the family VespidcB
of the group Diploptera* and it includes some of the most inter-

* From the Greek diplofi, doubled, and ptcra, wings, referring to tlie fact that the rep-
resentatives of this family, when in a state of repose, fold their fore wings longitudinally.

3i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

esting wasps and hornets of wliich we have any knowledge. So
far as it is known to me, the Vespidoe, are all social species, the
individuals consisting of males, females, and neuters. They are
also known as the "paper-making" wasps, having the habit of
constructing paper nests of various sizes and forms in which
their young are reared. Our common brown wasps {Polistes) are
too well known to require any detailed description. To those
living anywhere in the Atlantic States their paper nests are very
familiar, being formed of a circular disk of a single tier of cells,
being suspended at the solid back by a median pedicle attached
to the point chosen by the community to build. Usually these
cells face downward, but occasionally the plane of the nest is ver-
tical or nearly so, causing the long axes of the cells to lie horizon-
tally, or more or less obliquely. This grayish, papery stuff used
by the paper-making wasps is a composition of their own manu-
facture. In the case of the common wasp it is made by the
female ( Vespa vulgaris), she using the fibers of old wood for the
purpose. These she gnaws and kneads until they come to be of a
consistence of yapier-mache pulp — the mixture being assisted by
the secretion of the salivary glands of the insect.

The paper hornet {Vespa maculata) builds often a very large
and elaborate nest of this material. These structures are fre-
quently found in various localities in the eastern United States
and elsewhere. The year before last a colony of them built be-
neath the eaves of the tower to my residence in the suburban
parts of Washington, D. C. A great paper nest filled the entire
angle of the recess. When they build in the forests, however,
these insects usually select the smaller limbs of bushes or trees,
making the nest more or less spherical or ellipsoidal in contour.
Sometimes these are placed high up in the trees, but again may
be close to the ground. Two years ago I discovered a deserted
one near my present home that was fastened to the twin trunks
of a small dogwood, its lower surface being practically in contact
with the ground. It was of an egg-shaped form, with the small
end downward ; the entire affair measuring about thirty centi-
metres by twenty-two centimetres, selecting for the purpose the
greatest vertical diameter and the longest horizontal one (see Fig.
2). Eight distinct layers composed the walls of this nest, and its
entrance, a small oval opening, was situated low down in front.
It contained three tiers of unipedicled nests of cells, they being
closely packed together, and the disks faced downward and were
about a centimetre apart. As usual, any single cell was in con-
tact with all its juxta- placed neighbors, and when not too closely
crowded they were seen to be of a cylindrical form, but if the
crowding was closer they then assumed the hexagonal shape. At
their bases they were rounded, while inferiorly they were open

SOME FACTS ABOUT WASPS AND BEES.

319

and exhibited the various means by which the young had escaped
when the proper time had arrived for them to do so. In some
cases the thin paper cap was perforated ; in others it had been
lifted as a cover ; while, finally, in some it was practically gone
altogether. Paper hornets will, as every one knows who has
ever had any experience of the kind, sally forth in numbers and
protect their nest by winged attacks en masse and in loose order,
their stings being no trifling matter in many cases. I have before

Fia. 2. — Nest uk the 1'apkk IIhiixet ( I'es/nj nuKjulata). One side cut iiwiiy tu show interior.
Collected and photographed by Dr. Shufeldt.

me another very pretty nest of this kind found in the same local-
ity, but built by a different species. It is no bigger than an ordi-
nary peg top, being att iched to the twig of a blackberry vine by
its large end, the apex, looking directly downward, being occu-
pied by a single circular aperture leading to the interior. Ex-
ternally this little structure is very smooth, and it contains but
one small disk, composed of but seven or eight cells.

Other communities of social hornets build their vespiaries in

320 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the hollows of trees and logs, which they occasionally clean out
to render the places fit for their purposes.

Arthur Shipley, in describing some of the habits of the Ves-
pidcB, has said in part that the workers among hornets " are
females in which the ovary remains undeveloped ; they resemble
the perfect female in external appearance, but are slightly
smaller. Unlike the bees', the wasps' community is annual,
existing for one summer only. Most of the members die at the
approach of autumn, but a few females which have been ferti-
lized hibernate through the winter, sheltered under stones or hol-
low trees. In the spring and with the returning of warm weather
the female regains her activity and emerges from her hiding
place. She then sets about finding a convenient place for build-
ing a nest and establishing a new colony."

The methods of making the paper cells and their arrangement,
the laying of the eggs in them, and the rearing of the young are
practically much the same in both the common wasps and the
social paper hornets. So Professor Shipley, after describing the
manufacture of the paper nest of the common wasp ( Vespa vul-
garis)— how she lays a single egg at the bottom of each of the
first three cells, and then this, the foundress of the society, " con-
tinues to add cells to the comb, and as soon as the grubs appear
from the first-laid eggs she has in addition to tend and feed them."

" The grubs are apodal, thicker at the middle than at either
end ; the mandibles bear three teeth ; the maxillae and labium are
represented by fleshy tubercles. The body, including the head,
consists of fourteen segments, which bear lateral tubercles and
spiracles. They have no arms. They are suspended with the head
downward in the cells, and require a good deal of attention, being
fed by their mother upon insects which are well chewed before
they are given to the larvae, or upon honey. At the same time
the mother is enlarging and deepening the cells in which they
live, building new cells and laying more eggs, which are usually
suspended in the same angle of each cell. The development
within the Qgg takes eight days.

" After about a fortnight the grubs cease to feed, and, forming
a silky cover to their cells, become pupae. This quiescent state
lasts about ten days, at the end of which period they emerge as
the imago or perfect insect. The silky covering of the cell is
round or convex outward, and to leave the cell the insect either
pushes it out, when it opens like a box lid, or gnaws a round hole
through it. As soon as the cell is vacated it is cleaned out and
another egg deposited. In this way two or three larvae occupy
successively the same cell during the summer. The first wasps
that appear in a nest are neuters or workers, and these at once
set to work to enlarge the comb and feed the larvae, etc. . . .

SOME FACTS ABOUT WASPS AND BEES. 321

" In a favorable season, when the weather is warm and food
plentiful, a nest may contain many thousands of cells full of
wasps in various stages of development, and, as each cell is occu-
pied two or three times in the course of a summer, those authori-
ties who put the number of the members of the community as
high as thirty thousand are probably not far wrong.

" At the approach of autumn the society begins to break up ;
the males fertilize the females while flying high in the air ; they
then die, often within a few hours. The workers leave the nest,
carrying with them any grubs that remain in the cells, and both
soon perish. The nest is entirely deserted. The females which
have been fertilized creep into crevices under stones or trees or
hide among moss, and hibernate until the warmth of the follow-
ing spring induces them to leave their hiding places and set about
founding a new community.^^

Where hornets or wasps occur in very large numbers they fre-
quently, at certain seasons, do considerable damage to fruit and
forest trees by gnawing off the bark to build their paper nests.
They destroy the fruit they attack, living as they do upon the
juices extracted from it. But, on the other hand, these insects
are very useful in that they likewise feed on flies and other in-
sects, and so very materially diminish the numbers of these pests.
Some wasps live in part upon honey, which they collect from the
most open-petaled flowers, and thus to a very moderate extent
they may be regarded in the light of flower fertilizers. Kirkland
says, in the first volume of the American Naturalist, that " the
paper hornet {Vespa maculata) often enters my nucleus hives,
when I am rearing Italian queen bees, and captures the young
queen in the midst of her little colony, usually just after she has
commenced her first laying. I have seen this depredator enter
the small hive, drag out the queen, and fly away with her to the
woods " (page 52), Some of the species of the genus Polistes
store up honey which is poisonous, from the fact that it has
been collected from poisonous flowers. They are found in South
America, where also species of the genus Chartergus occur —
wasps that make a very remarkable and tough nest, with funnel-
shaped combs inside, arranged one inside of another, nest fashion,
but not in contact except at their points of suspension. At the
apices of these cones occur the apertures of entrance for the in-
mates to pass up among the conical tiers. Icaria, a genus repre-
sented in Australia, the East Indies, Africa, and Madagascar,
contains some very remarkable species. Some of them have the
power of contracting the hinder segments of the abdomen so far
within the body that at first sight they appear to have been
broken off. Many of these species are very small and brilliantly
colored, and often build curiously shaped little paper nests.

TOL. LI. — 25

322 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Wasps and hornets are not witliout their enemies, for their nests
are frequently infested by parasitical insects that feed upon their
grubs. According to Shipley, " In the tropics some species are
attacked by fungi, the hyphse of which protrude between the seg-
ments of the abdomen and give the wasp a very extraordinary
appearance."

From the wasps and hornets I next pass to a consideration of
a few of the species of bees, omitting, however, anything in refer-
ence to the common hive bee {xipis mellifica), of which insect
entire volumes have been written.

Hundreds of species of wild bees are now known, and they are
to be found in almost every part of the world, and doubtless many
species yet remain to be described by the entomologists. Those
found have been arranged in the two families Andrenidce. and
ApidcB by Kirby, and are subdivided into a number of genera.
In the first family all the species are solitary of habit, while in
the second both solitary and social species are found. True honey-
bees are found wild in this country, and the species most nearly
allied to them with us is the common bumblebee (Bomhus), of
which genus upward of fifty species or more occur in North
America. This bee, or rather a queen of this species, hibernates
all winter, but early in the spring makes her nest. This may be
under any old log or piece of turf or the vacated nest of a field
mouse. A dozen eggs or so are laid in a mixture she makes of
pollen and honey, and the young appear in series from egg to
imago, the period of development being of no great length. From
this time on the study of the colony is full of interest, but the
sequence of events is not altogether unlike what has been de-
scribed above for the wasps, the nature of the nest and the fate of
the eggs when first deposited being the main difference.

Bumblebees are preyed upon by a variety of parasites, the
most curious being a species of Aimthus, an insect so closely re-
sembling its host that it requires the eye of an expert to detect
the one from the other. Many of us are familiar with the history
of the tunnels in posts, planks, and similar places made by that
large species known as the Virginian carpenter bee {Xylocopa vir-
ginica); and then, too, we have its pretty little ally, the bright
pea-green Ceratina duplet, that constructs similar tunnels in such
plants as have a pithy center, as reeds and elderberry bushes.
These tunnels in either case are intended to hold the cells in
which the eggs are deposited and the young reared. The habits
of the tailor or leaf-cutting bee are even still more interesting
{MegacMle centuncularis). They have strong, sharp-cutting jaws,
by means of which they cut away bits of leaves to be used in the
formation of their cells, the site of the nest being in elder stalks
or under planks or in the hollows of certain trees. Their very

SOME FACTS ABOUT WASPS AND BEES. 323

interesting habits have been closely studied by a number of
naturalists. Mason bees of the genus Osmia are also small and
brilliantly colored, blue or green, having habits somewhat akin
to those of Megacliile. A European species is said to build her
cells of mud, depositing them in the empty shells of snails. Many
other species of this genus Osmia, in various parts of the world,
possess habits full of interest to us, that have been described in
the books with greater or less detail. Then we have the less
intelligent types of those bees that burrow in the ground, that
are solitary, and leave their young to look out for themselves.
These fossorial bees see their types in such forms or species as
the common Andrena vicina, that I have observed in many parts
of New England. Parasitic bees, called cuckoo bees (as Nomada
sex-fasciata) , prey upon these fossorial forms, such as Andrena or
its allies of the genus Halidus and others, by laying their eggs
in their nests. They are also infested by numerous other para-
sites, such as by certain ichneumon flies and oil beetles {Meloe)>
and others. Some of the South American bees are destitute of
stings {Melipoma, Trigona), and I have frequently seen a large bee
here near Washington that does not sting. It has the appearance
of a Bomhus, but the fore part of the head is nearly all of a very
pale yellow, almost white.

Carder bees {Bombi muscorum) are known to all frequenters of
open fields and meadows, after the haying season has commenced.
A popular writer at hand says : " They select for their nest a shal-
low excavation in the ground about a foot in diameter, or, if such
a one is not to be found, they make one with prodigious labor.
This they cover over with a dome of moss, or sometimes with
withered grass. They collect their materials by pushing them
along upon the ground, working backward like the tumblebugs.
Frequently in the spring a single female founds a colony, and by
perseverance collects the mossy covering in the way described ;
later in the season, when the hive is populous and can afford more
hands, there is an ingenious division of this labor, A file of bees,
to the number sometimes of half a dozen, is established from the
nest to the moss or grass which they intend to use, the heads of
all the file of bees being turned from the nest and toward the
material. The last bee of the file lays hold of some of the moss
with her mandibles, disentangles it from the rest, and, having
carded it with her fore legs into a sort of felt or small bundle, she
pushes it under her body to the next bee, who passes it in the
same manner to the next, and so on till it is brought to the border
of the nest — in the same way as we sometimes see sugar loaves
conveyed from a cart to a warehouse by a file of porters throwing
them from one to another. The elevation of the dome, which is
all built from the interior, is from four to six inches above the

324 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

level of the field. Besides the moss or grass, they frequently
employ coarse wax to form the ceiling of the vault, for the pur-
pose of keeping out rain and preventing high winds from destroy-
ing it. Within this retreat the eggs present an appearance not
very different from that of the bumblebee."

In conclusion, I may say that among the ancient Hebrews and
Romans the error was widely credited that bees made their nests
and reared their young in the carcasses of dead animals; and,
although these people knew that bees were governed by a ruler,
they labored under the impression that it was a king and not a
queen. Such ignorance can easily be overlooked, however, when
we come to consider that it is only of comparatively recent date
that we have worked out the biology of these insects, and, as it is,
there yet remains the greater part, by all odds, of their natural
history of which we know little or absolutely nothing, and to
which must still be added that of the host of species of this order
yet to be discovered and made known to science.

♦»♦•

THE PRINCIPLE OF ECONOMY IN EVOLUTION.

By EDMUND NOBLE.

ONE of the many interesting things about evolution, oftener
taken for granted than formally recognized, is the fact that
the changes which everywhere accompany and constitute it have
their rise in a simple excess of pressure in one direction over the
pressure in another. For all movement, whether it be of simple
or of complex matter, whether it be of an inorganic or an organic
system, whether it involve will and conscious perception or not,
is in every case and under every conceivable set of circumstances
movement in a single mode — that is to say, movement in the
direction of the least resistance, or from the direction of the
greatest traction or stress.* If we look to the origin of the move-
ment, we shall speak of acting as in the line of the greatest
stress; if we consider the resistances in the presence of which
movement is produced, we shall regard acting as in the direction
of the least resistance. But, however we may describe it, the
truth of the law is obvious, since it follows from the very nature
of movement. For if a body be equally stressed from all direc-
tions it will not move, while if it be stressed differentially — in one
direction more than in other directions — it will move in the line
of, or away from, the greatest stress. Now, as all movement must

* In order to save repetition, the word " stress " will be used throughout in the sense of
traction or stress."

THE PRINCIPLE OF ECONOMY IN EVOLUTION. 325

take place in the presence of or against resistance, a body which
moves in the line of the greatest stress necessarily moves in the
direction of the least stress, and it is this movement in the direc-
tion of the least stress which we mean when we speak of move-
ment in the direction of the least resistance.

We have next to note what is meant by the greatest stress.
This is not necessarily a stress applied at a single moment in time
or at a single point in space. The movement of a billiard ball, for
example, may be determined for part of its course wholly by the
blow given with the cue, but the cushions soon come into action,
and thus the total course of the ball is decided, not solely by the
cue, but by the cue and all subsequent stresses of the cushions
and balls that happen to be struck. In like manner, the initial
impulse is given to the cannon ball by the exploding gunpowder,
yet this initial stress is immediately complicated with gravitative
action ; and when we say that such a ball moves in the line of the
greatest stress, we mean not simply the direction originally given
by the cannon, but the whole direction as determined by cannon,
gravity, and atmosphere. The greatest stress determining the
direction of movement, then, is a stress made up, not only of the
initial stress, but also of all subsequent determinations encoun-
tered as resistances by the moving body in its course ; and when
we say that a body moves in the direction of the least resistance,
we mean that its total movement is determined by the total
of greatest stresses. It is true that a distinction may be made
between the original impulse given to a body and the subsequent
stress or stresses entailed upon it by its own movement, and due
to contact with other bodies at rest or in motion. It is an active
stress, for example, which gives the initial impulse to the billiard
ball ; it is a reactive stress by which the cushion deflects the ball
from its original course. But this distinction is little more than
formal ; the whole of the stresses determining movement, however
easy it may be to analyze them into parts, must be regarded in
their totality ; for if we have to account for movements that
take place in time in their totality, we must consider the determi-
nations to those movements in their totality.

The law of least resistance, as we may briefly call it, finds
exemplification alike in the realm of life and in the world of
inanimate things. Not only are all movements of masses and
their parts — from the descent of a bowlder down the hillside to
the revolutions of planets in their orbits ; from the activities of
gas molecules in a chemist's laboratory to the movements of cos-
mical aggregation out of which suns arise — due to a differential
stress producing motion in the presence of resistance to that
motion : the law is valid also for the activities of animals, since,
if the molecular forces embodied in an organic system impel that

326 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

system to move to particular ends in the interest of maintenance, it
can not move to such ends save in the direction of the least resist-
ance. Thus, if a stone thrown at a mark takes the shortest route,
having regard to the whole of the influences which act upon it, so
a pedestrian goes to his destination by the shortest way which the
circumstances permit. A volume of steam finds exit from an
overstrained boiler at the weakest point ; so by the weakest point
an animal escapes from its cage. As a river flows through its
channel, determined to that path by the resistance which pre-
vents deviation from it, so the traveler is held to the beaten track
by the broken and difficult ground on each side of it. A bullet is
diverted by some obstacle suddenly encountered ; the root of a
plant coils round the stone it meets ; the railway engineer usually
carries his line round an obstruction instead of through it ; the
secondary current of an induction coil avoids a journey of many
miles by leaping through a flaw in the insulation; a dishonest
pupil avoids work at examination by copying the replies of a
fellow- student. The light wave makes its way, roughly speaking,
spirally through ether ; objects of large surface and slow descent,
such as certain suitably shaped pieces of paper, descend through
the atmosphere in a spiral path ; a bubble of air ascends spirally
through water ; the plant climbs a tree by spiral windings ; a
horse mounting a steep ascent with a heavy load takes a zigzag
or spiriform course ; men ascend and descend by spiral stair-
ways ; water sinks through an orifice spirally, and the descent of
a whirlpool is a spiral ; boring instruments, such as gimlets, au-
gers, corkscrews, have spiral blades. The hunter seeks particular
animals at pools and watercourses which they frequent, as certain
medusae throng to water traversed by a beam of light because the
illumination attracts thither small Crustacea upon which they
feed. Earthworms, in drawing leaves into their holes, seize the
leaf at such a point as will permit its passage into the hole with
the least amount of resistance ; a man carrying a ladder on his
shoulder through a crowded thoroughfare carefully regulates his
movements so as to avoid collisions. Men escape from an invested
city by utilizing the wind ; the invested dandelion balloons its seed
to a place where it can grow in safety. Certain organisms wear
the garb of others in order to increase the ease of their existence ;
certain men mimic their fellows to the like end of diminishing
resistance. As a mother disguises her child's medicine in sugar
or sirup, so plants offer their seeds to animals in sweetly fla-
vored fruits. Bees construct their combs in the form that secures
the utmost capacity for storage with the smallest expenditure of
building material and therefore of energy; so human builders
attain in their constructions a maximum of needed effect with the
lowest minimum expenditure of material and labor. A general

THE PRINCIPLE OF ECONOMY IN EVOLUTION. 327

carrying on war, a statesman conducting affairs of government, a
merchant engaged in business negotiations, alike take tlie path
which, having regard to the whole of the circumstances, offers
the least amount of resistance to the attainment of the ends in
view.

All inorganic and organic movements are therefore alike in
the fact that each is due to a greatest stress, and takes place in
the direction of a least resistance. It is true, of course, that a
pedestrian does not rebound, like the billiard ball, from the re-
sistances which he encounters in trying to find the easiest path
through a forest or over the mountains ; yet he consciously seeks
the path of least resistance, and does so because he is diverted
into it by the greater resistances of all other paths ; these greater
resistances become part of the greatest stress which determines
the form of his movement, just as the reactive stress of the cush-
ions forms part of the greatest stress that determines the path of
the billiard ball. Inorganic and organic movements differ from
each other simply in the fact that by living animals the path of
least resistance is more or less consciously chosen, while in the
inorganic world the path of least resistance is not chosen. And
this unlikeness arises out of a more fundamental unlikeness still,
from the fact that movement in the realm of the organic has end
for its concomitant, though not necessarily conscious end, while
in the motion of things inanimate end is wholly absent. Organic
movements, that is to say, are all directed to some end, while in
the realm of the inorganic, movements are simply unintelligent
effects, results, or products of differential stress. In the form of
organic movement, end plays a most important part, while in in-
organic movement it has no part at all. Thus a pedestrian may
find a circuitous route through a forest the easiest if his only end
be to pass through it as quickly as possible ; yet, should botaniz-
ing be his object, the form of his movement will be quite differ-
ent, and may very well be the direction of greatest resistance, so
far as physical obstacles to movement are concerned. In the case,
moreover, of particular ends, numerous opportunities for the ex-
ercise of choice present themselves. The more direct path up a
mountain is chosen in preference to the one less direct, yet, when
the " easier " path is the more dangerous, the traveler takes the
safer and more difiicult passage. So the more efficient tool is pre-
ferred to the less perfect instrument ; and so, out of numberless
ways in which the ends of life are to be reached, men instinc-
tively and consciously choose those which, by encountering the
least possible resistances, involve the minimum expenditure of
effort. In the case of organic movements, economy of energy is
possible because of the presence of end, the existence of various
ways of reaching it, and the possibility of choosing the one which

328 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

involves the least expenditure of energy. In tlie case of inor-
ganic movements there is no such economy, since those move-
ments are mere effects, and comply unvaryingly with the laws of
mechanics. Finally, the exertion of choice by an organism does
not determine whether movement shall take place in the direc-
tion of the least resistance or not — for that is the inevitable mode
of all movements, organic as well as inorganic — but whether the
energy expended in the differential or greatest stress producing
movement shall be a larger or a smaller quantity.

We have next to note that the economy of energy which is
possible in organic movements has two forms. There is economy
in the realm of the conscious will, exemplified in movements by
which animals reach various ends ; and there is an economy in
the realm of the unconscious life of the organism by which the
parts thereof rearrange themselves in such a way as to lessen the
expenditure of effort in the work of maintenance. For, whenever
function is imposed by the organism upon certain of its parts, such
parts, moving into configurations of least resistance, set up the
intelligent adaptations which we know as organs. The only dif-
ference between a tool and an organ is that the former has been
consciously shaped by man, whereas the latter has arisen through
the unconsciously effected rearrangements of living molecules
upon which function has been imposed by the organism. All
organs, like all tools, are paths of least resistance, ways of reach-
ing ends of organic maintenance with a minimum expenditure of
effort. Simultaneously, moreover, with the saving of energy
spared through the gradual perfecting of organs, there goes on a
gradual improvement of the ends which such organs are uncon-
sciously produced to reach. For this is simply to say that all
effort saved by an organism through increase of the efficiency of
its organs and processes goes — the circumstances being favorable
— to increase the complexity and delicacy of its relation to the
environment, as well as to enlarge the scope of the activities of
maintenance.

The way in which organic molecules move into configurations
that offer the least resistance to their special activities may be
seen in similar structural formations which are more or less
unconsciously assumed by human beings. One of these is the
habit of taking turn by people waiting, say, at the box office of a
theatre — a configuration which is assumed more or less uncon-
sciously, because it is the one which, under the whole of the cir-
cumstances, involves conditions of least resistance. There is a
similar selection of conformations involving a maximum of ease
in the manner in which pedestrians avoid collision with each
other. The throng in movement on the crowded sideways of a
great city divides itself naturally and without conscious delibera-

THE PRINCIPLE OF ECONOMY IN EVOLUTION. 329

tion into two streams going in contrary directions, each pursuing
its particular course without the slightest resistance from the
other, and to the manifest advantage, both in amount of energy
expended and speed of movement, of every individual concerned.

The history of social and industrial ascent is, throughout, a
record of the lessening of the resistance encountered in the attain-
ment of human ends, as well as of the constant improvement of
those ends. Social ascent not only diminishes resistance within
the tribe, community, or nation ; it everywhere lessens external
aggression, substitutes mutual aid for the antagonisms of con-
flict, and enables men to devote energy spent in war to the pur-
suits of peace. Step by step with this lessening of resistance by
the reduction of conflict, there goes on within the social body,
and between the group of social bodies, those co-operative move-
ments which, by tending to unify men, gradually bring to the aid
of the individual the whole power of the social organism. In the
beginning there is little industrial co-operation : each man is his
own agriculturist, hunter, tailor, shoemaker, and soldier — each,
that is to say, discharges for himself the work which individual
maintenance involves. But little by little men discover the
superior ease of mutual aid, and as they learn the value of the
division of labor, the function of maintenance, originally exer-
cised almost wholly by each individual for himself, comes more
and more to be distributed among sets of individuals specially
differentiated for the tasks allotted to them, and finally there
arise those wider interdependencies of industrial and commer-
cial co-operation that bind the inhabitants of almost every clime
under the sun in bonds of mutual indebtedness. That the whole
of this movement is a movement of constantly increasing economy
of energy in the reaching of special ends, and of constant ascent
in the scope and perfection of those ends, will be evident when
we remember that the lower we go down in the scale of human
existence — to the stages where coacting is least developed — the
Tuoi'Q rudely and imperfectly are the ends of maintenance reached,
and the more completely is the time of the organism exhausted
in attaining them, while the higher we look in co-operation the
more efficiently are those ends accomplished, and the less time is
taken up in their performance.

The way in which labor is reduced and end perfected, both as
to the quality of the work and the time in which it is performed,
has been shown in many familiar examples of co-operative acting.
The advantages of giving particular tasks to specialized sets of
workmen in such processes as those of coining and pin-making is
well known. The gradual improvement of tools — which are really
means to the attainment of the ends of the individual and of the
community of individuals, and must therefore share in the move-

33© POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ment of ascent in whicli those individuals are engaged — yields in
its every detail an illustration of the mode of all movement. At
first, tools were of the rudest kind, and men reached their ends
with labor enormous compared with that needed for the attain-
ment of the same ends to-day ; but in proportion as they acquired
knowledge of the external world, of the properties of things, of
how things act and may be acted upon, and of the means and
methods by which desired results may be brought about — in pro-
portion, moreover, as human need, widening and becoming more
varied with human ascent, made demand for a larger number and
a greater variety of implements — in such proportion did men per-
fect, not only their tools, but also the ends possible of attainment
therewith. To the implements, moreover, once used only by in-
dividuals, there have been added the tools called into service as
social appliances by groups of men, and finally by the whole com-
munity. Thus the progress of tools has been an ascent, not only
from the sandals of rawhide to the shoe of civilized races, from
the knife of stone to the modern blade of steel, from the sticks
rubbed together to the lucifer match, from the sling to the rifle,
from the bone needle to the sewing machine, and from the gnomon
and the clepsydra to the timepiece — it has also meant the gradual
development of such social mechanisms as steamboats, railways,
street cars, post offices, telegraphs, and the like. Finally, all such
improvement, whether of the individual or the social appliance,
has been, from first to last, progress in the economy o\ the labor
needed for particular ends and perfection of the ends themselves.
Illustrations of the law of least resistance may also be drawn
from the realm of mind. The need of economizing energy in
thought is one which, however conscious or unconscious we may
be of it, dominates and directs, so to speak, all our mental activi-
ties. This is suggested by the familiar antithesis between breadth
and profundity of acquirements — by the fact that artistic genius
is usually divorced from depth of intellect, that speculative ability
is rarely associated with knowledge of the world, that the thinker
who is deeply versed in general principles is almost never a spe-
cialist, that the poet is only phenomenally a man of affairs, and
that the power to think originally and philosophically and the
power to excel in the graces of literary style are rarely allied in
one and the same individual, or present in any individual at one
and the same moment. In a general way, we can concentrate the
mind, so to speak, upon any particular object only by abstracting
it from all other objects ; our attention to a speaker, or a book,
ebbs and flows according to the interest we take in particular pas-
sages ; more than half the familiar activities of our daily life are
performed without any attention to them which can properly be
called conscious. We are constantly, on the one hand, reserving

THE PRINCIPLE OF ECONOMY IN EVOLUTION. 331

voluntary effort for the less habitual processes and activities, and
on the other committing such processes and activities, to the ex-
tent that they become habitual, to the realm of the subconscious.
What is true of our bodily activities is equally true of the
mental processes through which we form judgments and reach
conclusions. To men in the mass, partial aspects of reality are
easier to seize than complete verities ; they find " concrete facts "
more comprehensible than general principles; the gently undu-
lating slopes of belief offer them a less arduous path than that
which leads over the steep cliffs of knowledge ; for most of them,
the rosy streamers that herald morning are more beautiful than
the full lights of day :

L'homme est de glace aux verites —
II est de fed pour les mensonges !

Hence it is that in their earlier thoughts men explain the invisi-
ble parts of the external world in terms of -the parts visible to
them ; that they confound the object with the garb woven for it
by the subject ; that they conceive anthropopathically of things
and activities in the external world and that most of their ideas
of the universe and of its parts presuppose the human organism
as the source of the analogies which alone make them intelligible.
There can be thus no theory of the universe, however crude,
and no religious belief, however barbarous, which may not find
its justification in the fact that, for a particular stage of mental
ascent, it is an expression of the law of least resistance. If, more-
over, the beliefs and theories of individuals and races, at first of
the simplest kind, become more complex as men ascend in mental
power and knowledge; and, if, as the spheres of feeling and
knowing draw near to one another, each grows richer in content
until in both the mind is enabled to range in a world of ideas in-
accessible to man on a lower plane of development — these results
are reached in every stage of the progress they constitute not only
by the saving of energy through the improvement of mental
operations, but also by the enlarging and perfection of the ends
compassed by those operations.

The history of the concept is itself full of evidence to the same
effect. In the early stage of mental development, men attach
high validity to appearances, and thus form concepts which con-
nect things only on the basis of their superficial likenesses and dif-
ferences ; the stage is one in which, while there are terms for the
members of a class, those descriptive of the class are either very
imperfect or do not exist at all — one in which, for example, there
are names for particular trees, particular plants, particular ani-
mals, but no general name for tree, for plant, or for animal. Not
only are objects imperfectly known in the absence of the power

332 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to form these general concepts ; it is impossible to think of tliem
in tlieir proper relations to one another, and thus there is at once
imperfect knowledge of the external world on the one hand, and
on the other, through lack of the bond of likenesses between
classes, that comparative slowness of mental processes which must
have been a character of all early thought. The more imperfect,
in fact, are the links of likeness which binds concepts together, the
more the mind tends to resemble the confusion of an unclassified
library, where the needed volume can be obtained only by great
expenditure of time and effort ; the more complete is mental seg-
regation, the more the mind may be said to resemble the same
library properly classified. Ascent, therefore, from the knowing
of things by their superficial characters to knowledge of them
also in their fundamental characters .enormously increases, not
only the ends reached by thought, but also the ease and rapidity
of mental operations.

There is another economy to be noted in mental operations —
the economy wrought by the increasing content and the growing
symbolism of the concept. The name first given to any object
simply expresses the most prominent out of a very small number
of qualities by which we know that object. In onomatopoetic
words, for example, the quality perceived and named is one of
sound, and the process gives rise to such terms as Jcolokol, the
Russian word for " bell " ; gunguma, the Gallas name for " drum " ;
hwdlalkwdlal, used for " bell " by the natives of Yakama (North
America) ; tumtum, also a Gallas word, meaning " workman," or,
more literally, " hammerer " ; krahra, the name of a Dahoman
watchman's rattle ; cJiaclia, the Aino word for " to saw " ; the
Peruvian ccaccaccahay , signifying " thunderstorm " ; the Austra-
lian hunghungween, used for "thunder"; liou-liou-liou-gitclia, the
Botocudo word for " to suck " ; kakakhaka, which in Dyak means
"to go on laughing loudly"; sliiriushiriukanni, used by the
Ainos in the sense of "a rasp" ; and the Quichua chiuiuiuiniclii,
indicating the noise made by the wind among trees. At first,
that is to say, the name means no more than the most prominent
character, and perhaps the only known character, of the object to
which it is applied, whether that character be one of sound, of
acting, or of appearance ; but, as men come to learn more of the
qualities and relations of such object, the name gradually loses its
descriptive value, and becomes a mere symbol or word counter
for the total content of the concept. Thus, " the Russian called
the duck utka because he saw it plunge its beak into the water ;
the Pole called it kaczka, because he noticed that it waddled in
walking ; the Bosnian gave it the name of plovka, because he saw
it swimming " ; yet in their survival none of these terms for the
duck retain or even suggest the character which originally gave

THE PRINCIPLE OF E CON 031 Y IN EVOLUTION. 333

rise to them — they imply the duck in all its characters and activi-
ties. It is for like reason that the various symbol values of a
vast number of terms in our own language have gradually
emerged from their original meaning as words descriptive of a
single quality of the thing named — sheep from "bleater," its
original meaning; dawn from "shine/' pig from "grunter/' or
" the maker of the su sound," mortality from " a wasting away/'
mother from " fashioner/' sky from " cover/' mouse from " stealer/'
ant from " swarmer/' bird from " upstriver/' father from " nour-
isher" or "protector/' ground from "the trodden/' foot from
"treader/' woman from "bearer" (gune), "soft one" {mulier), or
"the suckler" (femina), night from "the blind" or "dangerous/'
earth from "the dry" (terra), house from the "built/' horse from
" the neigher/' picture from " scratching/' stars from " strewn/'
fetters from "footers/' fingers from "seizers" {Fdnger), language
from " tongue/' imply from " folding in/' apprehend from " taking
hold of/' develop from " unwrap." The gain of the process is ob-
viously this — that the mind, instead of describing a single quality
by its name — instead of having to deal with all the qualities sepa-
rately— is enabled to include in a single concept all the characters
which the thing named is known to possess, and to bring such
concept into true relation with other concepts equally rich in the
number of qualities which they connote. That the economy thus
attained is no small one — that it means enlargement and perfection
of end as well as saving of energy — may be realized by remember-
ing the enormous increase which has taken place even in recent
years in the meaning of such simple terms, for example, as stone
and star. " Stone/' to the uncultured man, is merely a hard sub-
stance of a particular color, size, shape, and weight ; to the geolo-
gist the concept " stone " has a rich content of both chemical and
physical characters, and demands for its thorough comprehension
a familiarity with the whole history of the planet. So to the
ignorant man " stars " are little more than

specks of tinsel fixed in heaven,
To light the midnights of his native town ;

while to the educated, and above all to the scientific mind, the
concept is rich with thoughts of cosmic processes and solar evolu-
tion, and has a content of materials drawn from well-nigh every
department of knowledge.

Economy in language (which throughout implies economy in
mental processes) is probably shown as much by that which
escapes as by that which attains to expression in speech. "Words
are brought into use only to describe things, actions, and relations
that are of habitual or frequent occurrence. A vast number of
phenomena are left unnamed for the reason that they do not recur

334 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with sufficient frequency to demand formal attention for the social
purposes of language. Thus, if only one railway collision had
ever occurred, the word " telescoped " would never have been in-
vented ; so a single case of " marauding " or of " boycotting "
would have been totally insufficient to bring into existence these
now familiar terms. It is because most emotional states are too
complex ever to recur a second time in the same form and sequence
that they can never become fixed by language, and that the feel-
ings excited by the sight of a beautiful landscape, or an Alpine
range, may be but imperfectly suggested only by the multitudi-
nous epithets of a poem, and need a new poem to suggest them
every time they are felt. The naming faculty is in fact called
into action only as impressions emerge into familiarity : for the
changing complex of the activities and relations that never recur
twice in the same way, and often never recur at all, the mind has
no process of classification, and therefore no concepts that can be
named.

Uttered speech is full of the signs of this ever-present striving
after economy. Observe the constant omission of particles and
words whenever intelligibility is to be attained without them.
Where gestures will suffice to convey our meaning — a beck of
the hand, it may be, or a shrug of the shoulders — we do not
need speech, or, when we do, a " Pooh-pooh ! " a " Mind ! " or a
" Beware ! " will often answer all our purposes. We say " in
French " for " in the French language " ; " Thanks ! " for " I thank
you " ; " Herein ! " for " Kommen Sie herein ! " In phrases like " I
go to-morrow, not you," " Ni Tor ni la grandeur ne nous rendent
heureux," "Dove ci e despotismo, non ci h virtii" (Gaetano Filan-
gieri), " Er war armlich, aber doch sauber gekleidet," " Me ipsum
ames oportet, non mea" (Cicero), we habitually omit words for-
mally necessary to the sentence, but not needed to convey its
meaning. As, moreover, words are dropped from phrases, so let-
ters are dropped from words. When there is no literature to
stereotype a form, as in the case of the native American lan-
guages, degeneration by process of syncope sets in rapidly ; it is
not delayed long even for classic tongues, like Greek and Latin,
or for their successors of the Romance family, on all of which
phonetic decay has set its mark ; while all literary tongues, an-
cient and modern, display the process in their colloquial forms.
Thus the process which turned anima into dme, femina into
fernme, and pundum into point, which converted the earlier Latin
ad diem into the later Latin of ad die, and in Italian shortened
de ah illo monte into dal monie, has its analogue in the Bas-Valais
peasant's contraction of genisse into fni and eteindre into tede ;
in the Berlin workman's conversion of "IcJi" into "J"'; in the
English reduction of " I love-did " to " I loved," " boatswain " to

THE PRINCIPLE OF ECONOMY IN EVOLUTION. 7,7,^

"bos'n," "God be with, you !'^ to " Good-by ! " and in tbe slang
wbicli in portions of tlie United States has begun to dwarf " How
do you do ? " into " Howdy ? "

There is abundant scope for economy in all the forms of liter-
ary expression. Not only do we avoid as far as possible redun-
dant elements, we also choose words calculated to convey our
meaning with the minimum of effort on the part of the reader or
listener. Where our end is simply that of intelligibility, as in
the case of scientific statement, we choose words as simple and as
expressive as possible; where to the end of intelligibility are
added the ends of style, we employ words more ornate and pic-
turesque in their character. In most prose compositions we are
satisfied if we succeed in conveying our meaning ; in most poet-
ical compositions we seek, in addition to the end of intelligibility,
to produce emotional excitement, to call the imagination into
powerful activity, and to give rise to various pleasing effects, such
as those of rhyme and alliteration. But whatever are our ends in
composition, and however multifarious they may be, we alwaj^s
strive to reach them in the completest way and with the least
possible demand upon the attention of the persons whom we are
addressing. The sparing use of metaphor and parenthesis, the
placing of the stronger epithets after instead of before the weaker,
the avoidance of long and involved sentences, the care taken not
to repeat words already used instead of their synonyms, the pro-
vision for variety which excludes monotony both of thought and
of style, the observance of a best arrangement for the words in a
sentence, the choice of particular material for the various para-
graphs of a composition, and the construction of the links by
which unity is secured for the whole treatment — all this is ordered,
as far as is possible in each individual case, so as to produce a
maximum of effect with a minimum of material.

How intolerant men are of speech elements unnecessary to in-
telligibility is shown by the drift of the educated and uneducated
alike toward a phonetic spelling by the gradual doing away with
inversion in both word and sentence, and by the growing tend-
ency to use adjectives as adverbs, to discard subtleties like the
subjunctive, and break down the well-established distinction be-
tween " shall " and " will." The economy which has taken place
in the domain of grammatical forms is shown both in their
gradual acquirement as means to the increased intelligibility of
speech, and in the haste with which the mind, no longer needing
them, hastened to discard the scaffolding of the structure which
with their aid it had built up. The enormous gain which has
been secured by the dropping of inflection may be appreciated
somewhat by reference to the clumsy paraphernalia of such un-
developed languages as Zulu, in which, as translated by Dr. Bleek,

336 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the simple sentence, ''Our great kingdom appears; we love it,"
must be expressed as, " The kingdom our dom, which dom is the
great dom, the dom appears, we love the dom" {U-bu-kosi hetu
ohu-'kulib hu-ya-honalcdla si-hutanda). So the saving attained in
such a language as English may be easily inferred from the wild
luxuriance in analytic distinctions of all tongues in an early stage
of development.

It should be added that the gain which comes of the gradual
rejection of inflection is a gain not merely in the domain of lan-
guage alone, it is throughout made possible by mental ascent,
and the whole of the progress which it implies is a progress not
only in the saving of labor in the intercourse between men, but
also in the enlargement and perfection of the ends of that inter-
course.

We now return from this brief and highly incomplete account
of the various forms of acting to consider the application of our
principle to the case of the organic system. That principle ad-
mitted, it will be at once obvious that the law of least resistance
must be true of all those rearrangements and activities which are
imposed upon a living protoplasmic system in the interest of
maintenance. If, in other words, such aggregate be impelled by
the forces inherent in organic molecules to maintain itself, the
various means by which it will maintain itself will be means such
as, from the minutest detail of structural rearrangement to the
highest organ and process, are best adapted under the whole of
the circumstances to accomplish the end of maintenance with the
minimum expenditure of energy, and this for the reason that only
such means can arise by movement in the direction of the least
resistance. It also follows, from the inevitableness of the law
and from the character of the organic aggregate as a system of
parts, that the means by which maintenance is carried on by such
aggregate will undergo progressive improvement, and will there-
fore illustrate the same gradual advance in the economizing of
energy and the perfecting of end as those which are exemplified
in the ascent of the human community.

The obvious analogy between the parts of an organic system
and the individuals constituting a human society is completely
borne out on examination. Whether, in fact, the primitive or-
ganic aggregate be viewed as a union of previously separated
units, or as an organic mass divided into unit parts that are first
likes to each other and only finally differentiated, or as an aggre-
gate that undergoes differentiation of its parts the moment it is
sufficiently advanced in complexity to possess organic character,
the fact remains that the parts can not constitute an organic sys-
tem without aiding each other in the work of maintenance. Even
if we could regard them as independent of each other, though

THE PRINCIPLE OF ECONOMY IN EVOLUTION. 337

associated, we should be compelled to say that, acting in accord-
ance with the law of least resistance, they would find it easier to
divide that work among their own number than for each to main-
tain itself apart from the rest. Yet the reality is even stronger
than this : since the parts are interdependent, must each act in the
interest of the whole of them, and are each by that whole domi-
nated, so to speak, into co-operation with one another for the ends
of maintenance. Just in proportion, moreover, as special activi-
ties are imposed upon special parts, in that degree are such parts
differentiated for the tasks they must perform ; special centers
and organs arise connecting the various processes with one an-
other, until finally the whole unified system is an aggregate of
co-operating but subordinated individualities, of which each is in
the service of all, and all act in the interest of each — an aggre-
gate, that is to say, in which each of the parts, instead of having
to carry on itself all the activities of maintenance, obtains in
exchange for its own small contribution to the general labor the
services and power of the whole society. In other words, the
parts of such a system, impelled to the activities of maintenance,
move into those configurations in which self-maintenance is the
easiest and completest for all of them, and do so by a process of
gradual adaptation and interadaptation, every stage of which is a
stage of increasing efficiency of end and of greater economy of
energy in the reaching of that end.

The progressive unification of men in the human society also
has its analogy in the progressive unification of the organic sys-
tem. In the lower planes of life lack of complete solidarity be-
tween all the parts and processes of an organism often manifests
itself in the well-known phenomenon of iterated organs. The
system in this stage consists, so to speak, of groups or segments,
and every segment has its special set of organs — such, for example,
as the legs of the centiped and the lobster, the multiple breath-
ing holes of insects, and in a variety of organisms the iterated
eyes or ocelli, as well as the repeated nerve centers of many of the
lower forms. As the organism becomes unified this phenomenon
of iteration tends to pass away, and the change is wrought through
what may be called the discovery by the organism that it is easier
to produce and maintain a single set of organs of each kind for
the body as a whole than to produce and maintain and use a sepa-
rate set of such organs for each segment or group. Hence the
ascent of the organism from the stage of iterated organs to the
stage of single sets of organs, from the condition of imperfect to
the condition of perfect unification, is ascent by diminution of
resistance, by perfection of end, by greater economy of energy.

As, moreover, the improvement of tools is a saving of energy
to the individual wielding them, so is the improvement of an

VOL. LI. 26

338 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

organ to the system whicli needs and has produced it for ends of
maintenance. In the degree that the organic parts have special
activities imposed upon them, in that degree do they become
modified by those activities, and therefore adapted to the doing
of those activities. An incipient leg, tail, fin, or eye, or any other
organ, impelled to a particular thing, to act in a particular way,
will do that thing more perfectly, will act in that way more com-
pletely and efficiently, with every repetition of the acting, for the
reason that the parts of the organ and of the organism become
with every such repetition, up to a certain natural limit, more
and more adapted to the doing of that particular thing, to act-
ing in that particular way ; and this is why use is said to im-
prove organs. The parts of such a system rearrange themselves
in such a way as in every case continually to lessen the resistance
offered within the system to the acting needed for each particu-
lar end. Just as from the simple foot of the snail to the leg of
the vertebrates, so from the membrane of the worm sensitive to
light, from the ocelli of insects and marine organisms to the
highly developed eye of mammals, or from the incipient forms of
internal organs to the more perfect and efficient forms of such
organs, there have been progressive stages of ascent in the econ-
omy of energy with which given ends have been reached, as well
as improvement of the ends themselves. In the case of organs, as
in that of tools, the improvement has been made possible by a
finer sense on the parts of the organism acting of the direction of
least resistance, a finer self-adaptation by that organism to the
environment, and a more perfect reaching of more perfect ends
as the result of that adaptation.

We now see that the advantage gained by the perfection of
any given organ or appliance necessary to maintenance is the
advantage which, given the end to be reached, is gained by the
saving of energy in the reaching of that end — that, in other words,
the inducement to the improvement of any given organ is the
saving of the energy spent in reaching, with the aid of that organ,
the general end of maintenance. The more perfect are the appli-
ances of the organic system, the more easily and completely does
that system reach its end of maintenance ; hence the gradual im-
provement of the organs with which maintenance is accomi^lished
is so much movement in the direction of the least resistance.
Thus the eye is gradually perfected in successive organisms, not
because there is anywhere any foreknowledge that a given con-
figuration of parts will lead to so highly useful an appliance as
the organ of vision, but because, given the impulsion to mainte-
nance and the general conditions of organic life, all structural
changes leading away from the development of an organ like the
eye would involve loss of energy to the organism in the reaching

THE PRINCIPLE OF ECONOMY IN EVOLUTION. 339

of the general eud, and because all rearrangements of the organic
parts that lead directly to the development of the eye are favored,
as against rearrangements tending in any other direction, by the
fact that every successive stage of such rearrangements results in
a saving of energy in the reaching of maintenance to the organ-
ism bringing them about. In a word, the path of structural
movement toward the eye is the easiest path, the path of least re-
sistance, while the path away from the eye is the most diflBcult
path, the path of greatest resistance ; and what is true of the eye
is true of all other organs and organic appliances whatsoever.
Given, therefore, the molecular forces which in some way not
yet understood impel the organism to display those activities of
maintenance which we call life, and there follow, by virtue of
those forces, of the character of organic matter, and of the general
conditions of existence, not only the intelligent adaptations which
make possible and facilitate maintenance, but also the gradual im-
provement of those adaptations which constitutes organic ascent.
What, finally, is the outcome ? In the biological world at the
present moment the great question which interests inquirers is
that of the meaning of intelligent adaptations. Thinkers in this
field no longer question the existence of intelligence in the uncon-
scious form ; they seek to discover what that intelligence means.
" What we should like to discover," says one of them in a letter to
the writer, " is the seat of the so-called unconscious intelligence
which brings about those structures which the older teleologists
called designed." That natural selection supplies little if any
material for an answer to the question is already recognized. It
being impossible to trace these structures to an artificer operating
outside, our only recourse is to look to the organism itself for the
power to which the fashioning of tissues and organs is due. And
though we can do nothing toward solving the fundamental prob-
lem in biology, the origin of life itself, we need not despair —
given the fact of life — taking the powers of living protoplasm
for granted, of comprehending something of the process by which
intelligent adaptations arise. For, the rest being assumed, we see
how from the operation of the law of least resistance all the
mechanisms of life result by necessity. Writ minutely in the
tissues of the organism the law is inscribed broadly and grandly
on all the features of our modern civilization. Not an activity of
the busy industrial life around us, whether it be due directly to
travail of brain or hand, or find its realization in that wonderful,
external side of human life — the life of machinery — but illustrates
the universal mode in which all conscious intelligence reaches its
end. And so also in the realm of the unconscious we have only
to take for granted the powers of living protoplasm, and the sim-
plicity as well as the exceeding beauty of the process by which

340 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

intelligent adaptations come into existence flash upon us like a
revelation. We look as with vision renewed upon the pine cone
in the forest, upon the flower shining amid the expanse of green,
upon the sudden lightning of the firefly, and the manifold hues of
insect and bird. For, little as we have attended to them before
save as the commonplaces of our knowledge, we now see that
they are paths of least resistance objectively embodied — proto-
plasmic tools with which, in the silence of the unconscious world
the organic system is slowly but surely reaching its ends. And
as we ponder it becomes clear to us that the same system is
at work in the making of tools and the fashioning of organs —
that, though the one process is conscious, the other unconscious,
they are deep down in the heart of them the expressions of but a
single method. Everywhere we find the evidences of this likeness
— in the awl of the shoemaker and the tool of the boring insect ;
the earth-trap of the native African and the pitfall of the ant
lion ; the web of the spider and the net of the fisherman ; the
digging stick of the Australian, the foot of the mole, and the
spade of the navvy ; in the single oar of the boatman and the
sculling tail of the fish ; the sticky tongue of the anteater and the
slime pot of the human catcher of birds ; in the kayak of the sav-
age and the floating pupa skin of the gnat ; the scale armor of
the armadillo and the soldier's cuirass ; in the climbing hooks of
the tiger beetle, the claws of the bat, and the grappling irons used
in naval warfare; on the one hand, in the pulley, screw, and
wedge ; in chisels used in stonecutting, gravers with which wood
is carved, axes for felling trees ; in screwdrivers, lifting jacks,
Nasmyth hammers, battering rams ; the cord and weight of the
window sash, the wheels of carriages, and the rollers whereon
heavy masses are moved from place to place ; on the other hand,
in the muscles, sinews, and joints of animals ; in the wing of the
bird, the paddle of the porpoise, the hand of man, the mandible of
the ant, the horns of the cow, the lance of the swordfish, the
stinging cells of certain coelenterata, the channeled poison tooth
of the snake, or the defensive antennae of the spider ; even in the
vertebrate eye itself. For all these, being objective paths of least
resistance, are signs of a law that, pervading the realm of living
things, has its roots in the inorganic world, since it springs from
the very nature of motion as a result of differential stress. And
when adequate account is taken of the presence of end in organic
activities, of its absence from movements which are inorganic —
account, that is to say, of the fundamental difference between
living protoplasm and inorganic matter — then the whole of evolu-
tion, viewed apart from its secondary processes, may be summed
up in the simple formula — movement in the direction of least re-
sistance.

LET US THEREWITH BE CONTENT. . 341

LET US THEREWITH BE CONTENT.

Bt ELLEN COIT ELLIOTT.

THE men of America have met the suffrage agitation with an
admirable gallantry. Aspersed to their faces from the
rostrum as masculine creatures of unfathomable iniquity, they
return only a deprecating smile. Assured by the " new woman "
that the ever feminine leadeth them on, and that politics will
clarify as soon as the superior purity and integrity of the sex are
brought to bear upon them, they appreciate her splendid confi-
dence, applaud, and cry her on. There are those who, ever sus-
picious of the masculine character, take umbrage at this favor,
looking upon it as an impertinent condescension. But surely we
may grant that the slow partner of our humanity, admiring our
victorious advance, and bewildered by our swift onslaughts from
all points at once, wishes by his expressions of good will to
placate our wrath and further our desires. Stupid and mannish
he may be, but after all he is rather good-natured.

American women, however, are taking toward the question
at issue a curious attitude. One large and picturesque division,
when exhorted that they " ought " to desire a finger in the polit-
ical pie, if not for the sake of the pie at least for the sake of the
finger, show a sweet resignation, and, definitely premising that
they do not wish the ballot, cry meekly that if it be the will of
God to give it to them they will do their best to make a proper
use of it. Others express a frank impatience with our prophets
and saviors. Others, still, recognizing that the vantage ground
upon which American women stand to-day is not entirely the
result of democracy, give due gratitude and appreciation to those
who through hard battles have helped to win the position.
" But," they exclaim, " stay in your ministrations of deliverance !
Forbear to impose upon us the added responsibility of the suf-
frage ! " And, worst of all, masses of these shackled citizens
show an unalterable apathy toward the injustice they are suffer-
ing, and indifference to the hands reached out to help them.
Surely never did enthusiasts have to deal with more refractory
and exasperating material. The suffrage leaders have i3roved in
their own persons the angelic quality of womankind in not giv-
ing up long ago the attempt to free such inveterate slaves.

What is the significance of this general reluctance ? To give
her the suffrage is to add another to the long list of her oppor-
tunities for exercising power and influence outside of the home,
and the question becomes. Do American women desire this, and if
not, why not ? The answer is bound up with the hackneyed sub-
ject of " woman's sphere," and, as all our philosophy is nowa-

342 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

days biologized, it rests back upon the great physical fact that
women for all time must be prepared to bear and rear the children
of the race. Granting that much of her physical disability is
due to various sorts of foolishness and may be removed, it re-
mains undeniable that in even the most normal of women the
reproductive system is by nature so constituted that it requires a
much larger proportion of her vitality than is the case with man.
Hence, leaving out of account all other possible variations be-
tween the sexes, this difference alone is a definite handicap to all
women who " compete " with men. For married women there
is the further fact that childbearing and the care of children
add a new and very serious handicap in any " competition " with
men.

If, then, woman is physically at so great a disadvantage in
many occupations, shall she not consider that these occupations
are, for her, but secondary issues ? For her specialty shall she
not look along the line of least resistance ? Instead of denying
her physical constitution, shall she not exalt it by a consistent
allegiance to its fundamental significance ? Notwithstanding the
present apotheosis of the physical sciences, woman will not rest
satisfied in a purely physical explanation of her destiny. Bitter
rebellion is inevitable whenever she is confronted by her physical
limitations and possesses not the spiritual key to their meaning.
But a spiritual significance in the life of woman has been more or
less felt in all times, and in the present it is not only tacitly con-
ceded by society in general, but it has received definite scientific
formulation. From their physical constitution women more
than men must inevitably sacrifice themselves for the progress of
the race. Unconscious and unwilling though they may have
been, necessity and habit have so trained countless generations of
women in the practice of self-denial that they have grown to be
in the world the special witnesses and exemplifiers of the altruistic
principle. So true is it that motherhood and the love and self-
sacrifice which it involves, is woman's peculiar contribution to
evolution and progress, that, as has been keenly pointed out, " the
woman question is not solved until it is solved by mothers." In
other words, a woman can not solve her life problem on a purely
individual basis except at the price of her influence on the race.
A man may lead a life largely self-centered and still transmit
his qualities to his children, but the self-centered woman can
not pass on her qualities, for she will have no children to inherit
them. If she would, in any large way, save her life, she must
lose it.

The actual facts bear out this conception of a woman's func-
tion. It is not that women are wholly altruistic. Though loath
to own it, we are but mortal. Nor will any (except the suffrage

LET US THEREWITH BE CONTENT. 343

leaders) contend that every woman is more unselfish than every
man. On the contrary, it is only too easy to point out cases where
feminine selfishness is shown again and again in petty ways to
which men, as a rule, do not stoop. Yet it remains in general
true that the practical life of women the world over calls for a
more constant exercise of self-sacrifice than that of men, and
that everywhere women have learned in the main to make their
sacrifices cheerfully because lovingly, and even to court a life
which brings them. That this acquiescence should be often
considered an indication of tameness, if not inferiority, is but
natural in a civilization which has even now only half realized
the dignity of the altruistic ideal. In the affairs of life intellect
has enjoyed a long prestige. Character, which, according to
the highest conceptions of the race, depends at its best upon
altruism, is but slowly growing into an equal recognition. In
a rough, general way, men have been the apostles of the one
and women of the other. It is true that the ideal of humanity
is one. Women have gained in intellect and men in character,
and this must go on ; but it has not come about, and it will
not come about, by a direct exchange of their activities.

These considerations lead to the good old dictum that "home
is woman's sphere." It seems well-nigh superfluous to enumer-
ate the obvious qualifications of this general statement. Surely
no fin-de-siecle person would understand it to mean that woman
should look upon marriage in itself as the sole desideratum of
her existence, or that, failing to marry, she should devote her-
self to pets and fancy work, and live upon the charity of her
male relatives. Surely at this stage of proceedings no one would
attempt or desire to limit woman to purely domestic pursuits.
It has been reiterated and most abundantly proved that she need
not be circumscribed in freedom or opportunity for the sake of
binding her to the home : it is not necessary, for Nature will take
care of itself ; and it is not expedient, for the more she is allowed
to be in herself the greater the gift she can and will bring to the
race. Moreover, no one will contend that every woman ought to
be a mother, or that an indefinite number of offspring is a wife's
chief duty. In a word, marriage, and the bearing and not bearing
of children, are individual accidents dependent upon a thousand
private considerations. To fulfill the law of womanhood one
need not be a mother, but only to be motherly ; one need not be
a wife, but only to be loyal to the unselfish principle of wifehood ;
one need not eschew the paths of business or professional life, so
only that slae recognize hers as the exceptional feminine career,
the more normal and significant one lying within the walls of the
home.

Consciously sometimes, but perhaps more often with uncon-

344 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

scious instinct, a woman does thus stand by her colors. Why
this eager activity in the matter of temperance rather than the
tariff ? Because intemperance menaces the home. Why this
quick sympathy with organized or unorganized charities, as op-
posed to the average apathy over finance ? Because charity
touches people whom she can love and homes which she can
transfigure. And — if one may be pardoned a notion somewhat
transcendental — is not her oft-observed lack of creative ability^
together with her equally notable power of appreciation, due to
the fact that with her an idea is not worked out so readily in
purely intellectual formulations as in the material of character ?
The laws of mechanics as such she does not readily apprehend,
but the truths of rectitude which are their moral counterpart she
grasps with special illumination. The masterpieces of formal art
she does not create, but she, more naturally than man, can live a
life which may properly be called a poem or a picture.

And why this respect for womankind deeply rooted in the best
of men ? The individual character of woman is not, unfortunate-
ly, so much loftier than that of man as to compel it, and that she
is the " weaker sex " hardly accounts for so large a fact. Nor does
it look like a merely left-over remnant of mediseval chivalry. Is
it not, at bottom, that sound and sensible men recognize and
reverence the altruistic ideal, which, however faltering her loy-
alty, it is a woman's special privilege to perpetuate ? The beau-
tiful phrase so bedraggled by controversy —

Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan —

does it not mean that the principle of love which rules a woman's
life is also the loadstar of human progress ?

Homes must be made, and the masculine half of us, as they
make haste to proclaim with amusing emphasis, have neither the
inclination nor the ability to assume the task. Says one of them,
naively, " If marriage meant to a man what it does to a woman
in the way of suffering, labor, and social status, I am convinced
that not one man in fifty would marry." It is impossible not to
be reminded of the similar disclaimer —

Oh, then I can't marry you, my pretty maid !

and the milkmaid's retort —

Nobody asked you to, sir, she said —

seems singularly appropriate, did we wish to be so impolite as
to use it. But, strange as it may look to the masculine mind,
women in general do choose to marry. They are not driven to
it by the conditions of society, nor impelled by a blind sexual in-
stinct, nor misled by the enthusiasm of the martyr. They know

LET US THEREWITH BE CONTENT. .3^5

perfectly well what it will mean in their career. And they need
not be looked upon as fools for so doing, being in fact possessed
of the average degree of common sense of the race. They choose
it because they want it, and they want it because, in spite of its
restrictions, it brings the most satisfactory fulfillment of their
aspirations and development of their powers.

The same masculine thinker is firmly convinced that " women
wish to be men, but men do not wish to be women." Both parts
of this proposition are delightfully characteristic of the sex which
has never been backward in claiming its superiority, and the last
clause, by the same sign, is doubtless unquestionable. But the
first is as unjust to woman's ideals as it is derogatory to her mis-
sion. If she give up social pleasures, literary activity, pecuniary
independence, or a hundred other personal ambitions, to minister
to the interests of one modest home, and the career of one average
husband ; if she turn from the gratification of public recognition
to years of the unapplauded cares of the nursery ; if she drop out
of the onward march of purely intellectual progress, and spend
her life marking time in the ranks of the housekeeper — it is not
because she is the poor-spirited victim of circumstances. It is not
that one half the race is, by some mischance of destiny, doomed
to a life of tragedy. The bird with one wing broken droops in
its flight, and humanity thus hampered would have sorely lagged
in its onward sweep. On the contrary, she chooses these things
because law and the satisfaction of her life are not that of indi-
vidual ambition or attainment, but the law of love and service —
" unto the Jews a stumbling-block and unto the Greeks foolish-
ness."

Women, it is true, do not always feel or admit this. Many of
them have a taste for pity, and they pet and pity themselves and
each other. Yet the more sincere own willingly that everything
has its price, and that they have paid none too dear for that
which they have gained by their sacrifice. The strongest scorn to
pose as martyrs, because they see clearly that in life as it runs, a
woman, exactly as a man, gets what she pays for, and must pay
for what she gets. And they conceive of no more just equality
of the sexes than this.

As to the women of America, to begin with, they are not, as
some would have us think, downtrodden drudges, manacled
slaves, or what not, after the same order. Rejoicing in the most
perfect social freedom the world has seen, proud in a position
and influence quite equal to those of men, they can afi^ord to laugh
at such tirades. With the exceptions that must always accom-
pany general statements, woman in America may do whatever
she wishes to do. She may run the typewriter in an office instead
of a sewing machine at home. She may carry on a farm or a

VOL. LI. — 27

346 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

business. Slie may teach, write, i:)reac}i, lecture, practice law or
medicine. Journalism and belles-lettres are her happy hunting
grounds. She may marry or remain unmarried with equal honor,
and no one dictates in her choice of a husband. She may wear
bloomers and ride a wheel. She may carry on public agitations
to an unlimited extent. The most serious drawbacks to her com-
plete freedom result from flaws in her own standards and tradi-
tions, and are in no wise imposed upon her from without.

American men are neither tyrannical nor condescending to-
ward women. From childhood up they have been in the habit
of seeing their sisters walk beside them with independence and
privilege equal to their own. Their attitude is one of frank
comradery based upon a respect which on both sides is uncon-
sciously taken for granted. They have, besides, a genial tendency
to be proud of their women and to applaud rather than discour-
age their ambitions. If women wish to vote, these men will not
deny them. In fact, many an American household presents the
edifying spectacle of a husband more ready to vote the suffrage
to his wife than she to accept it.

Notwithstanding this freedom — perhaps because of it — one
need only obtain an unaffected expression of their feeling to find
that, maid and matron alike, the women of the country are, as a
rule, content in marriage as a career. They wish for children,
and gladly make the prolonged sacrifices necessary to their care
and education. One day a young woman — exactly such a one as
may be met with any day anywhere in the country — went " in
fun " to consult a fortune-teller. But she returned in tears, and
confided to her girl friend that she wept because the seer had told
her she would never have children.

It can not of course be said that among women there is no dis-
content, no restlessness. The age is full of discontent of a certain
kind, and restlessness is in the blood. Women do not escape
these general influences of the time. Moreover, there is, at least
among college women, a special dissatisfaction with the drudgery
attendant upon home-making. With the increase of individual-
ity which the higher education can not fail to bring, comes the
need of a new sort of home ; and the conflict and adjustment of
old with new ideals, old with new duties, old with new purposes,
brings confusion and sadness into the problem of many a modern
woman's life. Notwithstanding this, the college woman is found
in general to be no more ready than her uneducated sister to go
back upon the womanhood which means self-denial, and the
career which means self-sacrifice.

When these American women, full of the complicated in-
terests and duties of the American home and its dependent
sociological activities, are confronted with the prospect of exer-

LET US THEREWITH BE CONTENT. 347

cising the suffrage, their instinct seems to be to draw back. Ask
the women, one after another, in a representative community, if
they wish to vote, and again and again will come the answers :
" I haven't time," " My hands are overfull now," " How can I
undertake a duty which means that I must inform myself upon
all the public questions of the day ?" Naturally, many of them,
especially those who are temperance workers, or those whose
property interests are not represented under existing conditions,
desire the ballot. But the great majority are content to occupy
themselves with the multitude of interests which are already
theirs, and to leave the formal affairs of state to men. The great
majority, when they speak sincerely, will say that home-making
and its allied interests is their chosen life, and that its demands
are so exacting that they must leave the work of government to
other hands.

This attitude is certainly open to criticism. Perhaps it is true
that the sons could be better educated by mothers who voted,
that homes could be better made and protected by wives who
held the power of the ballot, that the welfare of schools and
charities would be furthered if women who are interested in
them had a share in the making of the laws. Yet it would seem
that if woman possessed by nature any great aptitude for polit-
ical life, she would be eager to exercise it. It has been said
that " the men are not what they are because they vote, but they
vote because they are what they are." They make politics, and
they are interested in the work of their hands. Women do not
make it and (always in general) are not interested in it. If
woman alone were to govern the state, how radically different
would be her methods ! And how can oil and water mix ? Until
she can disfranchise man and establish a rule of her own peculiar
sort, woman may perhaps be expected to show indifference to
political affairs. Furthermore, she might evince more alacrity
for reaching out for the august power of the ballot if she ob-
served that the men who exercise it thereby get what they want.
But to her puzzled query, " If you want this reform or that
measure, why don't you put it through ? " the conclusive reply
is that " you can't get at it," on account of the " primaries," or
" the bosses," or " the spoils system," or the " rings," or the
wheels within wheels of whatever other complications interfere
to muddle the brain and thwart the will of the sovereign Amer-
ican people. A woman answered thus, and reflecting upon the
suffrage, is apt to wonder, in her silly, feminine way, if the
game is worth the candle.

Perhaps it is worth the candle. Many a wise man thinks so,
and having the suffrage himself, a man should be able to esti-
mate its value. However that question may be finally settled.

348 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

women will be women. The practical conviction that this is
after all what they most wish to be must have an important
bearing upon their particular aspirations, and it is this convic-
tion whicli, to say the least, suggests misgivings and compels re-
serve in the minds of a very large number of average American
women whose voices are not heard in the land.

WILD FLOWERS OF THE CALIFORNIA ALPS.

By Mi8S B. F. HERRICK.

THE Sierra Nevada mountain range — with its lofty, snow-
capped peaks and majestic glaciers, its serrated crags and
romantic caiions, its foaming rivers, sparkling waterfalls, and
dense pine forests — is the California Switzerland. The climate
of this region more nearly resembles that of the mountains of
the Atlantic coast than any other section of the far West ; and
the vegetation is in most respects quite similar, though there are
many varieties of trees and plants that are peculiar to the State.
Spring is late in these high altitudes, and the summers are of
all too short duration.

Among the first flowers to greet the new year is the curious
snow plant {Sarcodes sangri*t?iea), world- renowned not only from
the fact that it is exclusively Californian, but on account of its
rare beauty and individuality. It was first discovered by one of
General Fremont's exploring expeditions on the slopes inclosing
the valley of the Sacramento; and is common at the Yosemite
and on Mount Shasta, at an altitude of from four to nine thou-
sand feet above the sea level. Though generally supposed to be
parasitic on the roots of the pine tree, eminent botanists, after
careful investigation, now claim it to be a " saprophyte," or a
plant growing from a rotten substance near the surface of the
soil, like certain species of fungi, an aid to this conclusion hav-
ing been found in the fact that the plants are sometimes known
to flourish in open places considerably removed from any growth
of timber. Their usual habitat is moist, sheltered forests, where
the winter snows fall deeply ; and they make their appearance
when the spring sun warms the frozen ground and melts the
fleecy snowdrifts. True leaves they have none ; and the fleshy
bracts, bell- shaped blossoms, and thick, brittle stems are all of
a brilliant scarlet, icy to the touch, and of the consistence of
crystallized sugar. The average height is about one foot, what
corresponds to the underground roots or bulbs being of about an
equal depth and of a much lighter tint.

These plants are members of a suborder of the heath family ;

O

g
o

350 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

though their resemblance to the sturdy manzanita, the fragrant
rhododendron, or the velvet-limbed madrone is not at first ap-
parent. They abound in gallic acid, giving them a sour smell,
suggestive of ink or vinegar. In early summer the flowers are
succeeded by hard, circular pods, containing numerous fine seeds
like those of a poppy ; and despite repeated experiments in ger-
mination, they refuse to grow in a foreign environment. Trans-
planting also always meets with failure, though specimens may
be dried and kept for several months. A writer in Hutching's
Heart of the Sierras thus graphically describes this matchless
Alpine flower :

A pyramid of tiny tongues of flame,

Darting from out the rifts of dazzling white ;

A strange bright phantom, born of ice and fire,

Flushing pale wastes with gleams of crimson light.

On the bleak, ice-bound heights, at an altitude of from eight
to twelve thousand feet, is found the curious " red snow," a very
low form of vegetable life, which, though common in polar
regions, occurs in the United States only on Mount Shasta and at
the head of Cross Creek, Colorado. When it is trodden upon in
a half -melted state, the footsteps of the mountain-climber fill in
with a clear, blood-red fluid, which leaves no stain, even if exam-
ined in the handkerchief. Some of the patches are of consid-
erable size, while others are scarcely a foot in diameter ; and the
color varies from a deep magenta to the faintest shade of pink.

Rivaling the snow plant in general interest is the singular
Darlingtonia, or California pitcher-plant, indigenous to open,
marshy places in the northern part of the State from Mount
Shasta to the coast, and the only species of its genus, though it is
related to the Eastern Sarracenias, or side-saddle flowers. The
pitchers, which are said to be in reality the enlarged and hol-
lowed petioles, or leaf stalks, average about three feet in height,
and are terminated by an arching hood or crest, furnished with
a pair of mustachelike appendages, which are the genuine leaves.
As these are provided on the under side with numerous honey
glands, and are usually highly colored, they constitute the prin-
cipal lure ; though the cunningly devised, nodding flowers, con-
spicuously borne on the ends of long, bare peduncles, also contain
an intoxicating nectar. The interior of the pitchers is lined with
innumerable fine, downward-pointing hairs, which form a most
insecure footing for the struggling victims and render escape
almost an impossibility, while the glare through the lacy, dome-
like roof only adds to the general confusion.

The colorless liquid which half fills the tube must be secreted
by the plant itself, as the covers of the pitchers prevent the

WILD FLOWERS OF THE CALIFORNIA ALPS. 351

accumulation of raindrops ; and the insects ensnared are mainly-
winged varieties, such as flies, bees, wasps, and beetles, though
ants, spiders, slugs, and other crawling creatures often share their
untimely fate. In one of these omnivorous vegetable traps the
writer once discovered a tuft of three straight pine needles, six
inches in length, though how

they ever worked their way, un- I'iSiip."!"' WIS

bent, through the curved mouth,
will ever remain an unsolved
problem.

Intermingled with the pitcher
plants and coarse grasses of the
swamps is often found a tall,
graceful orchid (Hahenaria leu-
costachys), with spikes of small,
white flowers, distilling the fra-
grance of the tropics ; and in
its company frequently grows
the California Cypripedium, or
" lady's slipper," which has leafy
stems about two feet in height
and from three to a dozen blos-
soms, with brownish, twisted pet-
als, and a white lip veined with
purple.

The rose-tinted, drooping Ca-
lypso, and the Spirantlies, or
" ladies' tresses," are also lovers
of wet places, the latter bloom-
ing in the late summer months
and being easily recognizable by
the curious manner in which the
little, greenish-white flowers are
coiled or twisted around the
stem.

Somewhat allied to the "la-
dies' tresses " is the " rattlesnake

plantain" {Goody eara Menziesii), the leaves of which were used
by the Indians as sovereign cures for snake-bites. From the
center of the variegated, rosettelike foliage springs a pubescent
stalk, about a foot in height, bearing a spike of one-sided white
flowers, which bloom in the deep woods through July and
August.

The epipactus {Epipacius gigantea) is found in the tangled
undergrowth along the banks of mountain streams, and has
slender, leafy stems and from three to ten brown and green blos-

CALiroBNiA Snow Plant.

352

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

soms, marked with purple ; wliile the Listera, or northern t way-
blade, may be distinguished by the stout oval leaves, clasping the

low stem, and the downy

1

of tiny purplish

raceme
flowers.

None of the above-men-
tioned orchids are parasit-
ic ; but there are at least
two indigenous species
which draw their nourish-
ment from other plants.
One is the well-known
"coral root" (Corallorrhi-
za), so called on account
of the fleshy rootstocks,
which resemble branches
of white coral. There are
several varieties, inhabit-
ing dry spots in mountain
forests all over the State.
Both flowers and stems are
of shaded browns and yel-
lows, and the plants readi-
ly escape detection, as they
are so nearly the color of
the surrounding dry weeds
and grasses.
The other parasitic orchid is the Cephalantliera Oregana, a
northern species of especial interest, suggesting the "corpse
plant " or " Indian pipe " of the Eastern woods. It is wholly des-
titute of green leaves, and the stems and flowers are of a pure
glistening white, somewhat startling in their unique beauty.
Like the epipactus, it prefers the neighborhood of forest streams
and hides itself in the shrubbery.

All along the banks of the foaming Sacramento there grows,
as though planted by a landscape gardener, the giant saxifrage
(Saxif raga peltaia), locallj known as the " umbrella plant," and
also as the "Indian's rhubarb," certain portions of the plant
being edible. Its generic name signifies " rock-breaker," as it is
said to disintegrate the rocks from the clefts of which it springs.
The graceful stalks, often a yard in length, are terminated by
scalloped, circular leaves a foot or more in diameter, which
resemble small parasols or umbrellas inverted by the wind.
Though highly attractive in the spring and summer, they are
especially ornamental in the autumn, when their clear, green
tints are changed to yellows and russets. The clusters of small

CALiFOR>nA Pitcher Plant.

WILD FLOWERS OF THE CALIFORNIA ALPS. 353

pink and white blossoms, on the ends of the long, fleshy flower
stalks, ripen in June into little double seed pods, which, when
shaken in the hand or brushed against by accident, produce a
sound much like that of the dreaded rattlesnake. Sometimes
these plants domesticate themselves upon submerged rocks, the
leaves floating on the surface of the current like those of a water
lily, while the masses of tangled roots threaten to trip up heed-
less fishermen. Though many varieties of saxifrage are found in
different parts of the State, none equal, either in size or pictur-
esqueness, these beautiful border plants of the northern Sierra
streams.

At irregular intervals along the banks grow tall thickets of
fragrant azaleas, or rhododendrons, reflecting their bright green
leaves and pink and cream-white flowers in the limpid water be-
low ; and behind them are terraces of feathery purple or white
ceanotlius, or mountain lilac, beloved by deer and honeybees.

Then come the dogwoods, flaunting their showy white bracts
full fifteen feet in air, and mingling their spreading boughs with
those of the laurel, the alder, the cottonwood, the wild hawthorn,
and syringa. At their feet appear the freckled faces of the

Giant Saxifrage or Sacramkxto Eiver.

tawny tiger-lilies, the largest of which is the Humboldt, as tall
as a good-sized man and with from four to six whorls of leaves,
each whorl ten to twenty leaves in number ; and rivaling them
in attractiveness are the stately Washington lilies, with their
satiny-white chalices, flecked with black and gold, suggestive of
the Bermuda or Easter lilies of gardens and greenhouses.

354 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Among other lovers of moist localities are the Aralia, or wild
sarsaparilla (the long, aromatic roots of which are sometimes
used as a substitute for the genuine commercial article), and the
poisonous Cicuta, or water hemlock, a member of the parsley-
family, easily distinguished by its lofty, hollow stem, large tri-
pennate leaves, and umbels of numerous rays of small white
flowers. On the borders of Lake Tahoe flourish the beautiful
pond lilies, prized by boat-riders as trophies of summer excur-
sions ; the white Brasenias, or "water shields"; and the sulphur-
yellow Niqjhars, or " spatterdocks," the large flat leaves of which
are the favorite camping ground for small green frogs. Most of
the forest underbrush is composed of the manzanita, or " little
apple" [Ardostapliylos), sometimes known as the "bear-berry,"
as Bruin feasts on the fruits. This shrub averages about five
feet in height and has round, thick leaves and tiny white or
rose-colored blossoms which ripen in early autumn into dull- red,
globular berries, resembling Indian beads. The smooth, mahog-
any-hued bark peels annually, like that of the madrone ; and the
larger boughs furnish a hard cabinet wood capable of a fine polish.

Other flowering shrubs include the heathlike bryanthus ; the
Audiberta, or white sage ; the rabbit brush, and the Oregon grape
or holly-leaved barberry (Berberis), a low bush with prickly, pol-
ished foliage and racemes of yellow flowers, succeeded by round
blue berries much like those of the elder. In great patches under
the pines grow the Chamobafia (a little evergreen plant about a
foot in height with blossoms like those of the strawberry), and
the trailing Vaccinium, or "squaw's carpet," recognized by its
small, serrated leaves, and round, pale-pink bells, or hard, reddish
seed vessels. The Alpine phlox clings to the rocks in high alti-
tudes, together with the arctic willow and dwarf conifers, while
the juniper redeems barren, sandy sections from utter desolation.

Two pretty little wood plants, nestling in the dry leaves under
the trees, are the Fyrola, or " shin-leaf," and the pipsissewa, or
"prince's pine" {Chiniaphila) , the former having radical varie-
gated leaves and nodding white flowers, suggesting those of the
lily of the valley, and the latter being known by its shining ever-
green foliage and terminal clusters of waxy, flesh-tinted blossoms
of delicate fragrance.

Near by usually grow the quaint little " Dutchman's breeches,"
with their fine compound leaves and drooping, pink corollas, as
well as the Asarum, or wild ginger, so called on account of the
rootstock, which has a pungent flavor. This is an odd-looking
herb, with several heart-shaped leaves, and a curious, brownish-
purple flower, about the size of a large thimble, which makes its
appearance just above the surface of the ground, and has no
petals, but a three-parted calyx.

WILD FLOWERS OF THE CALIFORNIA ALPS. 355

In open, rocky places one is apt to come across the downy,
pink and white " pussy's paws " {Syraguea unihellata), together
with clumps of gorgeous lupines — lilac, yellow, or rose-color — and
patches of golden coreopsis, purple pentstemons, and lovely gilias,
godetias, and Indian pinks ; while tall columbines, larkspurs, and
wild roses peep from the tangled shrubbery. The beautiful Mari-
posa lily, or " butterfly tulip," a member of the calochortus fam-
ily, derives its name
from the large dark
spots on the petals and
through June delights
the eye with its yellow,
violet, or snow-white
chalices.

In the early spring
the wild flowers run riot
everywhere, carpeting
sunny, open spots with
a veritable crazy quilt
of bloom, chief among
them being the large,
purple-spotted Nemopli-
ila, or " baby -eyes," the
white forget - me - not,
the blue, white, and yel-
low violets, the wild
agapanthus, the yellow
iris, the wild strawberry
blossom, and the far-
famed Eschsclioltzia, or
California poppy, the
emblem of the State. In
these mountains there
are a good many va-
rieties of old-fashioned

herbs, which have been used medicinally for ages, and are sacred
to the memories of the spicy garrets of ISTew England country
farms. The chamomile and the aromatic peppermint and penny-
royal head the list; then come the aconite, or monk'shood, the
flannely-leaved mullein, useful for lung troubles of man or beast,
the woodsy yarrow, the yellow tansy, the wintergreen, and the
Brunella, or self-heal — a cure for quinsy and all sorts of wounds.

On the outskirts of the Mount Shasta meadows, where the plow-
man stands knee deep in rolling billows of red clover, timothy,
and redtop, there grows a singular iioral torch, known as the
California veratrum. This plant is a member of the lily family.

Azaleas.

356

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and resembles the yucca or Spanish bayonet of the southern
counties, the small, greenish-white flowers being borne in a dense
panicle on the summit of a stout stem, from three to seven feet
in height. The long, narrow leaves are smooth and grasslike,
and are suggestive of corn or sugar cane. Close at hand, the
spirea, or steeple-bush, waves high in air its feathery white or

WASiiixftToN Lilies.

magenta plumes ; and beyond are thickets of wild plums and
hazelnuts, mingled with low bushes of thimbleberries, huckle-
berries, and large, prickly gooseberries.

There are a number of roadside and pasture plants, known by
farmers as " weeds," which nevertheless seem to have imbibed
the very spirit of midsummer. Among them are included the
dainty evening primose (Enofhera biennis) ; the clematis, or " vir-
gin's bower," festooning itself gracefully from tree to tree, with
the wild grape and ivy ; the milkweed {Asclepias), with its dull-
pink flowers and big, oval seed pods, filled with brown seeds and
silky white down; the yellow sunflower; the flame-colored Cas-
telleia, or " Indian's paint brush " ; the golden-rod, three to six

THE PLANET SATURN. .357

feet in height; the aster, dandelion, and the bright-eyed little
Hypericum, or " Saint John's- wort," formerly used in certain parts
of Europe as a charm against evil spirits. In sandy places, on
the edge of the woods, grows the curious " horsetail," or telescope
reed, sometimes known as " file-grass," as the rough, furrowed
stalks were once used for polishing purposes. Being without
true or visible blossoms, this plant belongs with the ferns,
mosses, and other cryptogams, and is said to have deteriorated
from the coal ages.

Toward the end of September a change creeps over the face of
Nature, and a solemn hush heralds the approach of autumn. The
great, towering yew tree clothes itself with scarlet berries, and the
dry, yellow leaves of the maple flutter downward through the
quiet air, the chokecherry dons a robe of scarlet, and ripens
clusters of astringent fruit of an equally vivid hue ; the deciduous
azaleas drop their foliage into the sparkling river, and the dog-
wood and poison oak assume a garb of solferino, while the con-
tinual dropping of pine cones breaks the silence of the mountain
forest. Then the snow falls like a fleecy blanket, and winter sets
in, with its rigors of ice and sleet.

THE PLANET SATURN.

By CLIFTON A. HOWES, S. B.

DOUBTLESS many observers of the sky are familiar with the
planet Saturn as he slowly moves through the constellations
from year to year, but how many of them stop to think of the
wonders and mysteries connected with this far-off member of the
solar system ? Very few, probably ; and yet this planet is well
worth a closer acquaintance, for, as Prof. Langley says, " In all
the heavens there is no more wonderful object than the planet
Saturn, for it preserves to us an apparent type of the plan on
which all the worlds were originally made."

Saturn was the remotest planet known to the ancients, and it
was probably on account of his sluggish motion along the sky
that a malignant influence over human affairs was attributed to
him by the astrologers. This slow movement is only apparent,
however, for he is really bowling along through space more than
twenty thousand miles every hour ; but such is his distance from
us that we can scarcely detect any change of position from night
to night, and must wait thirty years for him to make his circuit
of the heavens.

In point of size Saturn stands next to Jupiter, the " giant of
the solar system," and upon his diameter nine earths could be

358 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

strung like beads on a wire, while from his vast bulk seven
hundred planets like ours could be formed. But just here comes
a factor which has an important bearing upon the present con-
dition of Saturn. In spite of his enormous bulk, he " weighs "
only ninety times as much as the earth, which at once shows us
that the materials of which he is formed are much lighter than
those composing our world. In fact they are but three quarters
the weight of an equal amount of water, so that theoretically, if
placed in an ocean large enough to hold it, this huge planet would
float on the surface like a wooden ball.

There is but one conclusion from this and also from some
other facts connected with the planet. Saturn is not, like the
earth, a solid sphere covered with oceans and continents capable
of supporting animal and vegetable life, but is midway between
this state and that of the sun. In other words he might be called
a semi-sun, perhaps giving forth but little light, yet so intensely
heated still that its vast bulk is probably but a distended mass of
liquid fire — a world where " the solid land as yet is not, and the
foot could find no resting place." It is too bad to destroy the
pleasant theories we often see about the inhabitants of this far-
off world and the conditions of life upon its surface, but we can
not evade the facts as they open up to us.

When viewed through a good telescope the planet presents a
most beautiful sight — a huge golden ball, crossed by parallel
belts of a brownish tinge, and capped at the poles with a bluish
or greenish gray ; and, most wonderful of all, surrounded by a
thin, broad, flat ring, likewise of a golden hue. As if this were
not enough, it is accompanied by a retinue of at least eight satel-
lites or moons, some of which will be in the field of view.

Under very favorable conditions faint markings can be dis-
cerned on the belts, which seem in every way similar to those of
Jupiter, and like his may safely be assumed to be masses of roll-
ing clouds ranged in belts parallel to the equator by currents
analogous to our trade winds. It seems very probable that these
clouds may be mostly aqueous, and we may thus regard them as
the future oceans of these planets, suspended in the air at present
because the surface is not yet sufficiently cool to allow them to
settle and remain as bodies of water upon it.

That this must be the case is shown by a moment's thought.
We know that on the earth clouds are formed by the condensa-
tion, in the upper and cooler portions of the air, of the water
vapor raised from the surface waters by the sun's heat. But at
Saturn, nearly ten times farther away, this heat is reduced to one
one-hundredth of its intensity here. On the earth too, as a rule,
the clouds are somewhat sparsely distributed, so that a large part
of the globe has usually fairly clear weather. On Saturn, how-

THE PLANET SATURN. 359

ever, we never yet have caught a glimpse, so far as known, of the
real surface, whatever that surface may be. The rolling cloud
masses completely envelop the planet and shut it out entirely
from the sun's light.

We can scarcely suppose, then, that these clouds are raised
upon this distant world by the solar heat, especially when we see
how feeble that heat is compared with what the earth receives.
And this is but another argument to prove the theory of Saturn's
present condition as already given, for it is most probable that
the planet holds in its own vast bulk the immense amount of
heat whose presence is so certainly revealed in these phenomena.

Of course the rings are the unique and most wonderful feature
of the whole system. When Galileo first turned his rude tele-
scope upon Saturn, in 1010, he announced that the planet was
tri-ple, the projection of the ring on either side making it appear
to him as if two smaller planets were joined to the larger one.
Gradually, however, these smaller companions decreased in size
and finally vanished altogether, much to Galileo's amazement.
Later on they reappeared and still further increased his per-
plexity.

Saturn thus remained an enigma to astronomers until an in-
crease in the power of telescopes brought out the fact that it was
surrounded by a thin, flat ring, which, by its varying positions as
seen from the earth, caused the peculiar appearances that so puz-
zled Galileo.

This so-called ring, when seen through large telescopes, ap-
pears as a very thin, flat disk with a circular opening in the
center in which the planet itself is situated. It lies exactly in
the plane of Saturn's equator, and extends considerably more
than half the planet's diameter on either side of it. The breadth
of the ring is just half the planet's diameter, so that there is quite
a space left between its inner edge and the surface of the planet.

We speak of it as a ring, but in reality there are many of
them. When favorably situated, a dark division can easily be
detected which separates it into an " outer " and an " inner "
bright ring ; while within the last fifty years a third one, inside
of the others, was discovered at Cambridge. This innermost of
all, known as the " dark " or " crei)e " ring, is a most peculiar
object. In appearance it is more like a shadow than anything
else, for it seems to be semi-transparent, inasmuch as the out-
line of the planet can be seen through it where it crosses the
planet's disk. It shades away gradually from the inner edge of
the inner bright ring, and becomes fainter until it disappears at
some nine thousand miles from the planet's surface.

What the nature of these rings may be is still in some degree
a mystery. They are not gaseous, and it has been shown that

360 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

they are not liquid, for no liquid could be suspended in sucli a
manner without being precipitated eventually upon the surface
of the planet. Nor are they solid ; for it has been demonstrated
that no solid could hold together under such strains, such tre-
mendous forces, as the attraction of the monster planet would
subject it to ; it would soon be broken up entirely.

The only supposition remaining is that it is composed of
myriads of solid particles — a ring of dust and fragments of rock
and stone. In this case we may imagine it as being an immense
swarm of tiny moons or satellites, each revolving in its own par-
ticular path around the planet, and the aggregation presenting to
us at this distance the appearance of a solid mass. Of course, the
word " tiny " must be taken in an astronomical sense, which
would not preclude one of these " dust " particles or fragments
from being as large as a house, or even a mountain.

That the ring is composed of solid matter of some kind is
proved by the fact that it reflects the sunlight which it receives,
apparently unchanged in quality, and deprives of sunlight those
portions of the planet on which its shadow falls. But here comes
the question, If we know the ring is composed of solid matter,
how do we know that it is in the form of dust and fragments ?
This question was long a stumbling-block, but, as Prof. George
Darwin points out, the investigations of M. Roche, a French
mathematician, seem to have solved the difficulty.

Briefly, the reasoning is as follows : We know that our moon
always keeps the same face toward the earth, but perhaps it is
not so generally known that the cause of this is in the moon's own
shape, which is that of an Qg^ with the longer diameter pointing
toward the earth. Not that this egg shape is so very pronounced,
but it is sufficient to keep the moon from rotating as the earth
does, and to keep its longer diameter pointed toward the seat of
that force which holds our satellite in its path.

The cause of this egg shape is simply in what is termed the
" tide-generating force." The moon's efl^ect upon the earth due
to this force is rendered noticeable and well known in our tides.
The earth also exerts the same force upon the moon, only, as the
former is eighty times more massive, the effect is correspond-
ingly greater, and the moon's globe has suffered under the strain
— has been pulled out of shape, so to speak.

Now this force of course increases as its source is approached,
and were the moon brought nearer and nearer the earth, a point
might finally be reached where the solid materials of which she
is composed could no longer hold together, and her globe would
be torn to pieces by the tremendous forces to which she would
be subjected. To determine this point was the problem which
M. Roche solved, and his conclusions led him to place it at a

THE PLANET SATURN. 361

distance just under a diameter and a quarter from the planet's
center. Within this distance, then, no satellite of any consider-
able size can circulate for the reasons above stated.

Now, the most remarkable fact remaining is that the outer
edge of Saturn's ring system lies just luithin this limit, so that
the conclusion as to its nature seems to point to the " meteoric
theory," as it is called, as the only possible one. Either a satellite
has been drawn within the fatal circle and disrupted, or the mate-
rials now present as a ring have been prevented from uniting to
form a single satellite, as they might otherwise have done.

So much, then, for theory. The next point is. What proof can
we get to substantiate it ? This might seem at first a hopeless
task, but that wonderful instrument, the spectroscope, has recently
given us direct testimony on the subject.

One of the peculiarities of the spectroscope is its ability to
detect the motion of a luminous body in the line of sight, by the
shifting of the dark (Fraunhofer) lines of its spectrum from their
normal position as seen in the spectrum of direct sunlight. Ad-
vantage was taken of this fact by Mr. J. E. Keeler, who obtained
photographs of the spectrum of Saturn and its rings which plain-
ly showed that the shifting of the lines due to the motion of the
rings was greater in each case for the inner edge than for the
outer, proving conclusively that the portions of the ring nearer
the planet move faster than those farther away.

Let us see what this means. In the first place, if we suppose
the rings to be solid, it is evident that they must rotate as a whole,
the angular velocity of all parts being the same, but the linear or
actual velocity being much greater at the outer edge of the ring
than the inner, because of the greater circumference of the circle
traveled over in rotation.

If, on the other hand, the ring is composed of separate par-
ticles, each in effect a little moon, it is apparent that the nearer
these tiny satellites are to the planet the faster they must revolve
to overcome the increasing pull of the planet and save themselves
from being drawn to destruction upon its surface. In this case,
therefore, the inner edge of the ring will have a much greater
velocity than the outer.

Thus we see that the two theories require opposite condi-
tions to obtain, and that the proof given by the spectroscope
confirms directly the approximate correctness of the "meteoric
theory.'^

This latter theory offers a ready explanation for the curious
" crepe " ring. Shading off gradually as this ring does from the
inner edge of the bright one, it is natural to suppose that it is a
portion of the former ring in which the fragments or " meteorites "
are more sparsely distributed, their numbers growing gradually

TOL. LI. — 28

362 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

less as the distance from the main ring increases, until the eye can
no longer detect their mass and the ring apparently ends.

This explains why the outline of the planet can be seen through
the dark ring ; but if this fact is not enough, an observation made
on November 1,1889, at the Lick Observatory will further confirm
the theory. This observation was of the outer satellite, which
was in such a position behind the planet as to pass through the
shadow of the rings and be eclipsed by it. Watching the satel-
lite, then, as it left the planet's shadow and slowly passed on into
the shadow of the rings, its light was seen to grow gradually
fainter as it passed through the shadow of the dark ring, but did
not wholly disappear until the moon had entered the shadow of
the inner bright ring. This shows clearly that the dark ring is
partially transparent, but becomes more opaque as the bright ring-
is approached.

With regard to the satellites there is little to be said. There
are eight known at present, and there may be more, for they are
mostly quite small, as heavenly bodies go. Still, they form the
most numerous as well as the most extended family within the
sun's domain, for the outer one of all swings around Saturn at a
distance of two and a quarter millions of miles — ten times as far
away as our own moon. This one, which is named Japetus, is just
about the size of the moon, and apparently shares the latter's
peculiar trait of always keeping one side toward its ruling planet.
This supposition is due to the fact that when on the western side
of Saturn Japetus is always very much brighter than when to the
eastward ; in fact, though easily seen with a telescope of moder-
ate power when brightest, it will almost entirely disappear when
faintest. It is difficult to explain the cause of such a marked
change, for one half of the satellite must be extremely bright and
the other half very much darker to produce it, but the fact re-
mains.

Titan, as its name implies, is the largest of the group, and in
size is midway between Mars and Mercury — in fact, it would make
a very respectable planet itself, for it is nearly half the diameter
of the earth. The other six are all considerably smaller than our
moon, and have been discovered in the order of their brightness,
their discovery keeping pace with the increase in the power of
telescopes, so it is quite possible that there may be others in this
already numerous family to be introduced later on.

We spoke in the beginning of this article of destroying the
theories often put forth concerning the inhabitants and condi-
tions of life upon this far-off world. There are certain facts
and deductions, however, from which we can gain an idea
of some of the conditions which may prevail when Saturn has
finally reached a stage where life will be possible upon its sur-

THE PLANET SATURN. 363

face, and it may not be uninteresting to consider some of their
peculiarities.

In considering the climatic conditions of a planet we find they
depend principally upon three factors : the distance of the planet
from the sun, the inclination of its axis, and the length of its
year, with incidentally the length of its day. What the results
of this combination may lead us to expect in the case of Saturn
we will point out by using the earth, naturally, for analogy or
contrast.

In the first place, as affecting animal and vegetable life, the
greater distance of the sun, and the corresponding decrease in
its lighting and heating power compared with the same effects on
the earth, would materially change in itself the character of such
life on Saturn. As already noted, the heat and light are reduced
to nearly one one-hundredth of their intensity here, but no one can
tell what compensating features may ultimately be provided for
retaining the internal heat of the globe or storing up the sun's
heat. As an instance of such adaptation we have only to turn to
the planet Mars, where we have visual proof, in the melting of
its polar " snows," of a much milder climate than the earth pos-
sesses, although the intensity of the sun's heat there is reduced
by half.

In connection with the foregoing is the question of the com-
position of the atmosphere, and whether it could support such
organisms as we are familiar with in terrestrial life. The spec-
troscope has told us but little about Saturn's atmosphere, but it is
known that the planet is provided with one of considerable ex-
tent, and apparently of a similar constitution to our own. The
presence of water vapor has been detected, according to some
observers, but not positively ; yet it is fair to suppose from other
considerations that this most necessary adjunct of all life is plen-
tifully supplied.

The change in the seasons will, of course, depend upon the in-
clination of the axis, which in Saturn's case is twenty-six and
a half degrees from the perpendicular to its orbit. When we
remember that the corresponding inclination of the earth's axis
is twenty-three and a half degrees, it will be apparent that the
change of seasons would be quite similar to ours, the sun mere-
ly rising three degrees higher in the heavens at the summer
solstice and three degrees lower at the winter solstice. But the
length of the seasons, determined by Saturn's long journey around
the sun, will be, on the average, nearly seven and a half years, a
fact which would render unlikely much similarity in organic life
to the forms found on the earth. If we add to this the rapid suc-
cession of day and night, each being at the equator of but five
and a quarter hours' duration, we may look for still further dis-

364. POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

similarity ; but the greatest difficulty comes when we consider the
effect of the rings.

At first thought it might seem that the rings would have little
to do with the climate of the planet, and in fact such is the case
during the summer of either hemisphere ; but winter tells a dif-
ferent tale, as we shall see. Since the rings lie exactly in the
plane of the planet's equator, they will be presented edgewise to
the sun at the equinoxes, when the sun is " vertical over the equa-
tor." At this time their shadow, part of which must fall on the
planet, will lie directly on the equator, and presumably be about
as wide as the general thickness of the ring system, which is esti-
mated to be not more than one hundred miles.

As the sun travels northward from the equinox, it is apparent
that the shadow will fall farther and farther south of the equator
until it has covered the whole southern hemisphere, save a por-
tion of the torrid zone where the light comes through the space
between the rings and the planet. After the summer solstice the
effects are reversed : the shadow retreats toward the equator, and
after the succeeding equinox the southern hemisphere will have
its summer undisturbed, and the northern hemisphere in turn will
have its long winter made still more dreary by this remarkable
daily eclipse of the sun. It thus appears that only in a relatively
narrow belt lying on either side of the equator would be likely
to occur climatic conditions approaching those with which we are
familiar.

One often sees in articles on astronomy some reference to the
grandeur of the Saturnian heavens at night, where, in addition to
the starry host familiar to us all, would be the wonderful ring
spanning the sky as an arch of golden light, and eight moons in
their various phases. In a measure this is true, but it depends
upon circumstances. During the summer half of the year in
either hemisphere the illuminated side of the rings is, of course,
visible— perhaps even faintly so in the daytime, as is the case
with our moon ; but when the twilight falls and the golden arch
shines forth in all its beauty against the darkness of the sky, it
must certainly be a sight which for grandeur surpasses any celestial
phenomenon known to us, save possibly a total eclipse of the sun.

As soon as the sun has set, however, the shadow of the planet,
where it falls upon the rings, rises in the east and mars the
beauty of the arch as it travels across it during the short night
and disappears in the west at sunrise. At the summer solstice,
though, the sun rises high enough in the heavens, or, more cor-
rectly, the planet's axis is inclined far enough toward the sun to
bring the outer ring clear of the shadow, which then appears
somewhat conical in shape and reaches across the inner bright
ring nearly to the outer one.

THE PLANET SATURN, 365

But after the autumnal equinox and during the winter season
all this is changed. Not only do the rings cause daily eclipses of
the sun, but they give no illumination at night, for their dark
side is then toward the observer, and they can be only " nega-
tively visible," so to speak — that is, their position in the sky is
shown merely by the absence of stars in that portion.

As to their appearance from various positions on the planet, it
might be said that the whole system is visible above the horizon
as far as latitude 41° — that of New York and Constantinople in
our northern hemisphere, and Tasmania and New Zealand in the
southern. At this latitude the inner edge of the dark ring will
be upon the south point of the horizon, and the arch will extend
about a third of the way toward the zenith. When latitude 51°
is reached, that of Dresden and Winnipeg, Manitoba, the dark
ring will have sunk below the horizon, but the whole width of
the bright rings will be above it ; and, finally, at latitude GG° 30',
that of our Arctic and Antarctic Circles, the entire system will
have disappeared.

Of the illumination given by the moons in the absence of the
rings we must say a little, since one often sees some statement to
the effect that so many moons must compensate in some measure
for the diminution of sunlight. But as the moons are illuminated
by this very sunlight, their brilliancy is reduced in the same
ratio, and in Saturn's case their total light in no wise makes up
for this loss.

Reckoning from the best estimates of their sizes, we find that
the total area on the sky covered by the moons when full is about
two and a half times the area of our own moon, but their illumi-
nation, could they all be full at once, would be only the fortieth
part of what we are accustomed to at the full. Then, again, as all
of them except Japetus, the outer one, lie in the plane of the
equator, it is evident that at the equinoxes, when this plane
passes through the sun, they will all suffer total eclipse at the
full, and will continue thus until the increasing inclination of the
axis toward the sun brings their orbits one by one outside the
shadow at this point. Thus we see that this numerous retinue
does not amount to so much, after all, in the matter of illumi-
nation.

One other feature, and one which would doubtless be noticed
first of all were any of us suddenly transferred to another planet,
would be our change in weight due to the change in surface
gravity. If we take the dimensions of Saturn as revealed by the
telescope to represent its true size, we should find much less dif-
ference than one would expect, considering the tremendous size
of the planet. The combination of three factors — the much
greater distance of the surface from the center of the planet.

366 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wliicli is the center of the attraction we call gravity ; the much
greater " lightness " of the materials composing the planet; and
the great centrifugal or " throwing-off " force at the equator, due
to the rapid rotation, and which would, of course, counteract to
some extent the downward pull of gravity — results in making
but a slight increase, so that a man weighing one hundred and
fifty pounds on the earth would weigh only about six pounds
more at Saturn's equator. At the poles, however, the change is
more marked, since there is no centrifugal force, and the polar
flattening, due to the rapid rotation and consequent bulging at
the equator, brings one nearer the center of the planet. In this
case the increase would be about thirty- six pounds, and would
probably be found somewhat uncomfortable to us.

However, it is by no means certain that the dimensions seen
through the telescope are the right ones to consider in this man-
ner. If all we have ever seen of the planet is the outer side of its
cloud envelope, it may be that the true surface, provided there is
one at all, is far beneath the tops of these rolling cloud masses ;
and if there is no real surface yet — if the terrible struggle of
fire and water for the mastery is still in full sway — no one
can tell just what the size of the globe may be when the crust
finally forms and the real planetary life begins. This " dis-
tended mass of liquid fire " may have shrunk i^erceptibly by that
time.

This also brings up one other interesting query. The spectro-
scope has proved that the sun and stars are composed of materials
with which we are familiar in our laboratories, and Saturn as
well as the other planets must be composed of the same chemical
elements, though probably with wide variations in combination
and distribution. If, then, Saturn were to approach the earth in
the density of its composition when it reaches a corresponding
stage in its planetary growth, it must shrink to one eighth its
present volume, or one half its present diameter. On the other
hand, if its size remains anywhere near the present dimensions,
we shall almost be forced to the conclusion that this great globe
may eventually become one vast ocean — a dreary expanse of
water with perhaps only a relatively small solid center, thou-
sands of miles below the surface.

But whatever its future, it will always remain a most interest-
ing object of study, and no one can consider it thoroughly with-
out being inclined to agree with Richard Proctor, that here cer-
tainly must be a world " altogether more important in the scheme
of creation than the globe on which we live."

NORTH AND SOUTH. 367

NORTH AND SOUTH.

By SPENCER TROTTER.

PBOFESSOE OF BIOLOGT IN 8WAKTHM0RE CtiLLEGE, PENNSTLVAHIA,

A WRITER has somewliere remarked upon the different at-
mosphere that surrounds two well-known railway stations
in the city of Baltimore. The Union Station, in the upper and
newer section of the city, has about it all the life and bustle of a
Northern railroad center, while at the Camden Station, for so
many years the terminus of a Southern trunk line, there is an
air of easy-going uncertainty that breathes of the South. If this
difference in the influence of the Northern and the Southern life
is felt within the narrow limits of a metropolis, it is still more
apparent in the region that lies between the " City of Monu-
ments " and its more northern neighbor. As a matter of fact, the
frontier of the South extends some distance north of the region
with which we are accustomed to associate it, and the real line of
demarcation is a natural boundary fixed by certain well-marked
geographical features and indicated by the distribution of certain
animals and plants. When Mason and Dixon ran their cele-
brated " line," they did more than settle the dispute of a bound-
ary between colonial Commonwealths. Their arbitrary survey
embodied, in an approximate way, a more or less natural division
between the people of two great physical areas, each one of which
is broadly defined as a distinct geographical and political unit —
the North and the South. Each of these domains is characterized
by certain marked peculiarities, both in natural productions and
in the life of the people, which have their origin in climatic and
topographical features. Through nearly two and a half centuries
the physical environment has slowly worked its subtle influence
into the blood and tissues of the inhabitants in each contrasted
area, producing a certain cast of thought, speech, and action
which are highly characteristic and which present unmistakable
marks of difference.

The Northern and the Southern seaboard States of the Atlan-
tic slope are decidedly different in their physical aspects as a
result of topography. The numerous mountain ranges embraced
in the Appalachian highland have a long, southwesterly trend
from New England to Alabama. In the former section, north
and east of the lower Hudson Valley, the eastern slopes of the
mountainous highland reach to the sea, forming the bold and
rocky coast line of New England. South of the Hudson the
mountain ranges become more nearly parallel ; and the long
chains of the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, trending more and
more toward the southwest, stand some distance inland, leaving a

368 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gently sloping lowland between tliem and tlie ocean — the Atlan-
tic coast plain.

The coast plain is first found as a narrow strip in New Jersey.
A line drawn from about the locality of Long Branch diagonally
across the State to the Delaware River, at a point some distance
below Philadelphia, serves roughly to indicate its inland bound-
ary, marking it off from the upland terraces that form the foot
of the highland slope. The line of demarcation then runs more
and more inland, cutting off a small section of southeastern Penn-
sylvania, and, proceeding across the upper streams and estuaries
of Chesapeake Bay, passes along the edge of the mountainous
regions of Maryland and Virginia and the upland slopes of the
Piedmont lands in North Carolina.

The traveler who journeys southward through William Penn's
" low counties " finds himself on this line of demarcation be-
tween "the North" and "the South." Philadelphia, the last of
the " Northern cities," lies behind him, and when Baltimore is
reached the traveler begins to feel that he has passed into a dif-
ferent atmosphere. A certain unmistakable difference in voice and
speech and a softer manner are, more than anything else, the first
Southern characteristics to strike the stranger. The colored folk
become more plentiful, and pickaninnies at the doors of white-
washed cabins form a not unfamiliar foreground touch in the
landscape south of the city of Penn. From a car window one
sees little of the change that comes over the face of Nature in
passing from one region to another. But to him who fares by
the way, with a keen instinct for things afield, comes the knowl-
edge of just where the subtle change takes place. For it is by
the range of country that a bird inhabits or where some particu-
lar tree or wild flower grows that Nature maps out the boundary
lines of regions.

Naturalists have long recognized the fact that certain kinds
of animals and plants were characteristic of certain regions of
country, and that the boundaries of these regions coincided with
lines of temperature or isotherms. Every species of animal and
plant is definitely related to a certain fixed quantity of heat
which is required for the full development of its reproductive
activities. It is a habit fixed by purely physiological conditions.
Various species of animals and plants, for some occult causes
dating back to a remote period in their history, require a greater
amount of heat throughout the period of reproductive activity
than do other species, even though they be closely related. The
species of animal or plant that requires the greater sum total
of heat will find the northward limits of its range farther south
than the species that requires a less amount. The breeding
range of many birds, the dispersal of various species of mam-

NORTH AND SOUTH. 369

mals and reptiles, and the growth and development of many-
different kinds of forest trees and wild flowers are thus defi-
nitely outlined.

Topographical conditions exert an important influence in the
distribution of surface temperature. High mountain ranges,
running southward, carry the cooler or more temperate condi-
tions of the regions to the north along their crests far into the
warm zone which they penetrate. Likewise, lowland plains, ex-
tending northward, carry the conditions of greater warmth into
the cooler area of higher latitudes. It is not surprising, there-
fore, in passing from lowland to upland districts to find more or
less of a change in the character of the vegetation and in the
animal life. Certain species, quite abundant in the lowland
region, disappear on the higher ground, where other kinds, not
met with in the lowlands, make their appearance.

Through the researches of biologists * it has been found that
the continent of North America may be divided north and south
into several great temperature belts or heat zones, each one of
which is characterized by peculiarities in its inhabitants. The
boundaries of these heat zones are marked by isotherms which
include a certain definite range of temperature that characterizes
the contained area of country and which is definitely related to
the reproductive functions of the animals and plants inhabiting
it. It is an interesting fact to note that the isotherm represent-
ing the boundary between two of these heat zones coincides with
the line that marks off the inland border of the Atlantic coast
plain from the interior uplands of the highland region. If we
turn our attention to the distribution of life in North America,
we shall find some facts that do not quite agree with our already
conceived ideas as to the divisions of the continent. An irregular
line drawn from the coast of northern New England northwest-
ward across the Great Lakes to the head waters of the Saskatche-
wan serves roughly to mark off a vast northern area known as
the boreal zone. Its chief characteristic is the predominance of
coniferous forests which stretch away northward to the Barren
Grounds of arctic America. The inland border of the Atlantic
coast plain, after bending around the end of the Appalachian
highland region in northeastern Alabama, runs northward along
the western base of the mountains to Lake Ontario. Then, turn-
ing sharply westward, it pursues an irregular course across the
lower lake region and upper Mississippi Valley to the base of the
Rocky Mountains. This extremely irregular line marks off a

* Especially those of Dr. C. Hart Merriam. See National Geographic Magazine, vol. vi,
p. 229. The Geographic Distribution of Life in North America. From Smithsonian Report
for 1891, p. 365.

3 JO POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

vast territory to the south known as the austral zone. It is
evident that the southern boundary of the boreal and the north-
ern boundary of the austral zones do not coincide, but leave
more or less of an intermediate territory where the peculiar
types of the northern and the southern life mingle. This over-
lapping area is known as the transition zone.

Dr. Merriam has shown that these three great life zones —
boreal, transition, and austral — are also temperature zones, each
one of which is characterized by a definite sum total of heat
throughout the reproductive period. Thus the mean daily sum-
mer temperature of the boreal zone never aggregates above
ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit, while the daily temperatures of
the transition zone always aggregate above this. The austral
zone is marked by two temperature belts — the upper austral,
aggregating above eleven thousand five hundred, and the lower
austral, aggregating above eighteen thousand degrees Fahren-
heit. It is a significant fact that this subdivision of the austral
zone into two temperature belts conforms exactly with its sub-
division into two characteristic life regions. The boundary sepa-
rating these is indicated by a line that, starting at the mouth of
Chesapeake Bay, runs southwestward to the borders of Georgia
and Alabama, and, then turning northward, reaches the mouth of
the Ohio. This line of demarcation coincides with what geolo-
gists know as the " fall line," where the various rivers, in their
course from the highland region to the sea, break into a series of
rapids as they flow from the higher and older formations of the
Piedmont lands to the lower and more recent Tertiary deposits of
the alluvial plains.

Each of these great zones is characterized by the presence of
certain animals and plants that do not range beyond its limits.
A traveler journeying northward from the tropical shores of the
Gulf States, with their flocks of pelicans and flamingoes and
their characteristic palms and mangrove swamps, marks the
change from one region to another in the different species of
plants and animals which he encounters. The change in vegeta-
tion alone is striking. The persimmons, tulip trees, magnolias,
sweet gums, sassafras, papaws, and other forms that characterize
the landscape of the Southern States give place to the oaks,
hickories, and chestnuts, and, farther north, to the maple and
beechwoods and the birches and aspens of the highland and
mountain regions in the Middle States and New England. Be-
yond these deciduous woods of the transition zone the traveler
enters the vast domain of coniferous forests that mark the boreal
region of North America. Days of journeying through the
wilderness of evergreens bring the wayfarer at length out into
the "tree-line zone," scattered clumps of spruces and firs that

NORTH AND SOUTH. 371

straggle along tlie southern edge of the inhospitable Barren
Grounds of arctic America — a treeless, blizzard-swept waste of
mosses and saxifrages, the home of the wolf, the musk ox, and
the Barren Ground caribou, stretching away to the shores of the
Arctic Ocean.

Zoologists recognize several well-defined regions within these
life zones, each of which is characterized by some forms of rep-
tiles, birds, and mammals that do not range or breed beyond its
limits. These geographical life areas have received the name of
faunas. In the eastern United States four such regions are rec-
ognized and are known as the Canadian, Alleghanian, Carolin-
ian, and Louisianian faunas. The Canadian fauna belongs to
the boreal region. It is characterized by certain species of mam-
mals that do not range south of it, as the moose, caribou, and
wolverine, and by certain birds that breed within its borders.
Among these latter are the well-known snowbird, several species
of wood warblers, the winter wren, and the hermit thrush. This
fauna extends southward to Georgia along the hemlock-crowned
crests of the Appalachians, where the altitude produces condi-
tions similar to those prevailing in the coniferous forests of the
boreal zone to the north. Through the deep, cool shades of these
hemlock woods floats the song of the hermit thrush — a vesper
strain that falls on the sense like the tinkling of some far-off,
sweet-toned bell, rising and swelling in an amplitude of liquid
melody that fills the twilit aisles and dies away in still solitudes.
The pleasing song of the snowbird breaks upon the forest still-
ness, quite different from its sharp, clicking notes so familiar in
our winter walks about home. Along the brawling mountain
brooks and trout streams of the AUeghanies the water thrush,
with oddly jerking motions, bobs up and down on the rocks, and
the winter wren flits about the windfalls or steals away from its
nest, that is hidden under the gnarled roots of some old stump
that overhangs the bank. To an ornithologist these and other
features indicate a decided Canadian tinge in the summer bird
fauna of the higher ranges from the Catskills to Georgia.

The so-called Alleghanian fauna of the eastern transition zone
includes all the more familiar species of birds, reptiles, and mam-
mals inhabiting the New England and Middle States and the
lower ranges of the Appalachian highland to the south. Its chief
characteristic is a mingling of the life of the other two zones —
the boreal and the austral. Such decidedly northern forms as the
bay lynx or catamount, the red squirrel, porcupine, woodchuck,
chipmunk, jumping mouse, and certain other mammals find their
ranges restricted along the southern boundary of this fauna. A
number of familiar birds, as the brown thrasher, scarlet tanager,
bluebird, house wren, chewink, indigo bird, meadow lark, the

372 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

orioles, the common dove, and tlie bob-white or quail do not
breed beyond its northern boundary. The brook trout does not
range south of this fauna, and the rattlesnake, the copperhead,
the puff adder, the green snake, the milk snake, and the water
snake are not found beyond its northern border.

The Carolinian fauna is a distinctly southern type and char-
acterizes the upper austral zone, which includes that portion of
the coastal plain region that reaches from the foot of the Appa-
lachian highland to the " fall line " of the various Atlantic
streams. The northern limit of this fauna thus coincides with
the inland border of the coastal plain which we have already re-
ferred to and which may be looked upon as the true dividing line
hetiveen the North and South. The presence of such birds as the
cardinal, the yellow- breasted chat, the Carolina wren, the tufted
titmouse, the Acadian flycatcher, and the blue-winged, Kentucky,
and worm-eating warblers during the breeding season is a sure
sign of the Carolinian fauna. These species never go beyond its
northern limits. Moreover, such species as the brown thrasher,
the wood thrush, the house wren, the chewink, the dove, and the
field sparrow, which find their northern limit in the transition
zone, are far more abundant in the Carolinian region, and might
almost be regarded as representatives of its fauna.

It becomes a matter of profound interest, not only to the orni-
thologist and the student of geographical distribution, but to
every one who has in his heart a love of woods and fields, to lo-
cate this natural boundary by such fine shadings as the nesting
place of a bird or the habitat of a forest tree. Let us take that
portion of the line that cuts off a small corner of southeastern
Pennsylvania. To the ordinary observer this special tract of
country presents no marked difference from the landscape a hun-
dred miles or more to the north or south of it. Its detail of fea-
tures is quite similar and seasonal changes follow much the same
course that they do in northern Virginia and southern New Eng-
land. To the northwest, beyond the low, irregular ridge of the
" upland terrace " that marks the gneiss and schist rocks of an
ancient shore line, the country breaks into the rolling hills and
dales of the interior uplands. To the southeast lies the flat low-
land of the Delaware plain, and beyond this the pine barrens and
marshes of the Atlantic coast plain of New Jersey. One who has
an eye for the woods, however, will note a certain change in the
trees from southern New England and the highlands of the Mid-
dle States. Groves of tall tulip trees, with their broad, smooth
leaves of shining green and large, creamy blossoms streaked with
orange that open toward the end of May, form a characteristic
feature of the woodland scenery. The sassafras and the persim-
mon are scattered more or less abundantly through the woods

NORTH AND SOUTH. 373

and old pastures and along the borders of the streams. The sweet
gum or bilsted, with its gray- colored branches winged with corky
ridges, its spiny autumn fruit, and its five-starred leaves, fragrant
when crushed and turning crimson in the fall, is a characteristic
tree of this borderland. Curiously enough, too, it is confined to
the lowlands, growing quite abundantly in the moist woods along
the Delaware just south of Philadelphia, but unknown in the
northern suburbs save as a transplanted tree.

These woodland features give a decided southern tinge to the
region, and are especially significant when we come to know that
the tulip tree belongs with the magnolias, a typical southern
group, and that the persimmon is one of the ebony trees, a family
characteristic of the tropics. But it is the presence of a Caro-
linian element in the fauna, especially the bird fauna, that marks
this region as the beginning of the southern realm. At all sea-
sons of the year the clear whistle of the Virginia redbird — the
crested cardinal with mask of black — may be heard in the woods
of the lower Delaware Valley and along the tributary streams. I
have seen its flash of red against the whiteness of midwinter snow-
drifts. In the bramble thickets that fringe the streams and on
the wooded slopes above, the Carolina wren finds a home the year
round, and its clear, ringing song breaks loudly on the frosty
stillness of late winter mornings. I know of no more character-
istic sounds in these woods in the early springtime than this
wren's song and that of the tufted titmouse. It is a noteworthy
fact that these three Carolinian birds are resident throughout the
year along the northern limit of the fauna. When the spicebush
has blossomed, and " all the wood stands in a mist of green," the
first bird waves of the spring tide of migration appear. We wake
some morning to hear the chipping sparrow striking pebbles
together, and catch the plaintive song of the field sparrow in the
pastures and the budding copses along the edge of spring woods.
Only yesterday these sounds of the spring were but a memory.
The thrasher pours out a medley of sweet notes from the high
tree top, and later, in the warm days of early May, the reedy,
mellow lute of the wood thrush comes from the bosky glade.
During the migration the voices of birds sound unceasingly
through the woods from dawn to twilight. When the blackberry
is white with blossoms and the arrowwood is in bloom, most of
the migrants have passed on to their northern breeding grounds,
and those that stay with us have built their nests. Among these
latter are several Carolinian birds. In the depths of smilax and
brier-tangled thickets the skulking chat — the wildest bird of the
woodland — utters its weird, delusive cries. The low-pitched, in-
sectlike notes of the blue-winged warbler and the song of the
worm- eating warbler that sounds like a chipping sparrow in the

374 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

underwoods, where a cliipping sparrow is never found, remind
the ornithologist that he is on the edge of the Carolinian zone,
for these and the handsome Kentucky warbler find their breeding
limit on the northern confines of this fauna.

One of the most characteristic birds of this region, and yet
one of the most unfamiliar, is the curious barn owl, which makes
its home in certain low tracts of woodland south of Philadelphia.
Those of us who were brought up on the transatlantic story books
of a generation ago know this bird as the strange-faced " staring
owl" of our childish fancies. The barn owl of this country is
only a geographical race of this long familiar owl of the English
towers and belfries.

The turkey buzzard, though frequently observed as far north
as southern New England, is never found abundantly beyond the
Carolinian fauna. It nests among the rocks, often in communities
of considerable size, in southern Pennsylvania, and winters in
southern New Jersey. Almost any day from April to November
numbers of turkey buzzards may be seen in the neighborhood of
Philadelphia, soaring on motionless wing, often at a great height,
or gathering in large flocks over the woods to feast on the carcass
of some animal. Farther south, especially toward the coast, the
turkey buzzard becomes less abundant where the black vulture or
carrion crow, a closely related species that scarcely ever occurs
north of Charleston, takes its place.

A notable mammal of the southern realm is at home in the
woodland tracts of this region. The opossum is quite as abun-
dant along the northern edge of the Carolinian fauna in south-
eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey as it is farther south,
but is rarely found north of this locality on the Atlantic sea-
board. Its nocturnal habits preclude it from ordinary observa-
tion, and only in the autumn and early winter, when tempted into
some rabbit snare or caught in its predatory midnight rambles
and its fat body swings before the market door, are we aware
that this curious marsupial dwells in our midst. From the Dela-
ware southward a fat " 'possum " is the delight of the darkey, and
most toothsome is it indeed if caught in a persimmon tree after
feeding on the frost-ripened fruit. A less common mammal is the
little gray fox, which formerly was much more abundant on the
northern range of the Carolinian fauna than it is at the present
day. The gray fox must be the " Brer Fox " of Uncle Remus, for
the more familiar and larger red fox of the Northern States does
not range far beyond the limits of the transition zone. The red
fox is now the most abundant species in southeastern Pennsylva-
nia, and this may be due to a difference in habits. The gray fox
makes his lair under the roots of a tree or a shelving rock, while
the red fox tunnels out a burrowlike den underground. With

NORTH AND SOUTH. 375

the clearing of tte country this last is undoubtedly the most
favorable method of holding territorial rights.

The southern portion of New Jersey presents a unique area in
the Middle Atlantic States. In all its essential features — topo-
graphical, geological, and also in certain biological aspects— it is
related to the region farther south, being the northward extension
of the Atlantic coast plain. The most characteristic feature is
the " pine-barren " region that reaches from the foot of the higher
country to the maritime marshes and beaches that immediately
fringe the coast. The tourist journeying to the seaside resorts
south of Long Branch has the monotonous sandy waste of the
pine barrens for a landscape. Here and there the white, loamy
soil gives place to loose beds of yellow gravel. Sluggish streams
of water, stained dark brown from the leachings of the cedar
stumps, meander through swampy jungles. The landscape varies
somewhat with the character of the trees in different places. In
some sections the tall pitch pine forms vast stretches of forest,
while in others a low and scanty woodland growth of the " Jer-
sey " or scrub pine and several species of scrub oak prevails. The
cedar swamps that lie scattered in the course of the numerous
streams form a remarkable feature of this interesting region.
Dense jungles of white cedar growing out of the dark water and
surrounded by an impenetrable undergrowth of tangled vines
and brier thickets form a harbor for many wild animals and
birds. The tropical effect of these cedar swamps is heightened
by broad-leaved magnolias and the long festoons of graybeard
moss that fringe the branches. In these dark recesses, and
through the pine barrens generally, the botanist finds many
plants which belong to a more southern flora. Indeed, all the
way along the coast from New Jersey to Maine, in favorable situ-
ations, representatives of distinctively southern forms may be
found which in these higher latitudes do not occur inland. The
mockingbird, which is highly characteristic of the Louisianian
fauna, has been met with as a straggler during the breeding
season in the New Jersey pine barrens ; and in the cedar swamps
near Cape May the hooded warbler, a typical Carolinian species,
breeds regularly. In times long past the rare and curious Caro-
lina parroquet, now known only from the Gulf region, was an
occasional visitor as far north as the lower Delaware and its
tributaries.

River valleys are topographical features of great importance
in determining the distribution of living beings. The conditions
of greater humidity and higher average temperature that prevail
in the bottom lands along a river's course, as compared with the
higher ground of the upland districts which forms its watershed,
is strikingly illustrated in the case of Carolinian birds. Certain

376 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

species are found regularly during the breeding season in the
valleys of the Susquehanna, Delaware, Hudson, and even the
Connecticut Rivers, extending inland for a greater or less distance,
but are unknown in the surrounding higher country. Thus,
Carolina wrens, cardinals, turkey buzzards, and other no less
characteristic Carolinian birds are abundant in the bottom lands
along the Susquehanna in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but
are scarcely ever found on the uplands above the wooded slopes
of the river, though the conditions of food and shelter seem
equally favorable.*

Much of the outside world enters a man's soul and becomes
the ground of his joy through life. We all owe something to the
region in which we dwell, unconsciously perhaps, but still some-
thing that is assimilated by the tissues of the inner life, and that
goes to the making of what we really are. Those of us who dwell
on the borderland of Dixie owe some fragmentary moments of
inspiration, even of happiness, to the genial influence of its prox-
imity. We think of ourselves as belonging with the North, but
has not the South spun a few threads into the web of our lives ?
The cardinal whistles the same sweet tune as he does in " Old
Virginia " ; the opossum and the persimmon savor of the South ;
even the turkey buzzard suggests the warmer clime. And then
spring is always two weeks earlier just down the Delaware, and
this is something ; even if it is too far off to start the " spring
feeling," it hints of fresh early strawberries and the first run of
the shad.

Prof. J. J. Thomson, addressing the Section of Mathematics and Phys-
ical Science in the British Association, was able to testify to a great improve-
ment which had taken place in the teaching of science in the public and
secondary schools during the past ten years. The standard in physics
attained by the pupils was increasing from year to year. There might,
however, be danger of a temptation to make the pupils cover too much
ground. "Although you may increase the rate at which information is
acquired, you can not increase in anything like the same proportion the
rate at which the subject is assimilated, so as to become a means of strength-
ening the mind and a permanent mental endowment when the facts have
been long forgotten," In the university training of intending physicists
the preservation of youthful enthusiasm was, in the speaker's opinion, one
of the most important points for consideration; and this could best be
effected "by allowing the student, even before he is supposed to be ac-
quainted with the whole of physics, to begin some original research of a
simple kind under the guidance of a teacher who will encourage him and
assist in the removal of difficulties. If the student once tastes the delights
of the successful completion of the investigation he is not likely to go back."

* Witmer Stone. The Birds of Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, p. 10.

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL. 377

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL.

By Pbof. CHARLES ERNEST PELLEW.
II.

IT is a curious fact that, althougli intoxicating beverages have
been known and used from time immemorial, alcohol itself
was not discovered until after the fall of the Roman Empire, and,
when once discovered, it was not used for intoxicating purposes
for many hundred years. Pliny, in his Natural History, written
about A. D. 50, mentions that oil of turpentine could be extracted
from the crude pitch by boiling the latter in open vessels and
catching the vapors on fleeces, from which the condensed oil could
be pressed. This marks the first beginnings of the art of distilla-
tion, which progressed but slowly, for, two hundred years later,
we read that sailors were accustomed to get potable water from
sea water by similar crude methods.

About this time there existed a flourishing school of alchemists
at Alexandria, and it is probable that some of them had, or soon
would have, developed the art further. But a. d. 287 the Em-
peror Diocletian destroyed their books and prohibited their
studies, for fear lest by discovering the philosopher's stone, and
hence learning to change base
metals into gold, they might
overturn the Roman rule. A
more serious disaster befell
the later Alexandrian School
of Philosophy in the destruc-
tion of the famous Alexan-
drian Library by the Moham-
medan general AmrU, a. D. 984, q^^^ g^^^LS used by Alexandrians.

at the orders of the Caliph

Abu Bekr. "If the books agree with the Koran, they are not
needed ; if opposed, they are injurious." This was the argument
which helped to put back civilization some centuries, and gave
Literature, as well as science and medicine, a blow from which
she has not yet recovered. It is curious to speculate what would
be our present condition if only two or three of our recent ad-
vances— the discovery of galvanic electricity, for instance, or the
germ theory of disease — had been made but one hundred years
earlier.

As it was, the study of science had to be begun over again
almost from the very foundation by the Arabians under a more
enlightened rule. The famous Geber about the close of the eighth
century mentions the term distillation, but it is doubtful whether

VOL. LI. 29

378

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

he understood mucli raore by it tlian tlie separation by beat of two
metals of different melting points. Albucasis, a famous alchemist
of the eleventh century, speaks of the process in less doubt-
ful terms, and late in
the thirteenth century
the art of distillation
and the preparation,
properties, and uses of
alcohol were clearly
described by two Euro-
pean alchemists, Ray-
mond Lully and Ar-
mand de Villeneuve.

In view of the fierce
and indeed not unde-
served abuse that has

Old Stills, from Early Edition of Geber.

been levied against distilled liquors, it is interesting to note that
for some hundreds of years after its discovery alcohol was dis-
tinctly the most valuable product of chemistry. The old alche-
mists went wild over it. They wondered at its power of dissolv-
ing oils and resins and balsams, calling it oleum vini and bal-
samus universalis, and making with it varnishes and perfumes
and cosmetics, by the sale of which they replenished their not
overfilled purses. They admired the clear, colorless, smokeless
flame with which it burned, and named it sulphur cceleste,
in contradistinction to the ordinary or earthly sulphur,
which burns by no means so pleasantly. They used it
as a preservative, they used it for the preparation
of their chemicals, and above all they
used it as a medicine.

For during many hundred
years this aqua vitcB, water of
life as it was almost universally
called, was the most valuable
medicine in their large but ineffi-
cient pharmacopoeia. Each al-
chemist, each physician, prepared
his own elixirs, his own cordials,
and claimed miraculous results
for his own particular nostrums :
but the basis of them all was the ^"^^ ""^ ^^'^^^^ ^"^' Countrie Farme.
same — namely, alcohol, sweetened with sugar, and flavored by dis-
tillation or infusion with herbs and spices. Some of these " cor-
dials" or heart remedies exist at the present day in the form of
the various liqueurs. The Chartreuse and Benedictine are simply
the same old medicines, prepared after practically the same old

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL.

119

formulae, that the Carthusian and Benedictine monks used to dis-
till hundreds of years ago to give to the sick and feeble at their
convent doors, or sell to the wealthy invalid who sought their
treatment.

But the curious part of it is not that it should have been used
as a medicine, but that it should have been used as a medicine
exclusively. There seems to have been little or no idea of its
intoxicating power. In Shakespeare, for instance, there is abun-
dant mention of drinking and drunkenness. But Cassio, and fat
Sir John, and the rest got tipsy on
sack, and canary, and sherry, or, if
of lower rank, on ale and beer, but
never on spirits. Indeed, the only
mention of distilled liquors in all
his plays is in Romeo and Juliet,
where the old nurse sighs, " Oh, for
some strong waters from Venice ! "
to restore her energies. As an ex-
ample of how long this state of
a,ffairs continued I may mention a
well-known book. The Countrie
Farme, published in England in
1616. This large and important
work discusses in great detail all
the varied occupations of a large
country place. It describes care-
fully the wine industry, the culture
of the vines and grapes, the prepa-
ration and the varieties of wine, and, while highly praising good
pure wine as a beverage, the author is extremely careful to de-
scribe fully and with much emphasis the many evil effects which
come from intoxication, and from constant as well as from over-
much winebibbing.

A. few chapters further on the author describes the art of dis-
tillation. He explains that a still room was a necessary adjunct
to a well-equipped country house, and shows curious illustrations
of stills, some of them with sixty or eighty retorts on one oven.
He mentions the great variety of vegetable and animal substances
from which extracts could be and should be distilled, but spends
most of his time upon the distillate from wine. " For," says he,
" the virtues of aqua vitcB are infinite. It keepeth off fits of apo-
plexie — it driveth away venime. ... In wet and malarial climates
every one should take a teaspoonful, with sugar, before breakfast,
to keepe off the ague," and so on. Not one word about intoxica-
tion— purely as a medicine.

It is not to be supposed from this, however, that the English

Household Still, Countkie Farme.

38o

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Tartars distilling Koumyss.

did not have plenty of ways of getting tipsy. They had long
been known as ranking next to the Germans and the Dutch for

their drinking powers.
The Saxons and the
Danes had both intro-
y^ duced into England the
intemperate habits of
the Northmen, and beer
and cider, and mead or
metheglin made from
honey, were quite as effi-
cacious in their way as
stronger beverages. The
Normans were a more
refined and far more
temperate race, and it is
for this reason, in large
part, that they con-
quered England so readily. The night before the battle of Hast-
ings, so the old chroniclers tell us, was spent by the Saxons in
drinking heavily and uproariously around their camp fires. " Next
morning, still drunk, they recklessly advance against the enemy,"
so we read in the old monkish Latin, while the Normans, passing
a quiet, peaceful
night, were cool
and well prepared
for the decisive
struggle.

Their habits,
however, soon de-
teriorated, and
they drank almost
as heavily as their
predecessors. In
the reign of Henry
I the nation suf-
fered a grievous
loss, from overin-
dulgence in liq-
uor, in the sad

drowning of his eldest son, just married to a princess of France.
The wedding party were returning to England on a galley, amid
the rejoicing of both nations, and wine flowed freely on board,
until even the seamen became intoxicated. As they were nearing
the shore, the galley ran upon a sunken rock, and out of the
whole company but one person escaped. The young prince, it was

Ancient Still for Extraction of Essential Oils and
Perfumes.

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL.

381

said, with his bride and some attendants had pushed off from the
ship in a boat, but he insisted on returning to try to save his
sister, when the boat was upset, and all perished together.

All during the middle ages, in the chronicles of Froissart,
Holinshed, and others, we find records of the fact that our Eng-

Geoegb IV AS Pbince Regent. (Gillray.)

lish ancestors, then as now, " liked a glass of good beer," and of
wine too. Sir John Fortescue naively says, " They drink no
water, except when they abstain from drinks, by way of penance
and from principles of devotion." In 1498 the Spanish ambassa-
dor at the English court wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella to ask
that Princess Catharine of Aragon, betrothed to Prince Henry,
afterward Henry VIII, should learn to drink wine. This was a

382 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

good-natured tip from the English king and queen, who wished
their future daughter-in-law to know that " water in England is
not drinkable, and, even if it were, the climate would not allow the
drinking of it." Heavy drinking was not by any means confined
to the laity, for there are constant complaints of the habits of the
clergy, and especially of the religious orders. The drunkenness of
both monks and nuns was one of the main excuses for closing the
monasteries by King Henry VIII. Good Queen Bess did not
frown on the practice either, for, in the records of her visit to
Kenil worth, 1575, we" read that the Earl of Leicester broached
three hundred and sixty-five hogsheads of beer, besides any
amount of wine.

Toward the end of her reign drinking increased, thanks to the
habits acquired by the volunteers in the Low Countries; and
under her successor, the stupid and pedantic Scotchman, James I,
the court itself set an ugly example to the people of England.
We read that, at a great feast given by the minister Cecil to the
king and to a visiting monarch. Christian IV of Denmark, James
was carried to the bed intoxicated, and King Christian, less fortu-
nate, rolled around very much under the influence of liquor and
grossly insulted some of the ladies present. The latter, in their
turn, before the evening was through, became quite as tipsy as
the men, and, according to the testimony of an eye-witness, be-
haved most disgracefully. The nation sobered somewhat during
the next reign and under the Commonwealth, only to return again
to loose habits after the Restoration. And with the accession of
the Dutch King, William, in 1G88, the drinking assumed a more
dangerous stage than ever.

For by this time people had at last learned that alcohol was
intoxicating, and had also learned how to make it cheaply out of
grain. Up to the seventeenth century all the aqua viice, was
made from wine, and was therefore expensive. But now they
were able to make it from beer; and not only in France, at
Nantes and elsewhere, but in Switzerland, and especially in
Holland, at Schiedam and other places, great distilleries were
pouring out vast quantities of cheap and fiery spirits. Early in
William and Mary's reign encouragement was given to similar
distilleries in England, on the ground of assisting agriculture,
and by the beginning of the eighteenth century all England was
flooded with native as well as imported gin at absurdly low
prices.

The results were most disastrous. London streets abounded
with ginshops, and one could actually find placards on them
reading, " Drunk for a penny ; dead drunk for twopence ; clean
straw for nothing." The effects on the common people were so
marked that all thoughtful persons were alarmed by it. In the

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL. 383

wet, temperate climate of England people might drink heavily of
beer or wine, and still in fair measure retain their health and
their capacity for work ; but, under the reign of gin, vice and
misery and disease increased so fearfully that Parliament finally
passed a law practically prohibiting its use.

This famous " Gin Law," passed in 1736, is interesting as the
earliest severe blow at liquor dealing among civilized nations.
It levied a tax of twenty shillings a gallon on spirits, and a
license of fifty pounds for any one selling or dealing in it. And,
being in advance of public opinion, it failed much as other, more
stringent, prohibition laws have failed in our own day. For the
cry was at once raised that it taxed the poor man's gin, and let
the rich man's wine go free. Every wit, every caricaturist, had
his fling at it. Ballads were hawked round, telling of the ap-
proaching death of Mother Gin. The liquor shops were hung
with black, and celebrated uproariously Madame Geneva's lying
in state, her funeral, her wake, and so on. The night before the
law went into effect, so the contemporary journals say, there was
a universal revel all over the country. Every one drank his fill,
and carried home as much gin, besides, as he could pay for.

To evade the law, apothecaries sold it in vials and small
packages, sometimes colored and disguised, generally under false
labels, such as " Colic Water," " Make Shift," " Ladies' Delight."
There were printed directions on some of these packages — e. g.,
" Take two or three spoonfuls three or four times a day, or as
often as the fit takes you." Informers were very prominent and
exceedingly offensive, inventing snares to catch lawbreakers for
the sake of the heavy rewards, and spying and sneaking around
in a way particularly distasteful to the English mind. In conse-
quence, they suffered in their turn. The mere cry " Liquor spy ! "
was enough to raise a mob in the London streets, and the in-
former was lucky if he escaped with a sound thrashing and a
ducking in the Thames or the nearest horse pond. Indeed, such
an outcry was made about the matter that the ministry became
very unpopular, and the law was not enforced after two or three
years, and was largely modified in 1743, after seven years' trial.

While the lower classes in England were thus being demoral-
ized by gin, the upper classes were suffering almost as much from
the introduction of the strong, sweet, fiery, heavily brandied
wines of Portugal, thanks, in part at least, to some favoring
clauses in the Methuen treaty, early in the eighteenth century.
It is curious to read in the contemporary journals and diaries
and in the histories and descriptions of the last century — as, for
instance, in Trevelyan's Life of Fox — how terribly demoralized
was the state of English society during the period of England's
greatest colonial and material expansion. The country was gov-

384

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

erned by a small, wealthy, land-owning aristocracy, wlio seemed
to take tlie most unbridled corruption in public, and tbe most
unrestrained dissipation in private life as a matter of course. It
was from the long years of peace under the Walpoles, during
the first half of the century, when the energy and industry of
the middle classes were able to exert themselves, and from the
protection of her insular position, that England obtained strength
to master her empire, not from any superiority in her governing
classes.

For, all during the last century, drunkenness was the rule, not
the exception, in all classes of society. In the lower classes it
was actually encouraged. Did the troops win a victory, did a
prince come of age, " Go home. Jack," would say the master to
his servant, " build a big bonfire, and tell the butler to make ye
all drunk." It was quite a compliment to call an underling an
" honest, drunken fellow." And as for the gentlefolk — well, we

can hardly conceive
of the state of aif airs.
It was part of a gen-
tleman's education to
learn to carry his
port. One, two, three
quarts a night was a
proper and reason-
able supply. After
dinner the ladies re-
tired into another
room — a practice still
observed — so that the
men should have
no embarrassing re-
straints, and it was a
matter of course for them to drink one another under the table
as fast as was convenient. In the army and navy, in the learned
professions, among the gentry and nobility, and even in the royal
family, heavy drinking was the rule and not the exception until
well on in the present century.

And they suffered from it. Their lives were shortened, their
usefulness impaired, their estates squandered, and then the gout !
Nowadaj^s, with the example of Palmerston and Bismarck, Glad-
stone and Sherman before our eyes, it is hard to think of a time
when statesmen were incapacitated at thirty-five or forty. But
it was so. A gentleman who reached middle age without being
crippled was either unusually lucky or was a milksop. Lord
Chatham and many, nay most, of his contemporaries were hor-
ribly tortured by it. At critical periods in the nation's history a

The Gout. (Gillray.)

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL.

385

severe onset of gout, or the illness leading np to it, would cause
the retirement of the most prominent statesmen. Many of them
died young. Few indeed of them reached a healthy and vigorous
old age. For heavy drinking was not confined to the idlers and

?^^^i"^'nii

John Bull petitioning Pitt and Dundas to Lkjiiten the Liquor Tax. (Gillruy.)

spendthrifts, the courtiers and country gentlemen ; it was a cus-
tom with the ablest and most brilliant men in England. Pitt and
Fox, the two " Great Commoners," were noted topers. The old
couplet is still remembered that refers to a scene in the House of

386 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Commons when Pitt and his friend Dundas came staggering in,
and Pitt says : " I can not see the Speaker, Dick ; can you ? "
" Not see the Speaker ? Hang it, I see two" And all through the
regency and well on through the next reign until the accession of
the young Queen, there prevailed what to us would seem unpar-
donable license.

But it must not be inferred from this that drinking was much
TYiore prevalent in England than in other parts of the world at
the same periods. Indeed, the records of Germany and Holland
show quite as startling pictures. And in our own country we
have not much to boast of.

The North American Indians were, on the whole, unaccus-
tomed to alcoholic beverages before the arrival of the white man.
Tobacco they had, and used it freely. In some stray localities we
read of drinks made from maize ; and from the reports of Cap-
tains Amadas and Barlow to Sir Walter Raleigh about the expe-
dition to Virginia in 1584, we find that the Indians along the
coast of Chesapeake Bay and the Carolinas had learned the art
of making wine from grapes. But when the Puritans landed in
Massachusetts in 1620 they found, to their disgust, that beer and
wine were both lacking, and we find Governor Bradford com-
plaining bitterly of the hardship of drinking water.

Nor was water a more favored beverage among the settlers
of Massachusetts Bay eight or ten years later. The first list of
necessities sent back to the home company, in 1629, is headed, as
our New England friends have so frequently reminded us, by an
appeal for " ministers," and for a " patent under scale." We do
not hear so often of their request, only a line or two further
down, for " vyne planters." They ask for wheat, rye, barley, and
other grains, and also for " hop rootes."

The records are still kept of the equipment of the vessel sent
out in answer to this appeal. It was provisioned for one hundred
passengers and thirty-five sailors for three months, each sailor
counting as much as two passengers. They provided for the
voyage " forty-five tuns beere, at four and six shillings per tun ;
two caskes Mallega and Canarie at sixteen shillings ; twenty gal-
lons aqua vitse," and — for drinking, cooking, and all, only six
tuns of water !

Higginson, the well-known first minister, went out in 1628.
The next year he wrote home a glowing account of the country.
Among other things, the air was so fine that his health was greatly
benefited. "And whereas my stomache could only digest and
did require such drinke as was both strong and stale, now I can
and doe oftentimes drinke New England water verie well."

This really remarkable fact we find explained a few years
after by Wood, in his New England's Prospect. He says that the

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL. 387

country is well watered, and with different water from that of
England ; " not so sharpe, of a fatty substance, and of a more
jetty colour. It is thought that there can be no better water in
the world ; yet dare I not pref erre it to good Beere as some have
done. Those that drinke it be as healthful, fresh, and lustie as
they that drinke beere."

By 1631 they had passed a law for putting drunkards in the
stocks ; other laws followed concerning adulterations, sale to sav-
ages, etc. In 1634 the price of an "ale quart of beere" was set at
a penny, and brew houses were soon in every village, in some
places attached to every farm. The manufacture of other drinks
followed rapidly, and in Judge Sewall's diary, some forty or fifty
years later, we find mention of ale, beer, mead, metheglin, cider,
wine, sillabub, claret, sack, canary, punch, sack posset, and black
cherry brandy. The commonest of all these was " cyder," which
was produced in enormous quantities and drunk very freely.
Sack was passing out of date, excepting in posset, a delectable
mixture of wine, ale, eggs, cream, and spices, boiled together.
Metheglin and mead were brewed from one part of honey and
two or two and a half parts of water and spices, fermented with
yeast, and very heady liquors they were. The least excess, as
they used to say, would bring back the humming of the bees in
the ears. Governor Bradford early issued one of his orders
against some " Merrymount scamps " on board the bark Friend-
ship, who took two barrels of metheglin from Boston to Plym-
outh, and " dranke up, under the name leakage, all but six gal-
lons."

But none of these, nor the " beveridge " and " swizzle " made
from molasses and water, the perry, peachy, spruce and birch
beer, and the rest, did half as much execution as rum. This was
introduced from Barbadoes about 1650, and from then on became
practically the national drink of the country. A great trade was
set up with the West Indies, the ships exporting corn and pork
and lumber for the plantations, and returning with cargoes of
raw sugar and molasses, which last was almost valueless where it
was made, but, diluted and fermented, furnished a ready source
of alcohol.

Every little Now England town and village had its distillery
— the seaport towns had scores of them — and the rum bullion,
rumbooze, or, as it was universally known, killdivil, was sold
freely for two shillings a gallon, and was shipped largely to the
African coast in exchange for slaves. It was to this profitable
trade that Newport and other New England coast towns owed
their prosperity, and the interference with this trade by the
English Commerce Acts was one of the main causes of the
Revolution.

388 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

This rum was the basis not only of "flip," when mixed with
beer, molasses, dried pumpkin, and sometimes cream and eggs,
and stirred, before serving, with a red-hot poker, but also of
punch. This latter, named after an East Indian word meaning
five, was concocted with sugar, spices, lemon juice, and water, and
was imbibed freely. As early as 1686 we find travelers telling of
noble bowls of punch, which were passed from hand to hand before
dinner. Double and " thribble " bowls there were also, holding
two or three quarts each, and the amounts that our ancestors dis-
posed of in those days are staggering.

For liquor was not only used at dinner and supper parties ; it
was taken morning, noon, and night, as a matter of course. The
laborer would not work at the harvest, the builders at their
trades, without a liberal allowance of rum. It did not matter,
either, what class of work they were doing. When the little town
of Medfield, early in the last century, " raised " the new meeting
house, there were required " four barrels beer, twenty-four gallons
West Indian rum, thirty gallons New England rum, thirty-five
pounds loaf sugar, twenty-five pounds brown sugar, and four
hundred and sixty-five lemons." A house could not be built
without liquor being distributed at every stage of the operation,
and this practice was not obsolete till well on in this century.

The clergy, while keeping a strict eye upon the excesses of
their parishioners, did not disdain a drop themselves, and their
conventions rivaled the dinners of the non-elect. In 1792 Gov-
ernor Hancock gave a dinner to the Fusileers at the Merchants'
Club in Boston, and for eighty diners there were served one
hundred and thirty- six bowls of punch, twenty-one bottles of
sherry, and lots of cider and brandy. But a similar bill is pre-
served for the refreshments at the ordination of a clergyman at
Beverly, Mass., in 1785, and we notice :

30 Bowles Punch before they went to meeting £3 Os. Od.

80 people eating in morning, at 16c? 6 0 0

10 bottles of wine before they went to meeting 1 10 0

68 dinners at 30d 10 4 0

44 bowles punch while at dinner 4 8 0

18 bottles wine 2 L4 0

8 bowles brandy 1 2 0'

Cherry Eum 1 10 0

and 6 people drank tea 0 0 9

It would be but useless repetition to discuss the drinking
habits of New York and other colonies. It is enough to say that
well on into the present century drunkenness was extremely com-
mon, and, when people could afford it, a most pardonable and
venial offense. It is the pride of our civilization in the present
century that, during the last fifty or seventy-five years, the whole

THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL. 389

tone of society has changed, and intemperance, while still unfor-
tunately prevalent, is nothing like as common as it used to be.

Indeed, it is hardly possible for us to imagine the state of
affairs in our grandfathers' times. A hundred years ago a gentle-
man who went out to dinner, and was not brought home in the
bottom of a cab or in a wheelbarrow, was a very poor-spirited fellow
indeed. So with the poorer classes. Just a century ago George
Washington was engaging a gardener, and in his contract it was
expressly stipulated that he should have " four dollars at Christ-
mas, with which he may be drunk for four days and four nights ;
two dollars at Easter to effect the same purpose ; two dollars at
Whitsuntide, to be drunk for two days ; a dram in the morning,
and a drink of grog at dinner at noon." Nor was the sum mentioned
a niggardly one, when George Washington was distilling his own
whisky, and selling it, probably, for thirty or forty cents a gallon.

And now, just think of the change. We can hardly imagine a
gentleman perceptibly exhilarated with wine at a dinner table.
He certainly would never get a second opportunity, if the fact
were known. And as for the working classes — a clerk, an en-
gineer, a coachman, or even a gardener whose breath smelt of
whisky, or who was seen often dropping into a saloon, would run
a good chance of losing his position.

For the world has at last found out what intoxication means.
Alcohol in large doses is a poison, but it is a poison which in-
jures the family and neighbors and friends of the inebriate more
than the victim himself. It, to some extent at least, causes him
discomfort, but think of the discomfort it causes his family ! It
shortens his life, to be sure, but think of the other lives that it
shortens! And while some attack the problem with fierce and
violent denunciations, and others by quieter and not the less
effective arguments and appeals, the world certainly owes a debt
of gratitude to those who are doing so much now, and who have
done so much already, to relieve mankind from the burden of ine-
briety.

The electric telegraph cable laid five years ago between the Senegal
coast of West Africa and Pernambuco, Brazil, has broken twice about one
hundred and fifty miles from the African coast. On examining it for re-
pairs, the cable was found surrounded by great quantities of vegetable
growth, with refuse and rubbish of various kinds; while the color of the
sea changed to a dirty brownish green, indicative of the presence of river
water; yet the nearest stream was a great distance away, flowing at its
point of discharge in a direction different from that of this spot. It was
supposed to be a sudden outburst of a submarine gully or stream. A
number of such streams or fresh-water submarine wells are known, but
how gourds, pieces of orange peel, and scraps of carpets, such as were
found around the cable, got into them, remains a mystery.

390 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE MOB MIND.

By Prof. EDWARD A. ROSS.

IN viewing social life among animals one is struck by the con-
tagion of feeling in a herd or flock. Whatever the feeling
called up, whether terror, hostility to a stranger, rage at heredi-
tary enemies, sympathy for a stricken fellow, or the impulse to
migrate, all the members of the group feel it, and feel it almost at
once. If anything unusual occurs, a wave of excitement passes
over the herd, followed by instant and unanimous response. Of
inquiry or doubt or reflection there is no sign.

This prompt obedience to suggestions from one's fellows is ac-
counted for the moment we recall the harsh conditions of animal
existence. It is the gregarious animals that are least formidable
by nature and hence most dependent on mutual aid. Instant
fight or flight is the condition of their existence, and failure to co-
operate promptly means death. By oft-repeated sifting out of
the stupid, the heedless, or the willful, Nature builds up a mar-
velous suggestibility and a most alert response to sign. Not oth-
erwise can we explain why a feeling should run like wildfire
through a band of elephants or terror should strike through a
herd of deer as a shock passes through a solid body.

The human analogue to the agitated herd is the mob. Mob
comes from " mobile," and refers to mental state. A crowd, even
an excited crowd, is not a mob ; nor is an excited crowd bent on
violence a mob. Great mental instability marks the true mob, and
this characterizes only the crowd that is under the influence of
suggestion. A lynching party may be excited, disorderly, and law-
less, yet not be a true mob. The crowd that lynched thirteen Ital-
ians in New Orleans a few years ago, far from showing the waver-
ing indecision of the genuine mob, seemed to know exactly what
it wanted and just how to go about it. In this respect it stood in
high contrast to the Cincinnati mob of 1886. What distinguished
the New Orleans crowd was the absence of epidemic. Its perfect
unanimity came not from an overmasteringsuggestion, but from
the coming together of all who had been aifected with the same
grim rage at the news of Chief Hennessey's assassination.

Again, we must refuse the name " mob " to the disorderly
masses that in times of tumult issue from the criminal quarters
of great cities. In such cases there is an unchaining in each man
of the evil and secret lusts of his heart on observing that oppor-
tunity is favorable and that others are like-minded. Safe from
punishment or shame, the ragamuflin or hoodlum burns, loots, and
riots in obedience not to a common impulse but to his natural
inclination. It is this peculiar effect of numbers in bringing on

THE MOB MIND. 391

the criminal mood that chiefly marks off the human crowd from
the animal crowd.

More than any other animal, man is restrained by a morality
founded not on impulse but on discipline. Animal morality is
mainly the prompting of fellow-feeling. But by the long pressure
of an artificial environment man is brought to submit himself to
the constant sway of a moral code often quite alien to his im-
pulses. Remove the fear of consequences by the anonymity of
the crowd, take away the sense of personal responsibility by the
participation of numbers, and people will step by step descend into
depths of evil-doing and violence that measure how far their pre-
vailing inclinations lie below the moral standard which social
pressure has forced upon them. Animals, because they have
been less moralized than men by education, rarely show any such
collective demoralization.

A 07ie-mi7idedness, therefore, the result not of reasoning or dis-
cussion or coming together of the like-minded, but of imitation,
is the mark of the true mob. We think of the mob as excited
simply because it is under stress of excitement that men become
highly imitative. Fickleness and instability characterize it sim-
ply because mood changes promptly with every change in the
nature of the suggestion. It is irrational because dominated not
by the remembered teachings of experience but by the fleeting
impressions of the moment. It is cowardly because its members,
actuated not by stern purpose or set resolve but by mere sugges-
tion, scatter in craven flight the moment the charm is broken. It
is transitory because the orgy of excitement leads to fatigue and
lessened power of response to stimuli from without. In a few
hours the hypersesthesia wears away, physical wants and sensa-
tions turn the attention inward, the psychic bond is broken, and
the crowd disperses and goes home. A mob, then, defined for pur-
poses of social psychology, is a croivd of people showing a una-
nimity due to mental contagion. Other traits of the mob of which
much is made — such as ferocity, shamelessness, criminality, cour-
age, intolerance, etc. — need not flow from suggestion at all. More
often, as I have pointed out, they are the effect of the sense of
numbers.

Analyzing the mob as thus defined, we find at the base of it
that mental quality termed suggestibility which comes to light in
gregarious animals, children, certain lunatics, hysterical patients,
and hypnotized subjects. It dominates childhood, but fades as
character sets and the will hardens. In adult life it is so over-
borne by habit and reason as to be dominant only under abnormal
conditions such as disease, fascination, or excitement.

Why, now, should this quality be heightened when one is in the
midst of a crowd ?

392 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The inhibitive power which measures our ability to go our
own way undisturbed grows with the variety and number of sug-
gestions that reach us. This may be because conflicting sugges-
tions block each other off. The power of independent choice
seems to develop best when the clash of suggestions reduces to a
minimum the ascendency of the outer world over the individual.
This is why age, travel, and contact with affairs build up charac-
ter. But when numerous identical suggestions beset one, one's
power of resistance is gradually undermined. As many taps of
a hammer fracture the bowlder, so the onset of multitudinous sug-
gestion breaks the strongest will. Men who can readily throw
off the thousand suggestions of everyday life will be quite swept
away by the reiteration of a single idea from all sides. As a
mighty organ compels even benches and windows to vibrate in
unison with it, so the crowd dominated by a single mood emits a
volume of suggestion that gives an emotional pitch and tone to
every individual in it.

Besides the volume of suggestion possible in a crowd, there is
usually a condition of excitement or expectancy. Frequently, too,
there is a pressure on the body which prevents voluntary move-
ment while conveying promptly to each all those electrifying
swayings and tremors that express the emotions of the mass. The
mere physical contact in the excited crowd, therefore, provides
certain conditions of suggestibility.

A cross-section of the mob sometimes shows a concentric struc-
ture. There is in the center a leader from whom suggestions pro-
ceed. These, caught up by those near by and most dominated by
his personality, are transmitted to the next circle with an added
force. Thus the suggestion passes outward from zone to zone of
the crowd, at each stage gathering volume and hence power to
master the rest. That, therefore, which started at the center as
fascination becomes sheer mental intimidation at the rim. This
symmetrical type of mob has led some to look in every case for
the leader who controls the mass by his personality or prestige.
But the quest for a nucleus, while it makes the study of mobs
more mysterious and sensational, certainly does not make it more
scientific. Rarely does the primitive impulse proceed from one
man. Usually the first orientation of minds is brought about by
some object, spectacle, or event. This original phase, the moment
it is observed by the members of the crowd, gives rise to three
results : (1) By mere contagion the feeling extends to others till
there is complete unanimity ; (2) each feels more intensely the mo-
ment he perceives that the rest share his feeling ; (3) the per-
ceive(J unison calls forth a sympathy that makes the next agree-
ment easier, and so paves the way for the mental unity of the
crowd.

THE MOB MIND. 393

The mob is thus a formation that takes time. In an audience
falling under the spell of an actor or an orator, a congregation
developing the revival spirit, a crowd becoming riotous, or an
army under the influence of panic, we can witness the stages by
which the mob mood is reached. With the growing fascination
of the mass for the individual, his consciousness contracts to the
pin point of the immediate moment, and the volume of sugges-
tion needed to start an impulse on its conquering career becomes
less and less. In the end, perhaps, any commanding person can
assume the direction of the mob.

It must be manifest, however, that there are a hundred cases
of imitation of the many for one case where the entire mass
throughout obeys a single person. In accounting for the mob,
hypnosis has no such scope of application as the theory of mental
intimidation. If we suppose that the eye of the leader or the ges-
ture of the orator paralyzes the will of the crowd as the " bright
object " of the hypnotizer overcomes his subject, we shall not get
the mob without presence. But if the secret of its unanimity
lies in mass suggestion, why is presence necessary ? May there
not be mob phenomena in a multitude of people not collected at
one spot within sight and sound of each other ?

It has long been recognized that the behavior of city popula-
tions under excitement shows the familiar characteristics of the
mob quite apart from any thronging. Here we get unanimity,
impulsiveness, exaggeration of feeling, excessive credulity, fickle-
ness, inability to reason, and sudden alternations of boldness and
cowardice. In fact, if you translate these qualities into public
policy, you have the chief counts in the indictment which his-
torians have drawn against the city democracies of old Greece
and medieeval Italy.

These faults are due in part to the nervous strains of great
cities. The continual bombardment of the attention by innu-
merable sense impressions is known to produce neurasthenia or
hysteria, the peculiar malady of the city dweller. Then, too,
there thrive in the sheltered life of the city many mental de-
generates that would be unsparingly eliminated by the sterner
conditions of existence in the country. But aside from this the
behavior of city dwellers under excitement can best be under-
stood as the result of mental contacts made possible by easy com-
munication. While the crowd, with its elbow-touch and its heat
has no doubt a maddening all its own, the main thing in it is the
contact of minds. Let this be given, and the three consequences
I have pointed out must follow. An expectant or excited man
learns that a thousand of his fellow-townsmen have been seized
by a certain strong feeling, and meets with their expression of
this feeling. Each of these townsmen learns how many others

VOL. LI. — 30

394 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are feeling as he does. Each stage in the consequent growth of
this feeling in extent and in intensity is perceived, and so fosters
sympathy and a disposition to go with the mass. Will we not
inevitably by this series of interactions get that " out "-look
which characterizes the human atom in the mob ?

The bulletin, the flying rumor, " the man in the street," and
the easy swarming for talk or harangue open those paths between
minds, and prepare those contacts that permit the ambient mass
to press almost irresistibly upon the individual. But why will
this phenomenon be limited to the people huddled on a few square
miles of city ground ? Mental touch is not bound up with prox-
imity. With the telegraph to collect and transmit the expres-
sions and signs of the ruling mood, and the fast mail to hurry to
the eager clutch of waiting thousands the still damp sheets of the
morning daily, remote people are brought as it were into one
another's presence. Through its organs the excited public is able
to assail the individual with a mass of suggestion almost as vivid
as if he actually stood in the midst of an immense crowd.

Formerly, within a day a shock might throw into a fever all
within a hundred miles of its point of origin. The next day it
might agitate the zone beyond, but meanwhile the first body of
people would have cooled down and would be disposed to listen
to reason. And so, while a wave of excitement passed slowly over
a country, the entire folk mass was at no moment in the same
state of agitation.

Now, however, our space-annihilating devices, by transmitting
a shock without loss of time, make it all but simultaneous. A
vast public shares the same rage, alarm, enthusiasm, or horror.
Then, as each part of the mass becomes acquainted with the senti-
ment of all the rest, the feeling is generalized and intensified. A
rise of emotional temperature results which leads to a similar
reaction. In the end the public swallows up the individuality
of the ordinary man, as the crowd swallows up the will of its
members.

It is plain that in matters of policy this instant consensus of
feeling or opinion works for ill if it' issues in immediate action.
Formerly the necessary slowness of focusing and ascertaining
the common will insured pause and deliberation. Now the swift
appearance of a mass sentiment threatens to betray us into hot-
headed or ill-considered measures. Sudden heats and flushes take
the place of reflection and resolve ; and with this comes a grow-
ing impatience with the checks and machinery that prevent the
public from giving immediate effect to its will. As the working
of representative government thus becomes less clumsy, there dis-
appears some of that wholesome deliberateness which has distin-
guished indirect from direct democracy.

THE MOB MIND. , 395

Mob mind working in vast bodies of dispersed individuals gives
us the craze ot fad. This may be defined as that irrational una-
nimity of interest, feeling, opinion, or deed in a body of communi-
cating individuals which results from suggestion and imitation.
In the chorus of execration at a sensational crime, in the clamor
for the blood of an assassin or dynamiter, in waves of national
feeling, in war fevers, in political " landslides " and " tidal waves,"
in passionate "sympathetic" strikes, in cholera scares, in public
frights, in popular delusions, in religious crazes, in " booms " and
panics, in agitations, insurrections, and revolutions, we witness
contagion on a gigantic scale, favored in some cases by popular
hysteria. It is best to keep the term " craze " for an imitative
unanimity arrived at under great excitement, while " fad " is that
milder form of imitation which appears in sudden universal in-
terest in some novelty.

As there must be in the typical mob a center which radiates
impulses by fascination till they have subdued enough people to
continue their course by sheer intimidation, so for the craze there
must be an excitant, overcoming so many people that these can
affect the rest by mere volume of suggestion. This first orienta-
tion is produced by some event or incident. The murder of a
leader, an insult to an ambassador, the sermons of a crazy fanatic,
the words of a " prophet " or " Messiah," a sensational procla-
mation, a scintillating phrase, the arrest of an agitator, a coup
d'etat, the advent of a new railroad, the collapse of a trusted bank-
ing house, a number of deaths by an epidemic, a series of myste-
rious murders, and an inexplicable occurrence such as a comet,
an eclipse, a star shower, an earthquake, or a monstrous birth —
each of these has been the starting point of some fever, mania,
crusade, uprising, boom, panic, delusion, or fright. The more ex-
pectant, overwrought, or hysterical is the public mind, the easier
it is to set up a great perturbation. Even clergymen noted a con-
nection between the " great revival " of 1858 and the panic of
1857. . After a series of public calamities, a train of startling
events, a pestilence, earthquake, or war, the anchor of reason finds
no " holding ground," and minds are blown about by every breath
of passion or sentiment.

