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ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 
BOARD OF REGENTS OF 


Pah ovr PrHSONIAN 
INSTITUTION 


SHOWING THE 


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


1915 


WASHINGTON 
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1916 


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LETTER 


FROM THE 


SECRETARY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 


SUBMITTING 


THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE 
INSTITUTION FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1915. 


SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 
Washington, December 15, 1915. 
To the Congress of the United States: 

In accordance with section 5593 of the Revised Statutes of the 
United States, I have the honor, in behalf of the Board of Regents, 
to submit to Congress the annual report of the operations, expendi- 
tures, and condition of the Smithsonian Institution for the year end- 
ing June 30,1915. Ihave the honor to be, 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
Cuartes D. Watcortt, Secretary. 
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CONTENTS. 


Page. 

Letter from the Secretary submitting the Annual Report of the Regents to 

PMOES soe Sere gk eas nie Fic ee eae i On EO ey a kw ad ul 

Gaatents of the report... <= 35 ~4445-+~++-< Sse => = Wertab.) oy/itueex? do. v 

WE OL PI RGE Se a an 5 54.4525 thhiss = 554-S55sen- BSeuell to 4pen Hl Ac pooeik VII 

General subjects’ of the annual reports. 3... .. 2.222.445. 225 50-45.) <8 2-525-4 IX 

Officials of the Institution and its branches........................-..2------ XI 

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 

The Smithsonian Tnstitubionence:ig22! $n geededogined! legs aegheue he cigdte tas if 
Ps Bish iON ern at RE 2 eer Be so eyo ae Gene ee i 
adierioart. of Ropentsn24 45 48. occ AI A et. ce he ate 1 
Minaneesc-) , itivnald oiseact yt Lyietl degen!) aevigig ht et} sd aeieenstrs 2 
Researches and explorations: 

Geological explorations in the Rocky Mountains..............-.-.-- 5 
Stratigraphic studies in central Tennessee............-..---.-------- 6 
Fossil Echinoderms in western New York......-...-.-.-.---..------- 6 
Vertebrate tosgtisain-Mon tang: fd - lect t fe ese he ang hes ott Se amd 7 
Coral: inyestigaitene 2 yas ate ccou decd: ot ee g-esise-aentt 7 
Borneo. and:Celebes.expedttions. 2.000 . Y- yk cc pews Seen: ts eae 7 
Expeditions to the: Mardeast?! - 23 sed — spe qee os od -R > sods en eed -eppes 7 
Bird studiesin- bilimoisss . £52: SER SP ee Se eee se 8 
Henderson.expedition in: Cabad . .os3648- sates 2d pee es eee 8 
Botanical explorations in South America ..........-...-.------------ 9 
Anthropological researches in Africa and Siberia ................---- 10 
The natural bestony ef Maan. 21494.) thot i gueane sb PREP gece ee 10 
talsndvot Tamor expeditions <2 5.2... 2.007) sss Ss aged sch eat vee 12 
Clearing of fog by electrical precipitation...............--..-..----- 12 
cccaren mM onpotaiinmns~ Sead. Sores te te eee eee ae vic a Re 12 
Harriman Teust Mandya s2ehe. foun cons Fastest els y evrsetd Cay Bone hie 13 
Langley Aerodynamical ‘Laboratory; ..--2ceencef sted - % = bce Bice BPs 14 
Pa blieationee is pnt SOE 9 ete ewe a. Cae oP es en ee 15 
DBI eke ene et Ge ee te ee ee eee A Neem Sout ene teleost k mee! 16 
icy © anuocorre Ws Poore und. ..05 2. 83ers 2s 14 le Serres: Se 17 
US DMDR A ee ETS 100) Thee apap ae i pag ge 7 

Rpt Orc Rnierer en ant ten > onrte. 1. < 2s. Senate, Seman a rte eee 20 

bares of Amoenicn MatinGlapy” 2022-7 2000 582-2 ee oe en sels eae. t Malan 22 

Astrophysical Observatory............-- Be Ren et ae ane ee 23 

Tiaiterna trons! phx nanreseeesseere seat arene Se te ee Ps ae Sears 24 

International Catalogue of Scientific Literature.............-.-.....--- ees 24 

ent Het A OlOmiCe ereBEK As Semen ere ov sao yee it yoeealncain'e sine he see's ose Sears 25 

Necrology........-- Eee ee Ail to Rete oe tases ui aia ener 26 


VI CONTENTS. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY—Continued. 


Appendix 1. Report on the United States National Museum. ..............-- 
. Report on the Bureau of American Ethnology.........-.---.--- 
. Report on the International Exchanges................-.--++--- 
. Report on the National Zoological Park.............--.-------- 
. Report on the Astrophysical Observatory.............----------- 
. WReport:on the laibratyes ete seamen act eae sae aciece tees 
. Report on the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature. - . 
Report on publications: =-o-5 2. ones. sect cess bate a oan eens 


Con oo Ot mR © LO 


EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND REGENTS. 


Report of Executive Committee: ). <5. .ss00i cece nes ccecete dR 
Froceedines of Board.of Repents. 5.1. 0262. caecideer sd aoe sie ceases eeeen 


GENERAL APPENDIX. 


Review of astronomy for the year 1913, by P. Puiseux ...............------- 
The utilization of solar energy, by A. 8. E. Ackermann..................-..-- 
The constitution of matter and the evolution of the elements, by Ernest Ruther- 


Submarine signaling, by R. F.-Blake .......222. 022222. -5. 0002901), OILS 
The earthquake in the Marsica, Central Italy, by Ernesto Mancini........... 
Atlantis, by Pierre Termmier-..... 2.2... .-)-=- 2522... eee 
Evidences of primitive life, by Charles D. Walcott.........-....-..--------- 
The place of forestry among natural sciences, by Henry 8. Graves............- 
Lignum Nephriticum, by W. E. Saffdtd . 2.64 sft lo. A cen. ee. 
Impressions of the voices of tropical birds, by Louis Agassiz Fuertes........-. 
The Eskimo Curlew and its disappearance, by Myron H. Swenk........-..--- 
Construction of insect nests, by Y. Sjdstedt 2/227) 29. Meo OUUOeEL 
Olden time knowledge of Hippocampus, by C. R. Eastman. .............---. 
Heredity, by William Bateson. ......:2...-5...22.. 200A DE ee 
Some aspects of progress in modern zoology, by Edmund B. Wilson........-.-. 
Linguistic areas in Europe: Their boundaries and political significance, by 

iaon Dominian:.-....0--2. 2.20 SI a aia 
Excavations at Tell el-Amarna, Egypt, in 1913-14, by Ludwig Borchardt. ----. 
Waccines; by UL. Roger.<.:.. 2... 225. :22. sere: =. 2. SA SORE Ip ee 
Progress in reclamation of arid lands in the Western United States, by John 

BORIS 220s ois iene occa da ncn dane ewan dase coe eRe Uer eres.» Boe eeeen: 
Some recent developments in telephony and telegraphy, by Frank B. Jewett. 
Sir Dayid Gill, by A; 8. Eddington-~...: JST e See ae 
Walter Holbrook Gaskell, by J. N. Langley ......--..--. idva - «June eeeOeeee 


LIST OF 
Secretary’s Report: Page. 
IR Tate wel es es cs 72, 
Solar Energy (Ackermann): 
12 Gay esis |e eee 154 
Tat CS hoe es et oe 160 
Pistes: DOs tee so eee 164 
Constitution of Matter (Ruther- 
ford): 
VES MEH So ee tS Sey rn oe ene 172 
LEG Re Ee ee eee ee eer 180 
TIES No}) 2 eee 182 
1 2G Het 3 de, Sa OR a eae ne een 190 
Earthquake (Mancini) : 
Plated ee seer. AS Pipe. 218 
Primitive Life (Walcott) : 
12 oe ee ee ee ees 235 
EAGAN ite ah os epee eae Ne 240 
PLCS aes ee ee ee 242 
lates Gia eee ee 244 
PAGES 1S. cO= i eerese tela 8 SVE 246 
Pigtes. 10. ile ee hes 248 
Tiley desea Pa ee 250 
ALCS aah te oe eee Se 252 
Plates rliG— 16's iat aah Soe ee 254 
Lignum nephriticum (Safford) : 
Plate1..(colored)22225-s 226 <2 271 
LEARY ey ee Ee. ee Se ial 
LAE ees ee a ee De. Sea tey 280 
Plate 4 (colored)____________ 282 
Elate:s (colored) === = 283 
TEAC Wet (elem Aire Me lcnl SE ee a 292 
Rigtett(2 2223 a 296 
Bird Voices (Fuertes) : 
TEAS Wetstel [A eee oA Ce aati 300 
PIgtkeS 3. 4222 eee eee 304 
Plates) Os GO) wese ee EP Sl 310 


PLATES. 

Bird Voices—Continued. Page. 
PIAteS Ni 8 = tae Bie a 312 
Pilates: 00 NQ2 S26 ee ee 314 
Plates) dl O26 eee 316 
Plates Se Wide Sc eed ee 318 
Platess1osdG eee eee 322 

Eskimo Curlew (Swenk) : 

Pel ae ye NS oe 338 

Insect Nests (Sjéstedt) : 

BlatesMl (22 eee ar 342 
TAT Cig oh = coe a 344 

Hippocampus (Hastman) : 

Platess 2 Qo. 2 - ae 352 
Babes a ptAe ee oe. eee 354 
Linguistic Areas (Dominian) : 
EAE eked Ua ed prepa a caps a 412 
lates 25 ite. SER eee ee SE 414 
IPTSGG: Beet vee ee ee es oy 426 
Plate ae eo eee 434 
Rigteg) 2222 Saas se ee ee 442 

Excavations in Egypt (Borchardt) : 
Plate ik. 2 Seer eee ait fee 446 
PIatest2 eee = eee ee eee 448 
PIRteskA (eet ee Se bee era 450 
Blases, Gy Fs et eh 452 
BIA teS SRG te es see Aes 454 
Plates, 10-(3a ss. 7s en 456 

Reclamation (Beadle) : 

Plates ee oe oe eek 472 
PIALCS 3 Aor ee nee era 474 
PIates Oy G22 ee ee ee 478 
PIAS (5 Siete nr emer aes 480 
PlatessO Osea ce ea ereg 482 
Piagtes Miva 2S ee Soe aes 484 
Tater ales Sees een os EPs ee 486 


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ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE SMITHSONIAN 
INSTITUTION FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1915. 


SUBJECTS. 


1. Annual report of the secretary, giving an account of the opera- 
tions and condition of the Institution for the year ending June 30, 
1915, with statistics of exchanges, etc. 

2. Report of the executive committee of the Board of Regents, 
exhibiting the financial affairs of the Institution, including a state- 
ment of the Smithsonian fund, and receipts and expenditures for the 
year ending June 30, 1915. 

3. Proceedings of the Board of Regents for the fiscal year ending 
June 30, 1915. 

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


memoirs relate chiefly to the calendar year 1915. 
Ix 


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_ wit aot pica him ame i ne ; 


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Zz 


THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 


June 80, 1915. 


Presiding officer ex officio—Woovrow Witson, President of the United States. 
Chancellor.—Epwarp DovucLtAss WHITE, Chief Justice of the United States. 
Members of the Institution: 
Wooprow WILson, President of the United States. 
Tuomas R. MArsHAtt, Vice President of the United States. 
Epwarp DovuGLass WHiTs, Chief Justice of the United States. 
Rozert LANSING, Secretary of State. 
WiLL1AM Gisps McApoo, Secretary of the Treasury. 
LiInpDLEY MILLER GARRISON, Secretary of War. 
THoMAS WATT GREGORY, Attorney General. 
ALBERT SIDNEY BURLESON, Postmaster General. 
JOSEPHUS DANIELS, Secretary of the Navy. 
FRANKLIN KNIGHT LANE, Secretary of the Interior. 
Davin FRANKLIN Houston, Secretary of Agriculture. 
Witit1AmM Cox REDFIELD, Secretary of Commerce. 
Wit1t1aAm BaucHor Witson, Secretary of Labor. 
Regents of the Institution: 
Epwarp Dovuetass Waiter, Chief Justice of the United States, Chancellor. 
THomas R. MargsHALL, Vice President of the United States. 
Henry Casot Lopcre, Member of the Senate. 
WILLIAM J. STONE, Member of the Senate. 
Henry FRENCH Horiis, Member of the Senate. 
Scorr Frerris, Member of the House of Representatives. 
Maurice Connotty, Member of the House of Representatives. 
Ernest W. Roserts, Member of the House of Representatives. 
AnpREW D. Wuirt, citizen of New York. - 
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, citizen of Washington, D. C. 
GEORGE GRAY, citizen of Delaware. 
CHARLES F’. CHOATE, Jr., citizen of Massachusetts. 
JOHN B. HENDERSON, Jr., citizen of Washington, D. C. 
CHARLES W. FArRBANKS, citizen of Indiana. 
Executive committee—GrorGE GRAY, ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, MAURICE 
CoNNOLLY. 
Secretary of the Institution—CuHar.Les D. WALCOTT. 
Assistant secretary.—RIcHARD RATHBUN. 
Chief clerk.—Harry W. Dorsey. 
Accountant and disbursing agent —W. I. ADAMS. 
Editor—A Howarp CrLark. 
Assistant librarian.—PavL BRocKeEtTT. 
Property clerk.—J. H. Hitt. 


xI 


XII THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 


THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. 


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

Assistant secretary in charge.—RIcHARD RATHBUN. 

Administrative assistant.—W. DE C. RAVENEL. 

Head curators.—Witu1AM H. HotMeEs, LEONHARD STEJNEGER, G. P. MERRILL. 

Curators.—Pavut BartscH, R. S. Basster, A. Howarp Criark, F. W. CLARKE, 
F. V. Covitte, W. H. Dart, CHEestrr G. GILBERT, WALTER HovucH, L. O. Howarp, 
AvceS HrpiiéKa, FrepertcK L. LewtTon, Grorce C. MaAyNarp, Gerrit S. 
MILLER, Jr., RoBERT RIDGWAY. 

Associate curators.—J. C. Crawrorp, W. R. Maxon, DAviIp WHITE. 

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

Chief of correspondence and documents.— RANDOLPH I. GEARE. 

Disbursing agent.—W. I. ADAMS. 

Chief of exhibits (Biology).—Jamrs B. BENEDICT. 

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

Rditor.—Marcus BENJAMIN. 

Assistant librarian.—N. P. SCUDDER. 

Photographer.—T. W. SMILLIE. 

Registrar.—S. C. Brown. 

Property clerk.—W. A. KNOWLES. 

Ingineer.—C. R. DENMARK. 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 


Ethnologist-in-charge.—F. W. Hopce. 

Ethnologists.—J. WALTER FEWKES, JOHN P. Harrineton, J. N. B. Hewitt, 
Francis LA FLESCHE, TRUMAN MICHELSON, JAMES MooNEY, JOHN R. SWANTON. 

Special ethnologist.—Lro J. FRACHTENBERG. 

Honorary philologist —FRANZ BOAS. 

Editor.—JosErH G. GURLEY. 

Librarian.—ELia LEARY. 

Illustrator.—Dr LANCEY GILL, 


4 


INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES. 
Chief clerk.—C, W. SHOEMAKER. 


NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK. 


Superintendent.—F RANK BAKER. 
Assistant superintendent.—A. B. BAKER. 


ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY. 


Director.—C, G. ABBor. 
Aid.—F’. E. Fow te, Jr. 
Bolometric assistant.—L. B. ALDRICH. 


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


Assistant in charge.—Lronarp C. GUNNELL. 


REPORT 
OF THE 


SECRETARY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 


CHARLES D. WALCOTT 


FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1915. 


To the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution: 

GENTLEMEN: I have the honor to submit herewith the annual 
report on the operations of the Smithsonian Institution and its 
branches during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1915, including work 
placed by Congress under the direction of the Board of Regents in 
the United States National Museum, the Bureau of American Eth- 
nology, the International Exchanges, the National Zoological Park, 
the Astrophysical Observatory, and the United States Bureau of 
the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature. 

The general report reviews the affairs of the Institution proper 
and briefly summarizes the operations of its several branches, while 
the appendices contain detailed reports by the assistant secretary 
and others directly in charge of various activities. The reports on 
operations of the National Museum and the Bureau of American 
Ethnology will also be published as independent volumes. 


THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 
THE ESTABLISHMENT. 


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


THE BOARD OF REGENTS. 


The Board of Regents consists of the Vice President and the 
Chief Justice of the United States as ex officio members, three Mem- 
bers of the Senate, three Members of the House of Representatives, 
and six citizens, “ two of whom shall be resident in the city of Wash- 
ington and the other four shall be inhabitants of some State, but no 
two of them of the same State.” : 

In regard to the personnel of the board there were no changes 
during the fiscal year. The roll of Regents on June 30 was as fol- 
lows: Edward D. White, Chief Justice of the United States, Chan- 

18618°—sm 1915——1 1 


2 |. ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


cellor; Thomas R. Marshall, Vice President of the United States; 
Henry Cabot Lodge, Member of the Senate; Henry French Hollis, 
Member of the Senate; William J. Stone, Member of the Senate; 
Scott Ferris, Member of the House of Representatives; Ernest W. 
Roberts, Member of the House of Representatives; Maurice Con- 
nolly, former Member of the House of Representatives; Andrew D. 
White, citizen of New York; Alexander Graham Bell, citizen of 
Washington, D. C.; George Gray, citizen of Delaware; Charles F. 
Choate, jr., citizen of Massachusetts; John B. Henderson, jr., citizen 
of Washington, D. C.; and Charles W. Fairbanks, citizen of Indiana. 

The board held its annual meeting on December 10, 1914. The 
Hon. George Gray was on that date elected chairman of the executive 
committee to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Bacon 
on February 14,1914. The proceedings of the above meeting, as also 
the annual financial report of the executive committee, have been 
printed, as usual, for the use of the Regents, while such important 
matters acted upon as are of public interest are reviewed under ap- 
propriate heads in the present report of the Secretary. A detailed 
statement of disbursements from Government appropriations, under 
the direction of the Institution for the maintenance of the National 
Museum, the National Zoological Park, and other branches, will be 
submitted to Congress by the Secretary in the usual manner in com- 
pliance with the law. 

FINANCES. 


The permanent fund of the Institution and the sources from which 
it was derived are as follows: 


Deposited in the Treasury of the United States. 


Bequest of James SmithsonjAls163 30 pes ies eee ee $515, 169. 00 
- Residuary legacy of James Smithson, 1867_____________________ 26, 210. 63 
Deposit of:savings of incomes iSGiss 22" — ser teet eh ey 108, 620. 37 
Bequest. of. dames -Hamiltongns(i2se 2s ee $1, 000 
Accumulated interest on Hamilton fund, 1895___________ 1, 000 
2, 000. 00 
Bequest of, Simeon; Habels 1830 Sess eee See eee eee ne ee 500. 00 
Deposits from proceeds of sale of bonds, 1881__________________ 51, 500. 00 
Gift of Thomas G. Hodekins stele see eee 200, 000. 00: 
Part of residuary legacy of Thomas G. Hodgkins, 1894__________ 8, 000. 00 
Deposit Lrom-savings of income; A QOS eee ee 25, 000. 00 
Residuary legacy of Thomas G. Hodgkins, 1907_____--_-________ 7, 918. 69 
Deposit from savings of income) 1913__- 220) te 636. 94 
Part of bequest of William Jones Rhees, 1913________.__________ 251. 95 
Deposit of proceeds from sale of real estate (gift of Robert 
Stanton Avery );, 1913622 3 Se ee 9, 692. 42 
Bequest. of Addison "LReids Osa. ee ee ee 4, 795. 91 


Deposit of savings from income Avery bequest, 1914_____________ 204. 09 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 3 


Deposit of savings from mMeome Avery fund, 1915___- $1, 862. 60 
Deposit of savings from income Reid fund, 1915____________ 426. 04 
Deposit of balance of principal $248.05 and income $28.39 Rhees 
SFaDT ClegeU eM een pees es ee I aa ee PE A ee ee Ee eS 276. 44 
Deposit of first payment of Lucy T. and George W. Poore 
«> PEWS TG Tales tg SS a ee 24, 534.92 
Total of fund deposited in the United States Treasury__.__. 987, 600. 00 


Other resources. 


Registered and guaranteed bonds of the West Shore Railroad 
Co., part of legacy of Thomas G. Hodgkins (par value)________ 42, 000. 00 


ERO tala WeEMANeNt UME ate tee etd Bee ed oe I hy 1, 029, 600. 00 


The first installment to the Lucy T. and George W. Poore fund, 
amounting to $24,534.92, was received in March, 1915, and was im- 
mediately deposited in the United States Treasury to the credit of 
the permanent fund. Other deposits to this fund during the year 
were from the income of several funds amounting to $2,565.08, or a 
grand total of $27,100, making a total now deposited in the Treasury 
to the credit of the permanent fund of $987,600. 

That part of the fund deposited in the Treasury of the United 
States bears interest at 6 per cent per annum, under the provisions of 
the act organizing the Institution and an act of Congress approved 
March 12, 1894. The rate of interest on the West Shore Railroad 
bonds is 4 per cent per annum. 

The income of the Institution during the year, amounting to 
$112,035.90, was derived as follows: Interest on the permanent 
foundation, $59,310; contributions from various sources for specific 
purposes, $12,000; first installment of a bequest known as the Lucy 
T. and George W. Poore fund, amounting to $24,534.92; the original 
bequest designated as the George H. Sanford fund of $1,020; the 
balance of the William Jones Rhees fund, amounting to $248.05; and 
from other miscellaneous sources, $14,922.93; all of which was de- 
posited in the Treasury of the United States. 

With the balance of $30,560.13 on July 1, 1914, the total resources 
for the fiscal year amounted to $142,596.03. The disbursements, 
which are given in detail in the annual report of the executive com- 
mittee, amounted to $100,480.17, leaving a balance of $42,165.86 on 
deposit June 30, 1915, in the United States Treasury and in cash. 

The Institution was charged by Congress with the disbursement 
of the following appropriations for the year ending June 30, 1915: 
International xXCchances sess) =e ee esis we SEE Ce ere $32, 000 


AMericanyH thn ology ts tatu MRI ET  Pai dO A EL eR BY 42, 000 
Astrepbysical Observatory iia ti) 1 eae Bits pry ewes ob oro Ly tie 13, 000 


4 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


National Museum: 


Farniture and. textures’) = = en tee ee eee ee eee $25, 000 
Heating “and dightine 2S ee ee ee ee 46, 000 
Preservation ofcollections== =" = === Ss ee ee eee 300, 000 
IB00Ks ee a ee a ae er ee ee ee 2, 000 
IPOStHE Gis Ee ee ae ee a ee ee ee ee 500 
Building repairs S=< 2 2 oss. bee ee ae ee eee es 10, 000 
Bookstacks for Government bureau libraries_________________________ 10, 000 
National 7o0loricals Park = 5:56 t2 eS Sve ee ee eee 100, 000 
International Catalogue of Scientific Literature_______________________ 7, 500 
Tower telescope, Astrophysical Observatory, Mount Wilson, Cal_______ 2, 000 
Repairs smithsonian su UG Ss Se ee ee ee ee ee 16, 000 
Notales Sese2 vot ed Sa ee a ee ee ee 606, 000 


In addition to the above specific amounts to be disbursed ‘by the 
Institution there was included under the general appropriation for 
public printing and binding an allotment of $76,200, to cover the 
cost of printing and binding the annual report and other Govern- 
ment publications issued by the Institution, and to be disbursed by the 
Public Printer. 


EXPLORATIONS AND RESEARCHES. 


The “ increase of knowledge ” is one of the fundamental objects of 
the Smithsonian Institution, and toward the accomplishment of that 
object it has imaugurated and maintained or has participated in 
astronomical, anthropological, biological, and geological explora- 
tions in every portion of the world, resulting in greatly increasing 
our knowledge of the meteorology, the geography, the fauna and 
flora, and the ethnology of all lands, and in the acquisition of a large 
amount of valuable material for the National Museum. The Insti- 
tution has likewise, through special grants, aided laboratory re- 
searches in practically every line of natural science. The extent of 
these explorations and researches during the last 60 years covers a 
wide range, although a great deal more of most important work 
could have been accomplished had adequate funds been available. 
Friends of the Institution have many times, and particularly during 
the last few years, generously aided the work through the contribu- 
tion of funds for specific purposes, but much yet remains undone, 
and opportunities for undertaking important lines of investigation 
are constantly being lost through lack of means to carry them into 
execution. 

I will here allude only briefly to some of the activities of the Insti- 
tution in these directions during the year and for details of other 
investigations may refer to the appendices containing the reports 
of those directly in charge of the several branches of the Institution. 


\ 
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 5 
GEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 


In continuation of my previous geological researches in the Rocky 
Mountains of Canada and Montana I spent a week during the field 
‘season of 1914 at Glacier, British Columbia, where I assisted Mrs. 
Walcott (née Mary M. Vaux) in measuring the flow of the Illecille- 
waet and Asulkan Glaciers. 

From Glacier we proceeded to White Sulphur Springs, Mont., 
for the purpose of studying the ancient sedimentary pre-Paleozoic 
rocks of the Big Belt Mountains. These explorations were made on 
the eastern and southern slopes of this range, and then extended to 
the south on the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson Rivers. ~ 

It was found that the pre-Paleozoic sedimentary rocks were ex- 
posed by the uplift of the granite mass forming the summit of 
Mount Edith of the Big Belt Mountains in such a way that the 
thickness of the sandstones, limestones, and shales could be readily 
measured in the numerous sections exposed in the canyons worn by 
waters descending from the higher points to the valley surrounding 
the range. Nearly 5 miles in thickness of rock were measured, and 
in the limestone belts reefs of fossil algal remains were studied and 
large collections made with the assistance of Mrs. Walcott and 
Charles EK. Resser and sent on to Washington. 

It was found that the algal remains were deposited very much 
in the same manner as those that are now being deposited in many 
fresh-water lakes, and that many of the forms had a surprising simi- 
larity to those being deposited in the thermal springs and pools of 
the Yellowstone National Park. 

In the lower portion of Deep Creek Canyon, southeast of the city 
of Helena, a deposit of siliceous shale was examined where some 
years ago I had discovered the remains of crablike animals suggest- 
ing in form the fresh-water crayfishes found in the streams and ponds 
all over the world. These fossils are the oldest animal remains now 
known, and the algal deposits which occur at intervals for several 
thousand feet below the shales containing the crustaceans are the 
oldest authentic vegetable remains. It is also most interesting that 
two types of bacteria have been found in a fossil state in the rock 
in association with the algal remains. 

On the north side of the Gallatin River two very rich beds of 
algal remains were found, many of which, on account of the fossil 
being silicified and embedded in a softer limestone, were weathered 
out in relief. 

For the season of 1915 I have planned some investigations in the 
Yellowstone Park in order to be able to better interpret the fossil 
algal remains found in and about the Big Belt Mountains. 


6 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 
STRATIGRAPHIC STUDIES IN CENTRAL TENNESSEE. 


Under the joint auspices of the United States Geological Survey 
and the United States National Museum Dr. E. O. Ulrich and Dr. 
R. S. Bassler, of the Museum, were engaged for several weeks dur- 
ing the summer of 1914 in a study of debated points in the stratig- 
raphy of the Central Basin of Tennessee with a view to determine 
accurately the division line between the Chazyan and Black River 
groups and to secure additional information on the black shale 
problem. 

The well-known marble beds of east Tennessee and associated 
shales and sandstones of Upper Chazyan age, with a thickness of 
over 8,000 feet, have never been found in central Tennessee or, in 
fact, in any area west of the Appalachian Valley. The first problem 
was therefore to determine either the corresponding rocks in the 
more western areas or, if such strata were wanting, to discover the 
unconformity representing this great thickness. It was found that 
the Lower Chazyan or Stones River rocks of central Tennessee are 
succeeded directly by the lowest Black River or Lowville formation, - 
and central Tennessee therefore was presumably a land area during 
the time of deposition of the celebrated east Tennessee marbles. 

The second problem entailed further work on the determination of 
the age of the widespread Chattanooga black shale, which previously 
had been considered to be middle to late Devonian. In recent years 
this determination had been questioned, and facts had accumulated 
showing it to be of younger age. Two features of considerable sig- 
nificance in this problem were the discoveries in northern Tennessee, 
where the shale is well exposed, that (1) this black shale passes with- 
out a discernible break into the overlying Mississippian (Kinder- 
hook) shales, and (2) that the fossils of this overlying shale are of 
late instead of early Kinderhook age. As a result of this work good 
collections of several well-preserved faunas were added to the Mu- 
seum collection. 


FOSSIL ECHINODERMS IN WESTERN NEW YORK, 


Field work carried on during the summer of 1914 under the super- 
vision of Mr. Frank Springer, for the purpose of adding to the 
Springer collection of fossil echinoderms in the Museum, was devoted 
mainly to a careful examination of Silurian rocks exposed along the 
new Erie Canal in western New York, especially the waste material 
thrown out in excavations for the canal. The most valuable speci- 
mens from this part of New York occur in the Rochester shales of 
Niagaran age, which weather rapidly into mud upon exposure 
to the elements, and it was therefore necessary that the new outcrops 
be examined at once to secure the best results. Numerous specimens 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 7 


of crinoids and cystids were found, a number of them having, as is 
rarely the case, root, stem, and crown preserved. 


VERTEBRATE FOSSILS IN MONTANA. 


Through cooperation with one of the field parties of the United 
States Geological Survey, Mr. Charles W. Gilmore, of the National 
Museum, spent three weeks during the summer of 1914 searching for 
fossil vertebrate remains in the Judith River formation in north 
central Montana. The most noteworthy discovery was the fragmen- 
tary remains of a fossil bird related to Hesperornis. It came from 
practically the same locality as the type of Coniornis altus Marsh, 
and is of importance as showing these bird remains as occurring in 
the upper part of the Claggett formation, whereas heretofore it was 
thought that Coniornis had come from the lower part of the Judith 
River formation. 

CORAL INVESTIGATIONS. 


Dr. T. Wayland Vaughan has for some time been engaged under 
the auspices of the Carnegie Institution in a study of the growth of 
corals, their role in reef building, and related problems. His field 
of investigation has been chiefly the coast of Florida, the Bahamas, 
and other regions of the West Indies. Large collections made by 
him in those localities have been received by the Museum. 


BORNEO AND CELEBES EXPEDITIONS, 


Through the generosity of Dr. W. L. Abbott, who for so many 
years has been a most generous contributor to the zoological and 
ethnological collections of the Museum, Mr. H. C. Raven conducted a 
collecting expedition in Borneo for a period of about two years. His 
work there was completed in September, 1914, having yielded about 
3,000 interesting specimens of mammals and birds. Mr. Raven next 
crossed the Macassar Strait to the Island of Celebes, where he 
expects to remain for a considerable period and to secure impor- 
tant collections from a region heretofore poorly represented in the 
National Museum. 


EXPEDITIONS TO THE FAR EAST, 


Through the liberality of a gentleman who desired to remain un- 
known, Mr. Arthur de C. Sowerby has continued his zoological ex- 
plorations in Manchuria and northeastern China- and has forwarded 
a valuable collection of insects and vertebrates, including two wapiti 
bucks, a roe deer, two bears, and a peculiar rabbit. 

Mr. Copley Amory, jr., a collaborator of the National Museum, 
joined a party accompanying Capt. J. Koren to the northeast coast 


8 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


of Siberia. It was Mr. Amory’s intention to explore such territory 
as may be practicable from Nijni Kolymsk as a winter base, giving 
special attention to mammals and birds. When last heard from he 
had made a trip up the Lesser Ammi River, where he obtained a 
good number of fossil specimens, also some birds and small mammals. 


BIRD STUDIES IN ILLINOIS. 


Incidental to continued work on preparation of manuscript of the 
unpublished volumes of “ Birds of North and Middle America” 
(Bulletin 50, U. S. National Museum), Mr. Robert Ridgway, during 
the past year, made a careful study of bird life in southern Illinois 
in order to compare present conditions with those existing half a 
century ago. It was found that with few exceptions the native birds 
are greatly decreased in numbers. At least three species (the pas- 
senger pigeon, wild turkey, and ruffed grouse) have totally disap- 
peared from the region examined, while several others are on the 
verge of extermination. A few species, such as the crow blackbird 
(bronzed grackle) and blue jay, and perhaps the robin, are, appar- 
ently, as numerous as they were 50 years ago. 

The principal causes which have brought about this greatly dimin- 
ished bird life are: (1) In the case of the game birds, relentless 
shooting; (2) greatly reduced breeding and shelter areas, through 
clearing of forests, cutting away of woody growths along roadsides 
and fence lines, and drainage of swampy or marshy areas; (3) intro- 
duction of the European house sparrow, which has increased to such. 
an extent that it now outnumbers, even on the farms, all the smaller 
native birds combined, greatly reducing their food supply and mo- 
nopolizing the nesting sites of such species as the bluebird, purple 
martin, wrens, swallows, and other birds that nest in cavities or about 
buildings; (4) invasion of the woods and fields by homeless house 
cats and destruction of eggs and young (often the parents also) of 
ground-nesting species by “self-hunting” bird dogs (setters and 
pointers) ; and, probably, (5) spraying of orchards. 


HENDERSON EXPEDITION IN CUBA. 


Since the Tomas Barrera expedition to western Cuba, Mr. John 
B. Henderson, a regent of the Smithsonian Institution, has made 
two trips to eastern Cuba to supplement the work of that expedition. 

One of these visits was to Cardenas Bay, where extensive, as well 
as intensive, dredgings yielded a lot of interesting marine organisms. 
The second trip embraced Cubitas Mountains, and was made in quest 
of land shells, which were needed to elucidate problems in the geo- 
graphic distribution of the land mollusks. 

As heretofore, Mr. Henderson’s yacht, the Holis, has been kept 
busy exploring the Pourtales Plateau. Numerous hauls in all depths 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 9 


of water have been made, and the material, which has arrived here 
from time to time, is exceedingly rich in marine invertebrates, par- 
ticularly mollusks. 

This year’s efforts have resulted in the discovery of grounds with a 
more prolific, varied, and interesting fauna than previously known 
in this region. 


BOTANICAL EXPLORATIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA, 


Through cooperation with the Carnegie Institution of Washington 
the Museum was enabled to benefit by an expedition carried on by 
Dr. J. N. Rose during the summer and fall of 1914 along the west 
coast of South America in furtherance of his work on the Cactacee. 
About 3,000 specimens of cacti and other plants collected by him 
have been permanently deposited in the National Herbarium. 


Dr. Rose explored a section through central Peru from Callao to Oroya, from 
sea level to the top of the Andes, at an altitude of 15,665 feet. Cacti were found 
in the greatest abundance at an altitude of 5,000 to 7,500 feet; but the various 
species range from a few feet above sea level to as high as 12,000 to 14,000 feet. 

A second section was made across southern Peru, from Mollendo to Lake 
Titicaca via Arequipa. The highest point reached was 14,665 feet. Here also 
the cacti are found from near sea level nearly to the top of the Andes; but the 
most remarkable display is on the hills surrounding Arequipa, at an altitude of 
from 7,000 to 8,500 feet. While the cacti are abundant in both these regions, 
they are, with only a few possible exceptions, quite distinct. Side trips were 
made from Arequipa to Juliaca and Cuzco, in Peru, and to La Paz, Oruro, and 
Comanche, in Bolivia. 

On the pampa below Arequipa are found the famous crescent-shaped sand 
dunes. Each dune or pile of sand is distinct in itself, often separated some dis- 
tance from any other dune, and occurring, too, on rocky ground devoid of other 
‘sand. The dunes are found on the high mesa some 5,250 feet above the sea. 
They form definite regular piles of sand, each presenting a front 10 to 100 feet 
wide and 5 to 20 feet high, nearly perpendicular, crescent shaped, amd from the 
crescent-shaped ridge tapering back to the surface in the direction from which 
the wind blows. These piles of shifting sand go forward about 40 feet a year. 

In Chile two sections were made into the interior—one from Antofagasta to 
Calama, and one from Valparaiso to Santiago. The first is through the rainless 
deserts of northern Chile, the whole region being practically devoid of all vege- 
tation. The second is across central Chile, the hills and valleys of which are 
veritable flower gardens, the hills often being a mass of yellow. Various trips 
were made in the central valley of Chile and one journey along the Longitudinal 
Railway of Chile extended from Caldera to Santiago. Special trips were made 
for certain rare plants like Cereus castaneus, first collected in 1862 and not since 
observed until found by Dr. Rose; and Cactus horridus and Cactus Berteri, de- 
scribed in 1833, but long since discarded by cactus students. In the central 
valley of Chile is seen that beautiful palm, the only one native of Chile, Jubaea 
spectabilis H. B. K., which often forms forests of considerable extent. From 
this palm is made the “ Miel de Palma” so much used as a sirup on ships and 
at hotels. 


Botanical explorations by Dr. Rose on the east coast of South 
America were in progress at the close of the fiscal year. 


10 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCHES IN AFRICA AND SIBERIA. 


In connection with the work of the division of physical anthropol- 
ogy in the National Museum, two expeditions were sent out during 
the year 1914 under the joint auspices of the Smithsonian Institution 
and the Panama-California Exposition at San Diego. 

One of these expeditions was in charge of Dr. V. Schiick, anthro- 
pologist of Prague, Bohemia, and its objects were: 1, to study the 
negro child in its native environment, and thereby create a basis of 
comparison for the study of the negro child in our country; 2, to 
visit the South African Bushmen for the purpose of obtaining meas- 
urements, photographs, and facial casts of the same; and 3, to 
visit British East Africa in search of the Pygmies. The tribe chosen 
for the child study were the Zulu, of Natal or Zululand, and over 1,000 
children and adolescents of all ages—ages which could be definitely 
determined—were examined. These data are expected to contribute 
some very important results to anthropology. The Bushmen were 
reached in the Kalahari Desert, and besides other results 20 first-class 
facial casts were obtained of the people, which have since then been 
installed among the anthropological exhibits at San Diego. As to 
British East Africa, the work soon after a successful beginning was 
interrupted by the war. 

The second expedition was in charge of Dr. St. Poniatowski, head 
of the ethnological laboratory at Warsaw. The object of this expedi- 
tion was to visit a number of the remnants of native tribes in eastern 
Siberia, among which are found physical types which so closely 
resemble the American Indian. The expedition reached two such 
tribes, and secured valuable data, photographs, etc., when its work 
also was interrupted by the war. 


THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN. 


Some of the results of exploration and field work by the Institution 
among various races of mankind are shown in connection with the 
anthropological exhibits of the Panama-California Exposition at 
San Diego. These exhibits were in preparation for over three years. 
‘hey are original and much more comprehensive than any previous 
exhibits in this line, either in this country or abroad. Dr. Hrdlitka, 
under whose direction this exhibit was prepared, describes it as fol- 
lows: 

The exhibits fill five large connecting rooms, which occupy the building of the 
Science of Man at the Exposition. Four of these rooms are devoted to the 
natural history of man, while the fifth is fitted up as a modern anthropological 
laboratory, library, and lecture room. Of the four rooms of exhibits proper, 
the first is devoted to man’s phylogeny, or evolution; the second, to his ontog- 
eny, or life cycle at the present time; the third, to his variation (sexual, indi- 
vidual, racial) ; and the fourth, to his pathology and death. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 11 


The exhibits in room 1, on Human Evolution, consist of: (a) A large series 
of accurate, first-class casts of all the more important skeletal remains of au- 
thentic antiquity; (b) photographic enlargements and water color sketches 
showing the localities where the specimens were discovered; (c) charts show- 
ing the relation of the archeological position of the various finds, and their 
relation to the extinct fauna and to archeological epochs; (d) a series of 
sketches by various scientific men showing their conception of the early man, 
with several illustrations of drawings, statuettes, and bas-reliefs, showing early 
man as drawn or sculptured by the ancient man himself; and (e) a remarkable 
series of 10 large busts prepared by the eminent Belgian sculptor, M. Mascré, 
under the direction of Prof. Rutot, representing early man at different periods 
of his physical advancement. 

The main part of the exhibits in room No. 2, devoted to man’s development at 
the present time, from the ovum onward, are three series of true-to-nature 
busts, showing by definite age-stages, from birth onward and in both sexes, the 
three principal races of this country, namely, the “ thoroughbred ” white Ameri- 
can (for at least three generations in this continent on each parental side), the 
Indian, and the full-blood American negro. These series, which required two 
and one-half years of strenuous preparation, form a unique exhibit, for nothing 
of similar nature has ever been attempted in this or any other country. Each 
set consists of 30 busts, 15 males and 15 females, and proceeds from infants at 
or within a few days after birth to the oldest persons that could be founda. 
The oldest negro woman is 114. After the new born, the stages are 9 months, 3 
years, 6, 10, 15, 20, 28, 35, 45, 55, 65, and 75 years. The utmost care was exer- 
cised in ascertaining the age, particularly among the negro and Indian. No 
choice was made of the subjects beyond that due to the requirements of pedi- 
gree, age, and good health. The whites and negroes were obtained, with a few 
exceptions, in Washington and vicinity, but their places of birth range over a 
large part of the Eastern, Southern, and Middle States; for the Indian, we 
chose the Sioux, a large, characteristic, and in a very large measure still pure- 
blood tribe, and one in which the determination of the ages of the subjects was 
feasible. Special trips were made to these people, and no pains were spared 
to get just what was wanted; in the case of the new born, it was actually neces- 
sary to wait until they came. 

Other exhibits in room 2 show the development, by various stages, of the 
human brain, the skull, and various other parts of the body. A large series of 
original specimens show the most closely related animal forms to man at the 
present time, particularly the anthropoid apes; a series of charts on the walls 
deal with the phenomena of senility; finally, 10 photographic enlargements 
show living centenarians of various races. 

Human variation is shown in room 38 by 10 sets of large busts representing 
10 of the more important races of man; by 200 original transparencies giving 
racial portraits; by over 100 bronzed facial casts, showing individual vari- 
ations within some of the more important branches of humanity ; and by numer- 
ous charts and other exhibits. 

In room 4 a series of charts and maps relates to the death rate in various 
countries, to the principal causes of death in the different parts of the world, 
and to the distribution of the more common diseases over the earth. Actual 
pathology is illustrated extensively by prehistoric American material. Many 
hundreds of original specimens, derived principally from the pre-Columbian 
cemeteries of Peru, show an extensive range of injuries and diseases, such as 
have left their marks on the bones. In many instances the injuries are very 
interesting, both from their extent and the extraordinary powers of recupera- 


12 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


tion shown in the healing; while among the diseases shown on the bones there 
are some that find no, or but little, parallel among the white man or eyen the 
Indian of to-day. In addition this room contains a series of 60 skulls with 
pre-Columbian operations (trepanation). 


ISLAND OF TIMOR EXPEDITION. 


Among the projected expeditions interrupted by the European 
war was one to the Island of Timor, inthe East Indies. This island 
has been a rich collecting ground for scientific study, though little 
has been done by the paleontologist. An opportunity was offered for 
making collections at Timor through the courtesy and interest of 
Mr. N. E. Crane, a retired engineer, of Pittsburgh, who had planned 
to visit the island. The fund for this enterprise was contributed by 
Mr. Crane, Mrs. EK. H. Harriman, and Mr. Frank Springer, but the 
expedition has been postponed for the present. 


CLEARING OF FOG BY ELECTRICAL PRECIPITATION. 


The fact was long ago scientifically established that all dust and 
fog particles in the open atmosphere are electrified and subject to 
dispersion or precipitation, but how to clear fog frém a street, along 
a railway, or from the neighborhood of a ship at sea, and to do it 
in a manner commercially feasible has been a matter of serious study 
for many years. The question having recently aroused fresh atten- 
tion, particularly in the neighborhood of San Francisco, through re- 
searches planned by the University of California in cooperation with 
the United States Lighthouse Service, it was decided by the Smith- 
sonian Institution during the past year to make an appropriation to 
further this investigation, which is under the general direction of 
Dr. F. G. Cottrell, who has done so much toward the practical pre- 
cipitation of dust, smoke, and chemical fumes at large industrial 
plants. The American Institute of Electrical Engineers has also 
appointed a committee to cooperate in this great work, and reports 
on the results of the study are awaited with much interest. The 
essential element to success in scattering fog seems to be some form 
of electrical apparatus of very high direct voltage, with facilities for 
its control and ready application. 


RESEARCH CORPORATION. 


In previous reports I have called attention to the Research Cor- 
poration formed primarily to undertake the development of certain 
precipitation patents generously offered to the Institution by Dr. 
F. G. Cottrell. Although it was impracticable for the Smithsonian 
Institution to administer this work directly, yet there was no objec- 
tion to the Secretary becoming a member of a distinct organization 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 13 


that would undertake its development. An independent organiza- 
tion was accordingly formed in 1912 under the laws of the State of 
New York, the Secretary of the Institution becoming one of the 
directors of the Research Corporation and a member of the executive 
committee. The board of directors includes a number of prominent 
men of wide business experience, such as James J. Storrow, of Lee, 
Higginson & Co., Boston; Charles A. Stone, of Stone & Webster, 
Boston; Arthur D. Little, of the Little Chemical Co., Boston; T. 
Coleman du Pont, of Wilmington, Del.; Elon H. Hooker, president 
of the Hooker Electrochemical Co., Niagara Falls, N. Y.; Benjamin 
B. Lawrence, mining engineer, New York; George F. Kunz, of Tif- 
fany & Co.; Frederick A. Goetze, dean of the engineering depart- 
ment of Columbia University, New York; William Barclay Par- 
sons, engineer, of New York; and Hennen Jennings, mining engi- 
neer, of Washington. 

The principal object of the corporation is to acquire inventions 
and patents and to make them more available in the arts and indus- 
tries, while using them as a source of income, and, second, to apply 
all profiits derived from such use to the advancement of technical 
and scientific investigation and experimentation through the agency 
of the Smithsonian Institution and such other scientific and educa- 
tional institutions and societies as may be selected by the directors. 

The chief assets of the corporation at present are the Cottrell pat- 
ents relating to the precipitation of dust, smoke, and chemical fumes 
by the use of electrical currents. Dr. F. G. Cottrell, the inventor 
and donor of these patents, has described their operation’ and advan- 
tages and the progress thus far made in their installation in an 
article printed in the Smithsonian Report for 1913. 

There is now under consideration the acceptance and develop- 
ment of other patents besides those presented by Dr. Cottrell. It 
is planned that when the funds of the corporation received from 
royalties and other sources shall have reached $100,000, to apply the 
income “to the advancement of technical and scientific investigation 
and experimentation ” as provided by the act of incorporation. 

Owing to the wide experience of the members of the board and 
their standing in the business community, it has been possible to do 
work in connection with the Research Corporation that would have 
required the expenditure of large sums if undertaken by an ordinary 
business organization or private individual. 


HARRIMAN TRUST FUND. 
Aided by the income of a special fund established by Mrs. E. H. 
Harriman, Dr. C. Hart Merriam, research associate of the Institu- 


tion, has continued and practically completed his studies of the big 
bears of America, so that it is now possible to determine the relations 


14 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


of most of the species and to arrange them in definite groups. Of 
the true grizzlies there appear to be about 38 species and subspecies 
representing a dozen groups, and of the brown bears about 10 species, 
representing 5 groups. Opportunity will now be afforded for study 
in other fields of biological research. 


THE LANGLEY AERODYNAMICAL LABORATORY. 


The Langley Aerodynamical Laboratory was reopened under reso- 
lution of the Board of Regents adopted May 1, 1913, and on May 23 
an advisory committee was organized, as detailed in my report for 
that year. In my last report I reviewed what had been accomplished 
up to June 30, 1914, in certain lines of investigation, including the 
successful flights of the Langley aeroplane built in 1898-1903, and 
further trials of that machine were described by Dr. A. F. Zahm in an 
article in the general appendix of the Smithsonian Report for 1914. 

During the past year it was found necessary for legal reasons to 
discontinue the advisory committee as originally organized, and it 
therefore seemed advisable to call upon Congress to authorize the 
establishment of a national advisory committee for aeronautics. 

Following an urgent appeal by myself and others to the Senate 
Committee on Naval Affairs, there was inserted in the naval appro- 
priation act (Public, No. 271, 63d Cong.) approved March 3, 1915, the 


following provision for a national advisory committee for aeronautics. 
*: * * + * * * 

An Advisory Committee for Aeronautics is hereby established, and the Presi- 
dent is authofized to appoint not to exceed twelve members, to consist of two 
members from the War Department, from the office in charge of military aero- 
nautics; two members from the Navy Department, from the office in charge 
of naval aeronautics; a representative each of the Smithsonian Institution, of 
the United States Weather Bureau, and of the United States Bureau of Stand- 
ards; together with not more than five additional persons who shall be ac- 
quainted with the needs of aeronautical science, either civil or military, or 
skilled in aeronautical engineering or its allied sciences: Provided, That the 
members of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as such, shall serve with- 
out compensation: Provided further, That it shall be the duty of the Advisory 
Committee for Aeronautics to supervise and direct the scientific study of the 
problems of flight, with a view to their practical solution, and to determine the 
problems which should be experimentally attacked, and to discuss their solu- 
tion and their application to practical questions. In the event of a laboratory 
or laboratories, either in whole or in part, being placed under the direction of 
the committee, the committee may direct and conduct research and experiment 
in aeronautics in such laboratory or laboratories: And provided further, That 
rules and regulations for the conduct of the work of the committee shall be 
formulated by the committee and approved by the President. 

That the sum of $5,000 a year, or so much thereof as may be necessary, for 
five years is hereby appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not other- 
wise appropriated, to be immediately available, for experimental work and in- 
vestigations undertaken by the committee, clerical expenses and supplies, and 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 15 


necessary expenses of members of the committee in going to, returning from, 
and while attending, meetings of the committee: Provided, That an annual 
report to the Congress shall be submitted through the President, including an 
itemized statement of expenditures. 

On July 27, 1914, the Institution published a report by Dr. Zahm 
on European aeronautical laboratories, in which he describes the 
buildings, equipment, and operations of laboratories in England, 
France, and Germany. 

Although, as above stated, it was not practical to continue the 
advisory committee of 1913 as originally planned, nevertheless the 
individual members of the committee have been active in their in- 
vestigations, and several valuable reports have been received, some 
of which are as yet confidential or incomplete, one of those being a 
report on wireless communications to and from air craft. 

Mr. Buckingham completed and published a masterly paper on the 
mathematical principle governing the relations of experimental mod- 
els of all sorts to those of full-scale machines. Dr. Humphreys pub- 
lished a long paper on the Physics of the Atmosphere. Dr. Zahm 
helped to design for the United States Army a 200-horsepower bi- 
plane, and published a mathematical method of analyzing the stresses 
sustained by such an aeroplane during flight. 

At the annual meeting of the Regents on December 10, 1914, Dr. 
Alexander Graham Bell, Senator William J. Stone, Representative 
Ernest W. Roberts, Mr. John B. Henderson, jr., and Secretary Wal- 
cott were appointed a committee to consider questions relative to the 
Langley Aerodynamical Laboratory. 


PUBLICATIONS. 


The publications of the Smithsonian Institution and its branches 
during the year comprised a total of 6,753 printed pages, accom- 
panied by 655 plates of illustrations, and the number of copies dis- 
tributed of these various publications, both pamphlets and bound 
volumes, aggregated 132,010. 

The Institution has for one of its primary objects the “ diffusion 
of knowledge,” and this aim is carried out by printing and distribu- 
ting the results of scientific investigations, accounts of explorations 
and researches, of progress in the various branches of science, and of 
development in any phase of human endeavor which would tend to 
increase “knowledge among men.” Of its three series of publica- 
tions, the Contributions to Knowledge, Miscellaneous Collections, 
and the annual reports, the first two are issued in limited editions 
at the expense of the Institution and are sent out to libraries, institu- 
tions, and interested individuals throughout the world. The annual 
reports, containing in addition to the administrative reports a gen- 
eral appendix of original and selected papers showing the recent 
progress made in all branches of natural and applied science, are 


16 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


printed under congressional appropriation, so that a larger edition 
and more widespread distribution is possible. 

Under the direction of the Institution are issued the various pub- 
lications of its branches, (a) the Annual Report, the Proceedings, and 
the Bulletins of the National Museum, including the series of Con- 
tributions from the National Herbarium; (2) the Annual Reports 
and Bulletins of the Bureau of American Ethnology; and (c) the 
Annals of the Astrophysical Observatory. These series are all public 
documents and are printed by means of annual allotments by act of 
Congress. 

Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.—The requirements for 
memoirs in this series are that they be accounts of extended original 
research constituting important additions to knowledge. Since the 
first appearance of this series in 1848, 85 quarto volumes containing 
150 memoirs have been issued, the most recent one being the “ Lang- 
ley Memoir on Mechanical Flight,” in which are recorded the results 
of the late Secretary Langley’s experiments establishing the practica- 
bility of heavier-than-air flying machines. 

Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections Fourteen papers forming 
parts of four volumes of this series were issued during the year, 
among them one paper on Cambrian geology by your Secretary. 
Another interesting paper was that by Messrs. Abbot, Fowle, and 
Aldrich recording new solar radiation researches, in the course of 
which free balloons carrying recording apparatus, ascended to a 
height of over 15 miles and were found on their descent with the 
records in good condition. As a result of these and other experi- 
ments, the authors abide by their former results, namely, that “the 
mean value of the ‘solar constant’ is 1.93 calories per square centi- 
meter per minute.” In this series, the sixth revised edition of the 
Smithsonian Physical Tables was issued, and was practically ex- 
hausted at the close of the year, showing the continued popularity 
and usefulness of this work. The publication of a further edition 
was being considered at the close of the year. The usual annual 
account of the Institution’s explorations and field work was issued, 
and being profusely illustrated, was of considerable popular interest. 

Smithsonian report.—The report for 1913 was received from the 
printer and distributed during the year. Separates of the articles 
forming the general appendix of the 1914 report were issued, the 
completed volume, however, not being received from the printer until 
shortly after the close of the fiscal year. Incorporated in the con- 
gressional act providing for printing for the Institution and its 
branches was a clause increasing the edition of the Smithsonian 
annual reports from 7,000 to 10,000, a very desirable change, as the 
edition of this volume has heretofore been exhausted almost imme- 
diately following its appearance. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 


17 


Special publications.—Of the opinions rendered by the Interna- 
tional Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, which the Institu- 
tion has published for some years past, Opinion 66 was issued, and 
the Institution has continued to provide clerical services in connec- 


tion with the office of the secretary of the commission. 


Among other special publications was a short biographical sketch 
of James Smithson, abridged from the chapter on Smithson by S. P. 
Langley in the history of the first half century of the Institution. 

National Museum publications —The National Museum issued an 
annual report, 1 volume of the Proceedings and 41 separate papers 
forming parts of this and other volumes, 6 bulletins, and 1 volume of 


Contributions from the National Herbarium. 


Bureau of Ethnology publications—The Bureau of American 
Ethnology published two bulletins and three miscellaneous publica- 
tions. Among the latter was a circular of information regarding 
Indian popular names, to be distributed in response to the numerous 
letters requesting information of this kind. Four annual reports and 


five bulletins were in press at the close of the year. 


Reports of historical and patriotic societies—The annual reports 
of the American Historical Association and the National Society of 


the Daughters of the American Revolution were submitted 


to the 


Institution and transmitted to Congress in accordance with the 


charters of these organizations. 


Allotments for printing—The allotments to the Institution and 
its branches under the head of “ Public printing and binding” were 
utilized as far as practicable, although there was a large amount of 
material which the Public Printer was unable to complete, and this 


will therefore become a charge against the 1916 allotment. 


The allotments for the year ending June 30, 1916, are as follows: 


For the Smithsonian Institution: For printing and binding the annual 
reports of the Board of Regents, with general appendices, the edi- 
tions of which shall not exceed 10,000 copies________-_- 

Yor the annual reports of the National Museum, with general appen- 
dices, and for printing labels and blanks, and for the Bulletins and 
Proceedings of the National Museum, the editions of which shall not 
exceed 4,000 copies, and binding, in half morocco or material not more 
expensive, scientific books, and pamphlets presented to or acquired 
by the National Muséum Niraryeece 2 ie i Pe ee 

For the annual reports and Bulletins of the Bureau of American Eth- 
nology and for miscellaneous printing and binding for the bureau____ 

For miscellaneous printing and binding: 

Internacionaleb XChange eS ee ee ee ge a 
International Catalogue of Scientific Literature_._____________ 
NEON /7OOLO Si Call Mar cores Pee eve LAREDO Leet ee SY Regn TOL 
ASinophySsicaly ObSErMatoRryie jee SOs ys a I Te 
For the annual report of the American Historical Association 


PRO eee es ee a ke ee Ee 
18618°—sm 1915——2 


$10, 000 


37, 500 
21, 000 


200 
100 
200 
200 
7, 000 


76, 200 


18 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Committee on printing and publication—All manuscripts sub- 
mitted for publication by the Institution or its branches have, as usual, 
been examined and passed upon by the Smithsonian advisory com- 
mittee on printing and publication. The committee has also con- 
sidered various general matters concerning printing and binding. 
During the year 18 meetings were held and 109 manuscripts acted 
upon. The personnel of the committee was as follows: Dr. Leonhard 
Stejneger, head curator of biology, National Museum, acting chair- 
man; Dr. C. G. Abbot, director of the Astrophysical Observatory ; 
Dr. Frank Baker, superintendent of the National Zoological Park; 
Mr. A. Howard Clark, editor of the Smithsonian Institution, secre- 
tary of the committee; Mr. F. W. Hodge, ethnologist-in-charge of 
the Bureau of American Ethnology; and Dr. George P. Merrill, head 
curator of geology, United States National Museum. 


THE SMITHSONIAN LIBRARY. 


The formation of a library of science was one of the earliest 
activities of the Smithsonian Institution and its natural growth 
during the last 60 or more years has resulted in the accumulation of 
nearly half a million works bearing on practically every branch of 
natural science, the fine arts, and the industrial arts. For adminis- 
trative reasons a large portion of the library, consisting in the main 
of transactions of learned societies, was in 1866 deposited in the 
Library of Congress. This deposit is constantly being increased, the 
accessions during the past year numbering 24,718 items of publica- 
tions and making the total number of entries to June 30, 1915, 
521,616. 

The several libraries still directly maintained by the Institution 
and its branches include the Smithsonian office library; the libraries 
of the National Museum, comprising over 100,000 titles; the Bureau 
of American Ethnology, about 35,000 titles; the Astrophysical Ob- 
servatory; the National Herbarium; and in addition to these should 
be mentioned the more recently formed aeronautical library, which 
contains probably the most.complete series of works on this sub- 
ject in the United States. One of the chief contributors to this 
library during the year was Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, whose 
gift included a working library of 46 volumes and 156 volumes of 
newspaper clippings covering the recent years of rapid development 
of the art of aeronautics. 

Among other accessions to the art section of the library during the 
year I may mention the loan by Mrs. Walcott of nine volumes of 
Japanese art and about 400 volumes of architectural publications 
which formed the library of her brother, Mr. George Vaux, of 
Philadelphia. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 19 


The report of the assistant librarian, appended hereto, describes 
the improvements recently made by the construction of steel stacks 
in the Smithsonian building for assembling in accessible quarters 
many general works belonging to the Government bureaus under the 
Institution which had heretofore been widely scattered in unsuitable 
rooms. 

LUCY T. AND GEORGE W. POORE FUND. 


In my last report I referred to a number of bequests then awaiting 
settlement. One of these was the bequest of George W. Poore, of 
Lowell, Mass., who died December 17, 1910, and by the terms of 
his will made the Smithsonian Institution his residuary legatee. 
As mentioned in my 1910 report, the estate, estimated at about 
$40,000, is bequeathed under the condition that the income of this 
sum should be added to the principal until a total of $250,000 should 
have been reached, and that then the income only should be used for 
the purposes for which the Institution was created. Although I 
have heretofore called attention to Mr. Poore’s reason for making 
this bequest, it is so apt and appropriate that I will repeat it here. 
The will says: 

I make this gift not so much because of its amount as because I hope it will 
prove an example for other Americans to follow, by supporting and encouraging 


so wise and beneficent an institution as I believe the Smithsonian Institution 
to be, and yet it has been neglected and overlooked by American citizens. 


In March, 1915, the Institution received from the executors of the 
Poore estate the first installment of the bequest, amounting to 
$24,534.92, as noted under the head of finances. It will be known as 
the Lucy T. and George W. Poore fund. 


THE FREER COLLECTION. 


In 1906 Mr. Charles L. Freer, of Detroit, Mich., presented to the 
Institution about 2,300 paintings and other objects of art, and from 
time to time since then he has supplemented that gift by further 
generous donations until this wonderful collection now aggregates 
4,811 pieces, including 991 paintings, engravings, lithographs, etc., 
by American artists, and 3,820 oriental works of art, many of them 
of high historic and intrinsic value. It was stipulated by Mr. Freer 
in connection with the gift that the collection should remain in his 
custody during his lifetime, and that he would provide funds for the 
erection of a suitable building for the permanent preservation of the 
collection. He is now considering the question of erecting such a 
building and a committee of the Regents has been appointed “on 
the securing of a site for the Freer Art Gallery.” 


20 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. 


The report of the Assistant Secretary in charge of the National 
Museum, hereto appended, indicates most gratifying progress in all 
lines of Museum activities. To the collections there have been many 
large and most valuable additions, and installation of exhibits, par- 
ticularly in the new or natural history building, has been greatly ad- 
vanced and improved. 

More than 800,000 specimens were He aan during the year, 
over two-thirds = which pertained to paleontology and zoology, 
one-sixth to botany, and the remainder to anthropology, geology, 
mineralogy, textiles, and to other divisions of the Museum. 

The ethnological exhibits were enriched by a large series of old 
Japanese art assembled some 30 years ago by the late J. Crawford 
Lyon; baskets, musical instruments, and other objects from Dutch 
Borneo, presented by Dr. W. L. Abbott; also many interesting ar- 
ticles pertaining to the American Indians. In American archeology 
the principal accession was a series of implements and other objects 
of stone, metal, and terra cotta from various parts of the United 
States and Mexico, secured through cooperation with the management 
of the San Diego Exposition. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell added 
very greatly to the electrical exhibits by his gift of 280 pieces of 
experimental phonographic apparatus and several relics relating to 
the early history of the telephone. 

Special mention should also be made of the gift of Mr. Hugo 
Worch of a large number of pianofortes, illustrating the progress 
and development of piano making from about 1770 to 1850. The 
earliest of European pianos in the series dates from about 1770 and 
of American pianos about 1790. Many interesting accessions per- 
taining to American history are mentioned by the Assistant Secretary 
in his report, as also important additions to the zoological, geological, 
and botanical collections. A most notable contribution of mollusks, 
consisting of a very large collection of specimens from practically 
every part of the world, was a gift from Mr. John B. Henderson, a 
Regent of the Institution. 

As in previous years, much material was received from the United 
States Geological Survey, the Bureau of Fisheries, the Department 
of Agriculture, and other Government establishments, these accumu- 
lations from various field researches having served their purpose in 
the preparation of reports on scientific investigations. 

The National Gallery of Art has already outgrown the space 
allotted to the display of paintings. Each year the additions to the 
permanent collection of paintings, as well as the loan exhibits, causes 
more and more embarrassment to those in charge of their installa- . 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 21 


tion, and the time has now come when serious consideration must be 
given to securing adequate quarters for these national collections. 

T can not pass without mention of the very interesting exhibition of 
laces, embroideries, and other art textiles, as also the historical cos- 
tumes, especially those representing the several administrations at 
the White House since the period of President Washington. I will 
not attempt to describe any of the gowns recently received, further 
than to say that they include a lavender silk dress worn by Mrs. Fill- 
more, one of black moiré worn by Mrs. Pierce at the inauguration of 
President Pierce in 1853, and a pale green brocade worn by Mrs. 
Cleveland during President Cleveland’s first administration. 

The division of textiles has greatly increased in popular interest 
through the installation of a series of machines illustrating methods 
of manufacture as well as exhibits of the raw and finished products. 

Likewise, mineral technology is being illustrated by models and 
products, showing the manufacture of mica plate from material here- 
tofore thrown away as waste, the preparation of asbestos products, 
and the manufacture of graphite and its industrial products. 

The Museum is participating in the expositions at San Francisco 
and San Diego, although the very small allotment allowed the Institu- 
tion and its branches from the appropriation for Government ex- 
hibits permitted only a comparatively small display at San Fran- 
cisco. At the San Diego Exposition, however, for which no appro- 
priation was granted for Government exhibits, it was ‘possible, 
through cooperation with the exposition management, to prepare an 
interesting exhibit of physical anthropology and one illustrating 
American aboriginal industries. The former exhibit, more fully de- 
scribed on a previous page, is an entirely novel one. It illustrates 
man’s evolution, his development or growth, his racial, sexual, and 
individual variations, and the causes, other than normal senility, 
which result in the decline of the human organism. 

For many years it has been possible to aid the schools and colleges 
of the country in their teaching of natural history through the dis- 
tribution of duplicate material. During the past year 163 sets of 
such duplicates, aggregating 14,843 specimens, were thus distributed. 
And about 8,000 duplicate specimens, nearly three-fifths of which 
were plants, were utilized in exchanges with other museums and in- 
stitutions. 

The total number of visitors to the older Museum building during 
the year was 133,202, and to the new building 321,712. The latter 
aggregate includes 59,577 Sunday visitors to the new building, the 
older building not being open on that day. 

The Museum issued its usual annual report and series of scientific 
papers, the total distribution for the year aggregating 54,000 volumes 
and pamphlets. 


92 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 


The field work of the Bureau of American Ethnology during the 
last year resulted in the accumulation of a large amount of im- 
portant data relating in particular to the early inhabitants of the 
western and southwestern portions of the United States. There was 
also brought together a great deal of material bearing on the habits, 
customs, beliefs, institutions, ceremonies, and languages of vanishing 
tribes of Indians throughout the country. The report of the ethnolo- 
gist-in-charge, appended hereto, reviews in detail many lines of sys- 
tematic research now being conducted by the bureau. Among these 
I may note interesting explorations in New Mexico and Utah among 
ancient village sites which appear characteristic of peoples prob- 
ably of a considerable earlier period than those heretofore known 
from those regions. Ancient earthenware collected by Dr. Fewkes 
in such sites in the lower Mimbres Valley in New Mexico bear deco- 
rations of animals and geometric designs in some measure resembling 
certain ancient paintings on the walls of caves in France, In south- 
ern Arizona are some extensive aboriginal ruins awaiting investiga- 
tion, which bid fair to add much to our knowledge of the early in- 
habitants of that region. 

Among documents preserved in the Santa Ines Mission in Califor- 
nia there has been brought to light an old manuscript of special in- 
terest in connection with the study of the former Chumash Indians, 
and a complete copy of the manuscript has been made for the use of 
the bureau. 

Special researches have been in progress for some years in the 
preparation of several series of handbooks relating to American In- 
dians. One of these series, devoted to Indian languages, is in course 
of publication, the first volume already having been issued, under 
the editorship of Dr. Franz Boas. A Handbook of American An- 
tiquities, the first part of which will soon be ready for the printer, 
is being prepared by Mr. W. H. Holmes. The “ Handbook of Ameri- 
can Indians North of Mexico,” published some years ago, has had 
several reprintings, and the public demand for it still continues. A 
handbook in course of preparation is devoted to Aboriginal Remains 
East of the Mississippi. 

There had been such doubt and discussion as to the probable age 
of certain Indian mounds in northeastern Kansas and southeastern 
Nebraska that it seemed important for a representative of the bureau 
to make an investigation of the facts in the case. This task was 
undertaken by Mr. Gerard Fowke. His report indicates that instead 
of dating back many thousands of years, as some had claimed, “ it is 
safe to say that no earthwork, mound, lodge site, or human bones 
along this part of the Missouri River has been here as long as 10 
centuries.” 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 2a 


The study and analysis of Indian music is a subject to which the 
bureau has devoted considerable attention during the last few years, 
and there have already been published two bulletins on Chippewa 
music, which have attracted much attention in the musical world. 
There is now in press an extended account of “ Teton Sioux Music” 
with transcriptions of 240 songs and about 100 illustrations; and a 
paper on the music of the Ute Indians is in preparation. 

The collection of manuscripts pertaining to American Indians which 
has been accumulated by the bureau during the last 30 years now 
numbers about 1,700 items. Many of these manuscripts have come to 
be of priceless value, comprising as they do records which it would 
be impossible now to duplicate. There was added to this collection 
during the last year a number of interesting records, including a 
Laguna Indian dictionary, 49 Arapaho and Gros Ventre notebooks, 
the war record of “Sitting Bull” depicted in 55 pictographs, and a 
photostat copy of “A Grammar of the Pottewatomy Language.” 

- The bureau issued two bulletins, and there was in press at the Gov- 

ernment Printing Office at the close of the year the twenty-ninth, 
thirtieth, thirty-first, and thirty-second annual reports, and four 
bulletins. The completion of several of these works is delayed by 
the European war, the authors in some cases residing in belligerent 
countries. The distribution of publications aggregated 10,185 vol- 
umes and pamphlets. There were about 500 books added to the 
library, which now numbers 20,237 volumes, 13,188 pamphlets, and 
several thousand unbound periodicals. 


ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY. 


One of the principal researches by the Astrophysical Observatory 
during the past year was the continuation of observations as to the 
intensity of solar radiation at various altitudes, with a view to defi- 
nitely determine the value of the solar constant of radiation. By 
means of sounding balloons, to which were attached automatic record- 
ing pyrheliometers, successful records were secured up to a height of 
25,000 meters or about 15 miles, where the barometric pressure is only 
one twenty-fifth that at sea level. Director Abbot, in his report 
and in a special publication (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 
Vol. 65, No. 4, June 19, 1915), reviews the observations in solar radia- 
tion made at various altitudes from sea level up to the highest prac- 
ticable mountain peak (Mount Whitney), thence in a balloon as high 
as man could live, thence to a height of 15 miles, and concludes that 
the solar constant of radiation is 1.93 calories per square centimeter 
per minute. Dr. Abbot discusses also the interesting fact that con- 
siderable fluctuations of the “solar-constant” values occur from day 
to day ranging over nearly 10 per cent between the extreme limits, 


24 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


1.81 and 1.99 calories. In 1913 the radiation of the sun was 2.5 per 
cent below the mean, and 1 per cent above the mean in 1914. A high 
average value is said to be indicated for 1915. In concluding his re- 
port for the year Dr. Abbot says: 

Short-period fluctuations of solar radiation were large in 1913, but small in 
1914. Associated with these quick, irregular fluctuations are found variations 
of contrast of brightness between the center and edges of the solar disk. Curi- 
ously enough, while greater contrast is associated with greater radiation and 
with numerous sun spots in the general march of the sun’s activity, lesser con- 
trast is associated with greater solar radiation in the march of the quick, irregu- 
lar fluctuations of the sun’s emission. This paradox points to two causes of 
solar radiation—the long period changes may probably be caused by changes 9f 
the sun’s effective temperature attending the march of solar activity; the quick 
fluctuations may be ascribed to changes of the transparency of the outer solar 
envelope. 


INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES. 


The operations of the International Exchange Service have been 
necessarily curtailed for some months because of the European war. 
The total number of packages handled during the year was 275,756, 
or 65,911 less than the year before, and their weight was 367,854 
pounds, a decrease of 199,131 pounds. There has accumulated, more- 
over, a large number of packages awaiting opportunity of shipment, 
particularly to Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, 
Montenegro, Roumania, Russia, Servia, and Turkey, which were en- 
tirely shut out of the service at the close of the year, although cor- 
respondence is in progress to secure renewal of shipment with some 
of those countries. 

One of the important functions of this service is the interchange 
of official Government documents with various countries, resulting 
in the building up of a most important division of the Library of 
Congress. During the past year there was received in this connection 
from the Chinese Government a set of the Imperial Institute of the 
Ching Dynasty and other valuable records aggregating 684 volumes. 

Fifty-six full sets and 36 partial sets of United States official publi- 
cations are now sent regularly to depositories abroad, in accordance 
with treaty stipulations and congressional resolutions. A list of these 
depositories and detailed statistics of the service are given in the 
appendix to this report. 


INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE OF SCIENTIFIC 
LITERATURE. 


The Smithsonian Institution has administered the United States 
Bureau of the International Catalogue since its organization in 1901. 
There are 33 of these regional bureaus located in the principal coun- 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 25 


tries with a central bureau in London, where reference cards are as- 
sembled and published annually in 17 volumes covering each branch 
of science. During the past year there were collected and classified 
in the Smithsonian office and sent to London 12,386 cards of reference 
to the scientific literature of the United States for the year 1914, be- 
sides 14,027 references for the years 1906 to 1913, or an aggregate of 
26,413 cards, making 345,349 references to American literature since 
1901. 

Through a minute system of classification, the equivalent of a brief 
digest of the subject contents of each paper, the International Cata- 
logue places before students and investigators references to practi- 
cally all the scientific literature of the world. 

On account of the necessarily high cost of the annual volumes sub- 
scriptions to the series are limited as a rule to the most important 
institutions and libraries, where, however, the catalogue is available 
to everyone desiring to consult this work. 

As in all lines of scientific work, the European war temporarily in- 
terferes with the finances and general work of the catalogue and the 
amount of literature produced in most of the countries at war is 
greatly curtailed. 


NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK. 


There was added to the collections in the National Zoological Park 
during the past year a number of interesting animals, including 25 
species not before represented there. The total accessions ager seared 
498. The census of animals on hand June 30, 1915, was 1,397 indi- 
viduals, representing 151 different species of patina) 185 of birds, 
and 22 of reptiles, as compared with 1,362 animals on hand July 1, 
1914. The report of the superintendent of the park, on another page, 
records a detailed systematic list of all the animals, numbering 629 
mammals, 696 birds, and 72 reptiles. 

Every year since 1890, when the park was established, many speci- 
mens have been received through the individual donations of those 
interested in its growth. Forty-three such donors during the past 
year contributed 60 animals. 

The total number of visitors was 794,530, an increase of about 
60,000 over the year preceding, and the largest attendance in the his- 
tory of the park. Among the visitors were 3,485 students from vari- 
ous schools and classes on special visits to the park for educational 
purposes. 

The superintendent notes among the improvements of the year the 
construction of a cage and shelter house for pumas; and an out-of- 
doors inclosure with a small shelter house for a band of 25 rhesus 
monkeys which thrived there well throughout the winter. 


26 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Near the close of the year work was begun on a hospital and labor- 
atory building, the urgent need of which was noted in my last 
report. 

In the sundry civil act making appropriations for the fiscal year 
ending June 30, 1914, provision was made for the acquisition of about 
10 acres of land along the western boundary of the park, but neces- 
sary legal proceedings to complete the purchase had not come to a 
close at the end of the year. 

Among the primary objects in establishing the Zoological Park was 
the “instruction and recreation of the people.” To this end the 
playground department of the District of Columbia has been allowed 
to install several pieces of apparatus in a meadow tract which has 
become a favorite resort for picnic parties. 

The needs of the park become greater with the growth of the col- 
lections and the increasing popularity of the resort as an attractive 
public institution. The appropriations from year to year, while 
sufficient for absolute maintenance, have permitted the construction 
of but few of such permanent buildings as are needed for the ade- 
quate care of the animals. Among these urgent needs I may mention 
an aviary building and a building for the proper housing of ele- 
phants, hippopotami, and certain other animals now sheltered in 
mere temporary quarters. 

Accompanying the superintendent’s report is an outline map on 
which are indicated desirable building sites where necessary grading 
for that purpose would permit the desirable filling of certain ravines 
now practically useless. 


NECROLOGY. 


THEODORE NICHOLAS GILL. 


Theodore Nicholas Gill was born at New York March 21, 1887, 
and died at Washington September 25, 1914. The following tribute 
to his memory was adopted at a meeting of his associates on Sep- 
tember 26: 

TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF DR. GILL. 


Theodore Nicholas Gill, master of arts, doctor of medicine, doctor of philos- 
ophy, doctor of laws, associate in zoology in the United States National Museum. 
died at Washington, D. C., September 25, 1914, in the seventy-eighth year of his 
age. ; 

His associates in the Smithsonian Institution and its several branches, 
assembled at a meeting in his memory at the National Museum on September 
26, do here record their deep sorrow in the loss of a sincere friend, profound 
scholar, one of America’s foremost men of science, and one officially connected 
with the Smithsonian Institution in various capacities for more than half a 
century. 

Trained in private schools and by special tutors in New York City, he early 
acquired a love for natural science which he made his life work, rising to the 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. a7 


highest rank in the field of zoology, and through his critical studies adding 
greatly to the sum of human knowledge. 

As one of the founders of the Cosmos Club; as a professor in the Columbian 
(now the George Washington) University for more than 50 years; as a member 
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Philosophical 
Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and of many other scientific socie- 
ties in the United States and foreign lands, Dr. Gill was most highly esteemed 
and was widely known to biologists throughout the world as a man of deep 
and accurate learning, particularly in the study of his specialty, ichthyology. A 
man of phenomenal memory, familiar with many languages, he was a veritable 
cyclopedia of science and knew how to make plain to the layman its technical 
phraseology. He was a constant and willing source of information and in- 
spiration to all who sought his aid in professional studies. 

Through devotion to his chosen calling and his genial disposition Dr. Gill 
has left to his associates a cherished memory and a brilliant example worthy 
of emulation. 


WILLIAM WOODVILLE ROCKHILL. 


— William Woodville Rockhill, former ambassador to Russia, Tur- 
key, and other countries, one who had ably filled many other im- 
- portant diplomatic positions in China, Korea, and elsewhere, and 
had served as Assistant Secretary of State, was born in Philadelphia 
in 1854 and died in Honolulu, December 8, 1914. From 1888 to 1892 
he conducted two scientific missions to China, Mongolia, and Tibet 
under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, resulting in a 
large accumulation of most interesting and important data bearing 
on the habits and customs particularly of the then little-known 
Tibetans. Much of this valuable information was embodied in his 
“ Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet,” published by the 
Institution. To the National Museum collections he added a large 
amount of ethnological material resulting from his journeys. Mr. 
Rockhill was intensely devoted to oriental study and had been a con- 
stant collaborator of the Smithsonian Institution throughout all his 
official career. At the time of his death he was en route to assume his 
duties as financial adviser to the Chinese Government. 
Respectfully submitted. 
Cuaries D. Watcort, Secretary. 


APPENDIX 1. 
REPORT ON THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 


Str: I have the honor to submit the following report on the opera- 
tions of the United States National Museum for the fiscal year end- 
ing June 80, 1915: 

{NTRODUCTORY. 


In the last two reports the general status and arrangement of the 
public collections in all departments were briefly reviewed. Since 
then the exhibits of anthropology, biology, and geology in the new 
building have undergone few material changes, though they have 
received many important additions and there has been an improve- 
ment in the condition of a large number of specimens which needed 
renovation. It having become necessary to provide a place for the 
larger whale skeletons, which were not transferred at the time of 
the general moving of the zoological collections, the south hall in the 
second story of the west wing, previously assigned to marine in- 
vertebrates, was allotted to this purpose and the invertebrates were 
taken to the north side of the building on the same floor. The re- 
installations necessitated by these changes were in progress at the 
close of the year. : 

The accommodations afforded by the improvised picture gallery 
in the north main hall have been entirely outgrown and the point 
has been reached where the paintings must be so crowded as to 
utterly destroy their effect. There is no other suitable location to 
which this important collection can be extended and would-be con- 
tributors find no encouragement in the conditions. The time has 
certainly arrived when serious consideration should be given toward 
providing proper means for sheltering and displaying the art treas- 
ures of the Museum, in which connection the interests of the Na-_ 
tional Gallery of Art are vitally at stake. 

The work of renovation of the main hall in the Smithsonian 
building, which continued throughout the year, prevented the exe- 
cution of the proposed plans for the enlargement and improvement — 
of the exhibition series of the graphic arts. In the older Museum 
building the installations, especially in the recently reorganized di- 
visions, steadily progressed with very measurable advancement. In 

28 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 29 


the division of textiles much material was added, many gaps were 
filled, and numerous novel features were introduced. In mineral 
technology, where the construction of models makes progress slower, 
the number of comprehensive educational features was nevertheless 
considerably increased, and so many more are in course of preparation 
that another year should see a wide representation of the subjects 
covered. Toward the end of the year a section of wood technology 
was established with the main object of setting forth in a manner to 
satisfy the artisan and the public the qualities and sources of the 
woods available for any purpose to which that material is put. It 
is not doubted that a creditable collection can soon be gathered. 


COLLECTIONS. 


The additions to the collections, comprised in 1,481 accessions, 
aggregated approximately 304,647 specimens, which were classified 
and assigned as follows: Anthropology, 15,140; zoology, 101,928; 


botany, 51,295; geology and mineralogy, 4,063; paleontology, 129,981 ; 


textiles and animal and vegetable products, 1,511; mineral technol 
ogy, 607; National Gallery of Art, 122. Loans for exhibition were 
also received to the extent of 1,760 articles, consisting of paintings 
and sculptures, laces, embroideries and tapestries, costumes and 
other ‘historical objects, ethnological specimens, etc. The number 
of lots of material sent in for examination and report amounted to 
790, of which about 64 per cent were geological and 28 per cent 
zoological. 

Among the more important gifts to the division of ethnology were 
a large series of old Japanese art, assembled about 30 years ago by 
the late J. Crawford Lyon and presented by the Misses Lyon; a col- 
lection of baskets, bark cloth, sword hilts in process of making, 
quivers for blowgun darts, musical instruments, and other objects, 
gathered in Dutch Borneo by Mr. H. C. Raven, and donated by Dr. 
W. L. Abbott; examples of modern Egyptian clothing contributed 
by Mr. Herbert E. Winlock; and interesting articles from the Plains 
Indians, which belonged to the late Maj. George Henry Palmer, 
United States Army, presented by Mrs. Palmer. A valuable series 
of musical instruments, household articles, tools, and other objects 
from the Ute Indians of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, south- 
eastern Utah, was purchased. The loans comprised objects from 
southern Mindanao, P. I., Abyssinia, Japan, China, Egypt, and 
Europe. 

The principal accession in American archeology was secured 
through the cooperation of the Smithsonian Institution with the 
management of the Panama-California Exposition at San Diego, and 
comprised important series of implements and other objects of stone, 


30 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


metal, and terra cotta from various localities in the United States 
and Mexico. Many specimens of like nature from the same countries 
were also received in exchange from the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseum 
at Stockholm, and the Bureau of American Ethnology transmitted a 
quantity of pottery displaying a distinct type of decoration from 
the lower Mimbres Valley, N. Mex. A banner stone of rose quartz, 
a very remarkable Indian relic and probably one of the finest ex- 
amples of its kind yet brought to ight, from Woodruff County, Ark., 
and one image of gold and two of gilded copper from Chiriqui, 
Panama, were purchased. The principal gifts consisted of a notable 
jade ax from Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, a small stone celt from 
Ahuachapan, San Salvador, and a clay figurine from Tepecoyo, in 
the same country, presented by Mr. Emilio Mosonyi, of San Salvador, 
and a pottery vase from a mound in Marion County, Tenn., con- 
tributed by Mr. Clarence B. Moore. 

In Old World archeology there were only two relatively important 
accessions. The first, an exchange from Dr. Rutot, of the Royal 
Museum of Natural History at Brussels, consisted of 90 Neolithic 
stone implements from Belgium, representing the first epoch of pol- 
ished stone culture in Europe, known as the “ Spiennian”; the sec- 
ond, a gift from Mr. Herbert E. Clark, of Jerusalem, of 19 stone 
implements, forming a valuable addition to the present collection 
from Palestine. 

The more important contributions in physical anthropology com- 
prised skeletal material from a Minsi burial place on the Jersey 
side of the Delaware River, 3 miles below Montague, N. J., one 
of the most complete and carefully recorded collections of such 
specimens so far acquired, from Mr. George G. Heye, of New York; 
similar material from Alabama and Tennessee, from Mr. Clarence B. 
Moore; eight prehistoric skeletons and four skulls from Bohemia, 
from Prof. J. Matiegka, of the University of Prague; and three 
nearly complete and four partial human skeletons, from Montana, 
collected by Mr. C. W. Gilmore, of the Museum staff. 

The electrical collections were enriched by a most noteworthy 
gift from Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, consisting of 280 pieces of 
experimental phonographic apparatus and several relics connected 
with the early history of the telephone. Under a special act of 
Congress, the Coast and Geodetic Survey transferred a large number 
of antiquated surveying instruments which are now of much his- 
torical importance; and a quantity of guns needed to fill gaps in th¢g 
collection were deposited by the Navy and War Departments. Of 
especial interest is a gasoline automobile of 1896, presented by the 
Olds Motor Works. 

The section of musical instruments received during the year such a 
contribution as places its collection among the most notable of the 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 31 


kind in the world. The gift came from Mr. Hugo Worch, of Wash- 
ington, D. C., a student of the history of the pianoforte in America, 
who has been assembling a collection of these instruments, which he 
offered to the Museum in order to provide for their permanent 
preservation. While accommodations for the entire series may not 
be found, 70 instruments have already been delivered, the selection 
following lines to best illustrate the progress and development in 
piano making down to about 1850. Too much praise can not be 
accorded Mr. Worch for this splendid donation, which now includes 
24 examples of European make and 46 of American make. With few 
exceptions, the latter are the product of manufacturers in Philadel- 
phia, New York, Baltimore, and Boston, and represent, among 
others, the names of Taws, Albrecht, Harper, Geib, Kearsing, Loud, 
Hisky, Osborne, Nunns, Goodrich, Stewart, Chickering, Meyer, Bab- 
cock, and Wise. The earliest of the American pianos is of date about 
1790 and of the European about 1770. While in most cases the ex- 
amples are no longer in playing shape, the mechanism is preserved, 
and some remain in excellent condition. 

In the section of ceramics the more noteworthy additions con- 
sisted of two loans, one including an old porcelain rice bow] and a 
tea set of cloisonné on porcelain from Miss Julia H. Chadwick, the 
other being a collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelains from 
Miss Eliza R. Scidmore. The division of graphic arts received 
a large number of specimens mainly required for filling gaps in the 
collections, among the more important being illustrations of a process 
for color printing from photographs and of the rapid rotary in- 
taglho process, besides many examples of lithographs, collotypes, 
and other prints. 

The additions to the memorial collection of American history were 
numerous and of great variety, the most important being loans, in 
which were included a water-color portrait of Washington by James 
Peale; articles of military equipment carried by Capt. William Wal- 
ton during the War of the Revolution; a silver tea service of five 
pieces once the property of Laura Wolcott, daughter of Oliver 
Wolcott, a signer of the Declaration of Independence; a pair of gold - 
and jeweled earrings formerly belonging to Mrs. Rebecca Madison, 
niece of President Madison; and three gold medals and one of 
bronze added to the collection of Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary, 
United States Navy. There was also a large contribution of silver 
and bronze coins of the nineteenth century, issues of the United 
States and several foreign countries; and the collection of postage 
stamps, envelopes, and post cards was very materially increased. 

The exhibition of historical costumes was greatly increased both by 
gift and loan, most noteworthy being appropriate costumes for repre- 
senting four additional presidential administrations at the White 


32 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


House. The earliest of these belonged to Betty Taylor, daughter of 
President Zachary Taylor, 1849-1850. The next, a lavender silk dress, 
was worn at the White House by Mrs. Fillmore, wife of President 
Millard Fillmore, 1850-1853. The third, a black moiré, was worn 
by Mrs. Pierce on the occasion of the inauguration of her husband, 
Franklin Pierce, March 4, 1853. The last, a pale-green brocade, was 
used by Mrs. Cleveland during the first administration of President 
Cleveland, 1885-1889. 

Tn the section of art textiles the acquisitions, all loans, comprised 
over 100 pieces of lace, besides embroideries, brocades, velvets, tapes- 
tries, etc. Six tapestries of great beauty and value were also lent for 
a short period by Messrs. P. W. French & Co., of New York. The 
room containing this collection was entirely renovated and repainted, 
the materials were also for the most part rearranged, and where 
necessary new and more effective backgrounds were substituted. 

As during many successive years, the Museum was indebted to Dr. 
W. L. Abbott for large collections of the higher animals, one made 
at his expense in Dutch East Borneo by Mr. H. C. Raven, the other, 
composed entirely of mammals, obtained by himself in Kashmir. Of 
no less importance was a collection from the northwest coast of Cuba, 
secured during an expedition by Mr. John B. Henderson, comprising 
at least 10,000 mollusks and other invertebrates, nearly 3,000 fishes, 
and many reptiles and batrachians. The Bureau of Fisheries made 
extensive deposits of marine invertebrates and fishes; and Mr. Arthur 
de C. Sowerby continued to transmit valuable series of vertebrates and 
insects from little known districts in China. Birds, reptiles, batra- 
chians, fishes, and marine invertebrates from Panama were contrib- 
uted by Mr. James Zetek; plants and marine invertebrates in large 
numbers by the Carnegie Trstitition of Washington; and ional of 
various groups by the Biological Survey. 

Besides those above mentioned, interesting collections of birds were 
received from Ecuador and Australia. A unique accession consisted 
of the last of the pair of passenger pigeons which had been so long 
preserved in the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, and whose death sig- 
nalized the absolute extinction of this remarkable form. Additional 
specimens of reptiles and batrachians were obtained from Texas, Cali- 
fornia, Mexico, and Baluchistan; and of fishes from the Philippine 
Islands, Formosa, and Panama. 

The most notable contribution of mollusks was a gift from Mr. 
John B. Henderson of a very large collection of selected and gen- 
erally identified specimens assembled from practically every part of 
the world. Eight separate transfers of invertebrates by the Bureau 
of Fisheries were of much scientific value. Four of these consisted of 
material that had been studied and described and therefore contained 
numerous type specimens, and the remainder of new collections from 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 33 


recent surveys of the steamer Adbatross on the Pacific coast. 
Through the courtesy of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 
about 1,000 specimens of corals from the Bahama Islands and 
Florida, 800 specimens from Australia, and many other marine forms 
were acquired. The Bureau of Entomology was the principal con- 
tributor of insects, which belonged mainly to the Hymenoptera, Dip- 
tera, and Odonata. Peruvian Diptera to the number of over 3,000, 
besides several hundred preparations, were presented by Dr. C. H. T. 
Townsend; and numerous wasps and other insects, by Dr. T. D. A. 
Cockerell. Two other important collections, consisting of Coleoptera 
and Hymenoptera, were received from Copenhagen. 

The number of plants received was greater than in any of the pre- 
vious 10 years except 1913. Nearly one-fourth were deposited by the 
Department of Agriculture, including 7,300 specimens of grasses, of 
which the larger part will be distributed in sets to scientific establish- 
‘ments. Two other noteworthy collections from the same department 
consisted of phanerogams from the western United States and west- 
ern Canada. Important accessions otherwise obtained came from the 
West Indies, the Philippine Islands, China, the Canary Islands, 
western South America, Mexico, and several of the States. 

Though the accessions in geology were not extensive, they fur- 
nished a considerable variety of valuable material. A collection 
from the Geological Survey was illustrative of the economic phases 
of the feldspar deposits of the United States. Individual gifts com- 
prised excellent specimens of ferberite-bearing pegmatite from Ari- 
zona; tungsten ore and roscoelite-bearing sandstone from Colorado; 
and a sample of ferro-vanadium made from patronite ores of Minas- 
ragra, Peru; besides several slabs of marble for the exhibition series 
of ornamental stones. The meteorite collection was enriched by 
specimens from 13 falls, obtained by gift, exchange, and purchase, 
to which may be added fragments of 12 meteorites deposited by the 
National Academy of Sciences. 

The most important single accession in mineralogy consisted of 
several hundred specimens of minerals and cut stones, including a 
suite of unique titantic crystals from an exhausted locality at Bridge- 
water, Pa., received as a bequest from the late Brig. Gen. William H. 
Forwood, United States Army. Among the transfers from the 
Geological Survey were various lots of gem minerals, in both rough 
and cut form, including many specimens of exceptional value, con- 
sisting for the most part of types of new species, or restudied and 
redescribed material from new localities. From several other sources 
rare and interesting examples were also obtained, such as one of the 
largest known nuggets of osmiridium, large crystals of phenacite, 
tarbuttite, roepperite, pseudomorphs from the Blue Jay Copper 
Mine, scheelite, large rhodonites, ete. The additions in petrology 

18618°—sm 1915——3 


34 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


consisted, as usual, largely of studied material, representing folio 
series, deposited by the Geological Survey. Mention should also be 
made of an interesting collection of obsidians from Iceland, pre- 
sented by Dr. F. E. Wright, and illustrating his studies on the origin 
of spherulitic structure. 

An extensive series of Devonian fossils, representing the lifelong 
collecting of Prof. Henry Shaler Williams, and including many 
faunas not previously represented in the Museum, formed the largest 
and most important accession in invertebrate paleontology. It was 
transferred by the Geological Survey, which also deposited nearly 
600 specimens of type and other monographic material. Other large 
acquisitions consisted of about 5,000 specimens of European Paleo- 
zoic and Mesozoic fossils; some 6,000 specimens of Ordovician and 
Silurian fossils from Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky; and about 
5,000 Cambrian fossils from China. <A series of Mesozoic sponges 
from Germany is especially adapted for exhibition purposes, as is 
also a large slab containing numerous Devonian glass sponges from 
New York. Additional specimens from the cave deposit at Cum- 
berland, Md., referred to in previous reports, comprising 15 more or 
less complete skulls and other fragmental material, were obtained 
through the generous financial aid of Mr. John B. Henderson. 
Portions of a mastodon discovered at Winamac, Ind., indicate the 
existence at that place of a more or less complete. skeleton, which the 
Museum has obtained permission to excavate. Other important con- 
tributions include 30 dinosaurian skin plates from the Lance forma- 
tion in Wyoming; a composite skeleton of a dog, and three skulls 
and lower jaws, from the Rancho La Brea asphalt deposits at Los 
Angeles, Cal.; and a large part of the skeleton of the extinct swim- 
ming reptile, Mosasaurus, from Montana. 

The division of textiles received so many and such variety of addi- 
tions as to render an adequate summation impossible within the 
compass of this report. Of particular popular interest is a series of 
machines for ginning, drawing, spinning, and weaving cotton, which 
it is intended, in part at least, to provide with motive power so as 
to be able to actually demonstrate to the public the processes of manu- 
facture from the raw material to the finished product. The processes 
in the manufacture of worsted goods and of carded woolen fabrics 
are also fully illustrated by a large series of specimens. Besides 
standard goods of cotton, wool, silk, etc., the contributions include 
a great array of specialties and novelties, materials recently placed 
upon the market, or soon to be, in satisfaction of the ever-increasing 
demand for new stuffs and new patterns. Printed cotton goods, 
printed cotton draperies, upholstery fabrics; pile fabrics for dress and 
decorative purpose, including beautiful examples of artificial furs; 
brocaded dress silks for the fall season of 1915, new printed satins,° 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 5) 


pongees, tussah silks, trimming silks, taffeta dress silks in Mexican 
and Indian designs; satins, crépes, and chiffons decorated by means 
of spray printing; machine and hand made laces; embroidered and 
brocaded Chinese silks; Cashmere shawls; the manufacture of Amer- 
ican rugs; oilcloths—these and many samples of other goods were 
all well represented in the accessions of the year. Additions were 
also received for the historical collection of textile machinery, in- 
cluding several early appliances marking important stages in the 
development of the industry. 

Following the plans outlined in a previous report, the work of 
preparing exhibits in mineral technology was actively carried on. 
The principal ones, including models and products, installed during 
the year were illustrative of the occurrence, mining, and treatment of 
rock salt for the manufacture of sodium compounds by the Solvay 
Process Co., of Syracuse, N. Y.; the manufacture of glass, additional 
to the models received the previous year, from the Macbeth-Evans 
Co.; the processes employed in the manufacture of gypsum as a 
building material at Oakfield, N. Y.; the manufacture of mica plate 
by a process which permits the utilization of what was formerly 
thrown away as waste; the occurrence, derivation, and adaptability 
of abrading materials; asbestos fiber and the manufacture of asbestos 
products; a by-product coke furnace, its operation, and products; 
and the manufacture of graphite and its industrial products. 


THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART. 


By a supplemental transfer executed in January, 1915, the splendid 
gift of Mr. Charles L. Freer, of Detroit, Mich., was increased by 
110 articles, of which 8 are American and 102 oriental. The Ameri- 
can works comprise 1 oil painting by Dwight W. Tryon, 1 oil paint- 
ing and 2 silver points by Thomas W. Dewing, and 3 drawings and 
sketches and 1 lithograph by James McNeill Whistler. The oriental 
objects consist of 43 Chinese and 7 Japanese paintings, mainly panels, 
kakemono, and makimono; 14 pieces of pottery, of which 12 are 
Chinese and 1 each Rakka and Raghes; and 24 pieces of jade, 5 
sculptures in stone, and 9 bronzes, all Chinese. By this addition 
the Freer collection now aggregates 4,811 items of American and 
oriental art. 

The other permanent acquisitions numbered 12, of which the prin- 
cipal donor, as heretofore, was Mr. William T. Evans, of New York, 
who contributed 4 paintings and 1 bronze, namely: “ Moonrise at 
Ogunquit,” by H. Hobart Nichols; “ Portrait: of Mrs. William T. 
Evans and Son,” by Henry Oliver Walker; “ Portrait of William T. 
Evans,” by Wyatt Eaton; “ Portrait of Wyatt Eaton,” by J. Alden 
Weir; and a bronze bust inscribed “ William Thomas Evans 


36 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


MOMIV,” by J. Scott Hartley. The further contributions were as 
follows: “ Wooded Landscape,” oil painting, by Samuel Isham, 
received from the estate of the artist in accordance with his wish; 
“Fisher Girl of Picardy,” oil painting, by Elizabeth Nourse, pre- 
sented by Mrs. Elizabeth C. Pilling, of Washington, in memory of 
her husband, the late John Walter Pilling; “ Full Moon,” a land- 
scape at Limache, Chile, oil painting, by Alfredo Helsby, presented 
by the Embassy of Chile at Washington; the original plaster model 
of the bronze equestrian statue of Lafayette, by Paul Bartlett, 
erected in the Square of the Louvre, Paris, France, in 1900, as a testi- 
monial from the school children of the United States, presented by 
the artist; a bronze bust, heroic size, of Viscount Bryce, formerly 
ambassador of Great Britain to the United States, by Henry Hudson 
Kitson, presented by the artist; a full-length statue of the goddess 
Sappho, in white marble, typifying the Muse of Poetry, modeled be- 
tween 1865 and 1870 by Vinnie Ream Hoxie and presented by Brig. 
Gen. Richard L. Hoxie, United States Army (retired) ; and the origi- 
nal plaster cast of the statue of The Falling Gladiator, by William 
Rimmer, presented by his daughter, Miss Caroline Hunt Rimmer. 

The loans to the Gallery aggregated 121 paintings, 2 bronzes, and 2 
plaster casts, received from 14 sources. Included in the paintings 
were 27 portraits by 23 artists, forming a special loan exhibition on 
behalf of The National Association of Portrait Painters, which was 
held from March 6 to April 7, 1915, a special view by invitation being 
given on the first evening. This exhibition, like the corresponding 
one of the year before, was especially noteworthy. 


MEETINGS, CONGRESSES, AND SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS. 


The facilities afforded by the new building for meetings, lectures, 
and congresses were extensively utilized. The Washington Society of 
the Fine Arts continued its lecture courses, which, as customary, were 
divided into three series, one being on “The art of to-day,” another 
on “ The decorative arts,” and the third on “ The romantic period of 
music.” Seven interesting lectures on various scientific subjects were 
given, five under the auspices of the Washington Academy of 
Sciences, and two under the joint auspices of the same organization 
and the Biological Society of Washington. The Washington Society 
of the Archaeological Institute of America provided two lectures, as 
did also the Audubon Society of the District of Columbia. 

The National Academy of Sciences during its regular annual 
meeting in April used the auditorium for its public sessions, which 
included two lectures under the William Ellery Hale foundation, and 
also held a conversazione in the picture gallery and rotunda. The 
annual meeting of The American Fisheries Society took place in Sep- 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. ot 


tember and October, in the course of which two lectures on the sal- 
mon industry of the Pacific coast, illustrated by moving pictures, 
were given. Accommodations were furnished for two conventions. 
The first was the twelfth annual convention of the National Rural 
Letter Carriers’ Association, held in August, and the second a joint 
convention of postmasters from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and 
North and South Carolina, which met in October. Two special ex- 
hibitions of exceptional interest on July 16, consisted of illustra- 
tions of marine life below the surface of the sea at the Bahama Is- 
lands by means of moving pictures. The films were the first of their 
kind known to have been taken, and this was the first occasion of their 
public display, arranged through the courtesy of the Submarine Film 
Corporation. 

Two receptions were given by the Regents and Secretary of the 
Institution, the first, on April 17, in honor of the National Society of 
the Daughters of the American Revolution, the second, on May 13, to 
the delegates to The American Federation of Arts, then in session in 
the city. The auditorium and other rooms were used on a number of 
oceasions by branches of the Department of Agriculture for hearings 
and meetings, including a series of 12 Saturday lectures under the 
auspices of the Bureau of Plant Industry. 

Outside of the National Gallery of Art, the only special loan exhi- 
bition of importance held during the year was one assembled under 
the auspices of The American Federation of Arts. It relates wholly 
to industrial art in the United States, was opened on May 13, and 
will continue until the middle of September of the current year. 
Favored by a very large number of contributors, including manu- 
facturers, craftsmen, artists, and schools, it has proved one of the 
most notable displays of its kind ever held in this country, and, while 
not claiming to be complete, it is remarkably comprehensive and rep- 
resentative. The standard upheld is extremely high, and two things 
are especially emphasized—the value of beauty in design and the fine 
quality of artistic products now being made in America. 

The Museum is participating in the two California expositions, 
which, beginning in January and February, respectively, will continue 
until the close of the calendar year 1915. For preparing Government 
exhibits to be shown at the larger of these, the Panama-Pacific Inter- 
national Exposition at San Francisco, Congress gave $500,000, of 
which amount the small and inadequate sum of $23,750 was allotted 
to the Smithsonian Institution and its branches. The repre- 
sentative of these, by designation of the Secretary, is Mr. W. de C. 
Ravenel, administrative assistant of the Museum. The display made 
by the Museum has, in view of the circumstance, been almost entirely 
restricted to ethnology, of which the most prominent features are 


38 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


four large family groups, representing the Alaskan Eskimo, the 
Zulu-Kaflir of southern Africa, the Caribs of British Guiana, and the 
Dyaks of Borneo. These are supplemented by a series of 10 aborigi- 
nal dwelling groups, a large collection of artifacts, and several sy- 
noptic series illustrating the history of fire making and illumination, 
the jackknife, the saw, the spindle and shuttle, and the hafted and 
perforated stone ax. Outside of ethnology the only material exhibit 
is a splendid group of the common elk, or wapiti, of the Rocky Moun- 
tain region, comprising male, female, and young, but the important 
Museum exhibits in anthropology, biology, and geology are repre- 
sented by means of an extensive series of lantern slides for use with 
the stereomotorgraph. 

While the Panama-California Exposition at San Diego received no 
aid from the Government, the Museum was enabled to take part and 
also to derive considerable benefit through a cooperative arrangement 
between the management of the exposition and the Smithsonian Insti- 
tution, whereby the latter assumed charge of the assembling and 
installation of an exhibit of physical anthropology and another illus- 
trating certain important industries of the American aborigines. The 
expenses were entirely defrayed by the exposition company, which 
allotted $27,000 for the former subject and $5,000 for the latter. 
Preparations were begun in 1912, and in physical anthropology, un- 
der Dr. AleS Hrdlika, of the Museum staff, entailed extensive ex- 
plorations which were carried to many quarters of the globe. The 
collections as finally installed greatly surpass in richness, instructive- 
ness, and harmony anything before attempted in this line. They are 
divided into four sections, illustrating, respectively, man’s evolution; 
his development or growth; his racial, sexual, and individual vari- 
ations; and the causes, outside of normal senility, which contribute 
to the decline of the human organism, as disease and injury. The 
other exhibit, prepared under the direction of Mr. William H. 
Holmes, head curator of anthropology, consists primarily of.six lay- 
figure groups, representing the mining of iron ore and pigment mate- 
rials, and of copper, the quarrying of soapstone, obsidian and build- 
ing stone, and the arrow makers. These groups are supplemented by 
extensive series of the implements, utensils, and art works generally 
of these ancient peoples. Particular interest attaches to these col- 
lections, as they have been installed as permanent exhibits in a build- 
ing specially erected as a museum feature for the city of San Diego. 
The benefits derived by the National Museum through its participa- 
tion in this exposition consist in the division of a part of the collec- 
tions, the opportunity of reproducing many novel features, and the 
working up and publication of the scientific results of the expedi- 
tions which were mainly into new and important fields. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 39 
MISCELLANEOUS. 


Duplicate specimens of natural history to the number of 14,848, 
accurately classified and labeled, and put up in 163 sets, were dis- 
tributed for teaching purposes among the schools and colleges of the 
country. They consisted mainly of rocks, minerals, ores, fossils, and 
recent mollusks, though other zoological groups and ethnological 
and archeological subjects were also represented. In making ex- 
changes 7,927 duplicates were used, over three-fifths being plants. 
The number of specimens, all belonging to natural history, sent out 
for study by specialists located elsewhere, was 10,269, the preponder- 
ating subjects being plants, insects, marine invertebrates, and fossils. 

The total number of visitors to the new building aggregated 
262,135 for week days and 59,577 for Sundays, being a daily average 
of 837 for the former and of 1,145 for the latter. At the older 
Museum building the attendance for week days (the building not 
being opened on Sundays) was 133,202, a daily average of 425. The 
Smithsonian building was closed to the public during five months on 
account of extensive alterations in progress, and the attendance was 
thereby reduced to 40,324 persons. 

The publications issued during the year comprised 9 volumes and 
41 separate papers. The former consisted of the annual report for 
1914; volume 47 of the Proceedings; volume 19 of the Contributions 
from the National Herbarium; and 6 bulletins, 3 of which related to 
paleontology and 3 to marine animals. The separate papers formed 
parts of volumes 47, 48, and 49 of the Proceedings. The total num- 
ber of copies of Museum publications distributed was about 54,000. 

The library received 2,209 volumes, 2,530 pamphlets, and 183 parts 
of volumes, and at the close of the year contained 45,818 volumes and 
76,295 pamphlets and unbound papers, or a total of 122,118 titles. 


Respectfully submitted. 
Ricuarp RaTHBun, 
Assistant Secretary in Charge, 
United States National Museum. 
Dr, Cuartes D. WAtcort, 
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 


SEPTEMBER 27, 1915. 


APPENDIX 2, 
REPORT ON THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 


Sir: Pursuant to the communication of the Acting Secretary dated 
July 2, I have the honor to present the following report on the oper- 
ations of the Bureau of American Ethnology during the fiscal year 
ended June 30, 1915, conducted in accordance with the act of Con- 
gress approved August 1, 1914, making appropriations for the sundry 
civil expenses of the Government, and with a plan of operations sub- 
mitted by the ethnologist-in-charge and approved by the Secretary 
of the Smithsonian Institution. The provision of the act authorizing 
the researches of the Bureau of American Ethnology is as follows: 

American Ethnology: For continuing ethnological researches among the 
American Indians and the natives of Hawaii, including the excavation and 
preservation of archzeologic remains, under the direction of the Smithsonian 
Institution, including salaries or compensation of all necessary employees and 


the purchase of necessary books and periodicals, including payment in advance 
for subscriptions, $42,000. 


SYSTEMATIC RESEARCHES. 


As in the past, the systematic researches of the bureau were con- 
ducted by its regular staff, consisting of 9 ethnologists, including the 
ethnologist-in-charge, and of 10 ethnologists during part of the year. 
These operations may be summarized as follows: 

Mr. F. W. Hodge, ethnologist-in-charge, devoted most of his atten- 
tion during the year to the administration of the affairs of the bu- 
reau, but opportunity was found, with the assistance of Miss Florence 
M. Poast, to add materially to the compilation of the bibliography of 
the Pueblo Indians, which now comprises about 2,400 titles. Mr. 
Hodge also read several extended manuscripts submitted for publi- 
cation by the bureau; he likewise continued to represent the bureau 
on the Smithsonian advisory committee on printing and publication 
and the Smithsonian Institution on the United States Geographic 
Board. 

Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, ethnologist, at the beginning of the fiscal 
year brought to a close his archeological researches in the valley of 
the lower Rio Mimbres, N. Mex., reference to which was made in the 
last annual report. These studies of the many village sites of the 
prehistoric people of the section named lead to the belief that the 

40 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 41 


ancient habitations were not terraced community houses, such as 
characterize typical pueblos, but were of an older form, hence Dr. 
Fewkes assigns them to a period and a people which he designates 
pre-Puebloan. This conclusion is based not only on the character of 
the house structures as indicated by their ground plans, but also on 
the character and decoration of the pottery vessels found under the 
floors. The most noteworthy feature of this earthenware is the re- 
markable painted decoration on the inside of the bowls, consisting of 
representations of men engaged in various pursuits, animals, and 
geometric designs of exceptional forms, suggesting the culture of the 
Keres Indians of New Mexico rather than that of other Pueblos. A 
distinctive feature of some of the animal pictures on the Mimbres 
pottery is the fusion of two different animal forms, as the antelope 
and a fish, in a single representation. Dr. Fewkes suggests that the 
almost constant presence of rectangular and other geometric designs 
on the bodies of the animals depicted on the pottery may be con- 
sidered in a sense parallel with certain very ancient paintings on the 
walls of caves in France, as described by Dr. Capitan and others. 
The special value of the study of the painted designs on the Mimbres 
pottery les in the light which they cast on general problems con- 
nected with the culture-genesis and clan migrations of the sedentary 
Indians of the Southwest. These designs are related, on the one hand, 
to those on Pueblo painted pottery of northern New Mexico and 
Arizona and, on the other, to the decorations on the earthenware of 
the prehistoric inhabitants of the valleys of the southern part of the 
Sierra Madre Plateau, notably those of the celebrated Casas Grandes 
in Chihuahua. An illustrated preliminary report, under the title 
“Archeology of the Lower Mimbres Valley, New Mexico,” was pre- 
pared by Dr. Fewkes and published in Smithsonian Miscellaneous 
Collections (Vol. 63, No. 10, pp. 1-53, pls. 1-8, figs. 1-82). 

In January Dr. Fewkes visited southern Arizona, where he made 
several archeological reconnoissances, following the Rio Santa Cruz 
almost to the Mexican boundary. He visited the old Indian missions 
of San Xavier del Bac and Tumacacori, and in their vicinity examined 
extensive aboriginal ruins, which were found to belong to the same 
type as Casa Grande, Ariz. The group of prehistoric ruins near the 
dilapidated mission of ‘Tumacacori (which imposing structure, now 
preserved as a national monument, is greatly in need of repair) pre- 
sents unusual advantages for thorough archeological investigation, 
with promise of important collections. The walls of the compound 
can be traced readily, and if uncovered by excavation would reveal 
important information on the ancient culture of the Santa Cruz Val- 
jey. Similar remains were noted in other parts of this valley and 
elsewhere in southern Arizona. While in this general area Dr. 
Fewkes observed that the Papago Indians of the desert have been 


49 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


little affected by civilization, retaining many of their original cus- 
toms, beliefs, and ceremonies, and a wealth of folklore. 

Dr. Fewkes visited. also the ruins of a large pueblo compound on 
the road between Phoenix and Tempe, chiefly for the purpose of de- 
termining the advisability of its excavation and repair, as an effort is 
being made by citizens of Phoenix to preserve the ruins with a view 
of having the compound created a national monument and receiving 
adequate scientific treatment. 

Leaving Arizona in February, Dr. Fewkes proceeded again to the 
Mimbres Valley, but found the weather unpropitious for field work 
except for excursions with the view of locating sites for possible fu- 
ture excavation. He returned to Washington about the middle of the 
month and continued the preparation of his memoir on “ Antiquities 
of the West Indies,” which is to include the results of archeological 
research conducted in the Greater and the Lesser Antilles under the 
joint auspices of the bureau and the Heye Museum of New York, as 
referred to in a previous report. In connection with this work Dr. 
Fewkes visited New York for the purpose of studying recently ac- 
quired collections, in the Heye Museum, illustrating the culture of 
the ancient inhabitants of the West Indies. 

The greater part of May was devoted by Dr. Fewkes to the com- 
pletion of a paper on “ Prehistoric Hopi Pottery Designs,” which 
comprises 138 manuscript pages, 12 plates, and 105 figures. In this 
article the author treats of the pictography on the ceramics of the 
ancient village dwellers of the East Mesa of the Hopi of northwest- 
ern Arizona, including the Keres and Tewa colonists of early times, 
as well as the designs of the more modern period. The memoir con- 
siders in detail the probable genesis of modern Hopi symbolic figures, 
and devotes attention also to their connection with clan and other 
sociologic groups. 

The opening of the fiscal year found Mr. James Mooney, ethnolo- 
gist, engaged in field studies among the Cherokee Indians of North 
Carolina, which were continued until the middle of September. Mr. 
Mooney devoted his efforts especially to the further collection and 
translation of the sacred formulas of the Indians named, together | 
with the collection, for botanical identification, of the plants men- 
tioned in the formulas, with others of Indian economic importance. 
The remainder of the fiscal year was spent by Mr. Mooney in the 
office, most of the time being devoted to the final elaboration of the 
Cherokee formulas, of varying length, originally written down by 
the priests of the tribe in the native Cherokee alphabet and used by 
them for purposes of medicine, love, hunting, fishing, agriculture, 
protection, etc. Each formula consists usually of a prayer or a song, 
or both, in an archaic and highly figurative form of the language, 
followed by brief directions couched in the everyday language, and 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 43 


relating to the manner of the ceremony or the plants to be used in 
the prescription. The printed formula will consist of three parts, 
namely, transliteration, translation, and explanation. The glossary 
will comprise perhaps 4,000 words, largely archaic and otherwise 
unusual in form. The botanical appendix will deal with the names 
and uses of from 500 to 700 plants mentioned in the formulas, nearly 
all of which have already been collected and botanically identified. 
There will also be an extended chapter on Cherokee religion and 
mythology. Approximately a third of the transliterations and trans- 
lations have been written in final form from the interlinear note- 
books, and half of the work has been glossarized on cards. 

