THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THC

1^

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY

EDITED BY

J, MCKEEN CATTELL

VOLUME LXXVII
JULY TO DECEMBER, 1910

NEW YORK

THE SCIENCE PRESS

1 910

Copyright, 1909
The Science Press

iSL %

Press of

The New Era Printing compajT

Lancaster. Pa

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY

JULY, 1910

A NATURALIST IN THE STEAITS OF MAGELLAN1

By Dr. CHARLES HASKINS TOWNSEND

DIRECTOR OF THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM

IT was in January and February of the misty Antarctic summer
that we lingered for a month along the seven hundred miles of
Magellan Strait and Smythe Channel. The delicate flowers of a
December springtime were passing out of bloom giving place to flowers
of longer duration, and young land birds were all out of their nests.

The uneven plains of eastern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego were
green with grass and low shrubbery and the mountains along the
western channels dark with unbroken forests of evergreen beech. Our
course along salt-water passages was marked by somewhat gustier
weather than would have been found a short distance inland, but it was
not uncomfortably chilly for explorations ashore in daytime, and days
are long in summer at fifty-three degrees latitude, both south and
north. It was in fact pleasanter in the straits than we had found it
shortly before at Montevideo and Buenos Aires — a thousand miles
nearer the tropics — where " pamperos " had been blowing wildly along
the great river.

It was pleasant to escape from the unfriendly South Atlantic and
enjoy the easy progress of a vessel on even keel. Still more agreeable
was the panorama of passing shores and the abundant animal life of the
channels and their islands. Best of all were the intimate observations
of the aspects of nature, permitted by our daily explorations on land,
the Albatross always within reach as a home camp, anchored in some
protected harbor.

• To the naturalist a voyage of exploration through the Straits of
Magellan is a rare privilege, not only on account of the strangeness of
its animal and plant life and the wonders of its scenery, but also because
of the records of scientific discovery associated with it. We were fol-
lowing in the wake of Darwin and the Beagle, although more than half
1 Illustrated by photographs made by Mr. Thomas Lee and the writer.

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

U. S. S. Albatross in Borja Bay. Straits of Magellan.

a century later, and had read the quaint descriptions of the region by
Magellan, Drake, Cook and the hardy sea explorers who followed them.

Out in the straits whales, porpoises and seals made their presence
known at times, but sea birds were more constant objects of interest.
The nesting places of cormorants were marked by masses of black-
backed, white-breasted birds, acres in extent. From low island levels
Cassin terns rose in clouds of protesting thousands when our boats
grounded.

" Steamer " ducks2 kept well ahead of the active oarsmen, their
flightless wings aiding their webbed feet in a manner suggestive of
paddle wheels used as auxiliaries to screw propellers, trailing a foamy
wake a hundred yards behind. The species belongs exclusively to
southern South America and is altogether the most notable bird of the
straits region. It is said to weigh over fifteen pounds. While it can
not, or at least does not, fly, and is seldom inclined to dive, the rapidity
of its progress over the surface long ago attracted the attention of
explorers and navigators. Most observers are of the opinion that the
wings move alternately when in motion. An occasional penguin — that
flightless, burly diver, peculiar to Antarctic seas — only showed himself
above water in porpoise-like leaps and was seldom easy to get.

The diving petrel,3 also Antarctic in range, was by special request
a mark for all guns, but no specimens were taken. As a quick diver it

- Tachyeres cincreus.
8 Pelcccmoidcs urinatrix.

IN THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 7

is a little brother to the northern auklet, which it resembles in appear-
ance and to some extent in habits. When at large there is nothing in
its actions to suggest the petrel. It strikes down into the water from
full flight, emerging farther on, fairly bursting forth into the air with
wings in rapid motion.

There were also gulls, ja?gers and grebes along the great waterway.
Albatrosses and Cape Horn pigeons did not follow us into the straits,
but we found them awaiting the ship when we emerged into the Pacific
a month later.

About the marshy places, ducks, geese, plovers and snipes of un-
familiar kinds afforded sport as well as ornithological specimens on our
trips ashore. The Paraguay snipe proved a good substitute for the
Wilson snipe of North America. Most striking in appearance were
the large kelp geese, the males of which are snowy white and the
females dark.

The barred Magellan geese, however, are more important on account
of their abundance. This bird is a resident of the region throughout
the year. It is an inhabitant of the open plains and mountain slopes
and is a land rather than a water species. It occupies the open country
of Tierra del Fuego in enormous numbers and has contributed more
to the food of the white settlers now establishing sheep ranches in that
country and in Patagonia than any other wild creature.

With few exceptions both land and water 'birds were species of the
southern hemisphere and of Antarctic distribution.

The Magellan robin would have passed for the North American
bird but for its gray tones and its disinclination to sing. There were

Natives. Straits of Magellan.

8

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wrens, swallows, finches, flycatchers and hawks to be seen daily, but all
in unfamiliar guise.

The Great Magellan owl was enough like our great horned owl to
be taken for the same bird. The same might be said of two pygmy
owls shot at Laredo Bay, which closely resemble those of our western
states and are among the smallest of known owls. The Magellan
pygmy, notwithstanding the abundance of its fluffy plumage, is a mere
featherweight of less than four ounces. The burrowing owl and spar-

Glaciek Ice. Ayre Sound, Straits of Magellan.

row-hawk did not differ appreciably from home species. In these lati-
tudes the burrowing owl inhabits excavations made by the " viscacha,"
a rodent of the chinchilla family which lives in communities after the
manner of our northern " prairie clog." Lacking the viscachas' burrow,
it digs its own. The common barn owl and short-eared owl of world-
wide distribution were both present.

Kingfishers, woodpeckers and goldfinches were masquerading along
the straits in strange garb, and best disguised of all, a meadow lark with
bright crimson breast.

A courageous species of humming-bird4 penetrates southward into
the chilly wilds of Fuegia, and we procured specimens within a few
hours of a snow squall which greeted us in one of the western channels.
The Patagonian burrowing parrot we found within a few miles of
Punta Arenas, where it seemed as much out of place in the driving mist
as it would in Alaska.

In the dense forests along Smythe Channel we heard and obtained

4 Eus teph anus rjaleritus.

IN THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 9

the " barking bird/'5 a thrush-like ground bird whose sharp notes sug-
gest the presence of a small dog. The condor and buzzard were fre-
quently seen.

One of the most interesting of the birds is the quail-like Attagis, a
species of the Limicoke inhabiting the open uplands. Darwin refers to
their rising and flying like grouse and says they occupy the place of
ptarmigan of the northern hemisphere.

The most familiar bird of the straits is a species of creeper6 which
follows the hunter constantly through the forest. The Cape Horn wren
is as saucy as a wren can be, and the marsh wren creeping through the
grass like a mouse, is almost familiar enough to be caught with a
butterfly net.

Of the hundred or more species of birds to be found along the
straits we obtained about seventy, three of which belonging to the family
of " wood-hewers "7 were new to science. Our bird collection numbered
one hundred and seventy specimens in all. The variety of migratory
birds was greater than we had expected, but South America has a
wonderfully varied bird fauna, and why should not the migrants fly
southward in springtime if summer is to be found in that direction?
One has but to get used to a reversal of the seasons.

The natives had skins of puma, guanaco, deer and Patagonian
ostrich, but none of these were observed alive, as our shore trips did not
permit of extended journeys inland. The Magellan fox, otter and little
striped skunk were easily obtained, the last going whole into a tank of
alcohol sent ashore for the purpose, no one being sufficiently self-sacri-
ficing to skin it. We could only hope that the alcohol would have a
deodorizing effect, but I never had the courage to inquire of the curator
of mammals of the Smithsonian Institution respecting an alcoholic
specimen of Mephitis patagonica from the Straits of Magellan.

The inquisitive fox watched us everywhere from the bluffs, but the
crab-eating otter quickly slid from the rocks into the tangles of giant
kelp so abundant along the shores of this region.

From Punta Arenas a two days' journey was made in the steam
launch to the Fuegian side in search of Antarctic fur seals. We met
with these animals about thirty-five miles south of Punta Arenas, at
St. Peter and St. Paul Eocks, where a number were lying on the rocks
near the water. By landing on the opposite side the captain and I
managed to stalk them, killing three with our Winchesters before they
could take to the sea. After the seals had been skinned for museum
specimens, the carcasses were eagerly appropriated by a canoe load of
hungry and more than half-naked Fuegians. While the men were
stowing their wind-fall of fresh meat in the canoe, one of the women
went foraging among the nests of some cormorants near by, taking all

5 Pteroptoehvs.
eOxi/unis s; inicavda.

7 Deudvocolaptida-.

IO

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■ ■

Fuegian Canoes. Straits of Magellan.

the half-grown young she could carry, staying her appetite meanwhile
with such raw eggs as could be found. Another woman was busy at the
characteristic occupation of baling, for all Fuegian canoes leak, not
being dugouts, but made of the roughest of native-hewn slabs lashed
together with tough vines or rootlets and caulked with mosses. A third
woman and a child seemed to be warming food over a fire and inci-
dentally warming their own nearly naked bodies. The party had no
knives and borrowed one of ours to cut up their meat.

Their backs were partly protected by guanaco skins, tied around
their necks with the hair side out. These primitive capes were not
otherwise fastened and, when the hands were in use, left the body quite
exposed to the wind. None of the canoe Indians that we saw had more
clothing, except in a few cases where they used portions of cast-off sailor
clothes, and none fastened their fur capes about the body with so much
as a string.

There is always a low fire burning on a bed of earth in the bottom
of the Fuegian canoe wherever it may be met with, making possible the
serving en route of smoked cormorant and baked mussels, but the indi-
cations did not always point to that use of the fire, some of the food at
least being eaten raw. It is doubtless necessary for these wandering
shellfish gatherers to maintain a permanent camp fire ; to light it anew
on their rain-saturated shores must tax their ingenuity to the utmost.
A careful search of the canoes revealed neither flint nor matches, and
the Fuegian has no pockets. This was our first meeting with the canoe
Indians. Later we encountered them among the western channels, but
never more than two canoes could carry. They were always eager to
come aboard the ship and to trade their bone-pointed spears, bows and

IN THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN

ii

arrows, or rough paddles for ship biscuit and misfit clothing. They
were even willing to trade their children. The canoe was apparently
the only article not for sale. It seems to represent home and fireside,
the few brush and leaf-covered bowers we saw on shore being merely
hastily made night camps and wet ones at that. The canoe conveys the
people from mussel bank to sea-bird rookery in the continual search for
food. It is not likely that they often get seals, as their spears appear
too rude — merely short poles with the bark on, the bone points being
tied on in the roughest manner. Besides there never seemed to be
enough seal skins to provide each member of the group with a cover
for his shoulders. Naked children huddled close to their mothers for
shelter from wind and rain. We made no measurements, but my recol-
lection is that none of these savages exceeded five feet in height. The
faces of the adults were all utterly barbarous. We saw but one dog
among these people, where he may have been of more importance as
possible food than as an aid in the capture of food. It is not unlikely
that the natives get plenty of young seals during the season when the
animals are breeding on the outlying rocks.

In Punta Arenas I purchased from a trader a rough Fuegian basket,
but did not ascertain from what tribe it was derived.

Our photographs show Fuegians with clothing, but we had supplied
it. We had at last found primitive man. It is doubtful if he exists in
greater simplicity anywhere else to-day.

The natives of Fuegia are quite different from the Patagonian
tribes and are known as the Onas, inhabiting the interior of Tierra del
Fuego proper and subsisting largely by the hunt of the wild guanaco;

Fuegians. Otter Bay, Straits of Magellan.

i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the Yahgana of the Cape Horn region and the more southern parts of
the archipelago, and the Alaculofs of the western channels, who like
the Yahgans, are canoe Indians. All are disappearing in the face of
the long, irregular warfare maintained between themselves and the white
race. In half a century they have diminished from perhaps forty or
fifty thousand to certainly less than one thousand. It is to be regretted
that the canoe Indians have not been the subject of more study by
ethnologists, as they probably are the least known of wild tribes, and
the lowest in the scale of intelligence and development.

In the vicinity of Punta Arenas, which marks about the first third
of the westward journey through the straits, the general aspect of the
country undergoes a change. Hills and patches of forest appear.
The climate also changes appreciably, the western part of the region
being much more stormy and rainy. From this neighborhood may be
seen to the southward on clear days the white summit of Mt. Sar-
miento, nearly one hundred miles away. It is 7,000 feet in elevation
— the highest peak in Tierra del Fuego — and its summit is as yet un-
trodden by man. Sir Martin Conway succeeded in reaching a height
of only 4,000 feet when his party was driven back by appalling storms
of sleet.

The resemblances to northern species which were noticeable among
many of the birds, were traceable among the wild flowers. There were
dandelions, buttercups, ground orchids, anemones, yellow violets,
geraniums, gentians, yellow star-grass, primroses and marigolds, and
probably hosts of others not observed because not in bloom. Many of
those met with are unfortunately not namable except in botanical
terms. Growing close to the ground and very striking was a large
pink flower8 of great beauty common along the western shores. There
were ferns of many kinds. A barberry shrub9 was found everywhere,
and a fine currant bush10 was often seen. Our greatest surprise was at
the size and beauty of the Fuchsia, which forms thickets ten or
twelve feet high and bears a wonderful abundance of flowers much
frequented by humming birds.

The contradictions presented by nature were remarkable: with
cold rain storms blowing over the mountains and beating fiercely down
into the channels, chilly mists and lowering skies perhaps most of the
time, we must yet believe it summer where, at the same time, hum-
ming birds, parrots and flamingoes, beautiful flowers and ripe berries
are to be found. The line of perpetual snow is only 2,000 or 3,000
feet above tide water, while the mean summer temperature is about
50 degrees.

However mild and bright occasional days might be, the forests
were always damp to the point of saturation. The excessive moisture

8 Philesia buxifoUa.

0 Empetrum.

"' Rites magellanicum.

IN THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 13

was favorable to certain large fungus growths on the trees, and used
as food by the natives.

The chief constituents of the Magellan forest are the Antarctic
beech,11 the evergreen beech,12 and the "winters bark13 (of the mag-
nolia order) with laurel-shaped leaves nearly four inches long. A so-
called cypress14 is conspicuously abundant along the western channels.

It was new and rich ground for the scientific prospector. The
naturalists were not to be deterred by the weather, but penetrated the
narrow side channels in the ship's boats, shooting, fishing, botanizing,
shore-collecting at low tide, photographing, hammering mesozoic fos-
sils from the rocks, digging in the ancient shell-heaps of the aborigines
and bartering with the natives.

Suitable beaches for dragging the seines were not easy to find, but
the sailors usually secured enough smelt and mullet-like fishes for the
table and a considerable variety of finny oddities for the ichthyol-
ogist's alcohol tanks. The naval officers found sport for their trout
rods, in taking a trout-like fish abundant in the small streams. They
insisted on calling it a trout, but this peculiar genus, Haplo chiton, of
the austral fresh waters differs noticeably from the boreal fish in lack-
ing the adipose fin of the true trouts. To the angler it is equally
gamy. The ichthyologist ignoring the rules of the true sportsman,
swept many of the best pools with his nets. His " specimens," it is
needless to relate, did not appear upon the mess table, much to the
protest of the anglers.

Collecting along shore at low tide yielded many interesting inverte-
brates. A univalve of the genus Concholepas clings to the rocks like
a limpet. It is as large as a man's fist and deep enough for a drinking
cup. I saw one in a canoe where it may have been used as a boat
bailer. It is also said to be used by the natives as food. The large
Chilian mussel15 is abundant and seems to be the principal item in the
food supply of the natives. We found it excellent eating and obtained
specimens fully seven inches long. The handsomest sea shell of the
straits is Voluta Magellanica, which reaches a length equal to that of
the large mussel.

The most interesting crustacean was an isopod of the genus Serolis,
which bears a superficial resemblance to the extinct trilobites and here
takes the place of our North American horseshoe crab16 as a notable
zoological type. We obtained specimens of it in many localities along
shore and also in our dredge hauls.

We were scarcely prepared to find frogs in this latitude, but four

11 Fagus antarctica.

12 Fagus betuloides.

13 Drimys.

" Libocedrus.

15 Mytilus chilensis.

16 Limulus polyphemus.

i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

very small specimens, representing three species, were secured, one of
which proved to be new to science.

Of insect life we learned little, and our collections were unimpor-
tant. A few butterflies, moths and bees were seen, while beetles were
more noticeable. Mosquitoes may be dismissed with the remark ap-
plied to the snakes of Ireland : there are none.

Xo exploring ship ever carried a more industrious scientific staff;
its store of zoological and botanical plunder grew daily and the lab-
oratory lights burned into the small hours for the identification of
species and the preservation of specimens. The naval corps and the
sailors also warmed up to the work, bringing in birds, mammals, fishes

Cassius Teen. Straits of Magellan.

and plants, some of them wielding the clumsy coal shovels from the
fire-room, in digging ancient stone and bone implements from the
shell heaps. Some of the shell heaps or " kitchen middens " as the
archeologist called them, were several feet thick. Digging into them
was laborious and the results called forth only contemptuous remarks
from the sailors. A few arrow-heads, bone, flint and stone imple-
ments with bones of seals, and mussel and limpet shells did not seem
to them worth the effort. But the ancient camp sites showed to those
who could read their story, that the native population of the past
had lived as simply as their descendants of the present, had subsisted
on the same food, used the same primitive tools and camped on the
same spots. There were doubtless more of them as barbarians decrease
in numbers after contact with the white race.

Large mammals were, with the exception of fur seals and Antarctic
sea lions, not common along the line of our operations, but foxes,
otters, coypu, Ctenomys and other small fur bearers of the far south

IN THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN

i5

Straits of Magellan. White-breasted cormorants. Santa Marta Island.

Young birds in foreground.

were added to the ship's steadily increasing lists of the fauna and
flora of the straits.

In the captain's private log there is a reference to the activities of
the scientific staff, in connection with notes on very stormy weather
at one of our anchorages, where it was too rough to send boats ashore :

It was fortunate for the naturalists, for it gave them a chance for a much-
needed rest — they ceased work in the laboratory at 11:30 p.m. and were off at
4 a.m. the following morning!

But the latter hour did not mean starting before daylight, at that

White-breasted Cormorants, Santa Marta Island. Straits of Magellan.

i6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

season and in that latitude, and the naturalists did not consider that
they were making any sacrifices.

The weather during our "midsummer" month in the straits was
of all sorts : it was very rainy or misty six days, very windy as many
more, slightly snowy two days, really bright and pleasant four days.
The remaining days could not well be classified, presenting all of the
above-named varieties of weather in such rapid succession that the
entries in the log book by each watch included them all, with an oc-
casional fierce squall thrown in to take the kinks out of the cable and
give the anchor something to do. The vessel sheered alarmingly as
the squalls changed direction, but fortunately they were of only brief

Exploring an ancient Shell Heap. Elizabeth Island, Straits of Magellan.

duration. With all these wintry contrarities in the season of summer
blooms, it was seldom squally enough to drive the hardy humming
birds away from the fuchsias.

Our shore work, beginning at Dungeness Point at the eastern en-
trance of the straits, covered the territory adjacent to seven different
anchorages in the straits proper and six among the channels of west-
ern Patagonia, terminating finally at Port Otway, where we entered
the South Pacific Ocean. With the exception of Punta Arenas, these
points were uninhabited save for the occasional presence of roving
canoe Indians.

At Elizabeth Island there were excellent opportunities for the ob-
servation of water birds. A rookery of Cassin terns occupied several
acres, the nests being close together, so that care was necessary to
avoid stepping on them. Eggs and young birds covered the ground
and countless thousands of old birds swarmed close overhead, actually
clouding the sky, while the noise of their cries was tremendous in
volume. The adjacent island of Santa Marta was largely occupied by
white-breasted cormorants, the area covered by their nests being sev-
eral acres in extent. The nests, about six inches high by eighteen in

IN THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 17

diameter, were placed close together. The great mass of old birds re-
mained by their nests until cameras could be brought into play at a
distance of fifteen or twenty yards. On being approached closer they
shuffled off, not taking wing until more closely pressed, leaving the
well-grown young behind. The latter had not developed the white
breasts of the adults and were quite fearless. Another species of
cormorant lacking the white breast, had nests along the low cliffs,
while eggs and young of gulls were abundant on some elevations near
the water.

Our explorations were not confined to the shores; when the ship
was under way, the large dredge, or beam trawl, was often lowered to
drag on the bottom, once as deep as 370 fathoms. It was, in fact,
dragged systematically through the inland passages of the straits and
Smythe Channel from Cape Virgins on the Atlantic to Port Otway on
the Pacific. This big iron-framed net, hauled by steam power, brought
up fishes, shells, crustaceans, sea urchins, starfishes and many other
sea forms whose scientific names are here somewhat out of place.

Among the fishes we often got Macrurus, that strange, big-eyed,
long-tailed genus distributed nearly everywhere over the ocean floor.
Crustaceans were better represented in the dredge hauls, many deep
sea types being brought up. Mollusks were plentiful in number and
variety, living brachiopods — the " lamp shells " so well known as fos-
sils— appearing frequently.

There were many specimens of small octopus and a couple of
burly squids nearly six feet long. The deep-water species were, as a
whole, new to science.

This whole region is an anciently depressed, sea-engulfed mass of
mountains among which the voyager of the present carefully gropes
his way.

The navigation of the straits is confined to daylight work and the
summer days are of course long, but even then heavy fogs have to be
reckoned on. The short nights were always passed at anchor. While
the straits are several miles wide in places, there are dangerous nar-
rows which can only be passed at slack water. English Narrows are
less than a quarter of a mile wide and the channel affords room for
but one ship at a time.

The only settlement worthy of mention here is Punta Arenas, the
most southerly town on the globe. The region is too far south for
agriculture, but garden vegetables can be grown in sheltered places.
There is some gold digging carried on, but sheep raising has become
an established industry. There was much in the climate to remind
me of the Aleutian Islands, which lie nearly in the same latitude in the
north.

Our observations of water temperature in the straits varied from
47° to 57° Fahrenheit, the higher temperature being found in the

VOL. LXXVI.I — 2.

1 8 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

more northerly channels. The temperature of the air followed in a
general way that of the water.

While there was a great deal in the way of birds and flowers to
suggest familiar objects, our surroundings in other respects were
strange. The trees of the forest, the smaller forms of sea shore life,
the utterly barbarous look of the natives, the wildness of the scenery,
left strong impressions. Even the constellations were altogether un-
familiar. The navigating officer pointed out the Southern Cross, the
beautiful nebulous mass called the Cloud of Magellan, the " Coal Sack,"
that dark starless area close to the Milky "Way, and the bright stars
Canopus and Achenas.

I know of no more forbidding headland than Cape Froward, the
southern point of the continent.' The scenery reminds one in many
ways of the inland passage of Alaska and is probably finer, as there are
more high cliffs of exposed rock. As in Alaska, the vegetation of the
forest comes uniformly down to sea level, and here we find it actually
overhanging and touching the surface at high tide.

After passing through Magellan Straits and turning northward into
Smythe Channel and the series of inland passages beyond, the channels
become narrower and the scenery wilder. The evergreen coniferous
forests of the north are here replaced by evergreen beeches, which give
a new and strange aspect. There are, however, the same high, tumbling
waterfalls in the foreground with snow-topped ranges beyond.

No ordinary description can convey a clear idea of the generally
impenetrable character of the forests, which are more tangled and diffi-
cult than those of the tropics. Fallen trees and branches cover deeply
the whole forest floor, these in turn being mostly concealed with mosses
and large plants, the whole always saturated as if by a recent rain-
storm. After clambering over decayed logs, heavily blanketed with
mosses, one may land waist deep in boggy vegetation. Progress is pos-
sible only by constant and laborious climbing over obstructions.

In this western section of nearly four hundred miles, the open ocean
is seen only once, so completely is the long stretch of coast protected by
the lofty islands of the archipelago. Passing gradually northward,
glimpses of lofty snow ranges become more frequent, and at the mouth
of the last narrow channel the white Andes are exposed to full view
and may be enjoyed during the forty-mile voyage across the Gulf
of Penas.

Before leaving Eyre Sound we made fast to one of the small icebergs
drifting away from adjacent glaciers terminating in tide water, and
took on board seven tons of ancient Andean ice for our voyage north-
ward to the Galapagos Islands in the tropical Pacific.

THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE 19

THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE

Br Professor T. D. A. COCKERELL

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

EVOLUTION is not an orderly march along a well-defined high-
way, to the slow time of the music of the spheres. In its
details, it is an irregular process, sometimes so slow that millions of
years seem to make no difference; sometimes so rapid that a single
generation marks a notable advance. Many of its most remarkable
products come into existence only to perish shortly afterwards, because
they are exclusively adapted to conditions which are not permanent.
Rapid progress seems usually to go with a high percentage of failures,
as though progress itself were only an attempt to dodge the stroke of
doom. Out of all this man, the species Homo sapiens, zoologically
speaking one of the higher apes, has in these latter days evolved. A
creature in many ways inferior to his brother mammalia, but favored
by the gods. Denuded of hair, he is obliged to spend much of his time
and energy providing artificial clothing; slow of foot, he is compelled
to devise means of travel not depending upon his muscular activities;
so deficient in the sense of smell, that he does not know, as do the dog
and the ant, that it is the most important of all the senses; lacking a
tail, and with no grasping power in his feet, he rarely ventures to
climb the trees; a poor creature indeed, well-fitted to be the laughing
stock of the rest of animal creation.

All this would not be so bad if, like his sylvan ancestors, he could
go on his way with a placid sense of his own sufficiency. Alas ! even
this poor privilege is denied to him; in the Garden of Eden, at the
very beginning of his career, he acquired the sense of sin, and was
henceforth to be a wanderer in a spiritual as well as a physical sense.
Hence it comes that we, in this year 1910, think it proper to enquire
anxiously about the future of our species, an inquiry which would cer-
tainly never occur to any other species of mammal.

At the very outset we are bound to observe that without exception
the species of mammalia are short-lived. The records of the Tertiary
rocks show a continually changing panorama of mammalian life, in
which genera and species come and go, while plants, mollusca and other
lowly organisms remain almost unaltered. "VVe further notice that the
comparatively brief existence of these animals may be terminated in
either of two ways — by extinction, or by change into something else.
When the creatures are very highly developed in special ways, they

2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

seem nearly always destined to die out, being supplanted by tbe de-
scendants of simpler and more plastic forms. Supposing the career of
man to resemble that of other specialized mammalia, he might be ex-
pected to have before him perhaps another hundred thousand years,
and then in all probability the end of the world, so far as he was con-
cerned with it as an animal. Even on this hypothesis, he would have
as much occasion to prepare for his terrestrial future as a young child
has for its adult life, but there are very good reasons for supposing
that the fate of man need not necessarily be the same as that of the
animals to which he is most nearly allied. Prior to the existence of
man, living beings might have been divided roughly into two groups,
those related to very simple or unchanging environments, such as the
amoeba or the oyster, and those specially adapted to complex conditions,
such as the yucca moth and the giraffe. The former have proved suc-
cessful through their very simplicity, have been saved by their lack of
progress; the latter are nature's masterpieces, often destined, as such
things are, to go out of fashion. Any single man may be taken as a
rather extreme example of the latter type; he is extraordinarily de-
pendent upon a special set of conditions, but the race as a whole is rela-
tively independent, and without sacrificing anything of its organic com-
plexity, is able to meet and overcome the dangers which have destroyed
so many of the higher mammals. If with this man can secure a genuine
but moderate progress in his fundamental organism, not sufficient to
break the continuity of tradition or destroy his essential specific unity,
he may be assured a career such as no mammal ever had before.

The causes of the extinction of other animals have been principally
related to climate, food and natural enemies, including here the germs
of disease. With regard to climate, man at first, through racial differ-
entiation, became adapted to everything from tropical heat to arctic
cold ; but here he was on the way to split up into a number of distinct
species. Now through devices of housing and clothing he can almost
create climatic environments for himself, and so single races, or mix-
tures of races, are to be found nearly everywhere. At the same time,
like the bird, he knows how to migrate when necessary, so that he will
never be destroyed by changes confined to a single continent or even
hemisphere.

In the case of food, he is relatively unspecialized, and no doubt his
omnivorousness has greatly aided his spread over the globe. So long
as he had to depend upon the supplies furnished gratis by nature this
was a necessary condition of his cosmopolitanism ; but now that he can
so largely control his food supply, and can carry any given product to
the opposite end of the earth, it is a question whether there will not be
a distinct gain in a return to primitive simplicity in diet.

Of natural enemies, the grosser and more tangible kind, like the

THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE 21

lion and tiger, have in most places been destroyed; but the small in-
sidious germs or bacteria remain with us. Through a process of nat-
ural selection, we have acquired a comparative tolerance of or immun-
ity from several of them, but they have at all times heavily taxed our
resources, and have actually been the means of exterminating many
races. It is perhaps not unlikely that man would have died out before
this, had he been confined to any limited region ; but since his distribu-
tion has always been wider than the prevalence of any one disease, he
has managed to survive in spite of all of them.

A very interesting discussion of the insidious parasites of disease
has been given by Dr. Eonald Eoss in an address on " Malaria in
Greece," delivered before the Oxford Medical Society.1

Until recent times, the success of mankind in weathering the
dangers of disease has been mainly due to the precautions he has been
able to take, along with the limited distribution of diseases, and the
process of evolution against them. In the future with the aid of sci-
ence there can be little doubt that the bacteria of many will be exter-

1 This is quoted, with much other pertinent matter, by Dr. L. 0. Howard
in Bulletin 78, Bureau of Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture (1909).

We now come face to face with that profoundly interesting subject, the
political, economical and historical significance of this great disease. We know
that malaria must have existed in Greece ever since the time of Hippocrates,
about 400 B.C. What effect has it had on the life of the country? In prehis-
toric times Greece was certainly peopled by successive waves of Aryan invaders
from the north — probably a fair-haired people — who made it what it became,
who conquered Persia and Egypt, and who created the sciences, arts and philos-
ophies which we are only developing further to-day. That race reached its
climax of development during the time of Pericles. Those great and beautiful
valleys were thickly peopled by a civilization which in some ways has not been
excelled. Everywhere there were cities, temples, oracles, arts, philosophies and
a population vigorous and well trained in arms. Lake Kopais, now almost
deserted, was surrounded by towns whose massive works remain to this day.
Suddenly, however, a blight fell over all. Was it due to internecine conflict or
to foreign conquest? Scarcely; for history shows that war burns and ravages,
but does not annihilate. Thebes was thrice destroyed, but thrice rebuilt. Or
was it due to some cause, entering furtively and gradually sapping away the
energies of the race by attacking the rural population, by slaying the new-born
infant, by seizing the rising generation, and especially by killing out the fair-
haired descendant of the original settlers, leaving behind chiefly the more
immunized and darker children of their captives, won by the sword from Asia
and Africa? . . . The whole life of Greece must suffer from this weight, which
crushes its rural energies'. Where the children suffer so much how can the
country create that fresh blood which keeps a nation young ? But for a hamlet
here and there, those famous valleys are deserted. I saw from a spur of
Helicon the sun setting upon Parnassus, Apollo sinking, as he was wont to do,
toward his own fane at Delphi, and pouring a flood of light over the great
Kopaik Plain. But it seemed that he was the only inhabitant of it. There
was nothing there. " Who," said a rich Greek to me, " would think of going
to live in such a place as that ? " I doubt much whether it is the Turk who has
done all this. I think it is very largely the malaria.

22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

minated, and it will no longer be necessary to think of them as possible
dangers to human life. Thus, in England, by the universal practise of
muzzling the dogs for a sufficiently long period, hydrophobia has been
eliminated; in the tropics by the quite feasible if somewhat difficult
plan of destroying the mosquitoes, yellow fever and malaria may be
utterly stamped out in some regions. Other diseases are much less
easily controlled, but it does not appear more difficult to destroy them
than it once did to get rid of the wolves in England.

Along with the development of the medical and agricultural sci-
ences, we may hope for great advances in social organization, reducing
to a minimum the tremendous waste of life and property which goes
on to-day. It is not too much to expect that every individual will be
assured all the air, food, clothes and shelter necessary for a normal
existence, and will find ample opportunities for exercising such talents
as he may possess. Liberty will be curtailed in so far as it permits
antisocial activities, but it will be tremendously extended, in the form
of practical opportunities to develop ordinary or special abilities. All
this may be a long way ahead, and there may exist great differences as
to the program for the near future; but I suppose that few will deny
that some such outcome as that indicated should logically follow from
indefinite advance in the direction we are even now taking.

If we picture human society thus relatively perfected, and free from
many of the ills which now so fearfully decimate it, what have we left
to desire? Very much, I venture to think. Is there one of us who
could honestly say that, if he had been born into such a society, he
would be without any serious defects of mind or body ? In other words,
given as good an environment as could well be devised, should we then
be perfect ? It is exceedingly obvious that we should not.

Those who are enthusiastic, and very justty, concerning the possi-
bilities of social reform, are somewhat too apt to assume that all defi-
ciencies noted in people to-day are due to adverse external conditions.
The student of heredity — even the farmer, when he is dealing with his
crops — knows better than that. Figs do not grow on thistles, for all
the fertilizers in the country. There is no doubt whatever that every
year there are born thousands of persons who are not merely unfitted
to succeed in the world as it now is, but would never be successful in
any complete sense in any world which could be devised or imagined.
Some of those who recognize this fact see in it the doom of all social
amelioration. If to-day the tremendous destruction of the unfit which
takes place leaves us so many incapables, what would happen if most of
those who perish were to survive ? Would not society be buried beneath
a load of incompetency, wbich would make even such organization as
we have impossible? To this gloomy suggestion it may be replied, in
the first place, that much of the present-day elimination is of those who

THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE 23

would be eminently fitted to become useful members of society, could
they be saved. Those who die of bacterial diseases may be unfitted to
cope with those diseases, but this does not imply all other forms of
unfitness. This has been recognized from time immemorial, in the
phrase, " those whom the gods love die young."

In the second place, it should be pointed out that while much of the
elimination now occurring is desirable, it is no doubt preposterously
haphazard, and those who so keenly recognize the need for elimination,
should be the first to advocate a rational method of bringing it about.
This rational method consists, not in the destruction, but in the pre-
vention of the unfit.

At this point it will be useful to leave mankind for a while, and
consider some of the recent results of the study of heredity; results
obtained mainly from investigations on plants and lower animals.
Without going into detail, it may be said that through the researches
of Mendel, Bateson, de Vries, Davenport and many others, we have
come to a very clear recognition of unit-characters in inheritance.
That is to say, particular characters, such as hairiness, eye-color or
susceptibility to some disease, are inherited separately, passing from
one generation to another much as atoms pass without change from one
to another chemical compound. These unit characters may be lost, and
sometimes the loss is real and final, sometimes it is illusory, due merely
to non-potency. In very simple cases, it is found that the inheritance
of these units follows easily recognized laws, the distribution being in
accordance with the laws of chance. In others, this is not evident, and
in man especially, the results are often perplexing. Thus the mulatto
is virtually a blend between the white and black races, and at first sight
it is not at all apparent that the racial characters are inherited as
separate units. Nevertheless, we have indications of this in the remark-
able differences sometimes observed within a single family of mulattoes,
and it may well be inferred that further investigation will yield results
in accordance with recognizable laws, and in so far predicable in
advance.2

The absolute distinction which at first seems to exist between char-
acters which are inherited as separate units and those which blend may
not be real. When the units are obviously separate, but are fairly
numerous, they will produce every sort of mosaic, in the most confusing,
and at first sight wholly disorderly manner. Let them be somewhat
more numerous still and it becomes practically impossible, by mere
inspection, to disentangle the result. It is just as black and white balls,
if of large size, will appear as separate things when mixed, but if suffi-
ciently small will give an apparent blend, of uniform gray. Because

2 When two " opposing " units coexist after a cross, there not rarely occurs
a blended result, due to what is called "imperfect dominance," but this does
not prevent complete segregation in a later generation.

24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of this possibility, we are not as yet entitled to explain all blending away
as illusory ; but we may bear in mind that this may be the case. It can
at least be said, that scarcely a month passes without some case of
inheritance, formerly seeming inscrutable, being brought into the field
of well-ascertained law.

With the incoming of the idea of unit characters, passes our former
conception of continuous variability. Supposing every character to be
at all times variable — that is in motion, as it were, away from its
present center of stability — there is no doubt that continuous selection
would be required to keep characters up to any particular standard.
The extraordinary permanency of some organic characters should suffice
to make us doubt this necessity. For millions of years, certain features
in the lower animals have been handed down generation after genera-
tion, practically without change. When we remember the tremendous
complexity of the protoplasm molecule and the much greater complexity
of the least imaginable bearer of heredity, and the fact that it has not
been possible to break up and then reform the combination, as in
inorganic chemistry, the permanency of these units in time is simply
amazing. Least particles of protoplasmic jelly, they have stood while
the rocks have been ground to dust, and made over many times. They
are entitled to be ranked among the most permanent things in nature.

What then of the facts of variability, as they appear to us? What
is the use of denying continuous variability, in the face of the fact that
no two human beings are alike? The paradox may be resolved, when
we remember the extraordinary number of words in the English lan-
guage, no two the same — yet made up of the undeniably unchanging
letters of the alphabet. When we recall that, on the unit character
theory, the units in man must be exceedingly numerous, and must be
recombined in almost every conceivable way in bisexual inheritance, it
is easy to see that the chances against any two individuals coming out
exactly the same are so great that such a result is practically impossible.
The only case which can come under this head are those of identical
twins, where the resemblance is indeed amazing, throwing light on the
extraordinary potency of inheritance. Such twins are believed to result
from the division of a single fertilized ovum, and hence to be, in a
biological sense, two halves of a single individual.

Much light has been thrown on the permanence of unit-characters
by studies among plants and protozoan animals of what are called pure
lines. A pure line is one in which all the individuals have the same
ancestry, uncontaminated by crossing. The most remarkable results
have been obtained by Professor Jennings in his studies of Paramecium.

He says :

In a given " pure line " ( progeny of a single individual ) all detectible
variations are due to growth and environmental action, and are not inherited.

TEE FUTURE OF TEE HUMAN RACE 25

Large and small representatives of the pure line produce progeny of the same
mean size. The mean size is therefore strictly hereditary throughout the pure
line, and it depends, not on the accidental individual dimensions of the par-
ticular progenitor, but on the fundamental characteristics of the pure line in
question.

All this indicates that if desirable qualities, represented by units in
inheritance, are once obtained, and are not disturbed by crossing, they
may continue from generation to generation indefinitely, without varia-
tion other than that produced in the individual by the immediate
influence of the environment.

But, here, as Professor Jennings remarks, we have to ask how the
different pure lines arise ? That is to say, whence the different qualities
which assuredly did not all coexist in the original form of life? We
have seen that the unit in inheritance is, to say the least, a very complex
object from a chemical point of view. No doubt it is easily destroyed,
but its usual character seems to be that of resisting molecular change
short of disintegration. Thus it is carried on from individual to indi-
vidual, virtually unaltered, or in the alternative cases, destroyed.
Occasionally, however, it must be subjected to some subtle influence
which merely disturbs its internal structure, or perhaps deprives it of
something it possessed. When this occurs, we have an original varia-
tion, the starting of something really new. Such original variations
must be relatively rare, and we do not know what causes usually bring
them about. Tower with beetles and MacDougal with plants seem to
have produced them, in the one case by changes of temperature and
moisture, in the other by chemical means. The fact that in some
regions certain genera produce many species, as the asters in America,
the brambles in Europe, seems to suggest that the disturbing influence
may be different for different organisms, and may be locally distributed.
Or it may be that, a line of disturbance once set up in some unknown
manner, influences prevalent anywhere are sufficient to continue the
line of change.

It may be that coming generations will see the causes of original
variation fully elucidated, and the phenomenon itself brought largely
under control. While mankind would thus be furnished with a weapon
of extraordinary value, one trembles to think of the damage it might
do. It might be made the means of producing new and wonderful
variations in plants and animals, even in man himself; but inasmuch
as there is every reason to suppose that its results could not often be
accurately foretold, there is no telling what evil might result, even sup-
posing that the power was never used with intentionally malicious
purpose.

We are not at present, however, in any danger of being overrun
with original variations; and it must be remembered that most of the
recent wonders of Burbank and others, which are new in a practical

26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

sense, owe their origin biologically to recombinations of characters
which have existed from time immemorial in separate races. No doubt
the great men which arise in human societies from time to time may
be explained in the same manner, so far as they are regarded as biolog-
ical phenomena.

This possibility of producing what is virtually new by recombination
must now be considered. Through the work done by various breeders,
beginning with Mendel, we know much about the manner of such com-
binations, and how to get rid of undesirable units. Where the cases
have been simple almost ideal success has been attained: and in com-
plicated cases it has been possible to produce definite results by con-
centrating attention on special characters. Thus Bateson in his presi-
dential address before the zoological section of the British Association
in 1904, said:

There are others who look to the science of heredity with a loftier aspira-
tion: who ask, can any of this be used to help those who come after us to be
better than we are — healthier, wiser or more worthy? The answer depends on
the meaning of the question. On the one hand, it is certain that a competent
breeder, endowed with full powers, by the aid even of our present knowledge,
could in a few generations breed out several of the morbid diatheses'. As we have
got rid of rabies and pleuro-pneumonia, so we could exterminate the simpler
vices. Voltaire's cry, " Erraser l'infame," might well replace Archbishop
Parker's " Table of Forbidden Degrees," which is all the instruction Parliament
has so far provided. Similarly, a race may conceivably be bred true to some
physical and intellectual characters considered good.

We come then to the conclusion that in the case of man, as with
domesticated animals and cultivated plants, it is possible to get rid of
many undesirable qualities, to combine others which are desirable, and
to maintain indefinitely that which has been once secured. Where
there is bisexual inheritance we can not have strictly pure lines, to be
sure, but it is possible to have lines which are pure within practical
limits. That is to say, we may have a race of people none of whom
have a certain hereditary taint, all of whom have a certain hereditary
quality. Beyond this, we would not go, were it possible; for no one
would wish to sacrifice the interesting diversity of human types which
makes life chiefly worth while. In our national aspirations, we have
recognized the ideal of a moderate unity of type; thus all Englishmen
will agree that a true, full-blooded countryman of theirs should possess
certain attributes, and will admit that those who fail in this are not
strictly of the elect. All Frenchmen, typically, should have a certain
vivacity not found among the Englishmen, and so on throughout the
series.

Thus the ideal of a relatively pure race of high quality is by no
means a new one; but what is new is the practical knowledge of how
this may be brought about, with the certain expectation of much more

THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE 27

light on the subject in the near future. The realization of such an
ideal involves selective mating ; but this again is nothing new, all mating
among civilized people is selective, with a wide range of reasons for the
selection. To these will now be added a new one, or rather an old one
in a somewhat new light.

Professor J. Arthur Thomson well says:

As to the diffusion of disease by the intermarriage of badly tainted with
relatively healthy families, we have this in our own hands, and we need not
whine over it. The basis of preferential mating is not unalterable, in fact we
know that it sways hither and thither from age to age. Possible marriages are
every day prohibited or refrained from for the absurdest of reasons: there is
no reason why they should not be prohibited or refrained from for the best of
reasons— the welfare of our race.

On the other hand, we have to consider the means of increasing and
continuing good qualities. The economic burden of raising a family
is at present such as to discourage many whose qualities should be
continued to other generations, and there can be no doubt that it would
pay society to furnish ample means for the industry of child raising to
those who are especially fitted to engage in it. Mr. Francis Galton has
tried to calculate the value of different classes of individuals:

The worth of a +X -class baby would be reckoned in thousands of pounds.
Some such " talented " folk fail, but most succeed, and may succeed greatly.
They found industries, establish vast undertakings, increase the wealth of mul-
titudes, and amass large fortunes for themselves. Others, whether they be rich
or poor, are the guides and lights of the nation, raising its tone, enlighting its
difficulties, and improving its ideals. The great gain that England received
through the immigration of the Huguenots would be insignificant to what she
would derive from an annual addition of a few hundred children of the classes
+ w and + #•

28 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

MIDDLE AND DISTANCE KUNNING

By CHAS. E. HAMMETT

JACOB TOME INSTITUTE

IS middle and distance running as practised in our schools and col-
leges injurious or is it not? The verdict of spectators at an in-
tercollegiate or interscholastic track meet, as the contestants cross the
finish line frequently exhibiting every evidence of exhaustion, would
probably be in the affirmative. It is difficult for them to resist the be-
lief that a contest which so drains a man of his strength must, of
necessity, use up vitality that can never be completely restored, must
permanently weaken the heart, and perhaps injuriously affect him in
other respects. This investigation was undertaken in the hope of as-
certaining whether there is adequate foundation for such a belief.

In an experience extending over fifteen years, the writer has at-
tended many track meets, has known personally hundreds of runners,
has time and again questioned them in regard to their personal ex-
perience. Curiously enough, he has never found a single man who
would admit that he had been injured by racing. The incompatibility
between the positive assertions of these men and the popular impres-
sion as to the effects of distance running was so pronounced, and
the subject is such an important one in its relation to schoolboys and
college men, that an investigation became imperative. The investi-
gation does not deal with the marathon running of the present day,
but solely with the distances usually run in school and college — one
half to two miles and cross-country seven miles.

Athletes from all parts of the country have been consulted, prin-
cipally men who quit running years ago, and who have had ample
time to note in their own persons the after effects of the training
they underwent; men whose youthful enthusiasm has been sobered by
years of business or professional life and whose judgment is there-
fore to be respected. Some of them quit running thirty years ago;
others twenty-six, twenty-four, eighteen, twelve, etc. A few are still
running, only eight in all. Seven have just quit, nine stopped a
year ago and the great majority from two to thirty years ago, aver-
aging eight and a half years. Nearly one half of the whole number
ran for five or more years, training five to six days a week in two
groups, one group averaging twenty-six weeks a year, the other ten
weeks. Many trained six days a week, thirty to forty weeks a year.
These men have been allowed to speak for themselves, first as to

MIDDLE AND DISTANCE RUNNING 29

facts, i. e., the manner in which they have been affected by their run-
ning; second as to their opinions, i. e., whether or not they consider
distance racing and cross-country running safe and valuable forms
of exercise. The facts to which they testify must be considered as
final; the opinions they express, even if not accepted as conclusive,
must be of greater value than opinions based merely upon theory,
for they are the incarnation of living experience, formed through
days, weeks and months of hard grueling work, through knowledge
of the manner in which their team mates bore the drudgery of train-
ing and the strain of contest, and shaped finally by their own physical
condition during the years which have elapsed since they ran.

Injuries to the Heart. — In view of the general belief that run-
ning is apt to injure the heart, particular attention was given to this
phase of the question. Contrary to expectation, permanent injury
to the heart was found to be very rare, only three men testifying to
this effect and in these three cases the injury manifests itself only
in unusual exertion. Twelve others developed functional heart af-
fections, irregularity, palpitation, etc. Further correspondence with
these men shows that all of these functional irregularities have been
entirely cured. Ten of these fifteen men had what is known as " ath-
lete's heart," three of the cases persisting to this day, as stated above.

Generally speaking, the term " athlete's heart " is very vaguely
comprehended. In medicine, it is defined as compensatory car-
diac hypertrophy' — that is to say, it defines a heart which although
it has become enlarged, still performs its functions perfectly. Such
a heart is normal in an athlete or in any man who performs vigor-
ous physical exercise, the fibers growing firmer and larger as the
demands upon the organ increase, just as a man's muscles grow
firmer and larger under a month's outing in the woods. In almost
every instance a heart of this type will shrink to approximately its
former size without injury to its tissues, after the exercise has been
discontinued. When, however, a man pushes his exercise too far,
his heart may develop valvular insufficiency, palpitation or other
functional irregularity, and I am inclined to believe that this is what
the average physician means when he tells a man that he has " ath-
lete's heart." This was so in most of the cases mentioned above,
nevertheless, all but three of the men have since been cured. "Ath-
lete's heart" is usually a temporary condition and permanent injury
from overwork is rarely found. In an experience with school boys in
all branches of athletics extending over a period of fifteen years, I have
met with but one case of true athlete's heart, and this boy's physician
told him that if he would abstain from violent exercise for six months
he would be entirely cured. This heart affection was brought about by
two years of hard training for the mile, beginning at an early age.
This case, together with the free expression of opinion from athletes to

30 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

whom this inquiry was addressed, strengthens my conviction that
unless a hoy is unusually well developed, he should not take up dis-
tance running in earnest until eighteen years of age, and leads me to
believe, furthermore, that the practise of running school boys daily
from the beginning of the school year in order that they may compete
in the spring, is a bad one, as is also that of running them in so many
races during the season.

But there was found to be a credit as well as a debit side in the
effects of running upon the heart. One man writes : " My train-
ing and running caused previous heart and lung trouble to disap-
pear " ; another, " transformed a nervous heart into a normal one " ;
another, "transformed a heart beating 100 usually, with occasional
palpitation, into a normal one and caused the palpitation to disap-
pear " ; another, " when I began running, I was so weak that I was
supposed to go down stairs backward — at the last physical examina-
tion I was found to have one of the best hearts in the school. Ran
four years from 440 yards up to seven miles."

Other Injuries. — In response to the question " Has racing ever in-
juriously affected you, and how?" eight men testify to temporary in-
jury due to over training or to racing when in poor condition, such
as weak stomach, run-down condition, nervous breakdown, etc., the
bad effects lasting from several weeks to as long as twelve months in
one instance. One of these men ran the half mile, mile and two
miles in one afternoon several times each year of his course of four
years. This, of course, was simply inviting disaster, and it is diffi-
cult to understand how any college trainer could have permitted it.
This brings us directly to a statement by one of the most famous
athletes this country has ever produced, namely that

The great trouble in my opinion is the lack of knowledge on the part of
trainers. The tendency is to overdo. This is particularly true of the school
boy who imagines that unless he runs himself clean out every day of practise,
he is not getting in the proper condition for competition. This is where he
makes a mistake, and where, in my mind, he is going to feel the effects in
later years.

Proper training means work suited to the strength and development
of the individual, and if a man is so trained, is allowed to compete only
when fit, and is fit to run when he begins training, such injuries would
not occur.

Benefits. — In answer to the question, " Has it benefited you in any
way ?" ninety per cent, answer " Yes," five per cent, do not know
whether it has or not, and five per cent, reply, " It has not." The
benefits said to have resulted are in general, strengthened heart and
lungs, developed a rugged constitution, cured several weak hearts,
" gave perfect health and endurance very beneficial in recent years,"
" cured frequent headaches," " effected a complete emancipation from

MIDDLE AND DISTANCE RUNNING 31

doctors and medicines/' etc., and the relatively minor one of increased
muscular development. The usual benefits resulting from training
for any branch of athletics are also emphasized, namely, regular
hours and regular habits of living, how and what to eat, the incom-
patability of dissipation with physical stamina, the moral lesson that
hard work, and that alone, leads to success. These benefits, it will be
noticed, are of the kind that contribute to increased constitutional
strength, strength of heart, lungs and vital organs, and are permanent
in character. The almost unanimous testimony to this increase in
vital strength is worthy of special note.

Cross-country Running. — Cross-country running is generally be-
lieved to be one of the best exercises that young men can take. The
testimony of Mr. Joseph Wood, the headmaster of Harrow, is of par-
ticular value in this connection. He writes :

We keep no actual record of our runners, but I have been a headmaster
now for over forty years, and my experience certainly goes to prove that cross-
country running does no harm but much good; second, that in long-distance
racing much care is necessary. No boy should be allowed to compete unless
certified as sound and fit by competent medical advisers. At Harrow we make
this a rule.

As Mr. "Wood implies, there is a vast difference between cross-
country running, in which a man swings along at a rate well within
his powers, and cross-country racing, in which he must drive himself
at high pressure from three to ten miles. There seems to be a pretty
well-developed opinion among the runners that cross-country racing is
injurious. An intercollegiate champion, the captain of a varsity team
writes :

I have had considerable opportunity to observe the effect of track and cross-
country racing on athletes in this section [the west[. I have yet to see the

track man at who was injured by races over the half-mile, mile and

two-mile courses, but cases have occasionally come to my notice of men whose
vitality was drained severely by cross-country races over five-mile courses.

Another captain and coach writes to the same effect. Information
accidentally received relating to one of the eastern universities, reveals
a belief among the students that the men on the cross-country squad
drain themselves of vitality, and there is frequent expression of opinion
to that effect from the athletes who responded to this inquiry.

Interesting Facts. — The cross-country men began running later in
life than the track men, the average being 18^ years, as compared
with 17^ for two milers, 17 for milers and 16 for half milers. In the
latter, the percentage of heart affections was greater than with the
one and two mile men. In view of the immaturity of the boys who ran
in the 880 class, this is not surprising.

Two thirds of the athletes participated freely in general athletics
when not in training for track — in football, baseball, basketball, tennis,
hockey, gymnastics, etc., and were practically engaged in vigorous ex-

32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

ercise for a period of five and a half years. Their statistics do not
show appreciable variation from those of the one third who engaged in
running only.

Naturally and yet unexpectedly the men who trained on an aver-
age of about ten weeks a year, notwithstanding they numbered less
than two fifths of the whole number, had nearly twice the percentage of
injuries. In attempting to fit themselves for the strain of a distance
race in such a short time, they overworked, with consequent bad effects.
Curiously enough, the men who trained twenty-six weeks a year and
continued running from seven to twelve or fifteen years, had no in-
juries at all. It might be supposed that this vigorous exercise con-
tinued for such a long time would drain their vitality. Exactly the
contrary has been the case. With one exception, all claim to be more
vigorous than the average man of their age, and the exception de-
clares himself fully as vigorous.

One half of the athletes began running as schoolboys, and 78.5
per cent, made good in college, as compared with 75 per cent, of those
who did not take up the sport until they entered college. Twice as
many of the boys who ran only a year or two in school made good, as
of those who ran three or four years. This seems to indicate that boys
who begin at school, if they do not begin too young, and if they are
brought along gradually, learning stride and pace and developing
stamina, have a slightly better chance than even the more mature man
who takes up the sport after he enters college. There is nothing sur-
prising in this, as it requires several years to bring a distance runner
to his best. C. H. Kilpatrick, winner of the American and Canadian
championships, '94, '95 and '96, and until recently holder of the world's
record for the half mile, began running while at school, as did also
George Orton, intercollegiate mile champion for several years. Melvin
Sheppard before becoming an Olympic champion was famous through-
out the middle Atlantic states as a school-boy runner. It is a common
saying, however, that school-boy stars usually " fall down " in college
and unquestionably many runners of promise are spoiled before they
get there, but, generally speaking, the school-boy star fails to develop
into a college star because he has stepped from the narrow limits of
school competition into the much greater range of college athletics.
I am inclined to believe that unless he has been overrun, he equals in
college his school records and usually surpasses them, and while the
data to support it are not at hand, I should expect this to be particularly
true of distance running, at which a man should get better and better
the longer he keeps at it. The evidence shows, furthermore, that boys
who were over sixteen years of age when they began running did twice
as well after they entered college as boys who began under sixteen. Evi-
dently the boy who begins too young is throwing away his chances in
college.

MIDDLE AND DISTANCE RUNNING 33

Breaking Training. — One hundred and twelve athletes quit run-
ning abruptly, and all but one of them are in vigorous health to-day,
apparently having experienced no ill effects, either from breaking
training suddenly or from that overdevelopment of heart and lungs
which is supposed to result from athletics. This seems to indicate, first,
that unnecessary emphasis has been laid upon breaking training gradu-
ally and, second, that abnormal development of the heart and lungs
leading to serious affections of these organs is not to be feared.

The entire physical organism is developed by training to a condi-
tion of unusual efficiency in order to meet the demands made upon
it. It is generally believed that when these demands cease suddenly
— through abruptly breaking training — tissue degeneration follows,
inducing physical ailments of greater or less severity. There is, un-
doubtedly, an alteration in the tissues when the organism is no longer
called upon for vigorous activity, but the theory that this change is a
pathological one is not sustained by the facts, in so far at least as
distance runners are concerned, save when it is aggravated by bad
habits, dissipation or close confinement. It has not been sustained
in my experience with school-boy athletes, for in fifteen years I can
recall but two cases of indisposition after the season, both temporary,
both in football men, big and full blooded, of the type that require an
active life. I think it is not sustained by the experience of the vast
majority of athletes graduated from our colleges year by year, who
from choice or necessity engage in business activities which deny leis-
ure for indulgence in sport, for, if so, it should by this time show
negatively in the national health statistics, whereas, on the contrary,
the spread of athletics in the past generation is believed to have raised
the standard of national physical efficiency. It seems to me likely that
the ordinary activities of life are sufficient to bridge over the transition
period, especially as men who have been accustomed to a great deal
of exercise, and who feel the need of it, will, as a rule, manage to
get more or less of it into or in connection with their work. I am
of the opinion that, save in rare instances, the development produced
by college athletics is not abnormal — as is that of professional strong
men, weight lifters, acrobats, etc., in whom vitality is sacrificed to
muscular development — but that it is normal, and constitutional as
distinguished from muscular development, for none of the college
sports, except perhaps the hammer throw, develop great muscular
strength. The character of the athlete's training supports this belief.
He trains hard for a season or two (twelve to thirty weeks), but during
the intermittent periods and the summer his exercise is much less
severe, and is engaged in solely for pleasure. He works during the
training season and plays in between, the mid-seasons in this way
providing just the type of letting down that is supposed to be neces-

VOL. LXXVII. — 3.

34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

sary, so that at the close of his college career, instead of cumulative
abnormal development, as in the case of the professional strong man,
he has built up an evenly-balanced physical machine.

Expert Opinions. — The athletes are nearly unanimous in endors-
ing cross-country running (as distinguished from cross-country
racing), as a safe and valuable form of exercise, but the same unanim-
ity is not shown when we come to the consideration of distance
racing — 880 yards to two miles. Ten per cent, of the men oppose
racing of any kind, on the ground that it involves too much strain.
Eighty per cent, of them approve it, nearly one third of these, how-
ever, qualifying their approval by saying, " if not overdone, if under
proper training, if sound at the start, if sufficiently mature, etc."
These various qualifications, insisted upon by so many of the athletes,
indicate a pretty general feeling by men who know the game, a feeling
arising from their own personal experience or through observation of
others, that distance racing is not free from risk except under com-
petent supervision. Their letters indicate that without such super-
vision immature boys, and men physically and constitutionally weak,
will take up the game; that they, as well as those who are fit to run,
will train improperly and will be likely to overdo it. They insist upon
a preliminary examination by a competent physician; they are opposed
to the practise of running more than one hard race on the same day,
a practise common among school boys, who, as a rule, have no com-
petent trainer to advise them; they are opposed to boys taking up the
game until they are seventeen or eighteen years of age, although recog-
nizing the difficulty of setting any fixed age limit, since the strength
and development of an individual must determine his fitness. Many
believe that one mile should be the limit for schoolboy contests. There
is a very pronounced feeling among them that school-boys gener-
ally overwork. These opinions, held by men who know, can not be
disregarded in an effort to discover and set forth the facts. They point
to the dangers which lie in the path of the inexperienced athlete, and
which bring adverse criticism upon the sport. And yet, notwithstand-
ing these dangers, all avoidable, it will be apparent to any one who
reads their letters that they approve the sport if properly supervised,
considering it in that case not only safe but of great benefit. Almost
all of the men, even those who are opposed to racing, even those who sus-
tained injury while at it, claim to have been benefited by their athletic
experience. This can mean but one thing, namely, as one of them ex-
presses it, " the increased health and vigor resulting from training
more than compensated for any injury due to racing." The exceed-
ingly small number of permanent injuries revealed by this investigation,
and the vigorous health enjoyed to-day by the athletes almost without
exception, sustain this view especially since it must be borne in mind
that a large proportion of the men quit running years ago, before the

MIDDLE AND DISTANCE RUNNING 35

highly specialized trainer of to-day was developed, and consequently
must have trained under more or less imperfect methods. It should
also be remembered that unlike football and crew men, runners are not
select specimens of plrysical manhood, picked because of their strength
and vigor. On the contrary, track men are fragile in comparison.
Strip a group of football and crew candidates and place them side by
side with a group of track men and no one could fail to be impressed
by the contrast in strength and development.

Vitality. — Whether distance running drains vitality or not can
not be demonstrated in terms of percentage, as one may speak of the
number of bodily injuries or of functional heart derangements. A
conclusion must be reached deductively, if at all, from the statistics
given by the men ; the character of the injuries they have received ; the
nature of the benefits which accrued from their running; the probable
effect of these injuries and benefits on their vital organs; the
state of their health at the present time, etc. Vitality must be de-
termined by the condition of the blood, and of the organs which main-
tain life, the heart, lungs, stomach, kidneys, etc. If running has re-
sulted in strengthening the heart and lungs of these athletes, in im-
proving their digestion, in stimulating to greater efficiency the func-
tioning of their vital organs, in endowing them with greater physical
vigor, it has evidently given them greater vitality, greater resistance to
disease; if, on the other hand, it has injured their hearts, weakened
their lungs, injuriously affected their vital organs; if a fair percentage
of them have become broken down athletes, it has impaired their phys-
ical vigor and drained vitality. Every one admits the value of run-
ning per se. It is generally recognized as the exercise par excellence
which develops vital strength, strength of heart and lungs, the kind of
strength that carries a man to a green old age. No one of our athletic
teams regularly presents to the eye such evidence of perfect physical
condition as does the track team. The practical value from a physio-
logical point of view of all the school and college sports is in direct
ratio to the amount of running involved. Eacing in itself may be
injurious, ten per cent, of the men believe it is, although their letters
show that half of these are opposed to it, not because of definite and
positive injury known to result from it, but from the vague general
feeling referred to on the first page of this inquiry, namely, the belief
that it is too great a strain. And this investigation shows that certain
injuries do result from it, though much less serious than is generally
believed. On the other hand, a large majority of the men deny that
racing is necessarily injurious, affirming that injury when incurred is
caused by poor condition, and that if a man is fit when he toes the mark,
he is not likely to injur.e himself, no matter how hard he runs. But it
is impossible to consider racing alone, since running is inseparably
connected with it. Boys can not race without training, and will not

36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

train without racing. There seems to be no doubt in the minds of the
athletes themselves as to the effects of their running. Over ninety per
cent, claim to have derived permanent benefits, in many instances of
inestimable value, and only four of the entire number testify to perma-
nent injury. Some of the letters have a direct bearing on the subject
of vitality, others relate to it indirectly; one man writes:

Cornell University is distinguished above all other institutions for the
development of runners at the distances you mention. I am in touch with all
the 'varsity distance men graduated in the last ten years, and there is not a
case of physical debility in the whole lot. Most of them are much more alive
than the average man.

A famous distance runner whose feats astonished men a few years
ago, writes :

I have been running for over twenty-three years now, and feel in perfect
physical condition. Have won races from seventy-five yards up, and have run
over one hundred miles quite olten. My heart has been examined by specialists
in London, Paris, Boston and other places, and all say that it is in perfect
working shape.

Another writes :

My father, who is sixty-two years of age, and an old distance runner, can
now run a quarter mile consistently under sixty seconds. He has not been ill
since he was a young man, and is as hale and hearty as a man of thirty.

A quarter mile in sixty seconds is beyond the ability of ninety-nine
out of a hundred men whom you and I meet in the streets. The aver-
age boy of eighteen years can not do it, but the trained runner can with
ease. A form of exercise which develops and maintains in a man
sixty-two years of age vigor enough to perform a feat beyond the
strength of the average man of half his years and which brings forth
testimony such as I have just quoted, has strong claims to favorable
consideration.

The Jinrickisha Man. — As bearing upon the general subject of
distance running, I have endeavored to ascertain how the jinrickisha
men of Japan and the dak or post runners of India have been affected
by their arduous occupations. Although the work performed by the
jinrickisha man differs widely in character from that demanded by
the college athlete training for distance racing, there is a parallel if
not similar demand upon the heart and lungs, and the effect should
be similar in character, differing only in degree. The jinrickisha man
performs infinitely harder work than the college athlete. Twenty,
forty and even sixty miles a day is no unusual performance, and while
he does not run as fast as the college man, he adds to the burden of
his running — which ordinarily is hardly more than a fast jog — the
strain of drawing a heavy weight, so that in all probability the cumu-
lative effect upon the vital organs is not only equal to but much bej^ond
that of the college man. In addition to this, he is subjected to all

MIDDLE AND DISTANCE RUNNING 37

kinds of temperature — drenched in perspiration one hour, shivering
with cold the next, hauling his 'rickshaw in all kinds of weather, in-
adequately fed, smokes and dissipates. His activities are irregular — he
may have work several days in succession, then lie idle for as many
more, to be suddenly called upon for a renewed strenuous task — and in
general his mode of life is exactly opposite to that of the college ath-
lete, who is required to keep regular hours, fed the most nourishing
foods, forbidden tobacco and spirits, is bathed, massaged and runs for
fixed periods of time, gradually increasing Ms performances under the
careful eye of an experienced coach. It is extremely difficult to obtain
definite information concerning the jinrickisha man. No traveler
whose works I have read has been sufficiently interested to publish in-
information of the kind that would be valuable in connection with our
inquiry. At the most, but casual reference is made to him as one of
the picturesque features of the flowery kingdom. Mr. E. G. Babbitt,
American vice consul-general in charge at Yokohama, has been good
enough to answer my inquiry, and his letter throws more light upon the
subject than I have been able to obtain from any other source. He
writes :

The imperial government publishes annually an elaborate report (statis-
tics) concerning movements of the population, but the number of deaths, etc.,
are given by " age " and not by " occupation," and it would be a very difficult
matter to find the death rate among any particular class. Each prefecture has
its own laws and regulations concerning the jinrickisha men and in one of
the prefectures the age of the applicants for the jinrickisha's man's license has
been limited to fifty-five; in Tokio, this age limit came into force in 1907, at
which time it was reported that there were over twelve hundred jinrickisha
men over fifty-five years of age. Most of these men were healthy and strong.
During the year 1907-1908, this consulate-general had two old janitors, both
of whom were jinrickisha men over twenty-five years, they said. The superin-
tendent of police of this district whom I interviewed on this subject attributes
a comparatively high death rate among them to their irregular diet and exces-
sive use of liquors, to which vice they appear to be more addicted than any
other class of laborers.

Dak and Kaliar Runners. — In attempting to investigate the dak or
post runner of India, I came into possession, through the courtesy of
Mr. G. Lockwood Kipling, of information of especial interest concern-
ing the Kahar caste, also known as Jhinwars in the Punjaub. Mr.
Kipling writes that this caste " has for many centuries been village
servants, appointed to be carriers, runners, watermen, fishermen, basket
makers, water fowl catchers, etc.," and are trained runners from genera-
tion to generation. Mr. T. C. Lewis, late director of public instruction,
United Province, India, in enclosing to Mr. Kipling the story which
follows, writes:

This goes to show that the Kahars who are in a manner born to the work,
and are trained to it from their youth up, can, if they do it regularly (the

38 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

oftener the better, as the old man said), cover extraordinary distances and
without dropping out of the running at an early age as folks seem to fancy.
Mr. John Harvey, formerly assistant inspector of schools, Lahore
Circle, who has had abundant opportunity for observation, writes that
these people are not short lived and that they are known to have per-
formed " most extraordinary feats of endurance, such as bearing palan-
quins and doolies, in carrying bangi loads and in long distance running
when laying a palki dak, i. <?._, arranging for a succession of bearers for
an urgent palanquin journey." He says :

I know that Kahars live to be old men, for it is from their own lips that
I have heard of feats of long distance running, as sarbarais and proved them
to be true. I could give you several instances of incredible endurance.

The following story from Mr. Harvey illustrates the wonderful
endurance of the Kahar :

LONG DISTANCE RUNNING (Dialogue)

Scene— Amritsar, N. India. Circ. 1875. Time, 5 p.m.

Dramatis Persona?

J. Harvey Asst. Inspt. Schools, Lahore Circle.

Maghi Ram. Doolie chaudhri, Amritsar.

Gangu Son of above.

J. H. "Ah, chaudhri ji! It is necessary that I should have a doolie to
start for Sialkot at 8 this evening."

M. R. " Very good, nourisher of the poor, here is the Order book : please
write the order and pay the money Rs 30, at the rate of 4^ annas per bearer
for six bearers, 1 sarbarai (forerunner) and 1 misalchi (torchbearer) for each
of eleven stages, with Rs 5 for the doolie and the balance for oil."

J. H. "There, count the money — is it all right?"

M. R. "Quite correct, noble presence — Take the Rs 20, and be off with
you. The doolie will be here at 7:30, Sahib. Salaam."

J. H. "Stay, chaudhri — That Gangu is your son, I think; now will he
go the whole distance to Sialkot (64 miles) before morning, laying my doolie
dak and paying the bearers?"

M. R. " O yes, noble presence, why not ? That is nothing for a boy of
his age (20 years). But kahars (doolie-bearer caste) are no longer in condi-
tion since the railways came in, though their time was always surer."

J. H. " Nonsense. But it is interesting to know that Gangu will do his
64 miles in 9 hours, if he really does do so. How shall I prove it?"

M. R. " Why, nourisher of the poor, Gangu will pay his respects to you,
in duty bound, when you arrive in Sialkot, for he must return to me at once
with your assurance that all went well on the journey."

J. H. " Well, I know this is said to be the usual procedure, but is it not
a trying piece of work for a young man, especially if he has to do it often?"

M. R. "Great king, the oftener the better; for it is much more trying if
undergone only occasionally, though we kahars are in a manner born to the
work. Unburdened, we could go on forever, but burdened — well, fifty miles is
nothing out of the way for a man in practise. Some of your own bearers will
not change for three, four, five or more stages on the way to Sialkot. It will
all depend on what men are obtainable on short notice. [This was subse-
quently verified by J. H. who found one man of his bearers toiling under the
doolie into Sialkot who started under it from Amritsar and who proved that

MIDDLE AND DISTANCE RUNNING 39

be had the previous day reached Amritsar from Sialkot with a banghy (bamboo
shoulder pole with burdens at either end) load of mangoes.] My grandfather
was a famous long-distance kahar, and my father, an old man now, still carries
his banghy all day."

J. H. "Is it so? But now, listen; how far could your Gangu go without
rest on one stretch J "

M. R. " Noble presence, there is no telling how far an unburdened kahar
could not go, but Gangu should be able to do one hundred miles without food
or rest."

J. H. (cynically) "Ah, indeed! And you, I think, in your day could have
done two hundred."

M. R. " Great king, 0 more than that. Listen, incarnation of justice.

Just at the mutiny time, Capt. of Mian Mir sent for doolie chaudhri

Tika Ram, and after informing him that he had important despatches for
Meerut, asked him if he could arrange for a doolie dak there. I need not tell
you the distance, Sahib, three hundred miles as the crow flies — and have him
carried with safety. Tika Ram was aghast at the very notion, but when Capt.
said he had thought of every other means, and had come to the con-
clusion that a continuous doolie journey through Patiala and Karnal would be
speediest, that not only would the chaudri be well paid, but that the reward
would be great if the dispatches could be delivered on the third day, and that
if Tika Ram, son of Lalu Ram, could not manage it, no one else could, the
chaudhri after considerable thought agreed to undertake it, as it was worth
risking. So asking for the bare fare in advance, and stipulating for ten hours
start for the sarbarai, he despatched his own son on the business of laying a
cross-country doolie dak to Meerut. At the appointed hour, the doolie was at

Captain 's door and bore him off to arrive without let or hindrance at

Meerut on the third day, to be greeted on his arrival by the sarbarai, and to
give him assurance that all was well."

J. H. " Enough, enough, chaudhri, that will do. Go."

M. R. " Your noble presence does not believe me. Here is the proof,
always carried with me. There, great king, cast your eye over that. What is
its purport, 0 mine of intelligence ? "

J. H. (Reading No. 1.) This to certify that chaudhri Tika Ram, son
of Lalu Ram arranged a doolie dak for me from Mean-Mir to Meerut and that
he fulfilled his engagement by having me safely brought with important
despatches to my destination.

Signed , Capt. Hianmir.

Dated .

No. 2. The bearer of this chaudhri Tika Ram, son of Lalu Ram, has been
rewarded with the sum of Rs 1000 for etc., etc.

Signed , General Commander Hianmir.

Dated .

No. 3. This is to certify that Maghi Ram, son of Tika Ram, doolie
Chaudhri of Mianmir, laid my doolie dak successfully from Mian-Mir to
Meerut, etc.

Signed , Capt. Hianmir.

Dated .

Looking at the chaudhri — " Humph ! I am to believe then that you are
the same sarbarai that laid the dak from Mianmir to Meerut which arrived
on the third day."

M. R. " Incarnation of justice, your slave is the grandson of Lalu Ram,

the son of Tika Ram, and the father of Gangu — Salaam."

Exit.

40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

When one recalls the distances covered in the six-day go-as-you-
please contests in vogue in this country some years ago, there is nothing
incredible in this. If men of this day can average over a hundred
miles a day for six days, what is there incredible in one of a race trained
from childhood covering three hundred miles in three days? The
interesting fact, in view of the scope of this article, is that the Kahars,
trained from childhood to be distance runners, lived to be old men;
that they were not only able to stand the strain of running great dis-
tances under a heavy load, but thrived under it.

I remember years ago of hearing that the post runners of India
died at about the age of forty as a result of their exertions, but I have
been unable to find any foundation for such a statement. Positive
information in regard to the mortality of Indian post runners is un-
available, as they are relatively very few in number and of inferior
caste, so that they are not mentioned as a caste in health statistics.
Mr. John Cornwall, late postmaster general in the United Provinces,
India, writes, that the Indian mail runners cover fifteen to eighteen
miles a day, that there is never any difficulty in getting men to under-
take the duties and that he never heard of them succumbing at the early
age of forty. The rumor may, he says, have arisen from " the arrange-
ment that Sowcars (bankers or money dealers) and Bunyas (merchants
and traders) made in pre-mutiny days, to obtain early information as
to the markets, rates of exchange, etc. They employed private per-
sons, trained runners, to outstrip the regular mail carriers and convey
information up country from trade centers. It was no uncommon
thing, fifty years ago to see these messengers " arriving with messages
sealed up in quills, and with their leg sinews swollen and strained from
their exertions," but there is no definite and authoritative statement
that their lives were shortened by their work.

Conclusions. — It seems to be an open question whether cross-country
racing is safe for any but men of exceptional strength with the proba-
bilities in the negative. It is evident that distance racing of any kind
is attended with a certain amount of risk, which, however, can be re-
duced to a minimum by proper training. There is nothing in the
testimony given by the athletes to show that distance running depletes
vitality. As a matter of fact the presumptive weight of evidence is to
the contrary. The facts revealed concerning the jinrickisha men and
the Kahar runner emphasize this conclusion. If, notwithstanding his
irregular diet, excessive use of liquors, exposure to the elements, etc., the
jinrickisha man can live to a reasonable age; if, as shown by Mr. Har-
vey's testimony, Kahar runners live to be old men notwithstanding
their extraordinary feats of endurance, we may safely conclude that the
infinitely milder work of the college man, usually done under the best
conditions, is not likely to injure him, and the evidence at hand appears
to establish this beyond reasonable doubt. But the number of injuries

MIDDLE AND DISTANCE RUNNING 41

shown, even though nearly all of them were temporary ones, indicate
the need for better supervision. None worthy of the name is given the
school-boy athlete, except in comparatively few preparatory schools and
city high schools. Competent trainers are scarce, but medical supervi-
sion can readily be had. If the boys were required to pass a prelim-
inary examination by a competent physician and were examined there-
after at intervals of three or four weeks to ascertain how they are stand-
ing up under the training, liability to injury would be practically
eliminated.

Twenty-two of the sixty or seventy colleges and large preparatory
schools to which we wrote furnished lists of their athletes. These lists
contained the names of two hundred and sixty men, two thirds of whom
responded to our letters. The replies are so similar in tone and so
emphatic as regards essentials that I believe the results shown will be
confirmed by further investigation involving any number of athletes.

42 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE SYMBOLISM OF DEEAMS

By HAVELOCK ELLIS

THE dramatization of subjective elements of the personality, which
contributes so largely to render our dreams vivid and interesting,
rests on that dissociation, or falling apart of the constituent groups of
psychic centers, which is so fundamental a fact of dream-life. That is
to say, that the usually coherent elements of our mental life are split
up, and some of them — often, it is curious to note, precisely those which
are at that very moment the most prominent and poignant — are recon-
stituted into what seems to us an outside and objective world, of which
we are the interested or the merely curious spectators, but in neither
case realize that we are ourselves the origin of.

An elementary source of this tendency to objectivation is to be found
in the automatic impulse towards symbolism, by which all sorts of feel-
ings experienced by the dreamer become transformed into concrete
visible images. When objectivation is thus attained dissociation may
be said to be secondary. So far indeed as I am able to dissect the
dream-process, the tendency to symbolism seems nearly always to pre-
cede the dissociation in consciousness, though it may well be that the
dissociation of the mental elements is a necessary subconscious condi-
tion for the symbolism.

Sensory symbolism rests on a very fundamental psychic tendency.
On the abnormal side we find it in the synesthesias which, since Galton
first drew attention to them in 1883 in his " Inquiries into Human
Faculty," have become well known and are found among between six
to over twelve per cent, of people. Galton investigated chiefly those
kinds of synesthesias which he called " number-forms " and " color asso-
ciations." The number-form is characteristic of those people who
almost invariably think of numerals in some more or less constant form
of visual imagery, the number instantaneously calling up the picture.
In persons who experience color-associations, or colored-hearing, there
is a similar instantaneous manifestation of particular colors in connec-
tion with particular sounds, the different vowel sounds, for instance,
each constantly and persistently evolving a definite tint, as a white,
e vermilion, i yellow, etc., no two forms, however, having exactly the
same color scheme of sounds. These phenomena are not so very rare
and, though they must be regarded as abnormal, they occur in persons
who are perfectly healthy and sane.

It will be seen that a synesthesia — which may involve taste, smell

THE SYMBOLISM OF DREAMS 43

and other senses besides hearing and sight — causes an impression of one
sensory order to be automatically and involuntarily linked on to an
impression of another totally different order. In other words, we may
say that the one impression becomes the symbol of the other impression,
for a symbol — which is literally a throwing together — means that two
things of different orders have become so associated that one of them
may be regarded as the sign and representative of the other.

There is, however, another still more natural and fundamental form
of symbolism which is entirely normal, and almost, indeed, physiolog-
ical. This is the tendency by which qualities of one order become
symbols of qualities of a totally different order because they instinctively
seem to have a similar effect on us. In this way, things in the physical
order become symbols of things in the spiritual order. This symbolism
penetrates indeed the whole of language; we can not escape from it.
The sea is deep and so also may thoughts be ; ice is cold and we say the
same of some hearts; sugar is sweet, as the lover finds also the presence
of the beloved; quinine is bitter and so is remorse. ' Not only our
adjectives, but our substantives and our verbs are equally symbolical.
To the etymological eye every sentence is full of metaphor, of symbol,
of images that, strictly and originally, express sensory impressions of one
order, but, as we use them to-day, express impressions of a totally dif-
ferent order. Language is largely the utilization of symbols. This is
a well-recognized fact which it is unnecessary to elaborate.1

An interesting example of the natural tendency to symbolism, which
may be compared to the allied tendency in dreaming, is furnished by
another language, the language of music. Music is a representation of
the world — the internal or the external world — which, except in so far
as it may seek to reproduce the actual sounds of the world, can only be
expressive by its symbolism. And the symbolism of music is so pro-
nounced that it is even expressed in the elementary fact of musical
pitch. Our minds are so constructed that the bass always seems deep
to us and the treble high. We feel it incongruous to speak of a high
bass voice or a deep soprano. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that
this and the like associations are fundamentally based, that there are,
as an acute French philosophic student of music, Dauriac (in an essay
"Des Images Suggerees par 1' Audition musicale ") has expressed it,
" sensorial correspondences," as, indeed, Baudelaire had long since
divined; that the motor image is that which demands from the listener
the minimum of effort; and that music almost constantly evokes motor
imagery.2

1Ferrero, in his "Lois Psychologiques du Synibolisnie " (1895), deals
broadly with symbolism in. human thought and life.

2 The motor imagery suggested by music is in some persons profuse and
apparently capricious, and may be regarded as an anomaly comparable to a
synesthesia. Heine was an example of this and he has described in " Florentine

44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The association between high notes and physical ascent, between
low notes and physical descent is certainly in any case very fixed.3 In
Wagner's " Lohengrin/' the ascent and descent of the angelic chorus
is thus indicated. Even if we go back earlier than the days of Bach
the same correspondence is found. In the work of Bach himself — pure
and abstract as his music is generally considered — this as well as much
other motor imagery may be found, as is now generally recognized by
students of Bach, following in the steps of Albert Schweitzer and
Andre Pirro. It is sometimes said that this is "realism" in music.
That is a mistake. When the impressions derived from one sense are
translated into those of another sense there can be no question of
realism. A composer may attempt a realistic representation of thunder,
but his representation of lightning can only be symbolical; audible
lightning can never be realistic.

Not only is there an instinctive and direct association between
sounds and motor imagery, but there is an indirect but equally in-
stinctive association between sounds and visual imagery which, though
not itself motor, has motor associations. Thus Bleuler considers it well
established that among color-hearers there is a tendency for photisms
that are light in color (and belonging, we may say, to the " high " part
of the spectrum) to be produced by sounds of high quality, and dark
photisms by sounds of low quality; and, in the same way, sharply-
defined pains or tactile sensations as well as pointed forms produce
light photisms. Similarly, bright lights and pointed forms produce
high phonisms, while low phonisms are produced by opposite conditions.
Urbantschitisch, again, by examining a large number of people who
were not color-hearers found that a high note of a tuning fork seems
higher when looking at red, yellow, green or blue, but lower if looking
at violet. Thus two sensory qualities that are both symbolic of a third
quality are symbolic to each other.

This symbolism, we are justified in believing, is based on funda-
mental organic tendencies. Piderit, nearly half a century ago, forcibly
argued that there is a real relationship of our most spiritual feelings

Nights " the visions aroused by the playing of Paganini, and elsewhere the
visions evoked in him by the music of Berlioz. Though I do not myself ex-
perience this phenomenon I have found that there is sometimes a tendency for
music to arouse ideas of motor imagery; thus some melodies of Handel suggest
a giant painting frescoes on a vast wall space. The most elementary motor
relationship of music is seen in the tendency of many people to sway portions
of their body — to " beat time " — in sympathy with the music. Music is funda-
mentally an audible dance, and the most primitive music is dance music.

3 The instinctive nature of this tendency is shown by the fact that it per-
sists even in sleep. Thus Weygandt relates that he once fell asleep in the
theater during one of the last scenes of " Cavalleria Rusticana," when the tenor
was singing in ever higher and higher tones, and dreamed that in order to reach
the notes the performer was climbing up ladders and stairs on the stage.

THE SYMBOLISM OF DREAMS 45

and ideas to particular bodily movements and facial expressions. In a
similar manner, he pointed out that bitter tastes and bitter thoughts
tend to produce the same physical expression.4 He also argued that
the character of a man's looks — his fixed or dreamy eyes, his lively or
stiff movements — correspond to real psychic characters. If this is so
we have a physiological, almost anatomical, basis for symbolism.
Cleland,5 again, in an essay " On the Element of Symbolic Correlation
in Expression," argued that the key to a great part of expression is the
correlation of movements and positions with ideas, so that there are,
for instance, a host of associations in the human mind by which
" upward " represents the good, the great, and the living, while " down-
ward " represents the evil and the dead. Such associations are so
fundamental that they are found even in animals, whose gestures are,
as Fere6 remarked, often metaphorical, so that a cat, for instance, will
shake its paw, as if in contact with water, after any disagreeable
experiences.

The symbolism that to-day interpenetrates our language, and indeed
our life generally, has mostly been inherited by us, with the traditions
of civilization, from an antiquity so primitive that we usually fail to
interpret it. The rare additions we make to it in our ordinary normal
life are for the most part deliberately conscious. But so soon as we
fall below, or rise above, that ordinary normal level — to insanity and
hallucination, to childhood, to savagery, to folk-lore and legend, to
poetry and religion — we are at once plunged into a sea of symbolism.7
There is even a normal sphere in which symbolism has free scope and
that is in the world of dreams.

Oneiromancy, the symbolical interpretation of dreams, more espe-
cially as a method of divining the future, is a wide-spread art in early
stages of culture. The discerning of dreams is represented in the old
testament as a very serious and anxious matter (as in regard to
Pharoah's dream of the fat and lean cattle), and, nearer to our time,
the dreams of great heroes, especially Charlemagne, are represented as
highly important events in the medieval European epics. Little
manuals on the interpretation of dreams have always been much valued
by the uncultured classes, and among our current popular sayings there
are many dicta concerning the significance, or the good or ill luck, of
particular kinds of dreams.

Oneiromancy has thus slowly degenerated to folk-lore and supersti-

*T. Piderit, " Miinik und Physiognomik," 1867, p. 73.

5 J. Cleland, "Evolution, Expression and Sensation," 1881.

"Fere, " La Physiologie dans les MStaphores," Rewie Philosophique, October,
1895.

T Maeder discusses symbolism in some of these fields in his " Die Symbolik
in den Legenden: Miirchen, Gebrauchen und Traumen," Psychiatrisch-Neurolo-
gische Wochenschrift, Nos. 6 and 7, May, 1908.

46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

tion. But at the outset it possessed something of the combined digni-
ties of religion and of science. Not only were the old dream-inter-
preters careful of the significance and results of individual dreams in
order to build up a body of doctrine, but they held that not every dream
contained in it a divine message; thus they would not condescend to
interpret dreams following on the drinking of wine, for only to the
temperate, they declared, do the gods reveal their secrets. The serious
and elaborate way in which the interpretation of dreams was dealt with
is well seen in the treatise on this subject by Artemidorus of Daldi, a
native of Ephesus, and contemporary of Marcus Aurelius. He divided
dreams into two classes of theorematic dreams, which come literally
true, and allegorical dreams. The first group may be said to corre-
spond to the modern group of prophetic, proleptic or prodromic dreams,
while the second group includes the symbolical dreams which have of
recent years again attracted attention. Synesius, who lived in the
fourth century and eventually became a Christian bishop without alto-
gether ceasing to be a Greek pagan, wrote a very notable treatise on
dreaming in which, with a genuinely Greek alertness of mind, he con-
trived to rationalize and almost to modernize the ancient doctrine of
dream s}Tnbolism. He admits that it is in their obscurity that the
truth of dreams resides and that we must not expect to find any general
rules in regard to dreams; no two people are alike, so that the same
dream can not have the same significance for every one, and we have
to find out the rules of our own dreams. He had himself (like Galen)
often been aided in his writings by his dreams, in this way getting his
ideas into order, improving his style, and receiving criticisms of extrava-
gant phrases. Once, too, in the days when he hunted, he invented a
trap as a result of a dream. Synesius declares that our attention to
divination by dreams is good on moral grounds alone. For he who
makes his bed a Delphian tripod will be careful to live a pure and noble
life. In that way he will reach an end higher than that he aimed at.8
It seems to-day by no means improbable that, amid the absurdities
of this popular oneiromancy, there are some items of real significance.
Until recent years, however, the absurdities have frightened away the
scientific investigator. Almost the only investigator of the psychology
of dreaming who ventured to admit a real symbolism in the dream
world was Schemer,0 and his arguments were not usually accepted nor

8 A translation of Synesius's " Treatise on Dreams " is given by Druon,
" (Euvres de Synesius," pp. 347 et seq.

8 K. A. Schemer, "Das Leben des Traumes," 1861. In France Hervey de
Saint-Denis, in a remarkable anonymous work which I have not seen ("Les
Reves et les Moyens de les Diriger," p. 356, quoted by Vaschide and Pi6ron,
" Psychologie du Reve," p. 26), tentatively put forward a symbolic theory of
dreams, as a possible rival to the theory that permanent associations are set
up as the result of a first chance coincidence. " Do there exist," he asked,

TEE SYMBOLISM OF DREAMS 47

even easy to accept. "When we are faced by the question of definite
and constant symbols it still remains true that scepticism is often called
for. But there can be no manner of doubt that our dreams are full of
symbolism.10

The conditions of dream-life, indeed, lend themselves with a peculiar
facility to the formation of symbolism, that is to say, of images which,
while evoked by a definite stimulus, are themselves of a totally different
order from that stimulus. The very fact that we sleep, that is to say,
that the avenues of sense which would normally supply the real image
of corresponding order to the stimulus are more or less closed, renders
symbolism inevitable.11 The direct channels being thus largely choked,
other allied and parallel associations come into play, and since the con-
trol of attention and apperception is diminished, such play is often
unimpeded. Symbolism is the natural and inevitable result of these
conditions.12

It might still be asked why we do not in dreams more often recog-
nize the actual source of the stimuli applied to us. If a dreamer's feet
are in contact with something hot, it might seem more natural that he
should think of the actual hot-water bottle, rather than of an imaginary
Etna, and that, if he hears a singing in his ears, he should argue the
presence of the real bird he has often heard rather than a performance
of Haydn's " Creation " which he has never heard. Here, however, we
have to remember the tendency to magnification in dream imagery, a
tendency which rests on the emotionality of dreams. Emotion is nor-

" bizarre analogies of internal sensations in virtue of which certain vibrations
of the nerves, certain instinctive movements of our viscera, correspond to sensa-
tions apparently quite different? According to this hypothesis experience
would bring to light mysterious affinities, the knowledge of which might become
a genuine science; . . . and a real key to dreams would not be an unrealizable
achievement if we could bring together and compare a sufficient number of
observations."

10 It is interesting to note that hallucinations may also be symbolic. Thus
the Psychical Research Society's Committee on Hallucinations recognized a
symbolic group and recorded, for instance, the case of a man who, when his
child lies dying sees a blue flame in the air and hears a voice say " That's his
soul" (Proceedings Society Psychical Research, August, 1894, p. 125).

uMaeder states that the tendency to symbolism in dreams and similar
modes of psychic activity is due to " vague thinking in a condition of diminished
attention." This is, however, an inadequate statement and misses the central
point.

13 In the other spheres in which symbolism most tends to appear, the same
or allied conditions exist. In hallucinations, which (as Parish and others have
shown) tend to occur in hypnagogic or sleep-like states, the conditions are
clearly the same. The symbolism of an art, and notably music, is due to the
very conditions of the art, which exclude any appeal to other senses. The
primitive mind reaches symbolism through a similar condition of things, coming
as the result of ignorance and undeveloped powers of apperception. In insanity
these powers are morbidly disturbed or destroyed, with the same result.

43 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

mally heightened in dreams. Every impression reaches sleeping con-
sciousness through this emotional atmosphere, in an enlarged form,
vaguer it may be, but more massive. The sleeping brain is thus not
dealing with actual impressions — if we are justified in speaking of the
impressions of waking life as " actual " — even when actual impressions
are being made upon it, but with transformed impressions. The prob-
lem before it is to find an adequate cause, not for the actual impression
but for the transformed and enlarged impression. Under these cir-
cumstances symbolism is quite inevitable. Even when the nature of
an excitation is rightly perceived its quality can not be rightly perceived.
The dreamer may be able to perceive that he is being bitten but the
massive and profound impression of a bite which reaches his dreaming
consciousness would not be adequately accounted for by the supposition
of the real mosquito that is the cause of it ; the only adequate explana-
tion of the transformed impression received is to be found (as in a
dream of my own) in a creature as large as a lobster. This creature is
the symbol of the real mosquito.13 We have the same phenomenon
under somewhat similar conditions in the intoxication of chloroform
and nitrous oxide.

The obscuration during sleep of the external sensory channels and
the checks on false conclusions they furnish is not alone sufficient to
explain the symbolism of dreams. The dissociation of thought during
sleep, with the diminished attention and apperception involved, is also
a factor. The magnification of special isolated sensory impressions in
dreaming consciousness is associated with a general bluntness, even an
absolute quiescence, of the external sensory mechanism. One part of
the organism, and it seems usually a visceral part, is thus apt to mag-
nify its place in consciousness at the expense of the rest. As Vaschide
and Pieron say, during sleep "the internal sensations develop at the
expense of the peripheral sensations." That is indeed the secret of the
immense emotional turmoil of our dreams. Yet it is very rare for
these internal sensations to reach the sleeping brain as what they are.
They become conscious not as literal messages, but as symbolical trans-
formations. The excited or laboring heart recalls to the brain no mem-
ory of itself but some symbolical image of excitement or labor. There

13 The magnification we experience in dreams is manifested in their emo-
tional aspects and in the emotional transformation of actual sensory stimuli,
from without or from within the organism. The size of objects recalled by
dreaming memory usually remains unchanged, and if changed it seems to be
more usually diminished. " Lilliputian hallucinations," as they are termed by
Leroy, who has studied them (Revue de Psychiatric, 1909, No. 8), in which
diminutive, and frequently colored, people are observed, may occasionally occur
in alcoholic and chloral intoxication, in circular insanity and in various other
morbid mental conditions. They are usually agreeable in character, and con-
stitute a micropsia which is supposed to be due to some disturbance in the
cortex of the brain.

THE SYMBOLISM OF DREAMS 49

is association, indeed, but it is association not along the matter-of-fact
lines of our ordinary waking civilized life but along much more funda-
mental and primitive channels, which in waking life we have now aban-
doned or never knew.

There is another consideration which may be put forward to account
for one group of dream-symbolisms. It has been found that certain
hysterical subjects of old standing when in the hypnotic state are able to
receive mental pictures of their own viscera, even though they may be
quite ignorant of any knowledge of the shape of these viscera. This
autoscopy, as it has been called, has been specially studied by Fere,
Comar and Sollier.14 Hysteria is a condition which is in many respects
closely allied to sleep, and if it is to be accepted as a real fact that
autoscopy occasionally occurs in the abnormal psychic state of hypnotic
sleep in hysterical persons, it is possible to ask whether it may not some-
times occur normally in the allied state of sleep. In the hypnotic state
it is known that parts of the organism normally involuntary may be-
come subject to the will; it is not incredible that similarly parts nor-
mally insensitive may become sufficiently sensitive to reveal their own
shape or condition. We may thus indeed the more easily understand
those premonitory dreams in which the dreamer becomes conscious of
morbid conditions which are not perceptible to awaking consciousness
until they have attained a greater degree of intensity.

The recognition of the transformation in dream life of internal
sensations into symbolic motor imagery is ancient. Hippocrates said
that to dream, for instance, of springs and wells denoted some disturb-
ance of the bladder. Sometimes the symbolism aroused by visceral
processes remains physiological; thus indigestion frequently leads to
dreams of eating, as of chewing all sorts of inedible and repulsive sub-
stances, and occasionally — it would seem more abnormally — to agree-
able dreams of food.

It is due to the genius of Professor Sigmund Freud, of Vienna —
to-day the most daring and original psychologist in the field of morbid
psychic phenomena — that we owe the long-neglected recognition of the
large place of symbolism in dreaming. Schemer had argued in favor
of this aspect of dreams, but he was an undistinguished and unreliable
psychologist and his arguments failed to be influential. Freud avows
himself a partisan of Schemer's theory of dreaming and opponent of
all other theories,15 but his treatment of the matter is incomparably

"Sollier, " L'Autoscopie Interne," Revue Philosophique, January, 1903.
Sollier deals with the objections made to the reality of the phenomenon.

25 Freud, "Die Traumdentung," p. 66. This work, published in 1900, is
the chief and most extensive statement of Freud's views. A shorter statement
is embodied in a little volume of the " Grenzfriigen " Series, " Ueber den Traum,"
1901. A brief exposition of j. reud's position is given by Dr. A. Maeder of
Zurich in " Essai d'Interpretation de Quelques Rgves," Archives de Psychologie,

VOL. LXXVII. — 4.

5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

more searching and profound. Freud, however, goes far beyond the
fundamental — and, as I believe, undeniable — proposition that dream-
imagery is largely sjnnbolic. He holds that behind the symbolism of
dreams there lies ultimately a wish; he believes, moreover, that this
wish tends to be really of more or less sexual character, and, further,
that it is tinged by elements that go back to the dreamer's infantile
days. As Freud views the mechanism of dreams, it is far from exhibit-
ing mere disordered mental activity, but is (much as he has also argued
hysteria to be) the outcome of a desire, which is driven back by a kind
of inhibition or censure (i. e., that kind of moral check which is still
more alert in the waking state) and is seeking new forms of expression.
There is first in the dream the process of what Freud calls condensation
(Verdichtung), a process which is that fusion of strange elements which
must be recognized at the outset of every discussion of dreaming, but
Freud maintains that in this fusion all the elements have a point in
common, and overlie one another like the pictures in a Galtonian com-
posite photograph. Then there comes the process of displacement or
transference ( Verschrebung), a process by which the really central and
emotional basis of the dream is concealed beneath trifles. Then there is
the process of dramatization or transformation into a concrete situation
of which the elements have a symbolic value. Thus, as Maeder puts
it,1G summarizing Freud's views, " behind the apparently insignificant
events of the day utilized in the dream there is always an important
idea or event hidden. We only dream of things that are worth while.
What at first sight seems to be a trifle is a gray wall which hides a great
palace. The significance of the dream is not so much held in the dream
itself as in that substratum of it which has not passed the threshold
and which analysis alone can bring to light."

" We only dream of things that are worth while." That is the
point at which many of us are no longer able to follow Freud. That
dreams of the type studied by Freud do actually occur may be accepted ;
it may even be considered proved. But to assert that all dreams must
be made to fit into this one formula is to make far too large a demand.
As regards the presentative element in dreams — the element that is

April, 1907; as also by Ernest Jones, "Freud's Theory of Dreams," Review of
Neurology and Psychiatry, March, 1910, and American Journal of Psychology,
April, 1910. For Freud's general psychological doctrine, see Brill's translation
of " Freud's Selected Papers on Hysteria," 1909. There have been many serious
criticisms of Freud's methods. As an example of such criticism, accompanying
an exposition of the methods reference may be made to Max Isserlin's " Die
Psychoanalytische Methode Freuds," Zeitschrift fur die Gesamte Neurologie
und Psychiatrie, Bd. I., Heft 1, 1910. A judicious and qualified criticism of
Freud's psychotherapeutic methods is given by Lowenfeld, " Zum gegenwiirtigen
Stande der Psychotherapeutie," Miinchener medizinische Wochenschrift, Nos. 3
and 4, 1910.

ieLoc. cit., p. 374.

THE SYMBOLISM OF DREAMS 51

based on actual sensory stimulation — it is in most cases unreasonable
to invoke Freud's formula at all. If when I am asleep the actual song
of a bird causes me to dream that I am at a concert, that picture may
be regarded as a natural symbol of the actual sensation and it is un-
reasonable to expect that psycho-analysis could reveal any hidden per-
sonal reason why the symbol should take the form of a concert. And,
if so, then Freud's formula fails to hold good for phenomena which
cover one of the two main divisions of dreams, even on a superficial
classification, and perhaps enter into all dreams.

But even if we take dreams of the remaining or representative class
— the dreams made up of images not directly dependent on actual sen-
sation— we still have to maintain a cautious attitude. A very large
proportion of the dreams in this class seem to be, so far as the personal
life is concerned, in no sense " worth while." It would, indeed, be sur-
prising if they were. It seems to be fairly clear that in sleep, as cer-
tainly in the Irypnagogic state, attention is diminished, and apperceptive
power weakened. That alone seems to involve a relaxation of the ten-
sion by which we will and desire our personal ends. At the same time
by no longer concentrating our psychic activities at the focus of desire
it enables indifferent images to enter more easily the field of sleeping
consciousness. It might even be argued that the activity of desire
when it manifests itself in sleep and follows the course indicated by
Freud, corresponds to a special form of sleep in which attention and
apperception, though in modified forms, are more active than in ordi-
nary sleep.17 Such dreams seem to occur with special frequency, or in
more definitely marked forms, in the neurotic and especially the hys-
terical, and if it is true that the hysterical are to some extent asleep
even when they are awake, it may also be said that they are to some
extent awake even when they are asleep. Freud certainly holds, prob-
ably with truth, that there is no fundamental distinction between
normal people and ps}rchoneurotic people, and that there is, for in-
stance, as Ferenczi says emphasizing this point, " a streak of hysterical
disposition in everybody." Freud has, indeed, made interesting an-
alytic studies of his own dreams, but the great body of material accu-
mulated by him and his school is derived from the dreams of the
neurotic. Thus Stekel states that he has analyzed many thousand

17 This is supported by the fact that in waking revery, or day-dreams, wishes
are obviously the motor force in building up visionary structures. Freud at-
taches great importance to revery, for he considers that it furnishes the key to
the comprehension of dreams (e. g., " Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur Neuro-
senlehre," 2d series, pp. 138 ct seq., 197 et seq.) . But it must be remembered
that day-dreaming is not real dreaming which takes place under altogether
different physiological conditions, although it may quite fairly be claimed that
day-dreaming represents a state intermediate between ordinary waking con-
sciousness and consciousness during sleep.

52 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

dreams, but his lengthy study on the interpretation of dreams deals
exclusively with the dreams of the neurotic.18 Stekel believes, more-
over, that from the structure of the dream life conclusions may be
drawn not only as to the life and character of the dreamer, but also as
to his neurosis, the hysterical person dreaming differently from the
obsessed person, and so on. If that is the case we are certainly justified
in doubting whether conclusions drawn from the study of the dreams
of neurotic people can be safely held to represent the normal dream-
life, even though it may be true that there is no definite frontier be-
tween them.19 Whatever may be the case among the neurotic, in ordi-
nary normal sleep the images that drift across the field of consciousness,
though they have a logic of their own, seem in a large proportion of
cases to be quite explicable without resort to the theory that they stand
in vital but concealed relationship to our most intimate self.

Even in waking life, and at normal moments which are not those
of revery, it seems possible to trace the appearance in the field of con-
sciousness of images which are evoked neither by any mental or physical
circumstance of the moment, or any hidden desire, images that are as
disconnected from the immediate claims of desire and even of association
as those of dreams seem so largely to be. It sometimes occurs to me —
as doubtless it occurs to other people — that at some moment when my
thoughts are normally occupied with the work immediately before me,
then suddenly appears on the surface of consciousness a totally unre-
lated picture. A scene arises, vague but usually recognizable, of some
city or landscape — Australian, Russian, Spanish, it matters not what —
seen casually long years ago, and possibly never thought of since, and
possessing no kind of known association either with the matter in hand
or with my personal life generally. It comes to the surface of con-
sciousness as softly, as unexpectedly, as disconnectedly, as a minute
bubble might arise and break on the surface of an actual stream from
ancient organic material silently disintegrating in the depths beneath.20

18 The special characteristics of dreaming in the hysterical were studied,
before Freud turned his attention to the question, by Sante de Sanctis, " I Sogni
e il Sonno nelF Isterismo," 1896.

19 See also Havelock Ellis, " Studies in the Psychology of Sex," Vol. I.,
3d ed., 1910, " Autoerotism."

20 Gissing, the novelist, an acute observer of psychic states, in the most
personal of his books, " The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft," has described
this phenomenon: "Every one, I suppose, is subject to a trick of mind which
often puzzles me. I am reading or thinking, and at a moment, without any
association or suggestion that 1 can discover, there rises before me the vision of
a place I know. Impossible to explain why that particular spot should show
itself to my mind's eye; the cerebral impulse is so subtle that no search may
trace its origin." Gissing proceeds to say that a thought, a phrase, an odor,
a touch, a posture of the body, may possibly have furnished the link of associa-
tion, but lie knows no evidence for this theory.

THE SYMBOLISM OF DREAMS 53

Every one who has traveled much can not fail to possess, hidden in his
psychic depths a practically infinite number of such forgotten pictures,
devoid of all personal emotion. It is possible to maintain, as a matter
of theory, that when they come up to consciousness, they are evoked by
some real though untraceable resemblance which they possess with the
psychic or physical state existing when they reappear. But that theory
can not be demonstrated. Nor, it may be added, is it more plausible
than the simple but equally unprovable theory that such scenes do really
come to the surface of consciousness, as the result of some slight spon-
taneous disintegration in a minute cerebral center and have no more
immediately preceding psychic cause than my psychic realization of
the emergence of the sun from behind a cloud has any psychic preceding
cause.

Similarly, in insanity, Liepmann in his study " Ueber Ideenflucht "
has forcibly argued that ordinary logorrhea — the incontinence of ideas
linked together by superficial associations of resemblance or contiguity
— is a linking without direction, that is, corresponding to no interest,
either practical or theoretical, of the individual. Or, as Claparede puts
it, logorrhea is a trouble in the reaction of interest in life. It seems
most reasonable to believe that in ordinary sleep the flow of imagery
follows, for the most part, the same easy course. That course may to
waking consciousness often seem peculiar, but to waking consciousness
the conditions of dreaming life are peculiar. Under these conditions,
however, we may well believe that the tendency to movement in the
direction of least resistance still prevails. And as attention and will
are weakened and loosened during sleep, the tense concentration on
personal ends must also be relaxed. We become more disinterested.
Personal desire tends for the most part rather to fall into the back-
ground than to become more prominent. If it were not a period in
which desire were ordinarily relaxed sleep would cease to be a period of
rest and recuperation.

Sleeping consciousness is a vast world, a world only less vast than
that of waking consciousness. It is futile to imagine that a single
formula can cover all its manifold varieties and all its degrees of depth.
Those who imagine that all dreaming is a symbolism which a single
cypher will serve to interpret must not be surprised if, however un-
justly, they are thought to resemble those persons who claim to find
on every page of Shakespeare a cypher revealing the authorship of
Bacon. In the case of Freud's theory of dream interpretation, I hold
the cypher to be real, but I believe that it is impossible to regard so
narrow and exclusive an interpretation as adequate to explain the whole
world of dreams. It would, a priori, be incomprehensible that sleeping
consciousness should exert so extraordinary a selective power among
the variegated elements of waking life, and, experientially, there seems

54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

no adequate ground to suppose that it does exert such selective action.
On the contrary, it is, for the most part, supremely impartial in bring-
ing forward and combining all the manifestations, the most trivial as
well as the most intimate, of our waking life. There is a symptom of
mental disorder called extrospection in which the patient fastens his
attention so minutely on events that he comes to interpret the most
trifling signs and incidents as full of hidden significance, and may so
build up a systematized delusion.21 The investigator of dreams must
always bear in mind the risk of falling into morbid extrospection.

Such considerations seem to indicate that it is not true that every
dream, every mental image, is " worth while," though at the same time
they by no means diminish the validity of special and purposive methods
of investigating dream consciousness. Freud and those who are fol-
lowing him have shown, by the expenditure of much patience and skill,
that his method of dream-interpretation may in many cases yield
coherent results which it is not easy to account for by chance. It is
quite possible, however, to recognize Freud's service in vindicating the
large places of symbolism in dream, and to welcome the application of
his psycho-analytic method to dreams, while yet denying that this is the
only method of interpreting dreams. Freud argues that all dreaming
is purposive and significant and that we must put aside the belief that
dreams are the mere trivial outcome of the dissociated activity of brain
centers. It remains true, however, that, while reason plays a larger
part in dreams than most people realize — the activity of dissociated
brain centers furnishes one of the best keys to the explanation of psychic
phenomena during sleep. It would be difficult to believe in any case
that in the relaxation of sleep our thoughts are still pursuing a delib-
erately purposeful direction under the control of our waking impulses.
Many facts indicate — though Freud's school may certainly claim that
such facts have not been thoroughly interpreted — that, as a matter of
fact, this control is often conspicuously lacking. There is, for instance,
the well-known fact that our most recent and acute emotional experi-
ences— precisely those which might most ardently formulate themselves
in a wish — are rarely mirrored in our dreams, though recent occurrences
of more trivial nature, as well as older events of more serious import,
easily find place there. That is easily accounted for by the supposition
— not quite in a line with a generalized wish-theory — that the ex-
hausted emotions of the day find rest at night.

It must also be said that even when we admit that a strong emotion
may symbolically construct an elaborate dream edifice which needs
analysis to be interpreted, we narrow the process unduly if we assert
that the emotion is necessarily a wish. Desire is certainly very funda-

21 Extrospection has been specially studied by Vaschide and Vurpas in " La
Logique Morbide."

TEE SYMBOLISM OF DREAMS 55

mental in life and very primitive. But there is another equally fun-
damental and primitive emotion — fear.22 We may very well expect to
find this emotion, as well as desire, subjacent to dream phenomena.23
The wish-dream of the kind elaborately investigated by Freud may
be accepted as, in what he terms its infantile form, extremely common,
and, even in its symbolic forms, a real and not rare phenomenon. But
it is impossible to follow Freud when he declares that the wish-dream
is the one and only type of dream. The world of psychic life during
sleep is, like the waking world, rich and varied; it can not be covered
by a single formula. Freud's subtle and searching analytic genius has
greatly contributed to enlarge our knowledge of this world of sleep.
We may recognize the value of his contribution to the psychology of
dreams while refusing to accept a premature and narrow generalization.

22 On the psychic importance of fears, see G. Stanley Hall, " A Study of
Fears," American Journal of Psychology, 1897, p. 183. Metchnikoff ("Essais
Optimistes," pp. 247 et seq.) insists on the mingled fear and strength of the
anthropoid apes.

23 Foucault has pointed this out, and Morton Prince, and Giessler (who
admits that the wish-dream is common in children), and Flournoy (who remarks
that not only a fear but any emotion can be equally effective), as well as
Claparede. The last admits that Freud might regard a fear as a suppressed
desire, but it may equally be said that a desire involves, on its reverse side, a
fear. Freud has indeed himself pointed out (e. g., Jahrbuch fur Psychoan-
alytische Forschangen, Bd. 1, 1909, p. 362) that fears may be instinctively
combined with wishes; he regards the association with a wish of an opposing
fear as one of the components of some morbid psychic states. But he holds
that the wish is the positive and fundamental element : " The unconscious can
only wish" ("Das Unbewussie kann nichts als wtinschen"), a statement that
.seems somewhat too metaphysical for the psychologist.

56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

MODEEN MEDIEVALISM

By Dr. FRANK T. CARLTON

ALBION COLLEGE

HISTOEY moves in a spiral, not in a circle. History does not
accommodatingly repeat itself; but it does pass through cycles
in which new eras contain social elements and forces which approxi-
mate those of periods belonging to earlier cycles. The new is merely
the old garbed in more modern attire. The United States is to-day
entering upon an epoch in its history which will be marked, in the
economic field, by many resemblances to the medieval period. The
fundamental economic problems of medievalism clustered around just
and fair prices and wages. At present the important and difficult eco-
nomic problems relate to " reasonable rates," " fair prices " and " living
wages." In the twentieth century when these old medieval questions
clothed in a strange and youthful garb, appear in an industrial and
nominally democratic country and age, the crux of the difficulty is
found in the absence of a standard by means of which to measure fair
prices, reasonable rates and living wages. The old and rigid status of
the feudal regime has disappeared in a large measure under the pres-
sure of the doctrines of free competition and of non-interference.
Mobility, rather than fixity, is characteristic of to-day.

The nineteenth century was a unique and transitional era ; it consti-
tuted the dark ages of economic history. During that eventful period,
it was assumed that prices, rates and wages were fixed by the ceaseless
action of free and untrameled competition. But, to-day, the existence
of numerous rate and arbitration commissions is a concrete and unmis-
takable warning that free competition does not act at the present
moment as our theorists of the past have dogmatically argued that it
did. Day by day the competitive field is being gradually narrowed.
A strip is securely fenced in on this side; and another portion en-
croached upon at an entirely different point. At the present moment
great and important fields of industrial activity are clearly seen to be
outside the competitive sphere. It must, however, be recognized that
competition in the halcyon days of the laissez faire doctrine was not
really free. It was modified and regulated by such legal conventions
as private property, inheritance, laws in regard to contract, custom
and a variety of other obstructions. The game of economic competi-
tion among human beings has always been played according to certain
rules. But these rules change. Custom is broken down, on one hand,
while monopoly encroaches upon the competitive field, on the other side.

The thinking public correctly recognizes that railway and street
railway fares, gas, electric light, water, telephone and telegraph rates
are not fixed by a competitive process. Insistent demand is made for
fair and reasonable rates in this class of semi-public service. The labor

MODERN MEDIEVALISM 57

unionist struggles for fair and living wages. Even the individualistic
American farmers are earnestly striving to fix " fair " prices for their
wheat, oats, corn, tobacco and other crops. Australia attempts to make
the application of a protective tariff to a given establishment dependent
upon the payment of " fair " wages to the employees of that concern.
A Wisconsin commission is industriously placing a valuation upon the
physical property of the public utilities corporations of that state, in
order that " reasonable " rates may be promulgated by that official body.
In this manner, the ground is being rapidly cut from under the com-
petitive basis of price regulation. Our commercial edifice still rests on
this substructure ; but the foundation walls are crumbling, and ominous
cracks which presage decay and demolition are appearing in the struc-
ture. Society is impregnated with the idea that competition is no
longer efficient and sufficient as a guide. From all sections of the
country come reports of rate commissions, boards of arbitration, gentle-
men's agreements, combinations and legal actions against restraint
of trade.

With the narrowing of the competitive sphere the question as to
what is a just, accurate and scientific standard of measurement for
wages, prices and rates becomes increasingly important; and, at the
same time, it becomes more difficult to solve because the basis of com-
petitive rates, prices and wages is being undermined. In fact, if no
standard can be found, socialism or anarchy seem to be the only alterna-
tives. Much of the discussion and theorizing as to the respective rights
of labor and capital is worthless because either free competition is
assumed, or reference is made to prices or wages paid in the past; or
some arbitrary standard is postulated which has no reality outside the
personal desires of certain individuals or classes.

No court of arbitration or board of conciliation has as yet offered
any definite and scientific formula by means of which disputes as to
wages or conditions of labor may be adjusted. The findings of that
famous board of arbitration, the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission,
merely offered a compromise; the commission did not dig down to the
roots of the difficulty. Neither did an anxious public receive any exact
data or the formulation of any definite method of procedure which
might be used as a basis for the work of future boards. A peace was
patched up, and the mines were opened. The members of the strike
commission honestly and faithfully tried to take into account the phys-
ical, social and economic conditions then existing in the anthracite
district. They investigated the home and working environment of the
miner; his condition was compared with that of other workers. Yet
after all, the principal value of this investigation consisted in empha-
sizing the rights of the general public. The decisions of the Interstate
Commerce Commission and of the various state railway and public
utilities commissions as to reasonable rates are invariably determined
by reference to profits received upon investments in competitive busi-

58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

nesses. An Ohio judge in dissolving a combination of ice dealers
ordered the reestablishment of the price charged during the preceding
year.

The decision of this judge bears a close resemblance to the action
of the English government as to wages immediately after the black
death. The present movement toward the regulation of prices, rates
and wages is distinctly a reversion to conditions preceding the nine-
teenth century; and the importance and extent of the movement will
necessitate a thorough search for a reliable and scientific standard for
the determination of fair wages and fair prices. The medievalists
had a very definite conception of fair price; men of to-day are not so
favored. During the middle ages these problems were solved by means
of the inelastic measuring rod of status, or of class demarkation. Each
class in the community had its own rather definite and customary
standard of living; and the summit of personal ambition was success
within a limited social and economic sphere rather than that of progress
from one class to the next higher. Ambition was curbed and chastened
by the great fact of birth within a given social compartment. The
attempt was made so to regulate prices as to maintain class immobility.
"With the advent of the era of competition the rigidity of class demarka-
tion was destroyed; and a democratic form of government resting on
broad suffrage requirements makes a return improbable. The modern
student or statesman instead of resting his theory of fair price upon a
basis of special privilege, must place it upon the firm foundation of
equality of privileges, upon the abolition of artificial and inherited
inequalities. This return to medievalism does not mean a return to
artificial and unyielding class demarkations. Society is moving toward
a point farther up on the spiral of history. The return to medievalism
does mean the elimination of forced and monopoly gains; and is a
natural and inevitable product of the progress toward democracy.

If the cornerstone upon which medieval writers based their doc-
trines regarding fair price has been removed by the increasing power
of the non-privileged class ; what is left upon which to build a new and
democratic doctrine of fair price ? In the modern formulation of the
doctrine, a fair price for an article or a service is one which will give
to the workers who have any useful part in getting the article into the
hands of the final consumer, whether that part be in obtaining the raw
material, transforming or exchanging these materials, a " fair wage."
A fair price will also give to capital a " reasonable rate " of interest,
and to the entrepreneur or manager — the man whose genius guides and
directs the business — such a return as will keep him in the business and
will call forth his best efforts. A fair price does not contain elements
which go to make up monopoly profits, or to reward the efforts of
unnecessary workers in the complex system of modern industry. This
is the basic principle upon which the new economic edifice must be
anchored. Competition has led to combination, and combination to

MODERN MEDIEVALISM 59

monopoly. A theory of price is needed which preserves the economic
value of combination; and, at the same time, removes the evil features
of special privileges and of monopoly.

A fair wage is as yet a very elusive and indefinite concept. A fair
wage for an unskilled worker would not be a fair wage for the skilled
man. The needs of the man are, in the last analysis, the chief factors
in determining fair wages. Subjective, rather than objective, consid-
erations have the greatest weight in the eye of modern man. Here is
a point of contrast between the modern and the medieval view point.
Again, social considerations enter into the problem. How will the man
make use of his income ? Society desires that a large income go to the
man who will make the best use of it — the use which will tend to
advance the progress of humanity. A multitude of different opinions
will be expressed as to the best uses of income; but certain fundamental
conditions are almost universally accepted. Excessive luxury and
wasteful consumption in living, in eating, in drinking and the like, are
condemned at the bar of society. In general, it is for the good of
society that expenditures for luxuries be sent for durable goods rather
than upon highly perishable commodities. A fair price for all articles
and services would tend to place wealth and income in the hands of
those best fitted to handle it ; those who would make the best use of it
judged from the somewhat theoretical view-point of society as a whole,
but not from the standpoint of any special class in the community.
A fair wage in an ideal industrial organism would give to each accord-
ing to his needs; and needs would be proportional to efficiency.

Distribution must now be considered from a non-competitive point
of view; and the storm center of discussion will be found in the treat-
ment of rents or monopoly gains. Wages are individual products ; but
interest and rents must be held to be social, or at least semi-social,
products. Social evolution has, it is true, made possible the existing
rates of wages ; but a sharp line of demarkation may be drawn between
wages on the one side, and rent and interest on the other. Individual
traits and characteristics play an important part in fixing wages. On
the contrary, rents accrue because of social progress, not because of
individual efficiency. The man who invests capital is frequently able
to gain a personally unearned income, to draw dividends, for example,
upon watered stocks. But the man who furnishes his labor receives no
extra or special gain. He runs no risk; but in a multitude of cases,
the returns accruing to the caj)italist or the promoter bear no discern-
ible relation to the risk involved. Individuals are able magically to
make capital — paper capital, but of a kind that bears interest. Labor
is unable by any sleight-of-hand performance to double or treble "its
equipment. A dollar may through stock watering, aided by gifts of
franchises and rights of way or by special privileges, be apparently
changed into two dollars and draw the income of two; but the laborer
in the same business can not make it appear that he has four hands or

6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

a dual personality as a worker, and thus double his pay check. In the
matter of market opportunity the opportunity is with capital, not with
labor. Extra income due to special advantages is capitalized in money,
not in labor power.

" Fair " interest and " fair " profits may be manipulated through
capitalization of special privileges ; but " fair " wages can not be so
acted upon. The man stands out in the open. Fair wages are kept
down because fair interest and fair profits are so elusive; and because
rents are concealed under the guise of interest upon concrete capital,
or of profits due to skilful management. If the capital of the country
were expressed only in terms of concrete tangible goods, as is proposed
by the Wisconsin law, the disproportion between fair wages and fair
profits and interest would be evident. The enormous gains of monopoly
would then inevitably attract such attention that they would be cut off
to some extent at least, and the long distance, impersonal and indirect
form of tribute taking would be reduced ; although a scientific basis for
determining fair wages, interest and profits may not be found.

But there are other tangible bits of evidence which bring to the
nostrils of the investigator the musty smell of medievalism. A corpora-
tion furnishing a municipality with water which is supposed to be taken
from artesian wells, finds it feasible and perhaps cheaper to introduce,
into the water mains, without notice to the consumers of the city, pol-
luted water from a river. As a consequence, sickness and death invade
many happy homes in the little city. Another company producing a
food product uses a deleterious preservative to enable it to foist a par-
tially spoiled article upon an ignorant and unsuspecting public. Sick-
ness, ill-health, reduced efficiency and even death follow unnoticed in
the wake of the packages sent broadcast over the land. A railway
company neglects to guard its street crossings or to protect its trainmen
because of the additional expense connected with such improvements.
Again, dead and maimed men, women and children are the direct
results of the policy of the heads of the company. This disregard for
employees and consumers which is by no means confined to a few
isolated cases, is not unlike the nonchalance with which the knight and
baron of the middle ages directed the destruction of the homes and the
crops of his adversaries and competitors. The toll of the monopolist
collected in prices made arbitrarily high is not very different from the
toll exacted at the point of the sword by the robber baron.

In the medieval period, a multitude of evils resulted from the inter-
ference of the church in secular affairs. To-day political chicanery and
corruption are the fruits of the interference of big business interests
in legislative affairs. The trust has replaced the church as a dangerous
meddler in political affairs. And the alliance between capital and the
state is as dangerous, as reactionary and as intolerant as was the
medieval alliance of church and state. Economic heresy is now almost
as bitterly condemned as was religious heresy in earlier centuries.

NATURE OF DISEASE AND OF ITS CURE 61

THE NATURE OF DISEASE AND OF ITS CURE

By Dk. JAMES FREDERICK ROGERS

TALE UNIVERSITY

THE earliest explanation of disease, corresponding to the ideas of
nature which first impressed the dawning human consciousness,
was that the usual working of the body had been upset by the entrance
into it of an evil spirit. This spirit proceeded to disturb the " ease "
of the body of the sick man, causing it to reject and eject food, racking
it with pain, and burning it with the slow fire of fever, and even talking
through its lips in incoherent or mysterious utterances. So satisfactory
an explanation did this seem that, in modified form, it has a hold with
the more superstitious even in the present day.

Such being the cause for his sufferings, the primitive man was
prompt to see that the cure should be the driving out of the evil spirit
which had taken up its abode in the body, by the most appropriate
methods. The medicine man of the tribe assumed a superior knowledge
in such affairs and took upon himself the responsibility of dealing with
these unseen powers. Working upon the reasonable assumption that
what appealed to human senses must also appeal to the dwellers in the
spirit realm, that what was agreeable or disagreeable to one must be
agreeable or disagreeable to the other, this healer proceeded to make it
very unpleasant for the tormentor of the sick man by appearing before
him in his most hideous garb, by the repetition of frightful cries and
thunderous thumpings upon his tom-tom, while draughts made of the
most vile and disgusting substances were poured down the throat of
the victim in the hope that the spirit would be induced to let go his hold
and depart. It was the most logical treatment imaginable, and it
seemed so proved by the fact that the sick man very often recovered.
Nor did the primitive mind stop at the mere driving out of the source
of disease, but followed up its success in this direction by equally
rational attempts at prevention by the wearing of some magic object
to keep away the demon of sickness in the future.

As men became more observant and thoughtful, it became apparent
that certain physical conditions seemed to have much to do with the
presence of sickness. While the spirit realm might be finally respon-
sible for the singling out of the sufferer, yet extremes of heat and cold,
dampness, lack of food, and some other agencies were seen to be get-at-
able causes. Moreover, it was discovered, more or less accidentally,
that the application of heat and cold, bathing, rubbing, and the use of

62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

certain plants often gave comfort and apparently often helped the sick
man to recover. So arose the more materialistic cure of disease and
the profession of physicians.

By those who studied disease from the more material standpoint
many theories were devised to explain the phenomena displayed by the
sick. The lack of knowledge of the minute or even the gross structure
of the body and its working in health, necessarily made all these
attempts at explanation more or less crude and imperfect. Every con-
ceivable " cure " was tried from age to age, and, no matter what the
means employed, whether gold or clay, sassafras or tar water, whether
the patient was bled or whether sharp hooks were applied to his flesh
in order to " draw out the humors," always a certain percentage of
patients recovered from the disease and survived the treatment. For
the time, at least, the " cure " was apparently justified by the results,
and held its place in practise until a change of theories or an unusually
long list of failures threw it into disrepute, and it was relegated to the
list of things which " have been used but are now found of little value."
The more obvious causes of disease — intemperance, exposure to heat
and cold, exhaustion, etc. — were early connected with certain forms of
bodily ailments, and even diseases like malaria were known to depend
somewhat on local conditions of living, but it is only within recent
years that such common affections as pneumonia, tuberculosis, influenza,
etc., have been found to have a tangible cause working within the body.
With the discovery of bacteria and their poisons there still remained
the questions, What is disease? Why, even in times of plague, are
some persons exempt? and why do certain persons recover and others
succumb even with the same treatment?

We can no longer look upon sickness as due to the presence within
or without us of an evil-natured personality. We must reverse the idea
and say that disease is the manifestation of a good consciousness within
us, a consciousness which seeks to maintain life by endeavoring to rid
the body of a harmful material presence. We realize through abnormal
sensations that we are sick — that the body has undergone a change from
the condition of health, but within us is a more elemental intelligence
of which we are not aware, an older body-mind which, whether we sleep
or wake, and even before we are born into consciousness of self, looks
after the highly complex and interdependent structures on which life
depends, constantly directing its complicated affairs with unerring faith-
fulness. Disease may be said to be the effort made by the body, directed
by this deeper mind, in its attempt to rid itself in most appropriate ways
of whatsoever it finds harmful to it, or that threatens its destruction.
A fit of vomiting, in which the conscious mind takes a passive and even
unwilling part, is but the wise attempt on the part of this inner con-
sciousness to rid the body of that which it finds to be harmful. In the

NATURE OF DISEASE AND OF ITS CURE 63

case of the presence of bacteria, they are at once detected by this bodily
consciousness, though the higher consciousness is unaware of their pres-
ence. The agencies within the blood, capable of destroying the germs
and of neutralizing their poisons, are set to work at high pressure. To
the higher consciousness and to the observing mind of another person
these efforts become apparent in higher bodily temperature (fever), a
more rapid pulse and increased respiration. The bodily machinery is
stirred to higher activity, its fires are heightened, and its organs are
quickened. Germ-destroying substances are being made in greatest
possible amount. The " signs and symptoms " of the disease, or these
outward manifestations of internal activity, differ with the kind of
germs and with their numbers, the body working more or less character-
istically in each case, so that for each germ the " symptoms and signs "
are an index to the cause.

Such a disease or body-fight must " run its course," and, no matter
what the treatment, that course can at best only be shortened, or the
struggle of the body with its enemy made less exhausting by help from
without. Where the number of bacteria is large or especially vicious,
or where the bodily powers are inadequate for promptly developing its
resisting powers, the fight of the body may be of no avail, even with the
most skillful aid. On the other hand, if the bacteria are few and the
bodily powers are vigorous, the patient will recover even with the most
absurd treatment. It is easy to see why the medicine man of primitive
society and the miracle workers of a later age often succeeded in
" driving out " disease and in effecting apparently marvelous cures.

After once having an infectious disease, such as typhoid, or measles,
the body is often exempt from an attack by the same germ. We now
know it is not because of special divine favor bestowed upon the indi-
vidual, but because the body, after passing through one struggle with
the bacteria, keeps on hand afterwards a defensive material which
quickly destroys any germs of the same kind which find an entrance.

Even in times of epidemics and among those associated with the sick,
a certain number of persons always escape without serious signs of the
prevailing disease. While the germs no doubt often attack such per-
sons, their protective powers are so perfect that the machinery of the
body does not have to be put at work in such a degree as to produce any
conscious outward signs of the disease.

For some of these bacterial invasions modern medicine has invented
the wonderful expedient of producing, in other animals, similar sub-
stances to those which the human body manufactures in its fight against
the germs. By inoculating these into the human body the microbes
can be prevented from gaining a lodgment, or the body can be greatly
aided in its fight against them. Although the body can be thus
aided in diphtheria and meningitis, for the attacks of most germs it

64 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

must still depend on its own resources in a successful fight against the
marauders.

Most of the infectious diseases are of short duration, the body
triumphing or failing in its fight in from one to five or six weeks; yet
some such fights are long drawn out, and, as in tuberculosis, may cover
many years, the disease — the fight — varying in success with the re-
sources of the body and with the amount of drain of bodily energy in
other directions. Whether brief or long drawn out, whether acute or
chronic, the bodily antagonists often leave scars in the shape of dam-
aged organs — lasting ills which serve to render the body less perfect in
its working than before, and also leave their impress on the higher con-
sciousness in feelings of weakness and discomfort.

Besides the bacteria and their poisonous products, other things pro-
duce disease more or less insidiously. While the body naturally rids
itself through certain organs of the waste matter — the ashes and smoke
of its daily activities, continued excesses in eating or drinking throw
extra work upon those organs, which in time wear out under added
burdens. Exhausting work, excesses of heat or cold, and other unusual
conditions also bring about reaction of the inner bodily consciousness
to adjust the body to its surroundings. The body makes the best of a
bad matter and does its utmost to bring itself into harmony with its
outer conditions.

Disease is, then, a life-saving effort of the body, directed by its inner
consciousness, in ridding itself of harmful substances within, or of
compensating for injured or overworked organs. It is the next best
thing to health in that it is nature's way of attempting to bring the
body back to that harmonious working of all parts which we call health,
and often also of producing protecting substances which prevent future
injury from the same source.

While the treatment rendered by the earliest healer, the medicine
man, must seem to us absurd, so far as any direct alleviation of suffering
is concerned, we can not but guess that the hope which his presence and
his, to us, useless efforts inspired in the sufferer, helped not a little to
stimulate, through the mind, the failing bodily forces. Mind and body
are so intimately related that what affects the one affects the other, and
throughout the history of the treatment of disease mental influence has
always been used directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, to
aid in restoring the body to its state of health.

The higher conscious mind is intimately a part of, or a manifesta-
tion of, the body, and is affected by bodily conditions of well or ill being.
While it can take little part in directing the defense against foes which
have gained an entrance to the body, the mental conditions — the emo-
tions of hope or discouragement — indirectly support or depress the
whole of the bodily fighting machinery, for the organ through which

NATURE OF DISEASE AND OF ITS CURE 65

the mind works is closely connected with every other organ of the body
and so influences digestion, circulation and all other functions. Like-
wise the mind is affected by the bodily states. The ill working of
damaged organs may produce a mental state of pain or depression.
These feelings may be heightened or diminished by mental effort, or
may be more or less forgotten, for the time at least, by directing con-
sciousness into some other channel of activity. Disease is, in every
case, modified more or less by the mind, and the mental state may some-
times help to determine the success or failure of bodily fight against
destructive agencies. If appeal to the mind seems to cure the bodily
ill, it does not indicate that the patient would not have recovered any-
how, and does not signify that the mind itself effected the return to
health. ISTo amount of faith or other mental state can take the place
of insufficient body-resources — can restore a damaged lung or a miss-
ing limb.

Disease being thus the attempt of the body to restore itself to its
usual condition by ridding itself of destructive agents, the treatment
of disease must be directed toward helping the body to this end, by
putting the mental and muscular forces at rest, by proper nourishment
and by such antitoxins or drugs as aid it in its natural efforts to rid
itself of harmful conditions. Better still are the efforts toward pre-
vention of infectious and other injuries by the avoidance of intem-
perance in eating and drinking, by breathing fresh air, by cleanliness,
and by such other means as the body demands to keep it at its best
working power. Lastly, the mind should be trained not to meddle too
much with bodily affairs, save as it observes the laws of hygiene, and
it should be educated to deal readily with the trials and vexations of
life in a way that will not affect the general health through depressing
emotional discharges.

It will be seen that our modern faith healers make no difference
between diseases as regards their cause. In their ignorance, comparable
only to that of the primitive medicine man, they deal with all sickness
alike. While the condition of the mind has much to do with some
diseases, with others it has little or no part in the cure, and the body
itself must work out its salvation through that wise inner body-directing
intelligence which the higher mind can not know nor — but to a slight
extent — influence. The faith curist in the conceit of his ignorance
takes the credit for the cures which, through good fortune plus a grain
of mental stimulus, often come to pass under his administrations, while
he who has studied into the physical nature of disease is perfectly aware
that when his patient recovers he has only assisted nature more or less
in what she would probably have accomplished without his help though
usually not so easily and completely and sometimes not at all. It is
this humble knowledge of the limitations of his art that makes the

VOL. X.XXVII. — 5.

66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

physician the more anxious, in this age, to prevent disease, for he realizes
it is much easier to remove the cause than to help the body in its efforts
to throw off the attack. By the purification of drinking water he has
greatly reduced the amount of disease from typhoid; by furnishing
pure milk the sickness and death of infancy have become much less ; by
recommending life in pure air tuberculosis is less frequent, etc. Mere
faith or mind cure has done and can do nothing of the sort. Medical
teaching has also warned against intemperance of all kinds, and against
other insidious destroyers of bodily harmony.

The physician has in all ages made use of mental treatment, for,
no matter what his remedy in physical form, there has always gone
with it a grain of hope. Where he finds the mind especially at fault
he may even appeal to it directly, and thus relieve suffering which had
its origin chiefly in mental depression or in a too exuberant and untu-
tored imagination. He often succeeds in producing more harmony in
bodily working by establishing a happier mental and moral view of life.

As the prevention of the entrance of bacteria or of any other
injurious agent into the body is far more economical than the helping
to overcome the damages these may produce, so the prevention of
unhappy and unhealthy mental states is far better than an attempt to
restore a mind to right habits from which it has lapsed.

In primitive times one minister looked after both the spiritual and
bodily health of the individual. As the doctor of medicine later as-
sumed the cure of the body, so the doctor of divinity took as his special
province the cure of the soul. Mind and body react upon each other,
and he who ministers to the one can not but influence the other to some
extent. While the priest has abundant opportunity for helping to
heal soul-injuries, his larger work, like that of the physician, lies in
surrounding those he would help with better social conditions, and in
developing, through religious and philosophic training, their individual
powers of resistance to the stresses to which the moral nature is daily
subjected. For both physical and spiritual ailments prevention is far
easier and better than cure.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 67

THE PALEONTOLOGIC BECOKD
PALEONTOLOGIC EVIDENCES OF CLIMATE

By T. W. STANTON

U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

TO every one climate is an interesting theme. The climates of the
past, especially when they can be shown to differ in character
or distribution from those of the present, attract the attention of the
general public, and they are of importance to the special student of
geologic history whether his researches deal with the purely physical
aspects of the subject or include some branch of paleontologic study.

The evidence as to former climates comes from many sources. The
records of deposition and denudation in themselves sometimes give
more or less definite indications concerning variations in temperature
or moisture or both; the land floras when compared with those now
living by their general characters and by the details of their structure,
show more or less clearly the climatic conditions under which they
lived; the land animals, especially the higher vertebrates, afford a good
basis for inferring their habits and hence indirectly their environment,
including climate; marine invertebrates give trustworthy evidence of
differences in temperature of oceanic littoral waters at least in the later
periods. It is obvious, however that the data furnished by any one of
these lines of evidence will make only unconnected fragments of the
history of past climates and that the evidence on the climate of any
particular epoch, if derived from a single source, is seldom so complete
or so convincing that corroborative testimony from other sources is not
desirable. The subject is one in which general cooperation is essential.

It should be stated at the outset that the most abundant and most
definite evidence comes from paleobotany, and will be outlined in Mr.
White's paper. The discussion of the data derived from fossil verte-
brates must also be left for some one who is qualified to present it, and
the whole Paleozoic era may be passed over with the statement that so
far as indications from the animal life are concerned the climate of
the whole earth was mild and equable. The proof of local exceptions
to this statement comes from other sources.

All inferences from paleontologic evidence as to former climatic
conditions rest in the final analysis on a comparison with the present
distribution of animals and plants with reference to climate. Such
comparisons may be general or specific, direct or indirect, and the con-

68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

elusions that may be drawn from them vary greatly in positiveness.
To take a familiar example;, the reef-building corals are now restricted
to shallow waters in which the mean temperature during the coldest
month in the year is not less than 68° P., and such conditions are not
found in the northern hemisphere north of latitude 32°. Since late
Tertiary corals differ but little from those of the present time it is
justifiable to assume that coral reefs in late Tertiary rocks indicate
waters of about the temperature stated. But when Jurassic coral reefs
are found as far north as latitude 53° it is by no means so certain that
they indicate a minimum monthly mean temperature of 68° F., and
concerning Devonian and Silurian coral reefs in high latitudes the
doubt must be still greater. At the present time large reptiles are
mainly confined to hot moist climates, but that fact alone can not be
considered proof that the Mesozoic dinosaurs required the same kind
of a climate.

The impress of climate on the present fauna is shown in various
ways. A tropical fauna contains the greatest number of species and
exhibits its luxuriance in other ways. Thus, taking shell-bearing
marine mollusks to illustrate the general law, Dall has shown in Bul-
letin 84, U. S. Geological Surve}r, that the average tropical fauna in
shallow waters consists of over 600 species, while the temperate fauna
has less than 500 species, and the boreal fauna only 250. Again, there
are certain genera that are characteristic of particular zones, and as-
semblages of forms that are recognized as belonging only to frigid, or
temperate, or tropical waters, and in genera that have a wide range
many of the species are restricted to certain limits of temperature.

In the late Tertiary faunas which contain a large proportion of
living genera and many living species justifiable inferences as to climate
may be made from direct comparison with living faunas. By one or
another of the tests just indicated, or by a combination of them, Dall
has produced convincing evidence that the Oligocene fauna of the
Atlantic states was subtropical and that the Oligocene maintains its'
subtropical character even as far north as Arctic Siberia. He has also
shown that the Miocene fauna of Maryland indicates a temperate
climate and that a similar cool-water fauna extended at that time as
far south as Florida.1 The fossils of the raised Pliocene beaches at
Nome, Alaska, according to the same investigator, furnish evidence of
warmer climate during Pliocene time even at that high latitude. By
similar methods, in a paper published in the Journal of Geology, Vol.
XVII., Arnold has recently argued for a series of climatic changes in
the late Tertiary and Pleistocene of California.

When the investigation is carried back to the Mesozoic and earlier

1 See especially Dall's " Contributions to the Tertiary Fauna of Florida,"
published as Vol. III. of the Transactions of the Wagner Free Institute of
Science, Philadelphia, and a chapter in the Miocene volume of the Maryland
Geological Survey.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 69

faunas in which few of the genera and none of the species are identical
with those now living the problem becomes more difficult and the con-
clusions are much less definite, as the comparisons must be more gen-
eral. Proofs of actual temperatures as measured in degrees should not
be expected unless the botanists can furnish data. There is, however,
great local differentiation of faunas and it is fair to ask the question
to what extent this is due to differences in climate. One of the earliest
discussions of this question was by Ferdinand Roemer, who more than
fifty years ago in " Die Kreidebildungen von Texas " noted the fact
that the Cretaceous of the highlands in Texas is lithologically and
faunally much like the Cretaceous of southern Europe and the Medi-
terranean region, that it differs from the Cretaceous of New Jersey in
about the same way that the southern European Cretaceous differs from
that of England and northwestern Germany, and that in each case the
European deposit is approximately 10° farther north than its American
analogue. He concluded that the differences between the northern and
southern facies were due to climate and that the climatic relations be-
tween the two sides of the Atlantic were about the same in Cretaceous
time as they are now. Eoemer's conclusion that there were climatic
zones in the Cretaceous may be true, but his reasoning was based on
false premises so far as the American deposits are concerned, for the
New Jersey type of marine Cretaceous extends with little change all
the way from New Jersey to the Eio Grande, and the " Cretaceous of
the highlands " with which he contrasted it, now known as the
Comanche series, is not represented by marine beds on the Atlantic
coast. This shows the necessity for careful stratigraphic and areal
work as well as for good paleontology before such broad conclusions
can be safely made.

The more general work of Neumayr2 recognized in the Jurassic
and Cretaceous of Europe three faunal provinces designated as boreal,
central European, and alpine or equatorial, which on account of their
zonal distribution he regarded as indicating climatic differences. He
believed that these zones are recognizable throughout the northern
hemisphere and cited evidence to show that similar zones exist south of
the equator. In recent years Neumayr's conclusions have been ques-
tioned by many because in so many instances genera supposed to be
characteristic of one zone have been found mingled with those of
another. For example, the alpine ammonite genera Lytoceras and
Phylloceras occur in Alaska (lat. 60°) associated with the boreal
Aucella, and Aucella itself ranges from the Arctic Ocean to the torrid
zone. Still, in spite of such exceptions and anomalies in distribution,
there is much evidence for a real distinction between boreal and south-
ern faunas in the Jurassic and in the Cretaceous which may indicate
a zonal distribution of temperature in Mesozoic time. It should be

3 " Erdgeschichte," Vol. II., p. 330 et seq.

7o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

remembered, however, that a boreal climate probably did not then mean
a frigid climate, and that the differences in temperature were probably
not so great as at the present time.

The conclusions justified by the evidence from fossil invertebrates
are:

1. In the Paleozoic there is practically no faunal evidence of cli-
matic zones comparable with those that now exist.

2. In the Mesozoic there is a more or less definite zonal distribution
of faunas which may be in part due to differences in climate but this
conclusion in each case should be checked by the study of the floras and
all other available lines of evidence.

3. From the middle of the Tertiary on through the Pleistocene trust-
worthy conclusions as to climatic conditions and changes can be made
by direct comj)arisons with the distribution of living faunas.

THE MIGRATION AND SHIFTING OF DEVONIAN FAUNAS

By Professor HENRY S. WTILLIAMS

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

IN the year 1881 I presented before the American Association for
the Advancement of Science the first definite announcement of
the theory of recurrent faunas, applying it to the fauna of the Mar-
cellus, Genesee and Ithaca black shales of New York, which I then
conceived to be represented by the continuous fauna of the black shales
of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee; and also in the same paper
the theory of shifting of faunas was applied to the Hamilton and Che-
mung faunas of central New York.1 Since that time a large amount of
evidence has been accumulated confirming these hypotheses.

The two hypotheses are correlated. Recurrence, or the departure of
a fauna, its replacement by another and its final reappearance in the
same section at a higher level, become the facts upon which the hypoth-
esis of shifting of the faunas is based; and only on the assumption of
the continuance and shifting of a fauna without losing its character-
istics can we satisfactorily explain its recurrence.

The following facts are among the more imjoortant which have come
to light in the course of my studies :

§ 1. The Catshill sedimentation was shown to be thicker and to start
lower down in the geological column in eastern New York than in
middle and western New York. In eastern New York it began while
the Hamilton marine fauna was still present and cut it off, bringing in
estuarian conditions with a brackish water and land fauna and flora.
In middle New York no Catskill sedimentation is present until after

1 Proc. American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vol. XXX.,
p. 186, etc.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 71

the arrival of the Chemung fauna; and in western New York no trace
of the Catskill type of sediments appears till after the close of the
Devonian.

These facts are direct evidence of shifting of the environmental
conditions of the edge of the continent westward as the deposits of the
middle and upper Devonian were heing laid down. "With this shifting
westward of the off-shore conditions of the sea, there went on a corre-
sponding shifting of several faunas that were adjusted to each phase of
those conditions.

These facts were stated in a paper on the classification of the upper
Devonian published in 1885.2

§ 2. The Appearance of Dominant Species of a General Fauna in
Reversed Order of Succession at the Close of a Fossiliferous Zone. —
The case of Sp infer leevis in the Ithaca Zone and of the frequent ap-
pearance of Leiorliynchus at the opening and close of a fossiliferous
zone were among the earliest observed facts suggesting the actual shift-
ing of the body of the fauna entering the area in one order of succession
and its departure in the reverse order. In the Ithaca section there
occurs at the base of the fossiliferous zone of the Ithaca member a bed
containing abundance of Spirifer (Reticularia) losvis. The discovery
of the same species at the top of the fossiliferous zone as the normal
Ithaca fauna become sparse gave the first suggestion that the faunas
were moving or shifting. The Reticularia zone marked the first trace
of the fauna to enter and the last to leave the area. Confirmatory evi-
dence was also found in the order of succession of the dominant species
of the Ithaca fauna. These facts were reported in 1883.3

§ 3. The study of the mode of occurrence of Leiorliynchus still fur-
ther drew attention to the definite order in which series of species came
in and went out of any given area. The species of the genus were
generally found abundantly at the base or at the top of the fossiliferous
zones rich in the brachiopods in the midst of which Leiorliynchus was
rare.4

§ 4. The reappearance in a single or few strata of several represen-
tatives of an earlier fauna long after the formation to which they were
normal had ceased.

Slight traces of this fact were observed in the first survey of the
Devonian section passing through Ithaca, reported in 1883, Bull. 3,
U. S. G-. S., and the fauna ~No. 14 N (p. 15) was called a recurrent
Hamilton fauna because of the appearance there of such species as
Spirifer fimbriatus, S. august us, Pleurotomaria capillaria and others;

2 Proc. American Association for the Advancement of Science, XXXIV.,
p. 222.

3 Bull. 3, U. S. G. S., p. 20, and 1885 Proc. A. A. A. 8., Vol. XXXIV., p.
222, etc.

4 See Bull. 3, U. S. G. S., pp. 16 and 17, 1883.

72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

and higher up in the midst of the Chemung section at Chemung nar-
rows Tropidoleptus carinatus and Cypricardella bellistriata, Phacops
bufo and Dalmanites calliteles were found.

The discovery of such traces of an earlier fauna led to further
search; and as the evidence accumulated an elaboration and definite
formulation of the theory of recurrence of faunas was made which has
been set forth in several papers, and is illustrated in detail in the folio
of the Watkins Glen-Catatonk quadrangles, which is now in press, for
the TJ. S. Geological Survey (December, 1909).

The facts there brought out are substantially as follows : There are
exhibited in the sections mapped for the quadrangles two series of fos-
siliferous zones; the separate zones of the two series alternate in suc-
cession; the zones of one series dominate the western sections of the
area and thus thin out or disappear on tracing them eastward ; the zones
of the second series dominate the eastern sections and particularly the
whole eastern New York sections, but thin out westward and in some
cases are entirely wanting in sections west of the Watkins Glen quad-
rangle. The first set of faunal zones includes the faunas of the Gene-
see shale, the Portage formation and the several divisions of the
Chemung formation.

The second set of zones includes the Hamilton fauna proper and
recurrent representatives of that fauna which I have named the Para-
cyclas lirata zone, the Spirifer mesistrialis zone, the Leiorhynchus
globuliformis or Kattel Hill zone. These zones are represented by the
typical Ithaca group of Hall in its typical sections at Ithaca ; and above
them appear the first, second and third recurrent Tropidoleptus faunas
(which I originally named the Van Etten, the Owego and the Swart-
wood Tropidoleptus zones, respectively). All of these several fossilifer-
ous zones of the second set become decidedly thin on passing westward
across the region. The Ithaca fauna is, occasionally, detected west of
the Watkins Glen quadrangle, but is confined to less than 100 feet thick-
ness at Watkins, is recognized for three hundred feet at Ithaca and
ranges through at least 600 feet along Tioughnioga River.

Only a slight trace of the Paracyclas zone is seen as far west as
Ithaca, but it is well expressed in the section on the east side of the
area. The Van Etten, Owego and Swartwood Tropidoleptus zones
appear in thin tongues of strata as far west as the Waverly quadrangle
and are seen in occasional traces as far west as the Elmira quadrangle.
When followed eastward they appear to blend together as a modified
Hamilton fauna sparsely appearing in the strata up to the income of
the Catskill type of sedimentation.

Where the Hamilton recurrent zones are seen in sharpest expression
the recurrent species range through only a foot or a few feet of strata,
hold in abundance four or five characteristic Hamilton species such as

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 73

Tropidoleptus carinatus, Cypricardella bellistriata, RMpidomella van-
uxemi, Spirifer marcyi and Delthyris mesacostalis (=D. consobrinus)
and others; and the Owego and Swartwood zones appear in the midst
of a characteristic Chemung fauna both above and below them. In the
Owego recurrent zone both Phacops rana and Dalmanites calliteles
occur.

The Van Etten recurrent zone lies entirely below the range of
Spirifer disjunctus and associated species of the Chemung formation.
On following the sections eastward from the Waverly quadrangle the
species of the Chemung fauna become scarce, and east of the Chenango
Eiver very few species of the typical Chemung fauna have been detected
— although they are still abundant in the Chemung rocks to the south-
east and southward across Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.

§ 5. These facts have been interpreted as evidence not only of a
general shifting of faunas coincident with a rising of the land along
the eastern edge of the present continent, but of oscillation of condi-
tions and alternate occupation of the area by two sets of faunas coming
from opposite directions and temporarily living in abundance in the
area of central New York.

§ 6. The lithologic changes in the sediments containing the different
faunas are not sufficient to account for the change in fauna. In quite
a number of sections there is no appreciable difference in lithologic
constitution between the strata which for a hundred feet thickness
have been filled with characteristic Chemung species and the imme-
diately following thin zone (of a foot or two) with scarcely a trace of
the Chemung species, but holding, in great number, species which if
found by themselves would be undisputed evidence of the Hamilton
formation.

§ 7. It becomes necessary therefore to suppose that the controlling
cause determining the presence of one or other fauna is not the char-
acter of the bottom on which the sediments which preserved the fauna
were laid. We are thus led to conclude that the qualities of the ocean
water have determined the shifting or migration of the faunas. The
conditions to which the faunas were adjusted were evidently those of
depth, salinity or temperature of the waters in which the species lived ;
and their change of habitation was occasioned by change in the direc-
tion, path or extent of flow of oceanic currents.

This leads us to consider the principles of migration as affecting
marine organisms.

§ 8. Migration of Species and Shifting of Faunas. — Migration as
commonly applied in natural history means the movement of large
numbers of the same species from one place to another in a general
definite direction at more or less regular periodic times. So birds mi-
grate northward with the advance of warm weather; some fish migrate

74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

from sea up rivers in breeding seasons; pigeons fly eastward or west-
ward in great flocks, or grasshoppers invade a rich country devouring
the vegetation in their path, or lemmings migrate across country in
great quantities.

The term in these cases has to do with movements of one kind of
animal in relation to the comparatively stable range of feeding-ground
for the remainder of the fauna inhabiting the areas concerned. The
term is rarely if ever applied to the slower movement of the whole body
of animals of a fauna, coincident with great changes of climate, such
as the advance of the glacial cover over the northern parts of Europe
or America produced during the glacial age, or the advance of an
Asiatic fauna across the Bering Straits and down the west coast of
North America at some Pleistocene time when an ice bridge furnished
means of communication by land from one continent to the other.
Perhaps there is no imjn'opriety in extending the application of the
term migration to these latter cases in which the whole fauna and
flora of a region is affected instead of single or a few species; and in
which the change of position of habitat is slow and spread over a great
period of time instead of being coincident with annual change of sea-
sons. The term may equally well be applied to movements in the
seas and movements on the lands.

There is, however, one reason for choosing a separate name for the
movements of the latter kind to distinguish them from typical migra-
tions.

In the first class of cases the migration is voluntary and is per-
formed by those organisms which have the power of more or less rapid
locomotion. They may be said to do the migrating themselves. In
the second case the movements are involuntary and the movement is
forced upon all the living organisms of the region and the change in
position may be supposed to take place by the contracting on one side
of the area of the conditions of possible existence for the species and
the extension on the other side of favorable conditions of environment.
The movements extend over many generations of life so that relatively
sedentary species may gradually adjust their locus liabitans to a given
direction of migration. To this latter process of migration I have been
accustomed to apply the term " shifting of faunas."

Migration of species is an expression of the ability of some organ-
isms to appreciate slight changes of favorable conditions of environ-
ment and to take advantage of the better conditions during the life-
time of an individual. Shifting of faunas is an expression of the
necessity for the perpetuation of the race of certain conditions of en-
vironment and the dying out of the whole fauna in the areas from
which the favorable conditions are removed with corresponding spread
of the fauna into new areas into which the favorable conditions have
been shifted.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 75

Shifting of faunas is an expression of the inability of the species
of the fanna to survive under the changed conditions of environment
which have overwhelmed them in the original habitat; but of an abil-
ity on the part of all those which migrate to follow the favorable con-
ditions as they shift from one area to another.

In both typical migration of species and shifting of faunas change
in the environmental conditions of life constitute the stimulus to change
of habitat on the part of the organisms; and the movement of the or-
ganisms is a direct response to the stimulus — those organisms in the
first case which migrate showing their greater vitality compared with
their neighbors who stay at home; while those who stay at home show
a greater power of endurance and organic adjustment to wider range
of environmental conditions.

In the case of the shifting faunas those which endure without
change of characters exhibit an acquired closeness of adjustment to
some particular combination of environmental conditions which they
are forced to follow or die and suffer annihilation. The evidence of
their endurance is indicated by return and reoccupation of the same
area at a later geological stage when by their reappearance, the orig-
inal condition of environment may be assumed to have recurred.

In the case of living organisms evidence of migration is found in
the actual presence of the species at one time in a region at a consider-
able distance from its ordinary locus liabitans; and in some cases by see-
ing the species in the process of migration, as for instance the temporary
alighting in fatigued condition of flocks of northern land birds on
Bermuda Island on their migration southward.

In the case of fossil species the shifting of a fauna is expressed by
the presence of a number of species representing an earlier fauna in a
stratum in the midst of rocks containing a different and dominantly
later set of species.

The fauna is then said to recur and it is the recurrence of the
fauna which forms the basis for the inference that the fauna has
shifted its locus liabitans during the period of time represented by the
sedimentary deposits separating the formation in which the fauna is
dominant from the zone in the higher formation in which the recur-
rent species are found.

This theory of the shifting of place and the recurrence in time of
the same fauna involves certain conceptions as to the nature of species
and the laws of evolution which it is important to consider.

§ 9. Evidence of Continuity. — To establish evidence of motion in
migration as in any other kind of motion it is all important to know
that the body or bodies to which the motion is ascribed is continuously
the same.

In the Devonian case I have been studying the moving body is a

7 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

fauna; not only have I found it necessary to establish identity of the
species in the recurrent zones with those of the initial zones, but it is
essential to show that the faunas as a whole are the same.

To put this in another form of statement we must establish the fact
that not only the individual species have retained their specific char-
acters, but the further fact that the equilibrium of adjustment to each
other in the faunal community has not been changed, in order to prove
that the recurrent fauna is the direct successor of a fauna represented
in the rocks at a lower horizon.

This has led to such distinction as rare and dominant species of the
fauna, and only as some such comparative frequency of the species in
the faunal combination is apparent can we be sure that we are not
considering an accidentally accumulated sample of a general fauna.

The presence of occasional associated species belonging to the
normal fauna of the formation in which the recurrent zone appears is
not antagonistic to the theory, because the theory proposes an invading
of the territory occupied by the normal fauna, and whatever were the
causes which brought about the shifting of the fauna they were not
so completely different as to annihilate all evidence of the fauna previ-
ously occupying the ground. Hence it is only necessary to find an
abrupt change of the grand majority of species to make the induction
that the faunas have shifted their habitat.

The theory involves the further conception of grand general faunas
which have their center of habitat and distribution in permanent
oceanic basins, as distinguished from the special and (in geological
strata) temporarily expressed faunas such as we are accustomed to as-
sociate with individual geologic formations.

In the case before us two such general faunas are in evidence, one
of which in its dominant characteristics is traced westward into Iowa,
Idaho and Arizona and up the Mackenzie Eiver valley to the north and
across the polar regions to Eussia and northern Europe. The other
is traced eastward and southward into central and southern Europe
and also dominantly into South America.

Although, with our present knowledge, it is not possible to deter-
mine in any temporary expression of marine faunas those particular
species which were derived from one from those derived from the other
grand source, it is possible to recognize numerous species which belong
to one center of distribution and others that belong normally to the
other.

§10. Interpretation of tlieJ?acts. — It is also important to keep our
heads clear in interpreting the facts.

It is only by close examination and comparison of the fossils them-
selves that identity of species or identity of faunas can be established.

The fixed characters of species are not only the characters by which

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 77

one species is distinguished from another, hilt they are of generic,
ordinal and even class value, and they may be of immense age in the
race and mark no special, narrow stage of its history.

It is a question of interpretation whether each particular phase of
expression of fluctuating characters is a matter of time or of environ-
ment.

I have reached the conclusion that it is those species which have
the greater degree of normal and persistent fluctuation of character
which migrate and follow the shifting conditions of environment, and
their life period is correspondingly longer.

On the other hand species whose plasticity of characters is narrow,
are more closely adjusted to their environment, are local in their range
of habitat, and temporary in their geological life-period.

Interpreting the facts on this basis it is the phases of continuously
fluctuating characters in species of wide geographic distribution and
long geologic range which furnish the most satisfactory evidence of
temporary stages in the life history of faunas.

Another question of interpretation arises when we attempt to re-
construct the physical condition of the environment at successive
stages of time.