The fad originates in the surprise or interest excited by
novelty. Roller-skating, blue glass, the planchette, a forty days'
fast, the " new woman," tiddledy-winks, faith-healing, the " 13-
14-15" puzzle, baseball, telepathy, or the sexual novel attract
those restless folk who are always running hither and thither
after some new thing. This creates a swirl which rapidly sucks
into its vortex the soft-headed and weak-minded, and at last,
grown bigger, involves even the saner kind. As no department
of life is safe from the invasion of novelty, we have all kinds of

396 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fads : literary fads like Maeterlinck or tlie Decadents ; philosophic
fads like pessimism or anarchism, religious fads like spiritual-
ism or theosophy ; hygienic fads like vegetarianism, " glaming,"
" fresh air," mush diet, or water cure ; medical fads like lymph,
tuberculin, and serum ; personal fads like short hair for women,
pet lizards, face enamel, or hypodermic injections of perfumery.
And of these orders of fads each has a clientele of its own.

In many cases we can explain vogue entirely in terms of
novelty fascination and mob mind. But even when the new
thing is a step in progress and can make its way by sheer merit,
it does not escape becoming a fad. It will have its penumbral
ring of imitators. So there is something of the fad even in
bicycling, massage, antisepsis, skiagraphy, or physical culture.
Indeed, it is sometimes hard to distinguish the fad from the en-
thusiastic welcome and prompt vogue accorded to a real improve-
ment. For the uninitiate the only touchstone is time. Here as
elsewhere "persistence in consciousness" is the test of reality.
The mere novelty, soon ceasing to be novel, bores people and must
yield to a fresh sensation ; the genuine improvement, on the other
hand, meets a real need and therefore lasts.

Unlike the craze, the fad does not spread in a medium special-
ly prepared for it by excitement. It can not rely on heightened
suggestibility. Its conquests, therefore, imply something above
mere volume of suggestion. They imply prestige. The fad owes
half its power over minds to the prestige that in this age attaches
to the new. Here lies the secret of much that is puzzling.

The great mass of men have always had their lives ruled by
usage and tradition. Not for them did novelties chase each other
across the surface of society. The common folk left to the upper
ten thousand the wild scurry after ruling fancy or foolery of the
hour. In their sports, their sweethearting, their mating, their
child-rearing, their money-getting, their notions of right and
duty, they ran on quietly in the ruts deeply grooved out by gen-
erations of men. But a century or so ago it was found that this
habit of " back "-look opposed to needed reforms the brutish
ignorance, the crass stupidity, and the rhinoceros hide of bigotry of
the unenlightened masses. Accordingly, the idea of the humani-
tarian awakening that accompanied the French Revolution was
to lift the common folk — the third estate — from the slough of
custom to the plane of choice and self-direction. And for a
hundred years the effort has been to explode superstition, to dif-
fuse knowledge, to spread light, and to free man from the spell of
the past and turn his gaze forward.

The attempt has succeeded. The era of obscurantism is for-
ever past. With school and book and press progress has been
taught till with us the most damning phrase is "Behind the

THE MOB MIND. 397

times ! " But we now see that a good deal of the net result has
been to put one kind of imitation in place of another. Instead of
aping their forefathers, people now ape the many. The multitude
has now the prestige that once clothed the past. Except where
rural conservatism holds sway, mob mind in the milder forms of
fad and craze begins to agitate the great deeps of society.

Frequently a half-education has supplied many ideas without
developing the ability to choose among them. The power to dis-
criminate between ideas in respect to their value lagging far be-
hind the power to receive them, the individual is left with noth-
ing to do but follow the drift. Ideas succeed one another in his
mind not by trial and rejection, but in the order of their arrival
on the scene. Formerly people rejected the new in favor of wont
and tradition ; now they tend to " go in " for everything, and
atone for their former suspiciousness by a touching credulity.
The world is abuzz with half-baked ecstatic people who eagerly
champion a dozen different reforms in spelling, dress, diet, exer-
cise, medicine, manners, sex relations, care of children, art, in-
dustry, education, and religion, each of which is to bring in the
millennium all at once.

These minds that, broken from the old moorings of custom,
drift without helm or anchor at the mercy of wind and tide, are
social derelicts. They follow the currents of opinion ; they can
not create them. At all times ripples chase each other over the
surface of society in the direction of improvement — sudden but
all-pervading interest in " how the other half lives,^^ in the aboli-
tion of war, in rational dress, in out-of-door sports, in "a white
life for two." Had these ripples a real ground swell beneath
them, the world might soon be made over. But, alas ! they are
only ripples. They wrinkle the surface of people's attention for
an instant, but in a moment their fickle minds are responding to
a new impulse in a different direction.

If this were to be the outcome of the attempt to emancipate
the common man and fit him to be helmsman of society, we might
well despair. Certainly the staid, slow-going man of olden times,
plodding along the narrow but beaten path of usage, is as dignified
a figure as the unsteady modern person whose ideas and prefer-
ence flicker constantly in the currents of momentary popular
feeling. The lanes of custom are narrow ; the hedgerows are
high, and view to right or left there is none. But there are as
much freedom and self-direction in him who trudges along this
lane as in the " emancipated " man who finds himself on an open
plain, free to go in any direction, but nevertheless stampedes aim-
lessly with the herd.

The remedy for mob mind, whether presented in the liquefac-
tion of our city folk under modern conditions of mental intimacy

398 POPULAR SCII:NCE MONTHLY.

or in the mad rush of the public for the novelty of the hour, is
not in replanting the hedgerows of custom. We must go for-
ward, keeping in mind, however, that the chief present need is
not to discredit the past but to discredit the mass. The spell of
ancestors is broken ; let us next break the spell of numbers.
Without lessening obedience to the decision of majorities, let us
cultivate a habit of doubt and review. In a good democracy-
blind imitation can never take the place of individual effort to
weigh and judge. The frantic desire of frightened deer or
buffalo to press to the very center of the throng does not befit
civilized man. The huddling instinct has no place in strong
character. Democracy's ideal is a society of men with neither
the " back "-look on the past nor yet the " out "-look on their
fellows, but with the "in "-look upon reason and conscience. We
must hold always to a sage Emersonian individualism, that,
without consecrating an ethics of selfishness, a religion of dis-
sent, or a policy of anarchism, shall brace men to stand against
the rush of the mass.

ARE SCORPIONS MATRICIDES AND SUICIDES?

By Dr. JUAN VILAEO,

PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY, HAVANA UNIVERSITY; FISH COMMISSION'S NATURALIST.

IT is by no means a rare thing to see a simple coincidence des-
ignated and accepted as a cause. Such is the case with the
erroneous though common and deep-rooted belief that the newly
born scorpions devour their mother during the first period of
their life. Science has dispelled this vulgar error, as it has done
away with the absurd assertions about the vegetating icasp and
other species of animals.

It is a well-known fact that the little scorpions, when they
come into life, place themselves at the sides and upon the back
of their mother, where they remain huddled together while their
transformation is being completed, or, in other words, until they
change their first skins (exuviation or ecdysis). '

At this moment the little scorpions break away and com-
mence on their own hook their lively search for food, thus enter-
ing the wide field of the struggle for existence.

During this period of their life the mother may die. The diffi-
cult and hazardous process of delivery is oftentimes the cause of
such death. The ants hasten to do away with the remains, and
this is the origin of the common but erroneous belief that the
mother has fallen a victim to the voracity of her own offspring.

As I have always been impressed by the grandeur of small
things, and as phenomena of apparent insignificance are often of

ARE SCORPIONS MATRICIDES AND SUICIDES? 399

great importance, I resolved to find out the truth through my
own experiments, with the following results :

A few years ago I introduced into a capacious flask a she
scorpion with her offspring of fifty little scorpions. They lost
no time in regaining their position upon the mother's back, to
which they regularly returned every time they were forcibly
dislodged. In order to excite the voracity of the little ones, I
withdrew all food from their reach, and even mutilated one of
the mother's legs. The haemorrhage thus produced failed to give
the result hoped for. The fifty little scorpions changed their

EocK Scorpion.

skins and subsequently died of hunger. The mother came out
unscathed. I repeated the experiment upon a later occasion, in
Jamaica, placing together two different breeds upon one mother's
back. The weak little scorpions died, as was to be expected, of
starvation, and I vainly tried to provoke their voracity with the
mother's blood.

But if science has exonerated scorpions from the horrible
crime of matricide, it is by no means so clear that they are en-
tirely deprived of the faculty of maiming themselves, and even
of making attempts on their own life, an inclination which they
possess in common with many other animals.

The assertion that scorpions, when surrounded by fire and de-
prived of all means of escape, commit suicide, was first advanced
by Paracelsus. Some naturalists delare this to be a fact, while
others deny it. Among the latter we may count Brehm, who.

400 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

while acknowledging that the scorpion when thus tortured does
sometimes commit suicide, does not believe it is intentional. " Na-
ture," says Brehm, " has set apart man as the only being, in all
creation, who under certain circumstances enjoys the dire privi-
lege of destroying his oiun self." My own observations and ex-
periments, carried out in July, 1881, at the sugar estate " Osado
de Lagunillas," jurisdiction of Cardenas (Cuba), in the presence
of several relatives and friends, authorize me to assert that the
scorpion, after repeatedly attempting to emerge from the circle
of fire by which it is surrounded, drawing its cheliform append-
ages toward its mouth whenever they come in contact with the
fire, wounds itself with its own sting in the place called by Flou-
rens the vital point, instantly dying.

I may add that the same experiment has been performed,
with identical results, on specimens of different ages, sex, and
strength by persons who are wholly deserving of my confidence.

E. Blanchard, Paul Bert, Jousset de Bellesme, and Joyeux-
Laffine have studied the poisonous apparatus of the scorpion and
the effects resulting therefrom.

The toxic matter is a transparent liquid of acid reaction, which
dries easily, is readily dissolved in water, and insoluble in abso-
lute alcohol and ether.

" The scorpion's poison," says Joyeux-Laffine, " is very active,
although it lacks all the toxic strength which some authors have
attributed to it. Its effects are directly proportionate to the
quantity introduced into the system. One drop of this poison in
a pure state, or even mixed with a small quantity of water, is
sufficient to produce instant death when injected into the cellular
tissue of a rabbit. Birds succumb to it as readily as mammals.
One drop of this poison is sufficient to kill seven or eight frogs.
Fish, and especially mollusks, are not so suscejitible. The articu-
lates, however, are surprisingly affected by this poison ; the one
hundredth part of a drop suffices to kill a good- sized crab. The
flies, spiders, and insects upon which the scorpion feeds are, so to
speak, fulminated by the sting of this animal."

The doctrine of multiple souls among the Calabar negroes is described
by Miss Kiugsley as including the notion of four souls — the soul that sur-
vives death, the shadow on the bush, the dream soul, and the bush soul.
The bush soul is detachable from the body, but if damaged or killed in its
wanderings the body suffers the same fate. Hence old people are held in
respect, even if known to be wicked, because their bush souls must be par-
ticularly powerful and astute. The soul that survives death is liable to
reincarnation either in a higher or lower form. The dream soul is the
particular care of witches, who lay traps for it and return it to the owner
on payment.

SKETCH OF HORATIO HALE. 401

SKETCH OF HORATIO HALE.

GREAT advances have been made by ethnologists of the
present generation in the study of the languages of the
American aborigines and in the investigation of primitive lin-
guistics. The pioneer in these researches, one whose efforts have
been among the most fruitful, the one who perhaps has so far
gone deepest into the investigation, was Horatio Hale, who died
at Clinton, Ontario, December 29, 1896. " By his death," says his
fellow-student in this subject. Dr. Franz Boas, in The Critic,
*' ethnology has lost a man who contributed more to our knowl-
edge of the human races than perhaps any other single student."
The sketch that follows was carefully prepared nearly two years
before Mr. Hale's death. Although a few changes of form might
have been proper to adapt it to the present date, we prefer to
publish it as it was left, only inserting a few words respecting
Mr. Hale's distinguished mother.

Hale, Horatio, M. A., ethnologist and lawyer, was born on
May 3, 1817, at Newport, N. H. His father, David Hale, was a
leading lawyer of that town, and his mother, Sarah Josepha, after
her husband's death in 1822, became well known in American lit-
erature as a highly esteemed author and editor. [Her nursery
poem, Mary had a Little Lamb, has endeared her to children's
hearts, and other fugitive productions of hers have become
widely familiar. She was for one year less than a half century
editor of the Ladies' Magazine, Boston, and, after its merger in
that periodical, of Godey's Ladies' Book, Philadelphia, which
had an immense circulation for its day and was a living force in
shaping the tastes and aims of American women. She was one
of the earliest advocates of the advancement and higher educa-
tion of women, and was the virtual founder of the engagement of
women in foreign missionary service and of the Woman's Union
Missionary Society for heathen lands. Through her urgency
the women of New England contributed fifty thousand dollars
toward the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument; and
mainly through her urgency and correspondence with Governors
of States and Presidents of the United States Thanksgiving Day
was made a national festival.] Their son showed an early in-
clination for the study of languages, and particularly of the
Oriental and aboriginal American tongues. At the age of sixteen
he entered Harvard College. In the following year, when a party
of Indians from Maine came to Massachusetts and encamped for
a time on the college grounds, he took the opportunity of collect-
ing a vocabulary of their dialect. This, with some accompany-
ing remarks, was printed in 1831 in a small pamphlet, which was

VOL. LI. — 31

402 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

distributed among scholars interested in linguistic science. As a
result of this and other like evidences of qualification he was
appointed in 1837, the year of his graduation from the university,
to the ofl&ce of philologist and ethnographer in the United States
Exploring Expedition to the Pacific, under Captain (afterward
Admiral) Charles Wilkes. The expedition occupied the years
from 1838 to 1843. Mr. Hale's report on Ethnography and Phi-
lology, composing the seventh volume of the expedition series,
and filling nearly seven thousand quarto pages, appeared in 1846.
It is devoted to the physical and mental characteristics, the cus-
toms, and the languages of the natives of the Pacific islands
(including Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia), and of Austra-
lia, northwest America, Patagonia, and southern Africa. The
eminent ethnologist. Dr. R. G. Latham, in the preface to his work
on The Natural History of the Varieties of Man (1890), describes
the contents of Mr. Hale's volume as " the greatest mass of philo-
logical data ever accumulated by a single inquirer." He quoted
from it freely, as does also Prof. Max Miiller in his Lectures on
the Science of Language (second series), where he refers particu-
larly to the " excellent Polynesian grammar."

The two portions of this volume which attracted most atten-
tion at the time of its publication, and have since most materially
influenced the sciences to which it related, are the section which
treats of the migrations of the oceanic islanders and that which
is devoted to the tribes of northwestern America. The first of
these sections, by a large accumulation of traditional and lin-
guistic evidence, determined the origin of the Polynesians from
a single island of the Malaisian Archipelago, and fixed not only
the probable time and place of their first appearance as emigrants
in the Pacific Ocean, but also the period of their settlement in
each of the principal groups, showing that both the original mi-
gration and the subsequent dispersion were events of compara-
tively recent occurrence, probably beginning but little before the
Christian era, and that the dispersion was, in fact, still going on
in our century. The other portion made known for the first time
the extraordinary number and variety of languages in northwest-
ern America. The " ethnographical map " prepared by the author
showed in what was then the Oregon Territory, comprising the
present States of Oregon and Washington, no less than thirty
languages and dialects, belonging to twelve distinct stocks, differ-
ing totally from one another in both vocabulary and grammar.
This is more than twice the number of stocks that are found in
the whole of Europe. These and other similar facts led to a
theory afterward proposed by Mr. Hale to explain them, as will
presently be recorded.

After the publication of this report Mr. Hale spent a few

SKETCH OF HORATIO HALE. 403

years in foreign travel and in the study of law, and in 1855 was
admitted to the bar of Illinois at Chicago. In the following year
he removed with his family to Canada West, taking up his abode
in the then newly formed town of Clinton, on an estate which
had descended to his wife, a lady of Anglo-Canadian birth. Here
he has since devoted his time partly to professional pursuits and
to local undertakings of public utility, and partly to scientific
researches. For the latter, an ample field was found among the
Indians inhabiting the many "reserves" which the considerate
legislation of the various provinces has set apart for them. One
of the most important of these is the " Six Nations' Reserve,"
near Brantford, occupied by about three thousand Indians, mostly
Iroquois, but with several groups belonging to other stocks. Here
he had the good fortune of discovering two native manuscripts in
different Iroquoian dialects — Canienga (or Mohawk) and Onon-
daga— one of them dating from about the middle of the last
century (soon after the language was reduced to writing by the
missionaries), which proved to be of much historical and ethno-
logical interest. They gave an account of the renowned confed-
eration of the Five (afterward Six) Nations, or Iroquois tribes,
which was formed about four hundred years ago, under the cele-
brated Onondaga chief Hiawatha. This great chief and law-
giver, whom Longfellow, following Schoolcraft's lead (though
well aware of the absurd misapplication of the name), has trans-
ported to the shores of Lake Superior and converted into an
Ojibway hero of romance, was a genuine historical personage,
as authentic as Alfred or Washington. At the request of the.
distinguished ethnologist. Dr. D. G. Brinton, Mr. Hale prepared
a translation of these manuscripts, which was published in 1883
in Dr. Brinton's well-known Library of American Aboriginal
Literature, with several introductory chapters on the history,
customs, and character of the Iroquois people, the whole forming
an octavo volume of about 220 pages. Of this work, which is
entitled The Iroquois Book of Rites, the eminent historian and
philologist. Dr. J. G. Shea, has said : " It is a philosophical and
masterly treatise on the Iroquois league and the cognate tribes,
their relations, language, mental characteristics, and policy, such
as we have never before had of any nation of this continent."
The American Journal of Philology adds : " Mr. Hale's book is
likely to make an epoch in North American Indian history,
giving as it does a clearer insight than we have had before
into the political constitution and fortunes and the personal
character of the famous ' Six Nations,' who played so prominent
a part in the land before and during the. Revolutionary War."

On the same reserve Mr. Hale made another notable discovery.
He had heard that there was living on the reserve an Indian of

404 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

great. age — reputed, indeed, to be over a century old — wlio was
believed to be tlie last full-blooded survivor of the once numerous
Tutelo tribe. This tribe formerly inhabited Virginia and North
Carolina, and migrated thence in the last century to Pennsylvania
and New York, where they united with the Iroquois " nations,"
and finally removed with them to Canada. Mr. Hale visited this
old man, and obtained from him and some intelligent half-castes
(of Tutelo-Iroquois origin) an extensive vocabulary of their lan-
guage, with many historical facts, which showed them to be
beyond question members of the great Dakota (or Siouan) stock
of the far West. It also appeared that other tribes near them
spoke the same language. The fact that septs of their wide-
spread family anciently dwelt east of the Alleghanies, and in all
probability occupied this North Atlantic portion of the continent
before its invasion by the Iroquois and Algonkin tribes, was an
important and unexpected addition to aboriginal history. The
particulars of this discovery were given in a paper of consider-
able length, entitled The Tutelo Tribe and Language, which ap-
peared in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
of Philadelphia, and was thence reprinted in pamphlet form. It
naturally aroused much interest among American ethnologists.
In 1882 Mr. Hale, as a member of a committee of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, which met in that
year in Montreal, took part in organizing the first meeting of the
Section of Anthropology in that association ; and, somewhat re-
markably, two years later in the same city he was one of the
.committee of the British Association which organized the first
meeting of the like section in that world-renowned society.
These facts afford evidence both of the recent rise and progress
of this branch of science and of the position held by Mr. Hale
among its cultivators. At this meeting of the British Associa-
tion a proposal of the first president of the new section, the dis-
tinguished anthropologist. Dr. E. B. Tylor, resulted in the ap-
pointment of a committee " to investigate the physical character,
languages, and industrial and social condition of the Northwest-
ern tribes of the Dominion of Canada." Of this committee Mr.
Hale was a member, having among his colleagues the late eminent
President of Toronto University, Sir Daniel Wilson, and Dr. G.
M. Dawson, of the Geological Survey of Canada. In compliance
with the unanimous request of his colleagues, Mr. Hale under-
took the ofiice of director of the investigations and editor of
the reports— an office which, under the rules of the association,
involved his temj)orary withdrawal from the committee. Of
these reports eight have already appeared, and another, designed
to be the final report, is now (January, 1895) in course of prepara-
tion. The first report, which was on the Tribes of the Blackfoot

SKETCH OF HORATIO HALE. 405

Confederacy (wlio, though belonging to the Algonkin family,
may from their character and achievements be styled the Iro-
quois of the Northwest), was prepared by Mr. Hale, partly from
his own minutes, gathered in Oregon in former years, and partly
from materials supplied by his correspondence with two highly
esteemed missionaries, Catholic and Methodist — the Eev. Father
Albert Lacombe and the Rev. Dr. John McLean. This report
was presented in 1885, and proved of so much interest that before
it appeared in the association's volume it was published in the
English periodical Nature, and was thence reprinted in the
American Popular Science Monthly. In this report, as well as in
his annotations on the third report, prepared partly by his expe-
rienced collaborator, the Rev. E. F. Wilson (well known as the
founder of the Shingwauk Home at the Sault Ste. Marie), Mr.
Hale sought to show that the remarkable superiority of the
Blackfoot Indians to the other Algonkins is due to an admixture
of blood with the Kootenays of British Columbia, whose singular
mental endowments are set forth in two of the subsequent reports,
the sixth and eighth. All the reports after the third, with the
exception of the eighth, which is by Dr. A. F. Chamberlain,
formerly of Toronto University and now of Clark University,
Worcester, Mass., have been prepared by Dr. Franz Boas, for-
merly editor of Science, who, like Mr. Wilson and Dr. Chamber-
lain, was invited by Mr. Hale to carry on the investigations.
The reports, usually prefaced by introductory remarks of the
editor, have been of considerable length, some of them compris-
ing many pictorial illustrations, and have proved a conspicuous
feature of the recent volumes of the British Association. They
have been considered of so much importance that the Canadian
Parliament has twice supplemented by considerable money grants
the sums liberally appropriated for the committee's work by the
British Association. The fifth report contained a colored " lin-
guistic map " of British Columbia, prepared at Mr. Hale's sug-
gestion, and supplementing his ethnographical map of Oregon,
already noticed. This British Columbian map showed five lin-
guistic stocks, additional to the twelve stocks comprised in the
Oregon map, thus evidencing the existence of no less than sev-
enteen language families in an area not larger than the British
Islands. This remarkable fact, with some similar instances in
other parts of the world, offered one of the most perplexing
enigmas of philological science.

This enigma Mr. Hale undertook to solve in an address de-
livered in 188G before the Section of Anthropology in the Ameri-
can Association for the Advancement of Science, of which
association he had been elected one of the vice-presidents and
chairman of that section. The address was on The Origin of

4o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Languages and the Antiquity of Speaking Man. In this essay he
maintained that the human race, when first endowed with articu-
late language, was necessarily of one community and one speech,
and that the origin of the various linguistic stocks is due to a
force which is in constant activity, and which may be styled " the
language-making instinct of very young children." Many in-
stances of languages thus spontaneously created by children were
given ; and in a later paper on the Development of Language,
read before the Canadian Institute of Toronto, in 1888, as a sequel
to the address, and published in the Journal of the Institute and
afterward separately, further evidence was produced to show that
the words and grammar of such languages might, and in many
cases probably would, be totally different from those of the pa-
rental speech. In the original address the fact was pointed out
that in the first peopling of every country, when, from various
causes, families must often be scattered at wide distances from
one another, many cases must have occurred where two or more
young children of different sexes, left by the death of their parents
to grow up secluded from all other society, were thus compelled
to frame a language of their own, which would become the
mother-tongue of a new linguistic stock. It is evident that, along
with their new language, these children and their descendants
would have to devise a new religion, a new social policy, and in
general new modes of life, except in so far as reminiscences of the
parental example and teachings might direct or modify the work-
ings of their minds. All these conclusions, it is afiirmed by Mr.
Hale, in his Introduction to the Committee's Sixth Report to the
British Association, " accord precisely with the results of ethno-
graphical investigations in America."

He further maintained that while, according to the evidence
adduced by geologists, we must believe that a being who had the
form and some of the faculties of man (including probably some
partly developed power of speech) existed in the Quaternary era,
many thousands and perhaps many ten thousands of years ago,
all the evidence points to the conclusion that social man, of the
existing species, fully endowed with the human faculties, includ-
ing that of articulate speech, appeared only some seven or eight
thousand years back ; and, further, that when " speaking man "
thus appeared, his mental like his physical capacity — though, of
course, not his knowledge — was fully equal to the capacity of any
of his descendants.

The solution thus offered of the linguistic problem was re-
ceived with more prompt and general favor than is usually
accorded to novel theories. Prof. Abel Hovelacque, well known
as one of the most eminent philologists and ethnologists of
Europe, and now the official director of the School of Anthro-

SKETCH OF HORATIO HALE. 407

pology in Paris, reviewed the address of 1886 at length in the peri-
odical UHomTue for September of that year, and, while dissent-
ing from some of its physiological suggestions recommended the
philological conclusion very strongly to the attention of scholars.
Prof. Sayce, in his presidential address of 1887 to the Section of
Anthropology in the British Association, spoke in equally com-
mendatory terms, merely asking for some additional evidence,
which the author of the theory endeavored to supply in his
Canadian Institute paper already referred to. Prof. G. J.
Romanes, in his Mental Evolution of Man, quotes largely from
Mr. Hale's address — to the extent of nearly a fourth part of the
whole essay — accepting the author's conclusions and fortifying
them by other evidence. Prof. Henry Drummond, in his recent
work, The Ascent of Man, takes a similar view. Lastly, Dr.
Brinton, in his important work on Races and Peoples (which he
dedicates to Mr. Hale), has given his opinion on the subject in
clear and decided terms. " Those convolutions of the brain " (he
writes) " which preside over speech being once developed, man
did not have to repeat his long and toilsome task of acquiring
linguistic faculty. Children are always originating new words
and expressions, and if two or three infants are left together,
they will soon have a tongue of their own, unlike anything they
hear around them. Numerous examples of this character have
been collected by Mr. Hale, and upon them he has based an
entirely satisfactory theory of the source of that multiplicity of
language which we find in various parts of the globe."

In 1889 Mr. Hale was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Canada. To their translations he contributed, in 1891, a paper
entitled Language as a Test of Mental Capacity. This essay was
also separately reprinted, with the additional title of An Attempt
to demonstrate the Tone Basis of Anthropology, and attracted
hardly less attention from ethnologists than his address of 1886.
It received from the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
and Ireland the unusual compliment of being republished in full
in their quarterly journal — despite its length of thirty-six quarto
pages. It was also reprinted in four sections in successive num-
bers of The American Antiquarian for the following year, under
the title of Man and Language. A review of this paper in Nature
(June 30, 1892) — anonymous, but bearing clear evidence of the
style of Prof. Max Miiller — speaks of Mr. Hale as " the Nestor of
American philologists, and, at the same time, the Ulysses of com-
parative philology in that country," and of his paper as "an
important essay." The eminent reviewer adds : " All his contri-
butions to American ethnology and philology have been distin-
guished by their originality, accuracy, and trustworthiness.
Every one of them makes a substantial addition to our knowl-

4o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

edge, and, in spite of the hackneyed disapproval with which
reviewers receive reprints of essays published in periodicals, it is
much to be regretted that his essays have never been published
in a collected form." In the North American Review for July,
1892, the distinguished President of McGill University, Sir J.
William Dawson, refers to this " remarkable paper of Mr.
Hale's " as " one which should commend itself to the study of
every biblical scholar and archseologist." He adds : " In this
paper Mr. Hale maintains the importance of language as a
ground of ethnological classification, and there was his wide
knowledge of the languages of American aborigines and other
rude races to show that the grammatical complexity and logical
perfection of those languages imply a high intellectual capacity
in their original framers. . . . On similar grounds he shows us
that it is not in the outlying barbarous races that we are to look
for truly primitive man, since here we have merely degraded
types, and that the primitive centers of man and language must
have been in the old historic lands of western Asia and northern
Africa."

In 1893 Mr. Hale was elected President of the American Folk-
lore Society. He had previously contributed to the society's
quarterly journal a series of articles on Huron Folklore from
materials gathered in his visit to the "Underdon Reserve," on
the Detroit River opposite to southern Michigan — the reserve
appropriated to the small band of Wyandot Indians, less than a
hundred, who alone in Canada retained the language, and with it
the traditions, of the once numerous and powerful Huron people.
In the same year he was invited to attend the International Con-
gress of Anthropology, which was convened for the World's Co-
lumbian Exposition at Chicago. To this congress he contributed a
paper entitled The Fall of Hochelaga, a Study of Popular Tradition,
which appeared in the volume of Memoirs of the congress, and
also in the Journal of the American Folklore Society for March,
1894. In this paper he was enabled, by employing the same
methods of research and analysis by which he had in early life
traced out the Polynesian migrations of two millenniums, to elu-
cidate, by the aid of traditions which had been preserved for more
than four centuries among the Canadian Hurons, a singular his-
torical mystery, which had long perplexed the writers of North
American annals. When the explorer Jacques Cartier, in 1535,
discovered and ascended the St. Lawrence River, he found its
shores, from what is now the site of Quebec to what is now the
site of Montreal, occupied by what he styled the "kingdom of
Hochelaga." Its " great king and lord," from his capital at the
last-named place, ruled over several communities of partly civil-
ized Indians, who spoke a language of the Huron- Iroquois stock.

SKETCH OF HORATIO HALE. 409.

They liA'^ed in commodious bark-covered houses, cultivated exten-
sive maize fields, and had encircled their chief town with a triple
row of tree trunks, planted as palisades, and thus making it a
fortress of great strength. When Champlain, nearly sixty years
later, ascended the river for the purpose of founding near it a
French colony, this "kingdom," with all its subject towns, had
disappeared. " A few wandering Algonkins occupied, but hardly
pretended to possess, the country which had been the seat of this
lost empire." Its destruction has been generally ascribed to the
attacks of these Algonkins. Mr. Hale's inquiries proved con-
clusively that this supposition was an error. The Huron tradi-
tions showed that in times long prior to Cartier's visit the Huron
and Iroquois nations, speaking similar dialects, or perhaps the
same dialect, had dwelt in unity near together along the St. Law-
rence ; that at length a rupture, of which the occasion and circum-
stances are minutely remembered, took place, followed by a des-
perate conflict ; that this conflict caused at first the retreat of the
Iroquois people to the region which is now northern New York ;
and, finally, after along-protracted warfare, resulted in the defeat
of the Hurons and their expulsion from their former seats. The
Algonkins, instead of being their enemies, were their friends
and allies, and still remained, when Champlain arrived, the bitter
enemies of the Iroquois.

This outline of Mr. Hale's scientific work may be properly
concluded by an extract from a brief sketch of his life, which
appeared in the Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography : " He con-
tributed to periodicals in the United States, Great Britain, and
Canada, on scientific and literary topics, and has taken particular
interest in educational matters. Through his efforts the Clinton
High School and the Clinton Mechanics' Institute and Library
Association were established, and he was for many years chair-
man of the High School Board and President of the Institute.
While holding these positions he gave much time to correspond-
ence and interviews with the Ontario authorities, and to the cir-
culation of petitions to the Legislature, which resulted in largely
increased public grants to the high schools and mechanics' insti-
tutes throughout the province, and in legislation which greatly
enhanced their efficiency. One important result of the legislation
thus promoted by Mr. Hale, it may be mentioned, was to secure
the admission of female pupils into the high schools, on the same
terms and with the same advantages which were allowed to male
pupils— a privilege which had previously been denied to them.
Mr. Hale has also taken part in various public enterprises, and, in
especial, was chairman of the committee which secured the
means for the construction of the London, Huron, and Bruce Rail-
way— a successful work, which has added largely to the prosper-

410 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ity of tlie fertile and rapidly improving district throiigli whicli it
passes." Mr. Hale was an honorary or corresponding member of
many learned societies, including, besides those mentioned in the
foregoing sketch, the Anthropological Societies of Washington
and Vienna, the Polynesian Society of Wellington, New Zealand,
the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, the
New England Historico- Genealogical Society, and several others.

A few days before his death Mr. Hale was notified by the
Secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science that the Council of that body desired him to act as vice-
president of the Section of Anthropology at the next meeting, at
Toronto in 1897. The letter declining to accept this position, on
account of failing health, was one of the last from his pen.

[Mr. Hale's first scientific publication was the first systematic
contribution to the study of the Malaisian and Polynesian lan-
guages, and cast a flood of light on the subject at the outset.
His last published contribution presented evidences that the
native tribes of America possessed at the time of the discovery
a higher degree of civilization than any one had before ascribed
to them, evincing " intellectual and moral faculties of no mean
order " ; that they had established forms of government, a real
money, " the elements of a written language, widely diffused, and
employed especially in preserving, with happy effect, the memory
of treaties of peace and alliance"; and a very high degree of
generally diffused comfort. In preparing this paper for publi-
cation in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great
Britain and Ireland, for February, 1897, Mr. E. B, Tylor mentions
having received, while writing, the intelligence of Mr. Hale's
death with regret, but hardly with surprise, and adds : " The tone
of his letters for months past had been that of a man looking
toward the end of his work in life, and anxious to settle finally
all matters he had much at heart. Among these were his investi-
gations into the history of his friends the Iroquois and Hurons,
to which he had given so much labor, and of which his last
studies^ undertaken to elucidate their native records, form a fit
completion." At the conclusion of his tribute to Mr. Hale in The
Critic, Dr. Franz Boas says : " His wise counsel, his amiable
guidance, his kindly friendship, insure a grateful memory to him
whose works students of ethnology and of linguistics will admire
for all time to come. Science has lost a worker to whose enthu-
siasm and faithful labor we owe much ; mankind has lost a man
whose wisdom, kindness, and steadfastness it is hard to lack."]

EDITOR'S TABLE.

411

%iMUx^s gaMje.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL ON
EVOLUTION.

THE Duke of Argyll is a writer
who finds it very hard to recon-
cile himself to the doctrine of evolu-
tion in the only form in which it can
ever prove satisfactory to the scien-
tific world. He believes in evolution,
or, as he prefers to call it. develop-
ment; but he wants to have it in
a shape to suit himself, with little
touches of special creation thrown
in here and there, to ease off the
difiicult places and keep in touch
with older modes of thought. He
has lately returned to the subject in
an article in The Nineteenth Cen-
tury, some of the observations in
which seem to us deserving of atten-
tion.

In the first place, we have the
complaint that " the very word ' de-
velopment ' was captured by the
Darwinian school as if it belonged
to them alone, and the old familiar
idea was identified with theories with
which it had no connection what-
ever.'' The fact is that, if the Dar-
winian school captured the word de-
velopment, it was not so much the
result of a freebooting raid on their
part as of the complete abandon-
ment and rejection of the idea of
development, in all that related to
the origin of species, on the part of
that orthodox school to which the
duke gives so much sympathy. As
his Lordship remarks, the facts of
development had long been con-
spicuous in embryonic growth and
in the production of plants h'om
seeds; and yet when the idea was
broached that one species might
have been " developed " out of an-
other, or that the work of creation
could have proceeded otherwise than

by a succession of special divine
fiats, the whole orthodox world was
up in arms. The '' facts " of devel-
opment, in spite of the " familiarity "
on which the duke lays stress, had
really done nothing to modify popu-
lar conception on this subject; on
the contrary, opinion in the age just
preceding Darwin was less enlight-
ened by far than had been the views
of many early thinkers, including
that rigid doctrinarian St. Augus-
tine. The idea of development, as
applied to the origin of species, was,
we may therefore say, forced upon
an unwilling world by Darwin ; and
it is no wonder, consequently, if to
some extent the idea became iden-
tified in the public mind with the
Darwinian theory.

We can not agree with the duke
in his criticism of the term " natural
selection." The question is not how
the term has been understood by
careless or ignorant people, because
such will always make a bvmgle of
things, but whether it has concealed
any false implications for those who
have made a thoughtful use of it.
The duke says that ''it resorted to
the old, old Lucretian expedient of
personifying Nature and lending the
glamour of that personification to
the agency of bare mechanical ne-
cessity and to the coincidences of
mere fortuity." We doubt whether,
in the minds of serious thinkers,
such a "glamour" ever attached to
the term. On the contrary, we are
persuaded that to such it suggested
nothing beyond a kind of automatic
movement in Natui^e by which the
adaptation of organisms to their cos-
mic surroundings became ever closer
and closer. His Lordship says that
Darwin was led to the phrase "by

412

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

an intellectual instinct which is in-
superable— viz., the instinct which
sees the highest explanations of Na-
ture in the analogies of mental pur-
pose and direction. jBm^," he adds,
" Darwin neither saw nor admitted its
implications." If Darwin neither
saw nor admitted its implications —
by which the writer means its teleo-
logical implications — it was a very
blind instinct indeed which led him
to choose the term because of those
implications. The fact is that Dar-
win had little choice in the matter.
Human language is necessarily so
tinctured with the idea of purpose
that it is extremely difficult to find
terms expressive of action which do
not in some degree or other seem to
imply purpose. Then we are told that
" the great bulk of Darwin's admirei-s
rejoiced in his theory for the very
reason that it rested mainly on the
idea of fortuity.." How does this agree
with the previous statement that the
success of the term " natural selec-
tion " was chiefly due to the glamour
it threw over men's minds as being
a kind of personification of Nature ?
It seems as if his Lordship had not
quite made up his mind as to what
his views really are on this point.

We are told, not for the first time,
that " it would be as rational to ac-
count for the poem of the Iliad, or for
the play of Hamlet, by supposing that
the words and letters were adjusted
to the conceptions by some pi'ocess
of natural selection, as to account by
the same formula for the intricate
and glorious harmonies of structure
with function in organic life. " State-
ments of this kind, we must confess,
seem to us rather inept. Tiie argu-
ment is: the words of the Iliad or of
Hamlet are so arranged as to render
certain meanings ; we know that
these words were chosen by a con-
scious intelligent agent ; wherever,
therefore, we find that any arrange-
ments in Nature are adapted to pro-

duce definite effects, we are entitled
to conclude that those arrangements
also had their oingin in conscious and
purposive effort. In other w^ords,
because results are reached in one
case, or in certain cases, by purposive
efforts, they must be so in all cases.
Manifestly the conclusion is illicit,
and yet the argument is continually
being served up to us in essentially
this shape. The duke talks of the
" intricate and glorious harmonies "
of Nature, but does he rest his ar-
gument on harmonics of this rich
order ? If so, where does he draw
the line ? How intricate and how
glorious must a harmony be in order
to make good its claim to a purposive
origin? And may it be assumed that
humbler harmonies may be the re-
sult of unconscious processes ? This
is no trivial logic-chopping question ;
it is all-important. We presume, from
the duke's seeming to rest his argu-
ment on the higher harmonies, that
he is ]Drepared to abandon the lower
to the reign of purely physical law ;
and if so, the believer in natural
selection and other evolutionary
formulas would like to know the ex-
tent of his conceded domain. Our
impression is that, if he once gets a
foot of space in the world of action
and reaction, no "pent-up Utica"
will long confine his powers. We
may say as much of the contrary
theory : once make it plain that any
adaptation in Nature is distinctly
purposive, and the dominion of pur-
pose will become a universal do-
minion.

From our point of view, we must
frankly confess, the idea of purpose
is simply a drag on the interpretation
of Nature. It is one of those short
cuts which it does not pay to take.
In so far as we assume purpose we
cease to be interested in method or
process. Voluntary action only
comes in to do that which could not
be effected by involuntary action ;

EDITOR'S TABLE.

413

and therefore if, in tracing* back any
chain of causation, we come to a
point where we conclude that vol-
untary action manifests itself, we do
not seek an explanation of that. It
does not follow, however, that, be-
cause the idea of purpose is a drag
on the scientific interpretation of
Nature, it has no place in a rational
scheme of thought. It is possible to
believe, and with deep conviction, in
purposes that can not be traced ; and
this, in our opinion, implies a more
truly religious spirit than the attempt
to read the petty thoughts of man
into the everlasting statutes of the
universe. To undertake, as the Duke
of Argyll does, to indicate at what
precise points in the sequence of
events there must have been the in-
troduction of a divine power does
not seem to us to be religious in the
best sense. At best of times we know
but in part ; where we know not at
all let us acknowledge our ignorance,
but let us not say that, because we
are ignorant, we must surely be upon
holier ground.

Since the above was written, a
further article by the Duke of Argyll
in criticism of Mr. Spencer's views
has been given to the world; and,
as we have our hand in, we may as
well deal with it in the remaining
space at our disposal. The writer
declares very positively that we de-
ceive ourselves " when we think or
talk of organs being made or fitted
by use," the idea being, he says,
" strictly speaking nonsense," as or-
gans are made " for use, not by
use." This would be an important
statement if there was only the least
reason for believing it to be true,
which there is not. The distin-
guished disputant simply assumes
the conclusion which it is the pur-
pose of his lengthy argumentation
to prove. We can claim with toler-
able confidence to know that organs

are formed, or have been formed, by
the combined action of use and nat-
ural selection, but we have abso-
lutely no knowledge in regard to
the deliberate formation of organs
for use. We can not even begin to
imagine what the nature of such a
process would be.

The duke makes, however, a true
and important remark when he says
that " we have no antecedent knowl-
edge of the Creator which can pos-
sibly entitle us to form any pre-
sumption as to his methods of
operation." How vain, then, to say
that He intervenes to form organs
for use, creating them first in a very
rudimentary form, and gradually
improving them in the course of
ages ! It is because of their profound
conviction that the Creator's ways
are past finding out— that they can
not possibly be level with the com-
prehension of man — that evolution-
ists limit themselves so strictly to the
simple sequence and filiation of phe-
nomena. When the duke says that
he "can not accept, or even respect,
the opinion of men who, in describ-
ing the facts of Nature, use perpetu-
ally the language of intention, and
then repudiate the implications of
that language when they talk what
they call science of philosophy," he
overlooks the fact referred to above,
that as a general thing " the language
of intention " is chosen because none
other is available. When we say
that running water sifts earthy mat-
ter, we may seem to use the language
of intention, sifting being a definite
action resulting in a definite, and
what might look like a j^urposive,
arrangement of the materials sub-
jected thereto ; but surely we are
not required to attribute intention to
the running water. It is difficult to
please the duke, however ; he declines
to respect the opinions of those who
use the language of intention with-
out fully accepting all its implica-

414

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tions ; and, on the other hand, when
Mr. Speacer seeks out the word
"equilibration" to express adjust-
ment of structure to function, he is
indignant at him for not using the
language of intention. He declares
the word to be " laboriously barba-
rous and incompetent in its mean-
ing," and altogether a " hideous cre-
ation." It always comes round to
this in the end that the duke is
entirely right and his opponents
entirely wrong ; and if that gratify-
ing conclusion can not be proved,
■why, then it is assumed. We wonder
"whether the critic could not possi-
bly make a personal application of
the following judicious observation
which we find in his article : " It is
one of the infirmities of the human
mind that, when it is thoroughly
possessed by one idea, it not only
sees everything in the light of that
idea, but can see nothing that does
not lend itself to support the domi-
nant conception." This is precisely
tbe duke's case : he sees nothing that
does not to his mind seem to support
his dominant conception ; and yet,
strange to say, after delivering him-
self of the apothegm, the only ap-
plication he can make of it is to
"the Darwinian school." If ever
there was a case in which one might
whisper, " De te fdbula narratiir,^^
this seems to be one.

On the subject of rudimentary
organs Mr. Spencer's critic indulges
in much special pleading. He says
we can never be sure " whether these
represent organs which have degen-
erated or organs which are waiting
to be completed." Few naturalists,
we think, would agree to this. But
why should any organ " wait to be
completed," unless its completion is
dependent on some prolonged nat-
ural process ? And if a natm'al
process can complete an organ,
why might not a natural process
have created its first beginnings ?

The duke seems to us to do here
something more illegitimate than
anything he charges on the Darwin-
ian school. Confronted with the
fact that organs are developed by a
series of actions and reactions, of in-
crements and adaptations, each one
of which has its place in the chain
of physical antecedents and conse-
quents, he deliberately uses the ex-
pression " waiting to be completed "
for the purpose of creating the im-
pression that natural processes count
for nothing, but that the " comple-
tion " depends on some kind of divine
fiat. If the organs in question are in
reality being completed by small im-
provements in adaptation from gen-
eration to generation — which, no
doubt, the duke believes — is it honest
to speak of them as " waiting to be
completed " ? We do not speak of a
tree " waiting " to grow when it is
growing, or of fruit " waiting " to
ripen when it is ripening.

Finally, the duke says that a
philosophy which is neutral " on the
most fundamental of all questions
respecting the interpretation of the
universe" — the question, namely,
" whether the physical forces are the
masters or the servants of that house
in which we live " — " can not prop-
erly be said to be a philosophy at
all." It seems to us, on the contrary,
that it is just because Mr. Spencer
leaves that question unanswered,
and shows that it must remain un-
answered— at least in any sense that
would satisfy the Duke of Argyll —
that his system may claim to be a
philosophy. His real answer to the
question, as we conceive, w^ould be
that the physical forces are alter-
nately servants and masters. They
are servants as ministering to our
mental operations and masters as
determining their limits. The pow-
ers of mind are servants as being
everywhere conditioned by the laws
of matter, and they are masters as

EDITOR'S TABLE.

4»5

being alone interpretative of the uni-
verse. We are only landed in blank
confusion and hopeless contradiction
if we try to assign a positive and un-
divided supremacy to either mind or
niatter. No one can doubt that the
Duke of Argyll is very sincere in
his attachment to pre-Darwinian
modes of thought; but it is no less
certain that the arguments which he
directs against the new philosophy
have a singularly unconvincing
quality. He is a writer who seems
to have exhausted all his intellectual
forces in convincing himself: the
more carefully we read him, the
more the impression grows that he
has compassed sea and laud, and laid
a vast amount of knowledge under
contribution, in a strenuous and suc-
cessful effort to be on the wrong side.

A NEW SOCIAL PROBLEM.

As must have been long apparent
to a critical observer of " the tenden-
cies of the times," the dei^ai'tment
store, to which so many master
minds applied themselves during
the legislative season just closed,
was bound, sooner or later, to rise
to the dignity and importance of a
new "social problem." It exhibited
precisely those traits that appeal so
powerfully to the shortsighted phi-
lanthropy and superficial knowledge
of the " new " social reformer. It
reqiiired a large concentration of
capital, which has come to be re-
garded as prima facie evidence of
"social peril." Because of certain
economies it was able to effect, it
brought about a reduction in prices,
which is likewise believed by a
well-known school of " uninstructed
economists" to be a deplorable evil.
Finally, it tended to crowd to the
wall smaller concerns dealing in the
same class of goods, that found them-
selves unable to compete with it.

Here were all the elements that

go to make up a first-class "social
problem." A vivid imagination, in-
flamed by a deep sympathy with im-
mediate inconvenience and suffer-
ing, drew a harrowing picture of
the distress to individuals and to so-
ciety. In the first place, there were
the small shopkeepers, high-spirited
and independent, driven out of busi-
ness and compelled to become " mere
clerks " under the roof of their mer-
ciless rival. In the second place,
there were the empty stores scat-
tered all over a city that had been
occupied to the advantage of their
owners. In the third place, there
were the loss of general knowledge
of any given business, the confine-
ment of the poor clerks to some spe-
cial department, and their reduction
to the humiliating and paralyzing
position of "only cogs in a great
piece of commercial machinery." Is
it any wonder that such a spectacle
moved the hearts of the j)hilanthro-
pists and statesmen in the Legisla-
tures of Missouri, Minnesota, Illinois,
and New York ? Was it not as plain
as a pikestaff that something was
wrong ? Was it not " the duty of
society " to remedy it ? Who could
be so ignorant and callous as to in-
sist that these questions were absurd
— that they applied to the spinning
jenny and the power loom as well as
to the department store ?

Yet such is the fact. The depart-
ment store is as much a labor-saving
device as a steam engine or the tele-
graph and telephone. One as much
as the other is a product of industrial
evolution. Like the mediaeval fair
or the modern market, the depart-
ment store is a segregation of com-
modities and of buyers and sellers.
Like the perfecting press also, which
unites in one machine several dis-
tinct processes, such as inking, print-
ing, cutting, and folding, it is an in-
tegration under one management of
a number of forms of trade carried

4i6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on under different managements.
It enables capital to gain such gen-
erous rewards that it can command
executive talents of a far higher or-
der than those content with the
profits of a small concei'n. As a
consequence, its management is the
most efficient— that is to say, the
most economical. Obeying still fur-
ther the law of evolution, the several
departments also fall into the most
eSicient hands. The subordinates
are likewise intrusted with the par-
ticular duties they are best fitted for.
Thus, from top to bottom, there is
an adaptation of meaias to ends far
beyond the reach of an establish-
ment where the management is of a
low order of ability and the subor-
dinates unite in their duties a variety
of functions. A further gain is had
from saving in rents, and from the
purchase of goods in large quanti-
ties. Besides economy in prices, so
important to the multitude of con-
sumers, whose welfare the "new"
social reformer seldom considers,
there is economy in time and effort.
The department store enables them
to obtain what they w^ant with a
minimum of movement.

In absolute ignorance of the na-
ture and achievements of the immu-
table law that has called the depart-
ment store into existence, the " new "
social reformer has begun to wrestle,
as already stated, with the " problem "
it presents. He has begun to repeat
the follies that every inventor from
Arkwright down has had to face.
To be sure, no department store has
been sacked or burned ; but the legis-
lation pi'oposed as a " I'emedy " has
virtually the same object in view,
namely, the destruction of an impor-
tant labor-saving device. But, most
happily, it presents difficulties to its
enemies that a mere machine does
not offer. Not long ago, when a
number of them met in Chicago to
propose a solution of the '' problem,"

they could not, as might have been
foreseen, agree upon the limit to
put upon the kinds of goods the de-
partment store shovild sell. Hardly
had the druggist vented his griev-
ance and suggested the rigid exclu-
sion of his goods before the tobac-
conist arose to protest against the
incursion of the druggist into his
domain. The grocer filed a like
complaint against the butcher, who
sells vegetables as well as meat. It
was discovered also that the butcher
trespassed upon the fishmonger and
the oyster dealer. In selliiig beer
and liquor, the grocer was guilty of
a similar offense against the saloon
keeper. Equally culpable was the
tobacconist who sold papers and um-
brellas ; the shoe dealer who sold,
trunks and valises; the bookseller
who dealt in candy and stationery ;
and the milliner who sold corsets
and toilet articles. In fact, the meet-
ing contained hardly a protestant
that did not deal in one or more
articles outside of his specialty, and
thus present the same " serious prob-
lem " that the department store docs.
Naturally, itbroke up without having
reached a decision as to how the
" problem " should be solved.

Although the same insuperable
difficulties confront the " new " so-
cial reformer and are not unlike-
ly to prevent him from getting the
legislation so generally regarded as
the solvent of most troubles, the
" problem " of the department store
is not insoluble. That is to say, a
limit upon its scope is not impossible
nor improbable. But the limit will
not be di*awn by the ''wise legisla-
tor," but by the law of evolution
itself. There is reason to believe
that the small store, devoted to spe-
cial lines of goods, will not succumb
altogether. Of certain staple goods
and of all goods of a medium or in-
ferior quality, the department store
will doubtless retain the monopoly.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE,

417

But in the highest class of certain
goods, such as furs, linens, tailor-
made gowns and suits, diamonds and
jewelry, porcelain and furniture, the
small dealer may be expected to con-
trol the retail trade. He alone will
possess the high degree of special
knowledge and be able to give the
personal attention that his business
requires. He alone will find it worth
his while to cater to the few but
wealthy customers that want the best
to be had. The department store
will find it more profitable, as indeed
it does now, to cater to the larger

class of customers that care more for
cheapness than gx'eat excellence. Be-
cause of this fact, it is already notice-
able, particularly in the inland cities,
that specialists have begun to estab-
lish themselves, usually taking mod-
est apartments in some large com-
mercial building. Thus, in spite of
the department store and without
the aid of the " new " social reformer,
there will be preserved to the world
this class of people with all their
" manhood " and " independence,"
thought to be so important to civili-
zation.

Scientific %X\tx^Xyxxz.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

Among the many manuals of architecture Mr. Mathews's book* takes a
distinct place. It is a concise history of architectural develoxDment through
all the various phases of civilization, showing the important modifications
produced by location and national life.

Beginning with the time when man longed for something more than
mere shelter and strove to make his habitation pleasing to the eye, the
author traces the art of construction as it was unfolded in Egypt and.
Nubia, India and Java, China and Japan. Then, crossing to the Western
hemisphere, which is never reached by some writers, he gives an outline
of its evolution among the Toltecs, Aztecs, and Incas. Returning to the
Old World, he takes up the record of the ruins in western Asia, Chaldea,
Assyria, and Persia. Thence the transition is easily made to Greece,
Etruria, and Rome; for, although there is an early period of classical
architecture — the Pelasgic, whose Cyclopean masonry and corbeled vault-
ing betray no foreign influence — the efflorescence of Greek art took place
many centuries after the Dorian invasion and subsequent to the Persian
conquest, when the Greeks had come into contact with many nations and
had assimilated whatever was of worth. They borrowed the fluted pillar
and molded lintel from the tombs of the Egyptians, but they increased the
proportional height of the column until it formed the stately Doric. The
colorettes of Nineveh and the Persian capitals possibly suggested the Ionic
order; the Greek architect, however, gave it graceful proportion. So, with
all the ideas that may be traced to outside sources, the beauty of the trans-
forming touch is clearly recognized, and it is readily acknowledged that for
nobility of purpose and an exquisite sense of harmony the architecture of
Athens is still unrivaled. " The artist bowed himself to his task w4th all
the unselfishness attendant on an act of worship. To look at Nature, see

* The Story of Architecture.
Co. Pp. 468. Price, $3.

VOL. LI. — 32

By Charles ThompBon Mathews, M. A. New York : D. Appleton &

41 8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

only the best, and make it immortal . . . may be justly called the main-
spring of all Hellenic thought, taste, and feeling."

Eome was indebted to Etruria and Greece for the elements of her archi-
tecture. From the former the arch, vault, and Tuscan order were derived,
while the latter contributed the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. In
amphitheaters, aqueducts, and baths she easily surpassed other nations,
while in the basilica or law court she furnished a design for Gothic cathe-
drals and the chui'ches of the Renaissance. Classical ideas prevailed over
all countries under Roman rule until the division of the empire. Subse-
quently the Byzantine style was evolved in the time of Constantine, who
spent immense sums in beautifying Byzantium and Constantinople. To
this we owe "one of the finest constructive inventions," the pendentive
system.

Early Christian architecture was exemplified in the basilicas, which
were built in the form of a Latin cross; the introduction of the apse and a
great increase of interior decoration were also marked features of the style.
This was followed by the round-arched Gothic or Romanesque.

Meanwhile with the Moorish dominion came the Saracenic style, which
may be studied in the mosques and tombs of the East and in the palaces
of Spain. Although contributing no new principle, " the world owes it a
debt of gratitude for its ornamental exuberance controlled by good taste."
Interiors were made exquisite with fretwork, mosaics, and jeweled inlays,
while minarets and domes of graceful proportions were beautified with
tiles "belonging to a lost ceramic art."

Gothic architecture is considered by Mr. Mathews in its two develop-
ments, ecclesiastical and secular, the different periods and characteristics
being very carefully and clearly explained.

Two chapters are devoted to the Renaissance, which the author has
treated in more detail in another volume, and the book concludes with an
examination of American architecture. The high buildings of the present
day are relegated to the province of engineering; most of them are "atten-
uated monstrosities." However, " when a whole block is devoted to such a
structure, and the design is treated pyramidally, the result may be stately
and imposing."

The work is amply illustrated, and a bibliography, index, and glossary
add much to its convenience and value.

In his recent work on economics Prof. H. J. Davenport makes large
use of the suggestive mode of imparting knowledge.* He asks suggestive
questions at the beginning of each chapter, review questions at the end,
and topical questions in the margins. In preparing the book he has evi-
dently had college students in mind for whom the instructor would be
available to supplement the text with lectures and answers to questions.
The vigorous thinker might dispense with such aid, but the average learner
is very often left by suggestive teaching encumbered with many hazy ideas
and exasperated with many unanswered queries. Our author generally
avoids short and precise definitions. He seeks to give an understanding of
the nature of utility, wealth, value, capital, etc., by leading the reader to
look at each from different points of view and thus to build up in his mind

* Outlines of Economic Theory. By Herbert Joseph Davenport. New York : The Macmillan Co.
Pp. 381, 8vo. Price, $2.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 419

a composite picture, as it were, of the thing or quality. In discussing wages
and profits he represents these two terms as essentially identical and makes
compensation for risk a separate thing. They are paid with the residue of
production after the service of land and capital are requited. The wage-
earner's assurance, he says, of receiving the approximate value of his prod-
uct rests solely upon the effectiveness of competition among employers.
His wage is, however, guaranteed from falling very low by his own power
of producing directly for the market. This in turn is limited by his lack
of capital. Prof. Davenport accounts for international trade like exchanges
between individuals on the theory that each party finds he can satisfy his
desires at less sacrifice by making one kind of goods and exchanging the
surplus for the surplus of the different kind of goods produced by the other
party. In measuring the " sacrifice " or cost, however, other than material
things often have weight. The latter portion of the work is devoted to
practical economic questions of the day. Here he discusses the competi-
tive system and the remedy which is claimed to lie in socialism. He sees a
promising field of usefulness for trades unions in establishing emergency
workshops between which exchanges could take place by barter. Other
topics that receive attention are State ownership of transportation and
other industries, the social function of the rich, race improvement, the eco-
nomic influence of fashion, taxation, various labor topics, and the cur-
rency. His general method of treating these matters is to point out the
conflicting considerations that bear upon them, but without assuming to
declare which outweighs the other. If the work resembled many others,
in presenting one view of each topic as the only correct one, it would be
much easier to describe, but we can not say that it would be as useful to its
readers.

While fully appreciating the value of Froebel's kindergarten work, Mr.
Hughes wishes teachers to realize that Froebel laid down principles of the
greatest worth in more advanced education.* He has accordingly, in this
volume, set forth the philosophy of Froebel's system, giving a chapter to
each of its most prominent features. Comparing Froebel with Pestalozzi
and Herbart, Mr. Hughes says : " Pestalozzi was instinctive and inspira-
tional, Froebel was philosophical and investigative. . . . Pestalozzi's pupils
were reproductive ; Froebel's were creative. . . . Herbart studied the child
to mold it ; Froebel studied it to guide it in its growth. . . . Herbart saw
the need of control much more clearly than the need of freedom ; Froebel
saw the harmony between freedom and control." Froebel's fundamental
law, according to our author, is that of unity or inner connection. " He
saw the unity between knowing, feeling, and willing, between analysis and
synthesis, between thought and life. He saw the unity or inner connection
of all created things so clearly, that he made the reconciliation of opposites
an important element of his system. He believed this law of unity, inner
connection, or vital interrelationship to be universal, and made it the fun-
damental law and the ultimate aim of all true educational effort." The
most fruitful of Froebel's principles was that of self-activity on the part of
the child — " the spontaneous effort of the child to make manifest to itself
and others the inner concejjtions and operations of its own mind." This is

* Froebel's Education Laws for All Teachers. By James L. Hughes. International Education
Series, Vol. XLI. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 890, 12mo. Pi-ice, $1.50.

420

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

very difPerent from action initiated by the teacher. While he insisted that
the child's individuality should be respected, he did not advocate giving the
child license to do wrong. The teacher should be able to transfer the child's
interest from what is wrong to what is right. He wished to banish coer-
cion ; he " would have the control of the mother and kindergarten so thor-
oughly in harmony with the spontaneity of the child as not to be felt by
it." He fully recognized the educational value of ijlay, and was the first to
use it systematically as a means of mental and moral training. His pro-
found sense of interrelationships made him a pioneer in the correlation of
studies. The same characteristic caused him to look beyond mere percep-
tion on the part of the learner, and to insist on apperception. Froebel was
an evolutionist before Spencer and Darwin, and he was the first to make
systematic use of manual training in distinction from industrial training.
The supreme aim of his educational system is character-building, and " he
applied precisely the same laws to the revelation of ideals of right, justice,
duty, and will that he applied in the general development of the child." In
stating Froebel's views Mr. Hughes makes large use of quotations from
Froebel's Education of Man and Autobiography, and from the Baroness
von Marenholz-Biilow's Reminiscences of Froebel. The book is eminently
one to stimulate the teacher's growth.

GENERAL NOTICES.

In Telepalhy and the Subliminal Self we
have an attempt to put certain occult phe-
nomena on a scientific basis.* The author,
rejecting all ideas of the supernatural, ap-
proaches his subject from the point of view
of a scientific observer who does not specu-
late with the intangible, but who has a defi-
nite theory, that shall account for certain
mysterious occurrences. The subjects he
takes up are Telepathy, Mesmerism and Hyp-
notism, Clairvoyance, Double or Multiplex
Personality, Somnambulism, Dreams, Autom-
atism, Planchette, Crystal-gazing, and Phan-
tasms. He explains most of these phenomena
by means of the subliminal self. This mys-
terious personality lies hidden away deep
down below our ordinary self, coming to the
surface only on special occasions, or when
called up without our knowledge by the hyp-
notizer or mesmerist. And it does not seem
to be given to every one thus to project this
inner being into the outer world of sense;
although apparently this other personality is
latent in us all, only the "sensitive" can

* Telepathy and the Subliminal Self. An Ac-
count of Recent Investigations regarding Ilypno-
tism, Automatism, Dreams, Phantasms, and Re-
lated Phenomena. By R. Osgood Mason, A. M.,
M. D. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Pp. 343, 12mo. Price, S1.50.

manifest it. The author deduces his theory
from a number of experiments and " experi-
ences " recorded by the English Society for
Psychical Research, the French therapeutic
hypnotists of La Salpetiere, and of Nancy,
and others, both physicians and laymen. The
chapters on Double or Multiplex Personality
and Natural Somnambulism give a number of
cases in which the subliminal self stands plain-
ly revealed. Some instances, however, might
very well be classed under temporary aberra-
tion of mind, as for example that of Ansel
Bourne the evangeUst, who, leaving his home
in Rhode Island, went to Norristown, Pa.,
and after keeping store there for two months
under the name of A. J. Brown, suddenly
awoke to find himself in a strange place.
One of the most curious chapters in the
book is that on Crystal-gazing, a species of
divination somewhat akin to clairvoyance.
The chapters on Phantasms sustain perhaps
most fully the author's theory of the sub-
liminal self. He does not pretend to go
over the whole ground of psychic phenom-
ena, leaving untouched, for example, the sub-
ject of the return of the departed, and other
spiritualistic manifestations. But " confining
ourselves within the limits as.=igned, if the
series of alleged facts which has been pre-
sented in the preceding chapters be true,

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

421

then we are in the presence of a momentous
reality which, for importance and value, has
not been exceeded, if indeed it has been ap-
proached, by any of the discoveries of mod-
ern times." However far the author's
theories and enthusiasms may carry him,
the book is an honest effort to explain some
more or less tangible occurrences in a ration-
alistic manner, free from superstitious cant.
It is a readable and interesting contribution
to the literature of the new psychology.

Two out of the forty-five volumes of the
Library of the World^s Best Literature *
have come to hand. This work, unique in
scope and character, aims to do for hterature
what the Encyclopasdia Britannlca has done
for the arts and sciences in general — to give
a survey of what the best poets, writers, and
thinkers of all ages have thought and felt
and expressed in artistic form, from the rec-
ords indehbly stamped on the baked brick
of the Assyrians, the characters traced on
the papyrus of the Eg3rptians and Chinese,
the pergamena of the Greeks and Romans,
the vellum of the medieeval monks, even
down to the type-written manuscript of the
present day. The plan, in the words of the
editor in chief, Mr. Charles Dudley Warner,
" is simple and yet it is novel. In its distinc-
tive features it differs from any compilation
that has yet been made. Its main purpose is
to present to American households a mass of
good reading. But it goes much beyond this ;
for in selecting this reading it draws upon
all literatures of all times and of every race,
and thus becomes a conspectus of the thought
and intellectual evolution of man from the
beginning. Another and scarcely less im-
portant purpose is the interpretation of this
literature in essays by scholars and authors
competent to speak with authority." Many
of the best critics, both in this country and
abroad, have taken part in the making of
the work. Among the American contributors
of note to the first two volumes may be
named Prof. Toy, of Harvard, who writes on
Accadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian Litera-
ture ; Mr. H. W. Mabie, on Addison ; Dr. H.
T. Peck, on J5sop and Alciphron ; Mr. R.
Burton, on Amiel ; Prof. E. S. Holden, on

* A Library of the World's Best Literature,
Ancient and Modern. In 45 vohmies. New York :
The International Society. Price, cloth, $3 a vol-
ume ; half morocco, $4 a volume.

Arago ; Rabbi Gottheil, on the Arabian Nights
and Arabic Literature ; and Prof. Woodberry,
on Matthew Arnold. The selections thus
introduced by critical and biographical es-
says, and representing the author at his best,
are carefully chosen with reference not only
to their literary quality, but also to their
interest as reading matter, for "the work
aims to suit a great variety of tastes, and
thus to commend itself as a household com-
panion for any mood and any hour." The
names are arranged alphabetically, for ready
reference. The volumes are handsomely
bound in half morocco, with clear print on
good paper, and illustrated with portraits
of the authors, colored plates, and photo-
gravures.

Prof. Baldu'in^s book on School Manage-
ment is devoted to the practical side fo the
subject.* It takes up the several divisions
of educational work systematically, and gives
helpful advice and suggestions on a vast
number of topics in each division. Pupil
improvement is the keynote of the work,
and the author aims to show how this can
be secured through better educational condi-
tions and facilities, better school and college
organization and correlation, and the most
efficient methods of teaching, and how
school government and class management
can be made educative. Among the elements
of educative governing power he names, first,
character. " Be what you wish your pupils to
become," he says. Next he places culture,
and charges the teacher to "cherish the
spirit of mastery and broad culture." Other
elements whose importance he explains are
pupil insight, teaching power, heart power,
will power, system, tact, and bearing. Of
the possible incentives to school work he
points out which are low motives, which
higher, and which the best. He shows how
school regulations can have an educative
effect, and what punishments operate to help
and what to harm the pupil. In other chap-
ters he gives advice as to school hygiene,
means and methods of administration, meth-
ods of teaching the usual school studies,
ways of conducting partly graded schools,
etc. He is a strong advocate of oral teach-

* School Management and School Methods.
By Joseph Baldwin. International Education Se-
ries, Vd. XL. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
Pp. 395, 12mo. Price, $1.50.

422

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing, by which he means something like the
Socratic method, with the use of objects for
some studies. Prof. Baldwin's teachings are
everywhere positive and emphatic, and he
ignores any possible difference of opinion on
such subjects as corporal punishment, free
text-books, and coeducation. The book is
intended to be used for systematic study by
classes of teachers, and each chapter is ac-
cordingly divided into sections and subdi-
vided into paragraphs, each with a number
and a heading. There is also a syllabus to
each chapter, and a list of topical questions
at the end of the volume.

Prof. Wiley has brought to a close his
carefully prepared treatise on Agricultural
Analysis with a volume devoted to agricul-
tural products.* The first chapter relates
to methods of preparing samples by grind-
ing, drying, incineration, and extraction.
Twenty-six forms of apparatus for these op-
erations are here figured. The first group
of substances for which processes of analysis
are given consists of the sugars and starches.
The specific gravity, the polariscopic, and
the reduction methods for sugar analysis are
each represented by a number of processes.
The author has not undertaken to select the
best practice for dealing with every problem,
as he has not been writing solely for stu-
dents, but more for trained analysts who are
competent to select for themselves from sev-
eral carefully described modes. A variety
of miscellaneous processes for sugar analysis
are also described. The determination of
starch requires less space, and from this the
author passes to metiods for separating and
determining sugar, starch, and other carbo-
hydrates in crude or manufactured agricul-
tural products. The fats and oils form the
next large group of substances treated, and
considerable attention is given to their phys-
ical properties, as well as to their chemical
behavior. Methods of estimating nitroge-
nous bodies follow ; dairy products have a
section by themselves, and a considerable
number of substances are grouped as mis-
cellaneous. These include cereals, fodders,
meats, fruits, vegetables, tannins, tobacco,

* Principles and Practice of AKricultiu-al
Analysis. Vol. III. By Harvey W. Wiley. Eas-
ton, Pa. : Chemical Publishing Company. Pp.
666, 8\-o. Price, $3.75 ; complete work, g9.50.

tea, coffee, and fermented beverages. In
dealing with meats several methods of arti-
ficial digestion and of determining nutritive
values are described. The volume is in-
dexed, and is illustrated with one hundred
and twenty-five figures of apparatus. A list
of authorities cited is given at the end of
each division of the work.

In his Laboratory Practice for Beginners
in Botany, Prof. William A. Setchdl has
furnished a guide for the application of the
laboratory method to the study of plants
(Macniillan, 90 cents). . He takes up the
seed first, because " it is not only readily
obtained, readily studied, and its meaning
clear, but it is also one of the most con-
venient starting points for a study of the
life history." His first directions will indi-
cate his method. " Take the ripened pod of
a bean plant and, splitting it open, notice :

1. That the seeds (beans) are attached along
one edge of each valve (or half) of the pod.

2. That each bean is attached to the pod by
a short stalk, the funiculus. 3. Make a
sketch of a valve of the bean pod with its
inclosed beans, representing and labeling
the parts." Drawing is a constant require-
ment throughout the course. In the ad-
vanced lessons questions are asked which it
is not practicable to answer otherwise than
from consulting books. There is a brief
appendix of suggestions to students and one
more extended of suggestions to teachers, in
which reading for each chapter is specified
and various directions as to material and de-
tails of instruction are given. Although the
author says that his book is intended for the
higher grades of primary schools or for sec-
ondary schools, he has apparently made no
effort to keep his language within the vo-
cabulary understood by children, hence we
doubt that the book would be available be-
low the secondary grade. There are no
illustrations.

Robert the Bruce and the Struggle for
Scottish Independence, by Sir Herbert Maxwell^
Bart. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1897,
$1.50), is one of the scholarly volumes of the
Heroes of the Nations Series. It deals with
the making of Scotland. The first five chap-
ters give a short survey of the country up to
the year 1305, a period of internal discords,
and feuds with England because of the latter's

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

423

claim to the overlordship. The greater por-
tion of the book recounts the deeds of Robert
the Bruce, the national hero. His coronation
as King of Scots, in 1306, marked an epoch
in Scottish history. Become king of a coun-
try that was claimed by the English Edward,
and surrounded by only a small band of faith-
ful followers, Bruce virtually had to con-
quer his realm foot by foot, until the decisive
battle of Bannockburn, in 1314, forced the
English to acknowledge his sovereignty. The
many exciting adventures of the landless
king, and his daring and personal bravery,
are well set forth in some of the most inter-
esting chapters of the book.

Among the papers submitted in competi-
tion for the Hodgkius Fund prizes and pub-
lished by the Smithsonian Institution is one
on Atmospheric Actinometry^ by E. Duclaux.
The chemical radiations of the sun do not
behave within our atmosphere in the same
way as the heat and light rays. This is in-
dicated by the differing effects on the pho-
tographer's plate on days equally luminous,
and by the rapid progress of vegetation in
high latitudes as compared with temperate
regions. The investigations which M. Du-
claux describes are based upon determina-
tions of the oxidation of solutions of oxalic
acid exposed to the sunshine under a wide
variety of conditions.

In the introduction to The Story of the
Birds, by James Newton Baskctt, M. A., As-
sociate Member of the American Ornitho-
logical Union (New York : D. Appleton and
Company, 1897, 65 cents), one of Apple-
tons' Home-Reading Books, the editor of the
series. Dr. W. T. Harris, points out the two
movements of the new education — original
observation and verifying by experiment on
the part of the pupil, and systematic home
reading to supplement class-room instruction.
" A library of home reading should contain
books that stimulate to self^activity and
arouse the spirit of inquiry. The books
should treat of methods of discovery and
evolution. All Nature is unified by the dis-
covery of the law of evolution." In keeping
with the aims here set forth, The Story of the
Birds gives a brief account of the evolution
of the bird, as far as such can be traced by
means of the present characteristics of the
feathered race. Beginning with the bird's

fore leg, popularly known as the wing, which
is an important factor in determining its past
history, the author goes on to the discussion
of the bird's raiment, its outer wraps and its
underwear, its "frills and fui-belows." We
have chapters devoted to the wooing and
mating of birds, to nest-building and nesting
habits, to birds' eggs and the rearing of the
young. Various habits of grown-up birds
are touched upon, their expedients in getting
a living, their tools and tasks, the way they
go to bed, and their manner of travel. In
the last two chapters hints are given for
recognizing and classifying the different spe-
cies. Scientifically accurate, yet free from
technicalities forbidding to the uninitiated,
the book, written in a pleasing style, recom-
mends itself not only to the young student,
but also to the general reader who, as a lover
of birds, wants more than a passing acquaint-
ance with them. It is profusely illustrated.
An analysis of the chapters, with study hints,
and an index, add to its usefulness.

In a pamphlet entitled A New Dairy In-
dustry a process for preparing sterilized milk
for infants is described by James Fred. Sarg
(the author, Kempsville, Va., 80 cents). Mr.
Sarg writes for the farmer, who, he says,
is best situated for preparing a suitable in-
fants' milk and should have the profit of the
industry. Whether discoursing of the oper-
ation of milking, the mortality of infants, or
the details and apparatus of the process that
he describes, Mr. Sarg writes with vigor and
an evident mastery of his subject. His pam-
phlet is illustrated with figures of machines
and other appliances.

An inaugural discourse before the Royal
Academy of Sciences of Havana, on the
study of spectroscopy {Introduccion al Estii-
dio de la Espectroscopia), by Dr. Gaston
Alonso Cuadrado, of the medical corps of the
Spanish army, presents a clear and carefully
elaborate summary of the theory and prop-
erties of light as illustrated by the latest
discoveries, including a brief account of the
Rontgen rays.

Rules for Regulating Nomenclature in
Entomological Work, compiled by Lord
Walsingham and John Hartley Durrani, of
Merton Hall, Thetford, England, and pub-
lished by Longmans & Co. (20 cents), have
been prepared with a view to securing a

424

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

strict application of the law of priority.
One of the objects of the authors has been
to define a method by which the recognition
of antecedent work can be consistently se-
cured. They propose that this rule be desig-
nated as " Merton rules " for convenience of
reference.

Convinced that physical science awaits
its next greatest elucidations from the side
of biology, Dr. Ernst Mach has made from
time to time various researches on sensation,
the results of which he states in a volume
under the title ConiributioTis to the Analysis

of the Sensations (Open Court Publishing
Company, $1.25). He here discusses tlie
sp.ace sensations of the eye in connection
with the innervation of that organ and the
physiological aspects of sensations of time
and sensations of tone. The conclusions
which he has arrived at on these topics
show, he affirms, that " there is no rift be-
tween the psychical and the physical, no
within and vnthont, no sensation to which an
outward, different tiling corresponds. There
is but one kind of elerrifnU, out of which
this supposititious within and without is
formed."

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins,
ReportB, etc. Cornell University : Nos. 181, 132.
Plums, Celery. — Hatch, MasBachusetts Agricul-
tural College : Nos. 44-47. Tests of Fruits and
Seeds, Fertilizers, the American Toad, Tobacco.—
Wichigan State Agricultural College; Nos. 141-
144. Forage Crops, Wheat, Fruit Teste, Vege-
tables.—New York: Nos. 114, 117-124, with Popu-
lar Editions of the same. Many subjects.— Ohio:
No. 74. Fifteenth Annual Report. Pp. 42 ; Nos.
77, 78. Destructive Insects, Corn. — Oregon: No.
44. Sugar Beets. Pp. 48.— Purdue University :
Special and Commercial Fertilizers. Pp. 8, with
Sheet Table. — Tennessee State Board of Health:
Bulletin, May, 1897. Pp. 16.— United States De-
partment of Agriculture : Studies of American
Grasses. Pp. 20, with plates: Some Common
Bird- in their Relation to Agriculture. Bj F. E. L.
Beal. Pp. 40.— North Dakota Climate and Crop
Service. March, 1S97. Pp. 6.— University of
Illinois : Nos. 47, 48. Broom-Corn Smut. San
Jose Seals. Pp. 60 and 26.

Baillet, Thomas M., Springfield, Mass. Manual
Training : Its Educational Value. Pp. 18.

Bayliss, Clara Kern. In Brook and Bayou ;
or, Life in the Still Waters. New York : D. Ap-
pleton & Co. Pp. 180, with plates. 60 cents.

Bulletins, Prqpeedings, Serials, etc. Academy
of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia : January,
Febniary, and March, 1S97. Pp. 165, with Splates.
— American Microscopical Society : Nineteenth
Annual Meeting, August, 1896. Pp. 413.— Co-
lumbia University Bulletin, March, 1897. Pp. 72.
Macmdlan Co. — Davenport Academy of Natural
Sciences. Pp. :W2.— Minnesota Botanical Studies.
Conway MacMillan, editor. Parts X and XI.
Pp. 340. with 42 plates.— Public Libraries : Inter-
national Conference number. May, 1897. Pp. 96.
library Bureau, Chicago.— Revista de la Instruc-
ci6n Publica Mexicana. Semi-monthly. Mexico.
Pp. 32.— Society Neuchatelaise de Geographic
(Neuchatel Geographical Society). Neiichatel,
Switzerland. Pp. 402.— United States Depart-
ment of Labor. Pp. 1:30.

Cooke, Frances E. England (History for Young
Readers). New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp.
253. 50 cents.

Crehore, A. C , and Squi'^e, G. O. The Syn-
chronograph. A New Method of Transmitting
IntelliTCnce by the Alternating Current. Pp. 31,
with plates.

Demoor, Jean, Mas art, Jean, and Vaudcr
Velde, Kmile. L'Evolution Regressive en Biologie
et en Sociologie (Retrogressive Evolution in Bi-
ology and Sociology). Paris : Felix Alcan. Pp.
324.

Dixon. D. B. The Mechanical Arts Simplified.
Chicago : Lair & Lee. Pp. 497.

Equitist, The. Fortnightly. VoL I, No. 1.
W. E. Brokaw, Editor. New York : Estclla
Bachman Brokaw, publisher. Pp. 8. 5 cents.

Fuertes, James H Water and Public Health.
The Relative Purity of Waters from Different
Sources. New York : John Wiley & Sons. Pp.
75. $1.50.

Hubrecht, A. A. W. The Descent of the Pri-
mates. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp.
4L $1.

Kingsley, J. S. In Memoriam, Edward
Drinker Cope. Pp. 10 of text, with 0 portraits.
Philadelphia : American Naturalist.

Kroeker, K. F. Germany (History for Young
Readers). New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp.
251. 60 cents.

Logan, John A., Jr. In Joyfid Russia. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 275. $3 50.

Mason, William P. Water Supply, considered
principally from a Sanitary Standpoint. New
York : John Wiley & Sons. Pp .504. $5.

Merrill, George P. Stones for Building and
Decoration. Second edition, revisied and en-
larged. New York : John Wiley & Sons. Pp.
516. $5.

Moore, D. R., and Stanley, N. B. A Treatise
on the Philosophy of Art. Pp 23.

Morris, Robert T., M. D. Lectures on Appen-
dicitis and Notes on other Subjects. Second
edition, revised and enlarged. New York : G.
P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 173.

Proseer, Charles S. Comparison of the Car-
boniferous and Permian Formations of Nebraska
and Kansas. Chicago : University of Chicago.
Pp. 41.

Reports. United States Commissioner of Fish
and Fisheries (John J. Brice). Pp. 145.— White
Pine Timber Supplies. Letter from the Secretary
of Agriculture. Pp. 20. — Zo01oj.'ical Society of
Philadelphia : Twentieth Annual Report of the
Board of Directors. Pp. 16.

Reprints. Boas, Franz: The Decorative Art
of the Indians of the North Pacific Coast. Pp.
.54.— Chaille, Prof. Stanford E. : The Practice of
Medicine as a Mouev-making Occupation. Pp.
10.— Hoffman, Walter J.: On Native Indian Pic-
tography. Pp. 10.— Lined, Martin L.: Insects col-
lected by Dr. Abbott on the Seychelles and other
Islands, with Descrii)ti(m8 of Nine New Species
of Coleoptera. Pp. 20.— Mason, Otis Tufton : In-
fluence of Environment upon Human Industries or
Arts. Pp. 20.— Mason. Prof. W. P.: Sanitary Prob-
lems connected with Municijial Water Supply. Pp.
21.— Mooney, James : The Ghost-Dance Religion,
and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. Washington:
Bureau of Ethnology. Pp. .500.— Mercer, Henry
0. : The Finding of the Fossil Sloth at Big Bone

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

425

Cave, Tennessee. Pp. 39 —Richmond, Charles
W. : Birds collected by Dr. W. L. Abbott in
Madagascar, with Descriptions of Three New
Species. Pp. 20. — Rotch, A. Lawrence : On ob-
taining Meteorological Records in the Upper Air
by Means of Kites and Balloons. Pp. 8 — Ratter,
Cloudsley : A Collection of Fishes obtained in
Swatow, China, by Miss Adele M. Fields. Pp. 36.
— Schuchen, Charles: On the Fossil Phyllopod
Genera Dipeltis and Protocaris of the Family
Apodidoe. Pp. 9, with plate.

Revue Diplomatique et Coloniale (Diplomatic
and Colonial Review). Bimonthly summary of
external poliiics. Henri Pensa, Director. Vol.1,
No. 1, March, 1897. Paris : Bureau des Revues,
19 Rue des Saints Peres. Pp. 64. 12 fr. .50 a
year.

Sands, Manie. The Opposites of the Universe,
Part IV. Ethological and Egological Opposites.
A Discourse about Conduct. New York : Peter
Eckler, .35 Fulton St. Pp. 89. 50 cents.

Schneider, \. Reagents and Reactions known
by the Names of their Authors. Revised and en-

larged by Dr. Julius Altschul. Translated by
Richard Fischer. Milwaukee : Pharmaceutical
Review Publishing Company. Pp. 82.

Smith, William Benjamin, Tulane University.
The Origin and Significance of Disease. New
Orleans. Pp. 2.5.

Solly, S. Edwin. A Handbook of Medical
Climatology. Philadelphia and New York : Lea
Brothers & Co. Pp. 470. $4.

Thruston, Gates P. The Antiquities of Ten-
nessee and the Adjacent States. Second edition,
with New Chapters, Notes, and Ilhistrations.
Cincinnati : The Robert Clarke Company. Pp.
369, with plates. $4.

United States Treasury Department. Notice
to Mariners for April, 1897. Pp. 16.

Walker, Judge J. C. Waco, Texas. What ia
the Unit of Life ? Pp. 16.

Ward, Lester F. Dynamic Sociology, as
based upon Statical Sociology and less Complex
Sciences. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 2 vols.
Pp. 706 and 690.

x'AQxxitnXs xrt ^ci^ttcje.

Dr. Ebonezer Emmons and the Olcnellns.

— During the geological survey of the State
of New York which, commenced in 1836,
was almost the first of the geological surveys
that were entered upon and properly prose-
cuted m the United States, there was a
marked difference of opinion between Prof.
Ebenezer Emmons, of Williams College, who
had charge of the portion of the survey that
embraced the rocks of western Massachu-
setts and the upper waters of the Hudson,
and his associate geologists, which finally ter-
minated in a bitter personal antagonism and
almost social ostracism of Dr. Emmons. The
point at issue was mainly the relationship in
respect to position and age of the rocks in
question, especially those typified by the
strata of Greylock Mountain and the Hoosic
Valley. The position taken by the majority
of the associate geologists on the survey was
that the so-called Silurian system of rocks
constituted the basis of the fossiliferous
rocks of New York and inferentially of the
whole country, and that the so-called " Pots-
dam sandstone " was the lowest fossiliferous
member of this system, and in fact marked
the dawn of life upon the planet. Dr. Em-
mons, on the contrary, claimed that beneath
the oldest member of the Silurian system
there was an older and extensively developed
system of fossiliferous rocks, to which he
gave the name " Taconic," and exhibited an

entirely new and characteristic fossil not
before recognized or described, and which
received the name of " Olenellus." For all this
Dr. Emmons received little or no credit, and
among geologists was regarded as visionary
and something of a humbug. But time has
at last brought its revenges, for, at the last
meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science (Liverpool, Septem-
ber, 1896), Mr. J. E. Marr, F. R. S., President
of the Geological Section, in an address re-
viewing the recent progress in this depart-
ment of science, took occasion to speak of
the " Olenellus " — whose first discovery he
attributed to Dr. Emmons — as characterizing
a zone of life in rocks much older than the
Silurian system, and as " furnishing us with
a datum line from which we can work back-
ward," and possibly prove the existence " of
a fauna of a date anterior to the formation
of the Olenellus beds." So that Dr. Em-
mons, in place of being wrong in his obser-
vations and deductions in 1845, did really
find the fossil he described, and rightly lo-
cated the rock containing it in the geological
horizon ; and thus was entitled to take the
lead at that time over all his American and
European colleagues.

Koch's Latest Tuberculin. — Since the
premature announcement of Dr. Koch's con-
sumption cure, some six years ago, the doc-

426

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tor has been steadily at work endeavoring to
perfect his method, and it is now announced
that he has succeeded in eliminating those
irritating substances which were so trouble-
some in the early preparations. From his
observations Koch concluded that the affected
patient gradually acquired a degree of im-
munity through the absorption of certain
constituents of the bacilli themselves. This
immunizing, however, usually occurs too late
in the disease to save the patient. In or-
der to collect these substances, whatever
they may be, he dries and triturates the dead
bodies of the bacilli, and from the resultant
powder makes two extracts. The first of
these is opalescent, and is practically iden-
tical with his original serum. He calls it
tuberculin 0 (TO). The remaining sedi-
ment is again dried, digested with water, and
then centrifuged, and this is continued until
the water is perfectly clear. These later
extracts contain the essential immunizing
principle which he calls tuberculin R (TR),
and with which such encouraging results are
said to have been obtained.

Some Jfotes on a Dust Storm, — Apropos
of our recent article on Dust Storms, we have
received the following item from Mr. W. S.
Jackman: "On the 19th of February, 1896
{Ash Wednesday, by eternal fitness), a remark-
able dust storm descended upon the city of
Chicago. As the ground had been complete-
ly covered with snow to the depth of several
inches a day or two previous, it was an easy
matter to form some estimate of the quan-
tity of dust that fell. The storm began in
the evening and lasted several hours. The
next morning, by selecting suitable open
areas that were likely to be free from eddies
and local currents, an average per square
yard of r34 ounces of dust was obtained.
This was gathered by scraping up the snow
to the depth the dust had penetrated — about
one inch — and, after melting it, the water
was evaporated and the dust dried. The
amount thus collected measured 2'45 cubic
inches. At this rate the quantity of dust
deposited upon a square mile would be about
129-6 tons; the volume would be on the
same area 4,352 cubic feet, equal to a pile
about thirty-four feet long, sixteen feet wide,
and eight feet deep. On being strongly heat>
ed in a clay crucible the dust turned reddish

brown and lost twelve per cent of its weight.
The microscope showed it to be largely com-
posed of irregular and rounded quartz grains.
As the storm began after dark, people who
were unfortunate enough to be caught in it
were at a loss for a time to know just what
was the matter. In many instances nothing
unusual was suspected until, entering their
homes, their smeared and blackened counte-
nances called forth an unwontedly hilarious
greeting. After the snow melted, in many in-
stances the sidewalks were so covered with
the slimy mud as to need scraping and
washing. The storm seemed to come from
the northwest, and was accompanied by a
moderate gale."

The Law of Mississippi Floods. — An im-
portant point in Mr. James L. Greenleaf's
study in the Engineering Magazine of the
Times and Causes of Western Floods is
the topographical division of the country
drained by the Mississippi into several large
water sheds, covering a total area of
1,259,000 squai'e miles. Although this topo-
graphical division has been wrought by
natural causes, the consideration of the
water sheds must be combined with that of
climatic areas for the purposes of the pres-
ent study. All the rivers tributary to the
Mississippi show a decided tendency to low
water in the autumn, the southern waters
beginning to fall from a high stage in June
and the northern in July. All begin to rise
from low water in winter — the southern
tributaries earlier, and the northern ones
later. Two freshets occur during the year
in each of the large tributary basins. The
coincidence of the highest stage in more
than two of the large branches is extremely
rare, and hence it is an exception for the
main river to be subjected to the enormously
congested state which would otherwise result.
The varying st.ages of the Mississippi accu-
rately reflect the fluctuations of rainfall and
of temperature which occur upon its tribu-
tary basins, and these are followed in detail
in the author's paper. The Mississippi being
virtually created by the union near one point
of three large rivers — the Ohio, the Mis-
souri, and the upper Mississippi — these three
branches, of which the Ohio is regarded as
the most important, naturally stamp their
characteristics upon it to a very marked de-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIFXCE.

427

gree, and it bears these features through the
entire course to the Gulf. The large tributaries
farther south modify but can not control their
overwhelming influence. The two periods
of flood characteristic of each of these large
tributaries have an important bearing upon
the continuance of high water in the main
river, pouring their floods in one after the
other as the force of the preceding flood is
beginning to be spent, so that the tendency
is for the main river to flow in strong volume
until well into the summer. The river is a
result; its tributaries are the cause. Viewed
broadly, a general similarity of behavior is
observed ; yet each feeder of the main river
has its special cycle of alternations between
high and low water; each great line of
drainage has its special feature of flow.
Were the secondary watercourses followed,
the vast Mississippi water shed would be seen
covered by countless brooks and rivulets,
each affected by local conditions, yet all
obeying a few fundamental laws, "which
gather the waters as in the hollow of the
hand and pour them through a single chan-
nel to the sea."

The Tarbiniai — In a recent issue of
Industries and Iron is a detailed description
of the Turbiuia, the vessel which recently
attained the highest velocity ever reached by
a steam vessel, an average of 32f knots on
the measured mile. As her name suggests,
she is fitted with steam turbines instead of
the ordinary form of engine. The Turbinia
was built by a syndicate formed especially
for the purpose of testing the application of
the compound steam turbine to marine pro-
pulsion. She is 100 feet in length, 9 feet
beam, and 44^ tons displacement. The
original turbine fitted in her was designed to
develop upward of 1,500 actual horse power
at a speed of 2,500 revolutions per minute.
The boiler is of the water-tube type, for 225
pounds per square inch working pressure.
The hull is built of steel plates, varying in
thickness from -j^ to -^ of an inch. A
curious difiiculty was encountered in the
early trials. It was noticed that a great deal
of power was being lost somewhere, and it
finally turned out that, owing to the high
speed of the propeller, what is known as
cavitation was produced — that is, the screw
tended to scoop out a hole in the water and

run in this, thus using up a part of the ener-
gy simply in maintaining this cavity. This
difficulty has been, to some extent, overcome
by altering the pitch of the blades, but it Is
believed that further experimentation will
result in overcoming this fault more com-
pletely, and hence make a still higher rate of
speed possible.

German Colonies for Unemployed Work-
men,— The fii'st of the German Arbeiter
Kolonie, or refuges for workmen out of em-
ployment, one of which has been described
in the Atlantic Monthly by Mr. Josiah Flynt,
was established by Pastor von Bodelschwingh
at Bielefeld, Westphalia, about 1882. There
are now twenty- seven such colonies in Ger-
many, where men able and willing to work
may go, and at least pay their way till some
more profitable labor is found. Connected
with them is an estate near Berlin, where
men who have proved deserving may acquire
a piece of land and eventually set up homes
of their own. Applicants for help must
promise to stay in the colony at least four
weeks, and have the privilege of staying
longer if no work has been found for them
outside ; while the managers are on the look-
out for work for them, in order that they
may go and other out-of-works may take
their place. The colonies are supported by
contributions and the proceeds of the work
of the colonists. Mr. Flynt applied at the
Berlin colony at Tegel, and, on complying
with the conditions required, was assigned
to a section and set to making straw cases
for wine bottles. He was expected to work
to the best of his ability and to show respect
to the officials — a Hausvater and a fore-
man, the only outsiders connected with the
institution. The day was spent according
to a prescribed routine, beginning at five
o'clock in the morning and ending at nine
o'clock at night, while Sunday was given to
church and rest. Every man received a
mai-k, or twenty-five cents, a day, and some,
working by the piece or at special work,
made a mark and a half. Out of these
earnings, eighteen cents a day were taken
for food and lodging. Several men had
credit in the colony treasury. The food was
simple but abundant, and the beds were
fairly comfortable. A store was opened on
Saturday afternoons, where the colonists

428

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

could buy tobacco and various useful little
things. Newcomers were confidentially ex-
horted and admonished on Sunday after-
noons by the pastor. Forty-nine men were
in the colony during Mr. Flynt's stay. In
winter there are more than three hundred.
The colonies are believed to be useful in dis-
tinguishing the deserving unemployed from
the undeserving, and helpful to the former.

Diffnsion of an Aneient Symbol. — The

swastika — a design resembling two Z's, nor-
mal or reversed, so arranged as to cross one
another — is described and studied as " the
earliest known symbol " in a paper by Thomas
Wilson in the Proceedings of the United States
National Museum. It appears in various
shapes, derived from the original, and is the
parent of various scroll forms and ornaments.
Its origin and original bearing or application
are lost in the darkness of remote antiquity.
It denotes something good, and is an orna-
ment. It is found in the far East and the
classical East, in all the cities of Troy, in
Egypt, Algeria, and Ashantee, in the ancient
Grecian countries, in western Europe from
the bronze age down, on ancient coins, in
prehistoric America, and among the North
American Indians. Allied to it are meanders,
ogees, and spirals ; and associated with it
are various prehistoric objects in both hemi-
spheres. In America, the swastika of the
mound builders, or of the oldest civilization
we know here, is similar in every respect, ex-
cept material, to that of the still living Navajo
and Pueblo Indians. The two curious facts
are emphasized that the swastika had an
existence in America prior to any historic
knowledge we have of communication be-
tween the two hemispheres ; and that it is
continued in America, and used at the pres-
ent day, while the knowledge of it has long
since died out in Europe. Mr. Wilson's
chief study is to find how this symbol was
carried from one region to another. While
the theory that like features of life originate
naturally at like stages in the development
of different peoples, and the one that they
are carried by migrating hordes, may both be
true to a certain extent, neither should be
insisted upon as exclusive. Mr. Wilson
maintains that the swastika was carried, as
Bome other customs may have been, by teach-
ing, or by the transmission of the idea from

one country to another — much in the same
way as Greek art and architecture have come
down to us — rather than by independent in-
vention or by migration of peoples.

Richard Haklnyt.— The Hakluyt Society
has recently celebrated in London the fiftieth
anniversary of its work in publishing vol-
umes, usually containing the texts of travelers
and voyagers in all parts of the world, which
were previously not known to the public.
It is named. Sir Clements Markham says,
after Richard Hakluyt, who was bom in
1553, acquired a love of geography from an
uncle of the same name, and assiduously
sought and read every narrative of adven-
ture he could procure, mastering six foreign
languages in order to be able to do so. He
strove to remedy the ignorance of seamen
of the scientific branch of their profession,
and to supply the absence of records for
want of which important voyages and travels
were allowed to -fall into oblivion, with a
measure of success that has given him rank
among the benefactors of their country. He
was irrepressible in seeking new informa-
tion. He rode two hundred miles to have
an interview with the last survivor of Master
Hose's Expedition to America in 1536. He
saved numerous journals and narratives from
destruction, and the deeds they record from
oblivion. His work gave a stimulus to colo-
nial and narrative enterprise, and inspired
literature. Shakespeare owed much to Prin-
cipal Navigators, his chief book. As the
years passed on, he, according to his own
quaint language, continued " to wade still
further and further in the sweat studie of
the historic of cosmographie," and achieved
his great task, which was " to incorporate
into one body the torn and scattered limbs
of our ancient and late navigations by sea."
He declared " geography and chronology to
be the sun and moon, the right eye and the
left, of all history." When he died, Novem-
ber 23, 1616, he was Archdeacon of West-
minster, and had reached his sixty-fourth
year.

Prlmitiye Traveling. — Of the motives
and lengths of the journeys of primitive man
Mr. 0. T. Mason observes, in his monograph
on Primitive Travel and Transportation, that
birds of passage made formerly longer jour-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

429

neys than men, and the length of their mi-
grations in time and distance was equaled,
perhaps, by those of fishes and marine ani-
mals. The simple motives that governed
these movements were the same as consti-
tuted the incentive to human movements
over the earth. The coming and going of
birds and marine creatures are likewise the
occasion of an enormous amount of human
bustle and running about. Most of the do-
mestication of animals is prompted by a de-
sire to have them at our doors, and to make
us independent of their migrations. Land
animals, as well as birds and sea animals,
were often obliged by natural conditions to
travel great distances, and men followed
them in order to live upon them. In every
tribe there are stories of travelers who made
long voyages and returned. Dr. Boas says
that the myths of the northwest coast of
America point across the Pacific. Besides
the traditions that fix upon the present habi-
tat as the primal home, there is a class of
migration myths. The perfection of devices
also prolongs travel. The East Greenlanders
journey around to West Greenland to get
snuff, and will consume four years in a sin-
gle excursion there and back, often, accord-
ing tc Nansen, remaining no longer than an
hour at the trading station before taking up
their homeward march. The Manchus and
Manyarg, who navigate the Sungari River,
spend from eight days to a month, according
to the destination, in their journeys; the
Turki, near East Cape, from four to six
months. According to Seton Karr, the tribes
of northwest British Columbia were afraid
to quit their tribal territory, but now Indians
are willing to accompany the white man
through regions that are as strange and un-
known to them as to him. The extent and
direction of aboriginal journeys have been
in some places cut off, and in others greatly
stimulated, by contact with the Caucasian
race.

Utilization of Wind Power. — A summary
of the conclusions reached by M. Maximilian
Plessuer from a study of the economies of
wind as a source of power is given by M.
Henry de Varigny in a paper on Air and
Life, published by the Smithsonian Institu-
tion. The irregularity of the wind forms
the chief objection to placing reliance upon

it, but much depends upon localities. There
are places and large regions where it is
fairly regular. It seldom fails at the sea-
shore, and the trade winds are nearly con-
stant; while in most parts of the globe it
becomes more regular as the altitude in-
creases. Hence, upon the whole, a consid-
erable part of the world is well suited for
investigations upon the best methods of
deriving power from the winds. The first
requisites of a wind-power machine are some
sort of a motor driven by the wind, and an
accumulator to store the energy and yield it
at the required moment. Dismissing the old
windmill and the asolian wheel as not fully
coming up to the mark, M. Plessuer turns to
sails as affording a possible solution of the
problem. " The utilization of the power of
the winds," he writes, " and its transforma-
tion into mechanical work are only possible
by means of sailing vehicles, driven by wind
upon a circular railway, the power generated
by such rotation being transmitted to an
axle and thence to machinery." On this
railway a circular train, made of small cars
coupled together, each carrying a mast and
two sails at right angles with each other, is
driven by the wind. The sails are auto-
matically trimmed, and automatically also
they expand or contract, or rather take in
the wind or withdraw from it. As long as
the wind blows the train continues rotating,
and if it is connected with a central axle the
latter may work dynamos and charge elec-
trical accumulators. A similar apparatus
might be arranged in water, boats taking
the place of the cars, and, since the wind
power is transformed into electricity, the
latter may be stored and kept in reserve, or
transferred to a distance to perform ten,
twenty, or fifty miles away any work that
may be required.

" Onr Friends the Monkeys." — Why,
asks M. Paul Megniu in La Nature, should
we not call monkeys our friends ? They
have been calumniated and had all sorts of
evil qualities attributed to them, because
when we make pets of them we encourage
and cultivate their odd traits, and spoil them
as children are spoiled. All monkeys have
not equal degrees of intelligence, but most
of them are capable of a development equal
to if not above that possible to any other

43°

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

animals. They love to learn, and the imi-
tative instinct natural to tliem permits them
to execute all sorts of feats with agility.
They learn tricks more readily than dogs,
and, although not manifesting so hearty good
will toward the public, execute them with
marvelous agility and grace. At Hagen-
beck's establishment in Hamburg, where
two hundred monkeys enjoy complete liberty
of play in the great rotunda, they are given
multitudes of children's toys, balls, hoops,
wheelbarrows, joiner's benches, etc., and
leam to manage them all without any one
showing them how. In the center of the
rotunda is an immense grain hopper, from
which the seeds, corn, walnuts, chestnuts,
apple quarters, etc., run into a trough when
a wheel at the top is turned. The manage-
ment of this hopper did not have to be ex-
plained to our friends the monkeys. While
one of them turns the wheel, the others,
sitting around the trough, enjoy the delica-
cies as they come down, till the one at the
wheel, thinking his turn has come, stops,
gives the signal for some one to take his
place, and comes down to get his share.
What other animals are capable of so intel-
ligent an initiative ?

Minute Earthquakes. — Very delicate ex-
periments have been instituted by Prof. John
Milne to determine the stress inflicted upon
the earth's crust by small, even minute, dis-
turbances, whether local earthquakes on a
small scale, faint echoes of more violent dis-
tant disturbances, those arising from me-
teorological causes — which are receiving spe-
cial attention — or even those which are due
to the falling of rain and to dew. A shower
of rain or a deposit of dew represents a con
siderable load on the soil, which may per-
haps be regarded, in the first instance, as uni-
formly distributed, but which will probably,
because of inequalities in evaporation, not
remain so long. The ground on the east
side of a building will be more quickly dried
than that on the north ; the dew on the east
side will evaporate before that on the west
side, and so on. Thus there will be bending
stresses in the soil tending to tilt buildings
or piers for instruments that have not deep-
laid foundations. Tilts due to rainfall would
be irregular; those arising from dew would
show a diurnal period. The inquiry is made

whether these tilts are large enough to affect
astronomical observations. Diurnal oscilla-
tions of several sections of an arc have been
detected by seismographs in Japan, which
Prof. Milne attributes to the evaporation of
dew. At the observatory of the University
of Oxford a disposable weight, consisting
of a crowd of human beings, was utilized.
Formed into a solid square, they were marched
back and forth, to and from the observatory
wall. They were then spread out so that
they only touched by the finger tips ; and
again so as to cover four times the space of
that formation. This was supposed to repre-
sent the evaporation effect. Seventy-six per-
sons were thus employed, and their march-
ing back and forth produced an appreciable
bending of the earth. As an aid to his re-
search. Prof. Milne has had a horizontal
pendulum set up in the Isle of Wight, in or-
der to obtain a continuous automatic record
of such disturbances as are there manifested.

Improyement in intitoxine-Making.—

In a recent number of the Archives dcs Sci-
ences Biologiques issued by the Imperial In-
stitute of Experimental Medicine at St. Pe-
tersburg is an important announcement by
Dr. Smirnow, describing a new method of ob-
taining diphtheria antitoxine. Hitherto the
preparation of the antitoxine has not only
involved great expense, but also much time,
several months oftentimes. The new meth-
od announced by Dr. Smirnow institutes a
great saving in both time and expense, and
consists simply of electrolyzing a virulent
diphtheria broth culture, whic'o is then found
to contain an antitoxine of great power and
efScacy. Dr. Smirnow states that a dog
weighing from eighteen to twenty pounds,
inoculated subcutaneously with 0'5 cubic
centimetre of a virulent diphtheria broth cul-
ture, usually dies in two or two and a half days.
If, however, even one day after inoculation,
treatment with the new serum is begun, from
three to five cubic centimetres of the latter
suffice to save the animal.

Maxims for* the Holiday. — The first
requi.'^ite to the complete enjoyment of a
holiday, as laid down by the London Lancet,
is to have earned it. Only a true workman
thoroughly enjoys his season of rest, while
tlie idler, the trifler, the man of pleasure,

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

431

knows little of its delights, for it brings him
no change. It is well, in arranging for the
holiday, to give attention to individual tastes
and idiosyncrasies, so that the lover of natu-
ral scenery, the seeker for historical associa-
tions, and the lover of art may each go where
he will find what he will enjoy the most.
For the best use of a holiday some definite
object may be combined with the general
fundamental idea of rest ; but there is a pos-
sibility of carrying this feature too far and
making the excursion a season of work.
This leads to the next rule, not to attempt

too much. " Take it easy," should always be
the motto. Long railway journeys and tedi-
ous excursions drawing upon the strength
are good things to avoid. Age, physical con-
dition, and previous training should always
be regarded; change of life and surround-
ings should be sought, but mischief may re-
sult if the change is too violent ; and what-
ever interferes with regularity of life and
sleep should be indulged in only sparingly.
Provided the traveler is a good sailor, few
forms of holiday are so entirely unobjection-
able as a sea voyage.

MINOR PARAGEAPHS.

According to Curator Duerden, of the
Museum of the Jamaica Institute, as cited
by Robert T. Hill in Science, a turn of the
tide has come in the life of the mongoose in
Jamaica. This animal was imported there
to rid the island of rats. Having disposed
of these, it turned upon the other small ani-
mals and nearly exterminated them. Con-
sequently the ticks and chigoes, in the ab-
sence of the lizards and snakes which had
eaten them, throve enormously, and became
nearly as veritable pests as the rats had been.
Within the past few years, however, the
mongooses have seemed to decline in num-
bers, and, when caught, to be suffering from
the attacks of ticks. Birds and snakes and
lizards are becoming more numerous, poul-
try and domestic animals suffer less from
depredations, numerous crocodile's eggs are
found, bevies of quails are occasionally seen,
and the rats are appearing again.

The researches of Alfred Goldsborough
Mayer on the color and color-patt€rns of
moths and butterflies have resulted in the
demonstration of several results believed to
be new to science, among which are the
prevalence of a surprisingly large percentage
of black in the great majority of the colors
of Lepidoptera, the composite character of
the colors as distinguished from simple col-
ors, and the derivation of the pigments of the
scales by various chemical processes from
the blood, or ha^molymph, of the pupa.
While the number of species of Papilio in
South America is nine times as great as in
North America, the number of colors which
they display is only twice as great. Hence
the greater number of colors displayed by

the tropical forms may be due simply to the
far greater number of species, and not to
any direct influence of climate. The scales
in Lepidoptera do not strengthen the wing or
aid the insects in flight. The vast majority
of the scales are merely color-bearing organs
which have been developed under the influ-
ence of natural selection.

According to a communication of M.
Albert Gauttard to the French Ethnographic
Society, the efforts which the Japanese have
been making since the revolution of 1868 to
adapt themselves to European civilization
and modes of life have resulted in surpris-
ing transformations of their national type.
Some of them are losing the eccentricity of
their eyes and the prominence of their cheek
bones ; children born recently have less
flattened noses than their ancestors, and a
skin not so yellow. On the other hand,
Europeans residing permanently in Japan
lose the rosy color of their skin and tend
to acquire an eccentricity in the eye. M.
Adhemar Leclere, French resident at Kratie,
said that he had observed that some of the
French residing in Cambodia began in a
short time to acquire the type and the gait
of the natives.

In the use of the Iroquois wampum belts,
his studies of which have already been no-
ticed in the Monthly, the facts associated,
and other features in the Indian life of both
American continents, Mr. Horatio Hale be-
lieved that evidence was found that the In
dians enjoyed systems of government and
forrrjs of civilization that evinced intellec-
tual and moral faculties of no mean order —
a real money, elements of a written language

432

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

widely diffused and employed in preserving
the memory of treaties of peace and alliance,
established institutions working well, and a
good degree of generally diffused comfort.

NOTES.

The summer courses of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, beginning at differ-
ent dates in June and generally continuing
through July, are intended for the benefit of
students who wish to prolong their stay in
summer or to make up deficiencies, and are
open to persons not students in the institute
if they possess the necessary qualifications.
The subjects are in the departments of me-
chanical drawing and descriptive geometry,
mathematics, architecture, chemistry, biol-
ogy, physics, European history, French and
German, mechanism, and shop work ; and
provision is made for other (non-technical)
subjects for those interested in them.

The International Exposition to be held
at Brussels this year will include an Inter-
national Section of Sciences, divided into
the seven Sections of Mathematics and As-
tronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Geology and
Geography, Biology, Anthropology, and
Bibliography. Various privileges will be
granted to participants, who will have to
pay nothing for their places, and will be
allowed rebates on railroads. A series of
questions have been prepared by the Belgian
Government, on which prizes will be awarded
for the best solutions. The prizes appertain-
ing to the Section of Sciences are valued at
four thousand dollars. Programmes contain
lull information on this subject by address-
ing the Commissariat General of the Gov-
ernment, 17 rue de la Purse, Brussels.

The Division of Entomology of the
United States Department of Agriculture is
engaged in a special investigation of the in-
sects that infest stored crops. The list in-
cludes the insect enemies of stored grain,
flour and meal, fruits, nuts and seeds, herbs
and dried plants, drugs, leather, specimens
of natural history, etc. Information is in-
vited from citizens who have made observa-
tions in the matter, particularly from per-
sons residing in the South. Special attention
is directed to the use of bisulphide of car-
bon, applied as a vapor to pervade the
stored material.

Granite, wood, and asphalt being accept-
ed as the best materials for carriage-way
pavements in large cities, preference between
them should be, Mr. L. H. Isaacs, C. E., says,
in the order, on the score of public hygiene :
asphalt absolutely, granite, wood; of noise-
lessness, wood, asphalt, granite ; of safety to
horses, wood, asphalt, granite ; of cleaning,
asphalt, wood, granite ; of economy, granite,
wood, asphalt ; of facihty in repairing, as-

phalt, wood, granite ; and of convenience in
connection with tramway rails, granite, wood,
asphalt.

Alvan H. Clark, the famous maker of
telescopic lenses, died of apo[ilexy at his home
in Cambridge, Mass., June 9th. He succeeded
his father, Alvan Clark, whose fame as a lens
maker was equally world-wide, as head of the
firm on the death of the latter in 1887. Of
his make were the twenty-six inch lens in the
Naval Observatory at Washington, and the
thirty-inch refractor for the Imperial Ob-
servatory at St. Petersburg, for which he was
decorated by the Czar; the great lens of the
Lick Observatory ; and the lens for the Yerkes
Observatory, Chicago, forty inches in diame-
ter, and having a focal length of sixty- four
feet, which was completed and shipped only
a short time before his death. As an as-
tronomer he accompanied the total-eclipse
expedition to Jerez, Spain, in 1870, and the
similar expedition to Wyoming in 1878 ; and
discovered fourteen double stars, including
the companion to Sirius — for which he re-
ceived the Leland gold medal from the French
Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Traill Green, Emeritus Professor of
Chemistry in Lafayette College, died at Eas-
ton, Pa., April 29th, aged eighty-four years.
He became a professor in Lafayette College
sixty years ago ; was dean of its scientific de-
partment and founder of its astronomical ob-
serv^atory; was one of the original members
of the American Association ; was first Presi-
dent of the American Academy of Medicine ;
and was author of a work on the Floral and
Zoological Distribution of the United States.

Mr. J. Theodore Bent, explorer, classi-
cist, and archaeologist, died in London, May
5th, of malarial fever contracted in a journey
in Sokotra and southern Arabia — from which
he had just returned with Mrs. Bent — fol-
lowed by pneumonia. He had spent the
winters of several years in journeys of re-
search, the fruits of which he recorded in
valuable and interesting books. Among the
subjects that engaged his attention were the
archaeology, classic survivals, and customs of
Greece; the Bahrein Islands of the Persian
Gulf; the Arabian states; Abyssinia; and
Mashonaland, where he was the first to make
a systematic exploration of the ruins of Zim-
babwe. His papers before the Koyal Geo-
graphical Society, the British Association,
etc., were of high merit, and his collections
had unique value.

The Due d'Aumale, who died from the
effects of the shock occasioned by the ter-
rible disaster at the Charity Bazaar in Paris,
was a member of the French Academy, and
was distinguished throughout the scientific
world foi' his gift to the Institute of France,
in trust for the nation, in 1884, of the Cha-
teau of Chantilly for a museum, with the
forest and estates for its maintenance.

JAMES CROLL.

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

AUGUST, 1897.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

{Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.)
By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Pn. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ; LECTURER IN
ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPIIY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

VI.— FRANCE. PART II.

WHY is Belgium entitled to a separate national existence
among the states of modern Europe ? Ireland and even
Wales have tenfold stronger claims to political independence on
the score both of race and religion. One half of this little state
is topographically like Holland ; the other is not to be distin-
guished in climate, geography, or soil from Alsace Lorraine — that
shuttlecock among nations, Belgium is father to no national
speech. The Flemings can not hold common converse with their
fellow-countrymen, the Wallons ; for the first speak a corrupted
Dutch, the second an archaic French language. Nor are the
people more highly individualized in the anthropological sense.
In fact, in a study of races Belgium is not to be considered apart
from either northern France or southwestern Germany. It is
closely allied to both. Of course, even despite the lack of all
these elements of nationality, there is still a reason for the sepa-
rate political existence of the Belgians, There must have been,
for the sense of nationality is very intense among them. There
is no sign of its abatement at the present time. It has made
them a dominant power in Africa and elsewhere abroad. Their
nationality is a geographical as well as an historical product. We
shall deal with that presently. In the meantime we must con-
sider the Belgians together with the whole population of northern

VOL. LI. — 33

434 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

France. It is befitting to do so ; for Csesar informs us that the
Belgje in Ms time controlled the whole region. Roman Gaul,
j)roperly speaking, extended only as far north as the Seine and
the Marne. In C?esar's time the frontier of Belgium — the land
of the Belgse — lay near Paris. Has its recession to the north pro-
duced any appreciable change upon the people ? Certainly not in
any physical sense, as we shall attempt to point out.

The northern third of France and half of Belgium are to-day
more Teutonic than the south of Germany. This is clearly
attested by the maps which show the distribution of each of the
physical characteristics of race. It should not occasion surprise
when we remember the incessant downpour of Teutonic tribes
during the whole historic period. It was a constant procession, of
Goths — from all points of the compass — of Franks, Burgundians,
and others. France was entirely overrun by the Franks, with
the exception of Brittany, by the middle of the sixth century. All
through the middle ages this part of Europe was not only ethnic-
ally Teutonic : it was German in language and customs as well.
The very name of the country is Teutonic. It has the same origin
as Franconia in southern Germany. In <S12 the Council of Tours,
away down south, ordained that every bishop should preach both
in the Romance and the Teutonic languages. The Franks pre-
served their German speech four hundred years after the con-
quest.* Charlemagne was a German ; his courtiers were all Ger-
mans; he lived and governed from outside the limits of modern
France. The Abb^ Sieyes uttered an ethnological truism when,
in the course of the French Revolution, he cried out against the
French aristocracy : " Let us send them back to their German
marshes whence they came ! " Even to-day the current of migra-
tion between France and Germany sets strongly to the south, as
it has ever done in virtue of economic laws deeper than national
prejudice or hostile legislation.!

The movement of population racially has been strongly influ-
enced by the geography of the country. Were it not for the
peculiar conformation of this part of Europe, there would be no
geographical excuse for the existence of Belgium as a separate

* For many details, aud a map of German place names in northern France, consult that
remarkable book of Canon Isaac Tajlor, Names and Places, pp. 94 neq. It is a woik
which should l)e made familiar to every would-be teacher of liistory and geography.

\ The standard authorities upon Belgium are E. Houze, Ethnogcnie de la Belgique,
Bruxelles, 1882; and L. Vanderkindere, L'Ethnologie de la Belgique, Bruxelles, 1879. K.
Bookh, in Zeits. f. allg. Erdkunde, Berlin, iii, 1854, p. 80, has mapped the linguistic bound-
ary. Cf. also H. Vandenhoven, La Lungue Flaniande, Bruxelles, 1844. The last investi-
gation is by K. Bramer, in Kirchhoff's Forschungen zur deut. Land- u. Volkskunde, ii,
1887, Heft 2. The boundary of the Flemish language on the south in Fiance is mapped
by R. Andree in Globus, xxxvi, 1879, pp. 6-10 and 25-29. Vide also G. Lagneau, Eth-
nogcnie des Populations du Nord de la France, Rev. d'Anth., 1874, pp. 577-612.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

435

political entity, as we have said ; and northern France would be
far more thoroughly Teutonized than it is to-day. In order to
make this clear, we must recall the topography of the district for
a moment. From the Alps in western Switzerland a spur of
mountainous country of very indifferent fertility, known as the
Ardennes plateau, extends far out to the northwest, its axis lying
along the Franco-German frontier, as our map of the geography
of France shows. This area is triangular in shape, with its apex

touching Switzerland, the Rhine forming its eastern edge, and
its base lying east and west across Belgium a little north of
Brussels. This base is the geographical boundary between Flan-
ders and the rugged uplands. Near the southern point, this Ar-
dennes plateau rises into the Vosges Mountains. The major part
of it consists of an elevated table-land, of little use in agricul-
ture. Its uplands are heavily forested ; its valleys are deep and
very narrow. This plateau is divided from the main body of the
Alps by a low pass about twenty- five miles wide, known as the
Gap of Belfort. This has always formed the main pathway of
communication between the valleys of the Seine, the Rhone, and

4?6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the Rhine, from the time of Attila to that of the Emperor
William I. It is the strategic key to central Europe. The only
other routes from France to Germany cut straight across the diffi-
cult Ardennes plateau, following either the valleys of the Meuse
or the Moselle shown on our map. These valleys are both ex-
tremely fertile, but narrow and easy of defense. Sedan commands
the one and Metz the other. This depression at Bel fort has
played quite a unique part in the natural history of Europe as
well as in its military campaigns. It is the only route by which
southern flora and fauna could penetrate to the north, since they
could not traverse the Alpine highlands. The parallel is con-
tinued by the constant counter-migration of southern culture over
the same way, evinced in archeeology and history. It is not sur-
prising that in anthropology this Gap of Belf ort should be equally
important.*

This Ardennes plateau is the core of a considerable popu-
lation, which is primarily of the Alpine racial type. It is an
anthropological table-land of broad -headedness, surrounded on
every side except the south, where it touches the Alps, by more
dolichocephalic populations. Turn for a moment to our map on
page 440, Notice the wing of dark tint extending up to Luxem-
burg from Belfort. Observe how it is eroded on the east along
the Rhine Valley, and toward Paris in the fertile plains of the
Isle de France. In the recesses of the Vosges Mountains the
cephalic index rises 87 ; in the valleys of the Meuse and the
Moselle it falls to 83. f The Germanic tribes in their ceaseless
wanderings are the cause of that phenomenon beyond question.
It is evident that for Teutonism to enter France, it must pass
through the Gap of Belfort, around north through Flanders, or
follow the valleys above mentioned. All three of these it has
certainly done in the anthropological sense. It has overflowed
along each of these channels, traversing the Alpine racial barrier.
It has done even more. Its influence is manifest even in the
nooks and byways. For the people of the whole region are well
above the average French in stature. They are quite Teutonic in
this respect. But the invaders have not been able to efi^ace that
most persistent trait of the primitive poj^ulation — the broad,
round head. Here, as in the Black Forest, just across the Rhine,

* W. Marshall, Tierverbreitung, in Kiichofif's Anleituiig zur dcut. Landes- u. Yolksfor-
seliung, p. 256. Montelius, Verbindungen zwischen Skandinavicn und dem oestlichen
Europa, Archiv fiir Anth., 1891, pp. 1-21.

f The authority upon this region is Dr. R. Collignon. Vide his Anthropologic de la
Lorraine, Nancy, 1886; especially, the map opposite page 9, showing the influence of the
river valleys : L'Anthropologie, T, 1890, p. 211 xeq. ; and Bull. Soc. d'Anth., Paris, 1887, p.
306; ibid., 1883, p. 463. Auerbach gives a fine description of the geographical features in
Revue de Geographic, Paris, 1890-'91.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

437

this physical characteristic remains as a witness of priority of
title to the land.

In Belgium itself, lying on the northwestern edge of the
Ardennes plateau, the contrast between the upland and the
plain is so distinct, and it coincides so closely with the racial
boundary between the Flemings and the Walloons, that it merits
special attention. Language here follows closely in the footsteps

Geolooy and ElepatioM.

— ~i JBelow /oo ??2

■■ Ove?' <30o meters.

XX XX Morth-west houndarY
of primitive rach
J- or motions

W.ZTi. del.

of race. As our three maps of the country show in detail, the
Walloons in the uplands are broader-headed than the Flemings.
They are distinctly shorter in stature.* Our map shows how
much more infrequent blond types are among them than among
the Flemings. It is curious to notice this Teutonism of Flanders
and the Low Countries. It denotes the utter extermination of all
traces of the Spaniards, despite their whilom political activities,
Belgium is sharply divided, therefore, into two halves, following
the topographical boundary of the plateau exactly, except in
the department of Hainault, where Walloons are found in the
plains. The two halves of Belgium thus indicated differ in poli-

* Quetelet long ago showed this. Vide Titeca, Bull. Soc. d' Anthropologic de Bruxelles,
vi, 1887, p. 109. Houze has mapped the statvire in ibid., vi, 1887, p. 278.

438

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

x;<xx

CEPHALIC [NDEX.

(Breadth 0/ heai in

percentage of length.)

Boundary 0^ Walloon and
Flemish dialects.

WZ R,

tics, language, and in many social customs. One, Flanders, is
cultivated largely by tenant farmers, the other tilled by peasant

:Blonde Z^/^^

proprietors. So clearly drawn is the line of division that many
interesting sociological problems may best be investigated here.
These, for the moment, we pass by. For us, at this time, the sig-

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 439

nificance of the division is, to put it in Dr. Beddoe's words, that
" the Walloons and their hilly, wooded country are a Belgic cliff
against which the tide of advancing Germanism has beaten with
small effect, while it has swept with comparatively little resist-
ance over the lowlands of Flanders and Alsace, and penetrated
into Normandy and Lorraine." Had it not been for this geo-
graphical area of isolation, political boundaries would have been
very different from those of to-day. Belgium is a piece of pie-
shaped stop-gap between France and Germany. Being inter-
nationally neutralized in the military sense, it covers the main
line of contact between the two powerful neighbors — the plains
of Flanders. This is, in the eyes of the natural scientist, its main
excuse for separate existence as a political entity. The Franco-
German hatred is nothing but a family quarrel after all from our
point of view. It is a reality, nevertheless, for historians. The
only country whose population is really homogeneous is the tiny
kingdom of Luxemburg in the very center of the plateau, scarcely
more than a dot on the map. It deserves its independence for a
like reason with Belgium. Were Alsace-Lorraine also a neutral-
ized and separate kingdom, the prices of European government
bonds would be considerably higher than they are to- day.

Let us now return to France again. We have still to cover
the most interesting part of all in many ways. Ca?sar's third
division of Gaul, from the Loire River southwest to the Pyrenees,
was inhabited, as he tells us, by the Aqnitani. Strabo adds that
these people were akin to the Iberians of Spain, both in customs
and race. Detailed study, however, reveals a population far less
homogeneous than these statements of the ancients imply.

A glance at the map of the physical geography of France, on
page 435, shows that this southwestern section is centered in the
broad, fertile valley of the Garonne. From Bordeaux in every
direction spreads one of the most productive regions in France,
favored alike in soil and in climate. Ascending the river valley, it
narrows gradually until we reach a low pass, leading over toward
the Mediterranean. This little axis of fertility, along which will
run the projected canal to unite the two seacoasts of France, divides
the plateaux of Auvergne from the highlands which lie along the
Pyrenees. In this latter region fertility decreases as we approach
the Spanish frontier in proportion to the increase in altitude,
although most of the region is fairly capable of supporting a con-
siderable population. The only extensive area which is extremely
unfavorable in character is the seacoast department of Landes,
along the Bay of Biscay south of Bordeaux. This region is a vast
sandy plain, but little raised above the sea level. It is a flat dis-
trict underlaid by an impermeable clay subsoil, which is, except

44°

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in midsummer, a great fen covered with rank marsh grasses.
Without artificial drainage, it is unfit for cultivation, so that it
remains to-day one of the most sparsely populated sections of the
country. As a whole, then, the southwest of France presents the
extremes of economic attractiveness, at the same time being devoid
of those geographical barriers which elsewhere have strongly in-
fluenced the movements of races.

The first impression conveyed by the general map of the
cephalic index for all France, in respect of this particular region
above described, is that here at last all correspondence between
the nature of the country and the character of the population
ceases. A wedge of the broad-headed Alpine stock centering in
the uplands of Auvergne pushes its way toward the southwest to

Cephalic Index
France

AND BeLGIVH

87 and 88
'roundheads

AFTER CoLUGNON AND HOUZE
16650 OBSERVATIONS

the base of the Pyrenees. This Alpine offshoot extends uninter-
ruptedly from the sterile plateau of Auvergne, straight across the
fertile plains of the Garonne and deep into the swamps and fens
of Landes. While the geographical trend of the country is from
southeast to northwest parallel to the Garonne, the population
seems to be striped at right angles to it — namely, in the direction

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

44'

of the Paris-Bordeaux axis of fertility. At the northwest appears
the lower edge of the broad-headedness of the area of Brittany ;
then succeeds a belt of long heads from Paris to Bordeaux, to the

Mediterranean Type. Montpellier.
Cephalic Index, 79-6.

Alpine Type. Aveyron.
Cephalic Index, 86.

south of which comes the main feature — a central strip of the Al-
pine type pushing its way to the extreme southwest, as we have
said. The portrait herewith is a good example of the last-named
round-headed type, which forms the bulk of the population. We
are confronted by a racial distribution which appears to be utterly
at variance with all the laws which elsewhere in France deter-
mine the ethnic character of its population.

One point is certain : either conditions have changed wonder-
fully since Strabo's time, or else the old geographer was far from
being a discriminating anthropologist, when he described the peo-
ple of Aquitaine as uniformly Iberians, both in race and in customs.
A large element among them is as far removed from the Spaniards
in race as it is possible in Europe to be. There is, as our map
shows, a strip all along the Mediterranean which is Iberically
narrow-headed and oval- faced, of a type illustrated in our portrait.
Especially is this true in the department of Pyrenees-Orientales,
shown on our map by the banded white area. This is the only
part of France where the Catalan language is spoken to-day, as we
took occasion to point out in our first article. This population in
Roussillon is truly Iberian both in race and language ; all the other
peoples of Aquitaine differ from the Spaniards in both respects.*

* The prime authority upon this part of France is again Dr. Collignon. Vide Mem.
Soe. d'Anth., Paris, series 3, i, fasc. 3 and 4. Condensed statement of his views is given in

442

POPULAR SCIENCE MOBTHLY

Turn back for a moment to the map of head form on page 440,
and notice the curious light-tinted area in the heart of this south
western region. It seems to be confined to four departments, lying
Ijetween Limoges on the northeast and Bordeaux at the south-

After

ColUgnon

CEPHALIC INDEX

Southwestern France

81
82|
83 1

85 j

86 I
67

west. This little island or sink, if you please, of long-headedness
has for years been a pazzle to anthropologists. It is a veritable
outcrop of dolichocephaly close to the great body of broad-head-
edness which centers in Auvergne. It lies, to be sure, at the
southwestern extremity of that axis of fertility from Paris to
Bordeaux which we described in our last paper. In conformity
with the law of differentiation of populations which holds all
through the north, a long-headed people is found in the plains-
The trouble is that the people are altogether too extreme. The
general law is out-proved by it. The remoteness of this spot from
any other great center of long-headedness constitutes the main
point of interest. Such a trait ought to have been derived either
from the north or the south of Europe. Teutonic intermixture is
not a competent explanation for two reasons. In the first place,

Annales de Geojiraphic, Paris, 1896, pp. ] 50-106. Our maps are adapted from this latter
source. (J. Laf^neau, Ethnogenie des I'opulations du Sud-ouest de la France, iu Revue
d'Anth., 187i, pp. 606-628, gives much interesting historical material.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

443

the heads are often more Teutonic in form than those of the peo-
ples of direct Germanic descent along the Belgian frontier ; nay,
more, in some cantons the people outdo the purest Scandinavians
in this respect. This region is also separated from all Teutonic
centers across country by several hundred miles of broader-headed
peoples. That disposes of the theory of colonization from the
north across France. Could the Teutons have come around by
sea, then, following the litus Saxonicum described in our last
paper ? Obviously not so ; for, as we shall see, the deepest pit of
long-headedness lies far inland, about the city of Pdrigueux. If
this be due to immigrants, they certainly could not have come in
ships. Is it possible, then, that the people of these departments
could have come from the south, an offshoot of the Mediterranean
type ? If so, they must have come over the Pyrenees or else across
the low pass down the course of the Garonne. In either case a
great dike of brachycephaly must have been heaped up behind
them, cutting off all connection with their base of racial supplies.
And then, after all, we do not place too much reliance in any case
upon theories of such wholesale bodily migration that populous
departments among the largest in France are completely settled
in a moment. Human beings in masses do not, as my friend
Major Livermore has put it, play leap-frog across the map in that
way, save under great provocation or temptation. We look for
slow-moving causes, not
cataclysms, just as the ge-
ologists have long since
learned to do.

We may gain an idea of
the reality of this curious
phenomenon if we turn to
our second map, in which
the same region is charted
in great detail. The head
form is here given by can-
tons, small administrative
divisions intermediate be-
tween the department and
the commune or township.
The location of the capital

cities of Limoges and Perigueux, on both maps, will enable the
reader to orient himself at once. The " key " shows the boundaries
of the departments. It is clear that a series of concentric circles of
increasing long-headedness — that is, of light tints upon the map —
point to a specific area where an extreme human type is prevalent.

History offers no clew to the situation. The country in ques-
tion, in Caesar's time, was occupied by a number of tribes of

KEY

Cro-ma<3non|
Teutonic
Alpine i

I I NEUTRAL

DEPARTMENTAL BOUNDARIES

444 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

whose racial affinity we know nothing. On the west dwelt the
Santones by the present city of Saintes (ancient Saintonge). The
city of Pdrigueux, which gave its name to the ancient province of
Perigord, marks the territory of the Petrocorii of Roman times.
The province of Limousin to the northeast of it was the home of
the Lemovices, with their capital at the modern city of Limoges.
Around the ancient city at Bordeaux lay the Bituriges and
their allies the Medulli (Medoc). Along the east lay the Ar-
vergni, whence the name Auvergne ; together with a number of
minor tribes, such as the Cadurci, giving name to the district of
Quercy to-day. Unless the population has shifted extensively,
contrary to all ethnological experience, the people whose physical
origin is so puzzling to us included the tribes of the Lemovices
and especially the Petrocorii. For these two covered the main
body of narrow-headedness shown upon our map, extending over
two thirds of the department of Dordogne, and up into Haute-
Vienne and Charente beyond the city of Angouleme. It appears
as if we had to do with two tribes whose racial origin was pro-
foundly different from that of all their neighbors. The frontier
on the southeast, between the Petrocorii and the Arverni, seems
to-day to have been the sharpest of all. In places there is a sudden
drop of over five units in cephalic index at the boundary lines.
This means a change of type almost as great as that indicated be-
tween our two portraits on a preceding page. This is especially
marked at the frontiers of the two modern departments of Correze
and Dordogne, as our " key " map shows. This racial boundary
finds no parallel in distinctness elsewhere in France, save between
the Bretons and Normans. In this present case, the people are
distinct because the modern boundaries coincide exactly with the
ancient ecclesiastical and political ones. For centuries the Ar-
verni in Correze have turned their backs upon the Petrocorii in
Perigord on fete days, market days, at the paying of taxes, or ex-
amination of conscripts. This they did as serfs in the middle ages,
and they do it to-day as freemen when they go to the polls to vote.
Each has looked to its capital city for all social inspiration and
support. The result has been an absence of intercourse, with its
attendant consequences. Artificial selection has sharpened the
contrasts imposed in the first instance by differences of physical
descent. It is one of those rare cases where political boundaries
are competent to perpetuate and even to accentuate natural
peculiarities due to race.

Let us now concentrate our attention upon these two peoples
clustering about the modern cities of P^rigueux and Limoges
respectively — separated alike from all their neighbors by their
long-headedness. Closer inspection at once reveals that each of
these two cities is to-day the kernel of a distinct subcenter of

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

445

doliclioceplialy ; for two very light-colored areas surround each
city, the two being separated by a narrow strip of darker tint
upon our map. Along this latter line the cephalic index rises ap-
preciably. Thus, for example, while only 78 about Limoges, and
76 or 77 in Dordogne, it rises on this boundary line to 80 and 81.
In other words, a bridge of relative broad headeduess cuts across
the map, setting apart the descendants of the Lemovices, at Li-
moges, from those of their contemporaries, the Petrocorii, about
Perigueux. This means that we have to do with two distinct
spots of long-headedness — a small one about Limoges, and a major

STATURE

Ll/v\6v/^l/\I

After Colli gnon

one extending all about Pc'rigueux and Angouleme. There can
be no doubt about this division. The boundary is a purely natu-
ral one, and deserves a moment's attention.

This frontier between Haute- Vienne and Dordogne lies along
the crest of the so-called "hills of Limousin," made familiar to us
already in another connection. It marks the watershed between
the two great river systems of western France, the Garonne and
the Loire. Our stature map of Limousin indicates the courses of
these streams. Here is a true parting of the waters ; for the
Charente flows directly to the sea on the west; the affluents of
the Loire run to the north ; and the Vezere, part of the system
of the Garonne, to the south. These hills of Limousin are the
western outposts of the granitic area of Auvergne; and just here

446 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the country changes abruptly to a calcareous formation along the
south and west. The district is accounted the very poorest in all
France. Its soil is worthless even for grazing ; the water is bad,
and the climate harsh and rigorous.

These hills of Limousin, as we pointed out in a preceding
paper, are, so to speak, a veritable watershed of stature as well.
The bridge of relative broad-headedness we have described as
lying along this line is but one among several peculiarities. The
people of these hills are among the shortest in all Europe. Im-
agine a community whose members are so dwarfed and stunted
by misery that their average stature is only about five feet two
inches ! Many cantons exist in which over thirty per cent of the
men are under five feet three inches tall ; and a few where two
thirds of them all are below this height, with nearly ten per cent
shorter than four feet eleven inches. With women shorter than
this by several inches, the result is frightful. Around this area
we find concentric circles of increasing stature as the river courses
are descended and the material prosperity of the people becomes
greater. Within it the regular diet of boiled chestnuts and bad
water, with a little rye or barley ; the miserable huts unlighted by
windows, huddled together in the deep and damp valleys ; and the
extreme poverty and ignorance, have produced a population in
which nearly a third of the men are physically unfit for military
service. This geographical barrier, potent enough to produce so
degenerate a population, lies, as we have said, exactly along the
boundary between the descendants of the Lemovices about Li-
moges and the Petrocorii about P^rigueux. To make it plain
beyond question, we have marked the stunted area upon our map
of cephalic index. The correspondence is exact. It also shows
beyond doubt that this short stature is a product of environment
and not of race; for our degenerate area overlies all types of
head form alike, whether Alpine or other.

Here, then, is an anthropological as well as a geographical
boundary, separating our long-headed tribes from one another.
Without going into details, let it suffice to say that complexions
change as well. To the north and east about Limogeis the blond
characteristics rise to an absolute majority, especially among the
women ; in the contrary direction, about P^rigueux, the propor-
tion of brunettes increases considerably. In short, the general
association of characteristics is such as to prove that among the
Lemovices there is a considerable infusion of Teutonic blood.
They are the extreme vanguard of the Germanic invaders who
have come in from the northeast. That accounts at once for their
long-headedness. Similar to them are the populations west of
Bordeaux in Mddoc {vide key map). They also are remnants of
the same blond, tall, long-headed type ; but they have come around

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

447

by sea. They are part of the Saxon hordes which have touched
all along the coast of Brittany. These last people, settled in the
beautiful Mddoc and Bordelais wine country, protected by their
peninsular position, are among the tallest peasantry of the south-
west. They are, without doubt, the legitimate descendants of the
Medulli and of the Nitiobriges Cubi and Vivisci of early times.
But between these two colonies of the Teutons, about Limoges
and in Medoc respectively, lies the one whose origin we have not
yet traced. The Petrocorii about Perigueux, who were they ? If
they also are of Teutonic descent, why are they not blond ? This
they most certainly are not, for a noticeable feature of the popu-

Alpine Type. Landes. Cephalic Index, 90-4.

lation of Dordogne is the high proportion of black hair, rising in
some cantons to twenty-seven per cent. This is very remarkable
in itself, as even in Italy and Spain really black hair is much less
frequent. This characteristic for a time gave color to the theory
that this great area of dolichocephaly was due to the relics of the
Saracen army of Abder-Rhaman, shattered by Charles Martel at
the battle of Tours. It is not improbable that some Berber blood
was thereby infused into the peasantry ; but this explanation does
not suffice to account for other peculiarities, which a detailed in-
vestigation reveals.*

The most curious and significant trait of these long-headed
people in Dordogne remains to be mentioned. A harmonic long
and narrow head ought normally to be accompanied by an elon-
gated oval visage. In the Teutonic race especially, the cheek

* G. Lrtgneaii. On the Saracens in France. Memoirs of the Anthropological Society,
London, vol. iii, pp. 157 seq.

448

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bones are not prominent, so that an even smooth outline of the
face results. In the Dordogne population, on the other hand, the
faces in many cases are almost as broad as in the normal Alpine
round-headed type. In other words, they are strongly dishar-

Cro-Magnon Tvi-e. Dordogne. Ceplaalic Index, 78±.

monic. To make this clear, compare the two heads shown in our
illustrations.* Notice at once how the Cro-Magnon head is de-
veloped posteriorly as compared with the Alpine type. This is
particularly noticeable in our second portrait on the next page.
Observe also how in the front view the cranium narrows at the
top like a sugar loaf, at the very place where the Alpine type is
most broad. Yet despite this long head, the face is proportioned
much more like the broad-visaged Alpine type than after the
model of the young woman's face on page 441. Hers is a truly
normal and harmonic dolichocephalic type.

In our Dordogne peasant there are many other minor features
which need not concern us here. The skull is very low- vaulted;
the brow-ridges are prominent ; the nose is well formed, and less
broad at the nostrils than in the Alpine type. These, coupled
with the prominent cheek bones and the powerful masseter
muscles, give a peculiarly rugged cast to the countenance. It is
not, however, repellent; but more often open and kindly in appear-
ance. The men are in no wise peculiar in stature. They are of
medium height, rather stocky than otherwise. In this latter re-
spect they show the same susceptibility to environment as all
their neighbors: they are tall in fertile places and stunted in the

* For the Cro-Magnon portraits on this and the following pages I am indebted to Dr.
Collignon himself. These are the first, I think, ever published, either here or in Europe.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

449

less prosperous districts. Lying mainly south of tlie dwarfed
areas of Limousin, tliey are intermediate between its miserable
people and their taller neighbors in the vine country about Bor-
deaux. Let it be clearly understood that they are not a degener-
ate type at all. The peasants are keen and alert ; often contrast-
ing favorably with the rather heavy-minded Alpine type about
them.

The people we have described above agree in physical charac-
teristics with but one other type of men known to anthropologists.
This is the celebrated Cro-Magnon race, long ago identified by
archaeologists as having inhabited the southwest of Europe in
prehistoric times. As early as 1858 human remains began to be
discovered by Lartet and others in this region. Workmen on a
railway in the valley of the Vdzere, shown on our map, un-
earthed near the little village of Les Eyzies the complete skele-
tons of six individuals — three men, two women, and a child. This
was the celebrated cave of Cro-Magnon. In the next few years
many other similar archaeological discoveries in the same neigh-
borhood were made. A peasant in the upper Garonne Valley,
near Saint-Gaudens, found a large human bone in a rabbit hole.
On excavating, the remains of seventeen individuals were found

Cbo-Magn-on Type. Dordogne. Ocplialir Iiuli'X, "i.

buried together in the cave of Aurignac. At Laugerie Basse,
again in the V^zere Valley, a rich find was made. In the cave of
Baumes-Chaudes, just across in Lozere, thirty-five human crania
with portions of skeletons were unearthed. These were the clas-
sical discoveries ; the evidence of their remains has been com-
pletely verified since then from all over Europe. In no district,
however, are the relics of this type so plentiful as here in Dor-

VOL. LI. — 34

450 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dogne. Eight sepulchral caves have been discovered within as
many miles of the village of Les Eyzies alone in the V^zfere val-
ley. Because of this geographical concentration of a peculiar
type in this region, it has become known by the name of the Cro-
Magnon race, since in the cave of this name the most perfect
specimens were found.

The geographical evidence that here in Dordogne we have to
do with the real Cro-Magnon race is fully sustained by a com-
parison of the physical characteristics of the crania here discov-
ered in these caves in the valley of the V^zere with the peculiar
living type we have above described. The original Cro-Magnon
race was extremely dolichocephalic ; as long-headed, in fact, as
the modern African negroes or the Australians.* The cranial
indices varied from 70 to 73, corresponding to a cephalic index
on the living head between 72 and 75. This was and is the
starting point for the theory that the Mediterranean populations
are an offshoot and development from the African negro. The
only other part of Europe where so low an index has been located
in the living population is in Corsica, where it descends almost
to this level. The people of Dordogne do not to-day range quite
as long-headed as this, the average for the extreme commune of
Champagnac being 7(;. This difference need not concern us, how-
ever, for within the whole population are a large proportion
with indexes far below this figure. Close proximity to the very
brachycephalic Alpine type, just over the line in Correze, would
account for a great deal larger difference even than this. Prob-
ability of direct descent becomes almost certainty when we add
that the Cro-Magnon head was strongly disharmonic, and very
low- skulled. The modern population does not equal its pro-
genitors in this last respect, but it approaches it so distinctly as
to show a former tendency in this direction. The skull was elon-
gated at the back in the same way — a distinguishing trait which
appears prominently upon comparison of the profile view of a
modern Cro-Magnon type with that of its Alpine neighbors, as
we have already observed. The brows were strongly developed,
the eye orbits were low, the chin prominent. The noted anthro-
pologist, De Quatref ages, prophesied what one of these types ought
to look like in the flesh. I give his description in his own words,
that its agreement with the facial type above represented may
be noted: "The eye depressed beneath the orbital vault; the

* Quatref ages and Hamy, Crania Ethnica, p. 46 seq. See also Qiiatrefages, The Human
Species, in Appletons' International Scientific Series. The best collection of material in
small compass, with references, is given by Salmon in Revue Mensuelle de TEcole d' An-
thropologie, V, 1895, pp. 155 and 214 seq. Bertrand, in La Gaule avant les Gaulois, Paris,
1891, has mapped these finds of the reindeer period. The correspondence with our modem
population is very close.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 451

nose straight rather than arched, the lips somewhat thick, the
maxillary (jaw and cheek) bones strongly developed, the com-
plexion very brown, the hair very dark and growing low on
the forehead — a whole which, without being attractive, was in
no way repulsive." *

The prehistoric antiquity of the Cro-Magnon type in this
region is attested in two distinct ways. In the first place, the
people possessed no knowledge of the metals ; they were in the
same stage of culture as, perhaps even lower than, the American
aborigines at the coming of Columbus. Their implements were
fashioned entirely of stone, although it was often cunningly
chipped and even polished. They were ignorant of the arts,
either of agriculture or the domestication of animals, in both of
which they were far below the culture of the native tribes of
Africa at the present day. Additional proof of their antiquity
was offered by the animal remains found intermingled with the
human bones. The climate must have been very different from
that of the present, for many of the fauna then living in the
region, such as the reindeer, are now confined to the cold regions
of northern Europe. To be sure, the great mammals, such as the
mammoth, mastodon, the cave bear, and hyena, had already be-
come extinct. They were contemporaneous with a still more an-
cient and uncultured type of man, whose remains occur in a lower
geological stratum. This Cro-Magnon race is not of glacial
antiquity, yet the distribution of mammals was markedly differ-
ent from that of to-day. Thus of nineteen species found in the
Cro-Magnon cave, ten no longer existed in southern Europe.
They had migrated with the change of climate toward the north.
The men alone seem to have remained in or near their early settle-
ments, through all the changes of time and the vicissitudes of his-
tory. It is perhaps the most striking instance known of a per-
sistency of population unchanged through thousands of years.

It should not be understood that this Cro-Magnon type was
originally restricted to this little region alone. Its geographical
extension was once very wide.f The classical skull of Engis, in
Belgium, so well described by Huxley in Man's Place in Nature,
was of this type. It has been located in places all the way from
Tagolsheim and Bollwiller in Alsace to the Atlantic on the west.
Ranke asserts that it occurs to-day in the hills of Thuringia, and
was a prevalent type there in the past. Its extension to the south
and west was equally wide. It was the type common among the
extinct Guanches of the Canary Islands. Dr. Collignon has iden-

* For description of modern representatives of this type, vide Quatrefages, in Bulletins
Soeiete d'Anthropologie, 1876, pp. 408-41*7.

f Dr. Verneau. La Kace Cro-Magnon, in Revue d'Anthropologie, 1886, p. 10 seq.

452 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tified it in northern Africa. From all these places it has now dis-
appeared more or less completely. Only in two or three other
localities does it still form an appreciable element in the living
population. There is one outcrop of it in a small spot in Landes,
farther to the southwest, and another away up in Brittany, in
that peculiar population at Lannion which we left in our last
article with a promise to return to it. On the island of Oloron off
the west coast there seems to be a third survival. A very ancient
type has also been described by Virchow in the islands off north-
ern Holland, which is quite likely of similar descent.

In all these cases of survival above mentioned, geographical
isolation readily accounts for the phenomenon. Is that also a
competent explanation for this clearest case of all in our popula-
tion in Dordogne ? Why should these peasants be of such direct
prehistoric descent as to put every ruling house in Europe to
shame ? Has the population persisted simply by virtue of num-
bers, this having been the main center of its dispersion in pre-
historic times ? Or is it because of peculiarly favorable circum-
stances of environment ? It certainly is not due to isolation
alone, for this region has been overrun with all sorts of invaders,
during historic times at least, from the Romans to the Saracens
and the English. Nor is it due to economic unattractiveness ; for^
be it firmly fixed in mind, the Cro-Magnon type is not localized
in the sterile Limousin hills, with their miserable stunted popu-
lation. It is found to-day just to the southwest of them in a fairly
open, fertile country, especially in the vicinity of Bordeaux.
These peasants are not degenerate ; they are, in fact, of goodly
height, as indeed they should be to conform to the Cro-Magnon
type. In order to determine the particular cause of this persist-
ence of an ancient race, we must broaden our horizon once more,
after this detailed analysis of Dordogne, and consider the whole
southwest from the Mediterranean to Brittany as a unit. It is
not impossible that the explanation for the peculiar anomalies in
the distribution of the Alpine stock hereabouts may at the same
time offer a clew to the problem of the Cro-Magnon type beside it.

The main question before us, postponed until the conclusion
of our study of the Dordogne population, is this : Why has the
Alpine race in the southwest of France, in direct opposition to
the rule for all the rest of Gaul, spread itself out in such a pecul-
iar way clear across the Garonne Valley and up to the Pyrenees ?
It lies at right angles with the river valley instead of along it. In
other words, why is not the Alpine type isolated in the unattract-
ive area of Auvergne instead of overflowing the fertile plains of
Aquitaine ? The answer is, I think, simple. Here in this utter-
most part of France is a last outlet for expansion of the Alpine
race repressed on every side by an aggressive alien population.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 453

It has merely expanded along the line of least resistance. The
Alpine type in Auvergne, increasing in numbers faster than the
meager means of support offered by Nature, has by force of num-
bers pushed its way irresistibly out across Aquitaine, crowding its
former possessors to one side. Certainly this is true in the Pyre-
nees, for here at the base of the mountains the population changes
suddenly, as we shall see in our next paper on the Basques. On
the other side at the north lies, as we have just seen, a second
primitive population, less changed from the prehistoric type than
any other in Europe. This Cro-Magnon race has been preserved
apparently by the dike of the Limousin hills with their miserable
population ; for these hills have cut across the Paris-Bordeaux
axis of fertility and have stopped the Teutonic race at the city of
Limoges from expanding farther in this direction — that is to say,
economic attraction having come to an end, immigration ceased
with it. The intrusive Teutonic race has therefore been debarred
from this main avenue of approach by land into Aquitaine. The
competition has been narrowed down to the Alpine and Cro-
Magnon types alone. Hence the former, overflowing its source in
Auvergne, has spread in a generally southwestern direction with
slight opposition. It could not extend itself to the southeast, for
the Mediterranean type was strongly intrenched along the sea
coast, and was in fact pushing its way over the low pass into
Aquitaine from that direction. The case is not dissimilar to that
of Burgundy, for in both instances a bridge of Alpine broad-
headedness cuts straight across a river valley open to a narrow-
headed invasion at both ends. It is not improbable that in both
this bridge is a last remnant of broad-headedness which would
have covered the whole valley had it not been invaded from both
sides by other competitors.

Enough has been said to show the complexity of the racial
relations hereabouts. We have identified the oldest living race
in this part of the world. The most primitive language in
Europe — the Basque — is spoken near by. It will form the sub-
ject of the next paper.

In his journeyings in the Zambesi country, Africa, Captain A. St. H.
Gibbons found an ancient and interesting custom prevailing at Nalolo of
investing the eldest surviving sister of the ruling king with the prerogatives
of a queen, without whose advice and sanction her brother can not give
effect to any important measure in the government of the state. In minor
local matters she in her own district reigns supreme, holds the power of life
and death over her subjects, and is at liberty to wed or depose a husband
at will. The present Makicai, or queen, from whom six husbauds have
been removed in ways not natural, is described by the author as having a
mixed character, being unscrupulous and very polite.

454 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

NEW QUESTIONS IN MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE.

By T. D. CEOTIIEKS, M. D.

THE startling revelations in the scientific world are repeated
in some degree in the sudden opening up of a new territory
of medico-legal science, the jurisprudence of inebriety. Within
five years the question of the mental soundness of the inebriate
and his capacity to act or reason normally has been raised with
increasing frequency in a great variety of criminal and civil
cases. The rapid advances in psychological studies fully sustain
the wisdom and necessity of scientific inquiry in this field. The
medical profession has been suddenly called to determine facts
and their meaning, and give advice along this new line of in-
quiry, without precedent, and opposed by public opinion and
deep-rooted prejudice, and hence are often plunged into great
doubt and confusion. As a result, the strangest theories prevail
as to what inebriety is and is not, theories of moral and legal
accountability and responsibility, that presuppose a degree of
psychological knowledge that can only be obtained after cen-
turies of further study.

To-day there are hundreds of persons awaiting trial or sen-
tence for crime committed when poisoned by alcohol. There are
hundreds of business contracts disputed and contested by law,
made when the parties were intoxicated. There are hundreds of
wills whose validity is questioned for the same reason. There
are hundreds of divorce suits where the inebriety of the parties is
the vital question on which the issue of the case turns.

Although these topics have so recently come into medico-
legal notice, and are so complicated with theories and super-
stitions, yet they have already divided into three distinct theories
or points of view :

First, the ethical and moral view, which seeks an explanation
of inebriety from the teaching of Scripture and the opinions of
theologians and metaphysicians. This view asserts that inebriety
is only a phase of moral depravity innate in every life, and one
that is susceptible of great growth and development, by willful
neglect and gratification of all the animal instincts. Medico-
legally the remedy is severe punishment, increased responsibility,
prayer, conversion, and the application of moral suasion.

The second is the legal view, which is practically an outcome
or result of the moral theory. It assumes that inebriety is a
phase of savagery or the inborn tendency to lawlessness and
giving up of all control and restraint ; or the indulgence of the
lower passions regardless of society, law, and order. The legal
remedy is severe punishment, increased penalties, and suffering.

NEW QUESTIONS IN MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 455

The theory is to develop the higher nature of man by causing
pain and suffering in the lower nature ; in this way to rouse up
the brain and will power to regain control of the animal part.
Three hundred years ago Lord Coke, of England, held that in-
ebriety always aggravated the offense, and the punishment should
rather be increased. This has been the corner-stone of the legal
view of inebriety up to very recent times.

Tlie third theory is the scientific and medical view. This
afl&rms inebriety to be a physical condition, the tendency of
which is often inherited and also acquired ; that this physical
condition is always a disease, a modified or pronounced form of
insanity. In other cases it is a positive symptom of insanity ;
also, it is a form of brain degeneration that, like other diseases,
has distinct causes, development, progress, and decline. It is
also urged that the continuous use of alcohol always causes dis-
turbances of brain circulation, and is followed by brain conges-
tion, brain paralysis, and impaired senses ; the result of which
is incapacity to realize the nature and character of acts, the
judgment is defective, and the control is lessened and is not nor-
mal. Medico-legally this theory regards the inebriate as diseased
and incapacitated to act sanely, to be treated as a sick man and
placed under medical and legal care and control, until recovery
or for life.

The first two theories assume perfect sanity in all cases of
inebriety, and assert that the remedy is to be more severe punish-
ment, and accountability to law and society. The third theory
recognizes a physical condition, and demands a scientific study of
each case before the remedy or treatment can be determined.
Another theory has been asserted, that in some cases inebriety
was a vice at first, then later a disease ; that in some cases
punishment is the remedy, and in others medical care and treat-
ment. Such are some of the theories and standpoints from which
the subject of inebriety is approached medico-legally.

The confusion and doubt of the exact nature of inebriety is
due in a large part to the failure to study these cases independ-
ently. The dictum of judges, the teachings of theologians, news-
paper views, and public opinion, are too often the sources from
which medical men derive their views. This was very apparent
in a contested will case, where five medical men testified to the
mental capacity of a chronic inebriate who willed his property to a
mistress. The judge declared he should act on his own judgment,
and decide the man unsound and incapable. A man set fire to a
church without apparent motive. Three physicians swore to his
sanity, although he had delirium tremens repeatedly and was a
chronic inebriate, and intoxicated at the time. The jury decided
otherwise.

4^6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Questions involving the capacity or incapacity of inebriates
can never be determined by any metaphysical theory of mind or
morals.

One of the very obscure questions which have recently come
into legal prominence has been called the alcoholic trance state.
The frequent statement of prisoners in court, that they did not
remember anything about the crime they are accused of, appears
from scientific study to be a psychological fact.

It is well known to students of mental science that in certain
unknown brain states memory is palsied, and fails to note the
events of life and surroundings. Like the somnambulist, the
person may seem to realize his surroundings and be conscious of
his acts, and later be unable to recall anything which has hap-
pened. These blanks of memory occur in many disordered states
of the brain and body, but are usually of such short duration
as not to attract attention. Sometimes events that occur in
this state may be recalled afterward, but usually they are total
blanks. The most marked blanks of memory have been noticed
in cases of epilepsy and inebriety. When they occur in the lat-
ter they are called alcoholic trances, and are always associated
with excessive use of spirits. Such cases are noted in persons
who use spirits continuously, and who go about acting and talk-
ing sanely although giving some evidence of brain failure, yet
seem to realize their condition and surroundings. Some time
after, they wake up and deny all recollection of acts or events
for a certain period in the past. This period to them begins at a
certain point and ends hours or days after, the interval of which
is a total blank, like that of unconscious sleep. Memory and
certain brain functions are suspended at this time, while the
other brain activities go on as usual.

Probably the largest number of criminal inebriates who claim
loss of memory as a defense for their acts are the alcoholic de-
ments. These are chronic inebriates who have used spirits to
excess for years. This, with bad training in early life, bad sur-
roundings, and bad nutrition, have made them of necessity un-
sound, suffering from many and complex brain defects. Such
persons are always more or less without consciousness or realiza-
tion of their acts. They act automatically, only governed by the
lowest and most transient impulses. Crimes of all kinds are gen-
erally accidents growing out of the surroundings, without premed-
itation or plan. They are incapable of sane reasoning or appre-
ciation of the results of their conduct. The crime is unreasoning,
and general indifference marks all their acts afterward. The
crime is along lines of previous conduct, and seldom strange or
unusual. The claim of no memory in such cases has always a
reasonable basis of truth in the physical conditions of the person.

NEW QUESTIONS IN MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 457

The second group of criminals who claim no memory are
those where the crime is unusual, extraordinary, and unforeseen.
In such cases the trance condition may have been present for
some time before and escaped any special notice, except the mere
statement of the person that he could not recollect his acts. The
unusual nature of the crime, committed by persons who never
before by act or thought gave any indication of it, is always a
factor sustaining the claim of no memory. The explosive, un-
reasoning character of crime always points to mental unsound-
ness and incapacity of control.

A third group of criminals urge this statement of no memory.
They are positive inebriates, drinking to excess, but not to stupor,
who suddenly commit crime with the most idiotic coolness and
indifference, never manifesting the slightest appreciation of the
act as wrong, or likely to be followed by punishment. Crime
committed is never concealed, and the criminal's after conduct
and appearance give no intimation that he is aware of what he
has done. These cases have been termed moral paralytics, and
the claim of the trance state may be true.

A fourth group of cases where memory is claimed to be
absent occurs in dipsomaniacs and periodical inebriates, who have
distinct free intervals of sobriety. This class begin ,to drink to
great excess at once, then drink less for a day or more, and begin
as violently as ever again. In this short interval of moderate
drinking some crime is committed of which they claim not to
have any recollection.

Other cases have been noted where a condition of mental irri-
tation or depression preceded the drink explosion, and the crime
was committed during this premonitory period and before they
drank to excess. The strong probability of trance at this period
is sustained by the epileptic character of such conduct afterward.
The trance state may be justly termed a species of aura, or brain
paralysis, which precedes the explosion.

In some instances, before the drink storm comes on, the per-
son's mind would be filled with the most intense suspicions,
fears, delusions, and exhibit a degree of irritation and perturba-
tion unusual and unaccountable. Intense excitement or depression,
from no apparent cause, prevails, and during this period some
crime may be committed ; then comes the drink paroxysm, and
later all the past is a blank. In these groups the crime is gener-
ally automatic, or committed in a manner different from other
similar crimes. Some governing center has suspended, and all
sorts of impulses may merge into acts at any moment. The
consciousness of such acts and their consequences is practically
destroyed.

One of the questions which has become prominent recently in
VOL. LI. — 35

458 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

many cases is as follows : How far can the testimony of inebriates
or persons under the influence of spirits be trusted concerning
matters observed in this condition ?

This question called for an answer in the following cases :

1. An. inebriate physician, partially intoxicated, witnessed an
assault, and swore to the identity and exact part which the accused
was supposed to have taken in the crime.

2. A barkeeper, partially intoxicated at the time, swore to the
particular man who shot another in a crowd, where several shots
were fired by different persons.

3. A man under the influence of spirits testified that he saw
the person accused put fire to a building which was burned
down.

4. A man on his way home from a saloon, where he had spent
the evening drinking, identified a man in the courtroom whom
he asserted he had seen breaking into a house.

In these cases the medical witness was asked, What, in your
opinion, as an expert, based on the statements of the witness, and
the circumstances of the case, was the condition of the witness's
mind as to the power of clearly observing and remembering the
facts and incidents to which he has testified ? Also, do you be-
lieve in these cases that the witness was competent to observe
and clearly remember the incidents to which he has sworn ?

If the medical expert has formed no higher opinion of ine-
briety than that it is a vice in the moral sense, and alcohol pro-
duces a state of exhilaration, his answer will be unsatisfactory ;
but if he is a scientific student he will form a general conclusion
which will at least approximate very near to the real facts. In
arriving at the facts the medical witness must start from some
general principles which are recognized as established beyond
question.

First, the action of alcohol is always that of an anaesthetic,
benumbing and paralyzing (1) the nerve function and the con-
sciousness of nerve impression; (2) the power of co-ordinating
and regulating these impressions ; (3) the reasoning or capacity
of comparing acts and events is disturbed. Thus both the sense
impressions and the power of analyzing and correctly estimating
them are impaired. This takes place in all cases, depending on
the amount and quality of spirits taken : where intoxication fol-
lows, these effects are very clear ; but where a smaller amount of
spirits is taken, and only partial intoxication is present, they are
not so prominent. It is present in those who use alcohol continu-
ously, and is noted as a general diminution of brain and sense
acuteness. In active life, brain workers, trained experts, and all
persons whose work requires delicate nerve adjustment and accu-
racy of brain and muscle work, soon find the use of alcohol im-

NEW QUESTIONS IN MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 459

pairing their powers, and abandon its use, especially when they
are called to do any particular work. The musician, the actor,
the scientist, and the professional and business man very quickly
discover the impairments which follow from the use of alcohol,
not only over the senses, the volition, the nerve and muscle co-
ordination, but the power of clearly realizing the relation of events.
The increased action of the heart from alcohol is of short duration,
and is surely followed by diminished sensibility and anaesthesia.

The vigor and strength supposed to come from alcohol quickly
merge into weakness and debility. Hence, the man who is visibly
poisoned by alcohol, however slight the degree, has defective
senses, defective nerve impressions, defective co-ordination, and
defective reasoning. He is literally suffering from the first stages
of paralysis, which begins with the senses. He can neither see
nor discriminate accurately ; he is always open to the possibility
of false impressions and false conclusions, and is unable to correct
them. His senses may be but little impaired, but his power of
comparison, of analyzing events and their meaning, is faulty.
He has anaesthesia of the higher brain centers, which does not
appear except from close observation.

From these general facts the study of the individual case
resolves itself into a question of how far the person used spirits,
and how much he had drank at or about a certain specified time ;
also the circumstances, conditions, and surroundings of the act
in question, and the statement of the man ; from this a medical
witness can draw accurate conclusions.

In the two murder cases referred to, other testimony made
the statement of the drinking witness doubtful. In the third
case a clear alibi was established by the accused. In the other
cases, although the evidence of the witness was accepted, there
was a strong probability of mistake. The conclusion, which ap-
pears to be sustained by all the facts and scientific study of these
cases, is as follows :

The testimony of persons while under the influence of spirits,
concerning matters observed by them, and their judgment as to
events and their meaning, are never accurate, but always open to
sources of error and unconsious self-deception which they are
unable to correct.

The medical expert should have no hesitation in denying the
value and truthfulness of all such testimony.

A second question which has come up recently along this same
line of research is more difficult and requires more accurate psy-
chological and physiological study.

It is this : How far are the statements or confessions of per-
sons partially intoxicated, or under the influence of spirits, con-
cerning their personal acts to be accepted as true and veritable ?

460 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

An answer to this question was sought in the following cases :

First. An inebriate shot and killed his partner while under
the influence of spirits. At the station house, soon after, he made
a confession, which reflected very severely on him. On the trial
the statement of the crime was not sustained, but contradicted in
many ways.

Second. A man was found drowned, and a drinking friend
confessed to have pushed him into the water while in a state
of intoxication. This confession was clear in its details, and he
seemed very earnest and contrite. It was accepted as true, and
he was sentenced to prison for life. Subsequently it was found
that the dro\<^ning was accidental, and the confessed murderer
was miles away sleeping at this time, suffering from alcoholic
stupor. A few hours later he came to the scene of the drown-
ing, and at once came to the conclusion that he had committed
the crime.