Considerable time was spent by Mr. Mooney in furnishing special 
information for use in answering inquiries of correspondents. 

Dr. John R. Swanton, ethnologist, in addition to supervising the 
final work incident to the publication, as Bulletin 45, of “ Byington’s 
Choctaw Dictionary,” edited by himself in conjunction with Mr. 
H. 8. Halbert, devoted attention to the study of the Creek Indians, 
to which reference is made in former reports. The first draft of his 
memoir on the Creeks is practically completed, but the amount of 
material was found to be so great that it has seemed best to separate 
it into two, if not three, sections. The first of these, embracing a 
discussion of the location and classification of the southern tribes, 
their early history, and their population, Dr. Swanton is now revis- 
ing, incorporating new material and making such changes as fuller 
information has shown to be necessary. It is hoped that this section 
may be ready for publication at a comparatively early date. 

Through an Alibamu Indian living in Texas the bureau has been 
able to add several hundred words and a few pages of text to:the 
Alibamu material gathered by Dr. Swanton. 

During the first three months of the year Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, eth- 
nologist, completed the translating and editing of a collection of 
texts and legends for the memoir on “ Seneca Myths and Fiction” to 
be published in the Thirty-second Annual Report, consisting of ma- 
terial originally collected in native texts and in English by the late 
Jeremiah Curtin and Mr. Hewitt. This material, aggregating 2,300 
pages, besides 350 notes and additions by Mr. Hewitt, was submitted. 
early in October for publication. Subsequently, and as opportunity 
was afforded throughout the year, Mr. Hewitt devoted special atten- 
tion to the preparation of material for a grammatical sketch of the 
Troquois languages, especially as spoken by the Mohawk, Onondaga, 
and Cayuga, for incorporation in the “ Handbook of American In- 
‘dian languages.” 

In December Mr. Hewitt visited the Grand River Reservation in 
Canada for the purpose of prosecuting his studies among the Indians 
dwelling thereon. A serious epidemic of smallpox interfered some- 


44 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


what with his work, but with the efficient assistance of Mr. William 
K. Loft, a Mohawk speaker, Mr. Hewitt was able to make a critical 
phonetic and grammatic study of portions of the Mohawk texts 
relating to the league of the Iroquois, recorded by him in former 
years. Work was also done in recording a selected list of Mohawk 
verbs for comparative use, and with the painstaking aid of Mrs. 
Mary Gibson, widow of the late noted chief John Arthur Gibson, 
Mr. Hewitt was able to supply the Cayuga equivalents to this list, 
as well as to record other vocabulary terms of the Cayuga. From 
Mrs. Gibson also was obtained an extended text in Cayuga relating 
to the origin and the ritual of the death feast of the women. On the 
same reservation Mr. Hewitt, with the aid of Mr. Hardy Gibson, a 
Cayuga chief, elucidated certain mooted points in regard to the 
ritual significance of a number of words and phrases employed in the 
chants of the condoling and installation council of the Iroquois 
league. From Miss Emily Carrier, a mixed-blood Nanticoke, he ob- 
tained a lst of 50 Nanticoke words. This short list is of singular 
interest, as the Nanticoke dialect of the Algonquian stock has become 
practically extinct through absorption of its speakers by the Iro- 
quois-speaking peoples. Mr. Hewitt also made about 70 photo- 
graphs, principally of persons. 

On his return to Washington on January 15 Mr. Hewitt at once 
resumed his analytic study of the Mohawk, Onondaga, and Cayuga 
dialects for the purpose of obtaining proper material for the prepa- 
ration of the grammatic sketch above referred to. 

In addition to these investigations, Mr. Hewitt furnished much 
information for use in preparing replies to inquiries from corre- 
spondents, some of them requiring considerable research. No fewer 
than 180 such letters were answered by means of data supplied by 
Mr. Hewitt. As in the past, he performed the duties connected with 
the custodianship of manuscripts, which required more than the usual 
time and effort owing to the preparation of more thoroughly fire- 
proof quarters and transfer of the manuscripts thereto, as will later 
be mentioned. During June Mr. Hewitt was engaged in reading the 
first proofs of “ Seneca Myths and Fiction.” 

Mr. Francis La Flesche, ethnologist, was engaged during the year 
chiefly in assembling his notes on the No*’zhizho", or fasting degree, 
of the tribal rites of the Osage called No“ ho"zhiga Ie Ita, or Sayings 
of the No“ho*zhiga. Of the seven degrees, the No" zhizho® is said 
to be the longest and the next in importance to the Nikie degree; 
it is also said that this degree contains nearly all the symbols and cere- 
monial forms (wégaxe), for which reason it is regarded as higher in 
rank than the other degrees, excepting the Nikie. From information 
given by Watsémo" of the Black Bear gens and by Waxthizhi of 
the Puma gens, both of the Hoga dual division, their version of the 
ritual of the No™zhizho" degree is composed of 116 songs, 14 wigie 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 45 


(parts of the ritual that is spoken), and a number of ceremonial acts 
and forms. Waxthizhi, from whom the songs and wigie were ob- 
tained, gave 14 wigie and 74 songs; he was unable to give the entire 
116 songs, having lost some of them by reason of long disuse of the 
ritual. To the close of the year 206 pages of this ritual have been 
completed by Mr. La Flesche; these comprise 9 wigie with literal 
and free translations, 25 songs with translations, and explanations 
of the songs, ceremonial acts, and movements, as well as of the vari- 
ous symbols and paraphernalia used in the ceremonies. 

Mr. La Flesche’s work on the No™zhizho" ritual has twice been 
interrupted by visiting Osage, from whom, however, further infor- 
mation has been obtained concerning the great war rites of the Osage 
people. First, Wathuxage, who visited Washington in the autumn 
of 1914, gave the ritual of the WaxXobe degree of the Tsizhu Wash- 
tage gens, of which he was a member. The wigie and songs of this 
ritual cover 76 typewritten pages, including the music, which has 
been transcribed from the dictaphone. Besides the Waxobe ritual, 
Waithuxage gave, in fragmentary form, the Nikie ritual of his gens; 
this covers 20 typewritten pages, including the music of the songs, 
which also have been transcribed from the dictaphone. The trans- 
lations of the songs and wigie of these rituals have yet to be made 
and the explanatory texts written. Wathuxage died in May, 1915. 

The second interruption was by Xuthé Wato"" and Watsémo'7, 
from whom additional information was obtained. The former gave 
three of the wigie: Wigie Tonga or Great Wigie, Kino® Wigie or 
Symbolic Painting Wigie, and Wazhdigathe Wigie or Gentile Sym- 
bol Wigie, which it was his part to recite at the tribal ceremonies. 
These cover 37 typewritten pages. Besides the three wigie, Xuth4 
Wato"" gave the ritual of the Nikie degree of his gens. The wigie 
and songs of the ritual, including the music, comprise 15 pages. The 
translations of the three wigie, and the wigie and songe of the Nikie 
ritual, have yet to be made and the explanatory notes assembled. 
Watsémo'i® gave another version of the Nidse Wacpe Wigie, or 
Black Bear Wigie, which he had already given some time ago. 
This new version is the one recited when the widow of a deceased 
member of the No”ho"zhi"ga is admitted to take his place in the 
order; it comprises 6 typewritten pages and will form a part of the 
No” zhizho? ritual. This informant also gave some information con- 
cerning his great grandfather, who was a prominent “ medicine-man.” 
The notes recorded from the dictation of Watsémo"i™ have yet to 
be transcribed. The story will form a part of the chapter on the 
Wako'dagi, or “ medicine-men.” 

Mrs. M. C. Stevenson, ethnologist, continued her researches among 
the Tewa Indians of New Mexico, but failing health prevented her 


46 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


from completing the final revision of the manuscript of her memoir 
as she had hoped, and it remained unfinished at the time of her un- 
fortunate death, on June 24, in the suburbs of Washington. It is 
believed, however, that when an opportunity of fully examining Mrs. 
Stevenson’s completed manuscript and notes is afforded, it will be 
found in condition for publication after the customary editorial 
treatment. Mrs. Stevenson was an efficient and industrious investi- 
gator of the ethnology of the Pueblo Indians, to which subject she 
had devoted many years of her life, giving special attention to the 
Sia, the Zufii, and the Tewa Tribes. Three memoirs on these Indians, 
published in the annual reports, are replete with information on the 
subjects of which they treat, and there is no doubt that when Mrs. 
Stevenson’s memoir on the Tewa Indians finally appears much 
valuable knowledge will be added to that which she has already given 
on the sedentary Indians of the extreme Southwest. 

. With the opening of the fiscal year Dr. Truman Michelson pro- 
ceeded to Wisconsin in the hope of obtaining ethnologic and lin- 
guistic information regarding the Stockbridge Indians residing in 
that State. It was found that, with respect to the language of this 
remnant tribe, about a dozen members remembered isolated words, 
but only one could dictate connected texts, half a dozen of which 
were recorded. Although knowledge of the language is now too 
limited to enable restoration of the grammar, enough material was 
obtained to show that Stockbridge was intimately related to Pequot 
and Natick, as well as to Delaware-Munsee. The Stockbridges have 
long since abandoned all their native customs and beliefs, conse- 
quently their ethnology may be regarded as beyond recovery. 

While in Wisconsin Dr. Michelson procured also ethnologic and 
linguistic notes on the Menominee. A visit to the Brotherton In- 
dians resulted in the acquirement of little information excepting 
historical data, as these people have become greatly modified. 

Dr. Michelson next visited Tama, Iowa, for the purpose of renew- 
ing his researches among the Fox Indians, to which he has been de- 
voting his energies for some time. He was especially successful in 
obtaining accounts of the mythical origin ascribed to the Fox people, 
given in the form of rituals, and he gave attention also to the 
phonetics of the Fox language. A noteworthy result of Dr. Michel- 
son’s Fox investigations was the acquirement, through Horace Powa- 
shiek, of a complete translation of the two most important Fox 
myths—the Culture Hero and Mother of All the Earth. 

At the request of the Davenport Academy of Sciences, Dr. Michel- 
son conducted some archeological excavations for that institution at 
its own expense, leave of absence having been granted him for that 
purpose. En route to Washington, he examined the Sauk and Fox 
collections in the Field Museum of Natural History at Chicago. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 47 


In the office Dr. Michelson paid special attention to the observa- 
tions on the Sauk and Fox by early writers, especially by the authors 
in the Annals of the Propaganda Fide, and by Marston, Long, 
Carver, Beltrami, and others. With the view of definitely settling the 
question of the relationship of the Yurok and Wiyot languages of 
California to the Algonquian linguistic stock, Dr. Michelson devoted 
further study to the subject, reaching the conclusion that whether or 
not further material would prove these languages to be divergent 
members of Algonquian, the existing data do not warrant such a 
_ classification. Dr. Michelson also devoted attention to the linguistic 
classification of Potawatomi, based on certain grammatical treatises 
by the late Father Gailland in possession of St. Mary’s College at 
St. Marys, Kans., which the bureau was permitted to copy through 
the courtesy of Rev. George Worpenberg, S. J., librarian of the col- 
lege. By these studies Dr. Michelson concludes from the verbal pro- 
nouns of Potawatomi that it belongs to the Ojibwa division of the 

central Algonquian languages, but that the language is further re- 
moved from Ojibwa, Ottawa, and eb than any of these is from 
the others. 

Mr. John P. Harrington, ethnologist, became a member of thie 
staff of the bureau, with the approval of the Civil Service Commis- 
sion, on February 20, from which time until the close of May he 
finished 600 pages of manuscript and more than 3,000 slips of 
linguistic information regarding the Chumash Indians of California, 
the result of researches conducted by him before entering the service 
of the bureau. He also has, in various stages of elaboration, a quan- 
tity of other’ Chumash ethnologic and linguistic material in the 
preparation of which for publication satisfactory progress is being 
made. At the end of May Mr. Harrington proceeded to Santa Ines 
Mission, where, among its documents, he found an old manuscript 
bearing the title “Padron que contiene todos las Neofitas de esta 
Mision de la Purisima Concepcion con expresion de su edad, y par- 
tida de Bautismo segun se halla hoy dia 1° de Enero de 1814,” by 
Father Mariano Payeras, of the greatest importance to the study of 
the former Chumash Indians of La Purisima and Santa Ines. A 
complete copy of this splendid manuscript, which does not seem to 
have been known to historians, was made by Mr. Harrington, who 
also extracted a considerable amount of other material from the mis- 
sion records. While at Santa Ines Mr. Harrington located the site 
of the former large rancheria of Nojogui (which had not before been 
known), and also the site of the rancheria of Itias, mentioned in the 
records. On June 19 Mr. Harrington visited Arroyo Grande, where 
he worked for a week with a poor, sick old woman, the sole survivor 
of the San Luis Obispo Indians, for which reason, to use Mr. Har- 
rington’s own expression, “the words of her language are precious 


48 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


beyond the power of money to buy,” especially as her speech is the 
most archaic of all the Chumashan dialects. For the convenience of 
his field studies Mr. Harrington has established headquarters at Los 
Angeles, where he has been granted the facilities of the Southwest 
Museum by the courtesy of its officials. 


SPECIAL RESEARCHHS. 


The preparation of the second volume of the “ Handbook of 
American Indian Languages,” under the editorship of Dr. Franz 
Boas, honorary philologist, has progressed slowly, on account of the 
impossibility of sending proofs to Russia, where the author of the 
section on the Chukchee and Eskimo resides. The chapter on 
Siuslaw, by Dr. Frachtenberg, has been corrected and made up in 
pages, forming pages 431 to 605 of the second volume. At the begin- 
ning of the year Dr. Boas concluded his collection of Kutenai 
material, which was studied preliminary to the writing of the gram- 
mar of this language. The texts collected by him were written out, 
and the completed manuscript, consisting of 263 pages of Indian 
texts and 269 pages of translation, has been submitted and set in 
type, forming 125 galleys. The texts include some material collected 
by the late Dr. A. F. Chamberlain, which was acquired by the bureau 
and was revised by Dr. Boas. 

Much time has been spent by Dr. Boas in work on his memoir, 
“Tsimshian Mythology,” to accompany the thirty-first annual re- 
port. During the fiscal year 1913-14 the tales themselves had been 
set up. During the year now under consideration the manuscript 
of the discussion of this material was completed and put in type; it 
forms pages 394 to 867 of the annual report. In the mechanical work 
of preparing the manuscript Dr. Boas was assisted by Miss H. A. 
Andrews, who, besides the preparation of manuscript and proof 
reading, did much of the laborious work of extracting and collating 
material needed for the investigation. 

The manuscript on Eskimo mythology, intrusted to Waldemar 
Bogoras and accepted for publication, together with an introduction 
by Mr. Ernest Hawkes, is held in abeyance, owing to the impossibility 
at the present time of communicating with the author in Russia. 

Dr. L. J. Frachtenberg, special ethnologist, left Washington on 
July 6, 1914, going directly to Oregon for the purpose of concluding 
his investigations of the language, mythology, and culture of the 
Kalapuya Indians, commenced during the previous fiscal year. 
After a short trip to the Siletz and Grand Ronde Agencies in north- 
western Oregon for the purpose of interviewing all available inform- 
ants, he proceeded to Chemawa, Oreg., where he conducted his Kala- 
puya investigations until December, and completed them at the 
Grand Ronde Agency between December 13 and 20, which time was 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 49 


spent chiefly in the collection of linguistic material for a comparative 
study of the Kalapuya dialects. Special attention was given to the 
Yamhill and Yonkalla variations. Dr. Frachtenberg’s field work 
proved highly successful. He obtained 30 myths, tales, historical 
narratives, and ethnographic descriptions, told in the various Kala- 
puya dialects, an unusually large amount of grammatical notes, suffi- 
cient material for a linguistic map showing the original distribution 
of the several Kalapuya dialects, and some data on Kalapuya eth- 
nology. A glance at this material reveals some interesting facts: 
The Kalapuya Indians in former times were the most powerful and 
numerous family of Oregon. They claimed the whole of the fertile 
valley of the Willamette, extending from the Coast Range to the Cas- 
cade Mountains, their settlements reaching as far north as the pres- 
ent Portland and as far south as the middle course of Umpqua River, 
an area of approximately 12,000 square miles. These Indians were 
placed on the Grand Ronde Reservation in 1857, at the close of the 
Rogue River war. Previous tribal wars and frequent epidemics of 
smallpox and other infectious diseases have reduced the Kalapuya 
tribes to such an extent that Dr. Frachtenberg has found but a mere 
handful of survivors, hence the time is not far off when the stock will 
become extinct. 

The Kalapuya family embraces a large number of tribes, the most 
important of which are: (1) Atfalati (or Wapato Lake), living 
formerly on the banks of the Tualatin River; (2) Yamhill, claiming 
the banks of the river of the same name; (3) Lakmayuk, who ob- 
tained their name from the river Luckiamute; (4) Marys River 
(Calapooia proper), whose settlements were situated along the banks 
of the Calapooia and Marys Rivers; (5) Yonkalla, the most south- 
erly Kalapuya tribe; (6) Ahantsayuk, also called Pudding River 
Indians; and (7) Santiam, who formerly lived on the banks of 
Santiam River. These tribes speak varieties of the Kalapuya lan- 
guage, which show remarkable lexicographic diversities. Morpho- 
logical differentiations exist also, but are chiefly of a phonetic nature. 
All differences between the dialects seem to have been caused by a 
geographic distribution, resulting in the three subdivisions men- 
tioned in the last annual report. Long and continued contact of the 
Kalapuya Indians with white settlers has resulted in a complete 
breaking down of the native culture and mode of living; conse- 
quently the ethnologic data obtainable were very meager and in most 
cases were given as information obtained through hearsay. 

In the early part of January Dr. Frachtenberg made a short trip 
to the Siletz Agency for the purpose of settling a few questions per- 
taining to Alsea phonetics. In view of the fact that the allotment 
made for his field researches during the fiscal year became exhausted 
Dr. Frachtenberg was obliged to remain in the field until the close 

18618°—sm 19154 


50 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


of June. On January 15 he resumed the work of preparing a gram- 
matical sketch of the Alsea language, which was finished late in 
May; this consists of 158 sections, approximating 600 manuscript 
pages. During June he was engaged in typewriting this grammati- 
cal sketch, which will be published in part 2 of the “ Handbook of 
American Indian Languages.” 

In addition to his field investigations Dr. Frachtenberg corrected 
the proofs of his grammatical sketch of the Siuslaw language, spe- 
cial attention being given to the insertion of the proper references 
taken from his Lower Umpqua texts, printed in the Columbia Uni- 
versity Contributions to Anthropology. 

Mr. W. H. Holmes continued the preparation of the “ Handbook of 
American Antiquities” whenever his exacting duties in behalf of the 
National Museum permitted. Part 1 of this work is well advanced 
toward completion; much attention has been given to part 2, and the 
preparation of the numerous illustrations is well in hand. 

During the month of July, Mr. Gerard Fowke was engaged, under 
instructions from the bureau, in making limited archeological in- 
vestigations in northeastern Kansas and southeastern Nebraska, the 
purpose of which was to ascertain the value of certain recent deter- 
minations regarding the age of the prehistoric aboriginal occupancy 
of this region. Respecting the large mounds, the age of which has 
been under discussion, Mr. Fowke reports that three points must be 
taken into consideration in fixing a definite age for these remains, as 
follows: 


1. The relics found in and around the lodge sites, except for the markings 
on some of the pottery, are in no wise different from those found on the sites 
of villages which were occupied when Lewis and Clark came through here. 

2. Fairly solid bones of animals, and occasionally human bones, are found 
in the bottoms of the lodge sites, even where these are damp most of the year. 
In the pits, where such remains are preserved by ashes, this would not mean 
much; but where they are found in clayey earth it is evident that ‘“ thousands 
of years” is a meaningless term to apply to them. 

8. Persons who claim these ‘ thousands of years” for pretty much everything 
they find in the ground, must explain why it is that while the bones and imple- 
ments of these assumed “ ancients” are found in such quantities and in such 
good preservation, those of later Indians should have entirely disappeared. 

The only tenable theory of age is the amount of accumulation in the depres- 
sions of the lodge sites. Above the clay which formed the roof, and is next 
to the floor now, is a depth of material sometimes, it is said, as much as 20 
or even 22 inches of mingled silt, decayed vegetation, and soil from the sur- 
rounding wall. It is used as an argument of age; that as these sites are on 
hilltops where there can be no inwash, this depth must indicate a very remote 
period for their construction. But a large amount of the earth thrown out into 
the surrounding ring or wall will find its way back into the depression. The 
water will stand in them a good part of the year, and the soil remain damp 
even in prolonged drought; vegetation is thus more luxuriant than on the out- 
side, and its decay will fill up rather rapidly. In addition, much sand blows 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 51 


from the prairies as well as from the bottom lands, and whatever finds its way 
into the pit will stay there; it will not blow away again, as it would in 
open ground. Weeds also will catch and retain much of this dust, which would 
pass on over a dry surface. Consequently the allowance of an inch in a 
century, which is the most that advocates of great age will allow for accumu- 
lation, is too small. 

The topography of the region was essentially the same when these remains 
were constructed as it is now. The hills and valleys were as they now exist; 
the erosion has been very slight as compared with that which has taken place 
since the loess was brought above the water to which it owes its origin. This 
statement is fully proved by the position of the mounds and lodge sites. Any 
estimate of age must be only conjecture at best; but it is safe to say that no 
earthwork, mound, lodge site, or human bones along this part of the Missouri 
River has been here as long as 10 centuries. 


With regard to the discoveries of human remains at exceptional 
depths in loess formations on Longs Hill, near Omaha, Mr. Fowke 
states that excavation of the site has been so exhaustive that further 
investigations are out of the question, and that determinations of age, 
therefore, must rest, in the main at least, with the published state- 
ments of the original explorers. 

During recent years observers have reported the existence of 
mounds and other evidences of prehistoric occupancy in western 
Utah; these reports, however, contained little definite information 
regarding the character of existing ruins and described only briefly 
the artifacts associated with them. The possible relationship of 
such remains with those of the ancient pueblo. dwellers of Arizona, 
New Mexico, and Colorado suggested the necessity of a preliminary 
examination of the western Utah field, with the view of determining 
the nature and range of former settlements, and also the desirability 
of more detailed investigations. This work of reconnoissance was 
commenced by the bureau in May and extended through the close of 
the fiscal year, the field observations being made by Mr. Neil M. 
Judd, of the National Museum. A group of small mounds near Wil- 
lard, on the northeastern shore of Great Salt Lake, were first exam- 
ined. Many other mounds in this locality have been completely 
destroyed by cultivation during recent years, and of those remaining 
all show modifications resulting from recent tillage. Four mounds 
were selected for special investigation, and from these sufficient in- 
formation was gathered to indicate the chief characteristics of the 
primitive dwellings over which the mounds had accumulated. 

Following the work at Willard, an examination was made of 
certain well-defined mounds on the outskirts of Beaver City, in 
Beaver County, where three house sites of the Willard type were 
found in close proximity to larger mounds containing groups of 
dwellings. Two weeks’ work resulted in the complete excavation of 
one house group comprising 16 rooms and the partial examination 
of a still larger group. The Beaver mounds, like those at Willard, 


52 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


have resulted from the gradual accumulation of drifting sand and 
dust over the fallen walls of more or less permanent dwellings. Un- 
like the isolated structures at Willard, however, the mounds at 
Beaver City disclosed groups of associated rooms, arranged with 
some degree of regularity and exhibiting a certain unity of purpose. 
In each of the two groups studied, small series of contiguous rooms 
were uncovered, but the majority were single compartments sepa- 
rated from the other dwellings by varying distances. The walls of 
these primitive dwellings at Beaver were built cf adobe, sometimes 
placed in wide layers but more often forming a solid mass. No open- 
ings that could be identified definitely as doors were found in any of 
these walls; this fact, together with the comparative abundance of 
circular stone slabs, leads to the belief that entrance to the dwellings 
was gained through roof openings which could be closed with the 
stone disks. Post holes in several floors, with charred fragments of 
cedar logs, and masses of clay bearing impressions of logs, willows, 
and grass, give a fairly complete indication as to the nature of the 
roof construction. Large timbers crossed in the direction of the 
shorter dimensions, their ends resting upon the side walls of the 
rooms; when necessary these were supported by upright timbers. 
The roof beams in turn supported lesser timbers with layers of wil- 
lows and grass. Layers of clay, varying in thickness from 1 inch to 
6 inches with the unevenness of roof materials, covered the grass. 
thus completing a truly substantial shelter. 

Four small mounds, similar to those at Beaver City, were excavated 
at Paragonah, in Iron County. These contained one room only, but 
there are larger mounds in the vicinity whose superficial indications 
suggest as many if not more rooms than the group at Beaver. 
Twenty years ago, it 1s reported, there were about 100 mounds in 
this vicinity; to-day more than half of them have disappeared 
through cultivation of the soil. 

A brief examination was made by Mr. Judd of several house sites 
overlooking the Rio Virgen, near St. George, in the extreme south- 
western corner of the State. From this village eastward to Kanab 
only a few mounds were noted, although cowboys reported the exist- 
ence of others in the vicinity of Short Creek, on the Utah-Arizona 
line. ; 

From Kanab as a base, the mounds in Johnson Canyon and the 
small cliff houses in Cottonwood Canyon were visited and partially 
examined. Irom superficial observations the former were judged to 
contain the remains of house structures similar to those at Beaver 
and Paragonah, although the availability of suitable stone for build- 
ing purposes has resulted in its partial substitution for adobe, with 
certain accompanying structural modifications. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 5S 


Several caves in Cottonwood Canyon 12 miles westward from 
Kanab contained evidences of human occupancy. The walls of 
nearly all bear pictographs of more than ordinary interest, and three 
of the caves visited sheltered the remains of small dwellings, the most 
interesting of which is a group of four detached rooms and one cir- 
cular kiva. The walls of these are of stone with a rather greater pro- 
portion of mud plaster than is common in cliff dwellings of the 
Southwest. The ceremonial room measures 14 feet in diameter, but, 
except in its lack of recesses, does not differ greatly from similar 
structures in ruins previously reported throughout the San Juan 
drainage. 

Mr. Judd’s preliminary observations among a limited number of 
ruins in western Utah indicate the former existence of a people whose 
dwellings developed in natural sequence from single earth-covered 
shelters, such as those at Willard, to groups of more permanent 
structures like those at Beaver, Paragonah, and elsewhere, and finally 
to allied cliff houses similar to those in Cottonwood Canyon. The 
construction of these several types of houses and the character of the 
artifacts found in them point to close relationship between their 
builders and the better-known pre-Puebloan peoples of New Mexico, 
Arizona, and Colorado. Whether these primitive structures in Utah 
actually antedate the communal dwellings in the States named or 
whether they represent an offshoot from the more highly developed 
Pueblo culture is a point not yet determined. The relationship is 
certain, however, and future investigation may be expected to deter- 
mine its limits. It is hoped that the opportunity to continue this 
investigation may soon be afforded, as the progress of agriculture 
in most of the areas investigated by Mr. Judd is resulting in the 
rapid disappearance of all superficial evidences of aboriginal occu- 
pancy. 

En route to Washington from Utah, Mr. Judd spent a day at the so- 
called “Spanish diggings,” the ancient quarries in Wyoming where 
generations of western Indians quarried the flint and chert utilized 
in the manufacture of various weapons and household implements. 

Excellent progress has been made in the study and analysis of 
Indian music, to which subject Miss Frances Densmore has devoted 
special attention. The principal work in this direction has been the 
completion of the manuscript on “Teton Sioux Music,” consisting 
of 1,067 pages, in addition to transcriptions of 240 songs and about 
100 illustrations. This material was submitted in June for publica- 
tion. Miss Densmore also made considerable progress in the prepa- 
ration of a paper on the music of the Ute Indians, 92 pages of manu- 
script, 28 transcriptions of songs, 11 analyses of songs, and 8 original 
photographic illustrations being submitted. This work is not yet 
finished. 


54 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Mr. D. I. Bushnell, jr., has continued the preparation of the 
“ Handbook of Aboriginal Remains East of the Mississippi,” under a 
small allotment by the bureau for this purpose, and has made steady 
progress. During the year circulars were addressed to county offli- 
cials in those sections from which no information had been received, 
and good results were obtained. The thanks of the bureau are due 
Mr. Arthur C. Parker, State archeologist of New York, for a large 
body of valuable data regarding the archeological sites in New York, 
and to Mr. Warren K. Moorehead, of Phillips Academy, Andover, 
Mass., for similar information respecting aboriginal remains in the 
State of Maine, derived from his personal observations. 

Mr. James R. Murie, as opportunity offered, continued his studies 
of the ceremonies of the Pawnee Indians, under a small allotment 
by the bureau. During the year Mr. Murie submitted, as a result of 
these investigations, a manuscript of 266 pages on “The New Fire 
Ceremony” of the Pawnee. 

Dr. A. L. Kroeber, of the University of California, has made good 
progress in the preparation of the “ Handbook of the Indians of 
California.” At the inception of this work it was believed prac- 
ticable to confine the treatment to a very limited number of pages. 
By reason of the great diversity in the languages and the culture of 
the Indians of California, past and present, however, it was found 
that no adequate treatment of the subject was possible within the 
limits originally prescribed, consequently the handbook when pub- 
lished will comprise approximately 200 pages. Dr. Kroeber expects 
to submit the manuscript in readiness for publication in the early 
part of 1916. 

The “ List of Works Relating to Hawaii” has been added to from 
time to time by the surviving compiler, Prof. Howard M. Ballou, 
of Honolulu. Mr. Felix Neumann has devoted attention to its edi- 
torial revision, but it was found at the close of the year that much 
work of a mechanical nature remained to be done before plans for 
publication could be completed. 


MANUSCRIPTS. 


As in the past the valuable collection of manuscripts of the bureau 
has been in the immediate custody of Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, whose 
work in this direction was considerably increased by reason of the 
necessity of returning the manuscripts to the newly fireproofed room 
in the north tower of the Smithsonian building and reclassifying 
them. For the first time the manuscripts of the bureau, which now 
number about 1,700 items, many of which are of priceless value, are 
believed to be safe from possible fire, being contained in steel cases 
or on steel shelves, surrounded by brick, cement, and terra-cotta walls, 
floor, and ceiling. In addition to manuscripts submitted for imme- 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 55 


diate publication or elsewhere referred to in this report, the follow- 
ing accessions were made during the year: 


Laguna Indian Dictionary. Deposited by the wife and son of the late John 
B. Dunbar, of Bloomfield, N. J. 

Dr. A. L. Kroeber. Forty-nine Arapaho and Gros Ventre notebooks, six 
packages of slips containing an Arapaho vocabulary, and a carbon copy of a 
study of Arapaho dialects. 

War record of Sitting Bull, depicted in 55 pictographs, with a letter of 
authentication. Deposited by Dr. D. S. Lamb, of the Army Medical Museum. 

J. P. Dunn. The third part of the translation of the anonymous Miami- 
Peoria Dictionary, the original of which is in the John Carter Brown Library 
at Providence, R. I.; 36 pages, Assomer to Bercer. 

Photostat copy of “A Grammar of the Pottewatomy Language,’ by Rev. 
Maurice Gailland, the original of which is in possession of St. Mary’s College 
at St. Marys, Kans.; 452 pages. 


Note should here be made of the great usefulness of the photostat 
apparatus acquired by the bureau during the last fiscal year, which 
has enabled the photographic copying at slight cost of various manu- 
scripts, field notes, and rare books and pamphlets needed for refer- 
ence in the researches of the bureau. These copies have been made 
in the photographic laboratory of the bureau by Mr. Albert Sweeney, 
assistant to Mr. De Lancey Gill, illustrator. 


PUBLICATIONS. 


The editorial work of the bureau has been continued by Mr. J. G. 
Gurley, editor, who from time to time has been assisted by Mrs. 
Frances 8. Nichols. The publications issued during the year were: 


Bulletin 46. ‘‘ Byington’s Choctaw Dictionary,” edited by John R. Swanton 
and Henry S. Halbert. 

Bulletin 58. ‘“ List of Publications of the Bureau,” which appeared in August, 
1914, with a second impression in May, 1915. 


Miscellaneous publications: 


No. 10. Circular of Information Regarding Indian Popular Names. 

No. 11. Map of Linguistic Families of American Indians North of Mexico. 
This map, which is a revision of the linguistic map published in Bulletin 30 
(Handbook of American Indians), was reprinted in advance from the plate in 
the report on ‘‘ Indian Population in the United States and Alaska,’ subse- 
quently published by the Bureau of the Census. 

No. 12. List of Indian words denoting “man,” prepared in placard form for 
use in the Smithsonian exhibit at the Panama-Pacifiec Exposition. 


The status of other publications now in press is as follows: 


Twenty-ninth annual report. The “accompanying paper” of this report is 
“The Ethnogeography of the Tewa Indians,” by J. P. Harrington, a work 
presenting many technical difficulties. The solution of these was retarded by 
the illness of the author, which resulted in his incapacity for several months to 
deal with the various questions arising in connection with the text. The read- 
ing of the proof has been carried forward as rapidly as circumstances would 
permit, and at this time the entire report is paged with exception of the list of 


56 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


place names, 2,650 in number, and the index. Considerable progress has been 
made in the final reading of the page proof. The number of pages in the vol- 
ume (estimated) will be 660, with 21 plates, 31 maps, and 1 diagram. 

Thirtieth annual report. This report, which contains as “ accompanying 
papers” ‘The Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians,” by Mrs. M. C. Stevenson, and 
“Animism and Folklore of the Guiana Indians,” by Walter BH. Roth, has been 
“made up” and read through three page proofs. At the end of the year the 
report (453 pages) was practically ready for the bindery. 

Thirty-first annual report. With this report is incorporated a memoir on 
“Tsimshian Mythology,” by Dr. Franz Boas. Of this material less than half 
(365 pages) had been paged at the beginning of the fiscal year. With the 
progress of the work a large amount of new matter has been inserted, necessi- 
tating considerable revision from time to time and the reading of several gal- 
ley and page proofs of the greater part of the memoir. At this writing the 
make-up has been carried through page 682, and Dr. Boas looks forward to 
paging the remaining material at an early day. The memoir will contain in all 
about 850 pages, with 3 plates and 24 text figures. 

Thirty-second annual report. The memoir accompanying this report is en- 
titled ‘‘ Seneca Fiction, Legends, and Myths,” the material of which was col- 
lected by the late Jeremiah Curtin and J. N. B. Hewitt and edited by the 
latter. The manuscript reached the bureau for publication about the middle 
of October and when the fiscal year closed more than one-fourth (82 galleys) 
had been set up. The number of pages will approximate 900. 

Bulletin 40. “ Handbook of American Indian Languages,” part 2 (Boas). 
During the year two sections of the above-named handbook have received atten- 
tion—the Chukehee (Bogoras) and the Siuslaw (Frachtenberg). After the 
former had been put into page form to the extent of 50 pages work thereon 
had to be suspended by reason of the impossibility of communicating with the 
author of the section, who is in Russia. The Siuslaw section (75 galleys) is 
now at the Government Printing Office for paging. Two of the “ illustrative 
sketches” of part 2 of this bulletin, namely, Takelma (Sapir), 298 pages, and 
Coos (Frachtenberg), 183 pages, have already appeared in separate form. 

Bulletin 55. “The Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians” (Robbins, Harrington, 
and Freire-Marreco). After the manuscript of this bulletin had been prepared 
by the other authors here named and had passed into galley proof, Miss 
Freire-Marreco incorporated therewith additional material to the extent of 
greatly enlarging and practically recasting the memoir. Subsequently, on 
account of the European war it was found impracticable to get from Miss 
TFreire-Marreco the proof sent to her for correction and in the absence of her 
revision the task of putting the bulletin into final form has proved difficult. 
Half of the material, however, has been paged and it will be possible to com- 
plete the work in the near future. 

Bulletin 57. “An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs” (Mor- 
ley). The first proof of this publication bearing the author’s corrections 
reached the bureau the middle of September. Since then two additional proofs 
have been revised, the character of the material being such as to require great 
eare and exactness in the work. The author is now engaged in a final reading 
of the pages. Unfortunately the progress of the work has been delayed several 
months by his absence in Central America. The volume will contain, when 
completed, about 320 pages, with 32 plates and 85 figures. 

Bulletin 59. “ Kutenai Tales” (Boas and Chamberlain), The manuscript of 
this bulletin was received in March and, after being edited, was placed in the 
hands of the Public Printer. By the middle of June the first proof, complete 
(125 galleys), had been forwarded to Dr. Boas. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. at 


Bulletin 61. “‘ Teton Sioux Music”? (Densmore). The material of this bulle- 
tin, comprising 1,067 pages of manuscript, and copy for 80 plates, 20 text 
figures, and 263 folios of music, was approved for publication in June, too 
late for inclusion by the Printing Office under the bureau’s allotment for this 
fiscal year. 


As during the last few years, the correspondence arising from the 
large demand for the publications of the bureau has been in the im- 
mediate charge of Miss Helen Munroe and Mr. E. L. Springer, of 
the Smithsonian Institution, assisted during part of the year by Mr. 
Thomas F. Clark, jr., and later by Mr. William A. Humphrey. The 
distribution has been made, in accordance with law, by the superin- 
tendent of documents on order of the bureau. The total number of 
publications issued during the fiscal year was 10,185, distributed as 
follows: 


Anmaalemeportss- 22> 2s beeen Te See ees a ih a eee ee See 1, 239 
MB Ue aS es ea ey ee cy ge Ty EE ee ee ee OE A ee 8, 515 
Gomtributions to North American Ethnology ——_ ~._- —_»*+—- "= “2s s- 25 
STG LSTS OGL UL (CURR) TN See ee ne eee Se Ae ee re ee ee ee ee ee 8 
MVS COLAO OSes ee eek eee eee Ee See ae ee ee 398 

ETO Gels = = eh A 2B he eee 10, 185 


This total shows a decrease of 2,634 volumes in comparison with 
the year 1913-14, due largely to the retention in the transmission of 
certain publications to Europe by reason of the war. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


The preparation of illustrations for the publications of the bureau 
and of photographic portraits of the members of visiting Indian 
deputations has continued in charge of Mr. De Lancey Gill, illus- 
trator, assisted by Mr. Albert Sweeney. The photographic work 
during the year may be classed as follows: 


Portrait negatives of visiting delegations (Crow, Osage, Chippewa, and 


S10 Ure TL ES) fea a Se eee 10 
Negatives of ethnologie subjects to illustrate publications_______________ 52 
Development of negatives exposed by field parties______________________ 548 
Photographic prints for distribution and for office use__________________ 690 
Photographic prints for publication and for office use__________________- 120 
Photographic prints for exhibition purposes.+-=--222 4+ 22-2 115 
Small photographic prints distributed chiefly for scientific purposes_____~ 350 
Drawings. prepared. tor illnstravions. 222-2 2 =e ee eee 30 
Photostat copies (pages) of books and manuscripts_________ Wears serene 1, 452 


In addition Mr. Gill gave the usual attention to the critical exami- 
nation of engraver’s proofs of illustrations designed for the publica- 
tions of the bureau, submitted by the Public Printer. 

In the last report mention was made of a series of photographs 
of Indian subjects that has been exhibited successively by the New 
York Public Library, the Library Commission of Indiana, and the 
Providence Public Library. In September, 1914, in response to the 


58 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


request of the Public Library of Haverhill, Mass., this series of pic- 
tures was sent for public exhibition in that library. In addition, 
collections of photographs of Indian subjects, designed to illustrate 
in part the work of the bureau, were sent for exhibition at the Pan-' 
ama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco and at the Panama-Califor- 
nia Exposition in San Diego. 


LIBRARY. 


The reference library of the bureau has been in the continuous 
charge of Miss Ella Leary, librarian, assisted by Mrs. Ella Slaughter 
until her death on November 1, 1914, and subsequently by Charles 
B. Newman, messenger boy. During the year 997 books were acces- 
sioned, but of this number only 448 were newly acquired, the remain- 
der being represented by the binding and by entry on the records 
ef serial publications that had been in possession of the bureau for 
some time. Of these accessions 138 volumes were acquired by pur- 
chase and 310 by gift or through exchange. The serial publications 
currently received number about 700, of which only 17 are obtained 
by subscription, the remainder being received by exchange of the 
bureau’s reports and bulletins. Of pamphlets, 294 were acquired. 
The number of volumes bound was 678. The library contained 
20,237 volumes, 13,188 pamphlets, and several thousand unbound 
periodicals at the close of the year. The number of books borrowed 
from the Library of Congress for the use of the staff of the bureau 
in prosecuting their researches was about 450. 

The new steel bookstacks in the eastern end of the main hall of the 
Smithsonian building, referred to in the last annual report, were 
finished and placed at the disposal of the bureau in August, when the 
work of reinstallation of the library was undertaken by the librarian 
and promptly carried to completion. The facilities afforded by the 
new stacks are an improvement over those of the old library equip- 
ment, while safety is greatly increased. 


COLLECTIONS. 


The following collections were acquired by the bureau or by mem- 
bers of its staff and transferred to the National Museum, as required 
by law: 


Model of Cherokee packing basket from the Hast Cherokee Reservation, Swain 
County, N. C. Collected by James Mooney, Bureau of American Ethnology. 
(57699. ) 

179 archeological objects from the lower Mimbres Valley and an earthenware 
vase from Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico. Collected by Dr. J. Walter 
Fewkes, Bureau of American Hthnology. (57777.) 

Three stone figurines from the Tewa Indians of New Mexico. Collected by 
Mrs. M. C. Stevenson, Bureau of American Ethnology. (58129.) 

Snipe flute of the Sioux Indians. Received from Rey. A. McG. Beede, of North 
Dakota. (58254.) 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 59 


Five archeological objects from Virginia. Gift of Dr. W. B. Barham, of New- 
soms, Va.; and a necklace presented by Mrs. J. R. Kello and her daughter, 
Miss Hattie Kello. (58177.) 


PROPERTY. 


The most valuable property of the bureau consists of its library 
(of which brief statistics have been given), a collection of unpub- 
lished manuscripts, and several thousand photographic negatives. 
Comparatively little of this material could be duplicated. The other 
property of the bureau is described in general terms in the last annual 
report. The total cost of furniture, typewriters, and other apparatus 
acquired during the fiscal year was $553.35. 


MISCELLANEOUS. 


QUARTERS. 


The quarters of the bureau have been improved by the completion 
of the library bookstacks, previously referred to, and the installation 
of additional electric lights in the library and in one of the office 


rooms. 
PERSONNEL, 


The personnel of the bureau has been changed by the appointment 
of Mr. John P. Harrington, ethnologist, on February 20; the death 
of Mrs. Matilda Coxe Stevenson, ethnologist, on June 24; the death 
of Mrs. Ella Slaughter, classified laborer, on November 1, 1914; the 
transfer of Thomas F. Clark, jr., to the National Museum; the ap- 
pointment of William Humphrey, stenographer and typewriter; and 
the appointment of Dennis Sullivan, messenger boy. The corre- 
spondence of the bureau and other clerical work has been conducted 
with the assistance of three clerks and a stenographer and typewriter. 


Respectfully submitted. 
I’. W. Hopes, 


Ethnologist-in-Charge. 
Dr. Cuartes D. Watcorr, 
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 


APPENDIX 3. 
REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES. 


Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the oper- 
ations of the International Exchange Service during the fiscal year 
ending June 30, 1915: 

The system of international exchanges is based on the convention 
and the resolutions of Congress briefly referred to below: 

Convention between the United States and several other countries 
for the international exchange of official documents and scientific 
and literary publications, concluded at Brussels in 1886 and pro- 
claimed by the President of the Ynited States in 1889. (Stat., XXYV, 
1465.) (Since the ratification of this convention, several additional 
Governments have signified their adherence thereto; while a number 
of other countries, though they have not officially adhered to the con- 
vention, have established international exchange bureaus.) 

Resolution providing for the exchange of certain public documents, 
approved March 2, 1867. (Stat., XIV, 573.) This resolution pro- 
vides that 50 copies of all documents printed by order of either House 
of Congress, and also 50 copies of all publications issued by any 
bureau or department of the Government, shall be placed at the dis- 
posal of the Joint Committee on the Library for exchange with for- 
eign countries through the agency of the Smithsonian Institution. 

Joint resolution to regulate the distribution of public documents 
to the Library of Congress for its own use and for international ex- 
change, approved March 2, 1901. (Stat., XX XI, 1464.) By this 
resolution it is provided that, in lieu of the 50 copies of the publica- 
tions referred to in the above-mentioned resolution, there shall be 
placed at the disposal of the Library of Congress for its own use 
and for international exchange 62 copies of such documents, with the 
privilege, at the request of the Librarian, of enlarging this number 
to 100. 

Joint resolution for the purpose of more fully carrying into effect 
the convention concluded at Brussels in 1886 in reference to the im- 
mediate exchange of the official journal, approved March 4, 1909. 
(Stat., XX XV, 1169.) This resolution provides that such number 
as may be required, not exceeding 100 copies, of the daily issue of 

60 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 61 


the Congressional Record shall be supplied to the Library of Con- 
gress for distribution, through the Smithsonian Institution, to the 
legislative chambers of such foreign Governments as may agree to 
send to the United States current copies of their parliamentary 
record or like publication. 

The estimate submitted for the support of the service during 1915 
was $32,200, including the allotment for printing and binding, and 
this amount was granted by Congress. The repayments from private 
and departmental sources for the transportation of exchanges ag- 
gregated $4,819.41, making the total available resources for carrying 
on the Exchange Service $37,019.41. 

During the year 1915 the total number of packages handled was 
275,756, a decrease of 65,911, as compared with the preceding year. 
The weight of these packages was 367,854 pounds, a decrease of 
199,131 pounds. ‘These decreases were caused by the suspension of 
shipments to a number of countries on account of the European war, 
as explained below. 

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


Packages. Weight. 
Sent. |Received.| Sent. |Received. 
Pounds. | Pounds. 
United States parliamentary documents sent abroad...........- 135; O50" Sasce sess T4A5A26) |. 253 ae 
Publicationsreceived in return for parliamentary documents..-..}.......... 2,305) ste d--peae 5,817 
United States departmental documents sent abroad..........-. 73, G34) )2. heer as W465 549 5 oars somes 
Publicationsreceived in return for departmental documents. ....|......-.-- ASSO N Gc acts ss 9,389 
Miscellaneousscientific and literary publications sentabroad ...| 39,164 |....--..-- 805448 ||a. LeSe 
Miscellaneous scientific and literary publications received from 
abroad for distribution in the United States...........-.......|-.-------- rt 20 6275 cee aah 52,525 
MObal sa: cissan ete atsdsardde ssse st scp sneceescde ewes cess se | 247,848 27,908 | 300,123 67,731 
Grandst otal le py-e25 2 2S: os tee eee es reese Stes wee 275, 756 367, 854 


It should be added that the disparity between the number of pack- 
ages dispatched and those received in behalf of the Government is not 
so great as indicated by these figures. Packages sent abroad usually 
contain only a single publication each, while those received in return 
often comprise many volumes. In the case of publications received in 
exchange for parliamentary documents and some others the term 
“package” is applied to large boxes containing a hundred or more 
publications. No lists of these are made in the Exchange Office, as 
the boxes are forwarded to their destinations unopened. It is also a 
fact that many returns for publications sent abroad reach their des- 
tinations direct by mail and not through the Exchange Service. 


62 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Of the 1,653 boxes used in forwarding exchanges to foreign agen- 
cies for distribution, 220 contained full sets of United States official 
documents for authorized depositories and 1,433 were filled with 
departmental and other publications for depositories of partial sets 
and for miscellaneous correspondents. The total number of boxes 
sent abroad during 1915 was 812 less than the preceding year. This 
decrease was due to the suspended shipments to certain countries 
owing to the inability of the Institution to secure transportation 
facilities for forwarding consignments to the various exchange agen- 
cies, which condition has been brought about by the European war. 

Owing to the disturbed conditions which existed in Europe and the 
interruption to transportation facilities, shipments to all European 
countries were suspended during August and a part of September, 
1914. On September 17 transmissions were resumed to Great Brit- 
ain, and during the month of October to Denmark, Holland, Italy, 
Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. Through the courtesy of the 
minister of the Netherlands at Washington, arrangements were made 
to send consignments to Switzerland by way of Rotterdam, and 
transmissions to that country were resumed on November 2. On 
December 8 shipments were resumed to Greece, and on January 238 
to France. At the close of the fiscal year, therefore, the only coun- 
tries to which shipments were not being made were Austria, Belgium, 
Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Montenegro, Roumania, Russia, Ser- 
bia, and Turkey. Steps are being taken through the Department of 
State to send exchanges for Germany to the American consul general 
at Rotterdam for reforwarding to the German exchange agency in 
Berlin, and it is hoped that the exchange of publications with Germany 
will be resumed at an early date. Through the assistance of the De- 
partment of State, arrangements have also been made for the for- 
warding of exchange consignments from Germany to the United 
States through the American consul general at Rotterdam. 

The Russian Commission of International Exchanges was ap- 
proached with a view to sending exchange consignments to Petrograd 
by way of Archangel during the summer months, but the commis- 
sion replied that, as the route in question presents so many difficul- 
ties and is so encumbered, it would prefer not to make use of it, and 
not to renew the sendings until after the conclusion of peace and the 
reestablishment of the regular communications. 

The number of boxes sent to each foreign country and the dates 
of transmission are shown in the following table: 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 63 


Consignments of exchanges for foreign countries. 


Country. 


ARGENTINA (s3- 2-525 =445-=2 
ACOSTA? LS 22 HSS 5 oo. SEEE Se Ses 
BRBEGruatas &. 226 ..sh 05st. oS 
IB OLIVA soon so cee tenet esac 
BRAZID Te. osteo tso tensed 


BRITISH COLONIES....-....---- 


IBRITISH GUIANA! 0.0 -o2-2-550 


WANADAGT 2 S25 255 5 seen ace bs ec|dacedee 


GREG se wate 5 eres. 
GUATEMALA ....)...\... ee er 
DEV ATOIEO Fe Sess Ee SIS 2k 
HONDURAS 2 ee 38s. 288i. 


LOURENGO MARQUEZ...-....-- 
MANTITOB AS Sou Sot zebras 


INE Wea AGAND ook osc cece 
INTGARAGUAL EE: ct 2sas-2 0c 
NOR Watyacue eee RUE Oates 


-_ 


91 


Sas 


Date of transmission. 


July 16, Sept. 9, Nov. 17, Dec. 17, 1914; Jan. 27, Feb. 26, Apr. 22, 
May 20, June 22, 1915. 

July 8, 1914.1 

July 11, 1914.1 

Oct. 8, Dee. 10, 1914; Jan. 28, May 10, June 16, 1915. 

July 16, 20, Oct. 19, Nov. 18, 20, Dec. 17, 1914; Jan. 27, Feb. 26, 
Apr. 22, May 20, June 22, 1915. 

July 31, Sept. 17, 25, Oct. 26, Nov. 7, Dec. 5, 1914; Jan. 2, 16, 23, 
Feb. 6, Mar. 8, 20, Apr. 20, May 1, 29, June 12, 19, 1915. 

Oct. 31, 1914; Mar. 12, May 7, 1915. 

July 20, Nov. 20, 1914; Jan. 21, Mar. 31, May 29, 1915. 

July 16, Oct. 19, Nov. 18, Dec. 17, 1914; Jan. 28, Feb. 26, Apr. 23, 
May 20, June 22, 1915. 

Oct. 28, Nov. 4, 1914; Jan. 2,30, Mar. 2, Apr. 12, May 13, June 12, 
1915. 

Oct. 20, Dec. 17, 1914; Jan. 28, Feb. 27, May 15, June 16, 1915. 

Oct. 21, Dec. 17, 1914; Jan. 28, Feb. 27, May 5, June 16, 1915. 

July 20, Nov. 20, 1914; Jan. 21, Mar. 31, May 29, 1915. 

July 24, Oct. 10, Nov. 12, Dec. 14, 1914; Jan. 14, Feb. 20, Mar. 30, 
May 4, June 4, 1915. 

Oct. 31, Dee. 17, 1914; Jan. 28, Feb. 27, May 5, June 16, 1915. 

July 24, Nov. 16,1914; Jan. 12, May 22, June 23, 1915. 

July 3, 1914; Jan. 23, Feb. 23, Apr. 30, May 14, 29, June 14, 1915. 

July 7, 1914.1 

July 3, 11, 18, 31, Sept. 17, 25, Oct. 26, Nov. 7, 23, Dec. 5, 12, 19, 
26, 1914; Jan. 2,9, 16, 23,30, Feb. 6, 13, Mar. 12, 27, Apr. 20, 24, 
May 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, June 5, 12, 19, 26, 1915. 

Oct. 9, Dec. 8, 1914; Mar. 13, May 10, June 22, 1915. 

Oct. 31, 1914; Jan. 28, Feb. 27, May 7, June 17, 1915. 

July 20, Nov. 20, 1914; Jan. 21, Mar. 31, May 29, 1915. 

Oct. 31, 1914; Jan. 28, Feb. 27, May 7, June 17, 1915. 

July 8, 1914.1 

July 3, 16, 31, Sept. 17, 25, Oct. 26, Nov. 7, Dec. 5, 26, 1914; Jan. 
16, 30, Feb. 6, 13, Mar. 8, 20, Apr. 10, 24, May 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 
June 12, 19, 26, 1915. 

July 18, Oct. 7, Nov. 12, Dec. 11, 1914; Jan. 13, Feb. 12, Mar. 11, 
Apr. 12, May 11, 25, June 11, 25, 1915. 

Oct. 8, Dec. 8, 1914; Jan. 28, Mar. 12, May 10, June 22, 1915. 

July 15, Nov. 28, Dec. 22, 1914; Jan. 26, Feb. 26, May 4, June 4, 
1915. 

Jan. 2, Mar. 12, May 12, June 22, 1915. 

July 24, Noy. 16, 1914; Mar. 12, May 12, 1915. 

Dec. 10,1914; Mar. 10, 1915. 

July 20, Nov. 20, 1914; Jan. 21, Mar. 31, May 29, 1915. 

July 20, Nov. 20,1914; Jan. 21, Mar. 31, May 29, 1915. 

Oct. 12, Nov. 3, Dec. 9, 1914; Jan. 6, Feb. 10, Mar. 10, Apr. 13, 
May 13, 27, June 14, 26, 1915. 

July 14, Oct. 2, Nov. 14, Dec. 15, 1914; Feb. 24, Apr. 8, May 8, 
June 8, 1915. 

July 14, Oct. 2, Nov. 14,1914; Feb. 24, Apr.9, May 8, June 8, 1915. 

Oct. 31, 1914; Jan. 28, Feb. 27, May 7, June 17, 1915. 

July 24, Oct. 10, Nov. 12, Dec. 14, 1914; Jan. 14, Feb. 20, Mar. 
30, May 4, June 4, 1915. 


1 Shipments temporarily suspended on account of the European war. 


64 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Consignments of exchanges for foreign countries—Continued. 


Num- 
Country. ber of Date of transmission. 
boxes 

ONTARIO (099. 0 ee 5 | July 20, Nov. 20, 1914; Jan. 21, Mar. 31, May 29, 1915. 

PARES TEN eejoce rear ee eee 1 | June 30, 1915. 

IPARAGUAY saa re: Shoe Moraes 4 6 | Oct. 31, Dec. 4, 1914; Jan. 28, Feb. 27, Mar. 12, May 5, 1915. 

PRE pate e eee Le sero een 19 | July 16, Oct. 20, Nov. 18, Dec. 17, 1914; Feb. 27, Apr. 20, May 
20, June 22, 1915. 

BORTUGAL 288. 2s0so pease 16 | July 24, Oct. 9, Nov. 12, Dec. 14, 1914; Feb. 20, Mar. 30, May 4, 

f June 4, 1915. 

QUEBELG. .cia- -ti82s.ceees = 5 | July 20, Nov. 20, 1914; Jan. 21, Mar. 31, May 29, 1915. 

QUEENSLAND. . 262 -2jah0-32224- 17 | July 14, Oct. 2, Nov. 14, Dec. 15, 1914; Feb. 24, Apr. 9, May 8, 
June 8, 1915. 

PRUIBBEAVS SS 3 Hau ee yop ae Ae 9 | July 9, 1914.11 

DAL VAD OBE «fags ots ane pene 5 | Oct. 31, 1914; Jan. 28, Feb. 27, May 7, June 17, 1915. 

TA Mere episins yaa ae were Sid Seg 4 | Dec. 10,1914; Mar. 12, May 12, June 22, 1915. 

SOULE AUSTRALAS 2255.2 52 23 | July 14, Oct. 2, Nov. 14, Dec. 15, 1914; Jan. 20, Feb. 24, Apr. 9, 
May 8, June 8, 1915. 

Spams 20 ot oho SADE EA 24 | Oct.9, Nov. 16,1914; Jan. 12, Feb. 17, May 7, June 7, 1915. 

SWEDEN........ EB nee Sx 59 | July 9, Oct. 15, Dec. 1, 1914; Jan. 6, Feb. 10, Mar. 10, 19, Apr. 
29, May 26, June 24, 1915. 

SWITZERLAND......2..2---2-..- 42 | July 11, Nov. 2, Dec. 8, 1914; Feb. 9, Mar. 11, Apr. 28, May 14, 
28, 1915. 

SYRTAsas. ts? LANE, Sak ot 2) July 25, Oct. 28, 1914.1 

TVA MANTA: c84 20. ta Gaerne Oe. 38 14 | July 18, 31, Sept. 25, Oct. 26, Nov. 7, Dec. 5, 1914; Jan. 2, 16, 
Feb. 13, Apr. 20, June 19, 1915. 

SERINGDA 2= ceca cnceeacecemen ne 5 | Oct. 8, Dec. 10, 1914; Jan. 25, May 10, June 22, 1915. 

PRORKGY, =o53- Us: Seas ose 3 | July 25, Oct. 28, 1914.1 

UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA..... 30 | July 23, Oct. 30, Dec. 10, 1914; Jan. 12, Feb. 16, Apr. 30, May 27, 
June 25, 1915. 

WRUGUAY:..2 Sasa. Se Sale 17 | July 16, Oct. 20, Nov. 18, Dec. 17, 1914; Jan. 28, Feb. 27, Apr. 
23, May 20, June 22, 1915. 

MENEZUEUA Se. eae nee ae 11 | Oct. 20, Dec. 17, 1914; Jan. 28, Feb. 29, May 5, June 16, 1915. 
VICTORIAS: AL Seists -eee tose 25 | July 14, Oct. 2, Nov. 14, Dec. 15, 1914; Jan. 20, Feb. 24, Apr. 8, 
May 8, June 8, 1915. 

WESTERN AUSTRALIA......... 20 | July 3, 31, Sept. 17, 25, Oct. 26, Nov. 7, Dec. 5, 12, 1914; Jan. 16, 
23, Feb. 6, 13, Mar. 8, 20, Apr. 20, June 12, 1915. 
WINDWARD AND LEEWARD 3 | Dec. 10, 1914; Mar. 12, June 22, 1915. 
ISLANDS, 


1 Shipments temporarily suspended on account of the European war. 


With the exception of one package for the chief secretary to the 
government of Madras, India, and one for the undersecretary to the 
government of the United Provinces, Allahabad, India—each con- 
taining 12 United States governmental documents—no consignments 
have, so far as the Institution has been informed, been lost during 
the year, which is considered remarkable in view of the number of 
ships sunk by war vessels. 

A number of boxes have been detained at several ports of de- 
barkation owing to the fact that the vessels on which they were 
forwarded have been interned. Wherever possible the Institution 
has obtained the release of these consignments and they have been 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 65 


sent forward to their destinations. At the close of the year one box 
for Sofia, one for Serbia, and two for Syria, all forwarded from New 
York July 2, 1914, per steamship Barbarossa, were held at Bremen, 
Germany, and four boxes for Pretoria, forwarded from New York 
July 10, 1914, per steamship Rauenfels, were held at Bahia, Brazil. 
With the exception of the latter, these consignments will probably 
be held until the close of the war. The Institution is endeavoring 
to have the boxes for the Government Printing Works at Pretoria 
released and forwarded from Bahia to destination. 

During the year the Institution has obtained for the Library of 
Congress from the Chinese Government, in exchange for the full 
series of United States official documents sent to China, a set of the 
Imperial Institutes of the Ching Dynasty and of the Imperial Rec- 
ords Relative to the Suppression of Rebellions. These valuable 
works comprise a total of 684 volumes. Many other foreign govern- 
mental documents have been obtained through the Exchange Service 
for the Library of Congress. In special instances, when requested 
to do so, the Institution has used the facilities of the Exchange 
Service to procure publications for both foreign and domestic gov- 
ernmental and scientific establishments. Quite a number of requests 
of foreign organizations for publications have been received from 
American consular officers through the Department of State. 

Owing largely to the efforts of Mr. Vittorio Benedetti, recently ap- 
pointed chief of the Italian office of International Exchanges, the 
service between Italy and the United States has been very much 
improved during the year. Mr. Benedetti has presented the Insti- 
tution with a typewritten copy of an account prepared by him of 
the origin and development of the International Exchange Service. 
A translation will be made of this interesting document and placed 
in the archives of the exchanges for reference. 

The act making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the 
Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1916, included a pro- 
vision authorizing the Government branches under the direction of 
the Smithsonian Institution to exchange typewriters, adding ma- 
-chines, and other labor-saving devices in part payment for like ar- 
ticles. This office exchanged four typewriting machines during the 
year. 

The multigraph duplicating machine supplied by the Institution, 
which has been in use in the Exchange Office since 1908, has been 
replaced by a new machine. This multigraph, with stand, cost 
$283.50, and was purchased from the appropriation for the Inter- 
national Exchanges. It has been found to be very useful in the 
printing not only of circular letters, but of envelopes, labels, and 
other forms. 

18618°—sm 1915——5 


66 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


The walls, ceilings, floors, and woodwork of the government and 
shipping rooms were painted during the year and the government 
room was provided with a large sorting table 27 feet 3 inches long, 
2 feet 103 inches wide, and 3 feet high, with drop leaf at end and 
two drawers and shelves. There are only two windows in the gov- 
ernment room, and on account of the thickness of the walls of the 
Smithsonian Building these admitted very little light. The windows 
in that room have therefore been splayed, with the result that the 
lighting has been greatly improved. 

Another room has been assigned by the Institution for the use of 
the Exchange Office, which has facilitated the handling of the many 
packages received for transmission through the service. 

The unsatisfactory electric lighting system throughout the Ex- 
change Office has been very much improved by the installation of a 
semi-indirect lighting system. The washroom provided for the use 
of the employees has been fitted up with two lavatories. 


FOREIGN DEPOSITORIES OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENTAL 
DOCUMENTS. 


In accordance with treaty stipulations and under the authority of 
the congressional resolutions of March 2, 1867, and March 2, 1901, 
setting apart a certain number of documents for exchange with for- 
eign countries, there are now sent regularly to depositories abroad 
56 full sets of United States official publications and 36 partial sets. 

The partial set of publications sent to Ceylon has in the past been 
forwarded in care of the American consul at Colombo. The consul 
now informs the Institution that the documents in question are de- 
posited in the Record Department of the Library of the Colonial 
Secretary’s Office, and consignments will therefore be sent direct to 
that office in the future, 

The recipients of full and partial sets are as follows: 


DEPOSITORIES OF FULL SETS. 


ARGENTINA: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Buenos Aires. 

AUSTRALIA: Library of the Commonwealth Parliament, Melbourne. 

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

BavEN: Universitits-Bibliothek, Freiburg. (Depository of the Grand Duchy 
of Baden.) 

Bavaria: K6nigliche Hof- und Staats-Bibliothek, Munich. 

BeEteiuM: Bibliothéque Royale, Brussels. 

BompBay: Secretary to the Government, Bombay. 

Brazi.: Bibliotheca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro. 

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


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 67 


CanapbA: Library of Parliament, Ottawa. 

CHILE: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional, Santiago. 

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

CotomBrA: Biblioteca Nacional, Bogota 

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

CusAa: Secretaria de Estado (Asuntos Generales y Canje Internacional), 
Habana. ; 

DENMARK: Kongelige Bibliotheket, Copenhagen. 

ENGLAND: British Museum, London. 

FRANCE: Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris. 

GERMANY: Deutsche Reichstags-Bibliothek, Berlin. 

Guascow: City Librarian, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. 

GREECE: Bibliothéque Nationale, Athens. 

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

Huncary: Hungarian House of Delegates, Budapest. 

Inp1A: Department of Education (Books), Government of India, Calcutta. 

IRELAND: National Library of Ireland, Dublin. 

Iraty: Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Hmanuele, Rome. 

JAPAN: Imperial Library of Japan, Tokyo. 

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

MANITOBA: Provincial Library, Winnipeg. 

Mexico: Instituto Bibliografico, Biblioteca Nacional, Mexico. 

NETHERLANDS: Library of the States General, The Hague. 

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

New ZEALAND: General Assembly Library, Wellington. 

Norway: Storthingets Bibliothek, Christiania. 

OntTARIo: Legislative Library, Toronto. 

Paris: Préfecture de la Seine. 

Peru: Biblioteca Nacional, Lima. 

PorRTUGAL: Bibliotheca Nacional, Lisbon. 

Prussia: Koénigliche Bibliothek, Berlin. 

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

QUEENSLAND: Parliamentary Library, Brisbane. 

Russt1a: Imperial Public Library, Petrograd. 

Saxony: K6nigliche Oeffentliche Bibliothek, Dresden. 

SErB1A: Section Administrative du Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Belgrade. 

SoutH AUSTRALIA: Parliament Library, Adelaide. 

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

SWEDEN: Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm. 

SWITZERLAND: Bibliothéque Fédérale, Berne. 

TASMANIA: Parliamentary Library, Hobart. 

Turkry: Department of Public Instruction, Constantinople. 

Union oF SoutH Arrica: State Library, Pretoria, Transvaal. 

Uruauay: Oficina de Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, Montevideo. 

VENEZUELA: Biblioteca Nacional, Caracas. 

Victoria: Public Library, Melbourne. 

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Public Library of Western Australia, Perth. 

WURTTEMBERG: KO6nigliche Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart. 


68 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


DEPOSITORIES OF PARTIAL SETS. 


ALBERTA: Provincial Library, Edmonton. 

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

Boxtv1A: Ministerio de Colonizacién y Agricultura, La Paz. 

BreEMEN: Senatskommission fiir Reichs- und Auswirtige Angelegenheiten. 

British CotumMpBiA: Legislative Library, Victoria. 

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

BuuGaRiA: Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sofia. 

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

Ecuapor: Biblioteca Nacional, Quito. 

Eeyret: Bibliothéque Khédiviale, Cairo. 

IintAnpD: Chancery of Governor, Helsingfors. 

GUATEMALA: Secretary of the Government, Guatemala. 

Hambure: Senatskommission fiir die Reichs- und Auswirtigen Angelegenheiten. 

HeEssE: Grossherzogliche Hof Bibliothek, Darmstadt. 

Honpuras: Secretary of the Government, Tegucigalpa. 

JAMAICA: Colonial Secretary, Kingston. 

LisEeRIA: Department of State, Monrovia. 

LourENGO Marquez: Government Library, Lourengo Marquez. 

Lupeck: President of the Senate. 

Mapras, Province oF: Chief Secretary to the Government of Madras, Public 
Department, Madras. 

Matra: Lieutenant Governor, Valetta. : 

MonTENEGRO: Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Cetinje. 

New Brunswick: Legislative Library, Fredericton. 

NEWFOUNDLAND: Colonial Secretary, St. John’s. 

NICARAGUA: Superintendente de Archivos Nacionales, Managua. 

NorTHWEST TERRITORIES: Government Library, Regina. 

Nova Scotia: Provincial Secretary of Nova Scotia, Halifax. 

PANAMA: Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, Panama. 

PARAGUAY: Oficina General de Inmigracion, Asuncion. 

PrIncE Epwarp ISLAND: Legislative Library, Charlottetown. 

RouMANIA: Academia Romana, Bucharest. 

SALVADOR: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, San Salvador. 

S1Am: Department of Foreign Affairs, Bangkok. 

STRAITS SETTLEMENTS: Colonial Secretary, Singapore. 

Unitep Provinces oF AGRA AND OvupH: Under Secretary to Government, Alla- 
habad. 

ViennA: Biirgermeister der Haupt- und Residenz-Stadt. 


INTERPARLIAMENTARY EXCHANGE OF OFFICIAL JOURNALS. 


There are now 33 countries with which the immediate exchange of 
official journals with the United States is carried on, the Government 
of Costa Rica having been added during the year. A complete list . 
of the Governments to which the Congressional Record is now sent is 
given below: 


Argentine Republic. Belgium. 
Australia. Brazil. 
Austria. Buenos Aires, Province of. 


Baden, Canada. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 69 


Costa Rica. Portugal. 

Cuba. Prussia. 

Denmark. Queensland. 
France. Roumania. 

Great Britain. Russia. 

Greece. Serbia. 
Guatemala. Spain. 

Honduras. Switzerland. 
Hungary. Transvaal. 

Italy. Union of South Africa. 
Liberia. Uruguay. 

New South Wales. Western Australia. 


New Zealand. 


LIST OF BUREAUS OR AGENCIES THROUGH WHICH EXCHANGES ARE 
TRANSMITTED. 


The following is a list of the bureaus or agencies through which exchanges 

are transmitted : 

ALGERIA, via France. 

ANGOLA, via Portugal. 

ARGENTINA: Comisi6n Protectora de Bibliotecas Populares, Reconquista 538, 
Buenos Aires. 

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

AzorES, via Portugal. 

Brterum: Service Belge des Hchanges Internationaux, Rue des Longs-Chariots 
46, Brussels. 

BottviA: Oficina Nacional de Estadistica, La Paz. 

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

BrivTisH Cotontes: Crown Agents for the Colonies, London. 

BritisH Guiana: Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society, Georgetown. 

BritisH HonpurAs: Colonial Secretary, Belize. 

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

CANARY ISLANDS, via Spain. 

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

Cuina: American-Chinese Publication Exchange Department, Shanghai Bu- 
reau of Foreign Affairs, Shanghai. 

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

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

DENMARK: Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Copenhagen. 

DutcH GUIANA: Surinaamsche Koloniale Bibliotheek, Paramaribo. 

Hcvapor: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Quito. 

Eeypet: Government Publications Office, Printing Department, Cairo. 

FRANcE: Service Franeais des Hchanges Internationaux, 110 Rue de Grenelle, 
Paris. 

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

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

GREECE: Bibliothéque Nationale, Athens. 

GREENLAND, via Denmark. 

GUADELOUPE, via France. 

GUATEMALA: Instituto Nacional de Varones, Guatemala. 


70 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


GUINEA, via Portugal. 

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

Honpuras: Biblioteca Nacional, Tegucigalpa. 

Hunecary: Dr. Julius Pikler, Municipal Office of Statistics, Vaci-utea 80, Buda- 
pest. 

IcELAND, via Denmark. 

Inp1A: India Store Department, India Office, London. 

Jraty: Ufficio degli Scambi Internazionali, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Eman- 
uele, Rome. 

JAMAICA: Institute of Jamaica, Kingston. 

JAPAN: Imperial Library of Japan, Tokyo. 

JAvaA, via Netherlands. 

KoreA: His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s Residency-General, Seoul. 

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

Lourenco Marqurz: Government Library, Lourenco Marquez. 

LUXxEMBURG, via Germany. 

MADAGASCAR, via France. 

Mapetra, via Portugal. 

MontENEGRO: Ministére des Affaires Mtrangéres, Cetinje. 

MozAMBIQUE, via Portugal. 

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

New Guinea, via Netherlands. 

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

New ZEALAND: Dominion Museum, Wellington. 

NicAarRAGua: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Managua. 

Norway: Kongelige Norske Frederiks Universitet Bibliotheket, Christiania. 

PaNAMA: Secretaria de Relaciones HExteriores, Panama. 

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

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

Peru: Oficina de Reparto, Depdsito y Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, 
Ministerio de Fomento, Lima. 

PorTUGAL: Servico de Permutagdes Internacionaes, Inspeccio Geral das Biblio- 
thecas e Archivos Publicos, Lisbon. 

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

RouMANIA: Academia Romana, Bucharest. 

Russta: Commission Russe des Echanges Internationaux, Bibliothéque Im- 
periale Publique, Petrograd. 

Sarvapor: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, San Salvador. 

Serbia: Section Administrative du Ministére des Affaires Ktrangéres, Belgrade. 

Sram: Department of Foreign Affairs, Bangkok. 

SoutH AUSTRALIA: Public Library of South Australia, Adelaide. 

Sparn: Servicio del Cambio Internacional de Publicaciones, Cuerpo Faculta- 
tivo de Archiveros, Bibliotecarios y Arquedélogos, Madrid. 

SumatTrA, via Netherlands. 

SweEDEN: Kongliga Svenska Vetenskaps Akademien, Stockholm. 

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

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

TASMANIA: Secretary to the Premier, Hobart. 

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


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. eal 


TUNIS, via France. 

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

UNIon oF SoutH ArricA: Government Printing Works, Pretoria, Transvaal. 

Urucuay: Oficina de Canje Internacional, Montevideo. 

VENEZUELA: Biblioteca Nacional, Caracas. 

Victoria: Public Library of Victoria, Melbourne. 

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Public Library of Western Australia, Perth. 

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


Respectfully submitted. 
C. W. SHOEMAKER, 
Chief Clerk International Exchange Service. 
Dr. Cuarites D. WaALcort, 
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 
Aveust 24, 1915. 


APPENDIX 4. 
REPORT ON THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK. 


Sir: I have the honor to submit herewith a report concerning the 
operations of the National Zoological Park during the fiscal year 
ending June 30, 1915. 

The sundry civil act approved August 1, 1914, provided $100,000 
for.improvement and maintenance. The cost of food for the animals 
during the year was about $23,000, being slightly less than the 
previous year, when it attained the highest figure yet reached; exten- 
sive repairs were required on roads and a considerable amount had 
to be expended on some of the buildings, all of which reduced the 
amount available for additional improvements. 


ACCESSIONS. 


Eighty-eight animals were born and hatched in the park. Among 
these were a South American tapir, an Arabian camel, 4 otters, 5 
bears, a beaver, and various other mammals and birds. 

The accessions included altogether 25 species not hitherto repre- 
sented in the collection, and although considerably greater in number 
than during the previous year, included few of importance, as the 
supply of foreign animals was largely cut off by the war. <A speci- 
men of Przewalski’s horse was secured as were various other animals 
of less note; a considerable number of waterfowl were also added. 


EXCHANGES. 


Eighty-two animals were secured through exchange, including 4 
pumas, a jaguar, a palm civet and other mammals, a considerable 
number of birds, and a few reptiles. 


GIFTS. 


Mr. H. H. Bailey, Newport News, Va., a whistling swan. 

Mr. H. B. Barber, Washington, D. C., a great horned owl. 

Mr. D. L. Barton, Washington, D. C., an alligator. 

Mrs. O. L. Beardsley, Washington, D. C., three spermophiles, 
Mrs. B. O. Billingsby, Jules Station, Va., a skunk. 

Miss Lillian Birney, Washington, D. C., an alligator. 

Mr. F. D. Bradford, Washington, D. C., four alligators. 

Mr. M. E. Bruce, Philadelphia, Pa., two yellow-naped parrots. 


72 


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REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 73 


Mr. John Buckey, Washington, D. C., an alligator. 
Mr. Joseph H. Curtis, Washington, D. C., a woodchuck. 
Mrs. J. B. Dodson, Washington, D. C., an opossum. 
Mr. G. A. Durfee, Washington, D. C., a grass parrakeet. 
Mr. GC. C. Estes, Washington, D. C., two cottontail rabbits. 
Mrs. Sheldon Evans, Washington, D. C., a white-fronted parrot. 
Mr. E. Fabre, Washington, D. C., a red-shouldered hawk. 
Mrs. George Fowler, Philadelphia, Pa., a white-throated capuchin. 
Mr. I. A. Frazer, Spotsylvania, Va., a Cooper’s hawk. 
Mr. James Frazier, Washington, D. C., a silver pheasant. 
Brother Geraptin, Franciscan Monastery, Washington, D. C., two mocking 
birds. 
Mr. C. G. Hoffman, Remington, Va., a barn owl. 
Mr. J. M. Johnson, Washington, D. C., a bald eagle. 
Mrs. D. C. Laws, Port Limon, Costa Rica, a white-throated capuchin. 
Mrs. Arthur Lee, Washington, D. C., a silver-blue tanager. 
Mr. Osear M. Link, Washington, D. C., a sparrow hawk. 
Mr. BE. A. McIlhenny, Avery Island, La., six blue-winged teal. 
Mr. Vinson W. McLean, Washington, D. C., a diamond rattlesnake. 
Mr. Lester Martin, Washington, D. C., a raccoon. 
Mr. Fred. Mertens, Washington, D. C., a bald eagle. 
Mr. A. M. Nicholson, Orlando, Fla., a diamond rattlesnake. 
Mr. John M. Pickrell, Washington, D. C., a diamond rattlesnake. 
Mr. Edw. 8S. Schmid, Washington, D. C., a screech owl, two barn owls, and a 
spreading adder. 
Mr. Fred. Schnaebele, Washington, D. C., an alligator. 
Dr. R. W. Shufeldt, Washington, D. C., a black snake and a barred owl. 
Mrs. C. B. Strong, Washington, D. C., a merganser. 
Mrs. Swyhart, Washington, D. C., a horned lizard. 
Mr. E. Thomas, Washington, D. C., an alligator. 
Mr. Samuel G. Walker, Weld, W. Va., a bay lynx. 
Mr. William Whyte, Washington, D. C., an alligator. 
Hon. Woodrow Wilson, Washington, D. C., an opossum. 
Mr. D. E. Winstead, Washington, D. C., an alligator. 
Mr. N. P. Wood, North Mountain, W. Va., a green snake, 
Unknown donor, a red fox. 
Unknown donor, a Gila monster. 


LOSSES. 


The most noteworthy loss during the year was the death by rup- 
ture of the aorta of the largest of the Alaskan brown bears, caught 
as a small cub in May, 1901. He had attained a weight of 1,160 
pounds. A Coke’s hartbeest and several monkeys died from tuber- 
culosis, two pronghorn antelopes from necrotic stomatitis, a lion 
from pericarditis, and a large bison bull (the “ten-dollar buffalo ”) 
from the effects of old age. Quail disease was again brought into 
the collection in a shipment of birds received from the southwestern 
United States and caused the death of more than half of the quail in 
the collection. A few waterfowl, also, died from aspergillosis, and 
there was some loss of birds from attacks by predatory animals 


74 


ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


roaming at large in the park, though it was less than during the pre- 


vious year. 
the National Museum. 


Forty-one of the animals that died were transferred to 
Autopsies were made, as usual, by the Patho- 


logical Division of the Bureau of Animal Industry, Department of 


Agriculture. 


ANIMALS IN THE COLLECTION JUNE 30, 1915. 


MAMMALS. 
Green monkey (Cercopithecus callitri- Common ferret (Putorius putorius)_ 1 
CLUS)). Pe ee ee ee Ss Black-footed ferret (Putorius nigripes) 5 | 


Diana monkey (Cercopithecus diana) -— 
Bonnet monkey (Macacus sinicus)—-~ 
Macaque monkey (Macacus cynomol- 
DUS) eo ee = Ae ee 
Pig-tailed monkey (Macacus . nemes- 
Tins) 3 == Ease ee eee 3 
Rhesus monkey (Macacus rhesus)_--. 31 
Brown macaque (Macacus arctoides) ~~ 2 
Japanese monkey (Macacus fuscatus) — 3 
Moor macaque (Macacus maurus) ——-~ 1 
1 

2 

1 


if! 
Mona monkey (Cecropithecus mona) _—~ 3 
1 
1 


Chacma (Papio porcarius) ---—-=—+-- 
Hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas) — 
Mandrill (Papio maimon) —~--_-____-__- 
White-throated capuchin (Cebus hypo- 

leucus) 
Brown monkey (Cebus fatuellus)_--~ 
Mongoose lemur (Lemur mongoz)_-- 
Ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta)_----- 
Polar bear (Thalarctos maritimus) ~~~ 
European brown bear (Ursus arctos)— 
Kadiak bear (Ursus middendorffi) ----~ 
Yakutat bear (Ursus dalli)----_---- 
Alaskan brown bear (Ursus gyas)—-- 
Kidder’s bear (Ursus kidderi) ____-_ 
Hybrid bear (Ursus kidderi-arctos) —_- 


BPR RON WE REEP HN OWHHENNNHEHENNHEN WA 


North American otter (Lutra cana- 

densis) 
Eskimo dog (Canis familiaris) _.--___ 
Dinero NCanis7gingo) = 
Gray wolf (Canis occidentalis)______ 
Coyote (Canis latrans) _____________- 
Woodhouse’s coyote (Canis frustror)— 
Red fox (Vulpes pennsylwanicus) —---- 
Swift fox (Vulpes velox) —__________ 
Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) —-______-~ 
Gray fox (Urocyon cinereo-argenteus) — 
Spotted hyena (Hyena crocuta)_----~ 
Indian palm civet (Viverra civettina) — 
Common genet (Genetta genetta) ---__ 
Cheetah (Cynailurus jubatus)-----_-_- 
Sudan’ lion (felis teo)- et eee 
Kilimanjaro lion (Felis leo sabakiensis) — 
Tiger (Melis tigris) = se 
Puma (Felis oregonensis hippolestes)_— 
JaASUAl CHES OCU) ae ee 
Leopard (Felis pardus)__~--------~--- 
Black leopard (Felis pardus) ~-------- 
Canada lynx (Lynz canadensis)___---~- 
Bay lynx (Lyng suis) aaa 
Spotted lynx (Lynw rufus texensis) ~~~ 
California lynx (Lyn@ rufus californi- 


NORPRPOHANHWONNEE RHEE OWN RHE RO 


Himalayan bear (Ursus thibetanus) —— Cus)atecinve ty Bande tk SE _€b il 
Japanese bear (Ursus japonicus) —--~ Steller’s sea lion (Humetopias stelleri)_- 1 
Grizzly bear (Ursus horribilis) __-__ California sea lion (Zalophus califor- 

Black bear (Ursus americanus) — ~~~ NMONUS) cas nee, eee eee eee 2 
Cinnamon bear (Ursus americanus) —— Northern fur seal (Callotaria alascana) — al 
Sloth bear (Melursus ursinus)—----_-- Harbor seal (Phoca vitulina)_-_------ ak 
Kinkajou (Cercoleptes caudivolvulus) — Fox squirrel (Sciurus niger) --------- 9 
Cacomistle (Bassariscus astuta) ~ _-__ Western fox squirrel (Sciurus ludo- 

Gray coatimundi (Nasua narica) ~~~ UICLONWS) ae 2 ee Se ee 8 
Raccoon (Procyon ltotory2=2__-___ + rf Gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)__ 40 
American badger (Tawvidea tarus) —___ Black squirrel (Sciurus cdrolinensis).__ 20 
European badger (Meles tarus)_____~ Albino squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) — pl 
Common skunk (Mephitis putida) —__~ Thirteen-lined spermophile (Spermo- 

Tayra (Galictis barbara) ——~--__--____ philus tridecimlineatous)__---_-_---_- 2 
American marten (Mustela americana) — Prairie dog (Cyomys ludovicianus).___ 60 
Fisher (Mustela pennantii) -_______ Woodchuck (Marmota monar)_------- 2 
Mink (Putorius vison) =2s2— ~~. 16 1 Alpine marmot (Marmota marmotta)-- 1 


1 The causes of death were reported to be as follows: Enteritis, 20; gastritis, 2; gastro- 
enteritis, 1; quail disease, 20; pneumonia, 8; tuberculosis, 10; congestion of lungs, 4; 
pleurisy, 1; aspergillosis, 4; congestion of liver, 5; rupture of liver, 1; nephritis, 1; 
peritonitis, 1; septicemia, 2; pyemia, 1; septic endometritis, 1; pericarditis, 3; rupture 
of aorta, 1; hemorrhage on spinal cord, 1; visceral gout, 2; chronic arthritis, 1; impaction 
of intestine, 1; necrotic stomatitis, 2; anemia, 3; wound infection, 1; accident, 2; unde- 
termined, 7. 


REPORT OF 


American beaver (Castor canadensis) _~ 
Coypu (Myocastor coypus) —__---_--_-~ 
Huropean porcupine (Hystriz cristata) — 
Indian porcupine (Hystrix leucura)_—-~ 
Canada porcupine ( Hrethizon dorsatus) — 
Canada porcupine (Hrethizon dorsa- 

CUS) OALDING BE 2 Eee 
Viscacha (Lagostomus trichodactylus) — 
Mexican agouti (Dasyprocta mexicana) — 
Azara’s agouti (Dasyprocta azare)_-—~ 
Crested agouti (Dasyprocta cristata) —_ 
Hairy-rumped agouti (Dasyprocta 

prymnalopna) ase Dose tee 
Paca (Celogenys paca) —-_-—~~-~__--__-~ 
Guinea pig (Cavia cutleri) __--_=-__-_ 
Patagonian cavy (Dolichotis pata- 

GONiCe 22a 2 Sess ee Sea See 
Capybara (Hydrocherus capybara)_—_~ 
Domestie rabbit (Lepus cuniculus) —--- 
African elephant (Hlephas oryotis)——_~ 
Indian elephant (Hlephas maximus) _—~— 
Brazilian tapir (Tapirus americanus) _— 
Wild horse (Zquus przewalskii) _-_---- 
Grevy’s zebra (Hquus grevyi)_-------_- 
Zebra-horse hybrid (Hquus grevyi-ca- 

(ONL OED) ee Beas RR, he he RI a eal 
Zebra-donkey hybrid (Hquus grevyi-asi- 


Grant’s zebra (Hquus burchelli granti) — 
Collared peccary (Dicotyles angulatus) — 
Waldebonr (Sus scrvofa yee tee 
Northern wart hog (Phacocherus afri- 

CUTALS ee ne ee eee eee ees 
Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphi- 

CTE capa tania ana A se Bg TULL aT (Be, 
Guanaco (Lama huanachus)—-_-----_~ 
lamas (Hane Clana). <2 ses 
AUDAcam Chwma DaICOS) =a eet ee 
Vicugna (Lama vicugna)—~-~_-_-__-__ 
Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus)— 
Arabian camel( Camelus dromedarius) — 


Mocking bird (Mimus polyglottos) —--~- 
Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis)__-_--- 
Japanese robin (Liothriz luteus) —--~-- 
Laughing thrush (Garrulax leucolo- 

Pits) we ees S PO Ee ee eee 
Australian gray jumper (Struthidea 

CINCKED) VOCE 2 Se ES SEI 
Bishop finch (Tanagra episcopus)_—_--- 
Cut-throat finch (Amadina fasciata) —_ 
Zebra finch (Amadina castanotis)_____ 
Black-headed finch (Munia atricapilla) — 
Three-colored finch (Munia malacca) —— 
White-headed finch (Munia maja)___~_ 
Nutmeg finch (Munia punctularia)____ 
Java sparrow (Munia oryzivora)______ 
White Java sparrow (Munia oryzi- 


Sharp-tailed grass finch (Poéphila acu- 
UCUUAY) See oe a= are ee ee ee eee we 
Silver-bill finch (Aidemosyne cantans) — 
Chestnut-breasted finch (Donacola cas- 
tancotheraa) eee eee 


THE SECRETARY. 


Nee ee RPeRePpLOO 


wh bb 


_ oe Be bd oF bb 


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Boe & Ab bd 


Sambar deer (Cervus unicolor)______ 
Philippine deer (Cervus philippinus) _— 
Hog deer (Cervus porcinus)__~_~______ 
Barasingha deer (Cervus duvaucelii) —_ 
Axis deer (Cervus amis) 220 25 
Japanese deer (Cervus sika)_________ 
Red deer (Cervus elaphus) ~~ ~-______ 
American elk (Cervus canadensis) ____ 
Fallow deer (Cervus dama)_—______ 
Virginia deer (Odocoileus virginianus) — 
Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus)_____ 
Columbian black-tailed deer (Odocoileus 

columbianus) === === 
Cuban deer (Odocoileus sp.) ________ 
Blessbok (Damaliscus albifrons) —~___ 
White-tailed gnu (Connochetes gnu)_ 
Defassa water buck (Cobus defassa) —_ 
Indian antelope (Antilope cervicapra) — 
Arabian gazelle (Gazella arabica) ___— 
Sable antelope (Hippotragus niger) _—_ 
Nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus) —___ 
Congo harnessed antelope (Tragelaphus 

gratus) 
Tahr (Hemitragus jemlaicus) ~~ __ 
Common goat (Capra hircus)~~_-____ 
Angora goat (Capra hircus)_________ 
Circassian goat (Capra hircus)_______ 
Barbary sheep (Ovis tragelaphus)—__~ 
Barbados sheep (Ovis aries-tragela- 

phus) 
Anoa (Anoa depressicornis) —_______ 
Zebu: -(Bibos indicus). ~__ 
Yak (Poéphagus grunniens)________— 
American bison (Bison americanus) —_— 
Hairy armadillo (Dasypus villosus) _—_ 
Wallaroo (Macropus robustus)—-—-____ 
Red kangaroo (Macropus rufus) ~____ 
Bennett’s wallaby (Macropus ruficollis 

bennetti) 
Virginia opossum (Didelphys marsupi- 

alis) 


BIRDS. 


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if 
2 


bo 


WAORDMIREOA PR 


; Napolean weaver (Pyromelana ajfra) —— 


Madagascar weaver (loudia madagas- 

CONTERIS ARE SEE TORIES ee ore oh 
Red-billed weaver (Quelea quelea)_____ 
Paradise weaver (Vidua paradisea) ___ 
Red-crested cardinal (Paroaria cucul- 


Common eardinal (Cardinalis cardi- 

TELUS ee ae EEE Le a Rr 
Siskin: (Spinus ‘spinus) e222 2 
Saffron finch (Sycalis flaveola)_______ 
Yellow hammer (Hmberiza citrinella)__ 
Common canary (Serinus canarius) —__— 
Linnet (Linota cannabina)________-__ 
Cowbird (Molothrus ater)_-__________ 
Glossy starling (Lamprotornis cauda- 

TILT) ache ap el ape ae RE ah 


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Rocky Mountain jay (Perisoreus cana- 

densis capitatis) =o ee eee 
White-throated jay (Garrulus leucotis) — 
Blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata)__-_---_ 
American magpie (Pica pica hudsonica) — 
Red-billed magpie(Urocissa occipitalis) — 
Yellow tyrant (Pitangus sulphuratus 

TUPENNAS) = 22 ss. ke Es CE eee be 
Giant kingfisher (Dacelo gigas)_-_---__- 
Concave-casqued hornbill (Dichoceros 

O1COTNTS) a SO ee ee 
Reddish motmot (Momotus subrufes- 


Sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua ga- 
LOTTE) = a te EEE oh 
White cockatoo (Cacatua alba) ----_--_ 
Leadbeater’s cockatoo (Cacatua lead- 
DEE CRI asa Le nie a a 
Bare-eyed cockatoo (Cacatua gymno- 
DAB) ii to ne eh tS A Ae el 


Yellow and blue macaw (Ara ararauna) — 
Red and yellow and blue macaw (Ara 
AVOLCOO ) xn 2 in ate ee aes 
Red and blue macaw (Ara chlorop- 
tera) 
Great green macaw (Ara militaris)___ 
Cuban parrot (Amazona leucocephala) — 
Orange-winged amazon (Amazona ama- 
gonica) 
Festive amazon (Amazona festiva)___ 
Porto Rican amazon (Amazona_ vit- 
tata) 
Yellow-shouldered amazon 
ochroptera) 
Yellow-fronted amazon (Amazona och- 
rocephala) 
Yellow-naped amazon (Amazona auri- 
palliata) 
Yellow-headed amazon (Amazona le- 
vaillanti) 
Blue-fronted amazon (Amazona estiva) - 
Lesser vasa parrot (Coracopsis nigra) — 
Banded parrakeet (Paleornis fasci- 
OG) ee ee eh ee ge 
Love bird (Agapornis pullaria) ——_—-~ 
Shell parrakeet (Melopsittacus undula- 
EUS) a ie ore NEE ey as ee 
Great horned owl (Bubo virginianus) — 
Arctic horned owl (Bubo virginianus 
SILO QU CLICUR)) gine ees Se ee 
Barred owl (Stri# varia)_________=—= 
Sparrow hawk (Falco sparverius)———— 
Bald eagle (Haliwetus leucocephalus)_— 
Alaskan bald eagle (Haliwetus leuco- 
cephalus alascanus)—-~—_______.-— 
Golden eagle (Aquila chrysaétos)_-___ 
Harpy eagle (Thrasaétus harpyia)_—--_ 
Crowned hawk eagle (Spizaétus coro- 
natus) 
Rough-legged hawk (Archibuteo lago- 
pus sancti-johannis)——___________ 
Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperi) -—- 
Venezuelan jhawhke = 2 ser ees Sr 


(Amazona 


km Oo Co ee 69 


ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 


1915, 


Lammergeyer (Gypaétus barbatus) ___ 
South American condor (Sarcorham- 

phusrgryphus) ose sie ee 
California condor (Gymnogyps califor- 

RIO) ya Sos see bo ieee 28 
Griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus)_--_____ 
Cinereous vulture (Vultur monachus) — 
Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnop- 

Cer WS ess es eee eee ee 
Turkey vulture (Cathartes aura)_-_~ 
Black vulture (Catharista urubi)--__ 
King vulture (Gypagus papa)—_--_-_ 
Snow pigeon (Columba leuconota)____ 
Red-billed pigeon (Columba flaviros- 

tris) 
White-crowned pigeon (Columba leuco- 

cephala) 
Band-tailed pigeon (Columba ae 
Mourning dove (Zenaidura macroura) — 
Peaceful dove (Geopelia tranquilla) __- 
Zebra dove (Geopelia striata) ________ 
Collared turtie dove (Turtur risorius) — 
Cape masked dove (Gna capensis) —__ 
Australian crested pigeon (Ocyphaps 

lophotes) 
Wonga-wonga 

picata) 
Nicobar pigeon (Calenas nicobarica)_— 
Red-billed curassow (Craz carunculata) — 
Wild turkey (Weleagris gallopavo sil- 

UESTVIS) 2 a SO Bee ae 
Peafowl (Pavo cristata) —_-_.-.._.._= 
Peacock pheasant (Polyplectron chin- 


pigeon 


Huropean quail (Coturnia communis) — 
Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) -~---- 
Curacoa crested quail (Hupsychortyzr 

CTI ST GINS ioe 5 ae ee Pe te ts Se 
Scaled quail (Callipepla squamata) —-—~ 
Valley quail (Lophortyx californica 

vallicola) ea 4 
Gambel’s quail (Lophortyxr gambeli) —_ 
Massena quail (Cyrtonye montezume) — 
American coot (Fulica americana) ~~~ 
Great. bustard,, (Otis stard@) 2+. ..-— 


Common cariama (Cariama cristata)_~ ~ 


Demoiselle crane (Anthropoides virgo) —~ 
Crowned crane (Balearica pavonina) — 
Whooping crane (Grus americana) ——~ 
Sand-hill crane (Grus mexicana) —~---~ 
Australian crane (Grus australasiana) — 
Huropean crane (Grus cinerea) -~--~~ 
Indian white crane (Grus leucogera- 

A) a eee ee eee er eee ene 
Ruff (Machetes pugnar)=-—-~——+-----— 
Black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax 

NYCLiCOTAL .NECVULS) — ees 
Snowy egret (Zgretta candidissima) —_ 
Great white heron (Herodias egretta)~— 
Great blue heron (Ardea herodias) ~~~ 
Great black-crowned heron (Ardea co- 


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REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 


Marabou stork (Leptoptilus dubius) —-~ 1 | Fulvous tree duck (Dendrocygna bi- 
Wood ibis (Mycteria americana) _—_-_~ 2 COLON) ee aE Te ey Oe ee 
Sacred ibis (1bis wthiopica) __________ 3 | Wandering tree duck (Dendrocygna ar- 
White ibis (Guara alba) _~--_--_---~- 13 CUGTO) SE es Se a ae 
Roseate spoonbill (Ajaja ajaja)__-_-_-_- 2 | Ruddy sheldrake (Casarca ferruginea) _— 
Turopean flamingo (Phenicopterus ro- Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)___-____ 
SEALS ae en ee es ee 2 | East Indian black duck (Anas sp.) —-_~ 
Whistling swan (Olor columbianus)_—_ 6 | Black duck (Anas rubripes) _-________ 
Mute swan (Cygnus gibbus)_----__--_ 6 | European widgeon (Mareca penelope) -_— 
Black-necked swan (Cygnus melancory- Chilean widgeon (Mareca sibilatriz) __ 
NE) | ee 2.| Pintail (Dafila acuta),_---_2--...-_-= 
Black swan (Chenopis atrata) -~-------~ 3 | Blue-winged teal (Querquedula discors) — 
Spur-winged goose (Plectropterus gam- Rosy-billed pochard (Metopiana pepo- 
Lay Oh Ie aes een oN ee ee ee, uf SOCQ) eae Fe a BN a 
Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) ~~~ 2 | Red-headed duck (Marila americana) __ 
White muscovy duck (Cairina mos- American white pelican (Pelecanus 
(BUCO) ca ee ee a ee 1 CHYylhTerhyncnos) pee eee ee 
Wood duck,( Air: sponsa) =. — 13 | European white pelican (Pelecanus 
Mandarin duck (Dendronessa galericu- ONOCrOUOLUS) 22 == ae 
TTD ek LOE RE SARE AIT 10 | Roseate pelican (Pelecanus roseus)___~— 
Cape Barren goose (Cereopsis nove-hol- Brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) _ 
LL TEUL ACE, en arene ne ne OR ree a ey 2 | Australian pelican (Pelecanus conspi- 
Lesser snow goose (Chen hyperboreus) — 3” CHUTES) a ee a Ee 
Greater snow goose (Chen hyperboreus Florida cormorant (Phalacrocoraxz au- 
AEE UU UL L193) ee ee ee 1 TGs: flovidaniws) a 
Ross’s goose (Chen rossi) __--_---____ 2 | Water turkey (Anhinga anhinga) —-___- 
American white-fronted goose (Anser Great black-backed gull (Larus mari- 
atbijnons gambels) 22 x2. es 5 COI) eo = See ae, SEE ene oe ener 
Barred-head goose (Anser indicus) —-~~ 2 | American herring gull (Larus argenta- 
Chinese goose (Anser cygnoides) ~---~ 2 tus smithsonianus)s—- 22-255 
Canada goose (Branta canadensis)____ 12 | Laughing gull (Larus atricilla)__--___ 
Hutchins’s goose (Branta canadensis South African ostrich (Struthio austra- 
TURE ECIUATES UD) ere te ae no ee me ees 3 Saas =e a ee Es Sees eee 
Cackling goose (Branta canadensis mi- Somali ostrich (Struthio molybdo- 
ULNA) oe oe a eh a 2 PIONS) a ee ee Se 
Upland goose (Chloéphaga magella- Common cassowary (Casuarius galea- 
TAC ye a ES eee pod ee eb Serb 1 CUS) (So hele 28 eer ye re pe ees ey ated 
White-faced tree duck (Dendrocygna Common rhea (Rhea americana) ---__~ 
DELS ATH SG 9) oe ND I SN ace cl 2 ' Emu (Dromeus nove hollandie) ____-_ 
REPTILES. 
Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)._ 22 | Black snake (Zamenis constrictor) —-~ 
Painted box tortoise (Cistudo ornata) — 2 | Coach-whip snake (Zamenis flagellum) — 
Duncan Island tortoise (Testudo ephip- Water snake (Natrixz sipedon)__-_____ 
ILLENT) eee oe he Le ee 2 | Common garter snake (Hutenia sirta- 
Albemarle Island tortoise (Testudo vi- 9) os ee ee ee RS ee eee ee 
GUE) OO SEE Ss ARETE EA i Ros 1 | Texas water snake (Hutenia proxima) — 
Horned lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum) — 1 | Pine snake (Pituophis melanoleucus) — 
Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) — 2 | King snake (Ophibolus getulus) _--___ 
Regal python (Python reticulatus) —~-- 3 | Water mocassin (Ancistrodon piscivo- 
Common boa (Boa constrictor) _—______ 5 fUS8)\ === lo a ee ee 
Cook’s tree boa (Corallus cookii) ----~ 1 | Copperhead (Ancistrodon contortriz) _— 
Anaconda (Hunectes murinus)_—___-_-__ 1 | Diamond rattlesnake (Crotalus ada- 
Velvet snake (EHpicrates cenchris)_-_-~ 2 DIU ONUE CLES) ee ee 
Spreading adder (Heterodon platyrhi- 
MUS) Lee oe ee al 


STATEMENT OF THE COLLECTION. 


ACCESSIONS DURING THE YEAR. 
FAPESON CCC Ree LS NP ee 8) Da Nw PS EN BID BOR RS Sd hae EEE 
Wen 7SCQU Aas ot et ge aa eae eh ep etn re a OY es ake ey oye Byer et, hh oe 
Born and hatched in the National Zoological Park______________--____-- 
FRCCe i eaani tee XChl alll Doe memenmrei henner an ae ee ee eee ee ee 


Deposited in National Zoological Park 


ONNWNNAOEDS 


on 


© 


60 
225 
88 
82 
43 


498 


78 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


SUMMARY. 
Animals ‘onohanadyiby aly WOU at ea Tek pe a OI ee te 1, 362 
Alccessions during “they Cara == Se 8 in ea ee ee 498 
1, 860 
Deduct.loss (by exchange, death, return of animals, ete.) ____-___________ 463 
One HAN Ge UUeT ONe ee eae 2 Lane St ee 1, 397 
Class. Species. penis 
LEAT ee ee eS aa sar Se eae ae ae ee ee Seen Mei fan ne Se SS 151 629 
POSS ARONA (MERIAL DAT | IEE SS oe RO I A 185 696 
MB ORGS ose esc join wma cin oe Se SE SPs © Seb Balen Sache cece eee yo 22 72 
MPOTE ss. 2 sce sesh aes o as Siesta cltdaip Suiseele sowie Se iefes coe on tote ote amen etn Soman 358 1,397 
VISITORS. 


The number of visitors to the park during the year, as determined 
by count and estimate, was 794,530, a daily average of 2,176. This 
was the largest year’s attendance in the history of the park. The 
greatest number in any one month was 153,452 in April, 1915, an 
average per day of 5,115. 

Sixty-two schools, classes, etc., visited the park, with a total of 
3,485 individuals. 

IMPROVEMENTS. 


A cage for pumas was built near the lion house. The cage is 
22 by 28 feet, 10 feet high, and attached to it is a well-built shelter 
house, which provides four compartments for the animals and ample 
space for the keeper in caring for them. : 

In order to provide for keeping a band of rhesus monkeys out of 
doors throughout the year, a small shelter house with thick wooden 
walls was built and connected with it a yard 25 feet square. Twenty- 
five monkeys were placed there in October; all came through the 
winter in good shape except one, which was taken out as it appeared 
to suffer from the cold. 

A new machine lathe was added to the shop equipment, replacing 
one of inferior type which had been in use since the early years of 
the park. A tool grinder and power hack saw were also installed and 
overhead equipment of shafting and pulleys arranged for the several 
machines. <A food chopper and bone grinder, with motor for driving 
them, were put in at the food house. 

For the convenience of the increasing number of people who enter 
at the south end of the park, a foot bridge was constructed there 
across the creek. A small rustic shelter was also built near the new 
stone bridge. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 79 


The most important improvement undertaken was a building for 
hospital and laboratory. The construction of this was begun near 
the end of the year, part of the cost being met from this year’s ap- 
propriation and the balance to come from the appropriation for 
the following year. The total cost is expected to be about $5,000. 
The building will be of stone, 30 by 56 feet, and one story high. 
There will be a room at each end fitted up for the accommodation 
of animals, and between these a laboratory room, 16 by 27 feet. 
Each room will be provided with four skylights. The location 
selected for the building is entirely separate from all other animal 
quarters, but yet easy of access for those who will have charge of the 
animals that are kept in it. 

The cost of these improvements was as follows: 

Hospital and Jaboratory (1915 appropriation) —-______:____________:__._ $2, 
Care LANGE nOUSE SLOG) DUES eee meee ee Be See oe ee eee ee See 
Outloeor case ANG NOuUSe TOM INODKCYS 2.0 ee ee et eee 
Additional machine-shop equipment !4—2) 2o 25+ eis ee ae 
Additionalzequipment:tor food houses s+ 411532 =) ee 


TENG YOy HO ein § (fe eee ee eee ee ee ee ee Oe eee Beene Sere Spee Loree 
RUStiGEeshelter iat new Stonerbridge s+. 2-2. sae es 


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MAINTENANCE OF BUILDINGS, INCLOSURES, ETC. 


The roads and walks in the park had received almost no repair 
since 1910, when a special appropriation was made for that purpose. 
Their condition had become so bad that repairs had to be made early 
in the year. The roads were extensively patched and given a general 
surfacing throughout with tar and crushed stone, over 2 miles of 
roadway being thus treated. Portions of the walks were repaired 
in the same manner. The total area of roads and walks repaired 
was 8,330 square yards. The ford near Klingle Road also had to be 
thoroughly repaired, and toward the close of the year it became nec- 
essary to pave with concrete the ford on the driveway to Cathedral 
Avenue, which, from the effects of high water and heavy ice in the 
creek, had become impassable. The total cost of this road work was 
$4,075 (upper ford $325, lower ford $615). 

It was also necessary to clean out and repair the larger pond for 
waterfowl, in which an extensive bank of sand and mud had been 
deposited at time of flood by the water supply from the creek; this 
cost $850. 

Progressive deterioration of the temporary bird house again made 
repairs necessary there. The wooden floor, which had already been 
rebuilt twice, was replaced with concrete, as was also a part of the 
wooden foundation. The cost of this work was $700. This building 
is an example of the ultimate costliness of cheap temporary con- 
struction, 


80 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


The roof of the office building had to be reshingled and some other 
repairs made at a cost of $400. 

The section of the heating main between the temporary bird 
house and the antelope and elephant houses was repaired and a 
considerable part of the pipe replaced. A new hot-water boiler, for 
auxiliary heating of snake cases, was also put in at a total cost of 
$500. 


ALTERATION OF 'THE WEST BOUNDARY OF THE PARK. 


The acquisition of the land required to extend the park to Con- 
necticut Avenue from Cathedral Avenue to Klingle Road, for which 
an appropriation of $107,200 was made in the sundry civil act for 
the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, has not yet been accomplished. 

There was great delay at several stages in the proceedings for the 
condemnation of the land. A special survey and map of the prop- 
erty involved was required; the preliminary proceedings were then 
postponed from time to time in order that the property owners 
interested might submit arguments regarding the instructions to be 
given to the jury of condemnation; the work of the jury in arriving 
at the value of the land to be taken and the amount of benefits which 
should be assessed against neighboring property occupied several 
months; the hearing by the court of objections on the part of prop- 
erty owners to the verdict further delayed the matter, especially as 
the time of that court from November, 1914, to May, 1915, was al- 
most entirely occupied by the contest in an important will case. 
Changes in the personnel of the court and of the Government attor- 
neys also operated to delay and complicate the matter. The court 
finally, on June 28, 1915, confirmed the verdict of the jury as regards 
the awards of damages for land to be taken and a portion of the 
benefits assessed against neighboring property, but set aside the ver- 
dict as to benefits in all cases where the owners of the property had 
filed exceptions to the verdict. The amount awarded for the land 
to be taken was $194,438.08, and to this is to be added the cost of the 
proceedings, $2,203.35, msi a total of $196,641.43. The benefits 
were assessed at $66,013.50, but a considerable part was set aside by 
the court. The exact amount that is involved in this decision of the 
court has yet to be determined by the Government attorneys upon 
examination of the land records. 

The total amount required to purchase the land and meet the costs 
of condemnation will therefore be considerably greater than the sum 
that was appropriated, so that an additional appropriation will have 
to be obtained in order to secure all of the land for which the act 
provides. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 81 
ROCK CREEK INTERCEPTING SEWERS. 


The District of Columbia completed the construction of the main 
intercepting sewer through the park in October, 1914, and shortly 
thereafter built a large connecting sewer to this from the intercept- 
ing sewer that had been constructed through the park some years 
before. In accomplishing this work there was necessarily a‘con- 
siderable amount of destruction and defacement of natural features 
along the line of the work. The District authorities and the con- 
tractor have removed the excavated material and restored the ground 
to its original condition so far as that is practicable, but some ex- 
penditure on the part of the park and considerable time will be re- 
quired to bring it again into satisfactory condition. 


PLAYGROUND PRIVILEGE. 


At its request, the playground department of the District of Co- 
lumbia was allowed to install several pieces of apparatus on a meadow 
near which is a favorite resort of picnic parties. The apparatus has 
been quite largely used. Objectionable features thus far have been 

_some temporary disfigurement of an attractive part of the park and 
the tendency to extend playground operations beyond the area that 
was allotted for that purpose. 


IMPORTANT NEEDS. 


BUILDINGS. 


The importance of providing certain permanent buildings for 
housing the collection and for other purposes has been urged for 
several years past, but, with the scanty means available, all that 
could be done was to provide, from two yearly appropriations, a small 
building to meet the bare necessities of a hospital and laboratory. 
An aviary building is still a most urgent need, and repeated efforts 
have been made to secure an appropriation for this purpose. A 
building to accommodate elephants, hippopotami, and certain other 
animals whose requirements as to housing and care are similar will 
soon be a necessity, as the present temporary quarters are already 
too small and insecure for the young animals, which are rapidly grow- 
ing and acquiring formidable strength. 

The need of a public-comfort and restaurant building has been 
stated repeatedly and attention called to the fact that the facilities 
which it has been possible thus far to provide are altogether inade- 
quate and not befitting a public institution of this character. 

Gatehouses should be provided at the principal entrances, all of 
which are at considerable distance from the exhibition buildings, and 

18618°—sm 1915——6 


82 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


they should include a small room for watchmen and limited toilet 
facilities for visitors. 


PREPARATION OF SITES FOR BUILDINGS. 


The park includes but little ground that is even comparatively 
level, and in order to provide a building site of any considerable 
extent it is usually necessary to grade off a hill or fill up a valley. 
This involves the destruction of the trees and shrubs on the area and 
their replacement after the grading is completed by others required 
about the building for shade and ornament. Early preparation of 
such sites is highly desirable, in order that the planting may be done 
in advance and as much time as possible utilized for growth, especially 
of trees for shade. The site that has been selected for the aviary 
will require grading over practically the entire area needed for the 
building, the attached outdoor cages, and the walks about them. 
This would involve the excavation and removal of some 14,000 cubic 
yards of earth. The location is indicated at A on the accompanying 
map, which also shows where the excavated material could be used to 
fill a deep, narrow valley adjoining the bear yards at B. Nearly 
70,000 square feet of ground would thus be made available at the 
aviary site and some 34,000 square feet would be added to the usable 
area where the fill is made. It is estimated that the cost of this work 
would be about $4,000, and it is recommended that Congress be 
asked to appropriate that sum for the purpose. 


ADDITIONS TO THE COLLECTION. 


Attention is again called to the desirability of adding to the 
exhibit some of the more important animals which it still lacks, such 
as anthropoid apes, rhinoceros, giraffe, African buffalo and ante- 
lopes, and the mountain sheep and goat of our own country. 

Respectfully submitted. 

Frank Baker, 


Superintendent. 
Dr. Cuarites D. Watcort, 


Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 83 


| A. SITE FOR AVIARY. 
B Area of Cut 


B. LOCATION OF PROPOSED FILL. 
3.-ANTELOPE HOUSE. 
4.—INDIAN ELEPHANT. 
5.—MONKEY HOUSE. 
6.—AFRICAN ELEPHANTS. 
7.-TEMPORARY BIRD HOUSE. 
8.—BEARS. 
9.—SEA LIONS. 
10.—WOLVES. 
11.—ZEBRA. 
13.—BEAVER. 
14.—FLYING CAGE. 
16.—RESTAURANT. 


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‘APPENDIX 5. 
REPORT ON THE ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY. 


Sir: I have the honor to present the following report on the 
operations of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for the 
year ending June 380, 1915: 


EQUIPMENT. 


The equipment of the observatory is as follows: 

(a) At Washington there is an inclosure of about 16,000 square 
feet, containing five small frame buildings used for observing and 
computing purposes, three movable frame shelters covering several 
out-of-door pieces of apparatus, and also one small brick building 
containing a storage battery and electrical distribution apparatus. 

(6) At Mount Wilson, Cal., upon a leased plat of ground 100 feet 
square, in horizontal projection, are located a one-story cement ob- 
serving structure, designed especially for solar-constant measure- 
ments, and also a little frame cottage, 21 feet by 25 feet, for observer’s 
quarters. 

Upon the observing shelter at Mount Wilson there is a tower 40 
feet high above the 12-foot piers which had been prepared in the 
original construction of the building. This tower is being equipped 
with a tower telescope for use when observing (with the spectro- 
_ bolometer) the distribution of radiation over the sun’s disk. This 
has been made possible by an appropriation by Congress of $2,000 
for this purpose. 

During the year apparatus for research has been purchased or 
constructed at the observatory shop. The value of these additions to 
the instrumental equipment, not counting the tower equipment above 
mentioned, is estimated at about $500. 


WORK OF THE OBSERVATORY. 
AT WASHINGTON. 


Observations were made for the testing of pyrheliometers. As in 
former years several silver-disk pyrheliometers were prepared and 
sent abroad by the Institution after standardization at the Astro- 


physical Observatory. 
84 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 85 


Several automatic recording pyrheliometers were raised to great 
heights in sounding balloon experiments at Omaha early in July, 
1914. These instruments were all recovered, and the one which made 
the most successful flight was received back entirely uninjured. A 
great many experiments were made with it at Washington to inves- 
tigate certain peculiarities of its record, and to more thoroughly 
standardize its pyrheliometric and barometric elements. ‘These ex- 
periments consumed much time of the director and Mr. Aldrich. 
The results reached from these balloon pyrheliometer records will 
be summarized below. 

Further experiments were made with sky-radiation apparatus. 