In a single vertical section we have positive evidence of succession
in time. If we were sure that no recurrence of the same fauna could
take place we could correlate two vertical sections strictly upon the
fauna contained in the strata, on the basis of the supposition that the
single fauna appeared but once in the section and that when it ceased
in a given section its whole life period was expressed. But the facts
show us that this is not the case in nature. In geological times as in
the present, we know that many distinct faunas are living on the face
of the earth at the same time, even for very similar conditions of en-
vironment. It becomes therefore a very complex matter to correlate
two sections in which the order of faunas and the character of the
sediments differ ; which is generally the case for any two sections sepa-
rated by fifty miles from each other, although on stratigraphic evi-
dence they may be properly interpreted as covering the same interval
of time.

PALEONTOLOGIC EVIDENCES OF ADAPTIVE EADIATION

By Professor HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

rp HE law of adaptive radiation1 is an application of paleontology
J- of the idea of divergent evolution as conceived and developed
successively in the studies of Lamarck, Darwin, Huxley and Cope. It

1 Osborn, H. F., " The Law of Adaptive Radiation," Amer. Naturalist, Vol.
XXXVI., No. 425, pp. 353-363.

78

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

is more than divergence because it implies evolution in every direction
from a central form. The idea of radii, or radiations from a central
form greatly assists the imagination, because a distinctive feature of
paleontology is that we are constantly dealing with fragments of his-
tory. The radiations which have been discovered must be supple-
mented by those which remain to be discovered, and it is very remark-
able how in group after group of animals these missing " radii " have
turned up.

Eadiation actually begins in certain single organs, and the first
principle to be observed, as shown in the accompanying diagram, is

LIMBS AND FEET

VOLANT

FOSSORIAL

ARBOREAL

Short-limbed, plantigrade, "1 AMBULATORY
pentadactyl, unguicu- J- or

late Stem TERRESTRIAL

NATATORIAL

Amphibious

CURSORIAL

Digit igrade

Aquatic

Ungul igrade

• Fish
5 J Flesh ,
Carrion

TEETH

OMNIVOROUS

HERBIVOROUS J

Grass

Herb

Shrub

Fruit

Root

MYRMECOPHAGOUS
Dentition reduced

Stem INSECTIVOROUS

Main Lines of Adaptive Radiation of («) limbs and feet, (b) teeth among mammals.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 79

that radiation of different parts of the body is not necessarily cor-
related ; that is, that the adaptive divergence of the feet and limbs may
take one direction, while that of the teeth and skull may take another
direction. Thus great variety in combinations of characters may arise,
bringing about the very antithesis of Cuvier's supposed " law of cor-
relation " ; for we find that while the end results of adaptation are such
that all parts of an animal conspire to make the whole adaptive, there
is no fixed correlation either in the form or rate of development of
parts, and that it is, therefore, impossible for the paleontologist to
predict the anatomy of an unknown animal from one of its parts only,
unless the animal happen to belong to a type generally familiar. For
example, among the land vertebrates the feet, which are associated with
the structure of the limbs and trunk, may take one of many lines of
adaptation to different media or habitats, either aquatic, terrestrial,
arboreal or aerial ; while the teeth, which are associated with the struc-
ture of the skull and jaws, also may take one of many lines of adapta-
tion to different kinds of food or modes of feeding, whether herbivorous,
insectivorous or carnivorous. Through this independent adaptation of
different parts of animals to their specific ends there have arisen among
vertebrates almost unlimited numbers of combinations of food and tooth
structure.

Alternations of Habitat. — In the long vicissitudes of time and
procession of continental changes animals have been subjected to alter-
nations of habitat either through their own migrations or through the
"migration of the environment itself," to employ Van den Broeck's
epigrammatic description of the profound and sometimes sudden en-
vironmental changes which may take place in a single locality. The
traces of alternations of anatomical adaptation corresponding with
these alternations of habitat are recorded both in paleontology and
anatomy. For example, Huxley in 1880 briefly suggested the arboreal
origin of all the marsupials, a suggestion which has been confirmed
abundantly by the detailed studies of Dollo and Bensley, according to
which we may imagine that the marsupials have passed through a series
of phases, as follows: (1) a very early "terrestrial or ambulatory"
phase, (2) a "primary arboreal" phase as exemplified by the tree
phalangers of the present day, (3) a "secondary terrestrial" phase
as exemplified by the kangaroos and wallabies, (4) a " secondary ar-
boreal " phase as exemplified by the tree kangaroos.

Each one of these phases has left its anatomical record in the struc-
ture of the feet and limbs, although this record is often obscured by
adaptation.

Louis Dollo especially has contributed most brilliant discussions of
this theory of " alternations of habitat " as applied not only to the
interpretation of the anatomy of the marsupials but of many kinds of

So THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

fishes, and to such reptiles as the herbivorous dinosaurs of the Upper
Cretaceous.

This brief consideration of the external features of adaptation leads
us to glance at groups of animals. We here observe the influence of
geographic distribution; we observe the adaptive radiation of groups
both continental and local.

Continental Adaptive Radiation. — Among the Tertiary mammals
we can actually trace the giving off of radii in several, sometimes in all,
directions for the purpose of taking advantage of every opportunity to
secure food, to escape enemies, and to reproduce kind, the three phe-
nomena of the struggle for existence. Among such well-known quad-
rupeds as the horses, rhinoceroses and titanotheres the modifications
involved in these radiations can be clearly traced. Thus the history of
the life of continents presents a picture of contemporaneous radiations
in different parts of the world. We observe the contemporaneous and
largely independent radiations of the hoofed animals in South America,
in Africa and in the great continent comprising Europe, Asia and
North America.

Through the laws of parallelism and convergence each of these
radiations produced a greater or less number of analogous groups.

While originally independent, the animals thus evolved separately as
autochthonous types in many cases finally mingled together as migrant
or invading types.

We may thus work out gradually the separate contributions of the
great land masses of North America, South America, etc., to the mam-
malian fauna of the world. As a rule the greater the continents the
more important and fundamental the orders or larger groups of mam-
mals which have radiated in them; the lesser land masses and conti-
nental islands, like Australia, have been less favorable to wide adaptive
radiation. One of the most interesting features of adaptive radiation is
that it may also occur locally.

Local Adaptive Radiation. — On a smaller scale are the local adaptive
radiations which occur through segregation of habit and local isolation
in the same general geographic region wherever physiographic and
climatic differences are sufficiently great to produce local differences in
food supply or other local factors of change. This principle is well
known among living animals, and it is now being demonstrated among
many of the Tertiary mammals, remains of four or five distinct genetic
series having been discovered in the same geologic deposits.

The existence of multiple phyla of related animals, as of the rhi-
noceroses, horses and titanotheres in the same localities is due partly
to the operation of the law of local adaptive radiation.

This is conspicuously the case among the titanotheres, for example,
the chief evolution of which can be traced in the Rocky Mountain

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD Si

region. In the Eocene we discover four or five independent local
plryla; again in the Oligocene we discover five or six independent local
phyla. The evolution of these animals appears to have been chiefly
American.

In other cases, however, the polyphyletic condition appears to have
been through the mingling with local phyla of phyla evolved in other
countries. This is illustrated in the case of the Middle Miocene rhi-
noceroses of America, which are invaded by rhinoceroses of Eurasiatic
or European origin.

In studying the herbivorous quadrupeds, therefore, we must keep
in the imagination constantly the production of local phyla through
local radiation and the intermingling of foreign phyla through migra-
tion. There are a few very striking and profound differences between
quadrupeds which recur so frequently that where we discover one form
we may surely anticipate the discovery of the opposite or antithetic
form : in other words, there are extremes of structure shown in the
proportions of the skull, of the teeth, of the limbs, and groups of
quadrupeds are constantly tending through adaptive radiation to reach
these extremes. Some of the contrasting extremes are the following:
brachyodonty vs. hypsodonty, dolichocephaly vs. brachycephaly, dolicho-
pody vs. brachypody.

Eor example, a local adaptive radiation observed in the horses is
that the forest-living types are brachyodont, or possess short-crowned
teeth, while the desert-living horses are hypsodont, typically grazers,
with long-crowned teeth.

Extremes of long-headedness and short-headedness, of long-foot-
edness and of short-footedness, comprise a very large part of the mech-
anism of adaptive radiation; but we have to do also with long-necked
and short-necked types, and with many other chances of proportion
which are correlated with different feeding habits.

VOL. LXXVII.

82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS— II

By Professor FRANCIS H. HERRICK

ADELBERT COLLEGE

nnHE cyclical instincts of birds, present, as we have seen, a well-
-*- ordered series, rising and waning in due course, until the re-
productive cycle is complete. Nevertheless, the order and harmony
which commonly prevail are subject to many disturbances of a tran-
sient, or of a more lasting character. When variations in the cycle,
whatever their nature, become regular and permanent, any consequent
loss or injuiry to the species seems to be counterbalanced by the rise
of new instincts in both young and adult, which may involve marked
structural changes, as shown in the parasitic cuckoos of the old world
and their non-parasitic relatives of the new. If transient merely,
there is more or less individual loss, according to the nature and ex-
tent of the disturbance.

We shall now consider some of these variations in the cyclical series,
and we may assume, though with little exact knowledge, that when
any character of the sort to be described has become general or perma-
nent this has been effected through a gradual process of selection, with
or without environmental influence and other unknown agencies. We
may further assume that all modern birds originally built proper nests,
and there can be little doubt that many either falter or fail in this
work at present through the loss of an instinct which they once pos-
sessed; but this question aside, we can be reasonably assured that all
originally concealed or guarded their eggs.

The nest, in the first instance, tends to secure a more equable dis-
tribution of warmth and moisture for eggs or young; incidentally it
may conceal and therefore protect both young and adult, and add to
the comfort of the whole family. There would seem to be a vast dif-
ference between digging a hole in the warm, moist sand, as we see the
turtle, or the moleo, one of the brush turkeys, doing, and weaving
through the unremitted efforts of many days, a beautiful pouch like the
oriole's, so admirably adapted for protection, both by its form and by its
position. Yet it is by no means certain that the fundamental nest-
building instinct is entirely wanting in the moleo, the peculiar habits
of which will be later considered.

Nest-building of one kind or another is found in all classes of
vertebrates, and the guarding and fighting instincts at nesting-time
are as strong in some of the fishes as in birds, but while the practise is-

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 83

clearly of ancient origin, it is by no means universal ; it seems in every
case to be related to the needs of the animal, and to be a refinement of
more simple means of securing both concealment and protection.

The causes of the disturbances, which we have to describe, are
wholly obscure. We can only surmise that they may have their origin
in changes in the central nervous system, which, as one result, bring
about disturbances in nutrition, leading now to a premature, now to a
belated development of the reproductive cells. At all events there arises
what may be crudely described as an " overlap " or " blending " of in-
stincts. Or, we may say that in the struggle of conflicting impulses
victory now goes to one side, now to the other. The only facts that are
really known are that the egg sometimes anticipates the nest, instead
of the nest the egg, or that the migratory impulse may emerge too soon,
and nip the proper parental instincts in the bud, before they have run
their course. "We do not doubt that the sifting process of selection
would soon curb any tendency, like the last, in every species which was
destined to survive.

The eccentricities of behavior, which we attribute to disturbances
in the breeding cycle, will be examined under the following heads :
(1) Beginning a new cycle, and scamping an old; (2) multiple and
superimposed nests ; ( 3 ) eccentric behavior due to conflicting instincts ;
and (4) premature laying of eggs, omission of nest-building and para-
sitism.

II. Beginning a New Cycle oe Scamping the Old

When the cyclical instincts rise and wane in their proper order,
they may be represented by a series of circles tangent to each other, or
with but little overlap (Fig. 15). Beginning at term 3 or 4, a cycle1 is

CYinN. C.YouTN.

Fig. 15. Diagram to illustrate the serial instincts of the Reproductive Cycle,
with types of activities expressed in eight terms.

completed up to term 7 for each brood successively reared. Most wild
birds in this part of the world have but a single brood in the season.
The success of any individual pair depends upon circumstances.
Storms and predaceous animals of all kinds break down the nests or
destroy the eggs, when a fresh start is usually taken.

In very timid birds like the cedar waxwing, the cycle is often
1That is, when it is limited to the direct reproductive activities, the rela-
tion of which to migration is not important in this discussion.

84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

abruptly ended at term 3 or 4, as a result of fear, through discovery or
disturbance of the nest, and a new series is promptly begun at 3. This
is the simplest type of disturbance which we can record (Fig. 16).

CYmN. CYoutN.

Fig. 16. Diagram of any given Reproductive Cycle — A-B, interrupted by fear or
accident at term 4, and a new cycle, A1/}1, begun at term 3.

The old nest may be torn down by the little builders, and its materials
used again, but this does not commonly happen. Since fear is rapidly
depressed, with the rise of the brooding instinct, beginning at term 5,
interruptions are less liable to occur after this point is reached, but
wherever the thread is dropped, it is usually picked up again at stage 3.

Of far greater interest is the fact that a new cycle may be begun
at the very close of the breeding season, when it seldom goes far, and
is bound to fail for lack of time. Probably no stronger witness to
the instinctive basis of the behavior of birds could be found than this
recrudescence of the reproductive activities at a time when most must
answer the fatal summons of the migratory impulse. It is typically
illustrated by the great herring gulls, which toward the close of their
usual cycle in mid-July begin to build new nests, and will even lay eggs
in them, though all are eventually abandoned. It would not be sur-
prising to find that many young were also left to their fate, but my
observations have never extended late enough to determine this defi-
nitely. At the Great Duck Islands, Maine, where these facts were
gathered, the birds arrive early in March, and depart about September
1, according to the warden and lighthouse keeper, Captain Stanley,
who has found that the first eggs are laid about the middle of May,
while the first young begin to appear the second week in June.

In a census of one hundred nests of this gull taken on the island
July 17, 1902, at the close of the breeding season, some interesting
facts were brought out, which mav be summarized as follows :

Abandoned empty nests, from which young have been reared 64

Abandoned nests with addled eggs 8

Nests with chicks outside 5

Nests with newly hatched chicks or pipped eggs 1

Nests with fresh or slightly incubated eggs 5

New nests, begun or completed 17

Total 100

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS

85

Fig. 17. Imperfect nest of Great Herring Gull, illustrating the beginning
of a new breeding cycle, when too late to be finished. Chips, grass, and roots have
been brought to the new site. Great Duck Island, Maine, July 20.

Of the seventy-seven nests which had seen service in the season,
eight only contained addled eggs. It was certain that none of the new
nests, with or without eggs, could ever come to anything, and probably
most were never finished. They are made to be abandoned, sooner or
later, with the rise of stronger instincts. A new cycle is begun, but

Fig. 18. Nest of Gull, illustrating the same tendency as that shown in Fig.
17, but where the old nest was " repaired," or used as a site for the new one. The
body of a dead chick was worked into this nest, and the old bird was incubating an
addled egg. July 22.

86

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Pig. 19. Gull's Nest on Rotten Log, with eggs starred and nearly ready to
hatch, probably belonging to a bird which had earlier failed, but had renewed its
activities in time to sucessfully rear young. July 20.

stayed at terms 3 or 4. Now it might be supposed that those nests
which appear in middle or late July (Figs. 17-18) were the work of
young birds, or of others which for some cause had not met with earlier
success, but this is certainly not always the case. For the space of
several day's I watched a pair of gulls, which had large chicks to feed,
and repeatedly saw them leave their young and begin the construction
of a new nest about a rod from the old one. The female would split

Fig. 2U. White-hbadbd Eagle's Nest of the First Year, built in 1900, by
the owners of the eerie shown in Fig. 21, which was destroyed the previous winter.
The nest is considerably broader than tall.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS

87

chips, carry them to the chosen site, and go through the instinctive
moulding and turning movements in the most approved and character-
istic manner. The male even mounted the female, and was borne on
her back like a circus-rider, in his evident attempt to perform an act

Fig. 21. /Ekie of Eagle occupied Fifteen Yeaes, and nearly twice as tall as
broad ; the predecessor of the nest shown In Fig. 20 In dead sycamore, three and
one half feet in diameter at base ; top of nest 77 feet from ground.

which is usually necessary. In this case, however, eggs were not des-
tined to appear, and the new nest was eventually given up. This
sporadic attempt at nest-building, while there are still chicks to be
nursed, illustrates what we have described as the conflict of opposing
instincts.

At the beginning of the breeding season in the gull, old nests are
frequently reclaimed, and possibly by the same birds, though this has
not been determined, or a new site is chosen, and a new nest built.
If an addled egg is left after the others have hatched, " repairs " to
the nest are frequently undertaken, and the old egg is either incubated
for several days longer or it is buried out of sight. A pair of gulls,
which was watched from the tent, had a single chick, and this one

88 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

lived only long enough to crawl out of its shell, while a second egg was
bad. No sooner was the little one dead, than the work of reconstruc-
tion, that is building on the old site was begun, and the body of the
chick, treated as so much nesting material, was soon buried under new
layers of grass and chips (Fig. 18). This labor lasted for four days,
or as long as I was able to watch it, but as in the other cases described,
it was sure to be futile owing to the lateness of the season.

Fish hawks and eagles are known to return to their old nests year
after year, adding fresh materials, that is, building on the old site, each
season. An eagle's nest of the first year (compare Figs. 20 and 21)
is broader than tall, but with the yearly increment of stubble and sticks
added to its top, it gradually rises in vertical height, until becoming
so much taller than broad, in certain situations it tends to topple over
from sheer weight. The older of the two nests of the white-headed
eagle, which are here shown (Fig. 21), was begun in the crotch of a
dead sycamore, 77 feet from the ground at North Springfield, Ohio,
in 1885, and occupied for fifteen years, or until January, 1900, when
this ancient landmark was laid low in a storm. With the aid of photo-
graphs, taken in May, 1899,2 and by actual measurements which I later
made on the prostrate tree, the dimensions of this great nest were
exactly determined. It was nine feet high and six feet in diameter,
or three feet taller than broad, and contained rather more than three
cubic yards of wood, earth and stubble. The new nest (Fig. 20),
which was built in the spring of 1900, was examined and photographed
in June of the same year ; now after the lapse of a decade, it has much
the appearance of the older nest, having risen greatly in height. Such
a structure might be regarded as a kind of " multiple nest," being com-
posed of increments, corresponding in number to the years of occupa-
tion, the last " nest " being built on the site of that of the previous
year.

But a more interesting fact, if true, is the statement of Audubon3
and others that ospreys and eagles often repair their nests in the
autumn, as if in anticipation of the needs of the coming year. We can
readily accept the fact, but not the interpretation, for if such a practise
really occurs, it is plainly due to the rise of a new reproductive cycle,
which is begun but soon checked. The sporadic return of the nest-
building instinct at the close of the season is essentially the same in
hawk or gull, and can imply no more intelligent forethought in one
case than in the other.

2 By Mr. H. E. Denio, of Milesgrove, Pa., to whose kindness I am indebted
for their present as well as a former use.

"Audubon speaks only of the fish hawks, which he says but seldom alight
on the ground, as " when they collect materials' for the purpose of repairing
their nest at the approach of autumn." " Ornithological Biography," Vol. I.,
p. 419, Edinburgh, 1831.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS

89

Desertion of the Young under the Impulse of Migration
The struggle of conflicting instincts is clearly shown when the
normal cycle is brought prematurely to a close by the rise of the
instinct of migration, when eggs or young are left in the nest to perish.

Fig. 22. A Multiple — four-storied Nest of the Yellow Warbler (Dendroica
/Estiva), with a "parasitic" cowbird's egg in each compartment, but with proper
eggs in the first story only, illustrating the successive breaking of the breeding cycle
through fear, the beginning of three new cycles in succession, the new nest being built
in each case, and probably through association, on the site of the old, thus admirably
" concealing " the successive parasitic eggs. Original in the Field Museum of
Natural History, Chicago.

The migratory impulse seems to " overlap/' and finally to replace the
proper parental instincts. The cycle is scamped near its close.

9o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

A classical illustration of this struggle of instincts was furnished
by Dr. Jenner, in his " Essay on the Migration of Birds," published in
1824, and by the more circumstantial account given by Dr. John Black-
wall in 1834, who called particular attention to " the occasional deser-
tion of their last hatched broods by the swallow and house martin."
Blackwall was a keen and discriminative observer, but his work4 is so
little known that I shall give a summary of his valuable and interesting
results, under this head.

The swallow arrives at Manchester, England, about April the fif-
teenth, and the house martin on the twenty-fifth of the same month.
They produce from two to three broods in the season, and are commonly
found with nestlings in October, at a time when most of the migratory
species have left the country. Many of these young which are led out
of the nest, are deserted before they are able to follow their parents
south, and have been found in a state of semi- or total exhaustion, late
in the year. This, as Blackwall ingeniously suggests, may have given
rise to the queer notion that the European swallows passed the winter
season in a state of torpidity.

Blackwall's observations were begun as early as 1821, and when on
November 11, 1826, twenty-two nests under the eaves of a barn in
the Chapelry of Blakeley were carefully inspected, it was found that
thirteen of this number contained either eggs or dead nestlings; five
nests held eggs in every stage from the freshly laid to those at the
hatching point, while the eight with young showed nestlings in every
condition from that of hatching up to the nearly fledged state.

While the female swallow may exceptionally linger longer than the
male, it should be noted that both parents commonly abandon their
young at the same time. The same fatal conduct was also frequently
observed in the sand martin, and Gilbert White, of Selborne, has given
an interesting account of a swift, originally noted by him in 1781,
which renders it practically certain that this bird may also desert its
young, when the migratory impulse is strong. According to Pennant,
who is quoted by Blackwall, the puffin is in like case also. The parental
instincts of the puffin are strong, and the first young, which appear
early in July, are guarded with the utmost care. But strong also is the
instinct of migration, and when this emerges punctually at about the
eleventh day of August, any young puffins which can not fly are left
to the tender mercies of the peregrine falcon. This vigilant plunderer
watches at the mouths of their holes, ready to seize them with mailed
foot the moment hunger forces them to surrender. We may be quite
sure that the young of the species enumerated above are not the only
victims of the struggle of conflicting instincts. I have heard of similar
behavior on the part of the domestic pigeons.

4 " Researches in Zoology, Illustrative of the Manners and Economy of
Animals," London, 1834; 2d ed., London, 1873.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 91

III. Multiple and Superimposed Nests

We have referred to the towering Eerie of the eagle and osprey as
being, so far as instinct is concerned, a series of superimposed nests;
indeed, any nest built on the site or over the ruins of a former abode,
might be regarded in this light. When attachment to the site is strong,
the bird, like the peasant in ancient Egypt and many of the earlier
races of mankind, builds anew on the ruins of his former home, with-
out taking care to clear the ground or raze such parts as still exist.
The result is similar in either case — a series of superimposed structures
of different ages, the height to which the pile may rise, depending upon
the number of times the same site has been used.

The building of nest on nest, or of new nest on the site of the old,
according to this interpretation, gives rise to the wonderful storied
structures sometimes produced by the yellow warbler, or vireo, when
plagued by the cowbird. That the intruding egg is buried out of sight
is not due, however, to a feat of reason on the part of the suffering
bird, but is the curious result of a nearly pure instinct, modified only
by association. Fear breaks the cycle, but it is not always strong
enough to break the habit of going to the old site. Instead of two or
more supernumerary nests, more than one of which may contain eggs,
and even stand side by side, as has been reported in the case of the
phcebe, we have a series of superimposed nests, as is clearly illustrated
iu the remarkable four-storied structure of the summer or yellow
warbler, here shown (Fig 22). 5 Each section of this composite, more-
over, is seen to contain an egg of the parasitic cowbird, that in the
first story being partially concealed by the warbler's eggs present.

According to this view, the new nest is not built to conceal the
cowbird's egg, although it does so perfectly, any more than the addition
of new materials to an osprey's nest in the fall is of the nature of
repairs, although it may answer such a purpose admirably. The nest
is built or " repaired " because the bird is at the opening of a new
cycle, and is impelled to action by the rise of the building instinct.
Whether the new nest is built upon the remains of the old, or close
beside it, or half a mile away, must be attributed to the ordinary work-
ings of instinct, modified by association and fear, when for some cause
the normal cycle has been disturbed.

The so-called " cock nests " of the little marsh wrens may prove to
be only another illustration of the supernumerary nests given above,
but no opportunity has yet been offered to study these interesting
structures. The fact that they may be used secondarily as sleeping
apartments, if this is really the case, has no special significance. I have
seen the abortive hole of a kingfisher so used, but a few rods from the

B For the use of this photograph I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. F. J.
V. Skiff, director of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

bank, which was later successfully drilled and occupied by the same pair.
The subject of compound nests is too long and involved for full
discussion here, but from the builder's standpoint, which is that of
instinct, I think there is ground for regarding such a composite struc-
ture as that reared on the cooperative plan by the ani or Savanna
blackbird, as in reality a multiple nest.

IV. Eccentric Behavior; Robin offering String to Young

Under this head we shall describe a special case of what we have
frequently referred to as the " overlap " or struggle of competing
instincts. The incident happened in a neighbor's yard on One Hun-
dred and Second Street, Cleveland. A pair of robins had nested in this
yard, and successfully reared young, which were then hopping about in
the speckled-breasted stage, and begging for food. On a certain occa-
sion one of the parents was seen offering a long piece of twine to one
of the youngsters, and trying to cram it into its throat. This robin
would repeatedly gather up the string, as it would the coils of an
angleworm, and offer it in the usual way, but string not being to the
taste of this fledgling, it was as often rejected. After a time the old
robin flew with the string into a tree.

With these facts in view, how shall we interpret such extraordinary
behavior? We consider this case of the robin a most unusual and
interesting exhibition of the conflict of opposing instincts, for according
to this idea, the bird was at the close of an old reproductive cycle, and
the beginning of a new one. She had fallen, as it were, between two
stools. Impelled by the rising instinct of nidiflcation, she gathered
the string, when aroused by the calls and sight of her young she was
induced to offer it; again under the sway of the building instinct, she
flew with the string to a tree. We can judge of the sequel, although
unfortunately observation on the robin's conduct stopped at this point.
The popular interpretation that the bird was crazy gives place to some-
thing which we can measurably understand, or coordinate with other
related facts. On the other hand, what a commentary such an act
furnishes upon the effective intelligence of birds, when under the sway
of powerful instincts. Does not the robin know a " hawk from a
handsaw," or a worm from a piece of string? The behavior of the
great herring gull with chicks still requiring her care, in going through
all the motions of nest-building, and returning to her young again,
would seem to be similar in all essential respects.

V. Premature Laying of Eggs, Omission of Nest-building

and Parasitism

Lack of attunement between the appearance of the nest and eggs,
or terms 3 and 4 of the cycle is very common. Too frequently the egg

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 93

" anticipates " the nest. Every one who has given much attention to
the activities of birds in the field must have found isolated eggs lying
on the ground. Such prize packages are probably more common than
we might be led to suppose, for they can not long exist wherever snakes,
rodents and other prowling animals abound.

With most birds the act of prematurely dropping an egg can be
only a sporadic or casual variation. Without doubt, in the course of
time a proper nest is built; eggs are laid, and the normal cycle is
rounded out to completion. It is quite possible, on the other hand,
that all such eggs are not immediately neglected, but that they are
sometimes carried away, and " concealed " by dropping them in another
bird's nest, although we have no observation to support such a view
directly. It is known, however, that certain birds, such as the black-
billed cuckoo, will upon disturbance remove its eggs from the old nest
to a new one or to a place of safety.6 It is also certain that the prema-
ture egg is at times laid direct in another bird's nest, which the in-
truder will often strive to possess by force, and may even succeed.
Thus, Davidson, who is quoted by Bendire, found a black-billed cuckoo
and a mourning dove sitting on a robin's nest together. This nest
was in reality double, and contained two eggs each, of the cuckoo and
dove, and one of the robin. The cuckoo managed to get possession of
the nest before the robin had finished her work, and filled it with
rootlets, but the robin held its ground long enough to deposit an egg.
The fact that the cuckoo had " filled it nearly full of rootlets " is a
very interesting circumstance, for it shows how completely instinct held
the reins of action. This robin's nest seems to have served as a site
on which the cuckoo strove to erect one of its own. The dove, noted
for its strong parental instincts, had evidently come last, and her eggs
were the only ones in which incubation had not begun.

Such a case seems to present us, as in a picture, with one of the
steps in the process through which the most remarkable of all the
known instincts of birds, that of parasitism, has been brought about.

Certain cowbirds of the new world and cuckoos of the old steal the
nests of other birds, but usually only long enough to deposit an egg of
their own, which is left to its fate. If tolerated, as is apt to be the
case, the stranger is hatched with the other eggs, and the owner of the
nest assumes the role of nurse or foster-parent. If a cowbird, the
foundling soon smothers the proper young, and if a cuckoo, it evicts
them. The cuckoo seems to react to a contact stimulus of a disagree-
able kind, and when from one to three days old, while still blind, it
strives to get egg or nestling on its broad, depressed back, and

•That other species of birds occasionally remove their eggs when disturbed
can not be doubted, and they probably do it with their bills. The king penguins
of the Antarctic are said to guard their single egg by carrying it in a pouch
or fold of the skin, developed in either sex, between the legs.

94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

hitching its way, thus laden, up the wall of the nest, throws them
overboard. If such a bird is replaced after a time, the same move-
ments are repeated. With the coast thus clear, the little "parasite"
can monopolize the attention of its nurse, and grows apace, being
attended with all the care which is bestowed on a legitimate child.
As Philemon Holland has quaintly rendered the account of the elder
Pliny :

" And this yong Cuckow being greedy by kind, beguiling the other yong
birds and intercepting the meat from them, groweth hereby fat and faire-liking:
whereby it comes into speciall grace and favour with the dam of the rest, and
nource to it. She joieth to see so goodly a bird toward: and wonders at her
selfe that she hath hatched & reared so trim a chick. The rest, which are her
owne indeed, she sets no store by, as if they werr changelings: but in regard
to that one, counteth them all bastards and misbegotten." Having followed
our elder worthy thus far, we should give his sequel also, even if he steps from
observation to fable: "yea, and suffereth them to be eaten and devoured of the
other even before her face: and this she doth so long, until the yong cuckow
being once fledge & readie to flie abroad, is so bold as to seize on the old Titling,
and to eat her up that hatched her."

It is evident that this practise of nest-stealing, somewhat ambigu-
ously called " parasitism," could never become very popular or wide-
spread, for it would soon break down of its own weight.

For over two thousand years, or since the time of Aristotle, who
was the first to leave a permanent record of this propensity in the
European cuckoo, the question has been asked, How could such a habit
arise? and the answers have been various, and far from satisfactory.
The key to the matter lies, as we believe, in the cyclical instincts, and
in the disturbances to which they are prone. When the normal rhythm
is generally disturbed or permanently changed, new instincts and even
new structures may arise, which serve as a counterbalance to the
changes wrought.

We believe that the instinct of parasitism got its start through lack
of attunement in terms 3 and 4, of the reproductive cycle, and that it
has passed through essentially the following stages: (1) The egg
forthcoming before there is a nest ready to receive it, a condition
sporadic in very many, if not in most modern birds, due to unknown
causes, such as lead to a premature growth of the ovary, or to a dis-
turbance of certain instincts. There is a loss of eggs, although a nest
may be eventually built, and young reared in the season. (2) The
eggs are ready before the nest, and many are lost by dropping them
on the ground, while others are laid in stolen nests. A proper nest is
sometimes built, but whether young are ever reared, will depend upon
circumstances. This stage is exemplified by the Argentine cowbird
(MolotJius badius), described by Hudson, which commonly wastes its
eggs, scattering them in all directions, yet it will steal a nest upon

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 95

occasion, or build one of its own. It even laid eggs in artificial nests,
which Hudson placed in trees to test its propensities in this direction.
(3) The common practise of stealing nests of other birds, but of hold-
ing them, as a rule, only for laying its own eggs, as illustrated to-day
by the North American cowbird (Molothrus pccoris). The instincts of
the intruder seem to be satisfied by " concealing " its eggs, or simply
laying them against the wall of another bird's nest, and leaving them.
At this stage the European cuckoo, we may suppose, not only frequently
dropped its eggs on the ground, but occasionally tried to incubate them,
and may have even attempted a rough nest. At this stage also the
normal tendency to lay eggs at daily intervals was possibly disturbed,
and the interval became irregular, with the gradual establishment of a
longer rhythm.

At this point several roads would seem to be open, for the resources
of nature are not limited to one course. Parasitic or non-brooding
cuckoos have " chosen " one, so to speak, the brooding American species-
another, and if we are to accept the accounts, certain owls, which breed
in the far north, successfully rear young in the short Arctic summer,
with an interval of a week or more between each egg. Yet there can
be little doubt that an undue lengthening of this interval would seri-
ously interfere with nest-life in many species, and break the tendency
to guard the egg. All would seem to depend upon the correlated
instincts of parent and child. With an interval of from five to seven
days, which has been credited to Cuculus canorus, self-brooding would
be impracticable without a change in its instincts, for it migrates in
July. While it is certain that the egg-laying interval was gradually
extended in this bird, it is not known at what corresponding point the
parasitic practise was finally established. Certain it is, however, that
then as now, the egg, whether laid direct in a nest or dropped on the
ground and subsequently conveyed to one, was abandoned. The Amer-
ican brooding cuckoos (Coccygus erythroptlidlmus and C. americanus) ,
although suffering a similar disturbance in the brooding interval (of
one to three clays), have adjusted these differences by another course.
The young which are hatched in succession, also leave the nest in suc-
cession, when one week old, and enter upon a climbing stage which lasts
a fortnight. In this way the brood is divided into two groups, and any
untoward effects which might result from a marked difference in age
of the nestlings, is avoided. The greatest disadvantage of such a mix-
ture, in the nest of this species, would seem to lie in the fact that the
oldest and strongest usually succeed in holding up most of the food.
We may add that the American cuckoos have never advanced far be-
yond the first stage, as designated above, although they have suffered a
disturbance in the normal rhythm of egg-production, and that the
parental instincts are as strong with them as in passerine birds. The

96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

study of their habits gives no support to the idea advanced by Darwin,
in his " Origin of Species," that they are passing along the same road
to parasitism already traversed by their European relative. I do not
know whether the American cuckoos ever built a better nest or not, but
it is certain that the present structure is adequate to their needs, and
affords no evidence of a waning instinct of nidification. (4) The final
stage of the parasitic instinct among the Cuculidse is presented by their
famous European representative, Cuculus canorus, in which the in-
stincts of both young and adult have become so specialized that to
describe them at all adequately would require many pages. One hun-
dred and nineteen different species of birds have been the prey of this
parasite, the eggs of which have become reduced in size and highly
variable in form and color. The commonest dupes are birds of small
size, like the hedge sparrow and titlark ; but one egg is laid in the same
nest by the same bird, and this is often similar in size and coloring to
those of the prospective nurse. The egg is deposited stealthily in the
stolen nest, and in the absence of the owner, either just before or just
after the proper eggs have appeared, or it is first dropped on the ground
and conveyed to the nest in bill or gullet, by which the range of acces-
sible nests is greatly increased. These and other remarkable practises
of this bird have been fully described in a paper on the " Life and
Instincts of the Cuckoo," shortly to appear.

All travelers who have studied the ostriches of South America
and Africa in the field speak of the great numbers of their eggs which
are annually wasted both in and out of season by dropping them over
the plains or around their nests. If this is a secondary character, it
must have come from a disturbance of the normal cycle, quite similar
to what we have found in cuckoos and starlings. In this case adjust-
ment seems to have been effected in quite a different manner, for we
find the male taking upon himself almost the whole duty of incubation
and care of the young. Even the wasted eggs, at least in the neighbor-
hood of the nest, serve a secondary use as food, for the young soon break
them open and devour them.

We can not discuss with much profit the remarkable breeding habits
of the megapodes of Australia and the East Indies, referred to earlier
in this paper, until naturalists have made more detailed studies upon
the various species. The notes which follow are purely tentative, and
are offered by way of suggestion. The true megapodes build huge
mounds of earth and leaves, which serve as incubators for their eggs,
and the young, which may or may not be subsequently tended by their
parents, are in most cases able to run or fly from birth, or when they
emerge from their mound. The moleos or " maleos " deposit theirs in
black volcanic sand which is both clamp and warm, either by the sea-
shore or in the vicinity of warm springs in the interior. In any case

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 97

both birds instinctively secure the two requisites for successful incuba-
tion— even warmth and moisture — though in different ways.

That the brush turkeys are descended from stock which possessed
the instinct of incubation is rendered probable from the fact that they
are gallinaceous birds, allied to the curassows, wild turkeys and grouse,
all of which build some kind of a nest and brood their young at the
present time. Further, the fact that the same mound is used con-
tinuously by the same birds, whether by more than one pair or not, and
is added to year after year, like the aerie of an eagle, and that in the
ocellated megapode, at least, the adults remain in the vicinity of their
mound and tend their young after leaving it, all suggest that this
mound must be regarded in the light of a nest, however modified from
the typical structure. From the stage seen in the ocellated magapode,
it is only a step or two to that found in others, where the parents never
see their 3'oung, for which they make ample provision, any more than
does a turtle or a mud-dauber wasp.

More aberrant still, but in the same direction, is the behavior of the
moleo, in which as in the parasitic cuckoos, other changes have arisen,
which would render self -brooding difficult if not impracticable. Their
large eggs, six to eight in number, are said to be deposited at the
extraordinary interval of ten to twelve days, so that a period of three
months would elapse, between the laying of the first and last. Again,
unlike the fowls and birds generally, no turning of the eggs during
incubation is necessary.

While nothing is certainly known concerning the history of these
peculiar instincts of the megapodcs, it is not unlikely that, as in
cuckoos and cowbirds, they have arisen through the modification of
earlier and more uniform instincts which the ancestors of all modern
birds seem to have possessed in common.

VOL. LXXVII.-

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

99

THE PEOGEESS OF SCIENCE

TEE JOENS EOPKINS UNIVER-
SITY

The authorities of the Johns Hop-
kins University have issued a pamphlet
in the interest of the endowment and
extension fund which they need and
should have. The General Education
Board has undertaken to contribute
$250,000, on condition that $750,000
be obtained from other sources: but
the university aims at more than this.
It would remove to its new site and
would complete its university organiza-
tion by the establishment of a school
of higher engineering, a law school
maintaining the standards of its med-
ical school, and a school for the train-
ing of teachers. It would also obtain
an endowment fund for its college, es-
tablish a department of preventive
medicine and erect a building for
pathology.

When the Johns Hopkins University
celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary
of its foundation in 1902 a site was
given to it which cost $500,000, and is
now worth twice as much. The hun-
dred and twenty acres, finely situated
two miles from the center of Balti-
more, admit of picturesque develop-
ment beyond the possibilities of any
other city university. We reproduce
a plan of the site with pictures of two
of the buildings which it is intended

to erect first and of the Carroll man-
sion on the grounds, which is to serve
as a model for the architecture. A
botanical laboratory and garden and an
athletic field are already in use. The
administration and academic buildings,
shown in the illustration, and labora-
tories ior chemistry/ physics, geology
and botany must be erected promptly.
These with the power plant, grading,
etc., will cost about $1 200,000, towards
which can be used the proceeds of the
sale of the present site and buildings.

So long as a national university is
not established in Washington, there
is needed a great university at Balti-
more. The states to the south and
west are not adequately supplied with
institutions of higher learning, and for
a long while the Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity will set a model for that region,
whose industrial development will
surely be followed by an intellectual
renaissance.

The Johns Hopkins University de-
serves well not only of Baltimore and
Maryland and the south, but of the
whole country. When it was opened
on October 3, 1876, there were colleges
in this country, but no universities.
The idea of the university was doubt-
less in the air, but it was first placed
on a solid foundation at Baltimore.
Remarkable wisdom was shown by

i a e a

Administration and Academic Buildings with Entrance to Quadrangle.

IOO

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The Carroll Mansion at Homewood, built in 1803, the architecture of which will

be the key-note for the new buildings.

President Gilman and his advisers, not
only in deciding that the Johns Hop-
kins should be a university rather than
a college, but also in adopting stand-
ards and ideals, which have not else-
where been paralleled. The smallest
possible amount of money was spent on
buildings, and no attempt was made
to cover all kinds of subjects. A small
group of professors, each a man of dis-
tinction— Rowland, Remsen, Sylvester,
Martin, Brooks, Gildersleeve — were
brought together, adequately paid and
given complete freedom. Fellowships
and means of research and publication
were provided; the ablest students in
the country were drawn to Baltimore.
These men are now in nearly every
academic center of the country, and
tlie influence of the Johns Hopkins and
of the university ideal is everywhere.
Not only in 1870, but again in 1893,
and again with comparatively modest
resources, the Johns Hopkins set uni-
versity standards by the establishment
of its school of medicine. Again a
small group of distinguished men —
Welch, Osier, Howell. Mall — were

brought together, and for the first time
in this country there was a school of
medicine on a proper university basis.
Like the graduate faculty of philos-
ophy this school has set a model, which
other institutions are now following.
The country can only in slight meas-
ure repay the Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity for its great service by giving it
the money it now needs. Columbia
and Princeton have each received $5,-
000,000 within the past year; the
Johns Hopkins should have as much.
If the writer of this note — who is one
of those who came under the influence
of the university in its great days —
had despotic control of the vast wealth
of the country, he would assign to the
Johns Hopkins University as many
millions as it might ask. But it would
not be for new buildings and new de-
partments. It would be on condition
that the standards set in 187G and
1893 snould be maintained, that we
should have a university where every
teacher is a, great man, free to do his
own work in his own way.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

IOI

MEDICAL EDUCATION IN THE
UNITED STATES

The Carnegie Foundation has issued
a bulletin on medical education in
America, which is likely to do good
service in attracting attention to the
low standards and inadequate endow-
ment of many of the medical schools
of the United States. On behalf of the
foundation, Mr. Abraham Flexner has
visited every one of the 155 medical
schools, and gives a brief description
of each. The conditions in each state
are summarized, and plans are pro-
posed for their improvement. This de-
tailed report is preceded by an intro-
duction by President Pritchett and by
fourteen chapters by Mr. Flexner on
the whole subject of medical education
in this country, beginning with a his-
torical sketch and ending with the
education of the negro. The bulletin,
which extends to 347 pages, may be
obtained by sending seventeen cents
for postage to the foundation.

The conditions of medical education
in the United States have been investi-
gated with equal thoroughness by the
council on education of the American
Medical Association, and are well un-
derstood by experts. There are too
many inadequately trained physicians
in the country, and one of the prin-
cipal difficulties is the existence of
proprietary schools dependent on the
fees of students. Physicians are ready
to be professors in medical schools for
the title and connections. When the
school depends for its support on the
fees, low standards are likely to be
adopted in order to attract students.
It was at one time possible to conduct
a proprietary school with tolerable
efficiency, as can now be done in the
case of law, but with the development
of laboratory and clinical methods, the
cost of a satisfactory medical educa-
tion can not be met by fees. It is
certainly a scandal that one third of
our medical schools have incomes be-
low $10,000, all from fees, that in some
cases there are as many professors as

students, and that many students do
not have even a high school education.
One school actually exists with twenty-
six professors and a total income of
$1,060.

But while every one knows and ad-
mits the evils, the remedy is not clear.
Though Dr. Pritchett and Mr. Flexner
have obtained their medical education
by a short course, they have had expert
advice and their general point of view
is sound. We need several university
schools of medicine emphasizing re-
search and demanding long preliminary
preparation, the schools for the train-
ing of the great mass of practising
physicians should require a training in
science and the languages equal to two
years of college, the schools in the
south can not at present reach this
standard, but should require a prepara-
tion equal to a four-year high school
course. Each school should have ade-
quate laboratories for anatomy, physi-
ology, chemistry and pathology under
the charge of professors and instructors
who give their whole time to the work
of teaching and research. The clinical
departments should be under the
charge of professors whose practise
does not interfere with their teaching,
and there should be a suitable hospital
and dispensary controlled by every
school.

But how are we to reach these stand-
ards ? We are slowly approaching
them. When the Johns Hopkins Med-
ical School was opened seventeen years
ago, it was the only well-organized
department of medicine in the country.
With Harvard it still maintains pre-
eminence; but there are now some
thirty schools which give adequate
training for the medical profession.
The commercial schools are closing and
being merged every year, for by the
nature of things they can not last
when they do not pay. When good
schools are adequately endowed in all
sections of the country, students will
naturally frequent them. The states
can accomplish more for the profession
of medicine and the people by support-

102

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing good medical schools than by sup-
pressing those that are poor or by for-
mal restrictions making it difficult to
enter the medical profession.

ROBERT KOCH

In the death of Robert Koch, the
world loses one of its greatest men,
whose service to it has been beyond all
measure. It is not easy to realize the
changes in bacteriology and in medi-
cine which have taken place in the
course of the past thirty or forty years,
or how largely these are due to this
one man. Koch was preceded by Pas-
teur and Lister, but bacteriology and
the germ theory of disease scarcely
existed when in 1876 he published his
paper announcing the isolation of the
bacillus of anthrax. He was at that
time a country physician, but had had
the advantage of studying medicine at
Gottingen under Wagner and Henle.
One wonders whether the hundred and
twenty-five thousand physicians now
practising in the United States would
not produce some men of the type of
Koch if they had been turned in the
right direction at the university. If
so, how small would be the cost of such
schools in comparison with their value.

Koch published in 1878 a second
important paper on infectious diseases,
and was in 1880 given opportunity to
devote himself to research work by
being appointed to the Prussian de-
partment of public health. In his
small laboratory at Berlin, with
Loeffler and Gatt'ky as assistants, he
developed the methods of bacteriology
by cultures and disinfection, and in
1882 made announcement of the far-
reaching discovery of the bacillus of
tuberculosis. A year later he visited
Egypt and India and discovered the
comma bacillus of cholera.

Koch continued his study of tubercu-
losis, cholera and other diseases, not
only from the point of view of labora-
tory science, but devising and applying
means to combat them. In 1880 came
the discovery of tuberculin, the cura-

tive power of which was exaggerated,
not so much by Koch as lj the general
public. Koch was fully justified by
its diagnostic value; his statement of
its curative properties was cautious,
and if it has not fully justified even
these modest claims, it has led to the
whole subject of vaccine therapy, in-
cluding diphtheria anti-toxin, and may
still fully confirm such claims as Koch
made for its curative value in tubercu-
losis. Koch was again criticized when
in 1901 he announced the discovery
that human and bovine tuberculosis are
not identical, but time appears to have
proved that he was correct in his facts
and also in his claim that the main
efforts should be directed toward pre-
venting human contagion.

In later years Koch devoted himself
largely to tropical diseases and accom-
plished much by his studies in Africa
and Asia of parasitology, bacteriology
and hygiene, investigating rinderpest
and surra, the bubonic plague, malaria
and sleeping-sickness.

Such rewards as a scientific man
may have were given to him. He was
appointed in 1885 professor of hygiene
in the University of Berlin and di-
rector of the Hygienic Institute, then
newly established. In 1891 he was ap-
pointed director of the new Royal In-
stitute for Infectious Diseases, and
became an honorary professor in the
university. This institute now forms
a part of the Rudolf Virchow Hospital,
and is known as the Koch Institute.
Koch received the Nobel prize in medi-
cine in 1905. But the rewards that
could be given to him were insignifi-
cant beside his services.

Of the world's debt to Koch the
Journal of the American Medical Asso-
ciation says : " But death has claimed
the master and the world has lost its
leader in the struggle against infec-
tion. Endowed with a mind of the
first oraer, and animated, beneath a
quiet, impassive and meditative ex-
terior, by a spirit of unceasing but
wonderfully well-regulated activity,
which drove him on as by an internal

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

103

Robert Koch.

fire from achievement to achievement,
he made his own age preeminent over
all the ages that have gone before for
advances in the exact knowledge of the
causation ana prevention of infectious
diseases. Rarely, if ever, have so
many discoveries of such decisive im-
portance to mankind emanated from
the activities of one person; yet he
served with all humility of mind. He
simply tried to do his duty, being, as
he said, fortunate to find sometimes
the gold among the gravel of the road
which is open to every one. When we
consider the advancement medicine
owes to Robert Koch and the endless
and inestimable blessing which has
come to mankind through his work
and life, there comes an overpowering-
sense of admiration, reverence and
gratitude."

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS

We record with regret the deaths of
Dr. George Frederic Barker, emeritus
professor of physics in the University
of Pennsylvania; of General Cyrus
Ballou Comstock, U. S. A. (retired),
the eminent engineer; of Professor
William P. Blake, known for his con-
tributions to geology; of Professor
Stanislau Cannizzaro, the distin-
guished Italian chemist, and of Lieu-
tenant Boyd Alexander, the African
explorer.

New York University has given
its doctorate of laws to Dr. Henry
Miuchell MacCracken, who retires from
the chancellorship of the university. — ■
Sir David Gill, K.C.B., F.R.S., has been
appointed a knight of the Prussian
Order of Merit. — Lord Rayleigh has
been promoted from a corresponding to

104

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

a foreign member of the Berlin Acad-
emy of Sciences.

Following the advice of its advisory
board, the Wistar Institute of Anat-
omy has established a department of
embryology, and Professor G. Carl
Huber, of the University of Michigan,
has been called to this chair.

By the will of Isaac C. Wyman, of
Salem, Mass., a graduate of Princeton
College, most of his estate is be-
queathed to Princeton University, to be
used for a graduate school. Mr. John
M. Raymond, of Salem, Mass., and Pro-
fessor Andrew F. West, dean of the
Graduate School, are the trustees. The
value of the bequest is estimated at
$3,000,000. Mr. W. C. Procter has re-
newed his gift of $500,000 for the
Graduate College. A great graduate
school is thus assured at Princeton.

At a meeting of the trustees of the
General Education Board, held on May
24 in New York City, $082,450 in ap-
propriations was voted. Of this sum
$538,000 was appropriated condition-
ally for the endowment funds of eight
colleges, $113 000 for the furtherance
of demonstration work in agriculture
throughout the southern states, and
$31,450 for the salaries and expenses
of special professors of secondary edu-
cation in the several state universities
of the south. The appropriations
voted in support of college endow-
ments raised to $5,177,500 the sum
already spent in this direction. The
seventy colleges that have received
these endowments during the last four
years of the board's activities have
each raised sums in endowment which,
taken with the board's gifts, aggregate
$23,670,500.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

AUGUST, 1910
THE PAST AND PEESENT STATUS OF THE ETHEE1

By Professor ARTHUR GORDON WEBSTER

CLARK UNIVERSITY

IN a recent letter to the New York Nation, Professor William James,
in describing the philosophy of M. Emile Boutroux, makes the
statement that " theories result from psychological variations, just as
Eoosevelts and Eockefellers result from biological variations." Of the
entities of science he says:

The creative touch of human reason was needed in each case for the extrica-
tion; and that those particular creations resulted rather than a hundred others
just as possible, is one of those selective interactions between living minds and
their environment which can be " understood " when once it has occurred, but
which no acquaintance with the previous conditions can show to an outsider
that it was the sole thing possible.

Considering the prevalence of such philosophical views, and the
fact that many persons believe that physics is now undergoing a sort
of crisis, in which many of our most cherished ideas are about to be
relegated to the scrap-heap, I believe it to be not without profit to con-
sider the past and present condition of our views with regard to the
luminiferous ether, and to cautiously forecast their future.

Certainly the postulate of the existence of the ether has been until
very recently one of the fundamentals of physics (including astron-
omy). At the congresses of arts and sciences held at Si Louis in
1904, the subject of physics was, like all Gaul, divided into three parts,
physics of matter, physics of ether, physics of the electron, and al-
though this division was, I believe, not made by a physicist, this must
have made little difference. In an interesting book published less than
a year ago by Sir Oliver Lodge, entitled " The Ether of Space," the
properties of the ether are set forth with a concreteness and dogmatic
manner that is now becoming unfashionable, and relieves that writer

xRead at a meeting of the American Philosophical Society, April 22, 1910.

VOL. lxxvii. — 8.

106 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

from any suspicion of being called a pragmatist. For him the ether un-
doubtedly is a real thing. In a more ambitious treatise published ten
}rears ago, by Sir Joseph Larmor, entitled " Ether and Matter/' we
have a thoroughgoing mathematical investigation of the properties of
the ether, and, as the subtitle states, a development of the dynamical
relations of the ether to material systems. And yet, since the publica-
tion of the latter work there have been voices heard with ever-growing
distinctness, declaring in not dubious terms the lack of necessity of
any such conception as that of the ether, and threatening the belief in
its existence with relegation to the company of phlogiston in the morgue
of dead theories. That we can not dismiss such voices with contempt
is evident if among them are to be counted those of such leaders of
physical science as Henri Poincare, Sir J. J. Thomson and Professor
Max Planck.

Before we can discuss the question of the existence of the ether, we
must first determine what we mean by that term. This is undoubtedly
the main difficulty with the whole matter. The article in the " En-
cyclopedia Britannica," written over thirty years ago by Maxwell, as
competent an authority as could have been named at that time, begins
with the definition, " a material substance of a more subtle kind than
visible bodies, supposed to exist in those parts of space which are ap-
parently empty," and ends with the statement, " Whatever difficulties
we may have in forming a consistent idea of the constitution of the
ether, there can be no doubt that the interplanetary and interstellar
spaces are not empty, but are occupied by a material substance or body,
which is certainly the largest, and probably the most uniform body of
which we have any knowledge." This is certainly flat-footed enough,
but how different from the conclusions of Lodge, one of the present
survivors of the same school, we may see from his book above mentioned.

The need for the idea of an ether is well shown by the following

quotation from Newton, who, after describing an experiment of two

thermometers, one in a vessel filled with air and the other in vacuo,

being carried from a cold place into a warm one, both rising at the same

rate, says:

Is not the heat of the warm Room conveyed through the Vacuum by the
Vibrations of a much subtiler Medium than Air, which after the Air was drawn
out remained in the Vacuum? And is not this Medium the same with that
Medium by which Light is transmitted, and by whose Vibrations Light com-
municates Heat to Bodies?

And yet Newton did not accept the wave theory, but by the influ-
ence of his great name bolstered up the emission theory for a hundred
years. It was his contemporary Huygens, who must be credited with
the invention of the ether in order to explain the propagation of light.
Huygens's ideas of the properties of the ether were, however, very dif-

THE STATUS OF THE ETHER 107

ferent from those that have now been held for a century. In order to
cover all the different notions that have been held, without being so
definite in making the ether a substance as was Maxwell, we need only
ask the question, Since we know that light travels with a speed of about
three hundred thousand kilometers per second, and takes about eight
minutes to come from the sun, what is the state of the light after it
has left the sun and before it has reached the earth? We reply, it is
traveling through the ether. A similar definition was given by the
late Lord Salisbury who said that the noun ether was the subject of the
verb to undulate. But why undulations? The undulatory theory, as
a successful explanation of optical phenomena, is just about a century
old, and was propounded by Dr. Thomas Young, in two Bakerian lec-
tures before the Eoyal Society in 1801 and 1803. The reason that con-
vinced Young, and later the scientific world, of the undulatory nature
of light, was the fact of interference, or the production of darkness by
the simultaneous action of two beams of light, carefully investigated
by Young. These views were savagely assailed by Lord Brougham, in
a scurrilous article in the Edinburgh Review, in which he says that
"*it is a metaphysical absurdity, to assert that qualities can move in
concentric surfaces." The violence of the attack may be seen from the
quotation :

The long silence which he (Young) has since preserved on philosophical
matters, led us to flatter ourselves, either that he had discontinued his fruitless
chase after hypotheses, or that the Society had remitted his effusions to the
more appropriate audience of both sexes which throngs around the chairs of the
Royal Institution.

It is evident that Young had an excellent understanding of the
analogy between sound and light waves, but he did not follow out the
theory with the mathematical exactness bestowed upon it by Augustin
Fresnel, whose superb researches, beginning in 1815, have made his
name a classic of optical investigation. Both Young and Fresnel rec-
ognized, as Huygens had not, the fundamental difference in the nature
of waves of light and sound, namely, that since by turning the proper
apparatus traversed by light about the direction of the beam as an
axis, the light is capable of alternate extinction and transmission, the
undulations must be transverse to the direction of propagation. Fres-
nel introduced into his mathematical treatment certain mechanical
principles, notably that one which we now call the conservation of
energy, but he did not attempt to find a mechanical structure, in terms
of properties of ordinary matter inertia and rigidit}', which would ex-
plain the nature of the ether. This was done by George Green, who as-
similated the ether to an elastic solid, which is capable of transmitting
transverse waves in all directions with the same velocity. Unfortu-
nately, such a solid transmits equally well longitudinal waves, like those

108 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of sound, but with a different velocity from that of transverse waves.
But such longitudinal waves have no place in any optical phenomenon,
and therefore constitute a difficulty for the theory. In order not to have
them it was necessary for Green to suppose the ether incompressible.
Thus the theory did very well for the propagation of light on free space.
When light passes from free space to a transparent substance, however,
it is partially reflected and partially refracted, travelling with a differ-
ent velocity in the new medium. This change of velocity could be ex-
plained by a difference of either density or rigidity in the two media.
Green chose one hypothesis, in fact the same as that of Fresnel, Neu-
mann and McCullagh the other. This difference gave rise to a contro-
versy over the direction of the vibration, as to whether it was in or
perpendicular to the plane of polarization, a controversy vainly sought
to be settled by experiment. Although reflection and refraction could
thus be explained, there remained a very grave difficulty. The condi-
tions to be satisfied at the surface between two different media are too
many to be satisfied by a transverse wave alone, so that had there been
originally only a transverse wave, it would give rise to a longitudinal
wave on striking the surface limiting the media. To avoid this diffi-
culty a mechanical theory was proposed by McCullagh, in which the
elasticity was not like that found in any known substance, but was
called into play when a portion of the medium was rotated, quite inde-
pendently of whether neighboring portions were rotated or not. This
theory gave a very satisfactory explanation of reflection and refraction,
but long met with opposition on account of its postulating elastic
properties not found in any substance.

Probably the person who took most seriously the view of the ether
as having the properties of some familiar sort of matter was Lord Kel-
vin, who devoted a large portion of his life to the attempt to find a
suitable mechanical representation of the ether. In fact he stated on
the occasion of his jubilee that for forty years this question had not
been absent from his mind for a single day. Lord Kelvin frequently
uses the term " jelly " as typical of Green's elastic substance, and did
finally, by a very ingenious assumption, succeed in assimilating the
ether to such a substance. But in spite of all these attempts, we may
agree with the opinion of Lord Eayleigh, who concludes that for many
reasons " the elastic solid theory, valuable as a piece of purely dynam-
ical reasoning, and probably not without mathematical analogy to the
truth, can in optics be regarded only as an illustration."

Such was the condition of affairs at the close of what I may call
the medieval period in optics, when, in 1864, Maxwell gave affairs an
entirely new turn by the presentation of his famous paper on " A Dy-
namical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field." In this he was guided
by the conjecture of Faraday that the same medium which is concerned

THE STATUS OF THE ETHER 109

in the propagation of light might also be the agent in electromagnetic
phenomena. Faraday says :

For my own part, considering the relation of a vacuum to the magnetic
force, and the general character of magnetic phenomena external to the magnet,
I am much more inclined to the notion that in the transmission of the force
there is such an action, external to the magnet, than that the effects are merely
attraction and repulsion at a distance. Such an action may be a function of
the ether, for if there be an ether, it should have other uses than simply the
conveyance of radiation.

This expression of Faraday is the key-note of Maxwell's theory. In
examining the properties of the medium necessary to transmit electric
and magnetic forces, he concentrates his attention on two quantities
having direction, namely, the magnetic and electric polarization of the
medium at every point. He shows that these states of polarization are
propagated in waves, and that these waves have all the properties of
light-waves. They are transverse, no longitudinal wave occurs, and
moreover for the first time the conditions at the surface of separation
of two media are exactly sufficient to give the proper explanation of
reflection and refraction. Everything accomplished by any undulatory
theory was accomplished by the electromagnetic theory, with this in
addition, so that it is perhaps surprising that it remained for the ex-
perimental production in 1888 by Hertz of undoubtedly electromag-
netic waves having all the properties predicted by Maxwell to give this
theory the overwhelming preponderance that it has since maintained.

We may now touch upon the question, what is a mechanical theory.
A mechanical theory is one that can be stated in terms of the principles
of mechanics. The laws of mechanics, as they have been held since
their exact statement by Newton, are all embraced in the single
mathematical principle of least action, best comprised in the enuncia-
tion of Hamilton. In this enunciation occur two functions repre-
senting the two forms of energy, kinetic and potential. If these de-
pend in a certain simple manner on two quantities having direction, or
vectors, irrespective of their physical nature, the differential equations
follow, which lead to wave propagation. Maxwell's field vectors have
this property, and consequently Maxwell's theory is a mechanical theory.
I will now define the properties of the ether, as they seem to me to be
required by our present-day notions. The ether connotes those proper-
ties of space in virtue of which a change in either of two field vectors
at any point gives rise to a field of the other sort, the lines of which tend
to symmetrically surround the lines of the original and varying vector
in circles. In addition the direction of these surrounding lines is con-
trary according to the field that we begin with. This is a qualitative
statement in plain English of what is quantitatively stated in the six
differential equations of Maxwell's theory, and it avoids the use of the

no THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

electromagnetic terminology. It thus applies exactly to Fitzgerald's
and Larmor's resuscitation of McCullagh's rotational elastic theory,
which is found to be identical with the electromagnetic theory.

I believe that I have thus given that definition of the ether which
best agrees with what Boltzmann calls the phenomenological view in
physics which attempts to exactly describe phenomena, without any
hypothesis, or any attempt at mechanical model to assist the imagina-
tion. This was the view of Kirchhoff, Helmholtz, Hertz and Boltz-
mann, and I believe it to be the most scientific. The English method,
of which Lord Kelvin was the leading example, demands concrete
models, which resemble the phenomena more or less, and which are
frequently changed. In the words of an acute French critic, M.
Duhem, for a geometer of the school of Laplace or Ampere, it would
be absurd to give for the same law two theoretical explanations and to
maintain that the two explanations hold simultaneously; for a phys-
icist of the school of Kelvin or Maxwell, there is no contradiction in
the same law being represented by two different models. I may also
quote Fitzgerald's words:

I can not conclude without protesting strongly against Sir William Thom-
son's speaking of the ether as like a jelly. It is in some respects analogous to
one, but we certainly know a great deal too little about it to say that it is like
one. I also think that Sir William Thomson, notwithstanding his guarded
statements on the subject, is lending his overwhelming authority to a view of
the ether which is not justified by our present knowledge, and which may lead
to the same unfortunate results in delaying the progress of science as arose from
Sir Isaac Newton's equally gviarded advocacy of the corpuscular theory of optics.

I feel that this protest is a very mild one, and that the attempt made
by Kelvin to determine the density and elasticity of the ether, from
very questionable assumptions, together with the recent attempts of
Lodge, based on equally naive conceptions of the nature of the ether as
a concrete substance, are greatly to be deplored.

We come now to the most modern development of the ether theory.
Maxwell had, as has been said, accurately described the propagation
of the electromagnetic waves, and had given the differential equations
governing their propagation. It remained to add to these equa-
tions terms expressing the genesis of the waves, to show how these
resulted from the motion of charges of electricity. This was done in
an important series of papers begun in 1892 and continued until the
present by H. A. Lorentz, who may be characterized as the legitimate
successor of Maxwell. Not only did Lorentz add terms shown to be
necessary by the experiments of Rowland on the magnetic effect of
moving electric charges, and later by the deflection of the cathode rays
by a magnet, but he succeeded in showing for the first time how the
potentials determining the field were propagated in time through the
field, a result vainly sought by Gauss, Weber and Riemann, and almost

THE STATUS OF TEE ETHER in

reached by the latter. The object of Lorentz in his papers was to
explain the transmission of waves in moving media, beginning with the
explanation of astronomical aberration. Singularly enough this was
the one phenomenon which was better explained on the emission than
on the undulatory theory, and which had proved a stumbling-block
for the latter. If the ether is a substance, the question arises whether
it is carried along by the earth in its motion, or whether it remains
fixed. Lorentz assumed that it remains fixed, and thus satisfactorily
explained aberration. But if the earth moved through the ether, the
velocity of light between terrestrial points should be affected in the
same way that the velocity of sound is affected by the wind. To test
this a celebrated experiment was made by Michelson in 1881, repeated
by Michelson and Morley in 1887, and several times later, which showed
the failure of the earth's motion to influence the velocity of light from
a terrestrial source. This classical experiment may prove to be the
beginning of the end of the ether. It is evident that if light is propa-
gated through the ether in waves which have a velocity peculiar to the
ether, and not influenced by the velocity of the source, then light will
take longer to reach a point a given distance from it when both are
moving in the direction of the line joining them when the second point
is ahead than when it is behind, in the ratio of the sum of the velocities
of the source and the waves to their difference. The time for the light
to go to the forward point and come back is greater than it would be if
the system stood still by an amount inversely proportional to 1 — /?2 where
/? is the ratio of the speed of the source to that of light. In the case of
the earth this is about one part in one hundred millions, and it was
shown by Michelson that no such effect existed. Michelson assumed
that this showed that the ether was fixed to the earth. For the contrary
explanation, Lorentz adopted an hypothesis already proposed by Fitz-
gerald, namely, that all bodies in motion are thereby shortened in the di-
rection of their motion, in precisely this ratio. This hypothesis, though
startling, has now obtained great weight. In connection with it,
Lorentz introduced the idea of local time, which is different for dif-
ferent points of the same system moving with a uniform velocity of
translation. The modification, by the motion, of both distance and
time leads to a most fundamental principle for all our physical notions,
called the principle of relativity, which, though brought about by
Lorentz, was most clearly expounded by Einstein, who is probably the
high priest of the ultra-modern school. The principle of relativity
assumes as a postulate that all phenomena are the same if observed
with reference to a body moving with constant velocity with respect to
the ether as if with respect to a body at rest. If this is so, and no
experiments have contradicted it, we have as much right to suppose the
ether at rest with respect to one body as another. It seems then unnat-
ural to characterize one body as moving relative to a fixed ether. Hence

ii2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Einstein abandons the ether, which he declares to be the totally unneces-
sary conception. Einstein makes two postulates which are sufficient to
explain all phenomena now known. The first has been stated, the other
is that the velocity of light is the same when measured in any system.
By measures of this velocity, we can, therefore, not determine whether
the system is moving or at rest. Clothed in a more mathematical form,
such as has been given by Minkowski, we may state the principle as
follows : If instead of the distance x measured in the direction of the
motion of the system, and of the time t measured by a clock standing
still, we substitute a quantity x' denoting a new length and t' a new
time, then all the equations of electro-dynamics and presumably all
those of physics admit of a so-called linear transformation of the
variables x and t to the variables x' and V . Under this transformation,
the equations remain, therefore, absolutely unchanged. It is accord-
ingly impossible by any observations to determine whether the time
measured by the clock is t or V or whether the distance measured by the
scale is x or x' . As has already been said, this proposition is of the most
startling nature and results in connecting the notions of time and space
in a most unexpected manner. In fact we may briefly sum up by saying
that we can not tell where a point is until we know when, and we can
not tell the time when until we know the place where ! If we accept this
principle it may be necessary to totally abandon the hypothesis of the
ether. Certain writers, such as Eitz in France, have established a system
of electrodynamics in which the conceptions of the ether and of the
magnetic and electric fields have totally disappeared. Eitz, for instance,
bases his whole theory upon the so-called retarded potentials of Lorentz,
by means of which the action of any electric charge, fixed or in motion,
is calculated at any other time and place by means of definite integrals.
This conception has been vigorously maintained : in England I may
mention the name of Mr. Norman Campbell, who in a recent article in
the Philosophical Magazine, as in his excellent modern treatise on elec-
tromagnetic phenomena, has vigorously assailed and even ridiculed the
school of those whom he calls the " etherealists," as making use of a
totally useless and hindering conception.

In 1900 Professor Poincare had already asked the question, " does
the ether exist ? " This I may characterize as now the question of the
hour. To sum up what I believe to be the state of the case, certain
phenomena concerning radiation and the distribution of energy in the
spectrum have led to the necessity of certain assumptions which seem
difficultly explained on the ether hypothesis. Sir Joseph Thomson also,
in order to explain certain phenomena connected with the emission of
electrons from metals under the action of ultra-violet light and other
phenomena with which he is particularly competent to deal, has pro-
pounded the hypothesis that a wave of light is not uniform but is some-
what of a fibrous nature. I find it difficult to see how such a hypothesis

THE STATUS OF THE ETHER 113

is to be reconciled with the hypothesis of the ether or the differential
equations at all. In fact, the views of Sir Joseph are to me in many
places incomprehensible. In his lectures recently delivered at the Koyal
Institution on the electromagnetic theory of light, however, Sir Joseph
categorically expresses himself as of the opinion that the electromag-
netic theory of light is one of the great achievements of modern science.
To me this means that he approves of the ether. To take the extreme
argument of Bitz, who employs as a fundamental necessity the retarded
potential, seems to me to be exactly the same thing as to say that the
ether exists, for since nothing whatever is propagated with finite
velocity, this is the same to me as saying that it is propagated in the
ether. In the first part of this paper, I have defined what I mean by
the ether in very guarded form. This definition I see no reason to
change. Whether we begin with the retarded potential and find that
it satisfies a differential equation, or whether we begin with the differ-
ential equation and find that it is satisfied by a retarded potential is to
me a matter of utter indifference and implies an ether. I admit that
we still have to find a hypothesis for the ether which makes it give rise
to this differential equation. The hypothesis of Maxwell seems to me
the easiest one yet proposed. I will therefore close by stating my
present opinion, that the ether is as good to-day as it ever was, but that
apparently the notions of time and space have had to be modified in the
method suggested by Lorentz and splendidly developed by Einstein and
Minkowski. At the same time, we can not deny that there exists to-day
what we may call la crise de V ether, and we are far from being able to
say with Lord Kelvin, " It is absolutely certain that there is a definite
dynamical theory for waves of light, to be enriched, not abolished, by
electromagnetic theory."

ii4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

PHYSIOLOGIC LIGHT

By F. ALEX. McDERMOTT

HYGIENIC LABORATORY, U. S. PUBLIC HEALTH AND MARINE HOSPITAL SERVICE

THERE are probably but few if any of the readers of this magazine
who have not seen and admired at least one of the many mani-
festations of "physiologic light/' of which the most common to us is
the firefly. Indeed, from the earliest times the phenomenon of the
emission of light by animals and plants has attracted man's attention,
and a large amount of scientific work has been done upon the subject.
An attempt to compile a complete bibliography of the subject has
resulted in the remarkable discovery that there are over seven hundred
references to the literature bearing on the emission of light by organ-
ized bodies, and " the end is not yet." The work has embraced the
physical, chemical, physiologic, histologic and entomologic sides, and
much valuable information and many interesting facts have been se-
cured. Among the names of the early writers who refer to some phase
of this phenomenon are Aristotle, Pliny the Younger and Josephus;
the more recent names include those of Eobert Boyle, Sir Humphry
Davy, Faraday, Pasteur, Kolliker, Dubois and the late S. P. Langley,
and indeed a host of others whose names are more or less widely known.
Several extensive treatises on the subject have appeared, some of which
are really quite good, though regrettably they are for the most part out
of date at this time. For the benefit of those who may care to read
further, the names of a few of these are given below.1

The phenomenon of physiologic light has been variously termed
" phosphorescence," " luminosity," " photogenic function," etc., by dif-
ferent authors. As these are, for the most part, interchangeable in
meaning, they will be used in this paper to refer to the same thing.
The term " phosphorescence " is unfortunate, since it implies that the
light is due to the presence of the element phosphorus — which it is not
— and has become still more objectionable recently owing to its applica-
tion by physicists and chemists to another totally different phenomenon
of light emission.

It was my good fortune during the summer of 1909 to be associated
with Professor J. H. Kastle, of the "University of Virginia (then chief

1 Holder, C. F., "Living Lights," Scribner's, 18S6, New York; Gadeau de
Kerville, " Les Insectes Phosphorescents," Rouen, 1881, 1887; Gadeau de Ker-
ville, "Les Animaux et les Vegetaux Lumineux," Paris, 1891 (German edition
by Marshall, Berlin, 1893); Dubois, "Les Elaterides Lumineux," Paris, 1886;
Dubois, " Physiological Light," Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C,
Report for 1895, pp. 413-431.

PHYSIOLOGIC LIGHT i 1 5

of the Division of Chemistry of the Hygienic Laboratory, of the U. S.
Public Health and Marine Hospital Service), in a study of the effects
of various chemical agents on the emission of light by the common
firefly of the country around Washington, Photinus pyralis K. In the
progress of this work we had occasion to review the available literature
quite thoroughly, and were struck with the lack of acquaintance of
people generally with the theories which had been advanced to explain
the phenomenon, and with the work which had already been done upon
it. The results of this investigation will be published at an early date.
In spite of this great amount of work which has been done, the firefly
still preserves its secret of " the cheapest form of light," and seems
likely to do so for some time yet.

Although the most common and brilliant manifestations of physi-
ologic light are exhibited by the fireflies, this property is by no means
confined to the animal kingdom. Various vegetable forms, from the
lowest to the highest, have been reported as producing light. There are
many varieties of luminous bacteria and molds, whose activity is seen in
the luminous decay of fish and wood. Certain agarics and other of the
higher fungi are luminous, and the light given by the underground
rhizomorphs of fungus growths is among the first of these phenomena
to be reported in scientific literature. Of the higher plants, the mari-
gold, the nasturtium and other garden and wild flowers have been said
to emit flashes of light — a circumstance attributed by Phipson to elec-
tricity. But, for the most part, the light of vegetable forms seems to
be pale and often hard to discern, as compared with the brilliancy and
glitter of the firefly and other animal forms.

To those not living on the sea-coast, the most common manifesta-
tion of the photogenic function is that produced by some variety of the
firefly ; but there are a large number of marine forms of varying degrees
of organization which possess this property, and some of these are com-
mon on certain coasts. For the purpose of discussion, the animal forms
will be grouped as marine and land forms.

The simplest marine form which emits light is the " Noctiluca "
(Noctiluca miliaris), a tiny globule of protoplasm scarcely a milli-
meter in diameter, which when present — as it usually is — to the ex-
tent of millions upon millions, produces the appearance known as the
" milky sea " or " phosphorescent sea." Many interesting studies have
been made on this little organism, the principal importance of which
lies in the fact that it seems to give practically the same reactions as
other more highly organized luminous forms. Besides the Noctiluca,
certain Beroe and other Ctenophores are often present in immense
numbers, and give rise to the same appearance of the milky sea.
Higher still, there are a number of Salpse, and other marine forms
which give light, and interesting studies upon them have been made

n6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

by Panceri, Quatrefages and other scientific men. But perhaps the
most remarkable luminous marine organism is the bivalve, Pholas
dactylus, known to the French as the " Pholade," and to the Germans as
the " Bohrmuschel." This creature has definite luminous organs, whose
tissue and secretions are strongly photogenic. It has been the subject of
interesting researches by Dubois, and has been shown to react in a man-
ner similar to that of other luminous forms. More recently, certain
peculiar organs possessed by deep-sea fish have been determined to be
light organs, and thus it appears that in the depths of the sea they need
" artificial " light, when the sun's light fails to penetrate, just as on
land when the sun is hid.

By far the most brilliant and most commonly known form of
physiologic light is that given by the so-called fire-flies; this term em-
braces a large number of species of insects, mostly Coleoptera (beetles)
of two or three genera. Besides these Coleoptera, there are a few
luminous forms distributed among the other insects, together with cer-
tain myriapods, worms and other occasional forms. In a very few
instances luminosity of more highly organized forms has been re-
ported, but for the most part these appear questionable at least. Of
the non-coleopterous insects, Diptera (Cliironomus) and Hemiptera
(Fulgoridas) are said to be luminous; the hills of the South American
termites (Neuropterse) have also been observed to be luminous.

The majority of the insects commonly called fireflies belong to the
genus Lampyridas, including the Italian luciole (Luciola italica),
the English and continental glow-worm (Lampyris noctiluca), the
continental firefly (Lampyris splendidula) , the American fireflies and
"lightning-bugs" (Photinus pyralis, Photuris pennsylvanica, etc.),
and a vast number of other luminous insects. Further south, as in
Cuba, Mexico and Brazil, the more brilliant insects belong to the genus
Elateridae,- and embrace the cucuyo (Pyrophorus noctilucus) and the
cucuyana (Pyrophorus physoderus). In India there is said to be a
luminous buprestid beetle.

Thus it will be seen that, so far from being a rare phenomenon, the
emission of physiologic light is one of well-nigh universal distribution,
and appears to be an important function in the life of those organisms
possessing photogenic activity.

While most of the facts here given apply primarily to the fireflies,
they may, in great part, be taken as true for the entire phenomenon of
physiologic light. Different forms may show variations in color, in-
tensity and mode of emission of the light, but basically it all seems to
revert to the same cause — a cause as yet, however, unknown.

The light given by luminous insects is usually stated by authors to
be greenish or yellowish; a few have claimed to observe insects to emit
a reddish or bluish light, and marine forms have been reported to emit

PHYSIOLOGIC LIGHT 117

a large variety of colors, — red, blue, violet, green, etc. — but the colors
are in most cases pale and dim.

Perhaps a dozen investigators have submitted some form of physio-
logic light to analysis by the spectroscope, and with a few exceptions
the results have agreed very well. The best known of these spectro-
scopic investigations was that of Langley and Very, in 1890. These
authors worked with the Cuban cucuyo; briefly, they found that
the prism of their spectroscope resolved the light into a narrow band
in the yellow and green region of the spectrum, ending somewhat
abruptly and showing few red or blue rays; they were unable to find
that the light was accompanied by any evolution of heat, such as we
ordinarily associate with light produced by combustion or by electric
heating, and hence they called the paper presenting their results " The
Cheapest Form of Light." This valuable research has recently been
confirmed by Drs. Ives and Coblentz, working in the National Bureau
of Standards, in Washington, and using more sensitive instruments
than were available to Professor Langley and his coworker. Ives and
Coblentz found that the light of the common firefly (Photinus pyralis
K.), was resolved by the spectroscope into " an unsymmetrical, struc-
tureless band " in the red, yellow and green, but not extending further
than wave length 0.67^ toward the red end of the spectrum, nor than
wave length 0.51/a toward the violet end. From the facts at hand it
seems extremely unlikely that the spectrum could be discontinuous and
renewed in the infra-red or ultra-violet non-visible portions of the solar
spectrum.

The remarkable fact which these researches bring out is the ex-
tremely high luminous or radiant efficiency of the light. This was esti-
mated by Langley and Very at 100 per cent., and has been shown by
Ives and Coblentz to be about 96 per cent. In other words, 96 per cent,
of the total energy radiated by the firefly is exclusively illuminating
radiation, and does not embrace heat or other subordinate effects. This
is the more remarkable when it is considered that the best artificial
illuminant has a luminous efficiency of only 4 per cent., and most of
them run less than 1 per cent. Of course, this does not mean that the
mechanical or chemical processes resulting in the production of the
light have an equally high efficiency — that is quite another matter.
But it does mean that for a given amount of radiation, the firefly pro-
duces the greatest amount of luminous radiation.

But even if we should discover the means by which the firefly pro-
duces its light, we should hardly care to use it in our homes. The in-
sect has indeed reached the highest possible radiant efficiency, but it
has been accomplished at a sacrifice of color variety that makes the light
worse for color effects than even the ghastly green of the mercury
vapor arc. Anything not within a very limited range of yellow and
green tones would appear black.

n8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The spectrum of the light of some of the organisms which have
been reported to give reddish, bluish or other variously colored lights,
is said to differ from that of the firefly.

Another very interesting fact brought out by these observers (Ives
and Coblentz) is that there may be extracted from the common firefly
(Photinus pyralis K.) a substance which is fluorescent in certain
lights, and that the spectrum of the bluish fluorescent light of this sub-
stance is complementary to that of the light emitted by the insect itself
— that is, the spectrum of this fluorescent light occupies that portion
of the spectrum lying between the green and the violet. The presence
of this fluorescent substance may, of course, be merely a coincidence;
these same authors found a similar substance in a non-luminous species
of the same genus, and various observers have extracted fluorescent
substances from different organisms; but if it is a coincidence, it is
certainly a remarkable one. Dubois has also discovered a fluorescent
substance in the blood of the cucuyo (Pyrophorus noctilucus).

Luminous animals and their photogenic tissues are extremely sen-
sitive to irritants, whether mechanical, electrical or chemical; in other
words, these tissues are very irritable. Almost any schoolboy is fa-
miliar with the fact that pinching a firefly will result in the production
of light from its luminous organ. Any other mechanical irritation,
such as scratching or pricking with a pin, light taps or blows with a
splinter of wood, etc., will produce a similar effect, and this is true not
only of the live insect, but also of the luminous organ immediately
after removal from the body of the insect; as it dries, however, the
luminous organ gradually loses its sensitiveness, and when completely
dry it will not respond to mechanical stimuli.

The electric current acts as a stimulus to light production. The
passage of the current through the body of a firefly causes it to flash,
and sea water containing the Noctiluca shows luminous activity during
the passage of a current. Light may also act as an irritant or stimu-
lus; Henneguy records that the admission of light to the darkened
cabinet wherein were some Noctiluca in sea water, caused the evolution
of light from these infusoria, and the local firefly has been known to
flash following the turning on of an electric light in a darkened room
where the insects were confined, the phenomenon being repeated several
times.

The most extensive observations upon the irritability of photogenic
tissue, however, have been made with chemical substances. These have
included a large number of gases and vapors, acids, alkalis and salts,
alkaloids, and a vast number of miscellaneous compounds. In general,
chemical substances may be divided into three classes with reference to
their action upon the photogenic tissue: (1) Those which tend to pro-
duce the evolution of light, and which may therefore be classed as

PHYSIOLOGIC LIGHT i 1 9

stimulants to light production; examples of this class are mononitro-
benzene, carbon disulfide and carbon tetrachloride; (2) those sub-
stances which are neutral in their action, neither provoking lumines-
cence nor inhibiting it; examples of this class are hydrogen and nitro-
gen; (3) substances which poison the tissue and permanently prevent
the production of light ; examples of this class are bromine, sulfur diox-
ide and iodine cyanide. Strychnine and other alkaloids cause the pro-
duction of light, as do also certain poisons; oxygen appears to activate
the production of light somewhat.

Probably the most interesting fact so far developed by the chem-
ical study of this phenomenon is that when photogenic tissues have
been dried out, the dry tissue glows again when moistened with water
in the presence of air. Carradori mentioned this fact in 1808, and
quoted Spallanzani and Eeaumur as having made the same observa-
tion at earlier dates. Carus reported the same observation in 1864, and
Dubois confirmed it some twenty years later. Professor Kastle and the
writer have been able to perform the same experiment with the Ameri-
can firefly; it is indeed a fact that the photogenic tissue of this insect
may be dried, the dry material powdered, and the dry powder kept for
some time away from access of moisture, and it will, when moistened in
the presence of air or oxygen, glow again; indeed, by careful redrying,
the same result may be obtained two or three times on the same speci-
men of the dry material. Moreover, this dried tissue gives, when mois-
tened, many of the same phenomena with chemical reagents as do the
living insect and its freshly detached luminous organ. The property of
thus glowing upon moistening after having been dried, does not appear
to be confined to the luminous organ of the firefly, but appears to be a
constant characteristic of luminous tissue as a class. The main deduc-
tion from this fact is that at least three factors are necessary for the pro-
duction of light by photogenic forms — water, oxygen and some ma-
terial, as yet unknown, whose oxidation in the presence of water pro-
duces light.

Several theories have been advanced from time to time to account
for the production of physiologic light. Probably the earliest view was
that it was due to the presence of the element phosphorus. That this
is not the case is best evidenced by the fact that there are only traces of
this element present in the luminous tissues, and that which is present
is in the form of phosphates. Yet this is the commonly accepted view
of the cause of the phenomenon, and even as recently as 1880, Jousset
de Bellesme suggested that the light might be produced by the spon-
taneous combustion of phosphine. Carradori assumed that the luciole
was capable of absorbing from the air or from its food, the " material of
light," and of then emanating it again at pleasure.

The fact that the light is unaccompanied by the evolution of meas-

i2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

urable amounts of heat certainly shows that if it is indeed a combus-
tion, it is a most remarkable one and one which differs from any
analogous process known to us. The view that the light might be the
result of oxidation has, however, long been held. Eobert Boyle made
experiments on this point in 1667, and concluded that the light pro-
duced by shining wood and fish was not affected by the absence of air,
and was therefore not what we now call a combustion or oxidation.
Spallanzani, as the result of his studies on luminous sea forms, came to
the opposite conclusion, in which he was opposed by Macartney and
Carradori. More recently this phase of the subject has been studied by
Dubois, Watase and Townsend, all of whom have published very inter-
esting observations. As a result of these several observations the con-
clusion must be drawn that oxygen is essential to the process of the
production of physiologic light, and that we have in this phenomenon
a true but remarkable form of combustion. Of the mechanism of this
process we are still very ignorant. Dubois's theory is that the light is
produced as the result of the action of an " oxidase " (oxidizing fer-
ment), to which he has given the name " Lucif erase," upon a substance
of unknown composition, which he calls " Lucif erin," the latter being
oxidized by the atmospheric oxygen through the agency of the ferment.
It is a little early to accept this hypothesis finally, although it cer-
tainly presents some analogy to known processes — for example, the pro-
duction of the black pigment melanin through the action of the oxidase
tyrosinase upon the organic compound tyrosin. Phipson had already
described a substance he called " Noctilucin " as the active principle
of physiologic light; it seems possible that Phipson isolated and ana-
lyzed a culture of photogenic bacteria.

In this connection the structure of the light organs of various ani-
mal forms has been given special attention. In general, the results of
studies on those forms having special photogenic organs have been es-
sentially similar. Briefly, the luminous organs appear to be masses of
cells of some special kind, possibly a fat-derivative, or according to
Macaire and Kolliker, an albuminous substance penetrated by a net-
work of trachea (tracheoles), and as the result of some chemical ac-
tion, apparently oxidation, taking place in these tissues, the light is
produced. Whether these tracheoles are in life filled with air or with
a liquid seems doubtful; the evidence is contradictory so far as given,
but it seems quite probable that they convey air.

What is the purpose of this production of light? Of what value is
it to the forms which possess it ? This is another side of the " secret of
the firefly/' which has yet to be solved. Quite probably the function
bears some relation to the reproductive life of the insect. The females
of the local species (Photinus pyralis K.) give a very much less bright
light than, and are quite rare as compared with, the males; one female

PHYSIOLOGIC LIGHT 121

to from seven to fourteen males seems to be about the proportion. The
same condition appears to hold with other species of Lampyridae also.
King states that the female of the Texan form Pleotomus pollens
is much more luminous, and rather less active than the male. In addi-
tion to the photogenic power, the common firefly is possessed of a
strong and characteristic odor; Carradori also notes that the Italian
luciole has an odor like that of garlic. Many insects indeed possess
odors, but that of the Lampyridae appears to be especially character-
istic of the group.

In conclusion, we may say that while a vast amount of work has
already been done on this interesting problem, the production of physi-
ologic light still presents many mysteries which science has yet to ex-
plain. Nature keeps her secrets well, but this one seems well worthy of
solution; the immediate practical and economic importance may not
be so great as has been sometimes assumed, but it is a problem of in-
terest alike for the physicist, the chemist, the biologist and the ento-
mologist, and the scientific world awaits its solution with much curi-
osity.

VOL. LXXVII. -9.

i22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS— III

Br Professor FRANCIS H. HERRICK

ADELBERT COLLEGE
I

IN earlier papers we have tried to show how the behavior of wild
birds is moulded upon instinct and how some of their instincts
have been modified on a large scale, or specialized in a peculiar manner.
We shall now examine the other side of the shield, in order to ascer-
tain how intelligently they work, and in relation to their intelligence
it will be necessary to consider the growth of the young, and the de-
velopment of certain instincts, more particularly that of fear.

Many birds, like some mammals, have been lauded by idealists, as
paragons of virtue, and endowed with all the human or even angelic
powers of intelligence and reason; others, again, have regarded them
as the slaves of a blind or stupid instinct, whose lives are stereotyped,
and run in grooves, determined largely by heredity. " Do not speak
of blind instinct," says Michelet, the historian, " facts demonstrate how
that clear-sighted instinct modifies itself according to surrounding
conditions; in other words, how that rudimentary reason differs in its
nature from the lofty human reason." " Through the thick calcareous
shell, where your rude hand perceives nothing," the bird-mother " feels
by a delicate tact the mysterious being which she nourishes and forms.
. . . She sees it delicate and charming in its soft down of infancy,
and she predicts with the vision of hope that it will be vigorous and
bold, when, with outspread wings, it shall eye the sun and breast the
storm."

While we are not over-zealous in applying the rule of parsimony,
like most modern students, we are compelled to take- a middle course.
When the degrees of intelligence can be more justly weighed, the
mental powers of birds, as well as of mammals, will be better under-
stood. At present the balance does not seen to swing very far on the
side of intelligence. It is certain that the instincts of birds are modi-
fied at every step by association, and that the automatism of habit is
quite as striking as that due to heredity, which it sometimes replaces.
Many birds learn readily from experience; some remember long, when
past experience serves as guide to future conduct. It may well be
doubted if they ever attain to the level of analogical reasoning, or of
deliberately inventing the means in order to attain a definite aim.

Every observer is no doubt unduly influenced by the force of

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 123

isolated facts, and too often falls into temptation by trying to interpret
them without a full knowledge of their history. The act in question
may appear irretrievably stupid or exceptionally intelligent, while upon
fuller knowledge, either view might prove wholly erroneous. Illustra-
tions could be multiplied, but the few which follow, may be of interest.

Shrike Impaling Prey. — The great northern shrike is well known
to impale its prey, such as grasshoppers, small birds and rodents, on
thorns, and it presumably returns to them when in need of food,
although I am not aware that the bird has ever been actually seen in
the act of reclaiming its booty. According to some accounts the shrike
impales its prey in order to rend it with the greater ease, but still goes
on killing after it has satisfied its appetite.

On April 8 of last year I happened to witness a futile attempt at
impalement under such favorable conditions of seeing all that tran-
spired, that any mistake as to the meaning of the actions would seem
to be impossible. A harsh piercing cry attracted my attention to the
bird, which almost at the same moment dived into the stubble of an
adjoining field, and came up with a large object in its bill. Fortu-
nately it flew directly towards me, and alighted on the bare, lower
branch of a maple tree, less than ten feet from my eye, as if completely
preoccupied, and indifferent to observation. I could now see plainly
that it held a little shrew, about three and a half inches long, and in a
strangle grasp by the nape of the neck, for the body was as limp as a
rag. The shrike at once proceeded to walk along the branch and try
to impale the rodent, extending its head and drawing the body of the
animal in a peculiar manner, against the soft twigs of the tree. It
tried the terminal twigs, and the equally soft lateral shoots, and went
through the same motions on two different branches. After several
minutes of this ineffective effort, with a loud rasping call of a different
character, it flew off in the direction of some woods, and was seen to
descend to the ground.

The interpretation of such behavior seems obvious — that the shrike,
when under the spell of a strong impulse, does not know a thorn-bush
from a maple tree. Must it try tree after tree, until one of the right
sort is found ? If it can return to its tree by memory, why can not it
find one suited to its puposes by intelligence; or, was this a bird with
inherited instinct to impale, but with no previous experience with
thorns ?

Bobin " Tying Knots." — So far as I have observed, the robin in
nest-building, ties no proper knots, unless the present case (Fig. 23)
be exceptional, although strings are coiled more or less effectively
about adjoining twigs. This nest was placed in a crotch of a pine tree,
and one of its supporting branches bore the peculiar double loop or
:< knot " which is here shown. It seems that a piece of string over two

124

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

feet in length was brought to the nest-site, and passed five times round
the larger, and twice about the smaller of the two twigs, with overlaps
due to working each string-end independently. Having thus fixed it
firmly at the middle, the intelligent course would have been to have
incorporated the loose ends with the nest. Instead, they were both left
flying free, so that this labor, however begun, was not intelligently
finished. The eighteen' inches of free string really served to render the
nest conspicuous.

Woodpecker Drilling for Insects. — While in the Maine woods on
August 13, my attention was drawn to the freshly drilled hole of a

Fig. 23. Double " Loop-knot " made by Robin about Pine-branch close to
its Nest, illustrating an act probably instinctively begun, but not intelligently finished,
since the ends of the twine were not incorporated with the structure, but left hang-
ing free.

woodpecker (Fig. 24), in a pine tree, which was two feet in diameter
at the base, and apparently sound. This hole, which was remarkable
for its size, had been cut at a point seven feet up, through nearly five
inches of solid sap wood, to the heart of the tree, and was 9f inches
long, 5^ inches wide, and 8 inches deep. These dimensions would
imply the removal of over three hundred cubic inches of wood, and the
chips, some of which were four inches long (Fig. 25), were plainly the
work of our largest northern species, the pileated woodpecker or log
cock.

A moment's inspection showed that this woodpecker had tunneled

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS

125

Fig. 24. Huge boking of Pileated Woodpecker in a white pine two feet in
diameter, to reach galleries of the carpenter ants, seven feet from the ground, where
the insect gained entrance ; illustrating either instinct to follow sounds, or intelligence
in adapting means to end.

Fig. 25. Sound Pine Chips from Workshop of Pileated Woodpecker, shown
in Fig 24 ; some are bent or broken with the wrenching stroke of the bill. Nat-
ural size.

126 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

to reach the big carpenter ants (Camponotus herculeanus) , which had
extended their galleries up into the tree's heart, and some of which
were already entrapped in the exuding pitch. Now one of the chief
points of interest in this case was that the ant-borings were few, and
the tree itself so large and solid that it would seem to be impossible
for any bird to detect their presence by sounding with the bill. On the
opposite side at the base, a long ant-hole was plainly seen, and at this
point the observations of the woodpecker had evidently begun. A few
feet above this opening it had attacked the harder wood in three
different places, but desisted after making wells a few inches deep.
The woodpecker then went up seven feet, where the wood was pre-
sumably softer, and made the drilling, which led to success. With
these facts only known, this might appear like a case of reasoning by
analogy, but there is still one sense unaccounted for, that of hearing,
for the olfactory sense must be ruled out. It is possible, or even
highly probable that such birds either instinctively or habitually follow
the sounds in wood — sounds of wood-borers at work — and unless it
could be shown that the boring of carpenter ants cannot be heard
through five inches of solid wood, I should be inclined to accept this
view.

This case suggests another practise of woodpeckers, the interpreta-
tion of which is clear. The president of a large university recently
compared the futile efforts of certain reformers with these of a flicker
which was seen to be repeatedly engaged in the vain attempt to " drill
a hole through a copper gutter." The comparison may be apt to point
a moral, but is a trifle unfair to both the instincts and intelligence of a
useful bird, which will drum on any resonator, either to call its mates
or for the pleasure of the sound, and by habit will come to the same
place daily for more than a week, as in a case which we recently noticed.
In this instance the resonant body was the roof of a bird house, one
shingle thick, to pierce which, had that been its object, one or two blows
of its strong bill would have sufficed.

II. Intelligence in Young Birds
The d,awn of intelligence in young birds is seen, as we have earlier
shown,1 through the inhibition of the food-response by association —
association with the parent, the nest or the vibration imparted to the
tree by the touch of the parental foot.

For the first twenty-four hours, or longer, the altricious nestling
behaves like a mechanical toy, and in relation to the food-response is a
well-nigh perfect reaction-machine. It responds to every kind of a
tactile or auditory stimulus, and within the limits of fatigue its

1 See also " The Relation of Instinct to Intelligence in Birds," Science, N. S.,
Vol. XXVII., 1908.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 127

responses are about as uniform and predictable as those of an electric
bell. Eemove the blind and naked cedarbird from its nest, and the
complex food-reaction is given as regularly and as continuously as
before (Fig. 26). By the second or third day, however, all this has
changed, and it is difficult to get any food-response if the bird be out
of its nest with which association has become established. If the young
are not removed, however, the feeding reaction is usually regularly
given, unless checked by satiety or the rise of the instinct of fear.
Association in the early life of young birds thus tends, as we have seen,

Fig. 26. Young of Cedar Waxwing, blind and naked ; but little over twenty-
four hours old : a, typical prone position, when at rest ; b, typical food-reaction, or
reflex response to sound or contact-stimulus.

to cut out a lot of useless reactions, and to limit their responses to those
which count.

Growth in Relation to the Development of the Instincts and Intelli-
gence.— We have used the term " instinct " as synonymous with com-
pound reflexes, that is, as reflexes involving relatively complex coordi-
nations of the muscles and other organs. Although the sign or
manifestation of an instinct may be suddenly given, the instinct itself,
like every other power, seems to be unfolded gradually, and in correla-
tion with the organs upon which its action depends.

• In many precocious birds, which run, swim or fly at birth or
shortly after, some of the instincts are relatively perfect at the moment
of emergence from the shell, or according to certain observers even be-
fore this event, as when the young, which remain for hours with the
shell chipped, are thought to respond instinctively to the warning
cries of their parents. In rare cases, as in certain megapodes, they are
born masters of their own destiny, and receive no care from parents
which they never see. At the other extreme stand the common altrices,
like the robin or cedarbird, which are blind at birth, and so helpless

128

TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

that tliey would shortly succumb without that parental care and pro-
tection which is so faithfully rendered. Growth and development are
continued after hatching, but under new conditions, and at the age of
two weeks, when the nest is commonly deserted, the young so far as
instincts and intelligence are concerned are at about the same stage as
many of the precoces at birth.

Between these extreme types every intermediate stage is found.
The American black and yellow-billed cuckoos have a place near the
middle of the series, but as we have already seen, they are exceptional
in many ways, not alone in the possession of great muscular strength,
but in their equally remarkable muscular control, being able to grasp

Wt in gtams

r/st.

12 13 14 15

Fig. 27. Growth-curves of the Cedarbird and Black-billed Cuckoo, as repre-
sented by the daily increase in body-weight from hatching to flight from nest, illus-
trating an initial stage of relatively slow growth (in cedarbird first to third day), a
period of maximum increase (third to ninth day), and a final stage of retarded growth
or shrinkage in weight. See table.

a twig, and with both feet pull themselves up when but four hours old,
or possibly less. This ability is closely related to the climbing stage
which is entered on the seventh day, when they leave the nest in succes-
sion, and ascend into the branches, where they remain for a period of
two weeks before ready for flight.

In the cuckoo the curve of growth, as indicated by body-weight,
appears to be quite even and regular after the beginning of the second
day (Fig. 27). In these particular birds the highest rate was regis-
tered on the third day, and this proceeded without appreciable inter-
ruption until the last day in the nest, when it was slightly checked.
The power of muscular coordination, association and the instincts of
fear and of preening seem to develop gradually after the first day.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS

129

Thus the initial attempt to preen, which involves the complicated act
of drawing the mandibles over the feather-tubes, may be witnessed on
the fifth day; thereafter it is repeated more and more frequently, until
on the sixth day it is an established practise, and the movements have
become very precise. Gradual also is the development of fear, an early
premonition of which is crouching and hugging the floor of the nest,
although its final manifestations, such as bristling and spreading, giv-
ing a high-pitched alarm, or jumping out of the nest, may seem to
mature suddenly, partly no doubt because the stimulus which provokes
them is suddenly received.

In the altricious cedarbirds, a single family of which was weighed
and measured in 1901, there was (1) an initial period of relatively
slow growth, lasting three days, followed by a second period (2) of

L.rving in mm.

= Tlst.

Fig. 28. Growth-curves of the Black-billed Cuckoo and Cedarbird, based on
daily increase in length of wing from hatching to climbing stage or flight. See table.

maximum increase, of six days, and a final interval (3) of fluctuating
or retarded growth, extending from three to six days before flight, the
birds even losing weight either before or after this event.

The growth-curve of the most vigorous member of this cedarbird
family (Fig. 27), the first to hatch and to fly, is seen to start with a
higher initial rate, and to maintain it from the third to the ninth day,
at the age of flight. Fortunately this bird, which was then lost, was
recaptured on the fifteenth day, when it is seen to have shrunk very
perceptibly. It had, in fact, lost nearly three grams, or seven per cent.,
in body-weight. The curves showing the rate of wing-growth in both
cuckoo and cedarbird (Fig. 28) follow those of body- weight very closely,

i3o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

but there is possibly a variation in other organs, such as the leg or
tarsus, but it is difficult to obtain reliable measurements on some of
these parts. The most vigorous nestling (No. 1) more than doubled
in weight on the first day, more than trebled on the second, and more
than quadrupled on the third, while on the twelfth day, when it left

Fig. 29. Young Cedarbird, No. 1 of table, shortly after hatching, lying on side,
cicatrix of umbilicus showing on abdomen ; weight 5 grams. August 10, 1901.

the nest it had increased its initial weight seventeen-fold. What ten
days will do for the young cedarbird on the score of appearance may
be seen by comparing Figs. 29 and 30, the first of which shows nestling
No. 1 when about two hours old. The data on which these curves are
based are given in the following table.

Fig. 30. The same Cedarbird (on left) as shown in Fig. 29, ten days later with
birds Nos. 2 and 3 from the same nest. All show the crouching tendency, in evidence
of fear.

Kuhlmann,2 who has recently published an interesting study of the
development of the instincts and intelligence in certain altricious birds,
in particular the turtle dove, the brown thrush and the red-wing
blackbird, finds the rate of growth quite similar to that shown for the

2 The Psychological Review, Monograph Series, No. 44, November, 1909.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS

13I

Growth-records in Cedarbirds and Cuckoos, from Hatching to Flight,

or Climbing Stages

Day.

0

l

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

li

12

13

14

15'

Jedarbird.

fl

2.41

5.00

7.92

10.44

17.28

23.04

26.64

29.16

34.56

39.24

39.60

40.32

41.04

—

38.16

m. in m

2

2.41

3.42

6.48

7.92

11.52

17.28

20.16

24.12

28.08

30.90

32.76

33.48

37.44

36.36

34.20

36.72

3

2.41

3.96

6.66

8.28

12.24

17.64

20.52

21.72

27.72

31.68

33.84

33.12

36.00

37.44

35.28

33.84

u

2.26

2.52

3.60

Cuckoo.

Ft in r J

—

7.56

11.16

16.20

21.24

25.20

28.16

31.68

7.Q2

7.20

& 1 3

G.66

9.00

12.60

19.80

22.68

26.28

28.08

30.60

Jedarbird.

ri

12.50

14.00

15.00

19.00

24.00

27.00

29.30

37.00

38.50

• wing^

2

11.00

13.00

15.00

17.00

20.50

23.00

24.80

33.00

38.00

ti mm.

3

u

12.00
10.00

13.50
12.00

14.00

17.00

20.00

24.00

26.50

33.00

36.50

Cuckoo.

• wingf0

15
17

20

25

31

32

38

43

a mm. ] %

17

23

28

31

36

43

45

Cedarbird No. 4 was probably starved by its more vigorous mates, after the

second day. Cuckoo No. 2 fell out of its nest.

" 0 " indicates the egg.

cedar waxwing, and has based his results upon a much larger number
of cases. He also considers that the three stages enumerated correspond
to stages in the development of muscular coordination, of association
and the instinct of fear. During the first period, when the power of
motor coordination is weak, according to this observer, " the first crude
discriminations and associations are made," and the first signs of in-
stinctive fear noted. In the intermediate period (fourth to seventh
day), discrimination improves, and association is perfected, while from
the beginning of the last period " there is an abrupt change in all the
reactions, the food-reaction ceasing for all the artificial stimuli, except-
ing occasionally for the visual, and fear begins to develop rapidly
through several forms of manifestations."

Kuhlmann recognizes five different manifestations of fear, begin-
ning with " cessation of the food-reaction to stimuli that at first aroused
it," and ending with " escape from the nest when approached." Dis-
crimination and the formation of associations between the food and
certain stimuli are thought to develop simultaneously, and " all stimuli
with which no pleasant associations are already formed are then at the
same time instinctively feared." The food-reaction is not only modified
by association, but is inhibited by fear, and while the development of
association is gradual, the passage of one manifestation of fear to the
next in order is often very abrupt. Such animals, he says, " come to
fear particular things not so much because of unpleasant associations
that are connected with them, as because the taming process has not
been completed."

1 32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

We can not accept the conclusion of the writer quoted above, that
" fear for particular things remains in the main instinctive." Fear and
association, as we have seen, are without doubt developed, like all else,
by a gradual process, however abrupt certain reactions of fear may
appear. The normal and usual reactions of daily life seem to go
through a sifting process; the usual pass readily through the sieve of
experience and are stamped as harmless by association, provided they
are really harmless, or at least not disagreeable. Further, there seems
to be left a residue of strange or unusual sights, sounds or tactual
stimuli, ready to produce the fear manifestation, at a moment's call,
when this particular stage in the developing instinct has been reached.
The reaction is instinctive, but in no true sense would it seem to be the
inherited fear of any particular object or thing. Fear of objects having
particular, inherent qualities, which are harmful or unpleasant can
come only from experience of their harmful or disagreeable effects.

Habits of Young Kingfishers. — In my work on " The Home Life of
Wild Birds," I have described some curious habits which kingfishers
show when taken from their underground nest at an early age, espe-
cially the habit of sitting still, and of walking backwards. The earlier
observations were made over ten years ago, and thinking that some
other questions might be involved, such as the rising instinct of fear,
experiments were repeated on another family of these birds in the sum-
mer of 1908. When dug out of the ground on July 8, the five young
in this case were found lying twenty-eight inches below the surface, at
the end of a six-foot tunnel ; they were in " pin-feathers," and according
to my estimate about eight days old. Experiments were made on the
ninth, fourteenth, twentieth and twenty-third days, when the young
were at an age approximately corresponding to the date, with the fol-
lowing results; fear did not seem to play any part as a disturbing or
inhibitory factor in their behavior during the first two days ; they would
go forward or backward, rather indiscriminately, whatever their position
might be with reference to the observer, and whatever the nature of the
surface upon which they were placed. On subsequent days, the tend-
ency to walk backward increased, and though fear was rising, they were
readily quieted, and when placed in certain positions they would sit
quiet for long intervals.

The following notes were made on the behavior of these kingfishers
on the last day of observation, July 23 ; when placed on the pine carpet,
all began to make off with fluttering wings, going forward with crests
erect and rattles sounding. When recovered and placed in line, they
soon quieted, and the backward walking movements began (see Figs.
31 and 32). All showed the same tendency, and one, in which it was
especially marked, would retreat four feet before the camera could be
focused, and this was repeated for the twentieth time. The same per-

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS

*33

formance was given on level ground, or an incline, and whether facing
the observer or away from him, though with variable movements in many

Fig. 31. Five Kingfishers about twenty-three days old, removed from under-
ground and placed in line, to illustrate habit of keeping still, and of walking back-
wards.

Fig. 32. The same Kingfishers one minute after the position assumed in
Fig. 31 was photographed, showing that Nos. 1 and 5 have each taken a few back-
ward steps, while the pose of Nos. 2 to 4 has not appreciably changed.

cases. When placed in head-to-tail line, and in contact, the line would
remain unbroken for a surprising length of time, with hardly the turn
of a head, which seems to be due to their habit of sitting still, with

i34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

wings often interlocked,, during their long imprisonment in a dark,
subterranean chamber. When, after a good rest in this position, they
were brought to right-about-face, two immediately moved backward a
few steps, and came to rest again (Figs. 31 and 32). Move around
them in circle, and not a head is turned; make a pass of the hand sud-
denly towards them, and sometimes there is a slight backward move-
ment, but sometimes there is none; reverse again with heads turned
awa}r, and two turn part way around, one of which repeats the move-
ment when repeatedly reversed. If placed on their backs, they will
slowly right themselves, though if in the nest-hole they were sometimes
contented with this position for a longer time.

I am now convinced that the earlier conclusion was correct, and
that the peculiar actions described are due to habit, learned under-
ground, and in relation to getting their food, although I was probably
in error in supposing that their instinct of fear was ordinarily delayed
until they were ready to leave the tunnel. When such birds are handled
daily there can be little doubt that this instinct is liable to be checked.
The arched chamber of sand in which these kingfishers lay was 11^
inches in diameter, and 6^ inches high, while the tunnel leading to it
had a 3-inch bore. Its temperature stood at 77° F., and was seven
degrees cooler than that of the air outside. Since these five birds were
each about six inches long it is evident that they were closely packed,
and that once in the tunnel, no turning movement would be possible,
any more than for the adult which after feeding always backs out of
the hole. Now we have earlier noticed a tendency among the older
young to crawl down the passageway, and meet the parent at the mouth,
but that they are hustled back and presumably fed at the nest, hence
the probable association between walking backwards and getting food,
and hence the curious habit displayed by these birds when they are
taken from the ground.

III. Intelligence in Adult Birds

There seems to be little intelligence displayed by birds in regard to
the quantity of food served at the nest. What one of the altricious
kinds really does in effect is to " test " the reaction of the throat of its
nestling, and to await the response. If this is not forthcoming the
food is quickly withdrawn, and another is tried. The most responsive
bird gets the food, and there is no distribution on any other basis than
this. The same bird may thus be fed twice or even three times in
succession, the strongest usually getting the most, and the amount
which it can take being reflexly determined by the gullet.

On the other hand, intelligence is certainly shown in the kind of
food served, and in the treatment which it often receives. Thus a gull

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS

!35

chick when but a half-hour old gets only small bits of predigested fish,
but at the age of three weeks it may be invited to bolt an entire squid.
Again a bird like the black-billed cuckoo, which has repeatedly tried to
serve a large insect and failed, has been seen to quickly withdraw it,
mince it fine with her bill, and then offer it with success.

Birds quickly acquire a habit of going to their nest, by a definite
path, through association, and if the branch which holds it is suddenly
removed, they try to follow the established course, and will hover at the
point in space which the nest formerly occupied, even when their young
are in full sight, and these actions may be repeated many times, until
the old habit is broken by an actual visit to the new position (compare

Fig. 33. Flicker feeding Young, with nest-hole opened at the back, illustrating
the force of old habit. The bird for some time continued to enter the hole by the
usual course.

Figs. 33 and 34). The habit of entering the nest from a certain side,
of facing the same way while sitting over the eggs, of grasping the same
branch when inspecting and cleaning the nest, and of leaving it in a
definite manner, are all more or less fixed by habit in a brief course of
time. In the same way drinking and bathing places, perches, spots for
dusting, sun-bathing and sleeping are resorted to by habit for longer or
shorter periods, according to the other conditions which modify be-
havior.

Do birds discriminate their own eggs and proper young? Very
many do not, yet some do, sooner or later. * The success of the European

136

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

cuckoo and the American cowbird, the young of which are reared by
foster-parents of many diverse species, would argue for little power in
this direction. Yet, in some cases, the foreign body is promptly re-
moved, when the nest is not summarily deserted through fear.

The freedom with which certain finches and grosbeaks learn to
imitate difficult notes, and the fair degree of precision with which some

Fig. 34. The same Flicker as shown in Fig. 33, after new habit of entering
opened nest was formed.

of the parrots, crows, jays, jackdaws and magpies reproduce spoken
words, or even short sentences, show that they readily discriminate
differences in the pitch of sounds, although they do not possess a cochlea
of the complexity of structure found in mammals, and it is the cochlea
in which this power is supposed to reside in man. It is interesting to
note that the magpie, though a star performer in this art, never exhibits
it, according to Blackwall, in a state of nature.

The bower birds of Australia show a decided liking for bright and
colored objects of various kinds, which they work into their remarkable
" runs," bowers, or " play-houses," and the crow, and other members
of his tribe, which are commonly regarded as the most intelligent of
birds, can seldom be trusted in the presence of any small and shining
objects whatsoever, which they will steal, and either carry off and hide,
or work into their nests. To mention a trivial case — a tame young
crow once entered my room, made off with some objects on the dressing
table, and deposited them on a belfry-roof hard by. Again, the hooded

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 137

crow in Egypt and India, where from a long and undisturbed inter-
course with man, it has come to build its nests in the city streets, and
in Cairo even before the foliage of the lebbek trees is out, often gives
free rein to this propensity, as was well shown by the experience of an
optician in Bombay, who lost a large store of steel spectacle-frames,
and later found them in a ruined state, worked into a nest of this
familiar bird. The propensity to seize bright objects, and to hide and
store food by burying it in the ground, a practise attributed to the
European crow, raven, magpie and rook, is undoubtedly instinctive in
origin. Their ability to find it' again would depend more upon intelli-
gence than in the dog, which has the same tendency, for they are pre-
sumably without the guiding power of scent. The Californian wood-
pecker (Melanerpes formicivorus) is noted for the autumnal stores of
acorns which it embeds in the bark of trees, but the strong instinctive
impulse which shapes its conduct is accentuated by the reported fact
that the holes so nicely drilled are occasionally filled up with stones.

That color plays an important part in the lives of birds seems highly
improbable, although it is a commonplace fact that the nest in many
cases harmonizes perfectly with its surroundings. For several seasons
I made a practise of offering colored yarns, such as blue, brown, green
and bright red, to various species of birds, for building purposes, and
especially to robins and cedar waxwings ; as a rule, all colors were taken
indiscriminately, with very bizarre nests as a result. When white
threads or long streamers of cotton cloth were added, these were usually
taken first, and in greater quantity, apparently because they were more
conspicuous, and sometimes to the detriment of the builders. Thus,
one of the least flycatchers took and dropped so much of the cloth that
a white trail was finally laid from field to nest, in the construction of
which five times more was used than needed. The quaint structure
which resulted was too obvious to escape destruction, and it did not
endure many hours.

The docility of birds is well illustrated by the trainer's power over
many species, and by the tricks which, through a system of rewards
and punishments, they can be made to perform. A classical illustra-
tion is furnished by the art of falconry, the popular sport of middle-age
Europe, in which the young of the wild peregrine falcon, or of some
other hawk, was trained to limit its instinct to kill to a particular kind
of game, to follow the falconer afield, to stoop to the quarry, and return
to its master's call. After a similar fashion the instincts of the cor-
morant have been molded to the will of man, and successfully used in
taking fish, a practise which I am informed may still be witnessed in
certain remote fishing communities in Japan, the trained birds descend-
ing from father to son.

Modern experiments in the laboratory, which have been conducted

VOL. LXXVII. — 10.

138 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

by students in recent years, by the Hampton Court maze or labyrinth
method, upon young chicks, and various wild species, show an ability
to learn more or less rapidly, according to the simplicity of the path
to be traversed. They always seem to be guided in large measure by
sight. Their educability has been further tested by Thorndike and
others, by placing food within sight, but enclosed in a wire box, access
to which can be reached only by working some simple contrivance, with
bill or foot, such as pecking or pulling at a string. The animal is thus
induced to do an unusual thing, or to do it in an unusual way, but some
species, like the house sparrow, have proved apt to learn, and though
success may come first through accident, by the tenth or some later trial,
the new act is learned, and unnecessary movements are in time elim-
inated. The effect of the acts performed, as in the case of exit from
the labyrinth, is remembered for days or weeks, according to the strength
of the habit, or the ability of the learner. Whether the memory in-
volved in these and similar acts is of a visualized character, involving
a memory idea, image or picture, may be doubted, though Edinger
among others is not inclined to admit this. We might ask why a bird,
with a memory image of the position of her nest, does not always strike
a direct path to it, after reaching her tree. Why should she slavishly
follow the track stamped in by previous associations, walking along a
certain branch, and grasping a certain twig, before landing at the nest-
side, a practise very commonly followed? Such behavior certainly can
not always be attributed to the inhibitory effect of fear.

All the intelligence which birds may on occasion exhibit seems to
give way under the spell of any of the stronger instincts, as when the
male canary, as related by Blackwell, plucked the feathers from the
necks and backs of its own young in order to line a newly built nest,
although ether feathers were supplied to it in abundance. They seldom
meet emergencies by doing the intelligent act, and, in spite of the anec-
dotes, probably but seldom come to the effective aid of their compan-
ions when in distress. On the other hand, I have more than once seen
a mother bird try to pluck a hair or piece of grass from the mouth of
a nestling.

It has been asserted that only birds can be frightened from fields by
scarecrows, but to most birds any strange object is a " scarecrow," which
may in time, and often brief at that, become familiar through associa-
tion, as shown by the many devices used by farmers to frighten crows
from their fields of newly planted corn. The genuine scare crow is a
subject worthy of further study.

At this point I wish to notice certain anomalous actions of peculiar
interest in birds, and to refer particularly to the wood swallows (Ar-
tamid?e) of Australia, the hornbills (Bucerotidas), of the East Indies,
and to the honey-guides (Indicatorinag), of the East Indies and Africa.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 139

The wood swallows are social, gregarious birds of rather small size,
characteristic of the tropical forests, where they feed upon insects, and
often " hawk " them, like the swallows and swifts. Many have the
curious habit of " swarming," or clustering in cold or wet weather in
sheltered places or under trees, possibly for the jyurpose of keeping
warm, though this appears to be an assumption; when thus bunched,
they crowd one upon another, all heads up, thus forming a great ball-
like mass several feet in diameter; if disturbed they go off with start-
ling effects produced by the whirring of many wings, often leaving, it
is said, a few dead ones behind, which might have been smothered in the
press. All this is suggestive of rheotropism, or the tendency shown by
many fish, insects and other invertebrates to orient themselves in re-
sponse to currents of air or water, and in particular of the clustering
tendency shown by the young of many aquatic animals, as well as by
many flying insects. Whatever its history may prove to be, no one can
doubt that the act is purely instinctive in origin. We are reminded of
the swarming habits of chimney swifts, which have been known to enter
hollow trees in great numbers for the purpose of roosting and passing
the night, especially after their arrival in spring and before their fall
departure.

Hornbills are large birds of peculiar structure, and wide distribu-
tion in the old world, being noted for their great serrated bills, which
in many of the species are surmounted by a remarkable casque or hel-
met. But it is in the cyclical instincts of their reproductive period
that we find the most extraordinary departure from the common type.
Before she is ready to lay her eggs, the female hornbill enters some
suitable cavity, in a dead tree or branch, and with or without the assist-
ance of the male, proceeds to wall herself in, closing the opening with
mud or excreta, or with both, with the exception of a hole large enough
to admit the bill, and the food which is passed in by the male. While
thus confined, the female lays the eggs, incubates them, and through
the cooperation of her mate their naked and helpless young are reared
until ready for flight; then the prison-house is suddenly burst open,
the enfeebled mother and the young are liberated, and the happy
family united in the bright world outside. Further, at intervals dur-
ing this period the male casts off and regurgitates an inner layer of
the gizzard, which with all the contained food comes up like a dump-
ling, that is to say, a package or thin-walled sac, three inches long by
two inches in diameter, and upon this generous food-supply the female
is able to subsist for some little time.

The practise of closing the opening to the nest is to be regarded as
a modification of the nest-building instinct, and while its history has
no doubt been lost in the remote past, it may be compared with a not
wholly dissimilar practise of the European nuthatch, which also nests

Mo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

in natural cavities, and when the entrance is large regularly blocks the
passage with mud until it will barely admit her body. The hornbills
have possibly lost the cleaning instinct, if they were ever possessed of it,
and the singularity of their present activities must be attributed to in-
stinct alone.

The little honey-guides are related to the barbets, and hoopoes,
rather than to cuckoos, although like many of the latter they are thought
to regularly steal the nests of other birds, and never rear their proper
young. But aside from this diversion, they are said to conduct the pass-
ing traveler to bees' nests, to call his attention to the important busi-
ness in hand by hisses and shrill cries, and to even fly in his face " as
if enraged at not being followed." That such efforts are not wholly
altruistic may be gathered from the fact that they will eat the bees,
grubs and honey alike. According to the accounts, the honey-guides
are the " pointers " among birds, for when the woodsman is encoun-
tered, they flutter up to him and point the way to a nest, and if fol-
lowed, go on and on, but halt when hot on the trail. They will also
point to empty nests, or even to a domestic hive, but more significant
than this, they will follow a dog, or lead the confiding traveler to a
leopard, cat or snake, showing clearly that, whatever the origin of this
practise, whether concerned with the instinct to sound the alarm at a
common enemy, and to follow it and keep it in view, or not, we are
dealing with an instinct; and probably one of very pure type.

We will close this account by giving one or two reputed instances of
bird-intelligence which stand out in a marked degree from others of
their kind, on account both of the acts themselves and the credibility
of the witnesses. Thus Montagu, whose excellence as an observer is
abundantly proved in his " Ornithological Dictionary of British Birds,"
states that he once saw two crows (Corvus cor one), by the seashore
" busy in removing small fish beyond the flux of the flowing tide, and
depositing them just above high-water mark, under the broken rocks,
after having satisfied the calls of hunger." It seems to me that too
much has been made of this instance, since it may with equal justice
be interpreted as an illustration of the instinct to hide, the circum-
stance of the tide being fortuitous, for it does not follow that these
birds knew that the tide would surely advance and sweep away their
prize. The incident, however, is interesting in relation to another, told
of the hooded crow {Corvus sple?idens) , by the worthy Blackwall, who
saw these birds " on the eastern coast of Ireland, after many unavail-
ing efforts to break with their beaks some of the mussels on which they
were feeding, fly with them to a great height in the air, and, by letting
them fall on the stony beach, fracture their shells, and thus get posses-
sion of the contents." Perhaps it would not be easy, says Blackwall,
" to select a more striking example of intelligence among the feathered

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 141

tribes than this, where, on one expedient proving unsuccessful, after a
sufficient trial had been made of it, another was immediately resorted
to."

A similar habit has been attributed to the gull, but with how much
truth I am unable to say ; the exact history of its origin, in either case,
would be of much interest. It would seem to have arisen either from
accident or from ideas, for the question of imitation can here be ruled
out, so far as the initial performance in a given individual is con-
cerned. The very rarity of the habit, attested by the fact that it has
been so seldom reported, seems to clearly point to an accidental origin,
and to the conclusion that it does not rise above the level of associative
memory.

i42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE PALEONTOLOGIC EECOED. Ill

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY IN" INVERTEBRATE EX-
TINCT ORGANISMS

By RUDOLF RUEDEMANN

STATE MUSEUM, ALBANY, N. Y.

THE inquiry into the position of anatomy and physiology in in-
vertebrate paleontology seems very appropriate at present, since
paleontology is steadily becoming more closely affiliated to zoology, and
the sphere of zoology is at present dominated by comparative anatomy
and physiology.

Since, however, invertebrate paleontology has only the hard parts,
mostly outer shells, at its disposal, the view still prevailing among
zoologists that little is to be expected from it in regard to the solution
of the problems of anatomy and physiology of the lower animals seems
natural. Nevertheless, the results already attained prove that if paleon-
tologists do not ajDproach their material with a geological knowledge
only, as has been done in the past altogether too often, most gratifying
results may be obtained, at least in some classes, for it must be con-
ceded that the connection of the hard parts with the fleshy parts is very
unlike in different classes; it is very intimate in some, as the crinoids
and brachiopods, and again more indifferent, as in the gastropods.

But it is not claiming too much for invertebrate paleontology if we
say that where the hard parts are of great structural importance,
paleontology has earlier taken cognizance of this fact and consequently
gone ahead of zoology. As an instance I may cite Zittel's investigations
of the skeleton of the hexactinellid sponges which have taught the
fundamental imjjortance of the form of the spicules and the structure
of the skeleton in that class and whose results have been readily
adopted by zoologists. In classes which, as the brachiopods and crinoids,
are to-day mere shadows of their former greatness, paleontology has its
greatest chance, and it would fail in its task if it would there not be-
come the instructor of the affiliated science; and it is gratifying to see
that this fact is finding recognition, as, for instance, in Ray Lankester's
" Treatise of Zoology," where the chapter on the crinoids has been
entrusted to Bather, a paleontologist and one of the best authorities on
crinoids.

It is apparent that in such classes as those just mentioned, of which
only the last ends of the branches are still alive, the origin and nature

TEE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 143

of many structures can not be elucidated, even by the embryology and
comparative anatomy of the recent forms, but only by paleontology.
Such a structure is, for instance, the mystifying stem of the crinoids
which, by a study of the primitive ancestors of the crinoids among the
cystids, is readily recognized as a dorsal evagination of the body.
Likewise, to cite another example, the siphuncle of the recent Nautilus,
which is obscure as a wholly rudimentary organ, is in such primitive
Paleozoic cephalopods as Nanno and Piloceras, still seen in its original
form and thereby recognized in its nature.

Since that which has already been accomplished in fossil anatomy
is proof that there are still larger fields to be ploughed and harvested,
it is proper to inquire into the best methods of this work before us.

We first need more extensive and more intensive or more detailed
purely descriptive anatomical researches of the invertebrate fossils.
There are many species that, when investigated in their smallest detail,
are bound to give important results. I may cite here, as examples of
such accomplishments, Hudson's minute study of the strange Blas-
toidocrinus of our Chazy rocks with its 90,000 ossicles, or that of the
Eurypterus fischeri by Holm. Of this archaic fossil marine arachnoid,
a relative of the scorpion and of the king crab, it can be fairly said that,
as far as its chitinous integument is concerned, it is as well known as
any recent species. We know, through Holm, its gills, its complex
genital appendages of both sexes, and even its fine hairs and bristles.
Dr. Clarke and myself have lately continued these investigations in
the American eurypterids, and there observed the structure of the com-
pound eyes, the pore system of the segments, the genital apertures, the
mode of moulting, the arrangement of some of the principal muscles
and other anatomical facts of interest.

It can be said that this field of detailed descriptive anatomy has
been merely touched thus far, as far as our fossil invertebrates are con-
cerned, and altogether too much neglected. This is not only true as to
the gross anatomy, but still more so as to the microscopic structure.
It must be conceded that owing to the secondary changes in the rocks,
this latter line of investigation meets with great obstacles not fully ap-
preciated by the zoologist, and that it is only in its infantile stage in
some classes. But the results obtained by the microscopic research of
the Paleozoic bryozoans in this country may be considered as a striking
example of what persistency and enthusiasm may still accomplish. In
microscopic anatomy of the fossils the training of a geologist is as
much required as that of a zoologist and the history of these investi-
gations shows that a zoologist without geologic training may be badly
misled by the deceptive states of preservation of the fossils.

The main object of anatomical research is to result in comparative
anatomy and to determine what parts are fundamental or primary and

i44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

what have undergone modifications due to functional changes. It is
obvious that here invertebrate paleontology is in a position to answer a
host of questions that could not be successfully approached by compar-
ative anatomy of recent forms, by the direct observation of successive
changes. Its methods of investigation have already been applied with
wonderful success to large parts of our Paleozoic crinoids, brachiopods,
bryozoans and cephalopods. And I do not doubt that the time has
come when the preliminary stage of mere description of fossils is passed,
and a monographic treatment of each class that would fully enter into
the comparative anatomy of all structures preserved, could be profitably
undertaken.

It is only by this work that paleontology can hope to make those
contributions to philosophical anatomy in revealing the causes of the
different structures which it is especially fitted and called upon to
furnish by its ability to study the gradual development of the struc-
tures. Wherever a class of fossils has been thus thoroughly treated, it
has given a fruitful crop of new hypotheses and principles, as is in-
stanced by Hyatt's investigation of the fossil cephalopods. Most
classes, and especially the corals, echinoids and trilobites, await such
treatment by competent investigators.

Since physiology is that branch of biology that treats of the laws of
phenomena of living organisms, it might seem hopeless to expect any
information from the fossil world. This is apparently the more true
in regard to the invertebrates, since a special physiology exists thus far
only for men and the higher invertebrates and the recent invertebrates
are largely a virgin field. For this reason also, only the most general
foundations of comparative physiology have been laid, and an inverte-
brate fossil physiology would get as yet but little support from that
side. Moreover, the main source of exact information in recent physi-
ology is the experimental method, and this is wholly inapplicable to
the fossil world.

And yet it seems to us that the empiric method upon which physi-
ology has so long flourished promises also rich fruit in paleontology.
I can do no more now than briefly mention the problems that most
readily suggest themselves here. Invertebrate paleontology will be
especially competent to furnish contributions to the mechanics of
physiology by throwing light on the development of the means and
modes of locomotion. In connection with this problem invertebrate
paleontology also shows most clearly the deep-reaching influence of
secondary fixation on the structure of the organism, as in the case of
the strange Richtliofenia among the brachiopods and the Kudistae
among the lamellibranchs. It can not fail that the progress in recent
invertebrate physiology will stimulate inquiry into the physiology of
the fossils; and further that, as invertebrate fossil anatomy progresses,
the data for such inquiry will also come forth.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 145

Another problem closely connected with that of the mode of loco-
motion is that of the origin of the organs of sense, and also upon this,
as far as the organs of seeing at least are concerned, the fossil inverte-
brates are able to throw some light, as in the trilobites and eurypterids.

Another line of inquiry is that of the mode of nutrition as recog-
nizable by the appendages, and its influence upon the general structure.
Under this heading such interesting minor problems as that of the
origin of parasitism arise and may be solved, as indicated by a recent
publication as to the time of beginning, causes and gradual changes of
parasitism, to its very complex present conditions.

Probably also the physiology of respiration will in time receive
important additions as far as the echinoderms, crustaceans, scorpions
and eurypterids are concerned.

The widest scope, however, will have those problems that are con-
nected with the reactions of the organisms to their physical and chem-
ical surroundings. The invertebrate paleontologist meets forever, in
sight of the ever-changing faunules, the question, what exterior influ-
ences caused these changes? Often they can be directly recognized, as
in the dwarfed faunules of the Devonic pyritiferous Tully limestone or
of the bituminous Marcellus and Genesee shales or the eurypterid
faunas of the Salina lagoons. The systematic investigation of these
reactions through the series of formations is an inviting task.

A special problem of singular interest connected with the reaction
of the organisms to the chemical surroundings is that of the composi-
tion of the shell of the invertebrates. There is good evidence for the
view that the shells were at first chitinous and that but gradually they
became calcareous or siliceous. This important question again is
intimately connected with that of the original composition of the ocean,
and this line of inquiry again leads us to the highly fascinating paleo-
physiological problem, lately so happily dealt with by Professor Lane,
as to the geological evidence on the original composition and origin
of the vital liquid, the original body temperature and the physiological
origin of the hard parts of the invertebrates in general.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO MOEPHOLOGY FEOM
PALEONTOLOGY

By Professor WILLIAM BULLOCK CLARK

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

OUR knowledge of the morphology both of the animal and plant
kingdoms has been largely extended by the work of the paleon-
tologist. Mention needs only to be made of the many species, genera
and families, even orders and classes, established solely for fossil forms

146 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

to show how much we owe to paleontology. There is not a single sub-
kingdom but has been immensely enriched from this source.

Some of the fossil species possess morphological characters so closely
allied, on the one hand to earlier, and on the other to later, forms as to
indicate that they occupy a position in the line of descent, and phylo-
genetic series have been established frequently on this basis. As ex-
amples we have the well-known developmental series of the horse and
the camel. Other illustrations may be found in the Pdludinas of the
Slavonian Pliocene and in the Planorbis types of Steinheim.

Still other fossil forms combine in the same species several morpho-
logical features which later become segregated and characterize different
types. Such " synthetic types " serve to show the common origin of
the forms in question if not their actual ancestors and have greatly
enlarged our knowledge of the morphology of the several groups in-
volved. These early forms are, for the most part, highly generalized,
while their descendents are variously specialized. Take, for example,
the mammalian Condylartlia, small, generalized Ungulata with an
astragalus shaped almost as in the Carnivora; or the reptilian Anomo-
dontia with intermediate skeletal characters between the highest
labyrinthodonts and the lowest mammals; or again, the early Paleozoic
cystoids with generalized characters in their calyx plates which appear
in more specialized forms in later crinoids and blastoids. An almost
indefinite number of such illustrations might be cited.

Still other fossil forms present morphological characters so dif-
ferent from other fossil or living species that the genetic relationships
may not be determined accurately. Some of these are possible of refer-
ence to already defined orders, while others present so many diverse
morphological characters as to require the establishment of new divi-
sions for their reception.

A survey of the known fossil and living forms shows that not only
have old species constantly become extinct during the progress of
geological time, but new species have been as frequently appearing.
This is equally true of genera, families, orders or even classes. Some
forms have appeared and disappeared, as the case may be, suddenly;
others slowly. The great group of the Ammonites, for example, dis-
appeared suddenly at the close of the Cretaceous after showing many
degenerate characters, while the Trilobites gradually declined during
late Paleozoic time before their final extinction. One of the most
striking features in the developmental history of plants and animals is
found in the great number of fossil types which have left no descendants.

Both the animal and plant kingdoms furnish a wealth of material
with which to demonstrate the aid which paleontology has rendered to
morphology.

The contributions of invertebrate paleontology are numerous and
striking :

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 147

The Protozoa afford in the Carboniferous Fusulinida3 and in the
Tertiary Nummulinidas forms with very different morphological char-
acters from those living to-day, while the numerous extinct species of
the Lituolidse and Textularidae in the Cretaceous and of the Miliolidae
and Globigerinidas in the Tertiary have greatly widened our knowledge
of the entire subkingdom.

The Ccelcnterata in the Paleozoic Tabulata and Graptoloidea show
types so different from living forms that the systematist has never
been able to satisfactorily assign them to a position within the limits
of the phylum. Many external and internal characters appear that are
quite unknown in later forms. On the other hand, the paleontological
subclass of the Tetracoralla long imperfectly understood is now re-
garded with a fuller knowledge of the morphology as affording the
probable ancestors of the later Hexacoralla.

The Ecliinodermata have furnished two classes, the Cystoidea and
the Blastoidea, unknown after the Paleozoic, whose morphology aids
very materially in an interpretation of later and more highly differen-
tiated forms among the Pelmatozoa. Thus the cystoids, which have
been regarded as the ancestral type from which the crinoids have
sprung, afford forms like the Camarocystites, in which the arms are
similar to those of the crinoids although the calyx plates are irregularly
arranged and thus cystoidean in character. Both the Asterozoa and
Echinozoa are represented in the fossil state by many species that greatly
widen our knowledge of the morphology of this group. Take for
example, the Echinocystites, regarded as belonging to the Palechinodea
which has a valvular pyramid of calcareous anal plates so highly char-
acteristic of the cystoids.

The Molluscoidea, to which phylum belong the Bryozoa and Brachio-
poda, would be but imperfectly understood from a morphological stand-
point but for the vast number of fossil forms. The Brachiopoda have
been estimated to have less than 150 living species, while probably more
than 6,000 fossil species have been described. Of the 31 families only
7 have living representatives. We are dependent, therefore, largely on
the fossil forms for our knowledge of the morphology of this class.

The Mollusca with their varied forms, although so well represented
to-day, have furnished in the fossil state one of the most interesting
and important orders in the animal kingdom, the Ammonoidea with
its 5,000 and more species ranging from the Devonian to the Cretaceous.
Even the allied JSTautiloidea, although containing living forms, attained
its chief development in the Paleozoic, and it is from these ancient forms
that we obtain our chief knowledge of the morphology of this group
with their early straight and irregularly coiled types.

The ArtJiropoda afford in the Paleozoic the important groups of the
trilobites and euripterids, forms that have aided greatly in the inter-

148 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

pretation of the entire phylum. The trilobites from their morpholog-
ical features have been generally regarded as entomostracous crusta-
ceans with relationships on the one hand to the Phyllopoda and on the
other to the Merostomata, while the coalescing of the caudal segments
suggests also a relationship to the Isopoda.

Vertebrate paleontology has also furnished much to morphology.

The Fishes would be but imperfectly known in their wonderful
variety but for the fossil types. The problematical group Agnatha
found only in the Silurian and Devonian affords no certain evidence
of a lower jaw or paired limbs, and in some of the genera of the Ostra-
coderma mimic in a curious way the contemporaneous euripterids,
which has led some to erroneously ally them with the Merostomata.
The dermal armor of most of these forms is also a striking morpholog-
ical feature.

Woodward divides the fishes proper into Elasmobranchii, Holo-
cephali, Dipnoi and Teleostomi, and considers that the common an-
cestors of all were Elasmobranchs. Numerous fossil forms among the
Elasmobranchs and Dipnoids as well as the Crossopterygians which
have been thought by many to bridge the gap between the Telelostomi
and Dipnoi have added largely to our knowledge of the phylum.

The Batracliians which consist to-day largely of diminutive forms
were represented in the later Paleozoic and early Mesozoic by the Stego-
cephalia which contain the giant labyrinthodonts with their highly
complex infolding of the walls of the teeth.

The Reptilians which began their existence toward the close of the
Paleozoic became so numerous and diversified during the Mesozoic that
this division of geological time has been referred to as the age of
reptiles. Several orders of Saurians containing many giant types
flourished during this time, but became practically extinct before the
close of the period. With the adaptation of some for walking on their
hind legs, of others for swimming, and still others for flight we have
developed a great variety of morphological features that would never
have been suspected from a study of living forms.

The Birds which are recognized as possessing certain dinosaurian
relationships and were doubtless derived from one of the reptilian orders
are unknown prior to the Jurassic. The Mesozoic forms are general-
ized, the tail at first not being atrophied and the pelvis imperfectly
developed as in later forms. The vertebra? also had not acquired their
saddle-shaped articulation while teeth were present in the jaws of the
adults. Such forms certainly add greatly to our knowledge of the
morphology of this class.

The Mammals which began in the early Mesozoic were represented
throughout the Cenozoic time by highly diversified forms, many of
which have left no descendants. The gradual evolution of the mam-

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 149

malian skeleton has brought about many morphological modifications
from those shown in the Batrachia and Eeptilia. We find the skull
loses the prefrontal and postfrontal bones, the mandible is simplified,
the limb bones show a development of terminal epiphyses with ossifica-
tion to the center of the vertebras and the bones of the pelvic arch are
ossified. From the beginning of the Tertiary time a marvelous variety
of morphological characters appears, and without the fossil types we
should have but an inadequate conception of this great phylum.

The contributions of paleobotany to morphology are in some re-
spects quite as striking as those of paleozoology.

The fossil Thallophytes have not furnished any very striking varia-
tions from their present morphological features, while the Bryophytes
are scarcely represented as fossils except in very recent deposits.

The remaining phyla, the Pteridospermatophytes, the Pteridopliytes
and the Spermatophytes have their oldest known beginnings as far
back as the Devonian and their study has enormously widened the
bounds of plant morphology.

The Pteridospermatophytes, which are confined to the Paleozoic,
are in habit and vegetative morphology ferns — in methods of repro-
duction and in the morphology of their reproductive organs typical seed
plants. They alter our whole conception of ferns and seed plants and
in their significance are comparable to archetypal vertebrata, the acqui-
sition of the seed habit in plants and the vertebral column in animals
probably marking the culmination of the transfer of vital activity from
aquatic to terrestrial conditions.

In the Pteridopliytes the extinct Paleozoic class, the Sphenophyllales,
is significant, since the morphology of the distinct lycopod and Equi-
setum lines seems to merge in this group. The lycopod type, itself
represented in the existing flora by six or seven genera of herbaceous
plants, monotonously uniform in their morphology, is found in the
Paleozoic to constitute one of the chief units in the arborescent flora
with numerous species of complex organization, whose stem, foliar and
reproductive morphology was quite unknown to botanists (Lepido-
dendron, Sigillaria, etc.). The Equisetum type furnishes a like
case. With few existing species of minor importance and uniform
morphology we find in the Paleozoic a host of forms, many of them
arborescent and of varied and complex structure {Calamites, Archceo-
calamites, etc.). Similar examples could be drawn from the fossil
representatives of the true ferns.

In the Spermatophytes another wholly extinct class, the Cordaitales,
embraces a curiously organized group of conifers extending back to the
oldest horizons from which land plants are found, and continuing to
the close of the Paleozoic as one of the most abundant as well as the
highest type of pre-Mesozoic plant. In the older Mesozoic we find two

150 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

groups of plants which have made similar great contributions to
morphology. The Cycadales or cycad-like plants, which to-day are an
inconspicuous group, were one of the dominant Mesozoic types, and any
understanding of the modern forms rests entirely upon a study of their
immensely abundant Mesozoic ancestors. The other group, the Gink-
goales, represented in the existing flora by a single species, the ginkgo,
is found in the Mesozoic to have been represented by many genera and
species of great diversity.

The dominant plants of to-day, the conifers on the one hand, and
the angiosperms on the other, have each afforded many extinct genera,
the former with more fossil than recent species, and only understand-
able in the light of their fossil ancestors. Vegetable morphology based
only upon existing plants abundantly demonstrated its sterility before
the relative recent study of fossil plants placed it upon an altogether
new basis.

RELATION OF EMBRYOLOGY AND VERTEBRATE

PALEONTOLOGY

By Professor RICHARD SWANN LULL

YALE UNIVERSITY

THE problem of recapitulation among vertebrates gives by no means
as accurate results as among invertebrate forms, for while a single
adult shell, if perfectly preserved, will often display the entire life
history or ontogeny of the individual, a bone, or even a complete
skeleton, is rarely retrospective and if at all only in some minor detail.
The vertebratist, therefore, in his study of ontogeny, for comparison
with racial history must needs follow either the entire growth of one
animal, a thing manifestly impossible when the embryonic stages are
considered, or study a long series of individuals in various stages of de-
velopment, the securing of which in the great majority of cases is largely
the result of a number of happy accidents. When one comes to weigh
the evidence offered by the actual embryos of fossil vertebrates he will
find a very great dearth of material, for fossil embryos — that is, the
stages in the life history before birth or hatching — are extremely rare.
Recent embryology, on the other hand, is more productive of results
and the earlier stages of certain organs often suggest those of equivalent
development in animals of the past. In his interpretation of a given
structure, however, one has to bear in mind whether it may not have
been modified to suit some modern need in the life history of the indi-
vidual, and thus no longer give us a true image of bygone structure.
These ccenogenetic organs are not historic, but as Wilder says, " have
to do with such immediate environmental problems as nutrition or
protection." Again, if the organ has approximately the same form

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 151

and character in the ancestral type at the same stage of its development,
it represents an actual repetition of past history and is therefore palin-
genetic. Sometimes it is not quite clear, however, under which caption
the embryonic structure comes, and its interpretation must be attempted
with caution.

Osborn in his lectures to his students speaks of the three-fold evi-
dence for evolution which stands firmly like a tripod, the legs of which
are comparative anatomy, embryology and paleontology; and the evi-
dence of each should correspond, provided the interpretation be correct.
Of these, however, embryology is manifestly the weakest member, while
paleontology is a tower of strength !

The reptiles are so rare as embryos and withal so ancient a group
that their ontogeny throws but little light upon paleontology. Among
the fossil forms a number of specimens of Ichthyosaurus have been
found with young contained within the body of the adult. Many of
these are in the normal position for fceti-in-utero ; others are displaced,
with the head directed forward. These latter Branca thinks may be
young that have been eaten. There is also, at times, a very great
difference in the size of the contained young. Aside from a slight dif-
ference in proportions, especially that of head to trunk, and a less degree
of hardness of the embryonic bones, as indicated by their being crushed
over the parent's ribs, the young teach us nothing as to ancestral struc-
ture as they are in every way perfect ichthyosaurs. They do prove,
however, when the evidence of viviparity which they offer is taken in
connection with the supreme degree of aquatic adaptation indicated,
that the ichthyosaurs were high sea-forms, never coming ashore even
for egg-laying.

That certain of the dinosaurs were also viviparous may be proved
by an embryo contained in the unique specimen of Compsognathus
longipes from the Jurassic of Bavaria. So far as I am aware this
embryo gives no other evidence of ontogenetic value.

The turtles have been made the subject of exhaustive study by Hay
and from the embryological point of view by Clark under L. Agassiz.
Anatomically they are the most remarkable of reptiles, having under-
gone during their career an extreme modification in many directions
while retaining a number of very primitive characters. The most
remarkable feature is the development of the shield or carapace, which
contains what are generally considered as the homologues of the ribs of
other vertebrates, but, strangely enough, here lying outside of the
shoulder girdle, a feature wherein the turtles are utterly unique. The
embryology, which is well known, ought to throw some light upon the
origin of this important feature. In their earlier stages of develop-
ment the Chelonia resemble the Lacertilia, the chief pecularity being
caused by the development of this carapace which appears in the form

152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of two longitudinal folds extending above the line of insertion of the
fore- and hind-limbs which have already made their appearance. Hence
the carapace grows outward and over the limb-girdles which come to lie
within the rib-like osseous supports. This ontogeny shows us clearly
how the ancestral carapace may have been formed. Paleontology has
not as yet confirmed this, but doubtless will do so.

Among birds one of the most interesting features is the occurrence
of vestigial tooth papillae in the jaws of certain embryo parrots and owls
— reminiscent of Mesozoic days when birds were toothed in their adult
state.

Mammalian evidence is very striking in many details and much of
it has recently been summarized by Hubrecht, who makes much of the
character of the placentation and derives from it and other features
some remarkable conclusions. Hubrecht abandons the idea of the
derivation of the mammalia from the reptilian-insectivorean stem, but
on the contrary derives them from amphibia-like animals of the Car-
boniferous. The character of the placentation, moreover, places man,
the Anthropomorphae and the hedgehog among the most archaic of
living mammalian types, an idea also borne out by comparative anatomy
and one which paleontology may some day confirm.

The most primitive mammals, the Prototheria, are still very sug-
gestive of their old reptilian ancestry in many ways, especially in the
method of producing the young inclosed within an eggshell. The posi-
tion of the Marsupials is surely low in the scale of mammalian life,
although they show in many respects remarkable specializations. Wilder
compares them with the Prototheria in that they also bring forth their
young at a very early state of development, though not protected by an
eggshell. The period during which they are permanently attached to
the nipples within the pouch is actually post-embryonic and properly
larval. Vestiges of placentation have been found in at least one mar-
supial, a fact which gives color to the belief that in this respect they
may be degenerate rather than primitive. Broom has shown that the
modern marsupial shoulder girdle passes through a prototherian stage
implying a relationship which is strongly supported in other ways.

The foetal Sirenia and Cetacea, so far as known, show no greater
development of hind-limbs than do the post-natal individuals. They
do show a marked neck construction and the head bent at right angles
with the trunk in a normal quadrupedal posture. The head of the
fcetal manatee is very suggestive of the modern ungulate. Ryder has
tried to prove the homology of the caudal flukes in the Sirenia and
Cetacea with the integument of the hind feet, drawing his evidence
largely from comparison with the seals. In the embryo the flukes
appear as lateral expansions near the end of the tail, giving it a lance-
like form when viewed from above. These flaps by transverse expan-

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 153

sion develop into the powerful swimming flukes of the adult. They
may be compared with lateral flanges on the tail of the sea otter
Enhydris, but in the latter the flaps are elongate, while in the Cetacea
they are short and situated toward the end of the tail. Nevertheless,
the homology of the two types of flange structures appears true, the
posterior position and concentration in the whale being a mechanical
adaptation which has become accelerated in its appearance so as to be
embryonic. The presence of hair on the body of the foetal whale and
of distinct calcareous tooth germs in both upper and lower jaws of the
unborn young of whalebone whales are both reminiscent.

The horses, our knowledge of which is so complete owing to the
pioneer work of Marsh and later of Osborn, show some interesting
points of comparison between foetus and ancestor. The skulls of pre-
natal modern horses resemble those of MesoJiippus or even of Eohippus
in the proportions of face and cranium, the short-crowned grinding
teeth, lesser angle between basi-cranial and basi-facial axes and the fact
that the orbit is incompletely ringed with bone. The feet of the unborn
foal are also somewhat reminiscent of old-time conditions.

One of the most difficult points to be reconciled in the acceptance
of the Cope-Osborn theory of the origin of molar cusps was the apparent
non-agreement of cusp ontogeny with the interpreted phylogeny which
this theory upheld. The difficulty has been met in two ways: by the
supposition that ecenogenesis has entered into the embryogeny, or that
the paleontological record as shown by the trituberculists is open to a
different interpretation. The present great exponent of the idea claims
that the matter is still sub judice and thus the problem stands.

In conclusion, the paleontological student of the higher vertebrates
can hope to find in embryology a host of valuable suggestions, much
verification of his work and sundry apparent inconsistencies which must
in some way be reconciled. He should ever bear in mind the influence
of nature and nurture, the latter often giving rise to perplexing con-
flicts between the two records. He will on the whole have in embry-
ology a fair mirror of the past wherein, even though the image be some-
what distorted and the more remote reflections dimmed by time, he can
view the striking features of the long procession of the ages.

VOL. LXXVII.— 11.

154 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

OSERVATIONS ON THE EARTHQUAKE OF MAY 26, 1909

By Peofessou J. A. UDDEN

ADGUSTANA COLLEGE, ROCK ISLAND, ILL.

EARTHQUAKES are infrequent in the upper part of the Missis-
sippi Valley, and observations on earthquake phenomena in this
part of the world have a peculiar interest, not only on account of the
special bearing they may have on seismological questions, but also on
account of the light they throw on the psychology of an observant public
which is unacquainted with seismic phenomena. The writer wishes to
present some observations on the earthquake which occurred in this
region on the twenty-sixth of May, 1909. They are based on notices
which appeared in the public press, and which were secured from fifty
daily and weekly newspapers immediately after the earthquake. The
collected reports contained in all some three hundred observations on
incidents which occurred during a few moments shortly before nine
o'clock in the morning, when the earth waves rapidly traversed the states
of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri and Min-
nesota.

The reports collected indicate that the mesoseismal area of this
earthquake lay in northern and north central Illinois, and reached
slightly beyond the south boundary of Wisconsin. It appears also that
there were no less than three epicentral tracts, one near Dubuque in
Iowa; one near Waukegan, and another near Bloomington, in Illinois.
At all of these places the shock was strong enough to slightly damage
a few buildings. From this unusually large triangular mesoseismal
area the earthquake waves spread in all directions, sensibly as far north
as to Rochester in Minnesota and to Muskegon in Michigan, east as
far as to Muncie in Indiana, westward to DesMoines in Iowa, and
southward to Hannibal in Missouri, affecting an area of some five
hundred thousand square miles.

In the central region, where the earthquakes are most complex, one
report states that a distinct raise, or upward motion, was first felt, and
that this was followed by a trembling. In other cases, houses and
floors are said to have " heaved." In Beloit the houses are said to have
been " jostled out of plumb." Violent shaking and rocking is also
reported. Farther out from the central area there is a more frequent
use by the reporters of such terms as " shaking," " rocking," " swaying "
and " jarring," while toward the outer margin of the disturbed area
houses are more often said to have been gently rocked and shaken, or
to have " trembled " or " quivered," indicating the more gentle and

THE EARTHQUAKE OF MAY 26, 1909

*55

M i HNESOT/I

Isoseismals of the Earthquakes in the Upper Mississippi Valley, May 26, 1910.

more regularly undulating nature of the free and gradually vanishing
oscillations of the earth.

The greater number of earthquakes are now known to be due to
slipping of enormous blocks of the earth., along fissures or joints of
great depths, and thus forming the dislocations known to geologists as
faults. In the case of the earthquakes with two maxima of disturbance,
the slipping occurs first at one point in such a fissure, and then at
another. There can be no doubt that this Illinois earthquake was of
the nature of such a compound slip, although the exact position of the
fault can not be correctly located from the data at hand. In most
descriptions of the shock no mention is made as to whether there was
one maximum or more. Such particulars were naturally overlooked.
The people of the upper Mississippi Valley are not trained in making
observations on earthquakes. Nevertheless, nine observers make men-
tion of more than one commotion. One account from each of eight
localities states that two distinct shocks were felt. These places are
Bushnell, Canton, Champaign, Chicago, Geneva and Sterling in Illi-
nois, and Davenport and Dubuque in Iowa. In the latter place the
first disturbance lasted about ten seconds, after which there was a short
pause and then again a shock of short duration. But the reports from
Chicago, Springfield and Champaign, which places lie on the other side
of the mesoseismal area, all agree in stating that the first shock was of
brief duration, and that the second lasted several seconds. One ob-
server is reported as having noted three distinct shocks, and this was
Professor W. H. Hobbs, at the time on a visit in Madison, Wis. He is

156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

one of America's prominent seismologists, and his testimony may be
regarded as specially competent. The three shocks he noted may have
been three separate impulses coming from the three epicenters pre-
viously mentioned, at Dubuque, Waukegan and Bloomington, started
by slippings closely following each other in each of these places.

This inference is in a measure strengthened by some observations
made on the duration of the earthquake. There are in all fifty-eight
such observations, showing a range of estimates from one second to
three minutes. Thirty-eight of these estimates vary from one to eight
seconds and average four seconds. In six places the disturbance is
reported to have lasted ten seconds; in five places, fifteen seconds, and
in one, twenty. An average of these twelve estimates is about thirteen
seconds. In two places the shock is reported as lasting a half minute;
in three places, one minute ; in one, a minute and a half, while in Dixon
and Joliet the disturbance continued for three minutes. No great
accuracy can be claimed for these estimates, but it will be observed that
they fall into three groups, one with an average of four seconds, one
with an average of about thirteen seconds and another with an average
of about sixty seconds. We may suppose that the shortest average
represents places where only one of the three shocks was sensible, while
the two larger averages represent places where two or where all three
shocks were strong enough to be felt. All places where the disturbance
lasted more than a minute are somewhat centrally located, and may
hence very well have been exposed to the effects of all the three shocks,
each of which increased the total length of the period of the disturbance.

No less than sixty-six observations are reported on the time at which
the earthquake was felt. These are of interest chiefly in showing how
great is the difference in accuracy of time measurements required for
general purposes, and for the purpose of seismic investigations. They
also illustrate our general preference for round numbers. The reports
range from eight o'clock in the morning to twenty minutes after nine.
More than half of them give the numbers thirty, thirty-five, forty and
forty-five minutes after eight. Discarding these figures, which are
multiples of five, twenty-two observations range from thirty-seven to
forty-one minutes after eight. The time recorded by the seismometer
in the office of the United States Weather Bureau in Peoria, no doubt
more reliable, was thirty-eight minutes after eight. The time marked
by another government seismometer in Washington was forty-one and
a half minutes after eight. If the velocity of the earthquake wave in
traveling from Peoria to Washington, be calculated from these last two
figures, we find that it approached three and three tenths miles per
minute. For the purpose of determining the velocity of earthquake
waves the data furnished by the press reports are of course entirely
inadequate.

The location of the epicentral tracts and of the mesoseismal area is,

THE EARTHQUAKE OF MAY 26, 1909 157

however, clearly indicated by reports from which the intensity of the
motion may be estimated, and from which isoseismal lines may be
constructed.

The data contained in the press reports can be readily compared
with the Eossi-Forel scale of intensities. The greatest intensity shown
is in the falling of chimneys and in the cracking of walls, which barely
approximates eight in the scale. It is not practical to separate these
localities of greatest intensity from a more extended region where the
earthquake had an intensity more nearly comparable with seven in the
scale. Within this area furniture was overthrown, plaster fell from
ceilings and from walls, and hanging pictures and other suspended
ornaments were jerked loose from their fastenings. Outside of this
most severely disturbed mesoseismal area there is a belt from ten to a
hundred miles wide where the intensity approximates the next lower
point in the scale. Here lighting fixtures, chandeliers and bookcases
are reported to have swayed, dishes were broken, chairs rocked or were
moved or overthrown, houses were rocked, chimneys cracked and clocks
were stopped. Beyond this again is a zone where the evidence of the
earthquake consisted in the more subdued motions described as shaking
of houses and of furniture, rattling of dishes, bottles and tinware and
swinging of suspended objects. This zone has a width of from fifty
to a hundred and fifty miles and marks the location of the fifth iso-
seismal. Continuing the diminuendo, the earthquake next announced
its rapid passage by the rattle of windows, the jarring and quivering
of houses, and by gentle shaking and trembling of furniture. This is
the fourth intensity, and characterizes a zone that merges imperceptibly
into the next, where few people noticed the disturbance, and where it
appeared as a merely perceptible jar, or a slight undulation, most fre-
quently noted only in the upper stories of high buildings. In this
gentle form it disappeared to human senses at a distance, in all direc-
tions, of some four hundred miles from the central region. How much
farther did it speed, unseen, unheard and unf elt ? You will remember
that it left a record on the seismometer in Washington. This city is
nearly four hundred miles beyond the zone where the waves ceased to
be perceptible to the unaided human senses. From this record we may
infer that in the brief span of two or three minutes the earthquake
waves spread over a circular area about sixteen hundred miles in
diameter.

A classified review of the little things that happened in the upper
Mississippi Valley, when a block of the earth slipped in the northern
part of Illinois may perhaps be of interest. The phenomena reported,
affected at least five of the human senses, the senses of general well-
being, of touch, of equilibrium, of hearing and of sight.