A third case was that of a man who, after drinking all the
evening in a saloon, saw on his way home after midnight a dead-
ly encounter with a burglar in the hall of a house he was pass-
ing. He was taken to the station house and, after a series of
questioning, identified the burglar, and swore to many details of
the crime. This was found to be untrue, although he adhered
very closely to the details and urged their truthfulness. In real-
ity he had been told what he saw by the officer, whose suggestive
questions made up the entire statement.

The medical questions in these cases were answered from the
assumption that the use of alcohol, unless to stupor, does not im-
pair the senses and reason on matters that concern the personal
acts and conduct. It was assumed that any statements or con-
fessions of crime that did not peril the freedom and safety of the
man could have no other motive except that of the promptings of
a wounded consciousness to repair the injury. It was assumed
that no man under the influence of spirits, not stupidly intoxi-
cated, would ever confess to acts not committed, or ever delude
himself with such impressions, especially as at this time the brain
was in a state of increased activity. All these assumptions were
wrong, and contradicted by the facts. The man under the influ-
ence of spirits is always semiparalyzed ; his brain is in a con-
fused state, and never guided or controlled by natural, healthy
motives; his senses and judgment are weakened, and the repeti-
tion of any statement which may impress him may soon seem a
reality which he is never able to correct. His mind is open to
all sorts of morbid impressions which quickly appear like realities.

In the lower courts these special phases of brain palsies are
seen in the confessions and sworn statements of acts and events
observed that are often found to be absolutely false. The conclu-

Ni;jV QUESTIONS IN MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 461

sion is evident that no testimony, statement, or confession of a
person under the influence of spirits concerning his acts, conduct,
or motives has any value or can be trusted unless sustained by
collateral and other evidence.

A third question along this line of inquiry has also become
prominent during the year : How far shall an inebriate, or man
under the influence of spirits, be held liable for any acts or con-
tracts, such as wills, marriages, or bargains ?

The questions the medical man is asked are these : How far is
the person in this state capable of appreciating the nature and
consequences of his acts ? Was his mind in any way impaired to
that extent as to be unable to clearly realize his duty and obli-
gations to himself and others ? Was the act sane in its execution
and reasonable consequences ? These questions came up for an
answer in the following cases : An inebriate who had drank at
intervals for twenty years had made a will disposing of a large
property, and had repeatedly mentioned its terms with pleasure
and satisfaction. At his death it was found that he had made
another will giving most of his property to the Freedman's Bureau
for the education of colored children. He had been a very miser-
ly man all his life, and this was an unusual act. The will was
made after a drink period, and he seemed to the lawyer and wit-
nesses sober and fully conscious of what he was doing. The med-
ical men held that the use of spirits had not weakened his mind
or rendered him incompetent to dispose of his property.

In a second case, a man who drank to excess at intervals
bought a large interest in a traveling circus while under the
influence of spirits. He seemed perfectly sane at the time, yet
the act was unusual, and he sought to annul the contract, claim-
ing that he was subject to undue influence.

The testimony of medical men as to the probable state of the
mind when these acts were performed is the central evidence
upon which the issue of each case must turn. The necessity of
thorough scientific study of the mental condition of men who use
spirits at intervals or continuously, and the application of all
the facts that enter into the history of the cases in question, is
imperative.

The question of premeditation in the drink paroxysms is a
subject of much confusion in many cases.

The frequent instances where inebriates, in apparent posses-
sion of good judgment, go away and drink to great excess, dis-
playing a degree of forethought and premeditation fully charac-
teristic of all the ordinary events of life, are often very confusing
to the ordinary observer. When the drink paroxysm comes all
unexpectedly upon the victim, in some unforeseen state and cir-
cumstance, and he falls, it is apparent that he is suffering from

462 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

some unstable or diseased brain state, whicli has burst out from
the application of some exciting cause. But when the paroxysm
is anticipated and prepared for, and all the surroundings are
made subservient to this end, when every facility to procure
spirits is increased, when money is secured and business arrange-
ments are made in view of this coming paroxysm, the conclusion
most commonly reached by all non-expert observers is that it is
deliberate vice and wickedness. When the history of a number of
these cases is studied and compared, they are found to be well-
marked cases of reasoning insanity, with drink paroxysms. These
paroxysms are the acute attacks — the deliriums which expend
themselves like storms that gather and burst — and are preceded
by long periods of rest.

Several very noted cases of capital crime by inebriates have
brought out this fact of premeditation, with conviction, on the
theory that disease and insanity were incompatible with power
of conceiving and coolly executing crime. This theory is opposed
by the facts in the history of the following case : A business
man, who bad drank at intervals to excess for ten years, had a
preliminary period of moderate drinking before the stupor or the
delirium of the paroxysm of drink. During this time he con-
tinued his business as usual, but to his confidential friends he ex-
plained various schemes of revenge, in which he wished to punish
persons who had injured him in business. These plans were
skillfully and shrewdly arranged, and indicated a clear, unusual
conception of causes and effects. The reasons for these acts were
delusional, and based on strained inferences. His friends advised
delay, and after the drink paroxysm his recollections of these
plans became indistinct, and his interest passed away. He treated
them as crazy notions, and was ashamed to consider or talk about
them. These delusions only appeared when he began to use
spirits, and were concealed and only mentioned to his most inti-
mate friends. This scheme of revenge comprised arson and
murder, and the execution required a combination of studied acta
that would mislead and mystify others. With but little encour-
agement he would have committed this crime, and premeditation
and malice could have been clearly brought out in the trial.

In a second case a periodical inebriate, whose preliminary
period lasted from two to three weeks, planned a bank swindle.
At about the time of its consummation he drank to great excess,
having the usual paroxysm, then recovered and denied all knowl-
edge of this event. While the act was very unusual and opposed
to all his previous conduct and character, yet during the time it
was planned he appeared to be very clear and fully conscious of
the nature and character of the act. The probability is that
all acute reasoning and display of full consciousness of the act

NEW QUESTIONS IN MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 463

and its consequences are based on delusions, either concealed or
openly confessed. The action of alcohol seems to suspend some
governing center, and capacity to discriminate the folly of the
act. The mind appears to be eclipsed, and previous standards of
truth and honor are overshadowed. All the former vigor remains,
or appears to be intact ; judgment and reason display vigor and
clearness in criminal acts and conduct. Motives and purposes of
life have changed, although the form and semblance of the past
conduct remain.

Innumerable illustrations are seen among petty criminals, so
called, where the acts have preceded the drink craze, and always
been executed while the victim was using spirits in small quanti-
ties. Premeditation, acute reasoning, and apparent consciousness
of acts and their consequences, preceding a drink excess, either
associated with a moderate use of spirits or immediately before
spirits are used in excess, should always be regarded as symptoms
of mental derangement.

The use of spirits for the purpose of committing crime is an-
other disputed question in courts.

Crimes which are supposed to have been committed by persons
who deliberately used spirits for this special purpose are com-
monly found to have been stimulated and provoked by other
causes. To give spirits to a person and encourage him to commit
crime may not be an unusual occurrence, but its consummation is
an accident and exceedingly uncertain. On general principles
the natural tendency of an inebriate's mind is to ignore all
restraint and obligation, legal, social, and moral. The higher
governing centers are depressed and more or less paralyzed. The
senses are deranged, and false impressions are constantly received,
and the power of analysis and reason is diminished and broken
up. All higher relations of duty are obscured, and only the
lowest, most transient impulses control the mind. At this time
temptations to acts that are criminal, urged on the bewildered
mind, may be acted upon, from simple incapacity to reason and
understand the consequences. This blurred mental state is of
short duration, and merges quickly into ansesthetic physical
and mental states, or delusional conceptions, of which fear and
suspicion are prominent. The use of spirits to give courage to
commit crime very often produces the opposite effect, partic-
ularly where an interval occurs between the use of spirits and
the performance of the act.

The courage or stimulation of the first stage from the action
of alcohol on the brain is of short, uncertain duration, and liable
any moment to change to abject fear or other states.

There are two conditions in which crime is committed by per-
sons who drink spirits for this purpose : one, where they become

464 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the agents of others, and accept and carry out the plans arranged
for them, either tacitly as by power of compulsion of an idea,
or desire to please another ; secondly, the act is the materiali-
zation of a delusion which has existed before and has been stimu-
lated into activity by the use of spirits. In the first case some
hypnotic state, in which an idea becomes dominant, exists. But
this is very unstable, and while it may be increased by alcohol,
is uncertain in duration, and liable to change any moment.
Thus in a case where a man who, after using spirits, developed
delusions of suspicion that his partner was robbing him, this was
increased by giving him more spirits and reiterating the idea, and
suggesting criminal revenge. It was noticed that there was a cer-
tain brief period when he might execute a criminal act, but before
and after it was very doubtful. The brain could not be depended
upon : it might act in an entirely different way and from a differ-
ent motive apparently. Alcohol clearly predisposes to criminal-
ity by lowering and paralyzing the higher brain centers which
preside over consciousness of right and wrong. The immediate
effect of spirits is to cause impulsive, petty acts. For the pres-
ent moment such acts might materialize into serious crime, but it
would depend upon favorable conditions and surroundings. The
unstable condition of the brain made so by alcohol, is more or
less incapable of sustaining a preconceived idea and carrying it
out, especially if time and continuous drinking follow. This is
the rule to which there are exceptions, but these exceptions
clearly follow certain circumstances which are easily traced.
Often it is claimed that spirits are given for the purpose of obtain-
ing undue influence in the making of a will or signing a contract.
This is confirmed by a clinical study of cases, and facts indicate
the impulsiveness of the act, with absence of deliberation or fore-
thought. Delusions and misconceptions of acts and motives are
very common in all inebriates. Faulty reasoning, childish credu-
lity, and general failure of capacity to discriminate and adjust
himself to the conditions and surroundings, must of necessity
result in wrongdoing ; although in many cases this condition is
covered up, and only when the person acts along unusual lines
is it apparent.

All contracts and wills written by inebriates should be sub-
jected to careful scrutiny. Not infrequently such acts display
sound judgment, and it is found that they are the culmination of
previous conceptions. Where they manifest imbecility and strange
motives, it is clearly the workings of an ansesthetic brain, acting
from suggestions from without or deranged impulses formed
within. While a very large number of inebriates act rationally
in ordinary affairs of society and business, and do not commit
overt acts that come under legal recognition, it is a question if

iV^ir QUESTIONS IN MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 465

this is not the result of accident and conditions. There are strong
reasons for believing that a slight change of surroundings both
mental and physical would explode the degeneration which exists
and bring to light insanity, criminality, or idiocy. Instances are
not infrequent of acts of lawlessness and crime in inebriates pre-
viously law-abiding and honest citizens. It was not the last use
of spirits which provoked the act ; this only exploded a condition
which had been gathering like a storm long before. The direc-
tion and form which this disturbance would take could not al-
ways be foreseen.

The designing man who gives spirits and suggests crime and
wrongdoing is in peril of being the victim himself. He is prac-
tically exploding a state of insanity, and trusting that he may be
able to control it.

The inebriate or moderate drinker who uses spirits to give
courage to commit some act makes the same blunder of suppos-
ing that he can paralyze the higher governing centers and still
direct and control the lower faculties. Where imperative ideas
and delusions already possess the brain, alcohol may intensify
them for a time, but confusion and uncertainty of thought and
act are inevitable.

The claim that alcohol is used for the purpose of committing
crime should be a question open for evidence, and one to be con-
sidered doubtful until proved by facts that can have no other
meaning. Crime committed when under the influence of spirits
will be found as a rule to follow uniform lines and be very much
alike in methods of execution. If spirits have been used for the
special purpose of facilitating the commission of crime, very
wide differences will appear. No two cases will be alike, and
doubt and uncertainty will complicate the factors in every case.

These are some of the many new questions coming into prom-
inence in the courtroom with increasing frequency every year.
The present obscurity and confusion of law rulings and medical
theories will be cleared away in the near future, when the sub-
ject is studied from the scientific point of view.

L'Eleveur, of Paris, has a story of a heron in England which, having
lost its mate, sought consolation in constituting itself a kind of shepherd for
the village. It brought the cattle to the stables, and took upon itself the
supervision of the poultry, adjusting all the quarrels, and driving away
unruly members of the brood. It also assumed the charge of the horses
when they were harnessed, and at the first sign of restiveness restored
them to quiet by giving them a i^eck in the nostrils. One day, when two
calves had escaped, the heron, having tried unsuccessfully to drive them
back, remained near them and watched them till the men came in search
of them.

TOL. LI. — 36

466 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

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

CORREgPOlfDANT DE l'iNSTITCT DE FRANCE, KTC.

IX. — NOMENCLATURE AND FORMS OF TAXATION.

{Continued from page 1S5.)

THE nature and scope of the "legal" and wholly anomalous
definition (to which reference has been made, see page 173)
that has been given in the United States by its Supreme Court to
a direct tax,* and the interesting judicial and historical circum-
stances in connection therewith are substantially as follows :

The Constitution of the United States provides that "repre-
sentatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several
States according to their respective numbers" — that is, popula-
tion— "and excluding Indians not taxed." The origin of the
idea thus incorporated in the Constitution of proportioning direct
taxes according to representation, or population, rather than upon
property, is not certainly known, and has been made the subject
of speculation. Hamilton, subsequent to the adoption of the
Constitution, suggested that the writings of the French econo-
mists of the eighteenth century, with which a number of the promi-
nent members of the Constitutional Convention were familiar, was
its source. These held that "agriculture was the only productive
employment, and that the net product from land, to be found in
the hands of the landowner, is the only fund from which taxation
can draw without impoverishing society." They were accordingly
led to class taxes habitually as direct when laid immediately
upon the landowner, and as indirect when laid upon somebody
else, but in their opinion destined to be borne by the landowner
ultima,tely. Precedents for levying taxes by apportionment were
also to be found in the French taille reelle, which was a tax on the
income of real property and laid by apportioning a fixed sum
among the provinces and requiring from each its quota. The
English land tax, established under William III, embodied a like

provision.!

\

* Chief-Justice Chase on more than one occasion judicially intimated that the definition
of direct taxes by political economists can not be used satisfactorily for the purpose of con-
struing the phrase in the Constitution of the United States. Thus, a tax on the circulation
by banks of State bank notes was held not to be direct (Veazie vs. Fenno, 8 Wallace, 533-
546), and so also of a tax on incomes of insurance companies (Pacific Insurance Company
v.i. Soule, 7 Wallace, 433).

f For further discussion of this subject, see paper by Prof. Charles F. Dunbar, con-
tributed to The Journal of Economics, for July, 1889, and entitled The Direct Tax of
1861.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 467

Be this as it may, the distribution of property (wealth)
among the people of the American States at the time of the adop-
tion of the Federal Constitution, as shown by the debates in the
Constitutional Convention, was, very curiously, such that an ap-
portionment of taxes according to population and representation
was not inequitable. When the subject was under discussion,
Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, said he " thought the number of
people alone the best rule for measuring wealth as well as repre-
sentation" (Elliot's Debates, v, 297). Mr. Gorham, of Massachu-
setts, "supported the propriety of establishing numbers as the
rule. He said that in Massachusetts estimates had been taken in
the different towns, and that persons had been curious enough to
compare these estimates with the respective numbers of people,
and it had been found, even including Boston, that the most exact
proportions prevailed between numbers and property" (ibid., 300).
Mr. Wilson, a leading member from Pennsylvania, said that,
" taking the same number of people in the aggregate in the west-
ern settlements of Pennsylvania and in the city of Philadelphia,
he believed there would be little difference in their wealth and
ability to contribute to the public wants" (ibid., 301). Dr. John-
son, of Connecticut, " thought that wealth and population were
the true, equitable rules of representation ; but he conceived
that these two principles resolved themselves into one, popula-
tion being the best measure of wealth" (ibid., 303). And when
the vote came to be taken in the Federal Convention on the
proposition that direct taxation ought to be proportioned to
representation, it passed without opposition (ibid., 303).

In the five occasions— 1798, 1813, 1815, 181G, and 18G1— in which
the Federal Government has established a general system of di-
rect taxation, there has been no essential and radical difference
of opinion in respect to the methods and instrumentalities by
which the provisions of the enactments could be made effective
for the purpose of raising revenue. The amount of money de-
sirable to raise was first determined. Then the population of
each State was taken, according to the latest preceding census,
and the proportion of tax proceeds respectively due was calcu-
lated.* A statute was then passed declaring that each State should
pay to the Federal Treasury so much money, according to their
ascertained proportionate liability of the aggregate amount
which the entire Union of the States was required to raise. In
, each of the first four cases of such a system of taxation the sev-
eral States were empowered to assume or assess in their own way

* Up to and includiug the direct tax of 18fil, its imposition was' scrupulously made in
accordance with the understanding of the framers of the Constitution. Thus, the ratio of
the State of New York in 1861 was returned at $2,602,918|.

468 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the sums for wliicli they were severally assessed and liable to pay
into the national Treasury. In the case, however, of the levy in
1801, eleven States openly in insurrection against the Federal Gov-
ernment, one loyal State, and one Territory (Utah) refused or
neglected to pay their assessment ; whereupon a law was passed
by Congress authorizing the appointment of special officials,
whose duty it was to go into such States as soon as it was prac-
ticable and levy the proper assessments, seizing and selling real
property whenever it became necessary to enforce payments of
the amount required. And these provisions of law were enforced
by threat or action to such an extent that about 83,800,100 were
collected up to 1870, out of an aggregate quota of $5,153,891 due
from all the States that adopted ordinances of secession; the total
amount assessed on all the States having been $20,000,000.

The confusion attendant on the settlement after the war of
the unpaid liabilities of the impoverished insurrectionary States
to the Federal Government, on account of the direct tax of 1801,
finds further illustration in the circumstance, that the Comptroller
of the United States Treasury decided in 1883 that the sum of
$35,555, appropriated by an act of Congress to refund to the State
of Georgia money expended by it in 1777, or one hundred and six
years previously, for the common defense in the War for Inde-
pendence, should be paid to the Treasurer of the United States,
"to the credit of Georgia on account of direct taxes charged
against the State." The Supreme Court of the United States also
decided in 1887 (United States vs. Louisiana, 37, 123) that the
direct-tax law in 18G1 did not create any liability on the part of a
State to pay the tax ; and that the apportionment merely desig-
nated the amount to be levied upon the property of individuals in
the several States, without any liability attaching to the State in
its political and corporate character. " This decision finally left
the unpaid quota of the direct tax of 1861 in precisely the same
position as any other tax assessed upon individuals, which the
United States has been unable or has neglected to collect in full."
(Dunbar, Direct Tax of 18G1, Quarterly Journal of Economics,
July, 1889.)

At the time when it was proposed to enforce the tax on de-
faulting States by the seizure and sale of land, a doubt was ex-
pressed whether the tax in question was, in its essence, "a tax on
the land and all the various estates into which the fee may have
been divided, or was a tax on the owner of the land and levied on
the interest of the owner in it, and on no other subordinate or
incorporeal interest. But no tax was ever collected or any land
sold under the act of seizure and sale." (Hillard, Law of Taxa-
tion.)

But, apart from a unison of opinion as to the methods by which

PRINCIPLES OF TAX ATI Oy. 469

a direct tax should be levied and collected under the Federal
Government, the determination of what is a direct tax has not
been an easy matter ; and the question came up for solution before
the United States Supreme Court shortly after the adoption of
the Constitution, or in 1794, in a case that has become historic in
the annals of American jurisprudence.

Congress having imposed a tax on pleasure carriages— or char-
iots, as they were then termed — its collection was resisted by one
Hylton, of Virginia, on the ground that such a tax was a direct
tax, and had not been apportioned among the States, as required
by the Constitution. The court held that the tax in question was
to be considered as a tax on the expenses of living and not a direct
tax within the meaning of the Constitution, as the evils which
would attend its apportionment according to population would be
so great " that the Constitution could not have intended that an
apportionment should be made." "The Constitution," said the
Court, " evidently contemplated no taxes as direct taxes, but such
as Congress could lay in proportion to the census. A tax on car-
riages can not be laid by the rule of apportionment without very
great inequality and injustice. Suppose two States, equal in cen-
sus, to pay eighty thousand dollars each, by a tax on carriages of
eight dollars on every carriage, and in one State there are one
hundred carriages and in the other one thousand. A, in one State,
would pay for his carriage eight dollars ; but B, in the other
State, would pay for his carriage eighty dollars." (Opinion by
Justice Chase, 3 Dall., 171.)

These, and other decisions of the United States Supreme Court,
have accordingly been regarded as affirming, that within the
meaning of the Constitution of the United States there are only
two forms of taxation that can be considered as direct — namely,
a capitation or poll tax, simply, and without regard to property,
profession, or any other circumstance, and a tax on land; and
that no other taxes can be regarded as direct by the Federal
authorities. It is also worthy of note that since the decision in
the carriage case in 1796, Congress, in the few instances in which
it has imposed a tax which it recognized as direct, has never
made it applicable to any objects other than real estate and slaves.

The following additional memoranda are pertinent to this dis-
cussion : "While the carriage case was pending before the United
States Supreme Court in 1796, Mr. Madison, who participated in
the convention that framed the Constitution, wrote to the effect
that the action of Congress in imposing this tax was constitu-
tional, but that he doubted whether the court would so regard it.
Hamilton, who appeared as one of the counsel for the United
States in this case, also left behind him a legal brief in which he
says : " What is the distinction between direct and indirect taxes ?

470 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is a matter of regret that terms so uncertain and vague on so
important a point are to be found in the Constitution. We shall
seek in vain for any antecedent settled legal meaning to the re-
spective terms. There is none. We shall be as much at a loss to
find any disposition of either which can satisfactorily determine
the point." In his argument on behalf of the Government in the
carriage case, Hamilton, however, mentioned such taxes which
should be considered as direct; namely, direct capitation taxes,
taxes on land and buildings, and general assessment. (See his
brief in the case referred to.) And in rendering the decision in
the income-tax case of Springer -us. United States, Justice Swayne
also added to our historical information on this subject by re-
marking, that " the question of what is a direct tax is one ex-
clusively of American jurisprudence," which is the same thing
as saying that the system of American taxation is so peculiar,
that the question involved has never been made a subject of legal
controversy and discussion under any other, or foreign system of
taxation.

This statement of Judge Swayne is one of a number of illus-
trations that will confront the student of the existing American
system of taxation — if, indeed, it is worthy of being called a sys-
tem— showing how the makers and administrators of tax laws in
the United States have drifted, as it were, into uses and practices
which long usage has made to appear almost as of self-evident
validity, but which find no precedent in the experience or sys-
tems of other countries, and no solid foundation in any correct
economic philosophy.*

There were also two reasons and two points of view in the
Hylton case on which the judgment of the court might have been
predicated. One was that Hylton possessed one hundred and
twenty-five carriages, which warranted the inference that they
were hackney carriages, kept and used for hire, and that the tax
levied on each carriage ultimately fell on the consumer and not
on the owner (Hylton) himself; or, in other words, the tax in
question was a tax on transportation, and, as such, capable of
transference to the person carried, and therefore, when imposed

* Since the statement of Judge Swayne (above referred to) was made, a decision has
been rendered by the Privy Council of Great Britain, in which the recognition of direct
taxation and its method of incidence by British jurisprudence is taken for granted ; for
in concurrence with a decision rendered by the full bench of judges concerning an opinion of
one of their members, wherein he says, in speaking of a point tliat had been raised, that a
tax must be general in order to be a direct tax, they reject that view, inasmuch as it
'■ would deny the character of a direct tax to the income tax of this country — Great
Britain — which is always spoken of as such, and is generally looked upon as a direct tax
of the most obvious kind; and it would run counter to the common understanding of
men on this subject, which is one main clew to the meaning of the Legislature."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. . 471

on the carrier, was an indirect and not a direct tax. Another
point is, that a tax on carriages has not the compulsory element
which pertains to all direct taxes, as their ownership and use are
optional, which is the special characteristic of all indirect taxes.

Substantially the same question involved in the carriage case
came up again (in 1874) before the same court (Springer vs.
United States, 12 Otto, 102 U. S. Reports, p. 85G), when a citizen
of Illinois resisted the payment of a national income tax on the
ground that such a tax was a direct tax ; and not being levied in
the manner prescribed by the Constitution, was not legal and
valid. From an economic point of view such a tax, as has been
before shown, is and always has been regarded as a direct tax ;
and on the hearing the plaintiff adduced in support of his posi-
tion the testimony, as found in their writings, of almost every
acknowledged authority on political economy or finance in the
English language — Adam Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Wayland*
Brande, Say, Perry, as well as the Encyclopaedia Britannica and
almost every other cyclopsedia or dictionary of English or Ameri-
can origin.* The court, however, held as before, that under the
definition of a direct tax, as expressed in the Constitution, the in-

* In all the debates in the British Parliament it is doubtful if any British statesman can
be named who has ever spoken of an income tax as other than a direct tax. The same
may be also affirmed of French authors and statesmen. The following citations of the
opinions of various recognized authorities are illustrative :

" The taxes which it is intended should fall indifferently upon every species of revenue
are capitation taxes." (Adam Smith.)

James Mill, under the title of " Direct taxes, which are designed to fall upon all sources
of income,''^ says, " Assessed taxes, poll taxes, and income taxes are of this description."
(Elements of Political Economy, p. 267.)

J. R. McCulIoch divides his work on taxation into two parts ; Part I, on direct taxes, and
Part II, on indirect taxes, and under the head of " Direct Taxes " he treats of " taxes on
property and income^

Dr. Lieber, referring to the different modes of levying taxes, says: "The first way is
direct — to determine from the statement of the parties concerned, or from official informa-
tion, the net income of persons. This kind of taxes are called direct." (Encyclopasdia Amer-
icana )

" Taxes are either direct or indirect. A direct tax is one which is demanded from the
very pei-ons who it is intended or desired should pay it. Direct taxes are either on income
or exi^enJiture. . . . Most taxes on expenditure are direct, being imposed not on the pro-
ducer or seller of an article, but immediately on the consumer. . . . The window tax is a
direct tax on expenditure, so are taxes on horses and carriages." (John Stuart Mill, Political
Economy, vol. ii.)

When Sir Robert Peel brought forward his plan for an income tax in 1842, he said:
" Indirect taxation has reached its limits, and can no longer be relied on. My plan is this,
to levy an income tax," etc. (Parliamentary Debates, Ivi, 428 ; Ann. Reg., 1842, 72, 73.)
And Lord John Russell said in reply : " To resort to the desperate measure of an income
tax in such circumstances is nothing less than to proclaim to the world that your resources
are exhausted, that indirect taxation has reached its limits," etc. (Parliamentary Debates,
Ivii, 86, 147 ; Ann. Reg , 1842, 77, 79.)

472 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

come tax was not direct but indirect, and accordingly that its
imposition was not unconstitutional. The following was the
exact language of the Court :

"Our conclusions are that direct taxes within the meaning of
the Constitution are only capitation taxes, as expressed in that in-
strument, and taxes on real estate ; and that the tax of which the
plaintiff complains" (i.e., a direct tax) " is within the category of
an excise or duty."

Whetlier warranted or not, the drift of public opinion in the
United States has been, that the decision of its Supreme Court
in the Springer case in 1874, and, to a certain extent, in all pre-
vious cases touching the constitutionality of an income tax,
was made under the pressure of an apparent political necessity.
Had the decision been to the effect that the income tax was a
direct tax, and any method of levying it other than that pre-
scribed by the Constitution — i. e., according to population — was
unconstitutional, the Government would have been forever prac-
tically deprived of an effective instrumentality for raising reve-
nue which might be most desirable in cases of emergency. Im-
mense sums which had been paid under protest as income taxes
would also have been pressed for repayment in case the decision
had been otherwise, to the serious embarrassment of the national
Treasury.

In harmony with the above decisions, the United States Su-
preme Court has decided that neither taxes on distilled spirits
(United States vs. Singer, 15 Walh, 111), nor succession duties on
the devolution of title to real estate (Scholey vs. Rew, 23 Wall.,
331), nor taxes on the notes of State banks (Veazie Bankrs. Fenno,
8 Wall., 533), nor taxes on the receipts of insurance companies from
premiums and assessments (Insurance Company vs. Soule, 7 Wall.,
433) are direct taxes ; but that all such taxes are imposts and ex-
cises, and subject, therefore, to the requirement as to uniformity,
but not subject to the requirement of apportionment.

Important, interesting, and instructive from a constitutional,
legal, and economic point of view, as was the experience (jf the
United States in respect to direct taxation, prior to 1804, the
sequel of events and experience in respect to this question and its
involved problems has been no less important and worthy of nar-
ration.

By an enactment of Congress, August 18, 1894, establishing
an income tax for the United States, a tax of iico per cent was
imposed on the gains, profits, and income of persons derived
from any kind of property, including rent and the growth and
produce of lands, and profits made upon the sale of land if pur-
chased within two years. Every element that could make real or
personal property a source of value to an owner was taxed. An

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 473

excise duty was also imposed upon income derived from any pro-
fession, trade, employment, or avocation. The tax upon persons
generally was not upon their entire income, but on the excess over
and above the sum of $4,000. All persons having incomes of $4,000
or under were exempt. The whole burden of the tax, it was esti-
mated, would fall on less than two per cent of the population of
the country. That the Government practically conceded that such
a feature of the act was pre-eminently class legislation is evident
from the following extract from a statement made in a brief by
the Attorney General of the United States : " Congress," he says,
" has adopted as the miniTnura income for the purpose of taxa-
tion the limit of $4,000. This limit may be said to divide the
upper from the lower middle class, financially speaking, in the
larger cities, or to divide the middle class from the wealthy in the
country districts." {Opening argument hy William D. Guthrie,
in support of the coritention that the income-tax law of 189Jf. was
unconstitutional.)

As might have been expected, the provisions of this enactment,
which could not be fairly considered pertinent and relevant to a
just and equitable system of income taxation, occasioned much of
dissatisfaction among business men and the financial authorities
of the country generally ; and measures were at once initiated to
test before the proper legal tribunals — i. e., the courts of the
United States — the constitutionality of the statute. The most
important and immediate representatives of this action were the
Farmers' Loan and Trust Company and the Continental Trust
Company, of New York — two of the largest trust companies in
the United States. It is also worthy of note in this connection
that the above-named companies, before taking any steps to test
the validity of the act in question, complied with all its pro-
visions ; no collector of internal revenue or any public officer of
the United States having been made a party, or any injunction
sought from the courts, to restrain the collection of the tax.

The basis of action of the above-named parties, as repre-
sented by some of the most eminent members of the legal pro-
fession in the country,* was substantially as follows : Each of
them, and a large number of other like organizations — insurance
companies, savings banks, and trusts — hold as investments of
capital stock, earnings, and profits, and as trustees for minors,
widows, individuals, copartnerships, and corporations too numer-
ous to mention, resident in the United States and elsewhere, large
amounts of real estate, situated in the various States of the Fed-

* Messrs. Joseph Choate, Clarence A. Seward, William D. Guthrie, Benjamia H. Bristow,
David Wilcox, and Charles Steele. For the United States, James C. Carter and Richard
Olney, the Attorney General.

474 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

eral Union, and amounting in aggregate value to liundreds of
millions of dollars. The rents and income of tliis real estate, also
annually amoimting in the aggregate to large sums, are collected
and received by the above-mentioned organizations, and held by
them in their various fiduciary capacities.

The first point of importance under such a state of affairs to
which attention is asked is, that taxes levied or laid b}^ the Fed-
eral Government are recognized and admitted (in virtue of re-
peated decisions and assumptions of the United States Supreme
Court) to be typical forms of direct taxation, and as such under a
clear and carefully worded provision of the Federal Constitution
must be apportioned among the several States according to their
respective population.* On this point, therefore, there could obvi-
ously be no legal contention.

It is now well recognized that this provision of the Constitu-
tion, after full discussion and careful wording on the part of its
framers, was adopted in order to protect to the States, which in
entering into union were surrendering to the prospective Federal
Government so many sources of income, the power of direct taxa-
tion, and so preclude a combination of States from exacting trib-
ute from other States, f

The next point of contention in order of importance in the case
as presented to the United States Supreme Court was ; did the
provisions of the income-tax act of 1894, imposing a tax of two
per cent upon the gains, profits, and income derived from all kinds
of property — including rent and the gains and profits accruing
from the growth, profits, or sale of land — involve and create a
tax which must necessarily be deemed a direct tax on real estate
(land), and which not being apportioned (levied) according to the

* " Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among tlie several States
which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers." — Condi-
tution of the United States, Article 7, S'ction 2.

f " The foundera anticipated that the expenditures of the States, their counties, cities,
and towns, would chiefly be met by direct taxation on accumulated property, Mhile they ex-
pected that those of the Federal Government would be for the mosl part liy indirect taxes ;
and in order that the power of direct taxation of the General Government should not be
exercised except on necessity, and when the necessity arose should be so exercised as to
leave the States at liberty to discharge their respective obligations and should not be so ex-
ercised unfairly and discriminatingly as to particular States or otherwise by a mere majoi-ity
vote, possibly of those whose constituents were intentionally not subjected to any part of
the burden, this qualified grant was made. Those who made it knew that the power to tax
involved the power to destroy, and that the only security against the abuse of this power is
found in the structure of the Government itself. In imposing a tax the Legislature acts
upon its constituents. This is in general a sufficient security against erroneous and oppress-
ive taxation, and they retained this security Vjy providing that direct taxation and repre-
sentation in the lower House of Congress should be adjusted on the same measure." — Chief-
Justice Fuller.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 475

provision of the Constitution render the entire act imposing an
income tax unconstitutional and void ?

The precise or original question involved, it was admitted, was
one on which the Federal Government had really never been
heard,* and was first brought before the United States Supreme
Court for a hearing and adjudication in April, 1895. On that
occasion the court held that the provisions of the act of August
15, 1895, were unconstitutional, so far " as they purport to impose
a tax on the rent or income of real estate." It was, however,
equally divided on the following questions, and expressed no
opinion in regard to them :

(1) Whether the void provisions invalidated the whole act ;
(2) whether, as to the income from personal property as such, the
act is unconstitutional as levying direct taxes ; (3) whether any
part of the tax, if not considered as a direct tax, is invalid for
want of uniformity.

The court, early in its history, adopted the practice of requir-
ing, if practicable, constitutional questions to be heard by a full
court, in order that the judgment in such cases might, if possible,
be the decision of the majority of the whole court. And as the
court was not full, at the first hearing in April, and as four judges
did not concur in the opinion then rendered, a rehearing was
granted by the court in the month following (May 6th, 7th, 8th) ;
in the announcement of which the Chief Justice remarked that
" the importance to the Government of the new views of its
taxing power can hardly be exaggerated."

In advocating the constitutionality and rightfulness of the
provisions of the income tax of 1894, the then United States At-
torney General, Hon. Richard Olney, on behalf of the Govern-
ment, made in part the following argument :

"What is this" (contested)" tax in its true value and essence ?
It is an assessment upon the taxpayer on account of his money-
spending power as shown by his revenue for the year preceding
the assessment. It is not a property tax in any sense or of any
sort. Yet this is the sort of tax which is called a tax on real
estate for no other reason than that last year's rents form a part
of the yardstick by which this year's money-spending capacity
is measured ! A greater error, I submit, could not easily be justi-
fied. My Lord Coke is quoted to the effect that a grant in fee
of the profits of land passes the land itself. Other citations are
always interesting, and state a rule of law which is indisputable

* None of the previous decisions of the court " discussed the question whether a tax
on the income of personalty is equivalent to a tax on that personalty ; but all held real
estate liable to direct taxation only so as to sustain a tax on the income of realty on the
gi'ound of being an excise or duty." — Chief-Justice Fuller.

476 POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

and of universal acceptance. But wliat is their relevancy to the
case in hand ? They relate to grants taking effect in future — to
grants taking effect from the date or delivery of the deed, or from
the probate of the devise, and carrying all after- accruing rents
as a matter of course. But what this case is concerned with is
rents that have not only become due, but have actually been
received by the landlord. Does any one pretend that rents thus
received would pass by a grant of the estate that has yielded
them ? Of course not, and why ? Because, by falling due and
being collected, they have become severed from the realty, and
have become personal property — money in the landlord's pocket,
like any other money. Nothing is gained, however, by belittling
or evading an argument, and I have no intention of doing either.
The strength of the plaintiff's claim is in the proposition that
the value of land is in its use ; that rents are the pecuniary equiva-
lent of the use, and that, therefore, to tax rents is in substance and
effect to tax the land itself. This is what may be called a fetch-
ing proposition. How much truth is there in it, and how much
of applicability to the present case ? There is this much of truth
in it: that a tax upon rents to become due — to accrue in the
future — may well be deemed a tax on the estate itself. Such
accruing rents are like growing crops, an inseparable part of the
land, and whatever is a charge upon them is necessarily a charge
upon the land. But the proposition stated has no application
whatever to the present case, because the tax it has to do with
is a tax in respect to rents already due and collected, and in all
probability either spent or transformed into other tangible prop-
erty. How can a tax in respect to such rents be said to be a tax
upon the real estate producing them ? When they become due
and are paid, just as when crops are harvested ; when either pro-
cess is complete, a new and distinct item of property comes into
existence, and the landlord's property realizes a corresponding
accretion."

In rejoinder the counsel for the appellants maintained that
under the income-tax enactment in question (i. e., of August 28,
1894) a tax was imposed upon income "derived not merely from
business, but also expressly upon that derived from property, and
therefore directly upon the property producing the income,
whether real or personal." Notably is this the case with a tax
upon "rents" and the "growth and produce of land." It taxes
every element of value of the land which the owner can realize
from third parties. It must be clear that a tax upon what gives
the land value is a tax upon the land itself. In the words of
Hamilton, " What in fact is property but a fiction without the
beneficial use of it?" In many cases, indeed, the income or
annuity is the property itself. As one of the justices said in the

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. . 477

Hylton case, " Land, independently of its produce, is of no value."
It scarcely needs argument to establish that anything which
affects every element that gives an article its value, in the eye
of the law, affects directly the article itself. In illustration of
this many decisions, mainly of the United States Supreme Court,
were cited, of which the followiug are examples :

In Brown vs. Maryland, 12 Wheaton, it was held by the
United States Court that a tax on the occupation of an importer
is the same as a tax on imports, and was therefore void.

In Weston vs. Charleston, 2 Peters, it was held that a tax
upon the income of United States securities was a tax upon the
securities themselves, and equally inadmissible.

In Almy vs. California, 24 Howard, it was held that a duty
on a bill of lading was the same thing as a duty on the article
which it represents.

In Cook vs. Pennsylvania, 97 United States, it was held that a
tax upon the amount of sales of goods made by an auctioneer was
a tax upon the goods sold.

In Railroad Company vs. Jackson, 7 Wallace, it was held that
a tax upon the interest payable upon bonds was a tax not upon
the debtor, but upon the security, the bonds.

In Philadelphia Steamship Company vs. Pennsylvania, 122
United States, it was held that a tax upon the income received
from interstate commerce was a tax upon the commerce itself,
and equally unauthorized.

"If a man seized of lands in fee by his deed granteth to
another the profit of those lands to have and to hold to him and
his heires, the whole land itself e doth passe ; for what is the land
hut the profits thereon 9 " (Coke upon Littleton, the accepted rule
of law in every court in English Christendom.)

A devise of the interest or of the rents and profits is a devise
of the thing itself out of which that interest on those rents and
profits may issue (Patterson vs. Ellis, 11 Wendal).

It seems clear, therefore, that the weight of judicial opinion
as expressed in the judgments of the highest courts, both in the
United States and England, was to the effect that the tax imposed
under the United States act of August, 1894, on the income from
the use, profits, and sales of land was a direct tax, and, not being
apportioned in accordance with a strict provision of the Federal
Constitution in respect to the levy and collection of said tax, was
necessarily unconstitutional and void.*

* The following rejoinder by one of the counsel for the applicants (Mr. Choate) to a
portion of the argument made by the Attorney General (Mr. Olney), and before cited, is per-
tinent and instructive, as respects the much-vexed question as to the sittis of property for
the purpose of tax administration :

" The Attorney General says, ' When a man has got the money in his pocket it is no

478 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Apart from the leading element in this celebrated case, and
on which the final decision of the court was mainly based, was
that provisions in the act of 1894 establishing an income tax,
being in the nature of direct taxation, and the same being not
assessed in accordance with the requirements of the Federal Con-
stitution, were void in effect. The constitutionality of the entire
act was also questioned on the ground that it violated the consti-
tutional requirements that " all duties, imposts, and excises shall
be uniform throughout the United States." Thus, for example,
it taxed the income of certain companies and associations, "no
matter how created or organized," at a higher rate than the in-
come of individuals and partnerships derived from precisely sim-
ilar property; and denied to individuals deriving their income
from shares in certain corporations and associations the benefit
of the exemption of $4,000 granted to all other persons inter-
ested in similar property and business, and the like. These fea-
tures of the act of 1894, although constituting most important
and instructive contributions to the general subject of "taxa-
tion," are not, however, so pertinent to the immediate subject
under consideration as to require at present any extended dis-
cussion.

Conclusion. — As the result of the hearing and discussions
involving the constitutionality of the income-tax statute of Au-
gust 28, 1894, the United States Supreme Court, a majority of its
members concurring, gave judgment as follows :

1. We adhere to the opinion already announced, that
taxes on real estate being indisputably direct taxes,
taxes on the rents or income of real estate are equally
direct taxes.

2. We ARE OF THE OPINION THAT TAXES ON PERSONAL PROP-
ERTY, OR ON THE INCOME OF PERSONAL PROPERTY, ARE LIKEWISE
DIRECT TAXES.

longer rent.' One thing I would say about tbat is, that if you are going after rent as
money, the tax is on personal property, and should be apportioned. But the answer is that
the tax does not go after the rent as money in the taxpayer's pocket. The act of 189-1
(section 27) specifies the rents as a cardinal part and element of this income return, and every
man who goes up to make return has to state under oath what rent he got last year. This
fiction — this dilference between the name and the thing, between the substance and the
shadow, urged by the Attorney General — is that, though you can not tax rent, you can tax
the money in the owner's pocket received from rent. ■ If there is one factitious argument,
one pretense of a reason, one attempt to make a distinction without a difference that this
court has uniformly stamped upon with all its might, it is just that. The court has re-
peatedly decided that such an argument is wholly unsound. What did the court mean in
Brown vs. Maryland, when it held that a tax on the occupation of an importer is the same
as a tax on imports and is therefore void ? It is the source, the substance, that the act
strikes at, that the court always looks to, and always has looked to, in any form and case
that has ever come before it until now."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. ■ 479

3. The tax imposed by sections twenty- seven to thirty-
seven, INCLUSIVE, of the ACT OF 1894, SO FAR AS IT FALLS ON
THE INCOME OF REAL ESTATE AND OF PERSONAL PROPERTY, BE-
ING A DIRECT TAX WITHIN THE MEANING OF THE CONSTITUTION,
IS THEREFORE UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND VOJD, BECAUSE NOT AP-
PORTIONED ACCORDING TO REPRESENTATION. AlL THOSE SEC-
TIONS, CONSTITUTING ONE ENTIRE SCHEME OF TAXATION, ARE
NECESSARILY INVALID.

A brief word more is desirable to complete tbe record of the
curious and instructive experience of the United States in respect
to the enactment and administration of direct taxation.

Theoretically an almost ideal system, especially if made uni-
versal in its incidence and exclusive of all indirect taxes, its ap-
plication under a dual form of government, such as exists in the
United States, with a practical denial of resort to arbitrary action
in collection, such as exists in all despotic governments, and an
accepted rule that neither the " nation " nor the forty- five " States "
shall tax an instrumentality of the other, will be necessarily most
perplexing. These and other like circumstances, more especially
the inequalities and inefficiencies contingent on the act of 1861,
therefore, render it almost certain that direct taxation will not
hereafter be resorted to by the Federal Government until all
other means of relief for its treasury have been exhausted. With
the decision of the United States Supreme Court in 1896 against
the taxation of land incomes remaining unimpaired, as it proba-
bly will be unless the Federal Constitution is practically recon-
structed, the enactment by Congress of another income tax which
will not reach more than half the incomes designed to be reached,
will probably not be attempted. When it is also considered that
it will be an impossibility to separate the- part of incomes of great
corporations which they derive from real estate, when they neces-
sarily use real estate in common with other property in order to
derive any income, the enormous expense and interminable litiga-
tion contingent on any attempt on the part of the Government to
enforce such a law will be almost beyond estimate.

Note. — In order to render more complete the discussion of the
nature and historical experience of the " poll tax," previously
given in Chapter VIII, pages 165-175, Popular Science Monthly,
No. 2, vol. Ix, attention is here asked to a statutory and legal
action on the part of one of the States of the Federal Union that
has hitherto largely escaped public attention, and which prob-
ably finds' no exact precedent in history.

The antagonism between the white and colored races of the
Southern States, mainly contingent on the former toleration of
slavery, still continues to a large degree, although both races, by

48o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

amendments to the Federal Constitution, liave been placed on
terms of full legal right and equality. In no one respect does
this antagonism more persistently manifest itself, than in opposi-
tion on the part of the white citizen voters to the exercise of free
and concurrent suffrage by the negro citizens. Yet, in view of
the restraints imposed by the Federal Constitution in respect to
political or legal discriminations against the negro race, any
change in the way of relief from the situation by State enactment
has been regarded as impracticable. A recent constitutional con-
vention of the State of Mississippi seems, however, to have at
last most ingeniously solved this difficult political problem, by
enacting that every citizen (white or black) of established age
shall pay a poll tax, the nonpayment of which shall exclude him
from voting ; and the collection of the tax out of exempt or non-
taxable property — i. e., the possessions mainly of the poorer classes
— was also denied. The intent of this provision was therefore
manifestly not to raise revenue, but to exclude negroes from vot-
ing by reason of nonpayment of the poll tax ; and by a like covert
purpose the commission of a list of petty crimes which white men
do not generally commit, such as thievery, arson, and obtaining
money under false pretenses, was also made a disqualification of
voting; while robbery, murder, and other robust crimes which
are practiced chiefly by white men were not included.

" Within the field of permissible action under the limitations
of the Federal Constitution, the Mississippi convention swept the
circle of expedients to obstruct the exercise of the franchise for
the negro race." — Bailiff vs. Bedle, Mississippi Reports.

In the preface to the works of Jean Rey, the philosopher who nearly
three hundred years ago first suggested the cause of the increase in weight
of lead and tin when burned, M. Edouard Grimaux notices some of the
theories that have been put forth on the subject. Boyle explained the in-
crease by supposing that corpuscles of fire, passing through the walls of
the vessel in which the calcination took jDlace, became fixed in the metal.
This theory was accepted by Stomberg, Lemery, and Nicolas Lefevre, and
was formulated by Lemery: " The pores of the lead are so disj^osed that the
corpuscles of the fire insinuate themselves among them; they remain
fastened and agglutinated in the pliant and intricate parts of the metal
without being able to escape from them, and add to its weight." Father
Cherubin, of Orleans, refuted this explanation by showing that glass was
not thus i^ermeable; while Boerhaave, and afterward Boulduc, held that
there was no increase of weight in the calcination of metals. Bierne, in
1753, supijosed that some rich and sulphurous acid coming from the flame
became fixed in the metal. Lavoisier declared the true cause — the fixation
in the metal of a pai-t of the air — in 1774, and a little while afterward, in
1775, Bayen called attention in the Journal de Physique to the existence of
Jean Key's Essays.

THE THYROID GLAND IN MEDICINE. 481

THE THYROID GLAND IN MEDICINE.*

By PEAKCE bailey, M. D.

IN the past few years a remedy has been discovered for certain
conditions hitherto regarded as incurable, which is certain in
its action, and which for the beneficence of its results stands un-
rivaled in therapeutics ; and, since from the infrequency of the
diseases which it cures but little is known of this agent outside of
the medical profession, it has appeared to me that a short descrip-
tion of the development and application of the thyroid treatment,
one of modern medicine's greatest achievements, should prove of
interest to any one who cares to observe the advances of medical
science. The task is the more pleasant from the fact that the use
in medicine of the thyroid gland of animals is a logical conclu-
sion from adequate premises, and because the thyroid forms one
of the few medicinal agents in our possession which are not given
on purely empirical grounds.

It is a generally familiar fact that the majority of drugs are
prescribed because medical history records that, for some un-
known reason, they have proved effectual in the diseases in which
they are administered, though why they should do so remains
unexplained. In certain conditions mercury has a specific action,
the nature of which is absolutely unknown. Quinine had cured
the Countess Chinchon (and hence the name cinchona) of her
ague centuries before a clever Frenchman discovered that ma-
laria resulted from the activity in the blood of a vegetable para-
site on which Peruvian bark exerts a restraining influence.

So it is with most of the remedies which the physician em-
ploys : he uses them because experience has shown that they will
do good in the conditions in which he prescribes them, although
he has not learned why. But in the use of animal thyroid the
physician knows that he has a sovereign remedy, and he also
knows the reasons for the brilliant results of its proper applica-
tion. To appreciate the philosophy of the action of this agent
requires the understanding of a few facts in anatomy and physi-
ology which relate to what the thyroid gland is and to what
it does.

In man the thyroid gland lies deep in the neck, in front and
at the sides of the windpipe, and is covered by skin and muscle ;
its deep situation renders it difficult to be felt in the living sub-
ject. The thyroid belongs to the class of glands known as duct-
less— that is, there is no canal or duct by which the secretions
of the gland are carried out. Its function, like the function of

* Read at Saratoga, September 2, 1896, before the American Social Science Association.
VOL LI. — 3*7

482 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the other ductless glands (the spleen, the thymus, and the adrenal
bodies), is but imperfectly understood. I shall limit myself to
saying that the presence of the normal thyroid gland is neces-
sary for health, and that it is supposed that the secretion of the
gland, which enters the blood- current directly, either neutralizes
some poison which, from the ordinary processes of life, is circu-
lating in the blood, or furnishes to the blood some substance
which is necessary to it. When from any cause this function of
the gland is interfered with, very characteristic symptoms result.
It is only within recent years that it has been recognized that
impairment of thyroid function can and does cause a definite
group of symptoms which constitute a disease. These symptoms
may occur when a tumor develops in the gland, and will be inten-
sified if, when the tumor is removed, much of the gland substance
is destroyed.

But the most important disease of the gland itself, which is
insidious, chronic, and progressive, is myxoedema. This affection
is a chronic inflammation of the thyroid gland, by which the
secreting structure is gradually destroyed, and which consequent-
ly deprives the patient of the good services which are rendered
by a normal gland. In many respects myxa^dema resembles
Bright's disease, and it was some time after the first description
of it by Sir William Gull before it became established that the
affection depended upon the impairment of function of the thy-
roid gland, and not upon disease of the kidney. The most promi-
nent symptom of the disease, and the one from which the name is
in part derived, is an (jedema or swelling, which, unlike the oedema
of Bright's disease, does not pit on pressure. This oedema is most
prominent in the face, and it is there that it begins, although
later in the disease it may extend to the hands and feet, and
thereby increase the general weight of the body. The lips are
thickened, the nose becomes large and flat, and the eyelids are
swollen. Owing to the swelling of the tongue and throat, the
character of the voice may be changed. The skin is dry, rough,
and peculiarly pale ; the hair falls out — a symptom particularly
noticeable in the eyebrows — the teeth become poor and the nails
brittle. The pulse is slow, the heart is weak, and the temperature
is almost always below the normal. Neuralgic pains are of com-
mon occurrence in myxoedematous patients, and cold weather is
very disagreeable to them, probably on account of their low body
temperature. The muscles are weak, especially those of the head
and neck, and all muscular movements are slowly performed.
The mind becomes dull and apathetic ; there is usually developed
irritability of temper. Hallucinations or perverted sense percep-
tions are not at all uncommon, and occasionally the affection
terminates in insanity. These patients are peculiarly sensitive

THE THYROID GLAND IN MEDICINE. .483

as to their own appearance and to the attention which it attracts,
and consequently shun society ; and for this reason partly, and
partly because of their muscular weakness and subnormal tem-
perature, they "like nothing so well as staying quietly in the
house. The onset of the disease is gradual and its progress is
slow, ordinarily extending over a period of several years. It
most frequently occurs in women of middle age. Altogether
myxoedema, although not a direct menace to life, makes the vic-
tim of it very uncomfortable and unhappy.

The appearance of a person suffering from advanced myxoe-
dema is so characteristic that when one has seen a case there
is usually no difficulty in recognizing another. In the earlier
stages, however, when the disease is beginning, its diagnosis may
be difficult or temporarily impossible.

Myxoedema is not a common disease in this country, and
until five years ago was regarded as incurable. But as physi-
cians become more familiar with the condition, which after all
has only been recognized for about twenty years, and more espe-
cially as the possibility of curing it becomes more widely known,
it is altogether probable that we shall find the disease less rare
than we have been led to suppose.

The series of experiments which led to the employment in this
disease of the thyroid glands of animals resulted in discoveries
so complete and definite that it became possible to predict that
the thyroid treatment of myxcedema would be a success. Be-
fore Sir William Gull described the affection and claimed for it
a place of its own among the list of distinct diseases, it had been
regarded as a variety of Bright's disease. But to the trained eye
the resemblance of myxoedema to Bright's disease was too super-
ficial to be satisfying; and, furthermore, when these patients
died their kidneys, which would have shown disease changes if
they had been responsible for the symptoms observed in life,
were found to be normal. So the first step forward in our knowl-
edge of the disease was the establishment of the fact that the seat
of the trouble was not in the kidneys ; it was not discovered until
later that it was in the thyroid gland. This discovery came
about from several sources.

It was observed by physiologists that animals from which the
thyroid gland had been removed developed a condition of oede-
ma and stupidity ; and several surgeons reported that patients
from whom the thyroid gland had been removed by operation
for various causes developed symptoms almost identical with
those of the cases which had been regarded as examples of
Bright's disease, but in whom the kidneys were found nearly
normal.

This experimental evidence was amplified by the work of

484 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pathologists who, in their examination of all the organs of per-
sons dead with myxoedema, found that there existed constant
disease in the thyroid, so that it became established beyond
doubt that these symptoms, which were so much like those of
Bright's disease, were in reality due, not to the ordinary causes
of Bright's disease, but to a chronic inflammation of the thyroid
gland — a process which resulted in the diminution or loss of the
function of the gland, and a consequent deprivation of the secre-
tion which it was intended to supply.

The symptoms which ensued after extirpation of the thyroid
gland, whether in man or in the lower animals, received the name
of cachexia tliyreoprwa, or operative myxcx^dema ; when the con-
dition occurred independently of such operations — i. e., from
primary disease in the gland — it was called myxci^dema; but
although the pathology of myxcpdematous conditions thus be-
came established, it was a long time before it became known how
they could be cured ; and again it was due to the ingenuity and
observation of physiologists and surgeons that it eventually be-
came possible for the physician to apply a form of treatment
which has proved curative for myxcpdematous conditions of
whatever origin.

It occurred to physiologists that if another thyroid could be
made to grow beneath the skin of an animal whose own gland
had been removed, the new thyroid might assume the functions
of the one which was gone; and surgeons conceived the same
idea for patients from whom the thyroid had been removed at
operation. This was accordingly tried : physiologists grafted
sheep's glands in monkeys whose own thyroid they had re-
moved experimentally ; and surgeons put sheep's glands beneath
the skin of patients who had been operated upon on account of
thyroid disease. Although these procedures were only partially
successful, they were the beginnings which led to the ultimate
establishment of the thyroid treatment. The results of these
graftings were beneficial for a time, but as the transplanted
thyroid could not be made to accommodate itself to its new
home, the effects soon wore away and the myx(pdematous symp-
toms returned. The temporary benefit, however, was so pro-
nounced that it was evident that the disease had in some way been
influenced by the grafted thyroid. Since the gland at the time
of its transplantation was full of its normal secretion, but could
not be made to secrete further after grafting, it was inferred that
the beneficial influence was solely due to the thyroid juice which
the grafted gland contained. So it became evident that the suc-
cessful treatment of my x( edematous conditions required an un-
interrupted supply of thyroid secretion. It was not until 1891
that Dr. G. R. Murray drew this conclusion, and presented at a

THE THYROID GLAND IN MEDICINE.

485

meeting of a medical society in England a woman witli myxoe-
dema whom he said he intended to treat by subcutaneous injec-
tions of the extract of the thyroid gland of the sheep. When
about six months later he showed the same patient, improved in
every way, the success of the treatment was established.

The success which followed this experiment was so immedi-
ate and complete, and was so speedily substantiated by physi-
cians the world over, that thyroid therapy at once became the
recognized means of treating myxoedema and allied condi-
tions.

The results of the treatment are very striking; the oedema
rapidly disappears, leaving the skin soft, smooth, and moist ; the

Fig. 1. — Myxcedema. Before treatment.

Fig. 2. — Same patient after treatment.

mental dullness gives way to cheerfulness and hope ; strength is
returned to the weakened muscles, and the patient becomes once
more, to all appearances, a normal individual. A large number
of cases of myxoedema have been recorded as cured by thyroid
feeding, and these reports are usually accompanied with photo-
graphs of the patient as he appears before and after treatment,
which present most striking contrasts. Through the courtesy of
Dr. John Woodman, of New York, I am able to give the repro-
ductions of the photographs (Figs. 1 and 3) of a case successfully
treated by him. A common history of the early cases treated in
this way is somewhat as follows : A woman has had myxcedema
for years, and has been told by many physicians that her condi-
tion is incurable, and she is indifferent and skeptical as to the
value of the treatment proposed for her. In a few months it is

486 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with difficulty that she can be recognized as the same person.
The swollen, pallid, stupid face is gone, and in its place are red
cheeks and the pleasant expression of a healthy woman. She can
walk several miles a day, sleep well, has a good appetite, and
enjoys life.

Such is the history of myxcedema and how it came to be
treated by the thyroid gland of animals. Therapeutics can show
no more brilliant results than these.

When myxciedema occurs in infancy or childhood it is called
cretinism. The word " cretin " will recall to the minds of most
of my readers visits to Switzerland or to the eastern parts of
France, where these queer little dwarfs are so common. Goitre
is also, curiously enough, frequent in these localities. But few
are aware that we, here in America, possess cretins of our own.
In the cretinous regions of Europe, where so many of the inhabit-
ants are afflicted with the disease, it is called endemic or peculiar
to the country. In America it occurs only occasionally, and not
with any geographical regularity, and so such cretins are called
sporadic. Now, sporadic cretinism with us is certainly a rare
affection ; but as the condition becomes more familiar to physi-
cians, and as the inmates of our own idiot asylums are more care-
fully examined, it is possible that it will be found that cretinism,
like myxoedema, is less rare than had been suspected.

The absence or disease of the thyroid gland produces much
the same symptoms in the child as in the adult ; the most strik-
ing difference is due to the fact that in the child development of
the body and brain is interfered with, so that cretins are generally
dwarfs, and the failure of mental development results in a con-
dition closely allied to idiocy. These idiotic dwarfs are very re-
pulsive to look at. They have large heads and necks and thick
lips, through which protrudes the clumsy tongue. They have
few or no teeth, and the swelling of the throat renders the voice
indistinct. The nose is large and flat, and the swollen eyelids
partly cover eyes which are frequently crossed. The limbs are
swollen and often incapable of service ; the skin which covers
them is hard, rough, and thick. Cretins are always short, and
may never grow taller than a normal child of two or three years.
They never attain a high degree of intelligence, and most com-
monly are idiots with only the power to comprehend the simplest
things of daily life, and with a vocabulary limited to a few
words.

There are some differences between endemic and sporadic
cretinism, and what follows applies only to sporadic cretins.

What has been said concerning the treatment of myxedema
by thyroid feeding may be repeated for sporadic cretinism. The
changes which result from the thyroid treatment of cretins.

THE THYROID GLAND IN MEDICINE.

487

owing to their stunted bodies and vacant minds, are even more
astonishing than those described for myxoedema ; for in cretins,
not only do the oedema and other general symptoms disappear,
but the dwarf begins to grow, and the idiot to show signs of
intelligence. One patient who, at the beginning of treatment,
was sixteen and a half years old and only thirty-three and a half
inches in height, and in whom no growth had occurred in four-
teen years, grew four and three quarters inches in six months ;

-Sporadic Cretinism.
treatment.

BL'fore

Fig. 4. — Same patient after treatment.

another, sixteen and a half years old and twenty- nine and a half
inches tall at the beginning of treatment, increased six and a half
inches in height in six months. Under treatment the teeth begin
to grow, and the facial expression and the whole appearance of
the patient are radically changed. The patients soon become
more intelligent and appreciative of their surroundings, and
many begin to talk and to understand what is said to them.
How striking may be the improvement in the general appearance
is shown by Figs. 3 and 4, which are reproductions of photo-
graphs of a little patient treated by Dr. J. C. Carson, superintend-
ent of the Syracuse Institution for Feeble-minded Children.

That the results will be permanent, and that these idiotic chil-
dren will become, under the influence of the thyroid treatment,
intelligent men and women, it is as yet impossible to say.

488 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The occurrence, in the formative period of infancy and child-
hood, of a disease which attacks fundamentally nutrition, de-
velopment, and growth, has much more disastrous effects than
when its appearance is delayed until the organism has reached
maturity.

And while it is possible that the removal of causes inhibitory
to growth may result in a gradual return of developmental pro-
cesses, the thyroid treatment of infantile myxoedema has in no
case been carried out for a sufficient length of time to permit
the assertion that such will be the case. In no case is treatment
reported to have lasted more than three years, and in few cases
is it said that the patient is in all respects cured ; but from
the fact that in nearly all of the cases treatment was not insti-
tuted until the child was several years of age and had developed
but little or not at all for a considerable length of time, several
years would be necessary, by the natural processes of develop-
ment, for the complete re-establishment of normal growth.

Although data sufficient to justify positive assertions are
lacking, it seems entirely in the range of possibility that if the
treatment of sporadic cretinism wer« begun at the outset of the
disease, before growth was seriously interfered with, it would
permit the proper development of the child without myxa?dema-
tous symptoms as long as the thyroid was administered.

From the consideration of the history of myxoedematous con-
ditions it will have been seen that all this treatment promised to
do was to supply to the body the necessary substance which the
thyroid gland was no longer able to produce. It never under-
took to supply a new thyroid gland ; and the disappearance of the
symptoms of myxoedema under the thyroid treatment means that
the necessary secretion is being artificially supplied, and not that
the function of the gland has been restored.

Consequently, any one in whom the activity of the thyroid
gland has been lost, whether it be by myxcx^dema, or operation
which has induced the condition of cachexia thyreopriva, must
continue the use of the thyroid glands of animals for the remain-
der of life. Dr. Murray's original case is still taking thyroid, and
after five years remains well.

The therapeutic use of the thyroid has now been tried in
many other conditions with varying success. From its efficacy
in reducing the size of ordinary goiters it has to a great extent
supplanted the knife in the treatment of that condition. Recent
reports from Germany would seem to indicate that it exerts a
beneficial influence upon the development of children who are
physically or mentally backward, although they have none of the
characteristic symptoms of cretinism. Its power to reduce ex-
cessive fat is becoming very widely known, and when properly

THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY. 489

used it certainly is a valuable agent for this purpose. In many-
diseases it may prove to be of service, though, aside from its use
in myxoedematous conditions, exactly what place in the materia
medica should be assigned to it, it is as yet impossible to say.
The gland is obtained chiefly from the sheep, and is usually ad-
ministered in the form of a dried powder or in tablets. Alarm-
ing symptoms may occur as a result of overdosage ; such symp-
toms consist in too rapid loss of weight, or feeble heart action,
or lowering of the temperature ; they usually subside when the
remedy is stopped. It should be remembered, however, that it
is a mysterious and powerful agent, by no means destined for
indiscriminate use.

In conclusion, it may be said that the introduction into medi-
cine of the thyroid gland is a logical conclusion from adequate
premises. It resulted from scientific experimental and chemical
study by trained and skillful workers, and it has nothing in com-
mon with the largely advertised " organic extracts," which are
false in theory and worthless in practice.

Animal thyroid is by no means a cure-all, and even in myx-
oedematous conditions which have existed for many years it may
be unable to repair the ravages of the disease ; but it has shown
itself, when appropriately applied, to be among the most unfailing
therapeutic agents in our possession.

•♦«»

THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY.

Br FRANKLIN SMITH.

" TTTHATEVER crushes individuality," says John Stuart Mill,
VV describing the essential feature of all political govern-
ments, "is despotism, by whatever name it be called, and whether
it professes to enforce the will of God or the injunctions of men." *
Be the government autocratic, aristocratic, or democratic, the
power it wields in restraint of natural rights, or of equal freedom,
puts it under the ban. Decked though it be with motives worthy
of the noblest philanthropy, aim though it may to fill the world
with saints, it is vitiated by the love of jjower and by the check
it puts upon the natural growth of character. It would make all
men, not like the diversity of Nature, but like the figures of
Egyptian art. If democracy as well as autocracy and aristocracy
has sought to accomplish this task ; if the former as well as the
latter, in the pursuit of an enterprise that has always ended and
must inevitably end in disaster, has put shackles on the individ-
ual in the form of laws and seized his property under the guise of

* On Liberty. Ticknor & Fields edition, pp. 122, 123.
TOL. LI. — 38

490 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

benevolences and taxes, it is none the less despotism because the

crime is done in the name of the people. Nor is it any the less a

fit object of execration because it does not bear the title of Caesar

or the Council of Ten.

I.

That democracy should be thought the protector of freedom
and property is natural. Despite the dense clouds of cant and
metaphysics that have enveloped it, the idea has a historic basis.
The growth of civilization has been largely an abatement of the
monopoly and amount of political control. Human society did
not begin, to use the phrase of Hobbes, " with the desolate freedom
of the wild ass." Morgan and Maine have made it a common-
place of science that there was never a time when the members of
the primitive group had the rights and immunities conferred only
upon those possessed of the power of moral control. " Mankind,"
says Prof. Burgess, confirming the truth of a social philosophy he
rejects, " does not begin with liberty. Mankind acquires liberty
through civilization," * It is first subjected to a double dominion
— that of custom and that of the leader become autocrat through
the fortunes of war. To him belong the person and property of
his subjects, to be used as whim or interest may direct. " Kings,"
said Louis XIA^, expounding the doctrine of autocratic despotism,
" are absolute lords, naturally possessing the entire and uncon-
trolled disposal of all property, whether belonging to the church
or to the laity, to be exercised at all times with due regard to
economy and to the general interests of the state." \ The political
philosophy of English autocracy was the same. " As the father
over one family," said Sir Robert Filmer, the apologist for the
despotism of Charles I, "so the king, as the father over many
families, extends his care to preserve, feed, clothe, instruct, and
defend the whole commonwealth. His war, his peace, his courts
of justice, and all his acts of sovereignty tend only to preserve
and distribute to every subordinate and inferior father and to
their children their rights and privileges, so that all the duties
of a king are summed up in an universal fatherly care of his
people." X

Here is the point of departure in the long and desperate strug-
gle against political control — a struggle that occupies the greater
part of the history of civilization. If autocratic despotism has
not, as in the East, deprived men of the desire to live their
lives in their own way and to profit from their own skill and

* Political Science and Constitutional Law, vol. i, p. 88.

\ Worka of Louis XIV, quoted by Say. Political Economy, third American edition,
Philadelphia, 1827, p. 411.

X Two Treatises on Civil Government, by John Locke, preceded by Sir Robert Fil-
mer's Patriarcha, p. 21.

THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY. 491

energy, they find it intolerable. They lapse into doubt as to the
divinity, benevolence, and wisdom of the master that holds them
in bondage. Like the English barons, they unite to wrest from
him some right or privilege, some bar to the arbitrary seizure of
their person and property. With the triumph of their courage
and efforts passes the power of the one to the hands of the few.
As a landed aristocracy, like that of feudalism, or as a commer-
cial oligarchy, like that of Florence and Venice, they become the
new despots. They, in turn, rule by divine right ; their voice is
the voice of God ; and disobedience to their commands becomes
impiety and treason. While they have introduced, in a measure,
the reign of liberty in the ordering of their own lives, the many
are still the victims of unmitigated despotism. Whether it be in
Greece or Italy, in Spain or England, in France or Germany, their
lives and property are not their own. Describing the government
of lower Austria at the close of the middle ages, Navagero tells
us that there were " five sorts of persons — clergy, barons, nobles,
burghers, and peasants." Of the peasants, however, " no account "
was made, because they had " no voice in the Diet." But there was
still a sixth sort — the servile laborers — of even less account. Yet
the peasants were hardly better off than slaves. They were not
merely obliged to bear much heavier taxation than the barons,
nobles, and burghers, but they had no part in tempering its weight.
That, as in other aristocratic countries, was the arbitrary work of
the upper classes. As in other countries also, the upper classes
determined their own burdens.* There was still to be won for
the lower classes the same right. Not only must they be permit-
ted to fix the amount of their taxes, but they must have exemp-
tion from arbitrary seizure ; they must have impartial justice ;
they must have deliverance from the countless restraints upon
their freedom. When these conquests of the masses over the
classes have been made, there is then the advent of democracy,
the power that so many fear and hate, that so many hail as the
beginning of a better day. Misrepresented as it has been by
friend and foe, it signifies nothing more dreadful or more wonder-
ful than the possession of the right of every man to direct his
own life as seems to him best. It is the application to politics of
the fundamental principle of Protestantism — the concession of
the same freedom in individual conduct as is granted in individ-
ual belief, f

* James Russell Lowell. Collected Works, vol. vi, p. 14.

f "As it is useful," says Mill (On Liberty, Ticknor & Fields edition, p. 109), "that
while mankind are imperfect, that there should be different opinions, so is it that there
should be different experiments of living ; that full scope should be given to varieties of
character, short of injury to others, and that the worth of different modes of life should be
proved practicable when any one thinks fit to try them."

492 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Little as this truth is recognized and practiced, it lurks in the
current political discussions. If it is not -openly proclaimed, it is
tacitly implied. Mr. Godkin defines democracy as " the partici-
pation of the whole community in the work of government."*
Bringing out more distinctly the idea that it is something besides
the universal possession of political power, Sir Thomas Erskine
May defines it as " a principle or force, and not simply an institu-
tion." t More specific still, Mr. Lowell describes it as a " form of
society, no matter what its political classification, in which every
man had a chance and knew that he had it." | Mr. Morley also
holds that it means something more than political sovereignty
put into the hands of everybody. Showing that as such it has
shattered the old forms of despotism and enlarged the opportuni-
ties of life for all, high and low, rich and poor, he says : " It has
shaken the strength and altered the attitude of churches, has
affected the old subjection of women and modified the old concep-
tions of the family and of property, has exalted labor, has created
and dominated the huge enginery of the press, has penetrated in
a thousand subtle ways into the whole region of rights, duties,
human relations, and social opportunities." * It is Boudrillart,
however, that brings out the truth that democracy, properly
speaking, is a form of moral control as well as a condition of
freedom. After saying that modern democracy " permits a larger
and larger number to enjoy the moral, intellectual, and material
possessions of life," and " undertakes to substitute merit for favor
and right for injustice," he adds: "It takes shelter behind the
doctrine of perfectibility, which applies not only to the achieve-
ments of the human mind, to the discoveries of science, to the
inventions of industry, but to the social condition and to the po-
litical and economic conditions that favor it. . . . To let each man
be more and more a man," he continues, emphasizing the need of
moral control to check the possible license of freedom — " that is
to say, realize more perfectly the type of humanity, by the devel-
opment of all that constitutes it — such is the end to which democ-
racy aspires. Development of power for the individual and for
the race — that is its ideal." |1

II.

Finding little cheer in the contemplation of the ideal toward
which the evanescence of political control and the growth of
moral control have been taking the human race, the students of
democracy are often weighted heavily with foreboding. It seems
to portend some disaster that no man can avert. " There is no

* Atlantic Monthly, February, 1897, p. 157. f Democracy in Europe, preface, p. vii.
X Collected Works, vol. vi, p. 83. « Littell's Living Age, June 13, 1896, p. 643.

H Block. Dictionnaire de la Politique, vol. i, p. 635.

THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY, ■ 493

mincing the matter," says Mr. W. E. Forster : " nnless the world
goes back, democracy must go forward." * " The democratic prin-
ciple," says Maine, regarding it as a militant power like some
barbarian horde, " has gone forth conquering and to conquer, and
its gainsayers are few and feeble." f " To attempt to arrest the
progress of democracy," says De Tocqueville, in the same melan-
choly vein, " seems like opposition to God, and it remains for the
nations of the earth to adjust themselves to the conditions imposed
by Providence." X But when viewed in the light of the far-reach-
ing and hopeful inductions of Herbert Spencer, democracy, to
many minds so fraught with peril to civilization, is divested of
terror. They show not only why it is honored with the vast
moral, intellectual, and material achievements of the last four
centuries, but they show also why it is charged with the intoler-
able social and political evils that have blackened and still blacken
the pages of history. By the operation of the law of evolution,
as immutable as any law of Nature, the agencies of human effort,
whatever be their purpose, have been enlarged almost to an infi-
nite degree, and made immeasurably more perfect and useful.
By the operation of another law, equally immutable, has been
decreed the character of those agencies ; it has determined whether
the beliefs, institutions, and morals of a nation shall be those of
savages or those of civilized men — those of war or those of peace.
Subjected to the solvent power of these inductions, all the
phenomena of social life yield their secrets. They disclose the
truth that feudalism, from which modern society took its origin,
was not due to soil, nor climate, nor race; it sprang from the
murder and pillage of mediaeval barbarism. Of the same remorse-
less Fury were born its machinery of despotism and its hideous
traits. She was the mother of the hatred, cruelty, greed, and
lust that afflicted the world for a thousand years and still afflict
it. Industry, however, has been the mother of peace, liberty,
honesty, and virtue. Without security and freedom, traffic in
labor and its fruits is impossible. Men must be protected from
robbery ; they must own themselves as well as their toil ; they
must have the right to exchange; they must be exempt from
seizure and confiscation. Nor can traffic thrive without the
benignant spirit of kindness and courtesy. It demands an effort
to please, and the effort to please begets the habit of pleasing. It
demands honesty and confidence, the basis of credit and a potent
stimulus to enterprise. But traffic is a ship freighted with
wealth, which gives leisure and permits the culture of the noble

* Address as Lord Rector of the University of Aberdeen. Quoted by May, Democracy
in Europe, vol. i, introduction, p. 29.

•j- Popular Government, p. 5. \ Democratic en Am^rique, introduction, p. 6.

494 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

side of life — literature, art, science, philosophy, philanthropy.
Shall any one say, then, with Renan, that " the origin of all civili-
zation is aristocratic," that it is " the work of aristocrats " ? * On
the contrary, its origin is democratic; it comes of freedom and
self-control ; it is the work of toil, so despised and oppressed in
every feudal land.

Yet it is heard on every hand that, as civilization advances,
political government — that is, the restraints of feudal despotism —
must increase ; otherwise the world will stop, and its lights go
out. The cry is not from the throats of ignorant demagogues or
rapacious politicians ; it is raised by the most studious and
thoughtful. " Law," said John Randolph Tucker, before the
American Bar Association, " must grow with civilization, or," he
added, showing that he had yet to learn what civilization means,
"progress will cease, and the achievements of a people will be
unworthy of their genius and, their character." f Although Mr.
Lecky has declared that the tendency "in the midst of the many
and violent agitations of modern life to revert to archaic types of
thought and custom will hereafter be considered one of the most
remarkable characteristics of the nineteenth century," he, too, be-
lieves it to be " quite true that the functions of government must
inevitably increase with a more complicated civilization." X Even
Mr. Godkin, who says most truly that "the best thing in the
world is individual freedom/' and that " a man who is compelled
to work by law ... is to all intents and purposes a slave," holds
that " the world, through the increase of its offices and activity,
needs far more regulation than it used to need." * But the growth
of law, the increase of functions and regulations, the creation of
officials to correspond with both, is not progress — it is, as Mr.
Lecky himself hints, retrogression ; it does not point to the future
— it points to the past ; it is not the dawn of a better day — it is a
return to the curse of the middle ages. No tribute to the purpose
of official machinery can hide its kinship with feudalism. Nor
can any sophistry blot out the fact that such machinery is only an
attempt to fit the institutions of that hated and decadent form of
social life, whose object was the prosecution of war, to modern
social life, whose object is the cultivation of peace and industry,
as well as self-control. The current belief that it will be more
successful in the future than in the past is the most amazing
delusion that ever lodged in the human mind. There is no magic
in the diffusion of the irresponsible power of the one among the

* Caliban, pp. 1^ and 91. Quoted by Maine, Popular Government, p. 42.
f Proceedings, Milwaukee, 1893, p. 203.

X Democracy and Liberty, vol. i, p. 335 ; vol. ii, p. 228.

* Democratic Tendencies. Problems of Democracy, p. 195, and Atlantic Monthly, Feb-
ruary, 189Y, p. 158.

THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY. 495

irresponsible many. Wisdom and virtue do not increase with
the multiplication of the greed and ignorance intrusted with the
management of an important and difficult enterprise. Forty-
millions of despots under the hierarchy of other despots trying
to force thirty millions of subjects under the same debasing rule,
to live a life not their own and to contribute money to a use they
have no interest in, is just as much a form of feudalism as the
government of a Bourbon prince or of a council of Spartan
ephors.* It is just as certain to evoke the same evils and stir uj)
the same revolt that have overthrown every other despotism.

Ignored as this truth has been and still is in speculation and
practice, it has been tacitly recognized and acted upon. That is
why the tyranny of the majority has been branded as no better
than the tyranny of the minority ; why publicists from Aristotle
to Mill and Spencer have declaimed against its perils; why so
much has been done in contravention of the belief that progress
is to be sought through an increase of these perils ; why scheme
after scheme for the selection of representatives, for the restriction
of legislatures, for the appointment of officials, and for the preven-
tion of extravagance and fraud, have been invented ; why every
one of them has failed, and must inevitably fail. The virtue of
human wit is not greater than the virtue of human character. A
system of regulation can not be devised that will not yield to some
plan to subvert it.f "If, in Greece," says Polybius, describing
an experience constantly duplicated in modern democracies, " the
state intrusts to any one only a talent, and if it has ten checking
clerks, and as many seals, and twice as many witnesses, it can not
insure his honesty." X But with character any political system

* Here we have an explanation of Mill's statement (Liberty, Ticknor and Fields edition, pp.
135, 136) that " the spirit of improvement is not always the spirit of liberty, for it may aim at
forcing improvements on an unwilling people." He adds very truly that " the only unfailing
and permanent source of improvement is liberty, sinee by it there are as many possible inde-
pendent centers of improvement as there are individuals."

f One example is the Raines law and its amendments, which led to the invention of the
Raines hotel and clubs to circumvent the legislator. Another example is the new German
bourse or anti-option law that the corn and produce merchants of Berlin have, according
to a cablegram in the Evening Post of May 13th, discovered ways to evade.

X Quoted by May, Democracy in Europe, vol. i, p. 126. "The number of defalcations of
county treasurers," says Mr. Roberts, Comptroller of Ijfew York (Annual Report, 1897, p. li),
" brought to my attention induced me to inquire of every county clerk in the State as to
whether there had been any defaulting treasurer in his county of late years. The replies
received show defalcations or shortages in twenty-three counties. In some cases there was
one ; in some two ; and in one several." Referring to " internal improvements " and other
business enterprises in the United States, Prof. John W. Million says, in his State Aid to
Railroads in Missouri, p. 30 : " There is not a single case in the whole list of the States
attempting the construction or the assistance in the construction of public works between
1825 and 1840 in which there is evidence of commanding administrative ability. In the
case of almost all there is an absence of what can be called immaculate honesty." In his

496 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

•will work ; witliout it, none. When, however, human natnre has
grown perfect — that is to say, when civilization has reached its
goal — political government will have ceased, and the only govern-
ment will be that of self, or conscience. Such governmeftt will
suiSce to prevent the aggressions that philanthropists and states-
men strive in vain to suppress. It will also permit the fullest
liberty, the highest development, and the greatest happiness both
for the individual and for the race. " Not to crush minorities
under the majority, the individual under centralization, liberty
under equality," says Boudrillart, stating the problem thus solved,
" that is the destiny of democracy." *

III.

Nothing could be more indicative of the fact that democracy
as a form of political government is only a form of despotism
than the exhibition of certain traits otherwise inexplicable and
absurd. As the heir of the irresponsible one and the few, it arro-
gates to itself their attributes of divinity, and like them exacts
from its subjects a slavish homage and obedience. Although Aris-
totle said that in a democracy " a people knowing itself to be king
assumes all his pretensions," the truth has yet to be learned
and acted upon. " The modes of addressing the multitude," writes
Maine, after describing democracy a second time as monarchy in-
verted, " are the same as the modes of addressing kings." \ " O
king, live forever," said the Oriental courtier as he approached
his irresponsible master. X " The voice of the people is the voice
of God," cries the courtier of democracy. " Your ascent to xoower,"
exclaims an American Bossuet, addressing the Grand Monarch of
the New World, "proceeded as uniformly and majestically as the
laws of being, and was as certain as the decrees of eternity." *
How the obsequious practices of despotic states have been revived
under popular government has not escaped the attention of Mr.
Godkin. " In talking on such subjects as the currency with a
view of enlightening the people," he says, " skillful orators are
very careful to repudiate all pretense of knowing anything more
about the matter than their hearers." \ But they must do more

review of State railroads undertaken since 1840, he finds that the causes of failure were
" two in number: (1) incompetency and (2) corruption." (Ibid., p. 222.)

* Block. Dictionnaire de la Politique, vol. i, p. 640. The same view is to be found set
forth in James M. Woolworth's address before the American Bar Association, S^iratoga,
1896 (Proceedings, pp. 317, 318) : "This is the vital and mighty fact of modern Christian
civilization," he says, "the integrity of every human soul and its right to the possession,
exercise, and enjoyment of all its faculties, capacities, and activities as to it seems good, and
in such full measure as is consistent with the same right of others."

f Popular Government, p. '77. % Spencer. Principles of Sociology, vol. ii, p. 148.

* Bancroft. Quoted by Maine, p. 77. | Problems of Democracy, p. 90.

THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY. 497

than that ; they must represent their hearers as omniscient.
" When/' said an orator in the last presidential campaign, discuss-
ing the most complex of political issues, " I see a person who says
it is too difficult for the people, I find some one who says it is too
deep for him. No question is too deep for the people." * Had
any sycophant of Nero's time pretended to more knowledge than
the tyrant himself, he would have lost his life. In these days of
humane societies, however, the penalty is less severe but not less
summary. Howls of derision and certain defeat await the suitor
for popular favor that neglects to burn the incense so pleasing to
the many, and dares to say that they not only do wrong but often
do miost grievous wrong ; that universal suffrage, however lauded
as a cure for political and social ills, never insures the choice of
the most fit to rule ; f that there is a deal of ignorance and crime
that masquerades under the name of democracy. As well might
the scoffer at the divine right of kings or the infallibility of
Popes two centuries ago have expected to be received with honor
and cordiality at the Vatican or the palace of Versailles.

When the power of democracy is increased — that is, when gov-
ernment assumes more functions, thus emulating the " universal "
parent of Sir Robert Filmer's political philosophy — the more des-
potic, intolerant, and barbarous it becomes. J More offices and
privileges are thrown into the political arena to be fought for.
Party organization grows stronger, and party feeling more bitter
and savage. The pursuit of politics becomes a form of civil war,
giving rise to its ethics and its evils. Division of the people into
hostile camps follows. Military discipline, transferred to civil life,

* William J. Bryan. Speech in Pittsburg, Pa., August 10, 1896.

f It was cited against an eminent American scholar and diplomatist, who was once men-
tioned for the governorship of New York, that he had written a paper in favor of a restric-
tion of suffrage as a measure to improve the government of American cities.

\ No one will forget the fierce but senseless resentment shown toward Minister Bayard
by the press and Congress for his remarks on democracy in Boston, England, August 2,
1895, and in Edinburgh, Scotland, November 7, 1896. What he said was the exact truth.
" The President," he said at Boston, " stood in the midst of a strong, self-confident, and
oftentimes violent people, men who sought to have their own way. It took a real man to
govern the people of the United States." The riots at Homestead, Chicago, Cleveland, Buf-
falo, and Pittsburg justify every word. " In my own country," he said at Edinburgh, " I
have witnessed an insatiable growth of a form of socialism styled protection, which has
done more to corrupt public life, to banish men of independent mind from public councils,
and to lower the tone of national representation than any other cause. . . . It . . . has
sapped the popular conscience by giving corrupting largesses to special classes, and it
throws legislation into the political market, where jobbers and chafferers take the place of
statesmen." Observe what has been going on in Washington since the introduction of the
Dingley bill. But the only mistake Mr. Bayard made was in not distmguishing clearly be-
tween democracy as a form of political government and democracy as a condition of free-
dom under moral control. It is the former and not the latter that is responsible for the
evils that he describes so accuratelv.

498 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is enforced. Leaders spring np to take command of the political
organizations, the modern condottieri, always agents of crime and
despotism. They fight campaigns as they would fight battles ; and
they fight them with no more principle than the lawless bands
that plundered Italy and Spain at the close of the middle ages.* If
divided counsels are fatal in war, they are equally fatal in politics.
Nothing, therefore, becomes more odious than independence in
thought and action ; and nothing is more sternly rebuked, and, if
possible, severely punished. f Only the utmost fidelity is approved,
and rewarded with either appointments, or contracts, or legislative
favors. The policy adopted is, not what is right, but what is ex-
jDedient. The demoralizing principles of Jesuitism assume con-
trol, and the end, which is party triumph, is made to justify its
achievement by any means. Hence, caucus tricks and crimes,
convention intrigue and outrage, bribery and fraud at elections,
and sophistry and falsehood in political discussion. Hence, the
exclusion from public life of men that loathe these practices and
refuse to sell their souls to the Mephistopheles of politics. Hence
the dominance of men, including even the " scholar in politics,"
so quickly debased, that never hesitate to purchase power by the
creation of offices or by the plunder of the rich. Hence the low
tone, the scenes of violence, and the marked decadence of all legis-
lative bodies in every part of the world.

No fine phrases of social or political speculation can mask the
odium of the fact that the spirit of democracy, like that of other

* The parallel is quite perfect. It will be remembered that the Italian freebooters on
both sides used to have " rings " — that is, understandings by which they profited as much as
possible from their warfare and at the same time did each other as little damage as possible.
See Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. ii, p. 2Y9. In Spain, as in the United States, it
was found necessary for good citizens to band themselves together to secure protection from
those that should have protected them. The Hermandad, or Holy Brotherhood, was the
analogue of our Good Government Clubs, Citizens' Unions, etc. (Ferdinand and Isabella,
vol. i, pp. 26, 186.) By the way, there could be no more convincing evidence of the capa-
city of people to look after themselves without the aid of the state — that is, the politician's —
than the existence of such organizations as these clubs and unions throughout the country
to look after the politicians. Is it not absurd to suppose people that have to form volun-
tary organizations to watch their government and to prevent it from driving them into
bankruptcy by its incompetency and dishonesty are unfitted to form voluntary organizations
to undertake enterprises that social reformers have come to imagine government alone fitted
to undertake ?

f A striking example of this kind of intolerance is to be found in Senator Piatt's letter
of May 8, 189V, on the Citizens' Union of New York. " It can't prance around," he said,
" with the agile irresponsibility of a self-constituted committee of ' best citizens.' It can
agree to no basis of union which substitutes the government of an individual acting wholly
on his own whims and caprices for the rule of an organized responsible party performing
an authorized party policy." Rather than hcBve good government independent of any par-
ticular party organization. Senator Piatt, echoing the sentiment of his lieutenant, Mr. Lau-
terbach, would see the triumph of its enemies.

THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY. 499

despotisms, is selfish and sordid. The truth is exploited in every
work of history and politics. "The love of exercising power,"
says Buckle, drawing upon his vast knowledge, "has been found
to be so universal that no class of men who have possessed au-
thority have been able to avoid abusing it." * Madison, who was
a friend of democracy, thought the same. " Where there is an
interest and a power to do wrong," he says, " wrong will generally
be done, and not less readily by a powerful and interested party
than by a powerful and interested prince." f Maine, who was
quite as friendly toward aristocracy, agrees with him. " Under
the shelter of one government as of the other," he says, " all sorts
of selfish interests breed and multiply, speculating on its weak-
nesses and pretending to be its servants, agents, and delegates." X
Even one of the most distinguished high priests of democracy
does not pretend that it will be more unselfish than any other
despotism. " Having forged an instrument for democratic legis-
lation," says Mr. Labouchere, alluding to the establishment of
universal suffrage, "we shall use it."* To be sure, democracy
does not propose to create hereditary privileges. It will continue
to wage, as it has waged, relentless war against them, and will
not cease until it has crushed them. But it creates privileges of
its own not less odious nor less violative of the laws of political
science and the rights of individuals. It permits its subjects to
plunder one another as pitilessly as the barons of the Rhine.
With the aid of duties and bounties, defended with the logic of
philanthropy, manufacturers grow rich "beyond the dreams of
avarice." Appealing to the same feudal argument, trades and
professions gain possession of monopolies as despotic and intol-
erable as the mediaeval corporations. Commissions, created to
provide politicians with place and pelf, and duplicating the in-
tendants of the old regime, threaten the destruction of that insti-
tution so famous in history and so dear to the American heart —
local self-government. 1| Even philanthropists, under the spell of
a sympathy that eclipses their judgment, band themselves to-
gether to exercise an authority in the suppression of vivisection
that will eventually subvert the freedom of science as well as the
freedom of the community.

* History of Civilization, vol. i, p. 280.

•f Quoted by F. N. Judson. Proceedings of the American Bar Association, 1891,
p. 239.

X Popular Government, p. 87.

* Quoted by Maine, pp. 43 and 44, from Fortnightly Review of March 1, 1883.

H For no other purpose than the one indicated in the text, the New York State Legisla-
ture added a fourth memljer to the Railroad Commission. Other commissions were pro-
posed, but the public criticism was so severe that they were abandoned.

500 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

TV.

" The really alarming feature connected with the growth of
democracy," says Mr. Godkin, apparently astonished at this natu-
ral and inevitable abuse of power, " is that it does not seem to
make adequate provision for the government of this new world
[of modern industry]. Its chief function, like the chief function
of the monarchy which it has succeeded," he adds, showing an un-
conscious recognition of the cause of the evil, " is to fill offices." *
But what other form of despotism has ever made adequate pro-
vision for anything beyond the preservation of order and the pre-
vention of aggression ? Has not the government of the one tried
it and — failed? Has not the government of the few tried it and —
failed ? Let the moral, intellectual, and industrial history of every
country on the face of the earth answer. For centuries despotism,
either autocratic or aristocratic, strove in the interest of self-pres-
ervation to regulate the beliefs of men. Even the portly volumes
of Dr. White on The Warfare of Science scarcely suffice to record
its incalculable harm. It made cowards, hypocrites, and martyrs.
It drove virtuous and industrious populations from their homes,
crippling forever Protestant France and the Spanish Netherlands.
Never has it laid its fingers on any enterprise, whether its mo-
tives be greed or virtue, without blighting it like a plague, and
summoning, like an evil spirit, all the malevolence that war has
planted in the human heart. " The first inevitable consequence
was," says Buckle, recounting its attempts to regulate trade,
"that in every part of Europe there sprang into existence nu-
merous and powerful gangs of smugglers, who lived by disobey-
ing the laws which their ignorant rulers had imposed. These
men, desperate from the fear of punishment, and accustomed to
the commission of every crime, contaminated the surrounding
population ; introduced into peaceful villages vices formerly un-
known ; caused the ruin of entire families ; spread, wherever they
came, drunkenness, theft, and dissoluteness ; and familiarized
their associates with those coarse and swinish bebaucheries which
were the natural habits of so vagrant and lawless a life." f Most
significantly does he add that with the abolition of the laws van-
ished the crimes and the criminals they had created. But the
despotism of democracy has yielded no better fruit. " The public
have seen law defied," says President Charles W. Eliot, describ-
ing the attempts to control the American liquor traffic in the
interest of virtue ; " a whole generation of habitual lawbreakers,
schooled in evasion and shamelessness ; courts ineffective through

* Democratic Tendencies. Atlantic Monthly, February, 189Y, p. 159.
f History of Civilization, vol. i, pp. 278, 279.

THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY.

501

fluctuations of policy, delays, perjuries, negligencies, and other
miscarriages of justice; officers of the law double-faced and mer-
cenary, legislators timid and insincere, candidates for office hypo-
critical and truckling, and officeholders unfaithful to pledges and
to reasonable public expectation." *

" But," urges some philanthropic statesman, enamored of
quackery for social and political ills, "is it not possible to frame
laws with sufficient skill and to get them enforced with sufficient
vigor to hasten human progress ? Too intolerable altogether is it
to await the slow pace of evolution." Intolerable though it be, it
is far less so than the remedy urged, which was foredoomed from
the first to inevitable disaster. It is a flagrant violation of the
law of social and physical growth. The union of merit with
benefit is as vital as the union of breath with life. The sever-
ance of the one is punished with the same certainty and severity
as the severance of the other. Men must not be deprived of the
fruits of their talents and toil ; they must not be allowed to
escape the penalties attached to ignorance and indolence. Pro-
tection against this law was. the inherent and destructive vice of
the rule of the one and of the few ; it is the vice also of the rule
of the many. "When despotism," says Boudrillart, catching a
glimpse of this truth, "becomes the regime of a nation, is it not
its fatal law to revive favors and privileges, and to destroy equal-
ity for the benefit of the low and unworthy ?"f As if fresh
from the study of the national, State, and municipal govern-
ments of the United States, Maine replies in the affirmative.
"When the ingenious legislator," he says, "had counted on pro-
ducing a nation of self-denying and somewhat sentimental pa-
triots, he finds that he has created a people of Jacobins or a
people of slaves." X Necessarily is it so. Self-interest, enlisted in
behalf of the prostitution of public affairs, as must be the case
under every form of despotism, can produce nothing but ineffi-
ciency and corruption. A powerful bureaucracy can only destroy
the independence of a people and render them unfit to care for
themselves. If they have not wholly lost spirit, any failure to
give them relief from the woes they have been taught to charge
to the government is certain to turn them into rioters and revo-
lutionists. It did so in Greece and Rome ; it did so in the Italian
republics ; it will do so in their modern successors.

Of the many " problems of democracy " that now vex the vic-
tims of social and political speculation, there is one at least that
admits of solution. It is the utter unfitness of any class of people
to exercise special dominion, even though they be " leading citi-

* Atlantic Monthly, February, 189Y, pp. 179, 180.

\ Block. Dictionnaire de la Politique, vol. i, p. 641. \ Popular Government, p. 176.

502 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

zens" or distinguished philanthropists. The assumption that
they are an unfailing depository of virtue to be graciously and
mysteriously diffused among the poor and ignorant, so generally
regarded as the greatest peril of modern democracy, is another
astonishing delusion. To expose it, I shall not appeal to the lives
of fighting ecclesiastics that led armies to slaughter, thus violat-
ing the gospel of peace, and practiced in private and public the
current morals, nor to the lives of the philosophers and states-
men that befogged the interests of the people with sophistry and
falsehood and gave themselves up to vice and crime, I can not
hope to deepen the significance of the pleas of apologists that they
were simply the creatures of their age, obedient only to its code
of ethics. I call attention rather to history more recent and
impressive — to the history of the day, which discloses a diver-
gence quite as profound between preaching and practice. It
shows that, as the morals of every class are molded by the same
forces, they are very much alike. Inspect, for example, those of
the wreckers of banks and railroads, and of the promoters of
fraudulent enterprises. Are they better than those of the burglar
or thief ? Inspect, also, those of the " influential citizens " that
intrigue and bribe for municipal contracts and privileges.* Do
they differ from those of the ward heelers that conspire for
places they are not fitted to fill, or of the public officials that
peddle protection to gamblers and harlots ? Inspect, again, those
of the illiterate and impoverished "gang" that flock to a State
Legislature to become the chartered pilferers of some metrop-
olis. Are they worse than those of the more intelligent and
prosperous "gang" that besiege the national Legislature for a
similar purpose on a greater scale ? Inspect, finally, those of the
people that revel in books on a Corsican barbarian, in series of
articles hideous with the atrocities of war, and in newspapers
reeking with vulgarity and crime ; that hear without a shudder
of the annual slaughter of victims more numerous than the
Greeks of the Anabasis ; f that preach rancor and revenge toward

* " Is it your men in the common walks of life,'' said Mayor Swift, of Chicago, quoted
in the Arena, April, 1897, p. 716, " that demand bribes and who receive bribes at the hands
of legislative bodies or of the Common Council ? No, it is your representative citizens, your
capitalists, your business men." I venture to add that the mayors of most American cities
could duplicate the same experience.

f Dr. Andrew D. White has put the number at ten thousand and five hundred. He
shows that it has been increasing with frightful rapidity of late years. How shocking has
become the disregard of human life among people not belonging to the criminal class, may
be gathered from the mobbing and murder of Chinese in the West, and from the practice of
lynching, which has extended from the South to the North. Equally significant is the state-
ment of the leader of the Florida House early last May, on the Governor's message relative
to lynching, that the Southerner would always summarily punish any person guilty of crimi-
nal assault. Kef erring to " the unwritten but binding law of the land " which allows " a

THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY. 503

a kindred nation that has their own institutions and their own
love of freedom ; that show contempt for the law of nations in
their reckless clamor for the recognition of insurgents that have
no status as belligerents ; that lust after the territory of a primi-
tive people and applaud the conspirators that rob them of their
rights ; that join with others to crush the native government of
harmless tribes of South Sea islanders ; that hide behind the
dazzling shield of "manifest destiny" colossal schemes of ag-
gression all over the world, and prepare for them with lavish
expenditures upon a powerful navy and a vast system of coast
fortifications.* Yet it is supposed that a people thus tainted
from top to bottom with the ethics of feudal barbarism may be
trusted with their brother's keeping — that he can have no pos-
sible need of the kindly attention of a good Samaritan.

From democracy as a form of political government no more
need be expected than from any other despotism, f Like the gov-
ernment of the one and of the few, the government of the many
tends to crystallize society and to thwart its growth. Every law
to restrict freedom and every official appointed to enforce it are
steps toward a fixity of structure that will cramp and deform
social life and divest it of variety or interest, t Already this

husband to slay the man who has invaded his family," the Atlanta Constitution said two
years before to a month, " We know it is a bad thing for one man to kill another, but it is
worse to permit men to violate the sanctity of a home, and go free upon paying a fine or
damages." With an extension of this law of revenge society would soon be reduced to a
state of anarchy.

* In a review of one of Captain Mahan's laudations of naval barbarism, in the Political
Science Quarterly, vol. ix, p. 1*72, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, a brilliant representative of the
spirit of modern barbarism, says : " We need to heve the lesson taught again and again and
yet again, that we must have a great fighting navy, in order to hold our proper position
among the nations of the earth, and to do the work to which our destiny points." As though
our "proper work " did not consist of strict attention to our own affairs, to the suppression
of crime and the better enforcement of justice, to the reclamation of our cities from mis-
rule and to the protection of our liberty from threatened destruction ; as though " a gi-eat
fighting navy " as well as a great fighting army could point to any other " destiny " than
the indefinite postponement of this important work of civilization.

f M. Edmond Scherer's study of French democracy has brought him to a similar con-
clusion. " Je me persuade," he says, in Democratic et la France, p. 2, " que la nature
humaiue restera eternellement assez seniblable k elle-meme, et dans tous les cas, que ce
ne sont pas des formes de gouvernement ou des mesures d'economie sociale qui la modi-
fieront."

1 " It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in ourselves by cul-
tivating it and calling it forth within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of
others," says Mill (On Liberty, Ticknor & Fields edition, p. 121), "that human beings be-
come a noble and beautiful object of contemplation; and as the works partake of the char-
acter of those who do them, by the same process human life also becomes rich, diversified,

504 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tendency toward a rigid bureaucracy, with its moral perversion
and industrial paralysis, has become painfully manifest. The
centralization of the Federal Government, which set in so irre-
sistibly with the civil war, has spread like a pest to the State and
municipal governments, which wield an authority over the indi-
vidual far in excess of the fears of the fathers. The same si:)irit
has entered political parties and reduced them to powerful mech-
anisms almost military in perfection and despotism. It has seized
upon the laboring man and capitalist, and arrayed them in bitter
enmity and bloody conflict. It has reached the trades and profes-
sions, and developed in them the most odious traits of intolerance
and monopoly. It has invaded social life even. There it has
created a multitude of organizations with an exclusive and
aggressive temper and a feudal love of pretension and show.*
When a nation falls, like another priest of Apollo, into the stran-
gling coils of such a system of organization, every part of which is
made firm and unyielding by some law in violation of right or
in concession of privilege, it has reached the limit of evolution.
Immobile and unprogressive, its people, grown greedy, deceitful
and barbarous,t lose the capacity to think or to care for themselves.
The Government, also become depraved and incapable, degener-
ates into a huge machine to oppress and exploit. Thus a free
democracy is turned into a Roman or Bourbon despotism that
only a shock like an irruption of barbarians or a terrific explo-
sion like 'a great revolution can awaken and rescue from the
lethargy of death.

But from democracy as a condition of freedom under moral
control, every achievement within the reach of human effort may
be expected. Under its regime society remains fluent and mobile,

and animating, furnishing aliment to high thoughts and elevating feelings, and strengthen-
ing the tie which binds every individual to the race, by making the race infinitely better
worth belonging to."

* I refer particularly to the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Grand Army societies, and to
various uniform and semi-secret orders. Referring to the lecrowning of the " Queen of the
Society of Holland Dames of New Netherlands," a paragraph in a daily newspaper says,
" Almost royal state will be attempted, the lady riding on coronation day from her home to
the Waldorf in a stately carriage drawn by six white horses, and bedecked with orange-col-
ored ribbons and flowers." Everybody will recall the interest aroused by the exclusion
from one of these societies of a descendant of Benjamin Franklin, on the ground that his
relations with women had not been above reproach. For a further account of the Colonial
societies, see Ladies' Home Journal, July, 1S97, p. 10.

\ Evidence of this spirit is to be found already in the various trades and professions that
seek protective legislation, and also in the testimony of the tariff beggars before the Ways
and Means Committee last winter. They show hardly more consideration for their victims
than would a wolf for an infant it had found playing in its path. People really civilized
could never have permitted the legislation that threw thousands of Welsh tin-plate makers
and Austrian button makers out of employment subsequent to the enactment of the lIcKin-
ley bill in 1890,

THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY. . 505

ready to assume the countless forms that meet the ever- changing
needs of human life. There is no interference with either the law
of evolution, which is left to work its miracles, nor with the law
that merit shall be the measure of benefit. Subjected to their
powerful stimulus, the individual, neither cramped nor plundered
by an ignorant and greedy bureaucratic despotism, is impelled to
make the most of his talents and opportunities. He is free to
struggle and experinjent with himself and with the world in every
direction. Not protected from the evils of his blunders by an
unwise philanthropy nor deprived of the fruits of his successes
by confiscatory taxes, he learns to avoid the one and to strive for
the other. What is beyond his own achievement he induces his
fellows to help him achieve. Whether the object be one of per-
sonal profit or public benefit, that alone is the true method. It is
the method that will enable men to execute the most important
commercial enterprises, like the construction of canals and rail-
roads, and to work out the weightiest moral reforms, like the
abolition of intemperance and the mitigation of cruelty. It was
the method of the founders of the great religious orders of the
middle ages ; it is the method of the founders of the great church
and secular societies of to-day.* The modern industrial system,
unparalleled in history, had the same origin. Not only without
the aid of statesmen, but often hampered and almost crushed by
their vicious meddling,! its founders have turned forests and
deserts into farms and gardens, covered continents and seas with
lines of transportation, and filled cities with markets, banks, and
exchanges. Thus are avoided the evils of every form of despot-
ism. There is no longer the incentive to practice the ethics of
war. No one is forced to surrender his liberty without consent,
or to part with his property except by gift or contract. Nor is
he obliged to change his thought X or mode of life at any behest
but that of persuasion and conviction.

* Note the Epworth League, the King's Daughters, and the Young People's Association
of Christian Endeavor. Note also the League of American Wheelmen and the savings and
loan associations.

•]- " No great political improvement," .says Buckle (History of Civilization, vol. i, p.
272), "no great reform, either legislative or executive, has ever been originated in any
country by its rulers." Even in our own country Congressman Loud made a desperate but
futile attempt to reform the postal service and to turn the constant deficit into a surplus.
The perpetuation of the seed-distribution evil, despite the efforts of Secretary Morton, is
another example of the tenacity of the same trait of bureaucratic despotism.

± Everybody is familiar with the intolerance of ecclesiastical despotism ; but the intol-
erance of political despotism is not so much thought about, especially under popular gov-
ernments. I do not refer altogether to the intolerance of trade unionism nor to that of
party organizations, nor even to that of both to foreign immigrants, which are very marked
in the United States and sufficiently significant of retrogression. I refer more particularly
to the intolerance that denounces the teaching of free trade in colleges and universities ; that
VOL. LI. — 39

5o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Whatever power may be needed beyond the conscience of men
to control their conduct will be that of rational public opinion.
As a matter of fact, it is the only power at any stage of social
progress that has validity or efficacy. Without it neither the auto-
crat nor the democrat can command the slightest allegiance. But
no truth is more persistently and disastrously ignored. Although
public opinion can make dissent from a Hebrew myth or from a
rule of evening dress more culpable than the deception of a cus-
toms collector or a tax official, modern social reformers put their
faith in a power that has no authority without it. Instead of ap-
pealing to Csesar himself, who alone wields the scepter, they appeal
to Caesar's slaves, who obey his will and incline to his vices. But
every act of a legislator that abridges a right or confers a privi-
lege twists the convictions and perverts the morals of every per-
son affected. As this despotism grows, no matter what name it
bears, public opinion becomes more depraved and less fitted to be
the arbiter of social welfare. It sets up false standards of belief
and conduct.* In the end it will justify bribery and plunder, as
during the degradation of the Swiss,f and even assassination, as

excludes from such institutions, as in Kansas, the professors that oppose populism ; that
requires an official history of the civil war to be taught in the public schools. Should wheat
production and distribution become a function of the Government, I doubt not that pre-
scribed or " official " views in regard to it would spring up, as in regard to the tariff and the
currency, and that instruction in them in all State institutions would be demanded. Still
another amazing example of intolerance is to be found in an article from the Democrat and
Chronicle (July 2, 1897) of Rochester, N. Y., the largest and most influential Republican
newspaper in the State outside of New York city. "A college president," it says, exhib-
iting the same spirit as that of the measure before the Prussian Diet to suppress critics of
the Government or of Prussian institutions, " ought to have full power to drive out by force
and arms, if need be, college professors who belittle American history and cast reflections
upon our system of government. In recent years some of the colleges have become teach-
ers of pessimism in history and politics, sending out narrow-minded critics of American
institutions. A correspondent of the Sun, E. A. Scribner, a graduate of Bowdoin, suggests
a chair of 'American Patriotism' in every college. There is need of such a chair in sev-
eral institutions."

* How far public opinion has been perverted in the United States by this influence may
be gathered from an address of Dr. Rainsford before the Woman's Auxiliary to the Civil
Service Reform Association, reported in the Evening Post, May 6, 1897. "Dr. J{ams-
ford," it says, "administered a scathing rebuke to those who excuse corrupt practices on
the part of politicians and others in power on the ground of expediency. Educated men
who accepted such things as necessary evils were the most to blame, and committed the
greatest crime against democratic institutions. He thought that the distrust maiiii'ested in
some quarters arose from the fact that the country was honeycombed with the idea that
' pulls,' ' deals,' buying of legislation, and similar practices is the only way to get things
through. Continuing, ' I heard a member of the City Club declare that it was legitimate
to buy legislation at Albany.' " I, too, have heard respectable men express the same
opinion.

\ " La corruption par I'or dtranger p6n6tra chez Ics deputes aux dietes federales : I'as-
sentiment des peuples dans les cantons I'ut obtenu par des dons annuels decores du nom des
pensions." (Morin, Histoire politique de la Suisse, vol. i, p. 101.)

A TORTOISE-SHELL WILD CAT. 507

after the collapse of tlie Italian republics.* Thus, without ban-
ishing the devils of freedom, the reformers, moved to such endless
efforts to keep swept and garnished, evoke only the devils of
despotism, which are immeasurably more ferocious and destruc-
tive.

A TORTOISE-SHELL WILD CAT.

By WILLIAM H. BALLOU.

THE cat family has given naturalists quite as much trouble as
it has the ordinary citizen in his efforts to repose at night.
The wild type (or types) of the domestic animal has never been
located, although various views have been advanced to account
for the household pet. As far back as we can distinguish man
arising on the horizon of history, we find him accompanied by
certain domestic animals, the origins of which are quite as in-
volved in problems of transition conditions as is man himself.
The late Dr. J. S. Newberry was wont to exhibit to me a mummi-
fied alleged cat from Egypt, to show that the domestic animal of
the Egyptians was really a civet. The late Prof. Cope thought
that perhaps all living species of wild cats had been defined, until
Felis hracatta was sent him from Brazil ; he thought it probable
that there were no more extinct Felidce, to be discovered until,
just before his death, a pocket containing several new types was
opened in a Philadelphia quarry not far from his laboratory.

I have always taken an interest in the origin of the domestic
cat, not the least diminished by these two lamented paleontol-
ogists, who could find no technical basis for any theories that
have been advanced. No wild cat has been tamed in modern
times, and years of confinement and kindness have wholly failed
to soften the savage nature of these denizens of the forest and
jungle, some representatives of which will instantly attack man
or beast, oblivious to overwhelming odds, and fight to the last
gasp. I have always inclined to the multi-origin of various types
of domestic cats, holding that wild types in various parts of the
earth gave origin to the domestic types therein found. It is im-
possible for me to reconcile to a common existing wild ancestor
the domestic cat of the Isle of Malta, the stub-tailed Manx cat
of the Isle of Man, and the tortoise-shell cat of Brazil — all well-
known domestic types.

It was therefore with great interest that I viewed in the late

* " Tyrannicide was extolled as a patriotic virtue. . . . Public honors were paid to Dona-
tello's statue of Judith the tyrannicide, erected in Florence, with the inscription 'Mxemplum
salutis publicce cives posuere / ' While such a spirit prevailed in society, tyrants lived in
constant dread of assassination." (May, Democracy in Europe, vol. i, p. 323.)

5o8

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prof. Edward D. Cope's laboratory at Philadelphia, during the
past winter, the Felis bracatta from southern Brazil. The size of
the animal is that of the domestic type, and its coloration is very
near to that of the tortoise-shell pet. Prof. Cope would tell you
that its only structural resemblance was to that of Felis jagua-
roncli, a common Brazilian wild cat of similar size. It would
seem that color and size might be at least suggestive, when struc-
tural variation might possibly be accounted for by long years

.\(

K-^''^'^'//;//0^

Felis bracatta (Cope). Soutliern Brazil.

of domestication, changes in environment and food. But this is
mere theorizing, an approach to venturesome ground, of which
the paleontologist has a natural horror. At another time and in
another article I propose to point out certain interesting resem-
blances between types of domestic and types of wild cats, even
at the expense of being criticised by my friends who stand by
teeth, skull, vertebrae, and claws. I propose to assume that the
ancients had patience and good methods of reducing wild ani-
mals. The origin of the cat is as much of a mystery as the north
pole, and entitled to the same venturesome exploration. Paleon-
tology can throw no light whatever on the domestication of ani-
mals. Zoology has so far rendered no material assistance.

Only one specimen of the new Brazilian wild cat is in exist-
ence. Not long since Prof. Cope found the skin in a musty old
box, where he had labeled it Felis bracatta, and hurriedly placed

A TORTOISE-SHELL WILD CAT. 509

it long ago. He had this skin mounted, and the new work of
taxidermic art became a favorite on his wide writing desk, to-
gether with the skull of a primitive Japanese, the femur of a
camarasaur, a live Gila monster, and a live turtle. The bracatta
was found in the great forests of southern Brazil. Its chief value
lies in the fact that it is the only specimen in existence, and mod-
ern values are based on the rarity of the commodity. Bracatta
has a protective advantage in its colors, which are such that it
would scarcely be distinguished, even in motion, from the dead
leaves, soil, or rocks, accounting for a ready escape from enemies
and an easy capture of prey, presumably small birds and mam-
mals. Its general color is brown and shades of brown, suggest-
ive, on the whole, of tortoise shell. The shading extends oblique-
ly down the back toward the hind legs. The hair is long and
very fine. The beautiful, dark, striped tail is nearly the length
of the body, exclusive of the neck. Underneath the cat is spotted
after the manner of leopards, and the legs have dark bands and
boots. It is a slender, tapering, and graceful animal. Its mark-
ings are plain, suggesting the beautiful in simplicity, which aid
in its general harmony with surroundings and to conceal it from
the eye. It has black and gray ears of moderate size, with long
inside hairs of a buff color. The whiskers are long and buff-col-
ored, with black bases. Below each nostril and above each eye
are buff spots ; the cheeks are yellowish brown ; the chin is a
pale buff, and the throat has three rows of brown spots ; the tip
of the tail is black ; the feet are small.

Prof. Cope pronounced the animal new to science because it
was allied to only one species, Felis jaguarondi, and was possessed
of characters which appeared to him to be distinct. The jagua-
rondi is a wild cat of similar size from the same locality, but its
structural differences are notable. These structural differences
are visible at almost every point of comparison, applying to feet,
toes, claws, tail, ears, fur, and coloration. The aggregate of these
characters indicates the specific differences.

Accompanying this article is a drawing of the bracatta as he
probably appeared in life and environment. A mounted skin is
necessarily more or less contracted and distorted. I think, how-
ever, the artist has effected the proper catlike proportions and
markings with much fidelity to Nature.

It will be noted that the harmony of all this coloration is best
expressed by the general term of tortoise shell. Its love of small
birds and mice further suggests the domestic cat. Perhaps future
capture of the species and a study of its habits in the wild state
may disclose its relations, if any, with the tortoise shell of the
fireside. At least it has the merit of being the nearest approach
yet found to this particular domestic type.

510 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ANTHROPOLOGY A UNIVERSITY STUDY.

Bt JOHN S. FLAGG,

PROFESSOR OF BIOLOOY AND EMBRYOLOGY, AN]) LECTURER ON ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE COLLEGE
OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS, BOSTON, MASS.

ANTHROPOLOGY, the science of man, has been in the past a
■^l\. term of comparatively narrow significance. Journals of
anthropological societies all show a habit of thought along a few
restricted lines. Under the old scholastic regime the departments
of archseology and written history comprised nearly the sum total
of anthropological study, all other studies appearing to be related,
though but slightly, in a fixed cosmogony. Later, ethnology, as a
truly scientific study, apart from history and comparative philol-
ogy, has crept in as a growing realization of the interdependence
of all knowledge arose.

The marvelous results of scientific investigation with which
the workers of this century have blessed us, and above all the
far-reaching generalizations which great but exact minds like
Darwin's and Spencer's have given us, have so unified scientific
thought that the student has been obliged to enlarge his use of
the term anthropology to embrace the new and broader concept.
He now realizes that every department of study is necessarily a
department of anthropology, in that every branch of knowledge
has some contribution to make toward the solution of that great-
est of all problems to us. What is man — how did he originate, and
how arose his characters and customs ? As it was realized that
man was a result of all precedent causes that had acted in his
line, and as no activity, however remote, but had some effect on
this line, either mediately or immediately, the concept became
ever larger, until now the term anthropology really conveys the
idea of a broad synthetic philosophy, built up from verified and
ever- verifiable data alone — the great law of the evolution of all
things and the harmonious mass of laws relating to detail, which
shows the universe a logical series of causes and effects. While
each separate department of science is busy adding new data to
the mass of detail, correcting by careful and constant verification
and a juster appreciation of values the false concept that some
previous fact has given birth to, anthropology fits each new fact,
so far as it bears on the problem of man, into its proper place
in the whole ; sees hitherto unknown relationships to facts dis-
covered in other lines of research; traces further and further
through the web of things the warp threads of unvarying law.
As the master builder carries within his mind the concept of the
finished building, to whose realization every workman contributes
by adding each his stone, so a perfect anthropology can be real-

ANTHROPOLOGY A UNIVERSITY STUDY. 511

ized only by the contribution of every fact dug out by tireless
and devoted research, fitted together by workers equally tireless,
equally devoted. Isolated facts are of little value for the ad-
vancement of human knowledge; it is only when correlated —
brought into their proper relationship to other data — that they
are able to yield their full quota of aid.

For more than two thousand years speculative philosophy has
dominated the schools, and in all that time has made no actual ad-
vance toward explaining the nature of man or his relationship to
his environment.

Tied to the ever- varying and unverifiable personal equation,
there could not be a sound basis for a worthy superstructure. It
was not until Herbert Spencer, taking as the basis of his deduc-
tions those objective activities from which alone the subjective
states of another can be judged, reared his splendid synthetic phi-
losophy, which is destined to supplant all others as a system, even
if every detailed deduction made by him were disproved.

If anthropology, then, comprises every department of human
learning, it might seem that a university is as a whole devoted
to the study of anthropology, that its various departments are
branches of this one universal study. Were universities ideal
institutions of learning, and had they been reared at once on
a true scientific basis, this might be so. Then, again, anthro-
pology views the details of each branch of research chiefly with
reference to its bearing on the evolution and present status of
man, while the active specialist as an earnest searcher for truth
must wrest from the unknown each minutest fact in his own
domain.

Were a university curriculum arranged on a perfect scheme of
anthropological unity, the time at a student's disposal would not
permit him to gain any adequate acquaintance therewith. Desir-
able as it might be to have a university founded on such a scheme
of logical unity, yet it would fail in giving the student a complete
grasp of the interdependence of all phenomena through its very
multiplicity of detail.

As our universities are constituted, where is there one that has
a definite curriculum so arranged that its various departments
bear any true relationship to the whole, whose scheme of training
is so arranged that there arises in the student's mind any concep-
tion of unity ?

The very requirements for admission and the consequent train-
ing furnished by the preparatory school are based almost wholly
on the old scholastic mode and Platonic cosmogony. The minor
colleges, having set courses, are still controlled by the same influ-
ences. The larger colleges, having professional schools attached,
and aspiring to the broader title of universities, pile all the Intel-

512 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lectual food on the table at once, and tlie hungry rush in and help
themselves to whatever is within their reach, and come away at
least self-satisfied. The few minds that are synthetic either by
nature or early training are those that reap the highest good ; the
rest have at most sharpened their wits or gained a pert self-esteem,
while many are unfitted for a life of action.

Ingersoll's brilliant sentence in his Lincoln lecture has not a
little truth in it : " Colleges are places where pebbles are polished
but diamonds are dimmed." The truth that lies in this sentence
will be true so long as colleges remain a series of parthenogenetic
scholasticisms unfit to cope with the hard environment in which
mankind must live.

Our higher schools have in the past had to deal with only a
limited and favored portion of mankind, but with each succeed-
ing generation of students they have had to go down deeper
among the producing people, and at each succeeding stage they
have more or less closely reflected the general average of those
with whom they dealt. People, colleges, and civilization have all
evolved together, pari passu. Just now all are in a state of
transition. In the colleges even scholasticism is slowly giving
way before the assaults of exact knowledge. One is encouraged
at seeing the rapid increase of laboratories, and the lengthening
courses in English and economics, and the diminishing proportion
of time devoted to the classics. Would that one might say the
same of speculative philosophy ! Its value as now studied, save
as an exercise in mental gymnastics, was aptly characterized by
one of the best- known professors of philosophy in this country,
when he said to me, " Philosophy is wind, and he that can sell his
wind at the highest figure is the greatest philosopher."

The history of the growth of philosophic thought, studied as a
branch of anthropology, is of value, as the history of the slow
growth in any other department of human thought or effort is
valuable — no more.

The real value of anthropology, then, as a university study is
to take the place that philosophy occupied in the old scholastic
system, save that synthetic philosophy, under whatever name, re-
quires a broad basis of accurate knowledge. He that would teach
must have a mind of largest grasp, capable of far-reaching
generalizations, rigidly ruled by absolute fact. To this end pre-
liminary training in exact investigation is indispensable, that he
may be familiar with the road to truth and readily detect the
verified from the speculative. On the other hand, he must not be
a mere delver for facts. Men who are justly noted as investi-
gators are constantly proving themselves unfit for generalized
deductions even in their own departments. The teacher of an-
thropology must be accurately acquainted with results in astron-

ANTHROPOLOGY A UNIVERSITY STUDY. 513

omy, geology, paleontology, biology and embryology, ethnology
and archseology, philology, sociology, and economics.

Above all, he must be a devoted lover of truth and unwaver-
ing in its search. He must never be led away by an unsupported
theory, however seductive.

It has been said in the past that great men make great men,
that the influence of a great mind on plastic youth is invaluable ;
and it is as true now as ever. But the concept of what makes a
great mind has changed. In an age of scholasticism, with an
almost universal adherence to a fixed cosmogony, that man was
great who by his personality and the influence that it carried
could transfer that cosmogony as a whole to the minds of his
pupils and the code of its ethics to the guidance of their lives. It
is one of the glories of the new scientific thought that there can
be no completed cosmogony, that it is ever growing and being
rectified with each new truth discovered. The example of noble
men of the past and the study of their deeds may stimulate others
to live like them still. But for building up a stable character, the
baseless, shifting philosophy of the past can never equal the study
of exact truth as expressed in natural law and the humble facts of
our own being. Nature never lies to her children if they stop and
listen. There is more rigid, unprevaricating response to an hon-
est query in a right angle than in all the sophistry of the schools.
The young man that is thrust out into the world of action now,
with only the scholastic cosmogony as a support for his moral
code, is to be pitied when he finds his foundation swept away, as
it surely will be if he truly thinks. How much more sturdy he
would have been had he been led to clearly see the social neces-
sities that step by step gave rise to moral law — law that grows
higher and broader with social need and raises ever to its own
level its own creators !

A QUITE original system of raising revenue is described by Mr. Hugh
Clifford as existing in the Malay state of Trengganu. " It is managed in
one of two ways. Either a consignment of goods is sent to the village or
to an individual, and a price considerably in excess of that current in the
markets is demanded in return for them ; or else a small sum of money is
sent, and a message is conveyed to the recipients that a given quantity of
getah or jungle produce is demanded in return. On the receipt of a serah
a village headnian calls his people together and enforces a public subscrip-
tion to meet the sum required by the raja. The things are then divided
among the subscribers, but as the quantity of goods is altogether out of
keeping with the high price paid for them, and as the village elders usually
insist on receiving the full value of their subscription, the weaker members
of the community get little or nothing in retuini for their money." The
other form of assessment likewise works oppressively upon its victim.

514 POPULAB SCIENCE MONTHLY.

STONES IN THE HEAD.

By Dk. a. CARTAZ.

IN all times painters have been fond of reproducing scenes of
medical life, but the tendency has never been more marked
than it was in the middle ages. Taking to the very life the
oddest-seeming subjects, they have presented with the hands of
masters the realistic pictures of the most various nervous troubles
and pathological afflictions. On celebrated canvases may be seen,
in attitudes of the most scrupulous exactness, the likenesses of
great nervous affections like hysteria, malformations, clubfoot,
and rickets. The great book of Charcot and Richer, Les
demoniaques et les malades dans I'art (Demoniacs and Invalids in
Art), has brought out into the light the large number of ancient
works in which scenes of that kind are to be found. Yet they
deal with only one special point in pathology.

A gentleman whose artistic erudition is equal to his medical
knowledge. Dr. Henry Meige, has in his turn been gleaning in a
rich field for observations, and has given us, in a series of remark-
able studies in the New Iconography of the Salpetriere, a saga-
cious and interesting critical estimate of the " painters of medi-
cine." A recent memoir of his concerns pictures illustrating
operations on the head.

We find these scenes of medical life most frequently repro-
duced, whether in a realistic or a satirical fashion, in the Flemish
and Dutch schools. There are pictures giving a vivid image of
a woman dying of hydropsy of the heart, as in Gerard Dow's
celebrated canvas in the Louvre ; of a young victim of anaemia,
as in " The Patient " of Van Hoogstraaten, at Amsterdam ; of a
hysterical sufferer, as in "The Possessed*' of Rubens, etc. But
these pictures are most frequently figures of charlatans and really
caricatures ; subjects were abundant, for in that day, as in our
own time, quacks and tooth-pullers were not idle. As in our
fairs and parades, street operators and doctors and quacks of all
sorts made display of their knowledge in public, and their ad-
dress was not lacking in wit or warmth. Such scenes as these the
Flemish painters strove especially to represent, castigating the
quacks with their satirical pencils.

The pictures which we present to our readers repeat scenes
from the operations for stone in the head. It may be asked.
What was the operation which the painter intended to ridicule ?
There exist on the hairy part of the skin no such calculous prod-
ucts as are found in the canals of some of the glands or in some
of the reservoirs of the organism, like the biliary vesicle or the
bladder. We only know as tumors that might lend themselves

STONES IN THE HEAD.

515

to the operations of wandering quacks or mountebanks, such as
the pictures represent, the sebaceous cyst or the common pimple,
the caseous contents of which may possibly become chalky and
hard like a stone. There are also pimples scattered over the
forehead and the cranium which may be freed from their cores
by a stroke or two of the bistoury. Large operations on the
head were certainly known in those days ; for trepanation, with
which Hippocrates was acquainted, goes back, as any anthro-
pologist will tell us, to prehistoric times. But our quacks could
not have become skillful in such bold attempts ; and if they had

Fig. 1. — " Stones in the Head." An engraving from tlie picture of Pierre Bruegtiel le
Vieux, in the engravings room of the Amsterdam Museum. ( F]emi^ih school of the six-
teenth century.)

only pimples to remove, there would have been no need of making
a triumphant display of a stone or of piles of stones.

In his very judicious interpretation of these pictures. Dr.
Henry Meige concludes that they relate to operations which were
for the most part purely factitious and addressed to subjects of
disordered minds. Instead of talking of bees in their bonnets,
they said in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of persons a
little off the balance that they had a stone in their head ; and if
one of such unfortunates happened to recover, they said, just as
carelessly, that a stone had been taken out of his head.

When such a way of talking was current with the public,
what is there to surprise one that the quacks of the period should
be on the, lookout to make innocent and half-witted persons be-
lieve that they were masters of the surest process to cure them of

5i6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

their terrible infirmity ? Do we not see in our own time patients
persuaded that a snake is devouring their insides, that their
skull is bored with a gimlet ? Do we not see simple maniacs
possessed by like ideas ? Are there not neurasthenics who have
a helmet weighing upon their head and compressing their brain ?

Fig. 2.—" Stones in the Head." Picture by Jan Steen. Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam.

Have not hysterics their famous nail ? And would not all these
people of those times, less cultivated than in our time, however
high their position may have been, be willing, in the paroxysms
of their suffering, to submit to any operation that might be sug-
gested in order to be delivered permanently ? It was so formerly,
and more especially in the era when sorcery had lost none of its
prestige. It therefore seems logical to us to regard these opera-
tions, as Dr. Meige does, as pure deceptions of quacks ; further-
more, we have the pictures to prove this.

Let us look, for example, at the painting of Brueghel le Vieux,
in the Amsterdam Museum (Fig. 1). We are in a busy doctor's
shop, where operations are performed without truce or mercy.
Three surgeons are not too many to attend to the throng of pa-
tients. One rustic, already operated upon, looks slyly at his neigh-
bor who is howling with pain and pushes away the assistants,
while the operator is preparing, with formidable-looking forceps
in his hands, to extract the troublesome stone. On the right, an-
other operator, his head covered with a queer-looking long cap, is
opening the incision through which deliverance is to come. In
the background, an assistant is practicing upon a corpulent old
fellow, while a fourth is trying to retain an unfortunate who is

STONES IN THE HEAD.

517

making for the door. These scenes of pain make no impression
upon the monks, one of them prostrate and exhausted and carried
by a good rustic who salutes the company with his fur cap, while
another is exhibiting his affliction and asking for deliverance
from it.

Another design, likewise by Brueghel le Vieux, is still more
suggestive. It is a bald caricature, directly aimed against the
quacks. The scene is not laid in a shop, but in the open air, with
a staging put upon barrels, on which the operator (alone this time)
exercises his wonderful talent. The crowd is gathering around
him, presenting a curious series of types ; some gaping with aston-
ishment, some frightened, and others rejoicing as if at the ap-
proach of deliverance. One unfortunate has just passed through
the hands of the operator ; an assistant is applying a restorative
liniment to the open wound, while the victim is gazing sadly at
the pebble which is supposed to have been taken frona his head.
Another one is about to be placed in the fatal chair ; the surgeon
with his lantern carefully examines the offensive body. The pa-
tient howls, but a matron holds his head firmly. Another one is
being brought up with a tumor larger than an orange on his head.
Hidden under a stool
is a confederate with a
basket full of stones,
ready to be passed at
the proper moment, as
the ball is passed to
the juggler — and he is
a confederate who can
be relied upon, for his
lips are closed by a
padlock to secure his
silence. The satirical
intention of this curi-
ous picture has been
marked by the painter
himself in the little
sketch outside of its
lines on which he has
placed his signature.
It is a large egg con-
taining an operator
and his victim, with stones raining from the patient's head and
falling out of the shell.

A like satirical intent may be found in Jan Steen's picture
(Fig. 2), although the scene is treated less fancifully. The oper-
ator may have been a well-known man ; he does not operate in a

Fio. 3. — "Stones in the Head." Picture by van Achen
Cvan Bosch). Amsterdam Museum. (Dutch school of
the sixteenth century. )

5i8 ■ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

public place, but at home, in a comfortable Dutch interior ; but
he is not without skillful accomplices — the matron, his habitual
assistant, with her cunning expression, and the urchin who laughs
at the humbug of the thing, as he passes the pebbles which the
crafty charlatan causes to roll over the neck of the suffering
patient.

The scene represented in Jerome van Achen's picture (Fig. 3)
would be considered less grotesque were it not for the fantastic
dress and appearance of the operator ; his robe, his cap, down to
the curious stool he stands upon — all are extraordinary. The
quiet figure of the patient is no less so. Surely, if any such stones
had been taken from his head as the other doctor is showing to
the assistants, it must have been with the aid of a local anaes-
thetic. He beams with as happy an expression as if a most griev-
ous pain had just gone away from him by enchantment.

M. Meige has collected more than a dozen pictures represent-
ing these operations for stone in the head. — Translated for the
Popular Science Monthly from La Nature.

♦*»

A LILLIPUTIAN MONSTER.

Bv EGBERT BLIGHT.

IN front of a sunny window there stands, on a small bamboo
table, an aquarium of very unpretentious appearance and
size. It is nothing more than a "globe," such as is used for
goldfish. In the bottom are a couple of inches of river sand,
with a thin layer of gravel, which was repeatedly washed before
it was placed there. Planted in the sand is a plant of water
starwort, as well as one of anacharis, while on the surface float
a few plants of duckweed ; and two or three water snails com-
plete the arrangement. Around the rim of the globe is tied a
string on which is threaded a screen of dark-green material,
which can be drawn so as to shade the globe or to admit the sun-
light at pleasure.

Occasionally I amuse myself by fetching a pailful of water
from the stream that runs through the meadows ; and as I take
up the water I give the grass and water weeds a good shake to
get whatever creatures may be hiding there. I have provided
two pieces of glass tubing of equal diameter — one about two feet
in length, the other only some fourteen inches ; and these I have
bent nearly double by the heat of a spirit lamp. Thus equipped,
I change some of the water. I place a footstool or a pile of books
covered with a newspaper on the table, so as to get a surface as
high as the top of the globe. On this I place a "Mason jar,"

A LILLIPUTIAN MONSTER.

519

borrowed from the kitchen, filled with the water from the
stream. By the side of the globe I place another jar, empty.
Taking the shorter tube, I place one end in the aquarium and
give a quick draw with my lips, slipping the end instantly into
the empty jar. As soon as I see that the water is flowing
through the siphon I repeat the operation with the full jar, and,
as the leg of the siphon is sufficiently long, the water runs from
the jar into the bottom of the globe. Thus a current is set up in
which the plants wave back and forth, and from the liveliness of

Fig. 1. — Hydra Vulgaris.

the living creatures it is evident that they enjoy the sensation.
When I see that the upper jar is nearly empty, I remove the

tank

IS

siphon from the lower one, and the replenishing of my
at an end.

Few can tell how much pleasure is obtained from this appar-
ently trifling " hobby," but it really is intense. Close at hand is
the microscope, and on the table, ready for use, lie a piece of
glass tubing for a pipette, a zoophyte trough, a pair of forceps,
and an ordinary pocket magnifier. It is easy, when anything is

520

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wanted, to take it out, either with the pipette or the forceps, and

transfer it to the trough. By holding it up to the light one can

readily see whether it is worth while to sit down at the other

I <2 table and use the much more

powerful aid of the binocular
microscope.

My friends, it is true, laugh
at me, and I laugh at them. They
wonder why I am so devoted to
" a glass globe full of water, with
a few plants and snails," and I
tell them that while they see
much to admire in horticulture,
agriculture, and a host of other
"cultures," I am an enthusiast
about hydra-culture. Indeed, in
this small and insignificant aqua-
rium I have a flock of fresh-
water polyps, called "hydras,"

Fig. 2. — The Fresh-watee IItdra hanging

FROM DUCKWEEP IN A i'OND : 1, tlie loUff-

armed hydra i Hijdra fi/sca) feeding ; a a,
small animals caught in it« arms ; 2, short-
armed hydra (IJi/Jra viridis) throwing
off yoxing hydi-a buds, b b.

full of interest, full of wonder. I envy Trembley, who in 1744
published A Memoir on the Fresh- water Polyp, the intense pleas-
ure he felt in unraveling the life history of these creatures. He
was investigating the unknown when he studied the strange phe-
nomena connected with them, and was transported with astonish-
ment. I know, from the labors of others, what to expect, and yet
I am lost in wonder.

We may be thankful that these animals are as small as they
are ; for, if they were only a few feet in length, we should have
in our water world many a repetition of the devastation said to
have been caused by the Lernsean Hydra, whose destruction was
one of the gigantic labors of the hero Hercules. As it. is, the
longest you can find is only an inch in length. They can, how-
ever, be easily seen with the unaided eye, and with the help of a
pocket lens can to some extent be studied. In fact, Trembley,
the famous observer of them, had nothing better. It is only
when we wish to examine minute details that the use of the
elaborate microscope is called for. A group of them attached to
the rootlets of duckweed or the under side of the leaves or on
the stems of plants is a curious sight. A nearer view may often
be obtained, for they will attach themselves to the side of the
glass to enjoy the light, which they seem to love.

The commonest species of hydras may easily be distinguished
by their color, one being usually a reddish brown, while the
other is a vivid green. The particular shade of color of the
former depends on the nature of the food captured ; and it is said
that it has been colored blue, red, and white by feeding it with

A LILLIPUTIAN MONSTER.

521

matter stained with these pigments. Other species have been
noticed, but they are less common, and some are rarely met with.

A single individual may be thus described : There is the body,
like a thick thread, of varying length up to an inch. At the foot
the substance is slightly expanded into a small disk, with which
the creature fixes itself to some surface ; at the top is a series of
arms or tentacles, thin, threadlike, and arranged symmetrically
around the end of the stem, which is the mouth. These tentacles
vary in number, the green hydra having from six to ten, and the
brown one from seven to twelve. As the trunk sways this way
and that in a slight degree, and the tentacles twist about, the
sight is a curious one and well worth while watching. The arms
have the power of contracting, and sometimes look like little
buds around the mouth ; and the trunk itself will also sink down
until it seems to be a small mass of jelly.

The trunk is nothing but a stomach. There are no lungs, no
liver, no heart, no intestines, no nervous system. All there is
consists of two layers of tissue, with a very delicate layer be-
tween. The trunk and the tentacles are alike in structure, and
are simple hollow tubes. If the latter are examined with a mag-
nifying glass, they are found to be covered with little warts,
which are technically called "urticating" or stinging organs.
These consist of an oval capsule, the top of which is turned back
into itself so as to form a cavity in which there lies a thread
coiled up, while round the edge of the cavity are four little darts.
In this introverted capsule the thread lies bathed in a poisonous
secretion, and the darts are
nothing more or less than poi-
soned arrows. The opening is
provided with a sort of trigger,
so that when any substance is
pressed against it the capsule
is flung outward, the thread is
cast round the opposing body,
and the poisoned arrows are
projected into its substance if
it is penetrable.

The hydra lives on minute
aquatic creatures, and is ex-

FiG. 3. — Lasso Cells of the Hydra and Sea
Anemone: 1, piece of one of the hydra's
arms, showing the cells crowded in it ;
2, one of the colls ; 3, the same cell after
bursting open ; 4, lasso cell of an anemone.

clusively carnivorous. Attached to its moorings, it spreads its
arms in every direction with a searching motion ; and although
the two commonest forms can not explore at a much greater
distance than the height of the body, the " fuscous " species — one
of the rare forms — has tentacles which can reach some seven or
eight inches. As soon as a victim touches the subtle angling
line it is seized by it, enveloped in the threads, and struck by the

TOL. LI. — 40

522 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

darts. Then "begins a tussle whicli generally ends in the captive
being conveyed to the mouth. Occasionally some strong swim-
mer may get away, but, unless he is armor-plated, he has but
little chance of his life, for a poisoned dart is most probably
imbedded in his body. Sometimes a victim is very troublesome,
and, in order to get it safely into its mouth, the tentacle itself
must also be partially ingulfed, and it remains so until the mor-
sel is quiet, and even until digestion has begun. As the food is
drawn in, you can see the body swell, and in some cases become
quite pear-shaped. After a while the swelling subsides, and,
after all the useful part of the food has been extracted, the rest is
ejected at the same place at which it entered. It is most inter-
esting to watch the instinctive motions of this creature, which is
totally destitute of what we should call brain.

Hitherto we have spoken only of a single individual, but we
must now notice a startling fact. The hydra is multiplied
according to the usual law — by eggs, it is true ; but also in
another way. You can not examine a group in summer time
without finding that they "bud." You see the trunk of one
bearing a second, perfect in every respect, except that it is con-
nected with its parent, instead of resting on a foreign substance.
It has sprouted out from the parent stock, like a sucker from a
tree. It may break off after a while and seek an independent
resting place, or it may send out a bud from its own stem, which
in its turn may do the same, and all may remain attached for
some time. While this connection lasts, each member of the
compound body forages at his own " will," but the tubes of each
connect with the trunk of the next, and so with the parent
stomach. Thus they form a colony in which each member helps
to maintain every other member by his labor. A sight of such a
colony of hydras, the working of which is visible to the naked
eye, helps one to understand many other similar forms of animal
life — as, for instance, the corals, which form colonies by budding.
As many as four generations of hydras have been seen on one
stem, so that there is some reason for likening such a community
to " a living genealogical tree."

By a number of experiments with which some of us will
scarcely sympathize, Trembley and those who have repeated his
investigations have brought out many astounding facts about
these animals. If you cut one in two across the trunk, the upper
part floats off and resumes its voracious habit in a new locality ;
while the lower portion remains, develops a new set of tentacles,
and goes on just the same as if nothing had happened. Nay, you
may cut a hydra into five or six pieces, and each will make a sepa-
rate animal. If one is divided into two vertically, the two halves
close up, and again you have two individuals. Trembley sue-

A LILLIPUTIAN- MONSTER. 523

ceeded also in turning a hydra inside out, and it was able to catch
food and digest it as well as before. The creature, however,
insisted on turning itself back again, and this was not what the
experimenter wished. He therefore passed a needle through the
body, near the mouth, and kept it there.

The method of this Dutch naturalist was very ingenious.
Holding the hydra in a little water in the palm of his hand, he
induced it to swallow a small worm. He then took a bristle and
began to push against the base, working the end of the body
upward against the worm, and soon had the animal inverted.
Thrusting a needle through the base of the tentacles, he had
what he wanted. He says : " I have seen a polyp turned inside
out, which has eaten a small worm two days after the operation.
I have fed one in this state for more than two years, and it has
multiplied in that condition."

Hydras have but low powers of locomotion, but still they can
move from place to place. When one wishes to go upon its
travels it attaches itself to the surface of its support by a ten-
tacle, and then moves the disk up to the tentacle. In this way it
can get over about eight inches in twenty-four hours. It can,
however, take a longer journey by attaching itself to the shell of
a water snail, and thus travel in a few minutes a greater distance
than it could do in a day alone. It can also swim with the disk
floating on the surface of the water as if suspended.

Although without eyes and a nervous system, the green hydra
is very sensitive to the light, and indeed all seem to be instantly
aware of a ray of sunlight. Would it not be curious if it was discov-
ered that the rays which affect sightless creatures, like the hydra,
are those about which so much investigation is being carried on ?

Many more interesting things might be said about hydras, but
these must suffice. I will only add that the more I think about
them and the more I see of their habits, the more I realize the
truth of the words of Charles Bennet, of Geneva, in Switzerland,
about them : " We can only judge of things by comparison, and
have taken our ideas of animal life from the larger animals ; and
an animal we can cut and turn inside out, which we can cut
again and it still bears itself well, gives one a singular shock.
How many facts are ignored which will come one day to derange
our ideas of subjects which we think we understand ! At present
we just know enough to be aware that we should be surprised at
nothing."

A PLANT of a new species — Bauhinia magalandra — is described as grow-
ing on the island of Trinidad, the flowers of which depend on bats for their
fertilization. The bat visits the flowers for the insects they harbor, and, in
trying to reach them, disturbs the stamens and shakes the i)ollen from them.

524 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF NUMBER

SYSTEMS.

Bt Prof. EDWIN S. CEAWLEY.

IT is generally acknowledged that we have in the number sys-
tems of the lower races to-day a means of studying the devel-
opment of our own system. This is based upon the assumption
that when the savage begins to count he does it always in essen-
tially the same way. This is, in fact, more than an assumption.
An analysis of the number systems of many races scattered all
over the globe shows that such a similarity exists, and there is
no reason to suppose that our own ancestors followed any other
method. Indeed, such evidence as it is now possible to bring for-
ward all goes to support this view.

Counting begins when man first forms the idea of two as dis-
tinct from one and more than two. We may perhaps go back
even one step further, and say that it begins when the idea of one,
as distinct from more than one, is formed. If this be taken as the
starting point, the distinct conception of two forms the second
step. It is difficult to realize that such ideas are not contempora-
neous with the birth of intelligence, but there is evidence to show
that such is not the case. According to Dr. Charles Letourneau,
we have one example of a race which has not yet taken even this
first step. He says in his book on Sociology (translated by Henry
M. TroUope), page 582: ''The Weddahs of Ceylon, who seem to
be the least intelligent of men, have still no mathematical faculty
whatever; they have no name for any number." To say that
they have no name for any number probably does not imply that
they are unable to realize that one group of objects contains more
individuals than another group of the same objects. They could
even determine which of two such groups contained the greater
number of objects, by placing in succession one from each group
in pairs until all in one group were exhausted. Such a process,
however, is not counting, and the race which finds it necessary to
resort to such an expedient may fairly be said to have no concep-
tion of number as such.

We find other races who have taken only the first two or three
steps. These are chiefly the South American forest tribes and
the bushmen of Australia. Speaking of these tribes, Edward B.
Tylor says (Primitive Culture, London, 1871, Vol. I, page 220) :
" Five is actually found to be a number which the languages of
some tribes do not know by a special word. Not only have trav-
elers failed to get from them names for numbers above 2, 3, or 4,
but the opinion that these are the real limits of their numeral
series is strengthened by their use of the highest known number

THE ORIGIN OF NUMBER SYSTEMS. ■ 525

as an indefinite term for a great many. Spix and Martins say of
the low tribes of Brazil : ' They count commonly by their finger
joints, and so up to three only. Any larger number they express
by the word many." In a Puri vocabulary the numerals are given
as — 1, omi ; 2, euriri j 3, prica, ' many ' : in a Botocudo vocabu-
lary— 1, mokenamj 2, uruhu, ' many.' " It is needless to multiply
these examples.

The next step in advance in the development of a number sys-
tem is taken when the fingers and toes are brought in as aids in
the art of counting. The advance is now comparatively rapid up
to the point where, these means being exhausted, there is no fur-
ther natural aid conveniently at hand. It is popularly believed
that finger-counting represents the very earliest stage of the art,
but the existence of tribes who can not count as far as five, as
already cited, would seem to be conclusive evidence of a stage
which antedates this. The etymological character of the numeral
words in most of the known languages points to the same conclu-
sion. Prof. Levi Leonard Conant, in a book recently published
under the title The Number Concept, has collected and analyzed a
great number of the numeral systems of savage and semicivilized
tribes. He says (pages 98 and 99) : " Collecting together and com-
paring with one another the great mass of terms by which we find
any number expressed in different languages, and while admitting
the great diversity of method practiced by different tribes, we ob-
serve certain resemblances which were not at first supposed to
exist. The various meanings of 1, where they can be traced at all,
cluster into a little group of significations with which at last we
come to associate the idea of unity. Similarly of 2, or 5, or 10, or
any of the little band which does picket duty for the advance
guard of the great host of number words which are to follow. A
careful examination of the first decade warrants the assertion
that the probable meaning of any one of the units will be found
in the list given below. The words selected are intended merely
to serve as indications of the thought underlying the savage's
choice, and not necessarily as the exact terms by means of which
he describes his number. Only the commonest meanings are in-
cluded in the tabulation here given :

" 1 = Existence, piece, group, beginning.

" 2 = Repetition, division, natural pair.

" 3 = Collection, many, two-one.

" 4 = Two twos.

"6 = Hand, group, division.

" 6 = Five-one, two threes, second one.

" 7 = Five-two, second two, three from ten.

" 8 = Five-three, second three, two fours, two from ten.

" 9 = Five-four, three threes, one from ten.

526 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" 10 = One (group), two fives (hands), half-a-man, one man.

" 15 = Ten-five, one foot, three fives.

" 20 = Two tens, one man, two feet."

One of the most significant things to be observed in this table
is the absence of any reference to the figures in the numerals for
1, 2, 3, and 4. This strongly confirms the view already expressed,
that counting began before the use of the fingers as an aid was
thought of. The higher numerals, on the contrary, are made up
almost entirely of finger- words and their adjuncts. This does not
appear in the English translations, but in the original words it is
seen at once.

We may say, therefore, that the human race in learning to
count passes through three stages. In the first stage the fingers
are not used; progress is very slow; no distinct conception of
numbers greater than two or three is formed ; all beyond this is
"many." Indeed, in this stage it is altogether probable that no
conception of number, properly so called, is formed at all ; that
is, the idea of the number of things in a group is not distinctly
abstracted from the objects themselves. In the second stage the
fingers and toes are used, and counting can be carried as far as
ten or twenty, or perhaps, by the use of more than one man, even
a little further ; but corresponding numeral words are not yet
invented, so that counting is by gestures. In the third stage,
words or expressions describing the gestures used in the second
stage are assigned to do duty as numerals, and in the course of
time they become pure numeral words — that is, they are used
merely to indicate numbers, the mind no longer thinking of them
as describing gestures that once served the same purpose.

The question now arises whether we can find any trace of
finger-counting in our own numerals, and whether we can trace
the origin of the lower numerals — those in which we should not
naturally expect to find a finger origin. Mr. James Gow, of
Cambridge, in his Short History of Greek Mathematics, Chapter
I, gives some reasons that seem to show that our own Aryan
ancestors, like other races, could not at first count beyond three
or four, and afterward learned to count on their fingers. His
reasons are three, as follows: 1. The words for 1, 2, 3, and 4
show a different grammatical character from the next six. He
says (page 2) : " The first three are adjectives, agreeing with only
casual and partial exceptions (e. g., 8vo) in gender and case with
the substantives which they qualify. The same might be said of
the fourth, but that in Latin quattuor is wholly indeclinable.
The rest, from 5 to 10, are generally uninflected, and have, or
had originally, the form of a neuter singular." 2. The existence
of three grammatical numbers — singular, dual, and plural — prob-
ably points to a time when more than two was regarded indefi-

TEE ORIGIN OF NUMBER SYSTEMS. 527

nitely as many. 3. The names of the six numerals, from 5 to 10,
may possibly be derived etymologically from a hand or finger
source.

Mr. Gow's statements with regard to the grammatical char-
acter of the words is easily seen to be quite what we should
expect. When man first begins to count, the numerals do not
represent to him abstract ideas. He does not think of " 3," for
example, as a mere number, as we do. It represents nothing to
him if separated from the group of objects which it is used to
describe. The numeral words, therefore, naturally take on the
form of adjectives. Later, when his ideas are further developed
and he begins to use his fingers in counting, the real idea of
number begins to assert itself, and the words used to designate
different numbers appear in a more abstract form. The fingers
become, in fact, when used thus, real numerical symbols, as much
so as written ones, and the mind gradually becomes accustomed
to thinking of the number of a set of objects as something which
can be considered apart from the objects themselves, and which
can be represented just as well by an equal number of other
objects differing from the first set in all respects except that of
number. Thus the abstract idea of number is formed.

Mr. Gow's ideas upon grammatical number seem to me, if
they have the significance he claims, to point back still further.
As soon as the idea of two or more as distinct from one is con-
ceived, the necessity for a new grammatical form arises. Now,
if the number sense were at all developed, the formation of gram-
matical number ought to stop here ; for it would be apparent at
once that to have a different grammatical form for every num-
ber is impracticable. But we find a distinct inflection set apart
to express two, and a new inflection to designate three or more.
The existence of this third or plural number would then indicate
that the idea of three, or many, as distinct from two corresponds
to another step in the development of the number sense. That
the process of forming new grammatical numbers went no fur-
ther then becomes an argument to show that the subsequent
number development was more rapid, and the impossibility of
making the former keep pace with the latter was realized.

The etymology of the first three or four of our numerals is
probably quite beyond our reach. It has already been pointed
out that in the selection of words to represent 1 or 2 the
savage has such a wide range of objects to choose from that it is
very much a matter of chance what he will select. Any concrete
object that possesses the essential quality of unity or duality
may be impressed into the service. For 3 and 4 the range of
objects that will serve his purpose is more limited, but it is
still sufiiciently large to make it a mere accident what he will

528 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

use. For example, the Abi pones of the Paraguay region express
4 by "toes of an ostrich./' and 5 by " neenhalek," a, five-colored,
spotted liide. Nevertheless, some attempts have been made to
discover these etymologies.

Below is given a list which includes, besides those for 3
and 4, some etymologies that have been suggested for the
higher numerals. I quote from the work of Gow already referred
to, page 3, footnote : *' The common derivations, taken chiefly
from Bopp, are set out in Morris's Historical Outlines of English
Accidence, page 110, note. The following only need be cited :

" Tliree = ' what goes beyond ' (root tri, tar, to go beyond).

"Four (quattuor) = * and three ' — i. e., 1 and 3.

" Five = ' that which comes after ' (four), Sk. yashclidt = after.

" Six J Sk. shash, is probably a compound of two and four.

" Seven = ' that which follows ' (six).

" Eight, Sk. Ashtdn = 1 + and + 3.

" Nine = new — that which comes after 8 and begins a new
quartette.

" Ten = two and eight."

In commenting on these etymologies Gow says (pages 3 and
4) : "When they say that panhan and saptan, 'five' and 'seven,'
mean * following,' because they follow ' four ' and ' six ' respect-
ively, they suggest no reason why any other numeral above 1
should not have been called by either or both of these names ; so
when they say that navan, ' nine,' means neiv (ve'os, etc.) because it
begins a new quartette, they assume a primeval quaternary
notation, and do not explain why ' five ' was not called navan ; so,
again, when they say navan means ' last ' (veWos, etc.) because it is
the last of the units, they evidently speak from the point of view
of an arithmetician who has learned to use written symbols."
The objections offered by Mr. Gow to these etymologies seem to
me to be quite valid, with the exception of the last. It is not at
all uncommon to find " 9 " expressed by some such phrase as
" approaching completion," the fingers forming the natural scale,
and serving the purpose of written numerals. The savage would
be therefore in this respect in the position of an " arithmetician
who has learned to use written symbols." In the Jiviro scale 9
is "hands next to complete" (Conant, page 61) ; in the Ewe scale
it is " parting with the hands " (ibid., page 92), and in the Chippe-
way dialect the same numeral is shangossivoy, which is akin to
chagissi, "used up" (ibid., page 162).

The derivations of the last six of the first ten numerals sug-
gested by Gow are as follows : " Their original names appear to
have been pankan or kankan (5), ksvaks or ksvaksva (6), saptan
(7), aktan (8), navan (9), and dakan or dvakan (10). Sonie allu-
sion to finger-counting may well underlie these words. Ever

THE ORIGIN OF NUMBER SYSTEMS. 529

since A. vou Humboldt first pointed out tlie resemblance between
the Sanskrit panh'an and tlie Persian yenjeli, ' the outspread hand/
some connection between the two has always been admitted. . . .
So also dval-an seems to be for dval^anlcan, meaning 'twice five '
or ' two hands ' ; dakan points to 8e|to?, dexter, Se^o/xat, etc., or else
to SdKTvXo<s, digitus, zelie, toe. Thus, whatever original forms we
assume for these two numerals their roots appear again in some
name or other for the hand or fingers. It is intrinsically proba-
ble, therefore, that pankan means ' hand,' and that dakan means
' two hands ' or ' right hand.' It may be suggested here that the
intervening numerals are the names of the little, third, middle,
and fore fingers of the right hand. Thus, the little finger was
called by the Greeks wTtVi^s, by the Latins auricularis. This name
is apparently explained by the Germans, who call this finger the
* ear-cleaner.' Now, ksvaks or ksvaksva seems to be a redupli-
cated form, containing the same root as ^ew, ^aiVw, $vpe(o, etc., and
meaning ' scraper.' The name saptan seems to mean * follower '
(?7r-o/x,at, etc.), and the third finger might very well be so called
because it follows and moves with the second, in the manner
familiar to all musicians. The name aktan seems to contain the
common root AK, and to mean, therefore, 'projecting,' a good
enough name for the middle finger. Lastly, the first finger is
known as do-Trao-riKos, index, salutatorius, demonstraforius (= ' beck-
oner,' 'pointer'), and the meaning probably underlies navan,
which will then be connected with the root of novus, veos, new,
etc., or that of vtvia, nuo, nod, etc., or both. Whatever be thought
of these suggested etymologies, it must be admitted that there is
no evidence whatever that our forefathers counted the fingers of
the right hand in the order here assumed. They may have
adopted the reverse order, from thumb to little finger, as many
savages do,* and as, in fact, the Greeks and Romans did with that
later and more complicated system of finger- counting which we
find in use in the first century of our era. If this reverse order
be assumed, the numerals may still be explained in accordance
with other finger-names in common use, besides those which have
been cited. But, after all, the main support of these etymologies
is their great a priori probability. The theory on which they are
based brings the history of Aryan counting into accord with the
history of counting everywhere else ; and it explains the Aryan
numerals in a way which is certainly correct for nearly all other
languages. It is hardly to be expected that such a theory should
be strictly provable at all points."

* The order of counting from the little finger to the thumlj is, however, the more usual
method with savages. See a paper by Lieutenant F. H. Gushing, entitled Manual Concepts,
in the -\merican Anthropologist for October, 1892 (vol. v).
VOL. LI. — 41

530 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Before leaving tliis part of the subject the writer wishes
merely to add that the etymologies suggested above for six,
seven, and eight appear to be quite plausible ; for navan, or
nine, however, it appears to him that the association with the idea
of " last " is the more reasonable, and would fit in with the finger
interpretation of the others just as well as the one suggested.

We return now to the general question of the development of
number systems, which we left at the point where men were sup-
posed to have learned to use their fingers and toes as a natural
abacus, and to have reached, therefore, the number 20. Be-
fore any further progress can be made a scale of notation must
be adopted. Of course, this is not done consciously. Within
certain limits it is probably entirely a matter of chance what
number will be selected as a base. I had better say what num-
ber will become the base ; for the use of the word " selected ''
unconsciously implies that the savage exercises a choice, while
in fact, as already stated, he is simply led by circumstances. In
most cases he has adopted some kind of a base before he has
counted as far as 20. We have already seen that one of the
commonest forms for "0" is "hand- one" or five-one. When
the savage expresses G in this way he is committed to a quinary
scale. The chances are, however, overwhelmingly against his
carrying out this sj'stem consistently in all higher numbers, and
for very obvious reasons. A pure quinary system of numeration
is therefore extremely rare. Nevertheless, at least one such
exists, one that is purely quinary as far as it seems to be known ;
this is the scale of one of the Betoya dialects of South America.
In this scale

Six = teyente tey = hand + 1.
Eleven = caya ente-tey = 2 hands + 1.
Sixteen = toazumba-ente tey = 3 hands + 1.
Twenty = caesea ente — 4 hands.
(Conant, pages 57 and 140.) It would be interesting to know
whether this scale is carried on consistently — that is, whether
25, the square of the base, is recognized as a new starting point,
or whether they call it simply " five hands," without any sign
to mark it off distinctly from other multiples of the base.

What is generally found in these scales that introduce the
quinary element at (i is that "10" is designated by some ex-
pression other than " two fives " ; and eleven then becomes 10 + 1 ;
twelve, 10 + 2, etc. — that is, the quinary scale here merges into
the decimal ; and either we see no more of it, or it continues with
the other in a subsidiary place. The latter is the more usual.
Thus sixteen is 10 + 5 + 1 ; seventeen, 10 + 5 + 2, etc. Thus is
formed a mixed decimal and quinary scale.

It is a question over which there has been considerable dis-

THE ORIGIN OF NUMBER SYSTEMS. 551

pnte whether all numeral systems were not originally quinary,
and the adoption of a larger base came as, with the lapse of time,
its superior advantages were recognized. I think that not only
is the evidence in favor of the opposite view, but also that from
a priori considerations we might expect to see the adoption of
10 as a base as readily as 5. It depends, I think, entirely upon
whether 6 is called "five-one" or is designated in some other
way. In speaking upon this point Prof. Conant says (pages 170,
171) : "From the fact that the quinary is that one of the three
natural scales with the smallest base, it has been conjectured that
all tribes possess at some time in their history a quinary numera-
tion, which at a later period merges into either the decimal or the
vigesimal, and thus disappears, or forms with one of the latter a
mixed system.* In support of this theory it is urged that exten-
sive regions which now show nothing but decimal counting were,
beyond all reasonable doubt, quinary. It is well known, for
example, that the decimal system of the Malays has spread over
almost the entire Polynesian region, disjilacing whatever native
scales it encountered. The same phenomenon has been observed
in Africa, where the Arab traders have disseminated their own
numeral system very widely, the native tribes adopting it, or
modifying their own scales in such a manner that the Arab influ-
ence is detected without difficulty.

" In view of these facts and of the extreme readiness with
which a tribe would through its finger-counting fall into the use
of the quinary method, it does not at first seem improbable that
the quinary was the original system. But an extended study of
the methods of counting in vogue among the uncivilized races of
all parts of the world has shown that this theory is entirely
untenable. The decimal scale Is no less simple in its structure
than the quinary, and the savage, as he extends the limits of his
scale from 5 to 6, may call his new number 5-1, or, with equal
probability, give it an entirely new name, independent in all
respects of any that have preceded it. With the use of this new
name there may be associated the conception of ' 5 and 1 more ' ;
but in such multitudes of instances the words employed show no
trace of any such meaning, that it is impossible for any one to
draw with any degree of safety the inference that the signifi-
cance was originally there, but that the changes of time had
wrought changes in verbal form so great as to bury it past the
power of recovery."

In support of this argument it may be said that at least in the
languages of the most cultivated races to-day those elements of

* An elaborate argument in support of this theory is to be found in Hervas's celebrated
work, Ariihrneiica di quasi tutte Ic nazioni conosciute.

532 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

their numeral systems wliicL. are not homogeneous witli the
main characteristics of the system show great persistence. The
"score" of English is a remnant of old vigesimal counting, and
although it has lost its place in the ordinary number system,
it is still retained as a semi-poetical form. Still more marked
is the " quatre-vingts " of the French. In counting from 61 to 99
they use a purely vigesimal system. If these traces of vigesimal
counting still remain, it would seem probable that if the qui-
nary system had ever formed a part of the system it would also
somewhere have left its marks, fainter, it is true, on account of
its greater antiquity, but still discernible. Now the only indica-
tion from a philological source that such a system was ever
employed by the Aryan peoples seems to be the Homeric TrefX7rdt,etv
(literally to five), meaning "to count." It is sometimes stated
also that the form of the Latin numerals I, II, III, IIII or IV,
V, VI, etc., implies the existence of an early form of quinary
counting. My own opinion is that evidence derived from written
numerals, between which and the formation of the numeral
system itself there can be no comparison as to dates, can be of
very little weight in deciding what was the scale upon which
the system was originally formed. If the Roman V for 5 and
VI for 6 were adopted because of a quinary element in the Roman
scale at the time these signs were first used, surely the spoken
language would have retained some marks of the same system.
The evidence all points, therefore, with the one exception quoted
above, to the nonexistence of a quinary element in Aryan counting.
The third natural scale, besides the quinary and decimal, is the
vigesimal. It is doubtful whether a pure vigesimal scale, un-
mixed with any quinary and decimal element, occurs in any part
of the world. In certain regions, or with certain races, a strong
tendency is found to make 20 the principal base of the nu-
meral system. This is so with the Celtic peoples, with some Asiatic
and a few African tribes, with some of the Eskimos, and with
the peoples who formerly occupied the Central American regions.
If a tribe counts up to 20, using their fingers and toes, and
then continue their counting beyond this point in a consistent
way, a vigesimal system will be the natural result ; but on account
of the practical difficulty of using the toes in any system of ges-
ture-counting, which, as we have seen, is the second stage in the
development of the number system, it seems plausible that most
tribes confined themselves to the fingers alone. This would ac-
count for the greater predominance of 10 and 5 as number bases.
It is true that in the case of many well-developed vigesimal scales
we have no positive evidence that they originated in the custom
of counting on the fingers and toes, but there is certainly grent
probability that they did all begin in this way. There seems

THE ORIGIN OF NUMBER SYSTEMS. 533

to be no other good reason why 20 should have been adopted
for a base. The most perfect examples of vigesimal scales are
those of the Mayas of Yucatan and of the Aztecs of Mexico. It
has already been mentioned that traces of this system are to be
found in our own English numerals and in those of the French.
Danish and some of the kindred languages show a strong tend-
ency to vigesimal forms, although, as a whole, the Germanic sys-
tems of counting are purely decimal.