As in former years the major portion of the time of Mr. Fowle 
and Miss Graves, and a considerable part of that of Mr. Aldrich 
and Mr. Carrington, has been used in measuring and reducing the 
Mount Wilson bolographic data. This work is heavier than for- 
merly, as it now includes the tower-telescope observations on the dis- 
tribution of brightness along the sun’s diameter. These are now 
made at seven different wave lengths of the spectrum on each day 
that solar-constant measurements are secured. Owing to the de- 
mands of the Mount Wilson work, Mr. Fowle has devoted but little 
time to his research on the transmission of long-wave rays in air 
containing water vapor. 

The instrument maker, Mr. Kramer, was occupied mainly on the 
construction of sky-radiation apparatus, and on many improvements 
for the Mount Wilson tower telescope. 


AT MOUNT WILSON. 


Observations by Messrs. Abbot and Aldrich were continued at 
Mount Wilson from July to about November 1, 1914, and were begun 
again about June 1, 1915. Asin former years measurements of solar 
radiation were made on every favorable day, with the purpose of 
following the course of the solar variation. On each day of observa- 
tion the distribution of brightness along the diameter of the solar 
image of the tower telescope was also observed at seven different 
wave lengths. 


AT OMAHA. 


As stated in last year’s report, Mr. Aldrich, in cooperation with 
Dr. Blair and other representatives of the United States Weather 
Bureau, made sounding-balloon experiments at Omaha early in 
July, 1914. Three flights with automatic recording pyrheliometers 
were made on July 1, 9, and 11, respectively. The first was made at 
night, with electric lamps for recording, as a test of certain antici- 
pated sources of error. In the second flight the instrument was 


86 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


much damaged when landing and remained a great while undis- 
covered, so that the record was quite spoiled. Apparently, too, the 
clockwork had stopped before reaching a very great elevation. The 
third flight was highly successful. 


RESULTS OF BALLOON PYRHELIOMETRY. 


A complete account of the balloon pyrheliometers, the circum- 
stances of the flights, and the results obtained has been published in 
a paper by Messrs. Abbot, Fowle, and Aldrich, entitled, “ New Evi- 
dence on the Intensity of Solar Radiation Outside the Atmosphere ” 
(Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 65, No. 4, 1915). The 
following is a summary of the principal results: 

In the flight of July 11, 1915, the balloons reached an elevation of 
approximately 25,000 meters, or 81,000 feet. The pressure of the air 
remaining above the instrument was approximately 3 centimeters, or 
1.25 inches of mercury, about one twenty-fifth of the barometric 
pressure at sea level. Seven readable measurements of solar radia- 
tion were recorded at various levels. Of these the three near highest 
elevation were the best. Their mean gives a value of 1.84 calories 
per square centimeter per minute, as the intensity of solar radiation 
at mean solar distance, at noon on July 11, at the altitude of about 
22,000 meters, or 72,000 feet. It appears reasonable to add about 
2 per cent for the quantity of solar radiation absorbed and scattered 
by the air above the instrument. This gives 1.88 calories as a value 
of the solar radiation outside the atmosphere, on this day, according 
to the balloon pyrheliometry. Unfortunately no solar-radiation 
measurements were secured on Mount Wilson on July 11, but the 
result falls well within the range of values for the solar constant of 
radiation which have been obtained by the bolometric method at 
various stations, and compares well with the mean of these values, 
1.93 calories. 


UNIFORMITY OF ATMOSPHERIC TRANSMISSION AT MOUNT WILSON. 


In solar-constant measurements on Mount Wilson the atmospheric 
transmission for vertical rays is determined in the following man- 
ner for numerous spectrum wave lengths: 

Spectrobolographic observations are made at different zenith dis- 
tances of the sun, usually between 75° and 30°. Between these 
limits the length of the path of the rays within the atmosphere is 
proportional to the secant of the zenith distance. Knowing the 
length of path and the intensity of the transmitted rays, the co- 
efficient of transmission for any ray is readily computed. In this 
determination it is assumed that the atmosphere remains unchanged 
in transparency during the whole period of observation. Several 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 87 


critics have objected against the Mount Wilson measurements that 
a progressive decrease of transparency occurs during the morning 
hours, and especially during the period ordinarily used in our ob- 
servations, so that our estimates of atmospheric transmission are 
in their view too high, and our solar-constant values too low in con- 
sequence. It has been suggested by one critic that the period during 
which the zenith distance of the sun changes from 85° to 75° would 
be more suitable for the work. 

To test this matter, observations were begun at sunrise on Septem- 
ber 20 and 21, 1914, and continued until 10 o’clock, the usual clos- 
ing time. These days were exceptionally clear and very dry, and 
seemed well suited to give excellent solar-constant values. The 
conditions of experiment, discussion of observations, and results are 
given in full in the paper by Abbot, Fowle, and Aldrich above cited. 
The principal results are these: No considerable difference in trans- 
mission coeflicients appeared whether these were based on the whole 
morning’s observations, on the range of air masses usually employed, 
or on the range recommended by the critic above mentioned. Six 
solar-constant values were derived for the two days, based on these 
three different treatments of the data. All six values fall between 
1.90 and 1.95 calories per square centimeter per minute, in good 
agreement with values obtained as usual on other days. The ex- 
periments confirm the view that the atmospheric transparency above 
Mount Wilson is sufficiently uniform for the purposes of solar- 
constant investigations. 


LONG-PERIOD VARIATION OF THE SUN. 


In the year 1913 the solar activity, as judged by the prevalence of 
sun spots, was less than at any time for about a century. The mean 
of all solar-constant values obtained at Mount Wilson from July to 
October, 1913, inclusive, was 1.885 calories per square centimeter per 
minute. This value falls 2.5 per cent below the mean value for the 
years 1905 to 1912, which was 1.933 calories. 

Beginning September 9, 1913, observations of the distribution of 
radiation along the diameter of the solar disk were secured on about 
45 days of September, October, and November. These showed that 
the increase (or contrast) of brightness of the center of the sun’s 
disk over that which prevails near the edge was less than that which 
was found from Washington observations of the years 1905 to 1907. 

In the year 1914 the solar activity became distinctly greater than 
in 1918. The number of spots, to be sure, was not great, but other 
phenomena joined in showing that the period of maximum sun spots 
was about to come. The mean of all solar-constant values obtained 
at Mount Wilson from June to October, inclusive, was 1.950 calories. 


88 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


This value is 3.5 per cent above that of 1913 and 1 per cent above 
the mean for former years. Indications are that the value for 1915 
will also fall very high. 

The contrast of brightness between the center and edges of the 
solar disk was greater in 1914 than in 1913, and, in fact, almost as 
great as was found from Washington work of 1905 to 1907. 

These facts confirm the result derived from earlier observations, 
namely, the solar emission of radiation varies along with the solar 
activity as revealed by sun spots and other phenomena. Higher 
values of solar radiation prevail at times of greater solar activity, as 
expressed by sun spots. The connection does not, however, appear 
to be a strictly numerical one between solar radiation and sun spot 
numbers. In the return of solar activity presaged in 1914 the solar 
radiation rose almost to its maximum value before the number of 
sun spots had greatly increased. Associated with these changes, 
greater contrast of brightness between the center and edges of the 
solar disk prevails when the solar activity is greater. 


SHORT-PERIOD VARIATION OF THE SUN. 


In the year 1913, as in former years, considerable fluctuations of 
the solar-constant values occurred from day to day. The values 
found ranged over nearly 10 per cent between the extreme limits 1.81 
and 1.99 calories, but seldom more than 38 per cent in any 10-day 
interval. The periods of fluctuation were irregular, as heretofore. 
Associated with these fluctuations, though perhaps not strictly con- 
nected numerically, the contrast of brightness between center and 
edges of the solar disk also varied. Curiously enough, however, the 
correlation between solar-constant values and contrast values proves 
to be of opposite sign for these short irregular fluctuations to that 
which attends the long-period changes which are associated with the 
general solar activity. In other words, in the progress of the sun 
spot cycle high solar-constant values and increased contrast between 
center and edges of the solar disk are associated together with numer- 
ous sun spots, but for the shor¢ irregular period fluctuations of solar 
radiation, higher solar-constant values are associated with diminished 
contrast of brightness along the diameter of the solar disk. The year 
1914 was singularly free from large fluctuations of solar radiation. 
The extreme range of solar-constant values was only 4 per cent be- 
tween limits 1.91 and 1.99 calories. Accordingly the year was not 
very favorable for testing the relation just described. Nevertheless, 
the results tend to confirm rather than disprove the conclusion 
reached that for short, irregular fluctuations of the solar radiation 
high values are associated with less contrast of brightness between the 
center and edges of the sun. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 89 


The somewhat paradoxical conclusions above stated seem capable 
of explanation as follows: Associated with the great increase of 
solar activity attending the maximum of the sun spot cycle, increased 
convection is continually bringing fresh hot material to the sun’s 
surface, so that the effective solar temperature is then higher, and 
greater emission of radiation prevails. At such a time the contrast, 
which would be zero if the solar temperature were zero, is naturally 
also increased. As for the quick, irregular fluctuations, it must be 
supposed that the sun’s outer envelope hinders somewhat the passage 
of radiation from within outward. This hindrance is greater at the 
edges of the sun’s disk, where the path of the rays in the line of 
sight is oblique, than it is at the center of the sun’s disk. Suppose 
now that the obstructive property of these layers varies from day to 
day. When their transparency is increased the solar radiation must 
increase; but as the effect will be most conspicuous at the edge of the 
solar disk, where the path of the rays is longest, the contrast of 
brightness between center and limb must thereby decrease. 

Two kinds of causes may, therefore, contribute to the sun’s vari- 
ability. The one, a change of effective temperature attending the 
general march of solar activity, may cause the variability of long 
period. The other, a change of opacity of the outer solar layers, 
may cause the variability of short irregular period. 


SUMMARY. 


Successful records of the intensity of solar radiation up to 25,000 
meters were secured by means of automatic recording pyrhelio- 
meters attached to sounding balloons. The mean’‘of the three highest 
values reduced to mean solar distance is 1.84 calories per square 
centimeter per minute. Making 2 per cent allowance for scattering 
and absorption in the air above (which gave a barometric pressure 
only about one twenty-fifth of that at sea level), the value 1.88 
calories is obtained as the probable intensity of solar radiation out- 
side the atmosphere at mean solar distance on this day. This value 
falls near the mean of numerous values obtained by spectrobolo- 
metric observations on Mount Wilson. 

Experiments begun at sunrise and continued until 10 o’clock on 
September 20 and 21, 1914, indicate great constancy of transparency 
of the atmosphere above Mount Wilson, and yield solar-constant 
values independent of the altitude of the sun. These results con- 
firm the substantial accuracy of the Mount Wilson observations of 
the solar constant of radiation. 

The radiation of the sun was 2.5 per cent below the mean, accord- 
ing to the average of observations extending from July to October, 


90 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


1918, inclusive, and 1 per cent above the mean from similar studies 
extending from June to October, 1914, inclusive. A high average 
value for 1915 is indicated. 

The contrast of brightness between the center and edges of the 
solar disk was less in 1913 than in 1905 to 1907, but was restored to 
the earlier condition in 1914. 

Short-period fluctuations of solar radiation were large in 1913, 
but small in 1914. Associated with these quick, irregular fluctua- 
tions are found variations of contrast of brightness between the 
center and edges of the solar disk. Curiously enough, while greater 
contrast is associated with greater solar radiation and with numerous 
sun spots in the general march of the sun’s activity, lesser contrast 
is associated with greater solar radiation in the march of the quick, 
irregular fluctuations of the sun’s emission. 

This paradox points to two causes of solar variation—the long- 
period changes may probably be caused by changes of the sun’s 
effective temperature attending the march of solar activity; the 
quick fluctuations may be ascribed to changes of the transparency 
of the outer solar envelopes. 

Respectfully submitted. 

C. G. ABBor, 
Director Astrophysical Observatory. 
Dr. C. D. Waucort, 
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 


APPENDIX 6. 
REPORT ON THE LIBRARY. 


Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report upon the 
operations of the library of the Smithsonian Institution and its 
branches for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1915: 

In common with other libraries of the world, the Smithsonian 
library has had to confront a serious situation during the last year. 
This was the difficulty experienced in the securing of current parts 
and the completing of sets of the publications of learned institutions 
and scientific societies that have been received from European sources 
for many years. Some of these series have ceased publication, others 
have been published with fewer pages and in smaller editions, while 
still others have been issued but not forwarded, all due largely to 
the military service required of the contributors and publishers at 
this time at the front and the risk involved in transportation. Not- 
withstanding these conditions, the efforts to keep the library ex- 
changes alive have been continued with marked success. 


ACCESSIONS. 


During the fiscal year a total of 26,928 packages of publications 
were received, of which 25,097 came through the mails and 1,831 
through the International Exchange Service. The correspondence 
necessary in connection with these receipts numbered about 1,400 
letters, requesting publications and acknowledging them, and 5,148 
acknowledgments on the regular form. 

The publications for the Smithsonian library were entered, acces- 
sioned, and forwarded to the Smithsonian deposit in the Library of 
Congress each day as received, numbering in all 24,713 publications, 
as follows: 3,043 volumes, 1,179 parts of volumes, 1,763 pamphlets, 
17,410 periodicals, 594 charts, and 724 parts of serials to complete 
sets. The numbers in the accession record run from 517,777 to 521,616. 
There were catalogued during the year 3,451 publications, of which 
1,000 were charts. Four thousand one hundred and twenty-two 
volumes were recatalogued from the old records and entered in the 
new catalogue. The cards typewritten and filed in the catalogue 


numbered 4,038. 
91 


92 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


The sending to the Library of Congress of public documents pre- 
sented to the Smithsonian Institution, without stamping and record- 
ing, has been continued, and 4,675 were forwarded in this way. 

The accessions for the office library, which includes the Astro- 
physical Observatory and the National Zoological Park, numbered 
561 publications, distributed as follows: 351 volumes, 35 parts of 
volumes, and 40 pamphlets, for the office library; 72 volumes, 11 
parts of volumes and 25 pamphlets for the Astrophysical Observa- 
tory, and 21 volumes and 6 pamphlets for the National Zoological 
Park. : 

Complete sets of inaugural! dissertations and technological publica- 
tions from 12 universities and technical high schools were received 
from the following places: Baltimore, Basel, Copenhagen, Delft, 
Ithaca, Lund, Paris, Philadelphia, Toulouse, and Ziirich. 


EXCHANGES. 


The sendings from Europe have been restricted compared with 
those of former years, but there has been no cessation in the efforts 
to secure new exchanges and missing parts in the series, and many 
have been received. The new series added to the hbrary numbered 48, 
and all of the 887 want cards for the series searched in the Library of 
Congress were considered and some action taken on each at the 
Smithsonian Institution, with the result that 82 sets of publications 
of learned institutions and scientific societies in the Smithsonian 
division were entirely or partially completed by the supplying of 460 
parts; in the same way 254 parts of 48 sets were supplied to the 
periodical division, and for the part of the deposit in the general 
classification 10 parts of 4 sets. 

Among the more important of these series secured for the Smith- 
sonian library may be cited the following: 


Australia : 

Sydney, New South Wales.—Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia. 

Science of Man. 
Belgium: 

Brussels.—Académie Royale de Belgique. Bulletin, Classe des lettres. 
Association des industriels de Belgique pour l’étude et la propagation 
des engins et mésures propres 4 préserver les ouvriers des accidents du 
travail. Rapport. 

St. Nicholas.—Cercle archéologique du pays de Waes. Annales. 

England: 
; London.—Agricultural Economist and Horticultural Review. 
Royal Geographical Society. Geographical Journal. 
Birmingham.—Birmingham Natural History and Microscopical Society. 
Report. 
France: 
Nice.—Association Procincials des architectes francais. Bulletin. 
Paris.—Société Francaise de Physique. Résumé des communications. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 93 


Germany: 
Berlin.—Berliner Missionsgesellschaft. Berliner Missions-Berichte. 
Deutscher Fischerei-Verein. Zeitschrift fuer Fischerei. 
Darmstadt.—Historischer Verein fuer das Grossherzogthum Hessen. 
Quartalblitter. 
Dresden.—K. Oeffentliche Bibliothek. Papyrus-Fragment aus der Kgl. 
Oeff. Bibliothek zu Dresden. 
Munich.—Kk. Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Abhandlungen, 
Denkschriften Gelehrte Anzeiger Sitzungsberichte. 
India: 
Calcutta.—Medical and Sanitary Departments of India. Scientific Memoirs 
by the Officers of the Medical and Sanitary Departments. 
Italy: 
Florence.—Societa Botanica Italiana. Bullettino. 
Siam: 
Bangkok.—Siam Society. Journal. 


The exchange of publications with historical societies in this coun- 
try and abroad has been continued, resulting in many additions both 
in the form of new exchanges and the supplying of missing parts. 


READING ROOM. 


In the reading room the current foreign and domestic scientific 
periodicals have been in constant use by the staff and the members 
of the scientific bureaus of the governmental establishments in Wash- 
ington, and there are now 294 titles on the shelves. Three thousand 
five hundred and three publications from the reading and reference 
rooms were circulated during the year. Of these 3,161 were single 
numbers of periodicals, and 342 were bound volumes. 


THE AERONAUTICAL LIBRARY. 


One of the important collections of reference works at the In- 
stitution is that relating to aeronautics, and is, in all probability, 
the most complete series on this subject in the United States. The 
collection had its origin with Secretary Langley when he was carry- 
ing on his aeronautical experiments, at which time he was able to 
secure many early works that can not now be purchased. 

One of the chief contributors during the year was Dr. Alexander 
Graham Bell, a Regent of the Institution, whose gift consists of his 
working library on the subject, numbering 46 volumes, and another 
series of 153 volumes of newspaper clippings relating to the im- 
portant period when the Wright brothers were making their initial 
flights. 

The additions to the collection during the year, including those 
from Dr. Bell, were 256. 


94 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 
. 
ART ROOM. 


Mrs. Charles D. Walcott has added to the collection of works on 
art an exceptionally valuable loan, consisting of nine magnificent 
volumes on Japanese art, fully illustrated in color. Mrs. Walcott 
has also deposited the architectural publications, numbering 394 
volumes, and parts of serial publications which formed the library of 
her brother, George Vaux, an architect of prominence in the city of 
Philadelphia. 

EMPLOYEES’ LIBRARY. 


The employees’ library has also received a contribution from Mrs. 
Walcott by the deposit of a collection of popular works, numbering 
145 volumes. 

NEW STEEL STACKS. - 


The work on the new steel stacks for the books belonging to the 
libraries of the Government bureaus under the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion has been continued, and at the close of the year this work is 
nearly completed. With the passage of the appropriation bills in 
August, 1914, the additional sum of $10,000 became available, and 
immediately an order was issued for the erection of as much of the 
second half of the stacks in the west end of the main hall as the 
money available would permit. Those in the east end were completed 
in August, and the moving of the library of the Bureau of American 
Ethnology to its new quarters was accomplished within a very short 
time. The old wooden galleries in the west end were then removed, 
and this part of the hall was turned over to the contractors for the 
erection of stacks. Congress having appropriated an additional sum 
of $6,500 during the last session, the steel stacks were practically 
finished at the close of the year. 

The libraries of the Government bureaus under the Institution have 
heretofore been cared for in the bureau offices and wherever there was 
space for shelving. Proper classification and arrangement were im- 
possible, owing to lack of space, and much time was lost in looking for 
references. The new stacks have a capacity of 100,000 volumes, and 
make it possible for the first time to bring all publications relating to 
one subject together, so that each is available for consultation. 


UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 


Tt seems desirable, after a period of a third of a century, to briefly 
review the growth and progress that have been made in the Museum 
library. The formation of a working library in the National 
Museum in 1881 was largely due to the increased activity in investi- 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 95 


gations and the need of reference works for the curators in their 
study of the collections which were moved from the Smithsonian 
Building to the separate building erected for the Museum. 

A nucleus was begun in the northwest corner of the Museum build- 
ing with a collection of publications for the most part made up of 
standard zoological and industrial works and bound pamplets, com- 
posing the library of Spencer Fullerton Baird, second Secretary of 
the Smithsonian Institution, which he had presented to the Museum. 
The Library has grown steadily until it now occupies not only the old 
rooms, but additional larger quarters in the new building as well as 
space for the special libraries in the various sections. Within a year 
after the first books had been brought together there were 5,450 
volumes and 4,750 pamphlets; in all, 10,200 publications. Now, in 
the thirty-fifth year of its existence, there are 45,818 bound volumes, 
76,295 pamphlets, forming a collection of 122,113 titles, from which 
the duplicates have been removed. 

The system of arrangement has been modified to some extent, but 
the plan upon which the Museum library was organized has been 
continued, in that the general library has retained all books treating 
of more than one subject, such as periodicals, proceedings of socie- 
ties, dictionaries, and encyclopedias, together with such monographs 
as are not constantly needed in the sectional libraries; and the sec- 
tional libraries have had assigned to them only those publications 
which relate to the work of the department or division. A little more 
than a year ago the general library and works relating to anthro- 
pology, biology, and geology were moved to new quarters in the 
new building, where up-to-date facilities for the consultation of 
publications have been provided. 

This left the old rooms where the library had had its inception 
free, and the space thus made vacant is now being used for the 
accumulation of another collection of works of reference of equal 
importance relating to history and the collections of arts and indus- 
tries of a technical nature, which are being developed in the older 
Museum Building. While this library has but recently been started, 
the indications are that it will have a growth equal to that of the 
parent library, and it promises to become one of the most important 
technical series of publications in the country. 

The establishment of sectional libraries of special reference works 
bearing on the collections has been of importance to the curators, 
and the number has been increased in proportion to the growth of 
the Museum. Beginning with 8 in 1881, there are now 33 collections 
of publications on special subjects. 

Considering the ways and means for adding to the library in the 
early days, its growth has been remarkable. The library for the first 
18 years was dependent largely for its increase upon the exchange 


96 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


of the publications of the Museum descriptive of its collections in 
the various fields of science. This plan for increasing the library was 
very successful, but it did not provide books of reference, in part 
published at a loss, which could only be secured by purchase. In 
1898 an appropriation of $2,000 was made by Congress for the pur- 
chase of such books, but this sum was barely adequate then, and 
while the appropriation has been continued, it has not been in- 
creased. This lack of sufficient funds will be more keenly felt in the 
very near future, owing to the present conditions in Europe and the 
inability of the scientific societies and institutions abroad to supply 
even exchange copies. 


ACCESSIONS. 


The Museum library now contains 45,818 volumes, 76,295 pam- 
phlets and unbound papers, and 124 manuscripts. The accessions 
during the year covered by this report number 2,209 volumes, 2,530 
pamphlets, and 183 parts of volumes. 


CATALOGUING. 


The books catalogued number 1,550, pamphlets 2,530, and the 
total number of cards made 4,664; completed volumes of periodicals 
catalogued, 756; parts of publications, 183; parts of periodicals, 
9,805; new periodical cards made, 389. 

The old catalogue of the Museum library was entered on cards 
of about twice the size of the standard card now in use without sufli- 
cient information for the proper identification of the publication. 
For a number of years the recataloguing of these publications on 
standard cards has been carried on as the other work permitted until 
at the present time only the publications in the sectional libraries 
remain. With the continued increase in the work it is hardly pos- 
sible to do more than recatalogue 100 volumes in a year, but with ad- 
ditional help this work could be completed at once, and would be of 
great value to the Museum in connection with reference work. 


EXCHANGES. 


The existing conditions in Europe have interfered to some extent 
with the securing of new exchanges as well as with the receipt of 
publications which have been coming for many years. In the matter 
of exchanges and the securing of publications needed to complete 
the series 297 letters were written, with the result that many new 
titles of publications issued in series were added to those already 
coming. The receipts of publications from abroad have been de- 
layed, and in many cases the institutions and societies are holding the 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 97 


sets and series until it will be safe to transmit them. Also, for 
economic reasons, only limited editions with fewer pages are issued, 
which gives a special value to those received. 


LOANS. 


The use of the library has been largely by the scientific staff of 
the Museum, but other departments of the Government, particu- 
larly the Department of Agriculture, have availed themselves of the 
opportunity of consulting the publications relating to the various 
branches of science. During the year the loans from the general 
library numbered 12,492 publications, which includes 5,272 books 
assigned to the sectional libraries, 3,020 books borrowed from the 
Library of Congress, 111 from the Department of Agriculture 
library, 72 from the United States Geological Survey, 44 from the 
Army Medical Museum and Library, and 13 from other places. From 
the Museum shelves there were borrowed 3,960 volumes. 

One of the important matters ea during the latter part 
of the year was the return of books that had been borrowed from 
the Library of Congress on the older records, and while only the 
charges for books coming under the first three letters of the alphabet 
were acted upon, the indications are that those running back as far 
as 1876 will be cleared up. During the year 3,487 books were re- 
turned to the Library of Congress and 294 to other libraries. 


BINDING. 


The binding of volumes received in separate parts is still a serious 
matter, and it is hoped that some provision can be made at an early 
date, so that all of them may be bound. To cite an instance, there are 
now in the technical series of recently catalogued works over 100 
volumes that should be bound at once, in order that they may be 
preserved intact. 

There were 812 volumes prepared for binding and sent to the Gov- 
ernment bindery. 

GIFTS. 


Gifts of importance have been received from the following per- 
sons: Dr. Charles Doolittle Walcott, Mrs. Richard Rathbun, Dr. 
William Healey Dall, Dr. Oliver Perry Hay, Dr. Charles W. Rich- 
mond, Mr. George C. Maynard, Dr. Robert W. Shufeldt, Mr. Austin 
Hobart Clark, Mr. Robert Ridgway, Dr. Joseph Nelson Rose, Dr. 
I. M. Casanowicz, Mr, William R. Maxon, and also the library of 
the late Dr. Theodore Nicholas Gill has been presented by Mr. 
Herbert A. Gill. 


18618°—sm 1915——7 


98 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


DALL COLLECTION. 


Dr. William Healey Dall contributed 162 titles, at a cost of about 
$60, as additions to the collection of books relating to mollusks which 
has been brought together by him as curator of that division, as a 
reference library. These and the publications previously received 
now number approximately 7,662 titles. 


BOTANICAL LIBRARY. 


A large collection of botanical books, the property of Dr. Edward 
L. Greene, which had been on deposit in the United States National 
Museum since 1904, was withdrawn during the year as it was imprac- 
ticable to secure the sum of $20,000 required for their purchase. 


TECHNOLOGICAL SERIES. 


In this branch of the library, which has only recently been formed, 
and which is cared for in the older Museum Building, special efforts 
have been made to put the classes of publications in more conven- 
ient places and to make them more accessible for consultation. Those 
relating to music, ceramics, photography, and botany have been 
critically examined, recatalogued, and put in order on the shelves. 
Those of the following classes have not as yet been considered: Art 
and architecture, physics, chemistry, history, literature, sociology and 
economy, and political science. 

This branch of the library is very deficient in general reference 
books, such as an exhaustive encyclopedic work, technical diction- 
aries, and dictionaries of some of the foreign languages, and while 
a few of these works can be purchased during the present year, there 
will not be money available to secure them all. 

The additions to this part of the library numbered 1,061 volumes, 
3,073 parts of volumes, and 2,631 pamphlets and 4 maps. 

The cataloguing for the year numbered 660 volumes, 1,131 pam- 
phlets, and 4 maps, requiring 1,406 cards. The number of periodicals 
entered on the records were 801 volumes and 6,253 parts of volumes. 
Special efforts have been made to catalogue the entire collection in 
the library, and until this is completed the record for cataloguing 
will not cover the receipts. Books and pamphlets loaned during the 
year, in addition to those from the general library, numbered 258 
volumes and 346 pamphlets, while there were consulted in the read- 
ing room about 520 publications. In addition to the work on the 
catalogue, about 800 volumes and 7,000 pamphlets and parts of 
volumes were filed on the shelves, to be added to the records later. 

In the scientific depository set of printed cards from the Library 
of Congress about 30,000 were filed alphabetically by authors. This 
index will be of great value when the subject cards are included, as 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 99 


it will then contain a complete reference list of publications available 
on all subjects considered in the Museum. 


SECTIONAL LIBRARIES. 


While progress has been made in the revision of the records for 
reference publications which are permanently deposited in the sec- 
tional libraries it has not been possible to carry the systematic check- 
ing very far, and my recommendation of last year that a competent 
cataloguer be employed to do this special work is renewed. While 
this condition is largely due to the overcrowded condition of the 
library for so many years, it is essential to the work of the Museum 
that the sectional libraries should be in perfect order and that the 
records in the main library should be complete. 

The following is a complete list of the sectional libraries: 


Administration. Materia medica. 
Administrative assistant’s oflice. Mechanical technology. 
Anthropology. Mesozoic fossils. 
Biology. Mineralogy. 

Birds. Mineral technology. 
Botany. | Mollusks, 

Comparative anatomy. | Oriental archeology. 
Editor’s office. Paleobotany. 

Ethnology. Parasites. 

Fishes. Photography. 

Geology. Physical anthropology. 
Graphic arts. Prehistorie archeology. 
History. Reptiles and batrachians. 
Insects. Superintendent’s office. 
Invertebrate paleontology. Taxidermy. 

Mammals. Textiles. 

Marine invertebrates. : Vertebrate paleontology. 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 


This library is administered under the direct care of the ethnolo- 
gist-in-charge? and an account of its operations will be found in the 
report of that bureau. 


ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY. 


Publications relating to astrophysics have been assembled: in the 
bookcases just completed in the east end of the main hall of the 
Smithsonian Building. This situation is convenient to the observa- . 
tory, and the new facilities make it possible for the first time to 
properly classify this library. During the year there were added 
72 volumes, 11 parts of volumes, and 25 pamphlets. Fifty-five vol- 
umes were bound. 


100 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK. 


This library contains publications relating to the work of the park 
in the care of the animals, reports of other zoological parks, and a 
few works on landscape gardening. The number of publications 
received was very small as compared with the previous year, and this 
may be due to the fact that none of the parks abroad, except that 
at Gizeh, Egypt, issued any publications. During the year there 
were received 21 volumes and 6 pamphlets. 


SUMMARY OF ACCESSIONS. 


The following statement summarizes the accessions during the 
year, with the exception of the library of the Bureau of American 
Ethnology: 


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


complete 'sets.2% = Skat es ee ee ee eo ee ee (, 308 

To the Smithsonian office, Astrophysical Observatory, and National Zoo- 
logicalsiParks 2. 22. Ser Se ee ee eS ee ee ee 560 
Mo sthe iWnited. States National Museum] ot ee ee 4,922 
TAS O then = SAE EE PA RS es Se ees 12, 785 


Respectfully submitted. 
Paut Brocxert, 
Assistant Librarian. 
Dr. Cuartes D. Watcort, 
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 


APPENDIX 7. 


REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE OF 
SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 


Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the oper- 
ations of the United States Bureau of the International Catalogue 
of Scientific Literature for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1915: 

This international cooperative enterprise has since 1901 published 
annual classified index catalogues of the current scientific literature 
of the world. The following-named branches of science are repre- 
sented each year by a separate volume: Mathematics, mechanics, 
physics, chemistry, astronomy, meteorology, mineralogy, geology, 
geography, paleontology, general biology, botany, zoology, anatomy, 
anthropology, physiology, and bacteriology. « 

All of the first 10 annual issues of 17 volumes each have been pub- 
lished, together with 15 volumes of the eleventh issue, 9 volumes of 
the twelfth issue, and 2 volumes of the thirteenth issue; a total of 
196 regular volumes in addition to several special volumes of 
schedules, list of journals, etc. 

The 15 volumes of the eleventh issue published are mathematics, 
mechanics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, meteorology, mineralogy, 
geology, geography, paleontology, general biology, botany, zoology, 
anatomy, and anthropology. 

The nine volumes of the twelfth issue published are mathematics, 
mechanics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geography, paleontology, 
general biology, and zoology. 

The two volumes of the thirteenth issue published are mathematics 
and zoology. 

During the year there were 26,418 classified references to American 
scientific literature prepared by this bureau, as follows: 


Literature of— 


AOD OG 2 Dee ee eter Incr ye te ee 10 
AGO FE See = A SU ea es ue 
DOOSr eats pes yt) ose seroes see 3 oth ee OG ae ee 192 
M909, 43 Teale og emert a en oot pees 8 Su 195 
AQAQ wre ett seh sphuneey siz) TU ys aise tay 348 
WGA ise sep ie twats Bieta oe ty seed eye era 1, 358 
io) DS Se ee ae ee ee 8, 511 
CSAS pets al yale Rael pe a a NS SE SO 8, 394 
SG Lak A Me ef eS sh 12, 386 


Notas 223 ae Se ae eerie 26, 413 
101 


102 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


The object of the catalogue is not only to publish references by 
authors to current scientific literature, but also to supply practically 
a digest of the subject contents of each paper by means of minutely 
classified subject catalogues. The elaborate classification schedules 
used render it possible to refer to all subjects treated in each paper 
indexed. 

It is the duty of this Bureau of the International Catalogue to 
analyze and classify the contents of all scientific papers published 
in the United States. An idea of the extent of the work may be 
gained from the fact that between 25,000 and 30,000 citations are 
sent each year to the London central bureau for publication, the 
subjects classified covering all branches of science. In this day of 
specialization it is not possible for one or two individuals to have a 
thorough knowledge of all the sciences, and as economy of adminis- 
tration would not warrant the employment of, say, a dozen special- 
ists, it was the practice for a number of years to refer some of the 
more technical papers to specialists for classification. ‘These special- 
ists, being employees of the various scientific branches of the Gov- 
ernment in Washington, have, while not engaged in their official 
duties, aided the catalogue by furnishing the classification data 
required. Payments averaged approximately $600 per year, divided 
among five or six individuals. It may be said that while the 
specialists were willing to aid in this important international under- 
taking for a comparatively nominal compensation, the catalogue was 
benefited to a very great extent, for each citation furnished was the 
equivalent of a specialist’s decision as to the value and application 
of the scientific subject of each paper classified. This method of 
compensating employees of other scientific bureaus of the Govern- 
ment was decided on in 1905 after a conference between the disburs- 
ing agent of the Smithsonian Institution and the then Comptroller 
of the Treasury. 

The present Comptroller of the Treasury does not agree on this 
subject with the former comptroller, and in a letter dated February 
4, 1914, referring to a number of similar payments stated : 

I am of the opinion that the payments in question come within the prohibi- 

tion of sections 1764 and 1765, Revised Statutes, and were not authorized by 
law. In view of the fact that this office, in letters dated October 24, 1905, 
and February 15, 1906, sanctioned the payments to employees of other bureaus 
and departments, which seems to have been construed to sanction the payment 
for both classes, no disallowance will be made in the present settlement, but 
payments made subsequent to the date of this decision will not be allowed. 
_ This decision has greatly embarrassed the work of the bureau, and 
it is hoped that Congress will so change the wording of future appro- 
priations for the maintenance of the bureau as to authorize payments 
of this character being made. 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 103 


The general organization of the International Catalogue of Scien- 
tific Literature consists of a central bureau in London whose duty 
it is to assemble, edit, and publish classified references to current 
scientific literature supplied by the various regional bureaus repre- 
senting the cooperating countries. The following named countries 
have established regional bureaus, supported in most cases by direct 
Government grants: Argentine Repiilics Austria, Belgium, Canada, 
Chile, Cuba, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, 
Holland, Hungary, India and Ceylon, Rite Japan, Mexico, New 
South Wales, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Queensland, 
Russia, South Africa, South Australia, Spain, Straits Settlements, 
Sweden, Switzerland, United States of America, Victoria and Tas- 
mania, and Western Australia. 

The present war in Europe has seriously interfered not only with 
the finances but with the general work of the catalogue. Before 
hostilities began the receipts and expenditures of the London cen- 
tral bureau just balanced. These receipts are derived from the sale 
of the catalogue to the various subscribers throughout the world 
and are used entirely to defray the cost of printing and publishing. 

Subscriptions aggregating almost $6,000 a year, due from five of 
the countries engaged in hostilities, have been either delayed or 
stopped by the war. The Royal Society of London, realizing that 
it would be impossible for the central bureau to continue aE 
the catalogue in the face of this deficit, has very generously made 
a grant of a sum almost suflicient to cover the deficit caused by the 
first year of the war. It may be said that the Royal Society has 
not only stood sponsor for the catalogue since its inception, but it 
was through the good offices of this society that the enterprise was 
begun. It is greatly to be hoped that this action of the Royal 
Society will stimulate similar institutions in the United States to 
aid in making up the annual deficit until a readjustment of the 
affairs of the bureaus affected can be made after peace has been 
declared. 

Very respectfully, yours, 
Lronarp C, GUNNELL, 
Assistant in Charge. 
Dr. Cuarues D. Watcort, 
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 


APPENDIX 8. 
REPORT ON THE PUBLICATIONS. 


Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the publi- 
cations of the Smithsonian Institution and its branches during the 
year ending June 30, 1915: 

The Institution proper published during the year 14 papers in the 
series of “Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections,” two annual re- 
ports, pamphlet copies of 68 papers from the general appendices of 
these reports, and 8 special publications. The Bureau of American 
Ethnology published 2 bulletins and 8 miscellaneous publications, 
and the United States National Museum issued 1 annual report, 1 
volume of the Proceedings, and 41 separate papers forming parts of 
this and other volumes, 6 bulletins, and 1 volume pertaining to the 
National Herbarium. 

The total number of copies of publications distributed by the In- 
stitution proper during the year was 77,710. This number includes 
620 volumes and separate memoirs of Smithsonian Contributions to 
Knowledge, 30,058 volumes and separate pamphlets of Smithsonian 
Miscellaneous Collections, 30,909 volumes and separate pamphlets of 
Smithsonian annual reports, 10,185 publications of the Bureau of 
American Ethnology, 5,424 special publications, 86 volumes of the 
Annals of the Astrophysical Observatory, 121 reports of the Harri- 
man Alaska Expedition, 245 reports of the American Historical 
Association, 5 publications of the United States National Museum, 
and 108 publications not of the Smithsonian or its branches. There 
were distributed by the National Museum 54,300 copies of its several 
series of publications, making a total of 132,010 publications dis- 
tributed by the Institution and its branches during the year. 


SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO KNOWLEDGE. 
QUARTO. 
No publications of this series were issued during the year. 
SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS. 
OCTAVO. 


Of the Miscellaneous Collections, volume 57, the title-page and 
table of contents was published; of volume 62, 1 paper; of volume 63, 
104 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 105 


4 papers and title-page and table of contents; of volume 64, 1 paper; 
and of volume 65, 8 papers; in all, 14 papers, as follows: 

Volume 57. 
Title-page and table of contents. July 31, 1914. (Publ. 2270.) 

Volume 62. 


No. 38. Report on European aeronautical laboratories. By A. F. Zahm, July 27, 
1914, 23 pp., 11 pls. (Publ. 2273.) 


Volume 63. 


No.6. Smithsonian Physical Tables. Sixth revised edition. By F. HE. Fowle. 
November 10, 1914. xxxvi-+355 pp. (Publ. 2269.) 

No. 8. Explorations and field-work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1913. 
November 27, 1914. 88 pp. (Publ. 2275.) — 

No. 9. The olfactory sense of insects. By N. E. McIndoo. November 21, 1914. 
63 pp. (Publ. 2315.) 

No. 10. Archeology of the lower Mimbres Valley, N. Mex. By J. Walter Fewkes. 
December 18, 1914. 53 pp., 8 pls. (Publ. 2316.) 

Title-page and table of contents. January 30, 1915. v pp. (Publ. 2320.) 


Volume 64. 


No. 2. Cambrian geology and paleontology. III. Pre-Cambrian Algonkian algal 
flora. By Charles D. Walcott. July 22, 1914. Pp. 77-156, pls. 4-23. 
(Publ. 2271.) 


Volume 65. - 


No.1. The present distribution of the Onychophora, a group of terrestrial in- 
vertebrates. By Austin H. Clark. January 4, 1915. 25 pp. (Publ. 
2319.) 

No. 2. The development of the lungs of the alligator. By A. M. Reese. March 8, 
1915. 11 pp., 9 pls. (Publ. 2356.) 

No.3. A study of the radiation of the atmosphere. By Anders K. Angstrim. 
Hodgkins fund. 159 pp. (Publ. 2354.) In press. 

No. 4. New evidence on the intensity of the solar radiation outside the atmos- 
phere. By C. G. Abbot, F. E. Fowle, and L. B. Aldrich. Hodgkins 
fund. June 19, 1915. 55 pp. (Publ. 2361.) 

No. 5. The microspectroscope in mineralogy. By Edgar T. Wherry. April 7, 
1915. 16 pp. (Publ. 2362.) 

No. 6. Explorations and field-work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1914. June 
80, 1915. 95 pp., 1 pl. (Publ. 2363.) 

No. 7. Two new sedges from the southwestern United States. By Kenneth K. 
Mackenzie. April 9, 1915. 3 pp. (Publ. 2364.) 

No. 8. Report upon a collection of ferns from western South America. By Wil- 
liam R. Maxon. May 3, 1915. 12 pp. (Publ. 2366.) 


SMITHSONIAN ANNUAL REPORTS. 


Report for 1913. 


The Annual Report of the Board of Regents for 1913 was received 
from the Public Printer in completed form in December, 1914. 


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution show- 
ing operations, expenditures, and condition of the Institution for the year 
ending June 30, 1913. xi+804 pp., 169 pls. (Publ. 2277.) 


106 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915.. 


Small editions of the following papers, forming the general appen- 
dix of the annual report for 1913, were issued in pamphlet form: 


The earth and sun as magnets, by George E. Hale. 14 pp., § pls. (Publ. 
2278. 

The acne of the planets upen the sun, by P. Puiseux. 16 pp. (Publ. 2279.) 

Recent progress in astrophysics, by C. G. Abbot. 20 pp., 8 pls. (Publ. 2280.) 

The earth’s magnetism, by L. A. Bauer.- 18 pp., 9 pls. (Publ. 2281.) 

Modern ideas on the end of the world, by Gustay Jaumann. 9 pp. (Publ. 
2282.) 

Recent developments in electromagnetism, by Hugene Bloch. 19 pp. (Publ. 
2283. ) 

Wireless transmission of energy, by Elihu Thomson. 18 pp. (Publ. 2284.) 

Oil films on water and on mercury, by Henri Devaux. 13 pp., 7 pls. (Publ. 
2285. ) : 

Water and volcanic activity, by Arthur L. Day and HE. S. Shepherd. 381 pp., 11 
pls. (Publ. 2286.) 

Ripple marks, by Ch. Epry. 11 pp., 10 pls. (Publ. 2287.) 

Notes on the geological history of the walnuts and hickories, by Edward W. 
Berry. 13 pp. (Publ. 2288.) 

The formation of leaf mold, by Frederick Y. Coville. 11 pp. (Pubi. 2289.) 

The development of orchid cultivation and its bearing upon evolutionary 
theories, by J. Costantin. 14 pp. (Publ. 2290.) 

The manufacture of nitrates from the atmosphere, by Ernest Kilburn Scott. 
26 pp., 3 pls. (Publ. 2291.) 

The geologic history of China and its influence upon the Chinese people, by 
Eliot Blackwelder. 12 pp., 9 pls. (Publ. 2292.) 

The problems of heredity, by E. Apert. 17 pp. (Publ. 2298.) 

Habits of fiddler-crabs, by A. 8S. Pearse. 14 pp. (Publ. 2294.) 

The abalones of California, by Charles L. Edwards. 10 pp., 10 pls. (Publ. 
2295.) 

The value of birds to man, by James Buckland. 20 pp. (Publ. 2296.) 

Experiments in feeding hummingbirds during seven summers, by Althea R, 
Sherman. 10 pp. (Publ. 2297.) 

What the American Bird Banding Association has accomplished during 1912, 
by Howard H. Cleaves. 11 pp., 2 pls. (Publ. 2298.) 

The whale fisheries of the world, by Charles Rabot. 9 pp., 3 pls. (Publ. 2299.) 

The most ancient skeletal remains of man, by AleS Hrdli¢ka. 62 pp., 41 pls. 
(Publ. 2300.) 

The redistribution of mankind, by H. N. Dickson. 17 pp. (Publ. 2301.) 

The earliest forms of human habitation, and their relation to the general 
development of civilization, by M. Hoernes. § pp. (Publ. 2302.) 

Feudalism in Persia; its origin, development, and present condition, by Jacques 
de Morgan. 28 pp. (Publ. 2303.) 

Shintoism and its significance, by K. Kanokogi. -9 pp. (Publ. 2804.) 

The Minoan and Mycenaean element in Hellenic life, by A. J. Hvans. 21 pp., 8 
pls. (Publ. 2305.) 

Flameless combustion, by Carleton Ellis. 14 pp., 1 pl. (Publ. 2306.) 

Problems in smoke, fume, and dust abatement, by F. G. Cottrell. 33 pp., 37 
pls. (Publ. 2307.) 

Twenty years’ progress in marine construction, by Alexander Gracie. 21 pp. 
(Publ. 2308.) 

Creating a subterranean river and supplying a metropolis with mountain water, 
by J. Bernard Walker and A. Russell Bond. 14 pp., 11 pls. (Publ. 2809.) 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 107 


The application of the physiology of color vision in modern art, by Henry G. 
Keller and J. J. R. Macleod. 17 pp. (Publ. 2310.) 

Fundamentals of housing reform, by James Ford. 14 pp. (Publ. 2311.) 

The economic and social role of fashion, by Pierre Clerget. 11 pp. (Publ. 
2312.) 

The work of J. van’t Hoff, by G@. Bruni. 23 pp. (Publ. 2313.) 


Report for 191}. 


The report of the executive committee and proceedings of the 
Board of Regents of the Institution, as well as the report of the 
Secretary, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, both forming 
part of the Annual Report of the Board of Regents to Congress, 
were published in pamphlet form in December, 1914, as follows: 


Report of the executive committee and proceedings of the Board of Regents for 
the year ending June 380, 1914. 17 pp. (Publ. 2318.) 

Report of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution for the year ending 
June 30, 1914. iii, 117 pp., 4 pls. (Publ. 2317.) 


Small editions of the following papers, forming the general appen- 
dix of the report, were issued in June, and the complete volume was 
received from the printer shortly after the close of the fiscal year: 


The radiation of the sun. By C. G. Abbot. 16 pp., 4 pls. (Publ. 2322. 

Modern theories of the sun. By Jean Bosler. 8 pp., 2 pls. (Publ. 23823.) 

The form and constitution of the earth. By Louis B. Stewart. 14 pp. (Publ. 
2324.) 

Some remarks on logarithms apropos to their tereentenary. By M. d’Ocagne. 
pp: 2, Diss (EB ubls 2325.) 

Modern views on the constitution of the atom. By A. S. Eve. 9 pp. (Publ. 
2326.) 

Gyrostats and gyrostatic action. By Andrew Gray. 16 pp., 10 pls. (Publ. 
Peal te)) 

Stability of aeroplanes. By Orville Wright. 8 pp. (Publ. 2328., 

The first man-carrying aeroplane capable of sustained free flight—Langley’s 
success as a pioneer in aviation. By A. F. Zahm. 6pp., 8 pls. (Publ. 2329.) 

Some aspects of industrial chemistry. By L. H. Baekeland. 25 pp. (Publ. 
2330. ) 

Explosives. By Edward P. O’Hern. 27 pp., 7 pls. (Publ. 2331.) 

Climates of geologic time. By Charles Schuchert. 35 pp. (Publ. 2332.) 

Pleochroic haloes. By J. Joly. 15 pp., 3 pls. (Publ. 2333.) _ 

The geology of the bottom of the seas. By L. de Launay. 24 pp. (Publ. 2334.) 

Recent oceanographic researches. By Ch. Gravier. 10 pp. (Publ. 2335.) 

The Klondike and Yukon goldfield in 1913. By H. M. Cadell. 20 pp., 6 pls. 
(Publ. 2336:) 

The history of the discovery of sexuality in plants. By Duncan §8. Johnson. 
24 pp. (Publ. 2337.) 

Problems and progress in plant pathology. By L. R. Jones. 13 pp. (Publ. 
2338. ) 

Plant autographs and their revelations. By Jagadis Chunder Bose. 23 pp. 
(Publ. 2339.) 

The National Zoological Park and its inhabitants. By Frank Baker. 34 pp., 
4i pls. (Publ. 2340.) 


108 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


On the habits and behavior of the herring gull. By R. M. Strong. 31 pp., 10 
pls. (Publ. 2341.) 

Notes on some effects of extreme drought in Waterberg, South Africa. By 
Eugéne N. Marais. 12 pp. (Publ. 2342.) 

Homeeotiec regeneration of the antennze in a Phasmid or walking-stick. By 
H. O. Schmit-Jensen. 14 pp., 2 pls. (Publ. 2348.) 

Latent life: Its nature and its relations to certain theories of contemporary 
biology. By Paul Becquerel. 15 pp. (Publ. 2344.) 

The early inhabitants of western Asia. By Felix V. Luschan. 25 pp., 12 pls. 
(Publ. 2845.) 

Excavations at Abydos. By Edouard Naville. 7 pp., 3 pls. (Publ. 2346.) 

An examination of Chinese bronzes. By John C. Ferguson. 6 pp., 14 pls. 
(Publ. 2347.) 

The role of depopulation, deforestation, and malaria in the decadence of certain 
nations. By Felix Regnault. 5 pp. (Publ. 2348.) 

The story of the chin. By Louis.Robinson. 11 pp., 12 pls. (Publ. 2349.) 

Recent developments in the art of illumination. By Preston 8, Millar. 18 pp., 
3 pls. (Publ. 2350.) 

The loom and spindle: Past, present, and future. By Luther Hooper. 49 pp., 
HS pisieGeubl apie) 

The demonstration play school of 1918. By Clark W. Hetherington. 29 pp. 
(Publ. 2352. : 

Sketch of the life of Eduard Suess (1831-1914). By Pierre Termier. 10 pp. 
(Publ. 2353. ) 

SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS. 


The following special publications were issued in octavo form: 

Publications of the Smithsonian Institution issued between January 1 and 
June 80, 1914. Published August 8, 1914. 2 pp. (Publ. 2274.) 

Publications of the Smithsonian Institution issued between January 1 and 
September 80, 1914. October 7, 1914. 2 pp. (Publ. 2314.) 

Publications of the Smithsonian Institution issued between January 1 and 
December 31, 1914. January 23, 1915. 3 pp. (Publ. 2355.) 

Publications of the Smithsonian Institution issued between January 1 and 
March 31, 1915. April 17,1915. 1p. (Publ. 2365.) 

Biographical sketch of James Smithson. October 30, 1914. 17 pp., 4 pls. 
(Publ. 2276.) 

Opinions rendered by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, 
Opinion 66. March 8, 1915. Pp. 171-176. (Publ. 2359.) 

An index to the Museum Boltenianum. By William H. Dall. March 29, 1915, 
64 pp. (Publ. 2360.) 


PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 


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

During the year the Museum published an annuaf report, one 
volume of the Proceedings and 41 separate papers forming parts of 


REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 109 


this and other volumes, 6 bulletins, and one volume of Contributions 

from the National Herbarium. 

The issues of the proceedings were as follows: Volume 47, papers 
2052 to 2063, and the complete volume; volume 48, papers 2064 to 
2091; volume 49, paper 2093; Annual Report of the United States 
National Museum for 1914. 

The bulletins were as follows: 

Bulletin 71, A monograph of the Foraminifera of the North Pacific Ocean, Part 
V, Rotaliidae. By Joseph Augustine Cushman. 

Bulletin 82, A monograph of the existing Crinoids, Vol. 1, The Comatulids, 
Part1. By Austin Hobart Clark. 

Bulletin 88, Revision of Paleozoic Stelleroidea, with special reference to North 
American Asteroidea. By Charles Schuchert. 

Bulletin 89, Osteology of the Armored Dinosauria in the United States National 
Museum, with special reference to the genus Stegosaurus. By Charles Whit- 
ney Gilmore. 

Bulletin 90, A monograph of the molluscan fauna of the Orthaulax Pugnax 
Zone of the Oligocene of Tampa, Florida. By William Healey Dall. 

Special Bulletin, American hydroids, Part III, The Campanularidae and the 
Bonneviellidae. By Charles Cleveland Nutting. 


In the series of Contributions from the National Herbarium there 


appeared volume 19, Flora of New Mexico, by E. O. Wooten and 
Paul C. Standley. 


PUBLICATIONS OF THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 


The publications of the bureau are discussed in Appendix 2 of 
the Secretary’s report. The editorial work of the bureau has been 
continued by Mr. J. G. Gurley, editor, who has been assisted from 
time to time by Mrs. Frances 8. Nichols. 

Two bulletins and three miscellaneous publications were issued dur- 
ing the year, as follows: 

Bulletin 46. Byington’s Choctaw Dictionary. Edited by John R. Swanton and 

Henry 8S. Halbert. 

Bulletin 58. List of publications of the bureau. 

No. 10. Circular of information regarding Indian popular names. 

No. 11. Map of linguistic families of American Indians north of Mexico. 

No. 12. List of Indian words denoting ‘‘ man,” prepared in placard form for use 
in the Smithsonian exhibit at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. 

Four annual reports and five bulletins were in press at the close 
of the year. 


PUBLICATIONS OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


The annual reports of the American Historical Association are 
transmitted by the association to the Secretary of the Smithsonian 
Institution and are communicated to Congress under the provisions 
of the act of incorporation of the association. 


110 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


The annual report for 1912 was published in August, 1914. In 
September, 1914, the manuscript of the 1913 report was sent to the 
printer, but it was not completed at the close of the year. 


PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOCIETY OF THE DAUGHTERS OF THE 
AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 


The manuscript of the Seventeenth Annual Report of the Na- 
tional Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution for the 
year ending October 11, 1914, was communicated to Congress March 
3, 1915. 


THE SMITHSONIAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON PRINTING AND 
PUBLICATION. 


The editor has continued to serve as secretary of the Smithsonian 
advisory committee on printing and publication. To this committee 
have been referred the manuscripts proposed for publication by the 
various branches of the Institution, as well as those offered for 
printing in the Smithsonian series. The committee also considered 
forms of routine, blanks, and various matters pertaining to printing 
and publication. Eighteen meetings were held and 109 manuscripts 
were acted upon. 

Respectfully submitted. 


A. Howarp Cuarn, Yditor. 
Dr. Cuaries D. Watcort, 


Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 


REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE BOARD OF 
REGENTS OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION FOR THE 
YEAR ENDING JUNE 380, 1915. 


To the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution: 

Your executive committee respectfully submits the following 
report in relation to the funds, receipts, and disbursements of the 
Institution, and a statement of the appropriations by Congress for 
the National Museum, the International Exchanges, the Bureau of 
American Ethnology, the National Zoological Park, the Astrophysi- 
cal Observatory, and the International Catalogue of Scientific Lit- 
erature for the year ending June 30, 1915, together with balances of 
previous appropriations: 


SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. ; 
Condition of the fund July 1, 1915. 


The permanent fund of the Institution and the sources from which 
it has been derived are as follows: 


DEPOSITED IN THE TREASURY OF THE UNITED STATES. 


BequesteorsemMithsons, 1S40es = 2 Lil A ee a ee ee ee $515, 169. 00 
Residuary legacy of Smithson, USGt 2 2 22 ae ee ee ee 26, 210. 63 
WEPOSIEM TOM Savines, O1INCOMeC. SO ae. ee ee 108, 620. 37 
Bequest of, james Eamiltony 1Lo(oos- 2 = ee $1, 000. 00 
Accumulated interest on Hamilton fund, 1895_________ 1, 000. 00 

—_—__—— 2, 000. 00 
CONES Oly SIMICOM ET AD Els lies Ms es ee ate ee eee 500. 00 
Deposits from proceeds of sale of bonds, 1881___--__-----_______ 51, 500. 00 
GitirorPniomas G. Hodgkins, 1890.22.22. 2 ee 200, 000. 00 
Part of residuary legacy of Thomas G. Hodgkins, 1894___________ 8, 000. 00 
DeppSsit; trom savinestofineome, 19032 = 20 _ 25, 000. 00 
Residuary legacy of Thomas G. Hodgkins, 1907__-_--_-__--_____ 7, 918. 69 
Deposit: from savings ob income: 191g. = 250s So SL ae 636. 94 
Part of bequest of William Jones Rhees, 1913_-----------__-___ 251. 95 
Deposit of proceeds from sale of real estate (gift of Robert Stan- 
arm A VET.) Py OS eta SE i ea ee eS 9, 692. 42 
inequest of Addison T.. Reid; 1904. a= 2 ee ee ee, 4, 795. 91 
Deposit of savings from income of Avery bequest, 1914___________ 204. 09 
Balance of bequest of William Jones Rhees, 1915-_--____-___-__- 248. 05 
Deposit of savings from income of Rhees bequest, 1915_--__-_-_-_ 28. 39 


aati 


112 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Deposit of savings from income of Avery fund, 1915_-_-___-_______ $1, 862. 60 
Deposit of savings from income of Reid fund, 1915__-------_____ 426. 04 
Deposit of first payment Lucy T. and George W. Poore fund, 1915_ 24, 534. 92 


Total amount of fund in the United States Treasury___-___ 987, 600. 00 


OTHER RESOURCES. 


Registered and guaranteed bonds of the West Shore Railroad Co., 
part of legacy of Thomas G. Hodgkins (par value) _----______ 42, 000. 00 


Total’ permanent fund 202. See ee Eee 1, 029, 600. 00 

Also three small pieces of real estate located in the District of Columbia and 
bequeathed by Robert Stanton Avery, of Washington, D. C. 

That part of the fund deposited in the Treasury of the United 
States bears interest at 6 per cent per annum, under the provisions of 
the act of Congress of August 10, 1846, organizing the Institution, 
and the act approved March 12, 1894. The rate of interest on the 
West Shore Railroad bonds is 4 per cent per annum. The real 
estate received from Robert Stanton Avery is exempt from taxation 
‘and yields only a nominal revenue from rentals. 


Statement of receipts and disbursements from July 1, 1914, to June 30, 1916. 


RECEIPTS, 
Gashyon: deposit-and. in) safe July a 914 es ee eee $30, 560. 18 
Interest on fund deposited in United States Treasury, 

que duly .1;, 1914, sand: Jan. 1, 019102 see ee $57, 630. 00 
Interest on West Shore Railroad bonds, due July 1, 

1914; ‘and Janieae Omg ace Save ars Shee ace l ey yy 1, 680. 00 
Repayments, rentals, publications, ete________-_-___--___. 14, 922. 93 
Contributions from various sources for specific pur- 

OSES eee kane So ene eee ei anaes Sh Spee eee 12, 000. 00 
iRucy “hand Georse We Poore, founds 222 ee ee 24, 584. 92 
George EL Santord shun 2 22 ee ee ee 1, 020. 00 
Walliamvydones Rhees stund 2s = see ee eee 248. 05 

————-— 112, 035. 90 

142, 596. 03 

DISBURSEMENTS. 
Buildings: care-and-repairsre sss sewed ask Cee ees ees 5, 468. 44 
Kurniture and-fixtures=s==s3e stesso ee eee ee 1, 290. 04 
General expenses: 

SSE ATIOS |= es oe ei os ve A ee eee 18, 514. 26 
Meetings. ae aut. Se) 27 Sea epee kee oo 148. 00 
Stationery 22 sas ae eS are ee leew 770. 91 
Postage, telegraph, and telephone______-._________ 9938. 74 
Hreicht.. sss ses SEA eh ea ee ee ENS 93. 05 
Ticidentals;--fuely and -lietits: = - ears sae eS 1, 264. 47 


Garage - 22s essen. ce ee Sh 1, 827. 36 
—_————_ 23, 411. 79 


REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 113 


NE ATV ces Ee oe a a Pe a ae ee a Be Tn ee lle $2, 554. 13 
Publications and their distribution: 
Miseclianeous | COWCCLIONS = === .2 sae eee oe $5, 447. 87 
IRODORUSE © Stee ee oe Ses ee ed Ie 493. 42 
Speciale publicaitons sees. ee ee 553. 21 
Publication Supple see sean 2 ee eee 181. 86 
SPEC OSE ite ee a ene ee ee, eee 6, 892.72 5 
= 13, 569. 08 
Explorations: -researches,” and’ collections 2* = 24 2-7 = ik ee 6, 358. 03 
Hodgkins specific fund, researches, and publications_______________ PA its, Clk 
international hxchaneesk = es — bleep ee 5, 022. 74 
Cra eren (Ok ArT: (yee ee ek aE ee ee ee ee 19, 53 
Advances. for fieldwexpenses. .Ct@s 22 So sats ne ee ee 12, 464. 60 
Mepositedsto: credit. of Mermanent tounge as eee eee 27, 100. 00 
lancley sAerodynamical MaborpatOnyen a= = ee a ee 418. 58 
100, 430. 17 
Balance, June 380, 1915, deposited with the Treasurer 
GEALNEMUOTLLEd  SCALCS: ee er eee ee eee ee $41, 965. 86 
Cash on hand 27s Sees ne a eae 200. 00 
——————. 42,165.86 
142, 596. 03 


By authority your executive committee again employed Mr. Wil- 
liam L. Yaeger (now Capital Audit Co., William L. Yaeger, presi- 
dent), a public accountant of this city, to audit the receipts and dis- 
bursements of the Smithsonian Institution during the period covered 
by this report. The following certificate of examination supports 
the foregoing statement and is hereby approved: 


Capiran AupiIt CoMPANY, 
METROPOLITAN BANK BUILDING, 
Washington, D. C., August 6, 1915. 
Executive Committee, Board of Regents, Smithsonian Institution. 
Sirs: We have examined the accounts and vouchers of the Smithsonian In- 
stitution for the fiscal year ending June 80, 1915, and certify the following to 
be a correct statement: 


PR raaRe COL CS) aes at ee eer eee a er UE ee eee oe $112, 035. 90 
MPEGS teed eg CLUS BD MIT STITT M Gg Siesta cs 8 De RA ee 100, 450. 17 
Excess of receipts over disbursements___-------__________ 11, 605. 73 
NOTHING s TOM MUL Y pile) OM A ie es ee es Se ee re ae 30, 560. 13 
Balance-on hand waUnero0. 1 Oli — = eae eee eee 42, 165. 86 
Balance shown by Treasury statement of June 30, 1915____-_____ 46, 428. 25 
mMeRsvoOuULstandine Checksas 25s ee ed ee 4, 457. 39 
41, 965. 86 

COVS] ou anal asia YG Le wales ORS Ss ee it RR eee hk Lo dell Die ae 200. 00 
PD aA CerUMer sae Oty mene et Se ee ee 42, 165. 86 


The vouchers representing payments from the Smithsonian income during the 
year, each of which bears the approval of the secretary, or, in his absence, of 


18619" suc 1915S 


114 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


the acting secretary, and a certificate that the materials and services charged 
were applied to the purposes of the Institution, have been examined in connec- 
tion with the books of the Institution and agree with them. 


CapitaL AvpiIT Co., 
By WittiaAm L. YArcer, President. 


All moneys received by the Smithsonian Institution from interest, 
sales, refunding of moneys temporarily advanced, or otherwise are 
deposited with the Treasurer of the United States to the credit of the 


Institution, and all payments are made by checks signed by the 
secretary. 


The expenditures made by the disbursing agent of the Institution 
and audited by the Auditor for the State and Other Departments are 
reported in detail to Congress and will be found in the printed 
document. 

Your committee also presents the following summary of appro- 
priations for the fiscal year 1915 intrusted by Congress to the care of 
the Smithsonian Institution, balances of previous appropriations at 
ihe beginning of the fiscal year, and amounts unexpended on June 
30, 1915: 


Available | Balance 


Appropriations committed by Congress to the care of the institution: 


imtenniational HixChanees sn Oise ome mest om ome eee atom meee aie a= ieee $0. 02 1 $0. 02 
Mmternmational- Exchanges: LOLs Se otters «goat tome cece ee onene ease teem 1, 622. 22 -01 
ater ational Chant esi Ol posse sectemr a anemia) = lala ot seeps os ae lnainlaae 32, 000. 00 3, 453. 79 
I Neostyle nail Dy dab alo) (ajeargalit) Be as ee BSR AEN See Oe ee or eseoe Sees eco. 1, 250. 74 1 400. 74 
Atmericanidh thology; (Ql4S sos. oe eee set i eee ete eeioncetem ckiienice somes 2, 676. 68 185. 30 
Nears Dyna ato) Fofeqyo IS yee SORE A ee SRE SEP oo soo cee oe = 42, 000. 00 3, 854. 52 
Astrophysical Observatory, 1913.....-.-..2.-..2..1.. Bis at mlene ec liegr einen ae A ean 142. 42 1 41.04 
INStropiysical ODSenvat Ole aban. oc rse peer sia ete ale aioe ee area eae 779. 87 62. 36 
ASiLOPDYSICal OMSErValOR Ys olor seas ee = sem te ale atta =e a area eee lane 13, 000. 00 1, 263. 57 
Bookstacks, Government bureau libraries, 1914........-....--.---..-.-------- 13, 559. 77 33. 61 
Bookstacks, Government bureau libraries, 1915...............---...-.------- 10, 000. 00 35. 36 
Tower telescope on Mount Wilson, 1915... 202... 05.222 -- 222-22 et eee eee eens 2,000. 00 1, 284.17 
Repairs toiSmithsontanvB mild inp OIG eS ook ce ee reece cee wes 16, 000. 00 452. 13 
MTEGerMavIOMal CaralOBMescl Ole see ein ec aime ore, ames tee aa tee te ree te aan rte eae 291. 73 1291.73 
international CatalopieyOl 4 oes o.oo een eeges nieelomisae ee een 720. 09 21. 50 
international Catalomuer to loca-stemeeman siesta see eee ae eae sere oie ee eee 7,500. 00 864. 45 
National Museum— 
Ublasitibegereh ave ieib-an bitsy ths Wee = SSE Bee wee Pee nee cee Se ere 42. 58 1 42.58 
Purmiture and fixtures! LOU Tio see cca celine nee see es see cee sere 10, 369. 30 56. 85 
Murniture anditistures moles sneer eee ce oe cece meee eet ateees 25, 000. 00 1, 048. 83 
Heating and lighting, L013 2 boos: jaca 2 sees eeiscss se ciines sn cn weno eoeeas 151. 81 1151. 81 
Heating'and lighting, 1914.2. soc. dso) eee places eitenite- bcurs. sabes 5, 902. 35 242. 62 
Heatme' and lighting Gib lc> See cence ene ote chee nie myareteet= cetera oe rene 46, 000. 00 4, 473. 33 
Preservatiow of collections, 1913 osiac secre eowiw eminem cise re win oes eit s ete 3,659.15] 411,485.78 
Preservatiomor collections; ISU ea. sms ssee bee teem sen ae ean oan eee 7,652. 72 744. 09 
Preservation of collections, 1915.......- Spe tie pea eetee mee aoae na 300, 000. 00 8,774. 88 
BOOKS, 1913. -c7o5 cectcu sees Ree SORE eR ore eee att ant A 10. 67 13.67 
IBOURKS 1014 ee oo bcs cccsccenwecetereree cheeses taccen See eenee wre seamen 1,091.35 25. 83 
BOOKS; LOLS... cur eccmec datos be ste sapere Ses. Jase opa sae pe ee oe eee 2,000. 00 1,389. 73 
POstaze, 191b Sooo coco opal cues eee eRe eee sale neice ciel Grate ne eee DOO OO Wawsaacuconen 
IBnGidine T enaIEs 1918 oan cb te ee peepee se ce eee. oo 1.14 11.14 
Ging repairs 114. oo. ooo. ane e ee ears eae cheek ieee ite ee 1, 298. 78 5.03 
BUNdMeE repairs OURO yok ok aa so ee ie re ere isa aie nee ae 10,000. 00 487.15 
National Zoological Park, TO1G oo 8 Se ek See eee ae eee Rene eee 9.18 1,18 
National Zcological Park; (914: 2. oo202. jac oeemenees seem ner see oe anc ee eee 6, 210. 30 3.94 
National Zoological Park, 1916 soo oso roe eee eee eeenseeeeessseeeseeeee ee 100, 000. 00 6, 261. 07 
Bridge over Rock Creek, National Zoological Park.........-....--.----+---- 3,018. 67 1, 830. 90 


1 Carried to credit of surplus fund. 


REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 


115 


Statement of estimated income from the Smithsonian fund and from other 
sources, accrued and prospective, available during the fiscal year ending 


June 30, 1916. 


Balancey june oO) Ol hee ee ee ee eee ae ee eee oo eee 
Interest on fund deposited in United States Treasury 

GUE ulyeslge Od one alien Ol Ga ee $58, 000. 00 
Interest on West Shore Railroad bonds, due July 1, 

iS ae a0 Nad ah oes Len Lo See ee a 1, 680. 00 
Hxchange repayments, sale of publications, refund of ad- 

RETESET 11, 901. 88 
Deposits. for specific purposesss asset Sa as eae 12, 000. 00 


Total available for year ending June 30, 1916_____._________ 


Respectfully submitted. 
Gro. Gray, 


$42, 165. 86 


83, 581. 83 


125, 747. 69 


ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, 


Matricre ConNnouty, 


Executive Committee. 


Wasuineton, D. C. 


PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE SMITH- 
SONIAN INSTITUTION FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING JUNE 
30, 1915. 


ANNUAL MEETING, DECEMBER 10, 1914. 


Present: The Hon. Edward D. White, Chief Justice of the United 
States, chancellor, in the chair; the Hon. Thomas R. Marshall, Vice 
President of the United States; Senator William J. Stone; Senator 
Henry F. Hollis; Representative Maurice Connolly; Representative 
Ernest W. Roberts; Dr. Andrew D. White; Dr. A. Graham Bell; 
the Hon. George Gray; Mr. John B. Henderson, jr.; the Hon. 
Charles W. Fairbanks; and the secretary, Mr. Charles D. Walcott. 


DEATH OF SENATOR BACON. 


The secretary announced the death of Senator Bacon, who had 
been a Regent of the Institution since 1905, and chairman of the 
executive committee for the last three years. 

Senator Stone submitted the following tribute to his memory: 

Augustus Octavius Bacon, doctor of laws, United States Senator from 
Georgia, and Regent of the Smithsonian Institution, died February 14, 1914, 
in the seventy-fifth year of his age. 

His associates on the Board of Regents, assembled in annual meeting, do here 
record their personal sorrow in the loss of a distinguished citizen, lawyer, and 
statesman; one whose sound advice will be greatly missed by the Regents in 
their deliberations on the affairs of the Institution, in whose development and 
in whose plans for the advancement of science and the general welfare of 
mankind he at all times exhibited the deepest interest. 

He was a most worthy exemplar of a gentleman, a scholar, a legislator, and 
a councilor. 

On motion, the tribute was unanimously adopted, ordered to be 
spread upon the records of the board, and a copy directed to be sent 
to the family of Senator Bacon. 


APPOINTMENT OF REGENTS. 


Senator Henry F. Hollis, of New Hampshire, was appointed by 
the Vice President on March 10, 1914, to succeed the late Senator 
Bacon. 

Mr, Charles F. Choate, jr., was reappointed for six years by joint 
resolution of Congress, approved March 20, 1914. 

116 


PROCEEDINGS OF THE REGENTS. Ly 
CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 


The Hon. George Gray was elected chairman of the executive 
committee to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Bacon. 


RESOLUTION RELATIVE TO INCOME AND EXPENDITURE. 


Judge Gray, as chairman of the executive committee, submitted 
the following resolution, which was adopted: 

Resolved, That the income of the Institution for the fiscal year ending June 
30, 1916, be appropriated for the service of the Institution, to be expended by 
the Secretary with the advice of the executive committee, with full discretion 
on the part of the Secretary as to items. 


ANNUAL REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 


The annual report of the executive committee, showing the finan- 
cial condition of the Institution for the fiscal year ending June 30, 
1914, was adopted. 


ANNUAL REPORT OF THE PERMANENT COMMITTEE. 


Hodgkins fund.—There has been no change in the status of this 
fund since the last report of the committee. 

The sum of $5,000 was allotted from the income of the fund, in 
accordance with the formal action of the board at the meeting of 
May 1, 1918, for the purpose of continuing the work of the Langley 
Aerodynamical Laboratory during the past year. 

Two thousand dollars was allotted to Mr. F. G. Cottrell for 
experiments in the clearing of fog by electrical precipitation. 

Avery bequest.—This bequest has remained unchanged during the 
past year. Three parcels of land are still to be sold. 

The Poore bequest—A recent report states that this property is 
being closed up as rapidly as possible, and it is expected that within 
a short time it will be turned over to the Institution. The whole 
estate is now valued at approximately $35,000 to $40,000, but under 
the terms of the will the income is to be added to the principal until 
the latter has reached the sum of $250,000, the income of which will 
then become available for the Institution’s purposes. 

On motion, the report was accepted. 


THE SECRETARY’S ANNUAL REPORT. 


The secretary presented his report for the fiscal year ending June 
30, 1914, and stated that since the last annual meeting of the Regents 
there had been printed a total of 90 publications, aggregating about 
6,000 pages of text and 650 plates. Of this aggregate 23 volumes 
and pamphlets (1,626 pages and 289 plates) pertain to the institu- 
tion proper; 55 volumes and pamphlets (4,170 pages and 352 plates) 


118 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


were issued by the National Museum; and 2 volumes and pamphlets 
(115 pages and 11 plates) by the Bureau of American Ethnology. 
In addition there are now in page proof 5 annual reports (about 
2,000 pages) and 3 pamphlets and 1 special publication (about 1,000 
pages) ; these will probably be ready for distribution within a few 
months. The total number of copies of all publications distributed 
during the year was about 169,000. There were also transmitted 
through the institution to Congress two annual reports of the Amer- 
ican Historical Association and the Annual Report of the Daughters 
of the American Revolution. 

Among the Museum publications is the sixth volume of the De- 
scriptive Catalogue of the Birds of North and Middle America, a 
work in which there has thus far been technically described more 
than 2,500 species and subspecies of American birds. 

A second edition of the Hodgkins fund prize essay by Dr. Hins- 
dale on atmospheric air in relation to tuberculosis was published to 
meet the general demand for this work. 

The institution also published through the generosity of Mrs. E. H. 
Harriman two elaborate volumes by Prof. Verrill, on the Starfishes 
of the Pacific Coast. 

On motion the report was accepted. 


THE SECRETARY’S STATEMENT. 


The secretary made personal statements as follows: 

Death of the assistant secretary, Dr. F. W. True—Dr. True died 
on the 25th of June, 1914, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. He 
entered the service of the Institution as the youngest member of the 
scientific corps brought together by Profs. George Brown Goode and 
Spencer F. Baird during the primitive stages of the National 
Museum, his first work being in connection with investigations by 
the U. S. Fish Commission. Later he had been placed in charge of 
the mammal collections in the Museum, and upon its reorganization 
into three principal departments became head curator of biology. 
For a number of years he had served as executive curator of the 
Museum and at times had been designated acting secretary of the 
Institution. June 1, 1911, he had been appointed an assistant secre- 
tary, his special duties being in connection with the library and 
International Exchanges. 

The secretary added a tribute to Dr. True’s ability and loyalty. 


NATIONAL MUSEUM. 


Statue of Lafayette—The Museum was honored during the past 
summer by receiving as a gift from the sculptor, Mr. Paul Wayland 
Bartlett, a copy of his equestrian statue of the Marquis de Lafayette 


PROCEEDINGS OF THE REGENTS. 119 


erected in 1900 in the Court of Honor of the Louvre, Paris, France. 
The statue in Paris is of heroic size and in bronze, and was presented 
to France by the school children of the United States. The copy 
given to the Museum is the original plaster model, of natural size, 
in excellent condition, and has been installed in the rotunda of the 
new building. 

Collection of pianos—Since the beginning of the present fiscal 
year the Museum has received a remarkable donation consisting of an 
historical collection of pianos, the gift of Mr. Hugo Worch, of 
Washington, by whom they had been assembled. Mr. Worch is a 
student of the piano, on which he is preparing an extensive memoir, 
which is now approaching completion, hence he has sought a place 
where his collection could be permanently preserved. The series 
consists of over 200 examples, covering the entire period from the 
invention of the piano, shown in the various changes in construction . 
and the great variety of form and decoration of the case. The col- 
lection is very beautiful, instructive, and has involved a very large 
expenditure on the part of Mr. Worch. It is being installed in the 
first gallery of the rotunda in the new building, which it will entirely 
fill. The Museum was already in possession of one of the best col- 
lections of musical instruments in any of the museums of the country 
and the addition of such an important aie series will probably 
give it a very high standing. 

Gift of Mr. John B. eee ae ce a number of years 
the Museum has been placed under deep aiigeaone to Mr. John B. 
Henderson, jr., a Regent of the Institution, for valuable collections 
of marine animals secured in the course of his own explorations, in a’ 
number of which members of the Museum staff have participated as 
guests of Mr. Henderson. Very recently Mr. Henderson has made a 
most exceptional donation to the Museum, consisting of over 30,000 
specimens of land, fresh-water, and marine mollusks, assembled dur- 
ing a long period of years and representing in a broad sense the 
donor’s special lines of study. Notable among its contents are 
specially fine series from Japan collected by Hirase, and from the 
Philippines by Quadras; the old and valuable collection of J. H. 
Redfield in its entirety; and a complete set of the fluviatile and land 
shells of the Southern States. This is unquestionably one of the 
most valuable additions to the division of mollusks of the Museum 
since the bequest of Dr. Isaac Lea. 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 


The Bureau of American Ethnology has been devoting special 
attention to the study of certain tribes of Indians on the verge of 
extinction. To this end successful efforts have been made in record- 
ing the languages, beliefs, and customs of some of the tribes of 


120 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Oregon, Oklahoma, and Texas. In some cases these remnant groups 
are represented by only one or two survivors who speak their native 
language, hence the very last opportunity of gaining authentic in- 
formation regarding them has been embraced. In other directions 
also the bureau’s activities are being vigorously pursued and several 
volumes will soon be published. 


ADDITIONAL LAND FOR NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK, 


Since the statement at the last meeting of the board much delay 
has been encountered in the steps taken to acquire the land on Con- 
necticut Avenue, for which Congress appropriated $107,200 by the 
act of June 23, 1913, but it is now understood that the jury cf con- 
demnation has completed its work and will shortly present its find- 
ings to the court. As previously stated, the land in question has a 
‘frontage on Connecticut Avenue of 1,750 feet and covers about 10 
acres, and when acquired will bring the park area to 180 acres. 


THE LANGLEY AERODYNAMICAL LABORATORY, 


The first year’s work of the Langley Aerodynamical Laboratory, 
reopened by authorization of the Board of Regents in May, 19138, was’ 
to organize an advisory committee, arrange a comprehensive program 
of operations, devise ways and means of carrying on investigations 
and publishing reports, conduct such active experiments as were pos- 
sible with the means immediately available, and secure and arrange 
in the library all available aeronautical literature. 

The reports of the committee thus far published have appeared as 
individual papers in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. 
The first of these recounts the organization of the advisory commit- 
tee and the resources of the Langley Laboratory. The first technical 
publication sets forth the results of experiments made at the model 
tank at the Washington Navy Yard. Another report describes the 
organization and equipment of the leading aeronautical laboratories 
of England, France, and Germany. Some of the reports of the com- 
mittee are as yet confidential or incomplete, such as Hammond’s re- 
port on wireless communications to and from air craft. 

The members of the various committees of the Langley Laboratory 
have been active in aerodynamics and allied subjects. Naval Con- 
structor Hunsaker has completed the installation and equipment of 
the aerotechnical laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology and has sent the Smithsonian the results of the first researches 
for publication. Mr. Buckingham has completed and published a 
masterly paper on the mathematical principle governing the relations 
of experimental models of all sorts to those of full-scale machines. 
Dr. Humphreys has published a long paper on the physics of the 


PROCEEDINGS OF THE REGENTS. beep 6 


atmosphere. Dr. Zahm has helped to design for the United States 
Army a 200-horsepower biplane and has published a mathematical 
method of analyzing the stresses sustained by such an aeroplane 
during flight. 

The library has been furnished with the chief aeronautic periodi- 
cals and the best books thus far published. The recent additions 
number 120 publications, of which 71 were purchased and the others 
received in exchange. The publications were chosen from a list 
specially prepared by Dr. Zahm and Naval Constructor Hunsaker 
while visiting the leading aeronautical libraries of Europe. 

The rehabilitation and successful launching of the Langley aero- 
plane, constructed over a decade ago, was accomplished last May. 
The machine was shipped from the Langley Laboratory to the Cur- 
tiss Aeroplane Factory to have the planes recanvassed and hydro- 
aeroplane floats attached before launching on Lake Keuka May 28. 
With Mr. Curtiss as pilot the machine planed easily over the water, 
rose on level wing, and flew in steady poise 150 feet. Subsequent short 
flights were made in order to secure photographs of the craft in the 
air. Then Mr. Curtiss was authorized, in order to prolong the flights 
without overtaxing the bearings of the Langley propulsion plant, to 
install in its place a standard Curtiss motor and propeller. 

On October 1, hovering within 30 feet of the water and without 
material loss of speed, the great craft made in quick succession flights 
of the following duration and length at an average speed of 50 feet 
per second: Twenty seconds, 1,000 feet; 20 seconds, 1,000 feet; 65 
seconds, 3,250 feet; 20 seconds, 1,000 feet; 40 seconds, 2,000 feet; 45 
seconds, 2,250 feet. The total weight of the aeroplane with its hydro 
floats and the pilot was 1,520 pounds. 

The tests thus far made have shown that former Secretary Lang- 
ley had succeeded in building the first aeroplane capable of sus- 
tained free flight with a man. It is hoped that further trials will 
disclose more fully the advantages of the Langley type of machine. 
Tt may be recalled that this aeroplane was begun in 1898 for the 
War Department, and in the interest of the national defense. 

The numerous and comprehensive aerotechnical investigations 
planned for the Langley Laboratory can be successfully carried out 
only when increased funds are available. Properly equipped and 
endowed, the laboratory would serve as a national aeronautical in- 
stitute suitable for conducting the aerotechnical investigations and 
tests required by the Government and the aeronautical industries 
of this country. 

The secretary further spoke of the personnel of the advisory com- 
mittee, and said that its operations were very much hampered by the 
recent decision of the Comptroller of the Treasury that it was illegal 
for the members already in the Government service to act as an ad- 


122 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


visory committee to the laboratory. All of the gentlemen selected 
have expressed their interest and willingness to serve, but in view 
of the decision referred to were able to do nothing except in a most 
informal manner. The secretary expressed the opinion that a com- 
mittee of the Regents should be appointed to take up matters in this 
connection.* | 

Dr. Bell said that he was much gratified at the secretary’s state- 
ments in regard to the successful flights of the Langley aeroplane. 
He was familiar with its history and had been present at the flights 
of the models, and now that the large machine, with the addition of 
floats weighing upward of 400 pounds, had actually flown, he felt 
that the Institution, and the board also, should be congratulated at 
the verification of Langley’s work. He thought that the Langley 
type of machine was a correct one, and he hoped that this would 
be further proved by the additional flights contemplated. He 
thought that the important work of the laboratory should be facili- 
tated in every way, and he hoped that the committee recommended by 
the secretary would be appointed, 

Dr. Bell then submitted the following resolution, which was 
adopted: 

Resolved, That a committee be appointed by the chancellor, to consist of four 
members of the board and the secretary, to consider questions relative to the 
Langley Aerodynamical Laboratory. 

The chancellor appointed the following as the committee: Dr. 
Bell, Senator Stone, Representative Roberts, Mr. Henderson, and 
the secretary. 


RESEARCH CORPORATION. 


It will be recalled that when Dr. F. G. Cottrell presented his pre- 
cipitation patents to the Smithsouian Institution, the Board of Re- 
gents decided that it was not practicable for the institution to under- 
take the commercial development of the patents, but there was no 
objection to the secretary becoming a member of a distinct organiza- 
tion that would undertake their development. 

This independent organization was formed under the laws of the 
State of New York as the Research Corporation, as reported to the 
Board of Regents at the meetings in 1912 and 1913. The secretary 
became one of the directors of the corporation and a member of the 
executive committee. The board includes a number of prominent 
men of wide business experience, such as James J. Storrow, of Lee, 
Higginson & Co., bankers, Boston; Charles A. Stone, of Stone & 
Webster, Boston; Arthur D. Little, of the Little Chemical Co., 


Boston; T. Coleman Du Pont, of Wilmington, Del.; Elon H. Hooker, . 


1 By act of Congress approved Mar. 3, 1915, the President was authorized to appoint an 
advisory committee for aeronautics. 


PROCEEDINGS OF THE REGENTS. 123 


president, Hooker Electrochemical Co., Niagara Falls, N. Y.; Ben- 
jamin B. Lawrence, mining engineer, of New York; George F. Kunz, 
of Tiffany & Co., New York; Frederick A. Goetze, dean, engineering 
department, Columbia University, New York; William Barclay Par- 
sons, engineer, of New York; Hennen Jennings, mining engineer, of 
Washington. 

The development of a patent on a commercial basis is a very difli- 
cult proposition, and it was only through the active cooperation of 
Dr. Goetze, chairman of the executive committee, and other gentle- 
men on the board, in connection with the engineers of the corpora- 
tion, that success has been attained. 

On a capital of $10,100, subscribed by the directors, and the fees 
received for engineer services, work was carried on for 18 months. 
In July last there was but $1,200 in the treasury and many monthly 
expenses to be met. This was the low-water mark, as payments then 
began to come in in the form of royalties and payments for the per- 
manent use of the patent, so that on December 1 there was $65,000 in 
the treasury besides $100,000 in approved notes. 

At a recent meeting of the board of directors it was decided that 
no grants for general research would be made until after the invested 
funds of the corporation were $100,000 with cash in bank for ex- 
penses. 

In addition to the Cottrell patents, the corporation is now consid- 
ering the acceptance of certain rights in connection with a patent for 
a reinforced concrete railroad tie that is quite promising. There are 
also several other patents that have been brought to the attention of 
the engineers, but owing to the necessity of concentrating all effort 
upon the commercial development of the Cottrell patents, it was not 
deemed best to undertake other investigations. Now that the finan- 
cial conditions are improved, some money and energy will be ex- 
pended in looking up the concrete tie and other promising patents. 
Owing to the wide experience of the members of the board and their 
standing in the business community, it has been possible to do work 
in connection with the Research Corporation that would have re- 
quired the expenditure of large sums if undertaken by an ordinary 
business organization or private individual. 


CLEARING OF FOG BY ELECTRICAL PRECIPITATION. 


Science has established the fact that all dust and fog particles in 
the open atmosphere are electrified and subject to dispersion or 
precipitation. It is apparent, therefore, that a source of very high 
direct voltage with facilities for control and application, may be of 
inestimable value in certain quarters and seasons for clearing fog 
from a street, from along a passenger railway, from around the land- 


- 


124 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


ing stages of a ferry, or possibly about and in advance of a ship under 
headway at sea. z 

Sometime ago Mr. Cottrell, who has been referred to in connec- 
tion with the work of the Research Corporation, expressed to the 
secretary his desire to take up the investigation of the possibility of 
clearing away fog by the precipitation method mentioned, and he 
was asked to communicate again later when his ideas and plans were 
more fully developed. 

He has recently written from San Francisco to say that the idea is 
now arousing interest in various quarters; for instance, the Uni- 
versity of California is actively engaged in the investigation, while 
the United States Lighthouse Service has placed its boats and facili- 
ties at his disposal when needed, while assurances have been received 
from certain transportation companies that as soon as definite effects 
in the open were shown they would assist in the further development 
of the work. 

Mr. Cottrell stated that funds were urgently needed to enable the 
university people to carry through what he termed the academic part 
of the program. They had already accomplished a great deal with 
their own funds and the apparatus and supplies contributed by the 
electric companies, but certain essential equipment was needed that 
could not be obtained through these channels. Chief among these 
was a transformer of at least 250,000 volts, which would cost about 
$1,500; and $500 additional was desired for smaller items of special 
equipment. 

The importance of this work was apparent, and as it came within 
the scope of researches outlined in the Hodgkins fund, an allotment 
of $2,000 was made. 

In acknowledging this action, Mr. Cottrell stated that the San 
Francisco section of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 
had appointed a committee to cooperate in this great work. Reports 
will be submitted from time to time on the progress of the investi- | 
gation. 

THE FREER COLLECTION. 


The original gift of Mr. Charles L. Freer, of Detroit, Mich., made 
in 1906, comprised about 2,326 paintings and other objects of art. 
The additions since that date, recorded in five supplementary inven- 
tories, the last submitted in February. 1914, increase the total extent 
of this wonderful collection to 4,/U1 pieces, of which 983 are paint- 
ings, engravings, lithographs, etc., by American artists; and 3,718 
are oriental paintings, pottery, bronzes, stone and wood carvings, 
lacquered objects, glass, etc. In the eight years which have inter- 
vened since the acceptance of Mr. Freer’s offer the collection has, 


PROCEEDINGS OF THE REGENTS. 125 


therefore, been doubled in extent, and its value has been increased 
far beyond all earlier expectations. 

The secretary added that Mr. Freer was considering the matter 
of erecting the building to house his gift, and that the question of a 
site was now an important one, and he suggested that a committee 
be appointed to take the matter up. 

Dr. White offered the following resolution, which was adopted: 

Resolved, That four members of the board and the secretary be appointed 
by the chancellor as a committee on the securing of a site for the Freer Art 
Gallery. 

The chancellor appointed the following as the committee: Senator 
Lodge, Senator Hollis, Judge Gray, Representative Connolly, and 
Secretary Walcott. 


WORK UNDER THE HARRIMAN TRUST FUND. 


Dr. C. Hart Merriam, research associate under the special fund 
established by Mrs. EK. H. Harriman, has continued his studies of 
the big bears of America and has practically completed the research 
work. 

In addition to the technical studies, the literature of early explora- 
tion and hunting in the western and northern parts of the continent 
has been searched for records concerning the former ranges and 
habits of the grizzlies and big brown bears, and it was now possible 
to determine the relations of most of the species and to arrange them 
in definite groups. Of the true grizzlies there appear to be about 
38 species and subspecies, representing a dozen groups; of the big 
brown bears, about 10 species, representing five groups. 


REPAIRS, SMITHSONIAN BUILDING. 


The appropriation of $16,000 for the repairs to the exterior of 
the Smithsonian Building became available on August 1,1914. These 
repairs are now practically completed, well within the limits of the 
appropriation, the balance remaining being set aside for exterior 
painting and some further minor repairs which will be undertaken 
in the spring. 

EXPEDITIONS. 


Borneo expedition—F¥or over two years an expedition has been 
engaged in Borneo through the generosity of Dr. W. L. Abbott, a 
collaborator of the National Museum, who had at the time of the last . 
meeting contributed $8,000 for this purpose. Dr. Abbott has since 
added $3,000 to this sum for the completion of the work in Borneo 
and the further work of collecting in Celebes, the fauna of which is 
. practically unrepresented here. Mr. H. C. Raven, who has been 


126 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


conducting this expedition, left Borneo in June, 1914, crossing with 
his native boat and crew to Celebes. 

In addition to the gifts already mentioned, Dr. Abbott has sup- 
plied Mr. Raven directly with ammunition and supplies and with 
funds aggregating between $500 and $1,000. Much valuable material 
has been received from Borneo and the work in Celebes is expected 
to prove of great interest. 

Biological work in north China.—At the last meeting mention was 
made of the work being carried on in north China by Mr. A. de C. 
Sowerby through the liberality of a gentleman who desired to re- 
main unknown. There has been no change in this condition. Mr. 
Sowerby has already sent numerous valuable specimens to the Mu- 
seum and other collections are understood to be nearly ready for 
shipment. 

British Columbia and Montana.—The Secretary continued the work 
of exploration among the fossil beds of British Columbia inaugu- 
rated some years ago, and extended the work to Montana. 

A week was spent in measuring and recording the flow of two 
glaciers near Glacier, British Columbia, before beginning the meas- 
urement of sections and the collecting of fossil remains in the very 
ancient pre-Paleozoic rocks of central Montana. 

In Montana a camp was established in July and field work con- 
tinued until a heavy snow storm closed the season early in October. 
A number of great sections of bedded rocks were studied and meas- 
ured. Large collections were made from the limestones, that in- 
clude the oldest and most simple forms of life yet recorded in the 
early history of the earth. They are mainly algal deposits that may 
be compared with those now being made in fresh-water lakes and 
streams by the beautiful blue-green algae. 

At the secretary’s request, Dr. Albert Mann, the distinguished 
microscopist, began a search for microscopic organisms in thin, 
translucent sections of the algal deposits. He has discovered the 
remains of two types of bacteria in great abundance. These, in 
connection with the microscopic cells of the algae, furnish positive 
proof of the organic origin of the limestones in a period that hereto- 
fore had furnished no evidence of such life. 

Solar radiation.—Observations have been continued on Mount 
Wilson, Cal., for the purpose of observing the variability of the 
sun, and of confirming the newly discovered relationship between 
the variation of the total heat of the sun and the variation of the 
distribution of its light over the solar surface. Computations of 
the results are now in progress, and it is hoped very soon to make a 
satisfactory confirmation of this discovery. 

Mr. Aldrich, in cooperation with the United States Weather 
Bureau, sent up several sounding balloons with apparatus attached 


PROCEEDINGS OF THE REGENTS. Ela 


for measuring the heat of the sun at high altitudes. In spite of 
unlooked-for difficulties, an excellent ascension was made to an alti- 
tude above 15 miles and very fine records were obtained, the pre- 
liminary reduction of which indicate that they will confirm the 
value of the solar constant of radiation which has resulted from 
years of observation at the Astrophysical Observatory. Additional 
flights were made up to altitudes of 20 miles, but no records were 
obtained at that height owing to the freezing of the mercury in the 
thermometers. 

By invitation of the Australian Government and of the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. C. G. Abbot, 
director of the Astrophysical Observatory, attended the meetings of 
the British association in Australia and submitted to the Australian 
Government a recommendation for the establishment in that country 
of a solar observatory particularly devoted to the measurement of 
the radiation of the sun. Owing to the breaking out of the war in 
Europe, the Australian Government was unable to promise definitely 
the early establishment of such an observatory, but expressed great 
interest in the project. 

Island of Timor expedition—The island of Timor in the East 
Indies has been a rich collecting ground for scientific study, though 
little or nothing has been done by the paleontologist. An expedition 
for this sole purpose would be a very expensive undertaking, but an 
opportunity presented itself for acquiring many of these collections 
through the courtesy and interest of Mr. W. E. Crane, of Pittsburgh, 
a retired engineer and an enthusiastic collector, who had planned 
to visit the East Indies and to aid in making collections on the 
island of Timor for the National Museum. The expense of the 
enterprise was estimated to be $2,000, one-half of which was con- 
tributed by Mr. Crane, while Mrs. E. H. Harriman and Mr. Frank 
Springer gave $500 each. 

Unfortunately, about the time Mr. Crane was to start, the war 
broke out in Europe and the expedition had to be abandoned for the 
present. 

Western Siberian expedition—During the spring of 1914 the 
secretary received information that an expedition was being fitted 
out for western Siberia to take in the Kolyma River region, for the 
purpose of making collections in general ethnology and natural 
history. The locality was represented as particularly rich in such 
material, and after consultation with those qualified to advise, the 
secretary decided that it would be well that the Institution par- 
ticipate in the results of the expedition. 

There being no funds of the Institution that could be allotted for 
this purpose, however, steps were taken to secure the means by pri- 
vate subscription, and it is with pleasure that the secretary an- 


128 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


nounces that a sum sufficient for the purpose, $3,500, was contributed 
by the Telluride Association of Provo, Utah, and Ithaca, N. Y. 

The expedition is under the direction of Mr. John Koren, an ex- 
plorer of experience. He is accompanied by Mr. Copley Amory, jr., 
who made collections for the Institution in 1912 along the Alaskan- 
Canadian boundary, and by Mr. Benno Alexander, of Tolt, Wash., 
who is the special representative of the Institution. 

The chief object of the expedition, so far as the Institution is con- 
cerned, is to secure remains of the Siberian mammoth, the woolly 
rhinoceros, and the mastodon; it is also desired to secure skulls, 
tusks, hair, skin, flesh, and anything to indicate the contents of the 
stomach and the nature of the food. Other much desired remains 
are those of the bison, musk ox, camel, and bear. In addition to the 
above, collections will be made of geological, mineralogical, and 
paleontological material likely to be of interest to the Museum. 

The expedition sailed from Seattle on June 26, 1914, and touched 
at Nome on August 1, since which date no word has been received 
from the party. It is expected that they will return to Seattle by 
the end of September, 1915. 


GENERAL APPENDIX 


TO THE 


SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1915. 


129 
18618°—sm 1915——9 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


The object of the Generau Arrenpix to the Annual Report of the | 
Smithsonian Institution is to furnish brief accounts of scientific dis- 
covery in particular directions; reports of investigations made by 
collaborators of the Institution; and memoirs of a general character 
or on special topics that are of interest or value to the numerous 
correspondents of the Institution. 

It has been a prominent object of the Board of Regents of the 
Smithsonian Institution, from a very early date, to enrich the annual 
report required of them by law with memoirs illustrating the more 
remarkable and important developments in physical and biological 
discovery, as well as showing the general character of the operations 
of the Institution; and this purpose has, during the greater part of 
its history, been carried out largely by the publication of such papers 
as would possess an interest to all attracted by scientific progress. 

In 1880 the secretary, induced in part by the discontinuance of an 
annual summary of progress which for 380 years previous had been 
issued by well-known private publishing firms, had prepared by com- 
petent collaborators a series of abstracts, showing concisely the prom- 
inent features of recent scientific progress in astronomy, geology, 
meteorology, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, zoology, and 
anthropology. This latter plan was continued, though not altogether 
satisfactorily, down to and including the year 1888. 

In the report for 1889 a return was made to the earlier method of 
presenting a miscellaneous selection of papers (some of them origi- 
nal) embracing a considerable range of scientific investigation and 
discussion. This method has been continued in the present report 
for 1915. 

130 


REVIEW OF ASTRONOMY FOR THE YEAR 1913.1 


By P. PuIsEux, 


Member of the Institute, Astronomer at the Observatory of Paris. 


STUDY OF PLANETS AND COMETS. 


The increasing knowledge of the phenomena of the globe that 


carries us puts us in a position to interpret more surely what we 
observe in the celestial bodies. The astronomer, who gives to the 
mariner and the geodecist the means for determining their time and 
precise position, hopes some day to receive some recompense for these 
services. He is examining now the facts which come from the scien- 
tific stations established at diverse latitudes. One of the least ex- 
pected among these facts is a small annual variation in geographic 
latitude. This variation had not been predicted by dynamical theory. 
It takes place as though the center of gravity of our globe were 
displaced alternately about 3 meters toward the North, and then 
toward the South Pole. Several explanations come to mind, but have 
to be abandoned under closer analysis. For instance, the melting of 
the ice, taking place alternately each six months in the region of 
the two poles, acts in the right direction, but in order to correspond 
with the magnitude of the observed change, would have to affect 
masses of ice very improbable in size. The most-favored opinion, 
developed by the recent studies of Kimura, Ross, and Biske, assumes 
that the isobars (lines of equal pressure) of the air vary with the sea- 
son, oscillating about a mean configuration. There would result, for 
a series of stations at the same latitude, a variation in the same man- 
ner of the atmospheric refraction, and an annual, purely apparent 
oscillation would be mixed with the one of 430 days, the reality of 
which we have no reason for doubting. 

The movements of the magnetic needle show bizarre caprices which 
would seem to escape all prediction. However, in a long series of 
means, each magnetic element is seen to be affected by four super- 
posed fluctuations the periods of which are the day, the year, the 
synodic rotation of the sun, and the sun-spot-cycle period. From this 
we conclude that the sun acts upon the earth’s magnetism, not only 
through the unequal heating to which it subjects our globe, but also 
through a direct action, doubtless the restricted emission of electrified 


1 Translated, by permission, from the Revue générale des Sciences, vol. 25, p. 746, 1914. 


131 


132 . ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


particles. According to the calculations of Chapman, the moon also 
possesses this power in much less degree but nevertheless surely. To 
it are due several oscillations the most marked of which has a period 
of half a lunar day. 

We are not yet in the position for studying the distribution of 
magnetism on the moon. But in lunar topography we are making 
progress. The valuable collection of plates collected at the Observa- 
tory of Paris furnished the basis to Le Morvan of a new 48-plate 
atlas of our satellite. One half of this work had appeared in 1913. 
This chart, less expensive and more manageable than the great atlas 
of this observatory, is well conceived, admirably executed, and will 
be of great value to observers. 

The planetoid Eros, which so held the attention of astronomers in 
1900, had at that time surprised them by its rapid variations in 
brightness. Now we find that its orbit is contracting more than we 
would have predicted. There will result far more favorable condi- 
tions for a new determination of the solar parallax. In 1931 the dis- 
tance of this planetoid from the earth will be decreased to almost one- 
half of the smallest value reached in 1900. 

The system of planets which revolve about the sun, and ‘the two 
systems of moons which keep company with Jupiter and Saturn, re- 
spectively, have always attracted calculators in a search for numerical 
analogues. The well-known law of Bode serves as the point of de- 
parture for such calculations, and its aspect is changed slightly, 
according as weight is attached to the exactness of the verifications, 
the absence of discontinuities, or the small number of parameters. 
Miss Blagg has made a marked advance over her predecessors, includ- 
ing the three series of distances in one formula, analogous to one 
which connects the reciprocals of the wave-lengths in the spectra of 
simple bodies. The existence of this relation between such apparently 
different systems makes us feel that we are dealing with some mysteri- 
ous physical law imposed in the formation of the planets as well as 
of the satellites. Such grouping could not be the effect of fortui- 
tous and successive aggregations, as the theory of capture would have. 
It rather forces us to require in each system a unity of origin, retaining 
the general idea of the cosmogony of Laplace. 

None of the laws derived from that of Bode would have foretold 
the existence of the distant and retrograde moons which both Jupiter 
and Saturn possess. In studying these two exceptional cases, which 
have been considered by certain authors as irreconcilable with the 
ideas of Laplace, Jackson found that these anomalous moons. could 
be considered as the remains of a nebulous ring, the component parts 
of which possessed confused movements, and sufficiently vast to have 
expanded beyond the sphere of effective attraction of the planets. 
Certain distances from the planets and certain angular velocities are 


REVIEW OF ASTRONOMY—PUISEUX. 133 


more favorable to stability and are just such as correspond to the 
distances and velocities of the retrograde satellites. 

An analogous conclusion is drawn by Eddington from the statistics 
of the elements of the comets. The positions of their aphelia, as a 
rule, group about two directions which seem to depend in no way 
upon the general movement of the solar system. These directions 
rather reveal the direction of the elongation of the one or two primi- 
tive rings at the expense of which the comets were formed. The 
short-period comets form an exception possibly because they are 
endowed with a shorter longevity. They are to be considered as 
revolving in their actual orbits through the intervention of the 
greater planets. Thus the comet Neujmin (1913c), discovered 
the 6th of September, 1913, was the third member of the cometary 
family of Saturn. It was remarkable for its almost constant stellar 
aspect. The Westphal comet (1852, IV), refound September 26, 
1913, by Delavan, underwent in October a considerable and unex- 
plained decrease in brightness. 

In comparison with the planets and the stars the comets are doubt- 
less ephemeral. What becomes of the matter—tenuous, to be sure, 
but in time abundant—which is left in their wake? Fessenkoff con- 
siders that it must expand in the region of the ecliptic in the form cf 
a vast flattened, lens-shaped mass centered about the sun and de- 
creasing in density with increasing distance from the sun. All the 
well-known traits of the zodiacal light could thus be explained. 
Fessenkoff believes that certain unsymmetrical and changeable fea- 
tures which have been noted are due to insufficient allowance for the 
effects of atmospheric absorption. The total mass of the zodiacal 
matter is certainly very small compared with that of the principal 
planets, indeed compared with that of the comets and meteors. 

We may suppose that certain meteors are efficacious for troubling 
the surface of the sun because they are subject to closer approaches 
to it. Turner was led to adopt the idea, formerly held by J. Herschel, 
while trying to represent the variable frequency of sun spots by a 
series of periodical terms. For a course of years certain constant 
values may be adopted for the coeflicients of these terms, and then 
these values have to be altered. The epochs of all these perturba- 
tions, according to Turner, fall close to the time of the perihelion 
passage of the Leonides. It is true the distance of the Leonides 
from the sun, even at perihelion passage, is somewhat great and 
necessitates recourse to a secondary stream derived through the inter- 
vention of some planet. This theory finds a certain degree of con- 
firmation in the Chinese Annals, which record ancient increases in 
the number of sun spots at epochs when the Leonides swarm must 
have passed close to Saturn. 


134 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 
STUDY OF THE SUN. 


Is the periodic increase in the number of sun spots definitely con- 
nected with the flux of heat which we receive from the sun? The 
question has been answered in various senses, and it must still be con- 
sidered as under litigation. The discordance of the statistics, when 
they are not coordinated in point of time, may result from a general 
variation in the transparency of the earth’s atmosphere. For in- 
stance, the greater or less diffusion of volcanic dust suffices to explain 
this discordance. And it seems quite certain that the eruption of 
Mount Katmai (Alaska) in 1912, as well as that of Krakatoa in 1883, 
have had effects of this nature. At any rate the passage of this 
atmospheric disturbance does not occur simultaneously in widely 
separated countries and the parallelism of the solar-constant values 
found by the methods of Dr. Abbot in California and in Algeria, 
Africa, prove that very perceptible variations can be imputed to the 
sun. These variations up to the present appear rather irregular than 
periodic. 

Fabry and Buisson have found that the solar spectrum is cut off at 
the violet end by an absorption band due to ozone. The presence of 
a layer of ozone, formed in the upper part of our atmosphere by the 
action of the ultra-violet light of the sun, is not improbable. It 
would in that region somewhat alter the laws of absorption and 
(shghtly) alter the value of the solar constant. 

The micrometric examination of the numerous plates taken at 


the Observatory of Zo-Sé (China) under the direction of P. Cheva-- 


her, shows that the sun underwent, from 1905 to 1909, a measurable 


and somewhat variable elongation along the polar diameter. It is | 


not the first time that such a change has been suspected, but it is as- 
serted now, it seems to us, with an imposing train of evidence. The 
mean photographic diameter surpasses by 0.6’’ that which is gener- 
ally admitted on the authority of Auwers. An indication pointing in 
the same direction, results from the discussion by Simonin of the 
plates of the eclipse of April 17, 1912. . 

The documents resulting from the last solar eclipse still furnish 
material for interesting publications. Father Cortie gives the de- 
scription of several limited bundles of rays, each one issuing from a 
spotted region of the sun and showing marked effects upon terrestrial 
magnetism. In the American photographs of the flash spectrum 
taken at Daroca in 1905, Mitchell found the whole counterpart of the 
Fraunhofer spectrum. The only differences occur in the relative in- 
tensities of the lines. Neither Mitchell nor Evershed are disposed 
to consider the presence of radium as established in the sun’s chromo- 
sphere. 

The powerful spectroscopes continue to give numerous results rela- 
tive to the velocities which rule at the various levels in the sun. But 


REVIEW OF ASTRONOMY—PUISEUX. 135 


their interpretation is complicated and the results change according 
as we consider some special spectrum line or the diverse parts of the 
same line. For Evershed the dominant fact is the general expanding 
out of the metallic vapors as they leave the border of each spot. St. 
John finds that the centripetal tendency again becomes predominant 
above a certain elevation. The analogies which have been attempted 
between sun spots and cyclones or the whirlpools in water currents 
give little satisfaction. 

The ascending movements which the spectroscope records toward 
the center of the disk of the sun are not as rapid as the horizontal 
movements, but it is not a rare occurrence for them to be accelerated 
as if the weight was opposed effectively by a repulsive force. These 
vertical velocities, in every case, are sufficiently great to make us 
consider very hazardous the attempt of Schulz to revive the former 
theory of Kirchhoff concerning the general constitution of the sun. 
According to that theory the sun is liquid up to the level of the spots 
and the latter are floating scum. Every difficulty is removed by 
that theory relative to the existence of a continuous spectrum but 
not relative to temperature and velocities. Fowler prefers to admit 
the existence in the sun of some unknown physical agent capable of 
maintaining certain refractory elements in a pulverulent state at 
temperatures above 6,000° C., the temperature above which pyrhelio- 
metric measures show that the sun must be. We must resign our- 
selves for a long while yet perhaps to see Nature use in the stars far 
more powerful sources than those at our disposal in the laboratory. 

Deslandres and d’Azambuja continue to devote themselves to the 
isolation of the light of the central parts of the strongest lines of 
the solar spectrum and its use in their solar photographs, and that 
choice is justified by the striking originality of the photographs ob- 
tained. The astronomers at Meudon, despite the doubts raised by 
A. Buss, maintain an essential distinction between “ filaments” and 
“alignements.” ‘The latter, fainter but more prolonged, are char- 
acteristic of the upper layers. They appear as far as the greatest 
latitudes and are not dependent upon the Schwabe cycle. 

The existence of the Zeeman phenomenon at the border of the 
spots, shown by Hale, as we know, has furnished him with a means 
of measuring the local magnetic fields. We see no other probable 
origin for these magnetic fields except the motion of electrified par- 
ticles, but one would suppose that electricity would be conducted 
with great difficulty in as rare a medium as that which surrounds 
the sun. This objection has been very much weakened, although 
not nullified, by the recent experiments of Harker, who found that 
a rarified gas becomes an effective conductor for electricity in the 
neighborhood of a body at a very high temperature. 


136 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 
STARS AND NEBULZ. 


The observatory at Greenwich has undertaken the task during re- 
cent years of the redetermination of the precise positions of all the 
bright stars of the corona borealis, stars already included by Car- 
rington in a catalogue which is now half a century old. It has thus 
become possible to study and classify a gre eat number of proper mo- 
tions. The discussion made by Dyson gives a result favorable to 
the views held by Schwarzschild that the existence of a single pref- 
erential direction for stellar motions is probable. In measure as 
we consider a direction differing from this, the number of stars 
having this different direction diminishes regularly. From the re- 
lation between the brightness of a star and its apparent motion, 
it may be deduced that the distribution of stars in space is neither 
uniform nor fortuitous. The greatest frequency is found in the 
constellation of Gemini at a distance which is small compared with 
the dimensions of the Milky Way. When we depart from this central 
region the frequency of the stars diminishes without limit, so that 
we may speak of the stars visible in meridian instruments as a 
limited system of definite structure. 

Analogous conclusions were derived by Eddington from the study 
of the catalogue of Boss, in which are collected the most accurate 
data concerning the bright stars in all parts of the sky. It is espe- 
cially in high galactic latitudes that the density is found to decrease 
most markedly. We must therefore regard the stars connected with 
the Milky Way—that is, the great majority of the visible stars—as 
forming a globular cluster with a very marked flattening. 

At each point of such a cluster the Newtonian attraction must pro- 
duce a field of force. A star, obedient to this field of force and 
sensibly untroubled by neighboring bodies, would complete its revo- 
lution about the center in about 300,000,000 years, and we would 
expect a definite, dominant direction in each region of space. 

The researches of L. Boss and of Messrs. Hertzsprung and Plum- 
mer have definitely revealed the existence of several groups or fami- 
lies of stars, all the members of which travel with equal and parallel 
velocities and having a yet further kinship in the character of their 
spectra. These stars thus preserve a trace of their common origin 
and move freely or under the action of a common field of force, and 
resemble very little the final state of bodies intermingling with 
diverse velocities. It is therefore necessary to abandon the com- 
parison of the Milky Way to'a gaseous mass where the velocities of 
the molecules result from multiple collisions in every direction and 
with velocities showing definite relationship to the masses, but 
no regularity as to direction. Jeans, starting with the stellar density 
calculated as existing in the neighborhood of our sun, has found 


REVIEW OF ASTRONOMY—PUISEUX. 137 


that the dispersion of a swarm, once formed, would require billions 
of years—a time much greater than the probable life of a star as a 
bright star. 

Results well worthy of attention have been obtained lately through 
the formation of tables having as headings the principal character- 
istics of the stars, spectrum class, annual parallax, magnitude of mo- 
tion, intrinsic brightness. Thus, Campbell has shown that the white 
stars (A and B of the Harvard classification) are more numerous than 
other stars near the Milky Way, have small velocities, great distances 
from the sun, and great brightness. The red stars are, on the average, 
nearer the sun and have greater velocities. There is reason for con- 
cluding, according to Stratton, that the stars have their birth close 
to the plane of the Milky Way and depart from it with time with 
increasing velocities. H. N. Russell thinks that he can go yet further, 
laying stress upon the fact that statistics separate the red stars into 
two classes—one much brighter intrinsically than the sun, and the 
others decidedly fainter. The former (giant stars) are less advanced 
in their evolution. Their destiny is to contract, and consequently 
become warmer and whiter, losing in size and gaining in velocity. 
They again become red before their final extinction. These correla- 
tions are valuable for guiding researches, but it will without doubt 
be necessary to wait until their degree of generality is better estab- 
lished. 

The existence of a particularly close analogy between certain stars 
and the sun results from the work of the observers at Potsdam. They 
have found that in the spectra of Arcturus and Aldebaran we can 
observe the partial reversal of the H and K lines, that is to say, the 
formation of a brilliant central line in them such as those seen in the 
troubled regions of the sun. 

The category of spectroscopic double stars, enriched continually 
by the work of the Lick and Allegheny observers, presents on the 
other hand a phenomenon of which we find no analogy in the sun. 
We know now several instances of the fact, noted first in 3 Orionis, 
that the calcium lines do not follow the periodic oscillations of those 
due to hydrogen and helium. Possibly clouds of calcium, unconnected 
with the stars, are interposed in the line of sight. In the Cepheid 
variables, compared with one another, Ludendorff has noted the 
existence of a proportionality between the amplitudes of the varia- 
tions which the brightness and radial velocities respectively undergo. 

Tt will be useful, in order to interpret these and similar laws, to be 
able to reach greater precision in the measure of faint magnitudes. 
All methods, in which the judgment of the eye is utilized, involve a 
certain inaccuracy of physiological origin. Attempts are being made 
to substitute for the operator’s eye an apparatus of rigorously im- 
personal measures, indefatigable and of a superior sensitiveness. 