A rheumatic woman in the zone where the disturbance was very
feeble "felt the vibrations keenly and told others of the earthquake,

158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

before it was generally known." Another woman, in poor health,
ascribed the peculiar feeling that she experienced to an attack of heart
disease, and sank frightened in bed. Experiences of this kind have
been noted in other earthquakes and appear to be due to a morbidly
excitable condition of the ill-defined and unspecialized sense of general
well being. Some people perceived the earthquake chiefly through the
sense of touch, as when a man, seated in a chair and resting his legs
on a railing, " felt his legs shake," or as when a chief of police, also
seated, felt that his chair shook. In several other cases the earthquake
was likewise merely " felt." No doubt the sense of touch entered as
an important element in a far greater number of instances when men-
tion is made that something shook, trembled, quivered or rocked, or
when there was a jar or a tremor. The sense of equilibrium or of
poise was evidently involved in the case of a man who felt " dizzy,"
and in the case of people who " wabbled on the streets," in cases where
occupants of houses noted a " heaving," " rocking " or a " swaying "
motion, and when people " were thrown down," or " nearly tumbled
over," or " found difficulty in keeping on their feet."

The reports mention only five instances of sounds accompanying
the earthquake. Such sounds are general in the mesoseismal area in all
severe earthquakes in all parts of the world, except in Japan, and one
noted seismologist believes that their absence in that country is due to
a racial inability among the Japanese to hear sounds of very low
pitch. The general absence of sounds in the Illinois earthquake is
readily accounted for by its comparative weakness. It was faintly
audible only in three epicentral tracts. Some parties claim to have
heard a distinct rumbling before the shock in Dubuque. In Waukegan
one man described the quake as a rush of wind, and said that he had
heard it. This swishing noise is one of the many known characteristic
forms of earthquake sounds. In Springfield, 111., a faint rumbling
was heard, and a janitor in one of the school buildings in Peoria made
a similar observation. One man heard a sound like the " bumping of
a locked door." This is another variation of earthquake noises, which,
when more powerful, resemble volleys of musketry and artillery, and
which, like the other noises, originate under the ground. Many ob-
servations involve sounds which are, as it were, proxies of the quake,
induced by secondary events, such as the rattling of windows and
dishes, the crash of falling brick and the like. The student of earth-
quakes depends, as we have seen, on such noises for much of his in-
formation on the progress of the earth waves in the peripheral region
of the disturbed area.

The sense that gives us the most reliable information on earth-
quakes, as on most other physical phenomena, is the sense of sight.
Visible earth waves are, however, rarely seen except in severe disturb-
ances. It is uncertain whether they appeared anywhere in this case.

THE EARTHQUAKE OF MAY 26, 1909 159

but there is a suggestion that they were rioted in Waukegan, where the
sidewalks were seen to " heave." A high bridge near Dubuque, la.,
and some old buildings in Plattsville, in Wisconsin, were seen to
" sway." But motions of such structures, as well as motions of smaller
objects, indoors and outdoors, are merely the effects of the earth's
motion and not a part of the earthquake itself. It is unnecessary to
enumerate them here.

Another classification of the earthquake jahenomena takes into con-
sideration the different objects giving evidence of the seismic motion
and the terms used by the observers in stating how these objects were
affected. It presents simultaneously in this case, a study in journalistic
diction and in mechanics. Forty reports relate the varied behavior of
buildings and houses. These are said to have shaken (17), rocked
(7), trembled (4), swayed (3), cracked (3), to have been jarred (2),
to have quivered (2) and to have creaked and heaved, respectively in
as many cases as indicated by the inserted figures. Observations on
dishes, bottles and tinware are next in number. These mostly rattled
(15), or were broken (8). Some were dashed to the floor (6), others
merely fell (3), some were shaken (3), were moved (2), or they
rocked, trembled, wabbled and were disturbed. A crockery store in
Dubuque sustained a damage of some eight hundred dollars. The
words used in describing the motions of furniture present a turbulence
of performances of almost kaleidoscopic variety. Chairs, tables, beds,
bookcases, even sedate stoves shook (8), were moved (6), were over-
turned (3), swayed (2), quivered (2), trembled (2), broke, were up-
set, tipped over, threatened to tumble over, rattled, rolled back and
forth, rocked, heaved and " had the glass shattered." Windows and
doors rattled (12), and shook (3), and one door was "sprung so it
would not close." Hanging pictures and mirrors engaged in a variety
of diversions. Some swung (3), some were shaken from the walls (3)
and some were thrown from their fastenings. One mirror " trembled
on the wall," and another " fell from the wall." One is said to have
" jumped around " and one was " demolished." Light fixtures and
lamps swayed (4), heaved, shook, were shaken from their rests, were
overturned, fell and broke, or were knocked down, and one gas flame
was "shaken out." Chimneys fell (4), toppled over (2), were razed,
shaken down and cracked. Water and milk in tumblers and pans were
spilled (5) and tippled. At Sabula a wave was thrown up against the
bank of the Mississippi Eiver. Bric-a-brac was shaken off, tipped off
and thrown down from mantles (6) or simply fell to the floor. Four
clocks were stopped. Heavy machinery rattled or " shook in good
shape." An elevator swayed and some linotype machines swayed
violently. Telephone wires were seen to sway, a telephone receiver was
knocked off its hook, and a telephone instrument was " put out of com-
mission." Other public utilities suffered serious damage, several thou-

160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

sand dollars being needed for the repair of disjointed gas pipes in Chi-
cago and its suburbs. Goods were thrown from the shelves in some
stores. In the watch works in Elgin some delicate instruments were
thrown out of gear, and in a printer's office in Dubuque some type,
locked in a form, was pied. A kitten was thrown across a room.

There was one class of accidents, some serious and others comical,
which could not have been foreseen as the results of an earthquake.
These involve some trigger-like arrangements. Falling stoves and dis-
jointed stove flues caused several fires in Aurora and Chicago. In
Waukegan the shock disarranged the bins in a feed store, and some of
the grain was let out through a crack between the boards. The leg of a
piano was loosened and fell in a school in Oak Park. The whole
instrument was in this way upset and tumbled down on the floor, and
the accompanying crash and noise naturally frightened the children.

Many reports describe the mental state and the behavior of people
on experiencing the unusual sensation of the earthquake. In the epi-
central tracts some were terrified, many left, or fled or rushed from
their homes, or from buildings where they were working. There were
several small panics among laborers and among employees in factories.
People were alarmed and excited and ran on the streets. Some schools
were dismissed for the day and instruction was interrupted in two uni-
versity classes. From farther out in the disturbed region some papers
state that the people in the upper stories of some high buildings were
frightened, and from still further out reports mention that people
were surprised or merely that they perceived the physical sensation,
evidently unattended by any emotion.

The tendency of the human mind to make inferences and draw
conclusions is pointedly illustrated by many of the reports. In cases
where the earthquake was not recognized, the disturbance noted was
nevertheless invariably ascribed to some cause, more or less remote, but
suggested through the bias of previous experience. Many people
thought the jar they felt was due to an explosion or a blast in some
quarry, and others thought it was due to the moving of some heavy ob-
ject in the building they occupied. A janitor in a school building
thought that a man engaged to repair the flag pole had fallen on the
roof. A grocer who had piled up some sacks of flour in the second
story, went up to see if these had fallen down. People living near car
lines and railroads referred the commotion to passing cars or trains.
Residents in the cities were reminded of the passing of heavy vehicles.
Two unsophisticated children jumped out of a bed that shook, ran
crying to their mother and reported that the bed was falling to pieces.
A young lady stenographer in Chicago, more versed in the ways of the
world, felt her chair rocking and promptly rebuked a supposed offender
at her back with the command : " You stop that."

Projected forward instead of backward, reasoning results in the

TEE EARTEQUAKE OF MAY 26, 1909 161

vision of things impending. Here also the bias of earlier experience
and of training plays an important role. Eemembering the recent dis-
asters in Europe, Italian laborers in Chicago quit work to fall on their
knees and pray. Eecalling a prophecy of the coming of the end of the
world three days later, some Zionists are reported to have concluded
that the earthquake was the beginning of the fulfillment of the proph-
ecy. Some persons who had left their houses, refused for hours to enter
them again, fearing a repetition of the earthquake. A prisoner in a
jail is said to have speculated on his chances of getting away, in case
the walls of the jail would fall, and some people in Chicago feared the
coming of a " tidal " wave from Lake Michigan.

It is well known that afferent impulses, especially if they are pow-
erful, have the effect of inhibiting or interfering with central psychic
activities. Such inhibition was probably responsible for the forgetful-
ness of a reporter who sent in his account of the earthquake in a
neighboring city to a newspaper in Clinton, but forgot to affix his
signature. It explains also the action of a woman in a hospital, who
was walking on crutches and who ran out without them, to escape from
the building. With the inhibition of man's reason, his instincts take
its place, and it would seem that many of our instinctive actions are
not much different from those of the brute. They are exemplified in
the panics that took place in a few factories and schools. When people
rushed from buildings and started to run on the streets, they acted on
instinctive impulses. These actions must have been prompted by a
nervous mechanism quite like the mechanism that started several run-
away horses in places where the earthquake was sufficiently severe to
appear alarming. The launching of sensational rumors during a gen-
eral excitement is traceable to a related instinct, only more refined and
exclusively human. The reflex was started on this occasion by a fire in
a kitchen in Aurora, and the reaction announced that " Aurora is
burning up."

One phenomenon in this connection is almost embarrassing to
mention, in view of the present growing sentiment in favor of women's
rights and woman suffrage. It appears from the effects of the recent
earthquake on the American people, that human reason is more readily
inhibited in the gentler sex and in children, than in men. The state-
ment may be worded in another, and perhaps a better way, by saying
that human instincts are relatively stronger in woman than in man.
This statement will hardly pass as anything new. This distinction is
implied in the wording of one report, which states that " men were
excited, women and children frightened." It is stated that in Du-
buque a panic was narrowly averted in a shop where women worked.
In an office building in the same city it happened that the women
rushed in a panic to the stairs, and that men met them and quieted
them. In a home for young women the jar is said to have " scared the

1 62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

occupants out." Several panics occurred in schools. One man relates
that his wife and sister " rushed to him." Nurses were alarmed in a
hospital. Telephone girls left the switch-boards in Chicago, and
" were scared " in Clinton. A particular mention is made of a seam-
stress who was alarmed, and of another woman who sank frightened
on a bed. But in no case is a man specially mentioned as having been
afraid. In places where men were scared, fright was general, and
there was then no cause for such special mention. The evidence of
this difference can hardly be charged to an unconscious discrimination
by the reporters in favor of the stronger sex. It must be regarded as a
noteworthy incident in this earthquake that its intensity was near
that limit, which is strong enough to scare women but not men. This
limit must approximate seven in the Rossi-Forel scale, and the un-
sentimental seismologist may hence add another criterion for correctly
locating the seventh isoseismal.

One general observation which has a practical bearing should per-
haps not be left unmentioned. It is that the earthquake was more
strongly felt in the upper stories of high buildings than on the ground
floors. In Dubuque " the upper part of the high buildings swayed."
A reporter in Burlington says that the shock was " felt most in the
upper stories of tall buildings." " The floors shook in the upper stories
of large buildings " in Clinton, and in Davenport " the tremors were
mostly noted in high office buildings." In Chicago the shock was not
felt on the ground floors, but mostly " only in the higher stories." The
top floors are especially mentioned as having shaken in some of the
university buildings in Evanstown and in a college building at Cedar
Eapids. In the architecture produced by the demands of industry and
business in this part of the world, the eventuality of a severe earth-
quake has not entered as an element of consideration. The experience
of a half century shows that this neglect is probably justified. Never-
theless, it is appalling to contemplate how different the story of this
recent jar would appear if the intensity of the disturbance had been
just a little greater than it was. From our past experience we may safely
infer that the valley of the upper Mississippi is in a region where earth-
quakes are not frequent. Are we also justified in believing that when
such disturbances do occur, they will not be severe? The violence of
the New Madrid earthquakes a hundred years ago makes the answer to
this question uncertain. Time alone will tell.

USES OF A RESEARCH MUSEUM 163

THE METHODS AND USES OF A EESEARCH MUSEUM

By JOSEPH GRINNELL

DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEUM OF VERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

THE average public museum contains natural history specimens of
two categories — those which are displayed within glass cases con-
stantly open to the light, so as to be continually in the view of visitors ;
and of those which are stored away in various appropriate containers,
ordinarily protected from the light, and which are not open for the
inspection of the general public, though they may be freely handled
and examined by the special student in the field to which they pertain.
The former category of specimens constitutes what is usually referred
to as the museum proper, or exhibition museum ; while the latter forms
what may be termed the research museum.

The functions of an exhibition museum have been discussed at
length, and its claim to recognition as a valuable factor in public edu-
cation as well as amusement has been too well established to require
further proof. It should be remembered, however, that much of the
material on display may at the same time be of direct value in research ;
for it consists in part of such objects as skeletons which are not af-
fected injuriously by light and which may be encased with a view to
easy access by the osteologist who wishes to examine them minutely.

It is in the research department of the museum that I believe lies a
great value, even though the sight-seeing visitor may know nothing of
its existence. The maintenance of a research department on a large
scale is certainly justifiable, as I purpose to show, by the importance of
the results to be obtained through it from the standpoint of pure
science. In an institution, like the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology,
which is an integral part of a large university, it may even be war-
rantable to emphasize the importance of research over exhibition. For
the presence of the research museum serves as a stimulus to the univer-
sity student and as a source of material and information usable in the
work of other departments in the university.

In discussing at length the functions of a research museum, in
order to have something concrete to use in illustration, I will refer
constantly to the institution with which I am connected. Here, al-
though it has been little more than two years since its inauguration,
enough of methods and policies have been formulated to furnish data
for the basis of this paper.

The functions of our research department, in other words the

1 64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

energies of our curators and the expenditure of our money allowances,
are directed along the following lines :

Our most obvious activity, though not necessarily the most impor-
tant one, lies in the accumulation of the preservable remains of ani-
mals of the vertebrate classes with the exception of those below the
Batrachia. I am sure that no one will disagree with me in the claim
that the results of our work will be of far greater moment in thus nar-
rowing down the object of our work to a portion of the animal kingdom
than if we were to spread it thinly over a greater range of subjects.

The field of our work is the region immediately about us. In other
words, it is much less effective to attempt to secure a representation of
the animals of the world than to exploit the fauna of a limited area.
The Pacific coast is practically inexhaustible, is naturally of easiest
access and should be of greatest interest to this institution.

Our collections consist of the skins and skulls of mammals, each
individual collected being ordinarily represented by its skin, together,
of course, with all dermal structures attached, and the entire skull,
cleaned and preserved separately. The entire skeletons of a much
smaller proportion of the specimens secured are also preserved; and
of the smaller forms the entire animal, a few of each species, is pre-
served in alcohol for anatomical purposes.

In the class of birds the ordinary study skin is the chief portion
preserved. However, the endeavor is made to secure complete skeletons
representative of each family at least; and also portions of skeletons of
a greater number, consisting of skulls and sterna chiefly. As with the
mammals, alcoholic preparations are saved, especially of young birds.
The expense and mechanical inconvenience of collecting and storing
alcoholics impose a practical limit upon the quantity of material to be
cared for in this way.

Reptiles and batrachians are preserved entire as alcoholics. Skele-
tons should also be prepared and saved, but the difficulty of properly
obtaining them has proved so great that as yet we have but few. At
any rate, with the entire animal preserved in alcohol it is possible for
the special student at any time to take out the skeleton of the reptile
or batrachian that it is desired to study.

The museum's policy is, and should be everywhere, liberal as re-
gards the loaning of material to non-resident as well as near-by special-
ists. Material of any sort is loaned freely to any responsible person
any where for the purpose of aiding in his investigations, or as basis
of any special study. The value of a museum's hoard of specimens
and facts increases in direct ratio to the extent to which they are used.
No museum is a success as long as it remains a cold-storage warehouse,
closed to ready access by the general student whether he be remotely
situated or located within easy reach.

USES OF A RESEARCH MUSEUM 165

The museum curator only a few years since was satisfied to gather
and arrange his research collections with very little reference to their
source or to the conditions under which they were obtained. In fact it
is surprising to find how little information is on record in regard to
collections contained in certain eastern institutions as accessioned
previous to about 1885. The modern method, and the one adopted and
being carried out more and more in detail by our California museum, is
to make the record of each individual acquired, whether it comes in
from an outside donor or whether, as is the most usual case, it is se-
cured by the trained museum collector, as complete a history as prac-
ticable.

The field collector is supplied with a separate-leaf note-book. He
writes his records on the day of observation with carbon ink, on one
side of the paper only. The floral surroundings are recorded, espe-
cially with respect to their bearing on the animal secured. The be-
havior of the animal is described and everything else which is thought
by the collector to be of use in the study of the species is put on record
at the time the observations are made in the field. The camera is as
important a part of his outfit as the trap or gun. These field notes and
photographs are filed so as to be as readily accessible to the student in
the museum as are the specimens themselves.

Furthermore, a rather elaborate system of card cataloguing is main-
tained in the museum. Three sets of cards, namely, accession, depart-
ment and reference, which are kept up as a part of the regular work of
the curators, enable the enquirer to determine quickly what material is
on hand, in what form it is, when and where obtained, and, by follow-
ing up the cross references to the field note-books, the conditions under
which each animal was obtained.

As a matter of routine, each specimen as it is obtained in the field
is at once tagged, the label being inscribed in India ink with the exact
place of capture, date, collector and field number. The original field
number is the same as that under which the animal is at the same time
recorded in the field notes. Its original tag is never detached from the
specimen, no matter what disposition is made of the latter in arranging
the collections in the museum; and so, reversely, the student may
quickly trace back again from any particular specimen its history, by
referring to the card catalogue and field note-book. In addition to the
original collector's number there is added on each label a separate de-
partment number by which it is referred to in the museum records and
any published articles specifically mentioning it.

It will be observed, then, that our efforts are not merely to accumu-
late as great a mass of animal remains as possible. On the contrary,
we are expending even more time than would be required for the col-
lection of the specimens alone, in rendering what we do obtain as per-

1 66 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

manently valuable as we know how, to the ecologist as well as the sys-
tematist. It is quite probable that the facts of distribution, life history,
and economic status may finally prove to be of more far-reaching
value, than whatever information is obtainable exclusively from the
specimens themselves.

At this point I wish to emphasize what I believe will ultimately
prove to be the greatest value of our museum. This value will not,
however, be realized until the lapse of many years, possibly a century,
assuming that our material is safely preserved. And this is that the
student of the future will have access to the original record of faunal
conditions in California and the west wherever we now work. He will
know the proportional constituency of our faunas by species, the rela-
tive numbers of each species and the extent of the ranges of species as
they exist to-day.

Perhaps the most impressive fact brought home to the student of
geographical distribution, as he carries on his studies, is the profound
change that is constantly going on in the faunal make-up of our coun-
try. Eight now are probably beginning changes to be wrought in the
next few years vastly more conspicuous than those that have occurred
in ten times that length of time preceding. The effects of deforesta-
tion, of tree-planting on the prairies, of the irrigation and cultivation
of the deserts, all mean the rapid shifting of faunal boundaries, the ex-
tension of ranges of some animals, restriction in the ranges of others,
and, with no doubt whatever, the complete extermination of many
others, as in a few cases already on record.

If we now had the accurate record of faunal conditions as they were
in the Atlantic states a century ago, how much might we not be able
to adduce from a study of the changes which have taken place. Now is
the opportunity to make such records in our western region. Compar-
ative studies of conditions in the same area at different successive times
is bound to bring important generalizations in the field of evolution.
It will be seen here how valuable also will prove the collections pre-
served at corresponding intervals. Changes in conditions will doubtless
bring about changes in the habits and physical characters of the ani-
mals enduring them.

Another grave danger from the standpoint of the student of natural
speciation lies in the introduction of exotic animals. This evil is grow-
ing rapidly in the effort to restock regions with more hardy or prolific
game animals. If successful from the sportsman's basis, either of two
things will happen : the original, native species will become extinct by
competitive replacement, or, where the relationships are close, crossing
will take place so that the original species will be spoiled through
hybridization. There are already instances of both in different sec-
tions of the United States. It is highly desirable that a good repre-

USES OF A RESEARCH MUSEUM 167

sentation of specimens of the pure, native stock be properly preserved
in our museums, for future comparison.

I wish here to register an objection to the prevalent idea that ex-
perimental methods upon the higher animals under artificially im-
posed conditions may be expected to lead invariably to the satisfactory
solution of evolutionary problems. I have in mind some experiments
recently made upon birds. Certain species were kept captive in en-
closures in which a relatively high atmospheric humidity was main-
tained. The experimenter found that within the life of an individual,
in fact within a few months, successive molts resulted in the plumages
of some of the birds becoming darker. Feathers which were normallv
marked lightly with black became solid black. The increase of pig-
ment throughout the plumage brought about a conspicuous change in
the appearances of the birds, as great a difference as one finds between
two near-related species under natural conditions, the one occupying
an area of arid climate, the other a region of humidity.

The conclusion from these few experiments, quite generally, but, I
feel confident, too hastily, drawn, has been that there may be a " direct
influence " of the atmospheric humidity sufficient to bring about the
color characters of the different species as we find them under the
varying natural conditions; in other words, that it is not a matter of
gradual adaptive acquisition subject to inheritance. It is even being
maintained widely among biologists that natural selection may have
very little to do with the characters of animals as we find them in na-
ture.

I believe that the above experiments, among others carried on in
the same way, will, alone, lead to inductions largely inapplicable to
animals in the wild. My chief objection is that wild animals brought
into confinement at once begin to show irregularities in various* struc-
tural respects. This is shown sufficiently by studies upon the skeletons
of animals dying in zoological parks, a very large proportion of which
are abnormally modified in various particulars. This diseased condi-
tion undoubtedly begins just as soon as the animal is taken out of its
natural surroundings. For the cessation of any one set of muscular
activities is bound to bring about immediate changes in quantitative
metabolism in the system. Change in food supply directly affects the
entire organism, and unusual invasion by parasites ensues with con-
comitant irregular growths. How then can we expect to get a knowl-
edge of the processes of species formation under natural conditions
from the extraordinary physical development or behavior of such
animals ?

I would urge that it is only through the close and long-continued
study of animals in the wild state, that is, under perfectly natural
conditions, that we can hope to gather conclusive evidence as to the

1 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

causes and methods of evolution. Our research museum has assumed
the role of recorder of faunal conditions as they are in this age. I
reiterate, for emphasis, that I believe its greatest ultimate value will
not, therefore, be fully realized until a later period.

But to return to our immediate activities and their justification:
The mass of information already at hand brings us face to face with
numerous problems of distribution and variation. As our field work
is carried on, we learn more and more in detail of the extent of the
range of each species of animal, and we are able to recognize more
clearly the correlated factors. We are able with more accuracy to de-
fine the characters of the local races or subspecies. The study of these
" small species " I believe is leading to a better understanding of the
relationships of animals and the causes of evolution than if we ignored
the slight varieties and contented ourselves with dealing systematically
only with the species differentiated so far as to be distinguishable at a
glance.

Systematists, either as members of our museum staff or students
from elsewhere, who make use of our material, are putting on pub-
lished record the more important facts of distribution and variation as
they come to light. All of this activity leads to the more thorough
knowledge of animals necessary for any sort of wider generalization.
Our institution is a repository of facts; and no matter what may be
said to the contrary by those who undervalue the efforts of the hoarder
of facts, it must always be the mass of carefully ascertained facts upon
which the valid generalization rests. I have lately learned from no
less than three zoologists of prominence that the published scientific
paper which does not include some induction or generalization is not
worth while. The result, it seems to me, of such a sentiment as this,
which is being promulgated among the younger students, is to en-
courage premature conclusions. The object, in the view of the young
research student, becomes the discovery of generalizations, and he is
liable to be content with a wholly insufficient basis of facts. We can
not expect satisfactory inductions from scanty data any sooner than
from inaccurate data. At the same time I do realize that the ultimate
value of the facts lies in their service as indicators of general truths.
The amassing of detailed facts in any field of science is certainly a
commendable pursuit; and if generalizations of wide application are
early indicated, so much the better. Our research museum is a re-
pository of facts.

There is a more widely-appreciated function of our institution
which is already asserting itself as an important one in the research
museum's activities, especially in its connection with a state univer-
sity: People want to know whether or not a reptile is poisonous;
whether or not a bird is beneficial or injurious; whether or not a

USES OF A RESEARCH MUSEUM 169

" wild animal " is to be feared. People instinctively want to know the
names of things. There is the mere curiosity, perfectly laudable,
which brings such questions as these to the museum in greater and
greater number. It is as a popular source of information that no small
part of the curator's time is occupied.

The economic value of birds and mammals to the agricultural in-
terests of the state is one of practical importance. In our field work
we obtain a great amount of information applicable along this line;
and, further, our staff keeps posted as to the results of the important
work carried on by our national government to ascertain the beneficial
or injurious effects of wild animals. Either from knowledge acquired
directly by ourselves, or from that published elsewhere, we are often
able to give the information asked for. The museum is thus constituted
a popular bureau of information as regards the higher vertebrate ani-
mals of the region with which, we are familiar.

The functions of a research museum may be summarized as follows r
Collecting and preserving animals of certain groups from a limited
region; recording in permanent form all obtainable information in re-
gard to their distribution, variation, economic status and habits; serv-
ing as a bureau of popular information as regards the animals of the
region worked in; the description and analysis of ecologic and faunal
conditions as they are to-day; the publication of the immediately im-
portant data obtained, calling attention to whatever generalizations,
these facts may point towards.

VOL. LXXV.— 12.

17© TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE EFFECTS OF SMOKING ON COLLEGE STUDENTS

Br De. GEORGE L. MEYLAN

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

THE question of the effects of tobacco upon the smoker has re-
ceived much attention from moralists, educators, physicians and
scientists. The literature on the subject is voluminous. Numerous
investigators have experimented upon animals, mainly to determine
the effects produced by nicotine. The results of these experiments
show that nicotine when injected in animals acts as a strong poison,
causing disturbances of the nervous, circulatory and respiratory func-
tions. The problem of determining the effects of smoking upon human
beings presents far greater difficulties than the effects of nicotine in-
jections on animals. There is very little agreement in the conclusions
reached by the many physiologists and physicians, who have investi-
gated this problem.

Professor Lombard, of the University of Michigan, has shown that
in from five to ten minutes after beginning to smoke an ordinary cigar
muscular power began to diminish, and in an hour when the cigar was
burned, it had fallen to about 25 per cent, of its initial value. The
total work of the time of depression compared with a similar normal
period was as 24.2 is to 44.8.

According to Dr. Woodhead, of Cambridge University:

Cigarette smoking in the case of boys, partly paralyzes the nerve cells at
the base of the brain and this interferes with the breathing and heart action.
The end organs of the motor nerves lose their excitability, next the trunks of
the nerves and then the spinal cord. In those accustomed to smoking, it has
a soothing effect upon the nervous system, but often acts as a nervous stimulant
to mental work, as in reading. In those cases the effect is not due to nicotine
itself but to the stimulus of the smoke on the sensory nerves of the mouth,
which reflexly stimulate the vaso-motor system and dilate the vessels of the
brain. There appears to be less irritation of the brain structure and motor
nerves than of the sensory nerves, but the power of fine coordination is de-
cidedly lost.

Dr. Clouston, the eminent English physician, writes on tobacco as

follows :

The use of tobacco has become the rule rather than the exception among
the grown men of Europe and America and of some parts of Asia. If its use is
restricted to full-grown men, if only good tobacco is used, not of too great
strength, and if it is not used to excess, then there are no scientific proofs that
it has any injurious effects, if there is no idiosyncrasy against it. Speaking
generally, it exercises a soothing influence when the nervous system is in any

SMOKING AND COLLEGE STUDENTS 171

way irritable. It tends to calm and continuous thinking, and in many men
promotes the digestion of food. To those good results there are, however,
exceptions. It sometimes sets up a very strong desire for its excessive use;
this often passing into a morbid craving which leads to excess and hurt. Used
in such excessive quantity tobacco acts injuriously on the heart, weakens
digestion, and causes congestion of the throat as well as hindering mental
action. In many people its use tends towards a desire for alcohol as well.
I have repeatedly seen persons of a nervous temperament where the two excesses
in tobacco and alcohol were linked together. Tobacco, properly used may, in
some cases, undoubtedly be made a mental hygienic.

Dr. Pereria says :

I am not acquainted with any well-ascertained ill effects resulting from the
habitual practise of smoking.

Dr. Bichardson writes of tobacco in the London Lancet:

It is innocent as compared with alcohol; it is in no sense worse than tea.

In the Fourth Annual Eeport of the Henry Phipps Institute, 1908,
Dr. Lawrence F. Flick reports that of 443 male patients treated for
pulmonary tuberculosis, 72.68 per cent, used tobacco. The result of
the treatment was favorable in 38.28 per cent, of the patients who used
tobacco, as against 47.42 among non-users. Unfavorable results oc-
curred in 61.7 per cent, of the users of tobacco, and in only 52.62 per
cent, of the non-users. Dr. Flick concludes :

Here again, as with alcoholism, we have merely evidence as to the influence
of tobacco on the development and mortality of tuberculosis and not upon im-
plantation. . . . The statistics here given, if they have any meaning at all,
would seem to indicate that the use of tobacco by males may be one of the
explanations why tuberculosis is at present as much more prevalent among
males than among females. Tobacco undoubtedly depresses the heart and inter-
feres to some extent with vigorous circulation. It is generally conceded that
anything which depresses the circulation interferes with nutrition.

Under the title " The Effects of Nicotine," Dr. Jay W. Seaver pub-
lished an article in the Arena, for February, 1897, in which he gives
some statistics of the differences in the physical measurements of
smokers and non-smokers among Yale College students. Unfortunately,
Dr. Seaver does not give any figures of the actual measurements or the
number of cases that he observed. He says :

A tabulation of the records of the students who entered Yale in nine years,
when all of the young men were examined and measured, shows that the
smokers averaged fifteen months older than the non-smokers, but that their
size, except in weight, which was one and four-tenths kilograms more, was
inferior in height to the extent of seven millimeters (about J inch), and in
lung capacity to the extent of eighty cubic centimeters.

In explanation of the difference in age between the smokers and the
non-smokers, Dr. Seaver says:

The difference in age in the two groups points to an age limit to parental
restraint, and raises the inquiry as to what might supplement this influence.

In regard to the influence of smoking on the increase of physical
measurements of college students, Dr. Seaver says:

172 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The effect of nicotine on the growth is very measurable, and the following
figures are presented as a fairly satisfactory demonstration of the extent of the
interference with growth that may be expected in boys from sixteen to twenty-
five years of age, when they are believed to have reached full maturity. For
purposes of comparison the men composing a class in Yale have been divided
into three groups. The first is made up of those who do not use tobacco in any
form; the second consists of those who have used tobacco regularly for at least
a year of the college course; the third group includes the irregular users.
A compilation of the anthropometric data on this basis shows that during the
period of undergraduate life, which is essentially three and a half years, the
first group grows in weight 10.4 per cent, more than the second, and 6.6 per
than the second, and 11 per cent, more than the third; in girth of chest the
first group grows 26.7 per cent, more than the second, and 22 per cent, more
than the third; in capacity of lungs the first group gains 77 per cent, more
than the second, and 49.5 per cent, more than the third.

These figures have been widely quoted, and generally considered as
affording positive proof that college students who do not use tobacco
make far greater progress in physical development than is the case
with smokers. Without actual figures of increment in measurements,
these percentages signify little or nothing. For instance, the difference
of 24 per cent, in stature increment reported might mean that the
smokers increased 17 millimeters and the non-smokers 21 millimeters,
but no one would attach any significance to a difference of 4 millimeters
in stature measurement.

A recent study by E. L. Clarke, published in the Clark College
Record for July, 1909, shows that 46.3 per cent, of 201 students smoke.
The smokers exceed the non-smokers a little in strength and lung-
capacity, and 26 per cent, of the smokers won athletic insignia against
16 per cent, of the non-smokers. But in the matter of scholarship,
68.5 per cent, of the non-smokers won honors as against only 18.3 per
cent, of the smokers. Mr. Clarke concludes :

1. As a rule the non-smoker is mentally superior to both the occasional
and the habitual smoker.

2. As a rule the non-smoker is equal, and probably slightly superior, phys-
ically, to all members of the smoking classes except the athletes. It may well
be queried as to whether the smoking athlete does not make his gain at too
high a mental cost to make it pay. No one would contend for a moment that
smoking is the sole cause of these differences. There are numerous other factors
that are inseparably linked with it.

The question may be approached from the physiologic, the moral
or the economic view-point. In this article, the chief aim will be to
determine if smoking exerts any influence upon the physical and mental
characteristics of college students; the moral question involved will be
considered only incidentally; no attempt will be made to present the
economic view-point. The writer, with the cooperation of his assistant,
Mr. Hyman Cohen, A.M., made a detailed study of 223 college students
from two classes, including all for whom records could be obtained.

KJ J.TJL V/iX, X XT \J XXXI X-' \S WUUU ^ XJ A_; X. *_/ X-' X_4 X 1 J. Aw*

Percentage of Smokeks

115 smokers or 52 per cent.

108 non-smokers or 48 per cent.

Age when Smokers acquired the Habit
Age 7 S 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Number 10 0 2 0 2 0 11 11 18 30 23 16 0 1

/ o

Average Measurements of 145 College Students at the Beginning of
Freshman Year and End of Sophomore Year

Age

Weight

Height

Lung
Capacity

Total

Strength

68 Smokers, 1st.

68 Smokers, 2d.

Difference.

77 Non-smokers, 1st.

77 Non-smokers, 2d.

Difference.

18.8
20.1

1.5
18.0
19.6

1.6

59.1
62.5

3.4
59.0
61.6

2.6

171.8
173.0

1.2
170 4
172.5

1.1

4.02
4.10

.08
4.08
4.28

.20

582
685
103
570
671
101

The smaller number of observations in the physical measurements
is due to two causes : first, the physical examinations are optional for
students entering with advanced standing in physical education; these
students usually take only the first examination; second, a number of
students in this group had not yet taken their second physical exam-
ination when this study was made. The selection is therefore purely
accidental.

It appears from these tables that there is no appreciable difference
between the measurements of the smokers and of the non-smokers
except in the matter of age. The slight advantage in the average meas-
urements of the smokers at the first examination is undoubtedly due to
the fact that they are 8 months older. The slightly larger gain made by
the smokers in weight, height, and total strength during the first two
years in college is really too small to have any significance.

Scholarship Records of the 223 Students

Average Marks Marks during Failures during

at Entrance first 2 years first 2 years

223 students 90 per cent. 66 per cent. 7 per cent.

115 smokers 89 per cent. 62 per cent. 10 per cent.

108 non-smokers ... 91 per cent. 69 per cent. 4 per cent.

The differences in scholarship standing between the smokers and
non-smokers are distinctly in favor of the non-smokers.

If the only difference between these two groups of students is that
the members of one group use tobacco and the members of the other
group abstain from it, then it would appear that there is a direct rela-
tion between smoking tobacco and scholarship. A further study of
these two groups brings out differences between smokers and non-
smokers in athletic and social activities.

i74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Students who Won a Place on One ok More Vaesity Athletic Teams

Of 223 students 84 or 37.6 per cent.

Of 115 smokers 47 or 41 per cent.

Of 108 non-smokers 37 or 34 per cent.

This table shows that 41 per cent, of smokers and only 34 per cent,
of non-smokers achieved success in varsity athletics.

Of varsity athletes 56 per cent, are smokers as compared with 52 per
cent, of all students.

The following table illustrates the same point in another way, giving
a percentage of 57.3 for the number of smokers on the various varsity
athletic teams during one college year.

Percentage of Smokers on Varsity Athletic Teams during the

Season of 1908-09

No. of Men No. of Smokers Per Cent.

Baseball 13 11 84

Soccer 11 7 63

Swimming 14 11 74

Crew 12 4 33

Hockey 7 4 57

Lacrosse 12 6 50

Basketball 6 1 17

Wrestling 7 4 57

Gymnastic 11 5 45

Fencing 3 2 67

Total 96 55 Average, 57^3

Participation in the social activities of college life is best measured
by membership in college fraternities. The following table shows the
relation between smoking and membership in fraternities:

Students who Belong to College Fraternities

Of 223 students 66 or 29.4 per cent.

Of 115 smokers 49 or 42.6 per cent.

Of 108 non-smokers 17 or 15.7 per cent.

This table shows a very close relation between smoking and mem-
bership in college fraternities.

Scholarship of Students who Belong to College Fraternities

Average Marks Average Marks Average failures dur-
at Entrance during first 2 years ing first 2 years

223 students 90.0 66.0 7.0

66 fraternity members 85.4 59.1 12.8

49 fraternity members smokers . . . 84.0 56.6 14.4

17 fraternity members non-smokers 89.4 66.5 8.1

In order to show more clearly the facts brought out in the previous
tables, the following comparisons are made:

SMOKING AND COLLEGE STUDENTS 175

Of 223 students 115 or 52.0 per cent, are smokers

Of 96 athletes 55 or 57.3 per cent, are smokers

Of 66 fraternity men 49 or 74.2 per cent, are smokers

There are more smokers among athletes and a great many more
among fraternity men than among all students.

Of 223 students 84 or 37.6 per cent, made varsity teams

Of 115 smokers 47 or 41.0 per cent, made varsity teams

Of 66 fraternity men 41 or 62.1 per cent, made varsity teams

There are more athletes among smokers and a great many more
among fraternity men than among all students.

Average Marks Average Marks Average failures

at Entrance in first 2 years in first 2 years

223 students 90 per cent. 66 per cent. 7 per cent.

115 smokers 89 per cent. 62 per cent. 10 per cent.

84 athletes 90 per cent. 63.2 per cent. 8.4 per cent.

66 fraternity men 85.4 per cent. 59.1 per cent. 12.8 per cent.

Smokers, athletes and fraternity men have lower scholarship records
than other students.

There is some definite relation existing between smoking, partici-
pation in athletics, membership in college fraternities and low scholar-
ship. These relations indicate that the factor of smoking can not be
isolated from other related factors which may account for differences in
age and scholarship. It is very clear, however, that students who use
tobacco invariably rank lower in scholarship than students who do not
smoke.

Those who are conversant with present conditions in American col-
leges, recognize two distinct types of students. President Butler, in
his annual report for 1908-09, devotes several pages to a discussion of
this subject ; among other things he says :

Not so many years ago there were few boys who went to college without a
serious, definite purpose more or less scholarly in character. They were looking
forward to the ministry, to teaching or to the practise of law or medicine.
Not many of them had in mind a career as merchant, financier or corporation
official. With the lapse of time and the increasing wealth of this country, this
condition has been very much changed. It is now fashionable to go to college,
at least to some colleges, and the attractions of college life and companionship
are powerful motives in leading young men to strive to surmount the barrier
of college admission. This new type of college student, whether he knows it or
not, goes to college primarily for a social, not for an intellectual, purpose. His
wish is to share in the attractive associations of an American college; he desires
to participate in athletic sports; he hopes in after life to mingle freely and on
terms of equality with college-bred men. It is a good thing that boys of this
type should go to college, provided that the college will recognize their exist-
ence as a type and will deal with them accordingly. To try to turn such men
into scholars is a hopeless task. They are not fitted for high scholarship and
they do not desire it.

The type of student referred to by Dr. Butler is a good fellow, he
dresses well, has a generous allowance, belongs to a fraternity and tries
to " make " some varsity team ; he elects courses partly because they are
easy and partly because the instructor is popular; he spends much time
in social intercourse and athletics, and gets few high marks, mainly
because he does not try to get them. This is the student who smokes,
because he has the time, the money and the opportunities to indulge in
the practise.

The non-smoker usually belongs to another type of student. He is
the scholar who is ambitious for rank. Many students of this type earn
part or all of their expenses by tutoring and other remunerative work;
many of them hold free scholarships and must maintain high rank in
their studies to retain them. Students of this type have little time for
athletic training or social life of fraternities, and therefore few oppor-
tunities and incentives for indulging in the practise of smoking.

There are three points of interest brought out by this study :

1. College students who acquired the smoking habit before entering
college are about eight months older at entrance than the non-smokers.
Three factors are probably responsible for this difference in age: (a)
all scientists who have studied the physiological effects of tobacco upon
man and animals are agreed that it has a depressing influence upon
the heart and circulation, also, that anything which interferes with
the vigor of the circulation has a retarding effect upon growth. It is
therefore possible that smoking may retard, both physical and mental
development; (b) the age seventeen is the time when most boys begin
to smoke, if for any reason a boy is older than the average when he
enters college, there is more than an even chance that he will have
acquired the smoking habit in the secondary school, and (c) the type
of student described above who is primarily interested in social life
and athletics, is found in secondary schools as well as in college; three
out of four of such students smoke, and they are usually graded low in
their studies, these facts would account for a higher average age among
entering freshmen who are smokers.

2. The physical measurements of freshman smokers are slightly
above those of the non-smokers, and the smokers gain more than the
non-smokers during the first two years in college, except in lung capac-
ity. These figures are susceptible of misinterpretation unless three im-
portant facts are taken into consideration. (1) The smokers are 8
months older than the non-smokers; their measurements should be
slightly larger on that account. (2) It was shown that smokers belong
to a class of students having larger means and therefore a more favorable
physical environment — better nutrition, etc. — than the non-smokers;
their measurements should be larger on that account. (3) It was shown
that smokers participate in athletic exercises more than the non-smok-

ers; their measurements should be larger on that account. That the
smokers are not appreciably heavier, taller and stronger than the non-
smokers may be due to the depressing influence of nicotine on the cir-
culation and the consequent interference with normal growth.

3. The scholarship standing of smokers is distinctly lower than that
of non-smokers. The intimate connection existing between the smoking
habit and participation in the social and athletic activities of college
life makes it impossible to determine how much, if any direct influence
the smoking habit exerts upon scholarship, but the results of this study
and the similar results obtained at Clark College indicate very clearly
that the smoking habit is closely associated with idleness and lack of
ambition for scholarly achievement.

Conclusions. — The writer has no desire to defend the use of tobacco.
The motive in making this study was to ascertain the facts concerning
the effects of tobacco upon college men. The teaching of hygiene is
making rapid progress; quantities of new books are being published in
which the large volume of new scientific facts on nutrition, muscular
exercise, and the effects of alcohol take the place of the dogmatic state-
ments and easy moral of the old books; a similar change is desired in
the treatment of the problem of the effects of tobacco.

A study of the literature on the effects of smoking, years of medical
examinations of boys and men, experience in teaching hygiene and the
results of this study have led the writer to the following conclusions :

1. All scientists are agreed that the use of tobacco by adolescents
is injurious; parents, teachers and physicians should strive earnestly to
warn youths against its use.

2. There is no scientific evidence that the moderate use of tobacco
by healthy mature men produces any beneficial or injurious physical
effects that can be measured.

3. There is an abundance of evidence that tobacco produces injurious
effects on (a) certain individuals suffering from various nervous affec-
tions; (b) persons with an idiosyncrasy against tobacco; (c) all persons
who use it excessively.

4. It has been shown conclusively in this study and also by Mr.
Clarke that the use of tobacco by college students is closely associated
with idleness, lack of ambition, lack of application, and low scholarship.

178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE DANGEE OF UNSKILL

By WALTER G. BEACH

STATE COLLEGE OF WASHINGTON, PULLMAN, WASH.

f I i"WO human streams pour ceaselessly into the sea of American
-*- industry. One of these brings to us the immigrant, the man
of foreign stock, alien in blood and customs, and more and more from
the backward and " beaten " peoples of eastern Europe. The sources
of the other stream are in our own life, and upon it are borne America's
own children who, in the passing of years, are to face the duties of
manhood and womanhood. These two streams fill the vast national
reservoir of labor upon which depends in large measure the future of
American industry and American moral welfare. This is the first fact
to which attention is directed.

The second fact is the changing character of industry, aside from its
human element. We are in the midst of the great mechanical revolu-
tion whose beginning in America goes back to the early years of the
nineteenth century, but which since the civil war has been uprooting
the old order, supplanting its simpler methods with marvelous rapidity
and tremendous power.

The human consequence of this revolution is the driving out of the
man by the machine, on the one hand, and the increasing specialization
of labor on the other. And the labor supplanted by the machine, if it
is to fit into the resulting more specialized employments, must have
skill. Primitive man was unspecialized and his skill was of the
slightest, his knowledge being insignificant. The man of to-day finds
that sheer muscle is at a discount, and his weaker but better trained
fellow passes him in the race. It is not meant that there is not a great
demand for unskilled labor, but the unskilled laborer works under a
constantly growing handicap.

In our earlier national history, it was possible for us to rely for
prosperity upon the resources of nature. Force of body and character
sufficient to brave the hardships of a raw and untrained world, and to
pluck from nature the bounties which she furnished in abundance, was
the quality most essential. Each man or family was a unit in produc-
tion ; cooperation or combination on any extended scale involving train-
ing, was not found or needed. Individualism and the overthrow of
nature, and her exploitation, were the important features of our national
life which assured success ; and it was just these qualities of endurance,
courage, force, assertiveness, aided by sheer muscle, which the selective

THE DANGER OF UN SKILL 179

process of our early immigration brought to us. Only men and women
of such qualities could and would face the long and dreary sea voyage
and brave the peril of the unknown new world. Only the man of hope,
of ambition, poor in the wealth of the world, but rich in determination,
force and foresight, was suited for such migration. So too, it often
was the leader of the advance movement of civilization in Europe who,
because of political oppression, led a vanguard of the best blood of his
country to share the bounties of nature in America.

But the day in which we can rely for prosperity upon nature's
bounty is past. Her resources have been explored and divided up.
And while new resources continue to be brought to light, they are the
possession of the few, and offer little of hope to the hungry immigrant
from the old world.

We can not, therefore, depend exclusively upon nature and the raw
force and determination of our people to maintain or continue the old-
time progress and high position of America. More and more our
dependence must be placed upon ourselves rather than upon nature
alone, and in particular upon a character acquired through training.
The new industrial life, it has been said, demands skill. If America
is to advance in industry, she must face this demand; her people must
be trained and trained industrially.

If such is a true statement of the general character of the productive
process of to-day, it is pertinent to inquire if the two streams of
humanity, which furnish the labor necessary to production, are fitted
to the more specialized demands of this process. Is our labor skilled?
And what are its means of attaining skill?

Let us consider first the stream of immigration. The report of the
commissioner general of immigration for 1907 shows that out of the
total number of 1,285,000 coming to this country from other parts of
the world in the year 1906, about eighty-three per cent, were without skill
requisite to enter a skilled industry. If we eliminate from this number
the women, children, aged and such other persons as are described as
having no occupation at all, there remains fifty-nine per cent, of the
total who are of industrial age and sex and yet are distinctly unskilled
laborers. A large number, too, of those excluded are women who will
enter unskilled trades, and many are children who will begin to earn at
the earliest possible time in unskilled employments.

The fact that such a large proportion of the immigrant population
is unskilled is inevitable. It is necessary only to recall that the great
influx of the present and recent past is from central and southern
Europe, from regions in which the opportunity to acquire skill is com-
paratively slight, and where the call for skill is not yet dominant.

If it be agreed, then, that the stream of immigration is pouring a
mass of unskilled labor into our country, consider what is the case in

i8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

regard to the second source of our industrial life. What is the tend-
ency to skill and the opportunity to acquire it among our own children
who must soon enter industry? It is impossible to state this problem
in a statistical fashion; but a fair idea may be obtained from a study
of the industrial situation. Skill may be gained through two, and only
two, methods. It must come either in connection with industry itself
or in some way of preparation outside it; either through a system of
apprenticeship or by way of vocational schools or school studies. In
the older state of industry, the apprentice system of the guilds con-
stituted a logical and efficient method of training. Boys became skilled
workers under direction of a master and in the actual work of produc-
tion. The apprentice system was the great industrial school of the past,
and not only because it led to industrial skill, but also because it gave
at least something of that mental discipline and power which we asso-
ciate with the idea of a school.

This system, as is well known, is largely a thing of the past. It is
true that apprentices are now received in some industrial plants, but
the number so received is entirely inadequate to furnish a supply of
skilled labor for the many lines of trade and industry. It is enough
to say that the modern factory with its great specialization, is not as
a rule, willing to train its skilled workers. It wishes its workers to
come to it already skilled.

If training can not be gained as a part of the actual productive
process, may it be acquired outside that process? Or, to state it dif-
ferently, does our school system give the members of the growing gen-
eration a training which fits them to enter the industrial life as skilled
workers ?

We have in this country a considerable and growing number of
trade schools and technical schools. We also find evening schools where
vocational training may be obtained; and there are other opportunities
of a similar sort. But it is not necessary to prove that there is but a
scant beginning in this direction, as this is admitted by all students of
the subject. It is clear that our present means of training for trade
and industry through special schools is entirely inadequate, and it is
equally well admitted that our common school system does not meet the
need in this direction. Its curriculum has been determined by other
interests than the economic needs of a constantly increasing industrial
population.

In the excellent study by Professor Thorndike,1 based upon returns
from schools of twenty-three cities having a population of 25,000 or
more, it is demonstrated beyond a doubt that the lack of opportunity
for vocational training is a great cause of that heavy dropping out of
school in early grades which thereby closes school education to a large

1('The Elimination of Pupils from School," p. 118 ff.

THE DANGER OF UN SKILL 181

proportion of our children. Dr. Thorndike finds that only twenty-
seven per cent, of those entering the first grade of the common school
continue into the first year of the high school; and of these, thirty-
seven per cent, drop out by the end of the first high-school year. The
main cause of this enormous elimination from the high school has to
do with the nature of the high-school course of study. Evidently a
considerable number begin the high school at the age of fourteen or
fifteen, an age at which little skill has been gained, yet which is favor-
able to its acquisition, but are discouraged by the lack of opportunity
in this direction and so leave school altogether.

As is well known, it was found by the Massachusetts Commission
on Industrial and Technical Education that " 25,000 children between
fourteen and sixteen years of age are at work or idle," that is, not in
school; and the result of this careful investigation was to make entirely
certain that these children had dropped out of school because they did
not find there any possibility for training along lines which would
prepare for the making of a livelihood.

We must conclude, therefore, that neither within the organization
of industry itself, nor outside of it, in schools of any type, is there
opportunity for the stream of growing boys and girls to gain in an
economic manner that degree of vocational training which the con-
ditions of modern industry demand.

What then is the situation which we face? First, the demand of
our specialized commercial and industrial life for a larger and larger
percentage of skilled workers. Secondly, a stream of foreign immi-
gration pouring upon our shores an unskilled population much of which
could not acquire skill readily, even if opportunity were presented, and
which must inevitably supply largely the demand for unskilled labor.
Third, a stream of growing boys and girls who must earn their living
through our present complex and specialized forms of industry. Fourth,
a comparatively slight chance of their gaining skill after they enter the
industrial life, and no adequate opportunity to gain skill through the
school before entering upon this work. What is the result ? A demand
for trained men and women, on the one hand, and on the other a vain
beating against the bars which defend the skilled positions, by a mass
of desponding, dissatisfied unskilled workers, with only the most ven-
turesome and aggressive pushing through into skilled positions in a
manner harmful and exhausting to themselves and weakening to the
nation.

It is at this point that the real menace of unskill becomes clear.
Much has been written and spoken about the retarding effect of unskill
upon our national production, and this is indeed serious. But the real
danger is more fundamental. Of greater importance than the product
of labor is the worker himself. The effect upon our people of such a

1 82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

situation as has been described, is the real danger. The problem is not
primarily industrial but social. Unskill in the face of a demand for
skill leads to degeneracy. In this fact lies its greatest menace. In his
admirable study of " Misery and its Causes," Dr. Devine wisely suggests
that the great cause of misery is maladjustment, and there is strong
reason to think that his conclusion is correct. But just in so far as it
is time that economic facts lie back of and condition the progress of
civilization, to that extent failure to meet the fundamental economic
facts involved in advancing stages of industry must constitute or lead
to the greatest social maladjustment and consequent degradation and
misery. It is maladjustment in respect to the most vital phase of life.
A great proportion of the young people of our country must enter
an industrial calling. In what way does this unfitness for it affect
their lives? The result is best shown by the often-quoted finding of
the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and Technical Education,
for 1906. Out of 25,000 young people of from fourteen to sixteen
years of age in that state not in school, it is reported that thirty-three
per cent, were in absolutely unskilled trades and sixty-four per cent,
in what are called low-grade industries, where the skill of the work-
ers is very slight. Only less than two per cent, had found their way
into really skilled industries. What does it mean, humanly speak-
ing, to have a child employed in an unskilled industry? Simply
that the child usually has come to the end of its development.
On the side of industry it means a permanently small production
and low earning power; on the side of the individual life, it
means a stagnant mind and the consequences which flow from
it. For it is not true that children remain in these low-grade oc-
cupations for a brief time, and from them pass to higher and more
skilled employment. The nature of industrial and commercial
technic is such that there is a chasm between unskilled and skilled
employments. There is no passage from one to the other. The elevator
boy or messenger boy is not being trained to be a mechanic or a
telegrapher or any other more or less skilled worker. These and other
low-paid juvenile employments represent a class of work of a special
sort from which there is no exit and which rather unfit than fit one for
better work. In the street trades, in candy-making, in cotton, woolen,
knitting and other mill work, and in many other places such work is
found. To a considerable extent it is work which should be done by
machines and not by growing boys and girls. The child who leaves
school to enter one of these positions, condemns himself in the majority
of cases to an unskilled life. He passes from one unskilled position
to another, becoming more and more discontented as he finds it impos-
sible to advance in wages and responsibility. Discontent, hopelessness,
shiftlessness, take the place of ambition and progressive force. The

THE DANGER OF UN SKILL 183

unskilled employment is not disciplinary and it does not lead to a
skilled employment which is disciplinary. In the organization of
industry, the avoidance of waste is a great aim ; yet the lessening of the
greatest of all wastes — the waste of life — receives scanty attention.

The writer of " The Long Day," 2 in drawing upon her own experi-
ence as an unskilled girl, looking for employment in a great city, sum-
marizes the situation in these works :

For sad and terrible though it be, the truth is that the majority of
" unfortunates," whether of the specifically criminal or of the prostitute class,
are what they are, not because they are inherently vicious, but because they
were failures as workers and wage earners. They were failures as such,
primarily, for no other reason than that they did not like to work. And they
did not like to work, not because they are lazy — they are anything but la2y —
but because they did not know how to work.

And again the same writer records her conclusions in regard to the
educational need of girls in view of the modern demand for skill :

And there are other things more important than the " three R's " which
she should be taught. She should be taught how to work — how to work intel-
ligently. She should be trained young in the fundamental race activities, in
the natural human instincts for making something with the hands or of doing
something with the hands, and of taking infinite pleasure in making it perfect,
in doing it well.3

And it may be added that what is true of girls is equally true of
boys. The great cause of failure and resulting degeneracy is lack of
training.

It must be recognized that the vocational impulse is deep-seated,
and as the child advances into youth he begins to look to the doing of
his life's work. He is restless with simply academic subjects, however
valuable. He is concrete in his demands. He wishes to do and earn.
But it is an interest in the deep human instincts and forces which must
be laid hold of, if we are to develop a healthy, hopeful life ; and among
these we must recognize the economic instinct leading to the desire to
earn and to make a place in the world of production. How much of
progress flowed from the development resulting from the vocational
education of the apprentice of the guild organization, it is not possible
to say ; but it certainly was a factor of no small import. And the close
association of the wonderful expression of artistic genius in Italy with
the development of the skilled artisan and craftsman, is a feature of
social history which should lead to serious reflection.

But, further, lack of skill means insecurity of employment for adult
workers; and no greater danger threatens labor than this. Every
slackening of trade, every depression of business, every interference with
industrial progress, every mistake of judgment of the organizers of
industry, falls with heaviest force upon the unskilled. Their value in

2 Page 277.

3 Page 294.

1 84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

industry is least, their tenure of employment is most easily imperilled.
The past two winters with armies of unemployed in every large city,
recruited largely, we are told by competent observers, from the un-
skilled, bear witness to this fact.

A consequence of economic insecurity is a weakening of moral tone
and grip ; this is the greatest of all dangers to society. " Every great
industrial crisis leaves behind it," says Dr. Warner, " a legacy of indi-
vidual degeneracy and personal unthrift." 4 " Involuntary idleness
intensifies and perpetuates incapacity." Nothing so begets failure as
the consciousness of failure. The discipline of regular and continuous
occupation is a support which few can do without. At the recent
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a
member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws held that pauperism
arises mainly from the casual worker class, that is, in the main, the
unskilled class whose security of employment is slightest and whose
mental attitude is therefore least hopeful and healthy. To live on the
edge of social existence blinds the eyes to the social order which is not
near the edge. Hopefulness of mind is a social force impossible to
measure. It is hope which marks the difference between slavery and
freedom, between stagnation and progress. But insecurity weakens and
destroys hope, and if employment continues to be insecure, the result
must be an increasing body of hopeless men and women, feeding, in-
evitably, the ranks of criminal and pauper degeneracy.

Viewed from this point, the significance of unskill becomes tre-
mendous. Lack of skill stands as the bar to mental progress even in
an unskilled age; but in an age demanding skill, the lack of it is itself
a condition leading to degeneration. Through unskill, labor is con-
demned to low wages, a narrow outlook, an inability to meet the modern
demands of industry; by remaining economically unfit, men become
socially unfit and are forced for themselves and their children into the
ceaseless round of struggle for bare subsistence, with consequent hope-
lessness, bodily decay and resultant misery. It should be clear that in
refusing to meet the industrial needs of our age for skilled workers the
nation is condemning a considerable part of its population to an in-
evitable economic unfitness and resultant mental sterility, since eco-
nomic well-being is essential to mental stability and progress. Degen-
eracy, thus, is born of the unskilled hand and the untrained mind.

There is one further position which needs to be considered. It is
becoming clear, as investigation into social life proceeds, that human
progress depends largely upon society's creative minds, its " inventors,"
its originators, whose fertile ideas are passed on to the mind of the mass
of mankind. It is these suggestive and fruitful ideas which mark the
stages of advancement and which constitute the essence of civilization.

4 A. G. Warner, "American Charities," pp. 103 and 97.

THE DANGER OF UN SKILL 185

And it may be said, further, to be a matter of at least large proba-
bility that these creative minds may be brought forth in any stratum
of society. Whether they shall develop and give to civilization the
benefit of their talent, depends upon the conditions surrounding them.
They may grow and become mentally fruitful, or be repressed and
become sterile, according as social environment is favorable or the
contrary. It would seem that society should make every effort, in its
own interest, to encourage their nurture and preservation. But, as
Dr. Ward has so well shown,5 education is the greatest social agency
for providing that the mind, strong by nature, shall develop and give
its ideas to the world. How great therefore is the urgency that society
should afford educational opportunity to all classes of its people. How
great a part of the possible progress of the race or nation is hindered
by the social waste of its creative ability which never arrives at its
period of fertile productiveness for lack of suitable social opportunity.

It should, however, be clear from what has already been said that
the only education which can reach the masses of a nation and hold
them long enough to be of educational service to them, is that which
looks toward vocation. And it therefore follows that only by making
our school system, to some degree, industrial and vocational, and thereby
holding our children under educational influences for a longer period,
can the great number of productive minds, born in poverty or other
unfavorable conditions, be preserved and brought to that stage of devel-
opment in which they may advance the nation.

Here, then, is the real danger of unskill. Modern industry calls for
skill. In the face of this demand, lack of skill leads to unemployment
and so to social weakness. Lack of skill leads, also, to poor employment ;
and so, likewise, carries men into shiftlessness, discontent and degenera-
tion. On the other hand, skill breeds hope and hence mental develop-
ment. It opens new avenues of activity and draws out otherwise buried
talent, and thus preserves the originators to the race. But our two
streams of labor are inadequately trained for the economic demand.
What we should do in regard to the stream of immigrants is a problem
by itself. But as for our own children, the demand for opportunity to
gain that skill, which will enable them to fit the economic life of to-day,
is a very urgent and vital one.

5 " Applied Sociology," chapter X.

VOL. LXXVII. — 13.

1 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

BACTERIOLOGY AND PARASITOLOGY IN RELATION TO

AVIAN DISEASES

By GEO. EDWARD GAGE, Ph.D.

MARYLAND AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION

DURING the last ten years the sciences of bacteriology and para-
sitology have been established beyond previous expectation.
To-day these sciences are so far-reaching that they not only have to do
with medicine but extend into the realm of hygiene, agricultural sci-
ences and the industrial arts. The advances made in connection with
the life histories of the various microscopic animal parasites and the
studies which have led to a general understanding of the relation
between parasite and host have done much toward unearthing mysteries
of diseases which attack domestic fowls and menace the poultry in-
dustry. Bacteriologists have enabled the avian pathologist to study
and control these fatal diseases.

Practical applications of bacteriology to the arts and industries are
only instances of the ramification of this science. In agriculture and
closely allied science, bacteriology and also parasitology have been
immediately and intelligently employed to set forth new facts and
expose new problems. During the last few years bacteriology has held
close relations with medical science. By the application and extension
into the field of protozoon pathology one of the latest and most helpful
developments in the study of infectious diseases has evolved. This is
not alone true of human pathology, but must include avian, insect (such
as bee and silkworm), sheep, swine and cattle diseases and possibly the
diseases of plants.

In the poultry yards epidemics of the so-called " white diarrhoea,"
" black-head " of turkeys, and tape-worms, have demanded scientific
study for remedial help. The loss to the poultryman is at present
almost incalculable. The etiology of many diseases is understood
only by the discovery of some bacteria or parasite. The mode of en-
trance of the invading microorganisms to the avian body, the study of
the original source of the infectious material and the possibilities of
transmission and infection can be apprehended only through prosecu-
tion of detailed bacteriological and parasitological studies. Individual
birds may suffer from malnutrition and be afflicted with ailments which
may be the result of inability to utilize food properly, but when a whole
flock becomes droopy, listless and unable to maintain normal life, we
must resort to the field of parasitology or bacteriology for the cause.

AVIAN DISEASES 187

In the warfare against the ravages of disease a most rational
hygiene of the poultry yards must be observed, and in order to under-
stand thoroughly those factors which have to do primarily with elim-
inating the trouble, it is to the use of disinfectants and antiseptics that
we must resort. Here again the science of bacteriology lends a helping
hand, for data concerning the efficiency of disinfectants can be ascer-
tained only by bacteriological technique. It then becomes the duty of
the scientist to direct his entire attention to those factors which in
themselves are sufficient to allow a foothold for many an infectious
disease. It is no less a fact among domestic birds than with human
beings, that infection may take place by contaminated food, the par-
ticular parasite or organism being transmitted in such manner. All
the modes of spread are recognized, and just as the spread of human
diseases are held to be matters of public concern and preventive measures
are instituted by expert bacteriologists, so also should the spread of
diseases among domestic fowls be of the same great concern to the
poultryman if he is desirous of maintaining his birds in a healthy
condition.

Probably one of the most difficult problems in relation to avian
diseases lies in the prompt recognition of the cause, so that measures
may be employed immediately to allay the trouble. With the large
poultry farms it may appear that careful observation of hygienic meas-
ures involve too much time, but under many circumstances and espe-
cially at this infant stage in our knowledge concerning avian diseases
the application of searching and delicate parasitological and bac-
teriological tests are often necessary to determine the proper method
of procedure.

The great losses to poultrymen from the disease known as "black
head " or " coccidiosis of turkeys " has called scientific men to make
thorough investigation and a specific parasite known as a coccidium
has been claimed to be the cause. Dr. Geo. B. Morse, of the Bureau of
Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture,1 states that
this coccidium may infect turkeys, ducks and pigeons. It has a defi-
nite life cycle. He describes it as a certain circular, sometimes slightly
oval, cyst, 12 to 25 microns in diameter, containing granular matter
which may fill the cyst or occupy only a portion of it. These are per-
manent cysts and may be voided in the feces of the bird. These only
require warmth and moisture for their development into sporozoites by
which the disease is transmitted to other birds. By the destruction of
the malarial parasite within the body of many we may break the life
cycle and thus interrupt the continuity of the transfer between man and
mosquito in the transmission of this disease. In like manner, the
scientist can plan to break the cycle of these avian parasites within the

1 Circular 128 (1908), Bureau of Animal Industry, Dept. of Agriculture.

1 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

body of the bird aud consequently eliminate infection. Contributions
from the Division of Biology of the Ehode Island Experiment Station
have furnished us interesting facts concerning parasitism of Cytodites
nudus, a mite and Hcemaphysalis chordeilis, a tick and these are but a
beginning to the study of such parasites affecting birds. It demon-
strates the field for research in parasitology and what contributions
from this realm of science would mean in determining the cause of so
many diseases, the etiology of which at the present time is unknown.

Fowl typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis and hosts of other afflictions were
discovered through the aid of scientific bacteriologists. In a very
recent publication2 Professor Eettger, of Yale University, has demon-
strated the value of bacteriology, by his valuable contribution to the
study of white diarrhoea. He has been able to demonstrate the role of
bacteria in the etiology of this disease. We need no better example of
the usefulness of such a science in planning investigations of this na-
ture. By thorough bacteriological methods he has been able to give
us the results of his work and has shown how infection may occur,
what it means to the poultry industry, and methods of prevention.
This also demonstrates how bacteriological methods have been used to
study epidemiology. It has given a procedure based on bacteriological
facts and with such methods at hand we are supplied with the means
of suggesting treatments which undoubtedly will do much toward
solving the problems which have heretofore been unsolved. These
studies have shown that the function of pure water and food and san-
itary conditions are essential to the daily life of domestic birds. If
diseases of the poultry yards are to be suppressed, hygienic measures
must be observed here as with human beings. It was not until after
the introduction of hygienic measures such as a proper sewage dis-
posal, and water filtration that the death rate of typhoid fever was
perceptibly diminished in this country and Europe.

Conspicuous as the achievements have been in bacteriology, it can
not be said that the field is exhausted. There is hardly an infectious
disease of the poultry yards which does not have to do with some bac-
terium or parasite, and the variations and adaptations of these patho-
genic forms is to-day one of the difficult problems with which the avian
pathologist has to deal. It is for the scientist to determine whether
certain bacteria and parasites owe their pathogenic action to the organ-
isms themselves or to their toxic or poisonous by-products. The field
of immunity as related to avian pathology is unexplored. This would
be among the most complicated that the scientist could undertake, yet
the fields of bacteriology and parasitology with its many perfected
methods of attack would indicate that it is not impossible. Not only
human medicine, but also veterinary science owe much of their ad-

2 Bulletin 60, Conn. Agr. Exp. Station.

AVIAN DISEASES 189

vancement to these two fields of knowledge. The scientific contribu-
tions of Neuman on parasites show that such organisms are the cause
of many a dreadful disease, not only with man and animal, but with
all avian life. The careful study of their life histories should appeal
to our protozoologists and inspire them to contribute to our knowledge
of those parasites which are causing an enormous mortality of our
most valuable birds.

After the removal of a sick fowl from the flock a diagnosis is
usually made. Very often the specific organism causing the infection
is readily discovered, while, on the other hand, the most diligent scien-
tific efforts may fail to reveal the character of the disease. Many fail-
ures are accountable because there is a lack of sufficient knowledge or
a lack of thoroughness in making the investigation.

The fundamental difficulty in ascertaining more definite knowledge
about our poultry diseases is the lack of enough scientific men to take
hold of the situation. To-day we have no rational system of medical
treatment for birds, nor can one be looked for until scientists, who are
busy on anatomy and physiology of avian life, offer to the layman a
definite plan of procedure, when these parasites and bacteria have made
their way into the body and brought about pathological lesions.

The relation of bacteriology and parasitology to the infectious
avian diseases as mentioned before, is fundamental. If bacteriologists
and protozoologists will enter upon this field of avian diseases as a
basis for their research in their respective fields, the results of their in-
vestigations will lead to an improvement in the conditions of our
poultry yards, and give facts which are necessary before any treatment
can be found. With men of this character at work upon avian pathol-
og;v, success is inevitable.

i9o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE BOLE OF SELECTION IN PLANT BREEDING1

By Professor E. M. EAST

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

WHEN one attempts to give some idea of the principles and of the
methods and scope of plant breeding, the matter falls naturally
into two parts, the role of selection and the role of hybridization. This
is not because the subject is really thus separable, but because the meth-
ods in use fall into these categories. One must, of course, use selection
after hybridization, but there are a number of plants of great agricul-
tural value, in which either the flowers are too small for artificial cross-
ing or in which other reasons make it desirable to use simply selection
in their improvement. It is of these that this paper will treat.

The particular work discussed has been selected because it will il-
lustrate certain principles, not because it is regarded as more important
than other work of like nature. The work of many quiet men who are
striving for the good of mankind by their efforts toward the improve-
ment of plants deserves to be mentioned, but unfortunately the limits
of a single paper are too narrow to discuss principles and to say much
about practise, and knowledge of the former should be made more
widespread in order that the latter may be appreciated.

The non-botanical public can not be blamed if it receives compara-
tively worthless productions with greater acclaim than those of value
when the former obtain all the publicity and no voice is raised in pro-
test. Exploitations of new plant introductions of little value have
certainly been numerous in the past few years. Perhaps this has been
a public benefit, for it has increased the general interest in plant breed-
ing and has stimulated many laymen to study the subject in order to
be able to separate the wheat from the tares when dealing with new
varieties. It is strange, perhaps, with our reputation for always look-
ing for the dollar sign, that the new agricultural productions of great-
est economic value have always received less notoriety than the pro-
duction of horticultural novelties of limited use and small importance ;
yet such is the case. It is doubtful whether the production of a new
field corn that would increase the yield in the United States by ten
per cent, would obtain more than a passing notice from the press; yet
such an increase would add $100,000,000 per annum to the wealth of

1 This paper is based on a series of poular lectures delivered at the Bussey
Institution of Harvard University April and May, 1910. A second paper will
follow.

SELECTION IN PLANT BREEDING 191

the country, and the individual who was responsible would deserve to be
ranked among the greatest benefactors of the commonwealth.

This illustration serves to show something of the extent of the bene-
fits that may be confidently expected from the improvement of culti-
vated plants ; but the full extent of our rightful expectations is at least
ten per cent, increase in both quality and quantity of all the great
crops of the United States. In fact this is a very conservative forecast
based upon what has been accomplished in the past. Men like Haynes
with his " Blue stem " wheat and J. S. Learning with his " Learning "
corn have perhaps made an even greater percentage increase in the
value of the returns from the land upon which their productions have
been grown. Their results were obtained largely in the latter half of
the last century and even greater advances should be made in the fu-
ture. This statement is made because, in the last quarter of the nine-
teenth century, experimental biology was in the same relative position
in which chemistry stood in its beginning. During the century chemis-
try made wonderful advances; during this — the twentieth — century
experimental biology will make similar progress. And one of the first
and most important applications of the facts discovered will be to
guide and direct man in producing new plants and animals by more
direct and certain methods.

When one speaks of producing new plants, however, he should not
be misunderstood. Man has not yet actually produced new variations
(although the time may come when even this is possible) ; he simply
works with the variations which have occurred through natural causes
of which little is known. The isolation of a varying plant and from it
the production of a variety, or the combination of desirable characters
from one strain with other desirable characters from different strains,
comprises the total aim and desire of the plant breeder. The idea is
simple ; to put the idea into practise successfully is often a tedious and
difficult task.

As in hybridization the ease with which results can be obtained by
selection depends largely upon flower structure. In selection, how-
ever, the relative facility with which artificial cross-pollination can be
accomplished is of small importance. What one wishes to know is
whether cross-pollination or self-pollination takes place naturally.
Practically all plants are occasionally cross-fertilized naturally, and
many of them have devices whereby they are nearly always crossed ; but
we are coming to see that cross-fertilization is not as essential to plant
life as Darwin endeavored to prove in his " Cross- and Self-fertilization
in the Vegetable Kingdom." Wheat, for example, is almost always
self-fertilized; yet it has kept its vigor for thousands of years. The
importance of this fact to the selectionist is easily seen. If seed from
several varieties of wheat is mixed and planted, each variety remains

i9 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

true to its type because of self-pollination, and during the growing
season the plants can be compared and any desirable type selected for
future propagation. In a cross-pollinated plant like maize this is not
the case. The pollen is carried by the wind through long distances and
varieties planted close together are continually intercrossed. The iso-
lation of a particular type is not simple as in the case of wheat, but may
be prolonged through many generations. Each prize ear selected for
future planting will have had at least a few and possibly many of its
seeds fertilized by pollen from less desirable strains. When these seeds
are grown they of course again fertilize the seeds of the desirable plants
with a frequency proportionate to their number.

In the case just cited recourse may be had to artificial self-pollina-
tion. Several hundred seeds are thus produced at one operation and the
work of isolating the new variety is made materially easier. But sup-
pose we are dealing with red clover where the flowers are small, almost
sterile with their own pollen and produce only one seed. In this crop,
the long and tedious method of continuous selection just mentioned
must be used, for there is no other way. This method is often called
the pedigree-culture method. The main idea of the plan is that the
seeds of single plants are grown in isolated plots, and the character of
the mother plant judged by the characters of the progeny. This
method has given much better results than the so-called German
method, which consisted in planting a mixed lot of seeds from several
of the best plants. For example, the German sugar-beet raisers have
for years analyzed large numbers of sugar-beets and have grown their
seed from the mother beets showing the highest percentage of sugar.
No particular attention was paid to the general average of the progeny
of each beet; those were bred from which appeared to be the best as
shown by the polariscope sugar test. In this way the amount of sugar
produced per acre was gradually increased, but progress was slow and
cessation of selection immediately caused the sugar content to decline.

To see the real reason of this we must go back to the time of Dar-
win. The data from which Darwin proved the doctrine of descent
came in large measure from domestic animals and cultivated plants.
He saw that plants varied among themselves and that by selection of
the variants new types were gradually produced. From these facts he
argued that all evolution had taken place by the selection of minute
variations and generally through the selective agency of a contest for
life taking place among all living organisms. This he called the agency
of natural selection. Later, however, Bateson, Korshinsky and de Vries
called attention to the fact that many new types of animals and plants
are known to have originated suddenly. There was no gradual evolu-
tion of the type; it simply appeared fully formed. This hypothesis,
called the " mutation theory," found great favor among plant breeders

SELECTION IN PLANT BREEDING 193

for they knew that many times they had noticed and isolated plants
showing new characters from their cultures, and had carefully made
selections for further improvement of the new strain, but that genera-
tion after generation showed no further progress. LeCouteur, whom de
Vries cites as the first known user of the pedigree culture method, had
a case in point. From the heterogeneous lot of wheat plants which he
was growing, he isolated a uniform type of great merit which he called
" Bellevue de Talavera." For years after, this strain was subjected to
selection in order to bring about further improvement, but the efforts
were made in vain, for no new heritable variations were produced. Yet
something was lacking from this theory. Sometimes there did appear
to be a gradual improvement by selection. De Vries said that this was
merely a temporary improvement made by selection of quantitative
variations. He believed that when selection ceased, sooner or later
the improved types would return to the original type of the variety
from which it had been produced. The real interpretation of the facts
and one which fitted all the parts of the puzzle together, came from the
work of Johannsen and later investigators. It is an explanation that
should have been thought of before, but like many other important dis-
coveries, it was too simple for ordinary minds to grasp. Weismann had
shown years before that the inheritance of characters acquired through
outside influences during the development of the body was probably
mythical. His investigations led him to believe that there is a continu-
ity between the reproductive or germ cells of different generations, and
that the body is nothing but a temporary house built to shelter them.
Injuries to the house have no effect on the future generations unless the
germ cells themselves are affected. Later Boveri and others, through
their cytological studies, showed that the future germ cells are laid down
at a very early stage in certain animal organisms and that very few cell
divisions take place before the maturation of the reproductive organs
and the production of active germ cells. The body cells he found to be
built up by continuous cell division of a very different part of the orig-
inal fertilized egg. Since no biologist, however, had found or is likely to
find similar cytological phenomena in plants, no one seemed to grasp
the idea that here was the key to the question that had been puzzling
the plant breeders. Johannsen, however, brought matters straight by
his experiments on beans. He found that commercial varieties of
beans, though pure in grosser characters, such as color, were actually
very mixed types when such characters as length or weight were studied.
Several investigations were undertaken on size characters, the char-
acters most rapidly affected by changes in environment. He found that
his commercial variety fluctuated around an average size and that when
seeds larger or smaller than this type were selected they responded to
it in whichever direction the selection was made. The progeny of the

i94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

selected beans were not so extreme, however, as their parents but re-
gressed toward the average character of the parent race. This was
nothing new. Galton had discussed the matter a decade before and had
interpreted the regression as due to the " pull toward mediocrity " ex-
erted by former ancestors that must have been on the average mediocre.
Johannsen was not satisfied with this interpretation and in order to in-
vestigate the subject more thoroughly introduced the individual pedi-
gree culture method, or pure line method as he spoke of it, into his
work. All of his plants under experiment were self-fertilized for suc-
cessive generations, so that all of his future bean progeny were descend-
ants of single individuals from the original commercial variety. Each
pure line he found to fluctuate around a typical size just as the com-
mercial variety had done. Some types were exactly the same as the
original mixed type, but others fluctuated around averages that would
have been considered more or less extreme variations in the original.
He then grew extreme variants from each of his pure lines and made
the discovery that no progress at all was made by repeated selections of
this kind. The progeny of the high extremes and the progeny of the
low extremes each were found to fluctuate around the same pure line
average. It was quite evident then that in the first place he had been
dealing with a mixed race. This mixture consisted of sub-races each with
a heritable difference in the character size. These heritable variations,
however, were obscured by size fluctuations produced by differences in
moisture, sunlight and fertilizer received by the different individual
plants. There was even a difference in the size of individual beans on
the same plant, due probably to location of some pods in places on the
plant more desirable than others for the utilization of the plant's sol-
uble foods waiting to be stored in the seeds. These differences due to
immediate environment were not inherited. They behaved exactly as
the acquired characters of an animal. This made the role of selection
clear. The only improvement that selection can achieve is to isolate a
substrain if such a substrain or substrains exist in the variety under
experiment. When this substrain has been isolated, selection has abso-
lutely no effect, and even if continued for countless generations will
have no effect until nature produces one of the heritable changes which
are so much rarer than the fluctuations produced by environment. It
is also evident that the older idea that improvements made by continued
selection; — i. e., gradual isolation of a type — are inconstant, is wrong.
The explanation is that since non-inherited fluctuations obscure the
heritable variations, only a pure line method can absolutely isolate a
pure strain; and in the German method of mass selection with poor
control against mediocre pollen, the chances were overwhelmingly in
favor of the selected type recrossing with the more commonly culti-
vated and poorer type from which it came.

SELECTION IN PLANT BREEDING 195

To my mind this work should clear up the strife between the critics
and the adherents of evolution by mutation. It is evident that there
are variations that are inherited and variations that are not inherited.
If we call the one a mutation and the other a fluctuation, we have a
distinction that will stand analysis. Why should a further distinction
be made? De Vries believes mutations to be qualitative, fluctuations
quantitative. Nevertheless, quantitative changes that are transmis-
sible occur in much greater numbers than do qualitative changes. Op-
ponents of mutation believe wide jumps appear too seldom to have been
a factor in organic evolution, but they can not deny that they do occur.
There are too many authentic cases in variation under domestication.
Yet no one who has had experience in breeding plants will deny that
small variations (not fluctuations) occur with much greater frequency.
While it is impossible to prove it, I believe that the mathematical law
of error controls the transmissible variations as well as fluctuations.
If one could collect a random sample of variations that are inherited
he would probably find that a great many forces act as the causes, and
therefore as in ordinary probability, the extreme changes — that is, the
great variations — occur with less frequency. One should remember,
however, that in our present state of physiological knowledge, he can
not know with much certainty which of two changes that apparently
differ greatly in magnitude is really the greater in the light of the
plant's economy.

It might be well before leaving this part of the subject to speak of
one other point. In a strain that has been self-fertilized for several
generations, gradual progress has sometimes been made by selection.
This probably comes about because the parent plant is still hybrid in
regard to certain characters, and it is to their recombinations that the
intensification or reduction of certain apparently single characters but
which are really combinations of separately heritable characters, is due.
According to the law of chance with repeated self-fertilizations any
strain approaches a constant condition in all of its characters when
unseleeted, but one can not say when this state is reached unless he
knows the exact number of hybrid characters in the beginning and can
recognize each.

If we were to take up the crops of the United States which owe their
present excellence and future prospects in large measure to the isolation
of superior strains by selection, we should cover a great majority of the
agricultural wealth of the country. Of course natural cross-fertiliza-
tion and even occasional artificial hybridization have played important
parts by causing recombinations of characters, but selection has been the
main cause of improvement. Two of the important crops, tobacco and
wheat, are very seldom cross-pollinated naturally; nevertheless new
types are continually appearing in the fields. To make new varieties

:q6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

$hs *

..-#*\ i=

,<A •„£;

~

3Si ■ .■'^a!aB

- If8i§llfil»fiii

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Fig. 1.

Types appearing in a Single Field of Maize.
the center has been isolated.

A strain like the ear near

it simply takes an alert eye for their detection, comparative tests to
prove their merit and the time needed to produce a sufficient increase
for commercial use. Some of our other important grain crops like oats
and rye are more often cross-pollinated, as is also our chief grass crop,
timothy. But as maize is probably the most difficult crop to deal with,
and is a typical cross-pollinated plant as well as our most important
cereal, perhaps it will be of interest to take a short survey of some of
the problems with which one has to deal when endeavoring to improve
it by selection.

Maize is the only one of our cereals that is monoecious. The tassel
contains the pollen or male element while the silks are the stigmas of
the female flowers. In order that the pollination of the silks shall be
relatively certain, each tassel produces about thirty million pollen
grains ; and as the ears average less than five hundred seeds apiece, there
are about sixty thousand pollen grains produced for each kernel. With
such a large amount of superfluous pollen floating around in the air,
there is a great deal of inter-crossing between the neighboring plants.
This fact has been an obstacle to the improvement of maize, but it has
been offset by one advantage it possesses over the other cereals, that of
producing large ears. Since each individual ear must be handled and
its characters noted at husking time, it is not strange that ears with
desirable variations sufficiently striking to catch the eye of the grower
have become the parents of numerous distinct varieties. By selecting
desirable seed ears and isolating them from other varieties, various
strains have been produced that are remarkably uniform in characters
such as color that have forcibly attracted the attention of the breeder.
Even in these strains, however, there are many natural types growing
side by side and continually crossing with each other. There are stalks

SELECTION IN PLANT BREEDING

197

m

BKlIT 1 inri 1

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k",'£?2?l»SSI m

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Fig. 2. Inherited Abnormalities appearing in Maize. All pollen from these
plants and from their normal sister plants must be prevented from maturing.

which bear their ears high and stalks which bear them low, stalks with
long and stalks with short ear shanks, stalks with different leaf mark-
ings and with notably different tendencies to produce suckers. Differ-
ences are everywhere present even in the ears, as is shown in the accom-
panying photograph ( Fig. 1 ) . A large number of these differences are
simply fluctuations produced by the environment and are not inherited.
The obscuration of heritable variations by the fluctuations and the mixed
condition of the natural types makes it a difficult task to isolate the most
productive types. Many variations of technique have been proposed

iq8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

for the prosecution of the work, but are all based upon the idea of
proving the capacity of a mother ear by the characters of the progeny
produced. If a very large number of ears are included in the original
stock, it is unquestionable that some of them will transmit more de-
sirable characters than others. It only remains to test them out by
growing the seed of each ear in marked plots or rows and gradually
eliminating the undesirable types.

The accompanying diagrams, showing the work of the Illinois
Agricultural Experiment Station in their experiments in selecting
for high and low protein content, and high and low oil content,
admirably illustrate the rapidity with which progress can be made
by selecting only from the maternal side, even in the face of con-
stant intercrossing. This work the writer believes has given a com-

Y

8

7
6
5
4
3

s

h

I

X

s

10 11

Pig. 3. Diagrammatic representation of the Results of the Illinois Agri-
cultural Experiment Station in selecting for high and for low protein content.
T ' , per cent, protein in crop ; X, generations ; h, high protein strain ; I, low protein
strain.

plete corroboration of Johannsen's conclusions on pure lines. This
interpretation has been made, however, from their published data, and
the Illinois station should not be held responsible. This work of breed-
ing to change the composition of maize was started in 1896 with a hazy
Darwinian idea that as corn was known to vary in composition, con-
tinuous selection of extreme variations would produce a continuous
change in type. A very old type — Burr's White — furnished the foun-
dation stock. A chemical analysis was made of parts of the individual
ears each year, and the extreme ears planted. From the first, the four
lines above mentioned were planted in isolated plots and were continu-
ally selected in the same direction. After ten generations the average
crop of the high protein line had reached 14.26 per cent., while the low
protein line was only 8.64 per cent.; the high oil strain had reached
7.37 per cent., while the low oil strain was reduced to 2.66 per cent.
These facts clearly show the rapidity with which results can be obtained

SELECTION IN PLANT BREEDING

i99

by this method of selection even with a crop that is often cross-fertilized.
But the diagrams show other facts. The published records show that
the variability of the race was but little, if any, reduced by continuous
selection. With extreme variants comparatively as far removed from
each year's type, available for planting in each successive generation,
the gain each year should have been at the same rate, if the Darwinian
interpretation of the role of selection were correct. On the contrary,
we notice that the regular curve fitted to the crop averages for ten gen-
erations, is first concave showing great progress made by selection, is
later convex as progress becomes slower, and last becomes horizontal

1

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Lo
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14

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Fig. 4. Diagrammatic Representation of the Results of the Illinois Agri-
cultural Experiment Station in selecting for high and for low oil content. Y, per
cent, oil in crop ; X, generations ; h, high oil strain ; I, low oil strain.

as no more progress results. It is very evident that the original stock
was a mixed race containing sub-races of various composition inter-
mingled by hybridization. Selection rapidly isolated these sub-races.
The isolation was practically complete at the eighth generation in the
case of the protein strains and the ninth generation in the oil strains.
After this selection accomplished nothing. That the effect of selection
was simply the isolation of a sub-race and not a continuous response,
is further demonstrated by the fact that in 1903 another plot was
started with seed from the isolated high oil strain. After four years'
cessation of selection, the average composition of the crop remained the
same, showing that after complete isolation of a homogeneous type no
retrogression of the selected character occurs unless intercrossing with
mediocre strains takes place. Fluctuation in composition still appears,
but this is the non-inherited kind produced by external conditions.

2oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

It is sometimes somewhat difficult to see why selection of this kind
should yield results slowly. There are indeed many points concerning
which little is known. One may picture to himself, however, that
where crossing is always likely to occur and where the apparent char-
acter is in reality a combination of a number of separately inherited
characters, many thousands or even millions of individuals would have
to be grown to run a fair chance of obtaining the most desirable com-
bination. By growing a few individuals in which the desired character
is intensified in successive generations, the combination wanted may
be obtained with the use of smaller numbers.

I have stated that nothing can be accomplished by selection after a
pure line or genotype as Johannsen calls them is isolated, unless a new
transmissible variation is produced by nature. The questions then
arise: how often may such changes be expected? and, what is their
nature? Such changes are of two kinds,2 progressive where a new
character appears, or retrogressive where a character is lost. But little
can be said as to their relative frequency. Undoubtedly some species
are in a more unstable condition than others and give more of such
variations, as de Vries has already suggested. On the other hand, cer-
tain unknown combinations of external conditions may favor germ-
cell changes. They are both rare, the progressive changes being rela-
tively much less frequent than the retrogressive changes, but they are
sufficiently common for several to have come within the knowledge of
every experienced breeder.

There is another type of variation much more closely related to
changes occurring in " pure lines " than is generally supposed. I refer
to what is commonly known as bud variation or vegetative sports.
Retrogressive variations of this kind are probably no rarer than the
same kind of changes occurring in pure lines. No authentic progressive
variations (as distinguished from digressive) are known. In my own
experience in growing eight hundred species and varieties of tuberous
solanums (largely potato varieties), fifteen retrogressive variations have
been noticed, and the changes that occurred were exactly like those
occurring in seed-propagated strains.

The relative value of progressive and retrogressive variations is
difficult to estimate. In organic evolution the former must have been
far more valuable; commercially the latter are often of great worth.
We may cite, for example, the great value of the bush or dwarf varieties
of beans, peas and tomatoes that have originated as retrogressions.

2 De Vries also gives a third kind, digressive variations, such as occur when
a character previously possessed by but latent in the plant appears. This class
is unnecessary. Digressive characters appear either through the loss of a com-
plementary inhibiting factor or the gain of a complementary factor necessary
for it to become active.

SELECTION IN PLANT BREEDING

20I

In closing I should like to call attention to a fact both of evolu-
tionary and of commercial importance. The first generation of crosses
between nearly related types generally grows more vigorously than the
pure types themselves. If the fertility is not impaired;, they even fruit
more freely. This is undoubtedly the explanation of Burbank's quick-
growing hybrid walnuts, but if they were self-pollinated and grown for
another generation a large percentage of the progeny would lose this
character. In naturally self-pollinated types like tobacco, one sees the
phenomenon expressed as greater vigor in a cross ; in a continually inter-
crossed species like maize the same thing is shown by a loss of vigor
when the plants are self-pollinated. It is clear then that if pure strains
of maize are gradually isolated by selection, by the same token they lose
in vigor and productiveness. The original mixed strain may contain

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Fig 5. Effects of inbreeding in Maize. Outer ears inbred four generations.
Middle ear the result of their crossing, first generation.

sub-strains some of which are much more productive than others. The
less productive types may be discarded, but at the same time there is a
loss of vigor from the fact that they are withdrawn from hybrid com-
binations. The logical procedure, then, is to isolate two high-yielding
types, combine them by hybridization, and grow only the first genera-
tion of the cross. This is not mere theory, for by using such methods
I have obtained from 100 to 200 bushels of shelled corn per acre on
small plots. Unfortunately, this method can not be used to advantage
on many crops, but in the case of maize the procedure is simple. There
are many breeders using the isolation method of improvement. From

VOL. LXXII. — 14.

202

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Fig. G. Results of crossing two Inbred Strains of Maize. At the right
average of the parents after three generations inbreeding, 61 bushels per acre. At
the left crop of first generation cross of the inbred strains, 101 bushels per acre.

them the grower obtains two strains and plants them in alternate rows.
At flowering time all of the male flowers or tassels are removed from
one of the plants of the varieties before they shed their pollen. All the
ears that these plants produce are crossed with the other variety. It is
this seed that produces the vigorous plants.

This method might be made the basis for some very valuable work
in forestry. It is quite conceivable that many important timber trees
might be found where nearly related species or varieties would cross
readily. Experiment would show how great an increase in rapidity of
growth could be expected., and whether such an increase would pay for
the increased expense of hand hybridized seed.

Fig. 7. Silver Hill. Normal at left. Bud variation isolated by selection at

the right.

SELECTION IN PLANT BREEDING 203

One may summarize by saying that two important points cover the
whole role of selection. The first point is that nature continually
causes variations to appear in plants. The majority of these variations
are simply accelerations or retardations of development of the whole or
of certain parts of the plant due to good or bad environment at critical
stages of the plant's growth. These variations are not inherited because
the reproductive or germ cells are not affected. Other variations, how-
ever, are being constantly produced by nature — though much more
rarely — which do affect the reproductive cells and are transmitted to the
plant's progeny. These variations are the basis of selection. They are
constant from the beginning and remain so unless changed by a second
variation affecting the same constituent in the reproductive cells that
is due to develop the character in question.

The second point to be remembered is that the whole aim and action
of selection is to detect the desired heritable variants among the useful
commercial plants and through them to isolate a race with the desired
characters. When this is accomplished, selection can then do nothing
until nature steps in and produces another desirable variation.

In other words, the results of selection are not continuous. Selec-
tion does not gradually perfect a character. The production of herit-
able variations is intermittent and the intermissions may be long. If
the practical results seem to be parts of a continuous process, it is
because of the imperfect methods at hand to isolate the desirable varia-
tions from their combinations with undesirable characters formed by
natural hybridization.

204

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE PEOGEESS OF SCIENCE

THE ^YORK OF THE NEW YORK
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY

The Zoological Society has per-
formed an important service for the
city of New York by the establishment
and conduct of a Zoological Park and
later by taking charge of the Aqua-
rium. The relations of the society to
the city are similar to those of the
trustees of the American Museum of
Natural History, of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art and the Botanical Gar-
den, but are somewhat unusual. In
each case the city provides the build-
ings and the cost of maintenance, while
a private corporation supplies the col-
lections and is responsible for the con-
duct of the institution. The plan
appears to have worked very well, as j
each institution has had a strong or-
ganization, free from any political
control, but effective in obtaining large
appropriations from the city and con- I
siderable private gifts.

The fourteenth annual report of the
Zoological Society lays emphasis on
increasing the scientific work done both

at the park and the aquarium. The
institutions have been extremely suc-
cessful in gathering and maintaining
large collections of animals and inter-
esting the public in them; but they
have not as yet been able to undertake

i research work comparable in value.
The director of the aquarium writes in
his report, " The small aquarium at
Naples has made Naples famous." It
is not, however, the exhibition tanks,
but the research work and publications

1 of the station which have added to the
fame of Naples. The entertainment
and instruction of the public is an im-
portant function for the city to under-
take, and the money devoted to these
purposes at the Zoological Park and
the Aquarium is well spent. But
money used for research is not spent
at all ; it is invested for the perma-
nent benefit of all the people. Zoolog-
ical gardens have hitherto emphasized
scientific work less than have botan-
ical gardens, but there are problems of
comparative psychology and compara-
tive pathology to which collections of

The Administration Building of the New York Zoological Society.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

205

— TTjr\

r

V<-J rl

fcllNlAlllllAl

VL r^"'

,.,......4,.>™*.-~A.».^"-i»"i

NEW YORK AQVWUVtt.

Preliminary plan for the enlargement of the New York Aquarium.

animals might be made to lend them-
selves admirably; and there are many
kinds of research work in experimental
morphology and heredity which might
be carried on to advantage. While
paying their cost in exhibits of general
interest and unusual instructiveness to
the public, they would at the same
time advance science and its applici-
tions.

The report of the executive com-
mittee begins with the paragraph:
" With this year closes the first period
of the Zoological Park development,
and from now on the work of the
society will be, to an ever increasing
degree, in the direction of the remain-
ing objects of the society. Briefly
stated, those objects are, scientific
work in connection with the collec-
tions, and the protection and preserva-
tion of our native fauna." The di-
rector of the aquarium also urges the
desirability of establishing a small
staff of scientific curators. We may
consequently expect that in a short
time the contributions to science from
the Zoological Park and the Aquarium
will rival those from the Museum of
Natural History and the Botanical
■Garden.

The director of the Zoological Park
urges the need of additional bear dens,
a zebra house and an aviary for eagles
and vultures. He expresses the hope
that these three buildings may be ob-
: tained during the present year and
states that with these the animal
! buildings and other installations for
exhibits will be practically complete.
During the past year an administra-
tion building has been erected at a
cost of $75 000. It is intended for
executive offices and as a meeting place
for the members, and is to contain a
library and art gallery. At present a
collection of some GOO heads and horns,
in which the director has taken much
interest, is housed in this building, but
a separate building open to the public
is planned.

The attendance at the park last year
was 1,614,953, an increase of 200,000
over the preceding year. There were
5,000 animals on exhibition represent-
ing 1,117 species, of which 812 were
mammals, 2,880 birds and 1.308 rep-
tiles. This is an increase over 1908
of 155 species and 421 specimens, in-
cluding many of special interest.

The attendance at the aquarium
reached the remarkable record of 3,-

206

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Photograph by Gutekimst.

George Frederick Barker.

803.501, an increase of a million and a
quarter in a single year, and probably
a larger number of persons than vis-
ited any other institution in the world
for scientific entertainment and in-
struction. There were no increases in i
the collections, as there is no room for
them. The director very properly
urges the desirability of enlarging the
aquarium and providing laboratories
for scientific work and men to carry it
forward.

DEATHS AMONG AMERICAN MEN
OF SCIENCE

Since the death of Mr. Alexander
Agassiz, in April, we have lost three
other American scientific men officially
placed among the hundred who are
most eminent by their membership in
the National Academy of Sciences.
They are Professor George Frederick
Barker, General Cyrus Ballou Coni-
stock and Dr. Charles Abiathar White.

Professor Barker, who was both a

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

207

ClIAIiLES Abiathak White.

chemist and a physicist, was born in
1835 and graduated from Yale in 1858
and later in medicine from the Albany
Medical School. He held various posi-
tions, including the chair of physiolog-
ical chemistry at Yale until 1873, when
he became professor of physics at the
University of Pennsylvania, and for
thirty-seven years, latterly as pro-
fessor emeritus, held a leading position
in the university, when Philadelphia
had a more dominant position in sci-
ence than it has been able to maintain.

Professor Barker was an admirable
lecturer and the author of widely-used
text-books of chemistry and physics;
he served as expert in important legal
cases and carried forward research
work of consequence. He was elected
to the National Academy in 1876 and
was president of the American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science
in 1879.

General Comstock, born in 1831,
graduated from West Point in 1855
and taught physics in the academy.

208

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

He was actively engaged in the civil
war, first in the defenses of Washing-
ton and later as chief engineer and
senior aide-de-camp to General Grant.
Later he became superintendent of the
geodetic survey of the great lakes and
of the improvements at the mouth of
the Mississippi, and published works
on these and other engineering topics.
He was elected to the National Acad-
emy in 1884, and in 1907 gave the
academy a fund of $10,000 for the
promotion of researches in electricity
magnetism and radian energy.

Charles Abiathar White, born in
1826, though early interested in sci-
ence, was late in beginning professorial
work. He received a degree in medi-
cine at the age of thirty-seven and
three years later became state geologist
of Iowa and professor of natural his-
tory in the state university. He ac-
cepted a chair in Bowdoin College in
1873 and two years later became geol-
ogist in the surveys of Powell and
Hayden. For many years he was con-
nected with the Geological Survey, the
National Museum and the Smithsonian
Institution. He was elected to the
National Academy in 1889. He pub-
lished over two hundred contributions
to geology, zoology and botany, main-
taining his scientific activity to the
end, as is indicated by an article in a
recent volume of this journal.

Mr. Agassiz and Professor Barker
died at the age of seventy-five, Gen-
eral Constock at the age of seventy-
nine, Dr. White at the age of eighty-
five. Another American scientific man
who played an important part during
the second half of the last century and
died with his life work fully accom-
plished was Professor William Phipps
Blake. He was born in 1826 and made
valuable studies in the mineral de-
posits and geological structure of the
Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast
regions. Dr. Amos Emerson Dolbear,
for thirty-six years professor of phys-
ics at Tufts College, known for inven-

tions and other work in physical sci-
ence, has died at the age of seventy-
three years. Professor Robert Parr
Whitfield, of the American Museum of
Natural History, eminent as a geol-
ogist, has died at the age of eighty-two
years. Dr. Cyrus Thomas, archeologist
in the Bureau of American Ethnology
since 1882, well known for his con-
tributions to anthropology, has died at
the age of eighty-five years.

More grievous than the death of
veteran men of science is the loss of
those whose work is not accomplished.
Charles Reid Barnes, professor of plant
pathology in the University of Chicago,
dying after a fall at the age of fifty-
two, was among our leaders in botany
in both performance and promise. Dr.
H. T. Ricketts, also of the University
of Chicago, but called to the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, died in Mexico
City at the age of thirty-nine years
from typhus fever contracted as a re-
sult of research work on that disease.
Even this partial list shows how severe
have been the losses by death from
among American men of science during
the past six months.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS

The Paris Academy of Sciences has
conferred the Janssen Prize, consisting
of a gold medal, on Director W. W.
Campbell, of the Lick Observatory. — •
Professor Theodore W. Richards, of
Harvard University, has been invited
by the Chemical Society (London) to
deliver the next Faraday lecture. This
will be the tenth Faraday lecture, the
others having been given as follows:
Dumas, 1869; Cannizzaro, 1872; Hof-
mann, 1875; Wurtz, 1879; Helmholtz,
1881; Mendeleef, 1889; Rayleigh, 1895;
Ostwald, 1904; Emil Fischer, 1907.—
Dr. John Benjamin Murphy, professor
of surgery in Northwestern University,
has been elected president of the Amer-
ican Medical Association, for the meet-
ing to be held next year at Los Angeles.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY,

SEPTEMBER, 1910

THE ZOOLOGICAL STATION AT NAPLES

By Professor CHARLES LINCOLN EDWARDS

TWENTY centuries ago the rain of ashes and pumice-stone from
Vesuvius buried Pompeii, and, at the same time, a stream of
mud sealed up Herculaneum. Within the period of the last three
hundred years, four times in succession, Torre del Greco has been
covered by the flowing lava, but each time this town has been rebuilt.
The great lava-stream of the eruption of 1906, lying just beyond Torre
Annunziata, is an ominous demonstration of the evil possibilities still
within old Vesuvius. To-day the small white cloud of smoke above the
summit of the volcanic ash-cone merely hints of these latent forces that
may again overwhelm some community at the base, while now the
great mountain rests in its beauty and historic interest, overlooking the
blue waters of the Bay of Naples. To the right are the massive build-
ings of the city intersected by narrow passage-ways, all crowded between
the shore and the high wall of the hills which stretch from the Pallazzo
Capoclimonte to the Posilipo. Par away at either side of the Bocca
Grande are the islands of Capri and Ischia, at times clearly outlined,
or again almost lost in the haze of opalescent mist.

All through the day many groups of fishing-boats are scattered about
the bay while the men cast and haul their nets. Over the stone sea-
wall others pull on the end-ropes of a drag-net that has been set far
from shore, until at last the great burden of fish is safely unmeshed.
Here and there divers go down to scrape" the rocks and sand of the
bottom for mussels which are placed in a bag worn at the waist. Prom
an anchored skiff a man dredges with a scoop-net attached to a long
pole contented with many of the living things that appear, for strange
creatures are welcome in the Neapolitan market. Thus, without plant-
ing or cultivating, the people gather from the sea an unending harvest.
But from under the cliff of Sorento, to the wave-eroded rocks of Ischia,

VOL. LXXVII. — 15.

fa

fa

C

o

-

z
o

o

o

o

o
o

fa
o

fa

THE ZOOLOGICAL STATION AT NAPLES 211

whenever a fisherman finds a strange or curious creature he carefully
brings it to the zoological station, sure of ready purchase in an institu-
tion that uses every agency for the advancement of the knowledge of
the life of the sea.

The opening of the zoological station in 1874, realized the dream of
Anton Dohrn of a laboratory for marine biological investigation, and
now, in the high development of this institution, we mourn the death
of its creator, which occurred on the twenty-sixth of September, 1909.
Dohrn himself tells in an article in the Preuszisclie Jahrbilcher for
1872, how, during his travels to various European coasts, the necessity
was impressed upon him for the erection of marine laboratories suitably
equipped for research. In October, 1868, after a journey to Scotland
rendered disappointing by bad weather, Dohrn sought the rich faunal
region of lower Italy and Sicily where Johannes Miiller and his stu-
dents had been pioneers in marine zoology. Fully realizing that such
an institution as he planned does not spring into being completely
formed by generatio cequivoca, but rather develops like an organism,
Dohrn began to collect money for the erection in Messina of a building
which should contain rooms for investigation and also an aquarium for
the entertainment of the public. The next step, in January, 1870, was
to change the plan so as to locate in Naples where the larger numbers of
tourists and citizens would justify a great aquarium, not only for
popular education but as a substantial aid in support of the scientific
work of the institution. In the Deutsche Rundschau for 1892, Dohrn
tells the story of the preliminary work necessary to enlist the interest
and support of the Prussian ministry and the government of Naples.
Overcoming difficulties and interferences that would have utterly dis-
couraged a less enthusiastic and steadfast nature and valiantly taking
his patriotic part in the Franco-Prussian war, it was not until June,
1872, that a contract with the city authorities was executed for the
erection by Dr. Dohrn of a building for the zoological station. The
original contract has since been modified, so that now the station occu-
pies 4,000 square meters of ground in the Villa Nazionale and is to
remain in the possession of the Dohrn family for ninety years, then
reverting to the city of Naples, unless otherwise provided for.

While devoting his own life and his estate to the building up of a
great central station for marine biology in Naples, Dohrn urged the
necessity for similar stations in all lands, to release investigators from
the troubles and expenses otherwise involved. These advantages he
especially desired for the young men fresh from the university, who
might thus increase their powers, widen their knowledge and enlarge
their general point of view. If it be possible to remain free from the
pressing necessities of life for four or five years, such a young man
could demonstrate whether he really had the call to be an investigator.
The work would necessitate the wearisome uncovering: of the smallest

v_xy A M<J&» Jh?^

THE ZOOLOGICAL STATION AT NAPLES 213

facts, together with the placing of large problems before the mind for
imagination and criticism to solve. An enthusiast for Darwinism and
influenced by the philosophical writings of Leuckart and Milne-
Edwards, from the very beginning, Dohrn's conception of the field of
work broadly included the investigation of function as well as form,
and the phylogeny of both. The dissection of animals, the study of
their tissues by the aid of the microscope and the description of their
life histories from the fertilized egg through all the changing embry-
onic and larval stages, should be reinforced by physiological experiment
and chemical analysis, together with the observation of the manner of
living and behavior of the animals.

The zoological station is situated on the shore of the bay in the Villa
Nazionale, on the most beautiful and convenient site in Naples. One
approaches by a long walk flanked by rows of stone-oaks whose over-
arching, intertwining branches produce a grateful shade from the bril-
liant sunshine. Here and there groups of phoenix palms, spreading,
leafy palmettos and cycads, add the appropriate subtropical vegeta-
tion. The renaissance architecture is perfectly adapted to the uses of
the station, while the beautiful structure fits into the scene as naturally
as the palms themselves.

The oldest of the three buildings (A) of the zoological station was
opened in 1874 and is now chiefly occupied by the public aquarium
(a) and the library (5). The second building (5), finished in 1886,
is connected to the western end of the first by bridges and contains the
department for collecting and preserving organisms as well as indi-
vidual laboratories for zoologists. The third addition (C) was built in
1906 for the new science of comparative physiology. This laboratory
lies to the east of the aquarium, being connected therewith by a building
(D) surrounding a court. It is scarcely necessary to enumerate the
rooms and describe them in detail. In fact no one at the station could
tell me just how many rooms there are ! It is sufficient that each
investigator is provided with a laboratory containing large and small
aquaria, tables, and all necessary reagents and apparatus for his work.
There are also large general laboratories for zoology, physiology, botany
and chemistry, with all the equipment necessary for research. The
museum, now under charge of Dr. Gast, contains a faunal series of
specimens so wonderfully preserved that often they are more beautifully
expanded than the living animals themselves.

From the brilliant sunlight one enters the semi-obscurity of the
large aquarium hall. Great tanks, with plate-glass fronts, are around
the sides of the room, and a double row in the middle partially divides
the hall. The only light enters through the water, so that one has the
impression of being in a submarine environment. The sea-water is
stored in large tanks upon the upper floor, then, mixed with air, circu-

214

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

r.

■■

B

i

i

Sectional Plan of the First Two Buildings of the Zoological Station.
A, building containing (a) aquarium and (6) library; B, individual laboratories.

i-.-f

Sectional Plan of the Laboratory for Comparative Physiology (C) and
connecting Building around the Court.

lates through the aquaria and finally runs into a sand-filter in the base-
ment to be again pumped into the upper tanks. Every fourteen days
a fresh supply is pumped in from the sea. A perfectly developed system
of collecting enables the institution to exhibit the most beautiful and
interesting animals of the bay of Naples in large numbers and in the
best condition. A little book published in Italian, German, French
and English gives, in simple language, just such a description of the
animals, their habitat and behavior, as will appeal to the public. There
are many " happy families " formed upon long observation of the
different kinds of animals that may live together without acquiring too
marked a taste for one another. The aquarium containing the coral
animals is constructed like a grotto under the arch of which one sees
the orange-colored polyps spread about like marigolds. Some of the
related anemones are actually old, as is shown by their long, wrinkled,
thick-skinned bodies, but their straight, or slightly curled tentacles of
purple, or lavender, or cream-color, or brown, are most beautiful.

THE ZOOLOGICAL STATION AT NAPLES

215

Among the echinoderms the methods of feeding are interesting. The
sea-cucumber holds fast to a rock by means of the suckers at the tips
of its tube-feet, and, with tentacles widely expanded like the branches
of a tree, waits for minute crustaceans and the larvae of all sorts of
animals to comfortably settle themselves upon the hospitable branches.
Then, with the least possible motion, the sea-cucumber very gradually
bends a tentacle over and into the mouth, and, as it is again extended
one of the two small tentacles scrapes off the resting organisms. So
each tentacle, in rhythmical succession, takes its turn in the feeding
process. Some species of star-fishes have large mouths and can swal-
low snails and mussels whole, sometimes consuming as many as twenty-
five or thirty mollusks of various kinds at one meal. Other star-fishes
have mouths too small to receive the animals commensurate with their
appetites and so they simply turn their stomachs inside out, covering
over a clump of oysters, and thus forming a sort of external stomach
into which the secretion from the digestive glands is poured. When
the soft parts are thus dissolved and absorbed the star-fish pulls in its
stomach and goes on in its devastating course. The sea-urchin has an
apparatus known as Aristotle's lantern providing five strong teeth
worked by powerful muscles with which it catches live worms and
crabs. The sea-crawfishes, built like lobsters except for the absence
of the large pincers, most perfectly convey the impression of life on
the bottom of the sea. They seem like uncanny agents of evil as they
solemnly stalk about over the rocks, poking their great antennae into
each other's affairs and always having several claws out for a fight,
yet seldom engaging with one another. Some of the veterans, however,
have lost an antenna, or a leg, and the missing parts are being regen-

The Palm-like Ringed Wobms.

2l6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Hwm mama — ------ *". / -

One of tee Happy Families in the Aquarium.

erated. The semi-transparent squids, with posterior triangular fins,
swim back and forth as delicately poised as submarine monoplanes.
When a live fish is placed in the water the squid darts at it, grasps it
firmly with the suckers or the tentacles and cuts off the head, eating
only the body. The cuttlefish, with broader body, striped like a zebra,
and big elephantine head, constantly undulates a fin-like fringe around
the border of its mantle, as it nervously drifts here and there. Fre-
quently it wriggles into the sand which it throws upon its back, or,
if much disturbed, ejects a cloud of ink in which it disappears. The
large octopus has a body that suggests both a toad and a spider, with
highly developed eyes and brain projecting above it. Generally this
devil-fish lies sleeping in a corner of the rocks, or lazily reaching out
and creeping about by means of eight long tentacles that express a
giant's strength. With a spurt of water from its siphon the octopus
may dart rapidly through the tank, and by directing the tube of its
siphon, go whither it wills. Lying upon the bottom of an open trough,
often buried in the sand, is the very interesting electric ray. If one
presses the fingers upon the broad body where it runs into the tail he
will, in the words of a Cook's guide, " get a strike." The electric tis-
sues are descended from muscle fibers which in the course of evolution
have come to produce electricity instead of motion. In the embryo
ray the primitive muscle cells first appear, then they swell out anteriorly
and shrivel up posteriorly until each loses the characteristic striated
muscle structure and becomes an electric plate lying in a little com-
partment embedded in a jelly-like substance. Electricity is produced
by some chemical action upon innumerable minute granules stored up
in the protoplasmic network pervading the electric plates. The shock

THE ZOOLOGICAL STATION AT NAPLES

217

is brought about by the stimulation of the electric nerve, which in turn
acts upon very minute electric rods that release the electricity.

Above the aquarium is the library. In the north room are found
in complete series all the most important biological journals. In the
south room are the separate volumes, monographs and authors' reprints.
The current numbers of journals and the latest publications from all
parts of the world are found upon central tables. The classification
and arrangement of the books is simple and the card-catalogue complete.
Each worker is given cards bearing his special number in the general
list and he inserts one of these cards in the place of the book desired.
Dr. Schoebel, the librarian, is always ready with assistance in case of
need. On the walls are notable frescoes by Hans v. Marees, one of the
group of four especial friends of Dohrn when, in 1871, he was Privat-
dozent at the University of Jena. In the fresco on the east wall, Dohrn
and these four friends, the biologist Kleinenberg, Charles Grant, the
author of " Tales of Naples and the Camorra," the artist himself and
the sculptor Hildebrand, are represented as grouped about a table at
the ruins of the Palazzo di Donn' Anna on the Posilipo. In two other
scenes, first Neapolitan fishermen are carrying the net from the shore
and launching their boat and then four stalwart fishermen are rowing,
standing in their characteristic manner and bending forward with each
push upon the oar. On the south wall three ages of man are repre-

ECHINODERMS AND ANEMONES.

218

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Sea-crawfish and other Crustaceans,
Medusae and Coralline Animals.

sented in an orange grove; the child lying on the sand and playing,
the man in his prime gathering the ripe fruit and the old man bending
over his spade. The ornamental panels between the frescoes and the
frieze, as well as impressive busts of Darwin and Von Baer, are by
Hildebrand.

Three very important publications are issued by the zoological sta-
tion under the able editorship of Professors Dr. P. Mayer and Dr.
Giesbrecht. The Fauna und Flora des Golfes von Neap el consists of a
series of more than thirty splendid monographs upon the animals and
plants of the bay. Following the ideal sketched by Dohrn in 1880 as a
foreword to the first volume, each monograph embodies the anatomy,
histology, embryology and physiology, as well as the taxonomy, of the
animals or plants of the group treated. Beginning with Chun's great
work on the ctenophores, these monographs are models of a systematic
zoology and botany based upon the whole range of biological science.
They are beautifully illustrated by the authors themselves, often assisted
by the talented artists of the station, Merculiano, Serino and Manzoni.
The Mittheilungen aus dcr Zoologisclien Station zu Neapel, now in its
nineteenth volume, is a journal for the publication of shorter papers
and contains the earlier annual reports of the director. The annual
Jahresberichte contain admirable analyses of all the zoological literature
of the year. While these publications contain many most important
contributions, yet far beyond the limits of the station, almost every
biological journal receives papers based upon investigations carried on,
in whole or in part, in Naples, or upon material furnished by the
institution.

For the purpose of meeting current expenses, in addition to the
receipts from visitors to the aquarium, Dohrn conceived and developed
the "table" plan by means of which various governments, universities

THE ZOOLOGICAL STATION AT NAPLES

219

or associations may rent tables at which naturalists may work. By this
means the station assumed an international character and remained
free from governmental control, to develop under the wise direction and
tireless energy of its founder, unimpeded by bureaucratic interference
or the cumbersome machinery of a commission. At the cost of $500 a
year a table may be taken and allotted to investigators in succession
for the longer or shorter periods desired. All the resources of the
institution are thus available to such an occupant without cost to him-
self. At present fifty tables are under contract. Germany has twenty-
two tables, of which eleven are provided for by an imperial grant of
twenty thousand Marks, while, in addition, Prussia has four and
Bavaria, Saxony, Wurttemburg, Baden, Hessen, Hamburg and the
University of Strassburg, one each. Italy has twelve tables, Russia
four, Austria two, Hungary, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and the
Roumanian Academy, each one.' In England the universities of Oxford

Squids and Octopi,
Roman and Conger Eels.

220

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MOXTHLY

View of Library, looking East.

and Cambridge and the British Association for the Advancement of
Science have each a table. In the United States, the Smithsonian
Institution has one, the Carnegie Institution two, Columbia University
and the Association for Maintaining the American Woman's Table at
the Zoological Station in Naples, one each.

For the erection of the new laboratory of comparative physiology
citizens of Germany have given 300,000 Marks, and with also at present
an annual payment of 20,000 Marks, this country lias shown implicit
faith in Dohrn and his work. Of the 2,000 workers up to 1910, more
than one half have been Germans. Besides supporting her tables, Italy
has contributed 100,000 francs to the second building, and for over
thirty years has given 5,000 francs annually to the library. During
the thirty-six years since the founding of the station biological research
has been awakened in Italy, until now her workers stand in the foremost
ranks. In the early stages of the station English naturalists, headed
by Darwin, gave £1,000 and thus assured Dohrn of international sym-
pathy and support in his splendid work.

Dohrn, as owner and chief of the station, established the most com-
plete system for the transaction of its business so that he always main-
tained the utmost confidence of the contributing governments and
institutions. By the death of the founder, the directorship of the
zoological station has descended to Dr. Eeinhard Dohrn. That this
great trust will be faithfully executed in the spirit of the founder's
high ideals and will continue its remarkable development is evident to
any one who knows Dr. Eeinhard Dohrn. Each department is under

THE ZOOLOGICAL STATION AT NAPLES

221

the direction of a member of the scientific staff, who is at the same time
devoting his life to research in his own special field of natural history.
At present the staff is organized as follows : Professor Dr. Mayer and
Dr. Gross, morphology ; Dr. Burian, comparative physiology ; Dr. Henze,
chemistry; Dr. Gast, the museum. One of the founder's first associates,
Professor Dr. Eisig, now enjoying the benefit of the station's pension
system, is still pursuing his life-work upon the annelids. The veteran
secretary, Hermann Linden, assists in looking after the voluminous
correspondence, and the local business with the city authorities, the
railway, post and customs. A trained engineer and assisting machin-
ists care for the electric motors, steam-engines, pumps and complicated
network of gas, salt- and fresh-water pipes. In an especially equipped
workshop a trained mechanic makes the instruments for experimental
investigations. Dr. Lo Bianco developed beyond rivalry the depart-
ment for the supply of animals and plants, either living for exhibition
in the aquarium, or for the many workers in the various laboratories,
or as perfectly preserved specimens for museums and investigators
all over the world. Since the recent death of Dr. Lo Bianco his former
assistant Sig. Santorelli has taken charge of this department. For
collecting there is a fleet of well-manned boats, including the steamers
Johannes Miiller and Francis Balfour supplied with steam winding-
reel for the dredges and trawls, and all sorts of nets and other neces-
sary apparatus.

In 1885 Dohrn elaborated a plan of a floating laboratory for the
extension of the work in marine biology. For this purpose a war-ship
is too expensive to maintain and too ill adapted to the needs of inves-
tigation besides generally involving political and other interests dis-
tracting to biological research. An ordinary steamship would not be
much better, so Dohrn planned a specially constructed and well-equipped

View of the Library, looking West.

222

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The Laboratory of ax Investigator.

steamer of 300-4:00 tons of burden with an engine of from 150-
200 horse-power and room for from six to ten investigators. Two
laboratories, one above and the other below deck, completely outfitted
for a six months' voyage together with a library would furnish ideal
conditions for work. With such a floating biological station unknown
regions could be entered with all the resources of modern equipment
for both morphological and physiological work and investigations thus
carried on which would not be possible upon land. To accomplish
these results most economically the floating laboratory would be used,
at first at least, in conjunction with the Naples Station, for the ex-
ploration of the bay of Naples, and the neighboring waters of the bays
of Salerno and Gaeta. During the day-time the great depths would

THE ZOOLOGICAL STATIOX AT NAPLES 223

be searched with dredge and trawl and fished with long lines, each
bearing man}* baited hooks, and the pelagic animals caught from the
side of the vessel. Small boats would be sent out to gather from the
rocks and grottoes under the water-line such organisms as the sponges,
corals, worms, echinoderms, mollusks and algae. A portion of the
catch would be examined by the naturalists on board, another part kept
in well aerated aquaria to be taken in the early morning by the
Johannes Mutter to the Naples Station. In the night-time silk tow-
nets would collect from the vast numbers of minute living things that
then reappear after having gone below the surface waters to escape the
intense sunlight. Stone-plates could be lowered to the sea-bottom in
various places to be taken up and examined at regular intervals in
order to study the assembling and growth of the sessile organisms that
seek such locations. Then these stone-plates might be changed from
one place to another, varying the depth, light and other conditions of
existence in accord with the method of experimental zoology, with re-
sults of the greatest value to the knowledge of the distribution and
evolution of marine organisms and scarcely possible except by means
of such a floating laboratory. After exjrdoring the sea around Naples
the floating laboratory might be taken to the coasts of Sardinia, Tunis,
Crete, Cyprus and other regions. The moment anchor is cast the vessel
serves as dwelling house and laboratory from which would center all
the activities of a marine station. If needed, a portable house, carried
on board, could be quickly placed upon any desired shore. In connec-
tion with biology other kinds of scientific work such as geology, paleon-
tology and philology might be advanced, with the best possible conserva-
tion of all the collections on board the ship, whereas it is often so diffi-
cult and dangerous to transport such things from isolated regions by the
ordinarily available means. It is easily seen that such a combination
would greatly advance the various sciences concerned at the least cost to
each. This plan, always in Dohrn's mind, was temporarily laid in the
background by the more pressing need of the erection of the building
for comparative physiology which absorbed much time in the last years
of Dohrn's life. Through the death of F. A. Krupp his promise to
build a 700-ton yacht for this deep sea investigation came to naught.
Now, although the Prince of Monaco is devoting much time and money
to the development of oceanography, and various governments are send-
ing out vessels, yet the field is so large and so important that it is to be .
hoped Dohrn's plan will be carried out not alone at Naples, but in
America and other countries.

In spite of the time consumed in directing the affairs of the zoolog-
ical station and in traveling and making addresses in its behalf, Dohrn
was always an investigator of the foremost rank. During the half-
century of continuous production his bibliography numbers eighty
titles. Following in the footsteps of his father, the entomologist Karl

224

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

August Dohrn, his first two papers, published in his eighteenth year,
•were upon Hemiptera. Until 1881 his work was mostly concerned
with the insects and other arthropods including his monograph on the
Pantopoda for the Fauna and Flora of the Bay of Naples. However,
as early as 1876, appeared the first of Dohrn's brilliant and suggestive
papers on the origin of the vertebrates. "Working upon the basis of
embryologieal studies in such forms as the Aseidians, Amphioxus, the

The Zoological Station feom the East.

Cyclostomes, sharks, bony-fishes, and other vertebrates, Dohrn traced
the phylogeny of the vertebrates to the annelid worms. Beyond their
theoretical bearing upon a question still debatable, his discoveries con-
stitute substantial additions to comparative anatomy and embryology.
The investigators at the station find intellectual and esthetic en-
joyment in historic Naples and its neighborhood. Among the marbles
and bronzes of the National Museum one finds such masterpieces as
the Hera Farnese and the Narcissus. In Pompeii the uncovered
auditorium and the uncurtained stage of the great theater seem to voice
the awful tragedy of 79 in spite of the roses and larkspurs blooming

THE ZOOLOGICAL STATION AT NAPLES 225

again in the peristyle of the house of the Vettii. In the present ex-
cavations one sees the volcanic debris removed from an atrium wall
revealing in its pristine freshness a fresco of the brief period of recon-
struction after the earthquake of 63. After the excursions from
Naples certain pictures will always linger in the mind. The wonderful
panorama from the Camaldulensian monastery extending from the
Ponza Islands in the west to Monte Sant' Angelo in the southeast,
and embracing the City of Naples with omnipresent Vesuvius in the
background, and the islands of Nisida, Procida, Ischia and Capri. The
view from the rose-garden of the Palazzo Eufolo, at Ravello, on the
heights of Monti Lattari, with the fishing-boats of the bay of Salerno
like winged creatures suspended just above the waves and gliding
back to the gods who sent them forth. The temple of Neptune at
Paestum, having withstood the devastation of wind and storm for
twenty-five centuries, rising from the green meadows, with its massive
yet graceful fluted Doric columns, sepia tinted by age, outlined against
the blue sky and bluer sea. The blue grotto of Capri entered by a hole
in the cliff so small that our little skiff scraped the rock, lighted by
the sunshine which permeates the water from the one opening, and
transformed into a great hall of fairyland with an atmosphere of
silvery greenish-blue so clear that the primeval rock of the vaulted
cavern is reflected in the shimmering depths below. The naturalists
from many countries, all representing different phases of biological
work and thought, create a cosmopolitan atmosphere most profitable
and inspiring to each investigator. During the year ending March,
1910, there were 163 workers at the zoological station. Thus there is
a perpetually changing and yet permanent congress wherein the
exchange of ideas is not by means of formal lectures but rather in the
conversation of two or three workers in some nook about the buildings,
or upon the deck of the Johannes Miiller. For the thirty-six years of
its existence the Naples Zoological Station has been one of the most
potent factors in the development of modern biology, and now this
institution world-wide in its influence, stands as the chief monument
to the remarkable personality of Anton Dohrn.

vol. lxxvii. —16.

226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

A UNIQUE COLLECTION OF AEITHMETICS

By De. LOUIS C. KARPINSKI

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

RECENT visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art have been
impressed by the wealth of the loan collections standing in names
comparatively unknown to the general public. A two-million-dollar
sale of works of art lately excited only passing comment — in spite of
the fact that many priceless treasures were forever lost to America.
The existence of this private gallery was made widely known only
through the dispersal of its paintings — and the unfortunate story of its
loss to New York City. There are many other storehouses of those
things which we human beings prize in this great city. Fortunately not
all of them need to be destroyed as collections before their significance
and charm receive adequate recognition. So the Morgan library in its
own somewhat permanent home is now numbered among the city's
choicest possessions.

The existence in the metropolis of an absolutely unrivaled collection
of fifteenth and sixteenth century arithmetics has been brought to the
attention of the scientific world by the publication of David Eugene
Smith's " Kara Arithmetical' "While the work purports to be a mere
descriptive catalogue of the arithmetical books of the period mentioned
which are in the library of G. A. Plimpton, it is in fact a comparatively
complete bibliography of the subject, since this library contains prac-
tically all the arithmetic books published in the first hundred and fifty
years of printing. As the third, and by far the most complete, col-
lection of arithmetical works of international fame the Plimpton books
take a high place among modern private libraries.

George A. Plimpton's interest in arithmetics grew out of his busi-
ness as a publisher of text-books. The historical development of the
school curriculum is exhibited by his library. Included are geographies
from the invention of printing up to modern times, spellers, writing
books with wonderful specimens of writing from all the world, geo-
metries, reading books and representatives of the other subjects of the
ordinary school program. But the gems of the collection are doubtless
the mathematical works, for in these Mr. Plimpton's interest has been
stimulated by Professor David Eugene Smith, himself an enthusiastic
bibliophile. The bookshops of all the world have yielded their trea-
sures to these indefatigable searchers. Professor Smith's recent trip

A UNIQUE COLLECTION OF ARITHMETICS 227

around the world brought mathematical finds to the Plimpton and
Smith collections in the shape of Arabic and Persian, Hindu and
Chinese and Japanese manuscripts and rolls.

Mention should also be made of the medallions of mathematicians,
on exhibition in Teachers College, extending back nearly to the time of
P}rthagoras. The Smith collection of portraits of the devotees of num-
bers is without parallel and the autograph letters and documents are
priceless. Here is an original note-book from the hand of Newton, and
the more prosaic receipt for his semi-annual annuity of fifty pounds
granted by parliament. The diploma of the great physiologist E. H.
"Weber, signed by Carl Friedrich Gauss, probably the greatest mathe-
matician of all time, will interest especially those who are familiar with
the labors of these men.

The invention of printing gave a tremendous stimulus to all sci-
entific work by making possible the wide diffusion of knowledge, as
well as by facilitating the intercourse of scholars. A potent indication
of the really scientific spirit of the learned men of that day is the fact
that the newly discovered art was used to give the older classics a wider
circulation. Thus it need not surprise us to find in this bibliography
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the names of the more ancient
writers.

Archimedes (287-212 B.C.), whom we ordinarily recall as a geometer
tracing figures in the sand and incidentally being killed while engaged
in this harmless occupation, or as a master of applied mechanics de-
fending Syracuse with his catapults and burning glasses, appears in the
" Eara Arithmetica " as the author of a work on numeration. Archi-
medes explains how it is possible to obtain numbers sufficient to express
the grains of sand in a sand-heap as large as the world and even as
large as the universe, a problem which is also found in India.

The arithmetic of Boethius (c. 480-524) involving that of Nico-
machus of Gerasa (fl. c. a.d. 100) was the most widely used text-book
in the monastic schools of the middle ages. Doubtless never again will
any text-book be kept in use for approximately a thousand years, and
yet an examination of the content of this text reveals not science, but
hair-splitting philosophical discussions and extreme poverty of ideas.
Boethius might have been expected to be a more practical philosopher,
for he wrote his " Consolations of Philosophy " while he was in prison.

The exchange of professors by the leading universities was more
common in the early days of these institutions than it is even now.

#

Thus the Englishman, John of Halifax, or Holywood, who was known
in the middle ages by the Latin form of his name Sacrobosco, studied
and probably lectured at Oxford before settling in Paris about 1250.
Sacrobosco's " Algorism," while by no means the first European work
on the Hindu art of reckoning, was one of the most widely used and

228 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

served largely to spread the knowledge of the numerals which we now
employ. This " Algorism " was first published at Strassburg in 1488
and at least thirteen other editions followed before fifty years had
elapsed. In the first edition it appeared with a computus, the title ap-
plied to works on the arithmetic of the church calendar. The Latin
version of our rhyme " Thirty days hath September," etc., appears in
this " Compotus Manualis n (in verse) and was written by Anianus, a
Strassburg astronomer and poet. The name algorism was applied for
some five hundred years to the arithmetic which explained the method
of reckoning with the Hindu-Arabic numerals. The word is a cor-
ruption from the name of Mohammed ben Musa, al- Khowarazmi, whose
Arabic work on this subject was translated into Latin in the early
twelfth century. Early manuscripts of Sacrobosco's classic are found
in the Columbia Library as well as in the Plimpton collection.

Many theologians and churchmen, among the earliest of these may
be mentioned the Venerable Bede (c. a.d. 700), and Cassioclorus (c.
a.d. 550), amused themselves by writing arithmetics, but this was in-
evitable in the period when learning was so largely confined to church
institutions. Thomas Bradwardin (c. 1290-1349), who was professor
of theology at Oxford and later archbishop of Canterbury, wrote ex-
tensively on mathematics. His name suffered, as did many others, at
the hands of transcribers, being found as Bragwardine, Brandnardinus,
Bredwardyn, Bradwardyn, de Bradwardina and de Bredwardina.
Another of these professors of theology was Christian Ursinus (also
known as Allassiderus, Allassisiderus, Wursteisen or Urstis) who pub-
lished in 1579 at Basel an arithmetic entitled " Elementa Arith-
meticee."

The surnames, as noted above, were rather shabbily treated from the
modern point of view, since the first names were regarded as the im-
portant ones. It was common, too, for scholars to Latinize their
names, or more rarely to give the Greek equivalent. The reformer
Melanchthon, who appears as a writer on the nature and value of mathe-
matics, was baptized Schwarzerd. Schreiber (c. 1525) became as a
writer of school texts Grammateus, but was also known as Scriptor.
Melanchthon's friend, Camerarius, who was also a classical scholar, was
born as Liebhard. Camerarius wrote a commentary on the arithmetic
of Nicomachus. Conrad Dasypodius, whose family name was originally
Rauchfuss or Hasenfuss, wrote two works which should have been in-
cluded in this catalogue. Copies of these rare books, both published at
Strassburg in 1567-1570 and 1593-1596, respectively, are found in the
Astor Library. The older one is entitled " First and Simplest Mathe-
matics," and is partly in Greek and partly in Latin, treating of geom-
etry, logistic (a Greek name for practical arithmetic), astronomy and
geography. The writer was professor of mathematics at Strassburg

A UNIQUE COLLECTION OF ARITHMETICS 229

towards the end of the sixteenth century and he designed the famous
clock of the Strassburg cathedral.

The unusually large number of physicians (eleven) appearing in
the " Eara Arithmetica " is at first sight rather surprising, until we
recollect that the scientific training of the time was largely confined to
medicine. Some of these men might be counted among the best mathe-
maticians of their day, notably the Italian Hieronymus Cardan (1501-
1576) who attained fame as an algebraist, and the German Johann
Widmann (fl. c. 1490), who wrote one of the first arithmetics in the
German language. An English goldsmith is the author of a practical
arithmetic, of which there were many designed especially for merchants
and tradespeople. Jurists and numerous professors of Greek and
Hebrew mingle here with priests and bishops and even two cardinals,
Petrus de Alliaco and Nicolaus Cusa. The reckoning masters so
frequently mentioned as authors remind us that for many years arith-
metic had no place in the schools, and that the reckoning masters taught
the art of reckoning outside of school hours very much as music and
dancing are taught to-day.

Especial interest attaches, of course, to the first arithmetic to appear
in print, the anonymous Treviso arithmetic of 1478. While there is no
proper title page, the first page begins as follows : " Here commences a
practical treatise, very good and very useful for any one who wishes to
learn the art of merchants, vulgarly called the art of the abacus." The
last page states that it was printed at Treviso (just north of Venice)
on the tenth day of December, 1478. There are 124 unnumbered pages,
running about 32 lines each. The first page is reproduced in the
" Eara Arithmetica " in facsimile, together with three other pages.
The author was evidently a teacher in Treviso, as he states that the
book is written at the oft-repeated solicitation of his students; the
printer's name is also unknown. Peculiarly enough this practical
arithmetician applies four different names to the science, two as in the
above title and further the art of " arismetrica " and algorism. This
particular copy was in the Pinelli collection, and was acquired in 1790
by a Mr. Wodhull. Later it found its way into the library of Brayton
Ives and at the sale of that library became the property of Mr. Plimp-
ton. The work is strictly speaking an " algorism " since that title
implied the use of the Hindu-Arabic numerals for practical computa-
tion, whereas " arithmetica " designated a theoretical treatise based
largely on the work of Nicomachus and Boethius. An " abacus,"
strictly speaking, would be a work involving the use of some ruled
surface or device to separate by columns (or rows) the units, tens,
hundreds and thousands, etc., from each other. However these terms
were not strictly applied, Leonard of Pisa's extended explanation of
the Hindu reckoning appearing under the title " Liber Abbaci " or

230 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

" Book of the Abacus," while " Algorithmus Linealis " was applied to
numerous works explaining the reckoning on lines which was a slight
variation of the abacus idea.

The beautifully printed Calandri arithmetic of 1491, the first in
De Morgan's list, differs from its predecessors in having the traditional
problems co]3iously illustrated. The slow-moving snail, who climbs up
by day one seventh of a foot and slides back by night one ninth of a
foot, is seen here with his head just emerging from the fifty-foot well
and looking remarkably active after a climb of 1,575 days. The title
page presents Pythagoras as " Pictagoras arithmetice introductor," the
wholly erroneous but wide-spread notion being that this philosopher was
the originator of the science of numbers.

Of the eight or ten arithmetics (two being parts of compendiums)
given by this catalogue as preceding Philippi Calandri's treatise the
three following are of general interest. " Prosdocimi de beldamandes
algorismi tractatus " (Padua, 1483) contains probably the first refer-
ence to a slate ; Pietro Borghi, one of these successful text-book writers,
wrote the most elaborate of the early books on the subject and more
than any other set a standard for the arithmetics of the succeeding cen-
tury. This text-book for the use of merchants, written in Italian,
appeared at Venice in 1484 from the press of Eatdolt. Widman's
German text of 1489 employs for the first time the -f- and — signs,
but simply as warehouse symbols of excess or deficiency.

One of the rarest of the catalogued treasures is the " Arithmetica "
or "Compendium of the Abacus" (Turin, 1492) of Francesco Pellos
(Pellizzati). It appears that this native of Nice came very near to
the invention of decimal fractions, writing almost a hundred years
before the first complete explanation of the subject in " La Disme "
or " The Decimal " by Simon Stevin the Hollander. Pellos actually
used a decimal point to indicate division by such numbers as 100, but
its full significance did not dawn on him.

The first printed discussion of arithmetic in the English language
is a chapter of Caxton's " The Mirrour of the World or Thymage of the
same" (London, 1480) ; the section begins "And after that of Arsme-
trike and whereof it proceedeth." An interesting sidelight is thrown
on early American history by the announcement of the discovery in
Madrid of the first arithmetic printed in the western hemisphere.
Extensive printing was done in Mexico in the second half of the six-
teenth century, and it was here that Juan Diaz Freyle published in
1556 the Spanish " Compendium . . . with Certain Eules of Arithmetic."

Of necessity many works apparently unrelated to arithmetic are
introduced. The fine distinctions between the sciences did not then
exist, so that an astronomer, a geometer, a philosopher or a writer on
the Church calendar would not hesitate to bring into his subject a dis-

A UNIQUE COLLECTION OF ARITHMETICS 231

cussion of arithmetic. Finger reckoning and a number game called
Eithmomachia are other related subjects which received elaborate treat-
ment. The first modern encyclopedia to appear in print is the
"Epitome of all Philosophy" by the Carthusian monk Gregorius Reisch,
the publication appearing in Strassburg in 1503. " Pythagoras " and
" Boethius " adorn the first page of the part devoted to arithmetic.

It would appear that scientists have, in the course of centuries,
grown more modest in their published claims. Borghi's " Noble work
of arithmetic treating all those things which are requisite for mer-
chants " sounds like a boast. More seductive are " The Ground of
Artes," " The Castle of Knowledge/' " The Pathway of Knowledge "
and " The Whetstone of Witte," mathematical works by Robert
Recorde, the royal physician to Edward VI. and Queen Mary. Recorde
was the first to use the present equality sign, stating that no two things
can be more equal than two such lines. His were the most influential
English mathematical publications of the sixteenth century. Equally
enticing as the titles of Recorde was Humphrey Baker's " The Well
spring of Sciences, Which teacheth the perfect work and practise of
Arithmetick, both in whole Numbers and Fractions" (London, 1562).

The most fitting name with which to terminate a discussion of the
printed arithmetics of the sixteenth century is that of Adam Riese.
So- widely were his books used and so deep the impression which they
made that even to-day, nearly four centuries after he wrote, the expres-
sion to reckon " nach Adam Riese " is common in Germany. Riese's
works quite supplanted the numerous editions of the Rechenbuch by the
versatile Jakob Kobel, who was Reichenmeister, printer, engraver, wood-
carver, public official, as well as a successful text-book writer. Kobel's
" Rechenbuch " of 1514 bears silent but eloquent testimony to the
tremendous inertia that must be overcome by any new system that
revolutionizes the common processes of thought. Kobel's arithmetic,
four hundred years after the Hindu- Arabic numerals had been explained
in Europe, is wholly in Roman numerals, even to the fractions. Riese's
work made the publication of any other arithmetic in Roman numerals
impossible.

Part II. of the " Rara Arithmetica " treats of the rich collection of
mathematical manuscripts in the Plimpton library. The oldest of these
is a beautifully written Latin Euclid (about a.d. 1260). This manu-
script appears to be the copy given by the translator Campanus to
Jacques Pantaleon when he was Patriarch of Jerusalem. Campanus
was chaplain to Pantaleon both in Jerusalem and later when that
churchman became Pope Urban IV.

An arithmetic written about 1339 by Paolo Dagomari, also known
as Paul of the Abacus, furnishes the clue to the derivation of our per
cent, symbol. The sign is derived from the abbreviation c° for cento

232 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

(hundred), and its evolution is traced through later manuscripts. As
interesting, but not as conclusive, is an illustration from a fifteenth-
century manuscript containing the possible progenitor of ihe dollar sign.

A beautifully written and illuminated copy of the Boethius arith-
metic, written on vellum about 1294, is one of the most valuable pieces;
the pigskin binding is of about the same date as the text. Just as
valuable, because of the rarity of the material, is the copy of al-Kho-
warazmi's Algebra, a Latin manuscript of 1456. The title is " Book
of Mohammed on Algebra and Almuchabala, or Restoration and Oppo-
sition." The word " algebra," like the words alchemy and almanac, is
of Arabic origin, having the meaning " to restore." So a surgeon,
restorer of broken bones, is called in Don Quixote an " algebrista."
The word " almuchabala " contains the idea of balance. Both of these
terms were applied to early algebras appearing in Europe.

That no expense has been spared in the preparation of the " Eara
Arithmetica " is shown by the 255 photographic reproductions, largely
full-page, which constitute one of the most valuable features for bib-
liophiles and librarians. The tremendous labor involved in searching
out twelve hundred printed works, as opposed to De Morgan's one
hundred, can be understood only by one who has tried to make a com-
plete bibliography of any subject. The citations and references which
have been given are sufficient to indicate the fundamental importance
of the " Eara Arithmetica " in the history of the development of
arithmetic. The actual additions in the notes, to our present knowl-
edge, are entirely too numerous to mention. They show that the library
offers a rich field for research in the history of mathematics. Biblio-
graphically the " Eara Arithmetica " will always be an authority in so
far as arithmetical books of the period treated are concerned and Amer-
icans may justly be proud that this work, which in the nature of the
subject might have been considered more properly the field of a Euro-
pean scholar, has been so ably and finally done by a Columbia professor.

The first of the great collections of mathematical works at all to be
compared with Mr. Plimpton's was made by Guillaume Libri, the author
of the " History of the Mathematical Sciences in Italy." The first
volume of his great work was just off the press at the time of the great
fire in Paris in 1835. Libri, who had been at the printer's, took a few
copies home under his arm ; the rest were destroyed. One of the copies
preserved, to which Libri made corrections for the second edition of
1838, is on exhibition in the museum of Teachers College, having been
bought in Italy by Professor Smith.

Libri began his mathematical career as a boy prodigy, for at the
early age of fifteen he was in correspondence with famous mathema-
ticians, and at the age of twenty he was appointed professor of mathe-
matics in the University of Pisa. Being exiled from Italy for political

A UNIQUE COLLECTION OF ARITHMETICS 233

reasons when he was twenty-eight years old, he took up his residence in
Paris and later became a French citizen. His remarkable ability won
him in the brief space of three years the chair of mathematics in the
College of Prance and admission to the Academy of Sciences as suc-
cessor to the great French geometer, Legendre. His activity extended
to the political field as inspector-general of public instructon and later
as inspector-general of the libraries of France. Soon difficulties of
another nature overtook him, as he was accused of appropriating books
and manuscripts from French libraries to his own use, in spite of the
fact that he had previously offered his valuable collection as a whole,
consisting of some 30,000 books and 2,000 manuscripts to the Royal
Library of Paris on the rejected condition that it be kept intact as the
Libri Collection. His conviction of the misuse of the national libraries
occurred, many say unjustly, in 1805 and he was again an exile, living
in England as a fugitive from the law; we will not say justice. His
library was sold at auction in England, many of the works finding their
way into the hands of Prince Boncompagni and after the dispersal of
his library into the Plimpton collection and the private library of
David Eugene Smith.

Prince Baldassarre Boncompagni, who gathered together a second
famous collection of mathematical books and manuscripts, came nat-
urally by his interest in scientific work, as he belonged to that same
princely family as Pope Gregory XIII., who revised the calendar.
While eminent as a contributor to mathematical literature, Boncom-
pagni's greater service was as a patron of the science. At his own ex-
pense he published the " Bulletin of the Bibliography and History of
the Mathematical and Physical Sciences," running through twenty
volumes, with many valuable contributions by German, French and
Italian scholars to the history of mathematics and astronomy. Even
more important were his numerous publications in regard to Leonard
of Pisa, who flourished at the beginning of the thirteenth century and
to whom was due in a large measure the spread of the Arabic numerals
in Italy and Europe. The publications of Boncompagni included two
large volumes of the writings of Leonard of Pisa and two Latin versions
of the Arabic work of Mohammed ben Musa, al-Khowarazmi, who made
the Hindu art of reckoning known to the Arabs in the early ninth
century ; these Latin versions were made by a Spaniard and an English-
man, both of whom studied at that Moslem center of learning, Toledo,
in the early twelfth century. Prince Boncompagni's magnificent col-
lection was offered, on certain mild conditions, to the city of Rome, but
was refused. While in printed works of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries this library was not as complete as is the Plimpton, yet the
equal of this collection of old mathematical manuscripts will doubtless
never again be held by any private library. The sale at auction of these
books took place as recently as 1898.

234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The small collection of Augustus De Morgan is worthy of note, as it
furnished the stimulus for the publication of the first work dealing
wholly with the bibliograhy of arithmetic, De Morgan's " Arithmetical
Books/' published in London in 1847. Of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries De Morgan described some seventy arithmetics, while the
" Eara Arithmetica " describes well over four hundred. A quotation
from the prefatory letter by the great English mathematician in which
the book is inscribed to the Eev. George Peacock, a writer on the history
of arithmetic, is worth giving : " The most worthless book of a bygone
day is a record worthy of preservation. Like a telescopic star, its
obscurity may render it unavailable for most purposes; but it serves,
in hands which know how to use it, to determine the place of more
important bodies." De Morgan's felicity of expression in his numerous
publications — he was an extensive contributor to encyclopedias — sug-
gests his kinship to the present popular novelist, William Frend De
Morgan, his son.

While the " Arithmetical Books " by De Morgan dealt wholly with
arithmetical works, many others have treated the bibliography of mathe-
matics. One of the earliest to give fairly extensive bibliographical
references to mathematical literature is the " Kitab al-Fihrist," or
" Book of Eecords," an Arabic treatise written in a.d. 987. The mathe-
matical section of this large book was translated into German by H.
Suter and appeared in Leipzig in 1892. The author, who went by the
melodious name of Abou'l-Faradsch Mohammed ibn Ishak, or more com-
monly by the name Ibn Abi Ja'kub al-Nadim, included all the writers
known to him, of whatever nationality. The Kitab al-Fihrist is of the
greatest importance in the history of mathematics, as it is, indeed, in
the history of the development of Christianity, for the writer describes
various early sects of the christians. An appreciably large part of our
knowledge of Greek mathematics comes from such Arabic sources, for
the Arabs kept the spark of Greek learning alive while Europe was in
the darkest of the dark ages.

Our interest, however, is in the bibliographers who treated the early
printed works. Gerard Joannis Vossius in 1650 published in Amster-
dam his work, " On the Four Arts," which is an unreliable mixture of
bibliographical and historical material. Naturally many histories of
mathematics treated also the bibliography of the subject. The first
German work to attempt a somewhat complete list of early printed
books in mathematics was the " Einleitung zur mathematischen Biicher-
kentnis," which J. E. Scheibel completed in 1769 and of which at least
two editions appeared. Other German publications, purely bibliograph-
ical, are F. G. A. Murhard's " Literatur der mathematischen Wissen-
schaften " of 1797 and J. Eogg's " Handbuch der mathematischen
Literatur," which catalogued and described books from the invention of

A UNIQUE COLLECTION OF ARITHMETICS 235

printing up to 1830. The more general treatises on bibliography like
those by Graesse and Hain and Copinger also touch this field, although
of necessity only incidentally.

Aside from these there have been some purely national works like
the " Bibliography of the Lowlands " of the mathematical and physical
sciences by Bierens de Haan and the " Biblioteca Mathematica Italiana,"
by Pietro Eiccardi. Professor Smith's " Kara Arithmetica " contains,
for the period which it treats, more titles of Italian works than does
Eiccardi and more German than does Murhard or Eogg. In general,
we may say, it is more complete for its specialty than any of the bib-
liographies hitherto published. The " Eara Arithmetica " may be said
to be, with the exception of slight additions, the final bibliography of
this field. It may safely be predicted that for centuries to come no
other authority will appear to contest its claim to first place.

236 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

JOHN DEE AND HIS "FRUITFUL PREFACE"

By MARY ESTHER TRUEBLOOD

MT. HOLYOKE COLLEGE

IT may be necessary to introduce this " faithful student of the school
of verity," for his contribution to human thought was of the kind
that is easily absorbed in the sum total of the period, while the man
himself remains little known to any but his contemporaries. The
writer's introduction to him was through his " fruitful preface " to the
first translation of Euclid's " Elements " into English printed in 1570.
That long preface is an interesting document in the development of
intellectual freedom as well as in the history of science. It was ad-
dressed not so much to learned men as to the author's countrymen at
large, though there was an occasional side glance at the university
pedants. It expresses ideas strikingly like those for which the name
of Francis Bacon stands, though written when Bacon was a boy of nine
years. In it the author makes a vigorous appeal to the men of the time
to shake themselves free from the commentational habit of the middle
ages — to consider that the Greeks and Romans, who were held in such
reverence, had not achieved all that was to be achieved. " Master
Dee " was fully aware of the state of opinion that must be contended
against. He says :

Well, I am nothing affrayde of the disdayne of some such, as thinke Sciences
and Artes to be but Seven. Perhaps those such may, with ignorance and shame
enough, come short of them seven also: and yet nevertheless they can not pre-
scribe a certaine number of Artes: and in each certain unpassable boundes, to
God, Nature, and man's Industrie. New Artes dayly rise up: and there was
no such order taken, that all Artes should in one age, or in one land, or of one
man be made knowen to the world.

The immediate and ostensible purpose of the preface was to attract
attention to the newly translated " Elements." The author begins :

Neither do I think it mete for so strange matter (as now is ment to be
published) and to so strange an audience, to be bluntly, at first put forth with-
out a peculiar Preface.

In his pride in the achievements of England in the reign of
Elizabeth, John Dee was at one with his countrymen, and whether
consciously or unconsciously he appealed to men through the motive
dominant in that period when he explained at great length how the
" wonderful applications of mathematics " might be used for the glori-
fication of the country. At the same time, the author sounds in
advance a distinct seventeenth century note in suggesting that the laws
governing natural phenomena might be better understood by being
treated mathematically, and foreshadows the modern " Precisions and
Approximations-mathematik " when he speaks of " allowing somewhat

JOHN DEE 237

to the imperfection of Nature not answerable to the preciseness of
demonstration."

The preface is framed for such
who well can, (and also will) use their outward senses to the glory of God, the
benefite of their Country, and their own secret contentation, or honest prefer-
ment on this earthly Scaffold. To them I will orderly recite, describe and
declare a great number of Artes, from our two Mathematicall fountaines, de-
rived into the fields of Nature. Whereby such Sedes, and Rotes, as lye depe
hyd in the ground of Nature, are refreshed, quickened, and provoked to grow,
shote up, floure, and give frute, infinite, and incredible. ... At this time I
define an Arte to be a Methodicall complete doctrine, having abundancy of
sufficient, and peculiar matter to deale with, by the allowance of the Metaphys-
icall Philosopher: the knowledge whereof, to humaine state is necessarye. And
that I account, an Art Mathematicall derivative, which by Mathematicall dem-
onstrative Method, in Numbers, or Magnitudes, ordereth and confirmeth his
doctrine, as much and as perfectly, as the matter subject will admit.

It seems certain that John Dee had also a conscious belief in the
value to science itself of the application of its principles. He invites
his reader to " consider the infinite desire of knowledge, and incredible
power of man's Search and Capacitye how, they jointly have waded
farder by mixtying of speculation and practise." Compare with this
a sentence by Ernst Haeckel written three centuries later :

We must welcome as one of the most fortunate steps in the direction of a
solution of the great cosmic problems the fact that of recent years there is a
growing tendency to recognize the two paths which alone lead thereto —
experience and thought, or speculation to be of equal value, and mutually
complementary.1

John Dee's long life covers a dramatic period in the history of the
development of thought, and as the most widely known English scholar
of his generation his education and wanderings are interesting. It was
in 1526 that the books were burned in Oxford in the futile attempt to
stop the new learning. In the following year John Dee was born of
the ancient family of Dees of Eadnorshire. His father, Eowland Dee,
was by some accounts a vintner in London, by others he is described as
gentleman sewer to Henry VIII. Whatever his occupation, he was a
friend to the universities, and in 1542 sent his son to St. John's College,
Cambridge. Here he remained, first as student, then as foundation
fellow, until 1546. When in the same year Trinity College was founded
by patent of Henry VIII. , Dee was made one of the original fellows and
was, as he says, assigned there to be the "under reader of the Greek
tongue." At the same time he was occupied with mathematical and
astronomical studies and on " going down " gave to Trinity his astro-
nomical instruments.

At that time the men of the universities seemed not to aspire to
know more than was to be learned from Plato and Aristotle. That
John Dee had a mental appetite beyond the ability of Cambridge to
satisfy appears from his account of his wanderings.

1 " Riddle of the Universe," p. 18.

238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

After I was Batchelor of Arts, I went beyond the seas (Anno 1547 — May)
to speak and confer with some learned men and chiefly Mathematicians. . . .
Anno 1548 I was made Master of Artes. I became a student at Lovain 1548
midsummer, and there I made abode, till the 15th of July 1550. . . . From
Lovaine I took my journey towards Paris Anno 1550, . . . where within a few
days (at the request of some English Gentlemen, made with me to do some-
what there for the honour of my Country) I did undertake to read freely and
publicly Euclid's Elements Geometrical ... a thing never done publicly in any
University of Christendome. My auditory in Rhemes College was so great . . .
that the Mathematical Schooles could not hold them; for many were fain, with-
out the schooles at the windows, to be auditors and spectators as they best
could help themselves thereto. I did also dictate upon every proposition,
besides the first exposition.2

John Dee was held in high esteem not only in Paris and Louvain,
but at almost all the courts of Europe. He relates (and there is no
reason to question the statement) that he might have served five Chris-
tian emperors, namely, " Charles V, Ferdinand, Maximilian, this
Rudolph and this present Moscovite," but Queen Elizabeth " very gra-
ciously " took him into her service. Just what the service was that is
referred to here is not evident, but the Queen called upon " Master
Dee " for a great variety of services. At one time he instructed her in
astrology, using the book which he had written for the Emperor Maxi-
milian. Once he was sent for post-haste to prevent mischief to her
majesty's person apprehended from a waxen image of her, found in
Lincoln's Inn Fields with a pin stuck in its breast. In 1577 the queen
sent for Dee to come to Windsor on account of a comet, and for three
days she listened to his discourse and speculations on the subject. Five
years earlier there had appeared a brilliant star in " Cassiopeise " that
caused such consternation among the people that John Dee and Thomas
Digges united in an attempt to give an explanation and bring to an
end the terror of the people. As a result Dee printed in 1573 his
" Parallactics commentationis praxeosque nucleum," but not content
with that, he printed in the same year a work entitled " de Stella
admiranda in Cassiopeia? asterismo ccelitus demissa ab orbem usque
Veneris." Knowing the superstitions of the times, Dee frequently urges
the desirability of man's understanding nature. After enumerating
various natural phenomena, he asks :

Is it not commodious for man to know the very true cause, and occasion
naturall ? Yea, rather, is it not greatly against the Souverainty of man's nature,
to be so overshot and abused, with thinges (at hand) before his eyes?

In 1580 the queen desired to know her title to countries discovered
in different parts of the world and Dee drew up for her two large rolls
of description and maps which were approved by the queen and Lord
Burleigh. Not only the queen, but explorers, men of affairs and the
learned men of Europe sought him out. To him came Sir Humphry
Gilbert and John Davis to talk of the Northwest Passage (John Dee

2 Dee's " Compendious Rehearsal."

JOHN DEE 239

himself wrote two works on navigation). The East India Company
called upon him to improve the compass. Certain large landholders in
England who had mines extending under their boundary lines came to
him to settle their controversy. In 1582 Dee was urging the Queen to
improve the calendar, and two years later she and her ministers re-
quested him to make the necessary calculations. The Eoman Church
amended the calendar on the supposition that all that was done at the
council of Nice with regard to chronology was correct and proposed the
omission of ten days, but Dee's calculations led him to recommend the
omission of eleven days. He agreed, however, to compromise for the
sake of uniformity, providing the facts should be publicly announced.
The plans were approved by the lay members of the committee, Thomas
Digges, Henry Savile and Mr. Chambers, but opposed by the arch-
bishop and bishops on the ground chiefly that the project of reforming
the calendar emanated from the See of Eome. The reform was thus
delayed one hundred and seventy years, but Dee's able treatise was
preserved and was made use of when the change actually took place.
The original has passed through the hands of many eminent mathe-
maticians, and is now in the Ashmole collection at Oxford.

This treatise on the calendar, the " Fruitful Preface " and the
memorial to Queen Mary in regard to a royal library are the most
significant of his seventy-nine works, many of which were never printed.
In the last-named Dee called the queen's attention to the fact that with
the destruction of the cloisters there was no longer any place of safety
for manuscripts, and that these were now being destroyed or scattered
broadcast. He set forth the loss this would be to history and science,
and proposed that a commission should be appointed to establish a royal
library — he himself undertaking to procure copies of famous manu-
scripts at the Vatican. Whether because of his youth or because of the
indifference of the Queen, he was not listened to, but in his own library
at Mortlake he collected 4,000 books, of which he tells us " 700 were
ancient manuscripts in Greek, Latin and Hebrew."

John Dee early accepted the Copernican theory and was apparently
among the first to understand and give due weight to the writings of
Roger Bacon, to whom he refers as a " philosopher of this land native
(the floure of whose worthy fame, can never dye nor wither)." It was
to him doubtless that Dee owed his high valuation of experiment in
science. He begs of his readers to

Esteeme one Drop of Truth (yea in Natural Philosophie) more worth, than
whole Libraries of Opinions undemonst rated or not answering to Nature's Law,
and your experience. . . . Words and arguments are no sensible certifying: Hor
the full and final frute of Sciences practisable.

That many of the opinions held by Dee were not common among
even the learned of his countrymen is evident from the manner in which
he exhorts them in his writings. He too held out a hand to " divine

24o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Plato/' sometimes with an apology, but from his influence Dee had
escaped farther than he himself perhaps knew. The amount of space
given in the " Fruitful Preface " to the explanation of the uses of
mathematics and the record of his varied activities give abundant proof
that this scholar believed in making knowledge effective for the benefit
of mankind. It is impossible to go through his writings without sus-
pecting that here is one source of Bacon's ideas. John Dee preceded
Francis Bacon at Cambridge by thirty years, and were there no positive
proof of their acquaintance it would not be probable that a man known
all over Europe for his learning and frequently called into service by
the Queen and her ministers should remain unknown to a young courtier
with the omnivorous intellect of a Francis Bacon. For many years Dee
kept an intermittent diary on the margin of his almanac in which is
found this note :

Aug. 11 — 1582. Mr. Bacon and Mr. Phillips of the court called.