Among the important number systems of the world there is
one which uses neither 5, 10, nor 20 as its base — namely, the
sexagesimal scale of the ancient Babylonians. This system is
of special interest to ourselves, for its influence is still felt in
the division of our degree into GO minutes, and the minute into
60 seconds. It seems to have arisen and continued in use side
by side with a decimal system, for the monuments furnish ex-
amples of numbers which are wholly decimal, others wholly sexa-
gesimal, and still others in which the two systems are combined.
It is a question of great interest to know how such a system came
to be adopted. It seems reasonable to suppose that it was formed
artificially — that is, GO did not come to be the base of this sys-
tem by a process of natural development, as "5, 10, or 20 came
to be the bases in the systems of other races. In all probability,
therefore, it grew up after the decimal system, and may have
been invented for the purposes of astronomical calculation, for
the Babylonians were famous astronomers in their day. It is
not impossible to suppose that its purpose originally was to ren-
der the calculations of the astronomers less intelligible to those
who were acquainted with only the decimal scale. However that
may have been, its use apparently became common. M. Cantor,
the German writer on the History of Mathematics, seeks to ex-
plain its origin by saying that the Babylonians divided the circle
of the heavens into 360 degrees, one degree for each of the 360 days
into which they divided the year. They were probably also ac-
quainted with the fact that the chord equal to the radius subtends
exactly one sixth of the circumference, or 60 degrees. This may
liave led to the adoption of 60 as the number base. Prof. John P.
Peters, in a letter published in the Proceedings of the Society of
Biblical Archaeology for May, 1883, pages 120, 121, says, in sub-
stance : The use of the fingers of one hand to count to 5 was in
some cases extended to 6, by using the open hand with the fingers
and thumb extended to express 5, and then indicating G by the
closed hand. This method, if extended to both hands, gives
rise ordinarily to a duodecimal system ; and we have abundant
evidence both in our own English and in some other languages of
the presence of a duodecimal element, which may have arisen in
the way suggested. The Babylonians, however, instead of devel-

534 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

oping a pure duodecimal system, combined the seximal with the
decimal in a multiplicative manner, and so developed a sexagesi-
mal system.

The reader may take his choice between these two attempts to
explain what, in any case, must be regarded as a remarkable phe-
nomenon. Without denying that either may possibly be the true
explanation, the writer is of the opinion that much additional
evidence will be required to finally solve the question. With the
rapid advance that is now being made in the field of Babylonian
antiquities it is not impossible that the needed information will
be forthcoming.

IVORY: ITS SOURCES AND USES.

By N. B. nelson.

THOUGH an animal product, its combinations with wood,
particularly ebony, from the earliest history, and the simi-
larity of its uses and working in the way of carving, turning,
veneering, and inlaying, make ivory an interesting material to
joiners, decorators, and builders.

In texture, elasticity, hardness, peculiar markings or cloud-
ings of the grain, and several other particulars, ivory is very like
the harder woods, and, being of similar durability, is very suit-
able to " make up " in mosaics, inlaying, etc., with them, making
a companion commodity.

Ivory is really dentine — that substance, not unlike bone, of
which teeth principally consist. By usage it is restricted to the
dentine of those teeth which are large enough for industrial pur-
poses— viz., the tusks of the elephant, hippopotamus, walrus, nar-
whal, and some varieties of whales. These forms of ivory differ
about as the hard woods differ : the elephant ivory, by its size
and quality, is best suited for all purposes; that of the hippo-
potamus is harder and finer, but owing to its hollowness can
only be used for small articles. The old Norsemen used exten-
sively the tusks of the walrus, and when "whaling" was at its
best the sperm whale was sought almost as much for the ivory as
for the oil. It was the writer's fortune to examine a whale's tooth
which was nine or ten inches in length and six or eight in cir-
cumference, and seemed solid ivory of a beautiful quality, but so
hard as to defy every effort of its owner, who was an expert
carver, spoiling, as he expressed it, his " tools and temper."

Ivory, consisting chemically of an onganic matrix or growing
element, phosphate and carbonate of lime, is permeated by nu-
merous exceedingly fine canals, starting from the organic or pulp
cavity and running generally outward to the circumference of

IVORY, ITS SOURCES AND USES. 535

the tusk. To the regularity and smalluess of these canals ivory-
owes its elasticity, firmness, and fineness of grain ; to their curva-
tures and eccentric direction — plainly visible in cross-cut sections
— are due those beautiful cloudings and delicate markings which
give value to, and readily distinguish the real from the imitated
article.

Ivory is extremely hard and heavy — the very name, a Latin
derivative from harms, an elephant, so called from a Greek word
meaning heavy. It is difficult to cut, requiring the sharpest and
hardest of tools, but yields readily to the saw, the lathe, the file.
Owing to its value, which is so constantly increasing that it now
ranks with the " precious " substances, the greatest care is taken
to avoid waste in manipulation. The cutting is effected with
thin saws. Large plates of veneer have been obtained by the
"reciprocating" saw, cutting a spiral shaving round the tusk.
There is an account of one thus produced which was forty feet in
length and twelve inches wide. Polishing is done by the use of
various powders.

Ivory is dead pearly white in color, which sometimes changes
with age and exposure to yellow, brown, or black. This natural
whiteness is exquisitely delicate, and, as an enthusiast in ivories
expresses it, " bears a great resemblance to the brightest tint of
the human skin, which latter is the most beautiful hue in Na-
ture." On account of the yellowing with age, there have been
many recipes for restoring its whiteness, but none have proved
satisfactory. A fortune is in store for the inventor or discoverer
of the "happy medium." The opacity and elasticity of old ivory
can be partially restored, at least to be useful for some purposes,
by boiling in a solution of gelatin.

The existence of statues and of plaques of ivory larger than
could be cut from any known tusk, render it probable that an-
cient workers possessed some method of bending or molding. It
can be made flexible by a bath of phosphoric acid, but at the
expense of many of its properties. It will also take a variety of
dyes without interfering with its polish, particularly if the actual
matrix or organic matter is stained.

The tusks of the elephant are an elongation of the upper incisor
teeth, which may attain to enormous development; the largest
are those of the extinct mammoth ; some specimens have been
found in Siberia more than twelve feet in length and two hun-
dred pounds weight. There was a noted one of particularly fine
quality, weighing one hundred and eighty-six i)ounds, that was
cut up into piano keys.

Among the modern elephants the African possesses the largest
tusks, often nine or ten feet in length, and weighing one hundred
and sixty pounds each. A pair of African tusks was exhibited

536 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

iu London recently that weighed three hundred and twenty-five
pounds, and measured eight and a half feet in length and twenty-
two inches in circumference. Think of the muscular strength of
head and neck necessary to support such a weight ! The impor-
tance of these "ivories" in combat is evident by the dread of
a "tusker" shown by elephants less favored. They are often
broken in fighting, and always show marks of considerable wear.
While even captive animals use them for a variety of purposes
— e. g., a trained elephant when directed to pull a rope, will take
it between his molar teeth and pass it over one of his tusks to
get a good purchase. Nothing of less strength and elasticity
than ivory could withstand the strain to which it is constantly
exjiosed.

Foreign bodies, as bullets, arrowheads, or spear points, are
often found imbedded in ivory. It is not a rare occurrence for
the sportsman's bullet, or the native's spear, intended to pierce
the elephant's brain, to penetrate the pulp cavity of the tusk and
there become encysted or grown over with ivory and apparently
have given the animal no trouble ; but occasionally the vicious-
ness of a " rogue," or the evident insanity of some unmanageable
creature, has proved after death to have been caused by the suf-
fering from inflammation and suppuration consequent upon the
presence of a leaden ball in the " nerve of the tooth."

The best ivory is the African, and the finest quality from near
the equator. Much of it is brought by natives from the interior
to the coast and sold to Arab merchants, while many expeditions
are organized by Europeans to go to the interior and collect the
stores gathered by the native tribes. It is an extensive com-
merce. Four thousand pounds sterling, or twenty thousand dol-
lars, is considered a good result for one season's expedition with
one hundred and fifty men. Prices differ in different localities.
The "portage," or distance from coast, size, condition, care in
handling, and weight all affect price.

The African ivory trade is an ancient one, and in mediseval
times Marco Polo, who lived from 1251 to 1334, speaks of the
ivory traffic in Zanzibar being " astonishing in amount."

The tusks of the mammoth of northern Siberia, or the fossil
supplies, are said to furnish almost the whole material of the
Russian ivory workers. They are found in extraordinary abun-
dance, and come principally from the neighborhood of the Lena
and other arctic rivers and the coast islands. Mammoth tusks
are more slender, more curved, and much larger in proportion
than those of recent animals. Many have been found in the
frozen morasses or in the solid ice, intact and in a beautiful state
of preservation, having lain in their air-tight cases for many
centuries.

IVORY, ITS SOURCES AND USES. 537

Among the Scandinavians tlie tusks of the walrus have long
been a source of ivory, and of very good quality too. The spi-
rally twisted tusk of the narwhal is the desideratum of the Es-
kimo hunter. Asiatic ivory is from India and Ceylon elephants,
which are rapidly disappearing. America has some fossil de-
posits and " glacial preserves " of mastodon ivories, but they are
more sought for museums and antiquarian collections than for
any commercial value.

The uses of ivory are exceedingly varied. The large cuttings
are for veneer, plaques, panels, and portraits ; then billiard balls,
knife, cane, umbrella, and brush handles, piano keys, buttons,
measuring rules, mathematical scales, statuettes, caskets, chess-
men and draughtsmen, furniture decorations, and an endless
variety of ornaments and works of art.

Ivory working is one of the oldest industries. Numerous
references occur in the Old Testament which show that the mate-
rial was regarded as of great value. It was an element in temple
decoration, and is often mentioned among the presents to kings,
who employed it for regal state. The ancient Egyptians and
Assyrians used it extensively.

The excavations of Nineveh, a city that dates nearly 2000
years b. c, have supplied the British Museum with ivories of
very great antiquity, many of them in good preservation, and
many others tolerably well restored by boiling in gelatin; all
show considerable artistic merit and mastery of the material.

Solomon had an ivory throne inlaid with gold — vide descrip-
tion in Chronicles ; and the throne of Penelope, of about the same
date, is said to have been of ivory and silver. Those ancient carv-
ers attained a delicacy and artistic finish that our modern artists
may well envy.

The later Greeks and Romans carried this gold-and-ivory and
ebouy-and-ivory work to a degree of splendor which seems in-
credible. From their extensive traffic with Persia and Egypt
they obtained immense quantities of both Asiatic and African
ivories. The Temple of Juno at Olympia contained, among many
great works in ivory, the coffer of Cypselus, the bed, the discus,
and the statues of Juno, the Hesperides, and Minerva.

The reputation of the great Phidias was based largely on his
gold and ivory sculpture. The Minerva of the Parthenon, forty
feet high, and the Olympic Jupiter, fifty- eight feet, evidently sur-
passed anything of the kind known to moderns. The pupils of
Phidias made a number of those colossal images, in which the
nude parts of the human figure were in ivory and the drapery in
gold.

The Romans were equally extravagant ; the gates of the Tem-
ple of Apollo, built by Augustus, were of this costly material.

538 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Charlemagne had two ivory gates of Byzantine ■vrorkmanship.
The episcopal chair of St. Vitalis, a work of the sixth century, is
a fine specimen. Ivory seems to have become scarce in the
twelfth century, and bone was largely used for carving, but dur-
ing the middle ages ivory again became plentiful, and with the
renaissance the art of carving reached perfection.

Florence, Flanders, and Germany were great centers. Cellini,
Michael Angelo, Raphael, Dlirer, and others tried the old-new
art. In the seventeenth century there were many celebrated
ivorists. Monks in cloisters frequently devoted a life to carving
a crucifix ; there are several specimens in different museums.

Schliemann, in his excavations at the supposed site of Troy,
found many articles of ivory, useful and ornamental. The French
town of Dieppe has had celebrated ivory factories since the fif-
teenth century, and is still extensively in the trade ; but it is in
the East, and especially in China, that ivory is most highly prized
and worked into decorative forms.

No amount of care and patience is considered excessive among
the Chinese in this work of ivory-cutting. This is evident in
the extremely minute and delicate workmanship of their carved,
lacelike trays, while their nests of concentric ivory balls are well
known and are reckoned among the puzzles of industrj^

The earliest recorded history — we might say prehistoric, the
hieroglyphical — that has come down to us has been in carvings
on ivory and bone. Long before metallurgy was known among
the prehistoric races, carvings on reindeer horn and mammoth
tusk, evidence the antiquity of the art. Fragments of horn and
ivory, engraved with excellent pictures of animals, have been
found in caves and beds of rivers and lakes. There are specimens
in the British Museum, also in the Louvre, of the Egyptian skill
in ivory carving, attributed to the age of Moses. In the latter
collection are chairs or seats of the sixteenth century B. c. inlaid
with ivory, and other pieces of the eleventh century b. c. We
have already referred to the Nineveh ivories. Carving of the
" precious substance " was extensively carried on at Constanti-
nople during the middle ages. Combs, caskets, horns, boxes, etc.,
of carved ivory and bone, often set in precious stones, of the old
Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods, are frequently found in tombs.
Crucifixes and images of the Virgin and saints made in that age
are often graceful and beautiful. The Chinese and Japanese are
rival artists now in their peculiar minutiic and detail.

Nothing is wasted in manipulating ivory ; all dust, shavings,
chips, and small pieces are utilized by being converted into gela-
tin, or ivory black, or artists' pigments ; confectioners and chefs
make use of ivory dust. Owing to the constantly increasing price,
many attempts have been made to imitate ivor}^ but with poor

THE PARADOX OF DIDEROT. 539

success. Billiard balls and otlier small articles have been made
of celluloid, a combination of gun cotton, camphor, and ivory
dust, but none have been satisfactory to the workman, whether
carver, turner, or miniature painter.

There are not less than fourteen extinct but only two or three
living species of elephants. Like the American buffalo, they are
becoming less numerous every year. Though long-lived — some
have in captivity lived over one hundred and fifty years — they
propagate very slowly, the most slowly of any known animal;
the period of gestation is twenty- two months, and but one at a
birth, and they are gradually disappearing before the hunter.
One writer states that England's imports of African ivory alone
average in one year 15,550 hundredweight, worth from £600,000
to £750,000, or between, three and four million dollars, and pre-
dicts the certain decrease of supply and consequent increase of
value of ivory.

THE PARADOX OF DIDEROT.

By M. ALFEED BINET.

HAVING had occasion several years ago to converse on sub-
jects of psychology with a number of comedians, I sought
their opinion concerning the "paradox of Diderot," and, finding
much in their answers that was instructive, I took them down.
I afterward completed the inquiry by questioning several of the
actors connected with the Theatre Frangais. The subject had
been already studied by W. Archer (cited by William James in
his Psychology), but I was at the time ignorant of his work. So
far as I can judge, I reached the same conclusions as he.

Diderot's Paradox of the Comedian is not a very profound
work, but deals in scattered facts of little intrinsic weight, and
his arguments are not very forcible.

His thesis is that a great actor must not be sensitive ; or, in
other words, that he must not feel the emotions he expresses.
" Extreme sensitiveness makes poor actors ; while absolute lack
of sensitiveness is a quality of the highest acting." He sustains
this view by six arguments, viz. : we can not repeat emotion at
will, but the power is soon exhausted ; the age when the come-
dian is at his greatest is not youth, when he is quick and full of
emotion, but after he has had a long experience, when the ardor
of his passions has subsided and his head is calm and his spirit
self-possessed ; certain facts going to show that the performer's
real feelings are different from those which he is expressing on
the stage ; and, finally, his best argument, and the one on which
his thesis mainly rests, that one can not do two things at a time.

540 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The actor has to be observant of his playing, to regulate its
effects, his gestures, and his exclamations, to see that they are
correct, to keep his mind on the scene, to recollect his part. All
this critical work is incompatible with sincere emotion. When a
person is really moved, when he feels some great woe, while he
may indeed sink upon a chair as the actor does in the scene, he
does not keep watch of his attitude while falling or think how to
make it expressive and harmonious, but gives himself wholly up
to his trouble.

The nine comedians whom I interrogated were unanimous in
declaring that Diderot's thesis can not be sustained, and that the
actor on the stage always feels, in some degree at least, the emo-
tions of his character. I have been told that other comedians are
of a contrary opinion — the elder Coquelin professes not to feel
anything of the kind ; but I have not conversed with M. Coque-
lin, and can not verify this assertion. Madame Bartet, of the
Com^die Frangaise, says, in writing : " Certainly I feel the emo-
tions of the characters I represent, but by sympathy, not on my
own account. I am not, indeed, moved before my audience is, but
my emotion is of the same kind as theirs, and is only preceded by
it. The extent of the emotion varies on different days, and very
much according to my moral and physical condition ; and to feel
nothing, as happens sometimes, but rarely, is very depressing."

Replies from other actors are to a like effect. M. Worms, of
the Com^die Frangaise, says that at certain periods when he is
playing scenes of passion or tenderness, the eyes of his comrade
are moistened, and that those who do not enter into sympathy
with their parts are generally themselves without feeling. M.
Mounet Sully and his brother Paul Mounet hold that the art of
the comedian consists in this very capability of realizing the emo-
tions of his part with the intensity of actual life; and that on
those days when he is without emotions he fails to attain the de-
sired power. The power of realization diminishes, however, if the
piece is repeated too many times in too rapid succession, as in M.
Paul Mounet's case after the fiftieth representation.

It must be admitted that some actors, as, for instance, Sarah
Bernhardt, may become such virtuosos in their parts as to be-
come complete masters of their organisms, and produce the emo-
tions at will.

The emotion of a part does not constitute all of it. A charac-
ter lives in a piece, mingles in its action, and has his interests,
ideas, and characteristics — a personality, in short, the development
of which depends on the talent of the author. The actor who plays
a part, especially one who creates it, should undergo a metamor-
I)hosis, and forget his own personality for a few hours, to put on
a borrowed personality. Madame Bartet enters so thoroughly

THE PARADOX OF DIDEROT. 541

into her part that she puts on features not described by the au-
thor, but conformable to its character, thus going far toward com-
pleting the personality — filling in the outlines — which the author
has sketched. M. Paul Mounet says that one can not master a
character till he has mastered its reflex actions, its unconscious
movements, gait, etc. M. Got tells us that the comedian's great
pleasure is the pleasure of metamorphosis, of becoming for the
moment in various things the personage he represents. M. Truf-
fier believes that his profession would be in a crude state with-
out the gift of such metamorphoses. He adds that he experiences
these metamorphoses more completely in old plays, which take
him out of the range of present life, than in those of to-day.

An important fact to be noted is that each actor plays a part
according to the sensibility peculiar to him. M. Mounet Sully
speaks of a combination of the character of the personage evoked
aud that of the actor, and observes that no two actors play the
same part in the same way. Madame Bartet says that she is not
capable of rendering every kind of emotions, and that she repre-
sents some categories better than others. Actors usually play
parts having a certain degree of agreement with one another, and
are liable to fail when they undertake a part of a different type.
This restriction of ability is in part of physical origin, but is also
largely moral or emotional.

The power of sustaining emotion and the duration of it vary
among actors much, as M. Le Bargy has observed, as some horses
excel in speed and others in bottom.

As to the exact nature of artistic emotion, Madame Bartet re-
gards it as real in the sense that it produces the same physical
effects in the organism as one would feel on his own account.
She is oppressed in a scene of continued grief, is transported in
another scene, and becomes wearied with the condition, especially
when the emotions correspond with those natural to her.

Artistic emotion has, however, the two peculiar characteris-
tics of being always agreeable and of being subject to the will.
The answers we have reviewed are very precise. Othere are
less definite ; and some of the comedians to whom we have ap-
plied have simply answered that the factitious emotions inspired
by the parts are less intense than real ones ; but M. Mounet Sully
is of the opinion that the emotion is lived and felt as if it were
real.

We come now to Diderot's principal argument, that one can
not be moved by emotion and be critical at the same time. With-
out availing ourselves of the fruits of recent researches on complex
consciousness, we will merely refer here to what we have learned
concerning the case in hand. M. Got found no difficulty in sup-
posing the combination of the two functions, in dramatic repre-

542 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

sentation or in oratory. M. Le Bargy regards the emotions of the
theater as very much like those of real life. When we are sin-
cerely moved on our own account, we nevertheless remain critic
and judge ; and only in exceptional circumstances, when the pas-
sions are very strong and absorbing, do we lose the critical sense.
Madame Bartet finds the thesis of Diderot so far correct that an
excess of emotion may restrain the actor and paralyze his re-
sources. He must not be dominated by his emotion, but must
control it. But to be in emotion while one controls it implies no
contradiction ; one can duplicate himself in the theater the same
as in life. In the highest anger one has within himself something
that says, " I am in too great passion, I am going too far, I must
not say that." Yet sometimes, notwithstanding that inner voice,
we do not stop in time. The same, in substance, exists in the
theater. We watch, we judge — we duplicate ourselves.

Regarding the exact nature of this duplication, Madame Bartet
says that during the period of preparation she feels the person-
ality of her part taking possession of her till it substitutes itself
for her own as to all the interests of common life ; in the scene the
doubling is very clear, but under control : " I am all the time see-
ing and hearing myself; I attend my play. I duplicate myself
enough to hear the sound and intonations of my words, the suc-
cession of my attitudes, movements, and gestures, but not so far
that I cease to appropriate them to myself. The duplication is
intensified when, instead of playing, I read." The forgetting of
personality varies with the nature of the parts and with numerous
other circumstances. M. Truffier relates that once he was obliged
to play two characters in farce in the evening after the sudden
death of his infant son. He played the first piece automatically,
but gradually warmed up to the situation, until his second
character took possession of him, putting aside the father's grief.
It did not extinguish it, but remanded it to a secondary position.
Many like observations are known in science, but this is of spe-
cial interest, because I got it at first hand. Exceptional circum-
stances are evidently required for the actor to forget his person-
ality wholly. It is an ideal which some pursue but not one in a
hundred reaches. We may remark that when the actor incar-
nates the personage within himself, he ceases to duplicate him-
self, but becomes another — the personage. The doubling occurs
only when the incarnation is incomplete. Furthermore, the rela-
tions between the rival personalities are not fixed once for all,
but probably vary from day to day, and with the parts. Then
the characters of the actors, their moods, and their relations with
the audience have much to do with the matter. Madame Bartet
says that she communicates directly with the audience, and feels
very distinctly whether it is in sympathy with her or opposed to

THE PARADOX OF DIDEROT. 543

her. " If I feel that I have not gained it over far enough, I make
an intense physical effort to accomplish this. At the climax of
emotion, the public appears quite indistinct, like a collective
mass ; but when my part only half possesses me, I discern the
slightest movements occurring in the hall. I have a very clear
perception of the silence that denotes that the attention of the
audience is fixed, as I have also of its wandering."

We come now to the illusion of the theater as it is felt by the
spectators. Taine's description of it as something that is alter-
nately excited and destroyed is not sustained by the persons
whom I have interrogated, and so little resembles the reality that
I suppose it is a purely theoretical and systematic explanation,
invented in all its parts, perhaps unconsciously, by one who was
nothing less than he was an observer. As I interpret the teach-
ing of observation, we most clearly and curiously perceive the
illusion side of the spectacle when we enter the theater after the
curtain has been raised, and are still in the lobbies regarding
from a distance what is passing on the stage. At that moment
we have a very strange impression that the actors are playing
false, and all that there is of the conventional in the theater stands
out before us. This impression is strongest at the beginning, and
is gradually dissipated as we listen and comprehend the piece.
Leaving aside this somewhat exceptional circumstance, and
describing what the spectator usually experiences at the theater,
we may theoretically, after the manner of Taine, distinguish two
different states of consciousness in our minds : we are moved by
the piece, and are aware that it is a fiction. But these two states
of consciousness in the large majority of cases have not each an
independent life, and do not take each other's places by turns. Our
real experience is a complex, composite feeling, in consequence of
which we are captured by the emotions of the piece while still
vaguely aware that it is a fiction. There are not two contrary
acts of the mind, two antagonistic attitudes, but everything is
mingled and fused. There are at the same time, in our minds, an
emotion of the spectator, a feeling of the illusion, a critical judg-
ment on the actor's playing and the merit of the piece, and a good
many other things.

About ten years ago, when hypnotic experiments in psychol-
ogy were in great favor, the thought sometimes occurred of
transforming the personalities of subjects and giving them parts
to play. M. Charles Richet took the initiative in these ingenious
transformations. A woman, a mother of a family, was by his
suggestion metamorphosed into a general, an archbishop, a ballet
dancer, or a sailor, and we are assured that she acquitted herself
in her parts with a perfection which the most accomplished actor
could not attain. The superiority of these subjects of suggestion.

544 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

so ignorant in most things, came, it was said, from tlieir sincerity ;
they believed in the part they were playing, while the actor knows
he is an actor. Our inquiry among the world of comedians has
not confirmed these theoretical views. In the first place, we are
not convinced that an actor of genius would be so inferior to a
poor hysteric on whom the same part had been imposed by sug-
gestion ; and then this question of sincerity seems to us now
susceptible of a very large number of gradations. We can not
affirm that an actor plays without believing ; it is true that when
he has returned to his dressing room and has put away his bur-
den and become himself again, he no longer believes in the per-
sonality of his character, although he may still retain a part of
it ; but in the scene, in the heat of the action, he may be moved
on account of this artificial personage. The artistic emotion of
the actor exists, it is not an invention ; it is lacking in some,
while in others it rises to paroxysm. Now, is not emotion an
essential element of sincerity ? In short, we believe there is no
radical difference, only a shade, between the actor and the subject
of suggestion. — Translated and condensed for the Popidar Science
31onthly from UAnnee Psychologique, vol. Hi {G. E. Stechert,
New York).

-♦♦♦-

SKETCH OF JAMES CROLL.

IN awarding the Wollaston medal of the Geological Society of
England to Mr. James Croll in 1872, President Prestwich
spoke of the additional value Mr. Croll's labors had in the esti-
mation of the society from the difficulties under which they had
been pursued, and the limited time and opportunities he had had
at his command. Prof. A. C. Ramsay, accepting the medal for
Mr. Croll, said that he was all the more deserving of the honor
from the circumstance that he had risen to the place he had among
men of science without any of the recognized advantages of sci-
entific training, having won his position by his own unassisted
exertions. Mr. Croll indeed pursued the work which he carried
to an achievement that marked an era in geology under disabili-
ties and in the face of difficulties that would have deterred and
disqualified any but a man of the highest ability and most vigor-
ous energy.

James Croll. was born, the second of a family of four sons, at
Little Whitefield, parish of Cargill, Scotland, January 2, 1821, and
died in Perth, December 15, 1890. His father was a stone mason,
" mild, thoughtful, and meditative, and possessed of strong reli-
gious and moral sentiments"; his mother was firm, shrewd, and
observing, and gifted with a considerable amount of " com-

SKETCH OF JAMES CROLL. 545

mon sense." Being afflicted from early childhood with a pain in
his head, he was not sent early to school, but was taught at
home. He afterward went to the parish school for a short time,
but showed little promise of scholarship, and never could acquire
an accurate style of reading or become even a moderately good
speller. He was withdrawn from school because of family exi-
gencies just at the time he was beginning to have a longing de-
sire for a better education. This had been awakened by the sight
in a shop window of the first number of the Penny Magazine,
which he bought ; and he continued to buy the successive num-
bers, and read them with zest. Shortly afterward he read Thomas
Dick's Christian Philosopher, and was struck with the novelty of
the ideas. He then procured other books on physical science,
among which was Joyce's Scientific Dialogues. "At first," he
says, " I became bewildered, but soon the beauty and simplicity
of the conceptions filled me with delight and astonishment, and I
began then in earnest to study the matter. . . . Even at the very
commencement of my studies it was not the facts and details of
the physical sciences which riveted my attention, but the laws
and principles which they were intended to illustrate. This neces-
sarily determined me to study the sciences in something like sys-
tematic form ; for, in order to understand a given law, I was gen-
erally obliged to make myself acquainted with the preceding law
or conditions on which it depended. I remember well that, be-
fore I could make headway in physical astronomy, ... I had to
go back and study the laws of motion and the fundamental prin-
ciples of mechanics. In like manner I studied pneumatics, hydro-
statics, light, heat, electricity, and magnetism. I obtained assist-
ance from no one. In fact, there were none of my acquaintances
who knew anything whatever about these subjects." But he had
no taste for chemistry or especially for geology, and a suggestion
made at that time that he would one day be a professional geolo-
gist would have been repelled as incredible. Seeking for an oc-
cupation to give him a livelihood, he served an apprenticeship to
a millwright and worked for a time as a journeyman, repair-
ing thrashing machines on the estates where they were situated.
The conditions of this life were not pleasant, and he applied him-
self to house joinering, in which he had acquired considerable
skill, at Kinrossie, Glasgow, and Paisley. He had when a boy
received a hurt on his left elbow, from the effects of which he had
never recovered. The wound now began to assume a serious char-
acter, and he was obliged to give up the joiner business and find
some easier pursuit.

Not having the education, qualification, or taste to be a clerk,
he concluded that some sort of occupation in the tea trade might
suit him. He went to Perth to see what could be done, and, ap-

VOL. LI. — 42

546 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

proaching tlie city, saw a man distributing handbills. He resolved
that if these bills should turn out to relate to tea, he would follow
whatever guidance they might afford him. They were the adver-
tisements of a coffee and tea warehouse which had recently been
opened in the High Street. He went there, made an arrangement
with the proprietor, Mr. Irons, father of his biographer, and in the
spring of 1847 opened a shop in Elgin. The situation was con-
genial to him, and the business gave him opportunity to read. He
read Edwards on the Will ; was convinced by its reasoning ; and
in course of time failing to find in any of the writers of contrary
opinions to Edwards what he considered effective answers to his
arguments, from a sturdy Arminian and sympathizer with the
Rev. James Morison, founder of the Evangelical Union of Scot-
land (now united with the Congregational Union), he became a
fixed Calvinist. The tea business had begun to be a paying one,
but the condition of Mr. Croll's arm becoming such that he was
unable to attend to the shop properly, he was obliged, in order to
avoid future loss, to give it up and retire to Perth.

He supported himself for a little while making induction ap-
paratus for the curative application of electricity and galvanism ;
then, on the persuasion of a friend who had premises to let, en-
gaged in keeping a temperance hotel at Blair- Go wrie. The house
was not furnished, and, having no means to buy furniture, he made
it while the building was being finished. The hotel business
proved unsuccessful, and Croll's next effort was as a canvassing
agent for insurance companies, in which occupation he spent four
years and a half — about the most disagreeable part, he says, of
his life.

About this time Mr. Croll published his first books, which in-
dicated a leaning of his mind toward theological speculation.
They were a pamphlet on Predestination, signed "A Moderate
Calvinist," and pronounced by the Rev. Dr. Morison " an extraor-
dinary production " ; a pamphlet on the Bearing of Geology and
Astronomy upon the Creation of the World ; and a larger work
on The Philosophy of Theism, a thoughtful book, displaying
considerable philosophical insight and accumen, which was ea-
gerly discussed by a knot of students who used to meet with the
author. The direct object of this work was defined in the preface
to be not to prove the existence of God, but to investigate the
method to be pursued in order to arrive at a proof of his exist-
ence ; or, as the author described it to Dr. Morison, the solution
of the problem, Given an organic body, to show how it can be
rationally proved that its cause must have been a personality en-
dowed with intelligence, will, and sensitivity. The author main-
tained that a purely a priori or a purely a posteriori proof of the
existence of God is impossible, and that the only way is by a

SKETCH OF JAMES CROLL. 547

metliod which combines both elements from experience and a
priori elements. The Rev. Dr. John Cairns regarded the work
as a positive contribution to theistic argument, and said that the
author (whose name was not declared) need only to give himself
entirely to this topic or any other to secure distinguished success.
Five hundred copies of the book were printed, and it paid ex-
penses and returned a small profit.

Notwithstanding it was anonymous, Mr. Croll gained a repu-
tation from this work, which led to his connection, in 1858, with
the Commonwealth newspaper, a journal at Glasgow devoted to
the advocacy of temperance and social and political reform ; a
position which, as he was a total abstainer and a strong advocate
of temperance and had forsworn the use of tobacco, suited him
very well.

After he had worked a year and a half with the Common-
wealth, the directors of the Andersonian College advertised for a
janitor. Mr. Croll applied for the position, which involved the
keeping of the museum and the free run of the libraries, and, ob-
taining it, entered upon its duties in the fall of 1859. He found it
the most congenial position he ever occupied, notwithstanding one
of its duties was the disagreeable one, of which no mention is
found in his autobiography, of collecting subscriptions from pri-
vate gentlemen for the support of the institution. " After twenty
years of an unsettled life," he says, " full of hardships and difii-
culties, it was a great relief to get settled down into what might
be regarded as a permanent home." But " Why so many changes,
trials, and diflBculties ? " The disability of his arm precluded him
from active work and compelled him to make changes of occupa-
tion which were not advantageous. But the main cause of his
troubles, he confesses, "was that strong and almost irresistible
propensity toward study which prevented me devoting my whole
energy to business. Study always came first, business second;
and the result was that in this age of competition I was left be-
hind in the race." His situation in the college was compatible
with study.

Mr. Croll's tastes were nearly evenly balanced between philo-
sophical and theological speculation and the study of physical
science, partly to his advantage and partly to his disadvantage;
so that, as he observes, when he was engaged in physics he was
continually tempted to turn aside into philosophy, and when
in philosophy the attractions of physics frequently drew him
over, and it was only by strong effort that he could keep in one
region of inquiry without passing over into the other. Hitherto
he had been engaged for about fifteen years in philosophical and
theological studies, the culmination of which was his book on
theism. Now the Andersonian Library afforded facilities for

548 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

physical study that he could not resist, and he began again,
where he had left off in former years, with the principle of the
transformation and conservation of energy and the dynamical
theory of heat. The question of the cause of the Glacial epoch
was much discussed among geologists. Without knowing what
Herschel and Lyell had written upon the matter, he conceived
the change in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit as probably the
real cause, and began in 18G4 a series of papers of great impor-
tance on the subject, setting forth the solutions " which make his
name one of the most illustrious in the history" of theoretic
geology. They were published in the Philosophical Magazine
and the Reader, and were elaborated in the course of ten years in
the book Climate and Time. These papers are characterized by
Mr. James Campbell Irons, Croll's biographer, as " distinguished
by remarkable concentration of thought, joined to a very great
lucidity of exposition," and are considered by him in detail in six
groups, of which those on Geological Climate and Chronology,
Glacial Epoch and Glaciers, and Ocean Currents include the most
weighty contributions.

The papers as they appeared attracted the attention of men of
science at home and abroad. The Geological Society of Glasgow
in 1867 elected their author an honorary associate, and Prof. Alex-
ander Ramsay, chief of the Geological Survey, and Dr. Archibald
Geikie, director of the Scottish department of the survey, were so
struck by them that Mr. Croll was offered a position in the Scot-
tish service, to be resident surveyor and clerk in the office at
Edinburgh. He was well satisfied with his position in the An-
dersonian College and reluctant to leave it, but besides a larger
salary this place offered some other advantages over that, and its
duties promised to leave him as much time and strength to accom-
plish the work of investigation on which he was engaged as the
one at Glasgow. He was obliged to submit to a civil-service ex-
amination. His knowledge having been acquired in a life of work
and not in the formal routine of school, and he being very nerv-
ous, he failed on questions of arithmetic, and in English composi-
tion. Dr. Geikie nevertheless insisted on having him, knowing
his value, and was supported by other eminent geologists ; and at
last the Lords of the Civil List, in consideration of many special
recommendations in his favor and much labor on the part of his
friends, were induced, as Lord Kelvin has it, to accept Croll's
"great calculations regarding the eccentricity of the earth's orbit
and the precession of the equinoxes during the last ten million
years as sufficient evidence of his arithmetical capacity, and his
book on The Philosophy of Theism and numerous papers pub-
lished in the scientific journals as proof of his ability to write
good English," and he received the appointment. The duties of

SKETCH OF JAMES CROLL. 549

this office consisted simply in overseeing the various details of the
work, and were not phj^sically or mentally laborious ; the hours
were short and the labor did not produce mental exhaustion. Yet
it did not leave him in quite as fresh condition as his work at
Glasgow, and he was obliged to be very precise in the regulation
of his life. He had early conceived a distaste for geology as in-
volving too much the consideration of details and not giving due
prominence to principles, but he had a special interest in the
branch which bore upon the object of the particular study in
which he was engaged — of surface geology or drift in its bearings
on glacial and interglacial periods. He had begun his studies in
this department before leaving the Andersonian College, and had
made frequent excursions into the country in search of glacial
phenomena. These excursions were continued with equal success
after he went to Edinburgh ; and Mr. James Bennie, who accom-
panied him on some of them, has left delightful accounts of them
and of Mr. Croll, which are published in connection with Mr.
Croll's correspondence.

In 1865 Mr. Croll suffered an affection which interfered seri-
ously and permanently with his capacity for mental work. While
bent down, assisting in putting a few tacks into a carpet, he felt a
kind of twitch in his head. It did not affect his general health
or impair his mental energy, but it was followed by a dull pain,
which increased if he persisted in doing mental work for any
length of time till it became unbearable ; and he was never able
afterward to keep his thoughts concentrated upon a single point
as he had been before. Had it not been for this mishap, he says,
all the private work which he was able to do during the twenty
years that followed "might have easily been done, and would
have been, in the course of two or three years." For a few years
prior to the publication of Climate and Time it was with the
greatest difficulty that he could manage to put together in one
day as many sentences as would fill a half page of foolscap, and
the appearance of the booi? was delayed on that account.

In the published correspondence of Mr. Croll appears a letter
to him from Charles Darwin under date of July 19, 1871, stating
that "Mr. Youmans [Prof. E. L. Youmans], of the United States,
is very anxious to get a series of small monographs written by
the most competent English authors on various subjects, to be
published in the United States, and I suppose in England. Mr.
Youmans is in some way connected with the great firm of Apple-
tons in New York. He has asked me to name some of the most
competent men, and I have thought that you would excuse my
giving your name and this note as a kind of introduction. I
should add that I do not know on what subject he wishes you to
write. I do, however, know that some very good judges think

550 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

highly of his scheme." This note seems to have been given to
Prof. Youmans to present to Mr. Croll. Mr. Croll wrote to Mr.
Darwin in reply to it that " the gentleman wished me to write a
small treatise on Geological Time; but I explained to him that,
in the present state of the question, nothing satisfactory could be
written on it which would be of any service to general readers. I
believe he felt satisfied that the better plan was to let this subject
lie over for some time to come." In February, 1872, on motion of
Prof. Ramsay, the Geological Society of England awarded the
balance of the proceeds of the Wollaston Donation Fund to Mr.
Croll "for his many valuable researches on the glacial phenomena
of Scotland and to aid in prosecuting the same." In communicat-
ing the award to Prof. Ramsay, Prof. Prestwich, President of the
society, added, " Mr. Croll is also well known to all of us by his
investigation of oceanic currents and their bearings on geological
questions, and of many questions of great theoretical interest con-
nected with some of the large problems in geology."

The book embodying the results of Mr. Croll's glacial studies
of twenty years — Climate and Time in their Geological Rela-
tions ; a Theory of Secular Changes of the Earth's Climate — was
published early in 1875. It was accepted at once by scientific
men everywhere as a work of great importance and of equal
merit and interest ; and it has not fallen from the position it took
then and has held since. Men might controvert some of the
author's arguments or dispute his conclusions, but no one was
found to deny that it was an honest and able book and a real
contribution to knowledge. Honors came to him after its publi-
cation from various directions ; in the form of personal acknowl-
edgments from the most distinguished men of science in their
letters to him, and in the recognition of learned institutions and
societies. The University of St. Andrews gave him the degree of
LL. D. ; the Royal Society of London elected him a fellow ; the
New York Academy of Science made him an honorary member ;
and he was chosen an honorary member of the Bristol Natural
Society, of the Psychological Society of Great Britain, of the
Glasgow Geological Society, of the Literary and Antiquarian
Society of Perth, and of the Perthshire Society of Natural
Science. He received also the award of the Murchison Fund in
1876 and of the Badow-Jamieson Fund in 1884. His reply to
the proffer of the St. Andrews degree reveals the character of the
man. He said, " I hope you will not deem it affectation when I
say that I do not consider that I have done anything deserving
of such an honor, and that I must look upon it more as a reward
to a self-taught man for a long and persevering struggle against
difficulties than for any possible results which he has as yet been
able to achieve."

SKETCH OF JAMES CROLL. 551

Having completed Climate and Time, Dr. Croll desired to
abandon the study of climatology and physics in order to engage
in the investigation of the philosophy of evolution preparatory
to a work on that subject which he contemplated. But his book
had become a topic of general discussion in which he was obliged
to participate, to the extent at least of seeing that his views were
correctly quoted and understood ; and consequently he still pub-
lished articles and wrote much in correspondence on subjects
treated in it. During the summer of 1880 he suffered a strain in
the region of the heart which almost completely disabled him.
Making an external application of aconite, under his physician's
advice, to the seat of the pain, he lost the power of speech tem-
porarily, and contracted an impediment in utterance which did
not disappear for several years. He finally thought it his duty
to resign his position on the Geological Survey, and accordingly
retired from the Government service in the spring of 1881. Ap-
plication was made by his friends for a liberal pension, corre-
sponding with the merits of his work, under the superannuation
act ; but although the Government dealt at the time with consid-
erable liberality with other persons whose deserts were no greater
than his, an allowance of £100 from the Queen's bounty and a
superannuation allowance of £75 I65. 8d a year were all that
were granted him ; and although repeated applications were made
on various aspects of the case, and backed by what would appear
to be among the most influential names in the kingdom, no more
could be got.

Among the first fruits of Dr. Croll's new studies was the
article on Evolution by Force Impossible ; a New Argument
against Materialism, which was published in the British Quarterly
Review for January, 1883. It was a discussion of the question of
" What determines molecular motion and force ? " and an attempt
to prove that force alone, motion alone, or any sort of act alone,
that is, undetermined to any particular direction, is unable to ac-
count for evolution. If his conclusion were correct, it would
follow that Mr. Spencer's theory of evolution by force was abso-
lutely impossible. A copy of this article was sent, with a friendly
letter, to Mr. Herbert Spencer, who answered, in substance, that
he had not undertaken to deal with the ultimate cause, which he
had alleged to be unknowable.

All the papers Mr. Croll had written on climatic subjects since
the publication of Climate and Time in 1875 were collected, re-
vised down to date, and republished at the end of 1885 under the
title of Discussions on Climate and Cosmology. " This completed
his work on geology and physics, and he quietly but deliberately
closed his reading and writing on those subjects, which had en-
grossed his attention for a period of twenty-five years, in which he

552 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

had earned a world-wide reputation, ... to turn to his favorite
theme of metaphysics ; and now he resumed the subject of which
he had never lost sight since his earliest manhood."

While engaged in his book on Stellar Evolution, and par-
ticularly while preparing an article on the Nebular Hypothesis,
Dr. CroU wrote to Prof. Alexander Winchell, of Ann Arbor, for a
copy of his book on World Life, which he desired to see before
publishing. The new book, Stellar Evolution and its Relation to
Geological Time, was published in the spring of 1889. It deals
mainly with the prenebular condition of matter.

Dr. Croll was now able to dictate — not to write and hardly to
read — only half an hour a day. But he had one thing to do be-
fore his life work could be completed — and he accomplished it.
This was the publication of his Philosophical Basis of Evolution,
a book in which he undertook to state the principle of deter-
minism, which he declared to be the foundation stone of evolution ;
to examine its relation to Spencer ianism and Darwinism, and to
prove that " force, matter, and motion can never be determined
by force, matter, and motion," reaching the conclusion that " the
universe, in all its beauty, joy, and fullness of life, can never be
explained in terms of matter, motion, and force ; so that the
whole process of evolution, natural selection included, evidently
points to theism." Although it was largely of a metaphysical
character, the author claimed that his main conclusions were,
without exception, "deduced from facts or from fundamental
principles." Dr. Croll substantially exhausted himself in finish-
ing the manuscript of this book, and the proof sheets were revised
with the help of the Rev. Dr. Caird. The publisher hurried the
printing of the work, in order that the author might see a copy
of it before he died. A bound copy of it was put into his hand,
and he examined it with evident pleasure, observing : " My work
is now done. I leave the world without a regret save one " — con-
cern for the future support of Mrs. Croll. A few days after he
had read to him the favorable review of the London Times. Two
days before he died, though very weak and exhausted, he was
mentally " as clear and alert as in his best days," and eager to
discuss with a friend some of Mr. Herbert Spencer's views.

Dr. Croll was a man of a deeply religious nature, of the strict-
est orthodox belief, and of a religion the earnestness and intensity
of which impressed his neighbors. His correspondence abounds
in expressions marking this as one of the most essential elements
of his character. His piety seems to have deepened as he grew
older, and was never clearer or more emphatic than in his closing
days.

CORRESP ONDENCE.

553

CH^orrjcspotitltucje,

AGE AND SUICIDE.

Editw Popular Science Monthly :

SIR : In Mr. Robert N. Reeves's interest-
ing paper, Suicide and the Environment,
Popular Science Monthly for June, 1897,
there are several erroneous conclusions,
which are, in my opinion, the direct result
of false or iucomplete statistics. Not long
ago (in 1894) I had occasion to gather data
from every civilized country in the world
while preparing an article on suicide for the
New York Medical Record ; and, since Mr.
Reeves expressly states that his conclusions
are based on statistics (he does not introduce
them, however, in his paper), I am forced to
conclude that bis data are false, for it is
not probable — nay, it is impossible — that the
gentlemen (the majority of them officials
and in charge of mortuary statistics), both
in the United States and abroad, from whom
I, personally and through correspondence,
derived my information in regard to the sta-
tistics of suicide, could have unanimously
erred.

It is not my purpose to discuss all of the
propositions in which 1 differ from Mr.
Reeves ; I will content myself with one.
And you will please pardon me if, instead of
introducing my tables In this letter, I refer
you to them as they are to be found pub-
lished in the New York Medical Record of
August 17, 1895.

Mr. Reeves says, " The theory that we
hold more strongly to life as we approach its
natural conclusion is contradicted by statis-
tics, which show that the last half of life
exhibits a great mcrease in the rate of sui-
cide." The conclusion here advanced is,
according to my observations, wholly incor-
rect. According to Morselli, Quetelet, Mayr,
and Wagner, the tendency to suicide is great-
est at maturity, and decreases, after maturity,
with mcieasing age. Of course, there is a
great disparity between the number of the
middle-aged and that of the aged ; yet, when
the proportion is properly arranged and the
correct average found, it will be observed that
the above conclusion holds good throughout
the civilized world. In a list of a thousand
suicides (I have forty-seven similar lists,
gathered from all parts of the world, in
which the groups of suicides range in num-
ber from two hundred to five thousand, and
the periods of time embraced from five to
twenty years) occurring in one locality dur-
ing a period of nearly ten years, the greatest
number is between the ages of thirty and
forty years ; after forty there is a marked
decrease. I think that Morselli's average of
greatest frequency for the entire world would

be slightly above mine (forty-two years),
probably forty-five years. This is about what
I make it from his tables. According to my
tables, there is an increase in the tendency
to suicide from fourteen years up to and
slightly beyond forty years, and then a cor-
responding decrease in this tendency as in-
dividuals grow older. James Weir, Jr.
OwENSBOKO, Kt., Jvne 5, 1897.

EARLY PRODUCTION OF ALCOHOL.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : Prof. Charles E. Pellew's articles on
The History of Alcohol in your issues of
June and July are very interesting and at-
tract by the amusing illustrations.

Allow me to point out that the figures of
alembics ascribed to an edition of the writ-
ings of Geber, the Arabian physician of the
eighth century, are from the spurious works
of this author. Berthelot has shown that
the treatises ascribed to Geber, which were
published in Latin, French, and German in
the sixteenth century, are fraudulent, and
that the genuine writings of the Arabian
contain far less chemical knowledge than is
usually attributed to him. Prof. Pellew is
right in stating that the distillation of wine
is first mentioned by Albucasis, a Spanish
physician, who died in 1107. He might have
added that the first definite recipe for pre-
paring alcohol occurs in the Book of Fires,
by Marcus Gra?cus, written in the thirteenth
century ; in this the volatile liquid is called
aqua ardens. Very truly yours,

H. Carrington Bolton.

Univeesitt Cltjb, New York,
July 4, 1897.

A CORRECTION.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir: I wish to call your attention to a
paragraph under the head of a Biographical
Sketch of William Williams Mather, pub-
lished in your journal of August, 1896, on
page 553, in which a citation is made from
an article by Charles Whittlesey upon the
personality of the first geologic survey of
Ohio. This article I have never seen, but
the statement in regard to my association
with Prof. Mather is not warranted by the
facts.

In the spring of 1838 I went to Chilli-
cothe, and entered in the land office seven-
teen thousand five hundred acres of coal and
iron lands in Jackson and Lawrence Coun-
ties. These lands were purchased for some

554

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gentlemen in Albany, Jergey City, and Phila-
delphia, and in which Prof. Mather, Mr.
Briggs, and myself shared. Ttese lands
were known to be underlaid by coal and to
be within the limit of the productive iron
belt of that part of the country, being sub-
sequently the great resource in the establish-
ment of the city of Ironton. Subsequently,
and after the suspension of the Ohio survey.
Prof. Mather did purchase a tract of land
upon which he established a furnace. In

this venture Prof. Mitchell, the astronomer,
of Cincinnati, was associated with Prof.
Mather. I never had any interest in the
project in any way, and when selling my
lands to Mr. Campbell, of the association
which founded Ironton, I refused to have
any connection whatever with the business
enterprise, preferring to part with my prop-
erty for a moderate price rather than to be
connected with any business operation.

Very truly yours, James Hall.

%SiiXox's SaMje.

"CHRISTIAN SCIENCE" AND SCIENCE.

IT seems as if every age must have
its fad, and perhaps we should
not disquiet ourselves too much
about it. Long ago the question was
asked why the heathen raged and
the people imagined a vain thing.
The question, especially the latter
part of it, is equally pertinent to-day ;
and the answer we venture to sug-
gest is, because they like it. It is
very sweet to the unregenerate mind
to be able, or seem to be able, to fly
in the face of facts. Just as there
are persons so constituted morally
that they are unable to conceive of
liberty except as defiance of law,
and who, therefore, when they want
to feel particularly free, resort to
disorderly conduct of one kind or
another, so there are those — in much
greater number — to whom natural
law seems an intellectual tyranny
from which any escape is welcome.
This we take to be the philosophy of
so-called "Christian science," a de-
lusion which to-day is playing havoc
with the intellects of thousands of
pi-esumably sane and well-meaning
persons.

The great beauty and merit of
Christian science in the eyes of its
devotees is that it affirms the thing
that is not and denies the thing that
is. It has to make grudging conces-

sions to the law of gravitation and a
few other primary conditions of ex-
istence. In a kind of a way it admits
that certain injuries to the bodily
frame may impair activity and even
destroy life. That a man can not
walk without legs or do much useful
thinking without his head are propo-
sitions which it has not yet seen its
way to combat; but it takes its re-
venge on the system of visible things
by comprehensive denials in a host
of matters only a little less indis-
putable. It scornfully refuses to
recognize pain or functional irregu-
larities of any kind. Fevers, indi-
gestions, inflammations, and the
whole tribe of maladies which chal-
lenge the physician's art have no
foundation in reality, and only need
to be suitably ignored in order to be
put to flight. If Job of old could
only have planted himself at the
Christian-science point of view, he
could have got rid of his boils
in short order, and perhaps saved
himself from the interminable and
not overcheerful discourses of his
friends. The great remedy, as rec-
ommended to-day in Christian sci-
ence circles, is not to think about
these things at all, and in case you
can not thiiik hard enough, to send
for a Christian -science adept to help
you. The adept will then, with

EDITOR'S TABLE.

555

cheerful and enthusiastic mendacity,
inform you that you haven't any
pain, that you haven't any boils, that
you haven't any rheumatism or
sciatica, or whatever it may be ; and
if you should point ruefully to the
affected part, veill exclaim: "Why,
that isn't you; that's a mere mass
of matter — soulless matter — and you
are a soul, a spirit. You ought to
rule your matter and not let your
matter rule you." This is a point in
the proceedings at which the faith of
the sufferer is sometimes severely
tried. Cases have been known in
which, breaking into language nei-
ther wholly Christian nor rigorously
scientific, the patient has demanded
to know why, if that wasn't him —
even grammar may be sacrificed in
these emergencies — he should be en-
during such abominable tortures on
account of it ; and up to date the
satisfactory answer of Christian sci-
ence to that particular question has
not been formulated.

Give people a fad, however, that
they thoroughly enjoy and they will
make great sacrifices for it, looking
pleasant under circumstances which
would test the good humor even of a
Mark Tapley, Here is where the
Christian scientists may sometimes
score; for good spirits are cei^tainly
both a prophylactic and a remedial
agency of no mean value in various
physical troubles. This is the one
grain of truth in their bushel of non-
sense. On the other hand, they do
widespread and serious moral mis-
chief by promoting the bad habit of
ignoring facts. We have heard of
the case of a Christian-science prac-
titioner who, called in to see a child
whose head was covered with a her-
petic eruption, declared, while look-
ing steadily at the head, that she
could not see any eruption. A little
girl who by accident had cut her
hand at school somewhat objected to
having it bound up by the teacher,

giving as her reason that her parents
were "Christian science." It cer-
tainly is lamentable that, in addition
to all the other influences which tend
to weaken the sense for truth and
fact, there should have sprung up
a so-called religious society which
places a willful blindness to fact at
the foundation of its creed and prac-
tice. Surely that kind of thing does
not need encouragement or cultiva-
tion.

Meantime, Wisdom is crying
aloiid. Science has revealed itself
as the helper and guide of mankind,
and, in reply to all questioning of
its claims, points to the works it has
wrought. " They are they,'' it may
say, "which testify of me." The es-
sential and peculiar mark of science
is that it ignores no fact. " Hold
thou the fact ! " might be taken for
its motto. It holds the fact, it
wrestles with it till it yields a bless-
ing. The individual scientific think-
er, honest though he be, may ignore
a fact, may turn aside from evidence
that ought to command his atten-
tion; but, in so far as he does this,
he is unfaithful to the mandate of
Science. The fact, however, abides;
and Science, through some other of
her servants, or perhaps later through
this very one, will take it up and
make it yield its meaning. Science
has all truth for its domain, and for
that reason there can be but one
science. To apply to science such
an epithet as "Christian" involves
a total misunderstanding of what
science is. Science can do no more
than investigate all truth, nor can
it, consistently with its essential na-
ture, do less.

In the matter, however, of reliev-
ing human suffering and prolonging
human life, what is the record? The
record is that since science obtained
a secure footing in the world it has
been steadily making better condi-
tions of life for mankind ; that it has

556

POPULAR SCIEJS'CE MONTULY.

almost extirpated certain diseases and
greatly mitigated the virvileuce of
others; tliat its prophylactic methods
in regard to epidemics that used peri-
odically to scourge the most civilized
jiatious are of proved and signal
efficacy ; and that by the use of an-
aesthetics and antiseptics it has as-
suaged an absolutely incalculable
amount of human anguish. A writer
in a recent number of The Nineteenth
Century, describing the progress of
medicine and surgery during the last
sixty years, quotes an account given
by a distinguished physician of his
own experiences in undergoing a
surgical operation before the days of
anaesthesia. The passage is a painful
one, but we shall be pardoned, we
hope, for reproducing it, as it is very
pertinent to the occasion :

" Of the agony occasioned I will
say nothing. Suffering so great as I
underwent can not be expressed in
words, and thus fortunately can not
be recalled. The particular pangs
are now forgotten; but the black
whirlwind of emotion, the horror
of great darkness, and the sense of
desertion by God and man, border-
ing close upon despair, which swept
through my mind and overwhelmed
my heart. I can never forget, how-
ever gladly I would do so. . . . Be-
fore the days of anaesthesia a patient
preparing for an operation was like
a condemned criminal preparing for
execution. He counted the days till
the appointed day came. He counted
the hours of that day till the appointed
hour came. He listened for the echo
on the street of the surgeon's car-
riage. He watched for his pull at
the door-bell; for his foot on the
stairs ; for his step in the room ; for
the production of his dreaded instru-
ments; for his few grave words and
his last prei)arations before begin-
ning. And then he surrendered his
liberty and, revolting at the neces-
sity, submitted to be held or bound

and helplessly gave himself up to
the cruel knife."

Less than fifty years ago these
were daily experiences; and whence
did relief come? From any hocus-
pocus speculations ixpon mind and
matter? From any looking away
from phenomena and trying to dis-
believe them out of existence? No,
but from assuming the reality of
Ijhenomena, and bringing a material
agent to bear ou a physical condi-
tion. True, theological objections
were raised to this new and most
benelicent extension of medical sci-
ence; but it would have taken more
theology than was contained in all
the catechisms to make the world
renounce the new hope thus ten-
dered to it. And now, if further
progress is desired, can any sane and
honest man doubt the direction in
which it is to be sought? What sci-
ence has done is but an earnest of
what it will yet do. All that is
needed is a patient following out of
her methods— the first of which is a
careful measuring and recognition
of facts as they are — in order to
reach forward to all possible good.
We can only trust that many minds
now entangled with " Christian sci-
ence" wnll work their way to a
knowledge and love of true science.
If they do, they wnll gain a sense of
intellectual emancipation such as
they never before experienced ; they
will know also of the doctrine that
its foundations are in the truth of
things, and that its mission is the
healing and regeneration of the hu-
man race.

THE WORLD AS IT IS.

In these bright summer days,
when most of us get glimpses of ru-
ral scenery and not a few are privi-
leged to enjoy it for days and weeks
together, it would be fitting if we
were occasionally to reflect how

EDITOR'S TABLE.

557

wonderfully this world which we
find so beautiful has become adapted
to us and we to it. We are too much
accustomed to take the world as it
actually exists for granted as some-
thing that always has been and that
always will be. We are apt to for-
get that the whole human period is
but as a narrow fringe upon the vast
space of geologic time, and that the
world before the advent of man was
a very different world from that in
which we live. We talk of the ever-
lasting hills and of the primeval for-
est, but to the geologist the hills are
not everlasting and the forest is but
a creation of yesterday. The poet
Tennyson has caught the true geo-
logical standijoint in the following
fine verses of In Memoriam :

There rolls the deep where grew the tree.

0 Earth, what changes thou hast seen !

There, where the long street roars, hath heen
The stillness of the central sea.

The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands ;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,

Like clouds they shape themselves and go.

The earth, which we find to-day
bright with varied hues, vocal with
innumerable sounds, rich in fruits
and fi'agrant with odors, lay for an
almost incalculable period of time
destitute, or all but destitute, of color,
soundless save for the noise of wave
and tempest, and with no promise as
yet of the rich profusion of vegeta-
ble and animal forms that now di-
versify its surface and fill it with the
thrill and manifold activities of life.
We often speak of man as " the heir
of all the ages," but not often, prob-
ably, do we pause to realize the sig-
nificance of the word. We talk of
evolution, but seldom make any due
effort to grasp the plenitude and
grandeur of the thought. These
senses of which we have the use, and
each of which brings a different world
within our ken, whence are they ?
It seems so natural to see; it seems

so natural to hear, to touch, to smell,
to taste, that we forget through what
slow processes, by what an incalcu-
lable number of slight accretions
and delicate modifications these won-
derful channels of knowledge and
sensation have been made for us.
We go back through the ages and
we come to a sightless, voiceless
world. For a period probably as
long as all the rest of geological
time the only forms of life were pro-
tozoa. Sight was developed among
the wonderful crustaceans of the Si-
lurian period, but as yet there were
no organs of hearing. The first
stridulation of an insect wing was
heard (if it was heard) in the Devo-
nian age, the birth epoch of the first
vertebrates, fishes ; but long ages had
to pass before the first bee hummed
over a fiower or the first butterfly
fluttered its wings in the sunshine.
There were no flowers in the Devo-
nian age nor yet in the ensuing Car-
boniferous, though in both there was
a mighty vegetation.

The earliest birds belong to the
Cretaceous period — the classic age of
reptiles. They were not songsters,
however — far from it ; nor were they
beautiful to look upon, for they had
strong points of affinity with the
reptile tribe from which there is rea-
son to believe they were developed.
It was not till well into the Tertiary
period that birds as we know them
began to trill and twitter in the
woods. It was in the same period
that the mammals began to take
masterful possession of the earth.
The earliest mammalian forms were
not the perfect organisms as regards
form or activity with which the
modern world is familiar, and many
of them had but a comparatively
short existence. In the Tertiary pe-
riod, however, there was a vast out-
break of insect, bird, and mammalian
life, and now began in earnest the
struggle for existence— that struggle

558

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which has carried existing forms of
life to so high a point of perfec-
tion.

In the Quaternary period appears
man. Whence ? How ? These are
questions which it is impossible not
to ask, but for satisfactory answers
to which we may have to wait a
long time. All analogy leads us to
believe that man was developed from
some humbler form of life. Upon
him was bestowed the great and
unique gift of a superior thinking
faculty, the material organ of which
is undoubtedly his brain. Man
"looks before and after," and if he
also " sighs for what is not," that too
is a notable mark of his superiority.
Other animals learn from experi-
ence, but to man it is given some-
times to anticipate experience. He
sees things in their relations, and a
relation becomes to him as real as
the thing itself. His thought is,
therefore, compared with the thought
— if we may so characterize it — of
the nearest to him of the lower ani-
mals, like a higher algebra com-
pared with the processes of a very
elementary arithmetic. His senses
are not in general keener than those
of the lower animals. The latter,
indeed, often surpass him in this re-
spect, but what he sees or hears is for
practical purposes increased a hun-
dredfold by what he is able to infer
therefrom. He loiows what to look
for over a wide range of possible
pheuomeua, and separates the sig-
nificant from the insignificant.

So equipped, the human race has
entered ujjon a world already pre-
pared in a wonderful manner for its
habitation. Many were the struggles
it had to endure in the early ages;
but society was formed, and man, by
the aid of his fellow-man, triumphed
over all his foes — triumphed, at least,
sufficiently to perpetuate his race and
hand down from generation to gen-
eration a slowly bettering inherit-

ance. And now, in these later days,
the human individual in a civilized
land can look forth on scenes of
peace and plenty and beauty. In this
advanced stage of the physical world
the song of the bird, the hum of the
bee, the gleam of the fii'efly, the col-
ors and odors of flowers, the golden
ripple of the cornfields, the tints and
flavors of autumn fruits, are his rich-
ly to enjoy. He gazes at the clouds,
at the stars, at the brimming tide of
the ocean, with thoughts that have
been widened and strengthened by
the mental efforts of a thousand bur-
ied generations. If there is any duty,
therefore, that is incumbent on the
man of to- day it is to know some-
thing by his own efforts of the won-
derful and beautiful world in which
he has so great an inheritance. Not
without feelings of love should he
gaze on the landscapes which the la-
bors of his forefathers have helped
to make beautiful ; and not without
feelings of reverent interest should
he regard the daily play of natural
forces in the world around him. We
should all be students in our way ; it
may not be much that we can do,
but some little plot or corner of the
great field of knowledge we should
religiously till, that we may add, if
not a sheaf, at least a blade to the
harvests which the workers ax*e bring-
ing in.

Who can reflect, however, on the
beauty and harmonies of Nature
without remembering that human
society is far as yet from having
reached its perfect harmony ! If there
is a natural landscape there is also a
human landscape ; and here the blots
are many, so many that it is difficult
not to be discouraged at times, even
when making full allowance for all
the good that society has realized and
represents. The man of strenuous
mind will not, however, be discour-
aged. He will acknowledge the ex-
isting evil, and will patiently seek

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

559

out remedies in the storehouse of
natural knowledge. Nature duly in-
terrogated will supply the remedy.
For the world apart from man she
has established the beneficent law of
natural selection; for man also she
has established that law, but in the
heart of the human being she has
implanted, as an adjunct to it, the
law of justice. The full scope of
that law has never yet been ade-
quately understood by any human
society; and four fifths of the legis-
lative tinkering that is done by our
politicians springs from a simple ig-
noring of it. We wish most strong-
ly that every man of science, instead
of turning away from politics as

something most alien to his studies,
would make a duty of asking him-
self this question : What light do my
studies throw upon the questions, or
some one or other of the questions,
that are now most debated in the
political world ? It may be that the
particular facts with which a given
man of science deals may have no
visible bearing on any question of
the day; but what about the scien-
tific methods he pursues — have they
no bearing ? We are convinced that
light must come some day from the
direction of science. It is for the
men of science to see that they do
not fail in their duty in this most
important respect.

^tituXitic %iXtxviXuxt.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

In these two handsome volumes* the distinguished Director General of
the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland traverses ground once
hot with subterranean fires but long since cooled, and traverses, too, a field
in science formerly heated by the fires of controversy which have burned
themselves out like the ancient volcanoes. Werner's "geognosts," or the
Neptunists, as they were dubbed, who in the latter part of the eighteenth
century maintained the aqueous origin of basalt, were converted or silenced
in the early part of the nineteenth and have left no followers. There are
no more Plutonists, moreover, for all geologists are of that stripe. The
author has designed this work as a summary of what has now been ascer-
tained regarding the former volcanoes of the British Isles. " The subject,"
he says, "has occupied much of my time and thought all through life.
Born among the crags that mark the sites of some of these volcanoes,
I was led in my boyhood to interest myself in their structure and his-
tory. The fascination which they then exercised has lasted till now,
impelling me to make myself acquainted with the volcanic records all
over our islands, and to travel into the volcanic regions of Europe and
western America for the purpose of gaining clearer conceptions of the
phenomena." The British Isles afford a large and varied body of evidence
regarding the j)rogress of volcanic energy in former ages. The geological
record is remarkably complete in those islands, and has been very carefully
studied. The position of Britain, on the margin of a great ocean basin, is
one in which volcanic action is apt to be most vigorous and continuous.
Furthermore, denudation has made the extensive volcanic record of this

* The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain. By Sir Archibald Geikie, F. K. S., D. C. L., D. So.
two volumes. New York : The Macmillan Co. Price, $11.25.

In

560 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

region fully accessible to observation. The proofs of the existence of old
volcanoes consist in part of the lavas, agglomerates, bi'eccias, and tuffs
erupted from the earth's interior. The walls of the orifices through which
these materials have reached the surface are also to be found, but often
more enduring than these is the column of hardened material filling the
once belching chimney of the volcano. Molten material that does not
reach the surface is often intruded from below into vertical fissures, form-
ing dikes, or spreads out in horizontal cavities, forming sills and laccolites.
Sir Archibald describes all these kinds of evidence in his early chapters,
and then enters upon a description of the ancient volcanic localities of
Britain in the order of the geological ages. The Lewisian gneiss in north-
west Scotland afPords glimpses of probable volcanic activity at the very
beginning of geological history, and there is other similar evidence dating
fi'om pre-Cambrian times. In South Wales a remarkably varied display
of British Cambrian volcanic rocks has been preserved. Coming to Silu-
rian time, we find a singularly complete volcanic chronicle. In Merioneth-
shire, Pembrokeshire, Caernarvonshire, Anglesey, the Lake District, and
the eastern parts of Ireland the history of eruptions is unmistakable.
During the Old Red Sandstone period groups of volcanoes rose in long
lines from the waters of most of the lakes, and threw out lava and ashes
over tracts hundreds of square miles in extent. Only the eai'lier half of
the Carboniferous period was productive of volcanoes in Britain, but vast
remains of these are to be seen in the puys and plateaus of Scotland and
in numerous dikes, sills, and bosses. After the last of the Palaeozoic erup-
tions ages of quiescence elapsed before volcanic activity recommenced in
Tertiary time. Remains of Tertiary volcanoes are to be found chiefly in the
isles of Skye and Mull and in northeastern Ireland. In summarizing the
studies here presented our author calls attention to the distribution of the
ancient volcanic eruptions along the western margin of the European con-
tinent, thus conforming to the tendency of modern volcanoes to range
themselves along continental borders. From Archaean time to the Ter-
tiary volcanic activity was remarkably persistent in the British Isles. It is
evident from a study of the British examples that where no fissures existed
in the visible part of the earth's crust communication from the internal
magma to the surface was effected in hundreds of instances by explosions
which blew out an orifice. Besides the manner in which the vents were
formed, the kind of materials ejected, the mode of closing of the chimneys,
and the manifestations of the final efforts of the volcanic force are all to be
read in the grand chronicle of the rocks. Seven colored maps and nearly
four hundred figures illustrate the work.

"^Hiile polar auroras may be classed among the more spectacular phe-
nomena of the heavens, they do not force themselves upon our attention as
storms, lightning, shooting stars, and eclipses do. They have been studied
only under difficulties, for they do not occur frequently in temperate re-
gions as lightning does, and the time when preparations should be made to
observe them can not be foretold as with eclipses. It is interesting to have
laid before us, in the latest volume of the International Scientific Series,
the knowledge that has been gained in the face of such obstacles.* Much

* The Aurora Borealie. By Alfred Angot. International Scientific Series, Vol. LXXVII. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 264, liJmo. Price, $1.75.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 561

of the popular interest which auroras have aroused is due to the varied and
often changing forms that they assume. Their protean shapes have caused
people of earlier times to see in them hloody flames, armies in the clash of
battle, or furiously riding Valkyries. They may appear as faint lights
without defined shape; if more distinct, they are seen to have the form of
rays converging upon some point in the sky, or of more or less clearly de-
fined arcs, or of hands which fold over on themselves like a curtain, and
are called draped auroras. M. Angot describes many variations of these
typical shapes, and presents plates on which some of the most interesting
are depicted. The vertical rays of which most auroras seem to be made up
move both horizontally and vertically, and as they are usually in constant
motion an aurora may readily change from one typical form to another.
While the light from most auroras is white, the rays are frequently tinged
with yellow, and are sometimes red at the lower extremity and green at
the upper. The nature of the auroral light is not established, although the
spectroscope and polariscope indicate that it is emitted by luminous gases.
It seems probable that a slight rustling or crackling sound accompanies
auroral displays, but our author finds no credible evidence of any odor.
While many auroras of small extent appear only as local phenomena in
high latitudes, others are visible to within twenty degrees of the equator.
It seems to be usual for an aurora australis to occur simultaneously with
an aurora borealis, notably on February 4, 1872, when the globe, with the
exception of an equatorial zone of about forty degrees, was enveloped in
polar lights. The periodicity of auroras has been studied with the result
of establishing a diurnal and an annual period, and a period of a little
more than eleven years. Less exactly determined are the periods of about
twenty-eight days, and of about fifty-five years and a half. Those of
twenty-eight days and eleven years seem to connect the auroras with
sun spots. The relations of the aurora with meteorological phenomena
and with terrestrial magnetism have also been investigated. The data
obtained from researches on the foregoing questions have given rise to
many theories as to the cause of auroras. Our author states several hy-
potheses that have been made clearly untenable by recent advances of
knowledge. One of these is the idea of Mairan that auroras occur when
the earth passes through the cloud of matter that produces the zodiacal
light, some of this matter falling into our atmosphere and becoming
ignited. The reflection of sunlight from particles of ice in the atmosphere
is another cause suggested, and still another regards the light as a sort of
fluorescence. Our author treats with more respect, although positively
rejecting it, the theory first definitely stated by Dalton, that the light is
given oflP from silent electric discharges between the upper and lower
strata of the atmosphere, these discharges being conducted through ferru-
ginous dust falling upon the earth from space. He gives also several elec-
tric theories, among which he regards that of Edlund as the most satisfac-
tory. Edlund starts from the phenomena of unipolar induction — the
production of currents in a metallic sheath surrounding a magnet when
the sheath is rapidly revolved. The general phenomena of terrestrial
magnetism justify regarding the earth as such a sheath. Electricity, ac-
cording to this theory, is constantly being carried by molecules of air from
the equator to the poles, where it accumulates and from time to time re-
turns to the ground by slow discharges which produce auroras. M.

VOL. Ll. — 43

562

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Angot concludes with a statement of the plausible but undemonstrable
theory recently proposed by Unterweger. To the body of the work is ap-
pended a Catalogue of the Auroras seen in Europe below latitude 55° from
1700 to 1890, filling eighty-eight pages. A large part of the data employed
in this volume were gathered in Lapland during the winter of 1838-'39 by
the expedition on board the Recherche, others are taken from Norden-
skiold's Voyage of the Vega, and still others from a variety of sources
which the author indicates. The book will go far toward giving the
general reader clear ideas in place of fragmentary notions.

GENERAL NOTICES.

The evolution of special lines of culture
is a most interesting study. Tylor's Primi-
tive Culture and Early History of Mankind
have been followed by a host of books of a
general or a special kind, in which almost
everything has been " traced." Curiously,
however, there is no serious work upon art
evolution — using the term art in its wide
sense to include all the fine arts — Tylor's
arts of pleasure. The book before us,
which is the fourth in the Anthropologi-
cal Series, undertakes to study the Begin-
nings of Art.* Dr. Grosse holds that in
modern savages we may safely hope to find
similar crude beginnings to those made by
primitive man long ago. He denies our right
to draw illustrations from among barbarous
or civilized peoples, and insists upon taking
them from savages only. In marking out
culture stages, he emphasizes the mode of
gaining food supply, and considers those
peoples only as savages — Naturvolker — who
depend upon hunting and wild food. There
are really few such peoples : the Australians,
Andamanese, Bushmen, Fuegians, Botocudos,
and Eskimos are about all. From these Dr.
Grosse collects his examples of primitive art
forms. There are two classes of arts — arts
of rest (i. e., plastic and graphic) and arts of
motion (i. e., the dance, poetry, and music).
The former appear to begin with ornamenta-
tion and personal decoration, but real repre-
sentative art also begins early. The arts of
the dance, poetry, and music are usually
closely connected in savage life. Not only
does Dr. Grosse try to show how the various
art forms began, he also tries to show how

* The Beginnings of Art. By Ernst Grosse.
The Anthropological Series. New York : D. Ap-
pleton & Co., 1897. Pp. xiv + 327, 16mo. Price,
$1.75.

the art reacts upon the artist ; he traces the
social influence of arts. This is one of the
strikingly original features of the work. The
book is a translation from the German ; the
translator has done his part faithfully. The
book is perhaps the best that has so far ap-
peared in the Anthropological Series.

Prof. Tarr has not undertaken to make
this book * a perfectly balanced treatise by
giving each part of his subject just the prom-
inence due to its intrinsic value. He has
made a book for a special purpose — the in-
struction of pupils in high schools — and has
proportioned it as he deems best for that
purpose. He believes that stratigraphical
geology should be, for the most part, left to
a more advanced stage than that of the sec-
ondary school, and so has included only its
main truths and some examples of its evi-
dence here. But with structural and dy-
namical geology, he suys, " the body of fact
necessary for elementary understanding is
not so great nor so difficult to grasp. The
teachings of these truths are illustrated on
every hand, and, in fact, some of them are
already familiar to the pupil before he en-
ters upon the study. They deal with phe-
nomena in the midst of which we dwell, and
hence should become a part of the mental
possessions of every high-school pupil."
Accordingly, he devotes about three fifths
of the volume to the djTiamic side of the
subject, and gives a hundred pages to struc-
tural geology, leaving also a himdred for
the stratigraphical division. In the struc-
tural portion he gives most attention to
describing the minerals and rocks that
occur extensively in the earth's crust, and

* Elementary Geology. By Ralph S. Tarr.
New York : The Macmillan Co. Pp. 499, 12mo.
Price, ^1.40.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

563

by the use of simple language and many
photo-engravings of well- selected specimens
he makes their nature remarkably clear. In
the dynamical division the processes of
weathering, erosion, deposition, stratifica-
tion, metamorphism, and the formation of
mountains, volcanoes, etc., are made clear by
the same means. The stratigraphical divi-
sion probably contains as much material as
the pupil is likely to assimilate. It opens
with an explanatory chapter on the uses of
fossils, then the kind of life that prevailed
in each geologic age is described with the
aid of figures of fossils and ideal landscapes
of the several ages, and the account closes
with an outline of the changing geography
of the United States from Archasan to Ceno-
zoic time. Throughout the work the author
is careful to distinguish important doctrines
that are proved from those that remain hy-
pothetical. The volume is printed in large,
clear type, and contains two hundred and
sixty-eight figures and twenty-five plates, in-
cluding a colored geological map of the
United States.

His various investigations and writings,
extending over a term of years, have well
equipped Prof. Israel C. Russell with ma-
terial for making a book on the North
American glaciers.* In the volume which
he has recently put forth he not only enu-
merates and describes the glaciers of this
continent that have been explored, but he
also explains the theory and depicts the behav-
ior of these solid rivers, so that the reader
untrained in science may follow him. The
glaciers of the Alps, being in a region that
is surrounded on all sides by thickly popu-
lated countries, have been the most studied.
But Prof. Russell points out that " North
America offers more favorable conditions for
the study of existing glaciers and of the rec-
ords of ancient ice sheets than any other
continent. Of each of the three leading
types of glaciers thus far recognized — name-
ly, the Alpine, Piedmont, and continental —
North America furnishes magnificent exam-
ples." After describing the glaciers of each
locality from the Sierra Nevada Mountains
to Greenland, our author discusses the cli-

* Glaciers of North America. By Israel C.
Russell. Boston : Ginn & Co. Pp. 210, 8vo.
Price, $1.90.

matic changes indicated by the glaciers of
North America and the evidence that the
great ice sheets are retreating. The how
and why of glacier movement, and the life
history of a glacier, form the subjects of the
two closing chapters. The volume is illus-
trated with twenty-two plates and ten smaller
figures.

"There is perhaps little that need be
said prefatory to a work of this charac-
ter," say the authors of a volume of prob-
lems, and for the same reason a description
of the work can not be long.* The authors
have prepared it in the beUef that any text
in physics needs to be supplemented by
problem work in considerable variety. An
introduction contains the tables of physical
constants required in working the problems,
while tables of logarithms, sines, etc., and a
fist of answers appear at the end of the vol-
ume. The use of directed quantities, graphic
methods, averages, and approximations is
briefly set forth in several preliminary chap-
ters. The problems are divided among the
subjects of mechanics, solids, the behavior
of liquids and gases, beat, electricity, mag-
netism, sound, and light. A few problems
have been inserted which can not be satis-
factorily worked by other than calculus
methods, while here and there graphic
methods have been suggested that may be
profitably extended by the student. Occa-
sional questions not requiring numerical an-
swers have been asked.

The fourth volume of the American His-
tory Series deals with a period of growth.
Between 1817 and 1858 the territory of the
United States was increased by the acquisi-
tion of Florida, Texas, and Oregon.f The
population of the older States, pushing
toward the west and southwest, made set-
tlements and organized communities in the
hitherto unorganized territories. In this
task they were largely re-enforced by immi-
grants from Europe. It was a period also
of the growth of pent-up forces, which later
produced the outbreak of the civil war.

* Problems and Questions in Physics. By
Charles P. Matthews and John Shearer. New
York : The Macmillan Company. Pp. 247, 8vo.
Price, $1.60.

t The Middle Period, 1817-1858. By John W.
Burgess. New York : Charles Scribner'e Sons.
Pp. 544, 12mo. Price, $1.75.

564

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The question as to the policy of a United
States Bank and that of the right of a
State to nullify a Federal law were settled
in this period. But the slavery question
only grew more pressing, the several at-
tempts to adjust it all proving ineffective.
Prof. Burgess has given us a history of pub-
lic affairs in this period drawn from original
sources. He has made a special effort to
shun the bias of prejudice and preconcep-
tions, to refrain from glorifying lawlessness
in behalf of whatever opinion it was com-
mitted, and to credit men and communities
with whatever of integrity and sincerity they
actually possessed, instead of rating them
as gods or demons, according to their posi-
tion on some one question. Our author has
confined himself to those events which, in
his opinion, are significant of our progress in
political civilization, and he has hoped to so
treat them as to remove the traces of mis-
understanding between the North and the
South which still linger. He does not at-
tempt to do this by conceding that the South
was as much right as the North, but takes
the position that the South was in error in
secession and rebellion, and must ackuowl-
edge its error before complete national cor-
diality can be established. The volume con-
tains five maps, tables of electoral votes in
detail, of cabinet ofiicers, of chronology, of
bibliography, and a full index.

Since the days when Redfield and Espy
and Ferrel struggled with the larger theoret-
ical questions of winds and storms the ad-
vance of the science of meteorology has been
remarkable. Its practical applications have
not lagged behind, being, in fact, the chief
motive for the support that has been given
to the study of the science. Until lately
little has been done toward popularizing the
knowledge that has been gained in this field.
In a book now before us Dr. Waldo, formerly
a professor in the United States Signal Serv-
ice, has undertaken to give an outline of the
science in simple form.* The first of the
meteorological elements that he treats is
temperature. He tells how the atmosphere
gets its heat and how temperatures vary in
different places and at different times. This

* Elementary Meteorology. By Frank Waldo,
Ph.D. New York: American Book Company.
Pp. 373, ISmo. Price, Sl-50.

chapter is illustrated by many charts on
which the average and the extreme tempera-
tures of the earth's surface are indicated.
The variation and distribution of air pressure
are similarly treated, and a biicf discussion
of winds naturally follows. The author con-
siders the moisture of the atmosphere with
reference to three steps in the cycle that it
passes through — as distributed through the
air whether invisible or in cloud and fog, as
precipitated, and as taken up again from the
earth by evaporation. After briefly calling
attention to some optical and electrical phe-
nomena, the author returns to movements of
the air, describing first the larger circula-
tory movements, then the secondary circula-
tion in the form of cyclones and local and
miscellaneous winds. There is a chapter on
weather predictions — the part of meteorol-
ogy having most popular interest — and one
on climate in general, which is followed by
an extended analysis of the climate of the
United States. The book is suitable for use
as a text-book or for general reading. Its
mechanical form is attractive, and it is illus-
trated with one hundred and twenty-one dia-
grams and other figures.

Prof. Johnson has added to his valuable
works on engineering subjects a very com-
plete treatise on structural materials.* In
his preliminary chapters he describes the
behavior of materials under the several kinds
of stress, the matter here given being de-
signed to supplement that usually contained
in text-books on applied mechanics. A sec-
ond division of the work, which the author
intends to be read by engineering students
if they do not get the information in other
ways, deals with the manufacture and gen-
eral properties of cast and wrought iron,
steel, and other metals, lime, cement, brick,
and timber. The attention given to the
structural properties of wood is a feature of
the work. Little accurate information on
this topic had been available until the For-
estry Division of the United States Depart-
ment of Agriculture began the systematic
study of timber and timber trees some five
or six years ago. Prof. Johnson has been
intimately connected with these investiga-

* The Materials of Construction. By J. B.
Johnson. New York : John Wiley & Sone. Pp.
787, 8vo. Price, $6.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

565

tions, having had entire charge of the me-
chanical tests. In the chapter on the char-
acteristics of wood a list of over a hundred
timber-producing trees of the United States
is given, with a brief description of each and
a figure of its leaf and fruit. The part of
the volume upon which the author expects
the student to put his serious work relates
to the methods of applying tests of materials
and to the machines employed in testing.
This is followed by a group of chapters re-
lating to the mechanical properties of the
materials of construction as revealed by ac-
tual tests, in which the author expects that
selections will be made for students accord-
ing to the course they are taking. Among
the special subjects here treated are the
strength of iron and steel wire and wire
rope, and the magnetic testing of iron and
steel. The volume is illustrated with six
hundred and thirty-five figures and diagrams
and eleven plates. The author has avoided
the use of tables, preferring to arrange in
diagrams the data often appearing in tabular
form. There are appendices relating to the
micrographic analysis of iron and steel, to
attempts to secure uniform tests of materials,
and to standard specifications for structural
steel.

Our material for the study of infant psy-
chology has received a carefully prepared
addition in The Mental Development of a
Child, by Kathleen Carter Moore, issued as
a monograph supplement to the Psychologi-
cal Review (Macmillans, paper, $1). This is
a record by a mother embracing the mani-
festations of activity and of change in her
own child, and the conditions under which
each action or change was manifested. This
material is supplemented by summaries re-
viewing the mental condition of the child at
given periods. The first of these reviews
covers all lines of activity ; later, when there
was more to record, each set of activities
is summarized separately. The observations
are grouped under the four chief heads
Movements, Sensations, Ideas, and Language,
and many of them, especially those relating
to language, are tabulated besides being de-
scribed.

The sixth volume of the series in Philol-
ology, Literature, and Archaeology of the
publications of the University of Pennsyl-

vania is devoted to Researches upon the An-
tiquity of Man, by Henry C. Mercer (Ginn,
$2). The contents comprise descriptions of
excavations made and articles found in sev-
eral localities, and are introduced by a discus-
sion of the chipped stone implements which
are the most numerously preserved exam-
ples of the handiwork of savage man. The
first finds herein described are those made
at an ancient argillite quarry and blade
workshop on the Delaware River. Here
were found one hundred and seventy-four
hammer stones, large numbers of " turtle
backs " and chips, and a few miscellaneous
objects. An account of the exploration of
an Indian ossuary on the Choptank River,
in Maryland, is given by Mr. Mercer, with a
description by the late Prof. Cope of the
human bones discovered there, and an ex-
amination by R. H. Harte, M. D., of traces
of disease in the bones. There are also ac-
counts of explorations of aboriginal shell
heaps on York River, Maine, where traces
of cannibalism were found ; of a rock shel-
ter in the Delaware Valley ; and of Durham
Cave, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The
text is illustrated with fifty-one figures and
diagrams.

The Philosophical Society of Washington
has issued a substantial volume as the
twelfth in its series of Bulletins, containing
the publications of the society from i892 to
1894. The address of Prof. T. C. Menden-
hall, as retiring president, on The Uncertainty
of Conclusions, and that of G. K. Gilbert,
also as retiring president, on The Moon's
Face, are included in the contents, and
among the more extended papers are The
Origin of Igneous Rocks, by Joseph Paxson
Iddings ; Summer Hot Winds on the Great
Plains, by Isaac Monroe Cline: and Mean
Density of the Earth, by Erasmus Darwin
Preston. Several of the papers are accom-
panied by views or diagrams. There are
obituary notices of eleven members, those of
Garrick Mallery and James Clarke Welling
being accompanied by portraits.

An elementary text-book on Electricity
and Magnetism has been prepared by Prof.
Charles A. Perkins (Holt, $1.10), which,
while it acknowledges the impossibility of
such a work being up to date, still aims to
implant initial conceptions that are in ac-

566

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cordance with the best modern theories. A
brief introductory chapter on dynamics gives
some of the general ideas relating to force
which are applied later to the special subject
of the volume. The usual topics are taken
up, and the language and the amount of
mathematics employed adapt the book to
college preparatory or freshman year classes.
There is a directness and conciseness about
the mode of treatment that contrasts with
the formal and encyclopedic character of
some works of a generation ago, which are
still in use. The volume contains one hun-
dred and sixty-five diagrams and figures of
instruments.

The contrast between old and new meth-
ods in education can not be better illustrated
than by comparing an old-fashioned primer
with Our Little Book for Little Folks, ar-
ranged by W. E. Crosby. In the latter we
do not find an alphabet on the first page,
followed by the most mechanical of word
exercises, with a few crude black pictures
interspersed among them. We have, in-
stead, little sentences in which some words
are in vertical script, while others are repre-
sented by well-drawn pictures. Some pages
are in white on black, as they would appear
on a slate or blackboard ; some of the les-
sons consist of verses set to simple music ;
at intervals through the book are plates on
which appear in their natural colors the ob-
jects drawn in black and white on the read-
ing pages ; there is a frontispiece plate of
seven national flags, and a plate at the end
on which the three primary colors are shown
and the three secondary colors produced by
combining the primary ; another feature is
the many simple outline figures which the
child can copy with the pencil or by laying
sticks together. If this is not a " royal
road " to learning it is at least a flowery
path. (American Book Company, 30 cents.)

Those desirous of having a popular vol-
ume from the pen of the late G. J. Romanes
will be pleased with the collection of Essays
which Prof. G. Lloyd Morgan has prepared
(Longmans, -$1.75). Prof. Morgan has chosen
ten essays which Mr. Romanes had contrib-
uted to various English and American re-
views, only one of them, that on the Origin
of Human Faculty, in Brain, being taken
from the pages of a technical journal. Sev-

eral of the essays deal with psychology, which
was the especial field of the author, for ex-
ample. The Darwinian Theory of Instinct,
Mind in Men and Animals, Mental Differ-
ences between Men and Women, and Hyp-
notism, while in those treating of other sub-
jects, as folklore in the essay on Primitive
Natural History, hygiene in the one on
Recreation, or disease in that on Hydro-
phobia and the Muzzling Order, the philo-
sophical insight of the man into mental
states and operations, and his power of
placing his thoughts clearly before the
reader are everywhere apparent.

The second and concluding part of the
reports secured by the Secretary of the
Treasury on the Condition of Seal Life on the
Rookeries of the Pribilof Idnnds has been
issued as a Senate document. This publica-
tion contains descriptions of the condition of
the rookeries in 1893, 1894, and 1895, by C.
H. Townsend, a similar description for 1895
from an examination made by F. W. True,
and an account of the mode of seal hunting
practiced by a Canadian sealing schooner, as
reported by A. B. Alexander, all of these
writers being officers of the United States
Fish Commission. All these reports furnish
conclusive evidence as to the large propor-
tion of female seals in milk that are killed,
the consequent starvation of thousands of
nursing pups, and the rapidly progressive
reduction in the numbers of seals on the
rookeries that is going on. The volume is
fully illustrated with maps and photographic
views.

The author of America and the Ameri-
cans, from a French Point of View, draws no
very flattering picture of our social life and
institutions. It has been suggested that he
is not a Frenchman at all, but an American
who under this convenient disguise tells his
countrymen some disagreeable but whole-
some truths about themselves. The book
is nowhere on the title-page mentioned as
being a translation, a fact which seems
to favor this view. Whoever the author
may be, he shows himself intimately ac-
quainted with the peculiarities and customs
of the country he so severely criticises. Evi-
dently a man of culture who knows men and
manners on both sides of the Atlantic, he
touches with a caustic pen on the less lova-

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

567

ble characteristics of our social and political
life. He notes down his first contact with
our people on the journey from Liverpool to
New York, and his impressions of the me-
tropolis on its social side, as revealed in pub-
lic and private functions. He devotes a chap-
ter to the American business man, one to
politics, and one to the newspaper. He pays
flying visits to Boston, Concord, Plymouth,
Cambridge, and Chicago, the Black Belt, and
to various summer resorts. Perhaps the
most biting chapter is that on Young Amer-
ica, as indeed the difference in rearing chil-
dren here and on the other side with its
well-known results most forcibly strikes a
foreigner. The author dubs our children
" young Saxon Bedouins, the most terrible of
all enfards terriblesy The book may not flat-
ter our vanity, but as a fearless criticism on
some of the crudities of western civilization
it should open our eyes a little more to our

own shortcomings. (Charles Scribner's Sons,
189Y, $1.25.)

The value of Mr. Frederick J. Brown's
statistical study of The Northern Movement
of the Colored Population rests, it seems to
us, not so much upon any evidence it affords
as to a definite or very great movement
northward, as upon its explanation of the
tendencies of the movements of the negroes.
They seem to act very much as the whites
do — to go where they can do best, north,
south, or to other parts of their own region
of residence. They are governed by the
prospect of emplojTnent, by social motives,
and by the promise of good treatment —
drawn, not driven, as the author expresses
it in one place. A goodly number come
north, and goodly numbers go in the other
directions (Baltimore: Gushing & Co. Price,
25 cents).

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins
and Reports. Connecticut: Twentieth Annual
Report for 1896. S. W. Johnson, Director, New
Haven. Pp. 414.— Cornell University : Nos. 133-
136. The Army Worm in New York. By M. V.
Slingerland. Pp. 16 ; Strawberries undtr Glass.
By C. E. Hunar and L. H. Bailey. Pp. 8 ; Forage
Crops. By I. P. Roberts and L. A. Clinton. Pp.
26; Chrveanthemums. By L. H. Bailey and Wil-
helm M'iUer. Pp. 211.— North Dakota Weather
Service. Fourth Annual Report for 1896. By B.
H. Bronson, Fargo. Pp. 78— United States De-
partment of Agriculture. Insect Control in Cali-
fornia. By C. L. Marlatt. Pp. 24 ; The Aspara-
gus Beetle. By F. H. Chittenden. Pp. Vi ; Use
of Steam Apparatus for Spraying. By L. O.
Howard. Pp. ^. — North Dakota Climate and
Crop Service. April and May, 1897. Pp. 8 each.

Alabama Polytechnic Institute. State Agri-
cultural and Mechanical College, Auburn. Cata-
logue 1896-'97. Pp. 94.

American Association for the Advancement
of Science. Preliminary Announcement for the
Fortj-sLsth Annual Meeting, Detroit, Mich. Pp.
32.

Bellamy, Edward. Equality. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 412. §1.25.

Binet, Alfred, Editor. L'Aniiee Psychologique
(The Psychological Year). Third Year. Paris :
Schleicher Freres. Pp. 824. 15 francs.

Britton, N. L., and Brown, Hon. Addison. An
Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States,
Canada, and the British Possessions. Vol. II.
Portulaca to Gentian. New York : Charles
Scribner's Sons. Pp. 643. $3.

Bullock, Charles Jesse. Introduction to the
Study of Economics. Boston : Silver, Burdett
& Co. Pp. 511. $1.28.

Columbia University, 1897. Description of the
New Site and Buildings. Letterpress and plates.

Comstock, John Henry. Insect Life. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 349. $2.50.

Genealogical Magazine, The. A Journal of
Family History, Heraldry, and Pedigrees. Lon-
don : Elliot Stock ; New York : J. W. Bouton.
Pp. 64. 1 shilling.

Hopkins, Thomas L. The Building Materials
of Pennsylvania. I. Brownstones. Pennsylva-
nia Agricultural College. Pp. 122.

Howard, Clifford. Sex Worship. An Exposi-
tion of the Phallic Origin of Religion. Washing-
ton, D. C. : The Author. Pp. 166.

Indiana, Department of Geology and Natural
Resources. Twenty -first Annual Report. W. S.
Blatchley, State Geologist, Indianapolis. Pp. 719'.

Jordan, David Starr. Matka and Kotik. A
Tale of the Mist Island. San Francisco : The
Whittaker & Ray Company. Pp. 68, with plates.

Le Conte, Joseph. Light ; an Exposition of
the Principles of Monocular and Binocular Vision.
Second edition, revised and enlarged. D. Apple-
ton & Co. (International Scientific Series.) Pp.
318. $1.50.

Lewis, Prof. Henry Carvill. Papers and Notes
on the Genesis and Matrix of the Diamond.
Edited from his Unpublished Manuscripts by
Piof . T. G. Bonney. London and New York :
Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 72, with plates.

Lilly, Eli, Indianapolis, Ind. Formaldehyde.
Pp. 56.

Merton, A. J., Pittsfield, Mass. The Common
Sources of 2.10 Trotting and Pacing Speed. Pp.
33. 50 cents.

Minnesota, Forest Preservation. Second An-
nual Report of the Chief Fire Warden for 1896.
St. Paul. Pp. 111.

Mortillet, Gabriel de. Formation de la Nation
Fran9aise (Formation of the French Nation).
Paris : Felix Alcan. Pp. 336. 6 francs.

Municipal Affairs. Quarterly. June, 1897.
New York : Reform Club, Committee on Munici-
pal Administration. Pp. 200. 25 cents, $1 a year

Musee Sociale, La (The Social Museum). Soci-
ety Recognized as of Public Utility by the Decree
of August 31, 1894. Statutes, Organization, and
Services. Pp. 96. Also circulars, Series A, for
the General Public ; Series B, cf more technical
and special character.

New York Public Library, Aator, Lenox, and
Tilden Foundations. Bulletins. Vol. I, N08. 1
to 6 Januai-y to June, 1896. Pp. 176.

568

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Public Libraries. April, May, and June, 1897.
Vol. II, Nop. 4, .5, and 6. Pp. 40, 100, and 80. M.
E. Ahern, Editor. Chicago : Library Bureau. 20
cents, $1 a year.

Reprints. Blackford, C. M., Jr., Atlanta. Qa.
The Malignant Factor in Tumors. Pp. 20.— Brice,
J. J., Report on the l-'ipherieB of Indian River,
Florida. Pp. 40, with 37 plates.— Brinton, Daniel
G.: The Missing Authorities on Mayan Antiqui-
ties. Pp. 10 ; The Battle and the Ruins of Ciiit-
la. Pp. 12 ; The Pillars of Ben. Pp. 8; The So-
called "Bow Puller" identified as the Greek
Mupnj)f . Pp. 6 ; Native American Stringed Musi-
cal Instruments. Pp. ].— CoviUe, Frederick V.:
Notes on the Plants used by the Klamath Indians
of Oregon. Pp. 32.— Frazer, Persifor : Notes on the
Northern Black Hills of South Dakota. Pj). 28.—
Gifford, John : Notes collected during a Visit to
the Forests of Holland, Germany, Switzerland,
and France. Pp. 34.— Hall, C. W.: Some Tend-
encies of Modern Education. Pp. 8.— Irwell,
Lawrence. Racial Deterioration : The Relation
between Phthisis and Insanity. Pp. 29. — James,
William. The Case of Albert Le Baron. Pp. 20.
—Keen, W. W. Resection of the Sternum for
Tumors, etc. Pp. 10 ; Clinical Lecture on Vari-
ous Subjects. Pp. 6 ; Literary Methods in Medi-
cine. Pp. 14; Tuberculosis or Carcinoma (?) of
the Stomach, etc. Pp. 8 ; Address on the Unveil-
ing of the Bronze Statue of the Late Prof. 8. D.
Gross, Washington, D. C. Pp. 8 ; Address in
Surgery. Pp. 30 ; Treatment of Cancer of the
Rectum, etc. Pp. 73.— Langley, 8. P. : Memoir of
George Brown Goode. Pp. 30 —Rhodes, T. L :
The Technique of Prof. Keen's Surgical Clinic in
Jefferson Medical College Hospital. Pp. 46. —
Robertson, Charles : Seed Crests and Myrme-
cophilous Dissemination in Certain Plants. Pp. 21.
— Woolman, Lewis : Reports on Artesian Wells.
Pp. 102 ; Other Papers of the Geological Survey
of Newr Jersey. Pp. 54.

Scientific Bodies. Bulletins and Papers. Co-
lumbian University: Bulletin. Pp.60; Studies in
History, Economics, and Public Law. Vol. VU,
No 2. Recent Centralizing Tendencies in State
Educational Administration. By W. C. Webster.
Pp. 79; No 3. The Abolition of Privateering and
the Declaration of Paris. By Francis B. Starr.
Pp. 163.- Field Columbian Museum : Publication
16. Archaeological Studies among the Ancient
Cities of Mexico. By W. H. Holmes. Part II.
Pp. 19>') ; Publication 18. Observations on Popo-
catepetl and IztaccihuatI, etc. By O. C. Far-
rington. Pp. 54.— Chicago Academy of Sciences:
Th« Pleistocene Features and Deposits of the
Chicago Area. By Frank Leverett. Pp. 87.—
Johns Hopkins University Circulars June, 1897.
Pp. 16. 10 cents —Portland, Maine, Society of
Natural History: Proceedings, 1897. Pp. 41.

Telephones, How the Best are made. Told
from Photographs. Baltimore : Best Telephone
Manufacturing Company. Pp. 50.

Tenney, D. K. The Cooling Universe Theory
Refuted. Madison, Wis. Pp 34.

Tyner, Paul. " Know Thyself." A Study of
Spiritual Self-consciousness. Pp. 64. 10 cents.

United States Bureau of Ethnology. Four-
teenth Annual Report. Part I. Pp. 637. Part
II. Pp. 499.

United States Senate. Memorial of Clergy-
men on Inequalities of the Present Protective
System. Pp. 45.

United States Treasury Department. Notice
to Mariners, May, 1897. Pp. 14.

Weir, James. The Psychical Correlation of
Religious Emotion and Sexual Disease. Owens-
boro, Ky. Pp. 32.

Wright, Lewis. The Induction Coil in Practi-
cal Work, including ROntgen X Rays. New
York : The Macmillan Company. Pp. 172. $1.25.

^ragmjcuts jof ^cljetix;je.

The Swift's Night Flight.— The curious
night flight of the swifts is described in
Knowledge by C. A. Witchell : " The sun has
set and most of the small birds have retired
for the night, though the sparrows are still
noisy in the creepers on the house. Most of
the swifts are flying low over the meadows,
but some are in the sky, and of these a few
are chasing others, and performing those
magnificent swoops by which it appears that
the males drive the females to their nests.
Certain it is that the pursuing birds (always
acting singly) chase particular individuals,
whose course they follow at a greater alti-
tude, but always with the intention of finally
descending in a falconlike swoop at the
lower bird, who, anticipating the attack,
swerves downward and finally plunges head-
long. The swishing sound produced by the
descending swifts can be heard at a consid-
erable distance. ... At about forty minutes
after sunset (whether in June or July) the

group of swifts begins to whirl round and
round, like a mob of rooks ; but again and
again the cluster breaks up in a pursuit and
a mad, noisy rush across the sky. Yet the
birds are gradually attaining a higher posi-
tion, and their screaming becomes the less
noticeable. Their wings often have a tremu-
lous motion, reminding one of the flight of
an ascending skylark. Still, there is no de-
liberate upward flight, only a succession of
swoops and rushes, terminating at increasing
distances from the ground. The birds keep
fairly together, and not one descends to the
houses ; but it may be the cluster is jomed
by another group, coming you know not
whence. Dusk is beginning to fall, and even
the sparrows are silent, but the cries of the
swifts can yet be famtly heard. The birds
may now be easily lost sight of altogether,
especially if there be no white, fleecy clouds
high overhead to throw into relief the whirl-
ing black dots in the sky. Now is the time

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

569

to use a field glass or small telescope, and,
having once found the birds with it, to keep
them in the field as long as possible. . . .
Up and up they go, appearing smaller each
moment till even the power of the glass is
overcome, and the tiny specks vanish for the
night. As you drop your arms wearily you
find that the dusk has fallen, the bats are
out, and the evening mists are rising ; but
the swifts must now be nearly on a level
with those remote flecks of cloud which, at
an immense height, are yet snowy in the sun-
shine."

The Light of Fireflies. — In experiments
on the properties of the light of fireflies, Prof.
H. Muraoka used plates of copper, aluminum,
zinc, and brass of equal size, separated from
the photographic plates on which they were
severally laid by a layer of cardboard having
a cross-shaped piece cut out of the center ;
wrapped the whole with three or four thick-
nesses of black paper, and exposed the
bundle to the light of several hundred fire-
flies. His purpose was to learn whether
the light from the insects after filtration
through the black paper could penetrate the
metals and affect the photographic plate,
and to determine the relative transparency
of the substances used. To his surprise, the
parts of the photographic plate under the
cardboard were most darkened, while those
under the cross-shaped holes remained clear.
The light of the insects seemed to behave
very much like ordinary light, but, after
*' filtration," acquired properties similar to
those of the Rontgen or the Becquerel flu-
orescent rays — properties apparently result-
ing from the filtration. Further, the filtered
rays appeared to exert a peculiar action to-
ward the cardboard — called by the author a
suction phenomenon — similar to that of the
lines of magnetic force upon iron. The prop-
erties of the filtered rays seemed to depend
on the filtering substances, probably upon
their thickness. They exhibited properties
of reflection, but those of refraction, inter-
ference, and polarization were not observed,
although the author believes that they exist.
Their properties, generally, appear to be be-
tween those of the ultra-violet and the
Rontgen rays. The insects used in the ex-
periments had two or three rows of luminous
spots on their under body ; but the photo-

graphic plates were affected by the whole
body as well as by the luminous spots, so
that a complete image of the insect was
formed when it was put upon the plate, the
figure of the luminous part being, however,
plainer than the rest.

Dust. — Micro-organisms are the great
producers of disease, and dust is the chief
carrier of micro-organisms. If there is any
one ubiquitous thing, it is dust, and yet, not-
withstanding its dangerous contents, it is
being continually poked up, so to speak.
As soon as the housemaid is up, it is hustled
and dusted into the air, so that by the time
the family is astir any germ which may have
quietly settled in some corner where it could
do no harm is fioating about in the air, ready
to appropriate any convenient and moist rest-
ing place, such as the human lungs or a bit
of the breakfast, which will shortly carry
it into one of the inmate's systems. The
street-cleaning department, too, spends much
of its energy in simply stirring up the dust
about the streets ; a little of it is carried off
in carts each day, but every particle thus re-
moved has probably been previously stirred
up and allowed to settle a dozen times. The
carpets and upholstery of modern houses
were apparently designed as dust collectors.
It is impofsible to clean thoroughly a thick-
ly upholstered sofa or chair, and almost aa
difiicult to get a modern carpet or rug clean ;
these articles always contain more or less
dirt, which in the case of the carpet is super-
ficially stirred up at each sweeping. In fact,
the reckless way in which house and street
cleaning are handled is really appalling.
Dusting should always be done with a damp
cloth, and carpets cleaned by a closed sweeper
well filled with wet tea leaves. The street-
cleaning problem is simply a question of
water supply. A thorough flushing of the
streets once or twice in twenty-four hours
offers a simple hygienic and thorough solu-
tion.

Pocltet Gophers. — The pocket gophers,
or Oeomyidce, according to G. Hart Mer-
riam's description, are North American ani-
mals exclusively, and most at home in the
western United States and Mexico. Their
whole organization is modified to suit a life
underground. They are short-legged, thick-

570

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

set animals, with no appreciable neck or ex-
ternal ears, and very small eyes. The feet
are adapted to digging, the fore paws in
particular being very strong and armed with
long, curved claws, while the sides of the
toes are lined with rows of bristles that
prevent the dirt from passing between the
fingers. The tail is moderately long, thick,
fleshy, usually hairless, and sensitive to the
touch. In working under the earth the
animals loosen the ground with their upper
incisors, while they keep their fore feet in
active operation in digging and pressing the
earth back under the body, and their hind
feet in moving it still farther backward. As
the dirt accumulates in its rear the animal
turns in its burrow and, bringing its wrists
together under its chin, with the palms of
its hands held up, forces itself along by its
hind feet, pushing the earth outward. All
the pocket gophers have external cheek
pouches, which are used for carrying food.
They are great hoarders, and fill their store-
houses with vastly more than they consume.
The cheek pouches reach back as far as the
shoulder. A captured animal filling its
pouches after a meal made motions so rapid
that they were hard to observe. If a piece,
say of potato, too large to go in the pouch,
was given him, he would grasp it with both
paws and pry ofE small bits with his long
lower incisors, then raise himself a little on
his hind legs and hold the fragment between
his fore paws while eating previous to put-
ting away what was left. Small pieces were
disposed of promptly ; others were trimmed
by cutting off projecting angles. The ani-
mal has to use its fore paws in passing food
from its mouth to the pouches, and in
emptying the pouches these paws are used
very dexterously.

Ginseng. — This drug, which is frequently
spoken of as the panacea of eastern Asia,
consists of the roots of Panax ginseng, be-
longing to the natural order Araliaceoe, a
plant indigenous to China and Japan, but
chiefly occurring in Corea and Manchuria.
The following account is taken from the Lan-
cet: When full grown, the ginseng plant
stands from a foot to a foot and a half high,
each stem supporting a single palmate leaf.
The flower is purple-colored, and in summer
is replaced by brilliant red berries. The

roots are gathered at the commencement of
winter, and, after maceration in cold water
for three days, are placed in covered vessels
which are suspended over fires until the con-
tents become hard, resinous, and translucent.
The drug then appears in the form of brittle
rods, often forked or many-tailed, about the
thickness of the little finger and from two
to four inches in length. The taste is sweet-
ish and glutinous, recalling, in spite of slight
bitterness, that of licorice. The wild plant
is the most highly valued, but it is extreme-
ly rare, being worth more than its weight in
gold. According to the Chinese Times, ten
large sticks of ginseng and eight of medium
size, weighing collectively nine ounces and
one fifth, fetched, including duty, seventeen
hundred and seven taels (about seventeen
hundred dollars). Ginseng culture in Corea is
exclusively in the hands of a few state farm-
ers, and is most carefully supervised. The
fields are surrounded by lofty barriers, while
in each a watchman, perched on a platform,
keeps guard night and day. The seeds are
set in ridges, the tender shoots being pro-
tected from sun or storm by sheds of thatch
or coarse cloth. During the first year or two
the seedlings are frequently transplanted.
They do not attain to maturity until about
the fifth year, and, as a rule, are not culled
before the sixth or seventh. The leaves are
said to possess emetic and expectorant prop-
erties, but the roots alone are employed medi-
cinally, being prescribed as a tonic in every
disease that is attended by debility. It is as
an aphrodisiac, however, that ginseng is in
greatest request throughout the whole of the
Orient. It is taken in the form of an extract
or decoction, the latter mode being generally
preferred. It is usually taken in the morn-
ing and at bedtime. From three to five
grammes of the root constitute a daily dose,
and the exhibition may be continued for a
week or more. Several unsuccessful attempts
have been made to introduce the drug into
Europe.

Pilgrims ef the Japanese Alps, — In ex-
ploring what are called the Japanese Alps,
the Rev. Walter Weston found himself in a
region still unaffected by European innova-
tions; a plateau more than a hundred and
twenty miles long, surrounded by mountain
ridges, and known, on account of its se-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

571

eluded position, as "the island province."
The old superstitions prevail there in full
force : " Hunters burn candles and pray to
the spirit of the crag they are climbing " ; a
black dog or white paper is a charm against
the evil one ; and " the drawing of ' a horse
rampant' is a recognized prophylactic against
smallpox." Until a few years ago women
were not allowed to climb beyond a certain
limit; and when the wife of one of the
mountaineers ventured beyond it she was
turned, they say, into a stone. Mr. Weston
had the very pillar pointed out to him. But
the charm is now broken, and women can
climb in security. It is, however, considered
sacrilegious to climb a mountain till proper
parties have been sent to the top to pray
the gods for good weather. The mountains
are ten thousand or more feet high, of vari-
ous geological character, and, being near the
sea, command peculiar views. Hodekadaka
is granite ; Yarigsiake, the highest peak
after Fujisan, is of brecciated porphyry ;
and Fujisan, nearly two thousand feet
higher than the others, is a crater. No
railroad or common road enters the moun-
tain region, though both come near it. Mr.
Weston met several "pilgrim clubs" — a
sort of Alpine clubs having a more numer-
ous membership and costing less than those
of the West. " Every year, before the sea-
son commences, they meet and decide by
ballot who shall climb the sacred mountains.
. . . They also stamp their alpenstocks
with the names of the mountains they have
ascended." They regard their exercise as
a religious one, and as they went up they
chanted, " May our six senses be pure, and
may the weather on the honorable peak be
fine!"

The Longevity of Astronomers. — We

take the following from an article under the
above title in The Observatory. The longev-
ity of astronomers has often been called at-
tention to. The Herschels, the Cassinis, and
others have been notable examples. This
is all the more curious, as their vocation
necessitates late hours and constant exposure
to night air. The following consists, says
the writer of the paper, of a portion of a list
of the names of well-known men connected
with astronomy who have lived beyond the
allotted human span of " threescore years

and ten." The ages are correct to within a

few months :

Obit. Age.

Fontenelle, Bernard de 1757 100

Herechel, Caroline L 1848 08

Cassini, Count J. D 1845 97

Sabine, Sir Edward 1883 94

Mairan, De 1771 93

Somerville, Mary 1872 92

Santini, Giovanni 1877 91

Sharpe, Abraham 1742 91

Long, Dr. Roger 1770 90

Airy, Sir George Biddell 1892 90

Thales b.c. 550 90

Humboldt, Alexander von 1859 90

Robineon, Rev. T. R 1883 90

Bouillaud, Ismael 1694 89

Rosenberger, Prof. Otto A 1890 89

Gautier, Jean Alfred 1881 88

Biot,J.B 1863 88

Ca6sini,J.D 1712 87

Messier, Charles 1817 87

Wallis, J 1703 87

Brewster, Sir David 18G8 86

Halley, Edmund 1742 86

Schwabe, Samuel Heinrich 1875 86

Barlow, Peter 1862 86

Pingre, Alexander Guy 1796 85

Longomontanus 1647 85

Horrebow, P 1764 85

Whiston, William 1752 85

Pritchard, Rev. Charles 1893 85

Maclear, Sir Thomas 1879 85

Button, Dr. Charles 1823 85

Dick, Dr. Thomas 1857 i!4

Wooihouse, W. S. B 1893 84

Newton, Sir Isaac 1737 84

Le Monnier, Peter Charles 1799 84

Herschel, Sir F. William 1823 84

Lee, Dr. John 1866 83

Bernouilli, Daniel 1782 82

Troughton, Edward 1&35 82

Gibers, Dr. William 1840 82

South, Sir James 1867 82

Le Gendre, Jean 1833 82

Nasmyth, James 1890 82

Eratosthenes b.c 195 81

AristarchuB ? b. 0. 280 81

Emerson 1882 81

Moestlin, Michael 1631 81

Maurolico 1575 81

Bernouilli, John 1748 81

Kant, Immanuel 1804 80

La ssell, William 1880 80

Piazzi, Joseph 1826 80

MMler, J. H 1874 80

De Lisle, Joseph N 1768 80

Bacon, Roger 1294 80

De La Hire, P 1718 80

Types of the Unemployed. — Of forty-two
men in a German colony for unemployed work-
ingmen, described by Mr. Josiah Flynt in the
Atlantic Monthly, mechanics and common la-
borers were most numerous, while others had

572

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been in various occupations, and even noble-
men were represented. A third of them
were boys and young men, while the major-
ity were between thirty and fifty years of
age. Two had been in the United States —
one as a labor agitator, while the other had
never gone a day without work here, if he
wanted it. Other men were in the colony
" because they had been unable to find even
a bread-and-water existence." They had
sought work, always in the large towns, but
leaving aside the smaller places, where the
farmers were asking for laborers. Most of
the old men had trades, " but were too old
to ply them satisfactorily." One had come
to trouble through politics, another because
he was unfortunate in his family life. One,
who had indulged a ruthless passion for
cruelty and killing, was distinguished for his
devout piety. The men expressed their hos-
tility to the church, the monarchy, the army,
and the police. Very few of them were out-
and-out disbelievers, but nearly all had their
own private religious ideas, and were per-
fectly sincere in stating them. Politically
they were revolutionists, republicans, or so-
cialists. They all thought they knew what
ailed the world, and what it needed for its
regeneration, but it hardly ever seemed to
occur to them that they had any personal
responsibility in the reforms suggested. They
seemed to consider themselves as something
aloof from society, justified in making all
manner of criticisms, but not required to
look into their own failings and sins. Tramps
have this same trait. They will talk for
hours at a hang-out campfire about what
ought to be done to make the world better,
and at times with a clearness of perception
and earnestness of argument that are unex-
celled; but let a little personal introspec-
tion or criticism be suggested, " and a silence
comes over them like that of the grave-
yard."

The Bordeanx Vineyards. — As described
by C. L. Marlatt, in a report to our Govern-
ment on wine-making in France, the vine-
yards of the Bordeaux district extend along
the Gironde and Garonne Rivers, and their
products are classed and known according
to the situation of the plantations or the
nature of the soil. The most famous of
these tracts, that of Medoc, extends from

Bordeaux to the sea and between the rivers
and the Landes. This tongue of land, al-
most a peninsula, is entirely planted with
vines, and for a distance of fifty miles and
five or six miles in breadth the land is occu-
pied by vineyards. These are separated into
small communes, each of which bears some
celebrated or ancient name, as Margaux, Saint-
Julien, etc., and produces its distinct and
well-known brand of wines. The wines vary
also according to the vintages, the qualities
being affected by variations of seasons. The
wines as they are quoted in the market usu-
ally bear the name of some chateau or other.
These chateaux, the fame of some of which
has become world-wide, are for the most
part simply country seats, in which the pro-
prietor resides from time to time. The term
chateau was formerly applied to old mano-
rial residences, and the antique appearance
and baronial style of architecture of some of
the houses is still suggestive of this associa-
tion. Oxen are generally used in the rough
work of the cultivation of the vineyards,
while the more delicate operations are per-
formed by women, who in their neat dresses
present a very picturesque appearance among
the vines. Some of the cellars in which the
wines are stored are very large, and the long
rows of hogsheads in them have an imposing
appearance. In them the wine is bottled,
and stoppered with an especial cork bearing
the name of the ch&teau. The best wines
are kept here for long periods of time, in
order to develop the special qualities, coming
only with age, which give them their repu-
tation.

Early Writing Materials. — Quintus Cur-
tius is cited by Dr. Biihler, in his work on
Indian-Aryan Philology, as affirming that
birch bark was in use among the Hindus
for writing at the time of Alexander the
Great. Its employment began in the north-
west, where the extensive birch forests of
the Himalayas afforded abundant material,
and gradually spread to the other parts of
the peninsula. The oldest examples of it,
says Mr. A. A. Macdonnell in The Academy,
are twists found in Buddhist topes of Af-
ghanistan and in the Bower MS. of the fifth
century a. d. According to the testimony of
the ancient canonical Buddhist works, leaves,
probably those of the palms, were the

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

S73

ordinary writing material of tlie oldest
times. The earliest example is the Horiazi
palm-leaf Sanskrit MS. of the sixth century
A. D., which is preserved in Japan, and of
which the Bodleian Library, Oxford, pos-
sesses a facsimile. In northern India, where
they were written on with ink, palm leaves
ceased to be used after the introduction of
paper ; but in the south, where the writing
was scratched in with a stylus, they are still
employed. Paper was introduced by the Mo-
hammedans, and has been very extensively
used for manuscripts. The oldest Gujerat
paper manuscript dates from the beginning
of the thirteenth century. Neither varnished
boards, such as are used in Burma for man-
uscripts, have been found in India, nor
leather or parchment, which the regulations
against impurity of materials would forbid
Hindus from using. Copper plates were
early and frequently used for inscriptions.
They furnish a curious illustration of the
narrowness of the limits of invention, in that
they practically all imitate the shape either
of the palm leaves or of strips of birch bark.

Arid Tncatan. — The second contribu-
tion by Dr. C. F. Millspaugh to the Field
Columbian Museum, on the Coastal and Plain
Flora of Yucatan, relates to a region pecul-
iar in its biological character, and differing
essentially from the surrounding regions, es-
pecially in its flora. There all plants have a
desiccated appearance, due to their struggle
against drought, while in the neighboring
areas — Honduras, Guatemala, Chiapas, and
Tabasco — the wealth of exuberant vegeta-
tion is marked. The difference is brought
about partly by orographic features — the
other regions having elements of mountain
and ridge and large streams of which the
Yucatan region is destitute, and its soil and
coralline substratum being so porous that
whatever rain falls quickly filters into cavi-
ties, caverns, and faults beneath the surface.
Hence the only residual supply of water avail-
able for vegetation is held in the peculiar sar-
tenejas, aguadas, and cenotes. The sartenejas
are depressions in the plain, from a few ounces
to several hogsheads in capacity, at the bot-
tom of which suSicient marshy soil has been
formed to retain such water as falls into
them. These soon dry up after the rainy
season and their vegetation lies dormant.

The aguadas are simply larger sartenejas,
usually of circular outline and from fifty to
one hundred feet in diameter. They retain
stagnant water and m-^ in tain a growth of
mud plants throughout the year. The
cenotes are deep, perpendicular-walled, near-
ly circular wells, penetrating the floor of the
plain and opening into an abundant supply
of clear, cool water, saturated with carbonate
of lime. They are from a few feet to a
hundred yards or more in diameter, and
from thirty to two hundred feet deep to the
water level, and prove by their frequency
and extent that this great plain is as freely
watered far below its surface as most coun- •
tries are above. Mr. Millspaugh's list of
plants collected in this region and its islands
includes 418 genera and V34 species.

Owl Trees. — It is common knowledge or
common supposition that owls nest in the
hollows of trees ; and since sentiment is
turning to regard these birds as beneficial
enemies of vermin rather than noxious de-
stroyers of useful things, talk is occasionally
heard of protecting and encouraging them
— as Sir Montstuart Grant Duff has done.
An English writer has been investigating
their nesting places, and finds that they pre-
fer pollard elms in which repeated cuttings
have caused growths of gnarls and protu-
berances and all sorts of shapeless hiding
places. In one of these trees become a
habitation of birds he found the center of
the crown forming a kind of platform walled
round by the ruins of what should have
been branches. The floor of the platform
was constituted of rotten wood, leaf mold,
and dead sticks, mixed with the bones and
fur of " finely pulverized mice." " The
bases of the branches, or what should have
been branches, were hollow shells, often
measuring yards across, with various holes,
bulges, knots, and cracks, some piercing the
sides, some making only side chambers and
shelves. These caverns are the chosen
home of the white owl. In one she sleeps,
in another she lays her eggs, in a third
she has her larder when the young owls are
growing up. In another similar tree, if one
be near, her husband sleeps by day ; and
from any one of the doors or windows she
slips out and flies noiselessly across the
meadow when an intruder scrambles into

574

POPULAR BCIENCE MONTHLY.

the crown of the old tree. There is such a
labyrinth of passages in the hollow cham-
bers that to find the nest is not easy, even
when the place of the bird's exit is marked."
The testimony to the service rendered by
the owls during the vole plague, given be-
fore a parliamentary commission of inquiry,
is declared to be sufficient to justify com-
plete protection of them by law.

Chess Players' Vision. — The study of the
psychology of the great chess players has
given Prof. Alfred Binet opportunity to de-
scribe a special form of visual memory
which he calls geometrical. As represented
by the players, the elements of blindfold
chess playing are reducible to the three prin-
ciples of erudition, memory, and imagination.
By imagination, corresponding to what psy-
chologists call visualization, they represent
to themselves as if they saw them the posi-
tions of the pieces on the board. It is not
an uncommon faculty, but is developed to a

rarely high degree in the chess player ; and
has the peculiar power of abstracting from
the object visualized solely the qualities ne-
cessary for the combinations of the game,
consisting of the reciprocal positions of the
pieces and their motions. The image seen
by the player is therefore an image of fixed
positions and possible movements ; or, a
geometrical visual image. A second element
of blindfold chess playing is the recapitulat-
ing memory, or the faculty of repeating all
the movements in the order in which they
have been played. Blindfold playing rests
chiefly on the exercise of these two memo-
ries— the memory of position and the memo-
ry of recapitulation. The third element of
the play, erudition, comprehends the recent
memory of a game. The analysis of it fur-
nishes a good occasion for studying the true
character of what may be called the memory
of ideas, and the part which former recol-
lections play in the acquisition of new con-
ceptions.

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

Experiments on the influence of music
upon respiration recorded by MM. Alfred
Binet and J. Courtier in the Annee Psycho-
logique for 1897 indicate that musical sounds,
chords, and music in general as a sensorial
excitation, independent of all suggested feel-
ings, provoke acceleration of respiration, in-
creasing as the movement is more lively,
without disturbing the regularity of the
breathing or augmenting its amplitude. The
major mode is more exciting than the minor.
The heart is similarly affected. The distinc-
tion between sad or solemn and lively music
appears to be for the most part wholly the-
oretical, and hardly squares with the com-
plexity of the musical emotions produced by
the melodies with the infinite shadings sug-
gested by the ideas of the libretto. The
authors, however, infer from their researches
that the acceleration of the heart and of
respiration was not so marked during the
hearing of sad pieces as in those in which
joy and high excitation of musical emotions
prevail.

A NOVEL use is proposed for the pith of
cornstalks as a packing between the inner
and outer shell of war vessels. When pierced
with a projectile it will absorb water and

swell so rapidly as to close the opening be-
fore the vessel has leaked to a dangerous
extent. This quality is under investigation
by official commissions of some of the Euro-
pean nations. The by-product of the process
of preparation seems to be equally valuable.
The outer rim of the stalk ground up is
found to make a fine and palatable food for
cattle and horses. It is said to compare
favorably too with the corn blades, timothy
hay, and wheat bran. It also keeps well,
and can be uniformly mixed with any ground
grain.

Marked preferences for different kinds
and altitudes of perching places are shown
by different birds. The domesticated pigeon
perches almost exclusively on buildings ; in
fact, the seldom flying domestic fowl takes
oftener to trees. Wild pigeons, of course,
must needs perch in trees. The Spectator
calls attention to the fact that some species
are never satisfied unless they occupy the
absolutely highest point in the neighbor-
hood. Thus, while the jackdaw will sit on
any part from the buttresses to the vane of
a cathedral, the stork, the gull, the cormo-
rant, and the falcon always seem uneasy un-
less perched upon the summit of the build-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

S7S

ing or crag which they choose for a resting
place. The Rev. A. Morres writes to The
Field giving some observations on the fal-
cons that for many years have made Salis-
bury spire their haunt. The first year that
he saw them one of four peregrines settled
on the weathercock, four hundred feet high.
On crags and cliffs along the coast seafowl
always occupy the highest points. One even-
ing in the autumn of 1893 a cormorant,
probably driven inland by a storm, alighted
on the arrow of the weathercock on the
summit of the parish church spire in New-
ark-on-Trent, where it remained until morn-
ing. For nearly eight weeks it returned
each night to its perch upon the arrow, final-
ly disappearing in a November gale. In
India the adjutant storks always prefer to
stand on the topmost pinnacles of high
buildings. Once, when a brick had been
left on the highest part of the roof of a
house during some repairs, an adjutant was
seen to take his stand upon the brick, thus
gaining an extra two inches of altitude.

NOTES.

The second session of the Monsalvat
School of Comparative Religion (Lewis G.
Janes, Director) is to be held at Greenacre,
Eliot, Maine, August 3d to September 2d.
The purpose of this school is entirely unsec-
tarian, and is described to be to afford op-
portunity for the scientific study of various
forms of philosophical and religious thought
under competent teachers. The lectures in-
clude courses on the History and Philosophy
of Religion and on Christian Origins, by the
director ; the Vedantic Philosophy and the
Religions of India, by the Swa,nii Sarada-
nanda, of India ; Buddhism, by the Anagarika
H. Dharmapala, of Ceylon ; The Philosophy
and Religion of the Jains, by Mr. Virchaud
R. Gandhi, of Bombay ; Zoroaster and the
Religion of the Parsis, by Mr. Jehanghier D.
Cola, of Bombay; and The Religions of
China, by the Rev. F. H. James, missionary.
A conference for the comparative study of
religions will be held during the last week of
the school, at which Rabbi Hirsch, of Chi-
cago, Mr. Gandhi, Edward B. Rawson, of
New York, and Mrs. Annie Besant will
speak on special subjects.

The Newcastle Daily Chronicle of De-
cember 17, 1896, speaking of the trial trip
of the torpedo boat Turbinia, built by the
Marine Steam Turbine Company, Limited,
for the purpose of testing the steam turbine
engine of Hon. Charles Parsons, says : " Sev-
eral most successful runs were made, and
the very high speed of 29 6 knots was

attained over the measured mile. It is be-
lieved that this is a speed greatly in excess
of anything tliat has ever been previously ac-
complished by a vessel of the small dimen-
sions of the Turbinia, which is only one hun-
dred feet in length, nine feet in beam, and
has but forty-two tons displacement when
fully loaded." As this was only a trial trip,
a still higher speed is anticipated after re-
peated experiments.

It is stated in Nature that M. Camille
Flammarion has I'ecently compiled some
meteorological statistics regarding the
amount of rainfall in Paris, which disclose
the remarkable fact that there has been a
gradual increase in the fall for the last two
hundred years. The following brief table
speaks for itself :

Mm.

1689 to 1719 4S5-7

1720 to 1754 409-4

1778 to 1797 492-5

1804 to 1824 503-7

1825 to 1844 507-5

1845 to 1872 522-4

1873 to 1896 557-4

Whether this increase is actually due to
more rain or to some such causes as better
positions for rain gauges, or more improved
gauges themselves, one can not with cer-
tainty say, but the amount of increase seems
rather to negative this. It would be inter-
esting to have similar data from other Con-
tinental cities.

The account of the Proceedings of the
National Science Club, at its second annual
meeting in January, 1896, is late in reaching
us, but it loses none of its interest for all
that. The purpose of the club is to promote
the cooperation of the scientifically inclined
women of the country in research and inves-
tigation. Twenty papers were read at the
annual meeting by members of the club ;
meetings were held at the reading rooms,
1425 New York Avenue, Washington, sev-
eral days each week till May ; and an experi-
mental course of lectures was given with
much success. All parts of the country are
represented in the list of nearly a hundred
and fifty members, and Norway and Spain
furnish corresponding members. The club
has twenty-two sections, five of which are in
botany.

In a paper read in the British Associa-
tion, Mr. W. H. Preece mentioned electrical
disturbances in submarine cables which pro-
duce mutilation of signals and loss of speed
in telegraph working, indistinctness of speech
and the presence of extraneous and disturb-
ing sounds in telephones, with reduction of
the distance through which speech is prac-
ticable, which, he said, were due to electro-
static and electro-magnetic induction and to
leakage. The paper explained how these
disturbances were detected, measured, and
mitigated, defined the conditions that deter-
mine the distance through which telephony

576

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is possible, and described a new form of
cable with which the author proposed to con-
nect England and Germany. With such a
cable across the Atlantic, he claimed, treble
or quadruple the number of words per hour
now practicable might be transmitted with
the same weight of material.

Dr. C. Le Neve Foster, her Majesty's In-
spector of Mines, while visiting the Snaefell
lead mine, Isle of Man, after a recent disas-
trous explosion there, was, by a series of ac-
cidents, exposed to poisoning by carbonic-
oxide gas for about two hours, until he was
taken out on the verge of death. There were
several of the party who had to be taken up
one at a time, and he was the last to go.
For an hour and a half he recorded notes of
his feelings while sinking under the influence
of the poison, the last entry giving the time
he reached the top. Happily, he recovered.
" The world," says Nature, " could ill spare
a man with such sterling qualities, and sci-
ence would grieve to lose an investigator who
devoted what seemed to be his last moments
to extending knowledge for the ' benefit of
others.' " Such heroism would have won
immortal fame for a military man.

Prof. Bessey, in the American Natural-
ist, criticises some recent botanical publica-
tions for employing English units of meas-
urements, and urges botanical writers to
insist upon the use of metric measures
throughout. This would all be very well, but
that there are some clear-headed people who
insist that our system should not be super-
seded by any but the best, and who still be-
lieve that the metric system has not yet
proved itself to be that. If it is really the
best, it will work its way without special
urging.

Mr. E. p. Martin, of the Iron and Steel
Institute, observed at its annual spring meet-
ing, 1897, that American steel makers excel
enormously those of Great Britain in the
output they obtain from their appliances.
They have thus, in spite of the high wages
that prevail in America, by working in this
wholesale manner brought the cost of pro-
duction to a very low ebb, so that it is now
a question not how much steel British pro-
ducers should send to America, but how far
they can meet American competition within
their own boundaries.

Sir Augustus W. Franks, President of
the English Society of Antiquaries, who died
in May, in his seventy- second year, early de-
veloped a taste for mediaeval archffiology, on
which he was a leading authority ; became
an assistant in the British Museum in 1851,
and afterward Keeper of the Department of
British and Mediaeval Antiquities and of Eth-
nography, and was subsequently till his death
a member of the Standing Committee. His
principal discovery in archaeology was to dis-
tinguish the period of " late Celtic " antiqui-

ties. Among his archaeological works are
Ornamental Glazing Quarries, Medallic Illus-
trations of British History, and an edition
of Kemble's Horaj Ferales, which his addi-
tions converted, Nature says, into a standard
work.

Mr. a. D. Bartlett, Superintendent of
the London Zoological Gardens, whose death
has recently been announced, was originally
a hairdresser, and incidentally a bird fan-
cier, specially knowing in canary birds. He
obtained a position in connection with the
animals at the Crystal Palace, and afterward
at Regent's Park. He acquired a remark-
able acquaintance with animal life, its habits
and diet, and was a skillful appraiser of the
value of specimens. With all these accom-
plishments in zoology he was not a writer.

Mr. Edward James Stone, for the past
twenty years Director of the Radcliffe Ob-
servatory, died in Oxford, England, May 9tb,
aged sixty-six years. Previous to assuming
charge of RadcUffe Observatory he had been
her Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape of
Good Hope. His special field was the " as-
tronomy of position,'' and his reputation was
mainly won by devotion to meridian observa-
tions. He studied the constants of nutation
and refraction, the proper motions of the
stars, the systematic differences between
stellar catalogues, the motion of the solar
system in space, and the sun's parallax ; and
contributed much to the organization of the
various astronomical expeditions to the south-
ern hemisphere. He had been President of
the Royal Astronomical Society, and held
other relations to several learned bodies.

The death is announced at Gothenburg,
Sweden, of Baron Oscar Dickson, the wealthy
merchant who helped equip Nordenskiold's
first (1868) and bore the entire expense of his
second arctic expedition (18'72-"73). Baron
Dickson was also a large contributor to the
expeditions of 1875, 1876, and 1877.

Matthew Ca^rey Lea, who died in Phila-
delphia on March 15th, devoted himself es-
pecially to the study of the chemistry of pho-
tography, and particularly to the action of
light, etc., on the salts of silver, and pub-
lished in 1887 a paper on the Identity of the
Photo-salts of Silver with the Material of the
Latent Photographic Image. He discovered
and described three allotropic states of silver.
He was a frequent contributor on this and
related subjects to the American Journal of
Science, had published fifty-four " more im-
portant " papers when elected to the National
Academy of Sciences in 1892, and issued in
1868 a Manual of Photography, which reached
a second edition in 1871.

The deaths are announced abroad of
Julius von Sachs, the distinguished botan-
ical author, and of the veteran chemist, Frese-
nius.

SAMUEL LOCKWOOD.

1^ iLIBR

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SOIEKOE
MONTHLY.

SEPTEMBER, 1897.
SPANISH EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE.

By henry CHAELES LEA.

MUCH instructive research, has of late years been devoted to
the history and inevitable results of paper inflation. The
French assignats, our own continental money, colonial overissues,
and the practically irredeeroable currency of the banks of some
of the States prior to the civil war have furnished subjects for
elaborate discussion and have yielded their appropriate warnings ;
but I am not aware that the most remarkable and significant of
all attempts to create and sustain fiat money has ever received
the attention which is its due, I term it the most remarkable
because it was made with coin and not with paper, and the vitiated
currency was comparatively small in amount, because it was car-
ried on for more than two centuries with true Spanish persistency,
and because it permanently and disastrously affected the desti-
nies of a great nation. Many causes contributed to the decadence
of Spain, but, after the expulsion of the Jews and Moors, none
perhaps did more to destroy its industry and commerce than its
vicious currency legislation. The story is a long one, and I can
here touch only on its more salient points. If some of the meas-
ures adopted should seem incredibly violent, it must be borne in
mind that they were the devices, not of rude and unlettered sav-
ages, but of the best trained and most experienced statesmen of
the land vainly seeking to escape the consequences of the first
fatal step in the wrong direction. The lesson taught is the more
impressive from the fact that, in the sixteenth century, Spain was
by far the richest and most powerful state in Europe, practically
owning Italy through her hold on Naples, Milan, Sicily, Sardinia,
and Corsica, and mistress of the wealthy provinces of the Nether-

TOL. LI. 44

578 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

lands. She, moreover, enjoyed the monopoly of commerce with
the New World and its stores of precious metals ; and this enor-
mous power, military and financial, was wielded by an absolute
monarch who combined the legislative and executive functions
unhampered and unrestrained. If ever a successful attempt could
be made to overcome the self-acting laws which govern trade it
could be made by Philip II and his successors.

Like all other mediaeval kingdoms, Castile had had ample ex-
perience of the evils of an uncertain standard of value. In the
latter half of the fifteenth century the feeble Henry IV, among
other devices to secure the allegiance of faithless magnates, parted
freely with the right to coin money, until there were about a hun-
dred and fifty private mints scattering their issues throughout
the land. The crown itself reduced the standard of gold coin to
7 carats, while the irresponsible private coiners debased it to what-
ever their cupidity dictated. When Ferdinand and Isabella .came
to the throne their resolute sagacity speedily put an end to this
deplorable condition. In their final legislation the gold standard
was fixed at 23f carats ; that of silver at the one traditional in
Spain known as 11 dineros and 4 grains, equivalent to 0"935 fine.
The marc, or half pound, of gold, containing 4,008 grains, was
worked into 05^ exceleides or ducats, also known as escudos or
crowns. The marc of silver was worked into 07 reales or ryals.
The monetary unit was the maravedi, of which there were 34 to
the ryal and 374 to the crown, there being thus 11 ryals to the
crown. For convenience in small transactions there was an alloy
known as vellon, consisting of 7 grains of silver to the marc of
copper, the marc being worked into 192 hlancas, the blanca being
lialf a maravedi, and the value of the marc of alloy and the cost
of coinage being reckoned at 90 maravedis.*

In 1537 Charles V reduced the standard of the gold crown to
22 carats and its weight to 08 to the marc, diminishing its value to
330 maravedis, which he says brought it to an equality with the
best coinage of France and Italy. In 1552, moreover, he reduced
the silver alloy in the marc of vellon from 7 to b^ grains, giving
as a reason that there had been a profit in the exportation of the

* It will perhaps facilitate the comprehension of the Spanish coinage to remind the
reader that the peso or realde d ocho, the " piece of eight," containing 8 rvals, is the Span-
ish dollar, adopted as our monetary unit by act of Congress in 1786. The ryal is thus one
eighth of a dollar, or 12^ cents, well known to the older generation, when our silver cur-
rency was almost exclusively Spanish or Mexican, as the " ninepence " of New England
and Virginia, the " shilling " of New York, and the " elevenpenny bit " shortened to " levy "
in Pennsylvania, or to " bit " in the West and Southwest. Our " quarter " was the two-
ryal piece or peseta, and the " pistareen," which rated at 20 cents, was the similar coin of an
inferior currency, which, as we shall see hereafter, was known as " provincial."

The maravedi, as the thirty-fourth part of the silver ryal, was equivalent to nearly
three eighths of a cent.

SPANISH EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE.

579

hlancas, rendering them scarce at home. Thus far there had been
no serious tampering with the currency, but not long after this,
in 15G6, the necessities of Philip II led him to seek relief in de-
basing the minor coinage. lb is true that he was the richest
monarch in the civilized world ; that, besides his revenues from
his European dominions, the crown claimed twenty per cent of all
the precious metals mined in the Indies and ten percent seignior-
age for minting the rest ; but the Venetian envoy Paolo Tiepolo
tells us in 15G5 that his expenditure for interest alone was
5,050,000 ducats per annum, which, when capitalized at eight per
cent, amounted to 63,000,000 ducats of indebtedness — a sum in-
credible even to the Italian financiers of the period. He had
little scruple as to the means of alleviating the burden. In 1559
he had experimented with methods suggested to him of issu-
ing money falsified with a certain powder combined with quick-
silver, which when rubbed over copper gave it the semblance of
silver, and was proof, as we are told, against the touchstone and
the hammer, but not against fire. One inventor of this promising
scheme, named Tiberio della Rocca, lost Philip's favor through
a quarrel with the royal confessor ; another one, a German named
Peter Sternberg, was more fortunate, and secured payments
amounting to 2,000 ducats for his discovery ; but, although every
effort was made to keep the matter secret, the Cortes got wind
of it, and their remonstrances forced the abandonment of the
scheme.

Compared with this wholesale fraud, an enlargement of the
token coinage of base metal might well seem harmless, and it is
a striking proof of the dangers attendant on any vitiation of the
currency that consequences so deplorable and so lasting should
have sprung from a source apparently so trivial. In 1566 Philip
ordered the coinage of a new alloy, to be known as moneda de
vellon rica, with a larger proportion of silver — 98 grains to the
marc of copper, or about ^\. The coins were all small : quartillos,
80 to the marc, to be current for a quarter of a ryal (about three
cents) ; quartos, 170 to the marc, worth four maravedis (about a
cent and a half) ; and medios quartos, 340 to the marc, worth two
maravedis. At the same time the old blancas, two to the mara-
vedi, were retained, but the silver alloy was reduced to four
grains in the marc ; and the number to be worked from the marc
was increased to 240, augmenting the profit on every marc by a
ryal and a quarter. What amount of this new vellon coinage
was poured forth from the mint we have no means of ascertain-
ing, but there can be little doubt that it was as great as the rude
mechanical facilities of the age were capable of producing, for
Philip's necessities were ever growing, what with the construc-
tion of the Escurial, the x>erpetual drain of the Flemish revolt,

58o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the maintenance of the religious wars in France, the conquest of
Portugal, the crusade which brought the triumph of Lepanto,
the collapse of the Armada, and other ceaseless efforts, prompted
by zeal for the faith and thirst of aggrandizement. Yet the
infiltration of the currency with these little debased coins was a
slow process, and its effects were correspondingly deferred, but
they manifested themselves at last, and the calderilla — as this
coinage came to be popularly designated — grew to be a load
which the ablest statesmen of Spain for a century vainly endeav-
ored to shake off. Apparently the process of manufacture be-
came too slow to supply the increasing wants of the treasury,
for we hear in 1603 of a restamping of the vell(5n coinage,
doubtless to give it an increased fictitious value. At the same
time Philip III made a new issue of pure copper, to the amount
of 2,448,000 ducats, working 280 maravedis to the marc, the cost
of metal and coinage being only 80 maravedis. Prices rose, and
there was general discontent, voiced by the learned historian
Mariana in a tract on the coinage written with so much vigor
that it cost him an imprisonment by the Inquisition. Thus the
reservoir became filled to overflowing, and the inevitable depre-
ciation commenced. To arrest it Philip III, in 1619, solemnly
decreed that there should be no more vellon money coined for
twenty years ; but financial promises of this nature are made to
be broken, as is witnessed by Philip IV, in 1632, renewing the
pledge conditionally for another twenty years. In spite of these
promises, the vellon fell to a discount. There was no formal
suspension of gold and silver payments; the silver fleet from
Mexico and the galleons from Tierra Firma yearly poured into
Spain the treasure won from the mines of the New World; but
all the power of an autocratic sovereign could not maintain the
parity of the currency. The inequality became so firmly estab-
lished that it had to be recognized, and Philip IV, in 1625, en-
deavored to regulate it by a decree permitting a difference of
ten per cent. Beyond this any transaction entailed on the re-
ceiver, for a first offense, the forfeiture of the principal with a
fourfold fine, applicable in thirds to the informer, the judge, and
the fisc ; for a second offense, the same, with the addition of six
years' exile. At the same time it was enacted that no one could
demand gold or silver who had not given them, and no obliga-
tion to pay in gold or silver was lawful unless gold or silver
was lent. These provisions show that already the vell(5n coinage
had risen from its function as a token currency in petty deal-
ings, and was rapidly becoming the standard medium of ex-
change in all commercial transactions. It is as such that we
shall have henceforth to consider it, and it is to this that it owes
its importance.

SPANISH EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE. 581

Tlie situation was growing insupportable. Commerce and in-
dustry were equally stagnant. No land in Europe had greater
resources than Spain in the fine wools of Castile, Aragon, and La
Mancha ; the flax and hemp of Asturias, Catalonia, Galicia, and
Leon ; the excellent silk of Murcia and Valencia ; the iron, steel,
and timber of Navarre, Guipuscoa and Biscay ; the wines and
fruits of Andalusia ; but these were all exported as raw materi-
als, and though the trade of the Indies was a jealous monopoly,
half the goods sent thither in the fleets were the property of Hol-
landers, under the names of Spaniards, although Spain was at war
with Holland. Partly this was attributable to the disordered cur-
rency, and the communities throughout the Peninsula supplicated
the crown for relief. There was but one way to obtain this — by
retracing the vicious course of the last half century, and the at-
tempt was heroically made. By a pragmatica of August 7, 1628,
it was decreed that after the day of publication all the velldn
money should be reduced one half in value. To diminish the loss
to the holders a complicated arrangement was ordered, by which
one half of the depreciation should be made good to them by their
towns and villages, and in view of the sacrifice thus imposed on
the nation the royal faith was solemnly pledged by Philip IV,
for himself and his successors, with all the force of a compact be-
tween the crown and the people, that the value of the velldn coin-
age should never again be tampered with, either to raise or to
depress it. After this, any transaction disturbing the parity of
the various coinages was declared an offense subject to the severest
punishment and to render the measure effective the sternest
penalties were directed against the introduction into the king-
dom of foreign vellon money. The profits on this had already
called forth the most vigorous efforts of repression, and these
were now sharpened by declaring it to be a matter of Use majeste,
and subjecting it to the pains of heresy — death by fire, confisca-
tion of all property, and disabilities inflicted on descendants to
the second generation. Any vessel bringing it, even without the
knowledge of the master, was forfeited ; an unsuccessful attempt
to import it was punished with death, and knowledge of such
attempt without denouncing it incurred the galleys and confisca-
tion. For a while, in fact, the crime was made justiciable by the
Inquisition, which was a tribunal inspiring far greater popular
dread than the ordinary courts. Evidently the law-making
power in Spain had few scruples, and no constitutional limita-
tions in its control over the currency.

Yet with all its power it might as well have attempted to con-
trol the tides or the winds, and the solemn pledges of the throne
were not worth the paper on which they were printed. Richelieu
was pressing Spain hard, and the condition of Spanish finance

582 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

was becoming more and more desperate. Recourse was again
had to a forced loan under the device of another inflation of the
currency. A royal cedula of March 12, 1636, called in all the re-
stamped velldn; from the day of publication of the edict no one
was to pass it, or spend it, or pay it out, but was to convey it to
the nearest mint, where he would receive its current value ; and
whoever, after eighty days, was found in possession of any of it
incurred the severe penalties decreed against the holders of un-
lawful money. Having thus provided for obtaining possession
of all the coinage, the mints were set to work restamping it with
a valuation threefold that which it had borne : the quarto, thus
far current for four maravedis, was raised to twelve, and the
other coins in proportion, while death and confiscation were
threatened for any violation of the coinage laws. The result of
this arbitrary creation of value is seen in the edict of April 30th of
the same year, permitting a premium on gold and silver of twenty-
five per cent until the arrival of the galleons, after which it was
to be reduced to twenty ; and that this was below the ruling mar-
ket rate is assumable from a sharpening of the penalties provided
for those who should demand or accept a higher premium. Six
months later an effort was made to bring the precious metals to
par by suspending the permission to exchange them at a pre-
mium, but the distress caused by this suspension was so severe
that a decree of March 20, 1637, renewed the recognition of twenty-
five per cent premium, and added that in the larger cities casas
de diputacion, or exchanges, could be established, where trans-
actions could be negotiated at twenty-eight per cent, with a bro-
kerage of one quarter or one half. The extreme importance
attached to regulating the premium is visible in the punitive
clauses of the edict. Any deviation from the established rate was
classed with treason, irrevocably punishable with confiscation,
disability for office, and personal infamy. In prosecutions all
reasonable means of defense were withdrawn from the accused ;
the names of witnesses were kept secret, and judicial forms were
not to be observed. Even ambassadorial immunity was set aside ;
the foreign ministers resident in Madrid were liable to accusa-
tion, when the king would determine as to their imprisonment
and punishment.

This was speedily followed by a reaction. Of course, there
were two parties in Spain, as elsewhere — inflationists and contrac-
tionists — and the policy of the state fluctuated as one or the other
obtained preponderance with the king, or rather with his all-
powerful minister, the Count-Duke Olivares. The contractionists
now had control, and their views were expressed in a pragmatica
of January 29, 1638, which lamented the misfortunes brought
upon the land by the superabundance of velldn money which had

SPANISH EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE. 583

injured commerce, had raised extravagantly the prices of the
necessaries of life, and had driven silver out of circulation, de-
priving it of its natural function as money and converting it into
a commodity to be bought and sold, while the only currency was
the debased coinage, fabricated for the most part by the enemies
of Spain, eager to gain the enormous profits accruing from its
manufacture. As this, if unchecked, may work the ruin of the
kingdom, the king declares that he has had the matter repeatedly
discussed by his ministers, and as the result he orders that all the
unstamped velldn money shall be melted down into bullion and
be sold for silver, the proceeds being used to purchase more of the
precious metal. It is expected that the vacuum thus created will
bring silver into circulation, and to aid in this all the bullion
brought by the galleons shall be coined ; moreover, the savage
edict of 1628 against the introduction of velldn is repeated ; even
the importation of copper is prohibited, and the laws forbidding
the export of the precious metals are ordered to be enforced with
the utmost rigor.

Had this policy been steadily pursued, perhaps it would in
time have restored health to the currency, but it was neutralized
by the financial exigencies of the state, which kept the mints busy
in turning out debased coinage. It was impossible under the cir-
cumstances for the contractionists to win more than a temporary
ascendency, and with the progressive dilution of the currency the
premium on the precious metals obstinately kept advancing, in
spite of the laws which punished such trafl&c as a crime. A de-
cree of January 21, 1640, declares that this has become more
inexcusable in view of the large amount of silver brought by the
galleons in 1639 and the activity of the mints in coining velldn.
To render its chastisement more certain, the rate of twenty-eight
per cent is permitted in open market, but only for four months,
after which it will be lowered ; special judges are provided whose
sole business shall be to try infractions of this law ; every case
that is heard of shall be prosecuted, and negligent judges shall be
severely punished. The laws forbidding the export of the pre-
cious metals shall be still more vigorously enforced, especially
those which require merchants bringing foreign goods into the
country to take away an equivalent amount in merchandise.

The revolt of Portugal and Catalonia brought fresh financial
complications, and recourse was again had to the ruinous expe-
dient of a further debasement of the currency. A cedvJa of Feb-
ruary 11, 1641, orders all the four-maravedi vellon pieces to be
surrendered to the mints, where they will be paid for at their
current value ; this is to be done within thirty days, after which
they can not be paid out or otherwise used. They are then to be
restamped and issued at the valuation of eight maravedis; all

5 84 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

other restamped vellon is to be surrendered by May 15th, after
which it is to be no longer current, and disobedience of these
orders is visited with death and confiscation. The natural result
of this measure is seen in a decree of September 5th of the same
year, limiting the premium on specie to fifty per cent until the
arrival of the silver fleets. That this was below the market rate
is shown in the prohibition of all indirect ways of evasion and of
dealing in futures. How this condition afi:ected all transactions,
large and small, and how business was conducted under the double
standard, are illustrated in some statements now before me of the
expenses of the Supreme Council of the Inquisition about this
time. After summing up the aggregate of the salaries and other
items, in one case twenty- eight per cent and in another fifty per
cent is added to show the total amount to be provided in vellon.
When governmental outlays were thus increased we can not won-
der at the struggle to keep down the premium on the one hand
while stimulating it on the other by constant dilutions of the
currency. The situation affords a singularly forcible illustration
of the power possessed by an inferior money to force a superior
one out of circulation. The largest of the debased coinage was
only a piece of a quarter of a ryal, equivalent in our modern
American system to three cents, yet it had completely demone-
tized silver and gold, and had become the practical standard of
value. The Spanish possessions were the chief source from which
the civilized world obtained its supply of the precious metals, yet
Spain, in spite of the most arbitrary measures, could retain none
of them within her borders. So scarce had they become that for
twenty years, from 1623 to 1612, there had been repeated decrees
forbidding the use of gold and silver in the arts — their melting
and fashioning by artisans, even their employment for plating
and gilding and in embroidery. In 1642 these laws were supple-
mented by others prohibiting the sale of silver plate except to be
broken up for coinage, and owners were tempted to bring it to
the mints with the promise of a bonus of five per cent in vellon,
in addition to the coin that it would yield. At the same time the
laws against exportation were rendered still more rigorous, sus-
pending even licenses to carry silver away for the royal service
in Flanders and Italy.

The contractionist policy was now granted another trial, and
a comprehensive scheme was evolved to get rid of the intolerable
burden and bring all the various kinds of coinage to a parity.
The partial attempt of 1628 had proved a failure ; but if all the
base money in the land could be controlled, there was reasonable
prospect that another efl'ort might be successful. To accomplish
this a pragmatica was signed August 31, 1642, and sent under seal
to the local authorities everywhere with instructions to open it on

SPAHISJI EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE. 585

September IStli. At the same hour throughout Spain they were
to go to the shops of all bankers, brokers, agents, traders, etc.,
seize whatever vellon money they should find, weigh it, register
it, and convey it to a secure place, where it was to be kept under
three padlocks, the keys being held by as many officials. When
this was done they were to proclaim that the value of all vellon
money was reduced to one sixth : the piece that had been circu-
lating for twelve maravedis was in future to be worth but two,
and so forth. All discount or premium between the metals was
prohibited for the future, under the customary severe penalties,
and it was hoped that the general benefit thus derived to the com-
munity at large would compensate for the losses inflicted on indi-
viduals, but to lessen these there were vague promises held out
of satisfaction to be adjusted by the registry of the amount of
vell6n seized ; and it was suggested that the king would consider
any propositions made by those who should prefer honors or
privileges or some other advantages in lieu of satisfaction.

Apparently it was soon found that something more was needed
to bring the refractory metals closer together, and a cedula of
December 23d endeavored to accomplish this by diluting the sil-
ver coinage. The marc of silver, in place of furnishing sixty-
seven ryals, was ordered to be worked into eighty-three and one
quarlillo, thus diminishing the value of the ryal by twenty-five
l^er cent ; and in accordance with this, the existing pesos, or pieces
of eight, were declared to be worth ten ryals, the profit on those
in private hands being generously left to the holders. Gold was
more simply treated by marking up the crown from 440 to 550
maravedis, and by a subsequent decree of January 12, 1643, to 612.
The effect of this on the specie premium was, however, neutralized
by diminishing from 98 grains to 75'3, the amount of silver to the
marc of copper in the moneda de vellon rica, and holders of the
white metal were tempted to have it thus employed by offering to
coin it for them in vellon without charge of seigniorage.

Taken as a whole, these decrees formed but a halting measure
of contraction ; but, even as it was, it brought a strain too sudden
and severe to be endured, and the effort was soon abandoned. A
pragmatica of March 12, 1643, announced that the vellon coinage
(except some recent issue by the mint of Segovia) should in future
be current at a fourfold increase of value, the piece of two mara-
vedis being raised to eight and the rest in proportion. The dilu-
tion of the silver coinage was similarly revoked, or at least sus-
pended until the arrival of the fleet ; the pieces of eight were to
be current for eight ryals and no more, while the gold crown was
reduced to 510 maravedis. As usual, the royal word and faith
were pledged that there should be no further variation in the
value of the vellon coinage, and that it should remain forever

586 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on the basis then assigned to it. Of course, the premium on the
precious metals reappeared, and efforts to repress it by law were
vain. It had to be recognized, and in 1G47 a decree permitted it
to the extent of twenty- five per cent, with stern punishment for
those who should exceed the limit.

There could be no prosperous trade subject to such fluctua-
tions in the standard of value, and the royal revenues must have
suffered accordingly, for the next change was distinctly a method
of raising money. The old calderilla coinage of Philip II had
remained thus far undisturbed, and now by a cedula of November
11, 1651, all the rest of the base coin was restored to the value
which it had borne prior to the reduction of 1G42. The profit of
this increase was reserved to the crown by requiring all holders
of vell(5n to bring it to the mints within thirty days, after which
it was demonetized and could no longer be used as currency.
They were to receive its present value in the restamped issue at
the new rate, and any one hoarding or passing the old money after
the expiration of the limit incurred death and confiscation. The
premium on specie, in spite of the law of 1647, had already reached
fifty per cent, and the sternest penalties were decreed to prevent
its rising above that figure — for a first offense, confiscation and
six years of presidio (service in the African forts) for nobles,
confiscation and six years of galleys for plebeians ; for a second
offense, death without distinction of rank. If absolute power
could regulate values, Spanish thoroughness would have accom-
plished it.

Kings may propose, but in matters like this it is the people that
dispose. The natural result of this measure was to drive not only
the precious metals but even the calderilla out of circulation. It
required only six months to demonstrate the error committed,
and a heroic effort to bring some sort of order into the medium
of exchange was made in a pragmatica of June 25, 1652. Under
this the old calderilla remained unchanged, but the vellon griieso,
or large coinage, which had been advanced in value six months
before, was reduced to one fourth, at which it was to be current
until the end of the year, and on January 1, 1653, it was to be
demonetized and its use prohibited under the severe penalties for
passing false money. The plan of seizing it all and sequestrating
it at a given hour throughout Spain was adopted, but the crown
proposed to assume the loss, not only on about seven millions of
the restamped coin in the treasury, but by giving to those who
surrendered it assignations on the tobacco tax, bearing five per
cent interest. All arrears of taxes were also receivable in it for
two months, and various other methods were offered of relieving
the community. All the vellon griieso thus received was to be
melted down, and to make a market for the copper the laws pro-

SPANISH EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE. 587

hibiting its importation, even in tlie shape of manufactured arti-
cles, were to be strictly enforced. It was argued that when this,
which through its superabundance had caused so much trouble,
was out of the way, there would remain only the calderilla, which
would all be needed for petty traffic, so that for larger transac-
tions the precious metals would come forth and circulate abun-
dantly at par, compensating the nation for the losses and sacri-
fices entailed by the measure.

This was a bold attempt in the right direction, but it was too
sudden and too severe to be successful. It must have caused
abundant ruin and distress, and the clamor for relief must have
become irresistible, for in less than five months another edict was
issued (November 14th), announcing a complete reversal of the
means proposed for attaining the end in view. This time the
vellon grueso was retained as money and the calderilla was pro-
scribed and demonetized on the spot. Those who should register
what they held within fifteen days and surrender it within two
months were promised the same satisfaction as that ofliered in the
previous decree to the holders of vellon, and any one in whose
hands it should be found after sixty days was liable to the penal-
ties for circulating forbidden money. This reduction in the base
currency, together with the large amount of the precious metals
in the country and the yearly accessions by the fleet, it was
argued, deprived any difference in value of all excuse. As this
measure was the ultimate remedy whereby to obtain absolute
parity between them, any deviation from such equality was
declared a species of treason. Any premium or discount, how-
ever small, exposed all participating in it, whether as principals
or brokers, to confiscation and deprivation of office and of citizen-
ship. A special court was established for the prosecution of such
cases, in which the trial was to be secret and the names of the
witnesses withheld from the accused. Judges everywhere were
ordered to see that prices were reduced by one third, and all out-
standing debts and obligations were required to be settled at the
same reduction.

This fresh disturbance of all business relations was as fruitless
as its predecessors. The calderilla thus called in was not melted
down but was restamped, and by a decree of October 22, 1654, was
received at its old valuation. Large amounts had apparently
been retained by the people in spite of the threatened penalties,
and this they were told would be receivable for dues to the fisc at
one half its nominal value, or might be taken to the mints and
by exchanged for half the amount in the restamped coin. Forty
days were allowed for this, after which its possession involved
confiscation and six years of presidio, or galleys.

After this there was a pause in legislation until September 24,

588 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

1658, wlien an attempt was made to unify the minor coinage by
withdrawing the vellon grueso and substituting a new copper
issue of the same weight and nominal value as the calderilla, so
that there should be but one kind of currency. To check the
temptation to import imitations of this, the same savage penalties
as before were re-enacted — confiscation and the stake, with the
forfeiture of any vessel bringing it. The vellon grueso, however,
refused to be withdrawn, and on May 6, 1659, a compromise was
attempted by reducing it in value one half. Moderate as was this
contraction of the currency, it served merely as a prelude for
further inflation. Although the Peace of the Pyrenees, in 1659,
might be expected to lighten the financial necessities of the state,
s, pragmatica of September 11, 1660, under pretext of providing a
currency lighter, easier of transport, and more convenient for use,
ordered all the vellon grueso to be called in and reworked, so that
the marc of copper in place of producing 31 pieces of 2 maravedis
should furnish 51 pieces of 4, thus trebling its nominal value. This
must have called forth energetic expressions of dissatisfaction, for
in less than two months— on October 29th — a new project was an-
nounced. The coinage of pure copper was stopped, and in its
place a new alloy was ordered containing 20 grains of silver to
the marc (^fo)> ^o be worked into 51 pieces of 16 maravedis, and
smaller coins in proportion. The existing calderilla and vellon
grueso were allowed to remain in circulation, to be gradually
worked over into the new coinage as they should reach the treas-
ury. The new issue was styled moneda de molino de vellon ligado
— mill money alloyed — shortened into moneda de molino* and
added to the confusion by furnishing a third debased coinage, for
of course the two older ones remained in circulation. The country
speedily was flooded with the new currency, and prices began to
rise still higher. Some relief was necessary, and, as usual, it was
applied in a violent and summary manner. A pragmatica of
1664 reduced the value of the new moneda de molino by one half
— the 16-maravedi piece was to pass for only 8; for thirty days it
would be received at the old rate by the treasury in settlement of
overdue debts and taxes up to the end of 1662 ; after thirty days
it would be accepted only at fifty per cent of its face, and the
Royal Council was vaguely ordered to adopt such measures as it
should deem wise to prevent injustice between buyers and sellers,
debtors and creditors. As there ought to be only one base- metal
currency, moreover, the edict prohibited the further use of the

* It seems to have been not long before this that the mill or machine for stamping was
introduced, enabling coins to have a raised and milled edge, to check clipping. In the
Indies the primitive labor de martillo, or hammering process, was maintained until 1728,
when mills were ordered to bo erected. Where practicable, these were run with water
power ; when this was not available, by mules.

SPANISH EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE. 589

calderilla and vellon grueso — those coinages wliicli had undergone
so many vicissitudes, and which, in spite of prohibitions, persist-
ently continued in circulation. They were a shirt of Nessus,
clinging to the victim and impossible to discard.

Again the load became too onerous to be endured, and relief
was imperative. The mints were pouring forth the molino
money ; there were quantities of it in circulation of pure copper
illegitimately issued, and the land was filled with imitations
brought from abroad. To remedy this, a decree of February 10,
1680, orders the simultaneous registration and sequestration of
the whole, carefully distinguishing the three varieties. The first,
or legitimate alloyed coin, was reduced to one fourth of its exist-
ing value — that is, the piece which had been originally issued for
16 maravedis, and had in 1664 been cut down to 8, was now still
further diminished to 2; the same was done with the native
counterfeits, while the foreign ones were accepted at one eighth
of their current value. To soften the blow to the holders the
legitimate molino was redeemable at the treasury in gold or silver
at fifty per cent premium, and was receivable for sixty days for
all overdue debts to the fisc up to the end of 1677, while, as
a further act of grace, arrearages due up to the end of 1673,
amounting to over 12,000,000 ducats, were forgiven.

This measure appears to have been designed as a preliminary to
the total extinction of the molino money, for it was followed, May
23d, by an elaborate •pragmatica demonetizing this wholly and
forbidding its use, only twenty-four hours being allowed during
which it could be spent for the purchase of bread, meat, and wine,
and for nothing else. In all these efforts at contraction it was
expected that the inflated prices, which were a standing grievance,
would collapse with the diminution in the circulating medium,
and when this result did not follow with sufficient rapidity, there
was no hesitation in fixing a scale of maxima, for the trans-
gression of which heavy penalties were threatened. Thus on the
present occasion a most elaborate edict was issued, November
27, 1680, consisting of over a hundred folio pages, regulating all
dealings. All rents in Madrid are to be reduced to what they
had been in 1670, and for buildings of later construction or en-
largement the rates are to be determined by the magistrates.
Then follows a most extensive list of maximum prices, embrac-
ing nearly three thousand items, from raw materials by whole-
sale to finished products by retail, from wool by the arroha to
rhubarb by the drachm, and including what a tailor should re-
ceive for making a coat and a washerwoman for washing a
shirt. Such supervision by the state becomes endless, and a
supplementary edict was requisite. May 2, 1681, supplying omis-
sions and making changes. If currency and values were capable

590 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of governmental regulation, it would have been accomplislied
"by Spain.