138 - ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Stebbins uses for this purpose the variable resistance which selenium 
offers to the passage of the electrical current when the selenium is 
more or less exposed to light. But the results do not appear to be 
regular except when the selenium is kept at low temperatures. 
Messrs. Elster, Geitel, and Guthnick have utilized the property which 
certain alkaline metals, such as sodium and calcium, offer of emitting, 
under the influence of light, corpuscles capable of acting upon an 
electrometer. They have thus obtained a sensitiveness of one part in 
a thousand in estimating the brightness of faint stars. 

The photographic study by Prof. Bailey of the cluster Messier 3 
has shown the existence in this single group of 137 variable stars, all 
of the same type and having periods of about a half a day. Stars 
- showing such rapid changes are rarely found outside of clusters. 
There has, however, meanwhile been found a new example in uae star 
RR Lyre, Fees eater by ISiess. 

In order to establish a homogeneous system of magnitudes in a 
photographic catalogue there has been used with success at the 
Greenwich Observatory a diffraction grating formed of metallic wires 
stretched across the front of the objective of the telescope. Each 
star then furnishes a central image with a series of secondary images 
on either side. The ratio of the brightness of the successive members 
of each series can be calculated with precision if a micrometrical 
study is made of the grating and the widths of the wires and spaces 
are made very uniform. Each bright star thus will give in the field 
of the telescope a scale of magnitudes to which the fainter stars may 
be referred. Messrs. Chapman and Melotte have thus been able to 
make a complete catalogue of the stars down to the fifteenth magni- 
tude and within a radius of 25’ of the pole. 

The examination made by Reynolds of the distribution of bright- 
ness in the great Andromeda nebula makes it seem as though a great 
part of that nebula’s brightness were due to a central star too envel- 
oped and obscured in the diffused matter for us to see it. In the 
spectrum of this same nebula, generally held to be continuous with a 
few absorption lines, Messrs. Fox and Max Wolf have found bright 
lines, and in the spectrum of the Wolf-Rayet stars, characterized by 
bright lines, Max Wolf finds also the lines of gaseous nebule. We 
are thus forced to believe that bright lines are a general characteris- 
tic of true nebulee, which do not shine by reflected stellar light, and 
that the Wolf-Rayet stars show a transition type between such nebule 
and ordinary stars. 

How is the evolution from one to the other effected? Nicholson 
has tried to determine it by a subtle analysis of the numerical values 
of the wave lengths. The only terrestrial elements known with cer- 
tainty as existing in the nebule, and accordingly in the Wolf-Rayet 
stars, are hydrogen and helium. The other lines which are in the 


REVIEW OF ASTRONOMY—PUISEUX. 139 


spectra, and as yet unreproducible in the laboratory, are distributed 
in series, and the structure of these series allows us to attribute to 
them modified forms of these simple elements. The passage takes 
place by discontinuous steps, corresponding to successive whole num- 
bers of electrons. The transmutation of the nebula into the star 
results less from a concentration of visible matter than from new 
intraatomic configurations, the reverse of that which radioactive 
matter undergoes in our laboratories and which has helium for its 
final product. 

Nicholson, faithful to the traditions of Laplace, considers the 
nebula as the primal form of matter in preference to the star, which 
seems to him on the track toward a more complex structure. One is 
tempted to regard the reverse route as probable if we consider two 
incontestable facts: The practical irreversibility of the radioactive 
transformation and the constant evolution of new stars toward the 
nebulous state. The artificial production of the nebula spectrum, if 
it ever becomes possible, will of course throw light upon this problem 
of the utmost importance to cosmogony. May we live long enough to 
be witnesses of this conquest, the object of so much of our striving! 


eh an 
. 


THE UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY. 


By A. 8. E. AcKERMANN, 
B. Sc. (Engineering), A. C. G. I., M. Cons. -E., A. M. Inst. C. E. 


[With 6 plates. ] 


As it has been justly said that the play of Hamlet without the 
Prince of Denmark is somewhat dull, perhaps it will be well to devote 
a few words to the principal actor in all schemes for the utilization 
of solar energy, viz, the sun. He is no longer regarded as a monster 
fire, burning in the manner of fires in our grates. Great as is his 
mass, it would be comparatively rapidly consumed if such combustion 
were taking place. Another reason why this old idea was given up 
is that the temperature of the sun has been determined by several 
experimenters, and all agree that it is about 6,000° C. This is far too 
high to permit of the formation of most chemical compounds, and 
for the production of heat by combustion it is necessary for such com- 
pounds to be formed. Briefly, such a temperature decomposes nearly 
all compounds into their elements and prevents their reuniting and 
the consequent production of heat. 

Scientists are by no means certain how the sun’s heat is produced, 
but one theory is that it is due to radioactivity; and another. due 
to Helmholtz, that the energy to keep up the radiation could be sup- 
plied by a relatively microscopic contraction of the sun’s volume, 
though even this theory is not a complete success, as it implies that the 
age. of the sun is 17,000,000 years. Great as is this lapse of time, 
geology indicates that our earth is considerably older; but as the 
earth can not very well be older than the sun, we must conclude that 
the sun is older than 17,000,000 years. 

As to what the structure of the sun is there is also doubt; but the 
inner portion is spoken of as the nucleus and the outer portion as the 
- atmosphere, and as the outer layers of the atmosphere get relatively 
cooled they sink to a lower level, and their place is taken by hotter 
layers. Thus there is a continual circulation of the sun’s atmosphere. 

The specific gravity of the sun is only about a quarter of that of 
the earth, whose specific gravity is 5.538. A cubic foot of water weighs 


1 Reprinted, by permission, from the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, London, 
April 30, 1915, 


141 


a 


142 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


624 pounds, and hence an average cubic foot of the sun weighs 864 
pounds, while an average cubic foot of the earth weighs 345 pounds. 
For comparison it may be mentioned that a cubic foot of granite 
weighs 165 pounds. The density of the sun being so small, it is 
concluded that it can still go on contracting, and hence that it is 
probably getting hotter instead of cooler, as is popularly supposed. 
If this be so, it is a hopeful feature for future workers in the field of 
solar energy. 

The diameter of the sun is 863,600 miles, or about one hundred 
times the diameter of the earth, and an earthly pound weight at its 
surface would weigh 274 pounds. The glowing surface which the 
sun presents to us, even considering him as a flat disk, has the enor- 
mous area of 585,750,000,000 square miles, each square foot of which 
emits the enormous amount of about 12,500 horsepower, and the 
radiant energy received at the outer surface of the earth’s atmosphere 
is equivalent to 7,300 horsepower per acre. Of this about 70 per 
cent (say, 5,000 horsepower per acre) is transmitted to the land sur- 
face of the earth at noon on a clear day, and Jess in the morning and 
evening, owing to the greater thickness of atmosphere through which 
the radiation has to pass. 

The quantity of solar heat per unit area which arrives in unit time 
at the outer surface of our atmosphere is called the solar constant, 
and its value, as determined in 1913 by C. G. Abbot, of the Smith- 
sonian Institution, after making 696 experiments in different parts 
of the globe, is 1.93 calories per square centimeter per minute (equal to 
7.12 B. t. u. per square foct per minute). Its value given by various 
experimenters between 1881 and 1909 was considerably higher, and 
this makes it all the more remarkable that John Ericsson, the engineer 
and inventor, who spent some £20,000 on experiments with solar 
energy, when writing in 1876 a record of his life’s work, gave the 
value of the solar constant as 7.11 B. t. u. per square foot per minute 
and said, “In view of the completeness of the means adopted in 
measuring the energy developed and the ample time which has been 
devoted to the determination of the maximum intensity, it is not 
probable that future labors will change the result of our determina- 
tion,” and, as\shown above, his confidence was justified. 

Perhaps the most remarkable things about solar radiation are that 
it passes through the 93,000,000 miles (1,000,000 is 2,740 a day for a 
year) of space between the sun and the earth, the temperature of | 
which is nearly absolute zero (1. e., it is about —263° C.), and that 
only three-fifths of it produces any impression on the eye. It is not 
till the radiant energy impinges on some material body that it is con- 
verted into heat. The best body for causing such conversion is a dead- 
black one. 


UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—ACKERMANN. 143 


The absorption of solar energy by the atmosphere is about 20 per 
cent greater in summer than in winter. This may be due to there 
being a larger total quantity of water vapor in the atmosphere in 
summer than in winter. It has long been known that the greater the 
humidity of the atmosphere the greater the amount of heat stopped 


SUN POWER PLANT AT MEAO/, ECYPT, 19173 
Curves showing etfect of humidity on steam [voduchion 


g 


The numbers are those & the Fials 
© Trial mith vorered boilers 
wet » 


= 
6 


ahem produced PS UT Oy (8 WILE ABSOr Der 


7 
Wis, 3° — 
Ye : 
Soe heal (Rae O5S-1 Spe 


Tes 19-2 b&b 


g 


| 


pL 
© 
Pest! os 


Tow-n0 Tih Rew 
338 o3if 
PB 7B eee 


§ 


- 


90 


VALUE FIGURE FOR THE STEAM. NOTE: The value figure X 1025 gives the heat aatieo in UR o the total meight ¥: 


Ps ee ‘ss 
HUMIDITY PER CENT 


Fig. 1. 


by it; but the author believes that his experiments in Egypt in 1913, 
with the Shuman-Boys sun-power plant, were the first which de- 
termined the quantitative effect of humidity, especially on so large a 
scale. The curves on figure 1 record the results, from which it is 
seen that when the humidity decreased 20 per cent the quantity of 


144 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


steam increased about 30 per cent, thus showing the great importance 
of humidity in.connection with this subject. 

The great possibilities of this field of work, and the obvious fact 
that there is a limit to our supplies of coal and oil, have naturally 
attracted many workers, of whom the following is a chronological list. 
Some of them, however, have not been engaged in the practical 
utilization of solar energy, but in determining the solar constant and 
atmospheric absorption which tell us the theoretical quantity of heat 
available for power purposes. 


Name. miele 4 ey ft first solar 
work. 
Solomon! de Cauxi(Hrance)= = 2) 3-2 === ice sae ee ee eS Fo) ee 1576 * 1626 1615 
eB de Saussure (Swedeneec.e ot re so ee ae ee ee Oe eee Soe 1740 1799 1766 
Sin Jonneererschel (Mingland) 53022522625. 2steeee a5 fos eccaee < Be Le 1792 1871 1836 
CoS Me Pouiller CEraAncs) J3s1.5 2 se eee eee kee eee: ee 1791 1868 1838 
Cob /ATih ans: (Germany) csc os aia ne Ree eee oe (2) (2) 1853 
CaniGuntners CATSirIg) | Sa anc tees e oe chet ere eee Ge eee re See eee (?) (?) 1854 
PAuSist Monechot CErance) cS ceo once eee ene eee oe ee ae ene (2) (?) 1860 
John Ericesson:(United States:of America) =. . - <2 25-hides. 242 ee ce as 1803 1889 1864 
C. H. Pope (United States of America)........-..- ne san gs es Nr (?) (?) 1875 
WitiieInoAtisIms ( Hmeland 9a ccck cee cs au male eens ee: s See tee (?) (?) 1876 
PALME AITO CHUATCO) so5 26 oro. Aes ISSO ete coe eee See vote ceaneya meas (?) (?) 1878 
Sow. Laneley (United States of, A merica)i22 os: 223 282.8 ee Sse bsee 1834 1906 1881 
Meerrandime: ((Himpland)) 5 3 eee on ee ee eee ee ee ee cee (?) (Goes 1883 
Ohaswouis Apel Lellier (france): ssc ot one ee ete ee aE erred (?) 1913 c. 1884 
A. G. Eneas (United States of America).....-..-.-.-- L saa 9 Sees 3 Sear Ge) Tolecesseeses 1900 
EP REE WiIISIOSs . 5: acco cals obec es UReae Poet eee ae eee ee ene oe GCOSIES ESE 1902 
CiG. Abbot (United States of America): = <5. 5..252-3--.-- 25-4 S-sesbeemee TST 5 aie heer sohebe 1905 
Frank Shuman (United States of America) .......-...-..--.---------.---- LSC Dill] hndretiercrarc 1906 
SHC YN (TANGO) As. .ce eee ee acct: eee - ean eee te Ree eens i RUG p OR Paget, we eee 1906 
Gevillochath (hrance)t 524. sess sees ees ee eee os We tae ee 35k. Tey CI Gre) ll bk oes 1906 


Now, although the theoretical power value of the heat reaching the 
surface of the earth is no less than 5,000 horsepower per acre, it must 
not be thought that anything like this amount can be converted into 
mechanical power any more than can all the heat of coal be converted 
into its theoretical equivalent of mechanical power. For example, 
the heat value of good coal is about 14,500 B. t. u. per pound, equal 
to 12,760 horsepower hours per ton, but in fact the best result, even 
under test conditions, ever obtained from a ton of coal by means of a 
boiler and steam engine is only about 1,470 brake horsepower hours, 
or 11.5 per cent of the heat value, while in the case of a gas engine the 
corresponding figure is 25.5 per cent, and of a Diesel oil engine 31 per 
cent. The chief loss is in converting the steam into mechanical energy, 
and most of the loss is inevitable for thermodynamic reasons. With 
this fact in mind, you will not be so surprised to learn that the best 
overall thermal efficiency obtained from the Shuman-Boys plant in 
Egypt was only 4.32 per cent, the chief reasons for this being so much 
less than 11.5 per cent being that the steam pressure was so low, and 


UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—ACKERMANN. 145 


that the best efficiency of the sun-heat absorber was only 40.1 per cent, 
compared with 75 per cent for the best coal-fired boiler. But it has 
taken boilermakers many years to attain this efficiency, so that 40.1 
per cent is not a bad result when the number of sun boilers that have 
been made is taken into account. Thermal efficiencies of engines are 
materially affected by the heat fall of the steam, just as the efficiencies 
of water turbines are affected by the height of the waterfall. The 
larger the fall in either case the better the efliciency. 

It is interesting to realize from the foregoing figures that the value 
of 24 acres of bright sunshine for an hour is 1 ton of coal. This fact 
is more readily realized in Egypt in the summer. With this we may 
compare what Mr. J. C. Hawkshaw said in his presidential address 
to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1902, viz, that the wood fuel 
produced by an acre of land in Europe is equivalent to at least 1 
ton of coal a year. 

With so much heat generated at the surface of the earth it might 
be thought that the temperature of the earth would rise. So it would 
do were it not for the fact that the earth radiates into space as much 
heat as it receives, though some of it may be stored on earth for a time 
in the form of vegetable growth (including coal) or water raised to 
high levels. 

Coal has been called “ bottled sunshine,” but the cork of the bottle 
must be a leaky one, for Abbot says (The Sun, p. 360): “It appears 
from such investigations as have been made that plants may store up 
as chemical energy in round numbers 1 or 2 per cent of the energy 
of solar radiation which shines upon their leaves.” With regard to 
the earth’s own heat, it has been estimated that the continuous supply 
coming from the interior to the surface is equivalent to 1,280 horse- 
“ power per square mile, or only 2 horsepower per acre. 

Having now considered the nature of the source and the quantity 
of heat available, we will give a brief description of the plants which 
have been constructed by various experimenters for the purpose of 
utilizing solar heat. They are given in chronological order as regards 
their solar work so far as the author has been able to discover the 
facts. 

At one stage the author thought he had discovered the earliest 
worker at the subject when he came across a record of Sir John Her- 
schel’s experiments in 1836, but further research disclosed that Buf- 
fon, the celebrated French naturalist, was at work in 1747, and on 
April 10 of that year he succeeded in setting fire to a plank of tarred 
wood, at a distance of 150 feet, by solar rays reflected from a combina- 
tion of flat mirrors. He did this to show the possibility of the legend 
that Archimedes set fire to-the fleet of Marcellus at Syracuse in 
212 B. C. 

18618°—sm 1915——10 


146 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Other early workers were Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan 
monk, who died in 1294; Solomon de Caux (1576-1626), a French 
engineer, who, in 1615, invented and described the first machine for 
raising water by solar heat and the expansion of air; Ducarla; and 
H. B. de Saussure, the Swiss geologist, physicist, and naturalist, who 
made (in 1787) the second ascent of Mont Blanc. To de Saussure the 
credit is due for inventing the “ hot box” (1. e., an insulated air-tight 
wooden box, black inside, and covered with two layers of plain glass 
with an air space between them), which has since been such a favorite 
with other workers. It was he, too, who found that a cover of two 
sheets of glass gave the best results. 

Next in the field was Sir John Herschel, F. R. S., who in 1837 took 
the temperature of the surface soil near Cape Town, and for dry earth 
recorded temperatures varying from 120° F. to 162° F., the latter 
having been obtained on December 1, 1837, at 0.36 p. m., in a sand heap 
sheltered from the wind in a sail garden inclosure, the soil being 
moist 3 inches or 4 inches below EBS surface. 

He also experimented with a “small mahogany box, blackened 
inside, covered with windowglass fitted to size, but without putty, 
and simply exposed perpendicularly to the sun’s rays.” In this box 
he recorded a temperature of 152° F., but “ when sand was heaped 
around the box to cut off the contact of cold air, the temperature 
rose on December 3, 1837, to 177° F. And when the same box, with 
its inclosed thermometer, was established under an external frame of 
wood well sanded up at the sides, and protected by a sheet of win- 
dowglass (in addition to that of the box within), the temperatures 
attained on December 3, 1837, were— 


Time (p.m.). ba ios 
2 
WSOms ety bacer: 207 
ASCE Sete Coes eae 217.5 
PAA = me yc 218 


and that with a steady breeze sweeping over the spot of exposure. 
Again, on December 5, under a similar form of exposure, tempera- 
tures were observed: 


Time (p.m.). pee 
3 OF 
O19 bBo akk eet Boe 224 
OP20). 52 2 ee eae 230 
BS Spelt 239 
RSG. AOA eee 248 
DEST Mead: Wie FES 240.5 


As those temperatures far surpass that of boiling water, some amusing experi- 
ments were made by exposing eggs, fruit, meat, and in the same manner (Dec. 


UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—ACKERMANN. 147% 


21, 1887, et seq.), all of which, after a moderate length of exposure, were found 
perfectly cooked, the eggs being rendered hard and powdery to the center; and 
on one eccasion a very respectable stew of meat and vegetables was prepared, 
and eaten with no small relish by the entertained bystanders. 

Sir John then described his method of determining the solar con- 
stant by means of a tinned iron vessel 33 inches diameter, and 2.4 
inches high filled with inked water, upon which he allowed the nearly 
vertical rays of the sun to play through a 3.024-inch-diameter hole 
for 10 minutes and noted the rise in temperature, of course allowing 
for cooling losses. The mean of six experiments, made between De- 
cember 23, 1836, and January 9, 1837, inclusive, gave a rise of 0.38° F. 
per minute, the quantity of water being 4,638 grains. Allowing for 
the obliquity of the sun’s rays, the mean area of the normal cross-sec- 
tion of the beam of sunlight was 7.01 square inches. From these par- 
ticulars we are able to calculate that Herschel’s value of the solar 
radiation reaching the earth’s surface was 1.38 calories per square- 
centimeter-minute, while if we assume the coefficient of atmospheric 
transmission to have been 0.70, his value of the solar constant was 
1.98, agreeing well with 1.93, the value now accepted as correct. 

From these experiments he deduced that a cylindrical rod of ice, 
45.3 miles in diameter, and of indefinite length, continually darted 
into the sun with the velocity of light (186,000 miles per second), 
would barely suffice to employ the whole radiant heat for its fusion, 
without at all reducing the temperature of the sun. 

For comparison with Herschel’s sand temperatures recorded above, 
the author gives the following similar readings, which he obtained at 
Meadi, Egypt: 


alae Reading Pe yaad 
mometer| ofther- |" with | Shade | Humid- 
Date. Time. pager noes blacked | tempera-| ity per my OFS , 
Terre | ring RU EV lH, | Suan | 
Ringe Foe sand. ants. 
1913. eee ei 25 Ses ae ae 
DuubyplAs. oo. 42: A230 Deh oe bere INK Gace ese 93 37 Fair breeze. 
Lian ERE ALSO Dey Tso |hysyeeee U2 ee oes segeice: 90 OYE Ree SOS recone 
tS ease eee aa are rte | ee ee ee 120) | ee here = 92% 45 Waariia: 
PESO omens eee ea SO ilen sere aoe 924 
4.2039 Is. | oo. 055-5 177534 ee Se 97 34 Slight wind. 
TOS, 2G. 383 APTOS E75] F AEE IZGAEE Gases 94 33 | Slight breeze. 
DAN ese =het 11.45 a. m. 107 AD | Saeck -Eese 894 40 2.7 | N. 
BON a tte tami. *4 122 132 144 893 
12 noon... 127 138 145 914 33 2.9 
[Sipe ince 3) 127 125 128 94 Nw. 
4 pymMe 120 115 123 94 | 39 2.7 
Losier 105 103 105 91 
anna es ee 11.10 a. m. TLS Peee creer 3 143 99 
12 noon... LPN ee ae 144 102 33 1.9|NE. 
2.45 p.m. GLa peepee GES eure 


4.22 p.m... nS) A Lee peepee 125s \essee sn 2c 


148 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Almost contemporaneous with the work of Herschel was that of 
M. C. 8. M. Pouillet, a record of which, on the determination of the 
solar constant, appears in Comptes Rendus, Vol 7, 1838, pages 24-65. 
His value of the solar constant was 1.763 calories per square-centi- 
meter-minute. 

Carl Gintner was at work experimenting with reflectors in Lai- 
bach in 1854, and in 1873 he exhibited one at the Vienna Exposition. 
Giintner wrote in the Scientific American Supplement of May 26, 
1906, pages 25, 409-412: 


This reflector possessed, however, the disadvantages common to all sheet-metal 
reflectors—that to maintain the surface in proper condition when exposed to all 
sorts of weather requires careful and costly attention. 

Being convinced, however, that the exploitation of solar heat will come more 
and more into vogue, even in spite of the disadvantageous periodicity of this 
source of warmth, I have taken the trouble to put aside the evil mentioned above 
and overcome it by an entirely new method of reflector construction. * * #* 
This plane reflector consists of a large number of long, narrow mirrors placed 
at suitable distances from one-another, and which, when upon level ground, lie 
parallel with each other horizontally, extending either from north and south or 
from east to west. 

Each one of these mirrors revolves about a horizontal axis, and by means of 
a simple parallelogram motion may be made to follow the sun in such a manner 
that all the sun’s rays falling upon the plane mirrors may be reflected on the 
surface of u tube or boiler, the long axis of which lies also in the plane of the 
mirror axis * * *, By a simple movement of a hand lever, all the mirrors 
nay be simultaneously turned through an are of 180°, which means that all the 
mirrors may thus be made to look toward the ground and be in this way pro- 
tected from the destructive action of sudden falls of hail. 


He claimed that the reflector could be made at a cost of 8s. 6d. per 
square yard of reflecting surface, and that it required “ but 200 square 
feet of surface to generate steam sufficient for 1 horsepower.” He 
proposed to construct the reflectors of thin corrugated steel plates, 
faced with lead and then coated with tin. 


Hence it is necessary to discover the value of e (the amount of useful heat 
dispensed per unit of surface per minute) which affords the unit of heat that 
can be made available for effective service from a square foot of catching sur- 
face per minute. 

Being deprived of the experience of any former experimenter in this direction, 
I myself made appropriate trials with reflectors * * *. The two opposite 
sides, each 3 feet long, of a wood right-angular frame, having a width of 1 foot 
and a length of 3 feet, were hollowed out to correspond with a previously de- 
signed parabolic template, and upon the parabolic curve thus established two 
sheets of white tin were nailed. Four supports, which were fastened to the 
sides of the frame, carried a 34-inch tube erected in such a manner that its axis 
coincided with the burning axis of the reflector * * *,. The catching surface 
presented a superficial area equal to 8 square feet * * *, The boiler was 
not lagged with glass or anything. 


a 


UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—ACKERMANN. 149 

He then gives a table of four tests of one hour each, varying from 
9a.m.to4 p.m., and goes on to say: 

From these experiments it has been deduced that the amount of heat given 
off per square foot per minute is about equal to 1.8 (major) calories (equal to 
1.4 minor calories per square-centimeter-minute). For our zone [probably 
Laibach, Austria], then, the mean value of e may be set down as 1.3. 


The work of August Mouchot in connection with the utilization of 
solar energy was certainly of great importance. It is recorded in his 
book entitled “ La Chaleur solaire et les Applications industrielles,” 
second edition, 1879; but, as with other workers in this field, he gives 
extremely meager information as to results of: experiments. 

Mouchot started his solar work in 1860 and took out his first patent, 
No. 48,622, on March 4, 1861. In the first edition of his above-named 
work (p. 231) he stated that theoretically, on an average, $6 square 
feet of reflecting surface are required for 1 horsepower. ‘Then, to 
allow for losses, he doubled the area, thus making it 172 square feet. 
It is to be noted that he referred to reflecting surface and not the area 
of radiation collected, which would almost certainly be a smaller 
quantity. 

On page 195 he described one of his boilers as having a capacity of 
34 pints. It consisted of two cylindrical concentric copper vessels 
with domed tops and the water space between them. The vertical 
height of the outer vessel was 16 inches. The boiler was covered by 
a bell glass and placed at the focus of a reflector. The water boiled 
in one hour from an initial temperature of 50° F. 

In August, 1866, Emperor Napoleon IIT of France saw Mouchot’s 
first solar engine at work in Paris, and in 1872 Mouchot (with the 
monetary assistance of the French Government) constructed another 
sun boiler. This was described by M. L. Simonin in the Revue Des 
Deux Mondes of May 1, 1876, as follows: 


The traveler who visits the library of Tours sees in the courtyard in front a 
strange-looking apparatus. Imagine an immense truncated cone, a mammoth 
lamp shade, with its concavity directed skyward. This apparatus is of copper, 
coated on the inside with very thin silver leaf. On the small base of the trun- 
cated cone rests a copper cylinder, blackened on the outside, its vertical axis 
being identical with that of the cone. This cylinder, surrounded as it were by a 
great collar, terminates above in a hemispherical cap, so that it looks like an 
enormous thimble, and is covered with a bell glass of the same shape. 

This curious apparatus is nothing else but a solar receiver—or, in other words, 
a boiler—in which water is made to boil by the heat rays of the sun. This 
steam generator is designed to raise water to the boiling point and beyond by 
means of the solar rays, which are thrown upon the eylinder by the silvered 
inner surface of the conical reflector. The boiler receives water up to two- 
thirds of its capacity through a feed pipe. A glass tube and a steam gauge 
communicating with the inside of the generator, and attached to the outside of 
the reflector, indicate both the level of the water and the pressure of the steam. 
Finally, there is a safety valve to let off the steam when the pressure is greater 


150 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


than desired. Thus, the engine offers all desirable safety and may be provided 
with all the accessories of a steam boiler. 

The reflector, which is the main portion of the generator, has a diameter of 
2.60 meters at its large and 1 meter at its small base, and is 80 centimeters in 
height, giving 4 square meters of reflecting surface or of insolation. The in- 
terior walls are lined with burnished silver, because that metal is the best 
reflector of the heat rays; still, brass with a light coating of silver would also 
serve the purpose. The inclination of the walls of the apparatus to its axis 
measures 45°. Even the ancients were aware that this is the best form for this 
kind of metallic mirrors with linear focus, inasmuch as the incident rays par- 
allel to the axis are reflected perpendicularly to the same and thus give a focus 
of maximum intensity. 

The boiler is of copper, which of all the common metals is the best conductor 
of heat; it is blackened on the outside, because black possesses the property of 
absorbing all the heat rays, just as white reflects them; and it is inclosed in a 
glass envelope, glass being the most diathermanous of all bodies; that is to say, 
the most permeable by the rays of luminous heat. Glass further possesses the 
property of resisting the exit of these same rays after they have been trans- 
formed into dark rays on the blackened surface of the boiler. 

The boiler proper of the Tours solar engine consists of two concentric bells 
of copper, the larger one, which alone is visible, having the same height as the 
mirror, i. e., 80 centimeters, and the smaller or inner one 50 centimeters. Their 
respective diameters are 28 and 22 centimeters. The thickness of the metal is 
only 8 millimeters. The feed water lies between the two envelopes, forming an 
annular envelope 3 centimeters in thickness. Thus the volume of liquid is 20 
liters, and the steam chamber has a capacity of 10 liters. The inner envelope is 
empty. Into it pass the steam pipe and the feed pipe of the boiler. To the 
steam pipe are attached the gauge and the safety valve. The bell glass covering 
the boiler is 85 centimeters high, 40 centimeters in diameter, and 5 millimeters 
in thickness. There is everywhere a space of 5 centimeters between its walls 
and those of the boiler, and this space is filled with a layer of very hot air. 


Mechanism was provided whereby the reflector was adjusted by 
hand to follow the movement of the sun. 


On May 8, 1875, a fine day, 20 liters of water, at 20° C., introduced into the 
boiler at 8.80 a.m., produced steam in 40 minutes at 2 atmospheres (30 pounds) 
of pressure to the square inch, i. e., a temperature of 121°, or 21° above boiling 
water. The steam was then raised rapidly to a pressure of 5 atmospheres (75 
pounds to the square inch), and if this limit was not exceeded it was because 
the sides of the boiler were only 3 millimeters thick, and the total effort sup- 
ported by these sides was then 40,000 kilograms. It would have been dangerous 
to have proceeded further, as the whole apparatus might have been blown to 
pieces. 

Toward the middle of the same day, with 15 liters of water in the boiler, the 
steam at 100°—that is to say, at a pressure of 1 atmosphere—rose in less than 
a quarter of an hour to a pressure of 5 atmospheres, equal to a temperature of 
158°. Finally, on July 22, toward 1 p. m., an exceptionally hot day, the appa- 
ratus vaporized 5 liters of water per hour, which is equal to a consumption of 
140 liters of steam per minute, and one-half horsepower. Tor these experiments 
the inventor used an engine which made 80 strokes per minute under a con- 
tinued pressure of 1 atmosphere. Later on it was changed for a rotative 
engine—that is to say, an engine with a revolving cylinder—which worked 
admirably, putting in motion a pump to raise water, until the pump, which 
was too weak, was broken. 


UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—ACKERMANN. V5] 


In 1878 Mouchot used a boiler made of many tubes placed side by 
side (pl. 1) and having a capacity of 100 liters (70 for water and 30 
for steam). 

Mouchot seems to have been the only inventor of a solar plant, with 
the exception of Shuman, who has had his apparatus tested by inde- 
pendent engineers. The following refers to Mouchot’s plant. In 
Comptes Rendus, Vol. 94, 1882, pages 9438-945, M. A. Crova reports 
that— 


The minister of public works appointed two commissions, one at Constantine 
and the other at Montpellier, to make experiments with two identical mirrors 
of 5.22 square meters in section normal to the sun’s rays and to evaluate their 
practical utility. 

The commission of Montpellier was composed of MM. Duponchel, engineer in 
chief of Ponts et Chaussées, as president; Col. Fulcrand, R. E.; Guibal, and 
myself. 

The experiments (at Montpellier) lasted from January 1 to December 31, 1881, 
and were made from hour to hour every day during which the sun was bright 
and the observations possible. 

The solar rays concentrated at the focal line of the mirror were received on 
a black boiler placed at the axis and which was inclosed by a glass shade. 

The number of major calories utilized, divided by those incident, received in 
one hour upon 1 square meter of surface normal to the rays, gives the efficiency 
of the apparatus. 

Here are the principal results obtained during 176 days which gave 930 ob- 
servations, during which 2,725 liters of water were distilled. 


Moyenne générale des valeurs mesurées pendant Vannée 1881 et rapportées a 
177, et & 1, 


Ay a Maximum 

Calories. ealoniess Date. 
Whaleurirecue'directement.2<c- 015 Sus As Sea et Sse 616.1 945 25 Avril. 
Chaleur utilisée par appareils =... s-cse~ess rey ~taeehisgee este «4252 <2 258.8 547.5 15 Juin. 
Moyenno des rendements : 5.0. F328 be a ce a Oe et saat -491 .854 | 14 Juin.” 


The author has purposely not translated the last five lines for fear 
of making a mistake. He is unable to interpret the results; but as 
they represent an important and independent investigation lasting 
a year, they are given in the hope that some of his audience may be 
able to throw some light on the matter. 

Next came that versatile engineer and successful inventor, John 
Ericsson, a Swede by birth and an American by adoption. He made 
an immense number of experiments, extending over 20 years, with 
costly apparatus, to determine the solar constant, and later on made 
apparatus for the practical utilization of solar radiation. All these 
experiments were made at his own expense, and he tells us they cost 
him £20,000; and having done all this work, the conclusion he arrived 
at was: 


The fact is, however, that although the heat is obtained for nothing, so ex- 
tensive, costly, and complex is the concentration apparatus that solar steam is 


152 © ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


many times more costly than steam produced by burning coal. (Letter dated 
Sept. 21, 1878, to R. B. Forbes. ) 

We have already referred to his remarkably accurate determination 
of the solar constant; but he was not so happy in deducing the tem- 
perature of the sun, which he made to be 7238,000° C., the present 
accepted result being only 6,000° C. 

He tried hot-air engines, as well as steam engines, for niliving solar 
energy, and claimed that the steam engine which he constructed in 
New York for this purpose in 1870 was the first one driven by the 
direct agency of solar radiation. The diameter of its cylinder was 
44 inches. He afterwards modified his solar hot-air engine so that 
it might be used as a small pumping engine, using gas as its heat 
supply. 

The profits upon this chip from his workshop are already estimated at several 
times the amount of the £20,000 expended by Ericsson upon the solar investiga- 
tions leading up to this invention. (Vol. II, p. 275 of his “ Life,” by W. C. 
Church.) Mouchot claimed, apparently correctly, that his engine was the first, 
and Ericsson admits that, ‘‘ Some time previous to 1870, Mouchot made a small 


model engine, a mere toy, actuated by steam generated on the plan of accumula- 
lation by glass bells * *. *, 


i 


Ericsson gives full details of all his apparatus for determining the 
solar constant in the record of his life’s work, entitled, ‘“ Contribu- 
tions to the Centennial Exhibition,’ New York, 1876; but unfortu- 
nately he did not describe in detail therein the solar boilers, explain- 
ing that “experienced professional men will appreciate the motive, 
viz, that of preventing enterprising persons from procuring patents 
for modifications.” He does, however, give us the following amount 
of information: 


On grounds already fully explained, minute plans of my new system of ren- 
dering sun power available for mechanical purposes will not be presented in 
this work. The occasion, however, demands that I should present an outline 
of the concentration apparatus before referred to. It consists of a series of 
polished parabolic troughs, in combination with a system of metallic tubes 
charged with water under pressure, exposed to the influence of converging solar 
rays, the augmented molecular action produced by the concentration being 
transferred to a central receiver, from which the accumulated energy is com- 
municated to a single motor. 

Thus the mechanical power developed by concentrated solar heat is imparted 
to the solar steam engine without the intervention cof a multitude of boilers, 
glass bells, gauges, feeders, ete. Moreover, the concentration apparatus, unlike 
the instrument of Mouchot, requires no parallactic motion, nor does its manage- 
ment call for any knowledge of the sun’s declination from day to day. Its 
position is regulated by simply turning a handle until a certain index coincides 
with a certain bright line produced by the reflection of the sun’s rays. 


His boilers seem to have been exceedingly efficient, for he claims that 
“the mechanism which I have adopted for concentrating the sun’s 
radiant heat abstracts, on an average, during nine hours a day, for 
all latitudes between the Equator and 45°, fully 3.5 units of heat per 


° 


UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—-ACKERMANN. 143 


minute for each square foot of area presented perpendicularly to the 
sun’s rays.” Three and five-tenths B. t. u. per square-foot-minute 
=0.95 calories per square-centimeter-minute. The mean transmis- 
sion of solar radiation by the atmosphere over a zenith distance from 
45° Ki. to 45° W. is 67.5 per cent when the sky is clear. Thus 
0.675 ><1.93=1.31 calories per square-centimeter-minute are available 
at the earth’s surface. Hence the efficiency of Ericsson’s boiler was 
295><100=72.5 per cent, which is remarkably high. 

In 1872 Ericsson built his hot-air solar engine, which had a reflector 
the shape of which was approximately a portion of a sphere and 
which concentrated the solar radiation onto one end of the cylinder. 
The power of both these engines was evidently very small. On July 
9, 1875, Ericsson wrote that he had up to that time constructed and 
started seven sun motors. j 

Ericsson wrote in Nature of January 3, 1884, an illustrated article 
describing another of his sun motors which he erected in New York 
in 1883, in spite of his opinion as to the cost of solar steam (previ- 
ously quoted) expressed in 1878 (pl. 1). His description was as fol- 
lows: 


The leading feature of the sun motor is that of concentrating the radiant 
heat by means of a rectangular trough having a curved bottom lined on the 
inside with polished plates so arranged that they reflect the sun’s rays toward 
a cylindrical heater placed longitudinally above the trough. This heater, it is 
‘searcely necessary to state, contains the acting medium, steam or air, employed 
to transfer the solar energy to the motor, the transfer being effected by means 
of cylinders provided with pistons and valves resembling those of motive engines 
of the ordinary type. Practical engineers, as well as scientists, have demon- 
strated that solar energy can not be rendered available for producing motive 
power, in consequence of the feebleness of solar radiation. The great cost of 
large reflectors and the difficulty of producing accurate curvature on a large 
seale, besides the great amount of labor called for in preventing the polished 
surface from becoming tarnished, are objections which have been supposed to 
render direct solar energy practically useless for producing mechanical power. 

The device under consideration overcomes the stated objections by very 
simple means, as will be seen by the following description: The bottom of the 
rectangular trough consists of straight wooden staves, supported by iron ribs of 
parabolic curvature secured to the sides of the trough. On these staves the 
reflecting plates, consisting of flat window glass silvered on the under side, are 
fastened. Jt will be readily understood that the methed thus adopted for 
concentrating the radiant heat does not call for a structure of great accuracy, 
provided the wooden staves are secured to the iron ribs in such a position that 
the silvered plates attached to the same reflect the solar rays toward the heater. 

Referring to the illustration, it will be seen that the trough, 11 feet long and 
16 feet broad, including a parallel opening in the bottom, 12 inches wide, is 
sustained by a light truss attached to each end, the heater being supported by 
vertical plates secured to the truss. The heater is 6} inches in diameter, 11 
feet long, exposing 1309.8=1.274 superficial inches to the action of the reflected 
solar rays. The reflecting plates, each 3 inches wide and 26 inches long, inter- 
cept a sunbeam of 130X180=238,400 square inches section. The trough is sup- 
ported by a central pivot, round which it revolves. The change of inclination 


154 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


is effected by means of a horizontal axle, concealed by the trough, the entire 
mass being so accurately balanced that a pull of 5 pounds applied at the extrem- 
ity enables a person to change the inclination or cause the whole to revolve. 
A single revolution of the motive engine develops more power than needed to 
turn the trough, and regulates its inclination so as to face the sun during a day’s 
operation. 

The motor shown by the illustration is a steam engine, the working cylinder 
being 6 inches in diameter, with 8-inch stroke. The piston rod, passing 
through the bottom of the cylinder, operates a force pump of 5 inches diameter. 
By means of an ordinary crosshead secured to the piston rod below the steam 
eylinder, and by ordinary connecting rods motion is imparted to a crank shaft 
and fly wheel, applied at the top of the engine frame, the object of this arrange- 
ment being that of showing the capability of the engine to work either pumps or 
mills. It should be noticed that the flexible steam pipe employed to convey the 
steam to the engine, as well as to the steam chamber attached to the upper 
end of the heater, have been excluded in the illustration. The average speed of 
the engine during the trials last summer was 120 turns per minute, the absolute 
pressure on the working piston being 35 pounds per square inch. The steam 
was worked expansively in the ratio of 1 to 3, with a nearly perfect vacuum 
kept up in the condenser inclosed in the pedestal which supports the engine 
frame. - 

In view of the foregoing, experts need not be told that the sun motor can be 
carried out on a sufficient scale to benefit very materially the sun-burnt regions — 
of our planet. 


From the particulars given it is easily calculated that the “ con- 
centration ” of this absorber was 9. 

The Rev. C. H. Pope has produced a useful little book entitled ° 
“Solar Heat,” the second edition of which was published in 1906. 
In it he tells us he started his experiments (which do not appear to 
have included the conversion of solar radiation into mechanical 
energy) in 1875. He used a modification of Mouchot’s truncated 
cone reflector formed of many plane mirrors, the plan adopted about 
the same time by Adams. Pope has fallen into the same error re the 
connection between temperature and concentration of radiation as 
did Adams, for he says (p. 17): 

That the degree and amount of heat at the focus will be proportionate to the 
area of the opening of the lens or mirror, and that thus the only limit to the 


temperature which may be reached is the size to which such lenses and mirrors 
may be constructed and revolved. 


And (p. 93): 


These rays may, therefore, be gathered together and made to unite, as if they 
became one denser, stronger, hotter ray, so that the temperature of the con- 
densed rays will be raised in proportion to the number of rays blended, and 
we can thus cause the heat to increase to any degree our apparatus can be 
enlarged. 


W. Adams, deputy registrar, High Court, Bombay, seems to be the 
sole Englishman who has worked on the practical side of the prob- 
lem of the utilization of solar energy. His work was done in India, 
and is recorded: in his interesting book, Solar Heat (Bombay, 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Ackermann. PLATE 1. 


TE TAR REMAITIOX ok: NAOT SH BES BPAISS 


MoucHoT’s MULTIPLE TUBE SUN-HEAT ABSORBER OF 1878. 


ASHRAM AURA 


ERICSSON’S SUN-POWER PLANT OF 1883. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Ackermann. PLATE 2. 


= 


PIFRE’S SUN-POWER PLANT OF 1878 DRIVING A PRINTING PRESS. 


‘UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—ACKERMANN. 155 


1878). He started on the work in 1876, and his experiments led him 
to conclude, as did Buffon, that silvered-glass mirrors were superior 
to polished-metal ones. This is no doubt true for ordinary use, 
though for laboratory experiments the polished-metal ones give better 
results, as there is then no absorption by the glass (pl. 2). 

In two particulars Adams was much at fault—(1) in believing 
that the solar rays which reach the earth are not practically parallel, 
and this in spite of the opposite opinions of the many physicists 
whom he quotes, and (2) in believing that the temperature attained 
at the focus of a lens or mirror is directly proportional to the con- 
centration of the rays. As a consequence, he stated that if a lens 85 
feet 4 inches in diameter concentrated the radiation onto a circle one- 
half inch in diameter the temperature would be 73,400,320° F. This is 
equal to 40,780,000° C., while the temperature of the sun itself is only 
6,000° C., and no amount of such concentration could produce a 
temperature in excess of this. This error on the part of Adams and 
Pope seems to be due to a confusion of “temperature” with “ quan- 
tity of heat.” 

His experiments were all made with plane or flat glass mirrors, 
the use of which he strongly advocated in preference to curved metal 
ones, which Mouchot used. Sometimes he used groups of 18 mirrors, 
each 17 by 104 inches, and sometimes of 32, each 9 by 6 inches. The 
latter he arranged in a concave wooden frame in 4 tiers of 8 in each 
tier. Such a group of 32 formed 1 unit, of which he had 16, all 
focused onto one boiler. When placed together the 16 units formed 
a portion of the surface of a hollow sphere 40 feet in diameter. One 
of his boilers was of copper one-sixteenth inch thick, 16 inches diam- 
eter, 2 feet 7 inches high, and held 9 gallons of water, which boiled 
in 30 minutes and evaporated 3? gallons in an hour. 

His next boiler was also of copper one-fourth inch thick, and of 
the same design and external dimensions as Mouchot’s, but with a 
water space between the inner and outer shells of 3 inches instead 
of 3 centimeters, and containing 12 gallons of water as compared 
with Mouchot’s 44 gallons. The 12 gallons of water were boiled and 
the pressure raised to 10 pounds to the square inch in the half hour 
from 7.30 a. m. to 8 a. m., and by 8.30 a. m. the pressure was 70 pounds 
to the square inch, when the safety valve opened, whereupon he goes 
on to say: 

A gentleman present kept the valve down by placing his foot on it, till the 
steam, escaping from several leaks in the joints of the fittings made the position 
untenable. The weight on the safety valve was then supplemented by a brick 
suspended from the lever by a piece of string, when suddenly the packing and 
red lead at the top of the dome under the socket of the steam pipe (which had 


been fixed by my butler, who professed to have formerly been a fitter) gave 
way, and, with a terrific noise, the whole volume of steam rushed out of the 


156 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


opening. . On turning off the solar rays and examining the boiler it was found 
to be dry. All the water had either been evaporated or blown out. 

When this boiler had been properly fitted up by professional fitters, a steam 
pump was hired, said to be of 23 horsepower, and it was connected with the 
steam pipe. At 7.30 a. m. fire was opened on the boiler from the whole battery of 
16 mirrors at a range of 20 feet, the boiler containing 12 gallons. At 7.45, i.e. a 
quarter of an hour there was a pressure of about 2 pounds and at 8.50 a, m. 55 
pounds. The steam was then turned into the cylinder of the pump, and the 
pump was kept working at a uniform pressure of about 30 pounds to the square 
inch. 

This pump, the first steam engine ever worked in India by solar heat, was kept 
going daily for a fortnight in the compound of my bungalow at Middle Colaba, 
in Bombay, and the publie was invited, by a notification in the daily papers, to 
witness the experiments. 


Adams also made a solar cooker, the reflector of which was formed 
of eight sheets of plane glass arranged so as to form a hollow truncated 
octagonal pyramid 2 feet 4 inches in diameter at the larger end. The 
food was placed in a cylindrical copper vessel, at the axis, covered 
with an octagonal glass shade. With this he and others cooked many 
meals, both stews and roasts, and he records that both he and Mouchot 
found (p. 98) that animal fat— 


When exposed to the direct or reflected rays of the sun was converted into ~ 


butyric acid, a substance having such an offensive odor and taste as to render 
the roast unpalatable. Mouchot then discovered that a sheet of red, pink, or 
yellow transparent glass interposed between the roast and the reflector had 
the effect of preventing this fermentation, as those colors have the curious 
property of absorbing, neutralizing, or eliminating the rays by which it is 
caused. 


Adams also states (p. 36) 

When the sacred fire that burned in the Temple of Vestal became extinct, 
the ancient Romans used to rekindle it by placing a piece of dry wood in the 
linear focus of the conical reflector * * * To bring fire from heaven, by 
supernatural aid and a metal reflector was, no doubt, one of the most ancient 
miracles of priestecraft.” 

He suggested many uses for solar heat, among others (p. 96), “ for 
the cremation of deceased Hindus and others.” 

Taking into account the facts that he did not expend much money 
on his experiments, and that he did the whole of his solar work in 
18 months, it will be admitted his was a most creditable piece of work, 
especially as he was neither an engineer nor a physicist. To make this 
amply clear, he says: 

I have neither the capital, the time, nor the practical knowledge required to 
conduct any business in which steam machinery is used. I know now that the 
“ oovernors’”’ of a steam engine are the two iron globes which revolve about it, 


and not, as I had supposed, the two men who lubricate the machine and feed the 
boiler with coals. This is nearly the extent of my knowledge of steam machinery. 


1 Vesta, the Goddess of the Hearth. 


ee 


UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—ACKERMANN. Tad 


In concluding this brief account of Adams’s work you will be 
pleased to learn that he was awarded the gold medal of the Sassoon 
Institute of Bombay for his essay on The Utilization of Solar Heat, 
which he submitted in March, 1878. 

In Comptes Rendus, Volume 91, 1880, pages 388-389, M. Abel Pifre 
claims an efliciency of 80 per-cent for his apparatus when he says he 
obtained a rate of absorption of 1.21 calories per square-centimeter- 
minute. If such a rate were obtained we now know it would mean an 
efficiency of 89.7 per cent, which is improbable. Pifre used a para- 
bolic reflector (instead of a truncated cone), and reduced the surface 
of the boiler, thus increasing the concentration. The capacity of his 
boiler was 11 gallons, and he collected 100 square feet of solar radia- 
tion so the diameter of his reflector was about 11 feet 4 inches. He 
used a rotary pump, and raised 99 liters of water 3 meters in 14 
minutes, which is equivalent to 0.065 horsepower. He ran a printing 
press with his sun-power plant, and claimed that if he had collected 
216 square feet of radiation he could have produced 1 horsepower, 
which is quite likely (pl. 2). 

Next in order we have Langley’s work, which consisted of many ex- 
periments to determine the value of the solar constant, the value of 
which he gave as 3 calories per ae -centimeter-minute. 

Langley experimented with de Saussure’s “ hot box,” and was the 
leader of the expedition to Mount Whitney, where some of his best 
work wasdone. He gave a preliminary account of this trip in Nature 
of August 3, 1882, pages 314-317, and a full record of it under the 
title “ Researches on solar heat” in the United States of America 
War Department, Papers of the Signal Service, 15, 1884. He also 
referred to it in the New Astronomy (1900). 

In Nature (p. 315), he said: 


As we still slowly ascended and the surface temperature of the soil fell to the 
freezing point, the solar radiation became intenser, and many of the party pre- 
sented an appearance as of severe burns from an actual fire, while near the sum- 
mit the temperature in a copper vessel, over which were laid two sheets of plain 
window glass, rose above the boiling point, and it was certain that we could boil 
water by the direct solar rays in such a vessel among snow fields. 


In Volume 73 of the Proceedings, Inst. C. E., 1883, page 284, 
is described a plant designed by J. Harding, M. Inst. C. E., for dis- 
tilling water by solar radiation. 

This plant was erected at Salinas, Chile, 4,300 feet above sea level, 
and had 51,200 square feet of glass arranged in sections 4 feet wide, 
and in the form of a very flat A, forming the roof of a shallow water 
trough. The sun evaporated the water, and the resulting vapor con- 
densed on the glass, for the temperature in the box was far higher 
than that of the atmosphere, and hence of the glass. The pure water 
trickled down the sloping glass and dripped from its lower edge into 


158 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


a small channel on the top of each side of the box. These channels 
delivered into larger ones, and thus the distilled water was collected. 
The plant yielded 5,000 gallons of pure water per day in summer, 1. e., 
1 pound of water per square foot of glass. Allowing for interest on 
capital, cost of repairs, etc., the cost of the pure water is said to have 
been less than one-half penny per gallon. ‘The chief item of expense 
was the breakage of glass by whirlwinds. Distillation started at 10 
a. m. and continued to 10 p. m. The maximum temperature of the 
water in the troughs was 150° F. The total cost of the plant, includ- 
ing pumps, windmills, and tanks, was $50,000, or Is. 6d. per square 
foot of glass. 

It is not clear when the solar energy problem first engaged the atten- 
tion of C. L. A. Tellier, a French refrigerating engineer, but in 1889 
he published his book, “Elévation des Eaux par la Chaleur Atmos- 
phérique,” in which he gave many drawings and details, and a very 
full description of his plant. He may have been the first to use the 
lamellar boiler, but the United States patent No. 230323, of July 20, 
1880, of MM. Molera and Cebrian, shows that they proposed this form 
of boiler. The dimensions of each section of Tellier’s boiler were 
3.5 by 1.12 meters. They were made of thin plates of iron, 
so riveted together as to give them a quilted formation. They 
were filled with ammonium hydrate, which, he says, when heated 
by the sun produced gaseous ammonia at a pressure of “several 
atmospheres.” ‘The ammonia gas was used in a small vertical engine, 
and was then liquefied in a condenser and used again. The boilers were 
fixed in a sloping position so as to “ face the sun,” and two somewhat 
fanciful illustrations show them used as roofs of verandas. The 
boilers were insulated on their lower or shade sides to prevent loss of 
heat, and were placed in shallow boxes with only one layer of glass to 
form the cover. He experimented with different colored glass, and 
found, as might be expected, that colorless glass gave the best results. 
He also gave complete details of his invention as applied to the manu- 
facture of ice. With so much detail it is disappointing that the au- 
thor could not find the results of a single experiment with the plant. 
In fact, he is not sure whether Tellier ever constructed one. 

In his work La Conquéte Pacifique de VAfrique Occidentale 
(1890), Tellier discussed social and economical questions, and showed 
_ how improvements might be made by rendering the deserts of Africa 
productive by means of his sun-power plants. 

A. G. Eneas, in the United States, used the popular truncated, 
cone-shaped reflector, collecting about 700 square feet of solar radia- 
tion. The weight of the reflector was 8,300 pounds. 

The boiler was formed of two concentric steel tubes, the two together 
being incased in two glass tubes with an air space between them and 
another air space between the inner glass one and the outer steel tube. 


UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—ACKERMANN. 159 


The water circulated up between the inner and outer steel tubes and 
down the inner tube. The boiler was placed at the axis of the cone. 
Its length was 13 feet 6 inches, its water capacity 834 pounds (13.4 
cubic feet), and steam space 8 cubic feet. Hence the diameter of 
the outer tube appears to have been 1 foot 2 inches and the concen- 
tration of radiation 13.4; 1. e., 13.4 square feet of sunshine were con- 
centrated on each square foot of the external surface of the boiler. 

C. G. Abbot (The Sun, p. 369) states that Eneas gave him the 
following particulars: 

February 14, 1901.—Pasadena, Cal., 11.30 a. m—0.80 p. m.; 642 square feet 
sunshine. Temperature of air, 61° F. Steam pressure, 145-151 pounds per 
square inch. Steam condensed, 123 pounds. 

October 8, 1903.—Mesa, Ariz., “about midday”; 700 square feet sunshine. 
Temperature of air 74° F. Average steam pressure, 141 pounds per square inch. 
Steam condensed, 183 pounds. 

October 9, 1904.—Willeox, Ariz., 11 a. m.—12 a. m.; 700 square feet sunshine. 
Steam pressure, 148-156 pounds per square inch. Steam condensed, 144.5 
pounds. 


The temperature of the feed water is not given, but, assuming it 
to be the same as the temperature of the air, we can deduce the rate 
of absorption per square foot of radiation and the thermal efficiency 
of the absorber. This being done, we obtain the following table: 


Rate of 
Mean absorption 
Weight of | pressure of ner pote gee 
. steam steam in oot oO efficienc 
Place and date. Period. produced | pounds per] radiation of the am 
in pounds. | square inch} collected, | absorber. 
of absorber. = Lipgtie 
per hour. 
Per cent.1 
Pasadena, Feb. 14, 1901-...... 11.30 a. m. to 0.30 p. m.. 123 163 223 74.6 
Mesa, Oct. 3, 1903.....-. eee) SA bowt midday’: - ae... 133 156 219 73.3 
Willeoxs'Oct. 95190822. =... 5: bem ito tamales =- 144.5 167 238 79.6 


1 For a maximum transmission of radiation through ths atmosphere of 70 per cent. 


Eneas refers to his “nine different types of large reflectors,” and 
found that he obtained better results when he concentrated the re- 
flected rays “on two parts of the boiler instead of its entire length, 
-as in the Pasadena machine.” The unexposed portions of the boiler 
then appear to have been lagged. 

Eneas said, “I find 3.71 B. t. u. per square foot per minute as the 
greatest amount of heat obtainable during the trial runs.” This 
gives a maximum efficiency of 74.5 per cent, which agrees with the 
result given for his Pasadena plant in the foregoing table. 

Eneas also stated that “the interposition of a single thin glass 
plate in a beam of sunlight diminishes the intensity about 15 per cent. 
This decrease is owing principally to reflection.” On page 466 of 


160 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Preston’s Treatise on Heat, it is stated that “mirror glass 2.6 milli- 
meters thick transmitted 39 per cent of the radiation that fell on it 
from a Locatelli lamp, while rock salt transmitted 92 per cent.” The 
diathermancy of each substance varies with the nature of the source 
of heat, so the result just given is not comparable with that given by 
Eneas. 

Abbot found the following percentages of heat were transmitted 
through sheets of glass, each from 1.5 to 2 millimeters thick. In 
one set of experiments the glass was normal to the rays and the other 
at 45°. 


Percentage transmis- 
sion. 


Number of 
sheets 
of glass. | Raysnor- | Rays at 
mal to 45° to 
glass. glass. 
1 86.5 85 
2 74.5 71.8 
3 63.5. 60 
4 53.3 49 


The sun-power plant known as the Pasadena? one was described 
and illustrated in the August, 1901, issue of Cassier’s Magazine by 
Prof. R. H. Thurston, LL. D., D. E., and on page 103 of the Railway 
and Engineering Review of February 23, 1901. It is stated to have 
been designed by, and erected at the expense of, “a party of Boston 
inventors whose names have not been made public.” It consisted of 
a truncated cone reflector, 33 feet 6 inches in diameter at the larger 
end and 15 feet diameter at the smaller, with a boiler 13 feet 6 inches 
long, having a capacity of 100 gallons (U.S. A.) plus 8 cubic feet 
of steam space (pl. 3). 

The article in the Railway and Engineering Review states: 
“According to newspaper accounts, the all-day average work per- 
formed by the engine is 1,400 gallons (U. 8. A.) of water lifted 
12 feet per minute, which is at the rate of 4 horsepower.” It is more 
nearly 44 horsepower; thus, this plant required 150 square feet of 
radiation per horsepower, and the concentration appears to have- 
been 13.4. 

The Pasadena plant is said to have cost £1,000, and Willsie, writing 
of it in 1909, says it was “the largest and strongest of the mirror 
type of solar motor ever built.” 

H. E. Willsie and John Boyle, jr., started their work in America 
in 1902. The method they adopted was to let the solar radiation pass 
through glass and heat water, which in turn was used to vaporize 


1There appear to have been several plants erected at Pasaderfa by different experi- 
menters. Probably Eneas designed the plant above described. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Ackermann. PLATE 3. 


THE PASADENA SUN-HEAT ABSORBER OF 1901. 


"LLOL ‘ANOOVL ‘YaauOSSY NVWNHS AHL 4O SSM SHL WOYS M3lA IVYSN35 


‘py ALVId ‘UUBWeYIY—'G1 6, ‘HOdey ueluosy}iWS 


UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—ACKERMANN. 161 


some volatile fluid such as ammonium hydrate, ether, or sulphur 
dioxide, the vapor being used to drive an engine. 

Willsie thinks he was the first to propose this two-fluid method for 
the utilization of solar energy, and, so far as the author knows, his 
claim is correct. Their first sun-heat absorber was built at Olney, 
Tll., and consisted of : 


A shallow wooden tank tightly covered with a double layer of window glass. 
The sides and bottom were insulated by inclosed air spaces filled with hay. 
The tank was lined with tar paper, well pitched, to hold water to the depth of 
3 inches. Although the weather was cold and raw, even for October, with occa- 
sional clouds, the thermometer in the water showed temperatures higher than 
were needed to operate a sulphur dioxide engine. 

The next solar heater was built at Hardyville, Ariz. Sand was used for 
insulation. Three tests for the amount of heat gave these average results in 
December : 


peal eee 
absorbed per 
Test No. | “square foot 


per hour. 
1 120 
2 122 
3 148 


An estimate showed that 50 per cent of the heat reaching the glass was 
absorbed into the water. 

In 1903 some further heater tests were made, patent applications filed, and to 
earry on experiments on a more extensive scale the Willsie Sun Power Co. 
was incorporated. 

In the spring of 1904 a complete sun-power plant was built at St. Louis. 
In this installation a 6 horsepower engine was operated by ammonia. The 
heater consisted of a shallow wooden basin coated with asphalt and divided 
by strips into troughs. It was covered by two layers of window glass and 
insulated at the sides and bottom by double air spaces. Each trough of the 
heater formed a compartment. The troughs were inclined so that a thin layer 
of water flowed from one trough to the next. In this heater was collected and 
absorbed into the water from the sun’s rays 211,500 heat units per hour at 
noon, or 3877 heat units per hour per square foot of glass exposed to the sun. 
As, according to accepted solar observations, about 440* heat units per hour 
reached a square foot of glass, this heater was showing the surprising efficiency 
of 85 per cent, and collecting nearly twice as much solar heat per square foot 
per hour as did the apparatus of Ericsson. Of the lost heat I estimated that 40 
heat units were reflected and absorbed by the glass and that 23 heat units were 
radiated. On cloudy days the water could be heated by burning fuel. A de- 
scription of this plant appeared in a St. Louis paper and in a New York paper, 
but, so far as I know, it has not been mentioned in any technical publication. 

It was then decided to build a sun-power plant on the desert, and some land 
about a mile from The Needles, Cal., was purchased for a site. 


tNo; only 299. Note: 0.70X1.93=1.352 calories per square-centimeter-minute=299 
B. t. u. per square-foot-hour. 


18618°—sm 1915——11 


162 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


This Needles plant used sulphur dioxide, and its results decided 
them to build a larger plant, which Willsie speaks of as their third 
sun-power plant, and describes as follows: 

A 20-horsepower slide-valve engine was connected to an open-air water-drip 
condenser and to a fire-tube boiler 22 inches by 19 feet having fifty-two 1-inch 
tubes. The solar-heated liquid flowed through the tubes giving up its heat to 
the sulphur dioxide within the boiler. Boiler pressures of over 200 pounds were 
easily obtained. The engine operated a centrifugal pump, lifting water from a 
well 43 feet deep (sic), and also a compressor, in addition to two circulating 
pumps. 


Their fourth plant was a rebuilding of the third, and they tried 
the expedient of covering the heat-absorbing water with a layer of 
oul, but the results were not so good as when a heat-absorbing liquid 
(water, or oil, or a solution of chloride of calcium) was rapidly 
circulated in a thin layer. The sun-heat absorber for this plant was 
in two sections, one covered with one layer of glass and one with 
two layers, and both on a slope, the liquid running from the first to 
the second, and its temperature in the two sections being 150° F. and 
180° F., respectively. The liquid at 180° F. was distributed over a 
“heat exchanger” consisting of horizontal pipes about 3 inches in 
diameter, arranged in a vertical plane, something like an air con- 
denser. The pipes contained sulphur dioxide, and the heat-absorbing 
liquid lost about 100° F. in its descent. The cooled liquid was 
returned to the two sections of the absorber to be reheated. The heat 
exchanger was inclosed in a glass-covered shed. Willsie says: 

The engine used in this experiment was a vertical automatic cut-off, which 
at times, with a boiler pressure of 215 pounds, probably developed 15 horse- 
power. The two-heater sections exposed an area of about 1,000 square feet to 
the sun, but as the heat was taken from storage and not directly from the 
heater, it is not fair to assume the above proportion of heater surface to horse- 
power developed. 

The condenser consisted of 6 stacks of horizontal pipes, 12 pipes to the 
stack. The cooling water, pumped from a well 48 feet deep, had a temperature 
of 75° F. Only enough water was allowed to drip over the pipes to keep them 
wet, and so great was the evaporation in the dry desert breeze that the cooling 
water left the lower pipes at 64°. By using the cooling water over and over, 
the condenser gave very satisfactory results. A shade of arrow weed, a straight 
willowlike shrub abundant along the Colorado River, kept the sunshine from 
the condenser pipes and permitted a good air circulation. 


Willsie estimated the cost of his sun-power plant, complete with 
engine, at £33 12s. per horsepower. 

With regard to Willsie’s results, it is to be noted that 377 B. t. u. per 
377X100 
600.70 X7.12 
know that a maximum of only about 299 B.t.u. per square foot per 
hour penetrate the atmosphere. The author agrees with the 50 per 

cent efficiency given a little earlier by Willsie. 


hour means an efficiency of =126 per cent, for we now 


UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—ACKERMANN. 163 


Frank Shuman, of America, started on the problem in 1906, and 
in 1907 he had a plant running which developed about 34 horsepower ; 
1,200 square feet of sunshine fell onto a fixed, horizontal water box 
with a glass top. In the water there were rows of parallel horizontal 
black pipes containing ether, and exposing 900 square feet of surface 
to the solar radiation. The water also became heated and conveyed 
heat to the under sides of the pipes. The ether boiled, and its 
“steam” drove a small vertical, simple, single-cylinder engine. The 
exhaust ether vapor passed into an air surface condenser, and the 
liquid ether from this was pumped back into the tubes of the “ boiler ” 
already described. 

This plant, Shuman says, ran well even when snow was lying on 
the ground. This at first seems very remarkable, but though in the 
winter the number of solar rays falling on a given horizontal area is 
smaller than in summer, the permeability of the atmosphere is about 
20 per cent greater in winter than in summer, which counteracts the 
other effect; but of course the loss of heat by conduction from the 
boiler is greater in winter than in summer. 

In 1910 Shuman constructed an experimental unit of an absorber 
measuring 6 by 9 feet. This unit combined the lamellar boiler of 
Tellier and the “ hot box” of de Saussure, for it consisted of a shallow 
black box with double glass top, with 1 inch of air space between 
the two layers of glass, another air space of an inch between the lower 
glass and the boiler, which was 6 feet long (up the slant), 2 feet 6 
inches wide, and 4} inch thick over all. The box was so sloped that 
at noon the rays of the sun were perpendicular to the glass. The box 
was not moved to follow the sun, but it was adjusted about every three 
weeks, so that the condition just named was comphed with. The 
remarkable thing about the absorber was that there was no concentra- 
tion of any kind of the sunshine by mirrors, lenses, or other means, 
and yet the author on one occasion recorded a temperature of 250° F. 
in the box. The best run of an hour’s duration produced steam at 
atmospheric pressure at the rate of 7} pounds per 100 square feet of 
sunshine falling on the box. The author’s tests of a Shuman 100 
horsepower low-pressure engine at Erith showed the steam consump- 
tion to be 22 pounds at atmospheric pressure per brake-horsepower- 
hour. Hence, with an absorber of the type just described, it would 
be necessary to collect solar radiation to the extent of 300 square feet 
per brake horsepower, which is a much larger area than any named 
by other workers. The maximum thermal efficiency of this absorber 
was 24.1 per cent. 

In 1911, with the aid of some English capitalists, Shuman con- 
structed his third absorber at Tacony (a suburb of Philadelphia), 
which was almost identical with the one just described, except that it 
had two plane mirrors, one at the upper edge of the “hot box” and 


164 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


one at the lower, so arranged that 6 square feet of sunshine were con- 
centrated onto 3 square feet of “ hot box”; i.e., the concentration was 
2to 1. Its position was adjusted about every three weeks. This time 
the total quantity of solar radiation collected was many times as large 
as the largest collected by any previous worker, for the total area 
was 10,296 square feet. In the best run of one hour this plant pro- 
duced 816 pounds of steam at atmospheric pressure. This is at the 
rate of 9 pounds per 100 square feet of sunshine, and therefore equiva- 
lent to an allowance of 245 square feet of sunshine per brake horse- 
power. The maximum thermal efficiency of this absorber was 29.5 
per cent (pl. 4). 

Toward the end of 1911 the Sun Power Co. (Eastern Hemisphere), 
(Ltd.), requested their consulting engineers (Messrs A. 8S. E. Acker- 
mann and C. T. Walrond) to select and invite some distinguished 
physicist to join them in a consultative capacity. Hence Prof. C. V. 
Boys, F. R. 8., became associated with the work, and he suggested 
a vital change in the design of the absorber, viz, that the boilers should 
be placed on edge in a channel-shaped reflector of parabolic cross 
section, so that solar radiation was received on both their surfaces, 
instead of one being worse than idle, as it was when the boilers were 
placed side on to the sun. The design immediately received the 
hearty approval of the consulting engineers and Shuman, and at the 
time we all thought the arrangement was novel, but the author has 
since found and recorded herein that Ericsson used a very similar 
reflector and boiler. 

An absorber of this design was constructed and erected at Meadi on 
the Nile, 7 miles south of Cairo, in 1912, but the boiler was constructed 
of thin zinc and failed before the official tests could be made. This 
boiler was replaced by a cast-iron one in 1913, and the author (accom- 
panied by his old pupil, G. W. Hilditch, A. M. Inst. C. E., as his chief 
assistant, now Lieut. Hilditch of the Divisional Engineers, Royal 
Naval Division) spent two most interesting months with the plant in 
July and August, 1918. He went out in time to tune up the Shuman 
engine (a 100-horsepower one) taken out from Tacony, and make all 
the necessary preparations for the trials, of which there were over 35. 

In addition to the alteration of the shape of the reflectors, another 
very important change was made. Their axes were placed north and 
south, and they were automatically heeled over from an eastern aspect 
in the morning to a western one in the evening, so as to follow the 
sun. Thus the same number of solar rays were caught all day long, 
and the small decrease in steam production in the morning and even- 
ing was almost entirely due to the greater thickness of atmosphere 
through which the rays had to pass. The total area of sunshine col- 
lected was 13,269 square feet (pls. 5 and 6). 


‘OLBL ‘lQVAIN ‘YSSuOSaYY SAOG-NVWNHS SHL SO HLNOS SHL WOYS M3IA IWYSNa5 


“pce tee aaa OD A 
ALLL LOLA 


4. 


CNA Be 


‘"G ALV1d ‘uUuBWaY9Y—'G16| ‘HOdey URiUOSY}IWS 


"HLYON SHL Wous ‘YaauOsSay SH JO NOILOSS SNO ‘“EL6L 


"9 ALVId 


avalN ‘yaauosay SAOG-NVWNHS 


‘uURWUaxOW—'G L6| ‘HOdey uBlUOsY}!LUS 


UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY—ACKERMANN. 165 


The boilers were placed at the focus of the reflectors and were 
covered with a single layer of glass inclosing an air space around the 
boilers. Each channel-shaped reflector and its boiler was 205 feet 
long, and there were five such sections placed side by side. The con- 
centration was 44 to 1. The maximum quantity of steam produced 
was 12 pounds per 100 square feet of sunshine, equivalent to 183 
square feet per brake horsepower, and the maximum thermal efficiency 
was 40.1 per cent. The best hour’s run gave 1,442 pounds of steam at 
atmospheric pressure, hence, allowing the 22 pounds of steam per 
brake-horsepower-hour, the maximum output for an hour was 55.5 
brake horsepower—a result about 10 times as large as anything pre- 
viously attained, and equal to 63 brake horsepower per acre of land 
occupied by the plant. A pleasing result was that the output did not 
fall off much in the morning and evening. Thus on August 22, 1913, 
the average power for the five hours’ run was no less than 59.4 brake 
horsepower per acre, while the maximum and minimum power on that 
day were 63 and 52.4 brake horsepower per acre, respectively. 

The work of MM. G. Millochau and Ch. Féry was started in 1906 to 
determine the solar constant and the temperature of the sun. Their 
work is recorded in Comptes Rendus for 1906 and 1908, and in the 
Revue Scientifique of September 7, 1907. They give the absolute 
temperature of the sun as 6,042° C., and the value of the solar constant 
as 2.38 calories per square-centimeter-minute. This latter value was 
the result of experiments they made on the summit of Mont Blane 
in 1908. 

The article in the Revue Scientifique of September 7, 1907, is by 
Millochau, and in it he gives the following list of experimenters and 
the results of their determination of the solar constant, after reading 
which some may consider the word “constant” a misnomer: 


ROUINLE Rg See ae ee ee ea PE ee 1. 793 
TOT OYE «SY eae ce eS eS ee ee 2. 82 
COLE IG WERE TA IST a a Pe es 0h eo a 1S 
WUC M DM eases ASH Ca sk Ha lL RA 3 SL ha ea eS 2.28 to 2.37 
Daneaicy Gules serCaReETY AMEE, seca, iN 3. 068 
SAV EIIC iy al SSO Meee ea Sa ie cy eee Se cre aes 3. 47 
RETIN gel SSO memes steer ne ood eh et 3.05 to 3.28 
PNTTESINASTL C1 Rats 0 ake Ont a Se a 4 
EPA Sic Vaan OU) yee enorme a Oc Bike ee 3. 29 
To these we may add: 

ETerSche le: oS Sane see Ses. 1.98 
BETTS CONN a Seen arene a ee oe 1.93 

Wea AHO Mer ye LOUts 2.6 nos A eee 2. 38 
ADDOU 1013 Sees Meese ee Suis = ees ee 1. 93 


In spite of this history of comparative failures, the author is of 
opinion that the problem of the utilization of solar energy is well 
worthy of the attention of engineers, for even now it is very nearly 


166 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


a solved problem where there is plenty of sunshine and coal costs 
£3 10s. a ton. It is fortunate that where coal is dear sunshine is often 
plentiful, and it is to be remembered that coal will gradually get 
dearer while the cost of manufacture of sun-power plants should 
decrease. Sun-power plants are admirably suitable for pumping in 
connection with irrigation, for where there is most sunshine there 
is need for most irrigation, and the slight variation in the quantity 
of water pumped throughout the day does not matter. Also, when 
temporarily there is no sunshine (due to clouds), probably little or 
no irrigation is required. 

In conclusion, the author would refer those who are interested in 
the subject to his paper (8vo, 86 p., 22 illus.), bearing the same title 
as this one, presented to the Society of Engineers on April 6, 1914. 
Therein he dealt fully with the whole of Shuman’s work from 
1910-19138, inclusive, and gave details of the results of the 62 trials 
of the plant made by the author in England, the United States, 
and Egypt. 


THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER AND THE EVOLUTION 
OF THE ELEMENTS. 


By Prof. Sir Ernest RUTHERFORD, F. R. S. 


[With 5 plates. ] 


Speculations as to the constitution of matter have occupied an 
important place in the development of scientific knowledge. The 
idea that all matter was composed of minute particles called atoms 
was put forward long ago by the Greek philosophers and was ad- 
vanced again with varying degrees of confidence by philosophic 
men at the dawn of the scientific age. For example, Newton sug- 
gested that matter was composed of atoms which were likened to 
“hard massy balls,’ while Robert Boyle regarded a gas to consist 
of atoms which were in brisk motion. The first definite formula- 
tion of the atomic theory as a scientific hypothesis was given by Dal- 
ton, of Manchester, in 1803 in order to explain the combination of 
atoms in multiple proportion. The necessity of distinguishing be- 
tween the chemical atom and the chemical molecule was soon recog- 
nized, while the famous hypothesis of Avogadro that equal volumes 
of all gases at the same temperature and pressure contain equal num- 
bers of molecules still further extended the usefulness of the theory. 
The whole superstructure of modern chemistry has been largely 
reared on the foundations of the atomic theory. The labors of the 
chemist have revealed to us the presence of more than 80 distinct 
types of elements, each of which has a characteristic atomic weight, 
and in most cases sufficiently distinct physical and chemical proper- 
ties to allow of its separation from any other element by the applica- 
tion of suitable methods. 

It has been generally assumed that all the atoms of one element 
are identical in shape and weight, and until a few years ago were 
supposed to be permanent and indestructible. The close study of 
the variation of chemical properties of the elements with atomic 
weight led Frankland and Mendelief to put forward the famous 
“periodic law,” in which it was shown that there was a periodic 


1The William Ellery Hale Lecture, delivered at the annual meeting of the National 
Academy of Sciences, Washington, D. C., 1914. Reprinted by permission. 


167 


168 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


variation in the chemical properties of elements when arranged in 
order of increasing atomic weight. This empirical generalization 
has exercised a wide influence on the development of chemistry, and 
the periodic law has been considered by many to indicate that all the 
atoms are composed of some elementary substance or protyle. It is 
only within the last few years that our knowledge of atoms has 
reached a stage to offer a reasonable explanation of this remarkable 
periodicity. 

Time does not allow me to more than refer in passing to the im- 
portant contributions of Le Bel and van ’t Hoff to the structure of 
complex molecules and. the arrangements of the atoms in space, 
which has exercised such a wide and important influence on the de- 
velopment of organic chemistry. 

While the chemist was busy disentangling the elements, determin- 
ing their relative atomic weights and studying their possible combina- 
tions, the physicist had not been idle. The idea that a gas consisted 
of a large number of molecules in swift but irregular movement 
had been tentatively advanced at various times to explain some of 
the properties of gases. These conceptions were independently re- 
vived and developed in great detail by the genius of Clausius and 
Clerk Maxwell about the middle of the last century. On their the- 
ory, now known as the kinetic or dynamical theory of gases, the mole- 
cules of a gas are supposed to be in continuous agitation colliding 
with each other and with the walls of the containing vessel. Their 
velocity of agitation is supposed to increase with temperature, and the 
pressure is due to the impact of the molecules of the gas on the walls 
of the inclosure. This theory was found to explain in a simple and 
obvious way the fundamental properties of gases, and has proved of 
great importance in molecular theory. The idea that atoms must be 
in brisk and turbulent motion is strongly supported by the well- 
known property of the interdiffusion of gases and also of liquids, 
and in recent years has received practically a direct and concrete 
proof from the study of a very interesting phenomenon included 
under the name “ Brownian motion.” The English botanist, Brown, 
in 1827 discovered that small vegetable spores immersed in a liquid 
appeared to be in continuous motion when viewed with a high-power 
microscope. This motion of small particles in liquids was at first 
supposed to be a result of temperature disturbances, but at the close 
of the last century the Brownian movement was shown to be a funda- 
mental property of small particles in liquids. The whole question has 
been investigated in recent years with great ability and skill by Per- 
rin. He examined in detail the state of equilibrium and of motion of 
minute particles in suspension in liquids. The excursions due to the 
Brownian movements depend mainly on the size of the particles, 
although influenced to some extent by the nature of the liquid. Small 


o-— 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 169 


spheres of the size required can be produced by a variety of methods. 
One of the simplest used by Perrin is to allow a solution of pure water 
to pour slowly out of a funnel under an alcoholic solution of gam- 
boge or mastic. An emulsion is formed where the layers meet which 
consists of a great number of minute spheres. When these particles 
are viewed in a strong light with a high-power microscope, they all 
exhibit the characteristic Brownian movement; i. e., the particles 
dart to and fro in irregular and tumultuous fashion and never ap- 
pear to be at rest for more than a moment. The motions of these 
small particles under a microscope irresistibly convey the impres- 
sion that they are hurled to and fro by the action of mysterious 
forces resident in the solution. Such a result is to be anticipated if 
the molecules of the liquid are themselves in rapid though invisible 
tumultuous motion of the kind outlined on the kinetic theory. The 
particle is very large compared with the molecule, and it is bombarded 
on all sides by great numbers of molecules. Occasionally the pressure 
due to the bombardment is for a moment greater on one side of the 
particle than on the other, and the particle is urged forward, until a 
new distribution of impacts hurls it in another direction. In fact, the 
movement of these particles has been found to conform exactly with 
that predicted by the molecular theory. 

It would take too long to discuss the remarkable conclusions that 
Perrin has reached from a study of the distribution and motion of 
small particles. The particle which may be an agglomeration of 
many millions of molecules behaves in many respects like the much 
smaller molecule. A great number of particles in a liquid do not 
distribute themselves uniformly under gravity, but the numbers de- 
crease with height according to the same law as the gases in our 
atmosphere. 

On the kinetic theory we thus have strong evidence for believing 
that the atoms of matter, whether in the solid, liquid, or gaseous 
form, are in continuous agitation and irregular motion. The ve- 
locity of agitation decreases with lowering of temperature, and 
at the lowest attainable temperature the motion has either ceased or 
become very small. 

It is well known that under suitable conditions the same type of 
matter can exist in three distinct forms—solid, liquid, and gas. 
If we take the ordinary air of the room, it can be turned into a 
clear liquid under certain conditions of temperature and pressure, 
and this liquid can be frozen solid by still further lowering of the 
temperature. The most refractory gas of all, helium, has only 
recently been shown to conform with the behavior of all other gases 
and to pass into a liquid at a temperature only a few degrees re- 
moved from absolute zero. The remarkable changes in appearance 


170 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


and physical qualities of an element in passing from one state to 
another is a matter of common knowledge, but it is not for that 
reason very easy of explanation. These changes are believed to be 
connected with the average distance which separates one atom or 
molecule from the other and their rapidity of motion. In the gas 
or vapor form the molecules are, on an average, so far apart that 
their mutual attractions are relatively unimportant. With lowering 
of temperature, the distance and rapidity of motion of the molecules 
diminish until, under certain conditions, the attraction of the mole- 
cules for one another predominates, resulting in a much closer pack- 
ing and the appearance of the liquid form. The molecules, how- 
ever, still retain a certain freedom of motion, but this is diminished 
with lowering of the temperature until at a certain stage the mole- 
cules form a tighter grouping, corresponding to the solid state, 
where the freedom of motion of the individual molecules is much 
restricted. In order to account for the resistance of solids to com- 
pression or extension, it has been supposed that the force between 
molecules is attractive at large distances, but repulsive at small dis- 
tances. While we are able to offer a general explanation of the 
passage of an element from one state to another, a complete expla- 
nation of such phenomena will only be possible when we know the 
detailed structure of the atoms and the nature and magnitude of 
the forces between them. 

While the kinetic theory of gases has proved very successful in ex- 
plaining the fundamental properties of gases, its strength, and at 
the same time its weakness, lies in the fact that in most cases it is 
unnecessary for the explanation to know anything of the structure 
of the atom or molecule or of the forces between them. In some 
investigations, in order to explain some of the more recondite prop- 
erties of gases, assumptions have been made of definite laws of force 
between the molecules, but no very definite or certain results have 
so far been achieved in this direction. It should, however, be pointed 
out that the kinetic theory afforded us for the first time a satisfac- 
tory method of estimating approximately the dimensions of mole- 
cules and the actual number in a given weight of matter. As the 
recent development of science has provided us with more certain 
methods of estimation of these important quantities, we shall not 
enter further into the question at present. 


CRYSTALS. 


There is another very striking form that matter sometimes as- 
sumes which has always attracted much attention, and which has 
recently emerged into much prominence. It is well known that the 
majority of substances under suitable conditions form crystals of 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. gal 


definite geometrical form, which is characteristic of the particular 
atoms or groups of atoms. |The great variety of crystal forms that 
are known have all been classified as belonging to one or more of the 
230 forms of point symmetry which are theoretically possible. 
While considerations of symmetry are a sufficient guide to the classi- 
fication of crystals, they offer no explanation of the definite archi- 
tecture of the crystal nor of the nature of the forces that cause the 
-atoms or molecules to arrange themselves in such definite geometric 
patterns. We are inevitably led to the conclusion that the atoms of 
the crystal are arranged according to a definite system, which is 
characteristic of the particular crystalline form, and the unit of 
structure is repeated indefinitely with continued growth of the crys- 
tal. In fact, if we had no other evidence, the crystalline form of 
matter would itself point to the necessity of an atomic structure of 
matter. 

While many attempts have been made to explain the grouping of 
the atoms in a crystal, there has been on the whole little success, with 
the exception possibly of Pope and Barlow’s theory that the atoms 
take up the positions of closest packing, the dimensions assigned to 
the atom depending on a quantity connected with its chemical valency. 
It is only within the last year that a new and powerful method of 
attack of this problem has been developed, largely through the ex- 
periments of Prof. Bragg and his son, W. L. Bragg. On account of 
the definite ordering of the atoms in a crystal, it acts like an almost 
perfect optical grating, only in three dimensions, where the grating 
space is exceedingly small—in most cases about one one-hundred-mil- 
lionth of a centimeter. Laue showed that when Réntgen rays passed 
through a crystal definite interference patterns were observed. This 
result was of great importance, as it showed that Réntgen rays must 
consist of very short transverse waves akin to those of light. Bragg 
showed that the reflection, or rather diffraction, of R6ntgen rays 
incident, on the face of a crystal afforded a very simple method of 
determining the wave length of the bright lines generally present 
in an X-ray spectrum. By a study of the position and intensity of 
the spectra in different orders thrown by the crystal it was possible 
to examine in detail the structure of the crystal, and to deduce the 
grating space, i. e., the distance between successive planes of atoms. 
The subject is so large and the discovery of this method so recent 
that so far only a few of the typical crystals have been examined, 
but in these cases we are able to obtain most positive evidence of the 
grouping of the atoms in the crystal. The results indicate that the 
atom and not the molecule is the unit of the crystal structure. Con- 
sider the structure of the simple cubic crystal of rock salt (sodium 
chloride). The structure of the crystal deduced by Bragg is shown 
in figure 1. The sodium atoms are marked by black spheres, the 


172 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


chlorine atoms by white spheres. The simplicity of the crystal archi- 


tecture is obvious, for all the atoms are equidistant. The structure 
of the diamond is more complicated, but it is one of great interest, for 
all the atoms in these cases are of one kind, carbon. The structure 
found by Bragg in seen in plate 1, figure 2. The atoms are all equi- 
distant, but the general arrangement differs markedly from that of 
rock salt. It is seen that each carbon atom is linked with four neigh- 
bors in a perfectly symmetrical way, while the linking of six carbon 
atoms inaring is also obvious from the figure. The distance between 
the plates containing atoms is seen to alternate in the ratio 1:3. This 
variation of the grating space is brought out clearly from the study 
of the spectra, and is an essential feature of the structure of the 
diamond. The cubical arrangement is shown by turning the model so 
that the lines joining the atoms 
are vertical and horizontal (pl. 1, 
fig. 1). : 
Now that we have a method of 
determining the arrangement and 
distances apart of the atoms in a 
crystal, the next step will be to 
examine the intensity and type of 
forces which are brought into play 
to keep the atoms in equilibrium 
and relatively fixed in their places. 
It is to be expected that the atoms 


Fig. 1.—Arrangement of atoms in a rock salt 
(NaCl) erystal. White circles represent are able to move to and fro about 


dium atoms; black, chlorine. Me ate 
Seer egih freee ome their position of equilibrium, and 


this is indicated by the effect of lowering the temperature of the 
crystal, for the intensity of the diffraction spectra increases as the 
amplitude of motion of the atom diminishes. The sharpness of the 
diffraction spectra suggests that the atoms are not only arranged at 
definite distances from one another, but that each atom is orientated 
in a definite position with regard to its neighbor. 

While varieties of crystals are known of all degrees of hardness, 
the work of Lehmann has brought to ight the unexpected existence 
of crystalline arrangement in some liquids. These liquid crystals 
are best shown in certain complex organic substances at a tem- 
perature slightly above their melting point, and they are only observ- 
able in the liquid by the patterns and colors developed when 
polarized light passes through them. These crystals are mobile, like 
a drop of oil in a solution, and can be squeezed into a variety of 
patterns. Such results would indicate that the molecules of the liquid 
have a tendency to arrange themselves in ordered patterns, although 
it is difficult to understand how the freedom of relative motion that 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Rutherford. PLATE 1. 


1. CUBICAL ARRANGEMENT OF CARBON ATOMS IN A 
DIAMOND. 


2. ARRANGEMENT OF CARBON ATOMS IN A DIAMOND. 


7 ips 7 
y 
= 
, 
. 
, ern ven a 
Lo ‘ua * eee 
ere a ) 
\ \° Sn ie 
a0)? . 
te 
y al 
Th, 
A) 
=] e “o 
' 
j vi 
‘ 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 173 


is supposed to characterize a liquid can contemporaneously exist 
with an ordered arrangement of some of the constituent molecules. 


LIGHT SPECTRA. 


We will now direct our attention to another type of phenomenon 
which ultimately promises to throw much light on the detailed struc- 
ture of the atom. When the hght from an incandescent vapor or 
gas is passed through a prism or reflected from a grating it is re- 
solved and gives a characteristic spectrum consisting of a number 
of bright lines. By suitable methods, the wave length of these 
radiations can be determined with great accuracy. Each of these 
lines represents a definite and characteristic mode of vibration of the 
atom, and from the exceeding complexity of the spectra of many of 
the heavy elements we are forced to conclude that an atom can vibrate 
in a great variety of ways. When the meaning of the dark lines 
in the solar spectrum was correctly interpreted we were enabled at 
one stride to extend our methods of observation to the sun and the 
farthest fixed stars. It was soon recognized that atoms of the same 
element always vibrated the same way under all conditions. It was 
found, for example, that hydrogen atoms in the earth vibrated in 
exactly the same way as the same atoms in a distant star. The im- 
portant bearing. of this result on the structure of atoms was pointed 
out by Clerk Maxwell, in his well-known address on Atoms and 
Molecules, before the British Association, at Bradford, in 1873, 
from which it is interesting to quote the following: 

In the heavens we discover by their light, and by their light alone, stars so 
distant from each other that no material thing can ever have passed from one 
to another; and yet this light, which is to us, the sole evidence of the existence 
of these distant worlds, tells us also that each of them is built up of molecules 
of the same kinds as those which we find on earth. A molecule of hydrogen, 
for example, whether in Sirius or in Arcturus, executes its vibrations in 
precisely the same time. Each molecule,* therefore, throughout the universe 
bears impressed upon it the stamp of a metric system as distinctly as does the 
meter of the archives at Paris, or the double royal cubit of the temple of 
Karnace. 

No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of 
molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule 
is incapable of growth or decay, of generation. or destruction. 

None of the processes of nature, since the time when nature began, have 
produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are 
therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity 
of their properties to any of the causes which we call natural. 

On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the 
same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well said, the essential character 


of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self- 
existent. 


1 Maxwell used the term “‘ molecule”? where we now use the term ‘“ atom.” 


174 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


While there is no doubt that an atom of an element in the earth 
or in a star vibrates in identical fashion under the same physical 
conditions, it is now known that the frequency of vibration of an 
element is not the exact constant that was at first supposed. It is 
altered to a slight extent by motion of the source, by change of 
pressure, and by the application of magnetic and electric fields. The 
apparent change of frequency of vibration with the motion of the 
source relative to the observer has proved an invaluable method for 
studying the motion of stars in the line of sight, while the displace- 
ment of the lines of hydrogen in the sun has, in the hands of Prof. 
Hale and his assistants proved of great power in throwing light on 
some of the physical conditions that exist in that distant body. It 
has been found that there is order and system in the great complex 
of modes of vibration of an atom, and that many of the lines can be 
arranged in definite series whose rates of vibration are connected by 
simple and definite laws. It is only within the last year or two that 
we have been able to form some idea of the origin of these spectra 
and the meaning of a spectral series. The fact that the lightest and 
presumably the simplest atom known, viz, hydrogen, gives a very 
complicated light spectrum was at first, and quite naturally, be- 
lieved to indicate that the hydrogen atom must be a very complex 
structure. We shall see later, however, that the hydrogen atom is 
believed to have an exceedingly simple structure, and that the com- 
plexity of the spectrum is to be ascribed rather to a complexity in 
the laws of radiation. 

We have seen that the study of the spectrum led Maxwell to con- 
clude not only that the atoms were identical in weight and form but 
that they were the only permanent and indestructible units in this 
changing world. The apparent identity of the spectrum under all 
conditions certainly strongly supported such a view at that time. It 
was believed that if some of the atoms were changing, it would be 
shown by a gradual alteration of their modes of vibration, i. e., of 
the spectrum. It was left to the beginning of this century to show 
the fallacy in this deduction, and to bring undoubted evidence that 
some elements at least are undergoing spontaneous transformation 
with the appearance of new types of matter giving a new and charac- 
teristic spectrum. This question will be discussed later in some detail. 


ELECTRONS. 


Before, however, considering the bearing of radioactive phenomena 
on the structure of the atom I must refer to a discovery which has 
exercised a most profound influence on the development of physics 
in general and on our ideas of the structure of atoms. Sir William 
Crookes long ago found that when an electric discharge was passed 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 175 


through a vacuum tube at very low pressures a peculiar type of ra- 
diation appeared, known as the cathode rays. This radiation ap- 
peared to be projected from the cathode in straight lines and, unlike 
light, was deflected by a magnet. These rays excited strong phos- 
phorescence in many substances in which they fell and also produced 
marked heating effects. Crookes concluded that the cathode rays 
consisted of a stream of negatively charged particles moving at high 
speed. The general properties of this radiation appeared so re- 
markable that Crookes concluded that the material constituting the 
cathode stream corresponded to a “new or fourth state of matter.” 
After a controversy extending over 20 years the true nature of these 
rays was finally independently shown in 1897 by the experiments of 
Weichert and Sir J. J. Thomson. They proved, as Crookes had sur- 
mised, that the rays consisted of a stream of negatively charged 
particles traveling with enormous velocities from 10,000 to 100,000 
miles a second, depending on the potential applied to the vacuum 
tube. In addition, it was found that the mass of the particle was ex- 
ceedingly small, about one eighteen-hundredth of the mass of the 
hydrogen atom, the lightest atom known to science. These results 
were soon confirmed and widely extended. These corpuscles, or elec- 
trons, as they are now termed, were found to be liberated from mat- 
ter not only in an electric discharge but by a variety of other agencies: 
For example, from a metal on which ultra-violet light falls and also 
in enormous numbers from an incandescent body. Radium and other 
radioactive substances were found to emit them spontaneously at 
much greater speeds than those observed in a vacuum tube. It thus 
appeared that the electrons must be a constituent of the atoms of mat- 
ter and could be released from the atom by a variety of agencies. 
This idea was much widened and strengthened by the investigations 
of Zeeman and Lorentz, who showed that the radiation of light must 
be mainly ascribed to the movements of electrons of the same small 
mass within the atom. 

It does not fall within the scope of my address to outline the 
very important consequences that followed in many directions from 
this fundamental discovery of the independent existence of the 
electron and its connection with matter. It was found by Kauf- 
mann that the mass of the electron was not a constant, but in- 
creased with its speed, and from this result it was deduced that 
the electron was an atom of disembodied or condensed electricity 
occupying an exceedingly small volume whose mass was entirely 
electrical in origin. 

UNIT OF ELECTRICITY. 
I should mention here one important consequence that has fol- 


lowed from these discoveries. From the laws which control the 
passage of electricity in conducting solutions, Faraday recognized 


176 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


that there must be a close connection between the atom of matter 
and its electrical charge. Maxwell and Helmholtz suggested that 
the results were simply explained by supposing that electricity was 
atomic 1n nature. This conclusion is now definitely established, and 
the positive charge carried by the hydrogen atoms in the elec- 
trolysis of water is believed to be the fundamental unit of electrical 
charge. This charge is equal to and opposite to the charge carried 
by the electron. Any charge of electricity, however small or large, 
must be expressed by an integral multiple of this fundamental unit 
of electricity. The actual value of this unit charge has been meas- 
ured by a great variety of methods and concordant results. One 
of the most detailed and accurate investigations of this important 
constant has been made by Prof. Millikan, of the University of 
Chicago. 
OBJECTIONS TC ATOMIC THEORY, 


We have so far implicitly assumed that the great majority of 
scientific men now regard the atomic theory not only as a working 
hypothesis of great value but as affording a correct description of 
one stage of the subdivision of matter. While this is undoubtedly 
the case to-day, it is of interest to recall that less than 20 years ago 
there was a revolt by a limited number of scientific men against 
the domination of the atomic theory in chemistry. The followers 
of this school considered that the atomic theory should be re- 
garded as a mere hypothesis, which was of necessity unverifiable by 
direct experiment, and should, therefore, not be employed as a 
basis of explanation of chemistry. This point of view was much 
strengthened by the recognition of the power of thermodynamics 
in affording a quantitative explanation of the changes of energy in 
chemical reactions without the assumption of any definite theory 
of the constitution of matter. This tendency advanced so far that 
textbooks of chemistry were written in which the word atom or 
molecule was taboo, and chemistry was based instead on the law 
of combination in multiple proportion. At that time it did un- 
doubtedly appear that there was little if any hope of finding a 
concrete proof of the validity of the atomic hypothesis or of detect- 
ing by its effects a single atom of matter or a single electron, for 
it was known that the smallest fragment of matter visible under a 
high-power microscope must still contain many millions, or even 
billions, of atoms. 

The march of science has, however, been so rapid in this direction 
that we have been able in recent years to show in a definite and 
concrete way the independent existence of atoms and also of elec- 
trons in rapid motion. 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 177 
COUNTING ATOMS AND ELECTRONS. 


We shall, first of all, consider the method devised by Rutherford 
and Geiger for detecting and recording the effects of single alpha 
particles from radium. At this stage it is unnecessary to enter into 
details of the nature of the transformations occurring in radioactive 
matter. It suffices to say here that the atoms of a radioactive sub- 
stance are unstable and occasionally break up with explosive violence. 
In many cases the explosion is accompanied by the ejection of a 
charged body, called the alpha particle, with a velocity of about 10,000 
miles a second. These alpha particles are known, from other investi- 
gations, to consist of charged atoms of the rare gas, helium. The 
presence of these rays is simply shown by the marked phosphorescence 
they set up in certain substances. I have here a fine glass tube, which 
was filled about a week ago in Manchester with purified emanation 
released from about one-fifth of a gram of pure radium. In the 
interval of its journey across the Atlantic the activity of the emana- 
tion has decayed to about one-quarter of its original value. The 
glass walls of the tube are made so thin (about one one-hundredth 
millimeter) that the alpha rays are able to escape freely into the 
surrounding air. They produce a small phosphorescence in the walls 
of the glass tube, which is just visible in the darkened room. On 
bringing near, however, a screen covered with zinc sulphide, a bril- 
liant phosphorescence is observed, which increases in intensity as we 
approach the tube. Similar effects are seen to be produced in this 
crystal of willemite, while the crystal of kunzite is seen to be trans- 
lucent and emit a ruddy light. This phosphorescence of zine sulphide 
and willemite is due mainly to the alpha rays, and from the present 
emanation tube about 5,000,000,000 of these particles are projected 
each second. 

In their passage through air or other gas the alpha particles pro- 
duce from the neutral molecules a large number of negatively 
charged particles called ions. The ionization due to the alpha par- 
ticles can be readily measured by electrical methods, and it can be 
shown that the effect to be expected from a single alpha particle is 
much too small to detect except by very refined methods. In order 
to overcome this difficulty Rutherford and Geiger employed a 
method of magnifying automatically several thousand times the elec- 
tric effect due to an alpha particle. The general arrangement of 
the original apparatus is seen in figure 2. 

A few of the alpha rays from a radioactive substance passed 
along an exhausted tube E through an opening D covered with thin 
mica into the detecting tube A B. The latter contained a central 
insulated electrode B connected with an electrometer, and the pres- 


18618°—sm 1915——12 


178 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


sure of the gas inside was adjusted to a few centimeters of mercury. 
The tube B was connected with the negative pole of a battery of 
about 1,500 volts, the other pole being earthed. The potential was 
adjusted so that a spark was on the point of passing between A and 
B. Under such conditions the ionization due to an alpha particle 
passing along the detecting vessel is magnified several thousand times 
by collision of the negative and positive ions with the neutral mole- 
cules. 

The entrance of an alpha particle into the detecting vessel is then 
signified by a sudden ballistic throw of the electrometer needle, 
and the number of particles entering the vessel in a given time can 


HABE LEAS EEE 
Se ——— 3 —____» 
‘enanerene + lp 
6 S oo ee 
a : 
nes" NY 
Firing Tube Detecting Vessel 


Fig. 2.—Apparatus for counting alpha particles. 


be counted by observing the throws. The amount of active matter 
and its distance from the opening were adjusted so that 3 to 5 alpha 
particles entered the opening per minute. The following table illus- 
trates the results obtained: 


Number Magnitude of successive throws, 


of throws. scale divisions. 

BirstyMIn iW bO i215 Sek ec oi eee eer eee oak Be eee AWAD 2 10s: 
Second minute... o#-'gs oboe! oc. - oecee ees FEE tee 3 | 10, 11, 8. 
Mir diminiterns ween se caveat eee eee ee oe ee 5 | 10,9, 18, 8, 12. 
Rourth miIngbe:t. hee eties toon ae ah keee = cnet se otaeee. 4 | 18*, 8, 12. 
Fifth minute!) aft hei morperyaor mitt 3 | 10, 6, 10. 
Siethiminni ter «hese «2 cceeoe ee cee Ee ees eee 4 | 9, 10, 12) 11. 
Seventh minutes eS caees aoe ae ae Oe a ae 2 | 10, 11. 
Pighthminiwter esse ow ec ete ee eee eee Sees 3 | 21,1358. 
Nunth minute... F202 e. Saey. Eee et eed . eee = Fs 3 | 8, 20%. 
RENE MING, oa cc cece eee he: Berber © ot eee eee 4 | 8,12, 14,6. 

A-vyeraze: per |miinate2asi6sti 3. Bas oe 3.5 

Average throw (divisions).....-........---- Gro 5 ths eRe Saeed eee 10. 


It will be seen that the number of throws varies from minute to 
minute. This is to be expected, since the chance of an alpha particle 
entering the opening is governed by the ordinary laws of proba- 
bility. It will be seen that two throws, marked by asterisks, are 
much larger than the others. These were due to the passage of two 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 179 


alpha particles through the opening within a short interval. This 
was readily seen from the motion of the spot of light reflected from 
the electrometer needle. As the needle was moving slowly near 
the end of its swing, caused by one alpha particle, a second impulse 
due to the entrance of another was communicated to it. 

By this method the number of alpha particles expelled from one 
gram of radium per second was determined. Of course only a 
minute fraction of the alpha particles was actually counted, but 
the total number was deduced on the assumption, verified by experi- 
ment, that the alpha particles on an average were expelled equally 
in all directions. In this way, 1 gram of radium in equilibrium was 
found to expel the enormous number of 1.3610" alpha particles 
each second. 

Another interesting result followed from these experiments. It 
has long been known that the alpha particles produce a marked 
phosphorescence in crystalline zine sulphide. When examined by 
a lens, the light is found not to be uniform, but exhibits a very 
beautiful scintillating effect. By counting the number of scintilla- 
tions due to the alpha particles it was found that each scintillation 
was produced by the impact of a single alpha particle. It is thus 
seen that two distinct methods, one electrical and the other optical, 
are available for detecting and counting single alpha particles, 
1. e., single atoms of matter. This is only possible because the atoms 
are in swift motion and expend their great energy of motion in 
ionizing the gas or in producing luminosity in zinc sulphide. 

Still another simple method was devised later. Kinoshita first 
showed that a single alpha particle produced a detectable effect on 
a photographic plate which was observable under a microscope. A 
number of experiments have been made by Reinganum, Makower, 
and Kinoshita to examine the effect of single alpha particles on a 
photographic plate. If a fine needle point coated with a trace of 
radioactive matter rests on the surface of the film, the plate on 
development shows a number of distinct trails radiating from the 
active point. Each of these trails results from the action of a single 
alpha particle. A beautiful photograph of this kind (magnification 
about 300) obtained by Kinoshita is shown in plate 2, figure 1. It 
appears that each alpha particle makes a certain number of the 
grains, through which it passes, capable of development. 

The use of an ordinary electrometer is not very suitable for count- 
ing alpha particles by the electric method, since the time of swing 
of the electrometer needle is fairly long, and accurate counting can 
be made when only a few alpha particles enter the detecting vessel 
per minute. This difficulty can be got over by the use of a string 
electrometer in which the moving system consists of a fine silvered 
quartz fiber suspended between two charged parallel plates and 


180 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


viewed with a high-power microscope. The entrance of an alpha 
particle is shown by a sudden movement of the fiber, and if the cur- 
rent is allowed to leak away through a suitable resistance, the fiber 
returns to the position of rest in a small fraction of a second. The 
movement of the fiber can be recorded photographically on a moving 
film, and it is possible in this way to count accurately the number 
of particles, even if several thousand enter the detecting vessel per 
minute. 

Examples of such photographic records, obtained by Rutherford 
and Geiger, are shown in plate 2, figure 2. The vertical movements of 
the fiber from the horizontal line are due to the entrance of alpha par- 
ticles, and it is seen how clearly the detailed movements of the fiber 
are registered. In some cases one alpha particle follows another so 
rapidly that the fiber has not time to come to rest in between, and 
this is shown by the sawlike appearance of some of the peaks in the 
photograph. It will be noticed also that while the heights of most 


E lecTROMETER, 


Fic. 3.—Geiger’s detector of individual alpha and beta particles, 


of the deflections are nearly the same, in a few cases the deflections 
are nearly twice as great as the normal. This is due to the nearly 
simultaneous entrance of two alpha particles into the vessel. 
Although the photographic film moved at a constant rate, it is seen 
that the throws due to the alpha particles are distributed very ir- 
regularly along it. A close examination of such records shows that 
variations of this kind are in accord with the ordinary laws of 
probability. 

During this year, Dr. Geiger has found a still more sensitive de- 
tector for counting alpha particles. The arrangement, which is very 
simple, is shown in figure 3. A fine sharply pointed needle ends 
about 1 centimeter from the opening O, where the alpha particles 
enter. If the outer brass tube be charged positively to about 1,000 
volts, and the needle connected with a string electrometer, it is found 
that the entrance of an alpha particle produces a very great deflec- 
tion of the fiber. So sensitive is this method that Geiger has found 
that individual beta particles can easily be detected and counted by 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Rutherford. PLATE 2. 


1. PHOTOGRAPHIC EFFECT DUE TO ALPHA PARTICLES FROM A CENTRAL POINT. 


2. PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD ON STRING ELECTROMETER OF ENTRANCE OF ALPHA 
PARTICLES INTO THE DETECTING VESSEL. 


3. RECORD WITH STRING ELECTROMETER; UPPER RECORD 
FOR BETA PARTICLES, LOWER FOR ALPHA PARTICLES. 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 181 


its aid. This is very remarkable when it is remembered that the 
ionization effect due to a beta particle is on the average not more 
than one one-hundredth of that due to an alpha particle. 

A photographic record of the entrance of beta particles into the 
detecting vessel is shown in plate 2, figure 3. The upper record is for 
beta particles and the lower for alpha particles. I am indebted to Dr. 
Geiger for this photograph. It is seen that the effect of a beta par- 
ticle is just as marked and as definite as for an alpha particle with 
the old form of detector. We are thus in a position not only to count 
single atoms of matter, but also to detect the presence of a single 
electron in swift motion, although the mass of the latter is exceed- 
ingly small compared with that of the lightest atom. 

I would now very briefly direct your attention to some results 
which to my mind not only completely prove the hypothesis of the 
atomic structure of matter, but allow us at once to calculate the 
number of atoms in a given weight of matter with the mini- 
mum amount of assumption. We have seen that by direct count- 
ing it has been found that 1.3610" alpha particles are ex- 
pelled per second from 1 gram of radium in equilibrium with its 
rapidly changing products. Now, it has been definitely shown by 
methods I need not discuss here that each alpha particle consists 
of a helium atom carrying two unit positive charges. Since the 
alpha particle, when it has lost its charge, becomes a neutral helium 
atom we should expect to find that helium would be produced by 
radium at a definite rate. This is found to be the case, and it is 
not difficult to determine by actual measurement the volume of 
helium formed by a known quantity of radium in a given time. 
It has been found that one gram of radium in equilibrium produces 
each year 156 cubic millimeters of helium at standard pressure and 
temperature. Now, the number of alpha particles expelled per 
year per gram is 4.2910!*, giving rise to 156 cubic millimeters of 
helium, each of these alpha particles is an atom of helium, and con- 
sequently the number of atoms of helium in 1 cubic centimeter of 
that gas at normal pressure and temperature is 2.7510". 

It appears to me that no more direct and convincing proof could 
be obtained of the atomic structure of matter or of the number of 
atoms forming a given weight or volume of helium, for the number 
of separate constituents are counted and the volume of the resulting 
gas is measured. The value so obtained is in good accord with 
measurements based on entirely different data of various kinds. 

It is somewhat remarkable that while the study of radioactive 
phenomena has clearly indicated that the atom is not always per- 
manent and indestructible, it has at the same time suppled the 
most convincing proof of the actual reality of atoms and has pro- 


182 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


vided some of the most direct methods of determining the values 
of atomic magnitudes. 


TRACKS OF SWIFT ATOMS AND ELECTRONS. 


We have seen how it is possible to detect single alpha and beta 
particles and to count their number. We will next consider a most 
remarkable experimental method, not only for detecting such par- 
ticles but of following in detail the effects produced by them in their 
passage through a gas. C. T. R. Wilson showed many years ago 
that the positively and negatively charged ions produced in a gas 
by the passage of alpha and beta and X rays possessed a remark- 
able property. When air, for example, saturated with water vapor 
is suddenly expanded the air is rapidly cooled and the water tends 
to deposit on any nuclei present. C. T. R. Wilson showed that 
in dust-free air the ions produced by external radiation become 
nuclei for the condensation of water upon them when the cooling 
by expansion was sufficiently great. Under such conditions each 
ion becomes the center of a visible globule of water, and the number 
of drops formed is equal to the number of ions present. 

C. T. R. Wilson later perfected this method to show the trail of 
a single alpha or beta particle in passing through the gas; for each 
of the ions produced by the flying particle becomes a visible drop 
of water by the sudden expansion. By suitable arrangements the 
trails of the individual particle can be photographed, and the pic- 
tures obtained show with remarkable fidelity and detail the ionizing 
effects produced in the passage of alpha and beta particles or X 
rays through gases. 

Plate 3, figure 1, shows the tracks of the alpha particles shot out 
from a small fragment of radium. The number of ions produced 
per centimeter in the gas by the alpha particle is so great that the 
trail of drops shows as a continuous line. The alpha particles are 
seen to radiate in straight lines from the active point and have a 
definite range in air—a characteristic property discovered by Bragg 
many years ago. The next photograph (pl. 8, fig. 2) shows a mag- 
nified image of these trails. It is seen that the tracks are generally 
quite straight, but in a few cases there is a sudden bend near the end. 
The significance and causes of these sudden deviations in the recti- 
linear paths of the alpha particles will be discussed later. 

A radioactive substance like radium emits not only alpha particles 
but beta particles which are electrons in very swift motion. These 
beta particles are generally far more penetrating than the alpha 
rays, but produce a much smaller number of ions per centimeter 
of their path through a gas. In plate 4, figure 1, is seen the track 
of a swift beta particle crossing the expansion chamber. It will be 
observed that the path is not straight but tortuous, due to the marked 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Rutherford. PLATE 3. 


1. TRACKS OF ALPHA PARTICLES FROM CENTRAL 
Points (C. T. R. WILSON’S METHOD). 


2. MAGNIFIED TRACK OF ALPHA PARTICLES (WILSON). 


PLATE 4 


Rutherford. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915. 


TRACKS OF BETA PARTICLES. 


ile 


BETA PARTICLES PRODUCED BY PASSAGE OF X RAYS THROUGH AIR 


De 


(WILSON). 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 183 


scattering of the particle by collisions with the atoms of matter in 
its path. Although the trail is clearly defined, the density corre- 
sponding to the number of drops per centimeter is much smaller 
than for the alpha particle. In fact, by magnifying still further 
small portions of the track the individual ions, or rather the drop 
formed around each ion produced by the beta particle, are clearly 
visible. In this way it is obviously possible to count directly the 
number of ions produced in any length of the path. 

These beautiful photographs thus not only bring out clearly that 
alpha and beta particles are definite entities but show with great per- 
fection the actual path of the particles in traversing matter. The 
next photograph (pl. 4, fig. 2) shows the effect of passing a pencil of 
Roéntgen rays through the expansion chamber. It is believed that 
these rays do not ionize the gas directly, but indirectly, through the 
slow speed electrons which are liberated by some of the atoms acted 
on by the radiation. These electrons are not nearly so swift as some 
of those emitted by radium, for they are only able to traverse a few 
millimeters of air before being stopped. The photograph brings 
out clearly these effects and shows the tortuous path of a beta particle 
resulting from collisions with the atoms. Such scattering effects 
become more marked the slower the velocity of ejection of the beta 
particle. 

TRANSFORMATION OF MATTER. 


While the discovery of the independent existence of the electron 
as a constituent of the structure of atoms gave a great impetus to 
the study of atomic structure, it was soon found that the removal or 
addition of an electron from an atom did not appear to cause a 
permanent transformation of the atom, for no evidence has yet been 
obtained that the passage of an electric current through a gas or 
metal is accompanied by a permanent alteration of the atoms of 
matter through which the current passes, although there is little 
doubt the current is carried in part at least by the electrons liberated 
from the atoms. 

The first definite evidence of the transformation of matter was 
obtained from a study of the processes occurring in radioactive sub- 
stances. The writer and Mr. Soddy in 1903 put forward the theory 
that the radiations from active matter accompanied a veritable 
transformation of the atoms themselves. The correctness of this 
theory as an explanation of radioactive phenomena is now gen- 
erally accepted. As an illustration of these processes, consider the 
transformation of the radioactive element uranium. The series of 
substances which arise from the transformation of uranium are 
shown clearly in the diagram (fig. 4). The best known of these 
elements is radium, which will be taken as a typical example of a 


184 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


radioactive substance. Radium differs from an ordinary element 
in its power of spontaneously expelling alpha particles with very 
great speed. This property is ascribed to an inherent instability 
which is not manifest in the atoms of ordinary elements. A small 
fraction of the radium atoms—about 1 in 100,000,000,000—break 
up each second with explosive violence, expelling a fragment of the 
atom (the alpha particle) with very great speed. The residue of 
the atom is lighter than before and becomes the atom of an entirely 
new substance, which is called the radium emanation. The atoms 
of the latter are far more unstable than those of radium, for half 
of them break up in 3.85 days, while half of the radium atoms break 
up in about 2,000 years. After the loss of an alpha particle an atom 
of the emanation changes into an atom of a new substance (radium 
A), which behaves as a solid. 

Radium A is very unstable, half of it breaking up in 3 minutes 
with the emission of an alpha particle, and gives rise to radium B. 
The latter differs from the substances already mentioned in the nature 
of its radiation, for it emits beta rays but no alpha rays. Notwith- 
standing this fact, it is transformed according to the same law as 
an alpha ray’s substance, and gives rise to an entirely distinct ele- 
ment, radium C. In the transformation of the latter, not only are 
swift alpha rays emitted but also beta rays of great speed. There is 
some evidence, however, that the substance called radium C is com- 
plex, and that the alpha and beta rays arise from two distinct sub- 
stances. 

The successive substances arising from radium C are radium D, 
radium E, and radium F. The two former, like radium B, emit 
only beta rays; the latter, known generally as polonium, emits only 
alpha rays. It is believed that the sequence of changes ends with 
the transformation of radium F, which is supposed to change into 
the well known nonradioactive element lead. 

According to the transformation theory, radium, like all other 
radioactive products, must be regarded as a changing element, but 
one whose rate of transformation is very slow compared with its 
successive products. Boltwood showed experimentally that radium 
is half transformed in about 2,000 years, and a quantity of radium 
would practically have disappeared as such in 100,000 years. In 
order to account for the continued existence of radium in the earth, 
it.is necessary to suppose that it is steadily produced from some 
other element. Boltwood showed that the parent substance is a 
radioactive element called ionium, which is itself derived from the 
transformation of uranium. A quantity of ionium, entirely freed 
from radium, will grow radium at a slow but constant rate. The 
primary element of the ionium-radium series is uranium, which we 
can calculate should be half transformed in 5,000,000,000 years—a 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 185 


period probably long compared with the age of many of the min- 
erals in which uranium is found. 