Sir Nicholas Bacon was prominent at the court of Queen Elizabeth
and his two sons, Anthony and Francis, were court favorites, while yet
in their teens. As Sir Nicholas died in 1579 and Anthony Bacon was
on the continent in 1582, the " Mr. Bacon of the court " could not well
have been other than the young Francis. According to Bacon's own
testimony, he wrote his first letter on the " Instauration of Philosophy "
about 1583.

Looking at this " faithful student of the school of verity," this " old
forworne mathematician," as he styles himself, we see a scholar familiar
with the contributions of all men up to his time, a pilgrim to every
shrine of knowledge; we see a councillor of kings, an adviser of ex-
plorers and men of affairs, a proud patriot, a profound believer in the
ability of man to obtain sovereignty over the forces of nature, a cour-
ageous man throwing down the gauntlet to authority. But there is a
reverse side to the picture. The desire to force the secrets of nature,
of which he had a deep presentiment, became a ruling passion. In the
midst of a discussion of " Statike (experiment of the Balance) " he
breaks off with this prayer :

Oh that men wist what profit, (all manner of ways) by this Arte might
grow, to the liable examiner and diligent practiser. Tho only, knowest all
things precisely (0 God) . . . who hast created all things in Number, Waight,
and Measure: and hath wayed the mountains and hils in a Balance: who hast
peysed in thy hand both Heaven and Earth, . . . and being farther advertised
by thy merciful goodness that, three principall wayes, were, of thee, used in
Creation of all thy creatures, namely, Number, Waight and Measure, and for
as much as of Number and Measure, the two Artes (ancient, famous, and to
humaine uses most necessary) are, all ready, sufficiently known and extant:
This third key, we beseche thee (through thy accustomed goodness) that it
may come to the nedefull and sufficient knowledge of such thy servants, as in
thy workmanship would gladly finde thy true occasions. . . . Amen.

Mervaile nothing at this pang (godly friend, you Gentle and Zealous
Student). An other day perchance, you will perceive, what occasion moved me.

JOHN DEE 241

Could John Dee have lived another century he might have found in
the work of Isaac Newton some answer to his prayer. The very in-
tensity of the longing to understand the mysteries of the universe was
in part the cause of the errors into which he fell. His belief in astrol-
ogy and in the value of the alchemical experiments on which he spent
so much of his energy and substance may be accounted an error of the
time rather than of the individual, but his long connection with Edward
Kelley — charlatan and magician — is not easily reconciled with his intel-
ligence. Kelley, at first an apothecary, became an avowed dealer in
magic and seems, for a time, to have made a complete dupe of Dee, who
in all good faith admitted him as a valued assistant in his researches
and travels. Between the years 1582 and 1589 they were making
alchemical experiments, peering into crystals, communing with spirits,
etc. — part of the time in England, part of the time on the continent —
chiefly at Prague. When in 1590 the real character of his masterful
assistant became apparent, Dee experienced the keenest sorrow over
misplaced confidence.

But for the time of his wardenship of Manchester College, 1596-
1604, he spent the remaining years of his life at Mortlake in poverty
and sadness. Queen Elizabeth, in passing to and from Eichmond, often
stopped to question and console him and sent her own physicians when
he was ill. From the records of the time " Master " Dee seems to have
made a deep impression on the people round about, both because of his
learning and of his handsome presence. Aubrey speaks of him as a great
peacemaker among his neighbors, and adds " a mighty good man was
he." By some Dee was accounted a conjuror, and so oppressed was he
by the charge that he petitioned James I. in 1604 that he might be
tried and cleared of the horrible slander. After the king had inquired
into the nature of his studies the petition was refused as unnecessary.
Up to his death in 1608 Dee retained the profoundest interest in experi-
ments. His magic crystal and cakes are preserved in the British
Museum.

Though his actual contribution to science was not great, John Dee
belonged to and had an important part in the transition from the com-
mentatorial period of the middle ages to that time of bold originality
and vivid reality — the time of Bacon, Kepler, Galileo and of their young
contemporary, Descartes. His eyes at least were above the plane on
which Francis Bacon stood. Forerunners such as Dee prepared the
way for the stupendous achievements of the seventeenth century — that
century made notable by the introduction of the most powerful mathe-
matical methods and by the use of these methods to obtain an under-
standing of the laws that govern the phenomena of nature.

VOL. lxxvii.— 17.

242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE MAKING OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR

By THOMAS H. MONTGOMERY, Jr.

PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

f I THE question is old but important, how far a man may influence
-*- his destiny and career by power of will and by training. Very
often it is argued that his future lies entirely with himself, that he is
modeling clay in his own hands. From this comes the expression of
" the self-made man." Yet " there's a divinity that shapes our ends,
rough hew them how we will," a might that the biologist calls inherit-
ance. For by no manner of endeavor can a man make himself a bird
or fish, nor can he divorce his mind from his body. An organism may
be introduced to new conditions of life, by volition or by circumstance,
and though it may change to some extent, it can not become entirely
different from what it was at the start and still continue to live. As the
twig is bent the tree inclines, that is, bends off from the normal path,
but it does not become another kind of tree. The gardener can change
the growth of a flower by placing certain solutions in the soil, but he
simply adds another substance to it; or the experimenter can prevent a
skeleton from developing by withdrawing from the medium certain
salts, but he has only subtracted a certain substance. Some qualities
may receive an added impulse, others may be retarded, monsters may
be engendered, but no man has yet changed one being into a very dif-
ferent one.

Thus there are genetically diverse kinds of beings, and this is as
true for men as for the rest of creation. What will be the outcome of
any individual is to greatest extent a matter of his inheritance, it is
blood that tells. All of us make our advent naked and helpless, all
seemingly equally dependent upon the maternal care, all have to learn
by experience. Yet no two human infants are alike, except to the inex-
perienced eyes of an old bachelor, for because they are of different
parentage they possess at the beginning different qualities, and it is
probable that infants arc as unlike as full-grown men and women,
though in not the same ways. Indeed, every step in our growth has been
conditioned by our ancestry. For the organism is much more than a set
of substances and structures, it is a chain of processes linked continu-
ously with the remote past and the outcome depends very largely upon
the initial condition. This is the cardinal point that educators have
grasped only recently, and about which some of them are still strangely
in doubt. A man can not mold himself entirely, nor can his teachers
wholly change him, for he is largely fashioned by his inheritance.

But though inheritance handles the reins, the course of life depends

THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 243

much upon the finding of the right road. Only the Universalgenie,
if such exist, could arrive at the goal by any of the divergent roads.

The true aim and project of the university seems to me to be, in the
first instance, to help the man to find himself, and only in the second
instance to educate him. For the reason that this may appear an
unusual view it should be explained. Universities arose out of the
desire for freedom of thought, out of the wish to break the fetters of
formalism. At various times, at Salamanca and Bologna, Strassburg,
Paris and Oxford, assembled groups of men who had become dissatisfied
with the crystallized curriculum offered by the church schools, who felt
the curb on thought. Consequently they segregated, and from their
number selected those men as teachers who had new and fertile ideas.
Thus within such an assemblage all subjects came gradually to be pro-
fessed, and each man chose his disciplines according to his inclinations.
That is to say, universities in their inception were places for freedom
of choice of subject, and this has remained the ideal in at least the more
influential continental universities. One expression of it is our elective
system, but it is pursued still more broadly in Germany. There the
student comes from the fairly rigid curriculum of the Eealschule, or the
still narrower course of the gymnasium, to the university where he may
select just as many courses and just what ones he cares for. The result
is a double one: he frequently chooses as few lectures as possible, and
then enjoys several Bummeljahre; but drones are no honey getters, and,
provided he need a profession, he sooner or later comes to hear lectures
on a great variety of subjects until he finds the one that most engrosses
his attention, when he devotes himself to that. This system, in the
nearly complete freedom of choice it allows, offers the fruits of all sci-
ences, so that by browsing in this diverse orchard the student may find
his peculiar taste.

A graduate department is not an Eden simply because all are com-
manded to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Men come to it
from undergraduate courses where they have followed rather delimited
curricula; in it they are free to make choice of the profession of their
lives. It is the duty of the graduate school, the university proper as
seen in the historical setting, to help each man to find himself, which is
but a paraphrase of the Socratic " know thyself/'

Students come with different innate propensities ; they should choose
the fruit that comes nearest their hearts. The decisive step towards
success is to choose wisely, which means simply to elect that which
attracts most strongly. That is, one should place himself in the soil
for which providence or his inheritance meant him, for only by so doing
can one develop his capabilities to the full. And if there be one duty
set upon us, a duty to our neighbors as well as to ourselves, it is to do
that for which we are best fitted, granted only that a man be of sane
social judgment.

244 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The occupation of a lifetime is not to be chosen by cold reason, but
by the warmth of the heart. When friends go and the purse gets lean,
a man may be kept warm by the enthusiasm for his work. When we
always recur to our work with delight we make the most of our futures.
Much of the success of an investigator lies in his choosing rightly, and
the test of one's fitness is the durability of one's zeal.

Many and varied temptations there are to lead one astray from such
a choice, the most seductive of which is escape from financial care. All
of us can appreciate this, and the more perhaps because the multitude
is apt to measure social standing by material wealth. But we will not
linger over this time-worn and hoary subject of dispute, beyond noting
that such thinkers as Dante and Harvey, who added so marvelously to
our understanding of man, were neither rich nor yet in society. What
immediately concerns us is that the investigator requires all of his
ability to achieve results, and he certainly will have less success if he
sacrifice his stronger inclinations for any social or mercenary reason.
Let our financial futures take care of themselves, let us guard our
talents. There is room at the top; it is only the bottom rungs that
seem insecure.

Most men when they have obtained their doctor's degrees feel sud-
denly helpless, thrown out upon a chilling world. As a result most feel
they should secure at once some sort of a remunerative position, and they
are apt to think the position better the more it pays. This seems to me
to be on the whole a pitiable error, and the reason why is very simple.
For if }roung men have decided upon scientific research they surely will
require time for their researches. It is rarely the case that they can oc-
cupy any school position and still have opportunity for their own work.
Therefore the positions that are best for them are ones that make the
least demands upon their time, and most of these are found only in
universities. Suppose then a man should be given the choice of an
instructorship at $1,500, in a high school or small college in which he
would have no time for investigation, and of a graduate fellowship of
$500, in which he would have every minute for his work, he should
choose the latter no matter what worldly sacrifices he must make. For
by this choice he would be gaining time, he would have opportunity to
make a name for himself, and if he did not lose heart but remained
true to himself he would certainly arrive at the proper kind of a posi-
tion. If a man become side-tracked into a school teacher's chair, for
the poor reason that he gets a living salary quicker, he will never be
heard of and never get out of it to realize his ideals. The dollar may
seem big, but time is more productive capital than money.

Yet, at the same time, it should be noted that a certain amount of
teaching is good for the investigator. For in the first place a body of
students enables him to farm out parts of his problem, and by estab-
lishing in this way a special school he is able to accomplish much more

THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 245

than he could single-handed. He can not by himself answer the whole
of his problem, but with the help of a corps of students, each prosecuting
some particular part, he may be able to; and the students themselves
gain by cooperating in such a unified project. For no one man has the
ability to follow out all the clues that suggest themselves to his mind.
And in the second place, a certain amount of teaching is almost neces-
sary to prevent a man from becoming narrow, and to keep him in active
touch with all sides of his subject. It is particularly important for an
investigator to teach undergraduate courses, though these are the most
difficult to present well, for that keeps him in touch with the broader
and more generally comprehensible parts of his work. The occasional
meeting with younger and fresher minds is stimulating, and clear
presentation of a subject to them often clarifies our own ideas. It is
probably on account of their teaching that university men are generally
broader than museum curators.

Given then the opportunity to measure the different paths of knowl-
edge, and supposing a man has made his choice congenial and has
resolved to stick to it, a great step has been taken. Yet this is, after all,
merely the planting of the right seed in the proper ground, much re-
mains before the harvest. To make the simile true we should imagine
that the case is one where a man is at once seed, farmer and harvest,
limited and constrained by his inherited powers. We have to find our
particular effective seed, to set it out with care, and to keep its nurture
mainly in our hands.

The subject matter of a science can be taught us, but we have to
learn to investigate mainly through our own endeavors. The teacher
out of his experience can indicate a problem awaiting solution; he
should be able to decide whether it be soluble, but the real work, the
research, is with us. One can learn investigation only by investigation,
and each man must find his own path through the maze.

Encyclopedic knowledge is often more an impediment than a help
to investigation; the two are contradictory. The student may become
so charged with scholastic learning that he has no room left for think-
ing. And as we recall the creative thinkers of the past, we find they
were on the whole rather undertrained men, in consequence untired
and active in thought, picking up knowledge only when it was needed.
For knowledge is not an end but only a tool. Yet there still lingers the
idea that during the three or four years the student devotes to his
doctorate, he should try to learn the whole of his subject ! University
teaching, it seems to me, should be called successful only when it helps
a man to independent thinking. It is wholesome to recognize our
limitations, to realize that we can not carry heavy freight and at the
same time make headway. The mind that has to interpret must be
fresh and agile, not loaded with the thousand and one opinions of fore-
runners. Let us avoid burdening our strength with laborious compila-

246 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

tion. We sometimes think we are getting wise when we are only get-
ting rusty.

It is this consideration that indicates a man should receive very
little help with his doctor's thesis, he should sink or swim without the
help of a convenient raft — or professor. For then is the witching time
when he is finding out whether he holds the power of research, and he
alone can tell whether he has it; he can tell by a certain elation and
undefined feeling of strength. The student should be given a soluble
problem for his thesis, also certain technical aid, then left rather severely
to his own devices. If he succeed he will have proved his ability ; if he
fail it is still well, for he will be saved from an ill-chosen career. "While,
on the other hand, the result of aid constantly given is what we may
call the " one-thesis man," he who finishes his thesis, to be sure, and gets
his degree, but who afterwards, when he is thrown upon himself, proves
unable to carry out further investigation. The best test of a leader of
a school of investigation is not the number of doctors graduated, but
the number who afterwards actively continue to investigate. For their
own good students should prosecute their problems so far as possible
without extraneous help.

The highest that graduate work can foster is independent thinking,
not scholastic learning. A man may be led to knowledge, but he can
not be made to think.

There are three particular gifts that the investigator should cherish
to his utmost, imagination, judgment and the maintenance of an ideal.

As the insect stretches out his antennae, feeling and smelling at once,
forming thereby an idea of what is ahead of him, so it is that by the
help of our imagination we can reach out into the unknown. Blind
searching for a clue is not profitable, and it is waste of time to expect
some happy fortune to bring an answer to us. Science is not a game
of chance. It is necessary to form tentative explanations, and the work-
ing hypothesis is the outcome of the imagination much more than of the
reason. The reason deals with the known and experienced, it is the
imagination that must as a pioneer leap into the unknown. Thus the
scientist makes his soundings and feels the depths. He has to forecast
various possibilities, and to test these severally. Yet the imagination is
only a feeler and not a leg to stand upon. We must bear in mind that
hypotheses are but suggestions, invaluable though they be in directing
effort, and that the real labor of the scientist is the testing of his
hypotheses. The immediate subject matter of all of us, physicist,
mathematician, chemist, philologist, whatever our calling may be, is
hypothesis, and out of hypotheses we have to reach explanations; an
explanation so attained is a theory. We must not confuse hypothesis
with theory, nor inflict upon suffering colleagues, much less publish,
all our hypotheses. If, as Goethe says, all theory is gray, how colorless
must hypothesis be until it has been turned to account.

THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 247

For these reasons the man of science may be very directly benefited
by a study of the great poets, and he will learn thereby how close is the
bond between science and art. Yet many still hold the strange idea
that the scientist lacks all fancy, as though he could ever explain without
the help of it! He who has no gift of imagination has no place in
science.

It is by what we call judgment that we measure our hypotheses.
This comes in the main from experience, is capable of nurture, and is
well characterized as good sense.

In his haste a man may try to run straight through a briar patch,
but if he has common sense he will, like the renowned Br'er Eabbit,
hunt out some trail; so he will reach the clearing quicker though he
can not show so many honorable scars. Herein lies the main value of
studying the lives of the masters of thought. Of each man who has
markedly advanced knowledge we should make a hero, and humbly try
to follow his footsteps by analyzing his methods of work. Indeed,
this study of personalities should not be limited to the great, for from
every man that we meet we may learn something to help our own work-
ing method; that is, we may learn if we try to. Each of us realizes
that we can not give a correct estimate of a man's work unless we
know his personality, Shakspere always excepted. Therefore to judge
of scientific data we can be greatly aided by measuring personalities.
It is then suggested, to help us to a sound judgment, to analyze the
individualities of others, to see how they came by their results. This
is the chief value of all collegial intercourse in seminar and society
meetings. A fellow student is often the best of all teachers. And for
the same reason it is well worth the time both to study the history of
one's subject, that is, the methods and especially motives of its found-
ers, and to read reverently and lovingly classical monographs whether
they be now fashinable or not. How many of us do actually read
Aristotle, Newton and Helmholtz? It is such study that enables us
to see modern discoveries in their proper perspective, and restrains us
from fancying each mole hill to be a mountain.

Breadth of judgment may be helped by catholicity of interest.
Some men seem to do their best by devoting every energy to one
problem, seeing nothing outside of it. Their mind is a short-focus
lens with consequent penetration, but it can not see the garden for the
weeds. It is perhaps more wholesome, however, and it certainly leads
to a nicer mental balance, to respect all good endeavor and to try to
understand at least the fundamentals of our sister subjects. This indi-
cates the choice of a problem that is not circumscribed, but that leads
into an ever-widening field. It further indicates that we should breed
acquaintance with subjects quite apart from our own, to see the rela-
tions of our work to that of others. Expression of contempt for any

248 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

source of knowledge is an acknowledgment of ignorance, and meager-
ness of ability is to be measured by narrowness. That investigator with
a foreshortened horizon will find everything small.

We hear it said that in science all facts have an equal value, just
as all links in a chain have equal importance. If this were so, then
all problems of science should have an equal significance and it would
make no difference what choice of problems were made. But the
premise is wrong, because we generally recognize that some phenomena
have very wide bearings while others do not, or at least do not in our
present understanding of them. Thus the phenomenon of the size of
an animal has not nearly so much significance as the phenomena of its
rate of growth or alternation of generations. We measure the value of
a phenomenon by the number of ideas we associate with it, that is, its
relative degree of complexity. As in art a painting of a basket of fruit,
no matter how excellent the technique, can not be compared in value
with a study of a human face, so in science the discovery and descrip-
tion of a new muscle, no matter how accurately made, can not be paral-
leled with an investigation of the process of formation of that muscle.
The human face and the process of differentiation call up ever-widening
associations, while the basket of fruit and the muscle suggest a meal.
To be sure, a master artist might make the basket of fruit appear
celestial, and a great anatomist make the muscle seem extraordinary,
but they would still suggest a meal, even though a meal for angels or
heroes. Men will differ as to the relative importance of any thing, and
we have no right to prefer our estimates to others. But it is generally
acknowledged in science that the investigation of a process is of a
higher order than the contemplation of one particular step, the number
of comparisons possible being the criterion of value. Thus it is certain
that all problems are not of equal value, because they have very dif-
ferent bearings. All need solution, they are of sufficient diversity to
appeal to all types of mind, but a man should assure himself that his
problem has really broad significance. And when the layman ap-
proaches us on the manner of our work we should not tell him, as is
often done, that he can not understand it because he is not a scientist;
for if we can not make it intelligent to him it is clear we have no good
comprehension of its bearings, and the fault is with us and not with
him. Every scientific research has some connection with human inter-
ests we should understand what the connection is ; if we do not under-
stand this we are to blame for any lack of sympathy. It is a duty of
the investigator towards his subject to make it comprehensible to the
layman, and when he does so his merits will be acknowledged, but not
before.

Like every other process, so thought needs time, and by reflection
is meant thought pursued at leisure. When a certain result has been

TEE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 249

won in our researches, and its bearings seem misty and uncertain, we
gain nothing by rilling the ink pot and knotting a cold towel around
our heads in full determination to settle matters. Dogged does not
always do it. Put the idea away in some corner of the mind to give it
time to germinate, then bring it out at intervals for consideration.
This mental chewing of the cud is wholesome because natural. When
the way seems darkest and most beset with stumbling blocks we may be
nearest the door, and it is best to go slowly in the dark. We attain our
conclusions at unexpected moments and have generally to wait until
they appear subconsciously, the time varying with the individual mind.

It is often an aid to reflection to drop for a while the subject that
has begun to worry us, to take up a different and fresh problem. This
alternation of subject is a necessary mental recreation and frequently
accomplishes more than long hammering. For any change of thought
is stimulating.

Yet the investigator need not be like Heine's " gray friend between
two bundles of hay," slowly starving to death because he can not decide ;
it is better that he choose unwisely than not choose at all, else he can
not maintain himself in the arena of thought. After all, if he eats one
of the bales of hay and learns later that the other was larger and
sweeter, he has not gone hungry.

It would seem to be on the average best for the general man to take
rather a middle stand in his judgments, which means to see the good in
both sides of any question. One should be neither too critical nor too
tolerant. New ideas are constantly emerging, many of them contradic-
tory to our own, and we have to cultivate a mode of meeting them,
not to be bristling like the fretful porcupine, nor yet to embrace them
eagerly because they are new. Also it is not safe to say an idea is
wrong because it is new. We should react towards views as towards our
fellow men, hunt for the best in them. Nothing is easier than to criti-
cize, nothing less constructive. Life is too short for full achievement,
unless Metchnikoff's prophecies may come true, and " Like as the waves
move on the pebbling beach, so do our minutes hasten to their end."
Then why misuse the moments in picking flaws ? In the orchard before
us we may readily find the insect-bitten fruit if we look for it, but what
pays is to gather the good. Whether it be right or wrong from the
philosophical aspect, the optimistic standpoint is the most wholesome,
and that man is happy who sees only the good in others — in their per-
sonalities as well as in their opinions. We all shun him who has the
squinting mind of noting only mistakes. Let us be fair to other men
even though we can not be impartial, if only for the reason that it is
the best policy, as Franklin would have said. For if we are not so, the
retort courteous will be harder than the blow we struck, and then will
be our time to wince.

25o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

We are least objective about ourselves and that is why we can never
decide what is our own merit and achievement. For while the ambi-
tion to excel is both justifiable and desirable, the true mirror of success
must be the eyes of others. Geniuses are really exceeding rare, yet
every man is inclined at some period or other of his existence to think
himself one, and a fool continues to think so. On the whole, we do
not deserve more praise than we get, the world's estimate being reason-
ably fair; and in fact it is incorrect to talk of deserts since each man
carves for himself his slice out of the cake of his own baking. Perhaps
the happiest stand we can take is to lose consciousness of self, to think
of results but not of our part in them, to come to comprehend that our
subject and the sunlit world outside of us is much more engrossing
than ourselves. From the philosophical side this attitude may be in-
correct. But a new philosophy is gradually forging ahead, that men
do not contain the whole universe in their minds, that phenomena are
not wholly subjective, but that nature is one great unit of which we are
only inconspicuous morsels. This is certainly the philosophy of biology.
It places us in a truer perspective, and aids us to be more objective
and therefore happier. Fortune is a fickle goddess who keeps beyond
those who seek her, to touch those who made their work their grail.
Thus what we accomplish, and how we have done it, is a matter to be
decided by other men and usually by other men of a later generation.
When we try to boost our own reputations they will surely receive a
great fall. Therefore let us try to forget ourselves and not be troubled
about our scientific levels. This will also save that waste of time and
good paper given to polemics. When some one overlooks our writings
or misrepresents them, we are apt to feel we should go him one better,
which may force us into such extremes that we think we can not in
honor back out. A published polemic is noisome, an airing of one's
dirty linen, and springs from a condition of megalocephaly. Our
work is with us, our repute with others. By being true to our work we
may attain a dignity never to be reached by self pushing. Science is
not a business market.

In any scientific inquiry he rightly receives the most credit who
presents a definite and positive solution. Such was the case with
Pasteur, in many ways the master mind of the nineteenth century ; what
he undertook he definitely settled. Most men attain to only conjec-
tures, but we should seek indisputable decisions. And a good method
is that of Darwin, to formulate a working hypothesis and then try
honestly to disprove it. Darwin gave as full and fair hearing to the
objections made against the theory of natural selection as to the evi-
dence for it. We may approximate this by using every check and
control. For we do not want the elusive possible or probable, rather the
decisive actual.

THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 251

But what especially lends dignity and strength is the maintenance
of an ideal. German students in their expansive intimacies discuss
their ideals quite openly, their " Lehensphilosophien " as they term
them. "We Anglo-Saxons are not inclined to talk of such matters. But
a man should keep a nohle aim in sight and never let it be hidden by the
clouds of circumstance. That ideal must be something much grander
than any detail we have immediately in hand, our several efforts only
approximations towards it. "We are, it seems to me, to consider the in-
vestigations of science as all directed to one end, though no man
will see its consummation, the interpretation of that great melody, the
universe. Here is a subject without end, all human knowledge may be
employed in its elaboration. Men of the world do not understand why
we are busying ourselves with fixing the exact date of the first render-
ing of a play, the number of times that a certain prefix occurs in the
writings of Pindar, the exact length of a heat wave, or the behavior of a
particular microscopic particle of one kind of organic cell. And in
themselves these are not great things; an average man with patience
and training might deal with them. They are on the whole so gen-
erally uninteresting that each has the world over only a small group of
devotees. But when they are seen as steps in a synthesis of explana-
tions their value is at once apparent. Our business is to weld all these
separated bits of knowledge together, to make of them a great sustain-
ing wall. And when the utilitarian inquires what will be gained by
this giant effort, be ready with the prompt reply: on this knowledge
depends our control of ourselves and of nature. Scientific inquiries
are not to be pursued wholly academically, as games to amuse. They
are attempts to explain the processes of nature, in order that we may
use this knowledge for the advancement of our kind. And it is as true
as the night follows the day, that explanation must precede application
and consequently human progress.

This is the apology for the investigator. He has to do neither with
the cataloguing and rearranging of facts, nor with their transmission,
but with the enlargement of knowledge by discovery and intrepretation.
Both stand for the development of character, but while the under-
graduate work is for the transmission of knowledge, the graduate de-
partment is for a higher aim, its increase. If it is difficult to garner
and hand over knowledge, it is still harder to add to it, and no faint
heart need try to be an investigator.

Our project is to try to decipher the nature of man and of the
universe, and for this there is full need of every iota of strength and
determination and talent there may be in us.

252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE CAUSE OF SOCIAL PEOGEESS AND OF THE EATE OF

INTEEEST

By Professor J. PEASE NORTON

YALE UNIVERSITY

IT has been generally considered by the scholars of the social sciences
that there is no fundamental cause in human societies for social
progress. Indeed, the whole Malthusian theory is to the effect that the
overwhelming rate of increase possible in human societies tends to keep
a considerable percentage of the members of a society on the threshold
of continuous poverty. A moral hopelessness characterizes the books of a
great many economists, when- they touch upon the subject of population.
By reason of these gloomy chapters, political economy has been termed
the dismal science.

How many established doctrines of good writers have been swept
away by the light of subsequent discoveries and later reasoning ! Were
it not for the high improbability of any one scientific doctrine long
standing without modification, I should hesitate seriously before ad-
vancing these notes on the views held by me and which are so com-
pletely at variance with the long-established and present theories of
the science of political economy with respect to population and interest.
Yet, because these views have greatly brightened my interest in all sub-
jects of human history, I am interested in subjecting them to early
criticism.

There seems to exist in the tendency of populations to increase in
numbers the cause of progress, which, if unimpeded by certain de-
structive agencies, which I have termed to assist me in my thinking
the " wastes of nations," would carry along on the waves of comfort
and prosperity an ever-increasing population up to an unassignable
limit, so great is the possibility at which a stationary state could be
maintained. These destructive agencies are not a product of the in-
crease in numbers, but they constitute the elements of the hostile en-
vironment against which progress has been continually made since the
earliest historic times.

Now a social group on any habitat at a given time exists through
the application of a series of arts which are possessed by the society
and are exercised over the environment. The arts existing at any time
may be inventoried and logically classified. The arts are productive
and are ways of doing things which bring a return. There are the arts
of the food supply, such as hunting, fishing, agriculture, food preser-

SOCIAL PROGRESS 253

vation and eventually food production by synthetic chemistry in the
broader classifications, of house building, of useful clothing, of hygiene,
etc. These arts are known in varying degrees of detail to some mem-
bers of the society.

There may be two specific arts known at a given time useful for
the accomplishing of the same result. We are apt to find that art in
current exercise which accomplishes the result with the smaller cost of
production. It is wonderful to contemplate how very closely cost of
production has been studied at all times. In the same classifications,
one art successively displaces another on the basis of reduction of cost
of production or saving of human effort.

But the art is very different from a material thing. The art is
immaterial and useful. Wealth is commonly defined as material and
useful. The art as well as the object of wealth may be possessed. The
value of wealth, of the material things which are useful, is the shadow
of the force of the arts, the immaterial things which create value. We
must distinguish sharply some of the characteristics of the arts. Napo-
leon once said : " But you can not outnumber the one brain."

In a great problem, a thousand ordinary brains put to work on the
same problem can not be added together. The results of all this medi-
ocre thinking will not surpass the products of the brain of a Newton, a
La Place, or a Napoleon. There is a degree or quality which can not
be gained at random by addition. In the mental tug-of-war, it is true
that we can not outnumber the one brain. The art is the product of the
" one brain," i. e., of the brain of a quality or degree slightly superior
to the brains around it. We, therefore, note that a superior brain is a
treasure for the community, provided the brain is put to work to solve
the problems of the present life.

Now, Professor Karl Pearson and Sir Francis Galton are wont to
define the exceptional man as one in a certain proportion of the popula-
tion. It is assumed that in a strain of the population, there is the " one
brain " in a hundred, in a thousand, in a million and in a hundred
million of persons, of increasing quality for each classification. Around
the lives of the " one brains " are gathered the essential narrative of
the history of their times.

But, our first theorem is that the value of an art or of an invention,
measured in a saving or a lessening of the previous cost of production,
is theoretically commensurable, and that this value for the same new art
varies with the population. In other words, the greater the population
at a given time, when a new art is discovered, the greater will be the
value of the art. If an art, say the invention of the sewing machine in
the clothing trade, is equal to saving two dollars per capita per annum
net over previous outlay, after making due allowance for new capital
invested in the machine, etc., the value of the new art is plainly the

254 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

savings per capita multiplied by the population and capitalized at the
proper rate of interest for new industries. If the population is one
hundred thousand and ten per cent, of a fair rate for capitalization, the
above example would produce $2,000,000 as the value of the invention.
If the population had happened to be one million, the value of the inven-
tion would have been $20,000,000. Consequently, we note that the
greater the population the greater will be the value of a new art.

The second theorem is, that the capitalized value of the old arts
in current exercise steadily increases with increasing population, since
the savings are effected for more people.

As a third theorem, we may assume that the new arts during any
period are the products of the inventive or exceptional minds, and that
the greater the population, the greater will be the number of exceptional
minds of each degree for the various classifications, so that the value
of the new arts during a year is the product of the exceptional minds
and the average inventive productivity for each degree.

Suppose that in a population of one million, we may expect that the
" one brain " in the million will produce an invention capable of saving
one dollar per capita per annum over existing arts. Capitalized at ten
per cent, the value of one year's product of this mind is ten million of
dollars. Now, let us assume that in two million of people, we shall find
two such men. The capitalized value of two such inventions as above
will be not twenty millions, but forty millions of dollars. In other
words, the capitalized value of new inventions for a given time tends to
vary at least as the square of the population, and, if we may imagine
that the " one brain " in two millions is of higher degree than in the
one million of population, the value of inventions will be at a greater
rate than the square of the population.

"We, therefore, arrive at the conclusion that the comfort and the
prosperity of a population tends to increase more rapidly than the popu-
lation on which it depends; that society tends to progress under the
law of increasing returns. It is also interesting to note that through
the workings of our law of social progress, the per capita increment
of value for arts varies with the population. In our illustrations above
the savings for each person in a one million population would be one
half that in a two-million population. We find in the above law an
explanation of the rise in wages, inasmuch as exceptional men in all
degrees tend to receive as wages or remuneration for services of the
same per-capita saving a sum proportional to the total population.

All this reasoning is theoretical. The same is true of the writings
regarding the Malthusian theory. But it would appear that the steady
progress made in average comfort by all nations of the world since the
remotest antiquity would favor the former rather than the latter reason-
ing. It would appear that there can be no more favoring circumstance

SOCIAL PROGRESS 255

than a steadily increasing population, provided the quality and fre-
quency of exceptionality are not diminishing through an untoward
reproductive selection.

How carefully should statesmen strive to prevent all hindrances to
the successful operation of this fundamental law of social progress
which is imbedded in the very nature of knowledge. With what fore-
thought should we strive to prevent the wastes of nations. To the
wastes of nations such as disease, ignorance, vice, crime, injustice, bad
government, lack of opportunity for the exceptional and war, must we
ascribe the hideous catastrophes which have wrecked successively one
nation after another.

On account of the above law that there tends to be an annual in-
crease in capital value of the new arts, and varying with the square of
the population, we are led to the conclusion that herein lies the cause
of interest. In those fields where inventions are being made most
rapidly at any time, capital is needed. The savings in part effected
by the new arts are paid over for the use of the capital. The existence
of an interest rate which, eliminating the element of risk, probably
varies between two per cent, and eight per cent, is the shadow of this
law of progress which says in substance that the product of the annual
work of the exceptional men tends to vary as the square of the popu-
lation, and it follows that as population slowly increases, this surplus
fund comes into existence out of which interest is paid. The above,
then, seems to be the major cause of interest, and many known facts
are in harmony with this theory. Interest has increased historically in
times of rapid invention. It rules highest in industries where new
inventions are taking place most rapidly. Interest is higher in new
countries where population is rapidly increasing. Further, in the case
of nations retrograding through disease, vice, bad government and
decreasing population, commercial interest sinks to a very low figure.
The elaborate agio theories of interest seem to me to throw no light on
the cause of interest. A geometrical increase of wealth, which is so uni-
versal, must have an adequate cause. I am aware that there are very
many important considerations not touched upon in the foregoing, but
in a series of notes, this must of necessity be so.

256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

PARASITIC CULTUBE

By GEORGE E. DAWSON, Ph.D.

SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

TT is a fact well recognized in biology that a functionless organ is
-*- not tolerated by nature. In the evolution of life, whenever any
organic structure has fallen into disuse, it has forthwith come under
the law of atrophy and elimination. Until this law of atrophy and
elimination is satisfied, the useless organ is a drain upon the vitality of
the organism as a whole. It gives no equivalent for the support it
derives from the life of which it is a part. In other words, it is para-
sitic. As a parasitic organ, moreover, it not only uses up energy that
should go to the other organs that have a vital function to perform,
but it also tends to become diseased and thus to impair the health of
the entire organism.

There are numerous illustrations in the human body of the disuse
and atrophy of organs, as well as of the incomplete elimination and
disease of such organs. Thus there are many muscular structures, such
as those of the pinna, epicranius and the platysma myoides, that are
at present functionless and far on the way to complete atrophy. These
useless organs are comparatively harmless, though, in strict truth, they
must be nourished at the expense of the rest of the organic life. There
are other functionless organs, however, that are not so harmless. Such
is the vermiform appendix, in man a useless and retrogressive structure,
which is apt to become the seat of serious disease. Such also are various
functionless ducts, as, for example, the parovarium, which frequently
become the seats of tumors, more or less malignant and destructive
of life.

All these useless and, in a sense, parasitic organs of the human body,
which modern research in the fields of physical anthropology, anatomy
and embryology has brought to light and explained, point to laws of
development that have a profound significance for every department of
effort in which the control and improvement of man's life is an object.
These laws are already beginning to be recognized by scientific edu-
cators. It is seen that the education of the mind and of the body
consists essentially in doing what nature has been doing throughout the
biological ages — that is to say, producing favorable variations through
adjusting individuals to a progressive environment, perpetuating and
perfecting these variations as more efficient organs of life, and getting
rid of outgrown and useless organs so that no energy may be diverted

PARASITIC CULTURE 257

from the channels of vital usefulness. Nature is sternly and rigidly
utilitarian, and yet she is splendidly idealistic. Her aim is always an
enlarged, and ever enlarging, life, and to this end she can tolerate
nothing in her economies that is functionless and therefore an obstacle
to progress.

Here, then, is the clue that modern education is beginning to accept
for its guidance. As a result, the ideal of general culture in education
is being subjected to standards of criticism that are as new as is our
better understanding of the nature of life. Men have believed for cen-
turies that certain studies, or forms of discipline, have the peculiar
virtue of generating in the mind, or the body, a power, or wealth of
resources, that may subsequently be available for any purpose to which
mental or physical energy is applied. From the days of the renaissance
to the present time, universities and colleges have contended for this
ideal of general culture. Mathematics and the classical languages have
been regarded as, in a special sense, indispensable to such culture. In
the organization of secondary schools, these institutions have been sub-
ordinated to university and college entrance requirements. And so
throughout our educational system, above the elementary schools, and
frequently in the elementary schools themselves, the culture ideal has
largely determined the subject-matter and methods of instruction.
Thus it is that in our very midst, every boy and girl who looks towards
higher education in our standard institutions of learning is compelled
to have certain courses in mathematics and the classical languages.
Greek has at last been made an optional entrance requirement, but
Latin and mathematics still hold their distinctive places. No difference
what the ulterior life-purpose of the adolescent boy or girl may be, no
difference what their tastes or aptitudes may be, Latin and mathematics
they must have ; and Latin and mathematics they must look forward to
pursuing even after they enter college. All for the sake of the general
culture these subjects are supposed to give !

In the light of the biological law of wasted energy and disease, in
connection with organs that are parasitic on the life, we are now pre-
pared to estimate this ideal of general culture from a new point of view.
And first of all, as being more obviously amenable to this biological law,
let us consider the ideal of physical culture. Now it has been con-
tended for generations, in accordance with the general culture ideal,
that certain courses of discipline will give a fund of physical energy
that may be available for all the demands of subsequent life. Thus
physical culture has been separated from the natural, every-day func-
tions of life, and made a matter of general courses of training in the
gymnasium. Even since the play-idea of physical culture has come to
the front, and the gymnasium has had to share its prerogatives with
the athletic field, much of the justification of the undue absorption of

vol. lxxvii. — 18.

258 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

large classes of students in football, baseball and the like, and of the
over-strenuous combats waged among them, has been found in the sup-
posed advantage of athletics in storing up a fund of physical energy for
subsequent use. The line of reasoning has been the same as in connec-
tion with all phases of general culture; namely, that the discipline
given, the power acquired, may be applied to all possible physical func-
tions. In academic circles, this view of athletics, whether in the gym-
nasium or on the athletic field, has not even yet been very generally
questioned. While the popular mind, as reflected in the newspapers,
universally consoles itself for the bruises and broken bones of the
strenuous athletes, with the thought that there is fine discipline in all
this, and that the results in subsequent life will amply compensate for
present injuries.

But here the accumulated observations and inductions of science
have begun to suggest troublesome questions about this more or less
artificial muscular development of boys and men. It has been observed
by physicians that very frequently athletic types of manhood have weak
hearts, weak lungs and weak vital organs generally. Often their health
and efficiency in later life are poor ; and, in not a few cases, they break
down prematurely. These observations have set both medical men and
teachers of physical culture to thinking, and we are now being told that
there is danger of over-developing the muscular system ; that over-
developed muscles impose a severe drain upon the rest of the organism ;
and that all muscular development, unless it is utilized, becomes a tax
upon bodily energ}r, and may give rise to disease. Only very recently a
naval officer, who was an athlete while in the naval academy, is reported
as having failed to meet the required tests of physical efficiency; and
his physician ascribes his failure to his earlier muscular development
in excess of the needs of his later life. That is to say, his vitality was
reduced through parasitic muscular culture.

All this suggests that we can not store up a fund of physical energy
through specially devised forms of physical training. Indeed, the term
" general culture " as applied to the organic life is probably a mis-
nomer. The culture we get from gymnastic training and from the
athletic field is really special in character, and is applicable mainly, or
solely, to the types of physical activity that constitute the training.
Hence the energy derived from such culture does not become available
for the organism as a whole, but is limited to the special organs that
have been trained; and unless these organs continue to perform the
functions for which they were trained, they become useless and a detri-
ment to the life. Functionless physical structures derived through the
artificial exercises of any form of physical culture thus fall under the
general biological law of atrophy, with all its attendant consequences of
waste and disease. The only really economical form of physical culture,

PARASITIC CULTURE 259

biologically speaking, is the culture derived through performing activi-
ties associated with the natural, that is to say, fundamental and long-
established, functions of life. These are, in general, the spontaneous
play-activities of childhood, and the productive work-activities of man-
hood and womanhood, each performed under normal conditions of
stimulus and environment. Neither artificial gymnastics nor the feats
of strength and skill performed under the stimulus of the prize-ring or
athletic field come under these heads.

How such considerations have begun to affect the thought of critical
students of physical culture may be illustrated by the conclusions of
Dr. Jules Payot, set forth in his book on " The Education of the Will " :

The qualities of vital resistance are in no way dependent upon muscular
strength. A man may be an athlete in a circus, or able to do the heaviest porter
work, and yet have very poor health, while another man who lives in his study
may have an iron constitution with mediocre muscular power. Not only have
we no reason to aspire to athletic strength, but rather we ought to avoid it;
because it can only be developed by violent exercise, and such exercises not only
interfere with the regularity of the respiration, and cause very distinct conges-
tion in the veins of the neck and brow, but they are undoubtedly weakening and
exhausting. . . . We have come to the conclusion, therefore, that it is not Eng-
land with her violent system of exercise which we ought to imitate in this con-
nection, but rather Sweden who has completely given up such ruinous physical
efforts for young people in her schools. There the object is to make young
people strong and healthy, and they have perceived, that excessive physical
exercises are more sure to lead to a breakdown than excessive study.

Turning now to intellectual culture, we have to consider whether the
law of waste and disease, operative throughout the biological world,
applies to the unused organs of the mind that have been developed
through stunts in mathematics and the classical languages, as there is
accumulating evidence for believing it does to physical organs trained
in the gymnasium and on the athletic field. Here, it must be acknowl-
edged, our evidence may seem less tangible and conclusive. It is
harder, even for minds familiar with the facts of neurology and psy-
chology, to image the special processes of nervous stimuli, the building
up of cortical neurones, and the establishing of association-centers
involved in mathematical and linguistic study, than it is to image the
enlarged biceps of the disciple of punching-bag or gridiron education.
For minds unfamiliar with such facts, it is absolutely impossible.
Hence the whole process of intellectual culture, both to the average
student and to the average onlooker, be he teacher or parent, has no
concreteness whatever. It is a mere matter of subjective impression
and a priori opinion. But the difficulty of our problem need not deter
us. Our evidence, however intangible and remote from average experi-
ence, is sure to become clearer the longer it is considered in the lio-ht
of the general scientific facts of life that are gradually becoming so
extensively popularized.

26o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

To present our problem definitely at the outset, I submit the fol-
lowing proposition : The intellectual culture derived through standard-
ized branches of education, as mathematics and Latin, for example,
instead of having a general mental economy for the innumerable young
men and women who study them, in reality becomes parasitic in the
nervous and mental life, and thus is a cause of wasted energy and, pos-
sibly, of disease. This proposition has its proper qualification, of course,
in all cases where such intellectual culture is so related to the functions
of life that it can be utilized. There are two questions that confront
us in such a proposition : ( 1 ) Is culture, unused for the specific func-
tion that called it into being, of no economy in performing other func-
tions? And (2) is such culture, therefore, parasitic and wasteful of
human energy? As has already been pointed out in connection with
physical culture, it has long been assumed, and is still generally as-
sumed, that culture acquired through any given discipline becomes a
general fund of energy or skill, transferable to other organs and func-
tions. And yet there has never been any really critical evidence in
support of such an assumption. The belief in a hierarchy of culture-
values, which has standardized the various branches of our academic
curricula, like many other beliefs relating to the world of mind and
the world of matter, belongs to the category of the naive, the uncritical
and the prejudiced. In most of the learned decisions upon the con-
stitution of this hierarchy, the judge, the advocates, and the jury have
merely reflected the nature of their own training, and more especially
the interests of their own calling. But we are now in a position to
submit this question to the test of exact experiments. This has been
done repeatedly within the last few years by experimental psychologists.
Among such psychologists may be mentioned James, Gilbert, Fracker,
Thorndike, Woodworth, Judd, Bair, Volkmann and Scripture. The
net result of these men's studies may be stated in the words of Professor
Thorndike, of Columbia University:

A change in one function alters any other only in so far as the two func-
tions have as factors identical elements. The change in the second function is
in amount that due to the change in the elements common to it and the first.
. . . Improvement in any single mental function need not improve the ability
in functions commonly called by the same name. It may injure it. Improve-
ment in any single mental function rarely brings about equal improvement in
any other function, no matter how similar, for the working of every mental
function-group is conditioned by the nature of the data in each particular case.1

This is direct experimental evidence, and it is fairly conclusive
against at least much of the indiscriminate championship of the general
culture values of special subjects, like mathematics and the classical
languages. Neurology, moreover, supplies additional indirect evidence
no less conclusive to those familiar with the histology of the brain.

1 " Educational Psychology," Chapter VIII.

PARASITIC CULTURE 261

The study of the development of cortical neurones and association fibers
makes it probable that every mental process modifies these nervous ele-
ments ; so that education, whatever else it may be, is a matter of devel-
oping specific nervous organs through which the mind may work. Thus
the study of mathematics means, on the neurological side, the building
up of cortical neurones, with their association fibers, which shall con-
stitute a mathematical nervous mechanism. So, likewise, the study of
Latin or Greek means the building up of nervous structures specifically
adapted for those languages. The clinics of nervous and mental path-
ology tend to show that this probable process of specialization of brain-
structures, parallel with special mental activities, actually takes place.
Thus when the centers of the brain having to do with mathematical
relations are diseased, the subject may lose the power of perceiving
mathematical symbols, or of thinking in them. So, too, when the
centers of the brain having to do with language relations are diseased,
the subject may lose the power of perceiving words, or of thinking in
them. That is to say, the elements of mathematical and linguistic
experience and culture may be lost, and meanwhile the other elements
of experience and culture remain unimpaired. This would seem to
prove that human experience is mediated by specialized nervous organs,
and that the culture derived therefrom is special, and not general, in
character. In fact, it but confirms the conclusions that all scientific
students of nervous organs and of mind must reach, in any compre-
hensive interpretation of the facts.

Here then, is a body of facts and inferences supplied by experi-
mental psychology, the histology of the brain, and nervous and mental
pathology, which point to the conclusion that so-called " general cul-
ture " is not general but specific, that it affects organs and functions
appropriate to the particular study pursued, and that to be. of any
adequate advantage to the life such organs and functions must continue
the activity through which they were developed. There is here, evi-
dently, a vast territory of unknown and debatable ground, but the head-
lands and mountain peaks stand out more and more clearly for the
explorer who approaches the problems of education and life in a scien-
tific spirit and with adequate command of scientific facts. It is clear,
for example, that those educators who will subject an adolescent girl to
five or six years of severe training in higher mathematics, should be
peremptorily challenged as to why they do it. They should be asked to
show, in terms more specific and modern than most of the vague
opinions one commonly hears about " culture," just how the fund of
power that is supposed to be generated by mathematical study, is, in
fact, generated ; and how it becomes available throughout the girl's sub-
sequent life. So, too, these same educators should be asked to give
reason why they compel an adolescent boy to spend five or more years
upon the study of Latin before they will accredit him as being educated.

262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

What is there in this comparatively immense expenditure of time and
energy upon Latin that will develop organs and functions continuously
available for the boy's mental efficiency and usefulness in the world?
How does a nervous mechanism, with its infinitely complex system of
neurones and connecting fibers, fashioned through and for the study
of the Latin language, become adapted for all other mental processes?
In short, it is time to read a new and compelling significance into the
old query of instinctive common sense as to what is the value of the
so-called culture that is doled out to our children in the secondary
schools and colleges.

Having thus answered the first question involved in our proposition,
it remains to consider the further question of what becomes of useless
organs of culture. What is the effect upon the girl's life of having to
support an elaborate nervous mechanism for dealing with mathematical
symbols and concepts which she never has occasion to use? What is
the effect upon the boy's life of having to support a nervous mechanism
for declining Latin nouns and adjectives, conjugating Latin verbs, and
construing Latin sentences, which he never has occasion to use? May
not these unused nervous organs become parasitic upon the nervous
vitality, just as the unused muscles of the athlete become parasitic
upon the general organic vitality? It may seem to some little less
than fantastic to suggest such a result. And yet, if we believe that
life is a biological unit, and that the laws controlling it are identical in
nature and operation, there is no escaping this conclusion. Moreover,
there are many peculiarities in the nervous and psychic constitutions
of a considerable number of educated men and women that await a
plausible theory to account for them. The suspicion is harbored in
many minds that academic communities are apt to become over-cultured.
They are apt to lose that balance between perceptual and conceptual
experience which is the supreme test of healthy-mindedness. At the
very best, they suffer from an hypertrophy of the critical faculties,
which reveals itself in philosophical and linguistic hair-splitting. At
the worst, it may amount to a nervous tension and general intellectual
straining after precision in scholarship and propriety in conduct that
creates an atmosphere blighting to spontaneity of work and life in the
students. This is frequently illustrated in schools and colleges for
girls, where an excess of women teachers, with hypertrophied intellects
and atrophied human interests, make education a process of mental
arrest and disease instead of growth.

Outside of academic communities, there are to be found everywhere
a cultured flotsam and jetsam. Europe has long had its proletariat of
culture, and America is rapidly developing one. In the more intense
nervous life of America, moreover, there are appearing numerous types
of nervous instability among educated men and women. This is illus-
trated not only in the frequent neurasthenia of the cultured classes. It

PARASITIC CULTURE 263

is also, and, perhaps, more characteristically, shown in the religious,
social and other vagaries that often bring to light strange perversions
of human energy. The movement towards the emancipation of women
during the past few decades, with all its numerous and positive merits,
abounds, nevertheless, with examples of mental and emotional distemp-
ers that find their psychological explanation in the strangulated intellec-
tual energies of its votaries. Much of the current unrest among intellec-
tual women is probably due to specially cultivated mental organs that
find no adequate function to perform. All these forms of neuropsychical
strain and instability are, I submit, at least partially explicable in terms
of the useless and parasitic culture, which has become more dangerous
to modern society in proportion as it has been extended to the masses
of men and women. In earlier generations, when fewer men and women
were subjected to the artificial culture of the schools, the general detri-
ment to society was not so obvious. But now that thousands and tens
of thousands of boys and girls, and young men and young women, are
having their nervous and mental lives fashioned for activities they never
have a chance to perform, it may happen that higher education, instead
of being a means of racial advancement, will become a means of racial
deterioration.
To summarize:

1. It is a law of the biological world that unused organs become
parasitic upon the life, draining off the energy of the individual and
tending to become diseased.

2. It has been found that physical culture which leads to the hyper-
trophy of special muscles, entails a drain upon the general vitality. As
in life in general, so in physical education, organs that can perform
no adequate function are wasteful of human energy.

3. Experimental psychology is showing that the culture of particular
intellectual organs and functions can not be transferred to other organs
and functions, except where there are elements in common. Histology
and pathology of the nervous system confirm the conclusions of psy-
chology in this respect.

4. Intellectual culture not being transferable must become parasitic
and a cause of mental disorganization when it fails of application and
usefulness in the life of the individual. Illustrations are to be found
in the over-refinements of culture in academic communities, in the
nervous instability frequently met with among educated men and
women, and in the religious and social vagaries and perversions that
crop out in the older and more highly cultivated centers of population.

5. The artificial culture of the secondary schools and colleges in our
democratic society, in proportion as it is diffused throughout larger
sections of our population, is likely to develop a cultured proletariat,
ill-balanced and inefficient as individuals, and a source of danger in our
civilization.

264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY AND DEMOCRACY IN OUR

HIGHER INSTITUTIONS1

By Professor EDWIN D. STARBUCK

STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

IT is somewhat embarrassing to appear on a program that I myself
have assisted in devising. It demands an explanation. It is, in
short, an instance of too highly centralized authority in this associa-
tion in the hands of our lively general secretary. It seemed eminently
desirable to the committee that this topic to which I am to address
myself should have consideration. When the first draft of the program
came into the hands of the secretary, with a blank left after this topic,
he rashly placed my name after it, rushed to print and scattered it
broadcast over the country. So I am here against my will but, I must
confess, not wholly reluctantly. The topic is of immense importance.
It was a vain endeavor to find the proper person who should address
you on this theme. All presidents and all who aspire to such position
of power were condemned to silence from the start. That cut off the
flower of the genius of the nation at a single stroke. The presiding
officer of our department had an intimate way of knowing that presi-
dents, being under indictment, so to speak, could not be trusted with
the topic. There has been much written and spoken latterly on the
theme, but mostly by those whose ambition has been punctured, whose
pride has been stung or whose wings have been clipped. Were any of
these turned loose in this place, they might enact a bloody scene not
entirely consistent with the proper spirit of a religious association.
Our general secretary must have known that I had no ax to grind, no
grievance to right, no power except the power of righteousness to fear,
and that I should speak in a wholly guileless manner. It is a tempta-
tion to admit that this was another instance of his rare insight; for
however much my judgment may be at fault and wisdom limited, I
shall address myself to this most delicate topic entirely without animus.
I might follow the example, indeed, of one of our periodicals which
recently declared that, with a single exception, theirs was the only
sheet in the nation that is not subsidized. If I lay claim to being, with
but an exception or two, the only mind in the nation that is dispas-
sionate on this question, then every member in the audience will con-
gratulate himself that he is that other person and we shall all be think-
ing through the subject helpfully to one another.

1 Read at the meeting of the Department of Universities and Colleges of the
Religious Education Association, Nashville, March 9, 1910.

CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY 265

There can be no question that American universities and' colleges
are highly centralized in respect to their organization and control.
The power legally is in the hands of some kind of a board of education,
mostly composed of business and professional men who are in no sense
organically a part of the institutional life of the university. Practi-
cally, the power centers in a president and faculty. In all matters that
refer to the running of the institutional life of the place, these are
autonomous bodies. They make their own laws; set their own stand-
ards; inflict their own penalties, and exercise their influence without
asking anybody any questions. Their constituency, so to speak in state
and church has little power. President and faculty are considerate of
their constituents — sometimes tenderly so, when the budget is in excess
of the available means, or when the normal percentage of increase of
attendance is not attained. Otherwise these good people are expected
to be silent well-wishers. Perhaps that is as it should be ; at least I see
no way to change it. Our chief consideration at this time, however, is
that students have almost no voice in the control of the institution
they attend, little feeling of responsibility for its destiny, almost no
sense that their personalities are caught up into it, or that they are
an organic part of its best life. The ordinary student feels himself to
be an attache, a recipient, an appendage at best, and lucky for him if
he is not a sort of parasite — a foreign body, drawing vitality from the
institution for a time and then going away with it. If I am right in
believing that the ordinary student has a sense that he is a sort of in-
mate of the institution, who must obey the rules and get what he can;
who does not have a stimulating sense of partnership in the place ; who
can talk with zest about my fraternity or our team, but who never can
talk with the same warmth about our college spirit, or our curriculum,
or our faculty, or our institution; if the bulk of students at the end
of the four years' course have any feeling deep down that the center
and core of their own wills are aloof from the deepest, warmest currents
of the institutional life, then something is wrong; for the university
exists solely for the student — indeed, it has no other reason for being.
I fear, however, that our universities have become bulky institutions
that exist chiefly for themselves — to perfect their own machinery, to
preserve their own lives; they are closed systems busy with inner ad-
justments, rather than with the problem of how they can cultivate the
soul-life of those entrusted to their care, and burning with a passion to
be of service, through the students, to church, state and humanity.
Our higher institutions have been developing, during recent decades,
rapidly in the direction of an imperialistic attitude toward students.
Professor Stratton, who first set our minds going in a lively manner
in this direction, points out the anomaly existing in our political ideals
and our university practises, and also the anomaly of anomalies that

266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Germany reverses the inconsistency, being politically imperialistic, but
educationally democratic. Speaking of our own nation he says:

Among a people so jealous of private rights, university governments have
assumed a form that we might have expected to see in a land of kings. Euro-
pean universities have a constitution that might have come from some American
theorist. American universities are as though founded and fostered in the
bourne of aristocracy. Europe and America are each harboring what would
seem properly sacred only to the other.

There are four or five causes that have brought about too great a
centralization of authority in the hands of president and faculty, and
along with it a cleavage of interest of faculty and student body until
they stand off from one another in a relationship that is not wholesome
for either.

1. In the first place, a historic strain of autocracy has come down
from the old-fashioned schoolmaster. In the early days of America,
the schoolmaster, with rod and rule if need be, usually a man — not a
lad of eighteen or a woman or much less a frail girl — was a monarch
in his realm. He was built, and for a reason, on the lines of a sturdy,
stern Anglo-Saxon father. He has left us as a heritage his custom and
conception of imperialistic authority in education along with his in-
effaceable three " r's." The secondary schools were differentiated from
the common schools. The " head master " developed out of the parent
stem, the schoolmaster, under the rule that like produces like. He
was well named, for he was expected to be superior in wisdom and
masterful in bearing. The college is a specialization of the old acad-
emy and high school, and has inherited from these many of its ideas
about curriculum, form of organization and centralized authority.

2. In the second place, as Professor Stratton has pointed out, our
higher institutions have received a strain from the form of government
of the early colonies. These were under the rule of the mother country,
which rule was effected through a corporation, or a governor, or both.
They were never elected by the colonists nor selected from among their
number, but superimposed on them from the mother country. Our
boards of education are descendants of the early corporations, and the
university presidents are built after the pattern of the early governors.

In imperialistic Europe the democratic life of the faculty and the
university generally, on the contrary, is the direct historical conse-
quent of the old guilds that were established around the idea of equal-
ity, fraternity and mutual helpfulness.

3. In the third place, the higher institutions have reaped the bless-
ings and also the ills of the naive democracy in which each individual
is turned loose to do as he pleases, and, being human, chooses to be un-
duly self regardful. There are many indications that the earlier col-
leges, established by people whose passion was for equal opportunity,

CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY 267

incorporated unconsciously and as a matter of course, much of the
spirit of democracy into their organization. The spirit of common
fellowship often pervaded the life of the faculty and students. They
were intellectual brotherhoods like families or fraternities in spirit.
The gradual, quiet transformation that now has made of them, perhaps,
the most imperialistic, educational institutions in the world is not so
difficult to account for. This has been a land of freedom and oppor-
tunity. There have been all kinds of things lying around loose in
America — virgin soil, virgin forests, virgin mineral lands, virgin so-
ciety and virgin politics. The liveliest and strongest have gone after
the benefits, appropriated them, taken means to hold possession against
the covetous, and then, alas ! have found themselves unwittingly, as a
result of wealth, social preferment and political power, proud, arro-
gant and irresponsible, and pitted against their fellows. Those who
have not been lucky themselves have nevertheless had something of
hero-worship in their veins. They have admired Napoleonic success
and Anglo-Saxon strenuousness. They have passively paid tribute and
so have had their part in the immoderate inequalities that have sprung
up. The inevitable outcome of it all has been a harvest of captains of
industry, captains of wealth, captains of politics and captains of edu-
cation.

Do I dare say aught in this place about college presidents? If so,
it would be in the " spirit of sweet charity/' They have had their temp-
tations and trials; they are subject to weakness of the flesh; they have
been battered and buffeted, and whatever is said about them must be
spoken in kindly sympathy. They are not vicious, they are not "ex-
ploiters of genius " ; they are not worshippers at the shrine of mammon,
nor devotees of the God Thor with his symbol of the arm and hammer ;
they are just human. Like all of the other citizens in our primitive
republic, with its free opportunity, they have seen a good many things
lying around loose. This time it has not been some irrigation stream
or mineral deposit that they saw lying unclaimed, but the opportunity
for power. No one else had been exercising it, and why not they ? In-
deed, they have gathered of the treasure in large measure, and why not ?
Men do love power if they are normal. There is no better thing in the
moral order than a will that can produce, create and help things along.
There is not a more righteous joy than the feeling of that fine tension
of a strong will that can be a living force in the world. But enough is
a sufficiency, and too much, even of a good thing, is dangerous. And
men are human. Let us say, with gracious compassion, that it is the
fault of the times, of our social order, that has placed in the hands of
presidents the power of life and death over the professional career of
members of the faculty and also the shaping of the destinies of our
educational institutions.

268 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Members of faculties are also human. They have acquired all the
power that has been relegated to them by constituencies and boards of
education, and have picked up whatever else they could acquire on
their own account. They have sometimes watched their chances
to share the responsibilities of the institution with the president,
lest it should weigh too heavily upon him. Some one has happily
said that no Irishman could be found in Ireland so poor but that he
has not some other Irishman dependent upon him. Presidents and
faculties together have come into the position of almost entire separa-
tion from the student body. They have the attitude of ruler and ruled.
They march in stately parades, begowned in robes of dignity and state
before the admiring eyes of the students; they run the institution;
they dispense grades and degrees as parsimoniously as possible to stu-
dents who devote their college career to earning these marks and badges
as economically as possible.

4. In the fourth place, competition has played its part in bringing
about centralized authority. It has been necessary for institutions to
act and act quickly in the raising of funds, in the employment of in-
structors and in appeals to the public. The matter of winning out in
the contest has led us to do much as a hive of bees in creating a queen.
We have done everything in our power to produce presidents who are
masterful, who can appear well, who can be " drawing cards " in tempt-
ing into our institutions the guileless youth of the land. There is no
one who will dispute that our university and college presidents are of
the noblest of our people. But we are creating them at too high a cost.
It is the fundamental axiom of our entire educational system that the
end is not so much to produce leaders as to lift the level of all. It is
growing too late in the history of democracy in the world to need to
argue the point. Still an analogy will be in place. Christianity, dur-
ing the first century, was a spiritual brotherhood. In the second and
third centuries, they began to have conventions, and it was the custom
for a bishop and at least one layman to represent a church or diocese.
By the fourth century, the laymen had been almost forgotten in their
councils ; and from that time on the power became more and more cen-
tralized in the hands of a few of the highest officials of the church. The
consequence is a familiar fact of history. From the fifth century, for
several centuries following, the organization of Christendom was a
closed system with neither change nor progress. It existed not for
mankind as persons, but for itself and its own institutional ideals.
In our educational system the laity, the students in our universities,
have long since lost their voice. Our educational elders, let us say,
that is, members of faculties, have been little consulted in our national
association of universities that are taking upon themselves the right to
determine the educational policies of the country. We are living in a

CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY 269

later age, and must not allow the history of the first five centuries to
repeat itself.

The spirit of competition has magnified out of all proportion the
value of quantity instead of quality. Bigness has bred looseness of
organization and aloofness of person from person and group from group.
The tendency toward manifoldness has been augmented by the natural
law of differentiation, of which specialization is an instance, until our
institutions are atomistic. Each person has relegated to everybody else
all responsibility for everything except his own little sphere of interests.
This differentiation amounts in the long run to radical individualism
and approximates indifferentism, the worst disease that can affect the
life of higher institutions. The only excuse for the large university is
that it may have a more highly organic and intense life than a smaller
one can have. Growth at the expense of inner coordination, refinement
of articulation and intensification of the individuality of the whole, is
a disease, whether in plant, animal or institution. We have grown
like a boy in his teens as fast as our health would allow. The rapid
differentiation in general has naturally widened the gap between stu-
dent and faculty, who are made for each other like eyes and hands.
The next step, in order to get safely through our stalking educational
adolescence, must be in the direction of binding up into the life of our
colleges again, the personal lives of students.

5. Still another fact must be mentioned that has made of our facul-
ties against their own will, ruling or governing bodies who are set off
against a pack of persons supposing themselves to have antithetical
interests to those of the university as an institution. Through the
hasty expansion, already referred to, the machinery of the university —
teaching, looking over papers, grading, giving credits, establishing
standards, etc. — has grown into such proportions that there is little
time and energy left for anything else. The enforced result is that
the prevailing point of contact between students and instructors has
come to be in terms of their proper advancement and grading in the
curriculum, and what they must and must not do while resident in the
institution. I appeal to those present who have spent a number of
years as instructors in colleges and universities whether nine tenths of
the time of the faculty meetings is not given up to such questions as
marking systems, giving of grades, granting degrees, penalties for
delinquencies, admission and classification of students, control of ath-
letics, regulation of social affairs, and the like, which have nothing to
do, except indirectly, with the inner personal life of students. From
the University of Plato in Athens, Plotinus in Rome, Abelard in Paris,
and the College of Mark Hopkins in America, we have traveled far.
We catch glimpses in the New England days of what was called among
professors, a hunger for the souls of students. Those days will never

270 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

return; but we have suffered a loss that is irreparable, if there is not
preserved in our colleges and universities the equivalent of the things
they did, as shown in reverence for the divine beauty of personality in
the lives of our students.

There can be no question but that our attitude toward students is
conventional, mechanical and institutionalistic. Behind us, to hold us
firmly in our chosen course, besides the causes we have been describing,
is the wish of anxious parents who forget that their young men and
young women are not still children and who say gracious things about
their favorite institution if their sons are held in check, and if their
daughters are tenderly " guarded " and pampered.

What are we to do about it? How can the student body and faculty
be brought into closer relationship? How may our universities escape
a cold institutionalism ? What changes will move in the direction of
most surely catching up the personal loves and enthusiasms of the
average student into the warm, vigorous, purposeful life of the institu-
tion ? There are many things to do, certainly. I shall confine myself
to a simple urgent suggestion that leads, I believe, towards the heart
of the situation. The spirit of democracy should prevail. Not a senti-
mental democracy that preaches equality and cooperation, and prac-
tises autocracy. Students should be given a part, however small, in the
control of our institutions. It is not my purpose to determine specific-
ally what their powers should be. That has been so delightfully and
convincingly discussed in the paper preceding my own that nothing
further need be said. It is in itself a suggestive fact that Professor
Fiske, like every one I have met who was connected with the Amherst
attempt at self-government, believes in it thoroughly. Indeed I know
of no one who has observed intimately any of the various experiments
in student participation in student affairs, who has for it other than
words of commendation. My contention would be that the kind of
thing students undertake is more or less indifferent, if only they feel
that it is worth doing and that they do it with a will. It may be the
matter of honor in examinations. Students can do this successfully, as
several happy instances prove, while instructors are powerless to cope
with it, except at a cost in moral and social attitudes toward students
that is hopelessly disastrous. Let it be the regulation of social activi-
ties, over which faculties distress themselves and still do their work so
bunglingly that students wink at it and smile at their own cunning.
In some institutions students have undertaken the control of the daily
paper, monthly literary sheet, and a comic sheet, from which they learn
the meaning of free speech and the virtue of controlling it, derive les-
sons in collective ownership and the joy of building for the future. In
some instances they have been given a controlling voice in athletics,
with advantage to the spirit of the institution. One spontaneous

CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY 271

impulse of students toward pure sportsmanship that grows out of
facing a concrete situation with responsibility is worth a half dozen
lectures by a professional moral dictator. These are only instances of
the many possible lines along which student activity may express itself.
President Drinker, who has, with remarkable success, encouraged self-
government at Lehigh University, says : " It has been my experience
that the more responsibility is placed upon students, provided they are
willing to assume it, the better it is for all concerned." Even a small
duty that students enter upon heartfully is enough to transform their
attitude into one of partnership. It is an old rule that interests follow
activities as the shadow the body. Sympathies and enthusiasms apart
from deeds are pale and shallow. When students undertake anything
in concert they must have organization. This creates unity of action
and solidarity of sentiment. The fact of positions of emolument to be
filled and the need of officers, leads to college politics with its fine ten-
sion of rivalry and its tang of victory and defeat. Let us grant there
will arise occasional abuses and mistakes. There are instances on
record. The number is, however, relatively small. The redeeming
feature of it is that whatever failures and successes they make, there is
in it a preparation for citizenship. They are meeting in college life
exactly the problems and difficulties that they will have to face later.
We preach the gospel of learning to do by doing in the lower grades of
our common schools, but are full of the notion of the value of learning
to do by obeying, during the choice years of young manhood and woman-
hood, which are above all others the time for preparation for the duties
and responsibilities of citizenship. The educational world has had its
prophets this long time of the value of social and family ideals among
tiny children ; but by a strong irony of fate, we have been slow in taking
seriously the same problem during the critical formative years of a
college course.

The root of the difficulty is in the need of more democracy in our
institutions. That would come in a day if all concerned could apply
the golden rule. There is a sort of mental near-sightedness in human
nature by which it is hard to see through the other person's eyes and
feel his problems. All are, furthermore, intensely human — biologically
human — and want all they can get of power and prestige. Universities
have differentiated into about four types of personages : a board of
education, a president, a faculty and a student body. All except the
last would dominate everything if it could. The best results will come
only when each participates slightly in the whole, but specializes upon
its own function. The board are specialists upon finance and should
exercise a fairly free hand in all the material interests of the university,
with only a negative control, through the power of veto, upon scholastic
affairs. The faculty are specialists upon institutional questions. All

272 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

matters of the formation of the curriculum, standardization, election
and dismissal of instructors and the like, belong naturally to the fac-
ulty, with board and student representatives, under normal conditions
exercising advisory influence. It is as hazardous for boards of educa-
tion to assume responsibility for the complicated institutional life of a
university and exercise the fine shades of judgment needed for its suc-
cess, as it would be for the ordinary university professor without the
requisite years of preparation to run a bank or department store. The
president should be chairman of the faculty. His proper function is
primarily an executive one, and in no sense legislative or judicial. But
the prerogatives of students — what are they? I recently asked a pro-
fessor in a state university what power, in his judgment, students ought
to have in an educational institution. He replied, "Power? Why,
the -power to work and work like thunder." When I argued that they
were already in possession of such freedom, he retorted emphatically,
" But they do not seem to know it ! " No one has to urge a graduate
student, interested in his problem and inspired by personal contact,
to work. Usually, on the contrary, he must be restrained from too
continuous application on account of his bodily health. His attitude
toward instructors, tasks and institution is different. Student bodies
have rarely come into possession of their own. Why should they not
have full responsibility for student enterprises and social activities?
How mucli power of the faculty, which is legally the responsible agent
in such matters, should be in evidence, is an open question. Professor
Payne, of the University of Virginia, where for more than a century
students have successfully regulated questions of student honor, honesty
and propriety, assures me that the plan is working well, just because the
faculty keep their hands off entirely. Under such circumstances stu-
dents are glad to regulate their own affairs, and they do it well. I know
of no instance in which students have participated in the activities of
an institution, wherein they have broken faith or usurped power. Still
they are treated as underlings, while instructors keep school, hold exam-
inations and administer grades. Under present conditions they are
filled with ideals of military discipline rather than infused with social
impulses. Why may not our universities be transformed into states in
miniature or social communities, in which students are " the people,"
each of whom is tempted by the entire situation, to care, to lend a hand,
to feel the thought currents of the time, to know men as well as books,
to be efficient units in society? In this direction we must tend if our
new ideals of social righteousness are to be woven into the texture of
our common life.

The problem would be easy were we not tempted by the luscious
sense of power and blinded by a highly developed institutionalism. The
university exists for the students, and not the students for the university.

CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY 273

No one would care to depreciate the conservation of race life that is
accomplished through the mere fact of the existence of a group of
teachers, a hody of college customs, and well-equipped laboratories and
libraries. But they are not finished products. They are means to an
end in a living, growing organism. The end is the best life of all and
the fullest life of the future. There is a distortion when the rich
inheritance of the past that the university represents is not directed
wholly and purposefully toward the students who are to be the race of
to-morrow. To this end the university may well exert itself to have
them feel that they are organically a part of it. Each student when he
goes out should be, not a recipient from the institution, but a real incar-
nation of its best life. He must be in it and of it. The form of organ-
ization should tempt him into closer and closer heart relation with his
school. Let it not be, either, a seeming act of charity or missionary
enthusiasm on the part of instructors, or the best is lost. The advantage
is mutual. Each student has some original endowment from nature to
bring to the institution. I have heard it sometimes expressed that part
of the fascination of the life of a teacher is in the personal enrichment
and the multicolored quality of truth that come from mingling with
many types of student minds when each is allowed to be at his best.
In order to bring out the riches of his nature, generally as yet undiscov-
ered even to himself, the attitude of the university toward the student
and his attitude are almost everything. It can not reach him from the
outside in; it can inspire and educate him only from the inside out.
Let our universities be decentralized from their organization about
institutionalism, and recentralized in the personal lives of students.

YOL. lxxvii. — 19.

274 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE FIVE-FOLD FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT

By W J McGEE, LL.D.

ORGANIZATIONS, like organisms, are products of development.
Governmental organizations, like most others, are increasingly
designed and shaped in the light of conscious experience. Thus, the
constitution of the United States epitomized the lessons of history so
far as recognized by its framers, whereby the instrument became the
embodiment of governmental practise and theory gained through known
experience. Naturally, by reason of the ability of the framers and the
stress under which they wrought, the instrument is notable — certainly
among the most notable ever produced, whatever be thought of Glad-
stone's view as to the divinity of its inspiration. Naturally, too, the
framers specified most clearly those governmental powers with which
they were familiar and which they most desired to adopt : and, no less
naturall}r, their action was guided quite as much by the wish to elimi-
nate that which they thought objectionable as by the aim to perpetuate
that which they deemed desirable. Seeing that government is an ex-
pression of law, their first care was to provide for the framing of laws,
the second to provide for the execution of these laws, and the third to
provide for the interpretation of law; and in this way arose what came
to be known as the " three coordinate branches " of the United States
government. The branches are indeed coordinated, though they are far
from coequal, since the power of creating the third is entrusted to the
second " by and with the consent " of a part of the first ; yet they by no
means constitute the entire government — as becomes clear in the light
of earlier phases of social organization made known largely since the
instrument was framed, no less than in that of discussion before and
during the framing of the constitution.

Early in that primitive social type in which tribal organization rests
on consanguinity traced in the female line, the elder-woman is both law-
giver and judge, while her elder-brother acts as an executive in case
of need, and the two jointly or severally exercise administrative author-
ity throughout the clan ; later the elder-women become priestesses or
seeresses still giving and interpreting the clan laws, and their elder-
brothers form an avuncular council of gradually increasing executive
and administrative powers; yet at every step all primary power is
imputed to a mystical pantheon of which the beldames are only vicars
and the sages merely indirect agents. In the next stage of development

THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 275

(i. e., in the patriarchate, in which organization rests on consanguinity
traced in the male line), the elder-man becomes vicar or priest, and
hence law-giver and judge as well as both administrative and executive
— as when a patriarch communes with his deity over sacrificing a son
or daughter, or a kalif commands of his own impeccability, sits in judg-
ment, awards and rewards, imposes and deposes, and (like a later
emperor) personifies the state; yet his primary power is imputed mainly
or solely to that supernatural source of which he is deemed but the
agent. "With the growth of cities and those civic usages in which the
organization arises in proprietary right (especially in lands), rulers
long remain vicars of mystical or spiritual powers manifested in symbols
and ceremonies though often exercised through arms and armies ; and
until within recent centuries each monarchy was virtually a hierarchy
whose king or emperor stood — panoplied in the " divinity which doth
hedge about a king " — as the source and exponent of both temporal and
spiritual power, performing so much as he would of all governmental
functions, his rule ranging from hierarchic to autocratic according to
the faith and custom of the time. Gradually (the rate being vastly ac-
celerated by the American Revolution) the monarchs surrendered legis-
lative functions, delegated judicative powers, divided administrative
and executive duties with the agents of parliaments and courts, some-
times shared their vicarial powers with ecclesiastic potentates, and began
yielding to the inevitable growth of petition into suffrage ; yet no mon-
arch was ever quite independent of putative supernatural powers resid-
ing within or conveyed through his own personally, or of the symbolism
or ceremonial tending to perpetuate the imputation.

In brief, during each stage of governmental growth from the sim-
plicity of primal clan to the pomp and circumstance of gilded empire,
the primary functions remain much the same despite sweeping changes
in structure. In logical order the functions are (I.) initiatory, and
(II.) directive, the former connoting the source and the latter the aim
or control of institutional power. In genetic sequence, or in that order
of successive manifestation illustrated, e. g., in the natural family of
which the clan, gens, city and nation are outgrowths, they are (1)
administrative, or concerned with the current regulation of every-day
affairs; (2) legislative, or concerned with the establisbment of rules
of conduct (always finally adopted only through common consent) ; (3)
judicative, or concerned with the peaceful settlement of disputes in
accordance with custom and established rules; (4) executive, or con-
cerned chiefly with the carrying out of rules and judicative decisions;
and as the natural source of power gradually comes into ratiocinative
view in the light of the general good, (5) determinative, or concerned
with the primary expression of common judgment and desire.

Now when the founders of the American nation undertook to frame

276 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

a governmental organization, little was known of the natural stages in
the course of human development. The notable works of Maine and
McLennan on primitive law, of Fustel de Coulanges on " The Ancient
City," of Lewis H. Morgan and Herbert Spencer and Auguste Comte
on early society, and of Taylor and Powell and Brinton on lowly re-
ligion had not been written — indeed the epoch-marking investigations
of these and other writers run back to the unprecedented efforts of the
American revolutionists to ascertain the ultimate foundations of human
government, efforts not disparaged but only accentuated by the rapid
growth of human knowledge since they were made. Since then, science
has come into being on the earlier foundation laid by Bacon and Linne
and a few others : of the five cardinal principles of science,1 the first
(the indestructibility of matter) was established by a contemporary of
the Eevolution, Lavoisier; the second (the persistence of motion) grew
out of Piiimford's experiments begun under the influence of this Amer-
ican rennaissance ; while the others (the development of species, the
uniformity of nature, and the responsivity of mind) came scores of
years later — indeed nearly all of the current branches of science have
arisen since the revolution. Since then, too, historical knowledge has
been both expanded and refined; geographic knowledge has extended
over the full half of the earth then practically unknown ; invention has
revolutionized industries, largely through the American example ; steam
and electricity and high explosives have been harnessed; the world's
population has doubled; man's conquest over nature has advanced
further than during all earlier time ; statecraft in the modern sense has
taken form, and diplomacy has been reconstructed, both largely through
the world-touching influence of the seventh and eighth decades of the
eighteenth century; and the American governmental model has been
adopted in spirit if not in form by far the greater part of the nations
of the earth. In the light of the vast advance since 1776, the sagacity
and courage displayed by the signers of the declaration and the articles
of confederation, and especially by the framers of the constitution,
shine forth among the greater marvels of human history.

The founders included eminent scholars and statesmen, yet they
were practical men confronted by problems of which the issue meant
life or death; and on surveying the field of experience in governmental
organization within their reach, they seized on the essentials and wisely
withheld their hands from both the collateral and the controvertible.
Dwelling long on the pressingly practical (as shown by the record of
discussion in the constitutional convention), they defined clearly the
legislative and executive and judicative functions of the nascent gov-

1 Outlined in an address of the president of the Anthropological Society of
Washington, delivered before the Washington Academy of Sciences and affiliated
societies February 19, 1900 (Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sci-
ences, Vol. 2, 1900, pp. 1-12).

TEE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 277

ernment, leaving the then relatively unimportant details of administra-
tion— over which controversy arose whenever the subject was approached
— to the sense of their successors ; while they proceeded so circumspectly
as to reveal implicitly rather than by explicit statement their chief —
and history's greatest — contribution to governmental principle, i. e., the
substitution of human poiver exercised through an electorate for the
inscrutable might manifested through a hierarchy as the basis of gov-
ernment. Strong as is the constitution in every feautre and depart-
ment, its chief strength lies in that last-written but first-placed para-
graph, " We, the people of the United States, ... do ordain and estab-
lish this Constitution." With this utterance the mysticsm of the ages
fell away, and the foundation of humane government became fixed
forever; and the new light has already gone around the world and
entered every land.

Now in addition to the specific powers expressed in the first, second
and third articles of the constitution, others are so clearly implied or
expressed inter se that they were unhesitatingly exercised from the day
the instrument was adopted. These embrace the administrative power-
implied throughout, together with that primary power ranking all the
others combined (since they rest on and arise from it), i. e., the de-
terminative (or elective) power implied in the first, second, fourth,,
fifth and sixth articles and expressed in the preamble. So any com-
plete enumeration of the powers of our government (or any other of
representative type) necessarily comprises those pertaining to the five
innate and coordinate functions involved in all governmental organiza-
tions from the most primitive to the most advanced ; in logical order —
which is that reflected in the constitution — they may be denoted (1)
elective, exercised by the people; (2) legislative, exercised by the con-
gress; (3) administrative, exercised by the president and his cabinet
officers; (4) judicative, exercised by the court, and (5) executive, exer-
cised primarily by the president.

II

The popular movement for the utilization of our waterways2 first
marked an awakened public sentiment; now it is stirring the national
conscience in a manner not unlike the movement of 1776. A round
century of public indifference since Gallatin followed Washington in
pointing a way, and a half-century of national incompetence attested
by the decline of river and canal navigation — these unwittingly set the
alarm now ringing. As befits democracy, the awakening began with
the extremities of the body politic; yet signs are not lacking that it is
reaching the somnolent centers. When the declaration and the con-

2 Described in "Our Great River," World's Work for February, 1907 (Vol.
XIII., pp. 8576-8584), and "Our Inland Waterways," Popular Science
Monthly for April, 1908 (Vol. LXXII., pp. 289-303).

278 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

stitution were framed, the sense of citizenship still lay dormant in all
but a few leading minds, and in some of these soon turned sluggardly
for longer slumber; then the legion prodigals were fed with the swine
on husks of party welfare rather than the sound corn of public weal
until a shadowy " no-man's-land " grew up between citizen and state
and a " twilight zone " spread between state and nation. Yet, stirred
at last by the waterway movement and a forest policy uniting in the
cult of conservation, the people are at last preempting the shadowy
middle ground, and thus coming into their own as citizens. Two years
ago the governors — the actual sponsors for the welfare of their com-
monwealths— felt the stir; they responded vigorously, and now they and
their people are moving together against a tyranny of regnant apathy
not greatly different from that of his ease-loving and privilege-giving
majesty George III.

Within a few months the congress began to respond to the popular
demand by authorizing the publication of the reports of the Inland
Waterways Commission and National Conservation Commission and the
Proceedings of the Conference of Governors; then the senate created a
strong committee on the conservation of natural resources; and within
a month this committee reported favorably a bill for the establishment
of a " National Commission for the Conservation of Natural Eesources."
The report3 meets the popular movement half way. Declaring that
" The measure is designed to conform with various actions, both legis-
lative and administrative, growing out of one of the strongest popular
movements in the history of our country," the document outlines the
movement, summarizes the nature and extent of our natural resources,
indicates the leading wastes and the industrial diversions attending
development of the resources, and concludes with a plan for action
framed to meet the people's will. Even more significant than the body
of the report is the appendix; for at last the senate has yielded to the
voice of the people sufficiently to print the expressions adopted in great
conventions of citizens — among others, the declaration of the Fourth
Deep Waterway Convention (adopted in New Orleans November 2
last) " comprising duly appointed delegates to the number of 5,000
from 44 of the 46 states of the union, including the governors of a
majority of the states," which finally turned over a new leaf by recog-
nizing and declaring the rights of citizenhood to " demand and direct "
action by their representatives — in lieu of the far lesser rights of sub-
jecthood to " petition " or " submit " or " respectfully request " or
" forever pray " with which Americans have been content for a century
— and then nailed down the new leaf by the public pledge of personal
honor proper to full citizenship ! Surely if these 5,000 delegates mean

3 Calendar number 733, Sixty-first Congress, second session, Senate Report
No. 826, pp. 1-50; ordered printed June 11, 1910.

THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 279

what they say — and who can doubt their sincerity? — no more signifi-
cant utterance has been made on American soil since the declaration
of July 4, 1776. The final paragraph of the declaration reads:

Believing in our hearts that the needs of the country and the fundamental
principles of our government set forth herein involve moral no less than
material issues, and agreeing that the time has come for us and the other
citizens we represent to exercise our constitutional powers by the means pro-
vided when the constitution of the United States was framed, we, the delegates
in this convention assembled, representing more than half the people and three
fourths the productive energy of the United States, do hereby deliberately and
firmly, and in the full realization of our duties and responsibilities, demand
and direct that a definite and vigorous policy of waterway improvement,
beginning with the Lakes-to-Gulf Deep Waterway, be adopted and put into
operation by the national government without delay. To the enforcement of
this demand we pledge our individual effort and our united support; and we
hereby publicly pledge our personal honor, each for himself and to each other,
to support no candidate for public office who will not unqualifiedly indorse and
maintain that policy.

Academically, such an utterance is in so full accord with the con-
stitution and with the principles of popular government as to be com-
monplace; yet actually it is so far out of accord with current govern-
mental methods that the third of the representatives and senators in
attendance at the convention generally (except perhaps a dozen pro-
gressives) repudiated and condemned the utterance more or less openly
as " socialistic " or " anarchistic." Still the voice of the people has
echoed and reechoed; and at last it has reached print in a public
document.

The spirit of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Association
expressed in their declaration has cropped out in various conventions
other than those noted in the senate report. During the past two years
the question has been growing more and more incisive, Is this nation
competent to protect the interests of its people ? The question has been
pressed in non-partisan assemblies held in every section, including
citizens of every state, and with constantly increasing directness and
pointedness ; and it is a sign of the times that it is put with a sense of
power and a realization of responsibility unprecedented in the century
and a quarter since Washington moved toward the constitution. Amer'
ica — the collective mass of ninety million souls — is a long-suffering if
not lethargic giant, slow to wrath and show of strength; yet as to its
power when aroused — who can doubt? Its full strength lies in the
spirit of the ninety millions; the force of a first effort lodges in some
eighteen million voters, a half temporarily tied by one special interest
or another — but nine millions are full freemen, and five millions more
are ready to follow their lead. Now that the giant is aroused, in con-
science no less than in sentiment, the demand of the people is attracting
attention. Already the waterway advocates can point to a partial re-

28o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

sponse to their demands in enlarged provision for river surveys, in
provision for a national waterways commission empowered to extend
and apply plans framed by the last administration, and in a recent
declaration of the administrative and legislative authorities that " pork-
barrel " appropriations must cease — indeed, to the longest steps in the
right direction since Washington prevised and Gallatin planned and
Windom pleaded for rational waterway development. Verily, the water-
way workers have not wrought in vain !

The significant fact lying behind the past and prospective legisla-
tion is the power of the people when once aroused — a power not to be
confounded for a moment with that of tumult or mob, but inhering in
the very spirit and lodging in the innate structure of democracy. True,
this power is too often ignored by those for the moment responsible for
the public welfare, too little felt by its own possessors; it is seldom
stirred save by war or rumors of war, rarely tempted to exercise save
by partisan calls at times of political stress; yet although a virtually
neglected factor of our national life, it is worthy of weighty con-
sideration.

Ill

The first, second and third articles of the constitution, respectively,
define the legislative, the executive (including the administrative) and
the judicative functions of the government. The specifications of the
executive function are general to the point of vagueness — naturally
enough, in view of the then current antipathy to concentrated authority.
Few matters were so faithfully discussed during the constitutiontl con-
vention as the powers of the president;4 and few of the discussions
better exemplify the superlative caution which constantly led the dele-
gates away from definite specifications and toward bare generalities in
compromising mooted points. So, just as the instrument is silent on
the primary governmental function save in the preamble, the common-
place functions of administration are implied rather than explicitly
stated in the second article — being most clearly (or most nearly) de-
fined in the oath or affirmation by the president-apparent that he will
" faithfully execute the office of president," which " office " manifestly
covers minor governmental affairs not otherwise specified. The indefi-
niteness was not due to inattention or indifference concerning the
administrative function, as the debates clearly show. Mid-course of the
deliberation, " Mr. Gouverneur Morris " thus expressed what seems to
have been a prevailing view:

One great object of the executive is to controul the Legislature. The
legislature will continually seek to aggrandize & perpetuate themselves; &
will seize those critical moments produced by war, invasion or convulsion for

4 The index to the discussion occupies a page in the recent edition of
"Madison's Journal" (edited by Gaillard Hunt; Putnam's, New York and
London, 1908).

THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 281

that purpose. It is necessary then that the Executive Magistrate should be
the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, agst- Legislative tyranny,
against the great & the wealthy who in the course of things will necessarily
compose the legislative body. Wealth tends to corrupt the mind to nourish its
love of power, and to stimulate it to oppression. History proves this to be the
spirit of the opulent. The check provided in the 2d branch was not meant
as a check on legislative usurpations of power, but on the abuse of lawful
powers, on the propensity in the 1st branch to legislate too much to run into
projects of paper money & similar expedients. It is no check on legislative
tyranny. On the contrary it may favor it, and if the 1st branch can be seduced
may find the means of success. The executive therefore ought to be so consti-
tuted as to be the great protector of the mass of the people. It is the duty of
the executive to appoint the officers & to command the forces of the republic:
to appoint 1. ministerial officers for the administration of public affairs.
2. officers for the dispensation of Justice. Who will be the best judges whether
these appointments will be well made? The people at large, who will know,
will see, will feel the effects of them. Again who can judge so well of the
discharge of military duties for the protection & security of the people, as the
people themselves who are to be protected & secured ? 5

Unhappily, the inclefmiteness begat uncertainty, which has multi-
plied with the growth of the country; for public affairs requiring ad-
ministrative attention tend to increase geometrically (just as do trans-
portation lines) with the number of individuals and communities
touched. Under the natural desire to protect prerogatives (so clearly
foreseen by Morris), and with a facility due to the weight of numbers,
the congress gradually grew inattentive to the first duty of the presi-
dent under the constitution (" He shall, from time to time, give to the
congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their
consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedi-
ent"), and drifted into the habit of obtaining "information of the
state of the union " by more cumbrous methods directly through their
own committees or indirectly (and of course unconstitutionally) from
the administrative departments. Moreover, they increasingly ignored
the warning of George Washington (the presiding officer and moving
spirit in the constitutional convention) in that ever-memorable fare-
well address read annually in their hearing : " Let me . . . warn you
in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of
party generally. . . . The alternate domination of one faction over
another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention
. . . serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public
administration " — so that the nominally representative congress has
virtually ceased to act in behalf of the people and come to act instead
in behoof of party, in ways for which no shadow of constitutional war-
rant exists. It would appear that the gravest apprehensions of Wash-
ington and Morris have been realized in a policy of special legislation
so pronounced that — mirabile dictu ! — fully 99 per cent, of the bills
Ubid., Vol. II., pp. 1-2.

282 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

introduced during an ordinary session are special, local or personal in
whole or in part, while far the larger part of the committee work and
public debate appears to be devoted to special or local interests ! Nat-
urally little time and thought are left for general laws, touching alike
the entire citizenry; and naturally the custom of special legislation
under party control opens easy way for such machine organization that
a half-dozen shrewd manipulators may assume leadership in either
house and completely dominate legislation. So far has this tendency
run that it is to-day a grave question — the gravest in our history —
whether our current laws are framed in the interests of our ninety mil-
lions or in the interests of special privilege reducible in the last analysis
to a scant dozen " captains of industry " : and hence whether after all
representative government is inherently and permanently stable. The
" propensity " of the congress " to legislate too much " has indeed been
checked from time to time in the manner forecast by Morris ; for while
some administrations acquiesce, others hold out for a stricter conform-
ity with the constitution. George Washington sought to carry out the
intent of the instrument framed under his chairmanship, and was so
savagely assailed for " usurpation " that he declared death preferable
to public service; Abraham Lincoln carried forward the administrative
affairs of his terms through sheer force of personality, aided indirectly
by the military activity of the time; no less competent authority than
the present president of the United States once signalized Grover Cleve-
land's insistence that the presidency carries power coequal with those
of the congress as the notable feature of his administrations ; and Theo-
dore Roosevelt's policy was consistently parallel and still more vigorous,
even to his final and most trenchant presidential message pointing out
the unconstitutionality of an item in the sundry civil act passed as his
term closed. Meantime some heads of executive departments shrank
from assuming administrative responsibilities; yet under growing
necessity they have gradually become our chief administrative officers.
Verily the price of indefiniteness as to the administrative function
in our fundamental law has been large ! Not only have confusion and
friction arisen, with enormous attendant expense, but the relatively
simple duties of administration are ill-performed. The advocates of
waterway improvement were among the first to notice that nearly all
our waterway enactments to date are special, and tend to magnify rather
than merge sectional and political interests; and that the flood of spe-
cial bills and local items has so far diverted effort from general legisla-
tion that even unto this day the country lacks fundamental laws relating
to waters, and is weakly perpetuating monarchial common-law doctrines
not only unsuited to current conditions but such as the constitution was
designed to annul or forestall ! The waterway workers are no longer
slow to condemn methods which have permitted — if indeed they have

TEE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 283

not caused — the decline and disappearance of navigation from the
finest river system of the world in a country suffering from the lack of
transportation facilities. Already a majority of the states are moving,
and many citizens in every state are astir ; and the prevailing sentiment
runs along the lines forecast century-before-last by Gouverneur Morris
and George Washington.

IV

When popular assemblies " demand and direct " action relating to
waterways, regardless of party and under a suffrage penalty, the
awakening means more than mere recognition of bad legislative and
administrative methods; it extends to that innate and primary power
seized on by the founders as a substitute for the " divine right of
kings " — i. e.j the power of the people defined in the preamble of the
constitution and exercised through the suffrage. While this power has
existed throughout our history, the act of suffrage is the last to be
realized as essentially governmental — indeed as the supreme function
of democratic government. The spirit of free citizenship arises slowly ;
to the anthropologist it is the latest self-conscious attribute acquired
by mankind in that long course of human progress stretching from the
prime to the present. Even in our Atlantic tidewater states, the real
home of democracy, few citizens feel the franchise as in and of itself
a function of government; in oratorical flights they hear and even
declare that ours is a government of the people by the people for the
people, yet only the exceptional citizen actually senses the casting of
his ballot as a function no less governmental in character than those
delegated thereby to his fellow-citizens acting as president and repre-
sentative and judge. Now this is the sense stirred by the non-partisan
waterway and other conventions, particularly in the newer states west
of the Appalachians; it is the sense stirred as well in DesMoines and
other municipalities governed by the commission system carrying pro-
vision for initiative and referendum and recall — the sense of innate
power exercised through the elective function.

Concurrently with the sense of power the realization of rights is
arising; and naturally enough, first as to the waters. Finding nation
and most states apathetic, the more progressive waterway advocates
looked into fundamental questions for themselves ; and now, as a member
of the supreme bench recently declared half querulously, " The country
is full of constitutional lawyers." Five years ago, few citizens cared to
consider the ownership of water in itself ; to-day tens of thousands are
familiar with the tenth amendment (" Tbe powers not delegated to the
United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are
reserved to the States respectively or to the people"), and hold that
since this resource was never granted to the nation or conveyed to the
states it necessarily belongs to the people as a heritage no less inde-

284 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

feasible than the common title to sunlight and air, or indeed the equal
rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and three great
conventions during last year adopted in substance the water plank made
public by the senate committee on the conservation of natural resources.

We adhere to the principle arising in our constitution and incorporated in
statutes recently enacted in several states that the waters belong to the people,
and maintain that this right of the people is inherent and indefeasible; and
while recognizing the necessity of administering this invaluable possession of
the people by state and federal agencies, each within its appropriate jurisdiction,
we deny the right of municipalities or of state and federal governments to
alienate or convey water by perpetual franchises or without just consideration
in the interests of the people.

With the sense of power and the realization of rights, the conscious-
ness of duty is spreading. Until recently, provision for waterway im-
provement or other public works otherwise than by direct appropriation
was commonly deemed chimerical; and citizens were led by advice of
their representatives and the policy of congress to look on local appro-
priations as spoils of conquest rather than general contributions to the
public good — whereby the " pork-barrel " was kept open and the appro-
priations went for " works " with little regard for actual navigation of
the waters. Now, seeing that despite the expenditure of hundreds of
millions on waterway " works " navigation of the rivers has declined,
the people demand business-like methods whereby public funds shall be
expended only for commensurate public benefits; and since the people
have spoken, presidents, governors and probably a majority of the con-
gress are concurring in the wisdom of issuing bonds to cover the cost
of continuously and increasingly beneficial public improvements.
Almost never before has the issue of bonds been contemplated without
more or less open guarantee from Wall Street; but now legion citizens
clamor for opportunity to share public burdens directly on a patriotic
basis rather than indirectly through the expensive medium of special
interests — for in the end the people pay. Under this pressure bills
have already been introduced in the congress providing for waterway
improvement on the basis of bonds issued in small denominations
bearing interest too low to tempt bankers and brokers ; and the adoption
of this popular policy promises to mark America's most definite step
toward making her citizens joint owners rather than passive tenants
of their common country, and thereby at once raising patriotism to a
higher plane and insuring stability of the nation.

The recognition of rights and duties respecting the waters leads
to juster appreciation of other resources, which were of no account when
the constitution was framed but have acquired value through the natural
growth and orderly development of our population and industries ; and
to-day several of our forty-odd state conservation commissions hold that
in legislative or other action looking toward wiser use and conservation

TEE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 285

of the natural resources the people are but protecting their own. The
growth of the sense of common welfare has been greatly impeded by
court decisions based on common-law doctrines which the constitution
was designed to displace, decisions sometimes tincturing later legisla-
tion ; yet several courts have fairly kept pace with the growing sense of
eternal equities among the people — they who adopted the constitution
partly to provide a judicative mechanism adapted to their own needs
and subject to their own supreme will: The decision of the supreme
court of Maine that the public are entitled to a voice in the management
of forests affecting stream-flow; the finding of the New Jersey courf
of errors and appeals, sustained by the supreme court of the United
States, that the people have a residuary right in the waters ; the opinion
of the supreme court in the Rio Grande case that the government may
maintain navigability by protecting the source waters — these and other
decisions tending toward closer unity of interest among all the people
are signs of the times. So, too, are the enactments by the congress for
reclaiming lands and constructing canals under the " general welfare "
clause of the constitution, and providing for the Panama Canal and for
operations in the insular possessions under the same constitutional
warrant — enactments viewed askance by ultra-strict constructionists,
yet amply sustained by that court of final appeal, the judgment of the
people expressed through their franchise and sustained by their own
paramount power.

V

The waterway and conservation movements are still young, and may
reasonably be expected to contribute continuously to that public welfare
by which they were inspired. Whatever they may do in the future, they
have already done much. They have revealed to the people a growing
sense of their own powers and rights and duties as citizens. They have
brought to light and started toward rectification our ineffective if not
actually repressive methods of administration by legislative machinery.
They have shown the inherent rights of the people in and to those
material resources given value by their own work, and on which their
own prosperity and perpetuity depend; and thereby they have warmed
the spirit of unity among citizens and states. They have stirred patriot-
ism more than any peaceful issue before, deeply as only bloody wars
have done in the past. Incidentally, they are surely establishing the
elective function as the primary power of representative government,
and will no less surely establish the administrative function as correla-
tive with those of legislative and judicative character.

286 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS OF AMERICAN SOCIETIES

By Peofessoe EDWARD C. PICKERING

HAEVAED COLLEGE OBSEEVATOET

TWO papers on " Foreign Associates of National Societies " were
published in The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 73, p. 372,
and Vol. 74, p. 80, in which the foreign membership of the seven great
scientific societies of the world was discussed. It is the object of the
present paper to make a similar study of the associate and honorary
membership of the leading American societies, based on the latest
printed lists. To avoid confusion, members paying fees will be called
residents, those who live at a distance and pay no fees, associates, and
foreigners, honorary members. All of the American members of the
National Academy and the honorary members of the New York Acad-
emy, if Americans, will be included in the second class.

The oldest of American scientific societies is the American Philo-
sophical Society held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge.
It was founded in 1743, on the initiative of Franklin. Its membership
consists of 165 residents, who live within thirty miles of Philadelphia,
224 associates and 113 honorary members. The number of persons
elected each year is limited to fifteen Americans and five foreigners.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded in 1780,
with its headquarters in Boston, is the second oldest scientific society.
The numbers of residents (citizens of Massachusetts), associates and
honorary members are 193, 87 and 63, and are limited to 200, 100 and
75, respectively.

The New York Academy of Sciences was founded in 1817. The
numbers of residents, associates and honorary members are 468, 139
and 48, respectively. The numbers of the last two classes are limited
to 200 and 50, respectively.

The National Academy of Sciences was founded in 1863, with its
headquarters in Washington. Its membership consists of 113 associates
and 45 honorary members. The number of the latter class is limited
to 50.

Lists were next prepared of the associates and honorary members
of these societies. Table I. contains a list of those Americans whose
names appear on two or more of these lists. The successive columns
give the name, place of birth, college, residence, specialty, date of birth
and age at the time of election into each of the four societies. Place
of birth and residence are indicated by states, or countries, except in the

MEMBERS OF AMERICAN SOCIETIES

287

TABLE I American Associates

Name

Birth

College

Residence

Specialty

Bir.

1838

P
33

B

46

N

w

Abbe, C.

N. Y. City

A.B. City, N.Y.

Washington

Meteorol.

41

Abbot, H. L.

Mass.

West Point

Cambridge

Engineer.

1831

31

32

...

41

Abbott, C. C.

N.J.

M.D. Penn.

Trenton

Zoology

1843

46

...

40

• ■•

Allen, J. A.

Mass.

— Harvard

New York City

Zoology

1838

40

33

36

38

Ames, J. S.

Vermont

A.B.J. Hopkins

Baltimore

Physics

1864

41

...

...

45

Angell, J. B.

R. I.

A.B. Brown

Ann Arbor

Educ.

1829

60

39

...

...

Bailey, L. H.

Michigan

B.S. Michigan

Ithaca

Agric.

1858

38

42

...

...

Barnard, E. E.

Tennessee

— Vanderbilt

Williams Bay

Astron.

1857

46

35

...

Barus, C.

Cincinnati

— Columbia

Providence

Physics

1856

47

34

...

36

Becker, G. F.

N. Y. City

A.B. Harvard

Washington

Geology

1847

60

54

Bell, A.G.

Scotland

— London

Washington

Physics

1847

35

30

81

36

Billings, J. S.

Indiana

A.B. Miami

New York City

Physiol.

1838

49

43

...

45

Boas, F.

Germany

— Heidelberg

New York City

Anthrop.

1858

45

...

30

42

Bowditch, H. P.

Boston

A.B. Harvard

Jamaica Plain

Physiol.

1840

64

32

...

47

Branner, J. C.

Tennessee

B.S. Cornell

Stanford

Geology

1850

36

34

55

Brush, G. J.

Brooklyn

Ph.B. Yale

New Haven

Mineral.

1831

34

40

45

37

Campbell, D. H.

Michigan

Ph.M. Mich.

Stanford

Botany

1859

51

39

...

...

Campbell, W. W.

Ohio

B.S. Michigan

Mt. Hamilton

Astron.

1862

41

...

...

40

Cattell, J. McK.

Penn.

A.B. Lafayette

Garrison

Psychol.

1860

28

...

34

41

Chain berlin, T. C.

Illinois

A.B. Beloit

Chicago

Geology

18-13

62

58

55

60

Chandler, C.F.

Mass.

— Harvard

New York City

Chem.

1836

39

■ . .

29

38

Chittenden, R. H.

Connecticut

Ph.B. Yale

New Haven

Physiol.

1856

48

...

...

34

Choate, J. H.

Mass.

A.B. Harvard

New York City

Diplom.

1832

74

68

...

...

Clarke, F. W.

Boston

S. B. Harvard

Washington

Chemis.

1847

57

29

62

Comstock, C. B.

Mass.

West Point

New York City

Engineer.

1831

61

...

53

Coulter, J. M.

China

A.B. Dartmouth

Chicago

Botany

1851

. . .

41

. . .

58

Dall, W. H.

Boston

— Harvard

Washington

Zoology

1845

52

...

25

52

Dana, E. S.

Connecticut

A.B.Yale

New Haven

Mineral.

1849

47

44

36

35

Davenport, .C. B.

Connecticut

B.S. Brooklyn

Spring Harbor

Zoology

1866

41

40

...

Davidson, G.

England

A.M. Mil. H. S.

San Francisco

Geodesy

1825

41

62

...

49

Davis, W. M.

Philadel.

S.B. Harvard

Cambridge

Geog.

1850

49

84

48

54

Dutton, C. E.

Connecticut

A.B. Yale

Englewood

Geology

1841

30

...

43

Emmons, S. F.

Boston

A.B. Harvard

Washington

Geology

1841

42

62

...

51

Farlow, W. G.

Boston

A.B. Harvard

Cambridge

Botany

1844

61

30

35

Flexner, S.

Kentucky

M.D. Louisville

New York City

Physiol.

1863

38

...

43

45

Frost, E. B.

Vermont

A.B. Dartmouth

Williams Bay

Astron.

1866

43

42

Furness, H. H.

Philadel.

A.B. Harvard

Wallingford

Author

1833

47

64

...

Gilbert, G. K.

New York

A.B. Rochester

Washington

Geodesy

1843

59

50

27

40

Gill, T. N.

N. Y. City

A.M.Columbia

Washington

Zoology

1837

30

21

36

Gooch, F. A.

Mass.

A.B. Harvard

New Haven

Chem.

1852

55

38

...

45

Goodale, G. L.

Maine

A.B.Amherst

Cambridge

Botany

1839

54

35

50

51

Hadley, A. T.

Connecticut

A.B. Yale

New Haven

Econom.

1856

46

46

...

...

Hague, A. D.

Boston

Ph.B. Yale

Washington

Geology

184(i

63

64

...

45

Hale, G. E.

Chicago

B.S. Mass. Inst.

Pasadena

Astron.

1868

34

33

30

34

Hastings, C. S.

Clinton

Ph.B. Yale

New Haven

Physics

1849

57

. . .

...

40

Hilgard, E. W.

Bavaria

— Zurich

Berkeley

Geology

1833

...

71

• ■■

39

Hill, G. W.

N. Y. City

A.B. Rutgers

West Nyack

Astron.

1838

65

27

60

36

Hillebrand, W. F.

Honolulu

— Cornell

Washington

Chem.

1853

53

...

55

Holden, E S-

St. Louis

B.S. Washing.

West Point

Astron.

1846

51

39

...

39

Holmes, W. H.

Ohio

B.S. McNealy

Washington

Geology

1846

53

...

54

59

Howell, W. H.

Baltimore

A.B. J.Hopkins

Baltimore

Physiol.

1860

43

• ■ •

...

45

Jordan, D. S.

New York

M.S. Cornell

Stanford

Zoology

1851

54

25

...

Koenig, G. A.

Germany

M.E. Pol. Carl.

Houghton

Chem.

1844

30

• • •

32

* • •

Libbey, W.

N. Y. City

Princeton

Princeton

Geology

1855

42

. . .

39

...

MahaD, A. T.

New York

Naval Academy

New York City

History

1840

57

63

...

• ••

Mall, F. P.

Iowa

M.D. Michigan

Baltimore

Physiol.

1862

44

39

* • •

45

Mallett, J. W.

Ireland

Ph.D. Gott.

Charlottesville

Chem.

1832

53

51

44

...

Mark, E. L.

New York

A.B. Michigan

Cambridge

Zoology

1847

60

...

56

Mendenhall, T. C.

Ohio

Worcester

Physics

1841

58

43

46

Merriam, C. H.

N. Y. City

— Yale

Washington

Zoology

1855

47

1*9

47

Merriman, M.

Connecticut

Ph.B. Yale

New York City

Engineer.

1848

. > .

50

■ ■ •

Michelson, A. A.

Germany

Naval Academy

Chicago

Physics

1852

50

33

...

36

Minot, C. S.

Boston

B.S. Mass. Inst.

Boston

Zoology

1852

44

30

26

45

Mitchell, S. W.

Philadel.

— Pennsylvania

Philadelphia

Physiol.

1829

S3

36

...

36

288

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Name

Birth

College

Residence

Specialty
Math.

Bir.

1862

p
43

B

39

N

w

Moore, E. H.

Ohio

A.B. Yale

Chicago

• 9

Morley, E. W.

New Jersey

A.B. Williams

Hartford

Chem.

1838

65

54

...

59

Morse, E. S.

Maine

— Harvard

Salem

Zoology

1838

57

31

26

38

Morse, H. N.

Vermont

A.B. Amherst

Baltimore

Chem.

1848

55

...

...

59

Monroe, C. E.

Mass.

S.B. Harvard

Washington

Chem.

18-19

42

48

...

...

Nef, J. X.

Switzerland

A. B. Harvard

Chicago

Chem.

1862

. . •

46

...

42

Nichols, E. L.

England

B.S. Cornell

Ithaca

Physics

1854

50

47

47

Nichols, E. F.

Kansas

B.S. Kansas

Hanover

Physics

1869

37

• • ■

...

39

Osborn, H. F.

Connecticut

A.B. Princeton

New York City

Zoology

1857

30

44

34

43

Peckham, S. F.

R. I.

— Brown

Brooklyn

Chem.

1839

58

...

37

• ■•

Peirce, B. 0.

Mass.

A.B. Harvard

Cambridge

Physics

1854

56

30

...

52

Peirce, C. S.

Mass.

A.B. Harvard

Milford

Logic

1839

...

28

...

37

Pickering, E. C.

Boston

S.B. Harvard

Cambridge

Astron.

1846

50

21

30

27

Prudden, T. M.

Connecticut

A.B. Yale

New York City

Physiol.

1849

• . .

55

41

52

Pnmpellv, R.

New York

A.B. Yale

Newport

Geology

1837

37

33

31

35

Pupin, M. I.

Hungary

A.B. Columbia

Yonkers

Physics

1858

38

47

32

47

Putnam, F. W.

Mass.

S.B. Harvard

Cambridge

Anthrop.

1839

56

26

...

46

Remsen, I.

N. Y. City

A.B. City, N.Y.

Baltimore

Chem.

1846

33

29

30

36

Richards, T. W.

Philadel.

S.B. Harvard

Cambridge

Chem.

1868

34

23

. . •

31

Rovce, J.

California

A.B. California

Cambridge

Philos.

1855

53

36

...

51

Sargent, C, S.

Boston

A.B. Harvard

Jamaica Plain

Botany

1841

41

37

.. .

54

Scott, W. B.

Cincinnati

A.B. Princeton

Princeton

Paleon.

1858

28

...

40

48

Scudder, S. H.

Boston

A.B. Williams

Cambridge

Zoology

1837

41

31

39

40

Sherwood, A.

Penn.

— Chicago

Portland, 0.

Geology

1848

27

. ..

28

. . .

Smyth, C. H.

New York

Ph B. Columbia

Princeton

Geology

1866

42

29

...

Stephens, H. M.

Missouri

A.B Dickinson

Berkeley

Zoology

1868

29

32

...

...

Stevens, W. L.

Georgia

A.B. S. Carol.

Lexington, Va.

Physics

1847

37

...

43

...

Thomson, E.

England

A.B. Phil. C. S.

Swampscott

Engineer

1853

23

35

...

54

Trelease, W.

New York

B.S. Cornell

St. Louis, Mo.

Botany

1857

46

35

45

Trowbridge, J.

Boston

S.B. Harvard

Cambridge

Physics

1843

53

28

34

35

Van Hise, C. K.

Wisconsin

B.M.E. Wis.

Madison

Geology

1857

52

■ ••

43

45

Verill, A. E.

Maine

S.B. Harvard

New Haven

Zoology

1839

. . .

48

28

33

Walcotfc C D

New York

Washington

Geology

1850

47

49

48

46

II . 1 1 ' ' ' 1 l , \_/» A~r .

Webster, A. G.

Mass.

A.B. Harvard

Worcester

Physics

1863

43

32

...

40

Welch, W. H.

Connecticut

A.B. Yale

Baltimore

Physiol.

1850

46

51

...

45

White, A. D.

New York

A.B. Yale

Ithaca

Educat' n

1832

37

36

...

White, I. C.

West Va.

A.M. W. Virg.

Morgantown

Geology

1848

30

...

26

Whitman, C. 0.

Maine

B.A. Bowdoin

Chicago

Zoology

1842

57

4S

58

53

Wood, H. C.

Philadel.

M.D. Penn.

Philadelphia

Physiol.

1841

• • .

46

25

38

Woodward, R. S.

Michigan

C.E. Mich.

Washington

Astron.

1849

53

47

...

47

Wright, A. W.

Connecticut

A.B. Yale

New Haven

Physics

1836

60

...

40

45

case of a few large cities. The four societies are indicated by the
initials of the headquarters of each, P, B, N and W. Eesident mem-
bership is indicated by italics.

The discussion of Table I. is complicated by the fact that several
men were elected as residents, and later moving to another state, were
made associates. Three men were made honorary members of the New
York Academy. In all these cases, the first election is that entered in
the table. Twenty-one men, including the three just mentioned, are
members of all four societies, and will be designated below as of class A.

From the second column, it appears that the birthplaces are dis-
tributed as follows : Massachusetts, 22 ; New York, 18 ; Connecticut, 10 ;
Pennsylvania, 7; Maine and Ohio, 4 each; Michigan and Vermont, 3
each; foreigners, 13, of whom 5 came from Great Britain, and 4 from
Germany. The only cities furnishing more than one member are

MEMBERS OF AMERICAN SOCIETIES 289

Boston, 11; New York, 8; Philadelphia, 5; Cincinnati, 2. Of 105, 41
come from New England and 26 from the Middle States, making nearly
two thirds, in all. Of class A, 6 were born in New York, including 3
in New York City; 5 in Massachusetts, 4 of them in Boston; 3 in
Maine, and 2 in Connecticut.

A grouping of the colleges where these men got their education led
to unexpected results, as follows: Harvard College, 12; Lawrence Scien-
tific School, 12 ; Yale College, 9 ; Sheffield Scientific School, 6 ; Cornell,
Michigan and common schools, 5 each ; Columbia and Princeton, 3 each.
Nine colleges educated 2 each. Harvard and Yale, therefore, educated
39, or rather more than a third of the whole. The numbers of living
graduates in the four institutions, Harvard College, Lawrence Scientific
School, Yale College and Sheffield Scientific School, are about 12,000,
1,200, 8,000 and 4,000. Accordingly, the proportion is 1 out of 1,000,
100, 900 and 700, for the four institutions, respectively. The average
numbers of societies are 2.5, 3.3, 2.6 and 2.5, respectively. Evidently
the greatest possible number is 4.0, and the least, 2.0. The number of
graduates of the other institutions is too small to determine averages
with accuracy. The average 3.3 for the Lawrence Scientific School is
only surpassed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2 mem-
bers, average 4.0, and Williams College, 2 members, average, 3.5. Of
class A, 5 are graduates of the Lawrence School, 2 of Yale College and

2 as just stated of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The present residence of these men according to cities is as follows :
Boston, New York and Washington, 15 each; New Haven, 8; Balti-
more and Chicago, 6 each ; Princeton, 4 ; Berkeley, Ithaca and Stanford,

3 each; Philadelphia, Williams Bay and Worcester, 2 each. The sub-
urbs of each city are included in it. Thus, Boston includes Cambridge,
and represents, practically, Harvard College. Of class A, 6 are resi-
dents of Boston, 3 of New York, 3 of Washington, 2 of Chicago and
2 of New Haven. While birthplaces indicate conditions of about sixty
years ago, and colleges forty years ago, residences indicate nearly pres-
ent conditions.

The other columns of Table I. are better discussed in connection
with the corresponding columns of Table II. The latter gives a list
of the foreigners who are honorary members of two or more of these
societies. The successive columns give the name, residence, specialty,
year of birth, age at time of election into each of the four societies and
number of the seven national societies of which each man is a member.
The numbers in the last column are taken from the article already
mentioned.

In Table II. the residences are distributed as follows: Germany,
16, of which 8 are in Berlin and 3 in Leipzig; England, 15, of which
7 are in London and 4 in Cambridge ; Erance, 4, all in Paris ; Holland,

VOL.LXXVII. — 20.

290

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

3; Austria, 2, both in Vienna; Edinburgh, Palermo, Berne and Stock-
holm, 1 each. Eight men are members of all four societies, and of
them five are residents of England.

TABLE II
Honorary Members

Name

Residence

Specialty

Birth

P

B

N

W

No.

Auwers, A.

Berlin

Astronomy

1838

42

60

45

7

Baeyer, A. von

Munich

Chemistry

1835

75

49

63

7

Bornet, E.

Paris

Botany

1828

65

73

3

Broegger, W. C.

Christiania

Mineralogy

1851

48

■ . .

53

52

4

Bryce, J.

Washington

Diplomacy

1838

57

55

...

Darwin, G. H.

Cambridge

Geography

1845

53

54

59

4

Delitsch, F.

Berlin

Archaeology

1850

54

52

. . .

■ • ■

DeVries, H.

Amsterdam

Agriculture

1848

55

...

56

56

3

Dewar, J.

Cambridge

Physics

1842

57

60

65

* . .

Diels, H.

Berlin

Philology

1848

61

59

...

...

Engler, A.

Berlin

Botany

1844

62

57

...

...

• * •

Fischer, E.

Berlin

Chemistry

1852

57

56

49

52

7

Geikie, A.

Surrey

Mineralogy

1835

45

65

41

66

6

Geikie, J.

Edinburgh

Geology

1839

37

62

...

Gill, D.

London

Astronomy

1843

67

67

55

6

Haeckel, E.

Jena

Zoology

1834

51

60

...

2

Hann, J.

Vienna

Meteorology

1839

. . .

63

60

...

8

Hoff, J.H. van't

Berlin

Chemistry

1852

52

43

44

7

Hooker, J. D.

Sunningdale

Botany

1817

52

49

62

66

6

Kapteyn, J. C.

Groningen

Astronomy

1851

56

• . .

...

56

• • •

Klein, F.

Gottingen

Geometry

1849

• • •

55

47

49

6

Kohlrausch, F.

Marburg

Physics

1840

69

60

. . .

...

5

Kronecker, H.

Berne

Medicine

1839

* • •

62

62

2

Lankester, E. R.

London

Zoology

1847

56

55

51

56

5

Larmor, J.

Cambridge

Physics

1857

. . .

46

.. .

51

...

Lister, J.

London

Medicine

1827

70

66

...

71

4

Lockyer, J. N.

Kensington

Astronomy

1836

38

...

44

3

Lorentz, H. A.

Leyden

Physics

1853

53

...

• • •

53

5

Maspero,G. C. C.

Paris

Philology

1846

45

39

...

...

Nansen, F.

Lysaker

Geography

1861

36

37

...

3

Ostwald, W.

Leipzig

Chemistry

1853

52

55

53

4

Penck, A. F. K.

Berlin

Geography

1858

50

40

51

...

Pfeffer, W. F.

Leipzig

Botany

1845

64

52

53

58

6

Picard, E.

Paris

Geometry

1856

54

47

47

47

5

Poincar6, H.

Paris

Geometry

1854

45

47

46

44

7

Kamsay, W.

London

Chemistry

1852

47

49

52

7

Rayleigh, J. W.

Essex

Physics

1842

44

46

57

56

7

Eetzius, N. G.

Stockholm

Zoology

1842

65

• ••

57

6

Roscoe, H. E.

Leatherhead

Chemistry

1833

70

57

54

...

3

Stoney, G. J.

London

Physics

1826

76

...

78

...

...

Strasburger, E.

Bonn

Botany

1844

...

48

64

54

5

Suess, E.

Vienna

Mineralogy

1831

55

■ . •

■ *•

67

7

Thomson, J. J.

Cambridge

Physics

1856

47

46

40

47

3

Unwin, W. C.

London

Engineering

1838

52

62

. . •

. * .

...

Waldeyer, W.

Berlin

Mineralogy

1836

68

. . .

. . *

73

■ . *

Wundt, W.

Leipzig

Physiology

1832

63

...

72

77

...

Considering now the 105 Americans in Table I., and the 46 foreign-
ers in Table II., we find that the four societies, as already stated, con-
tain 224, 87, 142 and 113 associates, and 113, 63, 48 and 45 honorary
members. The numbers of these included in Table I. are 96, 70, 48
and 82, and in Table II., 36, 31, 27 and 32.

MEMBERS OF AMERICAN SOCIETIES 291

Sciences are not easily grouped, since many are closely connected.
An approximate grouping of Table I. gives: geology, 20; zoology, 15;
astronomy, 15; physics, 14; chemistry, 13; physiology, 10; botany, 7;
miscellaneous, 11. Class A gives: geology, 7; zoology, 6; astronomy,
3; physics, 3; chemistry, 1; botany, 1. Table II. gives: astronomy, 9;
physics, 7 ; chemistry, 7 ; geology, 6 ; botany, 5 ; zoology, 3 ; physiology,
3; miscellaneous, 6. The large number of geologists and zoologists in
Table I., and especially in class A, is remarkable, and the reversion of
this condition in Table II. Of the 20 geologists in Table I. there is
only 1 mineralogist, while in Table II., of 6 geologists, there are 4 min-
eralogists. Table I. contains but 1 mathematician, while Table II.
contains 4.

Important conclusions may be drawn from the order of election, but
the discussion is beset with unusual difficulties. A society which chose
members who were later elected into all the other societies would dis-
play remarkable skill. In class A, the number of members first elected
by the four societies is 2, 10, 8 and 1, respectively. But it is much
easier to become a resident than an associate, and 13 members were
elected as residents of the American Acadeny, and 2 of the New York
Academy. Omitting these, the numbers become 3, 0, 13 and 5.
Accordingly, the New York Academy appears to have shown extraor-
dinary skill in selecting early, men of such ability that later they were
chosen by all the other societies. This result is confirmed by the eight
foreigners who are members of all four societies. Four of these were
first elected by the New York Academy, in two cases before they were
elected by either of the seven leading European societies. The last col-
umn of Table II. shows that 32 men are members both of the European
and American societies; of these, 23 were first elected by a European
society, 6 by an American Society and 3 in the same year by both.
Of the 9 in the last two classes, 6 were chosen first by the American
Academy.

The numbers elected in the different societies, during the last ten
years, differ greatly. Thus, for associates, we have from 1901 to 1905,
26, 15, 0 and 20, and for 1906 to 1910, 17, 1, 1 and 13. For honorary
members no such differences occur, the numbers for 1901 to 1905 being
8, 11, 9 and 12, and for 1906 to 1910, 11, 5, 3 and 9. Only 2 honorary
members were elected into the National Academy before 1896, both in
1883. In the New York Academy, 11 associates were elected in 1876.
Of course all of these numbers relate only to the selected lists contained
in Tables I. and II.

292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD

ONTOGENY: A STUDY OF THE VALUE OF YOUNG FEA-
TURES IN DETERMINING PHYLOGENY

By Professor F. B. LOOMIS

AMHERST COLLEGE

IN this paper I want to study what value is to be given to the prin-
ciple that ontogeny is a brief recapitulation of phylogeny, when it
comes to the concrete determination of the ancestry of a given genus.
For the purpose three types have been studied carefully and several
more for confirmations, the principal study being between the young
and adult of the pig, cat and man, the differences being noted to see if
they suggested the forms considered ancestral.

First let us consider the skull of a six weeks' pig in comparison with
that of the adult, the two having been drawn to the same length. The
first and most marked variation is in the brain case, that of the young
being relatively vastly larger. The same is especially true of the sense
capsules of the ear and eye. The later growth is much greater in those
parts of the skull designated as facial, or having to do with the jaws and
their supports. Then there is a change in the axis of the skull, this
being due to the growth of the maxilla region, and lastly where there
is any cellular bone or bone spaces they are developed in later life.
This factor is especially well shown in the development of the elephant
skull and in ruminants. It is coincident with high crests and marked
protuberances.

While most of the features have been indicated in the pig, the same
comparison in the cat reveals the same excessive development of the
brain case and sense organs, the same weakness of the jaws and change
in the axial relations, and this may be further confirmed in looking at
the contrast between a three-year-old child's skull and that of an adult.

The conclusions then to be drawn from this hasty comparison of
the two skulls are, first, that the shape of the skull in the young shows
the excessive development of the brain and sense capsules, so that the
appearance is not that of a primitive animal, but exactly the contrary,
the appearance which the genus would assume were its mental or
nervous development carried to a much higher degree than is the case.
The embryonic development of the brain and sense organs is pushed
far toward the beginning, and is matured, as far as size is concerned,
the earliest of any of the systems. The skull is first an envelope for
the brain and sense organs and is therefore profoundly modified by this
embryonic peculiarity, and the younger the individual the less like the
adult or ancestor the skull is shaped.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 293

Secondly, the change of axis is not in the ancestral direction, the
excessive weak condition of the jaws being again an embryonic adapta-
tion and not an ancestral one.

Lastly, in the development of cancellous tissue is a condition which
more nearly approximates the phylogenetic development, but here even
the use of young features is deceptive, for it is seldom that this cellu-
lar bone is developed in the immediate ancestor but is rather found in
several genera back, being usually an accompaniment of the develop-
ment of the heavy facial portion of the skull. So much for form.

Turning to the dentition. The milk set of the pig and those of the
adult are drawn side by side, and it is seen that while the front teeth
of the young approximate those of the adult, the comparison is between
the complicated premolar and molar sets. Briefly, of the four pre-
molars, if all present, in the young (and often but three are developed)
the two in front resemble the premolars to succeed them in the perma-
nent set, while the two rear milk premolars resemble the permanent
molars, the last milk premolar being especially like the last molar.
This granted, the interest centers around whether the pattern of the
milk teeth is such as to indicate the ancestry. A glance at the pig and
its young will show that while the detail is not exactly the same in young
and old, yet they are so alike that no one would identify a single milk
molar as Hyotherium or any other suine genus, but would have to put
it in the genus Sus. Taking other cases among the Ungulata, the his-
tory of the naming of the Miocene genera of horses gives a good ex-
ample. There are, according to Gidley, four genera, Hyohippus, Para-
hippus, Merychippus and Protohippus; of these, three were founded on
young teeth, i. e., the first three named. When it was recognized that
they were young teeth, they were by Cope assigned to Protohippus, but
when the adult teeth were found it was clear that the distinctive features
of these young teeth were the distinctive features of the adult. For the
genus Merychippus there is a difference in that the young teeth are not
cemented, while the adult are. That is ancestral. In analyzing the
descriptions of several genera of horses usually some feature can be
found in the milk tooth which is ancestral.

In the Carnivora there is the carnassial tooth which is specialized;
in the upper jaw it is the third milk premolar and the fourth in the
adult; in the lower jaw it is the fourth milk premolar, and the first
molar of the adult. Thus it is clear that it is a different dental follicle
which forms the young and the adult carnassial. In the case of the dog
the permanent and milk carnassials are approximately alike, but in the
case of the cat the inner lobe or protocone occupies a very different
place in the young from that of the adult, a position characteristic of
none of the Felidge and suggests some of the apparently unrelated
Creodonts.

294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

In the matter of the succession of teeth the follicles which form the
last two — the milk premolars — form teeth in the first set of a totally
different and usually more advanced character than the teeth to he
formed from the same follicles in the permanent set. As a general
thing then the conclusion would be that the milk teeth tend to have
the same characters as mark the permanent set, but when they vary
they often retain characters of the phylogenetically ancestral form.
Weber adds that the later the succession the less the difference between
the milk and permanent sets.

Turning to the limbs, there are again several distinctly ontogenetic
characters, which are by no means ancestral. First, the formation of
epiphyses, so that a bone ossifies from three or more centers. This is
purely an ontogenetic adaptation and has no phylogenetic significance.
Then the articular ends of all the limb bones are greatly enlarged as
compared with adults. This again is not phylogenetic but an adapta-
tion, the joints and their ligaments being early approximated to their
permanent conditions. Then the length of limbs seems to be ef-
fected as an embryonic adajDtation. First take the case of man born
with disproportionately short arms and legs. The legs have been inter-
preted as representing a phylogenetic condition, but the same rule does
not apply to the arms which were ancestrally long. This feature of
short limbs is also characteristic of carnivora and I feel that it is an
embryonic adaptation; certainly the ancestral limb can not be deduced
from the }roung condition. Quite the reverse of conditions obtains
among the Ungulata where the young at birth have disproportionately
long limbs, which with equal certainty does not represent any ancestral
condition recapitulated, for the ancestral limb in ancestral forms is
shorter. Again, I believe the anomalous legs are adaptations to either
the necessity for speed on the part of the young, or for height to reach
the teats, suckling being while the parent is standing.

In the cases of the reduction of digits, greater portions of the re-
duced digits are usually found in the young animals than in the adults,
but in the case of the entire loss of a digit it is also lacking in the
young and embryo.

The general conclusion of the whole matter would then be that the
young give us very little which is not deceptive in reconstructing an-
cestral forms. In certain cases, namely in the teeth and in reduction
of digits, confirmatory points may be obtained, but these must be
used with care, the valuable constructive evidence being rather found
in adult skeletons, and in morphological comparisons. While allowing
that many stages are recapitulated in the development of an individual,
the vast number of adaptations impressed on the young to be used after
birth, make their skeletons specialized even from birth, and such dif-
ferences as exist are seldom reminiscent.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 295

PALEONTOLOGY AND ONTOGENY

By Professsoe A. W. GRABAU

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

ONTOGENY, or the life history of the individual, is commonly
interpreted by zoologists as its embryology, the later stages of
development, from infancy to old age, being deemed of little or no
importance. This was the case fifty years ago ; this is largely the case
to-day. From the days when Agassiz first called the attention of zool-
ogists to their one-sided attack of the problem of ontogeny, and urged
them to pay attention to the important post-embryonic stages, down to
our own time, students of recent animals have for the most part been
content to follow the beaten path. They have left to the paleozoologist
the study of the later stages in the life history of the individual, and
the latter's endeavors in this direction have developed the science of
zoontogeny as to-day understood. There was, perhaps, a natural cause
for this separation, in the fact that the student of soft tissues finds few
changes which he deems worthy of attention, between the embryo and
the adult; whereas the student of hard structures generally sees an
abundance of such changes. This is especially true of invertebrates,
more particularly of such as build external hard structures in which
successive additions are marked by the lines of growth. Vertebrates,
and invertebrates without permanent hard parts, such as the Crustacea,
require series of individuals showing the successive steps in develop-
ment. But mollusks, brachiopods and corals show, by their incremental
lines, the steps in the life history during the post-embryonic period, so
that one perfect individual suffices to present these later stages in
development.

It is not infrequently urged that the hard parts of invertebrates,
especially the shells of mollusks, are not reliable indices of ontogenetic
development, since they represent only the integument, which is subject
to ready modification under the influence of the environment. Such an
argument is based on a total ignorance of the relation of the shell or
other hard structure to the soft parts of the animal. The paleontolo-
gist is convinced that the hard parts of animals are the best indices of
its development, since they record in a permanent form all the minute
modifications which are not even recognizable in the soft parts. More
than this, I believe that shells, those of mollusks at any rate, furnish
us with a record of changes wholly independent of the environment, and
referable entirely to an inherited impulse towards progressive modifica-
tion, along definitely determinable lines. I am well aware that I am
not expressing the opinion of all paleontologists in this statement, and
that this view, moreover, is strongly opposed by some of our ablest
European conchologists. But here again I contend that this difference

296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of opinion is due to a difference of method. "When the student of shells
directs his attention chiefly to adult characters, this definitely directed
variation, independent of environment, is not recognized by him. But
no one can study the details of shell ontogeny, especially in the earlier
stages, without quickly realizing that ontogenetic development is ortho-
genetic, and that the inherited impulse towards determinate modifica-
tions is the most powerful controlling factor of the animal's life history.

So far as invertebrates are concerned, the study of post-embryonic
development was first seriously undertaken by the immortal Hyatt, in
his work on the ammonites. To be sure, others before him — notably
d'Orbigny — noticed that a distinct series of changes was recognizable in
the shell of ammonites, but no one before Hyatt actually employed this
method. He himself once told me that when, in the early sixties, he
first realized the importance of this method of study when actually
applied to shelled organisms, and its value as a guide in phylogeny,
it seemed so marvelously simple that he felt sure that the method and
its application must be fully understood by all working naturalists.
" But," he added, " I soon found that I practically stood alone, and I
have spent my life since in the endeavor to convert them to my point
of view."

This misunderstanding, on the part of many zoologists, of the onto-
genetic method has given rise to their false attitude towards the doc-
trine of the recapitulation of ancestral characters. This subject will
be adequately treated by some of my successors, but I can not forbear
to anticipate them to the extent of pointing out this fact: When the
embryologist seeks for proof or disproof of this concept in the enor-
mously condensed record of the stages between the ovum and birth, he
is bound to be grievously disappointed; for this record, necessarily
modified by eliminations, can only furnish general resemblances of the
embryo to earlier types, and can not be said to actually recapitulate the
life history of the entire race. When, however, the student of post-
embryonic ontogeny compares the youthful stages of an individual with
the adult of immediately preceding species of the same genetic series,
the fact of recapitulation becomes at once apparent.

The post-embryonic life history of an individual falls readily into
stages, of which four major ones have been recognized and named,
chiefly by Hyatt. These are: (1) the infant or nepionic stage; (2)
the adolescent or neanic stage; (3) the adult or ephebic stage, and
(4) the senile or gerontic stage, followed by death. These onto-stages,
as they may be called, are further divided into substages, designated by
the prefixes ana, meta and para, and they may be observed in the ontog-
eny of all individuals. Moreover, in closely related members of one
genetic group, the duration of these stages and substages is approxi-
mately uniform. Change in form, however, may vary greatly, and have

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 297

no necessary relation to the onto-stages, even if tliey coincide with them.
We have thus a second group of stages, which we may designate form
stages, or morphic stages, and there will be required distinct designa-
tions in each case. The best method of naming these stages is to refer
them to the adult ancestral type which they represent.

Thus, in all species of the gastropod shell Fusus, the earliest morphic
stages are a close recapitulation of the adult of Fusus porrectus of the
Eocenic. These stages may therefore be called the F. porrectus stage.
It may be continued for a considerable period of the early life history,
covering several onto-stages, or it may be condensed into a short por-
tion of one stage or substage, in accelerated individuals.

It is of considerable importance that onto-stages and morphic stages
should be discriminated, so I will introduce another illustration.

In the Miocenic of the Atlantic coast we have the gastropod genus
Fulgur well represented. Fulgur fusiformis is normally characterized,
in the adult, by the possession of a pronounced flat shoulder, which is
separated from the body of the shell by an angulation carrying rounded
tubercles. Some of the more specialized individuals lose the angula-
tion and tubercles in the last whorl and become rounded. Thus, while
normally the species is tuberculated in the ephebic onto-stages, special-
ized individuals acquire a new morphic stage through the loss of orna-
mentation. This morphic stage is prophetic of the normal adult of
Fulgur maximum, and hence may be called the F. maximum stage.
F. maximum itself has in its nepionic onto-stage the characters of
adult F. fusiformis; hence it may be designated the F. fusiformis stage.
Some individuals acquire a new stage, namely, a spinous stage, char-
acteristic of the adult of F. carica. In the type designated as F.
tritonis, the nepionic stage is characterized by a fusiformis morphic
stage, the neanic largely by the maximum stage, though some of the
later neanic stages may actually acquire the carica stage. In less
specialized individuals the maximum stage may continue into the early
ephebic in more specialized ones it ceases early in the neanic, the carica
stage taking its place. Finally, Fulgur carica is characterized by the
elimination of the maximum morphic stage, so that the neanic as well
as the ephebic onto-stages are characterized by the spines of the carica
stage, which may even begin in the late nepionic.

In the foregoing, the different morphic stages are shown to be
telescoped with the onto-stages, appearing either earlier and earlier in
the ontogeny of successive individuals, through the operation of the
law of acceleration or tachygenesis ; or later and later, through the
operation of the complementary law of retardation or bradygenesis.
These laws are, of course, only applicable to an orthogenetic series, but
in such a series they are competent to produce, by interaction, all
conceivable combinations of characters.

298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The paleontologist, more than any other naturalist, is concerned
with the product of these interactions, and to him, oftener than to
others, has come the question, Are these results species ? and, if so, what
are the criteria for the separation of species? The student of hard
structures appreciates the difficulty of drawing sharp lines, and one of
his most trying tasks is to satisfy the idiosyncrasies of his colleagues in
the making of species, subspecies, varieties, etc. The student of hard
parts finds transitional forms the rule, and he dare not grind them to
powder under his heel with the remark credited to Stimpson, that
" that is the proper way to dispose of those damned transitional forms."

The philosophic paleontologist recognizes more readily than any one
else the truth of the dictum that nature knows only individuals, and
that species are special creations, called into being by the fiat of the
naturalist. He is concerned not so much with the origin of species as
with the origin of individuals; and while he makes use of the artificial
divisions called species, and sometimes finds his chief joy in multiplying
and subdividing them, he still recognizes their non-existence, and turns
to individuals. He may, perhaps, prefer to speak of mutations, mean-
ing individuals, nevertheless.

But individuals are complex entities, and the paleontologist can not
investigate their genesis before he has thoroughly investigated the origin
of the parts composing it. As Professor Osborn has said, the paleo-
zoologist is concerned primarily with the origin of structures. He
alone is able to trace their development, for he is present at their birth,
he follows their whole history, and will be present also at their extinc-
tion, for the paleontologist alone is immortal.

PALEONTOLOGY AND THE PtECAPITHLATIOX THEOEY

By E. R. CUMINGS

INDIANA UNIVERSITY
I

BATHER once said that " If the embryologists had not forestalled
them, the paleontologists would have had to invent the theory
of recapitulation." This may be considered as a fair sample of the
attitude of at least the Hyatt school of paleontologists toward the theory.
It is doubtful if any paleontologist could be found who wholly rejects it.
In violent contrast with the more or less complete acceptance of
the theory by paleontologists, is the attitude of many embryologists
and zoologists. Montgomery and Hurst have perhaps put the case
against recapitulation more strongly than any one else. The former
says, for example,

The method is wrong in principle, to compare an adult stage of one organism
with an immature stage of another.

TEE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 299

And again :

Therefore we can only conclude that the embryogeny does not furnish any
recapitulation of the phylogeny, not even a recapitulation marred at occasional
points by secondary changes.

Hurst is even more emphatic. He says :

The ontogeny is not an epitome of the phylogeny, is not even a modified
or " falsified " epitome, is not a record, either perfect or imperfect of past
history, is not a recapitulation of evolution.

It would seem as though two statements could scarcely be more
flatly contradictory than those of Bather and Hurst, just quoted.
Nevertheless, I venture to make the assertion that both parties to the
recapitulation controversy are right, for the simple reason that they are
not talking about the same thing. Grabau has called attention to this,
by implication, in one of his papers on gastropods. He states that the
recapitulation theory has been placed in an evil light by the habit of
embryologists of comparing embryonic stages with the adults of exist-
ing representatives of primitive types, and that they have commonly
neglected to compare the epembryonic stages with the adults of geolog-
ically older species. In other words, paleontologists have usually dealt,
in their comparisons, with epembryonic stages, and embryologists with
embryonic stages.

There arises here a question of definition : does the biogenetic law
mean that the ontogeny is a recapitulation of the ph}dogeny, or does
it mean that the embryogeny is a recapitulation of the phylogeny?
If we take the general consensus of opinion, wTe shall find for the former
definition; and if we take the words of Haeckel, whose statement of
the law is the one usually quoted, we shall again find for the former
definition.

It is certainly true, at any rate, that the epembryonic stages may
and do show recapitulation, even when the embryonic stages do not, or
when the embr}'ogeny is so obscured by secondary adaptations as to be
untrustworthy. There are many reasons why adaptations should occur
in infra-uterine or larval life to obscure the ancestral record. These
have often been stated and discussed, and I shall pass them with this
mere mention. That the record of remote ancestors, contained in the
embryogeny, may be lost or obscured, while the record of nearer ances-
tors, contained in the epembryogeny, is still clear and convincing, is
my contention; and I hold that this contention is substantiated by the
studies of a host of paleobiologists.

While contrasting the views of biologists and paleobiologists, I do
not wish to create the impression that all of the former have turned
against the theory of recapitulation. Several recent studies of the
development of extant forms seem to afford very satisfactory evidence
that the theory is not wholly rejected in the house of its fathers. Of

3oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

these I may mention the very interesting papers by Griggs on juvenile
kelps, Zeleny on the development and regeneration of serpulids, and
Eigenmann on the blind vertebrates of North America.

Griggs especially criticizes the views of such critics of recapitula-
tion as His, who holds that the reason why ontogeny seems to recapitu-
late phylogeny is because the developing organism must from physiolog-
ical necessity pass from less to more complex stages, more or less
resembling ancestral forms; and the views of Morgan, who holds that
only embryonic stages of ancestors are repeated. This is the so-called
" Repetition Theory." To both of these critics Griggs objects that
they confuse physiology and morphology. " The recapitulation the-
ory," he says, " has nothing to do with physiology ; it is purely a matter
of morphology."

On the first point, that the developmental stages are merely the
physiologically necessary steps in the development of the adult organ-
ism, the conclusions of Eigenmann and Zeleny are of especial interest.
Eigenmann shows that in the blind fish, Amblyopsis, the development
of the foundations of the eye is normal, and is phylogenic, while the
stages beyond the foundations are direct. Zeleny concludes that the
ontogenesis of the opercula of serpulids is phylogenic, and recapitulates
ancestral characters; but the regeneratory development of the organ is
direct, and may be very different from the ontogenetic development.
We may ask, therefore, if development takes a certain course only be-
cause that is the physiologically necessary way in which the individual
or the organ must develop, why should a condition of perfect blindness,
with almost total loss of all the eye structures, be attained only by the
round-about method of first developing the foundations of a normal
eye? Why, again, if there is any physiologically necessary course of
development, should the serpulid be able to regenerate the opercula in
a manner entirely different from their ontogenesis ?

Hatschek, Hurst, Montgomery and others maintain that, if two
individuals differ in the adult, they must also differ in the egg, and
consequently must be different at all stages between. From this thesis
they draw the conclusion that organisms can not recapitulate adult
ancestral characters, because any change in the adult stage of an indi-
vidual, causing it to be different from its parents, involves a change in
the entire ontogeny — " the entire row of cells " from the egg to the
adult. That there is some sort of change in the entire row of cells we
grant; but that this change necessarily affects the morphology of the
individual or of its organs, up to the adult stage, we do not grant.
We have here again a confusion of morphology and physiology. The
cell energies may indeed be changed; but unless a change in the cell
energies inevitably necessitates a change in the morphology of all the
cells or of all the organs which they compose, the argument of Mont-
gomery proves nothing.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 301

If inheritance were perfect, the individual would take exactly the
same course in development as its ancestors. That it does not do this
in all cases is a more remarkable fact than that in so many cases it
follows the ancestral mode of development so closely. This loss of
inheritance is clue to a progressive condensation of ontogeny, or as it is
commonly called, acceleration. Most embryologists misconceive the law
of acceleration, limiting it to the omission of characters or stages.
With the classic formulation of the law by Hyatt we are all familiar.
According to Hyatt, acceleration involves not only omission, but con-
densation without omission, through the earlier inheritance of char-
acters acquired in the adult or adolescent stages of life. By the un-
equal acceleration of characters an overlapping, or telescoping, as
Grabau calls it, may be introduced. It follows, therefore, that accel-
eration may be by elimination, by condensation without change in the
order of appearance of characters, and by condensation with change in
the order of appearance, or telescoping. As conceived by the paleo-
biologist, the law of acceleration is an explanation of recapitulation, as
well as an explanation of the failure to recapitulate.

Another factor in inheritance is retardation, so named by Cope.
By the operation of this law, characters that appear late in the ontogeny
may disappear in the descendents, because development terminates
before the given characters are reached. In this way the ontogeny
may be shortened and simplified, and many ancestral characters may be
lost entirely. The result of the continued operation of retardation is
retrogression, since the loss of the characters of nearer ancestors, with
the continued repetition in early ontogeny of the characters of remote
ancestors, must eventually cause the species to resemble the remote,
rather than the nearer, ancestors.

II

Of the numerous cases adduced by paleontologists, in which there
is clear evidence of recapitulation, I shall mention a few only.

Probably the best known examples of recapitulation are those made
known by the researches of Hyatt, Branco, Wiirtenburger, Buckman,
Smith and others among the Cephalopoda. It is shown that Ammon-
ites pass through a goniatite stage, and that, as phrased by Zitttel,
" The inner whorls of an ammonite constantly resemble in form, orna-
ment and suture line the adult condition of some previously existing
genus or other." The nautilus grows at first straight or orthocera-
form, then arched or cyrtoceraform, and finally at the close of the first
volution of the shell, becomes close coiled. The impressed zone appears
in ancient nautiloidea in the neanic stage, where the whorls first come
into contact, and is indeed a result of contact. In modern nautilus,
and in Mesozoic and Tertiary nautilus the impressed zone appears in

3Q2 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the nepionic stage, before the whorls come into contact. It has been
carried back in the ontogeny by acceleration. Smith concludes from a
study of the development and phylogeny of Placenticeras, an Upper
Cretaceous ammonoid, that " the development of Placenticeras shows
that it is possible, in spite of dogmatic assertions to the contrary, to
decipher the race history of an animal in its individual ontogeny."

Among the Gastropoda, Grabau and Burnett Smith have pointed
out numerous beautiful cases of recapitulation. In Fusus and its allies,
the higher forms quite constantly resemble in their earlier stages the
adults of ancestral forms. Even in profoundly modified gerontic types,
the young resemble the ancestors. Smith has brought to light in
Athleta (Volutilithes) of the Eocene, an almost perfect example of even
and regular acceleration, with its correlative, the recapitulation in the
young of the Upper Eocene forms of the adult characters of the Lower
Eocene forms. The stages passed through by this group of shells are,
beginning with the earliest, a smooth, curved rib, cancellated, spiny
and sometimes a senile stage. In the ancestral species (A. limopsis)
the curved rib stage comes in at the close of the fourth whorl, whereas
in the Upper Eocene form (A. petrosa), this stage comes in at the
beginning of the third whorl.

Among the Pelecypoda the classic researches of Jackson are familiar
to all. He shows that the modern Pecten passes through, in its on-
togeny, a series of stages resembling adult Rhombopteria, Pterinopecten
and Aviculopecten, and that the geologic order of these genera is the
same as the ontogenetic order in Pecten. In such monomyarian genera
as Ostrca, the initial shell, or prodissoconch, is dimyarian, and resembles
the primitive Nucula. Again, in various more or less widely separated
genera, the condition of complete cemented fixation has produced the
ostreaform shape. Each one of these genera, however, except where
the modification of shape due to fixation appears very early in ontogeny,
recapitulates the adult characters of its respective ancestor. The ex-
amples of this are Mulleria, a member of the Unionidae — like Anodon
in the yo ung; Einnites, a member of the Pectinacea — like Pecten in
the young; Spondylus, another member of the Pectinacea — like Pecten
in the young.

Beecher's various studies of the Brachiopoda not only brought out
the fact that the initial shell or protegulum of the brachiopod is remark-
ably similar to the most primitive known Lower Cambrian brachiopods,
but have supplied in addition numerous other remarkable examples of
recapitulation. One of the most striking of these is the case of the
Terebratellidoe. In both the boreal and austral subfamilies a very com-
plete series of genera correspond to the ontogenetic stages of the ter-
minal or highest genera. Another interesting case is that of Orbicu-
loidea. This discoid shell has at first a straight hinge like Iphidea.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 3°3

It next resembles Obolella, then at a later stage it is like Schizomania,
and finally adult growth brings in the characters of Orbiculoidea.
Raymond has shown the remarkable similarity of the neanic stage of
Spirifer mueronatus to the adult S. crispus of the Niagara. Shinier
and Grabau found in the upper Hamilton of Thedford, Ontario, a
variety of Spirifer mueronatus that is very mucronate in the young
and not at all so in the adult. The derivation of this form from
S. mueronatus is beyond question. I have pointed out a precisely
similar case in Platystrophia acutilirata var. senex. This variety,
which occurs in the upper Whitewater beds of Indiana and Ohio, has
a hinge angle of nearly 90° in the adult. In the young, however, the
outlines of the shell are exactly like the typical P. acutilirata, from
which it is beyond any question descended. Greene has shown that
Chonetes granulifer of the Carboniferous is, in the neanic stage, like
the Devonian Chonetes, and that the hinge-spines come in at a consid-
erably earlier stage in the Carboniferous than in the Devonian and
Silurian forms, showing the acceleration of this character.

In the Bryozoa I have pointed out the fact that the colony behaves
as an individual, and like an individual recapitulates in its ontogeny
(astogeny) ancestral characters. This is beautifully shown in Fenes-
tella, in which the earlier zooecia are strikingly like the adult zocecia of
the Cyclostomata. The adolescent zocecia of Devonian Fenestella are
similar to the adult zocecia of Niagara forms. Lang has brought
together numerous cases of recapitulation among Jurassic and Creta-
ceous Stomatopora and Proboscina. The method of dichotomy in the
earlier portions of the colony is constantly more like the normal dichot-
omy of ancestral species.

In graptolites the remarkable researches of Ruedemann clearly

indicate that the graptolite colony recapitulates ancestral characters,

the proximal thecse being similar to ancestral adult thecas. He says :

The rhabdosomes in toto and their parts, the branches, seem also to pass
through stages which suggest phylogenetically preceding forms.

Among the trilobites the studies of Beecher, Walcott and Matthew
are classic. Beecher has shown that there is a common larval form,
the protaspis, and that in higher genera characters appear in the pro-
taspis that are known only in the adults of more primitive genera.
For example, the " main features of the cephalon in the simple protaspis
forms of Solenopleura, Liostracus and Ptychoparia are retained to
maturity in such genera as Carausia and Acontheus." Larval Sao has
characters that occur in the adult of Ctenocephalus. The larval stages
of Dalmanites and Proetus have characters that appear only in the adult
of ancient genera.

Among the corals Beecher and Girty show that such genera as
Favosites have early stages that suggest Aulopora. Lang, in a recent

3o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

paper, records very interesting cases of recapitulation in the genus
Parasmilia of the Cretaceous. Bernard concludes that the coral colony,
like the graptolite colony and the bryozoan colony, behaves as an
individual.

In the echinoderms the likeness of the stem ossicles and the devel-
opment of the anal plate of Antedon, to Paleozoic and Mesozoic forms
has become one of the stock illustrations of recapitulation. Jackson
has found interesting examples of recapitulation in the development of
the ambulacral and inter-ambulacral plates of echinoids. Miss Smith
has shown that the young Pentremites is exactly similar in form to the
adult Codaster. This is an extremely interesting case, for Bather has
independently, and from quite different data, come to the conclusion
that Pentremites is derived from Codaster.

The idea of recapitulation has been one of the most fertile in the
whole realm of biology, and its usefulness to the paleobiologist has been
almost incalculable. But while there can be no doubt that recapitula-
tion is a fact, the paleontologist should observe all due care not to
assume too much for it. That there are various sorts of adaptations,
arising at all stages of life, and that these may greatly obscure the
ancestral record, is a fact too well known to require more than mention.
There is also always acceleration, sometimes affecting different char-
acters very unequally; and there may be retardation. All of these fac-
tors complicate the record of ontogeny. Nevertheless, after all of these
have been taken duly into consideration, the parallel between ontogeny
and phylogeny remains a powerful aid to investigation for the pale-
ontologist.

VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY AND THE EVIDENCES

FOR RECAPITULATION

By L. HUSSAKOF

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

AFTER the careful papers of Professors Loomis and Lull in which
the doctrine of recapitulation was so fully set forth from the
standpoint of vertebrate paleontology, I can perhaps do no better than
devote part of the time allotted me to showing how certain leading
vertebrate paleontologists have viewed this question. Then I will cite
one or two illustrations of this principle drawn from among the lower
vertebrates.

Passing over the period of pre-Darwinian paleontology — the pale-
ontology of Cuvier, Owen and Louis Agassiz — we come to the time of
Leidy, who, as Professor Osborn has recently shown,1 was one of the first,

1 In his address on " Darwin and Paleontology " printed in " Fifty Years
of Darwinism." Centennial addresses in honor of Charles Darwin, New York,
1909, p. 209.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 305

if not the first, to bring the fruits of paleontology to the support of
evolution. But Leidy, as far as a hasty search through his writings
could reveal, nowhere expressly advocated the doctrine of recapitula-
tion. Indeed, he gave but little attention to the philosophical bearings
of paleontology, generally partly because of temperament and partly
because in those pioneer days material to serve as a basis for generaliza-
tion was still scanty.

Gaudry, one of the first European paleontologists to champion the
cause of evolution,2 likewise did not specially advocate the doctrine
of recapitulation. An examination of his " Philosophic Paleontolo-
gique " fails to reveal any definite belief in this doctrine.

Huxley, as far as I can gather from his papers and essays, be-
lieved in this doctrine, though with certain implied reservations as to its
general applicability. In his presidential address to the Geological
Society of London on " Paleontology and the Doctrine of Evolution "
delivered in 1870, we find some interesting comment on the signifi-
cance of the splints of the living horse, which he regards as indicative
of the presence of three complete digits in the horse ancestor. But
Huxley was never an out-and-out advocate of the biogenetic law.

Cope and Marsh, as we all know, were staunch upholders of evolu-
tion ; and Cope, at least, was also a staunch upholder of the doctrine of
recapitulation. In his " Primary Factors of Organic Evolution," his
last contribution to philosophical paleontology, he devotes considerable
space to proving this doctrine. He says :3

The representatives of each class passed through the stages which are
permanent in the classes below them in the series.

And he backs up this proposition with evidence derived from the
ontogeny and phylogeny of batrachia, the antlers of deer and the blood
trunks of vertebrates generally. For all that, Cope recognized the
justice of certain criticisms which had been brought against the doc-
trine of recapitulation and urged caution in its application.

An example or two of recapitulation may now be cited from the
field of the lower vertebrates.

The mode of development of the teeth in Neoceratodus has some-
times been adduced as an illustration of recapitulation. It is well
known that the Devonic dipnoans (e. g., Dipterus) had teeth com-
posed of rows of denticles, those in each row being more or lesls fused
at their bases. During the history of the dipnoans since the Devonic
period, the separate denticles have merged more and more until in
Ceratodus and the living Neoceratodus, the rows of denticles are, in

2 According to a letter from Darwin to Gaudry dated Januiry 21, 1868.
" The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin/' edited by his son Francis Darwin,
New York, 1899, Vol. II., p. 269.

3 "Primary Factors of Organic Evolution," Chicago, 1890, p. 195.

vol. lxxvii. — 21.

306 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the adult, replaced by almost smooth ridges. Now, Semon in his
beautiful studies on the development of Neoceratodus* has shown that
the teeth of this fish at one stage in ontogeny, are represented by rows
of denticles even more discrete than the denticles in the Devonic Dip-
terus; then the denticles gradually merge at their bases, the separate
cusps, however, still showing — a stage comparable with the Carbonifer-
ous Ctenodus; then they merge still more and assume the ridge-like
form seen in the adult Neoceratodus.

Another example : In many sharks the alimentary canal is
longer in the embryo than in the adult, the anal opening being situ-
ated near the posterior end of the trunk. From such cases one is in-
clined to believe that in the ancestral sharks this must have been the
condition in the adult form; that is to say, the anal opening probably
was near the posterior termination of the trunk. We may therefore
ask: are there any early fossil sharks which show such a condition?
Recently Professor Dean has described5 a remarkable specimen of
Cladoselache from the Upper Devonic of Ohio which seems to indicate
such a condition. In this specimen remnants of both kidneys are pre-
served. They extend in the posterior half of the fish and by their direc-
tion indicate that they were drawn together, toward their external
opening, not far from the posterior termination of the trunk. This
shows that the anal opening in this ancestral shark was very much as in
the early shark embryo to-day.

In conclusion perhaps I may venture to make one other point
in regard to this question. A vast amount of skepticism concern-
ing the doctrine of recapitulation is to be found in the literature
of to-day ; and if we study the reasons for this skepticism we find
that it is in some measure justified. It is clearly established that among
vertebrates as well as among invertebrates there are many examples of
structures appearing during embryonic growth which are identical
with structures found in the adult of some remote ancestor. But
when we reflect on the amount of adaptation which any embiwo
has undergone in its long evolutional history; when we remember
how palingenetic characters are on every hand overlaid by ceno-
genetic ones ; who will say that recapitulation is a principle of gen-
eral application, or that it is safe to draw conclusions from all em-
bryos concerning their long extinct ancestors? Who will believe that
a bony fish which runs through its embryonic development in a few
days repeats its ancestral history, when we see at every stage of its
ontogeny how it has been adaptively modified for this and for that
special need? Only when series of related forms have certain onto-

4 " Die Zahnentwickelung des Ceratodus forsteri," " Zool. Forsch. in Austral.
u. Malay. Archipel.," 1899, pp. 115-135, pis. xviii-xx.