All this time the prohibited cdlderilla and vellon grueso were
in circulation, the latter running 74 maravedis to the marc, or
about 56 cents of our money to the pound, while copper was
worth about 29. The legalized premium on gold and silver was
still fifty per cent. Even copper was now becoming scarce under
the ceaseless labor of the mints. A proclamation of May 14,
1683, sets forth that it is for the common benefit to have abun-
dance of copper money ; and, in order that all the metal in the
kingdom may be thus utilized, all pieces of copper brought to
the mints will be paid for at the rate of 3i ryals of vellon for
the pound. To prevent its being wasted by consumption in the
arts, all coppersmiths are forbidden to manufacture articles of it,
or to repair old ones that may be brought to them to be mended.
Their shops are to be visited, and their stocks of metal seized
and paid for at the above price ; inventories of their finished work
are to be drawn up, and sixty days allowed for the sale of the
articles. Anything concealed is declared to be forfeited, and
severe penalties of fine, confiscation, and exile are decreed for eva-
sions or infractions of the order. A false financial system had
brought Spain to such a pass that, with the wealth of the Indies
pouring into her lap, gold and silver had been driven from circu-
lation, and she was ransacking the shops for scraps of copper to
keep her mints busy.

These resources proved insufiicient to supply the ever-growing
demands of a depreciated currency, and resort was had to re-
monetizing the molino alloyed coinage which had been prohibited
in 1680. By an edict of October 9, 1684, it was restored to circula-
tion at a valuation double that which it had borne prior to its
demonetization, which would seem to render superfluous an ac-
companying threat of penalties for its exportation, the same as
for gold and silver.

Having thus apparently exhausted the possibilities of copper
inflation, attention was turned to gold and silver which had
hitherto been but little tampered with. A pragmatica of October
14, 1686, ordered a reduction of weight of twenty-five per cent in
the silver ryal by working 84 to the marc in place of 67. The
existing pesos or pieces of eight were rechristened crowns, and
were ordered to pass for ten ryals, and the smaller coins in pro-
portion. This was purely an inflation measure without any view
of reducing the discount on vellon, for the fifty per cent premium
was ordered to be applicable to the new light-weight silver coins,
of which the piece of eight was declared equivalent to twelve
ryals velldn, and the old one, now called a crown, to fifteen. No
change was made in the weight of the gold coinage, but the value

SFAJVISH EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE. 591

was raised to correspond, the single doubloon, or gold crown, being
declared worth nineteen silver ryals in place of fifteen, and a
month later it was further raised to twenty. In this reduction of
the standard the interests of the debtor class were tenderly
guarded by decreeing that outstanding obligations in gold or
silver could be settled on the new basis. Some concession, how-
ever, was made on this point where suits arose as to specie lying
on, deposit or bills of exchange drawn in silver or gold prior to
the depreciation, for these were ordered to be paid at the old
standard.

The War of Succession, which broke out in 1701, naturally
brought large quantities of French silver into Spain. The quart
d'ecu was held for a time to be equivalent to the two-ryal piece,
and came to be known as the peseta or little peso, but it was pro-
nounced to be inferior in value, and in 1709 its further introduc-
tion was prohibited. At the same time the silver standard was
reduced to eleven dineros or "91667 fine in place of the '925 at
which it had stood for centuries. This did not arrest the pro-
gressive depreciation of the vellon currency, which in 1718 we
find legally recognized in the equivalence of a silver ryal to nearly
two ryals vellon, and not long afterward the regular exchange
was as one to two. This was allowed by law, and it doubtless was
frequently exceeded, for dealers kept the copper coin in bags
representing fixed amounts, and those who preferred gold or silver
were charged extra for it. This would have worked compara-
tively little evil if the inferior currency had been confined to the
petty traffic for which it was originally designed, but for more
than a century it had become the standard of value and the
precious metals had been rendered merely a commodity. Thus
in the regulations of the mints the salaries are all defined in reales
de vellon or escudos de vellon, and the treasurer has to give
security in twenty thousand ducados de vellon on unincumbered
real estate. It was always necessary, when mentioning a sum, to
specify whether it was in reales de vellon or reales de plata, and
with the complexities which crept into the silver coinage we even
sometimes find a further definition required, as in such expressions
as " un real de plata 2^rovincial, valor de 16 quartos de vellon."
The evils entailed by the system were freely admitted, but the
country had been plunged so long into this financial debauchery
that recovery seemed impossible. In 1718 Philip V acknowledged
the grave injuries which it inflicted on trade and commerce, but
the remedy which he proposed was futile. In 1743 he again de-
plored the manner in which greed and malice had used the in-
crease of copper money to drive silver from circulation and
reduce it to the condition of merchandise. To remedy this he
ordered that payments in vellon should not exceed 300 ryals, and

592 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

he forbade any charge for exchanging the metals under the
same penalties enjoined by the law of November 14,1052 — con-
fiscation and loss of citizenship. It was in vain ; the distinction
between the coinages was too firmly established, and the tend-
ency was even to increase the premium on the precious metals.
In 1772 Charles III, in issviing a new gold coinage, prescribes that
the gold crown shall be worth 374 velldn ryals, and as it was
equal only to 16 silver ryals, this shows a premium of over one
hundred per cent.

The question of the premium on silver was further compli-
cated by tampering with the silver coinage. In 1726 it was ordered
that the peso or piece of eight should be counted for 9'5 ryals;
the small silver coins of two ryals and less were worked 77 ryals
to the marc, in place of the old weight of 67, and only 10 dineros
fine in place of 11, thus lowering them to twenty per cent below
the standard; and in 1728 the fineness was further reduced to 9
dineros (22 grains), or 0798, increasing the deficiency to twenty-
five per cent. The mintage of the Indies, principally in the larger
pieces, was not reduced, and thus there came to be two kinds of
silver coinage, known as the nacional or heavier, and the provin-
cial or lighter. Between these there was a recognized difference
of twenty per cent, the real de plata nacional being worth 2'5
vellon ryals, or 20 quartos, while the real de plata provincial was
only worth 2 vellon ryals, or 16 quartos. There were thus three
established currencies of different values, two of silver and one of
copper, and for awhile there was a fourth, for we hear, in 1728,
of a new coinage popularly known as Marias, which is ordered to
be demonetized by July 1st next ensuing. The order, as usual,
was disregarded, for in 1736 it was repeated, with a prohibition to
draw bills of exchange in the forbidden currency.

The depreciation of the ryal has survived, to modern times,
the revolution in the currency, which has become decimal, and is
modeled on that of France. The peseta is the equivalent of the
franc, worth approximately twenty cents in our money, and when
ryals are quoted they are a fourth of i\i.Q peseta, or five cents, thus
being only two fifths of their nominal value in silver. Whether
the vellon ryal has ceased to be the standard money of account I
can not say, but I happen to have before me a draft drawn through
the Bank of Spain, December 17, 1858, in Madrid on Jaen for
"la suma de tres mil reales de vellon en plata u oro," showing
that accounts were still kept in velldn and that every transaction
involved a conversion of this into specie.

There can be no exaggeration in attributing to these perpetual
fluctuations in the standard of value a leading part in the industrial
and commercial decadence of Spain. During the period we have

SPANISH EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE. 593

traversed, Spain was the chief source through which Europe de-
rived the precious metals, yet it could never retain them, in spite
of savage laws prohibiting their export ; its people were forced to
content themselves with a debased coinage, and at times it could
scarce procure enough copper to supply even this. Commercial
and industrial enterprise was impossible when no one could know
from day to day what was to be the value of the money which
was due to him, or in which he was to meet his obligations, and
consequently the magnificent resources of the land remained un-
developed, while the rest of western Europe was entering on the
modern era of industrialism. Once embarked on such a vicious
course, return to a permanent standard was too painful a process
to be endured, and the efforts made toward it from time to time
only aggravated the trouble by increasing the uncertainty, for
the distress which they caused was too acute for even Spanish
endurance. Thus it dragged on from century to century, while
the wealth of the Indies enriched the nations whose commercial
instincts taught them the essential necessity of an unvarying
standard of value. This was no new discovery, for the long-
enduring prosperity of Florentine manufactures and commerce
was largely attributable to the jealous care with which the re-
public preserved the purity and weight of its coinage, so that
the florin became a recognized standard throughout Europe, the
honesty of which no one ever questioned. Florence had learned
the lesson from the Byzantine Empire, whose historian, Mr. Fin-
lay, asserts that its prolonged duration was greatly owing to the
wisdom which preserved its coinage unaltered for eight centuries,
so that "the concave gold byzants of Isaac II (1185-1203) are pre-
cisely the same weight and value as the solidus of Constantino
the Great." With the Latin conquest in 1204, barbaric reckless-
ness was introduced from the West, and successive debasements
of the coinage accompanied the decay and extinction of the empire
of the Caesars. Spain affords an exceedingly instructive example
of the opposite, inasmuch as its trouble arose from a token cur-
rency of small denominations which was incautiously allowed to
expand until it dominated the whole financial system, to the ex-
clusion of the precious metals.

The "Australian Snow Country/' as Mr. John Plummer, of Sydney,
calls it, includes a I'egion in the neighborhood of Mount Kosciusko and the
Munoing- Range where fires and blankets are needed, even during the hot-
test days of that continent of summer torridity. Mount Kosciusko, 7,171 feet
high, is the highest peak in Australia, but is remarkably easy of ascent.
The climb begins twenty-five miles from the top, and is pi*acticable for a
drive all the way. There are no trees within several miles of the top, but
gigantic mosses grow there and beautiful flowers.

VOL. LI. 45

594 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE HAWKS OF NEW ENGLAND.

By WILLIAM E. CKAM.

DURING the middle ages, while "the noble sport" of falconry-
was in vogue, hawks, and to a certain extent all kindred
birds of prey, were respected, revered — almost worshiped — con-
temporary naturalists, and even their successors for many cen-
turies, placing them at the head of their order, much as man is
ranked as the head of all mammals. Recently, however, as scien-
tific methods have taken the place of romantic fancies, a change
has shown itself, and the whole tribe has been moved down
almost to the foot of the list, where in the minds of bird students
they occupy a position only a little more dignified than that of
the penguins and similar seafowl. Nowadays it is the fashion
to speak of them as robbers and butchers, low in their grade of
development, and lacking even in intelligence.

Without denying the justice of all this, I must still confess to
a strong admiration for them, having always found them more
interesting than any other group of birds.

Of course, the literature touching this particular subject is very
great, and it is almost a hopeless task to try to write anything
new; still, since the favor into which the smaller birds have
fallen of late has resulted in a rather undeserved oblivion for
the once-honored falcon, it may not be out of place to note anew
their varieties and characteristics, since their commonness in this
country makes study very easy, while their almost forgotten
qualities well repay one for a little attention. In speaking of
them I shall not class them in the order assigned by the old
naturalists — viz., as long-winged or noble falcons, short-winged
hawks, and ignoble kites and buzzards — but according to their
size, as they are generally known by farmers and hunters, the
bitter enemies that now concede them attention, and take the
place of the courtly nobles who treasured them as almost their
most precious possessions.

Of the largest hawks, there are quite common with us the
rough-legged, the red-shouldered, and the redtail: the first is
known as the winter hawk, the others are the hated hen hawks,
and are hardly to be distinguished one from another. From
April to November they may be seen sailing in wide circles over
the woods and pastures, or perched on some dead tree from which
they may overlook their hunting grounds.

Redtail is probably the heaviest of all our hawks, and he
shows his weight as he flies, while a pretty large branch may be
seen to bend if he lights on it. He has a fierce, long-drawn, sav-
age scream, and his tones are usually angry and harsh. Hen

THE HAWKS OF NEW ENGLAND.

595

hawks are most abundant during the last part of summer, and at
that time if a flock of poultry should stray out into the field a
single hawk will sometimes kill two or three of them before they
have reached a place of safety.

Although only a buzzard, he kills his prey with a single stroke,
like a true falcon, and his capacity is enormous, yet sometimes
for weeks together he is content to live entirely on mice and
grasshoppers. His color is grayish brown above, and yellowish
white beneath, with traces of rusty red on the tail feathers, which,
when the bird is in full plumage, become wholly red with a black
band near the tip.

But trying to know hawks by their colors is uncertain work
at best, as members of most species change their entire coloring

ZiW'J' we.c

Ked-tailed Hawk.

at least once in their lifetime. These changes are popularly as-
cribed to age, birds in full plumage being spoken of as old ones,
though they have always seemed to me to depend more on the
general vigor of the bird, as it is not uncommon to find specimens
showing every mark of great age, with stiff joints and beaks and
claws worn blunt, in precisely the same attire as when they left
the nest, while those in full plumage, as far as my observation
goes, are never very old, and are always in excellent condition.

The red-shouldered hawk is smaller and more lightly built
than his cousin, and he has a longer tail. In full plumage he is
rich brown on the back, with wings and tail barred with black
and white, and chestnut-colored shoulder patches. Beneath he is
dull red, more or less barred and spotted with white. Young
birds are much the same color as redtailed hawks. This bird

596

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

keeps more to the woods than the redtail, and is much less de-
structive ; his cries are shorter, shriller, and less savage, and his
general disposition is milder. In the spring they are especially-
noisy, and then several pairs
may sometimes be seen circling
together high in air, all whis-
tling and screaming at the same
time.

Occasionally a pair will re-
main all winter, and during this
season they will keep to the
thickest parts of the woods and
loaf about open springs, feed-
ing on such half-dormant frogs
as rise to the surface of the wa-
ter. They never appear to suf-
fer from want of food, however,
as all those I have killed in win-
ter had a thick layer of fat un-
der the skin.

Although the rough-legged
hawk is usually spoken of as
rare in this part of the coun-
try, they seem to be common
enough here in southeastern
New Hampshire, at certain sea-
sons at least ; and during the
Indian-summer weather that
comes just before winter sets
in, I can at almost any time find
one or more without the least trouble. Perhaps it is because they
are here at a season when other birds — and hawks in particular —
are most conspicuous by their absence that this species is so well
known ; still, there seems to be something different in their meth-
od of flight and ways in general. One peculiarity the rough-
legged hawk shares with the little sparrow hawk — that of hang-
ing like a wind-hover in midair, head to the wind, with dangling
legs, his keen eyes watching the grass beneath for any sign of a
mouse. With a continual rolling flap of the wings he holds him-
self, hour after hour, over precisely the same spot. At the first
glimpse of a mouse he goes down with a perpendicular rush like
a falcon, and flounders and flaps around until he has the little
victim in his claws.

Judging from my own experience I should consider this the
most intelligent of hawks. With the utmost caution I find it
almost impossible to approach within two hundred yards when I

Ked-shouldered Hawk.

THE HAWKS OF NEW ENGLAND.

597

have a gun, even in the best of cover, and yet they will sit on the
trees by the roadside and let carriages pass almost under them,
or fly back and forth within fifty yards of a team. Apparently
they have less fear of skaters than of pedestrians, probably hav-
ing learned from experience that any one on skates is hardly
likely to prove dangerous. They seem to see every one and every-
thing within a radius of a quarter of a mile, and never lose sight
of one for a moment. Most of those that I see are dark brown,
with a dark belt underneath, and the base of the tail is usu illy
white. Others are dark brown above and nearly black beneath,
the tail white with bands of black and gray near the tip. The
colors vary, however, from dark to light, a few being quite
black, with white spots on the tail and under the wings.

They are seldom seen here in midwinter, but when the ice
breaks up in the spring they pass over on their way north, and
sometimes stop for a few days in the meadows.

Another large hawk, whose swiftness and courage made him
a great favorite with the old falconers, is the goshawk, but as

EOOGH LEGGED IIaWK.

most of them are colored like some of the other large hawks, and
are, moreover, extremely shy, keeping always to the dark, ever-
green woods, it is sometimes hard to be certain about having
seen one. This species could hardly be called common, though
occasionally in August birds that I take to be goshawks are very

598

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

abundant. I am not absolutely certain, liowever, as to the
species.

One August afternoon I heard an angry croaking that seemed
to issue from the top of a large oak. As I approached a goshawk
waddled out along a horizontal branch, and on another that ex-
tended parallel with the first
and only a few inches below
marched a crow, keeping di-
rectly under the hawk and
striking savagely at his feet.
Both kept their wings tightly
closed, and neither seemed in
the least excited. I do not
know how the quarrel ended,
for presently both flew to an-
other part of the woods to
argue the matter away from
human intelligence. There
seems to be a continual feud
between the crows and all
kinds of hawks, and some of
the disputes that arise are
humorous in the extreme.
I once saw a sharp-shinned
hawk that insisted on flying
south in company with a flock
of crows. To be sure, if he flew at the same height as they did,
he would have to fly with them, for the sky was full of crows at
the time, all going in the same direction ; still, he might have
risen above them or kept down nearer to the tops of the trees, but
evidently he didn't choose to. Every time a crow dashed at him
he would sweep down out of their ranks, only to join them a few
yards farther on, and when, miles away, they were only just visi-
ble through my glass, the dispute seemed still in progress.

In full plumage the goshawk is bluish-slate color, and differs
from the other large hawks in having shorter wings, longer tail,
and yellow or orange-colored eyes.

When flying, the marsh hawk has the appearance of being a
large bird, but in weight he would be classed among the smaller
hawks. A lean-bodied, loose-jointed, long-limbed bird, he sails
along close to the grass, carefully beating over ever foot of
ground in his day's hunt. The small birds seem to realize that it
is useless to try to escape as they do from other hawks by hiding
in the tall grass, and as soon as one appears you may see meadow-
larks, blackbirds, reedbirds, and sparrows rise in clouds and fly
for the nearest woods for protection. When there is a flight of

Goshawk.

THE HAWKS OF NEW ENGLAND.

599

warblers, and the treetops are alive with these brilliantly colored
little fellows, the marsh hawks follow them and rise and dip
among the branches like swallows in a listless, careless manner,
striking with their long legs at whatever bird happens to be
nearest. They are very methodical in their way of hunting, and
day after day follow the same course, flapping back to the nest
whenever successful. They nest on the ground in a swamp or
brier patch, and the young remain hidden about in the bushes,
where they are fed by the parents for months after they are able
to fly. All their cries are rather faint and hysterical, and they
always seem to be somewhat weak-minded ; still, they show con-
siderable intelligence at times, and appear to distinguish between
persons. I remember one pair that became quite friendly, and,
when I visited their nest, would light near me or hover close
over my head, even when I carried a gun ; but a neighbor of
mine, who accused them of stealing his chickens, complained
that they would not come within gunshot, even when he thought
himself well hidden. In color they vary from pale, bluish gray
to dark brown above, and from white to chestnut red underneath,
and are easily known by the large white patch on the back. They
are abundant from the last of March to November.

For medium-sized hawks we have the peregrine falcon. Coop-
er's hawk, and the broad-winged hawk. The peregrine falcon is a
rather uncommon bird. I occasionally see them in the spring,
but not often. This
is the falcon par ex-
cellence of the older
writers, and is said
to be the most dash-
ingly courageous of
all hawks.

The broad-winged
hawk is also rare,
but -less so than the
last ; he looks like a
heavy, owlish fel-
low, with broad,
rounded wings, and
a short tail that

seems to be inserted between them. He is usually seen in frosty
October weather, and spends most of his time in the woods.
Cooper's hawk, or the chicken hawk, is plentiful enough : a slen-
der, compactly built bird, with a long tail, short wings, and fierce,
yellow eyes, steely blue or rich brown on the back, and white-
barred or streaked with reddish on the breast. He flies with tre-
mendous swiftness, and doesn't seem afraid to tackle anything.

Maksh Hawk.

6oo

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

This is probably the most destructive hawk we have, a nest with
young birds usually containing remnants of partridges, chickens,
and perhaps a dozen kinds of small birds, but very seldom any
signs of mice or insects. When together, these chicken hawks are
always quarreling with each other, and pairs separate about as
soon as the young birds are able to take care of themselves. Their
scream is, I think, the most petulant, angry, ear- piercing note to
be heard in the woods.

The three small hawks are the merlin, the sharp-shinned, and
the sparrow hawk. The first two are commonly called pigeon

Broad-winged Hawk.

hawks. Sharp-shinned is almost exactly like a small Cooper's
hawk, but not so compactly built; in disposition he is quite as
bad, and makes up in general recklessness what he lacks in size ;
he is less businesslike, however, and flies through the woods in a
crazy, erratic sort of way, apparently with no particular object
in view, striking savagely at every living thing he sees, though
seldom following a bird if he misses it the first time. These birds
have a curious way when alone of darting back and forth between
two branches, striking with their claws at some particular knot
or leaf, as if for practice, and then performing a most indescrib-
able kind of war dance. Being especially fond of young chickens,
they will come day after day to the same yard, and are only too
often successful in their hunting. At such times it is almost im-
possible to shoot them, as they come with a rush and are gone.

THE HAWKS OF NEW ENGLAND. 601

sneaking from orchard to orchard, and you have to guess at their
whereabouts from the cries of the small birds that have nests
in the neighborhood. A colony of swallows, however, makes an
excellent pack of sky hounds to hunt them with, as they keep
directly over the hawk, and by watching their movements you
may judge what direction to take in order to head him off. Even
if you get a good shot at him you may call yourself lucky if you
succeed in bringing him down, for he is harder to hit than snipe
or woodcock, and is rarely captured until fairly riddled with shot.

Merlins are solid, muscular, beautiful little birds, with close-
fitting, dark-colored plumage. They are never very numerous,
except in the fall, when they come in flights, and are most abun-
dant near the seacoast and salt marshes. They fly swiftly and
steadily, seldom changing their course, and as sure as one of them
starts in pursuit of a bird that bird is doomed, for the merlin sel-
dom gives up the chase.

He is not a difficult bird to shoot, for, though tenacious of life,
his flight is steady, and, as a general thing, on being hit by a shot,
he turns and flies back in the direction whence he came, giving
the sportsman a second chance.

In my opinion, the sparrow hawk is the handsomest of his
race ; his back is bright, golden cinnamon, his wings steely blue
and jet black, and his tail chestnut, with a broad black band ; his
breast is beautifully marked with chainlike patterns of black
spots. His mate is chestnut above, banded with black. Unlike
other hawks, the plumage of these birds does not vary with age.
They usually make their appearance in some still, cloudy day,
about the last of March, and take up their position in the mead-
ows ; from then until September they are always to be seen either
perched on the topmost twig of some tall elm or hovering in the
air on the lookout for prey. Their nest is in some hollow tree or
deserted woodpecker's hole, or even a last year's crow's nest. I
have often tried to account for the seemingly friendly relations
existing between the sparrow hawks and golden-winged wood-
peckers ; both frequently occupy holes in the same branch, and
sit side by side on top of some tall stub without the least sign of
disagreement, although, unless I am very much mistaken, the
sparrow hawk often attacks larger birds, and might easily carry
off the young ones when the old birds were absent.

About the last of June the young hawks are ready to fly, and
at once betake themselves to the nearest thick treetop, preferring
an evergreen if possible. They appear to enjoy the change from
their former stuffy apartments immensely, and preen their feath-
ers in the bright sunlight, each waiting patiently its turn to be
fed by the parents, who are chasing the half-fledged blackbirds
and sparrows about the meadows, or darting after grasshoppers

6o2

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

aud locusts in the grass. At the first cry of warning the young-
sters scramble down into the thick foliage, and hide there as skill-
fully as young owls. At first they have no especial fear of man,
and sometimes on approaching them I have seen the old birds

WE-M _
Cooper's Hawk.

deliberately knock them off their perch and compel them to fly,
driving them into the pines for safety.

I once took a hawk of this kind from the nest when only a
few days old, and brought him up according to the rules most
approved by the old falconers. He was never confined in any
way, and as soon as he had learned to fly had the run of the en-
tire place. His favorite haunt was a series of gutters under the
eaves, where he would spend hours at a time hunting for spiders
or digging the wasps' nests to pieces for the larvae. When spoken
to at such times he would look out over the edge of the gutter,
with his head on one side, and answer with soft, chattering cries,
and immediately go back to his work. Let no one make the mis-
take of thinking that the loud screaming or whistling of hawks
is their usual voice, although it is the only one easily heard at
the distance hawks usually insist on keeping from the observer.
One has only to watch a pair of hawks of any kind close at hand,
to learn that probably nine tenths of the cries uttered by them in
the course of a day are either low and guttural or soft and almost
musical. But it was not until I had had one about me for an en-
tire summer that I realized what an almost limitless variety of

THE HAWKS OF NEW ENGLAND.

603

notes lie had at his command. Sweepstakes, as we named him,
would sit on my shoulder or the rim of my hat, and chatter away
with so much expression that it seemed the worst kind of stu-
pidity on my part not to be able to understand everything he
said. When he had gained the full strength of his wings he
would come flying to me for protection from a furious mob of
small birds which he had exasperated by his bungling attempts
at hunting, and alighting on the rim of my hat go scrambling
round and round it with a great rustling and scratching of his
claws. When perched on any one's wrist or finger, he was al-
ways careful not to let his claws prick the skin, and was more
thoughtful about such matters than the best-natured kitten in
the world. He was especially fond of being stroked with the
wing feather of some large bird, and was always uneasy if any of
his own feathers were ruffled or misplaced. He would almost
always come when called, even though not in the least hungry.
Sometimes if he saw Jack, the white bull terrier, going about
with a bone in his mouth, he would light on the bone and ride

Sparrow Hawk.

there until he had eaten what he wanted. If it took him some
time to get enough. Jack, who was a most exemplary gentleman,
would drop the bone, and lying down beside it quietly wait for
his very good friend to finish. But his very fearlessness proved
his destruction, for he got into the way of flying across the pas-
tures to a farmhouse half a mile away, and was shot, to the bit-
ter regret of all who had known him.

6o4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

The next season I took a female sparrow hawk from the nest,
when nearly grown, but she was never quite as familiar as
Sweepstakes, and in a few days ran or rather flew away. If she
had gone north toward the meadows, she would probably have
found her parents, at that time engaged in teaching her brothers
and sisters the rudiments of hunting, and would probably never
have returned. Instead of this she took the opposite direction,
and in a few days came back with a tremendous appetite, hun-
grily eating everything that was given her. When haying time
came on she would follow about the field, lighting on rake han-
dles or shoulders, or even the cart, when she was not feeding on
grasshoppers till she could hardly fly. Toward the end of sum-
mer she would be gone for days on hunting excursions, her abil-
ity in this direction having increased, but on her return would be
as familiar as ever.

One day, however, she appeared nervous and frightened, and
on taking her in my hand I noticed that shot had cut through her
wing feathers, and those on her breast were rumpled and bloody.
Suddenly she caught sight of some one in the road more than a
hundred yards away, and was instantly in the air, soaring out
over the fields and up toward the clouds until almost out of sight.
She seldom came about the house after that, and though when I
saw her in the meadows was apparently not afraid, she yet refused
to come at my call. Early the next spring a female sparrow hawk
lighted on the roof of the barn, and at one time seemed to show
signs of coming down to me, but evidently thought better of it,
and flew off toward the north. Perhaps it was only a wild hawk ;
still, I prefer to think that she is still alive, and has escaped
those who shoot hawks only to obtain the bounty offered for
their scalps by the State.

While traveling in the Balearic Islands. M. Gaston Vuiller, passing
through a gorge in Minorca, found the road barred by extemporized stone
walls, tree trunks, and all sorts of loose obstacles, while the foliage above
was hung '' with colored ribbons and garlands of flowers and fruit, like the
route of a triumphal procession." This was in preparation for a wedding
festival, and in obedience to a custom of placing every possible obstacle in
the way of brides and bridegrooms in order to remind them how diffi-
cult is the path to happiness, while the festoons above expi'ess the good
wishes of the people. The proper attention for a lover on this island to
pay his sweetheart is '"to steal silently upon her from behind and suddenly
to discharge his musket into the ground at her feet, and a well-brought-up
gii'l never winces under the trial." Suitors announce their good feeling
for the family by discharging a musket in the sitting room after spending
the evening with them, but before saying "good night." If the "good
night " has been said, the firing is held to signify a challenge to a rival.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. .605

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

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

CORRESPONDAUT DE l'iNSTITLT DE FRANCE, ETC.

X. — NOMENCLATURE AND FORMS OF TAXATION.

( Continued from page 4^0.)

""OEAL" AND PERSONAL TAXES.— Direct taxes are also
J-V spoken of, and in fact, classified as real and personal
taxes. " Real " taxes (Latin res, thing), or taxes on realty, as is
tlie general expression, are taxes on property — generally on things
naturally characterized by immobility — without reference to the
pecuniary condition of the owner, and hence without taking his
debts into account. A tax on land or real estate — houses and
land — is a typical tax on realty ; and a tax legally assessed upon
such property rests, or is a lien upon it, irrespective of its owner-
ship.

Business taxes are regarded as real taxes, as they are taxes on
pursuits or occupations rather than on persons. The same is true
of taxes on capital and the rental value of land or buildings.*
The restriction on the levy of direct taxation imposed by the Con-
stitution of the United States on the Federal Government does
not apply to the States.

Personal taxes are taxes on persons. A poll or " capitation "
or " head " tax, implying a uniform payment from every poll or
head of some portion or all the population of the State, would be
a typical personal tax. Strictly speaking, therefore, a personal
tax can be no other than a poll tax levied under the above con-
ditions. What are usually called personal taxes are taxes as-
sessed or rated to a person, not as in the case of a poll tax because
he is a person or citizen, but in virtue of the movable property —
furniture, clothing, vessels, carriages, animals, money at interest,
stocks in corporations, bonds, or negotiable instruments and the
like belonging to him. It is the individual that the law regards
as the objective rather than his personal property — which may
not be tangible or visible— on enforcing the tax ; the property
being resorted to for the purpose of ascertaining the amount of
tax which its owner should pay. An income tax is regarded as a
personal tax because it is assessed on the income that gathers
about a person irrespective of its source — rents, interest, profits,
salaries, and the like. A tax on land is a tax on realty, while a
tax on a mortgage is a personal tax, which is equivalent to aflBrm-

* " Real estate for the purpose of taxation shall include all lands within this State, and
all buildings or other things erected on or affixed to the s&iwe.'''' ^Statutes of Massachusetts.

6o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing that the former is a thing, while the latter is only the repre-
sentation or shadow of the thing.

In levying taxes on realty the owner, as a rule, is not allowed
to offset or reduce its valuation by the amount of his outstanding
indebtedness ; but in the case of the taxation of personal prop-
erty such an offset is generally permitted, on the ground that a
man should be taxed only upon what he owns and not upon what
he oiues ; and even when not allowed by law, the circumstance of
indebtedness is almost always taken advantage of by persons
assessed, for reducing valuation in making returns to the tax offi-
cials of the value of their property. In assessing an income tax
a deduction is allowed for interest paid on mortgages, and such
business expenses as lessen income. Personal expenses, as house
rent, cost of living, and the like, can not, on the other hand, be
properly deducted from income before it is taxed, because income
is sought for and exists for the purpose of defraying such ex-
penditures. By the income-tax law of the United States, enacted
in 18G5, and also in 1894, deductions were allowed from the
amount of taxable income, of all taxes paid within the year, of
all interest paid on indebtedness, and the rent or rental value of
any homestead actually occupied by the taxpayer.

One of the most curious features of recent tax experiences in
the United States has been the extent to which this practice, or
right of reducing valuations of personal property for taxation by
debts, has been made the op|)ortunity for evading taxation. Thus,
by the very structure of the Federal Government, its various in-
strumentalities, as heretofore explained,* are necessarily exempted
from all taxation by the States of the Federal Union. Recogniz-
ing this, it has been the habit of individuals to effect credit pur-
chases to a greater or less amount of United States securities a
short time previous to the time fixed for tax returns or valua-
tion, and then offsetting the debts thus incurred against valuation,
evade the taxation on their personal property to which thej''
would otherwise be subjected. f And for such moral wrong there
would appear to be no legal remedy on the part of the State,
except by the commission of a greater wrong — namely, the pro-
hibition of the offsetting of all debts in tax valuations ; or, what is

* See Popular Science Monthly, vol. 1, No. 3, p. 289 ; vol. 1, No. 4, p. 468.

f When the Federal Government effected in November, 1894, a loan for .$50,000,000,
a premium was paid on no inconsiderable amount for the privilege of purchase, or invest-
ment, so large as to net to the purchaser an abnormally low rate of interest — 25 per centum.
The explanation of this action was that, apart from the recognized value of an unquestion-
able security, the investment carried with it an exemption from a national income tax of two
per cent, as well as from State and municipal taxation — so that the rate of interest accruing
to the purchaser was not as low as it might have seemed to be, and ])y the holders and
managers of trust properties was generally regarded as satisfactory.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 607

the same thing, the imposing of a discriminating burden of taxa-
tion upon persons who, for any cause, may be in debt — a denial of
equity which public sentiment in every free country will not long
tolerate. A further proof and illustration of this averment may
be found in the fact that years ago the Constitution of Ohio pro-
vided that credits, or evidences of indebtedness, should be subject
to taxation by a uniform rule ; and the Supreme Court of Ohio
subsequently decided that this did not allow any offset of debts
owed against credits owned. But popular opinion was so adverse
that by common consent this clause of the Constitution, as inter-
preted by the court, was entirely disregarded in making up tax
valuations.

In old English history the division of property into real and
personal was wholly unknown ; and all laws regulating this spe-
cies of property, with a view to taxation or inheritance, are of
comparatively modern origin.* It is also interesting to note
that probably full one fourth of all the so-called personal
property of this country — namely, all railroad, steamship, tele-
graph, telephone securities — did not have an existence fifty years
ago.

As is the case with direct and indirect taxes, the line of de-
marcation between real and personal property, and consequently
between real and personal taxes, is very indefinite, and some very
nice and curious points in connection therewith have been estab-
lished by usages, or court decisions. Thus an apple on the tree is
real estate, but when fallen upon the ground it becomes personal
property. Running water accumulated in a pond is real estate,
though the owner is not permitted to invest it with the peculiar
attribute of real estate — namely, stability — by permanently arrest-
ing its flow. In some States the engines, water wheels, shafting,
and even belts of factories are real estate, while looms and lathes
are personal property. Stone in the quarry is real estate, but
when thrown out by a blast and made ready for market it be-
comes personal property. Hop-poles, not standing, have been

* The first authorization of local taxation in England was for the maintenance of the
poor, and occurred in the reign of Elizabeth. At that time it seems to have been assumed
that there was no personal property in the kingdom capable of being assessed, and that
real property was alone valuable property. Hence it was enacted (43 Elizabeth, cap. 2)
that overseers should be appointed who were to raise, by taxation of every inhabitant, par-
son, " and of every occupier of lands, houses, tithes impropriate, propriations of tithes, coal
mines, or salable underwoods in the said parish," moneys for the relief of the poor. No men-
tion was made of personal property, and it is probable that every kind of property then
known was mentioned in the act. When fresh burdens were necessary the principle
adopted by the act of Elizabeth was continued, without much inquiry or opposition, and
owners of personalty have remained exempt from taxation, although personal property has
gone on increasing until its value has become much greater than all the real property of
the kingdom.

6o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

decided to be real estate, but wood cut and corded for sale is per-
sonal property. A statue exhibited for sale in a workshop is
personal property, but when placed upon a permanent foundation
(although not fastened to it), as an ornament in front of a house,
has been held to be a part of the realty. Chairs in a theater
and screwed to the floor, as they can not stand alone, are consid-
ered a part of the realty ; but gas fixtures and mirrors, made to
order for the house, and attached to the freehold, but removable
without injury thereto, are not deemed a part of the realty. Be-
fore emancipation in the United States, slaves, which by the
Federal Constitution were recognized as persons, were in several
of the States declared by law to be real estate ; * and in one State
of the Union, Wisconsin, the one species of property which is
especially typical of mobility, and is of no value apart from its
capability of motion, namely, the rolling stock of railroads, has
been by law made real estate. Shares in the national debt of
France, as well as stock on the bank of France — instrumentalities
which in the United States would be regarded as personal prop-
erty in its most typical form — may by French law be made real
estate, and as such be administered on.

Some years ago the following curious experience occurred in
one of the New England States : A person rented a farm, and on
the expiration of his lease attempted to remove from the estate
the manure which had accumulated during his holding, assuming
that he had the right to it as personal property. The owner of
the farm, on the other hand, forbade the removal of the manure, on
the ground that it was real estate, and so a part of the farm. The
case found its way into the courts, and on its trial the lessee and
defendant who appeared for himself, attempted to substantiate
the legality of his proceedings in the following manner : Address-
ing the judge after the facts in the case had been established, he
asked, " Was the hay in the barn personal property ? " Judge :
" Certainly." Lessee : " Were the horses and cattle personal
property ? " Judge : " Without dispute." Lessee : " Then will
your Honor please to tell me how personal property can eat per-
sonal property and produce (dung) real estate?" The decision
was nevertheless in favor of the owner of the farm, or the plain-
tiff. Subsequently the courts of New York decided that manure
accumulated in connection with a livery stable, not being an
agricultural product pertaining to a farm, was not real estate but
personal property.

In a case in the State of Tennessee, where a person who had
entered a neighbor's field and removed corn on the stalk was

* In American colonial days slaves were regarded as belonging to the land, and figured
in tax valuations as real property.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 609

prosecuted for larceny, the court held that the offense was not
larceny, which is the unlawful taking and carrying away of per-
sonal property, but trespass, inasmuch as the corn not severed
from the ground was real estate, but would have been larceny if
the corn had been gathered or disconnected from the ground pre-
vious to its taking. Thereupon a bill was introduced into the
Legislature of Tennessee to make it a felony to steal corn from a
field under any circumstances.

From these illustrations it seems obvious that the distinction
between real and personal property and real and personal taxes
is, to a very great extent, an artificial and not a natural distinc-
tion.

The following are some of the other terms used to designate
particular forms of taxation, the meaning and technical applica-
tion of which may not be readily apparent :

A franchise tax is a tax on a franchise, or on a right granted
by a State to a corporation or association to exercise certain privi-
leges. In fact, a franchise is a privilege, and in most cases it is
an exclusive privilege, and has an actual value largely dispro-
portionate to the amount of capital invested by the company or
corporation upon which it has been conferred.* It has been held
by the courts that a franchise tax is not a tax on capital or on
real estate, but on privilege, and does not exclude additional taxa-
tion on any property covered by the franchise.

The terms imjiosts and" custovis" (Latin " aonsuitudines ") are
generally understood to mean indirect taxes on the importation
of commodities, while the term duty is more properly applied to
a tax upon exports.

The origin of all these terms is obscure and involves some
interesting features in English history. It appears certain that
they were in the first instance applied to exactions on trade gen-
erally, and not, as was finally the case, on imports and exports
exclusively, and were in use before indirect taxes on personal

* The following is a case in point, derived from actual experience : A street railway com-
pany in a city of the United States reported the gross earnings of the corporation for 1891 at
$1,188,000. Its net earnings were $400,000, or nearly six per cent on a capitalization of
$7,000,000. Its city property tax was only $11,000, or $2.10 on $500,000. It is evident,
therefore, that the value of the capital of this corporation was due largely to the value of
its franchise.

The value of a franchise is an eminently proper subject for taxation, though it is not
commonly so regarded. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in a recent case (1894), has
held that under the laws of that State it was proper and lawful in ascertaining the actual
value of the capital stock of a corporation (Susquehanna and Schuylkill Railroad Company)
to take into consideration, as affecting that value, the franchises of the company. Fran-
chises conferred by Congress upon a corporation created by it, to be exercised within a
State, can not be subject to taxation by the State without the consent of Congre?s. — Cali-
fornia vs. Central Pacific Railroad Company.

VOL. LI. 46

6io POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

property were recognized in England. At the outset and for a
long period they were also not regarded in the light of taxes, but
rather as dues personal to the sovereign, which he had the right
to regulate and collect independent of any statute, and which car-
ried with it the further right to restrain at pleasure the import
or export of any commodity.* Thus, until the reign of Edward
II (1272-1307) the right to tax the export of wool was exclu-
sively a royal privilege ; and the enactment of a statute by Par-
liament in 1275, limiting the amount that the king could take
in respect to the export of wool, skins, and leather — but not
denying the privilege — is regarded as the first legal foundation
in England of the customs revenue. The controversy between
the king and Parliament over customs duties went on, how-
ever, with varying phases until finally settled in 1G82 ; and
from these circumstances, and also from the fact that customs
and duties are unseen by those who finally bear their burden
because they are embodied in the prices of commodities, has pos-
sibly come about the curious idea that tariffs, or taxes on im-
ports, are not taxes on any one or are any burden on property,
but rather some sort of a business contrivance for the raising
of revenue, and, if they are taxes at all, then that the foreigner
pays them.

The term impost is a general expression for any tax, duty, or
tribute, but is seldom now applied to any but indirect taxes on
imports.

The term excise, though used in the Constitution of the United
States, is now almost entirely restricted in use to the tax system
of Great Britain; and even there has acquired a far different
meaning and application from what it possessed originally.
Thus the term was first applied in England to taxes on manufac-
tured commodities produced and consumed in the kingdom, as
beer, cider, soap, glass, paper, and the like, and in contradistinc-
tion to duties or customs on commodities of foreign manufacture
and importation ; and this distinction is still officially recognized
in the fact that special care has always been taken in all British
legislation on this subject to make the excise tax as nearly equal

* It is a curious fact that the old idea that imposts and customs, or the right to impose
exactions on trade, were, when first imposed, not regarded in the light of taxes but as dues
personal to the sovereign, which he had the right to regulate and collect independent of
any statute, has recently found reassertion and indorsement in the United States Senate by
a leading member of that body from New England, that he did not regard the levying of
imposts or customs dues on imported commodities as in the nature of taxes; for, if such
levies on trade are not taxes, they are simply exactions of a despotic form of government,
represented immaterially either by one man or a collection of men, and for whom or for
which no rightful claim of representing or being a government by the people or for the
people can be preferred.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 611

as possible to the customs imposed on the same kind of imported
commodities. The term is supposed to find its origin also in the
circumstance that it was originally the practice to cut off, or "ex-
cise," portions of the goods assessed, and take them away in pay-
ment of the tax in kind. The first attempt to impose an excise tax
in England was in 1525, and failed, as both Houses of Parliament
concurred in opinion that it was unconstitutional. After the Res-
toration, or under Charles II, the attempt was successfully re-
newed, and the taxes under it were very curiously divided into
two classes, and the receipts from the same made personal to the
crown — namely, the hereditary excise, so called because granted
to the crown forever in consideration or recompense for the aban-
donment by the crown of certain perquisites and privileges ; and
the temporary excise, the receipts of which were only granted to
the sovereign for life. The tax was, however, always unpopular
in England, being regarded as contrary to the spirit and princi-
ples of a just government, and on the accession of William and
Mary it was greatly modified and reduced ; and it is somewhat
curious that a term having such an origin and history should
have found a place in the Federal Constitution and be thus
recognized as a legitimate form of taxation under a free gov-
ernment. In Great Britain at the present time the only com-
modities on which taxes designated as excise are assessed are
spirits, malt, fermented liquors, and chicory, or other substitutes
for coffee. But in addition the British system classifies under
the head of excise its taxes on railways and a few other minor
subjects.

The late United States Justice Miller defined an excise tax
as " one which is assessed upon some article of property or
money or something which is exhausted in the use. It is one
which from its essence and nature must be paid in fact by the
buyer, or the last man who buys or uses the property, because,
whoever has it at the time when the tax is levied upon it
adds that amount to the selling price when he comes to dis-
pose of it until the property is consumed. It is a tax upon con-
sumption." (Lectures on the Constitution of the United States,
p. 238.)*

In the United States all Federal taxes that are not levied under
the tariff and navigation laws are classified under the general
designation of " internal revenue taxes."

The term toll, formerly in extensive use, and signifying duties
on imports and exports, is now nearly obsolete, and restricted

* " What is the natural and common or technical or appropriate meaning of the words
duty and excise it is not easy to ascertain. They present no clear and precise ideas to the
mind. Different persons will annex different significations to the terms." — Faterson, J.,
Hylton vs. U. S., 3 Dallas, 171, 176.

6i2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

almost exclusively in meaning to the charges for permission to
pass oyer bridges, ferries, and roads (turnpikes) owned by the
parties imposing them. The courts have held that railroad fares
can not be regarded as tolls.

A word in very common use in English history, especially
when reference is made to fiscal topics, is that of subsidy ; but
its former and present signification are very different. Under
the earlier English kings, when the inadequacy of the hereditary
or peculiar revenues of the crown to defray its expenditures com-
pelled the monarch to ask pecuniary aid of his subjects, the grants
that were made were known as "tenths" "fifteenths," or the like,
according as the exaction of such percentages of certain proper-
ties were authorized, and also as " subsidies " and " benevolences."
The peculiarity of all such grants was that they were always
special and extraordinary, and had no place in any regular sys-
tem of taxation. Thus, of the reign of Henry VIII it is recorded
that Parliament granted subsidies occasionally, but the king, hav-
ing found a readier way of obtaining money, did not need them —
the readier way having been the confiscation of all the property
of the religious houses, which included more than half of all the
land of the kingdom ; and of Elizabeth, that during the forty-
five years of her reign Parliament granted twenty subsidies and
thirty-nine fifteenths, the balance of needed supplies being ob-
tained from crown lands — as the duchy of Lancaster — and other
hereditary revenues. Under the Commonwealth regular taxes on
lands and other forms of property were for the first time insti-
tuted in England, and these proved so productive that the old
methods of percentages, subsidies, and benevolences were discon-
tinued, and with their nomenclature disappeared from English
fiscal history.

At the present time the term subsidy, in place of designating
as formerly a grant obtained by the Government from private
interests, has come to mean a grant obtained from the Govern-
ment, in aid of private enterprises which it is claimed should be
encouraged by the state in the interest of the general public, as,
for example, the fostering of shipbuilding and ship-using, and the
cultivation and manufacture of certain commodities. But this
modern use of the word " subsidy " can not, it is said, be referred
back to any earlier period than the year 1840.

Of the many other terms and words used in connection with
the subject of taxation, there are very few that seem to require
special explanation, and the majority of these, although formerly
in extensive use, have now become obsolete and passed into his-
tory— as, for example, gabelle, the term given in France to the tax
on salt ; corvee, a compulsory contribution of labor ; and taille, or
taillage, a tax on the supposed profits of agriculturists, and the

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 613

like. The characteristic of almost all modern tax words or terms
is indefiniteness ; and probably in no other department of knowl-
edge is there such a lack of exactness in respect to definitions.
This to a student may seem at first to be a factor of no little
embarrassment, and as assimilating him to the condition of
the man who couldn't see the forest because of the multitude
of trees; but with the exception of the definitions of tax and
taxation, this condition of affairs really constitutes no obstacle in
the way of clearly reasoning and determining as to what should
be the fundamental principles of taxation.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

'" {Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.)

By WILLIAM Z. EIPLEY, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ; LKOTUREB IN
ANTHROPO-OEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

VIII.— THE BASQUES.

THE Basques, or EusTioldunak, as they call themselves, on ac-
count of the primitive character of their institutions, but
more particularly because of the archaic features of their lan-
guage, have long attracted the attention of ethnologists. Few
writers on European travel have been able to keep their hands
off this interesting people. Owing to the difiSculty of obtaining
information from the original Basque sources, a wide range of
speculation has been offered for cultivation. Interest for a long
time mainly centered in the language; the physical character-
istics were largely neglected. The last ten years have, however,
witnessed a remarkable change in this respect. A series of
brilliant investigations has been offered to science, based almost
entirely upon the study of the living population. As a conse-
quence, this people has within a decade emerged from the hazy
domain of romance into the clear light of scientific knowledge.
Much yet remains to be accomplished ; but enough is definitely
known to warrant many conclusions both as to their physical
origin and ethnic affinities.*

* The best modem authorities on the Basques are Broca, Sur I'origine et la repartition
de la langue Basque. Revue d'Anthropologie, series i, iv, 1875, pp. 1-53; R. Collignon, Anthro-
pologiedu sud-ouest de la France, Memoires de la Societc d'Anthropologie, series ill, i, 1895,
fasc. 4; De Aranzadi y Unamuno, El Pueblo Euskalduna, San Sebastian 1889; Hoyos
Sainz and De Aranzadi, Un Avance k la antropologia de Espafia, Madrid, 1892 ; Oloriz
Distribucion geografica del indice cefalieo en Espafia, Madrid, 1894 ; and ibid., La talla

6i4

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Thirty years ago estimates of the number of people speaking
the Basque language or Euskara ran all the way from four to
seven hundred thousand. Probability pointed to about a round
half million, which has perhaps become six hundred thousand to-
day ; although large numbers have emigrated of recent years to
South America, and the rate of increase in France, at least, is
very slow. About four fifths of these are found in the Spanish
provinces of Yizcaya (Biscay), Navarra, Guipuzcoa, and Alava,

Dialects -^.^^^

lAMGVAGES

. Political

. B>OVNDARlE3

BAsevE Place NAMES I

ALONE ....
bASpVE PL^Ct NAMES
AMD 6PEECti . .

at the western extreme of the Pyrenean frontier and along the
coast. (See map page 632.) The remainder occupy the south-
western third of the department of Basses-Pyr^ndes over the
mountains in France. The whole territory covered is merely a
spot on the European map. It is by quality, therefore, and not
in virtue either of numbers or territorial extension, that these
people merit our attention. In the preceding paper we aimed to

umana en Espafia, Madrid, 1896. Dr. De Aranzadi has also published interesting material
in the Basque journal, Euskal-Erria, vol. xxxv, 1896, entitled Consideraciones acerca dc la
raza Basca. For ethnography the older standard work is by T. F. Blade, Etude sur I'origine
des Basques, Paris, 1869. The works of Webster, Dawklns, Monteiro, and others are of
course superseded by the recent and brilliant studies above outlined.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 615

identify the oldest living population in Europe— a direct heritage
from prehistoric times. We found it to lie about the city of
Pdrigueux, shown on our map (page 633). Here, less than two
hundred miles to the southwest, is probably the most primitive
spoken language on the continent. Is there any connection dis-
coverable between the two ? Whence did they come ? Why
are they thus separated ? Which of the two has migrated ? Or
have they each persisted in entire independence of the other ?
Or were they never united at all ? Such are some of the perti-
nent questions which we have to answer.

These people derive a romantic interest from the persistency
with which, both in France and Spain, they have maintained
until the last decade their peculiar political organization ; despite
all attempts of the French and Spanish sovereigns through
centuries to reduce them to submission. Their political institu-
tions were ideally democratic, worthy of the enthusiasm be-
stowed by the "late Mr. Freeman upon the Swiss folk moot. In
Vizcaya, for example, sovereignty was vested in a biennial assem-
bly of chosen deputies, who sat on stone benches in the open air
under an ancestral oak tree in the village of Guernica. This tree
was the emblem of their liberties. A scion of the parent oak
was always kept growing near by, in case the old tree should die.
These Basques acknowledged no political sovereign ; they insisted
upon complete personal independence for every man ; they were
all absolutely equal before their own law; they upheld one
another in exercising the right of self-defense against any out-
side authority, ecclesiastical, political, or other; they were en-
titled to bear arms at all times by law anywhere in Spain ; they
were free from all taxation save for their own local needs, and
from all foreign military service : and in virtue of this liberty
they were accorded throughout Spain the rank and privileges of
hidalgos or noblemen.*

Along with these political privileges many of their social cus-
toms were equally unique. On the authority of Strabo, it was
long asserted that the custom of the couvade existed among
them — a practice common among primitive peoples, whereby
on the birth of a child the father took to his bed as if in the
pains of labor. This statement has never been substantiated
in modern times ; although the observance, found sporadically
all over the earth, probably did at one time exist in parts of
Europe. Diodorus Siculus asserted that it was practiced in
Corsica at the beginning of the Christian era. There is no like-
lier spot for it to have survived in Europe than here in the

* For an account of these political rights, see W. T. Strong, The Fueros of Northern
Spain, in Political Science Quarterly, New York, vol. viii, 1893, pp. 31'7-334.

6i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Pyrenees; but it must be confessed that no direct proof of its
existence can be found to-day, guide books to tbe contrary not-
withstanding. The domestic institutions are remarkably primi-
tive and well preserved.* Every man's house is indeed his cas-
tle. As Herbert puts it in his Review of the Political State
of the Basque Provinces, speaking of Vizcaya : " No magistrate
can violate that sanctuary; no execution can be put into it,
nor can arms or horse be seized ; he can not be arrested for debt
or subjected to imprisonment without a previous summons to ap-
pear under the old oak of Guernica." The ties of blood are per-
sistently upheld among all the Basques. The women enjoy equal
rights before the law in many places. Customs vary from place
to place, to be sure, and primitive characteristics are not always
confined to the Basques alone. They are, however, well repre-
sented, on the whole. In some places the eldest daughter takes
precedence over all the sons in inheritance, a possible relic of the
matriarchal family which has disappeared elsewhere in Europe.
It would be out of place to enlarge upon these social peculiari-
ties in this place. It will be enough in passing to mention the
once noted mystery plays, the folklore, the dances, the week con-
sisting of but three days (as Webster asserts), and a host of other
facts, each capable of inviting attention from the ethnological
point of view. The only detail which it will repay us to elabo-
rate is the language. To that we turn for a moment.

To the ordinary observer many peculiarities in the Basque
language are at once apparent ; x, y, and z seem to be unduly
prominent — to play leading parts, in fact. There are more conso-
nants alone, to say nothing of the vowels and double characters,
than there are letters in our entire alphabet. For the linguist the
differences from the European languages are of profound sig-
nificance. The Basque conforms in its structure to but two other
languages in all Europe, each of which is akin to the linguistic
families of Asia and aboriginal America. It is formally like the
Magyar or Hungarian ; but this we know to be an immigrant
from the East within historic times. It is also fashioned after
the model of the speech of the Finns in Russia. These people
are likewise quite foreign to western Europe ; they are akin to
tribes which connect them with the Asiatic hordes. The Basque
alone of the trio is mysterious as to its origin ; for it constitutes
a linguistic island, surrounded completely by the normal popu-
lation and languages of Europe.

In place of inflection, the Basque makes use largely of the so-

* E. Cordier. De I'Organisation de la Famille chez les Basques. Complete references
in detail by authors will be found in a Bibliography of the Ethno- Geography of Europe
shortly to be published in Bulletins of the Boston Public Library.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 617

called principle of agglutination. The different meanings are
expressed by the compounding of several words into one, a device
not unknown, to be sure, in Aryan tongues ; but in the Basque this
is carried much further. The verb habitually includes all pro-
nouns, adverbs, and other allied parts of speech. The noun com-
prehends the prepositions and adjectives in a like manner. As an
example of the terrific complexity possible as a result. Blade gives
fifty forms in the third person singular of the present indicative
of the regular verb to give alone. Another classical example of
the effect of such agglutination occurs in the Basque word mean-
ing " the lower field of the high hill of Azpicuelta," which runs

Azpilcuelagaraycosaroyarenherecolarrea.

This simple phrase is an even match for the Cherokee word
instanced by Whitney :

"Winitawtigeginaliskawlungtanawneletisesti,"

meaning " they will by this time have come to the end of their
(favorable) declaration to you and me." It justifies also the
proverb among the French peasants that the devil studied the
Basque language seven years and only learned two words. The
problem is not rendered easier by the fact that very little Basque
literature exists in the written form ; that the pronunciation is
peculiar; and that the language, being a spoken one, thereby
varies from village to village. There are in the neighborhood of
twenty-five distinct dialects in all. No wonder a certain traveler
is said to have given up the study of it in despair, claiming that
its words were all " written Solomon and pronounced jSTebuchad
nezzar."

Several features of this curious language psychologically de-
note a crudeness of intellectual power. The principle of abstrac-
tion or generalization is but slightly developed. The words have
not become movable " type " or symbols, as the late Mr. Romanes
expressed it. They are sounds for the expression of concrete
ideas. Each word is intended for one specific object or concept.
Thus there is said to be a lack of such simple generalized words
as " tree " or " animal." There are complete vocabularies for each
species of either, but none for the concept of tree or animal in
the abstract. They can not express " sister " in general ; it must
be " sister of the man " or " sister of the woman." This is an un-
failing characteristic of all undeveloped languages. It is paral-
leled by Spencer's instance of the Cherokee Indians, who have
thirteen distinct words to signify the washing of as many differ-
ent parts of the body, but none for the simple idea of " washing "
by itself. The primitive mind finds it difficult to conceive of
the act or attribute absolved from all connection with the ma-
terial objects concerned. Perhaps this is why the verb in the

VOL. LI. — 47

6i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Basque has to include so many other parts of speech. The Arabic
language is similarly primitive. It has words for yellow, red,
green, and other tints, but no term exists to express the idea of
" color," apart from the substance of the thing on which, so to
speak, the color lies.

A second primitive psychological characteristic of the Basque
is found in the order of the words. These follow the natural
sequence of ideas more closely than in European languages. The
importance of the idea determines precedence. Thus, instead of
saying " of the man," the Basque puts it " man, the, of." Nouns
are derived from one another in this manner. From hum, head,
comes hurnk, " head-for-the," or bonnet.* Many of the words
thus contain traces of their derivation, which have long since
vanished from the Aryan. Sayce gives some good examples.
Thus orzanz, thunder, comes from orz, cloud, and azanz, noise.
The word for month is illabete, derived from illargi-hete , meaning
" moon- full." The first of these two parts is again divisible into
il, death, and argi, light. In this manner we can trace the process
of reasoning which induced the combination in many more cases
than in our own languages. We still have some, like twilight or
hidalgo, which in Spanish signifies "son-of- somebody," a noble-
man ; but these are the exception.

Probably the most primitive element in the Basque is the
verb, or the relative lack of it. It was long asserted that no such
part of speech existed in it at all. This, strictly speaking, is not
true. Most of the verbs are, however, really nouns : " to give '' is
in fact treated as if it were " donation " or the " act of giving."
It is then declined quite like a noun, or varied to suit the circum-
stances. This is indeed truly primitive. Romanes has devoted
much time to proving that the verb requires the highest power
of abstraction of all our parts of speech. Certain it is that it is
defective in most primitive languages, from the Chinese up. Its
crudity in the Basque is undeniable evidence of high antiquity.

The archaic features of these Basque dialects in the days when
language and race were synonymous terms led to all sorts of
queer theories as to their origin and antiquity. Flavins Josephus
set a pace in identifying the people as descendants of Tubal- Cain
and his nephew Tarsis. In the middle ages they were traced to
nearly all the biblical heroes. Such hypotheses, when compara-
tive philology developed as a science, gave way to a number of
others, connecting the Basques with every outlandish language

* Good details on the structure of Basque are given by Pruner Bey in Bulletins de la
Societs d' Anthropologic, 186Y, pp. 39^-71. Blade, cited above, also describes fully. Jules
Vinson is the best modern authority. Vide his Le verbe Basque in recent volumes of the
Revue de Linguistique et dc Philologie Comparee, Paris.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 619

and bankrupt people under tlie sun. Vogt and De Charency
connected tliem directly with the American Indians, because of
the similarity in the structure of their language. Then De Cha-
rency changed his mind and derived them from Asiatic sources.
Sir William Betharn made them kin to the extinct Etruscans.
Bory de Saint- Vincent proved that they were the sole survivors
of the sunken continent of Atlantis ; of the type of the now
extinct Guanches of the Canary islands. Max Mllller gives some
evidence of similarity to the Lapps, the Finns, and the Bulgari-
ans. Others said the ancient Egyptians were related to them.
We have no space to mention more. Little by little opinion crys-
tallized, especially among the historians, about the thesis upheld
by Wilhelm von Humboldt, that the Basque was a survival of
the ancient Celt-Iberian language of Spain ; and that these people
were the last remnants of the ancient inhabitants of that penin-
sula. Pictet was the only linguistic dissident from this view,
holding that the Basques were of even greater antiquity ; being
in fact the prehistoric race type of Europe, antedating the Aryan
influx altogether. So much, then, for the conclusions of the phi-
lologists. Not very satisfactory, to be sure !

It will be observed that all these theories rested upon the as-
sumption that racial derivation could be traced by means of
language. A prime difficulty soon presented itself. Some thirty
years ago the Basque language was found to be drifting toward
the north, despite the apparent immobility of the people them-
selves. It seemed to be losing ground rapidly in Spain, with no
indication of doing so, rather the reverse, in France. Nor was this
apparently a new development. Everything denoted that it had
been going on for many years. The mode of proof is interesting
as Broca used it. There are two independent sources of evidence.
In the first instance the place names all over Navarra as far
south as the Ebro River are of Basque origin ; although the lan-
guage, as our map shows, does not to-day extend nearly as far.
This indicates that the Basque speech prevailed when the villages,
the mountains, and the rivers were named. No such zone of place
names lies outside the speech line in France, save in one canton,
just over the Pyrenees. There the Basque place names extend
out as far as the broad white line upon our sketch, shown more
clearly perhaps upon our other maps. The inward bend of the
curve of present speech at this place points to a retrogression of
language. Everywhere else in France the division line of place
names coincides very closely with that of speech.

No less important proof that Basque is losing ground in Spain
but holding its own in France is at hand. Notice on the map that
the Spanish language is to-day in use considerably within the
Basque limit. In other words, there is an intermediate zone in

620

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Spain where botli languages are understood and spoken by the
peasants. This zone varies considerably in width. By the city of
Plamplona there is a deep recess cut in the Basque. Castilian

CEPHALIC INDEX-

5A5QUE Provinces

f RANGE AND 5 PAIN.

After DeAranzadi's?, Broca'75,
coluqnon '9s. and olowz. '94-.

OUTER. LIMIT OF BASQUE SPEECH

^^

'■■; * af^C -.-, '. ■- .£5* '. .. ■■. ■■. VS."

-. •- ■-. ^^ -\. ■■■■ ■: ■■}

being the official language, and Plamplona the capital of the
province, the people in its vicinity have been compelled to adopt
this language. They have forgotten their native Basque tongue
entirely. At Bilbao, also an official city, the Spanish is actively
forcing its way in ; although the Basque language has more per-
sistently held its own along this side. All along the frontier in
Spain the Basque is on the retreat, much of the movement having
taken place since the sixteenth century. In France, on the other
hand, the Basque tongue holds its own. The line of demarcation
between the Basque and the Bearnais-French patois is clean and
clear cut. There is no evidence of an invasion of territory by the

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

621

outsider. This is equally true in respect to customs and folklore ;
so that the Basque frontier can be detected all along the line
from village to village. The present boundary is of such a form
that it denotes a complete equality of the two rival tongues. It
has remained immovable for many generations.

The clearness of this frontier in France is interestingly illus-
trated by a bit of detail on the accompanying map. It concerns
that loop which is roughly indicated upon the larger map just
east of Bayonne. Here at the village of La Bastide-Clairence for
generations has been a little tongue of Bearnais-French, penetrat-
ing deeply into Basque territory. The name of this town indi-
cates a fortress, and another "Bastide" occurs in the tongue
farther north. Broca inclines to the view that here was a bit of
territory in which the French patois was so strongly intrenched
that it held its own against the advancing Basque. It may have
been a reconquest, to be sure. For us, the sharpness of frontier
is the only point of concern, in contrast with the one in Spain.
It is an undoubted instance of linguistic invasion toward the
north.

Another difficulty, no less insuperable than the fact that their
language was on the move in a quiescent population, lay in the
way of the old as-
sumptions that the
Basques were pure
and undefiled de-
scendants of some
very ancient people.
Study of the head
form precipitates us
at once into it. No
sooner did physical
anthropologists take
up the matter of
Basque origins than
they ran up against
a pair of bars. Study
of the cephalic in-
dex yielded highly
discordant results.
Those who, like Bro-
ca and Virchow,

measured heads or skulls of the Basques in Spain, discovered a
dolichocephalic type, with an index ranging about 79 on the
living head. Equally positive were those like Pruner Bey, who
investigated the head form on the French slopes of the Pyrenees,
that the Basque was broad-headed. The indexes obtained in this

Detail — Basque-French Boundary.

622

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

latter case clustered about 83. The difference of four units and
over was too great to ascribe to chance variation or to defective
measurement. The champions of the broad heads, such as Ret-
zius and Pruner Bey, affirmed an Asiatic origin, while their oppo-
nents, following Broca, as vehemently claimed that, whatever the
Basques might be, they certainly were not Mongolian. They
generally asserted an African origin for them. The often acri-

H

French Basque. Basses-Pyrenees.

monious discussion has been settled finally by proof that both
sets of observers were right after all. Strange as it may seem,
the people on the two opposite slopes of the Pyrenees, both alike
speaking the same peculiar language distinct from all others in
Europe, were radically different in respect of this most funda-
mental racial characteristic. No proof of this, beyond a glance
at our map of cephalic index, on page C^^O, is necessary. From
preceding articles the broad heads in France, denoted by the dark
tints, will be recognized as the extreme vanguard of the Alpine
race of central Europe. Spain, on the other hand, is a strong-
hold of the long-headed Mediterranean type. Here we have the
point of contact between the two. Let us not be confused by the
light-shaded area about Dax. That is not truly Mediterranean.
It need not bother us. Dr. Collignon identifies it as a remnant of
the same prehistoric Cro-Magnon race, centering in Dordogne,
which we described in our last paper.

Bearing in mind now that the crest of the Pyrenees runs along
the political frontier, it seems as if, on the whole, the line of di-
vision between broad-headed and long-headed types lay at the
northern base rather than along the summits of the mountains.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

623

This is indeed true. Apparent exceptions prove the rule; for
where, in the heart of the Basque territory, the broad heads seem
to penetrate to the Spanish frontier, there is the ancient pass of
Roncesvaux, celebrated in history and literature. The broad-
headed type would naturally have invaded here if at all. Every-
where else the long-headed type seems to prevail, not only on
the Spanish slopes, but clear over to the foothills of the Pyrenees
on the other side in France.*

If these facts be all true, what has become of our Basque phys-
ical type ? Where are our philological theories of purity of racial
representation ? If the Basques are indeed an unmixed race,
there must be one of these two types which is false. At first
the anthropologists sought thus to reject one or the other, French
or Spanish, for this reason. Then they laid aside their differ-
ences ; they abandoned entirely the old theory of purity of descent.
The Basque became for them the final complex product of a long
series of ethnic crosses. Each of the conflicting characteristics
was traced to some people, wherever found it mattered not. The
type was compounded by a formula, as a druggist puts up a pre-
scription. Bladd wrote in the light of such views. Canon Taylor,

Spanish Basques. Tolosa, Guipuzcoa.

in his Origin of the Aryans, holds that the broad-headed French
Basque is only a variation of the Alpine type which we have seen
prevails in all the southwest of France, with a dash of Lapp
blood. For him the Spanish Basque was, on the other hand, a
subtype of the long-faced Iberian or Spanish narrow head. The

* The general limits of the mountainous country are shown by the five-hundred-meter
contour line on our subsequent map on page 625.

624 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

result of the crossing of the two was to produce a peculiarity of
physical feature which we shall shortly describe — namely, a broad
head and a long, narrow face. Aranzadi, himself a Basque, as-
signs an equally mixed origin to his people. His view is that the
Basque is Iberian at bottom, crossed with the Finn or Lapp, and
finally touched by the Teuton.

Is there, after all, a Basque physical type corresponding to the
Basque language ? Enough has already been said to cast a
shadow of doubt upon the assumption. Can it be that all which
has been written about the Basque race is unwarranted by the
facts ? Let us examine a few portraits collected from both slopes
of the Pyrenees. They appear on page G5?2 and the following pages.
At once a peculiar characteristic is apparent in nearly every case.
The face is very wide at the temples, so full as to appear almost
swollen in this region. At the same time the chin is very long,
pointed, and narrow, and the nose is high, long, and thin. The
outline of the visage becomes almost triangular for this reason.
This, with the eyes placed somewhat close together, or at least
appearing so from the breadth of the temples, gives a countenance
of peculiar cast. It resembles, perhaps, more than anything else
the features of so-called infant prodigies, in which the frontal
lobes of the brain have become overdeveloped. The contrast
appears especially strong when we compare this Basque type of
face with that of its neighbors. The people all about have very
well- developed chins and regular oval features, in many cases
becoming almost squarish, so heavily built is the lower jaw. A
Basque may generally be detected instantly by this feature alone.
The head is poised in a noticeable way, inclining forward, as if to
balance the lack of chin by the weight of forehead. The car-
riage is always erect, a little stiff perhaps. This may be because
burdens are habitually carried upon the head. On the whole,
the aspect is a pleasant one, despite its peculiarities, the glance
being direct and straightforward, the whole bearing agreeable
yet resolute.

The peculiar triangular facial type we have described — char-
acteristic both of Spanish long-headed or French brachycephalic
Basques — has been mapped by Dr. Collignon for the north slope
of the Pyrenees with great care. We have reproduced his map
on this page. It is very suggestive. It shows a distinct center
of distribution of the facial Basque wherein over half the popu-
lation are characterized by it. Concentric circles of diminishing
frequency lie about it, vanishing finally in the plains of Bdarn and
Gascogne. The most noticeable feature is the close correspond-
ence of this distribution of a physical type with the linguistic
boundary. It is exact, save in one canton, Aramitz, at the east-
ern end southeast of Maul(5on. Here it will be remembered was

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

625

the one spot in France where there was evidence in the place
names of a retrogression of the Basque speech before the French.
The light-dotted line shows the former boundary. It is the one
French-speaking canton, with nearly a quarter of the population
of the Basque facial type. The exception proves the rule. Some
relation between language and racial type is proved beyond a
doubt.

Another significant fact is illustrated by this map. It appears
that instead of being refugees isolated in the recesses of the
Pyrenees, the Basque physical type is really most frequent in
the foothills and open plains along the base of the mountains.

Outer.
Limit of

BASQUE
5PEECH

PERCENT^

5-10|
10-30|
30-5o|
Oi/er 5ol

Relative Frequency

OF

Basque Facial Types

IN France

AfTW- COLLISNON '95

In order to emphasize this point we have indicated the lay of the
land upon our map by means of the five-hundred-meter contour
line of elevation above the sea. It shows that in the Basque
country the mountains are much narrower than farther to the
east. The Pyrenees, in fact, dwindle away in height down to the
seacoast. The only canton in the mountains proper with upward
of half the population of the Basque facial type lies at the famous
pass of Roncevaux. At this point the contour line sweejis far
south, well toward the frontier. Of the three cantons with the
maximum frequency of triangular faces among conscripts. Dr.
Collignon found two and a half to be outside the mountains
proper. The area of their extension is shaped like a fan, spread-
ing out toward the plain of Beam. The two wings of the fan are
the cantons which form the core of the ethnic group. This re-

626

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gion, Basse-Navarre, has always enjoyed a considerable political
autonomy. Quite probably the ethnic segregation is due in part

to this cause, as well as to the
peculiarities of language. This
fact that the Basques are not
an ethnic remnant barely hold-
ing their own in the fastnesses
of the Pyrenees, as is generally
affirmed ; but that they have
politically and ethnically as-
serted themselves in the open
^^ u Jl^^^^l fertile country, reverses their

Hj^^ V ^^^^^~ status entirely. It confirms an

^PB ^m|^ ,|, ^ -.^^ impression afPorded by a study

mm '1H^^^ Jii V ^"^ of their language that however
^^ --^1^ nF '\si it may be in Spain, these people

are a positive factor in the popu-
lation of France.

In reality we have here in the
department of Basses-Pyrenees
a complex ethnological phenomenon, the Basques constituting the
middle one of three distinct strata of population lying on the
north slope of the Pyrenees. Our map of cephalic index, on
page 620, serves to illustrate this. The plains of Beam are occu-
pied by the extreme western outpost of the broad-headed, round-

I

Broad-headed Type.

Like the Bearnais.

^mer^^-^'^-^

m

French Basque. Basses-Pyrenees.

faced Alpine type of central Europe. A portrait of one of these
is given on this page. Then come the Basques jjroper, with their
broad heads and triangular faces. These lie mainly along the

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 627

foothills, althougli at Roncevaux extending back into the moun-
tains proper. Behind them, in the recesses of the Pyrenees, is
the third layer of population. These mountaineers are distinctly
dolichocephalic. Conscripts with the characteristically narrow
head, the long and smoothly oval face, are depicted in portraits
on this same page. These last people are really Mediterranean in
type, overflows from the true Iberian stock, which forms the bulk
of the Spanish population. This ethnic segregation has probably
been preserved because of the political independence of the people
of the mountains during many generations. These three groups
merge into one imperceptibly to the eye ; but on analysis their
differentiation from one another has now been clearly established.
How has it come to pass that our Basques are thus left inter-
posed between two neighboring populations so entirely distinct

tgr^r:mi^^>^.*^ -^^

Mediterranean Dolichocephalic Types. Pyrenees Mountains.

in respect of these important racial traits ? Is it permissible to
suppose that the intermediate zone in which the triangular face
occurs most commonly is really peopled by a simple cross be-
tween the two ethnic types on either side ? This would be simi-
lar to Canon Taylor's supposition that a brachycephalic parent
stock determined the head form of the Basques, while the narrow
lower face and chin was a heritage from a dolichocephalic long-
visaged ancestry. Such disharmonic crania arise sometimes
from crossing of the two types of head form, especially in Swit-
zerland, where the Teutonic and Alpine races come into contact
with one another. - An objection to this theory of secondary
origin by intermixture is close at hand. It is fatal to the assump-
tion. It is an important fact that the Basques are relatively

628 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

broader-headed than even the neighboring peasantry of Beam,
and of course even more so than the long-headed Spanish popu-
lation across the Pyrenees. Turning back to our map on page
620, this will appear. Of course, the Basques are not more ex-
treme in this respect than the pure Alpine type ; we mean that
they rise in cephalic index above their immediate and adulterated
Alpine neighbors in B^arn. This implies, of course, that they
are at the same time far broader-headed than the Spanish Basques
over the mountains. Thus we dispose at once of the explanation
offered both by Canon Taylor and De Quatrefages for the broad-
headedness of the French over the Spanish Basque. Taylor ac-
counted for this marked difference between the people of the two
opposite slopes of the Pyrenees on the supposition that in invad-
ing B^arn from Spain the Basques intermarried with the broad-
headed Alpine stock there prevailing, and so deviated from their
parent type. This fact that we have mentioned, that in France
in their greatest purity the Basques are broader-headed than the
B^arnais about them, proves beyond question that they are
brachycephalic by birth and not by intermixture with their
French neighbors. In Spain, on the other hand, the facial
Basque, if we may use the term, is slightly broader-headed than
his purely Spanish neighbor. Surrounded thus on all sides by
people with longer and narrower heads, we are forced to the con-
clusion that this people is by nature of a broad headed race. An
important corollary is that the pure Basque is to-day found in
France and not in Spain, although they both speak the same lan-
guage. This exactly reverses Taylor's theory. It is the Spanish
Basque which is a cross-type — in other words, narrower-headed
by four units than the French Basque because of intermixture
with the dolichocephalic Spaniards. Those who are found here
in Spain are probably stragglers; they have merged their physi-
cal identity in that of their Spanish neighbors. Their political
autonomy on this south side of the mountains being less marked,
the i30wer of ethnic resistance vanished quickly as well.

Having disposed of the explanation of origin by intermixture,
the only hypothesis tenable is that these Basques are immigrants
— that they are an intrusive people. Dr. CoUignon's explanation
is so simple and agrees so well both with history and with anthro-
pological facts that we give it as nearly as possible in his own
words : During the Roman imperial rule a number of petty
Iberian tribes, by virtue of the same tenacity which enables their
descendants to enjoy political autonomy to this day, had pre-
served a similar independence south of the Pyrenees. Such were
the Vardules, Caristes, Autrigons, and the Vascons (Basque — by
no means physically identical with the Gascons, although de-
rived from the same root word). These last occupied the upper

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 629

course of the Ebro — that is to say, modern Navarra in Spain.
The barbarian invasions ravished all Gaul with fire and sword.
The Visigoths, controlling for a time the two slopes of the Pyre-
nees, were finally expelled from Aquitaine by the Franks, greater
barbarians even than they. It is readily conceivable that these
Visigoths about this time began to covet the rich territory of the
A^ascons over in Spain, especially the environs of Plamplona,
which were of great strategic importance. History furnishes no
details of the conflict, except that the Vascons were completely
subjugated and partly driven into the Pyrenees. Here they
speedily found their way over into Beam in France, meeting no
opposition since the country there had mainly been depopulated
by constant wars. This occupation by the A^ascons, according to
Gregory of Tours, took place in the
year 587 — that is to say, some time
after the fall of the Roman Empire.
The invasion was accelerated later
through the pressure exerted by the
Spaniards, fleeing before the Sara-
cen conquerors in the south. Rem-
nants of all the Spanish peoples took
refuge at this time in the north.
Impelled by this pressure from be- "j^,^

hind, the Vascons were driven out
of the Pyrenees and still farther
north into France, retaining their

political autonomy under Prankish / 7

rule. Here they remained undis- v jr

turbed by the Saracens, save by

the single army of Abd-er-Rhaman. g^^^,^„ ^^^^^^

Hence on this northern side of the Zamudin, Ouipuzcou.

Pyrenees they have preserved their

customs and physical characteristics intact, while in Spain inter-
mixture has disturbed the racial type to a greater degree. The
language alone has been better preserved south of the mountains
because it was firmly fixed there before the Spanish refugees came
in such numbers. Of our three layers of present population the
dolichocephalic type in the fastnesses of the Pyrenees to-day rep-
resents the primitive possessors of Aquitaine. Here, driven to
cover by the advancing wave of the Alpine stock on the north
long before the fall of Rome, they have remained protected from
disturbance by the later invaders from the south. The Vascons
or Basques have simply passed through their territory, with eyes
fixed upon the fertile plains of Aquitaine beyond. They spread
out in two wings as soon as they were out of the mountains, as
we have seen. In the course of time they have intermarried with

630 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the primitive population of the Pyrenees; and the latter have
adopted the Basque language and customs : for they were penned
in by them all along the base of the mountains and had no other
option. This community of language and customs could not
fail to encourage intermarriage ; to the final end that to-day in
the mountains the Basque is considerably crossed, as our map
shows. In the plains, on the other hand, the line of demarca-
tion of blood is as sharp as that of speech. Purity of type on
this side was made possible by the political independence which
Basse-iSTavarre has always enjoyed.

We have still to inquire as to the physical origin of this curi-
ous peo])le. We have traced them back to Spain. Whence did
they come into this country in the first place ? Are they of
African descent, following Broca's theory, or are they offshoots
from Mongolian stock as Pruner Bey would have it ? Or must we
class them with the lost tribes of Israel ? We already know the
physical type of the prehistoric Cro-Magnon race. Let us com-
pare it with our Vascons and test the theory of descent from it.
The Basque head is disharmonic — that is, it is broad, while the
face is extraordinarily narrow. This is in contravention of the
general law that the face and the head usually participate alike
in the relative proportions of breadth and length. Thus, as our
portraits have shown, the broad-headed Alpine stock in B(?arn
has a round, short face; while the dolichocephalic population of
the Pyrenees, lying behind the Basque, has a correspondingly
long, oval visage. The Cro-Magnon race off'ers the only other
example of a widespread disharmonic head in Europe. Are our
Basques derived from this pure ethnic source ? Curiously enough,
these two cases of disharmonism so near to one another cross at
right angles. In the Basque the head is broad and the face nar-
row ; in the Cro-Magnon it is the head which is narrow while
the face is broad. In view of this flat contradiction, the hypothe-
sis of the Basque as a direct and pure descendant of the most
primitive prehistoric population of Europe becomes completely
untenable. Thus we dispose of one possible source for this people.
We have already rejected those based upon intermixture. The
broad head of our Basque with its narrow face is explained by
De Aranzadi, himself a Basque, by the supposition of an admix-
ture of Lapp blood to give the broad head with Iberian or Berber
blood for the narrow face. Modern research is, however, inimical
to such hasty assumptions of migrations across continents and
over seas : for the inertia of simple societies is immense. Causes
of variation nearer at home are regarded as more probable and
potent, and there is none more powerful than social selection.

The difficulty of placing the Basque is solved by Dr. Collig-
non in a novel and yet simple way which has won favor already

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OE EUROPE. 631

among anthropologists. It is of great significance for the student
of sociology. His explanation for the Basque type is that it is a
subspecies of the Mediterranean stock evolved by long-continued
and complete isolation, and in-and-in breeding primarily engen-
dered by peculiarity of language. The effects of heredity, aided
perhaps by artificial selection, have generated local peculiarities
and have developed them to an extreme. The objection to this
derivation of the Basque from the Mediterranean stock which at
once arises is that the latter is essentially dolichocephalic, while
the Basques, as we have shown, are relatively broad-headed. It
appears, however, that the Basque is broad-headed only at one
spot, and that far forward near the temples. The cranium itself
at its middle point is of only medium width and the length is
only normal. The proportions, in fact, excluding the frontal
region, are very much like those of the Mediterranean stock in
Spain across the Pyrenees. They approach much nearer to them,
in fact, than to the Alpine or broad-headed stock. It is thus
only by its abnormal width at the temples that the cranium of
the Basques may be classed as broad-headed. Dr. Collignon
regards the type, therefore, as more or less a variation of the
Mediterranean variety, accentuated in the isolation which this
tribe has always enjoyed. It approaches in stature and in gen-
eral proportions much nearer also to the Mediterranean than to
the Alpine stock in France.

That the Basque facial type — that which is recognized as the
essential characteristic of the people, both in France and Spain —
is a result of artificial selection, is rendered probable by another
bit of evidence. The Basques, especially in France where the
type is least disturbed by ethnic intermixture as we have seen,
are distinguishable from their Bearnais neighbors by reason of
their relatively greater bodily height. This appears upon our
map of stature on page 632. The lighter tints denoting taller
statures are quite closely confined within the linguistic boundary.'
This is not due to any favorable infl.uence of environment ; for
the Basque foothills are rather below the average in fertility.
The case is not analogous to that of the tall populations of
Gironde, farther to the north, light tinted upon the map. They,
as we took occasion to point out in the preceding paper, are above
the average either in Dordogne on the north or in Landes on the
south. The contrasted tints show this clearly. These differences
are in great measure due to the surpassing fertility of the valley
of the Garonne, as compared with the sterile country upon either
flank. No such material explanation is applicable to the Basque
stature. Some other cause must be adduced. Ought not arti-
ficial selection, if indeed it once became operative in a given
ethnic group, to work in this direction ? Goodly stature is earth-

632

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wide regarded as a type of beauty. We know that the Basques
are proud of this trait. May they not have evolved it, or at least
perpetuated it, by sexual choice perhaps ? This, of course, is

3TATURE

Southwestern
France

5PA1N.

] ATTEB COLLIGNON '95
AND OLOR12. ■3b

merely supposition on our part, but it seems to })e worthy of
mention.*

The development of a facial type peculiar to certain localities
is by no means a rare phenomenon. We shall have occasion to

* The apparentl)' contradictory low stature in Spanish Xavarra need not disturb us.
No attempt was made by Oloriz to differentiate the IJasciue half of the province from
the other. Hence the figures obtained are truly characteristic of neither. The data are
defective for all Spain, as compared with the detailed researches of Collignon upon the
French side.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

633

call attention to it later in other portions of Europe, particularly
where isolation prevails. The form of the nose, the proportions
of the face, nay at times the expression, seem to be localized and
strongly characteristic. It is easy to conceive of an artificial
selection in an isolated society whereby choice should be exer-
cised in accordance with certain standards of beauty which had
become generally accepted in that locality. It is merely an illus-
tration of what Giddings, in his Principles of Sociology, aptly
terms a recognition of " consciousness of kind " ; or as Dr. Beddoe
puts it, of " fashion operating through conjugal selection." An
example of the effect of selection of this kind in producing
strongly individual types is offered by the Jews. They as a race
vary greatly in the proportions of the head ; and in color of eyes
and hair to a lesser degree. Nevertheless, despite all variations
in these characteristics the prominent facial features remain
always the same. The first, being inconspicuous traits, are
allowed to run their natural course ; the latter are seized upon
and accentuated through the operation of sexual preference for
that which has become generally recognized either .as beautiful
or ethnically individual.

In the attempt to justify this interesting sociological explana-
tion for the peculiarities of the Basques, causing them to differ

■^ ^■vitmnm-'^K'

French Basuue. Basses-Pyr6nees.

from their parent Mediterranean stock, several corroborative facts
have come to light. Certain customs among the peasants seem
to imply a recognition of their facial individuality. These all
tend to accentuate the peculiarities which have now apparently
become hereditary among them. The chin is almost invariably

TOL. LI. 48

634 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

shaven in tlie adults, with the effect of exaggerating its long and
pointed formation. More conclusive still, it is said that in early
manhood side whiskers are often grown upon the broadest part
of the cheeks. This would obviously serve still more to exag-
gerate the peculiar form which the face naturally j)ossesses. A
neighboring people, the Andalusians, differ in their way of adorn-
ing the face in such wise as to heighten the contrast between
themselves and the Basques. Among them chin whiskers are
grown, which serve to broaden their already rounded chins and
to distinguish them markedly from the pointed-chinned Basques.
All this fits in perfectly with much of the evidence brought
forward by Westermarck, in his History of Human Marriage,
serving to show that the fashions in adornment which prevail
among various peoples are largely determined by the physical
characteristics which they naturally possess. Thus the North
American aborigines, having a skin somewhat tinged with a red-
dish hue, ornament themselves almost entirely with red pigment,
heightening still more their natural characteristics. Among the
negroes a similar fact has been observed, in each case the attempt
being to outdo Nature.

Is it not permissible to suppose that here the same process
has been at work gradually remolding the physical type ? A far-
reaching and bold hypothesis this, to be sure. It would have less
probability in its favor did we not observe in modern society
many phenomena of fashion and custom closely akin to it in their
immediate effects. We have but to suppose a fashion arising by
chance, or perhaps suggested by some casual variation in a local
hero or prominent family. This fashion we may conceive to
crystallize into customary observance, until finally through gen-
erations it becomes veritably bred in the bone and part of the
flesh of an entire community, A primary requisite is isolation —
material, social, political, linguistic, and at last ethnic. No other
population in Europe ever enjoj'ed all of these more than the
Basques. If such a phenomenon could ever come to pass, no
more favorable place to seek its realization could be found than
here in this uttermost part of Europe.

Defexdixc} the use of scieutifio terminnlog-y in scientific books, a re-
viewer in The Athen;eum maintains that "those most interested soon be-
come familiar with the meaning of terms, and, experiencing their conven-
ience, adopt them. It is only those who have no real knowledge or interest
in the subject who refuse to i-ead a book because they have not mastered
the alphabet. We do not think it possible that anybody who would take
the trouble to master the structure of half a dozen plant types could remain
in ignorance of a considerable amount of terminology, or could express,
himself rationally without it if he tried."

OBJECTS AND RESULTS OF POLAR RESEARCH. 635
OBJECTS AND RESULTS OF POLAR RESEARCH.

By GEOEG GEELAND

X EAVING out of view the commercial enterprises of tlie an-
-L^ cient inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula and the voyages
of the primitive Celtic people of Britain, the earliest explorer of
the north was a younger contemporary of Alexander the Great,
Pytheas of Marsilia, who braved the perils of that region, im-
pelled by purely scientific motives. He returned with abundant
results, but was not understood by the people of his time, and
more than two thousand years elapsed before men sailed north
again in scientific inquiry. It is true that many voyages were
made to the north during the middle ages. The Northmen dur-
ing that period founded colonies in Greenland, in the farthest
north, as their countrymen settled in the fair southern regions of
Apulia and Sicily ; but both sets of settlements failed to be of
permanent establishment. The voyage of the Venetian Zeno to
the Faro Islands in 1390 was without historical significance, and
the voyage of Christopher Columbus beyond Iceland in 1477 is
mythical.

At the close of the middle ages, when the deficiency of knowl-
edge of the earth was great, avarice and the quest for the goods
of the south led men into the northern ice ; they sought to reach
India by the shortest possible routes, where they would not meet
rivals and enemies. This was the object of Magellan's circum-
navigation. The Ceterum Censeo of James Lancaster asserted
that the way to India was north, around America. India was the
object of the polar navigators Cabot in the fifteenth, Frobisher
and Davis in the sixteenth, and Hudson and Bafl&n in the seven-
teenth centuries, to name only a few of the most famous. It is
astonishing what these daring British and Dutch sailors risked,
suffered, and gained.

They did not, indeed, reach India, but we all know of Hudson
Bay, Davis Strait, and Lancaster Sound. As we owe to the men
of the stone age, who lived before all history, one of the most
important possessions of man, the great paths they marked out
upon the earth across streams, over mountains, and through wil-
derness and plain, which are still the routes of to-day's highways,
so these older arctic navigators mapped out the courses of their
successors. The ships of the whalers and seal hunters followed
them, discovering one bay, island, and channel after another,
naming them and marking them on maps.

In the seventeenth century appeared such men as Kepler, Cas-
sini, Newton, and Boyle. The shape of the earth was actively
discussed, improved maps were made, and new aims and motives

636 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

were conceived, the development of whicli has caused the nine-
teenth century to be so sharply distinguished from its predeces-
sors. Now knowledge of the earth is sought for itself, and in this
respect the polar research of the present has all at once assumed
another aspect, under which it is differentiated from that of the
past. Northwestern and northeastern passages have been sought
in our days, but not in order to reach India. When Maclure
achieved the former in 1852 and Nordenskjold the latter in 1879,
the value attached to the discoveries was not that they furnished
routes, but that a correct knowledge of the northern coasts of the
two continents and rich stores of other scientific information had
been gained by them. Fruits like those, no longer the interests
of trade, justified the high prizes which the English Government
offered for the discovery of the passage, and the costly expedi-
tions which were dispatched for that purpose. The early trade
routes became highways for scientific investigation, and the na-
ture of the polar regions as a whole was inquired into. Such ob-
jects were pursued by individuals. Scoresby, while hunting for
whales, made constant studies of the highest scientific value of
the hydrography, magnetism, and meteorology of the arctic re-
gions ; and so did Karl Ludwig Gieseke, afterward Professor
of Mineralogy at Dublin, who traveled through East and West
Greenland from 1807 to 1813 solely for the thorough study of the
geology of their coasts.

Till 1860 the English, and afterward the Americans with
them, were in the front as polar explorers. The most important
results of their work were the discovery of the magnetic pole in
1831 by John and James Ross, the definition of the coast of arctic
America, and numerous single observations. More recently other
nations have come forward — the Danes in Greenland, and the
Swedes, whose most illustrious representative is Nordenskjold.
Two German expeditions have been sent to East Greenland, an
Austrian expedition under Weyprecht and Preyer has discov-
ered Franz- Joseph Land, the Dutch have explored south of Spitz-
bergen, the Russians on the northern coast of Siberia, and now
with Nansen and Mohn the Norwegians have advanced to the
very front. In 1882-'83, at the instance of the German Neumayer
and the Austrian Weyprecht, a chain of observation stations was
established around the pole, to be kept up for a year — an enter-
prise in which Germany, England, the United States, Russia, Aus-
tria, France, Sweden, Norway, and Finland took part. The year
1883 was further marked by Nordensjold's return from the inland
ice of Greenland, and by Nansen's conception of his scheme for
traversing Greenland on snowshoes, which he carried into effect
the next year. North polar research is therefore almost exclu-
sively the work of the Germanic nations, for the Russian ex-

OBJECTS AND RESULTS OF POLAR RESEARCH, b^i

plorers have been chiefly of that stock. The Romanic nations,
no less seafaring people, have kept away from the north pole ;
but France has done something in south polar exploration.

The south pole has been comparatively neglected on account
of the unfavorable character of its surroundings. Large masses
of land are wanting, and the immense wastes of water of the
South offer only a few islands possessing neither large mammals
nor human inhabitants ; while the Eskimos of the North are of in-
calculable advantage to exploration. Magellan's southern voyage
was not followed up for two hundred and fifty years. The first
after him to reach high southern latitudes was James Cook, in
1774, and no other similar expeditions followed for fifty years
more. Those best known were those of the French under Du-
mont d'Urville in 1839, of the Americans under Wilkes, and of the
English under James Ross, who in 1842 penetrated to the seventy-
eighth degree, the highest southern latitude yet attained. After
a year's maintenance of a German station on the South Georgian
Islands and of a French station at the southern point of America,
both of which belonged to the international system of 1883, and
after a few dashes southward in later years, a number of nations
— Germany, Austria, England, the United States, and others — are
again preparing to co-operate in another polar siege at the
austral end of the world for the benefit of science.

The question rises, What is the good of all this effort, this toil,
this risk incurred in seeking inaccessible regions ? The prospect
of adventure, of witnessing strange scenes and experiencing un-
wonted conditions, of displaying prowess and achieving victory
over formidable obstacles, may account in part for the readi-
ness with which individuals are tempted to go into arctic expedi-
tions, but not so with governments. And governments can not
expect any practical material gain from such enterprises suffi-
cient to justify the expenditures which they willingly lavish
upon them.

Yet there is a real gain in a higher sense to be derived from
them. They contribute to the enlargement of our knowledge,
to the widening of our circle of view, to the increase of our
mental capacity and ability ; they make us better acquainted
with the planet on which we live, and help us achieve a mastery
over it.

Nowhere are more questions to be found for which to seek
answers than in the polar regions. Here the magneto-electric
light of the earth manifests itself in the wonderful phenomenon
of the northern lights. All the wind currents of the earth press
toward the pole, and the sea currents too. Curious dispositions of
Nature are found here, with great volcanoes, the outer cones of
which are constituted of strata of ice covered with lava, and

638 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

under the masses of ice we discover remains of plants that
demonstrate the presence not so very long ago of a flourishing
tropical or subtropical vegetation instead of the present ice. We
meet mountains of ice everywhere, and everywhere the arctic
region is sublime. Man's disposition to make all the earth his
home and himself at home everywhere in it is only sharpened by
the problems offered there, and the tendency to go becomes
irresistible.

There is thus much to observe and much to learn in these
regions for the satisfaction of our irresistible longings. First, we
are able to study in the polar regions the division of land and sea,
the size, elevation, and topography of the land — the whole question,
in short, of polar geography. The form of the earth's surface is
not casual, but is the result of interactions of the crust and the in-
terior of the globe. The discovery by Nansen's expedition of the
profundity of the polar sea tallies with Prof. Mohn's observations
of the great depths between Greenland and Spitzbergen and with
those of the fiords and interinsular channels of the North At-
lantic. Further, the sea bottoms are penetrated by volcanoes,
some of them still active — here single, as in Jan Mayen Island,
there in groups, as in Franz- Joseph Land and Fire Island. A
marked difference exists in this respect between the Atlantic half
of the polar regions north of Europe and eastern North America,
where disturbance and divisions of the land are the rule, and the
Pacific side, north of Siberia and western America, where quiet
prevails, with regular coast forms and few islands. The lands on
the Atlantic side have, moreover, been gradually rising for an in-
calculable length of time, and are still rising, while those on the
opposite side have until very recently been subsiding. These
facts, selected as examples from a great number of phenomena,
may serve to illustrate how important is a knowledge of the polar
regions to that of the earth as a whole. Its importance is, in fact,
quite beyond comprehension.

So the magnetism of the earth, the colored beams of the
northern lights, the flickering of their draperies and bands, are
of interest far beyond their relations to the earth alone ; for the
movement of the magnetic elements reflects the processes of the
sun's atmosphere, and may be connected with the immense
periods of the revolution of our solar system. Man could not
refrain from inquiring into the nature and reason of these things
even if he would, and hence he is willingly or unwillingly led
to the poles, where he is brought into the closest relations with
them, and where the explanation of them can be most hopefully
sought.

A relation between the northern lights and the weather has
been established by repeated observations, and that brings us to

OBJECTS AND RESULTS OF POLAR RESEARCH. 639

another group of phenomena, those of meteorology, which are of
interest to the whole earth, and are especially remarkable in the
polar regions. An interchange of great wind currents between
the equator and the poles is constantly going on, upon which the
movements of the atmosphere and the pressure in the interme-
diate regions are ultimately dependent, and the study of the at-
mospheric phenomena of the polar regions is indispensable to our
proper knowledge of them.

The excess of heat at the equator forces masses of air into the
highest regions of the atmosphere; the congestion at the pole, the
necessary consequence of accumulation there, forces them back to
the earth. On their way through the higher regions these masses
are attenuated and cooled, so that, even when condensed at their
sinking, they can not overcome the polar cold ; and as they bring
little moisture, and consequently little cloudiness, the radiation of
heat goes on continuously during the long polar night ; the more
so because snow and ice are extremely good radiators. Hence the
extreme cold which Nansen found in Greenland, and which makes
that interior a second pole of cold along with that in the interior
of Siberia, is fully explained.

Yet the winds contribute to the warming of the polar sea.
They drive the waters from warmer regions in wide superficial
currents into the higher latitudes, where, being heavier in conse-
quence of their greater content of salt than the fresher water
resulting from the melting of the glaciers and the ice and from
the outpour of the great Siberian rivers, they sink beneath them
to the bottom and keep the temperature of the sea constantly
above the freezing point. The colder, lighter water has to give
way to these under-sea currents, and flows into the Atlantic
Ocean, cooling the American coasts. At the south pole currents
flow in from all the seas, and superficial waters spread into all
the oceans.

How shall we account for the masses of polar ice, for the im-
mense icebergs, and the glaciation of Greenland ? The snowfall
of the polar regions is light. The air is nowhere drier than over
the cold glacier ice, as is proved every day in Switzterland by the
quickness with which clothes dry when hung over it. At the
same time the ice is covered with extremely fine, hardly visible
snow crystals. If we boil water in a retort which is connected
with another vessel containing a piece of ice, all the steam will
pass over on to the ice and deposit itself as ice upon it. The same
takes place in a larger degree on the earth, where the retort is
the warm evaporating water of the tropical regions, the connect-
ing pipe is the upper atmosphere, and the thickening ice is at the
pole. Thus, without any rain or snow falling, all the moisture
and all the vapor is withdrawn from the atmosphere by this ice

640 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and deposited upon it in fine crystals ; and as the influx of air
is constant and all-pervading, a never-ceasing supply of frost is
going on all the time. In consequence of the larger quantity of
moisture, the process is still more marked and regular at the
south pole. The explanation of the glaciation of the northern
part of our temperate zone during the ice age, still unfound, is a
matter of great importance, for the present topography of the
land was brought out and the organic life of the whole earth was
modified by it ; and it is the general opinion that the solution of
the problem is to be found, if it is found, by the study of the
polar regions.

In the period immediately preceding the ice age the polar
regions were not covered with ice, but had a rich growth of
plants, reaching up even to the glaciers of their mountains, and
plants were represented in them which are now known only in
warmer countries. This was a very noteworthy time in the his-
tory of the earth. Organic life, in the continents at least, was in
its greatest extension, and, I believe, specificism and diversity.
The forests also were more luxuriant than now. And this was
the time when man originated. Upon this came the ice age,
during which man was scattered over the whole world, and or-
ganic beings were divided according to their capacity to resist
the cold into the three great classes of arctic, temperate, and
tropical life — a division which probably existed too during the
earlier period, but then only locally, as on mountain ranges.
The study of the organic life of the poles is therefore of the
greatest importance for the understanding of the history of the
organic life of our planet ; and the more so because the arctic
region has always been an important station for the distribution
of organisms. The plants and animals of the south polar lands,
on the contrary, and of the pointed southern continental termi-
nations have never shown any permanent community with one
another. This peculiar feature of the southern continents ap-
peared very early.

Knowledge concerning the origin and spread of peoples may
likewise receive valuable contributions from polar research. That
is shown by the Eskimos and their wonderful adaptation to that
nature which is so destructive to civilized peoples. In this we
have a clear demonstration of the maxim which is one of the
most important if not the most important law of all organic and
human life : that what is to be permanent can be brought about
only by gradual, extremely slow formation ; never by sudden,
immediate transition, or by sharp, violent breach. It is the same
in the mental life. It is impossible to create anything new and
enduring by simply casting the old away. Only what has con-
nection has permanence. This maxim may be called the funda-

THE GIANT CACTUS. 641

mental law of all development ; and as it certainly prevails for
earthly life, so it does for the existence of human society. This
principle is illustrated, and is destined to be more extensively so,
from observations in the polar regions. — Translated for the Popu-
lar Science Monthly from the Deutsche Euridschau.

THE GIANT CACTUS.

Bv Pkof. JAMES W. TOUMEY.

PEOPLE in general are but little impressed by the many forms
of life, be they plant or animal, with which they daily come
in contact. A tree of unusual size, or a flower of exceptional
form or color, attracts our attention. It is the unusual in Nature
which always catches the eye. The New England boy grows to
manhood under the widespreading boughs of the American elm,
in sight of grass-covered mountains and winding rivers. The
natural beauty of his surroundings is a part of himself. So, also,
the Papago Indian sees nothing peculiar in the many forms of
life characteristic of the region where he makes his home.

He can not listen to the whispering of the leaves, because the
trees of his limited world do not grow them. He knows nothing
of tangled woods, but draws his inspiration from the broad, hot,
cactus-covered plains and the granite-walled and lava-strewn
mountains.

The many and varied species of cacti, which constitute the
vegetation most familiar to him, are the most peculiar of all
forms of vegetable life to those who live beyond the limits of our
arid region. Of all these strange plants the sahuaro, or giant
cactus, on account of its great size and striking aspect, is the most
impressive. We can well imagine the feeling of the early ex-
plorers when they first came in sight of these towering plants, so
abundant on the foothills contiguous to Salt River Valley, and
from where they extend southward far into Mexico. The finest
and largest specimens that I have ever observed are growing only
a few miles from Tucson, on the foothills of the Santa Catalina
Mountains, where hundreds may be seen growing on a single
acre, many extending their huge green columns to the height
of fifty feet. The many ribs which parallel the columns are
surmounted by bunches of heavy spines. With great age the
spines fall away from the lower portion of the plant, leaving the
broad, obtuse ribs devoid of their natural protector. This fact
led the first observers to report the plant spineless.

When lighted, the spines burn readily ; the flame, soon ascend-
ing, burning the spines in its path until it reaches the top. From

642

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

this fact the plant is sometimes recognized as the "Arizona
candle."

Just beneath the epidermis and alternating with the spiny-
ribs are strong ligneous fascicles. These fascicles are of the same
number as the ribs, and serve as a support for the soft paren-
chyma tissue which constitutes the great bulk of the plant.

The fascicles are not unlike huge fish poles, twenty to forty
feet long and from one to three inches in diameter, flattened
radially as relates to their position of growth. This woody por-
tion endures long after the other parts of the plant have decayed
and is popularly known as the skeleton. During the growth of

A Cactis Fohest.

the plant the fascicles increase in size each year by the addition
of a woody layer to their outer surface, in the same manner as the
oak and maple add their annual layers. The layers of growth
forming the older fascicles are very close together, sometimes a
hundred being crowded into less than an inch of space.

This portion of the plant is of great value to both Indians and
Mexicans, as it not only serves as firewood but is extensively
utilized in both fence and house building. When cut to requisite
length it makes excellent pickets, and throughout its entire range
the dirt roofs of the adobe houses are supported by the long,
strong fascicles.

We find by counting the layers of growth that many of the

THE GIANT CACTUS.

643

older plants laave been more than a century and a half in grow-
ing. The size of the plant is not always a fair criterion of its
age, as plants eight to ten feet
high, growing from the granite
rocks on the southern slopes of
the Santa Catalina Mountains,
are older than plants four or five
times larger growing in deep
canons or in yards about the
city, where the water supply is
not so completely withdrawn.
The ability, however, of this
plant to withstand prolonged
drought is very great. Its enor-
mous mass of succulent tissue,
protected by a thick epidermis,
enables it to maintain the ac-
cumulated moisture for an al-
most indefinite period, even after
every source of outside moisture
has been dried up. A plant may
be taken up, exposed to the hot,
dry air for months, and when
replaced in the soil continue to
grow, having suffered little ap-
parent injury. Living speci- ^Y$
mens, weighing several hundred l|f,
pounds, may be packed in boxes
and shipped to Europe and other
foreign countries, without injury
to their vitality. A few years
ago a specimen some eight feet
high was placed in the window
of one of the Tucson shops.
Some eighteen months later it
was found on examination to
still contain a large amount of
moisture. Its vitality is further
illustrated by the fact that a foot
or more of the top may be cut
from the plant in early spring
and sent across the continent, flowers developing on the detached
portion several weeks after it has reached its destination.

A number of birds, includiDg the Gila woodpecker, the red-
shafted flicker, and the golden flicker, excavate great holes in the
soft tissues in which they build their nests. Later the abandoned

Giant Cactus ( Cereus giganteus).
(Engelm.)

644 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

houses of the woodpeckers are favorite retreats for the Mexican
screech owl and the pygmy owl. An occasional bat, overtaken
by sunlight, passes the day in one of these dark holes, and when
the excavation extends through, from side to side, the cactus
wren brings in its miscellaneous collection of sticks and straws
and makes itself at home.

The first flowers appear when the plant reaches a height from
eight to twelve feet, and at this time branches develop ; usually
forming a whorl a few feet below the summit. In the course of a
year or two the branches assume an upright position, forming
columns parallel to the main stem.

The large, waxy-white flowers are borne in the axils of the
bunches of spines, at or a few inches below the summit of the
trunk and branches ; sometimes a half hundred crowning the sum-
mit of a single branch. They begin to bloom during the early
days of May, and are not entirely gone before the middle of June.
By midsummer the thick stems are loaded with ripened fruit,
and the harvest time for both birds and Indians is at hand. The
latter, mounted on ponies, pass from tree to tree, armed with long
poles, with which they detach the fruit and bring it to the ground.
The squaws gather it in baskets and carry it to their village,
where it constitutes the staple article of food for the time being.
The surplus is made into a preserve having the consistence of
thick molasses, and is nearly as sweet. It is then packed in small
oUas and put away for future use. Not always, however, is the
surplus fruit put to this use, but instead is made into a rank,
intoxicating drink.

The fresh fruit is not unpleasant, even to the cultivated palate,
and is very unlike the slimy, mucilaginous fruits of many other
species. At maturity they are fully three inches long and half as
wide. In a few days the pericarp, or thick outer rind, splits at
the summit into several segments, which, curling back, exposes
the rich, red pulpy interior. The segments spreading in all direc-
tions appear from a distance like gayly colored petals. As they
become more deflexed the central portion falls to the ground,
leaving only the pericarp attached to the plant. The edible por-
tion consists of the long, fleshy funiculi which attach the numer-
ous small black seeds to the ovary.

Nearly a half hundred birds feed upon the rich, nutritious
fruit of this plant, the list including all our thrashers, wood-
peckers, finches, and pigeons. It is through the agency of these
birds that the seeds become disseminated.

ESKIMO BOWS AND ARROWS. 64.5

ESKIMO BOWS AND ARROWS.

By JOHN MURDOCH.

WHEN we landed at Point Barrow, in 1881, it seemed as if
every Eskimo hunter had a pretty good rifle. There is a
law against selling breech -loading arms and ammunition to "In-
dians," but it was no better enforced in Alaska than it was in old
times on the plains, when the Sioux used to butcher our soldiers
with rifles and cartridges made in the Eastern States.

When we grew better acquainted with the natives, however,
we found that some of the poorer men were still obliged to de-
pend on the weapon of their forefathers, the bow and arrows.
Besides, every boy in the village had his little bow, which he used
for shooting birds and small animals. Now, these bows were per-
haps the most ingenious piece of bow-making in the world.

As every one knows, the Eskimos, with very few exceptions,
inhabit a region which is perfectly treeless, or at any rate where
nothing grows but pines and spruces, whose soft, inelastic wood
is entirely useless for making bows. They have overcome this
difiiculty very efi^ectively by fastening along the back of the bow
twisted cords of reindeer sinew in such a way that each cord is
stretched when the bow is bent and flies back when the bow-
string is released. As far as we know, no other race of savages
make use of this ingenious contrivance. Some tribes of Indians
are in the habit of stifi;ening their bows by " backing " them with
strips of sinew, glued on, but the Eskimo backing is made of
cords and tied on. As old Martin Frobisher, the first English-
man who ever saw the Eskimos (in 1577), tells us, " Their bowes
are of wood of a yard long, sinewed on the back with strong
sinewes, not glued too, but fast girded and tyed on."

In some regions the Eskimos when first visited by white men
were still using bows with a very simple backing, merely twenty
or thirty strands of twine running from one end of the bow to
the other, twisted together tightly from the middle, and tied
down to the bow in two or three places. My friends at Point
Barrow and along the adjacent coast, however, had gone on im-
proving the bow until it was the best made by Eskimos anywhere.

The body of the bow was made of a piece of good sound spruce
driftwood, from forty to fifty inches long, an inch and a quarter
wide, and three fourths of an inch thick in the middle. It was
very carefully and neatly made, trimmed down beautifully
smooth with the crooked knife, the Eskimo's universal tool, with
which he does such very clever whittling. Like all bows, they
were flattened on the " back " and rounded on the " belly " and
tapered ofl: toward the ends, where they were worked into neat

646 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" nocks " for the bowstring. Some bows were straight, and some
turned up at the ends like a Tartar bow.

Now, to " back " such a bow as this they would take one piece
of twine, forty or fifty yards long. This twine is made of a
three-ply braid of reindeer sinew, about the size of common twine
such as we use for tying parcels, and serves the Eskimos for a
great variety of purposes. One end is looped round one nock of
the bow, and about twenty strands are strung up and down the
back of the bow, from one end to the other. Then they began to
lay on strands that ran only between the weakest parts of the
bow — that is, the points about half a foot from each end. Here
these strands were fastened with very complicated hitches, mak-
ing a sort of " whipping " round the bow. When there were
enough strands put on to make a couple of cords about as big as
a lead pencil, an ingenious tool was used to twist each up tight
from the middle, and the whole was whipped down securely with
the end of the cord. It is easy to see how drawing the bow would
stretch these twisted cords and make them fly back with great
force when the string was released, while all these lashings and
whippings not only hold the cords tight to the bow, but also com-
press the fibers of the wood like the whippings on a fishing rod,
and prevent cracking. The hitches and knots, besides, are put on
in such a way that straining the backing draws every lashing
tighter. The bowstring was also of the same plaited sinew.

The arrows were very neatly made of some light wood, and
feathered with two or rarely three narrow feathers, generally made
from the quill of some bird of prey, and neatly lashed on. They
had four kinds of arrows. The bear arrow in old times always
had a regular flint arrowhead, made by flaking, such as so many
savages used, and which are found in such quantities all over the
country wherever the Indians used to live. They still preserve
the art of making these at Point Barrow, and made a number of
beautiful arrow points for sale to us. But they never learned
how to make a flint arrowhead with barbs, and so they sometimes
made their bear arrows with a barbed head of bone tipped with
flint. Driven by such a strong bow these arrows were very ef-
fective, and, if no bone was in the way, were sometimes driven
clean through the body of a polar bear. As they came more in
contact with white men, they took to tipping both kinds of bear
arrows with bits of metal, brass, iron, or steel when they could
get them. I brought home a couple of arrows tipped each with
one blade of a pair of scissors, filed into an arrowhead.

For hunting the reindeer the arrow had a long, sharp, bayonet-
shaped head made of antler, barbed on one edge and fitted loosely
into the shaft. As the Eskimos told us, when they hit a deer
with one of these arrows the shaft could drop out, leaving the

ESKIMO BOWS AND ARROWS. 647

barbed head in tbe wound, and the deer would go off, " sleep one
night, and then die."

Geese, gulls, and other large fowls were shot with arrows that
had long, five-sided heads of walrus ivory, not very sharp and
barbed on one edge, while for hunting small birds they used an
arrow with a blunt, club-shaped head made of reindeer antler.
Such an arrow kills a small bird or little animal like a lemming
or ground squirrel by stunning it, and does not tear a great hole
in it. The boys' arrows nowadays are often headed with empty
copper cartridge cases, and I have seen one of these shot clean
through the body of a small bird.

The bow was carried, strung ready for use, in a sheath of
tanned sealskin slung across the shoulders in such a way that it
could easily be drawn out under the right arm. Nowadays they
carry their rifles in similar sheaths.

Attached to the sheath was a quiver, also of sealskin, in which
they used to keep an assortment of arrows, some of each kind,
according to the hunter's needs.

All the Eskimos draw the bow like European archers — that is,
by hooking the fore and middle fingers round the bowstring, with
the arrow clasped between the fingers, instead of pinching the
butt of the arrow between the finger and thumb, like most
Indians.

As the bow is now practically nothing but a plaything among
the Eskimos of the Northwest, it will probably not be many
years before it entirely disappears, as it has in Greenland.

Putting aside "supposed portraits" and such as might be termed
" fancy portraits " having no claim to authenticity, Mr. W. Carruthers has
satisfied himself of the existence of eight porti'aits of Linnaeus that were
evidently painted or drawn from life, and have been copied more or less
frequently by different engravers. The earliest was painted by Hoffmann
in 1737, while Linnaeus was working for his patron, Cliffort, at Hartecamp,
and represents him at the age of thirty in the picturesque di-ess in which
he traveled through Lapland. Of the next portrait, an engraving by
Ehrensverd in 1740, no original is known to exist. In 1747 two pencil
sketches of Linnaeus, forty years of age, one sketch being a full length,
were made by Rehm. Five years later a fine pastel was executed by Lund-
berg. SchefFel, in 1755, painted him at the age of forty-eight ; and this
portrait was painted by Krafft, and was placed originally in the Medical
College of Stockholm, of which Linnaeus was one of the founders. It was
supposed to be lost, but had been I'emoved to the Royal Academy of Sci-
ences at Stockholm, where Mr. Carruthers discovered it. The latest por-
trait was tbat by Roslin, painted in 1775, when Linnaeus was in his sixty-
eighth year. A fine copy of this by Pasch, presented to Sir Joseph Banks,
and given by him to Robert Brown, hangs in the library of the Linnean
Society.

648 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

WHEN CHARACTER IS FORMED.

By M. V. O'SIIEA,

I'KOFESSOR ELECT OF THE SCIENCE AND ART OF TEACHING, UNIVERSIIV OK WISCONSIN.

I.

THE results of late researches in physiological and experi-
mental psychology contribute much toward a rational ex-
planation of the causes of abnormal and deficient mental char-
acteristics in childhood. To begin with, it is now satisfactorily
shown that mental action is accompanied by the expenditure of
energy derived from the breaking down of highly unstable chem-
ical compounds in cerebral nerve cells. The brain has come to
be regarded as a storehouse of nerve power ; and when too severe
or prolonged demands have been made upon it the cells become
much depleted of their contents, and there results a condition of
brain tire or fatigue. The process of depletion has been studied
with great care in the case of the frog by Dr. Hodge,* of Clark

Diagram A, showing clumges observed in the nucleus of the living sympathetic nerve cell of
the frog, as the result of direct electrical stimulation ( Hodge, after Donaldson t)- After
six hours and forty-nine minutes of stimulation, the nucleus («) is seen to be reduced to
less than one half its size when the stimulation began.

University, and some of his results are shown in the accompany-
ing Diagram A.

While no similar observations have been made upon human
beings, for obvious reasons, yet it seems reasonable that the same
law holds here in regard to the expenditure of nerve energy by
physical or mental work.

It is evident that the law of the conservation of energy is im-
plied in this phenomenon, and the accompanying diagrams may
serve to make clear the method of its application. In Diagram B
there is shown leading to the very heart of the nerve cell a fila-
ment, N, whose ofiice is to carry messages in the form of stimuli
from the world without ; and leading from each cell are a num-
ber of avenues or passageways, D, through which may run off to
other cells or muscles the energy set free by the advent of some
sense stimulus or by the processes of thought and feeling. A
very slight stimulus may in certain instances unloose a relatively

* For a detailed description of the method of making the study, " ith results, see Hodge,
Some Effects of Electrically Stimulating Ganglion Cells. American Journal of Psychology,
vol. ii, p. 3 el seq. f The Growth of the Brain, p. Ji'iO.

WHEN CHARACTER IS FORMED.

649

Diagram B, from Starr, Atlas
of Nerve Cells, page 39,
modified especially to show
nucleus which is depleted
of energy when the cell is
in action.

great amount of energy whicli may be expended in thought and
emotion, or which may issue directly in movement. Every one

knows that a mere whisper of the death
of a dear friend or of an approaching
calamity or any similar circumstance will
create great mental disturbance and drain
the nerve cells to the point of exhaustion.
So the prick of a pin or a tickling of the
sole of the foot will produce vigorous
movements of the entire body in most per-
sons. It is probably true that in almost
all instances the physical or mental result-
ant of a given stimulus is far greater, from
the point of view of energy expended, than
the stimulus itself. Every stimulus enter-
ing the cerebral cells is re-enforced from
the energy stored therein ; and it is plain,
of course, that the less the supply or the
greater the demands made the more rap-
idly will exhaustion follow. In a study,
then, of brain fatigue in childhood we
have to consider first the conditions which determine the amount
of energy which shall be stored in the cells, which, as we shall
attempt to show, differs in individual cases on account of a variety
of varying circumstances ; and, secondly, we have to regard the
character of the work done, so as to notice how heavily it draws
upon the credit of the brain.

It is the purpose here to consider especially the intellectual
and emotional concomitants of brain fatigue in childhood. In
order to ascertain these we may employ
any or all of several methods of inquiry.
In the first place, we may make direct
mental tests to determine if a child can
think as rapidly and logically in a state
of fatigue, occasioned by overwork or
by lack of food, as when refreshed after
rest or proper nutrition. In the second
place, we may by introspection observe
the effects of fatigue upon our own pro-
cesses of thinking and the character and
quality of our feelings. Third, we may

study children in their everyday work and play, and observe the
influence upon their thinking and feeling of prolonged periods of
activity, of great excitement or overstimulation of any sort, of a
lack of proper and sufficient food, and other like conditions.
Again, we may by observation, and by experiment with apparatus,

TOL. LI. — i9

-s-^

Diagram C. — S = stimuli pour-
ing into the brain ( E ) through
all the senses, and issuing in
mental action or movement
(M). It shows that the ener-
gies of the brain are being
drawn upon continually to
re-enforce the stimuli from
the outer world.

650 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

determine the effect of brain fatigue upon physical power and
control and make inferences therefrom respecting thought and
emotion, since there is little doubt that good physical control indi-
cates a well-balanced and hence a well-nourished brain, which in
turn is the essential requisite for well-balanced thinking and feel-
ing. On the other hand, a lack of control in the body as a whole
or special members thereof is indicative of an impaired state of
the brain, and this impairment must interfere with vigorous, con-
nected thought, and give rise to more or less abnormal feelings.
It follows from these proj^ositions that the character of an indi-
vidual's movements is an index to his brain condition, and indi-
rectly to his mental constitution, aptitudes, and possibilities.

As a result of considerable investigation * of late, according
to these various methods of study, it has been shown that, as
might be expected, fatigue interferes in the first place with the
keenness and integrity of one's intellectual processes. The power
of continuous attention is lessened, the rapidity and accuracy of
X^ierception through every sense are dulled, memory becomes halt-
ing and uncertain, and reason grows illogical and erratic. The
writer has studied during the past year the influence of brain
fatigue upon school children in Buffalo by observations made
during the regular work of the day, and by simple experiments
with apparatus designed to test first, the rapidity of thought
and action as determined by the length of reaction time upon
stimuli presented to the different senses ; second, the keenness
and accuracy of sense perception ; and, third, the power of con-
trol of the body as a whole, and of the different parts, as the
hand, the tongue, etc.f He has also tested the elementary in-
tellectual processes according to methods devised by Dr. Joseph
Jastrow, wherein the ability to perceive and judge of form

* For detailed results of some of the most important of these researches, together with
careful and complete descriptions in many cases of the methods of study employed, see the
following : Cowles, Neurasthenia and its Mental Symptoms ; Mercier, The Nervous Sys-
tem and the Mind; Donaldson, Growth of the Brain, pp. 27*7-323; Francis Galton, Jour-
nal of the Anthropological Institute, 1888, p. 153 ; Warner, Mental Faculty, p. 76 ; Dressier,
Fatigue, Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1896 ; Kraeplin, A Measure of Mental Capacity, Popu-
lar Science Monthly, vol. xlix, p. 756 ; Sinclair, Schoolroom Fatigue, Educational Founda-
tions, May and June, 1896 ; Bryan, The Development of Voluntary Motor Ability; Gilbert,
Studies upon School Children in New Haven, in Studies from the Yale Psychological
Laboratory, vol. ii.

f It will not be possible here to give a description of the apparatus employed, with illus-
trations and details respecting methods of use, but the reader, if interested, can obtain com-
plete information relating to most of the apparatus by referring to Scripture, op. cit., as
follows: For the apparatus used in testing rapidity of thought and action, see pp. 27-37;
also pp. 43, 46, and 58. For the apparatus employed in testing the keenness of the senses,
see pp. 101-112; also pp. 124, 135, 139, 141, and 170-173. For that employed in deter-
mining physical control, see pp. 67-74, 79, 80, 86, 87.

WHEN CHARACTER IS FORMED. 651

readily and accurately, to retain and reproduce visual impres-
sions, and to identify new impressions similar to others recently
experienced, is detected,* These experiments test in a way at
least the processes of attention, perception, retention, and com-
parison or reason; and because of their simplicity, not being
complicated with other factors, it is comparatively easy to detect
varying power on the part of the pupil.

Space will not permit a detailed statement of the results of
these studies, but it may be said in summary that after two and
a half hours' work in the schoolroom almost all pupils show a
decrease in intellectual power. Reaction time is considerably
lessened — the pupil can not perceive and react so quickly or
with such surety. He can not discriminate colors with such
keenness. If in the morning he can detect a gramme pressure
upon the back of the hand, he now requires two grammes or
more in order to receive an impression. If when he is refreshed
he can detect two points upon the back of the hand thirty milli-
metres apart, they must be separated considerably in order to be
detected as two when he is in a state of fatigue. In a test of
physical control the hand will be found much less steady after a
few hours of mental labor, as may be seen by examining one's
handwriting with a magnifying glass. If the pupil endeavor to
perform some difficult task requiring great co-ordination of the
different parts of the body, as in directing a light rod upon a
small point a few feet away but yet within easy reach, or in
threading a fine needle, the influence of fatigue is easily observed.
In the laboratory a device is used whereby an electric bell is
rung when a given point is not touched. In testing a pupil in
this way it has often been found that he can not only not touch

* The ability to perceive and judge of form is tested first by dividing a line of a given
length, say three inches, into any desired number of equal parts ; second, by marking off
on lines B C D a distance equal to that on A ; third,
by singling out and marking a certain form, as "1 >
mingled in with many more similar forms, as
~\ I " I r . This work requires consider-
able power of attention and discrimination.

Retention and i-eproduction of visual impressions

is tested by having the pupil examine for about two ^—\

minutes a card containing fifty pictures or words, I

each being accompanied by a number; then on a

card containing ten pictures or words selected from

the fifty the pupil is to set down the appropriate

number opposite each, being allowed only a brief

period for this — say one minute. To test the ability j)

of identification the pupil examines for one minute

a card with ten words or pictures, and then either immediately or some time after identifies

and marks these in a group of fifty words or pictures.

652 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the point so often in a state of fatigue as when rested, but the
strain seems much greater upon the whole body, causing twitch-
ing and other choreic movements if continued very long. This
evidence all points to the fact that mental activity expends
nervous energy which is revealed in lessened muscular control.
So in the direct mental tests, a pupil can not after a half day's
work in school do such an apparently simple thing as to divide a
line into a given number of equal parts with the accuracy that he
can earlier in the day. The same effects of fatigue are evident
in the lessened power of retention of visual images, and of identi-
fication of similar impressions. In short, fatigue lessens mental
ability; produces, relatively speaking, dullness, stupidity, and
inaccuracy in thinking.

Substantially these same results have been reached in experi-
ments made by Professors Burgerstein,* of Vienna, and Kraeplin,f
of Leipsic, and at Leland Stanford Junior University X in our
own country. Mr. Galton * has secured statements from adults
to the effect that a hard day's work lessened the keenness and
trustworthiness of their intellectual operations. They could not
perceive so accurately, remember so readily, or reason so effi-
ciently. Mr. Sinclair, || in his studies of schoolroom fatigue, has
obtained similar data.

The statement was made in a previous paragraph that people
differ greatly in the readiness with which fatigue ensues upon
mental effort. The nerve cells seem to be so constituted in some
people that they give off an undue amount of energy upon slight
stimulus.'^ This fact may be easily observed in a group of chil-
dren as well as among adults. A slight noise, a touch upon the
shoulder, or a sharp question will cause some to react with an
amount of vigor quite out of proportion to the degree of the
stimulus. The body will twitch, the face flush, and the thought
will be confused. Other children will show none of this excessive
display of energy. Their reaction is proportionate to the stimu-
lus, and in this way they save their energies. Consequently, other
things being equal, they endure much longer and can undertake
more difficult and trying ordeals without fatigue. Again, it is
easy to see when any number of children are gathered together
that some have much more energy always at their disposal than
others. In other words, they are better nourished, which means
in this connection that they have more nerve energy that may be
employed in either mental or physical work. The important

* See Kraeplin, op. cit. \ Op. ciC. ^ Pedagogical Seminary, vol. iii, p. 213 et seq.

* Op. cit. 1 Op. cit.

^ Cf. Bryan. The Development of Voluntary Motor Ability. Proceedings of the De-
partment of Superintendence of the N. E. A., 1897.

WHEN CHARACTER IS FORMED. 653

point to be noted here is that some children, from whatever
cause, may be in a more or less constant state of fatigue all or
most of the time ; and since fatigue produces what is called dull-
ness, these unfortunates will be distinguished as dullards and
stupids, unless the greatest care be taken in home and school
to conserve their nervous energy. If such care is not taken, a
chronic condition is established in the nervous system which per-
mits the energy to escape in useless ways ; and if this continues
long enough, perhaps through the college period, it is doubtful
if the individual will ever fully recover, since the nerve cells
probably acquire their permanent modes of action by this
time.

Thus far nothing has been said of the effects of fatigue upon
emotional states. It is manifestly much more difScult, if at all
possible, to obtain data respecting this question by scientific ex-
periment ; we must rely rather almost wholly upon observation.
Doubtless every one has had suflQcient experience to be assured
that irritability is in many persons an almost certain consequence
of unusually severe mental strain or worry.* It has already
been pointed out that in a state of fatigue the nerve cells are un-
stable, giving off energy — exploding as it were — without sufficient
cause. A person who when refreshed and vigorous would be
able to inhibit impulses to anger, or quick words, or passion of
any sort, would probably in a state of fatigue lose this power, at
least in a measure. That is, fatigue in most instances lessens the
inhibitory action of cerebral cells, and the individual reacts upon
every stimulus without, as we say, deliberation or consideration.
It is shown, too, by some investigators f that fatigue produces a
melancholy, depressed feeling ; causes one to turn his thoughts
in upon himself, and to become morbid and gloomy if this self-
consciousness is long continued. Further, it is the opinion of
those who have had large experience that those qualities of
character which are described by the terms vicious or criminal
are due to perverted feelings dependent upon impaired physical
conditions, J especially of the nervous system. It has become a
maxim that a man in a state of hunger is much harder to govern
than when he is well nourished. Untruthfulness, which Kant
has called the negation of self, is generally a characteristic of an
individual who has not vigor enough to face boldly the conse-
quences of his acts. It would doubtless be within bounds to say
that in general one who is physically weak, who is nervously de-
pleted, is usually, although perhaps not always, morally weak.

* Cf. Warner, op. cit., p. 'ZG. •)■ E. g., Beard, Cowles, Dresslar, op. cit.

X See Collin, Papers in Penology, 1891, pp. 27, 28; also Wey, in same, pp. 57-69;
Wright, American Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry, vols, ii and iii, pp. 135 et seq.

654 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Dr. Stanley Hall has said somewhere that the time may not he
far away when we can say that what is physiologically right is
morally right — that is, whatever begets the best physiological
conditions will produce the best moral character.

II.

If brain fatigue interferes with the readiness and accuracy of
one's intellectual operations and estranges the emotional nature,
it is important to know what are the agencies most commonly
found in home and school which produce this condition ; for when
the various qualities of which dullness and irritability are types
are characteristic of one's childhood they tend to become per-
manent, thus determining one's character. It is shown by neu-
rology that any mental act oft repeated leads to the establish-
ment of correlated neural processes which make the reproduction
of that act continuously easier until it becomes automatic, when
all the causes which originally produced it even if with conscious
effort on the part of the individual will in time awaken it with-
out any such difficulty. If now it be remembered that brain
fatigue is due to some degree of exhaustion of cerebral cells, it
will be apparent that one of the most important sources of fa-
tigue is inadequate nutrition of the brain. Nerve cells, like all
other cells in the body, repair themselves by absorbing from the
blood those materials suited to their particular needs. If the
blood does not carry to them a sufficient quantity of the right
elements of food to meet the demands made upon them, then
while thus neglected they will be in a partially exhausted state
from sheer inability to obtain nutriment. Just so a field of
wheat in poor soil will bring forth imperfect grain, or a fruit
tree unable to find the proper elements of nutrition will bear
defective apples or pears or peaches.

All life of whatsoever kind requires a proper sort and adequate
amount of nutrition in order that it may develop in a vigorous,
healthy manner. Experiments have been conducted in rearing
tadpoles and pond snails in various sized vessels of water, where
the opportunities for nutrition corresponded with the quantities
of water inclosed, and it has been found that the less the amount
of water the smaller the animal. Animals reared in this way
may be arranged in a series increasing in size according to the
quantity of water in which they have been placed.* Many mam-
mals and birds are found to have their centers of distribution in
the northern regions, and they diminish in size from the northern
to the southern latitudes, thus indicating that the ability to ob-
tain food determines the degree of development of the bird \ or

* Donaldson, op. ciL, p. 139. ■{■ Ibid., p. 59.

WHEN CHARACTER IS FORMED. 655

animal. Bowditch * has shown in his studies upon the growth
of children that native-born Americans are larger and better
developed than those of foreign parentage, and ascribes the rea-
son to the better conditions which surround the American chil-
dren. So children from the non-laboring classes are larger than
those from laboring homes, f

While these data show only the dependence of physical devel-
opment upon nutrition, still we are not without similar evidence
showing that mental development depends also upon the charac-
ter and amount of a people's food. The causes for the intellectual
and temperamental differences between the races of different coun-
tries may be ascribed, at least in part, to the character of their
dietaries. Contrast the Chinese and English, for instance: the
former are mentally and emotionally very different from and in-
ferior to the latter, as might be expected from the quality of their
food. The difference between these two races is typical of the
difference between types of children to be seen frequently in
home and school. The one is slow and obtuse intellectually,
and possessed of an indifferent or negative emotional and moral
nature; while the other is keen and vigorous in thought, and
positive in emotions and morals ; and one who strives by con-
crete observation to account for these differences can not fail to
see plainly ofttimes that they are due to the quality and quantity
of food which the children eat.

It is important to note that cerebral nerve cells demand par-
ticular materials for their proper nutrition. Food which will
make bone will not be best suited to the nourishment of an active
brain, and vice versa. So fat- producing foods, while of course of
value in one's diet, yet do not furnish in large measure nutrients
for the repletion of nerve cells. Prof. Ladd says that the chem-
istry of the nerve cells is in the main protoplasmic, and therefore
rich in albuminous bodies. X And again, " Of the solids compos-
ing the nervous substance, more than one half in the gray and
one fourth in the white consist of proteid or albuminous bodies." *
The foods that are best calculated to nourish the brain, then, are
those containing a large amount of protein or albumin, rather
than fats, carbohydrates, or minerals, the three other important
constituents of foods. But in many homes, as well in those of the
rich as of the poor, the children's dietaries contain comparatively
little albuminous food, as may be seen from the following analysis
of the nutritive values of the various common articles of a child's
diet : Beef contains 29'7 per cent of protein ; chicken, 19"3 per

* Eighth Annual Keport of the Massachusetts State Board of Health, p. 295,
f Cf. Herbert Spencer, Education, New York, 1884, pp. 226, 227.
\ Outlines of Psychology, p. 15. * Ibid., p. 12.

656 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTnLY.

cent; fresh fish, about 16 per cent; salt cod, 276 per cent; rolled
oats, 16 per cent ; wheat flour, 12 per cent ; Graham flour, 14 per
cent ; beans, 22*2 per cent ; while such vegetables as beets, cab-
bage, corn, celery, lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, etc., contain
on an average not more than 1*5 per cent of foods that nourish
the brain. Pie, pudding, cake, cookies, and crackers contain at
the outside not over six to seven per cent, even when these are so
cooked that the little substance they contain may be extracted in
digestion,* The writer has ascertained the bills of fare of many
school children by direct observation and by having them write
out the customary articles of diet with mode of cooking, and he
has found, what is doubtless already well known, that in many
homes the children live quite largely upon vegetables, white
bread, and pastry and cakes of various kinds. Parents are oft-
times satisfied if their children eat a large amount of such things,
thinking it is primarily the quantity, not the quality, which is to
be considered in securing nutrition. As a consequence, those
children that live largely upon a starchy diet are in a more or
less constant state of brain exhaustion, and they will be liable to
manifest all the evidences of fatigue which have been described
in preceding paragraphs.

It happens frequently in the homes of the well-to-do, where the
expense can have nothing to do with the matter, that the children
are permitted to live almost wholly upon those foods which seem
to delight the palate, as cookies and cakes in a variety of forms,
but which contain relatively little nutrition, the principal in-
gredient being starch in the form of wheat flour. It is the prac-
tice often to begin in the early months of a child's life to feed it
highly seasoned and sweet foods, thus establishing an appetite
which later is not satisfied with the simple nourishing meats,
grains, and milk. In the poorer homes, in our cities particular-
ly, many are unwise in the expenditure of what money they can
spare for food, purchasing mainly starchy foods, which, although
of relatively little value anyway, are yet more suited for the adult
engaged in out-of-door labor than for a child at mental work in
school, t Usually in such homes children eat the same food that

* Dietary Studies at the Maine State College in 1895, published by the United States
Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No 37, pp. 11-1 7. See also Prof. Atwater's Analy-
ses, published by the Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 23 ; and Meats : Composi-
tion and Cooking, Bulletin No. 34.

\ Atwater (pp. cit.) gives quite a number of dietaries showing how money may be spent
to greatest advantage in poor homes. Atkinson, in his Science of Nutrition, pp. 11-65,
Springfield, Mass., 1892, also discusses the subject quite fully. An attempt is made by both
these authorities to state just what proportions of the different nutritive elements a child's
dietary should contain at different ages, but the results are nothing more than suggestive,
for children dift'er greatly in their needs. A highly organized, nervous child, working hard

WHEN CHARACTER IS FORMED. 657

is prepared for the father of the family, whose labor involves only
the use of his muscles, and greater thought is taken in providing
for his needs than for those of the children. And then so slight
attention has been given by most people to the subject of foods
for human beings, although many intelligent men pride them-
selves in knowing what is best for their horses and cattle, that
they do not discriminate between the relative values of different
articles. For the most part our tables are thought to be abun-
dantl}^ provided for when they are supplied with a large quantity
of food, even though this be of a non-nutritive character, consid-
ering the special needs of those who are to partake of it. The
art of cookery, too, is so little developed among us that even
when food has potentially nutritive value it is not infrequently
destroyed in the process of preparation, or is rendered so invul-
nerable that the stomachs of the children are too feeble to have
any effect upon it. Either or all of these conditions are sufficient
to keep the brains of many children poorly nourished, and as a
consequence such will show evidences of dullness and of the
various temperamental disturbances which accompany a lack of
proper nerve nutrition.*

That imperfect nutrition is the cause of much of that emo-
tional estrangement in childhood which is called irritability, ugli-
ness, viciousness, or something of that sort, has been satisfactorily
evidenced to the writer as the result of a number of observations
which he has been able to make upon young children. The fol-
lowing case is typical of many others : H was a well-formed

child at birth, and continued to develop normally during her first
five months. Throughout this time she slept very well, and for
the most part seemed happy and contented. The constant expres-
sion on her face showed healthy feeling, and she rarely made a
disturbance. At about the fifth month a change seemed to gradu-
ally come over her. She did not sleep so well ; the expression on
her face showed less happiness and contentment, and by the sixth
month she could be called an irritable and peevish child. She
who had been previously an especially happy child did not now
smile often ; and the things which ordinarily attract children of
that age seemed to be of little moment to her. Some member of
the family was now kept busy much of the time endeavoring to
soothe her troubled spirit. This state of affairs continued until
about the eighth month, when it was decided to make a change in

in school, requires much more nerve nutrition than one of a phlegmatic temperament who
may be leading an easy Ufe at home. Temperament is an important factor in this matter
of nutrition. Spencer {op. cit.) has some excellent things to say along this line, pp.
214-236.

* Cf. Warner, op. cit., p. 81 ; Krohn, Child-Study Monthly, vol. i, No. 10, p. 565
Holmes, Transactions of the Illinois Society for Child-Study, vol. i, No. 1, p. 205.
VOL. LI. — 50

658 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the diet. She was given a food rich in materials to nourish the
nervous system, and within a week it was observed hj all who
knew her that there was a marked improvement in her tempera-
ment. After two weeks of proper nourishment she had regained
her former restfulness, sleeping peacefully a good portion of the
time ; and gradually the expressions of irritability and moodiness
disappeared. Her face would now light up as formerly with
pleasant smiles whenever any one she knew was about, and once
more she appeared to every one as a very good-feeling, happy
child. From that time on care was taken with her food, keeping
it rich in albuminous elements, and her intellectual and emo-
tional development was most satisfactory in every way. Some
time after her diet was enriched it was learned definitely that the
food she had been getting just previously was quite deficient in
nutritive elements.

Brain fatigue in childhood, as physicians well know, is some-
times due to pathological conditions wherein the peculiar ele-
ments needed to nourish the brain are not assimilated from the

food. X and Y are two children of the same family,

who at the ages of five and seven respectively came under the
writer's notice. They were then giving their parents a great
deal of trouble. They were highly organized, irritable chil-
dren, with whom no one seemed to get along pleasantly. While
at home nothing was permanent in its interest for them, and dis-
cipline was a serious problem. When they began going to school
matters grew worse. While apparently bright children, thej'^ did
not make rapid progress, and always seemed utterly fatigued at
the close of the day's work. When they reached home at night
any little thing which crossed their paths would so greatly annoy
them that they were much of the time in tears and passions.
After every effort had been made by the parents to discover what
was the matter, an analysis of the blood was finally decided upon,
and it was found that it lacked the right proportion of elements
to properly nourish the nervous system. A special diet was then
begun, and other treatment resorted to to supply this deficiency.
After seven months of this special care sleep had been largely
restored, the tendency toward irritability had decreased, and the
children could now remain in school all day without becoming
unbalanced thereby. They were in reality quite different chil-
dren— keener intellectually, and expressing more estimable traits
of character.

Lately a group of similar cases has come to the notice of the
writer. The members of a family for several generations have
been afflicted with ansemia of the brain, and the children show
easily all the evidences of cerebral fatigue. One girl of twelve is
characterized by willfulness and carelessness, as her teachers say.

WHEN CHARACTER IS FORMED. 659

She is an irresponsible child, acting upon every impulse without
much regard to the outcome of her actions. This lack of inhibi-
tion or forethought or considerateness is characteristic of her
intellectually as well as temperamentally. One day she may do
fair work in school, and the next day fail utterly, being appar-
ently attracted by everything but the work before her. She
would pass in most schoolrooms as a stupid, willful pupil. A
cousin, a boy of seven, has somewhat the same qualities. He
fatigues more readily than other children of his age, and when
in this condition he is impulsive, quarrelsome, and even vicious
toward his companions. His attention wanders in school, and
while bright in some ways, he has little power of continuous
application to hard work. He is spoken of by his teachers as
a " peculiar " child, a term so extensively used as a cloak for
ignorance respecting the causes which make one child different
from another.

III.

Imperfect nutrition is not the only source of brain fatigue in
childhood. When the energy of the cerebral cells is consumed
too rapidly by overwork, worry, or intense excitement of any
kind, the same unhappy effect is produced. One would not ex-
pect to find any of these brain-fatiguing conditions in the golden
age of childhood, since one would think the struggle for exist-
ence with its terrific strain in our day might be left until later
life, where doubtless it must be encountered by every individual.
But while our children may not be troubled by the social and
financial problems of daily life, yet in many homes and schools,
especially in our cities, they are from the cradle up subjected to
continual over- stimulation, which is as inimical to the right de-
velopment and hygiene of the nervous system as the whirl of
society or the crush of business. According to the American
fashion in most households, infants of a few months as well as
children of maturer years are permitted to be in the presence of
the older members of the family much of the time. Guests
always expect to see the baby, to hold it, and to stimulate it
in all sorts of ways to see how prettily and intelligently it re-
acts. This practice would not be so objectionable if it were not
that when the average adult has a little child in his arms he is
always intense and restless in voice and actions. Few people
seem to appreciate how such treatment taxes the nervous strength
of an infant. But let an older person imagine what a strain it
would be to have excited people about him constantly, tossing
and patting him, and making all manner of facial and vocal dem-
onstrations for his entertainment. How much more it must wear
upon a child to whom these things are new and strange, all arous-

66o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing the strongest emotions of fear, curiosity, or excitement, and
thus draining the plastic, immature brain of its vitalities ! In
some homes it is quite the custom to allow a little babe to be freely
handled by strangers of whom it is afraid ; and then we wonder
why in later life our children are the victims of a vast brood of
fears which sap the energies and curtail the pleasures and useful-
ness of life in every direction.

It is not alone the trials of meeting strangers that are extreme-
ly fatiguing to young children, but the experiences with parents
and other members of the family are often as exhausting. The
young child, with its fresh, innocent ways, is not infrequently re-
garded as a plaything for the entertainment of its elders, and so is
teased and tormented in all sorts of ways because its response is so
novel and interesting. Of course, parents would not call such treat-
ment teasing, but that is precisely what it amounts to from the
child's standpoint. Just recently the writer was witness to a scene
which is typical of much that may be observed in one's environ-
ment if he has an occasion to look for it. A little child disliked
very greatly to have anything touch its nose, and would make the
liveliest efforts to dispel whatever came in contact therewith.
The sweet baby movements were naturally enough very amusing
to an adult who did not see anything in them but fun for him-
self. Frequently some mature person who knew the child's char-
acteristic in this regard would place a finger or other object near
the delicate member to see the little one strive with arms, head,
and body to drive it away. On one occasion a grown woman,
whose years should have taught her better, was seen to tantalize
the child for two or three minutes, finally throwing it into a
state of fatigue. When it grew restless and began crying it was
grabbed up, tossed and thrown about, and talked to in a loud
voice. This violent stimulation overcame the child's impulse to
cry for the moment, but had the effect to further fatigue it, which
was shown later in continual crying until it fell asleep. If one
will think of such things going on day after day throughout the
early life of a child, the irritable, unbalanced, disagreeable chil-
dren of one's acquaintance may be accounted for at least in part.

The writer has had opportunity to study with some care the
effect which a lady with high-pitched, nervous voice and intense
nervous face and manner, but otherwise of most estimable char-
acteristics, had upon a little child, H . Whenever she was

near H she insisted upon taking her, and she thought the

proper mode of entertainment was to shake and toss and pat her,
and to make a great amount of noise and fuss over her. As a
consequence, a half hour of such treatment was enough to fatigue

H for a whole day, and her disposition at such times would

be quite changed from a haj^py, good-natured child to one easily

WHEN CHARACTER IS FORMED. 661

irritated and satisfied witli none of her ordinary pleasures. A
nervous, irritable parent will breed these qualities in bis children,
because his personal contact will overstimulate them and they
will be in a state of chronic fatigue. Such a parent will be apt to
nag his children, to be constantly forbidding or commanding, and
this arouses emotions which draw off the energies from the brain
very rapidly. Antagonism is a breeder of nerve fatigue, and
some children seem hardly ever to be free from it during waking
hours.

Again, in many homes older children make the life of the
smaller ones wretched much of the time. The writer knows a
family where there are three children, the youngest about two
years of age. The plder ones seem to find no greater pleasure
than to tease the babe on every opportunity, for she occasions
them much merriment by her violent vocal and bodily expres-
sions whenever she is tormented beyond endurance. One does
not need to remain about this home long before seeing plainly
that this child is being worried into an ugly disposition. Even
at two years she has reached the point where she is intolerable
much of the time, showing her unbalanced condition by flying
into a passion over every little thing that occasions her displeas-
ure. The attitude of the older children serves to keep her in a
more or less constant state of fatigue, and the actions performed
in this condition are rapidly forming habits, thus determining
her character.

The evil effects of overstimulation are evident also in the
attempts of parents and teachers to hasten as rapidly as possible
the intellectual development of the children under their care. It
has come to be regarded as desirable that a little child should
begin hard work in school at five, and keep it up continuously
until the college course is completed. Many think it creditable
to a child to be precocious in his learning, and so he is encouraged
to sit still and study instead of being spontaneously active in play
milch of the time. He is subjected in school to the great strain
of appearing before his elders in "speaking pieces," etc., all of
which tends to overstimulate, and hence to fatigue easily and un-
necessarily. There is in our midst a feeling that maturity ought
to be reached as early as possible and by the shortest cuts, but
science shows that excessive rapidity in development is secured
at the expense of mental health and attainment of the highest
ultimate ends.* It assures us that too early and rapid organiza-
tion of the nervous system through undue stimulation or edu-
cative influence of any kind finally results in arrested growth.
Precocity is usually succeeded by mediocrity, if by nothing

* Cf. Spencer, op. cit., p. 262.

662 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

worse.* It is significant that those races that are most preco-
cious are ultimately the least intelligent and progressive,! more
nearly resembling the lower orders of animal life, where the
young possess at birth nearly all the powers they ever attain,
and so are not educable to any great degree. It is to be feared
that overstimulation in numerous ways of children in American
homes and schools leads to early cessation of, and hence to an
ultimately inferior, physical and mental development.

THE SCOPE OF BOTANY.

By GEOEGE J. PEIRCE, Pn. D.,

ASSISTANT PEOFESSOR OF BOTANY AND VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY,
LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.

WE hear much talk nowadays about the new chemistry, the
new psychology, the new theology, even the new woman.
It is not my purpose to present in this x^aper any remarks which
could be styled " the new botany," for I hope that there is no new
botany. Every department of human inquiry should be plastic
enough to be modified by increasing knowledge, it should open
new fields for investigation, and its members should increase in
power. I feel that botany has been plastic, that the science has
grown through the years until now it has not merely men who
are actively seeking its development, but also those who are seek-
ing for knowledge in ways and by means that have never before
been employed, seeking for a knowledge not of facts only — inter-
esting as many of these may be in themselves — but seeking in
these facts, painfully and slowly accumulated, the evidences of
deeper things, of the great principles which govern the world.
The definition is a familiar one — "botany is that science which
seeks to answer every reasonable question regarding plants" — and
to many people botany is nothing more; but I should not venture
to write upon this topic had I nothing more to say than this.
The botanist regards his plants not as an end, but as a means of
learning a little more about life. The human physiologist was
the first to try to penetrate the mystery of life ; later the animal
physiologist, studying lower forms than man, attacked the same
problem ; and still later, only within the last hundred years one
may say, the vegetable physiologist has come to the aid of the
other two. All three, studying the manifestations of life, are

* Cf. Porter. The Physical Basis of Precocity and Dullness. St. Louis, 1893.
t Cf. Christopher. Handbook of the Illinois Society for Child-Study, vol. ii, No, 2,
pp. 109-114.

THE SCOPE OF BOTANY. 663

seeking to solve the puzzle. What is life itself ? With such an
aim, the science of botany is more than a pleasant recreation for
a summer holiday, it is more than a little accomplishment which
can be taught in a finishing school for girls, it is even more than
the sentimental or the poetic or the artistic contemplation of the
beautiful as displayed in the rose and the lily. The botanist is
devoting his time, his energy, his ability (if he has any) to the
study of plants not because " it must be so lovely to be always
studying flowers," as I have heard so often to my great discom-
fort, but that he may learn something that will help his fellows
in their everyday lives, give them some truer notion of the
physical life, and reveal to them some of the principles that
underlie it all.

This sounds very fine, but how is the botanist doing all this \
and what is the evidence that he has even begun to do some of
this ? The beginning of botany in this country, so far as the
white settlers are concerned, was coincident with the first explor-
ing expeditions, when the hardy pioneers made note of the vege-
tation, whether it was luxuriant or sparse, whether the plants
were poisonous, useless, or useful. That even then a better and
more general knowledge of the flora was deemed important, is
proved by the record that at the college at Newtowne, founded in
1636 and now known as Harvard University, the study of plants
was part of the curriculum in every summer term. To learn the
names and the striking properties, useful or harmful, of the
plants of a new country is the most natural endeavor of those
who are to make it their home. From that time until now, it has
been the custom to teach in the schools, and in many of the col-
leges, just these things. Because most of us go no further in our
study of plants, we conclude that this must be all. The school
boy and girl painfully learn the descriptive nomenclature, as we
find it set forth with wonderful clearness in Gray's Text-book of
Botany — that leaves are linear or obcordate or punctate with
pellucid dots ; that stamens are distinct or hypogynous or tetra-
dynamous ; and then they find that the bird-foot violet is tech-
nically known as Viola pedata and the lily of the valley Con-
vallaria majalis. But the school boy and girl have thus simply
acquired one means of learning more of Nature. Botany is not a
science of names, a science overloaded with names though it may
be. The individual who destroys a flower by tearing it to pieces
(analyzes it, as the ladies say), and finds by the aid of some tire-
some artificial key the Latin name of the plant which bears it,
has conquered the difiiculties of the botanical alphabet ; but until
he goes further he knows absolutely nothing of the literature of
Nature. Children now learn to read before they learn the alpha-
bet, and in many of our better schools the pupils begin to study

664 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plants before they learn the descriptive terms applied to them.
To have a knowledge merely of the names of plants is to possess
a series of jug-handles without the jugs or anything in them.
The handles belong with the jugs, and jugs should have, at times
at least, something in them. Now, the truly scientific man who
seems to be devoting his time to acquiring a knowledge of the
names of plants, is in reality learning much more about them.
He sees that plants of different sorts resemble one another in
greater and less degrees. Those which resemble one another, not
merely in superficial characters, which may be due merely to like
conditions of growth and life, but in the more fundamental and
less obvious characters, he assumes are related ; and his studies
lead him to formulate a classification which shall indicate in
what ways and in what degrees the different plants are related.
So we see the first step in the development of botany, the study
of plants with a view to arranging them in some classification
which shall subserve the convenience of students and at the same
time indicate the relationships of plants to one another. But the
word relationship implies something more than superficial resem-
blance. The resemblance is an index of descent. The older bota-
nists— Jussieu, Linngeus, and others like them — believed that
plants are now as they were created — created either at the begin-
ning of the world or brought into existence later by separate acts
of creation. The more critical observations of later years have
shown that no two plants are exactly alike, that the offspring
are not the duplicates of the parents, that plants are constantly
changing as organisms and as generations of organisms. Certain
influences cause certain changes ; the different conditions to which
plants are exposed in sunny and shaded, in moist and dry, in ex-
posed and sheltered positions — the climatic, the geological, the
geographical conditions — all have their effects. And so the study
of plants extends from the examination of those just about us to
a comparison of these familiar forms with those in other locali-
ties. There develops the science of geographical botany, which
seeks to penetrate the reasons for the existence of certain plants
as characterizing the North American, the central European, the
Australian, and other floras.

In order to solve the problems thus encountered, the botanist
must know not merely the present geographical and geological
conditions of our globe, or of that part of it which he especially
studies, but also what its geological history has been. This throws
light upon many questions. For example, the North American
flora is much richer than that of Europe. We gain some idea
as to the reasons for this when we realize that the last ice ]jeriod
made much of Europe and of North America uninhabitable, as
well for plants as for animals. All were compelled to migrate

THE SCOPE OF BOTANY. 665

to the soutliward or to perish. The Isthmus of Panama and the
broad expanse of Central America offered a refuge for the tender
forms which could not withstand the rigors of the Ice Age when
North America was covered to the Ohio Valley with a great con-
tinental glacier. In the milder climes many of them survived,
and as the ice retreated they slowly followed it — how, I shall take
occasion to show in a moment. But between the ice-bound con-
tinent of Europe and the warmer lands to the southward inter-
vened then as now the broad expanse of the Mediterranean, which
could be traversed but by few animals and by still fewer plants.
Many forms perished, and their places are empty to this day.
Hence we see one reason for the greater number of plant species
on our own continent.

The botanical geologist finds other things to study, for there
are many plants of bygone ages preserved to this day as fossils in
the rocks of various horizons. The science of paleobotany grows
more slowly than the science of paleozoology, which greedily
usurps the name of paleontology, as if plants were not quite as
important, had not contributed quite as much of value to the
earth's crust, as animals. The reasons why paleobotany is such a
slow-growing and fragmentary science are two. In the first place,
as I have suggested, paleontologists devote themselves in their
investigations and teaching too exclusively to animal remains,
and hence he who will know more of the plants of past ages must
study and learn largely unaided. But the second reason is more
fundamental — namely, that plant structures are less easily pre-
served than those of animals (whose shells or other hard parts
are very resistant), and hence many have been destroyed during
the various changes that the rocks in which their remains were
imbedded have undergone. The fossil remains which are now
known give confirmation of the fact mentioned a moment ago that
plants are ever changing. The plants of the Carboniferous Age
were very different from those of to-day. The aspect of field and
forest then must have been mysterious indeed ; the heavy atmos-
phere, the intense light, the moisture, contributing to a vegetation
of more than tropical luxuriance. Between the lofty stems of
tree ferns, in the deep shade cast by their great fronds, wandered
animals hideous to the eye, though perhaps no more dangerous
than our mild-eyed cows. But we find to-day, growing here and
there, plants which greatly resemble those of the coal measures,
not only the ferns, but the horsetails (scouring rushes of our an-
cestors, Equisetum), the Lycopodiums, without which no northern
Christmas festival is quite complete, and others less conspicuous.
These the paleontologist convinces us are the direct descendants
of those plants which compose our coal. He thereby adds his
facts to that history of life which shows that plants are related,

666 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that they have common ancestors, that they have developed
through the ages until now.

Another field of botanical study is being cultivated by those
who devote themselves to the investigation of the adaptations of
plants to their surroundings. The adaptations are so many and
so perfect that all are tempted (and many yield) to let their senti-
mental imaginations replace that spirit of critical inquiry without
which no scientific work of lasting value can be done. The adap-
tations for disseminating seed — the winged fruits of our maples,
elms, and lindens, for example, or the silken parachutes of the
dandelion and the milkweed, the explosive touch-me-not, and the
wild crane's-bill with its boomerang — show one how a region
devastated by glaciers, fires, or floods can be repopulated. The
relations of flowers to the insects which are to poUenate them were
first discovered by Christian Conrad Sprengel, and described in a
now rare and highly prized book. The Secret of Nature Revealed ;
but botanists left Sprengel and his secret to themselves. Darwin
rediscovered the secret, then discovered the book, and since then
the world has been deluged with writings good and bad on this
most fascinating subject. The whole field of phytobiology, the
adaptations of plants to their surroundings, is open to every one
whose interest in Nature takes him into the fields and woods —
even into the public parks. No knowledge of technical terms is
necessary to enable one to pull apart one of the great horse-chest-
nut buds, to notice the water-proofing varnish on the outside, the
scale armor just within, the soft, downy padding which protects
the minute leaves and the tip of the stem from sudden changes of
temperature, to see that leaves or flower cluster are already formed
in miniature ready to burst their coverings when the favorable
time shall come.

The minute internal structure of the plant is as important a
subject for investigation as the more evident- features of which I
have just spoken. The microscopic study of plants leads one to
the most fundamental questions in biological science. It was in
consequence of the microscopic studies of a botanist that it was
discovered that all organisms are composed of cells, that these
cells are essentially minute masses of a viscid substance — proto-
plasm— which is "the physical basis of life." Is it any wonder,
then, that men have devoted their lives to its study, seeking
through a knowledge of its structure to learn something of the
life of which it is the physical, tangible embodiment ?

Among plants as among animals there are two modes of repro-
duction, the sexual and the nonsexual. Higher animals repro-
duce themselves only sexually. Some of the higher plants re-
produce themselves in the wild state nonsexually as well as
sexually, as, for example, the blackberry by its runners, the pop-

THE SCOPE OF BOTANY. 667

lar by those saplings which develop from underground parts
often quite distant from the parent trunk ; and most of the higher
plants can be reproduced in cultivation by cuttings, slips, etc.
The sexual reproduction has been developed from simple forms in
low plants — for example, the seaweeds — to a state of complexity
among the flowering plants which is equal to that among the
higher animals. Though there are no superficial resemblances
between the sexual reproduction of animals and that of plants,
yet the processes are intrinsically the same. The differences are
mainly superficial, like those in the means of conveying the male
elements to the female elements. The male and female elements
in plants are very different from one another, just as in animals,
much more different from one another than these elements are
from the corresponding elements among animals. In the one
kingdom as in the other fertilization takes place when a male ele-
ment fuses with a female element. So much alike indeed are the
microscopic processes in the two kingdoms that much light has
been and still may be thrown upon the great general questions of
the influence of parents on offspring, of heredity, of descent, of
development, by the microscopic study of the phenomena of fer-
tilization and development among plants. There is, therefore, a
science of embryology cultivated by botanists which is of almost
equal value to man with the science of embryology cultivated by
zoologists.

The microscopic study of the purely vegetative as distin-
guished from the reproductive parts of plants reveals certain
mechanical principles of structure which engineers are now just
beginning to follow in their buildings, especially those con-
structed of materials which in large masses resemble in physical
qualities those microscopic elements of which plant structures
are composed. We see that the stems of our native trees and
those of the palms and others of warmer climes are really frames
consisting of long, slender, light yet strong and elastic beams so
joined together that they form a structure capable of supporting
great weights in spite of the force of gravitation, and so but-
tressed at points of branching and where the aerial structures
spring from their strong foundations in the soil that they are able
to resist the really tremendous strains brought to bear upon them
by high winds. These principles of buttressing, of accurate bal-
ancing, of avoiding sharp angles by the substitution of curves, of
a light, elastic framework of great strength, which are common to
all the larger plants, we see employed in those buildings which
by reason of height, position, or purpose are exposed to great
strains. For example, there is more than a fancied resemblance
between the Eiffel Tower and the steel lighthouses of our coasts
to the buttressed, spreading bases of our elms.

668 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

The study of structure, whether macroscopic or microscopic,
leads one naturally to investigate the functions of the parts. The
study of functions is physiology, and since we have given up the
older notions as to the sacredness, the supernaturalness, of the
phenomena of life in favor of the more rational view that they
are chemical and physical, all physiologists to-day are pressing
forward, with chemistry and physics as their allies, to larger
knowledge and clearer ideas as to what constitutes life. Far as
we still are from a solution of the riddle of the ages, yet during
the present century progress hitherto unequaled has been made.
Animal and vegetable physiologists are now going hand in hand
toward their common goal. In studying the processes of nutri-
tion, growth, reproduction, and the phenomena of perception, re-
action, and exhaustion, they are supplementing one another.
There are indeed some few physiologists of training and disposi-
tion so broad that they decline to be known as animal or as vege-
table physiologists, but wish to be called what they really are,
students of the functions of living organisms and seekers after
light from Avhatever source upon life itself. The more one studies
the physiology of animals and plants the more one sees that the
distinctions which have been made between the two are more ap-
parent than real, and that as in so many other cases our names
are for convenience rather than for the exact expression of the
truth.

The physiologist finds that there are two great classes of
plants : (1) Those which, able to obtain from the crude materials
of the soil and the air all the elements which they need for their
nutrition, lead self-dependent existences ; and (2) those which,
unable to elaborate their food from such matters, must get it from
other organisms, either directly or indirectly. All animals depend
ultimately for their food upon those plants which are able to
elaborate living matter from lifeless mineral salts, water, and air.
But there are quite as many plants which are as dependent as
animals. The groups of parasites, the flowering and the flower-
less, the dodders and many of the fungi and bacteria, for exam-
ple, are absolutely dependent upon living organisms, either ani-
mal or vegetable as the case may be, for their food. Other plants
extract from the dead and more or less decayed remains of organ-
isms the highly elaborated nitrogenous and carbon compounds
which are essential to all life. Still others are fairly independent,
but supplement their self-made food by other means ; for exam-
ple, the whole group of insectivorous plants and several of the
orchids. The saprophytic plants, those living on dead organic
matter, are very important in the economy of Nature. They
accomi:)lish rapidly, and with much less damage or offense to other
organisms, the decomposition of otherwise waste matters which

THE SCOPE OF BOTANY. 66g

could be removed, but slowly by the processes of chemical non-
vital oxidation. Even the parasites are not wholly evils, for some
of these man has already tamed and compelled to perform some
of the most important domestic operations — the raising of bread
and the making of cheese and vinegar. Alcohol is one product
of the activity of yeasts, and to these we owe our wines and
beers. The precision in the manufacture and the uniform quality
of the product of bread, cheese, vinegar, and beer have come
only within recent decades when the microscopic organisms upon
which these processes depend have become known and regularly
raised like wheat and cattle. Recent investigations plainly sug-
gest that greater precision and more uniform success can be ob-
tained in the production of wines and in the curing of tobaccos.
Doubtless we have but begun to domesticate the plant parasites
which can be made useful to man, and more extended investiga-
tions will probably show that many processes in the domestic and
other arts which are now tardy and uncertain can be carried on
rapidly and accurately.

The science of bacteriology has now become so specially de-
veloped along medical lines that in this aspect it can scarcely be
counted longer a part of botany ; but we should not forget that
the first knowledge of the bacteria came through botanists, and
that the methods now employed in studying and combating them
were first suggested by botanists, and every teacher of botany
should regard it both a duty and a privilege to spread among his
pupils and the public in general such a knowledge of the habits
and effects of these minute organisms that public sentiment will
demand not only personal but municipal cleanliness. An adequate
supply of water, free from contamination at its sources and in its
passage to our houses, contributes not only to the comfort, but
greatly also to the health, of any community. The installation of
a system of sewerage, for the safe disposal of the extremely dan-
gerous waste matters of houses and stables, will come as soon as
public sentiment is enlightened as to the probability of fatal dis-
ease resulting from the infection of drinking water, milk, and
other uncooked foods from such decaying matters. It is now
known that street dust contains millions of organisms which,
when they find lodgment in human bodies, made suitable by
weakness for their growth, cause the most malignant maladies.
Even the dust of our rooms contains numberless organisms of
these same sorts. So it behooves us as intelligent people to strive
to bring about such cleanliness of streets and houses that these
dangers will be reduced to a minimum.