The complete sequence of changes in the uranium-radium series 
is shown in the diagram (fig. 4). The nature of the radiation and the 
half period of transformation is added for each element. In addition 
to uranium, there are two other radioactive elements, thorium and 
actinium, which are transformed with the appearance of a number 
of new substances. The time at my disposal, however, is too short 
to discuss these changes in detail. Thorium is known to be a pri- 
mary element whose radioactive life is even longer than uranium, 
but actinium is believed to be a branch descendant from some point 
of the uranium series, and is thus to be regarded as a product of 
that element. In all, 34 of these radioactive substances have been 


A 
FF SS FS 
Url UrX,. UrX,. Ur 2. Ra. Eman” 
5x10° years, 24° Odays. {-14mins. 10° years. ree 2000 years. S85 days. 


RoA RaB. RaC. ReaD. RoE. ( Pie Lead. 


30 mina 268 mins. 19.5 mins. 165yeare. — Sdays. 136 days. 


Fig. 4.—Successive substances produced by the transformation of the uranium atom. 


discovered, and the position of each in the three main radioactive 
series has been determined. 

Each of these new substances is to be regarded as a distinct chemi- 
cal element in the ordinary sense, but differs from ordinary stable 
elements in the spontaneous emission of special radiations which 
accompanies the disintegration of the atoms. The radioactive sub- 
stances are thus transition elements which have a limited life and 
which carry within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. 
Not only are these transition elements distinguished by their types 
of radiation but also by their distinct physical and chemical proper- 
ties. The extraordinary differences in properties which sometimes 
exist between a product and its parent substance is well illustrated 
by the comparison of radium and its product, the emanation. Ra- 
dium is a solid element of atomic weight, 226, which has chemical 
properties allied to barium, but is capable of separation from it. The 
emanation is a heavy monatomic gas of atomic weight, 222, which, by 
its absence of chemical properties, is allied to the well-known group 
of rare gases—helium, argon, neon, xenon, and krypton. In some 
cases the elements show almost identical physical and chemical prop- 


186 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


erties with those of known elements, although they differ from them 
in their atomic weight and radioactivity. For example, radium B 
appears to be identical in ordinary chemical and physical proper- 
ties with lead, although its atomic weight, 214, is quite distinct from 
lead, 207. The probable explanation of this, at first sight, remark- 
able identity will be discussed later. 

It is of interest to note that in the majority of cases a radioactive 
element breaks up in only one way, which is characteristic for all 
the atoms of that element and gives rise to only one new product. 
The work of Fajans and Marsden, however, has clearly shown that 
in the case of radium C and the corresponding products in the tho- 
rium and actinium series, the atoms break up in two distinct ways 
and give rise to two distinct radioactive elements. It has already 
been pointed out that actinium is, in reality, one of these side or 
branch products. It is supposed that uranium X breaks up in two 
distinct ways, the smaller fraction giving rise to actinium. The 
evidence, however, on this point is not yet complete. 

The radioactive elements are in some respects more interesting 
and important than stable elements, for, in addition to the ordinary 
physical and chemical properties, they possess the radioactive prop- 
erty which allows us to study the mode amd rate of transformation 
of their atoms. 

It may be asked what is the essential difference between radio- 
active changes and ordinary chemical changes. In the radioactive 
changes we are not dealing with the dissociation of molecules into 
atoms, but an actual disruption of the chemical atom. The disinte- 
gration of any given element appears to be a spontaneous and 
uncontrollable process which, unlike ordinary chemical changes, is 
quite unaffected by the most drastic changes in temperature or by 
any other known physical or chemical agency. 

The radioactive changes differ entirely from chemical changes not 
only in the peculiar character of the emitted radiations, but also in 
the enormous emission of energy. It can be simply shown that the 
energy emitted from a radioactive substance which expels alpha 
particles is several million times greater than the energy emitted 
from an equal weight of matter in any known chemical reaction. 
This emission of energy is mainly to be ascribed to the conversion 
of the energy of motion of the swift alpha and beta particles into 
heat, and is thus in a sense a secondary effect of the radiations. The 
enormous emission of energy is most simply illustrated by consider- 
ing the case of the radium emanation, together with its swiftly 
changing products radium A, radium B, and radium C. The heat- 
ing effect of a given volume or weight of this gas has been accu- 
rately determined. From the data it can be calculated that 1 pound 
weight of the emanation would emit heat energy initially at the 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 187 


rate of 23,000 horsepower. The rate of emission decreases with the 
time, falling successively to half value after intervals of 3.85 days. 
During the life of the emanation the total energy emitted corre- 
sponds to an engine working at 128,000 horsepower for one day. 
Such a quantity of emanation would be an enormously concentrated 
source of power, for the total energy emitted is many million times 
greater than for an equal weight of the most powerful known ~ 
~ explosive. 

The emission of energy from radioactive substances does not con- 
trovert the law of the conservation of energy, for the energy is 
derived from the atom itself where it exists in kinetic or potential 
form. We shall see later that the atom is believed to consist of a 
large number of positively and negatively charged particles which 
are collected in a very small volume and held together by intense 
electrical forces. Such an idea of atomic structure involves the 
necessity of a large store of energy resident in the individual atom. 
The great emission of energy from a radioactive substance like the 
emanation illustrates in a striking way the enormous reservoir of 
energy that must exist in the atoms themselves, for there is every 
reason to believe that an equivalent amount of energy is present in 
the atoms of the common heavy elements. This store of energy ordi- 
narily does not manifest itself and is not available for use. It is 
only when there is a drastic rearrangement of the atom resulting 
from, an atomic explosion that part of this store of energy is 
liberated. 

It must be borne in mind that the processes occurring in radio- 
active matter are spontaneous and uncontrollable. There is at 
present no evidence to indicate that we shall be able in any way to 
influence radioactive changes. We are at present only able to watch 
and investigate this remarkable phenomenon of nature, without 
any power of controlling it. In a recent book H. G. Wells has dis- 
cussed in an interesting way some of the future possibilities if this 
great reservoir of energy resident in the atoms were made available 
for the use of man. This will only be possible on a large scale if we 
are able in some way to alter the rate of radioactive change and to 
cause a substance like uranium or thorium to give out its energy 
in the course of a few hours or days instead of over a period of 
many thousands of millions of years. The possibility, however, of 
altering the rate of transformation of radioactive matter or of induc- 
ing similar effects in ordinary matter does not at present seem at all 
promising. 

STRUCTURE OF THE ATOM. 

We have seen that in recent years a number of methods have been 
devised for determining with precision the actual weight of any 
atom of matter. If it be assumed that in the solid state the atoms, 


188 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


or molecules, of matter are in close contact, it is a simple matter to 
deduce the diameter of the atom. This varies slightly for different 
atoms, but on an average comes out to be about one one-hundred- 
millionth of a ‘centimeter. It is necessary, however, to be cautious 
in speaking of the diameter of the atom. The term “diameter of 
the sphere of action” of the atom is preferable, for it is not at all 


’ certain that the actual atomic structure is nearly so extensive as the | 


region through which the atomic forces are appreciable. 

Even before the discovery of the electron the genera] idea had 
been suggested that the atom was an electrical structure composed 
of negatively and positively charged particles held in equilibrium 
by electrical forces. Such ideas had been proposed and developed 
by Larmor and Lorentz in order to explain the electrical and optical 
properties of the atom. The proof that the negative electron was 
an independent unit of the structure of the atom gave a great im- 
petus to the formation of more concrete ideas on atomic structure. 
There was one important difficulty, however, that arose at the outset. 
While negative electricity had been shown to exist in independent 
units of very small apparent mass, the corresponding unit of positive 
electricity was never found associated with a mass less than the atom 
of hydrogen. All attempts to show the existence of a positive elec- 
tron of small mass, which is a counterpart of the negative electron, 
have resulted in failure, and it seems doubtful whether such a posi- 
tive electron exists. The réle played by positive electricity in the 
atom was thus a matter of conjecture. In a paper called Aepinus 
Atomized the late Lord Kelvin considered an atom tc consist of a 
uniform sphere of positive electrification, throughout which nega- 
tive electricity was distributed in the form of discrete electrons. 
In order to make such an atom electrically neutral it is, of course, 
necessary that the positive charge should be equal and opposite to 
the charge carried by the electrons. This idea of the structure of the 
atom was taken up and developed with great mathematical skill by 
Sir J. J. Thomson. He investigated the constitution of atoms con- 
taining different numbers of electrons and showed that such model 
atoms possessed properties very similar to those shown by the actual 
atoms. The Thomson atom proved for many years very useful in 
giving a concrete idea of the possible structure of the atom and had 
the great advantage of being amenable to calculation. 

The rapid advance of science in the last decade has provided us 
with new and powerful methods of attack on this problem, and has 
allowed us to distinguish to some extent between various theories of 
atomic structure. One of these methods depends on the study of the 
deflection of swiftly moving bodies like alpha and beta particles in 
their passage through matter. It is found that these rays are always 
scattered in their passage through matter; i. e., a narrow pencil of 


oO 2 | 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 189 


rays opens out into a diffuse or scattered beam. The alpha and beta 
particles move so swiftly that they are actually able to pass through 
the structure of the atom and are deflected by the intense forces with- 
in the atom. Geiger first drew attention to a very unexpected effect 
with alpha particles. When a pencil of alpha rays falls on a thin 
film of gold, for example, the great majority of the particles pass 
through with little absorption. A few, however, are found to be so 
scattered that they are turned back through an angle of more than a 
right angle. Taking into consideration the great energy of motion 
of the alpha particle, such a result is as surprising as it would be to 
a gunner if an occasional shot at a light target was deflected back 
toward the gun. It was found that these large deflections must 
result from an encounter with a single atom. The occasional sudden 
deflection of an alpha particle is well illustrated in one of the later 
photographs of the trail of an alpha particle obtained by Mr. C. T. R. 
Wilson, and shown in plate 5, figure 1. It is seen that the rectilinear 
path of the particle suffers two sharp bends, no doubt resulting in 
each case from a single close encounter with an atom. In the sharp 
bend near the end a slight spur is seen, indicating that the atom was set 
in such swift motion by the encounter with the alpha particle that it 
was able to ionize gas at a short distance. If the forces causing the 
deflection were electrical, it was at once evident that the electric field 
within the atom must be exceedingly intense. The distribution of 
positive electricity assumed in the Thomson atom was much too 
diffuse to produce the intense fields required. To overcome this difli- 
culty the writer inverted the role of positive electricity. Instead of 
being distributed through a sphere comparable in size with the sphere 
of action of the atom, the positive electricity is supposed to be con- 
centrated in a very minute volume or nucleus, and the greater part 
of the mass of the atom is supposed to be resident in this nucleus. 
The latter is supposed to be surrounded by a distribution of negative 
electrons extending over a distance comparable with the diameter of 
the atom as ordinarily understood. On this point of view the alpha 
particle is the minute nucleus of the helium atom, which has lost its 
two external electrons. In this type of atom the large deviations of 
the alpha particle take place when it passes through the intense elec- 
tric field close to the nucleus of the colliding atom. The nearer it 
passes to the nucleus, the greater the deflection of the particle. As- 
suming that the forces between the alpha particle and the nucleus of 
the colliding atom are mainly electrical and vary according to an in- 
verse square law, the alpha particle describes a hyperbolic orbit 
around the nucleus, and the relative number of alpha particles de- 
~ flected through different angles can be simply calculated. 

It was thus possible to test this theory of atomic structure by ac- 

tual experiment. This was undertaken by Geiger and Marsden in 


190 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


a very important but difficult investigation. They examined the 
relative number of alpha particles scattered through various angles 
by their passage through thin films of matter—e. g., aluminum, 
silver, and gold—by actually counting the alpha particles by means 
of the scintillations on a zine sulphide screen. The experimental 
results were found to be in very good accord with the theory, while 
Darwin, in addition, showed that any other law of force except the 
inverse square was incompatible with the observations. 

From these results it is a simple matter to show that the radius 
of the nucleus of the gold atom can not be greater than 3107? em.— 
an exceedingly small distance and only about one ten-thousandth 
part of the diameter of the atom. While the results thus indicated 
that the nucleus of a heavy atom was of minute dimensions, it was 
of interest to see whether a still lower limit could be obtained for 
lighter atoms. On this theory, the helium atom has a nucleus of two 
unit positive charges, and the lighter atom, hydrogen, should have 
a nucleus of only one unit. When an alpha particle passes through 
hydrogen gas there should be occasional very close encounters be- 
tween the particle and nucleus of the hydrogen atom. Since the 
mass of the hydrogen atom is only one-quarter of that of helium, it 
is to be anticipated that the former should be set in very swift mo- 
tion by a close collision with an alpha particle, and in special cases 
should be given a velocity 1.6 times greater than that of the colliding 
alpha particle, and should travel four times as far. Such swiftly 
moving hydrogen nuclei were actually observed by Marsden with 
the scintillation method when a pencil of alpha rays passed through 
hydrogen, and they were found to travel, as the theory predicted, 
about four times farther than the alpha particle itself. Since the 
energy gained by the hydrogen nucleus depends on the closeness of 
its approach to the alpha particle, it can be simply calculated that 
the centers of the nuclei must have passed within 10-** cm. of each 
other. This is an extraordinarily small distance, even smaller 
than the diameter of the electron itself. It is thus clear that the 
nuclei of hydrogen and of helium must be exceedingly minute. It 
should be borne in mind that such observations only give a maximum 
limit to the size of the nucleus, and there is no experimental evidence 
against the view that the nucleus of the hydrogen atom may not 
actually prove to be minute in volume compared even with the nega- 
tive electron. If this be the case, it appears probable that the hydro- 
gen nucleus is the positive electron and that its great mass, compared 
with the negative electron, is due to the greater concentration of its 
charge. According to modern theory the electrical mass of a charged _ 
particle varies inversely as its radius. The greater mass of the posi- 
tive than of the negative electron would thus be explained if its 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Rutherford. PLATE 5. 


1. TRACK OF ALPHA PARTICLES 
SHOWING SHARP DEVIATIONS 
(WILSON). 


2. X-Ray SPECTRA OF SUCCESSIVE ELEMENTS 
(MOSELEY). THE ADDITIONAL LINES IN SPEC- 
TRUM OF Co AND Ni ARE DUE TO IMPURITY. 
Brass SHOWS THE COMBINED SPECTRA OF 
COPPER AND ZINC. 


§ 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 191 


radius were only one eighteen-hundredth of that of the negative 
electron, viz, about 10-*° cm. 

There is no evidence to contradict this point of view, and its sim- 
plicity has much to commend it. In viewing the essential differences 
exhibited by positive and negative electricity in connection with 
matter and the obvious asymmetry of the distribution of the two 
electricities in the atom, one is driven to the conclusion that there is 
a fundamental distinction between positive and negative electricity. 
Since the unit of positive charge is identical in magnitude with the 
unit of negative charge, the only possible difference is the mass of 
the two units, and this on modern views is mainly dependent on the 
dimensions or degree of concentration of the electricity in these 
fundamental entities. 

If we take the view that the hydrogen nucleus is the positive elec- 
tron, it is to be anticipated that the nuclei of all atoms are built up 
of positive and negative electrons, the positive electricity being al- 
Ways 1n excess, so that the nucleus shows a resultant positive charge. 
The mass of the atom will depend mainly on the number of the 
massive positive electrons in the nucleus, although it will be affected 
to a slight extent by the number of the lighter negative electrons 
involved in the structure of the whole atom. The mass of the atom 
will no doubt be influenced also by the distribution of the positive 
and negative electrons in the nucleus, for these must be packed so 
closely together that their field must interact. As Lorentz has shown, 
the mass of a number of closely packed electrons is not necessarily 
the same as the sum of individual masses of the component electrons. 
Taking such factors into account, we should not necessarily expect 
the mass of all atoms to be nearly an integral multiple of the mass 
of the hydrogen atom, although it is known that in a number of cases 
such a relation appears to hold fairly closely. 

The appearance of a helium atom in such a fundamental process 
as the transformation of radioactive atoms indicates that helium is 
one of the units, possibly secondary, of which the nuclei of the heavy 
atoms are built up. In course of its successive transformations a 
uranium atom loses eight helium atoms, a thorium atom six, and an 
atom of actinium five. The probability that helium is one of the 
units of atomic structure not only in the case of radioactive atoms 
but for ordinary atoms is strengthened by the fact that the atomic 
weights of a number of elements differ by about four units. 

The fact that the helium nucleus survives the intense disturbance 
resulting in its violent ejection from a radioactive atom suggests 
that it is a very stable configuration. On the views discussed it is 
natural to suppose that the helium nucleus, of atomic weight about 
four, is made up of four positive electrons united with two negative 
electrons. No doubt it is difficult to understand why such a system 


192 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


should hold together, but it must be remembered that we have no 
information as to the nature or magnitude of the forces existing at 
such minute distances as are involved in the structure of the nucleus. 

We have so far assumed without proof that while the nucleus of 
an atom carries a resultant positive charge, negative electrons are 
also present. The main evidence on this point comes from a study 
of the radioactive elements. A substance which breaks up with the 
emission of swift electrons (beta rays), but no alpha particles, suffers 
disintegration according to the same laws and gives rise to a new 
element in the same way as when an alpha particle is lost. It seems 
necessary to suppose from a number of lines of evidence that a 
transformation which is accompanied by the emission of primary 
beta particles must have its origin in the ejection of a negative elec- 
tron from the nucleus itself or from a point very close to the nucleus. 

There are no means at present of deciding definitely the relative 
number of positive and negative units composing the nucleus, except 
possibly from a consideration of the atomic weight of the atom in 
terms of hydrogen. It is, however, premature to discuss such ques- 
tions until more information is obtained as to the structure of the 
nucleus and the effect of concentration and distribution of the com- 
ponent electrical charges on its apparent mass. 


CHARGE CARRIED BY THE NUCLEUS. 


We are now in a position to consider a very important question, 
viz, the magnitude of the positive charge carried by the atomic 
nucleus. Since an atom is electrically neutral, the negative charge 
carried by the exterior distribution of electrons in the structure of 
the atom must be equal and opposite to the resultant positive charge 
carried by the nucleus. The electrical charge is most conveniently 
expressed in terms of the number of the fundamental units of 
charge in the nucleus. Since the charge carried by the electron 
is one unit, the charge on the nucleus of the atom may be expressed 
numerically by the number of electrons exterior to the nucleus. 
Several methods of attack on this problem have been suggested. 
Sir J. J. Thomson showed that the scattering of Rontgen rays in 
passing through the atoms of matter must depend on the number 
of electrons composing the atom. By assuming that each electron 
scattered is an independent unit, an expression for the scattering 
was found in terms of the number of electrons in the atom. By 
comparison of the theory with experiment, Barkla deduced that for 
many elements the number of electrons in an atom was approxi- 
mately proportional to its atomic weight and numerically equal to 
about one-half of the atomic weight in terms of hydrogen. 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 193 


The charge in the nucleus can also be directly determined from the 
experiments on scattering of alpha rays, to which attention has pre- 
viously been drawn. Geiger and Marsden found that the large- 
angle scattering of alpha rays in passing through different sub- 
stances was proportional per atom to the square of its atomic weight. 
This showed that the positive charge on the nucleus was approxi- 
mately proportional to the atomic weight at any rate for elements 
of atomic weight varying between aluminium and gold. By meas- 
uring the fraction of the total number of alpha particles which were 
deflected through a definite angle in passing through a known thick- 
ness of matter, the charge on the nucleus was deduced directly. The 
number of positive units of charge on the nucleus, which is equal to 
the number of external negative electrons, was found to be expressed 
by about one-half of the atomic weight in terms of hydrogen. The 
results obtained by two entirely distinct methods of attack are thus 
in good accord and give approximately the magnitude of this impor- 
tant atomic constant. 

It is obvious, however, that the deduction that the number of units 
of charge on the nucleus is half the atomic weight must be only 
a first approximation to the truth, even in the case of the heavier 
atoms. It has already been pointed out that the nucleus of the 
helium atom of atomic mass four must carry two unit charges, for 
it is difficult to believe that any of the exterior electrons of helium 
can remain attached after its violent expulsion from the atom and 
its subsequent passage through matter. If this be the case, the 
nucleus of the hydrogen atom of atomic mass one must carry one 
unit charge. Van den Broek and Bohr have suggested that the 
charge on the nucleus might be equal to the actual number of the 
element when all the known elements are arranged in order of 
increasing atomic weight. ‘This is in excellent accord with the 
experiments of scattering, and removes a difficulty in regard to the 
lighter atoms. Taking this view, the nucleus charge is for hydro- 
gen 1, helium 2, lithium 3, carbon 6, oxygen 8, etc. The simplicity 
of this conception has much to commend it. 

During the last year a new and powerful method of attack on this 
fundamental problem has been developed by Moseley by the study 
of X-ray spectra. In 1912 Laue found that X rays showed obvious 
interference or diffraction effects in their passage through crystals, 
thus proving definitely that the X rays consist of very short waves 
analogous to those of light. W. H. Bragg and W. L. Bragg and 
Moseley and Darwin found that the reflection of the X rays from 
crystals provided a very simple method of measuring the wave 
length of the X rays when the spacing of the atoms in the crystal is 
known. If the X rays give a spectrum containing some bright lines, 


18618°—smM 1915 13 


194 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


the wave lengths of the latter can be simply determined. The work 
of Barkla has shown us that an X radiation, characteristic of each 
element, is excited under certain conditions when X rays fall upon 
it. The penetrating power of this characteristic radiation increases 
rapidly with the atomic weight of the radiator. In heavy elements, 
another type of characteristic radiation makes its appearance. These 
two types of characteristic radiation have been called by Barkla the 
K and L radiations, respectively. These radiations can be excited 
either by X rays of suitable penetrating power or by direct bom- 
bardment of the element by cathode rays in a vacuum tube. Moseley 
made a systematic examination of the X-ray spectra of a great 
majority of the elements. For this purpose the elements examined 
were bombarded by cathode rays, and the spectrum of the radia- 
tion examined by reflection from a suitable crystal. He found that 
the spectra of the K radiation from elements varying in atomic 
weight from aluminium to silver were all similar in type, consist- 
ing mainly of two strong lines.t. An example of the spectrum ob- 
tained for a number of successive elements is shown in plate 5, figure 2. 
It is seen that with increasing atomic weight the wave length of the 
corresponding lines diminishes, not irregularly but by definite and 
well-marked steps. Moseley found that for the K radiation the 
frequency of the radiation was proportional to (N-a)*, where N was 
a whole number which varied by unity in passing from one element to 
the next of higher atomic weight and a was a constant about unity. 
From silver to gold the spectra given by the L radiations of elements 
were compared. These spectra consist of about five lines, of which 
two are relatively very strong. It was found again that the spectra 
were similar in type and that the frequency of a given line diminished 
by definite steps in passing from one element to another. The fre- 
quency of the radiation in this case was proportional to (N-b)?’, 
where b was a constant and N a whole number. Moseley concluded 
that the value of N in these expressions was the atomic number, 1. e., 
the number of the element arranged in order of increasing atomic 
weight. Taking aluminium as the thirteenth element, he found 
that succeeding elements were expressed by the value of N 14, 15, 16, 
17, etc., up to 77 for gold. 

There appears to be little doubt that the X-ray spectrum of an 
element arises from the vibrations of the rings of electrons deep in the 
atomic structure outside the nucleus. Quite apart from the very in- 
teresting question of the mode of origin of these very high frequency 
spectra, it is seen that the fundamental modes of vibration of the 
distribution of electrons are simply connected with the square of a 
number, which varies by unity in passing from one element to the next. 


1J—n later work Rawlinson and Bragg have found that each of these lines is in reality 
a very close double. 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 195 


There appears to be no doubt that the atomic number represents the 
number of units of positive charge carried by the nucleus, which, on 
account of the atomic nature of electricity, can only vary by whole 
numbers and not by fractions. 

It is obvious that the study of X-ray spectra reveals at once 
whether any atomic number is missing, and also affords a remark- 
ably simple method of settling the number of elements possible in 
the rare earth group about which there has been so much difference of 
opinion. Moseley concluded that from aluminium to gold only 
three possible elements were missing which should have atomic num- 
bers 43, 61, 75, and only one element of number 61 appears to be 
missing in the rareearth group. The frequencies of the X-ray spectra 
of these missing elements can be calculated with certainty, and these 
data should prove an invaluable aid in a search for these missing 
elements. It has long been known that nickel and cobalt occupy an 
anomalous position in the periodic table when arranged according to 
atomic weights. This difficulty is now removed, for Moseley found 
that when arranged in order of nucleus charge both elements fall 
into the position to be expected from their chemical properties. 


NUCLEUS CHARGE AND CHEMICAL PROPERTIES. 


It is established by the work of Moseley that the elements can be 
defined by their nucleus charge, and that probably elements exist 
which have all the nucleus charges from 1 for hydrogen to 92 for 
lead. There is, however, another very important consequence that 
follows from this conception of the atom. Disregarding for a mo- 
ment the atomic weight which depends mainly on the structure of the 
nucleus, the main physical and chemical properties of. the atom are 
determined by the nucleus charge and not by the atomic mass. This 
must obviously be the case, for the number and distribution of elec- 
trons around the nucleus is determined by the electric forces between 
the electrons and the nucleus, and this is dependent on the magni- 
tude of the nucleus charge, which may be regarded as a point charge. 
Without entering into the difficult question of the actual distribu- 
tion of the exterior electrons in any atom, it is obvious that the 
number and position of the outlying electrons of the atomic struc- 
ture, which probably mainly influence the chemical and physical 
properties of the atom, are determined by the charge on the nucleus. 
No doubt if the electrons are in motion, their positions relative to the 
nucleus and possibly also their rates of vibration will be shghtly 
influenced by the mass of the nucleus as well as its charge, but the 
general evidence indicates that this effect must be very small. 

We thus see that there is in the structure of every atom a quantity 
which is more fundamental and important than its atomic weight, 


196 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


viz, its nuclear charge. It is known that the variation of the atomic 
weights of the elements with atomic number, while showing certain 
well-marked relationships, shows no definite regularity. From the 
point of view of the nucleus theory, the atomic weight of an element, 
while in some cases approximately proportional to its atomic num- 
ber, is in reality a complicated function of the actual structure of 
the nucleus. The question why the atomic mass should not neces- 
sarily be proportional to the atomic number has already been dis- 
cussed on page 1938. While the main properties of an atom are con- 
trolled by its nuclear charge, the property of gravitation and also 
of radioactivity are to be ascribed mainly, if not entirely, to the 
nucleus. 


RADIOACTIVE ELEMENTS AND THE PERIODIC SERIES. 


Since the nucleus charge of an atom determines the main physical 
and chemical properties of an atom, it is possible that elements may 
exist of equal nuclear charges but different atomic weights. For 
example, if it were possible to add a helium nucleus to the nucleus 
of another atom, it would increase the nuclear charge by two and 
the mass by about four; if instead of the helium nucleus two hydro- 
gen nuclei were added, the charge would be the same, but the mass of 
the resulting atom two units less than with helium. In such a case 
two atoms would be possible of identical nuclear charge but different 
atomic weights. In a similar way it may be possible for elements to 
exist of the same atomic mass but different nuclear charges. This 
would be brought about by the loss or gain of one or more negative 
electrons in the nucleus. 

The study of radioactive elements has in the last year thrown a 
flood of light not only on this problem but on the underlying mean- 
ing of the periodic law of the elements. Russell, Fajans, and Soddy 
independently put forward a remarkable and important generaliza- 
tion in regard to the change of chemical properties of the successive 
products of transformation of the primary radioactive elements. 
This generalization can be very simply expressed in terms of the 
usual arrangement of the elements in groups according to the 
periodic law. It is found that after a transformation in which alpha 
particles are expelled the resulting element has chemical properties 
which shifts its place two groups lower in the direction of diminish- 
ing mass. On the other hand, the element resulting from a beta ray 
transformation shifts one place in the opposite direction. For ex- 
ample, radium, which is in Group II, changes after loss of an alpha 
particle into the emanation into group O, which included all the 
inert gases of the helium-argon type. The emanation after loss of 
another particle becomes radium A, which belongs to Group VI, 
and this in turn becomes radium B belonging to Group IV. Since 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 197 


radium B is transformed by the loss of a beta particle, the resulting 
element, radium C, takes up a position in Group V. By this simple’ 
rule it has been found possible to define the essential chemical prop- 
erties of all known radioactive elements. It was found that on this 
theory one element was missing in the general scheme. This element 
was discovered a few weeks later by Fajans and Géhring and found 
to have the general chemical properties predicted for it. 

This generalization is capable of a very simple explanation on the 
nucleus theory. The loss of an alpha particle of charge 2 lowers 
the nuclear charge of the resulting elements two units; the loss of a 
beta particle, which carries a unit negative charge, raises the nuclear 
charge by one unit. In other words, the atomic number of an 
element shifts two units lower after loss of an alpha particle and 
shifts one unit higher after loss of a beta particle. 

The atomic numbers of the elements in the uranium-radium series 
can be simply deduced from this rule if the atomic number of one 
element is known. We shall see later that the atomic number of 
radium B is 82 and identical with that of lead. The actual atomic 
numbers of the various elements are given in the circles representing 
the atoms in figure 4. It is seen that uranium, the heaviest known 
element, has an atomic number, 92, while the elements radium BP, 
radium D, and the end product, which is believed to be lead, have 
the same atomic number, viz, 82. The evidence of the correctness of 
this striking conclusion will now be discussed. 

As a result of a careful examination of the radioactive substances 
it has been found that in a number of cases elements which are of 
different atomic weights and exhibit different radioactive proper- 
ties yet show identical general physical and chemical behavior. 
For example, the ‘elements radium “B, radium D, and_ lead, 
of atomic weights 214, 210, and 207, respectively, are so closely 
allied in chemical and physical properties that all attempts to 
separate a mixture of any two of them have failed completely. 
This would be explained if the nuclear charges were identical for 
those elements, as the generalization, already referred to, indicates. 
Tf this be the case they should give identical spectra under similar 
conditions. Unfortunately, the elements radium B and radium D 
are in too small quantity to determine their ordinary light spectra, 
but we can compare the X-ray spectrum of lead with that given by 
radium B under the excitation of its own beta rays. Experiments of 
this kind were recently made by Dr. Andrade and the writer, and the 
two spectra were found to be identical within the limits of experi- 
mental error. It is to be anticipated that their light spectra would 
also prove to be identical, or nearly so, for, as previously pointed out, 
the effect of the mass of the nucleus on the spectrum is probably 
very small. 


198 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


The fact that the atoms of these three elements are not identical as 
regards mass or radioactive properties shows that the structure of 
the nucleus is different in each case. 

There is another important deduction that should be mentioned. 
The end product of the uranium-radium series is an inactive element 
which has long been considered to be lead, but it has been difficult 
to verify this conclusion by direct experiment. We have seen that 
the end product has the same atomic number as lead, but should have 
an atomic weight about 206 instead of 207, as found for ordinary 
lead. In a similar way it has been concluded by Soddy and Fajans 
that the end product of thorium has the same atomic number as lead, 
but should have an atomic weight about 208.5. In order to test these 
remarkable conclusions experiments are now in progress by a number 
of investigators in different countries to examine whether the lead 
always found in radioactive minerals, and which presumably has 
partly, if not wholly, a radioactive origin, shows the same atomic 
weight as ordinary lead. Soddy has already found evidence that 
there is a distinct difference in the atomic weights in the direction 
predicted by the theory.? 

The question naturally arises whether some of the ordinary ele- 
ments may not prove to be a mixture of two or even more of these 
isotopes, as they have been termed. Unless the component isotopes 
are present in different proportion in different natural sources of the 
element, it will be difficult to settle this problem by ordinary chemi- 
cal methods. There is one element, however, besides lead, from which 
some interesting evidence has been obtained on this point. Sir J. J 
Thomson found by examining the deflection of the positively charged 
particles produced by an electric discharge through the rare gas 
neon that two elements were present of atomic weights about 20 
(neon) and 22. Aston was able by diffusion experiments to separate 
partially the two components of neon and to show that they differed 
in density, but failed in attempts to separate them by fractional dis- 
tillation in charcoal cooled by liquid air. Such results are to be 
anticipated if neon is a mixture of two isotopes; 1. e., elements of 
identical nuclear charges but different atomic weights. 

It is obvious that this new point of view will result in a systematic 
examination of the elements to test for the possible presence of 
isotopes, and thus give an additional reason for the accurate deter- 
mination of atomic weights for elements obtained from widely dif- 
ferent sources. 


1 Since the delivery of this lecture similar conclusions have been reached by the experi- 
ments of Richards and Lembert in Cambridge and Hénigschmid in Vienna. ‘There still, 
however, remains some doubt as to the actual difference in atomic weight of uranium 
lead, thorium lead, and ordinary lead. A very promising beginning has thus been made 
on the attack of this most important and fundamental problem. 


ae 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER——RUTHERFORD. 199 


DISTRIBUTION OF ELECTRONS IN THE ATOM. 


It is seen that the nucleus theory of the atom offers a simple ex- 
planation of many important facts which have been brought to 
light in recent years, and for this purpose it has not been necessary 
to make any special assumptions as to the actual structure of the 
nucleus, or of the way in which the external electrons are distributed. 
The investigation of the latter problem is beset with many diffi- 
culties; for an electron is attracted toward the nucleus, and even if 
it is in orbital motion, it must, on the electromagnetic theory, lose 
energy by radiation and ultimately fall into the nucleus. It appears 
likely that this difficulty is in reality due to our ignorance of the 
conditions under which an electron radiates energy. According to 
the views outlined in this lecture, the hydrogen atom has the sim- 
plest possible structure, for it consists of a nucleus of one unit 
charge and one negative electron. The question naturally arises 
how such a simple structure can give rise to the complex spectrum 
observed for hydrogen. This problem has been attacked in a series 
of remarkable papers by Bohr, who concludes that the complexity 
of the spectrum is not due to the complexity of the atomic structure 
but to the variety of modes in which an electron can emit radiation. 
Suppose, for example, that a hydrogen atom has lost its negative 
electron. Bohr supposes that an electron falling toward the posi- 
tively charged nucleus may occupy temporarily any one of a number 
of stationary positions fixed relatively to the nucleus. In falling 
from one stationary state to another, radiation is emitted of a definite 
frequency v which is connected with the difference of potential energy 
E of the electron in the two stationary states by E=h v where h is 
Planck’s fundamental constant. On this hypothesis, he has been able 
to account for the series spectra of hydrogen and to deduce directly 
from the theory the value of Balmer’s constant which plays such an 
important part in the spectra of all atoms. In a similar way, the 
helium atom is supposed to consist of a nucleus of two unit charges 
surrounded by two electrons. On this theory, the spectrum of helium 
is connected in a very simple way with that of hydrogen. Bohr also 
pointed out that the Pickering series of spectral lines observed in 
certain stars which were originally attributed to hydrogen must be 
ascribed to helium. This conclusion has since been strongly sup- 
ported by the direct experiments of Fowler and Evans. In a similar 
way, Bohr described the possible distribution of electrons in several 
of the lighter atoms and also discussed the structure of the hydrogen 
molecule, which is composed of two hydrogen nuclei and two elec- 
trons. The heat of combination deduced for the theoretical molecule 
is in fair accord with experiment. He found that two helium atoms 


200 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


were unable to unite to form a molecule—in agreement with a well- 
known property of this gas. 

While there is room for much difference of opinion as to the in- 
terpretation of the rather revolutionary assumptions made by Bohr 
to explain the structure of the simple atoms and molecules, there can 
be no doubt of the great interest and importance of this first attempt 
to deduce the structure of the simple atoms and to explain the origin 
of their spectra. The agreement of the properties of such theoretical 
structures with the actual atoms is in several cases so remarkable 
that it is difficult to believe that the theory is not in some way an 
expression of the actual facts. While much work will be necessary 
before we can hope to understand the structure of any but the 
simplest atoms, a promising beginning has been made in the attack 
on this most difficult and fundamental of problems. 

There seems to be little doubt that the more marked physical and 
chemical properties of an atom are to be attributed to a few outlying 
electrons in the atomic structure. The position and number of these 
valency electrons, as they have been termed by Stark, are defined 
by the magnitude of the nucleus charge. It has previously been 
pointed out that the loss of an alpha particle from a radioactive atom 
changes the position of the element two groups lower in the periodic 
table, while the loss of a beta particle raises it one group higher. 
Consequently it follows that the loss or gain of a unit charge from 
the nucleus of an atom causes it to change its position from one group 
to the next. If, for example, we follow the chemical properties of 
successive elements when the nucleus charge increases by unity, we 
soon reach an element which belongs to the same group as the first, 
although of much higher atomic weight. We must consequently con- 
clude that the number and position of the outlying electrons in the 
structure of the atom passes through successive changes which are 
regularly repeated with increasing atomic weight. Quite apart from 
any detailed knowledge of the electronic distribution of atoms, the 
regular recurrence of elements of similar chemical properties with 
increasing atomic weight is to be anticipated on the general theory 
that an atom is an electrical structure. 


EVOLUTION OF THE ELEMENTS. 


It has long been thought probable that the elements are all built 
up of some fundamental substances, and Prout’s well-known hypothe- 
sis that all atoms are composed of hydrogen is one of the best-known 
examples of this idea. The evidence of radioactivity certainly in- 
dicates that the heavy radioactive elements are in part composed of 
helium, for an atom of the latter appears as a result of many of the 
radioactive transformations. No definite evidence, however, has been 


ee 


CONSTITUTION OF MATTER—RUTHERFORD. 201 


obtained that hydrogen appears as a result of such transformations; 
but as previously pointed out on page 191, helium may prove to be an 
important secondary unit in the structure of heavy atoms. While we 
have thus undoubted evidence of the breaking up of heavy atoms, no 
indication has yet been observed that the radioactive processes are 
reversible under ordinary conditions. Many investigations have been 
made to test whether new elements appear in strong electric dis- 
charges in vacuum tubes. While some of the results obtained are 
difficult of interpretation, no reliable evidence has yet been adduced 
that one element can be transformed into another under such con- 
ditions. 

The question of the evolution of the elements has been attacked 
from another side. Sir Norman Lockyer and others have suggested 
that the elements composing the star are in a state of inorganic 
evolution. In the hottest stars the spectra of hydrogen and helium 
predominate, but with decreasing temperature the spectra becomes 
more complicated and the lines of heavier elements appear. On this 
view it is supposed that the light elements combine with decreasing 
temperature to form the heavier elements. 

There is no doubt that it will prove a very difficult task to bring 
about the transmutation of matter under ordinary terrestrial condi- 
tions. The enormous evolution of energy which accompanies the 
transformation of radioactive matter affords some indication of the 
great intensity of the forces that will be required to build up lighter 
into heavier atoms. On the point of view outlined in these lectures 
the building up of a new atom will require the addition to the 
atomic nucleus of either the nucleus of hydrogen or of helium, or a 
combination of these nuclei. On present data this is only possible 
if the hydrogen or helium atom is shot into the atom with such 
great speed that it passes close to the nucleus. In any case it 
presumes there are forces close to the nucleus which are equivalent 
to forces of attraction for positively charged masses. It is possible 
that the nucleus of an atom may be altered, either by direct col- 
lision of the nucleus with very swift electrons or atoms of helium, 
such as are ejected from radioactive matter. There is no doubt 
that under favorable conditions these particles must pass very close 
to the nucleus, and may either lead to a disruption of the nucleus 
or to a combination with it. Unfortunately, the chance of such a 
disruption or combination is so small under experimental conditions 
that the amount of new matter which is possible of formation within 
a reasonable time would be exceedingly small and so very difficult 
of detection by direct methods. Very penetrating X rays or gamma 
rays may for similar reasons prove to be possible agencies for chang- 
ing atoms. Although it is difficult to obtain direct evidence, I per- 
sonally am inclined to believe that all atoms are built up of positive 


202 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


electrons (hydrogen nuclei) and negative electrons, and that atoms 
are purely electrical structures. 

There can be little doubt that conditions have existed in the past 
in which these electrons have combined to form the atoms of the 
elements, and it may be quite possible under the very intense elec- 
trical disturbances which may exist in hot stars that the process 
of combination and dissociation of atoms still continues. 

In these lectures I have tried to give an idea of some modern 
views of the structure of the atoms and of the great variety of 
new and powerful methods which have been applied to the attack 
of this problem in recent years. We have seen that a heavy atom 
is undoubtedly a complex electrical system consisting of positively 
and negatively charged particles in rapid motion. The general 
evidence indicates that each atom contains at its center a massive 
charged nucleus or core of very small dimensions surrounded by a 
cluster of electrons, probably in rapid motion, which extend for 
distances from the center very great compared with the diameter 
of the nucleus. Such a view affords a reasonable and simple ex- 
planation of many important facts obtained in recent years, but so 
far only a beginning has been made in the attack on the detailed 
structure of atoms—that fundamental problem which lies at the 
basis of physics and chemistry. 


SUBMARINE SIGNALING—THE PROTECTION OF SHIP- 
PING BY A WALL OF SOUND AND OTHER USES OF 
THE SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH OSCILLATOR.? 


By R. F. Brake. 


Compared with other forms of transportation, the amount of 
energy necessary to transport water-borne freight is very small, 
and its cost would be cheap indeed if it were not for the dangers of 
the sea. We have fogs and rocky coasts, shoals and icebergs, cur- 
rents and storms to guard against, and these add. immensely to the 
expense. Of this we have had a very recent instance, for, as the 
result of the loss of the Titanic, vessels carrying passengers are now 
constructed with a complete double bottom extending above the 
water line; in other words, instead of a single ship we must now 
have two complete ships, one entirely inclosed by the other. And 
the loss of the Empress of Ireland indicates that even this may not 
be adequate. 

Bit by bit the dangers which beset the early navigators have 
been overcome. The chart told him the best course to take from 
one point to another. The mariner’s compass enabled him to main- 
tain his course when the stars were blotted out by clouds. With 
sextant and chronometer he located his position, with log and 
soundings he guarded himself when a sight could not be obtained. 
More recently wireless telegraphy has enabled him to call assistance 
in time of danger. But with all this, many dangers remain. The 
more important of these are due to fog. 

The North Sea, the English Channel, and the Grand Banks, the 
New England coast, the western coast of the United States, British 
Columbia, and Alaska, and other points are all of them subject to 
fogs, sometimes lasting for weeks at a time, and it is therefore not 
surprising that thousands of lives are still lost at sea each year. 

And there is not only loss of life; the pecuniary loss is also very 
great. It is no unusual occurrence for a score of steamers to be tied 
up at one time, unable to enter harbor on account of fog or of the 
combination of fog and rough weather. 


1 Reprinted by permission from the Proceedings of the American Institute of Electrical 
Engineers, October, 1914. 


203 


204 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


In such a case the loss to the steamship companies in interest and 
depreciation on ships and cargoes and in wages may easily amount 
to more than $50,000 per day, and this loss occurs not once but fre- 
quently during a year, and on many routes. 

In addition to this, the danger of collision in fog adds very con- 
siderably to the cost of insurance, and some of our worst disasters 
have occurred in this way. 

Aside from those dangers peculiar to fog there remains a number 
of others. A continuance of cloudy weather or abnormal ocean 
currents, or both, may throw the navigator out of his reckoning and 
place him on a rocky shore a score of miles away from the safe route 
he assumes himself to be following. 

Icebergs still remain a menace in spite of all the efforts which 
have been made to guard against them. From time to time statements 
have been made that apparatus has been devised which is capable of 
locating their presence, but in every instance in which such apparatus 
has been tested it has proved a failure. 

The history of systematic marine protection by means of light- 
houses and beacons does not go back very far. It is true that there 
were a few lighthouses, such as the Pharos of Alexandria, centuries 
ago, but even in quite recent years a European Government received 
a petition for compensation from the inhabitants of a seacoast district 
on the ground that the erection of a lighthouse had deprived them 
of one of their principal sources of income, to wit, luring vessels on 
near-by shoals by means of false lights. 

The systematic employment of sound signals for marine protection 
is of still more recent date and has never been carried out fully, in 
spite of the fact that many of our greatest scientists, for example, 
Tyndall and Rayleigh, have devoted special attention to this matter. 

One reason for this is that sound signals produced in air are very 
erratic in their range and intensity, so much so as to be on many 
occasions absolutely misleading. This is due to the fact that when a 
fog horn is blown the sound may be carried by the wind or may be 
reflected or refracted by layers of air of different densities, with the 
result that the sound may be audible many miles away, while there 
may be a zone of complete silence extending from a few hundred 
yards in front of the signal to a distance of 4 or 5 miles. 

As this phenomenon is by no means infrequent, the result has been 
to discredit more or less this type of signal, and it will be evident 
that the knowledge that a siren had been installed at a certain dan- 
gerous point might prove a source of danger instead of a protection. 

As already stated, many eminent men have worked upon this 
problem, but it was not until Arthur J. Mundy, of Boston, suggested 
the use of water instead of air as the medium for transmitting signals 
and proved its value by practical demonstration that any great 


SUBMARINE SIGNALING—BLAKE. 205 


advance was made. Water has many advantages over air for this 
purpose. 

1. In the first place, it is free from the dangerous zones of silence 
which occur when the signals are produced in air. 

2. In the second place, the absorption of the sound is much less 
in water, and consequently the signal is not only absolutely reliable 
but is transmitted to a distance many times greater than when it is 
transmitted through air. 

3. The sound is not carried away by the wind in stormy weather, 
as is the case with the siren. 

4. It is not affected by atmospheric disturbances, as is the case of 
wireless. 

5. It permits of the accurate determination of the direction from 
which the sound is proceeding, which is not the case with either the 
air siren or wireless telegraphy. 

‘Some recent instances where ships have signaled by wireless that 
they were in distress but have had to remain without assistance for 
many hours, and in one instance for more than a day, because their 
location could not be determined by the vessels coming to their aid, 
will be familiar to everyone. 

All these advantages indicated clearly years ago the advisability 
of developing apparatus for signaling by means of sound waves 
transmitted through the water itself. 

But it is one thing to conceive the idea and another élite to 
develop a practical system; and it may be of interest to know that 
up to the present time the sum of a million dollars has been invested 
in developing submarine signaling, so far without monetary return. 

The first method which was employed for producing the sound 
was through the striking of a bell, and the method of receipt of the 
signals was by means of a microphone attached to the skin of the 
ship. Neither the original bell nor the original microphone attach- 
ment was satisfactory. 

It would be impossible in the space permitted to discuss even briefly 
the innumerable experiments made with different sizes of bell, with 
different materials for the bell, with different methods of producing 
the blow, the precautions en to eliminate electrolytic action, with 
different types of microphone, with different methods of mounting 
the microphone on the side of the ship, with the experiments made 
to minimize water and other noises. It will be sufficient to say that 
finally the work of Mundy, Wood, Fay, Williams, and others resulted 
in a completely practical system. 

The submarine bell in use on the lightships is actuated by com- 
pressed air stored in a reservoir. The actuating wheel has projections 
mounted on it so-that when the wheel revolves a number of strokes 


206 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


follow each other, the different intervals being peculiar to the dif- 
ferent signal stations, so that the captain of a ship by counting the 
strokes of the bell can determine what lghtship is producing the 
sound. 

In order to receive the sound it has been found absolutely necessary 
to suspend the microphone in a tank of water, for this is the only 
method of cutting out the water noises and the noises due to ma- 
chinery, etc., on board the ship which otherwise drown out the sound 
of the bell. 

One of these small water tanks, containing a microphone of a spe- 
cial type, is attached to each side of the bow inside of the ship. 
From each tank wires are run to a device which is called the indi- 
cator box, so arranged that by throwing the handle to one side the 
starboard microphone is connected to the telephone, and by throw- 
ing the handle to the other side the port microphone is connected. 

Tt will be obvious that once the bell is picked up the captain has 
only to turn his vessel until the sound is heard with equal intensity 
on each side, to know that his ship is then pointing in the direction 
from which the sound is coming, and in this way he can take com- 
pass bearings of the lightship on which the bell is situated. 

The importance of this method will be at once perceived. No 
matter how stormy or how foggy the weather may be, it enables the 
captain of a ship, on making land, to obtain at once the compass 
bearings of the nearest lightship or lighthouse fitted with a bell. 

How many vessels and how many lives this device has saved even 
in the few years during which it has been in use it would be im- 
possible to tell. Less sensational than the wireless telegraph, it may 
be questioned whether its actual practical utility to the merchant 
marine has not been greater. 

Compressed air, or an electromagnetic mechanism, may swing the 
hammer, or the bell may be operated by the waves themselves. <A 
type much used is a bell buoy which may be anchored off a shoal, 
and will give submarine warning day and night without frie 
attention. A large vane extends frond one side of the mechanism. As 
the buoy swings up and down in the water, the vane by means of a 
ratchet compresses a spring which amibcnigiae sly releases and operates 
the bell hammer. 

It will be evident that even if no further development had been 
made the system would be and is a complete and practical one. Its 
universal adoption would greatly minimize, if not entirely prevent, 
disasters due to errors of ship position. 

But, with the very success of this system it became evident to those 
in charge of its development that still further advances might be 
conceived as possible, especially in three directions. 


SUBMARINE SIGNALING—BLAKE. 207 


1. Suppose the sound-producing apparatus could be so constructed 
- as to be operated from moving ships by a telegraph key. If this 
were achieved, it would be possible for one ship to signal to another 
in fog, to communicate its position, its direction and its speed, and 
eliminate all dangers of collision. It would also be possible to signal 
between submarines or between battleships and submarines, and to 
communicate between battleships in action without interference from 
the enemy, and though all masts were shot away. 

2. Suppose the range of the sound-producing apparatus could be 
extended so as to cover a radius of 25 or 50 miles. Then it would be 
within our power so to encircle the coast of every nation with what 
has been felicitously termed. “a wall of sound,” that no vessel, under 
whatsoever circumstances of loss of reckoning, of variable currents, 
of fogs, and storms, could approach the coast without being warned 
of that fact and notified of its exact position on that coast and of 
the direction of the nearest lightship. 

3. If the sound-producing apparatus could be constructed so as 
to be actuated by telephonic currents, it would be possible to trans- 
mit speech through the water. 

It will be of interest to consider some of the difficulties which 
had to be overcome before the desired results could be obtained. 

The most serious of these obstacles was the fact that water is 
almost incompressible. 

Now, since sound is a compressional wave in the medium through 
which it is transmitted, it is evident that any apparatus which is 
to transmit sound through water must be capable of exerting very 
great force. In the bell this is accomplished by the hammer blow 
of the clapper, and any electric or other apparatus which is to be 
used for submarine signaling must have a force comparable with 
that produced by the impact of a hammer on an anvil. 

A second and very grave difficulty arises from the fact that if 
the water is to be compressed, some material object must be set in 
motion to compress it, and that object, which must have sufficient 
mechanical] strength to stand the stress, and must therefore be of 
considerable size, must start from rest, reach its highest velocity, 
and come to rest in one one-thousandth part of a second, if a musical 
note having a pitch of 500 per second is to be produced. The forces 
of acceleration thus necessitated are very large. 

A third difficulty arises from the fact that in order to telegraph 
at a speed of 20 words per minute the time allowable for a single 
dot is very small. As the average word consists of 5 letters, and 
the average letter has a length equivalent to 7 dots, an apparatus 
capable of telegraphing at the rate of 20 words per minute must 
be capable of making 700 dots per minute, or a single dot in some- 
thing less than one-tenth of a second. 


208 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


If the signal is to have individual quality, so.as to be readily dis- 
tinguishable from other noises, and so as to be separable by resonance 
from other notes, each dot must consist of at least 10 impulses. 

Thus we arrive at the conclusion that whatever device is used it 
must be capable of producing at least 100 compressional waves in a 
single second in order to telegraph satisfactorily at the rate of 20 
words per minute. 

If this same apparatus is to transmit speech through the water, 
it must be still more rapid in its action and must be capable of pro- 
ducing several thousand compressional waves per second. 

The above were 
the three main dif- 
ficulties in the way. 
Of course there 
were many others; 
for example, the 
apparatus must not 
weigh too much; it 
must not be affected 
by water or change 
of temperature; it 
must be simple in 
construction; it 
must be easily ap- 
plied to the ship; 
positive in its ac- 
tion; must not re- 
quire adjustment 
after being once set 

Fig. 1. up; and must be 

able to stand all 

kinds of ill treatment at the hands of unskilled operators. It will 

be unnecessary to go over the ground taken by the development, and 

we will therefore proceed at once to describe the apparatus as finally 
developed by Prof. R. A. Fessenden. 

The device used is termed an “ oscillator,” and its construction is 
shown in cross section in the drawing, figure 1. . 

In the drawing the iron of the magnetic circuit and the copper 
tube are shaded. The magnetizing coil is crosshatched. The moving 
part ts the copper tube A. This hes in the air gap of a magnetic 
field formed by a ring magnet B, built up in two parts, as shown in 
longitudinal section in figure 2. 

The ring magnet is energized by the coil C, and produces an in- 
tense magnetic flux which flows from one pole of the ring magnet 
across the air gap containing the upper part of the copper tube, 


%, 
O 
CORKS 
LRKO 
CKD 
OD y 
ratete: 
oe, 4 


SUBMARINE SIGNALING—BLAKE, 209 


thence through the central stationary armature D, thence across the 
other air gap to the lower pole face of the ring magnet, and thence 
through the yoke of the ring magnet back to the upper pole face. 

This field is very much stronger than that in the ordinary dynamo, 
there being more than 15,000 lines for each square centimeter of 
cross-section. 

Around the armature is wound a fixed winding, which we will 
call the armature winding and which is reversed in direction so that 
one-half of the winding is clockwise and the other counterclockwise. 

When an alternating current is passed through this armature 
winding it. induces another alternating current in the copper tube. 


Only by this construction has it been found possible to obtain 
the enormous force and rapidity necessary to compress the water 
and to overcome the inertia of the moving parts of the mechanism. 

In order to apply this force to the work of compression, the cop- 
per tube is attached to solid disks of steel, which in turn are attached 
to a steel diaphragm 1 inch thick, which may be made part of the 
side of the ship. In practice the tube is provided with lugs, and is 
held between two disks drawn together on the tube by a 1-inch 
vanadium-steel rod and a right-and-left-handed screw thread. 

Telegraphing is accomplished by means of an ordinary telegraph 
key placed in the main armature circuit. 

Although an ordinary telegraph key is used, there is no sparking 
at the contacts. This may surprise electrical engineers familiar 
with the sluggish action and vicious arcing commonly found asso- 
ciated with the operation of electromagnetic apparatus of this size 
and power, more especially in view of the fact that a very high 

18618°—sm 1915——14 


210 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


frequency is used, 500 per second, and that there is no laminated iron 
used in the construction of the apparatus. 

The secret of this lies in the fact that the armature has substan- 
tially no self-induction, and no eddy currents are generated in the 
apparatus. This is because the copper tube forms, as will be seen, 
the short-circuiting secondary of a transformer, of which the arma- 
ture winding is the primary. 

This eliminates the self-induction of the armature winding. In 
addition the upper and lower portions of the winding are wound 
in opposite directions, and therefore there is no mutual induction 
between the field coil circuit and the armature circuit. With this 
construction the amount of magnetic leakage in the armature G¢ir- 
cuit is very small, only a trifle more than if the armature core were 
of wood, and as there is no alternating magnetic flux in the iron, 
there are no eddy currents. 

As regards the capacity in kilowatts of this apparatus, it is large. 
The armature, being wound in grooves in the armature core, so as 
to withstand the mechanical forces acting upon it, is well cooled. 

The copper tube has no insulation to be affected, and on account 
of its large cooling surface and high permissible temperature of 
operation can carry very high currents without injury. 

When the oscillator is placed on a vessel or hung overboard from 
a lightship, a large water-tight diaphragm is attached to the oscil- 
- lator. This particular type of oscillator was first tested by suspend- 
ing it in 12 feet of water at the Boston Lightship and the signals 
were heard plainly with a microphone lowered overboard from a 
tug at Peaked Hill Bar Buoy, 31 miles away. Since that time tests 
have been made with oscillators installed in the fore-peak tank of 
the Devereux, a collier of the Metropolitan Coal Co., and also with 
an oscillator mounted on a diaphragm made part of the hull of the 
vessel. The signals have been heard upward of 20 miles from the 
Devereux running at her regular speed of 8 knots. Full power has 
not been employed on any of the tests, and it is more than prob- 
able that much longer distances can be obtained in the future. 

In addition to the tests already described the oscillator has been 
temporarily installed on submarine boats and proved itself of im- 
mense value, and demonstrated that a flotilla of submarines equipped 
with oscillators will be able to make a combined attack on an enemy, 
only one needing to show its periscope in order to direct the others, 
or all of them can be directed by the mother ship. It therefore makes 
possible a whole field of submarine maneuvers heretofore out of the 
question, and perhaps, most important, it removes the principal 
danger these boats have had to face, the risk of being run into. 

So much for the apparatus when in use as a sound generator. The 
signals produced by the oscillator can, of course, be received by 


SUBMARINE SIGNALING—BLAKE, Qtt 


water-immersed microphones of the usual type, but one would per- 
haps not anticipate the possibility of using the oscillator as a re- 
ceiver in view of the fact that the diaphragm is of solid steel and 
weighs, with the copper tube and its attachments, considerably over 
100 pounds; but the oscillator, like the ordinary electric motor, is also 
capable of acting as a generator, and on account of its high efficiency 
as a motor is a very efficient one. 

The same oscillator is therefore used for sending and for receiving, 
a switch being thrown in one direction when it is desired to tele- 
graph under water and thrown the other way when it is desired to 
listen in. 

Tn addition to telegraphing and receiving messages, the oscillator 
can also be used for telephoning under water. Sentences have been 
transmitted at 800 yards and conversation at more than 400 yards, 
and this was accomplished with the use of an ordinary telephone 
transmitter and six dry cells. 

It seems evident, therefore, that with more power much greater 
distances can be reached. Long distances are not, however, neces- 
sary, as, even with a distance of 1 mile, it will be readily understood 
that this method of underwater telephoning will be of great use as a 
means of communicating between submarines while submerged and 
between ships in fog, as the captains of the vessels can talk directly 
to each other instead of transmitting and receiving through a tele- 
graph operator. 

Some other uses to which the oscillator may be put may be men- 
tioned briefly. 

One which will at once suggest itself is the steering of torpedoes 
by sound under water. The idea of so operating torpedoes is not a 
new one, and has occurred to a number of inventors, but until the 
present time no method of accomplishing it has been developed. With 
this new source of sound, however, the method should be practicable. 

Another use is as a means for obtaining soundings. If we take a 
commutator wheel, with one live segment and two brushes, one con- 
nected to the alternating-current generator and the other to the tele- 
phone receiver, it will be evident that when the commutator segment 
makes contact with the brush connected to the generator a sound 
will be produced by the oscillator. When the live contact passes 
away from the brush the sound will cease. This sound wave will 
travel outward, and on reaching the bottom will be reflected and 
travel back again to the ship. Meantime no sound will be heard in 
the telephone receiver, but if the brush connected to the telephone 
receiver be shifted in the direction of rotation of the commutator 
until it makes contact with the live segment of the commutator at 
precisely the instant at which the reflected sound wave has come back 
and impinged on the oscillator diaphragm then a sound will be 


212 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


heard. Since sound travels in water at a velocity of approximately 
4,400 feet per second, if the distance be 100 feet, the time taken by 
the sound in traveling from ship to bottom and from bottom to ship 
will be approximately one-twentieth of a second. 

In April, 1914, some tests were made on the U. S. revenue cutter 
Miami to see whether soundings could be taken in the manner above 
indicated. As the commutator had not been completed, a temporary 
apparatus with a stop watch wasused. The echo from the bottom was 
plainly heard not only on the oscillator but in the wardroom and in 
the hold of the ship without any instruments whatever. The elapsed 
time corresponded to the depth shown on the chart, and the proposed 
method was proved to be feasible. 

The chief object of the tests on the Miami was, however, to deter- 
mine whether a reflection from icebergs could be obtained, and this 
was proved beyond question. The apparatus used was the same as 
for taking soundings. 

A signal was sent on the oscillator, the echo from the bottom heard, 
and then the echo from the iceberg came in. To make sure that the 
second echo was not also from the bottom, the distance from the 
Miami to the iceberg was varied from about 100 yards to 24 miles. 
The elapsed time between the signal and the echo from bottom re- 
mained the same, but the elapsed time of echo from the iceberg varied 
with the distance and corresponded very closely to the position of the 
iceberg determined by the range finder. Moreover, it was found that 
it made no difference whether the face of the iceberg was normal to 
the path of the sound or not, thus showing that the echo was due not 
to specular reflection but to diffraction fringes. 

When the I/iamé had gone 24 miles from the iceberg a heavy storm 
made it necessary to postpone further tests, and continued rough 
weather made further tests impossible, as the oscillator was not per- 
manently installed but had to be lowered overboard. The echoes at 
21 miles were, however, loud, and there can be no doubt that they 
would have been heard at greater distances. (See appended report 
of Capt. Quinan.) 

To sum up: The oscillator represents an important step forward 
in the science of navigation. It makes it possible to surround the 
coasts with a wall of sound so that no ship can get into dangerous 
waters without warning, to make collisions between ships possible 
only through negligence. Although no sufficient tests have been made 
to warrant the statement that icebergs can be detected under all 
circumstances or that soundings can be taken at full speed, what 
evidence there is points that way. For naval purposes it provides 
an auxiliary means of short-distance signaling that is available at 
all times and that can not be shot away, and it widens the possibili- 
ties of submarine boats to an extent we can not yet fully grasp. 


SUBMARINE SIGNALING—BLAKE. 913 


REPORT OF CAPT. J. H. QUINAN, OF THE U. S. REVENUE CUTTER “ MIAMI,” 
ON THE ECHO FRINGE METHOD OF DETECTING ICEBERGS AND TAKING 
CONTINUOUS SOUNDINGS.! 


“We stopped near the largest berg and by range finder and sextant 
computed it to be 450 feet long and 130 feet high. Although we had 
_ gotten within 150 yards of the perpendicular face of this berg and 
obtained no echo from the steam whistle, Prof. Fessenden and Mr. 
Blake, representatives of the Submarine Signal Co., obtained satis- 
factory results with the submarine electric oscillator placed 10 feet 
below surface, getting distinct echoes from the berg at various dis- 
tances, from one-half mile to 24 miles. These echoes were not only — 
heard through the receivers of the oscillator in the wireless room 
but were plainly heard by the officers in the wardroom and engine 
room storeroom below the water line. Sound is said to travel at 
the rate of 4,400 feet per second under water. The distance of the 
ship, as shown by the echoes with stop watch, corresponded with the 
distance of the ship as determined by range finder. On account of 
the great velocity of sound through water, it was our intention to try 
the oscillator at a greater distance for even better results, but a thick 
snowstorm drove us into shelter on the Banks again. 

* * * * * * * 

“On the morning of April 27 anchored in 31 fathoms of water with 
75 fathoms of chain in order to make current observations. * * * 
Prof. Fessenden also took advantage of the smooth sea to further 
experiment with his oscillator in determining by echo the depth of 
water, the result giving 36 fathoms, which seemed to me very close.” 


1From the Hydrographic Office Bulletin of May 13, 1914. 


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THE EARTHQUAKE IN THE MARSICA, CENTRAL ITALY.1 


By ERNESTO MANCINI, 


Secretary of the Royal Academy of the Lincei. 


[With 1 plate.] 


On the 18th of January, 1915, at 53 minutes past 7 in the morning, 
a terrible earthquake devastated the Marsica, a rich and flourishing 


c Perugia 


AsSisr 


a 
Ly x at 3 se 
woNatiy 
si ig ann nun ai Sanam 
Garsou 
Monterotundo i ae ban Cela tina 


Tivoh 
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yROMA 


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vere 


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frakat oy anon 3 Shesth 9 sangrd 


Fi@. 1.—Zone of maximum intensity of the earthquake of Jan. 13, 1915. 


region of Italy, in 
the southern part 
of the Aquilian 
Abruzzi and the 
neighboring lo- 
calities, the Val- 
leys of the Salto, 
of the Latium, and 
of the Liri. The 
disaster had terri- 
ble consequences; 
it caused the de- 
struction of a num- 
ber of small cities, 
market towns, and 
villages, and the 
death of a great 
number of people. 
The extent of the 
cataclysm and un- 
favorable weather 
conditions with 


heavy rain and snow, rendered aid laborious and difficult. 

For some weeks the scientific observations made concerning the de- 
tails of the terrible phenomenon have been collected, coordinated, 
and discussed. As a result of the preliminary observations of several 
scientists of the Meteorological and Geodynamical Bureau of Rome, 
of which Prof. Palazzo is the director, the following notice was pre- 


pared: 


1 Translated by permission from the Revue générale des Sciences, Mar. 15, 1915. 


215 


216 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


If an attempt is made to trace the isoseismic curves of the principal 
shock, it will be seen that the area most affected (fig. 1) contains 
alluvial strata of the dried-up Lake of Fucino, and embraces a zone 
to a high degree sedimentary and of Karstic origin. This precludes 
any volcanic cause for the earthquake; it is likely, on the contrary, 
that it was due to a sudden modification of the deep stratifications of 
the earth’s crust. The region of Marsica which was the epicenter of 


——- 
3S yracuse 
= 


Fic. 2.—Distribution of the Italian earthquakes along a fixed line, according to Prof. Omori. 


the earthquake, although having a seismic character, had not until 
that time been the scene of any great catastrophes. 

The present phenomenon, adds Dr. Martinelli, was in a way pre- 
dicted by science. In fact, Prof. Omori, in a study of the great Ital- 
ian earthquakes from 1688 to 1908, in Sicily, Calabria, and in central 
Italy, came to the conclusion by an examination of the stricken area 
that earthquakes follow a determined line and that an area in which 
an earthquake takes place never coincides with that of a previous 
quake. In a chart of southern Italy (fig. 2) traced by the learned 
Japanese seismologist it will be noticed that the destructive area of 


EARTHQUAKE IN THE MARSICA—MANCINI. 217 


the earthquake of January 13 is on this line and does not coincide 
with any other seismic locality. However, Dr. Martinelli, who has 
gone over with great care the seismic history of the regions traversed 
by the axial line of Prof. Omori, thinks that it is merely a curious 
coincidence; in fact, in tracing this line Prof. Omori has not con- 
sidered other important earthquakes, which would have altered the 
direction of it. 

The seismogram recorded by Agamennone’s seismograph with 
horizontal pendulums is remarkable for its amplitude. The regis- 
tering apparatus of the Bureau at Rome, except for the presence of 
lateral stop screws, would have been put out of action by the shock, as 
happened to the seismograph of the Observatory of Rocca di Papa. 
The great seismograph of Strassburg was dismounted by the vio- 
lence of the shock, and the passage of the seismic waves was recorded 
by all the sensitive seismographic instruments in the world, even to 
Japan, Australia, and Canada. The seismogram shown here (fig. 
3) is that traced by a bifilar pendulum at the Seismologie Observa- 
tory of Cartuja, in Granada; at P and S are shown the beginnings 
of the preliminary quakes. 

The shock commenced at exactly 7h. 52m. 55s. in the direction 
K. 6° N., the direction from Rome to the region affected by the dis- 
aster. During that day and in the days following several small 
repetitions of the phenomenon were noticed. Concerning these repe- 
titions, Prof. Agamennone observed on the instruments of the 
Geodynamic Observatory of Rocca di Papa, up to the 6th of Feb- 
ruary, 750 shocks, occurring sometimes at intervals of less than a 
minute apart, revealing the state of continual convulsions of the 
earth in the epicentral area. 

The position of the epicenter of the earthquake has not yet been 
exactly established. This uncertainty and the enormity of the devas- 
tation wrought in the Valley of the Liri have led Agamennone to 
believe in the existence not of a single center but of two separate 
seismic centers which came into action either at the same instant or 
one immediately following the other, as occurs in earthquakes spoken 
of as “in relays.” It might even be that the epicenter had a linear 
form of considerable length and for reasons of a geologic nature the 
devastation was manifested in two widely separated localities. 

From the preliminary researches carried on by Prof. Oddone on the 
sites of the disaster, relating to the details of the seismic waves, to 
their transmission, speed, height, etc., it would seem that it can already 
be deduced that the complete period of the waves was 0.7 second, the 
length of the waves from summit to summit about 20 meters, with a 
height of 20 centimeters. The mean speed of transmission, according 
to Agamennone, appeared to be about 7.69 meters per second. The 
bulging movement of the ground caused the destruction of the walls 


218 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


of buildings, a ruin which became even more serious because of other 
eddying motions due to the combination of longitudinal and trans- 
versal vibrations coming from the depths of the hypocenter to the 
epicenter at the surface of the ground. 

The number of victims of the earthquake is estimated at more than 
25,000. The greater part of the cities, market towns, and villages 
in the region affected were entirely destroyed, being reduced to vast 
heaps of ruins, among which rescuers went in, braving the great 
dangers and with a fine disregard of self, to the aid of those caught 
in the ruins. One of the cities where the shocks were most destruc- 


Comp. W 20°s - E20°N 


etc, 


Awaba ALA, 
. a ih para he 
O* 59-37 6*s5~44° 


Fic. 3.—Seismogram of the earthquake of Jan. 13, 1915, recorded at the Seismological Observatory 
of Cartuja, in Granada. 


tive was Avezzano, as shown by the two accompanying photographs 
reproduced on plate 1; from a population of 13,000 inhabitants only 
2,300 were saved. Several persons still living were found after a 
long imprisonment underground, and among these the most ex- 
traordinary case is that of a peasant who, having taken refuge under 
an arch of his ruined stable, lived for 24 days, having for nourish- 
ment only a little water which leaked through the ruins, and he came 
forth from his prison in quite good condition. 

This frightful disaster, which wiped out one of the most beautiful 
and thriving regions of Italy, has excited everywhere the warmest 
expressions of sympathy for a country so grievously stricken. Be- 
fore the immensity of this misfortune the Government and citizens of 
Italy have united in a great charitable effort to aid the victims of 
this new calamity and to assure the life and future of the devastated 
region. 


PLATE 1. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Mancini. 


.— RUINS OF AVEZZANO. THE REMAINS OF THE BANK OF 
NAPLES 


1 


LACE. 


. THE TORLONIA r& 


RUINS OF AVEZZANO 


2 


ATLANTIS.? 


By PIERRE TERMIER, 


Member of the Academy of Sciences, Director of Service of the Geologic Chart 
of France. 


There is a somber poem, that of Atlantis, as it is unfolded to our 
eyes, marvelously concise and simple, in two of Plato’s dialogues. 
We understand, after having read it, why all of antiquity and the 
Middle Ages, from Socrates to Columbus, for nineteen hundred years, 
gave the name “Sea of Darkness” to the ocean region which was 
the scene of so frightful a cataclysm. They knew it, that sea, full 
of crimes and menaces, wilder and more inhospitable than any other; 
and they questioned fearfully what there was beyond its mists, and 
what ruins, still splendid after a hundred centuries of immersion, 
_were hidden beneath its peaceful waves. To brave a voyage across 
the Sea of Darkness and to pass the gulf where sleeps Atlantis, 
Columbus required a superhuman courage, an almost irrational con- 
fidence in the idea that he had apprehended the true shape of the 
earth, an almost supernatural desire to bear the Christ—after the 
manner of his patron, St. Christopher, the sublime river ferryman— 
to the unknown peoples who so long were awaiting Him, “ seated in 
the shadow of death,” 


On the mystie shores of the western world. 


After the voyages of Columbus terror disappears, curiosity re- 
mains. Geographers and historians are occupied with the question 
of Atlantis; leaning over the abyss they seek to determine the exact 
location of the engulfed island, but, finding nowhere any definite 
indication, many of them slip into skepticism. They doubt Plato, 
thinking that this great genius might indeed have imagined, from 
beginning to end, the fable of Atlantis, or that he mistook for an 
island of gigantic dimensions a portion of Mauritania or of Sene- 
gambia. Others transpose Atlantis into northern Europe, while 
others at length do not hesitate to identify it with all America. The 
poets alone remain faithful to the beautiful legend; the poets who, 


1 Lecture given before the Institut Océanographique of Paris Noy. 30, 1912. Translated 
by permission from Bulletin de l’Institut Océanographique, No. 256, 19138. 


219 


220 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


according to the lofty phrase of Léon Bloy, “ne sont sfirs que de ce 
qu’ils devinent ” [are sure of only what they dream]; the poets, who 
would never be satisfied with an Atlantic Ocean which had no drama 
in its past, and who would not be resigned to the belief that the 
divine Plato might have deceived them, or that he might himself 
have been entirely mistaken. 

It may be, indeed, that the poets were once more right. After a 
long period of disdainful indifference, observe how in the last few 
years science is returning to the study of Atlantis. How many 
naturalists, geologists, zoologists, or botanists, are asking one another 
to-day whether Plato has not transmitted to us, with slight amplifica- 
tion, a page from the actual history of mankind. No affirmation is 
yet permissible; but it seems more and more evident that a vast 
region, continental or made up of great islands, has collapsed west 
of the Pillars of Hercules, otherwise called the Strait of Gibraltar, 
and that its collapse occurred in the not far distant past. In any 
event, the question of Atlantis is placed anew before men of science; 
and since I do not believe that it can ever be solved without the aid 
of oceanography, I have thought it natural to discuss it here, in this 
temple of maritime science, and to call to such a problem, long 
scorned but now being revived, the attention of oceanographers, as 
well as the attention of those who, though immersed in the tumult 
of cities, lend an ear to the distant murmur of the sea. 

Let us first, if you please, again read Plato’s narrative. It is in the 
dialogue called “ Timeeus,” or “ Concerning Nature.” There are four 
speakers: Timeus, Socrates, Hermocrates, and Critias. Critias has 
the floor; he is speaking of Solon, and of a journey that this wise law- 
giver made to Sais, in the delta of Egypt. An old Egyptian priest 
profoundly amazes Solon by revealing to him the history of the begin- 
ning of Athens, all but forgotten by the Athenians. 

I will make no secret of it with you, Solon [says the priest], I agree to 
satisfy your curiosity, out of respect for you and for your country, and, above 
all, in order to honor the goddess, our common patroness, who reared and estab- 
lished your city, Athens, offspring of the Earth and Vulcan, and a thousand years 
later our own city, Sais. Since the foundation of the latter our sacred books 
tell of a lapse of 8,000 years. I will then entertain you briefly with the laws 
and the finest exploits of the Athenians during the 9,000 years which have 
elapsed since Athens began to live. Among so many great deeds of your citi- 
zens there is one which must be placed above all else. The records inform us 
of the destruction by Athens of a singularly powerful army, an army which 
eame from the Atlantic Ocean and which had the effrontery to invade Europe 
and Asia; for this sea was then navigable, and beyond the strait which you 


call the Pillars of Hercules there was an island larger than Libya and even 
Asia. From this island one could easily pass to other islands, and from them 


1The latest comer of these poets of Atlantis is a young girl, Emilie de Villers (Les 
Ames de la Mer [The Souls of the Sea], Paris, 1911, pub. Eug. Figuiére). 


ATLANTIS—TERMIER. Pe 


to the entire continent which surrounds the interior sea. What there is on 
this side of the strait of which we are speaking resembles a vast gateway, the 
entrance of which might be narrow, but it is actually a sea, and the land which 
surrounds it is a real continent. In the Island Atlantis reigned Kings of amaz- 
ing power. They had under their dominion the entire island, as well as several 
other islands and some parts of the continent. Besides, on the hither side of 
the strait, they were still reigning over Libya as far as Egypt and over Europe 
as far as the Tyrrhenian. All this power was once upon a time united in order by 
a single blow to subjugate our country, your own, and all the peoples living on 
the hither side of the strait. It was then that the strength and courage of 
Athens blazed forth. By the valor of her soldiers and their superiority in the 
military art, Athens was supreme among the Hellenes; but, the latter having 
been forced to abandon her, alone she braved the frightful danger, stopped the 
invasion, piled victory upon victory, preserved from slavery nations still free, 
and restored to complete independence all those who, like ourselves, live on 
this side of the Pillars of Hercules. Later, with great earthquakes and inunda- 
tions, in a single day and one fatal night, all who had been warriors against you 
were swallowed up. The Island of Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea. Since 
that time the sea in these quarters has become unnavigable; vessels can not 
pass there because of the sands which extend over the site of the buried isle.? 

Here surely is a narrative which has not at all the coloring of a 
fable. It is of an exactness almost scientific. It may be thought that 
the dimensions of the Island of Atlantis are slightly exaggerated 
here, but we must remember that the Egyptian priest did not know 
the immensity of Asia, and that the words “larger than Asia” have 
not in his mouth the significance that they have to-day. Everything 
else is perfectly clear and entirely probable. A large island, off the 
Strait of Gibraltar, mother of a numerous, strong, and warlike race; 
other smaller islands, in a broad channel separating the large island 
from the African coast; one may pass easily from the large island to 
the little ones. and from the latter over to the continent, and it is 
easy then to gain the shores of the Mediterranean and to subdue the 
peoples who have become established there, those of the south first, 
as far as the frontier of Egypt and of Libya, then those of the 
north, as far as the Tyrrhenian, and even to Greece. This invasion 
by the Atlantic pirates Athens resists with success. Perhaps, how- 
ever, she might have been vanquished, when a cataclysm came to her 
aid, in a few hours engulfing the Island Atlantis, and resounding, 
with violent shocks and frightful tidal wave, over all the Mediter- 
ranean shores. The conflicting armies disappear, taken unawares 
by the inundation of the shores; and when the survivors recover 
themselves they perceive that their invaders are dead, and they learn 
then that the very source is wiped out whence descended those ter- 
rible hordes. When long, long after some hardy mariners venture to 
pass through the Pillars of Hercules and sail across the western seas, 


1 Works of Plato, translated [into French] by V. Cousin, vol. 12, pp. 109-115, Paris, 
pub. Rey and Gravier. 


222 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


they are soon stopped by such a profusion of rocks and débris from 
the engulfed lands that fear seizes them, and they flee these accursed 
regions, over which seems to hang the anathema of a god. 

In another dialogue, which is entitled “ Critias,” or “ Concerning 
Atlantis,” and which, like the foregoing, is from the “ Timzus,” 
Plato indulges in a description of the famous island. It is again 
Critias who is speaking. Timeus, Socrates, and Hermocrates are 
listening to him. Critias says: 

According to the Egyptian tradition a common war arose 9,000 years ago 
between the nations on this side of the Pillars of Hercules and the nations 
coming from beyond. On one side it was Athens; on the other the Kings of 
Atlantis. We have already said that this island was larger than Asia and 
Africa, but that it became submerged following an earthquake and that its 
place is no longer met with except as a sand bar which stops navigators and 
renders the sea impassable. 

And Critias develops for us the Egyptian tradition of the fabu- 
lous origin of Atlantis, fallen to the share of Neptune and in which 
this god has placed the 10 children that he had by a mortal. Then 
he describes the cradle of the Atlantic race; a plain located near the 
sea and opening in the central part of the island, and the most 
fertile of plains; about it a circle of mountains stretching to the 
sea, a circle open at the center and protecting the plain from the 
icy blasts of the north; in these superb mountains, numerous 
villages, rich and populous; in the plain, a magnificent city, the 
palaces and temples of which are constructed from stones of three 
colors—white, black, and red—drawn from the very bosom of the 
island; here and there mines yielding all the metals useful to man; 
finally the shores of the island cut perpendicularly and command- 
ing from above the tumultuous seat We may smile in reading the 
story of Neptune and his fruitful amours, but the geographic de- 
scription of the island is not of the sort which one jokes about and 
forgets. This description tallies well with what we would imagine 
to-day of a great land submerged in the region of the Azores and 
enjoying the eternal springtime, which is the endowment of these 
islands; a land formed from a basement of ancient rocks bearing, 
with some fragments of whitish calcareous terranes, extinct vol- 
‘anic mountains and lava flows, black or red, long since grown cold. 

Such is the Atlantis of Plato, and such, according to the great 
philosopher, is the history of this island, a history fabulous in its 
origins, like the majority of histories, yet extremely exact and 
highly probable in its details and tragic termination. This is, fur- 
thermore, all that antiquity teaches us, for the accounts of Theo- 
pompus and Marcellus, much vaguer than that of Plato, are inter- 


1 Works of Plato, translated [into French] by V. Cousin, vol. 12, p. 247. Paris, pub. 
Rey and Gravier. 


ATLANTIS—TERMIER. 223 


esting only from the impression that they leave us of the wide cir- 
culation of the legend among the peoples along the Mediterranean 
shores. On the whole, down to very nearly our own era, there was 
a general belief, all about the Mediterranean, in the ancient inva- 
sion by the Atlantians, come from a large island or a continent— 
come at all events from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, an invasion 
abruptly checked by the instantaneous or at least very sudden sub- 
mergence of the country from which these invaders came. 

Now, let us see what science teaches as to the possibility or the 
probability of such a collapsing, so recent, so sudden, so extended 
superficially, and so colossal in depth. But we must as a preliminary 
recall the facts of geography as to the region of the Atlantic Ocean 
where the phenomenon must have occurred. 

For a ship sailing due west the distance across the Atlantic Ocean 
from the Strait of Gibraltar is about 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles). 
Such a ship would touch the American coast in the locality of Cape 
Hatteras. She would not in her voyage meet any land. She would 
pass, without seeing them, between Madeira and the Azores, and she 
would leave the Bermudas very far to the south, though these coral 
islands, very small and low, might to. the eyes of the crew have 
emerged from the marine horizon. Her passengers would have no 
suspicion of the relief of the ocean depths, so irregular notwithstand- 
ing, and none of the mysteries of the “sea of darkness” would have 
risen before them. 

But had the ship lengthened her route a little by making a detour, 
first toward the southwest, then toward the northwest, then again 
toward the southwest, it would have been enough, successively, to 
bring in view Madeira, the more southern Azores, and finally the 
Bermudas. And if the travelers, whom we are supposing embarked 
on our vessel, had possessed a perfected instrument for sounding, and 
had known how to use it, they might have ascertained, not without 
surprise, that the marine depths over which they were passsing are 
strangely unequal. Very near Gibraltar the bottom of the ocean is 
4,000 meters down; it rises again abruptly to form a very narrow 
socle, which bears Madeira; it drops again to 5,000 meters between 
Madeira and the southern Azores; reascends at least 1,000 meters in 
the neighborhood of these latter islands; remains for a long distance 
between 1,000 and 4,000 to the south and southwest of the Azores, 
with very abrupt projections, some of which approach very nearly to 
the surface of the sea; then plunges to more than §,000 meters, and 
for a short distance even to more than 6,000; rises again suddenly in a 
bound which corresponds to the socle of the Bermudas; remains 
buried under 4,000 meters of water to within a short distance of the 
American coast, and finally rises again in a steep acclivity toward 
the shore. | 


224 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Let us imagine for a moment that we could entirely empty the 
Atlantic Ocean, drain it completely dry; and, that done, let us con- 
template from above the relief of its bed. We shall see two great 
depressions, two enormous valleys extending north and south, par- 
allel with the two shores, separated one from the other by a median 
zone elevated above them. The western valley, extending the length 
of the American coast, is the larger and deeper of the two; it shows 
oval fosses, or depressions, descending to more than 6,000 meters 
below the level of the shores, and also occasional elevations, one cor- 
responding to the Bermudas, which, from the bottom of the gulfs, 
rise boldly toward the surface. The eastern valley, along the Euro- 
pean coast, appears to us narrower and of less depth, but much more 
hilly; and numerous pyramids, some thin and slight like that of 
Madeira, others massive like those which bear the archipelago of 
the Canaries and Cape Verde, rise here and there in the midst of 
the valley or near its eastern border. The much elevated median 
zone outlines before us a long promontory, whose axis coincides with 
that of the Atlantic abyss. It curves in an § shape like the two 
valleys and the two shores, and, starting from Greenland and sur- 
rounding in its mass Iceland and the northern islands, goes tapering 
southward and ends in a point at the seventieth parallel of latitude 
south. In most of its course, this promontory has a mean breadth 
of about 1,500 kilometers (937.5 miles). Far from being regular 
and with a uniformly spherical curve, its surface is everywhere 
indented, bristling with projections, riddled with hollows, especially 
in the region of the Azores, what we call the Azores being merely 
the summits of the highest protuberances. 

In this complete view of the ocean drained and dry we would 
certainly observe many other things, which are otherwise invisible 
beneath the waters. We would see not only the longitudinal ar- 
rangement which I have just described and which has been revealed 
to us by soundings but also the transverse irregularities which can 
not fail to exist and of which, at the present time, we know 
almost nothing, because the soundings have not yet been numerous 
enough. The map of the archipelago of the Azores shows clearly 
that the nine great islands of which it is composed are ranged along 
three parallel bands, in a direction from east-southeast to west- 
northwest; and these bands are staked out by the islands over a 
total length of nearly 800 kilometers (500 miles). No doubt such 
lines are prolonged very far under the waves, and they would have 
great importance in making a model of the ocean bed, but they are 
evidently not the only ones. The day will come when the charts of 
the Atlantic depths will be exact and detailed; we shall then see 
fault lines and bands of folds crossing the vast abyss and extending 


ATLANTIS—TERMIER. 225 


from Europe to the United States, or from Morocco to the West 
Indies, or from Senegambia to the South American Continent. 

Now, let geology say its word. In the same way that the painter’s 
eye perceives a whole world of colors and reflections unsuspected by 
other men, so is the eye of the geologist impressed by the vague and 
very uncertain gleams which illumine, for him alone, the darkness 
of the gulfs and the still deeper night of the distant past. And his 
ear, sensitive as that of the musician, vibrates to the murmurs, the 
crackings, and the sighs which come from the earth’s depths or from 
the depths of history and which the majority of men mistake for 
absolute silence. 

Observe one primary fact: The eastern region of the Atlantic 
Ocean, over all its length and probably from one pole to the other, 
is a great volcanic zone. In the depression along the coast of 
Africa and of Europe and in the eastern part of the highly elevated 
strip which occupies the middle of the sea volcanoes are abundant. 
All the peaks which reach the surface of the sea outcrop in the 
form of volcanic islands or bearing volcanoes. Gough Island, Tris- 
tan da Cunha, St. Helena, Ascension, the Cape Verde Islands, the 
Canaries, the great Madeira and the neighboring isles, all the Azores, 
Iceland, Jan Mayen Island are either integrally or in greater part 
formed of lava. I will tell in a moment how certain dredgings in 
1898 found lavas, at depths of 3,000 meters, on a line from the 
_ Azores to Iceland, and at about 500 miles or 900 kilometers to the 
north of the Azores. One navigator in 1838 established the éxist- 
ence of a submarine volcano on the Equator at about 22° west longi- ~ 
tude, or on the line joining Ascension to the archipelago of Cape 
Verde; warm steam was rising from the waves and shallows had 
formed unlike those indicated on the charts. On the islands I have 
just named many volcanoes are still in activity, the extinct ones 
appear to have been extinguished only yesterday, everywhere earth- 
quakes are frequent, here and there islets may spring up abruptly 
from the sea or rocks long known may disappear. The continuity 
of these phenomena is concealed by the ocean covering them, but to 
the geologist it is unquestionable. 

The volcanic zone of the eastern Atlantic is comparable in length, 
in breadth, and in eruptive or seismic activity, to that which forms 
the western border of America, and coincides in the south with the 
cordillera of the Andes; it is one of the characteristic traits of the 
present phase of the earth, quite like the fiery girdle of the Pacific 
Ocean. Now, there is no volcano without a convulsion, or, at the 
very least, not without a subsidence of some portion of the terrestrial 
crust. The volcanoes of the fiery girdle of the Pacific stake out the 
border of a deep marine foss which compasses this ocean, and which, 


18618°—sm 1915——15 


226 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


undoubtedly, has not stopped growing deeper; the volcanoes of the 
Mediterranean appear on the margin of great, abysses recently opened 
and into which enormous mountains have fallen. It must be, there- 
fore, that there is also in the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, still 
present, a certain mobility, and that the median wrinkle of this bot- 
tom, already much elevated above it, has not finished its relative 
movement upward in proportion to the eastern depression. While 
the continental shores of the Atlantic now appear immobile, and a 
hundred times more impassive than the Pacific shores, the bottom of 
the Atlantic is in movement in the entire eastern zone, about 3,000 
kilometers (1,875 miles) broad, which comprises Iceland, the Azores, 
Madeira, the Canaries, and the Cape Verde Islands. Here there is 
even now an unstable zone on the planet’s surface, and in such a zone 
the most terrible cataclysms may at any moment be taking place. 
Some cataclysms certainly have occurred, and they date only as 
from yesterday. I ask all those who are concerned with the problem 
of Atlantis to listen attentively and to impress on their mind this 
brief history; there is none more significant: In the summer of 1898 
a ship was employed in the laying of the submarine telegraphic cable 
which binds Brest to Cape Cod. The cable had been broken, and 
they were trying to fish it up again by means of grappling irons. It 


was in north latitude 47° 0’ and longitude 29° 40’ west from Paris, 


at a point about 500 miles north of the Azores. The mean depth 
was pretty nearly 1,700 fathoms, or 3,100 meters. The relaying of 
the cable presented great difficulties, and for several days it was 
' necessary to drag the grappling irons over the bottom. This was 
established: The bottom of the sea in those parts presents the char- 
acteristics of a mountainous country, with high summits, steep slopes, 
and deep valleys. The summits are rocky, and there are oozes only in 
the hollows of the valleys. The grappling iron, in following this 
much-disturbed surface, was constantly being caught in the rocks by 
hard points and sharp edges; it came up almost always broken or 
twisted, and the broken pieces recovered bore large coarse strive and 
traces of violent and rapid wear. On several returns, they found 
between the teeth of the grappling iron little mineral splinters, hav- 
ing the appearance of recently broken chips. All these fragments 
belonged to the same class of rocks. The unanimous opinion of the 
engineers who were present at the dredging was that the chips in 
question had been detached from a bare rock, an actual outcropping, 
sharp-edged and angular. The region whence the chips came was 
furthermore precisely that where the soundings had revealed the 
highest submarine summits and the almost complete absence of oozes. 
The fragments, thus torn from the rocky outcrops of the bottom of 
the Atlantic, are of a vitreous lava, having the chemical composition 
of the basalts and called tachylyte by the petrographers. We are 


ATLANTIS—TERMIER. 927 


preserving some of these precious fragments at the Musée de l’Ecole 
des Mines at Paris. 

The matter was described in 1899 to the Académie des Sciences. 
Few geologists then comprehended its very great import. Such a 
lava, entirely vitreous, comparable to certain basaltic stones of the 
volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands, could solidify into this condition 
only under atmospheric pressure. Under several atmospheres, and 
more especially under 3,000 meters of water, it might have crystal- 
lized. It would appear to us as formed of confused crystals, instead 
of being composed solely of colloidal matter. The most recent 
studies on this subject leave no doubt, and I will content myself 
with recalling the observation of M. Lacroix’ on the lavas of Mount 
Pelee of Martinique: Vitreous, when they congealed in the open air, 
these lavas became filled with crystals as soon as they were cooled 
under a cover, even not very thick, of previously solidified rocks. 
The surface which to-day constitutes the bottom of the Atlantic, 900 
kilometers (562.5 miles) north of the Azores, was therefore covered 
with lava flows while it was still emerged. Consequently, it has been 
buried, descending 3,000 meters; and since the surface of the. rocks 
has there preserved its distorted aspect, its rugged roughnesses, the 
sharp edges of the very recent lava flows, it must be that the caving 
in followed very close upon the emission of the lavas, and that this 
collapse was sudden. Otherwise atmospheric erosion and marine 
abrasion would have leveled the inequalities and planed down the 
entire surface. Let us continue our reasoning. We are here on the 
line which joins Iceland to the Azores, in the midst of the Atlantic 
volcanic zone, in the midst of the zone of mobility, of instability, and 
present volcanism. It would seem to be a fair conclusion, then, that 
the entire region north of the Azores and perhaps the very region of 
the Azores, of which they may be only the visible ruins, was very 
recently submerged, probably during the epoch which the geologists 
call the present because it is so recent, and which for us, the living 
beings of to-day, is the same as yesterday. 

If you recall now what I told you a little while ago of the extreme 
inequality of the depths to the south and the southwest of the Azores, 
vou will agree with me that a detailed dredging to the south and the 
southwest of these islands would give the same results which have 
been shown at the north, in the operations of fishing up the tele- 
graphic cable again. And before your eyes would increase then, 
almost immeasurably, the buried region, the region which was ab- 
ruptly engulfed yesterday, and of which the Azores are no more than 
the evidences, escaped from the general collapse. 

But observe other facts, always of the geologic order. The At- 
lantic abyss, almost as a whole, seems to be of relatively recent date; 


228 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


and, before the collapse of the Azorian region, other collapses oc- 
curred there, the size of which, more easily measurable, staggers the 
imagination. 

Since Eduard Suess and Marcel Bertrand taught us to regard our 
planet and to decipher the slow or rapid transformations of its 
face through unnumbered centuries we have become assured of the 
existence of a very ancient continental bond between northern 
Europe and North America and of another continental bond, also 
very ancient, between the massive Africa and South America. There 
was a North Atlantic continent comprising Russia, Scandinavia, 
Great Britain, Greenland, and Canada, to which was added later 
a southern band madé up of a large part of central and western 
Europe and an immense portion of the United States. There was 
also a South Atlantic, or African-Brazilian, Continent extending 
northward to the southern border of the Atlas, eastward to the 
Persian Gulf and to Mozambique Channel, westward to the eastern 
border of the Andes and to the Sierras of Colombia and Venezuela. 
Between the two continents passed the mediterranean depression, 
that ancient maritime furrow, which has formed an escarp about 
the earth since the beginning of geologic times, and which we still 
see so deeply marked in the present Mediterranean, the Caribbean 


Sea, and the Sunda or Flores Sea. A chain of mountains broader 


than the chain of the Alps, and perhaps in some parts as high as the 
majestic Himalaya, once lifted itself on the land inclosed shore of 
the North Atlantic continent, embracing the Vosges, the Central 
Plateau of France, Brittany, the south of England and of Ireland, 
and also Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and, in the United States, 
all the Appalachian region. The two coasts which front each other 
above the Atlantic waters 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) apart, that 
of Brittany, Cornwall, and the south of Ireland on one side, that of 
Newfoundland ‘and Nova Scotia on the other side, are among the 
finest estuary shores in the world, and their estuaries are face to 
face. In the one as in the other, the folds of the ancient chain are 
cut abruptly, and often naturally, by the shore; and the dirigent 
lines of the European chain are directly aligned with those of 
the American chain. Within a few years it will be one of the 
pleasures of oceanographers, by clearing up the detailed chart of 
the ocean beds between Ireland and Newfoundland, to establish the 
persistence of a fold, of oriented mountainous aspect, on the site 
of this old engulfed mountain chain. Marcel Bertrand gave the 
name of “ Hereynian” to this old chain. Eduard Suess calls it the 
chain of the Altaides, for it comes from far-off Asia, and to him 
the Appalachians are nothing less than the American Altaides. 
Thus the region of the Atlantic, until an era of ruin which began 
we know not when, but the end of which was the Tertiary, was 


a 


ATLANTIS—TERMIER. 929 


occupied by a continental mass, bounded on the south by a chain 
of mountains, and which was all submerged long before the col- 
lapse of those volcanic lands of which the Azores seem to be the 
last vestiges. In place of the South Atlantic Ocean there was, like- 
wise, for many thousands of centuries a great continent now very 
deeply engulfed beneath the sea. It is probable that these move- 
ments of depression occurred at several periods, the contours of 
the Mediterranean, which then separated the two continents, being 
frequently modified in the course of the ages. From the middle of 
the Cretaceous the Mediterranean advanced as far as the Canaries, 
and its southern shore was then very near the site to-day occupied 
by these islands. On this matter we have a precise datum recently 
found by M. Pitard, and very exactly fixed by MM. Cottreau and 
Lemoine. The region of the Cape Verde Islands, at the same era, 
still belonged to the African-Brazilian Continent. 

While the Mediterranean in this Atlantic region was being en- 
larged by the gradual collapsing of its shores, it was being sub- 
divided, perhaps, and in any case its bottom was becoming undu- 
lated by the formation underneath it of new folds and wrinkles. 
In this broad and deep furrow, where the sediments from the north 
and south continents were accumulating to enormous thicknesses, 
the movement was in fact developing which during the Tertiary 
period gave rise in Europe to the Alpine chain. 

How far did this Tertiary chain, this Alpine chain, extend in 
the Atlantic region? And, also, what was the extent of its fault- 
ings in this now oceanic region? Did some fragments of the chain 
rise high enough to lift themselves for some centuries above the 
waters before returning, suddenly or slowly, into the starless night? 
Did the folds of the Alps or of the Atlas Mountains spread abroad 
as far as the Caribbean Sea? And must we admit, between our 
Alps and the Cordillera of the West Indies, which is itself only a 
sinuous outpost of the grand cordillera of the Andes, a tectonic 
bond, as we are admitting, since Suess has shown it to us, a strati- 
graphic bond? These questions are still unanswered. M. Louis 
Gentil has followed, in the western Atlas Mountains, the folds of 
the Tertiary chain to the shore of the ocean, and he has seen these 
folds, gradually diminishing, “ drowning themselves,”? as the miners 
say, descend into the waves; their direction, on this coast of Agadir 
and of Cape Ghir, is such that, if prolonged in mind, they would 
lead us to the Canaries. But to be able to affirm that the Canaries 
are highly elevated fragments of the engulfed Atlas one must have 
observed the folds in their Cretaceous sediment, and I do not 
believe that this observation has been made. The Atlas Range, 


1“ S’ennoyant.” 


230 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


as every one knows, is only one of the branches of the great Tertiary 
chain; it is the prolongation in the north of Africa of the mountain- 
ous system of the Apennines. As to the true Alps, which are the 
principal branch of the same chain, they may be followed without 
difficulty as far as the Sierra Nevada, and even to Gibraltar. Under 
the Strait of Gibraltar they are reunited to the Rif Mountains. 
But the Rif, in which some geologists would see the continuation of 
the entire Alpine system, certainly correspond to only a part of 
this system; all of one northern band of Alpine folds, emerging 
from under the nappes of the Sierra Nevada, moves toward the 
west instead of turning toward Gibraltar. J see them, under the 
recent terranes, crossing Andalusia, forming a narrow band on the 
coast of Algarve, and finally, at Cape St. Vincent, abruptly cut 
off and not showing any tendency toward “ drowning,” hiding them- 
selves in the sea. Their direction, if prolonged, would lead us to 
Santa Maria, the most southern of the Azores, where we observe 
undisturbed Miocene sediments. 

Summing up, there are strong reasons for believing in the Atlantic 
prolongation of the Tertiary folds, those of the Atlas Mountains 
toward the Canaries, those of the Alps toward the southern islands 
of the Azores, but nothing yet permits of either extending very far 
or limiting very narrowly this prolongation. The sediments of 
Santa Maria prove only this, that at the Miocene epoch—that is, 
when the great Alpine movements were terminated in Europe—a 
Mediterranean shore extended not far from this region of the Azores, 
the shore of a continent or of a large island. Another shore of the 
same Miocene sea passed near the Canaries. 

In every way the geography has singularly changed in the Atlantic 
region in the course of the later periods of the earth’s history; and 
the extreme mobility of the bottom of the ocean, shown at the 
present time by such a multiplicity of voleanoes and such an extent 
of lava fields, surely dates from far back. Depressions during the 
secondary period, enlarging the Mediterranean and causing the ruins 
of the Hercynian chain to disappear; foldings in the entire Mediter- 
ranean zone during the first half of the Tertiary era, modifying the 
beds of this sea and causing mountainous islands to arise here or 
there near its northern coast; collapses again at the close of the 
Miocene, in the folded Mediterranean zone and in the two conti- 
nental areas, continuing up to the final annihilation of the two con- 
tinents and the obliteration of their shores; then, in the bottom of the 
immense maritime domain resulting from these subsidences, the ap- 
pearance of a new design whose general direction is north and south 
and which conceals or, at the very least, partially obliterates the 
former marking; the pouring out of the lavas, everywhere a little, 


in the residual islands and even on the bottom of the seas, this pour- 


ATLANTIS—TERMIER. 25h 


ing forth being the necessary and inevitable counteraction of the 
very deep, downward sinking of such portions of the crust. Such, 
in brief, is the history of the Atlantic Ocean for several million 
years. Many incidents of this history will never be exactly corre- 
lated, but we know that certain of them are very recent. M. Louis 
Gentil has given us, in this connection, some very interesting ob- 
servations, gathered along the Moroccoan coasts. The Strait of 
Gibraltar was opened at the beginning of the Pliocene. Already, 
at the Tortonian epoch, the sea was washing the shore of Agadir, 
and consequently Madeira and the Canaries were then already sep- 
arated from the Continent. But the Tortonian and even the Plai- 
sancian beds on this Moroccoan shore are faulted and folded. There- 
fore in the zone of prolongation of the Atlas Mountains there have 
been important movements posterior to the Plaisancian, and conse- 
quently Quaternary. The channel which separates Madeira and 
the Canaries from the African mass was again deepened m Qua- 
ternary times. 

Such are the data of geology. The extreme mobility of the At- 
lantic region, especially in conjunction with the mediterranean de- 
pression and the great volcanic zone, 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) 
broad, which extends from north to south, in the eastern half of 
the present ocean; the certainty of the occurrence of immense de- 
pressions when islands and even continents have disappeared; the 
certainty that some of these depressions date as from yesterday, are 
of Quaternary age, and that consequently they might have been seen 
by man; the certainty that some of them have been sudden, or at 
least very rapid. See how much there is to encourage those who still 
hold out for Plato’s narrative. Geologically speaking, the Pla- 
tonian history of Atlantis is highly probable. 

Now let us consult the zoologists. There is a young French 
scholar, M. Louis Germain, who is going to answer us; and I really 
regret very much not being able actually to give him the floor, but 
instead to be only his very inadequate interpreter. 

First of all, the study of the present terrestrial fauna of the 
islands of the four archipelagoes, the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, 
and Cape Verde, has convinced M. Germain of the clearly continental 
origin of this fauna. He even observes numerous indications of an 
adaptation to desert life. The malacological fauna especially is 
connected with that of the region about the Mediterranean, while 
differing from the African equatorial fauna. The same analogies 
with the fauna about the Mediterranean are observed in the Mollusca 
of the Quaternary. 

Secondly, the Quaternary formations of the Canaries resemble 
those of Mauritania and inclose the same species of Mollusca; for 
example, the same species of Helix. 


232 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


From these two primary facts M. Germain deduces the evident 
conclusion that the four archipelagoes were connected with the 
African Continent up to an epoch very near our own, at the very 
least until toward the end of the Tertiary. 

Thirdly, in the present Mollusca of the four archipelagoes there 
are some species which seem to be the survivors of the fossil species 
of the European Tertiary; and a similar survival exists also in the 
vegetable series, a fern, the Adiantum reniforme, at present extinct 
in Europe, but known in the Pliocene of Portugal, continuing to-day 
to live in the Canaries and in the Azores. 

M. Germain deduces from this third fact the bond, up to Pliocene 
times, with the Iberian Peninsula, of the continent which embraced 
the arcliipelagoes and the severing of this bond during the Pliocene. 

Fourthly, the Pulmonata Mollusca, called Oleacinide, have a pecu- 
liar geographic distribution. They live only in Central America, 
the West Indies, the Mediterranean Basin, and the Canaries, Ma- 
deira, and the Azores. In America they have preserved the large 
size that they had in Europe in the Miocene epoch; in the Mediter- 
ranean Basin and in the Atlantic islands they have become much 
smaller. 

This geographic distribution of the Oleacinids evidently implies — 
the extension to the West Indies at the beginning of the Miocene 
of the continent which included the Azores, the Canaries, and 
Madeira, and the establishing during the Miocene, or toward its close, 
of a separation between the West Indies and this continent. 

Two facts remain relative to the marine animals, and both seem 
impossible of explanation, except by the persistence, up to very 
near the present times, of a maritime shore extending from the West 
Indies to Senegal, and even binding together Florida, the Bermudas, 
and the bottom of the Gulf of Guinea. Fifteen species of marine 
Mollusca lived at the same time, both in the West Indies and on the 
coast of Senegal and nowhere else, unless this coexistence can be 
explained by the transportation of the embryos. On the other hand, 
the Madreporaria fauna of the island of St. Thomas, studied by M. 
Gravier, includes six species—one does not live outside of St. 
Thomas, except in the Florida Reefs; and four others are known 
only from the Bermudas. As the duration of the pelagic life of the 
larve of the Madreporaria is only a few days, it is impossible to 
attribute this surprising reappearance to the action of marine 
currents. 

In taking all this into account, M. Germain is led to admit the 
existence of an Atlantic continent connected with the Iberian Penin- 
sula and with Mauritania and prolonging itself rather far toward the 
south so as to include some regions of desert climate. During the 
Miocene again this continent extends as far as the West Indies. 


ATLANTIS—TERMIER. 933 


Tt is then portioned off, at first in the direction of the West Indies, 
then in the south, by the establishment of a marine shore which 
extends as far as Senegal and to the depths of the Gulf of Guinea, 
then at length in the east, probably during the Pliocene, along the 
coast of Africa. The last great fragment, finally engulfed and no 
longer having left any further vestiges than the four archipelagoes, 
would be the Atlantis of Plato. 

I will refrain in my incompetence from expressing the slightest 
opinion as to the zoologic value of the facts pointed out by M. Ger- 
main, and as to the degree of accuracy of the conclusions that he 
draws from them. But how can one fail to be struck by the almost 
absolute agreement of these zoologic conclusions with those to which 
geology has led us?) And who could now, in the face of so complete 
an accord, based on arguments so different, still doubt the preser- 
vation, up to an epoch very near our own, of vast lands emerged in 
the part of the ocean which is west of the Pillars of Hercules? 

That is sufficient; and this is what we should remember from our 
brief talk. 'To reconstruct even approximately the map of Atlantis 
will always remain a difficult proposition. At present we must not 
even think of it. But it is entirely reasonable to believe that, long 
after the opening of the Strait of Gibraltar, certain of these emerged 
lands still existed, and among them a marvelous island, separated 
from the African Continent by a chain of other smaller islands. 
One thing alone remains to be proved—that the cataclysm which 
caused this island to disappear was subsequent to the appearance of 
man in western Europe. The cataclysm is undoubted. Did men 
then live who could withstand the reaction and transmit the mem- 
ory of it? That is the whole question. I do not believe it at all 
insolvable, though it seems to me that neither geology nor zoology 
will solve it. These two sciences appear to have told all that they 
can tell; and it is from anthropology, from ethnography, and, lastly, 
from oceanography that I am now awaiting the final answer. 

Meanwhile, not only will science, most modern science, not make it 
a crime for all lovers of beautiful legends to believe in Plato’s story 
of Atlantis, but science herself through my voice calls their attention 
to it. Science herself, taking them by the hand and leading them 
along the. wreck-strewn ocean shore, spreads before their eyes, with 
‘thousands of disabled ships, the continents submerged or reduced to 
remnants, and the isles without number enshrouded in the abyssmal 
depths. 

For my own part I can not help thinking of the abrupt movements 
of the earth’s crust and, among others, of that terrifying phenomenon 
of the almost sudden disappearance of some outskirt of a continent, 


234 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


some element of a chain of mountains, some great island, into a gulf 
many thousands of meters deep. That such a phenomenon may be 
produced, and even repeated many times, in the course of later 
geologic periods, and that it may often attain to gigantic size, this 
no geologist is right in questioning. We are surprised sometimes that 
similar cataclysms have left no traces on our shores, without reflect- 
ing that it is the very suddenness of their arrival and their flight 
which renders them scarcely conceivable. Not one of them, in fact, 
has ever occurred without initiating a lowering of the mean sea 
level, but the counteraction is never delayed at all, and the rapid 
rising of another division of the ocean bottom, or the slower issue 
of the by no means unimaginable submarine flows of lavas, has soon 
reestablished the equilibrium; so exact is the balance in which are 
weighed—on one side the deeps, on the other the mountains. 

And when in thought IT thus review those frightful pages of the 
earth’s history, usually in presence of the smiling sea, indifferent, be- 
fore the sea “more beautiful than cathedrals,” I dream of the last 
night of Atlantis, to which perhaps the last night, that “ great 
night” of humanity will bear semblance. The young men have all 
departed for the war, beyond the islands of the Levant and the dis- 
tant Pillars of Hercules; those who remain, men of mature age, 
women, children, old men, and priests, anxiously question the marine 
horizon, hoping there to see the first sails appearing, heralds of the 
warriors’ return. But to-night the horizon is dark and vacant. How 
shadowy the sea grows; how threatening is the sky so overcast! 
The earth for some days has shuddered and trembled. The sun seems 
rent asunder, here and there exhaling fiery vapors. It is even re- 
ported that some of the mountain craters have opened, whence smoke 
and flames belch forth and stones and ashes are hurled into the air. 
Now on all sides a warm gray powder is raining down. Night has 
quite fallen, fearful darkness; nothing can be seen without lighted 
torches. Suddenly seized with blind terror, the multitude rushes 
into the temples; but lo! even the temples crumble, while the sea 
advances and invades the shore, its cruel clamor rising loud above all 
other noise. What takes place might indeed be the Divine wrath. 
Then quiet reigns; no longer are there either mountains or shores; no 
longer anything save the restless sea, asleep under the tropic sky, 
with its stars unnumbered; and in the breath of the trade winds I . 
hear the voice of the immortal poet singing: 

O, waves, how many mournful tales you know! 
Wide waves profound, that kneeling mothers fear! 
Those tales the flocding tides recount with care; 


And thus arise those voices of despair 
Which you to-night again bring with you here! 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Walcott. PLATE 1. 


ROBSON PEAK FROM THE NORTHERN SIDE OF ROBSON PASS. 


To the left the dark base of Iyatunga (Black Rock) Mountain with Blue Glacier extending 
down to Berg Lake. Robson Peak rises 7,060 feet above the lake to itssnowy crest. Photo- 
graph by Mary Vaux Walcott. 


EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE. 


By CuHarres D. WaAtcort. 


[With 18 plates. ] 


INTRODUCTION. 


Few of us have a clear realization of the age of the earth. Under 
many deceptive aspects she carries with her the secrets of a long 
and busy life, one of such fascinating activity that it is not sur- 
prising that students are ever seeking to unravel the mysteries of 
the past. With all the evidences of youth there is to be felt, espe- 
cially among the mountains, a sense of age and infinite power, and 
we are inspired with awe as we trace the base of worn-down rocks, 
miles in thickness, that formed the mountain ranges far back in 
geologic time. 

The age of the earth in years I shall not attempt to discuss. A 
recent résumé’ shows the relative age of the sedimentary strata 
for each period of its history. These figures point to a minimum 
time limit of scarcely less than 90,000,000 of years since water and 
wind began to transport continental earth and rocks over the land 
and into seas and lakes. How long before that the earth history 
began it is difficult even to conjecture. With the discovery of the 
stored-up energy of radium and the development of the planetesimal 
hypothesis by Dr. T. C. Chamberlin, the supposed. fixed standards 
of the past generation have been swept away and new conceptions 
are being slowly formulated and subjected to all the tests that mod- 
ern earth science can conceive. 

A concrete conception of the age of life on the earth is suggested 
by recalling that the Cambrian system, with its early and semiprimi- 
tive forms of invertebrate marine fossils, stands, roughly speaking, 
midway in the earth’s history; approximately as long a period of 
time was required to develop life to the Cambrian stage of evolution 
as has since elapsed up to the present time. 

My own investigations have been mainly in the Cambrian and pre- 
Cambrian strata and have involved new and somewhat startling 


1M. Joly: The Age of the Earth, Ann. Rept. Smithsonian Inst., 1911, Washington, 1912, 
pp. 271-293, 


235 


236 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


discoveries that helped to show how very much earlier life was de- 
veloped on our planet than we had previously supposed. These re- 
searches have taken into consideration the records left on all the 
continents and many of the great islands. The Cambrian rocks of 
China and their included traces of life were compared and reviewed ; 
the problem of the abrupt appearance of the Cambrian fauna on the 
North American continent was considered; comparisons were insti- 
tuted from measurements of sections in the Cordilleran and Appa- 
lachian regions of the United States and Canada, including the Bow 
River Valley of Alberta, and the Robson Peak and Mount Burgess 
districts of British Columbia, where peculiarly rich fossil beds were 
discovered; more recently certain horizons of the Cambrian forma- 
tions of the Mississippi Valley were discussed with their faunas, 
followed by the study now in hand of pre-Cambrian Algonkian 
traces of life. 

In these inquiries I have had generous assistance in obtaining col- 
lections and exchanging publications with students all over the world, 
including geologists, paleontologists, zoologists, and paleobotanists 
in America and Europe and in far-away outposts of China, Siberia, 
India, Australia, and New Zealand. 

Field work, with compass, hammer, and chisel, has been the rule, 
followed by laboratory and critical comparison of many thousands © 
of specimens of fossil genera and species of ancient marine life, and 
often study of microscopic sections of rocks and fossils in the hope 
of finding evidence of the presence of minute and active bacterial 
and simple algal workers, such as exist in modern seas and lakes, 
which by their united efforts form great masses of the recent sea and 
lake deposits. 


PRE-CAMBRIAN ALGONKIAN NORTH AMERICA? 


In North America, with its great epicontinental formations, the 
Algonkian era, between the inchoate Archean and the well-defined 
Cambrian, was a time of continental elevation and largely terrigenous 
sedimentation in nonmarine bodies of water,and of deposition by aerial 
and stream processes in favorable areas. Marine sediments undoubt- 
edly accumulated in the waters along the outer ocean shores of the 
continent, but they are unknown to us, and great quantities of erup- 
tive matter were extruded into the central Lake Superior region 
(Keweenawan). The agencies of diastrophism exerted their influ- 
ence throughout this long period, though with decreasing energy, 
until they became practically quiescent during the latter part of 
Algonkian time. 


1Problems of American Geology, Yale Univ. Press, 1915, pp. 166-167. Walcott: The 
Cambrian and its problems. 


EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE—WALCOTT. 237 


The North American continent was larger at the beginning of 
known Cambrian time than at any subsequent period, other than 
possibly at the end of Paleozoic time and the end of Cretaceous time, 
when the land area was equally extensive. Indeed, it is highly prob- 
able that its area: was even greater then than now, for no marine 
deposits containing pre-Cambrian life, as they were laid down in 
Lipalian+ time immediately preceding the Cambrian period, have 
been discovered in the North American Continent or elsewhere, so 
far as known. 

I gradually came to the conclusion? that the most natural expla- 
nation of the absence of the traces of a distinct marine pre-Cambrian 
fauna is that the North American continent in pre-Cambrian time 
was at such an elevation above the sea that there is now no record 
of the sediments deposited on the under sea shelf about the conti- 
nental area of that time. This presupposes that the great series of 
pre-Cambrian Algonkian sediments in the Rocky Mountain region 
were deposited in an inland mediterranean, or a series of great lakes 
and flood plains such as existed in Ter tiary times.* The same con- 
clusion apples to all of the later pre-Cambrian Algonkian forma- 
tions of the Lake Superior region, Texas, Arizona, and so forth. 

On this hypothesis the evolution of the pre-Cambrian fauna was 
taking place in waters contiguous to the continental area, and their 
remains, buried in the sediments then accumulating, have not been 
found, owing to the fact that those sediments are now hidden beneath 
the sea off the present coast lines of the continent. That such a con- 
dition existed is suggested by the almost total absence of any traces 
of life in the existing pre-Cambrian sediments. 


EXTENT OF WITHDRAWAL OF SEAS IN ALGONKIAN TIME. 


That the present area of the North American Continent was higher 
than the level of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at the beginning 
of known Cambrian time is, I think, well established, and with the 
data available it would appear that all other continental areas were 
in a similar condition. What diastrophic action caused the with- 


1 Abrupt appearance of the Cambrian fauna on the North American Continent. Smith- 
sonian Misc. Coll., vol. 57, no. 1, 1910, p. 14 (footnote). Lipalian (Aewa+adrs) was pro- 
posed for the era of unknown sedimentation between the adjustment of pelagic life to 
littoral conditions and the appearance of the Lower Cambrian fauna. It represents the 
period between the formation of the Algonkian continents and the earliest encroachment 
of the Lower Cambrian sea. 

2 Olenellus and other genera of the Mesonacide, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 53, no. 6, 
1910. 

’The crustacean and annelid faunas described from these sediments [Walcott, 1899, 
Pre-Cambrian fossiliferous formations, Bull. Geol. Soc. America, vol. 10, p. 238] might 
quite as well have been fresh-water as marine forms, There is nothing as far as known 
to indicate that they were necessarily limited to a marine habitat. 

* Abrupt appearance of the Cambrian fauna on the North SEE Continent. Smith- 
sonian Misc. Coll., vol. 57, no, 1, 1910, p. 12. 


938 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


drawal of the oceanic waters from the continental areas during the 
great period represented by the non-marine deposition of the later 
Algonkian sediments and the period of erosion preceding the deposi- 
tion of the superjacent Cambrian sediments, is unknown. It may 
have been produced by a sinking of the ocean bed that lowered the 
shore line of all the continents. It was of world-wide extent and of 
great duration, and it was during this period that the open-sea fauna 
was presumably first developed in the open ocean, as outlined by 
Brooks.t. It probably found its way to the littoral zone and de- 
veloped in the protected waters along the ancient epicontinental 
shelves. Of this period we have no known record either in marine 
sedimentation or in life, but I think that the life of the oceans be- 
came adapted to littoral and shore conditions in Algonkian time 
during a period when the relation of all the continents to the sea 
level was essentially the same as at the present time, or possibly the 
continents may have been still more elevated in relation to the sur- 
rounding oceans. 

The known fossils contained in the Algonkian sediments of the 
Cordilleran geosyncline lived in fresh or brackish waters that were 
rarely in connection with marine waters on the margins of the 
Algonkian continent of North America. This will explain the 
abrupt appearance of Beltina, a highly specialized shrimp-like crus- 
tacean, deep down in the Beltian series. 

When the oceanic waters gained access to the Algonkian conti- 
nental areas at the beginning of Cambrian time they brought with 
them the littoral marine fauna which had been developed during 
the Lipalian sedimentation, and buried its remains in the sands and 
muds which form the Lower Cambrian deposits. The apparently 
abrupt appearance of this fauna is to be explained by the absence 
on our present land areas of the sediments, and hence the faunas 
of the Lipalian period. This resulted from the continental area 
being above sea level during the development of the unknown 
ancestry of the Cambrian fauna. 

I fully realize that the conclusions above outlined are based 
primarily on the absence of a marine fauna from the Algonkian 
rocks, but until such is discovered I know of no more probable 
explanation of the abrupt appearance of the Cambrian fauna. 


ALGONKIAN FORMATIONS. 


The Algonkian rocks are largely formed of mud, sand, gravel, and 
voleanic rocks that were deposited in lakes, on plains, or in valleys 
by the action of water, wind, and eruptive agencies. 


1 Brooks, W. K.: The origin of the oldest fossils and the discovery of the bottom of the 
ocean, Jour. Geol., vol. 2, 1894, pp. 455-479. 


EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE—WALCOTT. 239 


On the eastern side of North America the rocks are mostly formed 
of siliceous mud and sand; in the Lake Superior region, siliceous 
mud, sand, gravel, and an immense mass of eruptive rock; in the 
Rocky Mountain and adjacent areas, siliceous and calcareous muds, 
fine sands, and a small amount of eruptive rock. In Montana the 
Algonkian rocks are from 12,000 to 25,000 or more feet in thickness 
and contain great beds of limestone, in which traces of life have been 
found. One of them, called the Newland limestone, is particularly 
rich in algal deposits.* 


UNCONFORMITY BETWEEN THE CAMBRIAN AND PRE-CAMBRIAN 
ROCKS.’ 


The variation in thickness of the basal Cambrian conglomerate 
seems to indicate that the pre-Cambrian surface over which it was 
deposited was broadly irregular. The Cambrian sea was evidently 
transgressing across the dark siliceous shales of the pre-Cambrian 
land and reducing them to rolled pebbles, angular fragments, and 
mud. The mud gave origin to small lentiles of shale similar in 
character to the shale below the unconformity, while lentiles of 
sandstone of greenish tint indicate that fine material was being de- 
rived from still older pre-Cambrian formations than the shale. 

Of greater importance is the evidence that the sediments of the 
two periods were deposited under different physical conditions. The 
Cambrian sandstones are composed of clean, well-washed grains, and 
the. Cambrian calcareous and argillaceous shales were deposited as 
muds offshore along with the remains of an abundant marine life. 
The Algonkian Hector shales* of the pre-Cambrian are siliceous 
and without traces of life; the sandstones are impure and dirty, 
with the quartz grains a dead milky white or glassy and iron 
stained. These sediments were evidently deposited in relatively 
quiet, muddy, fresh or brackish waters. 

I do not compare the limestone formations, as in the Cambrian 
they are 2,000 feet or more above the-plane of unconformity at the 
base of the Cambrian and much farther below in the Algonkian 
series. 


ORIGIN OF ALGONKIAN LIMESTONES.* 


The stream flow and drainage into the Algonkian lakes undoubt- 
edly afforded all of the soluble mineral matter necessary to account 
for the limestones, siliceous shales, and calcium carbonate deposits of 


1 Pre-Cambrian Algonkian algal flora, Smithsonian Mise. Coll., vol. 64, no. 2, 1914. 

2Pre-Cambrian rocks of the Bow River Valley, Alberta, Canada, Smithsonian Misc. 
Coll., vol. 53, no. 7, 1910, p. 426. 

® Algonkian, Hector-Corral Creek series, Bow River Valley, Alberta, Canada. See see- 
tion, Smithsonian Mise. Coli., vol. 53, no. 7, 1910, p. 428. 

*Pre-Cambrian Algonkian algal flora, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 64, no. 2, 1914. p. 84. 


940 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


the Algonkian series of formations,’ but the origin of the great pre- 
Cambrian limestones of western America has long been a mooted 
question, and the nature of the concretionarylike Cryptozoon (pl. 2) 
has not been so definitely determined as to be accepted by common 
consent either as of plant or animal origin. Twenty years ago I had 
a number of thin sections made of the matrix and “ fossils” from 
the limestone of the Chuar terrane of the Grand Canyon series of 
Arizona? and later of specimens from the Belt series of Montana. 
Not being able to discover any traces of detailed or minute structure, 
the specimens and slides were put aside for future study. Recently 
I have had occasion to consider the question of the origin of the 
limestones of the great pre-Cambrian Algonkian formations of the 
Cordilleran area, and in this connection to determine if possible 
whether there was any relation between the so-called Cryptozoon 
and the presence of the Algonkian series of limestones. 

The carbonaceous matter in the dark Newland limestones is shown 
by the black, flocculent residue that accumulates when a fragment of 
limestone is dissolved in hydrochloric acid and by the bituminous 
odor given off when the rock is struck with a heavy hammer. This 
carbonaceous matter was probably derived from the bacteria and alge 
of the time.’ 

The limestones of the Newland formation have more or less mag- 
nesian content, but many of the layers are pure limestone, especially 
those containing the reefs or banks of algal remains. The specimens 
of algal remains are usually magnesian and siliceous, which accounts 
for the weathering in relief (pls. 2 and 3) and the ease with which 
they are etched by the solution of the limestone in weak hydro- 
chloric acid. 

The purer limestones are of considerable vertical thickness and 
their distribution indicates bodies of water several thousand square 
miles in area. The banks or reefs of algal deposits make a small 
percentage of the total mass of limestone, but if we assume, as I think 
we may, that the bacteria: were active agents in the deposition of 
the soluble bicarbonate of lime in Algonkian waters, a plausible ex- 
planation is found for the occurrence of the homogeneous limestones 
of the Algonkian in which no traces of fossils have been found.‘ 


FOSSIL BACTERIA. 


The occurrence of bacteria in a fossil state has long been known. 
Dr. Clement Reid, in an article on Paleobotany, states that >— 


the first evidence for the existence of Paleozoic bacteria was obtained in 1879 
by Van Tieghem, who found that in silicified vegetable remains from the coal 


1 Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 64, no. 2, 1914, p. 89. 

2 Cryptozoan ? occidentale Dawson, Bull. Geol. Soc. America, vol. 10, 1899, pp. 282-234, 
pl. 238, figs. 1-4. 

3 Pre-Cambrian Algonkian algal flora, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 64, no. 2, 1914, p. 95. 

*Tdem, p. 94. 

5 Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 20, 1911, p. 525. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Walcott. PLATE 2. 


SECTIONS OF MODERN AND ALGONKIAN ALGAL FORMS. 


1, Lake Ball; 2, 3, Newlandia concentrica Walcott; 4, Newlandia frondosa Walcott. 


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EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE—WALCOTT. 241 


measures of St. Etienne the cellulose membranes showed traces of subjection 
to butyric fermentation such as is produced at the present day by Bacillus amy- 
lobacter; he also claimed to have detected the organism itself. Since that time 
a number of fossil bacteria, mainly from Paleozoic strata, have been de- 
scribed by Renault, occurring in all kinds of fossilized vegetable and animal 
débris. The supposed micrococci present little that is characteristic; the more 
definite, rodlike form of the bacilli offers a better means of recognition, though 
far from an infallible one; in a few cases dark granules, suggestive of endo- 
spores, have been found within the rods.. On the whole, the occurrence of 
bacteria in Paleozoic times, so probable a,priori, may be taken as established, 
though the attempt to discriminate species among them is probably futile. 


M. Renault, in 1895, wrote: 

It may be surprising that beings like the bacteria, whose teguments are so 
slightly distinct, should have been preserved in a manner clear enough so that 
their presence is often easier to discover when they are fossil than when they 
are living." 

The reason for this, M. Renault continues, is because this delicate 
tegument has taken on a certain discoloration, which makes it stand 
out clearly from the surrounding matrix. Though, of course, highly 
microscopic, its form is preserved with absolute perfection. In the 
secondary and Tertiary (Permian) strata he distinguished several 
varieties, both of bacteria and micrococci, resembling almost identi- 
cally the living forms, and he stated that the only reason he hesi- 
tated to identify them as positively the same was because of the im- 
possibility of subjecting fossil bacteria to the culture test. In this 
test, as is well known, the various genera of bacteria, though often 
looking alike, behave very differently and thus are distinguishable 
and separable. At present, therefore, we may only point out ap- 
parent generic differences in the fossil bacteria revealed by the 
microscope. | 


PRE-CAMBRIAN ALGONKIAN BACTERIA. 


The presence of minute forms of alge and bacteria in the ancient 
pre-Cambrian rocks was suspected for several years before they were 
found. From the part they both play in the deposition of calcium 
carbonate in modern waters and the fact that bacteria are usually 
present when animal or vegetable matter is broken down by decom- 
position it seems that they must have existed almost from the begin- 
ning of life on earth, and that in this way we may explain the pres- 
ence of limestone of pre-Cambrian Algonkian time that is found in 
Montana and other parts of North America. 

In the spring of 1914 after careful study of the problem it was 
concluded to be quite probable that bacteria were an important fac- 


1M. Renault, Recherches sur les Bactériacées fossiles, Ann. Sci. Nat., Bot., Vol. 2, 
Paris, 1896, pp. 274-349. 


18618°—sm 1915——16 


242 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


tor in the deposition of the Algonkian limestones, but no definite 
bacteria had been discovered. From specimens collected in the sum- 
mer of that year many thin sections were prepared, and in these Dr. 
Albert Mann, microscopist and student of diatoms and bacteria, dis- 
covered individual cells and apparent chains of cells (pl. 4, figs. 2 
and 3) which correspond in their physical appearance with the cells 
of micrococci (pl. 4, fig. 1), a form of bacteria of to-day. The world 
at large has believed that bacteria were modern forms of life, but 
they had been found as explained above in fossil wood of Carbonifer- 
ous time and now we are made to realize that they existed in the first 
known epoch of the earth’s life history, many millions of years ago. 

For the purpose of comparison an illustration is given of a group 
of recent forms as illustrated in the Encyclopedia Britannica* and 
of the form of cells shown in the thin sections cut from the fossil 
algal remains of the Newland limestone (pl. 4). 


ALGONKIAN FOSSIL ALGAL REMAINS. 


In Montana it was found that a great series of pre-Paleozoic sedi- 
mentary rocks was exposed by the uplift of the granite mass form- 
ing the summit of Mount Edith of the Big Belt Mountains, in such 
a way that the thickness of the sandstones, limestones, and shales 
could be readily measured in the numerous sections exposed in the 
canyons worn by waters descending from the higher points to the 
valley surrounding the range. Nearly 5 miles in thickness of rock 
were measured, and in them limestone reefs of fossil algal remains 
were found and large numbers of typical specimens were collected. 

It was observed that some of the algal remains were deposited 
very much in the same manner as those that are now being deposited 
in many fresh-water lakes, and that many of the forms had a charac- 
ter similar to those being deposited through mechanical and algal 
agencies in the thermal springs and pools of the Yellowstone Na- 
tional Park. A comparison of microscopic cells from recent blue- 
green alg and their Algonkian representatives disclosed surprising 
similarity (pl. 5) and led to the conclusion that this type of alga 
existed very early in the history of life. 

On the north side of the East Gallatin River two very rich beds 
of algal remains were found, many of which, on account of the fos- 
sil being silicified and imbedded in a softer limestone, were weathered 
out in relief, as shown by plate 3. 


1 QWleventh ed., vol. 3, p. 160, fig. 5. 


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*p A3LV1d ; *}}09/2MM—'S16| ‘Hodey ueiuosyyiws 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Walcott. PLATE 5, 


Microscopic CELLS FROM RECENT BLUE-GREEN ALG AND THEIR ALGONKIAN 
REPRESENTATIVES. 


Figs. 1 to 6a are from the ancient forms Newlandia and Camasia; figs. 7 to 8a are from the recent 
Blue-Green Algee. 


EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE—WALCOTT. 243 


THE SEARCH AMONG THE ROCKS OF CAMBRIAN TIME, AND EARLY 
INCENTIVE TO GO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 


Friends have often asked how I happened to take up geologic work 
in the Rocky Mountains. The reason is a very simple one. As a boy 
of 17 I planned to study those older fossiliferous rocks of the North 
American Continent which the great English geologist, Adam Sedg- 
wick, had called the Cambrian system on account of his finding them 
in the Cambrian district of Wales. 

The early explorers of the Rocky Mountains and large plateaus 
wrote of great masses of ancient bedded rocks exposed by mountain 
uplifts and deep canyons, and so I have taken advantage of every 
opportunity to visit and work in that great wonderland. This study 
has led me to many wild and beautiful regions, where nature has 
glorified these old sea beds by thrusting them up into mountain 
masses, with forests below and crowns of perpetual snow and ice on 
their summits. 

From the vicinity of our Burgess Pass camp in the Canadian 
Rockies the views were most beautiful and varied, changing from 
hour to hour during the day and from day to day with the varying 
atmospheric conditions. Emerald Glacier was most attractive in the 
bright sunlight, in the gray light of early morning, the shadows of 
sunset, or when snow and fog were sweeping over the range, giving 
only now and then a glimpse of the ice and cliffs. The light-colored 
moraines on either side of its foot and the dark rocks afforded a 
beautiful setting for the ice, and across the Yoho Pass the cliff of 
-Mount Wapta stood in bold relief, with a steep slope of broken rock 
on the west, and a huge bank of snow on the eastern side of its south 
ridge. 

Our camp at Lake O’Hara (7,000 feet) (pl. 6) was in a beautiful 
mountain meadow at the foot of Mount Schaffer, where the morning 
and evening views of the surrounding mountains were often superb. 
Snow squalls are not infrequent on the higher summits, and on July 
17 snow fell at the camp nearly all day. As seen from a slope of 
Mount Odaray, Lake O’Hara rests like an emerald in a bowl of 
mountains, reflecting the glaciers of Mounts Lefroy and Hungabee. 


CAMBRIAN SECTIONS. 


My first study of a great section of Paleozoic rocks of the western 
side of North America was that of the Eureka mining district of 
Nevada.? This was followed by the section of the Grand Canyon of 


1Cambria (or Cymru) was the ancient name for Wales. 
2 Monograph 8, U. 8S. Geol. Survey, 1884. 


244 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


the Colorado River, Arizona.’ In this section the Cambrian strata 
extend down to the horizon of the central portion of the Middle 
Cambrian (Acadian) where the Cambrian rests unconformably on 
the pre-Cambrian formations.” 

The object of my preliminary correlations of the several sections 
studied, was to show in a broad way the interrelations of the strata 
and faunas in the North American Cordilleran area west of the great 
continental land area of Lower and much of Middle Cambrian time. 

In the course of my studies, particularly in recent years, data have 
also come to light which help us more definitely to outline the boun- 
daries of the three great marine incursions of Cambrian time. There 
are also presented to us new conceptions of geological conditions in 
that period and more accurate information indicating the probable 
sources of the Cambrian fauna of the Cordilleran area.* 

The change in the species from the Lower to the Middle Cambrian 
fauna is very great.t| Of 77 species of brachiopods in the Lower 
Cambrian, six are found in the Middle Cambrian. Among the trilo- 
bites the disappearance of the Mesonacide® is the most marked 
change. Some of the species of the Conocephalide may have con- 
tinued on into the Middle Cambrian, but the study of this and other 
crustaceans of the Cambrian time has not yet advanced so that any 
reliable data are available. 

Most of the genera of the Lower Cambrian pass up into the Middle 
Cambrian, and this leads to the thought that the interruption, though 
important and of considerable duration, was not of a degree com- 
parable with the unconformity immediately preceding the pre-Cam- 
brian revolution, nor like the great faunal change that came at the 
close of Cambrian time, although the later diastrophic movement 
appears to have been relatively insignificant on the western side of 
the continent. 

After the close of Middle Cambrian time the waters of the Pacific, 
the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic began to rise and to flood lands 
that had not known the presence of marine waters since far back in 
the Proterozoic and may be since Archeozoic time. The margin of 
this area was as far westward as the present position of the main 
range of the Wasatch Mountains in the vicinity of Salt Lake, Utah; 
from this point the shore-line trended gradually south-southwest to 
southwestern Utah. 


1Tenth Ann. Rep. U. S..Geol. Survey, 1891, pp. 509-774: The fauna of the Lower 
Cambrian or Olenellus zone. 

Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 53, no. 5, 1908, p. 167. Cambrian sections of the Cordil- 
leran area. 

2See American Jour. Sci., 8d ser., vol. 26, 1883, pp. 437-442. 

The Cambrian and its problems, Yale Univ. Press, in Problems of American Geology, 
1915, p. 162. 

4TIdem, pp. 189-190. 

5 See plate 14, Lower Cambrian trilobites, facing p. 252, this paper. 


‘QUIZBSRIV OLYABIds0EH [VUOTVN JO AsoyINOD *4I0OTBAA 
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(L934 $999) VYVH,O 3XxVT 


"9 3ALV1d "OO; —'G16| ‘Hodey ueluosy}iws 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Walcott. PLATE 7. 


View SHOWING MASSIVE CHARACTER OF CAMBRO-ORDOVICIAN LIMESTONE, IN BROAD 
SYNCLINE EAST OF YAU-T’OU COAL FIELD, PROVINCE OF SHAN-SI, CHINA. 


Illustrates abrupt walls of recent canyons cut in heavy limestone. On the T’ai-shan-ho 4 miles 
southwest of Shi-pan-k’6u, in the district of Wu-t’ai-hién, Province of Shan-si. (After Willis, 
Research in China, Pub. No, 54, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1907.) 


EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE—-WALCOTT. 245 


Attention is called to the close relationship between the great Cam- 
brian section of the Province of Shantung, China, and the Cordil- 
leran sections of North America. The thickness of the strata is very 
much less, but the general character and stratigraphic succession of 
the Cambrian faunas is very much the same. This relationship is 
further verified by the association of genera and snecies as shown by 
my subsequent study of the Cambrian faunas of China. 


THE CAMBRIAN FAUNAS OF CHINA.* 


When looking over the descriptions of China by Baron Ferdinand 
von Richthofen? and their contained Cambrian fossils described by 
Dr. W. Dames* from Liautung, and Dr. Emanuel Kayser, I was 
impressed with the necessity of having the stratigraphic sections 
studied in detail, and extensive collections of fossils made, in order 
that comparisons of value might be instituted between the Cambrian 
sections and faunas of the western portion of North America and the 
Paleozoic sections and their contained faunas in eastern Asia. This 
project was held in abeyance 18 years, until in 1907 an expedition 
was sent by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, under the 
charge of Dr. Bailey Willis and his associate geologist, Mr. Eliot 
Blackwelder, resulting in the acquisition of large and interesting 
collections, of which I have made a careful study, comparing them 
with other collections from abroad, which I also had the opportunity 
to examine. 

The chief results obtained from the study of the Chinese collec- 
tions were the discovery of portions of the upper part of the Lower 
Cambrian fauna and a great development of a Middle Cambrian 
fauna of the same general character as that of the Cordilleran , 
province of western North America; also an Upper Cambrian fauna 
comparable with that of the Cordilleran province and the upper 
Mississippi province of the United States. The fauna of the upper 
zone of the Lower Cambrian was found to be of the same general 
type as that of the Cambrian fauna of the Salt Range of India, and 
we were thus enabled definitely to locate the faunal horizons in 
India which had been referred to Upper Cambrian and _post- 
Cambrian formations. 

Another important discovery was that of the occurrence in the 
Middle Cambrian of China of a fauna comparable with that of the 
Middle Cambrian of Mount Stephen, British Columbia (pp. 246, 
247), and the southern extension of the same fauna in the Middle 
Cambrian of Idaho, Utah, and Nevada in the United States. 


1 Research in China, Carnegie Inst. of Washington, Pub. No. 54, 1913, Walcott: The 
Cambrian Faunas of China. 

2China, 1882, vol. 2. 

3TIdem, 1883, vol. 4, pp. 1—33. 

4Tdem, pp. 34-36. 


246 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


There is much still to be learned by larger and more systematic 
collections in the Cambrian of China, and the future student of the 
Cambrian system in Asia should also consider carefully the Siberian 
Cambrian. The field is a large one, and what we now know of it in- 
dicates a rich reward to the individual who takes the time to thor- 
oughly work out the formations and their contained faunas. 


THE GREAT MIDDLE CAMBRIAN FOSSIL QUARRY OF BRITISH 
. COLUMBIA. 


Nature has a habit of placing some of her most attractive treas- 
ures in places where it is difficult to locate and obtain them. Nearly 
30 years ago rumors came of a wonderful find of glaciers, forests, 
mountain peaks, lakes, and fossil beds along the line of the rugged 
pass through which the Canadian Pacific Railway was building,t 
but it was only during the past four or five years, while making 
researches in the Canadian Rockies, that it was my good fortune to 
discover highly organized marine fossils deep in the Middle Cam- 
brian formation. In these the minutest details of the internal struc- 
ture are wonderfully preserved and reveal a great deal not before 
known of the life history of that period. 

To secure as complete a series of the fossils as possible work has 
been continued for several seasons. The great fossil quarry is 3,000 
feet above Field and 8,000 feet above sea level on the southwestern 
flank of Mount Wapta. The conditions were such that in order to 
reach the finest fossils it was necessary to blast the solid beds out to 
a depth of 22 feet (pl. 8). 

Most of the Cambrian rocks of this quarry section were deposited 
in waters teeming with marine invertebrate life? As far as now 
‘ known, this was before the day of fish or of any other vertebrate 
animal; no land plants are known to have existed then, and even 
marine vegetable life, except in the lowest forms, was unrepresented. 
Other animals, however, lived in great profusion, and here and 
there conditions were so favorable for their burial in the mud and 
sand of the Cambrian sea that they were imbedded unbroken, and 
throughout all the processes of rock making and mountain building 
they have escaped destruction (pl. 9). 

One of these favorable places was at the quarry, where the most 
readily destroyed organisms, like the jellyfish (pl. 11, figs. 1, 2), 
have been exquisitely preserved; and we have crustaceans of numer- 
ous varieties (pls. 9, 10, 15), many of which preserve the most 
delicate branchiz and appendages. One can hardly realize that these 
were buried in the mud 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 years or more ago 
and have remained undisturbed while several miles of thickness of 


1 Walcott, A Geologist’s Paradise, Nat. Geog. Mag., June, 1911. 
2 Tdem, 


Smithsonian Report 1915.—Walcott. PLATE 8. 


SOUTH END OF FOSSIL QUARRY, WHERE MANY OF THE Most BEAUTIFUL SPECIMENS 
WERE SECURED FROM THE LOWER 83 FEET OF BEDS. 


Near Field, British Columbia. Photograph by C. D. Walcott. 


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EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE—WALCOTT. 947 


sediment were deposited over them, changed into rock, elevated into 
mountain masses, and later eroded to form the present mountains 
and canyons. 

We have long considered that the trilobite (pl. 9) was the most 
highly developed animal in Cambrian time, but a few summers ago? 
a crustacean was found by the author’s son, Sidney, in the great 
fossil bed, that was the king of the animal world in its day (pl. 10, 
Sidneyia inexpectans). That it was prepared to assert its right to 
the control of the Cambrian sea is shown by the claws with which 
it was armed (pl. 10). 


EVOLUTION OF EARLY MARINE LIFE. 


Marine life, as already noted, began in times long antedating our 
oldest fossil records, but we are obliged to take up its study at the 
beginning of Cambrian time. Several groups have been studied in 
a preliminary way, and from these certain deductions have been 
drawn. The first that I will mention is one of the most unlikely of 
animals to be preserved in fine condition in the fossil state. 


MIDDLE CAMBRIAN HOLOTHURIANS.? 


That the tests or shells of trilobites and merostomes should be 
finely preserved in a fine-grained, silico-argillaceous rock is rather 
to be expected, but, with past experiences in mind, I was not pre- 
pared to find entire holothurians. That they are present and show 
many details of structure (pl. 11) is most instructive and satisfac- 
tory, since their occurrence records for the first time, with the ex- 
ception of some scattered calcareous spicules and plates, the pres- 
ence of this class of organisms in any geologic formation. Any 
calcareous matter that may have been present in them was prob- 
ably removed by solution while the animal was in the mud and 
before it became fossilized. That carbonic acid was present in the 
mud and immediately adjoining water is suggested by the very 
perfect state of preservation of the numerous and varied forms of 
life. These certainly would have been destroyed by the worms and 
predatory crustaceans that were associated with them if the animals 
that dropped to the bottom on the mud or that crawled or were 
drifted onto it had not at once been killed and preserved with little 
or no decomposition or mechanical destruction. This conclusion 
apples to nearly all parts of a limited deposit in the fossil quarry 
(pl. 8) about 6 feet in thickness, and especially to the lower 2 feet 
of it: 

1JTn 1910. 
2 Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 57, nos. 2 and 3. 


A holothurian is defined as a sea-cucumber or similar echinoderm. 
Medusa, a jellyfish. 


248 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


CAMBRIAN ANNELIDS.' 


I had often searched the fine shales of the pre-Cambrian and 
Cambrian strata for remains of annelids, but it was not until the 
summer of 1910 that anything more than trails and borings were 
found. 

The annelids of the Burgess shale, like the holothurians and 
meduse, are pressed so flat that the worm is represented by only a 
thin film. Fortunately this is darker than the shale and usually 
shiny, and the contents of the animal are often preserved as a glis- 
tening silvery surface, even to the fine details of structure. How 
clearly the specimens exhibit both external and internal characters 
is shown by the plate figures (pl. 12), which are reproduced from 
photographs made by reflected light. 


RELATIONS TO LIVING ANNELIDS. 


The discovery of this remarkable group of annelids in the Burgess 
shale member of the Stephen formation opened up a new point of 
view on the development of the Annulata. The fact that from one 
very limited locality there were collected 11 genera belonging 
to widely separated families points clearly to the conclusion that 
the fundamental characters of all the classes had been developed 
prior to Middle Cambrian time. 


CAMBRIAN BRACHIOPODA. 


The chief characters of the Cambrian brachiopod are illustrated 
on plate 13. It may be studied in three ways—historically, geologi- 
cally, and zoologically. 

The conditions in which the Cambrian brachiopods are found 
indicate that some of them were gregarious in habit, and that many 
persisted through marked changes of environment and sedimenta- 
tion. One species,? for instance, is found in sandstone, siliceous 
and argillaceous shale, and limestone. It has a wide distribution in 
the Cordilleran province of western North America and has a verti- 
cal range in the layers of rock of 2,000 feet or more. Other forms, 
such as Micromitra haydeni, are known only from one locality and 
one layer of rock. A large number of species occur in sandstone 
and shales that are evidently of shallow-water origin; others occur 
in limestones that were probably deposited in relatively deep water. 
The evidence indicates that their habitat largely ranged from be- 
tween tides to a depth of 1,000 to 2,000 feet. Some forms may have 


1 Middle Cambrian Annulata, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 57, no. 5, 1911. Annelid, 
from anulus, ring; applied to worms. 

2 Walcott, Monogr. 51, U. S. Geol. Survey, 2 vols., 1912. 

3 Micromitra (Iphidella) pannula Walcott. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.— Walcott. PLATE 10. 


SIDNEYIA INEXPECTANS WALCOTT. 


The king of the animal world 15,000,000 years ago; discovered by Mr. Walcott. The spiny claws 
of the Middle Cambrian crustacean (Sidneyia inexpectans Walcott) are shown asa light patch in 
the center of Plate 9. From Burgess Pass shale, Field, British Columbia. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Walcott. PLATE 11. 


MIDDLE CAMBRIAN MEDUSA AND HOLOTHURIAN. 


cr=central ring; p=digitate tentacle; re=radial canals; s=stomach; 2=four large lobes. 
1, 2. Peytoia nathorsti Walcott. (Medusae, or jellyfish.) 3. Eldonialudwigi Walcott. (Holothurian.) 


From locality 35k, Middle Cambrian: Burgess shale member of the Stephen formation, west 


slope of ridge between Mount Field and Wapta Peak, 1 mile (1.6 km.) northeast of Burgess 
Pass, above Field, British Columbia. 


EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE—WALCOTT. 249 


had a greater bathymetric range, but the evidence in favor of such 
a range is not known to me. A table of the species in the monograph 
showed that with few exceptions each of the species is confined to 
one type of sediment. 

More than 500 species and varieties of Cambrian brachiopods were 
studied and between 40 and 50 of Ordovician. Of the Cambrian 
forms, 10 genera, 2 subgenera, 21 species, and 1 variety persisted 
into the Ordovician. 

Approximately 1,050 different localities bearing brachiopods were 
examined, and the same genera were found often to exist in widely 
separated regions, as, for example, a clear relationship was shown 
between brachiopods from the Scandinavian Peninsula and those of 
eastern Canadian localities, while in many other instances those of 
the western Cordilleran region of North America were related to 
those from China. 


MICROSCOPIC STRUCTURE. 


One important deduction from microscopic examination of the 
shells was the differentiation of certain genera and species from the 
Cambrian and Ordovician hitherto classed together,’ the microscopic 
shell structure of one being of granular material pierced by small 
pores, and in the other of fibrous material. On the other hand, the 
microscopic structure of two other orders? in question is so similar 
that an unbroken line of descent is indicated. 

We do not know of any brachiopods in strata older than that con- 
taining Lower Cambrian fauna. Yet when the advanced stage of 
development of some of the earliest-known forms is considered it 
seems almost certain that such existed far back in pre-Cambrian time. 


THEORETICAL HVOLUTION OF CAMBRIAN CRUSTACEA FROM THE 
BRANCHIOPODA.® 


The Cambrian crustacean fauna suggests that five main lines or 
stems (Branchiopoda, Malacostraca, Ostracoda, Trilobita, and Mero- 
stomata) were in existence at the beginning of Cambrian time, and 
all of them had already had their inception in Lipalian time or the 
period of pre-Cambrian marine sedimentation, of which no known 
part is present on the existing continents. Examples of some of these 
forms are shown in plates 9, 10, 14, and 17. 

In the accompanying diagram (p. 250) the attempt is made to show 
the relations of Cambrian crustaceans to a theoretical ancestral stock, 


1Cambrian Billingsellide and Ordovician Protremata. 

2Cambrian and later Pentameracea. 

3 Walcott: Middle Cambrian Branchiopoda, Malacostraca, Trilobita, and Merostomata, 
Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 57, no. 6, 1912. 


250 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


which for convenience is correlated with the Apodidz. From this 
stock it is assumed that the Branchiopoda came, and from the 
Branchiopoda stock three distinct branches were developed prior to 
or during Cambrian time. Of these the one of greatest interest in 
the present connection is that on the right of the diagram. In this 
line of descent it is assumed 
that the Trilobita are di- 
rectly descendent from the 
Branchiopoda, and forms 
grouped under the order 
Agiaspina = A glaspina are derived from 
the Trilobita. The order 
Limulava is considered as 
being intermediate between 
Aglaspina and the Euryp- 
terida, and that the two 
orders Limulava and 
Aglaspina serve to connect 
the Trilobita and the Eu- 
rypterida. 


The line of descent of 


Fia. 1.—Theoretical evolution of Cambrian Crustacea from the various genera of the 
the Branchiopoda. ; 


Eurypterida 
Phyllocarida 


Limulava 


Hymenocarina 


Trilobita 
Ostracoda 


Mesonacidee of the Lower 
Cambrian series! is indicated on plate 14, from figures 1 to 9, as 
stated in the description of the plate.” 


MIDDLE CAMBRIAN CRUSTACEANS? 


Examples of a few others of the Middle Cambrian crustaceans 
found at the great quarry are illustrated on plate 15. 


DISCOVERY OF ANOTHER CAMBRIAN FAUNA IN THE CANADIAN 
ROCKIES. 


During the summer of 1911 a Smithsonian expedition, in coopera- 
tion with Mr. Arthur O. Wheeler, of the Alpine Club of Canada, 
visited the Robson Peak district. My son Charles, who accom- 
panied the party, brought back a few Cambrian fossils picked up 
while hunting and told me that ridge after ridge encircled the great 
Robson Peak with rocky layers, all sloping back toward and under 
the mountain. This suggested an opportunity to study another 


1 Walcott: Fauna of the Lower Cambrian or Olenellus zone, Tenth Ann, Rept., U. S. 
Geol. Surv., pt. 1, 1890, pp. 509-763. 

Olenellus: A large trilobite characteristic of the Lower Cambrian rocks. See pl. 14, 
fig. 9, this paper. 

2 Walcott: Olenellus and other genera of the Mesonacide, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 
53, no. 6, 1910. 

3 Smithsonian Mise. Coll., vol. 57, no. 6, 1912. 

4 Walcott: The Monarch of the Canadian Rockies, Nat. Geog. Mag., May, 1913. 


SE 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Walcott. PLATE 12. 


es 


MIDDLE CAMBRIAN ANNULATA. 
1-3. Canadia setigera Walcott. 4-7. Canadia spinosa Walcott. 8,9. Aysheaia pedunculata Walcott. 


From locality 35k, Middle Cambrian: Burgess shale member of the Stephen formation, west 
slope of ridge between Mount Field and Wapta Peak, 1 mile (1.6 km.) northeast of Burgess 
Pass, above Field, British Columbia, 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Walcott. : ; PLATE 13. 


CAMBRIAN BRACHIOPODA. 


a=area; cf=cardinal muscle scar; /=foramen; /’=cast of foraminal tube; h=central muscle — 


scar; 7=transmedian muscle scar; j=anterior lateral muscle scar; vs=yascular sinus, 


Obolus, Dicellomus, Lingulella, Acrothele, and other genera are represented from localities in the 
United States, Canada, Sweden, France, and China. 


EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE—WALCOTT. 251 


great section of the Cambrian of the Rockies 200 miles (328.8 
kilometers) northwest of the Burgess Pass section near Field, 
British Columbia, and the following season accordingly found me 
again exploring new fossil localities in the midst of magnificent 
scenery. 

Robson, the most majestic peak of the Canadian Rockies (pl. 1), 
is situated northwest of the Yellowhead Pass, through which the 
Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern Railway have been 
building their lines to connect the great interior plains and granary 
of Canada with the Pacific coast. Known to trappers of the Hudson 
Bay Co. and a few hardy explorers who have penetrated the region 
in search of a practicable trail to the Pacific, it has until now re- 
mained to the rest of the world almost an undiscovered country. 


NOMENCLATURE, 


Although not an original explorer of the Robson Peak district it 
fell to my lot to be the first to study the geologic section, and in this 
connection it was necessary to apply additional names in order to 
* properly locate, describe, and name the geologic formations. 

In this region of ancient Indian association it seemed to me 
especially fitting that some appropriate Indian terms should be 
used in order to preserve from total oblivion a curious language 
typical of a picturesque and fast disappearing people. With the 
help of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian 
Institution I prepared a list of such names, of which the following 
are examples: 

Titkana? (bird) Peak. 

Tyatunga? (black rock) Mountain. 
Hunga (chief) Glacier. 

Hihuna (owl) River. 

Chupo (fog, mist) Glacier, ete. 


FOSSIL DISCOVERIES. 


Chupo, the glacier of fog and mist, is usually half concealed by 
clouds and banks of mist that form on the edge of the mountain 
and drift over it. This glacier proved of great interest and service 
to us in our geologic work. On its surface blocks of rock from 
high up on the peak were carried down to the great moraine at its 
foot, and in those blocks I found the evidence that proved the upper 
third of the mountain to be of post-Cambrian age by the presence 
in the limestone of marine shells and fragments of crablike animals 
that lived in so-called Ordovician time. 

The beautiful Hunga Glacier is literally a flowing river of ice. 
At its left Titkana (bird) Peak rises as a black limestone mass that 


1 Approved by National Geographic Board of Canada, December, 1912. 


252 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


with Lyatunga (black rock) Mountain forms the mighty portals of 
the great glacier. 

Day after day we passed between these portals and climbed over 
the crevassed and hummocky ice in order to trace the connection of 
the rocky section of Titkana Peak with that of Robson (pl. 16). 
Thanks to the fine fossil fauna found in Billings Butte and the 
slope of the layers of rock a satisfactory “tie” was made across the 
glacier to the limestones of Robson. 

The work was trying and tedious, but nature kindly assisted by 
bringing down long trains of bowlders on the ice of the glacier. 
From these was revealed the story concealed in the cliffs far above, 
and thus we learned the history of the rocks connected with those of 
the more accessible cliffs on the opposite side of the glacier. 

The geologic story of this enchanting region is too long and com- 
plieated to be related here. Suffice it that I found over 12,000 feet in 
thickness of Cambrian beds capped by 3,000 feet or more of Ordo- 
vician strata high up on Robson Peak. 

A new fossil find was made by chance. Mr. Harry Blagden and 
I were sitting on a huge block of rock at the lower end of Mural 
Glacier, munching our cold luncheon, when I happened to notice a 
block of black, shaly rock lying on the ice. Wishing to warm up, 
for the mist drifting over the ice was cold and wet, I crossed to the 
block and split it open. On the parting there were several entire 
trilobites belonging to new species of a new subfauna of the Lower 
Cambrian fauna (pl. 17). 

There were also some fine marine shells of a kind that occurs in 
the Lower Cambrian rocks west of Petrograd, Russia. We found 
the bed from which this block had come by carefully tracing frag- 
ments of the shale scattered on the upward-sloping surface of the ice 
to a cliff 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) up the glacier at the foot of 
Mumm Peak, which is a high point (9,740 feet=2,968 meters) di- 
rectly north of Robson Peak. The fossil locality is high up, where 
rain, fog, and snow squalls may be expected nearly every day of the 
year. Working until late in the afternoon, we carried all of the 
rock we could pack over the glacier and down through the cliffs to 
the valley of the Smoky River. 

One of our horses had taken leave on his own account, so we 
loaded faithful Billy with the rock specimens, two rifles, two shot- 
guns, a camera, and our raincoats and’ plodded over the muddy trails, 
forded two icy-cold rivers, and “dropped” in at camp three hours 
after dark. At the last ford the powerful animal carried us both and 
all our impedimenta through the broad, rushing glacial stream. 

Tf any readers wish to visit Robson Peak they can readily do so 
by going to Edmonton and thence by railroad to Mount Robson 
Station, which is in sight of Robson Peak. The Alpine Club of 


Smithsonian Report, 1915,.—Walcott. REAIE |)srs 


LOWER CAMBRIAN TRILOBITES. 


1. Nevadia weeksi (Walcott); 2. Mesonacis vermontana (Hall); 3. Elliptocephala asaphoides Emmons; 4. Caullavia 
bréggert (Walcott); 5. Holmia kjerulfi(Linnarsson); 6. Wanneria walcottanus (Wanner); 7, 8. Pedeumias transitans 
Walcott. Fig. 8 isan enlargement of the posterior portion of figure 7, showing the rudimentary segments and 
pygidium beneath the telsonlikesegment. 9. Olenellus thompsoni Hall. 

Illustrates variation in principal genera of the Mesonacide; shows changes from most primitive form Nevadia 
(figure 1) through one line of descent, as represented by figures 2, 3, and 7, to Olenellus (figure 9), also another 
line of descent through figures 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6, probable line of descent from Nevadia (figure 1) to Holmia 
(figure 5), and on to Paradoxides. (See pl. 17.) 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Walcott. PLATE 15. 


MIDDLE CAMBRIAN CRUSTACEANS. 
1-3. Burgessia bella Walcott; 4,5. Waptia fieldensis Walcott; 6. Opabinia regalis Walcott. 


From Burgess Pass fossil quarry, near Field, British Columbia. 


EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE—WALCOTT. 253 


Canada has recently held its summer camp on the shores of Berg 
Lake, and soon this wonderland will be open to all who love the 
mountains and outdoor life. 

Some of the fossil trilobites of this region are illustrated on plate 
17 (Olenellus truemani Walcott, figs. 2-10),1 and may be correlated 
with another similar species (pl. 14, fig. 9, Olenellus thompsont 
(Hall) ) from a Lower Cambrian shale in Pennsylvania and other 
Appalachian localities. Often the discovery of these correlations 
proves of great importance in the assignment of strata to their proper 
formations, and it has frequently been of great service in prospecting 
and exploiting mining districts in the West and elsewhere. <A fault 
or break in the strata is sometimes detected only by this means. 


UPPER CAMBRIAN FAUNA OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 


The importance of the distribution of a single family or genus in 
determining the stratigraphic position and succession of layers is 
shown in a recent study of the Dikelocephaline? (pl. 18). 

Tt had been evident for several years that the various Cambrian - 
formations of the Upper Mississippi Valley, which had been re- 
ferred first to one formation (Potsdam) and then to another (St. 
Croix sandstones), needed careful revision in relation to their 
stratigraphic position and succession. This was accomplished 
through the study of the distribution of the Dikelocephalus* fauna 
in this wide region, and its correlation with related genera and 
species elsewhere. 


THE SARDINIAN CAMBRIAN GENUS OLENOPSIS IN AM®RICA.* 


An example of the significance of distribution in showing unsus- 
pected relationship of widely separated faunas, and consequently a 
bond between the marine bodies of water which covered the land 
at an early age, is found in the study of the geographic distribution 
of a remarkable trilobite. Until the publication of the report in 
1912 the presence of the genus Olenopsis in America had not been 
announced, although a number of the cranidia of species referred 
to the related Ptychoparia were very much like the cranidia of 
Olenopsis. 

The type species, Olenopsis zoppii, occurs on the island of Sar- 
dinia at Canal Grande and vicinity. Investigation in North America 

1 Vig. 1 on this plate represents a related species, Holmia ? macer Walcott, from the 
Lower Cambrian shale, Fruitville, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. 

2 Walcott: Dikelocephalus and other genera of the Dikelocephaline. Smithsonian Misc. 
Coll., vol. 57, no. 18, 1914. 

® Dikelocephalus, a large trilobite characteristic of the later (Upper) Cambrian rocks. 

Dikelocephalus, from Greek duedX\a, a mattock or two-pronged hoe, and keéade head. 


This trilobite has been called “‘ shovel-head,”’ well suggested by fig. 1, pl. 18. 
4 Walcott, Smithsonian Mise. Coll., vol. 57, no. 8, 1912. 


254 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


disclosed Olenopsis roddyi on the eastern side of the continent, near 
Lancaster, in the central part of Pennsylvania; on the western side 
of the continent Olenopsis americanus in the northern central part of 
Montana, and Olenopsis ? agnesensis on the line of the Continental 
Divide, near the Canadian Pacific Railway, in both Alberta and 
British Columbia. It is quite probable that if entire specimens of 
a number of species now represented by cranidia and referred to 
the genus Ptychoparia were available for study other species of 
Olenopsis would be found at approximately the same stratigraphic 
horizon. 


AN HARLY DISCOVERY BY THE AUTHOR. 


Another instance of settling a disputed horizon’ recalls a per- 
sonal experience. In a small drift block of sandstone which I found 
in 1867 on the road from Trenton to Trenton Falls, Oneida County, 
N. Y., there is an unusual apparent association of Upper Cam- 
brian (Hoyt limestone) and Ordovician (Aylmer sandstone, Chazy) 
fossils. The Hoyt limestone species are Ptychaspis speciosus aud 
Agraulos cf. saratogensis. The Aylmer sandstone species are Leper- 
ditia armata and Bathyurus cf. angelina Billings. 

When as a boy I found the rounded block of sandstone referred 
to I broke out all the fossils possible, as at the time I was well 
acquainted with the Trenton limestone fauna, and the fossils in the 
block were strangers to me, with the exception of Leperditia armata. 
The following winter I endeavored to locate the stratigraphic posi- 
tion of the trilobites, but could not, further than that they were 
evidently of pre-Trenton age. This study aroused an interest in 
the American early Paleozoic fossils that gradually led me to take 
up the Cambrian rocks and faunas as my special field of research. 

The block of sandstone I had found was about 3 inches in thickness 
by 12 in diameter. The impact of the wheel of the wagon in which 
I was riding split the block open and exposed several cranidia of 
the trilobite now known as P7: ychaspis speciosus. Neither this nor 
Agraulos cf. saratogensis occurred in direct association with the 
Chazy Leperditia and Bathyurus. 

In explaining this connection I have recently been led to adopt a 
suggestion of Dr. E. O. Ulrich that the block of sandstone was part 
of a bed formed by the overlap of the Aylmer sandstone of the Chazy 
on a layer of Potsdam sandstone. This would make the line of 
demarcation between the Cambrian and Ordovician deposits within 
the block of sandstone that I found. With this view in mind, the 
Hoyt limestone species have now been referred by me to the Upper 
Cambrian and the Aylmer sandstone species to the Ordovician. 


1 Walcott: New York Potsdam-Hoyt fauna, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 57, No. 9, 1912. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Walcott. PLATE 16. 


WorkING UP THROUGH THE VAST AND BROKEN FRONT OF HUNGA GLACIER. 


Photograph by R. C. W. Lett, by courtesy of Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Reprinted from 
National Geographic Magazine. 


melt An 
j = = I 


¥ 


’ 
» 
hd 
@ 
z 
; 


. ae 


os 7 
\ - . 


» ~ a Ve a » i i 
i bee et. Oe ee ee eee eee eee te ee eee ees a Sy eer bar ‘af 7 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Walcott. PLATE 17. 


mae OF G2 DAT : 
Bees hare Fe, 


LOWER CAMBRIAN TRILOBITES. 
1. Holmia ? macer Walcott; 2-10, Olenellus truemani Walcott. 


Mahto formation: From Mumm Peak, 6 miles north of Robson Peak and northwest of Yellow- 
head Pass, in western Alberta, (See pl. 14). 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Walcott. 


PLATE 18. 


DIKELOCEPHALIN©: UPPER CAMBRIAN TRILOBITES. 


1. Dikelocephalus minnesotensis Owen. From Goodhue County, Minn. 
2-5, da. Saukia crassimarginata (Whitfield). From Sauk County, Wis. 


EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE—WALCOTT. 255 


CAMBRO-ORDOVICIAN BOUNDARY WEST OF CONTINENTAL DIVIDE." 


As a third instance of similar kind, the discovery of fairly well- 
characterized specimens of the trilobitic genus Ceratopyge associated 
with brachiopods of the same general type as those found in the 
Ceratopyge shale of Sweden is most important, as it gives the first 
definite suggestion of a base for the Ordovician in the section along 
the Canadian Pacific Railway west of the Continental Divide. In 
Sweden the Ceratopyge shale and limestone are now. by general 
assent placed at the base of the Ordovician, and with our knowledge 
of the stratigraphy of the upper portion as determined by Mr. Allan ? 
I am inclined to agree with him in placing, at least tentatively, the 
boundary between the Cambrian and the Ordovician at the summit 
of the Ottertail limestone and the base of the Goodsir formation. 

The broad question of the Cambro-Ordovician boundary in other 
sections of North America is one that is still in process of adjust- 
ment, owing to the absence of detailed information as to the boun- 
daries between formations and the character of the faunas in the 
formations. Investigations now in hand will throw new light on 
the relations of the Appalachian formations and their invertebrate 
faunas.* 

CONCLUSION. 


The varied investigations of the past few years have opened very 
interesting problems which have been barely touched upon in this 
brief review. 

How much earlier than the pre-Cambrian and Algonkian faunas 
the study of primitive life may be extended will depend very largely 
upon the discovery and study of now unknown fossil faunas and 
floras. All of this comparative study requires a world-wide activity 
in the fields of geology and paleontology. That science is universal 
is shown by a recent incident. The writer lately received a scientific 
pamphlet from a European paleontologist, with the request that it 
be forwarded to a fellow paleontologist in a country with which his 
nation was at war, and there was no communication between the two. 
The friend replied, through the intermediary, acknowledging its 
receipt and asking that his thanks and kind wishes be conveyed to 
the sender. 

Students and investigators everywhere are invited to cooperate 
with the writer in his studies of the evidences of primitive life, and 
in his effort to correlate all procurable data on the subject and make 
them available for study and research by all those interested in these 
fascinating problems. 

1 Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 57, no. 7, 1912. 

2 Allan, John A.: Ice River District, British Columbia, Geol. Survey of Canada, Sum. 


Rept., Dept. of Mines, 1910, pub. 1911, pp. 135-144. 
® Smithsonian Mise. Coll., vol. 64, no. 8, 1916, Cambrian Trilobites. 


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THE PLACE OF FORESTRY AMONG NATURAL 
SCIENCES.* 


By Henry S. GRAVES, 


Forester, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 


In an old forest magazine, Sylvan, is a story about Germany’s 
great poet, Karl von Schiller. Schiller, taking rest at Illmenau, 
Thuringen, met by chance a forester who was preparing a plan of 
management for the Illmenau Forest. A map of the forest was 
spread out, on which the cuttings for the next 220 years were pro- 
jected and noted with their year number. By its side lay the plan 
of an ideal coniferous forest which was to have materialized in 
the year 2050. Attentively and quietly the poet contemplated the 
telling means of forest organization, and especially the plans for 
far-distant years. He quickly realized, after a short explanation, 
the object'of the work, and gave vent to his astonishment: 

I had considered you foresters a very common people who did little else 
than cut down trees and kill game, but you are far from that. You work 
unknown, unrecompensed, free from the tyranny of egotism, and the fruit of 
your quiet work ripens for a late posterity. Hero and poet attain vain glory; 
IT would like to be a forester. 

An opinion not unlike that held by Schiller before meeting with 
the forester still commonly prevails in scientific circles in this 
country. It is quite generally believed that foresters are pure 
empiricists; something on the order of gardeners who plant trees, 
of range riders who fight forest fires, or lumbermen who cruise 
timber, carry on logging operations or manufacture lumber and 
other forest products; that for whatever little knowledge of a 
scientific character the forester may need in his work, he depends on 
experts in other branches of science; on the botanists for the tax- 
onomy of the trees; on physicists, chemists, and engineers for the 
proper understanding of the physical, chemical, and mechanical 
properties of the wood; on the geologists and soil physicist for the 
knowledge of sites suitable for the growth of different kinds of 
trees; upon the plant pathologist for the diseases of trees; upon 
the entomologist for the insect enemies of the forest, and so on. 


1 Paper delivered before the Washington Academy of Sciences on Dec. 3, 1914. Reprinted 
by permission from the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Washington, D. C., 
Vol. 5, No. 2, Jan. 19, 1915. 


18618°—sm 1915——17 257 


258 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Such an impression is undoubtedly strengthened when the. ac- 
tivities of such an organization as the Forest Service are considered. 
The placing under management of about 165,000,000 acres of forest 
land has been an administrative problem of enormous magnitude. 
The administration of this vast public property involves many large 
industrial and economic questions, and affects intimately a number 
of varied and important interests; the lumber industry, the grazing 
industry, water-power development, navigation, municipal water 
supplies, agricultural settlement, mining development, and the rail- 
roads. In launching this great public enterprise, undertaken in the 
face of strong opposition, administrative activities appeared to 
overshadow research work. In this way doubtless many scientific 
men have gained the impression that forestry has little to do with 
science, which seeks for the causal relationship of things and for 
the establishment of laws and principles; that forestry is rather a 
patchwork of miscellaneous knowledge borrowed from other sciences 
and assembled without particular system to help the practical ad- 
ministrator of forest property. 

My endeavor in this paper will be to show that this impression 
is erroneous. While it is true that forestry as an art, as an applied 
science, utilizes results furnished by the natural and engineering 
sciences; while it is also true that the forester’s activities, particu- 
larly during the pioneer period of establishing forest practice, may 
be largely administrative in character, there is nevertheless a funda- 
mental forest science which has a distinctive place. As with all 
others, the science of forestry owes its distinctive character to its 
correlation, from a certain point of view, of parts of certain other 
sciences, such as mathematics, botany, entomology, civil engineering, 
and chemistry. But these are only auxiliary to the resultant sci- 
ence—forestry—which rests upon a knowledge of the life of the 
forest as such, and which, therefore, depends upon the discovery 
of laws governing the forest’s growth and development. 

It is in this field chiefly that foresters may claim some scientific 
achievement, some contribution to general science. Sciences do not 
develop out of curiosity; they appear first of all because there are 
practical problems that need to be solved, and only later become an 
aim in themselves. This has been equally true of the science of 
forestry. The object of forestry as an art is to produce timber of 
high technical quality. In pursuing this object the forester very 
early observed that tall, cylindrical timber, comparatively free of 
knots, is produced only in dense stands, in forests in which the trees 
exert an influence upon each other as well as upon the soil and cli- 
mate of the area occupied by them. He further discovered that the 
social environment produced by trees in a forest is an absolutely 
essential condition for the continuous natural existence of the forest 


FORESTRY—GRAVES. 259 


itself. If the forester had not found forests in nature, he would 
have had to create forests artificially in order to accomplish his prac- 
tical purpose, since it is only through the control and regulation of 
the natural struggle for existence between trees in the forest that the 
forester is capable of managing it for the practical needs of man. 
Thus from the very nature of his dealings with the forest the forester 
was forced from the beginning to consider the forest not merely as an 
aggregation of individual trees but as communities of trees—tree 
societies—and first, from purely utilitarian reasons, developed a 
science upon which the practice of silviculture now rests. 

Forestry as a natural science, therefore, deals with the forest as a 
community in which the individual trees influence one another and 
also influence the character and life of the community itself. As a 
community the forest has individual character and form. It has a 
definite life history; it grows, develops, matures, and propagates 
itself. Its form, development, and final total product may be modi- 
fied by external influences. By abuse it may be greatly injured, and 
the forest as a living entity may even be destroyed. It responds 
equally to care and may be so molded by skillful treatment as to 
produce a high quality of product, and in greater amount and in a 
shorter time than if left to nature. The life history of this forest 
community varies according to the species composing it, the density 
of the stand, the manner in which the trees of different ages are 
grouped, the climatic and soil factors which affect the vigor and 
growth of the individual trees. The simplest form of a forest com- 
munity is that composed of trees of one species and all of the same 
age. When several species and trees of different ages occupy the same 
ground, the form is more complex, the crowns overlapping, and the 
roots occupying different layers of the soil. Thus, for instance, 
when the ground is occupied with a mixed stand of Douglas fir and 
hemlock, the former, requiring more light, occupies the upper story 
and because of its deeper root system extends to the lower-lying 
strata of the soil. The hemlock, on the other hand, which is capable 
of growing under shade, occupies the under story, and, having shal- 
low roots, utilizes largely the top soil. 

There are forest communities, such, for instance, as those typical 
of northwestern Idaho, where western larch, Douglas fir, western 
white pine, white fir, western red cedar, and hemlock all grow to- 
gether. Such a forest is evidently a very complex organism, the 
stability of which is based on a very nice adjustment between the 
different classes and groups occupying the same ground. Any change 
in one of these classes or groups must necessarily affect the other. 
If, for instance, in the Douglas fir-hemlock forest the Douglas fir is 
cut out, the remaining hemlock trees are likely to die out because their 
shallow roots are left exposed to the drying effect of the sun and wind. 


260 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


It is only by a thorough understanding of such mutual adjustments 
that the forester is capable of intelligently handling the forest. With 
the great number of species that are found in this country, with the 
great, variety in climatic and other physical factors which influence 
the form of the forest, it is self-evident that there are many forest 
communities, each with distinctive biological characteristics, which 
offer a wide field for scientific inquiry. Amid the great volume of 
administrative phases of the work in the Forest Service this main 
objective has never been lost sight of in handling the national forests. 
The Forest Service is now spending nearly $300,000 annually for 
research work; it maintains eight forest experiment stations and one 
thoroughly equipped forest-products laboratory, and is doing this 
work solely to study the fundamental laws governing the life of the 
forest and their effect upon the final product—wood. 

Forestry may be called tree sociology, and occupies among natural 
sciences the same position as sociology among humanistic sciences. 
Sociology may be based upon the physiological functions of man as 
a biological individual. A physician, however, is not a sociologist, 
and social phenomena can be understood and interpreted only in the 
light of sociological knowledge. So also: with forestry. Forestry 
depends upon the anatomy and physiology of plants, but it is not 
applied anatomy and physiology of plants. With foresters anatomy 
and physiology of plants is not the immediate end, but enters only 
as one of the essential parts, without which it is impossible to grasp 
the processes that take place in the forest. 

As the science of tree societies, forestry really is a part of the 
larger science dealing with plant associations, yet its development 
was entirely independent of botanical geography. When the need 
arose for the rational handling of timberlands no science of plant 
association was in existence. Foresters were compelled to study the 
biology of the forest by the best methods available; they used the 
general scientific methods of investigation and developed their own 
methods when the former proved inadequate. I am frank to admit 
that the present knowledge of plant associations in botany has not 
yet reached a point where foresters could leave wholly to botanists 
the working out of the basic facts about the life of the forest which 
are needed in the practice of forestry. When the general science of 
plant associations has reached a higher state of development the two 
may possibly merge, but not until then. 

In developing the science of tree associations the forester has been 
unquestionably favored by the fact that the forests, being the highest 
expression of social plant life, afford the best opportunity for 
observing it. 

The reason for the ability of forest trees to form most highly 
organized plant societies lies in their mode of growth, Each annual 


FORESTRY—GRAVES. 261 


ring of growth, together with the new leaves that appear every year, 
is in reality new colonies of cells. Some of the cells die toward the 
end of the vegetative season; others continue to live for a number 
of years. When the conditions of life in a forest have changed for 
a certain tree, when, for instance, from a dominant tree it became 
a suppressed one, the new colonies of cells formed during that year, 
and which sustain the life of that tree, are naturally adapted to these 
new conditions. The same is true when a suppressed tree, through 
some accident to its neighbors, comes into full enjoyment of light. 
The last annual growth is at once capable of taking advantage of 
the new situation created in the forest. Therefore as long as a tree 
can form annual rings it possesses the elasticity and adaptability 
essential for trees living in dense stands. It is only when a tree is 
suppressed to a point when it can not form new growth that it dies 
and is eliminated from a stand. 

Because of the fact that the forest is the highest expression of 
social plant life, the foresters occupy the strategic position from 
which they command vistas accessible only with difficulty to other 
naturalists. In this lies the strength of forestry, its peculiar beauty, 
and the debt which natural science owes to it. It is a significant 
fact, although, of course, only of historic importance, that, according 
to Charles Darwin! himself, it was “an obscure writer on forest 
trees” who, in 1830, in Scotland—that is, 29 years before the Origin 
of Species was published—most expressly and clearly anticipated his 
views on natural selection in a book on Naval Timber and Arbori- 
culture. For the same reason it was foresters, who, long before the 
word “ecology” was coined, had assembled a vast amount of mate- 
rial on the life of the forest as a plant association—the basis of their 
silvicultural practice. Warming, Schimper, and other early writers 
on ecology borrowed most of their proofs and examples from the 
facts established by the foresters, and the forest literature of to-day 
is still practically the only one which contains striking examples of 
the application of ecology to the solution of practical problems. 

One discovery recently made at the Wind River Forest Experi- 
ment Station, in Oregon, comes particularly to my mind. In north- 
western Idaho, where the western white pine is at its optimum growth 
and is greatly in demand by the lumberman, our former method of 
cutting was to remove the main stand and leave seed trees for the 
restocking of the ground. In order to protect the seed trees from 
windfall they were left not singly but in blocks, each covering sev- 
eral acres. The trees left amounted often to from 10 to 15 per cent 
in volume of the total stand, and since they could not be utilized 
later they formed a fairly heavy investment for reforesting the cut- 
over land. A study of the effect of these blocks of seed trees upon 


1 Origin of Species. 


262 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


natural reforestation has proved that they can not be depended upon, 
at least within a reasonable time, to restock naturally the cut-over 
land. The distance to which the seed is scattered from these seed 
trees is insignificant compared with the area to be reforested. Splen- 
did young growth, however, is found here and there on cut-over 
land, away from any seed trees, where the leaf litter is not completely 
burned. It is evident, therefore, that the seed from which this 
young growth originates must have come from a source other than 
the seed trees. The study of the leaf litter in a virgin stand showed 
that the latter contained on the average from one to two germinable 
seed per square foot. Some of the seed found was so discolored that 
it must have been in the litter for a long time. Thus, it was dis- 
covered that the seed of the western white pine retains its vitality 
for years while lying in the duff and litter beneath the mature stands, 
and then germinates when the ground is exposed to direct light by 
cutting. It was found similarly that in old Douglas fir burns, where 
the leaf litter was not completely destroyed, the young growth in- 
variably sprung up from seed that had escaped fire and had been 
lying dormant in the ground. Should a second fire go through the 
young stand before it reaches the bearing stage, the land may become 
a complete waste, at least for hundreds of years, although there may 
be seed trees left on the ground. This conclusively proves that the 
young growth comes from the seed stored in the ground before 
cutting took place and not from the seed scattered after cutting by 
the seed trees left. 

The wonderful capacity of the leaf litter and duff of the cool, dark 
forests of the Northwest to act ‘as a storage medium for the seed 
until favorable conditions for its germination occur is confined not 
only to the Douglas fir and western white pine but to the seed of 
other species which often grow together with them, such as noble 
fir, amabilis fir, western red cedar, and hemlock. The subsequent 
appearance of other species in a Douglas fir or western white pine 
stand depends apparently, to a large extent, upon the seed stored in 
the ground at a time when the original forest still existed. This 
discovery revolutionizes our conception of the succession of forest 
stands, since it shows that the future composition of the forest is 
determined by the seed stored in the leaf litter; and the appearance 
of seedlings first of one species and then of another results simply 
from the differences in the relative endurance of seed of the dif- 
ferent species that are lying in the ground. Besides being of sci- 
entific importance this discovery has also a great practical signifi- 
cance. It accentuates the disastrous consequence of a second fire in 
an old burn, because no more seed remains in the ground while the 
capacity of the few seed trees that may be on the burn is very limited 
in restocking the ground. This discovery enabled the Service to 


FORESTRY—GRAVES. 263 


change materially the present methods of cutting in the white pine 
and Douglas fir forests, to the mutual advantage of the Government 
and of the logging operators. 

I shall give briefly a few other illustrations of the life of the 
forest which stamp it as a distinct plant society. 

The first social phenomenon in a stand of trees is the differentiation 
of individuals of the same age on the basis of differences in height, 
crown development, and growth, the result of the struggle for light 
and nourishment between the members of the stand. A forest at 
maturity contains scarcely 5 per cent of all the trees that have 
started life there. Yet the death of the 95 per cent is a necessary 
condition to the development of the others. The process of differen- 
tiation into dominant and suppressed trees takes place particularly 
in youth and gradually slows down toward maturity. Thus, in some 
natural pine forests, during the age between 20 to 80 years, over 
4,000 trees on an acre die; whereas at the age between 80 to 100 years 
only 300 trees die. With some trees this natural dying out with age 
proceeds faster than with others. Thus in pine, birch, aspen, and all 
other species which demand a great deal of light, the death rate is 
enormous. With spruce, beech, fir, and species which are satisfied 
with less light, this process is less energetic. The growing demand 
for space with age by individual trees in a spruce forest may be 


expressed in the following frgures: 
Square feet. 
PNP OORT SN Oil LO eo 2) ERs PEPER Ge te Pp Peed 2 td Bala pp ed ae Ps epg 4 


PAIRS ORVEHT SPO ls ECR. rele feel eee al RR ORR) eet Te oe eS ees Ee 34 
EN TOUSVCORSLOR ASCH. Mem eel Ss Loren ae ely 2 2 ee OE eee ee ee ees 70 
A ep OURV Gar SOA pect* 5. ON 1 ee hk Se a ae eee a 110 
At 100) VearSsOt he Ose = ne ee eee re a Se ee a ee ee 150 


If we take the space required by a pine at the age between 40 
and 50 years as 100, then for spruce at the same age it will be 87, 
for beech 79, and for fir 63. This process of differentiation is uni- 
versal in forests everywhere. 

Another peculiarity that marks a tree community is the difference 
in seed production of trees which occupy different positions in the 
stand. Thus, if the trees in a forest are divided, into five classes 
according to their height and crown development, and if the seed 
production of the most dominant class is designated as 100, the seed 
production for trees of the second class will be 88, for the third class 
33, for the fourth class only 0.5 per cent; while the trees of the fifth 
class will not produce a single seed, although the age of all these trees 
may be practically the same. The same struggle for existence, 
therefore, which produced the dominant and suppressed trees works 
toward a natural selection, since only those which have conquered in 
the struggle for existence and are endowed with the greatest in- 
dividual energy of growth, reproduce themselves. 


264 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 
? 


In a forest there is altogether a different climate, a different soil, 
and a different ground cover than outside of it. A forest cover does 
not allow all the precipitation that falls over it to reach the ground. 
Part of the precipitation remains on the crowns and is later evap- 
orated back into the air. Another part, through openings in the 
cover, reaches the ground, while a third part runs down along the 
trunks to the base of the tree. Many and exact measurements have 
demonstrated that a forest cover intercepts from 15 to 80 per cent of 
precipitation, according to the species of trees, density of the stand, 
age of the forest, and other factors. Thus pine forests of the north 
intercept only about 20 per cent, spruce about 40 per cent, and fir 
nearly 60 per cent of the total precipitation that falls in the open. 
The amount that runs off along the trunks in some species is very 
small—less than 1 per cent. In others, for instance beech, it is 5 per 
cent. Thus if a certain locality receives 50 inches of rain, the ground 
under the forest will receive only 40, 30, or 20 inches. Thus 10, 20, 
and 30 inches will be withdrawn from the total circulation of mois- 
ture over the area occupied by the forest. The forest cover, besides 
preventing all of the precipitation from reaching the ground, simi- 
larly keeps out light, heat, and wind. Under a forest cover, therefore, 
there is altogether a different heat and light climate and a different 
relative humidity than in the open. 

The foliage that falls year after year upon the ground creates deep 
modification in the forest soil. The changes which the accumulation 
of leaf litter and the roots of the trees produce in the soil and sub- 
soil are so fundamental that it is often possible to determine cen- 
turies after a forest has been destroyed whether the ground was 
ever occupied by one. 

The effect which trees in a stand have upon each other is not con- 
fined merely to changes in their external form and growth; it extends 
also to their internal structure. The specific gravity of the wood, 
its composition, and the anatomical structure which determines its 
specific gravity differ in the same species, and on the same soil, and 
in the same climate, according to the position which the tree occu- 
pies in the stand: Thus in a 100-year-old stand of spruce and fir the 
specific gravity of wood is greatest in trees of the third crown class 
(intermediate trees). The ratio of the thick wall portion of the 
annual ring to the thin wall of the springwood is also different in 
trees of different crown classes. The difference in the size of the 
tracheids in trees of different crown classes may be so great that in 
one tracheid of a dominant tree there may be placed three tracheid 
cells of a suppressed tree. The amount of lignin per unit of weight 
is greater in dominant trees than in suppressed trees. 

Forest trees in a stand are thus influenced not only by the ex- 
ternal physical geographical environment, but also by the new social 


FORESTRY—GRAVES. 265 


environment which they themselves create. For this reason forest 
trees assimilate, grow, and bear fruit differently and have a different 
external appearance and internal structure than trees not grown in 
a forest. 

Forestry, unlike horticulture or agriculture, deals with wild plants 
scarcely modified by cultivation. Trees are also long-lived plants; 
from the origin of a forest stand to its maturity there may pass more 
than a century. Foresters therefore operate over long periods of 
time. They must also deal with vast areas; the soil under the 
forest is as a rule unchanged by cultivation and most of the cul- 
tural operations applicable in arboriculture or agriculture are en- 
tirely impracticable in forestry. Forests, therefore, are largely the 
product of nature, the result of the free play of natural forces. Since 
the foresters had to deal with natural plants which grew under 
natural conditions, they early learned to study and use the natural 
forces affecting forest growth. In nature the least change in the 
topography, exposure or depth of soil, etc., means a change in the 
composition of the forest, in its density, in the character of the ground 
cover, and so on. As a result of his observations, the forester has 
developed definite laws of forest distribution. ‘The forests in the 
different regions of the country have been divided into natural types 
with corresponding types of climate and site. These natural forest 
types, which, by the way, were also developed long before the modern 
conception of plant formations came to light, have been laid at the 
foundation of nearly all of the practical work in the woods. <A forest 
type became the silvicultural unit which has the same physical con- 
ditions of growth throughout and therefore requires the same method 
of treatment. The manner of growth and the method of natural 
regeneration, once developed for a forest type, hold true for the 
same type, no matter where it occurs. After the relation between a 
certain natural type of forest and the climate and topography of a 
region has been established, the forest growth becomes the living ex- 
pression of the climatic and physical factors of the locality. Simi- 
larly, with a given type of climate and locality it is possible for the 
forester to conceive the type of forest which would grow there natu- 
rally. The forester, therefore, may speak of the climate of the beech 
forest, of the Engelmann spruce forest, of the yellow-pine forest. 
Thus, if in China, which may lack weather observations, we find a 
beech forest similar to one found in northern New York, we can be 
fairly certain of the climatic similarities of the two regions. More 
than that, a type of virgin forest growth may serve as a better indi- 
cation of the climate of a particular locality than meteorological 
records covering a short number of years. A forest which has 
grown on the same ground for many generations is the result not 
of any exceptional climatic cycle, but is the product of the average 


266 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


climatic conditions that have prevailed in that region for a long 
time. It expresses not only the result of one single climatic factor, 
but is the product of all the climatic and physical factors together. 
Similarly, the use of the natural forest types for determining the 
potential capacity of the land occupied by them for different pur- 
poses is becoming more and more appreciated. When the climatic 
characteristics of a certain type of forest, for instance those of Engel- 
mann spruce in the Rocky Mountains, is thoroughly established, the 
potential capacity of the land occupied by it for agriculture, grazing, 
or other purposes is also largely determined. 

Observations of the effect of climate upon forest growth naturally 
brought out facts with regard to the effect of forests upon climate, 
soil, and other physical factors and led to the development of a 
special branch of meteorology, known as forest meteorology, in 
which the foresters have taken a prominent part. While there are 
some phases in forest meteorology which still allow room for dis- 
agreement, some relationships established by foresters are widely ac- 
cepted. One of these is the effect which forests have upon local 
climate, especially that of the area they occupy and of contiguous 
areas. Every farmer who plants a windbreak knows and takes ad- 
vantage of this influence. Another relation is that between the 
forest and the circulation of water on and in the ground, a relation 
which plays such an important part in the regimen of streams. 
Still a third one, as yet beyond the possibility of absolute proof, is 
the effect of forests in level countries, in the path of prevailing winds, 
upon the humidity and temperature of far-distant regions lying in 
their lee. 

Tf in the field of botany the forester has contributed to the progress 
of botanical geography and in the realm of meteorology has opened 
new fields of investigation, his influence in wood technology has been 
in changing entirely the attitude of engineers, physicists, and chem- 
ists in handling wood products. The methods of studying the 
physical, mechanical, and chemical properties of wood were, of 
course, those used in engineering by chemists and physicists; but the 
forester has shown that wood, unlike steel, concrete, or other struc- 
tural material, is subject to altogether different laws. Wood, he has 
shown, is not a homegeneous product, but is greatly influenced by 
the conditions in the stand from which it comes. Were it not, there- 
fore, that mechanical properties can.be tied up with some definite 
forest conditions and correlated with some readily visible expression 
of tree growth, such as the number of rings per inch or the specific 
gravity of the wood, timber would be too much of an indefinite 
quantity for architects and other users of wood to handle with 
perfect safety. To find such a relation is just what the foresters 
have been attempting to do, and most of the studies of the strength 


FORESTRY—GRAVES. 267 


of wood have been with the view of establishing certain relations 
between the mechanical, physical, and anatomical properties of the 
wood. Some of these relations I may mention here. 

One of the earliest relations which foresters have established with 
a fair certainty is that between the specific gravity of the wood and 
its technical qualities. Some of the foresters even go so far as to 
claim that the specific gravity of wood is an indicator of all other 
mechanical properties and that the strength of wood increases with 
the specific gravity, irrespective of the species and genus. In other 
words, the heavier the wood, all other conditions being equal, the 
greater its strength. Even oak, which formed apparently an excep- 
tion, has been recently shown to follow the same law. If there is 
still some doubt that the specific gravity of wood can be made a 
criterion of all mechanical and technical properties of wood, the cor- 
relation between the specific gravity and the resistance to compres- 
sion endwise (parallel to the grain) is apparently beyond question. 
Thus by the specific gravity the resistance to compression endwise 
can be readily determined. The compression endwise equals 1,000 
times the specific gravity minus 70, when the moisture content of the 
wood is 15 per cent, or C=1,000 S—70. 

Since in construction work the most desirable wood is the one 
which possesses the highest strength at a given weight, the ratio 
between the compression strength and the specific gravity was found 
to express most clearly the strength of wood. This ratio, however, 
increases with the increase in the specific gravity, a fact which 
further substantiates the law that the specific gravity of wood 
determines its mechanical properties. 

Another relation which has been fairly established is that between 
the resistance to compression endwise and the bending strength of 
timber. By the resistance compression endwise, therefore, the bend- 
ing strength of timber can be determined. 

One of the other properties of wood—namely, hardness—was 
found to have a definite relation to the bending and compression 
strength of wood and this fact tempts the conclusion that by hard- 
ness alone all other mechanical properties can be determined. The 
test for hardness is very simple; it can be made even by a small 
manufacturer and therefore the whole problem of wood testing would 
be greatly simplified. Hardness was also found to have a definite 
relation to the proportion of, the summerwood in the annual ring, 
and consequently to the specific gravity of the wood. The specific 
gravity of wood is determined by its anatomical structure, by the 
proportion of fibro-vascular bundles, their thickness and length, the 
‘ proportion of thick-walled cells, medullary rays, etc. The anatomi- 
cal structure in its turn is probably determined by the combination 
of two factors—the amount of nourishment in the soil and the in- 


268° ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


tensity of transpiration. The mechanical properties of wood come, 
therefore, within the control of the forester who raises and cares for 
the forest. 

There is another field of scientific endeavor in which foresters 
in this country may claim some credit. This is in the field of forest 
mathematics. One unfamiliar with forest growth can hardly realize 
the difficulties in the way of measuring the forest crop, the amount 
of wood produced in a forest composed, for instance, of many dif- 
ferent species, sizes, and ages. If a tree resembled any geometric 
body, such as a truncated cone, or an Appolonian paraboloid, it 
would be a simple matter to determine its contents by applying the 
formula for such body. But a tree’s form does not coincide with 
that of any known geometric body, so that it would seem that the 
only possible way of determining the contents of the trees forming 
a forest would be by measuring each single tree. Evidently this 
would be an entirely impracticable task. 

The common practice of determining the contents of trees either 
in board measure or in cubic feet is to measure a large number of 
trees of a given species in a given locality and apply the average 
figures to the trees of the same diameters and heights within that 
locality. Since there are, however, a great many species of trees 
in this country some of which have a very wide geographic range, 
this method necessarily involves the preparation of a large number 
of local volume tables and hence the measurement of hundreds of 
thousands of trees. The measurement of the taper of a large num- 
ber of trees has shown that there are certain critical points along 
the stem of a tree the ratio between which expresses the form of the 
tree in a sufficiently accurate manner. It was found that trees hav- 
ing the same total height, the same diameter breast high (43 feet 
from the ground) and the same ratio between the diameter at half 
the height of the tree and the diameter breast high, must invariably 
have the same cubic contents irrespective of the species of the tree 
or the region in which it grows. Thus whether it be a Scotch pine 
of northern Sweden, a yellow pine of Arizona, a mahogany of the 
Tropics, or a scrubby birch of the Arctic Circle, the volume of the 
tree may be expressed by means of one simple relationship. The 
discovery of this very simple relation provides, for the first time, a 
basis for the construction of a universal volume table. The mathe- 
maticians of the earlier period sought in vain to find a formula by 
which the cubic contents of a tree could be expressed. What the 
mathematicians failed to develop by the deductive method, foresters 
have found by the inductive method. With a reliable table for con- . 
verting cubic measure into board measure for trees of different sizes, 
the universal volume table expressed in cubic feet could be translated 


FORESTRY—GRAVES. 269 


into a universal table expressed in board feet, which is the measure 
peculiar to this country. 

There is another contribution of which I am somewhat hesitant to 
speak, for it is not a contribution to pure science, if by science is 
meant only the physical or natural sciences. Since, however, it 
touches the interests of a large number of people, I may be forgiven 
if I say a few words about it. It is a contribution to what one 
economist has aptly called the “science of social engineering.” The 
transfer of the forest reserves in 1905 to the Department of Agricul- 
ture marked a new departure in the national economic life. It 
recognized the new principle that the Nation’s resources should be 
managed by the Nation and directly in the interests of the whole 
people; it recognized that these resources should be developed col- 
lectively rather than individually and indirectly. Nearly 10 years 
have now passed since the inauguration of this policy. The record 
of what has been accomplished and the manner in which many of 
the problems have been approached and solved must unquestionably 
be considered a contribution to the methods by which similar prob- 
lems may be handled by the Nation in the future. In the adminis- 
tration of the national forests there is being developed gradually 
what I believe to be a truly scientific system for attaining a concrete 
economic end, a system of controlling certain correlated industries 
with a single purpose in view—the maximum of the welfare of the 
Nation as a whole. In spite of many mistakes which we have un- 
doubtedly made and which we have attempted to correct as we went 
along, in spite of the lack of practice and experience in solving the 
problems at hand, this new policy, it seems to me, has already proved 
to be entirely safe and workable. 


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Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Safford. 


A Hoen & €o.Baltinore 
CuP OF PHILIPPINE LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM, Plerocarpus indicus, AND FLASK CONTAINING 
ITS FLUORESCENT INFUSION, 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—\ITS HISTORY AND AN AC- 
COUNT OF THE REMARKABLE FLUORESCENCE OF 
ITS INFUSION. 


By W. E. SAFFORD, 


Economic Botanist, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 


[With 7 plates. ] 
INTRODUCTION. 


Lignum nephriticum is a remarkable wood which was celebrated 
throughout Europe in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and the early part 
of the eighteenth centuries, not only for its reputed medicinal virtues 
but on account of the strange color phenomena displayed by its 
infusion in spring water. Cups turned from it were deemed fit gifts 
for emperors and princes. The water drunk from these cups, or 
from bowls in which a few chips were allowed to remain, was 
declared to work marvellous cures; and its beautiful opalescence 
and changes in sunlight and shadow were the subject of investiga- 
tions by the most celebrated physicists of that period. Strange to 
say, scarcely a fragment of this wood is now to be found in museums 
or drug collections. Its very name has disappeared from modern 
pharmacographies and encyclopedias; and its botanical identity has 
remained doubtful until the present day. In the present paper I 
propose to show that this classic wood came from two distinct 
sources, from trees of distinct genera. I shall also give an account 
of the fluorescence of their extracts, and endeavor to explain the 
causes which led to the confusion of their identity. 


EARLY HISTORY. 


The Spanish physician Monardes was the first to call attention 
to the wood. In 1565 he wrote the following account of it: 


They also bring from New Spain a wood resembling that of a pear tree, 
dense and without knots, which they have been using for many years in these 
parts for diseases of the kidneys and of the liver. The first person I saw use 
it was a pilot, 25 years ago, who was afflicted with urinary and kidney trouble, 
and who after using it recovered his health and was very well. Since then 


' 1 Based upon a paper entitled ‘‘ The Rediscovery of Lignum nephriticum,’ read by the 


author Feb. 2, 1915, at a meeting of the Botanical Society of Washington. Published by 
authority of the Secretary of Agriculture. 


271 


272 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


I have seen much of it brought from New Spain and used for these and kindred 
maladies. * * * It is used in the following manner: They take the wood 
and make of it chips as thin as possible and not very large and put them into 
clear spring water, which must be very good and pure, and they leave them in 
the water all the time that it lasts for drinking. A half hour after the wood is 
put in, the water begins to assume a very pale blue color, and the longer it 
stays the bluer it turns, though the wood is of a white color. Of this water 
they drink repeatedly and with it they dilute their wine, and it causes very 
wonderful and manifest effects without any alteration nor any other requisite 
than good order and regimen. The water has no more taste than if nothing 
had been put into it, for the wood does not change it at all. Its complexion 
is hot and dry in the first degree. 


Francisco Hernandez, protomedico of Philip II, who returned to 
Spain in 1577 after having spent seven years in Mexico studying the 
resources and useful products of that country, added nothing to 
Monardes’s description of the wood, but gave testimony as to its 
medicinal virtues, and for the first time described the plant produc- 
ing the Lignum nephriticum of Mexico. He was a physician rather 
than a naturalist, and many of his descriptions and illustrations of 
both plants and animals are so crude as to be unrecognizable. Of 
Lignum nephriticum he gave no illustration. He even expressed his 
uncertainty regarding its source, stating that the plant had been 
described to him as a shrub, but that he had seen specimens which 
exceeded very large trees in size. 

Hernandez’s work on the products of Mexico never appeared as 
a whole. The portions of it relating to medicine were grouped to- 
gether and prepared for publication by Nardo Antonio Recchi, 
physician to Philip II, but owing to lack of funds or for other 
reasons it did not appear until 1651, 73 years after Hernandez’s 
death. A Spanish translation of Recchi’s Latin epitome appeared 
in Mexico in 1615, the prolix title of which, rendered in English, is 
as follows: 

Four books of the Nature and Virtues of Plants and Animals which are 
received in the practice of Medicine in New Spain, and the Method and Correct 
Preparation required for their administration, with that which Doctor Fran- 
cisco Hernandez has written in the Latin language. Very useful for all kinds 
of people who live on farms and in villages where there are no physicians nor 
Apothecary-shops—Translated, and augmented with many simples, and com- 
pounds, and many other curative secrets, by Fray Fitincisco Ximenez, son of the 
Convent of Santo Domingo of Mexico, Native of the Villa de Luna, Kingdom of 
Aragon. ... In Mexico, at the house of the Widow of Diego Lopez Davalos, 


1615. On sale in the shop of Diego Garrido, on the corner of the calle Tacuba, 
and in the Porteria of Santo Domingo. 


In this work is presented Hernandez’s account of Lignwm nephriti- 
cum, including Monardes’s description of the wood, its medicinal 
virtues, and the wonderful blue color of its infusion. 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 273 


In 1646 Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit living in Rome, 
celebrated for his great learning and his contributions to science, 
published an account of Lignum nephriticum in his Ars Magna Lucis 
et Umbra, under the heading “On a certain wonderful wood, color- 
ing water all kinds of colors.” (Op. cit., p. 77.) He calls attention 
to the fact that other writers before him had described the wood as 
coloring water only a blue color; yet in his experiments he had found 
that it transformed water into all kinds of colors. His description 
of the plant yielding the wood was not made from observation but 
was undoubtedly taken from Ximenez’s translation of Hernandez’s 
work, published 31 years previously. He then goes on to say: 

The wood of the tree thus described, when made into a cup, tinges water when 
poured into it at first a deep blue, the color of a Bugloss flower; and the 
longer the water stands in it the deeper the color it assumes. If then the 
water is poured into a glass globe and held against the light, no vestige of the 
blue color will be seen, but it will appear to observers like pure clean spring 
water, limpid and clear. But if you move this glass phial toward a more 
shady place the liquid will assume a most delightful greenness, and if to a still 
more shady place, a reddish color; and thus it will change color in a marvelous 
way according to the nature of its background. In the dark, however, or in an 
opaque vase, it will once more assume its blue color. 

Kircher announces that he was the first to observe this chameleon- 
like color, as far as he knew, in a cup given to him as a present by the 
procurator of the Society of Jesus in Mexico. This cup he after- 
wards sent as a gift to his Sacred Majesty the Emperor, as something 
rare and little known. “ But,” he adds, “as to the cause of the 
strange phenomenon which I observed, I failed at first to understand 
it; for I saw that the color could be counted neither among the 
apparent nor the true colors; not among the former, because the true 
or real color comes from the nature of the wood and not from the 
light variously modified, as is usual with apparent colors; nor can it 
be considered a real color, since no color is seen in it when it is held 
up against the light; and it assumes different kinds of colors only 
when held against different objects.” The learned philosopher, true 
to his boast that there was no problem in nature that he could not 
solve, concludes with the statement: “ Taught, however, by various 
experiments, I have at last found the cause, which I shall publish 
hereafter.” This, however, he never did. 

Four years after the publication of Kircher’s work Johan Bauhin, 
in his Historia Plantarum (1650), describes a second cup made of 
Lignum nephriticum, which he had received under the name of 
Palum indienum from a colleague, Dr. Schopflius, physician to the 
Duke of Wiirtemberg. This ingeniously made cup, almost a span 
in diameter and of no common beauty, resulting from the variegated 


18618°—sm 191518 


274 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


lines adorning it, was accompanied by sawdust or shavings of the 
same wood of a reddish color and of no manifest taste. When water 
was poured into the cup and the sawdust macerated in it, the water 
assumed in a short time “a wonderful blue and yellow color, and 
when held up against the light beautifully resembled the varying 
color of the opal, giving forth reflections, as in that gem, of fiery 
vellow, bright red, glowing purple, and sea green most wonderful to 
behold.” After quoting Monardes’s account of Lignum nephriticum, 
the author notes that Ceesalpinius believed the latter to be a species 
of ash (Fraxinus). . 

The following year (1651) Recchi’s epitome of Hernandez’s work 
was published at Rome. It contained a description of Lignum 
nephriticum almost identical with that in Ximenez’s previously pub- 
lished Spanish translation. For one of its Nahuatl names, however, 
the form coatli instead of coatl was used. The latter name, signify- 
ing “snake water,” as well as tlapalezpatli, “ blood-tincture medi- 
cine,’ which was also used by Hernandez, has been frequently mis- 
quoted. Thus Pomet, in his Histoire Générale des Drogues, under 
the heading Bois Néfrétique, says that the latter “nous est apporté 
de la Nouvelle Espagne, principalement du Royaume de Mexique ot 
il est appellé Coult et Tlapalcypaty.” These names are meaning- 
less and misleading; and the same may be said of Pomet’s figure of 
the plant, which represents a miniature tree bearing toothed leaves | 
like those of Cicer arietinum (“pois chiches”), out of all proportion 
to the size of the tree itself. 

Padre Bernabé Cobo, in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo (finished 
in 1653, but not published until 1890-1895), speaks of wooden drink- 
ing cups, used for medicinal purposes in New Spain, which turn 
water blue. He describes the wood from which these cups are made 
as of a purple color and pretty grain, suitable for carving, and there- 
fore counted among the most precious woods of the country; and 
he also states that staffs are made of it. Although he gives the ver- 
nacular names for many other woods and useful plants in various 
parts of tropical America he gives none for this, but says that the 
source of the wood is a certain large tree called arbol de la inmortali- 
dad. Of this he gives no description nor definite habitat, and it is 
probable that he never saw a specimen growing. It is quite possible 
that he confused two woods, the dark-colored coatl, from the heart 
wood of which beautiful walking sticks can be made, but which 
never grows to great size, with some species of Pterocarpus of greater 
dimensions. It is quite certain that his description does not at all 
apply to the woods out of which the cups of Kircher and Bauhin 
were made, nor to Monardes’s wood, which was “of a white color” 
and resembled pear wood. 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 975 


BOYLE’S EXPERIMENTS. 


The color phenomena displayed by the extract of Lignum nephriti- 
cum were first investigated in a truly scientific manner by the Hon. 
Robert Boyle in 1663. The results of his studies were embodied in 
his Experiments and Considerations Touching Colors, page 208, 1664, 
a Latin translation of which (1667), and also a summary of the re- 
sults of Boyle’s studies in Richard Boulton’s edition of Boyle’s 
works (1700), are in the library of the Surgeon General of the Army 
at Washington. Boyle’s account, as published by Boulton, is as 
follows: 


I am told that Lignum Nephriticwn is us’d in the Country where it grows as 
an excellent Medicine against the Stone; which Virtues Monardes likewise as- 
eribes to it given in Infusion. An Infusion of this Wood, if it be not too strong 
will appear, betwixt the Eye and the Light, to be of a golden Colour, except that 
upon the Top it will be covered with a sky colour’d Circle; but if your Eye be 
plae’d betwixt the Window and the Vial, the Liquor will appear to be of a 
lovely Blew. And this Experiment hath succeeded by Candle Light: If the 
Liquor be held partly before the Eye and a Light, and partly betwixt the Eye 
and an Opacous Body, it will half of it seem of a golden Colour, and half a 
Blew; but if turning your back on the Window you observe the Liquor as it is 
poured out, it will at the first seem Blew; but when it hath fallen lower, and 
the Rays of Light penetrate it more, it will seem Parti-coloured. If a little of 
this Tincture be pour’d into a Basin of Water, partly in the Sun Beams and 
partly shaded, it will afford several pleasing Phenomena. If some of it be 
pour’d upon white Paper, the drops about it will appear of different Colours, 
as the Position of the Eye in reference to them varies; and when it is pour’d 
off, the Paper will be dyed Yellow; and if this be plac’d in a Window in the 
Sun-shine, and a Pen held betwixt the Sun and part of the Paper, the Verge of 
the Shadow next the Body that Causes it will be Golden, and the other Blew. 
Which Phenomena proceeded from the most subtile Parts of the Wood Swim- 
ming in the Water, and in Several Positions variously reflecting the Rays of 
Light. Some of this Liquor being carefully Distill’d, it yielded a colourless 
Limpid Water, a deep ceruleous Liquor remaining behind. Spirit of Wine and . 
Salt of Harts-horn, being mixed together I observ’d, that it required a certain 
proportion betwixt the Liquor and the Salt, which enabl’d it to vary it’s Colour. 
So that tho I was induc’d to believe that our Tincture receiv’d its Colour from 
a Salt dispers’d through it, yet I suspected, that this Salt would be either 
alter’d or incorporated by Acid Salts; and accordingly, dropping Spirit of 
Vinegar into some of the Tincture, it lost its Blew, but not the Golden Colour ; 
but upon an Affusion of Oyl of Tartar per deliquium, that correcting the Acid 
Salts, it presently regain’d its Blew Colour again, the ponderous Tartarous 
Liquor first altering the Bottom of the Liquor and gradually rising again. 

And since Kercherus, Art. Mag. lucis € umbrae Lib. I, Part 8, writes some- 
thing of this Exotick Plant, which agrees not with our account of it, since he 
says it will, according to the difference of the Medium, in respect of Light and 
its several Positions, vary its Colour; yet from the Account he gives of it, it 
appears, that the Wood he made use of, was different from Ours since he ealls 
it a white Mexican Wood, whereas ours, as Monardes witnesses, is brought 
from Nova Hispania, and is not of a White, but a darker Colour, except on the 
outside, which part is much weaker than the other. Besides, he tells us that 
his Tincture was like Spring Water when held betwixt the Light, whereas ours 


276 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


is Yellowish or Reddish, as the Tincture is weaker or stronger. And since he 
tells us, that the Tincture will afford all sorts of Colours, and resume a ceru- 
leous Colour in the Dark, I could wish to know how he was convinced of the 
latter; and as for the Former, I have tryed that it would not at all answer. 
Tho’ this I must needs own, that having held a Tincture of Lignum Nephri- 
ticum in the Rays of the Sun, in a darken’d Room, partly in and partly out, and 
also, wholly out of the Beams but partly near them, it afforded a much greater 
Variety of Colours than in a lighten’d Room. 

In this Experiment it is not a little to be admir’d, that the Blew Colour 
should be so easily destroyed, whereas the Yellow Colour is so durable; and 
further, that Acid Salts should destroy it and a Sulphureous one restore it. 


CONFUSION OF BOTANICAL NAMES. 


The source of lignum nephriticum remained unknown for cen- 
turies. Monardes (1565) knew nothing of its origin except that it 
came to Spain from Mexico. Cesalpinius (1583) and Caspar 
Bauhin (1623), as we have seen, supposed it to be a species of Frax- 
inus. 'Terrentius, in Recchi’s epitome of Hernandez (1651), referred 
it to the leguminose but did not attempt to identify it. Johan 
Boeclerus (1745), believing it to be a laburnum, called it Cytissus 
mexicanus. Linnseus, in his Materia Medica (1749) added to the 
confusion by referring it to Moringa pterygosperma, an East Indian 
tree; while Guibourt, in his Histoire abregée des drogues (1820), 
identified it with the West Indian cats-claw (Mimosa unguis- 
cati L.). 

The first to indicate its true botanical classification was Dr. 
Leonardo Oliva, professor of pharmacology in the University of 
Guadalajara, in his Lecciones de Farmacologia, vol. 2, p. 429, 1854, 
who identified it with Varennea polystachya DC. (Viborquia poly- 
stachya Ortega; Hysenhardtia amorphoides H. B. K.). Subsequent 
_ authorities, however, did not accept his identification. Dr. Fernando 
Aitamirano (1878), while recognizing the identity of the coatli of 
Hernandez with the tree called by the modern Mexicans palo dulce 
and referring it to Viborquia polystachya Ortega, was not aware 
that the latter was the same as L'ysenhardtia amorphoides H. B. K., 
and he followed Alfonso Herrero in referring lignum nephriticum 
to Guilandina moringa, a mistake which may be traced at once to 
Linnaeus. In describing the uses of coatli wood by the modern 
Mexicans, he states that the country people make drinking troughs 
of it for their fowls to guard against certain epidemics to which the 
latter are subject; or, if the vessel from which they drink is of some 
other substance, they put a piece of wood in the water and allow 
it to remain there. The water assumes a blue color, he says; but 
Mariano Barcena, who experimented with it, observed that the blue 
color was the result of the refraction of light, and the water, instead 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Safford. PLATE 2. 


EYSENHARDTIA POLYSTACHYA (ORTEGA) SARGENT, FROM THE BARRANCA OF GUADALAJARA, 
MeExIco. 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. Ay i 


of yielding a blue pigment like indigo, yielded a yellowish brown 
dyest:ff.t 

Sargent in his Silva of North America gave an amended descrip- 
tion of the genus EKysenhardtia, in which he for the first time estab- 
lished the combination H'ysenhardtia polystachya, but it is evident 
that he was unaware that this species had anything to do with the 
classic lignum nephriticum or that its wood yielded a fluorescent 
infusion. Concerning it he simply says: “ The wood of some species 
is hard and close-grained and affords valuable fuel. The genus is 
not known to possess other useful properties.” ? 

The third edition of the Nueva Farmacopéa Mexicana (1898) 
repeats Oliva’s observations under the heading “'Taray de Mexico,” 
but in a footnote states that lefio nefritico had been erroneously 
attributed to Varennea polystachya, or E'ysenhardtia amorphoides 
H. B. K., and that its classification was not known.* 

Tn a subsequent edition of this work the name palo dulce is omit- 
ted, except as applied to the European licorice. Fliickinger and 
Hanbury, in their well-known Pharmacographia (1879), are silent 
about lignum nephriticum, although for several years before the 
publication of this work Hanbury had been seeking to identify it.+ 
Dragendorff refers to it as a species of Guajacum.® 

Dr. Otto Stapf, guided by Ramirez and Alcocer’s Sinonimia 
vulgar y cientifica de las Plantas Mexicanas (1902), referred a piece 
of wood, labeled “cuatl” in the Paris Exposition, to Hysenhardtia 
amorphotdes; but the wood was unaccompanied by botanical ma- 
terial by which it might be identified with certainty.© He gives a 
history of the wood known as lignum nephriticum in early literature, 
and also quotes several Mexican authorities but not Oliva, cited 
above, nor any Philippine author. He accounts for the fact that the 
flowers were described by Hernandez as yellow, by the supposition 
that there are varieties of Eysenhardtia yielding lignum nephriticum 
which have yellow flowers, although, as a matter of fact, no such 
forms occur in the localities cited by writers on the subject; and the 
only species in which the flowers are yellow are low scrubby plants, 
belonging to a distinct section, which never attain the size even of a 
small tree, nor have a stem with a diameter sufficiently great for a 
cup, or even approaching the dimensions of the pieces of lignum 
nephriticum hitherto described. 


1 Altamirano, Fernando. ‘ Leguminosas indigenas medicinales,’ in La Naturaleza, 
4: 97-98. 1879. 

2 Sargent, Charles Sprague, The Silva of North America, 8: 30. 1892. 

* Nueva Farm. Mex. 153. 1896. 

*See Oliver and Hanbury, in Admiralty Manual of Scientific Inquiry, p. 391. 1871. 
“ Lignum nephriticum.—This rare wood, noticed by some of the earliest explorers of 
America, is a production of Mexico. To what tree is it to be referred? Its infusion is 
remarkable for having the blue tint seen in a solution of quinine.” 

5“ Bas Lignum nephriticum der iilteren Medicin wird wohl von einer Guajacum-Art 
stammen.” Dragend. Heilpfl. 845. 1898. 

° See Stapf, Otto. Kew Bull. Information, 1909, pp. 293-305. 1909. 


278 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


The last author to investigate the origin of lignum nephriticum is 
Dr. Hans-Jacob Moéller, of Copenhagen, who, after an exhaustive 
study of the subject, referred it to a Mexican tree belonging to the 
genus Pterocarpus. Dr. Moller made a careful examination of the 
various woods hitherto supposed to be the true lignum nephriticum 
mexicanum, among them specimens of the wood of HLysenhardtia 
amorphoides sent to him by C. A. Purpus—the latter described as 
“das Kernholz von einem recht dicken Ast’—but with negative 
results (“keine Fluoreszenz”). On examining the heartwood of 
a Philippine species of Pterocarpus, however, he found that in water 
containing lime it yielded an infusion having the characteristic sky- 
blue fluorescence of lignum nephriticum described by early investiga- 
tors. He therefore assumes that the mother plant of lignum 
nephriticum mexicanum, “sought in vain for 300 years by so many 
investigators is a Mexican species of Pterocarpus,” in all probability 
Pterocarpus amphymenium DC. (Amphymenium pubescens H. B. 
K., Pterocarpus pubescens Sprengel) ; and he refers a second kind 
mentioned by Hernandez, endemic in Quauhchinango, to Pterocarpus 
orbiculatus DC. 


TWO DISTINCT SOURCES OF THE WOOD. 


In these attempts to trace ignum nephriticum to a single mother 
plant the writers have been confronted with serious difficulties. How 
could Hysenhardtia polystachya, a shrub or small tree, be its origin, 
when, according to Hernandez, logs of lignum nephriticum of great 
size were transported to Spain. And how could the wood of this 
species, with its dark-colored heart and yellow infusion, be identi- 
fied with the ‘“ white” woods of Monardes and Kircher yielding an 
infusion as white and clear as spring water, or with the wood of 
Johan Bauhin with its variegated lines and its red sawdust? And, 
if lignum nephriticum originated in Mexico, why has the long search 
in that country for cups made of it been unavailing? On the other 
hand, it may be asked, How could the mother plant of ignum nephri- 
ticum be a species of Pterocarpus if, as Hernandez writes, its com- 
pound leaves are composed of minute leaflets suggesting those of 
Cicer arietinum or the ultimate divisions of the leaves of Ruta chale- 
pensis ? 

Figure 1 shows a leaf of Humboldt and Bonpland’s original type 
plant of Pterocarpus pubescens (Pt. amphymerium DC.), to which 


1 Moller, Hans-Jacob, Lignumnephriticum. Berichte der Deutschen Pharmaz, Gesellsch. 
28: 88-154. 1913. 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 279 


dulce, which has the largest leaflets of any of its genus hitherto 


described. 
There is a simple solution tothe problem. 'Two distinct woods have, 


beyond a doubt, been called lignum nephriticum: Hysenhardtia polys- 


Fic. 1.—Leaf of Pterocarpus pubescens contrasted with leaf of Eysenhardtia adenostylis. Slightly 
reduced. 


tachya, endemic in Mexico, and Pterocarpus indica, a forest free of 
the Philippine Archipelago and adjacent islands. Trees of the genus 
Pterocarpus also occur in Mexico, and it is possible that cups were 
made from their wood, but we have no definite evidence to prove this 
conjecture. 


280 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


I. Mexican Lignum Ne&rpuriricum. 
Eysenhardtia polystachya. 


Tn connection with his work on the economic botany of Mexico the 
writer has for years been seeking the source of lignum nephriticum. 
Among other woods examined for the blue fluorescence characterizing 
this wood were specimens of branches of Hysenhardtia polystachya 
collected by the writer in 1907 in the vicinity of Aguascalienthes, the 
infusion of which gave no evidence of fluorescence in ordinary sun- 
light. From this fact and from the fact that all specimens seen by 
him were either shrubs or trees too small to yield wood for the 
manufacture of bowls or cups, the writer was inclined to agree with 
Moller in discarding Eysenhardtia as a possible source of the famous 
wood. In July, 1914, however, specimens of a medicinal wood from 
Mexico were brought to the writer accompanied by herbarium mate- 
rial from the same tree. It proved to be Lysenhardtia polystachya, 
known by the modern Mexicans in many localities as palo dulce, or 
“sweet wood.” Its collector had not noticed anything peculiar about 
the color of its infusion, but dwelt upon its efficacy as a cure for 
certain diseases to which fowls are subject in Mexico. The wood was 
a section of a tree trunk, which deprived of its bark was 7 cm. in 
diameter, and which, unlike all specimens of Eysenhardtia wood 
hitherto seen by-the writer, consisted chiefly of dense, straight-grained 
dark brown heartwood very much like lgnum-vite (Guaiacum 
officinale) in appearance, surrounded by a ring of brownish-white 
sapwood 5 to 8 mm. thick. A few small chips of the heartwood in 
ordinary tap water tinged the latter a golden yellow, which soon 
deepened to orange and appeared like amber when held between the 
eye and window. When the glass vial containing the liquid was held 
against a dark background the liquid glowed with a beautiful peacock 
fluorescence very much like that seen in quinine. Placed partly in 
a sunbeam half of the liquid appeared yellow and the other half 
blue; and when the sunlight was focused upon it by the lens of a 
common reading glass, the vial appeared to be filled with radiant 
gold penetrated by a shaft of pure cobalt. There was no longer any 
doubt as to the identity of the wood. It could only be the Mexican 
lignuff nephriticum of Robert Boyle’s experiments, and it was un- 
doubtedly the wood of Hysenhardtia polystachya, a tree with small 
pinnately compound leaves which might indeed suggest those of a 
chick-pea or of the common wild rue of Spain, and with spikes of 
small flowers which had turned yellowish in drying, corresponding 
well with Hernandez’s description of the coatl of the Aztecs. 

Plate 3 shows a photograph of a section of the wood of Hysen- 
hardtia polystachya together with the botanical material which 
served to identify it. 


PLATE 3. 


Safford. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915. 


) erm 


eT hs so Oe 
hn ak hg 
4 Y pA 
Lge ae i 


ae = coe 

AY ng 
, 

ot SN CE 


EYSENHARDTIA POLYSTACHYA (ORTEGA) SARGENT. 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM MEXICANUM 


+< 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 281 


Chips of the sapwood tinged tap water only slightly at first, but 
when left overnight the infusion deepened to a greenish yellow and 
glowed with a decided fluorescence. With distilled water neither the 
sapwood nor the heartwood produced fluorescence as seen by ordi- 
nary sunlight; but this phenomenon was distinctly visible when, at 
the suggestion of Dr. Arno Viehoever, pharmacognosist of the Bu- 
reau of Chemistry, these infusions were held in the ultra-violet rays 
of a fluorescence lamp; and it was also displayed in ordinary day- 
light, when a small amount of carbonate of sodium or other alkah 
was added to the infusions of the wood in distilled water. By boiling 
chips of the wood in tap water for several hours a deep amber- 
colored extract was obtained not unlike Madeira wine in color. 
When placed on the table before a window the surface of this ex- 
tract appeared to be outlined by a deep blue marginal ring, and 
when held away from the light or when the light fell upon it ob- 
liquely the fluorescence of the liquid gave it an opalescent appearance 
not unlike that of certain mineral oils. A drop of the extract in a 
glass of water caused the whole glass to glow with fluorescence 
when held in the rays of the sun admitted through a hole in a screen. 

At the residence of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, in Washington, on 
the evening of January 6, 1915, where the wood and accompanying 
herbarium material were shown by the writer, specimens of the in- 
fusion exhibited by ordinary electric light failed to show fluores- 
cence; but afterwards, when held in the rays of an are light, the 
liquid glowed with an intense blue light which illuminated the faces 
of those standing near by. 

Experiments were made by Dr. Lyman J. Briggs, biophysicist 
of the Bureau of Plant Industry, with a view to determine the | 
possible value of lignum nephriticum as an indicator in titrimetric 
determinations. The result of Dr. Briggs’s observation have not 
been published, but he recognized at once the advantage which this, 
like other fluorescent substances, must have over those indicators 
which show color changes only by transmitted light, especially in 
testing dark liquids, in which the color of the liquid masks the color 
changes of the indicator. Eysenhardtia wood has a great advantage 
over fluorescein itself, from the fact that its extract is readily 
soluble in cold water. With most acids it does not, fluoresce, but 
in the presence of acetic acid its fluorescence is not destroyed. It 
can not, therefore, be used as an indication of alkalinity in all cases. 
As compared with phenolphthalein it has a neutral point nearer the 
acid end of the scale; that is to say, it will fluoresce in a solution in 
which phenolphthalein develops no color whatever. 

Plate 4 is a colored drawing by Mr. J. M. Shull, showing a 
section of the wood of Lysenhardtia polystachya, together with an 
infusion in tap water of the sapwood, in the smaller phials, and an 


282 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


extract of the heartwood in the larger phials, also in tap water con- 
taining a small percentage of lime. The outer phials are repre- 
sented with the hght shining through them; the inner ones, against 
the black background, display the fluorescence, as seen by reflected 
light. 

Plate 5 is a colored drawing by Mrs. R. E. Gamble of two phials 
containing an extract of Eysenhardtia wood in distilled water, made 
slightly alkaline by the addition of a little carbonate of sodium. 
The flask against the dark background is illuminated by light com- 
ing obliquely from the left; the other flask is shown against the light, 
with the surface of the deep amber-colored extract bounded by a 
bluish circle. 


BOTANICAL DESCRIPTION. 


The plant positively identified as yielding the hgnum nephriticum 
mexicanum of Hernandez and Robert Boyle may be described briefly 
as follows (see pl. 3) : 

Eysenhardtia polystachya (Ortega) Sargent. Silv. N. Am. 3:29. 1892. (Excl. 

Texas references). ; 

Viborquia polystachya Ortega, Hort. Matr. Deé. 5: 66. pl. 9. 1798. 
Eysenhardtia amorphoides H. B. K. Noy. Gen. et Sp. 6: 494. pl. 592. 1828. 
Varennea polystachya (Ort.) DC. Prodr. 2:522. 1825. Oliva, Lecce. Farm. 2: 

429. 1854. 

An erect, sweetly aromatic shrub or small tree, glandular-punctate, 
with spreading, recurved branches. Leaves even-pinnate or odd- 
pinnate, with numerous small opposite or alternate stipellate leaflets; 
leaflets oval, or oblong-elliptical, entire, usually decreasing in size 
toward the extremity of the rachis, the terminal one of odd-pinnate 
leaves often obcordate, the others rounded or slightly retuse at 
the apex and often terminating in a short acumen, pubescent when 
young, sometimes becoming glabrate, usually punctate with glandu- 
lar dots on the lower surface. Flowers fragrant, smali, white, turn- 
ing yellow in drying, borne in terminal densely spicate racemes; 
pedicels subtended by a lanceolate deciduous bracteole, short and 
slender, often reflexed at length, but sometimes ascending or widely 
spreading; calyx glandular-punctate, 5-toothed, persistent; corolla 
scarcely at all papilionaceous, composed of 5 nearly equal unguicu- 
late petals; the standard slightly broader than the wings and keel, 
emarginate, carinate, with involute margins; stamens 10, diadelphous, 
the superior one free, the filaments of the others united into a tube; 
ovary subsessile, oblong, compressed, terminating in a slender style, 
somewhat longer than the stamens, geniculate and glandular below 
the apex; stigma introrse. Legume very small, oblong, compressed 
flat, subfalcate or almost straight, subtended by the persistent calyx 


Smithsonian Report, 1916.—Safford PLATE 4. 


A Hoen & Co Baltimore 


SECTION OF WOOD OF EYSENHARDTIA POLYSTACHYA, WITH INFUSIONS 
OF SAP-WOOD AND HEART-WOOD. 


i nN a 


‘an 


“ «ads 
ayes: 


ia i if 


Tet 


Smithsonian Report, 191 


PLATE 5, 


ere 


XTRACT OF E 


IW 


EEN AGAINST THE LIGHT AND 
KGROUND. 


. LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 283 


and tipped by the persistent base of the style, usually glandular- 
punctate, indehiscent, pendent or abruptly reflexed, sometimes widely 
spreading or ascending, but never erect and appressed, purplish 
at the apex when fresh, usually containing a single seed near the apex. 

The earliest description of this plant was that of Hernandez, as 
already indicated, which, though written about the year 1575, re- 
mained unpublished until 1615, when it appeared in the form of 
Ximenez’s Spanish translation of the original Latin, in Mexico City. 
Of the identity of Hernandez’s plant there can be no doubt; for it 
had small pinnately compound leaves suggesting those of a garvanzo 
(Cicer arietinum), but smaller and almost like the pinnately divided 
leaves of the common rue (uta chalepensis), though “ somewhat 
larger, a mean between these two extremes; and small longish flow- 
ers, yellow and delicate, arranged in spikes.” According to Hernan- 
dez it grows in moderately warm regions like the Valley of Mexico, 
and still warmer situations like Guachinango [in the present State 
of Puebla], Chimalhuacan [in the district of Texcoco], Chalco, and 
Tepuztlan [near Cuernavaca, State of Morelos], and almost through- 
out the entire extent of the mal pais [the pedregal, or lava beds| of 
Coyohuacan ; and in many other places.” 

The first botanical description of the plant, in the modern sense 
of the word, was that of Gomez Ortega, in 1798, as cited above; but 
Ortega, in spite of the fact that he had but recently included a de- 
scription of the Mexican lignum nephriticum, or coatl, in the Madrid 
edition of Hernandez’s works, which he himself edited, had not the 
slightest idea that his Viborquia, grown in the Royal Garden of 
Madrid from seeds sent by Sessé from Mexico, had any connection 
whatever with lignum nephriticum, or even that its wood would yield 
a fluorescent infusion. 