5 Mem. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. IX.. p. 232.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC BE CORD 307

genetic stages in common are we justified in inferring that their
racial ancestor may have had such characters in the adult state. But
it should never be lost sight of that this inference is only a provi-
sional hypothesis which may or may not be verified when the paleonto-
logic record is more complete. It is no surprise that the efforts of
some earnest paleontologists have been discredited in some quarters,
especially among zoologists. Some of them have invoked recapitula-
tion as a sort of magic spell by which they can conjure up ancestral
forms from almost any embryonic series, forgetting the limitations of
this doctrine. As far as the attitude of vertebrate paleontologists is
concerned, their view has been aptly summarized by Professor Charles
Deperet in his book " Les Transformations du Monde Animal " and I
can do no better than close with a quotation from him:

If we appeal to paleontology, it must be recognized that this hypothesis
[recapitulation] is by no means verified. There do exist here and there certain
fossil genera, which all their lives have retained certain youthful characteristics
apparent in their living descendants; but when it comes to reconstructing whole
series chronologically continuous, grave contradictions are met with, and it is
only in the groups of the mammals and perhaps of the reptiles [and, we may
add, fishes] that it becomes possible to present a few examples sufficiently
demonstrative.8

°" Les Transformations du Monde Animal," Paris, 11)07, p. 117.

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

3°9

THE PEOGEESS OF SCIENCE

THE SCIENTIFIC LABORATORIES
OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
The colleges first established in this
country prior to the revolution, apart
from the two in Virginia, have all be-
come great universities within the past
forty years. Harvard, Yale, Columbia
and Pennsylvania have preceded
Princeton in this development, and for
a period it was doubtful whether
Princeton should be ranked among the
universities or among the colleges.
When, on the occasion of its sesquicen-
tennial celebration in 1896, the official
name of the College of New Jersey was
changed to Princeton University, it
was not so much a measure of what
had been accomplished as a promise of
things hoped for but unseen. The
prophecy is now, however, in course of
fulfilment. Princeton, it is true, has

no professional schools, except its de-
partments of civil and electrical engi-
neering. A law school was once estab-
lished, but it lasted only two years.
No school of medicine is in contempla-
tion, though the first two years of a
medical course could be given to ad-
i vantage. The theological seminary in
the village has supplied a large propor-
tion of the students registered in the
graduate department, but it has no
official connection with the university
and is too narrowly denominational to
be regarded as a graduate school of
theology.

In most of our universities, however,
the professional schools scarcely form
an integral part of the institution and
the graduate school is the place in
which university and research work is
accomplished. Such work has been

Holler Hall, a dormitory erected by Mrs. Sage.

:io

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Guyot Hall.

gradually developed at Princeton in
the course of the past few years, and
there is likely to be now a mutation
which will place the university among
those where productive scholarship and
creative research are most cultivated.
The difficulties in regard to the grad-
uate school which have been so widely
exploited are in fact rather trivial and
are now fairly solved, as the university
has not only money for a residence hall
but also for the men who are the real
university. The Swan bequest of
$300,000, the gift of $500,000 from Mr.
Proctor, once withdrawn but now re-
newed, and the Wyman bequest,
amounting probably to over $2,000,000,
are all for the graduate school and
give it a free endowment scarcely
equaled at any other university.

Like all our institutions Princeton
has spent relatively too much money
on buildings and too little on men.
But the money has come freely and the
architectural setting at Princeton will
appeal to the alumni and to the gen-
eral public as the worthy exterior
manifestation of a great universitv.

It is also true that Princeton has done
much for its men. In the preceptorial
system it has undertaken to extend the
personal contact between teacher and
student which is one of the most
marked advantages in the teaching of
the sciences, to the departments not
having laboratories, and has brought
to Princeton some fifty selected men of
the younger generation with the rank
of assistant professors. The method
adopted may be open to certain criti-
cisms, but this group of men has added
greatly to the strength of the univer-
sity. In the meanwhile the laboratory
departments have been developed both
by buildings and by men. The depart-
ment of physics has been made one of
the strongest in the country and one
of our leading zoologists has been
called as head of the department of
biology.

The buildings recently erected for
physics and for natural science are
shown in the accompanying illustra-
tions. In both of them the academic
Gothic style has been well adapted to
laboratory construction. The Palmer

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

311

Physical Laboratory, erected and
equipped by Mr. S. S. Palmer, and
endowed with $200,000 by Mr. D. B.
Jones and Mr. T. D. Jones, is ad-
mirably adapted for work in physics
and electrical engineering. The three
floors have an area of approximately
two acres for the work of instruction
and research, and every need in the
way of appliances and apparatus is
provided.

Guyot Hall, completed last year at
a cost of $425,000, is divided about
equally between biology and geology,
giving the latter science probably the
best provision in the country. The
building contains over a hundred
rooms, including a large museum.
Biology has in addition a separate
building as a vivarium for the study
of living plants and animals. The
aquaria have both sea and fresh water,
and there is provision for insects, am-
phibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.
Near by is a pond and stream where
animals may be kept under natural
conditions.

Princeton offers opportunities for
study and research in the natural and
exact sciences which are in some ways
unique. The situation in the country,
but within easy reach of New York
and Philadelphia, offers many advan-
tages. With its peculiar attractions,
Princeton takes its place with the
great universities so closely lining
the eastern seaboard — Harvard, Yale,
Columbia, Princeton, Pennsylvania and
the Johns Hopkins.

COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY IN
AMERICA

The last number of the Zeitschrift
fiir Psychologie devotes twenty-two
pages to a review of the recent litera-
ture of comparative psychology. This
review covers more or less adequately
the material for the years 1907, 1908
and 1909. Twenty-eight articles are
noted of which nineteen are by Amer-
ican authors, one by an Englishman
and the remaining eight by Germans.

This review emphasizes the fact that

comparative psychology is largely an
American branch of science. It began,
in so far as the study of higher ani-
mal forms in this country is concerned,
in 1S98, with the classical work of
Thorndike on " Animal Intelligence,"
which was followed three years later
by his study of the " Mental Life of
the Monkeys." Shortly afterwards
small comparative laboratories were
added to the already existing experi-
mental laboratories of Clark, Harvard
and Chicago, and in these the great
bulk of the animal work has since been
done. Recently a fairly adequate ani-
mal-behavior laboratory has been added
to the psychological department of the
Johns Hopkins University. It has
been an interesting fact in the develop-
ment of this field that the work has
not been confined wholly to specially
developed technical laboratories. Sev-
eral important pieces of work have ap-
peared under psychological auspices
from the universities of Cornell, Illi-
nois and Stanford and from the zoolog-
ical laboratories of the universities of
Chicago, Harvard and Johns Hopkins,
and of the Carnegie Institution.

The work in this country has been
characterized by systematic and long-
continued studies of certain groups of
problems; while that in foreign coun-
tries has been more sporadic. The
work of Pfangst on " Der kluge Hans,"
which has been translated by Mr. Carl
Rahn and that of Katz and Revesz on
the light sense of the chick are the two
conspicuous examples of systematic
and careful work in Germany. In the
United States work has been centered
around three problems : ( 1 ) the gen-
eral method of learning (problem
boxes, mazes, etc.) which gives ac-
quaintance with the animal's instinct-
ive capacities and prepares the way
for a study of (2) imitation (and the
effect of tuition) and (3) the deter-
mination of the delicacy and complete-
ness of its sense-organ equipment.

The first problem received the great-
est amount of attention during the first

12

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

few years. We now know something
at least of the learning process, to
mention mammals alone, of several
of the monkeys (Thorndike, Kinne-
man, Watson. Haggerty) ; dogs and
cats (Thorndike, Hamilton) ; raccoons
(Davis and Cole) ; the rat (Small,
Watson, Berry, Richardson) ; the
dancing mouse (Yerkes) ; the guinea-
pig (Allen) and the grey squirrel
(Yoakum). Other forms have not
been neglected, and we have to-day as
a result of the ten years' work a fairly
respectable body of knowledge on the
learning methods and capacities of
animal forms ranging from the amoeba
to man. This work has shown that
even the lowest organisms possess
plasticity. Jennings has been chiefly
responsible for challenging the conti-
nental idea (Loeb, Bethe, Beer, Bohn
and others) that the behavior of the
invertebrates is of the fixed and non-
plastic type.

The second problem, that of imita-
tion, has been largely studied. Unfor-
tunately the work in this direction has
been characterized by a marked differ-
ence in experimental results. Thorn-
dike (dogs, cats, monkeys) and Watson
(monkeys) have been convinced by
their results that learning by imita-
tion is not an important function in
animal adjustment. Haggerty (mon-
keys). Porter (birds) and Berry (rat,
and manx cat) reach opposite conclu-
sions. Haggerty's recent work on the
chimpanzee and ourang shows clearly
that imitation of a complex character
is present in the anthropoid apes.
There is still room for doubt in the
case of other animal forms.

Careful work on the sensory equip-
ment of animals is only just beginning.
The American Psychological Associa-
tion has appointed a committee for the
determination of standard methods of
testing vision in animals. The appear-
ance of this report will probably lead
to renewed interest in this problem.

It ought to have the effect of making
the work of the different investigators
directly comparable and to lead to safe
conclusions concerning the phylogenetic
development of sense organ processes.
In conclusion, the renewed interest
in field observation may be mentioned.
The establishment of laboratories for
the study of animal behavior at first
drew interest away from field work.
Recently animal psychologists have
been forced to admit partially the
truth of the claims of Wesley Mills,
John Burroughs, Hobhouse and Mor-
gan, viz., that animal experimentation
ought not to be carried out under too
rigorous and unnatural conditions.
Studies in the field in the last ten
years have been made by the Peckhams
(insects), Newman (amphibia) and
Watson (birds). Interesting possibili-
ties in field observation are offered in
studies of the beaver, the prairie dog
and lizards.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We regret to record the deaths of
Dr. Johann Gottfried Galle, the emi-
nent German astronomer, at the age
of ninety-eight years, and of the Rev.
Robert Harley, F.R.S., an English con-
gregational clergyman, known for his
contributions to mathematics and sym-
bolic logic, at the age of eighty-three
years.

At a meeting of the Berlin Academy
of Sciences on June 30, commemorative
addresses were made on Friedrich
Kohlrausch, by Professor Rubens; on
Hans Landolt, by Professor van't Hoff,
and on Robert Koch, by Professor
Rubner. — On October 2 the unveiling of
the statue of Johann Gregor Mendel
will take place at Gregor-Mendel-Platze
in Altbriinn. — A tablet in memory of
Richard Hakluyt, the navigator, was
unveiled in Bristol Cathedral on July
7, the address being made by Sir
Clements Markham.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY

OCTOBER, 1910

ADDRESS BEFOKE THE NATIONAL CONSERVATION

CONGRESS

By President WILLIAM H. TAFT

CONSERVATION as an economic and political term has come
to mean the preservation of our natural resources for econom-
ical use, so as to secure the greatest good to the greatest number. In
the development of this country, in the hardships of the pioneer, in the
energy of the settler, in the anxiety of the investor for quick returns,
there was very little time, opportunity, or desire to prevent waste of
those resources supplied by nature which could not be quickly trans-
muted into money; while the investment of capital was so great a de-
sideratum that the people as a community exercised little or no care to
prevent the transfer of absolute ownership of many of the valuable
natural resources to private individuals, without retaining some kind
of control of their use.

The impulse of the whole new community was to encourage the
coming of population, the increase of settlement, and the opening up of
business; and he who demurred in the slightest degree to any step
which promised additional development of the idle resources at hand
was regarded as a traitor to his neighbors and an obstructor to public
progress. But now that the communities have become old, now that the
flush of enthusiastic expansion has died away, now that the would-be
pioneers have come to realize that all the richest lands in the country
have been taken up, we have perceived the necessity for a change of
policy in the disposition of our national resources so as to prevent the
continuance of the waste which has characterized our phenomenal
growth in the past. To-day we desire to restrict and retain under pub-
lic control the acquisition and use by the capitalists of our natural re-
sources.

The danger to the state and to the people at large from the waste

vol. lxxvii. — 22.

3i4 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

and dissipation of our national wealth is not one which quickly im-
presses itself on the people of the older communities, because its most
obvious instances do not occur in their neighborhood, while in the newer
part of the country, the sympathy with expansion and development is
so strong that the danger is scoffed at or ignored. Among scientific men
and thoughtful observers, however, the danger has always been present;
but it needed some one to bring home the crying need for a remedy of
this evil so as to impress itself on the public mind and lead to the
formation of public opinion and action by the representatives of the
people. Theodore Eoosevelt took up this task in the last two years of
his second administration, and well did he perform it.

As president of the United States, I have, as it were, inherited this
policy, and I rejoice in my heritage. I prize my high opportunity to do
all that an executive can do to help a great people realize a great na-
tional ambition. For conservation is national. It affects every man of
us, every woman, every child. What I can do in the cause I shall do,
not as president of a party, but as president of the whole people.

Conservation is not a question of politics, or of factions, or of per-
sons. It is a question that affects the vital welfare of all of us — of our
children and our children's children. I urge that no good can come
from meetings of this sort unless we ascribe to those who take part in
them, and who are apparently striving worthily in the cause, all proper
motives, and unless we judicially consider every measure or method
proposed with a view to its effectiveness in achieving our common pur-
pose, and wholly without regard to who proposes it or who will claim
the credit for its adoption. The problems are of very great difficulty
and call for the calmest consideration and clearest foresight. Many of
the questions presented have phases that are new in this country, and
it is possible that in their solution we may have to attempt first one
way and then another. What I wish to emphasize, however, is that a
satisfactory conclusion can only be reached promptly if we avoid acri-
mony, imputations of bad faith, and political controversy.

The public domain of the government of the United States, in-
cluding all the cessions from those of the thirteen states that made
cessions to the United States and including Alaska, amounted in all
to about 1,800,000,000 acres. Of this there is left as purely government
property outside of Alaska something like 700,000,000 of acres. Of
this the national forest reserves in the United States proper embrace
144,000,000 acres. The rest is largely mountain or arid country, offer-
ing some opportunity for agriculture by dry farming and by reclamation,
and containing metals as well as coal, phosphates, oils and natural gas.
Then the government owns many tracts of land lying along the margins
of streams that have water power, the use of which is necessarily in the
conversion of the power into electricity and its transmission.

THE NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 315

I shall divide my discussion under the heads of (1) agricultural
lands; (2) mineral lands — that is, lands containing metalliferous min-
erals; (3) forest lands; (4) coal lands; (5) oil and gas lands; and (6)
phosphate lands.

I feel that it will conduce to a better understanding of the problems
presented if I take up each class and describe, even at the risk of tedium,
first, what has been done by the last administration and the present one
in respect to each kind of land ; second, what laws at present govern its
disposition ; third, what was done by the present congress in this mat-
ter; and fourth, the statutory changes proposed in the interest of con-
servation.

Agricultural Lands

Our land laws for the entry of agricultural lands are now as follows :

The original homestead law, with the requirements of residence and
cultivation for five years, much more strictly enforced than ever before.

The enlarged homestead act, applying to non-irrigable lands only,
requiring five years' residence and continuous cultivation of one fourth
of the area.

The desert-land act, which requires on the part of the purchaser the
ownership of a water right and thorough reclamation of the land by
irrigation, and the payment of $1.25 per acre.

The donation or Carey act, under which the state selects the land
and provides for its reclamation, and the title vests in the settler who
resides upon the land and cultivates it and pays the cost of the reclama-
tion.

The national reclamation homestead law, requiring five years' resi-
dence and cultivation by the settler on the land irrigated by the gov-
ernment, and payment by him to the government of the cost of reclama-
tion.

There are other acts, but not of sufficient general importance to call
for mention unless it is the stone and timber act, under which every
individual, once in his lifetime, may acquire 160 acres of land, if it has
valuable timber on it or valuable stone, by paying the price of not less
than $2.50 per acre fixed after examination of the stone or timber by a
government appraiser. In times past a great deal of fraud has been
perpetrated in the acquisition of lands under this act; but it is now
being much more strictly enforced, and the entries made are so few in
number that it seems to serve no useful purpose and ought to be re-
pealed.

The present congress passed a bill of great importance, severing the
ownership of coal by the government in the ground from the surface
and permitting homestead entries upon the surface of the land which,
when perfected, give the settler the right to farm the surface, while the
coal beneath the surface is retained in ownership by the government
and may be disposed of by it under other laws.

316 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

There is no crying need for radical reform in the methods of dis-
posing of what are really agricultural lands. The present laws have
worked well. The enlarged homestead law has encouraged the success-
ful farming of lands in the semi-arid regions. Of course, the teachings
of the agricultural department as to how these sub-arid lands may be
treated and the soil preserved for useful culture are of the very essence
of conservation. Then conservation of agricultural lands is shown in
the reclamation of arid lands by irrigation, and I should devote a few
words to what the government has done and is doing in this regard.

Reclamation

By the reclamation act a fund has been created of the proceeds of
the public lands of the United States with which to construct works for
storing great bodies of water at proper altitudes, from which, by a
suitable system of canals and ditches, the water is to be distributed over
the arid and sub-arid lands of the government to be sold to settlers at a
price sufficient to pay for the improvements. Primarily, the projects
are and must be for the improvement of public lands. Incidentally,
where private land is also within the reach of the water supply, the
furnishing at cost or profit of this water to private owners by the gov-
ernment is held by the federal court of appeals not to be a usurpation of
power. But certainly this ought not to be done except from surplus
water, not needed for government land.

About thirty projects have been set on foot distributed through the
public land states in accord with the statute, by which the allotments
from the reclamation fund are required to be as near as practicable in
proportion to the proceeds from the sale of the public lands in the
respective states. The total sum already accumulated in the reclama-
tion fund is $60,273,258.22, and of that all but $6,491,955.34 has been
expended.

It became very clear to congress at its last session, from the state-
ments made by experts, that these thirty projects could not be promptly
completed with the balance remaining on hand or with the funds likely
to accrue in the near future. It was found, moreover, that there are
many settlers who have been led into taking up lands with the hope and
understanding of having water furnished in a short time, who are left
in a most distressing situation. I recommended to congress that au-
thority be given to the secretary of the interior to issue bonds in antici-
pation of the assured earnings by the projects, so that the projects,
worthy and feasible, might be promptly completed and the settlers
might be relieved from their present inconvenience and hardship. In
authorizing the issue of these bonds, congress limited the application
of their proceeds to those projects which a board of army engineers, to
be appointed by the president, should examine and determine to be

THE NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 317

feasible and worthy of completion. The board has been appointed and
soon will make its report.

Suggestions have been made that the United States ought to aid in
the drainage of swamp lands belonging to the states or private owners,
because, if drained, they would be exceedingly valuable for agriculture
and contribute to the general welfare by extending the area of cultiva-
tion. I deprecate the agitation in favor of such legislation. It is
inviting the general government into contribution from its treasury
toward enterprises that should be conducted either by private capital
or at the instance of the state. In these days there is a disposition to
look too much to the federal government for everything. I am liberal
in the construction of the constitution with reference to federal power;
but I am firmly convinced that the only safe course for us to pursue
is to hold fast to the limitations of the constitution and to regard as
sacred the powers of the states. We have made wonderful progress
and at the same time have preserved with judicial exactness the restric-
tions of the constitution. There is an easy way in which the constitu-
tion can be violated by congress without judicial inhibition, to wit, by
appropriations from the national treasury for unconstitutional purposes.
It will be a sorry day for this country if the time ever comes when our
fundamental compact shall be habitually disregarded in this manner.

Mineral Lands

By mineral lands I mean those lands bearing metals, or what are
called metalliferous minerals. The rules of ownership and disposition
of these lands were first fixed by custom in the west, and then were
embodied in the law, and they have worked, on the whole, so fairly and
well that I do not think it is wise now to attempt to change or better
them. The apex theory of tracing title to a lode has led to much liti-
gation and dispute and ought not to have become the law, but it is so
fixed and understood now that the benefit to be gained by a change is
altogether outweighed by the inconvenience that would attend the in-
troduction of a new system. So, too, the proposal for the government
to lease such mineral lands and deposits and to impose royalties might
have been in the beginning a good thing, but now that most of the
mineral land has been otherwise disposed of it would be hardly worth
while to assume the embarrassment of a radical change.

Forest Lands
Nothing can be more important in the matter of conservation than
the treatment of our forest lands. It was probably the ruthless destruc-
tion of forests in the older states that first called attention to a halt in
the waste of our resources. This was recognized by congress by an act
authorizing the executive to reserve from entry and set aside public

3i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

timber lands as national forests. Speaking generally, there has been
reserved of the existing forests about 70 per cent, of all the timber lands
of the government. Within these forests (including 26,000,000 acres
in two forests in Alaska) are 192,000,000 of acres, of which 166,000,000
of acres are in the United States proper, and include within their
boundaries something like 22,000,000 of acres that belong to the state
or to private individuals. We have, then, excluding Alaska forests, a
total of about 144,000,000 acres of forests belonging to the government
which is being treated in accord with the principles of scientific forestry.

The law now prohibits the reservation of any more forest lands in
Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado and Wyoming, except
by act of congress. I am informed by the department of agriculture
that the government owns other tracts of timber land in these states
which should be included in the forest reserves. I expect to recom-
mend to congress that the limitation herein imposed shall be repealed.

In the present forest reserves there are lands which are not properly
forest land, and which ought to be subject to homestead entry. This
has caused some local irritation. We are carefully eliminating such
lands from forest reserves, or where their elimination is not practicable,
listing them for entry under the forest homestead act. Congress ought
to trust the executive to use the power of reservation only with respect
to land covered by timber or which will be useful in the plan of refor-
estation. During the present administration 6,250,000 acres of land,
largely non-timbered, have been excluded from forest reserves, and
3,500,000 acres of land principally valuable for forest purposes have
been included in forest reserves, making a reduction in forest reserves
of non-timbered land amounting to 2,750,000 acres. The Bureau of
Forestry since its creation has initiated reforestation on 5,600 acres.

A great deal of the forest land is available for grazing. During the
past year the grazing lessees numbered 25,400, and they pastured upon
the forest reserves 1,400,000 cattle, 84,540 horses and 7,580,400 sheep,
for which the government received $986,715 — a decrease from the pre-
ceding year of $45,470, due to the fact that no money was collected or
received for grazing on the non-timbered lands eliminated from the
forest reserve. Another source of profit in the forestry is the receipts
for timber sold. This year they amounted to $1,043,000, an increase
of $307,000 over the receipts of last year. This increase is due to the
improvement in transportation to market and to the greater facility
with which the timber can be reached.

The government timber in this country amounts to only one fourth
of all the timber, the rest being in private ownership. Only 3 per cent.
of that which is in private ownership is looked after properly and
treated according to modern rules of forestry. The usual destructive
waste and neglect continues in the remainder of the forests owned by

THE NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 319

private persons and corporations. It is estimated that fire alone de-
stroys fifty million dollars' worth of timber a year. The management
of forests not on public land is beyond the jurisdiction of the federal
government.

If anything can be done by law it must be done by the state legisla-
tures. I believe that it is within their constitutional power to require
the enforcement of regulations in the general public interest, as to fire
and other causes of waste in the management of forests owned by private
individuals and corporations. Exactly how far these regulations can
go and remain consistent with the rights of private ownership, it is
not necessary to discuss; but I call attention to the fact that a very
important part of conservation must always fall upon the state legis-
latures, and that they would better be up and doing if they would save
the waste and denudation and destruction through private greed or
accidental fires that have made barren many square miles of the older
states.

I have shown sufficiently the conditions as to federal forestry to
indicate that no further legislation is needed at the moment except an
increase in the fire protection to national forests, and an act vesting the
executive with full power to make forest reservations in every state
where government land is timber-covered, or where the land is needed
for forestry purposes.

Other Land Withdrawals

When President Roosevelt became fully advised of the necessity for
the change in our disposition of public lands, especially those contain-
ing coal, oil, gas, phosphates, or water-power sites, he began the exercise
of the power of withdrawal by executive order, of lands subject by law
to homestead and the other methods of entering for agricultural lands.
The precedent he set in this matter was followed by the present admin-
istration. Doubt had been expressed in some quarters as to the power
in the executive to make such withdrawals. The confusion and injus-
tice likely to arise if the courts were to deny the power led me to appeal
to congress to give the president the express power. Congress has com-
plied. The law as passed does not expressly validate or confirm previous
withdrawals, and therefore as soon as the new law was passed, I myself
confirmed all the withdrawals which had theretofore been made by both
administrations by making them over again. This power of withdrawal
is a most useful one, and I do not think it is likely to be abused.

Coal Lands
The next subject, and one most important for our consideratien, is
the disposition of the coal lands in the United States and in Alaska.
First, as to those in the United States. At the beginning of this ad-

32o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

ministration there were classified coal lands amounting to 5,476,000
acres, and there were withdrawn from entry for purposes of classifica-
tion 17,867,000 acres. Since that time there have been withdrawn by
my order from entry for classification 77,648,000 acres, making a total
withdrawal of 95,515,000 acres. Meantime, of the acres thus with-
drawn, 11,371,000 have been classified and found not to contain coal,
and have been restored to agricultural entry and 4,356,000 acres have
been classified as coal lands; while 79,788,000 acres remain withdrawn
from entry and await classification. In addition 336,000 acres have
been classified as coal lands without prior withdrawal, thus increasing
the classified coal lands to 10,168,000 acres.

Under the laws providing for the disposition of coal lands, the mini-
mum price at which lands are permitted to be sold is $10 an acre; but
the secretary of the interior has the power to fix a maximum price and
to sell at that price. By the first regulations governing appraisal, ap-
proved April 8, 1907, the minimum was $10, as provided by law, and
the maximum was $100, and the highest price actually placed upon any
land sold was $75. Under the new regulations, adopted April 10, 1909,
the maximum price was increased to $300, except in regions where there
are large mines, where no maximum limit is fixed, and the price is
determined by the estimated tons of coal to the acre. The highest
price fixed for any land under this regulation has been $608. The
appraised value of the lands classified as coal lands and valued under
the new and old regulations is shown to be as follows: 4,303,921 acres,
valued under the old regulation at $77,644,329, an average of $18 an
acre; and 5,864,702 acres classified and valued under the new regulation
at $394,203,242, or a total of 10,168,623 acres, valued at $471,847,571.

For the year ending March 31, 1909, 227 coal entries were made,
embracing an area of 35,331 acres, which sold for $663,020.40. For
the year ending March 31, 1910, there were 176 entries, embracing an
area of 23,413 acres, which sold for $608,813; and down to August,
1910, there were but 17 entries, with an area of 1,720 acres, which sold
for $33,910.60, making a disposition of the coal lands in the last two
years of about 60,000 acres for $1,305,000.

The present congress, as already said, has separated the surface of
coal lands, either classified or withdrawn for classification, from the
coal beneath, so as to permit at all times homestead entries upon the
surface of lands useful for agriculture and to reserve the ownership in
the coal to the government. The question which remains to be con-
sidered is whether the existing law for the sale of the coal in the ground
should continue in force or be repealed, and a new method of disposition
adopted. Under the present law the absolute title in the coal beneath
the surface passes to the grantee of the government. The price fixed
is upon an estimated amount of the tons of coal per acre beneath the

THE NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 321

surface, and the prices are fixed so that the earnings will only be a
reasonable profit upon the amount paid and the investment necessary.
But, of course, this is more or less guesswork, and the government parts
with the ownership of the coal in the ground absolutely.

Authorities of the Geological Survey estimate that in the United
States to-day there is a supply of about 3,000 billions of tons of coal,
and that of this, 1,000 billions are in the public domain. Of course, the
other 2,000 billions are within private ownership, and under no more
control as to the use or the prices at which the coal may be sold than
any other private property. If the government leases the coal lands
and acts as any landlord would, and imposes conditions in its leases like
those which are now imposed by the owners in fee of coal mines in the
various coal regions of the east, then it would retain over the disposition
of the coal deposits a choice as to the assignee of the lease, a power of
resuming possession at the end of the term of the lease, or of readjust-
ing terms at fixed periods of the lease, which might easily be framed to
enable it to exercise a limited but effective control in the disposition
and sale of the coal to the public.

It has been urged that the leasing system has never been adopted in
this country, and that its adoption would largely interfere with the
investment of capital and the proper development and opening up of
the coal resources. I venture to differ entirely from this view. My
investigations show that many owners of mining property of this coun-
try do not mine it themselves, and do not invest their money in the
plants necessary for the mining, but they lease their properties for a
term of years varying from twenty to thirty and forty years, under
conditions requiring the erection of a proper plant and the investment
of a certain amount of money in the development of the mines, and
fixing a rental and a royalty, sometimes an absolute figure and some-
times one proportioned to the market value of the coal. Under this
latter method the owner of the mine shares in the prosperity of his
lessees when coal is high and the profits good, and also shares to some
extent in their disappointment when the price of coal falls.

I have looked with some care into a report made at the instance of
President Roosevelt upon the disposition of coal lands in Australia,
Tasmania and New Zealand. These are peculiarly mining countries,
and their experience ought to be most valuable. In all these countries
the method for the disposition and opening of coal mines originally
owned by the government is by granting leasehold, and not by granting
an absolute title. The terms of the leases run all the way from twenty
to fifty years, while the amount of land which may be leased to any
individual there is from 320 acres to 2,000 acres. It appears that a
full examination was made, and the opinions of all the leading experts
on the subject were solicited and given, and that with one accord they

322 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

approved in all respects the leasing system. Its success is abundantly
shown. It is possible that at first considerable latitude will have to be
given to the executive in drafting these forms of lease, but as soon as
experiment shall show which is the most workable and practicable, its
use should be provided for specifically by statute.

The question as to how great an area ought to be included in a
lease to one individual or corporation is not free from difficulty; but
in view of the fact that the government retains control as owner, I think
there might be some liberality in the amount leased, and that 2,500
acres would not be too great a maximum.

By the opportunity to readjust the terms upon which the coal shall
be held by the tenant, either at the end of each lease or at periods dur-
ing the term, the government may secure the benefit of sharing in the
increased price of coal and the additional profit made by the tenant.
By imposing conditions in respect to the character of the work to be
done in the mines, the government may control the character of the
development of the mines and the treatment of employees with reference
to safety. By denying the right to transfer the lease except by the
written permission of the governmental authorities, it may withhold
the needed consent when it is proposed to transfer the leasehold to per-
sons interested in establishing a monopoly of coal production in any
state or neighborhood. As one third of all the coal supply is held by
the government, it seems wise that it should retain such control over the
mining and the sale as the relation of lessor to lessee furnishes. The
change from the absolute grant to the leasing system will involve a good
deal of trouble in the outset, and the training of experts in the matter
of making proper leases; but the change will be a good one, and can
be made. The change is in the interest of conservation, and I am glad
to approve it.

Alaska Coal Lands

The investigations of the geological survey show that the coal prop-
erties in Alaska cover about 1,200 square miles, and that there are
known to be available about fifteen billion tons. This is, however, an
underestimate of the coal in Alaska, because further developments will
probably increase this amount many times; but we can say with con-
siderable certainty that there are two fields on the Pacific slope which
can be reached by railways at a reasonable cost from deep water — in one
case of about fifty miles and in the other case of about 150 miles — which
will afford certainly six billion tons of coal, more than half of which is
of a very high grade of bituminous and of anthracite. It is estimated
to be worth, in the ground, one half a cent a ton, which makes its value
per acre from $50 to $500. The coking-coal lands of Pennsylvania are
worth from $800 to $2,000 an acre, while other Appalachian fields are
worth from $10 to $386 an acre, and the field in the central states from

THE NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 323

$10 to $2,000 an acre, and in the Eocky Mountains $10 to $500 an acre.
The demand for coal on the Pacific coast is for about 4,500,000 tons a
year. It would encounter the competition of cheap fuel oil, of which
the., equivalent of 12,000,000 tons of coal a year is used there. It is
estimated that the coal could be laid down at Seattle or San Francisco,
a high-grade bituminous, at $4 a ton, and anthracite at $5 or $6 a ton.
The price of coal on the Pacific slope varies greatly from time to time
in the year and from year to year — from $4 to $12 a ton.

With a regular coal supply established, the expert of the geological
survey, Mr. Brooks, who has made a report on the subject, does not
think there would be an excessive profit in the Alaska coal mining be-
cause the price at which the coal could be sold would be considerably
lowered by competition from these fields and by the presence of crude
fuel oil. The history of the laws affecting the disposition of Alaska
coal lands shows them to need amendment badly. Speaking of them,
Mr. Brooks says :

" The first act, passed June 6, 1900, simply extended to Alaska the
provisions of the coal-land laws in the United States. The law was
ineffective, for it provided that only subdivided lands could be taken
up, and there were then no land surveys in Alaska. The matter was
rectified by the act of April 28, 1904, which permitted unsurveyed
lands to be entered and the surveys to be made at the expense of the
entrymen. Unfortunately, the law provided that only tracts of 160
acres could be taken up, and no recognition was given to the fact that
it was impracticable to develop an isolated coal field requiring the ex-
penditure of a large amount of money by such small units. Many claims
were staked, however, and surveys were made for patents. It was rec-
ognized by everybody familiar with the conditions that after patent
was obtained these claims would be combined in tracts large enough
to assure successful mining operations. No one experienced in mining
would, of course, consider it feasible to open a coal field on the basis of
single 160-acre tracts. The claims for the most part were handled in
groups, for which one agent represented the several different owners.
Unfortunately, a strict interpretation of the statute raised the question
whether even a tacit understanding between claim owners to combine
after patents had been obtained was not illegal. Eemedial legislation
was sought and enacted in the statute of May 28, 1908. This law per-
mitted the consolidation of claims staked previous to November 12,
1906, in tracts of 2,560 acres. One clause of this law invalidated the
title if any individual or corporation at any time in the future owned
any interest whatsoever, directly or indirectly, in more than one tract.
The purpose of this clause was to prevent the monopolization of coal
fields; its immediate effect was to discourage capital. It was felt by
many that this clause might lead to forfeiture of title through the acci-

324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

dents of inheritance, or might even be used by the unscrupulous in
blackmailing. It would appear that land taken up under this law
might at any time be forfeited to the government through the action of
any individual who, innocently or otherwise, obtained interest in more
than one coal company. Such a title was felt to be too insecure to war-
rant the large investments needed for mining developments. The net
result of all this is that no titles to coal lands have been passed."

On November 12, 1906, President Eoosevelt issued an executive
order withdrawing all coal lands from location and entry in Alaska.
On May 16, 1907, he modified the order so as to permit valid locations
made prior to the withdrawal on November 12, 1906, to proceed to
entry and patent. Prior to that date some 900 claims had been filed,
most of them said to be illegal because either made fraudulently by
dummy entrymen in the interests of one individual or corporation, or
because of agreements made prior to location between the applicants to
cooperate in developing the lands. There are 33 claims for 160 acres
each, known as the " Cunningham claims," which are claimed to be
valid on the ground that they were made by an attorney for 33 different
and bona-fide claimants who, as alleged, paid their money and took the
proper steps to locate their entries and protect them.

The representatives of the government in the hearings before the
land office have attacked the validity of these Cunningham claims on
the ground that prior to their location there was an understanding be-
tween the claimants to pool their claims after they had been perfected
and unite them in one company. The trend of decision seems to show
that such an agreement would invalidate the claims, although under
the subsequent law of May 28, 1908, the consolidation of such claims
was permitted, after location and entry, in tracts of 2,560 acres.

It would be, of course, improper for me to intimate what the result
of the issue as to the Cunningham and other Alaska claims is likely to
be, but it ought to be distinctly understood that no private claims for
Alaska coal lands have as yet been allowed or perfected, and also that
whatever the result as to pending claims, the existing coal-land laws of
Alaska are most unsatisfactory and should be radically amended.

To begin with, the purchase price of the land is a flat rate of $10
per acre, although, as we have seen, the estimate of the agent of the
geological survey would carry up the maximum of value to $500 an
acre. In my judgment, it is essential in the proper development of
Alaska that these coal lands should be opened, and that the Pacific
slope should be given the benefit of the comparatively cheap coal of fine
quality which can be furnished at a reasonable price from these fields;
but the public, through the government, ought certainly to retain a wise
control and interest in these coal deposits, and I think it may do so
safely if congress will authorize the granting of leases, as already sng-

TEE NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 325

gested for government coal lands in the United States, with provisions
forbidding the transfer of the leases except with the consent of the
government, thus preventing their acquisition by a combination or
monopoly and upon limitations as to the area to be included in any
one lease to one individual, and at a certain moderate rental, with
royalties upon the coal mined proportioned to the market value of the
coal either at Seattle or at San Francisco. Of course, such leases should
contain conditions requiring the erection of proper plants, the proper
development by modern mining methods of the properties leased, and
the use of every known and practical means and device for saving the
lives of the miners.

The government of the United States has much to answer for in not
having given proper attention to the government of Alaska and the
development of her resources for the benefit of all the people of the
country. I would not force development at the expense of a present or
future waste of resources; but the problem as to the disposition of the
coal lands for present and future use can be wisely and safely settled in
one session if congress gives it careful attention.

Oil and Gas Lands

In the last administration there were withdrawn from agricultural
entry 2,820,000 acres of supposed oil land in California; about a mil-
lion and a half acres in Louisiana, of which only 6,500 acres were known
to be vacant, unappropriated land; 75,000 acres in Oregon, and 174,000
acres in Wyoming, making a total of nearly four millions of acres. In
September, 1909, I directed that all public oil lands, whether then
withdrawn or not, should be withheld from disposition pending con-
gressional action, for the reason that the existing placer mining law,
although made applicable to deposits of this character, is not suitable
to such lands, and for the further reason that it seemed desirable to
reserve certain fuel-oil deposits for the use of the American navy. Ac-
cordingly the form of all existing withdrawals was changed, and new
withdrawals aggregating 2,750,000 acres were made in Arizona, Cali-
fornia, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Field examina-
tions during the year showed that of the original withdrawals, 2,170,-
000 acres were not valuable for oil, and they were restored for agri-
cultural entry. Meantime, other withdrawals of public oil lands in
these states were made, so that July 1, 1910, the outstanding withdraw-
als then amounted to 4,550,000 acres.

The needed oil and gas law is essentially a leasing law. In their
natural occurrence, oil and gas can not be measured in terms of acres,
like coal and it follows that exclusive title to these products can nor-
mally be secured only after they reach the surface. Oil should be dis-
posed of as a commodity in terms of barrels of transportable product

326 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

rather than in acres of real estate. This is, of course, the reason for
the practically universal adoption of the leasing system wherever oil
land is in private ownership. The government thus would not be enter-
ing on an experiment, but simply putting into effect a plan successfully
operated in private contracts. Why should not the government as a
land owner deal directly with the oil producer rather than through the
intervention of a middleman to whom the government gives title to the
land?

The principal underlying feature of such legislation should be the
exercise of beneficial control rather than the collection of revenue. As
not only the largest owner of oil lands, but as a prospective large con-
sumer of oil by reason of the increasing use of fuel oil by the navy, the
federal government is directly concerned both in encouraging rational
development and at the same time insuring the longest possible life to
the oil supply. The royalty rates fixed by the government should
neither exceed nor fall below the current rates. But much more im-
portant than revenue is the enforcement of regulations to conserve the
public interest so that the convenants of the lessees shall specifically
safeguard oil fields against the penalties from careless drillings and of
production in excess of transportation facilities or of market require-
ments.

One of the difficulties presented, especially in the California fields,
is that the Southern Pacific Eailroad owns every other section of land
in the oil fields, and in those fields the oil seems to be in a common
reservoir or series of reservoirs, communicating through the oil sands,
so that the excessive draining of oil at one well, or on the railroad terri-
tory generally, would exhaust the oil in the government land. Hence it
is important that if the government is to have its share of the oil it
should begin the opening and development of wells on its own property.

In view of the joint ownership which the government and the ad-
joining land-owners like the Southern Pacific Eailroad have in the oil
reservoirs below the surface, it is a most interesting and intricate ques-
tion, difficult of solution, but one which ought to address itself at once
to the state lawmakers, how far the state legislature might impose
appropriate restrictions to secure an equitable enjoyment of the common
reservoir, and to prevent waste and and excessive drainage by the vari-
ous owners having access to this reservoir.

It has been suggested, and I believe the suggestion to be a sound
one, that permits be issued to a prospector for oil giving him the right
to prospect for two years over a certain tract of government land for
the discovery of oil, the right to be evidenced by a license for which he
pays a small sum. When the oil is discovered, then he acquires title to
a certain tract, much in the same way as he would acquire title under a
mining law. Of course, if the system of leasing is adopted, then he

THE NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 327

would be given the benefit of a lease upon terms like that above sug-
gested. What has been said in respect to oil applies also to government
gas lands.

Under the proposed oil legislation, especially where the government
oil lands embrace an entire oil field, as in many cases, prospectors,
operators, consumers and the public can be benefited by the adoption of
the leasing system. The prospector can be protected in the very ex-
pensive work that necessarily antedates discovery; the operator can be
protected against impairment of the productiveness of the wells which
he has leased by reason of control of drilling and pumping of other
wells too closely adjacent, or by the prevention of improper methods as
employed by careless, ignorant or irresponsible operators in the same
field which result in the admission of water to the oil sands ; while, of
course, the consumer will profit by whatever benefits the prospector or
operator receives in reducing the first cost of the oil.

Phosphate Lands

Phosphorus is one of the three essentials to plant growth, the other
elements being nitrogen and potash. Of these three, phosphorus is by
all odds the scarcest element in nature. It is easily extracted in useful
form from the phosphate rock, and the United States contains the
greatest known deposits of this rock in the world. They are found in
Wyoming, Utah and Florida, as well as in South Carolina, Georgia
and Tennessee. The government phosphate lands are confined to
Wyoming, Utah and Florida. Prior to March 4, 1909, there were 4,-
000,000 acres withdrawn from agricultural entry on the ground that
the land covered phosphate rock. Since that time, 2,322,000 acres of
the land thus withdrawn was found not to contain phosphate in profit-
able quantities, while 1,678,000 acres was classified properly as phos-
phate lands. During this administration there has been withdrawn
and classified 437,000 acres, so that to-day there is classified as phos-
phate-rock land 2,115,000 acres.

This rock is most important in the composition of fertilizers to
improve the soil, and as the future is certain to create an enormous
demand throughout this country for fertilization, the value to the public
of such deposits as these can hardly be exaggerated. Certainly with
respect to these deposits a careful policy of conservation should be fol-
lowed. Half of the phosphate of the rock that is mined in private
fields in the United States is exported. As our farming methods grow
better the demand for the phosphate will become greater, and it must
be arranged so that the supply shall equal the needs of the country.

It is uncertain whether the placer or lode law applies to the govern-
ment phosphate rock. There is, therefore, necessity for some definite
and well-considered legislation on this subject, and in aid of such legis-

328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

lation all of the government lands known to contain valuable phosphate
rock are now withdrawn from entry. A law that would provide a
leasing system for the phosphate deposits, together with a provision
for the separation of the surface and mineral rights as is already pro-
vided for in the case of coal, would seem to meet the need of promoting
the development of these deposits and their utilization in the agricul-
tural lands of the west. If it is thought desirable to discourage the
exportation of phosphate rock and the saving of it for our own lands,
this purpose could be accomplished by conditions in the lease granted
by the government to its lessees. Of course, under the constitution the
government could not tax and could not prohibit the exportation of
phosphate, but as proprietor and owner of the lands in which the phos-
phate is deposited it could impose conditions upon the kind of sales,
whether foreign or domestic, which the lessees might make of the phos-
phate mined.

The tonnage represented by the phosphate lands in government
ownership is very great, but the lesson has been learned in the case of
such lands that have passed into private ownership in South Carolina,
Florida and Tennessee that the phosphate deposits there are in no
sense inexhaustible. Moreover, it is also well understood that in the
process of mining phosphate, as it has been pursued, much of the lower
grade of phosphate rock, which will eventually all be needed has been
wasted beyond recovery. Such wasteful methods can easily be pre-
vented, so far as the government land is concerned, by conditions
inserted in the leases.

Water-power Sites

Prior to March 4, 1909, there had been, on the recommendation of
the reclamation service, withdrawn from agricultural entry, because they
were regarded as useful for power sites which ought not to be disposed
of as agricultural lands, tracts amounting to about 4,000,000 acres.
The withdrawals were hastily made and included a great deal of land
that was not useful for power sites. They were intended to include the
power sites on twenty-nine rivers in nine states. Since that time 3,-
475,442 acres have been restored for settlement of the original 4,000,-
000, because they do not contain power sites ; and meantime there have
been newly withdrawn 1,245,892 acres on vacant public land and 211,-
007 acres on entered public land, or a total of 1,456,899 acres. These
withdrawals made from time to time cover all the power sites included
in the first withdrawals, and many more, on 135 rivers and in 11 states.

The disposition of these power sites involves one of the most difficult
questions presented in carrying out practical conservation. The forest
service, under a power found in the statute, has leased a number of these
power sites in forest reserves by revocable leases, but no such power
exists with respect to power sites that are not located within forest

THE NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 329

reserves, and the revocable system of leasing is, of course, not a satisfac-
tory one for the purpose of inviting the capital needed to put in proper
plants for the transmutation of power.

The statute of 1891 with its amendments permits the secretary of
the interior to grant perpetual easements or rights of way from water
sources over public lands for the primary purpose of irrigation and such
electrical current as may be incidentally developed, but no grant can be
made under this statute to concerns whose primary purpose is gener-
ating and handling electricity. The statute of 1901 authorizes the
secretary of the interior to issue revocable permits over the public lands
to electrical-power companies, but this statute is wofully inadequate
because it does not authorize the collection of a charge or fix a term of
years. Capital is slow to invest in an enterprise founded on a permit
revocable at will.

The subject is one that calls for new legislation. It has been
thought that there was danger of combination to obtain possession of
all the power sites and to unite them under one control. Whatever the
evidence of this, or lack of it, at present we have had enough experience
to know that combination would be profitable, and the control of a great
number of power sites would enable the holders or owners to raise the
price of power at will within certain sections ; and the temptation would
promptly attract investors, and the danger of monopoly would not be a
remote one.

However this may be, it is the plain duty of the government to see
to it that in the utilization and development of all this immense amount
of water power, conditions shall be imposed that will prevent monopoly,
and will prevent extortionate charges, which are the accompaniment of
monopoly. The difficulty of adjusting the matter is accentuated by
the relation of the power sites to the water, the fall and flow of which
create the power. In the states where these sites are the riparian owner
does not control or own the power in the water which flows past his
land. That power is under the control and within the grant of the
state, and generally the rule is that the first user is entitled to the
enjoyment. Now, the possession of the bank or water-power site over
which the water is to be conveyed in order to make the power useful,
gives to its owner an advantage and a certain kind of control over the
use of the water power, and it is proposed that the government in deal-
ing with its own lands should use this advantage and lease lands
for power sites to those who would develop the power, and impose con-
ditions on the leasehold with reference to the reasonableness of the rates
at which the power, when transmuted, is to be furnished to the public,
and forbidding the union of the particular power with a combination
of others made for the purpose of monopoly by forbidding assignment
of the lease save by consent of the government. Serious difficulties are

VOL. LXXVII. — 23.

330 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

anticipated by some in such an attempt on the part of the general gov-
ernment, because of the sovereign control of the state over the water
power in its natural condition, and the mere proprietorship of the gov-
ernment in the riparian lands.

It is contended that through its mere proprietary right in the site,
the central government has no power to attempt to exercise police juris-
diction with reference to how the water power in a river owned and con-
trolled by the state shall be used, and that it is a violation of the state's
rights. I question the validity of this objection. The government may
impose any conditions that it chooses in its lease of its own property,
even though it may have the same purpose, and in effect accomplish
just what the state would accomplish by the exercise of its sovereignty.
There are those (and the director of the geological survey, Mr. Smith,
who has given a great deal of attention to this matter, is one of them)
who insist that that this matter of transmuting water power into elec-
tricity, which can be conveyed all over the country and across state
lines, is a matter that ought to be retained by the general government,
and that it should avail itself of the ownership of these power sites for
the very purpose of coordinating in one general plan the power gener-
ated from these government-owned sites.

On the other hand, it is contended that it would relieve a compli-
cated situation if the control of the water-power site and the control of
the water were vested in the same sovereignty and ownership, viz., the
states, and then were disposed of for development to private lessees under
the restrictions needed to preserve the interests of the public from the
extortions and abuses of monopoly. Therefore, bills have been intro-
duced in congress providing that whenever the state authorities deem a
water power useful they may apply to the government of the United
States for a grant to the state of the adjacent land for a water-power
site, and that this grant from the federal government to the state, shall
contain a condition that the state shall never part with the title to the
water-power site, or the water power, but shall lease it only for a term
of years not exceeding fifty, with provisions in the lease by which the
rental and the rates for which the power is furnished to the public shall
be readjusted at periods less than the term of the lease, say, every ten
years.

The argument is urged against this disposition of power sites that
legislators and state authorities are more subject to corporate influence
and control than would be the central government ; in reply it is claimed
that a readjustment of the terms of leasehold every ten years would
secure to the public and the state just and equitable terms. Then it is
said that the state authorities are better able to understand the local
need and what is a fair adjustment in the particular locality than would
be the authorities at Washington. It has been argued that after the

THE NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 331

federal government parts with title to a power site it can not control
the action of the state in fulfilling the conditions of the deed, to which
it is answered that in the grant from the government there may be easily
inserted a condition specifying the terms upon which the state may part
with the temporary control of the water-power sites, and, indeed, the
water power, and providing for a forfeiture of the title to the water-
power sites in case the condition is not performed; and giving to the
president, in case of such violation of conditions, the power to declare
forfeiture and to direct proceedings to restore the central government
to the ownership of the power sites with all the improvements thereon,
and that these conditions may be promptly enforced and the land and
plants forfeited to the general government by suit of the United States
against the state, which is permissible under the constitution.

I do not express an opinion upon the controversy thus made or a
preference as to the two methods of treating water-power sites. I shall
submit the matter to congress and urge that one or the other of the two
plans be adopted.

At the risk of wearying my audience I have attempted to state as
succinctly as may be the questions of conservation as they apply to the
public domain of the government, the conditions to which they apply,
and the proposed solution of them. In the outset I alluded to the fact
that conservation had been made to include a great deal more than what
I have discussed here. Of course, as I have referred only to the public
domain of the federal government I have left untouched the wide field
of conservation with respect to which a heavy responsibility rests upon
the states and individuals as well. But I think it of the utmost impor-
tance that after the public attention has been roused to the necessity of
a change in our general policy to prevent waste and a selfish appropria-
tion to private and corporate purposes of what should be controlled for
the public benfit, those who urge conservation shall feel the necessity of
making clear how conservation can be practically carried out, and shall
propose specific methods and legal provisions and regulations to remedy
actual adverse conditions.

I am bound to say that the time has come for a halt in general
rhapsodies over conservation, making the word mean every known good
in the world; for, after the public attention has been roused, such
appeals are of doubtful utility, and do not direct the public to the
specific course that the people should take, or have their legislators take,
in order to promote the cause of conservation. The rousing of emo-
tions on a subject like this, which has only dim outlines in the minds
of the people affected, after a while ceases to be useful, and the whole
movement will, if promoted on these lines, die for want of practical
direction and of demonstration to the people that practical reforms are
intended.

332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

I have referred to the course of the last administration and of the
present one in making withdrawals of government lands from entry
under homestead and other laws and of congress in removing all doubt
as to the validity of these withdrawals as a great step in the direction
of practical conservation. But it is only one of two necessary steps to
effect what should be our purpose. It has produced a status quo and
prevented waste and irrevocable disposition of the lands until the
method for their proper disposition can be formulated. But it is of
the utmost importance that such withdrawals should not be regarded
as the final step in the course of conservation, and that the idea should
not be allowed to spread that conservation is the tying up of the natural
resources of the government for indefinite withholding from use and
the remission to remote generations to decide what ought to be done
with these means of promoting present general human comfort and
progress. For, if so, it is certain to arouse the greatest opposition to
conservation as a cause, and if it were a correct expression of the pur-
pose of conservationists it ought to arouse this opposition. Beal con-
servation involves wise, non-wasteful use in the present generation with
every possible means of preservation for succeeding generations; and
though the problem to secure this end may be difficult, the burden is on
the present generation promptly to solve it and not to run away from it
as cowards, lest in the attempt to meet it we may make some mistake.
As I have said elsewhere, the problem is how to save and how to utilize,
how to conserve and still develop; for no sane person can contend that
it is for the common good that nature's blessings should be stored only
for unborn generations.

I beg of you, therefore, in your deliberations and in your informal
discussions, when men come forward to suggest evils that the promotion
of conservation is to remedy, that you invite them to point out the
specific evils and the specific remedies; that you invite them to come
down to details in order that their discussions may flow into channels
that shall be useful rather than into periods that shall be eloquent and
entertaining, without shedding real light on the subject. The people
should be shown exactly what is needed in order that they make their
representatives in congress and the state legislature do their intelligent
bidding.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 333

THE PALEONTOLOGIC EECOED
THE KELATION OF PALEOBOTANY TO PHYLOGENY

By Professor D. P. PENHALLOW

MCGILL UNIVERSITY

THE history of plant life has been the central idea in all botanical
studies from the very earliest times, whether expressed in the
imperfect methods of the early German and Dutch botanists who de-
sired simply to establish natural affinities on the basis of external re-
semblances, or in the ambitions of Caesalpino to arrive at a classifica-
tion of plants which should satisfy the conditions of relationship
through the structure of all parts, and especially of the reproductive
organs. For nearly four hundred years the external organs have been
employed as the chief basis of those numerous systems of classification
which have appeared from time to time. The idea that the reproduc-
tive organs and the minute interior structure of plants were of primary
importance as first advocated by Caesalpino, was for a long time lost to
view, although it reappeared now and then in the works of later writers.
Eventually it gained recognition and became a factor of increasing im-
portance, until the most advanced systems are now employed involve an
acceptance of both the external parts and the internal anatomy as es-
sential factors.

From the time of Malpighi and Grew, to Goeppert and Corda, our
knowledge of the interior structure of plants made great and rapid
progress, and was later applied successfully by various investigators in
the direction of establishing relationships. To no one are we more
fully indebted for an elaboration of this idea than Williamson, whose
researches into the structure of fossil plants from the Coal Measures
of Great Britain, during the latter part of the last century, laid the
real foundation of modern paleobotany.

In so brief a treatment as that which is now employed, it is impos-
sible to more than touch upon some of the salient features in the rela-
tions of paleobotany to the course of phylogeny, but it is, nevertheless,
worth while to give special emphasis to the now well-recognized fact
that a thorough knowledge of the interior structure of the plant, and
especially of the stem, leads to a more comprehensive and exact ac-
quaintance with relationships than that of any other part. This arises
from the fact that the minute anatomical details have a greater degree
of stability than any other portion of the body, doubtless due to the fact
that in its adjustment to the land habit, the environmental influences

334 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

present the least variable features in those factors which determine re-
lations to mechanical stress and physiological needs.

External organs are notoriously subject to variation, even under
slight alterations of surrounding conditions, within the limits of the
species or even within various stages of development of the same indi-
vidual. From this it is clear that organs such as leaves must be very
unreliable for phylogenetic purposes. It is, unfortunately, true that
much of the paleobotanical work based upon a study of such parts must
be of inferior value, and the conclusions drawn will require extensive
revision when the more rigid tests to be applied through a knowledge
of the stem structure are brought to bear.

The value of paleobotanical evidence consists in its ultimate corre-
lation with known types of plants, and it is obvious that all such studies
should be prosecuted with direct reference to the broader require-
ments of plant biology. This involves a comprehensive knowledge of
the history of plant life from its earliest development; that the data
derived from a study of living species should be correlated with the evi-
dence obtained from fossilized remains. Existing vegetation shows a
very incomplete record of plant life as a whole. Its history as known
until very recent times, and even now to a very large extent, is dis-
played only through the medium of detached groups, and relates chiefly
to the most highly organized types. Through the perspective afforded
by paleobotany, it becomes possible to not only supply missing facts,
but to establish what theory has for so long a time required a satisfac-
tory demonstration of — a more or less continuous series of phenomena
from the rudimentary forms to the most advanced organisms.

Until a very recent date the Linnsean division of plant life into two
great phyla, the cryptogams and the phanerogams, was the prevailing
conception of the constitution of the plant kingdom. This division
recognized no connection between the two great groups, but regarded
them as wholly distinct in origin as in character. But the rapid ad-
vances in a knowledge of plant anatomy, developed toward the middle
of the last century, and especially the remarkable and epoch-making
observations of Hofmeister respecting the process of reproduction,
enabled him to break down the old barriers erected by the doctrine of
the constancy of .species, and prove a genetic connection between the
primary divisions of Linnaeus. "With this starting-point, the crypto-
gams and the phanerogams were subjected to a severe scrutiny from an
entirely new point of view, with the result that each underwent a re-
vision which led to such a rearrangement of subdivisions as to present
an entirely fresh conception of their relations to one another. The
logical result was finally expressed in the subdivision of the plant world
into four great phyla, which, in their evolutional sequence, came to be
known as I., Thallophyta; II., Bryophyta; III., Pteridophyta ; IV.,
Spermatophyta.

TEE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 335

Admirable as this scheme is, and scientifically acceptable as it has
proved to be, it nevertheless presents certain well-recognized defects
with respect to the requirements of theory, although at the time of its
formulation and as late as 1899 it represented the sum of available
knowledge. It was just at this time that paleobotany became available
as a means of meeting those deficiencies which a knowledge of living
plants could not overcome. For a long time botanists have been famil-
iar with certain Paleozoic remains having a fern-like aspect which were
generally accepted as ferns; but because of their want of direct con-
nection with stems or fruit, there remained a serious doubt as to their
real character. In the same horizons, detached fragments of stems
were also observed with increasing frequency. The study of their
anatomy disclosed a structure which, in some respects, was curiously
like that of ferns, while in other respects it approximated to the anat-
omy of the higher plants as presented in some of the gymnosperms.
This combination of filicinean and cycadean characters was noted by
Potonie, who succeeded in correlating them and expressing their phylo-
genetic position in the name of a new order which he called the Cyca-
dofilices.

There yet remained to be considered certain remarkable fruits for
which no relationship has as yet been determined until, through the
work of Scott, Oliver, Kidston and others, it was shown that they were
of the nature of seed-bearing organs which could be correlated with the
Cycadofilices. It thus became evident that there was a hitherto un-
known group of plants combining the characters of ferns in their foli-
age and stem structure with those of primitive gymnosperms as pre-
sented in their stems and fruits. On the whole, however, these plants
approached most nearly to the pteridophytes in their external features.
To this new phylum, of which the Cycadofilices formed the most con-
spicuous member, Scott and Oliver in 1904 assigned the most appropri-
ate name, Pteridospermge. This result was based entirely upon paleon-
tological evidence through comparative anatomy, and it compels us to
recognize the existence of five, instead of four great phyla. The far-
reaching significance of this achievement can not be overestimated. It
is not only of the utmost importance as proving the general course of
evolution and bringing into the realm of proved facts what had previ-
ously been a working hypothesis only, but it offers an entirely new point
of departure for the botanist of the future. Attention may also be
directed to one other effect. The tendency of this discovery is to co-
ordinate, unify and strengthen all branches of botanical knowledge,
bringing to us the conviction that the more extended and thorough our
knowledge of the earlier forms of vegetation becomes, the more satis-
factory will be our knowledge of the science as a whole; for while the
example selected is probably the most important for our special pur-
poses, the general utility of paleontological research in relation to the

336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

history of development is enforced upon our consideration in a great
many subordinate ways.

Recognizable plant remains first occur in the Silurian in the form
of certain highly organized algas, the ancestral forms of which are un-
known. Nevertheless, the history of Nematophycus shows that in the
Silurian and extending through the Devonian, members of the brown
algae directly comparable with the modern kelps, both in general char-
acter and in detailed structure, had attained to a development unknown
to any of the marine algas of to-day. Arborescent forms with stems two
feet in diameter and a corresponding height lead to the inference that
they not only represent the culmination of the phylum at that time,
but that they must have been preceded by a long line of ancestral forms,
extending far back into the earlier horizons, possibly into the Eozoic
itself.

Parka decipiens from the old Bed Sandstone of Scotland affords
striking illustration of the very early period at which heterospory was
developed among vascular plants, which, according to the evidence now
available, are comparable with the genus Marsilea among existing types.
In these remains we meet with prostrate stems often one to two inches
in diameter, from which slender, upright branches are produced, bear-
ing in turn conceptacles containing both micro- and mega-sporangia.
Some of these latter further contain prothalli in various stages of de-
velopment.

The earliest form of gymnosperm is that which we recognize in the
genus Cordaites from the Devonian. The highly developed and dicoty-
ledonous character of the stem affords abundant evidence that the
ancestral type must be looked for in some remote and earlier horizon,
but, taken as an isolated case, it affords no clue whatever to the origin
of that particular phylum, although the subsequent course of develop-
ment may be traced with considerable certainty to comparatively recent
times.

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from the geological relations
presented by such illustrations as those recited, is, that the evolution of
even very simple forms from the most primitive plants must have
called for enormously lengthy periods of time. Even the most liberal
application of the law of mutation would fail to adequately account for
the extensive gaps which are recognized as occurring between the
simpler types and those which lie in the same general line of succes-
sion, but with greatly advanced organization.

"We are now led to ask, how far have paleontological studies carried
us in our knowledge of plant life from the earliest times, that is, do
they enable us to trace an unbroken series of steps from the first to the
last? To this the answer must be that, while paleobotany has been of
the greatest service in supplying missing data, in filling great gaps in a
supposed sequence and in giving the fullest support to the law of evo-

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 337

lution, it is as yet by no means adequate with respect to meeting all that
theory demands. For this there is an intelligible explanation based in
part upon the fact that the necessary material is available only under
conditions of great difficulty; and that the character of the remains
upon which research is based is conditioned by the original nature of
the structure and its ability to survive in an unaltered form, the re-
markable conditions of decay, infiltration, compression, upheaval and
often of volcanic influences to which it has been subjected. The earliest
type of vegetation was that which we now find in hot springs, continued
with the alga? found in cool or cold waters, all of which possessed a deli-
cacy of structure which permitted speedy decay. The great abundance
of such organisms probably afford an adequate explanation of the
Laurentian and later forms of graphite which is regarded by many as
the remains of former vegetation. While this hypothesis may be ac-
cepted provisionally, paleobotany is nevertheless wholly unable to fur-
nish any clue to the life history of the individuals, or even to inform
us as to the specific types. Such knowledge as we possess in this direc-
tion is the result of inference from parallel conditions and structures
as now found.

It might be assumed that with an increasing perfection in the pres-
ervation of fossil remains, as found especially in the later formations,
it should be possible to trace the course of descent with accuracy and
completeness. This is, in a measure, true, but although the general re-
quirements of theory may be verified, yet the haphazard conditions
involved in the collection of plant remains make it a very difficult mat-
ter to secure a complete narrative, and there remain many gaps which
it is difficult to fill. The evolutional position of the Bryophytes de-
mands that the origin of these plants should lie somewhere in the early
Silurian or even in the Eozoic age, but we have no certain knowledge
of them until the middle Mesozoic, and their remains do not become
familiar or abundant until the later Tertiary. So important a devia-
tion from what theory demands should lead us to caution in drawing
conclusions from the direct testimony which is thus presented. Unless
otherwise disposed of through paleontological evidence, it would be
more correct to infer that the delicacy of the plants, and the conditions
of their fossilization, have not admitted of their preservation in a recog-
nizable condition ; while there is also the further probability that many
of their remains have been overlooked through resemblance to certain
Pteridophyta for which they might well be mistaken.

In spite of such apparent contradictions, the evidence everywhere
points with great force to the idea that each of the lesser phyla had its
origin in some ancestral form, followed by growth and culmination.
This latter was, in some cases, abrupt, as in many of the Pteridophytes ;
in other instances there was a gradual decline, as in the lycopods or the
horsetails, which attained their highest development in the later Paleo-

338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

zoic,- but have since been in a state of degeneracy, their present repre-
sentatives being few in number and of a depauperate character. The
application of this law throughout the enormously lengthy periods re-
quired for the evolution of existing species, has led to the survival of
some of the most ancient types until the present day; to the absolute
obliteration of others which at one time gained great prominence; and
to the gradual dying out of yet others, some of which are now found in
the last stages of their existence. But through the entire course of
change, the evolution of higher and yet higher forms has been the most
conspicuous fact. Furthermore, it is undoubtedly true that the general
course of evolution is in progress to-day as in the past, since all the
potentialities of such evolution exist now as always, though conditioned
by the fact that owing to continued changes in the physical character
of the earth's atmosphere as well as of its crust, the possibilities of evolu-
tion are steadily diminishing and will eventually cease.

There is one direction in which paleobotany gives well-defined as-
surance that the evidence derived from existing species leads to correct
conclusions. In tracing the succession of types, we are led to the belief
that there is no direct sequence. Conterminous evolution is in accord
with neither theory nor ascertained facts, and it is, therefore, impossible
to conceive of a figure which shall in any way represent a single and
unbroken line of succession. If paleontology teaches us anything, it is
that each great phylum, as well as its various subdivisions, finally reaches
its culmination in a terminal member from which no further evolution
is possible. But that from some inferior member, possessing high
potentialities, a side line of development arises. There is thus, in the
early life of each member of the series, a certain recapitulation of
ancestral characters. This conception of a continuance of the main
line of descent through a succession of lateral members is both logical
and fully in accord with the evidence derived from both recent and
extinct forms of plant life, as well as with our present theory of
evolution.

PALEONTOLOGY AND ISOLATION

By Dr. JOHN M. CLARKE

STATE MUSEUM, ALBANY, N. Y.

THE notion of isolation as a factor in variation, as I am using the
term, is that of geographic separation exclusively, the concep-
tion expressed most clearly by Wallace, Moritz Wagner and Jordan.
I take it that while this influence has been carefully estimated in the
geographical distribution of living species, it has not often been ex-
pressed in its own terms in the analysis of extinct faunas. With in-
creasing accuracy in the record of ancient continental lines and bar-

TEE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 339

riers, we are coming to a point where the efficiency of this factor can
be safely taken into account. The outcome of free interbreeding, as
Jordan has pointed out, is to unify species and obliterate variations.
Per contra, isolation checks this process and gives freer play to tend-
encies arising from other factors in variation. The effect is thus, as
a general rule, negative, but expresses itself freely enough in geo-
graphic provinces severed by some barrier or condition which has the
effect of a barrier. Among existing species the formative effects of
segregation have been very largely illustrated from restricted areas
such as the subdivisional valleys and forests of Hawaii with its dis-
tinctive forms of the Helicidse and other terrestrial snails — a case that
is paralleled in paleontology by the snails of Steinheim. But the effect
is to be reckoned with in larger or continental areas between which
there has been at one time opportunity of interchange, especially in
the case of marine species, with which we chiefly deal, along the epi-
continents.

I have particularly in mind phenomena which have been brought
to my notice by a somewhat extended study of the Devonian faunas
of the southern hemisphere and the broader application of the factor
is best enforced and illustrated by this instance. I may say that this
broader notion seems to be that entertained by Darwin so far as he
specified the conception of geographic segregation as an element in
natural selection and it was his work in South America that formed
the basis of his conclusions.

With other students we recognize the existence during the Devon-
ian of austral continental lands which have been variously designated
and variously outlined. By some this land has been posited as a north
and south Atlantis lying in the meridional axis of the present ocean,
by others a broken land mass partly crossing the southern Atlantic
from east to west. But now we begin to see its continuity and the ex-
tent of its strands, with something of its changes in outline during
its early history. It was the precursor and the nucleus of Gondwana-
land. With it began, so far as we now know, the long history of that
continental land and the successive records of life developing under
continued conditions of geographic isolation from the northern strands.

From Argentina, Bolivia and northern Brazil we have very lucid
evidence, on the basis of paleontology, that in the late Silurian the
shore lines were continuous with those of the north. We have no de-
pendable knowledge of these earlier faunas at the east and indeed
their entire absence is indicated by stratigraphy; but with the sub-
mergence of the Silurian at the west, there entered from the African
east upon this south Atlantic field, a positive diastrophism whose axis
was well nigh normal to that of the present Atlantis, and along the
shores of this growing land bridge entered an invasion of marine life

34o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

at the opening of the Devonian time. It seems to have come west-
ward from a dispersion area in Africa and it evidently disseminated
itself without interruption of continuity from the strands which now,
as the Bokkeveld beds of Cape Colony, constitute the only evidence
of marine life in the South African Paleozoic, to those of the Falkland
Islands, two far distant regions which have much more of organic
content in common than do the Falklands and the nearer regions of
Parana, Argentina and Bolivia.

This fauna with its special and peculiar features is, however, spread
through Bolivia, western Argentina, southern Brazil, including Parana
and as far north as Matto Grosso, thence eastward by way of the Falk-
lands to South Africa. From the boreal strands of the period it was
separated by a barrier, often narrow and constituted only of deeper
water, so that of the boreal Devonian we find no evidence much south
of the equator in Brazil nor of the austral Devonian north of that line.
This barrier I believe to have been overpassed at times during the early
part of the Devonian by species which are of wider distribution south
and north but these passages seem to have become rarer as time passed
and as more complete geographic isolation was effected.

There are many evidences in this southern fauna that the land
bridge was accompanied by insular strands which are evidenced by
varying percentages in community of species and by bathymetrical
variations. Apart from these possible island masses, there was clearly
a Devonian land bridge extending from South Africa to the Falklands,
westward into Argentina and northward into Bolivia, embracing also
as continental or island lands parts of the states of Parana, Matto
Grosso and even of Para.

By virtue of the evident derivation of the fauna of this time from
the east along newly forming strands which were, throughout the
period of the Devonian, kept asunder from the Atlantic-European
lands at the north, and by its further development under conditions
of isolation, the fauna presents fundamental contrasts to any develop-
ment of the Devonian elsewhere in the world. It is in itself a unit and
a unit also in relation to the sediments in which it is involved. There
is no earlier Devonian in this southern region nor is there any later
Devonian, for wherever the succession has been determined this austral
fauna, bearing no evidence in itself of a later time stamp than early
Devonian, is overlain by Carboniferous deposits without demonstrated
unconformities between. Deposits and faunas which at the north we
are accustomed to regard as of later Devonian age, are absent at the
south, either because this austral land was broadly above the sea dur-
ing these stages and its strands now lie buried or, as seems much more
probable, this sedimentation represents the total Devonian sedimenta-
tion and this fauna the total Devonian fauna at the south.

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD 341

I can not in this place analyze the peculiarities which give the
austral fauna of these " Falklandia " strands their special impress but
I may specially cite the trilobites which are astonishingly developed.
I presume any competent student of northern faunas, being shown a
series of these without knowledge of their origin, would pronounce
them of early Devonian age and yet they are neither northern species
nor, in any large degree, northern genera. While they bear the im-
press of boreal genera and resort to morphologic equivalencies thereto
in fugitive epidermal structures which so richly characterize the boreal
trilobites at this time, they are on the whole constructed on a series of
modified types which hold their fundamental expression while de-
veloping minor details with the chronology normal to their succession
at the north. The Phacopes are seldom true Phacopcs, the Dal ma-
nit es seldom true Dalmanites, yet the same structural decorations and
extravagances we are familiar with at the north, are distributed freely
through the group. This is all equally true, in qualifying terms, of
the other groups of this fauna, save for the fact that in these we can
hardly venture to insist so entirely on generic distinctions south and
north. The species differences declare themselves on every hand and
taken as a whole the fauna presents fairly conclusive evidence of hav-
ing derived its distinctiveness through its isolation from the boreal
fauna from which it ancestrally took origin. Yet while it has de-
veloped this character it has also proceeded to maintain a faunal com-
position which declares its age, and a morphological stamp which
shows that it developed all its parts in the proper time and place in the
series.

In predicating geographic isolation as the prime factor in this
regional development of the Devonian fauna, its efficiency should not
be made to seem qualified by an illustration which is striking by
virtue of its contrast with the already well known. There are evi-
dences in plenty that geographic isolation has played a similar role
with even more diverse effect in the development of the boreal faunas
of the same geologic stage. The north Atlantic land bridge was con-
tinuous at this time, as evidenced not alone by the presence of the
Coblentzian fauna in the Atlantic coast rocks but by an array of addi-
tional facts ; and it seems very probable that the primary movement of
these northern faunas was from the same African dispersion area as
that of the south.

342 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE ROLE OF HYBRIDIZATION IN PLANT BREEDING1

By Professor E. M. EAST

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

THE word hybridization has been used with many meanings. The
term is used here to denote the crossing of any two plants that
differ from each other in a heritable character, whether they are of the
6ame or of different species.

There is intimate connection between the role of hybridization and
the role played by selection. It comes about in this way. Inherited
variations are produced by nature with considerable profusion. New
characters appear and old characters are lost: these form the working
basis of selection. But whether they are large or small they are usually
inherited completely. They are the units of heredity; or, if they
are sometimes transmitted in units of lesser degree, they may be
compared to chemical radicals.

The main object of hybridization then is the shuffling of these units
in the first hybrid generation and their recombination in the next
generation. There are, however, various phenomena attending hybridi-
zation, and I will endeavor to illustrate the following as those of most
importance: (a) Recombination of characters and their fixation, (6)
production of desirable combinations in the first hybrid generation and
their continuation by asexual propagation, (c) production of fixed first
generation hybrids, (d) production of blends.

If we begin at the real beginning in this discussion, we must say a
few words concerning the actual mechanical operations of crossing.
The first foundation stone to be laid is a knowledge of the flowering
habits and flower structure of the plants to be used. Of course a careful
examination of the flowers will show the easiest and surest method of
removing the stamens of the flowers that are to be pollinated and of
protecting them from foreign pollen. What is not so easily determined
are the precise conditions under which the cross should be made to be
successful. The proper preparation of the breeding plot even before
the plants are grown is necessary. One takes it for granted that some
fertilizer will be used, for the plants must be normal to seed well. The
three essential elements of soil fertility are nitrogen, potassium and
phosphorus, and to get the best results compounds of these elements
must be present in proper proportions. First, available potash must be
1 This paper is based on one of a series of popular lectures delivered at the
Bussey Institution of Harvard University, April and May, 1910.

PLANT BREEDING 343

present in normal quantity although a certain excess will not be harm-
ful. If nitrates are present in excess, however, vegetative growth will
be over stimulated and seed production will be small. A lack of phos-
phates will produce the same effect upon seed production, but for a
different reason. Phosphorus is an essential constituent of the proteid
compounds found in large quantities in the seed. Therefore, if the
plants are to be in the best condition for crossing, the soil should con-
tain just the right amount of nitrates for normal growth and a generous
supply of potash and phosphates. The exact amounts must be deter-
mined by experience for each soil and each species of plant.

Other necessary knowledge that can be obtained only from experience
is which are the best flowers on the plant to serve as parents of the cross
and what is the proper time for their pollination. For example, in the
grasses the first flowers that appear usually form larger, healthier seed
than the later blossoms. In most of the Solanaceas, the petunias, browal-
lias, etc., the exact opposite is true. The time when the individual
flower is most receptive to pollen is even more narrowly limited. Both
premature and delayed pollination is the cause of many failures and the
optimum time should be accurately determined. Having exercised these
precautions, it remains to study carefully the structure of the flower
in order that it may be emasculated — i. e., the anthers removed before
the pollen is shed — with sufficient adroitness that neither the anthers
shall be opened nor the parts of the pistil injured. Only a few buds
upon a single flower spike should be operated upon if they are to be
given the best chance of development. If the buds are very small and
some pollen unavoidably reaches them, it may be washed off with com-
parative safety with a dental syringe if done immediately. It is often
recommended that the calyx and corolla be cut away when emasculating.
This should be avoided if possible and the floral envelopes left as a
protection to the pistil. After emasculation the buds should be pro-
tected from foreign pollen until time for pollination, and again after
pollination at least until the fruits have begun to form. This protection
may be an ordinary paper bag when the crossing is done in the field.
In the greenhouse I find that a square of thin celluloid rolled around
the flower and caught with two rubber bands, each end being protected
with absorbent cotton plugs, is a better device. It gives excellent pro-
tection and allows transpiration.

But enough of the technique of hybridizing ; the phenomena attend-
ing it are of more importance. After the pollen is placed upon the
stigma it begins to grow until it reaches the ovule. Down this tube
comes the male cell which contains the potentialities of its parent plant.
This cell fuses with the female cell in the ovule and fertilization is ac-
complished. From this combination the seed and later the hybrid
plant results, half of its characters coming from the plant which fur-

344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

nished the pollen and half from the plant to which it has been applied.
If one studies the characters of several such hybrids, he finds many sur-
prising facts. It usually makes no difference which plant is the mother
plant, the result is the same. Certain characters are found in the hybrid
that are identical with those possessed by the male parent and other
characters the same as those possessed by the female parent. Other
characters appear to have resulted from the blending of those of the
two parents, while still others appear to be entirely new. The plant
may be sterile if the cross is between widely differing species, but if it
is fertile and the flower of the hybrid is self-fertilized, the plants re-
sulting from this seed present still more surprises. For example, if
one has crossed a pear-shaped yellow tomato with a round red tomato, in
the second hybrid generation he will find individual plants bearing fruit
of four kinds, pear-shaped yellow and round red, as were the two parents,
and in addition pear-shaped red and round yellow. In other words
all possible combinations occur and in definite proportions. Stated as
a principle it may be said that where either of the parent plants pos-
sesses characters absent from the other, the potential characters remain
pure in the germ cells of the hybrid and recombine as if by chance.
This is the most important feature of the only law of heredity of which
there is any exact knowledge — the law of Mendel. Let us illustrate the
action of the law. Such a character as starchiness, as shown in " flint "
maize, is either present or it is not present. The flinty appearance of
the seed is due to the possession of some character that causes the
maturation of plump starch grains. When this character is absent, the
seeds dry up without maturing their starch grains, and present
the wrinkled appearance common to sweet maize. Pairs of char-
acters such as these, affecting a certain plant structure, are called con-
trasted or allelomorphic pairs. When a sweet maize is crossed with a
flint maize, the resulting seeds are all flint like. That is, the dominant
character or the character that calls for the presence of the structure
or compound in question, manifests itself in the first hybrid generation.
Complete dominance, however, is not a general phenomenon in crosses
and as its importance is slight as compared with the second law, that
of segregation of the pure characters (potentially) in the germ cells
of the hybrid, we will discuss it no further. The second law predicts
that in the generations succeeding a cross, plants grown from the self-
fertilized seeds of the hybrid reproduce both contrasted characters in
the proportion of three of the dominant or " presence " characters to
one of the recessive or absent character. Furthermore, inbred or self-
fertilized plants bearing the recessive character continue ever after to
breed true, while of those plants bearing the dominant character one
third are pure and breed true while two thirds are hybrids and again
throw the recessive character in one fourth of their offspring.

PLANT BREEDING

345

Fig. 1. Castration of Buds of Nicotiana tabacum before Crossing, a, correct
stage for castration ; b, method of slitting the corolla ; c, castrated bud.

The theory supposes that when a dominant and a recessive char-
acter meet in a cross, the germ cells which are produced in the hybrid
do not blend these characters, but possess either the one or the other;
and as the possession of either character is a matter of chance, on the
average 50 per cent, will bear the dominant and 50 per cent, will bear
the recessive character. In a plant, for example, 50 per cent, of the
pollen cells would bear the dominant and the other 50 per cent, would

Fig. 2. Castrated Bud of Impalicns sultani showing Method of Protection in

Greenhouse Work.

vol. lxxvii. — 24.

346

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

bear the recessive character. One half of the egg cells, likewise, con-
tain the dominant, and one half the recessive character.

Now, if we could pick out at random an}'- one hundred pollen or
male cells to fertilize any one hundred egg or female cells, Ave can see
that there are equal chances for four results. A dominant male cell
might meet a dominant female cell, a dominant male cell a recessive
female cell, a recessive male cell a dominant female cell, and a recessive
male cell a recessive female cell.

We have (D + D), (D + E), (E + D), and (E + E) plants
formed in equal quantities, but as the two middle terms are the same,
we can reduce the formula to one (D + D) to two (D + E) to one
(E + E). But wherever there is a D present in the germ cell, the

Fig. 3. The Course of the Pollen-tube in a Rock-rose {HeUanthcmum mari-
folium). After Kerner and Oliver. 1, single flower; 2, essential organs of flower:
course of pollen tubes shown diagrammatically ; 3, pollen tubes penetrating the tissue
of the pistil ; 4, dried pollen grain ; 5, pollen grain germinating ; 6, ovule.

dominant character shows, while the recessive character is hidden. The
one part or 25 per cent, of the individuals showing the character
(D + D) will appear just like the two parts or 50 per cent, of the
individuals having the character (D + E). Therefore, there will be
75 per cent, of the individuals which will show the dominant or D
character, while 25 per cent, will show the recessive or E character.
These 25 per cent, showing the E character will ever after breed true,
because they contain nothing but the recessive character; while of the
75 per cent, showing the dominant character, one third or those having
the pure (D + D) character will breed true in succeeding generations,
while the other two thirds having the (D + E) or hybrid character
will again split in the next generation.

For all practical purposes in plant breeding the mere fact of segre-
gation is of greatest importance and the complexity of recent Mendelian

PLANT BREEDING 347

interpretations need not bother us. Suffice it to say that most plant
breeders have accepted the explanation that the recessive character is
simply the lack or absence of the character in question, while the dom-
inant character is its presence. This is simply a slightly different in-
terpretation of the same facts and simplifies some of the more complex
results of crossing. Instead of 50 per cent, of the germ cells bearing
the flint character and 50 per cent, bearing the sweet character when
sweet corn is crossed with flint corn, one should think of all of the
germ cells bearing the ability to produce the wrinkled sweet corn seeds,
but that 50 per cent, of them contain in addition the presence of a flint
or starch producing character. In other words, the " starchy " char-
acter is superimposed upon the " sweet " character. The dominant and
recessive characters in such a cross, then, are simply the presence and
absence of the starchy character.

When several character pairs differentiate the two parent plants in
a cross, all possible recombinations are formed, the relative frequency
with which the combinations occur being simply the algebraic product
of as many of the simple ratios as there are character pairs.

The importance of these Mendelian facts to the commercial plant
breeder is great. In crossing plants differing in several simple char-
acters that segregate after hybridization he may rest assured of two
things. First, that with a sufficient number of progeny in the second
hybrid generation, every possible recombination of the characters pres-
ent will be represented by at least one 'pure specimen. Second, that
these pure specimens when selfed, or pollinated with their own pollen,
will breed true. It should be remembered, however, that one may have
to self a number of plants to get the combination desired with all
characters pure, for if any dominant characters are concerned, their
purity can be ascertained only by breeding for another generation.
As an illustration we may take the snap dragon, Antirrhinum. There
is a long series of colors that segregate. There is also a type called the
" Delilah," where the tube of the corolla is uncolored. Starting with
this form in only one color, the whole color series of Delilah forms may
be reproduced by crossing with the self colored strains. Or, one may
combine the dwarf habit of growth of the Dwarf Champion tomato,
with any of the various colors and shapes now on the market which
have the ordinary tall habit of growth. Sometimes a very simple re-
combination is of very great commercial value. The so-called Havana
type of wrapper tobacco grown in the Connecticut Eiver valley has
large leaves and a short stocky habit of growth. It produces from
nineteen to twenty-one leaves. There is another type grown under
cheese cloth shade which has a tall habit of growth with about twenty-
six smaller leaves. The tall slender habit of growth makes it an undesir-
able type to grow in open fields where it is apt to be blown down. Mr.

348

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Fig. 4. Showing Absolute Segregation in Second Hybrid Generation. These
red and white ears grew from a single self-pollinated ear of the first hybrid genera-
tion of a cross between red and white maize.

A. D. Shamel, of the United States Department of Agriculture, crossed
these two types. A new type called the Halladay has been produced
with the higher number of leaves of the Cuban parent and the stocky
habit of growth and large leaves of the Havana parent. The first inter-
pretation of this result was that an entirely new variation had appeared,
for the Cuban type usually has but twenty-two or twenty-three leaves.
The writer has been able to show, however, that the actual strain of the
Cuban used as the parent of the cross has on the average twenty-six
leaves, and data have now been collected that show that the new variety
is a simple recombination of the characters possessed by the two parents
giving an out-door type averaging thirty per cent, greater yield than
the old Havana strain. In a similar way Biffen has produced a rust
resistant high-yielding wheat by crossing two varieties each of which
possessed but one of these desirable qualities. Orton has combined the
edible quality of the watermelon with the wilt resistance of the citron,
and Webber has increased the ability of the orange to resist cold by
crossing with the hardy trifoliate orange.

Recent accurately controlled investigations in hybridization have
shown that many apparently complex results yield to simple explana-

Fig. 5. Red Maize Ear with Pericarp removed, showing segregation of yellow and

white endosperm beneath it.

PLANT BREEDING

349

tions by use of the Mendelian theory. For example, two or more
hereditary factors may be necessary for the production of an actual
tangible character. If factors A and B must be present for its pro-
duction, then a plant carrying only factor A and another carrying only

Fig. 6. Mendelian Segregation in Maize, a and b, the two parents, starchy
and sweet maize ; c, the first hybrid generation showing dominance of starchiness ;
d, the second hybrid generation showing segregation with the ratio of three starchy
to one wrinkled seed. Lower row daughters of d. e, f and g, results of planting
starchy seeds. One ear out of three is pure starchy, h, result of planting sweet
seeds. Ear is pure sweet.

factor B do not possess the character. But let the two plants be crossed
and the character appears. There are two white varieties of sweet peas ;
each, however, contains one of the two factors necessary for the pro-

35°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Fig. 7. At left " Havana " Parent, at right " Cuban " Parent of Cross
shown in Fig. 8. The " Havana " has short habit of growth, large leaves averaging
19 to 21 in number. The " Cuban " has tall habit of growth and averages 26 medium-
sized leaves.

duction of a purple variety. When these two white varieties are crossed,
the purple variety results. The second generation, however, produces
seven whites to every nine purples. Such segregation into purples and
whites may not he desirahle; all purples may be wanted. This brings
us to a consideration of class B of the four classes of phenomena at-
tending hybridization, the production of desirable character combina-
tions in the first hybrid generation and their continuation by asexual
propagation. This class really includes several distinct types of oc-
currences. The purple sweet pea produced from the two whites will
serve as an illustration of the first type. In certain plants (not mean-
ing the sweet pea, however) it is as simple to reproduce by cuttings as
by seed. The cuttings are simply parts of the plant from which they
come and are identical with it in character.2 If in a species of this
kind a desirable character is formed by the union of two or more
hereditary factors and one wishes to reproduce the character indefi-
nitely, asexual reproduction by cutting serves the purpose admirably.

2 There are certain cases like variegation that are exceptions to this rule.

PLANT BREEDING z$i

There is another case of a different kind. Sometimes the hybrid
character is different from the character of the parents, even though
the exact parental characters are reproduced by segregation in succeed-
ing generations. The commercial carnation form is the result of cross-
ing the single carnation with the huge worthless doubles called
" busters." Eeproduced bj seed the commercial carnation throws both
singles and busters, showing that segregation of the parental characters
takes place; but as these plants are easily reproduced by cuttings, and
the cuttings are all of the commercial type, sexual reproduction is only
resorted to for the sake of producing new varieties. Another common
phenomenon attending lwbridization is sterility. Many very beautiful
flowers produce no seed at all. This is even an advantage in some cases,
because the plants flower more profusely than if they were spending
their energies in the production of seed. Here again, cuttings are re-
sorted to to reproduce the hybrid, or, as in the case of seedless oranges,
the cuttings are grafted into an older rootstock instead of being rooted.

I stated at the beginning that there were two other classes of
hybridization phenomena, the production of fixed first-generation
hybrids and the production of blend hybrids. It is probable in the last
analysis that the true explanation of these cases is the same ; so we will
consider them together. It is believed by many that there are kinds of
inheritance other than Mendelian, that is, inheritance where no segrega-
tion occurs. Far be it from me to deny this; I simply state the fact
that there are no exact data extant proving other kinds of inheritance.
Such data may be found, but it is useless to speculate upon other laws
without such evidence. There are several cases in which either new
characters that breed true or blended characters that breed true
appear to have been formed, but they have not been studied with
sufficient care for an analysis of their mode of inheritance to be accurate
and final. It is in crosses between true species that hybrids have been
formed seemingly as constant and uniform as their parent species. Janc-
zewsky has produced several such hybrids. Perhaps the most famous,
however, are the blackberry-raspberry crosses first produced by the late
E. S. Carman, editor of the Rural New-Yorker and later by Luther Bur-
bank and others. Several hybrids having a commercial value have been
made in this genus (Rubus), and all of them reproduce approximately
true from seed. These are the facts and show what may sometimes be
expected by hybridizers when crossing true species ; but I wish to point
out that this does not necessarily mean that we are dealing with a new
mode of inheritance. Bramble species produce seedlings that are quite
variable and in which the variations are extremely difficult to describe;
there is, therefore, no exact information as to the relative variability of
the hybrid seedlings as compared to that of the two parents. It may be
said, then, that it is yet unknown whether there is partial segregation.

352

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Fig. 8. First hybrid Generation of Cross between " Havana " and " Cuban "
Varieties of Tobacco shown in Iig. 7. Plant is taller than either parent showing
the increased vigor due to a cross. Size of leaf of " Havana " is dominant. Habit
of growth of " Cuban " is dominant. Number of leaves is intermediate, but ap-
proaches the " Cuban."

But why should there not be complete segregation to the types of each
parent? In the first place, because it is likely that numerous sepa-
rately heritable characters are concerned, and when n pairs of characters
are concerned it takes four to the nth power seedlings to run an even
chance that there will be one plant like each of the parents. When we
consider that with ten pairs of characters, this means over 1,000,000
individuals, we can see with what enormous numbers one has to deal.
In the second place these hybrids are only partially fertile, and as I
have suggested in former papers, some consideration must be given
the fact that there may be selective fertilization that works against ex-

PLANT BREEDING

353

Fig. 9. Recombination of characters of Plants shown in Fig. 7, occurring
in the second hybrid generation. This is a uniform and constant type having the
short habit of growth and large leaves of the " Havana " parent, combined with the
high number of leaves of the " Cuban *' parent. It is now grown in the Connecticut
River valley and yields 40 per cent, more than the Havana type.

treme segregation. To take a hypothetical case, suppose two plants are
crossed in which the flowers of one are twice as long as the flowers of
the other and that this extra length is controlled by three or four sepa-
rately heritable factors. If only a few of the egg cells can be fertilized
on account of dissimilarity from the pollen cells, one would expect only
those seeds to be formed that would come from the fusion of the germ
cells nearest alike. Intermediates would therefore be more likely to be
formed than extremes. There is one other possible way of accounting

354

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

-

1

i ^y^fc

/ 1~* . -

^^^ *

V ^

1 .

r %

*

^Sj

V^J-J*

■

^^y

► '-^ >^*3w<^' ■ "

dri

F

Fig. 10. Segregation of size Characters. At left Nicotiana rustica trazilia.
This plant was crossed with N. rustica scabra shown at left in Fig. 11. At right is
a segregate of the second hybrid generation which is exactly like its parent. Unfor-
tunately it has branched at the base or the similarity would be more striking.

■t&lsB

w*v&?Mmtim

/ #9

E«<

^ v^JH

By Br

i#4' r »■ • ATW1

Br < -W* ' ^M&Bp*-^

1 S. m tfc 'BLA
«_ 111 HW._.

Fig. 11. Segregation in size Characters. At left Nicotiana rustica scabra.
This plant was crossed with 2V. rustica brazilia shown at left in Fig. 10. At right
is a segregate of the second hybrid generation exactly like its parent in size of plant,
leaf and flower and in habit of growth.

PLANT BREEDING 355

for constant intermediate hybrid races which I think has never before
been mentioned. In crossing species of the genus Nicotiana, I have
had plants develop from seed that have apparently been formed
apogamously, that is, formed from an immature egg cell without fer-
tilization. It is evident that this is induced by the extraordinary irri-
tation of foreign pollen. The true hybrid plants that are formed are
generally blends in the first generation. The question, then, arises :
May not the. difficulty of maturing sexual cells in a wide cross some-
times cause apogamous development and therefore a continued propa-
gation of a constant and uniform race?

All but the last of these suggestions may also be pertinent in the
case of varietal crosses where there is said to be a blending of char-
acters that deal with size. I am not certain, however, that all the so-
called blend hybrids might not show segregation if studied in large
numbers. I have found such segregation in size characters in crosses of
both maize varieties and of tobacco varieties.3

3 In the writer's paper " The Role of Selection in Plant Breeding " in the
August number of this journal, the legends for figures three and four unfor-
tunately were interchanged in printing.

356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF

HIBERNATION

By ALLEN CLEGHORN, M.D.

LATE INSTRUCTOR IN COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY, LATE ASSISTANT IN PRACTICAL
PHYSIOLOGY, HARVARD VETERINARY AND MEDICAL SCHOOLS

Introduction — Natural History

IN this most important and interesting phenomenon of nature — a
truly protective phase — let us first briefly consider the natural -his-
tory side of the subject, describing how hibernation is peculiar to, and
differs, in the various animals possessing this function of protective
winter sleep. Then we will consider the various physiological phe-
nomena characteristic of this torpid state. Let us first make clear the
meaning of some of the terms used in connection with this condition.

The term "hibernation" is used by scientists and naturalists to
signify the peculiar somnolent or torpid state in which many animals,
both warm- and cold-blooded, inhabiting cold and temperate climes,
pass the winter. On the other hand, in hot and dry countries, various
animals pass into a similar condition during the hottest and dryest
season of the year, and this state is called " aestivation."

Many of the animals which hibernate during the winter are liable
to fall into a similar state at intervals during milder seasons — Dr.
Marshall Hall considers the day sleep of bats as a species of hiberna-
tion and has called it " diurnation."

In man it is a question if true hibernation ever occurs — a similar
condition may exist, however, but it is very rare either for a prolonged
or short period. Cases of hibernation (?) in man are most frequently
found in India, where some religious ascetics are stated, upon unim-
peachable authority to possess the power of throwing themselves into a
state closely resembling hibernation (trance?) for an indefinite period.
Many curious cases have been recorded by Mr. Braid in his treatise on
" Human Hibernation " ; the most celebrated and best known is that of
a " fakir," who, in the presence of Sir Claude Wade, the English gov-
ernor, was buried alive at Lahore in 1837, was exhumed and restored to
consciousness after remaining in the ground for several months, the
grave being guarded and every precaution taken, in the meantime, to
prevent any interference or disturbance of the body.

One of the largest groups of hibernating animals we have is that
of bats — Dr. Marshall Hall claims that the bat when hibernating, prac-
tically never wakes, but when disturbed will breathe naturally,1 for a
few minutes, but will then return to its former state of quiescence.

1 /. e., as in a fully wakened state, quicker and deeper.

HIBERNATION 357

Earlier or later in the autumn, according to the species, the bats
retire to caves and hollow trees and similar places, where they cluster
together, hanging by their hind claws, head downward, and clinging
to one another as well as to the walls of their retreat. Such masses may
comprise various species, yet all species do not retire at the same time.

The noctule is seldom seen abroad later than July — while the pipis-
trelle may be seen flying any warm evening during the spring, summer
and autumn months.2

Owing to the difference in the flying season of these different bats,
it is only natural to suppose that the hibernation of the former species
(noctule) is much deeper and longer than in the latter (pipistrelle),
which may feed all the year round. Here in North America some bats
may, and probably do, migrate southward to avoid the too intense cold,
and among these is probably the noctule, which is the first to come and
the first to go.3 These " flitter mice " 4 are insectivorous, and before
discussing some of the other mammalia, it may be advisable to call
attention to some points of difference existing, during the hibernating
state, between the carnivorous and herbivorous animals.

Bears come out of the hibernating condition as fat, or nearly so,
as when they retired in the fall ; marmots, ground squirrels, etc., emerge
in poor condition, in some cases quite emaciated; this in spite of the
fact that they are functionally torpid, while bears and skunks are not.
Female bears even bring forth their young while hibernating and suckle
them from about the beginning of February to April, while they obtain
no nourishment themselves.

The bear and badger, in our northern and western climates, retire
to their winter quarters and pass the greater part of their time in sleep,
yet neither the brown bear5 nor the badger falls into a true state of
hibernation. On the other hand, the black bear of North America is
aroused with difficulty from his winter sleep, and this gives ground for
the belief that he differs from the other species of bears in that he
hibernates while the others do not.

The most perfect hibernating animal we have in Canada is the
ground-hog (woodchuck), which hibernates in a burrow of its own

2 These names — noctule and pipistrelle — are the common names of two
species of European bats; the genus Pipistrelle is represented in North America,
but only in the extreme southern portion of the United States, by three species
and two subspecies. The common bats of eastern North America are the hoary,
brown, silvery, red and the little brown bat, all of which are found here in
British Columbia except the red variety.

3 Bats undoubtedly migrate; see Miller, "North American Fauna," No. 13.

4 Old term.

6 The " brown bear " is a very loose term — the cinnamon bear is only a
color phase of the common black bear. The grizzly may be any color and are
eubgenerically distinct from the black bear. It is doubtful if any bear is
completely torpid during hibernation; the grizzly is much less so than the black
bear, the period of hibernation being shorter.

358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

making. In Europe the hedge-hog6 (an insectivorous animal) is most
complete. It retires to a hole among rocks, under a tangled mass of
roots of trees or sometimes into an old disused drain, there it remains
for the winter, seldom or never awakens until spring, and during this
time it takes no food. In Canada it wakens to eat. If disturbed, it
draws a deep sononous breath, followed by a few weak respiratory move-
ments, returning almost immediately to its deep state of torpor and
quiescence. The tuerec, an allied animal, found in Madagascar, sleeps
similarly in its burrow for three months during the hottest period of
the year.

None of the American (or European) squirrels truly hibernate7
except the chipmunks (Entamicse) and the ground squirrels (sper-
mophiles).

The dormouse hibernates in the strictest form and its torpid condi-
tion is much deeper than that of the squirrels, its favorite bed for its
long slumber being an old bird's nest or a mass of dried moss or feathers.
In captivity, this little animal has been known to sleep for several days
during the summer. The myoxus, an allied animal, when brought to
Europe from Africa, hibernated in the winter seasons as if it were its
usual and natural habit, without sustaining any harm.

The hare will lie beneath deep snow for several weeks at a time, in a
cavity just large enough to contain its body. In a similar manner,
sheep, without any apparent injury, have been known to live for several
weeks, buried in huge snow drifts or slides.

All the amphibia hibernate in cold and temperate climes. Land
tortoises bury themselves in holes in the ground, while the fresh-water
tortoises bury themselves in the mud at the bottom and sides of lakes
and ponds. They obtain a deeper condition of torpidity than that of
hibernating mammals, digestion and respiration (lung) being entirely
suspended. Frogs hibernate in masses in the mud at the bottom of
stagnant pools and if awakened from the hibernating state by warmth,
can remain underwater, without drowning, considerably longer than
they can during the breeding season. That frogs (toads?) can remain
in a state of hibernation for an indefinite period remains to be proved,
but too many circumstantial accounts have been reported of the dis-
covery of live toads in masses of solid coal or rock formations to allow
the idea to be dismissed as fabulous.8

Eeptiles, fish and batrachians exhibit little change from their usual

6 Hedge-hog; this term hedgehog is confusing; it is the term applied in
Maine and New Brunswick to the common porcupine.

' In Canada, hoth the porcupine and squirrel store up food for winter con-
sumption, rousing themselves at irregular intervals to eat.

8" Our common toad hibernates in the ground, as does the wood frog (Rana
sylvaticus) and the small jumping frogs (Hyla) . Our newts also hibernate in
the ground." — John Burroughs (private communication).

HIBERNATION 359

condition ( ?) . Lizards and snakes retire to holes in trees, under stones,
dead leaves, and many species may congregate together in large num-
bers. They are in a quiescent and somnolent state, not true hibernation.
Fish of the temperate zone do not fall into a state of complete tor-
pidity, but their vital functions are diminished and they retire to shel-
tered holes and cease to go abroad in search of food. In the tropics
(Africa and India) large numbers of fish are known to survive long
and severe droughts during which the streams and ponds are completely
dried up. This, they do, by passing the dry season embedded in
the mud.

Most of the species of molluscse hibernate. The land snails bury
themselves in the ground or conceal themselves under the bark of trees ;
in fact in almost any sort of a cavity to be found. They close the
mouth of their shells with a calcareous plate technically known as the
" epiphragm," and this is perforated by a minute hole to permit breath-
ing. The substance forming this plate they secrete in their mouths.
During the dry weather in summer, the snails bury themselves in the
ground and cover the opening of their shells with this protective shield,
but it is much thinner than the one used in winter. This they do to
protect themselves from the drought, i. e., by checking evaporation.
Slugs bury themselves but do not enter into a complete state of hiber-
nation. Fresh-water molluscse go into a state of hibernation in the fall,
burying themselves in the mud until spring. It is believed that salt-
water mollusca?. hibernate in a similar manner, but practically nothing
is known concerning them.

Many butterflies and moths hibernate in the perfect state as well
as in the form of imagos, but not in the larval state ( ?). Most insects
which pass the winter in a state of larvse hibernate during the period
when they can not obtain any food. Insects which hibernate do not
pair until spring and bees do not hibernate at all. It is well known to
bee-keepers that these insects need plenty of food during the winter
months.

In the seeds of plants and in the eggs of many of the lower animals,
life may remain dormant for years in cold climates, until heat or mois-
ture awakens them. Many plants die down, while their roots remain
alive during the winter season (perennials and biennials), coming to
foliage and blossom in the spring. In the same way trees shed their
leaves in the autumn and the sap returns to the roots. Similar phe-
nomena take place in tropical countries during the hot season, when-
ever the amount of humidity in the atmosphere is sufficient to maintain
perennial vegetation during the entire year.

These phenomena in the vegetable world are regarded generally as
being analogous to those of hibernation in animals and therefore the
terms " hibernation of plants " is sometimes applied to them.

360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Physiology

In this article, so far, we have dealt with the natural-history side of
hibernation, explained what is meant by the various terms used in con-
nection with this state and in what respect the condition itself differs
in the various animals subject to its peculiar manifestations : a condi-
tion provided by nature to tide an animal over a period when its very
existence, owing to scarcity of food, becomes too difficult or even impos-
sible to maintain; so by preserving the animal's life allows it to per-
petuate its species.

We will now pass on to consider the purely physiological phases and
phenomena of this state.

In hibernation all the activities of the body are greatly reduced, the
temperature of the animal is lowered and even falls to a point slightly
above that of the surrounding media. As it has been pointed out above,
animals which hibernate do not belong to any one class, but examples
are met with in mammals, reptiles ( ?), amphibians, insects, molluscae,
but curiously enough, no case is known among birds.

In some cases, previous to entering the hibernating state, the animal
stores up food in its den or nest, on which it feeds when it wakes at
intervals during its winter sleep. This is hardly pure hibernation, as
in the true cases there is a special accumulation of fat in the animal's
body before the commencement of the torpid state (the animal not
waking to feed) and this serves as food during the hibernating period.
A peculiar physiological change is here involved — a herbivorous animal
becomes carnivorous, this being caused by the animal living on its own
flesh, hence the excretions (small) of the animal become profoundly and
completely altered in their chemical characters.

A low temperature is the cause generally assigned for the production
of hibernation, but a more careful consideration of the facts long ago
showed that cold could not be the sole cause of the phenomenon. Most
observers who have worked on the subject have found that extreme cold
will not cause an active animal to hibernate; although Saissy has ob-
served that continued cold, and a limited amount of air for respiration
caused a marmot to pass into a typical hibernating condition, even in
summer. Against this we have Vernon Bailey's experiments with
spermophiles (first cousins of the marmots or ground-hogs), which
showed that in the case of hibernating animals a few degrees lower
temperature changed the torpid state into one of death.

Mangili found that torpid marmots and bats were awakened by
exposure to severe cold and that lessened or confined air would not cause
hibernation. Dormice have been kept in a warm room throughout the
winter and yet they hibernated and were not aroused when the extreme
temperature was 20° C. The warmth, however, delayed the onset of
torpidity by two months and made it less profound. Again, as has been
mentioned before, hibernation may take place in the dry hot season.

HIBERNATION 361

The supply of food may also be a factor producing this condition, as
torpidity in dormice and groundhogs is delayed or prevented when the
food supply is plentiful. I question this for the following reasons:
Spermophiles and marmots retire for their winter sleep when their food
supply is at its best; they only remain active until the full coating of
fat is acquired. Here in British Columbia they will retire a month or
more earlier in the low lands than they do at the timber line. In the
latter regions they have not acquired enough fat until the end of Sep-
tember, as they come out of hibernation later in the spring.

In this connection it is interesting to note the influence of the food
supply on man, protectively causing a condition closely resembling
hibernation. For instance, there is in Eussia a certain class of peasants
who suffer from a chronic state of famine which becomes more acute
at the end of the year and more or less severe according to circum-
stances. In these cases, when the head of the family sees, towards the
end of autumn, that by a normal consumption of their supply of wheat
it will not last the family through the winter, he makes arrangements
to diminish the rations as much as possible. Knowing that it will be
difficult to preserve their health and keep up the physical force neces-
sary for their work in the spring, he and his family plunge themselves
into a condition known as " lejka " which means that everybody simply
goes to bed, lying down on the top of the flat stove, and there they stay
during the four or five months of winter. They get up, during this
time, only to replenish the fire, eat a small piece of black bread and
take a small drink of water. The peasant and his family try to move
as little as possible and sleep as much as they can — stretched out on the
stove top, they preserve almost complete immobility. Their only care
during the long winter is to keep down the body metabolism, to waste
as little as possible of their animal heat, and for that reason they try
to eat and drink less, move less, and to generally reduce the activities
of their bodies. Their instinct commands them to sleep as much as
possible — obscurity and silence reign in the hut where, in the warmest
place, either singly or crowded, the occupants pass the winter season in
a condition closely resembling hibernation.

The following observations are purely physiological phenomena,
occurring in mammals only.

Bespiration
The frequency of respiration is greatly diminished, the rhythm is
irregular and often of the Cheyne-Stokes type.9 What little respira-

9 In the Cheyne-Stokes type of respiration, there is a pause in the respi-
ratory act, then a small respiration occurs, to be followed by a deeper one;
then a still deeper act and so on until the maximum is reached, when the
respirations begin to gradually diminish until they die away altogether. This
is followed by a prolonged pause, then they gradually begin again.

vol. lxxvii. — 25.

362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

tion (i. e., interchange of gases in the lnngs) there is, when the thoracic
muscles and diaphragm are not acting (i. e., complete cessation of move-
ment) is maintained principally by the " cardio-pneumatic " move-
ment.10 A hibernating dormouse may not give a single respiration for
ten minutes, then takes from ten to fifteen breaths, at the end of which
it again lapses into a state of quiescence for a period of several minutes,
when the spasmodic respiratory act again occurs. The same animal,
when in a normal waking state, breathes at the rate of eighty or more
respirations a minute. Similar results are obtained in other animals.
It has been observed that hibernating bats and marmots could be kept
for hours in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide gas, without suffering any
ill effects, whereas a bird or rat placed in the same chamber died almost
at once, thus showing that in the hibernating state the consumption of
oxygen is extremely small or in other words very little oxygen is re-
quired by the hibernating animal (owing to the quiescence and lowered
metabolism of the animal and naturally for the same reasons very little
carbon dioxide is given off). Saissy has observed that the amount of
oxygen taken in by a dormouse varied according to the activity of the
animal, and so in true hibernation the amount of the intake of oxygen
is naturally very small.

Circulation

During hibernation, the force and frequency of the heart-beat is
greatly reduced. In the case of the bat and dormouse, it is as low as
fourteen or sixteen per minute, while in these animals in the active
state it is one hundred and over. Hill and Pembry by applying a
stethescope to the chest of a hibernating bat, make the observation that
no sound of the heart-beat could be heard, I can confirm this observa-
tion as applying to the hibernating ground-hog in British Columbia,
also, whereas with the animal awake and active, the sounds were so
loud that they could be heard distinctly when the ear was an inch away
from the animal.

I have found, and can confirm other observers, that the blood during
hibernation has an arterial hue (bright red) in the veins, and, on the
other hand, Marshall Hall states that it has a venous color in the ar-
teries.

Digestion

The activities of the digestive organs vary according to the habits
of the different animals. Some, much as the dormouse, marmot ( ?)
and hamster, store up food in the autumn which they consume during
the winter in their waking intervals. Naturally, then, their digestive

10 Cardio-pneumatic movement. Here the visible movements of respiration,
dilation and contraction of the thorax, have ceased, but still air (a very small
amount) is drawn into and expelled from the lungs. This is due to the heart's
action, it also being contained in the thoracic cavity, hence its contraction and
dilation so alters the pressure in the thorax that an interchange of respiratory
gases is produced in the lungs.

HIBERNATION 363

organs are intermittently active. In the black bear, however, digestion
is completely suspended and his intestines become plugged up with an
indigestible mass composed chiefly of pine leaves. This mass is not
discharged until the bear wakes in the spring.

It may be well to note here the important part played by the liver
during hibernation in maintaining the animal's life; it acts as a store-
house, storing up energy in the form of glycogen, often called animal
starch — a substance derived principally from starchy or carbohydrate
food. This glycogen is converted in the liver into sugar and poured
into the circulation, which carries it to the tissues, where it is consumed
during hibernation, as well as in the waking state. The presence of
glycogen in the liver-cells of the frog and other animals may actually
be seen by the aid of the microscope, immediately before hibernation,
and its absence, more or less complete, at the end of this period, demon-
strated in the same manner. (This is disputed by Weinland and Eichl
— they claim that the amount of glycogen in the body remains constant
during hibernation.

Nervous System

The excitability of the whole nervous system is greatly depressed.
Physiologically, it resembles, as do the other tissues, that of cold-
blooded animals in general, in that all the tissues (muscular, particu-
larly) retain their excitability for a long time after they are removed
from the body.

Temperature

A warm-blooded animal during hibernation loses all control (re-
flex) over its temperature-regulating mechanism, and acquires all the
characteristics of a cold-blooded organism, that is, instead of its body
having a regular, normal and steady temperature, its temperature be-
comes about the same as the surrounding media, and as this rises or
falls, so does that of the animal. On the other hand, by arousing a
dormant animal from its stupor, it is possible to make it exercise
enough to bring its temperature up to normal, i. e., what it would be
in its ordinary walking and active circumstances, or in other words to
bring it back to warm-blooded conditions again.

On studying the changes in external temperature, we find that the
output of carbon dioxide and the temperature vary with the activity
of the animal. If the animal is very active, it responds to a fall in
external temperature by more muscular activity, and by this way main-
tains the normal heat of its body. If, however, this animal is in a
sleeping condition and there is a sudden fall in temperature, it some-
what arouses at first, becomes active, and this causes an increase in the
output of carbon dioxide, but after a few minutes it coils itself up
again and returns to its former somnolent condition, and from which
it is not so readily aroused. It has also been observed that when the
surrounding temperature has been raised, the temperature of the

364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

hibernating animal does not keep much above it, until a point is
reached when the animal wakens. Then its temperature rushes up
many degrees in a few minutes and at the same time the excretion of
carbon dioxide becomes enormously increased.

Immunity and Formation of Antitoxine

Hansmann describes the influence of temperature on the incubation
period and the formation of antitoxine. He found much greater resis-
tance to infection and lengthened incubation time and no production of
the various antibodies during hibernation. Blanchard and Blatin made
the observation that in the hibernating condition the marmot was im-
mune to parasitic maladies.

Conclusion

It may be stated and accepted that when hibernation has been fully
investigated, all degrees of cessation of functional activity of the vari-
ous organs and tissues will be found represented, from the normal sleep
of man and other animals to the lowest degree of activity manifested
in life. Though some observers claim that in true hibernation there is
complete cessation of function in some organs, as, for example, the
lungs and movements of respiration, this is extremely doubtful. The
awakening of an animal from its winter sleep is never sudden, but
slow and gradual, often lasting for hours. This gradation from a pas-
sive to an active condition is no doubt protective to the vital machinery,
as it has been noticed that when bats have been awakened suddenly they
have quickly died.

We have spoken of hibernation in man, and by some authorities,
sleep in man is closely allied to a state of hibernation. Natural daily
sleep is favored by moderate exhaustion, the cravings of hunger being
satisfied, and the absence of all peripheral stimuli. Sleep is a rhythmic
diminution of the activities of all the tissues, but especially of the
nervous system, which has control of all the others. As we have men-
tioned before, Marshall Hall and others have shown that the gaseous
interchange in a hibernating animal is greatly lessened and so too it is
in sleep. It has also been shown by experiments that hibernation, like
daily sleep, is not a series of fixed and rigid phenomena, but is varied
in depth and in season and its main use is that of protecting and con-
serving life.

All forms of profound winter and summer sleep are protective, both
of the individual and of the species. If it were not for this act of
hibernation, many of the mammalia, amphibia, as well as some other
groups of animals, would be utterly destroyed from the face of the
earth.

THE HOME OF THE ALLIGATOR 365

THE HOME OF THE ALLIGATOE

By Professor A. M. REESE

UNIVERSITY OF WEST VIRGINIA

IT has twice been my privilege to visit the wilds of Florida under
the auspices of scientific societies, the first trip being to the
Everglades, while the second expedition, under the auspices of the
Smithsonian Institution, took me to the flat-wood and prairie regions
in the center of the state, far from railroads and other signs of
civilization.

From the pleasant little town of Orlando, with its orange groves and
numerous small lakes, we plunged almost immediately into the " piney-
woods," where the road is scarcely more than a trail, and is strewn with
numberless huge pine cones that produce constant and nerve-racking
jolting to passing vehicles.

For about thirty miles we drove, slowly on account of heavy loads,
through the pines, where but few and widely separated houses, and no
villages, worthy of the name, were to be seen. The monotony and lone-
liness of these almost perfectly level forests, broken only by an occa-
sional cypress swamp, sluggish stream, or tiny cabin, becomes, to one
accustomed to a thickly-settled, rolling country, quite oppressive; and
we were glad to come suddenly to the edge of the forest where we could
look out for miles upon the open prairie. The prairie proved to be
much more interesting, though no less lonely, than the pine woods.
The ground is here covered with either grass, upon which large herds
of cattle feed, or with the " scrub palmetto " which is, apparently,
gradually spreading its useless foliage over the entire prairie.

These scrub palmettoes, especially where they grow in taller, denser
groups, are the home of numerous diamond rattle-snakes, the most
deadly of American reptiles. As we drove past the palmettoes we
frequently saw, and always captured alive if possible, these deadly
rattlers, my guide being very expert and perfectly fearless in handling
them. If they were coiled when found, he would simply reach out his
hand slowly and pick them up by the back of the neck, sometimes
attracting their attention by dangling a handkerchief in front of their
eyes with one hand while he seized them with the other. If they
attempted to escape, he would tap them with a carriage whip until he
made them crawl where he could get at them easily. It is remarkable
the amount of teasing and rough handling to which a rattler will sub-
mit without attempting to bite. His rattle may whirr violently and

366

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

A Typical Florida " Hammock.

The Interior of a Florida "Hammock."

THE HOME OF THE ALLIGATOR

367

he will look as threatening and deadly as any animal could, but, unless
he be shedding, he will seldom strike if he can avoid it by escaping from
his tormentors.

Although he had been handling and collecting snakes for thirty
years, my guide had, until this trip, never been bitten by a rattler. One
morning he had caught, in a noose at the end of a pole, a large rattler
that was shedding and was, therefore, very vicious. Where a snake
was lying in an inaccessible place, or was, as in this case, unusually

Leaves of the " Cabbage Palmetto.

vicious, a noose was generally used and the snake thus transferred to
a bag carried for the purpose. As he was being lowered into the bag,
this particular snake gave a sudden twist and one of his poison fangs
cut a long gash in the hand of his captor. Fortunately for the man,
only the extreme tip of the fang penetrated the skin, so that little or no
poison was injected. The guide always carried a hypodermic syringe
for just such emergencies, so that a dose of potasium permanganate
was soon injected into the wound, and no ill effects from the bite
were felt.

Although the bite of these rattlers is not necessarily fatal to man,
almost any one in that region can tell of one or more cases where death
has followed within a few hours of the time that the wound was
inflicted.

368

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Capturing a Diamond Rattler.

villages would be in other states :
Camp Hammock, Hickory Ham-
mock and Jack Hammock are
familiar names in that region.
They serve as camping places
for men, and as shelters from
the noonday sun for cattle.
Some of them, when entered, are
veritable fairy-lands : from the
branches of the huge live oaks
are festooned great masses of
beautiful, gray, hanging moss,
while here and there is stationed
a stately palmetto, with its great
head of green leaves, each leaf-
nearly twice as tall as a man.
From the lower growth may pro-
ject the gaunt, bare branches of
a dead oak, on which a group
of turkey-buzzards and carrion
crows are likely to be seen.

The much smaller ground
rattlers are also numerous on the
prairie, but, on account of their
small size, one to two feet instead
of six to eight, they are not feared
as are the diamond rattlers.

The monotony of the prairie is
broken by an occasional clump of
trees, known as a " hammock "
(probably derived from "hum-
mock"). These hammocks are
sometimes composed merely of a
small group of palm trees, called
" cabbage palmettoes " from the
edible, cabbage-like core at the
tip; or they may cover several
acres and contain moss-hung oaks
and a dense undergrowth. The
hammocks serve as landmarks and
milestones for the traveler and
cowboy, and many of them ' are
named, just as streams, hills or

k Gkoup of Carrion Crows.

THE HOME OF THE ALLIGATOR 369

Except for the flatness of the country, which makes the drainage
uncomfortably slow in wet weather, a more delightful place to pitch
one's tent could hardly be found than one of these Florida hammocks.
To be sure there are numerous snakes (we caught no less than twenty-
three in a hammock where we camped for about a month), but they are
mostly of harmless varieties and are really very graceful and interesting
animals.

Dotted over the prairie are numerous small swamps and sluggish
water-courses: the latter are called "sloughs" (pronounced "slews"),
and differ from the former in containing, at least during wet seasons,
running water. These swamps and sloughs are the home of the alli-
gator and the deadly cotton-mouth moccasin. While searching for the

<#

* *%'

N...,/

V«T

/• •'

V*" ^ • ,-v*

A Typical 'Gator Hole of Central Florida.

nests of the former, the latter were frequently seen, but were left
severely alone, as they are quite deadly, are much more aggressive than
the rattlers, and have no warning rattle to indicate the state of their
tempers.

In these swamps we collected not only several hundred alligator
eggs, but also numerous alligators themselves, both large and small.
The baby 'gators were hooked up out of the water with a wire noose
on the end of a bamboo pole, while the large ones were either shot
directly or were pulled out of their caves under the banks and killed
by a rifle bullet in the back of the neck.

;7°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

A Nest of the Florida Alligator, made of a mass of flags and grasses,
has been opened to show the pile of eggs within.

The nest

In the tall grass about the swamps deer are frequently seen, while
on other parts of the prairie wild cats, skunks and other animals are
met with; and rabbits are so abundant and so tame that they may be
killed with a long pole or snared with the noose used for capturing
young alligators.

Herons, cranes, ibis and other beautiful and interesting birds are
constantly seen, so that the naturalist has something of interest before
his eyes at every turn.

For the ornithologist, professional or amateur, who wishes to study
and photograph an interesting bird colony, as has been done by Chap-
man with the flamingoes and by other naturalists, there is, on a small

An Bight-Foot Florida Alligator.

THE HOME OF THE ALLIGATOR

37i

Fouk Nests of the White Ibis, within a radius of three feet, on Bird Island.
Several nestlings, which are black at this age, are to be seen.

island near the center of Lake Kissimmee, an excellent opportunity.
Lake Kissimmee, which is about thirty miles long by five wide, lies at
almost the exact geographical center of the state of Florida. It may be
reached by driving, as in the present case, or by motor-boat from the
town of Kissimmee on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, at the head
of Lake Tohopekaliga.

The island in question is well named " Bird Island," for it is the
nesting place of thousands of white ibis, and not a few other birds.
Its situation in the center of the lake makes it a safe retreat from
the wild-cats and other destructive animals of the mainland, while
the neighboring swamps furnish an endless supply of food for both old
and young birds. For miles in all directions flocks of ibis, from three
or four to as many dozens in number, may be seen feeding in the
swamps and sloughs, or flying, single file, with their characteristic
alternate flapping and sailing, to and from the rookery on the island.

The island itself is covered with a dense jungle of reeds and under-
growth, with areas of bushes and small trees. When one pushes
through the reeds into one of the bushy areas, there is a startling whirr
of wings as thousands of the ibis take to flight, circling about overhead
in a perfect cloud, and making a most beautiful spectacle.

At the time of our visit to the rookery, about the middle of July,

372

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

nesting was in full swing, and in all stages, from the egg to the nearly
full-grown bird. The nests, crude affairs, each made of a handful of
small sticks, were everywhere — in every available situation on the bushes

and small trees, and scattered over
the ground in such numbers that
one had to walk with care to avoid
stepping on them. In some nests
were eggs, as has been said, while
in others were birds of all sizes, the
larger of which scrambled away
awkwardly at our approach. With
a proper shelter it should be an easy
matter to get any number of photo-
graphs, at closest range, of these in-
teresting birds. Circling overhead
was a flock of crows, watching for
opportunities to swoop down, in the
absence of the parents, and carry
off the young birds from the nests.
For studying reptiles and birds
there is probably no more interest-
ing locality in the United States
than this subtropical region of cen-
tral Florida ; and if the ubiquitous
gun sportsman can be kept away,
the hunter with the camera may
there enjoy his harmless and in-
structive sport for many years to come.

The writer will be glad to furnish information as to equipment,
guides, etc., to any camera sportsman who may be interested ; powder-
and-shot sportsmen need not apply.

A. Heron Poring fok his Pic-
ture. The Bird Island Rookery, Lake
Kissimmee, Florida.

A FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH 373

THE OWEN BILL FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A FED-
ERAL DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, AND ITS OPPONENTS

By S. ADOLPHUS KNOPF, M.D.

PROFESSOR OF PHTHISIO-THERAPY AT THE POST-GRADUATE MEDICAL SCHOOL

AND HOSPITAL, NEW YORK

ANY one who is familiar with the workings of governmental de-
partments of health such as exist abroad, who has seen or ex-
perienced the sanitary benefits bestowed upon the people by the Reichs-
gesundheitsamt of Germany (imperial department of health), the Con-
seil Superieur de Sante Publique de France, and the similar institutions
of most European governments, can not help feeling amazed that any
opposition should exist to the establishment of a federal department of
health in this country. This amazement becomes all the greater when
one considers some of the elements of which the opposition to that
measure is composed. There is, for example, the New York Herald, a
large and influential newspaper with an honorable career and a brilliant
record for advocating everything that is conducive to the public wel-
fare. Only in this particular instance has it allowed itself to become
the mouthpiece of principles to which it is in general opposed, that is
to say, principles and measures whereby the good of the people at large
and the progress and welfare of mankind are hindered, and the lives
of individual American citizens endangered. This particular news-
paper is independent of any political party, or professional or religious
association which might prejudice its point of view, and still it opposes
a measure whereby all citizens of the country would benefit. The writer
can not help thinking that this powerful news organ has. not informed
itself thoroughly of the real purpose and function of a federal depart-
ment of health, and in its attack upon a large body of men such as com-
pose the American Medical Association, the American Public Health
Association, the National Association for the Study and Prevention of
Tuberculosis, the American Association for the Advancement of Science
and the various medical academies of the country, it is certainly mis-
guided. It is to be hoped that the distinguished editors of the New
York Herald will soon see that in their attitude toward the Owen bill
they are not on the side of the people but are working against the wel-
fare and interests of the masses.

The principle of the Owen bill, establishing a department of health,
has been endorsed by the president of the United States, by General
George M. Sternberg, surgeon-general of the army, retired, and Rear-

374 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Admiral Charles F. Stokes, surgeon-general of the navy, by General
Walter Wyman, of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, by
Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, of the bureau of chemistry, by governors of states,
by the Conference of State and Territorial Boards of Health, by the
United Mine Workers of America, by the National Grange, by the
republican and democratic platforms, and by numerous other organ-
izations.

What is the principle of this bill which is advocated by thousands
of men trained in medicine or sanitary science and interested in the
public welfare?

Section 7, which embodies the main purpose of the Owen bill, reads
as follows : " That it shall be the duty and province of such a depart-
ment of public health to supervise all matters within the control of
the federal government relating to public health and to diseases of
animal life."

Section 2 of this bill deals with the unification under a secretary
of public health of the various agencies now existing which affect the
medical, surgical, biological or sanitary service.

There has recently been formed an organization which calls itself
" The National League for Medical Freedom." It has for its purpose
to combat the Owen bill ; it is opposed to the establishment of a federal
department or bureau of health. The name of this organization is
certainly, if not intentionally, misleading. It can not claim to battle
for medical freedom, for there is not a word in the entire bill which
could be interpreted as limiting the practise of medicine to any par-
ticular school. Their claim that the establishment of such a bureau
of health would have any resemblance to a medical trust is entirely
unfounded.

The life insurance and industrial insurance companies which advo-
cate this bill certainly have no desire to limit medical freedom or to
repress any system which offers the chance of lengthening human life.
These companies do not favor medical partisanship and their sole in-
terest is to prolong the lives of their policy-holders by whatever means
possible. Their actuaries state specifically that they believe human
life could and would be lengthened by the establishment of a federal
department of health.

Lee K. Frankel, Ph.D., representing the Metropolitan Life In-
surance Company, is a member of the Committee of One Hundred,
appointed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science
to further the propaganda for the establishment of such a department.
Neither the above-mentioned great newspaper nor any of the leading
spirits of the " National League for Medical Freedom," all of whom,
I regret to say, have allowed themselves to ascribe the worst motives to
the members of the committee, will deny that the names of the officers

A FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH 375

of this committee show that it is thoroughly representative of the
highest type of American citizenship. The officers of the Committee
of One Hundred are:

President: Irving Fisher, Ph.D., professor of political economy at
Yale University.

Secretary: Edward T. Devine, Ph.D., LL.D., professor of social
economy, Columhia University, and secretary of the New York Charity
Organization Society.

Vice-presidents: Eev. Lyman Ahhott, D.D., LL.D., emeritus pastor
of Plymouth Church, editor of The Outlook; Jane Addams, A.M.,
LL.D., founder and head worker of the Hull House Settlement, ex-
president of the National Conference of Charities and Correction;
Felix Adler, Ph.D., professor of political and social ethics, Columbia
University, leader of the N. Y. Society for Ethical Culture; James B.
Angell, A.M., LL.D., professor of modern languages and literature and
president emeritus of the University of Michigan ; Joseph H. Choate,
LL.D., D.C.L. (Oxford), diplomat and United States senator; Charles
W. Eliot, A.M., LL.D., president emeritus of Harvard University; Pit.
Pev. John Ireland, LL.D., archbishop of St. Paul; Ben. B. Lindsey,
judge, reformer and author, Denver, Colo. ; John Mitchell, president of
the labor union of America ; William H. Welch, M.D., LL.D., professor
of pathological anatomy, Johns Hopkins University.

Need I say anything in defense of the Committee of One Hundred
after having given the names of its officers ?

Direct and most unkind comments, not to use a stronger term,
have been directed especially against one vice-president of the com-
mittee representing the medical profession. I refer to Dr. William
H. Welch, M.D., LL.D., president of the American Medical Associa-
tion. Those who know Dr. Welch and even those who only know of
him, would justly think it absurd if I should see the need to say even
a word in defense of this master of medical science. To us it is indeed
difficult to understand that there would be any man or woman in this
land capable of speaking ill of Dr. Welch. There is no name in the
medical world which is more honored in this country and abroad, no
medical teacher more admired, no one who has a larger following than
this Johns Hopkins professor of pathology, and no physician more be-
loved and looked up to as representing all that is best and noblest in
the profession than Dr. Welch. If there is any man in the American
medical profession who is unselfishly devoting his high intelligence,
his time and his means to the public welfare it is Dr. Welch. Gladly
do we acknowledge him as our leader.

To accuse the president and members of the American Medical
Association of selfish motives in advocating the establishment of a
federal department of health is absurd. If there ever was an unselfish

376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

movement inaugurated, it is this one. It is a movement by physicians
for the reduction of disease, which ipso facto means a movement
against their financial interests.

The writer is a member of the regular profession; he nevertheless
would not wish for a moment to limit the freedom of any citizen to
choose his physician from some other school or cult, providing the
individual assuming the function and responsibilities of a physician
had the training necessary to prevent him from endangering the life
of his patient by lack of medical knowledge or skill.

The official mouthpiece of this " National League for Medical
Freedom " is Mr. B. 0. Flower, who has had heretofore the reputation
of a fighter for everything involving the spiritual, social and physical
progress of humanity, and it is inexplicable to many of his admirers
how he can lead a movement opposed to the improvement of the
health of the nation. The vast majority in the ranks of this so-called
" league," though they may be well-meaning, noble, and earnest, are
not men and women who have toiled patiently for years in order to
acquire the thorough scientific medical training which enables one to
assume that great responsibility of the care and treatment of the sick.
They are unable to appreciate the inestimable value of federal help in
preventing disease. These people are blindly following certain indi-
viduals who designate the regular profession as a medical trust, and
accuse the thousands of noble men and women who are devoting their
lives to the alleviation of human ills of a desire to monopolize medical
practise. The establishment of a federal department of health would
mean pure food, pure medicine, control of plagues and epidemics, the
advancement of medical science and through it the improvement of
the health and increase of material wealth of the nation. It is said
that many of the individuals opposing the Owen bill are commercially
interested in the manufacture of drugs or patent medicines, of which
latter the American people swallow about $200,000,000 worth annually.
Whether it is true or not that the National* League for Medical Free-
dom is backed financially by drug manufacturers and patent medicine
concerns, I am not prepared to say; yet even these men have nothing
to fear from a federal department of health if the drugs they put on
the market are pure and the claims made for patent medicines do not
delude the public or endanger its health. The element which clamors
most loudly for medical freedom is composed in many instances of men
and women who have attended one or two courses of lectures or got
their " degrees " without any training at all, and have developed into
" doctors " and " healers " in a most remarkably short space of time.

Because the American Medical Association has always advocated a
thorough medical education, is pleading constantly for pure drugs, is
opposed to quackery, patent medicines and nostrums, its 40,000 mem-

A FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH 377

bers are considered a medical trust. Yet it is in the ranks of this very
American Medical Association that are found the greatest number of
unselfish devotees to preventive and curative medicine. It is within
this association that are found the men who have added the greatest
glory to the medical and scientific reputation of this country. Amer-
ica's greatest surgeons — Marion Simms, Gross, Sayer, O'Dwyer, Bull
— were members of this association. McBurney, Jacobi, Stephen Smith,
Welch, Osier and Trudeau have graced this association by their mem-
bership for nearly half a century. The heroes in the combat against
yellow fever — Eeed, Lazare and the hundred of others who have de-
voted their best energies and knowledge and often sacrificed their lives
for the sake of medical science — were members of the American Medical
Association.

One of the most illustrious members of the American Medical As-
sociation is its former president, Col. William C. Gorgas, of the U. S.
Army, chief sanitary officer at Panama, an adherent to the regular
school. It is thanks to the genius, the scientific and thorough medical
training of Dr. Gorgas that the formerly deadly Isthmus of Panama
has now become as sanitary a region as any. A great patriotic enter-
prise, important to commerce and the welfare of nations, was made pos-
sible by this man. He has labored and is constantly laboring for the
establishment of a federal department of health because he knows the
inestimable benefit which such a department would bestow upon the
nation.

Whatever advance has been made in medical science in America or
in Europe has been made by scientifically trained men or by physi-
cians not without but within the ranks of the regular profession. The
greatest benefactors of mankind are those who diminish disease by
prevention and cure. As another illustrious example of medical bene-
factors, may I be permitted to cite that great trinity of scientific giants
who through their labors have accomplished so much in reducing dis-
ease and lessening human misery in all parts of the globe? They are
Pasteur of France, Lister of England and Koch of Germany; all of
them aided their governments by direct participation in the govern-
mental health departments. We are still mourning the death of per-
haps the greatest of the three — Eobert Koch. I do not believe that
there is, even in the camp of our opponents in this so wrongly called
".League for Medical Freedom," a single intelligent individual who
will deny the inestimable benefits which Koch has bestowed upon man-
kind through his discovery of the germs of tuberculosis, of cholera, of
the spores of anthrax, of tuberculin, and through his many other
equally important scientific labors. Yet, had it not been for the Im-
perial German Eeichsgesundheitsamt, which is the equivalent of the
institution we are striving for — a federal department of health — Koch
vol. lxxvii. — 26.

378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

never would have been able to devote his life, energy and great genius
to those important discoveries through which thousands of lives have
been saved in all civilized countries during the past few decades. It
was while working in this governmental institution, which is doing
exactly the work the Owen bill asks the federal department to do, that
Koch discovered the tubercle bacillus and the bacillus of cholera. Be-
cause of the discovery of the comma bacillus, we no longer have those
fearful cholera epidemics which formerly decimated our own and other
countries. This disease can now be easily diagnosed and by proper
quarantine its mortality can be reduced to a minimum. And what
shall we say of the progress that has been made in the fight against
tuberculosis because the federal department of health of Germany en-
abled Koch to do research work and thus discover the bacillus of tuber-
culosis to be the primary and only direct cause of the disease? As
director of the hygienic institute and member of the Reichsgesund-
heitsamt he inaugurated that wonderfully effective campaign against
tuberculosis whereby the mortality from this disease in Germany has
been reduced to nearly one half of what it was prior to the discovery
of the tubercle bacillus.

Under Koch's inspiration and guidance and in the same institute
many great scientific discoveries of incalculable value to humanity were
made. Foremost among them are the works of Ehrlich, one of Koch's
most celebrated pupils, who recently gave to the world a new remedy
which promises to prove a specific in an affliction from which mankind
has suffered for centuries.

As co-worker in the Kaiserliche Gesundheitsamt and the Institute
for Infectious Diseases, affiliated therewith, we must also mention Behr-
ing, the discoverer of the anti-diphtheritic serum. Thanks to the dis-
covery of this serum thousands of young lives are now saved which would
formerly have fallen victims to the terrible disease known as malignant
diphtheria. This was made possible by the opportunity given to the
workers in the Eeichsgesundheitsamt and Imperial Institute for Infec-
tious Diseases.

Can there be any better argument in favor of the establishment of
a federal department of health?

LIBERAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 379

THE DISTINCTION" BETWEEN THE LIBERAL AND THE
TECHNICAL IN EDUCATION

By Professor PERCY HUGHES

LEHIGH UNIVERSITY

THE terms liberal and technical do not distinguish two types of
educational practise, but two tendencies in and functions of any
part of the educational process. For at the present time any type of
liberal education includes of necessity education for efficiency in some
art, in the broadest sense of that term ; while the existent types of tech-
nical education involve training that goes far to realize liberal ideals..

But, in any education, the tendency to emphasize the technical at
the cost of the liberal function of that education is confronted with the
reciprocal striving of the liberal tendency and ideal to maintain its
ancient eminence and prerogative. The technical aim is to fit the indi-
vidual to take his place in the social scheme of toil through efficiency in
some art, whether it be teaching or engineering, medicine or " business/*
The liberal purpose is the realization in each individual of the highest
manhood, of those ideals of character and personality which alone make
the toil and sacrifice of society meaningful and worth while. It is pos-
sible that these two tendencies should cooperate and indeed proceed'
along identical lines of educational effort now, as they have done in
times past. But it seems that under modern conditions which the
school can neither at once change nor at all afford to disregard, the
demand for technical efficiency is necessarily antagonistic to liberal;
aspiratipn — not indeed at all points, but in many respects.

I believe that it is of the greatest importance clearly to formulate-
and contrast these two tendencies in modern education, so that, in-
answer to the perfectly clear and exceedingly insistent demands for
technical efficiency, there may be set forth ideals of liberal education'
which shall be well understood by all interested in education, and shall'
appeal to all as imperative and urgent.

Disregarding, therefore, accidental, partial and temporary phases
of liberal education, we note, in the first place, that in styling an educa-
tion liberal we thereby associate it with liberalism in politics, in philos-
ophy and theology, and in men's personal relations to each other. In-
each case liberalism seems fundamentally to denote freedom, that is, the
conditions that make for the development and realization in each indi-
vidual of that character and personality which is his true nature. A
similar argument leads to the conclusion that the technical in educa-

33o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

tion is directed toward efficiency in some art. (Here the term art is
used in its original and broadest sense, to include any method of action
that is recognized and adopted as the means appropriate to achieve some
definite, specific purpose.) We may then conclude that an education is
liberal in so far as it makes for manhood and personality, technical in
so far as it makes for efficiency in some art. And we proceed to con-
sider why it is that at the present time we find the liberal opposed to
and contrasted with the technical trend of education.

In ancient Athens the aim set before each citizen was, fundamen-
tally, to be a good citizen; and in mastering that art he realized also
personality and manhood. Here the technical and the liberal in educa-
tion seemed in perfect accord. And it was so in the Eome of Cicero
and Quintilian, when the education of the orator was looked on as the
fullest development of personality. And, in primitive and medieval
Christianity, the fullest realization of the soul in that life-long educa-
tion which should bring salvation in the knowledge and love of God was
the very education which should fit the man also for the one supreme
art, the extension of God's kingdom here upon earth. So too the
knight, the warrior of the medieval system, could not distinguish the
education which should make him a perfect knight, from that which
.should make him a perfect man.

During the renaissance there appeared and flourished a type of
education which had in view the cultured gentleman, rather than the
perfection of any art to which he might or might not apply his powers.
13ut even here the liberal was not contrasted with the technical, though
in later times there developed from this renaissance ideal the still per-
sistent concept of a " gentleman " who might best attain culture when
aloof from the general life of toil. But what is most noteworthy in the
renaissance, whether we consider its birth in the free Italian cities, its
culmination in Luther and Bacon, or its close in Milton, is not un-
worthily summed up in the ideal of education which Milton himself
thus expressed : " I call therefore a complete and generous education
that which fits a man to perform, justly, skillfully and magnanimously,
all the offices both private and public of peace and war." Still then it
was thought that a man might attain efficiency in every art and therein
find his perfect freedom and full realization.

The sense of opposition between the liberal and the technical in
education is not to be found in Huxley or in Spencer, who best express
to us the scientific in contrast with the humanistic vision of liberal
education. Indeed, both these men were criticized, even in their own
day, for failure to see that to be " in harmony with nature " or to strive
after a comprehensive knowledge of the various fields of science is not
the best preparation for most occupations, and is indeed hardly possible
in view of the necessity for the thorough acquaintance with some limited
field of science and knowledge which modern conditions seem to demand.

LIBERAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 381

For, as the development of the sciences has led to the elaboration
and multiplication of the arts, and to consequent specialization in each
field of art, even the gifted man finds himself forced to abandon the
scientific and humanistic aspirations which have been identified with a
liberal education, in order that he may attain some small success in a
selected realm of practical art and achievement. "Without for the pres-
ent assuming that such specialization does indeed mean dwarfing and
distorting of personality, we clearly have to recognize that it introduces
a new factor into the situation, which at least tends to turn technical
education from liberalizing paths, or seems to do so.

Another influence seems more obviously and directly to turn tech-
nical education from liberal ideals, viz., the fact that most arts now
demand for their prosecution great sums of money. For this and for
other reasons, no doubt, all arts have come to be looked on as in the
first place parts of " business," and are followed and studied chiefly
from the business point of view, in which the first consideration is to
do that for which people will pay, and to make a profit. " Business "
itself may be called an art; perhaps the art of money -making. But,
while of other arts it often is true that they require of the efficient artist
that he be very much of a man, no one claims, I believe, that the art of
money-making " functions " very successfully in the enlargement and
ennobling of personality. And, however much we may urge the student
and worker in any field of art, other than that of money-making, to find
within his work his reward, and to place the excellence of his art above
all considerations of gain, we must admit that that view of technical
pursuits is taken by but few men, save for " those brief moments when
men are at their best."

Granting then the liberalizing potentiality of any technical educa-
tion we may fairly inquire whether, in the presence of these two factors,
extreme specialization, and the exaltation of money-making, the liberal
tendency in and function of education is not greatly neglected and har-
assed. But in such an inquiry I would avoid the view-point of those
who stand primarily as defenders of an ancient order of things, of an
excellence the vision of which has bestowed upon them, but which is
rarely granted to those who attain intellectual maturity under present
conditions. The conception of a liberal education, that it stands for
freedom, for the spontaneous realization in each individual of what in
the fullest and truest sense he is, such a conception summons us to the
unbiased study of the individuals born into the world as it now is, in
order that we may afresh determine with their aid, for ourselves and
for them, what means to adopt in order that the best in each of them
may come to light. Yet, in thus adapting the liberal ideal and aspira-
tion to present conditions, we of course reject neither the classic nor the
scientific springs of culture.

332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

It seems to me that evidence of an actual opposition between the
liberal and the technical in education is found in three distinct evils
which pervade the activities of society; and in each case it seems to me
that the remedy for the evil lies only in adhering to and establishing
the ideal of liberal education.

It is regarded as the business of the technically trained man to give
people what they want, if they will pay for it. He is not expected to
judge, or to be capable of judging, whether what is thus done makes
for the development of human nature and personality. A shipbuilder
is not expected to judge whether the object for which he builds the
ship — war, it may be, or contemptible luxury — is a worthy object; the
skilled advertising agent is not blamed if he collects money for the
publication of a magazine much worse than useless, but permitted by
law; the bridge-designer is not expected to see that his designs are
executed under conditions that make for the safety and welfare of the
workmen; the automobile manufacturer is not censured for the con-
struction of machines ill adapted to run according to law, but excel-
lently suited to break the law and to put other people to discomfort
and in danger; the newspaper editor is not blamed for the destruction
of acres of noble spruce trees sacrificed to the production of a " comic "
supplement.

Even though we ask of the preacher and the teacher, of the physician
and the scientist — yes, of the lawyer and the politician — that they have
regard to the welfare of men in their several lines of art, and though
such technical training as all these men may receive is not without
reference to this liberal aspect of the professions they are to follow, yet
we have to recognize that none of these professions is free from the
general principle that people should get what they are willing to pay
for, and not much else. And it must be confessed that in every line
•of technical education, with the partial exception of the training for
teaching and the ministry, what little insistence there is upon the
importance of the liberal conception of life and art, is not accompanied
by thorough instruction in determining what ideals of manhood and
personality are worthy and well founded. On the study of what things
are of real worth much has been written (outside the literature of " rev-
•elation") which compares in solidity and scope of treatment with the
best that the mathematician and the physicist have achieved in their
fields of science. But the study of these teachings is at present largely
neglected, and seldom systematic or continuous.

From the liberal standpoint the highest development of a man's
personality involves the sense of a thoroughgoing responsibility for
what he does, and the determination to decide for himself, so far as
possible, whether what he does is, in its results upon human welfare,
worthy of himself. No man surely is called free who acts without

LIBERAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 383

appreciation of the significance of his acts. It is therefore the liberal
ideal that a man must seek himself to be the first judge of his own acts,
as to whether in the last analysis they are right or wrong. The con-
ception that a man may do whatever he is paid to do, provided his acts
do not come under the effective censure of the state, is no more liberal
than it is lovely. It seems to be the neglect of the liberal ideal that
has brought us face to face with our present condition in which talented
and trained men are swifter to do evil than the will of the people is
found ready to check the evil through laws.

The first element, therefore, of the liberal as distinguished from the
technical function of education, at the present time, is that men trained
for any art should know and fully recognize what things in life are of
greatest worth, and should acquire the habit of acting according to that
conception ; especially in their own fields or art. While history, litera-
ture and philosophy seem to be the subject-matter through which such
education may be given, it is obvious that their association with tech-
nical pursuits would need to be made much closer than is usual, if the
aspect of liberalism which I have described is to be realized.

A second respect in which, I think, the liberal in education needs
sharply to be contrasted with the technical drift in modern education,
may be styled " appreciation." In some occupations, it is true, there
is a strictly technical necessity that a man must grasp the scientific,
social and esthetic significance of his task, if he is to do his work well ;
but in countless other lines of technical achievement, from the work of
a factory hand to that of a railway president, it is idle to assert that a
proper appreciation of these aspects of his work is essential to his
technical success. And, indeed, it is essential that a man's apprecia-
tion of the meaning of his work should be cherished quite indepen-
dently of any possibility of use and reward; though of course if the
reward come, all the better. Freedom and the adequate realization of
personality require that a man's work " have meaning to himself."
Let him see within his work, in Dewey's words, " all that there is in it
of large and human significance," and he will not be the slave of to-
morrow's promised smiles.

There is no " job " that does not present innumerable phases of
interest, and problems for investigation to the mind trained in physics
and chemistry, none that is not linked in a hundred ways with all the
problems and needs of the social organism, and with the history of
man's effort and advance, his folly and despair. There is no task, I sup-
pose, in which the eye and ear trained to appreciation may not detect
features of beauty and romance and mystery. And to the philosophic
mind the very monotony of the toil is linked with the tireless move-
ment of ocean and planet, while the spirit that endures it is felt to be
kin and near to the will and temper of heroes in all ages.

384 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The habit of thus associating the richness of history, romance and
science with one's daily work is found in some men, and is a source in
them not only of technical efficiency, but of strength and joy. How
little is such genuine liberalism fostered by the aristocratic conception
of culture as a means of occupying leisure, or by our actual practise of
dissociating the study of history, literature and philosophy from the
common tasks of to-day ! Perhaps the remedy lies partly in the intro-
duction of industrial training into our schools, perhaps in the more
common employment of teachers who have worked in shop and factory
and office.

The third way in which under present conditions the liberal in edu-
cation stands opposed to the technical, is in the recognition of individ-
uality, the right of each individual to "yield," in Emerson's words,
" that peculiar fruit which he was created to bear." In place of each
man adjusting himself to his environment, which, technically speaking,
means the present or anticipated demands of the buyer, Emerson in-
vites the individual to " plant himself indomitably upon his instincts
and there abide," for the huge world will come round to him. How-
ever exaggerated the language, the conception is fundamentally the
liberal conception, viz., that the end of all our activities is nothing but
the bringing to flower and fruit the highest perfection of which each
man is capable. Whereas the technical view at present is to look on the
individual as part of the machinery by which the " world's work " is
done, that is, service is rendered for which people can be got to pay, the
liberal view is to insist that the world's work is the cultivation of the
garden of human life, and the best service a man can render is to offer
the world the finest fruits of his own personality. Liberalism bids the
man take counsel of his own spirit rather than of the market, and
prophesies that in maintaining his stand in the face of the world he
will gain a deeper insight of the essential harmony between himself and
it, while lifting life to a higher scale of intensity and idealism.

By thus starting from the simplest possible conception of liberal
education, as education for freedom, for the realization of personality,
we escape from a narrow tradition, and from a false antithesis to in-
dustrial ardor and efficiency, and are left free to judge for ourselves
wherein under present conditions true personality consists, to note
without prejudice what evils the technical emphasis in education actu-
ally tends to nourish, and to devise under constantly changing condi-
tions new ways for the protection and furthering of the liberal ideal.
Clearly the defense of the liberal in education is not merely a matter
of insisting on certain courses of study traditionally styled liberal ; but,
if I have correctly analyzed the situation, it is to cherish certain ideals
and to train in certain habits, viz., in the evaluation of one's conduct
in terms of its effect upon character, in the appreciation of the interest

LIBERAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 385

and beauty that actually is present in our work, and in counting indi-
viduality, patient and prudent independence, of more significance than
the world's approval or reward. Subsidiary to such ideals the classics,
ancient and modern, have indeed their place, which is side by side,
however, with modern science, in all its branches, and the alert observa-
tion of living men and existent things, which are at least as important
instruments to such liberalism.

The reformation which thus appears necessarly would be furthered,
in my opinion, by the formation in each school and university of
one or more associations of instructors for the professed, deliber-
ate and persistent study of the means through which the liberal spirit
and purpose may be preserved and increased, first in themselves, second
in the world at large, and finally in the student body. For liberalism
can not be very effective in the curriculum until it is born again in our
hearts and in the world at large. Few instructors seem to be less lib-
eral, in the fundamental significance of the term, than many teachers
of the subjects which are traditionally styled liberal. Personally, I
look with most hope towards those young men who are conscious of the
need without being committed by tradition and profession to any par-
ticular way of meeting the need, men, who, having their eyes fixed upon
the industrial world as the place where men really live, earnestly ask
themselves how the boys who are to toil there may take with them from
home and school the habitual recognition that the ultimate aim of all
modern industry is nothing but the exaltation of manhood, the free
realization in individuals of the ideals of manhood.

386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE TARIFF BOARD: ITS SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

By SEYMOUR C. LOOMIS

NEW HAVEN, CONN.

EMINENT authorities on civil government lay down the rule that
certain questions should be left to the people or their representa-
tives in a legislative body, and certain other questions should be
decided by experts : the latter, not because experts do, or do not, repre-
sent the people, but because they are more familiar with the subject-
matter and better able to reach a correct determination. Upon this
principle our federal and state constitutions have separated the legis-
lative from the judicial department. The legislature is chosen particu-
larly to represent the people; the judiciary, because of its knowledge
of the administration of the law.

Many, if not most, public questions arising in a republic, may
properly be classified in one or the other of two ways: those which
should be settled by the people, and those which are best referred for
final action to men trained in the subject-matter. There are some
questions, however, which can not be put wholly in one or the other of
these divisions. They are similar to those issues arising in the prac-
tise of law which are mixed questions of law and of fact, as, for ex-
ample, the question of negligence. The court, when a case involving
negligence is before it, decides what standards the law requires and
provides certain positive rules which must be obeyed by a party in
order for him to be in the exercise of due care. But within those rules
there are a vast number of cases which may, or may not, amount to
negligence in fact, according as the jury applies the test of what an
ordinarily prudent person would, or would not, do under the circum-
stances.

So the tariff is a question both for congress and for experts. Under
our federal constitution, as well as in accordance with the unwritten
principles underlying our government, the power to lay duties is
vested in congress. It can not be delegated to any other person or
body whatsoever. Obtaining the evidence and finding the facts so that
the duty can be intelligently levied, falls within the province of ex-
perts. It is for congress to say whether a tariff should be designed
primarily for protection or primarily for revenue, and to lay duties
accordingly. It has no power under the constitution, and ought to
have none, to frame a tariff simply for the purpoae of allowing certain
persons to obtain an excessive profit. Such a tariff has been called a

THE TARIFF BOARD 387

tariff for profit. No reasonable person would contemplate the deliber-
ate formation of such a tariff. It has doubtless been brought about
as a result of certain schedules, but was presumably unintended by the
framers. It is here that legislative machinery breaks down and re-
quires the aid of experts to furnish the foundation for intelligent ac-
tion. It is conceded that congressmen have no time, even if they have
the capacity and inclination, to find out and properly correlate all the
intricate items of supply and demand; weigh the variations of cost of
production here and abroad, and finally to estimate the relative amount
of protection and revenue, which will be yielded according as the duty
is more or less. A schedule which produces a large revenue may not
be protective and one which is protective may produce no revenue at all.
But between these extremes are numberless shifting conditions where
the amounts of protection and revenue vary as the duty is higher or
lower.

Previous to about a year ago these reasons did not appear to con-
gress sufficient to justify the appointment of a permanent govern-
mental agency to inquire and find out in regard to this subject. But
the agitation surrounding the framing of the Payne tariff bill was
such that congress in August, 1909, passed a law which recognizes the
need of such a board. Merchants and manufacturers throughout the
country were emphatic in their demand for it. The great body of
manufacturers had begun to realize that their foreign as well as do-
mestic trade was seriously damaged or ruined, for the benefit of a few
industries, which were making an excessive profit.

The popular branch of congress did not at first regard this agita-
tion as of enough importance to warrant the passage of any law concern-
ing it. In the senate, however, the finance committee were convinced
of its sincerity. Several bills for a tariff commission had been intro-
duced. Those proposing that such a commission should have power to
fix rates, even within certain limits to be prescribed by congress, over-
stepped the domain of a commission for the reasons already stated.
Others were within the proper field. On July 3, 1909, while the Payne
bill was before the senate, the finance committee reported an amend-
ment which provided for maximum and minimum rates. The general
duties in the bill were to constitute the minimum tariff, and the
amendment provided that from and after March 31, 1910, there
should be added to the general duties a further one of 25 per
cent, ad valorem, which was to constitute the maximum rate. It was
further provided that, whenever after March 31, 1910, and so long
thereafter as the president shall be satisfied that any foreign country
imposes no discriminations or restrictions, against the United States,
either by way of rates, regulations, charges, exactions or in any other
manner, directly or indirectly, upon the importation of the products

388 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of the United States, and that such foreign country pays no export
bounty or imposes no export duty or prohibition upon the export of any
article to the United States, which unduly discriminates against the
United States or the products thereof, and that such foreign coun-
try accords to the products of the United States reciprocal and equiv-
alent treatment, thereupon and thereafter, upon proclamation to
this effect by the president, all articles from such country shall be ad-
mitted under the terms of the minimum tariff; that is, without the
addition of the 25 per cent, ad valorem. The proclamation may
extend to the whole of any foreign country or may be confined to, or ex-
clude from its effect, any dependency, colony or other political sub-
division, having authority to adopt and enforce legislation, or to
impose restrictions or regulations, or to grant concessions, upon the
exportation or importation of articles which are, or may be, imported
into the United States.

It is further provided that whenever the president shall be satisfied
that the conditions which led to the issuance of the proclamation no
longer exist, he shall issue a proclamation to this effect, and ninety days
thereafter the provisions of the maximum tariff shall be applicable to all
productions of such country, whether imported directly or otherwise
into the United States.

Then the amendment in the senate closed with this important clause :

To secure information to assist the president in the discharge of his duties
imposed upon him by this section, and information which shall be useful to
congress in tariff legislation, and to the officers of the government in the admin-
istration of the customs laws, the president is hereby authorized to employ such
persons as may be required to make thorough investigations and examinations
into the production, commerce and trade of the United States and foreign
countries and all conditions affecting the same.

This amendment passed the senate and went with the rest of the
senate bill to the committee of conference of the senate and house.
The provision in regard to the maximum and minimum tariff board
clause was cut down and made to read as follows :

To secure information to assist the president in the discharge of the duties
imposed upon him by this section, and the officers of the government in the
administration of the customs laws, the president is hereby authorized to employ
such persons as may be required.

In this form it was finally passed by both houses of congress, signed
by the president and is now the law.

What are the powers of this board under this act and what further
authority, if any, ought to be given to it in order to make its usefulness
as effective as possible?

The purposes of the board are twofold: (1) To secure information
to assist the president in the discharge of the duties imposed upon him
in the maximum and minimum section. (2) To secure information

THE TARIFF BOARD 389

to assist the officers of the government in the administration of the
customs laws.

The scope of this language is much greater than appears on its face.
The president in order to be satisfied of the existence of the facts,
which are the basis of his proclamation, must have accurate informa-
tion of the details which go to make up the presence or absence of
discrimination on the part of every foreign country which does business
with the United States. If the president is not satisfied, then the
provision for this immense additional duty of 25 per cent, on the total
value of the imported goods, remains in effect. It does not become
operative by the action of the president, but continues in force by his
omission or failure to act. It is evident that there will be enormous
pressure from foreign governments as well as from our own importers
to see that the president takes action if he has not already done so.
If he is satisfied as to one or more foreign countries, and so proclaims
in accordance with the law, the United States at once is in a position
to demand fair and reciprocal treatment from the others. The fact
that the products of any foreign country may be imported into the
United States without the payment of 25 per cent, of their value,
provided the president is satisfied that such foreign country makes no
discrimination against the United States, is a strong argument, not to
say leverage, to induce that foreign country to remove the discrimina-
tion and reap the benefit of trade with the United States. This would
also be to the advantage of our own producers and manufacturers who
desire a foreign market for their products.

A differential, or maximum and minimum, tariff, applicable to
countries foreign to themselves, is in force in Argentine Eepublic,
Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany,
Greece, Italy, Japan, Norway, Eussia, Spain and Switzerland. A gen-
eral tariff rate applicable to all foreign countries is in force in Mexico,
Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland. The United States had commercial agreements
under section 3 of the tariff law of 1897, with Bulgaria, France, Ger-
many, Great Britain, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland
and Cuba. In France changes have been and are now under considera-
tion, making the maximum rate to range from 25 per cent, to 100 per
cent, above the minimum.