The bacterial and fungous diseases of other animals than man,
and the diseases of plants, are still being studied by botanists.
We have only begun to know the dangers which menace the

6/0 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

farmers' crops and stock. To study these dangers, to devise
means to avoid them, to discover cures for those plants which
are attacked by disease, are the tasks which the vegetable pathol-
ogist has before him.

Agriculture and horticulture are simply the practical applica-
tions of principles defined by the study of vegetable physiology.
Questions as to the suitability of certain soils for certain crops
are answered by the practical farmer, who scorns the aid which
the scientific man might give him, by such expensive experi-
ments as sowing the area in question with the seeds of the crop
which he hopes to reap. If the crop is a good one, the farmer
rejoices ; if he gets but a trifling return for his season's labor, he
grumbles at his luck, or wants the Government to order a bounty,
or to pass a prohibitory tariff. The market-gardener should
know now as the result of the published investigations of vege-
table physiologists at agricultural experiment stations, that some
of the vegetables and fruits which bring the highest prices when
marketed out of season can be brought to perfection much earlier
when grown not only in sunlight by day, but under the electric
light by night. Lettuce, for example, can be marketed about two
weeks sooner after planting if illuminated day and night.

The horticulturist daily proves by producing various and often
striking varieties of flowers or fruits the falsit}'' of the old notions
as to the fixity of living organisms. I must confess that it
seems to me rather disrespectful, some persons might say rather
impious, so to tamper with the natural or " divinely appointed "
forms of plants, as to produce the monstrous chrysanthemums
which we may see in exhibitions or in private houses. But these
exaggerated and often extremely ugly because so artificial forms
are the strongest evidences that the organic world, of which we
are a part, is extremely plastic still in spite of its age ; and that
those factors which have accomplished the evolution of jDresent
complexity from primitive simplicity are still operative, and that
man as well as other organisms has not yet reached his final and
highest development.

I wish to say one word of that aspect of botanical science
which is still but little regarded in our country, but which, if our
successors are to have any forests, must receive due and practical
notice. I mean the science of forestry. In Germany especially,
but in other European countries also, there are forestry schools,
where young men receive that scientific and many-sided training
which will fit them properly to administer the private and Govern-
ment wooded lands. It is an interesting fact that, great as is the
expense in maintaining these schools and in managing the forests,
yet the forests of Germany are one of the most profitable proper-
ties of the Government. The railroads pay a trifling interest still,

ALCHEMY REDIVIVUS. 671

but the forests yield regular and, for Europe, high interest. We
must soon acquire, by purchase or otherwise, such control of our
still forested areas as will insure their preservation and intelli-
gent use, else the boastful prophecy which I have heard more
than once in Germany will come true, that Germany will be ex-
porting wood to America within fifty years ! The Forestry Divi-
sion of the United States Department of Agriculture, and the
small forestry associations scattered here and there in the cities,
precisely where there can be no forests, are doing all they can to
arouse public interest in the matter, and to prevent further reck-
less deforestizing. But to leave the trees unfelled is not all ;
to replant where replanting is still possible, to fell the trees that
are now of useful size, to thin out that others may attain better
proportions, to protect against fires, these are equally important.
To do all this well demands intelligence, knowledge, and train-
ing. The training of the skilled forester must be largely botan-
ical ; for though he must know enough about zoology to be able
to distinguish and to combat insect and other animal pests, yet he
must know the principles of vegetable physiology and pathology.
For these he must study under some thoroughly trained botanist.
I have attempted to sketch, I fear in very impressionistic
fashion, the scope of a science whose value to man is great and
personal, which is naany-sided, and which is worthy of the devo-
tion and activity of those to whom it is an absorbing interest.

■♦«»

ALCHEMY REDIVIVUS.

By ALEXANDER E. OUTERBEIDGE, Jr.

BASIL-VALENTINE, a famous alchemist of the middle ages,
was the most noted exponent of the belief in the transmuta-
tion of metals. He thought that the germ of the precious metal
gold was hidden in the base metal antimony, and claimed that by
following certain mystic formulas the gold could be recovered.
About the year 1445 he published in the Latin tongue a celebrated
treatise entitled The Triumphal Car of Antimony, which had a
great reputation, not only among his contemporaries but among
his successors. The treatise was couched in cabalistic phraseol-
ogy— a sort of abracadabra — which, of course, the vulgar people
could not comprehend ; it was designed only for his disciples.
The book purports to contain the " twelve keys of the great stone
of the ancient philosophers."

His formula for converting antimony into gold is interesting
at the present time, in view of the fact that a modern alchemist
has actually succeeded in inducing the Secretary of the Treasury

672 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to officially order an investigation, by three of the mint experts, of
a process of transmutation, or " creation," of gold which is singu-
larly similar to the old alchemists' plan.

Basil- Valentine concealed his secret from the common people
in the following mystic words : " The king's diadem is made of
pure gold, and a chaste bride must be married unto him, where-
fore, if ye will work on our bodies take the most ravenous gray
wolf, which, by reason of his name, is subject to valorous Mars,
but by the genesis of his nativity he is subject to old Saturn ;
found in mountains and in valleys of the world ; he is very hun-
gry ; cast into him the king's body that he may be nourished by
it ; when he hath devoured the king make a great fire, into which
cast the wolf that he be quite burned, then will the king be at
liberty. When ye have done this thrice, then hath the king over-
come the wolf, neither can he find any more of him to feed upon."

The mysterious language adopted by the alchemists was not
always owing to an intention to deceive ; many of these fanatics
believed that it was wicked to reveal the hidden secrets of Nature
to the common people, and might even cause the death of the
author. Thus, Wilhelm von Schroeder, in 1684, wrote a book en-
titled Necessary Instructions in the Art of Gold Making, in which
he says: "When philosophers speak openly, a deceit lies behind
their words ; while when they speak enigmatically, they may be
depended upon."

Reverting to the enigmatical formula of Basil- Valentine, it is
said that the key to this mysterious jargon gives the following
simple explanation : The ravenous gray wolf is the sulphuret of
antimony. The king's body typifies the metal gold. The sul-
phuret of antimony is decomposed by iron by the aid of heat, and
is thus " subject to valorous Mars." When these elements (anti-
mony, sulphur, and iron) are subjected to a great fire in a crucible,
the king (gold) imprisoned in the wolf (antimony) is liberated.*

The modern process which the three mint experts were called
upon to investigate, and upon which they have reported nega-
tively, was at first shrouded in secrecy ; but the inventor himself
has recently given to the public his formula, in a newspaper in-
terview, which one of the experts stated at a meeting of the
Franklin Institute is substantially correct. His process consists

* In 1423 Henry VI of England issued a royal proclamation encouraging the ait of gold
making, and in 1476 Edward IV accorded to a company "a four years' privilege of making
gold from quicksilver." The Danish ducats of 1647 were made of gold obtained, as it was
believed, from artificial sources, h\ Caspar Harbach, the alchemist of Christian IV. In
1648 a large medal was struck for Emperor Ferdinand 11 from "artificially prepared gold,"
and the ducats struck under Landgrave Ernest Lewis, of Hesse-Darmstadt, were supposed
to be of artificial gold prepared by the transmutation of lead. In lYOO an alchemical work
appeared bearing the appropriate title Cbymical Moonshine.

ALCHEMY REDIVIVUS. 673

essentially in subjecting antimony, sulpliur, and iron to intense
heat in a crucible, whereby a portion of the antimony is supposed
to be changed or transmuted into gold, and this is subsequently
recovered by the usual metallurgical methods.

The experts found, on repeating these experiments, using the
purest antimony that could be obtained from chemists, that a
tiny globule of gold and silver remained after removing all the
iron, antimony, and sulphur; but they also found that traces
of gold and silver are invariably associated with native anti-
mony, and when they succeeded in producing chemically pure
antimony for the test, not a trace of gold or of silver resulted
from the subsequent transmuting or " creative " process.

Some criticism has been expressed that the United States Gov-
ernment should have dignified this ridiculous claim, to the extent
of ordering an investigation of it by the mint metallurgists, but
their report is well calculated to set at rest the preposterous
scheme which had already attracted not a few gullible people,
including some investors.*

This investigation recalls a series of interesting experiments
which were made in the Philadelphia Mint about forty years ago
by the former assayer, the late Jacob R. Eckfeldt, the results of
which were communicated to the American Philosophical Society
by his assistant and successor, the late William E. Dubois, who
also aided in the work. Samples of nearly all the known metals
were obtained from various parts of the country ; these were sub-
jected to the usual processes for detecting the presence of gold,
the greatest care being used to avoid errors. Gold was found in
all the specimens of antimony, bismuth, lead, copper, etc., vary-
ing from one part in four hundred and forty thousand parts in a
specimen of antimony to one part in six million two hundred and
twenty thousand parts in a specimen of galena from Bucks Coun-
ty, Pennsylvania : this was equivalent to two grains and a quarter,
not quite ten cents, to the ton.

The most remarkable result of all was obtained from speci-
mens of clay from various localities within the limits of the city
of Philadelphia; the clay was taken from a depth of about
fourteen feet below the surface, and was found to contain gold
in the proportion of one part in one million two hundred and

* It is stated that the inventor of the so-called " gold creative process " applied for a
United States patent, and, upon its refusal, the matter was brought before the present
Secretary of the Treasury, who ordered the investigation to be made in the metallurgical
laboratory of the Mint Bureau. The committee appointed by the Director of the Mint, in
accordance with these instructions, consisted of the assayer of the Mint Bureau, the super-
intendent of the assay office in New York, and the melter and refiner of the Mint in Phila-
delphia. They adhered closely to the inventor's formulas. An abstract of their report has
appeared in print.

VOL. LI. — 51

674 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

twenty- four thousand parts of thoroughly dried clay, and was
very uniformly distributed.

The report says: "In order to calculate, with some accuracy,
the value of this body of wealth, we cut out blocks of the clay,
and found, on an average, a cubic foot, as it lies in the ground,
weighs one hundred and twenty pounds as near as may be. The
assay gives seven-tenths grain, say three cents' worth, to the cubic
foot. Assuming the data already given, we get four thousand
one hundred and eighty million cubic feet of clay under our
streets and houses, in which securely lies one hundred and
twenty-six million dollars. And if, as is pretty certain, the cor-
porate limits of the city would afford eight times this bulk of
clay, we have more gold than has yet been brought, according
to the statistics, from California and Australia."

Other calculations show that every time a load of clay is
hauled out of a cellar enough gold goes with it to pay for the
carting; and if the bricks which front our houses could have
brought to their surface, in the form of gold leaf, the amount of
gold which they contain, we should have a glittering show of two
square inches on each brick. A single specimen of zinc proved
to be absolutely free from gold.

These investigations proved that, while gold is justly consid-
ered one of the rarest metals, it is also one of the most widely
diffused, and there are many philosophical reasons to be found in
explanation of this apparent paradox.

THE FORCES IN AN AIR BUBBLE.

By M. G. van DER MENSBEUGGHE.*

IN 1880 I had the honor of lecturing before the Class of Science
on the metamorphoses undergone by a drop of water, when I
described the several phases of the grand cycle which the drop
passes through from the moment it forms part of the great ocean
mass till the time when after long journeys and numerous trans-
formations it again joins its companions in the sea. A few
months ago I in a similar way told the history of a grain of dust,
dwelling especially on the universality and abundance of solid
particles in the atmosphere, pervading everywhere on the surface
of the earth.

I now proceed to describe the career of another minute body
hundreds of times lighter than a drop of water or a solid cor-
puscle, confining myself to the consideration of its relations with

* Address before a public meeting of the Belgian Academy of Sciences, December 14,
1895.

THE FORCES IN AN AIR BUBBLE. 675

liquids and solids, and we shall find that it in no wise falls behind
its rivals in activity and prowess. This marvelous little being is
a simple particle of air.

Although this particle and its companions wholly escape our
vision, they are diffused everywhere around us, and even pene-
trate our organism to such an extent that without a multitude of
them playing a definite part within our body we could not breathe
or live for an instant. We can not isolate these particles of air,
and could not see them if we did, but we can isolate masses of
them by various methods and distinguish them very clearly.
Thus let us take a watch glass and a capsule of water, and turn-
ing the concavity of the watch glass down, incline it slightly and
plunge it into the liquid. Immediately we see a bright line that
appears to define the limit of the moistened part of the concave
surface of the watch glass. The rest of this face of the glass is
kept from being wetted like the whole of the convex surface by
the intervention of a mass of particles of air, which, somewhat
compressed during the immersion, group themselves into a gase-
ous globule. Before it was isolated by our maneuver the globule
had constituted part of one of the thousands of concentric layers
of our atmosphere, each of which weighing upon the one beneath
it and communicating to it besides the weight of the layers above
it, they all together determine a total even pressure at the level of
the sea of fifteen pounds to the square inch. Our globule of air
is likewise subject to this pressure, which is transmitted through
the water, and added to it is the weight of the liquid that lies
above it.

This globule really betrays its presence only by the bright
liquid layer around it. When we inquire for the force by which
the regular shape of the globule is controlled, we find it, accord-
ing to the researches of Plateau, in a thin liquid portion sur-
rounding the volume of air, which is not more than one twenty
thousandth of a millimetre thick, and which is endowed with a
contractile force always impelling it to occupy the least possible
space on the body it covers ; and by virtue of its curvature it ex-
ercises upon the air imprisoned by the liquid a pressure greater in
proportion as the globule is smaller. If these dimensions are ex-
tremely small, the gaseous globules are always spherical — as, for
instance, the bubbles of carbonic acid that rise through a frothy
liquor.

Our globule of air imprisoned in the watch glass, acted upon
by the pressure of the atmosphere and by that of the liquid above
it, and further by the capillary pressure of the bright film encom-
passing it, possesses, to resist these three pressures, an elastic or
repulsive force which is more marked as it is more closely com-
pressed, and by virtue of which the globule occupies a larger

676 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

space the instant the external pressure is removed or diminished.
Perfect quiet seems to rule in the film enveloping our particles,
but this calm is only relative ; and if we supposed the ultimate
particles immensely magnified, we should find the conditions very
stormy indeed. We have already mentioned the elastic force
within the globule which gives it a tendency to expand. The
liquid enveloping it is also subject to a law which is illustrated
when wet objects dry, and when a cup of water placed on the scale
of a balance is found to be losing weight from day to day. The
superficial particles of water have a constant tendency to separate
from the rest of the mass and go ofit" as invisible particles of vapor
so light that they rise in the ambient atmosphere. This passage
from the liquid to the vaporous condition goes on gradually, so
that the distance between the molecules becomes greater the
nearer we approach the free surface. While this takes place in
the radial direction, the movement gives rise in the tangential di-
rection to contractile forces that act to give the liquid surface the
smallest possible extent.

We may now suppose ourselves witnessing a struggle between
rival particles, some of which are continually trying to escape
into the globule of air, while others — our gaseous particles — are
all the time striving to penetrate into the water. The spherules
escaping into the air have at the same time an extremely pro-
nounced tendency to resolve themselves into molecules incompa-
rably more tenuous still, and to produce vapor even lighter than
the air. As water is a medium of perfect mobility, each detached
spherule gives rise to vibratory movements, and these are com-
municated to the whole liquid mass. If we turn our attention to
the particles of air, we find them making incessant efforts to lodge
themselves in the open parts of the line of battle. As soon as one
of them has penetrated between two liquid molecules in vibration,
these, obedient to their mutual attraction, make it advance still
further; and so on till it reaches the midst of the mass. Thus
many particles of air one after another penetrate to the deepest
parts of the water, where they are strongly compressed and ac-
quire greater cohesion, while the mean cohesion of the water con-
tinues to diminish ; and as the particles of vapor passing into the
air finally saturate it, so no more particles of air can go into the
water after it is saturated with gas.

It follows that the lower the temperature, and, consequently,
the stronger the cohesion of the water, the more considerable may
be the quantity of dissolved air ; and for this reason, doubtless,
the slightest variation of temperature modifies the power of water
to absorb air. We can also easily comprehend that the quantity
of air dissolved in water increases as the external pressure be-
comes greater. Numerous applications are made of this property —

THE FORCES IN AX AIR BUBBLE. 677

in the manufactiire of carbonic-acid waters, for instance. The air
thus incorporated in the water is easily removed by warming
the liquid, when infinite numbers of little bubbles may be seen
adhering to the walls of the vessel or rising through the midst
of the water. But to drive out all the dissolved air, the water
should be subjected to a prolonged boiling, and this causes a
wonderful increase in its cohesion after it is cooled ; and water
which has been treated thus will not boil except at temperatures
considerably higher than the normal boiling point. Every en-
gineer knows that the water from which he generates steam in
his boilers must be aerated, if he would have the machine work
regularly and avoid the danger of explosion.

Seeing so much effort displayed without relaxation on the con-
fines of the water and the air in a simple gaseous globule, it is
natural to inquire into the enormous sum of work that must be
effected without interruption in the surface common to the whole
atmosphere and all the rivers, streams, lakes, and seas of the
globe ; but the most brilliant imagination is confounded in the
face of so prodigious an activity.

Who, indeed, shall measure the immense quantity of invisible
vapor diffused in the atmosphere ? In what balance shall we cal-
culate the weight of the fogs and the clouds suspended above our
heads ? Who shall weigh the long streams of ice particles float-
ing in the upper regions of the air ? Who, in particular, shall
adequately estimate the services that are rendered to mankind
by those legions of liquid particles that are carried up to great
heights in the atmosphere, and distribute warmth and fertility
everywhere ?

To return to our particles of air penetrating the free surface
of the water, what should we see if we fancied everything suffi-
ciently magnified ? Gaseous particles gliding one behind another
in the intervals of the upper liquid layer; here, particles of the
pre-eminently vivifying gas, oxygen, whose mission it is to purify
the water and give breath to the inhabitants of rivers and seas ;
there, molecules of another gas, the mission of which, among
other things, is to modify the intensity of the action of its com-
panion ; argon, the office of which we hope to find out some day ;
and molecules of a fourth gas, carbonic acid, which is essential to
the growth of plants. But this is not all, for we are further
astonished to see penetrate the water infinite numbers of animal
and vegetable germs only awaiting favorable conditions to grow
and develop with wonderful rapidity. We all know that if water
previously boiled be exposed to the light in an open vessel there
will form on the sides of the vessel in the course of a week spots
in which a powerful microscope will reveal the presence of mil-
lions of minute plants associated with legions of animalcules.

678 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

The results of numerous and delicate observations show also that
germs of plants and animals exist as universally in the air as in
water ; and when favorable conditions of light and temperature
come, these germs at once grow, multiply, and become visible
under the microscope.

Approaching the relations of our air particles with solids, we
meet the question of what these minute bodies can have in com-
mon with compact masses of invariable form, incomparably
denser than they, and all the particles of which seem to be too
dense to permit the access of our gaseous particles. This, the
hitherto prevalent idea of the structure of solid bodies, does not
conform to the real condition ; for, just as the superficial parts
of liquids tend to diffusion in the ambient air, a like habit exists
in the molecules of solids of being repelled from the interior to-
ward the exterior, and they separate from one another, but only
in an extremely thin exterior layer. Thus camphor, iodine, ice,
and some other substances change into vapor at ordinary tem-
peratures ; and the exhalation of perfumes may be something of
the sort.

Many other facts point to an exceptional constitution of the
free surface of solid bodies, of which I need cite only the experi-
ments of M. De Margay on the vaporization of metals in vacuum
at temperatures below their melting points, and especially the re-
searches of M. Spring on the direct uniting of metals, either of the
same or of different species. We conclude from all these evi-
dences that there exists on the surface of solid bodies an extremely
thin layer, the density of which diminishes the more nearly we
approach the free surface. Let us assume, consequently, such a
special constitution for the superficial layer of solids, and, by a
new effort of our imagination, witness the unrelaxing work of our
particles of air in the immediate vicinity of some solid body ; we
might thus see them dashing into the invisible intervals between
the extreme molecules of the solid and opening passages for them-
selves through innumerable spaces, whence there results a whole
formed of solid particles and more or less condensed aggregations
of certain gases. Possibly this is the way in which has been de-
veloped that texture, doubtless very fine but still very resisting,
which covers all solid bodies and is also very difiicult to take
away from them.

You ask, Of what interest to us is this incessant activity of
the air ? We answer that it has an interest of the very highest
importance ; for without this protecting layer covering solids,
every object brought in contact with another would risk adher-
ing to it so closely that they could not be separated without a
great effort. It is this invisible layer that permits the workman
to use his tools handily, the reader to turn the leaves of his book

THE FORCES IN AN AIR BUBBLE. 679

■with ease, the writer to guide his pen at will, and the pedestrian
to raise his feet from the ground ; in fact, I should never get to
an end if I should have to recall the principal examples of the
utility of this microscopic cushion of air on the surface of solid
bodies.

Long and patient observations by Moser and Waidele have
made it extremely probable that every substance has its special
gaseous envelope, which depends on the condition of the free sur-
face, the temperature, the pressure, the vapors diffused in the sur-
rounding space, etc. This is so true that it is enough to pass the
finger over a plate of glass or metal to modify the minute mo-
lecular aggregate covering the surface. We can prove this by
tracing, with the finger or any kind of rod or stick, invisible
characters on the plate and breathing upon it, when all the trac-
ings will immediately come out on it ; for this reason, beyond a
doubt, that the vapor of the breath deposits itself in different
manners on the surface that has not been touched and on the
parts followed by the tracings. Further, if we allow two metallic
plates to remain for a considerable time slightly removed from
one another, one of which is highly polished, and the other bears
engraved characters such as may be found on a presentation
watch, on separating them, say after two months, simply breath-
ing on the surface of the smooth plate will cause the characters
engraved upon the other to appear revealed. The cause of this
appearance is, that the hollowed parts of one of the plates con-
dense more air and moisture, and thus, by frequent changes of
temperature and pressure, the parts of the smooth surface oppo-
site the cavities are covered with a gaseous envelope different
from that of the parts adjoining, and the difference is marked by
a special condensation of the vapor of the breath.

Legions of grains of dust are known to be floating in the at-
mosphere, not near the ground alone, but miles above the sea
level. We may form an estimate of the prodigious number of
these solid particles suspended in the air by collecting snoW dur-
ing the earlier moments of a fall ; the water resulting from the
melting of it is nearly black with the corpuscles of every kind
which the little ice crystals have brought down in the cavities
of the snow. Later collections of snowflakes give clearer and
clearer water. The snow has therefore been called the " broom of
the atmosphere." The particles can not be held up in the atmos-
phere of themselves; for, taken one at a time and thoroughly
dried, they will certainly weigh more than the air they displace.
To learn the real cause of the phenomenon, we must recollect that
the constitution of a solid particle is that of a minute kernel
surrounded by a very thin layer of gradually decreasing density,
into which the surrounding air infiltrates itself so as to make a

68o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

kind of sponge; hence, the smaller the kernel the more notable
the influence of the lighter sponge. Another perhaps more im-
portant cause may be found in the power of the cavities of a
grain of dust to attract moisture from the air, by virtue of which
an atmosphere of invisible vapor is gathered around the corpus-
cle so as to form a single system with it. The density of vapor
being only about two thirds that of air at the same pressure, this
vaporous envelope has great sustaining power, and its presence
furnishes an adequate explanation of the suspension of so much
solid matter.

Although the presence of these millions of particles may di-
minish the transparency of the atmosphere, they contribute to
the illuminating power of the sun by reflecting its rays in every
direction and causing all the space to be pervaded with light,
and, intercepting the rays of heat as they pass from the earth,
they prevent loss by too rapid radiation. A similar explanation
accounts for the suspension of globules of water in clouds.

We come now to the powers of our particle of air to emit
sounds, which are always curious and often imposing : manifested
in the snap of the coachman's whiplash, when the particles sud-
denly thrown out of equilibrium execute sonorous vibrations in
recovering it ; in the resonance of artillery discharges, the roar-
ing of the tempest, the moaning of the surf, and the rolling of the
thunder— all reactions of air against forces which have com-
pressed it.

When we bear in mind the power displayed by particles of air
hurled in violent wind against a fixed obstacle, we are led to ask
how these particles exhibit their energy when the air is traversed
by a projectile — spherical it may be — moving with great velocity ?
Since the air, in spite of its extreme mobility, opposes a degree of
resistance to any sudden displacement, the vacuum created be-
hind the projectile is not instantly filled ; and not all the particles
in front of it being able to get out of the way as fast as it goes
along, an accumulation takes place there which exerts consider-
able pressure against it. The situation then becomes the same as
if there was a spring in front of the ball strong enough to nullify
every instant a part of its velocity and to deform a solid obstacle
placed in its course. Melsen was struck by this thought, and in-
stituted a series of experiments that gained him great credit, the
result of which was to prove that the air accumulated in front of
a ball flying with sufficient velocity forms a gaseous layer capa-
ble of opposing the immediate contact of the projectile with a re-
sisting medium, particularly at the point squarely opposed to the
course of the missile. This view was very clearly confirmed by
Prof. E. Mach, of the University of Prague, who obtained a pho-
tographic image of a projectile moving with great velocity and

THE DISCOVERY OF THE SUN SPOTS. 681

preceded by condensed gaseous waves. We can not, therefore,
doubt that the cusbion of greatly compressed air in front of the
projectile causes considerable delay in its progress, and conse-
quently a great beating of tbe ball. We know that this takes
place with aerolitbs which become incandescent and burst in fly-
ing through our atmosphere.

Melsen's experiments led me to suppose (in 1874) that the ob-
struction and heating of a projectile passing through the air
might be notably diminished by driving a narrow and slightly
conical channel through the ball and slipping into it a metallic
obturator to fit it. " In this way," I said, in my lectures on ther-
modynamics, " the ball migh.t be discharged without letting more
gas escape than usual ; once out of the chamber, it would con-
dense the air in front of it, while the air behind it would be ex-
tremely rarefied. A difference of pressure would immediately be
produced sufficient to force the conical tampon out of the projec-
tile, and after that there would be no more projectile- air pres-
sure." Under these conditions, I said, the velocity of projectiles
could be kept up for much greater distances, and the heating
would be considerably less. I was not so situated that I could
verify these views by experiment ; but the principle was applied
about two years ago in Germany, in the Hebler Kruka ball, the
axis of which is pierced with a small cylindrical channel, en-
larged behind so as to be funnel-shaped, and closed with a small
plug — the very device I had imagined twenty years before— which,
when fired from a cannon, behaved just as I supposed my perfo-
rated ball would do. — Translated for the Popular Science Montlily
from del et Terre.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE SUN SPOTS.

Br M. A. LANCASTEE.

SPOTS or groups of spots were seen more or less distinctly
upon the sun previous to the invention of the telescope. The
observations are described under various forms, first among
which may be mentioned obfuscations or obscurations of the sun.
At other times they were believed to be passages of Mercury in
front of the sun, as in 807, a date mentioned by the historians of
Charlemagne, and on the 28th of May, 1607, when even Kepler
was deceived. In 859 Alkindi thought he observed a transit of
Venus ; but the black object he saw on the sun's disk was only
a spot large enough to be perceived by the naked eye.

Observations of obscurities or spots on the sun have been
made in China at different epochs, the most ancient one dating
from the year 301. Between that date and the beginning of the

682 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

thirteenth century the great Encyclopsedia of Matouan-lin con-
tains forty-five mentions of the phenomenon. The existence of
dark spots on the sun was recognized very anciently by the
aborigines of Peru. The Arabs have recorded prolonged observa-
tions of the disk of the sun, among which are those of 635
and G26.

The oldest mention of a sun spot in Europe, a spot which was
supposed to be Mercury, is by an anonymous chronicler of the
eighth century. Different observations of sun spots before the
invention of the telescope are recorded in Zach's Mo7iaUiclie Cor-
respondenz, vol. xv, 1807, and in Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. iii.

The new instrument, invented in Holland, first permitted the
scientific study of the solar surface. Galileo appears to have seen
the spots on the sun for the first time in October, 1610, but did
not account for the nature of the phenomenon. Jean Fabricius
may have remarked the spots toward the end of the year 1610,
and certainly observed them in March, 1611. Scheiner reported
his discovery of the spots in April, 1611, but did not account for
what he saw. Harriott, who is believed by Zach to have seen the
spots as early as December, 1610, and whose manuscripts have
been examined by Rigaud, did not really see them till early in
December, 1611, and comes, consequently, only fourth in the order
of priority.*

There have been lively controversies at different times concern-
ing the claims of these three astronomers to priority in the discov-
ery of the sun spots. The discussions were summarized by Arago
in an article published in VAnnuaire du Bureau des Longitudes in
1842. The question has been settled by deciding that Galileo first
saw the spots with the aid of the telescope, but that Fabricius
first announced their existence to the scientific world and pointed
out their nature. The texts were plain enough on this point, and
the discussion was prolonged more by the agitation of questions
concerning the meaning of words than by any need of clearing
up the facts.

A work recently published by Dr. Gerhard Berthold on Fabri-
cius t contains a number of previously unpublished documents,
and throws light on some obscure points in the history of as-
tronomy at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

An interesting analysis of this essay has been published by M.
E. Millosevich in the Atti of the Accademia dei Lincei of Rome.
While its main object is to establish the claim of Jean Fabricius
to priority in the discovery of the sun spots, it further furnishes
many facts previously unknown in the life of this astronomer and

* These facts and dates are from Houzeau's Vade-mecum of Astronomy,
f Der Magister Johann Fabricius und die Sonnenflecken.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE SUN SPOTS. 683

of his father, David Fabricius. The claim of priority having been
already settled by Humboldt, the secondary object is really the
more important one. A little-known paper o| Jean Fabricius on
sun spots and their apparent turning with the sun, published at
Wittenberg in 1611, is reproduced in the book; and after it a
wholly unknown astrological paper by David Fabricius on the
appearance of the new star in OphiuQus, which Kepler's pupil,
Jean Brunowski, discovered on the 10th of December, 1604.
David Fabricius saw this star for the first time December 13,
1604, or only three days after Brunowski, of whose discovery he
certainly knew nothing, and wrote two other notices of it, which
are lost. The frontispiece of David Fabricius's Prognosticon as-
tronomicum is also given, with a complete list of the author's
writings, including those which are lost. Of • these, the Prog-
nostica for 1607 and 1616 have recently been found at Darmstadt
and Nuremberg. From a few facts concerning the life of David
Fabricius gleaned from the Progriosiicon for 1617, it appears that
he was born at Essen, in East Friesland, March 9, 1564, and
died — killed with a spade by a peasant of his commune — May 7,
1617. He assumed the ecclesiastical dress at an early age, and
performed the offices of a court pastor, while he also devoted him-
self to astronomical studies, and was the first to announce that
Omicron or Mira Ceti, was a variable star.* He made this dis-
covery August 13, 1596, and on the same day remarked a star of
the third magnitude, red like Mars, and situated in 25° 47' and
15° 45' south of the ecliptic. Twelve years passed without his see-
ing it only very indistinctly, and he did not find it again clearly
till 1609. The author observes that the astrological intimations
of David Fabricius did not prevent his being a good astronomer
of the second rank, like Longomontanus, Scheiner, and Simon
Marius. His correspondence with Kepler proves that he fur-
nished him with important material for the composition of his
works.

Jean Fabricius, the eldest of seven sons, was born at Rester-
have, near Dornum, in East Friesland, January 18, 1587. The
Calendarium historicum of David Fabricius gives some facts
concerning his life. He attended the university at Helmstadt as
a medical student in 1605, at Wittenberg in the next year, whence
he passed to Leyden, where he was registered as a student of
medicine in 1609. Omitting certain statements concerning his
astrological and meteorological studies, we remark that the publi-
cation of the work to which he owes his fame in astronomy dates
from the time of his doctorate in philosophy at Wittenberg,

* The period of the variability of this star was determined by Jean Holward, forty-two
years afterward.

684 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

■whither he returned after his sojourn at Leyden. The telescope
was discovered in Holland in 1608 by the optician Jean Lipper-
sheim, of Middelbourg, who immediately applied to the States
General for a patent. Jean Fabricius learned of the discovery at
Leyden, and took the instrument to Osteel, where his father was,
and with it found the sun spots. Nothing is known of him after
the publication of the book on the sun spots already mentioned
(1611), except that he practiced medicine at Marienhave, near Os-
teel, and died there probably about 1617. If the Prognosticon for
1618 had not been lost, we should doubtless have had some details
respecting his death. In the lack of other sources of knowledge,
there is left us the eulogy addressed by Kepler to David Fabri-
cius : " But also reading in your Prognosticon for the year 1618,
by which I am better informed concerning his [Jean's] too early
death," etc. ; and further on, " But, indeed, there is this excellent
little book concerning the solar spots in the year 1611," etc. The
author gives particulars concerning the first day of the discovery,
the method of observation by projection, and the conclusions
which Jean, aided by his father's advice, drew {spots fixed in the
body of the sun) concerning the sun's rotation around an axis.
Neither the Narration nor the writings of David, so far as they
are known to us, give any hints concerning the exact date of the
discovery, so that we were confined to guesses till M. Berthold
found the Prognosticon of David for 1615, which gave the 27th of
February (9th of March N. S.), 1611, as the exact date of the event.
Furthermore, a letter from David to Maestlin says that the Nar-
ration appeared at the time of the autumn fair of 1611, and this
is confirmed by Kepler.

At this point in his learned essay Dr. Berthold discusses the
question of priority, for which a claim was earnestly pressed as
against Galileo by the Jesuit Scheiner, who assumed the name of
Apelles. It is really very singular, as it appears to the author,
that not a word was said of Jean Fabricius in this controversy,
and it might be inferred that both contestants. alike knew noth-
ing of the Narration, but for certain considerations and facts
adduced by Dr. Berthold which make this supposition exceed-
ingly improbable, if not impossible.

It is proper to observe here that after the telescope was in-
vented all the discoveries in celestial objects became, as it were,
matters of course, and that, whatever noise might be made about
them at first, the merit of the observers is insignificant in com-
parison with that of the calculators who knew how to reason out
the basis of the true system. Even if it should be proved that
Galileo learned of the existence of the spots from Fabricius's
Narration, or from the letters of the false Apelles, the remarkable
fact remains that in his first reply to Welser he corrects the

THE DISCOVERY OF THE SUN SPOTS. 685

errors in the reasoning of Apelles concerning the direction of the
sun's rotation.

In Mario Welser's first letter to Galileo, dated January 6, 1612,
he asks Galileo's opinion concerning the spots discovered by
Scheiner, and forwards three of the latter's famous letters. Three
months afterward (May 4, 1612) Galileo answers him in a very
long letter, saying that he has been observing the spots for eight-
een months, that he has shown them to several friends, and has
besides within a year exhibited them to many prelates and lords
at Rome. According to this, he must have seen the spots as early
as the end of November, 1610 ; and the discovery, or first obser-
vation, must have been as early as the summer of 1610, or before
Galileo removed from Venice to Florence, the change of residence
taking place at the end of August, 1610. It is proved, in fact, by
a letter from the friar Fulgence Servita, a theologian of the Most
Serene Republic, that he showed the spots to Father Paolo. It is
not easy to divine why Galileo, usually so careful of his rights,
did not this time make a claim for priority in discovery ; but it
may be supposed that by the side of the discovery of the Medici
stars, Saturn's rings, and the phases of Venus, that of dark points
on the sun, changing in character and disappearing according to
the position of the star, appeared of trifling importance to him ;
and this is to a certain extent confirmed by the reply to Welser.
Galileo's observations, in fact, did not begin to be known till in
1612; and if we did not trust to his assertions or to ocular testi-
mony, Fabricius, Scheiner, and perhaps others, made the discov-
ery before him; but this would not be a fair judgment. It must
be admitted that Galileo first observed the spots on the sun with
the aid of the Lippersheim glass ; but his earliest notices on the
subject did not appear till the spring of 1612, while the earliest
publication on it is that of Fabricius, who discovered the spots on
March 9, 1611, in complete ignorance that Galileo had observed
them eight months before.

The false Apelles pretended that he had observed the spots
for the first time, together with one of his pupils, in March, 1611.
How, then, could Kepler have written to David Fabricius of " the
sun spots seen by your son long before, Apelles," if, as we know
now, Jean discovered them in March, 1611 ? No one was more in
the current of events than Kepler, and he was astonished at the
letters of Apelles. Besides, Scheiner told Welser that he had ob-
served some darkish things on the sun, but attached no impor-
tance to them till October, when he resumed his observations—
that is, after Jean Fabricius's book had been published.

It finally appears from Dr. Berthold's book that (1) Galileo
was the first to observe the spots on the sun with the Lippersheim
telescope in the summer of 1610, but he did not publish his draw-

686 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ings and observations till the spring of 1613, At that time he
was master enough of the question of the sun's rotation to correct
Scheiner's errors. (2) Jean Fabricius discovered the sun spots on
March 9, 1611 ; he was acquainted with the sun's rotation, and was
the first to publish a work on the subject. His discovery is quite
independent of any previous suggestion. (3) Scheiner may also
have observed the sun spots independently in March, 1611, but he
attached no importance to them till October of the same year,
after the publication of the Narration by Fabricius. His merit
consists in his having continued the observations, and in having
collected a large number of them, which were inserted in his
Hosa Ursina.

The "long before" {lovge ante) of Kepler is unexplained. —
Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from del et Terre.

■♦»»

FOURTEENTH-CENTURY DOCTORS.

By M. E. NICAISE.

DAREMBERG says, in his Histoire des Sciences medicales,
that the custom of consultations among doctors was extended
in the thirteenth century ; but it is probable that the usage existed
in previous stages of civilization. There have always been grave
maladies and hard diagnoses and cases involving considerable
responsibilities, for which a meeting of doctors was desirable ; and
there have always been patients in considerable social station
who liked to be taken care of by several doctors at once. Consul-
tations, therefore, have not all the same origin or the same pur-
pose, but the proceedings in them are always the same — exami-
nation for what is the matter with the patient, and discussion
concerning it and concerning the treatment to be adopted.

On this subject, we have but few documents from antiquity
and the middle ages, and of these the work of Mondeville * gives
tte most information. His work relates to other subjects than
surgery, and might, without straining words, be styled Memoirs.
Under Philippe the Fair money was scarce, and the doctor and
the surgeon were but poorly paid even by the king. " I have
never," Mondeville says, "found a man rich enough or honest
enough, of whatever condition, religious or other, willing to pay
what he had promised without being pressed or forced to do it."

* Chururgie de Maitre Henri de Mondeville (Surgery, by Master Henri de Mondeville),
Surgeon of Philippe le Bel of France, composed between 1306 and 1329; translated into
French, with notes, an introduction, and a biography ; published under the auspices of the
Minister of Public Instruction, by E. Nicaise, assisted by Dr. Saint-Leger and F. Chavannes.
Paris, 1893, F. Alcan.

FOURTEENTH-CENTURY DOCTORS. 687

His rancor against these patients is so great that he is ready to
excuse and counsel even means which we would incontinently
reject at this time, to compel them to pay acceptable fees. He
does not seem to have put these measures into practice, for he had
no fortune ; but the fact that a king's surgeon should venture to
speak as he does on so delicate a subject casts a curious light on
•the society of his day and its want of order ; on the other hand,
his remarks can not be generalized and applied wholesale to the
period in which he lived.

Coming to Mondeville's exposition of the method of holding a
discussion, we find his description almost a story of what might
take place to-day. " First," he says, " we should inquire into the
nature of the disease, examining carefully and feeling, because
the diagnosis is made by touching with the hand and observing
with the eye. All the consultants engage in turn in the examina-
tion. Then, if the case demands it, they make a new examination
all together, pointing out to one another the symptoms of disease
and the special or remarkable features either in the patient or
the disease. Then one of them, the highest in rank, says to the
patient, ' Sir, we perceive very clearly what is the matter with
you, and you ought to have full confidence in us. and be glad that
there are so many of us here, and such doctors — enough for a
king — and to believe that the youngest of us is competent to pre-
scribe and carry on your treatment and bring it to a good result.'
Then he interrogates the patient about the circumstances of his
attack : ' Sir, do not be displeased or take it ill, but when did your
illness begin ? ' following this with many other questions, the
answers to which are recorded as indications furnished by the
patient.

"When all the questions called for by the case have been
asked, the consultants retire to another room, where they will be
alone ; for in all consultations the masters dispute with one
another in order the better to discuss the truth, and sometimes
they come to a pass in the heat of discussion which would cause
strangers witnessing their proceeding to suppose there were dis-
cord and strife among them. This is sometimes the case.

" The oldest, the most eminent, or the most illustrious of the
doctors, if there is any such among them, a king's or a Pope's
doctor, should propose that they all speak in turn. If they are all
silent, as they would be in the presence of so eminent a chief, he
should take the floor and question them, one after another, begin-
ning with the youngest and least famous, and so on, passing always
from the inferior to the superior. If the older ones spoke first,
the younger and less considerable would have nothing to add,
and the consultation would thus be of no effect ; while, whatever
the younger doctors might say, the older ones would have oppor-

688 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tunity, wliicli would be valuable in some cases, to correct it, add
to it, subtract, oppose, or applaud it. He should ask them con-
cerning the character of the disease, what it is called, what the
experience of experts has been with it, what authors mention it,*
and in what part of their works. These questions being answered,
he should inquire whether the disease is curable or not, and how.
For a simple example in surgery," says Mondeville, " to show
better how the thing is done, suppose a tumor on a fleshy part, the
shoulder or the thigh, is to be treated : the doctor should inquire
of what matter or humor it is formed ; whether of the blood, for
example. He should then inform himself concerning the disease,
its beginning and progress, and ask if an evacuation is not desir-
able. This being decided upon, of what kind — a bleeding ? If
yes, in what limb or what vein, when and where ; for the practice
varies according to the season and the habits of the patients, and
according to the aspects of the moon and the heavenly bodies and
an infinite variety of things." Such is the regular, decorous con-
sultation, but things did not always go on thus smoothly.

Before repeating what Mondeville says concerning the inci-
dents of consultations, I will expound the sage precepts he lays
down for consultation at a distance, a subject to which he de-
voted a whole notable. This is an important point when we
recollect that at that time, and thence on down to the sixteenth
century, the doctor often gave his advice without leaving his
office, without seeing the patient, by examining his fluids and
asking some questions of the messenger.f It is not worth while
to give all that Mondeville says, but only the principal parts of
his chapter, omitting the arguments which he draws from the
authors that preceded him. It was one of the characteristics of
the period, as I have already remarked, that authors generally
rested their opinions, not principally on their own experience and
studies, but on what Galen and some Arabian authors said. The
respect of some for their predecessors was absolute, and they
cared for nothing besides what rested on the authority of these.

* This was characteristic of the age. Even doctors well instructed and advanced in
experience did not venture to rest on their personal opinion, but had always to invoke a
predecessor, Galen or the Arabs, as the original authority. Mondeville, however, paid less
attention to this custom than some of the others.

f Already at that time famous doctors and surgeons went to see their patients, notwith-
standing the diffiulties of communication ; Lanfrance, Mondeville, and Guy de Chauliac
give U3 proof of this fact. There were other doctors, clerks, and canons, as were most of
the maitres regents of the Faculty of Paris, whose dignity forbade their visiting patients and
who gave consultations by interrogating the messenger and analyzing the urine of the pa-
tient. This custom disappeared after the reform introduced in 1452 by Cardinal d'Estonte-
ville, who obliged the new doctors regents who received no prebends from the Church, to
busy themselves with their patients. The contest of the faculty and the surgeons origi-
nated at that time.

FOURTEENTH-CENTURY DOCTORS. 689

Mondeville rose bravely above this principle, but yielded some-
times to its influence, and also called the Arabians to bis aid.

On the subject of consultation at a distance, he observes that
" people have often asked counsel of us surgeons on the treatment
of diseases that we have not seen and can not see, because of the
absence and distance of patients who can not be brought to us,
while we can no more go to them. Under such conditions, it is
neither safe nor conformable to the precepts of the art and of a
good conscience to make out a prescription of curative treatment
for diseases hard to cure, like cancers, fistulas, etc. It is, how-
ever, permissible, after having legitimately excused one's self, to
prescribe a palliative treatment. In diseases easy to cure, in
recent small wounds — for example, boils, tumors, slight contu-
sions, etc. — we may give a curative prescription to absent persons.
We should laugh indeed at surgeons," he adds, "if the patient
had to appear personally before them for a light disease as well
as for a serious ona.

" Possibly the messengers from persons seriously ill will tell
us that they know as well as the patient himself all the details of
the disease ; but this is not possible, for no one can extract facts
as appropriate and useful in the particular case as the doctor.
The patient would not pay due heed to the questions if they did
not come from the doctor ; and even if the messengers did exact-
ly describe the condition of the patient as it was — and even this
is not possible — they would be wholly, or to a large extent, igno-
rant of his present state, for it would have changed in the in-
terim." In the proceedings just described things were done cor-
rectly, as in our own time, but it was not always so; and there
are some statements in Mondeville that throw a curious light on
the manners of the fourteenth century.

He represents many persons as choosing their doctor without
troubling themselves to know whether he was well taught and ex-
perienced ; others were not satisfied till they had as many doc-
tors around them as possible. " There are frequently," he says,
" Parisians who, when ill, call together a great many doctors of
different sects, to consult with them. Some think that the more
surgeons they have, the sooner their disease will be cured — the
same, for example, as ten masons working together on a wall
will accomplish as much in one day as one mason can in ten days.
Patients who know how to distinguish among surgeons the one
who has the best training and experience prefer to have only
one " — and that is Mondeville's advice.

But if complications arise, as a fourth day of fever,* it will be

* " Most usually," says Mondeville, " the fever accompanying wounds is ephemeral ;
but sometimes it changes into a fever of sippuration, and this is to be feared when the
VOL. LI. — 52

690 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

preferable to call two surgeons, "and if possible, let them be
friends, of the same sect, and agreeing in opinion; if two such
can not be found, then a third should be taken in, in order solely
to make the others agree after they have discussed the matter."
Moudeville is not a partisan of a large number of consultants.
He found many inconveniences and few advantages for the pa-
tient at the numerous meetings which he attended as king's sur-
geon. He then makes an irreverent comparison, of the patient
to a dog and the surgeons to its hair: "We are," he says, "like
the hairs of a dog : the longer and coarser they are, the more
they annoy the animal, because they overload him and furnish a
harbor for lice, and are of no use in any way, for dogs seldom die
of cold. . . . The more numerous we are," he adds, " the less each
one of us feels himself responsible. Each says that no larger part
of the treatment fell upon him than upon the others. Hence, the
more doctors the sick man has the more he finds that he has few
or none. If affairs go ill, every doctor excuses himself, and holds
that he is absolved. In this way it often happens that wealthy
patients are less effectively treated than poor ones, because of the
number of doctors they have around them. On the other hand,
a large number of consultants embarrasses the attending doctor,
and prevents his following his habitual practice ; while, if he does
not pay strict attention to the observations of the others, they re-
gard him as a disagreeable, proud, self-conceited man."

The experienced surgeon, when he is alone, uses processes which
he is not willing to reveal to the others (every one keeps his secrets,
and every one pretended to have them in those days), or he is
afraid that they will reject his remedy, as some do, who will nev-
ertheless make a note of it to use it on occasion. Or, again, if his
remedy is accepted, each of them will want to add something to
it — one rose, another melilot, a third camomile — whereby the medi-
cine will lose its virtue and the surgeon will not accomplish his
purpose, and will be exposed to reproach from the very persons
who have nullified his remedy. And, lastly, when the surgeon
reveals to others, who knew nothing about them, the conclusions
to which his experience has led him, they will say, " That is what
I observed a long time ago," or " That is what I was just going to
say."

Another argument adduced by Mondeville against a large
number of doctors is that an experienced doctor is really seldom
mistaken, while it is impossible, when several doctors have come
together, for them all to be agreed as to the cause of the disease,
its nature, symptoms, and treatment, for there will be as many

fever is prolonged beyond four days." This is why our author makes the limit of four days
intervene before deteriniHing it to be necessary to call in another surgeon.

FOURTEENTH-CENTURY DOCTORS. 691

opinions as there are heads. If by chance they should agree upon
the purpose to be effected, they will differ concerning the details.
One will propose, for example, in the treatment of a tumor, to
make it ripen, while another, who had intended to prescribe the
same, will say althea and a third ursine, and so on with the others,
if there are a thousand of them ; then all these drugs will be
mixed in the same medicine, although mallows alone would have
been the best.

An anecdote is related by Mondeville in illustration of the
desire that prevailed in those days to appear to be doing some-
thing. During a consultation, when a number of the best doctors
in Paris had just formulated a prescription for a sirup, a belated
colleague came in. After carefully examining the prescription, he
added a berry. On the others expressing surprise, he exclaimed :
" Mutton-heads and oxen ! why are you looking at me so ? How
could I conscientiously take my part of the fees if I did not put
something in the sirup ? "

If the consultants do not dispute over some definite object, they
will dispute from jealousy or hatred ; and the instant one of them
suggests something reasonable and conformable to experience, the
others, even though it was what each one of them himself would
have recommended if he had been alone, rise one after the other
and agree in declaring the contrary of what was proposed.

Mondeville thus describes consultations under two different
aspects. The first picture presents the typical, orderly consulta-
tion ; the second exhibits the daily strifes and rivalries, of which
he collects several various types in a few lines. Viewed in this
light, the men of the fourteenth century were much like those
who followed them, except that they were more brutal and less
careful of delicate forms. — Translated for the Popular Science
Monthly from the Revue Soientifique.

The progress of Tommy Stringer at the Massachusetts Kindergarten for
the Blind affords a remarkable illustration of the power of suitable train-
ing to awaken and develop a mind from the darkest obscurity, and when
the conditions around seemingly act only to eclipse it Tommy was
brought to the institution, four and a half years old, in 1891, blind, deaf,
speechless, with no great intelligence, and "not unlike a puppy in some of
his instincts and characteristics." He was placed under the charge of a
special teacher — and a competent one — who devoted all her time to him.
He is described in the last published report of the institution as having'
become "a fine boy — bright, energetic, manly, instinct with life, erect in
stature, innocent as a lamb, frolicsome as a kitten, full of fun and ingenu-
ity, and not destitute even of a tendency to mischief"; pure, honest, intel-
ligent, generous, using tools handily and with good taste, and advancing
well in all the branches of education, mental and physical.

692 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LOCKWOOD.

By W. S. SNYDER.

IN Freehold, N. J,, and almost Tipon the historic ground of the
battle of Monmouth Courthouse, in an inviting home built to
his liking, lived until January 9, 1894, the Rev. Samuel Lock-
wood, Ph. D., widely known as a general naturalist, and a shrewd
observer and describer of the habits of animals. Such was his
retiring and unpretentious nature that the writer had great diffi-
culty in securing his consent to the publication of the story of
his life. But long acquaintance and occasional meetings at last
thawed the reticence, and I am now, after his death, permitted
to give a brief account of it.

Prof. Lockwood was born in Mansfield, England, January 20,
1819. His father, William Lockwood, was a man of devout piety,
a leader among the Wesleyan Methodists, and, as a citizen, well
versed in public affairs. His mother, who was taken from him at
an early age, and for whom he entertained a loving regard, was
the daughter of a Moravian exile from Prussia, who became head
master of an English endowed school, and was known for his
superior artistic tastes and for his engravings on copper. On
her death the household in England was broken up, and the
father with his little boy started for New York city, where the
boy was brought up and received his education. I am unable
to give his exact age at the time, but in very tender years the
future naturalist began to unfold. A huckleberry party, going
into the country one day, were caught in a drenching thunder-
shower. Returning in haste to their stopping place, the boy
Samuel left the others, and, making a short cut, went by a by-
path through a low meadow. Suddenly he paused. Finding a
snake lying in the path, and supposing the reptile was dead, he
picked it up and carried it home, reaching the house in advance
of the others. Before the rest of the party came in, a little boy in
the house was taken into the confidence of the young naturalist,
who, with the reptile on his lap and a pin in one hand, dis-
coursed to him about the beauty of the scales upon his snake,
pointing to their outlines with the pin. So absorbed was the
juvenile lecturer in his theme that he was unaware that the entire
company had become his auditors.

Young Lock wood's education, with the exception of the bare
rudiments, had to be provided by the labor of his hands and
brain. He worked his way into the University of the City of
New York, where he attracted the attention of the eminent classi-
cist. Dr. Lewis, and of the elder Draper, eminent in physics.
With Dr. Henry, the rhetorician, his relation was dififerent. Lock-

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LOCK WOOD. 693

wood had somewliat independent notions concerning tlie rhetor-
ical proprieties, and, holding college compositions in no high
esteem, failed in a corresponding degree to be appreciated by the
professor. Yet he was all the time paying his way through col-
lege with his pen, being employed as an assistant editor on the
New York Sun, then under the control of Moses Y. Beach. Very
much surprised was the professor when he learned from one of
Lockwood's classmates that he, the member of the class who stood
lowest in marks, was thus practically achieving a substantial lit-
erary success.

In consequence of an attack of brain fever, Lockwood left col-
lege during his sophomore year and retired to the country to re-
cruit. A classmate came to visit him, and during his stay the
two youths went for a hunt. They bagged some birds and squir-
rels, which were carried to the farmhouse where they were stay-
ing. The good wife prepared the game for dinner in delicate
style, but while the classmate ate with evident relish, Lockwood,
although declaring that he was " as hungry as a bear," found his
conscience smiting him, and the savory dish seemed only to accuse
him of a wicked and selfish slaughter.

Prolonging his stay in the country through the vacation sea-
son, Lockwood one day discovered an oriole's nest at the ex-
tremity of a provokingly high and long branch of an oak. To
get at the nest without destroying the limb was impossible. At
the farmhouse he expressed a wish to get the young birds, when
an inmate said, in a taunting way :

" I'd like to see a city chap get them birds ! "

That was a challenge. He undertook the capture, and by a
series of ingenious devices, combined with steady persistence,
secured the whole brood.

This incident rooted more deeply than ever the taste of the
student for natural history. When his graduation was near, Dr.
Draper, the chemist, in whose class Lockwood stood very high,
endeavored to impress upon him that it was his duty to enter the
medical college. The young man's trend was, however, toward
the Christian ministry. This inclination, which became an irre-
sistible desire, was encouraged by the Rev. Dr. Ferris, afterward
Chancellor of the University, and Colonel Crosby, father of
the late Rev. Dr. Crosby. Mr. Lockwood entered the Theo-
logical Seminary of the Reformed Dutch Church at New Bruns-
wick, N. J.

Mr. Lockwood had been privately married soon after gradua-
tion from the university, and still kept the fact a secret when he
entered the seminary. He soon found himself without resources,
and in his trouble had recourse to prayer. Ultimately the singu-
lar thought occurred to him, on which he acted at once, of going

694 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to a business man in New Brunswick, who was not regarded as
generous or liberal, and proposing a loan of one hundred dollars
on bis individual note. The proposal was accepted, and the
financier, taking young Lockwood's hand in his own, wished him
God speed.

Immediately after this transaction the seminarian went into
a barber's shop, and, while waiting his turn, picked up a city
paper which offered a series of premiums for the four best stories
on a given subject. Reaching home, he told his wife what he had
read. She said, "You must write for the first prize ! " The story
was written, and won the first prize. It was called The Treasure
Hunters, and was written during the California gold fever, but
bears not even a remote relation to the Argonauts.

Mr. Lockwood was graduated from the seminary and was
licensed to preach in 1850. He received a call to the church at
Cortlandtown, N. Y., where he remained only two years, employ-
ing for diversion his spare time in the pursuit of natural history,
collecting insects and studying animals. In 1852 he was called
to Gilboa, N. Y., where, located by the side of the Schoharie, he
became deeply impressed with the fossil richness of the region.

A clerical agent for a benevolent society came to Gilboa, and
after having succeeded, with Mr. Lockwood's aid, in securing the
largest subscription ever given in the church for outside benevo-
lence, was taken by him for a stroll in the fields and by the fossil
beds. Mr. Lockwood spoke of the geological aspect of the region
and of the great age of the Catskills, when the agent responded
that it " was all the work of the flood." " Could the flood," asked
Mr. Lockwood, " build up these stony mountains filled with shells
for thousands of feet deep ? . . . We will let the rocks speak for
themselves." Picking up a soft stone from the stream, he dropped
it on the rock at the agent's feet, when it broke, revealing a mass
of Devonian trilobites. " Now," he said, " these fossils were de-
posited in quiet waters, and by no turbulent flood. So gently was
each one laid by Nature in its bed to die, that not one of the deli-
cate strise that beautify it was injured or disturbed. But then,
why should not the Creator have loved the beautiful before man
was made ? " " What ! what ! " exclaimed the agent ; " death in
the world before man was made ? I see ! You're an infidel ! "
The agent's society seems, however, to have overlooked this mat-
ter of infidelity, for it made Mr. Lockwood an honorary member
in recognition of his services to it.

The young minister was soon reading other "sermons in
stones,"

Strolling one day along a high bank when the water of the
stream was low, he observed some carbonaceous markings. With
the aid of hammer and chisel these were proved to be relics of an

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LOCKWOOD. 695

ancient flora. He extracted from the face of the cliff a bell-
shaped stone, the lower part of which was more than three feet in
diameter and the upper surface about two feet. It was the base
of a shaft of a huge tree fern.

In 1854 Mr. Lock wood was called from Gilboa to Key port,
N. J., and he took with him a careful drawing of the big fossil.
About two years afterward he revisited his haunts in the Scho-
harie Valley, when with other large fossils he removed the one
just described, and presented it to Rutgers College. The moving
of this mass — some thirteen hundred pounds — over thirty- seven
miles of the Catskills was not without incidents. The young
student was much annoyed, at points where the horses were
fed, by inquiries about the "big stun." His paleontological
lecture upon the rock as being the base of a wonderful plant
rather puzzled the country people, as at Durham, N, Y., where
the most rational theory that could be conceived to account for
his proceedings was that the rock contained gold. This theory
won respect for the geologist, who was now viewed in the light
of a mining explorer.

Mr. Lockwood prepared drawings of his fossil plants, intend-
ing to send them to Hugh Miller, when the news came of the
Scotch geologist's death. The fossils were studied and described
by Sir J. William Dawson, of Montreal, and the descriptions with
plates were published. The chief fossil received the name Cau-
lopteris Lockwoodi, meaning Lockwood's " wing-shafted " tree
fern. Each stem was a symmetrical column of sixty feet in
height, with vast fronds like far outreaching wings.

Upon invitation of the late Prof. George H. Cook, then the
New Jersey State Geologist, Mr. Lockwood presented the fossil
to Rutgers College, with a speech, at a meeting of the Students'
Natural History Society, in commencement week.

Mr. Lockwood reasoned out, without aid from books, to the
conclusion that, though resembling the Carboniferous fossils, these
Devonian plants must have antedated them ; and that, though the
rocks containing them were superficial in the Catskills, they prob-
ably extended, in Pennsylvania, beneath the coal beds. His in-
terest in geology became from this time very lively.

In his new field in Monmouth County, New Jersey, Mr. Lock-
wood's attention was directed to the Cretaceous deposits known
as the marl beds. They exhibited a new phase of organic re-
mains in their vertebrate fossils, attesting to the former pres-
ence in the region of a race of immense reptiles quite as wonder-
ful in their way as the Devonian cryptogams of the Catskills.
During one of the visits of inspection which he was in the habit
of making to the clay bluffs near Keyport, he observed what
appeared to be the surface of a broken bone, black and friable.

696 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Working very carefully, lie extracted two enormous pieces of
bone thickly coated with iron oxide — the distal ends of the fibula
and tibia of some very large animal. Examining his find on the
way home, he noticed a clean fracture, as if a spur had been
broken from the bottom of the tibia, indicating a novel form. He
returned to the bluff and extracted the missing piece. This bone
was examined by Marsh and Cope, and figured by Cope and de-
scribed by him as Ornithotarsus imvianis, or "immense bird-
ankled beast." The face of this ankle joint was thirteen inches
and three quarters in the longer diameter ; and the bones indi-
cated an animal with long hind feet, like those of a bird, and
short fore feet, that could stand up and browse upon the high
trees of the forests in which it lived. Cope estimated the length
of its hind legs at twelve feet.

Mr. B. Waterhouse Hawkins, an English artist skilled in the
restoration of fossil forms, had come to this country and made
some restorations of ancient gigantic animals — the Hadrosaurus,
for instance, at the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia, and at
Princeton College. As he had made restorations of extinct Eng-
lish reptiles for a public park in England, it was thought that a
good educational effect would result if a series of restorations of
the so much grander extinct reptiles of the Cretaceous period of
New Jersey could be set up in Central Park, and this gentleman
was accordingly engaged for the project. He had a studio in
New York city, where Prof. Lockwood visited him at his work.
The artist's plan was, first to reconstruct the entire skeleton from
the fossil bones, then to habilitate it in flesh by molding the clay
upon it, so that the animal really had a true skeleton inside. Mr.
Hawkins had already set up a Hadrosaurus when Mr. Lockwood
called, but the visitor noticed that there was a break in the
fibula. In answer to an inquiry about this omission, he was told
that the beast had a singular articulation of this joint for which
the fossil bones gave no data, and the artist had been unable to
invent it. Mr. Lockwood modestly said to the artist :

" Why, I can articulate that for you."

Mr. Hawkins was incredulous, and saems to have continued so
even after Mr. Lockwood told him he had the articulation at his
house. Returning home, Mr. Lockwood made drawings of the
part, the receipt of which set the English artist "crazy," as he
expressed himself in a letter asking the loan of the bones. With
their aid the difficulty was solved. Mr. Lockwood was afterward
asked to sell the bones, to be given to the British Museum, but
he preferred to keep them for America.

This incident was followed by a very curious psychological ex-
perience. Mr. Lockwood received from Mr. Hawkins an original
cartoon of the Cretaceous dinosaurs, accompanied by a letter ask-

SKETCH OF SAM UEL L 0 CK W 0 OD. 69 7

ing liim to write a popular descriptive text to it. While his mind
was exercised on this subject he was attacked by a violent fever,
culminating in delirium. In this delirium he dreamed of a ter-
rific battle of saurians, in which all the giants of the family took
part. After recovery from his illness Mr. Lockwood wrote the
dream down, and it proved a very satisfactory libretto to the
cartoon.

While Mr. Hawkins was still engaged in his saurian recon-
struction in Central Park, the " Tweed Ring " rose into power, and,
not appreciating the value of this scientific labor, or rather not
caring for it unless it was re-enforced by the kind of considera-
tion acceptable to political bosses, ordered the figures, represent-
ing the patient labors of two or three years, destroyed. Prof.
Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, intervened to prevent this
devastation, but he had no hearing.

Mr. Lockwood's residence at Keyport gave him opportunity to
study icnthyic life. As a first result of his researches in this new
field appeared his article in the American Naturalist, The Sea
Horse and its Young, which describes the remarkable fact that
the male fish takes from the female the eggs and places them in
an abdominal pouch, in which he carries them until they are
hatched. It was upon this discovery, published in 1867, that the
University of New York conferred upon her alumnus the degree
of Ph. D. Some studies on insects at this time led to economic
results.

After reading a paper before the New York Lyceum of Natu-
ral History on A New Parasite in the Eel, the society requested
the doctor to take up the study of Limulus, the horsefoot or
king crab. Dr. Lockwood was promised the loan of a compound
microscope for the purpose, but this he did not get, and did his
work with an instrument which cost but three dollars. The
paper was read to the society in 1869, and published in the Amer-
ican Naturalist in 1870. It showed that in one of its embryonic
forms Limulus is a trilobite. Dr. Lockwood also demonstrated
that in successive months of its larval life it went through fur-
ther phases representing those higher fossil forms known as
Pterygotiis. The author furnished eggs to Prof. A. Packard, who
sent some to Jena. The article in the American Naturalist at-
tracted much attention, and pointed out the way to a number of
eminent workers on the problem who were able to use the best
appliances. Dr. Packard led ; then Prof. Dorhn, the biologist of
the University of Jena, who translated the Lockwood article into
German. Dr. Richard Owen, the eminent English anatomist,
occupied two evenings of the Linnean Society of London citing
largely from the article and complimenting it. The paper re-
ceived praise also from Milne-Edwards.

698 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTH LF.

In his studies in fishes, besides some abstruse problems which
he attacked, not always with equal success, Dr. Lockwood gave a
charming lecture on sticklebacks, which included some descrip-
tions of their nesting and the raising of their young. He also
made some discoveries among the mollusks. But perhaps his
most extended labor was devoted to the oyster, as is shown in his
report published by the State of New Jersey. Upon this subject
as a lecturer and writer he won great applause and enduring fame.
An amusing incident, which was at the same time a compliment,
occurred some years ago when Dr. Lockwood was lecturing on
The Life of an Oyster. Two oystermen, at the conclusion of the
lecture, got into audible discussion over what they had heard.
Said one to the other, " I tell you, Ned, he knows it all, from the
cedar on Lebanon down to soft clams ! "

Dr. Lockwood's studies were not confined to fishes, but he ex-
amined and investigated zoology generally. There is also a third
phase in his scientific character which must not be omitted. His
discovery of the fossil plants in New York led him into the study
of living plants ; hence he was not without reputation as a com-
parative botanist. He seemed to see all things as a unit — nothing
unrelated — Nature as the oneness of the Infinite Maker. His
knowledge of these several fields, which was sharply defined and
comprehensive, and his simple yet almost poetic generalization,
made everything from his pen attractive to the popular reader.

But back of all was a devout mind, with an overflowing love
of any and every living form, animal or plant. In his study his'
aquarium was always. an attractive object to visitors. He even
had a little froggery, where different species of frogs enjoyed
themselves. Snakes and lizards, too, entered into his friendship,
and afforded him opportunity for the study of their habits. Then,
with all these, there seemed to be a pathological instinct in the
good man's heart. As a microscopist he investigated the diseases
of fishes and of plants.

He was fellow of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, President of the American Microscopical Socie-
ty, and President of the United States Hay Fever Association.
His latest contribution to the Manual of the last-named associa-
tion was an article on The Comparative Hygiene of the Atmos-
phere in Relation to Hay Fever. An article of similar character
was reproduced, together with the plate from the original, abroad,
where Dr. Lockwood was well known among scientists, and was
an honorary member of the Belgian Microscopical Society. ,

Speaking of his aquarium, the writer on one occasion observed
in a north room of his studj^ several small aquaria, which were
the quarantines to which he intrusted the sick animals while
making every effort to save them. These aquaria seemed to be

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LOCKWOOD. 699

divided into sanitaria for different kinds of maladies. On a later
visit the doctor was found going over a large number of mounted
slides for the microscope which he had prepared, containing fungi
and microbes taken recently from sick fishes. Dr. Lockwood's
general and specific knowledge in so many fields, with his well-
known love for the young and his lifelong experience as an edu-
cator, may readily account for the indescribable charm of his
writings ; but perhaps especially are these features discovered
in his two little volumes of Animal Memoirs, of which a third
volume, to embrace the reptiles and fishes, was to follow in due
course.

Dr. Lockwood lived to be about seventy-five years of age, but
time had dealt so kindly with him that his mind seemed to be
expanding and ripening as the years went by. His tenacity of
purpose in the pursuit of knowledge continued to brighten an in-
tellect that was never dull, while his conversation glowed with
the enthusiasm of youth and charmed with a delicacy of thought
that was intellectually refining and pure. He was ever a student,
but never a recluse. Seated by his beloved microscope, he seemed
to play upon science as a master of the violin feels for its magical
chords, and he caught by his sympathetic comment upon insect
and animal life the attention of his hearers and held it firmly and
harmoniously in touch with his own. His fondness for clearness
of speech brought him the admiration of those who know science
only by name, and his geniality and hospitality won for him the
love of all who came within the circle of his home. In his home
life he was ever gentle, considerate, and kind, and his love for his
work was as absorbing as the simplicity of his life was sweet.

One cause of the persistence of caged birds in singing is found by Mr.
Charles A. Witcliell in the result of their changed condition of life— that
they have nothing to do but to sing. " The wild bird has always plenty to
notice and consider— the approach of various creatures: men, beasts, hawks
and other birds; the sounds which these produce, and which signify vari-
ous degrees of safety or of peril ; the indications of food in air or tree, or on
the ground ; and lastly the state of the atmosphere and the various weather
signs which all birds observe — such incidents as these occupy the wakeful
hours of the wild bird. But the caged bird— often secluded from all com-
munication with his kind (one, perchance, of a gregarious species), without
the necessity of seeking food, with a horizon limited perhaps by a smoky
garden, perhaps by a dingy window — can take no exercise but in hopping
from perch to perch, across and across his cage, and can hear no call-notes
but his own, which he repeats again and again, and, if he has been reared
in a cage, his own song, which he seems to utter as much for the sake of
such occupation as it affords as to express by means of it any desire for a
mate or any pleasure in his surroundings.''

700

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

(SjOXXtSpi^iUiitMtt.

THE DEPARTMENT STORE.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

In the July number of the Monthly, under
the head of A New Social Problem, you dis-
cuss the department store. T was interested
in your application of the fundamental laws
of evolution to its development. From an
evolutionist whose views do not fully accord
with your own will you permit a query or two ?

I live in a city in which the first business
started was a department store. It was
owned and conducted by a wealthy man who
was eager for more wealth. Now, how did
it happen that his ability to purchase large
quantities of goods, the saving of rents, etc.,
failed to prevent a differentiation and segre-
gation into the little specialist? Has not
this been the general course of all communi-
ties in this country ? First, settlement was
made at some point, and the man with a
general assortment of commodities put in his
appearance. If population became perma-
nent and sufficiently large, differentiation
and segregation took place, and the whole
became integrated along the street or streets
best adapted to business.

Now, what has caused a reversal of the
process ? The economies mentioned in your
article manifestly are inadequate to explain
the matter, since all of them have been in
operation from the beginning. Take, for
instance, the ability to make large purchases
for cash. Is it not a well known fact that
the discount to-day in such transactions is
less than at any former time? The discount
has but two factors — interest and commer-
cial risk. Rates of interest are less than at
any former time, while commercial reports
are more readily obtainable and more trust-
worthy than ever before.

Evidently some new factor must be con-
sidered, as the forces with which you deal

have been in operation for all time. Nor
can this new element consist of knowledge
of advanced business methods, since it can
be shown that we to-day are familiar with no
business process not known from the dawn
of civilization. This new force, in my opin-
ion, is not far to seek. Is it not true that a
high rate of taxation wherever applied has
had the effect to concentrate the business in
the article so taxed ? We need but recall
the match, the tobacco and the whisky in-
terests. Now, have we not a new element in
the high property tax rates of modern mu-
nicipalities ? They certainly are new, as
their equal was never before imposed.

Space will not permit tracing the oper-
ations of this new force. But when we ob-
serve a direct relation between a high prop-
erty tax rate and business concentiation, we
are impressed with its potency. I will in-
stance Chicago. Here we find the highest
tax rate of all the principal cities of Amer-
ica ; here the department store has attained
its greatest development.

From my standpoint, when viewed in
connection with the community as a whole,
the department store is a dissolution to which
the laws of evolution apply precisely as they
do to a cancer. It has for its cause the ability
of the owner to escape the progressively in-
creasing burden of state. This is effected
by making the business so large and compli-
cated as to be beyond the comprehension of
the average assessor. The small dealer has
no such refuge. The public patronize his
rivals in order to obtain untaxed goods.
" Only this and nothing more."

The cure is obvious. Remove all tax
from personal property (at least), thus giving
the small dealer a free field and fair play.
This is all " wise legislation " can or should
do for him. S. L. Beeler.

Hamilton, Ohio, July 20, 1897.

%aitox's "gnJiU.

A WOMA]^ ON WOMAN SUFFBAGE.

IF the right of women to vote in
political elections depended on
a demonstration of their ability to
think clearly and conduct an argu-
ment in an orderly manner, the book
which Mrs. Helen Kendrick John-

son has published under the title of
Woman and the Republic (Apple-
tons) would settle the question. It
happens, however, that Mrs. John-
son is not a woman-suffragist, but
that, on the contrary, a wide histor-
ical study of the subject has led her

EDITOR'S TABLE.

701

to the belief that the party which
is laboring to convert women into
voters is threatening serious injury
to the state both in a political and
in a social aspect. Her argument is
a very comprehensive one, as a
glance at the titles of her chapters
will show; and at every point she
arrives at the same conclusion, name-
ly, that the womau suifragists have
raised false issues, put forward false
pretensions, and generally gone about
as far wrong as it was possible to do.
We believe — having read the book
attentively — that it is destined to
have a potent influence in the settle-
ment of the question with which it
deals.

The first thing that strikes us in
connection with Mrs. Johnson's ar-
gument is the high ground she takes
on woman's behalf. If she does not
claim the suffrage for women it is
not that she deems them incapable
of forming correct judgments on po-
litical questions ; not because she
recognizes any mental inferiority
whatsoever on their part, but be-
cause she believes that they consti-
tute that portion of society in whose
interest chiefly all laws are enacted
and the whole machinery of politics
is kept going. We are hardly mis-
taken in saying that she considers
that in the development and perfec-
tion of woman the life of society
finds its highest significance. The
poet Clough had the same thought
when he said that men might well

Perish in labor for her, who is worth the de-
struction of empires.

The advocates of the suffrage for
women will therefore have to at-
tack Mrs. Johnson on other grounds
than her depreciation of the female
sex. It is they, according to Mrs.
Johnson, who depreciate the female
sex in asking woman to enter upon
a strviggle for a position actually in-
ferior to that which she already pos-

sesses, a position in which, instead of
assuming, as she now may, that laws
are made especially for her benefit,
she will proceed on the contrary sup-
position that she can not get com-
mon justice unless she wrenches it
from man at the polling booth.

Our own view of the general
question has been more than once
stated in these columns ; and it is
with pleasure we note how close the
agreement is between what we have
said, writing from a masculine stand-
point, and the conclusions of the book
before us, written by a woman jeal-
ous for the honor of her sex and in-
stinct with true feminine feeling.
Mrs. Johnson perceives, as we do,
that law-making means nothing else
than the laying down of rules of con-
duct which are to be enforced, if
necessary, by physical compulsion,
and that unless we want women to
take up cudgels in the most literal
sense for the enforcement of laws we
should not ask them to take part in
making them. Those who vote for
laws should not only be possible com-
batants, but should be individuals
whose natures would not be essen-
tially injured by actual physical con-
flict. Women are possible combat-
ants, as the suffragists sometimes
remind us, but the essential nature
of woman would be injured by par-
ticipation in physical conflicts. Why
can we tolerate prize fights between
men, while prize fights between wom-
en fill us with horror and disgust ?
Is it not because Nature itself tells
us that whatever woman's physical
strength may be — and suffragists
sometimes remark with their cus-
tomary acuteness that some women
are stronger than some men— it is
not meant to be exerted in deliver-
ing blows ? But if a prize fight be-
tween two women is horrible to
think of, what language could be
applied to a prize fight between a
woman and a man, however evenly

702

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

they miglii be matched ? Surely
" woman's rights " stop short of that.
If voting meant merely the collect-
ing of opinions, no one would dream
of refusing the votes of women; but
so long as it means the determining
and arraying of forces, which must
in the last resort be physical forces,
something else than an instinctive
desu'e to tyrannize may well inspire
the men who do not wish women to
vote. As to the women who do not
wish to vote, the simple answer they
have to give to inquiring committee
women is that they know " a more
excellent way."

If the book to which we are re-
ferring has a fault it is that it is too
argumentative. The author seems
to have made up her mind to achieve
a victory at evei*y point, and has con-
sequently entered on one or two dis-
cussions which might perhaps have
been advantageously omitted. We
doubt whether it was very necessary
to prove that aristocratic institutions
are more favorable to the political
prominence of women than demo-
cratic ones. It is enough to prove,
as we think the author has done, that
there are reasons for believing that
the participation of women in the
suffrage to-day, far from improving
the constitution of society, would tend
to impair it. It was useful, however,
to insist that there is no connection
between the democratic theory of
society and the extension of the suf-
frage to women. It would be an
insult to the female sex to maintain
that, in the progressive lowering of
the conditions for the exercise of the
electoral franchise, women ought to
be taken in ; or even that, because the
franchise is very widely bestowed,
women ought to possess it. These
unflattering arguments are more or
less used by the advocates of woman
suffrage; but those who have a truer
sense of the position and claims of
women perceive that it never can be

a question of conceding any right to
her after men have obtained the
same right, or even because they have
obtained it; whatever is a woman's
right belongs to her whether men
have it or not.

How odiously in certain cases the
suffrage party have stated their posi-
tion is well shown by Mrs. Johnson
in the following paragraph :

''The argument for woman suf-
fi'age which bases it upon a fancied
grouping of women with the vile
and brainless element in the country
appears to me at once the weakest
and the meanest of all. When the
United States Government invited
its women citizens to share in mak-
ing the Columbian Exposition the
most wondrous pageant of any age,
the National Suffrage Association, at
its official exhibit, gave a picture of
the expressive face of Miss Willard
surrounded by ideal heads of a pau-
per, an idiot, and a criminal, with a
legend recording their belief that it
was with these that American men
placed American women. So false a
picture must have taught the thought-
ful gazers the opposite lesson from
the one intended. It could have told
them that the United Slates Govern-
ment had at least guarded one trust
with sacred care. The pauper was
excluded from the ballot as not being
worthy to share with freemen the
honor of its defense. The unfortu-
nate was excluded by an inscrutable
decree of Providence. The criminal
was excluded as being dangerous to
society. The women were exempt
from the ballot because it was for
their special safety that a free ballot
was to be exercised from which the
pauper and the criminal were to le
excluded. They were the ones who
have given to social life its meaning
and its moral, the ones who give to
civic life its highest value."

The writer lays proper stress on
the fact that the occasions are not so

EDITOR'S TABLE.

703

rare when the authority of law has
to be maintained by force, and cor-
rectly draws the inference that it
would be dangerous to mix up with
those who, by their votes, make the
laws a large number of non-combat-
ants. We do not find, however, as
distinct a recognition as we could
wish of the fact that not only are
laws founded in the last resort on
physical force, but that, in the inter-
est of liberty, it is desirable that they
should be so founded — that physical
force should be fully in view as the
final arbiter between those who favor
a law and those who are opposed to
it. The reason is obvious: if a law
may have to be fought for, and if
there is nothing to deter those who
object to it from fighting against it,
if it seems unduly to infringe their
1 iberties, and provided they feel them-
selves strong enough, there will be a
reasonable parsimony in the passing
of laws, and individual liberty will be
the gainer. If, on the other hand^
the idea of armed resistance to any
lav/ which has once been passed dies
entirely out, there will be no bounds
to the tyranny of majorities. This
is the condition of things which the
sharing of the suffrage equally be-
tween men and women would tend
to bring about. Even to-day laws
are being passed, in this country par-
ticularly, in vastly too great number,
precisely because the instinct of re-
sistance to unjust or unnecessary
laws is already weaker than it should
be. If we could be sure that it
was always "the common sense of
most"' that kept a "fretful realm in
awe" there would not be so much
reason to complain ; but we have no
reason in many cases to suppose that
there is anything more than a com-
mon desire on the part of a majority
to have their wishes and fancies im-
posed upon others. Men seem to be
approximating to women in their be-
lief in compulsion: add the female

vote, and liberty, in any wliolesome
sense, is at an end.

We trust that Woman and the Re-
public will be widely read and deep-
ly pondered. One advantage which
the suffragists possess is that the ar-
guments they use, though very su-
perficial, are specious in their sim-
plicity. It is so easy to ask whether
women are not as good as men,
whether they are not as cultivated,
whether they are not ag intelligent;
and when affirmative answers are
given to these and similar questions,
it is so easy to draw the infer-
ence that they ought in that case to
have equal voting power. The result
is that unwary persons are apt to be
carried away to an acceptance of the
suffragist position. Many men, and
some of no mean note, have been so
caiTied away; but the remedy for
the error is to look deeper and con-
sider society in its organic character.
Prof. Goldwin Smith, as quoted by
Mrs. Johnson, expresses the fear lest,
through the " feeble facility of abdi-
cation" which prevails in a revolu-
tionary era like the present, men may
give way to the demands that are
being made by the woman-suffra-
gists. Mrs. Johnson shares the fear,
but sees also a source of danger in
"the very tender-heartedness of the
men of our time," adding that, " so
far from desiring to hold the slight-
est I'estriction over the women of the
republic, they may rush into an at-
tempt at abdication of a sovereignty
that did not originate in their will,
but in their environment, in order
to prove the sincerity of their desire
that woman should not even ajypear
to be compelled to obey." For our
part we share both fears; but our
special dread is lest the intellectual
superficiality of our time should lead
to the acceptance of arguments which
move, as it were, in one dimension
onl}^, the dimension of abstract rights.
Any logic chopper can deal with ab-

704

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

stractions, and make of them what
he or she likes; it requires a more
philosophic mind and vastly more
patience and attention to deal with
concrete facts and organic systems.
Mrs. Johnson's book will repay a
careful perusal and reperusal. What-
ever errors she may have fallen into
upon poiuts of detail — and it is al-
most impossible that, dealing with so
vast an array of facts as she has
done, she should not have fallen into
some— she has got to the root of the
matter. Her formula for man and
woman is not, as with the suffragists,
Sa, but a6, each the coefficient of the
other, and both together forming
a compound unity. Her book rests
on the solid ground of Nature, and
will survive many dreary diatribes
of the 2a school of social reformers.

THE DICTUM OF A PHILOSOPHER.

Mr. Thomas Davidson is by all
accounts a philosopher. He is pro-
found in Aristotle and Rosmini, and
can tell to a shade just where Kant
failed to grasp the problem of hu-
man knowledge. He has written
magisterially on the subject of edu-
cation. He is therefore a man whose
utterances ought to be marked by a
very superior wisdom, particularly
on the subjects which he claims to
have made his own. Strange to say,
however, we fail to see any great
wisdom, or even, to put it plainly,
much sense in a remark in which he
indulges in the July Forum. He
there discusses the changes that have
taken place in England during the
last sixty years, and, in doing so,
takes occasion to say that " the edu-
cation of children, which formerly
was let out to teachers as the wash-
ing of clothes was to washerwomen,
is now regarded as a matter dejnawd-
ing the careful attention of par-
entsy If this means anything it
means that the giving of clothes to a

washerwoman to wash may be taken
as a typical instance of a matter that
does not receive careful attention — a
matter about which people are pro-
verbially indifferent.

Now, we do not claim a very pro-
found knowledge of the household
diplomacy which results in the mak-
ing of treaties with washerwomen;
but, so far as any echoes of the pro-
ceedings have reached our ears, we
have received an impression that very
considerable interest is taken in the
choice of an efficient washerwoman,
and that the subsequent performance
of the person selected is watched
with close attention. We have
reason to believe that questions are
very frequently raised as to whether
the clothes have been pi^operly treat-
ed in the washerwoman's hands; and
that if they come back unsatisfactory
in color, badly ironed or folded, or
showing signs of excessive use of al-
kali, sharp remonstrances are made.
If the case is serious, the clothes are
not again given to the inefficient or
destructive operator, but search is at
once made for one who will do the
work better. If we are not up to
date in our notions on this subject,
we are sorry for it; all that we can
say is that it used to be so. What
are we to say, then, to the learned
professor's typical example of slip-
shod indifference ? Only this, that
it was very ill-chosen, and that the
professor is evidently more at home
on the dizzy peaks of a transcen-
dental philosophy than in the region
of domestic economy.

The real truth is that, in these
advanced days, a contrast might well
be drawn between the care and sense
of personal responsibility people
manifest in getting their clothes
washed and the easy-going confi-
dence and careless irresponsibility
with which they send their children
to be educated. One reason for the
difference is that they pay directly

EDITOR'S TABLE.

70s

for the former, and only indirectly,
and in a manner they can not con-
trol, for the latter. In the former
case they want to get value for
the money they pay out; in the
latter case if they don't get value
they can not do anything about
it; the whole thing has passed be-
yond their control, and is largely
in the hands of ward politicians. So
the children go to school and come
home; and the average parent hard-
ly asks what they have learned or
whether they have learned anything.
It was long ago remarked by Adam
Smith that " the proper performance
of every service seems to require that
its pay or recompense should be as
exactly as possible proportioned to
the nature of the service." That is
the case with the washing of clothes,
but it is not the case with the educa-
tion of children. The parents who
pay the money have nothing to say
as to the quality of the article they
get in return ; and superintendents
and trustees are only able to a very
imperfect degree to proportion com-
pensation to the amount of useful
work done. Upon the whole the
" washerwoman " system has its good
points; and, disagreeing with Prof.
Davidson, we should be very glad if
it could be made applicable to the
whole business of education.

THE DEPARTilENT STORE.

A CORRESPONDENT regards as in-
adequate the recent explanation giv-
en m these columns of the origin of
the department store. Instead of
attributing it to the economies it
effects as a piece of labor- saving
machinery, which has come into ex-
istence under the operation of the
law of evolution, he ascribes it to the
influence of the heavy municipal
taxation that prevails in the United
States. In proof, he cites the fail-
ure of the department store, or rath-
er the country store, in new com-

VOL. LI. — 53

munities to prevent the growth of
the specialist. He cites also the city
of Chicago, saying that "here we
find the highest rate of taxation of
all the principal cities of America,"
and the highest development of the
department store.

That heavy taxation, as was
shown in the case of the match and
whisky industries during the civil
war, tends to concentrate business
in a few hands with large capital
we would not deny. Nor would we
deny that such concentration is ab-
normal and injurious. But while
we are willing to admit that further
municipal taxation in this country
has become very heavy and ought to
be materially reduced instead of in-
creased, as the tendency is, owing to
the extension of the sphere of gov-
ernment, we are not convinced that
it has become great enough to pro-
duce the department store. Were
that the case, the department store
would not be the only form that the
concentration of capital would as-
sume. Other industries, subjected
to the same influence, would also be-
come consolidated. But, as yet, we
have heard of no complaint of this
kind. What convinces us that this
view is correct is the fact that the
rate of taxation in Chicago, where
the movement against the depart-
ment store has assumed the greatest
proportions, is not higher than in
many other cities where there is no
serious complaint against this form
of industrial development. A refer-
ence to the Abstract of the Eleventh
Census and to the World Almanac
will show that the rate of taxation
in Boston, New York, Cincinnati,
Baltimore, San Francisco, and else-
where is higher than in Chicago.

The failure of the so-called de-
partment store in new and growing
communities to prevent differentia-
tion and segregation is not difficult
to explain. In such communities

7o6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the retail trade is not, as a rule, in
the hands of men of commanding
ability and enterprise, alert to seize
every opportunity to extend their
business. If they do possess these
qualities, they either go into some
other business or move to a larger
town. The consequence is, that in
the smaller towns the business of
the general merchant does not grow
beyond his limited capacity. If it
does, there are differentiation and seg-
regation. Men more capable in cer-
tain lines set up drug stores, gro-
cery stores, hardware stores, etc.
But when there is a large concen-
tration of population, making a con-
centration of trade so profitable as
to attract men of the highest ability,
then the depai'tment store proper is

certain to make its appearance. It
should be remembered, moreover,
that such a store, like any valuable
labor-saving appliance effecting im-
portant economies, has to be discov-
ered by some superior mind. Only
within recent years has any one
thought it possible to unite deliber-
ately under one management a large
number of forms of retail business.
But, as we pointed out in the article
criticised, there appears to be a cer-
tain limit to this phase of industrial
development, thus making superflu-
ous the efforts of the " new " social
reformers to cure the " evil." Even
if it were due to heavy taxation, as
our correspondent suggests, the rem-
edy would be simply a reduction in
public expenditures.

M>tit\xXitit %ittxxiXnxt.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

The author of Bird-life * will not be offended if we begin our descrip-
tion of his book by a mention of the illustrations, for he has himself ex-
pressed his high appreciation of Mr. Thompson's remarkably spirited and
accurate portraits. There are seventy-five full-page plates representing
birds described in the text, with natural surroundings and in characteristic
poses. Twenty -five smaller figures are scattered through the preliminary
chapters. Mr. Chapman begins by pointing out the position of the birds
with respect to the other classes of the animal kingdom. The different
forms of the chief external organs in different birds he shows to be adapted
each to a special habit, thus affording confirmation of the docti-ine of evo-
lution. He represents the interest of man in birds as thi^eefold — scientific,
economic, and aesthetic — and presents definite evidence as to the value of
the small birds in destroying insects and the seeds of weeds, and of hawks
and owls in keeping down field mice and other vermin. Some of the
scientific aspects of the coloration of birds are pointed out in another chap-
ter, and the migrating and nesting habits are similarly treated. Coming
to the subject for which the book will be most in request, Mr. Chapman
insists on definite observation of a bird as the first requisite to its identi-
fication. Having noted down the form, color, and markings of the bird,
and such added facts as to its voice and actions as may be obtained, the
amateior should be able, by means of the author's field key of eight pages
and the detailed descriptions that follow, to identify the specimen without

* Bird-life. A Guide to the Study of Our Common Birds. By Frank M. Chapman. With Draw-
ings by Ernest S. Thompson. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 269, 12mo. Price, $1.75.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 707

diflBculty. The descriptions are attractively written, and embrace over one
hundred of the commoner birds of eastern North America. " There are
results to be derived from the study of birds," Mr. Chapman remarks, "that
add to our pleasure in field and wood, and give fresh interest to walks that
before were eventless ; that quicken both ear and eye, making us hear and
see where before we were deaf and blind. ... I would enter a special plea,"
he continues, "for the study of birds in the schools ; for the more general
introduction of ornithology in natural history courses. Frogs and cray-
fish serve an excellent purpose, but we may not encounter either of them
after leaving the laboratory, whereas birds not only offer excellent oppor-
tunities for study but are always about us, and even a slight familiarity
with them will be of value long after school days are over."

The character of history is undergoing a most gratifying elevation.
Formerly its chief function was to chronicle battles, assassinations, and
slaughters, but it is coming more and more to depict the social, political,
economic, and intellectual progress of man, to which wars are deplorable
interruptions. In describing that movement of thought whose culmination
is the greatest intellectual event of the nineteenth century, Mr. Clocld* is
writing the highest kind of history. No theory of the first rank has ever"
sprung complete from the brain of one man, hence it is not strange that
conceptions leading up to the doctrine of evolution were formed in the
minds of philosophers who lived in the intellectual day that preceded the
dark ages. Following Prof. Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy in his sur-
vey of the thought of this time, Mr. Clodd takes the belief of Thales that
each thing is formed by a change from something preexistent as the
earliest recorded germ of the evolutionary theory, and points out develop-
ments of this idea in the writings of other philosophers down to Lucretius.
After Lucretius came the period denoted by our author as the Arrest of
Inquiry, extending from A. D. 50 to A. D. 1600. Toward the end of this
period Columbus, Copernicus, Vesalius, Brahe, and Bruno appeared as
forerunners of the renascence of science. From 1600 to about 1830 the
work contributing most conspicuously to scientific progress was done by
Linnaeus, Buffon, Cuvier, and Lamarck. Buffon taught the nonfixity of
species and Lamarck worked out a general theory of descent. At and after
their time lived two or three men who are remembered not for any con-
structive work that they did in science, but for being " anticipators of Dar-
win," because they stated, without proofs, an outline of the evolutionary
doctrine earlier than 1858.

But it is modern evolution in which Mr. Clodd's readers will be most
interested, and he does well to devote full half of his volume to the work
of Spencer, Darwin, and Wallace, and their exponent Huxley. Begin-
ning with Darwin, the author tells the chief events of his life, giving the
dates when his notable statements as to organic evolution were made and
describing the reception that they met with. Each of the others is treated
in a similar way, and, in the case of Spencer, dates are given which prove
that he had formulated the general doctrine of which Darwinism is a part
before the views of Darwin and Wallace were made public. In describing

* Pioneers of Evolution, from Thales to Huxley. By Edward Clodd. New York: D. Appleton &
Co. Pp. 274, 12mo. Price, $1.J0.

70 8

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the work of these men and giving a general view of their relations to each
other — both intellectual and personal — Mr, Clodd has performed a valuable
service. He seems to be solicitous — perhaps more so than becomes one of
a victorious party — to refer to the obstacles that theologians have vainly
thrown in the path of the evolutionists, and to point out the positive state-
ments in the Bible which modern l^'nowledge no longer permits to be ac-
cepted literally. His chapter on the Arrest of Inquiry is, for the most
part, an effort to show that the Christian religion was " an arresting force
in man's intellectual development — the chief barrier to the development
of Greek ideas." We can not accept this view. Christianity is no more
the cause of the dark ages than it is of the enlightenment that has fol-
lowed them. Both are stages in tlie evolution of mankind in which Chris-
tianity has degenerated and has achieved a new birth side by side with
science and philosophy and art. He takes unnecessary pains also to state
the religious views, or the lack of them, of the men whose work he de-
scribes. This will seem to many a blemish on an otherwise instructive
and attractively written book. Excellent portraits of Darwin, Wallace,
Spencer, and Huxley add to the value of the volume.

GENEEAL NOTICES.

No attempt to solve fundamental ques-
tions is indulged by the author of this book.*
His efforts are devoted to exposing the falla-
cies of those who become ingulfed in bio-
logical theory. He examines their methods
critically, and generally disapproves of them.
There is inner confusion in the science of
biology on account of its form, which em-
braces numbers of independent systems, each
with a core of facts. There is outer con-
fusion, because of its ambiguity of terms.
The structure of to-day is the function of
tomorrow. The favorite inquiries — Are ac-
quired characters inherited ? or, Is variation
purposive ? — are misleading. He asks what
quality is not inherited, or not acquired ; or,
find anything organic not purposive. For
the discussion he defines biology not as an
encyclopaedia of facts about organisms, but
as including the systems of explanation of
the forms, functions, and origins of animals
and plants. He finds twenty good theories
of the development of the individual, not any
one better or worse than the rest. All bio-
ogical systems are considered as involving
three postulates — the independence of quali-
ties, the doctrine of agents, and theories of
the use and adaptation of structure. Under

* Problems of Biology. By George Sande-
mann. New York : The Macmillan Company.
London : Swan, Sonnenscliein & Co. Pp. 213.
Price, $2.

the first head we are confronted with the
fact that gi'oups of qualities are inherited
together. The theories, however, ignore what
they call the correlation of qualities and escape
by means of terminology ; two qualities in-
variably combined are one. So, in regard to
the cell theory. The fact that every thing
living is a ceil, or a colony of cells, is usually
so stated as to evade the problem of the in-
dividual. " Functionless parts" and "latent
qualities " are also biological bewilderment,
and " a mathematical, chemical, or physio-
logical formula for the character of a species
is an attractive but vain dream." According
to the second postulate, the qualities of the
organism are related to one another through
an agent. This may be " a material vehicle
of hereditary qualities," or a " quasi-psychical
principle." The epigenetic theory avoids both
of these suppositions, and is deemed by the
author the critical point of view. He gives
an outline of the theories of the preforma-
tionists, or " biologists of hypothesis " as he
terms them — De Vries, Spencer, Weismann,
Naegali, and Brooks — and pronounces Jlr.
Spencer's, in two respects, the most serious
and credible of all. Yet this contains a self-
contradiction on the point of identity and
fails to give us individuality. The third
postulate supports the adaptation and trans-
formation of species and cruder forms for
the doctrine of design. " As ridiculously

5 CIENTIFIC LIT ERA TV RE.

709

inapt for science, as that grass grows for
cows to feed upon." Theories of organic
evolution arose from an effort to combat this
philosophy. Everything organic exists by
reason of its significance to the organism,
but it does not do so through the Darwinian
or other apparatus. As to the struggle for
existence, the author judges that the view
of this conflict is, " as regards Nature, quite
gratuitous, and, as regards science, quite ab-
stract." Biologists, however, do not monop-
olize the conception of a struggle. " Ideas
are represented mobbing round the trapdoor
under the stage." Motives, faculties, tenden-
cies, movements, all wrestle together. " In
all these cases the struggle is not what hap-
pens, or what we see, it is the result of the
struggle. We have to do with a hypothet-
ical process which we do not observe, and
the nature of our judgment is that we mis-
take ideal abstraction for physiological anal-
ysis. The concluding chapter is upon the
unity of the organism. The beginning and
end of our labor is to find an expression for
character. What is it, as distinguished from
the characteristics ? No answer to this prob-
lem is suggested, except by the biological
theories which have been dissected. The
author did not aim to construct, but to show
what errors are developed through the needs
of speculative systems. The book is thus
mainly an addition to the voluminous litera-
ture of biology, and it serves well as a cor-
rective to an overdose of theoretical abstrac-
tions.

A pamphlet of about sixty pages, present-
ing a new hypothesis concerning the struc-
ture and rotation of the earth, modestly pub-
lished by Carl Freiherr Loeffelhoh von Col-
berg at Munich in 188G, has passed through
a second edition, and now appears thoroughly
revised and enlarged as the exposition of an
elaborate theory.* The theory is that the
crust of the earth, through the natural dif-
ference in the action of tlie' sun's attraction
and centrifugal motion upon the two parts,
has a motion of its own, different from
that of the fluid nucleus beneath it, causing
it to slip over it to a greater or less ex-

* Die Drehnngen der Erdkruste in geologischen
Zeitraumen (Revolutions of the Earth's Crust in
Geological Ages). A new geologico-astronouiical
theory. By Carl Freiherr Loeii'elholz von Col-
berg. Munich : J. A. Finsterlin's SucceesorB.

tent, and giving rise to a variety of phenom-
ena which have been observed, but not
hitherto explained. In this way the au-
thor would account for the shiftings of the
pole which geologists have had to suppose ;
for the changes of climate of which evidence
is given by the fossils, particularly by the
subtropical fossils in the arctic regions, and
— probably — for the nutations in latitude
which are now under investigation. He as-
sumes that it is a strong evidence in favor
of his theory that it contradicts no natural
laws or phenomena so far established, but is
entirely in harmony with most geological
and biological and many astronomical ob-
servations.

Although the author states that this
work * must not be considered as a petrol-
ogy, he devotes nearly half of it to describ-
ing the several varieties of igneous, aqueous,
asolian, and metamorphic rocks, telling how
they occur, and what are their constituents.
Both the macroscopic and microscopic struc-
ture of these rocks are shown in photo en-
gravings from specimens, and their chemical
constitution appears in the results of many
analyses. The especial purpose of the
work is to set forth the processes and re-
sults of the natural decomposition of rocks
exposed to the atmosphere. After describ-
ing the chemical action of water and the air,
the mechanical action of water and ice, and
the effects produced by plants and animals.
Prof. Merrill proceeds to discuss the weath-
ering of typical rocks in special cases — for
instance, a granite in the District of Colum-
bia, syenite in Arkansas, diabase in Massa-
chusetts and Venezuela, basalt in Bohemia
and France, diorite in Virginia, etc. Va-
rious physical conditions that affect the
weathering process are next discussed, such
as position, exposure, surface contours,
structure of rock masses, etc., and there is
also a chapter on the rate of weathering as
influenced by such conditions and by climate,
topography, etc. The remaining hundred
pages of the work are devoted to a descrip-
tion of the regolitb or body of soils that
mantles the solid crust of the globe. The
author points out the various kinds of de-

* A Treatise on Rocks, Rock- Weathering, and
Soils. By George P. Merrill. New York : The
Macmillan Co. Pp. 411, 8vo. Price, $4.

710

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

posits of unconsolidated material that make
up the regolith, and tells something of their
chemical, mineral, physical, and other char-
acteristics. The volume contains a total of
twenty-five plates and forty-two smaller fig-
ures, and the mechanical execution of both
illustrations and letterpress is excellent.

The secret of Darwin's strength, accord-
ing to Prof. Poulton* lay in the perfect bal-
ance between his powers of imagination and
those of accurate observation. His heredi-
tary endowment unquestionably fitted him to
become a typical scientific discoverer, whether
or not this nice adjustment of the creative
and critical faculties would have produced
equally well a poet or a historian, as it is
claimed here. It is a noteworthy example,
however, of the immeasurable stimulation of
thought that both Darwin and Wallace should
ascribe to a reading of Malthus's Essay on
Population the discovery of the principle of
natural selection. Wallace constructed al-
most the whole of the theory in two hours,
and in three evenings finished his paper on
the subject. Darwin devoted four years of
study to the hypothesis before writing it out
fully, two years more to the collection of
further data and enlargement, and after
fourteen years of deliberation gave the the-
ory to the public in the Origin of Species.
The effect of this doctrine upon Lyell, Gray,
Hooker, and other scientific men, the misun-
derstanding and opposition it incurred, the
position of Huxley in regard to it, and his
noble championship of the fundamental truth
of evolution, are topics of especial interest
discussed by the author. Brief accounts of
other works of Darwin, some letters not here-
tofore published, and an index are also in-
cluded in the volume, which, for the most
part, was first given during 1894 and 1895
in the form of lectures in Oxford University
Museum.

A most valuable and scholarly contribu-
tion to Egyptology is Religion of the Ancient
Egyptians, by Alfred Wiedemann. Written
by a professor in the University of Bonn,
the subject is handled with German thor-
oughness and accuracy. He does not theo-
rize on the religion, maintaining that to be

* Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural
Selection. By Edward B. Poulton, F. R. S. New
York: The Macmillan Co. Pp.824. Price, $1.25.

fruitless in our present limited state of
knowledge of the subject; he investigates
the data found in the records and inscrip-
tions concerning the beliefs of a people
whose whole life was dominated by religion.
The writer's aim " is a modest ofle ; avoid-
ing any attempt to interpret or to system-
atize, he has endeavored to set before the
reader the principal deities, myths, reli-
gious ideas, and doctrines as they are to be
found in the texts, more especially dwelling
on such as have Important bearings on the
history of religion." The worship of the
sun occupying an important place in the
Egyptian ritual, the sun god Ra is discussed
at some length, together with the solar
myths, and the subordinate deities enterino'
into them. There are chapters devoted to
the other deities, both domestic and of for-
eign origin, the worship of animals and
plants, Osiris and his cycle, and the Osirian
doctrine of immortality, magic, sorcery, and
amulets. The author has admirably suc-
ceeded in getting order out of the complica-
tions of the Egyptian pantheon in which the
many deities of the numerous provinces en-
tered, each province claiming superiority for
its own deity. Many passages have been
translated from the Book of the Dead, hymns
and sepulchral texts, and numerous illustra-
tions from the monuments accompany them.*

The author of I Diseredati f believes that
outer material influences, instead of being
the single predominant factor in social phe-
nomena, as is commonly believed, are only
one of several concomitant elements of which
the social fact is the resultant. He seeks to
present in their exact proportions the im-
portance of the material element in social
development, and the influence exercised by it
upon the institution of property. The error
pointed out is supposed to be accompanied
by grave consequences in legislation and
practical life. In the former, civic capital-
ism has been created, and the doctrine has
been inculcated that the state should provide
for everything, depriving the individual of
his initiative and responsibility. The in-
stitution of wages is condemned as disor-

* The American supply of the work is im-
ported by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1897.

+ I Diseredati e 1 loroDiritti (The Disinherited
and their Bights). By Pietro Pellegrini. Borgo a
Mozzano, Italy.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

711

ganizing to the family, demoralizing to the
workman, and making his future uncertain ;
and by the institution of rents and the sys-
tem of day's work, the peasant is made as
proletary, as separate from his family, and
as destitute of a morrow as the workman in
the shop. Thus puahed out of society, such
individuals demand a new social order. So-
ciety dismayed contrives laws to meet the
demands of the workmen for relief, and thus
assists in establishing the collectivism which
the socialists invoke. Socialism is conse-
quently an evolution or degeneration of capi-
talism. This evolution is right if it con-
forms itself to the laws of being, wrong if it
does not take account of them. The au-
thor's purpose is to sho(v how the necessary,
evident, and near evolution of capitalism
may take just forms, which, not depriving
any, will give their rights to all, particularly
to the disinherited ; creating a new judicial
and social order upon the existing physical
order, but unknown to it.

The New York State Library has just
issued its seventh annual Comparative Sum-
mary and Index of State Legislation, cover-
ing the laws passed in 1896. Each act is
briefly described or summarized and classi-
fied under its proper subject head, with a
full alphabetic index to the entries. Perhaps
the most important legislation of the year
was that enacted by the people directly
through their votes upon the numerous con-
stitutional amendments submitted to them.
The bulletiu records the amendments de-
feated as well as those adopted, a special
table arranged by States being inserted for
convenient reference. It is of interest to
note that of fifty-seven separate constitu-
tional amendments voted on only twenty- four
were adopted. It is proposed that the
eighth bulletin shall consoUdate into a single
series with the legislation of 1897 the sum-
maries for the preceding seven years.

A History of Ancient Greek Literature,
by Gilbert Murray (New York : D. Apple-
ton & Co., 1897, $1.50), forms the initial
volume of the Literatures of the World Se-
ries. Edited by Edmund Gosse, who writes
the general introduction, the aim of the
series is to present " a succession of attract-
ive volumes, dealing with the history of
literature in a single country," not from the

point of view of the specialist treating cer-
tain epochs, but giving a survey of the
general evolution of thought expressed in
artistic form. The object being primarily to
give a biography of the intellectual life of a
race, " an effort will be made to recall the
history of Literature from the company of
sciences which have somewhat unduly borne
her down — from philology in particular,
and from political history. . . . Literature
will be interpreted as the most perfect utter-
ance of the ripest thought by the finest
minds, and to the classics of each country
rather than to its oddities, and rather than
to its obsolete features, will particular atten-
tion be directed." Homer stands, then, at
the head of Greek literature, as being the
oldest classic extant in the language. Much
attention is given to the historians, and the
drama, of course, is extensively treated, as
are also the song-writers, whereas less space
is accorded to philosophic and political writ-
ings. The author has in every case endeav-
ored to get at the personality of the Greek
writers and to set down their work as the
result of the strenuous life of the people.
The chapter on the later literature, Alexan-
drian and Roman, showing the rich fruitage
of its declining years, in poetry up to the
sixth century a. d., and in prose to the fall
of Byzantium, proves that Greek literature
by no means died with the loss of Greek in-
dependence, as is commonly assumed.

Dr. George A, Williams has prepared a
revised and enlarged edition of his Topics
and References in American History. The
topics begin with the prehistoric period and
come down to the election of 1896. Each
has one or more references to standard works
or to leading magazines, and lists of ques-
tions are inserted from time to time. In
choosing his references the author has rec-
ognized the recent demand that students of
history shall go " back to the sources." (Bar-
deen, $1.)

In a pamphlet on The Energy of Living
Protoplasm, Prof. Oscar Loew, of the Im-
perial University, Japan, seeks to define that
elusive mystery, the source of vital activity.
Starting from the observation that the
chemical properties of dead and living cells
are totally different, and that certain sub-
stances, toxic to living protoplasm, have no

712

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

effect whatever on common proteids, he has
made a study of the formation of albumin in
plant cells, and finds there is a labile or active
albumin in living matter chemically unlike
the ordinary albumin stored in seeds and
eggs. This exists as a reserve material in
plants and undergoes chemical change by
the same influences causing death to proto-
plasm. By many experiments it is shown
that the chemical activity of cells is akin to
the phenomena of catalysis. The conclu-
sion is reached that there is an oscillation

of atoms, or peculiar mode of motion, exist-
ing in labile proteids which is the source of
vital uctiviiy ; this being in its turn " but one
of the vicissitudes of solar energy." (Keegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London.)

The Bureau of Navigation of the United
States Navy Department has issued a chart
of twelve colored plates showing a Claxaiji-
cation of Clouds for the Weather Observem
of the Hydrographic Office. It is for sale at
40 cents.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins
and Reports. Connecticut,: Tests of Plant Food.
Pp. 11.— Iowa : Stomach Worms affecting Sheep.
Pp. 4.— New York : Sample Road Building. Pp.
2.— North Dakota : Climate and Crop Service.
June, 1^97. Pp. 8.— Purdue University, Indiana :
Formalin for Prevention of Potato Scab. Pp. 20.
—United States Department of Agriculture : The
San Jose Scale and its Nearest Allies. By T. D.
A. CocUerill. Pp. 20.— Wyoming : The Composi-
tion of Prepared Cereal Foods. Pp. 16.

Archibald, Douglas. The Story of the Atmos-
phere. New York : D. Appleton and Company.
Pp. 194. 40 cents.

Atwood, John. Constituents of the Universe.
San Diego, Cal.: J. E. Friend. Pp. 65.

Abbe, Cleveland, Editor. Monthly Weather
Review, April, 1897. Washington : United States
Department of Agriculture. Pp.64. 10 cents.

Bailey, L. H. The Principles of Fruit Grow-
ing. New York : The Macmillan Company. Pp.
5U8. $1.25.

Bell, Alexander Graham. The Science of
Speech. Washington : The Volta Bureau. Pp.
56. 50 cents.

Bulletins, etc., of Scientific Societies. Colora-
do State Agricultural College : The Birds of Col-
orado. By W. W. Cooke. Pp. 14.3. -Field Co-
lumbian Museum, Chicago : List of Mammals
from Somaliland. Pp. 155, with plates —Tokyo,
Zoological Society of : Annotationes ZcOlogicse
Japoneneis. Vol. I, Parts 1 and 2. Pp. 72.— Uni-
versity of Upsala, Sweden : Bulletin of the Geo-
kgical Institution Edited by J. Sjogren. Vol.
II, Part 2, No. 4. Pp. 172.

Christi on, J. Sanderson, M. D. Crime and
Criminals. Chicago : The W. T. Keener Com-
pany. Pp. 116. $1.

Clayton Air Compressor Works, New York.
Compressed Air and the Clayton Air Compressors.
Pp. 106.

College and School Catalomies, etc. Balti-
more M,;dical College : Annual Announcement,
1897-'98. Pp. 31.— Columbia University College
of Physicians and Surgeons : Announcement,
l897-'98. Pp. 57.— The Neff College of Oratory,
Philadelphia : Booklet and Prospectus. Pp. 48.
—State Normal School, Valley City, N. D. : An-
nouncement, 1897-'98. Pp. 46.

Hepner, .\dolf . Centenary of Faust Zueigung.
Goethe's Dedication of Faust. The Author : 800
Chouteau Avenue, St. Louis. Pp. 16.

Hopkins, T. C, and Siebenthal, C. E. The
Bedford OOlitic Limestone of Indiana. Indian-
apolis. Pp. 427.

Jones, Jenkin Lloyd. Ten Noble Poems. Chi-
cago : Unity Publishing Company. Pp. 48. 25
cents.

Mathews, F. Schuyler.
the Roadside. New York ;
pany. Pp. 209. $1.75.

Familiar Features of
D. Appleton and Com-

Mystic Oral School. Report to the Legislatiu-c
of Connecticut. Pp. 8.

Newman, K. Antisepsia Intestinal. Maniera
de Realizarla (Intestinal Antiseptis ; How to Ef-
fect it). Santiago de Chile. Pp £1.

New Orleans Catholic Monthly. Memorial
Number of Archbishop Jansscn. Pp. 27.

Reid, G. Archdall. The Present Evolution of
Man. London : Chapman & Hall. Pp 807.

Reports and Memoirs. Alabama Geological
Survey: The Valley Regions. By Henry McCal-
ley. Part II. Coosa Valley, Montgomery. Pp.
802, with map.— The Fish and Fishes of the Coast-
al Waters of Florida. Washington : Fish Coni-
misaion. Pp. 80. —Henry Draper Memorial. Mis-
cellaneous Investigations. By H. C. Pickering
and M. Fleming. Cambridge. Mass. : Harvard
Observatory. Pp. 90, with plates.— Iowa Geo-
logical Survey. Vol. VI. : Lead, Zinc, Artesian
Wells, etc. Pp. 487.— New Jersey : Annual Re-
port of the State Geologist for 1H96. Pp. 377,
with maps. — Peabody Museum of American Ar-
chaeology and Ethnology : Cave of Loltun, Yuca-
tan. By Edward II. Thompson. Pp 24, with plate.
—Tennessee : Sixth Report of the Bureau of Labor,
Statistics, and Mines, 1896. By A. H. Wood. Pp.
318— Wisconsin : Sixteenth Report of the State
Board of Health. Pp. 198.— United States Bureau
of Ethnology : Fifteenth Annual Report, lS9,3-'94.
Pp. 356.— United States Commissioner of Labor.
Eleventh Annual Report, 18'.i5-'96 : Work and
Wages of Men, Women, and Children. Pp. 671 .—
United States Life-Saving Service, 1896. Pp. .523.
— United States Weather Bureau : Report of the
Chief. Pp. 260.

Reprints. Davis, William Morris, and Curtis,
G C. The Harvard Geographical Models. Bos-
ton : Society of Natural' History. Pp. 24, with
plates.- Drnmmond, Andrew T. : Some Working-
men's Problems. Pp. 8.— Franklin Institute :
Discussion on the Smoke Nuisance and its Regu-
lation. Pp. 76.— Meams, Edgar A. : Descriptions
of Six New Mammals from North America. Pp.
6.— Merriam, C. Hart : A New Fur Seal or Sea
Bear (Aictocephalus. Tou'nsencli) from Guadalupe
Island, Lower California. Pp.4.— Ries, Heinrich :
The Fuller's Earth of South Dakota. Pp. 3 ; The
Clays and Clay working Industry of Colorado.
Pp. 5.— Shufeldt, R. D. : On Fossil Bird Bones
obtained by Expeditions of the University of
Pennsylvania from the Bone Caves of Tennessee.
Pp. 0.

Rodkinson, Michael L. New Edition of the
Babylonian Talmud. Vol. LV. New York: New
Talmud Publishing Company. Pp. 40.

Taber, Henry M. Faith or Fact. New York :
Peter Eckler. Pp. .347. $1.

The Temple. July, 1897. The Rosy Cross.
By Rosicrucian. Denver, Col. : The Temple Putj-
lishing Company. Pp.30. 10 cents.

Tucker, Oilman H. Education from a Pub-
lisher's Standpoint. American Book Company.
Pp. 23.

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

713

xvL^mtxiXs ot ^titutt.

Ups and Downs of the Tussock Moth. —

After the English sparrows had quite ex-
terminated the voracious measuring worms
that used to make our city trees naked, the
uneatable tussock moths took advantage of
the opportunity and filled the trees for a few
years with their uneatable larvae. Now the
tussock moths have nearly disappeared, and
A Study in Insect Parasitism, by L. 0. How-
ard, entomologist of the Department of Agri-
culture, tells us how it came about. It ap-
pears to be a kind of process of Nature that
as soon as any living thing becomes numer-
ous parasites find it, and shortly reduce it to
its normal proportions or below. These in
turn are subject to secondary parasites which
keep them in check. Thus twenty one para-
sites have been found upon the tussock moth,
with fifteen hyperparasites. While, after
having passed its culmination in the farther
Eastern cities, the proportion of tussock
moths has been about the same, it took a
rapid and enormous increase in Washington
in 1895. But the parasites appeared in force
with the third generation of that year ; and
when in September several species of trees
had been cleared of leaves and others badly
injured, " it was an exception to find a
healthy caterpillar which one of them was
not engaged in stinging." There was a
moderately abundant hatching of Caterpil-
lars in 1896, but the parasites were ready for
them, and the first generation was practically
exterminated by them. In the later months
of 1896 the hyperparasites took their turn,
and the tussock-moth caterpillars were not
so hard to find, but were still rare. Even
where parasites do not step in to keep down
increase, the excessive multiplication of ani-
mal pests is at length inevitably checked by
disease. Thus the chinch bug has no para-
sites, " but when it increases beyond the
bounds of what may be called Nature's law,
for want of a better term, bacterial and fun-
gous diseases speedily carry it off."

Objects of National Forestry.— The policy
and aims of those who are seeking the es-
tablishment and maintenance of a national

forest policy have been misunderstood and
misrepresented ; and the misapprehension
has been strengthened by some glaring de-
fects in some of the forest laws, which the
friends of forestry do not approve and desire
to have remedied. It is not by their work,
but contrary to their intentions, that these
laws embody no provisions by which citizens
can obtain wood from the public domain by
purchase, and that timber-stealing flourishes
under their operation. The laws which they
propose are designed to remedy these evils.
Reservation is the first purpose sought in
them, regulation of the use of the timber the
second ; perpetuation of a vair able resource
for coming generations the object. The pro-
gramme of those urging these laws, as de-
fined by Mr. B. F. Fernow, chairman of the
American Forestry Association, is to with-
draw from sale or entry all lands not fit or
needed for agriculture and to constitute as
objects of special care by the Government
the lands at the head waters of streams and
on mountain slo{)es in general ; to permit
prospecting, mining, and other operations
under such regulations as will prevent un-
necessary waste, and to cut and sell the tim-
ber under such methods as will secure per-
petuation and renewal of the forest growth ;
to provide for protection against fire, theft,
and unlawful occupancy; to respect all exi-t-
ing vested rights and arrange an exchange,
if necessary, for private lands included in
reservations; and, finally, to restore to the
public domain for entry all lands that are
found in the reservations fit for agriculture.
The interests of the miner, the lumberman,
the settler, and every citizen in the present
and the future are regarded in the policy they
advocate ; the free herding of sheep, by
which forest tracts are destroyed and ren-
dered unfit for renewal, being the only indus-
try not considered. " Just like the proverbial
incompatibility of the goat and the garden,
the growing of wool and wood on the same
ground is incompatible."

Sewage Porification by Filtering.— Fil-
tration through the soil is regarded by M.

1^\

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Vincey, of the French School of Agriculture,
as hygienicallj" and economically the most
perfect. The work is done through the nitric
oxidation of nitrous organisms effected, in-
dependent of vegetation, by special microbes
contained in the soil. The nitrates thus
formed, combined with the very soluble
bases contained in the earth, are taken up as
foods by plants or carried off in drainage
waters. The purifying quality of the soil is
not augmented by the production of crops
upon it. The siliceous sewer beds of Genne-
villiers, near Paris, dug up and ridged, with-
out crops, are capable of absorbing and puri-
fying 1,200,000 cubic metres of sewage per
hectare (about two acres and a half) a year.
Agriculture is regarded as of great impor-
tance in the economy of sewer beds, but not
so much on account of its relations to purifi-
cation as to the quantity of water which the
ground can receive. The demands which the
most thirsty crops can make upon the water
constituents of sewage are, however, limited ;
and they absorb only a fraction of the amount
poured upon the beds. M. Vincey's observa-
tions in the Agricultural Park of Asnieres in-
dicate that forest land is capable of usefully
purifying at least as much water as the
natural meadow ; and it results from all the
experiments that, for a like soil and equal
volumes of sewage, a smaller surface of
meadow or forest is required than, for in-
stance, of kitchen-garden crops. Siliceous
soils and sands free from marl appear to have
the highest purifying qualities. Limestone
formations, marls, clays, etc., are inferior in
these properties. The longer a soil has been
purifying sewer water, the fitter it becomes
for continuing the work ; for purifying irri-
gation multiplies the colonies of mineralizing
ferments in the soil. Comparative examina-
tion of land in which the operation had been
going on from ten to twenty years and of
soil that was virgin to the process, showed
that no nitrogen had accumulated in the
earth in consequence of sewage irrigation.
The smaller part of the mineralized matter
passes into the crops, while the larger part
is washed away.

Cycles and Dogs in War. — The utility of
bicycles in military art having been demon-
strated, men of war are now studying the
means of contending against them and their

riders. The mere overthrow of the instru-
ment does not convey any great advantage,
for the man is there, and possibly still stand-
ing, armed, and ready to fight. Dogs have
so far seemed to be the most effective agents
in this contention, and the large Danish dog
has been selected as the animal most fit.
About a thousand dogs are said to be under
training in Berlin for this sort of warfare.
They are taught to distinguish the uniforms
of friends — German, Austrian, and Italian —
from those of the enemy — French and Rus-
sian— and attack the latter, the legs of the
sham " hostile " soldiers being well pro-
tected, of course, by stout buskins. As all
the armies will have cycle troops, they will
all have to have their trained war dogs;
and then, when the attack has commenced,
La Nature slyly intimates, and the dogs get
mixed with the cyclists, they will leave the
soldiers and go to fighting one another.

Hydraulic Blasting. — A meeting of the
Manchester Geological Society is reported in
Industries and Iron, at which a new hy-
draulic apparatus for breaking down coal
in mines was discussed. Mr. James Tonge,
who described the apparatus, called atten-
tion to the great danger attending the ordi-
nary method of blasting in coal mines, and
said that the numerous serious accidents
from this cause had led the inventors to look
for a safer process of loosening the coal.
The new apparatus consists of a hydraulic
cartridge, eighteen inches in length and three
in diameter, and weighing thirty pounds,
and a small but powerful hand pump fitted
with a pressure gauge weighing about
twenty pounds. The mode of using it is as
follows : The coal is holed underneath the
usual depth, and a hole drilled near the roof
to about the same depth as the holing, in the
same w^ay as for blasting. After this the
cartridge is placed in the hole and pushed
to the back. No " stemming " is required.
The pump is coupled to the cartridge, the
suction pipe placed in a small bottle of wa-
ter, and work commences. Very soon the
gauge begins to show the rising pressure —
half a ton, a ton, a ton and a half, two tons
to the square inch. During this time a
cracking sound is heard, indicating the shear-
ing off of the coal at the back. The gradual
way in which the work is done, without shock

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

715

or jar of any kind, prevents even the least
damage to coal or roof, in striking contrast
to the action of explosives. The time occu-
pied is an important matter. It has so far
been about twelve minutes. This time in-
cludes placing the cartridge in the hole, con-
necting to the pump, getting down the coal,
withdrawing the cartridge from the hole, and
getting to the next place. The advantages
claimed for this process over the ordinary
blasting are (1) larger and stronger coal,
which means a better average price ; (2) non-
interference with the working of the pit, the
coal being got down whenever required ; (3)
no damage to roof; (4) no dust; (5) and ab-
solute safety from the dangers attending shot
firing. In previous machines of this sort
trouble has been had with the joints, but
it is stated that this one is free from that
fault. ^

Timbnctoo and Jene. — Mysterious and
romantic visions of wealth and gayety have
been associated for centuries with the name
of Timbuctoo. Of numerous travelers who
have ventured much to reach the city only a
few have succeeded. Thus, according to a
summary in the London Academy, Mungo
Park visited it in 1805, but was drowned in
the Niger shortly afterward. Major Laing
reached it in 1825, after a three years' ex-
pedition across the desert, but was murdered
on leaving it. Rene Caillie found it about
the same time, and wrote a book about it.
Davidson was murdered, and Richardson
died in the desert on the way thither. Dr.
Bart found his way into the city, but never
stirred out of doors while there. Lenz visited
it and wrote a description of his adventure.
The late Joseph Thomson was planning a
visit to Timbuctoo when he died. Now the
Frenchman, Felix Dubois, has published one
of the best descriptions we have of the mys-
terious city. Its position on the edge of the
Desert of Sahara, and at the top of the great
bend of one of the largest and most con-
stantly navigable rivers of the earth, the
Niger, defines its importance. Yet M. Du-
bois found it not the greatest or most inter-
esting town in the region. It is surpassed
by Jene, whose name is echoed in the An-
glicised form Guinea. That city dates from
the seventh century ; was built, not by ne-
groes or negroids, but by the Songhis, who

migrated from Egypt across the Soudan
more than twelve hundred years ago ; and
has wonderfully solid architecture of the
Egyptian order. The present inhabitants of
Jene, M. Dubois says, " resemble a palimp-
sest on which the first manuscript is dimly
decipherable. Their oral traditions, their
chronicles, and their dwellings all betray
their Nilotic fatherland."

Three Masters in Science. — We merely
mentioned, last month, the deaths of Prof.
Julius Sachs, the botanist, and Prof. Carl R.
Fresenius, the chemist. Prof. Sachs was
best known by his Text-book of Botany,
which is one of the standard works of the
science, of first authority. He was also au-
thor of the Experimental Physiologie, a work
of corresponding importance in its field, a
history of botany, and a collection of lectures.
He was born at Breslau, Germany, in 1832,
and died at Wurzburg, May 29th. His first
teacher was Purkinje. He taught at Prague,
Marandt, Chemnitz, and Poppelsdorf, near
Bonn, and was Professor of Botany at Frei-
burg and Wurzburg. The fame of Frese-
nius dates from so early a period in the cen-
tury that one would be almost inclined to
reckon him as of a past generation. He was
born at Frankfort on-the- Main in 1818, be-
gan the study of natural science very early,
entered the University of Bonn in 1840 and
that of Giessen a year later, and became
Professor of Chemistry, Physics, and Tech-
nology at the Agricultural Institute in Wies-
baden in 1845. He was identified with that
institution for the rest of his hfe. His best-
known works are the Qualitative Analysis
and the Quantitative Analysis, published in
1841 and 1846 respectively, which have
passed through very numerous editions and
have been translated into nearly every Euro-
pean language. M. Paul Schutzenberger, an
eminent French chemist, died June 26th, at
Mezy, France. He was born at Strasburg,
the son of a lawyer, in 1829 ; studied medi-
cine and then chemistry ; was made professor
of chemistry in the high scientific school at
Mulhouse ; then became adjunct director of
the chemical laboratory of the Sorbonne and
chief of chemical work in the College de
France. In 1876 he was named titular pro-
fessor of chemistry in this institution. For
many years he directed the physical and

7i6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

chemical school of the city of Paris. He
was a member of the Academy of Medicine
and the Academy of Sciences. His principal
works were on the application of chemistry
to animal physiology, coloring substances,
fermentation (in the International Scientific
Series), and the Traite de Chimie Generulc,
in seven volumes.

Primitive Drills. — We all know how dif-
ficult it is, even with the best tools we have,
to bore a correct hole by hand in a hard sub-
stance. Vastly more difficult must this have
been with primitive men, who had no tools
except flints and bones and sticks. Yet, as
Mr. J. D. McGuire observes in his study of
the Primitive Methods of Drilling, the ear-
liest remains of man are found associated
with implements of his manufacture in which
holes have been artificially perforated, the
implements consisting generally of bone,
ivory, or shell. During the cave period man
had the implements called " batons of com-
mand," the use of which is unknown, which
were bored with extreme care from reindeer
horn, and are often carved with representa-
tions of animals or of man, often artistically
done. These men could only fashion the
rudest implements from chipped stone. At
later periods of development beads of shell
and stone were made of shapely forms and
evenly perforated. Of such are the Indian
wampum beads, which, according to Law-
son's History of North Carolina, they man-
aged " with a nail stuck in a cane or reed.
Thus they roll it continually on their thighs
with their right hand, holding the bit of shell
with their left, so in time they drill a hole
quite through it, which is a very tedious work."
This describes the most primitive form of
drill, except that men had not yet advanced
to the nail. They used flints or bones or
sticks, re-enforced with sand. Mr. McGuire's
presentation of objects perforated with this
sort of drill exhibits some spocimens of fine
work done in hard stone and applied to vari-
ous purposes. The next development is the
strap drill, in which a string or cord is wound
around the stick, and when pulled back and
forth produces corresponding alternations in
the motions of the drill, and adds consider-
ably to its power. To this was added a bow,
the pulling and relaxing of which maintained
the revolution of the iustrument. An im-

provement on this was a disk, the momen-
tum of which carried on the motion of revo-
lution, and rewound in an opposite direction
the string which had been unwound. When
the bow was arranged so as to have an up-
ward and downward motion on the stick, the
pump drill was constituted, an instrument
differing essentially from all other boring
tools, relatively easy to work, which has been
widely distributed. The Egyptian monu-
ments bear frequent representations of the
use of the bow and disk drills under differ-
ent forms and with various modifications.
The Egyptians, however, had copper and
iron.

Birds and their Songs. — Whether birds
inherit their song or learn it by imitation has
been the subject of experiments which M.
Flamel describes in La Nature. We know
already that some species take up the songs
of others, but it had not been determined
whether they ever learned them at the ex-
pense of their native song. One of M.
Flamel's correspondents had a sparrow,
"brought up by hand," which, when put
into a cage with finches and canary birds,
took up the songs of all its companions, re-
peating them perfectly; and then, some cap-
tured crickets having been placed near it,
adopted their chirp too, but never sang like
a sparrow. Another correspondent was told
by a gamekeeper of two linnets which he
had taken fioni the nest when they were
very young and kept at his home in a wood
where there were no other birds of their
species, but nightingales were abundant.
The birds sang like nightingales. Of the
somewhat varied repertory of songs of a
certain species of linnet, this correspondent
asserts that the songs are severally peculiar
to certain well-defined localities. All the
individuals in one of these districts have the
same songs and the same number of songs,
so that the fanciers in the city where be
lives are acquainted with the songs of the
several stations around and know just where
to go to get birds to their liking. It follows
from this that some birds, at least, learn
their songs by imitation.

Snnlight and Bacteria in Rivers.— In

view of the destructive effect of sunlight,
especially of the blue to the ultra-violet rays,

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

7^7

upon bacteria iu water, Prof. H. Marshall
Ward would explain the comparative freedom
of river waters under the blazing hot sum-
mer sun from bacteria as against the more
abundant infection of the same waters in
winter. Pasteur and Miquel found that the
germs floating in the air are for the most part
dead — killed, the author holds, like the germs
in the air of the Alps, by the sun. Yeasts
which normally vegetate on the exterior of
ripening grapes are destroyed, according to
Martinaud, if the heat be very intense ; and
Giunti has observed that the ingress of sun-
light hinders acetic fermentation — a bacte-
rial process. So the access of light appears
to be inimical to the germination and devel-
ment of fungi of various kinds. The de-
structive rays may be cut off by color screens,
and the protected germs can then sprout and
develop as easily as if no light was playing
upon them. Such color screens appear to
the author to be common in Nature, where
the spores and tender growing cells are com-
pelled to begin their vegetative processes in
the light. The green chlorophyll screen of
ordinary plants may fulfill this purpose.
When the typlioid bacillus falls into turbid,
dirty water in summer, it finds a congenial
propagating place. The dirt furnishes it
food, absorbs heat to increase the warmth,
and keeps off the hostile blue and violet
rays.

The Appraisal of Books. — The subject
of furnishing librarians and the public with
some general, comprehensive guide to the
character and real value of books is discussed
by Mr. George lies in a paper on The Ap-
praisal of Literature, which he presented to
the International Library Conference held
in London in July. The task of selecting
from the enormous mass of books now ap-
pearing daily to be bought or read is a be-
wildering one. How make it easier? Mr.
lies would reach the end .by a system of
shortened reviews, prepared and adjusted for
the purpose — " a brief note of description,
criticism, and comparison, written by an
acknowledged authority, signed and dated,
and placed where the reader can not help
seeing it, both within the lid of the reviewed
book itself and on a card next the title- card
in the catalogue." If the book treats of a
question in debate, fact and opinion should

be carefully distinguished, and views of op-
posed critics might be presented. By this
means the inquirer would know which book
is best, or among the best of its kind ; would
be made aware of defects ; would learn how
one book can gainfully piece out another;
and would gather indications of the period-
icals or transactions which bring a story of
discovery and research down to date. In a
final line he might be told where detailed
reviews are to be found. Persons qualified
to undertake this business of appraisal might
be found among professional reviewers, who
could " boil down " their larger reviews and
adapt them. The work might be placed
under the direction of a central superintend-
ency of the American Library Association ;
and in connection with it something might
be done "to rescue from neglect the great
books which, from such causes as the un-
timely death of their authors, or the sheer
brunt of advertisement, are overlaid by new
and much inferior writing." Starts have
been made toward this work in such manuals
as the Reader's Guide iu Economic, Social,
and Political Literature, the List of Books
for Girls and Women and their Clubs, and
the special lists of books on fine art and on
music.

Man's Laugnage to Animals. — The ex-
clamations we use in driving and calling
horses, oxen, cats, dogs, fowls, and other
domestic animals ai-e presented by Prof. H.
C. Bolton in a paper on the subject as af-
fording familiar illustrations of a language
of peculiar characteristics, whose words are
chiefly monosyllabic and dissyllabic, and
usually repeated in groups of three, utterly
devoid of grammar, exclusively in the im-
perative mood, and consisting of words not
found in the dictionaries, which serves as a
ready and suflScient means of communication
between man and the many races of animals
under his subjection. It has little in com-
mon with the language used by the animals
themselves, but is forced upon them by man
and made comprehensible to them by con-
stant repetition. The terms used are differ-
ent in different countries. In thus control-
ling the actions of domestic animals by the
voice, man makes comparatively little use
of the language by which he communicates
with his fellow-creatures, but employs a pe-

718

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

culiar vocabularr, a variety of singular terms
coniprising inarticulate sounds and musical
calls, whistling, chirping, clicking, and other
sounds not easily represented by any com-
bination of letters of the English alphabet,
or by musical notation. Prof. Bolton has
collected these words from a considerably
large number of languages, ancient and mod-
ern, describes them, and analyzes them so
far as they are susceptible of analysis. He
reaches the general conclusion that the terms
are mostly corruptions of the ancient names of
the animals, sometimes with a prefix signify-
ing " come," with expressions that have be-
come otherwise obsolete. They are all sub-
ject to the same influences that lead to the
development of dialects, and, the language
being unwritten, the changes are quite radi-
cal. An important feature mentioned, but
not dwelt upon at length, is the musical in-
tonation giving a special character often as-
sociated with the call. We are surprised
that while the author says much about
"puss" as a call for the cat, he does not
even mention " kitty," which is used a hun-
dred times as often.

Plants and their Insect Inhabitants. —

Plants have a special interest to the ento-
mologist according to the number of insect
species they harbor, and the invasion which

causes dismay to the gardener biings him
joy — qualified, we are glad to say, if the
plant is a valuable one, by sorrow for his
neighbor's trouble. Miss Mary E. Murte-
feldt, of Kirkwood, Mo., has found no better
way of making the acquaintance of the in-
sect fauna of a locality than to take up, one
after another, its native or introduced plants
and, keeping them under close observation
from spring till fall, and perhaps for several
successive years, note the species that visit
them and the larvae that subsist upon them,
either exclusively or in common with other
plants. Many weeds afford abundant har-
vests of this kind ; one of the most produc-
tive of them is the cut-leaved ragweed {Am-
brosia artemisicefolia) of roadsides and fallow
fields, every part of which — foliage, tiower,
leafstalk, stem, and root — sustains its own
peculiar species, the majority of which do
not occur on other plants. This plant is
especially a mine of wealth to the micro-
lepidopterist in the number, beauty, and
variety of the species that are partially or
wholly dependent upon it. Miss Murtefeldt
names between forty-five and fifty species of
five orders which she has found on this one
plant. Perhaps one fourth of these are
limited to the genus Ambrosia, and six or
seven have been found only on artemisice-
folia.

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

It is reported that an important advance
in color photography has been made by M.
Yilledieu Chassagnc and Dr. Adrien Michel
Dausac. The process is simple and inex-
pensive. A negative is taken on a gelatin
plate, which has been treated with a solu-
tion of certain salts (the nature of the solu-
tion is kept secret). The negative is devel-
oped and fixed in the ordinary way. From it
a positive is printed on a sensitized paper
which has previously been treated with the
unknown solution. This positive is then
washed over with three colored solutions —
blue, green, and red — and it takes up in suc-
cession the colors in their appropriate parts,
and the combinations of the colors giving all
varieties of tints.

Berthelot and Vieille have riecently
been experimenting with acetylene, in refer-

ence to its explosiveness. They found that
when acetylene at ordinary pressure is ex-
posed to the action of the electric spark, a
red-hot wire, or a fulminate shock, the gas
is decomposed only in the immediate vicin-
ity ; when the gas is under pressure, how-
ever, the result is quite different, the acet-
ylene acting as do the ordinary ex[)losive
mixtures when the pressure exceeds two
atmospheres — the explosion rapidly spread-
ing through the entire mass which, decom-
poses into hydrogen and finely divided bulky
carbon. Liquid acetylene behaves in the
same way. Using eighteen grammes in a
bomb of 48'96 c. c. capacity, the final pres-
sure was 5,564 kilogrammes per square cen-
timetres— almost the equal of gun cotton.

Stress is laid by M. Albert Gaudry, in
his study of Philosophical Paleontology, on

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

719

the increase of intelligence as a feature of
animal development. First, there was prog-
ress in locomotion, and the sedentary inver-
tebrates of Primary times were succeeded
by the secondary reptiles, and they by the
numerous Tertiary mammals. The continued
improvement of the last was manifested in
the gradual adaptation of the feet of the
horse and deer, making them better fitted
for speed. The power of sensation has also
undergone a steady augmentation, and in-
telligence has been developed slowly and
regularly. If, in the absence of other knowl-
edge, we may judge concerning the nervous
system of the invertebrates or of the Primary
fishes from that of existing beings, we have
to conclude that their intelligence was very
imperfect. The forms of the brains of some
of the Secondary reptiles, as revealed by
molds of the interior of their skulls, show
that they were very little advanced. By this
criterion, the gigantic saurians were very
stupid animals. A progressive development
evidently took place during the Tertiary
period. Finally, the brain of man, the latest,
is the most complicated, the most voluminous,
and at the same time the most condensed of
all. The history of the world thus reveals
to us a progress which has continued through
the ages.

The utilization of burned clays as a road
material is mentioned in Mr. C. B. Keves's
last Missouri Geological Report as a subject
that should be fully discussed. Some of the
railroads are already using burned clay for
ballast in preference to rock, sand, or gravel,
with good results, so that the extension of
the use of this material to highways is in
reality beyond the experimental stage. Prof.
AVheeler says in his report on clays that,
while it is not so good as tough rock for the
heavy traffic in cities, it would prove durable
for country roads, where the teams are few
and the loads light. It can be prepared
wherever the clay is, and often by the road-
side ; and as the heaviest roads are those in
clay soils, these may be made themselves to
furnish the material for their own improve-
ment.

The failure of British girls' schools to
achieve the results intended in scientific
training was ascribed by Miss L. Edna Wal-
ter in the British Association to the two rea-

sons that only the faculty of observation is,
as a rule, cultivated, and that the work is
not begun low enough down in the school.
A gently graduated scientific course is, in
the view of the author, wanted, beginning
with the simplest experiments for young
children, and gradually increasing in com-
plexity till the girls reach the age of about
sixteen. From beginning to end the course
should be practical in character, and quanti-
tative as far as possible. Such a course can
be followed if practical arithmetic be made
the starting point. This leads naturally to
elementary physics, chiefly hydrostatics, and
finally to a course of elementary chemistry.
It is an important feature of the course sug-
gested that the children should use no text-
books ; their own notes written in their own
language should form their books of refer-
ence. In this way their literary powers are
cultivated ; but, above all, they learn to rely
upon themselves.

A REMARKABLE discovcry has been made
near Perm of an extensive burial place of
the supposed old inhabitants of Russia, the
Chuds, from which exceedingly rich collec-
tions of implements have been recovered.
Among them are at least a hundred earthen-
ware vessels, and " cart loads " of broken
pieces of earthenware ornamented with all
sorts of figures illustrating the life of the
people. Of these are men sitting on horse-
back and in small boats, nine engravings of
bees and flies, fifty-nine engravings of birds,
more than a hundred of different mammals,
and ten of snakes. Three masks and one
head of mammals were also found, a large
silver plate representing a man standing on
some animal, eight smaller silver pieces, a
hundred and forty one bronze plates, sev-
eral bronze statuettes, and " an immense
number" of rings, stars, bells, small models
of sledges, thimbles, arrowheads, hatchets,
knives, nearly four hundred gilded bronze
pearls, fishing hooks, skulls of stags, various
carnivorous animals, etc.

It is stated by Prof. T. F. Wright that
recent exploration in Palestine clearly shows
that all the ancient chronicles in regard to
the wall of Jerusalem were trustworthy. It
had a very strong wall, with frequent tow-
ers or bastions. The wall ran all around
the brow of Zion Hill, crossing the Tyropaeau

720

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Valley, and then going northeasterly to the
corner of the temple inclosure. As it will
be represented on new maps, the present
wall on the south side will be a nearly
straight line, placed east and west, with a
loop southward from its ends like a bow
with cord loosened. The space between the
straight and the curved lines has been very
little explored as yet, but at the pool of Si-
loam Dr. Bliss has found the perfect forma-
tion of a very early Christian church, show-
ing its whole plan. This place will be kept
open, and will be one of the most interest-
ing places in or near the city.

NOTES.

Some funeral jars found in Arkansas ex-
hibit representations of the human face
which contrast greatly with the crude figures
usually characteristic of Indian and even of
American art, they being accurate in anato-
my and physiognomy. From a study of them
Mr. F. S. Dellenbaugh concludes that they
can be accounted for without supposing some
exotic or wonderful native artist, by regard-
ing them as death-masks made by takmg a
mold of the face and transferring it to the jar.

The effect of fasting upon the power of
the system to resist infection from micro-
bian toxines has been investigated by MM. J.
Teissier and L. Guinard, and they find it a
strengthening one. Animals which had been
kept fasting bore out against inoculation
much better than the control animals, and
the resisting power seemed to increase with
the length of the fast.

The Russian thistle, concerning the intro-
duction and spread of which in the United
States much alarm was expressed a few years
ago, is likely, if we can credit the reports
from the Western States, to prove a com-
paratively harmless pest, after all. It does
not thrive so vigorously as it promised to, but
rather declines after a year or two. In some
districts the dried weed was chopped up fine
and fed to cattle ; and it has proved to be
good fuel, and is even said to be marketable
for that purpose.

Analyses of the air taken in the ascen-
sion of the "A6rophile," February 18, 1897,
at the height of fifteen thousand five hundred
metres, made by MM. Schloesing and A.
Muntz, show that the composition of the air
at that elevation, as has always been sup-
posed, does not differ materially from that of
the air of lower regions.

A very interesting question was brought
up in the British Association, in the discus-
sion of a paper by Mr. W. Barlow on homo-
geneous structures and the symmetrical par-
titioning of them with application to crys-
tals. Lord Kelvin remarked on the immense

number of possible methods of partitioning
space, and said that, although Schucke was
generally credited with having been the first
to investigate the subject, it had been thor-
oughly worked out by Bi avals, whose mind
gave way under its overwhelming complexity.
Prof. Miers said there were two hundred and
thirty types of symmetry and only thirty-
two types of crystal, so that the same crys-
tal might contain several types of symmetry.

A RAILWAY is to be built up the Hoch-
stauffen Mountain at Bad Reichenhall, Aus-
trian Alps, of which it is contemplated that
a balloon shall be the propelling power. The
balloon will run along a track, consisting of a
peculiarly shaped rail. This is clasped by a
trailer, furnished with many wheels, to which
a passenger car is fastened. The operator
has a seat in the car, and a cord swings be-
tween his place and the balloon, by which
the gas supply is regulated ; and provision is
given under his control of brakes and devices
for safety against accident. The gas gen-
erator at the foot of the railroad will supply
the town with ilhmiinating gas, as well as
furnishing that with which the balloon is
tilled.

Arterio-sclerosis is described by M. Hu-
chard, in his treatise on Diseases of the
Heart, as peculiarly the disease of physicians,
politicians, and financiers, their liability to
which is largely due to their practicing pro-
fessions in which emotion is often intensified
and which involve great liability to over-
work. In addition, doctors have to experi-
ence unavoidable irregularities in hours, and
sometimes continuous periods of work with-
out rest. The single means of arresting and
avoiding these consequences is by a diminu-
tion of anxiety and an avoidance of over-
work, with measures taken as far as possible
for repair of the wasted tissues.

Dr. Alfred Marshall Mayer died July
13th, after a protracted illness, in the sixty-
second year of his age, at Maplewood, N. J.
He had been Professor of Physics and
Chemistry in the University of Maryland
and in Westminster College, Missouri ; Pro-
fessor of Physics in Pennsylvania College,
Gettysburg; Professor of Physics and As-
tronomy at Lehigh University ; and, since
1871, Professor of Physics at Stevens Insti-
tute of Technology at Hoboken, N. J. In
1869 he had charge of one of the official
parties sent out to observe the total eclipse.
He was a member of seven scientific so-
cieties.

Fritz Mltller, who died May 2l8t at
Blumenau, Brazil, was best known by his
book Fur Darwin, enumerating facts in
support of the Darwinian doctrine of the
origin of species, which was translated into
English. Darwin received also direct assist-
ance from him in his investigations. He
was the author of numerous memoirs on
mimeti.sm, coloration, etc.

GUILLAUME LOUIS FIOUIER.

APPLETONS'

POPULAE SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

OCTOBER, 1897.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

(Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.)
By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. 1).,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECJINOLOGY ; LECTURER IN
ANTIIROPO-GEOORAPIIY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

IX.— ITALY.

THE anthropology of Italy has a very pertinent interest for
the historian, especially in so far as it throws light upon the
confusing statements of the ancients. Pure natural science, the
morphology of the genus Homo, is now prepared to render impor-
tant service in the interpretation of the body of historical mate-
rials which has long been accumulating. Happily, the Italian
Government has assisted in the good work, with the result that
our data for that country are extremely rich and authentic* The
anthropological problems presented are not as complicated as in
France, for a reason we have already noted — namely, that in
Italy, lying as it does entirely south of the great Alpine chain,
we have to do practically with two instead of all three of the
European racial types. In other words, the northern Teutonic
blond race is debarred by the Alps. It does appear in a few
places, as we shall take occasion to point out, but its influence is
comparatively small. This leaves us, therefore, with two rivals

* The best authority upon the liviDg population is Dr. Riclolfo Livi, Capitano Medico
in the Ministero della Guerra at Rome. To him I am personally indebted for invaluable
assistance. His admirable Antropometria Militare, Rome, 1890, with its superb atlas, must
long stand as a model for other investigators. Titles of his other scattered monographs
will be found in the author's Bibliography of the Ethnology of Europe, shortly to appear in
a Bulletin of the Boston Public Library. Among other references of especial value on
VOL. LI. — 54

722 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for supremacy — viz., the broad-headed Alpine type of central
Europe and the true Mediterranean race in the south.

A second reason, no less potent than the first, for the simplicity
of the ethnic problems presented in Italy is, of course, its pen-
insulated structure. All the outlying parts of Europe enjoy a
similar isolation. The population of Spain is even more unified
than the Italian. The former is probably the most homogeneous
in Europe, being almost entirely recruited from the Mediter-
ranean long-headed stock. So entirely similar, in fact, are all the
peoples which have invaded or, we had better say, populated the
Iberian Peninsula that we are unable to distinguish them an-
thropologically one from another. The Spaniards are akin to the
Berbers in Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis. The division line of
races falls at the French-Spanish frontier, as the maps in our last
article on the Basques showed in detail. " Beyond the Pyrenees
begins Africa " indeed. In Italy a corresponding transition from
Europe to Africa takes place, more gradually perhaps but no less
surely. It divides the Italian nation into two equal parts, of
entirely difi:erent racial descent.

Geographically, Italy is constituted of two distinct parts. The
basin of the Po, between the Apennines and the Alps, is one of
the best defined areas of characterization in Europe. The only
place in all the periphery where its boundary is indistinct is on
the southeast, from Bologna to Pesaro. Here, for a short distance,
one of the little rivers which comes to the sea by Rimini, just
north of Pesaro, is the artificial boundary. It was the Rubicon of
the ancients, the frontier chosen by the Emperor Augustus be-
tween Italy proper and cisalpine Gaul. The second half of the
kingdom, no less definitely characterized, lies south of this line in
the peninsular portion. Here is where the true Italian language
in purity begins, in contradistinction to the Gallo-Italian in the
north, as Biondelli long ago proved. The boundaries of this half
are clearly marked on the north along the crest of the Apennines,
away across to the frontier of France ; for the modern provinces
of Liguria (see map) belong in flora and fauna, and, as we shall
show, in the character of their population, to the southern half

Italy are: G. Nicolucci, Antropologia dell' Italia nel evo antico e nel nioiJemo, in Atti del
R. Accademia delle Seienze di Xapoli, series 2 a, ii, 1888, No. It, pp. 1-112; (J. Sergi,
Liguri e Celti nella valle del Po, in Archivlo per I'Antropologi.T, xiii, 188.3, pp. 117-175,
gives a succinct account of the several strata of population; R. Zampa, iSull' etnografia
storica ed antropologica dell' Italia, Atti del Accademia pontificia dei Nuovi Lincei, Rome,
xliv, session May 17, 1891, pp. 173 seq.\ and ibid., Ciania Italica Vetera, Meniorie Accad.
pont. dei Nuovi Lincei, vii, 1891, pp. 1-73. Full references to the other works of these
authors, as well as of Calori, Lombroso, Helbig, Fligier, Virchow, ct nls., will be found in the
authors bibliography above mentioned. Broca, in reviewing Nicolucci's work in Revue
d'Anthropologie, 1874, gives a good summary of conclusions at that time, before the more
recent methods of research were adopted.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

723

of the country. It is this leg of the peninsula which alone was
called Italy by the ancient geographers ; or, to be more precise,
merely the portion south of Rome. Only by slow degrees was the
term extended to cover the basin of the Po, The present political
unity of all Italy, real though it be, is of course only a recent

ELEVATION

ABOVE SEA LEVEL

METERS^

0-100^

IOO-20o| \

200-500

500HOOO|
OuerlOOol

Physical geogcaphy
°^ ITALY,

and, in a sense, an artificial product. It should not obscure our
vision as to the ethnic realities of the case.

The topography and location of these two halves of the king-
dom of Italy which we have outlined have been of profound sig-
nificance for their human history. In the main distinct politic-
ally, the ethnic fate of their several populations has been widely
different. In the Po Valley, the "cockpit of Europe," as Freeman
termed it, every influence has been directed toward intermixture.
Inviting in the extreme, especially as compared with the trans-
alpine countries, it has been incessantly invaded from three
points of the compass. The peninsula, on the other hand, has

724

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been mucli freer from ethnic interference, especially in the early-
days when navigation across seas was a hazardous proceeding.
Only in the extreme south do we have occasion to note racial

bROAD HEADS

87 ^1

CEPHALIC INDEA
ITALV-

■"«^M.,

i94Z71 OBSERWTIONS
AFTER, LLVl. '96

invasions along the coast. The absence of protected waters and
especially of good harbors, all along the middle portion of the
peninsula has not invited a landing from foreigners. Open water
ways have not enabled them to press far inland, even if they
disembarked. These simple geographical facts explain much in
the anthropological sense. They meant little after the full de-
velopment of water transportation, because thereafter travel by
sea was far simpler than by land. Our vision must, however,
pierce the obscurity of early times before the great human inven-
tion of navigation had been perfected.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

725

In order to give a summary view of the physical character-
istics of the present population which constitutes the two halves
of Italy above described, we have reproduced upon the following
pages the three most important maps in Livi's great atlas. Based
as they are upon detailed measurements made upon nearly three
hundred thousand conscripts, they can not fail to inspire con-
fidence in the evidence they have to present. Especially is this
true since their testimony is a perfect corroboration of the scat-
tered researches of many observers since the classical work of
Calori and Nicolucci thirty years ago. Researches at that time
made upon crania collected from the cemeteries and crypts began
to indicate a profound difference in head form between the popu-
lations of north and south. Then later, when Zampa, Lombroso,
Pagliani, and Riccardi * took up the study of the living peoples,
they revealed equally radical differences in the pigmentation and
stature. It remained for Livi to present these new data, uniformly
collected from evary commune in the kingdom, to set all possible
doubts at rest. It should be observed that our maps are all uni-
formly divided by white boundary lines into comparthnenti, so
called. These administrative districts correspond to the ancient
historical divisions of the kingdom. Their names are all given

ALi'KNh iii'i'.. riuJuioiit. Cephalic Index, 'Jl'o.

upon our preceding map of physical geography. Being similar
through the whole series, they facilitate comparisons between
smaller districts in detail.

The basin of the Po is peopled by an ethnic type which is mani-

* Exhaustive bibliography of each of these writers will be fouiul in the Bulletin of the
Boston Public Library, mentioned in the note on a preceding page.

726 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

festly broad-headed. This Alpine racial characteristic is intensi-
fied all along the northern frontier. In proportion as one pene-
trates the mountains this phenomenon becomes more marked. It
culminates in Piedmont along the frontier of France. Here, as
we have already shown in our general map of Europe, is the
purest representation of the Alpine race on the continent. Dr.
Livi has photographed a recruit from this region for me. It is
reproduced upon this page. The rounded fullness at the fore-
head and the shortness of head from front to back can not fail of
notice. Across the frontier, in French Savoy, the same racial
type is firmly intrenched in the high Alps. Such is also the prev-
alent physical type of the Swiss, who are descendants of the
Rhsetians of Roman times. Still further back we come upon
the prehistoric lake dwellers. No change of race has here taken
place since very early times. All indications point to a primitive
occupation and a persistent defense of the Alpine highland by
this broad-headed racial type.*

This Alpine type in northern Italy is the most blond and the
tallest in the kingdom. This, of course, does not imply that these
are really a blond and tall people. Compared with those of our
own parentage in northern Europe, these Italians appear to be
quite brunette ; hair and eyes in our portrait type were classed as
light chestnut. Standing in a normal company of Piedmontese,
an Englishman could look straight across over their heads ; for
they average three to five inches less in bodily stature than we in
England or America ; yet, for Italy, they are certainly one of its
tallest types. The traits we have mentioned disappear in exact
proportion to the accessibility of the population to intermixture.
The whole immediate valley of the Po, therefore, shows a distinct
attenuation of each detail. We may in general distinguish such
ethnic intermixture from either of two directions : from the north
it has come by the influx of Teutonic tribes across the mountain
passes ; from the south, by several channels of communication
across or around the Apennines from the peninsula. For exam-
ple, the transition from Alpine broad heads in Emilia to the
longer-headed population over in Tuscany near Florence is rather

* Whether this brachycephalic population is to be identified historical!}' with the
" Liguiians " or not is still matter of earnest dispute. Nicolucui, Calori, and most foreif^ii
authorities answer it affirmatively. On the other hand, such eminent specialists as Livi,
Sergi, and Zampa agree in tracing the Ligurians l)aek to a still more [jrimitive and under-
lying stratum of population. This original stock was dolichocephalic, identical with the
Mediterranean type in the south. Its direct descendants and survivors are the people of
the modern province of Liguria, to be described shortly. These latter writers hold the broad
headed more recent overlying people to be the true Ccltu' invaders from the Alps. Which-
ever theory be correct, we may rest assured of the ethnic facts in the case. There is no
longer doubt of the two distinct strata. To christen them is a relatively unimportant
matter, from our point of view.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

727

sharp, because the mountains here are quite high and impassable,
save at a few points. On the east, however, by Pesaro, where
natural barriers fail, the northern element has penetrated farther
to the south. It has overflowed into Umbria, Tuscany, and
Marche, being there once more in possession of a congenial moun-

RELATivE Frequency

BRUNEI TRA1T3

(MIXED BRUNEI TYPE)
After LlVl '96

298660 Okservltioni

PERCENT

'■■■-. "•■. I

'■- '•■■ '-- ' ~ ^

tainous habitat.* The same geographical isolation which, as Sy-
monds asserts, fostered the pietism of Assisi, has enabled this
northern type to hold its own against aggression from the south.
It is rather interesting to note the prevalence of the brachy-
cephalic Alpine race in this mountainous part of Italy ; for no-
where else in the peninsula proper is there any evidence of that

* Vide, on the Utubrians, Zampa, in Archivio per I'Antropologia, xviii, 1888, pp. 175
et seq. ; and Memorie Accademia pontiticia dei Niiovi Lincei, Rome, 1889, pp. Ill rf my.

728

POPULAR SCIUNCU MONTHLY.

differentiation of the populations of the plains from those of the
mountains which we have noted in other parts of Europe. Xor
is a reason for the general absence of the phenomenon hard to
find. If it be, indeed, an economic and social phenomenon, de-
pendent upon differences in the economic possibilities of any

h RELATIVE^FREQUENCY
TALL STATURE

After Livi '96

299355 Observilions

PERCENT ABOUE
1.7 METERS
(=5ft7in5>

Over Z96f^

Z36-Z6 6[" I

TUNIS

given areas, there is little reason for its appearance elsewhere in
Italy ; for the Apennines do not form regions of economic unat-
tractiveness, as their geology is favorable to agriculture, and
their soil and climate are kind. In many places they are even
more favorable habitats than the plains, by reason of a more
plentiful rainfall. The absence of anthropological contrasts coin-
cident with a similar absence of economic differences is, in fact,
a point in favor of our hypothesis.

Are there any vestiges in the population of northern Italy of

TRE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 729

that vast army of Teutonic invaders which all through the his-
toric period and probably since a very early time has poured over
the Alps and out into the rich valley of the Po ? Where are those
gigantic, tawny-haired barbarians described by the ancient writers
who came from the far country north of the mountains ? Even
of late there have been many of them — Cimbri, Goths, Ostro-
goths, Visigoths, Saxons, Lombards. Historians are inclined to
overrate their numerical importance as an element in the present
population. On the other hand many anthropologists, Virchow
for example, have asserted that these barbarian invaders have
completely disappeared from sight in the present population.
Truth lies intermediate between the two. It is, of course, prob-
able that ancient writers exaggerated the numbers in the immi-
grant hordes. Modern scholars estimate their numbers to be
relatively small. Thus Zampa * holds the invasion of the Lom-
bards to have been the most considerable numerically, although
their forces did not probably exceed sixty thousand, followed
l)erhaps by twenty thousand Saxons. Eighty thousand immi-
grants in the most thickly settled area in ancient Europe surely
would not have diluted the population very greatly. We can not
expect too much evidence in this direction consequently, although
there certainly is some. The relative purity of the Piedmont
Alpine type compared with that of Veneto is probably to be
ascribed to its greater inaccessibility to these Teutons. Wherever
any of the historic passes debouch upon the plain of the Po
there we find some disturbance of the normal relations of physi-
cal traits one to another ; as, for example, at Como, near Verona,
and at the mouth of the Brenner in Veneto. The clearest indubit-
able case of Teutonic intermixture is in the population of Lom-
bardy about Milan. Here, it will be observed on our maps, is
a distinct increase of stature; the people are at the same time
relatively blond. The extreme broad-headedness of Piedmont
and Veneto is moderated. Everything points to an appreci-
able Teutonic blond. This is as it should be. Every invading
host would naturally gravitate toward Milan. It is at the focus
of all roads over the mountains. Ratzel, in his Anthropo-Geo-
graphie, has contrasted the influence exerted by the trend of the
valleys on the different slopes of the Alps. Whereas in France
they all diverge, spraying the invaders upon the quiescent popu-
lation ; in Italy all streams seem to concentrate upon Lombardy.f
The ethnic consequences are apparent there, perhaps for this
reason.

* Les Gaulois d'ltalie, in Mem. pont. Acead. di Nuovi Lincei, Rome, viii, 1892, pp.
•241-316.

t On the significance of the Alpine passes, vide Lentherie, Les Alpes devant THomme;
.•ilso Jahresbericht des Vereins fiir Erdkunde zu Dresden, xviii.

730 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

With the exception of Lombardy the blood of the Teutonic
invaders in Italy seems to have been diluted to extinction.
Notwithstanding this, it is curious to note that the German lan-
guage still survives in a number of isolated communities in the
back waters of the streams of immigration. Up in the side val-
leys along the main highways over the Alps are still to be found
German customs and folklore as well. The peasants, however,
are not to be distinguished physically at this present day from
their true Italian-speaking neighbors. These southern Alps are
also places of refuge for many other curious membra disjecta.
Mendini, for example, has studied in Piedmont, with some detail,
a little community of the Valdesi, descendants of the followers of
Juan Valdes, the mediaeval reformer. Here they have persisted
in their heretical beliefs despite five hundred years of persecu-
tion and ostracism. In this case mutual repulsion seems to have
produced real physical results, as the people of these villages
seem to differ quite appreciably from the Catholic population in
many important respects.

The ethnic transition from the Alpine race in the Po Valley
to the Mediterranean race in Italy proper is particularly sharp
along the crest of the Apennines from the French frontier to
Florence. The population of modern Liguria, the long, narrow
strip of country between the mountains and the Gulf of Genoa,
is distinctly allied to the south in all respects. Especially does
the Mediterranean long-headedness of this region appear upon
both of our maps of cephalic index. It is curious to note how
the sharpness of the ethnic boundary is softened where the
physical barriers against intercourse between north and south
are modified. Thus there is just north of Genoa a decided break
in the distinct racial frontier of the province ; for just here is, as
our topographical map of the country indicates, a broad open-
ing in the mountains leading over to the north. The i)ass is
easily traversed by rail to-day. Over it many invasions in
either direction have served to confound the populations upon
either side.

The individuality of the modern Ligurians culminates in one
of the most puzzling ethnic patches in Italy, viz., the people of the
district about Lucca, in the northwest corner of Tuscany. Consid-
eration of our maps will show the strong relief with which these
people stand forth from their neighbors. These peasants of Gar-
fagnana and Lucchese seem to set all ethnic probabilities at
naught. They are as tall as the Venetians or any of the north-
ern populations of Italy, yet in head form they are closely allied
to the people of the extreme south. They are among the longest-
headed in [all the kingdom. They seem also to be considerably
more brunette than any of their neighbors. Nor are these pecul-

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

731

iarities of modern origin ; certainly not their stature, at all events.
For Strabo tells us that the Romans were accustomed to recruit
their legions here because of the massive physique of the people.

In order to make the reality of this curious patch more ap-
parent, we have reproduced in our small map on this page a bit
of the country in detail. It shows how suddenly the head form
changes at the crest of the Apennines as we pass from the Po
valley to the coast strip of Liguria. As we leave the river and
rise slowly across Emilia toward the mountain range the heads

LONG HEADS

gradually become less purely Alpine: and then suddenly as we
cross the watershed we step into an entirely different population.
On the southern edge this little spot of Mediterranean long-
headedness terminates with almost equal sharpness, although geo-
graphical features remain quite uniform. This eliminates envi-
ronment as an explanation for the phenomenon ; we must seek
the cause elsewhere.

All sorts of explanations for the peculiarities of this ethnic
spot about Lucca have been presented. Lombroso, who first dis-
covered its tall stature, inclines to the belief that here is a last
relic of the ancient and long-extinct Etruscan people penned in

732 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

between some of the highest mountains in Italy and the sea. He
holds that they were here driven to cover in this corner of Tus-
cany by the developed Roman power in the south. Dr. Beddoe
gives another explanation which is interesting. He believes this
population to be the result of artificial colonization. Livy tells
us that the Romans at one time, in pursuance of a long- settled
policy, transported forty thousand Ligurians (?) to Samnium, fill-
ing their places with others from the south. If this artificial
transplanting had been effected a sufficient number of times ; if
the Liguria of Livy had surely been this modern one instead of
the Alpine ancient one ; and thirdly, if we could thus account for
the tallness of stature, certainly not of southern origin, we might
place more reliance upon this ingenious hypothesis. As it is we
can not think it far reaching enough. To us it seems more likely
that we have to do rather with a population highly individualized
by geographical isolation. Much of the region is very fertile ; it
is densely populated ; it is closely bounded by mountain and sea.
May it not contain a remnant of a more ancient people than others
roundabout ? This accords with both Sergi's and Livi's view. At
a later time we shall be able to prove that in many respects the old-
est, most primitive layer of population in Italy possessed many of
these peculiar traits of the Garfagnanans and Luccheser. We in-
cline to the belief that a bit of this primitive substratum has per-
sisted in this place. The people of the island of Elba off the
coast are quite similar to it. Insularity explains their peculiar
physical traits. Why not environmental isolation about Lucca
as well ?