Ortega named the genus in honor of “ Viborq, most distinguished 
professor of the botanical garden of Copenhagen, who, when recently 
he journeyed through Spain and visited Madrid, left in us a deep 
appreciation of his kindliness and conversation.” Unfortunately, 
the generic name Viborquia had, according to the laws of nomen- 
clature, to be abandoned on account of its prior use by Moench of 
Marburg for another genus (written Viborgia) named for the same 
man (1794), and the much later name, Eysenhardtia of Humboldt, 
Bonpland and Kunth, proposed in 1823, had to be substituted for it. 
In this connection it is also interesting to note that Humboldt and 
Bonpland, like Ortega, had no idea of the connection of their plant 
with henum nephriticum. 


1“ De Coatli, seu Aqueo Serpente.—Coatli, quam alii Tlapalezpatli, seu medicinam 
sanguinis coccineam vocant, frutex est magnus, foliis Ciceris, minoribus tamen, ruta- 
ceisve, sed majoribus, flore luteu elanguescenti, parvo et longiusculo, composito in 
spicas.’’—Hernandez, ed. Matr., 1: 349. 1790. 


284 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Ortega’s original figure of Hysenhardtia polystachya, showing the 
young leaves with stipels at the base of the leaflets, the flowers in 
spicate racemes just beginning to bloom, and the reflexed seed pods, 
together with details of the flower and fruit, is reproduced in the 
Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, vol. 5, page 512, 
figure 1, 1915. 

VARIABILITY. 


EKysenhardtia polystachya, as understood by the author, is remark- 
ably variable in size and form of leaves, density of pubescence, and 
appearance of seed pods. It some- 
times occurs as a stunted bush with 
very small leaflets, sometimes as a 
spreading shrub with straight stems 
and recurved branches, and some- 
times as a slender tree of dimen- 
sions sufficient to furnish a valuable 
cabinet wood. 

A distinction has been made be- 
tween the forms having reflexed 
seed pods, as shown in plate 3 and 
in figure 1 6, and those with ascend- 
ing or spreading pods, as shown in 
figure 3; but in certain localities, 
as in the barrancas of the State of 
Jalisco, closely allied forms occur 
almost side by side, some with re- 
flexed and others with spreading or 
ascending seed pods; but the latter 
can never be confused with the 
closely appressed pods of the dwarf 
Eysenhardtia texana, shown in fig- 
ure 1 a Figure 3 shows a subgla- 
Fig. 2.—Fruits of Eysenhardtia. a, Ascending brous form with yey pronounced 

pods of E. terana; b, reflexed pods of E. pol- glandular dots on the leaflets and 
ke with spreading seed pods almost 
twice as large as those of the typical plant. | 

On account of this tendency to vary it is difficult to delimit the 
species. It is quite certain, however, that Hysenhardtia texana 
Scheele, the type of which was collected by Lindheimer in the vicinity 
of New Braunfels, Texas, is a valid species quite distinct from £. 
polystachya of central and southern Mexico. Figure 2 shows the 
fruits of the two species side by side, a, Lysenhardtia texana in 
fruit, drawn from a specimen of the type collection, showing the 
appressed subfalcate pods; 6, Hysenhardtia polystachya, showing 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 285 


the reflexed almost straight pods, like those in Ortega’s figure already 
referred to. 

It is also quite probable that the more robust H'ysenhardtia adeno- 
stylis Baillon of Guatemala is a valid species, with pods and leaves 
much larger than the typical /. polystachya. <A leaf of this species 
is shown in figure 1, 6. On the other hand, Hysenhardtia ortho- 
carpa Watson, based upon £. amorphoides var. orthocarpa Gray, 
collected by Charles Wright in Sonora, approaches so closely to 
forms of £. polystachya of central and southern Mexico that it can 
searcely be separated from that species. Watson recognized that 


Fic. 3.— Eysenhardtia polystachya, a Jaliscan form with spreading fruit. 


the plants with straight reflexed pods, referred by him to £. ortho- 
carpa, were specifically distinct from Lindheimer’s Texas plant, 
which was erroneously believed to be identical with 2’. polystachya 
(Z. amorphoides H. B. K.). £. tewana Scheele has much smaller 
leaves and fewer leaflets, and its pods are ascending on the rachis 
and subfalcate-incurved, as shown in figure 2. The group of low 
scrubby plants including Lysenhardtia spinosa Engelmann, /. parvi- 
jolia Brandegee, and E. peninsularis Brandegee, is so distinct from 
typical Eysenhardtia that it may possibly have to be removed from 
this genus. To the recently described /. Olivana Safford I have 
already referred in the footnote on page 279. 


286 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 


The genus Eysenhardtia is confined to America. Its range ex- 
tends from Texas and Arizona on the north to Guatemala on the 
south. On the elevated plateau of northern Mexico it usually grows 
as a shrub about 2 meters high, in southern Mexico as a tree 6 to 8 
meters high, yielding wood which is valued for cabinet purposes. 
It is probably this wood which Padre Cobo had in mind, when he 
described the “arbol de la immortalidad;” and, as the wood resem- 
bles lignum-vitae, it is possible that the latter suggested the name 
which Cobo applied to it and led to its incorrect identification as 
a species of Gnaiacum, which appears in Dragendorff’s Heilpflanzen. 
Not far from Mexico City, on the pedregal, or lava beds, a low form 
with small pubescent leaves occurs, which may possibly prove to be a 
distinct species. 

In the Herbarium of the United States National Museum are 
specimens of L'ysenhardtia polystachya from the Mexican States of 
Sonora, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosi, 
Coahuila, Aguascalientes, Jalisco, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Michoacan. 
The plant also grows in the State of. Guanajuato (according to 
Dugés), on the volcanic slopes of the Nevado of Colima near the 
Pacific coast, and on Orizaba, near the Gulf coast. Specimens grow- 
ing on the high watershed between Chilapa and Tixtla, in the State 
of Guerrero, were collected by Mr. E. W. Nelson, of the U. 
S. Biological Survey (No. 2159), and in the State of Oaxaca at 
elevations of 1,500 to 1,800 meters, usually on the slopes of deep 
barrancas. It also occurs in Jalisco, on the sides of the great bar- 
ranca of Guadalajara, where it was collected by C. G. Pringle (No. 
8762 and No. 9752), the barrancea of Mochitiltic, cited by Oliva; and 
between Guadalajara and Bolafios, where it was collected by Dr. 
J. N. Rose (No. 8734). On a herbarium specimen collected by Lan- 
glasseé (No. 226) in the State of Michoacan, at the station of La 
Junta, the tree is described by the collector as an “arbre au tronc 
elancé; bois, recherché pour ébénisterie, produit une teinture bleue.” 

A photograph of the specimens from Tamaulipas described in this 
paper is shown on plate 3 (opp. p. 280) and the wood with its in- 
fusion on the colored plate 4. . 


STRUCTURE OF THE WOOD. 


Microscopic sections of the wood of ELysenhardtia polystachya 
were made at the writer’s request by Dr. Albert Mann, plant mor- 
phologist of the Bureau of Plant Industry, and by Mr. C. D. Mell, 
recently attached to the Forest Service as assistant dendrologist, now 
attached to the Bureau of Chemistry. Dr. Mann found the heart- 
wood to be extremely compact, heavily lignified, and impregnated 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 287 


with a peculiar substance which could be called neither a resin nor 
a gum, insoluble in water, and not breaking down in alcohol or 
xylol. This substance is contained in pitted tracheae, or tubular 
vessels, which in a cross section appear like pores either solitary or 
in groups of two or three. Radial and tangential sections show the 
pitted tracheae throughout their length either partly or entirely 
filled with the resin-like substance, and they also show the medullary 
or pith rays, which in the cross sections are quite inconspicuous. 
The annular lines of growth, however, are well marked in the cross 
sections. 

The accompanying drawings (p. 288) were made by Mrs. Gamble 
from photographs of sections of the wood of Hysenhardtia poly- 
stachya cut by Mr. C. D. Mell. Figure 4 shows a cross section of 
the wood in which the annular lines of growth, a, the tracheae, |, 
either empty or containing the resin-like substance, and the inter- 
vening wood parenchyma, c, are indicated. Figure 5 shows a ra- 
dial section in which the pitted tracheae, 6, either empty or con- 
taining the resinoid substance, the intervening wood parenchyma, 
e, and the transverse medullary rays are shown throughout their 
length. Figure 6 shows a tangential section in which the tracheae, }, 
appear very much as in the radial section, but the medullary rays, d, 
are only seen in cross section between the tracheae and the mass of 
wood parenchyma, c. 


SOURCE OF ITS FLUORESCENCE. 


Experiments were made to determine the source of the fluorescence 
of Eysenhardtia wood by Dr. Arno Viehoever, pharmacognosist of 
the Bureau of Chemistry, assisted by his collaborators, Mr. C. O. 
Ewing and Mr. J. F. Clevenger. The results obtained show that 
the fluorescence is not inherent in the resin-like substance contained 
in the pitted trachee. This is quite insoluble in water, while the 
substance which causes the fluorescence is freely soluble even in cold 
water, as already stated. It is somewhat less soluble in alcohol and 
scarcely at all so in chloroform and ether. Unfortunately the amount 
of material available was too small to obtain with certainty the 
fluorescent substance in crystalline form. 

The fluorescing power of the wood is so great that an extract of 
one part of the wood in one hundred-thousand parts of water or al- 
cohol, after having been made alkaline, showed a distinct fluorescence 
in diffused daylight, and when diluted to a ratio of one to one million 
a fluorescence could still be detected in the rays of a fluorescence 
Jamp. In very attenuate solutions the fiuorescence is bluish; in more 
concentrated solutions it is distinctly yellowish green. 

Under a fluorescence microscope dry wood-sections showed a rather 
uniform fluorescence with some very minute bright spots. Sections 


288 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


cers 


a SE 
Re ASS 0 
) 4 


Ci POG QGS>, 
210 BRUNE GOS 
: 


ae =x) 2 
— 

ee se SO 

oe SS CEES at LEG SOB RIMS: 


YO ote 


I GST 
SZ Fi re se 2 ~ 
& : Ogee 
On aI 
Die ae <= Pe DP I FW OA 


REG. 


OD 
ital 


3 
Bo 
== 


a>: & 2a eo 2 


Fic. 4.—Cross section of wood of Eysenhardtia polystachya. 
(See description, p. 287.) 


me 


a3 
Sy 


geceee 

SB8ibe 

OF mz 2 
Dio*e he 
ZS i 


250000 


a 
c=) 


Bae. 
no% 
=) Com) 


oF 


0c 
a f 
y Oc to cP 
Serre 
ease 


erry 


fe 
——" 


5 


fos 
So 
6 Pe. 


IOQEIOR 
25S2Io3 


2 
tr)» 


S 2 A hacer” 
ee 4 a 
: sas t “ 
fea \\e= 
K ) 


5 


b prey 
Fic. 5.—Radial section of wood of Lysenhardtia Fic. 6.—Tangential section of wood of Lysen- 
polystachya. hardtia polystachya. 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 289 


mounted in borax-glycerine (one part to ten) showed a greenish 
veil of fluorescence due to diffusion, while sections from which the 
fluorescent substance had been completely extracted with boiling 
water had lost every vestige of fluorescence, though the resin-like 
masses remained undissolved in the pitted trachee. This substance 
proved to be remarkably resistant. Dr. Mann had already found that 
it would not break up in alcohol or xylol. Mr. Clevenger’s experi- 
ments showed further that it was also insoluble under ordinary tem- 
peratures in chloral hydrate, benzol, petroleum ether, chloroform, 
50 per cent potassium hydrate, 10 per cent sulphuric acid, 10 per 
cent hydrochloric acid, and carbon bisulphide. 


Tl. Parmierrnt Lignum Nrruriticum. 
Pterocarpus indicus. 


The early history of the Philippine lignum nephriticum is closely 
associated with the Jesuits, who concerned themselves wherever 
they went not only with their religious duties, but with scientific 
investigation in many fields. The first written account of it (1701) 
was that of the Rev. George Joseph Kamel, or Camellus, in honor 
of whom the well-known genus Camellia was named. Although 
from a botanical point of view his description was inadequate, yet 
he established its identity beyond a doubt by giving its vernacular 
names: narra, naga, and asana. The wood itself he describes as 
“from brownish to reddish, ttirning water, in which it is soaked to 
a sea-blue color,” and he calls attention to its medicinal virtues, 
especially as a remedy for renal calculus. 


ORIGIN OF CUPS. 


Another Jesuit, Father Delgado, speaks of the wood under the 
same common names and tells of cups made of it in southern Luzon, 
which he identifies with similar cups he had seen at Cadiz about 
the year 1700, when he was a child; and it was from the procurator 
of the Society of Jesus in Mexico that the Jesuit Kircher received 
the famous cup of lignum nephriticum, with which he performed 
his experiments already cited “on a certain wonderful wood, color- 
ing water all kinds of colors.” 

Delgado tells of two kinds of naga, or narra, one rose colored, 
which he calls the male wood, and the other, much paler in color or 
white, which he calls female wood. He tells of trees of both the red 
and white wood of enormous dimensions, yielding boards of such 

1“ Lignum ex subfusco rufescens, aquam in qua maceratur colore, inficiens cymatili.”— 


Camellus, G. J. Deser. Fruct. & Arb. Luzonis ad Jac. Petiverium, Pharmac. Londinens. 
missae, anno 1701, in Raiius, Joan., Hist. Plant., vol. 3, append. p. 79. 1704. 


18618°—sm 1915 19 


290 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


great width that a single one “ sufficeth for making a door or a table.” 
After praising the wood for its usefulness for construction purposes 
and for its durability when exposed to moisture, he speaks of its 
reputed medicinal virtues, and adds: 

The city called Nueva Caceres by the Spaniards bears among the natives the 
name Naga, on account of the abundance of this tree throughout those prov- 
inces of Camarines and Albay, where they carve very curious cups out of it for 
drinking water. Those made of female naga are much the better, for this wood 
tingeth the water very quickly to a celestial color, more quickly than the male. 
These cups are much esteemed in Europe and are regarded as a gift well worthy 
of any prince. Out of one of these cups they made me drink when I was a 
child, in Cadiz, as a remedy for hydropsy and oppilation, and I think that it 
might have helped me had I not drunk too much.* 

This description of Delgado, written in 1754, but remaining unpub- 
lished until 1892, certainly connects the Philippine wooden cups 
with those of Kircher and Bauhin, which really were presented to 
an emperor and to a noble duke. Indeed, it is quite probable that the 
wood originally described by Monardes was of Philippine instead of 
Mexican origin; for it must be borne in mind that for a long time 
after the discovery of America the only trade route from the Philip- 
pines to Spain was by way of Mexico, and many products of the 
“Indies” attributed to New Spain (Mexico) were really of Philip- 
pine or East Indian origin. ‘The “ white” wood of which Kircher’s 
cup was made might well have been the pale narra or “ female” wood, 
which from long continued use yielded a very pale or even white 
infusion, and the variegated wood yielding red sawdust, described 
and figured by Bauhin, was without doubt the red or “male” narra 
of the Philippines. 

These two kinds of wood were believed by Padre Blanco to come 
from distinct species of Pterocarpus. He described the tree yielding 
the pale wood as a new species, Pterocarpus pallidus, while he errone- 
ously referred the red wood to the East Indian Pterocarpus san- 
talinus, which is the source of the well-known “red-sanders wood ” 
of commerce.” The vernacular names given by him for these trees 
are narra, naga, asana, daitanag, and apalit. 

Padre Blanco’s Pterocarpus pallidus has been identified with 
Peterocarpus indicus, a species previously described from the little 
island of Amboyna in the Malay Archipelago; and his so-called P. 
santalinus, quite distinct from the younger Linnaeus’s species of that 
name, has been named by Mr. E. D. Merrill Pterocarpus Blancoi; but, 
as Mr. Merrill has already suggested,’ it is so very close to the first 
species that it is perhaps not specifically distinct from it. 


1 Delgado, J. J. Hist. gen. de las Islas del Poniente, Nlamadas Filipinas, p. 415. 1892. 
2 Blanco, Manuel. Flora de Filipinas, 560, 561. 1837. 
® Merrill, E, D. Philippine Journ. of Science, Botany, 5:100. 1910. 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 291 


Specimens of narra wood from the Province of Cagayan, Island 
of Luzon, were obtained by the writer from the newly installed wood 
collection in the United States National Museum. The sapwood, 
beautifully flesh tinted, with pale, red lines of growth, and with 
large, conspicuous pores, bears little resemblance to that of Kysen- 
hardtia but does resemble the palwm indianum figured by Johan 
Bauhin. Moreover, it is almost as soft as cedar and its grain is more 
or less twisted, while the dark-colored heartwood of Kysenhardtia 
is hard, like lignum-vitz, and its grain is close and straight. This 
wood had formed part of the Philippine collection at the St. Louis 
Exposition in 1904, where it had been exhibited as a valuable 
timber and cabinet wood. No notes on the fluorescence of its in- 
fusion accompanied the specimens, nor any indication that the wood 
is used medicinally. On placing a few chips of the wood in or- 
dinary tap water the latter soon became tinged a yellow color, which 
deepened at length to orange, displaying a most beautiful fluores- 
cence hardly to be distinguished from that of Kysenhardtia wood. 
At the request of the writer a cup was turned from this wood by Mr. 
James B. Conner, of the United States Department of Agriculture; 
and water, when allowed to stand in this cup, showed the same 
color effects as those described by Bauhin. Like the water in his 
cups the infusion assumed in a short time “a wonderful blue and 
yellow color, and when held up against the light beautifully resem- 
bled the varying color of the opal, giving forth reflections, as in that 
gem, of fiery yellow, bright red, glowing purple, and sea green most 
wonderful to behold.” This infusion as seen in a glass flask, to- 
gether with the cup described above, is shown on plate 1 (opp. p. 271), 
reproduced from a water-color drawing by Mrs. R. E. Gamble. 


BOTANICAL DESCRIPTION. 


The genus Pterocarpus, belonging to the Leguminosz, bears little 
resemblance to Eysenhardtia, although, as in that genus, the fruit 
is an indehiscent one-seeded pod, and the leaves are pinnately com- 
pound with large leaflets alternate or opposite, but without stipels. 
The yellow, papilionaceous flowers are borne in panicled racemes 
and: the pedicels are jointed at the apex. The turbinate, or top- 
shaped, calyx curved before opening, bears 5 short teeth, 2 above and 
3 below. The exserted petals are narrowed at the base into long, 
slender claws, and the broad standard and wings are crisped, or 
frilled, around the margin, while the keel is linear. The androecium 
is diadelphous, consisting of 1 free stamen and 9 stamens united into 
a sheath which is slit either above and below or only above. The 
2-ovuled ovary borne on a short stalk and bearing an incurved style 


292 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


develops into a large 1-seeded orbicular indehiscent pod surrounded 
by a broad, rigid membranous wing with the point on one side or 
turned toward the base. The tree yielding the Philippine lignum 
nephriticum may be described as follows: 

Pterocarpus indicus Willd. Sp. Pl. 3: 904. 1800; Prain, Indian Forestry 26, 


Append. 9: 7. 1900. 
Pierocarpus pallidus Blanco, Flora Filip. 560. 1837. 


A large forest tree with a trunk often provided wit broad but- 
tresses with drooping branches. Leaves 8 to 10 inches long, com- 
posed of 5 to 9 usually alternate leaflets; these 2 to 4 inches long and 
14 to 2 inches wide, the terminal one usually the largest, ovate with 
rounded, rarely tapering base and rounded, abruptly and obtusely 
acuminate apex, the main nerves hardly more prominent than the 
secondary beneath. Inflorescence composed of lax panicles, little 
branched, all except the endmost one issuing from the axils of leaves, 
peduncle long, rachis and pedicels glabrescent; pedicels three-tenths 
of an inch long with two linear caducous bracteoles at the jointed 
apex. Flowers yellow, corolla papilionaceous, twice as long as the 
calyx, the standard and wings frilled on the margins. Pod orbicular 
broadly winged, borne on a stipe three-tenths of an inch long, the 
style on one side, some distance from the base, the margin of the 
wing between the stipe and the style convex. 

Plate 6 is reproduced from a photograph of a specimen of Ptevo- 
carpus indicus in the United States National Herbarium, together 
with a piece of the wood from which the cup shown in plate 1 was 
turned. 

This species, which is endemic in the Philippines and the Malay 
Archipelago, has been introduced as a shade tree in many localities 
in the tropics. According to Major Prain, it does not occur spon- 
taneously either in India or Burma, but it has been confused with 
the well-known padouk (Pterocarpus macrocarpus Kurz) which is 
endemic in the vicinity of Mandalay and in other parts of Burma. It 
is interesting to note that the wood of the Burman padouk varies in 
color very much like that of the Philippine narra, and it is impos- 
sible in the forest to distinguish a tree yielding red padouk from one 
yielding yellow or pale-colored wood. | 

The genus Pterocarpus, as Prain has pointed out, is an exceed- 
ingly important one. In addition to the narra and padouk already 
mentioned, it includes the trees that yield the gum kino of commerce 
(Pterocarpus marsupium Roxb.), endemic in India and Ceylon; the 
red sanders (Péterocarpus santalinus L.), a much smaller tree of 
southern India, usually with 3-foliolate leaves; and the Andaman 
vermilion, or redwood (Pterocarpus dalbergioides Roxb.), which 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Safford. PLATE 6. 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM PHILIPPINENSE, PTEROCARPUS INDICUS WILLD. FROM THE ISLAND 
OF LUZON. 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 298 


by many botanists has hitherto been confused with Pterocarpus indi- 
cus, but which Prain has shown to be quite distinct. Specimens of 
padouk and of Andaman redwood were obtained from the wood col- 
lection of the United States National Museum. Only one variety of 
the former was secured, a beautiful red wood with distinct dark an- 
nular lines of growth. Of the Andaman wood there was an abun- 
dance of material of several varieties, deep scarlet (from which its 
American trade name, “ vermilion wood,” is derived); brownish, 
tending to flesh-color; and with mixed red and brownish streaks. 
Chips of the deep-red Andaman wood when soaked in ordinary tap 
water scarcely colored it at all, and showed no fluorescence in ordi- 
nary sunlight. Chips of both padouk and of pale-colored Andaman 
wood, on the other hand, yielded a distinctly fluorescent infusion. 


STRUCTURE OF THE WOOD. 


Microscopic sections of the wood of Pterocarpus indicus and P. 
dalbergioides were studied by Dr. Arno Viehoever, pharmacognosist 
of the Bureau of Chemistry, and his assistant, Mr. J. F. Clevenger. 
They found that the resistant resinlike bodies occurring in the large 
pitted trachee of Hysenhardtia polystachya were absent in both 
species of Pterocarpus. 

The color of the Pterocarpus wood is caused by certain colored 
bodies present in variable quantities in all parts of the wood. A 
study of distinct red masses, occurring chiefly in the medullary ray 
cells of the sapwood and heartwood (red and light colored streak) 
of Pterocarpus dalbergioides, shows a variation not only in the 
number of these masses but also in their solubility. Solubility tests 
were carried out with thin sections and observed under the micro- 
scope with the following reagents: Water, absolute alcohol, acetone, 
chloroform, ether, petroleum ether, concentrated hydrochloric acid, 
50 per cent potassium hydroxide and ammonium, at room tempera- 
ture, giving the following results: In the sapwood the colored bodies, 
which are relatively scarce, were not dissolved in any of the reagents. 
In the light-colored streak the colored bodies were soluble in 50 per 
cent potassium hydroxide and ammonium. In the red wood the 
colored bodies, being abundant, were readily soluble in absolute 
alcohol, acetone, 50 per cent potassium hydroxide and ammonium. 

In Péerocarpus indicus yellowish brown bodies, found almost en- 
tirely in the medullary ray cells. occur somewhat diffused throughout 
the cells in minute granules and in somewhat larger masses near 
the end of the cells. These masses are less definitely outlined than 
the red bodies of Pterocarpus dalbergioides and were soluble in 


294 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


water, 50 per cent potassium hydroxide, and 5 per cent hydrochloric 
acid. 

To determine the fluorescing power in the wood of Pterocarpus 
indicus and P. dalbergioides, pieces of each of known weight were 
treated with hot absolute alcohol. On the addition of a few drops 
of alkali, fluorescence was shown in each extract. The process 
was continued until fluorescence could no longer be detected by means 
of the fluorescence lamp. After the alcohol extraction was com- 
pleted, the same samples were boiled in water until no further 
fluorescence could be observed. The results demonstrated the fact 
that stronger fluorescence was displayed by the aqueous extracts, 
indicating either that the fluorescing substances are more easily 
soluble in water than in aleohol or that probably some of the fluor- 
escing substances present are soluble only in water and not in 
alcohol. 

Tn all cases fluorescence was observed, by means of the fluorescence 
lamp, in dilutions less than one to one hundred thousand parts, 
except in the sapwood of Pterocarpus dalbergioides, which yielded 
only a weak fluorescence in the aqueous extract. In the heartwood 
of this species the bright red portions show only slightly stronger 
fluorescence than the sapwood, while the paler streaks show the 
strongest fluorescence of all. 

The Philippine narra, Pterocarpus indicus, shows a much stronger 
fluorescence than any part of the Andaman redwood, as the writer 
has already stated; but not so strong as the Mexican lignum nephriti- 
cum, H'ysenhardtia polystachya of equal dilution. 

Dry wood sections showed no fluoresage when observed in the 
fluorescence microscope. After mounting them in borax glycerine, a 
greenish veil of diffused light was observed. There was no evidence 
that the colored bodies showed a stronger fluorescence. In fact, the 
fluorescence could still be observed in sections where the colored 
bodies were almost entirely removed, as in the red heartwood, and 
where the color bodies are very scarce, as in the light sapwood. It 
is therefore believed that the red colored bodies are not the cause 
for the fluorescence. 


FRUITS OF PHILIPPINE PTEROCARPUS. 


Pterocarpus Blancoi is very closely related to P. indicus, as Mr. 
Merrill has already pointed out, differing from it chiefly in its larger 
pods and its relatively narrower leaflets. Pterocarpus echinatus 
Pers., which also occurs in the Philippines is distinguished by its 
prickly pods, and its leaflets are sometimes long-acuminate. It was 
mistaken by Vidal for Pterocarpus erinaceus Poir., an African 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 295 


species, sometimes called rosewood, or African rosewood, and after- 
wards described as new by Rolfe, who named it P. Vidalianus in 


Fia. 7.—Fruits of Philippine Pterocarpus. a, Pécrecarpus indicus; b, P. Blancoi; c, P. echtnatus. 
Natural size. 


Vidal’s honor. Major Prain was the first to recognize its true iden- 
tity. Figure 7 shows pods of the three Philippine species of Ptero- 
carpus. 


MEXICAN SPECIES OF PTEROCARPUS. 


Owing to the marked fluorescence of infusions of Philippine 
Pterocarpus woods, Méller assumed that the Mexican species must 
yield similar infusions, but he had no opportunity of verifying this 
assumption. Of the wood of the tropical American Pterocarpus 
officinalis Jacq. (P. draco li.) very little is known. In Porto Rico 
it grows in swampy places to a height of 40 to 60 feet, with a trunk 
14 to 18 inches in diameter. The wood is described as soft and of a 
dirty white color, used for fuel and sometimes for making fire 
screens, and is known locally as palo de pollo or “ chicken wood.” 

Pterocarpus pubescens (H. B. K.) Spr. (Amphymenium pubes- 
cens H. B. K., Pterocarpus amphymenium DC.), supposed by Moller 
to be the true lignum nephriticum Mexicanum, and P. orbieulatus 
DC. are likewise imperfectly known. Figure 1, page 279, shows a 
Humboldt and Bonpland’s type, now in the Paris Museum (collected 


"996 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


in the Cafiada de Zopilote, between Zumpanga and Mezcala, State of 
Guerrero) contrasted with a leaf of Hysenhardtia adenostylis Baill. 
from Guatemala. 

\ Pterocarpus acapulcensis Rose, shown on plate 7, is apparently 
much more closely related to the Philippine narra. Of Pterocarpus 
uphyllus Micheli the leaves have never been described. It is inter- 
esting to note that the common names of both these species suggest 
the red, bloodlike exudation which flows from wounds made in the 
trees. Pterocarpus acapulcensis is locally known as drago, or drag- 
on’s blood tree, and P. aphyllus (possibly identical with A. pubes- 
cens) is called llora-sangre, from the fact that the tree weeps tears 
of blood. This substance, which has been called “dragon’s blood,” 
must not be confused with the dragon’s blood of Sumatra and Bor- 
neo, which is derived from a climbing palm, Daemonorops draco 
(closely allied to the genus Calamus), nor with the dragon’s bloods 
of Socotra and the Canary Islands derived from yuccea-like trees of 
the genus Dracaena. Its affinity is rather with the substance called 
gum kino exuded by Pterocarpus marsupium of India and Ceylon; 
and the same may be said of the so-called dragon’s blood derived from 
Pterocarpus officinalis. One thing is certain: The red, gummy sub- 
stance which exudes from Pterocarpus trees, called sangre de drago 
by the Spanish colonists has nothing to do with the fiuorescent ex- 
tract obtained from the wood. Several plants, quite distinct botani- 
cally, are known in Mexico as sangre de drago, or sangregrado. In 
addition to species of the leguminous genus Pterocarpus may be men- 
tioned Jatropha spathulata and Croton draco, belonging to the Euph- 
orbiaceae. ‘l'o the latter the ancient Mexicans applied the name 
ezquahuitl (from the Nahuatl eztli, blood, and guahuitl, tree). It is 
quite possible that the name tlapalezpatli (blood-red-tincture medi- 
cine) may have.been applied to a species of Pterocarpus; but without 
a description of the tree or a figure, it is impossible to determine this 
definitely. 

f SUMMARY. 


Lignum nephriticum, celebrated throughout Europe in the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries for its diuretic properties, but chiefly re- 
markable for the fluorescent properties of its infusion, comes from 
two distinct sources: (1) From a Mexican shrub or small tree, 
Eysenhardtia polystachya, the wood of which was used by the Hon. 
Robert Boyle (1663) in his well-known experiments on the fluo- 
rescence of light; (2) from a large tree of the Philippine Islands, 
Pierocarpus indica (Pterocarpus pallida Blanco), the wood of which, 
described by Kircher (1646) and Johan Bauhin (1650), was at one 
time commonly made into cups by the natives of southern Luzon. 
It is possible that cups were also made from allied species of Ptero- 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Safford. PLATE 7. 


PTEROCARPUS ACAPULCENSIS ROSE, THE DRAGON’S BLOOD TREE OF ACAPULCO. 


a 


ae 


LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM—SAFFORD. 29'7 


carpus growing in Mexico, but there is no record of cups of known 
Mexican origin. That which Kircher received from the procurator 
of the Jesuits in Mexico had in all probability been brought as a 
curiosity to Mexico from the Philippines, for at that time the only 
trade route from the Philippines to Spain was by way of Mexico. 
It is also quite probable that Monardes’s wood and the wood men- 
tioned by Hernandez as being carried on shipboard in the form of 
large logs was Philippine lignum nephriticum. 

The source of lignum nephriticum has remained uncertain for so 
long a time owing to the following causes: (1) Neither the Mexican 
nor the Philippine wood is known in its native country by the name 
hignum nephriticum; (2) from the beginning of its history the two 
woods bearing this name among pharmacologists were confused; (3) 
pharmaceutical material and cups were unaccompanied by botanical 
material; (4) botanical material in herbaria was lacking in wood 
and was usually unaccompanied by economic notes; (5) the original 
botanical descriptions of the species yielding lignum nephriticum 
were unaccompanied by references to the phenomenon of fluorescence ; 
(6) the source of the wood described by Monardes was sought in 
Mexico, but was in all probability of Philippine origin; (7) attempts 
were made to identify the Mexican plant described by Hernandez 
with the wood described by Monardes and the cups described by 
Kircher and Bauhin, which only led to confusion. 

The botanical identity of the Mexican lignum nephriticum was 
first indicated in 1854, by Dr. Leonardo Oliva, of the University of 
Guadalajara. It was established with certainty by the writer, 
January 6, 1915, through the exhibition of the wood and its fluores- 
cent infusion accompanied by botanical material from the mother 
plant. 

The identity of the Philippine lignum nephriticum was clearly . 
indicated, under its vernacular names, in 1701 by the Jesuit, George 
Joseph Rael: and the origin of the cups carved from the wood was 
revealed in 1754 by another Jesuit, Padre Juan J. Delgado; but the 
work of the latter remained in manuscript until 1892. Its botanical 
classification was first established in 1837 by Padre Blanco, in his 
Flora de Filipinas, under the name Pterecarpus pallidus, which i is 
now regarded as a synonym for Pterocarpus indicus. 

Closely allied to the tree, which yields Philippine lignum nephri- 
ticum are the padouk of Burma (Pterocarpus macrocarpus) and the 
Andaman redwood (Pterocarpus dalbergioides), both of which pro- 
duce red and pale colored varieties of wood. The padouk yields a 
fluorescent infusion very much like that of the Philippine narra. 
An infusion of the deep red variety of Andaman wood shows little 


1 See Safford, W. E. ‘‘ Hysenhardtia polystachya, the source of the true lignum nephriti- 
cum mexicanum.” Jour. Wash. Acad. 5: 503-517. 1915. 


298 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


or no fluorescence, while that of the pale variety yields a distinct 
fluorescence. 

Authors have hitherto tried to trace ignum nephriticum to some 
one source. Dr. Otto Stapf, after a careful study of the history of 
the wood and experiments upon a specimen of “cuat!” from the 
Mexican collection in the Paris exposition, was convinced that the 
mother plant of lignum nephriticum is L'ysenhardtia amorphoides. 
Dr. Hans-Jacob Miller of Copenhagen after an equally exhaustive 
study was confident that the source of lignum nephriticum was not 
Kysenhardtia but a Mexican tree belonging to the genus Ptero- 
carpus. It was assumed by Dr. Stapf that both the reddish palum 
indianum of which Johan Bauhin’s historical cup was made and 
the “ white” wood yielding an infusion like pure colorless spring 
water of which Kircher’s cup. was made were identical with the 
dark-colored wood used by Robert Boyle in his study of fluorescence. 
The erroneous conclusion would necessarily follow that the logs 
which Hernandez described as “larger than very large trees” were 
those of Hysenhardtia, although it is quite certain that this genus 
includes only shrubs and small trees. On the other hand Moller 
endeavors to make Hernandez’s description of coatli, with its tiny 
leaflets suggesting the foliage of the chick-pea or Gommon rue, apply 
to the genus Pterocarpus, of which all the known species have large 
leaflets in no way comparable to those of the plants mentioned. 
In the present paper the two distinct sources of the woods called 
lignum nephriticum are for the first time definitely indicated, the 
fluorescence phenomena displayed by infusions of each described and 
illustrated, and the origin of the celebrated cups of Kircher and 
Bauhin traced to the country where they were made. 


1 See Science, n. s. 48: 482, March 24, 1916, 


IMPRESSIONS OF THE VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS.* 


By Louis AGAssiz FUERTES.’ 


[With 16 plates. ] 
I. THE WRENS. 


Roughly speaking, wrens’ songs improve in direct ratio with the 
humidity and darkness of their haunts. This, at least, is the vivid 
impression one gets from a field acquaintance with the tropical 
genera, Heleodytes, Donacobius, Thryothorus, Henicorhina, and 
Pheugopedius. 

So far as I have been able to discover, all the cactus wrens except 
Heleodytes bicolor (which also differs in several other respects), are 
possessed of only a harsh, vigorous, and impertinent scold—a sort 
of angry, chattering noise, more or less closely imitated by pressing 
the tongue against the roof of the mouth and forcing the air out of 
a small opening behind the back teeth. All the speckle-breasted 
cactus wrens species have this note, and, so far as I know, no other 
that approaches a song, much less a wren song. Our own south- 
western species simply repeats a lazy, cross rrr, rrrr, rrrr, while the 
Mexican bird, Heleodytes zonatus, seems to try to yell “ brak-a-co-ax,” 
rapidly repeated, but still in the unmistakable cactus wren burr. If 
song is of any value as a philogenetic character, Yeleodytes bicolor 
certainly deserves to be lifted out of the prying and ill-natured group 
it now graces, and set down somewhere near the big wren-thrashers 
of the genus Donacobius,’ for it shares with them a loud, liquid song 
which is not given by the male alone, but by both sexes at the same 
time. 

This countersinging by the female, so far as I am aware, is not 
generally known among birds, but it is certainly practiced by this 
species, as well as by all forms I know of Pheugopedius, Henicorhina, 


1 Reprinted by permission from Bird-Lore, vol. 15, no. 6, vol. 16, nos. 1, 2, 8, 5, 6. 

2 Tilustrated by the author. 

3 Donacobius is a wren-like thrasher or thrasher-like wren which is usually placed in 
the family Mimids., 


299 


300 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


and Donacobius. In all these cases the birds sit close together, the 
male a little above the female, and his song is usually louder and 
more brilliant than hers. Meleodytes bicolor gurgles a loud, clear, 
oriole-like “ Keep your feet wet.” The female, 3 inches below and 
a little to one side, parallels this advice with an evenly timed “ What 
d’you care?” in perfect unison, usually, with the reiterated phrases 
of her mate. Donacobius does it somewhat differently, as the female 
only says “wank, wank, wank,’ while the male sits just above and 
sings almost exactly like a cardinal, or a boy whistling loudly to his 
dog, hui, hut, hut. If the male gives only three phrases, so with the 
female; if, however, the male repeats his whistle a dozen times, the 
female begins and ends in exact time with him. This curious habit 
I verified a number of times. Still more interesting is the fact that 
both sexes of Donacobius possess an inflatable sac of bright yellow 
skin on the sides of the throat, which, when the bird sings, puffs 
out to the size of a cherry, and is a very queer and conspicuous char- 
acter. When singing, they look down, hump up the shoulders, puff 
out the neck, and give their strange duet from the top of a marsh 
weed or dead bush, and then, wren-like, drop down into hiding. 

All the Pheugopedius wrens are gifted with the most astonish- 
ingly loud and clear whistles. A wondrous thrushy quality is 
theirs, with an unbelievable range in the form and forte of their 
songs. Both sexes sing, usually close together, and when one is 
hushed in the deep silence of the fern-filled forest of the humid 
mountains, tense for the tiniest pip of a manikin or the mouselike 
run of an ant-thrush, it is enough to raise one’s hair when right in 
one’s ear explodes a loud, astonishingly clear “bloong-wheee-rip- - 
wheeoo,” rapidly repeated, frequently seconded by a less showy 
“We'll whip you yet” of the female. 

Tt would be hard to describe a tangible difference between the songs 
of Pheugopedius and Henicorhina. Certainly there is no such dif- 
ference in volume or range as the tiny size of the latter would lead 
one to suppose, for the diminutive wood wrens are by no means 
always distinguishable by their songs from their larger cousins, and 
the variety and timbre of the notes of one genus is as endless as in 
the other. While no description or literal syllabification can do 
much to bring up an “audital image” of a bird song, my notes, 
written only for my own recollection, have these cryptic bits as the 
framework upon which I hook my remembrance of Henicorhina 
songs: “ Y’ought to see Jim, Y’ought to see Jim,” “ But Mary won’t 
let you” (repeat four times), “ Whip-wheéoo, correéoo.” 

Perhaps no songs heard in the Tropics are so characteristic or 
make such a strong impression on the mind and desire of a naturalist 
as these romantic and mysterious wren songs. ‘They assail the ear 


ssnqyvdpo1p sniqoonuUog? "DJIYSOINI] DULY LODUAEL 
"USHSVYH L—NAYM G3eddVO-NOVIG "NSYM GOO 


= 


“| ALVId *seHONjJ—'S16| ‘Hodey uriuosy}iWS 


Smithsonian Report, 1915,—Fuertes. 


JAMAICAN SOLITAIRE. 


Myadestes solitarius. 


PLATE 2, 


weet 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—FUERTES. 301 


while riding along the mountain trails, and are the unending goal of 
many a sweltering still hunt through the mosquito-full but otherwise 
Sabbath-still forest. For me, at least, a deep, humid mountain 
forest never ceases to have a hushing, even oppressive, effect. Awed 
and tense, I find myself a foreign and discordant note in the giant 
stillness. With this half-guilty feeling, and hushed by the stern 
ereen silence, hypnotized, as it were, into a sort of subjective identity 
with the Sunday-like vacuum of sound and keyed to a nervous ex- 
pectancy in tune with the heavy odorous stillness, the sudden singing 
of any of these brilliant-voiced wood wrens is sufficiently startling 
to make one recoil, lumpy-throated, and it is often more than a 
mere second or two before the readjustment into the normal frame of 
mind can be made. 

The wrens of the genus Thryophilus, which are closely allied to our 
Carolina wren, deserve a high place in the scale of singers. I think 
the Colombian species! are the most versatile and surprising singers 
in the entire family; and this is indeed high praise, for few, if any, 
birds of their size can surpass the wrens in volume and brilliancy of 
tone. 

II. TINAMOUS, PARTRIDGES, AND SOLITAIRES. 


In the Tropics, as in more familiar scenes, the bird songs of the 
fields are frank, pastoral, and prevalent. With us, the meadowlark, 
field sparrow, vesper, and song sparrows pipe often and openly, and 
from May to October their notes are almost constantly in the air. 
But the forest birds are more reluctant singers, and their rare notes 
are all mystery, romance, and reclusive shyness. The field sparrow 
will sit on a dock stalk and sing, looking you in the eyes; the veery 
will quietly fade away when your presence is discovered. 

So it is, even to a more marked degree, in the Tropics. In the open 
pastures and on the bushy slopes of the Andes one hears the shrill 
piping of the “four-wing” cuckoo (Diplopterus), the insistent 
kekking of the spurwing plover, the dry, phcebelike fret of the 
spinetails (Synallavis), the lisping insect songs of grassquits, and, 
from the bordering forest edge, the leisurely whistling of orioles. 
But enter the forest, and all is of another world. For a long time, 
perhaps, as you make your way through the heavy hush of its 
darkened ways, no sound strikes the ear but the drip of water from 
spongy moss clumps on broad leaves. You feel yourself to be the 
only animate thing in your universe. All at once, perhaps far off 
through the forest, perhaps close behind you, you hear the strangely 
moving whinny of a tinamou. I think no sound I have ever heard 
has more deeply reached into me and taken hold. Whether it is the 


1Thryophilus rufalbus, T. leucotis, and T. albipectus bogotensis. 


302 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


intensity of feeling that a deep, silent forest always imposes; the 
velvet smoothness of the wailing call; the dramatic crescendo and 
diminuendo that exactly parallels its minor cadence up and down a 
small scale; something, perhaps the combination of all these, makes 
one feel as if he had Rent caught with his soul naked in his hands, 
when, in the midst of his subdued and chastened revery, this spirit 
voice takes the words from his tongue and expresses so perfectly all 
the mystery, romance, and tragedy that the struggling, parasite- 
ridden forest diffuses through its damp shade. No vocal expression 
could more wonderfully convey this intangible, subduing, pervasive 
quality of silence; a paradox. perhaps, but not out of place with this 
bird of mystery. 

Only less appealing are those other chaste singers in the cloud 
forest, the solitaires. It is, indeed, a strange sensation, in uncanny 
harmony with the unexpected familiarity one always feels in a 
Tropic forest, when, thinking vaguely of thrush songs, the silver 
note of a solitaire crystalizes the thought. There are many kinds, 
and they have varied song types beyond most similarly unified 
genera. The most typical is simply a lovely hermit thrush song, 
giving that effect of a private hearing so graciously done by our own 
thrushes. For seme elusive reason, it seems as if these birds always 
sang as the shy perquisite of the favored few, and thus, perhaps, it 
is that their songs never become common. 

Our own Townsend’s solitaire has a very different melody, a blithe, 
grosbeak warble, frequently given in larklike flight, quite unlike 
any of the tropical species i ie heard. These are all of the chaste, 
contemplative type, given from a perch part way up in the forest, and 
in frequent accompaniment of splashing water in mossy and fern- 
fringed ravines. Jfyadestes ralloides, of the Andes, sings almost ex- 
actly like a hermit thrush, as does I/yadestes unicolor, of Mexico, 
while A/yadestes solitarius, of Jamaica, singing from the tree ferns 
up on Blue Mountain, reminded me strongly of the varied thrush 
heard in the dark, cold spruce flats of the Alaskan coast. What a 
transposition! A vibrant, steadily crescendo note, as true as a violin, 
fading to nothing. Then another in a new key. A rich, descending 
broken scale followed, after a pause; then an exceedingly high trill, 
swelling and dying. These singers were common at about 5,000 feet, 
and their choral chanting was an experience to be long remembered. 
Myadestes obscurus, of southern Mexico, has a song more spontaneous 
and overflowing than the other tropical species; I thought of a bob- 
olink when I first heard it. The song began high in the scale, and 
very loud; then through the rich progression of its bubbling 
cadences it gradually fell in pitch and lost volume till it died out, 
as with loss of breath. This is the “jilguero” of the natives, while 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—-FUERTES. 303 


unicolor is known as “clarin.” Distinguished from these as 
“jilguero de la tierra” are the wrens of the genus Leucolehis, which 
have a way of singing at your very feet, hidden under the ferns and 
low growing soft plants of earth. Theirs too, are violin tones, and, 
though the songs are not rare, the singer is seldom seen, however 
patiently you search or wait for him in the mosquito-ridden air of his 
dripping haunts. It has always seemed a mystery to me how these 
little birds of the cloud forest keep dry. They are, indeed, the only 
dry thing you would encounter in a week’s hunt, for overhead all is 
oozing water, all the leaves are shiny wet, and underfoot is soaking, 
rotting vegetable mold or deep muddy ooze, that frequently lets you 
in over your boot tops. 

In the same forests that shelter the tinamou and solitaire dwell 
the evasive and ventriloquistic wood partridges (Odontophorus). 
These are richly garbed in velvety, rotten-wood colors, with all the 
minute mothlike pattern of whippoorwills. But wonderful as is 
their coat, it is their vocal performance that gives them real distinc- 
tion, for besides the familiar partridge clucking and pipping heard 
only at close range and therefore seldom, they possess a loud rollick- 
ing call that may be heard a mile or more across the forested course 
of a mountain river. 

Once, while I was pussy-footing along a little water trail in the 
hope of again seeing a golden-headed trogon, I was congealed for 
the moment by a load, explosive alarm at the end of a fallen and 
rotting bole that lay just before me. “ Kivelry, cavalry, kivelry, 
cavalry, pt’, pt’, pt’, t’ t’ t’ t,’ and up popped a brown velvet bird, 
called once more and dropped, already running, on the other side 
of the log. The call, at close range, had a roosterlike quality not 
noticeable in the distance, and J was surprised to see that the whole 
complicated and rapid performance was the work of one bird. 

Perhaps it is a sort of statute of limitations that makes us con- 
stantly compare new bird songs with familiar ones at home. Per- 
haps it is the paucity of our language that renders description almost 
futile. But occasionally a resemblance is so striking that no alterna- 
tive suggests itself. Sweltering in the heat and glare of the Andean 
foothills, veins throbbing with the exertion of the climbing hunt, 
exhaustion screaming for a let-up, and temper getting thin, some- 
thing turns over inside one when, of a sudden, comes the cheery, old- 
home “bobwhite” of the little crested Hupsychortyx quail. Ap- 
pearances would never suggest the close relationship, but this little 
fellow, 3,000 miles from home, says “ bobwhite ” without a trace of 
accent, striking a primitive chord that does queer things for the 
moment to the inner you, caught unawares. 


304 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


III. ORIOLES, FLYCATCHERS, FINCHES, AND THRUSHES. 


A comparative study of the notes and songs of the birds of the 
Tropics and their familiar northern representatives is certainly not 
less interesting than the study of their physical resemblances and 
differences. And here it may be suggested that resemblances, which 
are of greatest value as showing relationships, are even more elusive 
and hard to follow out than are more physical characters. Differ- 
ences are of negative importance; resemblances alone count in tracing 
racial affinities. 

In this respect the great family of tropical orioles hangs together 
as a unit and ties closely to its more familiar northern offshoots. 
From the tiny Mexican orchard oriole to the crow-sized oropendolas 
there is some subtle quirk of tone that makes them all recognizable 
to anyone having a single good acquaintance in the family. 

I think no birds in tropical America have given me more pure fun 
with their vocal performances than the big yellowtails, or orepen- 
dolas; Gymnostinops in southern Mexico, and the various species of 
Ostinops in Colombia. I can not now remember any striking differ- 
ences in their songs or calls, except that Gymmnostinops combines more 
gymnastics with his effort than mere Ostinops. But everywhere in 
tropical America the loud rasps, chucks, and gurglings of these great 
orioles are as characteristic as the steady flashing of black and gold 
in the burning sky as they wing overhead from bank to bank of the 
great rivers. 

They are all highly polygamous, and I have frequently seen them 
demonstrate a most watchful and efficient warden service in favor of 
the old males. After one shot you may stalk and stalk the big black 
Sultan, “ quisking” from the bare dead spike above the forest roof, 
only to be defeated time after time by the party of six or eight silent 
and watchful females perching around him at lower points. Silent— 
that is, until you get within about twice gunshot of their lord—when 
they suddenly squawk and yell, and the old boss “ yips” loudly and, 
with batting wings, leaves for foreign parts. 

The calls of the male, given from a high perch with a commanding 
view, may be variously described: A loud, vigorous “quisk”; an 
equally carrying but very liquid “churg,” ending inside an empty 
cask; a series of dry, ascending clicks or twig snaps, probably done 
with the enormously strong and hollowed bill. But his true song, to 
eall it so, defies description or imitation without all the “traps” of 
the triangle man in the orchestra. Imagine a performance lasting 
only about 2 seconds, commenced by breaking off a handful of willow 
sticks, then running into a rising series of “ choog-choog-choogs,” to 
end in loud, explosive “ keow,” easily audible at a quarter of a mile. 
This is only the vocal part of the performance, and is accompanied 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Fuertes. PLATE 3. 


TINAMOU,. 


Crypturus. 


‘s 


MEXICAN OROPENDOLA—SINGING. 


Gymnostinops montezuma. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Fuertes. 


ANDEAN WHITE-THROAT. 


Brachyspiza capensis. 


ae 


DERBY FLYCATCHER. 


Pitangus sulphuratus derbianus. 


PLATE 4. 


PSII SEL EEE EO 


BAHAMAN THRUSH. 


Mimocichla bahamensis. 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—FUERTES. 805 


by a contortion of which the cowbird’s spring effort gives a mild 
idea. The bird first looks down, ruffles the nape feathers and elevates 
the tail, and then, clattering the bill and emitting the other sounds 
that he alone is capable of, falls forward, clapping his wings lustily 
over his back, until he is under his perch with his bill pointing 
directly up. Now he delivers his last explosive yell, wings and 
glorious tail all outspread to their utmost, and by means of his first 
foothold, not relinquished in his effort, and with wings folded, he 
draws himself back to his first position, where he sits ruffled for a 
minute or two. Then, depressing his feathers, he repeats his acro- 
batic song. The males are a full half larger than the females and 
have enormously developed legs and feet, apparently for this per- 
formance, recalling a raven’s foot; while the females have the usual 
slender, gracklelike feet of the family. One never need be bored 
when there is a colony of these striking and virile birds in the vicinity. 

Some of the typical orioles and troupials have exceedingly bril- 
liant, if monotonous, songs, and they are kept as pets in nearly every 
house in the towns or along the trails in Colombia. Jcterus meso- 
melas nearly drove us insane with his piercing song in the hotel in 
Cali, repeating it incessantly from his cage at our door. 


Fig. 1. 


All orioles are great singers of little tunes, usually going just 
enough off key to get on your nerves, and this is only one of hundreds 
of such little phrases. The hooded oriole group have a deliciously 
naive way of singing little “earless” tunes, like a small boy on his 
reluctant way to school, whistling himself along the road. This is 
the most companionable bird song I know and has frequently been 
real company to me when hunting alone along the banks of tropical 
rivers and in the foothills. 

It would be impossible here to take up more than a few of the 
striking types of this large family of brilliant singers, but.it would 
certainly be doing the whole group an injustice not to mention the 
wonderful silver and golden songs of one of the black offshoots of 
the family, Dives dives of Yucatan. This glossy beauty was very 
common at Chichen-Itza, and was a source of constant marvel from 
the variety, richness, and volume of its notes. I can not describe 
them, nor even remember them concretely, but I was at once reminded 
of the pastor bird I had once heard in the Philadelphia zoo. It 
had all the deep-throated richness of the best oriole songs, combined 


18618°—sm 1915——20 


306 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


with a sweetness more thrushlike and of infinite variation. Among 
all the varied and rich songs about the place—wrens, orioles, and 
thrushes—on my first morning afield in the continental tropics, 
Dives made the one deep and lasting impression above all others, in 
the classic and thrilling surroundings of the ruined Maya city. 

While orioles are always within hearing, I think that doubtless the 
most. pervasive and ever-present sounds in the Tropics come from 
the even larger family of flycatchers. From the blue, lonesome, 
plaintive little “phew” of Myiarchus 1. platyrhynchus and the 
equally despondent sighs of some of the Hlainias, to the executive 
“vips” of the big-billed and derby flycatchers, these characteristic 
sounds are ever in the ear. So far as I know only one flycatcher 
can really be proclaimed as a singer with a real song different from 
his ordinary calls and scolds. ‘This one exception is no less distin- 
guished by his coat from the rest of the rather somber-colored family. 
The gorgeous little vermilion flycatcher has a simple but very sweet 
song; lispy and thin, but delivered with great devotion. Darting 
like a flame up into the flood of sunlight, he reaches a point about 
a hundred feet from earth, and then, with scarlet crest spread out 
like a hussar’s hood and head thrown back, he floats lightly down 
on trembling wings, lisping in ecstacy his poor sweet little song, 
“Cirivi cirivi cirivi.” It is hardly noticeable even among the little 
finch twitters along the roadside, but for a flycatcher it is remark- 
able; and surely no gifted thrush or lark ever went to his matins more 
devoutly. It is a strange contrast to the usual flycatcher utterances, 
which are loud, raspy, egotistic, and highly commandeering. Our 
kingbird is a fair example of the family, with the greatcrest as a 
good amplifier of the impression. It is the forest flycatchers, like 
the wood pewee and some of the Hlainias, that have the lost-soul, 
hollow-hearted plaints; the sun-loving kinds are very kings of earth 
in their noisy self-confidence. 

The finches and sparrows in general do not add much to the tropi- 
cal mélange of bird music. They are, frequently birds of great 
beauty, and all have some blithe little song, “finchy,” and character- 
istic of each species. However, to a sparrow falls the distinction 
of being the most widely distributed singer we encountered in South 
America. It is safe to say that anywhere in the Andes above 2,000 
feet, from the Pacific to the Orinoco slope, the little Andean white- 
throat, Brachyspiza, will cheer the traveler with his brief and pleas- 
ant piping. “It is sweet cheer, here,” gives the phrase and accent. 
It is more like an abbreviated fox-sparrow song than anything I can 
recall. I shall always feel a personal debt to its cheery optimism, 
as it sang daily in the court of the hotel in Bogota in the clammy 
chill of the damp days 9,000 feet above sea, while I was fighting 
through the fever contracted in the lowlands. He gave my scram- 


—————————————— lO 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—FUERTES. 807 


bled and fevered brains the one tangible hold I had with the won- 
derful world outside, and it recalled nearly all of our associations in 
South America. 

Some of the roadside finches and grassquits have curious and ex- 
plosive little buzzy sounds. Volatinia, a raven-black mite living 
along the hedge-rows, has an amusing song-habit. Sitting on the 
top of a grass or weedstalk he suddenly rises in bee-like flight about 
a yard into the air; at the apex of his little spring he turns a rapid 
somersault, with a volatile “ bzt,” and drops back to his perch. . The 
whole effort takes perhaps a second. 

Most of the tanagers, which grade insensibly into the finches, are 
not much when it comes to singing. However, the larger Saltators 
have clear, whistled songs that are highly characteristic. They are 
leisurely soprano songs, usually heard from thickets of soft growth 
on the mountain sides. One song heard in the Eastern Andes that I 
ascribed to S. atripennis, though I could never quite satisfactorily 
prove the singer, was as loud, pure, and wide-ranged a song as I 
have heard. Though quite complicated it was always identically the 
same in form and range. Two long descending slurs, one ascending, 
a long descending trill, then a descending run in couplets (like a 
canyon wren), a rising slur, and a final short trill on a high note. 
In many songs, heard in several localities, this scheme was closely 
followed. The mountain forests of the Tropics furnish an endless 
and enchanting field for this kind of study, which our hasty survey 
and limited time unavoidably rendered all too superficial and frag- 
mentary. 

We found, as a rule, that the gemlike tanagers of Calospiza, 
Chlorochrysa, etc., were nearly devoid of song. Their drifting 
flocks, sifting along through the tree ferns and higher levels of the 
forest, were much like a flock of migrating warblers, always’ made 
up of several species, and their little lisping sounds were further 
reminders of our northern tree gleaners. 

The cotingas, as a rule, were silent, though some of the more 
flycatcher-like, such as Tytyra, have loud, buzzy calls, and the big 
ones, like Pyroderus and Querula, have deep, pervasive vocal sounds 
hard to describe, but fairly easy to imitate. The tiny and gorgeous 
manikins all make loud, staccato “pips,” out of all proportion to 
their diminutive size. . 

The thrushes, however, are quite as satisfactory singers in the 
Tropics as they are in New England. The robin group, Planesticus, 
is large and varied from Mexico south, and we had many chances 
to study and compare them in song and actions. P. gigas, of the 
Andes of Colombia, considerably bigger than a blue jay, and solid 
dusky but for his corn-colored bill, feet, and eyelids, had a dis- 


308 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


appointingly weak and squealy song. Members of the ¢ristis group, 
however, are to me the finest singers of the whole genus, trilling, 
piping, and warbling with the greatest abandon and purity of tone. 
They are shy singers, and rarely to be heard except after long 
silence in one spot. P. jamaicensis, heard with a divine accompani- 
ment of solitaires, lost nothing of its beauty by the comparison. 
The related genus J/elanotis, the “blue mockers,” are accomplished 
and brilliant singers, with much of the well-known quality of all 
mockingbirds. But they rank very high, as do the members of the 
interesting Antillean group, A/imocichla. I shall never forget a 
concert I once heard on New Province, in the Bahamas. We were 
out in the “coppet,” or woods, collecting, in the afternoon. About 
4 o’clock a drenching thunderstorm broke, and for an hour we were 
subjected to as thorough a wetting as could be desired, and most of 
our efforts went toward keeping our specimens from getting soaked. 
After a time, however, it stopped almost as suddenly as it had 
begun, and through the breaking sky the level rays of a declining 
sun reddened the straight columns of the pines and glistened from 
the wet and shining foliage of the broad-leaved trees. Suddenly, 
and so robin-like that I was for a moment quite moved, there com- 
menced a chorus of delicious and brilliant singing that I have no 
similar recollection of. It was from the “blue thrasher,”’ d/imo- 
cichla plumbea, and for a few breathless moments we were carried 
into an enchanted realm that it is still a joy to remember. The 
music was no less scintillating than its clean and glistening setting. 

It is perhaps too bad, and a sign of limitation that we should hesi- 
tate to admit, that the songs that please us most are apt to be those - 
that perfect or glorify songs we already know at home. It may 
even not be true, but I think, nevertheless, that no bird songs have 
ever given me a more welcome turn of heart than some of these 
tropical thrushes, which carry farther the lovely qualities of intona- 
tion so richly present in our hermit thrush’s song. The group 
known as Catharus, true thrushes, haunt the moist, ferny mountain 
forests, and from, the quiet fragrance of these silent places come 
the exquisite silvery bell tones of their songs. They sing from the 
ground or very near it, and never have I heard them lift their voices 
high. But their tone is more pure, their delivery more perfect, and 
their chaste cadences more prismatic and rich than those of any other 
thrush I know, and I should find it hard to pick the slightest rift 
within the lute. It is upon these tender, ineffably sweet flutings that 
I base my concept of a perfect bird song. 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—-FUERTES. 309 


IV.—ANT-THRUSHES AND THEIR ALLIES, AND WOODHEWERS. 


To northern perceptions and training the ghostly, long-legged 
forest ground-runners, generally known as ant-thrushes, make an 
immediate and lasting appeal. The many species of Grallaria, For- 
micarius, and Chameza, finding their most congenial surroundings 
among the tree ferns and moss-filled undergrowth of the wooded 
slopes, at once impress the student with their presence, but leave 
him, after however long an acquaintance, with little more knowledge 
of their lives and doings than he had on first hearing their invitation 
to the game of hide and seek they so skillfully and persistently play. 

They are all strictly terrestrial and, on the rare occasions when 
they fly, they keep so close to the ground that their dangling feet 
almost touch. Indeed, I suspect that they fly only upon some special 
stimulus, ordinarily going about on foot. 

The commonest and most generally distributed species in Colombia 
is Grallaria ruficapilla. It is about as big as a robin, but is almost 
round, stubby tailed, big eyed, and comically long legged. But while 
it was really a common bird, and its whistled compra pan was almost 
constantly in our ears in all three ranges of the Andes, not over six 
or seven were taken. Certainly nine out of every ten efforts to see 
the author ended blindly, even though they responded immediately 
to a whistled imitation of their notes. But so silent is their approach, 
and so densely are their ground haunts veiled by ferns, large fallen 
leaves, earth plants, and other visual obstructions, that they may 
call almost from between your feet with impunity, while with pound- 
ing heart and eager eyes you fail to penetrate the veil of intervening 
leafage. I have usually found that, while all these ground-running 
birds answer eagerly to a call, they are very easily satisfied on seeing 
its author, and usually the response, now almost under foot, suddenly 
fails, and the little feathered mouse that gave it swiftly and silently 
trots away after one quick look at the huge imposter. I think we all 
had certainly scores of these little ground ghosts within 15 to 20 feet, 
and not one-tenth of them gave us so much as a fleeting glance at 
them. 

Grallaria’s note can always be closely imitated by a whistle. The 
call of the common compra pan, whose name is the Spanish literation 
of his call, has a very “quaily” quality when heard near at hand. 
Three drawled notes—A, F, G, the first and second three tones apart, 
and the last between. We came to recognize this as an exact marker 
of the lower line of the second life zone, beginning at about 4,500 
feet. This species goes up almost to the upper limit of trees, and 
adheres closely to the cloud forest. I never heard any variation in 
the song except, when the bird is near the limit of its curiosity, the 


310 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


last note sometimes drops off in a throaty slur, instead of rising a 
tone: A, F, E. 

On the west slope of the Eastern Andes we found another species, 
G. hypoleuca, whose song, though readily recognizable as a Grallaria, 
was radically different in form. One longish note on B; a rest; 
then about five ascending notes a scant semitone apart, and four to 
the second. This bore a striking resemblance to the first half of 
Chameza brevicauda’s song heard on the eastern slope of the Eastern 
Andes at Buena Vista, and is almost identical with that of Grallaria 
rufula from the highest timbered ridges of this chain, except that 
here the pause is omitted and the song is higher, beginning on E. 

Little Grallaria modesta, from the eastern foot of the Andes at 
Villavicencio, has a most characteristic little song, all on E. It has 
seven sharply staccato notes, forming a perfect crescendo to the 
fourth, then diminishing to piano again at the end. The middle 
note is strongly accented. This little hermit lives in the sweltering 
weed thickets along the sun-baked beds of the lowland streams. I 
shall never forget an hour in a burr thicket, with nettle accompani- 
ment, at a temperature of perhaps 115°, trying to find the elusive 
author of that queer little song. At least five times I had him within 
close range, but never could I see more than a ghost of a movement 
or the sudden wiggle of a fern rubbed against in his approach. 
Nearly discouraged, with hair, eyebrows, and clothes matted thick 
with little burrs, almost exhausted with the heat, I at last hit upon a 
very effective scheme. Deliberately clearing out a space of 10 or 15 
feet and a tapering lane through which I could watch the opening, 
by gently approaching the sound I drove it to a point well beyond 
my clearing and retreated to my station. Waiting here a few min- 
utes in silence, I repeated the call, in full loudness, until I got a 
response. Then, as the bird approached, I did the call more softly, 
to appear farther away and allay his wariness. My unfair subter- 
fuge worked, and the little long-legged piper entered my trap unsus- 
pecting, and I was able to identify it. We had not encountered this 
species before, and never saw it again after leaving the torrid low- 
lands about Villavicencio. I was never able to identify the song of 
the big slaty-blue breasted G. ruficeps in the uppermost forest zone 
above Bogota. These were all the species of the genus that I per- 
sonally encountered. 

On the wooded slopes above Villavicencio we found another bird 
conspicuous in song, but spiritlike in actions. We at first thought it 
was a Grallaria, but it proved to be a closely allied bird, Chameza 
brevicauda, very similar, but with shorter legs and more delicate bill. 
Jt had a curious song of about seven gradually ascending “ toots,” 
followed by four or five queer little falling yelps, “ oot, oot, oot, oot, 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Fuertes. PLATE 5. 


COMPRA PAN. 


Grallaria ruficapilla. 


PLATE 6. 


Fuertes. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915. 


THE ‘‘NOON-WHISTLE.” 


Chamexza turdina. 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—-FUERTES. 311 


oot, oot, oot—elp, elp’, elp’, ulp’, ulp’.” It was common, and, because 


the forest was much opener and almost like our woods, it was much 
easier to find and see. But, even so, many more were heard than we 
were ever able to discern, and we never got over a feeling of victory 
when we succeeded in seeing the singer. The color gradation was 
so perfectly adjusted to the lighting in the woods that only a motion 
was visible, and that scarcely. 

In the dark, fog-steeped forest along the culm of the Central Andes 
a closely related species, darker in color, gave me one of the great 
song sensations of my life. I heard a sharp, loud, “ wip-wip-wip,” and 
ascribed it to one of the wood quail. I hunted it, unsuccessfully, 
until I was discouraged and exhausted. Also I became dully aware 
of a distant and long protracted whistle, which I vaguely attributed 
to a steam whistle in some neighboring village. So does our common 
sense become dulled when we are confronted by unfamiliar surround- 
ings. On my tired way back to camp I realized that there were 
neither mills, steam, nor villages in these mountains, which are un- 
broken virgin forest for a hundred miles or more either way. Per- 
haps I had heard a cicada. I could scarcely credit a bird with such 
a prolonged sound as this. 

The next day I went back to solve the thing. When, after two 
hours of steep ascent, I had reached the 8,000 foot level, I heard again 
my mysterious whistle. Listening carefully, and imitating it as well 
as I could, I was able to discern that the sound became definitely 
more loud and distinct. No insect, this. Soon I could analyze it 
quite closely, and found it to be a very gradually rising crescendo, 
beginning about on C, and a full though slightly throbbing or tremolo 
whistle. I was astonished at its duration, for I could detect no time 
at which a breath could be taken. Timing three successive songs, I 
found them to endure 47, 57, and 53 seconds! This was more than 
twice the length of any continuous song I have ever heard, the win- 
ter wren being second, with 28 seconds. But in this broken song there 
are surely many opportunities to catch the thimblefull of breath a 
wren can hold, while the Chamwza song was one long, unbroken, and 
constantly increasing sound. 

Eventually my singer came so near that I was afraid of scaring it 
away by the imperfection of my imitation, which required a full 
breath out, an in-breath to full lung capacity, and then the last bit 
of breath I could expel to accomplish even a 40-second song. So I sat 
silent, tense, and eager, hoping almost against hope that the mystery 
bird would reveal himself. Suddenly, almost at my heels, a song be- 
gan. Very soft and throaty at first, gradually rising and filling, the 
steady throbbing crescendo proceeded until I was so thrilled that I 
was afraid I couldn’t stand it any longer. I dared not move, as I 


312 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


was in plain sight, on the edge of a scar in the earth from a recently 
uprooted tree. Finally, though, the tension was relaxed; the song 
ceased. Where would it be next time? In front of me? Or would 
the singer see me and depart for good, still a mystery? Even as I 
was thinking these things a ghostly-silent little shadow sped dangling 
past me and came to a halt about 30 feet away, half lost in the dark 
fog, on the far side of the raw little clearing. In awful anxiety lest 
he become swallowed up in the mist and lost to me, and with a great 
effort not to lose the dim impression of the faintly seen bird, I moved 
slightly for a better view. My long watch was futile, for my spirit 
bird disappeared. I sat awhile and mourned, with a great deal of 
invective in my heart. But soon realizing that this was futile, I de- 
cided to practice the song I had learned. Imagine my surprise, after 
the first attempt, to hear, close by, the loud wip-wip of yesterday 
and to see it followed almost immediately by another ghost bird, 
which had the grace to alight or stop running (I couldn’t be positive 
which) within range and in sight. This proved to be (@. turdina. 
Although we often heard the curious protracted song later, when we 
went to the top of the range, we never again caught sight of this 
little-known bird, and this specimen remains unique in the whole 
South American collection. 

The several species of true ant-thrush, Yormicarius, all have char- 
acteristic notes, combined with the same skulking, rail-like habits of 
the foregoing. The recently described Colombian form of 7. ruf- 
pectus has two sharp whistles, the last a semitone above the first. 
This, in our experience, was never varied. J’. analis connectens, from 
the lower forest zone of the eastern foot above Villavicencio, had a 
song the exact reverse of that of Grallaria hypoleuca; a loud note on 
G, followed, after a rest, by a close descending scale of three or four 
semitones. Formicarius, like Grallaria, has a sort of clucking qual- 
ity when heard near at hand. 

Few brush birds have more distinctive notes than the ant-shrikes 
of Thamnophilus and their relatives. The commonest one we en- 
countered, 7’. multistriatus, has the characteristic dry, woody, de- 
scending scale common to many species. It strongly suggests in 
quality the spring “rucking” of a nuthatch. It might be written 
ruk, ruk, ruk, uk, uk, k, k, k beginning lazily and gathering speed 
as it descends. All these birds put much effort into their calls and 
sing with head up and tail down. The latter moves noticeably at 
each note and, as with the trogons, we came to look for the vibrating 
tail when hunting them. 

The many species have different notes, but most are readily recog- 
nizable as 7hamnophilus when any one of them becomes thoroughly 
familiar. Until one has had real experience with tropical birds, it is 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Fuertes. PEATE 7. 


ANT THRUSH. 


Formicarius rufipectus carrikert. 


PLATE 8. 


Fuertes. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915. 


ANT SHRIKE. 


Thamnophilus multistriatus. 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—-FUERTES. 313 


hard to work up much of an interest in the great mass of dull-colored 
brown and gray birds that form such a large proportion of the whole. 
In a case of South American birds the eye alights on the brilliant 
tanagers, callistes, trogons, cotingas, and hummingbirds, and 
ignores all the myriad flycatchers, ant-thrushes, furnarian birds, 
and other dullish and negative-colored things. But in the field the 
sense of sound enters and combines with the very interesting habits 
of the more obscure species. I can hardly subscribe to the popular 
idea that tropical birds are as a rule bright-colored and devoid of 
song after listening with an appreciative ear to the morning chorus 
in a Mexican or South American forest. 

One of the most extensive and typical families is that of the Den- 
drocolaptide, or woodhewers. They are, in actions, overgrown brown 
creepers. There are many genera and almost endless species. As a 
family it is nearly as extensive and varied as the family of finches, 
though all have a single general type of coloring that is hardly de- 
parted from. The great, flicker-sized Dendrocolaptes, the tiny 
A enops, and all between, are mainly wood-brown varying from rusty 
to olive, and streaked or not, but never boldly marked. They are also 
fairly unanimous in their songs, though of course there is considerable 
variation. Most that I have heard have a harsh, raspy note of alarm 
or displeasure, and many species sing a loud, ringing song that 
strongly recalls our canyon wren—“ tee, twee, tui, tui, tooi, tooi,” a 
descending series of whistles, which, pure and piercing in the lesser 
species, becomes coarse and “ woodpeckery ” in the larger. There are 
really no fine singers in this group, although several make pleasant 
sounds in the spicy-scented slashings, and all are interesting. They 
are rather silent birds, as a rule, and, as the family contains many 
rare and curious types, which are elusive and tricky, they are a never- 
ending source of interest and curiosity. 

The woodpeckers may be dismissed in a sentence. Their calls and 
notes are all perfectly typical of the group as we know it in this coun- 
try, and I recall no species that deviate noticeably from the well- 
known types of cries and calls by which we recognize our own species. 


V.—TOUCANS, CUCKOOS, TROGONS, MOTMOTS, AND THEIR ALLIES. 


The principal sensation one gets in the tropical forests is the 
mystery of the unknown voices. Many of these remain forever 
mysteries unless one stays long and seeks diligently. JI am very 
sure that many sounds I now tentatively attribute to certain birds 
really belong to others, though several are among the striking sounds. 

The toucans are all noisy birds, and for the most part they are all 
very boldly marked with strongly contrasting colors, all but the 
small green members of the genus Aulacorhamphus being brightly 


314 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


dashed with black, yellow, red, white, or blue, with bills as bizarre 
as they are huge. Andigena is commonly called the “siete color” 
(seven color) from his Joseph’s coat of black, blue, red, yellow, chest- 
nut, green, and white. Pteroglossus, as an entire group, is garbed 
in the most strikingly contrasting patterns of black, yellow, red, and 
green, with bills of enormous relative size and painted like a barber’s 
pole. Rhamphastos, containing the biggest of all toucans, with 
beaks like elongated lobster-claws, of all imaginable and many un- 
imaginable designs in black and yellow, white, red, blue, green, or 
orange are themselves principally black, trimmed with a yellow or 
white throat and breast, and lesser patches of red and white or yellow 
at the base of the tail. One would naturally suppose that with these 
flashy colors and their noisy habits and large size, toucans would be 
among the easiest. of birds to find; but this is far from the case. 
I think we all found them to be as hard to locate, after their calls 
had given us their general whereabouts, as any of the birds we en- 
countered. The little green snarlers of the genus Aulacorhamphus, 
whose harsh voice seemed to me to sound like the slow tearing of a 
yard of oilcloth, were in many places quite common; but only those 
whose movements disclosed them ever fell into our hands, for it was 
about hopeless to discover them when they were sitting quiet among 
the leafage. The blue-breasted group, Andigena, we encountered 
only once or twice. The only one I saw I got from the steep trail 
in the Central Andes, and it was to the rattling accompaniment of 
horns of some 50 pack oxen we were passing on the narrow road. 
The excitement the shot caused among the startled beasts gave me 
other things to think of at the moment, and I do not now remember 
whether my “siete color” had a voice or not. When I finally re- 
trieved him he was some 40 yards or more down the steep and 
tangled mountain side. In this connection it may not be out of place 
to offer one suggestion in explanation of the great difficulty of locat- 
ing these large and apparently gaudily colored birds in the tropical 
woods and in retrieving them when shot. 

To our northern eyes, used only to green leaves seldom larger than 
our hand, the extravagant wealth of size, form, and color in tropical 
vegetation offers quite as much wonderment and occupation as do the 
birds themselves; and here we have a diversion of the attention, 
however unconscious it may be, that certainly has its effect. Added 
to this, there are actual variations in the accustomed color of the 
foliage that repeat with greatest suggestiveness any red, yellow, 
blue, green, orange, or other color that may be present on a bird. 
No toucan’s throat is yellower than the light shining through a 
thin leaf, and when leaf forms are further complicated, like those 
of the Dendrophilum creepers, by having great holes that let through 


Fuertes. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915. 


WOoOODHEWER. 


Picolaptes lacrymiger. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Fuertes. PLATE 10. 


‘ enlessus \ 


», 


sD 
\ 


s evtaa-Color at, A COA 


e And 1g e no.) 


. 


‘ Dias te cles, - 
(Rlaw bhasTes.) 


TOUCANS. 


Sketched from nature, 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—FUERTES. old 


patches of the dark background or the blue sky, no black-patched 
toucan in the foreground looks more velvety than do these leaf 
interstices. As for the bizarre bills, they only serve to make it 
harder, for they bear no resemblance to bill or bird and simply 
merge their briliancy with that of the whole picture they sit in. I 
don’t know how many times I have searched and searched and scruti- 
nized, to find the author of some raucous carping, only to see one of 
the large toucans burst away from a perch in plain sight, where he 
had been all the time. This has happened to me so frequently that 
I am sure other students must have had the same experience. 
Perched on a dead stub above the sky line, toucans, ike everything 
else, are conspicuous in the extreme; sitting quietly within the shade 
of the forest cover, however varied their patchwork coat, they melt 
tantalizingly into their setting. 

The big black toucans of Rhamphastos are generally called by 
the natives Dios te de or Dios te ve—meaning God will give to you, 
or God sees you. This is not a confession of faith on the part of 
the simple native, but a free and lilting transcription of the bird’s 
call. It gives the rhythm and general shape of the sound fairly 
well. I could analyze it a little more closely by calling it a loud, 
hoarse whistle, with the words Tios-to-to or Tios, to, to, to. It has 
something of the queer quality of a yellow-billed cuckoo’s song, only, 
of course, it is much larger and louder. J. tocard is the “ Dios te de,” 
but the name fairly well fits and is generally applied to the whole 
group of heavy billed toucans. 

The only other group we encountered was Pteroglossus, the ara- 
carl toucans. These are small toucans, all joints and angles, much 
given to going around in noisy troops like jays. Skillful and jerky 
acrobats, they are the very extreme of bow-legged angularity. 
Curious as Jays, they jerk and perk their way up into the branches 
of some dead tree, their great clumsy beaks and thin pointed tails 
complementing each other at odd angles. Toucans are all great tail 
jerkers, and the aracaris the most switchy of all. Their harsh mob- 
bing cries recall some similar sounds made by jays, but are even 
louder and much more prolonged. Both are a great nuisance to 
the hunter, as they follow endlessly, their curious prying screeches 
and squawks effectually chasing out all the birds requiring more 
finesse in their approach. I should call their most characteristic 
noise a rattling, throaty squawk. In any case it will not take a 
green hunter long to identify these birds, as they are restless and 
their motion will soon catch the eye. I strongly suspect all the 
toucans of the habit and ability to slip noiselessly and rapidly away 
in case their curiosity is satisfied or their fear aroused. They are 
capable of making long leaps from branch to branch with their wings 


316 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


closed, like jays and cuckoos, only more so. What with their looks, 
their noises, and their actions no group of birds has more amusing 
and interesting new sensations to offer than the toucans. 

The family of cuckoos has some very interesting developments in 
the American Tropics. The little four-wing (Diplopterus), heard in 
the sunny river bottoms and lower brushy slopes—such places as a 
brown thrasher would affect—has perhaps the most insistent voice 
in his habitat. The commonest is an ascending couplet of notes a 
semitone apart—E, F. This is a sharp, piercing whistle that gets 
to be as much a part of the shimmering landscape as a hyla’s notes do 
of a northern meadow bog in March. Indeed, the four wing’s fuller 
song, which is a long, piercing note followed, after a short pause, by 
an ascending series of shorter notes, awoke a strangely familiar chord 
which I afterwards attached to the very similar pond toad call at 
home. The name four wing arises from the curious overdevelop- 
ment of the false wing or thumb plumes, which in this queer little 
bird form a sharply defined and separately distensible fan of black 
which the bird displays with a curious ducking motion. 

The larger brown cuckoos of the genus Piaya, which the natives 
rather aptly call “squirrel birds” from their color and the slippery 
way they glide through the branches, I have never heard call but 
once, though they are fairly common throughout most of tropical 
America. This one sat in a bare cecropia tree, and did a loud 
rough kek, kek, kek, repeated 20 times or more, and I at first took 
it for a big woodpecker. 

It is the little black, witchlike ani that is really the common 
cuckoo of the open savannas, and abounds over the cattle ranges and 
around the villages. There are a great many common native names 
for these conspicuous little black whiners, the commonest being “ gar- 
rapatero,” or tick eater. This name is: almost universal, though in 
Cuba and Porto Rico it bears, from its obsequious manner and its 
great thin curved beak, the apt title of judio—or Jew. ‘They are al- 
most always in molt, and look shoddy and worn, and their peevishly 
whined “ooo-eek” gets to be a mildly annoying accompaniment to 
the day’s work. . 

The barbets and puff birds (Capito and Bucco) fall naturally into 
this group, though they did not give us much to work on as to their 
notes. Bucco was usually found perching quietly on some twig half- 
way up in the trees along the roadside or pasture edges. All I re- 
member of him is that he had a buzzing sort of scold, and could bite 
a piece out of my finger when caught in the hand. 

The little spotted barbet, however (C’. auratus), at Buena Vista, 
on the eastern foot of the Andes, had a curious little toot that was the 
despair of all of us till Mr. Chapman associated it with Capito. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Fuertes. 


PUFF BIRD. 
Bucco rujicollis. 


PLATE 


ANI. 


Crotophaga ani. 


Wil 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Fuertes PLATE 12. 


TROGONS. 


Trogon collaris and Pharomacrus antisianus. 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—FUERTES. 317 


Hoot-oot . . . hoot-oot in perfect time—hoot-oot (blank), hoot-oot 
(blank), almost indefinitely. It was a pervasive sound, about as loud 
as and very like the individual toots of a screech owl, and was given 
to the invariable accompaniment of the twitching tail, and with the 
neck humped up and the bill directed downward. 

Every student in the Tropics hopes he may soon meet with trogons, 
at once the most beautiful and the most mysterious of all the varied 
tropical birds. Nothing could exceed the richness of their contrasting 
blood-red under parts, white and black tails, and resplendent emer- 
ald-green heads and backs. The large Pharomacrus trogons, of 
which the famed quetzal is a type, with their delicate yet richly 
gorgeous and pendulous mantle of feathers, are, for sheer beauty, 
among nature’s truly great triumphs, and can not fail to force deep 
appreciation from the most calloused or mercenary collector. P. 
antisianus has a loud, rolling call, which I put in my notes as “ whee 
00, corre 0,” done in a round, velvety whistle. When, after quite a 
long time spent in imitating the unknown note, in the soggy tree-fern 
forest at the ridge of the coast Andes, this magnificent ruby and 
emerald creature came swinging toward me in deeply undulating 
waves and perched alertly in full sight not far away, I found it hard 
to breathe so great was my excitement and joy. We never found it 
« common bird and only three were seen in all our travel in Colombia. 

A close congener of antisianus, the golden-headed trogon, fails in 
elegance before this distinguished beauty, though a marvel, never- 
theless. Its notes are more commonplace, too, being merely booming 
hoots, not very loud but quite pervasive. The little banded trogons, 
with pink breasts, as well as the yellow-breasted ones, have very 
characteristic calls, so like each other that I never learned to distin- 
guish the various species. They all sit quietly on some slender perch 
_or vine stem, and do their rolling call ruk, ruk, uk, uk, uk, k, k, k, k, 
all on the same note. Here again the tail seems to be indispensable 
to the performance, and jerks sharply forward under the perch with 
each syllable. More than once this motion became the index to the 
authorship of the strangely pervasive and ventriloquistic sound. 

One other group of birds has this quiet fashion of softly hooting 
from some low perch in the thicker and more watered parts of the 
forest. The curious racket-tailed motmots have what I call the most 
velvety of all bird notes. It is usually a single short “ oot,” pitched 
about five tones below where one can whistle. This note is very 
gentle, though fairly loud, and I think that some persons who do not 
hear low vibrations very well would often fail to notice it at a short 
distance. Most of the natives have sound names for motmots, and 
’ the Maya Indians of Yucatan call the brilliant little Ywmomota “ toh,” 
and, as an appreciation of this interest, he has come to nest and 


318 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


roost familiarly in the age-long deserted ruins of their former glory. 
Indeed, these mysterious, gentle, shy, little birds came to me, at 
least, to be the living symbol of this great lost magnificence; for the 
present-day Mayas know naught of the art and history of their great 
forefathers, whose temples and beautiful buildings are now in utter 
oblivion and disuse, except as the shelters and dwellings of little 
“toh,” the motmot, and his soft hoot is the only sound that ever issues 
from their carved portals. 
VI—PARROTS, GUANS, AND PIGEONS; THE VOICES OF A TROPICAL 
MARSH. 


When one meets with wild parrots for the first time he gets, un- 
diluted, the pure breath of the Tropics. And when, after an ac- 
quaintance with the parrakeets and parrotlets, the larger and more 
thrilling kinds appear the sensations are even richer. About Cal, 
and indeed most of the other South American towns and villages, 
the little green and sky-blue parrotlets fill the place house sparrows 
occupy with us, nesting in the bamboo ridgepoles of the houses and 
adopting a familiar attitude toward man and his works. The na- 
tive children almost universally tame them, and in the patio of the 
Cali Hotel, 17 of them lived in perfect familiarity among the roses 
and flowering vines. Their chirping and twittering reminded me 
of nothing more than the noises made by sparrows, though the fact 
that they were indigenous, coupled with their confiding friendliness 
and beautiful colors, removed the prejudice that the reminder 
might otherwise have engendered. 

Wild parrots make the same raucous noises that tame ones do, and 
a feeding flock, unsuspicious of man’s proximity, is constantly in 
low, chuckling conversation. But many and many a time I have 
heard them up the trail and, cautiously approaching, have become 
aware that I was observed, when all sound and motion ceased while 
I was still some distance from their feeding tree. With all their 
scarlet and saffron trimmings, the Amazona parrots, in my ex- 
perience, take an easy palm over all others in the gentle art of 
ceasing to be where you know they are. I think we all had the 
experience of searching till our eyes ached where we knew parrots 
were working without being able to discern a single bird, even in 
the comparatively open leafage along the trails. Suddenly, with- 
out the shghtest warning, as the entire flock took simultaneous 
alarm, the innocent air would be rent with the hellish screeching of 
200 fiendish birds and gorgeous with the flashing scarlet and blue 
and gold of noisy wings as these capricious and thrilling birds — 
would leave for another part of the forest. The tree would literally 
explode parrots, 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Fuertes. PLATE 13. 


MoTmotT. 


Momotus lessoni. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Fuertes. 


Con. Utes 


« Maecaws 
ee Eta 


MACAWS, PARROTS, AND PARRAKEETS. 


PLATE 14. 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—FUERTES. 319 


After some experience with them we came to distinguish the 
three Mexican Amazonas by their cries when they were too far 
away to tell by sight. A. oratrix, the “double yellow head” of 
fanciers, cried quite plainly “ cut it out, cut it out,” while A. viridi- 
ginalis called “poll poll parrot, poll poll parrot,” and A. autum- 
nalis, from southern Vera Cruz, had a sufficiently distinct screech 
to immediately stamp it as something new, although I made no 
transcription of its yell. 

Conures all make regular parrot noises, though shriller and 
“lighter ” than those of the larger kinds. But the “real noise” in 
parrotdom is the great, gorgeous and ear-sphtting macaw. Along 
the lower Magdalena River the red-and-blue and the blue-and-yel- 
low macaws were both quite common, and it is hard to say whether 
their greatest attack was on our eyes or our ears. Their heavy, 
rasping yell was clearly audible above the churning racket of the 
engines, even when the birds were some distance away in the forest. 
We were frequently apprised of their flights, high, high over the 
valley as they passed from one great Andean chain to another, 
perhaps 3,000 feet above us, by the penetrating, though distance- 
mellowed, cries that filtered down to us from the scarcely discernible 
line. When heard near at hand there is a heavy, hammering quality 
in a macaw’s scream that makes it the most deafening noise that I 
have ever heard from a bird, while their fiery beauty affords the 
greatest sensation a naturalist gets in their country. Not only are 
their exposed surfaces brilliant, but their wing and tail linings are 
as gorgeous. I shall never forget a flock of blue-and-yellow macaws 
we passed one evening just before sunset as we were descending 
the Magdalena. We were between them and the low sun. They 
were near, and about level with our eyes, relieving against the vel- 
vety green of the forest wall directly where our shadows fell. The 
astonishing glory of their turquoise upper surfaces, alternating as 
they flew with intense cadmium yellow as the sun got under their 
wings, kindled a flashing riot of color that made us gasp. 

So far as I know, parrots all pair for life, and every large flock 
we saw, whether of macaws, parrots, or parrakeets, was made up of 
pairs, each bird of which bore the same relation to the other all 
through the flock. They looked as if made with a paired stencil, or 
seen through a double-refracting glass. Invariably, if one bird was 
lost out of a passing flock, another would soon drop out, circle, and 
come back to see what had happened to its mate. If, rarely, there 
were unpaired birds in a flock, they were usually apart from the 
main body, and conspicuously “ out of it.” In flight parrots present 
a singular resemblance to ducks, particularly from ahead or behind. 
Flying “across the quarter,” their heavy blunt heads are, of course, 
unmistakable. 


320 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


We were kept constantly interested in the varied voices of the 
doves and pigeons. The gentle little ground doves, hardly bigger 
than sparrows, give a single, soft, questioning “coo,” invariably with 
a rising inflection. I could distinguish no material variation in their 
calls in Florida, Yucatan, or South America, and even the rufous 
species presented no differences appreciable to my ear. The ground 
pigeons of the genus Geotrygon all have gentle, velvety voices which, 
heard in the damp gloom of the cloud forest, impart something of 
the mystery and romance of the tinamou’s tremulous plaint. They 
have the same uncanny way of gliding silently into view and melt- 
ing away, and when, rarely, they fall into our hands, their subdued 
but rich beauty compels an admiration that does not dim with 
repetition. 

But not all pigeons have these soft owllike voices. Columba spe- 
ciosa has a harsh, raw-voiced single “ toot,” audible at a considerable 
distance. C’. bogotens’s, in the eastern Andes, in addition to the 
regular pigeon clucks and cooing, has a loud, rough call, with a 
strong roll or “ burr” in it, suggesting a “ Klaxon ” automobile horn. 
The white-winged doves of Melopelia are among the noisiest of the 
pigeons. Indeed, a flock calling from a feeding tree, with their loud 
rollicking “ Hoo-too-coo-ro000, hoo-too-coo0-roooo,” reiterated inter- 
minably, recalls a group of victory-crazed undergraduates “ rooting ” 
for their football team. I found that I could quite closely imitate 
this and several other pigeon calls by whistling through my hands. 

I heard only one of the big guans of the genus Craw. What I took 
to be the fine black curassow, at Buena Vista, sat one evening for half 
an hour before sunset in the dense top of a great forest tree and 
gave his exciting cry at intervals of half a minute until the sun was 
well down and the hurrying dusk began to deepen. I cautiously 
crept nearer and nearer and finally gazed up from directly below. 
Here I searched until my neck ached, but though the cries came 
regularly and I constantly changed my position, the bird was so well 
hidden that I never saw him, and at last I left him there, to hurry 
out of the deepening gloom of the forest before it should get fully 
dark. As it was, I had to “foot feel” my way for the last part of 
the trail, as night caught me before I reached the clearing. This 
call is hard to describe. It was not at all “ gobbly,” like a turkey’s 
voice, but was a loud siren call, which the natives interpret by their 
name for the bird “ Aburria,” with the r’s strongly thrilled. It rolls 
up a full octave, sustains a second, and rolls down again. I think it 
would carry across the shadowed valleys in the still sunset forests 
for a mile at least, and is fully as loud as any answer a strong-lunged 
boy could yell back. 

The little guans of the genus Ortalis, the Chachalacas, have also 
a fine sensation saved up for the eager naturalist who has not heard 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—-FUERTES. 321 


them before. The male, with his elongated and convoluted wind- 
pipe, has the louder and rougher ery, which, by virtue of the longer 
instrument to trumpet through, is an exact octave lower than that 
of his normally equipped mate. O. vetula, from Mexico, says quite 
plainly “ Cha-cha-lac’-ca. Cha-cha-lac’-ca,” or,as the Mexicans more 
phonetically spell it, “ Guacharra’ca.” It has a very human quality of 
voice and sounds nearly as loud at a quarter of a mile as it does at a 
hundred yards. The Colombian species heard in the Magdalena Val- 
ley seemed to my ear to screech “Aqua-dock.” The various members 
of a calling flock keep time, roughly, according to sex. They are 
apt to call from up on the mountain sides or in ravines, when the 
rebounding echoes complicate and augment the chorus immensely. 

Another noteworthy voice is the rolling cry of Aramides, the big 
rusty-colored wood-rail. As dusk was falling around me on a 
forested mountain side, while working my way out to the trail, I 
was suddenly congealed by a loud, rolling cry, hastily repeated three 
or four times. It sounded in front of me, behind me, over me, and 
under me. I began to think it was all around me. A loud hoot, 
then a rising, rolling trill—‘ Oot- roo-ee-e-e-e- oot- roo-ee-e-e-.” I 
found I could do it by “ pigeon tooting” through my hands, so that 
the bird came quite near and thrilled me deeply. But it was too 
dark, and I knew not where to look for it. After a few responses 
it slipped away, still a mystery; but when I reached camp and imi- 
tated it for Mr. Cherrie he at once recognized it as Aramides; and 
this diagnosis is his, not mine, for I never had another opportunity 
to identify it. 

Among the lasting impressions that I have brought out of the 
Tropics certainly one of the most vivid is of the great, sultry, odor- 
ous, and soundful marshes of the Magdalena and Cauca Valleys. 
These treacherous reaches have a fascination and exert a call upon 
the novice naturalist that is indeed likely to get him into trouble. 
Everything that charms the senses in a northern water field is here 
multiplied. Plant life is riot, insects accordingly swarm, and many 
species of birds avail themselves of the easy food they furnish. The 
allurements of a fragrant, shimmering sheet of placid water, with 
beds of floating plants made gay with the delicately lovely Jacanas, 
fighting their innocent battles and displaying their lemon butterfly 
wings; the dignified spurwinged plover that trot on the margins 
or fly in noisy flocks, like Dutch lapwings, low over the surrounding 
pasture lands; perhaps a bare snag far out in the deep marsh, all 
in glowing blossom with roseate spoonbills and snowy herons; the 
loud clatter of the giant kingfisher and the dry rasping of his 
tiny “Texas” cousin; statuesque screamers posing on an exposed 
bar; the squealing whistles of the tree ducks dabbling and sunning 


18618°—sm 1915 a1 


322 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


themselves at the edge of the hyacinth beds—all these and a hun- 
dred other charms lure him deeper and deeper into the marsh or 
into the lush reeds and papyrus beds that form some of their mar- 
gins. I shall not soon forget an hour spent in retrieving an ever- 
glade kite in the great marsh at Calamar. Here the one pervasive 
sound was the constant, irritating hum of the myriads of ravenous 
mosquitoes. Things were not helped by the discovery that I was 
soon on a false bottom, made only of the suspended roots of the 
vegetation that rose 10 feet above me, so that I went through and 
had to go the rest of the way on my knees, up to my armpits in 
tepid water. As I had a gun and a glass to keep dry, this was no 
joke, and I think that was the most miserable hour I ever went 
through. At the end I was absolutely spent and could only crawl 
out and lie down—easy meat for the mosquitoes—for another hour. 
But it had its recompenses. Into the willow-like shrubbery over me 
came the beautiful little yellow-headed blackbird of the Tropics 
and sang his orchard-oriole song. Nearby great-tailed grackles 
squealed, piped, and pointed their bills aloft in their nuptial atti- 
tudinizing. The red-breasted meadowlark, Leistes, also came to 
close quarters, though it did not sing, and I watched the lovely and 
delicate little black and white marsh flycatchers almost at arm’s 
length. 

There is a creature in the South American forests which, though 
not a bird, ranks easily first as a maker of weird noises. I have 
read many descriptions of his performance, but was not in the least 
prepared for the reality when I actually heard it, nor did I even 
recognize it. This is the roaring of the so-called howling monkey. 
To my mind howling is a sort of eerie, rising and falling noise, far 
different from the deep-voiced, businesslike, bellowing roar that is 
the predominant feature of this little animal’s performance. It is 
at least a hundred times more thunderous and terrible than would 
seem possible from a creature somewhat larger than a big tomcat. 
T had heard them in the distance a number of times, but it was at 
~ Rio Frio, on the Cauca River, where our little sternwheeler was 
taking wood, that I first got close to them in “action.” As I left the 
boat for a short walk in the virgin bottom-forest I heard howlers 
a little distance in. I knew they were small animals (our biggest male 
weighed 17 pounds) and could do me no harm. Yet he12 I confess 
to a greater triumph of mind over matter than I have elsewhere 
ever been called on to effect in order to overcome the fierce desire to 
be somewhere else. In spite of the intellectual certainty that it was 
perfectly safe, it took all my nerve that first time to move up under 
the tree whence came that courage-killing, menacing bellow. There 
were only four of them—an old male, a female, and two half-grown 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Fuertes. PLATE 15. 


ee ee 
SRE st aagacee 


Boucier’s Forest DOVE. 


Geotrygon bourcierit. 


Smithsonian Report. 1915.—Fuertes. PLATE 16. 


CRESTED CurRASssow. 
Crax sp.? 


VOICES OF TROPICAL BIRDS—FUERTES. 323 


young; probably a family. Yet the terrible noise that issued prin- 
cipally from the bearded and swollen throat of the old male seemed 
really to make the atmosphere quake. As I stood below he would 
rush down toward me, bellowing outrageously, and I thought it took 
some fortitude at first to stand by till he retreated again. The noise, 
as I analyzed it at the time, was a deep, throaty, bass roar, with 
something of the quality of grunting pigs, or the barking bellow of 
a bull alligator, or an ostrich. Accompanying this major sound was 
a weird, crooning sort of wail, probably the contribution of the 
female or young, or both. The noise was fully as loud as the full- 
throated roaring of lions, and that it has marvelous carrying power 
was frequently attested when we heard it from the far side of some 
of the great Andean valleys as we wound our tortuous way across 
the Central Cordillera. This is, of course, in no sense a bird voice, 
yet it is by far the most striking sound in the American tropics, 
and I should feel that I had done the subject slight justice if I did 
not at least try to make it recognizable to those who may read these 
papers and some day hear for themselves this astonishing sound. 

In bringing to a close this series of impressions it must not be 
thought that they cover the field of tropical-bird music. They form, 
indeed, the merest nucleus on which to build. 


ri girs T 


to urtidtensog 


% 


THE ESKIMO CURLEW AND ITS DISAPPEARANCE! 


By Myron H. SweEnk. 


[With 1 plate. ] 


Tt is now the consensus of opinion of all informed ornithologists 
that the Eskimo curlew (Vwmenius borealis) is at the verge of ex- 
tinction, and by many the belief is entertained that the few scattcred 
birds which may still exist will never enable the species to recoup its 
numbers, but that it is even now practically a bird of the past. And, 
judging from all analogous cases, it must be confessed that this 
hopeless belief would seem to be justified, and the history of the 
Eskimo curlew, like that of the passenger pigeon, may simply be 
another of those ornithological tragedies enacted during the last half 
of the nineteenth century, when because of a wholly unreasonable 
and uncontrolled slaughter of our North American bird life several 
species passed from an abundance manifested by flocks of enormous 
size to a state of practical or complete annihilation. In this deadly 
work the people of Nebraska, as well as those of our neighboring 
States, to our lasting discredit played a conspicuous and all too effec- 
tive part each spring, while in the fall the equally profligate gunners 
of New England and the Atlantic States poured leaden death into 
southbound flocks of these unfortunate birds whenever an oppor- 
tunity presented itself. 

Nothing was known concerning this interesting bird until after 
the middle of the eighteenth century. It was originally described 
by Forster? in 1772 as Scolopax borealis, from a specimen taken 
at Albany Fort, Hudson Bay. Pennant* in 1785 and Hearne‘ in 
1795 both erroneously referred to the larger congener of this bird, 
the Hudsonian curlew (Vumenius hudsonicus) as the “ Eskimaux 


1 Reprinted by permission, after revision by the author, from the Proceedings of the 
Nebraska Ornithologists’ Union, vol. 6, pt. 2, Feb. 27, 1915. 

2Forster, J. R. Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. London, 62, pp. 411 and 431, 1772. 

*Pennant, T. Arctic Zoology, 2, 1785. 
. *Hearne, 8. A journey from Prince of Wales’ Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern 
Ocean, 1795, 


325 


326 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


curlew,” though the latter author recognized two species of curlew 
as abundant about Hudson Bay from 1769 to 1772, the smaller of 
which was undoubtedly the present species. In 1790 Latham? 
formally described the Hudsonian curlew and referred the Eskimo 
curlew to the same genus, but confusion between the two species 
continued up to the earlier years of the nineteenth century, and the 
bird described by Wilson? in 1813 as the “ Esquimaux curlew” was 
in reality the Hudsonian, the species rightfully entitled to the name 
he used being unknown to him. The Hudsonian curlew is a large 
bird, about 17 inches long, with a bill about 4 inches long, a whitish 
stripe in the middle of the top of the head and the long flight feathers 
of the wing barred with buffy; the Eskimo curlew is 2 to 5 inches 
shorter, with a bill only slightly over 2 inches long, the crown un- 
striped and the flight feathers of the wing unbarred. 

In the spring migration this curlew passed through the interior 
of the United States, in the Mississippi Valley, rarely if ever occur- 
ring on the Atlantic Ocean or its coasts. It first appeared in the 
United States in Texas and Louisiana during early to middle 
March. In central Texas Brown* noted it at Boerne, Kendall 
County, March 9, 1880, as a rather common migrant, while in north- 
ern Texas at Gainesville, Cooke County, it arrived on the average 
March 17, according to Ragsdale, while its earliest date was March 
7, 1884.4 In the adjacent county, Wise, it was noted as late as April 
2, 1884, while at Caddo, Okla., a short distance across the Red River 
from Gainesville, in 1884 it was noted March 25 and was abundant 
on April 2.2. In Louisiana, where it was a common migrant,® the 
last records are for March 17 and 23, 1889,7 while for Arkansas the 
last record is from Fayetteville, March 31, 1883, on the authority of 
Prof. F. L. Harvey.® 

The quadrangle of States to the north—Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, 
and Nebraska—saw the passing through of these curlews during the 
last few days in March and during April. By the last of March 
the vanguard of the birds had reached central Missouri (St. Louis, 
Mar. 25, 1884, and southern Nebraska (Waco, Mar. 31, 1911)° 
Curlews were on the St. Louis market April 6, 1885,° a flock of a 
hundred birds was seen in Vernon County, southwestern Missouri, 
April 16, 1894, and a flock of 10 was noted in the neighboring county 
of Jasper as late as May 2, 1902.1° In central Kansas, according 


1 Latham, J. Index Ornithologicus, 2, p. 712, 1790. 

2 Wilson, A. American Ornithology, 7, 1813. 

% Brown, N.C. Bull. Nuttall Ornith. Club, 7, p. 42, 1882. 

4 Cooke, W. W. Bull. 35, Bureau of Biological Survey, pp. 74-76, 1910. 

5 Cooke, W. W. Bull. 2, Division of Hconomie Ornithology, p. 98, 1888. 

6 Beyer,’G, H., Allison, A., and Kopman, H. H. Auk, 25, p. 179, 1908. 

7 Forbush, H, H. Game birds, Wildfowl and Shorebirds, pp. 416-432, 1912, 
8 Howell, A. H. Bull. 38, Bureau of Biological Survey, p. 32, 1911. 
®Hiche, A. Proc, N..0.U., vy, p. 31, 1912. 

10 Widmann, O. Trans. Acad. Science, St. Louis, p. 75, 1907. 


THE ESKIMO CURLEW—SWENKE. 827 


to the observations of Kellogg, they reached Emporia April 14, 1884, 
and April 18, 1885.1? In Iowa, the last recorded specimen was taken 
at Burlington in the extreme southeastern part of the State, April 
5, 1893, by Paul Bartsch. The bulk of the birds reached southern 
Nebraska about April 2 to 25 and remained until the 15th to 25th of 
May; in northern Nebraska they were apparently most numerous 
in early May. The van reached Heron Lake, Jackson County, in 
southwestern Minnesota, April 3, 1884, and the next year (1885) were 
noted at this place on April 24.2. In southeastern South Dakota, 
the bulk arrived at Vermilion, Clay County, May 3, 1884,? while 
Coues reported them present in large flocks between Fort Randall 
and Yankton during the second week in May, 1873.* 

By latter May the curlews had reached their breeding range in 
the far north, on the Barren Grounds of Mackenzie, within the 
shadow of the Arctic Circle or even within the circle itself. They 
reached Fort Resolution, near the south shore of Great Slave Lake, 
May 26, 1860, Kennicott mentioning in his journal the taking of a 
specimen there on that date. At Fort Anderson, Mackenzie, near 
the arctic coast, they were noted May 27, 1865, by MacFarlane.‘ 
In this latter locality the birds bred abundantly, MacFarlane col- 
lecting some 30 sets of eggs on the Barren Grounds east of Fort 
Anderson on June 13, 1863, June 16, 1864, and June 16, 1865.7 Pre- 
viously Richardson had found “one of these curlews hatching on 
three eggs on the shore of Point Lake,’ Mackenzie, on June 13, 
1822.8 He also found these birds at Fort Franklin, on the west 
shore of Great Bear Lake, Mackenzie, late in May, 1849, but this was 
probably too early for nests.° The breeding range probably ex- 
tended from Alaska to Labrador, as these curlews penetrated even as 
far to the northwest as Point Barrow, at the apex of the north Alaska 
coast, where, though “rare and irregular,” it was first seen by Mur- 
dock May 20, 1882, and last seen July 6 of that year, thus probably 
being present through the breeding season.t° Also, eastwardly it 
was recorded by Kumlien as passing in small flocks northward in 
June, 1878, at Cumberland Bay, and a specimen was taken.! It was 


1 Cooke, W. W. Bull. 35, Bureau of Biological Survey, pp. 74-76, 1910. 

2 Cooke, W. W. Bull. 2, Division of Economic Ornithology, p. 98, 1888. 

sAnderson, R. M. Proc. Davenport Acad. Sciences, 11, p. 227, 1907. 

*Coues, E. Birds of the Northwest, pp. 510-512, 1874. 

5 Biography of Robert Kennicott; Committee, Chicago Acad. Sciences, in; Trans. Chi 
cago Acad. Sciences, 1, p. 172, 1869. 

® Preble, North American Fauna, No. 27, p. 332, 1908. 

™McFarlane, R. Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., 14, p. 429, 1891. 

8 Swainson, W., and Richardson, J. Fauna Boreali-Americana. London, 2, p. 378, 1831. 

®*Richardson, J. Arctic Searching Expedition: A Journal of a Boat-Voyage through 
Rupert’s Land and the Arctic Sea, in search of the Discovery Ships under command of 
Sir John Franklin, London, 2, p. 108, 1851. 

10 Murdock, J. Auk, 2, p. 63 and p. 201, 1885. 

u Kumlien, L. Bull. 15, U. 8S. Nat. Mus., p. 88, 1879. 


328 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


not known, however, to have actually nested either west or east of 
the Mackenzie Barren Grounds. 

The nest of the Eskimo curlew was a mere hole in the ground 
on the open plain lined with a few decayed leaves with a thin sprink- 
ling of dried grass in the center. The eggs were laid by the third 
week in June. As the setting bird would glide off before the nest 
was closely approached it was a very difficult thing to find. After 
leaving the nest the female usually soon ascended into the air in a 
straight line. The eggs, usually four in number, were oblong oval, 
shghtly pear shaped, varying in size from 1.90 by 1.40 to 2.12 by 
1.33, and also exceedingly variable in color, a pale green or greenish 
gray to clay colored or olivaceous drab heavily marked on the larger 
end with shades of sepia to umber brown. The young began hatch- 
ing about July 12, leaving the nest as soon as hatched and hiding 
away in the grass if alarmed.” 

Late in July and early in August the curlews had completed their 
domestic duties, and began congregating in flocks preparatory for 
their long southward migration. Their first movement was from 
the Barren Grounds southeastward to the eastern shores of Labrador, 
where they massed in immense swarms. July 29, 1833, while Audu- 
bon was near the harbor of Bras d’Or, Labrador, he found these cur- 
lews coming in from the north in such dense flocks as to remind him 
of the flights of the passenger pigeon. In 1838 Tucker recorded 
these birds as exceedingly abundant, occurring in vast flocks on the 
Labrador coast.* In 1860 Dr. Packard noted a flock which was per- 
haps a mile long and nearly as broad, and the sum total of their dis- 
tant notes resembled the wind whistling through the rigging of a 
ship, or at times sounding like the jingling of many sleigh bells.® 
Dr. Coues in the same year noted their arrival at Indian Tickle Har- 
bor, Labrador, August 16, 1860.6 Norton recorded their arrival at 
Houlton Harbor, Labrador, August 20, 1891.6 Here they found an 
abundance of food and gorged themselves until they became ex- 
tremely fat. During latter August the bulle of the curlews crossed 
the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and 
from there struck out to sea, heading toward their South American 
winter home. The records at Cartwright, Labrador, cover the period 
from July 28 to October 24.7 


1Coues, E. Birds of the Northwest, p. 510-512, 1874. 

2 Baird, 8. F,, Brewer, T., and Ridgway, R. Water Birds of North America, 1, p. 318, 
1884. 

® Audubon, J. J. Birds of America, 6, p. 45, 1843; Orn. Biog., 3, p. 69, and 5, p. 590, 
1835. 

4Tucker, E. W. Five months in Labrador and Newfoundland in 1838, p. 110, 1839. 

5 Porbush, E. H. Game Birds, Wildfowl and Shorebirds, pp. 416-432, 1912. 

® Cooke, W. W. Bull. 35, Bureau of Biological Survey, pp. 74-76, 1910. 

7Townsend, C. W., and Allen, G. M. Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 33, pp. 356-357, 
1906-7. . 


& Ss aul 


THE ESKIMO CURLEW—SWENK. 329 


During this long flight, if the weather was fair and fine, little 
was seen of the curlews from the time they left the Newfoundland 
and Nova Scotia shores until they reached the Lesser Antilles, nearly 
2,000 miles away. A few flocks would land for a few days on the 
Bermuda Islands, according to Jardine,’ and if southerly storms pre- 
vailed great numbers of them would land, but usually the bulk passed 
on, and, flying both day and night, probably without landing, did not 
land until the Lesser Antilles had been reached. Passing through 
these islands, they continued along the eastern portion of Brazil to 
Argentina, their winter home.t. Barrows reports them arriving at 
Conception del Uruguay, in large flocks, September 9, 1880, and re- 
maining until the middle of October. At Bahia Blanca they were seen 
every day until late in February, but after March they had disap- 
peared.? Most of the birds arrived in Argentina about the middle 
of September and wintered in the campos region of that country, 
mostly south of Buenos Aires.t. They occurred south of the Chabut 
Valley, Patagonia, according to Durnford, and according to Abbott 
a specimen was taken on the Falkland Islands.t_ On the west coast 
they were rare, but occurred in Chile south to Chiloe.t 

But if easterly storms occurred, the birds would be driven out of 
their line of flight, and great flocks would occur on the coast of New 
England, and, less commonly, the shores of the middle and southern 
States; or, if westerly storms prevailed, they might be driven far out 
to sea or even across the Atlantic, as there are several records of the 
occurrence of the species on the British Isles in the fall. On Sep- 
tember 6, 1885, one was recorded from Cairn Moncarn, near Stone- 
haven, Kincardineshire,? two others were also taken on unknown 
dates on the Alde at Aldeburgh, and at Woodbridge, both in Suf- 
folk; * a fourth was purchased in Dublin, in the flesh, October 21, 
1870;° another individual at Slains, Aberdeenshire, September 28, 
1878;° and a sixth bird, a male, at Forest of Birse, Kincardineshire, 
September 21, 1880.7. On May 26, 1906, an Eskimo curlew came on 
shipboard about halfway between Ireland and Newfoundland (lat. 
49° 06’ N., long. 27° 28’ W.) in a fatigued condition.® 
| On the Pacific coast south of Alaska this bird was always very 
rare. A lone specimen was shot over decoys at San Diego, Cal., Sep- 
tember, 1883, and was the only one seen.? Mr. P. I. Hoagland, who 
is well acquainted with this bird in Nebraska, states that a number 

1 Cooke, W. W. Bull. 35, Bureau of Biological Survey, pp. 74-76, 1910. 

2 Barrows, W. B. Auk, 1, p. 316, 1884. 

3 Longmuir, Naturalist, p. 265, 1855, and Yarrell, British Birds, 2, p. 620. 

* Hele, Notes about Aldeburgh, p. 177, and Harting, Handbook of British Birds, p. 145. 

5 Blake, Knox, Zoologist, p. 2408, 1870. 

®Sim, Scottish Naturalist, p. 36, 1879. 

7 Harvie-Brown, Zoologist, p. 485, 1880. 


§ Barbour, R. Auk, 23, p. 459, 1906. 
® Holterhoff, G. Auk, 1, p. 393, 1884. 


330 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


of years ago he saw a flock of about a dozen birds at Coronado Beach, 
near Lia Juana, Cal., and that he shot a few birds from this bunch. 

In Labrador the Eskimo curlews were abundant until about 1876, 
according to observations reported to Townsend and Allen,’ but 
there was a great and sudden falling off in numbers about 1886. 
Other observers place the sudden decline in 1891? or 1892.° Bigelow 
states that after 1892 the birds appeared no more in numbers, and 
while in Labrador in September, 1900, he heard of only about a 
dozen being seen on the coast, and of these he personally saw five.* 
According to Dr. W. T. Grenfell the birds became scarce in the 
eighties in Labrador, and in 1892 he saw only two flocks of any size. 
In 1906 he heard of a few dozen being killed but did not see one.* 
During the years 1908-1911 the birds were not noted in Labrador,? 
but in August and September, 1912, eight Eskimo curlews were 
seen on the beach at West Bay, north of Cartwright, Labrador, and 
seven of these were shot, while the skins of five were saved and sent 
to Cambridge, Mass., by Dr. Grenfell, where they were seen and 
identified by Mr. William Brewster.* 

During the period of abundance in Labrador these birds were con- 
tinually and heavily slaughtered. One hunter states that the fisher- 
men killed them by thousands, and he had personally shot a hundred 
before breakfast.1. Another hunter, quoted by Carroll,? said that 
he did not remember having secured less than 30 or 40 brace in a 
two-hours’ shoot, and in a day’s shooting by 25 or 30 men as many as 
2,000 birds would be killed for the Hudson Bay Co.’s store at Cart- 
wright. 