A brief consideration will disclose the necessity of the president's
being correctly and accurately informed as to details in order to become
satisfied that a foreign country accords to the products of the United
States reciprocal and equivalent treatment. And he must not only be
satisfied once, but he must continue to be satisfied in order to have the
minimum duties remain. The act provides that so long as the presi-
dent is satisfied, etc., the articles from such country shall be admitted

390 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

under the terms of the minimum tariff, and that whenever he shall be
satisfied that the conditions which led to the issuance of the proclama-
tion no longer exist, he shall issue a proclamation to this effect and
ninety days thereafter the provisions of the maximum tariff shall be
applicable to all productions of such country whether imported directly
or otherwise into the United States.

These duties thus cast upon the president require him to keep in
constant touch with the situation, not only of the treatment which our
products receive when exported to foreign countries, but also as to the
action of such foreign country in respect to export bounties, duties and
prohibitions upon the export of any article to the United States, and
its effect upon the United States and its products. There are many
ways by which a country can indirectly discriminate against another
country or its products. One way is to raise the valuation as appears
on the invoice or bill of lading. This may result in the payment of a
larger ad valorem duty or a higher specific one on account of a different
classification. If such treatment is unfair, and is persisted in against
the products of a particular country, and not pursued against those of
other countries, the treatment is discriminatory. The value of the
article exported then becomes of prime importance, for if the value
stated on the invoice or bill of lading is less than it ought to be, per-
haps so made with the intention of saving duty, then the foreign cus-
toms officers have an equitable right to raise the valuation to a proper
and reasonable amount, and such action on their part, provided they
do the same with the products of all other countries, is fair and just.
In order for the president to know in regard to this, he must have
accurate knowledge of the cost of production of all articles exported
from this country, and as any article made in the United States is likely
at any time to be exported, he should also have knowledge of its cost,
etc., so as to be ready to act, when the occasion arises, as provided by
the act of congress. Some articles are now exported from this country
at valuations less than they are sold here. Such practise is not contrary
to the law of the United States, but it is contrary to the law of foreign
countries to value articles for the purpose of customs lower than they
are worth. What they are worth depends to some extent upon their
cost in the country where they are made.

The second branch of the tariff board's duties is to secure informa-
tion to assist the officers of the government in the administration of
the customs laws.

What has been said of importations into foreign countries applies
to importations into our own. The proper administration of our cus-
toms laws requires on the part of the various officers of our government
a clear insight into the value and cost of all articles imported. The
acts of congress require the general appraiser and the boards of general

THE TARIFF BOARD 391

appraisers to " proceed by all reasonable ways and means in their power
to ascertain, estimate and determine the dutiable value of the imported
merchandise, and in so doing they may exercise both judicial and in-
quisitorial functions." This, however, only applies to articles which
are subject to an ad valorem duty or to a duty based upon or regulated
in some manner by the value thereof. In such cases the act distinctly
provides that the duty shall be assessed upon the actual market value
or wholesale price thereof, at the time of exportation to the United
States, in the principal markets of the country whence the goods are
exported; and that such actual market value shall be held to be the
price at which such merchandise is freely offered for sale to all pur-
chasers in said markets, in the usual wholesale quantities, and the price
which the manufacturers or owners would have received, and was will-
ing to receive, for such merchandise when sold in the ordinary course of
trade in the usual wholesale quantities. In order to determine with
any degree of accuracy, the appraisers, the board of appraisers, and on
appeal the government's counsel, must be in possession of the facts in
detail to properly know and present the government's side of the case.
When one reflects that some 300 to 400 millions of dollars are expected
to be annually collected as revenue from the tariff, one realizes that
there are sure to be strong tendencies, acting on the exporters of foreign
countries and the importers here, to keep the valuations down to the
lowest possible sum. The importers are allowed to produce witnesses
and try out their cases in very much the same manner as prevails in
ordinary cases before the courts of justice, with the additional authority
in the board of appraisers that they have inquisitorial powers.

The tariff board can clearly be of great assistance to our various
customs officers if it should continually keep informed and have in its
possession facts and figures relative to the cost of foreign products, as
incidental to their true value and as indicative of the price which the
foreign manufacturer or owner would have received and was willing to
receive, when sold in the ordinary course of trade, in the usual whole-
sale quantities, in the principal markets of the country, whence the
goods may be exported. Such assistance would be increased when the
publications of the tariff board by virtue of their accuracy, complete-
ness and truth come to be regarded as authoritative and are accepted
as such both here and in foreign countries. A condition like this
would lead to better trade relations between this country and the other
powers of the world.

The president has repeatedly stated that he will construe the act as
empowering the board to find out the facts at home and abroad so as
to assist him in his administration of the maximum and minimum sec-
tion, and to assist in the administration of the customs laws in general
by the officers of the government. With this end in view he has directed

392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the board to secure information as to the cost of production in this
country of all goods affected by the tariff law, and the cost of their
production in foreign countries. Two members of the board, Professor
Emery, its chairman, and Mr. Reynolds, have already visited Europe
in obedience to the president's orders. Professor Emery has recently
returned for consultation, leaving Mr. Reynolds abroad pursuing the
work there.

The findings and publications of the board can not hereafter fail to
reach congress either directly or by a presidential message, or otherwise,
and in matters of tariff legislation should expedite hearings, and fur-
nish solid foundation for intelligent tariff schedules.

In determining the construction to be put upon the language of a
legislative act, the debates at the time of its consideration and passage
are regarded as important factors in discovering the intention of the
legislature as to its scope and meaning.

Senator Aldrich, of Rhode Island, the chairman of the finance com-
mittee, introduced the amendment in the senate. Senator LaFollette,
of Wisconsin, who was notoriously in favor of a tariff commission,
charged that the provisions were purposely such as to render any action
by the proposed board of little, if any, value in future tariff legislation,
and that no adequate appropriation would be made. "Whereupon Sena-
tor Aldrich spoke as follows :

The duties of the commission, the parties to be named by the president, are
denned in this act. They will also be defined by the president. So far as the
appropriations are concerned, they will undoubtedly be made. This provision
was put into the bill in good faith. It was agreed to by the senator from
Indiana (Senator Beveridge) who aided in the preparation of it, and it covers
all the suggestions and the requirements of the various organizations that have
been asking us to provide for the appointment of a commission of this kind.

On the other hand, Senator Hale, of Maine, remarked :

I do not understand the provisions in any way constitute a tariff com-
mission. ... If I believed that the provisions of the bill would do anything
more than allow the president to appoint experts that might from time to time
report, and, if necessary, be sent to congress by the president, and that it would
be a commission such as the senator wants, I would not vote for the proposition.

Later Senator Aldrich said :

This is not intended to be a partisan or non-partisan commission. It is
intended to assist the president in carrying out the work that is assigned to
him by the provisions of this section. It is also intended that they shall ex-
amine all questions pertaining to tariff matters and the products of foreign
countries, so that they may have expert knowledge as to discriminations. For
that purpose they will need to be acquainted with industrial conditions in this
country and in other countries.

Whereupon Senator Bacon, of Georgia, interrupted and said:

If the senator will pardon me a moment I would like to draw his attention
to the fact that the amendment proposes that these appointees — whatever name

THE TARIFF BOARD 393

may be properly given to them — shall not only gather information for the benefit
of the president in determining what shall be done under the powers' given to
him under the amendment, but shall gather information which shall be useful
to congress in tariff legislation.

Whereupon Senator Aldrich replied, "Unquestionably." Senator
Bacon dwelt further upon the subject and inquired of the senator from
Ehode Island if he heard him, whereupon Senator Aldrich answered
that he did. And Senator Aldrich further stated :

I think the senator will agree with me, even from that standpoint, that
this information ought not to be gathered by men with a partisan bias. I can
imagine nothing which would be more detrimental to the purposes which we have
in view than a partisan commission sent out to gather information with refer-
ence to one political view or one economic view or another. I think it would
destroy the usefulness and the purpose of this commission, or whatever you
please to call it.

This occurred before the clause was changed in conference between
the two houses of congress. When the clause came back in the form
in which it was finally passed, it was the subject of a long debate in the
senate.

Several senators, among others, Senator Newlands, of Nevada,
called attention to the bill as it had passed the senate and then inquired
of the chairman of the finance committee, Senator Aldrich, how the
change came to be made. Senator Aldrich said that the house con-
ferees objected in toto to it. He said :

The inclusion of the words was a compromise between the two houses. I
will say to the senator from Nevada, of course with due deference to his judg-
ment to the contrary, that the provision contained in the bill itself is even
broader than it was in the senate, in my judgment. It allows the president to
employ whomever he pleases without limit and to assign such duties to them
as he sees fit within the limitation of the maximum and minimum provision,
and to assist the customs officers in the discharge of their duties. Now these
two purposes, especially the latter, cover every conceivable question that is
covered by tariff legislation.

Whereupon Senator Newlands inquired whether the bill as it came
from the conferees would warrant the president in appointing men
who will inquire into and ascertain the difference in the cost of produc-
tion at home and abroad, of the articles covered by the tariff. Where-
upon Senator Aldrich answered :

Unquestionably it will, for the reason . . . the home valuation as well as
the foreign valuation of goods is a matter which has to be determined by the
customs officers, and that involves, of course, all collateral questions. I have
no doubt myself that the provision as it now stands is, as I have already stated,
even broader than the provision which passed the senate.

Senator Beveridge then asked Senator Aldrich if he did not differ
from Senator Hale when the deficiency appropriation bill was being
passed, and Senator Newlands said he was about to ask the same
question, to which Senator Aldrich answered that he was not present

VOL. LXXVII. — 27.

394 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

when the senator from Maine (Senator Hale) made a statement on
that subject, " but," he said, " I am stating my own views, which are
clearly carried out in my judgment by the language used in the act."
Senator Newlands then remarked that he was much gratified to receive
the assurance from the senator from Rhode Island and that it did credit
to that senator's good faith and to his maintenance of his obligation
to the senate.

Senator Aldrich then said :

I think I can say, without betraying the confidence of the president, that
the views which I entertain are also the views entertained by the president of
the United States.

This language of Senator Aldrich, who was chairman of the com-
mittee which had charge of the bill in the senate, and who was one of
the conferees, was frequently quoted afterwards in the debate, particu-
larly by Senator Beveridge, who was and is in favor of a tariff board
with sufficient powers to make itself useful, and the bill was passed
with that understanding in the senate. In the house after the con-
ference, the debate was general and nothing contrary to the senate's
intention occurred.

For the work of the board the present congress at its last session ap-
propriated two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the last sundry
civil appropriation bill, which contains the following :

To enable the president to secure information to assist him in the discharge
of the duties imposed upon him by section 2 of the act entitled " An act to
provide revenues, equalize the duties, and encourage the industries of the
United States, and for other purposes," approved August 5, 1909, and the
officers of the government in administering the customs laws, including such
investigations of the cost of production of commodities, covering cost of ma-
terial, fabrication and every other element of such cost of production, as are
authorized by said act, and including the employment of such persons as may
be required for those purposes, and to enable him to do any and all things in
connection therewith authorized by law, $250,000.

This new provision, while it refers for authority to the old act, is
indicative of the construction thereof which has been hereinbefore
stated.

The limitations of the tariff board are in the absence of ways and
means of obtaining evidence in regard to the facts about which it is
to secure information. It has no power to summon witnesses or com-
pel the production of books or papers. If, however, the board shall
have access to the facts in the possession of other governmental agen-
cies, such as the consular and secret revenue service, the bureau of
corporations in the department of commerce and labor, and of the
officers of the government, who have charge of the collection of the
corporation tax (if that is held to be constitutional), the ways and
means which are otherwise lacking will be largely provided for. Under
the law the president can direct all other governmental agencies to aid

THE TARIFF BOARD 395

the board and to permit it and its agents, to examine all papers,
statistics, evidence, files, etc., in their custody. Such a course would
commend itself on the ground of dispensing with duplication of labor
and therefore saving expense to the government.

From these considerations it will appear that the scope of the act
providing for the tariff board is sufficiently broad for present purposes,
and the only action from congress needed is to provide adequate appro-
priations. To bring about this result, the continued interest, on the
part of all persons who desire intelligent tariff laws, and their reason-
able and honest administration, is required.

The board can not assume or be given the congressional prerogative
of making the rates any more than the president can make the rates
under this law. He can proclaim the event, upon the happening of
which congress says the different rates shall go into effect. The Supreme
Court so held in Field vs. Clark, 143 U. S., 692.

As time shows the necessity, and the work of the board commends
itself, or requires it, changes doubtless will be needed in the law;
notably some provision authorizing the tariff board to present the facts
directly to the ways and means committee, whenever any tariff legisla-
tion is before congress. The board should furnish data and memoranda
with verifying witnesses, who could be examined by the ways and means
committee and by parties interested. In this way the whole people of
the country would be represented before the committee in a substantial
manner, where now they are practically unrepresented so far as the
presentation of the case by witnesses and counsel is concerned. As a
check upon the accuracy of the work of the board, parties interested
should have the privilege of cross-examination, and also the right to
bring before the congressional committee, which is independent of the
board and of the department to which it belongs, experts of their own ;
these experts in turn to be subject to cross-examination by counsel
representing the tariff board.

Congress has taken a great step towards the scientific disentangle-
ment of the tariff subject, and towards the consequent enlargement of
our foreign trade, and it only remains for the people of the United
States to give their cordial support to the board in every reasonable
endeavor it makes to obtain the facts which are at the basis of the
solution of this intricate and vexing question. Thus will future con-
gresses be able and willing to deal with the tariff in an equitable way.

396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

A SUPEEME COUET OF SCIENCE

By Professor J. PEASE NORTON

TALE UNIVERSITY

IN the government of the nations, political parties and elections are
the slow methods by which national policies are determined.
Movements are started in response to conditions which seem to require
legislation. Gradually, these movements are combined within the po-
litical parties in the platforms of which the issues are suitably ex-
pressed. If the interests are sufficient in the combination rapidly to
propagate the platform, the party comes into power. When in power,
by agreement in the congress or the legislature, laws are placed upon
the statute books. These laws are passed by the party after careful
consideration by the committees having these matters in charge.

In all this, there is a great waste of effort, because the results are
modified by small minorities who are able at tactical points to bring to
bear immense pressure on individuals. In this manner, the will of the
majority of the people, which is the vague desire to remedy wrongs or
to perfect a better method of conserving the prosperity and of increas-
ing the national comfort, is thwarted. As a result the laws in some in-
stances are a generation out of date. When the situation becomes
intolerable, a too radical reaction is inevitable, and, in the end, the
peaceful, orderly development of a people is impaired to the great loss
of the whole nation.

Now, many of the issues which divide the country, in fact all coun-
tries, into opposing camps are scientific in their nature. Long cam-
paigns must be fought to decide policies which are capable of easy
solution, if only an impartial court existed before which such issues
could be tried. Just as technical questions require technical experts,
technical issues require a technical court. The administration at Wash-
ington favors the establishment of a court of commerce. Why should
there not be a court of science to determine questions of scientific
truth, the application and the feasibility of issues based on scientific
knowledge ?

Let us take an example. We find there exists a powerful society
with state branches and paid agents for carrying on a campaign against
vaccination, which is a scientific issue. The conditions are substan-
tially these. Many states have compulsory vaccination laws. School
children are being vaccinated on a wholesale scale as a precaution

A SUPREME COURT OF SCIENCE 397

against a danger which is probably little greater than the danger of
being struck by lightning. How these laws came upon the statute,
books, anti-vaccinationists explain by citing illustrations of activity on
the part of the lobbyists maintained by the virus makers. They say
school children are being vaccinated to sell virus. Now this move-
ment is costing a large amount of money. This society feels that pres-
sure must be brought to bear on legislatures throughout the United
States in order to modify the laws. These laws rest on the implied
scientific knowledge that vaccination is efficacious in a degree sufficient
to justify a wholesale application of the remedy to the people, and that
the danger of smallpox is sufficient to justify the application and
that no other remedy is available against the danger so desirable as the
remedy called for by the compulsory vaccination laws.

We should remember that these laws were made by legislatures of
states, and that the legislatures passed the laws on the recommenda-
tions of committees composed of men of average intelligence who could
not have had scientific knowledge of the issue without expert testi-
mony. Now, such laws as these are apt to be passed without careful
consideration, and it is doubtful whether this scientific knowledge has
been sufficiently determined. We must as scientists differentiate between
traditional scientific knowledge and scientific knowledge based on evi-
dence which is conclusive enough to stand the test of a court of science.
Who would not like to see a case brought against the custom of
vaccination in a supreme court of science before a grand jury consist-
ing of twenty-five scientific and engineering experts drawn from the
various walks of the scientific professions. Let such a case be argued
by legal counsel and all evidence introduced by experts on both sides
be subject to cross examination. In a comparatively short time and at a
relatively small expense, society would be in a position to know whether
in the judgment of a jury of impartial experts trained to the weighing
of real scientific facts, the evidence justified the position that vaccina-
tion is clearly efficacious to a degree sufficient to justify a wholesale
vaccination of little children in the schools throughout the country, and
even if efficacious in such degree whether the danger of smallpox is
sufficient to justify the application of the precaution, and further that
no other remedy, less dangerous and less costly or more efficacious ex-
ists, such, for instance, as effective quarantine, which is considered by
the anti-vaccinationists to be the more desirable. In such a way, this
question, which has disturbed us for forty years or more and will
furnish a running agitation for a decade or two longer in all probabil-
ity, could be settled once for all with dispatch.

Before such a court of science, all interested parties could appear
with experts; on the one side the virus manufacturers, the physicians

393 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

and those public-health officials who believe in the practise, and on the
other side the taxpayers and the people represented by the government.
The findings of such a court would be of great service to lawmakers
and other courts of the land. For the virus makers and the physicians
are not the only interests which are interested in vaccinating the people
for something. The laws which have been passed are countless in
number. If all laws could be declared void which were based on
implied scientific knowledge which is false or not proven, a vast number
of undesirable laws could be economically erased. Most laws passed
for grafting purposes would fail in a court of science.

When we consider how many are the issues which disturb the
country and which cause the expenditure of millions of dollars in agi-
tation to no good result, and, at the same time, the ease with which
many of the disputed scientific issues could be settled, the desirability
of a court of science with proper rules of procedure is apparent. It is
amazing to consider the struggles which occur, the endless substantia-
tions of a position for or against an " ism " by arrays of opinions, the
violent charge and counter charge of factions and parties, all of which
might be settled by a court of science. All that is required is a rela-
tively small expenditure for the collection and the presentation of the
evidence.

When the costly agitations of the past are analyzed, such as a tariff
on any commodity for the purpose of " protection," " silver sixteen to
one," " vaccination compulsory," " vaccination voluntary without
quarantine," as in Minnesota, " conservation " — in short, the count-
less " isms," why should they not be settled in a court ? When such
" isms " become popular enough to become the basis or the cause of
legislation which means that the " isms " are to be forced on others
than on believers, then it would seem that those who favor the " ism "
should be placed on trial before a scientific jury in the supreme court
of science. Many issues may be narrowed down to the determination
of a few simple questions which may be answered by a jury of intelli-
gent men. In what degree is the " ism " efficacious and does the de-
gree of truth found justify the application? On the side of the con-
ditions to be remedied, are the facts grievous enough to justify a
general remedy ? Is there no other remedy more efficacious ?

Should the supreme court of science decide after a fair trial that
compulsory vaccination was indefensible on the evidence, and that the
practise of vivisection was defensible and desirable within proper
/imits, two costly " movements " would be ended with these findings.
We may rest assured, if the supreme court of science impartially de-
cided on the evidence in accordance with a regular procedure, that the
truth would prevail with far greater dispatch than under the present
system of countless " movements." Many of these associations have an

A SUPREME COURT OF SCIENCE 399

income just about sufficient to make the " wheels go round " in the
office and the surplus available wherewith to grind grain is a very small
fraction of the funds required to keep the wheels in motion. Under
the billing system for small dues from hundreds of members and new
membership campaigns, often seventy-five to one hundred per cent, of
the funds are consumed. Instead of wasting so much capital in beating
the tom-toms and in asserting and defending from attack alleged
scientific knowledge, one quarter of the energy would be sufficient to
settle these scientific questions for all time if expended in bringing the
evidence suitably before an impartial scientific tribunal whose deci-
sion would command respect. With the same decision, much agita-
tion and annoyance would be saved our good people, who are wearing
themselves out trying to form intelligent opinions on all kinds of
technical questions without proper evidence presented on either side.

4oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAK1

BY WILLIAM JAMES

THE war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping
party. The military feelings are too deeply grounded to abdicate
their place among our ideals until better substitutes are offered than the
glory and shame that come to nations as well as to individuals from the
ups and downs of politics and the vicissitudes of trade. There is some-
thing highly paradoxical in the modern man's relation to war. Ask all
our millions, north and south, whether they would vote now (were such
a thing possible) to have our war for the Union expunged from history,
and the record of a peaceful transition to the present time substituted
for that of its marches and battles, and probably hardly a handful of
eccentrics would say yes. Those ancestors, those efforts, those memories
and legends, are the most ideal part of what we now own together, a
sacred spiritual possession worth more than all the blood poured out.
Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing in cold blood
to start another civil war now to gain another similar possession, and
not one man or woman would vote for the proposition. In modern eyes,
precious though wars may be, they must not be waged solely for the sake
of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, only when an enemy's
injustice leaves us no alternative, is war now thought permissible.

It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunting
men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the villages
and possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most ex-
citing, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes selected, and
in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle
with the more fundamental appetite for plunder.

Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue
to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all
the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and
horror is of no effect upon him. The horrors make the fascination.
War is the strong life ; it is life in extremis; war-taxes are the only ones
men never hesitate to pay ; as the budgets of all nations show us.

History is a bath of blood. The Iliad is one long recital of how
Diomedes and Ajax, Sarpedon and Hector hilled. No detail of the

1 This article, published last February by the American Association for
International Conciliation, is here reproduced as a tribute to the memory of
William James. It was written at the suggestion of the editor of The Popular
Science Monthly.

TEE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 401

wounds they made is spared us, and the Greek mind fed upon the story.
Greek history is a panorama of jingoism and imperialism — war for
war's sake, all the citizens being warriors. It is horrible reading, be-
cause of the irrationality of it all — save for the purpose of making
" history " — and the history is that of the utter ruin of a civilization in
intellectual respects perhaps the highest the earth has ever seen.

Those wars were purely piratical. Pride, gold, women, slaves, ex-
citement, were their only motives. In the Peloponnesian war, for ex-
ample, the Athenians ask the inhabitants of Melos (the island where the
"Venus of Milo " was found), hitherto neutral, to own their lordship.
The envoys meet, and hold a debate which Thucydides gives in full,
and which, for sweet reasonableness of form, would have satisfied Mat-
thew Arnold. " The powerful exact what they can," said the Athenians,
" and the weak grant what they must." When the Meleans say that
sooner than be slaves they will appeal to the gods, the Athenians reply r
" Of the gods we believe and of men we know that, by a law of their
nature, wherever they can rule they will. This law was not made by us,,
and we are not the first to have acted upon it; we did but inherit it,
and we know that you and all mankind, if you were as strong as we are,
would do as we do. So much for the gods; we have told you why we
expect to stand as high in their good opinion as you." Well, the Meleans
still refused, and their town was taken. " The Athenians," Thucydides
quietly says, " thereupon put to death all who were of military age and
made slaves of the women and children. They then colonized the is-
land, sending thither five hundred settlers of their own."

Alexander's career was piracy pure and simple, nothing but an orgy
of power and plunder, made romantic by the character of the hero.
There was no rational principle in it, and the moment he died his gen-
erals and governors attacked one another. The cruelty of those times
is incredible. When Eome finally conquered Greece, Paulus iEmilius
was told by the Eoman Senate to reward his soldiers for their toil
by " giving " them the old kingdom of Epirus. They sacked seventy
cities and carried off a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants as slaves.
How many they killed I know not; but in Etolia they killed all the
senators, five hundred and fifty in number. Brutus was " the noblest
Eoman of them all," but to reanimate his soldiers on the eve of Philippi
he similarly promises to give them the cities of Sparta and Thessalonica
to ravage, if they win the fight.

Such was the gory nurse that trained societies to cohesiveness. We
inherit the warlike type ; and for most of the capacities of heroism that
the human race is full of we have to thank this cruel history. Dead
men tell no tales, and if there were any tribes of other type than this
they have left no survivors. Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into
our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed it

4Q2 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

out of us. The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of
wars. Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no
ruler can withstand it. In the Boer war both governments began with
bluff, but couldn't stay there, the military tension was too much for
them. In 1898 our people had read the word WAR in letters three
inches high for three months in every newspaper. The pliant politician
McKinley was swept away by their eagerness, and our squalid war with
Spain became a necessity.

At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture.
The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but are con-
fronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom.
Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service.
Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally avowable motives, and
pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the enemy. Eng-
land and we, our army and navy authorities repeat without ceasing, arm
solely for " peace," Germany and Japan it is who are bent on loot and
glory. " Peace " in military mouths to-day is a synonym for " war
expected." The word has become a pure provocative, and no govern-
ment wishing peace sincerely should allow it ever to be printed in a
newspaper. Every up-to-date dictionary should say that " peace " and
" war " mean the same thing, now in posse, now in actu. It may even
reasonably be said that the intensely sharp competitive preparation for
war by the nations is th e real war, permanent, unceasing ; and that the
battles are only a sort of public verification of the mastery gained dur-
ing the " peace "-interval.

It is plain that on this subject civilized man has developed a sort of
double personality. If we take European nations, no legitimate inter-
est of any one of them would seem to justify the tremendous destruc-
tions which a war to compass it would necessarily entail. It would
seem as though common sense and reason ought to find a way to reach
agreement in every conflict of honest interests. I myself think it our
bounden duty to believe in such international rationality as possible.
But, as things stand, I see how desperately hard it is to bring the peace-
party and the war-party together, and I believe that the difficulty is due
to certain deficiences in the program of pacificism which set the militar-
ist imagination strongly, and to a certain extent justifiably, against it.
In the whole discussion both sides are on imaginative and sentimental
ground. It is but one utopia against another, and everything one says
must be abstract and hypothetical. Subject to this criticism and cau-
tion, I will try to characterize in abstract strokes the opposite imagina-
tive forces, and point out what to my own very fallible mind seems the
best utopian hypothesis, the most promising line of conciliation.

In my remarks, pacificist though I am, I will refuse to speak of
the bestial side of the war-regime (already done justice to by many

THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 403

writers) and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic sentiment.
Patriotism no one thinks discreditable ; nor does any one deny that war
is the romance of history. But inordinate ambitions are the soul of
every patriotism, and the possibility of violent death the soul of all ro-
mance. The militarily patriotic and romantic-minded everywhere, and
especially the professional military class, refuse to admit for a moment
that war may be a transitory phenomenon in social evolution. The
notion of a sheep's paradise like that revolts, they say, our higher imag-
ination. Where then would be the steeps of life? If war had ever
stopped, we should have to re-invent it, on this view, to redeem life
from flat degeneration.

Eeflective apologists for war at the present day all take it relig-
iously. It is a sort of sacrament. Its profits are to the vanquished as
well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question of profit, it is
an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature at its highest
dynamic. Its " horrors " are a cheap price to pay for rescue from the
only alternative supposed, of a world of clerks and teachers, of co-edu-
cation and zoophily, of " consumer's leagues " and " associated chari-
ties," of industrialism unlimited, and feminism unabashed. No scorn,
no hardness, no valor any more ! Fie upon such a cattleyard of a
planet !

So far as the central essence of this feeling goes, no healthy minded
person, it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking of it. Mili-
tarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human life
with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks or
prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a
type of military character which every one feels that the race should
never cease to breed, for every one is sensitive to its superiority. The
duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military characters in stock
— of keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and as
pure pieces of perfection — so that Roosevelt's weaklings and molly-
coddles may not end by making everything else disappear from the face
of nature.

This natural sort of feeling forms, I think, the innermost soul of
army-writings. Without any exception known to me, militarist au-
thors take a highly mystical view of their subject, and regard war as a
biological or sociological necessity, uncontrolled by ordinary psycholog-
ical checks and motives. When the time of development is ripe the war
must come, reason or no reason, for the justifications pleaded are in-
variably fictitious. War is, in short, a permanent human obligation.
General Homer Lea, in his recent book " The Valor of Ignorance,"
plants himself squarely on this ground. Readiness for war is for him
the essence of nationality, and ability in it the supreme measure of the
health of nations.

404 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Nations, General Lea says, are never stationary — they must neces-
sarily expand or shrink, according to their vitality or decrepitude.
Japan now is culminating; and by the fatal law in question it is im-
possible that her statesmen should not long since have entered, with
extraordinary foresight, upon a vast policy of conquest — the game in
which the first moves were her wars with China and Eussia and her
treaty with England, and of which the final objective is the capture of
the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska and the whole of our
coast west of the Sierra passes. This will give Japan what her ineluc-
table vocation as a state absolutely forces her to claim, the possession of
the entire Pacific Ocean; and to oppose these deep designs we Ameri-
cans have, according to our author, nothing but our conceit, our igno-
rance, our commercialism, our corruption, and our feminism. General
Lea makes a minute technical comparison of the military strength
which we at present could oppose to the strength of Japan, and
concludes that the islands, Alaska, Oregon and southern California,
would fall almost without resistance, that San Francisco must
surrender in a fortnight to a Japanese investment, that in three
or four months the war would be over, and our republic, unable to re-
gain what it had heedlessly neglected to protect sufficiently, would
then " disintegrate," until perhaps some Caesar should arise to weld us
again into a nation.

A dismal forecast indeed ! Yet not unplausible, if the mentality of
Japan's statesmen be of the Caesarian type of which history shows so
many examples, and which is all that General Lea seems able to imag-
ine. But there is no reason to think that women can no longer be the
mothers of Napoleonic or Alexandrian characters ; and if these come in
Japan and find their opportunity, just such surprises as " The Yalor
of Ignorance " paints may lurk in ambush for us. Ignorant as we still
are of the innermost recesses of Japanese mentality, we may be fool-
hardy to disregard such possibilities.

Other militarists are more complex and more moral in their con-
siderations. The " Philosophie des Krieges," by S. E. Steinmetz is a
good example. War, according to this author, is an ordeal instituted
by God, who weighs the nations in its balance. It is the essential form
of the state, and the only function in which peoples can employ all
their powers at once and convergently. No victory is possible save as
the resultant of a totality of virtues, no defeat for which some vice or
weakness is not responsible. Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, heroism,
conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth, physical health
and vigor — there isn't a moral or intellectual point of superiority that
doesn't tell, when God holds his assizes and hurls the peoples upon one
another. Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht; and Dr. Steinmetz

THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 405

does not believe that in the long run chance and luck play any part in
apportioning the issues.

The virtues that prevail, it must be noted, are virtues anyhow,
superiorities that count in peaceful as well as in military competition;
but the strain on them, being infinitely intenser in the latter case,
makes war infinitely more searching as a trial. No ordeal is com-
parable to its winnowings. Its dread hammer is the welder of men into
cohesive states, and nowhere but in such states can human nature ade-
quately develop its capacity. The only alternative is " degeneration."

Dr. Steinmetz is a conscientious thinker, and his book, short as it
is, takes much into account. Its upshot can, it seems to me, be summed
up in Simon Patten's word, that mankind was nursed in pain and
fear, and that the transition to a " pleasure-economy " may be fatal to
a being wielding no powers of defense against its disintegrative influ-
ences. If we speak of the fear of emancipation from the fear-regime,
we put the whole situation into a single phrase; fear regarding our-
selves now taking the place of the ancient fear of the enemy.

Turn the fear over as I will in my mind, it all seems to lead back
to two unwillingnesses of the imagination, one esthetic, and the other
moral : unwillingness, first to envisage a future in which army-life,
with its many elements of charm, shall be forever impossible, and in
which the destinies of peoples shall nevermore be decided quickly,
thrillingly and tragically, by force, but only gradually and insipidly
by " evolution '"' ; and, secondly, unwillingness to see the supreme
theater of human strenuousness closed, and the splendid military apti-
tudes of men doomed to keep always in a state of latency and never
show themselves in action. These insistent unwillingnesses, no less
than other esthetic and ethical insistencies have, it seems to me, to be
listened to and respected. One can not meet them effectively by mere
counter-insistency on war's expensiveness and horror. The horror
makes the thrill ; and when the question is of getting the extremest and
supremest out of human nature, talk of expense sounds ignominious.
The weakness of so much merely negative criticism is evident — pacifi-
cism makes no converts from the military party. The military party
denies neither the bestiality nor the horror, nor the expense; it only
says that these things tell but half the story. It only says that war is
worth them ; that, taking human nature as a whole, its wars are its best
protection against its weaker and more cowardly self, and that mankind
can not afford to adopt a peace-economy.

Pacificists ought to enter more deeply into the esthetical and ethical
point of view of their opponents. Do that first in any controversy, says
J. J. Chapman, then move the point, and your opponent will follow.
So long as anti-militarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary
function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to

4o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full
inwardness of the situation. And as a rule they do fail. The
duties, penalties and sanctions pictured in the Utopias they paint are
all too weak and tame to touch the military-minded. Tolstoy's pacifi-
cism is the only exception to this rule, for it is profoundly pessimistic as
regards all this world's values, and makes the fear of the Lord furnish
the moral spur provided elsewhere by the fear of the enemy. But our
socialistic peace-advocates all believe absolutely in this world's values;
and instead of the fear of the Lord and the fear of the enemy, the only
fear they reckon with is the fear of poverty if one be lazy. This weak-
ness pervades all the socialistic literature with which I am acquainted.
Even in Lowes Dickinson's exquisite dialogue,2 high wages and short
hours are the only forces invoked for overcoming man's distaste for
repulsive kinds of labor. Meanwhile men at large still live as they
always have lived, under a pain-and-fear economy — for those of us who
lived in an ease-economy are but an island in the stormy ocean — and
the whole atmosphere of present-day utopian literature tastes mawkish
and dishwatery to people who still keep a sense for life's more bitter
flavors. It suggests, in truth, ubiquitous inferiority.

Inferiority is always with us, and merciless scorn of it is the keynote
of the military temper. " Dogs, would you live forever ?" shouted
Frederick the Great. "Yes," say our Utopians, "let us live forever,
and raise our level gradually." The best thing about our " inferiors "
to-day is that they are as tough as nails, and physically and morally
almost as insensitive. Utopianism would see them soft and squeam-
ish, while militarism would keep their callousness, but transfigure
it into a meritorious characteristic, needed by " the service," and re-
deemed by that from the suspicion of inferiority. All the qualities
of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the col-
lectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own
pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourish-
ing such pride ; but it has to be confessed that the only sentiment which
the image of pacific cosmopolitan industrialism is capable of arousing
in countless worthy breasts is shame at the idea of belonging to such a
collectivity. It is obvious that the United States of America as they
exist to-day impress a mind like General Lea's as so much human
blubber. Where is the sharpness and precipitousness, the contempt for
life, whether one's own, or another's? Where is the savage " yes " and
" no," the unconditional duty ? Where is the conscription ? Where is
the blood-tax? Where is anything that one feels honored by belong-
ing to ?

Having said thus much in preparation, I will now confess my own
utopia. I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the gradual
2 " Justice and Liberty," New York, 1909.

THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 407

advent of some sort of a socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic view of
the war-function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due
to definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable
criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise. And when whole
nations are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in intellec-
tual refinement with the sciences of production, I see that war becomes
absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity. Extravagant am-
bitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations must
make common cause against them. I see no reason why all this should
not apply to yellow as well as to white countries, and I look forward to
a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civil-
ized peoples.

All these beliefs of mine put me squarely into the anti-militarist
party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be
permanent on this globe, unless the states pacifically organized preserve
some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently successful
peace-economy can not be a simple pleasure-economy. In the more or
less socialistic future towards which mankind seems drifting we must
still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to
our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. AVe must make
new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the mili-
tary mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring
cement ; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest,
obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states
are built — unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions against com-
monwealths fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack whenever
a center of crystallization for military-minded enterprise gets formed
anywhere in their neighborhood.

The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that
the martial virtues, although originally gained by the race through
war, are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic pride and
ambition in their military form are, after all, only specifications of a
more general competitive passion. They are its first form, but that is
no reason for supposing them to be its last form. Men now are proud
of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay
down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off
subjection. But who can be sure that other aspects of one's country
may not, with time and education and suggestion enough, come to be
regarded with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame? Why
should men not some day feel that it is worth a blood-tax to belong to a
collectivity superior in any ideal respect? Why should they not blush
with indignant shame if the community that owns them is vile in any
way whatsoever? Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this
civic passion. It is only a question of blowing on the spark till the

4o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

whole population gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the old morals
of military honor, a stable system of morals of civic honor builds itself
up. What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the indi-
vidual as in a vise. The war-function has graspt us so far; but con-
structive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose
on the individual a hardly lighter burden.

Let me illustrate my idea more concretely. There is nothing to
make one indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, that men should
toil and suffer pain. The planetary conditions once for all are such,
and we can stand it. But that so many men, by mere accidents of birth
and opportunity, should have a life of nothing else but toil and pain
and hardness and inferiority imposed upon them, should have no vaca-
tion, while others natively no more deserving never get any taste of this
campaigning life at all — this is capable of arousing indignation in re-
flective minds. It may end by seeming shameful to all of us that some
of us have nothing but campaigning, and others nothing but unmanly
ease. If now — and this is my idea — there were, instead of military
conscription a conscription of the whole youthful population to form
for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against
nature, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other
goods to the commonwealth would follow. The military ideals of
hardihood and discipline would be wrought into the growing fiber of the
people; no one would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are
blind, to man's real relations to the globe he lives on, and to the perma-
nently sour and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and iron
mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dishwashing,
clothes-washing and window-washing, to road-building and tunnel-
making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of skyscrapers,
would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their choice, to get
the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society with
healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. They would have paid their
blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human warfare
against nature, they would tread the earth more proudly, the women
would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and teach-
ers of the following generation.

Such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that would
have required it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would pre-
serve in the midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the
military party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace. We should get
toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty
as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is tem-
porary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of
one's life. I spoke of the " moral equivalent " of war. So far, war has
been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until

THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 409

an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its
way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames
of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of
organizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other
just as effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a question
of time, of skillful propagandism, and of opinion-making men seizing
historic opportunities.

The martial type of character can be bred without war. Strenuous
honor and disinterestedness abound elsewhere. Priests and medical
men are in a fashion educated to it, and we should all feel some degree
of it imperative if we were conscious of our work as an obligatory
service to the state. We should be owned, as soldiers are by the army,
and our pride would rise accordingly. We could be poor, then, without
humiliation, as army officers now are. The only thing needed hence-
forward is to inflame the civic temper as past history has inflamed the
military temper. H. G. Wells, as usual, sees the center of the situation.
" In many ways," he says, " military organization is the most peaceful
of activities. When the contemporary man steps from the street, of
clamorous insincere advertisement, push, adulteration, underselling and
intermittent employment, into the barrack-yard, he steps on to a higher
social plane, into an atmosphere of service and cooperation and of infi-
nitely more honorable emulations. Here at least men are not flung
out of employment to degenerate because there is no immediate work
for them to do. They are fed and drilled and trained for better services.
Here at least a man is supposed to win promotion by self-forgetfulness,
and not by self-seeking. And beside the feeble and irregular endow-
ment of research by commercialism, its little short-sighted snatches at
profit by innovation and scientific economy, see how remarkable is the
steady and rapid development of method and appliances in naval and
military affairs ! Nothing is more striking than to compare the prog-
ress of civil conveniences which has been left almost entirely to the
trader, to the progress in military apparatus during the last few decades.
The house-appliances of to-day, for example, are little better than they
were fifty years ago. A house of to-day is still almost as ill-ventilated,
badly heated by wasteful fires, clumsily arranged and furnished as the
house of 1858. Houses a couple of hundred years old are still satis-
factory places of residence, so little have our standards risen. But the
rifle or battleship of fifty years ago was beyond all comparison inferior
to those we possess; in power, in speed, in convenience alike. No one
has a use now for such superannuated things." 3

Wells adds4 that he thinks that the conceptions of order and dis-
cipline, the tradition of service and devotion, of physical fitness, un-

3 "First and Last Things," 1908, p. 215.
4 Ibid., p. 226.
vol.. lxxvii.— 28.

410 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

stinted exertion and universal responsibility, which universal military
duty is now teaching European nations, will remain a permanent acqui-
sition, when the last ammunition has been used in the fireworks that
celebrate the final peace. I believe as he does. It would be simply
preposterous if the only force that could work ideals of honor and
standards of efficiency into English or American natures should be the
fear of being killed by the Germans or the Japanese. Great indeed is
fear; but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make
us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges
of men's spiritual energy. The amount of alteration in public opinion
which my utopia postulates is vastly less than the difference between the
mentality of those black warriors who pursued Stanley's party on the
Congo with their cannibal war-cry of " meat ! meat " and that of the
" general staff " of any civilized nation. History has seen the latter
interval bridged over : the former one can be bridged over much more
easily.

William James

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

4*3

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

WILLIAM JAMES
Is there left to us in this land a
man so great as William James? If
the list of our leaders is scanned, men
eminent in philosophy, science, art or
letters, in education, law, politics or
business, is there a single one to be
placed beside him? He excelled in so
many ways, in science, in philosophy,
in letters, as a teacher, as a leader in
good causes and lost causes, before all
as a man — kind and generous beyond
measure, of remarkable individuality
and distinction.

The " Principles of Psychology,"
published in 1890, is a scientific and
literary classic. No one can foretell
whether it will be permanently in the
group of philosophical masterpieces,
beginning with the dialogues of Plato,
but "Miere is no contemporary Amer-
ican work and possibly no European
work since the " Origin of Species,"
which has an equal chance.

Wilhelm Wundt and William James
are the founders of psychology, a sci-
ence which in a single generation has
assumed a place coordinate with the
other leading sciences. Both men —
like their forerunners, Lotze and von
Helmholtz — had an education in medi-
cine and the natural sciences, with
strong natural interests in philosophy
and metaphysics. They established
laboratories of psychology at about the
same time, neither of them did experi-
mental work of consequence, both pre-
pared treatises which to a remarkable
extent established the lines of develop-
ment for a science. Wundt's " Thysi-
ologische Psychologie " is more sys-
tematic than James's " Principles of
Psychology"; it is more of an en-
cyclopedia. For that reason it could
be brought out in various editions,
corrected and enlarged. James's

*' Psychology " is more of a work of
art, exhibiting the subject as he left
it twenty years ago.

It is truly a remarkable book, com-
bining physiology, pathological psy-
chology, comparative psychology, ex-
perimental psychology, introspective
psychology and philosophy into one
whole which has dominated the sci-
ence. The author is always accurate
in his scientific material and clear in
his statements, but frank in his criti-
cism and daring in his conclusions.
His own contributions on the stream
of thought, the perception of things
and of space, the emotions, instinct,
habit and in many other directions are
of fundamental importance. The work
has an extraordinary vitality and in-
viduality which make it a work of art
and a classic.

In his "Talks to Teachers" and
" Varieties of Religious Experience,"
James extended the field of psychology
in two important directions. Nearly
all his work was done in a somewhat
opportunistic fashion. He made an
engagement to give lectures, perhaps
cancelled it or tried to do so, felt he
could not prepare them and finally
produced a masterpiece. " The Will to
Believe" was a collection of addresses;
the volume on " Religious Experience "
was Gifford lectures, the "Prag-
matism" Lowell lectures, "A Plural-
istic Universe" Hibbert lectures.

Although the interest in problems of
philosophy and the pluralism, prag-
matism and empiricism may be traced
backward to his earlier publications,
they were given full and vigorous ex-
pression only in these later volumes,
when James had passed the age of
sixty and was already suffering from
disease of the heart. It would be idle

414

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

to attempt to give here an exposition
of James's attitude in philosophy.
Pragmatism — the term was first used
by James's friend, Charles S. Peirce,
in this journal — is called on the title
page of his book " a new name for an
old way of thinking." It is largely
the method of science applied to phi-
losophy, but it is after all what James
thought and said and wrote. His per-
sonality and its expression, the intel-
lect swayed by the will and the emo-
tions, have made a deep impression
not only on professional philosophy,
but in the world of men.

James inherited his brilliant liter-
ary skill from his father and shared
it with his brother. His education
was long and irregular. He did not
graduate from Harvard, but studied
art and was with Agassiz in Brazil.
From 1872 to 1880 he was instructor
and assistant professor of comparative
anatomy and physiology at Harvard,
then professor of philosophy, then of
psychology and then again of philos-
ophy.

It is not probable that James left
unpublished manuscripts, but his let-
ters would form a volume of surpass-
ing interest, though it may be that
they are too personal for publication.
The writer ventures to reproduce the
concluding parts of the last two which
he received, the one from Cambridge
and the other from Bad Nauheim,
where he had gone for treatment of

the disease that so soon proved fatal.
James at first declined on account of
his health to accept the active presi-
dency of the International Congress of
Psychology to be held in this country.
! There was no one else to take the
place, so when difficulties arose he
played his part with characteristic
loyalty and self-sacrifice.

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL
SCIENTIFIC CONGRESSES
Among the various gatherings of sci-
entific men held during the present
summer two American meetings and
several international congresses were
of special importance. The national
conservation congress held at St. Paul
at the beginning of September was a
truly notable event, bringing together
men eminent in various pursuits to
consider problems which are essen-
tially scientific in character. Presi-
dent Taft's admirable address — printed
in the present issue of the Monthly
in its authorized form — shows how
carefully he has considered questions
which touch public policy on one side
and science on the other. Mr. Taft
stated that he inherited the policy of
conservation from his predecessor, and
Mr. Roosevelt and several leading
members of his administration, Mr.
Pinchot, Mr. Garfield and Mr. Wilson,
took an active part in the proceedings.
Governors of states and many men
prominent in education, in philan-

416

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

thropy and in affairs made addresses.
Men eminent in scientific research
were not so well represented as they
should have been, but the names of
Professor Bailey, of Cornell, Professor
Wesbrook, of Minnesota, and Dr. W J
McGee were on the program.

The American Chemical Society em-
phasized its national character by
meeting in San Francisco. The Amer-
ican Association for the Advancement
of Science had also planned a visit to
the Pacific coast and to Hawaii, but
transportation across the sea could not
be arranged. The chemists had a spe-
cial train from Chicago, which carried
over a hundred to California, where
arrangements were made for elaborate
entertainments and excursions and a
scientific program under the presidency
of Professor Bancroft, of Cornell.

The International Geological Con-
gress met this year at Stockholm, the
International Zoological Congress at
±>uda Pesth, the first International
Congress of Entomology and the Inter-
national Congress of Anatomists at
Brussels, and the International Physi-
ological Congress at Vienna. These
meetings were attended by scientific
men from all parts of the world, in-
cluding large numbers from this coun-
try. The Zoological Congress met last
time in Boston and the Geological
Congress will hold its next meeting in
Canada. America and American sci-
entific men are taking an increasing
share in these international congresses,
which within the past few years have

assumed an important part in the ad-
vancement of science.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We regret to record the deaths of
Dr. Charles Anthony Goessmann, since
1869 professor of chemistry at the
Massachusetts Agricultural College,
known for his important contributions
to agricultural chemistry; of William
Earl Dodge Scott, curator of ornithol-
ogy at Princeton University, and of
Dr. Paul Mantegazza, the eminent
Italian anthropologist.

The national memorial to Grover
Cleveland is to take the form of a
tower to be erected at Princeton as
part of the buildings of the graduate
school, with which Mr. Cleveland was
closely identified during the last years
of his life. The tower will be about
150 feet high and 40 feet square. It
will cost $100,000, of which sum $75,-
000 have already been given.

Professor Joseph A. Holmes, of
the U. S. Geological Survey, formerly
professor of geology and natural his-
tory at the University of North Caro-
lina and state geologist, has been ap-
pointed by President Taft director of
the newly-established Bureau of Mines.
— Among the representatives appointed
to attend the opening of the Mexican
National University on September 22
are Professor F. W. Putnam and Ro-
land B. Dixon, from Harvard Univer-
sity, and Professor Franz Boas, from
Columbia University.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY,

MAY, 1910

HEREDITY1

By Professor W. B. CASTLE

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

THE conservation movement now in progress has for its end to pre-
serve for future generations of men the natural resources of the
earth. But it goes without saying that the movement is useless unless
there are to he future generations of men capable of utilizing those
resources. Thoughtful persons are beginning to wonder whether this is
assured. Man is the product of two sets of agencies which we sum-
marize in the terms heredity and environment. The question has often
been asked which of these is the more important, but with this we need
not concern ourselves. Both are indispensable. Seed and soil com-
bined assure a harvest, but if either is lacking no harvest can be
expected.

The public is awakening to the importance of providing mankind
with a proper environment through the agencies of sanitation, educa-
tion and good government, and this is well. This assures a suitable
soil in which a crop of healthy human beings may develop. But what
of the seed? This question has not yet been seriously considered.
Only in England has it been more than suggested. There Francis
Galton and his associates in the eugenics movement have started an
inquiry as to why it is that the average physical condition of the
English nation is declining although more and more attention is con-
stantly being given to improving the environment. Likewise in Ger-
many statistics show a steadily declining proportion of the young men
fit for military service. There is a suspicion in the minds of many,
that these nations are producing the new generation of citizens chiefly
from inferior family and racial stocks. If this is so the remedy is

1 From a lecture delivered before Section F, American Association for the
Advancement of Science, December 31, 1909.

vol. lxxvj.— 29.

4i 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

obvious, though how easy of application remains to be ascertained.
Would a farmer expect to have full harvests if each year he saved seed
from the poorest yielding plants, or could he hope to secure the best re-
sults from his herds by selling or butchering the best stock and keeping
only the scrubs? Obviously not, and no more can the civilized nations
maintain their present standards of manhood if they follow a like
practise.

But before any serious attempt can be made to improve the human
race considered as an assemblage of animals possessed of certain de-
sirable physical and intellectual attributes, it is obvious that we must
know something about heredity in general, and how in particular each
of the desired physical and intellectual attributes is produced. Con-
siderations such as these lend general interest to the study of heredity,
a subject which has always been of great practical concern to farmers,
and of much theoretical interest to scientists. It is my purpose to
review briefly some of the problems which the study of heredity pre-
sents, and some of the results obtained from their consideration.

" Like father like son " is a homely proverb which shows how
general the recognition is that children resemble their parents. Re-
semblances to grandparents or ancestors even more remote are also of
frequent occurrence, and it is convenient to use the term heredity as
including all such resemblances, whether to near or to remote ancestors.
The phenomenon of heredity is of course not restricted to human
society. Heredity has for the stockman and plant-breeder a well-
recognized commercial value, because by a knowledge of its laws he is
enabled to produce in greater number or with greater certainty animals
or plants of a particular type. Indeed, much of our present knowledge
of heredity has been derived from a study of the domesticated animals
or of the cultivated plants, and from the same sources we may expect
to continue to draw, for here alone have we an unobstructed field for
observation and experiment, the indispensable tools of scientific re-
search. Just as the sciences of anatomy, embryology, physiology and
pathology progressed but slowly so long as the phenomena of the human
body alone were considered, but advanced by leaps and bounds when
comparative studies on other animals were undertaken, so concerning
heredity in man we have learned and can expect to learn but little from
the study of man alone, but much from a study of other animals and of
plants and from a comparison of the phenomena in the two cases.

Every new individual arises out of material derived exclusively from
its parents. This is the basis of heredity. But it does not follow that
•the new individual will resemble its parents merely. It may resemble
remote ancestors more strongly than either parent. For it represents
a combination of materials or of qualities derived from the two
parents and it is possible that neither parent may manifest all the

HEREDITY

419

peculiarities which it transmits to the offspring. For the parent is
made up of two distinct parts, its own body and the reproductive sub-
stance contained within that bod}", and the two may not be identical
in character.

The reproductive substance has been called by Weismann the germ-
plasm. He it was who first clearly recognized the fact that the germ-
plasm is distinct from the body which contains it, and that the in-
fluences which modify the character of the one do not of necessity
modify the character of the other. Thus he was able to show experi-
mentally that mutilations of the body, as loss of the tail in mice, are
not inherited, and to establish with a considerable degree of certainty
the principle that characters acquired by the body as a result of use,
disuse or other agencies are not inherited, because they have not
affected the constitution of the germ-plasm carried within the body.

Weismann's two principles are of fundamental importance to a
right understanding of heredity. They are : ( 1 ) That the germ-plasm
is independent of the body containing it, or, as Weismann put it, that
the germ-plasm is continuous from generation to generation, whereas
the body dies, and (2) that acquired characters are not inherited.

The hottest biological discussions of the last twenty years have been
waged over these two principles and the contest is by no means ended,
but year by year the correctness of Weismann's contentions is more
generally admitted.

Common experiences support both principles. Thus the independ-
ence or continuity of the germ-plasm has been shown from time pre-
historic in the practise of castration upon the domesticated animals or
upon man. The germ-plasm is localized in particular organs of the
body, the reproductive glands. If these are removed reproduction be-
comes impossible, though all other functions of the individual persist.
Further, it is possible to show experimentally that the germ-plasm

Fig. 1. A young black Guinea-pig, about three weeks old. The ovaries taken from
an animal like this were transplanted into the albino shown in Fig. 2.

420

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Fig. 2. An Albino female Guinea-pig. Its ovaries were removed and in their place
were introduced ovaries from a young black guinea-pig. Compare Fig. 1.

transplanted from one individual into another retains the character
which it originally had, quite unaffected by the changed body with
which it is associated. This Dr. John C. Phillips and the writer have
recently shown in the following way. The ovaries were removed from
a young black guinea-pig, Fig. 1, and these were transplanted into the
body of a white guinea-pig, previously castrated, Fig. 2. The white
guinea-pig was now mated with another white guinea-pig, Fig. 3.
Normal white guinea-pigs produce only white offspring when mated
with each other, but these two have now produced in three successive
litters six young, all black. Three of these are shown in Fig. 4.
Evidently the germ-plasm of the black guinea-pig retained its original
character even after transplantation into the body of a white one.

In order better to understand the processes of heredity we should
be familiar with what takes place when a new individual is formed.
The new individual, whether an animal or a plant, has its beginning in
the union of two bits of germ-plasm, an egg cell furnished by the
mother and a sperm cell furnished by the father. Whether the union
of the germ-plasm takes place within the maternal body or not is quite
immaterial ; among a great many animals it does not.

The new individual, it will be observed, is dual in origin, and to
its dying day it retains a dual nature. For the maternal and paternal
contributions of germ-plasm retain a certain distinctness as we shall
see, and may in part separate from each other at reproduction.

Each germ-cell (egg or sperm), so far as its contribution to heredity
is concerned, stands for a complete organism of its species, bears the
potentialities of a complete organism, and under appropriate condi-

HEREDITY

421

tions can develop into such an organism. For this idea we have strong
experimental evidence. It has long been known that the eggs of certain
species of animals can develop without fertilization, i. c, without
having united with a sperm or male sex-cell. In such cases there can
be no question that the potentialities of an entire organism are con-
tained in the egg, for without any outside help the egg develops into a
complete individual of the species. In recent years it has been shown
that the eggs of many species in which fertilization normally occurs
may by artificial means be made to develop without having united with
a sperm. This is true of the eggs of sea-urchins, star-fishes, and of
certain worms and mollusks. Such eggs artificially stimulated to
development produce entire individuals, similar to those produced by
fertilization, but possibly less vigorous.

On the other hand, a sperm cell may be made to develop, if it is
allowed to penetrate into a fragment of an egg, even a fragment which
lacks the important cell-nucleus. In such cases the entire nuclear
material of the embryo is furnished by the sperm, yet the embryo so
produced is complete, lacking no essential part, and similar except in
size and vigor to normal embryos produced by fertilization.

• Accordingly the evidence is fairly complete that each germ-cell
(egg or sperm), considered as the vehicle of heredity, represents a
complete organism, and that an individual produced by the union of
two such germ-cells represents twice over each heritable trait of the
species. In other words, the germ-cell is single, the individual is
double.

This fundamental principle of the singleness of the germ in con-

Fig. 3. An Albino male Guinea-pig, with which was mated the albino

shown in Fig. 2.

422

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Fig. 4. A Geoup of three Young, produced by the pair of albinos
shown in Figs. 2 and 3.

trast to the doubleness (duality) of the individual receives the fullest
confirmation from experimental breeding.

If we mate a pure-bred black guinea-pig with a white one, the
young are all black pigmented. This result seems to violate the prin-
ciple previously stated that both parents contribute equally in heredity;
in reality, however, that principle is not violated. The white parent
has contributed its own character to the offspring, but that contribu-

HEREDITY 423

tion is unseen in them simply because black hides it. The white will
reappear among the grandchildren. In Fig. 5 we see a mother guinea-
pig having a jet black coat. Beside her are four young of the same
color as herself. The father too was black. In a word this black race
breeds true. A female of this race was mated with the albino male
shown in Fig. 6. Albinos have white hair and pink (unpigmented)
eyes, the red eye color being due to the blood which shows through;
they breed true among themselves, but the result is very different when
they are mated with black individuals. Two children of the albino
male and the black female are shown in Fig. 7. They are intensely
black pigmented, as are all the young produced by this cross. Two of
them when grown to maturity and mated with each other, produced a
litter of four young, shown in Fig. 8. Three are black pigmented like
the parents, but one is an albino similar in all respects to the albino
grandsire. Here we notice the reappearance of the albino character
after skipping a generation. The albino grandsire really made a hered-
itary contribution as regards the character hair color, but it did not
show in the children, because black also was present in the children,
and black obscured or dominated the white.

Applying our principle of single germ, dual individual to this case,
we see that the facts observed are fully in harmony with it. The
original cross brought together the characters B (black) and W (white)
into an individual (or zygote as we call it, a joining together) B W,
which showed only black. Two such individuals, a male and a female
were now mated together. In the formation of germ-cells by these
individuals there is a return to the single condition, B separates from
W and passes into a different germ-cell. Accordingly, the mother forms
eggs, B and W, respectively, and the father forms sperms of a like
character. Now a new individual arises from a union of an egg with a
sperm. Apparently either sort of sperm may unite with either sort of
egg which it chances to meet. So there are formed in the next genera-
tion three sorts of zygotes (individuals), viz., B B, B W, and WW,
instead of B W alone as in the previous generation. The chances for
the occurrence of these three sorts of unions are 1 BB, 2 BW, and
1 WW. Any individual containing the character B will be blacl*;
accordingly the BWs as well as the BBs will be black and there should
be three blacks to one white. These are in fact the observed propor-
tions. The white individual should transmit no other character, be-
cause it contains only W. Such is indeed the observed fact. Any two
white individuals mated together will produce only white offspring.
But, if our reasoning is correct, two thirds of the black individuals of
this generation (viz., the BWs) should transmit white as well as black,
while the remaining one third, BB, should transmit only black. Ex-
periment justifies both these conclusions. If we mate the black animals

424

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Fig. 5. A black female Guinea-pig and her Young.

Fig. 6. An Albino Guinea-pig, father cf black young, like those seen in Fig. 5.

of this generation, one by one, with albinos, we find that on the average
two out of three of them will produce white offspring as well as black
ones, while the third one produces only black offspring.

The scientific law which governs the inheritance of albinism, and
of other characters transmitted in a similar fashion, is known as
Mendel's law. It applies, apparently, to all cases of color-inheritance,
as well as to the inheritance of characters of many other sorts. Through
its operation new combinations of the peculiar characters of individuals
or of races can be obtained in the course of one or two generations.
Thus when a guinea-pig showing the two coat-characters seen in Fig.
9, dark and smooth coat, is mated with one showing the combination,
white and rough, Fig. 10, young are produced showing a wholly new
combination, dark and rough, Fig. 11. And if these young are at ma-
turity bred together, a fourth combination, white and smooth, appears
among their young, the grandchildren. See Fig. 12. Other grand-
children manifest the combinations seen, respectively, in the parents
and in the grandparents. By selection any one of these combinations
may be obtained in a pure race.

Oftentimes a new combination of characters obtained through

HEREDITY

425

Fig. 7. Two of the geown-up young of a Black and of an Albino Guinea-pig.

Pig. 8. A Group of four Young, produced by the animals shown in Fig. 7.

crosses coincides with a lost racial combination. Then the phenomenon
is called reversion or atavism. Thus when yellow rabbits are crossed
with black ones, gray offspring are obtained similar to wild rabbits in
coloration. There is no longer anything mysterious about the process;
it is simple recombination of different unit-characters formerly asso-
ciated together in the same race, but since isolated in some of the
derived races.

Very different in nature, apparently, from the Mendelian inher-
itance of unit-characters is the result obtained when races of animals
are crossed differing in size or in the proportions of their parts. In
such cases the children are intermediate in character, and the grand-
parental conditions do not reappear among the grandchildren. The
result may be described as a blend apparently permanent. Fig. 13
shows the skulls of three rabbits, all adult, father, mother and son.
The skull of the son is shown between that of his parents, the mother's
skull being at the right. Size and proportions of parts are clearly
intermediate in the son. No grandchildren were obtained like either
grandparent in size. The color of the coat in this same family of
rabbits clearly followed Mendel's law, although the size characters
blended. The practical result is that one may at will produce a race

426

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Fig. 9. A dark smooth Gdinea-pig.

of rabbits of any desired size within the known limits of variation in
size among rabbits, and with any of the conceivable combinations of
color factors. Size variation is apparently continuous and its inherit-
ance blending, color variation is discontinuous and its inheritance
Mendelian.

Notwithstanding the seemingly radical difference between these two
types of inheritance, it is possible that they may, after all, prove to have

Fig. 10. A white rough Guinea-pig.

HEREDITY

427

Fig. 11. A dark rough Guinea-pig, the new combination of characters obtained when
animals are mated like those shown in Figs. 9 and 10, respectively.

a common basis. Blending inheritance may possibly be only a complex
sort of Mendelian inheritance, in which many independent factors are
simultaneously concerned. The question is one of much theoretical
interest.

Its solution awaits further investigation.

Fig. 12. A 'white smooth Guinea-pig, a second new combination of characters,
but obtained first among the grandchildren of such animals as are shown in Figs. 9
and 10. Other grandchildren are like the respective grandparents (Figs. 9 and 10)
or the parents (Fig. 11).

428

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Fig. 13. Skulls of three Rabbits, mother (3 and 3a), father (1 and la) and son
(2 and 2a). From Publication No. 114, Carnegie Institution of Washington,

by permission.

What has already been accomplished in the study of heredity gives
us a hopeful outlook for the future. We are gaining a fuller knowledge
of its processes, and a knowledge of processes is a first step toward their
control.

SNEEZING, SEASICKNESS, PAIX 429

SNEEZING, SEA-SICKNESS, PAIN

By ALEX HILL, M.D., F.R.C.S.

SOMETIME MASTER OF DOWNING COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

PHYSIOLOGISTS can not lay claim to a theory of pain. Even
definition is difficult. The distress of bodily wants overlaps
pain on the one side ; fear, anxiety and similar mental states overlap it
on the other. Excessive stimulation of certain organs of special sense,
particularly those for touch, temperature and hearing-, leads up to it.
If an attempt be made to isolate, in thought, the effect in consciousness
to which the term " pain " properly applies, it may be said to be the
awareness of something amiss in some part of the body, irrespective of
the testimony of either of the special senses. It is a modification of
consciousness, not a part of its content. AYe have learned to associate
the receipt of the modifying influence through particular nervous
channels, with its provenance, just as we have learned to associate
sensations of touch conveyed by particular nerve-fibers with the con-
tact with external objects of particular regions of the skin; but such
topognosis is no more innate in the one case than in the other. It is
the product of self-investigation, and is based either upon the testi-
mony of the eye or upon experiments in moving the hand to the spot.
Hence in the case of organs which are out of sight and out of reach
topographical guidance is unobtainable. Since we can have no knowl-
edge of its seat, the pain is referred to some accessible part of the seg-
ment of the body in which it occurs. A gulp of very hot water, on
reaching the closed sphincter muscle of the stomach — the valve which
must open before it can pass from gullet into stomach — gives rice to
pain which seems to have its seat in the skin over the lower end of the
breast-bone. In the same way disease of the various viscera gives rise
to pain and tenderness of areas of the skin of the segments of the
bod}' in which the nerves of the viscera join the spinal cord.

From a physiological standpoint " pain " and " sensation '; are
antithetical terms. Sensations inform. Pain is a state of conscious-
ness which masks sensation. Sensations are transient. Their apparent
prolongation is due to repetition. They are vibratory. Pain is a
condition, slowly set up, slow to disappear. Even the briefest pain is
long as compared with the constituent unit — a nerve wave — of sensa-
tion. It is of the very essence of sensation that it has quality or modal-
ity; the informing value of any given sensation depends upon its ex-
cluding all other forms of stimulation. The sensation of a bright red
spot of light is not susceptible of confusion in place or quality with
other visual sensations. Still less is it liable to be mistaken for a sen-
sation of hearing or of taste. Pain has no modality. If it may be

43° THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

justly described as stabbing, aching, burning, it owes its individual
character to the form of its onset and to its duration, and these in
turn depend upon either the vascular condition of the part affected —
the pumping of blood through the vessels of a tissue free to expand, or
packed in a bony case — or they are due to the effect upon the inflamed
or injured part of muscular contractions. If the injured part be inac-
cessible, pain has no " local sign." If it be on or near the surface of
the body the pain felt in it has or seems to have a topographical mean-
ing; but it is very doubtful whether the mind can localize the source
of pain in the absence of evidence simultaneously afforded by the
nervous apparatus of the sense of touch. Many instances are on
record of disease or injury to the central nervous system resulting in
complete loss of sensitiveness to pain, whilst sensitiveness to touch and
pressure remained undiminished. But there are no recorded cases, so
far as we are aware, of complete paralysis of the mechanisms of touch
and of the recognition of heat, of cold and of pressure, with the reten-
tion of normal sensitiveness to pain. Such a condition, if it were
established, would make it possible for an investigator to ascertain
whether skin-pain, by itself and unsupported by collateral evidence, has
a topographical meaning, or " local sign " ; and whether the expression
pain-spot may be legitimately used, as meaning a sounding spot in the
midst of a dumb area, and not merely a focus of sensitiveness at which
the weakest stimulus which can evoke pain is effective.

Dr. Henry Head caused the large cutaneous nerve of the thumb-
side of the forearm and hand to be cut in his own arm, in order that
he might study carefully the revival of sensations which follows on
nerve repair. He found that, long before he regained the ability to
distinguish degrees of warmth, to feel as separate the two points of a
pair of compasses, or to recognize a touch with cotton-wool, he re-
gained his power of recognizing stimulation by agents that do harm —
hot things, cold things, pricking with a pin — but his power of local-
izing the spot injured was extremely vague. Trotter and Davies have
made similar experiments in their own persons on a still more exten-
sive scale and have confirmed and amplified Head's results.

Investigations with the aid of new histological methods has shown
that the epithelial tissues are supplied with nerve-filaments in incon-
ceivable abundance. It is probable that the conclusion is justified that
every cell of the skin, of the mucous membranes, of the lining epi-
thelium of the air-chambers in the lungs, of the pleural and peritoneal
cavities, of the various glands, is connected with a nervous thread. It
is certainly true also of every muscle-fiber in the walls of the alimen-
tary tract, of ducts and of blood-vessels. By these filaments the cells
of the body-surfaces both external and internal, the central nervous
system and all motile organs, are bound together.

Superimposed on this basal system are the various specialized sys-

SNEEZING, SEA-SICKNESS, PAIN 43*

terns of nerves which originate in organs in which their ends are so
modified and so enveloped as to render them sensitive in the highest
degree to one particular order of stimulus, whether of smell, sight,
taste, hearing, touch, heat, cold, pressure or traction, and inaccessible
to stimuli of every other class. These nerves, with the chains of
neurones which link them to the muscles, via the spinal cord and brain,
stand out as a pattern on the basal system, like the pattern formed of
thicker fibers and coarser knots on a sheet of lace.

In a book recently published, " The Body at Work," I have en-
deavored to present a picture of the nervous system and its activities,
which, although not original in any of its details, is new in their group-
ing and in its comprehensiveness. It is based upon the teaching that
the two great functions of the nervous system, notwithstanding that
they grade one into the other, must, for purposes of analysis and de-
scription, be considered apart. By the basal system of protopathic
nerves all the cells of the body, with the exception of those of the con-
nective tissues, bones, tendons and so forth, are bound together into a
continuous inseparable whole. No change can occur in the nutritive
condition of any part of the skin or of an internal epithelium without
the induction of a nutritive change in the central nervous system and
thence, onward, in the plain muscle-fibers of arteries and other struc-
tures of the segment of the body in which the inducing change occurs.
As contrasted with the influence which spreads through this basal
system the " impulses " which travel up the nerves of special sense are
peculiar in kind or, at any rate, in intensity. In order that they may
overcome the resistance of a chain of neurones they have a certain
potential, and progress in pulsations or waves.

Pain is explained as due to the setting up in a particular segment
of the axial nervous system of a focus " pain-conditioned " sympathet-
ically with the injured tissues. Consciousness of pain depends upon
the direction of attention to impulses which ascend through the pain-
conditioned segment from end-organs of nerves of special sense. If
the seat of injury be the skin it is through the specialized nerves of the
injured spot that modified impulses reach the cortex of the brain. If
the seat of injury be an internal organ no effect is produced in con-
sciousness until the pain agitation of the spinal cord has become suffi-
ciently intense, and sufficiently wide-spread, to modify impulses which
ascend to the cortex from skin areas of the segment in which the viscus
is situate. The pain in angina pectoris is felt on the left side of the
breast bone at its lower end. This shows that the nerves of the aorta
have their centers in the same region of the spinal cord as the cutaneous
nerves of this area on the surface of the chest.

To give an illustration of the difference of mechanism of pain and
of sensation. In a railway station lavatory I recently observed a man
who absent-mindedly placed his fingers on a free-standing iron stove

432 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

to ascertain whether it was hot. It was a frosty morning in November.
Obviously, the stranger had a strong prejudice that the station-master
would not have thought it necessary to order a tire to be lighted so
early in the winter. As nearly as I could estimate, three seconds
elapsed between the touching of the stove and the ejaculation which
announced with unnecessary emphasis that the man had obtained the
information he desired. Had he, expecting to find the iron hot, directed
his attention to the modification of his skin sensation he would have
withdrawn his fingers in one seventh of a second.

One of the characteristics of incipient pain is exaltation of reflex
actions. I can not by any effort of will prevent my muscles from with-
drawing my hand from hot iron (although the resolute withdrawal of
attention from pain-modified sensations and the forcing of a conviction
that it does not exist, has in certain cases a remarkable effect in sup-
pressing pain). Equally characteristic of established pain is the inhibi-
tion of action. A whitlow abolishes all temptation to shake the finger.

Physiologists can not investigate the phenomena of pain, although
they make elaborate studies of its threshold value and of the distribu-
tion of " pain spots." It would take us too far were we to consider the
evidence of a degree of specialization in the protopathic nerves of the
skin which is held by some to justify the use of the expression " pain-
nerves," and of the allied question of neuronic conduction of incipient
or threshold pain along pain-tracts in the spinal cord.

The chief interest of the hypothesis of structural continuity through
the protopathic nervous system, with its corollary of sympathetic nu-
tritional change, lies in the explanation which it affords of the influ-
ence upon reflex action of the establishment of a pain-condition in the
axial nervous system in circumstances in which, consciousness not
being affected, there is no " pain."

Pain-condition which inhibits reflexes due to impulses which start
in the damaged organ or skin area, greatly increases in many in-
stances the conductivity of the portion of the nervous system which it
affects for impulses which do not come from the damaged part. Such
a reinforced reflex is the attack of sneezing to which many persons,
most monkeys, and some breeds of dogs are subjected when the eye is
stimulated by a bright light. When the gaze is directed towards a
bright cloud, excessive stimulation of the retina sets up a pain-condition
in the mid-brain. In the progress of evolution this portion of the
cerebrospinal axis has undergone great changes. Its sensory nerves
with their protopathic constituents have been drawn backwards into
the great bundle of the fifth nerve, which joins the hind-brain, whilst
the nerve from the retina has established a secondary connection with
the mid-brain. The mid-brain receives in consequence the protopathic
nerves of the eye. But the nose being the real tip of the body and
anterior to the eye the sensory fibers of the skin which lines it al-

SNEEZING, SEA-SICKNESS, PAIN 433

though bound up with the fifth nerve, extend forwards within the
cerebrospinal axis to the very front of the mid-brain. A remarkable
state of affairs is thus established. The mid-brain receives the pro-
topathic nerves of the eye and the root-fibers of the sensory nerves of
the nostrils. When excessive stimulation of the retina by bright light
sets up a pain-condition in the mid-brain the every-moment impulses
ascending from the nostril acquire undue importance. It is as if they
had been increased in intensity by a pinch of snuff. Their urgency
causes the reflex by which irritating substances are expelled.

Some persons merely feel a tickling in the nose when they look
at a bright light, but do not sneeze. This phenomenon is extremely in-
teresting. It proves that stimuli " adequate " to impress nerve-endings
are not necessarily " adequate " to arouse consciousness. External
forces incessantly press the button with sufficient energy to make con-
tact. At each pressure a bell rings in the chamber of consciousness,
but, if it is to attract attention, it must ring more loudly. The stimuli
which gave rise to a tickling feeling were not originated nor intensified
by the light which fell upon the retina. The mid-brain through which
impulses passed to reach the cortex was rendered more conductile.

In normal conditions no pain results from stimulation of the retina,
however severe; because the nerve-fibers which convey visual impulses
from this highly specialized sense-organ, are connected, not with the
mid-brain, but with the optic thalamus and the occipital cortex. It
would stultify so highly specialized a sense, were its news admixed
with, or modified by any influence or information not directly con-
nected with its proper function.

Sea-sickness is another illustration of the effect upon reflex action
of central agitation due to impulses which do not appear in conscious-
ness however voluminous the sensations may be of which they are the
indirect cause. The nerve which is concerned with the adjustment of
the position of the body is a constituent of the auditory nerve. It
comes from the semicircular canals. Never under any circumstances
do the impulses which originate in these organs of orientation enter
consciousness; but when a ship begins to roll, or worse, to heave, they
churn up the gray matter of the hind-brain until its conductivity is so
affected as to demonstrate their urgency beyond misunderstanding.
Root-fibers of the vagal nerve traverse the hind-brain much in the
same way as root-fibers of the fifth nerve traverse the mid-brain.
Habitual, every-moment impulses ascending from the stomach by the
vagal nerve, for the routine regulation of its purely domestic func-
tions, acquire, when the hind-brain is pain-conditioned by impulses
from the semicircular canals, a terrifying import, causing the ex-
plosion of numberless motor neurones. The stomach sneezes, with the
.zealous support of muscles of the throat, chest and abdomen. In the

VOL. LXXVI.— 30.

434 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

early stages of the malady the same cause leads, no doubt, to reflex
derangement of the secretion of the stomach involving nausea. Dis-
turbances of vision add to the victim's discomposure, and in some
small degree precipitate the stomachic catastrophe; but the effective
cause is, I take it, the agitation, by impulses from the semicircular
canals, of the gray matter of the hind-brain.

Hiccough, again, is an exaggerated reflex due to increased conduc-
tivity of gray matter. A child takes a cold drink, or he rapidly fills
his stomach with insufficiently masticated food. The ends of the vagal
nerve in the stomach are irritated. They convey an influence which
sets up the pain-condition in a portion of the gray matter through
which nerve-fibers from the lungs extend their roots towards the
nucleus of the phrenic nerve. The diaphragm sneezes.

It would carry us beyond the proper sphere of this journal were we
to consider the phenomena of inhibition of some reflexes and exagge-
ration of others which the modification of the normal conductivity of
gray matter due to the establishment of pain-conditioned foci, brings
about in hysteria, angina pectoris and many other morbid conditions.

The pain of headache is as truly "referred" as is the pain of
angina pectoris, although it must be assigned to a different category.
Medical men tell their patients that their headaches are in their scalps
and not within their skulls. The patient finds it difficult to under-
stand how this can be, when there is nothing the matter with his
scalp; but agrees with his doctor that, were it otherwise, it would be
impossible to explain the beneficial effect of a cold wet rag. Again as
in sea-sickness the vagal nerve is at the bottom of the mischief. In-
deed, in many persons, intolerable headache takes the place of sickness
on the sea. Impulses ascending the vagus agitate the gray matter of
the hind-brain. Into this pain-conditioned gray matter the nerves of
the scalp pour a constant stream of impulses. Myriads of fibers con-
necting the scalp with the brain twang ceaselessly with messages to
which, under normal circumstances, consciousness gives no heed — until
a draught of cold air or the tickling of a fly's feet accentuates a certain
group. Let the gray matter through which they pass be pain-condi-
tioned, the vibrations traveling to the cortex from innumerable spots on
the surface of the head produce a widely diffused dull ache which has no
sensational quality, because no particular group of nerve-endings is
being especially stimulated by external force. Vascular changes in the
scalp due to the same cause, the exaggeration of impulses during their
transit of the gray matter of the hind-brain, making believe that the
scalp is injured and needs more blood, react upon the nerve-endings
increasing the illusion of injury. The pain is no illusion. It is im-
possible to decide whether vascular changes are the first effect of vagal
agitation and therefore the immediate cause of pain or whether they are
merely subsidiary results of the exaggeration of sensory impulses from

SNEEZING, SEASICKNESS, PAIN 435

the scalp. A cold compress by constricting the blood-vessels reduces the
din of the multitudinous messages shouted into consciousness by the
sense-organs of the scalp. If completely successful it subdues their
chorus to its habitual murmur, too faint to secure attention. Long
continued, and therefore damaging, contraction of the muscles which
move the eye-ball, and particularly its elevator, sends through their
protopathic nerves a stream of influence to the mid-brain, with which
these nerves are connected, which causes frontal headache in just the
same way as the influence which ascends the stomach nerve.

Would doctors be more logical if they said that the headache was
in the hind-brain — the region which contains the agitated gray matter
which gives pain- value to the impulses from the scalp — or if they said it
was in the stomach ? The irritation of nerve-endings in the stomach is
the origin of the trouble, seeing that it sets up the pain-condition in
the hind-brain.

Psychologists base their science upon conspicuous sensations — sen-
sations of sufficient prominence to stand out in the field of conscious-
ness. They can do no otherwise. But the terminology in which they
have expressed the results of their analysis hampers physiology. In
the process of conduction a physiologist can distinguish no stages in-
termediate between stimulation and muscular response. In reactions
to which consciousness is adjunct, as judged by self- feeling, or, when
outside oneself by attribution of self-feeling, the nerve-current may
be termed a sensation, and sensations may or may not provoke atten-
tion. Nothing is gained by classifying the sequence of events into
stimulation, passage of impulse, sensation, perception. Such terms are'
machinomorphic. The nervous mechanism is infinitely vibrating. " I
always hear my clock stop " can have but one meaning. Every tick of
the clock produces an answering vibration of the auditory nerve, how-
ever little attention be given to the message; and attention carries with
it the idea of something which attends. Pain, as pictured in this
essay, is the interpretation which the ego gives of hitherto unperceived
sensations when they are increased in volume without definition. Pain
is developed when impulses, without informing attributes, are raised
in urgency to the level of attention.

The passage of a gall-stone from the gall-bladder to the intestine is
the cause of intense pain, " referred," in the first instance, to the skin
which overlies the liver. Yet the gall-bladder is insensitive. As sur-
geons have long been aware, the liver, stomach and other viscera may be
cut, burned, scarified, without arousing pain. Laying stress on these
two well-known facts, (1) the insensitiveness of the viscera and (2)
their liability to become the source of referred pains, James Mackenzie
has defined pain as " a disagreeable sensation due to stimulation of
some portion of the cerebrospinal nervous system and referred to the
peripheral distribution in the body wall of cerebrospinal sensory

436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

nerves." When a viseus is the seat of origin of pain the impulses which
ascend its sympathetic nerves excite the centers of sensory nerves in
the spinal cord.

The theory which I have attempted to outline in this article is laid
on the same basis, somewhat broadened. All pain is " referred " — to
the right spot, if its source be in the skin; because the skin is elabo-
rately supplied with place-defining nerves — to an organ or part, skin,
muscle, joint, which the ego, during the progress of self-investigation,
has discovered in the same segment of the body, if its source be in a
viseus.

The body is permeated with a felt-work of nerves, unprovided with
specialized nerve-endings, conveying no definite information, and in
consequence without precise distribution in the seat of consciousness.
This non-specialized system which binds the various parts of the body
together is the mechanism through which the caliber of blood-vessels,
erection of hairs, secretion of glands, contraction of the walls of ducts
and of the intestines, and many other domestic adjustments are effected.
It is also the medium through which the gray matter of the cerebro-
spinal axis is affected sympathetically with damage to the tissues. The
resultant altered conductivity of the gray matter leads to modification
of the only kind of impulses with which consciousness is concerned —
impulses which inform. We infer that the damage which is giving
rise to a feeling of pain is in the part from which the modified impulses
come.

When attempting to formulate the theory of pain it is necessary to
discard the prejudice that there need be a proportional relation be-
tween the intensity of pain and the magnitude of the physiological
changes which condition it. A heavy blow hurts more than a light one.
Yet a change which could not be detected by any piece of apparatus
in use in a physiological laboratory, if it affect the nerve-tissue of a
tooth, may give rise to more pain than is caused by a crushed limb.

Another prejudice, from which it is difficult to shake free, attributes
to the mind an innate knowledge of the topography of the body; an
innate knowledge, that is to say, of the distribution of its news-agents,
the sensory endings of nerves.

Thirdly, it is necessary to remember, when investigating the ma-
chine, that the machine is the man. It is not sufficient to design a
scheme of telephone wires requiring for its use a listening ear at its
center, the brain. The ear is a part of the machine. There is no need
to picture a system of pain nerves, carrying news of damage to an at-
tentive mind. A departure from the normal in the functioning of the
sensory apparatus is pain.

CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE 437

THE CIRCULATIONS OF THE ATMOSPHERES OF THE
EARTH AND OF THE SUN

Bt Professor FRANK H. BIGELOW

U. S. WEATHER BUREAU

The Two Causes of Circulation- on a Non-Rotating Earth

Gravity, Temperature and Pressure

IT must seem rather ambitious to attempt to treat so great a subject
as that of the circulation of the atmospheres of the earth and the
sun in a single lecture. It is true that if it should be discussed fully,
in the technical way, it would require a great many lectures, but of
course there are at the same time certain fundamental principles which
are common to all circulations that can easily be studied, and then
illustrated by the known facts of the circulation in these two atmos-
pheres. All circulation depends upon two primary causes, the first
being the attraction of gravitation, by the laws of the action of the
earth upon its atmosphere or the great body of the sun upon its atmos-
phere ; and, secondly, the difference of temperature which exists in differ-
ent parts of a given atmosphere. If we had an earth standing still in space
without rotation upon its axis and the sun were withdrawn for a consider-
able time, the atmosphere of the earth would gradually settle down into a
quiescent state, which may be described as consisting of a series
of concentric shells, each shell having a certain fixed temperature pass-
ing around the earth at the same distance from a center, as if a balloon
were floating at the same height above the surface, where will be found
the same barometric pressure and the same temperature in all latitudes
and longitudes. If the balloon falls from one shell to another it would
pass into layers of greater density, and if it rises, into layers of less
density. The boundary of each shell may be conceived as a surface
having the same force of gravity acting upon it, and this is called the
gravity level. In this case the surfaces of equal pressure or the isobars,
and the surfaces of equal temperatures, isotherms, both coincide with
their own gravity levels. Everything is quiescent and there is no cir-
culation. It is quite important to secure a clear idea of the fact that the
isobars, isotherms and gravity levels coincide wherever the layers in
the atmosphere have the same temperature. As a matter of fact the
earth is not without rotation, and the sun is shining upon it, sending
enormous masses of heat which fall upon the tropics, and it is our
problem to study the effect of this heat, at certain layers in the earth's;,
atmosphere, upon the circulation of the entire mass.

438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

To illustrate the series of causes and effects we can take a long box
or canal containing air at a certain temperature. Now if heat be ap-
plied at one end, it is evident that the air at that end is displaced in
proportion to the amount of heat. The effect of heating the bottom of
a column of air is to expand the lower layers of it and this produces
less density in each of the lower layers, while at the same time the
entire mass is lifted, provided the bottom rests upon a solid surface.
Take water in a tube, heat the lower part of the tube, and the whole
column will seem to rise in the tube, but the lower parts, being hotter,
will necessarily have a smaller density. A common case of the power
that can be produced by heat is seen in its effects in the steam engine.
Similarly, the air when heated in certain localities, as over the tropics,
begins to work practically like the steam engine. The air is expanded,
the upper part is elevated and the lower part is rarefied. Now the
effect of lifting a column which is heated in the lower part is to raise
the isobar above the gravity level which is occupied before heating, and
in the lower part the isobar is depressed below the position which it had
before it was heated. It is now readily seen that isobars, instead of
coinciding with the gravity levels, have a slope, the upper ones trending
downwards towards the cold end of the canal, and the lower one sloping
downwards to the warm end of the canal. Under the action of gravity
a liquid or a fluid which rests on a slope of any kind tends to run down
hill, just like water in a brook or a railroad train on a grade. The
part which is above the gravity levels tends to get down to it, in order
to destroy the slopes which nature abhors among its gravity levels.
The force of gravity tries to make all the temperature and pressure
levels coincide with the gravity levels, and in order to do that it is
clear that currents of circulation are set up. In this way there is an
effort to destroy the differences in temperature which have been pro-
duced by the sun's radiation and reduce them to a uniformity; that is,
a uniform temperature at the same distance above the surface of the
earth.

It becomes, therefore, a fundamental point in meteorology that the
air over the tropics is heated in the lower levels by the action of the
sun's radiation falling upon the earth, and that the air in the tropics
is also lifted above its natural gravity position; hence, in the upper
levels the air flows from the tropics towards the poles, and in the lower
levels from the poles towards the tropics. We will not attempt to trace
out this general circulation more fully until certain other conditions
have been described.

If the heat is applied at the center of a canal, instead of at one end,
the same principles operate, so that the lower part, being heated, has
its isobars depressed in the middle, while the upper part is lifted so that
the higher isobars are elevated above their original position. In this

CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE 439

case air flows from the center in both directions towards the cold ends
of the canal in the upper levels, and from the cold ends towards the
middle in the lower levels. In this figure we have therefore a general
description of the primary motion of the air on the earth taken as a
whole, by which the air flows from the tropics towards the north pole
and the south pole of the earth, respectively, in the upper levels, and
from the north pole towards the tropics and from the south pole
towards the tropics in the lower levels. It should be remarked in
passing that since the assumed canal is like a rectangular square box
in our laboratory experiments, but as a matter of fact of a wedge shape
in the earth's atmosphere, the circulation is not so easy as might be at
first assumed. The meridians at the equator, which are one degree
apart, converge to a point at the poles, so that the atmosphere when
quiescent must be thought of as made up of a series of sectors or spher-
ical wedges. Now the air in running from the tropics towards the
poles runs from a broad end to a thin end of the wedge, and, since it
can not congest, a very complex circulation is set up in order to enable
it to escape unnatural compression. There are, however, many ex-
amples in the earth's atmosphere of masses of air which are arranged
much more nearly in the form of a rectangular box canal, as shown
when a long mass of cold air is pointing north and south, with a mass
of warm air pointing from south to north and lying east of it, while
another mass of cold air pointing from north to south is placed just
east of the mass of warm air. While these masses may not in fact be
very rectangular, yet we can study their action on the supposition that
sections through them produce figures which are practically rectangular
in shape. Suppose we have a warm mass lying between the cold masses,
then the warm mass will be higher above and also lower below than the
cold masses so far as their isobars are concerned. That is to say, at
the upper surface of the sections if you want to get a mass of air at a
certain density it will be necessary to go higher up in the atmosphere
over the warm mass than over either of the undisturbed cold masses
lying on the side, and furthermore, if one wants to get a mass of air
of the same density as that lying on the under side of the cold section,
it will be necessary to go down lower in the warmer mass, that is,
nearer the surface of the ground, in order to find it. Applying now
our principles of circulation, the action of gravity will tend to draw the
upper part of the warm mass over upon the cold masses to either side, and
thus tend to destroy the inequality in the elevation of the upper isobar.
Similarly the cold masses will tend to flow under the warm mass from
either side, and remove the discontinuity in the positions of the lower iso-
bars. Not only do these masses of warm and cold air tend to overflow and
underflow sidewise, but they seek to move, as it were, along the merid-
ians, northward and southward at the same time ; hence the long currents

440 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of circulating air are naturally produced so that the warm and cold begin
to interflow among one another, as a matter of fact in very complicated
curves, the purpose of this being to restore the coincidence between the
isobars, isotherms and gravity levels, which had been disturbed primar-
ily by the heat of the sun falling upon the tropics of the earth. Hav-
ing considered thus briefly the general principles which would induce
circulation on a non-rotating earth, we can take up somewhat more
fully the effect produced upon this same circulation by the fact of the
earth's rotation; that is to say, we can discuss the circulation upon a
rotating earth.

The Gyrations in the Atmosphere set up on a Rotating Earth
It will be desirable to define a few terms which occur in circulation
that will enable us to speak more briefly of the subject in its advanced
stages. Rotation will be confined to the motion of a mass of matter, as
the sun or the earth, which is revolving about its center. The rotation
of the earth takes place in 24 hours; the sun rotates on its axis in 27
days more or less. Revolution is the motion of a mass about a center
from which it is separated by a radius, as the revolution of the moon
about the earth, or the earth about the sun, or of an ideal particle of
the atmosphere revolving about a center at a variable distance. Gyra-
tion is a more complicated motion. It consists of the revolution of a
mass about its center at a given radius while the center itself is moving
in some direction. If the moon revolves about the earth and the earth
revolves about the sun, each particle of the moon will describe a series
of gyrations forming a looped curve which describes this motion. If a
particle of air in a tornado revolves about its axis while the axis is
moving over the surface of the earth, the particle will gyrate or form a
looped curve relatively to the surface of the earth. Vortex motion is
more complex still. A vortex may be described as consisting of a
series of concentric tubes. The motion of the tube is such that the
inner tubes revolve about the axis faster than the outer tubes. A par-
ticle of an inner tube has a certain velocity which is greater than the
velocity on an outer tube, but the velocity of the inner tube multiplied
by its radius is equal to the velocity of the outer tube multiplied by its
radius. If a particle moves from an outer tube to an inner tube in a
vortex it can do so only by increasing its velocity of rotation. If the
particle moves from the outer tube towards the inner tube and at the
same time ascends along the axis, the particle will move in a helix. The
helix may be contracting, with greater angular velocity, or expanding,
with less angular velocity. In the latter case the particle moves from
the inner tube to the outer tube of a vortex. A torque is a complicated
motion which applies to a mass taken as a whole. The earth is cov-
ered by a shell of air and its actual motion may be described as a

CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE 441

torque. Take a bundle of paper rolled up about a center line and grasp
it in the two ends. Xow twist the roll so that the ends move in oppo-
site directions. At some point in the middle there will be no motion
of the particles, while the upper particles of the paper move in one
direction and the lower particles move in the opposite direction. In the
case of the earth's atmosphere, in each hemisphere, there are two great
currents each constituting a torque. In the northern hemisphere the
northern current moves eastward and is called the eastward drift. In
the northern tropic the great current moves westward and is called the
westward drift. There are really two torques in the earth's atmosphere,
one belonging to each hemisphere, so that in the tropics, as a whole,
the movement is westward, while north of the Tropic of Cancer it is
eastward, and south of the Tropic of Capricorn it is also eastward.
Instead of the atmosphere running from the tropics towards the poles
in the meridional wedges, as a matter of fact it circulates in these
great torques. In the northern hemisphere north of the latitude of
33° there is a great eastward drift and between the latitudes of 33°
there is a great westward drift. Along the latitude of 33° approxi-
mately there is no general motion either east or west, and this corre-
sponds with the part of the paper bundle which does not get twisted
when the upper and lower ends are moved in opposite directions.

When a current of air moves in any direction it tends to break up
into two volutes or spiral branches. If one takes a dandelion stem and
splits it along the center, the two pieces will curl over in opposite
directions and form beautiful right and left handed spirals. If a
warm current of air ascends from the ground and forms a cloud, it can
be seen that the middle of the cloud is ascending while the edges are
descending in a gentle spiral of an umbelliform shape. If a southerly
current of air moves northward it will tend to open up in two branches
to the right and left. If a northerly current moves southward it will
tend to open up in two branches to the right and left. The left-hand
branch of the southerly current and the right-hand branch of the
northerly current will tend to interlock or intercurl. The great cur-
rent in the tropics which moves westward, instead of proceeding due
west around the earth, tends to break up into two great volutes, one
curling into the northern hemisphere, and one curling into the southern
hemisphere. The word curl has several meanings, the first is that in
which it has already been used ; namely, a spiral rolling about a center.
The second is connected with vortex motion and is really a name for a
part of the helix action. If a mass of air moves in a spiral towards a
center, it is evident that it can not proceed long in this way without
some provision for its escape. If it moves in a spiral on a given plane
it must begin to escape along a line perpendicular to that plane. If a
circle is taken as a boundary in a given plane, and a certain mass of

442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

air moves into this circle on spirals, then there will be a certain
amount of the air moving perpendicular to the plane of the circle.
This whole action of spiral movement inward and vertical motion from
the plane is called a curl and it depends upon vortex laws. In a tor-
nado or hurricane the curl is illustrated by air which ascends as a cur-
rent while the air is moved inward along certain spirals. It is also il-
lustrated in electricity and magnetism where an electric current pass-
ing around the helix surrounds a magnetic field perpendicular to the
sections of the tube along which the electric current is flowing. Elec-
tric currents and magnetic fields are also related to each other by the
law of the curl, and this evidently goes back to the idea of the helix
or vertical spiral.

"We may now resume our discussion of the circulation of the air on
the rotating earth, repeating to some extent what has been said in de-
fining these special terms. Take a globe and in the tropics place an
arrow pointing westward between the equator and the latitude of 33°
both north and south. To the north of 33° place an arrow pointing
eastward, and in the southern hemisphere to the south of 33° place an
arrow also pointing eastward. These represent in a general way the
action of the atmosphere as consisting of two great whirls in each hem-
isphere, thus composing a torque on a hemispherical scale. Draw a ring
around the earth in latitude 33°, cutting out a section of the atmos-
phere. If this ring moves northward it will evidently contract, and to
have the same angular momentum, that is, mass energy, it must rotate
faster about the axis as it approaches the pole. This constitutes in a
way an illustration of vortex action whereby a particle passes from an
outer to an inner tube and consequently revolves faster about the axis.
Take another section south of latitude 33°, cutting out a ring of at-
mosphere. If this ring moves southward it must rotate slower because
it is moving to a region at greater distance from the earth's axis if it
is to retain the same momentum or energy of mass in motion. The
importance of these great torques in the earth's atmosjjhere can be seen
from this general fact that while the weight of the earth's atmosphere
taken as a whole is very great, and is, generally speaking, in vigorous
motion, yet the currents as a whole are so interbalanced that the mass
energy moving eastward is exactly equal to the mass energy moving
westward when the whole atmosphere is summed up. This is proved
by the fact that the rotation of the earth on its axis does not change
by the smallest fraction of a second from century to century, or at least
astronomers have been unable to detect any change in the period of the
earth's rotation so long as observations have been continued. If this
balance of eastward and westward momentum were not perfect, it would
immediately be shown by a change in the period of the rotation of the
earth upon its axis.

CIRCULATION OF TEE ATMOSPHERE 443

The picture which is presented by these ideal rings starting from
latitude 33° in each hemisphere and moving respectively towards the
poles and towards the equator is not very complete, because the rings
do not continue to move as a whole with an increase or decrease of
velocity. If we examine the actual velocity of the air in a given lati-
tude, as over the city of Washington or again in the tropics, as over
the Barbadoes, we shall find the following facts: At the ground in
"Washington the wind averages about six meters per second eastward;
at an elevation of 2,000 meters the eastward velocity is about eighteen
meters per second; at 4,000, it is about twenty-four meters per second;
at 6,000, it is about twenty-eight meters per second; and at 10,000, it
is about thirty-four meters per second.

Above this level the air moves eastward at a rate of about forty
meters per second; that is, ninety miles per hour. That is to say the
eastward velocity or the eastward drift increases upwards with the dis-
tance from the ground. Now these velocities are maintained through-
out the year with certain seasonal variations, though, of course, they
are at times disturbed by certain local circulations as when storms dis-
turb the normal movements of the air. The gyrating rings then which
we first considered may be more accurately described as sheets of air
parallel with the earth's surface which flow over each other at differ-
ent speeds, the upper sheets flowing faster than the lower sheets. This
may be practically seen in the cirrus clouds which are higher than the
cumulus clouds, and move eastward as a whole with twice as great
velocity. It is evident that we have here another type of vortex mo-
tion. What we first considered in the course of our definition was a
vortex in which the inner rings rotate faster than the outer rings, but
in this case of the torque in the northern hemisphere, for example, we
have the upper rings moving faster than the lower rings. This ap-
parent inconsistency may be reconciled by assuming that the axis of
the upper rings instead of being a line, as in the other case, is really a
spherical surface high above the ground outside the earth's surface, to
which the actual motion has to be referred. Mathematically considered
such a spherical sheet is in certain aspects equivalent to a line so far
as the reference of motion is concerned; that is, the motion may be a
maximum along a spherical sheet in one case, or a maximum around
an axial line in the other case.

Turning now to the tropics and examining the motion of the air
in a vertical section just as we did in the north temperate zone, we find
that the westward motion is distributed very differently. At the sur-
face the westward motion is greatest, and it decreases gradually on
going upwards from the ground till at 10,000 meters or so it has de-
creased to zero, and above that region an eastward motion sets in, grad-
ually increasing with the height. The westward branch of the torque

444 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

then, is strongest at the surface and decreases upwards. The eastward
branch of the torque is a minimum at the surface and increases up-
wards. We have several times referred to the latitude of 33° north and
south of the equator as separating the eastward branch from the west-
ward branch of the torque, but it has now been indicated that at about
10,000 meters above the tropics the westward branch changes into an
eastward branch of the torque. As a matter of fact the surface which
separates the westward branch from the eastward branch spans the
tropics in an arch resting on the ground at 33° of latitude and crossing
the equator at 10,000 or 12,000 meters above it. Beneath this arch the
western torque is included with its maximum motion at the bottom;
above this arch with a broad base in each temperate zone rises the
eastward torque in which the velocity increases upward and gradually
overspreads the tropics in the higher elevations, the northern branch
reaching southward, and the southern branch reaching northward in a
comparatively thin shell till they touch somewhere above the equator.
All this circulation therefore constitutes a complex vortex which can be
referred to distinct mathematical laws. If the atmosphere were willing
to circulate in this simple manner it would not be difficult to adapt our
mathematical analysis to it, but unfortunately, instead of moving so
that the branches of this torque remain intact and retain their theo-
retical individuality, there is a continual interchange or passage of
currents from one branch to the other in a rather irregular way which
it will be necessary more closely to examine.

The Circulation on the Bough Kotating Earth
The circulation which we have been describing might possibly be
set up on a perfectly smooth globe having the size and shape of the
earth, but the presence of continents and ocean areas, the mountain
ranges stretching north and south on the American and east and west
on the Euro-Asiatic continent, facilitate the breaking of these theoretical
branches of the torque into great circulating masses which interplay
among each other. It is evident that the Eocky Mountains of North
America and the Cordilleras of South America tend to stop the west-
ward currents in the tropics and the eastward currents in the temper-
ate zones. On the other hand, the Himalaya range in Asia tends to
hold the westward current in the tropical zone and the eastward cur-
rent in the temperate zone. There are thus certain places, that is, cer-
tain longitudes, where the currents tend to curl from the tropics into
the temperate zones. A conspicuous instance of this occurs in the
United States, where there is a continual outpouring of warm air from
the Gulf of Mexico over the Mississippi and central valleys of the
United States. While the trade winds in the tropics tend to blow
from the northeast, it is known that immense masses of air move

CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE 445

from the tropics over the United States from the south, quite
contrary to the general principle; and similarly, though not so
conspicuously, a case is found in South America and south Africa.
On the contrary, the warm air in the lower levels over the Indian
Ocean, whose winds are called monsoons, simply beats upon the great
mountain ranges to the northward of India without penetrating the
temperate zone in Siberia. In this way certain great circulations
called centers of action form in each hemisphere. There is one over the
middle Atlantic Ocean; another over the middle Pacific Ocean of the
northern hemisphere; and there are other corresponding centers of
action in the southern hemisphere. These are especially well marked
during the summer time when the ocean is cool and the land air is
warm. In the winter time the tendency is to form centers of action
over the land areas instead of over the ocean areas, but the process is
much more irregular, and in the United States it is exhibited chiefly
by a succession of cold waves which traverse the United States from
west to east. Eeferring to the center of action over the middle Atlantic
Ocean in summer, we know that the winds near the American side are
from the south or southwest. On the Atlantic Ocean in latitude 35°
to 40° north the winds are blowing eastward, and in latitudes 25° to
30° they are blowing westward; on the European side they are blowing
from the northwest and north. The consequence is that the United
States is bathed during the summer with warm, moist winds in the
eastern half, and Avith warm, dry winds in the western half of the con-
tinent. In Europe, on the contrary, the northerly winds prevail, and it
follows that the American continent is warm during the summer while
Europe is cool, and this is the cause of the annual migration of tourists
from America to Europe instead of from Europe to America. The con-
trol of the climate of Europe by the American Gulf Stream is a myth.
As a matter of fact the European climate is controlled by the great
currents of circulation referred to these centers of action.

More generally, warm masses of air find their way from the
tropics into the temperate zones by very irregular paths, and cold
masses find their way from the northern latitudes into the temperate
zones by very irregular paths. A similar statement applies to the cir-
culations of the southern hemisphere. The disturbances in the general
circulation which are produced by the land and ocean areas make it
well-nigh impossible to reduce meteorology to any simple scientific
system. The irregularities produced by the interaction of these warm
and cold masses are so great that the problem of forecasting seems to
bid defiance to any clear classification. The eastward drift over the
United States is, of course, the basis of any possible forecasts, and the
irregularities caused by the interpenetration of the warm and cold
masses, one after the other under the action of gravitation, produce

446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

what we call our storms, but technically are called cyclones and anticy-
clones. It would be beyond my province to attempt to analyze the tech-
nical side of the theories of cyclones and anticyclones, and yet the
subject of circulation would be so incomplete without at least alluding
to the prominent attempts which have been made to solve these great
questions that I shall venture a few remarks along this line.

The circulation of the air is classified as general and local, " gen-
eral " applying to the whole hemisphere, of which some description
has been given, and " local " as applying to the individual storms and
their accompaniments. The local storms are known as cyclones and
anticyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes and water spouts. They are all
features or phases of the circulation and can be referred back to a
few simple mathematical laws. Two attempts were made to solve the
question of the general circulation, but the year 1896-7, which repre-
sents a new era in meteorology, when the international cloud observa-
tions were established under the leadership of Dr. Hildebrandsson,
marks an epoch in the theory of the subject. I refer to those of Ferrel
and Oberbeck regarding the general circulation. They had one picture
in mind, namely, that of the simple canal, heated at one end, to which
allusion was made in the early paragraphs of this lecture. They con-
ceived the air to flow from the tropics northward towards the poles in
the upper levels, and from the poles towards the eqrator in the lower
levels, the northward current being separated from the southward cur-
rent by a neutral plane along which there was no motion. Ferrel dis-
cussed the equations of motion adapted to the general hemisphere, and
threw considerable light upon the subject. He conceived the rings of
parallel 33° to move towards the poles with increasing velocity, and he
made serious efforts to account for the fact that the velocity in higher
latitudes is comparatively moderate instead of excessively great, as his
equations demanded. If Ferrel derived an excessive velocity near the
poles, Oberbeck, as a result of his complex integration, derived an ex-
cessive velocity in the upper levels over the tropics. Neither of these
authors accounted for the reversal of direction from west to east at a
moderate elevation, as 10,000 meters over the tropics, nor did they at-
tempt to take into account the great irregularities in the circulation in
an east and west direction, which we have described in discussing the
centers of action. The result of the work of the Weather Bureau in
the international cloud observations in the year 1896-7, was to destroy
this theory of a neutral plane separating the upper northward current
from the lower southward current. In place of that it was explained
that these interchanging currents, instead of passing over each other
at different levels, really interpenetrate and pass by each other on the
same level ; that is to say, warm air moves from the tropics towards the
poles in all levels, and cold air from the poles towards the tropics in

CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE 447

all levels. The first theory can be illustrated by sliding the fingers of
the smooth hands over each other in opposite directions, while the
second theory can be illustrated by sliding the fingers between one
another on the same level; the fingers of the one hand will represent
the warm currents and the fingers of the other hand the cold currents.
This new view is really revolutionary because it renders inapplicable
the integrations which were attempted by previous authors. Unfor-
tunately the problem has become in this way so very complicated, that
no one of sufficient ability has yet been found to carry out the neces-
sary mathematical analysis with anything like fullness or precision.
At present meteorologists are engaged, by means of balloon and kite
ascensions, in determining the nature of the currents from the south
and from the north which prevail in different localities. Europe has
already done a great deal of work in this direction, and the United
States has recently made a beginning. A few soundings have also been
made over the Atlantic Ocean. Generally speaking, however, this is a
great field of research which it will require much money and time to
adequately complete. The circulation of the atmosphere, therefore, is
a great and fascinating problem for future development, and indeed
it may require more than one generation of scientists to bring it into
subjection.

We have described the cold and warm currents as interpenetrating
on the same levels like the fingers of the two opposite hands. Gravi-
tation takes these warm and cold masses and seeks to make them inter-
penetrate yet more intimately, so that the warm masses will become
more cooled, and the cold masses more warmed, and the isobars and
isotherms coincide with each other and the gravity levels. It is a
curious fact that masses of warm and cold air having any size are
exceedingly reluctant to mix with one another; that is to say, the
interchange of heat is a molecular process which naturally goes on
slowly, and in accomplishing it, in the atmosphere, a great deal of
energy must be expended. The great masses are first torn into shreds
along their edges, and are gradually fritted away in the local cyclonic
circulation. The energy that is felt in storms of any kind is merely
an illustration of this thermodynamic process of interchanging tem-
perature.

The Local Circulations

Historically speaking, the year 1896-7 marks the beginning of a
period of transition in the history of local as well as general theoretical
meteorology. There have been two schools of meteorology: one Amer-
ican, whose head is Ferrel, and one German, of which Guldberg and
Mohn, Sprung, Oberbeck, Margules and Pockels are leaders. These
two schools agreed in one particular, namely, in that they assumed that
the cyclonic and anticyclonic circulations are symmetrical about a center.

448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The first break in this theory was also made by Professor Bigelow in
the cloud work of the international year, when it was shown that the
distribution of warm and cold masses in the anticyclone was not
symmetrical but asymmetrical. In the symmetrical theory the center
of motion coincides with the center of heat or center of cold; in the
asymmetrical theory the center of motion is located near the edge of
the warm and cold masses. The actual cyclone is warm on the one
side and cold on the other side of the center, and likewise the anti-
cyclone is cold on one side of it and warm on the other side of it. The
northerly cold current, therefore, has a cyclonic center on the east side
of it and an anticyclonic center on the west side of it, while the south-
erly warm current has an anticyclonic center on the east side of it and
a cyclonic center on the west side of it. These differences are also
fundamental. Ferrel treated the equation of motion by one solution,
quite similar to that which he applied to the general circulation of the
hemisphere, and he found the vortical torque for the cyclone clockwise
on the outer part, anticlockwise on the inner part, with complex lines
of flow connecting them. The theoretical difficulties are quite obvious
when we consider that such a vortex as Ferrel worked out is applicable
only to a fixed mass of air; for example, put a mass of water in a
cylindrical vessel and sprinkle sawdust in it so that the stream lines
can be followed by the eye. If now heat is applied to the center it will
boil along the stream lines indicated by Ferrer's vortex, and especially
so if the glass vessel is rotating on its axis. This would make our
cyclones storms in which the same mass of air is boiling over and over
again along these fixed lines, whereas we have shown that the cyclonic
circulation is simply built up by currents of air which are streaming
through it in a very irregular way, and, anticipating the conclusion
which we have reached in our research, it may be asserted that the
cyclone, besides being asymmetrical, conforms only loosely to any known
type of theoretical vortex. The German school of meteorologists also
discussed the symmetrical vortex, but by another mathematical process.
There are two other solutions of the second equation of motion, one
of which was assumed to apply to the outer part and the other to the
inner part of a cyclone. The solution for the outer part has no vertical
current, while the circulation for the inner has a vertical current, quite
like that in the vortical helix, such as may be illustrated by the ordinary
tornado tube. Many attempts were made to join the outer part and
inner part in a single set of equations, the results conforming very
loosely to the observed facts in nature regarding the velocity and
angular directions. It is not too much to say that neither of these
systems of solution will find more than a very small application in
practical meteorology. Ferrel discussed the three equations of motion,
one by one, giving certain practical inferences which he found more

CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE

449

or less illustrated in nature, but he never succeeded in uniting the three
equations in one comprehensive system. The Germans approached more
nearly a satisfactory solution, but as already stated, the assumption that
cyclones and anticyclones are symmetrical, respectively, about warm and
cold centers, is no longer tenable. "We have already made the assertion
that the asymmetrical cyclone, as it occurs in nature, does not conform
satisfactorily to any homogeneous vortex. It will be possible to show
how this is by giving a few details regarding waterspouts, tornadoes
and hurricanes, which will lead up to this conclusion.

Local Vortices in the Earth's Atmosphere

A large waterspout was seen at Cottage City, Mass., in the Vineyard
Sound, on August 19, 1896, about eight miles distant from Cottage
City. Fortunately a series of good photographs was secured of the
waterspout and its cloud, which together with the meteorological data,
have enabled us to compute the dimensions and the velocities of motion
in all parts of it by means of the vortex formulas. It happens that the
same cloud developed two types of vortex, at short intervals of time
between them. One is the funnel-shaped vortex and the other is the
dumbbell-shaped vortex. Fig. 1 gives an illustration of a section

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through the funnel-shaped vortex, and shows the boundary of the sev-
eral vortex tubes. The horizontal dimensions are multiplied by ten
for the sake of showing the relative dimensions more plainly which
exist from one tube to another. It will be noted that the distances
between the successive tubes get smaller and smaller in a geometric
ratio towards the axis. They concentrate at the lower part, and expand
so that the lines become parallel to a horizontal plane in a region at

VOL. LXXVI. — 31.

45°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the level corresponding to the base of the cloud. Fixing attention upon
any one of these tubes, as the first or outer one, the theory indicates that
a particle of air which is lying on that tube in the lowest level continues
throughout its motion to follow the same tube. This particle rotates
in a spiral about a central axis gradually rising from the ocean towards
the cloud, and, rotating in larger and larger spirals, at last it flows out

from the axis parallel to the surface
of the cloud itself. On this outer
tube the particle at the sea is moved
with a velocity of 22 meters per
second and gradually rises upwards
and changes its velocity through
20, 18, 15, 12, 7, 5, 2 meters per
second quite near the surface of the
cloud, and finally the velocity falls
to zero. At the sea level the velocity
is in a circular direction around the
axis ; at the cloud level it is moving
in a radial direction directly away
from the axis. On the outer tube
having a large radius the velocities
as already given are small, but on
the same levels on tube No. 5 quite
near the axis the velocities on the
same levels become, respectively,
182, 159, 136, 110, 80, 44, 31, 14
meters per second near the cloud
level, and they finally run out to
zero. With such enormous veloci-
ties as 182 meters per second at the
sea level, the causes of the turmoil
and destructive effects which are
always found in the case of waterspouts and tornadoes passing over the
land are readily appreciated. Illustrations of the destructive effects of
tornadoes are commonly accessible. The purpose of such a vortex is to
lift a mass of air, as in a suction pump, from the surface of the ocean
to the cloud, and in this case it is computed that 2,468 cubic meters of
air are lifted in each second through each section of this vortex tube.
These natural lifting pumps are evidently of great efficiency.

The dumbbell-shaped vortex operates on substantially the same prin-
ciples, though the details are different. In this vortex the air begins
at the sea level to flow inwards towards the axis in a spiral which con-
tracts up to about 500 or 600 meters above the surface of the sea, and
then it begins to expand as in the funnel-shaped vortex. The dumbbell-

Fig. 2. Dumbbell-shaped Vortex.

CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE

45*

shaped vortex is really composed of two funnel-shaped vortices, the
lower one pointing upward and the upper one pointing downward,
meeting half way between the two planes of reference. This vortex is
really a more efficient lifting pump than the other one just described,
and it is found that 16,452 cubic meters of air are moved upwards
through each tube per second, so that the dumbbell-shaped vortex is
carrying 6.7 times as much air upward as the funnel-shaped vortex.
A careful examination of this dumbbell-shaped vortex at Cottage City
shows that the lowest sections are not fully developed. The outward
curvature of the tube is plainly shown on the picture, but at sea level it
is cut off or truncated by the friction of the tube against the water of
the ocean. The cutting off of these vortices at some section above their
theoretical lowest plane seems to play an important part in practical
meteorology.

On May 27, 1896, a violent tornado of large dimensions passed over
the city of St. Louis, causing great destruction in Lafayette Park and
thence to the bridge over the Mississippi River. The enormous
power of the forces which accompanied this vortex is shown on many
pictures which were secured at that time. Large trees were twisted off

flfi tap' Z -/too -Te'efs

iSOO '«<•» >3QQ

Fig. 3. Truncated Dumbbell-shaped Vortex.

and stripped of their branches ; buildings were overturned and destroyed
in every conceivable way; heavy iron girders and stone work of the
bridge were destroyed; and in short almost limitless powers seem to
have been at the disposal of this great vortex. Fig. 3 shows a section
of this vortex, the relative distance apart of the tubes, and the part
which has been cut off or truncated at about one third of the distance
from its lower plane of reference, several hundred meters below the
surface of the ground. It has been shown that this St. Louis tornado
was about 47 times as efficient as the large Cottage City waterspout in
its lifting power, and that at the surface of the ground it developed
somewhere between 150 and 250 meters per second; that is, 340 to 560
miles per hour. While it is not probable that these enormous theoret-

452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

ical velocities can develop near the center of a great tornado on account
of the retarding effects of friction where the wind moves over a rough
region like a city, yet it does show where the enormous power resides
that is always observed in these conditions. It might develop, there-
fore, a pressure of 5,000 or 6,000 pounds per square foot. This is, of
course, very much more than would be necessary to make all the de-
struction that has been noted.

Hurricanes such as are observed in the neighborhood of the West
Indies, and the typhoon, which is the name of a hurricane in the
neighborhood of the Philippine Islands and China Sea, are truncated
dumbbell-shaped vortices built on exactly the same principles as the
St. Louis tornado, only they are very much larger in their dimensions.

Fig. 4. Half Section of a Hurricane Vortex.

The tornado generally ends at a level something like 1,200 meters above
the ground, and it is usually much less than half a mile in diameter.
The hurricane, however, is probably 12,000 meters thick, and it extends
several hundred miles in diameter. This makes the hurricane a very
thin mass of air of broad extent, as compared with the word tornado,
which is a relatively high mass of air and narrow in extent. We can
construct the velocities in the hurricane from our meteorological data,
and show that the winds blow at a certain angle, which conforms to the
section that cuts off or truncates the vortex at a certain plane. These
angles should be more fully explained. On the lowest plane the wind
flows radially and directly towards the axis; on the uppermost plane it
flows radially and directly away from the axis ; at a middle section, half
way between these two planes, it flows in circles tangentially around the
axis. In passing from the lower plane to the upper plane the wind
gradually makes a larger angle with the radius; first 10°, then 20°,
then 30°, and so on up to 90° at the middle plane half way up the tube;
then 100°, 110°, and so on up to 180°, which represents the wind
flowing radially away from the axis. If now a vortex is truncated at
a certain plane, all the winds on that plane will make a given angle
with the radius. If a truncated plane is one third the distance up
the axis then the wind will make an angle of 60° with the radius; that
is, it will blow in at an angle of 30° from a circle. This is about the
angle of the wind which observers have recorded in the case of hurri-
canes, and hence it is proper to infer that the truncated section should
be drawn at about the distance indicated from the lower plane.

The ocean cyclone is a mass of air still larger than the hurricane,

CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE 453

circulating on practically the same vortical laws, but unfortunately it
shows indications of not being able to follow the law strictly, especially
in the inner portions of it. The outer part of a strong ocean cyclone,
where the barometer drops to 28 inches of pressure at the center, is
very much like an enormous hurricane in its formation, but near the
center the angles and the velocities begin to break away from the pure
vortex law. This is probably due to the great extent of the wind areas,
and consequently the congestion, and to the fact that the ocean cyclone
is not deep enough, although it may be 3 or 4 miles high, to carry out
fully the requirements of so large a vortex of a pure type. It is known
that hurricanes are vortices which are 6 or 7 miles deep. The large
ocean cyclone is probably not more than 4 miles deep, and the great
land cyclone is rarely more than 2 or 3 miles deep.

The land cyclones in the United States conform to the pure vortex
law less perfectly than does the ocean cyclone. The pressure in the
land cyclone usually stops at about 29 inches near the center. Its
depth is usually about 2 or 3 miles. It may cover a diameter of
2,000 miles. These dimensions are evidently unfavorable for the devel-
opment of a pure vortex. Furthermore, the distribution of the tem-
perature in the land cyclone is entirely different from that in the pure
hurricane, and this too prevents the land cyclone from developing accord-
ing to the perfect law. Furthermore, the cyclones of the temperate
zone develop in the lower levels of the great eastward drift. In these
lower levels the eastward velocity of the drift is not very high; some-
thing like ten meters per second. At the height of two or three miles
the eastward drift is something like twenty to forty meters per second.
It becomes evident, then, that a vortex which develops in the lower
levels, from any set of causes, must lift its head into a rapidly flowing
stream of air, and this necessarily will tend to break down the intruding
head by stripping off portions of it and detaching the upper portions of
the vortex from the lower portions. Now a vortex can not develop
except as a complete individual. If it is intruded upon by cutting off
the lower section, as in the hurricane over the ocean, or by the upper
sections thrusting themselves into the stream of the rapidly flowing
eastward drift, it is evident that this is a sufficient cause for the par-
tial destruction of the vortex system. In the theoretical vortex, above
the middle section, the wind has an outward component increasing with
the height, as already explained. Below this section it has in every
cyclone an inward component. Now as a result of the cloud observa-
tions which were undertaken by the U. S. Weather Bureau during the
international cloud year 1896-7, in which between 6,000 and 7,000
observations were made by means of theodolites upon the direction of
motion in the different cloud levels, it was found that there was an
inward component over the cyclones ia all levels from the ground up

454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

to four or five miles high. The strongest inward component was in
the strata cumulus levels about two miles above the ground. Above
this level and below it there was a radial inward velocity of a certain
value corresponding to each level. There was no clear indication that
the inward component in the lower levels reversed to an outward com-
ponent in the upper levels, and it looked as if the intruding vortex of
the lower levels did not succeed in reaching the middle plane where
theoretically the outward component begins to develop. It looked as
if this vortical system was so stripped of its natural features, by the
action of its intrusion into the eastward drift, that only the lower half
of the vortex really survived, and that there was an insistent struggle
of the rotating cyclone with this eastward drift for the mastery. In a
word, the upper sections of the vortex were stripped bare, and they
gradually died out at the height of three or four miles within the east-
ward drift. What remains then is a set of stream lines in the lower
levels which have certain features in harmony with the pure vortex
system, though only roughly conforming to them, and which in the
upper levels is broken down into a very imperfect kind of vortex.
It should be said in passing that it is very difficult, on account of the
prevailing clouds which occur in the cyclones of the United States, to
get satisfactory measures of the cloud motions in the upper levels.
Cumulus clouds develop strongly below the one-mile level, and above
them it is possible to get the cloud motions in the higher levels only
through the more or less occasional rifts in the lower cloud sheets. It
is therefore very desirable that an extensive campaign of theodolite
measurements of cloud motions in the upper levels of cyclones be insti-
tuted, in order to carry out much more fully the details of the discus-
sion which have been suggested in this fundamental research.

Temperature Distribution

Having now described the general and local circulations in the
temperate and tropical zones, it is important to make some further
remarks regarding the distribution of temperature in those regions,
also including the distribution of temperature in the sun itself. The
circulations which take place are accompanied by certain changes of
temperature in a vertical direction, called temperature gradients, which
are characteristic of them. If a cubic centimeter of air at the sea level
is lifted up to higher levels, so that it cools simply by the expansion of
its own mass, and there is no mixture of warmer or colder air with it
from the outside, then the temperature will fall 9.87° Centigrade for
every 1,000 meters. Now it is found by balloon observations that the
temperature gradients in different regions do not conform to this fun-
damental rule, which is called the law of adiabatic expansion. In the
tropics in the lower levels this rate is very nearly approached, but there

CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE 455

is a considerable deviation from it in the upper levels. In the tem-
perate zones the normal vertical temperature gradient is only about
5.40° Centigrade, though it may be considerably more or considerably
less according to the circumstances. It may be generally said that,
except in restricted regions, the air does not cool as fast in going up-
wards as it should if it were caused by mere vertical expansion. The
upper levels of the air are too warm; warmer than they should be if
that law prevailed. In the temperate zones they are very much too
warm, and that is why the vertical gradient is less than it should be
according to that law. The fact is that the warm masses of air which
flow from the tropics towards the poles retain their heat above what
they should have for the given latitude, and in that way the upper
levels of the atmosphere are maintained at a considerably higher heat
than would be expected. When the air has once cooled to about 70°
below zero, Centigrade, it seems disinclined to cool much further, and
in the levels from 12,000 to 16,000 meters high there has been dis-
covered a tendency for the air to be somewhat warmer than it is in
the levels below, say from 8,000 to 12,000 meters high. It is generally
thought that this phenomenon is due to radiation in some of its effects,
but it is still a subject of discussion. If we should assume as the
average vertical gradient for the entire atmosphere a rate of about 7°
Centigrade per 1,000 meters then we should find that the temperatures
in the tropics fall off too fast, and in the temperate zones too slow to
conform to this average gradient. Now the mathematical law shows
that if the lower levels of the atmosphere are relatively too warm for
the upper levels there will be a westward drift as in the tropics, and if
the upper levels are too warm relatively for the lower levels there will
be an eastward drift as in the temperate zones. Speaking a little more
broadly still, in order to avoid discontinuity, that is to say, changes by
jumps in the atmosphere as regards the barometric pressure at the
different levels, since the warm air has less density than the cold air,
it follows that the warm air must move faster over the surface of the
earth than does the cold air. Hence it is that in the tropics the air is
too warm for its altitude, and it must move off faster than it otherwise
would in the tropics. The westward drift in the lower levels compen-
sates for this excessive temperature, and in the upper levels of the
temperate zones the excess of motion compensates for the higher tem-
perature. We find exactly the same principle working in the formation
of hurricanes and tornadoes. Hurricanes develop in the northern hemi-
sphere in the late summer and early autumn, and this is the season when
the cool air of the northern latitudes begins to spread southward
towards the equator as the sun begins its southward march into the
southern hemisphere. At first the cool air flows over the warm air in
the higher levels. This in a general way increases the vertical tern-

456 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

perature gradient, and induces a more lively movement in the lower
levels. In certain localities, in order to keep up the vertical continuity
of barometric pressure, the warm air slides out radially in all directions,
where conditions are right, and this movement first induces the vortical
action in the upper sections of the hurricane which is gradually propa-
gated, when it is highly developed, to the surface. Tornadoes are
formed in somewhat a similar way, but in this case the cold and warm
masses lie side by side on the same level, though there is a tendency
for the cold air to overflow the warm air. The sliding action of the
warm air against the cold sheet is the first incentive to the curling-up
process which culminates in a tornado. In the ordinary cyclones the
temperature distribution is such that the vertical gradient is about the
same in the cold as in the warm mass, taken separately, though there
are moderate variations in the different quadrants surrounding the high
and the low areas of pressure. The warm air then overflows the cold
air in two branches, and the cold air underflows the warm air in two
branches. This tends to induce vortical action, but as already ex-
plained it is retarded, and the development is very imperfect on account
of its intrusion into the eastward drift.

While our knowledge of the distribution of velocity and tempera-
ture in the atmosphere of the sun is much less perfect than it is of the
atmosphere of the earth, we have yet definite knowledge regarding
several important features. Apparently the sun's atmosphere does not
operate in the same way that we have found to be the method of the
circulation of the atmosphere of the earth. It is quite easy to see that
these two atmospheres should work in a very different way. The at-
mosphere of the earth is really a thin shell of air heated in one zone
by the solar radiation falling upon it, and then this thin shell simply
slides around over the surface of the earth according to the laws which
have been described. In the case of the atmosphere of the sun we have
no definite knowledge as to its depth. It is proper to infer, from the
law of pressure and mass, that the density near the center is such that
the interior of the solar mass consists of a nucleus in a highly viscous
or even solid state. Such a nucleus may be only one third of the diam-
eter of the sun, but as the radius of the sun is 694,800 kilometers it
would make a nucleus of about 400,000 or 500,000 kilometers in diam-
eter. Above this the shell of the sun would be something like 400,000
kilometers thick, that is, about 250,000 miles. Our observations can
not penetrate below the surface of the solar photosphere, and of course
it is impossible to trace out the great currents which are undoubtedly
operating within this enormously thick mass. On the surface we
know from various sources that at the equator the solar mass drifts
from east to west as we look at the sun's disc with a velocity such that
the sun turns on its axis, as we see it, once in 26.68 days. This rota-

CIRCULATION OF TEE ATMOSPHERE 457

tion of velocity falls off gradually towards the poles, until at the poles
it takes something like 30 days to turn around. There is evidence to
show that in the polar zones or near the poles there are certain variable
velocities of rotation. These may belong to different sections in the
sun's atmosphere. Our observations at the poles cut through the sun's
atmosphere, as it were, parallel to the surface. At the equator our
observations look down vertically through the sun's atmosphere. We
can therefore near the poles get the same kind of observations at dif-
ferent solar levels. However this may be, the turbulence of motion
seems to be much greater near the poles than near the equator. Within
the sun's mass we can well imagine that many different periods of
rotation, or of the daily angular velocity, actually exist. Looking at
the solar surface as a unit, it consists of a huge wave whose crest ad-
vances around the equatorial regions at a considerably greater speed
than in the polar regions. Now our mathematical analysis indicates
that such a circulation can be maintained if the solar temperatures are
greater in the polar regions than in the equatorial regions. That is a
form of vortex, applicable to the solar mass, in which the velocities
and temperatures are so connected together that the polar regions are
warmer and have a slower angular velocity than the equatorial regions
which are cooler with a greater angular velocity. This, therefore, is
a condition of affairs practically the inverse of what we have been de-
scribing in the atmosphere of the earth. It is of course in some way
associated with the great heat cauldron which is boiling inside the
solar surface, where the heat accumulates and congests and finally
works its way to the surface by means of this gigantic solar vortex.
Within the great vortex there are innrmerable minor vortices. These
vortical tubes generally stretch from north to south perpendicular to
the plane of the equator. These vortex tubes may be very irregular
and broken up, but as a whole the sun may be described as a polarized
mass throughout which the minor motions are nearly parallel to the
plane of the equator.

Solar Phenomena

The different levels in the sun's atmosphere have received the fol-
lowing names: The lowest one which is visible is called the photo-
sphere, and consists of mottled shapes like cumulus cloud forms,
bright and dark areas being interspersed. Above this is the chromo-
sphere, a layer of hydrogen and calcium and other gases 5,000 or 6,000
miles thick. The lower surface of the chromosphere is a reversing
layer, so called, and is the level at which the dark lines of the solar
spectrum are formed. Through these layers are projected jets of hydro-
gen and calcium flames which stretch out beyond the visible edge of the
sun called prominences, and far beyond the region of the prominences

453 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

extends the solar corona which reaches enormous distances into space.
The corona is apparently composed of minute dust particles and ionized
atoms and molecules held in certain positions by the action of electric
and magnetic forces. The photosphere is penetrated in certain re-
gions by solar spots which extend from the upper levels of the photo-
sphere into the interior. It has been shown by recent photographs
taken at the Mount Wilson Observatory that the sun spots are closely
associated with motions so like those pertaining to the sections in a
dumbbell-shaped vortex that the analogy appears to be very complete.
If this is so, then terrestrial meteorology becomes intimately connected
with solar meteorology in many of its features, in spite of the great
differences of temperature. The average temperature of the earth's
atmosphere may be taken as about 15° Centigrade below zero. The
surface of the photosphere is apparently between 7,000° and 8,000°
Centigrade, and the sun's temperature increases to more than 10,000°
near the nucleus, though the gradient is not yet known. Taking the
sun spot region as a whole, the sun spot belts form near latitude 30°
north and south of the equator and they gradually drift towards the
equator in the course of about eleven years, when new spot belts begin
to form. The same is true of the faculae which are closely associated
with sun spots. The circulation within the sun spot belt is from the
surface downwards, while the spots drift as a whole towards the equa-
tor. This indicates, therefore, descent into the sun from the surface
in the neighborhood of the equatorial regions, and, of course, to com-
pensate this, material must be projected from the interior outwards in
the higher latitudes.

The prominences are hydrogen flames going through a periodic
drift. They may be said to appear first in largest numbers in middle
latitudes, and they seem to divide into two branches so far as the
number of them is concerned. One branch drifts southward in the
eleven-year period along with the spots and the facula?. The other
branch drifts poleward to the north and to the south, respectively. A
study of the number of these prominences in different latitudes indi-
cates that there is a periodic change in the apparent velocity of the
rotation in the polar regions, fluctuating back and forth in about a
mean value. Since the prominences have different elevations, and
different levels in the sun have different velocities, it may well be that
in the polar regions the prominences develop sometimes in the higher
levels and sometimes in the lower levels, so that they actually drift
eastward at different angular velocities according to their elevation.
The spectroscope apparently indicates a certain angular velocity per-
taining to special spectrum lines, which look like a fixed value for a
given elevation, and at the same time it has been shown that hydrogen

CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE 459

lines have different values from iron lines, and therefore the entire
subject is open to an extensive investigation.

The atmosphere of the earth is rilled with what is called atmospheric
electricity. This consists of positive and negative charges of electricity
distributed in a very complex way, depending upon temperature, vapor
contents and barometric pressure. The distribution of electricity
changes with the season of the year, and with the hour of the da}r, and
differs from latitude to latitude, and from elevation to elevation above
the same place. Similarly the sun's atmosphere is filled with electric
charges. Every electric charge in motion produces magnetic field. If
particles of electricity rotate about an axis, and parallel to a given plane,
there will be a magnetic field perpendicular to that plane. These mag-
netic fields may occur at any temperature, provided the charge of elec-
tricity and the motion in a closed curve is at hand. If a ray of light in
a strong magnetic field is looked at along the lines of force of the field, a
single ray is split up into two lines slightly displaced and circularly
polarized in opposite directions. If the line of light in the magnetic
field is looked at perpendicular to the lines of the magnetic force, a
single is split up into three or more lines. In the case of three lines the
outside lines are displaced and polarized in one direction, while the
middle line is not displaced but is polarized at right angles to the two
side lines. These effects of the magnetic field upon a ray of light are
called the Zeeman ejfect, and if these effects are seen it is strong evi-
dence if not proof that the magnetic field has been acting upon the
ray of light. The Mount Wilson Observatory has been able to show
that the light which comes from the interior of the sun spot or vortex
produces both types of the Zeeman effect, the two circularly polarized
lines when one looks at the spot near the center of the solar disc; that
is down the tube of the vortex ; and the three p*lane polarized lines when
one looks at the sun spot near the edge of the sun, that is, nearly at
right angles to the sun spot vortex tube. At any rate enough has been
shown to make it more than probable that magnetic field exists cer-
tainly in the solar spots, and probably throughout the mass of the sun
where gyrations and internal vortices doubtless take place. If the
sun spot produces a magnetic field strong enough to show the Zeeman
effect at a distance of 93,000,000 miles, it is entirely reasonable to sup-
pose that magnetic fields occur through the solar mass wherever there
is actual circulation. It has already been intimated that the entire
body of the sun consists of an enormous number of circulating tubes
directed more or less perpendicular to the equator, and as a corollary
the entire mass of the sun would be a magnetized sphere. The ends of
these polarized circulations at the solar surface should develop an out-
side magnetic field to correspond with the interior. In my early re-
searches of nearly twenty years ago it was shown that the lines in the

46 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

solar corona are so distributed, especially at the time of minimum sun
spot activity, as to indicate strongly that they were arranged around
the sun as a magnetized sphere. It is not necessary here to review the
many details which pointed to that conclusion. The great objection to
that theory at the time in the minds of scientists consisted in the fact
that the sun was too hot to be a magnetized sphere. It was pointed
out by me that the earth is certainly a magnetized sphere, and that its
interior has a very high temperature. Since those days the discovery
of the ionization of matter, whereby dynamic forces of one kind or
another disintegrate the atoms, of which molecules are composed, into
their primal constituents, which are pure charges of electricity, and
the demonstration that the free ions, positive or negative, as the case
may be, wander about from place to place and produce magnetic field,
have made this theory of the sun much more intelligible. The addi-
tional discovery of the Zeeman effect of magnetic field in the sun spots
greatly strengthens my theory, and in fact it is not easy to see how
solar phenomena can now be discussed on any other general basis.

The solar output shows itself in an irruption of prominences, in a
very extended corona, and in an invisible radiation stretching out to
almost unlimited distances in space. The polar magnetic field of the
sun, of which the corona is an evidence, will expand to great distances
from the center, and its strength may perhaps be detected as far as to
the distance of the earth. Electromagnetic radiation stretches out over
the solar sphere radially in every direction, a small pencil of the same
falls upon the earth in its different positions along the orbit from day
to day, and sets the circulation up in the earth's atmosphere which has
been described. This solar radiation falling upon the earth's atmos-
phere is in part absorbed by it, so that the molecules and atoms yield up
their ions, which by redistribution produce the observed phenomena of
the earth's electric field, and also certain well-known variations in the
strength of the earth's magnetic field. The entire subject is full of
difficulties, but at the same time it possesses a fascination to the student
such as pertains to very few branches of modern science. This same
radiation of the sun falling upon the earth produces the temperatures
which vary from place to place, from season to season, and from year
to year, in a very complex series of changes which, taken as a whole,
constitute what is called the earth's climate. There are many indica-
tions that this solar radiation, that is to say, the electromagnetic energy
which the sun sends forth into space, is not exactly constant. The sun
seems to be a variable star, the variation in its heat and light is the
natural consequence of the incessant changes of temperature and pres-
sure, in the circulation, the electricity and magnetism, which are going
on within the solar mass. We have already been able to show from our
studies of the barometric pressure, temperature and vapor pressure in

CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE 461

different parts of the earth, especially of the United States, that there
is a definite though complicated synchronism, which connects the
variations of the solar action with the variation in the terrestrial cli-
matic effects. This is a large subject which can not be properly under-
taken in this lecture. It may be said in general that as the sun gets
more energetic in some parts of its period, the temperatures in the
earth's tropics are higher, and simultaneously in the temperate zones
they are lower. At the same time the barometric pressures in the
atmosphere of the earth centered around the Indian Ocean are higher,
while in North and South America they are lower. In the Pacific
states the temperatures increase with the solar energy, and in the cen-
tral and eastern states they decrease. The solar impulse which pro-
duces these effects tends to precede the terrestrial exhibit which depends
upon the solar impulse by some months, possibly by a year under certain
conditions, and this anticipation of course promises an opportunity
to develop what may become a rational ground for a seasonal forecast
for terrestrial weather. The entire field of operations is very compli-
cated, the circulation in both atmospheres tends to mask and make
more complex the pure variation of the solar radiation, so that we must
be very cautious in attempting to pronounce for or against certain
tentative conclusions regarding this subject. It will probably require
more than one generation of men to make practicable and popularize
the result of this research. Mathematicians as well as laymen are
cautioned to withhold negative evidence based upon half understood
phenomena, because it is in fact very difficult to disentangle the net
which nature has spread before us. The threads should not be torn and
distorted by the bungling hands of those who have not the training
required to unravel the several skeins which lead to the center of the
great mesh. It is certainly not saying too much to assert that there is
good ground for proceeding positively and firmly along this line of
research, and the fact that it has attracted the attention of many com-
missions, international committees, scientific societies, observatories
and institutions shows to what an extent the great problem has already
commended itself to the favor of scientific men.

462 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE REORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN FARMING

Br Peofessor HOMER C. PRICE

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

FROM the beginning, American agriculture has been characterized
by its extensiveness rather than its intensiveness. Land has
been more abundant than labor and, in the aggregate, more has been
derived from a small yield on a large acreage than could have been
realized from a large yield on a small acreage. The yields of American
farm crops have been proverbially small, but the total production has
been exceptionally large and, as a rule, the countries producing the
largest amounts of farm crops have the smallest yields per acre. This
fact is illustrated in the following table:

Table 'showing the Average Yield of Wheat per Acre by Ten- year Periods
for the last Twenty Years and the Total Production for 1908

Avr. Yield per Avr. Yield per Production

Acre, 1888-97 Acre, 1898-1907

United Kingdom 30.1 bu. 32.6 bu. 55,585,000 bu.

Germany 22.7 28.4 138,442,000

France 17.6 20.8 310,526,000

United States 12.8 13.9 664,602,000

The above table also reveals the fact that the production per acre
when compared by ten-year periods has been increasing in all the
countries. Much has been said and is being written about the decline
in agricultural production, but statistics do not show that there has
been any decline, but rather a marked increase when the productions of
the leading countries are compared and using the production of wheat,
which is the most universally grown farm crop, as the basis for
comparison.

The intensity of culture always bears a direct relation to the density
of population and while it is difficult to get a comparable basis of com-
parison between countries on account of the varying proportions of
waste land in different countries and different methods of classifying
statistics, the following table represents the most reliable figures avail-
able and, when compared with the preceding table, shows that the yield
of wheat per acre varies directly as the density of population.

Number of Acres per Capita

United Kingdom L7° acres-

Germany 2-37 acres-

France 3-40 acres"

United States (exclusive of Alaska and Philippines) . . . 24.02 acres.

AMERICAN FARMING 463

In 1900 there were 838,000,000 acres in farms in the United States,
and since then we have been adding to them about 15,000,000 acres each
year from the public lands of the country. During this time, however,
the population of the country has been increasing at the rate of about
one and one half million each year. The public lands of the country
that are suitable for agricultural purposes have practically all been taken
up ; the tide of immigration has been turned back from the Pacific coast,
and the competition for land already under cultivation has become much
more keen and, as a consequence, the values of farm real estates have
advanced generally throughout the country, but to the greatest extent
in the western states. Farm lands in some sections have doubled or
even tripled in value in the course of a few years.

Together with the increased value of farm lands have gone other
changes that have had an important bearing on the agriculture of the
country.

The development of methods of transportation and the extension
of railroads through the new agricultural lands have widened the
markets of the country, for both buying and selling. The introduction
of refrigerator car service has made possible the shipping of fruits,
meats and other perishable products across the continent. This has
resulted in bringing the products of cheap lands in competition with
the products of high-priced land in the eastern states.

Another factor that has had an important bearing in this connection
has been the development of labor-saving farm machinery. If the
present wheat crop of the United States were harvested by the method
employed at the time of the civil war, it would require every man
of military age in the United States to work for at least two weeks in
wheat harvest. The invention of labor-saving machinery has increased
the producing power of the individual to such an extent that notwith-
standing the increase in the agricultural exports of the country from
$205,853,748 in 1858 to $1,017,396,404 in 1908, the percentage of the
population engaged in agriculture has decreased by decades as follows :

1880 44.3 per cent.

1890 37.7 per cent.

1900 35.7 per cent.

But notwithstanding the constant decrease in the proportion of the
population engaged in agriculture, the per capita production for the
entire population of the most important classes of agricultural products
has increased almost invariably.

The following table gives the average per capita production by
decades, 1866-1908. These statistics are from the United States
Department of Agriculture :

464

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Wheat, bushels

Corn, bushels

Oats, bushels

Barley, bushels

Rye, bushels..

Potatoes, bushels.. ..

Cotton, pounds

Hay, tons

Horses, number

Milch cows, number
Other cattle, number

Swine, number

Sheep, number

Decade

1866-1875

1876-1885

1886-1895

1896-1905 '

6.2

8.3

7.4

7.8

24.6

30.3

27.5

28.4

6.9

9.1

10.7

10.6

.7

.9

1.1

1.3

.5

.5

.4

.4

3.0

3.0

3.0

3.1

37.8

51.4

57.8

65.5

.63

.76

.86

.76

.20

.21

.23

.20

.25

.24

.25

.22

.37

.47

.55

.49

.69

.75

.73

.58

•80

.84

.68

.63

Period

7.9
31.8

9.8

1.9
.4

3.4
70.0
.74
.23
.24
.55
.64
.64

This almost inconceivable increase in agricultural production has
been accompanied by changes in agricultural conditions that make a
reorganization of American farming methods absolutely necessary.

Foremost among these changes has been the growth of cities from
an urban population of 2,897,000, or 12.5 per cent, of the population
total, in 1850, to a population of 24,992,000 or 33.1 per cent, of the
total population in 1900. This concentration of the population has
brought about new problems of food supply in furnishing the more
perishable products such as milk, vegetables, fruits and such products
as need to be consumed soon after production.

Another condition that has arisen is the tendency of the soil fertility
of the farms of the older agricultural sections to become exhausted.
To remedy this, the use of commercial fertilizers has become general in
eastern United States and the statistics of 1900 show that $55,000,000
worth of goods were used by the farmers of the United States, which
was an increase of 42 per cent, over the amount used in 1890, so that it
is probable that not less than $75,000,000 per year is spent for this
purpose.

The opening up of the middle west took from the farmer of the
eastern states his market for wheat and other grain. He was thrown
in competition on the open market with the farmer who had secured his
land for practically nothing and land that was much more fertile and
productive. The farmer of the middle west, in turn, has been thrown
in competition in the live-stock markets with the live-stock products of
the western and southwestern states and territories. Stock that was
raised under range conditions and often on government land free of
charge competed with stock raised on high-priced farms of the middle
west.

While these conditions are not so emphatically true as they were a
few years ago, yet the problem is far from being solved and the Amer-
ican farmer is now passing through a transitional stage and the most

AMERICAN 'FARMING 465

important problem before him at the present time is the question of
reorganizing his farming methods so as to best fit the agricultural
conditions as they now exist.

The unprecedented increase of values of farm products in recent
years 'resulting in a greatly increased cost of living to every one has
resulted in the most prosperous times the American farmer has ever
experienced, except during the civil war by those who stayed at home
and reaped the benefits of high prices.

The consumer, on the other hand, is alarmed at the continued rise
in price of the necessities of life. He is interested in knowing what
the end is going to be and how much longer prices are going to rise.

Writers who are ill-advised of the potential producing power of
American farms are freely predicting that we are rapidly approaching
the time when as a nation we shall not be able to produce sufficient
food stuffs for our own population. They forget that our farms are
not producing more than one half of what they are capable of doing.
Our average wheat yield is 14 bushels per acre; our average yield of
corn is 26 bushels, and of oats, 25 bushels; these yields can and will
be redoubled in the future as the high price of the products will demand.

The profits of farming in the past gained from actual production
has not been in proportion to the profits derived from other industries.
The market price of farm products has tended toward the actual cost
of production of the average crop at current wages rather than the cost
of production of the part of the crop produced under the most unfavor-
able conditions. This is readily demonstrated by taking the actual
amount of time required to grow and harvest an acre of any of the
principal crops and calculating the time at current wages and the
average yields at farm prices.

The results will show that the returns received for the time spent
will not be more than enough to pay current wages and six per cent,
interest on the investment in land and equipment. Farmers have
received greater returns from the increased value of their lands than
they have from the profits upon their productions.

The increased prices of farm products are beginning to bring to
farmers a just return for labor expended and will do more than any-
thing else to turn the city dweller " back to the soil " and to keep the
country boy on the farm. There is no danger of a shortage of food
supplies in this country, but higher prices must prevail in order to
develop the potential agricultural resources of the country. Aside from
the possibilities of doubling the present crop production on present area
under production, there remains the undeveloped agricultural lands of
the country. Aside from the limited amount of land suitable for agri-
cultural purposes still remaining in the ownership of the government,
the lands that may become valuable for agricultural purposes are of

VOL. LXXVI. — 32.

466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

two kinds — the swamp lands that may be reclaimed by drainage and
the arid lands that may be reclaimed by irrigation. The United States
Geological Survey estimates that75,000,000 acres can be made valuable
for agriculture by draining swamps. This is the equivalent of one
sixth of all the land now under cultivation in the United States. This
land would be much more fertile and much more productive than the
most of the land that is now being cultivated. The reclamation of arid
lands is just in its infancy. The first federal act to provide for govern-
ment assistance for this purpose was passed in 1902.

Projects are now under construction or have been completed that
will reclaim one and a half million acres and others are under consid-
eration that will reclaim three and one half million. To what extent
this work of reclamation will be carried in the future can scarcely be
estimated, but doubtless many millions of acres can he and will be added
to our cultivable lands in the future.

The period of low prices for farm products and extensive methods
of farming is rapidly passing. The large grain and live-stock farms
of the eastern states are giving way to the smaller dairy, fruit, vegetal tie
or poultry farm. The large wheat farms of the northwest are being
divided into moderate-sized farms for mixed farming. The ranges of
the west and southwest are being broken up into stock farms and the
movement everywhere is toward more intensive methods of farming.

The problem that now confronts the American farmer is to reor-
ganize his method of farming so as to adapt it to the present condi-
tions. The increased prices for farm products will increase their pro-
duction and insure a supply sufficient for all needs for the future.

INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS 467

INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS, THEIR RELATION TO
THE COMMUNITY AT LARGE. II

Br Trofessok J. B. SMITH

RUTGERS COLLEGE, NEW BRUNSWICK. N. J.

AND now, having given a very hasty and superficial statement to
show how important a place the insect really occupies in the
social economy, it behooves me to say something of some of the men
whose labors made some of these facts and conclusions known.

Many of the matters of which I have spoken are of recent develop-
ment and the men who have done the work are still with us and still
working. Some are in attendance at this very meeting and as we ex-
pect still better work from them, nothing will he said of what they
have done thus far. And while it is intended to confine the men-
tion to American entomologists, it is necessary to include under that
head some whose claim to be called American rests altogether upon the
work clone with or on American insects. Let me say too that the order
in which the names come is not meant to represent anything more than
convenience in arrangement of topics, and finally, it is not to be under-
stood that omissions show lack of regard, but only that within my time
limit no photographs were obtainable.

Thomas Say has been termed the father of American entomology,
and certainly no one is better deserving of that term than he. He
builded well and broadly and his knowledge of the American insect
fauna was surprising. His work was in all orders and the amount of
material that passed through his hands was very large. Unfortunately
most of his types have been destroyed, so that wre are not now able to
see the specimens that he had to work with. This has made less trouble
than with some other authors, because Say had that wonderful faculty
of seizing upon and describing the specific peculiarity of the individual
before him. I well remember the hours that I spent over his descrip-
tions, trying to identify captures made thirty-five years ago, and while
I was often disappointed, I succeeded in correctly identifying what I
now consider a really large percentage of the forms taken. Say's
experience meant hard work under difficulties: no money — very little
literature. His bed, for a time, the floor of the Exhibition Hall of the
Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, his food costing six
cents per day. Encouragements there were few — discouragements many
and none greater than the lack of literature. None of the younger men
can appreciate that hunger for books with which the older men were
compelled to fight and the enjoyment of getting into an alcove with

George H.Horn

BmonRVonOstin-Sacken

Silas S.Haldeman John LLe Conte

Thomas Say

ThaddeusWHarris

William H.Ashhead

Hermann Loew

H.A.Hagen

INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS 469

volumes that you knew were in existence but bad never before seen.
And yet Say was well off in these matters because be bad the library
of the academy to draw upon, and there were then — possibly there are
now — more works on entomological subjects in Philadelphia than else-
where in the United States.

Melsheimer and Haldeman were also of the Philadelphia clan,
coleopterists and systematists, and to the former we owe the first cata-
logue of American coleoptera — an excellent piece of work for its time
and of very great use to students until it was superseded by the Crotch
check list, which remained the standard for many years until it in turn
was superseded by the Henshaw list. These latter check lists are both
the work of the Boston circle, Crotch having done most of his work at
Cambridge, where Henshaw is still doing excellent service.

Dr. John L. LeConte, of Philadelphia, has without doubt done
more for American coleopterology than any one other man. It was my
privilege to know him personally and to profit to some extent by bis
encouragement and advice. Dr. LeConte, though confining his work to
the coleoptera, was by no means narrow in his knowledge, and the com-
prehensive view that be was able to take of his subject is witnessed in
the " Classification of American Coleoptera/' which forms to the pres-
ent day the basis of our knowledge in this order, and which will main-
tain its value though the order of families may be changed and their
relationships better established. Dr. LeConte's collection is now at
Cambridge, accessible to all serious students.

Dr. George H. Horn, first a pupil, later a collaborates with Dr.
LeConte, did as much or even more systematic work in coleoptera. But
the work is different : Dr. Horn was a genius in the separation of
species and in their arrangement within generic or family limits; but
be lacked the broad views of Dr. LeConte and was more precise in
working out details. With Dr. Horn I was well acquainted, and many
an hour did I spend in his room among his boxes, while he was on his
rounds; for the doctor had a large practise and entomology was his
recreation. I regret that I can not give a picture of that room. There
was a cot in one corner which was often the only available place to sit;
there was a huge table or desk occupying most of the floor and, during
the many years that I knew that room, this table was cleared only once.
Occasionally the cigarette stumps would be gathered together and
thrown out; but the dust and dirt were never otherwise disturbed.
Cabinets and book-shelves were about the walls and books were every-
where— on the floor, the chairs and often even on the bed. It was
strictly a workroom and the doctor was an indefatigable worker. His
collection is now in the rooms of the American Entomological Society
in Philadelphia.

John Abbot, associated with J. E. Smith in the work on the rarer

Wm. H.Edwards

Herman Strecker

George D.Hulst

^•r^*

Henry Edwards

Brackenridge Clemen*

SamuelScudoer

Augustus R.Grote

J.G.Morris

V£

ffni,

f

H

John Abbott

INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS 471

•

lepidopterous insects of Georgia, is an example of the combination of
artist and entomologist, and his published drawings give no idea of
the amount of the work he actually did, nor any real idea of its beauty
and accuracy. There are bundles of unpublished drawings in the
British Museum, a few of them in the Boston Society of Natural
History, and others scattered about. Some of the insects figured have
never been found since; some, described from the figures by Guenee,
Boisduval and others have never been satisfactorily identified, and I
well remember my hunt through Paris, over twenty years ago, under
the guidance of M. Aug. Salle after the original of one of Boisduval's
descriptions, which was finally located in the possession of a former
housekeeper, who fell heir to some of the effects of her master.

A hale, hearty old man was Dr. J. G. Morris, of Baltimore, when
I first met him thirty years or more ago, and never was I more pleased
to meet any one because, somehow, I had received the impression that
he was dead. Dr. Morris made the first attempt to gather together the
descriptions of American lepidoptera, and his volume in the Smith-
sonian series proved a very useful one to the collectors of that day.
Unfortunately the scheme was never completed, and a very small sec-
tion only of the Heterocera is represented in the volume. Dr. Morris
did not, I believe, ever describe either genus or species, and never
pretended to any extensive collection.

A. R. Grote, of Buffalo, and later, New York, was a most earnest
worker in the heterocerous lepidoptera and chiefly in the Noctuidae.
To him we owe the first satisfactory arrangement of our species, and
the identification of the species described earlier by Guenee and Walker.
It was no light task, and how remarkably well done it was I did not
realize until years thereafter, when I undertook similar work. Mr.
Grote's collection is now in the British Museum, where I have had the
opportunity of comparing its types with those of Walker and Guenee
which are also in that rich treasure house.

Mr. W. H. Edwards, of Coalburg, W. Va., I never met, although
his death is comparatively recent. But his magnificent work in the
butterflies lives on, and will continue to live. Mr. Edwards was much
more than a describer of genera and species. He was a real student
of the life of the insects, and he did more to make known their early
stages than any one other worker: and besides, he set up a standard
of thoroughness and accuracy, that our younger students must live up
to if they expect their work to be regarded. His collection is now in
the Carnegie Museum, at Pittsburgh.

Mr. Henry Edwards, of New York City, was one of the centers of
entomological interest in that city — hearty, whole-souled, enthusiastic.
He made friends wherever he went and his travels carried him not only
throughout our own country, but into Australian and Asiatic countries

472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

as well. He was an excellent collector and his cabinet was unusually
rich in Californian and Pacific coast forms. This collection remains
in Xew York, and forms the nucleus for the lepidoptera in the collec-
tion of the American Museum of Natural History.

Dr. George D. Hulst was one of the Brooklyn entomologists and
devoted his energies to work in the lepidopterous families Geometridae
and Pyralididae. While his systematic work in these groups is most
useful, it is not equal to his personal influence upon those that were
fortunate enough to come into contact with him. I grew to love that
man and felt his death as a personal loss. His collection is now in my
charge at Eutgers College, to which institution it was given by him
before his death.

Dr. Herman Strecker, of Beading, Pa., was known to many of
our older members, and never were there more diverse judgments than
those passed upon him. But he was earnest if erratic, and succeeded
in accumulating an enormous collection of lepidoptera during his long
life. He would pay any price for a specimen, that he wanted, and halt
at no expedient to secure what he could not buy. He was a genius
with pen, pencil and chisel; a sculptor of mortuary emblems by pro-
fession, and a painter of butterflies by choice. His publication on this
subject was unique: all the drawings and engravings were made by
him, and all the jjlates were hand colored. His industry was con-
tinuous and he was tireless in his work. His writings were spicy and
he never hesitated in printing what he wanted to say: he was his own
publisher and bad none to say him nay. His collection is now in the
Field Museum in Chicago.

In the tineid families of the Microlepidoptera there was an im-
mense unfilled field which only one of the older American students had
the courage to undertake. To Brackenridge Clemens belongs the honor
of breaking ground in this series, and upon his work the subsequent
students in the group, whom fortunately we yet number among our
associates, have built their own. Clemens also did some work in the
macros, notably the Sphingidae, and many of his types are yet to be
found in the collections of the American Entomological Society.

Among the unique figures in American entomology none looms
larger than Dr. H. A. Hagen, of Cambridge. Big, ponderous, thor-
oughly German to the end of his life, intensely loyal to his chief and
his work, he was easily the most learned entomologist of his day.
His monumental work in the literature of entomology has proved a
gold mine for later students, and would alone have been considered
a creditable life work. But Dr. Hagen was also a special student in
the Neuroptera, and his volume in the Smithsonian series is essential
to every student in the order to the present day. I knew Dr. Hagen
well and was his guest at times. I won his heart by the meekness with

INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS 473

which I accepted a severe reproof concerning a sending of diptera for
determination. He had kindly replied to a letter of mine asking for
aid and, in return, I had packed a cigar hox as full as it would hold
of undetermined specimens, big and little. I got it back next mail,
and with it a letter. The letter was instructive, very — and if the
medicine was bitter, it was at least salutory for I never did the like
again, and have never dealt quite so hardly as I might with those who
have in later times imposed upon me, as I did upon Dr. Hagen. His
library and his collections are at Cambridge, and no one who has not
seen both can appreciate the amount and character of the work that
the good doctor did during his lifetime.

Baron von Osten-Sacken was an unusual combination of diplo-
matist and entomologist. Of his standing in the former capacity I
know nothing; as a dipterist none stands better. To him we owe the
early systematic work done in this country and the series of volumes
published b}^ the Smithsonian Institution, for even the work of Loew
was made available through translation by Osten-Sacken. And so
these two pioneers of American dipterology must almost necessarily
be considered together, although the influence of Loew could not be
so great because of his dependence on a translator in reaching the
American public. Shortly before his death Osten-Sacken published
his memoirs, which certainly make interesting literature. A large part
of his collection is in the museum at Cambridge.

Among the hymenopterists I can mention only William H. Ash-
mead, whose death is so recent that most of us remember him per-
sonally, and whose gentle manner and unfailing courtesy endeared him
to all who came into contact with him. His work was monumental
and his systematic sense so developed that he seized almost at a glance
upon the really essential structures of the species studied by him. So
constant and persistent a worker was he that, to those of us who
knew him personally, the surprise was not that he died so young, but
that he lived so long.

Dr. A. S. Packard, of Brown TJniversit}r, was more than an ento-
mologist : he was a biologist and a teacher. His work as a systematist
was great; but as a teacher he was greater. And his teaching was not
confined to the classroom ; his " Entomology for Beginners," his
" Guide to the Study of Insects " and his " Text-book of Entomology "
continue his work, though his voice in the classroom is hushed. His
interests were broad enough to include even the economic side of the
subject and he appeared as a member of the IT. S. Entomological Com-
mission, though his part of the work was that which was more technical
in the publications.