One of the most disputed points in the ethnological history of
Europe concerns the origin of the ancient Etruscans, who domi-
nated middle Italy a thousand years or more before the Christian
era. Ancient Etruria covered what is now made up of the two
compartimenti of Toscana and Roma — extending, that is to say,
from the Arno to the Tiber. Here we find a sub-area of char-
acterization, rich alike in soil and climate, somewhat isolated
from the rest of the peninsula. This district is the center of one
of the earliest highly evolved cultures in Europe. The Etruscans
appear suddenly upon the scene, invading the territory of the
Umbrians, who seem to have been indigenous to the soil, akin to
the Oscians, Italians (Vituli), and other native peoples. With the
advent of this immigrant people a great advance in culture seems
to have occurred, from which Rome afterward derived her suprem-
acy in that respect : for the Etruscans were the real founders of
the Eternal City.

Popularly, the word " Etruscan " at once suggests the ceramic
art ; the progress effected in a short time was certainly startling.
To give an idea of the sudden change, we have reproduced upon

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

733

this page illustrations of typical bits of Italian pottery. The
first vase, |)rior to the full Etruscan culture, shows its crudity at
once, both in its defects of form and the plainness and simplicity

Early Etruscan.

Pure Etruscan.
Middle Period.

of its ornamentation. Such a vessel might have been made in
Mexico or even by our own Pueblo Indians. In a century or two
some teacher made it possible to produce the sample depicted in
the next cut. Perfect in form, superb in grace of outline, its dec-
oration is most effective ; yet it betrays greater skill in geometri-
cal design than in the representation of ani-
mate life. The dog drawn on the girdle is
still far from lifelike. Then come— prob-
ably after inspiration from Greek art — the
possibilities in complex ornamentation rep-
resented by our third specimen. Not more
pleasing in form ; perhaps less truly artistic
because of its ornateness, it manifests much
skill in the delineation of human and animal
forms. The culture culminates at this point.
From profusion of ornament and overloaded
decoration degeneracy begins. It is the old
story of the life and decay of schools of art,
time in and time out, the world over.

The advance in culture typified by our
vases was equaled in all the details of life.*
The people built strongly walled cities ; they

constructed roads and bridges ; their architecture, true prede-
cessor of the Roman, was unique and highly evolved. All the
plain and good things of life were known to these people, and
their civilization was rich in its luxury, its culture and art as

Greek Etruscan.

* A good recent resume of Etruscan culture is given by Lefevre in Revue Mensuelle de
I'Eeole d'Authropologie, i, pp. 112 seq. and 268 seq., and also in Revue Linguistique.

734 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

well. In costumes, jewelry, the paraphernalia of war, in paint-
ing and statuary they were alike distinguished. Their mythology
was very complex, much of the Roman being derived from it.
Most of our knowledge of them is derived from the rich discov-
eries in their chambered tombs, scattered all over Italy from
Rome to Bologna. There can be no doubt of a very high type
of civilization attained as early as ten or twelve centuries before
the Christian era. Roman history is merged in the obscurity of
time, five or six hundred years later than this. The high an-
tiquity of the Etruscan Is therefore beyond question.

We know less of the language used by the Etruscans than of
many other details of their existence — only enough to be assured
that it was of an exceedingly primitive type. It was constructed
upon as fundamentally different a system from the Aryan tongues
as is the Basque, described in our last paper. It seems to have
been, like the Basque, allied to the great family of languages
which includes the Lapps, Finns, and Hungarians in modern
Europe, and the aborigines of Asia and America. These unfortu-
nate similarities led to all sorts of queer theories as to the racial
origin of the people ; as wild, many of them, as those invented for
the Basques. It never occurred to any one to differentiate race,
language, and culture one from another, distinct as each of the
trio may be in our eyes to-day. If a philologist found similarity
in linguistic structure to the Lapp, he immediately jumped to
the conclusion that the Etruscans were Lapps, and Lapland the
primitive seat of the civilization. Thus Taylor, in his early
work, asserts an Asiatic origin akin to the Finns. Then Pauli
and Deecke for a time independently traced them to the same
Turanian source. At last, when the Etruscan civilization began
to be investigated in detail, authorities fell into either one of two
groups. They both agree that the culture itself was of foreign
origin. The Germans, with the sole exception of Pauli * and
Cnno, are unanimous in the assertion that it is an immigrant
from the Danube Valley and northern Europe. These authorities
regard it as an offshoot of the so-called Hallstadt civilization,
which flourished at a very early period in this part of the con-
tinent. In a later paper on the Aryan culture we shall have
occasion to speak of it more in detail. At the same time they
declare the people racially to be of Rhjetian or Alpine origin. The
second school is disposed to derive the Etruscan civilization from
the southeast — generally Lydia in Asia Minor. The relation of

* Von Czoernig, Helbig, Hoeines, Hochstetter (for a time), Koch, MiillenhofF, Niebuhr,
Mominsen, Seemann, Steub, and Virchow. Tayl<ir, in later work, seems to agree. Com-
plete titles will be found in the author's Bibliography of the Ethnology of Europe above
mentioned.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 735

the Etruscan to the Greek is by them held to be very close.*
Much evidence is favorable to either side. To us it seems that
Deecke is more nearly correct than either. He holds it to be
probable that both centers of civilization contributed to the com-
mon product. In his opinion the Etruscans were crossed of the
Tyrrhenians from Asia Minor and the Raseni from the Alps.
All these views, it will be noted, concern civilization mainly. It is
now time for us to examine the purely physical data at our dis-
position. Even supposing their culture to have been an immi-
grant from abroad, that need not imply a foreign ethnic deriva-
tion for the people themselves.

Inspection of our maps, in so far as they concern Etruria, con-
vinces one that if the Etruscans were of entirely extra-Italian
origin, their descendants have at the present time completely
merged their identity in that of their neighbors ; for no sudden
transitions are anywhere apparent, either in respect of head form,
stature, or pigmentation. On the whole, the trend of testimony
appears to favor the German theory that the Etruscans made a
descent upon Italy from the north ; and that they were derived
from the Rhfetians, racial ancestors of the modern Swiss and
other Alpine peoples. Thus it will be observed that Tuscany
allies itself in head form to the north rather than the south.
Especially is this brachycephaly noticeable about Bologna, just
over the Apennines in Emilia. In this region, especially about
Bologna, many of the richest archaeological finds of Etruscan
remains have been made. There appears to be a sort of wedge of
broad-headedness penetrating the peninsula nearly as far south as
Rome. This could not be if the Etruscans had been ethnically of
Greek or Semitic origin ; for the Greeks were and are of a type
quite similar to the Italians of the extreme south — of Mediterra-
nean racial descent, in fact. Certainly no ethnic type of this kind
has contributed largely to make up the modern Tuscan people.f

To us it appears as if here, in the case of the Etruscans as of
the Teutonic immigrants, we find reason to suspect that the ethnic
importance of the invasion has been immensely overrated by his-
torians and philologists. It seems quite probable that the Etruscan
culture and language may have been determined by the decided
impetus of a compact conquering class ; and that the peasantry or
lower orders of population remained quite undisturbed. It is
certain that the remains of the people unearthed in their tombs
betray very mixed characteristics. Crania are very rare, owing

* The Italians range themselves on this side — viz., Brizio, Nicolucei, Lombroso, Sergi,
and Zampa. With them stand Brinton, Evans, Lefevre, Montelius, and Myres, with Hoeh-
stetter in his later work.

f On the Greeks vide Zampa's Anthropolugie Illyrienne, in Revue d'Authropologie,
.series 3, i, pp. (532 seq., and Weisbach in Mitt. Anth. Ges. in Wien, xi, pp. 72 sfq.

736

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to the customs of cremation which were in vogue ; such as have
been studied are of all types.* It appears, from the few that have
been measured, that a long-headed (Greek ?) element was rather
predominant; and, as we have already observed, Lombroso and
others are inclined to regard the peculiarly dolichocephalic people

w^'t^^ym^MmrMMM^^mm,

1

Mixed Type. Island of Ischia. Cephalic Index, 83-6.

about Lucca as the last remnant of the pure Etruscan. If all
Etruria were once like this, it must have changed wonderfully in
the historic period, contrary to most of the experience we have
related, for to-day this long-headed element is relatively quite
scarce. For our own part, we regard the testimony of fifty thou-
sand living peasants, more or less, as more credible than the evi-
dence from a score or two of crania of uncertain origin, even
though they be found in Etruscan tombs.

On the whole, we are inclined to the belief that our Etruscan
ethnic origins must be sought in the north rather than in the
south ; in other words, that the Etruscans were an offshoot of our
Alpine race of central Europe. Since the earliest times, as Zampa
has proved, and it agrees with evidence from all around the Alps,
there has been a steady outflow of population from this inhosi)i-
table habitat, unable as it is to afford sustenance to an increasing
population. This downpour of broad- headed Alpine race types
has entirely overcome the valley of the Po. In prehistoric times
the people of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia were quite similar
to the modern peasants in the extreme south. All Italy, in other
words, was once Mediterranean in type. This has been proved.

* Tlie best references on this subject (see author's bibliography) are Zampa, 1891, pp.
48-56; Xicolucci, 1869, and especially 1888, pp. 12-52.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

Ill

Is it not probable that the same flood of expanding population
from the north which submerged these districts may have trav-
ersed the Apennines and overflowed both Etruria and Umbria ?
The so-called Etruscan historic invasion may have been merely
an incident in this great demographic event. This internal origin
for the Etruscan race is rendered all the more probable by other
evidence close at hand. All the chief cities were well inland-
None were on the coast, where Greek or Phoenician invaders by
sea would most likely have located. The Etruscans, in fact, seem
to have been quite ignorant of the art of navigation ; and, finally,
the testimony of place names points to the Alps as a point of
initial dispersion, as Canon Taylor has shown.

Middle Italy south of Umbria has little of special interest to
offer. It is merely intermediate between north and south. To
make this transition clear, compare the portrait on preceding page
with that of our pure Alpine type on page 725 and with the pure
Mediterranean type on this page. Owing to the late Abyssinian
war so many of the Calabrians and Sardinians in the south were
in the field that it was impossible to procure photographs of these
racial types. They are quite similar,
however, in head form to those which
prevail in Tunis. For all practical pur-
poses this African will do as well. No-
tice that the breadth of forehead and
the roundness of face in our medium
type stand between the extremes on
either side. In pigmentation and stature
the same thing is true. Little by little
as we go south the Alpine blonde is
eliminated until we reach the Mediter-
ranean race in all its purity.

The southern part of the Italian
Peninsula is to-day the seat of a Mediter-
ranean population of remarkably pure
ethnic descent. The peasants are very
long-headed, strongly brunette, and al-
most diminutive in stature. Especially
is this true in the mountains of Calabria,
where geographical' isolation is at an extreme. Along the coasts
we find little points of contact with invaders by sea. Apulia (see
map of geography) especially contains many foreign colonies.*
Some of these are of interest as coming from the extremely broad-
headed country east of the Adriatic. So persistently have these

Berber. Tunis.
Cephalic Index, 72.

* Vide for details Zampa's excellent Vergleichende anthropologische Ethnographie von
Apulien in Zeitschrift liir Ethnologie, 1886, pp. 167-193, and 201-232.
VOL. LI. — 55

738 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Albanians kept hy themselves that after four centuries they are
still characterized by a cephalic index higher by four units than
the pure long-headed Italians about them. Many Greek colonists
have settled along these same coasts. They, however, being of the
same ethnic Mediterranean stock as the natives, are not physically
distinguishable from them.

In conclusion, let us for a moment compare the two islands of
Sicily and Sardinia in respect of their populations. With the
latter we may rightly class Corsica, although it belongs to France
politically. Our maps corroborate the historical evidence with
surprising clearness. In the first place, the fertility and general
climate of Sicily are in marked contrast to the volcanic, often un-
propitious geological formations of the other islands. In respect
of topography as well, the differences between the two are very
great. Sardinia is as rugged as the Corsican nubble north of it.
In accessibility and strategic importance Sicily is alike remark-
able. Commanding both straits at the waist of the Mediterra-
nean, it has been, as Freeman in his masterly description puts it,
" the meeting place of the nations." Tempting therefore and ac-
cessible, this island has been incessantly overrun by invaders from
all over Europe — Sicani, Siculi, Fenicii, Greeks and Romans, fol-
lowed by Albanians, Vandals, Goths, Saracens, Normans, and at
last by the French and Spaniards. Is it any wonder that its peo-
ple are less pure in physical type than the Sardinians or even the
Calabrians on the mainland nearby ? Especially is this notice-
able on its southern coasts, always more open to colonization than
on the northern edge. Nor is it surprising, as Freeman rightly
adds, that " for the very reason that Sicily has found dwelling
places for so many nations a Sicilian nation there never has
been."

Sardinia and Corsica, on the other hand, are two of the most
primitive and isolated spots on the European map, for they are
islands a little off the main line. Feudal institutions of the mid-
dle ages still prevail to a large extent. We are told that the old
wooden plow of the Romans is still in common use to-day.* This
geographical isolation is peculiarly marked in the interior and all
along the eastern coasts, where almost no harbors are to be found.
Here in Sardinia stature descends to the very lowest level in all
Europe, almost in the world. Whether a result of unfavorable
environment or not, this trait is very widespread to-day. It seems
to have become truly hereditary. It extends over fertile and bar-
ren tracts alike. In other details also there is the greatest uni-

*Bull. Soc. d'Anth., Paris, 1882, p. ;il(». On anthropology see work of Onuis, in
Archivio per I'Antropologia, xxvi, 1890, pj). 27 xeq., besides the other authorities afore-
named.

FRANKLIN'S KITE EXPERIMENT. 739

f ormity all over the island — a uniformity at an extreme of human
variation be it noted : for this population is entirely free from all
intermixture with the Alpine race so prevalent in the north.

We have now seen how gradual is the transition from one half
of Italy to the other. The surprising fact in it all is that there
should be as much uniformity as our maps indicate. Despite all
the overturns, the ups and downs of three thousand years of re-
corded history and an unknown age precedent to it, it is wonder-
ful to observe how thoroughly all foreign ethnic elements have
been melted down into the general population. The political
unification of all Italy, the rapid extension of means of commu-
nication, and, above all, the growth of great city populations con-
stantly recruited from the rural districts, will speedily blot out all
remaining traces of local differences of origin. Not so with the
profound contrasts between the extremes of north and south.
These must ever stand as witness to differences of physical origin
as wide apart as A sia is from Africa. This is a question which we
defer to a subsequent article in our series, when we shall return
specifically to trace the geographical origin of these great Euro-
pean elemental races each by itself.

-♦♦♦-

FRANKLIN'S KITE EXPERIMENT WITH MODERN

APPARATUS.

By ALEXANDER McADIE.

THE recent improvements in kites have suggested perhaps to
many the question, " How would Franklin perform his kite
experiment to-day ? " It may seem a little presumptuous to
speak for that unique philosopher, and attempt to outline the
modifications he would introduce were he to walk on earth again
and fly kites as of yore; for, with the exception of Jefferson,
perhaps his was the most far-seeing and ingenious mind of a re-
markable age. But the world moves; and in making kites, as
well as in devising electrometers and apparatus for measuring
the electricity of the air, great advances have been made. Frank-
lin would enjoy repeating his kite experiment to-day, using mod-
ern apparatus. What changes and lines of investigation he would
suggest are beyond conjecture.

A hundred and fifty years ago a ragged colonial regiment
drew up before the home of its philosopher-colonel and fired an
ill-timed salute in his honor. A fragile electrical instrument was
shaken from a shelf and shattered. Franklin doubtless appre-
ciated the salute and regretted the accident. In the course of his
long life he received other salutes, as when the French Academy

74°

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Franklin's Elkcteical Machine.

rose at his entrance ; and he constructed and worked with other
electrometers ; but for us that first experience will always possess
a peculiar interest. The kite and the electrometer betray the in-
tention of the colonial scientist to ex-
plore the free air, and, reaching out
from earth, study air electrification in
situ. He made the beginning by iden-
tifying the lightning Hash with the
electricity developed by the frictional
machine of that time. A hundred pa-
tient philosophers have carried on the
work, improving methods and appa-
ratus, until to-day we stand upon the
threshold of a great electrical survey of
the atmosphere. It is no idle prophecy
to say that the twentieth century will
witness wonderful achievements in
measuring the potential of the light-
ning flash, in demonstrating the nature
of the aurora, and in utilizing the elec-
trical energy of the cloud. The im-
proved kite and air-runner will be the
agency through which these results will be accomplished.

The famous kite experiment is described by Franklin in a let-
ter dated October 19, 1752 : " Make a small cross of light sticks
of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a
large, thin silk handkerchief when extended. Tie the corners of
the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the
body of a kite which, being properly accommodated with a tail,
loop, and string, will rise in the air like those made of paper, but
being made of silk is better fitted to bear the wet and wind of a
thunder gust without tearing. To the top of the upright stick of
the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire rising a foot or
more above the wood. To the end of the twine next the hand is
to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join a key
may be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thunder gust
appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string
must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that
the silk ribbon may not be wet ; and care must be taken that the
twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. As soon
as the thunder clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will
draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine,
will be electrified, and stand out every way and be attracted by
an approaching finger. And when the rain has wet the kite and
twine you will find the electric fire stream out plentifully from
the key on the approach of your knuckle."

FRANKLIN'S KITE EXPERIMENT.

741

i

Now, liow would we perform this experiment to-day and with
what results ? Having flown big kites during thunderstorms, it
may perhaps be best to describe step by step two of these experi-
ments, and then speak of what we know can be done, but as yet
has not been done.

Our first repetition of Franklin's kite experiment was at Blue
Hill Observatory, some ten miles southwest of Boston, one hun-
dred and thirty- three years after its first trial. There were
two large kites silk-covered and tin- foiled on the front face.
These kites were of the ordinary hexagonal shape, for in 1885
Malay and Hargrave kites were all unknown to us. Fifteen hun-
dred feet of strong hemp fish line were wrapped loosely with un-
covered copper wire of the smallest diameter suitable, and this
was brought into a window on the east side of the observatory,
through rubber tubing and blocks of paraffin. Pieces of thor-
oughly clean plate glass were also
used. Materials capable of giving a
high insulation were not so easily
had then as now. We knew very lit-
tle about mica ; and quartz fibers and
Mascart insulators could not be ob-
tained in the United States. Our elec-
trometer, however, was a great im-
provement upon any previous type,
and far removed from the simple
pith-ball device used by Franklin.
Knowing that an electrified body free
to move between two other electri-
fied bodies will always move from
the higher to the lower potential.
Lord Kelvin devised an instrument
consisting of four metallic sections,
symmetrically grouped around a
common center and inclosing a flat
free - swinging piece of aluminum
called a needle. The end of the kite
wire is connected with the needle and
the sections or quadrants are alter-
nately connected and then electrified, one set with a high posi-
tive potential, say five hundred volts, and the other with a cor-
responding negative value, say five hundred volts lower than the
ground.

Perhaps the most noteworthy result of these earlier experi-
ments was the discovery (for such we think it was) that showery
or thunderstorm weather was not the only condition giving
marked electrical efi^ects. The electrometer needle would be vio-

Mascart Electkometeb.

742

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lently deflected and large sparks obtained at other times. Day
after day as we flew the kite we found this high electrification of
the air, and we had no trouble in getting sparks even when the
sky was cloudless. One other discovery was made, and this would
have delighted Franklin more than the other, for he was always
most pleased when a practical aj)plication was in sight. Seated
within the instrument room of the observatory, with his back to
the open window through which came the kite wire carefully

Mascaet Electkometek, with 1'ucjtugkapiiic Kegister, July, 1892.
Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory.

insulated, and the kite high in air, the observer closely watching
the index of the electrometer could tell positively, and as quickly
as one outside watching the kite, whether it rose or fell. When
the kite rose, up went the voltage, and vice versa. In other
words, the electric potential of the air increased with elevation.
It must be confessed that the kites made to- day would have be-
haved better and flown with more steadiness than the one we
used. It may have been the varying wind, or more likely wrong
proportions in the kite and tail ; but our old hexagonal kite

FRANKLIN'S KITE EXPERIMENT.

743

would dive even when higli in air. Once we kept the kite aloft
from the forenoon until late at night, but that was something
unusual.

Passing now over six years in which we had been busy meas-
uring the electrifica-
tion of the air under
all conditions, and dis-
covering, for example,
that a snowstorm was
almost identical with
a thunderstorm in its
tremendous electrical
changes, we come to
the year 1891, when we
again flew kites for the
purpose of electrically
exploring the air. Our
experiments at the top
of the Washington Monument in 1885 and 1886 (especially those
during severe thunderstorms, when we obtained potentials as
high as three and four thousand volts just before the lightning),

100

+ 50

Volts

-50

100

.

I^V — -^ ~

4,45 P.M. 5 15 30 45 6

Collector Y Kite
June 30, 1891.

Electrical Potential of the Aik. Small collector about
fifteen feet from ground ; kite about five liundred feet
from ground.

Multiple Quadrant Electrometer, July, 1892. Blue llill Observatory.

had given us an insight into the strains and stresses in the air,
and taught us what to expect at such times. There was still
little improvement in the kite, but much better electrical appa-

744

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ratus was at hand. It may seem ridiculous, but we hauled nearly
a wagon-load of electrical apparatus to the summit of the hill,
and found occasion to use all of it. Our insulators were delicate
glass vessels, curiously shaped, containing sulphuric acid, and

KiTE-FLYINO ON RoOF OF CiTY BuiLDINCi.

able to hold with little leakage the highest known potentials.
Besides these fine Mascart insulators, we had hundreds of dis
tilled-water batteries and two electrometers, one a Mascart quad-
rant, the other a large multiple quadrant. The chief aim that
year was to secure by mechanical means (discarding the photo-
graphic and eye methods) a continuous record of the potential.
When we can study the potential at any moment and still have a
record of it, the relation of the electricity of the air to the pres-
sure, temperature, and moisture will be more easily investigated.
Among our records that year there is one date, June 30, 1891,
where a direct comparison of the electrification of the air fifteen
or twenty feet from the ground and at a height of about five
hundred feet is shown. In one, the potential was obtained by a
water-dropper collector from a second- story window in the ob-
servatory, and in the other was obtained by means of the kite.
It will be seen how much higher the kite values are, although the
kite was a much slower accumulator of electricity. In the next
year, 1892, the kite was flown several times during thunder-
storms, but generally during afternoon storms ; and in the lull

FRANKLIN'S KITE EXPERIMENT.

74 S

preceding the wind rush the kite would fall. It was not until
August 9th that we succeeded in going through a storm with the
kite still flying. About 11 a. m. the kite was sent aloft, and it
remained aloft until after 10 p. m. From the observatory one can
see to the west fifty or more miles, and a thunderstorm came
into view just about sunset. The kite was flying steadily, and
whenever a finger was held near the kite wire there was a per-
fect fusillade of sparks. As the darkness increased, the polished
metallic and glass surfaces in the large electrometer reflected the
sparks, now strong enough to jump across the air gaps, and the
incessant sizzling threatened to burn out the instrument. The
vividness of the lightning in the west also made it plain that the
storm was one of great violence, and as the observatory itself
would be jeopardized, one of the four men present proposed to
cut the wired string
and let the kite go.
But even that was
easier said than done,
for to touch the
string was to receive
a severe shock. It
was necessary, how-
ever, to get out of

I

J

I-

i o

D

la

the scrape, and one
of the party took the
kite string and broke
the connection with ^^
the electrometer and ^■'[■■HS
insulators. While he
was in the act of
doing this, the oth-
ers, who by this time
were outside the
building, saw a flash
of lightning to the
west of the hill. The
observer who was
undoing the kite wire
did not see this flash.
He saw a brilliant

flare-up in the electrometer, and at the same instant felt a severe
blow across both arms. Notwithstanding, he loosened the wire,
and, dropping an end without, it took but a few moments to make
it fast on the hillside some distance away from the observatory.
There it remained for the rest of the night. A 105- volt incandes-
cent lamp was placed between the end of the kite wire and a wire

Habgeave Kite.

746 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

running to the ground. There was some light, but no incandes-
cence of the filament. It was more in the nature of a creeping
of the charge over the outer glass surface of the lamp. Stinging
sparks were felt whenever the kite wire was touched. The storm
gradually passed over, the lightning being vivid and frequent in
the west and north, and, as we learned next day, doing consider-
able damage. The nearest flash to the hill, however, as well as
we could determine by the interval between thunder and flash,

Harokave Kite in Aik. Same kite as in preceding cut.

was forty-five hundred feet away, so that the discharge which the
observer felt while loosening the wire must have been a sympa-
thetic one. We obtained a photograph of the prime discharge,
and very curiously this shows a remarkable change of direction.

This year, in some interesting experiments made on the roof
of the Mills Building at San Francisco, it was noticed that the
roof, which has a covering of bitumen, was a good insulator.
Ordinarily one may touch the reel on which the kite wire is
wound without being shocked, but if a wire be connected with
the ventilating pipes running to the ground there are small
sparks. Introducing a condenser in the circuit, the intensity of
the spark is increased. It only remains to construct an appro-
priate coil of the kite wire and place within it another inde-
pendent coil. In the outer coil a quick circuit breaker may be
placed, and theoretically at least we shall transform down the

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 747

high potential and low amperage charge of the air to a current
of less potential and greater amperage. This can be pnt to work
and the long-delayed realization of Franklin's plan of harnessing
the electricity of the air be consummated. It may not be a profit-
able investment from the commercial standpoint, but no one
can say what this tapping of the aerial reservoir may lead to.
Determining the nature and origin of the aurora will be as great
a scientific achievement as utilizing the energy of Niagara Falls.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF.

By W. B. PAKKEE.

IN considering the psychology of belief we find ourselves face
to face at the very outset with the questions : (1) What is the
nature of belief ? (3) What are the conditions under which it
arises ? and (3) What are the causes for its appearance ? In try-
ing to answer these questions we have to say frankly, before cross-
ing the threshold of the topic : We have no key to secret cham-
bers ; we propose no revelations, but only another look over what
may be very familiar premises.

To the question, What is the nature of belief ? many answers
have been given. Hume declared, "Belief is nothing but a
more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object
than the imagination alone is ever able to attain." Prof. Bain
said, " Belief in its essential character is a phase of our active
nature." The answer we shall give to the question shall not
necessarily conflict with either of the answers given above. It is
best given by defining our point of view.

We look at man as a physical organism of rare sensitiveness,
played upon by the forces of the world. Light and sound, the
blowing wind and the solid ground, all make their varying sorts
of contact with the delicate, susceptible organism. But not all of
the myriad voices are heeded, not all the thousandfold seduc-
tions entice, not all the sweet odors or the pleasant touches of the
great world call forth response. In fact, this human organism is
not unlike that lowlier organism, the sponge, through whose length
and breadth streams from the great ocean flow. There is no cur-
rent in the Atlantic, no distant sea, however narrow, but may
send its contribution of richly laden sea water to the sponge's
mouth. But not all the nitrogen, carbon, iron, that the tide bears
is taken up by the sponge. It extracts only what it needs, what
it can assimilate, and to most that passes remains, perhaps, insen-
sible. So with our more complex organism — man. He, too, is
set in the midst of oceans of sensation. Sounds, sights, odors,

748 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tastes, and touches flow round liim in limitless variety. Of
many, perhaps of most, he is never conscious ; to only a few does
he respond.

Objection may be made to the analogy, but on examination I
am sure it will be found to be sufficiently close for our own pur-
pose. To the mind, sounds, tastes, colors, odors, and sights are
what foods are to the sponge — they are stimuli. Specialists on
the eye tell us that the range of light vibrations to which the
human eye responds is but a little break in a great series, like a
short stretch cut out of the middle of an inclined plane. So, too,
with our ears. They can intercept only a few of the possible
sound vibrations that make up the world of noises. As the
sponge, then, comes in contact with but the merest vialful of the
great ocean, the human organism also makes contact with mere
fragments of the world's infinity of stimuli.

There is a second respect in which the analogy holds good.
Just as, out of the limited flow of food-laden sea water that passes
its doors, the sponge chooses what it needs, what it can assimilate,
so the human organism, out of the limited variety of stimuli to
which it is competent to reach, chooses such to respond to as are
important.

Now, what has this to do with belief ? Simply this, that belief,
whatever else it may be, is a human function, and in so far as it
is vital and important it must be subject to the fundamental
laws of the organism. We can neither believe nor disbelieve
what we never come in contact with, and the stress of life causes
us to believe only what is important to us, as the sponge absorbs
only what will nourish it. I do not say we are incapable of be-
lieving a thing that is useless for us. It is possible for an organ-
ism to take and to treat as food that which is valueless. But in
the main, life means taking what is good, and taking what is not
good means death. This is as true of the mental life as it is of
the physical life, and for the most part the process of choice is
instinctive and unconscious. When the thermometer falls we
have sensations of discomfort — we may respond by taking off our
clothing. It is conceivable that we should believe it is getting
hot. But we do actually respond by putting on our overcoats,
which is good evidence that we believe it is cold.

This, I take it, is what Prof. Bain meant when he said, " In its
essential character belief is a phase of our active nature," and I
do not think it conflicts in any way with Hume's account of belief
as a " more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception than
the imagination is able to attain." In fact, both of these accounts
seem to me very true. What I mean by believing my friend's
word is not that I have a clear perception that his words repre-
sent definite things, but that I conceive the main thing he de-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 749

scribes or the opinion he declares in a thoroughly lively way — in
fact, so warmly do I embrace it that I am willing to act npon it.

The nature of belief is to be a part of our active nature ; it is
related to the will. We believe a thing when we accept it and
are willing to act upon it.

We set for our second question, What are the conditions
under which belief arises ? These are of two kinds. There are
mental conditions and physiological conditions.

The physiological conditions of belief will of course be prima-
rily those, if there be such, which are indispensable to all mental
activity. Now, since of physiological activities in general there
is an unfailing register in the circulation of the blood — i. e., inner-
vation of muscle or nerve at any point is accompanied by an in-
creased flow of blood to that point — we may take the flow of
blood as one means of registering physiological activity. With
this as a test we can afiSrm that there are physiological conditions
for all mental activity. In fact, the investigations of Mosso, the
Italian physiologist, enable us to measure the increased flow of
blood to the brain which accompanies simple mental operations.
A delicately balanced bed scale on which the subject is placed
reveals the fact that the simplest mental operations, as answer-
ing a question or working out a problem in mental arithmetic, is
registered in increased weight of the head — i. e., greater blood
supply. Increased rapidity of circulation is then a prime physio-
logical condition of belief. This gives a key to the conditions
under which belief arises. In general they may be summed up
under one head — heightened vascular and nervous activity.

If we stop and ask ourselves how did we come to believe such
and such a thing, we shall find in almost every case that it was
under excitement. Did ever a girl sit down calmly and reason to
the conclusion that she was in love ? Did ever a man or woman
reason to the conclusion that he or she was saved ? No, belief
does not come that way. Every orator learns that. It is not the
close- woven, incontestable argument that leads to belief. It may
be a good preparation, but often the result can be gained wholly
without it, and I doubt if it is ever indispensable. Men and
women are moved to believe, not by argument but by aroused
feeling. Just as when anger is aroused some outlet must be had,
so when the active nature is aroused something must be believed.
The person who at a revival meeting happens to be unmoved,
finds it hard even to conceive the intensity of conviction which
possesses the kneelers at the mourners' bench.

Anything, then, that arouses the physical activities may be
expected to stimulate belief. This will be found to be true. Ex-
citement of any sort seems to quicken conviction. Stimulants
arouse belief. I hope some one will make a thorough study of

750 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

this matter. I am convinced it would repay the labor. The dif-
ferent effects produced by different sorts of stimulants would
make a valuable contribution to this subject : for instance, coffee
seems to awaken almost as many doubts as it lays, while alcoholic
stimulants seem invariably to dispel doubt and enthrone certitude.

Some men depend upon their pipe to give them the needed
start to the conclusion of problems. I confess that I seldom feel
so sure of the solidity and reality of the world as when I have
my favorite amber stem firm set between my teeth. And much
of the tenacity of religious conviction of our Methodist and Bap-
tist brethren is due to conceiving the articles of their creed with
passion bred in the excitement of camp meetings.

Perhaps more marked than any of these is the effect of sexual
feeling. It is practically impossible for either of two people to
believe in the love of the other without feeling some warmth of
feeling himself. It is the feeling that awakens doubt or con-
viction.

This leads naturally to the interrelation of feelings and be-
liefs. The close relation of love and religion has been a topic
for ages. It is, I think, remarkable how many women disap-
pointed in love turn to religion for consolation. Girls and women
who have never revealed the slightest interest in church or creed
become, under the influence of an unrequited passion, the most
ardent believers. There is no reason in such cases to charge
hypocrisy. They only show how much belief depends upon emo-
tion. It is as if the feelings, deeply stirred, must react strongly.
So long as the nature is left passive, belief, whether about love,
politics, or religion, seems needless ; but once the feelings are
aroused, a hunger appears that demands satisfaction in some con-
viction or other.

The physiological conditions of belief, then, are, in a word,
stimulation — excitement. There are also, as we agreed, mental
conditions of belief. These are, as follows from the volitional
nature of the function, such as conduce to a heightened state
of all the mental activities, but especially the imagination and
the affections.

Repetition or pondering over a matter helps us to believe it.
We accept many a thing by its familiarity. Many of our creeds
are believed in this way. The mental condition of acquiescence
is brought about by frequent repetition, just as memory is made
firm by the same means. Pondering over things, themselves
imaginary, makes them real to us. Prophets come to believe in
themselves and their mission, not so much by reasoning about it,
but by steadfastly fixing the goal of their desire in the mind
until, out of a fancy, it grows to a clear conception, and from a
conception becomes, for them at least, a reality. So with us all ;

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 751

we gain rest in belief often by putting reason out of doors.
Maudsley says : " To say that the great majority of men reason
in the true sense of the word, is the greatest nonsense in the
world ; they get their beliefs as they do their instincts and their
habits, as a part of their inherited constitution, of their education,
and the routine of their lives."

That this is true is shown by popular superstitions. Almost
every hamlet in Europe has its own ghost story, believed ardent-
ly by the local inhabitants, and scoffed at by those of the next
village.

We have insisted that, because belief is a function of the active
nature, whatever conduces to greater physical or mental activity
will conduce to believing. We are prepared to believe, then, that
in joy we believe more than in grief. A low state of mind — sor-
row, remorse, melancholy — is .a field where doubts grow rank, but
the cheerful, successful, hopeful mind finds belief easy. It is
failure that makes us cautious ; success emboldens us and like
rumor, multiplies as it goes, loosing our fancy and making cred-
ible what was but just now impossible.

Again, inaction kills belief, while action of any sort nourishes
it. Phillips Brooks was fond of saying, " Do something with
your religion, and your religion will not die." So with all our
beliefs. Though it is often bred in our mind by pondering things
over, calling up images until they become fixtures, belief is oftener
born and nourished in earnest action. Lincoln's life gives a not-
able example. In his pioneer days he was a skeptic. Both Lamon
and Henderson say that up to the time Lincoln went to Wash-
ington as President he was not a professing believer in any
Christian faith. But during the days of the war, when Lincoln
bore tremendous burdens of action and anxiety, embodying and
enforcing the will of the nation, he became thoroughly religious.
It is told that in 1864, when the tension was at its highest, and
Lincoln's life was like the action of the heart of the whole people,
in that time the President was found more than once on his
knees at prayer. Lincoln's faith did not come to him by reason-
ing, but in the stress and strain of life. He laid hold upon certain
great truths with the grip of a hungering and thirsting nature.
It is in this way, I believe, that the strongest faith is attained.
With his whole nature stretched to its highest tension, no man
can avoid conviction. So long as he merely rests, remains in-
active, passive, he may get along without a faith ; but when his
soul is awakened and his feeling is aroused, believe he must.

We have seen that in both sets of conditions for belief, physio-
logical and psychical, the same thing holds ; because belief is a
function of our active nature, whatever stimulates and rouses to
action promotes belief.

7^2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

We may now turn to the third question we set ourselves:
What makes us believe ? In general and roughly, the answer
to this question is — the vital impulse. We believe because we
want to, because we have a constitutional trend toward belief.
This follows from the fact that belief is a form of action, and we
are driven by a passion to act. I have said this is constitutional ;
it is the very inwards of our vitals ; there is nothing that so sums
up the meaning and essence of life as the passion to do. A living
organism is more than a tense spring ; it is a spring growing con-
stantly tenser and fretting to unleash its own forces. This vital
tension makes all consciousness motor, and makes every idea a
discharging force with inevitable consequences in overt act or
intraorganic disturbance. To apply a suggestion to an active
mind is like applying anything to a baby's mouth. Both alike
show an instinctive tendency to close on whatever offers, be it
sealing-wax or sweetmeat. We see this plainly in the workings
of a savage mind. For a savage to conceive anything vividly is
to believe it. Some such indiscriminate appetency of belief offers
the only sufficient explanation for the vast higgledy-piggledy
mass of superstition that belongs to primitive peoples.

This is, I take it, what Bain meant when he said that the chief
fact of belief was primitive credulity. We are all naturally and
primarily credulous ; skepticism is a later development and comes
from the sort of experience that makes sadder but wiser men of
us. It is in life itself, in its appetency, its passion to act, that we
find the prime cause of belief, which is, in fact, merely a gratifica-
tion of this vital desire. As the sponge needs no other justifica-
tion for absorbing nitrogen from the sea water than its own
nutritive instinct, we need no other excuse for believing than the
instinct of activity.

Yet this is but one side of the matter, and plainly enough the
rougher, more general side of it. I eat because I want to, is but
an imperfect answer to the question why I eat, and even the
addition that I eat because the vital processes demand satisfac-
tion that can be provided only by food, still leaves the matter
much beclouded. In putting down belief as the gratification of a
vital desire, we have only found the big, crass motive for be-
lieving. To answer fully the question, why we believe, demands
that we go further. We must be prepared to find here, too, that
the ground is an organic, constitutional one. The first reason for
believing at all is because we are alive, not dead, and crave
action, not torpor. The reason why we believe as lue do, and the
sort of things we do believe, is because we have the sort of con-
stitution we have. We have seen already that, of tlie myriad
sights the sun makes, only a slight proportion affect our retina ;
we have learned that of all the thousandfold possible excitants

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 753

of nerve and muscle, comparatively few ever produce in us sensa-
tion. This is matter of mere physical organization. We are con-
scious of a much more important selective process. We know
that we do choose what things we shall respond to, and what not.
We are now brought to see the two chief phases of belief, the
voluntary and the involuntary sides of it.

Much has been said of the uncontrollable nature of belief.
This is no mere fancy. We do believe in an involuntary sort of
way, much as a child puts everything into its mouth. In fact.
Prof. James has said, " Whatever is uncontradicted is ipso facto
believed." In such a sense as this, belief is uncontrollable. But
the other side of the matter is more important. We may will to
believe — that is, we may choose what we will believe and what
we will not believe.

This possibility of choice depends upon two things, one sub-
jective, the other objective. To the former fact Prof. James
has already called attention in pointing out that the same
things may seem different to us.* My table-top, for instance,
will look like a rhombus, a square, or an oblong rectangle, depend-
ing upon the point of view. I deliberately choose to regard it as
a square, and in so doing ignore the other aspects, which
none the less remain equally true and real. The second fact
upon which the possibility of choice depends is a matter of
mental constitution. Prof. Royce gives this a very clear state-
ment. " We are prejudiced," he says, " in favor of regularity in
the world ; and so we continually manipulate the data of sense
for the sake of building up a notion of a regular, necessary, and
simple universe." Just as the sponge, again, by its constitution
of calcareous outer skeleton and soft inner substance, must prefer
to absorb from the varied materials offered by the passing current
lime and carbon, so we choose what we choose largely per force
of our racial and individual constitutions.

" And so," continues Prof. Royce, " though it is true that our
knowledge of the world is determined by what is given to our
senses, it is equally true that our idea of the world is determined
quite as much by our own active combination, completion, antici-
pation of sense experience." f It is unnecessary to repeat the
arguments upon which the conclusion Prof. Royce reaches is
based. I have already indicated them. Because we can receive
more sensations than we can follow, we choose to reject some and
• retain others, thus carrying out consciously the selective process
that our organization unconsciously begins. Now, what Prof.
Royce emphasizes is the fact that this conscious process of selec-

* Prof. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. i, p. 285.
f Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 322.

VOL. LI. — 56

754 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

tion, wliicli is inevitable, follows certain lines, namely, of sim-
plicity, necessity, regularity. As he puts it, we are prejudiced in
favor of certain aspects of the world, and impose them upon the
phenomena with which we come in contact.

This brings us again to the active side of belief. To quote
Prof. Royce again : " Every one is certain to be prejudiced,
simply because he does not merely receive experience, but him-
self acts, himself makes experience." That is, everybody makes
his own belief, his own knowledge to some degree. And if we
will only watch closely our own mental movements during the
process of coming to a decision, we shall see how true this is.
During such a process there is a period of balancing one side
against the other, of more or less keen scrutiny of reasons, of
swift discussion back and forth, accompanied by a tension and
excitement rising to the height of exaltation. There is perhaps no
attitude in which the mind shows greater activity than this of
questioning. We have many times felt the drop that comes
with decision. The swift and agile leaping back and forth, the
piercing looks cast on this side and on that, are all stopped,
sometimes for very weariness, but almost always with a slight
sense of depression, like settling after flight. The act of de-
ciding, of accepting one of two alternatives, does really seem,
at the moment of doing it, like a lower form of action. It is
not intellectual, but volitional. I am quite sure no man ever
chose a sweetheart without a little sense of coming down from
the freedom and daring of uncertainty. It is like the feeling
we may imagine a cloud to have on condensing into rain. It
has become effective at the cost of freedom and elasticity. This
condensing, dampening turn of conception is belief, and it is
our will, our activity, the momentum of our life that bring it
to pass.

Though belief is thus primarily an expression of the instinc-
tive force of life, determined by intelligence and choice, what we
may believe is a matter of circumstance. To believe what one
has never heard of is manifestly impossible. Further, inasmuch
as belief means laying hold on a conception, accepting it as a
basis of action, it is necessary not only to have the matter come
before one's mind, but also to attend to it — to see it clearly.
Hume was right in insisting on the liveliness, clearness, perma-
nence, and firmness of the conception that is believed. We do not
as a rule believe our dreams, but let a dream recur again and
again, and few of us will be able to refuse it credence. Many
things come to be believed by their traditional weight of authority.
The creeds of Christendom have come down to us with the force
of centuries behind them. They are accepted in their traditional
form chiefly because by multitudinous repetitions they have been

FREE-HAND DRAWING IN EDUCATION. 755

beaten in upon the mind, and in most cases have been yielded
credence without question or reasoning.

Finally, at the peril of tediousness, let me repeat, belief is a
vital function. Whatever arouses and stimulates the active na-
ture, looked at from the physiological or psychical point of view,
helps to awaken and further belief. The forces that we call life
make for belief. We all want to believe. Primitive credulity is
an experience for us all, and it is just this vital side of it that
accounts for our tendency to accept rather than to reject. So
long as belief remains an active function, and so long as life
remains a bundle of functions united to delight in their activity,
we shall have a healthy desire to believe rather than to doubt.

FREE-HAND DRAWING IN EDUCATION.

By H. G. FITZ.

MR. CHARLES WHEELOCK, Head Inspector of the Regents
of New York State, voicing the opinion of fifty-five hun-
dred teachers in this State, says, that for the twenty years during
which drawing has been a part of the curriculum of the public
schools, "the results are not much of anything." *

This statement, coming from such a source, is worthy the care-
ful attention not only of teachers, but of all taxpayers as well.
If true, it seems that for each child in the public schools of this
State about forty hours a year are wasted ; this means an aggre-
gate of years of time and thousands of dollars.

The Art Students' League of New York city gathers pupils
from most of the States in the Union. It stands second to no art
school in America. Mr. Henry Prellwitz, a well-known artist of
this city, and instructor of the portrait class at the Pratt Insti-
tute, Brooklyn, N. Y., has for some time past been Director of
the League, and has had ample opportunity for studying the
work of those admitted to the classes. His opinion is that " ap-
plicants who have been trained in other than pure art schools
have received no benefit from their lessons in drawing ; their
efforts have been misguided, the undoing of which results in
loss of time, and their progress is less rapid than those who
have received no such previous training." Mr. Edward A. Bell,
a well-known figure painter, who was awarded the bronze medal
at the Paris International, also second Hallgarten prize at the
New York Academy of Design, who has had several years' expe-

* School Journal, June 10, 1896, p. 728,

756 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rience as a teacher, agrees entirely witli the opinion expressed by-
Mr. Prellwitz. Mr. D wight W. Tryon,* N. A., Professor of Fine
Arts, Smith College, whose reputation as an artist is interna-
tional, whose pictures have been practically loaded with medals,
the list of which would be too long to publish here, has had vast
experience as a teacher, but has taken no note of the previous
training of the pupils that come under his observation. He says
of the average adult, " The power of observation seems hope-
lessly atrophied"

The above-quoted opinions of men who have a reputation as
artists in the highest art circles seem to corroborate Mr. Whee-
lock, and extend the application to the whole country, the opin-
ion of the " art teachers' associations " to the contrary notwith-
standing.

The late Mr. William M. Hunt, reputed one of the ablest art
teachers of America, said to his pupils : f " You don't drill enough.
None of you know what mechanical drawing is. Go into the
schools where that and nothing else is taught, and try to add
their exactness to what you are now doing. . . . One thing let me
tell you : you must learn to make exact lines." X This opinion,
held almost universally, that the mechanical drill of drawing
exact measured lines and spaces leads to the exact observing of
lines and spaces, form and color, has led to the use of mechanical
drawing methods to obtain accuracy of location in educational
free-hand drawing. It seems plausible ; but mechanical drawing,
like writing, is to a degree technical. " What arts and skills a
young man may learn of any master for the sake of mere advan-
tage is in itself just as indifferent to the educator as the color he
chooses for his clothes."*

By actual measure the error that will escape the effort of
the mechanical draughtsman, directed for fifteen minutes to its
removal unaided by any mechanism, will be four times as
great as the error that will elude the figure painter for a like
time, opinions of the figure painter to the contrary notwith-
standing.

The following table shows the error, in inches and fractions,
and angle in degrees, that will be left by the average adult re-
corded in the several vocations named :

* Tryon, Dwigbt William, born in Hartford, Conn., 1849. Pupil of Daubigny, Jacques-
son de la Cbcvreuse and Guillement. A. N. A. Member of American Water Color Society.
Medals, American Art Association, 1886 and 1887. Second Ilallgarten Prize, 1887. Ell-
worth Prize, Chicago, 1889. Palmer Prize, Chicago, 1880. Webb Prize, 1889, and many
more. (Catalogue Society of American Artists, 1891.)

f W. M. Hunt. Lectures, second series, p. 17. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1883.
X Ibid., p. 36.

* Herbart. Introduction to General Pedagogics.

FREE-HAND DRAWING IN EDUCATION.

7S7

A.* Figure painters of national repute

•08

B.

C.
D.
E.

0.

Landscape painters, telegraph operators, coasting and yacht
mates and masters, village blacksmiths, expert baseball

players 'l*/

Mechanical engineers '30

Mechanical draughtsmen "40

Teachers, journeymen house carpenters, farmers thirty years

old or more *50

Children eight years of age 2.00

4°

r

9-5°
50°

Test No. 1
ASSISTED ATTENTION

Test No. 2
VOLUNTARY ATTENTION

To remove opinion the test must be equally new to all tested.
It must be easy enough for the child of eight to draw quickly ;
difficult enough, so that the most expert of any age will be unable
to reproduce it per-
fectly. To be novel
to all it must be ab-
stract. The above
table is the result of
measures obtained in
the following way :

Tests No. 1 and
No. 2, mechanically
enlarged to three feet by two feet, are placed vertically before
groups of from twenty to fifty or more individuals. The copies
are drawn on paper nine by six inches, and must not be raised
from the horizontal position.

The usual mechanical aids to accuracy, such as measuring by
the hand or pencil held between the eye and the object, are not
allowed in any way.

For test No. 1 the operator calls attention to the chart that is
to be proportionally reproduced by words that in no way hint
at the position or proportion, and by motion, pointing out and
holding for a few seconds, until recorded, each point on the chart.
The time consumed will be about two minutes, and the result
tabulated for age and error may be read in line No. 1 on large
chart, showing no variation for age. The least error is nothing;
greatest, six tenths of an inch ; average, three tenths of an inch.
Between this line and the top of the chart lies all the error of eye
and hand. The eye of the child sees as accurately as the adult's.

Test No. 2 is to be drawn under exactly the same conditions
as the above, except that no ivord or motion must aid the atten-
tion of those drawing, either to the chart or their copy of it. The
attention given it must be voluntary. The result, measured and
charted by age, position, and angle error, may be read for any
age — eight to twenty — on line No. 2. This curve is the center of

* These letters will be found on chart, indicating the relative position of the centers of
these groups.

758 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

groups selected and associated by the scliool examinations into
classes. The adult end of it (seventy-five per cent) is the position
of the center of groups trained in the schools of the United States
and part of Europe. The adult farmer who does nothing else
stands on exactly the same center as those graduated from the
high schools and colleges who have been licensed to teach. The
youth of the rural districts stand five per cent higher than the
adult, but they will not all be farmers ; many of them will drift
into the cities and become successful business men with a center
at eighty-five per cent or more, which is the point of accuracy
attained by all those of any profession reputed hy co-workers to
have marked ability, which means, as read from the chart, the
successful have as much power to direct their own attention to
the uninteresting thing as can be lent to them by external aid.
That the average school training has carried those who have fol-
lowed it no nearer success in drawing than those ivho have not
been so trained seems to go far toward taking Mr. Wheelock's
statement out of the realm of doubt and extending the scope of
it to the school drawing of Europe as well as to the "great State
of New York."

Not the least singular of the facts brought out by these ex-
periments is that, while the figure painter (position A) needs
ninety-five per cent of the power measured by the test, and the
landscape painter (position B) has acquired ninety-two per cent
by years of labor, the telegraph operator (also position B), whose
training certainly has not been toward eye accuracy, should also
be able to locate by observed jjroportion and direction to ninety-
two per cent. By what means did he get the power to locate
with an accuracy almost double that possessed by the average
mechanical engineer ? The telegraph operator has been trained
in voluntary attention to such an extent as to be able to listen to
certain sounds, not in themselves interesting, and inhibit all oth-
ers. Herbert Spencer says success in everything depends on the
power of observation.

It seems that the foundation of the power of observation is
voluntary attention.

Balzac is quoted as saying, " Almost the whole of human
genius consists in observing well." And Taine writes, " Suc-
cess in life depends on knowing how to be patient, how to endure
drudgery, how to make and remake, how to recommence and
continue without allowing the tide of anger or the flight of the
imagination to arrest or divert the daily effort." *

Prof. William James writes : " The faculty of bringing back
a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of

* Art in the Netherlands, p. 23.

FREE-HAND DRAWING IN EDUCATION. 759

judgment, character, and will. . . . An education which, will im-
prove the faculty will be the education par excellence" *

Whether any one, in the ordinary lay interpretation of the act,
is ever able to draw or not is of very little educational impor-
tance. But, since we see that the ability of the telegraph opera-
tor to attend by ear gives him also the power to attend by eye,
we may infer that training to conscious and effective effort by
one sense trains all others to some extent. The inference seems
rational that training one to attend by eye will strengthen the
power of observation in all directions.

The above-quoted opinions all seem to point to the ability to
set aside the things that clamor for attention and attend to those
that ordinarily escape our observation, as the foundation of
success.

Line No. 2 (on chart) differs from line No. 1, because the sub-
ject must, before an attempt to locate is possible, determine which
of the points will be taken first. This having been selected from
the seven and located, six remain. The choice must be made six
times, the location seven, each of which is the result of a distinct
conscious effort of the will in " bringing back a wandering atten-
tion," which, if left free, would be like Huldy's feelin's described

by Lowell :

All ways to once her feelin's flew

Like sparks in burnt-up paper."

To arrest those sparks, bring them back, and hold them for a
fraction of a second, means a considerable conscious mental
effort, each of which brings nearer the state where fatigue pre-
vents further effort and the sparks are followed instead of driven ;
hence the curve.

The very young child has a good conception of the vertical
and horizontal positions and of their conventional representatives
in lines. Bat when the line is oblique, the concept of it, as
oblique, is altogether insuflQcient for representation. It slants
right or left. This or that end is high, how much ? f

The composite drawing of fifty-three pupils, average age

* Psychology, William James, p. 228.

+ In the tests for liue 2 no lines were horizontal, none vertical, none parallel to each
other IT the mai-gin of the paper, no line prolonged would hit an angle. On the nine-by-
six-inch paper the triangle sides were 3'4 inches, 3"05 inches, 1-55 inches. The longer
diagonal of the trapezium measured 4'1 inches; the sides, 3 inches, 2-87 inches, 2*90
inches, and 2'86 inches. The measurements for the chart were obtained by placing a test
sheet over the drawn one, matching the edges with care, and making with a point holes for
the true positions of corners, as mechanically located on test sheet. The errors were ag-
gregated on a slip of paper and divided by the number of points (7). The greatest angle
error was then selected and divided by 24 (because that figure seemed to make the angle
error coefFective with the distance error). The result is added to the average of the first.

760

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

eleven (position on cliart at 9, a year and a half above the aver-
age of their age), shows the vertical recorded nearly upright
fifty-one times, greatest variation twenty degrees, while the ob-

COMPOSITE or 53
AVERAGE AGE IIYLARS

POSITIOM e ON CHART
0 POINTS AIMED AT

lique lines of the trapezium show the maximum possible varia-
tion forty-five degrees, with few lines near the right slant.

The so-called child drawing, so much written about of late,
that Herbert Spencer and many others deem of educational im-
portance, may be described as line making without conscious
effort — the graphic record of a muscular movement associated
with a concept. It becomes more plausible as years advance,
but never gets beyond caricature, and has no direct educational
value.

Drawing, to have educational value, must be the graphic
record of a perceived fact.

divided by 2. To get per cent, divide bv 2 again and subtract from 100, because yg^
inch = 1 per cent. Thus, total error, 2'1 inches; greatest angle error, 7'2°.
2-1 -- 7 = -3 ; T-2°-:- 24 = 3 ;

•3

;3 100

^H-2 = •3h-2 = -15; ^

85 per cent.
When time is limited and an approximation is desired, the greatest angle error treated
as above will give a result within two per cent of an average for a class.

The angle error may ))e ignored where the personal position is not desired, as it will
change the average center but little, the personal position very much, particularly of the
concept recorders.

FREE-HAND DRAWING IN EDUCATION. 761

The drawing in itself is of no consequence except as it stands
for the record of an exiiloration and discovery. The teacher, to
succeed, must be able at a glance to determine whether the child
is recording concept or percept.

The result of training the child to explore, discover, and re-
cord is shown by the dotted line beginning at the eleventh year
on line 2 of large chart, ending at fourteenth year (No. 30).
This line is the history of a parochial school. The pupils had
thirty minutes' exercise a week for about thirty weeks a year up
to the first circle, from then on one hour a week for about thirty-
five weeks a year. The average rate of increase in power of ob-
servation equals maintaining the average rate from the ninth
to the tenth year, to the fourteenth ; twenty per cent above the
average of their age, ten per cent above the adult average. The
line beginning in a circle at the sixteenth year, ending at nine-
teenth year at No. 19, is the history of a high-school class under
the same drawing teacher as the above described. They received
four times the training (one hundred and eighty hours a year)
given the parochial school, and made, as the chart shows, exactly
the same increase in two years that the former compassed in
eighteen months. All the lines between these two are of classes
trained by the same drawing teacher and the same method ; the
numbers in which they terminate indicate the number of pupils
of which the circle is the center.

Is it not possible that between the lines 30 and 19 we may
read the record of the atrophy suffered because of too much
instructing, by putting the child in possession of facts instead
of faculties, described by Dr. H. E. Armstrong, F. R. S., and in
the article * in which he also writes : " In the future all subjects
must be taught scientifically at school, in order to inculcate those
habits of mind which are termed scientific habits ; the teaching
of scientific methods — not the mere shibboleths of some branch
of natural science " ?

We see by the chart that the class that began to study draw-
ing as a science at eleven, at twelve and a half had reached
seventy-seven per cent, three and a half years in advance of the
later class ; they reached eighty-five per cent four years in ad-
vance of the (31) boys of the high-school class, and that at an
expenditure of one fourth the time.

The value of this training is necessarily a matter of opinion.
The regular teachers of the classes shown on the chart at posi-
tions 29, 28, 33, 51, 39, 44, estimate that the one hour per week
exercise in drawing as a science study, by the reduction of time
required for a certain subject, makes the class of fourteen years

* Popular Science Monthly, September, 1894.

762

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

equal one of fifteen years not so trained. Four of tlie teachers
place the gain at from forty to fifty per cent in study power.
One teacher (class position 44) puts the gain at one hundred per

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YEARS

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20

Explanation of Marks on Voluntary Attention Chart.

21,600 measurements of 2,700 individuals.

The error to two inclies may be read in tenths of an inch at right-hand end of horizontal line,

at tlie left end read up the lines are five per cent apart ; 0 i>er cent arbitrarily placed at

eighth year ; vertical hnes divide year spaces fourth tb twenty-first.
Line No. 1 (at thirty inches and eighty-five per cent). ^Externally sustained attention. All

those reputed by coworkers to be superior are at or above this line by test No. 2.
Line No. 2. — Voluntary attention. Average line of centers of groups trained in the schools

of many States in the Union as well as Europe.
Line No. 3 is the high limit of the above and ends in A. x marks the individuals through

which the line is drawn. From fourth year to fourteenth all are females. From fifteenth

year up all are males. ? Marks the rather doubtful lower limit of groups.
© Marks center of composite drawing, average age eleven. ^ High and low limit marks.
Kl Marks the center of three hundred and seventy pupils trained by free-hand drawing as a

science study.
0 Marks known positions.
^^ Movement between measured centers.

' Supposed movement.

oA Figure painters measured in the order' named : E. A. Bell, Clark Crum, C, C. Curran,

Kenyon Cox, Joseph Boston, Arthur B. Davies, Henry Prellwitz.
oE Fitty-three teachers. ^ High and low limit marks.

cent in geometry, claiming to have covered certain ground satis-
factorily in half the time usually needed for a class without the
special training.

By imagining line No. 3 (the high limit of group) prolonged
downward and to the left, three years, and line No. 2 treated in
the same way to the same age (one year), it will be seen that at
the age of twelve months children are almost infinitely separated

FREE-HAND DRAWING IN EDUCATION.

1^1

in power of observation. At eight the average has reached,
through the training of life's experiences, to within hailing dis-
tance of the leaders eighty-five per cent away ; at fourteen the
average will be seen to have gained on the leaders so much that
only thirty-two per cent divides them. At twenty only twenty-
five per cent stands between the average and the highest human

100%

90%
85%

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Group E.

• Personal positions of fifty-three
teacliers. Ages placed at thir-
teen to twenty for comparison.

O Average center.

Change in form of

class (29).
■ » Centers

months apart

SIX

« Personal positions of fifty-
one pupils, class (51).

O Center.

+ Successful competitors for
Pulitzer scholarship, 189G,
Fifty per cent of the candi-
dates came from this class.

attainment. By a more complete co-
ordination of scientific and educational
methods, I believe there will be no
trouble in raising the average, now at line 2, to the dotted line
above it, beginning at eighth year, passing through (Fig. 30) at
fourteenth year, ending at (B) twentieth year.

This would make the power of the average child at twelve
years, by the above- described test, equal to that now acquired by
the average adult, and the gain would not be attained by giving
power to a few already bright pupils who do not need it, but by
bringing all those now weak up to or above the present average.
(See charts 51 and 29.) The position of the fifty-three teachers *
(chart E) represents as nothing else could the value of the in-
struction received in the common and high schools in which they
were trained, of which Mr. Wheelock says the results are " not
much of anything." On this chart we find jive individuals above
the eighty -five-per- cent line, while chart 51 shows nineteen higher
than eighty-five per. cent and only two heloiv the average line, as
compared with sixteen below in the former group.

The unsatisfactory condition mentioned by the Regents' Head
Inspector is due almost entirely to the methods of examining

* This group may not represent the average standing of teachers at all, and it is only
just to the many noble workers in the field of education to state that, so far as measured,
all having charge of classes averaging over thirteen years of age range between eighty and
ninety-five per cent, as the successful in all vocations do.

764 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

drawing. Teacliers will teach for that which the examiner seeks,
and the drawings shown will be as free from error, as neat and
clean, as the spelling would be under the same plan of examina-
tion, and have no more educational value. The ability to locate
correctly is the foundation of success in free-hand drawing, and
to a great extent in all the graphic arts. It can be as well tested
in five minutes as in fifty. A glance at line 1, eighth year, shows
that if the teacher has lent no greater aid to the class than sus-
taining the attention during the exercise, the drawing that would
without that aid be so badly located as to be almost unrecogniz-
able may be made to appear on the eighty-five-per-cent line, ten
per cent better than the average adult unaided would make it.
That this is true will be recognized by all teachers who have
studied the exhibitions of pupils' drawings where a whole class
seems to do excellent work. Sustaining the attention of the pupil
is invaluable in instruction ; by its power the child of any age
above eight may learn as much fact in two minutes as the aver-
age adult can unaided in fifteen (see lines 1 and 2), but sustain-
ing the attention makes voluntary effort unnecessary ; that which
makes conscious effort needless makes it im^wssihle. The power
to direct the attention unaided by outside stimulus becomes atro-
phied, observation impossible. The use of transparent planes,
the theory of perspective, and all devices by which " drawing is
made easy,^' only serve to rob it of educational value by putting
the child in possession of technical tricks which make observing
facts of no account.

Having the child draw the familiar object from Nature is an-
other fatal mistake. The familiar object and language co-ordi-
nate to perfection. The child may study and try to represent the
difference between tivo objects as seen without danger, but he will
correctly describe that in language long before he can graphically,
because he can, while looking, put what he sees into words ; but
to draw, he must look at a blank page and recall, what ? The
strongest impression, whether because of the recency, frequency,
or intensity of it. I have known the recall to reach back a whole
week, a month, three months, because of the greater intensity put
into some former effort to observe objects associated with those
to be represented, the concept of which the pupil, though four-
teen years of age, was powerless to inhibit. It is to this inability
to indefinitely continue the inhibition of the conceived thing,
rather than to lack of knowledge or defective vision,* that most

* Lucien Howe, M. D. (Popular Science Monthly, August, 1895), seems to think that
eyesight plays an important part in accuracy as seen in drawing. The facts do not sustain
the idea. A gentleman who has drawn the test twenty times, with an average error for
each location of "075 of an inch, on one occasion made an error of only '033 of an inch,
1'5°, and at this time it was discovered that so considerable was the astigmatism of his

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 765

of tlie local errors seen in the works of many masters, old and
modern, may be attributed.

If the free-hand drawings were set aside or destroyed as soon
as made, it would remove the temptation that now exists to
waste time in technical finish that might to the pupil's lasting
benefit be spent in new effort at discovery, discriminating differ-
ences in various inclosed areas, values, or colors.

"We might then come to be able to see the beautiful in Nature
spread at our feet, and in common things at our very door, and
not as now, under the name of art, hew down the mind of the
rising generation to the narrow notion that the beautiful must
be sought only on the canvases and in the conventionalities of
the past or present age of interpreters, however exquisite or
grand their works may be.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

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

C0RRESP0NDA2SrT DE l'iNSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETC.

XI. — THE EXISTING METHODS OF TAXATION.

SUBJECTS OF TAXATION.— The subjects of taxation, to
use a happy generalization of Justice Field of the United
States Supreme Court (Foreign-held Bond Case, 15 Wallace),
"are persons, property, and business. Whatever form taxation
may assume, whether as duties, imposts, excises, licenses, or direct,
it must relate to one of these subjects. It is not possible to con-
ceive of any other, though as applied to them taxation may be
exercised in a great variety of ways."

With this postulate we are legitimately led up to the consid-
eration of the ways or methods by which the State or Govern-
ment, in virtue of its sovereignty, and on the ground of necessity,
and solely for its support, taxes or compels contributions from
the three above-enumerated subjects, for the purpose of defraying
its expenditures.

Apportionment of Taxation. — This department of the sub-
ject of taxation, while the most practical and therefore the most
interesting, is at the same time the one most obscure, and the one
about which there is the most striking difference of opinion among
writers on economic and fiscal subjects. The four maxims or
canons laid down by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, by

right eye, which was chiefly used, that when looking at a pinhole ten inches off he saw
two, about one tenth of an inch apart, and between these several more, yet the accuracy
obtained was the highest ever recorded — 98'S4 per cent.

766 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

reason, as lie claims, of their eminent justice and equality, have
obtained such world-wide celebrity that they are almost always
referred to as of unquestionable authority in all discussions of
this subject, and have been thus characterized by an eminent
French student and writer (M. Menier) on taxation : " When a
legislator," he says, " brings forward a new scheme for taxation,
he is always careful to say that it is not in contradiction with
even one of these rules ; and at the same time he never fails to
invoke them as authority during a debate, even when he is actu-
ally scheming to transgress them."

These rules are four in number, and are as follows : 1. " The
subjects of every state ought to contribute to the support of the
Government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respect-
ive abilities — that is, in proportion to the revenue which they
respectively enjoy under the i^rotection of the state." In the ob-
servation or neglect of this maxim consists what is called the
"equality or inequality of taxation." 2. "The tax which each
individual is bound to pay ought to be certain and not arbitrary.
The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be
paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor and to
every other person. The certainty of what each individual ought
to pay is, in taxation, of so great importance that a very consid-
erable degree of inequality (I believe, from the experience of all
nations), is not near so great an evil as a very small degree of un-
certainty." 3. " Every tax ought to be levied at the time and in
the manner in which it is most likely to be convenient for the
contributor to pay it." 4. " Every tax ought to be so contrived
as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people
as little as possible over and above what it brings into the public
treasury of the state."

But although almost universally accepted as the embodiment
of the highest wisdom, the above four maxims or canons of Adam
Smith have been and are, nevertheless, open to some criticism.
In the first place, they are so general in their nature and so lack-
ing in any precise rule or test for application, that they stand in
the light of aphorisms ; somewhat as the maxims " Honesty is the
best policy," " Never put off till to-morrow what can be done to-
day," etc., to which all respect is always given, except the desir-
able one of practical use in actual cases. In fact, the originators
of the very worst forms of taxation now existing might and
probably would plead that their methods or practices were based
on the ideas of Adam Smith, or were as near in conformity to
them as was possible under the existing circumstances. Again,
the first maxim or canon embodies two propositions antagonistic
to each other, and one of which can hardly be considered correct ;
namely, that every citizen should pay taxes for the support of

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 767

the Government in proportion to his ability. For if, as almost all
authorities are now agreed, taxes are the compensation which
persons or property pay to the state for protection, then it of ne-
cessity follows that where there is no protection, ability is no
just guide for assessment. " Where there is no protection," said
Judge Story (in the case of United States vs. Rice, 4 Wheaton,
276), " there can be no claim to allegiance or obedience." And that
Adam Smith did not intend to have his first proposition fully
accepted would seem evident from the circumstance that he added
to it, and qualified it with these other words, " that is, in propor-
tion to the revenue which they [the citizens] respectively enjoy
under the protection of the state." Montesquieu, who wrote at
an earlier date, also enunciated even more clearly this common-
sense and equitable principle, when he said (see Spirit of the
Laws), that " the public revenues ought not to he measured by the
people's abilities to give, but by luhat they ought to give." " And
what they ought to give," as has been remarked by another
writer, " can, of course, be only measured by the benefit they are
to derive."

Discriminating Taxation. — The proposition that "the sub-
jects of every state ought to contribute to the support of the
Government in proportion to their respective abilities " embodies
also, and inferentially favors the policy of discriminating taxa-
tion, and finds popular expression and justification in the asser-
tion that the rich man needs more protection from the state than
the poor man, has more interests to be guarded, and it is there-
fore right that he should pay more in proportion to his fortune.
" It is just," says Sismondi, the Italian economist, " that all should
support the Government in return for the protection it gives to
their persons and properties, in proportion to the advantages
society guarantees to them, and the expenses which it incurs on
their account." But the question is pertinent, to whom or to
what class of its members does society afford the most protection
or render the most service ? Is there any standard by which
such proportionality can be even approximately determined ?
To these questions Mr. John Stuart Mill has made the following
answer :

" It can not be admitted," he says, " that to be protected in the
ownership of ten times as much property is to be .ten times as
much protected. Whether the labor and expense of the protec-
tion, or the feelings of the protected person, or any other definite
thing be made the standard, there is no such proportion as the
one supposed, nor any other definable proportion. If we wanted to
estimate the degrees of benefit which different persons derive
from the protection of Government, we should have to consider
who would suffer most if that protection were withdrawn; to

768 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which question, if any answer could be made, it must be that
those would suffer most who were weakest in mind or body, either
by nature or by position. Indeed, such persons would almost in-
fallibly be slaves. If there were any justice, therefore, in the
theory of justice under consideration, those who are the least ca-
pable of helping or defending themselves, being those to whom the
protection of Government is the most indispensable, ought to pay
the greatest share of its price ; the reverse of the true idea of dis-
tributive justice, which consists not in imitating but in redress-
ing the inequalities and wrongs of Nature. Government must be
regarded as so pre-eminently a concern of all that to determine
who are most interested in it is of no real importance. If a per-
son or class of persons receive so small a share of its benefit as
make it necessary to raise the question, there is something else
than taxation which is amiss, and the thing to be done is to rem-
edy the defect instead of recognizing it and making it a ground
for demanding less taxes."

M. Menier, of France, widely known as a manufacturer of
chocolate, but who has shown himself to be an economist of re-
pute and a most valuable member of the French Chamber of
Deputies, in a comprehensive treatise on taxation {U Impost sur
le Capital, Faris, 1874:-, English translation, London, 1880) re-en-
forces the conclusions of Mr. Mill respecting the popular theory
of discriminating taxation by different though not less forcible
arguments and illustrations, taking as a text the following remark
of M. Ldon Faucher, another distinguished French writer on eco-
nomic subjects : " It seems just that he who, thanks to his talents,
to his property, or his capital, procures for himself and his family
the enjoyments of luxury should pay to the state a tribute pro-
portionately more considerable than he who has only the produce
of his daily labor to nourish and bring up his family." " To
those," says M. Menier, " who do not reflect, nothing seems more
simple than this proposition. A minimum of wants is spared
taxation. In proportion as income increases the tax increases.
Let us see the consequences.

" A principle is or is not. A principle recognized as true ought
never to be given up, whatever may be its apparent dangers. Once
admitted, it must be submitted to, followed out to the end, and its
consequences accepted. If by following out its consequences we
perceive that we are getting at the absurd, we must return to the
principle, and subject it again to the touch of observation. There
are many who content themselves with stopping halfway, not
daring to advance, and afraid to turn back to discuss the principle
on which they have long relied. They are the inventors of
compromises, who adjourn questions instead of solving them.

" But taxation, it is claimed, may be ' wisely progressive." I

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 769

know no more concerning a 'wise progression' than I do about a
'wise addition' or a 'wise multiplication.' A progression is or it
is not. If it is insignificant, then it is a delusion. The inequality it
aims at destroying subsists intact. If a true progression in taxa-
tion is established, here are the results we obtain : We will sup-
pose, for example, that the tax ought to be trebled when the
income is doubled ; then a tax of 10 francs on 100 francs of income
would rise to 200 francs on 2,000 francs, to 600 francs on 4,000
francs, to 1,800 francs on 8,000 francs, to 5,400 francs on 16,000
francs, to 16,200 francs on 32,000 francs, to 48,600 francs on 64,000
francs, and to 145,000 francs on 128,000 francs. I conclude that
the principle that ends in such a consequence can only be false.
What ! the tax would one day exceed my fortune ! I should be
the debtor of the fiscal system that had absorbed more than my
revenue. Then it would be for my interest not to augment it!
I shall have accumulated only for the treasury, and the more I ac-
quire the more rapidly I shall be despoiled. . . . That system may
suit Utopians and retrograde j^eople who completely absorb the
individual in the state, but it will not suit those who, relying on
facts, think the greatness and wealth of the state ought to pro-
ceed from the development of individuals. It may suit those
who seek equality at the basis, but not those who seek equality at
the summit. The theory of progressive taxation is a vestige of
the old prejudice that regarded wealth as an evil, as a sort of
theft from the rest of the country, and that it would be equitable
to make the rich man atone or make reparation for the possession
of his fortune and his pleasures. In warlike civilizations, where
wealth was based on violence, it is not difiicult to understand the
legitimacy of this prejudice; but it finds no warrant in our in-
dustrial civilization, where all wealth, to be legitimate, must be
based on the appropriation of natural agents to our wants. But
the partisans of a wise progression in taxation have found means
of escaping from the absurdity of the above consequence — namely,
confiscation. They propose that above a certain figure the pro-
gression shall stop. Under such a system they would favor him
who has but little money ; but they would favor still more him
whose wealth exceeds a certain limit. If you have £4,000 a year,
you pay the maximum of the progression; if you have more
than £4,000, the progression vanishes. A principle which ends in
such consequences does not exist."

M. Menier's Rules. — To establish a system of taxation which
will be equitable and effective without involving the principle of
progressive or discriminating taxes, M. Menier regards the fol-
lowing constructive rules as fundamental :

1. Taxation should never be laid on circulating capital, " since
every tax that obstructs circulation impedes production in a geo-

TOL. LI. — 67

770 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

metrical ratio." 2. Taxation should be levied on the commodity ;
never on persons. 3. Taxes should never impede the liberty of
labor. 4. Every tax ought to be levied as cheaply as possible.
5. There should be but one sole and single tax — namely, on fixed
capital*

The True Measure op the Burden of Taxation on Pro-
duction.— In addition to the maxims, or canons, proposed by
Adam Smith, another one, first pointed out by Mr. Edward At-
kinson, of Massachusetts, is worthy of being added, and may even
be regarded in the light of a fundamental principle ; and that is,
that the hurden or injurious effect of a tax on j^roduction or ex-
change is not to be measured by the ratio ivhich the tax may bear
to the gross value of the subject of taxation, but 7'ather by the pro-
portion which the tax bears to the profit which might normally or
naturally result from undertaking a certain line of industry or
product. To practically illustrate this, let us take an example.
Let us suppose two men, A and B, to start shops for the manu-
facture of machinery, each with a capital of $20,000, and that each
in his operations expends $20,000 for coal and iron, $40,000 in
wages, and $4,000 for transportation of the raw materials to the
shops for manufacture. The total cost of the annual product of
each shop will then be $64,000, or a little more than three times
the capital ; and a sale of their respective products, at the net
price of $66,000, would yield the owners $2,000, or ten per cent
profit. Now, suppose further that under such conditions A has a
tax imposed on him of three and an eighth per cent upon the value
of his product ; it may be a customs or excise tax, or an increased
rate of railroad freight. This amounts to $2,000 on the $64,000 of
product — no excessive burden, it may be said, and only requiring
A to sell his $66,000 for $2,000 additional. But suppose A can not
get this $2,000 additional ; and he certainly can not if the other
man, B, is exempt from this three-and-an-eighth-per-cent tax, or
contrives to evade it, and competes with A in the open market.
Then, in such a case, this three-and-an-eighth-per-cent tax upon
product manifests itself as ten per cent upon the entire investment
and absorbs the entire profits which otherwise might have been
realized ; so that the business of A first drags, then stagnates, and

* M. Menier defines fixed capital as every utility of which the product does not change
the identity, as useful machines, instruments of trade, profitable buildings, improvements
of land, and the liiie. Circulating capital, on the other hand, produces utility only by be-
ing transformed. It is represented by three elements — materials, goods, money. " Facts
prove that the suppression of circulation is a cause of ruin for the land as for every other
source of production. Look at Spain since the expulsion of the Moors, who had carried to
so great a height the theory and. practice of agriculture. The land, having become the
property of a few great families or the clergy, was consolidated. Its circulation ceased
completely, and production ceased with it."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 771

is finally abandoned ; while his workmen are discharged, the vil-
lage where the shop is located runs down, the artisans, shop-
keepers, and professional men connected with it complain of hard
times and emigrate from the locality or the country, while the
railroad fails to confer all the benefit to the community or profit
to its stockholders that might be possible. B, on the other hand,
exempt from the tax, keeps on working, and when hard times
come continues his sales and the occupations of his workmen by
taking five per cent profits instead of ten, and selling his goods,
as he can afi^ord to, at reduced prices to meet teijiporary condi-
tions. Actual practical illustrations of the injustice and disaster
consequent on such discrimination in respect to tax burdens and
exemptions are afforded on a small scale in the history of much
railroad management, and to a larger extent where two nations
with different systems of taxation undertake to compete with each
other in the sale of the products of their labor in the common
markets of the world. We find here an exj)laDation also of the
immediate beneficial effects which attended the first tentative
measures of reform in the British tariff instituted by Sir Robert
Peel in 1842 and 1845, which, although consisting mainly in the
removal of numerous small but obstructive duties, nevertheless
started British industry forward by leaps and bounds, even before
the larger burdens of tariff restrictions were removed in later years.

As the characterizations of "poll,'' "head," or "capitation"
taxes, the only j)ossible form of direct taxation on a person, and of
the advantages and disadvantages of indirect taxes, through the
agency of which the Federal Government collects the largest pro-
portion of its revenues, have been already pointed out, the field
of discussion under this head is practically limited to the existing
methods of State or local taxation on property and business, in
contradistinction to national or Federal taxation, or to the system
under which nearly six tenths of all the contributions which the
people of the United States make for the support of their govern-
ments are assessed and collected.

In Great Britain about two thirds of the revenue of the king-
dom is from " local " in contradistinction to " national " taxation
—£53,000,000 in 1890. Of this amount some £32,000,000, or about
three fifths, is raised by rates on the annual value of land and
house property in various localities. The next largest source
of local revenue is from tolls, dues, etc., from docks, piers, har-
bors, ferries, and markets, and yields over £7,000,000, or thirteen
per cent of the total. The total expenditures for local purposes in
1890 were returned at £67,000,000; the difference between local
expenditures and receipts being made up by contributions or
grants from the inland revenue department of the kingdom and
by municipal loans. The aggregate local debt of the kingdom is

772 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

about one third of the national debt, and has been mainly in-
curred for municipal and urban improvements, such as water and
gas supply, markets, tramways, parks, libraries, public baths,
wash houses, drainage, and other improvements. The purposes
for which the proceeds of local taxes are expended in the United
Kingdom are mainly for poor relief, gas and water supply, schools,
police, asylums, etc. In a report made to the British Association
for the Advancement of Science in 1870 by Mr. Stanley Jevons,
it was stated that the methods by which the local taxes of the
kingdom were then levied were substantially according to an act
passed in the reign of Elizabeth.

Popular Theory of Taxation in the United States
STATED AND EXAMINED. — The general idea which constitutes the
basis of the system of State or local taxation mainly recognized
in the United States (though not in other countries), and gener-
erally known and designated as "the general jproperty tax" is
founded on the assumption that, in order to tax equitably, it is
necessary to tax everything ; the term everything being at the
same time used in a sense so indefinite as to embrace not merely
things in the nature of physical actualities other than persons,
but also persons, incomes, rights, representatives of property,
titles, trusts, conclusions of law, debts, and in short any act of
assessing capable of resulting in the obtaining of revenue. As a
logical consequence of this idea, the exemption of anything from
taxation is furthermore held to be not only impolitic, but unjust,
and if made necessary by circumstances, as something to be
regretted.

The general property tax for general State purposes exists in
all but four of the States of the Federal Union — Delaware, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In Delaware there has
been no property tax since 1877, as its expenses are defrayed
mainly by licenses and taxes on railroads. In New Jersey there
is only a school tax on property, but no property tax for general
State purposes. In Pennsylvania the State tax is levied only on
personal property. In Wisconsin the so-called State tax is levied
only to defray the interest on the debt, and for the purpose of con-
tributing to the university (one eighth mill tax), schools (one mill
tax), and expenditures on account of the insane. But there is no
property tax for general purposes. In addition to these four cases
a property tax is levied in Vermont only in case the corporation
taxes do not suffice to pay the entire expenses of the State (Selig-
man, Financial Statistics of the American Commonwealths, 1889).*

* The statutes of Massachusetts enacted for making this system of taxation effective,
and which have been substantially adopted by most of the States of the Federal Union,
thus specify the objects, persons, and property that shall be subject to taxation :

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 773

Equally popular and plausible is the argument by wliicli this
assumption, and the administrative system based upon it, is up-
held and defended. " Is not all property," it is asked, " either
directly or through its owner, protected by the state or sover-
eignty?" "Do not all persons owe allegiance to the state?"
And if so, " why should not all persons and property contribute
to the requirements of the state for revenue in proportion to their
ability ? "

But, popular and plausible as are the arguments and assump-
tions for such a system of taxation, which, in the case of the
United States, has been made operative under State, municipal,
and local governments over the persons, property, and business
of over seventy millions of people, and fortified by a vast amount
of adjudication, it will require but little investigation and analy-

Section 1. A poll tax shall be assessed on every male inhabitant of the Commonwealth
above the age of twenty years, whether a citizen of the United States or an alien.

Skc. 2. All property, real and personal, of the inhabitants of this State, not expressly
exempted by law, shall be subject to taxation.

Sec. 3. Real estate, for the purpose of taxation, shall include all lands within this
State and all buildings and other things erected on or affixed to the same.

Sec. 4. Personal estate shall, for the purposes of taxation, include goods, chattels,
money, and effects, wherever they are, ships and vessels at home or abroad, money at inter-
est, and other debts due the persons to be taxed more than they are indebted or pay inter-
est for, but not including in such debts due any loan on mortgage of real estate, taxable as
real estate, except the excess of such loan above the assessed value of the mortgaged real
estate, public stocks and securities, bonds of all railways, including street railways, stocks
in turnpikes, bridges, and moneyed corporations, within or without the State, the income
from an annuity, from ships and vessels engaged in foreign carrying trade, and so much of
the income from a profession, trade, or employment as exceeds the sum of two thousand
dollars a year; but no income shall be taxed which is derived from property subject to
taxation.

The statute exempts from taxation the property of the United States and of the State ;
of the literary, benevolent, charitable, and agricultural institutions or societies incorporated
within the State ; all property of the common school districts; the household furniture of
every person not exceeding one thousand dollars in value, and wearing apparel ; farmers'
utensils, not exceeding three hundred dollars in value ; houses of religious worship ; mules,
horses, and neat cattle less than a year old ; swme and sheep less than six mouths old ; and
" the polls and estates of persons who by reason of age, infirmity, and poverty are unable
to contribute fully to the public charges."

"No ship or vessel, unless actually engaged in foreign trade, or in part undergoing
repairs, shall be deemed to be engaged in such trade."

The statutes of the State of New York to the same effect are more concise, but equally
comprehensive. They provide :

1. " All lands and all personal estate within this State, whether owned by individuals or
by corporations, shall be liable to taxation, subject to the exemption hereafter specified.

2. " The term ' personal estate ' and ' personal property ' shall be construed to include
all household furniture, moneys, goods, chattels, debts due from solvent debtors, whether
on account, contract, note, bond, or mortgage, public stocks and stocks in moneyed corpora-
tions ; they shall also be construed to include such portion of the capital of incorporated
companies, liable to taxation on their capital, as shall not be invested in real estate."

774 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sis to satisfy any one who can divest himself from the influence
of old prejudices of the truth of the following propositions : First,
that the assumption that it is necessary to assess everything in
order to tax equitably involves an impossibility, and therefore
unavoidable inefficiency, injustice, and inequality in administra-
tion; second, that, as popularly used in respect to matters per-
taining to taxation, the term %)roperty is made to apply equally
to entities and to symbols or non-entities, which is in itself an
absurdity; and, ^?ia/Z?/, that the outcome of all this is a system
which powerfully contributes to arrest and hinder natural devel-
opment, to corrupt society, and is without a parallel in any coun-
try claiming to be civilized. And, in illustration of this latter
point, it may be added that, notwithstanding recent discussions
and publications, this whole subject is yet so unfamiliar to the
people of the United States that probably nine out of ten of its
best-informed and collegiate educated citizens, and even members
of the bar, take it for granted that the method of assessing and
collecting taxes for local and municipal purposes is substantially
the same all the world over ; and would be greatly surprised to find
on investigation that the American system is one of the things that
is exclusively American and so little esteemed by the people of
other countries as to be for such reasons strictly " non-exportable."

Taxation of Real Estate. — Attention is first asked to the
defects of this system in respect to the taxation of real property.
Here everything, as the term implies, is real, tangible, visible;
something which can not be concealed ; something which can not,
under any circumstances, be removed beyond the jurisdiction of
the State, except by transfer to the Federal Government ; some-
thing concerning which the laws and decisions of the courts har-
monize rather than conflict. In the valuation of real property,
furthermore, it is possible to apply such tests and verifications as
will restrict the errors of estimate within comparatively narrow
limits. It would also seem as if the law as it exists upon the stat-
ute books of most of the States was sufficiently clear and explicit
in its declaration and mandate. Thus the language of the statute
of the State of New York is as follows :

" All lands within this State, whether owned by individuals
or corporations, shall be liable to taxation. The term ' land '
shall be construed to include the land itself, all buildings, struc-
tures, substructures erected upon, under, or above, or afiixed to
the same ; all wharfs and piers ; all bridges ; all telegraph lines ;
all surface, underground, or elevated railroads and the iron there-
on ; all mains, pipes, and tanks laid or placed in, upon, above, or
under any public or private street or place ; all trees and under-
wood growing upon land ; and all mines, minerals, quarries, and
fossils in and under the same."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. , yj^

In most of the States of the Federal Union the tax laws re-
quire that the assessment of all property shall be at its full and
fair cash value ; and the judicial authorities of the United States
have furthermore held that the requirement of approximative
equality inheres in the very nature of the power to tax, irrespec-
tive of any constitutional or statute provisions.

In the State of New York each assessor on the comiDletion of
his official labors subscribes an oath of which the following is the
material portion :

" We do severally depose and swear that we have set down in
the foregoing assessment roll all the real estate in , accord-
ing to our best information, . . . and that we have estimated the
value of said real estate at the sums which a majority of the as-
sessors have decided to be the full value thereof" And the law
further provides that " every assessor who shall willfully swear
false in taking and subscribing said oath, shall be guilty of and
liable to the penalties of willful and corrupt perjury."

It is difficult to see how language, other than this, could be
made more clear and explicit; and it is accordingly evident that
if the law fails in its execution, as it certainly does, the fault is
not in the statute but in its administration.

Let us now see what are the acknowledged facts in respect to
the valuation of real property in New York and other States
where the observance of substantially like conditions are impera-
tive.

In some instances in New York the valuation of real estate for
taxation is reported as low as twenty per cent of its real value.
In a majority of cases in the country the rate varies from twenty-
five to thirty-five per cent, and rises in the cities to fifty and pos-
sibly sixty per cent of the maximum. In one case, mentioned in
the report of the State assessors in 1879, two adjoining counties of
the State made a difference of twenty thousand dollars per mile
in assessing the same railroad. In short, there can not probably
be found a single instance in the whole State, unless possibly in
the case of certain unoccupied lands, the property of non-residents,
where the law as respects the valuation of real property is fully
complied with, and where the oaths of the assessors are not wholly
inconsistent with the exact truth. The official reports of other
States abound with like reports of flagrant inequalities in the as-
sessment of real property. As a rule, where assessors are depend-
ent for their tenure of office on political favoritism, there is no
pretense, notwithstanding their oath, of complying with the law.*

* " The strife between counties to reduce assessments has not ceased, and in all proba-
bility Tvill r,ot as long as assessors are elected, or selfishness be a passion in the human
breast." — Report of the California State Board for the Equalization of Taxes, 18S5-S6.

776 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

When, as is often the case, a State tax is apportioned to the several
counties of the State, and by the counties to their respective towns,
there arises a double competition between assessors of counties in
the aggregate and of the towns for making the lowest possible
valuation of property, especially real estate.

In a large number of States (twenty- one in 1890) an attempt
has been made to correct the undervaluation of property right-
fully subject to taxation by creating boards of equalization, with
power to raise or lower the valuations of county officials, with a
hope of securing substantial uniformity; but this measure has
not been successful, and the most intelligent members of such
boards have recorded their opinions that it is impossible under
the present system to effect any just distribution of the incidence
of taxation.

"SOME UNRECOGNIZED LAWS OF NATURE."*

By C. HANFORD HENDEESON.

IN Some Unrecognized Laws of Nature, Mr. Singer and Mr.
Berens have restated the riddle of the universe, and have
made a brave attempt to solve it.

It has not been the good fortune of modern science to give us
a coherent philosophy of things so much as it has been to give us
a very nice measurement of them. Its triumphs have been for
the most part quantitative. " We have only so much science as
we have mathematics." One might almost say that science has
become a branch of applied mathematics. In the case of the
luminiferous ether, and in some other departments of physical
inquiry, one might even go a step further, and assert that science
is mathematics, pure and simple, dealing only with signs and
symbols, and quite unregardful of the realities of experience.
Brilliant and successful as this treatment has been, it does not
satisfy all the demands of the spirit. The old sense of wonder
and inquiry is still unappeased. One is often tempted to stop in
the midst of one's measuring rods and balances, and put again
the old question, the eternal Why ?

It is this sentiment which makes us turn with some eagerness
to such a book as the one before us. It is an inquirj^ not into
the phenomena of Nature, but into their causes, and more par-
ticularly into the cause of gravitation. At the present time, we
have no theory of gravitation. The several guesses that have

* Some Unrecognized Laws of Nature: An Inquiry into the Causes of Pbvsical Phe-
nomena, with Especial Reference to Grayitation. By Ignatius Singer and Lewis H. Berens.
Illustrated. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1897. Pp. SIL Price, $2.50.

''SOME UNRECOGNIZED LAV/S OF NATURE:' 777

been made at it, have never been taken seriously enough to merit
the name of theory. With the strictly orthodox, indeed, the cause
of gravitation is no longer open to discussion. It has been rele-
gated once for all to the region of the unknowable. A book, there-
fore, which throughout five hundred pages not only proposes to
discuss this forbidden problem, but also professes to solve it, will
attract attention for its boldness, if for nothing else. One begins
to read with large sense of expectation.

The volume is divided into four books, which deal respectively
with methods of inquiry ; with first principles ; with phenomenol-
ogy, or " the interconvertibility of forces " ; and finally with grav-
itation. All the books seem to us of value. They have been
arranged with considerable cleverness, for the effect is cumu-
lative.

The first book is largely psychological. Its main content has to
do with methods of inquiry and of verification, and with sources
of error. It maintains, and we think very properly, that our
greatest need at the present time is a revision of our concex^tions
rather than any further confirmation of our observational or ex-
perimental data. In all cases the causes of phenomena are infer-
ential, and are necessarily colored by our prior conceptions along
the same lines of inquiry. Our stock in trade, when we come to
philosophize, is simply the report of our own imperfect senses,
helped or hindered, as the case may be, by our equally imperfect
reasoning. The same facts may come into different minds, but
they have far from equivalent values. It is comparatively easy
to agree about the facts, but far from easy to agree about their
interpretation. The interpretation is necessarily subjective, and
is conditioned by many factors outside the phenomena them-
selves. Remembering this, one will be disposed to agree with
the authors that apparent absurdity is not a legitimate refuta-
tion of any new and strange theory. It is only the absence of
similar conceptions that makes the new view absurd. Nor does
the correspondence of any theoretical view with prior conceptions
offer the least confirmation of the view itself. Its agreement with
preconceived ideas may prevent its seeming absurd, but does not
prevent its being untrue. The so-called "confirmations" of phi-
losophy and science will always bear re-examinatiou, indeed de-
mand such periodical re-examination, and the more so in propor-
tion to their seeming certainty. The shores of the ocean of truth
are thickly strewn with the wrecks of many a fair theory, as
beloved in its day as the most cherished beliefs of our own day.
Equally true is it that agreement between phenomena and theory,
however perfect it may be, is not confirmation, for it is to be
remembered that the theory itself was deduced from these very
phenomena. The argument that such agreement constitutes proof

778 POPULAR SCIJENCE MONTHLY.

is very plain reasoning in a circle — from wliicli Heaven defend
us all, and particularly our neighbor ! The only evidence of this
sort that is confirmatory must be a posteriori. If, from the con-
sideration of things in general, a universal principle is brought to
light, then the agreement of subsequently discovered or subse-
quently considered phenomena with this principle is strong evi-
dence in favor of the probable truth of the principle itself. These
considerations apply nowhere perhaps with greater force than in
the investigation of gravitation. The problem is practically where
Newton left it, unless indeed it has been rendered even more dif-
ficult by our inheritance of debarring ideas. The concluding
chapter of the first book is wisely given to a psychological study
of the current view of gravitation. The basic principle is not far
to seek. It lies in the doctrine that gravitation is proportional to
mass, and that mass is constant. With this conception firmly
fixed in the mind, the interpretation of the phenomena of gravi-
tation becomes a foregone conclusion. Yet the present authors
show that this conception is far from being a necessary deduction
from the facts of gravitation, is indeed probably a false deduc-
tion. Their experiments and reasoning lead them to believe, and
the belief is supported by other observers, that either mass is not
constant, or else that gravitation depends upon other factors than
simple mass and distance. This alternative, however, as we
shall see, is merely verbal.

Many of the psychological considerations in this first book are
very obvious, yet they are none the less necessarj'-, and we com-
mend most highly the skillful vestibule which Mr. Singer and Mr.
Berens have constructed to their new Temple of Truth.

The second book has to do with first principles. These the
authors find to be four — persistence, resistance, reciprocity, and
equalization. The four primary principles represented by these
terms are at the basis of the whole work, and of their truth and
adequacy the authors express themselves as having no misgivings
whatever. They believe that the entire phenomena of the visible
universe can be explained by referring them to these principles.

The principle of persistence grows out of a consideration of
Newton's first law of {notion : " Every body perseveres in its state
of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled
to change that state by forces impressed thereon." This is, of
course, only the principle of inertia, which is simply another, and
it has always seemed to us an unnecessary, statement of the prin-
ciple of causation. Nothing happens without a cause. It is per-
haps well to emphasize this principle when fighting superstitions
and other hobgoblins ; but in an intelligent world it may be
taken for granted as one of those primary conditions of thought
which need neither statement nor discussion. The habit of speak-

''SOME UNRECOGNIZED LAWS OF NATURES 779

ing of inertia as if it were a " property " of matter, and tiie use
made of it in current mechanics, has long seemed to us mischiev-
ous. The present authors modify this law to read, " All matter
tends to persevere in whatever state it may happen to be and to
resist change/' In this form the law is more catholic. By per-
sistence the authors mean " the tendency of all matter to remain
in any given state, even after the conditions are altered (i. e., a
quality), while the term resistance is used to denote the intensity
of this persistence (i. e., a quantity)." The gain is not simply one
of terminology. It is a real gain, since it allows us to substitute
a simple idea, that of relative persistence or resistance, for the
somewhat complex and dissimilar ideas represented by such
terms as impact, inertia, latency, conductivity, charge, etc.

The principle of reciprocity is founded on another dictum of
Newton's, that " all reactions are mutual and are directed to con-
trary parts." This means very simply that every change involves
at least two bodies, and that no body acts upon another, but
rather that two or more bodies react luith one another. This fol-
lows, indeed, from the principle of persistence. Since a change
of state in any body can be brought about by external agencies
only, it must follow that the jjersistence of this body can only be
overcome by the expenditure of a certain amount of resistance
on the part of the second or reacting body, and a corresponding
change in its own state.

The two corollaries growing out of this law are also very
important :

" 1. Bodies can react with each other only when there is a
difference of state in respect of any quality or tendency ; and —

" 3. The extent or intensity of the reaction will be propor-
tional to this difference, and will cease altogether when relative
equalization has been reached."

This second corollary really involves the fourth primary prin-
ciple, that of equalization, in virtue of which all bodies tend to
come to a common state, and the drama of the universe, the
flux and flow of things, goes on eternally. It might at first seem
that with the operation of this principle of equalization the uni-
verse would at last, like a spent clock, run down and stop. Such
a view has indeed found expression in that modern and now
famous doctrine, the dissipation of energy. A universe com-
pletely run down, a dead uniformity of condition, are among the
striking spectacles of modern scientific speculation. It is not
that we see any loss of action in the cosmic drama. On the con-
trary, it goes on unceasingly. It is only that a limited concep-
tion of the principle of equalization requires such ultimate uni-
formity. But there is another element that must needs be taken
into consideration. The establishment of relative equilibrium

78o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

between any two bodies would at once disturb the equilibrium
existing between them and other bodies, and so tend to produce
an unending series of readjustments. Furthermore, equalization
with respect to any one quality or tendency does not mean equal-
ization with respect to all. We have thus a twofold source of
variation, and the conception of eternal change becomes at once
less impossible than the conception of eternal rest. In addition,
the doctrine of the dissipation of energy involves a fatal contra-
diction. If the world be running down by the conversion of all
available energy into heat, how comes it about that the universe
is at the same time cooling off by the loss of heat ? The answer
that the heat energy is being transferred to the ether is not satis-
fying, and it is particularly unsatisfying if one does not believe
in the ether. An examination of the phenomena would lead one
to the very contrary conclusion — that the world machine is not
running down and that the universe is not cooling off.

The third book, on phenomenology, starts out with the denial
of " force " and " energy " as separate physical entities, and seeks
to find an explanation of acceleration and retardation, heat and
molecular reaction, electricity and magnetism, conduction and in-
duction, in terms of persistence, resistance, reciprocity, and equal-
ization. Energy is regarded not as a cause of phenomena, but as
a result, while "force" is dismissed as a metaphysical pitfall
which has already claimed too many victims. The attempt is
necessarily somewhat lengthy (it occupies two hundred pages),
and the more so since the milk of human kindness in these two
writers has not yet been condensed, but in the main it is a very
successful attempt. It proceeds upon the true scientific principle
— the search for similarities rather than for differences.

The same book also takes up the much- discussed question of
action at a distance. We all remember Newton's words : "That
gravitation should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so
that one body may act on another at a distance through a vacuum
without the mediation of anything else, by and through which
their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to
me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who in philosoph-
ical matters has a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall
into it." But experience shows that equalization between two
bodies in different states of excitation takes place the more readily
in proportion as the intervening resistance is less. It is a natural
inference, therefore, that the very most favorable condition for
such equalization would be the absence of all resistance — that is,
the absence of any intervening medium. Experiments with
vacuum tubes confirm this inference. The more perfect the ex-
haustion the more perfect the transmission ; and this is true not
only of heat, light, and electricity, but as well of gravity itself,

''SOME UNRECOGNIZED LAWS OF NATURES 781

since bodies fall more readily in vacuo than in air. There is an
important distinction between kinematic and dynamic reactions.
The first, or primary reactions, not only can but always do take
place at a distance, and in view of the undoubted fact any discus-
sion of the possibility is idle in the extreme. But it is very differ-
ent in the case of secondary or dynamic effects. There is, strictly
speaking, no reaction between the bodies concerned. They have
no attraction for each other. They merely happen to get in each
other's way when one or both are undergoing some kinematic
reaction. A falling body may meet a second body thrown up-
ward, and the path of each will be notably altered, but the reac-
tion will be purely dynamic, and as such absolutely dependent on
contact. These secondary reactions happen to be the ones with
which we are the more familiar and upon which we have allowed
our minds to play the more freely. The old question, " Can a
body act where it is not ? " is only applicable to dynamic reac-
tions, but is not at all pertinent in the discussion of kinematic
reactions. In the first case, no one doubts the inability of a body
to push or pull another without actual contact. In the second
case, the facts leave no room for discussion.

The concluding book, on gravitation, is naturally the apiece de
resistance of the whole, and seems to us of high interest and im-
portance. The other books lead up to it very cleverly. Newton
himself, as we have seen, had no theory of gravitation, or at least
was extremely careful not to publish it if he ever had one.
Later disciples, however, have been less cautious, and the ISTewto-
nian view has been erected into something of a theory. This
assumes that all matter attracts all matter, and this quite inde-
pendently of its state of excitation. The intensity of the attrac-
tion has been formulated in the well-known law that gravity is
proportional to the mass and inversely proportional to the square
of the distance. But mass, as Newton used the term, is synony-
mous with weight, and weight is simply the measure of gravity,
so that this fine-sounding phrase amounts only to this, that gravity
is proportional to gravity, a statement which can not be said to
materially help on the cause of truth. The Newtonian view as-
sumes the constancy of mass or weight, but does so without the
least experimental verification, and indeed in the teeth of much
contrary evidence. It is true that modern physicists distinguish
between mass and weight, making the former term stand for
amount of matter (whatever that may mean) and the latter for
the measure of gravity. But in this sense mass is a purely meta-
physical quantity.

Now, there are two classic experiments for determining the
density of the earth that seem at first sight to establish the cur-
rent view that all matter attracts all matter. These are the

782 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Cavendish experiment, in which the attraction of lead balls of
known mass is measured by means of a torsion balance, and so
compared with the attraction of the earth ; and the Schiehallion
experiment, in which a plumb line is suspended near a mountain of
known mass, and the deflection of the line from the vertical care-
fully measured. But both experiments proceed upon the assump-
tion that all matter attracts, and prove nothing.

This review of the Newtonian conception serves as a preface
to the authors' own theory, which is a direct outgrowth from the
four primary principles deduced in an earlier book — persistence,
resistance, reciprocity, and equalization. Briefly stated, their
theory is that two bodies in different states of excitation and free
to move will move toward each other, the intensity of attraction
being proportional to the difference in the excitation. Bodies in
the same state — that is, in equilibrium — have no attraction for
one another, and there will be no gravitation manifested between
them. This is a direct contradiction of the Newtonian position
that gravitation is universal. The excitation of a body may be
increased by heat, light, electricity, or magnetism, and conse-
quently the attraction, weight, or mass may be changed by a
change in the physical conditions. This has been repeatedly
shown by experiment, but with the idea of the unchangeableness
of gravity firmly fixed in the mind the results of the experiments
have always been explained on other grounds. According to the
new view, terrestrial gravitation is entirely due to the different
states of excitation which prevail on the outside of the globe and
on the inside, and notably to the difference in thermal condition.
Heating a body on the surface of the earth ought, by lessening
this difference, to reduce the attraction — that is to say, the weight
— and such is actually the case. Every one who has worked in the
laboratory knows that a hot platinum crucible weighs several
milligrammes less than the same crucible when cold. This was
formerly attributed to ascending currents of hot air, but the ex-
planation no longer holds. These and other similar experiments
have recently been repeated under conditions which do not admit
the existence of convection currents, and the loss of weight is
still observable.

With permission we quote from a letter recently received from
Mr. Paul R. Heyl, of Philadelphia : " I have been making a curi-
ous experiment since I got back within reach of an analytical
balance. I took a piece of three-quarter-inch glass tubing, sealed
it at one end, and choked it slightly about one inch from the sealed
end. In the lower chamber thus formed I placed dilute sulphuric
acid, and dropped in a piece of solid caustic potash, which was
arrested at the choke. I then sealed off the upper end of the tube
about two inches above the choke. This arrangement I then

''SOME UNRECOGNIZED LAWS OF NATURE:' 7S3

packed in cotton in a light glass cylinder, one and three quarter
inches diameter by six and a half inches high, and closed the
mouth of the cylinder by a flat cork carefully paraffined so as to
be air-tight. The apparatus was then placed upright on the bal-
ance and counterpoised carefully. The balance beam was then
lowered and the apparatus removed from the pan, held inverted
for a second or two, and replaced on the pan. On raising the
beam and releasing the pans a distinct loss of weight made itself
immediately apparent, some seven to nine scale divisions. (The
apparatus weighed from one hundred and ten to one hundred and
twenty grains.) After some three quarters of an hour the normal
weight returned.

" This loss of weight could not be due to the fact that I was
weighing a vessel filled with air partially rarefied by the heat
produced, for both vessels were closed air-tight. Nor could it
be due to currents of hot air rising (the usual explanation in
text-books) for two reasons : first, because the loss of weight was
immediate, and, owing to the cotton packing, the outside of the
apparatus did not become perceptibly warm to the touch for three
quarters of a minute, and never became more than barely warm ;
secondly, because the effect noticed was too great to have been
produced by convection. ... It would seem, then, that convec-
tion currents have been greatly overestimated, and that the loss
of weight noticed in weighing hot bodies is in large part a true
effect. Either mass is a function of temperature, or else (which
is more probable) heat weakens gravitation just as it weakens
magnetic attraction, only that the magnetic attraction does not
come back when the steel cools."

Furthermore, the authors show that the combining weights of
the elements vary with the temperature, and they record a series
of very interesting experiments. When applied to celestial gravi-
tation, to the motion of the earth and other planets, and to their
apparent irregularities, the new theory leads to surprising conclu-
sions. If it stand the test of a more widespread examination, it
will entirely change our conception of astronomical physics, and
make necessary a radically different cosmology. The specula-
tions in this department, however, are put forward very tenta-
tively, and more by way of suggestion than as settled convictions.
It will be noticed here, as elsewhere throughout the book, that
the observed phenomena of Nature are not called in question, but
only our conceptions and interpretation of them.

In conclusion — and it is quite time that we should stop — we
are disposed to believe that Mr. Singer's and Mr. Berens's book is
destined to attract wide attention, perhaps to provoke warm con-
troversy, and certainly to stimulate wholesome doubt and inquiry.
It has a high value quite aside from whether one accepts the

782

POPULAR SCIBN'H M

Cavendish experiment, in which le ;
known mass is measured by moan of
compared with the attraction of '
experiment, in whicli a plumb lino usi
known mass, and the dellection of
fully measured. But both ex])criij
tion that all matter attracts, and y

This review of tlie Newtonian
to the authors' own theory, wliich
four primary principles deduced iij
resistance, reciprocity, and etjuti
theory is that two bodies in differ
to move will move toward each •
being proj)ortional to the dififerei
the same state — that is, in equ
one another, and there will be n
them. This is a direct contrad
that gravitation is universal,
increased by boat, light, ele<
quentl)' the attraction, weigl
change in the jdiysical con
shown by experiment, but wi
of gravity firmly fixed in the
have always been explained
new view, terrestrial gravit
states of excitation which \
on the inside, and notably
Heating a body on the su^
this difference, to reduce t
— and such is actual b
laboratory knows
milligrammes h
formerly attril
planation 1
have recen
the exist
still ol

i

ftm

1. oi

••ti

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|>acked in «t)tton sn »

inches

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V

/■' ( iiicAao. 787

lie utht-r buildings

ier and stronger in

wainscotinga are in

ovided with piers of

all shelves which are

the building. The ob-

imize the jars and dis-

liorwise seriously inter-

l»e conducted, and the

f studied. One striking

,ely to convenience is the

'U walls and in the floors,

irt of the l)uilding to any

/. students work upon the

lie second, while the first

The more notable features

laily ujion this floor. The

n Ti 11

I "iffiflTJff

T * 11. .1- k-T' '

T"I!Y.

direiion of an expert mechanic with

pers^illows the manufacture on the

•f the irestigator, of instruments needed

This lop is fitted up Avith all needed

vith pov^r, and has connected with it a

r-x'Tii. '1 joining it is a students' work-

786

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nitro- methane and the cyanides. Fulminic acid, discovered in
1820, was first satisfactorily analyzed by him. Among his impor-
tant studies are those in the direction of ascertaining the com-
position of bivalent carbon. Prof. Smith has rendered important

Kent Chemical Laboratory.

contributions to bur knowledge of addition and condensation pro-
cesses, while among the important works of Dr. Lengfeld and
others of the staff are the obtaining of thiamines and other
organic sulphur salts, studies upon rearrangement of molecules
in compounds, hydrolitic dissociation of salts, and researches upon
amydo-phosphoric acid, titanium and zirconium compounds. So
far, however, nothing has been done in physical chemistry. No
courses in that direction have been offered, and it is probable that
none will be for some time to come. The department has no jour-
nal, but the results of the researches conducted here are published
in the more important chemical periodicals, particularly in the
American Chemical Journal, the Proceedings of the French and
German Chemical Societies, Liebig's Annalen, and the Compte
Rendu.

The Ryerson Physical Laboratory is unquestionably the best
equipped and most handsomely finished building on the campus.
Built by Mr. Martin A. Pyerson, of Chicago, to the memory of
his father, Martin Ryerson, it was completed January 1, 1894.
Externally individual and striking, its general character and

SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. jSj

style harmonize admirably with those of the other buildings
upon the grounds. It is, however, far heavier and stronger in
construction than the others ; the interior wainscotings are in
marble ; the first-floor laboratories are provided with piers of
masonry in addition to the heavy slate wall shelves which are
found throughout the other portions of the building. The ob-
ject of this heavy construction is to minimize the jars and dis-
turbances from outside, which would otherwise seriously inter-
fere with the delicate manipulations to be conducted, and the
minute movements and vibrations to be studied. One striking
constructional feature which adds largely to convenience is the
presence of ducts and channels between walls and in the floors,
so that pipes can be laid from any part of the building to any
other without difficulty. Elementary students work upon the
third floor, senior college students on the second, while the first
floor is devoted to research work. The more notable features
of the department's work are naturally upon this floor. The

Fig. 3. — Kyekson Phtsical Labobatoky.

machine shop, under the direction of an expert mechanic with
two trained men for helpers, allows the manufacture on the
ground, under the eye of the investigator, of instruments needed
in pursuing any study. This shop is fitted up with all needed
machinery, supplied with power, and has connected with it a
fully stocked supply room. Adjoining it is a students' work-

788

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

shop, where one pursuing special lines may make up his own in-
struments, construct his own machines, or devise models to be
used as patterns in the machine shop proper. The power for the
building is furnished by three dynamos and an engine located in
the basement. An air compressor and a vacuum pump form part
of the outfit. The laboratories are large, intended for several
students working together, or small, for individual workers. At
the present time, students are pursuing investigations upon the
mechanical equivalent of heat and the coefficient of viscosity of
a liquid. There are eight or ten of these individual laboratories
for single students, each supplied with all needed facilities.
Every laboratory room, large or small, is supplied with gas foi*
light and fuel, electricity for light and power, water, compressed
air, and vacuum pipes. In one of the two constant temperature
rooms is a highly interesting piece of apparatus conceived by
Prof. Michelson and perfected by Prof. Michelson and Prof.
Stratton. Its purpose is the direct production of standards of
length. The principle involved is the determination of the length

of the metre in waves of light.
This determination was first
made by Prof. Michelson, whose
original investigation was pub-
lished by the Bureau Interna-
tionale des Poids et Mesures,
at Paris. The instrument pro-
duces light waves, from a given
substance, of known length,
and then mechanically lays ofl:'
standards of length, up to two
decimetres, in waves of light.
Another notably interesting
piece of apparatus constructed
by Prof. Michelson and Prof.
Stratton is a harmonic analy-
zer, which has cost two years of
work. A first pattern was quite
fully developed, only to be aban-
doned for the design shown in
the illustration on next page.
The purpose of the apparatus is the analysis and synthesis of any
harmonic curve (Fourier's series), provided not more than eighty
elements enter into it. Every one knows the vast use made to-day
of traced curves in all branches of science. These curves are
frequently resultants and combinations of two or more simple
curves. It is a matter of difficulty to recognize and separate the
elements thus combined. The machine in question enables the

iui. 4. — 1'rof. a. a. ilicuKLsou.

SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 789

investigator to effect this decomposition and to prove it by me-
chanically reproducing the curve in question through combina-
tions of the elements involved. The best way of showing the
amount and character of the work
done in this physical laboratory
is to present a list of the researches
completed or in progress during
the year:

Researches Completed or
IN Progress during the Year.
—(1) Relative Motion of the Earth
and Ether — Head Professor Mi-
chelson ; (2) A New Harmonic
Analyzer — Head Professor Mi-
chelson and Associate Professor
Stratton ; (3) Production of Stand-
ards of Length by Means of Light
Waves — Head Professor Michel-
son and Associate Professor Strat-
ton; (4) Attempt to Measure the
Superior Limit to the Size of
Molecules by Capillarity — Head
Professor Michelson and Asso-
ciate Professor Stratton ; (G) Depo-
sition of Metals in High Vacua by
the Electric Discharge — Associate
Professor Stratton and Dr. Mann ;
(7) Study of Electric Waves by

Means of the Interferometer — Mr. Hull ; (8) Coefficient of Viscos-
ity— Mr. Johonnott; (9) Resistance of Thin Metal Films — Miss
Isabelle Stone; (10) Mechanical Equivalent of Heat — Mr. Smith;
(11) Application of Interference Methods to Spectroscopic Meas-
urements— Mr. Rice; (13) Velocity of Cathode Rays — Mr. Mor-
rison.

One of the most thoroughly organized scientific departments
in the university is that of geology, under the direction of Prof.
Thomas C. Chamberlain, who has associated with him seven
helpers. Perhaps nowhere in America is this work so carefully
divided. The broad way in which it is treated at the University
of Chicago is indicated by the list of workers : In geology proper,
Profs. Chamberlain, Salisbury, and Van Hise lay general founda-
tions ; Farrington in mineralogy, Iddings in petrography, Salis-
bury in physiography and geography, Weller in paleontology.
Holmes in anthropic and graphic geology, and Penrose in eco-
nomic geology form a strong corps of specialists. The depart-
ment aims at systematic training in its subject, either in con-

FiG. 5. — Harmonic Analtzer.

790

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

FiQ. 6. — Prof. Thomas C. Chamberlain.

tributing to a liberal education, or in preparing for professional
and investigative work. The work is adaptable, ranging from
undergraduate courses of the most elementary kind to the high-
est lines of seminar and field
study. One feature demanding
specific mention is the concentra-
tion of field work. While local
field work is done in connection
with the several classes, it is
considered incidental ; field work
pure and simple is concentrated
in consecutive and exclusive field
investigation during the second
term of the summer quarter. At
that time the class is systemat-
ically organized and held con-
stantly at work under the direc-
tion of an experienced field geol-
ogist. In all courses, whether in
class room, seminar, or field,
prominence is given to principles
and working methods ; special
emphasis is laid on the philo-
sophic phases of the subjects dis-
cussed ; much attention is given to the treatment from historic
and genetic points of view. Constantly and always the effort is
to bring the student into relation with the living questions of the
science, and to make him feel it as a growing body of truth. In
connection with the department the Journal of Geology is con-
ducted. It is a semiquarterly magazine, the actual editorship of
which rests upon the geological faculty ; the associate editorship
is made up of the leading geologists of America and Europe.
The important papers in its pages are mostly concerned with the
present problems of the science. Among its most striking and
valuable features are its Studies for Students, which are intended
for advanced workers, and are full of the most important sugges-
tions and help.

The department of geology is housed in the Walker Museum,
a three-story and basement building donated by Mr. George
C. Walker. The policy of the university is not in the direction
of gathering great museum collections in any line. The Field
Columbian Museum, so promisingly started soon after the World's
Columbian Exposition, is located near the university. Fully
organized, it is being systematically developed in every line of
science. Its proximity renders the gathering of great collections
at the university unnecessary, as students have special facilities

SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 791

furnislied them by the museum. Collections, then, at the uni-
versity will be chiefly formed with reference to their actual
teaching value. The ground floor of Walker Museum is devoted
to collections in mineralogy and geology, and the Ryerson collec-
tion of Mexican antiquities ; the second floor is given up to the
work of the department of geology, as already outlined ; the third
floor is chiefly devoted to work in anthropology. While the col-
lections in geology present little of striking interest, they include
the great series of fossils brought together by the late Prof. U. P.
James, of Cincinnati, famous in American paleontology, contain-
ing great numbers of important specimens, and a particularly
complete presentation of the fossils of the Cincinnati group
(Lower Silurian). As stated, the work in anthropology is located
on the third floor of the Walker Museum. It is fair to claim that
at no other American institution is instruction work in anthro-
pology so definite and at the same time so comprehensive, some
eleven different courses in somatology, ethnology, and archaeol-
ogy being offered. Part of the space occupied is set aside for
laboratory work. The instrumental equipment is nearly com-
plete, although the material upon which to work is inadequate.

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The charts and diagrams prepared by Dr. Boaz in connection
with the World's Columbian Exposition, representing an enor-
mous amount of investigation upon native American tribes and
presenting it in graphic form, are the property of the university,
having been originally drawn up at its expense ; they form valu-
able aid to class and laboratory work. While not boasting a
museum, the department has a considerable amount of material
of its own from New Mexican Pueblos, Mexico, and Peru ; it also

792 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

has the use of loan collections of objects from Mexico, the Aleu-
tian Islands, the Utah cliff-dwellers, Japan, etc. The most im-
portant of these loans is the Ryerson collection from Mexico— a
large series of antiquities gathered by Seiior Abadiano, and form-
ing an excellent general representation of Mexican archaeology.
No journal of anthropology is published, but a series of Bulletins
has been started. These will be octavo publications in pamphlet
form, presenting new material or results of investigations by in-
structors or advanced students in the science. Two have already
been published, dealing with points of Mexican archaeology.

The Hull Biological Laboratories are the newest buildings
upon the grounds. They are the gifts of Miss Helen Culver, and
are named in memory of her uncle, Charles J. Hull. They form
a group of four buildings arranged with an inclosed court. The
buildings are grouped into two pairs, the members of which are
connected by covered passageways or cloisters. Biology and Bot-
any are thus united, and Anatomy and Physiology. The Biologi-
cal and Anatomical Laboratories are at the front of the group
and are connected by a short passage surrounded by a rather
striking entrance way. The four buildings themselves, while
conforming in style to the rest of the university structures, have
been erected with special reference to their intended use, and
neither space nor light has been sacrificed to the demands of
Gothic decoration. In the center of the rectangular area sur-
rounded by these buildings it is planned to have a pond of water
of considerable size for supplying material in the direction of
pond life. The Zoological Laboratory is under the direction of
Head Professor C. O. Whitman, and consists of four floors and
basement. Connected with the latter is a greenhouse arranged
for supplying light and dark conditions, also rooms for animals
in captivity, and various workshops. On the first floor is the
general laboratory for elementary students, the general biological
library, and a museum of illustrative series of life forms. The
remaining floors are given up to suites of rooms for the head
professor and his assistants, and to research laboratories. When
the university was founded. Prof. Whitman brought with him
a force of instructors and advanced workers from Clark Uni-
versity, at which institution he had developed the work in zo-
ology to remarkable completeness. The work begun at Worces-
ter has been prosecuted at Chicago with diligence. Among the
important researches here conducted by Dr. Whitman and by
his helpers, William M. Wheeler, Edwin O. Jordan, Sho Wa-
tase, and others, are contributions to annelid morphology, mol-
luscan morphology and structure, and the development of arthro-
pods and invertebrates. Important work in the line of cellular
biology has also been done. An investigation now being con-

SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 793

ducted by Prof. Whitman himself will be of popular interest as
well as of scientific importance — a study in pigeons. Prof. Whit-

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man is crossing wild forms and conducting experiments upon va-
rious species in captivity ; a wide range of forms is used, includ-

794 POPULAR S CI E JVC A' MONTHLY.

ing species from Australia, Japan, Soutli America, and other
parts of the world. The east end of the fourth floor of the zoologi-
cal building is devoted to the work in bacteriology. Prof. Jor-
dan, who conducts this work, has a large laboratory and several
smaller individual laboratories equipped with steam sterilizers,
hot-air sterilizers, autoclavs, incubators, refrigerators, and all
other necessary apparatus for culture and study of pathogenic
bacteria and other germs. In connection with this work a Bacte-
riological Journal Club has been organized for reading and dis-
cussing the current literature of the field. On this floor, also for
the present, are the quarters of Dr. Baur, Professor of Vertebrate
Paleontology. The Department of Vertebrate Paleontology is
under the direction of Prof. G. Baur. Before coming to the uni-
versity Dr. Baur worked at Munich and afterward assisted Prof.
O. C. Marsh at Yale. In 1801 he had charge of the Salisbury Ex-
pedition to the Galapagos Islands. His work at the university
began at the founding of the institution in 1892. His courses
cover vertebrate zoology and paleontology. Special reference is
given to the great problems in taxonomy, distribution, and phy-
logeny. There are extensive collections for practical study from
the South Dakota Miocene, the Wyoming Laramie, Kansas Cre-
taceous, and Texas Permian, No reference to Prof. Whitman's
work would be complete which omitted the Marine Biological
Laboratory and the Journal of Morphology, although neither is
directly connected with the University of Chicago. The Marine
Biological Laboratory at Woods Holl, Mass., is thoroughly and
favorably known. Dr. Whitman is the director and has been
indefatigable in its development. The work done there during
the summer months is of the best. Students work in all grades,
from elementary class work to the most advanced original re-
search. Besides the laboratory work, which is of course the
chief feature, series of lectures more or less popular but thor-
oughly scientific in character are given. The University of Chi-
cago co-operates in these laboratories with the institutions of
learning which have preceded her in their development. The
Journal of Morphology, while not a university periodical, fur-
nishes the natural medium of the original investigations there
conducted. Dr. Whitman was connected with it before the uni-
versity opened, and is still associated in its editorial management
with Dr. Allis, of Milwaukee.

While the university has not yet a medical department, one of
the new laboratories is arranged for anatomy. It is under the di-
rection of H. H. Donaldson, Head Professor of Neurology. Among
the features of the building is the handsome demonstration room.
In this building also are two special lines of work of an interest-
ing kind — viz., the work in neurology and that in experimental

SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 795

psychology. The former is, of course, in Prof. Donaldson's hands.
The department is equipped with all the necessary illustrative ap-
paratus— diagrams, models, etc. ; the laboratory is supplied with
needed material and appliances. The courses offered are intended
(a) to furnish an exposition of the architecture and functions of
the nervous system ; and (6) to offer opportunity for the investi-
gation of new problems and critical discussion of current work in
the subject. In the outline of courses reference is had to the im-
portance of the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system to
the student of medicine. Special study is attempted of the varia-
tions in intelligence correlated with the changes in the central
nervous system (1) in the vertebrate series, (2) during the growth
and development of any individual, and (3) as the consequence of
disease or experimental injury ; such variations have an impor-
tance which is psychological as well as biological. The study of
the nervous system is capable of throwing light upon some of the
questions of phylogeny, and emphasis is laid upon this fact.

Experimental psychology, which has assumed recently great
prominence in the universities, is here in charge of Prof. James
R. Angell. Two chief ideas are held constantly in view in the
work : (a) to give thorough practical training for the carrying on
of experimental investigation ; (6) to directly conduct such inves-
tigation. The instrumental equipment is adequate, placing the
university among the first half dozen in America. The new quar-
ters in the Anatomical Laboratory furnish ample space for labora-
tory work, apparatus rooms, and lecturing. The relation between
this* work under Prof. Angell and neurology under Prof. Donald-
son is naturally close, and the two work in harmony. In psy-
chology proper no work in nervous anatomy is undertaken, but
students are impressed with its importance and urged to pursue
it in the other department. The nominal relation of the work is
with the Department of Philosophy, and some of the results of
research have appeared in the publication of the university enti-
tled Contributions to Philosophy. The first number of this pub-
lication is, in fact, devoted to psychology. Among its contents
the paper on Reaction Times is fundamental and perhaps the
most thoroughgoing statement yet made in this direction, so far
as the processes themselves are concerned. Much attention has
been given to memory processes, especially the visual and audi-
tory elements of such processes. The work upon simultaneous
sensations — visual, auditory, tactile, electric — is perhaps the most
careful yet made. The study of the psychology of attention has
been much emphasized during the past year. An investigation,
the results of which are just about to be published, upon the
growth of habit is among the first on this subject to be pursued
from the primarily experimental point.

796 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Both in the thoroughness of its equipment and in the interest
of the subjects to be studied no laboratory on the ground sur-
passes the physiological. It is probably the only building devoted
entirely to this purpose in America, and in the completeness of
its equipment it surpasses most if not all of the European insti-
tutions of its kind. It has the ordinary complement of lecture
rooms, laboratories, libraries, and study rooms. One somewhat
novel feature in the lecture room deserves notice. The space be-
hind the professor's platform is occupied by blackboards, extend-
ing almost entirely across the whole side of the room. The black
surfaces, however, are at two different levels, that directly be-
hind the lecturer's desk being slightly higher than the other, per-
mitting it thus to be rolled back in front of the other half, dis-
closing behind it a screen of ground glass for projection. The
work of darkening and operating in projection is done in a small
room behind this glass screen, thus preventing all noise and dis-
turbance of the class in the manipulation. Certain peculiar fea-
tures in the arrangement of the laboratory deserve special men-
tion : (a) a greenhouse of fair size, divided into two sections, is
intended for the rearing of insects and plants, supplying the
opportunity for extended study of phenomena of life in the lower
forms of animals and plants, for physiology can never be studied
simply from animals, vital processes being comprehended only
from a full survey of conditions found in all living things ; {h)
a large aquarium for sea life ; the proper stocking of this will be
a matter of time, but the keeping and observation of marine forms
are important; (c) a cold storage room for the study of polar
effects ; (c?) an arrangement of dark rooms with heliostat, prisms,
etc., for studying the effect of monochromatic light upon living
forms. The first of this series of rooms forms practically a vast
spectroscope. The light is thrown from outside by a heliostat of
the greatest perfectness of construction. It is received upon a
battery of prisms, which can be controlled by connections in the
next room. The light, when separated into rays of the various
colors, is thrown through a slit in a connecting door upon the
support on which rests the animal or plant under experimenta-
tion. This is in a little room so related both to the spectroscopic
room and to the hinder and third room of the series that no un-
resolved light can gain access to it at any time unless desired,
(e) There is also a room for the study of the influence of high
temperatures. These five special features are both important and
novel. In addition to them there are operating rooms, rooms for
experiments in metabolism, physiology, chemistry, ordinary lab-
oratory work, etc. The two rooms where higher animal forms —
dogs, monkeys, rabbits, etc. — are kept in captivity are supplied
with cages of the best construction, and are carefully arranged

SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 797

for light, ventilation, and cleansing. All the ordinary laboratory-
rooms are supplied with aquarium equipment. The two chief
designs of the laboratory may be categorically expressed : (1) to
provide material for the extension of physiological investigation
to the whole animal kingdom and even to the plant world ; (2) to
provide opportunity for studying the effect of all environmental
conditions singly upon living forms. The importance of these is
manifest. Physiologists have been too much inclined to learn
their lessons from man alone, or from man and a few of the
higher mammals. Certain processes, however, absent or o])scure
in man, are present or better defined in some other forms. Phe-
nomena vary with types : one is at its best in one species, another
in another; a wide range, therefore, of forms is necessary. In
studying the effects of environment it is desirable, so far as pos-
sible, to isolate the elements of which it is composed. It is an
easy matter to attribute an effect to the wrong factor in the sur-
roundings. The Physiological Laboratory is in a sense an ex-
pression of its head, Prof. Jacques Loeb. Dr. Loeb was trained
in the most important laboratories of Europe, and his investiga-
tions therein were of extreme interest. His study of heliotrop-
ism demonstrated that the tendency of plants to turn sunward
was the same thing as the impulse which drives the moth to the
flame ; that there is no more psychical activity in the latter than
in the former. His later investigations into the mechanism of
geotropism, or the tendency to turn or grow toward the earth,
and other kindred phenomena, amplified and further illustrated
these conclusions. His curious investigation into heteromorpho-
sis — substitution of one organ by another, transformation of one
organ into another — was really an outgrowth of these studies.
The importance of the results of the whole series is illustrated
in a recent article by Dr. Loeb upon Qgg structure and the he-
redity of instincts. Recognition that much of what has hereto-
fore been considered psychical in instinct is merely the necessary
result of chemical actions and the mechanical operations pro-
duced by them, given external combinations of conditions being
present, greatly simplifies the conception of egg structure, and
relieves us of some of the embarrassingly complicated concep-
tions in certain of Weismann's later theories.

The Botanical Laboratory, under Prof. Coulter's direct super-
vision, is the fourth of this striking cluster of buildings. The
most notable feature is the greenhouse in the roof. From below
it appears small, but it probably measures something like seventy
by thirty feet. It serves two excellent ends : (a) it supplies mate-
rial at every stage of growth for laboratory use; (6) it fur-
nishes all kinds of conditions for experimentation. The arrange-
ments for control in temperature and moisture are nearly perfect.

798 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Tropical conditions are presented at the center ; desert, arctic, and
aquatic conditions are arranged for at other parts. Experiments
are to be conducted to determine the effect of varying conditions
upon organs. One of the principal subjects hitherto pursued in
the field has been the determination of effects of varying environ-
ment. This field study is fundamental to, and directly suggests,
the experimental work to be followed in the greenhouse. The
building is supplied with an elevator which runs to the green-
house, so that material may be taken down with a minimum of
trouble to any floor where it is needed for laboratory work or
class-room illustration. The upper floor of the laboratory is de-
voted to plant physiology. The professor has a suite of three
private rooms — one his own ofiice, one a herbarium and library,
and one a laboratory. Similar suites of rooms are at the disposal
of each of the teaching force. The largest laboratory on this floor
is for general elementary work upon individual life processes.
Smaller laboratory and research rooms for special and advanced
students are numerous throughout the building. Everywhere
the work tables are set near windows, and each is supplied inde-
pendently with gas and water. The chemical laboratory, also on
the upper floor, is admirably arranged. On the third floor the
study of cryptogamic botany is pursued. The forms are studied
(a) morphologically, (6) taxonomically. The space is divided be-
tween two instructors, one devoting himself to alg£e and fungi,
the other to mosses and ferns. Each of these teachers has the
usual suite of rooms, while there are six absolutely independent
private research rooms. The second floor is occupied by Dr.
Coulter himself. Here is the seed-plant herbarium. There are
three large rooms for herbarium or taxonomic work, also the
library and reading room, club meeting room, and laboratory for
advanced work upon seed plants. Upon the ground floor are two
large laboratories crowded with students at elementary work.
Their purposes are (a) elementary morphology, (6) ecology. In
the present unsettled condition of the building those parts actu-
ally in use are overcrowded. One hundred and five students are
daily at work in the various laboratories and research rooms.
The Botanical Herbarium represents almost the whole collection
work of Dr. Coulter. It contains all his monographic material
and the type specimens of his Western flora. It was stocked up
by Dr. Gray for the work on the Rocky Mountain flora, and is
notably full and rich. The library presents two features of im-
portance in research work: (1) remarkable richness in complete
series of periodical and serial publications ; (-2) unusual fullness in
the line of old taxonomic works. Most of these came to the uni-
versity in the Calvary purchase. In the early days of the uni-
versity it purchased a gigantic stock of books from a well-known

SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 799

German second-hand dealer. In this vast mountain of printed
matter a number of lines were particularly richly represented ;
among them was taxonomic botany, a surprising number of rare
books turning up which Prof. Coulter had been watching for
through years without succeeding in finding. In 1875, at Hano-
ver College, the Botanical Gazette first saw light, and it has en-
joyed continuous existence up to the present, always under Dr.
Coulter's editorial supervision. At first a personal enterprise, it
was taken over by the university in March, 1896. It is a monthly
journal, the numbers comprising from eighty to one hundred and
twenty pages, and has always been a favorite medium for the ex-
change of botanical ideas and for the publication of important
papers. Notwithstanding the extensive arrangements for the
study of botany made at the University of Chicago, Dr. Coulter
writes : " But when all the space is used as planned, the demands
for work in plant diseases, so extensively cultivated by the Gov-
ernment and at experiment stations ; in economic botany, includ-
ing the great field of forestry ; in paleobotany, which is in sad
need of being cultivated in a botanical atmosphere, are not met.
It will be seen, therefore, that abundant as the space and the
privileges are from a comparative standpoint, from the stand-
point of the subject in relation to a great university the necessi-
ties are far greater."

While the work of the Departments of Sociology, Philology,
and Philosophy perhaps deserves mention here, our aim is rather
to present those lines of science which by instrumental equipment,
museum collections, or rigidly scientific methods of instruction
occur immediately to the mind upon the mention of the word
science. It is hardly possible, however, for us to omit reference
to the University School. Closely connected with the Department
of Philosophy and under the same direction is the Department of
Pedagogy. The work is both theory and method. To illustrate
principles and to furnish opportunity for scientific study of a
well-balanced curriculum in the earlier grades, a school is con-
ducted. Something over thirty pupils are in attendance. Prof.
Dewey's own statement regarding this school may well be quoted :

" The conception underlying the school is that of a labora-
tory ; it bears the same relation to work in pedagogy that a lab-
oratory bears to biology, physics, or chemistry. Like any such
laboratory, it has two main purposes : (1) to exhibit, test, verify,
and criticise theoretical statements and principles ; (2) to add to
the sum of facts and principles in its special line.

" As it is not the primary function of a laboratory to devise
ways and means that can at once be put to practical use, so it is
not the primary purpose of this school to devise methods with
reference to their direct application in the graded school system.

8oo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is the function of some schools to provide better teachers accord-
ing to present standards ; it is the function of others to create new
standards and ideals, and thus to lead to a gradual change in con-
ditions. If it is advisable to have smaller classes, more teachers,
and a different working hypothesis than is at present the case in
the public schools, there should be some institution to show this.
This the school in question hopes to do, and, while it does not aim
to be impractical, it does not aim primarily to be of such a char-
acter as to be immediately capable of translation into the public
school.

" The hypothesis underlying this experiment is that of the
school as a social institution. Education outside the school pro-
ceeds almost wholly through participation in the social or com-
munity life of the groups of which one is a member.

" The work here outlined is based on the assumption that the
more formal education of the school does not depart from the
same general course that the unconscious adjustment follows, but
organizes it. The school is a special social community in which
the too complex social environment is reduced and simplified ; in
which certain ideas and facts concerning this simplified social life
are communicated to the child ; in which, also, the child is called
upon to undertake not all kinds of activity, but those specially
selected on the ground of peculiar adaptation to the child."

The Haskell Oriental Museum is a three- story and basement
building erected by Mrs. Caroline E. Haskell to the memory of
her husband, Mr. Frederick Haskell. At the present time the
second floor only is devoted to museum collections, but in the near
future the whole space of the building will be so occupied. While
the most extensive collections are in Egyptology, there are other
series. A biblical collection has been begun; the Assyrian col-
lection consists almost wholly of reproductions ; the Buckley col-
lection, illustrating the religions of Japan — Shinto and Buddhism
— was secured by Dr. Edmund Buckley during a long residence
in the Island Empire. This last deserves more than passing
notice ; while rich on the Buddhistic side, it is notable in Shinto.
Shinto is a religion of a barbaric jjeople held by a nation in full
civilization ; it is profoundly curious and interesting. There is
probably nowhere so complete an exhibition of this native Japa-
nese cult as in Dr. Buckley's collection, containing as it does
sacred objects, votive offerings, scriptures, prayers, and cult im-
plements. Dr. James H. Breasted is in charge of the work in
Egyptology and brings to it an unusual enthusiasm. Recently the
Chicago Society of Egyptian Research has been established, with
a threefold object: (1) to assist in Egyptian excavation, (2) to
bring to Chicago a just share of antiquities so discovered, and (3)
to inform its members concerning the ancient civilization which

SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 801

these discoveries represent. The society was organized March 13,
1897, and is the outgrowth of two movements — the interest shown
for some years by Mrs. Charles L. Hutchinson in securing sub-
scriptions to the Egyptian Exploration Fund, and the later in-
terest shown in the same by the Woman's Club. The society
raises a considerable sum yearly, one half of which is given to the
Exploration Fund, and the balance to the Egyptian Research
Account, both of which are practically under Mr. W. Flinders
Petrie's direction. Mr. Petrie has sent a considerable quantity of
valuable, recently discovered material to the university, which,
with the material already secured by Dr. Breasted, forms the
Egyptian collection of the Haskell Museum. It comprises a rep-

FiG. 9. — Haskell OniENTAL Museum.

resentative series of pottery and household utensils, chess board
and men, matrices or molds for ornaments and charms, talismans,
gods, rings, pendants, etc. A full series of the pottery of the
remarkable people discovered by Mr. Petrie opposite Koptos in
the winter of 189-l-'95 has been sent by that explorer. Among
recent additions of interest from the same investigator are m^ny
of value because bearing royal names ; thus, a sandstone tablet
shows Thothmes IV worshiping Amon, with a line of inscription
commemorating his' overthrow of the barbarians. Several sun-
dried bricks are stamped with royal names, and a fine series of
jar tops are signed and sealed. Some pieces of gold foil also bear
signatures. There is some good carved work in stone, among
other pieces a magnificent bust of the goddess Sekhmet. Of
wooden tablets, two bearing scenes representing the deceased
before Osiris were exquisitely done. In the last shipment re-
ceived was a fine lot from the old empire representing the fifth

VOL. LI. — 59

8o2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dynasty ; limestone portrait statues with the original colors still
visible and bearing inscriptions ; coffin and mummy of the lady,
Mery ; an inscribed wooden head rest ; and a unique painted board
with figures of servants cooking for the deceased. This work of
collection so well begun will be prosecuted vigorously, and in
time the university will possess a notable Egyptian museum. In
one sense the Haskell Oriental Museum is the outgrowth of the
Department of Comparative Religion, which is under the direc-
tion of Prof. George S. Goodspeed. Courses are ofi'ered by Prof.
Goodspeed and his helpers in a considerable range. The religions
of China, Japan, India, ancient Persia, Greece, Rome, and north-
ern Europe are studied historically and in the light of modern
science. A unique feature connected with this department is the
establishment of two lectureships on the Relations of Christianity
to the other Religions. These lectureships were endowed by Mrs.
Haskell, and are known as the Haskell Lectures and the Barrows
Lectures. The former are given yearly at the university, the
latter are delivered in alternate years in cities of India. Both
lectureships are held by Rev. John H. Barrows, President of the
World's Parliament of Religions in 1893. The first course of Bar-
rows Lectures was given last year in India, and created a consid-
erable stir.

Presented last, from the fact that much of the work is done at
other places than the university proper, is the Department of
Astronomy. A small observatory on the campus supplies oppor-
tunity for elementary work in practical astronomy by under-
graduate students. The Kenwood Observatory, situated in the
city about one mile north from the campus, furnishes facilities
for practical work by more advanced students in physical astron-
omy, practical astronomy, and astrophysics. Its astrophysical
equipment is complete. The Yerkes Observatory is just being
completed, and will soon be in operation. This, the gift of
Charles T. Yerkes, is located about seventy miles from Chicago,
at Williams Bay, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The site occupied
comprises about fifty acres of timbered land. The buildings are
located upon a gently sloping hill about two hundred feet above
the level of the lake and twelve hundred feet above the sea. The
place has been especially selected for freedom from dust and
tremors. The building is T-shaped, the great dome being at the
foot of the letter and the smaller domes at the other extremities,
the latter being for sixteen-inch and twelve-inch telescopes. The
greatest length of the building, which is from east to west, is
three hundred feet. The central body contains library and lec-
ture rooms, laboratories for physical, chemical, and photographic
work, computing rooms, and offices. The building is of the best
construction. The great telescope is the largest refracting tele-

SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 803

scope ever constructed, having a forty-incli objective made by
Alvan Clark & Sons. The focal length of the instrument is
sixty- four feet. The mounting is similar to that of the great Lick
telescope, but is heavier, more rigid, and improved. One impor-
tant advantage introduced for the first time in this mounting is
the system of electric motors, by means of which the various
motions are effected. By simply touching buttons upon a little
keyboard the astronomer may produce any one of ten different
results, changing the position of the instrument or of parts of the
observatory itself. In this simple way the great instrument may

Fig. 10. — Yerkes Observatobt, Lake Geneva.

be moved, the clock may be started or stopped, the shutter of the
dome may be opened or closed, the dome itself may be revolved,
or the floor may be made to rise and fall. The dome covering the
telescope is about ninety feet in diameter, with an observing slit
twelve feet wide extending from the horizon to beyond the zenith.
Two spectroscopic attachments are connected with the great
telescope : (a) a spectroheliograpli for photographing the solar
chromosphere, prominences, and faculse by monochromatic light
combined with a large solar spectroscope for photographic and
visual study of solar phenomena ; (6) a stellar spectroscoj^e
for photographic and visual investigation of stellar spectra, and
determination of motion in the line of sight. The world has a
right to expect results from such an instrumental equipment, and
the Department of Astronomy has in view important researches.
Among these are micrometrical measurement of double stars and

8o4

POPULAB SCIENCE MONTHLY.

faint nebulae ; observation of planets, satellites, and comets ; pho-
tographic and spectroscopic investigation of conditions of the
sun ; researches on the spectra of fixed stars and nebula? ; motion
of stars in the line of sight. The Yerkes Observatory will, of
course, be used only by advanced students capable of undertak-

FiG. 11. — The TjiLEScoPE, Yerkes Obsekvatokv.

ing important and original investigation. The ordinary instruc-
tion for undergraduates and elementary students will continue to
be given in the city at the university itself and at Kenwood Ob-
servatory. It would be a mistake to imagine that up to the pres-
ent time the university has made no contribution to astronomical
science. Important studies have been conducted by Prof. Hale,

THE IDEA OF MURDER IN ANIMALS. 805

Prof. Burnham, and Dr. See; and a journal of high value, the
Astrophysical Journal is published through the University Press,
under the editorship of Prof. George E. Hale, of the University
of Chicago, and Prof. James E. Keeler,of the Allegheny Observa-
tory. In its pages will be found many valuable observations and
investigations conducted by the university force.

THE IDEA OF MURDER AMONG MEN AND

ANIMALS.

By GUGLIELMO FERKEEO.

WHOEVER has studied in its particulars the history of the
past knows well that human ferocity is an unfathomable
abyss. Who could enumerate all the means invented by men to
exterminate each other in turn, from the spear and the yataghan to
shrapnel, from hemlock to prussic acid, from Greek fire to dyna-
mite ? Were we to try and calculate, even roughly, the number
of human beings who have died a violent death at the hands of
their own kind, even during that period alone which has elapsed
since the dawn of history, the total reached would be undoubtedly
monstrous. Nor must we be blinded as to the feelings of our an-
cestors by the growth of a certain gentleness of manners which
has for scarcely a century past been refining human society in
Europe ; one of our ancestors' chief amusements consisted in the
destruction of other men — the extermination of other human be-
ings. Homicide has been at all times, in all forms, and under all
conditions, individual and collective, a fierce passion of the human
race, a most comoion incident of everyday life, inspiring no one
with any feeling of horror whatsoever. It is sufficient to recall
the fact that among people who reached a noteworthy stage of
civilization, such as the Romans, war, which is a systematic homi-
cide, or, in other words, ferocity reduced to a science, could be
regarded as a financial speculation and a perfectly legitimate one
for the educated classes to engage in ; and that what is called
history is little more than an interminable series of murders,
individual and collective, one more ferocious than the other.

The present age has witnessed so important an amelioration of
habits that we are apt to forget that it is of very recent date, and
to see in the ferocity displayed by our ancestors something con-
trary to human nature — so much so that we have come to stigma-
tize all actions of an excessively savage character as " inhuman "
and " brutal." A closer analysis will, however, show that this is
an illusion ; inasmuch as murderous ferocity, by which I mean
the passion for destroying life, would seem to be a characteristic

8o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

peculiar to humanity, one which either does not exist in animals
or has been observed to exist among them only in an infinitesi-
mal degree.

This is one of the most obscure and difiicult problems which
we meet with in animal psychology. A large number of animals
live, it is true, in a state of permanent warfare, killing and de-
vouring each other in turns, but how far does this fact imply an-
other— viz., that this internecine slaughter presupposes in animals
a clear idea of death — of the extinction of life as the necessary
consequence of their actions ? How far are these acts of hostility
determined by the intention of depriving another animal of life ?
In other words, have animals a distinct idea of life and death and
of the means by which life may be destroyed ?

Let us examine the animals which are considered to be the
most ferocious among the mammals — viz., the feline tribe. It is
well known that the lion, which attacks another animal in order
to make a meal of him, almost always kills his prey by seizing it
by the neck and crushing between his teeth the other's cervical
vertebrae. Further, the lion's action in this maneuver is so certain
that he generally kills the animal at the first attempt. Are we
justified in inferring from this fact that the lion has a clear idea
of life and death, and that he crunches between his teeth his ad-
versary's vertebne with the distinct idea of killing him, aware
that by so doing he is depriving him of life ? I do not think so.
When he treats his prey thus he probably merely remembers
from former experience that the animal will offer no further re-
sistance and may therefore be devoured in peace — a far simpler
idea than those complex differentiated notions implied in a per-
ception of the difference between life and death.

That, as a matter of fact, the lion does not possess the afore-
said idea of life as distinguished from death, and of the possibility
of inflicting the latter, may be seen from his behavior when he
springs upon a hunter who has wounded him — not to devour the
hunter but in self-defense. If he had a distinct idea of life and
death and of the means at his disposal of inflicting death, this is
surely the occasion in which he should display it. On the con-
trary, however, it usually happens that when a lion springs upon
a hunter that has wounded him and knocks him down, he bites
him two or three times, wherever he can ; and, having thus satis-
fied his rage, he goes away, taking no further heed of his enemy,
whose ultimate fate depends upon what part of the body the
lion has bitten him. If the bite has injured some vital organ,
the unfortunate hunter succumbs to his injuries ; but if it has
been inflicted upon some secondary organ only, he may escape
from a most critical position with comparatively little damage.
Hence, although the lion's claws are as keen as razors and his

THE IDEA OF MURDER IN ANIMALS, 807

teeth little better than daggers of the most terrible kind, hundreds
do frequently escape from conflict with a lion, sometimes almost
unwounded. Meunier, one of the most illustrious French ob-
servers of animal psychology, narrates how a certain man named
Botta was once knocked down by a lion, kept in a perilous posi-
tion for some time, bruised all over, and badly bitten in the arm,
after which the lion went away, leaving the man very seriously
but not dangerously wounded. Delagorgue cites a lion hunter
who found himself in the same predicament twice within seven
years after having fired at a lion. The first time the lion con-
tented himself with fracturing both the hunter's arms ; the second
time it inflicted six bites and clawed him in several parts of the
body, and on neither occasion did it proceed to further reprisals.
Another man, Vermaes by name, a farmer living near the source
of the Mooi, a tributary of the Tanguela, in Natal, one evening
espied a lioness assailing his cattle. Directly he saw her he fired
and hit her ; but the animal sprang upon him and knocked him
down. The man afterward described how he had felt : his ears
stunned by the animal's hoarse roars, how he had seen two jaws
armed with long white teeth opened wide above him ; how he
had felt the two sides of his chest being crunched together all
the way down ; after that, nothing more. He was picked up
bleeding from this one bite, after giving which the lioness had
departed.

These facts seem to show that the lion is not consciously aware
of his power of destroying the life of another living creature. He
springs upon his enemy in order to wreak his anger, and bites
instinctively, but not to kill him. Hence he bites at random
wherever chance offers, without allowing himself to be guided by
previous experience, which would have shown him that certain
bites given in a certain way may cause death ; and as soon as he
has satisfied the need he feels of relieving his rage by biting he
goes away.

The lion, then, is a dangerous beast, not because he is ferocious
in the sense that he enjoys the sensation of successful slaughter —
he has not reached the idea of death, and hence can not realize
his vast power to inflict it ; he is ferocious because he bites when
infuriated, and because the bites of an animal so powerfully en-
dowed by Nature are of terrible consequence. Hence it follows
that when he strikes his prey so definitely on the neck before de-
vouring it, he does so not with the distinct idea of killing it, but
merely because experience has shown him that after having
struck it in this particular way he can most easily devour it ; and
this fact also explains why he does not strike in the same way
when he springs upon another creature, not for food, but in a fury
of self-defense.

8o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Let us now consider another species of animal, and one nearer
to man — viz., tlie apes, more especially the strongest and most
savage of their kind. Here, again, it is permissible to assume that
no variety of ape has succeeded in forming a clear idea of death
and of the means of inflicting it. Thus, if the gorilla were pos-
sessed of the idea of death, and the way in which his formidable
arms can cause it, never would man escape from a struggle with
such a creature ; for, as Brehm points out, a single blow from the
huge claw- armed foot of a gorilla can rip up a man, break open
his chest, or cleave his skull. And yet many do escape from these
encounters with the great simian, maimed and mutilated indeed,
but with their lives. Brehm narrates that he has met in Africa
with many such horribly mauled survivors. Now, it is evident
that if so strong and formidable an animal — whose human foes are
absolutely at his mercy, once they have discharged their firearms
— frequently fails to kill them, it can only be because he strikes
blindly under the influence of rage, without directing his blows
in such a way as to indicate that he possesses any consciousness
as to the spots in which the blows would produce the most vital
effects. The gorilla, therefore, has no idea of death and of the
means of inflicting it.

This view is strengthened by all we know concerning the con-
flicts which take place among the gorillas themselves. The male
gorilla fights savagely in the mating season, and yet no one has
ever found a dead gorilla which could possibly have perished in one
of these skirmishes. On the other hand, gorillas have been seen
bearing scars or jagged rents undoubtedly produced by the teeth
of some rival in love, an obvious indication that in these conflicts
the animals confine themselves to biting as chance directs, and
that their frightful capacity for slaughter is not set in motion from
any predetermined idea of destroying the life of an adversary.

The orang-outang likewise uses its teeth as sole weapon of
offense and defense ; and that also on impulse. " When it is
wounded or pursued," says Brehm, " it can defend itself well ; the
hunter should then be on his guard. The animal's arms are
strong, and its teeth most formidable ; it can easily fracture a
man's arm and its bites are horrible."

Let us follow the same author's description of a fight be-
tween a dog and a baboon, which is the largest simian after the
orang-outang and the gorilla : " The dog follows its foe and en-
deavors to seize it ; but the baboon suddenly tiirns and springs
upon the dog with an appalling howl, grips it with all its claws
at once on breast and throat, bites it deeply on those spots several
times, rolls with it over and over on the ground, biting again and
again, and at last leaves it prostrate, covered with wounds and
blood. The baboon then makes for the rocks, uttering yells of

THE IDEA OF MURDER IN ANIMALS. 809

victory absolutely diabolical." Here, too, it is evident that even
the strongest baboon is not guided by the idea of destroying
its adversary ; it is not aware that by compressing the dog's throat
it might strangle or suffocate him, that by biting in certain parts
of the body it might cause him to bleed to death. It simply allows
itself to be carried away by an impulse of fury, which is vented
in bites and scratches — sometimes, it is true, of terrific violence —
which, however, do not easily cause death, precisely because all
these actions, however violent, are not co-ordinated in an end,
viz., that of killing the adversary — by a clear idea of death and of
the means of inflicting it.

I have cited the above examples to show that in one of the
strongest felines and among the strongest and most intelligent of
the anthropoid apes the existence of the idea of death and of the
means of inflicting it can not be admitted, and that hence the
slaughter of one of these animals by another, whether of its own
or of another species, can never be the result of a conscious act of
volition. In their struggles, both among themselves and with
other creatures, their aim is never to kill, but merely to bite and
claw ; in short, to give vent to their internal rage by violent acts
as impulse may direct. And if such acts do sometimes result in
death, this fact must be regarded as essentially due to accident,
and according as the wound happens to be inflicted, with more or
less severity, upon a vital part of the body. But the capacity,
predetermined by conscious will, to slay another creature of the
same or of a different species seems to be non-existent ; and hence
all the ferocity of these animals is impulsive, the result of im-
petus, never a matter of reflection or of will ; it is confined be-
tween narrow limits, in that it lacks that idea of the possibility
of destroying the life of other creatures which has opened such a
boundless horizon to the ferocity of the human race.

Can this generalization, which facts demonstrate to be true as
regards the lion and some of the primates, be extended to the whole
animal creation ? To make a similar assertion would undoubtedly
be rash ; the facts which have been noted are not numerous, and
we know little or nothing of the psychology of ferocity even
among animals like the tiger, which have, as wild beasts, a ter-
rible reputation, or among others which are extraordinarily intel-
ligent, such as the elephant. Nevertheless I believe that, as we
have been able to observe this fact in one of the most feared of
carnivora and also among the most intelligent and those nearest
to man, we are justified in asserting that the idea of death and
the possibility of inflicting it by artificial means in the animal
world is at least very indistinct, scarcely dawning, uncertain, and
that if any species has arrived at such an idea, it is in such cases
a mere dim and blurred outline.

8io POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is therefore probable that the idea of murder is a preroga-
tive of the human race, or that the human race is the only one
which has arrived at the conception with great clearness, and that
this superiority in man is a characteristic which differentiates
him from all the other species of animals. Probably it was in
this direction that, at a very early period, in the first beginnings
of human life, and in that variety from which Homo sapiens
emerged by selection, the intellectual force of the human species
was directed, and that the comprehension of the difference be-
tween the state of life and the state of death, with the perception
of the fact that living creatures might be made through certain
co-ordinate actions to pass from the first state to the second, was
one of the first and grandest discoveries of the human race. It is
easy indeed to understand of what great use this discovery was
to man in his struggle with animals physically superior to him-
self, to find himself in possession of the grand secret of life and
death. The work of selection accomplished by man among the
enemies of his species thus became systematic ; it became, not-
withstanding the physical feebleness of man's constitution, infi-
nitely more efficacious than the destruction effected by man's
foes, who were so much stronger, in the ranks of the human race.
Governed and regulated by the clear idea of killing, with deliber-
ate artifice, the enemies of the human race, this selection not only
became a terrible weapon and assured victory to man in the
struggle for existence, but it impelled him to perfect indefinitely
those means of slaughter to which he owed his victory.

This discovery has been of such capital importance that one
might say that the idea of killing and being killed is the funda-
mental idea underlying the mental system of the most savage
human races — those that are nearest akin to animals — such as the
Australian aborigines, the Botocudos, and the American Indians.
It is well known that the savage races suffer from a perfect de-
lirium of persecution, as witness their continual slaughter through
some subtle invention of other men. The Australians even have
no idea of natural death — can not conceive of a man's dying from
any other than a violent cause ; they believe that every one who
dies has been killed by some hidden agency of destruction, just as
he may have laid one low with an arrow. Hence the well-known
Australian custom that, on the death of a member of the tribe, a
relative must seek out some member of another tribe and kill
him to revenge the supposed murder. Superstitions and cruel
practices of primitive life, such as we find among the Australians,
have their origin in the abuse of generalization from the one
primitive discovery that one man has power over the life of an-
other man, and one of the first mental efforts of humanity has
lain in connecting these two general extensions of an idea which

FEDERAL RAILWAY REGULATION. 811

is at bottom just, and in connecting it by experience and observa-
tion so as to determine its real limits and to prevent man from
seeing homicidal forces in every unexplained phenomenon of Na-
ture. This idea was also fraught with importance in regard to
forms of social life — an importance so fundamental that a great
part of the work of primitive society was nothing but the prac-
tical development of this idea. The first form of social progress
which we find in the advance of human society is progress in
the manufacture of instruments of destruction — spears, daggers,
knives, arrows, bows — for among almost all primitive peoples it
is in their weapons that we first notice a wide differentiation and
variety of shape. There have been many races that had only
one form of house, very few articles of clothing or ornament, a
single kind of food, or nearly so — none with but one kind of de-
structive weapon, a single form of knife, spear, bow. The capacity
for committing conscious murder upon other beings, of its own
or another species, has marked so fundamentally the superiority
of the human race over all other species of animals that in the
suggestions of this idea there have developed through long time
all the mental activities of the human race. This fundamental
idea was perhaps the first discovery of man, and ranks with
that of fire as among the fundamental discoveries of the history
of mankind ; and if human cruelty has been only too capable of
assuming forms infinitely richer and more varied than the simple
cruelty of animals, it is to this discovery that the fact is due.

A DECADE IN FEDERAL RAILWAY REGULATION.

By II. T. NEWCOMB.

IT is ten years since public dissatisfaction with methods of rail-
way administration found legislative expression in the passage
of the Interstate Commerce Law, which was practically the first
attempt made by Congress to exercise, in relation to railway trans-
portation, its constitutional power to regulate commerce between
the several States. Whatever minor causes may have contrib-
uted to this dissatisfaction, there can be no doubt that the only
subject of disagreement between the railways and the general
public which constituted an at all adequate cause was the charges
exacted for the movement of passengers and property. While it
must be conceded that much of the complaint was unjust to the
railways and arose through the fact that, particularly in the more
exclusively agrarian sections of the country, much industry was
conducted at a loss that might have been shifted to railway cor-
porations could low enough charges for the movement of agri-

8i2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cultural products liave been secured, it is yet true that numerous
individuals and communities had suffered grievous injury through
unjust discriminations in the charges for railway service.

Unjust discrimination in railway charges being the evil that
Congress intended to eradicate by the Interstate Commerce Law,
the extent in which that result has been accomplished during the
ten years since its enactment must be the measure of its success.
If it has not materially diminished the unjust rate-making prac-
tices formerly so prevalent it will be fruitless to plead that it has,
through the annual reports of the commission appointed for its
enforcement, provided several volumes of most valuable and prac-
tical discussions of railway problems ; that through a clause which
has no direct connection with its substance, and might as well
have been an independent enactment, it has given desirable im-
petus to the application of safety appliances to cars and trains ;
or even that in spite of limitations voluntarily imposed by the
commission it has secured the compilation, under the skillful
direction of a most accomplished statistician, of a mass of statis-
tical information regarding the business of railway transporta-
tion that is of great utility to the student and may become an
important factor in securing wise and adequate legislation.

The means that Congress provided for the prevention of unjust
discriminations in charges were threefold, viz. :

First, a summary process for hearing and adjudicating com-
plaints and enforcing relief ; second, publicity of railway methods
and accounts ; third, perpetual competition among railways.

Though the tentative character of the law was acknowledged
by the most vehement of its partisans, there has been as yet no
amendment in any way modifying these fundamental principles.
Those that have been passed — adding the penalty of imprison-
ment to that of a mere tine for violation of its clauses ; extending
the provisions requiring filing and publicity to rate schedules, in
which two or more carriers join ; requiring public notice of reduc-
tions as well as of advances in charges ; and relating to procedure
— have been at the direct instance of the commission and were
advocated in its reports.

The first remedy lingers a living death in the reports of the
Interstate Commerce Commission, and it may yet be resuscitated
by suitable legislation, but it was deprived of all practical force,
except as a contributor to publicity, when, in the first action
brought to secure a decree enforcing an order made by the com-
mission, a Federal court, in a decision that has been followed
uniformly ever since, claimed the right to go into the matter at
issue between the defendant railway and the complainant before
the commission dp novo, to hear new testimony if offered, to
allow the railway to adopt a new line of defense, and to consider

FEDERAL RAILWAY REGULATION. 813

the couclusions of the commission as to law and fact as merely
prima facie evidence subject to rebuttal.

Publicity was provided for by authorizing the commission to
inquire generally into the business of all carriers subject to its
jurisdiction ; to keep continually informed regarding their busi-
ness methods, by requiring annual statistical reports ; authorizing
the commission to prescribe a uniform system of accounts ; re-
quiring the publication and filing of schedules of rates on all
traffic subject to the provisions of the law ; requiring railways to
file copies of agreements with other common carriers ; and giving
the commission authority to issue subpoenas and subpoenas duces
tecum. Competition was to be perpetuated by the prohibition of
pooling agreements. This and the second remedy have been
enforced with reasonable continuity.

Charges for railway service may unjustly discriminate in
three ways :

1. When differences are based upon the individuals for whom
services are performed.

2. When charges upon different commodities are adjusted for
the purpose or so as in efi^ect to foster the movement of one at the
expense of the other in a degree not warranted by differences ap-
pertaining to the commodities themselves.

3. When charges to or from particular localities favor some
to the disadvantage of others more than is justified by natural
conditions.

Unjust discriminations between individuals are those most
readily observed, and consequently most obnoxious to the general
public, though it is doubtful whether their consequences approxi-
mate in gravity the serious and deplorable effects of those that
fall in the second and third classes. They are effected by means
of secret deviations from the published rate schedules, while those
between producers of different commodities or between localities
appear boldly on the face of tariffs and classifications. The secret
rates, rebates, drawbacks, allowances, or other illegal devices re-
sorted to in order to accomplish the first class of discriminations
are punishable by fine or imprisonment. The only remedies for
the other kinds are modification of the rate schedules or monetary
recompense for the damage suffered. The number of discrimina-
tions between individuals has been materially reduced by the
operation of the present law, but that they have by no means
disappeared is evident from the following extract, which, as it is
taken from a recent issue of a railway paper of high standing,
may be regarded as ex cathedra :

" At present no railway man dares to assist the commission to
information against another road, no company dares to be the
active instrument in bringing complaint against another. It has

8 14 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

its own record behind it. There would be retaliation, and there
is no great company which can face having its record of the past
years subjected to investigation."

These discriminations are very effective in competition for
traflBc and will continue an important factor in the railway sit-
uation as long as competition is a controlling element in rate-
making. It is not even certain that they are not more harmful
at present than when more common, and it may be that their
baneful effects are accentuated now that, instead of being granted
to nearly every applicant, concessions from established charges
are accorded only to powerful traders who are able to control
traffic sufficient in quantity to yield revenue of almost vital im-
portance to the carrying companies. One of the ablest men ever
appointed to be an Interstate Commerce Commissioner has pub-
licly declared that —

" If we could unearth the secrets of these modern trusts, whose
surprising exploits excite such wide apprehensions, we should
find an explanation of their menacing growth in the systematic
methods by which they have evaded the burden of transporta-
tion. The reduced charges which they have obtained, sometimes
by favoritism and oftener by force, account in great measure for
the colossal gains which they have accumulated."

And he adds :

" Indeed, I think it scarcely too much to say that no alliance
of capital, no aggregation of productive forces, would prove of
real or at least of permanent disadvantage if rigidly subjected to
just and impartial charges for public transportation."

Unjust discriminations prejudicial to particular commodities
have not been materially reduced in number by the operation of
the Interstate Commerce Law. They appear, as has been said, in
rate classifications and rate schedules, and the burden of proof is
usually upon those who allege that they are unjust. The commis-
sion, in response to complaints brought before it, has found it ne-
cessary to prescribe the proper relations between rates for carrying
the following pairs of commodities : Common soap and pearline,
dried fruits and raisins, lumber and hub blocks, lumber and rail-
way ties, wheat and flour, corn and its products, grain and grain
products, celery and green vegetables, window shades and hol-
lands, and petroleum and its products. These, however, involve
but the smaller side of the question. It is not clear that rates as
at present adjusted are relatively reasonable as between, for ex-
ample, the products of agriculture and those of other industries,
nor that they do not bear with undue relative severity either
upon the grain producer of the trans-Mississippi region or the
cotton planter of the Gulf States. These are matters with which
the Interstate Commerce Law does not effectively deal, and which

FEDERAL RAILWAY REGVLATION. 815

can not be so dealt with until the law is modified in a manner
more radical than any yet officially suggested.