I can scarcely avoid referring at least to Dr. S. H. Scudder,
although he is yet with us, not only because his work, unfortunately,

Wm.Le Baron J.A.Lintner TownendGlover

A.S.Packard

James Fletcher

C.V.Riley

Asa Fitch

B.D.Walsh

INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS 475

is done ; but because it was carried into fields not theretofore frequented
by American entomologists. His labors on the fossil insects of America
are unique, and his collection of material for further work is immense.
Of his systematic papers on orthoptera and his accomplishments in
other directions I will not speak at present.

All these men paved the way — they made the studies necessary to
familiarize us with the insects round about us, and theirs is the labor
that is not spectacular and whose apparent results are not of public
interest : yet such work we must have as a foundation for what we con-
sider the more practical side of the subject.

First among the economic entomologists of this country we must
reckon Dr. Thaddeijs William Harris, whose work on the " Insects
Injurious to Vegetation " is a classic and, like most of the classics, was
a labor of love rather than a money-making proposition. The state of
Massachusetts paid him $200 for that work. Since that time it has
learnt to pay rather more highly for entomologists, and nowhere have
insects done more injury nor have they anywhere demanded the ex-
penditure of greater sums. Harris's work is not only intensely prac-
tical, but it is interesting and informing — as useful to the beginning
collector and entomologist as to the agriculturist, and always accurate.

Quite a different sort of man was Towxexd Glover, for a series
of years entomologist to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, who wrote
comparatively little, but used his pencil industriously; producing a
perfectly enormous number of drawings of insects in all stages, and
engraving them on plates from which only a very few impressions were
taken. Unfortunateh7, Glover had almost no systematic knowledge
of insects, and while he made excellent pictures of the specimens as
they appeared to him, he had not the slightest idea as to the identity
of the insects figured, nor did he preserve the originals.

Dr. Asa Fitch, of New York, was a man of different type. A
bard worker and hard student, industrious, of course, he studied not
only those species that his field work demonstrated to him as injurious,
but their allies and neighbors, and with a sure glance he fixed upon
certain of the hemipterous families as entitled to the special consid-
eration of the economic worker. Dr. Fitch's reports as state ento-
mologist initiated a work in that state which has not been abandoned
since, and which has put it among the leaders in organizations for
entomological work.

Meanwhile, in the middle west the ravages of insects had developed
new needs and new workers, and Walsh, Eiley and LeBaron, began to
make themselves felt, and really to develop a science of economic ento-
mology.

Benjamin- Dann Walsh, of Illinois, had a career much too short,
and it terminated before he had more than shown his vigor and orig-

476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

inality. In company with Riley, then a young man, he had planned
much in the way of entomological work; but one report and a few
vigorous papers in journals form the total of what remains to us.

Dr. William LeBaron, his successor in office, was a much less
positive character, but an equally conscientious worker, and, in his
fourth report, began what was intended to be a popular treatise on the
insects, the systematic portion forming a sort of supplement to the
specially economic portion. Illinois is another of the states which
has never allowed its service to deteriorate, and there is no better work
now done in the United States, nor is there a more effective organiza-
tion than that within its limits.

Dr. Charles V. Eiley was a prime factor in the development of
economic entomology in the United States. His series of reports on
the injurious and other insects of Missouri is a model which has never
been exceeded in interest and value. Not the least important feature
of these reports is the list of illustrations — wood-cuts most of them —
that have never been surpassed in their fidelity to nature, and their
artistic merit. Most of the insects figured in Riley's reports look
natural, and that is the highest praise that can be given to any figure
of this type. So well clone are they that they have become common
stock and are used again and again in bulletins and reports throughout
the country. With his transfer to Washington his field of activity
was enlarged, and he became a force in the development of the prac-
tical side of entomological work. The real development of our present
battery of spraying outfits, arsenical poisons and kerosene emulsions
began under Eiley, and the fight to secure their adoption was a more
difficult one than is understood. Congress thought itself very liberal
when it reached the $20,000 mark for the division of entomology, and
when we consider the force of men that Eiley gathered and trained
for that sum, men who form the nucleus of the division to the present
day, we begin to appreciate the ability of the man.

I will not attempt to give a list of the men who were associated
with Dr. Eiley in the development of his office at Washington ; I knew
them all and worked with some of them for a time. And not the least
of Dr. Eiley's ability was in getting all that there was out of his
assistants, in commanding their devotion and loyalty, although he con-
stantly quarrelled with every one of them. He was the best loved, best
hated, most admired and most detested man I ever knew; but he was
always a better friend than he was an enemy, and never lost an oppor-
tunity to do a man a good turn even when he personally lost by it.
Economic entomology owes much to Dr. Eiley and his influence is still
with us. I need hardly say that his successor has fully maintained
the standard set for him, and that there is nowhere in the world at
the present time a more efficient body of workers in economic ento-

INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS 477

mology than that connected with the U. S. Department of Agriculture
at "Washington.

Dr. J. A. Lixtxer, who was for many years state entomologist of
New York, was a model of gentle, persevering labor. Quiet and de-
liberate in manner, very painstaking in his work and observations, he
maintained the high standard set for his office by Fitch, and his reports
are models of completeness in the treatment of the subjects contained
in them. He was a familiar figure at the meetings of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, and was always listened
to with respect.

Last of all in this list of those who have been influential in the
development of the fight against insect pests, because his loss is one of
the more recent, is Dr. James Fletcher, of Ottawa, Ontario. Who
of the entomologists attending the annual meetings of the American
Association does not remember his hearty and cheering presence.
Who does not remember his cordial greeting, his constant good nature
and the directness and convincing qualities of his contributions to
our discussions and debates. As for the work that he did in Canada
— none could have clone it as he did. He was widely informed, not a
narrow specialist, he was a student of men as much as of insects, and
he commanded the confidence of his constituency. It will take two
men or more to carry on the work that this one did alone.

To summarize — insects are a factor of very great importance in the
community: (1) because of their injuries direct and indirect; (2)
because of their benefits, also direct and indirect, and millions of dollars
annually are involved on both sides of the ledger.

The entomologist who studies these insects, determines which are
harmful and which are beneficial, who works out their life histories
and habits and who determines methods of controlling those that are
harmful and improving those that are beneficial, is a worker of high
importance to the community and deserving of every possible aid and
assistance.

478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

ANCIENT CLIMATES OF THE WEST COAST

By Professor JAMES PERRIN SMITH

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

WE naturally look at things from the standpoint of the present, and
regard the existing distribution of climates as the normal one.
But even in our own times there are slight fluctuations of climatic
conditions, for we hear wonderful stories from our elders of cold winters
and hot summers, and tremendous storms of former years. The ad-
vances and retreats of existing glaciers give us surer testimony of recent
fluctuations in temperature and moisture, as does also the shifting of
the zones where wine grapes can be grown successfully in Europe.

If we go still further hack into older history we find still stronger
evidence of change, for in northern Africa and in central Asia there are
remnants of ancient cities, evidently the flourishing capitals of pros-
perous peoples,. where now is nothing but desert, and where even the
most advanced modern skill in irrigation could not support the popula-
tion of the old days.

And yet all the changes alluded to above may be only the secular
variations in climate that we know are going on all the time. The
climatic changes of the west coast which will be described in this paper
are older than those fluctuations recorded in history, and much greater.

The old geological theory was that the earth cooled down slowly
from the poles toward the equator, and that life first appeared at the
poles. It was further thought that in the more remote geologic ages
the interior heat of the earth was so great that there was little differ-
ence in temperature between the equator and the poles, and that, until
Tertiary time, there was no differentiation into climatic zones. The
Glacial epoch was supposed to be the culmination of this secular cooling
off of the earth.

Then came the discovery of the old Tertiary fossil floras of Siberia,
Alaska and Greenland, with abundant forests of trees that evidently
lived in a temperate climate where it is now arctic. This was so remark-
able that geologists had to invent some extraordinary explanation for
the phenomenon. They rose to the occasion and invented the theory of
the obliquity of the poles in early Tertiary time, to account for the
warm temperature under the arctic circle. This, however, did not agree
with the known distribution of life at that time over the rest of the
earth, and also the physicists declared this obliquity, or any obliquity,
to be a mathematical impossibility.

Later it was discovered that there was a great glacial epoch in the

ANCIENT CLIMATES 479

late Paleozoic era, about the line between Carboniferous and Permian,
and that too in the regions around the Indian Ocean, where it is now
tropical or subtropical in temperature.

Before we had entirely recovered from the shock of that discovery,
it was found out that in China and Australia there was another glacial
epoch, or epochs, near the beginning of Cambrian time. Now the geol-
ogist's spirit is so broken, that when the supposed discovery of glacial
epochs in Silurian and Devonian time is announced, he hardly raises a
dissenting voice, and appears to be resigned to the occurrence of glacial
epochs at almost any time in the history of the earth. The theory of
ancient climatic uniformity is definitely abandoned, and we must accept
fluctuations of climate from the earliest geologic record all through the
history of our planet. The old idea was delightfully simple, but too
good to be true.

Criteria of Ancient Climates

Physical Criteria. — Physical evidence as to ancient climatic condi-
tions is limited to two classes — glacial deposits and ice-work, and sedi-
ments indicating desiccation, that is, saline and gypsiferous beds. These
are both necessarily limited to continental areas, and tell us nothing of
marine conditions. And as we go back in time they become more and
more indefinite, so that there is much difference of opinion as to their
value. The evidence of the recent Glacial epoch is positive enough to
satisfy the most critical, but geologists are not yet united as to the
glacial epochs in older periods of geologic history, because of the diffi-
culty of determining whether the ice-masses were true sheets or whether
they were mere local highland glaciers.

Also the sedimentary deposits indicating desiccation may have been
merely local, and although they are positive as to prevalence of evapora-
tion at that particular place, they can not tell positively of wide-spread
dry climate, and certainly they do not indicate temperature.

Organic Evidence. — Fossil remains of animals or plants known to
have lived in either warm or cold climates are more definite, and tell
us equally well of land and water conditions, but they are authentic
only when the fossils are animals or plants that have either lived on into
our own time, or when the groups to which they belong have always
had the same habits. This becomes more and more conjectural as we
go back in geologic history, and have to deal not only with extinct
species, but even with extinct genera, families and orders.

Extensive fossil beds of deciduous trees point to moist climates,
and usually to temperate conditions. But deciduous trees extend back
only to the middle of the Cretaceous, and beyond that time we have
no positive criteria for temperate climate.

Cycads and palms are the best evidence as to tropical climates on

48o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the land. At present, cycads are almost exclusively tropical, ranging
outside only a short distance in eastern Asia. Palms are not quite so
delicate, ranging outside the tropics to 34° 1ST. lat. on the west coast
of America and to 36° N. on the east coast. But in any case, abundant
remains of either point to tropical or subtropical conditions.

Beef-building corals are even more definite in their testimony con-
cerning tropical temperature of the water. They are now found only
in the tropics, where the winter temperature does not fall below 68° F.
(20° C), and in general between 26° N. and 26° S. But since this
temperature zone may be extended by marine currents, coral reefs may
sometimes reach beyond 26° K. lat., as in the Bermudas, but more
often they fail to reach this geographic limit, as on the west coast of
America.

The principal reef-builders, the Madreporidae and the Astraaida?,
are confined to the hottest part of the tropical belt,1 within 18° of the
equator, and where the temperature does not fall below 74° F.
(23° 20' C). Between this line and the isotherm of 68° F. coral reefs
occur on both sides of the equator, but they are composed largely of
Poritidae and Milleporidse.

On the west coast of America the minimum isotherm of 68° F.
runs north of the equator, and the Galapagos Islands have no reefs, for
the temperature there often falls below 68° F. Beef -building corals
occur in patches from Panama to Magdalena Bay on the coast of
Lower California, but they do not form any reefs, and are composed
almost entirely of Poritidaa.

Fossil deposits of Astraaida?, in any age and anywhere, indicate with
a reasonable degree of certainty that the sea had a temperature of not
less than 74° F., and corals of any of the modern reef-building groups
show that the temperature was not less than 68° F.

But the reef -building Hexacoralla are not known below the Triassic,
and for the Paleozoic era we must use other criteria. From the Cambrian
to the upper part of the Carboniferous coral reefs are known, but they
are formed by Favositidae and Tetracoralla, both wholly extinct, so
that we can only infer their habits. It is, however, nearly certain that
these ancient reef -forming corals lived under the same conditions as
the modern groups, and that the temperature of the sea where they
lived was tropical.

Absence of coral reefs from any formation does not prove that the
temperature of that time was not tropical, for even now coral reefs are
lacking in many parts of the tropics, on account of unfavorable condi-
tions other than low temperature. Also the corals of the ancient reefs
have often been obliterated by metamorphism, and only massive lime-
stone left.

1 J. D. Dana, "Corals and Coral Islands," 3d ed. (1890), pp. 108-114.

ANCIENT CLIMATES 481

Now while one swallow does not make a summer, one reef -building
coral, or one palm, or one cyead does, since neither one of these organ-
isms now lives outside of a warm climate.

Paleozoic Climate of the West Coast

All the Paleozoic sediments on the west coast are marine, and
while the record is fragmentary, the evidence points uniformly to warm
temperature of the sea, and, thus by inference, of the land. The Lower
Cambrian, or Pre-Cambrian, glaciation of China and Australia has not
been recognized in this part of the world, but this is merely negative,
since land formations of that period are unknown here.

The Lower Cambrian limestones of Inyo County, California, and
the adjacent region of Nevada, have extensive coral reefs of Archseocy-
athidas; similar reefs are known in Europe and Australia, but not in
the Arctic region.

In the Silurian of Plumas County, and the Devonian of Shasta
County, California, there are coral reefs composed of Favositidas and
Tetracoralla, and in both these ages similar reefs are known in Siberia
and Alaska, which may show that the temperature of the sea had grown
warmer in the middle Paleozoic, with a northward extension of the
isotherms.

The Carboniferous of Shasta and Plumas counties, California, has
great limestone masses full of reef-building Tetracoralla, and similar
reefs are known up to 82° N. lat., and down to the equator. "Whatever
the temperature was, it was remarkably uniform. The flora of the
Coal Measures2 in the northern hemisphere indicates a warm and
equable climate for the land, extending up into the Arctic region, and
without evidence of any trace of climatic zones.

The Permian, or Upper Carboniferous, glaciation, which was so
widespread in India, Australia, South Africa and South America, has
not been recognized in North America. But this event is now
recognized as the greatest catastrophe in geologic history, and its
effects probably extended far beyond the limits of glaciation. With
the accompanying lowering of oceanic temperature, near the end of the
Paleozoic era, the ancient types of reef-building corals, the Favositidaa
and Tetracoralla, disappeared. Hardly anything but solitary corals,
that may have been deep-water forms, are left in the Permian, and in
the Lower Triassic no corals of any sort are known.

The Hexacoralla, the modern reef-builders, had already originated
in the Paleozoic, but were then little developed, unspecialized types.
They escaped the general catastrophe either by being distributed in
regions where the destruction did not take place, or by being then deep-

2 David White, Jour. Geol, Vol. XVII., No. 4 (1909), p. 338.
vol. lxxvi.— 33.

482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

sea forms, habituated to lower temperatures. When the amelioration
of the earth's climate took place, near the beginning of the Mesozoic
era, they found a free field on the coasts, and at once took possession.
In the epoch of the Middle Triassic they had already become widely
distributed, but as yet had formed no known reefs.

The distribution of the cephalopods in time shows a strong contrast
to that of the corals. There is an unbroken genetic series of ammonoids
and nautiloids from the Coal Measures, through the Permian, and ex-
tending into the Lower Triassic, several genera ranging through the
interval. This does not necessarily mean that the cephalopods were
hardier, for they probably were not. But they were very widely dis-
tributed, and must have lived on in some region, or regions, where
great catastrophe had little or no effect, and by their superior facility
in locomotion got back into the regions affected by glaciation, when the
temperature of the seas had risen again.

Mesozoic Climates of the "West Coast

Since corals are wholly unknown in the Lower Triassic, and since
the flora of that epoch is as yet little known, it is not possible to deter-
mine the temperature of either the land or the water. It is, however,
certain that the oceanic temperature in India, in western America and
in northern Siberia, was the same, for there is a remarkable similarity
of the cephalopod faunas in all three regions.

It is also known that in the Permian and the Lower Triassic a dry
climate prevailed over large areas, for products of desiccation, such as
gypsum and saline deposits are common in many parts of the world,
and even in regions that are now rainy, as in western Europe.

In the Upper Triassic there are great limestone masses and coral
reefs in the Alps, the Himalayas and in California, with many species
common to the three regions. Certainly the epoch of the Tropites
sabbullatus fauna was tropical up as far as Shasta Count}r, California,
for there reefs of Astrseidae are extensive. We may even be justified in
assuming that the isotherm of 74° F. extended that far north. Also
in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon there are coral reefs in
the Upper Triassic, but no Astra?idae were found in them, only extinct
genera. This outlying occurrence may correspond to the isotherm of
68° F., in which now corals may form reefs, but Astraeidae can not
flourish.

After the formation of the coral reefs in northern California and
Oregon the facies changed suddenly from limestones to clay shales,
and with this came an abrupt change in the marine fauna. The Indian
types of cephalopods disappeared entirely, and in their stead came in a
fauna of which the home seems to have been the boreal region. Pseudo-
monotis ochotica was the commonest species in this fauna, and was

ANCIENT CLIMATES 483

widely distributed around the North Pacific. It has also been found
as far south as Peru, on one side, and down to the equatorial part of the
Indian Ocean on the other. This wide dispersion does not necessarily
mean a lowering of the oceanic temperature during this epoch, for this
species may have lived in deep water, and therefore could easily find
uniform temperature from the equator to the Arctic region. But the
sudden change of facies and impoverishment of the fauna over such
an enormous area are suggestive. A slight drop in temperature, below
68° F. would account for it.

The last epoch of the Triassic, the Bhaetic, has no marine faunas
anywhere in America, but the flora, with its abundant cycads, is
widely distributed in both the northern and the southern hemisphere.
Coal deposits are common in this epoch, and this points to a very uni-
form and mild climate far beyond the present temperate zones.

At the opening of the Jurassic period we find a Mediterranean
marine fauna established in western America; this same fauna also ex-
tended from the equatorial regions to Alaska, so that we are without
evidence as to climatic zones, and can only infer that the temperature
was uniform.

In the Middle Jurassic reef-building corals lived in the waters of
the Great Basin Sea, and their remains are quite common in Plumas
County, California, but in that province they formed no reefs, for the
waters were not clear, and much disturbed by the deposition of volcanic
ash. Abundant cycads lived on the land in California at this time,
adding their testimony to the warmth of the climate. This same Mid-
dle Jurassic marine fauna extended up to Queen Charlotte Islands,
and to southern Alaska, in the latter place with cycads interbedded
with the salt-water fossils. Here, as was often the case, the cycads ex-
tended some distance north of the corals, a coral reef with Astraeidas
being known in this epoch on Queen Charlotte Islands, in 53° N. lat.,
while cycads occur as far north as 57° N. lat. In this same epoch the
northern limit for coral reefs in the Atlantic region was 53° N., in
southern England, while the other invertebrates and cycads ranged up
to 80° N. lat. A mild climate must have extended up nearly to the
pole.

The Upper Jurassic of California shows a sharp contrast to the
preceding epoch; its marine fauna is scanty, and what little there is
belongs to the boreal type, the Aucella fauna, which is characteristic
of Russia, northern Siberia and Alaska. For a short time this fauna
ranged down into the edge of the tropics in Mexico. This does not
mean that the climate was cold, but merely that the temperature was
lower than that at which reef-building corals and the other sensitive
invertebrates could flourish. In the Lower Cretaceous we find the same
boreal type still persisting as far south as middle California. But here,

484 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

as in the Upper Jurassic, the evidence is conflicting, for cycads are
known in both formations.

In the Lower Cretaceous epoch there was a sharp contrast between
conditions on the Pacific and those on the Atlantic side of America.
In the Atlantic waters coral reefs extended as far north as Texas, while
no corals at all are known in the Pacific waters of America in Cali-
fornia. In the Upper Cretaceous, on the other hand, coral reefs ex-
tended to Ensenada, Lower California, lat. 31° 30' N., while in the
Atlantic waters they did not reach so far north. In other words, the
Pacific waters on the western side of America became warmer in Upper
Cretaceous time than they were in the preceding epoch, while in the
Atlantic the conditions were reversed, as was the case also in southern
Europe, where coral reefs extended much further north in the Lower
Cretaceous than they did in the Upper Cretaceous.

The change in faunal geography in western America about the
middle of the Cretaceous period is very remarkable. The Knoxville
epoch had a boreal fauna, while with the opening of the Horsetown
epoch the facies changed rather abruptly, and an Indian fauna came
in. Swarms of ammonites of Indian type occupied the shallow mar-
ginal sea, showing at least a great change in geographic connections,
if not in climate. It has been suggested by the writer that the opening
of the Bering Sea passage during the Mariposa epoch of the Upper
Jurassic and the Knoxville epoch of the Lower Cretaceous would ac-
count satisfactorily for the change of facies and the lowering of the
temperature at that time. The closing of this passage near the end of
the Knoxville epoch explains the change of facies from the boreal to
the Indian type of fauna, and also the accompanying rise of oceanic
temperature on the coasts of western America.

The favorable conditions, inaugurated in the middle of the Creta-
ceous, continued throughout the Chico epoch,- during which coral reefs
extended up to Ensenada, Lower California, ~N. lat. 31° 30', and a
warm climate prevailed even in Alaska. Reef-building corals extended
up to the middle of California, but they formed no reefs, since there
were no stretches of clear sheltered waters in which they could flourish.

Neozoic Climates of the West Coast

The Eocene climate of the west coast was nearly the same as that
of the Upper Cretaceous. The marine deposits have numerous mol-
luscan genera that are now confined to the tropics, and on the land
palms abounded in California, Washington and Alaska. No reef-build-
ing corals of this age are yet known anywhere on the west coast, and
it is probable that the marine temperature was slightly below that
necessary for their existence in this region. The climate of the coast,
from California to Alaska, was probably very much like that of the

ANCIENT CLIMATES 4S5

states bordering the Gulf of Mexico. There to-day many tropical mol-
luscan genera are found in the waters, and on the marginal coastal
plain there is a mixture of palms, deciduous trees and conifers. This
is just what we find in the fossil Eocene flora of California and Puget
Sound; laurels, figs, sycamores, chestnuts, elms, liquidambar, oaks,
palms and sequoias lived together. From this association we should
infer that the climate of the west coast was no longer tropical, but
subtropical, and very rainy.

The middle Tertiary faunas are very like the present in the asso-
ciation of genera, and the flora on the land agrees with this. The palms
have disappeared, but laurels still occur. It is probable that the cli-
mate of the upper Miocene had about the same temperature as that of
the present in California, but it had, apparently, a much greater rain-
fall, or one much more evenly distributed.

The Tertiary flora of the west coast was immensely richer than the
present. No elm, liquidambar, nor true laurel lives wild on the west
coast now, and many other types that flourished here are gone. The
impoverishment of the present tree flora of California, as compared
with that of the Tertiary, has been ascribed to volcanic activity, but
this is absurd. In the first place the great extinction of the old types
took place in the lowering of temperature near the end of Eocene time,
while the era of great lava outbursts on the west coast was after the
middle of the Miocene. The climate continued to cool off in the
Pliocene, as is shown by the northern types of mollusca that then ranged
as far south as Los Angeles, and by the freshwater lake deposits of
middle California, which contain a fauna at present confined to the
Klamath region of northern California and southern Oregon. The flora
of the Pliocene in California is very scanty, composed largely of willows,
alders and conifers, very much like that of the Olympic Peninsula in
Washington.

The constantly decreasing temperature throughout the Tertiary is
sufficient to account for the reduction of the flora. The tropical and
finally the warm-temperate types were killed off locally, and such as
were confined to this region were wholly extinguished. Some of the
forms that lived in more favored regions to the south returned after
the Glacial epoch. But most of the region to the south of California
is not favorable to the extensive growth of forests, and many of the
types have never returned to California, except when brought in by man.

In the early Quaternary there were extensive ice-sheets in the Sierra
Nevada, and probably the climate of the sea-coast was cool. The glaciers
came down the slopes to a line that is now about 3,500 feet above sea-
level; it is thought, however, that California stood considerably higher
than now, and that conditions here were more like those of the present
on the Olympic Peninsula.

486 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

After the Glacial epoch was past the climate became warmer, and
many mollusca crept slowly up the coast, from the warm waters of
Lower California. This southern type reached as far north as Santa
Barbara in the upper San Pedro epoch of the Quaternary, during which
time the sea probably had a temperature as warm as it now is on the
shores of Lower California.

This warming up of the west coast was no mere local phenomenon,
for the same thing occurred at the same time on the eastern coast of
America, when a warm-water fauna ranged up to the Champlain dis-
trict. And also in Europe the climate after the Glacial epoch was, for
a little while, warmer than it is at present. After the San Pedro epoch
on the west coast, and the Champlain in the east the climatic conditions
became approximately what they now are, although it may well be that
the Terrace epoch had a larger rainfall than that of the present.

Summary

In the foregoing pages it will be noted that during all the known
Paleozoic the west coast enjoyed a warm and probably tropical climate,
with some suggestion of a northward march of the isotherms, reaching
a culmination in the Upper Carboniferous. There is then some indi-
cation of a southward recession of the isotherms in the Permian, and
a renewed northward advance in the Lower Triassic. This continued
until the middle of the Jurassic, but the farthest north was never again
reached in the Pacific waters.

In the Upper Jurassic and the Lower Cretaceous another consid-
erable southward recession of the isotherms is indicated, followed by a
renewed northward advance in the middle of the Cretaceous. But this
advance did not reach so far north as that of the Middle Jurassic. The
Eocene epoch shows the temperature of the west coast nearly holding its
own, but with a probable slight reduction. The Miocene climate had
grown considerably cooler than that of the Eocene, and by the Pliocene
it was already rather cold as far south as California. The early Quater-
nary climate was probably even colder than the Pliocene, for there we
have the local ice-sheets in the high mountains of California. The post-
Glacial amelioration of climate is as distinct here as it was in eastern
America, and in Europe, and probably as short-lived. Middle and late
Quaternary time was probably much longer than we have been accus-
tomed to consider it, and there have doubtless been considerable fluctua-
tions in our climate in that period, but we have as yet been unable to
decipher these in the geologic record of the west coast.

ACADEMIC EFFICIENCY 487

SOME TESTS OF ACADEMIC EFFICIENCY1

By RICHARD C. MACLATJRIN, LL.D., Sc.D.

PRESIDENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

I HAVE come here from Boston for the simple purpose of mani-
festing the good will of an eastern institution to this vigorous
university in the middle west. I need not remind you of the historical
connection between Massachusetts and Kansas, but I should like to
express the hope that frequent interchange of academic courtesies may
at any rate keep alive the memories of that interesting connection.
My mission here, however, is extremely simple and my duty entirely
congenial. It is merely to congratulate 3rou on this new exhibition
of western energy and to join with you most heartily in the dedication
of your splendid laboratories to the great purpose for which they were
designed, the pursuit of science and its application to the problems
of to-day.

I need not assure you that I have come here in no spirit of eastern
superiority. In fact, if there is anything of east and west in my mind
at all it is the old suggestion that the wise men of the east displayed
their wisdom in going to the west for inspiration. I believe that this
might well be done more frequently to-day.

But what impresses me most in a visit such as this is not so much
the difference between the east and west, not so much the distinction
as the points of similarity. The old distinctions seem to be rapidly
disappearing and all are recognizing that the prosperity of one part of
the country is intimately bound up with the prosperity of every other
part. And there is no field of our national activity in which this is
more clearly recognized than in the field of education. There have
been differences, there have been jealousies, there have been rivalries
between different colleges and technical schools. There are some of
these differences and rivalries still left, but never before was there a
time when the essential solidarity of the whole educational world was
more clearly recognized, and when men saw so well as they do to-day
that in all of our colleges, universities and technical schools we are
fighting, if we are fighting at all, on the same side. Bivalries in some
sense there must needs be, but no longer do we desire weak rivals. "We
want our rivals to be strong and we want them strong so that in the
process of emulation and of competition we may be all forced to higher
levels and there may be a general trend upwards rather than downwards.

1 An address delivered at the dedication of the engineering laboratories of
the University of Kansas, February 25, 1910.

488 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Now it seems to me that in the process of striving to raise our
standards we are a little apt to slavishly copy what other people are
doing without clearly recognizing why we are copying them and what
we are striving to attain. One college opens a new department in some
sphere of activity; another thinks it is bound to do the same thing,
although the local conditions may be totally different. If one school of
engineering establishes a new course another is sure to follow with a
similar course. We need a measuring rod to determine whether our
level is above or below our competitors. How are we to reach a real
standard of efficiency ? How are we to know whether our institution is
better or worse than some other institution ? Of course various stand-
ards have been suggested. The great objection to most of them is that
they are too mechanical. The best part of any educational institution
is a spiritual thing and a spiritual thing must be spiritually discerned.

Now one of the institutions in this country which is doing its best
to carry out a leveling process and trying to raise the institutions of the
country is the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Its course is so brief that none here can have missed the opportunity of
following it. Founded only a few years ago by Mr. Carnegie for the
avowed purpose of pensioning professors who had long served their
country as teachers and investigators, it is being put by those who have
managed it to a quite different purpose and that purpose is to stand-
ardize our institutions.

I am not going to discuss what the foundation has done or is doing,
but I should like to refer to a report, the advance sheets of which the
Carnegie Foundation has just issued, under the title "A Comparison
of Academic and Business Efficiency." The fundamental idea that
suggested the drawing up of the report is one that must attract us all.
It was to obtain a report on the efficiency of different educational
institutions looked at from the view-point of a business man. To this
end the foundation employed the services of an accomplished engineer,
Mr. Cooke, and asked him to report on a number of educational insti-
tutions in this country. He was instructed to employ the same methods
in his investigation that he would if he were reporting on the efficiency
of a cotton mill or an automobile factory. To simplify the problem he
was to confine his attention to eight institutions ; to further simplify it
he was to deal with a single department in each of these instituions;
that department happened to be the department of physics. The report
is a lengthy one — those of you who are interested will doubtless read
it for yourselves — but I may just sketch with extreme brevity the
fundamental guiding principle.

Mr. Cooke begins with the truism that if you are to test the effi-
ciency of a factory from a business point of view you want to know
the cost of the working of the machinery. He therefore proceeds to

ACADEMIC EFFICIENCY 489

discuss how much it costs to train men in physics in these different
institutions and sets up a standard of measurement of what he calls the
" student hour," the cost of teaching a student the subject of physics
for a single hour. After an elaborate system of figures and a great
deal of computation he discovers what is supposed to be the cost of
teaching a student in physics for one hour in Harvard and Boston
Tech, and these different institutions. Now whether his figures really
represent the cost or not is questionable, but there can be no doubt that
they do not gauge the efficiency of the institutions under consideration.

The efficiency of an automobile is not gauged by its cost, and cer-
tainly the efficiency of Harvard or Boston Tech is not gauged by their
cost. You must of course look to the product. Now a man of
Mr. Cooke's acumen could not overlook so obvious a fact, although he
passes it over with almost unpardonable brevity in a report that
professes to deal with the question of efficiency. He does not always
seem quite true to himself. He tells us in one place that " the cost
per student-hour has absolutely no value in distinguishing relative
educational values." Elsewhere he says " certainly some idea of
quality will be gained by simply knowing the cost." However, he does
recognize that the quality of the product must be tested before we have
any real gauge of efficiency, but when it comes to suggestions for a
test of quality he formulates a plan that a serious educator could
regard only with laughter or with tears. Here it is — let us establish
a central bureau to which may be submitted the examination papers
and the answers from the five highest and five lowest students, and let
the central authority assign marks for the difficulty of the questions
and the rigor with which they were answered. I shall not presume
upon your patience by pointing out to what abuses such a plan would
be exposed, nor how paltry a contribution it is towards the solution of
an extremely important national problem. I should like, however, to
call your attention to various matters to be kept in view when we set
out on the task of testing the efficiency of any educational institution.

I would remark at the outset that the matter is extremely complex
and that no wise man would even dream of giving a numerical measure
of the efficiency of Harvard or the University of Kansas. He would no
more do that than he would say that the efficiency of his friend Jones
is 62, and of Smith is 55. On the face of it, such apparent accuracy
is ridiculous. But we do want to know in a general way how we are
to gauge efficiency, and I need only sketch the process which is a
fairly obvious one. The natural way of attacking the problem would
be to attack it directly. We are interested not in the machinery but
in the product. The obvious procedure would be to examine the
product in the different institutions and see how they stand relatively
to one another. We would have, of course, to set out with some funda-

490 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

mental conception of what all of these educational institutions are
striving for. Unless we agreed about that we could not possibly agree
as to their efficiency. Fortunately, there is general agreement to-day
that the aim of all educational institutions is a social one. The
University of Kansas, and Boston Tech and Columbia University and
all the rest are striving to this great end — to train men to serve the
state intelligently, honestly and effectively. We are all attempting
that. To what extent do we succeed relatively to one another ?

Now, the natural process, I say, would be to examine the product
of these different institutions and see whether men coming from these
different institutions have " made good." This, however, is no easy
matter where there are thousands of men to be considered and the
gauging of the social efficiency of a single man is so difficult and deli-
cate an operation. And then, you have to remember that the " making
good " by an individual may have really little to do with the educational
institution in which he has been trained. I had the honor of being
brought up in the English university of Cambridge, which has been
spoken of by a poet as a " nest of singing birds," for the reason that
that university has produced, if I may use the term, an extraordinarily
large number of great poets. But no one seriously suggests that the
poetic power of Tennyson or Wordsworth had much to do with his
training in the University of Cambridge. And so it is with the actual
making good of a great many of our leading men; in most cases it is
only indirectly due to the training they received in the university.
Then you must bear in mind that an extremely important factor in
the making of good flour is to have good grain, and that one institution
might be as efficient as another, but yet for the lack of good grain not
turn out so fine a product. Thus you would have to gauge not only
the graduate, but the men at entrance, and this would greatly com-
plicate the problem. Practically, then, I think, you would have to
proceed indirectly by carefully examining the means that were employed
in the institution to produce the results. If you bore in mind the
idea of social service as a thing toward which we are all striving, you
would have to begin, I suppose, with some estimate of the relative social
value of a college education and the education in a professional school,
taking each at its best. The aim of a college is to train a man broadly
and so develop every side of his charcter that he can devote himself to
the duties of citizenship in whatever special sphere of activity he can
be most effective. The professional school does not neglect breadth
of outlook or the duties of citizenship, but it bends its powers to the
education of men for the service of society through the medium of
definite professions. To gauge the relative value of these two schools
you would need to decide whether it was more important to have an
alert broad-minded man with no professional skill, or a man who could

ACADEMIC EFFICIENCY 491

set your leg if you broke it, or bridge the Mississippi if you wanted to
cross it. It would be an extremely difficult question to decide, but you
would have to do it somehow if you wanted to solve this problem
numerically. Then if you confined your attention to professional
schools you would need to estimate the relative value to the community
of a doctor, lawyer, clergyman or engineer, and so on. In doing this
you would necessarily take into account local needs and local peculiari-
ties. You would have to consider, as a single sample of what I mean,
whether there was a real demand in the community for an increased
number of doctors, and so with the other professions.

Here to-day we are celebrating the foundation of buildings which
are to be devoted to science and its applications, and so it would seem
natural to consider that kind of educational effort somewhat more
minutely. You would have to begin with deciding on the usefulness
to the community of an education such as is being given in this insti-
tution, and in particular in this school of engineering where men are
trained in the sciences for the service of the state. Now, it is such a
commonplace to-day that science has revolutionized the world that I
shall not weary you with attempting to demonstrate that fact. At the
same time I should like to say in passing that, like many another com-
monplace, it is too often neglected in actual practise. It seems that
individuals and states in making provisions for education constantly
fail to recognize how enormously important to the welfare of the state
it is that men should be trained in science, and in its application to
every branch of practical life. "We live in an age preeminently scien-
tific, and if we are not able to cope with a problem scientifically we
can not cope with it at all. But not only is a scientific training essen-
tial anywhere to any country to-day, it is, I think, peculiarly important
in this country at this particular time. It seems to me that one of the
great dangers of our democracy is the prevalence of the idea that one
man is as good as another. It is an idea founded on an erroneous
theory of democracy and one that appears utterly false from a scientific
point of view. It too often gives support to the doctrine that any man
will do for any position that he is clever enough to get. Nothing has
surprised me more in moving about this country than to see countless
instances of men who have had no adequate scientific training employed
in the service of cities and of states, to do work that really needs a very
considerable scientific equipment. They are amateurs doing the work
of professionals. We have suffered too much at the hands of these
amateurs, and we must remove them — root and branch. We must
educate our communities in such a way that it will shock their moral
sense to see a man, let us say, administering a department of public
health who knows little or nothing of biology and bacteriology or any
of the other fundamental sciences that enter into the very heart of his

492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

work. Then we have to bear in mind that this nation is peculiarly-
given to extravagance. This is due largely to the optimism of the
American people, a quality on which so much of America's success
depends. But it has its drawbacks, like other good things, and the
spirit of extravagance may yet drive us upon the rocks. We must not
forget that conditions are rapidly changing and that what might suffice
for a past generation will not do to-day. A generation ago we could
speak of our natural resources as practically unlimited, now we begin
to see their end — at least in some directions. And apart from this we
must recognize that under any circumstances waste is a sin and that
the record of progress is largely the record of the elimination of waste.
We shall have to make up for the diminution of our natural resources
by new applications of science which will make ten blades of grass
grow where one grew before, and by new inventions which will save
fifty per cent, or more of the waste in most of our industrial processes.
However, even without any new inventions we could easily make enor-
mous savings by the proper use of existing knowledge. Let me give
you a single example. A few years ago a graduate of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, trained in the department of biology, was
appointed to an administrative post in one of the great cities. He
invented nothing new, but merely joined common sense and executive
ability to the scientific knowledge that his training at " Tech " had
given him. Before long he had given the city a much better service
than it had ever had before, and at the same time had saved it more
than a million dollars each year. Suppose you multiply the million
dollars thus saved by even a very small fraction of the thousands of
men trained each year in the scientific institutions of this country and
you may form some estimate of the saving grace of such institutions
and of their value to the community.

I think, then, that there can be no question that you would have to
put in a very large factor of usefulness, if you were estimating the
value of such an educational institution as we are considering to-day —
at least if you realize in any adequate degree the importance of scien-
tific knowledge in public and private life. And, of course, a not unim-
portant element in such scientific knowledge would be a knowledge of
physics, and under ideal circumstances this knowlege might be at least
partially tested by Mr. Cooke's method, to which reference has already
been made. It would, however, at best be only a partial test of knowl-
edge, and it would neglect a great many factors of the first importance.
May I remind you that knowledge is very far from being everything
and that much of our educational work to-day and in the future must
be to deliberately smash up the idol of knowledge. We are peculiarly
prone to this form of idolatry in a scientific school, for science rightly
lays a great stress on facts and their accurate apprehension. We are

ACADEMIC EFFICIENCY 493

very apt to overestimate the value of such knowledge, and it is because
we have done this so much in the past that there has been so much
disappointment in many quarters over the results of scientific teaching.
It is a fact that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, and it is
the knowledge of such facts that is tested by such examinations as
Mr. Cooke proposes. But, except to a very few, such knowledge profits
little or nothing — what is infinitely more valuable is an understanding
of the method by which the facts are reached and an appreciation of
the spirit that compels their investigation. Here, as elsewhere, it is
the spirit that giveth life, and any test of efficiency that ignores the
spirit and deals only with the bare fact is a mockery.

It would be a monstrous oversight to ignore the method and the
spirit of the teaching. Are the pupils trained by a mere grind over
knowledge, a mere hammering in of facts — enough perhaps to ensure
that they reach the requisite 50 or 60 per cent, in Mr. Cooke's exam-
ination? We must all know schools that would appear to be highly
efficient from such a test, and which are really extremely inefficient;
and on the other hand some of our best institutions might not make a
very good show when subjected to Mr. Cooke's scrutiny. At the
Boston Tech a method has been in vogue for long that is there deemed
highly satisfactory — it is known as the " do-it-yourself method." The
students are put as much as possible upon their own resources and
learning is not made easy where it seems better for a man to experience
the apparent hardship of overcoming a difficulty for himself.

Then, when considering method, we should "want to know whether
the students are taught to master fundamental principles, or to spend
most of their time over details or particular examples. Is it made
manifest to them that the details of practise are constantly changing,
that what is good in that respect to-day may be antiquated to-morrow,
whereas fundamental principles, like the brook, go on forever?

As to the spirit of the teaching — is it possible to overlook the
character of the teachers? Are they men who understand the depth
and breadth of their calling? Do they take a large view of the life
of to-da}', and have some prevision of to-morrow? Are their circum-
stances such as to make this larger outlook possible or probable ? Are
they narrow specialists or broad-minded, far-seeing men? Are they
paid so that a reasonably full life is a possibility, or are they so ground
down by poverty that they must give most of their thought to the
vexed question of the cost of living?

Finally, is a successful effort made by the teachers to convey their
largeness of view and breadth of outlook to their pupils? Do the
students learn to understand that science does not affect mankind
merely on the material side? Do they see that all the changes that
science has brought about necessarily involve a profound mental and

494 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

spiritual change — a change, so great, indeed, that it is well-nigh impos-
sible for us thoroughly to sympathize with our grandfathers ? Do they
realize that science has thrust us into a new world and that our new
surroundings have made us new men? Unless they appreciate this
they can not be in real communion with the life of this age. They must
live more or less apart, and move away from the great current that is
sweeping the world along. Like Bernard Shaw, they must find that
they were born in the seventeenth century and that they have not yet
outlived it.

I might express this last test of efficiency otherwise by saying that
you must look to the cultural element in the teaching of science — but
I am afraid of the word " culture." It has been so terribly abused.
Some speak as if the test of culture were the knowledge of Latin, or
of Greek, or of French literature, or of Italian painting, or of what not.
As a matter of fact it is none of these things, for I take it that the
root of culture in any worthy sense of that word is the possession of
an ideal that is broad enough to form the basis of a sane criticism of
life. I hope that I need not turn aside to demonstrate the competency
of science to present such an ideal. I willingly admit that some such
ideal may be reached by various paths, through the study of literature,
or of art, or of science. I should be the last to suggest that these are
rival or mutually exclusive pursuits or that any one can justly claim a
monopoly of culture. To know the best that has been said in literature
and to use this as a touchstone in the criticism of the life of to-day,
or to reach through art the ideal of perfection in form and color and
make this broad enough to embrace life as a whole — each opens a
promising avenue to culture. But how can a criticism of life be
broadly enough based to-day unless the main results of scientific investi-
gation lie at its roots and the method and the spirit of science be in
the atmosphere that surrounds it ? It can not, I think, be broad enough,
unless we greatly exaggerate the part that science has played and is
playing in the modern world. And I do not think that we exaggerate
it, for practically all must recognize that there are few important
problems of life to-day that science does not touch and touch most
closely. This being the case, can a school be declared efficient that
fails to give its students a vision and a grasp of the scientific ideal —
an ideal that will guide them in the solution of all the complex prob-
lems that face individuals and face the state?

FRANCIS BACON (1560-1910) 495

THE PEOPHECY OF FRANCIS BACON" (1560-1910)

By Professor RALPH BARTON PERRY

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

I. Bacon and the Spirit of Discovery. — There are several ways in
which the importance of a philosopher may be estimated. He may be
regarded as an exponent of his times; that is, as a representation in
which the manifold tendencies of an age are focalized and idealized.
Or he may be regarded as the author of a panorama of existence, of a
world-view or system, which, while it may be superseded, will always
retain enough of logical and imaginative coherence to make it typical
and classic. Or the philosopher, like other servants of mankind, may
be judged according to the degree in which he has been confirmed by
posterity. Judged by this last standard, the great philosopher will be
the philosopher who, while he may, like Bacon, have been born three
hundred and fifty years ago, is nevertheless modern, in the sense that
he is identified with important ideas which are now generally held to
be true. This brief summary aims to present the Bacon that is living
to-day in our common opinion, in our expert knowledge, and in our
dominant ideals.

Any one who considers Bacon in relation to European civilization
of the modern period must be impressed with the degree to which he
represents its progressive ideas. Those characteristics of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries which are most marked in Bacon are the
characteristics in which they anticipate later centuries. It is possible
for our immediate purposes to reduce these characteristics to one : the
disposition, namely, to look for a betterment of human life from the
advancement of knowledge. " Advancement of knowledge " does not
here mean the education of the individual, but the winning of new
truths by the race and for the good of the race. We may call this the
spirit of discovery, where " discovery " is used both in the theoretical
and in the practical sense. Bacon himself was not a discoverer of new
scientific truths, but the discoverer of the art of discovery. As he ex-
pressed it, he " rang the bell that called the other wits together."
While it is doubtless inaccurate to attribute so general an idea to any
individual authorship, Bacon was its greatest prophet. His brilliant
literary gifts, his imagination, his sanguine temperament, his breadth
of view and his native regard for utility, the very qualities that helped
to unfit him for exact research, made him the most important medium
through which the idea of discovery, or of intellectual conquest, has
gradually become the hope of mankind.

496 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

II. The Baconian Reform. — This idea was defined by Bacon largely
in opposition to what he believed to be the blindness and errors of his
own and earlier times. Philosophical literature nowhere else contains
so acute and so comprehensive an examination of man's intellectual bad
habits. Bacon's criticisms may conveniently be brought together under
four heads.

First, he defined the persistent error of anthropomorphism. It is
customary for man to fashion things after himself. He is deceived by
what Bacon calls the " idols of the tribe " or the prejudices character-
istic of human nature in general, and by the " idols of the den " or the
prejudices peculiar to the individual. But if he is to view nature as it
is, he must efface himself.

Second, he found the thought of his own time to suffer peculiarly
from conventionality. It was customary for men to accept what was
current and supported by general opinion. There are two important
means through which arbitrary or ungrounded ideas are foisted
upon belief : language, which gives rise to what Bacon calls the " idols
of the market-place," and established systems, or theories which have
the stage, and which give rise to what Bacon calls the " idols of the
theatre." In the interests of truth it is necessary to guard against the
suggestive power of words, which are often obscure or even meaning-
less, and against the inertia of doctrines that have acquired repute and
prestige.

Third, it was customary in Bacon's time, to a degree that is scarcely
intelligible to-day, to assent to theories of nature on grounds of au-
thority, ecclesiastical or political. Bacon is among the first to formu-
late the principle of tolerance, according to which there is hope of
knowledge, provided only that the mind be free from external constraint.
The truth-seeking mind can acknowledge no obligations except to evi-
dence.

Fourth, Bacon attacked the tendency, common at the time of the
Renaissance, to rely on antiquity. The essentially modern character of
Bacon's mind is nowhere more apparent than in his repudiation of the
idea that dominated the revival of letters. He detected the dangerous
fallacy which had arisen with the new study of the ancient languages
and literatures. Historical retrospect inverts the intellectual values of
the race. The wisdom of the ancients is but the folly of youth —
Antiquitas sa?culi juventus mundi. The hope of knowledge lies not in
a return to childhood, but in a maturity yet to come.

III. The Baconian Survey. — As a pioneer in a new intellectual
enterprise, it fell to Bacon to draw a rude map of the settled domain
and border wilderness of knowledge. It is impossible here to enter
into the merits and demerits of his classification of the sciences. Most
interesting to us of the present is his explicit provision for what is

FRANCIS BACON (1560-1910) 497

now known as " applied science." But there can be no doubt of the
service which Bacon rendered in making such a classification at all.
To Bacon modern science is largely indebted for the sense of solidarity
that obtains among all special investigators. He was, in a measure at
least, responsible for the organization of the Eoyal Society in London,
and of similar societies on the continent. He inspired the collective
scientific movement of the Encyclopaedists ; and, directly or indirectly,
the systematization of science made by Comte, Spencer and others.
The present idea, then, that the several sciences are the members of one
body, and that those who serve them are serving in one army to
achieve the conquest of the unknown, is an idea to which Bacon testi-
fied clearly and effectually.

IV. The Baconian Method. — But Bacon did not merely point out
the promised land and exhort men to discovery ; he organized a plan of
campaign. There is an opinion to the effect that while Bacon was
enlightened in his general ideas, he was benighted in his particular
ideas. This opinion is entirely unjust. Bacon does make many of
the mistakes current in his time; and he deliberately makes many loose
statements in the hope that they may prove suggestive and stimulating.
Furthermore, he necessarily uses terms, such as " form," which, because
they were borrowed from Greek and medieval thought, suggest to our
minds something pre-scientific and obsolete. But this very term, as
actually employed by Bacon, is the closest approximation in his time
to the modern conception of cause, as employed in such sciences as
molecular physics and chemistry. Furthermore, and be it said to his
great and enduring credit, he was the great systematizer and popular-
izer of experimental method. The incompleteness of the Baconian
method is the incompleteness of the experimental method. Although
he did not by any means ignore it, it is true that Bacon did not ade-
quately realize the importance of the quantitative or mathematical
formulation of scientific laws. But this fact in no wise affects the cor-
rectness of his statement of the experimental method. The Baconian
plan of research, avoiding technicalities, may be said to contain four
important ideas, all of which have been approved and employed in
subsequent scientific procedure.

His first and fundamental idea is that of observation. Bacon
never wearies of reminding us that the mind must be brought into
direct contact with things. In the study of nature, we may see, he
believes, by the " ray direct." To avoid verbalism, dogmatism or am-
biguity, it is necessary that the mind should be open to the facts, and
that it should follow their leading. " We can only conquer nature by
first obeying her." But Bacon understood the fruitlessness of desul-
tory observation. For purposes of explanation all facts are not equally
significant.

vol. lxxvi. — 34.

498 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Hence, secondly, he was led to define certain methods or canons of
induction. It was Bacon who first called attention to the importance
of " glaring " or " striking " instances, in which the phenomenon under
investigation is thrown into relief ; " parallel " instances, which per-
mit of the argument from analogy ; and " crucial " instances, which
serve as tests of contrary hypotheses. From Bacon, Mill derived the
methods to which he gave such prominence in his Logic, the methods,
namely, of " agreement," " difference " and " concomitant variation."
By means of these methods it is possible to single out from among the
circumstances attending or preceding the phenomenon to be explained,
that which is its probable cause. That which is present when the
phenomenon is present, which is absent when the phenomenon is
absent, and which shows like quantitative changes, may be assumed to
be connected with the phenomenon, and to point the way to its ex-
planation.

But, thirdly, it is necessary to supplement observation of the natural
course of events with artificial experiments. Nature, like men, will
reveal her secrets only when put to the torture. Bacon was a con-
sistent advocate of the first-hand manipulation of natural bodies. He
saw this to be the only method of study which afforded any prospect of
laying bare the more " subtle " physical phenomena, such as heat, light
and the transmutation of substances. The later development of physics
and chemistry not only confirmed this judgment, but in several signal
cases fulfilled definite predictions which Bacon based on it.

Fourthly, Bacon recommended the comparative and historical
method. He was one of the first to appreciate the importance of study-
ing all phenomena that develop, in different stages of their development.
In the particular case of anatomy, he called attention to the importance
of studying the structure of organs in their simpler forms, and using
the results as a key to the complex forms.

V. The Baconian Pragmatism. — Bacon's extraordinary modernism
appears not only in his definition of sound and fruitful methods of
scientific study, but also in his conception of the relation of science to
civilization. And in nothing is he so modern as in this. He asserted
that the hope of man lay in his advancing knowledge and control of
nature. This idea is undoubtedly a present commonplace, but there
are few philosophers that anticipate the commonplaces of mankind
by three centuries and a half ! But the idea is too fundamental
properly to be called a commonplace. It is the most fruitful idea in
modern life, the main presupposition of progress. Bacon sought to
promote learning for the sake of power. That this is essentially a
modern idea will be apparent to any one who will study the motives
underlying earlier periods of European civilization. The ancient
world had its critical and its dogmatic idea of progress. The

FRANCIS BACON (1560-1910) 499

former was that of national or racial aggrandizement, the conquest of
territory and political control. The latter, contributed by the genius
of Greece, was the humanistic idea of the intensive cultivation and
refinement of human nature. These ancient ideas were superseded
by Christian supernaturalism, which referred man's hope of salvation
to another world which might be won by the repudiation of this. As
christian Europe became secularized there developed the theocratic
idea of a fixed system in which all human activities should be limited
and controlled by religious authority. Finally, as a reaction against
the established order, there appeared the idea of the Renaissance,
an enthusiasm for antiquity, and desire to reverse the course of
history. The modern idea, though it borrows something from all
of these ideas, is fundamentally different. It bespeaks a solidarity
of mankind in the enterprise of life, and in this manifests its
Christianity; and it derives from paganism a respect for human
capacities, and a confidence in man's power to win the good for
himself. But these motives are so united in the modern spirit as to
produce something genuinely new. The good is to be won by the race
and for the race; it lies in the future, and can result only from pro-
longed and collective endeavor; and the power to achieve it lies in the
progressive knowledge and control of nature. This is the Baconian
idea. The incentive to knowledge lies in its application to life. " For
fruits and inventions are, as it were, sponsors and sureties for the
truth of philosophies." Therefore, Bacon would have men of learning
begin and end their study with the facts of their present environment.
" For our road does not lie on a level, but ascends and descends,
first ascending to axioms, then descending to works." In the last part
of the New Atlantis there is a remarkable description of the riches of
Solomon's House, the great museum and laboratory, the treasure house
and workshop, which was " the lantern of this kingdom." The words
with which the father of Solomon's House receives his visitors are a
terse and eloquent summary of that which Francis Bacon prophesied,
and which posterity has steadily achieved. " The end of our founda-
tion is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things ; and the
enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things
possible."

5oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

JOHN D ALTON AND HIS ACHIEVEMENT: A GLIMPSE

ACEOSS A CENTUKY1

Br Peofessok R. M. WENLEY

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

IT is a melancholy reflection that the treasure laid up by great men
in our memories should be corrupted often by the moth and rust
of error. But, after all, this mischance roots in the nature of the case.
Necessarily, our views of the past are synoptic, because the daily details,
even of big events, escape us, much more the complex, ceaseless pulsa-
tions of the persons who have served their time and place rarely. Be
we appreciative or critical, we lie under sore temptation to forget the
inevitable limitations of human lot, and thus to lose perspective.
Accordingly, my scientific colleagues,2 with whom you have done me
the honor to associate me in our effort to pay worthy homage to the
genius of John Dalton (1766-1844), whose "A New System of Chem-
ical Philosophy," although not completed in the second part of 1810,3
had reached all its epochmaking significance, have requested me to
introduce the subject with some account of the difficulties, amazing to
us in our conditions, under which this strenuous pioneer labored. To
this end, we must try to pierce the cultural inwardness of English life
at the close of the eighteenth century, keeping in mind the peculiar
qualities that characterize English science even yet.

I

As usual, the bare facts of Dalton's story need interpretation, the
invisible atmosphere, their setting, imports much. Born 1766, in a
little village of Cumberland, a county still remarkable for its sparse
population, of a Quaker family, who eked out a precarious livelihood
upon the home industry of woolen-weaving, Dalton's social relations
isolated him from the chief cultural organs of the national life. Till
the tender age of twelve he received such instruction as the local
Friends' school afforded, and he appears to have made excellent use of
his opportunities: then he went to work as a teacher there, and as a

1 Kead before the Research Club of the University of Michigan at its annual
memorial meeting, devoted in 1810 to a celebration of the centennial of Dalton's
atomic theory.

2 Professor S. Lawrence Bigelow, of the department of chemistry, and
Professor Karl E. Guthe,' of the department of physics.

8 It was never completed; the second part of the second volume did not
appear.

JOHN D ALTON 501

hand in the paternal fields, for three years. At fifteen he migrated —
literally walked ! — to Kendal, forty-five miles away, where he taught in
a mixed school, the venture of a cousin; and, remember, a mixed, local
school in the England of that generation portends not a little respecting
absence of amenity, appliances and opportunity. Here he spent twelve
years, fruitful in many respects. For, the day's darg done, he con-
trived to improve himself by private study of Latin, Greek, French,
mathematics, and " natural philosophy," with most important help and
encouragement from John Gough4 (1757-1825), the blind naturalist,
celebrated by Wordsworth in " The Excursion."

Methinks I see him how his eyeballs roll'd
Beneath his ample brow, in darkness pained
But each instinct with spirit, and the frame
Of the whole countenance alive with thought,
Fancy, and understanding; whilst the voice
Discoursed of natural or moral truth,
With eloquence and such authentic power,
That in his presence humbler knowledge stood
Abashed, and tender pity overawed.

In 1793 he removed to Manchester where, on Gough's recommenda-
tion, he had been appointed science tutor in New College, a Presbyte-
rian institution, and, therefore, once more without the pale of national
higher education ; he held this position for six years, at a salary of $400.
On the transference of the college to York, he resigned, and gave him-
self to private tuition, an exiguous vocation, sufficient for daily bread.
But the Manchester experience proved a turning point, for it offered an
environment wherein he could make pure science his avocation. From
1786 Dalton had been engaged in meteorological observations, and
published his maiden work in the autumn of 1793 — " Meteorological
Observations and Essays." Printed for the author, it failed of due
publicity. Thanks to his connection with the Manchester Literary
and Philosophical Society, he read his famous paper, " Extraordinary
Facts Relating to the Vision of Colours," in October, 1794, a month
after his election. In 1801 he presented his first classical research,
" On the Constitution of Mixed Gases," which was followed by three
memorable papers, " On the Force of Steam or Vapor from Water and
other Liquids in Different Temperatures, both in a Toricellian Vacuum
and in Air," " On Evaporation " and " On the Expansion of Gases by
Heat." In the last he enunciated the law of expansion of gases formu-
lated by Gay-Lussac a few months later.

It was in 1802, after six years of research in chemistry, that he re-
ferred to the possibility of multiple proportionate combinations of the
elements, in a paper entitled " On the Proportion of the Several Gases
or Elastic Fluids Constituting the Atmosphere." The atomic symbols

* See " Dictionary of National Biography," sub voce.

5Q2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

devised by him are first found in his note-book under the date Sep-
tember 6, 1803; and, under the same date there is a table of atomic
weights, showing that, by this time, he had grappled with the funda-
mental problem — that of fixed " relative weights of the ultimate par-
ticles of bodies." For unknown reasons Dalton appended it, in a some-
what different form, to a paper •' On the Absorption of Gases by
Water," read before the Manchester Society in October, 1803, but not
published till November, 1805. The table was added during the interval
between presentation and publication. The summer of 1804, as Dalton
himself tells us, was the crucial period of the investigation. The first
part of the first volume of the " New System of Chemical Philosophy,"
published in 1808, gives the mature theory, while the second part of
1810 describes the chemical elements in detail. Dalton was now forty-
four. And it is significant that, although he had lectured twice at the
London Eoyal Institution, and in Glasgow and Edinburgh as well, the
French Academy of Science recognized his merits six years5 before any
native body. In 1822, Dalton being fifty-six, the Royal Society hon-
ored itself by his election. Another decade elapsed ere Oxford conferred
her D.C.L., on the occasion of the second meeting of the British Asso-
ciation, and he was sixty-eight when Edinburgh enrolled him among her
honorary doctors. In 1833, the government took note of his services,
and he received a civil list pension, increased afterwards in 1836, when
the announcement was publicly made under dramatic circumstances by
Sedgwick, at the Cambridge meeting of the British Association. " The
imagination may picture, if it can," writes Eoscoe, " the feelings of the
son of the poor Eaglesfield handloom weaver as he sat in the Senate
House of the University of Cambridge listening to this eulogium — the
observed of all observers."6 As Sedgwick remarked in his striking
speech, " without any powerful apparatus for making philosophical
experiments — with an apparatus, indeed, many of them might think
almost contemptible — and with very limited external means for em-
ploying his great natural powers, he had gone straight forward in his
distinguished course, and obtained for himself, in those branches of
knowledge which he had cultivated, a name not perhaps equaled by
that of any other living philosopher of the world."7 Evidently, then,
Dalton wrought under grave disadvantages. What were they?

We would all agree, I take it, that certain results of human activity
must remain intimately personal, and that, as a consequence, they must
vary from age to age, or diverge even among different peoples in the
same epoch. Art and poetry, religion and, possibly, some portions of
philosophy, can not well escape these very subtle contrasts. But, with

8 Cf. " John Dalton and the Rise of Modern Chemistry," Sir Henry E.
Roscoe, p. 175.

"Ibid., pp. 204, 205.

' Ibid., p. 203.

JOHN DALTON 503

Wissenscliaft, particularly in that development of it known to us as
positive science, the case stands far otherwise. Yet, even here, the uni-
fication of knowledge, each nation contributing its quota to the common
fund, happens to be perhaps the achievement of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Organization by countries, especially in the case of France, there
was between the Renascence and the French Revolution; but a world-
wide pact, embracing all effort, no matter where, did not eventuate then.
Now, it is of prime moment for the present subject that the instru-
ments of this recent unification have been the German university sys-
tem, and the academies and institutes of France. By contrast, the
English-speaking world possessed no such developed organs, if we ex-
cept the Scottish universities where, naturally enough, Dalton met
immediate recognition. Thus English science till but yesterday — teste
even Darwin — has betrayed individualistic tendencies. These were
never more evident than in Dalton's career, and during his life,
moreover.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Cuvier, in his
" Rapport " of 1808, is extolling — and justly — the preeminence of
France in the exact sciences, an extraordinary contrast manifests itself
across the Channel. In the same year, John Playfair bewails the " in-
controvertible proofs of the inferiority of the English mathematicians,"
and refers to " the public institutions of England " as its cause.8 Eight
years later, in a damnatory notice of Dealtry's " Principles of Flux-
ions," another writer notes it for a paradox that, Newton dead, his
country " should, for the last seventy or eighty years, have been in-
ferior to so many of its neighbours."0 Once more, in the same review
for 1822, a third critic deplores the state of affairs at Cambridge, where
" for want of facilities " men " are apt to lose the spirit of investiga-
tion." Brewster's article in the Quarterly Review10 which, as is well
known, led to the foundation of the British Association, is no less sar-
castic and outspoken. These attacks were directed against the English
universities :X1 that of Babbage, the peg on which Brewster hung his
exordium, had the Royal Society for its mark.12 Now the extraordi-

8 Cf. Edinburgh Review, No. XXII., January, 1808, pp. 249 f. A review of
La Place's " Traite" de Mecanique Celeste."

8 Ibid., No. LIII., September, 1816, pp. 87 f. (Dealtry was a fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge, and a fellow of the Royal Society.) Dalton himself
made the same complaint in his lectures at the London Royal Institution
(1810) ; cf. "A New View of the Origin of Dalton's Atomic Theory," Roscoe
and Harden, p. 105.

"Vol. XLIII. (1830), pp. 305 f.

"Analogous circumstances- produce analogous protests even now— e. g.,
"Oxford at the Cross Roads," Professor Percy Gardner (1905).

12 " Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on some of its
Causes," by Charles Babbage, Lucasian professor of mathematics in the Uni-
versity of Cambridge (1830).

5o4 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

nary thing is that, prior to and during these years, or, to be quite exact,
between 1774 and 1828, Britain had contributed at least a dozen dis-
coveries of the first magnitude, and as many more of scarcely less im-
portance. As you all know for what each stands, I need only mention
Priestley, Black, Landen, Davy, Benjamin Thompson, Cavendish, Her-
schel, Nicholson and Carlisle, Dalton, Young, Wollaston, Ivory, Eobert
Brown, Charles Bell, Brewster, William Smith, Prout, Faraday, George
Green and Rowan Hamilton. Still more wonderful, continental leaders
were well aware of these contributions, and wont to emphasize them.
In 1821, Cuvier gave most generous testimony: and Moll, of Utrecht,
repelled Babbage's criticisms with no uncertain sound, remarking, " all
must allow that it is an extraordinary circumstance for English char-
acter to be attacked by natives and defended by foreigners."

Although I can not comment upon the ramifications to-night, the
puzzle has some obvious causes. The English universities were not
scientific organs, but groups of residential colleges. The advancement
of science was no primary part of their purpose, precisely as the labori-
ous elevation of incompetents to a bare level of possible passability was
no primary part of the purpose of the German universities or the
French institutes. The colleges cherished their individuality fondly,
because they aimed to produce a certain type of man for life — to anneal
him by forming his ethos, and to fit him for the exercise of civic influ-
ence by giving him a respectable general acquaintance with the " things
of the mind." In a word, the English universities did not exist to
promote science or learning, any more than the continental organiza-
tions existed to provide an educational top-dressing for the sons and
daughters of "the people." So, too, of pure thought. The apostolic
succession of English philosophers — Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley,
Hume, the Mills, Spencer, even our contemporaries, Hodgson, Balfour,
Shand, Haldane and Bertrand Eussell — do not adorn the universities.
Again, the peculiar position of the metropolis, its new university in the
melting-pot at this moment, must be taken into account. Lacking the
academic center, its scientific societies could not be organized for the
advancement of discovery after the style of French and German asso-
ciations.13 These causes, together with the distinctive arrangement of
English society a century ago, tended to render the great scientific
pioneers lonely figures, sitting loose to the main expressions and modes
of national culture. The wails over the condition of English science
are traceable as much to this severance, with its absence of constant
intercourse and cooperation, as to aught else. How Priestley and Dal-
ton and Joule, Young and Davy and Faraday were hampered by these
13 For example, in the preface to "A New System," Dalton makes the (to
us) astounding statement, that he did not know whether the abstracts of his
lectures, left by him for this express purpose, had been published in the Journals
of the Royal Institution. Some five years had elapsed since their delivery!

JOHN D ALT ON 505

circumstances is notorious. Others, like George Green, received no
recognition whatsoever. In addition, the English passion for inde-
pendence played its part. The demand for complete freedom, if it
fostered the eccentricity of which the docile, drilled Germans com-
plained, although it led to pig-headedness, as in Dalton's case, also
proved greatly favorable to original genius. For, it is well to recall
that more original notions, basal to modern science, have come from
England than from any other land, even if, as with Newton and Dar-
win, France was to systematize Newtonianisme, Germany Darwinismus.
England possessed no trained regiments to accomplish these things.
Accordingly, if we remember all this, some apparent mysteries that
cloak Dalton's career and mental characteristics begin to dissipate. In
short, the Dalton we commemorate would have been nigh inconceivable
had he been " born to the intellectual purple of the ancient universi-
ties " ; but the Dalton we regret, who remained obdurate to Gay-Lussac
despite Berzelius's intercession, might never have been. The qualities
of the man, like his defects, pertained to his strong, wayward and un-
disciplined, if narrow and often uncouth, provincialism. Qui a nuce
nucleum esse villi, frangat nucem.

II

Dalton maintained silence from 1793 till 1799, hindered, perhaps,
by college duties. On reappearance, he soon dropped the role of meteor-
ologist for that of chemist and physicist. The new line was taken in
the paper entitled " Experiments and Observations on the Power of
Fluids to Conduct Heat, with Eeference to Count Bumford's Seventh
Essay on the same Subject," read before the Manchester Society on
April 12, 1799. The simple nature of his apparatus may be illustrated
aptly from this communication.

Took an ale glass of a conical figure, 2* inches in diameter, and 3 inches
deep; filled it with water that had been standing in the room, and consequently
of the temperature of the air nearly. Put the bulb of a thermometer in the
bottom of the glass, the scale being out of the water; then having marked the
temperature, I put the red-hot tip of a poker half an inch deep in the water,
holding it there steadily for half a minute; and as soon as it was withdrawn,
I dipped the bulb of a sensitive thermometer about \ inch, when it rose in a
few seconds to ISO0.11

Then follow the tabulated temperature results. Another experi-
ment, described in the same paper, suffices to show that Dalton had
pondered the discontinuity of matter thus early. Having mixed hot
and cold water for half a minute, he proceeded to determine whether the
upper layer became warmer than the lower. Observing that it did not,
he remarked : " If the particles of water during the agitation had not

14 Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, Vol.
V., p. 381.

506 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

actually communicated their heat, the hot ones ought to have risen to
the top, and the cold ones subsided, so as to have made a material dif-
ference in the temperature."15 Furthermore, these and many other
experiments afford us indications of his mental habit as a scientific
investigator. Conceptual processes find him at his best ; his theoretical
expectations and deductions are good. In experiment he is not so
happy, and what we understand by " fine " or refined work occurs sel-
dom. Thus, in the case just cited, Dalton infers " that the expansion
of water is the same both above and below the point of maximum den-
sity." But, when he comes to determine this crucial point precisely,
he goes wide of the mark, setting it at 36°.

These references may enable us to grasp his manner of approach to
a problem, and to realize his general plan of attack upon the atomic
constitution of matter as it stood when he entered the field.

I wish that space permitted me to present some consecutive account
of the doctrine of " matter " as it developed down the ages — but this is
impossible. The subject deserves attention, because so bemused in the
minds of the laity. And not only this. Scientific men themselves mis-
conceive it at times, not deliberately indeed, but because, absorbed in
researches of immediate moment, they have not troubled to follow the
marvelous story with patience. The long, tortuous endeavors that
culminated in Dalton's atomic theory, with its kernel, the law of mul-
tiple ratios, are the tale of man's attempt to reduce his notion of " mat-
ter " to conceptual simplicity ; this to the end that it might be rendered
an obedient instrument. Freed from contingent accessories, the cen-
tral problem was this: Given such a vast multiplicity and variety of
phenomena as the " substantial " world presents, how can all be
grasped under a single, synthetic idea? Plainly, whenever man began
to reflect upon nature, he encountered this sphinx. The elusive, yet
persistent, relationship between the one and the many forms part of
ancient history in science no less than in metaphysics.

Now, stating the situation very synoptically, and omitting the meta-
physical reference in favor of the natural-scientific, it may be affirmed
that the problem itself is also a many in a one. For, if we are to reach
clear concepts about natural phenomena, we must reckon with three
investigations at least. In the first place, a particular phenomenon
must be selected, and treated as the starting point. This done, it is
requisite to obtain an all-round view of what it is. In the second place,
one must proceed to elucidate its relations to other phenomena, prefer-
ably to those which evince evident, or apparent, kinship. In the third
place, order must be induced in the relations that have thus come under
observation by reducing them, as far as possible, to numerical expres-
sion. The primary methods of weighing, measuring and enumeration

10 Ibid., p. 385.

JOHN D ALT ON 507

must be invoked. This achieved, we may assert that we have arrived
at that species of conceptual simplicity which we call a " law of nature."
On a broad view, it is fair to say that, prior to Dalton, investigation
and fancy pursued the one (i. e., the conception of "matter") through
the many (i. e., these three aspects of the problem). For, on the whole,
till we come to J. J. Becher (1635-82) and G. E. Stahl (1660-1734),
the element theory held the field. And this is only to affirm that men
were trying to master the properties of particular bodies, while reserving
the remoter question of the ultimate constitution of " matter." Eoger
Bacon's view, probably the least fantastic we possess, is exceedingly
significant of this.

There are four Elements — fire, water, air, earth; that is, the properties of
their condition are four— heat, coldness, dryness and wetness; and hyle is the
thing in which there is nor heat, nor coldness, nor dryness, nor wetness, and a
body is not. And the Elements are made of hyle; and each of the elements is
transmuted into the nature of the other element and everything into everything
«lse. For barley is a horse by virtual possibility, that is, occult nature; and
wheat is a man by virtual possibility, and a man is wheat by virtual possibility.

The age of phlogiston, with its theories of combustion, marks a
move to the second question. Men are now engaged in an effort to
relate phenomena. Or, as Stahl puts it, in his conspectus : Combustible
substance minus phlogiston is burnt substance — e. g., metals, sulphur,
phosphorus, etc., minus phlogiston, are metal calxes, sulphuric and
phosphoric acids, etc. On the other hand, burnt substance plus phlo-
giston is combustible substance — e. g., metal calxes, sulphuric and phos-
phoric acids, plus phlogiston supplied by carbon, are metals, sulphur,
phosphorus, etc. In a word, the most different phenomena, such as the
burning of carbon and the calcination of a metal, are shown to belong
to the same class, and to be explicable by a simple conceptual hypothesis.
Finally, when Lavoisier sent phlogiston by the board, the third question
came to the fore, and men began to ask, How can we weigh, measure
and enumerate the exact degree of relationship between the properties
of substances? Dalton ranks among the great epoch-makers, because
he first brought this inquiry within the range of practicable uniformity.

Discussions about prior discovery, over which much time and no
little temper have been expended, prove profitless affairs, as a rule. You
see, error and loyalty are human. For instance, I am well aware that
scientific chemistry is dated usually from 1776, when Lavoisier made
the balance the chemical instrument: but you will bear with Sadler16
and me if we travel a little farther back and, as loyal sons of alma
mater, find the initial point in the classical investigation of latent heat,
conducted by Black between 1759 and 1763, at Glasgow. Nevertheless,
as Dalton's priority has been impugned, we are bound to consider
the facts.

16 Herbert C. Sadler, professor of naval architecture.

508 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Of course, every one knows that the conception of the discontinuity
of " matter " appears in ancient history. And, when we descend to
modern times, Boyle (1627-91) speaks of corpuscles, Boerhaave (1668-
1738), Alhrecht von Haller's master, of massulce. Moreover, Dal ton
was a youth of only seventeen when the most important developments
occurred. First, and with special reference to the framework of possible
method, we have Lavoisier's (1743-94) celebrated memoir, " Eeflections
concerning Phlogiston/' where he dismisses the dominant theory in
sarcastic terms,17 and establishes the quantitative method on a firm
basis. In the same year (1783) Bergman (1735-84), the last of the
great phlogistic chemists, published his notable work on what he called
"elective attraction" (i. e., affinity), a phenomenon attributed by him
to the attraction between the most minute particles. Naturally, Berg-
man's table of " single elective attractions in the moist way, and in the
dry way," with its curious alchemical signs, was a description of quali-
tative relations. It marked the beginning of investigation of mass
action, and provoked the striking researches of Berthollet (1748-1822),
who, in 1799, presented his paper, " Eecherches sur les lois de l'affinite,"
out of which grew his major work, " Essai de statique chimique "
(1803). The main result of his assault upon Bergman was to show
that chemical change depends, not merely upon the affinities of the
substances involved, but upon their quantities. In other words, a new
method asserted itself. For, as Berthollet says-:

To find the affinity of two substances towards a third, in accordance with
the conception we have now gained of affinity, can mean nothing other than to
determine the ratio in which this third substance divides itself between the
two first.

Therefore, chemical change hinges upon the nature of the relative
masses of the substances involved, but, " to determine the ratio of the
affinities of two substances towards a third ... is attended by unsur-
mountable obstacles." Here was the blank wall, so to speak, that
shadowed Berthollet's services till the time of Guldberg and Waage
(1864). As Berthollet stood to Bergman, so did Proust (1755-1826)
to Berthollet. Baffled in every attempt to determine the distribution
of salts in solution, Berthollet had good reason to doubt the doctrine of
constant composition. Here was Proust's opportunity. Having dis-
tinguished between " combinations of elements " and " associations of
combinations," the latter variable under analysis, Proust was able to
enunciate the law of fixed proportions — in his own words, " Election
and proportion [i. e., affinity and fixity of composition] are the two
poles about which revolves immutably the whole system of true com-
pounds, whether produced by Nature or by Man " ; or, as Lothar Meyer
phrases it, " Definite chemical compounds always contain their con-

" Cf. " GEuvres," Vol. II., pp. 623 f.

JOHN D ALT ON 509

stituents in fixed and invariable proportions." Notice, in the words
I have italicized, the unanimous trend towards quantitative measure-
ments and accuracy, the ruling notion being that of numerical ratio.
We come to closer quarters with our central theme in the work of
Eichter (1762-1807), an investigator, it is important to note, obsessed
by mathematical methods. Despite his obvious idiosyncrasy, Eichter
arrived at the law of equivalent ratios — " The qualities of acids and
bases equivalent in one neutralization are equivalent in all." In 1802
Fischer made Eichter's conclusions known to Berthollet, and chemical
ratios became an integral part of the science. As Wollaston says, in
1814:

It is to Richter we are originally indebted for the possibility of represent-
ing the proportions in which the different substances unite with each other in
such terms that the same substance shall always be represented by the same
number. He discovered the law of permanent proportions.18

The experimental proof was clinched by Berzelius in 1811-12, and
the law of " permanent " or " definite " ratios, as it is called now, put
the problem of composition on a practicable footing.19 It should be
noted also that, in stating the numerical values of the elements, Dalton
employed some determinations of other chemists, at all events as checks.

We are now in a position to see that series of complicated researches,

all looking to quantitative results, furnished Dalton with material which

enabled him to render the atomic theory perspicuous and applicable

from the very outset. Notwithstanding, to him must be given sole

credit for the final simplification, which had been exercising his mind

for some eighteen years — since 1790, in fact. A quotation from Ber-

thollet's " Essai" (1803) may suffice to emphasize the long step due to

Dalton's insight.

Some chemists, influenced by having found determinate proportions in sev-
eral combinations, have frequently considered it as a general law that combina-
tions should be formed in invariable proportions; so that, according to them,
when a neutral salt acquires an excess of acid or alkali, the homogeneous
substance resulting from it is a solution of the neutral salt in a portion of the
free acid or alkali. This is a hypothesis which has no foundation, but a dis-
tinction between solution and combination.20

Undoubtedly, events tended towards the new climate of opinion,
nay, this had become so far prevalent that the Irishman, William Hig-
gins (17P-1825) came nigh playing Wallace to Dalton's Darwin.
Indeed, in 1814, he raised a claim to priority, which was disproved at
once by Thomson, the Glasgow chemist who had made Dalton known.
This Higgins is to be distinguished from his uncle, Bryan Higgins

18 The italics are mine.

19 Reference should be made to the classical experiments in further con-
firmation by Stas (1865).

2" Cf. Lambert's English translation, p. 39.

510 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

(1737-1820), who, in 1775, in a prospectus of lectures, proposed to dis-
course of " his notions and experiments concerning the primary ele-
ments and properties of matter," and of " experiments, observations
and arguments, persuading that each primary element consists of atoms
homogeneal : that these atoms are impenetrable, immutable in figure,,
inconvertible, and that, in the ordinary course of nature, they are not
annihilated, nor newly created." He also conceived of atoms, of simple
particles, and even of gases, as uniting sometimes, in approximately, if
not completely, fixed proportions. Yet, he never arrived at true causes,
because his experiments failed to dove-tail with his advanced theoretical
suggestions. Accordingly, the explicit variety of the former destroyed
the implicit unity of the latter, and the status quo ante was main-
tained.21 William Higgins, the claimant of 1814, published his book22
in 1789. It contains forecasts of the atomic theory, such as the
following :

I am likewise of opinion that every primary particle of phlogisticated air
is united to two of dephlogisticated air, and that these molecules are surrounded
with one common atmosphere of fire.23

But, after all, less than a dozen pages of the 300 deal with the
subject; and, although he assigned causes for definite proportion and
saturation in a few cases, he never suspected a simple, universal and
necessary law. His real acuteness led him to see that combining par-
ticles had the same weight (multiple proportions), but he missed his
chance to generalize in a maze of suspicions directed against the phlo-
gistic theory, which had already lost its primacy; his indolence also
hindered him, like his eccentricity.

Ill

Finally, coming to Dalton's characteristics as a thinker, we may
find the clue in his forcible independence. In the preface to Part II.
of "A New System of Chemical Philosophy" (1810), he declares:

Having been in my progress so often misled, by taking for granted the
results of others, I have determined to write as little as possible but what I can
attest by my own experience. On this account, the following work will be found
to contain more original facts and experiments, than any other of its size, on
the elementary principles of chemistry.

Here the strong man places himself on record, and the question of
priority takes to flight. Accordingly, I state it as my clear impression
that the merits and defects of his achievement are alike traceable to the
fact that our laureate lay under direct obligation to but one of his

21 His chief work is, " Experiments and Observations relating to Acetous
Acid, Fixable Air, Dense Inflammable Air, Oils and Fuel, etc." (1780).

22 " A Comparative View of the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Theories, with
Inductions, etc."

23 P. 132 (2d ed., 1791).

JOHN D ALTON 511

predecessors — Xewton. Dalton encountered certain phenomena, such
as multiple and definite proportion, aqueous vapor as a distinct con-
stituent of air, and, seeking for the simplest common representation,
found it in Newton's well-known doctrine. For example, he says :

According to this view of the subject [heat], every atom has an atmosphere
of heat around it, in the same manner as the earth or any other planet has its
atmosphere of air surrounding it, which can not certainly be said to be held by
chemical affinity, but by a species of attraction of a very different kind.21

And he quotes from Xewton :

All bodies seem to be composed of hard particles. . . . Even the rays of
light seem to be hard bodies, and how such very hard particles which are only
laid together and touch only in a few points, can stick together, and that so
firmly as they do, without the assistance of something which causes them to be
attracted or pressed towards one another, is very difficult to conceive.25

This was the secret of the opposition of Hope and, later, of Faraday's

complaint. In a letter, dated January 2, 1811, Hope wrote to Dalton

as follows :

I need not conceal from you that I am by no means a convert to your doc-
trine, and do not approve of putting the result of speculative reasoning as
experiment.

While Faraday, similarly suspicious, as late as 1844, said:

The word atom, which can never be used without involving much that is
purely hypothetical, is often intended to be used to express a simple fact. . . .
There can be no doubt that the words definite proportions, equivalents, primes,
etc., . . . did not express the hypothesis as well as the fact.26

The truth is that Dalton was a first-rate theorist, who arrived at his
conclusions, not primarily on the basis of induction from experiment,
but by reflection. Analogically, he imports the view of "matter"
peculiar to celestial mechanics, through molecular physics, into the
realm of chemistry. Proceeding thus deductively, he evinces little
awareness of the very complex problems involved, which the later devel-
opments of the atomic theory were to reveal. Cut off from the world,
he did not possess intimate acquaintance in detail with the labors of
his immediate predecessors and contemporaries — a happy accident, no
doubt. For, this freedom from puzzle and disturbance enabled him to
proceed boldly with a generalization when men of the caliber of Wollas-
ton and Davy hung back. Dalton had natural capacity for logical
thought, and complete confidence in the validity of those mathematical
syntheses of physical facts which he had pondered.

But, as happens frequentty, his limitations are traceable to the same
source. Like Kant before him, Dalton became so entangled in the
theoretical ways of his own thought that, after he had promulgated his

24 Manchester Memoirs, Vol. II. (2d series), pp. 287 f.

25 Royal Institution Lecture Notes.

26 " Experimental Researches," Vol. II., pp. 285 f.

512 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

theory, he stopped short in middle life, and could not appreciate the
work of others who followed and supported him. This is the blot on
his 'scutcheon. Still, even so, we must hold the balance true. The
kinetic doctrine of " matter," integral to the Cartesian philosophy, had
paled before Newtonian atomism. And Dalton had grasped Newton's
view so logically that he could not admit the law of equal volumes,
because, as he held, " no two elastic bodies agree in the size of their
particles." The very success of his hypothesis blinded him to Gay-
Lussac's experimental evidence — it would not conform to the conceptual
scheme. As he wrote to Berzelius, in September, 1812 :

The French doctrine of equal measures of gases combining, etc., is what I
do not admit, understanding it in a mathematical sense. At the same time
I acknowledge there is something wonderful in the frequency of the ap-
proximation.27

Of course, the fact was that, as Wurz points out,

The relation which exists between the densities of gases and their atomic
weights is not so simple as we should at first sight be led to expect, and as for
a long time it was thought to be.28

Nay, " understanding it in a mathematical sense," Dalton had his
reasons. By a kind of paradox, the very simplicity of his notion
befogged him here, just as the problems bred of the atomic theory
diverted chemists for many a long day from the study of affinity.

We may conclude, then, that the logical character of Dalton's mind
enabled him to formulate the timely conceptual representation on which
chemical logic has pivoted ever since; that his numerical conception
has stood the test of further discovery better than most hypotheses;
and that, little as he knew it, or could admit it at the moment, he laid
the foundation for that intimate alliance between physics and chemistry
which forms one of the most pregnant among contemporary movements.
For, the active criticism of the atomic theory — that it dogmatizes about
the physical constants marking the differences between the elements,
that it reveals little or nothing of the processes incident to chemical
composition and destruction, that it neglects synthesis — testifies also,
if negatively, to the revolution wrought by its author. Pity is akin to
praise here. And to-night, as we celebrate Dalton's " thoughts that
breathe," we are bound to let praise have its free way, especially when
we contemplate the indomitable devotion of a character who, amid sore
difficulties, but furnished with the splendid spur of consecration to the
ideal, achieved so much for man's conquest of the secrets of nature.

27 The italics " understanding," etc., are mine.

28 "The Atomic Theory," p. 35 (English translation).

VOL. LXXVU. — 35

Alexander Agassiz.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

5i5

THE PEOGEESS OF SCIENCE

THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER
AGASSIZ

In the death of Alexander Agassiz,
America loses its foremost naturalist,
as a few months ago in the death of
Simon Newccmb it lost its most emi-
nent representative of the exact sci-
ences. Both were born in the year
1835, and in a century preeminent for
science both gave distinction to this
country when it was relatively back-
ward in scientific productivity. Each
maintained his intellectual leadership
and continued his researches and pub-
lications to the very end of a long life.
America is no longer behind the nations
of Europe in the number of its scien-
tific workers, but among them all are
none to take the places left vacant by
Agassiz and Newcomb.

Alexander Agassiz was endowed at
birth with the heritage of his great
father, Louis Agassiz, whose work at
Harvard he carried forward. Born in
Switzerland, he came to the United
States in 1849 at the age of fourteen
and graduated from Harvard Colleoe
in 1855, continuing graduate studies in
mining and chemistry in the Lawrence
Scientific School. In 1859 he went to
California as an assistant on the coast
survey and in the following year be-
came assistant in the museum founded
by Louis Agassiz, during whose absence
in Brazil he was in charge. From 1866
to 1869 he was engaged in mining in
the Lake Superior region and became
superintendent of the Calumet and
Hecla copper mines of which he was
president at the time of his death. He
thus acquired abundant wealth, and
was able to give more than half a mil-
lion dollars to the Harvard Museum of
Comparative Zoology and to conduct
as he wished his oceanographical ex-
peditions.

In 1869 Mr. Agassiz visited European
museums and on his return in 1870
renewed his duties at the Harvard
Museum, of which he became curator
and director on the death of Louis
Agassiz in 1873. He was for a series
of years one of the seven fellows who
form the corporation of Harvard Col-
lege, and was on two occasions elected
an overseer. In 1875 he visited the
western coast of South America and
subsequently went to England to assist
with the reports of the Challenger
expedition, writing the monograph on
the Echini. Previously and subse-
quently to the end of his life, he made
a great number of valuable scientific
contributions to marine zoology, the
embryology of fishes and coral reefs.
In awarding to him its Victoria re-
search medal, the report of the Royal
Geographical Society said " he has
done more for oceanographical research
than any other single individual " and
summed up his work by noting that
for thirty years he had carried out
personally oceanographical expeditions
over most of the oceans of the world.
In 1877-80 he explored the Florida
Straits and Gulf of Mexico, the At-
lantic Coast and the Caribbean Sea.
In 1880 he studied the surface fauna
of the Gulf Stream; in 1892-4 he in-
vestigated the Sandwich Islands, study-
ing recent and extinct reefs. In 1891
he conducted three cruises off the West
Coast of Central America, and in
1895-6 he studied the Great Barrier
Reef of Australia and in 1897-8 the
Fiji Islands. In 1899-1900 he carried
out a cruise from San Francisco via
the Coral Island groups to Japan. In
1904-5 he investigated the eastern
tropical Pacific. In the Indian Ocean
in 1901-2 he devoted himself to the
Maldive Islands. In 1874-5 he investi-

Charles IIeid Baenes.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

5*7

gated Lake Titicaca. Mr. Agassiz has
done this entirely at his own expense.
The results have been published by him
through tne Museum of Comparative
Zoology at Harvard College, in thirty
volumes of memoirs and fifty-three
volumes of bulletins, mostly containing
the results of his own various expedi-
tions and of the work of the specialists
who examined his collections. Besides
the numerous publications through the
Harvard Museum, in 1888 Mr. Agassiz
published in two volumes the narrative
of his three cruises in the Gulf of
Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and along
the Atlantic Coast of the United States,
with charts and illustrations.

Mr. Agassiz had been president of
the National Academy of Sciences, and
was a foreign member of the leading
academies of the world. He was not
only the author of important contribu-
tions to science, but was also a great
man, possessed of complete courage and
frankness and a dominant will, which
gave him leadership throughout the
broad and rich experiences of his long-
life. As he was happy in his birth and
in his life, it may be said that he was
not ill-starred in his death, for he died
with faculties undimmed, suddenly, on
the sea, which he loved so well and had
explored so persistently.

CHARLES REID BARNES
The death of Dr. Charles Reid
Barnes, professor of plant physiology
at the University of Chicago, as the
result of a fall, is a serious loss to
botany. He was born at Madison, Ind.,
in 1858 and was educated at Hanover
College and Harvard University. After
occupying successively the chairs of
natural history and of botany and geol-
ogy at Purdue University, he was called
to the chair of botany at the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin in 1S87, where he
remained until he took up his final
work at Chicago in 1898. During all
of these years he was associated with
Professor Coulter in the editorship
of the Botanical Gazette. Professor
Barnes had served as vice-president of

the botanical section of the American
Association and as president of the
Botanical Society of America. Pro-
fessor Barnes's best known earlier pub-
lications dealt with the taxonomy of
mosses. Just before his death he com-
pleted the final proof-reading of the
physiological part of a general text-
book of botany that is expected soon to
appear from the Hull Botanical Labo-
ratory. Within the past few years
Professor Barnes had become greatly
interested in morphological problems
among the bryophytes. two papers hav-
ing been already published in conjunc-
tion with Dr. Land and several others
being partly ready.

THE TROUBLES AT PRINCETON

The secret history of almost any
American university is not less com-
plicated than recent events at Prince-
ton, but it is certainly unusual for
such family quarrels to be so com-
pletely exploited before a public which
can scarcely be expected to understand
them. It is, however, probably not a
bad thing for a university to conduct
its affairs in the open and for large
numbers to become interested in them,
even though the principles involved
may not be so vital as they appear to
those immediately concerned. Probably
the circumstance of greatest general
interest at Princeton is the control
exercised by the alumni. This is a
factor likely to become increasingly
important in the history of our univer-
sities, and it is not without its dangers,
for the alumni bear gifts and are more
likely to be concerned with athletics
and fraternities than with scholarship.
The outlines of the Princeton story
are now common property. Dean West
has long urged with enthusiasm a
graduate college on the lines of the
Oxford colleges and President Wilson
I approved the plan. Then came Presi-
dent Wilson's move against the clubs-
fraternities are forbidden at Princeton
—and in favor of more democratic
" quads," which divided the faculty and
trustees and awakened the opposition

Lieutenant Ernest Shackleton,
the eminent arctic explorer, who is at present lecturing in the United States.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

5i9

of the rich alumni. The Swan bequest
of $300,000 for a graduate college then
became available, and there was differ-
ence of opinion as to its site. Mr.
W. C. Proctor at this stage offered to
give $500,000 for the graduate college
as planned by Dean West and on condi-
tion that an equal sum should be sub-
scribed by others. There was again
difference of opinion as to the site and
the control of the college, and while
the president and a committee of the
trustees were trying to come to an
agreement with Mr. Proctor, he with-
drew his gift.

The question of site is somewhat
trivial except in so far as it has be-
come identified with policies. Whether
the residence hall should be in the
midst of the Princeton campus or on
its outskirts can not be a matter of
serious consequence. The fact is that
the president of the university and
some of the trustees were unwilling to
place the dean of the graduate school
in as complete control of its develop-
ment as the acceptance of Mr. Proctor's
gift might have implied. The real
trouble is one of men rather than of
measures.

It is a curious circumstance that
President Wilson and Dean West are
in pretty close agreement in favor of a
financial democracy and of an intel-
lectual aristocracy or snobbishness, as
one may please to call it. When Dean
West favors a residential college with
oak-panelled dining hall in which the
students shall dine in evening dress, he
does so because he wishes to give the
young men without money a chance
to live in the environment which he
regards as proper to the scholar and
the gentleman. The ideal of such
a college was well put in an address
made some years ago. We read of

a place removed — calm Science seated
there, recluse, ascetic, like a nun, not
knowing that the world passes, not
caring, if the truth but come in answer
to her prayer; and Literature, walking
within her open doors, in quiet cham-
bers, with men of olden time, storied
walls about her, and calm voices infi- |

nitely sweet; here "magic casements,
opening on the loam of perilous seas,
in fairy lands forlorn," to which you
may withdraw and use your youth for
pleasure.

Those who have followed the recent

Princeton controversy may be surprised

to learn that this not a quotation from

Dean West, but from the concluding

part of Dr. Wilson's address on the

! occasion* of the Princeton sesquicenten-

| nial celebration. It might be that

President Wilson had learned new

things in the meanwhile, but at the

J meeting of the Association of American

Universities a couple of months ago,

he presented a paper urging the old

ideas of amateurism and dilletantism

in college studies. He writes:

All specialism— and tnis includes
professional training— is clearly indi-
vidualistic in its object; that is, the .
object of professional training is the
private object of the person who is
seeking that training. . . . The minute
professionalism enters learning, it
ceases to wear the broad and genial
face of learning. It has become a
commodity; it has become something
that a man wishes to exchange for
means of support. It has become some-
thing that a man wishes to use in
order to get the better of his fellow-
men; to enhance his fortunes; to do
all the things that center in and upon
himself; and it is professionalism that
spoils the game, the game of life, the
game of humanity, the game of coop-
eration in social undertaking, the whole
handsome game that we are seeking to
throw light upon by the processes of
education.

It is a remarkable and interesting
fact that Princeton is becoming a great
university and a great scientific center
almost in spite of those in control.
The large gifts made to the university
have found their way to build fine labo-
ratories and to secure scientific men of
the first rank. The preceptors intended
for less modern purposes brought to
Princeton a large group of younger
men from various' institutions who
have given it new life. The efforts for
a graduate residential college, which in
Dean West's words should " show that
God is the end of all our knowing and

52°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Christ is the Master of the Schools,"
or, in President Wilson's phrase, should
be " quick to look toward heaven for
the confirmation of its hope," will lead
to a true graduate school for the train-
ing of professional scholars and the
advancement of knowledge.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We regret to record the deaths of
Professor Robert Parr Whitfield, cura-
tor of geology of the American Museum
of Natural History; Dr. Borden Parker
Bowne, professor of philosophy at Bos-
ton University, and of Dr. Eduard
Pfliiger, the eminent German physiol-
ogist.

Dr. T. Muir. F.R.S., has been elected
president of the South African Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Science
for the meeting in Cape Town, the date
of which is not yet set.— Dr. George W.
Hill, of Nyack, N. Y., and Professor E.
B. Wilson, of Columbia University,
have been elected foreign members of
the Brussels Academy of Sciences.— A
testimonial dinner to Dr. Charles Fred-
erick Chandler was given at the Wal-
dorf-Astoria on April 2, to permit his
former students and associates to ex-
press, before his retirement, their ap-
preciation of his forty-six years of
service to Columbia University, and his

lifetime of devotion to the cause of
education and science. It was an-
nounced that a lectureship in honor of
Dr. Chandler would be endowed by his
former students and that the chemical
museum of the university would be
named in his honor.

The Oceanographical Museum at
Monaco, established by the Prince of
Monaco, was opened on March 29. The
different European governments and
the principal scientific societies were
represented at the ceremony. — A Brook-
lyn Botanic Garden is now being estab-
lished by the City of Greater New York
in cooperation with the Brooklyn Insti-
tute of Arts and Sciences. Between
twenty-five and thirty acres of land,
south of the museum building of the
institute in Brooklyn, have been set
apart for the purposes of the garden.
A laboratory building for purposes of
investigation and instruction, together
with a range of experimental and pub-
lic greenhouses, will be constructed
during the coming summer and au-
tumn. For this purpose the City of
New York has appropriated $100,000
and friends of the garden in Brooklyn
have subscribed $50,000 as an endow-
ment. Dr. C. Stuart Gager, professor
of botany in the University of Mis-
souri, has been appointed director.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

DECEMBER, 1910

THE ILONGOT OR IBILAO OF LUZON

By Dk. DAVID P. BARROWS

UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA

THE grewsome practise of taking human heads is particularly asso-
ciated with the Igorot peoples of the Cordillera of Luzon. These
all engage in it or have done so until recently. But to-day the most
persistent and dreaded headhunters are neither Igorot nor inhabitants
of the Cordillera; they are a wild, forest-dwelling people in the broken
and almost impenetrable mountain region formed by the junction of
the Sierra Madre range with the Caraballo Sur. They have been called
by different names by the peoples contiguous to them on the north, west
and south, " Italon," " Ibilao," "Ilongot" or " Ilungut." The last
designation would for some reasons be the preferred, but "Ibilao," or
as it is quite commonly pronounced locally through northern Nueva
Ecija, " Abilao," has perhaps the widest use.1

There are no early records of these people and until late in his rule
the Spaniard knew almost nothing of them. In the latter half of the
eighteenth century, the valley of the Magat was occupied and the mis-
sion of Ituy founded, out of which came the province of Nueva Vizcaya,
with its converted population of Gaddang and Isinay. To reach Ituy
from the south the trail followed up the valley of the Eio Pampanga
almost to its sources and then climbed over the Caraballo Sur to the
headwaters of the Magat. On this trail along the upper waters of the
Pampanga grew up several small mission stations, Pantabangan and
Karanglan, with a population of Pampanga and Tagalog people drawn
from the provinces to the south. After more than a hundred years
these small towns are still almost the only Christian settlements in

1 The report of these people under different names has been the cause of
the belief that they were so many separate peoples. Professor F. Blumentritt
makes this mistake. " Versuch einer Ethnographie der Philippinen," p. 33 ;
" List of Native Tribes of the Philippines," translated in Smithsonian Report
for 1899.

VOL. LXXVII. — 36.

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THE ILONOOT OR IBILAO OF LUZON 523

northern Nueva Ecija. From the time of their establishment we find
references to the " Ilongotes " who inhabited the mountains to the east
and were spoken of as " savages/' " treacherous murderers/' " canni-
bals," and wholly untamable. Much as described a hundred years ago
they have continued to the present day. Their homes are in thick
mountain jungle where it is difficult to follow them, but, from time to
time they steal out of the forests to fall upon the wayfarer or resident
of the valley and leave him a beheaded and dismembered corpse.

Here are a few instances occurring in recent years which came
under my own notice or investigation. In 1902, the presidente of
Bambang, Nueva Vizcaya, informed me that four women had been
killed while fishing a short distance from the town. In March of the
same year, a party of Ilongot crossed the upper part of Nueva Ecija
and in a barrio of San Quentin, Pangasinan, killed five people and took
the heads of four. In November, 1901, near the barrio of Kita Kita,
Nueva Ecija, an old man and two boys were killed, while a little earlier
two men were attacked on the road above Karanglan, one killed and
his head taken. In January, 1902, Mr. Thomson, the superintendent
of schools, saw the bodies of two men and a woman on the road, six
miles south of Karanglan, who had been killed only a few moments
before. The heads of these victims had been taken and their breasts
completely opened by a triangular excision, the apex at the collar bone
and the lower points at the nipples, through which the heart and lungs
had been removed and carried away. As late as a year ago (1909),
on the trail to San Jose and Punkan, I saw the spot where shortly
before four men were murdered by Ilongot from the " Biruk district."
These men were carrying two large cans of " bino " or native distilled
liquor, from which the Ilongot imbibed, with the result that three of
their party were found drunk on the trail and were captured. These
are only a few out of numerous instances, but they explain why the
great fertile plains of northern Nueva Ecija are undeveloped and why
the few inhabitants dwell uneasy and apprehensive.

There have been no successful attempts to subdue or civilize these
people. Between 1883 and 1893, the missionary friar, Francisco
Eloriaga, founded the Mission of Binatangan in the forested hills east
of Bayombong, and the Spanish government had the project of erecting
it into a " politico-military commandancia," but so far as I know did
not reach the point of sending there an officer and detachment. Some-
thing was learned about the mo^t accessible Ibilao, but no permanent
results followed.2 Since the American occupation, however, progress
has been made in our knowledge and control of this people. In October,
1902, the writer, at that time chief of the Bureau of Non-Christian

2 A brief account of the people about Binatangan was published by a
missionary in 1891 in "El Correo Sino-Annamita," Vol. XXV. "Una Visita
a los Rancherias de Ilongotes." by Father Buenaventura Campa.

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THE ILONGOT OR IBILAO OF LUZON 525

Tribes, and engaged in a preliminary reconnaissance of tlie pagan
peoples of northern Luzon, made a trip with a small party to one of
their communities in the mountains east of Bambang. Photographs,
measurements and notes on their language and social institutions were
made. In January, 1906, Mr. Dean C. Worcester, secretary of the
interior, approached these people from the north, by ascending the
Kagayan river. His party started from a station of the Tabacalera
Company, south of Echague, and from there rode through fine forest to
a " sitio " called Masaysayasaya. From here they " started at dawn
and about noon passed the ' dead line ' set by the Ilongotes. A little
before sundown reached Dumabato, an Ilongote and Negrito settlement,
which had been the headquarters of Sibley,3 the deserter. Here were
found a few filthy Ilongotes and some fine Negritos."

In the spring of 1908, Dr. William Jones, of the Field Columbian
Museum, began a residence among the Ilongot of the upper Kagayan
and lived with them continuously until nearly a year had passed, when
he was killed by them. His notes and specimens were fortunately pre-
served and, when published, should constitute the most original and
important contribution ever made to Philippine ethnology. Dr. Jones
was part American Indian, a member of the Sac and Fox tribe. He
was not only a brilliant scientist, but one of the most engaging and
interesting men I have ever known — a man to cleave to. Here are brief
extracts from two letters written by him from the Ibilao country, val-
uable, I think, not only for the information they contain about this
people, but for the light they throw upon him and his manner of work.

May 26, 1908. I am at present among the Ilongotes of the Cagayan, where
I am having the most enjoyable time since my arrival in the islands. These
people are wilder than the Igorrotes. We made friends at the beginning and
the friendship has grown wider and stronger every succeeding day. I have a
shack high up on poles where I dwell with great comfort. And plenty of food
is to be had always; wild hog and venison in the jungle on either side of the
river; lurong and liesas in the river; wild honey back on the mountain side;
bananas, beans, camote and other things from the cultivated patches, and rice
which has been saved from last season. For the last fortnight the people have
been clearing in the jungle for sementeras.4 I wish you might hear the sweet
melody of the songs of boys and women at work in the clearings, songs sung
to the spirits of the trees and for good crops. Ilongot society is much simpler
than that of the Igorote; there is little if any of what may be called village life.
There is a house here, another yonder and so on here and there along the river.
Places near the river are reached by going on balsas 5 and away from the river
the trails are dim and indistinct. I do not know where I shall end up. I am
heading up-stream. It may be that I shall find myself going west and south-
west into the country of the Ilongotes, who are enemies of the ones I am now

3 Sibley was an American soldier from the 16th Infantry who deserted in
1900, and lived for over four years, a renegade among these people. He finally
surrendered to Governor Curry, of Isabela province.

4 Fields for seeding.

5 Cane rafts.

Ilongot Men and Woman of Oyao, Nueva Vizcaya.

The man on the right wears a characteristic head cover of rattan,

which confines his long hair.

THE ILONGOT OR IBILAO OF LUZON 527

with. I have to go much lighter than what I am now to keep up with the
little black Negrito. He is like a flea; here to-day, there to-morrow, and ever
on the move when food is gone, and at rest, when he has a supply, long enough
to consume it. He is at outs with the particular people I am with at present.
Kagadyangan, on the Cagayan, Isabela. July, about the 12, 1908. I am
compelled by force of circumstances to continue in this field for three or four
months more; at least that much time must pass before I can observe a full
cycle of the various activities of these people. Furthermore, the rainy season
sets in about September and it is difficult ascending in this region where the
rapids are numerous and swift. ... I have come upon Ilongote habitations in
cliff and rock shelters. Why might their ancestors or those of others not have
lived in such in ages past and left evidences of an earlier culture? Many Ifugao
burials are in sepulchres on mountain sides and the practise is no doubt very
old. Places like these and those of rock shelters in other lands have given
fruitful results and might they not in these islands ? " I am having a pleasant
time with these people. They are the wildest of any people that I have yet
come across in Luzon. But like all wild people, they are cordial and hospitable.
I live in their houses and so have their presence day and night. I hunt, fish
and hike with them, see them on and off their guard, observe them in all their
varying moods — in short, I'm very close to them all the time. Some time I
will tell you a thing or two about them.

Alas, for his intimacy and confidence in them ! Alas, that so gifted
and lovable a man should have been lost by their treachery to science
and to his friends !

From the Nueva Vizcaya side considerable progress has been made
in the acquaintance and control of these people. For several years,
Mr. Conner, the superintendent of schools, cultivated their friendship
and gained information that led to his successor, Mr. K. J. Murphy,
organizing a school in the community of Makebengat. The method
followed was to hire a very trustworthy and capable Filipino of the
town of Bambang who speaks their language and has had friendly rela-
tions with them, to go out and dwell with them, persuading and hiring
them to build a good dwelling house for the teacher, a school house and
shop, and to bring their own dwellings into the locality fixed upon for
the school. Then there were sent out two native teachers (one a woman,
capable of teaching spinning and loom weaving), to begin the instruction
of the children in language, figuring and in industrial arts not known
to the Ilongot. This school experiment promises to succeed and has
already led to starting one or two other schools in communities still
more distant in the forest.

Governor Bryant, of the province, has felt much interest in these
people, and two years ago performed the very difficult feat of traversing
the forests from these first communities northward to the province of
Isabela. This hazardous exploration occupied about two weeks before

•The Ifugao are an Igorot people inhabiting the Kiangan region. All the
Igorot people practise, wherever possible, the burial of their rich and important
personages in caves and artificial grottos. Burial caves occur in many places
in the Philippines and have yielded a large store of jars, skulls and ornaments'.

528 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the party emerged from the forest into the open country. The greatest
difficulty and peril was lack of food, which can not be carried in suffi-
cient quantities to sustain the entire journey.

In January, 1909, a very important exploration was made by Gov-
ernor Bryant, escorted by Captain Hunt with a detachment of soldiers,
and accompanied by Mr. Murphy and Dr. M. L. Miller, chief of the
ethnological survey. The party left Dupah, January 7, and traversed
the wholly unknown country lying to the southwest. The course of
the wild gorge of the " Kaseknan " river, the head of the Kagayan, was
developed, several important communities of Ilongot were discovered
and visited without hostilities and the first knowledge obtained of
much of this region. After struggling for ten days with the difficulties
of jungle, ravine and densely covered mountains, the party reached
Baler on the Pacific coast.

In May, 1909, the writer, accompanied by Lieutenant Coon and six
native soldiers, reached a small community of Ilongot east of Panta-
bangan, called " Patakgao." This community seemed to be composed
of renegades and outlaws from several other communities. Certainly
their hand was against every man. They were charged by a small
group of Ilongot living near Pantabangan with the murder of two of
their number a few weeks earlier and they themselves professed to be
harried and persecuted by unfriendly Ilongot to the north and east of
them. They had wounds to exhibit received in a chance fray a few days
before with a hunting party from near Baler. Altogether, their way-
ward and hazardous life was a most interesting exhibit of the anarchy
and retaliation that reign in primitive Malayan communities which are
totally " in want of a common judge with authority." A series of
measurements was obtained by me at Patagkao and vocabulary and
notes extended.

With the above remarks as to what has been accomplished in throw-
ing light upon these people some description of them will be given.
For information of their location and condition I am indebted to
several others, and particularly to Mr. Murphy, otherwise the facts are
the results of my own investigation.

Ilongot can not be said to live in villages, for their houses are not
closely grouped, but are scattered about within hallooing distance on
the slopes of canons where clearings have been made. Each little
locality has its name and is usually occupied by families with blood or
social ties between them, and several such localities within a few hours'
travel of one another form a friendly group. Outside of this group all
other Ilongot as well as all other peoples are blood enemies, to be
hunted, murdered and decapitated as occasion permits.

The most considerable body of Ilongot appears to be those living
east of the towns of Nueva Vizcaya from Mount Palali south, along a
high-wooded range to the district of " Biruk," nearly east of Karanglan.

THE ILONGOT OR IBILAO OF LUZON

529

Here are some important occupied sites that go by the names of Kam-
pote, Kanatwan, Kanadem, Makebengat, Oyao and Biruk, as well as
others. Homes are shifted from time to time as new clearings have to
be made, and the name of a community's home will vary and can not
always be relied on. All of these communities seem to be in fairly
friendly relations with one another, though they are not bound together
by tribal or political ties. Southeast on the rough hillsides of the
Kaseknan River, the country first traversed by Mr. Bryant's party in
January, 1909, are several communities of very wild Ilongot, Sugak,
Kumian and Dakgang. These places were greatly alarmed by the

An Ilongot Man at Work in Clearing.

He wears the peculiarly shaped Ilongot knife, the usual head covering and a shell
ear-ring. The wavy hair on head, face and limbs strongly^uggests the Negrito.

approach of the party and used every effort to persuade it to pass
without visiting at their houses. Conversations had to be held by
shouting back and forth across deep gorges, and approach was very
difficult. These people have scattered rancherias toward Baler and
sustain trading relations with the Tagalog of that town, but are hostile
with the Ilongot of the Nueva Vizcaya jurisdiction. Appurtenant to
the towns of Karanglan and Pantabangan are a few minor communi-
ties, among them Patakgao. Finally, further north on the Rio Kaga-

53°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

3^an, toward the province of Isabela,
we have the Iloiwot communities
in which Dr. Jones worked, and lost
his life, DumabatOj Kagadyangan
and others. It may be that these II-
ongot communicate with the Taga-
log town of Kasiguran. In all of
these communities together there
are probably only a couple of thou-
sand souls at most. Few communi-
ties have as many as twenty houses
or 200 souls; the most are isolated
groups of four or five married
couples and their immediate rela-
tions. The harsh nature of their
country, unsanitary life, occasional
epidemics and most of all their per-

A Young Woman of Oyao, Nueva

VlZCAYA.

Photograph taken in 1904.

An Ilongot Man of Bayyait, Nueva

Vizcaya.

The photograph shows the curious

deer skin cape and hat worn by the

men when hunting or traveling in the

rain.

petual warfare contribute toward
their diminution rather than their
increase.

Like other primitive Malayan
people who live in the forest, the
Ilongot support life by culti-
vating a forest clearing or " kain-
gin." The great trees are girdled,
men ascend their smooth clean
trunks a hundred feet or more
and daringly lop away their
branches and stems that the
life of the tree may be destroyed
and the sunlight be admitted to
the earth below. At Patakgao I
was shown some beautiful long

THE ILONGOT OR IBILAO OF LUZON 531

pieces of the rattan an inch and a half in diameter with elaborately
woven loops at the ends. These are swung from one tree top to another
and serve as passage-ways for the men at work. To cross they stand
on the slack cable, one hand grasping it on each side, and so, crouching,
pass along it at a height above the ground of 80 to 100 feet. With
this in mind, I could understand their replying to my inquiry as to
when they prayed, by saying that they " prayed and sang to the spirits
when they went to climb the trees." Their crops are mountain rice,
camotes or sweet potatoes, gabi or taro, maize, squash, bananas, tapioca
and, in some places, sugar cane and tobacco. They are good gardeners,
although all their cultivation is by hand, their tools being a sliQrt hoe
or trowel and a wooden planting stick, which is ornamented with very
tasteful carving.

The houses of the Ilongot are of two sorts. Sometimes they are low
wretched hovels, built two or three feet above the ground, with roofs of
grass and sides of bark. But frequently the Ilongot build really well-
constructed and creditable homes. These are set high above the ground,
fully twelve feet, on a large number of posts or piles ; the floor is made
of carefully set strips of palma brava, the door-posts, lintels and exposed
pieces of framework are curiously and tastefully carved. Such a dwell-
ing is built large and spacious for the occupancy of several families and
there is usually a hearth in each of the four corners of the big, single
room. Such a house set on a conspicuous ridge and lifted by its piles
high among the foliage of the surrounding jungle is a striking and
almost an imposing sight.

The arms of the Ilongot are the spear, the jungle knife which they
forge into a peculiar form, wide and curving at the point, a slender,
bent shield of light wood and the bow and arrow. The use of the
latter weapons is significant and here, as always in Malaysia, it indi-
cates Negrito influence and mixture. They use a bow of palma brava
and the ingenious jointed arrow of the Negrito with point attached by
a long cord of rattan to the shaft, which separates and dragging behind
the transfixed animal impedes his escape.

Both men and women wear the long rattan waist belt wound many
times about the loins with clouts and skirts of beaten bark cloth. The
men also use a curious rain hat not unlike a fireman's helmet, made
of rattan and deerskin, the light frame neatly decorated with carving,
and a deerskin rain coat to cover their backs in the dripping forest.

The physical type of the Ilongot is peculiar and rather unlike that
of any other Philippine people. The men are small, with long bodies
and very short legs, weak, effeminate faces, occasionally bearded. The
hair is worn long, but usually coiled upon the head and held by a
rattan net. The color of the Ilongot is brown and a little lighter than
that of Malayans exposed to the sun by life on the water or in the plain.
Their head hair is sometimes nearly straight, usually wavy and occa-

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THE ILONGOT OR IBILAO OF LUZON 533

sionally quite curly. These rather unusual characteristics of the Ilon-
got have led to some absurdly exaggerated reports of their appearance.

My measurements include 15 men, 8 women and a young boy whose
stature is disregarded. The height of the men varied from 1,439 mm.
to 1,610 mm., the mean being about 1,540, a very small stature though
considerably above the Negrito. The stature of the women was from
1,386 mm. to 1,510 mm., the mean being about 1,440. The cephalic
index of all but four of the 24 individuals was between 89 and 80
(brachycephalic), one was 79.9, two were 79, and one 76 (mesati-
cephalic). The nasal index of all but six varied from 100 to 87
(markedly platyrhinian), while the remaining six had indices from 83
to 76. The mean index of all was 88.6. The arm reach, as is usual
in Negritic peoples, exceeded the height.

A peculiarity of the Ilongot face is that, while it is relatively wide
at the cheek bones, it narrows rapidly below, giving the effect of a
pentagonal shaped face with sharp chin. The eyes are relatively well
opened and clear, like the eye of the Negrito, without slant or fold-
ing lid.

In the Ilongot then we have a small, shortlegged, wavy or curly-
haired man, round headed generally, flat and broad nosed, with occa-
sionally bearded face and restless nervous physiognomy. Most of these
are not characteristics of the ordinary forest Malayan ; on the contrary,
they suggest the Negrito, and occasion the belief, in my own mind, that
the Ilongot is, like many other peoples of the Philippines and Malaysia,
a mixed race resulting from the union of Negrito and Malayan.

From what has already been said it is apparent that in Ilongot
society we have a most rudimentary stage of political development.
There is no tribe. There is no chieftanship. There are no social
classes, for the Ilongot have neither aristocracy nor slaves nor what is
very common in most Malayan communities, a class of bonded debtors.
They have words to designate such classes, a slave being " sina lima "
and a debtor " makiotang," but this information was imparted with the
repeated statement, " There are none here." I was unable to get any
word whatever for a chieftain, although the Ilongot of Neuva Vizcaya
spoke of the " nalahaian " or head of the body of kin, but this person
seemed to be only the oldest influential relation in the family group.
The Ilongot of Patakgao said it was customary to hold a council called
" pogon " but it was evident that this gathering was without definite
constitution. The feebleness of the political life of the Ilongot can be
appreciated by comparing it to the Igorot, the sturdy mountain head-
hunters in the Cordillera to the west. The Igorot likewise have no
conception of the tribe but they do have thoroughly organized towns
and town life. They have a detailed social system, based primarily on
the possession of wealth; there are slaves, servant and indebted classes,
and a carefully developed and adequate body of law covering property,

534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

inheritance, conveyance and contract. Thus the political life of the
Igorot, although exceedingly weak on the side of federation or agree-
ment between the independent towns, is centuries of development ahead
of the almost institutionless communities of the Ilongot.

The Ilongot appears to be usually a monogamist and the wife is
purchased, or at least a dowry called " piyat " is paid in weapons,
utensils, liquor, wire, etc. Her position is not at all that of a bought
piece of property, but, like the woman in Malayan society generally, she
is the companion and almost the equal in influence and independence
of the man.

While the machinery for righting injuries or settling grievances is
almost non-existent, the Ilongot has a strong sense of injury and of
wrongful acts. He will say with the strongest feeling and disgust that
certain actions are " forbidden " (ma kxil).

I once asked an Ilongot what he would do if a man of a neighboring
community, with which relations were peaceful, should come and steal
his pig. He thereupon detailed the steps open to him. He might take
his weapons and go within hallooing distance of the aggressor's home
and demand a double fine or restitution ("baiyad"). If the demand
did not avail he would make a solemn warning (" tongtongan ") and
then, if satisfaction did not follow, there was no recourse but retaliation.
I believe, however, that compensation, even for such offenses as murder,
is frequently arranged through the anxiety of all members of the family
to escape retaliation. Feud, that inevitably arises under such social
conditions as these, pursues generation after generation and the obliga-
tion that descends to posterity and relations to take vengeance is
spoken of as the " debt of life " (utang nu biay).

Apart from the taking of heads as an act of vengeance, murder
with the winning of the gruesome trophy is obligatory on" the other occa-
sions as well. An Ilongot once said to me "A man may during his
life take three, four or even five heads, but he must take one, and that
before he marries. This head he carries to the relations of his intended
wife to prove that his heart and body are strong to defend her." Fur-
thermore, after the palay harvest each year the bundles of unthreshed
rice or palay are neatly piled into a stack about a tall stake which is set
up in the " kaingin." Then, for some ungodly reason, a human head
is very desirable to place on top of this pole. So raids are made,
usually on the Christian settlements below. Several questions may be
asked regarding these practises, but I can offer nothing by way of
answer. To whom is the "debt of life" owed? To the spirit of the
dead person? To the customary Malayan spirits of the forest? Only
a Ion? acquaintance would enable one to get to the bottom of the motive
of such customs as these.

The primitive Malayan is full of beliefs and dreads of the malignant
spirits which throng his environment. These are the spirits of forest,

Ilongot Men of Pulddpud in the Former Spanish Commandery of Principe.
One carries a bow and arrow, the other a spear with a point which detaches
itself from the shaft to which it is attached by a long cord. The dragging shaft
impedes the escape of the animal that has been speared until the hunters can come
up and dispatch it.

536 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

trees, canons,, streams and sea ; horribly conceived monsters and ghouls,
and furthermore, and omnipresent in the affairs of the living, are the
spirits of the dead — the ghosts. The Negrito, on the contrary, seems
to be very little disturbed by such beliefs. His elementary religious
notions leave him free for the most part from terror by night or by day.
Where troubled with conceptions of " anito " or " diwata " it is almost
certain that he has been learning at the feet of some demon-worship-
ping Malayan. Now, the Ilongot appear to have religious ideas that
have come from various sources. Those of Nueva Vizcaya, with whom
I talked, professed belief in spirits and called them " be tung " ; the
spirits of the dead were " gi na va." The Ilongot of Patakgao, curi-
ously, have been affected by Christian nomenclature. The ruling spirit
or spirits is " apo sen diot " ("apo" meaning lord or sir and "diot"
being a corruption of Dios). They had no word for heaven, but men-
tioned " Impiedno " (Infierno). They said that when people die " they
go to the mountains." They bury the dead near their houses in a
coffin of bark (ko ko). They said that there were no " aswang "
(malignant monsters believed in by the Christian Filipinos) in their
mountains. They stated that prayer is a frequent observance; that
they prayed when some one is sick or injured. " When an animal is
killed we pray before cutting up the animal," and as stated above prayer
is offered before the dangerous ascent of trees. In one house I saw a
little bundle of grasses which was put there, following prayer made
" at the first time when we are eating the new rice." Prayer is then
made that rats may not destroy the harvest or other ill occur to crops.

These notes are too fragmentary to give any definite idea of what
the religion of the Ilongot may be, but two other things observed had
religious significance. When our party reached the vicinity of the
community at Patakgao, we encountered in the bed of the canon we were
following a curious contrivance placed over the running water. Two
stakes had been set up, and attached horizontally was a branch twelve
feet long, five or six feet from the ground. A chicken had been sacri-
ficed here and its blood had been daubed along this pole in at least
eighteen different stains. Feathers had been tied to the ends of the
upright poles and midway between them a curiously whittled stick of
shavings was tied perpendicularly and the giblets and head of the fowl
stuck upon it. Our guide, who was a Christian native from a small
barrio which has some relations with this community, pronounced this
contrivance to be a warning against further approach, in fact a " dead
line." But later, Biiliud, one of the important men of Patakgao,
insisted that it was an offering made for the cure of their wounds
received a few days before in a fight with hostile Ilongot.

In the houses of the Ilongot at Bayyait were many curiously
whittled sticks suspended from the rafters. Some of these were of ir-

THE ILONGOT OR IBILAO OF LUZON 537

regular shape like a ray of lightning; many were bunches of shavings,
singularly suggestive of the prayer sticks of the Ainu.

The language of the Ilongot is predominantly Malayan. It con-
tains a large bulk of words identical or related to the surrounding
Malayan tongues. There are a few Sanskrit or Indian words, " pagi "
(palay, " paddy," the unhulled rice) and " pana " for arrow, both
words widely diffused in Malaysia. But besides, there is a doubtful
element which does not seem to be Malayan; at least no similar words
or roots occur in any of the other vocabularies of primitive peoples of
northern Luzon collected by me. The Ilongot continually makes use
of a short ii, which sometimes becomes the German sound u as in
" buh duk," a flower. These sounds can not be imitated by the Chris-
tian people in contact with them. This is a condition similar to what
we find in Negrito speech, where, with a preponderance of terms occur-
ring in Malayan languages, are often a number of totally distinct and
usually eccentric words and sounds.

Finally, it is manifest that the Ilongot are a problem to the govern-
ment of the islands. What is to be done with such people as these?
They can not be allowed to continue, as they have done, to harass and
murder the peaceful population of Nueva Ecija, northern Pangasinan
and Nueva Vizcaya. Some means must be found to restrain them.
Humanity does not permit their extermination. Steps are now being
taken to do something to get them in hand. The exploring parties
above referred to have opened the way. The communities organized
under teachers of the Bureau of Education seem to promise something
as well. Last fall when I left the islands search was being made for
the right sort of an American teacher to put in charge of school inter-
ests at Baler, with jurisdiction over the Ilongot villages appurtenant
thereto. The people of Patakgao since my visit have accepted an invi-
tation, then made, to send their young men and boys to the barrio of
San Juan, a village in the mountains back of Pantabangan, where a
school is conducted and where several of these youth are now living in
charge of a native man in whom the Ilongot have confidence. The
Bureau of Education meets the slight expenses of this educational
experiment. This work of social development, here as in a thousand
similar places in the Philippines, will be best done by the American
teacher, but the task is inviting only to the man in whom the spirit of
youth and adventure and fascination with human problems runs strong.

Mr. Murphy's last report concluded, " I believe the schools can do
these people a great amount of good and solve the government's worst
problems. The work, however, is dangerous, as the man who under-
takes it has no protection but his own diplomacy in handling the
people. If trouble comes it will be from the young bucks, desirous
of gaining a reputation."

vol. lxxvii.— 37.

538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

KANT AND EVOLUTION

By Professor ARTHUR O. LOVEJOY

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
I

IT has come to be one of the generally accepted legends of the his-
tory of science that the author of the " Kritik der reinen Ver-
nunft " was also a pioneer of evolutionism. In the anthropological es-
says of the Koenigsberger, for example — we are assured by the writer
of a German treatise on Kant's philosophy of nature1 — " we already
find the most essential conceptions of the modern theory of descent
indicated, at least in germ — and, indeed, in a way that marks Kant out
as a direct precursor of Darwin." The same expositor says :

Throughout these writings the idea of evolution plays everywhere the same
r6le as in contemporary science. . . . The series of organisms is for Kant in a
constant flux, in which the seemingly so stable differentiae of genera and species
have in reality only a relative and subsidiary significance.

And in a famous passage of the " Kritik der Urteilskraft," says
another writer, " the present-day doctrine of descent is clearly expressed
in its fundamental features."2 Haeckel, who is in the main followed by
Osborn, goes even farther in his ascription of Darwinian and " monis-
tic " ideas to Kant's earlier works, though he thinks that in later life
Kant fell from grace. Haeckel says :3

In various works of Kant, especially in those written in his earlier years
(between 1755 and 1775) are scattered a number of very important passages
which would justify our placing him by the side of Lamarck and Goethe as the
principal and most interesting of Darwin's precursors. ... He maintains the
derivation of the various organisms from common primary forms, . . . and was
the first to discover the principle of the " struggle for existence " and the theory
of selection. For these reasons we should unconditionally have to assign a place
of honor in the history of the theory of development to our mighty Koenigsberg
philosopher, were it not that, unfortunately, these remarkable monistic ideas of
young Kant were at a subsequent period wholly suppressed by the overwhelming
influence of the dualistic, Christian conception of the universe.

1 Drews, " Kants Naturphilosophie," 1894, pp. 44, 48.

2 Schultze, " Kant and Darwin," 1875, p. 217. Schultze's monograph, per-
haps the earliest, and hitherto the most comprehensive, on the subject, seems to
be responsible for much of the error into which subsequent writers have fallen.
It consists, indeed, chiefly of reprints of the greater part of each of the writings
in which Kant approaches the topic in question; but it is accompanied by a
commentary and notes in which Schultze gives a highly misleading impression
of Kant's actual utterances.

8 "History of Creation," Lankester's translation, 1892, p. 103. Cf. Osborn,
" From the Greeks to Darwin," 1894, pp. 98-9.

KANT AND EVOLUTION 539

Yet even at the last, though Kant's nature-philosophy became less
"monistic," Haeckel finds his biology scarcely less evolutionistic. In
the " Kritik of Judgment " Kant, according to Haeckel, still " asserts
the necessity of a genealogical conception of the series of organisms, if
we at all wish to understand it scientifically." In the supposition of a
marked " change of view from Kant's earlier to his later years " with
respect to the applicability of the principles of natural causation in the
realm of the organic, Osborn concurs with Haeckel. Finally, the writer
of the historical article in the volume issued by English biologists in
commemoration of the Darwin centenary, declares that Kant may be
" best regarded as the culmination of the evolutionist philosophers " of
the eighteenth century.4

These accounts of Kant's historic position in relation to transform-
ism are interesting but scarcely accurate. Kant wrote for the most part
at a time when the conception of organic evolution had been made fa-
miliar by two of the most celebrated and most influential men of sci-
ence of the period, Maupertuis and Buffon. He was himself through-
out his life especially interested in two distinct scientific problems, both
of which made a consideration of the hypothesis of the mutability of
species inevitable, and an acceptance of it natural. He accordingly
more than once refers to it. But on no occasion does he unequivocally
express belief in it; and on several occasions, some of them in his
earlier, some in his "critical," period, he vehemently rejects it. The ut-
most that can be said for him as a biological evolutionist is that, late
in life, he once timidly coquetted with the hypothesis — speaking in a
vaguely favorable way of it in the text, and then in a definitely unfa-
vorable way in a footnote ; and that at the very end of the century it oc-
curred to him to wonder whether the higher apes may not yet acquire
a gait, speech and intellectual powers similar to man's. On the other
hand, it is not true that any such change of view as Haeckel and Os-
born have described took place in Kant's mind with respect to the possi-
bility of explaining the origin of organisms or the processes of organic
life in mechanistic terms. Kant at no time affirmed any such possibil-
ity; and he repeatedly gave expression to an emphatic denial of it, in
his earlier as well as his later utterances. Upon both this question and
the question of descent, so far as any change of emphasis is distinguish-
able at all in Kant's successive opinions, it is a change in quite the con-
trary direction to that which Haeckel indicates.

These statements, in view of the wide prevalence of contrary be-

* J. Arthur Thomson in " Darwin and Modern Science," p. 6. Similar ex-
' pressions from a number of other writers might be cited. I have myself, before
coming to close quarters with the subject, fallen into the error of classifying
Kant among the early evolutionists (Popular Science Monthly, November, 1909,
p. 513). Yet for the past twenty years a substantially correct account of the
matter has been accessible, in a brief article by J. Brock, Biologisches Central-
blatt, Bd. VIII., 1888-9, pp. 641-8.

54o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

liefs, can be properly substantiated only by an examination of all the
more important writings of Kant (in their approximate chronological
order) which bear upon the topic in question. Such an examination
will at the same time show that the misapprehensions of his position
which have arisen are by no means unnatural results of taking certain
of his expressions apart from their contexts and in disregard of the
meanings which he was accustomed to give to certain terms.

1. The " Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens."
— That Kant in his earliest important writing, the " Allgemeine Natur-
geschichte und Theorie des Himmels," 1755, gave an outline sketch of
cosmic evolution which anticipated the nebular hypothesis of Laplace,
is one of the things that every schoolboy knows. Like most such things,
it is not exactly true. Kant's cosmological speculations were, as we
shall see, in scope and in method and in their most essential principles,
extremely dissimilar to the nebular hypothesis. Kant's enterprise was
far more ambitious than that of the French astronomer; he was con-
cerned with the evolution of a universe out of primeval chaos, not
merely with the formation of a planetary system out of a whirling
nebula. As a detail of his scheme, it is true, he sought also to explain
how planets are formed, and how their orbital revolution is to be ac-
counted for; but his version of their origin is such as to justify us in
classifying him with a school of cosmogonists of much later date than
Laplace, who are strongly opposed to Laplace's hypothesis. Kant's
treatise in its entirety will, I think, hardly be found to merit the ex-
travagant eulogies which it has won — at any rate, upon the score of
originality or of historic influence and importance. On these two
points, at least, we shall find it necessary to agree with a German writer
who has recently dealt with the book. Gerland says :5

An epoch-making or a foundation-laying piece of work it has not been,
either for the eighteenth century or the nineteenth. The assertion of Kuno
Fischer and others that Kant became by virtue of it " the founder of modern
cosmogony," is a false and unhistorical exaggeration. It would be justified only
if Kant's book had been the first in its field, and if our present cosmogony had
developed in direct dependence upon it; but nothing is farther from being the
case — in spite of a number of points of coincidence between Kant's conceptions
and contemporary ones.

Gerland adds the opinion that Kant's book remained unknown in its
own time, " not because of the bankruptcy of the publisher [which for
many years interfered materially with its sale], nor through the fault
of the people or of the men of science of Kant's day; it remained un-
known through its own faults."

Even at the risk of a somewhat lengthy digression from the ques-
tion of Kant's place in the history of biology — with which this paper is
primarily concerned — I think it worth while to try to make clear the

e Kantstudien, 1905, 417 f.

KANT AND EVOLUTION 541

historic relations of his cosmic evolutionism to that of both his prede-
cessors and his successors. The matter has never, it seems to me, been
quite justly set forth. It will at the same time be pertinent to observe
the position with respect to organic evolution in which Kant's cosmic
evolutionism left him.

The great, outstanding scientific event of the early eighteenth cen-
tury was the triumph of the Newtonian system of celestial mechanics,
based on the principle of gravitation in accordance with the law of in-
verse squares, over the Cartesian system of vortices, which had domi-
nated seventeenth century physics and astronomy. Now Descartes, a
more versatile and ingenious and a bolder mind than Newton, had him-
self elaborated his physical theories into a comprehensive philosophy of
nature and a fairly detailed cosmology and cosmogony. But Newton
had inscribed upon the last page of the " Principia " the maxim hypoth-
eses non jingo; moved both by scientific caution and by religious piety,
he had deliberately refrained from putting forward either a general
system of the heavens outside of the solar system or a mechanistic ex-
planation of the genesis of the revolutional and rotatory motions and the
arrangement of the planets of our system. " All these regular motions,"
declared the concluding scholium of the great treatise, " do not have
their origin from mechanical causes. . . . This most elegant structure
of sun and planets and comets could not have arisen apart from the
wisdom and the rule of an intelligent and powerful being." And New-
ton sums up with, as it were, a " let us hear the conclusion of the whole
matter," by which he would define the whole duty of explanatory as-
tronomy : Satis est quod gravitas revera existat, et agat secundum leges
a nobis expositas, et ad corporum cwlestium et maris nostri motns omnes
sufficiat. " It is enough that gravity really exists, and that it acts ac-
cording to the laws which we have set forth, and that it suffices for all
the motions of the heavenly bodies and of our sea."

But to many of those who devoted themselves with enthusiasm to
the propagation of Newton's positive doctrines, the self-denying ordi-
nance with which he had ended was far from agreeable. That that
ordinance should be transgressed by more intrepid and more architec-
tonic minds was inevitable. We find, therefore, in the early eighteenth
century a number of writers who busied themselves with the further
elaboration of the Newtonian "natural philosophy," with the applica-
tion of Newton's laws to problems the master himself had refused to
discuss. In these attempts the writers in question were in part merely
doing over again upon Newtonian principles what had already been
done upon Cartesian principles (now discovered to be erroneous) by
Descartes himself. Among the German enthusiasts for the completion
of Newton's system and the extension of it into a general cosmology,
one of the most zealous and most active was the young Kant. His early
preoccupation with these matters was doubtless due to the influence of

542 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

one of his university teachers, Knutzen, professor of logic and meta-
physics at Koenigsberg, who was at once an ardent Pietist, an ardent
Wolffian, and an ardent Newtonian. All of the earliest three consid-
erable writings6 of Kant may be said to be chiefly attempts to give new
applications to Newton's principles, or to supply his omissions, or to do
both at once. Of these three, the treatise with which we are here con-
cerned, the "Allgemeine Naturgeschichte " of 1755, was an endeavor
to fill up two of the most obvious gaps (from the cosmical system-
maker's point of view) which the author of the " Principia " had left.
It required no great originality and no stroke of genius on Kant's part
to recognize these gaps and to devise the general outlines of the hypoth-
eses by which he tried to fill them. The problems, and in one of the two
cases at least, the proposed solution even in most of its details, were
present in the scientific atmosphere of the period as epidemic infec-
tions.

The first of these gaps, and the one less pertinent to our present
topic, lay in Newton's failure to suggest even a conjectural hypothesis
concerning the systematic arrangement of the heavenly bodies beyond
the boundaries of our system. To three of his disciples at almost the
same time7 — but to the two others at an earlier date than to Kant — it
occurred as a " probable," though perhaps not strictly verifiable, suppo-
sition that our group of planets with its central sun is only a part of an
analogous but larger concentric system of revolving bodies, or of similar
groups of bodies, constituting the Milky Way; and that this in turn is
but part of a single, universal system, all the members of which are
similarly arranged with respect to one another, and revolve about a
body at the center of gravitation of the entire universe in accordance
with Newton's laws. The hypothesis had, of course, an attractive com-
bination of grandiosity and simplicity; and it was natural enough to
inquire whether or not it were true. But it was, I suppose, essentially
incapable of any serious testing by any data then in the possession of
astronomers. It is apparently only within the past five years that some
light has been thrown upon the problem of a possible " systematic ar-
rangement " of the fixed stars ;8 and the arrangement which recent re-

8 " On the True Mode of Estimating Vis Viva," 1747 ; " Universal Natural
History and Theory of the Heavens," 1755 ; " Physical Monadology," 1756.

7 To Thomas Wright, of Durham, before 1750; to Lambert, 1749; and to
Kant. Wright's " Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe, founded
upon the Laws of Nature and solving by Mathematical Principles the General
Phenomena of the Visible Creation," London, 1750, was known to Kant through
a summary in the Hamburg Freie Urteile, 1751, and is referred to by him in
the " Allgemeine Naturgeschichte." Lambert's " Kosmologische Briefe " were
not published until 1761, but were planned and partly written in 1749, as Lam-
bert declares in a letter to Kant, November 13, 1765.

8 See the article of Eddington on "Star-Streams," in Scientia, VIII., 1910,
p. 40.

KANT AND EVOLUTION 543

search seems to disclose is not in the least such as Kant imagined.
Kant himself is at pains to notify his readers, in his preface, that his
reasonings on the subject do not pretend to " extreme geometrical pre-
cision and mathematical infallibility." Yet it can not be denied that
in the body of the work Kant presents his hypothesis as if it could be,
and had been, established with rather more than a high degree of prob-
ability.

If all the worlds and systems of worlds acknowledge the same mode of
origination; if attraction is unlimited and universal, while the repulsion of the
elements is likewise everywhere active; if in the infinite both great and small
are small alike; — then must not all these worlds have received the same relative
constitution and systematic arrangement as that which the bodies of our own
solar system exhibit on a small scale? ... If, again, these are viewed as mem-
bers in the great chain of Universal Nature, then there is still the same reason
to think of them, in turn, as existing in the same reciprocal relations and inter-
connections— which, in virtue of the primary structural law ruling all nature,
make of them a new and greater system, ruled by a body of incomparably
mightier attractive force at the center of their systematically ordered positions.

Thus the whole universe will compose a single system held together
" by the connecting power of gravity and of centrifugal force." For if
it were made up, instead, of a multitude of irregularly scattered sys-
tems, of groups of stars not in revolution about a central body, Kant
argues that, in order to prevent the reciprocal attractions of these sys-
tems from " destroying them " there would be requisite

such an exactly measured disposition of them at distances proportionate to the
attractions, that even the slightest displacement of them would bring about the
ruin of the universe. . . . But a world-order that could not maintain itself with-
out a miracle would lack that character of stability which is the distinguishing
mark of the designs of God. It is therefore far more consistent with those
designs to make the whole creation a single system in which all the worlds and
systems of worlds that fill the whole of infinite space stand related to a single
center.8

It will, I suppose, hardly be maintained, even by Kant's most devout
admirers, that in his argumentation in behalf of his " theory of the
heavens " he displays a high degree of scientific caution or a very nice
sense for the distinction between the considerations that are, and those
that are not, admissible in scientific inference.

The second undeveloped problem which Newton had left to tempt
the ingenuity of his disciples was the problem of cosmogony. In attack-
ing this upon Newtonian principles Kant showed no greater originality ;
he had many forerunners in the enterprise, in the preceding half cen-
tury, and the enterprise itself was an obvious one. For the celestial
mechanics of Descartes had found one of its earliest and most striking
applications in a cosmogony. Descartes's first book, his " Traite du
Monde," written in 1633, had been chiefly a treatise on cosmic evolu-

8 " Allgemeine Naturgeschichte," 1798 ed., pp. 77-85; tr. in Hastie, "Kant's
Cosmogony," p. 136 f.

544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

tion based upon mechanical principles. That book had, it is true, been
suppressed by its author, who, upon hearing of the treatment received
by Galileo, had preferred to take no chances for the prize of martyr-
dom. But he had in Pt. V. of the " Discourse on Method " recapitu-
lated briefly the outline of his scheme of world-evolution; in the
" Principia " he had given some of the details of it ; and the treatise
itself, or a revision of the principal part of it, had been published after
his death by his friend Clerselier, in 1664. "While refraining, with
what might seem sufficiently unimpeachable orthodoxy, from maintain-
ing that the present constitution of the world actually had been evolved,
rather than created ready made, Descartes also insisted that it was
perfectly conceivable that it should have been evolved. He declared
himself ready, if given as a starting point even " a chaos more confused
and involved than any poet ever could describe," to deduce, with the
aid only of the ordinary laws of the motion of matter, the necessity of
the gradual formation out of that primeval chaos of a world having
the characters and the contents of the world as man now finds it. He
endeavored to show how matter "must needs, in consequence of those
laws, have arranged itself in a certain way which made it similar to our
heavens ; how some of its parts would necessarily become an earth, and
some planets and comets, and others a sun and fixed stars. And . . .
coming to speak more particularly of the earth," he set forth, "how
the mountains, seas, fountains and rivers can naturally have been
formed in it, and the metals have come to exist in the mines, and the
plants to grow in the fields, and, in general, how all the bodies which
are called mixed or composite could have been generated."

Now, it is certain that Kant had the cosmogony of Descartes in
mind in writing the "Universal Natural History," for he refers to
it in his preface. Defending himself against the imputation of ma-
terialism and irreligion, Kant writes:

I shall not be refused the justice which fair judges have always rendered to
Descartes, with respect to his attempt to explain the formation of the world
from purely mechanical laws. I therefore cite the remark upon this subject of
the authors of the " Universal History " : " We can not but think the essay of
the philosopher who endeavored to account for the formation of the world in a
certain time from rude matter, from the sole continuation of a motion once
impressed, and reduced to a few simple and general laws; or of others who have
since attempted the same, with more applause, from the original properties of
matter, with which it was endued at the creation, is so far from being criminal
or injurious to God, as some have imagined, that it is rather giving a more
sublime idea of his infinite wisdom." 10

Thus Kant, anticipating vituperation from the orthodox on account
of his cosmic evolutionism, pleads not only the Cartesian precedent, but

10 The version of the citation here given is that of the original English, as
in Hastie's " Kant's Cosmogony."

KANT AND EVOLUTION 545

also the favorable views already taken of that precedent by writers of
recognized respectability.

Moreover, as the passage just cited indicates, Descartes was not the
onl}r, though he was the most eminent, predecessor of Kant to set an
example of an undertaking similar to that upon which Kant was enter-
ing. Hypotheses about the origin of the world or of our planet may
be said to have been especially in fashion during the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth century. In the words of Cuvier,11

The end of the seventeenth century saw the birth of a new science, which
took in its infancy the high-sounding name of " Theory of the Earth." Starting
from a small number of facts badly observed, connecting them by fantastic sup-
positions, it professed to go back to the origin of worlds, to, as it were, play
with them, and to create their history.

The " Theoria Telluris Sacra," 1681, 1689, and the " Archseologise
Philosophies," 1692, of Thomas Burnet, and the " New Theory of the
Earth," 1696, of William Whiston — successor to Newton's professor-
ship at Cambridge, effective popularizer of the Newtonian doctrines,
and the supposed original of Goldsmith's " Dr. Primrose " — were based
upon an incongruous mixture of scientific and scriptural considerations ;
but they at least made cosmogony a topic of general interest. As much,
if little more, can be said of Woodward's " Essay toward a Natural
History of the Earth and Terrestrial Bodies," 1695. But in 1734 there
was published at Leipsic a treatise which resembled Laplace's theory
much more nearly than did Kant's. The " Principia rerum natu-
ralium " of Swedenborg — already celebrated as a geologist and metal-
lurgist, not yet celebrated as a mystic and religious reformer — enunci-
ated the following theses :12

That the sun is the center of a vortex; that it rotates upon its axis; that
the solar matter concentrated itself into a belt or zone or ring at the equator,
or rather at the ecliptic; that by the attenuation of the ring it became dis-
rupted ; that upon the disruption, parts of the matter collected into globes ; . . .
that the globes of solar matter were projected into space; . . . that in propor-
tion as the igneous matter thus projected receded from the sun it gradually
experienced refrigeration and consequent condensation; that hence followed the
formation of the elements of ether, air, aqueous vapor, etc., until the planets
finally reached their present orbit; that during this period the earth experienced
a succession of geological changes which originated all the varieties in the
mineral kingdom, and laid, as it were, the basis of the vegetable and afterwards
of the animal kingdoms.

The idea of planetary evolution was thus anything but a novelty in
1755. What is more, the decade immediately preceding the completion
of Kant's " Allgemeine Naturgeschichte " may be said to have been
especially distinguished by the prominence with which, during it, ques-
tions of cosmogony were brought to the attention of the learned world.

u " Eloge de Werner," cited in Packard's " Lamarck," p. 92.
"I borrow the summary of Clissold, from his introduction to the English
translation of Swedenborg's " Principia," 1846.

546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The work from which Kant quoted a justification of Descartes's enter-
prise— and, by implication, of his own — the " Universal History "
(1736-65) appeared in an (incomplete) German translation in 174.4.
This huge historical compilation, one of the great publishing enterprises
of the time, contained an introduction of (in the German edition) over
one hundred pages devoted to the subject of cosmogony, giving the the-
ories of the Greek philosophers, of Descartes, Burnet, Whiston and other
moderns, and a new hypothesis of the author's own. In 1749 the first
volume of a still more celebrated, and scarcely less voluminous, publica-
tion— Buffon's " Histoire Naturelle " — saw the light. This volume was
chiefly devoted to a " history and theory of the earth," with a chapter
on the formation of planets which contained ideas more closely related
than those of Kant to the nebular hypothesis. Buffon remarked upon
the peculiar uniformities of the solar system which seemed to call for a
mechanical explanation, but which gravitation alone did not account
for, viz., the revolution of all the planets in the same direction, approxi-
mately in the same plane, and in nearly circular orbits. Buffon's own
explanation of these phenomena in his " Theorie de la Terre " of 1749
is given in the following passages :

This uniformity of position and direction in the movement of the planets
necessarily presupposes some common factor in their original movement of
impulsion, and makes us suspect that it has been communicated to them by one
and the same cause. . . . This impulsive force was certainly imparted to the
stars in general by the hand of God when he set the universe in motion. But
since, in physical science, we ought to abstain so far as possible from having
recourse to causes outside of nature, it seems to me that in the solar system we
can account for this impelling force in a sufficiently probable manner and in
accordance with the principles of mechanics. . . . May it not with some proba-
bility be imagined that a comet falling upon the surface of the sun may have
separated from that body certain parts, to which it has communicated a move-
ment of impulsion in a common direction? . . . The planets would thus have
formerly belonged to the sun, and would have been detached from it by an
impelling force, common to all alike, which they still retain.18

Buffon was the only one14 of his precursors (of the post-Newtonian
period) known to Laplace. He made this passage of the " Histoire
Naturelle " the starting point of his own earliest exposition of his
nebular hypothesis, in the concluding chapter of the " Systeme du
Monde." The hypothesis of Buffon, he remarked, accounted for most
of the non-gravitational peculiarities of planetary motion that require
to be accounted for; but since there remained certain other such phe-
nomena which Buffon's supposition could not explain, a new hypothesis
must be devised.

Finally, in the same year, 1749, a generation after its famous

""Histoire Naturelle," first ed., I., pp. 131-133. Kant had read Buffon
before writing his own cosmogony; see "Universal Natural History," Pt. II.,
ch. 2.

14 Cf. " Systeme du Monde," first ed., 1796, II., p. 298.

KANT AND EVOLUTION 547

author's death, the " Protogsea " of Leibniz was published. In this
Leibniz contended, on grounds now familiar enough, that the earth
must have originally been in a fluid and intensely heated state; that
through the cooling of the surface a solid crust was formed and the
viscous fiery substance of the globe concentrated in the interior; that
the present earth-structure is due to the successive action in the past
of fire (fusion) and water (sedimentation) ; and that the existence of
fossils testifies to the extinction of once flourishing species of animals,
in consequence of modifications of the earth's surface due to one or the
other of these agencies.

For comparison with the hypotheses of his precursors and succes-
sors, Kant's own scheme of cosmogony must now be indicated in its
more essential features. He assumes for a starting point a " state of
nature which is the very simplest that could follow upon nonentity,"
namely, a chaos in which all the matter in the universe was scattered
throughout infinite space. It somehow " filled " the whole of that
space, and yet its component particles were infinitely more diffused than
now ; Kant expressly declares that space was once " full," and is now
<e empty," except for the actual celestial bodies. The original particles
were not all alike ; they differed in " specific density and force of
attraction." Consequently, when the universe is once permitted to be-
gin active business, " the scattered elements of the denser sort, by virtue
of their attraction, gather together out of the space surrounding them
all the matter of less specific gravity; these elements in turn, with the
material which has united with them, collect in points where the par-
ticles of a yet denser kind are found " ; and so on.

If we follow in imagination this process by which nature fashions itself
into form throughout the whole extent of chaos, we easily perceive that the
sole result of this process would consist finally in the agglomeration of divers
masses which, when their formation was complete, would be forever at rest
and unmoved.

Fortunately, nature has other forces at her command ; besides gravi-
tation, there is also operative a force of repulsion, which shows itself
<e especially when matter is decomposed into fine particles." By this
force the elements, " as they fall towards the attracting body are de-
flected by one another and have their perpendicular fall converted into
a movement of revolution." Having indicated the two general working
principles of his cosmical mechanics, Kant now judiciously leaves the
problem of the genesis of a universe, and turns somewhat abruptly to
the simpler problem of the formation of our solar system, from the
solution of which " we shall be able by analogy to infer a similar mode
of origination in the case of the larger world-systems."

The lesser process, as Kant conceives it, may be said to fall into
four stages: (1) The formation of the nucleus of a sun. There is
formed at the point of maximum attraction of a given region of space,
" a body which, so to say, grows from an infinitely small germ, at first

548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

slowly (through chemical attraction), then more rapidly (through the
so-called Newtonian attraction), and always in proportion as its mass
increases, draws the surrounding parts more and more strongly to unite
with itself." This central body is not strictly to be called a sun at the
outset, for it is not yet " in a flaming state " ; this it only gradually
becomes as, in the course of the subsequent processes of readjustment,
" the lighter and more volatile portions of the primitive matter," fail-
ing to maintain a movement of periodic revolution, drop into the center
of attraction. (2) The formation of a whirl of unaggregated particles
moving round this central body in circular but separate and intersect-
ing orbits.

When the mass of the central body has grown to such a point that the
velocity with which it draws particles to itself from great distances is, by the
weak degrees of repulsion with which the particles impede one another, deflected
into lateral motions which, by virtue of centrifugal force, encompass the central
body in an orbit — then there are produced great whirls of particles, each of
which, by reason of the composition of the gravitational force and the force
making for deflection sideways, describes a curved line. These orbits all inter-
sect one another . . . and are in conflict with one another.

(3) The transformation of this disordered whirl of particles into a
ring or disc of particles moving in free, parallel, circular orbits round
the central body. The conflicting movements of the preceding stage
come eventually to such an adjustment that they interfere with one
another as little as possible. This happens in two ways :

First, by the particles limiting each others' movements till they all advance
in one direction; second, by their limiting their vertical movements towards the
center of attraction till, all moving horizontally in parallel circles round the
sun as their center, they no longer intersect one another's paths, and, by the
equalization of the centrifugal and centripetal forces, they maintain themselves
constantly in free circular orbits. In this state, when all the particles are
moving in one direction and in parallel circles, the conflict and collision of the
elementary bodies is annulled, and all things are then in the condition of least
reciprocal interference.

Further, " in acordance with the laws of centrifugal motion, all
these revolutions must intersect the center of attraction with the plane
of their orbits " ; and for bodies moving in a common direction round a
common axis, there is only one such plane. Therefore, the revolving
particles gather about " that circle which passes through the rotation
of the axis in the center of the common attraction," and the system
assumes (though there are as yet no planets) that discoid form char-
acteristic of our present planetary system. (4) The gradual formation,
within this ring, of planets, through the attractions subsisting between
the separate particles composing it. Kant has hitherto treated attrac-
tion chiefly as operative between the central mass and the particles;
between particle and particle the relation has been one of repulsion.
But at this point, " the attraction of the elementary bodies for one
another begins to produce its effect, and thereby gives the start to new

KANT AND EVOLUTION 549

formations which are the seeds of the future planets. For the particles,
as they move round the sun in parallel circles and at not too great a
difference of distance from the sun, are, by the equality of their parallel
motion, almost at rest with respect to one another, and thus the attrac-
tion of those particles which are of a higher specific attraction imme-
diately produces an important effect, namely, the collection of those
nearest one another so as to form a body which, in proportion to the
growth of its mass, extends its attraction farther and draws elements
from a wide region to unite with it in its further formation."

It must be left to mathematicians and astronomers to assess the
precise merits of these speculations in comparison with those of Kant's
predecessors and successors in the same undertaking. But as to the
historic affinities of Kant's hypothesis the facts seem so clear that even
a layman may pronounce upon them. The Kantian scheme is as dif-
ferent from Laplace's as any post-Newtonian cosmogony could well be.
For it does not start with a gaseous, rotating, heated nebula; it does
not explain the direction of revolution and rotation of the planets as
derived from the rotation of a mass formerly cohering with that now
constituting the sun; it does not regard the planets as having ever
formed part of any such mass. It is well-known that the rings of
Saturn suggested the most characteristic feature of Laplace's theory.
Kant has a chapter explaining these rings much as Laplace does ; but
he expressly insists that " the ring which surrounds Saturn was not
acquired in the general way, nor has been produced by the universal
laws of formation which have ruled the whole system of the planets."
On the other hand, it is not quite exact to identify (as does Hastie15)
Kant's system of planetary evolution with the meteoritic hypothesis of
Lockyer and G. H. Darwin. So far as I understand these matters,
Kant's cosmogony most nearly resembles an extremely recent doctrine
upon the subject — the planetesimal hypothesis of Chamberlin and
Salisbury. In the words of those authors :

Under the typical form of that hypothesis it is assumed that the parent
nebula of the solar system is formed of innumerable small bodies, planetesimals,
revolving about a central gaseous mass much as the planets do to-day. The
evolution of the system consisted in the aggregation of these innumerable small
bodies into much fewer large ones. . . . The hypothesis, therefore, postulates no
fundamental change in the system of dynamics after the nebula was once
formed, but only an assemblage of the scattered material. The state of disper-
sion of the material at the outset, as now, was maintained by orbital revolution,
or, more closely speaking, by the centrifugal acceleration arising from revolu-
tion.14

15 "Kant's Cosmogony," 1900, p. lxxxiv. At this date, of course, the
planetesimal type of hypothesis had hardly been differentiated from the
meteoritic.

"Chamberlin and Salisbury, "Geology," 1906, II., p. 38. The authors of
this theory have failed to recognize in Kant an early prophet of their own doc-
trine, and have referred to him, in the conventional manner, as having held a
hypothesis " somewhat similar " to Laplace's ( op. tit., p. 4 ) .

55° THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

There are, of course, very material differences between the contem-
porary and the Kantian form of the hypothesis; notably, our contem-
porary geologists ascribe " the gathering of the planetesimals to the
nuclei, to form the planets, essentially to conjunctions in the course of
their orbital motions, not," as does Kant, " to simple gravitation,
except as gravitation was the fundamental cause of the orbital motions."
But in the two cardinal points Kant's is a planetesimal theory: (1) it
conceives the planets to have grown by gradual accretions from very
small nuclei, not to have been condensed from large masses " aban-
doned" or thrown off by a rotating, gaseous sphere; (2) it also con-
ceives these nuclei to have been in regular orbital revolution about a
central body before the formation of planets as such. The first trait
distinguishes both the planetesimal and the meteoritic hypotheses from
the general type of theory to which the conjectures of Swedenborg,
Buffon and Laplace alike belong; the second is the specific mark differ-
entiating the planetesimal hypothesis in turn from the meteoritic.
" If," in the words of Chamberlin and Salisbury, " the meteorites-
could be supposed to come together so as to revolve in harmonious
orbits about a common center, on a planetary basis, the assemblage might
be perpetuated, but this takes the case out of the typical meteoritic class,
and carries it over to the planetesimal." It is precisely this that we
find exemplified in the third stage of the Kantian cosmogony.

"Whether, in view of the state of knowledge in his time, Kant had
any good reasons for preferring his theory to those of the other type
which Swedenborg and Buffon had already put forward, I shall not
venture to discuss. In any case, the features of Kant's cosmogony which
establish its kinship with the planetesimal hypothesis are closely con-
nected with one of the most elusive and most questionable details of his
system of dynamics — namely, his " force of repulsion." It is this and
this alone which (to his mind) explains why particles, as they fall
towards the center of attraction, are " deflected sideways " and thus
have their rectilinear motion converted into movement of revolution.
It is likewise the establishment of an equilibrium between repulsive and
attractive forces that, as he conceives, gives shape and determinate
limits of size, not only to planets, but to all coherent and individuated
masses of matter.17 This notion of a ZuriicTcstossungshraft, which he
took over from Newton, but the use of which to explain revolutional
motion Newton would never have sanctioned, was a favorite one
with Kant from the beginning of his career to the end; he reverts
to it so late as 1786, in his " Metaphysical Foundations of Natural
Science." It is in the "Physical Monadology," 1756, that we get the
most definite account of it. We there learn the quantitative formula
for this force, when acting between any two bodies; while attraction
decreases in proportion to the square of the distance, repulsion decreases

17 " Monadologia Physica," X.

KANT AND EVOLUTION 551

in proportion to the cube.18 Kant seeks, by reasonings both obscure
and peculiar, to establish an a priori necessity that these two forces —
emanating from identical points and perfectly analogous save in the
direction of the motion of the external particles they affect — should
yet differ in the ratio in which their potency decreases with distance.
But in the " Universal Natural History " the disciple of Newton bases
no calculations, such as could be compared with the actual positions
and densities of the heavenly bodies, upon this quantitative formula —
of which, possibly, he had not yet bethought himself. In fact, in his
cosmogony he wholly fails to indicate even an approximate law of the
action of repulsive force. When the plot of the world-story threatens
to come to a standstill or to issue in a hopeless entanglement, " repul-
sion " like a deus ex machina appears upon the scene to set things right
and ensure a happy ending. Precisely the same particles, under what
(so far as one can judge from Kant's language) might be similar phys-
ical conditions, and at approximately equal distances, figure now as
attracting, now as repelling, one another, as the exigencies of the
hypothesis require. That a theorist who improvised laws of dynamics
in so easy-going a manner proves to have anticipated a very recent
conception of planetary evolution, must, I think, be regarded rather as
evidence of good luck than of scientific good management.