The most serious class of unjust discriminations includes those
which have for their victims the entire populations of towns,
cities, and even extensive districts which are made to suffer from
the unfair adjustment of railway rates. Practically the whole
region south of the Potomac and Ohio and east of the Mississippi
has continuously suffered from discriminations of this kind
through the system of making charges to a few selected cities the
basis for through rates to all other points. Through rates are
made to and from about two hundred of the larger towns, includ-
ing Atlanta, Birmingham, Chattanooga, Vicksburg, New Orleans,
and Mobile, and traffic shipped from or to all other points is
charged the rate to one of these basing points plus the local rate
from such basing point to final destination. In practice it is
common to make the combination by the use of rates to and be-
yond whatever basing point will give the lowest total, whether
on the line traversed by the shipment or not. Thus a shipment
from Cincinnati to a point on the line from that city to New Or-
leans may be charged the full rate to New Orleans plus that from
the latter back to the local point. The condemnation of such a
system can not be too severe. It not only limits the commercial
activities of the towns unjustly discriminated against and re-
stricts the sources from which they can directly draw supplies,
but by hindering their growth it retards the development of the
entire section, including the cities supposed to be favored.

The manner in which competition at points served by two or
more railways affects those having but one has received general
recognition, and is one of the most powerful causes of the too
rapid construction that has burdened the country with many un-
necessary, unprofitable, and bankrupt lines. To attempt to regu-
late these cases by the process of taking them up singly and
prescribing the alterations necessary to make the charges rela-
tively reasonable, is a task impossible on account of magnitude.
Though the relief afforded to particular places through the or-
ders of the Interstate Commerce Commission has often been of
great local importance, a large number of its decrees, including
those most important, have been entirely ignored, or are now
awaiting enforcement through the tedious processes of the courts.
Even had the commission itself the authority of a United States
court, and were there no appeal from its decisions, the town with
two railways would still have an immense advantage over that
with one.

In the case of the Eau Claire Board of Trade, decided by the
Commission in 1893, it was contended that the rates charged on
lumber from Eau Claire to points on the Missouri River were so

8i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

high relatively to those from points competing for the business of
supplying the same markets, as practically to destroy the busi-
ness of Eau Claire. Only a few of the roads serving these com-
peting points reached Eau Claire, and accordingly the only prac-
tical mode of adjustment, from the standpoint of the law, was to
order a reduction from that point. This the commission did, but
added :

" Undoubtedly those roads " (referring to those not serving
Eau Claire, and consequently not included in the order) " have it
in their power to continue the present disparity, but we do not
anticipate, and certainly can not assume, that they will resort to
such inconsiderate and arbitrary action in order to nullify the
lawful order of this commission."

The compliance of the defendant railway with the order of the
commission was, however, almost immediately nullified by the
action upon the part of the other railways which that body had
most properly refused to anticipate, and the rates of all lines were
ultimately restored to practically the figures in effect previous to
the complaint.

The conditions described are fairly typical of those existing all
over the United States. The Interstate Commerce Law has miti-
gated but slightly, if at all, the evil of unjust discrimination be-
tween individuals, has in but few and relatively insignificant
instances moderated unjust discriminations between articles or
classes of traffic, and has almost wholly failed to remedy the far
more serious inequities in rate-making which operate to the dis-
advantage of towns, cities, or districts.

If it were true that the single step necessary to prevent or
alleviate considerably the evils described is to re- enforce the law
by adopting the amendments suggested by the commission, or
otherwise to perfect the remedies already provided, adequate and
early relief might reasonably be hoped for. That the commis-
sion does not take this complacent and superficial view is evident
from the following extract from its Ninth Annual Report :

" Those who have given most reflection to the subject of gov-
ernment regulation are aware that the laws now in force are
more or less tentative and experimental, and such persons antici-
pate that the evolution of railway control by public agencies will
sooner or later result in a more comprehensive and direct exer-
cise of the power possessed by Congress to regulate our internal
commerce."

In fact, while the commission is, to adopt its own phrase, ask-
ing Congress merely " to make the act mean what it was supposed
to mean at the time of its passage," it must be itself aware that it
then contained the cause of endless discriminations. Says Com-
missioner Knapp :

FEDERAL RAILWAY REGULATION. 817

" The power to compete is the power to discriminate, and it is
simply out of the question to have at once the absence of dis-
crimination and the presence of competition."

And he adds :

" I regard the existing law as presenting this singular anom-
aly, that it seeks to enforce competition by the mandate of the
statute, and at the same time to punish as criminal misdemeanors
the acts and inducements by which competition is originally
effected."

The unreasonable rate not made either to secure competitive
traffic or to recoup losses from carrying such traffic at too low
rates is so extremely rare that its very existence may well be
doubted. Unjust discriminations between individuals are re-
sorted to in order to secure by means of secret rates, rebates, or
other devices a greater proportion of the traffic from or to com-
petitive points than would be carried at open and equal rates.
Discriminations between commodities result most frequently
from favoring articles produced by heavy shippers or in towns
at which competition is sharp, or from the fact that the railways
agreeing to a particular classification have not a sufficient iden-
tity of interest to make naturally for harmony and justice. Lo-
calities either are favored unduly because they are served by
competing lines, or are discriminated against in order that low
rates may be maintained at other points more fortunate in this
respect. The charges to local points on main and branch lines
are too high relatively to those at terminals where there is com-
petition. Yet it can not be denied that so long as the carriers are
independent of each other in the matter of revenue there will be
many plausible arguments available for the defense of these re-
lations. The difficulty of dealing with such discriminations is
greatly enhanced by the insufficient information upon which it is
necessary to decide regarding the reasonableness of rates under
present conditions. Thus, in determining whether a given rate
on wheat from Chicago to New York is reasonable and just, it
may be necessary to consider the rates on the same articles to
Buffalo, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Montreal,
Newport News, and other Eastern points not only from Chicago,
but also from Minneapolis, Duluth, East St. Louis, Peoria, Cin-
cinnati, Buffalo, and other places. Rates on flour, corn, and corn
meal between any of those points may also be involved ; and pos-
sibly the charges on any of the commodities named from St. Paul
or St. Louis to New Orleans via the Mississippi River boats, and
from New Orleans to New York or Liverpool by steamer, may in
some way be connected with the controversy so as materially to
affect its decision. In fact, it is impossible to set any limit to the
data that may have important bearing upon the question at

VOL. LI, — 60

8i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

issue, or to say of any fact concerning commerce or transporta-
tion that it would necessarily be wholly irrelevant in such a con-
troversy. Yet the parties defendant, when such a case is heard
before the Interstate Commerce Commission or the courts of the
United States, are the carriers between Chicago and New York
only. When the interdependence of all rates is thoroughly un-
derstood and the extent and importance of this condition fully
appreciated, it will be a matter of little surprise that through the
absence of sufficiently comprehensive information in particular
cases, and through the impracticability of treating the subject of
railway rates under the present system in the broad and thorough
manner absolutely essential to the correction of the evils now ex-
isting, even the clear-headed and able men who have constituted
the Interstate Commerce Commission have been led into occa-
sional errors which have furnished arguments to those who from
self-interest desire a return to the system in vogue when there
was no public supervision of interstate commerce by rail.

The conflict of interest between the several corporate units of
the railway system is the primary cause of the evils attendant
upon railway transportation as now conducted. This fact being
clearly established, it is at once evident that that portion of the
Interstate Commerce law which was intended to perpetuate com-
petition— i. e., the fifth or antipooling section — is radically an-
tagonistic to any wise and practicable system of railway regula-
tion. It is necessary at the outset, as a first step toward a system
under which railway rates can be made equal to all, that this re-
straint upon the carriers should be removed — not in order to save
them from the bankruptcy that is almost certain to follow the
vicious methods now in vogue ; not for the sake of the thousands
whose small savings have been invested in railway securities in
the reasonable belief that Congress would not legislate so as to
destroy an investment through which private capital is made to
perform a public function, but in order to relieve individuals,
classes of property, and localities from the unjustly discriminat-
ing charges for railway service from which they now suffer. At
the same time Congress should give some substantial finality to
the findings of the board of railway experts which under the
name of the Interstate Commerce Commission it has created to
adjudicate between the railways and their patrons, and should
strengthen the visitorial functions of that body by granting what-
ever amendments to the law are necessary in order to secure the
production of all the legal testimony desired and by considerably
widening the scope of its statistical investigations.

But this is only a beginning of progress toward more enlight-
ened methods of dealing with this important industry. It has
never been found profitable to legislate in restraint of natural

EARLY AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETIES. 819

economic forces, but tlie best results have accrued wlien states-
men liave frankly recognized the tendency of those forces and
have sought to make their operation useful to society. The force
which tends toward the consolidation of railway properties is one
of the most powerful, and it is now recognized that such consoli-
dation is in the public interest. All provisions forbidding or
hindering the various forms of consolidation of parallel or con-
necting railways, whether contained in State Constitutions or in
Federal or State statutes, should be repealed, and public and legis-
lative encouragement so far as practicable should be generously
accorded to every step that tends toward the complete harmoni-
zation of the railway system. If this somewhat radical change
in the attitude toward the railway monopoly can be eifected it
will not be long before favoritism will become as rare in railway
rates as in the rates of taxation.

-♦^♦-

EARLY AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETIES.*

By Pbof. H. CAEEINGTON BOLTON, Pn. D.

THREE chemical societies were organized in the United States
before the close of the first quarter of this century : 1. The
Chemical Society of Philadelphia, founded in 1792, 2. The Co-
lumbian Chemical Society of Philadelphia, founded in 1811.
3. The Delaware Chemical and Geological Society, founded in
1821. These societies were short-lived, local in jurisdiction, and
without much influence on the progress of the science ; but it is
interesting to note that professional, teaching, and amateur chem-
ists in America formed associations for mutual improvement and
for the advancement of their calling forty-nine years earlier
than their brethren in England. American chemists were not
impelled to form independent societies owing to a lack of organ-
izations for men of science, but they early felt the advantages of
specialization. Both the society of 1792 and that of 1811 were
formed in a city honored by the presence of the venerable and
dignified American Philosophical Society, established by Benja-
min Franklin in 1743.

1. The Chemical Society of Philadelphia was undoubtedly the
earliest organized body of chemists in either hemisphere ; it does
not appear to have published records of its meetings, but in
1801-2 it was presided over by Dr. James Woodhouse, the vice-
presidents being Felix Pascalis and John Redman. Dr. Wood-

* Abstract of a paper read to the Washington Chemical Society, April 8, 1897.

820 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

house (1770-1809) was at the time Professor of Chemistry in the
medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, of which
he was a graduate. This chair had been held by Dr. James
Hutchinson, and on his death, in 1793, Dr. Joseph Priestley, who
arrived from England a few months later, was invited to succeed
him, but he declined, preferring retirement at Northumberland,
and Dr. Woodhouse was chosen instead. He was more of a
physician than a chemist, and most of his writings were on
medical topics, but he edited Chaptal's Elements of Chemistry
and other works. He is said to have been the first to prove by
comparative experiments the superiority of anthracite coal from
Pennsylvania over bituminous coal from Virginia for intensity
and regularity of heating power.

The first vice-president, Felix Pascalis-Ouvrifere (1750-1840),
had an interesting career. He was born in France, where he re-
ceived his medical education, but emigrated to Santo Domingo,
and while practicing his profession there acquired an extensive
knowledge of botany and other branches of natural history. In
1793 a revolt among the negroes compelled Pascalis to take
refuge in the United States : he settled first in Philadelphia and
afterward in ISTew York, where he aided in founding the Linnsean
Society of New York. The second vice-president. Dr. John Red-
man (1722-1808), was one of the foremost practitioners of medi-
cine in Philadelphia, and from 1786 was President of the Phila-
delphia College of Physicians.

Among the most active members of the Philadelphia Chem-
ical Society were Priestley, Hare, and Seybert. The ambition of
the members is shown by the circumstance that a standing com-
mittee in 1802 was prepared to " annalize every mineral produc-
tion" sent to them, free of expense. The meeting held October
24, 1801, was made memorable by the appointment of a com-
mittee for the " discovery of means by which a greater concentra-
tion of heat might be obtained for chemical purposes." One of
the committee, Robert Hare, then only twenty years of age, re-
ported to the society on December 10th his invention of the " hy-
drostatic blowpipe." Hare's remarkable paper was printed in a
small pamphlet of thirty-four pages with the title. Memoir on the
Supply and Application of the Blowpipe, containing an account
of a new method of supplying the blowpipe either with common
air or oxygen gas. Hare's invention yielded a fruitful harvest of
discoveries and alone justified the existence of the first of chem-
ical societies ; his subsequent career as Professor of Chemistry in
the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania from 1818
to 1847 is well known.

2. The Columbian Chemical Society of Philadelphia was
founded in the month of August, 1811, by a " number of persons

EARLY AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETIES. 821

desirous of cultivating cliemical science and promoting tlie state
of philosophical inquiry."

The principal officers elected at the first meeting were as
follows : Patron, Hon. Thomas Jefferson, Esq. ; president, Prof.
James Cutbush ; vice presidents, George F. Lehman, Franklin
Bache.

Thomas Jefferson's commanding position in the world of sci-
ence and arts, as well as his literary attainments, well qualified
him for the office of patron ; he was at that time living at his
country seat in Virginia, having already served his country for
eight years as chief magistrate.

The president of the society, Dr. James Cutbush, was Pro-
fessor of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and Mineralogy at St.
John's College ; in 1814 he held the position of assistant apothe-
cary general in the army, and he afterward became Professor of
Chemistry and Mineralogy at the United States Military Acad-
emy, West Point, where he died in 1823. Dr. Cutbush published
several books, the best known being A System of Pyrotechny
(Philadelphia, 1825), an elaborate work of six hundred pages.

Franklin Bache, the second vice-president, was at that date a
youth of only twenty years, who had graduated the year before
at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a grandson of Ben-
jamin Franklin and a member of the distinguished Bache family
which numbered so many eminent men of science. He afterward
became Professor of Chemistry at the Jefferson Medical College,
a position which he held until his death in 18G4.

The constitution adopted by the founders of the society, be-
sides the usual business rules, contained some unusual features.
The officers included an orator, whose duty it was to deliver an
oration on some chemical subject once every year. Since the
Society's Memoirs contain no " oration," it is to be feared that the
incumbent's efforts were not satisfactory. The constitution un-
dertook to control the members' actions by a series of fines : twelve
and a half cents for absence each roll, and one dollar for refusing
to accept an office or declining to read an original chemical essay
jvhen appointed to do so. To insure against members withdraw-
ing early from a dull meeting, the secretary was directed to call
the roll at the opening and close of each meeting, and to fine
absentees twelve and a half cents. Candidates for membership
were required to read an original essay on some chemical subject
to be discussed by the members, and a two-thirds vote was re-
quired to insure election. It seems to have been easier to be put
out of the society than to get into it, for " any member behaving
in a disorderly manner shall be expelled by consent of two thirds
of the members present."

There were two classes of members : " junior," thirteen in num-

822 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ber, and " honorary," sixty-nine in number, of whicb thirty-one
were Europeans ; tlie home list included most of those chemists
whose labors contributed largely to the foundations of the science
in the New World. Brief notices of the prominent ones are here
given :

Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton (17G6-1815), who has been called
by his admirers " the father of American natural history," held
the chair of medicine, natural history, and botany in the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania ; he was an agreeable writer on natural
history topics.

Dr. Archibald Bruce (1777-1818) was one of the pioneers of
mineralogical science in America, and published one volume of
the American Mineralogical Journal in 1810; he held the chair
of mineralogy in Columbia College, New York.

Thomas Cooper (1759-1840), born in London, accompanied his
friend Priestley to America in 1793, sharing his radical views in
politics and religion. He held the chair of chemistry at the col-
lege in Columbia, S. C, of which he afterward became president.

Dr. Edward Cutbush (1772-1843) was surgeon in the United
States Navy and Professor of Chemistry in the medical school of
the Columbian University from 1825-'27.

Dr. John Griscom and Dr. David Hosack were both citizens
of New York ; the former had the honor of being regarded as the
head of all teachers of chemistry in New York for thirty years ;
the latter was Professor of Botany and Materia Medica in Colum-
bia College, but is best known as the founder of the first public
botanic garden in the United States in 1801. He died under
tragic circumstances — of shock at the disastrous conflagration in
New York city which swept away his property to the value of
$300,000.

Dr. John Maclean (1771-1840) was the first Professor of Chem-
istry in the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, to
which chair he was elected in 1797.

The Hon. Samuel L. Mitchill, M. D., F. R S. E. (17G4-1831),
was not only an active Professor of Chemistry and Natural His-
tory in Columbia College, New York, and editor of the New
York Medical Repository, but he was Senator of the United States
from 1804.

Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) was undoubtedly the first pro-
fessor of chemistry in America, his appointment dating August
1, 1769. In his busy life he was Professor of the Institutes and
Practice of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania, besides
acting as Surgeon General of the United States Army, Treasurer
of the Mint, President of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery,
and Vice-President of the Bible Society of Philadelphia, in which
city he also conducted a large medical practice.

EARLY AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETIES. 823

Dr. Adam Seybert (died 1825) was a pioneer in air analysis,
having made twenty-seven analyses of the air by eudiometric
methods on a voyage across the Atlantic in 1797. He came to the
conclusion that the sea exerted purifying power over the air.

Benjamin Silliman, at the time of the founding of the Colum-
bian Chemical Society, was forty years of age and had held the
chair of chemistry in Yale College for ten years. The American
Journal of Science was not begun until 1818. Silliman's name is
a household word among us, and no eulogium is here needed to
magnify his position in the scientific world.

The prominence of medical men on the roll of members is evi-
dent and readily explained. Before the days of schools of science,
and before colleges devoted a portion of their curricula to scien-
tific studies, almost the only training in science received by
American youth was in the medical schools. The chairs of natu-
ral history and of the physical sciences were almost exclusively
held by physicians whose education more nearly qualified them
for teaching these branches of knowledge than the graduates of
the classical courses customary in all colleges. To elevate the
standard of membership in the Columbian Chemical Society a
number of distinguished foreigners were enrolled. These in-
cluded such men as Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, John Dalton, Sir
Humphry Davy, and Dr. Wollaston, but no representatives of
Germany or Sweden, which presumably indicates that at this
early date communication and exchange of courtesies with Ger-
many and northern Europe were less common than with France
and England.

The society issued in 1813 one volume of Memoirs, containing
twenty-six essays by ten writers on a great variety of topics —
original, speculative, and practical. Eight of these papers are
from the pen of Dr. Thomas D. Mitchell. In his Remarks on the
Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Systems of Chemistry he supports
the Lavoisierian theory of combustion, stating that there is " no
necessity for a principle of inflammability." He cites the experi-
ment of Woodhouse, who obtained an inflammable air by heating
charcoal with scales of iron, both being free from water; and
points out that Cruikshank, of Woolwich, demonstrated that the
inflammable gas thus obtained is gaseous oxide of carbon (carbon
monoxide), discovered by Priestley in 1799 and combustible al-
though containing no hydrogen. He compares combustion with
neutralization of an acid and base, and says, " Inflammation and
acidity are effects resulting from the action of relative causes and
not attributable to a single agent or principle."

Dr. Mitchell, in his paper Remarks on Heat, objects to the
term " latent heat " and to Dr. Black's theories. In a paper enti-
tled On Muriatic and Oxy muriatic Acids he attacks the views of

824 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Sir Humphry Davy as to the non-existence of oxygen in muriatic
acid, clinging to the statement of Lavoisier that all acids contain
oxygen, and he claims that combustion is accompanied by decom-
position of oxygen gas. The doctor's Analysis of Malachite from
Perkioming, Pa., is given as follows : One hundred and twenty
grains of the green carbonate contained carbonic acid, thirty
grains; quartz and siliceous earth, sixty-eight grains; brown
oxide of copper, fifteen grains ; loss, seven grains. The specimen
was evidently a poor one. No account was taken of the water,
and reporting results in percentages does not seem to have been
in vogue.

The same writer, in Remarks on Putrefaction, discusses the
action of antiseptics and attributes the virtues of nitrate of pot-
ash to the increase of cold produced by the muriate of soda. His
other papers are argumentative and speculative, with little origi-
nality.

Franklin Bache's three papers are likewise speculative disqui-
sitions. In one he points to the " great error " in which Berthollet
fell as respects the law of chemical affinity, and in another he
proposes to introduce the following improvements in nomencla-
ture : Nitral acid forming nitrotes ; nitril acid forming nitrutes ;
nitrous acid forming nitrites ; and nitric acid forming nitrates.

Four of the papers in the Memoirs are by Dr. John Manners.
His Experiments and Observations on the Effect of Light on
Vegetables abounds in quotations from Darwin's Botanic Garden.
In the Mineral Spring at Willow Grove, fourteen miles from
Philadelphia, he found iron and sulphureted hydrogen. In Ex-
periments and Observations on Putrefaction he tested the influ-
ence of carbonic acid, hydrogen, and other gases on putrefying
flesh, and he attempted to collect and analyze the gases generated
by the same. He concludes that " putrefaction depends on a de-
struction of the equilibrium of attractions which exists in the ele-
mentary principles of which the animal substance is composed in
a healthy state, occasioned by the loss of vitality in consequence
of which new compositions and decompositions ensue."

The president of the society. Prof. Cutbush, describes quite
clearly the "oxyacetite of iron "as a test for the detection of
arsenic, a process since used quantitatively by Kotschoubcy.

Speculations on Lime, by Dr. Joel B. Sutherland, contains the
singular claim that if mortar be made with sand containing com-
mon salt the resultant compound gives " so much coldness to the
mass that during the whole summer vapor is almost incessantly
precipitated on a wall" with which it is plastered.

Mr. Edward Brux, of France, one of the junior members,
writes Upon the Effects of Various Gases upon the Living Ani-
mal Body, which consists largely of speculations, notwithstaud-

EARLY AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETIES. 825

\r\^ whicli lie cites an admirable passage from Dr. Bostock:
" Physiologists have in general been more inclined to form hypoth-
eses than to execute experiments, and it has necessarily ensued
from this unfortunate propensity that their science has advanced
more slowly than perhaps any other department of natural phi-
losophy." Unfortunately, this truth was not fully recognized by
the members of the Columbian Chemical Society.

A contemporary journal (New York Medical Repository) re-
views the Memoirs in the following quaint style: " It is highly
gratifying to behold a band of worthies like those before us labor-
ing to analyze the compounds which they find ready made, to
form by synthesis new combinations in the laboratory, and there-
by to deduce correct doctrines from the facts which are disclosed.
We cordially congratulate them on their noble occupation and
on the progress they have made. We hope they will be persever-
ing and undaunted ; and if from this beginning there shall arise
great improvements in theoretical disquisition, as well as in eco-
nomical exercise, we shall rejoice with a mingled glow of amica-
ble and patriotic sentiment."

3. The Delaware Chemical and Geological Society was organ-
ized at Delhi, Delaware County, New York State, September 6,
1821. The first meeting was held at the hotel of G. H. Edgerton,
in the village. The president was Charles A. Foote, and the vice-
president the Rev. James P. F. Clark. The society was composed
of " between forty and fifty well-informed and respectable inhab-
itants of the county." It had for its object the improvement of
the members in literature and science, especially in mineralogy
and chemistry. The members planned to form a library, and
they made a collection of the minerals and rocks of the region,
but the society was not long sustained.

In reviewing the condition of chemical science in the United
States as indicated by the membership and achievements of these
early societies, we note that those who held the most prominent
places were handicapped by the necessity of devoting a large part
of their intellectual energy to topics quite outside of the domain
of chemistry itself. The active members were either busy with
the art of healing or with teaching several branches of the phys-
ical and natural sciences, and too often chemistry was regarded
in the colleges as a kind of side iv'^sue or appendix to the more im-
portant subjects of instruction. This was caused by the necessity
of earning a competence at a time when there was no opportunity
of reaping pecuniary rewards by skill as an analyst or by the
application of science to the manufacture of products involving
chemical knowledge. Indeed, in default of this stimulus to labo-
ratory work it is not surprising that the papers read to the socie-
ties were largely either reviews of the grand discoveries made by

826 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Europeans or essays in wliicli the imaginative faculty was given
free play, it being far easier to indulge in speculations than to
discover new facts.

In the early struggles of a country to secure a place among
nations few men of ability can devote their energies to the pursuit
of science for science's sake. The environment is more favorable
to development of the inventive faculty than of the peculiar tal-
ent for conducting abstruse researches in an exact science. Add
to this the limited facilities for acquiring chemical knowledge in
the New World and the distance of amateurs from the European
head centers of learning, and it is certainly noteworthy that
American chemists combined to form associations for mutual im-
provement and the advancement of their calling at so early a
period.

A fourth attempt to establish a chemical society was made at
New York city in 1876. The organization was at first somewhat
restricted in its plan, but in 1893 a change in its constitution was
effected which broadened its scope, and it now forms a strong,
influential, and truly national society. Its nine hundred and
eighty-four members, working in nine chartered sections, repre-
sent forty-seven States and Territories, besides several countries
of Europe, South America, and distant Australia. Its Journal,
comprising eleven hundred and fifty pages annually, is an au-
thoritative medium for the preservation and diffusion of the re-
searches made in the United States, and its annual meetings, held
in diverse localities, strengthen the bonds which unite its members
in good-fellowship and in the pursuit of their common profession.

The recent publication of Mr. H. W. Seager's book, Natural History in
Shakespeare's Time, has incidentally made it evident that our master poet
was great in this as in all other fields, and that his allusions to animal life
and habits are not based on the fables in which his contemporaries indulged
even when writing seriously on the things of Nature, but on his own or
other accurate observations. Of such are his allusions to the quick breath-
ing of the captured sparrow, to the fast work underground of the mole, to
the wounded duck hiding among the sedges, to the scattering of the wild
geese at the firing of the fowler's gun, and his lamentation over the killing
of a fly by Marcus. An English reviewer of the book well says that "the
truth is that Shakespeare's natural histoiy is modern in its vividness, its
good sense, its sympathy. It is more profitable to compare his bird lore
with Gilbert White's than with anything in Bartholomew; more just to set
his animals against Buffon's than the grotesque 'four-footed beasts ' of Top-
sell ; more useful to verify his botany by Sowerby than by Gerarde or John
Parkinson. Modern naturalists and Nature-lovers have not been slow to
claim Shakespeare as their brother." Yet his characters sometimes bring
in the natural-history fables of the time. They would not be true to what
he intended to make them appear if they knew better.

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF ANIMALS. 827

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF ANIMALS.

By CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER.

THE influence which the lower animals have had upon man-
kind has never been appreciated ; had it been, they would
have received more consideration at our hands. They not only
provide us with food, raiment, and a vast array of industries, but
they have been factors in the physical and intellectual develop-
ment of mankind. The beauty of the birds and insects, the splen-
did coloring of the fishes and reptiles, the quiet harmonies of
Nature and the problems they suggest, have insensibly had a re-
fining efi'ect, and aided in the evolution of the higher and aesthetic
senses. In a word, the so-called lower animals have been impor-
tant factors in producing the high civilization which marks the
Caucasian race of to-day.

In glancing at the many forms which pay tribute to our wants
and requirements, the larger animals naturally attract the atten-
tion ; yet the greatest works, the most enduring monuments, are
those produced by the smallest and most insignificant creatures.
Such are the rhizopods — minute marine forms almost invisible,
among the very lowest in the scale of life ; literal drops of jelly,
yet endowed by Nature with the power to secrete shells of rare
and beautiful shapes. So vast are their numbers that it has been
estimated that if they are as numerous down to a depth of six
hundred feet as they are near the surface, there are more than
sixteen tons of calcareous shells suspended in the uppermost one
hundred fathoms of every square mile of the ocean.

These countless millions are constantly dying, and their shells
when released slowly sink to the bottom in a never-ending rain,
filling up the inequalities of the ocean bed, and forming a deposit
of ooze at a depth of not over twenty- four hundred fathoms sev-
eral feet in thickness, beneath which are layers of shells of an un-
known depth pressed into a solid mass. A prolific source of this
ocean rain is a rich spiked atom which has given its name to the
globigerina ooze that is almost universal in the deep sea at a
depth within the limitations given.

The tendency of the rain of shells is to fill up ocean beds, cap
submarine hills and mountains, building them up until they en-
ter the zone of the reef-building corals. In this way these insig-
nificant creatures have aided in the growth of the globe, and,
when the deposits by heat or exposure to air are hardened, they
become girders of the crust.

The ooze so deposited either fills up the ocean, or by some up-
heaval is lifted into the air and in time becomes covered with a
forest growth ; ages pass, and, by a depression of the crust, the

828 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hardened ooze again becomes tlie bottom of an ocean, subject to
another rain of shells ; and so the change goes on, and we may-
trace the rhizopods back to the Archtean time, millions of years
ago, their story being told by the limestone deposits alternating
between the metamorphic schists of that ancient period — monu-
ments of the part these insignificant creatures have taken in pre-
paring the world for man. The chalk cliffs of England are
among the visible evidences of this work, the chalk being formed
of rhizopods once deposited at the bottom of a sea, but now reared
high above the surface to tell the marvelous story. The city of
Paris is built of stone formed by rhizopods and other forms, and
the pyramids of Egypt are constructed of the remains of various
species of fossil animals; yet how these magnificent works of
man pale into insignificance before the unconscious work of these
minute animals !

A^ery near the rhizopods are the sponges; lowly creatures
whose skeletons are of great value — their collection and prepara-
tion forming a vast industry in many parts of the world ; a step
higher in life we find the coral polyp, secreting lime and piling
up reefs and islands that are important girders of the globe. I
have spent days in following a coral reef in the Helderberg Moun-
tains of New York far from the reefs of to-day ; and we find evi-
dences of them everywhere in the rocks of early geological times.
The great reef of Australia, the populous coral keys of the equa-
torial Pacific, the State of Florida, a reef of seventy-eight thousand
square miles in extent, illustrate the value of this polyp to man.

All these animals have other values. From the rhizopod cliffs
of Dover comes chalk, while heat is supposed to have changed the
skeletons of sponges into flint, so valuable in many ways. Heat
has transposed the old coral reefs into beds of marble ; and we
have the Capitol at Washington, and all the noble works of art
of the old Roman and Grecian masters, carved from the crystal-
lized remains of these lowly creatures.

The shells of the seashore and river all have a direct value ;
the oyster industry of New York city alone represents a capital
invested of over two million dollars, which means the support of
thousands of men, women, and children. Even the discarded
shells constitute an important branch of trade in themselves.
Germany and England use tons of pearl oysters, sending them to
us in the form of buttons, cheap ornaments, and other articles.
The pearl fisheries of the Persian Gulf pay one million dollars
per annum ; of Australia, three hundred and eighty thousand
dollars ; while those of Lower California have produced some of
the finest and most valuable pearls during the past two centuries.
The collection of abalone shells in the State of California means
an income of over fifty thousand dollars to the parties interested.

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF ANIMALS. 829

■while the sale of the polished shells as curiosities gives employ-
ment to many persons. From the whelks a dye is obtained ;
sepia comes from the cuttlefish or squid ; while one species pro-
vides the cuttlefish bone of commerce. The smallest worm, which
Shakespeare tells us, " will turn, being trodden on," has its place
in the economy of life. The phosphorescent worms add to the
splendors of the festivals of the nights along our shores, and are
among the illuminators of the ocean ; as bait they have a relation
to the fisheries ; leeches have a medicinal value, while the com-
mon earthworm is a valuable ally of the farmer. Darwin esti-
mates that there are one hundred thousand earthworms in the
upper six feet of every acre of ground in favorable localities, and
in New Zealand three hundred thousand. They are continually
turning over the soil, dragging down seeds and leaves, and bring-
ing to the surface in some places ten tons of mold to the acre
every year, thus performing a valuable service to the agriculturist.

The crustaceans are among the important scavengers of the
sea and are also valuable as food for fishes. The collection
of crabs, shrimps, and lobsters forms large industries all over the
world, contributing directly to the support of man. In Delaware
the horseshoe crab is used as guano, while the collection of fossil
crabs, as trilobites, is a peculiar industry. The fresh- water cray-
fish produces a concretion used as an antacid, well known to chem-
ists. We owe many of the beauties of our summer fields to in-
sects, all of which have their special functions and use. Even the
persecuted flea may render man a service by keeping the drowsy
watch dog awake, while the mosquito in tropical countries may
aid in preventing the human inhabitants from living a continual
siesta.

The flies are among the most valuable insect scavengers. The
spiders prey upon flies, holding them in check. The silk of the
spider is used as a cross line in astronomical instruments, and
that of a Bermuda species as sewing silk. Bridge makers have
obtained valuable suggestions from these silent workers, from
whose web one of the kings of France is said to have made a coat.
Grasshoppers and locusts are enemies of civilized man, but are
eaten by the Indians, while in the Malay country the dragon fly
is considered a delicacy.

The cochineal produces the famous commercial dye, a valuable
industry. Manna comes from the puncture of an allied insect,
while another insect produces wax. A popular eye powder
among the Chinese is made from a fly. The silk industry in the
United States, the product of the silkworm, represents a capital
of twenty-seven million dollars, and the moths and butterflies
perform an equally valuable work in fertilizing flowers, thus in-
suring the crojjs. A decoction of oak and other galls of the gall

830 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

fly is an important ingredient in certain inks. Ants are valuable
scavengers, and some produce an acid used in trade. The remark-
able honey ants of the Southwest are considered dainties in Mex-
ico and served after dinner alive. In the nests of these ants cer-
tain individuals cling to the ceiling, their abdomens filled with
honey, which has been given to them by their companions, so
they are literally living honey jars, holding the reserve food sup-
ply of the others, which they give up on application. The dis-
tended abdomen, about as large as a currant, is the luxury of the
Mexicans.

Bees have a sterling value the world over and support many
men, women, and children. A few years ago a single bee ranch
in San Diego County, California, produced one hundred and fifty
thousand pounds of honey and wax. The importance of bees,
aside from the question of honey, is shown by the fact that it was
found impossible to cultivate red clover in New Zealand, as there
were no bumblebees to carry the pollen. These are but a few of
the benefits we obtain from the insects, the majority of which are
generally considered pests.

The story of the economic value of vertebrate life would mean
a part of the commercial history of the world, so essential are
nearly all of the higher animals to man and his advancement.
We may pass rapidly in review the great fisheries of the globe
which afford a direct support to thousands, from the salmon can-
neries of Alaska to the tunny fishermen of the Mediterranean.

The sharks, valuable scavengers, provide the makers of
swords, belts, and various fancy articles with leather, the teeth
being made into fancy and cheap jewelry. On the New England
coast the small sharks or dogfish are in demand as guano, the
fisheries giving employment to hundreds of men during the sum-
mer months. The oil of nearly all sharks is a commercial com-
modity, while the shark fin is a delicacy to the Chinese and col-
lected by the ton from Catalina to China.

The torpedo ray has been utilized by science, and the electric
catfish of Africa is sometimes employed as a medicine.

The Volga sturgeon fisheries give employment alone to over
one hundred thousand persons, while that of our Alaskan coast is
an important and growing industry. Helmets are made from the
porcupine fish. The oil of the sunfish is valued in medicine. Sha-
green comes from various fishes ; leather and isinglass from the
cod, hake, and haddock, weak and drum fishes ; while the scales
of the tarpon and parrot fishes are employed in ornamentation.
Carp, dace, tench, and other fishes generally considered of little
value, produce scales from which artificial pearls are made, and
so become factors in a large and growing industry, especially in
France.

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF ANIMALS. 831

The importance of fishes as food need not be mentioned. In
the mere enumeration of useful products of animals but a faint
idea can be gained of the vast interests they present. The Na-
tional Museum, under the direction of the late lamented Prof.
Goode, arranged a collection which illustrates the value of fish
and fishing in all the details from the jewfish, that is made into
boneless cod, to the feather fly, whose manufacture gives employ-
ment to hundreds of women and girls in New York.

The products of fish give rise to numerous industries, among
which may be mentioned isinglass from the sturgeon ; caviare ;
leather from eelskins, and guano from catfish. Then come the
trades associated with the capture of fishes — the dealers in fishing
tackle, the builders of fishing boats, the makers of fishhooks,
sinkers, and artificial bait being a few that will suggest how the
fishes indirectly enter into the life of man and aid in his support.

Passing to the reptiles and their allies, we find the frogs and
lizards destroying noxious insects, ridding the gardens and trees
of pests. The skin of large snakes is made into leather ; that of
smaller varieties into belts, hatbands, covering for boxes, etc. ;
while snake oil is highly valued for various purposes. In South
America the white meat of the great boa is esteemed a delicacy.
A political economist, whose name I do not recall, has stated that
wars are a necessity to kill off the surplus population. This phi-
losopher would probably consider the snakes of India in the light
of a benefit, as since 1870 they have destroyed over two hundred
thousand natives.

We obtain our real tortoise shell from the hawksbill turtle, the
beautiful substance being made into countless articles, forming
important industries in themselves. The Florida crocodile and
alligator are on the verge of extinction that we may have satchels
and the hundred and one objects in this leather which the ingen-
ious makers give us. Every portion of the animal is of value.
The teeth are made into jewelry, the oil soothes the rheumatic
patient, while alligator musk forms an ingredient in the manufac-
ture of perfumes.

The direct benefits which we obtain from the birds are well
known. The egg, poultry, and wild game industry, the sale of
pet birds, the extravagant use of plumes and feathers at the dic-
tates of fashion, the sale of birds and eggs for specimens, the
manufacture of fly-fishing bait, are but a few industries which
afford employment to thousands all over the world and represent
the investment of vast sums of money. Some of the peculiar
products of birds are leather from the feet of tropic species, the
albatross ; pipestems from the leg of the latter ; quill pens, pen-
guin-feather furs, and penguin skins as fuel at Heard Island ; the
oil of gulls as lamp oil by Eskimos ; leather from the pouch of

832 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the man-of-war bird ; and tobacco pouches from that of the peli-
can. In heathen China the beautiful little quail is used by noble
ladies to warm the hands in winter, and in civilized America live
pigeons are used as a target by our so-called sportsmen. Many
birds are becoming extinct, due to the demand for them by exact-
ing fashion. Every hummingbird, bluebird, heron, or curlew in
California and Florida has a price upon its head.

A value which birds have to man should not be omitted, namely,
their work in distributing seeds, thus aiding in rendering islands
habitable for mankind. This can be illustrated by the work of
pigeons at the Moluccas. The Dutch destroyed all the nutmeg
trees except those on the island of Great Banda, but were obliged
to send a yearly commission to cut down the trees which grew
from seeds transported to the island in the crops of the fruit
pigeons. Coffee and other seeds are transported in the same way.

Among the higher or milk-giving animals there is hardly one
that is not of some distinct value to man. The fur-bearers are
well known, from the fast-disappearing fur seal to the common
cat, over a million skins of which are used every year in the
trade and sold as Alaska sable ; six million squirrel skins are used
by furriers every year, while thousands of common ratskins are
employed in the manufacture of kid-glove thumbs. Muskrats
contribute three million skins annually to the trade, and musk as
well. The skunk, kangaroo, and other little suspected animals
are all important factors in trade. Among the singular leather
producers are the raccoon, peccary, cat, dog, for drumheads ;
white whale, which is dressed as kid, velvet, or plush ; porpoise,
and hippopotamus.

Every portion of almost every animal is available for the
requirements of man: parchment from the viscera of seals and
bears, gold-beater's skin from those of the ox, and catgut from
those of the sheep. The hair of many animals is used in an infi-
nite number of ways, from that of the skunk in fine brushes to
that of the badger, dog, camel, hog, and others for coarse kinds.
From the hoofs, bones, and horns of animals comes gelatin, used
in the manufacture of court-plaster, jelly, and artificial flowers.

The oils of the milk- givers represent a vast interest. Some of
the most singular are porpoise-jaw oil, used in lubricating fine
watch machinery; manatee and dugong oil and dog oil in the
manufacture of kid gloves. From many of these fine soaps are
made. Some of our perfumes are obtained from certain animals
— as the muskrat, musk ox, civet cat, musk deer, and beaver.

The artist looks to various animals for fine colorings. Ivory
black, used in the manufacture of bank-note ink and in fine paint-
ings, comes from bones ; while Prussian blue is made from hoofs
and refuse hair. The gall produces a dye, and from blood comes

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF ANIMALS. 833

the turkey red of printers. The chemist depends upon animals
to a large extent. Portions of the dog are used in tanning hides ;
albumin of the blood in refining sugar and various secretions in
printing calico ; while the chemist finds pepsin in the stomach of
hogs and calves. Phosphorus for matches is taken from bones ;
the physician obtains his vaccine lymph from cows, by this
means saving thousands of lives; while ammonia and lime are
common products from bones and horn.

Among the special animals that are of great value to man is
the whale. In 1884 a single animal sold for over fifteen thousand
dollars, the oil bringing $3,490, the bone $12,230. Besides these
products there is the ambergris, a secretion in the intestine ; the
valuable ivory of the teeth used by the Japanese in their carving ;
the skin as leather; the bones for knife handles and for various
purposes.

The delicate mole is a valuable aid to the agriculturist. An
individual will eat twenty thousand grubs in a year, while the
fur is highly esteemed. The fur dealers use nearly ten million
skins of rabbits and hares a year. Twenty thousand bears are
sacrificed yearly, the hides being employed as leather, and even
teeth for Indian chisels, knives, and ornaments. In 1880 the
trade absorbed seven hundred tons of elephant ivory, one hun-
dred thousand of these noble animals being killed that we might
have billiard balls, chessmen, carved figures, and countless other
objects for use and ornament.

The furs of animals keep us warm in winter, while the wool
of our under- garments comes from another group representing
vast industries giving support to thousands of persons.

Statistics in which this paper abounds are dry and uninterest-
ing, but they alone tell the story of man's dependence upon the
lower animals. One hundred thousand Persian lambskins are
used annually by the trade; six hundred thousand Astrakhans
and two hundred English skins — suggestive of an array of
workers.

From the goat come mohair, cashmere ; while the interesting
Angora goat, which has been introduced into California, pro-
duces fifteen million pounds of wool per annum ; every hoof,
hide, and horn has its value in the great world of trade. The
camels and their allies produce the hair for shawls and other
valuable articles of wear.

The demand for objects of luxury is tending to the extinction
of some of our most valuable animals. The buffalo has been
almost wiped from the face of the earth, that we might have
sport, robes, and buffalo tongue. The five hundred lion skins
which the trade uses annually for rugs and leather have marked
the royal cat for early extinction ; while the rhinoceros, giraffe,

VOL. LI. — 61

834 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tiger, elephant, and many more will doubtless be known to our
descendants a century hence by their pictures in books and their
remains in the museums of the day.

This great question of the economic value of animals is of
radical importance to every citizen. It should secure our
thoughtful attention, and be taught in our schools and colleges.
We should demand from the Government absolute protection to
the fur seal; our humane societies, which have accomplished so
much, should extend their good offices to the protection of song
birds, the wild game of our forests, and to all animal life.

♦*»■

SKETCH OF LOUIS FIGUIER.

By IDA M. TARBELL.

WHO in America, reading twenty years ago, does not remem-
ber The World before the Deluge ? It was translated from
French into English at a time when the great call in our schools
was for more science ; when the ministers in numbers of pulpits
were "reconciling Genesis with geology," and when boys and
girls of fifteen were observing strata and fossil plants and ani-
mals as they never had before. Its direct statements, its vivid
pictures, above all its exciting reconstructions of primitive
epochs — a Silurian age whose principal inhabitant was a tran-
quil trilobite ; a carboniferous era rich in giant ferns and " horse-
tails " ; a Jurassic, whose terrible denizens, ichthyosaurus, plesio-
saurus, pterodactyl, haunted the dreams — caused it to be read by
hundreds of young people. There are many men and women
in America who can trace their first interest in geology to that
work, or to some one of those in the series to which it be-
longed.

The author of The World before the Deluge, M. Louis Figuier,
it was my fortune to meet frequently in the winter of 1893 and
'94 in his home in Paris, and the announcement of his death a
few months ago led me to believe that many American read-
ers might be interested in the recollections I have of our con-
versations and in the impressions his curious personality made
upon me. M. Figuier was one of those men whom the popular
fancy had wearied of and dropped, and who, unable to under-
stand why he was not as thoroughly in touch with his generation
as ever, insisted tenaciously on being heard.

The modest apartment of M. Figuier, like the house, was of a
past generation. Its vestibule, whose walls were covered with
the light striped paper in vogue long ago, and hung with family
portraits in fading crayon and water colors, was furnished with

SKETCH OF LOUIS FIGUIER. 835

an ancient hat tree. Its salon, carpeted witli a dark-green Brus-
sels, such as was in style in the United States perhaps forty years
ago, "was decorated with numbers of flower pieces, huge wreaths
and bouquets, after the manner in which our mothers did their
water colors. They were framed in narrow black or gilt mold-
ings, and some of them still bore in the corner the numbers they
had borne in the salons of the sixties.

As for M. Figuier, he had all the alertness, the decision, the
energy of the life which surged all about and invaded the street
in which he dwelt. In spite of his seventy- five years his form
was tall and straight ; his bearing was that of an ofiicer rather
than that of a writer ; in his white face was none of the efface-
ment of character so often seen in the old, no letting down of
moral and physical self-control; his eye was ardent, indignant,
sad by turns ; his speech eloquent, rapid, full of conviction, impa-
tient of contradiction. Yet one saw that he was, like the old
houses of the Rue Caumartin, " condemned." His bitter protest
against the way in which the journalism of the day treats the
popularization of science, his persistency in regarding himself as
the one and only popularizer ; his despair at the good-natured
raillery which the hobbies of his old age had called out, all
showed that M. Figuier was out of touch. This mingling of gen-
erations, this refusal to believe that his work was done, gave me
from the first of our acquaintance an interest in the fine old man
which was half pathetic, half humorous.

I have never known a person whose origin and early education
were more evident. He proved his southern birth — he was a Lan-
guedocian — by his fervor, his imagination, his astonishing plans.
He showed his Huguenot parentage by the strength of his con-
victions.

But these things did not explain why, at thirty years of age,
he should have left an excellent position as a professor, after hav-
ing spent years in the universities of Montpellier and Paris pre-
paring for it, and after having begun and succeeded in original
investigations, to become a popularizer of science.

It struck me that a man of his evident pride and culture
would have a justifiable satisfaction in remaining among savants
and in pursuing the conventional path of university work, espe-
cially after he had acquired a sure footing. Why did not M.
Figuier accept the scholar's career in which he was so well
launched ? Why did he take up popularization ? I asked him
one day.

" It was simple enough," he said. " It is true I had taken my
degrees and had a good position, but I had the idea that scientific
knowledge, which until then had been almost exclusively the
property of the learned, should be put within the reach of the

836 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

reading public, that the people should be enabled to share the
fruits of scholarship.

" I was convinced that no one should attempt to do this sort
of work but a man of thorough scientific training. I had done
all the work the schools offered. I had been a professor. I had
made some original researches. I felt that I had a right to at-
tempt to explain in a popular style the wonders of science. My
first book, on the Principal Modern Scientific Discoveries, was a
success, and I immediately arranged to continue the work. My
colleagues blamed me, and said I was belittling science, but I was
convinced the thing ought to be done, and I made up my mind to
do it if possible.

" In 1855 I began to write scientific letters for La Presse,
which under Emile de Girardin was one of the most important
papers of Paris. But I soon found I had too much to do. The
university or the popularization must be given up. I chose the
latter. There were plenty of men willing to do the exclusive
work of the former; there was only myself willing to use my
training for the press. And that is how I became a jour-
nalist."

He never referred to his early journalistic experience with-
out recalling the brilliant circle which he entered when he be-
came a member of the staff of La Presse. It needed only the
suggestion of a name then to get his characterization of many
a famous man or woman. He would clasp his hands and lift
his eyes. "Ah, those were great days ! Victor Hugo was living
then, you know. The year I joined the staff of La Presse Thdo-
phile Gautier was doing its dramatic work, Lamartine was run-
ning his Caesar as a feuilleton, and George Sand the Story of her
Life. It was around such a nucleus that the Girardins gathered
all that was brilliant in Paris into their hotel in the Champs
Elysdes."

M. Figuier continued writing popular scientific books after he
began journalism. The familiar Annee Scientifique, which he
conducted till the end of his life, was his first venture. It was
followed by the Pictures of Nature, the first of which, The World
before the Deluge, has been alluded to. This series incuded nine
volumes, reviewing the meteorology, physics, mechanics, and
chemistry of the globe.

One day when we were talking about the books he said: "I
had an ambitious idea in beginning that series. I wanted to
chase lying out of the schools."

" Lying ? "

" Yes, lying. What are mythology and fables but lying ?"

« But "

" False, all false."

SKETCH OF LOUIS FIGUIER. 837

M. Figuier never allowed me to oppose him. He rose and
took down one of tlie volumes, opened to a preface, and read me
with many a gesture and with increasing warmth of tone the fol-
lowing observations :

" The first book to put into the hands of a child should treat
of natural history. Instead of calling the attention of young
minds to the fables of La Fontaine, the adventures of Puss in
Boots, or the Twelve Labors of Hercules, they should be directed
to the simple and naive pictures of Nature — the structure of a
tree, the composition of a flower, the organs of animals, the per-
fection of crystalline forms. It is because the nourishment of the
young has been falsehood that the present generation includes so
many false, feeble, and irresolute minds.

" If I live a hundred years I shall never forget the frightful
confusion into which the reading of my first book threw my
young head. It was an abridgment of mythology ; and you
know what one finds there : Deucalion, who creates the human
race by throwing stones over his shoulders ; Jupiter, who cracks
his skull and lets out Minerva and all her accessories; Venus,
who one fine morning is born from the sea foam ; old Saturn, with
his vicious habit of eating his children ; and all the rest of that
Olympus where the gods and goddesses commit so many bad
actions. How can the head of a four-year-old resist such an up-
setting of common sense ? "

And so M. Figuier wrote his nine big volumes. Unquestion-
ably they have contributed to interesting the young, not alone of
France but of a large part of the world, in the phenomena of
Nature; and if they have not yet driven out La Fontaine, Per-
rault. Mother Goose, and the fascinating inhabitants of Olympus,
they have at least entered into healthy competition with them.

His great hobby as a literary worker was system. " System,
classification," he would repeat, " it is through them I have done
my great work. Every note I take goes into its proper place. So
with everything I own. You have asked for data of my life. I
can give them to you without looking ! See here ! " He opened a
drawer in a cabinet in the room, and out came a great bundle
of clippings — press notices on his work, reviews of his books,
sketches of his life. A goodly number of them were American.

" Yes," he said, regarding them with a frown, " I get press
notices from America by paying an agency, but that is all. My
books have been steadily reproduced there for thirty years. See
here, notice after notice of my last book. Happiness beyond the
Tomb, and I have been unable to get even a copy of the trans-
lation."

It was while pursuing his favorite subject of " system " that
M. Figuier revealed to me the great passion of his life.

838 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

One day he had led me into the vestibule where there were
two large cases running to the ceiling. They contained number-
less boxes of notes, all labeled. Here were all the subjects M.
Figuier treated. At a moment's notice he could have under his
eye all that he had accumulated on any subject which interested
him. While listening to his enthusiastic explanations I noticed
on one shelf a number of neat manuscripts.

" What are these ? " I asked.

"My theater/' he said, with a tender regard. "There are the
plays, mademoiselle, which are going to teach the world science
as it was never taught before. There," he continued, warming,
" is the greatest of all methods of scientific popularization. No-
body understands it ; nobody supports it. The press will not
recognize it. New ideas are choked to death in Paris by the jeal-
ousy of journalists. These plays have been represented before
audiences which were wild with delight. Ah ! but they are beau-
tiful ! But jealousy keeps them back."

" There is one on your countryman Franklin and electricity ;
here is another on how Morse got his appropriation bill through ;
here is one Bernhardt has read and promised me to play. She
says it is superb, superb. It is on Catharine of Russia."

" And some of them have been given ? "

"Nearly all, at my expense, understand. I believe it is one
way to teach science to the people, and I mean to do all I can to
push it. Here are two volumes of plays which I have put on at
much cost. One season I hired a theater for a series of scientific
matinees. Again I made a tour of the provinces with a troupe. I
have given ten years of my life and spent my fortune for this
idea. Once I lived in a hotel in the Champs Elys^es, now I am
here." And he looked scornfully around the modest room with
its faded air. " I have given it all for my theater."

The pain of the man was too intense, his earnestness too pro-
found, for me to probe deeper into this defeated passion of his old
age, and I waited until a free hour in the Bibliotheque Nationale
gave me leisure to discover just what M. Figuier's theater was.
I found it was just what he said — an attempt to teach science by
means of the drama. He argued in this way :

" Works of popular science contribute to dissipating the popu-
lar superstitions, concerning thunder, for example; but the book
is silent and cold. A theatrical representation which shows the
spectator the physical phenomena connected with thunder and
lightning, under a striking and material form, will impress much
more deeply.

" Besides teaching the laws of the physical and natural sci-
ences, scenes from the lives of celebrated savants should be repre-
sented. Instead of taking, for the hero of a play, Cromwell, Riche-

SKETCH OF LOUIS FIGUIER. 839

lieu, Louis XIV, Mazarin, take Denis Papin, Gutenberg, Kepler,
Benjamin Franklin, Robert Fulton. Before my time no one of
these persons had been made the subject of a play, simply because
dramatic authors are unfamiliar with the events in the lives of
naturalists and physicists. Nevertheless, illustrious savanis are
just as good as political or military personages for dramas or
comedies. A savant is a man. Like every man, he has had his
hour of youth and of love, his moments of sorrow and of bitter-
ness. Because he has enriched his age and country by an immor-
tal work is he less interesting than an imaginary personage ?
There are in the different periods of the lives of all savants sub-
jects for dramas or comedies, situations capable of moving, of
exciting to laughter or to tears."

A word on a few of the plays of M. Figuier will show how he
carried out this theory. Take the " Marriage of Franklin," which
turns around the difficulties which Franklin had to surmount to
secure Miss Deborah Read. The tricks which electricity plays at
the last moment untie the complications. A complete series of
the physical, mechanical, and physiological effects of thunder and
lightning are worked into the play.

" Miss Telegraph " portrays the situation of Samuel F. B.
Morse before the passage of the bill appropriating money for car-
rying on his experiments on the electric telegraph, and describes
the means by which Miss Ellsworth succeeded in getting the bill
through at the last moment.

" The Blood of the Turk " is a " Mr. Isaacs " situation, showing
what may result from the infusion of foreign blood into the veins
of an old man. The hero has been treated with the blood of a Turk,
and finds himself in the extraordinary situation of being half the
time a passionate, quarrelsome, amorous Oriental, the other half a
weak old man without the courage to fight the duels the Turk has
provoked, the appetite to eat the meals the Turk has ordered, the
gayety to do the love-making for which the Turk has contracted.

The " Six Parts of the World," in the style of Jules Verne,
characterizes the five continents of the globe and discovers a
sixth. Dumont d'Urville is the hero, and his expeditions to the
south pole form the plot of the play. Lessons on navigation and
discoveries, on desert fevers and phosphorescent beetles, on the
customs of Madagascar and Australian progress, on American
business methods and the character of the lands at the south pole,
are all included in five acts.

One day, some time after I made the acquaintance of M. Fi-
guier's theater, I asked him if he believed his idea would be car-
ried out in the future.

" I expect to carry it out myself," he said sturdily.
■ " Yourself ? " I exclaimed.

840 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" Oh, not here, not here," he said quickly. " Beyond the tomb.
I may fail here, but I shall take it up again when I am dead. I
am persuaded that it will be easy to carry out there this idea
which has occupied me so seriously here. Do you suppose we are
going to be idle there ? Not at all. We are going to do what
we loved to do here, and do it perfectly, as we have longed and
dreamed to do it.''

" Do you really believe that ? "

" Believe it ? Of course I believe it ! Does one put into a book
what he does not believe ? I have put all that into Les Boiiheurs
d' Outre- Tombe. Does a man at my age talk of what he does not
believe ? At seventy-five one tells the truth.

" Why should I not believe it ? Nature indicates a future life
by all her transformations, common sense preashes it, common
justice demands it, and if we live again we shall work. Do you
suppose the good God is going to leave us with our aspirations
unsatisfied ? No. Victor Hugo is writing better romances than
he ever wrote here, and De Musset better poetry." Then, glanc-
ing at the water colors on the walls, " My wife is going on with
her pictures, and there I shall succeed with my theater. Why,"
he cried, with a passionate conviction which was almost awe-
iuspiring, " that belief is the consolation of my life!"

He based his theories of the future life on no religion. It
is modern philosophy based on science and reason, which in his
judgment promises a future life. But this promise is only to the
upright, who in this world practice righteousness and cultivate
their minds. They after death take on the attributes of superior
beings — that is, become what M. Figuier calls " etres surhumains"
or, in ecclesiastical parlance, angels.

On escaping from the body the new being becomes an inhabit-
ant of the interplanetary spaces. Here all his faculties are quick-
ened to an extraordinary degree, the secrets of Nature are clear
to him, social problems are solved, all those whom he has loved
on earth and who have died join him. The natural gifts which
he has had no opportunity to cultivate on earth have full play
there. Unfinished work is completed. He is in relation with the
great and wise of all the ages. If he continues in this new sphere
to do good and to cultivate his intellect — that is, if he works to
raise his soul to perfection — he will be advanced to a superior
realm of the sky, where the beings are of a still higher intellec-
tual capacity and possess more numerous faculties.

As he loses more and more of the material element, he ascends
higher in the scale of the elect. After passing two series of these
celestial progressions and promotions, of which it is impossible to
know either the number or the length, the soul arrives at a state
of pure essence, and penetrates into the center of our solar sys-

SKETCH OF LOUIS FIGUIER. 841

tern, tlie sun, wliose inliabitants, possessing immortality, form a
part of the divine government ruling over this portion of the
astronomical system.

To merit such superior happiness man must apply himself
during his life on earth to perfecting himself, to purifying his
soul, loving his neighbor, spreading happiness about him, increas-
ing his knowledge. He who, on the contrary, perseveres in in-
justice and ignorance will be condemn "^-d to recommence his
earthly career, and that again and again until he is fit to leave
this globe.

One attractive feature of M. Figuier's interplanetary heaven
which he develops in his book is the novel means of travel he
imagines to exist there. " Since science," he writes, " excuses itself
from explaining the nature of the comets and the role they play
in the universe, it is permitted to the imagination to say a word
on the subject.

" Is it forbidden to believe that certain comets, notably those
that return into our solar system, are agglomerations of super-
human beings which have just finished a voyage in the profound
depths of the sky and end their trip by returning into the sun ?
According to this hypothesis, these comets are pleasure trains
made up of the inhabitants of ethereal spaces."

In the last conversation I ever had with him I asked him, just
as I was about to say good- by, "M. Figuier, do you really believe
in your comets made up of souls ? "

His stern face lighted up. " Ah, my excursion trains ! Who
knows ? who knows ? Perhaps I shall travel in one. But that,
you know, is imagination."

And when we rose to leave the salon, and I stopped to regard
for the last time the gay wreaths and bouquets on the walls, he
added with a nod of complete conviction, " But of one thing I am
sure — there I shall succeed with my scientific theater."

M. Vallot's observatory, on the Rocher des Bosses, Mont Blanc, about
fourteen thousand five hundred feet above the sea, has developed into a
really comfortable abode of eight rooms, furnished with adequate means of
keeping- out the cold and the snow and with conveniences for housekeeping.
The walls and windows and outer door are double. The house has a kitchen
and shop near the entrance ; a room for guides, with five beds ; a pi'ovision
room ; a director's room, with two beds ; a registering room ; a photograph
and spectroscope room; a guest chamber, with three beds; and a physical
laboratory. A peculiarity of the kitchen utensils is the construction of the
kettles to compensate for the lowered boiling point of the mountain height.
The observatory, instituted in 1890, was at first devoted to meteorology ;
but since the new observatory was erected on the summit, more attention
has been given in it to terrestrial physics.

842

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

TgdiiUx^s "gxmt.

MEETING OF THE AMERICAN
ASSOCIATION AT DETROIT.

THE American Association for the
Advancement of Science had a
very pleasant meeting at Detroit.
Socially it was all that could be de-
sired, and was perhaps in this re-
spect among the best in the history
of the body. The people of Detroit,
who call their town "the Conven-
tion City," and are proud of the
hospitality they show to the assem-
blies that visit them, strove to out-
do themselves in entertaining their
guests, and, what with the lunches
they served and the receptions and
excursions they gave, made the oc-
casion a brilliant one. The high-
school building, in which the asso-
ciation met, was one of the best it
has occupied, for it amply accom-
modated all the meetings and fur-
nished room for doing ail the work
under one roof.

The association suffered from the
absence of its designated president.
Prof. Wolcott Gibbs, who was kept
at home by illness. His presence
would have lent it much dignity,
and would have recalled its older
and best days. His place was taken
by Vice-President McGee, who dis-
charged the executive and adminis-
trative duties of the office satisfac-
torily. A happy feature in the
opening meeting was the felicitous
address of General Palmer, who, al-
though not a man of science, evi-
dently appreciated its value, and
knew well how to fit his remarks to
the occasion. The memorial address
on Prof. Cope, by Prof. Theodore
Gill, was perhaps the feature of the
whole meeting which most deserves
notice and will be remembered long-
est. The president's address and the

addresses of the chairmen of the sec-
tions were well-wrought-out pres-
entations of their several subjects,
creditable to the speakers and to the
association. Of the papers, the ma-
jority appear to have been technical.
Of the others, some were very good,
and some, we are constrained to say,
should have no place in the proceed-
ings of such a body as the association
ought to be.

The attendance was not large ; the
whole number of registered members
being only two hundred and ninety-
one.

An important new step was taken
in making the nomination of officers
by the council and its nominating
committee valid without further pro-
ceedings. Heretofore the nomina-
tions have been subject to approval
by the association. The joint meet-
ings of affiliated societies with sec-
tions of the association, of which
there were several, were a feature
to be commended.

The meeting made more promi-
nent the fact which has been evident
for many years, that our strongest
and most experienced men of science
are losing their interest in the asso-
ciation. They seem to have all the
field for work and distinction they
want in their own separate organi-
zation, which does not reach the
people at all ; while this field, in
which they could gain quite as
much repute, add fully as much to
knowledge, and contribute vastly
more to its diffusion, they neglect.
It is hard to conceive a nobler or
more desirable way in which the stu-
dent of Nature can contribute to the
instruction and elevation of his fel-
low-men than by giving his support
to this body which courts the sym-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

843

pathy of the people, and by going-
from place to place seeks to instruct
them in their very homes in the
highest achievements of research.
There can hardly be a more effective
way of promoting the advancement
of science than by these meetings,
now here and now there, through
"which the beauties of knowledge are
disclosed to the public, and the thirst
for its acqiiisition and extension is
aroused in whole com mun hies at a
time. The greatest scientific lights
of Great Britain, France, and Ger-
many love to do this. Thus, at the
meeting of the British Association
just held at Toronto, we have seen
such men as Lord Kelvin and Lord
Lister, Sir John Evans, and a dozen
others of almost corresponding
prominence, present, as interested
and taking as active a part as if
they were younger men still hav-
ing their spurs to win. Other men,
in their respective days of equal
standing in science with these,
whose hooks are standard authorities
wherever the English language is
spoken, have habitually attended the
previous meetings of this body be-
cause their heart is in the work of
making the whole world sharers in
the benefit of what they have been
able to discover. We can not but
think that the eminent students of
America who fail to do likewise are
comaiitting a great mistake.

THE TORONTO MEKTING OF THE
BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

The British Association for the
Advancement of Science has now,
for the second time, held an an-
nual meeting on this continent. In
the year 1884 it met at Montreal ;
this year it met at Toronto. The
Montreal meeting was not. on the
whole, considered a very successful
or in any way notable one; but this
year conditions and circumstances
seem to have proved more favorable,

and we believe the Toronto meeting
will be remembered with much sat-
isfaction by all who took part in it.
Toronto, as a city, is well adapted
for convention purposes, and the
noble grounds and buildings of To-
ronto University formed a most ad-
mirable and charming focus for the
work of a learned assembly. The
visitors were favored also with the
very finest weather which the cli-
mate of this continent is capable of
producing; and that helped not a
little to put every one in good spirits
and give animation to the proceed-
ings. Great names were not want-
ing amid the throng. The retiring
president, Lord Lister, whose name
all the world honors, was there to
hand over his office to the distin-
guished archaeologist Sir John
Evans. To see Lord Lister and hear
the tones of his voice is to recognize
in him the friend of human kind —
a noble example at once of scientific
eminence and moral greatness. Lord
Kelvin, too, was there with his ear-
nest, kindly, unassuming manner
and wonderfully penetrating intel-
ligence— a man who bears his great
honors meekly, as becomes one
whose fame rests upon a sure foun-
dation. Michael Foster was also
present, a man who has trained and
inspired with something of his own
zeal a whole generation of physiolo-
gists at the University of Cambridge.
Biology was further represented by
such men as Profs. L. C. Miall and
Lloyd Morgan; physics, by Oliver
Lodge and Sylvanus Thompson ;
chemistry, by Prof. W. Ramsay, of
argon fame; geography, by Mr. J.
Scott Keltie; political science, by the
Right Hon. W. Bryce, author of
The American Commonwealth. We
name but a few; there were men of
eminence and merit on every hand.
Associated with their scientific
brethren from England, and taking
a prominent part in the proceedings

844

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the association, were many of the
foremost scientific workers in this
country. Among these may be men-
tioned Profs. Morse, Newcomb, Eem-
sen, Hadley, Putnam, and Chamber-
lia. A few associate members came
from foreign countries. The Cana-
dians contributed their quota of men
of distinction, and altogether the
gathering partook to a pleasing ex-
tent of an international character.

As usual, on such occasions, lib-
eral provision of time was made for
social hospitalities and semiscientific
excursions; but the ser-ious business
of the association was well kept in
view. The inaugural address of the
incoming president, Sir John Evans,
consisted of a plea for the recogni-
tion of archaeology as entitled to a
place among the sciences. He had
no difficulty in showing tbe aid
which the archfeologist is able at
times to render to the geologist, and
also the assistance it affords toward
a scientific treatment of history. His
account of the evidence accumulated
within the last thirty or forty years
as to the antiquity of the human race
was clear and succinct. He did not
consider the existence of man in Mio-
cene times proved, but he spoke of
the "almost incredible length of
time " occupied by the Palaeolithic
period. " We may not know,"' he
said, " the exact geological period
when palaeolithic man first settled
in Britain ; but we have good evi-
dence that he occupied it at a time
when the configuration of the sur-
face was entirely different from what
it is at present; when the river val-
leys had not been cut down to any-
thing like their existing depth ; and
when the fauna of the country was
of a totally different character from
that of the present day." The time
covered by that period was sufficient,
he stated, to permit of " the erosion
of valleys, miles in width, to a depth
of from one hundred to one hundred

and fifty feet. . . . When we take
into consideration," he added, "the
almost inconceivable ages that, even
under the most favorable conditions,
the excavation of wide and deep val-
leys by river action implies, the re-
moteness of the date at which the
Palaeolithic period had its beginning
almost transcends our powers of im-
agination." Sir John Evans speaks
with the authority of a man deeply
versed in geology as well as in archae-
ology, and it is safe to assume that
he speaks within bounds.

Among the Presidential Addresses
to the Sections were several that were
weighty and valuable. Prof. Mi-
chael Foster i-evievved most insti'uct-
ively the progress of physiological
science in the dozen years that had
elapsed since the association had last
met in Canada. He sounded a not
unneeded note of warning against
allowing commercial considerations
to predominate in questions of re-
search. " There is an increasing
risk," he declared, " of men under-
taking a research not because a ques-
tion is crying out to them to be an-
swered, but in the hope that the
publication of their results may win
for them a lucrative post." A great-
er evil still, he considered, was the
locking up of scientific discoveries
for the private enrichment of the
men who had made them. Another
observation of general value was to
the effect that scientific controversy
is never wholly valueless, since " the
tribunal to which the combatants of
both sides appeal is sure to give a
true judgment in the end." The
great progress, he stated, that had
been made in the study of the condi-
tions and aspects of life in the higher
animal forms had rendered much
more hopeful the study of life in its
lowest and most generalized forms;
so that there is good reason to antici-
pate that " in the immediately near
future a notable advance will be

EDITOR'S TABLE.

845

made in our grasp of the nature of
that varying collection of molecular
conditions, potencies, and changes,
slimy hitherto to the intellectual no
less than to the physical touch, which
we are in the habit of denoting by
the word protoplasm." Here "the
animal physiologist touches hands
with the botanist, and both find that
under different names they are striv-
ing toward the same end." The
learned professor recognized that it
would be inopportune " to plunge into
the deep waters of the relation which
the body bears to the mind," but this,
he declared, we know, " that changes
in what we call the body bring
about changes in what we call the
mind." If, therefore, in the coming
years a clearer knowledge shall be
gained of " the nature and conditions
of that molecular dance which is to
us the token of nervous action," and
if " a fuller, exacter knowledge of the
laws which govern the sweep of nerv-
ous impulses along fiber and cell give
us wider and directer command over
the molding of the growing nervous
mechanism and the maintenance and
regulation of the grown one, then as-
suredly physiology will take its place
as a judge of appeal in questions not
only of the body but of the mind; it
will raise its voice not in the hospital
and consulting room only, but also
in the senate and the school." These
are eloquent words, but their elo-
qvience is the least part of their mer-
it; the prepoTiderant part lies in the
truth they contain — a truth which at
this very moment it has become ur-
gently necessary to proclaim in face
of the fanatical doctrines of the abso-
lute supremacy of mind or spirit
which are running like wildfire
through certain sections of supposed-
ly educated communities.

Wherever scientific men congre-
gate there the name of Darwin is
sure to be mentioned with honor.
Prof. Foster, in the address to

which we have just referred, spoke
of his '"pregnant ideas" as having
"swayed physiology in the limited
sense of that word as well as that
broader study of living beings which
we sometimes call biology, as indeed
they have every branch of natural
knowledge." The President of"4he
Anthropological Section, Sir Wil-
liam Turner, spoke of the " enor-
mous impulse given to the study of
the anatomy of man in comparison
with the lower animals by Charles
Darwin's ever memorable treatise on
the Origin of Species." According
to the President of the Botanical
Section, Prof. Marshall Ward, whose
address yielded to none in the wealth
of interesting facts and principles
it unfolded, recent comparative stud-
ies, both of existing and of fossil
plants, "are yielding at every tiirn
new building stones and explanatory
charts of the edifice of evolution on
the lines laid down by Darwin."
Not less ample were the acknowl-
edgments of the value of Darwin's
work made by Prof. Miall, President
of the Zoological Section. " I do
not," he said, ''lay it down as an
article of the scientific faith that
Darwin's theories are to be taken as
true; we shall refute any or all of
them as soon as we know how; but
it is a great thing that he raised so
many questions that were well worth
raising. He set all scientific minds
fermenting, and not only zoology
and botany, but paleontology, his-
tory, and even philology bear some
mark of his activity. We ov/e as
many discoveries to his sympathy
with living Nature as to his exactness
or his candor, though these two were
illustrious. A young student anxious
to be useful may feel sure that he is
not wasting his time if he is collect-
ing or verifying facts which would
have helped Darwin."

Apart from his reference to Dar
win, there were many interesting

846

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and valuable observations in Prof.
Miall's address. He dwelt witli
proper force on the impossibility of
obtaining a living insight into bio-
logical problems or even a living
acquaintance with biological facts by
means of text-books and lectures
alone. He indicated the necessity of
extreme care in talking of the " laws
of Nature," lest some false idea of a
positive mandate should creep into
the mind. He expressed himself as
accepting in great measure, but still
in part only, the " recapitulationist"
theory, as it has been called, of em-
bryonic development. He believes
that the mammalia certainly had a
piscine origin in remote ages, but
professed himself unable to trace
their family record any further back.
He does not like the word miust in
the mouth of a biologist. " Whenever

any biologist brings the word mxist
into his statement of the operations
of living Nature, I look out to see
whether he will not shortly fall into
trouble."

Upon the whole, there was much
useful work accomplished at the To-
ronto meetiiig. One could not at-
tend the different sections without
feeling that the work of science in
its different branches is a great and
mighty and beneflcent work, and one
which elevates and liberalizes the
minds that give themselves to it with
devotion. However lightly these
annual gatherings may sometimes be
spoken of as being mainly occasions
for holiday-making, we believe that
they are the means of communicat-
ing many useful intellectual im-
pulses both to the working members
themselves and to the general public.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

In this fifth volume of the Memoirs of the American Folklore Society
are sriven what might be called the book of Genesis of the Navaho Indians
and the shorter legends of Natinesthani and The Great Shell of Kintyel.*
The origin legend starts with twelve insect peoples and tells how First
Man and First Woman were produced by the gods and cared for by the in-
sect peoples as the gods directed. The history of this pair and of their
descendants follows and is filled with incidents designed to explain present
customs of the Navahoes and various phenomena of Nature. The last
chapter of the legend, dealing with the growth of the Navaho nation, is in
part traditional or historical, and many of its dates are approximately cor-
rect. The introduction of sixty pages which Dr. Matthews has prefixed to
the legends, and his sixty-five pages of notes, contain much material of
value to the anthropologist. The Navaho reservation lies in the northern
parts of Arizona and New Mexico, and although arid is not a desert. Dr.
Matthews tells us how the Indians manage to raise meager crops from its
soil, and how they care for their herds of sheep and goats. He also de-
scribes the pei'sonal appearance of this rather intelligent people and the
structure of their various kinds of dwellings, giving portraits of several
individuals and views of typical houses. Their industries — weaving, in
which they excel, basket making, pottery, silverwork, etc. — are described,

♦Navaho Legends. Collected and translated by Washington Matthews, M. D., LL. D. Boston;
Houghton, ilifflin & Co. Pp. 299, 8vo. Price, $6.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE, 847

with pictures of specimens and of Indians at work. Dr. Matthews gives
us also some description of the Navaho religion and its ceremonies.
The religion is an elaborate pagan cult, and as the tribe inclines to be
democratic so does the pantheon : they have no highest chief, so they have
no supreme god. There are also evil spirits whom men dread. Many of
the ceremonies are of nine days' duration, while others last but a single day
or a few hours. Elaborate costumes and other paraphernalia are employed
in them, specimens of which are here figured. To learn one of the great
rites so as to become its chanter, or priest, is the work of many years. Dr.
Matthews has a good word for the medicine men that he has come in con-
tact with among this people. Among the notes are given the woi'ds of several
songs with interlinear translations, and the music of eleven melodies, the
latter having been recorded on the phonograph by Dr. Matthews and noted
from the cylinders by John C. Fillmore. In addition to its forty-two cuts
in the text the volume contains four plates, of which two are colored.

Mr. Bellamy's Equality * takes up the story and the discussion of social
questions from where Looking Backward ended, and continues them. It
is in the year 2000, and in the conversation in the garden where Looking
Backward left the pair, Edith asks Julian West about the old times of the
nineteenth century, and is astonished that such things as he tells of could
have been. Some of the details of the revolution that changed conditions
are explained to him. He opens his account in the National Bank and
learns about the new financial system, in which private estates are extin-
guished, the nation owns all the property, and every citizen is allowed each
year an equal credit, in lieu of estate, wages, or profit. Every one is ex-
pected to choose some occupation and follow it, and all are expected to do
by turns their shares of the unpleasant work which no one chooses. A
remedy is described for those who refuse to take their privilege or burden.
In all those things, and in dress, women are as men, and changes of fashion
are no longer known. A discussion of right of property introduces an elu-
cidation of the theory of the social fund and the docti'ine that private capi-
tal is stolen from it, and the astonishing declaration that under the sys-
tem prevailing in the nineteenth century, if one monopolist could have
acquired title deeds to all of the earth, he might have ordered the human
race off of it. The right of title by inheritance is attacked, but it is argued
that the equalization of human interests achieved does not destroy the right
of property. It is simply merged in the title of the state. And it is held
that by this system of equalization women are delivered from a bondage
incomparably more complete and abject than any to which men have been
subjected by their fellow-men— the bondage of personal subjection to the
husband, and to the tyranny of conventional rules. The profit system is
held up as one of economic suicide. Stinkers of the nineteenth century are
honored in statuary as the leaders in the revolt against capitalism and the
pioneers in the new movement. Julian finds that what he had formerly
thought evil has become good, and what has seemed wisdom has become
foolishness. The iniquity of foreign commerce for profit and the hostility
to improvement of a system of vested interests are enlarged upon.
While under the old system the continued acquisition of knowledge after

* Equality. By Edward Bellamy. New York : D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 412. Price, $1.25.

848 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

leaving school was prevented by the burden of cares that fell upon the man
going into business for profit, in the new society the state assumes that bur-
den, and the man can keep on learning all the time. By a constant and
immediate referendum the people are able to keep their legislatures under
direct and instant control. War no longer exists. The new patriotism looks
to the character and purity of the people. Foreign trade is diminished and
foreign travel for knowledge increased. Hygienic development has ira^
proved doctoi's out of their occupation. Meat is no longer eaten. PopulatioB.
is distributed out of the cities over the country. The forests have been
restored. Farming is done by machinery. The last chapters comprise the
history of the supposed revolution, which is assumed to have begun in a
revolt against the corruption and monopolies of the nineteenth century and
of the solution of the problems it raised.

We wake from the reading of the book to find that we are still in the
nineteenth century, suffering from all its faults.

The popular idea of Russia is that of a country inhabited by two classes:
first, the military and civil minions of the Czar, who carry out the op-
pressive edicts of their master with fierce satisfaction ; and, second, the
people, who submit to this tyranny in constant sullen fear, the brightest
among them being generally occupied with plots of assassination. A mo-
ment's reflection ought to convince any intelligent person that there is
another side to the shield, but everybody does not stop to reflect. The book
before us shows the other side.* Mr. Logan had a good time in Russia,
and he saw many thousands of Russians having a good time. He attended
the coronation ceremonies as one of the diplomatic party from the United
States, and, although this brought him in contact only with the official and
noble class, who have reason to be contented, one could not go about as
much as he did at a time when the common people thronged to the splen-
did ceremonials without seeing a great deal that throws light upon the real
condition of '' Ivan," the peasant. Mr. Logan recounts the incidents of
travel, and describes the stores, streets, conveyances, and other things that
one sees in passing with a humor and unconventionality that are delight-
ful. He has grouped many of his observations by subjects. Thus, in a
chapter on The Breaking of Russian Bread, he describes the diet and the
dishes of both nobles and peasants, with digressions on hunting and fishing.
There is much French cookery in Russia, and there are also many dis-
tinctively native dishes, some of which Mr. Logan is able to praise en-
thusiastically. Other chapters describe a village of peasants, Russian horses,
the Russian church, Slavic art and literature, and tell " How we kept house "
and " How we washed in Russia." The bath-tub of America is a stranger
to Russian domiciles, but there are public establishments where the real
Russian bath is enjoyed by all classes of the population. In every village
there is a bath-house in which the peasants steam themselves at least once
a week. But the chief subject of the volume is the coronation ceremonies.
Mr. Logan portrays for us the splendid processions, the impressive cere-
monies, and the magnificent banquets, balls, and performances. He and

his friend "G " were blest with a courier who was constantly making

mistakes that brought them into better positions than they were entitled to.

* In Joyful Russia. By John A. Logan, Jr. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 275,
12mo. Price, $3.50.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

849

In this way they saw the imperial infant and passed through the throne
room, where the crown jewels were displayed, on the day of the coronation.
They were put out of this room with a courtesy that they found everywhere
unfailing among Russian officials — an officer chatted with them a few
moments, and then politely offered to send some one to show them the
way to the diplomatic tribune. Mr. Lognn tells also of the feast, the
juggling shows, and other things suited to their tastes that were pi-ovided
for the common people. He finds that the lower classes have many privi-
leges and a great deal of liberty, and that they have as intense a loyalty as
their heavy natures are capable of. The occurrence at the people's /efe on
the Khodynskoe Plain, which threw the only cloud over the joyousness of
the coronation, was not an unmixed evil, for it gave Nicholas II an oppor-
tunity to show kindness to his people that justified them in calling him
" the Little Father." There is much more in this book than we have space
to enumerate. The illustrations deserve more than the word we can give
them. There are nearly fifty pictures of buildings, interiors, distinguished
personages, and types of the population, besides which there are colored
portraits of the emperor and empress and views of the cathedrals of St.
Basil and of the Assumption in Moscow.

GENERAL NOTICES.

An Experiment in Education* is a sug-
gestive little volume setting forth, in about
two hundred and fifty pages, the experiment
of a thoughtful teacher in introducing young
children at once into the elements of knowl-
edge along novel lines of instruction ; and it
touches furthermore on the principles under-
lying the experiment. Readers of Appletons'
Popular Science Monthly are already familiar
with the main ideas of the book, two of the
chapters dealing with the actual experiment
in Boston and in Englewood, 111 , having ap-
peared as separate papers in previous issues
of the magazine. The author, after teaching
for ten years in high and normal schools,
found that from " one half to one third of
the time allotted to a subject had been spent
in teaching the student how to use his mind,
to use books, specimens, etc. — in other
words, how to study. This waste was irri-
tating and pitiable in view of the short time
allowed to subjects, and I could not be recon-
ciled to the notion that an adult mind must
so generally lack power to work economical-
ly, trustworthily, and discriminatingly." To
overcome this deficiency, and to ingrain into
the mind of the child from the very start

* An Experiment in Educati(^n. also the Ideas
which Inspired it and were Inspired by it. By
Mary R. Alliug-Aber. New York : Harper &
Brothers, 1897. Price, $1.25.
VOL. LI. — 62

habits of accurate observation and inde-
pendence of judgment, became the object of
the teacher ; and natural- science studies, as
lending themselves most readily to object
lessons, where the child could be taught to
observe facts and to verify his experience,
were made the basis of instruction. Read-
ing and writing were taught by means of the
blackboard, and the children constructed their
own primers and copy-books out of the mate-
rial drawn from their science lessons. Thus,
instead of wasting time over the mere tools
of learning or trite facts of everyday life, they
from the very start became familiar with
the elements of knowledge. In place of
text-books, the Socratic method was applied
— drawing out of the children by skillful
questioning the facts they were to observe.
Instead of taxing the memory with useless
lumber, the eye was trained to see and the
mind to form independent judgments. The
experiment in Boston was made with the
children of the primary department in a
private school, and was highly successful as
far as it went. That the principles could be
equally well applied to larger classes was
proved in some of the public schools of En-
glewood, 111., where they found enthusiastic
adherents in many of the teachers.

The ideas underlying the experiment are
explained in the second part of the book,

850

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and are in sum that " children must at once
be introduced to real knowledge, be given
something worth their effort-, and treated as
rational human beings, who ought not, even
if they could, be made to greatly care for the
symbols and shows of learning in the ab-
sence of the real substance, nor led to ima-
gine that they were being mentally and mor-
ally nourished — that is, educated — when fed
on chaff mainly." This part deals with the
Quality of Studies, the Order of Studies, the
Effects of Studies, and the Ends to be served
by Studies — all with the view of producing
a fully rounded, keen-eyed, alert, and self-
dependent man or woman, able to do his
share in the world's work, and to fill his
place in the social order — in short, to attain
to his highest development while fully
sympathizing with the endeavors of his
fellows. The doers of mankind are to be
developed ; the dreamers find no place in the
author's scheme of education.

Part III gives some details about the
teaching of special subjects, including Sci-
ence, History, Literature, Language, Mathe-
matics, Industrial Training, Means of E.ic-
pression, and a chapter for mothers entitled
At Home, indicating in what ways a mother
may awaken her child's powers of observa-
tion. Part IV gives some suggestions about
the atmosphere of the schoolroom. The
experiment was made in 18SI, when "nat-
ural-science studies had not been made an
integral part of any primary schoolroom, and
literature and history in such grades were
mostly unthought of." Long strides in ad-
vance have of course been made in the six-
teen years intervening ; still, the book can not
fail to arouse into more thoughtful activity
many teachers, and it should especially appeal
to mothers and to educators who advocate
individual instruction. What may by some
be considered an objection to the system is
that it makes enormous demands on the in-
genuity of the teacher, for in place of the
routine of the schoolroom it puts individual
tiiiuking.

Mr. Moore's brief treatise on the Philoso-
phy of Art * is a thoughtful study, by a man
who has had time and opportunity to give
full attention to the subject from the lit-

* A Treatise on the Philoeopby of Art. By D.
R. Moore. St. John, N. B. Pp. 23.

erary rather than the evolutional point of
view, of the origin and nature of the arts,
which he classifies as those appealing to the
sight and to the hearing. The author re-
gards them all as primarily the outgrowth of
necessity, and esteems as the most interest-
ing feature of his inquiry the paradoxical
nature of the transition from the original
condition and purposes of art to its later and
present uses.

A new work on geology, both suitable for
a college text-book and very attractive to the
general reader, has been written by Prof.
Scott, of Princeton.* The author's plan has
been to make a book dealing principally
with American geology, after the style of Sir
Archibald Geikie's Class- Book. Its Ameri-
can character is a marked feature of the
present work. It is clearly advantageous,
the author remarks, that wc should make use
of our own country in selecting typical facts
for study. Accordingly, the formations that
he describes and figures are nearly all Ameri-
can. Prof. Scott has had the use of a great
deal of material collected for the United
States Geological Survey, and a large part of
his nearly three hundred figures are repro-
duced from photographs taken for the sur-
vey. Prof. Scott does not make much use of
diagrams, evidently preferring to show the
reader the actual appearance of the exam-
ples that may be seen in the field. The
value of field study is strongly emphasized
by him. Dynamical geology is the first of
the large divisions of the subject that he con-
siders, beginning with igneous agencies, but
for students who begin a study of the sub.
ject in the fall he advises taking up other chap-
ters first. He makes a special division of the
work under the title Physiographical Geology,
in which he has three chapters dealing with
the changes in topography effected by geo-
logical agencies, and the clews which topo-
graphical features give in tracing past geo-
logical operations. A little more than one
third of the work is devoted to historical or
stratigraphical geology. Here, while both
American and foreign formations and fossils
are described, the foreign are always placed
in a separate paragraph after the Americaui

* An Introduction to Geology. By William B.
Scott. New York : The Macmillan Co. Pp. 573,
8vo. Price, gl.90.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

851

with a distinctive heading. A table of the
more important European formations is ap-
pended to the volume, but few of the subdi-
visions having been mentioned in the text.
Another appendix contains the system of
classification of the animals and plants which
has been used in the book. There is a full
index, and the mechanical execution of the
volume is of a high order.

Prof. Storer^s work on the chemistry of
agriculture, which first appeared in 1887 and
was revised in 1892, has been again revised.*
It is based on the lectures which the author
has delivered at the Bussey Institution, a
department of Harvard University, now for
twenty-five years. The chemical nature and
behavior toward plants of every substance
that has been used to any extent as a ferti-
lizer are set forth in these volumes. Other
subjects discussed are the relations of water
to the soil, the effects of tillage, rotation of
crops, the management of hay and grain
crops, the production of ensilage, etc. The
additions that have been made in this edi-
tion, and the fact that it has been entirely
reset in larger type, have necessitated print-
ing the work in three volumes instead of two
as heretofore.

The second volume of Britton and Brown's
Illustrated Flora of the Northern United
States,\ etc., gives the families, genera, and
species from Portulaca to the dogwoods and
tupelos, seventy-two families, in Choripet-
alee; and from the clethras to Buckbean,
sixteen families, in Gam,opetalce. We have
already indicated, in our notice of the first vol-
ume of this work, its general character and
scope. We have to refer specially here chief-
ly to the pains which are taken to make the
work as a whole and the particular descriptions
plain to the most untechnical reader. Every

* Agriculture In Some of its Relations with
Chemistry. By F. H. Storer. In three volumes.
Seventh edition, revised and enlarged. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons. Price, $5, net.

+ An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United
States, Canada, and the British Posssesions, from
Newfoundland to the Parallel of the Southern
Boundary of Virginia, and from the Atlantic
Ocean Northward to the 103d Meridian. By
Nathaniel Lord Britton and the Hon. Addison
Brown. Vol. II. Portulacacse to Menyanthaceae.
Portulaca to Buckbean. New York : Charles
Scribner's Sons. Pp. 643. Price, $3.

species is figured as to general habits, leaf,
flower, and fruit ; English names are given
or the botanical names are translated into
meaning English for each family, genus, and
species; and English measures are used, so
that the plain student may conceive at once
and as if with his eyes shut the dimension
indicated without having to look at a scale
or make a mathematical reduction. Com-
plete indexes are provided of English and of
Latin names.

Mr. Thayer's essay on the Hebrews in
Egypt and their JExodics* is an attempt to
find if there be not in the Pentateuch a rea-
sonably credible, historic narrative which
may be accepted with as much confidence
as any other chapter of history so ancient.
The argument is, in brief, that, owing to the
strong race feeling of the Jews, the genealo-
gies of their families were the most carefully
recorded and the most uniformly coherent,
consistent, and jealously preserved part of
their history ; that here we shall find firm
ground to stand on, if anywhere; that the
annals of the Pharaohs as now accepted by
Egyptologists support and confirm these gene-
alogies; and through these is to be traced
the real thread of historic truth. While the
author does not hold to the usually accepted
views concerning the Pentateuch, he has no
sympathy with what is called the destructive
school of criticism. His argument is, on the
contrary, intended to be constructive and
preservative.

" A practical treatise for practical men "
is what Dr. Louis Bell has aimed to make
his recent book on Electric Power Trarui-
mission (Johnston Co., $2.50). After some
discussion of elementary electrical principles
and transmission of power by other than
electrical means, he gives a chapter to power
transmission by continuous currents, which
up to the present time is the commoner mode.
He then takes up the coming mode of power
transmission, namely, by alternating currents.
He points out the properties of alternating
circuits that have a direct bearing on power
transmission, and discusses monophase, poly-
phase, and heterophase systems and the
forms of apparatus used with each. A chap-

* The Hebrews in Egypt and their Exodus.
By Alexander Wheelock Thayer. Peoria, 111. :
E. 8. Willcox. Pp. 315. Price, $1.25.

852

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ter is given to apparatus for changing al-
ternating to direct currents or the reverse.
Dr. Bell goes outside the strict limits of his
title to treat of steam engines and of the de-
velopment and use of water power. The
organization of a power station, line con-
struction, and the various problems of dis-
tribution, including the commercial problem,
are all discussed in more or less detail. The
volume contains over two hundred diagrams
and other illustrations, including several half-
tone plates.

The Macmillan Company has issued for
Dr. Charles B. Davenport the first part of a
work on Experimental MorplwJogy^ to be
completed in four parts. This part is de-
voted to the effects of chemical and physical
agents upon protoplasm as determined by ex-
periments. The chief chemical agents whose
influence on the vital actions of protoplasm
is examined are oxygen, hydrogen, oxides
of carbon, ammonia, and various poisons.
Among the physical agents experimented
with are the forces heat, light, and elec-
tricity ; the effects of moisture and dryness,
of different densities of the containing solu-
tion, of molar agents, and of gravity are also
passed in review. The influence of each
agent on the direction of locomotion of the
protoplasm is among the effects considered.
Following each, chapter is a list of literature
on the subject of the chapter. The work is
designed as a contribution to the funda-
mental question. Why does an organism de-
velop as it does? Of the two classes of
causes that influence development, Dr. Daven-
port has confined himself to the external
causes. The three parts of the work to fol-
low will deal respectively with growth, cell
division, and differentiation. (Price, $2.60.)

The United States Geological Survey is
publishing a geologic map of the United
States with a topographic base map. It is
being issued in parts, called folios, each cov-
ering a small area. Thus the Yellowstone
National Park Folio contains four topo
graphic sheets, known as the Gallatin, Can-
yon, Lake, and Shoshone sheets, and four
geologic sheets of the same districts. The
scale is about half an inch to a mile, and
the contour interval is one hundred feet.
Contours and elevations are printed in brown,
water courses in blue, and the works of man,

such as roads, railroads, and towns, are
printed in black. The geologic formations
are indicated by systematic coloring. There
are also eleven photo-engravings of views in
the region covered, and six folio pages of
description. The plan of the map is explained
on the two inside cover pages. The Survey
has a circular telling the prices at which the
several parts are sold.

An atlas of I/h/sfrations showing Con-
dition of Fur-seal Rookeries in 1895 and
Method of Killing Stals has been printed as
a Senate document to accompany the report
of C. H. Townsend. It contains forty-six
plates, many of them folded, the greater part
of which are views on St. Paul and St. George
Islands, showing the seals on the beaches.
Six plates show the processes of killing and
skinning the seals.

In the Fourteenth Annual Report of the
Bureau of Ethnologij, covering the year
1892-'93, the director. Major ,/. W. Powell,
describes the work of tlie year, which in-
cluded investigations along a number of dis-
tinct lines. The immediate purpose in or-
ganizing this bureau was " the discovery of
the relations among the native American
tribes, to the end that amicable groups might
be gathered on reservations. It was early
found that classification by somatologic
(physical) characters was useless for the pur-
pose in view, while a grouping by language,
governmental institutions, religion, indus-
tries, and arts brought together tribes who
could live in proximity with little or no
strife. In general, language alone will serve
as a satisfactory basis for this practical
grouping, and readers familiar with the pre-
vious publications of the bureau have no-
ticed the large share of attention that has
been given to Indian languages, both spoken
and written in pictograph. The present re-
port is accompanied by three extended pa-
pers. One of these, on The Menomini Indi-
ans, by Dr. Walter J. Hoffman, describes
the ritual of the Mitawit (Grand Medicine
Society), into which he was duly initiated,
and gives a considerable collection of Meno-
mini mythology and folklore, together with
descriptions of many of the arts and customs
of this tribe and a vocabulary of its lan-
guage. The memoir is illustrated with many
full-page plates and smaller cuts. The re-

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

853

suits of a historical research appear in a pa-
per on The Coronado Expedition, 1540-42,
by George P. Winship, of Harvard Univer-
sity. This expedition was sent out by Men-
doza, Governor of " New Spain," in southern
Mexico, and discovered the Pueblo Indians
of New Mexico, the Grand Canon of the Colo-
rado, and the bison of the great plains. Mr.
Winship presents the original text of Coro-
nado's report and an English translation, to-
gether with translations of shorter papers
relating to the expedition, and a historical
introduction giving the events which led up
to this undertaking and the circumstances
under which it was carried out. Many re-
productions of sixteenth-century maps and
modern pictures of Pueblo Indians and their
dwellings accompany the memoir. The
ghost dance, which has been for half a
dozen years a word to inspire terror in re-
ports from the Indian reservations, is de-
scribed by James Mooney in his paper on
The Ghost- dance Religion and the Sioux Out-
break of 1890. The dance is the manifesta-
tion of an epidemic of religious frenzy which
was transmitted from tribe to tribe over one
third of the area of the United States and
then died away. Mr. Mooney accompanies
his account with descriptions of similar rites
among the Indians and similar frenzies
among Christians and Mohammedans. The
memoir is copiously illustrated.

Nearly two thirds of the volume contain-
ing the Report of the United States Commis-
sioner of Fish and Fisheries for 1895 is de-
voted to a Check List of the Fishes and
Fishlike Vertebrites of North and Middle
America, by Jordan and Evermann. Owing
to ill health, the late Commissioner McDon-
ald was unable to prepare a report, and
the work of the year is shown in the re-
ports of assistants. Several special investi-
gations are described in appended papers.

The statistical matter in the eighth an-
nual report of the Interstate Commerce Com-
misdon on the Stat/dics of Railways in the
United States follows the same order and
covers the same ground as in previous years.
It yields many evidences of continued busi-
ness depression, although there has been a
net decrease of twenty-three in the number
of roads in the hands of receivers. Special
features of this report are, first, compari-

sons not only with the preceding year, but
so far as possible with the years from 1890
to 1894 inclusive; second, the compilation
of operating expenses for 1894 and 1895;
and, third, the table showing revenue and
density of tiaffic for all roads whose gross
revenue exceeds $3,000,000 a year.

The aim of Appletons' Home-Reading
Books evidently is to give young persons a
broader view of the world in which their
lives are to be passed than they can get
from their school books. It is not necessary
that all knowledge should be gained by
drudgery over set tasks ; much may be im-
parted by books like these, which interest at
the same time that they inform. In the
little volume on The Plant World which he
has prepared for this series, Mr. Frank Vir^
cent has made an excellent collection of the
romances and realities of the botanical king-
dom. He has taken from the writings of
American and foreign naturalists selections
describing plants remarkable for their
beauty, size, peculiar form, or great useful-
ness, and has scattered among them a few
tributes from the poets. Mr. Vincent has
not sought for the remote or startling alone.
He calls upon Bonifas-Guizot to tell the uses
of the cocoanut tree, and Paul Marcoy to
describe the Victoria Regia, but he has also
something about common grasses by Mar-
garet Plues, and includes Whittier's poem
on the pumpkin. Mr. Vincent has been in
every quarter of the globe himself, and may
be depended upon tp select only accurate
descriptions of foreign plants. Fifteen full-
page photo-engravings add to the attractive-
ness of the volume. (Appletons, 60 cents,
net.)

Prof. Edward L. Nichols, already favor"-
ably known as an author of text books on
physics, has produced an elementary work,
under the title The Outlines of Physics, which
is intended to be a fair equivalent for the
year of advanced mathematics now required
for entrance to many colleges ^Macmillan,
$1.40). In order to possess sulficient dis-
ciplinary value for this purpose, says the au-
thor, "physics must be taught by laboratory
methods, and the experiments should be, aa
far as possible, of a quantitative nature."
This book is designed as a text-book and a
laboratory guide combined. "In the selec-

854

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tjon of the methods and of the apparatus
used," Prof. Nichols continues, " I have al-
ways had in view the greatest possible direct-
ness and simplicity, rather than the highest
degree of accuracy. The inexperience and
the immaturity of the reader and the neces-
sarily inadequate equipment of school labora-
tories have been likewise borne in mind."
The applications of physics to the arts, which
in some books are pointed to with pride, he
has rigidly excluded. As in most elemen-
tary works, mechanics, being the simplest
division of the science, comes first, and
the chapter here includes something of hy-
drostatics and pneumatics. This is followed
by heat ; while electricity, often left till the
last, comes third, being followed by sound
and light. Practical directions on the use
of apparatus are given in appendixes. Four
hundred and fourteen cuts, nearly all from
new drawings, illustrate the text.

The extraordinary activity in the deter-
mination of atomic weights since 1884, re-
sulting in the accumulation of a great mass
of new material, has led Prof. F. W. Clarke
to prepare a revised and enlarged edition of
his Recalculation of the Atomic Weights. It
appears as Part V of the series of volumes
on the constants of nature published by the
Smithsonian Institution.

The small treatise on Metals in the Text-
books of Science Series, a new edition of
which has been prepared by ^. ^. Hunting
ton and W. G. McMillan, is based on one
by Bloxam published in 1872, and rewritten

by Prof. Himtington in 1882 (Longmans,
$2.50). Its aim is " to make clear the prin-
ciples which have guided the evolution of
the metallurgical arts and industries, avoid-
ing multiplicity of detail, which tends to ob-
scure main issues." The volume opens with
an extended chapter on the characters and
modes of preparing the various fuels used
in metallurgy, from charcoal to water gas.
Several forms of apparatus for producing or
utilizing various kinds of gas are also de-
scribed. This chapter is followed by a few
pages on refractory materials and fluxes.
In passing to the treatment of the various
metals, their common properties are set forth
and certain general processes for crushing,
dressing, and roasting ores are described.
Because of its importance iron is given first
place, and nearly two thirds as much space
is devoted to it as to all other metals to-
gether. The chief ores of iron are described,
and something is told of the Catalan and
other primitive smelting methods. The vari-
ous processes in present use for the produc-
tion of iron and steel are then described,
particular care being given to stating the
reasons for each step, and to telling the
properties of combinations of iron with small
quantities of other elements. The other
metals used in the arts are similarly treated.
Among the less common ones to which a
page or two is given are cadmium, iridium,
palladium, bismuth, magnesium, and sodium.
Tables and a full index are appended. There
are one hundred and twenty-two cuts of fur-
naces and other apparatus.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

American Chemical Society. Journal. August,
1897. Vol. XIX. No. H. Eastou, Pa.: Chemical
Publishing Company. Pp. 100. $.5 a year.

American Forestrv Association. Proceedings,
Fifteenth Annual Meeting, 18t)7. Pp. 1-UU. Wash-
ington, U. C.

Baldwin, J. Mark. Princeton ContribntionB to
Psychology. Vol. II. Nos. 1 and 2 March and
September, 1897. Pp. 59 and 70. Semiannual, 50
cents each.

Beal, F. E. L. The Blue Jay and its Food.
Washington: United States Department of Agri-
culture. Pp. 10.

Borden, John. An Essay on Value, with a
Short Account of American Currency. Chicago:
Kand, McNally & Co. Pp. 232.

Brinton, Daniel G. Religions of Primitive Peo-
ples. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.264.
$1.50.

Butts, First Lieutenant Ednnmd L. Manual of
Physical Drill, United States Anny. New York:
D. Applelon and Company. Pp. I'i'S. $1.25.

Call, M. Ellsworth. La Cartographie de Mam-
moth Cave, Kentucky. Pp 10.

Cannon, Hon. ■ rank J., Tillman, Hon. B. R.,
Butler, Hon. Manin, and Allen, Hon. William V.,
United States Senator. Speeches on the Tariff
(Bounties). Pp. 41.

Chavannes, Albert, Editor and Publisher,
Knoxville, Tenn. The Philosopher. A Monthly
Magazine for Progressive People. August, 1897.
(Vol. I, No. 4.) Pp.24. 5 cents. 50 cents a year.

Chester, Albert H. A Catalogue of Minerals
Alphabetically Arranged, with their Chemical
Composition and Synonyms. New York : John
Wiley & Sons. Pp. 56.

Cockcrell, T. D. A. The Food Plants of Scale
Insects. Washington : United States National
Museum. Pp. 00.

Colgate University, Department of Geology and
Natural History. Fifth Annual Circular of Infor-
mation, 1896-'97. Pp. 16.

Colles. George W. The Metric versus the Duo-
decimal System. Pp. 1*0.

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

855

CoBSTilar Reports, Angnet, 1897. Commerce,
Manufactiiree, etc. Washington: Goverumeut
Printing Office. Pp. 144.

Cooley, Le Roy C. The Student's Manual of
Physics, for the Study Room and Laboratory.
American Book Comi)any. Pp. 418. $1.

Gushing, Frank Hancilton. A Preliminary Re-
port on the Exploration of Ancient Key-Dweller
Remains on the Gulf Coast of Floiida Pp. 120.

Gushing, Frank Hamilton, and Morris, J. Ches-
ton. Shamanism. Pp. 14.

Day, William C. The Stone Industry in 1896.
United States Geological Survey. Pp. Vi%.

Dodge, Charles Richards. A Descriptive Cata-
logue of the Useful Fiber Plants of the World, in-
cluding the Structural and Economical Classiiica-
tions of E'ibers. United Stales Department of
Agriculture. Pp 361, with plates.

Galton, Francis. The Average Contribution of
each Several Ancestor to the Total Heritage of the
OfEspring. Royal Society, London. Pp. la.

Imperial University, Japan Journal of the
College of Science. Vol. X, Part 2. Tokyo. Pp.
IIG, with plates.

Kenners, R. C. The Therapeutic Management
of Certain Scrofulous Affections. Pp. 5.

Lewis, Margaret. Clymene Products. Sp.
Nov. Boston Society of Natural History. Pp. 5,
vtith plates.

Maltbie, Milo Le Roy. English Social Gov-
ernment of To-day. A Study ol the Relations of
Central and Local Government. New York : Co-
lumbia University. Pp. 296. $2.

Mays, Thomas J., M. D. Increase of Insanity
and Consumption among the Negro Population of
the South since the War. Pp. 13.

Morse, William H., Westfield, N. J. Opium.
Pp.6.

New York Public Library— Astor, Lenox, and
Tilden Foundations. August, 1897. Pp. 36.

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station. Fertil-
izers on a C.ay Soil. Pp. 2.

Ohio State LTniversity. The College of Agri-
culture and Domestic Science, 1897-1 89f<.

Palmer, T. S. Extermination of Noxious Ani-
mals by Bounties. United States Department of
Agriculture. Pp. 16.

Princeton University. Graduate Department,
Courses in Philosophy, 1897-'98. Pp. 4.

Redwayj Jacc^ues W. Natural Elementary Ge-
ography. American Book Company. Pp. 144. 50
cents.

Scientific Alliance of New York. Directory for
189:. Pp. 59. 25 cents.

Singer. Ignatius, and Berens, Lucius H. Some
Unrecognized Laws of Nature. New York : D.
Appleton and Company. Pp. oil. $2.25.

Smith, Vaimie E., M. D. Cerebral Hypersemia.
Pp.6.

Starr, Frederick. The Little Pottery Objects
of Lake Chapala, Mexico. University of Chi-
cago. Pp. 27.— Study of the Criminal in Mexico.
Pp. 17.

United States Fish Commission. Bulletin.
Vol. XVI. Washington : Government Printing
Office. Pp. 427.

United States Treasury Department. Notice
to Mariners, for July, 1897. Pp. 16.

Weir, James. The Psychical Correlation of
Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire. Owens-
boro, Ky. Pp. 32.

Whitman, C. O., and Wheeter, W. M., Editors.
Zoological Bulletin Bimonthly. Vol. I, No. 1.
Pp. 55. 75 cents. $3 a year.

Wright, Carroll D., and Weaver, Oren W.,
Editors. Bulletin of the Department of Labor.
No 11, July, 1897. Government Printing Office.
Pp. 156.

Youmans, E. L., Editor. The Culture De-
manded by Modern Life. New York : D. Apple-
ton and Company. Pp. 473.

x^QWitnts xrt ^cljetxcje.

A Bnnsen Burner for icetylene. — An in-
teresting item regarding the use of acetylene
as a heating agent occurs in the Chemical
News. A. E. Munby MTites: "The cheap
production of calcium carbide has placed a
powerful illuminaut within the reach of those
who possess no gas supply, but so far little
has been heard of the use of acetylene as a
keating agent. Our laboratory is, so far as
we know, the first to make use of the gas
for this purpose. We employ a Bunsen
burner of special dimensions, the tube being
five millimetres in internal diameter. A
slightly wider tube may be used, provided
the mouth be curved inward, so that the
actual exit does not exceed the diameter
mentioned ; if larger, the flame tends to
strike down. The gas jet is very small, be-
ing only capable of delivering about one
cubic foot of acetylene per hour under six

inches water pressure, such a rate of con-
sumption giving an ordinary working flame.
The air holes and collar are arranged as in
an ordinary Bunsen, the exact size of the
former not being of much importance, pro-
vided they be large enough to admit the air
required. A generator capable of giving gas
under seven inches water pressure with the
full number of burners in use is required.
The heating effect of the flame is, of course,
very great, enabling one to dispense with the
blowpipe for some operations, such as small
fusions. ... It would seem that in practice,
for equal volumes burned, the acetylene has
nearly twice the heating power of coal gas."'

Officers of the American Association. —

At the recent Detroit meeting of the Ameri-
can Association for the Advancement of Sci-
ence, Prof. F. W. Putnam resigned the office

856

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

f:^x

of Permanent Secretary, which he had held
for about twenty- five years, and L. 0. How-
ard, of the Department of Agriculture, Wash-
ington, was chosen to succeed him. The of-
ficers elect for the next meeting, which is to
be held in Boston, are : President, Prof. F.
W. Putnam ; Vice-Presidents, Mathematics
and Astronomy, E. E. Barnard ; Physics,
Frank P. Whitman ; Chemistry, Edgar F.
Smith ; Mechanical Science and Engineering,
M. E. Cooley ; Geology and Geography, H. L.
Fairchild ; Zoology, A. S. Packard ; Botany,
W. F. Farlow ; Anthropology, J. McKe«n
Cattell ; Economic Science and Statistics,
Archibald Blue (Toronto, Canada). The Sec-
tional Secretaries are : Mathematics and
Physics, Alexander Zirvet ; Physics, E. B.
Rosa ; Chemistry, Charles Baskerville ; Me-
chanical Science and Engineering, William
S. Aldrich; Geology and Geography, Warren
Upham ; Zoology, C. W. Stilles ; Botany,
Erwin F. Smith; Anthropology, M. H. Sa-
ville ; Economic Science and Statistics, Mar-
cus Benjamin. D. S. Kellicott, Columbus,
Ohio, was elected General Secretary, to suc-
ceed Prof. Hall ; and Frederick Bedell, of
Cornell University, was made Secretary of
the Council.

The Age of the Earth. — In a recent lec-
ture at the Victoria Institute on the Age of
the Globe as an abode fitted for Ufe, Lord
Kelvin maintained that if heat had been uni-
formly conducted out of the earth at its
present regular rate, the globe twenty thou-
sand miUion years ago would have been a
molten if not a gaseous mass. A further
argument against the huge lengths of time
required by the older geologists was sought
in the constantly diminishing velocity ia the
earth's rotation resulting from tidal action.
The earth was revolving faster a thousand
million years ago than now, and consequent-
ly centrifugal action was greater. If the
globe had become consolidated while it was
traveling at a faster rate, it would have pos-
sessed greater oblateness and the length of
the equatorial radius would have been six
and a half kilometres more than it is. Judg-
ing from the properties of rocks and by un-
derground temperatures, the date of the
solidification of the earth was probably twen-
ty or thirty million years ago. As to the
origin of the atmosphere, at the time of

solidification there could have been no free
oxygen, so far as could be determined, and no
chemical reaction by which it could be liber-
ated. Vegetable life and sunlight must have
come into play to prepare our atmosphere in
the course of a few hundred or thousand
years. A serious geological question was
the mode of production of the ocean depths
and of the eminences of the continents.
Many phenomena were doubtless due to
strain on cooling, but that did not afford a
sufficient explanation in this case. The au-
thor thought the cause was change of density
by crystallization. Perhaps the strongest
argument against unlimited geological time
was afforded by the heat of the sun, which
may have illuminated the earth for some-
where about twenty million years. The latest
geological estimate of the time required for
the formation of all strata since the be-
ginning of the Cambrian rocks was seventeen
million years, and the author could hardly
be spoken harshly of when he said that this
earth could not have been a habitable globe
for more than ten million years.

The Mn8('e Social. — The 3fusee Social is
a vigorous institution organized in Paris, in
1894, to furnish the public, besides informa-
tion and discussions, with the documents,
models, plans, and statutes of organizations
and social institutions intended to ameliorate
the material and moral situation of working-
men. It has established a permanent exhi-
bition of social economy, a library of about
nine thousand volumes, French and foreign,
documents on important questions, and pe-
riodicals ; and has made provision for com-
municating to those interested whatever in-
formation may be desired concerning social
enterprises. For the collection of informa-
tion it sends deputations to make personal
observations of social facts, events, and in-
stitutions, and has correspondents abroad, of
whom Mr. W. F. Willoughby, of the Depart-
ment of Labor, represents the United States,
to furnish news of the course of the social
movements in their respective countries.
The results of its inquiries are given to the
public through stated conferences held at its
rooms in Paris ; through " circulars " — very
respectable documents in size — published
and distributed at short intervals, and
through a series of publications known as

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

857

the Biblioiheqne, or Library of the Musee
Social. The Musee has been recognized by
the state as of public utility, and its mem-
bers and supporters are men of weight.

Some Conditions of Plant Distribution.

— A paper published by Mr. Conway Mac-
Millan in Minnesota Botanical Studies on the
Distribution of Plants along Shore at Lake
of the Woods is an admirable demonstration
of the dependence over such an area as the
shores of the lake of plant formations upon
conditions of topography and the environ-
ment, is very minute and exhaustive, and is
believed by the author to be the first of its
kind published in America. From the mul-
titude of illustrations it affords of the de-
pendence of vegetal and other character-
istics on small differences of conditions, we
can take, almost at random, only a few.
The shores of the lake are classified into
front, mid, and back strands, etc. "The
mid-strand area appears to afford an excel-
lent example of the sensitiveness of plant
formations to varying environmental condi-
tions. The character and aspect, the abun-
dance or paucity of certain forms, the ar-
rangement of the different forms with
reference to one another, all seem definitely
related to the variations in exposure, slope,
temperature, moisture, wind currents and
surf impact, or upon combinations or modi-
fications of these. So the constant variety
of the beach as one walks along it is con-
nected with the multitude of variations in
the soil below, the air above, and the water
off shore. The mid-strand, too, is modified
by the back-strand which abuts upon it. . . .
And by the physical texture and contour of
the back-strand the mid-strand may be af-
fected very sharply — as when the rain is
carried through the gullies in the back-strand
down upon or across the area nearer the
water's edge. Curious interrupted patches
of Carices and Epilobiums that occur in the
mid-strand are often to , be referred to de-
clivities or gullies in the back-strand, direct-
ing the moisture to some spots rather than
to others. Thus both the physical and bio-
logical conditions of the zone farther inland
affect the beach flora quite as distinctly as
do the conditions shoreward." The line be-
tween mid-strand and back-strand may be
called a tension line, as between two general

groups of plants striving to move in opposite
directions, where a reciprocal stress is devel-
oped ; and the plants of the mid-strand strive
to enter the back strand, while the others try
in turn to work out upon the mid-strand.
Thus an irregular boundary line is developed,
and the exact line of demarcation is nowhere
altogether clear and distinct. A peculiar
biological influence modifying back-strand
at certain isolated points is the nesting of
gulls and terns. "By their deposition of
guano, and probably by their carrying in of
seeds, these birds have at various points on
island back-strand established conditions
favorable to the development of vegetation
islands that may mark the approximate spot
of the rookery long after the birds have de-
serted it."

The Blue Color of Lakes. — It is general-
ly agreed, as Carl Vogt demonstrated in an
article published in the Monthly a few years
ago, that pure water, as in many of the
deepest lakes, is blue ; and it is usually sup-
posed that the greenish tint common to other
waters is given to them by yellowish matter
held in suspension, while an excess of such
matter turns them yellow. The explanation,
while he regards it as correct as to the color
of water, is not accepted by M. W. Spring
as sufficient to account for lakes looking blue ;
for, if their water is wholly pure and quiet, it
will absorb the mass of the light, reflecting
little or none, and look black. What gives
this water its reflecting power ? Some sup-
pose the existence of colorless solid matter
in the water like the dust that makes visible
the diffused light of the atmosphere. That
cause is admitted to be a possible one ; but
M. Spring has satisfied himself by experi-
ments that water absolutely pure will also
reflect the light if the mass is composed of
layers of different temperatures that give rise
to convection currents. This conclusion is
supported by observation. Prof. F. A. Forel
has found that fresh- water lakes are more
transparent in winter than in summer, as they
should be by M. Spring's theory ; because in
summer the differences in temperature be-
tween the surface and the layers beneath are
greater. Thus the remains of the lake dwell-
ers can be seen on the bottoms of the Swiss
lakes in winter at places where they are not
at all visible in summer. Prof. Forel thinks

858

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that this is because there is more duat in
them to obscure the view in summer than in
winter; but there is no reason why this
should be, while the disturbance by convec-
tion currents is necessarily much greater in
the warm season. M. Spring does not inter-
pret his theory as excluding any of the others,
but as supplementing them.

At the nead Waters of the Niger. — In the

expedition to the sources of the Niger, of
which Colonel J. K. Trotter recently gave an
account before the Royal Geographical So-
ciety, the first station of importance mentioned
after leaving Freetown was Kruto, where the
chief collected his people and organized a
dance in honor of his visitors, himself lead-
ing and brandishing an elephant's tail. From
a place called Kuiubundo, reached several
days afterward, there was no road farther
on, and the chief set his people to woik the
whole night to cut a path to a village which
the party reached the next day. Descending
from the heights at the eastern limits of the
British sphere to the Tembi, the travelers
entered French territory. The guides here
regarded their task as ended, and declined
to point out the source of the Terabi, averring
that it was the seat of the devil, whom they
had no anxiety to meet, though they were
devil-worshipers. They believed that any
one who looked at the Niger source incurred
the wrath of the devil and would die within
the year, and they regarded the water as
poisonous. Their views concerning the water
seemed to be confirmed, but the agency of
the devil was not made evident. A marked
difference was observed in the aspect of the
country in the river valley and outside of it.
The pnrt outside of the regular valley was
covered with canebrakes ten feet high, yel-
low and sun-scorched. The moment the
valley was reached the bush was green, the
foliage abundant, and the trees were covered
with creepers and trailers which constituted
formidable obstacles. Such differences are
characteristic of West Africa. The commis-
sion were disappointed at not finding the ele-
vation of the Niger sources higher, 3,379
feet being the maximum recorded. The
adjacent country was, however, distinctly
mountainous, though none of the summits
exceeded six thousand feet. The people in
whose country this part of the journey lay

exhibited a great love of music. The ma-
jority of them were pagans. Occasionally a
Mussulman town was passed, and it was re-
markable to observe how far the Mohamme-
dans were in advance of the pagans in
wealth, comparative civilization, and intelli-
gence. The author regarded all the natives
of the west coast, in spite of their defects,
which are easily apparent and are in general
those of a low order of civilization, as very
tractable and quite ready to obey the direc-
tion of the Europeans. Their best point
is their light-heartedness, which indeed he
thinks is the bright spot of West Africa.
It is a country where the worst jokes never
fail to be appreciated, and where one is cer-
tain of bringing down the house without any
claim to being a wit.

The Wastes of Civilization. — Improvi-
dent Civilization was the subject of the
chairman's address by Prof. R. T. Colburn, in
the Section of Social and Economic Science
of the American Association. Touching the
currency question, the speaker observed that
when we speak of value, equivalency, wealth,
risk, trust, distrust, panic, prosperity, we are
dealing not with concrete substances like
gold pieces, but with states of mind. Yet
these ideas lie at the foundation of commer-
cial exchanges and monetary science. " Have
any of you ever imagined what would hap-
pen if some modern Rosicrucian should suc-
ceed in the turning of base metals cheaply
into gold ? . . . Such a discovery would in-
troduce into the world of commerce, and in-
deed into all fiscal relations of men, an ap-
palling confusion : first, by a general rise of
prices ; and, second, by a dislocation of fixed
payments of interest, salaries, and otherwise.
Among other curious results we should wit-
ness would be a change of side s and tunes
between the advocates of the gold and silver
standards. . . . The same thing would hap-
pen, only more slowly, if a vast deposit of
gold were unearthed ; and if, after gold was
thus discredited by a practically inexhausti-
ble supply, the attempt were made to put
silver in its place (the price of which would
be enormously enhanced), this state of things
would be liable in its turn to be upset by
similar discoveries." By precipitating the
necessity of inventing some more efficient
tool of exchanges, a scientific and more sta-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

859

ble enumerator of values, the after benefits
to mankind of such an event might compen-
sate for all the disaster it would temporarily
cost. The speaker declared our present civ-
ilization not abreast of the knowledge of the
time and not yielding to mankind nearly the
amount of comfoi-t and well-being it might
be made to do. As examples of its defects
shown in the improvident tendencies of mod-
ern life, the speaker cited the waste of war-
fare and armament, the decadence of races,
pernicious competition, spendthrift luxury,
the blight of parasitism, the power of super-
stition, and the diversity of languages.

Legislation against Insects and Fangi. —

Referring to the principles upon which legis-
lation against insects and fungi injurious to
vegetation rests, and recognizing that such
laws are effective only to a limited extent.
Garden and Forest suggests that " it does
not follow that because the enforcement of
a law is not certain it is therefore unwise to
enact it. It is true that habitual disobedi-
ence to any law breeds to a certain extent
contempt for all laws, but it is also true that
the expression of the intelligence of a com-
monwealth on its statute book is of itself an
educating force. Laws against forest fires,
for instance, help to instruct people who
have never given the subject attention as to
the enormous amount of property fires sweep
away. It has been estimated that a million
and a half of dollars every day would not
pay for the losses inflicted upon agriculture
throughout the United States from insects
and fungous diseases. ... If we are not
yet prepared to enforce wholesome laws to
prevent this loss, we certainly ought to do
everything possible toward creating a senti-
ment that will enforce them." The assump-
tion on which these laws rest is defined to be
that no man has a right to permit his prem-
ises to be a breeding ground for pests which
will bring loss upon his neighbors when by
due diligence he can prevent this. If the
trouble does not come from his own care-
lessness, it is right that the state should pay
him as it pays for the destruction of dis-
eased cattle.

Vegetation of the Mammotli Cave. —

Notes have been taken by R. Ellsworth Call,
during frequent visits to the Mammoth Cave,

of its flora ; but the list, even including the
molds and mildews found growing upon the
remains of lunches taken in by parties, is a
meager one. The plants are, of course, all
cryptogams. Several of the forms occur in
the greatest abundance in the region beyond
the rivers of the cave, because, probably,
many spores are introduced with the lunches.
A small Peziza on very old, water-soaked
timbers in the Mammoth Dome still persists
in presenting reddish coloration, notwith-
standing that the forms at present found
must repi'esent a generation quite remote
from the one originally introduced. In some
places the great white patches of Mucor
niucedo ai-e conspicuous by their size and
great delicacy. Over the Bottomless Pit this
fungus hangs down in long festoons of a
white cottony consistence. In other places
it runs wild over the soil surrounding decay-
ing timbers. These forms are the most con-
spicuous in the wastes of the cave, but are
often passed by, being mistaken for sheets
or balls of white paper. Some of the forms
of fungi are common to mines, where they
grow under similar conditions to those pre-
vailing in the Mammoth Cave. The constant
temperature of the cave, 54°, is somewhat
below that adapted to the abundant produc-
tion of most forms of lower fungi.

Wreaths, — While the modern English
limit the use of wreaths to funeral purposes,
it was, as Mr. Talfourd Ely shows in his
paper read before the Archaeological Insti-
tute, among the ancients a sign of feasting
and joy ; and if their dead were crowned, it
was to mark them as still partaking of the
pleasures of this world. Religion originally
prompted the use of the garland, which may
have been connected with the widespread
belief in the supernatural powers of trees
and plants. Wreaths were employed as
bandages to assuage headache resulting from
debauch, and certain plants were believed to
exercise a prophylactic power against the
effects of wine. Floral decoration plays a
great part in Greek poetry, while among the
early Romans the use of wreaths in public
was limited to religious functions and as
marks of distinction connected with services
performed to the state — a function largely
derived from the Etruscans. In Greece the
single wreath of ohve, etc., as a reward for

86o

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

athletes siiperf5eded the prizes of intrinsic
value offered in heroic times. Wreaths of
laurel, myrtle, vine leaves, or flowers, were
commonly worn at symposia, and are thus
represented on vases. A few such wreaths
have been found preserved in E^crpt. The
manufacture of garlands is depicted in sev-
eral Pompeiian pictures. Gold crowns were
frequently modeled in the form of leaves.
Other materials for wreaths were wool and
artificial leaves and flowers of horn or silk.
Much may be learned about wreaths in the
writings of Theophrastus, Plutarch, Pliny,
Atheuaeus, and Gellius, and from inscriptions.

Scenery of Spilzbergen. — Sir William M.
Conway and his companions found Spitz-
bergen, of which they were the first ex-
plorers, a very different country from what
it was supposed to be. The general impres-
sion was that a continuous ice cap would be
found, and they expected it; but "in place
of a frozen surface they met with crevassed
sloppy glaciers, surrounded by miles of
quaking bogs and innumerable watercourses"
— a perpetual thaw produced by the perpet-
ual day of a brief arctic summer, in a region
emerging, as it were, from a glacial epoch.
Of course, the opposite conditions of relent-
less ice prevail in winter. Why should men
be attracted to such countries, as arctic ex-
plorers who have gone once seem to be time
and again ? Sir William gives one of the rea-
sons. " The arctic glory," he says, " is a thing
apart, wilder, rarer, and no less superb than
the glory of any other region of this beauti-
ful world. Here man has no place, and there
is no sign ot his handiwork. Nature com-
pletes her own intentions unhelped and un-
hindered by him. Such pure suows no Al-
pine height presents, nor such pale blue
skies, nor that marvelous, remote, opalescent
sea with its white flocks and its yet more
distant shores. No Alpine outlook pene-
trates through such atmosphere, so mellow,
80 rich." There are days, the reviewer of
Sir William's book in the Athenaeum adds —
rare days^-of glorious cloud effects, when
faint mists, delicate and gray, brood on the
fiords and almost obliterate the bases of the
hills, leaving their tops to stand out clear
against a sky mottled with brilliant flocks of
cloudlets. The beauties of Spitzhergen are
found not as in true mountain rejrious in the

forms of the hills, but in the atmospheric
colors and effects. The landscapes have the
charm of breadth, of horizontal lines, rather
than any sublimity or picturesqueness. " The
whole country," says Sir William, " is inter-
esting from a scientific point of view because
of the rapidity with which its surface is
being modeled into such forms as were im-
pressed in glacial times on the more temper-
ate and inhabited parts of northern Europe."

Dancing Ostriches. — The execution of a
kind of waltz is described by Mr. S. C. Cron-
right Schreiner as a common practice among
ostriches. When there are a number of
them, they will start off in the morning and,
after running a few hundred yards, will stop,
and with raised wings will whirl rapidly
round till they are stujiefied, or perhaps
break a leg. The males pose also before
fighting and to make their court. They
kneel on their ankles, opening their wings,
and balancing themselves alternately for-
ward and backward or to one side or the
other, while the neck is stretched on a level
with the back and the head strikes the sides,
now on the right, now on the left, while the
feathers are brij-tiing. The bird appears at
this time so absorbed in its occupation as to
forget all that is going on around him, and can
be approached and caught. The male alone
utters a cry, which sounds much like an ef-
fort to speak with the mouth shut tight.
The omnivorous qualities of the ostrich
have hardly been exaggerated. It swallows
oranges, small turtles, fowls, kittens, and
bones. Mr. Schreiner tells of one swallow-
ing also a box of peaches, tennis balls, sev-
eral yards of fencing wire, and half a dozen
cartridges. One followed the workmen and
picked up the wire as they cut it. Most
frequently the ostrich does not swallow each
dainty separately, but collects several in its
throat and then swallows them all at once.
Sometimes it is strangled. Its windpipe is
then cut, the obstacle taken out, and the
wound sewed up, when all goes well again.

Gypsnm in Kansas. — The gypsum depos-
its of Kansas are described by Mr. G. P.
Grimsley in the Kansas University Quarterly
as occurring in a belt that trends northeast-
southwest across the State, two hundred and
thirty miles long, while the bed of exposed

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

861

rock increases in width from five miles at
the north to thirty-six miles near the south-
ern line. There are three chief areas with
intermediate deposits. In the northern or
Blue Rapids area the gypsum occurs as a
gray, mottled rock, with sugary texture, cov-
ered at the top with a layer of white selenite
needles forming satin spar, from one fourth
of an inch to an inch and a quarter thick.
The manufacture of plaster of Pans in Kan-
sas was begun at this place in 18*72, with an
iron kettle holding about five barrels, heated
by a stove. In the Gypsum City area, the
lower portion of the bed is dotted with ellip-
tical crystals of yellowish-brown selenite,
nearly an inch long and half an inch wide,
which give it an appearance somewhat like
"bird's-eye limestone." Near Medicine
Lodge the red clays and shales below the
gypsum contain an interlacing network of
selenite and satin-spar layers, which have
been dissolved out of the solid stratum and
carried down by circulating water. In the
western part of the area solution has carved
out caves and underground channels, leaving
in many places natural bridges of gypsum.
The rock is snowy white. Many of the
plaster mills use earthy gypsum deposits,
which are common, furnishing what is called
" gypsum dirt." This is directly calcined,
with small labor and expense. These beds,
which lie in low, swampy ground, were prob-
ably formed by deposits from springs, aided
by wash from the hillsides, and are recent.
The rock gypsums were deposited in arms
of the sea. Eleven mills are engaged in the
manufacture of plaster.

Mythological Correspondences. — An at-
tempt has been made by Dr. E. B. Tylor to
use correspondence in culture as a means of
tracing lines of connection and intercourse
between ancient and modern peoples. Good
evidence of this class is furnished by myth-
ical beliefs notwithstanding their lack of ob
jective value. The conception of weighing
in a spiritual balance the judgment of the
dead, first appearing in Egypt, is traced
thence in a series of variants from Eastern
Buddhism to Western Christendom. The
associated doctrine of the Bridge of the
Dead, which separates the good passing over
from the wicked who fall into the abyss, of
the ancient Persian religion, reaches like-

wise to the extremities of Asia and Europe.
Historical ties are practically constituted by
these mythical beliefs, which coimect the
great religions of the world and serve as
lines along which their interdependence can
be followed. Similar evidences exist of Asi-
atic influences under which the pre-Colum-
bian civilization of America took shape. In
the religion of old Mexico four great scenes
in the journey of the soul in the land of the
dead are mentioned by early Spanish writers,
and are depicted in the Aztec Vatican Codex.
They are the crossing of the river, the fearful
passage of the soul between two mountains
that clash together, the soul's climbing up the
mountain set with sharp obsidian knives, and
the dangers of the wind carrying such knives
in its blast. These pictures correspond with
scenes from Buddhist hells or purgatories as
depicted on the Japanese temple scrolls. So
close and complete analogies of Buddhist
ideas in Mexico constitute a correspondence
that precludes any explanation except direct
transmission from one religion to another.
All these and other analogies support the
view that the natives of America reached
their level of civilization.

A Versatile Man. — A remarkably versa-
tile man, nearly equally eminent as a diplo-
matist, naturalist, and ethnologist, was Brian
Houghton Hodgson, a British oflicer in the
India service, who died in 1894, ninety- four
years old. An attack of fever while he was
studying at Calcutta sent him to the hill
country of Kumaon, where as assessor of
the little farms he had to traverse precipi-
tous mountain paths, crossing dangerous
rivers with the help of men swimming on
gourds or by bridges which were only lad-
ders suspended from cables, became friends
with the people, and imbibed a taste for
natural history. Next, as assistant in Ne-
paul, he began the collections of manu-
scripts, texts, and religious tracts with which
he endowed the libraries of Europe and
Asia, hunting them up in the archives of
Buddhist monasteries and buying them from
traffickers and monks. The Buddhist col-
lections of seven of the most famous Orien-
talist libraries began with these gifts, and
Eugene Burnouf, who was indebted to one
of these collections for the materials of his
great work on the History of Buddhism,

862

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

said that he collected a larger body of origi-
nal documeuts than had up to that time
been gathered in either Asia or Europe. He
first brought the Thibetan classics within
the range of the Indian and European
scholar, presenting the libraries with two
copies of the collection of three hundred
and forty-five folios, one of which was a
gift to him from the Grand Lama. His pub-
lished essays corrected the misinformation
and dissipated the fantastic theories that
had prevailed on these subjects. Retiring
from active service, he went to Darjeeling
and engaged in the study of Himalayan natu-

ral history. He discovered thirty-nine new
genera and species, contributed " a vast
number of papers on Himalayan mammals,
raised himself ... to the highest rank
among the original ornithologists of the
day," and presented collections to a number
of societies and museums. An expert is
quoted as saying that " in some respects he
was in advance of the science of the day.
He was fully alive to the importance of geo-
graphical distribution, and was the first to
attempt a demarcation of the zones of life
resulting from differences of elevation in the
Himalayas."

MINOK PARAGRAPHS.

A CURIOUS plant is the wild tamarind,
or jumbai plant {Leuccena glauca), of the
river sides and waste places of tropical
America; and very strange are its effects
upon the non-ruminant animals that feed
upon its young shoots, leaves, pods, and
seeds, as described in the British Associa-
tion by Mr. D. Morris, of Kew Gardens. It
causes hoxses to lose the hair from their
manes and tails, has a similar effect upon
mules and donkeys, and reduces pigs to com-
plete nakedness. Horses are said to recover
when fed exclusively on corn and grass, but
the new hair is of different color and texture
from the old, so that the animal is never
quite the same as it was. One instance is
cited in which the animal lost its hoofs too,
and had to be kept in slings till they grew
again and hardened. Ruminant animals are
not thus affected, and the growth of the
plant is actually encouraged in the Bahamas
as a fodder plant for cattle, sheep, and goats.
The difference in its action upon ruminants
and non-ruminants is probably due to changes
effected upon it in the chewing of the cud.

Among the events mentioned in the
thirtieth report of the Peabody Museum of
American Archaeology and Ethnology is the
completion of the arrangement of the
Mary Hemenway collection in such a way
that a nearly complete exhibition of the
archaeology and ethnology of the Pueblo
peoples of our Southwest is presented in the
u[)per hall and the gallery on the floor
below. Mr. Valk's explorations in New
Jersey, enforced by the observations of
Prof. G. F. Wright, are mentioned as con-

firming the opinion that stones worked by
man are found in the glacial deposits of the
Delaware Valley. Valuable relics have been
obtained from the prehistoric sites of Mount
Kineo and from the Indians of Maine. Mr.
Gordon has examined deposits in Honduras
attesting a mixture of several types of cul-
ture, and has obtained many objects of in-
terest from the exploration of two caves.
His general report on the ruins of Copan,
already noticed in the Monthly, is a publica-
tion of very great value. Many contribu-
tions of literature and specimens, all deserv-
ing fuller notices than we can give them,
are acknowledged in the report.

Physiological experiments are of vari-
ous kinds, and while some are of such a
character as to suggest cruelty unless per-
formed under the most careful guards, there
are probably others to which animals may be
indiffei'ent, or which may be even agreeable
to them. Of the last seems to be one de-
scribed by Dr. E. A. de Schweiuitz in a re-
cent address before the Chemical Society of
Washington. " A fine blooded horse, not
available for ordinary use on account of his
propensity to run away, was converted into
a subject for the cultivation of the tubercu-
lin antitoxine. He was, of course, expected
to rebel ; but, on the contrary, he received the
hypodermic injection of the poison of the tu-
berculosis germ in quietness and even seemed
interested in watching the operation. As a
burned child dreads the fire, it was supposed
he would resist the second operation. But
as soon as he observed the doctor appear
with the syringe Hnd bottle, he trotted to-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

863

ward him with pleasure, stood quietly look-
ing around with intelligence while the injec-
tion was made, and ever afterward lent him-
self to the experiment with as much evident
pleasure and interest as that of the investi-
gators."

Experiments made by Asa S. Kinney at
the Hatch Experiment Station, Massachu-
setts, with special reference to that question,
prove that electricity exercises an appreci-
able influence on the germination of seeds,
and that the application of certain strengths
of current for short periods of time acceler-
ates the process. The range in the strength
of current which accelerates germination is
exceedingly limited, and within this range
there are a maximum, optimum, and mini-
mum current. Seeds subjected to but one
application of electricity show the effect only
for a few hours, while, when applied hourly
to germinating seeds or growing plants, elec-
tricity does not lose its effect, but acts as a
constant stimulant to their growth and de-
velopment.

The movement for instruction in domes-
tic science is finding increasing favor. Pro-
vision is gradually being made fcr it as the
demand extends in one institution after an-
other. It is recognized in the Ohio State
University in the name of the College of Agri-
culture and Domestic Science, where a " short
course " and a four-year course in the branch
are arranged for. The programme of the
department, which is under the direction of
Miss Perla G. Bowman, of the Toledo Manual
Training School, includes cookery in its vari-
ous branches, with the principles of combus-
tion, food economics, the chemistry of the hu-
man body, comparative nutritive and money
values of foods, invalid cookery, a waiting
course, household economics, the proper-
ties of textile materials, sewing, millinery,
costumes, dressmaking, and needlework. In
connection with these last topics, the choice
and treatment of various materials, line,
form, color, and texture, as applied to dress-
making, are illustrated in connection with
practice. In designing the courses, the need
of every woman for the most liberal culture
in connection with technical training has
been recognized.

An exhibition at the Archaeological Insti-
tute of England of prehistoric flint imple-

ments, discovered in Egypt by Mr. H. W.
Seton Karr, includes articles from the mines
of the Wady-el-Sheik district, in the Eastern
Desert, some of the types of which are new
to science, and implements from Abydos,
Nagada, Nagh Hamdi, Thebes, and other
places in the Western Desert. At some of
the mines are shafts about two feet in diam-
eter filled up with drifted sand and sur-
rounded by masses of excavated earth neat-
ly arranged. There was usually a central
place where most of the objects were discov-
ered. At some mines a number of clubs or
truncheons lay distributed uniformly when
the mines were abandoned. Other imple-
ments of flint and quartzite are from Somali-
land, and were found on a long, low hill about
a hundred miles from the coast. The coun-
try around was of limestone, in some places
overflowed by lava, and the implements lay
in ones, twos, and threes. Sir John Evans
said, in a communication to the Royal So-
ciety, that these discoveries " have an im-
portant bearing on the question of the ori-
ginal home of the human race. Of their
identity in form with some from the valley
of the Somme there can be no doubt, and
we need not hesitate in claiming them as
palaeolithic."

NOTES.

The Columbia University Bulletin notices
the retirement, at his rwn request, of Prof.
Thomas Egleston, of the Faculty of Applied
Science, the creator of the original School
of Mines, of which the faculties of Applied
Science have been the outgrowth. Return-
ing from his i-t\idies abroad in 1863, he saw
that the time was ripe for a school in which
chemistry, geology, mineralogy, metallurgy,
and engineering might be taught young men
with a view to fitting them for practice in
the field of mining. The success of the
School of Mines was surprising and encour-
aging. The demand for instruction in allied
branches was so great that schools of archi-
tecture and engineering and chemistry, etc.,
were formed and set off in 1896 in the
Faculty of Applied Science. What has
been done at Columbia has happened to a
greater or less extent at several other insti-
tutions, so that schools and departments of
this sort are multiplying.

The ascent of Mount St. Elias, Alaska,
was successfully accomplished by Prince
Luigi, of Savoy, and his party of Italian
mountain climbers, July 31st. On their way
up they met the American party led by Mr.
Bryant, who were returning on account of

864

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

one of their nuraber having been taken ill.
The Italians remained two hours on the sum-
mit, and took scientific observations and
photographs. The height of the mountain
was for the first time satisfactorily measured
and found to be 18,120 feet. In the previ-
ous attempts to ascend this mountain the
Topham expedition reached a height of 11,-
400 feet, and Prof. I. C. Russell, in the second
attempt, made under the auspices of the Na-
tional Geographical Society in 1891, 14,500
feet. Prince Luigi found nothing to indicate
that the mountain had ever been a volcano.

The vessel Evelyn Baldwin arrived at
Christiania, Norway, August 13th, from Spitz-
bergen, whence she had sailed northward to
80° 45' of latitude and until stopped by pack
ice. The expedition has secured valuable
geological and botanical collections for some
American colleges.

Prof. S. P. Langley, Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution, recently attended a
meeting of the French Academy of Sciences,
and spoke concerning his experiments in me-
chanical flight. He said he had greatly en-
larged the distance which his aeroplanes
would run, without much changing his appa-
ratus.

Prof. Woi.cott Gibbs, who had been
designated president, was not able to be
present at the Detroit meeting of the Ameri-
can Association for the Advancement of Sci-
ence, and Mr. W J McGee took his place as
acting president.

A REPORT by Dr. Lambusto Loria on war
customs of certain tribes of New Guinea
mentions homicide and the " naming of the
dead relatives of others " as the two great
causes of intertribal war. Homicide is the
result of various savage ideas. After a
death, " all the gardens and plantations of
cocoanuts and betel nuts, etc., belonging to
the murdered person are destroyed, to allow
the relatives and friends to forget quickly the
departed person." Revenge is then decided
upon, and preparation is made for it with
curious preliminary religious rites.

In a paper in the American Association
on the Destruction of Forests and its Effects
on Drainage and Agriculture, Mr. H. W. De
Courcy advised the farmer. Let him but
follow the lines of least grade in his tillage,
and " he will soon see the effect of his im-
proved line of cultivation in better crops,
greater resistance to droughts by retaining
the drainage water, and his young plantations
of trees will gladden his sight on the former
bare hillside." A safe guide to the line of
least grade is the course of a railroad, if
there be one through the farm, which always
seeks that line.

The French Association for the Advance-
ment of the Sciences recently held its meet-

ing at St. ^ticnne, and was opened with an
address by the president, M. Marey, on The
Graphic Method and the Experimental Sci-
ences. The review of the past year's work
of the association, read by M. Cartaz, in-
cludes notices of studies during the interim
of historical geography ; of legislation for
workingmen, by M. Lebon ; of alcoholism, by
M. Alglave ; a memoir of Pasteur, by M.
Brouardel ; and a work on bibliography, by
Prof. Charles Richet. The death list is
rather large, and includes, among the best-
known names, those of D'Abbadie, Daubree,
Des Cloiseaux, Schutzenberger, Leon Say,
Cernuschi, and Victor Lemoin, physician and
geologist.

The Hon. Ralph Abercromby, author of
some excellent works on meteorology, includ-
ing that on Weather in the International
Scientific Series, died at Sydney, New South
Wales, June 21st, fifty-four years of age.

The death was announced in July of J.
J. S. Steenstrup, ex-Professor of Zoology
and Director of the Zoological Museum in
Copenhagen, aged eighty-four years. His
studies and his books covered a wide field.
His principal work was that on the Alterna-
tion of Generations. Besides publishing
much on natural history, he studied the pre-
historic remains found in Denmark, and in
conjunction with Sir John Lubbock contril)-
uted, in 1866, to the Ethnological Society of
London a memoir on the Flint Instruments
recently discovered at Persigny-le-Grand.

Prof. Thierry Wilhelm Preyer, for-
merly of Jena, died in Wiesbaden in July,
fifty-six years of age, of Bright's disease.
He was distinguished in physiology and psy-
chology. He was born in Manchester, Eng-
land, in 1841, was taught in London, attended
several German universities, and took his
degrees at Bonn in 1862 and 1865. He be-
gan scientific life as a privat docent at Bonn
in 1865, and was appointed Professor of
Physiology at Jena at 1869. He retired
from this position a few years ago, and went
to Berlin and then to Wiesbaden. He was
author of a famous work on haemoglobin ;
published researches on the mental develop-
ment of the child, some of which appeared
in The Popular Science Monthly, and some
form a volume in Applctons' International
Education Series ; carried on researches in
acoustics ; investigated the cause of sleep,
and published observations on hypnotism ;
and was the author of Elements of General
Physiology.

The distinguished chemist, Prof. Victor
Meyer, died at Heidelberg, August 8th. He
was born in Berlin in 1848, and was professor
successively at Stuttgart, Zurich, Giittingen,
and Heidelberg; was author of numerous
original researches in organic chemistry, and
also contributed to chemical physics, espe-
cially in the field of vapor densities.

INDEX TO VOLUME LI.

VOL. LI, — 63

i:n^ D E X.

ARTICLES MARKED WITH AN ASTERISK ARE ILLUSTRATED.

PAGE

Acetylene, A Bunsen Burner for. (Frag.) 855

Age and Suicide. (Corr.) 533

Age of the Earth, The. (Frag.) 856

Alchemy Redivivus. A. E. Outerbridge, Jr 671

Alcohol, Early Production of. (Corr.) 533

The History of. C. E. Pellew 231, 377

American Association, Detroit Meeting. (Table) 842

Officers of 855

Ancient Symbol, Diffusion of an. (Frag.) 428

Animals on the March. (Frag.) 282

" Tiie Economic Value of. C. F. Holder 827

" Young, at School. (Frag.) 137

Animal Traits. (Frag.) 285

Anthropology a University Study. J. S. Flagg 510

Antipatliies of Animals. (Frag.) 140

Antitoxine-Making, Improvement in. (Frag.) 430

Bachelor Seals. (Frag.) 139

Bacteria in Rivers, and Sunlight. (Frag.) 716

Bailey, Pearce, M. D. The Thyroid Gland in Medicine * 481

Ballou, William H. A Tortoise-shell Wild Cat* 507

" " World's Geologists at St. Petersburg 212

Baxter, William, Jr. Forecasting the Progress of Invention * 307

Beeler, S. L. The Department Store. (Corr.) 700

Berthelot, M. P. E. Science as an Instrument of Education 253

Binet, M. Alfred. The Paradox of Diderot 539

Birds and their Songs. (Frag.) 716

Blight, Robert. A Lilliputian Monster * 518

Blue Color in Lakes,, The. (Frag.) 857

Bolton, H. C. Early American Chemical Societies 819

Books Noticed 128, 270, 417, 559, 706, 846

AJIing-Aber, Mary R. An Experiment in Baldwin, Joseph. School Management and

Education, 849. School Methods, 421.

America and the Americans, from a French Barnes, C. R. Analytic Keys to the Genera

Point of View, 566. and Species of North American Mosses,

Anderson, R. E. The Story of Extinct Civ- 134.

ilizatlons of the East, 130. Baskett, James Newton. The Story of the

Angot, Alfred. The Aurora Borealis, 560. Birds, 423.

"l »3 ■€

866

INDEX.

Books Noticed :

Beal, W. J. Grasses of North America,
275.

Bellamy, Edward. Equality, 847.

Bell, Louis. Electric Power Transmission,
851.

Brandt, H. C. G., and W. C. Day. German
Scientific Reading, 278.

Britton, N. L., and Brown, Addison. An
Illustrated Flora of the United States,
Canada, and the British Possessions, etc.,
851.

Brown, Frederick J. The Northern Move-
ment of the Colored Population, 567.

Burgess, John W. The Middle Period, 563.

Campbell, Helen. Household Economics,
276.

Chapman. Frank M. Bird-Life, 706.

Charities, Report of New York State Board
of, for 1895, 135.

Clarke, F. W. Recalculation of the Atomic
Weights 854.

Clayton, H. Helen. Cloud Observations
(Harvard Observatory Annals), 278.

Clodd, Edward. Pioneers of Evolution,
from Thales to Huxley, 708.

Clouds, Classification of. Bureau of Navi-
gation, 712.

Connecticut Labor Bureau. Twelfth Annual
Report, Bureau of Statistics, 277.

Crockett, C. W. Elements of Plane and
Spherical Trigonometry, with Tables, 132.

Crosby, W. E. Our Little Book for Little
Folks, 566.

Cuadrado. Dr. Gaston Alonso. The Study
of Spectroscopy, 423.

Davenport, C. B. Experimental Morphol-
ogy, 852.

Davenport, Herbert Joseph. Outlines of
Economic Theory, 418.

Duclaux, E. Atmospheric Actinometry,
423.

Education. Report of United States Com-
missioner, 1894-'95, 133.

Farman, D. Autocars, 131.

Fish Commission, United States. Report
for 1892-'93, 277.

Fish Commission, United States. Report
for 1895, 853.

Geikie, Sir Archibald. The Ancient Volca
noes of Great Britain, 559.

Gould, George M., M. D. Anomalies and
Curiosities of Medicine, 274.

Grosse, Ernst. The Beginnings of Art,
562.

Hawley, Thomas D. Infallible Logic, 275.

Hogg, Alexander. The Railroad as an Ele-
ment in Education, 275.

Hughes, James L. Froebel's Education
Laws for all Teachers, 419.

Huntington, A. K., and McMillan, W. G.
Metals, 854.

Hutchinson, Rev. H. N. Prehietoric Man
and Beast, 270.

Jackson, D. C. and J. P. Alternating Cur-
rente and Alternating Machinery, 133.

Johnson, J. B. The Materials of Construc-
tion, 564.
Jordan, D. S. Observations on the Fur

Seals of the Pribiloff Islands, 134.
Keasbey, L. M. The Nicaragua Canal and

the Monroe Doctrine, 132.
Kellar, I. First Year in German, 277.
Lefevre, A. Number and its Algebra, 133.
Lewis, Edwin. The Philosophy of Sex, 1.33.
Literature. A Library of the World's Best,

Ancient and Modern, 421.
Loeffelholz, von Colberg, Carl Freiherr.

Revolution of the Earth's Crust in Geo-
logical Ages, 709.
Loew, Oscar. The Energy of Living Proto-
plasm, 711.
Logan, John A., Jr. In Joyful Russia,

848.
Loomis, E. J. An Eclipse Party in Africa,

129.
Mach, Dr. Ernst. Contributions to the

Analysis of the Sensations, 424.
Macleod, Henry Dunning. The History of

Economics, 271.
Mason, R. Osgood. Telepathy and the Sub-
liminal Self, 420.
Mathews, C. T. The Story of Architecture,

417.
Matthews, C. P., and John Shearer. Prob-
lems and Questions in Physics, 563.
Matthews, Washington. Navaho Legends,

846.
Maxwell, Sir Herbert. Robert Bruce and

the Struggle for Scottish Independence,

422.
Meicer, Henry C. Researches upon the

Antiquity of Man, 565.
Merriam, F. A. A-Birding on a Broncho,

131.
Merrill, George P. A Treatise on Rocks,

Rock-Weathering, and Soils, 709.
Moore, D. R. A Treatise on the Philosophy

of Art, 850.
Moore, K. C. The Mental Development of

a Child, 565.
Morgan, C. Lloyd. Romanes Essays, TAG.
Morrison W. Douglas. Juvenile Offenders,

129.
Murray, Gilbert. A History of Ancient

Greek Literature, 711.
Nichols, E. L. The Outlines of Physics,

853.
Osborne, H. Insects affecting Domestic

Animals, 134.
Pellegrini, Pietro. I Diseredati, 710.
Perkins, Prof. Charles A. Electricity and

Magnetism, 565.
Phillips, P. Lee. Virginia Cartography,

277.
Photography, American Annual of, for 1897,

277.
Poulton, Edward B. Charles Darwin and

the Theory of Natural Selection, 710.
Powell, J. W. Fourteenth Annual Report

of the Bureau of Ethnology, 852.

INDEX.

867

Books Noticed : pagk

Price, Sadie F. Fern Collector's Handbook Storer, F. H. Agriculture in Some of its

and Herbarium, 279. Relations with Chemistry, 851.

Putnam, George Haven. Books and their Tarr, Ralph S. Elementary Geology, 562.

Makers during the Middle Ages, 278. Thayer, A. W. The Hebrews in Egypt and
Railways, Statistics of, in United States. their Exodus, 851.

Report of Interstate Commerce Commls- Thompson, Edward P., and W. A. Anthony.

sion on, 853. ROntgen Rays and Phenomena of the

Ramsay, William. The Gases of the At- Anode and Cathode, 274.

mosphere, 131. Townsend, C. H. Illustrations showing
Rogers, Mrs. W. B. Life and Letters of Conditions of Fur Seal Rookeries in 1895,

William Barton Rogers, 272. and Method of Killing, 853.

Russell, Israel C. Glaciers of North Amer- Vincent, Frank. The Plant World, 853.

ica, 563. Waldo, Frank. Elementary Meteorology,
Sandemann, George. Problems of Biology, 564.

708. Walsingham, Lord, and John Hartley Dur-
Sarg, James Fred. A New Dairy Industry, rant. Rules for Regulating Nomenclature

423. in Entomological Work, 423.

Scott, William B. An Introduction to Ge- Washington Philosophical Society, publi-

ology, 850. cations from 1882 to 1894, 565.

Seal Life on the Rookeries of the Pribilof Weisbach. The Mechanics of Pumping,

Islands, 566. 275.

Setchell, William A. Laboratory Practice Wiedemann, Alfred. Religion of the An-

for Beginners, 422. cient Egyptians, 710.

Shinn, C. H. The Story of the Mine, 128. Wiley, Harvey W. Principles and Practice
Silberstein, Solomon J. The Disclosures of of Agricultural Analysis, 422.

the Universal Mysteries, 273. Williams, George A. Topics and Refer-
State Legislation, Comparative Summary ences in American History, 711.

and Index of, 711. Wright, G. F. The Ice Age in North
Stisted, Georgiana M. The True Life of America, 134.

Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, 276. Yellowstone National Park Folio, 852.

Books, The Appraisal of. (Frag.) 717

Bordeaux Vineyards, The. (Frag.) 572

Botany, The Scope of. G. J. Peirce 662

British Association, Toronto Meeting. (Table) 843

Bubonic Plague, The. V. C. Vaughan 62

Cactus, The Giant. J. W. Tourney * 641

California Alps, The Wild Flowers of. B. F. Herrick * 348

Candolle, M. C. de. The Latent Vitality of Seeds . . " 106

Cannizzaro's Jubilee, Prof. (Frag.) 140

Cartaz, Dr. A. Stones in the Head * 514

Caucasus, The, as a Pleasure Resort. (Frag.) 283

Chemical Societies, Early American. H. C. Bolton 819

Chess Players' Vision. (Frag.) 574

" Christian Science " and Science. (Table) 554

Civilization, The Wastes of. (Frag.) 858

Correction, A. (Corr.) 553

Cram, William E. The Hawks of New England * 594

Crawley, Prof. Edwin S. Number Systems 524

Croll, James. Sketch. (With Portrait) 544

Crothers, Dr. T. D. New Questions in Medical Jurisprudence 454

Dalai Lama, The. (Frag.) 286

Dana, J. C. The Public and its Public Library 242

Davenport Academy of Science. F. Starr 83

Department Store, The. (Table) 705

868 INDEX.

PAGE

Despotism of Democracy, The. Franklin Smith 489

Drills, Primitive. (Frag.) 716

Dust. (Frag.) •■ 569

Dust Storm, Some Notes on a. (Frag.) 426

Earthquakes, Minute. (Frag.) 430

Education, Free-hand Drawing in. H. G. Fitz * 755

Egret, Domestication of The. (Frag.) 187

Elephants in a Lumber Yard. (Frag.) 284

Elliott, Ellen Coit. Let us therewith be Content 341

Emmons, Dr. Ebenezer, and the Olenellus. (Frag.) 425

Eskimo Bows and Arrows. J. Murdoch 645

Evolution and the Fall, Canon Gore on. (Frag.) 285

The Duke of Argyll on. (Table).. 411

" The Principle of Economy in. Edmund Noble 324

Ferrero, G. The Idea of Murder among Men and Animals 805

Figuier, Louis. Sketch (with Portrait). Ida M. Tarbell 834

Fireflies, The Light of. (Frag.) 569

Fitz, H. G. Free-hand Drawing in Education * 755

Flagg, Prof. John S. Anthropology a University Study 510

Flournoy, M. Th. Strange Personifications 112

Forestry, National, Objects of. (Frag.) 713

Ginseng. (Frag.) 570

Geologists at St. Petersburg. W. H. Ballon 212

Gerland, George. Objects and Results of Polar Research 635

Glass, Substitutes for, in Germany. (Frag.) 284

Globe Lightning. M. Hagenau 209

Gophers, Pocket. (Frag.) 569

Gypsum in Kansas. (Frag.) 860

Hagenau, M. Globe Lightning 209

Hakluyt, Richard. (Frag.) 428

Hale, Horatio. Sketch. (With Portrait) 401

Hawks, The, of New England. W. E. Cram * 594

Henderson, C. H. Some Unrecognized Laws of Nature 776

Herrick, Bertha F. Wild Flowers of the California Alps * 348

Highway Construction in Massachusetts. C L. Whittle 73

Holder, Charles F. The Economic Value of Animals 827

Horticultural Extension Schools. (Frag.) 136

Howes, Cliflon A. The Planet Saturn 357

Hydraulic Blasting. (Frag.) 714

Indian Corn, Wild. (Frag.) 281

Insect Inhabitants of Plants. (Frag.) 718

Insects and Fungi, Legislation against. (Frag.) 859

Invention, Forecasting the Progress of. William Baxter, Jr.* 307

Ivory. N. B. Nelson 534

INDEX. 869

, PAGE

Japanese Alps, Pilgrims of the. (Frag.) 570

Johnson, Helen K. Woman Suffrage and Education 222

Jordan, D. S. Sketch of Eichard Owen 259

The Silent City of the Muir Glacier 161

(I u

Kite Experiments, Franklin's, with Modern Apparatus. Alexander

McAdie * 739

Koch's Latest Tuberculin. (Frag.) 425

Korean Interviews. E. S. Morse 1

Lancaster, M. A. The Discovery of the Sun Spots 681

Language, Man's, to Animals. (Frag.) 717

Lea, Henry C. Spanish Experiments in Coinage 577

Lock wood, Samuel. Sketch. W.S.Snyder. (With Portrait) 692

Longevity of Astronomers, The. (Frag.) 571

Mammoth Cave, Vegetation of the. (Frag.) 859

Man, A Versatile. (Frag.) 861

Maori Tattooing. (Frag.) 283

Marriage of the Dead. (Frag.) 282

Marsupials and their Skins. (Frag.) 285

Masters of Science, Three. (Frag.) 715

Match, Inventing a. (Frag.) 137

Maxims for the Holiday. (Frag.) 430

McAdie, Alexander. Franklin's Kite Experiments with Modern Ap-
paratus * 739

Medical Jurisprudence, New Questions in. T. D. Crothers 454

Mississippi Floods, The Law of. (Frag.) 426

Mob Mind, The. E.A.Ross 390

Moki Indians and their Birds. (Frag.) 280

Monkeys, Our Friends the. (Frag.) 429

Morse, E. S. Korean Interviews 1

Muir Glacier, The Silent City of the. D.S.Jordan 161

Murder, The Idea of, among Men and Animals. G. Ferrero 805

Murdoch, John. Eskimo Bows and Arrows 645

Mythological Correspondences. (Frag.) 861

Myth, Quick Growth of a. (Frag.) 286

Nasmyth, James. Sketch. (Portrait) 117

Nationality and Scenery. (Frag.) 139

Nelson, N. B. Ivory 534

Newcomb, H. T. A Decade in Federal Railway Regulation 811

Nicaise, M. E. Fourteenth-Century Doctors 686

Niger, At the Head Waters of the. (Frag.) 858

Noble, Edmund. The Principle of Economy in Evolution 324

Number Systems. E. S. Crawley 524

Orchards, Roadside. (Frag.) '. 286

Ordnance. Evolution of the Modern Heavy Gun.* By W. Le Conte

Stevens 145

870 INDEX.

PAGB

O'Shea, Prof. M. V. When Character is Formed * 648

Ostriches, Dancing. (Frag.) 860

Outerbridge, Alexander E., Jr. Alcheraj^ Redivivus 671

Owen, Eichard, Sketch of. D. S. Jordan 259

Owl Trees. (Frag.) 573

Paradox of Diderot, The. M. Alfred Binet 593

Parker, W. B. The Psychology of Belief 747

Pasteur, The Last Resting Place of. (Frag.) 138

Peirce, George J. The Scope of Botany 663

5ellew, C. E. The History of Alcohol 231, 377

Personifications, Strange. M. Th. Flournoy 112

PhUosopher, The Dictum of a. (Table) 704

Plague Virus and Dr. Yersin. (Frag.) 281

Plant Distribution, Some Conditions of. (Frag.) 857

Polar Research, Objects and Results of. G. Gerland 635

Primitive Traveling. (Frag.) 428

Psychology of Belief, The. W.B.Parker 747

Sources of the New. E. W. Scripture 98

Public Library, The Public and its. J. C. Dana 242

R's, The Three, of Prehistoric Man. (Frag.) 282

Racial Geography of Europe. W. Z. Ripley 17, 192, 289, 433, 613, 721

Railway Regulation, A Decade in Federal. H. T. Newcomb 811

Reeves, R. N. Suicide and the Environment 186

Reversions in Modern Industrial Life. II. F. Smith 34

Ripley, Prof. William Z. The Racial Geography of Europe 17, 192,

289, 433, 613, 721

Ross, Prof. Edward A. The Mob Mind 390

Saturn, The Planet. C. A. Howes 357

Science as an Instrument of Education. M. P. E. Berthelot 253

Scorpions. Are they Matricides and Suicides ? J. Vilaro * 398

Scripture, E. W. Sources of the New Psychology 98

Seals and their Pups. (Frag.) 138

Seeds, The Latent Vitality of. M. C. de Candolle 106

Sewage Purification by Filtering. (Frag.) 713

Shufeldt, Dr. R. W. Some Facts about Wasps and Bees * 315

Smith, Franklin. Reversions in Modem Industrial Life. II 34

" " The Despotism of Democracy 489

Snyder, W. S. Sketch, with Portrait, of Samuel Lockwood 692

Social Needs. (Table) 124

" Problem, A New. (Table) 415

" The Musee. (Frag.) 856

Spanish Experiments in Coinage. H. C. Lea 577

Spencer and Darwin. (Table) 127

Spitzbergen, Scenery of. (Frag.) 860

Starr, Frederick. Science at the University of Chicago* 784

" " The Davenport Academy of Science 83

Stevens, Prof. W. Le Conte. Evolution of the Modern Heavy Gun. . 145

INDEX. 871

PAOB

Suicide and the Environment. R. N. Reeves 186

Sun Spots, The Discovery of. M. A. Lancaster 681

Swift's Night Flight, The. (Frag.) 568

Tarbell, Ida M. Sketch of Louis Figuier. (With Portrait) 834

Taxation, Principles of. D. A. Wells 44, 165, 466, 605, 765

Thyroid Gland, The, in Medicine. Pearce Bailey, M. D.* 481

Timbuctoo and Jene. (Frag.) 715

Tortoise-shell Wild Cat. A. W. H. Ballou * 507

Torture, A Survival of. (Frag.) 140

Toumey, James W. The Giant Cactus * 641

Trees, Large, from the Coal Period. (Frag ) 280

Trotter, Prof. Spencer. North and South 367

Turbinia, The. (Frag.) 427

Tussock Moth, Ups and Downs of the. (Frag.) 713

Unemployed, Types of the. (Frag.) 571

" Workmen, German Colonies for, (Frag.) 427

University of Chicago, Science at the. Frederick Starr * 784

"Van der Mensbrugghe, M. G. The Forces in an Air Bubble 674

Vaughan, Victor C. The Bubonic Plague 62

Veils, Effects of, on Eyesight. (Frag.) 136

Vilaro, Dr. Juan. Are Scorpions Matricides and Suicides ?* 398

Wampum Belts, Historical. (Frag.) 283

War, Cycles and Dogs in. (Frag.) 714

Wasps and Bees, Some Facts about. R. W. Shufeldt* 315

Wells, Hon. David A. Principles of Taxation 44, 165, 466, 605, 765

Whittle, C. L. Highway Construction in Massachusetts 73

Wind Power, Utilization of. (Frag.) 429

Woman Suffrage and Education. H. K. Johnson 2'2'i

A Woman on. (Table) 700

World, The, as it is. (Table) 556

Wreaths. (Frag.) 859

Writing Materials, Early. (Frag.) 572

Yucatan, Arid. (Frag.) 573

THE END.

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