"What, now, was, for Kant himself, the bearing of his doctrine of
cosmic evolution upon biology ? Descartes, holding the theory of animal
automatism, had undoubtedly regarded the formation of organisms as
part of that mechanical process of the redistribution of matter which
also explained the formation of suns and planets. Such a view was not
necessarily equivalent to a belief in the transformation of species.
There is no necessary logical connection (though there is a natural
affinity) between a mechanistic physiology and transformism — any
more than between a vitalistic physiology and the doctrine of the fixity
of species. Thus the question concerning the relation of cosmic evo-
lutionism to biology is merely the genetic form of the issue of vitalism
versus mechanism ; in it the problems of the tbeory of descent need not
be directly implicated. Upon this question a view current in Kant's
time was that the gradual generis of inorganic things might well be ex-

18 Kant's conception of " repulsive force " is used by him in the " Physical
Monadology " primarily to explain the impenetrability of bodies (for which he
supposes that a special force must be posited). But it is not identical with
impenetrability; it is explicitly represented by him as a force acting in distans.
In the " Universal Natural History " it is rather to the phenomena of solutions
and the expansion of gases that Kant points as empirical evidence of the exist-
ence of such a force. Newton (" Optics," Bk. III., Q. 31) had made a like infer-
ence from the same phenomena; but he did not write, as Kant did, seventeen
years after D. Bernouilli had propounded the kinetic theory of gases. And it is
impossible to imagine Newton deducing a cosmogony by the use of a conception
so loose and quantitatively indefinite as is Kant's conception of repulsive force
in the " Universal Natural History."

552 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

plained from mechanical principles, but that no such explanation could
be given of the origin and the characters of living beings. Such was the
position taken by the author of the introduction to the " Universal His-
tory," whom we have already seen Kant quoting.

The manner of the original formation of plants and animals, in which the
wisdom of the Creator principally appears, has never been accounted for by any
philosopher with any tolerable success; matter and the laws of motion having
nothing at all to do in these things, whatever they have in the inanimate parts
of the world.18

And this was substantially the attitude which Kant adopted, in the
one passage of the " Allgemeine Naturgeschichte " in which he definitely
discusses the matter.

We are in a position to say : " Give me matter and I will construct a
world." For given matter endued with the essential force of attraction, and
[all astronomical phenomena] . . . can be traced back to the simplest mechanical
causes, which causes we may confidently hope to discover. . . . But can we boast
of any such advantage with respect to the meanest plant or insect? Are we in
a position to say : " Give me matter and I will show you how a caterpillar is
generated " ? Do we not in this case, from the very first step in our quest,
remain in ignorance of the true inner constitution of the object in question and
of the complexity of the manifold parts composing it? It should surprise no
one, therefore, when I venture to say that the formation of all the heavenly
bodies, the cause of their motions, in short, the origin of the entire present
constitution of the universe, will become completely intelligible, before the gen-
eration of a single herb or caterpillar can be made wholly clear from mechanical
principles.

This passage is, perhaps, capable of being construed as expressing
rather an ignoramus than an ignorabimus. But considering it in con-
junction with the uniform tenor of Kant's subsequent writings, we are
justified, I think, in saying that he at no time admitted the possibility
of bringing organisms within the compass of a scheme of cosmic evolu-
tion based upon mechanistic principles. He was, in short, throughout
his career a vitalist, though in later life a curiously inconsistent one.
The notion of an original " spontaneous generation " of life out of the
inorganic always roused his aversion. Yet, as I have remarked, a vital-
ist may without inconsistency be a transf ormist ; living beings, once
produced by non-mechanical causes, may still conceivably change their
forms in the course of natural descent. But Kant throughout most of
his life looked upon the theories of spontaneous generation and of the
transformation of species with so blinding a hostility that he could
scarcely tell them apart. We shall find that some thirty-five years of
reflection were required before he was able to make so simple a dis-
crimination as to recognize that, from the point of view of his own
biological philosophy, the two stood upon & different, even though both
stood upon an unsound, footing.

2. The Review of Moscati on Man's Upright Posture. — In 1771

19 Op. cit., 1736, I., p. 43.

KANT AND EVOLUTION 553

Kant wrote a review of a disquisition by an Italian anatomist, Moscati,20
on the difference between the structure of man and that of the lower
animals. Moscati's principal contention was that the upright posture
is not " natural " to man, and was not his primitive attitude. Upon
this Kant remarks in part as follows :

Here we have once more the natural man upon all fours — an acute anat-
omist having traced him back to that condition. Dr. Moscati shows that the
upright gait of man is forced and contrary to nature, and that his structure is
such that this position, when it has become necessary and habitual, entails upon
man various disorders and diseases — clear proof enough that he has been led by
reason and imitation to depart from his primitive animal posture. In his inner
constitution man is not formed otherwise than as are all the quadrupeds. . . .
Paradoxical as this conclusion of our Italian physician may seem, yet in the
hands of so acute and philosophical an anatomist it attains to almost complete
certainty (erhalt er beinahe eine vollige GevHssheit). We see from this that
nature's first care was for the preservation of man as an animal, in his own
interest and that of the species; and for this purpose the posture which was
best adapted to his internal structure, to the position of the foetus, and to pro-
tection against dangers, was the four-footed one; but we see also that there lay
in man a germ of reason, through the development of which he was to become
fitted for society. He consequently assumed the posture most suitable to this,
that of a biped. By virtue of this, man, on the one hand infinitely surpasses
the animals; but, on the other hand, he is obliged to endure certain disorder*
that afflict him in consequence of his having raised his head so proudly above
his former comrades.

Here, then, Kant readily accepts the doctrine that man was origi-
nally a four-footed animal, which, pari passu with its unique develop-
ment of rationality and of the social instincts, assumed the upright atti-
tude. His promptness in making the views of Moscati his own cer-
tainly indicates a general predisposition to evolutionary ways of think-
ing; and, if we had no other expressions of Kant's dealing with the
subject more directly, it would be not unnatural to construe this asser-
tion of the descent of civilized man from quadrupedal ancestors as
equivalent to an assertion of the mutability of species. Yet the latter
doctrine, it must be noted, is nowhere expressed or directly implied in
the review of Moscati; and it will presently become clear that Kant
would not have regarded it as a legitimate inference from any of his
admissions about the earlier condition of humanity. From the time of
publication of this review to the end of his life Kant seems to have
remained what may be called an anthropological evolutionist; but he
deliberately refused to make the transition from this position to a gen-
eral biological evolutionism.

20 Moscati was professor of anatomy at the University of Pavia. His book
appeared in 1770; a German translation by Beckmann, professor in Gottingen,
was published in 1771.

(To be continued)

VOL. LXXVII. — 38.

554 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

CLASSICS AND THE COLLEGE COURSE

By Peofessoe JOHN J. STEVENSON

NEW TOEK DNIVBBSITY

TWO or three years ago, the acting president of a state university
praised the small college for exalting the humanities, for making
" study of the great classics compulsory but attractive. It has always
found more power for both head and heart in the noble lines of the
Iliad and in the majestic music of the iEneid than in study of the
nervous system of the frog or the life history of the Harpiphorus macu-
latus, interesting and important as those are."

Somewhat later, a man of great eminence announced that " we have
turned away young men and some young women from the great classical
ideals of self-sacrifice in fields where they could do the most unselfish
work."

Still later, laments have become more numerous and have increased
in pungency. It has been discovered that the study of Greek and Latin
no longer holds preeminence in colleges and universities, whereas in
women's colleges the " humanities are still honored." A distinguished
writer of elegant literature has remarked that " our women really have
some use for the education of a gentleman, but our men have none."

The acting president, no doubt, pleased his hearers, but there must
have been among them some who were surprised to learn that com-
pulsory study of the great classics had been made attractive. The
speaker's remarks were elliptical or the compositor dropped the words
" to some," which ought to have completed the sentence. The excellent
results of this attractive study have not always been apparent. Even
fifty years ago, when Harvard and Yale had fewer students than are
claimed by some " small " colleges of this day, it was matter of common
report that few graduates could read their diplomas and that Latin
text-books had been thrust out of theological seminaries, because the
niceties of syntax and not the niceties of ancient heresies engrossed the
students' attention. If the noble lines of the Iliad and the majestic
music of the iEneid have exerted material influence upon the head and
heart of youths in American colleges during the last half century, they
must have done so through the " Bohn," that essential portion of the
average man's equipment.

One, considering the claims made by defenders of classical courses,
might imagine that in Greece and Rome there existed the ideal condi-
tion, that social and political life were lofty, in contrast throughout

CLASSICS AND THE COLLEGE COURSE 555

with conditions existing in modern times. He is led to suppose that
later periods offer nothing to compare with the Iliad and iEneid; with
the intellect of Aristotle; with the morals of Cicero, Seneca and Marcus
Aurelius ; with the philosophy or excellence of Socrates and Plato ; with
the daintiness of the Greek lyric poets; with the abandon of Horace;
or with the heroism of Marathon and Thermopyla3. He is led to sup-
pose that one must look to Greece and Rome for models of purity and
devotion; he is told that only by study of the classical writers can he
gain sure foundation in morals and true intellectual polish; that the
fulness of the Greek language was the outcome of God's desire to have
a fit vehicle for revelation. And finally he is left to gather that our
colleges by their teaching of Greek and Latin enable students to come
in close touch with all this nobility of thought and life.

Yet no one need feel humiliation because he lives in an inferior age
or belongs to a deteriorated race. The sentences extolling the distant
past mean nothing ; they are but echoes from voices of the long-buriedi
Humanists, which by long reverberation have become polished in form,
musical in rhythm. No " literary function " would be complete unless
some modern Humanist had repeated them with the fervor of a
Thibetan priest.

No one denies that the author of the Iliad had marvelous skill in
description, but not a few have regretted that a writer of such ability
had no better subject than the quarrels and combats of lustful savages,
whose exploits, so vividly pictured, are those of mere brutes. In point
of morals, the Homeric poems are not superior to the Kalevala, to
which they are inferior in imagery. Of course, this matter is one of
taste, but one may be pardoned for supposing that the Kalevala, less
extravagant in description than the Iliad, would have gained the
stronger hold on popular fame if it too had been translated by Alex-!
ander Pope. But neither the Iliad nor the ^Eneid is superior to
Paradise Lost or to the Inferno, which, produced by greater intellects,
are free from the grossness which characterizes the Homeric poems.

Aristotle no more typified Greek intellect than Ajax typified Greek
physique, or than a building with forty-five stories typifies New York's
dwelling houses. He was a giant amid pygmies, a phenomenon in the
Greek intellectual sky as startling as was Donati's comet in our physical
sky, half a century ago. Like Leibnitz, Kant and Spencer, he broke
away from the trammels which bound his contemporaries and devoted
himself to the study of actual conditions in search of sure basis for
philosophy. Like Leibnitz, Kant and Spencer, he received the maledic-
tions of those who belonged to the prevailing schools. "Were he living
now he would be but one of many, possibly the chief. It is unjust to
compare him with Spencer, as some have done, for the latter lived in
an age of greater knowledge and greater advantages. Plato's reputa-

556 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

tion is due in no small degree to the fact that his style is ponderous
enough to prevent popularization of his works and to conceal defects in
his system of social morals; he will continue to be read by only a few
and the verdict of four centuries ago is likely to remain unchallenged.
But his enduring reputation is due quite as much to his influence on
Christian theology as to his profundity of thought.

Socrates, as described by his disciples, was a picturesque but by no
means a wholly inviting personality. A careless sloven, of unattractive
face and figure, a lounger at street corners, neglectful of obligations to
his family, casting slurs publicly on his burdened wife, he was able, in
spite of all, to hold the admiration of a thoughtful dreamer like Plato,
of a young rake like Alcibiades, of brilliant young men about town like
Xenophon and Critias. His range of thought was wide and his versa-
tility remarkable; he could discuss lofty and commonplace topics with
equal ease; he was able to speak with authority respecting the immor-
tality of the soul and with equal authority he could advise the fashion-
able prostitute, Theodote, as to the best methods of coaxing and of
retaining her lovers. Socrates was unquestionably a man of great intel-
lect and through his disciples he has exerted great influence on the
world ; in his personal morals, he was far superior to his surroundings ;
but he was very far from being the ideal sage.

The essays by Cicero and Seneca are so lofty in tone that the reader
is puzzled to determine whether they were written under the influence
of a stinging conscience or simply to prove that high thinking may
survive low living. Too many moralists then, as in later days, were
like guide posts on a wagon — pointing in one direction while traveling
in another. It is absurd to look to Greece and Eome for models of
purity and devotion. The condition of Greece, literary Greece, was
gross beyond conception; it was utter foulness. The lyric poets were
dainty indeed, but their daintiness too often was exhausted in admira-
tion of the basest vices. Epictetus, in praising the virtue of Socrates,
tells incidentally the whole story of Greek morals ; while the high esteem
in which the Homeric poems were held shows that, beneath the veneer
of civilization, there still existed the savage, even among the scholars.
And this was evidenced equally by the glorification of physical perfec-
tion; they could not plead the excuse of American college presidents,
that it gave them free advertising. In Eome, gross immorality had
gained full sway even during the golden age of literature; while, in
later times, the moral conditions were so bad that men and women, who
would be ordinary mortals in our day, became by contrast with those
about them the immortal models of purity and devotion; the dreary
platitudes of a Marcus Aurelius shine amid the moral darkness as
diamonds in a pile of rubbish.

The models of honor to be found among Grecian statesmen are such

CLASSICS AND THE COLLEGE COURSE 557

as one might seek to-day among the heroes of Central and South
America. The history of Grecian public affairs is a continuous tale of
treachery and dishonor. Treaties between the states were made only
to be broken ; truth was unknown and other nations, however much they
might disagree in reference to most subjects, were one in believing that
the Greek was always a liar. The petty affairs of Marathon and
Thermopylae have been matched a thousand times in every land. A
New York policeman attacking a band of armed ruffians, single handed,
without the moral support of 300 or 10,000 companions, is a nobler
spectacle than that at either of the Greek battlefields — and it occurs
every week. The hand-to-hand combat on Cemetery Hill at Gettys-
burg, where men fought until barely three scores remained in each
regiment and the combat ended only because the survivors fell ex-
hausted, was truer martial heroism than anything in Grecian history.

The modern world unquestionably owes much to Greece and Eome,
but much less than many would have us believe. The shackles forged
by the Greek and Eoman intellect crippled development after the revival
of learning and centuries passed before men succeeded in casting them
off. One must concede unhesitatingly the brilliancy of many ancient
writers, but that is not to say that they excelled or even equalled those
of modern times. Modern thinkers excel those of the classic world,
because the horizon is farther away; just as civilized man with many
concepts excels the Greenlander or Hottentot with his few concepts.
And it may be said in passing that Greek civilization was not self-
originated. It was but the full blossoming of Egypt and Babylonia,
a blossoming which ignored the trunk and roots whence it was derived.

But granting that the ancients did excel the moderns in intellectual
power and in loftiness of thought, one is compelled to ask the classicist
why college students are not permitted to come into contact with the
authors themselves. One may assert, without any fear of successful
contradiction, that the teaching of Latin and Greek as given in the
vast majority of our colleges during the last half century, has not done
this; for few men have acquired in college such familiar knowledge of
the language as would enable them to think much of what the author
said. Their labor was expended on lexicon work and construction.
If these extollers of classic intellect are honest in their plea, why do
they neglect genuine study of the authors in the college course ? Plato,
Seneca, Lucretius and the rest have been done into English in such
fashion that the study might be made attractive to the last degree, while
the English versions themselves could be used as models of style. But
this has not been suggested. The clamor respecting the glory of
ancient days is but a plea for restoration of classical courses to the pre-
eminent place in college. But it is wholly irrelevant. As well might
one urge the grandeur of St. Peter's at Eome to support a demand that

558 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

courses in masonry and stone cutting be added to the college cur-
riculum. The plea is not consistent. The Hebrew people and the
Hebrew Scriptures have had greater influence upon mankind than that
exerted by the Greeks and Eomans or their literature, yet no one has
demanded that lads be drilled in the accents and paradigms of the
Hebrew language. The Greeks owed their civilization to Egypt and
Babylonia, yet no one has wept because the study of hieroglyphics and
cuneiform is not a prominent feature in the curriculum of secondary
schools and colleges. English translations suffice for these languages;
it is difficult to conceive why they should not suffice for Greek and
Latin.

It is not easy to discover grounds justifying diatribes against the
changed attitude toward Latin and Greek as college studies. When one
challenges the correctness of the classicist's position, the good man seems
to be shocked by the questioner's audacity, he wanders amid generalities
and usually finds relief in gloomy reflections respecting this utilitarian
age. But the classicist forgets or does not know that, until very recent
times, the study of Latin and Greek had nothing whatever to do with
mental training, was not supposed to have any special value in that con-
nection. It was as purely utilitarian as the study of bookkeeping in a
commercial school, the erection of an anvil in a blacksmith's shop or the
purchase of a ticket before entering the train. The would-be student
learned Latin just as he learned to read — that the road to knowledge or
to preferment might be open to him. In the old universities lectures
and text-books were in Latin; many of the Christian Fathers wrote in
Greek and would-be theologians needed that language. The university
was closed to the man ignorant of Latin as an American college is closed
to the man ignorant of English. It was for this reason that when col-
leges were founded in this land, the chief emphasis was given to the
classic tongues; they were established merely as schools preparatory to
the university work of theological seminaries, whose text-books were in
Latin and Greek.

But the Eoman church lost control of the intellectual world ; Latin
ceased to be the universal language of scholars ; lectures and text-books
were given in the vernacular. Even theological seminaries, outside of
the Eoman church, discarded the old text-books and replaced them with
modern works of less polemic spirit. Seventy-five years ago all excuse
for keeping Latin and Greek in the college curriculum had disappeared.
Those languages had held their place because of utility and that had
disappeared. But the colleges were here, the largest of them very small ;
their curriculum was a survival of the past, no longer useful, it was
barely ornamental. A new era had been opened by the study of science,
but those who controlled the colleges knew nothing of science and most
of them thought of it only as an invention of the devil — a new way of

CLASSICS AND THE COLLEGE COURSE 559

diverting men from consideration of the spiritual to love of the material.
Then came the genius who, remembering the classical statement that the
first step in education is the study of words, asserted that the chief thing
is the study of words ; and he discovered that in the study of Latin and
Greek words one gains an all-around training, a " mental culture " which
is imparted by no other study. "With that came the conception that
colleges are to give a " liberal education " without any reference to
utility. For more than half a century the gospel of culture has been
preached by college graduates, who, too often, are themselves living
proofs of its falsity.

It is difficult to speak or to write meekly respecting the ceaseless
chatter about " culture " and the " education of a gentleman." If
study of Greek and Latin in college should make men " cultured,"
should convert them into " gentlemen," there must be something wrong
in the mode of teaching or in the mode of study, for the results are not
wholly gratifying. Of course, there may be a difference of opinion as to
the meaning of " culture." If it mean comfortable self-satisfaction
without basis of knowledge, certainly a very great number of men have
acquired " culture " at slight cost ; an insignificant quantity of classical
or other lore found lodgment in their minds and their chief relic of col-
lege days is the recollection that they took the classical course. But if
" culture " mean intellectual breadth, judicial attitude of mind, the
ability to express one's thoughts clearly, not much of it could be ac-
quired in the old classical course and still less in a modern classical
group.

But one is told that a tree is known by its fruits, and the classicist
proceeds to prove results by presenting a long list of brilliant authors
who studied classics, while he challenges his opponent to show a similar
list made up from graduates of non-classical courses. This can not be
regarded as a legitimate argument. A field of blasted corn always con-
tains a considerable number of good ears. If one should take the whole
product, he might be inclined to say that the classical course is destruc-
tive of culture and that the men on the list were those who had escaped
the blasting influence of the study; for a very great proportion of the
graduates who have entered professional life, exhibit a charming indif-
ference to the rules of rhetoric and notable inability to express their
thoughts clearly. But the argument is worthless in either direction. It
is absurd as an argument for teaching the classics; nearly all of the
polished writers in this land and Great Britain were graduated before
the change in curriculum came about ; they had to study the classics or
nothing.

The writer holds no brief for defence of any special type of educa-
tion or of any special curriculum but he maintains that a curriculum
which ignores utility is wasteful. All training should aim to make a

560 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

man conscious of his worth to himself and to his fellows; it should fit
him and should stimulate him to make the most of himself so as to leave
the world in some sense better than he found it. One may concede that
mental polish is very important and at the same time he would be con-
sistent in asserting that to spend years under the polishing process with
nothing but veneer to show at the end is an insult to common sense.
Something of service should be acquired in the interval. It has been
said that the aim of education should be to enable a man to enjoy his
leisure; that would make of education a luxury. But one must recog-
nize that, fortunately or unfortunately, all but a very few men have to
earn their bread and that to them the years between sixteen and twenty
are all-important, being those during which intelligent acquisition of
knowledge is made most easily. Since the study of language is essential,
the language in the curriculum should be useful. English, German and
French are quite as difficult as Latin and Greek, and their literature is
sufficiently inspiring. If those languages were taught as the classic
languages were taught in American colleges one hundred years ago, the
student would have acquired the needed mental polish and he would
have the knowledge which is demanded, whether he enter a profession
or devote himself to business pursuits.

LEARNING FOREIGN LANGUAGES 561

LEARNING FOREIGN LANGUAGES

By Dr. CHARLES W. SUPER

ATHENS, O.

WHEN we consider that in all the high schools and colleges of
Christendom, with few exceptions, the pupils are required to
study one or more foreign languages, we can not but admit that the
subject is one of the utmost importance. And more than this : in the
public schools of many of our large cities thousands of children are
engaged in the study of English, which is to them a foreign language.
Since in the latter case the end in view is solely and directly practical,
we need not consider this phase of the problem further in this connec-
tion. It is only within the memory of many men now living that the
value of such studies has been called in question; or more especially,
the relative value of the ancient and modern languages. A few decades
ago the latter had either no place or a very subordinate one in the
educational curriculum. Every young man who entered college was
required to have some knowledge of Greek and Latin. In a few insti-
tutions he might pursue a modern language, or perhaps two, but this
part of the course was perfunctorily gone over because regarded as
subordinate. After a score or less of recitations from the grammar
the student was put to reading. Then a few master-pieces were in
whole or in part rapidly gone over and that was the end of the program.
So far as the principles of language-structure were concerned the
student was supposed to have learned them along with his Latin and
Greek. Gradually, however, the modern languages received an in-
creasing share of attention, until at the present time in many of our
largest universities not five per cent, of the students take Greek, while
neither Greek nor Latin is required for graduation. In most high
schools the former is not taught, and in all it no longer occupies the
post of honor. In this country the contest between the progressives
and the conservatives was carried on without much bitterness; but in
Germany the latter contested every inch of ground and the discussions
of the relative value of ancient and modern languages often gave rise to
acrimonious debates. It was in fact a contest between the ins and the
outs ; between the college professors and what may be called the enlight-
ened public; between the traditional views of education and the prac-
tical, not to say imperious, demands of the age. Under the old regime
an education was supposed to serve a sentimental rather than a practical
end. It was not necessary for either law, medicine, or theology, since

562 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

comparatively few young men who entered any of these professions had
had any systematic training. Owing, however, to the enormous expan-
sion of commerce and manufactures the public began to insist that edu-
cational institutions shall make a wisely directed effort towards enabling
young people to meet these demands with an adequate preparation.
Education was no longer to be confined to the few; it must be so
broadened and extended as to include all who wish to prepare them-
selves to meet the multifarious claims of the present age. Shortly
before his death, Lord Salisbury said : " We do not sufficiently cultivate
a systematic knowledge of foreign contemporaneous languages." And
further : " If I were capable of prescribing the course that ought to be
pursued, I should say that those who have to make their living by com-
merce in any of its stages, from the highest to the lowest, ought to
know French and German, and possibly Spanish, before they think of
Latin and Greek." Such words as these uttered by a man who had
been educated in the conservative atmosphere of Eton and Oxford are
highly significant. They not only reflect the prevailing spirit of the
latter years of the nineteenth century, but do credit to the insight and
freedom from prejudice of the speaker personally. In fact, it may be
said of most of the leading English statesmen that in their public
capacity they have always been responsive to the demands of their time,
notwithstanding the circumstance that most of them were educated
under conditions that were essentially medieval. The prominent place
occupied until recently by the ancient languages is a heritage of pre-
ceding centuries. For more than a thousand years the former was the
only language taught in the schools of Europe outside of the domain
of the Greek church. It was, however, not the language of pagan but
of christian Eome. The renascence added the Greek, which had be-
come a forgotten tongue; but it directed especial attention to the
great pagan writers, above all to Cicero. This change in pedagogical
material was logical, since it was the substitution of a literature that
had a value in itself for one that was hardly more than an auxiliary to
the church, and a language that was a highly cultivated medium for the
expression of thought, for one that had been developed along narrow
lines. There was no other language and no literature that so well
served its purpose. Although the church did not look with favor on
this innovation, it continued to make progress to such an extent that
the ecclesiastical writers were almost wholly extruded from the schools.
Cicero was the model to which all authors who strove to attain to
elegance of diction endeavored to conform as nearly as they could. Not
only was Latin taught in the higher schools and universities, but the
lectures in the continental universities were delivered in this tongue.
No other language was used by the German professors until near the
close of the seventeenth century, where it continued to be employed to
some extent within the memory of men now living. In Germany until

LEARNING FOREIGN LANGUAGES 563

•about 1570 fully seventy per cent, of books published were in Latin.
Those printed in the vernacular were for the most part of a popular
■character and considered by scholars beneath their notice. One hun-
dred years later the number of Latin and German books issued from
the press was about equal. But in fifty years from that date the pro-
portion of the latter to the former was about as one to two. This effort
to keep alive a language that no longer had its roots in contemporary
thought required a prodigious amount of labor. Nevertheless, the books
written by scholars for scholars thus obtained a wider currency than
they would have had if any of the vernaculars had been employed.
On the other hand, all works that were intended to be contributions to
literature were failures. Petrarch wrote most of his books in Latin;
yet they are virtually forgotten while his Italian sonnets are known
to all students of his vernacular. Many of his contemporaries spent
their time in equally fruitless labor. Dante knew better. Although
he wrote Latin with ease, he realized that he could not express his
inmost thoughts in an alien tongue. He seems to have been the first
man of modern times to discern a truth that Macaulay has expressed in
his essay on Frederick the Great : " No noble work of imagination, so
far as we can recollect, was ever composed by any man, except in a
•dialect which he had learned without remembering when or how, and
which he had spoken with perfect ease before he had analyzed its
structure."

When we try to answer the question whether it is worth while to
study a language which conveys little or no information that we can
not get in our own we are confronted with a serious problem. We can
not draw a hard and fast line between what is useful and what is
useless, perhaps not even between what is more and what is less useful.
Few persons will deny that the beautiful is also useful and that the
•esthetic taste is as well worth cultivating as any other of our mental
powers. The fairest flowers produce no fruit. Music is absolutely of
no value, while sculpture and painting in their higher aspects are
•equally so. The same affirmation may be made of architecture. No
man has championed more vigorously and more eloquently the claims
•of esthetics than the high priest of utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill.
He indignantly repudiates the charge that his system would exclude
the cultivation of any art that makes life richer or more worth living
than the pursuit of the narrowly practical. There is no room for
doubt that a student whose native language is English, with an occa-
sional exception, will get a more correct conception of Plato's philos-
ophy, for example, from Jowett's translation and comments than from
the original text. Some knowledge of Greek will be serviceable, but
it is not essential. If it be answered that no man of scholarly tastes
and scientific training will be satisfied with second-hand information,
the patent answer is that if we knew nothing except what we have

564 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

learned directly our stock of knowledge would be pitifully small. At
the utmost, we can make an immediate inspection of the merest frag-
ment of the immense domain of nature and life, while the entire past
has for the most part been transmitted to us through many hands.
If we purpose to acquire a language for itself alone there is nothing
gained by approaching it in a roundabout way. But there is no doubt
that if we wish to lay the foundation for studies of a similar character
we can not do better than to begin with Latin. A person who knows
Latin well will have far less difficulty in acquiring the Komance lan-
guages, barring the pronunciation, than he had with the Latin. The
great body of the vocabulary of these languages is derived more or less
directly from the ancient tongue. Most words, however, which desig-
nate modern objects are formed in various ways. Those words that
have their roots in the Latin have merely been modified according to
phonetic laws that are now well understood. On the other hand, it is
admitted by most teachers who can speak from experience that a
knowledge of Latin as gained in our schools is of small service in
acquiring French, the Romance language most generally taught. With
few exceptions the pupils fail to see the connection between the older
and the younger vocabulary and teachers have virtually to begin at
the beginning. It is only a small minority of learners that acquire
French more rapidly because they have studied Latin previously. It
is not too much to say that nobody fully comprehends what is written
in those languages now called dead. Part of the difficulty is due to
variations in the manuscripts, or to their defective character, but it is
also largely owing to the impossibility of ascertaining the meaning of
many words. To be convinced of this one needs but to examine the
copious notes with which most authors have been provided. A few
months ago I had occasion to read some of the later Books of the
^Eneid, a work that I had not had in hand for a number of years. As
long as I had only the text before me I thought I understood the author
except in a few passages. But after consulting a profusely annotated
edition I was in doubt whether I had got the meaning of more than one
verse in ten. So many possibilities and probabilities were suggested
that nobody could tell who was right. There is always some difficulty
in comprehending a profound thinker. But if we know exactly what
he said we can usually come pretty close to an understanding of his
meaning. If we are uncertain as to the words he wrote we encounter
preliminary obstacles which no amount of ingenuity and intellectual
acumen can overcome. It is doubtful whether the mind can be most
profitably employed in seeking for something which in the nature of
the case can not be found. On the other hand, the effort to acquire
the facile use of a language, whether ancient or modern, is always a
striving towards an attainable goal. We can obtain expert testimony
as to whether we have reached it. There are hundreds of persons now

LEARNING FOREIGN LANGUAGES 565

living who understand Greek and Latin more thoroughly than Plato
and Xenophon, than Cicero and Virgil understood them. But in the
ability to use them there is a wide difference. In order to understand
a language we must know its relation to other languages; in order to
be able to use it we need to know it only. It profits nothing for the
acquirement of a good style to study a foreign tongue. There is no
evidence that the Greek classic writers knew any language except their
own. When they discuss problems of philology they usually indulge in
puerilities. It was not until the rise of the science of language, about a
century ago, that scholars began to see the connection of languages with
each other and to classify them according to their affinities. But none
of the men who have put upon record the results of their investigations
were great writers. It would almost seem as if profound thought and
facile expression are incompatible. A knowledge of the etymology of
words gives us their history and a clue to their meaning; it does not
enable us to understand them exactly, nor aid us in the structure of
the sentence. Skill in the use of language is a matter of native ability
and something which the most painstaking study can not give us.
There is a wide difference between the bald statement of facts and
grouping them in their relations in such a way as to gratify the esthetic
sense. In the latter the imagination plays a large part; but if it be
allowed to become unduly prominent, the result is disastrous.

We have no classical Latin that is suitable for boys. This is a
strong objection to giving it a place in the lower schools. Almost all
the Latin read in both school and college deals with war and politics.
Besides, it is too difficult for beginners. More than a century ago a
French teacher compiled an elementary reading-book from good writers
by omitting difficult constructions and the less interesting passages.
It has been in use in Germany and France ever since his time and has
been introduced in this country to some extent. Nevertheless, it is
merely the old matter somewhat simplified in form. More recently
Professor F. W. Newman made an abridged translation of Robinson
Crusoe into Latin with a view to providing reading matter for begin-
ners that is both correct in form and interesting at the same time.
But his little volume never found a place in the schools. In this respect
the ancients were no better off than we are. As soon as the young
Greeks and Romans had learned to read a little they were set to work
on Homer or some similar author. No account was taken of their
mental immaturity. Perhaps the work has already been done; if not,
I am sure that he who shall trace the rise and development of text-
books for elementary schools will make an interesting contribution to
the history of education.

Although the Latin taught in the European schools for more than
fifteen hundred years was not that of the classic writers, the proceeding
was in many respects more rational than that now in vogue. The

566 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

pupils were taught to speak and to write the language, to use it in the
affairs of every-day life. It was not only the Latin of books, but of the
playground, of the street, of public discussion. While it was not the
speech of the common people, it was the general medium of correspond-
ence, of law and of diplomacy, until superseded by French. One needs-
but to read the letters of Erasmus or the Letters of Obscure Men to see
what a facile medium of expression it was. How easily a foreign lan-
guage may be acquired is daily demonstrated in the public schools of
our large cities. The children of the immigrants who come into this
country by tens of thousands from all parts of the world usually learn
English, to them a foreign tongue, in a year or less. "Were it not so
common the phenomenon would be called marvelous. Children do not
employ the principle of association; they simply yield to the natural
instinct to imitate. Unconsciously they strive to reproduce speech-
sounds until they get them to conform to those they hear uttered in
their presence. When they begin to talk, usually in the second year,,
their enunciation and pronunciation are very defective. But by con-
stant though unconscious effort they approximate more and more nearly
to the correct sounds until they attain complete conformity. When
they are engaged in learning two or three languages at the same time
they rarely confound them. They usually answer in the language in
which they are addressed. Children under favorable conditions before
they are old enough to attend school learn a list of some thousand of
words without knowing how. Their vocabulary grows faster than their
minds. It is easier for them to learn the words that designate common
things in two or three languages than to comprehend an unfamiliar
idea. After the age of mental maturity the task becomes more and
more difficult and is rarely accomplished correctly. There are, however,,
here and there persons who can, by an effort, reproduce any speech-
sound they hear, as long as their auditory apparatus is unimpaired.

Contrary to the popular belief, the ability to speak several languages
is not a mark of mental power. It merely indicates a retentive memory
of a certain kind and a knack for imitating sounds. Sir Eichard Bur-
ton relates in one of his books that once when near Jeddah he was
accosted by a man in Turkish. Getting no response, he tried Persian ;
then the same silence made him try Arabic. When his listener still
kept silent he grumbled out his astonishment in Hindustani. That
also failing, he tried in succession Pushtu, Armenian, English, French
and Italian. When Burton could no longer restrain his risibilities, he
admitted his nationality and chatted for some time with the stranger
in English, which he spoke very well. Professor Starr says in his
" The Truth about the Congo " that members of the Bantu tribes are
often met with who speak several languages readily. A recent denom-
inational periodical gives the names of several men who preach in four
different languages and a larger number in three. One clergyman is

LEARNING FOREIGN LANGUAGES 567

named who uses Spanish, French, Mandarin, Chinese, Japanese, Italian
and English. Of another it is said that he preaches in Burmese, Ger-
man, English, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Danish, French and
Quechua. When one visits an auction-room on the continent of Europe
at a point where several languages are spoken and prospective buyers
arrive from all parts of the world, he may hear the auctioneer drop one
language and take up another until all present have heard in their own
tongue what the goods are and the bids. One also meets on the trains
traveling salesmen who speak several languages with almost equal flu-
ency. Cardinal Mezzofanti, who died in 1849, spoke fifty-eight lan-
guages and knew fairly well about fifty more. He was a man of very
ordinary ability except that he had a singularly tenacious memory of
an unusual kind, so that when he once heard a speech-sound he never
forgot it. About twenty years ago there was an employee in one of
the London offices who was able to receive and to send telegrams in
twelve different languages. But he soon gave himself up to drink and
became so unreliable that the company felt obliged to discharge him.
The testimony regarding fluent speakers in several languages must
be received with great caution. It is almost always exaggerated, usu-
ally very much exaggerated. While there is virtually no limit to the
number of languages one may learn to read rapidly and intelligently,
their oral use is almost infinitely more difficult. I have taken careful
notes for many years and am convinced that not half a dozen men in a
generation can speak even three languages simultaneously with native
purity. Some years ago a lady informed me that a friend of hers spoke
eight languages as well as if each one was his native tongue. I hap-
pened to know that the man himself makes no such preposterous claim.
I once made the acquaintance of a young Swiss whom I asked what his
native dialect was. He replied that he did not know, since he had been
brought up to speak German, French, and Italian. As his English was
correct and fluent, although he had been in this country only a few
years, he probably told the truth. But his pronunciation betrayed the
foreigner in every sentence.1 Many years ago I was making a foot-
tour through the Black Forest with a fellow American. Among other
things he informed me that he spoke German like a native. Presently
we came to a farmhouse at which he asked for some milk. But he gave
the word a wrong gender. An ignorant native might have made a mis-
take in the grammatical structure of his sentence, or he might have had
a local pronunciation, but no native would have made a blunder in the
gender of this word, since it is not one of those of which the spoken
and the written gender differ. It needs to be remarked, however, that
the local dialects vary so widely from each other and from the language

1 It may be stated in this connection that there are districts in Switzerland
in which German is the language of every-day life; Italian the language of the
school, and French the language of the church.

568 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of books that the natives of one section have great difficulty in compre-
hending one another. Historically considered, the attitude of intelli-
gent men toward foreign languages presents some interesting aspects.
From about 500 B.C. until well into the third century, everybody who
laid any claim to be educated or even well informed, spoke Greek, no
matter what his native speech might be. The reader of the history of
antiquity meets with ever-recurring surprises at the wide dissemination
of a language that is now considered particularly difficult. The utility
of this knowledge is never mentioned by any writer: it was taken for
granted. While the Greeks themselves rarely knew any tongue but
their own, all foreigners possessed a speaking knowledge of Greek.
Quintillian, who taught in Eome in the first century, urges his pupils
to learn Greek at the same time with their mother-tongue. But he
deplores the prevalent custom of teaching Eoman children Greek before
they know Latin. Yet there were virtually neither grammars nor dic-
tionaries. The language was either picked up from those who spoke it
or systematically taught by private tutors. Young men of literary
tastes often supplemented the instruction gained at home by a brief
sojourn in some Greek city. It should be remarked, however, that the
Greeks had no need to acquire any other language for either literature
or science, since all that was worth knowing was accessible in their
native speech. Eoman literature is so pervaded with Greek ideas that
it is in no sense an original product. It contains hardly a thought that
may not be found in Greek. It was in government alone that the
Eomans developed their own ideas and profited by their own experience.
Although the Greek thinkers wrote a great deal upon the theory and
practise of administration, the populace paid no heed and failed every-
where. It is a melancholy fact that they never learned wisdom from
their constant succession of fiascoes repeated in every city throughout
Greek lands.

There is no best method of teaching foreign languages : the method
needs to be adapted to the pupil and to the purpose for which a lan-
guage is learned. If the mind is to be trained at the same time in
logical thinking, the procedure will necessarily be different and the
results much slower than when the memory of the learner is to be filled
with words and phrases to express concepts which are already in exist-
ence. Children learn languages because they can not help it; adults,
because they want to. There is besides the much larger number who
have to be taught for the reason that they are only half in earnest. It
is this class of so-called students who furnish one of the serious prob-
lems for teachers. If one wants to teach an adult foreigner the English
language there is no better method than that which bears the name of
M. Gouin. The teacher suits the action to the word or phrase. He
stands, he sits down, he gets up, he points to his eyes, his forehead, his
hair, and so on, each time using the appropriate words. If he knows

LEARNING FOREIGN LANGUAGES 569

the language of the foreigner he is trying to teach, so much the better.
But this knowledge is not essential. In this way the most ignorant
person will soon acquire a few hundred words and phrases which will
be a nucleus about which he may enlarge his vocabulary as much as he
pleases. Although his pronunciation will be very faulty, he will be
able to express himself in a way, and to understand fairly well what is
said to him. When teacher and pupil are equally in earnest progress
will usually be quite rapid up to a certain point. This point is difficult
to pass. For the successful teaching of Latin and Greek to schoolboys
a much higher degree of pedagogical ability is essential. Here the
teacher has to deal with complex thoughts strangely expressed and more
or less above the comprehension of the learner, one of the objects of this
kind of instruction being to train his mind up to them. The instructor
should not only have a competent knowledge of the language he teaches ;
he should also have psychological insight, fertility in resources, vivacity
of manner and a good measure of literary training. When pupils are
only half in earnest or somewhat defective in verbal memory, and the
teacher lacks any or all of the above-named qualifications, instruction is
" up-hill work," and the results decidedly unsatisfactory. My personal
observation of the teaching of Latin and Greek leads me to believe that
there is generally too much grammatical hair-splitting and too little
reading. A teacher needs to know very little about a language to be
able to spend day after day with a class discussing verbal niceties. The
serious student of a foreign language soon discovers the method that is
best for him, and his progress is usually rapid. In any case the text-
book ought to occupy an inconspicuous place.

With the advancing years our educational system will supply more
and more fully the needs of the rising generation. The time is not far
distant when schools will be called into being wherein everything will
be taught that is worth learning. So far as languages are concerned,
there will always be persons who will study them for their literature
rather than for their practical value. There will always be professors
of Latin and Greek, although it is a misnomer to call the latter a dead
language. It is more alive than the English of Chaucer. Besides, it
may be predicted with confidence that those persons whose native tongue
is English will have less and less need to learn any other, except for a
more or less permanent residence abroad.

vol. lxxvii.— 39.

57° THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

SOME EUROPEAN CONDITIONS AFFECTING EMIGEATION

BY ARTHUR CLINTON BOGGESS

EEID CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, LUCKNOW, INDIA

FROM what economic and social conditions do our immigrants from
Europe come ? This was the question that came to me after
reading book after book concerning the immigrant after he has reached
America. A diligent gathering from many sources, chiefly official
documents, has brought to light many facts of much interest to one who
really cares to know the character of the surroundings of those who are
thronging our shores. It is the purpose of this article to present some
leading conditions in various countries of Europe.

Russia

One eighth of our immigrants are Russian Jews. Peculiar and
pathetic is the lot of the Jew in Russia. A law of 1769, modified in
1804 and in 1835, requires that all Jews, except certain specified classes,
shall reside within the Jewish pale. The pale is a district beginning
immediately south of the Baltic provinces, stretching throughout the
west and extending over the south as far east as the Don Army Terri-
tory. It has an area of about 362,000 square miles, or less than 20 per
cent, of European Russia, and only a little over 4 per cent, of the entire
Russian empire. Outside the pale may reside, under certain restric-
tions, merchants of the first guild — i. e., merchants paying a very high
business license — professional persons and master artisans. As a mat-
ter of fact 93.9 per cent, of all Jews in the empire live in the pale, 4 per
cent, live in the remaining part of European Russia and 2.1 per cent,
live in Asiatic Russia. Even the place of residence within the pale is
limited by a provision of the notorious May laws of 1882, which pro-
hibits the Jews from buying or renting lands outside the limits of
cities and incorporated towns. Jews who owned farm lands in 1882
were not dispossessed, but the law operates to preclude any increase in
such holdings.

Restriction upon his place of residence is not the only limitation
placed upon the Jew in Russia. In the summer of 1887 the minister
of instruction was empowered to limit the number of Jewish students
to be admitted into the secondary institutions of learning. This limit
was defined as 10 per cent, for the institutions located within the pale,
5 per cent, in the remaining cities and only 3 per cent, in the two cap-
ital cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The measure was justified as
necessary to maintain a more " normal proportion between the number

CONDITIONS AFFECTING EMIGRATION 571

of Jewish and christian students." The result of this was that the
classes in many classical and technical high schools remained half
empty, for in the cities where the Jews constituted from 50 to 75 per
cent, of the population only 10 per cent, of the high-school students
could he of Jewish faith. Hundreds of Russian Jews go to Germany
and adjacent countries to attend the higher schools, many making
great sacrifices to do so. Jews became converted to Mohammedanism,
thus obtaining full admission to higher educational establishments.
Thereupon the senate declared that although Jews might be converted
to Mohammedanism they did not thereby escape the disabilities of Jews.
As Jews who become christians do escape these disabilities, the deter-
mination seems to be to drive them to be baptized.

Since 1889 no Jew in Russia can be admitted to the bar except by
a special permit of the minister of justice in each case. Russia employs
an enormous number of government servants, but except in rare cases
Jews are debarred from such employment. Five per cent, of govern-
ment physicians and surgeons may be Jews. Private practise of law or
medicine is almost the only professional work open to Jews, and as a
result these occupations are so crowded that a living income can scarcely
be made.

To work "as a farm laborer is not forbidden, but it is not attractive.
Agricultural laborers receive from 25.8 cents per day in sowing time to
77 cents in harvest in southern Russia, and from 12.9 cents to 25.8 cents
in northwestern Russia. Board is not furnished by the employer The
standard of living can be judged from the fact that the cost of subsist-
ence is officially estimated at from $23.18 to $25.75 per year — some-
what more than 6 cents per day — and that " the regular daily ration of
an agricultural laborer consists of about four pounds of bread, which is
sometimes supplemented with a cucumber or a few onions." In Russia,
especially outside the pale, the greatest poverty is found in the rural
districts and the small villages rather than in the cities as in the United
States. This is probably due to the general extreme poverty of the
peasantry and to the exorbitant taxation. A typical case is that of a
man who paid $40 taxes on twelve acres.

Legal restrictions make the Russian Jews swarm in cities, and so
overcrowd all occupations open to them that a high standard of living
is often wholly impossible in Russia.

Greece

Greece furnished the United States with 19,489 immigrants during
the year ending June 30, 1906, and with 36,580 during the succeeding
year. Greeks in the United States send to their home country about
$7,720,000 annually.

Rural life is of pastoral simplicity and manufacturing is largely of
the home variety, although some mills exist. The cotton mills at
Pirasus, the port of Athens, run eleven hours per day and the wages

572 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of the operatives, chiefly women and girls, average about 27.5 cents
per day. There are few milch cows in Greece. Goats and sheep fur-
nish nearly all of the milk for home consumption and the making of
cheese. A few cows are found in Athens, but the price of feed is so
high that butter sells at 68.5 cents per pound, cream at $3.27 per
gallon and curdled milk at 85.3 cents per gallon.

Austria-Hungary

Economic interest in Hungary centers in the development of manu-
facturing, especially the manufacturing of textile fabrics.

The act of 1907, which it is hoped will mark the beginning of a new era
in Hungarian industry, enables the government to grant subsidies and exemp-
tion from taxation to those industries which are considered by the minister of
commerce to be worthy of encouragement and desirable from a national economic
point of view. Subsidies may be in the form of a lump sum or an annual allow-
ance. The act favors the building of workmen's dwellings and enables the
municipal and parish authorities to encourage certain industries by grants of
money, etc. It further provides that the state, municipal and parish authorities,
the institutions maintained or subventioned by the same, and all enterprises
engaged in the service of public traffic shall have their initial requisites supplied
and their works carried out by home industry.

About $41,000,000 is thus expended annually. The Hungarian
mills are in a new milling district and they must import skilled labor,
usually from Austria. They also suffer from the large emigration.
About 1,000,000 persons emigrated from Hungary during the eight
years ending December 31, 1907. The few Hungarians who return
from America are arrogant and discontented. Hungary has 460 ap-
prentice's schools, with 66,030 pupils; twenty-two special industrial
schools, with 1,177 pupils, and six industrial schools of higher grade.
In a factory town where house rent was from $54 to $58 per year,
wages in the factory were as follows : picker hands : men, 40.6 cents per
day, women, 30.45 cents; cards, 52.78 cents; card grinder, 80.12 cents;
draw frames, 30.45 cents; slubbers, 40.6 cents; mules, one spinner,
$1,015, two piecers, 71.05 cents, two boys, 50.75 cents; ring spinning,
girls, 24.36 cents to 28.42 cents ; reelers, 30.45 cents to 40.6 cents. In
a Bohemian knitting, linen, and woolen mill weekly wages ranged from
$1.01 to $4.26 for female workers and from $1.01 to $7.10 for males.
The working day is ten hours.

The factories have by no means displaced home industry. In some
parts of Bohemia more than one fourth of the entire population is en-
gaged in home manufacture. In the Eiesengebirge paper bags and
horn or stone buttons are made. Near Eeichenau and Gablonz snuff-
boxes were formerly made. As the use of snuff decreased, the making
of cheap oil paintings on wood, tin and linen began. When the market
is good the whole family works night and day and makes a living. In
the Adlerhills weekly wages of $1 to $1.20 are paid, but lost time brings
the average to not more than 80 cents per week. Sometimes husband

CONDITIONS AFFECTING EMIGRATION 573

and wife work alternately eighteen hours a day. Some button makers
receive 60 cents per week.

Weavers who make at home silk and Jacquard and art work earn $1.40 to
$4 a week. The straw and bast matters earn from 20 to 40 cents a day, but
after the "season" the wages are lowered. Wood carvers earn $1.20 to $2.80
a week, and the brush makers at Gabel from $1.60 to $2 a week. The wood
carvers at the Wittigtal earn $1.60 to $3.60 a week, and the wood and mat
makers at Niemes from $1.20 to $1.60 a week.

People take work home with them from some of the lace factories.

Around perhaps the only table in the only room, in a little house, the
family assemble, the man, his wife, the grandparents and children with other
members of the family, if there be any. When evening comes on, an oil lamp,
a candle, or even chips of wood are the only lights by which they can work.
On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays the finished articles are taken to the
factories and paid for.

"It is very hard now," said one of the lace exporters from Neudek the
other day, " to get people in summer to make laces. They prefer to go to work
in fields or picking hops, for which they get higher wages than by making laces.
Children get 8 cents a day at that time and adults from 25 cents to even 40 cents,
and of course we can not afford to pay such high wages for lace making."

Austria-Hungary's housing problem becomes acute in her city and
factory districts. In 1900, 43 per cent. (592,134 persons) of the in-
habitants of Vienna lived in houses of one room, exclusive of kitchen.
In Eeichenberg, a decade earlier, 57.5 per cent, of the dwellings, and
in the suburbs 79.2 per cent., were without kitchens. In many of these
houses the inmates did their manufacturing work. Similar conditions
were found throughout the empire. Conditions in Eeichenberg have
not materially changed since 1890, but lately in other parts of Austria
and Hungary a strong movement has set in for the erection of suitable
dwellings for the poorer classes. The chief improvements are in the
size of rooms, lighting, ventilation and rate of rent rather than in the
number of rooms. Many of the model flats have but one room and an
attic or one room and a kitchen. In some places tenants are forbidden
to take lodgers. The government encourages the building of homes of
a certain specified desirable type by exempting the builders from cer-
tain forms of taxation. In several cases model houses are rented at
such a figure as to yield but 3 per cent, on the investment.

Italy
Italy has more than 650 mills for the manufacture of cotton fab-
rics. By far the larger part are in northern Italy, but the government
is trying to increase the number of mills in southern Italy.

To this end land has been offered free of cost for mill sites, taxes will be
remitted for ten years, and textile machinery for mills so locating will be
admitted free of duty.

Labor is cheaper in the south, but it is also less efficient and mills
are there farther from their sources of supply. The number of mills
in the south may, however, be expected to increase. Wages in the

574 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

south range from 29.1 to 38.6 cents per day and in the north from

38.6 to 58 cents. Country mills pay much less than city mills.

The average daily wages paid in a country mill near Milan have gradually
increased from 30.9 cents for men and 11.6 cents for women spinners in 1871
to 47.3 cents for men and 36.1 cents for women in 1907, while for weaving the
wages have increased from 15.4 cents to 39.6 cents in the same period. The
hours of labor have also been decreased from twelve to ten and a half per day.
The number of days worked per year is about 290.

Some mills still run eleven hours per day.

Two of the several Italian strikes of 1907 will be described for the
sake of their interesting data concerning grievances and wages.

Scanzo (Bergamo). — On March 9 there was initiated a strike at the
weaving plant of Carlo Caprotti by 3 men and 198 women weavers making 31
cents a day, 46 girls running cop winders at 16 cents a day, 50 spoolers at
21 cents a day, 12 warpers at 29 cents a day, and 16 drawing-in hands at 35
cents a day. The weavers demanded that the fortnightly minimum require-
ments be reduced by one piece of cloth, the cop winders, spoolers and warpers
asked an increase in wages. Fourteen men remained employed until the four-
teenth at 39 cents a day, and 20 boys at 19 cents a day. The strikers, notwith-
standing they were not organized, were assisted by the Catholic Society of
Labor of Bergamo. They obtained a reduction of the minimum required and
also a concession that loom stoppage not by their fault be not counted. The
increase of wages will be settled by an arbitrator. The work began again on
March 16.

Leghorn. — The firm Cantoni-Coats for the manufacture of sewing thread
gives work to 250 men at 58 cents and to 950 women at 23 cents per eleven-hour
day. The firm wishing to introduce in the several branches " lustraggio and
tavelle " (glazing and roughing), a system of labor that meant a reduction of
wages, the whole body of operatives on July 8 initiated a strike, asking a gen-
eral increase of wages. The labor union of Lucca directed the strike, the presi-
dent of the local chamber of commerce intervened, and the firm granted an
increase of 5.8 cents per day during apprenticeship and of 2.9 cents for those
on the roughening work, and besides made a formal promise for a general
increase of the rate remuneration. On July 29 work was resumed. During the
strike $4,053 was expended in assistance to the strikers.

Italy, in 1902, passed a law to take effect in 1907, prohibiting the
night work of women and children in mills. As women and children
constitute two thirds to three fourths of the operatives, the law prac-
tically meant that the mills had to be doubled. Most of the mills were
prepared for the change by 1907.

Italian operatives necessarily live cheaply. In Piedmont and Lom-
bardy the regular menu is : breakfast — bread and milk mush ; dinner —
spaghetti (potatoes and milk mixed into a porridge), polenta (corn-
meal mush), and wine; supper — cold spaghetti porridge, cold polenta,
cheese and some wine. Dinner in the middle of the day is the heartiest
meal, and enough spaghetti porridge and polenta are then made up to
last for both dinner and supper, being eaten cold for the latter meal.
Chestnuts are also a staple article of food, and radishes, with olive oil
and other vegetables, when procurable. Wine is within the reach of all.

CONDITIONS AFFECTING EMIGRATION 575

The better class of table wine costs 7% cents per quart, and less in
bulk. There has been a notable increase in the consumption of meat in
the kingdom. At Genoa the consumption of meat has increased 50 per
cent, in fifteen years; at Milan, 50 per cent, in seven years; at Eome
about 10 per cent, in seven years. At Naples, since 1902, the number
of beeves slaughtered has increased 150 per cent. At Milan the number
of horses slaughtered in 1897 was 4,586, in 1907, 7,132. Horse meat
retails at 6 to 9 cents per pound. The per capita consumption of meat
ranges from 8.8 pounds per year in the extreme south to 163.43 pounds
in the province of Milan.

Coral manufacture is an important industry in Naples. The coral
is sorted, cut in pieces, filed or engraved, and polished. Women do the
less skilled work and receive from 40 to 60 cents a day. Men receive
from 60 cents to $1.20. Very skilled engravers receive relatively high
wages, but rarely as much as $3 a day.

A consul at Messina, commenting upon the effects of emigration,
said that prices of both labor and foodstuffs had been raised, but that
the standard of living of the laborer had become markedly higher. A
part of this result was attributed to the money sent back by persons
working in the United States. Italians who return from the United
States are a disturbing factor, as they do not return to their old stand-
ard of living and they make those about them discontented with their
lot.

Italian farmers are accustomed to intensive work. They make ex-
pert truck gardeners and vineyard tenders.

The state, voluntary organizations, and, to some extent, religious
societies have been doing an increasing amount of progressive and in-
telligent social work in Italy. Already the effects of this work are be-
coming apparent.

Switzerland

Swiss manufacturers have several difficulties to combat. There is
such a scarcity of workmen that Italians, Germans and Austrians are
imported. No night work is allowed, while in Italy men can work at
night. Many mills are in places difficult of access, thus making the
cost of transportation high. All coal and almost all machinery must
be imported. In spite of these difficulties considerable manufacturing
is done.

The Swiss are patient, industrious workers, and however small their wages
they always contrive to have an account at the savings bank. In the country
their diet seems to be coffee, bread and potatoes three times a day, with meat
and wine on Sundays.

The standard of living of the workmen in the cotton mills can be
judged by comparing the wages paid with the prices of food. The fol-
lowing table presents the data for four separate mills.

In but one mill would a day's wages purchase so much as four

576

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Wages Paid

I.

ii.

III.

IV.

Blow room :

Head man

$1.06

$ .74

Workman

$ .65

$ .59

.60

.53

Waste man

.61

.55

.56

.56

Cards :

•

Head man

1.42

.85

1.16

1.12

Card grinder

.77

.67

.62

.66

Can boys

.61

.51

.59

.51

Lap carrier

.60

.51

.54

.53

Oiler

.42

Draw-frame girls

.48

.43

.41

.40

Speeders :

Head man

1.22

.85

1.06

1.10

Oiler

.61

.64

.49

Speeder hands

.65

.50

.45

.55

Creelers

.35

.39

King spinning :

Head man

1.14

1.07

.87

1.16

Oiler

.61

.61

.67

.44

Spinner

.56

.31

.43

.43

Doffer

.31

.33

Machine shop :

Head man

1.62

1.22

1.72

Average per day

.c.:;

.50

.47

.51

Peices of Necessaries

Bread, average quality, one pound

Meat, one pound

Flour, one pound

Potatoes, one pound

Sugar, one pound

Coffee, one pound

Salt, one pound

Milk, one quart

Kerosene, one quart

Beer, one quart

I.

II.

in.

Cents

Cents

Cents

3.13

2.95

2.63

15.68

14.77

13.09

4.4

3.5

4.31

.72

.72

.9

4.8

8.09

4.8

20

28.5

19.3

1.27

1.86

Q

3.9

4.1

3.7

3.5

8.5

4.1

7.7

6.3

5.7

IV.

Cents
2.95

16.59

4.31

.9

6.09

15.77
1

3.9
4.2
6.7

pounds of meat and in two cases more than four days' wages were re-
quired to pay for a fifty-pound sack of flour. Those whose wages were
below the average — and they are the large majority — would fare worse.
Of the 2,000 people employed by the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon,
Zurich, 50 per cent, represent a floating force. An increasing tendency
in workmen to float about is causing an increase in wages, but wages in
Switzerland in machine shops are not so high as in Berlin. A good tool
man at Oerlikon receives 96 cents to $1.35 per day. Fitters of the best
class receive $1.35 to $1,544 per day; shop men, for varied sorts of
work, 77.2 cents to 96 cents per day. The cost of living for workmen
in Zurich in proportion to the cost in America is, roughly, in the ratio
of about 1 to 2^ or 3. The Oerlikon firm provides both breakfast and
dinner for such employees as choose to purchase them. Dinner costs
about 10 cents and generally consists of good soup, pork and beef, cab-
bage, potatoes, and bread and butter. All except soup is served out in
portions For breakfast milk and coffee, bread and butter are provided,

CONDITIONS AFFECTING EMIGRATION 577

and the firm pays one half. The reason for serving breakfast is to in-
sure that the men start work in the morning on nourishing food.
Baths, including soap and towel, are provided at 2 cents.

The Swiss Locomotive and Machinery Works, Winterthur, are un-
dertaking a limited amount of welfare work. About fifty families are
housed in neat dwellings owned by the company. The rent varies
from $41.68 per year for three rooms to $57.90 for four rooms of
medium size and $69.48 for four large rooms. Nearly all of the men
residing in these houses are members of the firm's fire brigade. Baths
are provided here as at Oerlikon. In general, Europe has made con-
siderable advancement in providing houses, meals, baths, and pensions
for workingmen.

Germany

Berlin workmen in machine shops obtain, as a rule, better wages
than those in other parts of the empire, and the Berlin workmen are
unexcelled at their respective trades. In the machine-tool plant of the
Ludwig Loewe A. G. Works, at Berlin, the workmen can usually make
on piece work 20.23 cents per hour. The lowest guaranteed wage is
12.614 cents per hour. Workmen can obtain houses of one room and a
' kitchen at an annual rental of $57.12 to $64.26 and houses of two
rooms and a kitchen at $119.96 to $134.24. In the Hohenzollern A. G.
Locomotive Works, Grafenberg-Diisseldorf, and the Hanover Locomo-
tive Works, respectively, expert workmen receive, on the average, 16.6
cents per hour. The Hanover works own about 150 houses which rent
at an average of $3.57 per month — a sum merely sufficient to keep
them in repair. The houses contain from four to six rooms and may be
occupied by one or two families. In many cases one room and a kitchen
suffice, but two rooms and a kitchen are more common. The Benrather
Works, at Benrath, board and lodge their unmarried workmen for 23.8
cents per day.

In the textile industries lower wages are paid than in the machine
shops. Barmen is a great center for textile industries. Wages average
80 cents per day, but are increasing. Weavers on special work get as
high as $1.43 a day. In the most important single cotton mill in Ger-
many, at Augsburg, Bavaria, the picker-room hands and the carders
get 50 to 70 cents a day. On two 900 self-actor mules the spinner
averages about 90 cents a day, the piecer 71 cents, and each of the two
creelers 35 cents. Weavers, on an average, run three looms apiece and
make about 80 cents a day. The term of apprenticeship is two years,
during the first six months of which 24 cents a day is usually paid.
Houses of three rooms rent for $23.80 to $33.32 a year. The working
day is ten hours. Wages in the mills in Saxony are distressingly low.
At Plauen, Saxony, overseers receive $5.71 to $9.52 a week, rarely more.
Operatives average $3.81 a week. Man, wife and several children live
on this wage, although the wife is sometimes a wage earner. Eent of

578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the two-roomed houses is rarely less than $2.38 and is usually about
$3.57 a month. The chief food is potatoes and salt, bread, and a pepper
soup made of water, bread, a little fat, and plenty of pepper. Meat is
rarely eaten, and when indulged in is usually in the form of soup meat
or sausage.

Operatives generally eat five times a day, and rye bread is nearly always
taken. The first breakfast consists of coffee, made chiefly of roasted grain, and
a piece of bread or roll. Sometimes a bowl of hot water with a little flour
stirred in is taken instead of coffee. The dinner is at midday. The morning,
afternoon and evening meals are much lighter, and in them beer often occupies
a place.

A spinning master, in the woolen mills at Aix-la-Chapelle, receives
$9 to $14 per week; operatives, $5 to $6 ; other help, mostly girls, $4.50
to $5; weaving master, $9 to $14; regulators or setters, $7 to $10.50;
weavers, $6 to $8.40; head darner, $8 to $10; head darner's assistants,
$5 to $7. Prices of food, clothing and fuel in Aix-la-Chapelle are:
beefsteak, per pound, 27 to 30 cents; other beef, 20 to 25 cents; ham,
40 to 55 cents; sausage, 10 to 30 cents; pork, 20 to 25 cents; horse,
10 to 12 cents; flour, 3 to 6 cents; potatoes, 1 to 2 cents; dried Bosian
prunes, 6 to 8 cents; California prunes, 15 to 18 cents; cheese, 10 to
30 cents; butter, 10 to 40 cents; white bread, 4 to 6 cents; black rye
bread (4 lbs.), 12 to 14 cents; workmen's shoes, $1.25 to $2.25; work-
men's suits, $1.50 to $2.00; workmen's dress suit, $3.00 to $8.00; coal
(per 100 lbs.), 40 to 55 cents.

More than 25 per cent, of the factory operatives of Aix-la-Chapelle have
their homes in Holland, whence they come each morning (some as far as
thirty miles) and return each evening. For this they pay 75 cents a week for
the " workmen's railroad ticket." They mostly own little houses with one
fourth to one acre of garden or field. They have a cow and a few pigs or keep
some goats, and bake their own bread. They are allowed a few days off each
year to till their fields. They manage to live very cheaply; a family of father,
mother and four children will live on 60 cents a day. Flour is 20 per cent, and
meat 25 per cent, cheaper in Holland than in Aix-la-Chapelle. Most of these
country home dwellers have a savings-bank account or deposit of a few hundred
dollars.

Another 15 per cent, of the workers live in adjoining German vil-
lages where they either own little fields or pay $12 to $14 rent per
year. In the city a two-room house rents at $4 to $6 per month.

Twenty-five per cent, of the glass grinders in Bavaria work more
than eleven hours per day. In the Breslau district 58 per cent, of the
glass-grinders work from ten to eleven hours per day. Japan has be-
come such a keen competitor in the glass industry that Germany fears
opposition if a law limiting the hours of labor be passed.

The manufacture of dolls is a business of no small dimensions in
Germany. In the doll factories the minimum weekly wages are : Male
adults, $2.85; male minors, 95 cents; female adults, $1.80; female
minors, 85 cents and the maximum wages are less than double these,
being $4.75, $1.45, $3.60 and $1.55, respectively.

GENIUS AND STATURE 579

GENIUS AND STATUEE

By CHARLES KASSEL

FORT WORTH, TEXAS

THAT greatness and loftiness of stature are rarely found together is
one of the leading statements of Lombroso's " Man of Genius,"
and the eminent Italian, in support of his assertion, arrays a respectable
list of names. Nor does Lombroso stand alone in this opinion. The
notion is a common one — even a proverbial one — and now and again
some voice rises from press or periodical with this boding message to
the stalwart sons of men.

If the biographies, however, in the average American library afford
a just test of its truth, this belief must be gathered to the limbo of
popular errors and delusions. So far, indeed, from supporting the
statement of the great criminologist, the testimony of biography fixes
the average stature of men of eminence at a point above the middle
height.

In default of statistical data ready to hand — the dearth of reliable
material upon this question being quite marked — the writer has turned
through the biographical section of a general public library situated in
the city of his residence. Of the lives of two hundred and thirty dis-
tinguished men thus examined, those of one hundred and three sup-
plied the information sought either in exact figures or by way of general
statement; and of these personages it appears that sixteen were of
middle height, fifty-eight above and twenty-nine below. In many in-
stances the stature was merely described as "medium," or above or
below, and in tabulating the result we have assumed the correctness of
this classification, although it is far from certain that in reality the
terms bore the same meaning to all writers. "Where, however, the
stature was given in feet and inches, we have adopted as the standard
of medium height five feet seven inches. This is manifestly too low for
America, and is likewise too low for England, since, as we are told by
H. H. Donaldson in "The Growth of the Brain," five hundred and
seventeen observations among all classes gave 67.7 inches as the average
stature for men in England. For the civilized world, however, the
average would probably be so far lower than that of England and
America as to make the figures we have mentioned a fair standard.
Even, however, were 5 feet 8 inches to be used for middle height, the
result, so far as the present paper is concerned, would not be disturbed,
since none of the statures given fall within this disputed margin. It

580 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

will be observed, moreover, that our discussion is confined to the statures
of men. Those of women are notoriously lower, and the two can not
well be treated together in an article of short compass.

Towering above all the historic characters thus gathered before the
mind's eye is the immense form of Charles Sumner with his 6 feet
4 inches. Beside him, only an inch and a half less in height, stands
Thomas Jefferson, while near these two are Charles Godfrey Leland
and Andrew Jackson with statures of 6 feet 2^ and 6 feet 1 inch.

Described as " over six feet " are Samuel Adams, Bismarck, Samuel
P. Chase, Captain Cook, Jonathan Edwards, Eugene Field, Henry
Fielding and Walt Whitman, while Charles Darwin (" about six feet "),
Alexander Dumas, the elder, James Monroe ("six feet or more"),.
Bayard Taylor ("six feet at seventeen"), Alfred Tennyson, General
Thomas and George Washington must be ranged with celebrated men
six feet in height.

Another group — still of majestic presence — is referred to as
" slightly under " or " a little below " six feet, and in this we find the
names of Henry Ward Beecher, Eufus Choate, Sidney Lanier and
Daniel O'Connell. The remainder are of less impressive height —
Benjamin Franklin, Albert Gallatin, John Buskin, Robert Louis Steven-
son and Daniel Webster, who could claim five feet ten inches, General
Charles George Gordon, whose stature was five feet nine inches, and
Washington Irving, who was 5 feet 8£ to 9 inches.

In addition to these individuals there is a goodly company spoken
of by the biographers as " tall " — Matthew Arnold, Louis Agassiz,
William Cullen Bryant, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Charles XII. of
Sweden, Christopher Columbus, Stonewall Jackson, General Sam
Houston, Leigh Hunt, Edward Fitzgerald, Ben Johnson, Chief Justice
Marshall, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Southey ("very tall"), Phillips
Brooks ("of great height"), Wm. M. Thackeray ("above medium
height"), Patrick Henry, Lorenzo de Medici, Francis Parkman, Cov-
entry Patmore, Peter the Great, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sidney Smith
("of middle height, rather above than below"), Thaddeus Stevens,.
N. P. Willis, Richard Strauss and John Bunyan.

Described as of " medium height " are Robert Browning, John
Adams, Sir Thomas More, Wm. Hazlitt, Julian, S. S. Prentiss, Lord
Palmerston, Duke of Wellington, William the Silent, Sir Arthur Sulli-
van, Frederick the Great ("not of imposing stature" — Carlyle),
Admiral Nelson ("a little man of about medium height"), Schubert
("moderately tall"), and as 5 feet 8 inches we have the names of
Grant, Theodore Parker and Rossetti.

Under medium height were, according to their biographers,
Admiral Farragut, who was 5 feet 6^ inches, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Paul Jones and General Phil Sheridan, each of whom was 5

GENIUS AND STATURE 581

feet 5 inches, Beethoven, who is described as " scarcely over 5 feet 4,
Vienna measure/' John Keats ("little over 5 feet"), Stephen A.
Douglass ("scarcely over 5 feet") and Swinburne and Whistler, whose
statures are given as " five feet or so." We should add, however, that
the figures as to Swinburne and Whistler, like those with reference to
Edward Fitzgerald in an earlier paragraph, were derived not from
authoritative biographies, as in the case of all the other names, but
from magazine articles which chanced to come under the writer's
observation while pursuing these investigations.

As " short " or " under medium height " we find John Quincey
Adams, Andrew Carnegie, William Ellery Channing, Chaucer, Alex-
ander Hamilton ("much below"), Ibsen, Charles Lamb, Napoleon
Bonaparte, Thomas B. Macaulay, John Milton, Thomas Moore, Alex-
ander Pope, Bobespierre, Savanarola, Wm. H. Seward ("small"),
Thoreau, Martin Van Buren, Chopin and Michael Angelo.

The materialist who believes life and personality are but the flores-
cence of physical forces, and the brain not the urn but the creative
agent of thought, may rejoice over the fact that of those men of genius
who were low in stature no few are expressly mentioned as having had
large heads — namely, Stephen A. Douglass, Alexander Hamilton,
Charles Lamb, Macaulay, Napoleon and Beethoven. On the other
hand, he will be confronted by the fact that a number of tall men of a
high order of talent have possessed craniums of proportions not cal-
culated to inspire respect — notably Chief Justice Marshall, Washington,
Captain Cook and, in a peculiar degree, the poet Shelley, who shared
this characteristic with his fellow minstrels Byron and Keats.

The circumstance is a curious one, if our catalogue of names may
be relied upon as a basis for deduction, that naval commanders have
been of low stature. The fact that coast-dwellers, unlike mountain-
peoples and forest-folk, are usually short in body may not be without
a bearing upon this ; since sea-faring men are apt to spring from coast-
dwelling races.

The roll of names and statures which we have given suffers in its
usefulness because of the undue predominance of American names.
The effect of this is plainly to heighten the average stature. The need
of a table of names, sufficiently large to obviate errors from non-essen-
tial causes, and carefully sifted so as to exclude men of merely accidental
distinction, is a condition which meets the inquirer at the threshold of
the subject, and even this table of names would have to be grouped by
races and regions, and separately studied, in order that comparisons
within each region and nationality might be made.

582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

CERTAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOUTH AMERICANS

OF TO-DAY

By Professor HIRAM BINGHAM

TALE UNIVERSITY

~1 FNTIL very recently, the average newspaper article and the talk
v-J of the average person, so far as it went, took it for granted that
South America was a region devoted to revolutions and fevers, where
individuals called South Americans spent their time in a cheerful state
of anarchy. There are novels and plays that still maintain this pleas-
ing fiction, although, thanks to a recent enlightened secretary of state
and an energetic director of the Bureau of American Republics, we
know much more about South America than we did. In fact, we are
beginning to distinguish to a certain extent between the stable re-
publics of Argentina and Chile and the troublesome ones like Vene-
zuela, but we still like to speak of the people as " South Americans "
and it is fair to do so.

A race is rising in South America that is different from anything
that the world has yet seen. It is a hybrid product composed for the
most part of the blood of Spaniards and South American aborigines,
such as Quichuas, Araucanians and Abipones. There is also an in-
filtration of various European stocks. It is true that there are differ-
ences between the peoples of the several South American republics,
just as there were great differences between the aboriginal Indian
tribes. At the same time, there is so much of the blood that came from
the Hispanic peninsula and this has been for so many generations the
dominant factor, that it is possible to consider the people of South
America more or less as a whole.

It must also be admitted at the beginning that there are many
South Americans who can not be included in any general criticism.
There are many families of pure Castilian ancestry who rightfully re-
sent any implication that they are hybrids because they are South
Americans. And they would also prefer not to have the pure-blooded
Indians counted as South Americans, although the latter constitute a
majority of the population in several republics, notably Bolivia and
Peru. We ought easily to be able to appreciate the fact that such a
broad term as " South American " must include many diametrically
opposite types, for foreigners are finding it increasingly difficult, nay
almost impossible, to define and fix the limit of our own characteristics
as " Americans." A hundred years ago it was simple enough. People
of English descent dominated things everywhere. To-day we are a

CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTH AMERICANS 583

mixture of fifty races, and it is hard to say who has the right to be
considered the typical Bostonian or New Yorker, he of English or
Dutch extraction or he of Irish or Jewish ancestry.

Things are not quite so bad in South America, for most of the re-
publics have seen but comparatively little immigration and the politics
of South America are to-day directed by men of Spanish and Indian
descent. Even in Argentina, where the census shows a more cosmo-
politan population than in any other republic, the game of politics is
controlled almost exclusively by Argentinos whose ancestors were Span-
iards and Indians. In another generation this may be changed, for,
thanks to an increasing and extensive immigration, the Argentine type
is becoming more and more Europeanized. In Bolivia and Peru, on the
other hand, owing to the scarcity of available and accessible agricul-
tural lands and the consequent lack of immigration, the typical poli-
tician is nearer a simple cross between Spaniard and Indian. In
Chile there is more Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic blood, while in Ven-
ezuela and Colombia there is very much less. In Brazil there is more
African. In fact, one is almost inclined to leave the Brazilians out of
the case, for their ancestors have been of a very different stock from
that in the Spanish-speaking republics; Portuguese instead of Spanish,
Amazonian Indian instead of mountain Indian, and far more African
blood than in any other republic. Nevertheless, they too, by the very
fact of their being a mixture of Caucasian, American Indian and Afri-
can, living under similar geographical conditions, have many of the
same traits that are found elsewhere on the continent.

Making due allowance then for the exceptions, what are the char-
acteristics of the South Americans of to-day ?

As one travels through the various South American republics, be-
comes acquainted with their political and social conditions, reads their
literature and talks with other American travelers, there are a num-
ber of adverse criticisms that frequently arise. I shall attempt here to
enumerate some of them, to account for a few, and to compare others
with criticisms that were made of the people of the United States half
a century ago by a distinguished English visitor.

Although it is true that the historical and geographical background
of the South Americans is radically different from ours, it is also true
they have many social and superficial characteristics very like those
which European travelers found in the United States fifty years ago.
The period of time is not accidental. The South American republics
secured their independence nearly fifty years later than we did. More-
over, they have been hampered in their advancement by natural diffi-
culties and racial antipathies much more than we have. Although the
conditions' of life in the United States as depicted by foreign critics-
seventy-five years after the battle of Yorktown, were decidedly worse
than the conditions of life in South America seventy-five years after

584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the battle of Ayacucho, the resemblances between the faults that were
found with us fifty years ago and those that are noticeable among the
South Americans of to-day, are too striking to be merely coincidences.
It is surely not for us to say that there is anything inherently wrong
with our southern neighbors if their shortcomings are such as we our-
selves had not long ago, and possibly have to-day.

The first criticism that one hears and the first one is likely to make
after getting beyond the pale of official good breeding in South Amer-
ica, is that the manners of the ordinary South American are very bad.
Let the traveler who is inclined to take such a state of affairs too seri-
ously, read what Dickens wrote about us and our ways in 1855 in
" American Notes " and " Martin Chuzzlewit." It was a faithful pic-
ture of a certain phase of American life. Furthermore, it paints a con-
dition of affairs worse than anything seen in South America.

Travelers who are prone to find fault with the service at South
American hotels and restaurants, should ponder on Dickens's description
of the dining room of a New York boarding house in his day.

In the further region of this banqueting-hall was a stove, garnished on
either side with a great brass spittoon. . . . Before it, swinging himself in a
rocking-chair, lounged a large gentleman with his hat on, who amused himself
by spitting alternately into the spittoon on the right hand of the stove, and the
spittoon on the left, and then working his way back again in the same order.
A negro lad in a soiled white jacket was busily engaged in placing on the table
two long rows of knives and forks, relieved at intervals by jugs of water; and
as he travelled down one side of this festive board, he straightened with his
dirty hands, the dirtier cloth, which was all askew, and had not been removed
since breakfast.

It is indeed hard to overlook the table manners of the average
South American. But how many years is it since North Americans
were all reading and conning "Don't! A Guide to Good Manners"?
It is less than a quarter of a century since our self-conscious use of the
fork on all possible (and impossible) viands showed that we felt the
need of improvement.

To one inclined to criticize the speed with which a company of
South Americans will dispose of their food, let me recommend Dick-
ens's American boarding house table where

Very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat his utmost in
self-defence, as if a famine were expected to set in before breakfast-time to-
morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of nature.
The oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and
slid by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished;
whole cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums; and no man winked his eye. Great
heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn
and awful thing to see. Dyspeptic individuals bolted their food in wedges;
feeding, not themselves, but broods of night-mares, who were continually stand-
ing at livery within them. Spare men, with lank and rigid cheeks, came out
unsatisfied from the destruction of heavy dishes, and glared with watchful eyes
upon the pastry.

CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTH AMERICANS 585

The conversation of a group of young South Americans is not such
as appeals to our taste. There is usually too much running criticism
on the personal qualities and attractions of their women acquaintances.
To them it seems doubtless most gallant. At all events, it is not sordid,
as was that conversation which Dickens describes as "summed up in
one word — dollars."

When Dickens visited America, he remarked the frequency of the
expression, " Yes, sir," and made a great deal of fun of us for our use
of it. Singularly enough, the Spanish " Yes sir " — " Si senor " is so
extremely common throughout South America as to attract one's atten-
tion continually.

Another thing that Dickens notices was our tendency to postpone
and put off from day to day things that did not have to be done. Yet
there is no more common criticism of Spanish-Americans than that
known as the " Manana " habit. You will hear almost any one who
pretends to know anything at all about Spanish-America say that the
great difficulty is the ease with which the Spanish-American says
" Manana." Personally, I do not agree with this criticism, for I have
heard the expression very seldom in South America. It is true that it
is hard to get things done as quickly as one would wish, but I believe
that the criticism has been much overworked. Dickens was undoubt-
edly honest in reporting that the habit of postponing one's work was
characteristic of the "middle west" as he saw it, but such remarks
would be greatly resented to-day and would not be true.

In many South American cities one is annoyed by the continual
handshaking. No matter how many times a day you meet a man, he
expects you to solemnly shake hands with him just as did those western
Americans who annoyed " Martin Chuzzlewit."

So also with " spitting." With others, I have been repeatedly an-
noyed, not only in the provinces, but also in the very highest circles
of the most advanced republics, by the carelessness of South Americans
in this particular, even at dinner parties. But how many years is it
since " The Last American " was prophetically depicted by J. A.
Mitchell as sitting amid the ruins of the national capitol with his feet
on the marble rail, spitting tobacco juice ? One can hardly ride in our
street cars to-day without being reminded that only recently have the
majority of Americans put the ban on spitting. The fact that there
are already printed notices in some of the principal South American
cathedrals begging people, in the name of the local " Anti-Tuberculosis
Association," not to spit on the floor, shows that this unpleasant habit
will undoubtedly be eradicated in considerably less than fifty years after
we have ceased to offend.

We also dislike intensely the South American habit of staring at
strangers and of making audible comments on ladies who happen to be
passing. Unfortunately, this is a Latin habit which will be hard to

VOL. LXXV1I. — 40.

586 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

change. The South American has a racial right to look at such cus-
toms differently. But if some of his personal habits are unpleasant
and even disgusting from our point of view, there is no question that
we irritate him just as much as he does us. Our curt forms of address;
our impatient disregard of the amenities of social intercourse; our
unwillingness to pass the time of day at considerable length, and
enquire, each time we see a friend, after his health and that of his
family; our habit of elevating our feet and often sitting in a slouchy
attitude when conversing with strangers are to him extremely distaste-
ful and annoying. Our unwillingness to take the trouble to speak his
language grammatically and our general point of view in regard to the
" innate superiority " of our race, our language and our manufactures
are all evidences, to his mind, of our barbarity. "We care far too little
for appearances. This seems to him boorish. We criticize him because
he does not bathe as frequently as we do. He criticizes us because we
do not show him proper respect by removing our hats when we meet
him on the street.

Furthermore, he regards us as lacking in business integrity. We
are too shrewd. Our standard of honor seems low to him. In fact, a
practical obstacle with which one accustomed to American business
methods has to contend in South America, is the extreme difficulty of
securing accurate information as to a man's credit. Inquiries into the
financial standing of an individual, which are regarded as a matter
of course with us, are resented by the sensitive Latin temperament as a
personal reflection on his honesty. It seems to be true that the South
American regards the payment of his debts as a matter more closely
touching his honor than we do. He is accustomed to receiving long
credits; he always really intends to pay some time and he generally
manages to raise installments without much difficulty. Yet when
pressed hard in the courts, he is likely to turn and resent as an inten-
tional insult the judgment which has been secured against him. I
have known personally of a case where a debtor informed his creditor
that it would be necessary for him to come well armed if he accom-
panied the sheriff in an effort to satisfy the judgment of the court, for
the first man, and as many more as possible, that crossed the door of
his shop on such an errand would be shot. This we criticize as defiance
of the law. To the South American, the law has committed an un-
pardonable fault in venturing to convict him of neglecting his hon-
orable debts.

It is unfortunate that the South Americans themselves are generally
quite unaware of their failings — a species of blindness that has fre-
quently been laid at our own doors. It is due to a similar cause.
South American writers who have traveled abroad and seen enough to
enable them to point out the defects of their countrymen rarely venture
to do so. The South American loves praise but can not endure criti-

CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTH AMERICANS 587

cism. It makes him fairly froth at the mouth, as it did the Americans
in the days of Charles Dickens's first visit. So the pleasant-faced gen-
tleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Bevan, told young Martin Chuzzlewit:
If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of
any man, American born and bred, who has anatomized our follies as a people,
and not as this or that party; and has escaped the foulest and most brutal
slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange
name in my ears, believe me. In some cases, I could name to you, where a native
writer has ventured on the most harmless and good-humored illustrations of
our vices or defects, it has been found necessary to announce, that in a second
edition the passage has been expunged, or altered, or explained away, or patched
into praise.

There is a story in Santiago de Chile of a young American scholar
who spent some time there studying localisms. When he returned to
New York he ventured to publish honest but rather severe criticisms
of society, as he saw it, in that most aristocratic of South American
republics. As a result, the university from which he came received a
bad name in Chile and his visit is held in such unpleasant memory that
his welcome, were he to return there, would be far from friendly. This
seems narrow-minded and perverse, but is exactly the way we felt not
long ago toward foreigners who spent a few months in the states and
wrote, for the benefit of the European public, sincere but caustic criti-
cisms. American sensitiveness became a byword in Europe. Possibly
it is growing less with us. However that may be, South American
sensitiveness is no keener to-day than ours was fifty years since.

It is particularly important that we should realize that the political
conditions of the larger republics are very much more stable than our
newspaper- and novel-reading public are aware of. Lynchings are
unheard of. Serious riots, such as some of our largest American cities
have seen within the past generation, are no more common with them
than with us. It is true that the Latin temperament finds it much
more difficult to bow to the majesty of the law and to yield gracefully
to governmental decrees than the more phlegmatic Teuton or Anglo-
Saxon. But the revolutions and riots that Paris has witnessed during
the past century have not kept us from a serious effort to increase our
business with France. The occasional political riot that takes place,
of no more significance than the riots caused by strikers with which
we are all too familiar at home, is no reason why we should be afraid
to endeavor to capture the South American market.

Climatic conditions and difficulties of rapid transportation have had
much to do with the backwardness of the South American republics.
With the progress of science, the great increase in transportation facili-
ties and the war that is being successfully waged against tropical dis-
eases, a change is coming about which we must be ready to meet.

There is not the slightest question that there is a great opportunity
awaiting the American manufacturer and exporter when he is willing

588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

to grasp it with intelligent persistence and determination. South
America is ready to take American goods in very large quantities as
soon as we are ready to take time to give attention to her needs. As
Mr. Lincoln Hutchinson aptly says :

There is no quick and easy remedy; money must be spent, thoroughly
equipped export managers must be employed, export houses specializing on South
American trade must be established, efficient travelers must be sent out, technical
experts employed, agencies established, credits be given, minutiae of orders at-
tended to, and, above all, trade connections adhered to in spite of allurements
of the home market, if we would succeed in the face of our competitors. Half-
way measures can accomplish but little, and that only temporary.

Germany teaches her young business men Spanish or Portuguese
and sends them out to learn conditions in the field. American univer-
sities long ago learned the advantage of adopting Germany's thorough-
going methods of scientific research. American business men have
hitherto failed to realize the importance of adopting Germany's thor-
ough-going methods of developing foreign commerce. It is high time
that they took a leaf out of the experience of the " unpractical "
universities.

Finally, a word of caution to those in search of information regard-
ing the history, politics or geography of South America. The most
unfortunate result of the seven centuries during which Arab, Moorish
or Mohammedan rule dominated a part or the whole of the Spanish
peninsula, is the truly Oriental attitude which the Spaniard and the
Spanish American maintains towards reliable information, or what we
tall " facts." The student of the East realizes that orientals, including
Turks and celestials, have no sense of the importance of agreeing with
fact. They have, furthermore, a great abhorence of a vacuum. If they
do not know the reply to a question they answer at random, preferring
anything to the admission of ignorance. If they do know, and have no
interest in substituting something else for what they know, they give
the facts. When they have no facts they give something else. They
not only deceive the questioner, they actually deceive themselves. The
same thing is true to a certain degree in South Americans. Sometimes
I have thought they were actually too polite to say " I don't know."

In South America as in the East it is of primary importance to reach
the men who know and to pay no attention to any one else. No one
really knows, who is not actually on the spot, in contact with the facts.
The prudent observer must avoid all evidence that is not first hand and
derived from a trustworthy source.

I do not bring this as a charge against the South Americans. I
state it as a condition which I have found to be nearly universally true.
So far as the South Americans are concerned it is an inherited trait
and one which they are endeavoring to overcome. They are not to be
blamed for having it, any more than we are to be blamed for having in-
herited traits from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors which are unpleasant to

CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTH AMERICANS 589

our Latin neighbors and for which they have to make allowance in
dealing with us.

In offering these adverse criticisms of the South American as he
appears to me to-day, I must beg not to be misunderstood. There are
naturally many exceptions to the rule. I know personally many indi-
viduals that do not have any of the characteristics here attributed to
South Americans in general. I have in mind one South American, a
resident of a much despised republic, whose ancestors fought in one
of the great battles of the Wars of Independence, who has as much
push and energy as a veritable New York captain of industry. He has
promoted a number of successful industrial enterprises. He keeps up
with the times; he meddles not in politics; he enjoys such sports as
hunting with hounds and riding across country. The difference be-
tween him and the New Yorker is that he speaks three or four lan-
guages where the New Yorker only speaks one or two and he has sense
enough to take many holidays in the year where the New Yorker takes
but few. I know another, a cultured young Chilean lawyer who
gives dinner parties where the food is as good, the manners as refined,
the conversation as brilliant and the intellectual enjoyment as keen as
any given anywhere. He, too, speaks four languages fluently and
could put to shame the average New York lawyer of his own age in the
variety of topics upon which he is able to converse, not only at his ease
but brilliantly and with flashes of keen wit. I know another, a dis-
tinguished historian, who has been described by a well-known American
librarian, himself the member of half a dozen learned societies, as the
"most scholarly and most productive" bibliographer in either North
or South America.

Such men are worth cultivating. We have much to learn from them,
especially of the value of polite language and courteous intercourse.
At close range we may dislike some of their manners and customs, but
not any more so than European critics disliked ours half a century ago.
And not any more so, be it remembered, than the South American dis-
likes ours at the present day.

The South Americans of to-day have so many of the faults of the
Americans of yesterday that all our dealings with them should be
marked by appreciative understanding and large-minded charity. Any
feeling of superiority, like that " certain condescension " which we have
noted (and hated) in foreigners, will only make our task the harder,
and international goodwill more difficult to achieve.

590 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

WHEN DOES A FOOD BECOME A LUXUKY?

By Pkofessok E. H. S. BAILEY

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

IN the rapid expansion which is taking place in this country, and in
attempting to adjust ourselves to these changed conditions, and
to the higher price of foodstuffs, there is danger that we forget to
differentiate as carefully as we formerly did, between a nutritious food,
which is purchased for its food value, and other products, also good
enough as foods, but which are sold at prices which bring them within
the domain of luxuries.

In buying delicately flavored candies or chocolates at from 40 to
80 cents per pound, although it is recognized, by those who think about
it, that the chocolate and sugar are excellent food material, no one buys
such things as food. They are purchased as luxuries pure and simple,
because their flavor pleases the palate. Chocolate and sugar are also
sold as food, or to be used as a constituent of foods, at a price so low
that they can properly be used in the preparation of foods and bever-
ages. In this case their food value is more closely proportionate to
their cost.

Although a definition is in some cases a stumbling block, we ven-
ture to say that, in case of foods, a luxury is a substance that may have
some nutritive value, but which has a low food value in proportion to
the cost while, on the other hand, a food has, or should have, a compara-
tively high food value in proportion to its cost.

Some foods are expensive on account of their rarity or because
they are out of season, some because of the cost of the original material
from which they are made, some because they are brought from such a
distance that the transportation charges are high, and others on ac-
count of the expense attending the manufacture.

In general, manufactured foods cost more than those upon which
but little labor has been bestowed to prepare them for market. This
is well illustrated in the case of ordinary granulated 'sugar which fre-
quently retails at five cents per poundr while (although often made from
the same " stock ") " cube " sugar, which has been sawn into blocks, and
" powdered " sugar, which has been ground and perhaps bolted, sells
at ten cents per pound. The original materials in a five-cent loaf of
bread would probably not cost three cents, yet we recognize that to
make the bread and bake it and deliver it to the consumer costs some-

WHEN DOES A FOOD BECOME A LUXURY 591

thing, and the manufacturer is entitled to a fair profit. That profit
can be saved by the consumer if he does his own manufacturing and
makes his bread at home, but that means an expenditure of labor and
fuel.

There are many vegetables and fruits which, on account of contain-
ing from 30 to 90 per cent, of water, have a comparatively low food
value, and seem to be expensive foods. Some of them are, but on ac-
count of the vegetable acids present, or because they dilute the more
concentrated foods, or are stimulating to the appetite from their variety
and agreeable taste, it is everywhere conceded that they are valuable
additions to the diet. If fruits are out of season and consequently ex-
pensive, the ordinary purchaser is content to wait until they are abun-
dant and cheap. If he pays a high price for the fruits, he immediately
recognizes that they are to be classed as luxuries.

Although it may with reason be said that the cold-storage industry
has afforded an opportunity to hold back from market certain perish-
able food products, and thus keep the price up to a figure which will
insure a handsome profit, this practise has extended very greatly the
season in which fruits and similar products may be offered for general
consumption, and in many cases it has withdrawn them from the
class of luxuries.

Game and expensive fish the ordinary consumer is not tempted to
buy, but when it is a question of the " cut " of beef or mutton, he
sometimes says, " the best is none too good for my family," and so buys
the choicest cuts, not recognizing that others of less delicate flavor
would afford the same nourishment per pound, and would if properly
cooked and served be appetizing and in every way satisfactory. The
sirloin may be a luxury, but the consumer does not recognize it as such
and consequently spends more of his wages than he can afford upon
this form of nitrogenous food.

The rapid change that is taking place in the dietary of the Ameri-
can people, and the necessity for doing without servants, because effi-
cient help can not be obtained, has but confirmed the tendency in every
household to allow the food manufacturer to prepare the food, and thus
diminish as much as possible the labor of the household. This move-
ment applies to all articles of household use, so that all possible labor is
p^w done outside the home. It would be useless to attempt to stem this
tide, but something may be done to direct it so that it will not entirely
exhaust the family resources.

The manufacturer prepares the food from more or less satisfactory
" stock," and within recent years, with fair attention to the sanitary
condition of the factory. It may be packed in cans or packages or
boxes or cartons, and if the package is tastily put up, and the contents
have an agreeable taste, the consumer does not stop to inquire whether

592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

he is getting his money's worth or not — whether his pounds are sixteen
ounces or only ten ; whether he is paying at the rate of five or twenty-
five cents per pound for a simple, ordinary, nutritious food. The list
of foods sold in packages is constantly increasing. It includes fruits,
pickles, vegetables, crackers, cakes, cereals, syrups, meats, fish, vinegar,
spices, milk, cheese, butter, jams, jellies and even dried eggs. The
great advantage, which all will admit, is that the package protects the
food from dust and dirt and possible infection. The disadvantage is the
greatly increased cost over the bulk articles.

Until the present food laws and the "weight and measure" laws
were enacted, the consumer had not perhaps noticed that the " carton "
had taken the place of the pound, and that this had shrunken in
weight with each passing season. When the housekeeper, who was
hard pressed to make her scanty allowance carry her through the week,
expostulated with the grocer, in regard to the weight of his " pound "
of butter, he simply said " That is the way we buy it ; we do not sell the
package for a pound; nobody is cheated." Decidedly some one was
cheated — the consumer of course. The small housekeeper buys a bottle
of vinegar for 15 cents or at the rate of 60 cents per gallon for vinegar
selling in bulk at 25 or 30 cents per gallon.

One of the most conspicuous illustrations of the tendency to allow
the manufacturer to reap, to say the least, a large profit, because the
consumer wants to buy his food " ready prepared," is the fad of making
the breakfast to a great extent of the newly invented " breakfast cere-
als." A few years ago the people did not know the meaning of these
words, and now they are common in the most modest bill of fare.

Since these foods are made mostly from wheat, corn and oats, it is
absurd to suppose that the claims of some of the manufacturers are
true, when they say that these foods are in every way better than the
original grains from which they are made — in fact that the process
of manufacturing is a proteid-concentrating process. Analysis has
shown that the amount of so-called " predigested " or " malted " ma-
terial in these foods is small at most, and aside from the dextrin which
is formed largely by dry heat just as bread is toasted or potatoes are
browned in frying, these " malted " foods are little better than crackers
or bread. It is a question, anyway, whether the normal stomach wel-
comes the appearance of predigested food ; it is provided by nature with
" apparatus and chemicals " necessary for the digestion of food, and
why should the work be taken away from it?

Dismissing then the claim that these prepared foods are so much
better than simply ground and partially bolted cereals, what do we pay
for the finished product per pound? Are these cereals luxuries?

From the Bulletin of the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station
for 1906 we quote the following cost in cents per pound for some of

WHEN DOES A FOOD BECOME A LUXURY 593

these foods: Quaker oats, 3.1 cents; Nichol's pearl hominy, 4.5; Cream
of Wheat, 8.8; Grape Nuts, 14.6; Shredded Whole Wheat, 15; Force,
16.5 ; Flaked Eice, 18.2; Granula, 27.2. To this may be added the cost
of some other brands, as Quaker Corn Flakes, 13.3; Kellogg's Corn
Flakes, 13.3; Maple Corn Flakes, 14.5; Post Toasties, 14.5; Grape
Sugar Flakes, 17.8; Malta Vita, 18.4; Sugar Corn Flakes, 20; Holland
Eusk, 22.8; Puffed Wheat, 29.1 cents. At this rate a bushel of wheat
which might be originally worth $1.00 would, when made into a break-
fast food, cost the housekeeper from $5.00 to $12.00, calculating that
75 per cent, of the grain is available as food, as is the case in making
wheat flour. Oatmeal in bulk sells at five cents a pound, and simple
preparations of the other grains at from five to seven cents.

These are a few of the illustrations to show " where the money goes,"
or at least some of it, expended in the ordinary household. Some of us
are living on the luxuries of the market, and use them as food to fur-
nish the proteids and carbohydrates and fat for daily consumption.
Instead of using the oak and maple and pine for fuel, we are feeding
the fire with mahogam', and Circassian walnut and rare imported
woods.

594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE PALEONTOLOGIC RECORD
THE BIRTHPLACE OF MAN

By Peofessob S. W. WILLISTON

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

VARIOUS writers, from Le Conte to Smith Woodward, have spoken
of critical or rhythmical periods in evolution, periods when evo-
lutionary forces have acted more vigorously than at others, with inter-
vals of relative quiescence. What these forces are and have been we
are not yet sure, whether extrinsic, that is, environmental or Lamarck-
ian, or intrinsic, that is, orthogenetic, teleological or what not. Per-
haps we shall sometime be more certain of the basal causes of evo-
lution, for the paleontologist at least is not satisfied with the crass
ignorance of our Weismannian friends who impute the beginning of all
things to mere chance. Perhaps when we do know these fundamental
causes we shall understand better why evolution has been rhythmical,
if such was really the case, as some of us believe with Woodward.

But, whether there have been internal forces which have had
chiefly to do with the rhythm of evolution, or whether such critical
periods in the evolution of organic life have been due solely to the
larger cosmic forces, I think we shall all admit that there have been
critical places of organic evolution, places upon the earth where evolu-
tion has advanced with more rapid pace than in others, places per-
haps where environmental conditions have conspired to hasten the de-
velopment of life, or of particular groups, classes or kingdoms of life.

Such a critical period, at least for the higher organisms, it seems to
me, was the early Pliocene; such a critical place was central Asia; and
both together resulted in the birth of man.

It is a curious fact that nearly all our domestic animals had their
origin in Asia. It is also a curious fact that the domestic animals are,
almost without exception, the crowning ends of their respective lines
of descent, the most highly specialized of their kinds. The genus Bos,
the most highly developed of the even-toed ungulates began, to the
best of our present knowledge, in the Lower Pliocene of India. And
its four distinctive types likewise first appeared there: the Bubalus
group, including the domestic buffalo of India, and its untamable kin
of Africa; the group that is represented by the domesticated humped
oxen of India and their wild relatives of Africa ; the bison strain which
spread in Pleistocene times almost to the remote corners of the earth;

THE BIRTHPLACE OF MAN 595

and the true oxen, the most useful of all creatures to man, which
spread to Europe as Bos primigenius, the ancestor of Bos taurus.

The sheep also found their expression point in India, and their
home to-day is central Asia. So too the domestic goat yet lives wild in
western Asia, a less plastic type, but purely Asiatic in origin. Indeed,
of the whole family of Bovidae, Asia was the origin and dispersal center,
and it is a curious fact that it still remains the home of the higher
types while others of lower degree have wandered afar to find their
homes in Africa, Europe and America. The camelids after long ages
of exclusive development in North America migrated to Asia to find
their highest evolution in the true camels, the highest and probably
final stage in the evolution of the family, while their kin, of lower de-
gree, went southward to terminate in the llama and alpaca, the only
mammals among all man's servants which we can say with tolerable
certainty have been entirely beyond the influence, direct or indirect, of
Asiatic environment. The reindeer, the highest of all the cervid fam-
ily, doubtless arose in northern Asia; certainly its home is in part
there, though some of its early kin migrated to America and have left
their descendants in the caribous. And India was the birthplace, as it
is the home, of the pig, whence came originally our domesticated swine.
"Whether or not we give to Sus the highest place among the non-rumi-
nant, even-toed ungulate mammals, or to the Babirussa, matters not,
for both are of Asiatic origin.

Of the odd-toed ungulates our domestic horse, Equus caballus,
stands on the very summit; and Equus caballus arose in Asia, where
its ancestors yet have their wild progeny. And I believe that eventually
we must give to Asia the honor of the birthplace of the genus itself.
And the next lower type of the Equidge, the asses, are of Asiatic an-
cestry, though our domestic species comes from Arabia and Africa,
while the most primitive of the horses yet living found their refuge in
Africa.

Southern or central Asia was the birthplace in early Pliocene times
of the elephants, and was their dispersal center; and, in Elephas indi-
cus, the only domesticated species, we have the last and highest stage in
the evolution of the Proboscidea, and, as is the case with the cape
buffalo, the zebras, wart hogs and others, we find in Africa their only
living kin, of more primitive form and untamable.

Of all the great order of Carnivora the genus Felts admittedly oc-
cupies the highest place. The home of the cats is southern Asia and
there doubtless was their birthplace and the center of their dispersal.
The known paleontological record of the true cats is very meager in-
deed, and doubtless always will be till we know more of the Pliocene
and Pleistocene faunas of Asia. Two of the domesticated cats, the
Siamese and the cheetah, are of immediate Asiatic origin, and our fire-

596 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

side pet, while coming from northern Africa, doubtless arose from
Asiatic forebears in Pliocene or Pleistocene times. What the origin of
the various strains of dogs was we know not, though the wild forms
most nearly allied are living in Asia to-day, and the greyhound and
mastiff almost surely were domesticated in Africa thousands of years
ago. I believe that we may safely give to Asia the honor of the birth-
place of most of the domesticated species in Pliocene or Pleistocene
times.

Nor does it seem that this remarkable evolutional acceleration dur-
ing Pliocene times in central Asia was confined to the mammals alone.
The ostrich, the highest type of ratite birds, arose in central Asia. The
jungle fowl, the highest of the gallinaceous birds and the ancestral
stock of our most valued domestic fowls, arose in India and is still at
home there. The peacock is exclusively Asiatic; the gray goose, the
parent of our domestic geese, has its home in part at least in Asia ; and
the same may be said of the ancestors of the domestic doves ; while the
domestic duck may have originated there for aught we yet know. The
guinea fowls only are exclusively African, and the turkey American.

Of the reptiles I will venture to say less. But is it not a significant
fact that the highest specialization of the reptilian class appeared dur-
ing Pliocene times in the gigantic extinct gavials of central Asia?
Certainly the cobra is entitled to a high but unenviable distinction
among the snakes. And Megaldbatrachus, the largest of all recent
amphibians, lives in Japan and China. Finally, of the domestic plants
by far the majority come directly or indirectly from the Asiatic flora.

Have all these and doubtless many other facts of their kind no
significance? Has man been an exception among so many branches of
vertebrate evolution? The common inference has been that so many
of our domesticated animals and plants come from India because man
first reached civilization there, but the inference is, I believe, quite un-
justifiable. Man was born and attained elemental civilization in Asia
because there was the place of all others upon the earth where evolu-
tion in general of organic life reached its highest development in late
Cenozoic times. No mammals and few other creatures have been do-
mesticated by man in thousands of years, for the simple reason that he
had eliminated all but the most advanced and most adaptable long be-
fore, and none were left to compete with them.

That man originated in the western continent is quite impossible.
There is not a particle of evidence in support of such an hypothesis,
for there is no evidence that either man or any of his ancestry ever
inhabited the western continent till late in Pleistocene times. Indeed,
so far as North America is concerned, there is much to justify the as-
sertion that the Pliocene and Pleistocene were a period of evolutional
depression here^ of relative quiescence when the rhinoceroses, tapirs,

THE BIRTHPLACE OF MAN 597

and later the camels and horses, found conditions uncongenial and
migrated to Asia, a more favored region.

It has often been assumed that man must have originated in a
warm or tropical climate, to account for the loss of his hairy covering.
But I quite agree with Dr. Matthew, that the loss of hair is almost
conclusive evidence of his origin in a temperate or cold climate where
he found clothing necessary to protect himself from the inclemencies
of the weather. We know of no mammals or birds losing their pelage
or plumage because of tropical conditions, though some may have lost
their hair because of vermin.

Taking all these facts and conclusions into consideration it seems
to me that such evidence as paleontology can at the present time offer
points toward central Asia as the birthplace of Homo, and that the
time of his origin, as a family, was late Miocene or early Pliocene.
If Pithecanthropus be really a true hominid, then we already have evi-
dence of his origin in the Asiatic region. Be it as it may, I confidently
believe that within a very few years the discovery of indubitable links
in man's ancestry will be made in central Asia, in China or northern
India. Perhaps to no region of the world does the paleontologist look
with more eager expectation for the solution of many profound prob-
lems in the phylogenies and migrations of the mammals than to central
and eastern Asia. That there are remains of many extinct vertebrates
awaiting discovery there in the late Tertiary and Pleistocene deposits
has been made evident by the many fragments brought to light by
explorers and travelers.

A field second to none other in the importance and richness of the
results to be expected awaits the paleontologist in Asia.

THE RELATION OF PALEONTOLOGY TO THE HISTORY

OF MAN, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO

THE AMERICAN PROBLEM

By Professor JOHN C. MERRIAM

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

CONSIDERED in its broadest aspect, the most important relation
of paleontology to the study of man concerns the support which
it gives to the general theory of evolution of the organic world. If it
be held that we have reason to believe man, with all his highest
qualities, a product of evolution out of so-called lower animal types,
then it becomes necessary to have a full knowledge of the history of
man and of the forms preceding him, in order to understand the origin
and the true nature of man's fundamental characteristics as they exist
to-day. On the other hand, if there is reason to believe that man as

598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

represented in his highest attributes is entirely apart from nature, the
importance of paleontology, as offering a part of the explanation of the
fundamental characteristics of man, is very greatly diminished. The
value of paleontology would then lie largely in an interpretation of the
setting or environment in which man is developing.

With these considerations in mind, it appears of the greatest impor-
tance for us to obtain as full a history of the organic world, and as
satisfactory an interpretation of the processes therein concerned, as it
is possible to secuPe. Particularly is it desirable to have before us a
clear statement of that portion of the paleontological record which
leads from the higher vertebrates through the primate division to man.

One of the important phases of general paleontological work which
must receive special attention is the early history of the primate order
with particular reference to the development of those characteristics
which are most prominent in the human family. We have, as yet,
accumulated too little evidence in this field. Among the characters
which must be followed would be ( 1 ) extraordinary brain development,
(2) the tendency to development of an -upright position, (3) the free-
ing of the anterior limbs from the work of locomotion and the develop-
ment in them of extraordinary adaptability. Whatever other interests
one may have, there is certainly no more alluring problem than tracing
from the primitive mammalia into the early primate those peculiar
characters through which later on primitive man began the process of
making nature subservient to himself. We may never know whether
the brain actually grew large first and requisitioned the hands, so that
the animal became bipedal and therefore finally erect in position, or
whether a tendency to erect position was directed by the frequent as-
suming of a vertical position in a tree-climbing ancestor; but it is not
beyond reason to presume that a thoroughly satisfactory paleontological
record might give us an explanation of the origin of these characters.

The later primate history, or that which leads directly to the
human type, is also unfortunately incomplete, though most remarkable
advances have been made in the last few years. More missing links
have already been furnished than science was supposed to require a
few decades ago, but we can hardly be said to have one tenth of the
material that it is desirable to have in order to show the transition from
anthropoid to human, or from pithecanthropoid to the type of Spy or
Neanderthal. European paleontologists are at the present time making
rapid strides in filling the gaps of that portion of our ancestral chain
which falls in the Quaternary system, and we may look for other
important discoveries within the next decade.

It is to be presumed that the greater part of the work on the late
Tertiary and Quaternary history of man will be carried on in the old
world. The writer sees no reason why in this important work Amer-

THE BIRTHPLACE OF MAN 599

ican paleontologists should not interest themselves to some extent in
investigations now in progress in Europe and Asia, just as American
archeologists have contributed to the success of work on the later his-
tory of man. Whether American paleontologsits, working in their own
field, are to have a part in interpreting the Pleistocene history of man
is a burning question at the present time.

Whether we find that man was in North America in Pleistocene
time or not, it is certainly true that one of the most important prob-
lems in the general history of the human race concerns the date of
occupation of the western hemisphere by the human family. Discussion
of the numerous finds reported to represent Pleistocene man in North
America are too well known to every one to require particular mention.
It should only be noted in passing, that as yet no specimens represent-
ing either skeletal remains or implements of man found in North
America are generally recognized by geologists and paleontologists as
of Pleistocene age. A careful search through the literature, and the
investigation of many of the actual occurrences, lead the writer to the
conclusion that we have, as yet, nothing in North America which can
be considered as unquestionably representing Pleistocene man.

Also in South America there has been serious discussion of many
interesting finds. The evidence on the whole seems to be more dis-
tinctly in favor of Pleistocene occupation there than is the case in
North America. The discoveries made in recent years in the cave at
Last Hope Inlet, and the numerous remains found in the Pampean
formation at levels very far below the surface, seem difficult to interpret
excepting on the supposition that man was present in South America
before the beginning of the recent epoch.

It is to be presumed that any occupation of South America would
necessarily be through migration by way of the northern continent, and
proof of the presence of man in South America in Pleistocene time
would be tantamount to proof that he was in North America at least
as early. This suggestion does not, of course, take into account the
theories of Ameghino to the effect that man is possibly derived from
some of the South American monkey forms. Another suggestion made
by Ameghino would give us an immigration of old world forms, pos-
sibly with ancestral man, coming into the southern continent in com-
paratively late time, by some other route than North America.

In the consideration of man's history in America, it is particularly
important to notice the probable relation of migrations of the human
family to migrations of other groups of mammals. The presumption
is that the migrations of primitive man were caused or occasioned
largely by influences of the same sort as have produced the spreading
out or migration of many other mammalian types. It becomes then
particularly necessary to discover exactly when the more recent migra-

6oo TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

tions of mammals into the North American continent have taken place,
and, so far as possible, the exact routes of migration. This problem is
in a large part paleontological, requiring for its interpretation a satis-
factory account of the paleontology of vertebrates, invertebrates and
plants of North America and of Asia, with particular reference to the
relations of adjacent areas. We must also have, associated with this
information, a full statement of the crustal movements in these regions
as interpreted by the stratigraphic geologists and the physiographers.

Through the accumulated efforts of paleontologists in this country
particularly, we have already a considerable mass of evidence bearing
on the general relationships of the faunas of North America and Asia
in comparatively recent geological time, but the detail of the problem
is, as yet, scarcely indicated. Particularly for Pleistocene and Pliocene
time our knowledge of the faunal succession is exceedingly meager, and
we can scarcely expect to know anything satisfactorily until the Pleisto-
cene mammalian paleontology of America has been worked out in
detail. This work must be followed or accompanied by similar studies
of the mammalian faunas of western and southern Asia. When this is
completed we shall know the time of the various migratory movements,
the nature of the faunas which migrated, the character of the land areas
over which they have passed, and the climatic conditions which obtained
along the routes of migration. The presumption is, that when this is
done we shall have actual evidence of the time of man's occupation of
North America.

Viewed in the large, and without regard to the detail which has
just been indicated, it seems possible to present several reasonable
conclusions with reference to the probable period of migration of man
to America. It is shown by study of a map of linguistic stocks of the
western hemisphere that the northern and southern continents taken
together may be divided into between one hundred and two hundred
provinces, based on the number of stocks represented. These lan-
guages vary greatly in their structure, and are not similar to the
languages of other parts of the world. There is every reason to
believe that a large percentage of them have been developed by lin-
guistic differentiation which occurred since man first occupied this con-
tinent, and that measured in years the time required for this differentia-
tion has been long. On the other hand, considering the American con-
tinent as a whole, we find that the greatly differing physical environ-
ments are not reflected to any extent in different physical types of people
occupying this region. That the human family is not exempt from
physical differentiation, such as is almost universally indicated in mam-
mals which have for some time been distributed over large areas with
varying environments, is clearly shown by the map of the old world.
In that region the human race is known to have been spread over a wide

THE BIRTHPLACE OF MAN 60 1

area for a long period, and we find several greatly differing human
physical stocks in different geographic regions, just as we find differing
stocks of mammals and birds.

With the lack of physical diversity among the people of the western
hemisphere, there is also noticeable a resemblance of the whole group
to the people of the adjacent region of Asia. Judged by the standards
of differentiation which we obtain through a study of the history of
geographical distribution of other mammalian groups, we have every
reason to think that the people of America are immigrants who came
from the Asiatic region and spread themselves over America after the
period of the first great physical differentiation of the race, and so
recently that a second stage of physical differentiation has not yet had
time to develop. On the other hand, the time measured in years has
been long enough so that linguistic differentiation could take place.

Inasmuch as a large part of human history falls within the Quater-
nary period, the question naturally arises as to whether the principal
migrations of man to the American continent occurred before, during
or after the Glacial epoch.

As primates are naturally animals of a warm or temperate zone,
it is hardly to be presumed that primitive man came to America during
the ice age, though there is a possibility of immigration in some of the
interglacial epochs. Judging from what is suggested through study of
physical differentiation, it appears improbable that man came over as
early as the epoch preceding the ice age. In other groups of animals
spread over large areas, marked physical differentiation has ordinarily
taken place in a space of time comparable to the Glacial epoch. Had
man been present in America during this long period, widely differing
physical types would almost certainly have developed. On the whole it
seems most probable that he arrived after the end of the last division
of glacial time, or very near the beginning of the present epoch.
Whether his arrival is shown to have occurred just before or just after
the beginning of this epoch remains to be determined.

In conclusion it seems desirable to call the attention of paleontolo-
gists once more to the important part which their work must play in
obtaining the information which we need with reference to the history
of man and his antecedents. Only a small beginning has been made,
and the results which must come are of great importance in the large
problem of man's relation to nature. It is necessary that paleontolo-
gists keep the subject before them, in order to make certain that all
information bearing upon it may be recognized as it becomes available,,
and be given its proper place in relation to other evidence now at hand.

VOL. LXXVII. — 41

ACTIVE VOLCANOES OF THE SOUTH SEAS 603

TWO ACTIVE VOLCANOES OF THE SOUTH SEAS

By Professor HENRY B. CRAMPTON

BARNARD COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AND THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF

NATURAL HISTORY

IN the course of a fourth journey among the islands of the Pacific
Ocean, during the year 1909, the rare opportunity was presented
of making an ascent of the remarkably active volcano formed about
five years ago on the island of Savaii, the largest member of the Samoan
group. In addition, during a short stay in the Hawaiian Islands, a
visit was made to Kilauea, a volcano which in contrast with the former,
has a long geological history, for records of its intermittent periods of
activity cover more than a century. It is the purpose of the present
article to give a short general description of these two volcanoes.

Under any circumstances such works of nature would arouse the
interest of a student of natural phenomena; but in my own case the
opportunity to study them was valuable for additional reasons. My
investigations of the distribution and evolution of the land snails of
Polynesia demanded a thorough exploration of volcanic islands of
greater age, islands that for many centuries have been sculptured by
the elements so as to display alternating ridges and valleys radiating
from their high central peaks. Tahiti is perhaps the most beautiful
example of such an island. One finds that the several islands of the
Pacific groups are of various geological ages, and consequently ex-
hibit different degrees of weathering. They thus constitute a series
showing how ancient rugged islands like Tahiti and Moorea have been
derived from newly formed volcanic mountains like those of the
Hawaiian and other groups, which possess relatively even sides of lava
fields unfurrowed by erosion. Furthermore the various islands scat-
tered throughout the vast areas of the Pacific Ocean are interesting to
the naturalist because of the evidences they give of great changes in the
level of the ocean bed, and also on account of the role played by corals
in the construction of many types of islands. With few exceptions the
islands occur in groups or chains suggesting the conclusion that they
are the peaks of a range of mountains formerly connected by lowlands
but now separated as the result of a subsidence of the ocean's floor.
Every one is familiar with the theory that a coral atoll, consisting of a
living reef bearing a more or less extensive series of coral islets, is
built upon such a volcanic peak, which, according to Darwin and
Dana, has been withdrawn below the water's level and overgrown by
coral as it slowly subsided. It may be, as Agassiz contends, that a coral

604

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Fig. 2. Western Limit op the Lava Field along the Shore.

Fio. 3. The Cone of Savaii.
The cone is '400 feet from base to crest.

ACTIVE VOLCANOES OF THE SOUTH SEAS 605

Fig. 4. Sea Wall near the Cascades of Molten Lava.
Cinders and lava, in superimposed layers.

Fig. 5. Ruins of Stone Houses inundated by Lava.

Fig. 6. Cratek Margin, Savaii, from the Seaward Side.

6o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

atoll is built upon a submarine volcanic mountain upheaved from the
ocean's floor; but in either case the relation between coral reefs and
volcanic peaks is one that possesses a real importance for the zo-
ologist.

The two volcanoes of Savaii and Kilauea occur in island groups that
are in every way typical of the so-called " high " islands of the Pacific
Ocean. The Samoan Islands, including Savaii, lie almost on a
straight line running nearly east and west. Upon examination they
prove to be of various ages, for the westernmost, Savaii, bears the active
volcano and displays other indications that it is more recent in origin
than its neighbor, Upolu; this island, in its turn, is younger than
the more rugged Tutuila and Manua to the east. The Hawaiian Is-
lands, containing Kilauea, also range with some regularity along a line,
which in this case runs west-northwest and east-southeast; but one
very interesting difference consists in the fact that the newest island,
Hawaii, lies at the eastern end .of the group, while the relative geolog-
ical ages of the other islands correspond with their serial geographical
order westward to Kauai, the oldest and most sharply sculptured mem-
ber of the group. In all other essential respects, the Samoan and
Hawaiian Islands are closely similar. Our interest centers about the
peculiar features of their two active volcanoes, and the ways in which
these agree and differ.

The new volcano on the island of Savaii is assuredly the more im-
pressive of the two. Its total mass is great, but this feature is not so
striking as its remarkably rapid development in the short period of
five years ; this development and the continual flow of fiery lava from its
vast crater entitle it to supreme place in the array of volcanoes now in
activity. It lies about eleven miles back from the coast nearly opposite
the middle of the north shore of Savaii, which is roughly rhomboidal
in outline and forty miles long. Approaching this part of the island
by day, the most striking features of the panorama are the two vast
clouds of steam that rise from the places where molten lava pours in
cascades into the ocean (Fig. 1). Upon the glistening black slopes
beyond, jets of vapor mark the vents in the roofs of the tunnels through
which the fluid lava runs upon its seaward journey from the crater;
and from the crater itself, two thousand feet above sea level, rises a
similar fountain of thin steam that quickly merges with the dense
clouds above.

When one looks upon the enormous mass of this new mountain, it
seems impossible that five years could be sufficient for its formation, yet
this is actually the case. The first crater appeared in August, 1905,
upon the floor of a beautiful green valley. As cinders and lava were
cast forth, they gradually built up a larger dome and spread out to form
the first strata of the great volcanic field. The flow followed the valley

ACTIVE VOLCANOES OF THE SOUTH SEAS 607

Pig. 7. Mauna Loa, Hawaii, viewed from the Sea.
The even slopes, bearing secondary cones, rise slowly and grandly to a high summit.

Fig. 8. Lava-field of the Main Crater Basin of Kilauea.
The jet of vapor marks the fire-pit of incandescent lava

6o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

to the ocean, but as wave after wave of fluid lava or steam-charged ash
swept downward, more and more territory was devastated, while the
lava, already cooled to form ridges and hillocks, diverted the later lava
rivers into irregular and wider-spreading channels. Reaching the ocean,
the molten rock poured into the depths of the sea over the coral reef,
building ever outward, at the same time that it followed the reef and
shore so as to spread laterally over a sector of the island with a shore-
ward arc of five miles. Naturally the seaward wall of the whole lava
field is highest near its center (Fig. 4) where it measures eighty or
ninety feet. This wall displays a regular series of strata of prismatic
blocks or tables, formed by the cooling of successive sheets of flowing
lava. These strata sometimes lie between masses of cinders, showing
how the eruptive output varied in character during succeeding weeks
and months. Toward either side, the whole field gradually thins out,
and at its western edge (Fig. 2) it ends in a series of rough rocky
billows, seared and broken by their contraction in cooling. Yet their
materials reached this point as red-hot fluid lava, having traversed a
route that must have been nearly fifteen miles in length.

As the molten lava swept down the valley and along the strand, its
destructive effects were rapid and complete. The wooden huts of the
seaside villages were entirely consumed and only where there were
walls of coral limestone, like those of the churches and traders' ware-
houses (Fig. 5), was there anything to withstand the flood of rock.
Yet so quickly did the surface of the plastic mass become cool, that the
cocoanut and other trees, felled by the burning through of their bases,
were rarely consumed.

We began the ascent of the volcano early in the afternoon in
order to reach the crater before dusk. Proceeding through the unde-
stroyed woods of a neighboring valley we entered upon the lava field at
a point some miles from the coast, thus obviating the necessity of tra-
versing its whole extent from sea to crater. Our natives, bearing food
and water, now tied the husks of cocoanuts to their naked feet for pro-
tection in walking over the broken lava, and after a final pause for rest,
we left the shade and tempered heat of the tropical forest for the open
glare of the volcano's slope. Viewed from afar, this slope seems even
and smooth, but in reality it is like a tempestuous ocean suddenly ar-
rested in its movements and turned into stone. Here and there wide
sheets of lava with corrugated rippling surfaces formed still rivers be-
tween massive banks of cinders through which their molten substance
had earlier ploughed its way; larger and smaller tables of crust, like
broken floes of the Arctic Ocean, were tilted up and piled in strange
heaps. And so vitreous was the material of this sea of black broken
rock that the light was reflected from millions of crystal surfaces and
facets as from so many fragments of ice or glass.

Progress over this field was necessarily slow, but by following the

ACTIVE VOLCANOES OF THE SOUTH SEAS 609

Fig. 0. " Halemaumad," House of Perpetual Fire.

Fig. 10. The " Lake op Fire " of Kilauea at Night.
The photographic film was exposed four seconds.

6io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

I

general trend of the less broken lava streams, we gradually worked up-
ward and inward toward the main axis of the whole lava mass, indi-
cated by vents which gave egress to steam and gases discharged by fluid
lava running through tunnels beneath the surface.

The great crater (Fig. 3) is a perfectly typical cone of cinders and
lava, with a height from base to summit of four hundred feet as meas-
ured by the aneroid barometer. On three sides it is composed mainly
of ashes and pumice, but toward the sea its surface displays smoother
areas of rock where the lava formerly welled over the edge before the
tunnels were formed by which the discharge now takes place. Large
bombs, rounded masses of rock hurled from the crater during some ex-
plosive eruption, occur on the slopes, sometimes covered as by a sheet of
tar with a later-extruded layer of lava (Fig. 6).

When we stood upon the extreme edge of the jagged margin and
looked down upon the immense lake of fiery lava, four hundred feet
below, it was hard to realize that the scene was actual and not an
imaginary panorama of Dantesque infernal regions. The yawning
cavity of the crater extended a full half mile in length, and its width
was more than four hundred yards. Almost perpendicular and some-
times undercut, the crater walls dropped hundreds of feet to the lake
of molten lava, which was in such violent commotion that it seemed to
be liquid flame rather than a mass of fused and fiery rock. At certain
places it boiled with greater activity, sending huge jets and fountains
high into the air. Its waves moved variously at different times, but ever
and again they would surge heavily to dash against the wall where the
tunnels opened to give exit for the flow to the ocean. And always from
this surface, thin steam-like vapor charged with acid gases swirled up-
ward in the draught caused by the strongly-blowing trade winds, ma-
king it excessively unpleasant to look over the edge even from the wind-
ward side.

Magnificent though it was by day, the scene at night was far beyond
human powers of description. With the darkness, the lake glowed almost
as a continuous incandescent mass. Its light was reflected upon the
clouds above, making a beacon that we had often seen from a distance of
forty miles and which was said to have been visible at a distance of seventy
miles during the period of the volcano's greatest activity about two years
earlier. Looking seaward, the rosy vapors above the tunnel vents out-
lined the course of the lava down to the shore of the island where the
fire of the final lava cascades gave color to two huge clouds of steam.
Again and again through the night we climbed from our camp at the
base of the cone to look down upon the fascinating but awful marvel,
whose fires illuminated the scene so as to give ample light to guide a way
over the broken lava.

Leaving now the volcano of Savaii, which is a veritable classic in its
regularity of structure and mode of origin, we pass to the Hawaiian Is-

ACTIVE VOLCANOES OF THE SOUTH SEAS 6n

lands and the active volcano of Kilanea that is in many respects quite
different from the new one of Samoa. It is an accessory outlet upon the
side of the giant volcanic mountain of Mauna Loa, whose main crater at
the summit, more than thirteen thousand feet above the sea, is active
only at very long intervals. It is a journey of two hundred miles from
Honolulu to the island of Hawaii on which Mauna Loa occurs; viewed
from the ocean (Fig. 7) the even slopes of the mountain rise slowly and
grandly to the high summit, bearing numerous secondary or " parasitic "
cones which have been formed by sporadic local eruptions.

The first view of Kilauea itself is somewhat disappointing to one
who has recently witnessed the grandeur of the eruption at Savaii, but
closer acquaintance reveals many features of great interest. Kilauea
lies about four thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is about
twenty miles back from the coast. In general structure (Fig. 8) it is a
wide shallow basin over three miles in diameter, depressed below the
general level of the slopes of Mauna Loa. At quite a little distance from
the geometric center of the lava field which forms the floor of this basin
is the active fire-pit, marked during the day, as at Savaii, by a cloud of
vapor, and at night by a pillar of fire.

The well-beaten trail to this center of activity leads down along the
terraced wall of one side to the almost level floor of the main basin.
In the strongest contrast to Savaii, Kilauea's lava field is remarkably
even ; indeed, the best areas of the former are far more broken than the
most irregular parts of the latter. The surface undulates more or less,
it is true, while here and there broken masses form hillocks and ridges,
but the active vent has given forth the molten lava with comparative
regularity. Since the middle of the nineteenth century enough rock has
poured out into this wide basin to reduce the height of its vertical walls
from more than eight hundred feet to about four hundred.

In December last, Kilauea was unusually active after a period of
relative quiet. The fire pit (Fig. 9) is nearly circular in outline and its
walls fall in two terraces to the small pool of molten lava, about two
hundred feet below the natural level of the whole basin. Its general
structure has varied more or less in past decades, as well as its degree of
violence, but it has been a permanent center of eruptive activity for
more than a hundred years, well deserving the native name of " Hale-
maumau," the " House of Perpetual Fire."

Here as at Savaii the surface of the pool is in constant commotion,
but the areas of incandescence are much restricted and run in parallel
or forking lines. Cakes of congealed lava float between these lines, and
when in their movements they reach the neighboring areas of greater
activity, they are redissolved and their fragments are thrown into the
air together with jets of more fluid lava. Photographs taken at night
(Fig. 10) exhibit with great distinctness the major and minor areas of
greater activity that form a network upon the surface of the whole pool.

H
Eh

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

613

THE PBOGKESS OF SCIENCE

THE RICE INSTITUTE
In 1891 the late William M. Rice,
a native of Massachusetts, who emi-
grated to Texas and there amassed a
large fortune, selected a board of six
trustees, and to them made over the
sum of two hundred thousand dollars,
the foundation of future philanthro-
pies. At his further instance these
trustees immediately incorporated un-
der the name of the William M. Rice
Institute, for the advancement of lit-
erature, science and art, and with the
founder serving as a member of the
self-perpetuating board undertook to
administer the property of the insti-
tute until his death, and then — accord-
ing to his wish, not before — to take
up the organization of an institution
of higher education open and free to
the white inhabitants of Houston.
When the donor died in 1900 the cor-
poration was named as the residuary
legatee of his estate; this bequest to-
gether with the original endowment
and several generous gifts made during
his lifetime make up the institute's
present foundation of ten million dol-
lars. Prolonged litigation established
his will and the security of the founda-
tion upon which the trustees were to
begin the work of organization by
placing its direction in the hands of
Dr. Edgar Odell Lovett, called from
the chair of astronomy at Princeton
University. The task at hand was the
planning of a non-sectarian institution
which should look toward embracing
eventually all the functions and activi-
ties of a university, but in which at
the outset the interests of science
should predominate; on the instruc-
tional side there was to be no upper
limit, the lower limit being defined by
the necessity of articulating with the
best public high schools and prepara-

tory schools of the south and the south-
west; upon the investigational side
where emphasis was to be laid, the
direction of research in pure science
and its applications was to be taken
from the problems of material develop-
ment peculiar to the south, commercial,
industrial and agricultural; labora-
tories of biology, physics, chemistry,
besides their use for purposes of in-
struction were to provide special facili-
ties for research work by men of sci-
ence, who should become identified with
the institution. In effect, the terms of
the charter, the will of the trustees,
and every local consideration called for
the establishment of a school of sci-
ence, pure and applied, of university
rank, wherein scientific studies were to
be liberalized in an ever-increasing
degree until with fuller means and
ampler resources a university program,
with all its complexities, might be
entered upon.

By way of preparation for this work
President Lovett made an extensive
tour of investigation among the uni-
versities and higher educational estab-
lishments in this country and abroad,
and upon his return attacked first the
problem of planning a domicile worthy
of the large endowment of the Rice
Institute, and in keeping with its high
aims and the character of its projected
development. Striving to make a dis-
tinctive contribution to academic archi-
tecture in America, the trustees of the
Rice Institute have boldly avowed their
belief in the potency of a noble and
impressive architecture as an inspira-
tion to the youth who live and study
within its shadow.

The solution of the problem was en-
trusted to Messrs. Cram, Goodhue and
Ferguson, of Boston and New York,
supervising architects of the institute,

614

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

who prepared a block plan indicating
the most effective use of the three- \
hundred-acre campus lying along the !
boulevard extension of Houston's prin-
cipal street, and designating the posi-
tion of all future buildings; in those
three comprised in the first construc-
tion— the Administration Building,
the Mechanical Laboratory and the j
Power House — the architects have sug-
gested a style of treatment which will
be reflected in all future construction.
This style is not one easy to charac-
terize, for in it are borrowings from
many southern types; reminiscent of
the medieval work of Italy, southern
France and northern Spain, the influ-
ence of the east and the new world's
Spanish missions is not less apparent ;
the round Byzantine arch serves to
impart a scholastic tone to the whole
architecture which none the less re-
tains a quality distinctively American
and American of the southwest rather
than of the north. In the blending of
these southern types full advantage has
been taken of local climatic conditions;
bright, warm skies have prompted a
freer use of color than would be haz-
arded in a severer climate ; open courts
bounded by cloister walks, while foster-
ing an academic atmosphere, ward off
the sun and give easy access to every
wandering breeze from the south. An-
other local condition, the excellent
quality of brick available had weight
in the selection of a building material
which would lend itself readily to the
effects sought. The light pink brick of
native clay seemed especially suitable
to a local adaptation of the admirable
brick work of northern Italy; this
brick will be used, therefore, exten-
sively and with pink Ozark marble will
establish the prevailing color tone.

The Administration Building, so
called because eventually its function
will be the housing of the various ad-
ministrative offices, will, at the outset,
be put to more academic uses, and will
contain besides the offices of the presi-
dent, registrar and bursar, the great
hall or assembly room, the library and

a number of lecture halls, seminar and
class rooms. Lying across the prin-
cipal axis of the campus and facing
the entrance from the Main Street
Boulevard, the Administration Build-
ing is approached by a long driveway
lined with stately trees and flanked by
broad lawns. Its sallyport gives ac-
cess to an inner court richly gardened
and planted with cypresses, and walled
in by the cloisters of surrounding
buildings. As the principal building
on the campus and the most conspicu-
ous, it has oeen given a pronounced
richness of color and finish; special
pink tile matching the brick are ex-
tensively used in the face work; be-
neath the projecting marble cornice
glazed tile of blue color form a frieze;
and in the fagades small shafts, col-
umns and inlays of many colored for-
eign marbles discreetly accent the dom-
inant color tone.

At some distance from the Admin-
istration Building and closing another
long vista from Main Street Boule-
vard, the Mechanical Laboratory and
the Power House, surmounted by a
lofty campanile, form the extreme
boundary of the proposed science
group, and the nucleus for its imme-
diate development. The laboratory
itself contains on the first floor the
necessary offices for professors in
charge, two large laboratory rooms and
a thorough system of lockers ; upon the
second floor two large drafting rooms
and three lecture halls. Communi-
cating with the laboratory in the rear,
a large machine shop connects it with
the Power House, which will supply
light, heat, power and water to the
entire campus.

The next construction will include
two more laboratories in the planning
of which, as in the Mechanical Labora-
tory, assistance was received from an
advisory committee consisting of Pro-
fessor Ames, director of the physical
laboratory of Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity; Professor Conklin, director of the
biological laboratory of Princeton Uni-
versity; Professor Richards, chairman

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

615

of the department of chemistry, Har-
vard University, and Professor fcitrat-
ton, director of the National Bureau
of Standards.

SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS AND SCI-
ENTIFIC MEN IN THE
MIDDLE WEST

The National Academy of Sciences
is meeting in St. Louis as this issue
of the Monthly goes to press; the
American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, with a number of
affiliated societies, will hold its convo-
cation week meeting in Minneapolis at
the end of December. The National
Academy has only once before since its
foundation in 1863 held a meeting west
of the Atlantic seaboard. This meet-
ing was at Chicago in the autumn of
1903 and was fully as successful as the
autumn meetings in eastern cities.
The American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science has been more
national in the range of its meetings,
having in 1901 gone as far west as
Denver and in 1905 as far south as
New Orleans. It met in St. Louis in
1903, in Madison in 1893 and in Min-
neapolis in 1883. Some of the affiliated
societies which last year met with the
association will not go to Minneapolis,
there being scientific meetings in
Ithaca, New Haven, Princeton and
Pittsburgh. Still the number of scien-
tific men in the middle west is now so
large that a successful meeting at Min-
neapolis is assured. The University of
Minnesota is one of the great state in-
stitutions; in recent years it has had
a notable growth, and its future is
assured by the immense fund which
the state holds for educational pur-
poses.

The fact that scientific men and
their leaders are no longer concen-
trated on the eastern seaboard is indi-
cated by the residences of the retiring
and the incoming presidents of the
American Association — President Jor-
dan on the Pacific coast and Professor
Michelson in Chicago. A statistical
study of the origin and distribution of

American men of science, recently
made by the editor of this journal and
published in the issues of Science for
.November 4 and 11, shows that the
central and western states now possess
a fair proportion of our leading scien-
tific men and that they produce even
more than they retain. The thousand
leading scientific men of the country
were selected by asking ten eminent
men of science in each of twelve sci-
ences to arrange those who had done
research work in the order of the value
of their work.

Of these leading scientific men there
were in Boston 126, in New York 120
and in Washington 109. These three
cities remain our chief scientific cen-
ters, but none the less there has been
a significant westward movement in
recent years. The list referred to has
been made up twice, and it is possible
to give the changes which have taken
place in four years. In this short
period the University of Chicago has
gained nine men, the University of Illi-
nois eleven and the University of Wis-
consin twelve.

Even more significant is- a considera-
tion of the origin of the 238 men who
have attained scientific standing be-
tween the compilation of the two lists
and obtain for the first time this year
a place among the thousand. Massa-
chusetts has the highest birthrate of
scientific men now as before, but it has
sunk from 109 per million of its popu-
lation to 85. The productivity has
fallen in every one of the Atlantic
states, from 47 to 36 in New York,
from 42 to 17 in New Jersey, from 23
to 19 in Pennsylvania and from 38 to
13 in Maryland. On the other hand,
it has increased in all but one of the
north central states, from 36 to 74 in
Michigan, which state now stands next
to Massachusetts as a center for the
production of scientific men.

Most of the north central states do
not as yet retain the men whom they
produce. Thus twice as many have
been born in Michigan, Ohio and Indi-
ana as reside in those states. Still the

6i6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

fact that in the course of four years
the states of Illinois and Wisconsin
have increased their scientific men of
standing by 27, while New York, New
Jersey and Pennsylvania have lost 23,
is significant not only of what has
happened but also of what is likely to
happen in the course of the next two
or three decades. As civilization moves
westward, these great north central
states may be for a time the chief
scientific center of the country; and
not only this, for it is quite possible
that they may become the chief intel-
lectual and artistic center of the world.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF AMER-
ICAN MEN OF SCIENCE

The articles referred to contain a
large mass of statistics in regard to
the origin and distribution of our sci-
entific men. The 238 men who have
attained scientific standing within re-
cent years fill the places left vacant by
those who have died and of those who
have failed to maintain their position
among the thousand. Only one foreign
man of science has come to this coun-
try of such distinction that he would
surely have deserved a place on the
previous list, whereas ten have re-
turned to their native countries. Six
women have been added, and the total
number of women on the list is 18, two
of whom are among the second hun-
dred. Those who have obtained places
on the list are nearly all between 30
and 45 years of age. There are none
over 55; but one over 45 reaches a
place as high as the fifth hundred.
Only six are under 30, and this fact
seems to indicate a lack of men of
genius, who as a rule demonstrate
their ability at an early age.

Harvard has a dominant position in
the education of these men and in re-
taining them as instructors. It has
given its bachelor's degree to 20 and
its doctor's degree to 27, and 22 are
on its teaching staff. Chicago stands
next to Harvard, having an equal num-
ber of doctors and having 13 of the
men among its instructors. Yale fol-

lows Harvard and Chicago both in re-
gard to the men it has educated and
the men it has retained. These three
institutions are followed by the Johns
Hopkins and Cornell in the number of
degrees conferred and by Wisconsin
and the Johns Hopkins in the number
of instructors. The colleges of the
eastern states have been less produc-
tive of scientific men than the technical
schools or the colleges of the state
universities.

There are 201 men still living who
have failed to maintain their places
among the thousand. Of these 49 re-
side in the state of New York. There,
as in the other Atlantic states south of
New England, the immense wealth ap-
pears to be unfavorable to scientific
research.

The gain or loss of position of each
man is known. Those under forty are
likely to gain and those over this age
are likely to lose. The average age of
the 1,000 scientific men is 48 years;
the average age of the first hundred is
54.8 years. The average age for the
bachelor degree is 22.2 years and for
the doctorate of philosophy, 28.4 years.

Three fourths of all our scientific
men earn their living by teaching,
about one tenth in the government
service and about one twentieth by ap-
plied science. There are only eleven
scientific men of standing who may be
classed as amateurs, whereas in Great
Britain this class is responsible for a
considerable part of the research work
which is accomplished.

Of our thousand leading scientific
men 80 are at Harvard, 48 at Columbia
and the same number at Chicago, 38 at
Yale, 35 at Cornell, 34 at the Johns
Hopkins and 30 at Wisconsin. One
half of all the instructors at Clark are
among our leading men of science,
whereas in certain institutions there is
but one in fifty. The institutions
which stand the highest are Clark, the
Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Stanford,
Bryn Mawr, Harvard, Wesleyan, Case
and Princeton. These institutions
have at least one scientific man of

Sir William Crookes,
the eminent chemist, recently appointed a member of the British Order of Merit.

vol. lxxvii. — 42

William Henri Brewer.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

619

standing among each ten instructors.
The five institutions that have the best
record are of comparatively recent es-
tablishment; they have given a rela-
tively more prominent position to sci-
ence than the older institutions and
have selected better men. At certain
other institutions the ratios are: Yale,
10.6; Michigan, 12.3; Wisconsin, 13.2;
Columbia, 13.3; Cornell, 16.5; Cali-
fornia, 21.3; Pennsylvania, 25.2.

THE DEATH OF PROFESSOR
BREWER

Until the establishment of the
Johns Hopkins University in 1S76,
Harvard and Yale were our chief cen-
ters of scientific research and pro-
ductive scholarship. We are losing
one after the other the men who gave
distinction to these universities. Yale
has mourned the death of Dana,
Loomis, Newton, Gibbs, Marsh and
Johnson, and now in the death of
William Henry Brewer one of the few
remaining links with the past is sev-
ered. He belonged to a genei-ation and
to a type of university professor which
scarcely survive. The man of the

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Professor Brewer in his Library.

Professor Brewer in 1910.

world is now likely to be found in the
university chair as elsewhere, leaving
small space for the naive and the un-
conventional.

Brewer was born on a farm eighty-
two years ago; he graduated with the
first class of the Yale scientific school;
he studied with Liebig before studying
abroad had become usual; in 1858 he
became professor of chemistry and
geology at Washington College. From
1860 to 1864 Brewer served on the
California State Survey and was dur-
ing the latter part of this period pro-
fessor of natural science in the Uni-
versity of California. He always
looked back with special interest to
these years. He was associated with
King. Whitney and others in exploring
the Sierras, one of whose peaks is
named in his honor. At this time the
" Botany of California " was prepared.

In 1864 Brewer began his long serv-
ice as professor of agriculture in the-
Sheffield Scientific School of Yale Uni-
versity. In addition to the work of
his chair, he was indefatigable in in-
vestigation and exploration, in lectur-
ing and in attendance at scientific
gatherings, being rarely absent even to

620

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the end of his life from the semi-
annual meetings of the National Acad-
emy of Sciences.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We record with regret the deaths of
David Pearce Penhallow, professor of
botany in McGill University, and of
Professor Melchior Treub, for twenty-
nine years director of the Buitenzorg
Botanical Garden in Java.

The Nobel Prize in medicine for
1910 has been awarded to Dr. Albrecht
Kossel, professor of physiology at
Heidelberg. — For his researches on the
determination of atomic weights the
Royal Society has awarded the Davy
medal to Dr. Theodore W. Richards,
professor of chemistry at Harvard
University. — The Harben Lectures of
the Royal Institute of Public Health,
of London, for 1912, will be given by
Dr. Simon Flexner, of the Rockefeller
Institute for Medical Research, New
York.

On the occasion of the recent cele-
bration of the Mexican centenary a
statue of Friedrich Heinrich Alexander
von Humboldt, who more than one
hundred years ago made his journey of
research through Mexico, was unveiled.
— It is proposed to erect in the new
chemical building of the University of
Michigan a bronze tablet in memory of
Dr. Albert B. Prescott, for many years
director of the chemical laboratory. —
A drinking fountain has been erected
at the Central Experiment Farm, Can-

ada, in memory of Dr. James Fletcher,
former Dominion entomologist and bot-
anist.— The classification and catalogu-
ing of the Simon Newcomb Library,
the acquirement of which by the Col-
lege of the City of New York has been
announced, has been completed. This
collection of 4,000 volumes and 6,000
pamphlets, was presented by Mr. John
Claflin.

The hospital of the Rockefeller In-
stitute for Medical Research was
opened on October 17. There were no
special ceremonies, but a number of
guests were present to inspect the hos-
pital. At the same time it was an-
nounced that Mr. Rockefeller had given
securities valued at $3,820,000 for the
endowment of the institute, and that
its organization had been completed. —
At the celebration of the centenary of
the University of Berlin Emperor
William made an address, in the course
of which he said that the occasion
seemed to be peculiarly appropriate
for a fresh movement towards the com-
pletion of Humboldt's aims. Hum-
boldt's scheme required, in addition to
the Academy of Sciences and the Uni-
versity, independent institutions for
research. The plan had been com-
municated only to a small circle, but
already sums amounting to between
nine and ten millions of Marks, had
been forthcoming. It would be the
care of his government to see that the
new foundations did not lack state
assistance.

INDEX

621

INDEX

NAMES OF CONTRIBUTORS ARE PRINTED IN SMALL CAPITALS

Adaptive Radiation, Paleontologie Evi-
dences of, Henry Fairfield Osborn,
77

Agassiz, Alexander, Alfred Golds-
borough Mayer, 419

Agricultural Graphics, 515

Alexander Agassiz — An Autograph Let-
ter, 515

Alligator, The Home of the, A. M.
Reese, 365

Anatomy and Physiology in Inverte-
brate Extinct Organisms, Rudolf
Ruedemann, 142

Arithmetics, A Unique Collection of,
Louis Karpinski, 226

Avian Disease, Bacteriology and Para-
sitology in relation to, George Ed-
ward Gage, 186

Bailey, E. H. S., When does Food be-
come a Luxury? 590

Barrows, David P., Ilongot or Ibilao
Luzon, 521

Beach, Walter G., The Danger of Un-
skill, 178

Bingham, Hiram, The Characteristics
of the South American To-day, 582

Birds, Instinct and Intelligence in,
Francis H. Herrick, 82, 122

Birthplace of Man, S. W. Williston,
594; John C. Merriam, 597

Boggess, Arthur Clinton, European
Conditions affecting Emigration, 570

Breeding, Plant, The R6le of Selection
in, Edward M. East, 190; of Hy-
bridization, Edward M. East, 342

Brewer, Professor, Death of, 619

Carlton, Frank T., Modern Medieval-
ism, 56

Carver, T. N., Professor Norton's Law
of Progress, 510

Centralized Authority and Democracy
in Our Higher Institutions, Edwin
D. Starbuck, 264

Child Study, E. A. Kirkpatrick, 482

Clark, George Archibald, Tlie Much
Misunderstood Fur Seals of Bering
Sea, 465

Clark, William Bullock, Contribu-
tions to Morphology from Paleontol-
ogy, 145

Clarke, John M., Paleontology and
Isolation, 338

Classics and the College Course, John
J. Stevenson, 554

Cleghorn, Allen, The Natural His-
tory and Physiology of Hibernation,

356
Climate, Paleontologie Evidences of,

T. W. Stanton, 67
Cockerell, T. D. A., The Future of the

Human Race, 19
College Course, Classics and the, John

J. Stevenson, 554
Collins, Jos. V., Mathematical Defini

tions in Text-books and Dictionaries

457
Comparative Psychology in America

311
Congresses, Scientific, National and In

ternational, 414
Conservation Congress, Address before

William H. Taft, 313
Continuity of Development, W. D

Matthew, 473; T. Wayland Vaug

HAN, 478

Crampton, Henry E., Two Active Vol

canoes of the South Seas, 603
Culture, Parasitic, George E. Dawson

256
Cumings, E. R., Paleontoloy and the

Recapitulation Theory, 298
Cure, The Nature of Disease and its,

James Frederick Rogers, 61

Dawson, George E., Parasitic Culture,
256

Deaths among American Men of Sci-
ence, 206

Dee, John, and his " Fruitful Preface,"
Mary Esther Irueblood, 236

Definitions, Mathematical, in Text-
books and Dictionaries, Jos. V. Col-
lins, 457

Democracy and Centralized Authority
in Our Higher Institutions, Edwin

D. Starbuck. 264
Development, Continuity of, W. D.

Matthew, 473; T. Wayland Vaug-

han, 478
Disease, the Nature of and its Cure,

James Frederick Rogers, 61
Distance and Middle Running, Chas.

E. Hammett, 28

Distribution of American Men of Sci-
ence, 616

Dreams, Symbolism of, Havelock
Ellis, 42

Earthquake of May 26, 1909, J. A.
Udden, 154

622

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

East. Edward M.a The Role of Selec-
tion in Plant Breeding, 190; of Hy-
bridization in, 342

Education, Medical in the United
States, 101

Education, The Distinction between the
Liberal and Technical in, Percy
Hughes, 379

Edwards, Charles Lincoln, The Zool-
ogical Station at Naples, 209

Ellis, Havelock, The Symbolism of
Dreams, 42

Embryology and Vertebrate Paleontol-
ogy, Relation of, Richard Swan
Lull, 150

Ether, The Past and Present Status of,
Arthur Gordon Webster, 105

European Conditions affecting Emigra-
tion, Arthur Clinton Boggess, 570

Evolution and Kant, Arthur O. Love-
joy, 538

Extinct Organisms, Invertebrate, An-
atomy and Physiology, Rudolf
Ruedeman, 142

Faunas, Devonian, Migration and
Shifting of, Henry S. Williams, 70

Foley, Arthur L., Recent Develop-
ments in Physical Science, 447

Food, When does it become a Luxury?
E. H. S. Bailey, 590

Foreign Languages, Learning, Charles
W. Super, 561

" Fruitful Preface," John Dee and his,
Mary Esther Trueblood, 236

Fur Seals, ot Bering Sea, the Much
Misunderstood, George Archibald
Clark, 465

Future of the Human Race, T. D. A.

COCKERELL, 19

Gage, George Edward, Bacteriology
and Parasitology in Relation to
Avian Disease, 186

Genius and Stature, Charles Kassel,
579

Government, The Five-fold Functions
of, W J McGee, 274

Graphics, Agricultural, 515

Grinnell, Joseph, Methods and Uses
of a Research Museum, 163

Grabau, A. W., Ontogeny and Paleon-
tology, 295

Hammett, Chas. E., Middle and Dis-
tance Running, 28

Harper Memorial Library of the Uni-
versity of Chicago, 51;)

Health, The Owen Bill for a Federal
Department of, 373

Herrick, Francis H., Instinct and In-
telligence in Birds, 82, 12l,

Hibernation, the Natural History and
Physiology of, Allen Cleghorn, 356

Hughes, Percy, The Distinction be-

tween the Liberal and Technical in
Education, 379

Human Race, Future of the, T. D. A.
Cockerell, 19

Hussakof, L., Vertebrate Paleontology
and the Evidences for Recapitula-
tion, 304

Hybridization, The Role of, in Plant
Breeding, Edward M. East, 342

Ilongot or Ibilao Luzon, David P. Bar-
rows, 521

Instinct and Intelligence in Birds,
Francis H. Herrick, 82, 122

Interest, The Rate of, and the Cause of
Social Progress, J. Pease Norton,
253; T. N. Carver, 510

Investigator, Scientific, The Making of
the, Thos. H. Montgomery, Jr., 242

Isolation and Paleontology, Dr. John
M. Clarke, 338

James, William, The Moral Equiva-
lent of War, 400

James, William, 413

Johns Hopkins Lniversity, 99

Kant and Evolution, Arthur O. Love-
joy, 538

Karpinski, Louis, A Unique Collec-
tion of Arithmetics, 226

Kassel, Charles, Genius and Stature
579

Kirkpatrick, E. A., Child Study, 482

Knopf, Adolphus, The Owen Bill for
the Establishment of a Federal De-
partment of Health and its Op-
ponents, 373

Koch, Robert, 102

Learning Foreign Languages, Charles
W. Super, '561

Library, Harper Memorial, of the Uni-
versity of Chicago, 513

Light, Physiologic. F. Alex. McDer-
mott, 114

Loomis, F. B., Phylogeny and Ontog-
eny, 292

Loomis, Seymour, Tariff Board, its
Scope and Limitations, 386

Lovejoy, Arthur O., Kant and Evolu-
tion, 538

Lull, Richard owan, Relation of Em-
bryology and Vertebrate Paleontol-
ogy, 150

Luxury, When does Food become a, E.
H. S. Bailey, 590

McDermott, F. Alex., Physiologic
Light, 114

McGee, W J, The Five-fold Functions
of Government, 274

Magellan, Straits of, A Naturalist in
the, Charles Haskins Townsend, 5

Man, The Birthplace of. S. W. Willis-
ton, 594; History of, Relation of
Paleontology to, John C. Merriam,.
597

INDEX

623

Mathematical Definitions in Text-books
and Distionaries, Jos. V. Collins,
457

Matthew, W. D., Continuity of De-
velopment, 473

Mayer, Alfred Goldsborough, Alex-
ander Agassiz, 419

Medical Education in the United
States, 101

Merriam, John C, The Relation of
Paleontology to the Birthplace of
Man, 597

Middle and Distance Running, Chas.
E. Hammett, 28

Medievalism, Modern, Frank j.'. Carl-
ton, 56

Meylan, George L., The Effects of
Smoking on College Students, 170

Miers, H. A., The Relations between
Teachers and their Pupils, 489

Migration and Shifting of Devonian
Faunas, Henry S. Williams, 70

Modern Medievalism, Frank T. Carl-
ton, 56

Montgomery, Thos. H., Jr., The Ma-
king of the Scientific Investigator,
242

Moral Equivalent of War, William
James, 400

Morphology, Contributions from Pale-
ontology to, William Bullock
Clark, 145

Museum, Research, Methods and Uses
of, Joseph Grinnell, 163

Naples Zoological Station. Charles

Lincoln Edwards, 209
Naturalist in the Straits of Magellan,

Charles Haskins Townsend, 5
Norton, J. Pease, The Cause of Social

Progress and the Rate of Interest,

252; A Supreme Court of Science,

396
Norton's Law of Progress, T. N.

Carver, 510

Ontogeny, A Study of the Value of
Young Features in Determining
Phylogeny, F. B. Loomis, 292; and
Paleontology, A. W. Grabau, 295

Osborn, Henry Fairfield, Paleontol-
ogic Evidences of Adaptive Radia-
tion, 77

Paleontologic Record, 67, 146, 292, 333,
473, 601

Penh allow, D. P., The Relation of
Paleobotany to Phylogeny, 333

Parasitic Culture, Georce E. Dawson,
256

Parasitology and Bacteriology in Rela-
tion to Avian Disease, George Ed-
ward Gage. 186

Physiology and Natural History of
Hibernation, Allen Cleghorn. 356

Physical Science, Recent Developments

in, Arthur L. Foley, 447
Physiologic Light, F. Alex. McDer-

mott, 114
Phylogeny and Ontogeny, F. B. Loomis,

292
Phylogeny, its Relation to Paleobotany.

D. P. Penhallow, 333
Pickering, Edward C, Associate Mem-
bers of American Societies, 286

Plant Breeding, the RSle of Selection
in, Edward M. East, 190

Princeton University, Scientific Labo-
ratories of, 309

Progress of Science, 99, 204, 308, 413,
513, 613

Psychology, Comparative, in America.
311

Pupils, The Relation between Teachers
and their, H. A. Miers, 489

Recapitulation Theory, and Paleontol-
ogy, E. R. Cumings, 298; Evidences
for, L. Hussakof, 304

Race, Human, Future of the, T. D. A.

COCKERELL, 19

i Reese, A. M., The Home of the Alli-
gator, 365

Research Museum, Methods and Uses
of a, Joseph Grinnell, 163
! Rice Institute, 613

Rogers, James Frederick, The Nature
of Disease and its Cure, 61

Ruedeman, Rudolf, Anatomy and
Physiology in Invertebrate Extinct
Organisms, 142

Running, Middle and Distance, Chas.

E. Hammett, 28

Selection, The Role of, in Plant Breed-
ing, Edward M. East, 190

Science, The Progress of, 99, 204, 308,
413, 513, 613

Science, A Supreme Court of, J. Pease
Norton, 396

Scientific Items, 103, 208, 312, 416,
520, 620

Scientific Investigator. The Making of
the, Thos. H. Montgomery, Jr.. 242

Scientific Laboratories of Princeton
University, 309

Scientific Congresses, National and In-
ternational, 414

Scientific Meetings and Scientific Men
in the Middle West, 615

Seals, Fur, of Bering Sea, The Much
Misunderstood, George Archibald
Clark, 465

Smoking, the Effects of, on College
Students, George L. Meylan, 170

Social Progress, the Cause of, and the
Rate of Interest, J. Pease Norton,
252; T. N. Carver, 510

Societies, American, Associate Mem-
bers of, Edward C. Pickering, 286

South American, The Characteristics
of, Hiram Bingham. 582

624

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

South Seas, Two Active Volcanoes of
the, Henry E. Crampton, 003

Stanton, T. W., Paleontologic Evi-
dences of Climate, 67

Starbuck, Edwin D., Centralized Au-
thority and Democracy in our Higher
Institutions, 264

Stature and Genius, Charles Kassel,
579

Students, College, the Effects of
Smoking on, George L. Meylan, 170

Super, Charles W., Learning Foreign
Languages, 561

Supreme Court of Science, J. Pease
Norton, 396

Symbolism of Dreams, Havelock
Ellis, 42

Taft, William H, Address before the
Conservation Congress, 313

Tariff Board, its Scope and Limita-
tions, Seymour Loomis, 386

Teachers and their Pupils, The Rela-
tions between, H. A. Miers, 489

Townsend, Charles Haskins, A Nat-
uralist in the Straits of Magellan, 5

Trueblood, Mary Esther, John Dee
and his "Fruitful Preface," 236

Udden, J. A., Observations on the
Earthquake of May 26, 1909, 154

Unskill, the Danger of, Walter G.
Beach, 178

Vaughan, T. Wayland, Continuity of

Development, 478
Volcanoes, Two Active of the South

Seas, Henry E. Crampton, 603

War, The Moral Equivalent of, Will-
iam James, 400

Webster, Arthur Gordon, The Past
and Present Status of the Ether, 105

Williams, Henry S., The Migration
and Shifting of Devonian Faunas, 70

Williston, S. W., The Birtnplace of
Man, 594

Zoological Society of New York, 204
Zoological Station at Naples, Charles

Lincoln Edwards, 209
V

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