Concerning the shooting in Labrador, Coues® says: 

The most successful method of obtaining them is to take such a position as 
they will probably fly over in passing from one feeding ground to another. 
They may then be shot with ease, as they rarely fly high at such times. The 
pertinacity with which they. cling to certain feeding grounds, even when much 
molested, I saw strikingly illustrated on one occasion. The tide was rising and 
about to flood a muddy flat of perhaps an acre in extent, where their favorite 
snails were in great quantities. Although six or eight gunners were stationed 
upon the spot and kept up a continual round of firing upon the poor birds, they 
continued to fly distractedly about over our heads, notwithstanding the numbers 
that every moment fell. They seemed in terror lest they should lose their ac- 
customed fare of snails that day. On another occasion, when the birds had 
been so harrassed for several hours as to deprive them of all opportunity of 
feeding, great numbers of them retired to a very small island, or rather a large 
pile of rocks, a few hundred yards from the shore, covered with seaweed and, 
of course, with snails. Flock after flock alighted on it till it was completely 


1 Townsend, C. W., and Allen, G. M. Proce. Boston Soe. Nat. Hist., 33, pp. 856-857, 
1906-7. . 

2 Forbush, EB. H. Game Birds, Wildfowl and Shorebirds, pp. 416-432, 1912. 

3 Bigelow, H. B. Auk, 19, p. 29, 1902. 

4Townsend, C. W. Auk, 30, p. 10, 1913. 

5 Carroll, W. J. Forest and Stream, 74, p. 872 (1910). 

®Coues, E. Proc, Philadelphia Acad. Nat. Sciences, p. 236, 1861. 


— —" 


THE ESKIMO CURLEW—SWENK. aol: 


eovered with the birds, which there, in perfect safety, obtained their morning 
meal. f 

In Newfoundland and on the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence, for many years after the middle of the nineteenth century, 
the Eskimo curlews arrived in August and September in millions 
that darkened the sky.t As late as 1890 a “cloud” of these birds 
was seen on the Magdalen Islands, perhaps the last large flocking 
of these birds that was seen anywhere in the east.?_ In 1900 one was 
killed on an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in 1901 one was 
killed on Prince Edward Island, in 1902 it is believed one was taken 
on Sable Island, and in 1906 a male was killed, September 6, on the 
Magdalen Islands. In Nova Scotia, since 1888, there is but one 
record of this bird, a specimen in the Halifax market, September 11, 
1897.* 

The fishermen of Newfoundland, as well as those of Labrador, 
made a practice of salting down these birds in barrels. At night 
when the birds were roosting in large masses on the high beach a man 
armed with a lantern to dazzle and confuse the birds could approach 
them in the darkness and kill them in enormous numbers by striking 
them down with a stick. 

In New England, and especially in Massachusetts, the Eskimo 
curlew was known as the “dough bird” or “doe bird,” and the 
existing accounts would indicate that these birds occurred on Cape 
Cod, Nantucket, and other points on the coast in tremendous numbers 
in August and September during northeast storms in the early part 
of the nineteenth century. During these storms the birds sometimes 
landed in a state of great exhaustion, and they could be chased and 
easily knocked down with clubs when they attempted to fly. These 
immense flights continued to appear on the Massachusetts coast up 
to the middle of the nineteenth century or even later. In the thirties 
and forties these birds alighted on Nantucket in such numbers that 
the shot supply of the island would become exhausted and the 
slaughter would have to stop until more could be secured from the 
mainland.? By 1858 Sumner‘ wrote for the vicinity of Boston: 
* None are now to be seen where once they were so abundant, and 
even the market offers but few at 50 cents apiece.” In other less 
frequented parts of the coast, however, the bird continued common 
for 25 years or more. Up to 1861 there were some birds each year 
on the Massachusetts coast, but there were none in 1862.5 A great 
flight occurred there August 29, 1863. A few days later, on Septem- 


1 Hapgood, W. Forest and Stream series No. 1, Shore Birds, pp. 17 and 22—23, 1885. 

2Sanford, L. C., Bishop, L. B., and Van Dyke, T. 8. The Water-fowl Family, pp. 445-— 
446, 1903. 

? Forbush, E. H. Game Birds, Wildfowl and Shorebirds, pp. 416-482, 1912. 
'4Sumner, W. H. History of East Boston, p. 53, 1858. 

5 Mackay, G. H. Auk, 9, pp. 16—21, 1892; 10, p. 79, 1893; 11, pp. 75-76, 1894; 14, 
p. 214, 1897; 15, pp. 52-53, 1898; and 16, p. 180, 1899, 


332 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


ber 3, 1863, on Cape Cod, several gunners killed 281 Eskimo curlew 
and golden plover in one day. 

A few birds occurred on the Massachusetts coast in 1866, 1867, 
1868, 1869, and 1870, but none in 1864, 1865, and 1871.2 In 1872 
there were two flights, and the birds were killed in such numbers 
that two market gunners sold $300 worth and boys offered the birds 
for sale at 6 cents apiece. There were some birds in 1873, 1875, 
and 1876, but none in 1874, while in 1877 there was a flight and in 
1878 a smaller flight.2 In 1879 there were no birds, but the next 
three years there were some; in 1882 two hunters on Nantucket shot 
87 Eskimo curlew in one morning, while at about the same time 
another hunter on Marthas Vineyard killed about 70 of them.? In 
1883 there was a large flight August 26,? while on August 30 of that 
year the last great flight of Eskimo curlew and golden plover 
occurred on Cape Cod.* There were a few birds in 1884, 1885, 1886, 
and 1887, a number in 1888 and 1889, again a few birds in 1890, 1891, 
and 1892, while in 1893 a single bird was shot? and another seen.® 
One bird was seen in the Boston market in 1894? two were killed 
at Chatham in 1895,° none were seen in 1896, eight in 1897, and two 
in 1898.2, At Chatham Beach one was killed in 1897, four in 1899, 
and the last one on September 13, 1900.2 In 1898 one was seen at 
Dennis, in 1900 one was killed at Eastham? and in 1901 birds were 
killed at Ipswich® and on Prince Edward Island. In October, 
1902, two were obtained in the Boston market and one of them came 
from Massachusetts.* In 1908 two were shot at Newburyport, Mas- 
sachusetts, August 27, and one of them was saved.® 

In New York State the Eskimo curlew was seen or taken on Long 
Island every year except 1888 from 1885 to 1891; the last record for 
that State being about 1896.7 In early days there were flights of 
many thousands of these birds on Long Island, where they were 
known as “ Futes,” at long intervals during heavy easterly storms, 
but not in recent years.§ In 12 years this bird was met with only 
four times by N. T. Lawrence, viz, September 12, 1875, September 10, 
1876, and September 26, 1884, two on the latter date.2 In Maine a 
female was shot at Pine Point September 23, 1901, and two were 
shot at Hog Island, Hancock County, in September, 1909—one on 
the 2d and one on the 14th—both specimens being preserved.'°? 

1 Hapgood, W. Forest and Stream series No. 1, Shore Birds, pp. 17 and 22-23, 1885. 
*Mackay, G. H. Auk, 9, pp. 16—21, 1892; 10, p. 79, 1893; 11, pp. 75-76, 18943; 14, 
214, 1897; 15, pp. 52-53, 1898; and 16, p. 180, 1899. 

’ Forbush, E. H. Game Birds, Wildfowl and Shorebirds, pp. 416-432, 1912. 

4Job, H. K. Wild Wings, pp. 207-208, 1905. 

5 Townsend, C. W. Birds of Essex County. 

6 Mayer, J. E. Auk, 26, p. 77, 1909. 

7BHaton, E. HW. Birds of New York, 1, p. 342, 1910. 

§’Braislin, W. C. Proc. Linnaean Soc. New York, p. 64, 1907. 


® Lawrence, N. T. Auk, 2, p. 273, 1885. 
10 Knight, O. W. Auk, 27, p. 79, 1910. 


= 


THE ESKIMO CURLEW—-SWENKE. 333 


As to the destruction in Massachusetts, Forbush? says: 

The decrease of the dough-birds in Massachusetts during the last century 
may be explained in part by the continual persecution they suffered here. The 
arrival of these birds was the signal for every gunner and market hunter on the 
coast to get to work. The birds were rarely given any rest. Nearly all that 
remained on our shores were shot, and only those that kept moving had any 
chance for their lives. As a consequence of this continual persecution the birds 
probably learned to avoid the New England coast, and most of those that were 
driven to land by storms left the moment the weather was favorable for a con- 
tinuance of their flight. Often they came in at night and went in the morning. 

In Texas the Eskimo curlew came in immense flocks on the prairies 
from 1856 to 1875, after which year the large flocks disappeared.* 
Small flocks were seen in 1886 and 1890.1. The last records of the 
species for Texas were 1902 and 1905, one and three individuals re- 
spectively.t| The species were first definitely recorded for Kansas 
from Russell County in 1874.2 In that State these curlews were 
abundant as late as 1878, but in 1879 their numbers were much re- 
duced and the birds decreased rapidly.t_ There were still a few in 
the Kansas markets in the early nineties. The last record is for 
1902.+ 

Eastwardly in the interior the birds were always uncommon and 
disappeared early. The last Michigan record is in 1883. The last 
Ohio record is in 1878.1. The last Wisconsin records are April 27, 
1899, and September 10, 1912, the latter specimen a male taken at 
Fox Lake, Dodge County, Wis. The last Indiana record is, with 
some doubt, April 19, 1890.° 

We have no definite records of the Eskimo curlew in Nebraska 
during the territorial days, aside from the recollections of the few 
survivors among our earliest settlers of enormous flights of “ prairie 
pigeons” which passed through the territory each spring. As to the 
abundance of these birds in Nebraska during the early years of its 
statehood the observations of Prof. Lawrence Bruner, who distinctly 
remembers the flights which occurred in the vicinity of Omaha dur- 
ing the years 1866-1868, when he was a boy 10 or 12 years old, are 
indicative. The birds would arrive about the time the later willows 
began to bloom (latter April), being present in force for a week or 
10 days only, for by the time all of the wild plum blossoms had fallen 
(middle May) the birds were gone. Usually the heaviest flights 
occurred coincident with the beginning of corn-planting time, and 
enormous flocks of these birds would settle on the newly plowed 


4 


1 Forbush, E. H. Game Birds, Wildfowl and Shorebirds, pp. 416-432, 1912. 
*Benson, F. 8S. Forest and Stream, 2, p. 341, 1874. 

* Barrows, W. B. Birds of Michigan. 

*Schoenbeck, A. J. Birds of Oconto County, pp. 1-51, 1902. 

5 Snyder, W. E. Auk, 30, pp. 269-270, 1913. 

Butler, A. W, Auk, 23, p. 274, 1906. 


334 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


fields and on the dry burnt-off prairies; where they searched indus- 
triously for insects. 

These flocks reminded the settlers of the flights of passenger 
pigeons and the curlews were given the name of “ prairie pigeons.” 
They contained thousands of individuals and would often form dense 
masses of birds extending for a quarter to a half mile in length and 
a hundred yards or more in width. When the flock would alight the 
birds would cover 40 or 50 acres of ground. During such flights the 
slaughter of these poor birds was appalling and almost unbelievable. 
Hunters would drive out from Omaha and shoot the birds without 
mercy until they had hterally slaughtered a wagonload of them, the 
wagons being actually filled, and often with the sideboards on at that. 
Sometimes when the flight was unusually heavy and the hunters 
were well supplied with ammunition their wagons were too quickly 
and easily filled, so whole loads of the birds would be dumped on 
the prairie, their bodies forming piles as large as a couple of tons of 
coal, where they would be allowed to rot while the hunters proceeded 
to refill their wagons with fresh victims, and thus further gratify 
their lust of killing. The compact flocks and tameness of the birds 
made this slaughter possible, and at each shot usually dozens of the 
birds would fall. In one specific instance a single shot from an old 
muzzle-loading shotgun into a flock of these curlews, as they veered 
by the hunter, brought down 28 birds at once, while for the next 
half mile every now and then a fatally wounded bird would drop to - 
the ground dead. So dense were the flocks when the birds were 
turning in their flight that one could scarcely throw a brick or missile 
into it without striking a bird. 

The decade 1870-1880 witnessed the beginning of the diminution 
of these great flocks of Eskimo curlew. In addition to the numerous 
gunners who shot these birds for local consumption or simply for 
the love of killing, there developed a class of professional market 
hunters, who made it a business to follow the “ flight birds” as they 
made their annual journey across the State each spring. Mr. Mont 
Wheeler, living near Norfolk, pursued this business during the lat- 
ter seventies, and his observations, transmitted to me by Mr. L. Ses- 
sions of that place, describe graphically the status of the bird at this 
period, and also the typical methods of the market hunter in securing 
these birds. 

The chief feeding grounds of these curlews at the time Mr. Wheeler 
came to Nebraska (1877) was in York, Fillmore, and Hamilton 
Counties, and their heaviest lines of northward migration across the 
State were between the ninety-seventh and ninety-eighth meridians. 
The birds were much less numerous north of the Platte River than 
on the South Platte feeding grounds, although they were noted there, 
but not in large flocks. One spring, about 1879, while working on the 


THE ESKIMO CURLEW—SWENK. 335 


Marshall Field ranch in Madison County, following a heavy south 
wind, birds which seemed to have been driven past their feeding 
grounds by the wind were seen flying southwardly, very close to the 
ground, apparently going back to this South Platte feeding ground. 
The birds used to come in about the 18th to the 25th of April, all 
arriving between these dates, and would remain until about the 15th 
to the 25th of May. Early in the season, when they first arrived, 
they would frequent the burnt-over prairies, where they would occur 
in flocks of from a dozen to 300 or 400. As the season advanced the 
different smaller flocks would bunch up until as many as a thousand 
birds had assembled, but this assemblage was obviously made up of 
many small flocks, In later years, when these prairies commenced to 
be extensively broken up and farmed, the curlews used to feed a great 
deal in the open wheat fields, and toward the last they were found 
very frequently in tame meadows. 

In hunting these curlew the field glass was used by the hunters to 
follow their flights. The fields where they were prone to gather were 
patroled many times during the day, and carefully scanned with the 
glass to discover the flocks on the ground. When the birds came in 
they would be up quite high, perhaps from 200 or 300 yards to a quarter 
of a mile, and in preparing to alight they would turn and wheel, tow- 
ering in the air while they whistled softly, would hover a while, and 
then all drop and come down, flying along over the ground for a short 
distance before alighting. The birds would always alight all at once 
and very close together, and if the day were warm they would sit 
down very close together on the ground, forming bunches, when they 
could be readily discovered with the field glass and approached close 
enough to get a shot. 

There was no difficulty in getting quite close to the sitting birds, 
perhaps within 25 or 35 yards, and when at about this distance the 
hunters would wait for them to arise on their feet, which was the 
signal for the first volley of shots. The startled birds would rise and 
circle about the field a few times, affording ample opportunity for 
further murderous discharge of the guns, and sometimes would re- 
alight on the same field, when the attack would be repeated. Mr. 
Wheeler has killed as many as 37 birds with a pump gun at one rise. 
They weighed just about 1 pound each when they were fat. Some- 
times the bunch would be seen with the glass alighting in a field 2 or 
3 miles away, when the hunters would at once drive to that field with 
a horse and buggy as rapidly as they could, relocate the birds, get out, 
and resume the fusillade and slaughter. On rainy days the birds 
would fly restlessly from one field to another, moving about in this 
way most of the day, and seeming unusually plentiful because of be- 
ing so much in the air. 


336 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Other observers in the North Platte country corroborate the obser- 
vations of Mr. Wheeler as to the comparative infrequency of this 
bird north of the Platte River during these flights of the seventies, as 
compared with the enormous flocks found in the South Platte region. 
Removing from Omaha to West Point in 1869, Prof. Bruner recalls 
that though he noted the birds each spring the flocks were usually 
much smaller than the enormous flights seen at Omaha, usually con- 
sisting of 50 to 100 birds, though occasionally of considerable size. 
Year by year the birds decreased in numbers, until by 1878, in which 
year Prof. Bruner entered the services of the Government, they were 
seen only in small flocks or individually here and there. During these 
eight or nine years he mounted several of these curlews, three or four 
for the university museum (all of which have since disappeared), a 
pair for the Omaha Deaf and Dumb Institute, and a pair for the 
Union Pacific Railroad Co. 

Mr. L. Sessions moved to Madison County in May, 1871, and his 
acquaintance with the Eskimo curlew began at that time. The birds 
were then very abundant and could be found moving about over the 
burnt prairie or an occasional plowed field, in search of food. The 
flocks were not large, about 30 or 40 birds in a flock, on the average, 
and the banding together of numerous flocks such as occurred in the 
South Platte feeding grounds was not observed in Madison County, 
which furnished no special attraction as to feeding grounds. During 
these days food was somewhat scarce in Nebraska, and many of the 
settlers were led to look forward to this spring flight of the curlews 
as a helpful source of food supply. Mr. Sessions possesses a specimen 
of this curlew which was secured in these early days, for he has not 
seen a living bird for many years now, nor has he had any sent him to 
be mounted. 

Mr. W. A. Elwood, who as a boy hunter in the seventies shot quite 
a number of these birds in Antelope County, states that they were 
numerous in flocks of 30 or 40 birds, appearing about the first week 
in May and remaining only a very short time, just long enough to 
feed. He has not seen the bird for the past 20 years or more. Mr. 
A. J. Leach, of Oakdale, remembers these birds passing northward 
in the spring during the seventies while he was plowing for corn, 
probably from the middle to the last of April. These flocks consisted 
of from 20 to 40 birds, and they used to alight on the plowed ground 
and stubble lands to feed. He also has not seen an Eskimo curlew 
for a quarter of a century past. Mr. Sanders, a guide and old hunter, 
of Clarks, who lived at Silver Creek up to the early nineties, told 
Mr. P. I. Hoagland that in the early days the birds were very abun- 
dant there, as much so as the passenger pigeon in the East, and that 
hundreds would be shot in a single day. 


THE ESKIMO CURLEW—SWENK. 337 


In the eighties the Eskimo curlew began decreasing rapidly. Ap- 
parently many of the birds moved their line of migration to the 
westward. Gunners reported flights passing through Grand Island, 
Kearney, and North Platte after they had practically disappeared 
from eastern Nebraska, but no specimens are extant to verify these 
reports. April 2, 1884, the species was reported from Alda, Ne- 
braska.1. Rev. J. M. Bates informs me that Warden D. A. Piercy, of 
All Saints’ Church, at Kennedy, Cherry County, states that during 
the first years of his residence there, 1885-1887, the Eskimo curlew 
was as common as its congener, the long-billed curlew. In 1889 Rev. 
Bates saw a mounted specimen of this bird in a store near Wood 
Lake, Cherry County, which had been taken near that place. In 
1889 Mr. Charles E. Holmes, now of Providence, Rhode Island, 
reported the Eskimo curlew as common locally in the hills about 
40 miles south of Ainsworth, Brown County, though they were de- 
creasing and many were killed by cowboys.’ 

By the nineties the Eskimo curlew was so reduced in numbers that 
hunters rarely met with it, and there are no records of specimens 
taken during the next 20 years, though it was repeatedly reported 
as seen by competent observers. In 1896 Mr. I. S. Trostler reported 
the Eskimo curlew as still a “common” migrant at Omaha, giving 
its dates as April 1 to 20 in the spring and October 1 to 15 in the fall. 
On April 12, 1896, Mr. J. S. Hunter saw a pair of Eskimo curlews 
near Stevens Creek, several miles east of Lincoln. It might also 
be mentioned here that about 1897 Mr. P. I. Hoagland saw a flock 
of these birds near Laramie, Wyoming, so late in the spring that he 
wondered if the birds could be expecting to nest there. 

About the middle of April, 1900, Mr. Paul I. Hoagland and his 
father, of Omaha, were hunting near Clarks, Nebraska, when a large 
flock containing 70 or 75 birds flew across the road and disappeared 
over the hill. Mr. Hoagland, sr., recognized the birds as the Eskimo 
curlew, and both men started toward the place where the birds were 
last seen. They saw a newly plowed field and made toward it and 
found the entire flock on the freshly plowed land busily engaged in 
picking up grubs and insects turned up by the plow. The birds were 
entirely unsuspicious and permitted the hunters to approach as close 
as desired. The flock was flushed, and each hunter made four shots, 
obtaining in all about 34 of the birds. None of them was saved as 
a specimen. This was written up by Mr. Sandy Griswold in the 
Omaha World-Herald at the time, but he called the birds “ golden 
plover,” which they are not. 

Mr. C. W. Tinker, a hardware merchant, of Waco, who used to 


1 Cooke, W. W. Bull. 2, Division of Economic Ornithology, p. 98, 1888. 
2 Forbush, E. H. Game Birds, Wildfowl and Shorebirds, pp. 416-452, 1912, 


18618°—sac 1915-22 


338 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


hunt these birds with Mr. Wheeler in the seventies, saw his last 
Eskimo curlews in 1904 or 1905 on the old York County feeding 
grounds. Mr. Wheeler himself saw a flock of nine of these curlews 
in the spring of 1909 or 1910 near Norfolk, Madison County. He 
was very close to them, and positively identified the birds. 

The last records of collected birds for Nebraska were made in the 
spring of 1911 and of 1915. On March 22,1911, while Mr. Fred Geiger 
was shooting ducks near Waco, York County, two of these birds came 
flying by within gun range, and both were shot by him. The birds 
were identified by an old-time hunter, and were then brought to 
Lincoln and mounted by Mr. August Eiche, in whose collection they 
are at present. Both birds were females, with well-developed ovaries. 

On April 20, 1911, while hunting at Clarks, within a mile of the 
field where the large flock had been seen 11 years before, Mr. Hoag- 
land saw a flock of 8 Eskimo curlews. With little difficulty the 
entire flock were killed except one bird, which made its escape. The 
birds were brought to Omaha, and Mr. Hoagland, remembering that 
in spite of almost continual hunting during the open season he had 
not seen the bird since the large flock 11 years before, or even heard 
of its being seen, took one of the birds to Mr. Allabaugh, a taxi- 
dermist of Omaha, for mounting. Mr. Fred Goodrich, also of © 
Omaha, saw the birds, and when he noted that Mr. Hoagland was 
about to have one of them mounted said he would lke one mounted 
also. Two birds were put aside for this purpose. Later, on consider- 
ing the matter, Mr. Hoagland decided to save all of the birds and 
gave orders to that effect, but they had already been picked by the 
cook. Both birds were mounted by Mr. Allabaugh April 24, 1911, 
and one is now in the possession of Mr. Fred Goodrich, of Omaha, 
the other in the N. O. U. collection, a gift of Mr. Hoagland, through 
the writer. 

In April 1913, Mr. Mont Wheeler, of Norfolk, and Mr. Paul Hoag- - 
land, of Omaha, were hunting snipe near Norfolk when a flock of 
six or seven of these birds, flying northwest, passed over their heads. 
When the birds passed over they were not over a hundred yards high, 
and the hunters observed them until they disappeared from view. 
Both Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Hoagland are positive that the birds were 
the Eskimo curlew, and, considering the extended first-hand experi- 
ence that both of these men have had with the species, there can hardly 
be any question of correct identifications. Although no Eskimo cur- 
lews were noted in 1914, a single bird was killed about 10 miles due 
south of Norfolk, Nebraska, on the morning of April 17, 1915. The 
bird was alone when taken. It came into the possession of Mr. 
Hoagland, who had it mounted by Allabaugh, a taxidermist of 
Omaha, in whose shop I saw it in May. The taxidermist stated that 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Swenk. PLATE 1. 


ONE OF 7 ESKIMO CURLEWS SHOT FROM A FLOCK OF 8 AT CLARKS, MERRICK 
County, Nesr., APRIL 20, 1911, BY Mr. P. I. HOAGLAND, OF OMAHA. 


Specimen in N. O. U. collection. 


THE ESKIMO CURLEW—SWENK, 339 


the bird was a male and that it had been hit with a single shot only, 
so it has made a handsome specimen, which Mr. Hoagland will 
retain in his possession. About the same day that this specimen was 
killed, a brother of Mr. Mont Wheeler, of Norfolk, reported seeing 
five Eskimo curlews at about the same spot. These birds were not 
disturbed, but their occurrence was reported to Mr. Hoagland and, 
through him, to me. 

Even in these latter captures and observations, when the birds 
were nearing extinction from incessant persecutions, they were very 
unsuspicious and apparently fearless. They flew away leisurely in 
close, compact flocks, so that they could scarcely be missed when 
shot at, and a single discharge would bring down many of the birds. 

The occurrence of eight and the killing of seven of these birds 
near Cartwright, Labrador, in August and September, 1912, and 
the collecting of a male specimen on September 10 of that same 
autumn while flying alone over decoys along the shore of Fox Lake, 
Dodge County, Wisconsin, have already been mentioned. A speci- 
men was observed on the Bermuda Islands, according to Kennedy, 
on January 20, 1913.1. On September 5, 1913, a specimen was col- 
lected at East Orleans, Massachusetts, it being alone when taken.? 
These recent records for the Eskimo curlew would indicate that it 
is probably not yet wholly extinct. 

In the spring flight these curlews arrived at the ‘same time as the 
golden plover, though they did not always frequent the same Jocali- 
ties. The Eskimo curlew was always uncommon in the fall migra- 
tion in Nebraska. Most of the observers who have furnished me 
data on this bird (Messrs. Bruner, Wheeler, Hoagland) have never 
seen it at that season, but Mr. Elwood thinks he remembers having 
seen the birds some time in October, and Mr. A. J. Leach thinks he 
remembers their passing through southwardly about October 1. 
Aughey* records a specimen sent him from Bellevue for identifi- 
cation in October, 1874, and states that he had observed the species 
in northeastern Nebraska in that month. 

The Eskimo curlew had several notes. During flight they uttered 
a fluttering “tr-tr-tr” note, which was given by many individuals 
at once, and described by Coues as a “low conversational chatter” 
and by Mackay as “a soft, melodious whistle, ‘bee, bee.’” Mr. W. A. 
Elwood describes this note as “a short, low whistle” continually 
repeated by many of the birds simultaneously while in flight. Mr. 
A. J. Leach recalls the notes as resembling quite closely the note of 
the bluebird when in flight, only perhaps shorter and more of a 
twittering whistle, and, as it was given by a large number, perhaps 


1 Kennedy, J. N. Ibis, ser. 10, 2, 1914. 
2Lamb, C. R. Auk, 30, p. 581, 1913. - 
2 Aughey, 8S. 1st Rept. U. S. Entomological Comm., Appendix, p. 55, 1878. 


340 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


all, of the flock as they took wing and while flying, it was difficult to 
catch the individual note. This note was constantly uttered while 
the birds were flying and was often audible before the birds could 
be seen. Before alighting, as they descended and sailed, they gave a 
soft whistle, somewhat like the note of the upland plover, according 
to Prof. Bruner, while as they walked over the ground when feeding 
they uttered a chirruping whistle, as if calling to each other. 

The Eskimo curlew was a bird of such food habits that it is a 
distinct loss to our agriculture that it should have disappeared. 
During the invasion of the Rocky Mountain grasshopper (Jfela- 
noplus spretus) it did splendid work in the destruction of grasshop- 
pers and their eggs. Mr. Wheeler states that in the latter seventies 
these birds would congregate on pieces of land which had not been 
plowed and where the grasshopper eggs were laid, reach down into 
the soil with their long bills, and drag out the egg capsules, which 
they would then devour with their contents of eggs or young “hop- 
pers until the land had been cleared of the pests. A specimen exam- 
ined by Aughey in 1874 had 31 grasshoppers in its stomach, together 
with a large number of small berries of some kind.t_ The bird in its 
migrations often alighted on plowed ground to feed on the white 
grubs and cutworms turned up by the plow, or in meadow lands, 
probably feeding on ants in the latter situation. Richardson records 
finding them feeding on large ants at Fort Franklin in late May, 
1849.2. The curlews were rarely seen near water, but were upland 
birds almost exclusively during the spring migration over the Great 
Plains region. h 

The flesh of the Eskimo curlew is said by all who have eaten it 
to have been exceedingly well flavored, and, according to Mr. Hoag- 
land, the equal if not the superior of any of our large shore birds. 

Although the Eskimo curlew is reduced to the point of extinction, 
it is probably not yet absolutely extinct; and if the pitiful remnant 
of the species could be absolutely protected there is still a chance that 
it might be enabled to recover and be saved. A campaign of edu- 
cation as to the present desperate status of this bird by all ornitholo- 
gists and true sportsmen, together with absolute legal protection 
under high penalties everywhere, and a complete cessation of killing 
these birds, even for specimens, might actually accomplish this 
result. The recently enacted Federal law giving the control of 
migratory birds to the General Government should be a large help 
in such a campaign. 


1Aughey, S. 1st Rept. U. S. Entomological Comm., Appendix, p. 55, 1878, 
2Blake, Knox, Zoologist, p. 2408, 1870, 


CONSTRUCTION OF INSECT NESTS.* 


By Prof. Dr. Y. SsOsTEpDT, 
Royal Museum of Natural History, Stockholm. 


[With 8 plates. ] 


Among both the higher and lower animals are found types which 
can build protective shelters for themselves and for their young by 
widely varying methods, in some cases with a high degree of art, 
in others in the simplest manner. In the insect world this art 
takes the most widely diversified forms, but we can give here only 
a. few examples selected from among thousands. 


x 


The nesting material is of various origins; it may be taken from 
the vegetable kingdom or from the mineral kingdom, such as earth, 
clay, etc., or the entire nest may be composed of a secretion of the 
insect, as is the case with the cells of bees, which are made entirely 
of wax. 

With the European social bees all the cells, whether intended to 
contain young larve or only the pollen, are of the same shape, the 
cells of the bumblebee being simply larger. In North America other 
bees are found which make their cells in such a way that remark- 
able results are obtained with the least possible work. These bees 
(Meliponas) have no stings. As with many other wild bees, they 
make their nests in the hollow trunks of trees, where they store up 
wax and honey in great quantities. The cells intended for the 
larvee, placed in the middle of these masses of wax, are hexagonal 
and of nearly the same shape as those of the common bees, but 
differ from the latter, which are constructed back to back in; two 
rows with horizontal openings, in being made in a single row with 
the openings always directed toward the top. All around these 
hexagonal cells there are large cells of very different shape with 
large openings, intended exclusively to receive the pollen. The 


1 Translated by permission from the Revue générale des Sciences, Feb, 15, 1915. 
341 


342 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Meliponas and the Trigonas have achieved great economy in con- 
struction; instead of using for all purposes the hexagonal cells, 
made with great labor and with mathematical precision, they re- 
serve these for the larve only, constructing simpler cells for provi- 
sions. The nests of Meliponas built in hollow trees are sometimes 
over a meter long. If the hollow of the tree is too large, they limit 
it at one end or the other by making a wall, but instead of using the 
wax for this purpose, since this is made only with great labor, they 
utilize earth agglutinated with a liquid which they secrete. This 
same mixture is used to reduce the size of the entrance to a simple 
little hole, allowing the passage of only one bee at a time, and at 
night this opening is closed. These precautions are justified by the 
absence of a sting, which renders them defenseless. The cells of the 
larvee, in the middle of the nest, always opposite each entrance, are 
specially protected by lamelle of fine wax, and, as we have just 
said, are surrounded by provision cells shaped lke pots. Where 
the Meliponas can not find hollow trees they build by the aid of the 
mixture just mentioned—earth and the special secretion (pro- 
polis)—a true nest, with irregular branching galleries, which has 
some resemblance to a white ant’s nest. 

A peculiar habit is found among the Xylocopas, a species related 
to the Meliponas. These creatures, the largest of the big bees, are 
found in the warmer portions of Africa, Asia, and America. They 
make their nests in old trunks of trees and in dead wood which they 
bore with their strong jaws. In the gallery made in this way, the 
female brings together a mass of honey and pollen intended for 
larval food. On this mass an egg is laid, and then the chamber is 
closed by a wooden partition which becomes the bottom of the next 
chamber. In this way she builds a column consisting of a series of 
superposed cells. After about three weeks the larva becomes full 
grown and transforms into a pupa in the interior of a cocoon. The 
larva in the lowest cell, the oldest, is from that fact the first to be 
ready to issue as an adult bee. But how can it get out? Must it 
wait until the younger larve has transformed, or does it eat its way 
out through the upper cells at the risk of killing all of its brothers 
and sisters? Here the insect shows a very special adaptation, as 
though it appreciated the danger to which such a passage would ex- 
pose the other larve, and adopts another road. With its strong 
mandibles it opens a passage at right angles to the floor, and the 
others follow by the same road, each one eating through the partition 
of its own cell, and thus the whole colony finds itself liberated 
through the industry of the first one. 

Even more than the bees, the social wasps astonish us by their 
artistically constructed nests, and it is rare to find insects with such 
bellicose habits devoting themselves so conscientiously and peacefully 


Lehn ae” 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Sjéstedt. PLATE 1. 


1. Nest OF HYPSOIDES FROM MADAGASCAR 
(STOCKHOLM MUSEUM). 


Natural size, 17 cm. 


2. NEST OF CHARTERGUS CHARTARIUS (STOCKHOLM MUSEUM). 
Natural size, 38 em. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Sjéstedt. PLATE 2, 


Nest OF ANAPHE INFRACTA FROM CAMEROUN (STOCKHOLM MUSEUM). 


Natural size, 17 em. 


INSECT NESTS—SJOSTEDT. 343 


to work. We find among them simple combs with openings di- 
rected downward, which are not made of wax but of vegetable ma- 
terial finely pulverized and macerated by the secretions of the in- 
sect’s mouth. If we examine different wasps’ nests carefully, we 
‘note that some are elastic and resistant, while others are tender and 
fragile, depending upon the material used by the insect. In the sec- 
ond case, the substance consists of long wood fibers, and in the other, 
of a different kind of vegetation. The fragile paper of the nests of 
certain species is taken from the bark of various trees and has the 
appearance of ribbons. 

The simplest form of nest is made by the Belonogaster wasps. 
These large, somber, silent-flying wasps are found in the hot regions 
of Africa. Their nests generally are made simply of cells fastened 
together on top of a twig, without any envelope, although some spe- 
cies are not contented with such rudimentary nests and have added 
to them different methods of protection. We may cite the Charter- 
gus chartarius, a species found in tropical America. Its nests (pl. 1, 
fig. 2) are sometimes as much as half a meter long, and are composed 
of a great number of stories connecting by a central opening. <As the 
colony grows a new story is built on the preceding one, the surround- 
ing wall being torn down and reconstructed to inclose the new story. 


Ii; 


In all the cases that we have mentioned the nests have been built by 
the adult insects to insure the protection of their young. But certain 
larvee, which live a free and vagabond life, know how themselves to 
prepare a shell for the chrysalis, which is, of course, defenseless. 
I once had occasion to study the larve of one of the processionary 
caterpillars, Anaphe, in West Africa. They marched in a column up 
the trunk of a tree to a branch where they constructed a great common 
cocoon (pl. 2), consisting in part of the long hairs from their bodies; 
inside this great envelope each larva surrounded itself with a cocoon 
of silk, and in the silken cocoon it made a capsule of parchment- 
like tissue which served as the last protection for the chrysalis. 
Although in case of Anaphe the insects leave the nests without show- 
ing any trace of their leaving, with Hypsoides the exit is effected 
through a series of individual holes which make the abandoned nest 
look like a sieve (pl. 1, fig. 1). 

In tropical regions one meets upon walls and stones, earthy nests 
60 to 100 millimeters long, of an irregular, oval form, made by the 
wasp, Sceliphron. Other nests of a rounder form are built on the 
branches and trunks of trees by another wasp, Eumenes. These 
nests are found in Africa, chiefly in inhabited regions. If we 
closely examine these earthy structures which are apparently com- 


344 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


pact, we shall find that they are made up of a number of parallel 
cells connected by the inner surface, which, after being filled by the 
wasp with spiders for the nourishment of the larvee, are closed so 
carefully with bits of earth that they become invisible. 

To capture the spider the wasp often has to undertake a desperate 
struggle armed with its formidable sting; if the insect succeeds in 
stinging its prey, the conquest is easy, but the spider is not defense- 
less. With astonishing rapidity the spider spins a sticky thread and 
the struggle between the two adversaries begins. With great care 
the wasp approaches the spider’s web, and by a skillful maneuver 
often succeeds in stinging its enemy. But the threads are sticky; 
an imprudence, and the wings are caught. Immediately the spider 
renders the wasp helpless in a network of threads and devours it. 
When the wasp succeeds in touching the spider its sting does not 
cause immediate death, but produces a state of paralysis. If the 
spider were killed outright it could not be kept as reserve nourish- 
ment, while, merely paralyzed, it lives and keeps fresh, though it 
can not harm the larvee which are at this stage entirely defenseless. 
Usually about 15 spiders are found in each cell. The lower part 
of the cell is occupied by the larva of the. wasp, which, after having 
consumed the last spider, is transformed into a chrysalis in the inte- 
rior of a capsule of reddish-brown parchment. 


1G OR 


While some insects build their nests above the ground, others try to 
find security underground for their offspring. Among these we may 
mention the sacred Ateuchus, belonging to the group of Coprophagids. 
The Coprophagids are represented by many species, of which several 
are characterized by brilliantly colored and metallic-looking elytra. 
Their ball of provisions, of known origin, serves either for their own 
nourishment or for that of their larvee. In the first case the ball is 
pushed into a hiding place, where it is gradually consumed; in the 
other case the Coprophagid introduces an egg into the ball and 
buries it. 

On the plains of eastern Africa, at the end of September and dur- 
ing the month of October, these insects, especially the great black 
scarab, Scarabaeus pustulatus, may be seen making and rolling these 
balls (pl. 8, fig. 2). Their ability to discover the necessary material is 
remarkable. If not a single one of these insects has been noticed all 
day, great numbers of them will be found running around antelopes 
which have been recently shot down by hunters. 

It is extremely interesting to watch a scarab make one of these 
food balls, during which process it is often necessary for the insect 
to fight with its own kind. With the anterior edge of its head, which 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Sjéstedt. PLATE 3. 


1. NEST OF CECOPHYLLA FROM AUSTRALIA (STOCKHOLM 
MUSEUM). 


Natura! size, 20 em, 


2. THE SCARABAUS PUSTULATUS ROLLING ITS BALLS (STOCKHOLM MUSEUM). 


INSECT NESTS—SJOSTEDT. 345 


is flattened and notched, it loosens a fragment large enough to make 
up the future ball; then with a rapid movement the ball is freed and 
rounded off. Then standing on its front feet the scarab with his back 
feet rolls the ball thus made. During this operation the insect dis- 
plays great activity, but at this stage others of its kind endeavor to 
get possession of the fruit of its toil. A struggle ensues, during 
which the ball changes owners several times, and the final victor 
‘endeavors then to get the ball away in safety either for its own use 
or for that of its larvee. 

In the case just cited the parents provide shelter and reserve nour- 
ishment for the evolution of the larvee, while among other species the 
larve themselves provide their own nourishment and a way of release 
when the transformation is complete. 

Among the cicadas, which live in the Tropics and contribute their 
song to the perpetual concert heard there during the dry season, the 
larvee at the time of being transformed into perfect insects bury 
themselves about 40 centimeters deep in the earth. In digging the 
hole they secrete a liquid which assures the permanence of the pas- 
sage by hardening the sides. The quantity of liquid required to coat 
this tube nearly half a meter long is considerable, and the insect 
would not have enough unless while digging it encountered new ma- 
terial to supply the secreting organs. A close examination of the 
nest shows the presence of roots laid bare, from which the insect 
draws the sap by means of his proboscis. This nest, consisting of a 
shaft sunk in the ground with solid walls, permits the insect to come 
to the surface during the warm hours, and to bury itself to escape the 
cold. 


TY. 


An unusual method of making nests is encountered among cer- 
tain ants—those which build their nests in galls. On the plains of 
eastern Africa attention is often attracted to small acacias with long 
thorns appearing from a distance to be covered with a great number 
of black balls resembling apples but which in reality are hollow galls 
inhabited by a species of small ants, Cremastogaster tricolor. If one 
of these galls is touched, all the inhabitants come out through a se- 
ries of small orifices, and from the extremity of their abdomens, 
raised vertically, flows a white, ill-smelling liquid, with which the 
galls, leaves, and branches become saturated. 

The young galls are green in color, with a solid interior, attain- 
ing sometimes the size of a walnut. The ants remove little by little 
the medullary substance in such a way that the interior of the gall 
becomes a chamber with smooth and polished walls. The gall then 
takes on the color of soot and has a ligneous texture. When the wind 


346 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


blows on the plains the hollow balls, pierced with holes, give out 


strange, low sounds recalling the whistling of wind in the rigging of © 


a ship, or the tones of an aeolian harp—hence the name, acacia- 
flutes. | 

If the eggs, larvee, or chrysalises of the ant were placed in the 
hollow of the gall without precautions, at every puff of wind they 
would be thrown against each other and injured. To avoid this 
danger the ants build from the interior substance of the gall, which 
has the appearance of an agaric fungus, a series of combs and cases 
in which the larvee and chrysalises are placed. 

So there really exists a kind of symbiosis between the ants and 
the acacias; but who profits by this symbiosis? In the galls the ants 
find protection for themselves and their larvee; on the other hand, 
the ants cause no damage to the acacias and give them protection 
against numerous enemies. Giraffes, antelopes, and gazelles are kept 
away by the presence of these ants with such nauseous secretions. 


Ni. 


There are also cases in the insect world in which the adult uses 
the larve in the construction of the nest. This singular habit occurs 
among certain tissued ants, Gicophylla, Camponotus, and Polyrha- 
chis. The C&cophylla, inhabiting Asia, Africa, and Australia, build 
their nests among the leaves of certain trees by binding the leaves 
together with the aid of silk threads (pl. 3, fig. 1). 

Among these ants there is observed one of the most curious phe- 
nomena of all biology. If the nest be torn in any way so that the 
leaves are separated from each other, the ants are immediately seen 
hurrying out. While some are defending the nest against the pre- 
sumed enemy, the others hasten to repair the damage done. From 
one edge of the tear the workers try with their mandibles to reach the 
edge of the neighboring leaf and draw the two edges together to 
close the break, but the distance is often too great and they are forced 
to form a living chain. One ant with its mandibles seizes one of its 
comrades by the body, so that the second one may be able to reach the 
edge of the neighboring leaf. If the distance is still too great, a 
third comes to join the others, and sometimes the chain is made up of 
five or six ants. This work is very fatiguing, sometimes taking sev- 
eral hours to make sure the contact of the two leaves. The ants then 
clean up and polish the edges of the leaves, but how can they secure 
the necessary adherence to make the connection permanent, since the 
adult ants do not have setiferous glands? This difficulty is overcome 
by a method so astonishing that the first observations made in Singa- 
pore in 1890 were doubted by naturalists. When the edges of the 
leaves are perfectly clean several workers emerge from the nest, each 


a ange 


INSECT NESTS—SJOSTEDT. 847 


bearing a larva between its mandibles. The larva is held by the 
body, with the head upward. Thus their own larve serve to make a 
silken net to join the leaves. Due to the pressure of the mandibles, 
doubtless, the larva excretes from its mouth a liquid which in solidi- 
fying forms a silk thread, and by carrying the head of the larva 
from the edge of one leaf to the edge of the other the ant obtains a 
web which assures the adherence of the two leaves. In the same 
way the interior walls of the nest are formed, the larva thus function- 
ing as spinning wheel and as bobbin. An anatomical examination of 
these larve shows that the setiferous glands in them attain dimen- 
sions not found in any other of the Hymenoptera. 


Mi. 


From a scientific point of view, in the light of these complex mani- 
festations, the question arises as to whether or not they are expres- 
sions of intelligence—whether the insects at work are conscious of 
the procedure and of the importance of the end to be attained, or 
whether their actions are merely the result of instinct, the insects 
being incapable of reasoning. 

If the animals were simply mechanisms with no spontaneity, a 
strict identity ought to be observed in their methods of work and 
construction. But with certain species at least a remarkable adapta- 
bility to variations in the surrounding conditions is shown, these 
adaptations being transformed, if the causes persist, into hereditary 
characters. 

Forel, the eminent myrmecologist and psychologist, thus sums up 
the observations made during more than 20 years on the psychology 
of insects: 

All the characteristics of man might be derived from the characteristics of 
the higher animals, and all the characteristics of the higher animals might be 
derived from those of the lower animals. In other words, the evolutionary 


formula applies equally in the realm of psychology as in the physiological 
domain, 


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Skiba oldchriinoy « tansl du eeindge tinttes diiw Jui Yawk 
saad Arirotle St etioisibuop guibarotnia SH nd aco OP y 
ae sb oink sbeitinagy aseund old 4 ‘tistiohtedd scivs bone 
; Sake Ehbetis ered were ayf Live Hash 

fir” aaier? hal digolédoyay Bak deo ldsouth ct 1snidis ode "eee! 
ewototlo ret eiitito eat oe rei io S sige sroliaeiseds ome 
oF ae tse shea <a 

rs whet a954 bovtyat : od Jeigter : 
ad tetgice ia yi ane Yat fo et cae ie lig’ ae 
Pihidtivlors one Ses eta ar lic hgecstaret BAO OY set 


‘i; 1: hy Re eh ooh ‘ue ét ws itil. is bats rr) ne feos a 
bie ry the body ae thak the second Ghe inky be uiele ty rough 


Case) hi Fac: 2C rae joact, Af the Casdtetins st5eti Bap ine wy, 

ad cw io Wels Che eee , ENG someiace thevhrun | Ps inade ip é 

Ser tinuck “The work ie Pere sateiie. cornet hinds ta kieg aay 

Be. Gree BOT Ws Gases MNTE thy. conte dt the Sco ieee oR Lah ALMA f eo ‘ 
" relearn Ti 2% hy the etlevy ik fies den ves, tit hig * vis Shee: Hoc 


rates or eres: ty pa the cesoneWcien pathy 
RA thee We hae. sti terqne aE heeds 
Dy ve SAT ar wlan fe ie Uae the’ Sit Mba Yee 
ie ae ba ee A 3M: ¥ ior’ tad vad pet” Yea ae 


ea hoe AOE Se setts “iin: aO¥ avin Wi Denia waneree lise uke 
a i. 


a 


OLDEN TIME KNOWLEDGE OF HIPPOCAMPUS. 


By CHARLES R. EASTMAN, 


American Museum of Natural History, New York. 


? 
[With 4 plates. ] 


From time immemorial the interesting little fishes known as sea 
horses (Hippocampids) have attracted attention on account of their 
curious form and no less peculiar habits. Occurring plentifully in 
the Mediterranean, the typical species (Hippocampus hippocampus 
or antiquorum) was well known to the ancients; and owing to the 
wide distribution of the remaining thirty-odd species composing the 
genus, sea horses have become familiar objects in most of the large 
aquaria of the world. 

We owe to the late Dr. Theodore N. Gill an interesting account of 
the life history of Hippocampines, published in volume 38 (1905) of 
the Proceedings of the United States National Museum. More re- 
cently a number of pictorial representations of the common Mediter- 
ranean species, taken from old authors, have been reproduced in a 
short popular article by Prof. R. C. Osburn (Zoological Bulletin, 
March, 1915). 

The movements, feeding, and breeding habits of these creatures 
are all extremely curious, and have been so well described by Dr. Gill 
that we can not forbear quoting a few paragraphs from the article 
referred to, before turning to the accounts given by two or three old 
writers not mentioned by Prof. Osburn. 

Concerning the attitudes and movements of sea horses, Dr. Gill 
remarks that the “the most frequent position is a state of rest, with 
the tail wound around the stem of a plant or some other substance, 
and the body carried nearly or quite erect.” Continuing, this dis- 
tinguished observer writes: 

Such is the most frequent position, but notwithstanding the apparent rigidity 
of the cuirass almost every other attitude consistent with such a form may 
be assumed. The body may be thrown outward at various angles and even 
downward and the tail wound around a plant in a double coil. Once in a 
while one eye may roll toward you while another may be passive or look 


backward or in an opposite direction. It becomes obvious that the little fish 
can move its eyes independently of each other and in entirely different ways. 


349 


350 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


A comical effect is produced by the way in which the little fishes peer at 
some object, reminding one of the actions of a very near-sighted person. 

Releasing itself at length from its support one may slowly progress still in a 
vertical position, its tail curved inward, its dorsal fin rapidly undulating, and 
reminding one of a screw propeller, its pectorals vibrating in harmony. The 
rapidity of the undulatory or vibratory movements of the dorsal and pectorals 
is especially noteworthy. 

Ineased as it is in an almost inflexible coat of mail, progression can not 
be effected by lateral flexion of the body as in ordinary fishes, and flexion in 
a vertical direction is limited. 

With such limited powers of progression a nice adjustment of organs is 
ealled for, and Dufossé has explained one method. The air bladder is com- 
paratively large and always distended by a quantity of gas so exactly in 
harmony with the specific gravity of the body that this entire body is a 
hydrostatic apparatus of extreme sensibility. A proof of this is that if a 
single bubble of gas no larger than the head of a very small pin be extracted 
the fish immediately loses its equilibrium and falls to the ground on which 
it must crawl till its wound has been cicatrized and a new supply of gas 
secreted by the internal membrane of the bladder. 


As is well known, the eggs of Hippocampus are taken care of 
by the male in an abdominal sac or pouch open forward opposite 
the dorsal fin. The same authority described a peculiar phase con- 
nected with the breeding habits in these words: 


As the season for reproduction approaches the sexes become prepared for 
it. * * * The receptive male’s pouch becomes thickened and vascular and 
thus prepares for the reception of the eggs and the nutriment of the embryos. 
The males, as usual in fishes, are somewhat smaller than the females. 

Curiosity is naturally excited as to the manner in which the eggs are trans- 
ferred into the narrow-mouthed ovigerous sac of the male. Many have 
watched, but so far as known the only one who has caught the female and male 
in the act of transfer was Dr. Filipo Fanzago. In May, 1874, the doctor ob- 
served the approach of the two in an aquarium at Naples. The approach was 
not once for all, but oft repeated and very short each time. The male remained 
passive and the egg-burdened female advanced toward him and pressed the 
aperture for the extrusion of the eggs against the mouth of the male’s pouch. 
At the most a few eggs—perhaps not more than a single one—were passed from 
the female to the male and then she retreated. After a not very long interval 
(it varied) she again approached and another transfer was made. Five times 
Fanzago observed this strange kind of copulation in a short space of time (in 
breve spazio di tempo), but exactly how long is not stated. He hoped to be able 
to make further observations, but has left no other records. The eggs are doubt- 
less fertilized during the act of transfer. 

The ovigerous pouch is especially adapted not only for the reception of the 
eggs but for the sustenance of the newly hatched offspring. Dufossé (1874) 
found that there was a lining mucous membrane which had the faculty of 
secreting an aériform fluid. Further, this function is liable to pathologic devia- 
tion, in which case the bladder may become stopped up and the fish be unable 
to control itself and carried to the surface of the water, where it remains help- 
less till death follows. 


The earliest figures of Hippocampus in‘a printed book, so far as 
known to the present writer, are those given in Pietro Matthioli’s 
Commentaries on the “Materia Medica” of Dioscorides, which 


HIPPOCAMPUS—EASTMAN. 3851 


passed through a number of editions and translations beginning 
with the Italian editio princeps of 1544. This work appears to be 
the source of the illustrations given by Thomas Mouffet in his “ Thea- 
trum Insectorum” (London, 1634), which are copied by Prof. Os- 
burn; and the description therein given of the Hippocampus is by 
far the best found among sixteenth century writers. 

Next in order of time after the woodcuts of Matthioli, shown in 
our plate 1, figure 1 is the figure of Hippocampus given by Pierre 
Belon in his small folio entitled “ De Aquatilibus,’ published at 
Paris in Latin in 1558, and in French two years later under the title 
of “ La Nature et Diversité des Poissons.” A copy of Belon’s illus- 
tration is reproduced in our plate 1, figure 2, and his description of 
the creature may be rendered into English as follows: 


The name Hippocampus is derived from the Greek words hippus, signifying 
horse, and campus, a caterpillar. And in verity the head and neck are shaped 
like those of a horse, and the body (i. e., tail) like that of a caterpillar. The 
term hippus is employed by Pliny, hippidiwm by Athenaeus to designate this 
animal. Venetian fisherfolk cail it “ falopa,” and among those of Marseilles 
and Genoa it is known as the “ caballo marino.” 

Tits size does not exceed a finger’s length; it has a tough and rugose skin, 
and neither men nor fish of other kind esteem it as food. In color it is some- 
times dark; in other cases white. ‘The gills are laterally situated, and the 
neck is arched like that of a horse. [This sentence follows the Latin version. 
The French of 1555 reads: “‘ The gills are uncovered as in other fishes, notwith- 
standing it is a bloodless creature.”’] It bears a small fin, a little elevated, 
along the back, and another small one on the neck where it joins the head. 
The mouth is small and tubiform. Dead or dried specimens have the tail 
coiled inward, like that of a chameleon; it is furnished with small, blunt 
prickles, and is of quadrangular section. The spinous projections arise from 
transverse folds which cross the tail. 

Certain authors profess that the ashes of Hippocampus, when commingled 
with liquid pitch, tallow, or oil of Sweet marjoram, cure baldness and pain in 
the sides. Partaken of when roasted, it prevents retention of urine. An 
application of oil of roses into which the live animal has been dipped and 
killed is an efficacious remedy for chills and fever. 


The alleged medicinal properties of Hippocampus, which are 
gravely set forth by Matthioli, Belon, Rondelet, Gesner, and others, 
are traceable to a number of late Greek and Roman writers, the more 
important of whom are Menander, Strabo, Philostratus, Dioscorides, 
/flian (N. A. 14; 20) and Pliny (N. H. 32 and 36). Aristotle does 
not mention the Hippocampus, and this word was used by the poets 
of classical antiquity as the name of a sea monster, half horse and 
half fish, on which sea divinities rode.t’ It is probably in this char- 
acter that conventionalized representations of the creature appear in 


1See Hoffman, H. A., and Jordan, D, S., ““A Catalogue of the Fishes of Greece.’’ Proc. 
Acad, Nat. Sci., Phila., 1892, vol. 44, p. 250. It is there stated that “as the name of 
a fish it seems to occur only in late writings, * * * and the references in Pliny 
refer to the use of the Hippocampus and its ashes in medicine,” 


852 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Etruscan and other ancient works of art. Our plate 2 is from a pho- 
tograph of an Etruscan vase, which is preserved in the Boston Art 
Museum, and has the ears beautifully fashioned in the form of sea- 
horses with the tails conjoined. Similar figures are seen in an Etrus- 
can frieze belonging to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 
and the same design is occasionally found in ancient Greek coins. 

From the time of Pliny onward the sea horse does not reappear in 
literature until the close of the middle ages, when the great thirteenth 
century encyclopedists, Vincent de Beauvis (71190-1264) and Al- 
bertus Magnus (?1206-1280), both mention Hippocampines under 
the term of “sea dragon.” Vincent, or Vincentius, was an extraordi- 
narily industrious and painstaking compiler. One of his works, the 
“ Speculum Naturali,” is a bulky volume, divided into 32 books and 
3,718 chapters; it seems to have been given to the world about the 
year 1250, and was first printed at Ntiremberg in 1472. For us it 
represents, as has been well said, “a vast summary of all the natural 
history known to western Europe toward the middle of the thir- 
teenth century.” Books XVI and XVII treat of fowls and fishes, 
mainly in alphabetical order, and with frequent references to their 
medicinal qualities. In book XVI, chapter 138, we find the fol- 
lowing description of the “sea dragon” (“ Zidrach”), quoted from 
the unknown Gallic author of “ Liber de Naturis Rerum ” :1 

Caput habet ut equus, sed forma minori. Corpus autem ex omni parte 
draconi similium est; totumque diversimode coloratum. Caudam habet longam 
secundum quantitatem corporis sui; gracilem et tortuosam, ut anguis, pinnas 
quoque habet sicut piscis aliquis. 

Albert of Bollstadt, bishop of Ratisbon, the most erudite scholar 
and most widely read author of his time, gives, in book XXV of 
“De Animalibus” (Mantua, 1479), practically the same account as 
Vincentius, only the vernacular name for sea dragon is either mis- 
printed or corrupted into “ Zydeath,” and a slightly different de- 
scription of the same creature is found on another page under the 
caption of “ Equus maris,” as if it were another kind of fish. One 
of the attributes accredited by Albertus to the sea horse is that it 
expires on being brought out of water into contact with the air. 
“Extra aqua nihil potest: statim enim moritur ab aqua extractum,” 
one reads at page 654 of the Lyons edition. 

Important to note is the fact that the characteristic here reported 
as holding true of Hippocampines was transferred at the hands of 
later encyclopedists so as to apply to the Remora, or sucking-fish. 
The fifteenth-century physician who styles himself Johannes von 

1A widely read medieval work having the same title was written about 1180 by the 
English schoolman, Alexander Neckham, foster brother of King Richard I. This work 


is an important manual of the scientific knowledge of the twelfth century. Several 
kinds of fishes are mentioned, 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Eastman. PRAT Emte 


4. HiIPPOCAMPINES, THE COMMON MEDITERRANEAN SPECIES, AFTER MATTHIOLI (ED. 
OF 1568, P. 319). 


2. HIPPOCAMPUS, AFTER PIERRE BELON, 1553 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Eastman. PLATE 2, 


ARCHAIC ETRUSCAN REPRESENTATION OF SEA HORSES. ORIGINAL IN THE BOSTON 
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS. 


HIPPOCAMPUS—EASTMAN. 353 


; 
Cube,' compiler of “ Hortus Sanitatis,” and also Conrad Gesner, in 
the middle of the sixteenth century, both of whom quote Albertus, 
fall into the same error of treating the “ Zidrach,” “ Equus marinis,” 
and Hippocampus as separate and distinct kinds of fishes. 

Both Vincentius and Albertus Magnus, and also the English 
Franciscan scholar, Bartholomew, whose work on “The Properties 
of Things” was written some years prior to 1260, take a number of 
their descriptions of fishes from “De Animalibus” of Jorath (or 
Jorach), an eastern, perhaps Persian, Christian writer of whom 
little is known. Bartholomew’s encyclopedia, composed originally 
in Latin and translated into English by John Trevisa in 1397, con- 
tains rich materials for the study of the history of science and of 
literature. We become acquainted through it with popular medieval 
theories in the circle of sciences that are scarcely attainable other- 
wise, and modern students regard it as “one of the most important 
documents, by the help of which we rebuild for ourselves the fabric 
of medieval life.” ? 

In view of the fact that popular beliefs concerning the sea horse 
and “ship stayer,” or Remora, run a parallel course from the thir- 
teenth century onward, it may be instructive to offer at this point 
the account given by Bartholomew of the Remora. In Trevisa’s 
version the name Echeneis is either misprinted or corrupted into 
“ Enchirius,” just as Albertus Magnus and his copyists employ the 
erroneous term of “ Zydeath” for Zidrach, meaning “sea dragon.” 
The account reads: . 

Enciirius is a little fish unneth [only] half a foot long: for though he be 
full little of body, nathless he is most of virtue. For he cleaveth to the ship, 
and holdeth it still stedfastly in the sea, as though the ship were on ground 
therein. Though winds blow, and waves arise strongly, and wood [violent] 
storms, that ship may not move nother [neither] pass. And that fish holdeth 
not still the ship by no craft, but only cleaving to the ship. It is said of the 
same fish that when he knoweth and feeleth that tempests of wind and 
weather be great, he cometh and taketh a great stone, and holdeth him fast 
thereby, as it were by an anchor, lest he be smitten away and thrown about 
by waves of the sea. And shipmen see this and beware that they be not 
overset unwarily with tempest and with storms. 

After the time of these medieval encyclopedists no important. ad- 
ditions to the literature of ichthyology were made until the third 
decade of the sixteenth century, and such notices of fishes as ap- 

17The first edition of the Hortus, or “ Ortus,” Sanitatis appeared at Metz in 1475 and 
was a number of times reprinted. It is one of the earliest printed books containing illus- 
trations of fish and fishing scenes. The next oldest work containing similar figures is 
“Dialogues of Creatures Moralysed,”’ of which an English reprint, edited by Joseph Hasle- 
wood, was published in 1816. For an account of von Cube’s compilation one may consult 
an article by H. 8. C. Everard in the New Illustrated Magazine for July, 1898, p. 263-271. 


2 Robert Steele, in his epitome of Bartholomew's Encyclopedia entitled ‘‘ Medieval Lore.” 
London, 1893. 


18618°—sm 1915——23 


| 
354 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915.. { 
: 


pear in handbooks of medicine and herbals like the “ Hortus Sani- | 
tatis” or “ Margarita Philosophica ” consist chiefly of oft-repeated — 
excerpts from ancient writers on natural history. To the same class 
of popular handbooks belongs the so-called “ Kriiuterbuch” of — 
Adam Lonicer, a work which was frequently reedited and trans- 
lated, and which contains a rough sketch of Hippocampus. The 
illustrations shown in plate 3, figures 1 and 2, are reproduced from 
woodcuts in the 1536 edition of the Frankfort physician’s “ Hortus 
Sanitatis,” intended to illustrate the sea horse and Remora (Echeneis— 
naucrates) . 

New interest in the plants and animals of distant lands was 
awakened by the voyages of discovery that were made toward the 
close of the fifteenth century and in the early decades of the six- 
teenth century, and consequently a new era in natural science may 
be said to begin at about the year 1500. Columbus brought back 
with him from the New World in 1493 not only six Indians, but live 
parrots, many plants, and a few stuffed animals, among which latter 
was a fish from Hispaniola, the peculiar characters of which are 
recorded in his Journal (entry for Nov. 16, 1492). In all probability 
this was either the trunkfish or a specimen of Diodon histrix, a species 
which figures prominently in sixteenth and seventeenth century 
ichthyological writings under the name of “ Reversus, var. squam- 
mosus.” The other variety, called the “ Reversus Indicus anguilli- 
formis,” is clearly the Remora; and both forms are associated with 
the original eye-witness account given by Columbus of having been 
employed by native West Indians for the capture of other fish. Like 
other fish stories, the tale lost nothing in repeating. Oviedo (1535) 
“lifted” his account from the writings of Peter Martyr (Libretto of 
1504 and De Rebus Oceanis, 1511), and added considerable em- 
broidery of his own. Rondelet passed the story along to Gesner, 
Aldrovandi, and John Jonston, all of whom give illustrations of the 
two “species” of Reversus, and the first-named even portrays a 
fishing scene in which the anguilliform variety is seen in the act of 
capturing its prey (pl. 3, fig. 3). Nieremberg (1635) also gives a 
similar figure. 

The attentive reader will not fail to note in these various accounts | 
of the “ Reversus,” or, more properly speaking, the Remora, that a — 
peculiar property is still ascribed to it which in medieval times was 
transferred to this genus from the Hippocampus; that is, its.extraor- 
dinary aversion to the air. All of the authors just named mention 
this characteristic. Thus, Jonston, in his ‘“ Natural Wonders,” speaks 
in following manner: 

The Indian Reversus like an Hel, is a Fish of an unusual figure, like to a — 
great Kel in body, and it hath on the hinder part of the head a capacious skin, 
like to a great purse. The inhabitants hold this fish bound at the side of the — 


4 EPO Rat dees et 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Eastman. PLATE 3. 


\ 
Wb aa tre CUNLAY 
AT 
‘ ‘ 


1. ECHENEIS, THE REMORA OR “‘ SHIP- 2. “EQuus MARINIS,”? FROM THE 1536 
STAYER,” FROM THE 1536 EDITION EDITION OF VON CuBE’s “ORTUS 
OF VON CUBE’S “‘ORTUS SANITATIS.”” SANITATIS.”” 


GEE 
we 


a/} : 


3. FISHING WITH A REMORA AS DESCRIBED BY COLUMBUS, FROM GESNER’S “ HISTORIZ 
ANIMALIUM,” 1558. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Eastman. PLATE 4. 


——————— {\ \\ SS = 
SNE 


W777, ION 
ij Hi = 
TATA 


2. THe “ Reversus LIKE AN EEL,” AS REPRESENTED BY ALDROVANDI, IN “DE Pis- 
CIBUS,” 1638. 


HIPPOCAMPUS—-EASTMAN. $55 


ship, with a cord, and onely let it down, so far as the fish may stick by the 
keel of the ship, for it cannot anywayes endure the ayr; and when it sees any 
fish or- Tortoise, which are there greater than a great Target, they let loose the 
fish; he so soon as he is loose, flies swifter than an arrow on the other fish or 
Tortoise, and casting that skin purse upon them, layes hold of his prey so fast, 
that no force can unloose it, unlesse they draw up the cord a little and pull 
him to the brink of the water. For so soon as he sees the light of the ayr he 
forsakes his prey, Martyr. Rondeletius ascribes to him the understanding of 
an Elephant, for he will be tame, and know what is said to him. (P. 301.) 


In the early collection of voyages known as “ Libretto de Tutta 
la Navigatione,” etc., and “ Paesi novamente Retrovati,” published 
in 1504 and 1507, an account is given by Peter Martyr of fishing 
with the “anguilliform Reversus” (probably E’cheneis naucrates), 
which appears to have been derived from personal conversations 
with Columbus and his companions after their return from the sec- 
ond voyage, in 1494, The narrative reads: 

Afterwards they found further onward [among the Queen’s Gardens, off the 
southern coast of Cuba] some fishermen in certain of their boats of wood exca- 
vated like zopoli, who were fishing. In this manner they had a fish of a form 
unknown to us, which has the body of an eel and larger, and upon the head 
it has a peculiar, very tender skin, which appears like a large pouch or purse. 
And this fish they drag, tied with a noose to the edge of the boat, because it 
can not endure a breath of air. And when they see any large fish or reptile 
they loosen the noose and this fish at once darts like an arrow at the other fish 
or reptile, throwing over it this skin which he has upon his head, which he 
holds so firmly that they are not able to escape, and he does not leave them 
if they are not taken from the water; but as soon as he feels the air he leaves 
his prey and the fisherman quickly seize it. And in the presence of our people 
they took four large tortoises, which they gave our people for a very delicate 
food. 

Jt would be apart from our main topic to pursue the subsequent 
history of the Remora beyond calling attention to Aldrovandi’s and 
Jonston’s portrayals of its form, as shown in our plate 4, figure 2, 
and to Dr. Giinther’s article on the genus (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., 
1860, 3. ser., vol. 5), in which the more important literary references 
are collected. At this point we may say with Jonston, at the con- 
clusion of his “ Wonders concerning fishes,” “so much then for 
[this] fish.” 

Paul Giovio (in Latin Jovius, 1483-1552), whose work on fishes 
was first published in 1524 and passed through three editions, makes 
no mention of Hippocampus; and in the handsomely illustrated folio 
of the Roman physician Salviani, published in 1557, one finds only 
the bare references to its mention by earlier authors. 

We come now to the great encyclopedic writer, Conrad Gesner 
(1516-1565), apostrophized by Cuvier as “le plus savant naturaliste 
du seizeiéme siécle.” The account of Hippocampus given by this 
compiler in his “ Fischbuch” (1556), and also in his “ Historiz Ani- 


856 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


malium ” (Book IV, 1558), follows pretty closely that which is found 
in Matthioli’s commentaries on Dioscorides (1554), but the figures 
are of inferior merit. Our plate 4, figure 1, is reproduced from the 
woodcut introduced at page 156 of the “ F ees ” at which point 
we find the following passage: 


Hippocampus. Ein Meerross; Ein Meerpfirdt. Von seiner Gestalt und 
Grosse. 

Die’ grosse wunderwerck Gottes von geschickligkeit der natur erzeigend sich 
in vil wunderbarlichen geschépffen, insonderheit in disem giigenwirtigen Meer- 
thier oder fisch, welcher mit kopff hals, maul brust, halshaar* so an den 
schwiimmenden allein gesiihen wirt, sich genzlich eine irdischen pfirdt ver- 
gleycht, ausgenommen der hindertheil oder schwanz so ein andere gestalt hat, 
als dann aus giigenwirtigen figur wol mag sihen werden. Sein lenge ist nit 
ganz einer spang lang, die dicke eines daumes oder grossen fingers, an der 
farb voraus oben auff dem ruggen braun mit weyssen punckten, unden am 
bauch weysslicht; der so unser etlich zu Montpelier am gestad dess Meers 
gesiihen habend war bleich one zweyfel dass er todt was. Keine fischoun hat er 
sonder ob den augen zwey kleine léchle. Ist ein sonderlicher schéner wunder- 
licher silzamer fisch, wirt auch nit vil von den fischeren gefangen.* * * #* 

Dise thier angehenckt séllend bewegen zu unktischheit. Item gederret gepiil- 
vert und eyngenommen sol wunderbarlich denen hilifen so von wiitenden 
hunden gebissen sind. Dergleychen aus starckem essich gestossen auff den bis 
gelegt. 

Dises thier zu Hschen gebrant mit altem schmiir und Salniter, oder mit 
stareckem essich aufgeschmiert, erftilt die kalk6pff oder abgeflossen haar. 

Das pulver der gederten Meerpfiirden genossen milteret das seyten wee oder 
den stich, und in der speyss genommen hilfft denen so den harn nit verhalten 
mogend. 

Die gall der thieren sol ein sonderbare artzney seyn wider vil priisten der 
augen. 


Tt is evident that the famous sixteenth-century naturalist was 
quite unaware of having introduced into his work two other descrip- 
tions of the same creature, under different names, as if there were in 
reality as many different kinds of fish. Thus, the “ Equus marinis” 
is described at page 432 in book IV of the Natural History and the 
“Zidrach” (sea dragon) at page 1254. Far better illustrations of 
Hippocampus are found in the “ Historia Pisctum” (1686) of Wil- 
lughby and Ray. On the other hand, those given in the “ Theatrum 
Animalium” (1718) of Jonston, edited by Ruysch, and in the colored 
plates of East Indian fishes published by Louis Renard in 1754 are 
scarcely recognizable.” 

Other colored figures of both the Hippocampus and “ Reversus 
Indicus” (7. ¢., Diodon histrix) are shown in the plates accompany- 


1The so-called “ halshaar’”’ of Gesner’s description is not shown in his woodcuts, but 
is represented in exaggerated and fantastic form in Thomas Mouffet’s “ Theatrum” of 
1634. 

2Renard’s work has for title: ‘“* Poissons, écrivisses et crabes de diverses couleurs et 
figures extraordinaires, que l’on trouve autour des Moluques et sur les cdtes des terres 
australes,”’ ete. Amsterdam, 1754. For an account of these colored drawings see Cuvier 
and Valenciennes, Hist. Nat. des Poissons, 1828, vol. I, p. 86, 


C—O eee 


HIPPOCAMPUS—FASTMAN. B57 


ing Theodor van Brussel’s “ Dieren, Visschen,” ete., published at 
Amsterdam in 1798. Adam Lonicer’s Natural History, remarkable 
for its numerous editions and great longevity, preserved a fanciful 
figure of Hippocampus until the work finally disappeared from the 
book market in the eighteenth century. And with this we approach 
the modern period, ushered in, as regards Hippocampus, by Pietro 
Andrea Matthioli. 

The first mention of New World Hippocampines (//. hudsonius?) 
would appear to be found in John Josselyn’s “ New England’s Rari- 
ties Discovered” (1672), from which we may quote in conclusion 
the following passage: . 

Of fish, we are best acquainted with Sturgeon, Grampus, Porpus, Seales, 
Stingraies, whose tailes are very dangerous, Bretts, Mullets, white Salmonds, 
Trowts, Soles, Plaice, Herrings, Conyfish, Rockfish, Hels, Lampreys, Catfish, 
Shades, Perch of three sorts, Crabs, Shrimps, Creuises, Oysters, Cocles and 
Muscles. But the most strange Fish is a small one, so like the picture of 
Saint George his Dragon, as possible can be, except his legges and wings, and 
the Todefish, which will swell till it be like to burst, when it cometh into the 
aire. 


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HEREDITY. 


By Pror. Witt1am Bateson, M. A., F. R. 8. 


As the subject of the addresses which I am to deliver here and in 
Sydney I take “ Heredity.” I shall attempt to give the essence of 
the discoveries made by Mendelian or analytical methods of study, 
and I shall ask you to contemplate the deductions which these 
physiological facts suggest in application both to evolutionary theory 
at large and to the special case of the natural history of human 
society. 

Recognition of the significance of heredity is modern. The term 
itself in its scientific sense is no older than Herbert Spencer. Ani- 
mals and plants are formed as pieces of living material split from 
the body of the parent organisms. Their powers and faculties are 
fixed in their physiological origin. They are the consequence of a 
genetic process, and yet it is only lately that this genetic process 
has become the subject of systematic research and experiment. The 
curiosity of naturalists has, of course, always been attracted to such 
problems; but that accurate knowledge of genetics is of paramount 
importance in any attempt to understand the nature of living things 
has only been realized quite lately even by naturalists, and with 
casual exceptions the laity still know nothing of the matter. His- 
torians debate the past of the human species, and statesmen order its 
present or profess to guide its future as if the animal man, the unit 
of their calculations, with his vast diversity of powers, were a homo- 
geneous material, which can be multiplied like shot. 

The reason for this neglect lies in ignorance and misunderstanding 
of the nature of variation; for not until the fact of congenital 
diversity is grasped, with all that it imports, does knowledge of the 
system of hereditary transmission stand out as a primary necessity in 
the construction of any theory of evolution, or any scheme of human 
polity. 

The first full perception of the significance of variation we owe 
to Darwin. The present generation of evolutionists realizes perhaps 
more fully than did the scientific world in the last century that the 

1Two addresses delivered, August 14 and 20, 1914, at the Australia meeting of the Brit- 


ish Association for the Advancement of Science. Reprinted by permission from author’s 
pamphlet copy, London, 1914. 
359 


360 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


theory of evolution had occupied the thoughts of many and found 
acceptance with not a few before ever the “ Origin” appeared. We 
have come also to the conviction that the principle of natural selec- 
tion can not have been the chief factor in delimiting the species of 
animals and plants, such as we now with fuller knowledge see them 
actually to be. We are even more skeptical as to the validity of that 
appeal to changes in the conditions of life as direct causes of modi- 
fication, upon which latterly at all events Darwin laid much em- 
phasis. But that he was the first to provide a body of fact demon- 
strating the variability of living things, whatever be its causation, 
can never be questioned. 

There are some older collections of evidence, chiefly the work of 
the French school, especially of Godron! (and I would mention also 


the almost forgotten essay of Wollaston”). These, however, are only | 


fragments in comparison. Darwin regarded variability as a prop- 
erty inherent in living things, and eventually we must consider 
whether this conception is well founded; but postponing that in- 
quiry for the present, we may declare that with him began a general 
recognition of variation as a phenomenon widely occurring in nature. 

If a population consists of members which are not alike but dif- 
ferentiated, how will their characteristics be distributed among their 
offspring? This is the problem which the modern student of 
heredity sets out to investigate. Formerly it was hoped that by the 
simple inspection of embryological processes the modes of heredity 
might be ascertained, the actual mechanism by which the offspring 
is formed from the body of the parent. In that endeavor a noble pile 
of evidence has been accumulated. All that can be made visible by 
existing methods has been seen, but we come little if at all nearer to 
the central mystery. We see nothing that we can analyze further— 
nothing that can be translated into terms less inscrutable than the 
physiological events themselves. Not only does embryology give no 
direct aid, but the failure of cytology is, so far as I can judge, equally 
complete. The chromosomes of nearly related creatures may be 
utterly different both in number, size, and form. Only one piece of 
evidence encourages the old hope that a connection might be trace- 
able between the visible characteristics of the body and those of the 
chromosomes. I refer of course to the accessory chromosome, which 
in many animals distinguishes the spermatozoon about to form a 
female in fertilization. Even it, however, can not be claimed as the 
cause of sexual differ entiation, for it may be paired in forms closely 
allied to those in which, it is unpaired or accessory. The distinction 
may be present or w anting , like any other secondary sexual char- 
acter. Indeed, so long as e one can show consistent distinctions 


1 De VEspéce et des Races dans les Btres Organisés, 1859. 
20On the Variation of Species, 1856. 


M 

4 
o 
+ 
° 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 861 


between the cytological characters of somatic tissues in the same 
individual we can scarcely expect to perceive such distinctions be- 
tween the chromosomes of the various types. 

For these methods of attack we now substitute another, less am- 
bitious, perhaps, because less comprehensive, but not less direct. 
If we can not see how a fowl by its egg and its sperm gives rise to 
a chicken or how a sweet pea from its ovule and its pollen grain 
produces another sweet pea, we at least can watch the system by 
which the differences between the various kinds of fowls or between 
the various kinds of sweet peas are distributed among the offspring. 
By thus breaking the main problem up into its parts we give our- 
selves fresh chances. This analytical study we call Mendelian be- 
cause Mendel was the first to apply it. To be sure, he did not ap- 
proach the problem by any such line of reasoning as I have sketched. 
His object was to determine the genetic definiteness of species; but 
though in his writings he makes no mention of inheritance it is clear 
that he had the extension in view. By cross breeding he combined 
the characters of varieties in mongrel individuals and set himself 
to see how these characters would be distributed among the indi- 
viduals of subsequent generations. Until he began this analysis 
nothing but the vaguest answers to such a question had been attempted. 
The existence of any orderly system of descent was never even sus- 
pected. In their manifold complexity human characteristics seemed 
to follow no obvious system, and the fact was taken as a fair sample 
of the working of heredity. 

Misconception was especially brought in by describing descent in 
terms of “blood.” The common speech uses expressions such as 
consanguinity, pure-blooded, half-blood, and the like, which call up 
a misleading picture to the mind. Blood is in some respects a fluid, 
and thus it is supposed that this fluid can be both quantitatively and 
qualitatively diluted with other bloods, just as treacle can be diluted 
with water. Blood in primitive physiology being the peculiar vehicle 
of life, at once its essence and its corporeal abode, these ideas of 
dilution and compounding of characters in the commingling of 
bloods inevitably suggest that the ingredients of the mixture once 
combined are inseparable, that they can be brought together in any 
relative amounts, and in short that in heredity we are concerned 
mainly with a quantitative problem. ‘Truer notions of genetic 
physiology are given by the Hebrew expression “seed.” If we speak 
of a man as “ of the blood royal” we think at once of plebeian dilu- 
tion, and we wonder how much of the royal fluid is likely to be “in 
his veins”; but if we say he is “of the seed of Abraham” we feel 
something of the permanence and indestructibility of that germ 
which can be divided and scattered among all nations, but remains 
recognizable in type and characteristics after 4,000 years. 


4 


362 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


I knew a breeder who had a chest containing bottles of colored 
liquids by which he used to illustrate the relationships of his dogs, 
pouring from one to another and titrating them quantitatively to 
illustrate their pedigrees. Galton was beset by the same kind of 
mistake when he promulgated his “ Law of Ancestral Heredity.” 
With modern research all this has been cleared away. The allotment 
of characteristics among offspring is not accomplished by the ex- 
udation of drops of a tincture representing the sum of the charac- 
teristics of the parent organism, but by a process of cell division, in 
which numbers of these characters, or rather the elements upon 
which they depend, are sorted out among the resulting germ cells 
in an orderly fashion. What these elements, or factors as we call 
them, are we do not know. That they are in some way directly 
transmitted by the material of the ovum and of the spermatozoon 
is obvious, but it seems to me unlikely that they are in any simple 
or literal sense material particles. I suspect rather that their prop- 
erties depend on some phenomenon of arrangement. However that 
may be, analytical breeding proves that it is according to the dis- 
tribution of these genetic factors, to use a noncommittal term, that 
the characters of the offspring are decided. The first business of 
experimental genetics is to determine their number and interactions, 
and then to make an analysis of the various types of life. 

Now the ordinary genealogical trees, such as those which the stud- 
books provide in the case of the domestic animals, or the Heralds’ 
College provides in the case of man, tell nothing of all this. Such 
methods of depicting descent can not even show the one thing they 
are devised to show—purity of “blood.” For at last we know the 
physiological meaning of that expression. An organism is pure bred 
when it has been formed by the union in fertilization of two germ 
cells which are alike in the factors they bear; and since the factors 
for the several characteristics areindependent ofeach other, this ques- 
tion of purity must be separately considered for each of them. A 
man, for example, may be pure bred in respect of his musical ability 
and crossbred in respect of the color of his eyes or the shape of his 
mouth. Though we know nothing of the essential nature of these fac- 
tors, we know a good deal of their powers. They may confer height, 
color, shape, instincts, powers both of mind and body; indeed,so many 
of the attributes which animals and plants possess that we feel justi- 
fied in the expectation that with continued analysis they will be 
proved to be responsible for most if not all of the differences by which 
the varying individuals of any species are distinguished from each 
other. I will not assert that the greater differences which character- 
ize distinct species are due generally to such independent factors, but 
that is the conclusion to which the available evidence points. AIl this 
is now so well understood, and has been so often demonstrated and 
expounded, that details of evidence are now superfluous. 


* 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 363 


But for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with such work let 
me briefly epitomize its main features and consequences. Since 
genetic factors are definite things, either present in or absent from 
any germ cell, the individual may be either “pure bred” for any 
particular factor, or its absence, if he is constituted by the union of 
two germ cells both possessing or both destitute of that factor. If 
the individual is thus pure, all his germ cells will in that respect be 
identical, for they are simply bits of the similar germ cells which 
united in fertilization to produce the parent organism. We thus 
reach the essential principle, that an organism can not pass onto 
oftspring a factor which it did not itself receive in fertilization. 
Parents, therefore, which are both destitute of a given factor can 
only produce offspring equally destitute of it; and, on the contrary, 
parents both pure bred for the presence of a factor produce offspring 
equally pure bred for its presence. Whereas the germ cells of the 
pure bred are all alike, those of the crossbred, which results from 
the union of dissimilar germ cells, are mixed in character. Each 
positive factor segregates from its negative opposite, so that some 
germ cells carry the factor and some do not. Once the factors have 
been identified by their effects, the average composition of the sev- 
eral kinds of families formed from the various matings can be pre- 
dicted. 

Only those who have themselves witnessed the fixed operations of 
these simple rules can feel their full significance. We come to look 
behind the simulacrum of the individual body and we endeavor to 
disintegrate its features into the genetic elements by whose union the 
body was formed. Set out in cold general phrases such discoveries 
may seem remote from ordinary life. Become familiar with them and 
you will find your outlook on the world has changed. Watch the 
effects of segregation among the living things with which you have 
to do—plants, fowls, dogs, horses, that mixed concourse of humanity 
we call the English race, your friends’ children, your own children, 
yourself—and, however firmly imagination be restrained to the bonds 
of the known and the proved, you will feel something of that range of 
insight into nature which Mendelism has begun to give. The ques- 
tion is often asked whether there are not also in operation systems of 
descent quite other than those contemplated by the Mendelian rules. 
I myself have expected such discoveries, but hitherto none have been 
plainly demonstrated. It is true we are often puzzled by the failure 
of a parental type to reappear in its completeness after a cross—the 
merino sheep or the fantail pigeon, for example. These exceptions 
may still be plausibly ascribed to the interference of a multitude of 
factors, a suggestion not easy to disprove; though it seems to me 
equally likely that segregation has been in reality imperfect. Of the 
descent of quantitative characters we still know practically nothing. 


364 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


These and hosts of difficult cases remain almost untouched. In par- 
ticular the discovery of E. Baur, and the evidence of Winkler in re- 
gard to his “graft hybrids,” both showing that the subepidermal 
layer of a plant—the layer from which the germ cells are derived— 
may bear exclusively the characters of a part only of the soma, give 
hints of curious complications, and suggest that in plants at least the 
interrelations between soma and gamete may be far less simple than 
we have supposed. Nevertheless, speaking generally, we see nothing 
to indicate that qualitative characters descend, whether in plants or 
animals, according to systems which are incapable of factorial rep- 
resentation. 

The body of evidence accumulated by this method of analysis is 
now very large, and is still growing fast by the labors of many 
workers. Progress is also beginning along many novel and curious 
lines. The details are too technical for inclusion here. Suffice it to 
say that not only have we proof that segregation affects a vast range 
of characteristics, but in the course of our analysis phenomena of 
most unexpected kinds have been encountered. Some of these 
things 20 years ago must, have seemed inconceivable. For ex- 
ample, the two sets of sex organs, male and female, of the same plant 
may not be carrying the same characteristics; in some animals char- 
acteristics, quite independent of sex, may be distributed solely or 
predominantly to one sex; in certain species the male may be 
breeding true to its own type, while the female is permanently mon- 
grel, throwing off eggs of a distinct variety in addition to those of 
its own type; characteristics, essentially independent, may be asso- 
ciated in special combinations which are largely retained in the next 
generation, so that among the grandchildren there is numerical pre- 
ponderance of thosa combinations which existed in the grand- 
parents—a discovery which introduces us to a new phenomenon of 
polarity in the organism. 

We are accustomed to the fact that the fertilized egg has a polar- 
ity, a front and hind end, for example; but we have now to recognize 
that it, or the primitiye germinal cells formed from it, may have 
another polarity shown in the groupings of the parental elements. 
I am entirely skeptical as to the occurrence of segregation solely in 
the maturation of the germ cells,t preferring at present to regard it 
aS a special case of that patchwork condition we see in so many 
plants. These mosaics may break up, emitting bud sports at various 
cell divisions, and I suspect that the great regularity seen in the 
F, ratios of the cereals, for example, is a consequence of very late 
segregation, whereas the excessive irregularity found in other cases 

1The fact that in certain plants the male and female organs respectively carry dis- 


tinct factors may be quoted as almost decisively negativing the suggestion that segrega- 
tion is confined to the reduction division. 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 365 


may be taken to indicate that segregation can happen at earlier 
stages of differentiation. 

The paradoxical descent of color blindness and other sex-limited 
conditions, formerly regarded as an inscrutable caprice of nature, 
has been represented with approximate correctness, and we already 
know something as to the way, or, perhaps, I should say ways, in 
which the determination of sex is accomplished in some of the forms 
of life, though, I hasten to add, we have no inkling as to any method 
by which that determination may be influenced or directed. It is 
obvious that such discoveries have bearings on most of the problems, 
whether theoretical or practical, in which animals and plants are 
concerned. Permanence or change of type, perfection of type, 
purity or mixture of race, “racial development,” the succession of 
forms, from being vague phrases expressing matters of degree, are 
now seen to be capable of acquiring physiological meanings, already 
to some extent assigned with precision. For the naturalist—and it 
is to him that I am especially addressing myself to-day—these 
things are chiefly significant as relating to the history of organic 
beings—the theory of evolution, to use our modern name. They 
have, as I shall endeavor to show in my second address to be given 
in Sydney, an immediate reference to the conduct of human society. 

I suppose that everyone is familiar in outline with the theory of 
the origin of species which Darwin promulgated. Through the last 
50 years this theme of the natural selection of favored races has been 
developed and expounded in writings innumerable. Favored races 
certainly can replace others. The argument is sound, but we are 
doubtful of its value. For us that debate stands adjourned. We go 
to Darwin for his incomparable collection of facts. We would fain 
emulate his scholarship, his width, and his power of exposition, but 
to us he speaks no more with philosophical authority. We read his 
scheme of evolution as we would those of Lucretius or of Lamarck, 
delighting in their simplicity and their courage. The practical and 
experimental study of variation and heredity has not merely opened 
a new field; it has given a new point of view and new standards of 
criticism. Naturalists may still be found expounding teleological 
systems' which would have delighted Dr. Pangloss himself, but at 


1] take the following from the abstract of a recent Croonian lecture ‘“‘ On the Origin 
of Mammals” delivered to the Royal Society: ‘‘In Upper Triassic times the larger 
Cynodonts preyed upon the large Anomodont, Kannemeyeria, and carried on their ex- 
istence so long as these Anomodonts survived, but died out with them about the end of 
the Trias or in Rhetie times. The small Cynodonts, haying neither small Anomodonts 
nor small Cotylosaurs to feed on, were forced to hunt the very active long-limbed Theco- 
donts. The greatly increased activity brought about that series of changes which formed 
the mammals—the flexible skin with hair, the four-chambered heart and warm blood, the 
loose jaw with teeth for mastication, an increased development of tactile sensation and 
a great increase of cerebrum. Not improbably the attacks of the newly-evolved Cynodont 
or mammalian type brought about a corresponding evolution in the Psuedosuchian Theco- 
donts which ultimately resulted in the formation of Dinosaurs and Birds,” Broom, R., 
Proc. Roy. Soc. B., 87, p. 88, 


866 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


the present time few are misled. The student of genetics knows that 
the time for the development of theory is not yet. He would rather 
stick to the seed pan and the incubator. 

In face of what we now know of the distribution of variability 
in nature the scope claimed for natural selection in determining the 
fixity of species must be greatly reduced. The doctrine of the sur- 
vival of the fittest is undeniable so long as it is applied to the organ- 
ism as a whole, but to attempt by this principle to find value in all 
definiteness of parts and functions, and in the name of science to see 
fitness everywhere is mere eighteenth-century optimism. Yet it was 
in application to the parts, to the details of specific difference, to the 
spots on the peacock’s tail, to the coloring of an orchid flower, and 
hosts of such examples, that the potency of natural selection was 
urged with the strongest emphasis. Shorn of these pretensions the 
doctrine of the survival of favored races is a truism, helping scarcely 
at all to account for the diversity of species. Tolerance plays almost 
as considerable a part. By these admissions almost the last shred of 
that teleological fustian with which Victorian philosophy loved to 
clothe the theory of evolution is destroyed. Those who would pro- 
claim that whatever is is right will be wise henceforth to base this 
faith frankly on the impregnable rock of superstition and to abstain 
from direct appeals to natural fact. 

My predecessor said last year that in physics the age is one of rapid 
progress and profound skepticism. In at least as high a degree this is 
true of biology, and as a chief characteristic of modern evolutionary 
thought we must confess also to a deep but irksome humility in pres- 
ence of great vital problems. Every theory of evolution must be such 
as to accord with the facts of physics and chemistry, a primary neces- 
sity to which our predecessors paid small heed. For them the un- 
known was a rich mine of possibilities on which they could freely 
draw. For us it is rather an impenetrable mountain out of which the 
truth can be chipped in rare and isolated fragments. Of the physics 
and chemistry of life we know next to nothing. Somehow the char- 
acters of living things are bound up in properties of colloids, and are 
largely determined by the chemical powers of enzymes, but the study 
of these classes of matter has only just begun. Living things are 
found by a simple experiment to have powers undreamt of, and who 
knows what may be behind? 

Naturally we turn aside from generalities. It is no time to discuss 
the origin of the mollusca or of dicotyledons, while we are not even 
sure how it came to pass that Primula obconica has in 25 years pro- 
duced its abundant new forms almost under our eyes. Knowledge of 
heredity has so reacted on our conceptions of variation that very 
competent men are even denying that variation in the old sense is a 
genuine occurrence at all. Variation is postulated as the basis of all 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 367 


evolutionary change. Do we then as a matter of fact find in the 
world about us variations occurring of such a kind as to warrant faith 
in a contemporary progressive evolution? ‘Till lately most of us 
would have said “ yes” without misgiving. We should have pointed, 
as Darwin did, to the immense range of diversity seen in many wild 
species, so commonly that the difficulty is to define the types them- 
selves. Still more conclusive seemed the profusion of forms in the 
various domesticated animals and plants, most of them incapable of 
existing even for a generation in the wild state, and therefore fixed 
unquestionably by human selection. These, at least, for certain, are 
new forms, often distinct enough to pass for species, which have 
arisen by variation. But when analysis is applied to this mass of 
variation the matter wears a different aspect. Closely examined, what 
is the “ variability ” of wild species? What is the natural fact which 
is denoted by the statement that a given species exhibits much varia- 
tion? Generally one of two things; either that the individuals col- 
lected in one locality differ among themselves, or perhaps more often 
that samples from separate localities differ from each other. As 
direct evidence of variation it is clearly to the first of these phe- 
nomena that ~< must have recourse—the heterogeneity of a popula- 
tion breeding together in one area. This heterogeneity may be in any 
degree, ranging from slight differences that systematists would disre- 
gard, to a complex variability such as we find in some moths, where 
there is an abundance of varieties so distinct that many would be 
classified as specific forms, but for the fact that all are freely breeding 
together. Naturalists formerly supposed that any of these varieties 
might be bred from any of the others. Just as the reader of novels 
is prepared to find that any kind of parents might have any kind of 
children in the course of the story, so was the evolutionist ready to 
believe that any pair of moths might produce any of the varieties 
included in the species. Genetic analysis has disposed of all these 
mistakes. We have no longer the smallest doubt that in all these ex- 
amples the varieties stand in a regular descending order, and that 
they are simply terms in a series of combinations of factors separately 
transmitted, of which each may be present or absent. 

The appearance of contemporary variability proves to be an illu- 
sion. Variation from step to step in the series must occur either by 
the addition or by the loss of a factor. Now, of the origin of new 
forms by loss there seems to me to be fairly clear evidence, but of the 
contemporary acquisition of any new factor I see no satisfactory 
proof, though I admit there are rare examples which may be so in- 
terpreted. We are left with a picture of variation utterly different 
from that which we saw at first. Variation now stands out as a 
definite physiological event. We have done with the notion that Dar- 
win came latterly to favor, that large differences can arise by accumu- 


3868 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


lation of small differences. Such small differences are often mere 
ephemeral effects of conditions of life, and as such are not trans- 
missible; but even small differences, when truly genetic, are factorial 
like the larger ones, and there is not the slightest reason for supposing 
that they are capable of summation. As to the origin or source of 
these positive separable factors, we are without any indication or 
surmise. By their effects we know them to be definite, as definite, say, 
as the organisms which produce diseases; but how they arise and how 
they come to take part in the composition of the living creature so 
that when present they are treated in cell-division as constituents of 
the germs, we can not conjecture. 

It was a commonplace of evolutionary theory that at least the 
domestic animals have been developed from a few wild types. Their 
origin was supposed to present no difficulty. The various races of 
fowl, for instance, all came from Gallus bankiva, the Indian jungle 
fowl. So we are taught; but try to reconstruct the steps in their 
evolution and you realize your hopeless ignorance. To be sure there 
are breeds, such as Black-red Game and Brown Leghorns, which have 
the colors of the jungle fowl, though they differ in shape and other 
respects. As we know so little as yet of the genetics of shape, let us 
assume that those transitions could be got over. Suppose, further, as 
is probable, that the absence of the maternal instinct in the Leghorn 
is due to loss of one factor which the jungle fowl possesses. So far 
we are on fairly safe ground. But how about White Leghorns? 
Their origin may seem easy to imagine, since white varieties have 
often arisen in well-authenticated cases. But the white of White 
Leghorns is not, as white in nature often is, due to the loss of the 
color elements, but to the action of something which inhibits their 
expression. Whence did that something come? The same question 
may be asked respecting the heavy breeds, such as Malays or Indian 
Game. Each of these is a separate introduction from the East. To 
suppose that these, with their peculiar combs and close feathering, 
could have been developed from preexisting European breeds is very 
difficult. On the other hand, there is no wild species now living any 
more like them. We may, of course, postulate that there was once 
such a species, now lost. That is quite conceivable, though the sug- 
gestion is purely speculative. I might thus go through the list of 
domesticated animals and plants of ancient origin and again and 
again we should be driven to this suggestion, that many of their 
distinctive characters must have been derived from some wild origi- 
nal now lost. Indeed, to this unsatisfying conclusion almost every 
careful writer on such subjects is now reduced. If we turn to modern 
evidence the case looks even worse. The new breeds of domestic 
animals made in recent times are the carefully selected products of 
recombination of preexisting breeds. Most of the new varieties of 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 369 


cultivated plants are the outcome of deliberate crossing. There is 
generally no doubt in the matter. We have pretty full histories of 
these crosses in gladiolus, orchids, cineraria, begonia, calceolaria, 
pelargonium, etc. A very few eertainly arise from a single origin. 
The sweet pea is the clearest case, and there are others which I should 
name with hesitation. The cyclamen is one of them, but we know 
that efforts to cross cyclamens were made early in the cultural history 
of the plant, and they may well have been successful. Several plants 
for which single origins are alleged, such as the Chinese primrose, 
the dahlia, and tobacco, came to us in an already domesticated state, 
and their origins remain altogether mysterious. Formerly single 
origins were generally presumed, but at the present time numbers of 
the chief products of domestication, dogs, horses, cattle, sheep, poul- 
try, wheat, oats, rice, plums, cherries, have in turn been accepted as 
“polyphyletic” or, in other words, derived from several distinct 
forms. The reason that has led to these judgments is that the dis- 
tinctions between the chief varieties can be traced as far back as the 
evidence reaches, and that these distinctions are so great, so far 
transcending anything that we actually know variation capable of 
effecting, that it seems pleasanter to postpone the difficulty, relegat- 
ing the critical differentiation to some misty antiquity into which we 
shall not be asked to penetrate. For it need scarcely be said that 
this is mere procrastination. If the origin of a form under domesti- 
cation is hard to imagine, it becomes no easier to conceive of such 
enormous deviations from type coming to pass in the wild state. 
Examine any two thoroughly distinct species which meet each other 
in their distribution, as for instance, Lychnis diurna and vespertina 
do. In areas of overlap are many intermediate forms. ‘These used 
to be taken to be transitional steps, and the specific distinctness of 
vespertina and diurna was on that account questioned. Once it is 
known that these supposed intergrades are merely mongrels between 
the two species the transition from one to the other is practically be- 
yond our powers of imagination to conceive. If both these can sur- 
vive, why has their common parent perished? Why, when they 
cross, do they not reconstruct it instead of producing partially sterile 
hybrids? I take this example to show how entirely the facts were 
formerly misinterpreted. 

When once the idea of a true-breeding—or, as we say, homo- 
zygous—type is grasped, the problem of variation becomes an insist- 
ent oppression. What can make such a type vary? We know, of 
course, one way by which novelty can be introduced—by crossing. 
Cross two well-marked varieties—for instance, of Chinese Primula—- 
each breeding true, and in the second generation by mere recombi- 
nation of the various factors which the two varental types severally 


18618°—sm 1915 24 


870 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


introduced, there will be a profusion of forms, utterly unlike each 


other, distinct also from the original parents. Many of these can _ 


be bred true, and if found wild would certainly be described as good 
species. Confronted by the difficulty I have put before you, and 
contemplating such amazing polymorphism in the second generation 
from a cross in Antirrhinuwm, Lotsy has lately with great courage 
suggested to us that all variation may be due to such crossing. I do 
not disguise my sympathy with this effort. After the blind compla- 
cency of conventional evolutionists it is refreshing to meet so frank an 
acknowledgment of the hardness of the problem. Lotsy’s utterance 
will at least do something to expose the artificiality of systematic 
zoology and botany. Whatever might or might not be revealed by 
experimental breeding, it is certain that without such tests we are 
merely guessing when we profess to distinguish specific limits and 
to declare that this is a species and that a variety. The only defin- 
able unit in classification is the homozygous form which breeds true. 
When we presume to say that such and such differences are trivial 
and such others valid, we are commonly embarking on a course for 
which there is no physiological warrant. Who could have foreseen 
that the apple and the pear—so like each other that their botanical 
differences are evasive—could not be crossed together, though species 
of Antirrhinum so totally unlike each other as majus and molle can 
be hybridized, as Baur has shown, without a sign of impaired fer- 
tility? Jordan was perfectly right. The true-breeding forms which 
he distinguished in such multitudes are real entities, though the great 
systematists, dispensing with such laborious analysis, have pooled 
them into arbitrary Linnean species, for the convenience of collectors 
and for the simplification of catalogues. Such pragmatical consid- 
erations may mean much in the museum, but with them the student 
of the physiology of variation has nothing to do. These “little 
species,” finely cut, true breeding, and innumerable mongrels between 
them, are what he finds when he examines any so-called variable type. 
On analysis the semblance of variability disappears, and the illusion 
is shown to be due to segregation and recombination of series of 
factors on predetermined lines. As soon as the “little species” are 
separated out they are found to be fixed. In face of such a result 
we may well ask with Lotsy, Is there such a thing as spontaneous 
variation anywhere? His answer is that there is not. 

Abandoning the attempt to show that positive factors can be added 
to the original stock, we have further to confess that we can not 
often actually prove variation by loss of factor to be a real phenom- 
enon. lLotsy doubts whether even this phenomenon occurs. The 
sole source of variation, in his view, is crossing. But here I think 
he is on unsafe ground.. When a well-established variety like “ Crim- 
son King” Primula, bred by Messrs. Sutton in thousands of in- 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 371 


dividuals, gives off, as it did a few years since, a salmon-colored 
variety, “ Coral King,” we might claim this as a genuine example of 
variation by loss. ‘The new variety is a simple recessive. It differs 
from “ Crimson King” only in one respect, the loss of a single color- 
factor, and, of course, bred true from its origin. To account for the 
appearance of such a new form by any process of crossing is exceed- 
ingly difficult. From the nature of the case there can have been no 
cross since “ Crimson King” was established, and hence the salmon 
must have been concealed as a recessive from the first origin of that 
variety, even when it was represented by very few individuals, prob- 
ably only by a single one. Surely, if any of these had been hetero- 
zygous for salmon this recessive could hardly have failed to appear 
during the process of self-fertilization by which the stock would 
be multiplied, even though that selfing may not have been strictly 
carried out. Examples like this seem to me practically conclusive.’ 
They can be challenged, but not, I think, successfully. Then again 
in regard to those variations in number and division of parts which 
we call meristic, the reference of these to original cross-breeding is 
surely barred by the circumstances in which they often occur. There 
remain also the rare examples mentioned already in which a single 
wild origin may with much confidence be assumed. In spite of re- 
peated trials, no one has yet succeeded in crossing the sweet pea with 
any other leguminous species. We know that early in its cultivated 
history it produced at least two marked varieties, which I can only 
conceive of as spontaneously arising, though, no doubt, the profusion 
of forms we now have was made by the crossing of those original 
varieties. JI mention the sweet pea thus prominently for another 
reason, that it introduces us to another though subsidiary form of 
variation, which may be described as a fractionation of factors. 
Some of my Mendelian colleagues have spoken of genetic factors as 
permanent and indestructible. Relative permanence in a sense they 
have, for they commonly come out unchanged after segregation. But 
I am satisfied that they may occasionally undergo a quantitative dis- 
integration, with the consequence that varieties are produced inter- 
mediate between the integral varieties from which they were derived. 
These disintegrated conditions I have spoken of as subtraction—or 
reduction—stages. For example, the Picotee Sweet Pea, with its 
purple edges, can surely be nothing but a condition produced by the 
factor which ordinarily makes the fully purple flower, quantitatively 
diminished. The pied animal, such as the Dutch rabbit, must simi- 
larly be regarded as the result of partial defect of the chromogen 
from which the pigment is formed, or conceivably of the factor which 


1The numerous and most interesting ‘‘ mutations” recorded by Prof. T. H. Morgan 
and his colleagues in the fly, Drosophila, may also be cited as unexceptionable cases, 


372 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


effects its oxidation. On such lines I think we may with great con- 
fidence interpret all those intergrading forms which breed true and 
are not produced by factorial interference. 

It is to be inferred that these fractional degradations are the con- 
sequence of irregularities in segregation. We constantly see irregu- 
larities in the ordinary meristic processes and in the distribution of 
somatic differentiation. We are familiar with half segments, with 
imperfect twinning, with leaves partially petaloid, with petals par- 
tially sepaloid. All these are evidences of departures from the 
normal regularity in the rhythms of repetition or in those waves of 
differentiation by which the qualities are sorted out among the parts 
of the body. Similarly, when in segregation the qualities are sorted 
out among the germ cells in certain critical cell divisions, we can not 
expect these differentiating divisions to be exempt from the imper- 
fections and irregularities which are found in all the grosser divi- 
sions that we can observe. If I am right, we shall find evidence of 
these irregularities in the association of unconformable numbers 
with the appearance of the novelties which I have called fractional. 
In passing let us note how the history of the sweet pea belies those 
ideas of a continuous evolution with which we had formerly to con- 
tend. The big varieties came first. The little ones have arisen later, 
as I suggest, by fractionation. Presented with a collection of modern 
sweet peas, how prettily would the devotees of continuity have 
arranged them in a graduated series, showing how every intergrade 
could be found, passing from the full color of the wild Sicilian 
species in one direction to white, in the other to the deep purple of 
“Black Prince,” though happily we know these two to be among the 
earliest to have appeared. 

Having in view these and other considerations which might be 
developed, I feel no reasonable doubt that, though we may have to 
forego a claim to variations by addition of factors, yet variation both 
by loss of factors and by fractionation of factors is a genuine phe- 
nomenon of contemporary nature. If then we have to dispense, as 
seems likely, with any addition from without we must begin seri- 
ously to consider whether the course of evolution can at all reasonably 


be represented as an unpacking of an original complex which con-— 
tained within itself the whole range of diversity which living things — 
present. I do not suggest that we should come to a judgment as to — 


what is or is not probable in these respects. As I have said already, 
this is no time for devising theories of evolution, and I propound 
none. But, as we have got to recognize that there has been an 
evolution, that somehow or other the forms of life have arisen from 
fewer forms, we may as well see whether we are limited to the old 
view that evolutionary progress is from the simple to the complex, 


and whether after all it is conceivable that the process was the other 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 373 


way about. When the facts of genetic discovery become familiarly 
_known to biologists and cease to be the preoccupation of a few, as 
they still are, many and long discussions must inevitably arise on 
the question, and I offer these remarks to prepare the ground. I 
ask you simply to open your minds to this possibility. It involves 
a certain effort. We have to reverse our habitual modes of thought. 
At first it may seem rank absurdity to suppose that the primordial 
form or forms of protoplasm could have contained complexity 
enough to produce the divers types of life. But is it easier to 
imagine that these powers could have been conveyed by extrinsic 
additions? Of what nature could these additions be? Additions of 
material can not surely be in question. We are told that salts of 
iron in the soil may turn a pink hydrangea blue. The iron can not 
be passed on to the next geenration. How can the iron multiply 
itself? The power to assimilate the iron is all that can be trans- 
mitted. A disease-producing organism like the pebrine of silkworms 
can in a very few cases be passed on through the germ cells. Such 
an organism ean multiply and can produce its characteristic effects 
in the next generation. But it does not become part of the invaded 
host, and we can not conceive it taking part in the geometrically 
ordered processes of segregation. These illustrations may seem too 
gross; but what refinement will meet the requirements of the problem, 
that the thing introduced must be, as the living organism itself is, 
capable of multiplication and of subordinating itself in a definite 
system of segregation? That which is conferred in variation must 
rather itself be a change—not of material but of arrangement, or 
of motion. The invocation of additions extrinsic to the organism 
does not seriously help us to imagine how the power to change can 
be conferred, and if it proves that hope in that direction must be 
abandoned, I think we lose very little. By the rearrangement of 
a very moderate number of things we soon reach a number of possi- 
bilities practically infinite. 

That primordial life may have been of small dimensions need not 
disturb us. Quantity is of no account in these considerations. 
Shakespeare once existed as a speck of protoplasm not so big as a 
small pin’s head. To this nothing was added that would not equally 
well have served to build up a babboon or a rat. Let us consider 
how far we can get by the process of removal of what we call 
“ epistatic ” factors, in other words, those that control, mask, or sup- 
press underlying powers and faculties. I have spoken of the vast 
range of colors exhibited by modern sweet peas. There is no ques- 
tion that these have been derived from the one wild bicolor form by 
a process of successive removals. When the vast range of form, 
size, and flavor to be found among the cultivated apples is con- 
sidered, it seems difficult to suppose that all this variety is hidden 


374 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


in the wild crab apple. I can not positively assert that this is so, 
but I think all familiar with Mendelian analysis would agree with 
me that it is probable and that the wild crab contains presumably 
inhibiting elements which the cultivated kinds have lost. The legend 
that the seedlings of cultivated apples become crabs is often repeated. 
After many inquiries among the raisers of apple seedlings, I have 
never found an authentic case; once only even an alleged case, and 
this on inquiry proved to be unfounded. I have confidence that the 
artistic gifts of mankind will prove to be due not to something 
added to the makeup of an ordinary man but to the absence of 
factors which in the normal person inhibit the development of 
these gifts. They are almost beyond doubt to be looked upon as 
releases of powers normally suppressed. ‘The instrument is there, 
but at is“ stopped down.” The scents of flowers or fruits, the finely 
repeated divisions that give its quality to the wool of the Merino or, 
in an analogous case, the multiplicity of quills to the tail of the fine 
tail pigeon are in all probability other examples of such releases. 
You may ask what guides us in the discrimination of the positive 
factors and how we can satisfy ourselves that the appearance of a 
quality is due to loss. It must be conceded that in these determina- 
tions we have as yet recourse only to the effects of dominance. When 
the-tall pea is crossed with the dwarf, since the offspring is tall we 
say that the tall parent passed a factor into the crossbred which 
makes it tall. The pure tall parent had two doses of this factor, the 
dwarf had none; and since the crossbred is tall we say that one dose 
of the dominant tallness is enough to give the full height. The 
reasoning seems unanswerable. But the commoner result of crossing 
is the production of a form intermediate between the two pure 
parental types. In such examples we see clearly enough that the 
full parental characteristics can only appear when they are homo- 
zygous—formed from similar germ cells—and that one dose is insufli- 
cient to produce either effect Fale: When this is so we can never be 
sure which side is positive and which negative. Since, then, when 
dominance is incomplete we find ourselves in this difficulty, we per- 
ceive that the amount of the effect is our only criterion in distinguish- 
ing the positive from the negative, and when we return, even to the 
example of the tall and dw foe peas, the matter is not so certain as 
it seemed. Prof. Cockerell lately found among thousands of yellow 
sunflowers one which was partly red. By breeding he raised from 
this a form wholly red. Evidently the yellow and the wholly red 
are the pure forms and the partially red is the heterozygote. We 
may then say that the yellow is YY with two doses of a positive 
factor which inhibits the development of pigment, the red is yy 
with no dose of the inhibitor, and the partially red are Yy with only 
one dose of it. But we might be tempted to think the red was a 


Rees 


a 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 875 


positive characteristic and invert the expressions, representing the 
red as 2A, the partly red as Rr, and the yellow as rr. <Accord- 
ing as we adopt the one or the other system of expression we shall 
interpret the evolutionary change as one of loss or as one of addition. 
May we not interpret the other apparent new dominants in the 
same way? The white dominant in the fowl or in the Chinese 
primula can inhibit color. But may it not be that the original 
colored fowl or primula had two doses of a factor which inhibited 
this inhibitor? The pepper moth, Amphidasys betularia, produced 
in England about 1840 a black variety, then a novelty, now common 
in certain areas, which behaves as a full dominant. The pure blacks 
are no blacker than the crossbred. Though at first sight it seems that 
the black must have been something added, we can without absurdity 
suggest that the normal -is the term in which two doses of inhibitor 
are present, and that in the absence of one of them the black appears. 

In spite of seeming perversity, therefore, we have to admit that 
there is no evolutionary change which in the present state of our 
knowledge we can positively declare to be not due to loss. When this 
has been conceded it is natural to ask whether the removal of inhibit- 
ing factors may not be invoked in alleviation of the necessity which 
has driven students of the domestic breeds to refer their diversities 
to multiple origins. Something, no doubt, is to be hoped for in that 
direction, but not until much better and more extensive knowledge 
of what variation by loss may effect in the hving body can we have 
any real assurance that this difficulty has been obviated. We should 
be greatly helped by some indication as to whether the origin of 
life has been single or multiple. Modern opinion is, perhaps, inclin- 
ing to the multiple theory, but we have no real evidence. Indeed, 
the problem still stands outside the range of scientific investigation, 
and when we hear the spontaneous formation of formaldehyde men- 
tioned as a possible first step in the origin of life we think of Harry 
Lauder in the character of a Glasgow schoolboy pulling out his 
treasures from his pocket— That’s a wassher—for makkin’ motor 
cars.” 

As the evidence stands at present all that can be safely added in 
amplification of the evolutionary creed may be summed up in the 
statement that variation occurs as a definite event, often producing a 
sensibly discontinuous result; that the succession of varieties comes 
to pass by the elevation and establishment of sporadic groups of 
individuals owing their origin to such isolated events; and that the 
change which we see as a nascent variation is often, perhaps always, 
one of loss. Modern research lends not the smallest encouragement 
or sanction to the view that gradual evolution occurs by the trans- 
formation of masses of individuals, though that fancy has fixed 
itself on popular imagination. The isolated events to which varia- 


376 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


tion is due are evidently changes in the germinal tissues, probably 
in the manner in which they divide. It is likely that the occurrence 
of these variations is wholly irregular, and as to their causation we 
are absolutely without surmise or even plausible speculation. Dis- 
tinct types once arisen, no doubt a profusion of the forms called 
species have been derived from them by simple crossing and subse- 
quent recombination. New species may be now in course of creation 


by this means, but the limits of the process are obviously narrow. | 


On the other hand, we see no changes in progress around us in the 
contemporary world which we can imagine likely to culminate in the 
evolution of forms distinct in the larger sense. By intercrossing 


dogs, jackals, and wolves new forms of these types can be made, . 


some of which may be species, but I see no reason to think that from 
such material a fox could be bred in indefinite time or that dogs 
could be bred from foxes. 

Whether science will hereafter discover that certain groups can by 
peculiarities in their genetic physiology be declared to have a pre- 
rogative quality justifying their recognition as species in the old 
sense, and that the differences of others are of such a subordinate 
degree that they may in contrast be termed varieties, further genetic 
research alone can show. I myself anticipate that such a discovery 
will be made, but I can not defend the opinion with positive con- 
viction. 

Somewhat reluctantly, and rather from a sense of duty, I have 
- devoted most of this address to the evolutionary aspects of genetic 
research. We can not keep these things out of our heads, though 
sometimes we wish we could. The outcome, as you will have seen, is 
negative, destroying much that till lately passed for gospel. De- 
struction may be useful, but it is a low kind of work. We are just 
about where Boyle was in the seventeenth century. We can dispose 
of Alchemy, but we can not make more than a quasi-chemistry. We 
are awaiting our Priestly and our Mendeléeff. In truth it is not 
these wider aspects of genetics that are at present our chief concern. 
They will come in their time. The great advances of science are 
made like those of evolution, not by imperceptible mass improve- 
ment, but by the sporadic birth of penetrative genius. The journey- 
men follow after him, widening and clearing up, as we are doing 
along the track that Mendel found. 


PART II. 


At Melbourne I spoke of the new knowledge of the properties of 
hving things which Mendelian analysis has brought us. I indicated 
how these discoveries are affecting our outlook on that old problem 
of natural history, the origin and nature of species, and the chief 


\ 
+ 
be 


. 


HEREDITY—BATESON, 877 


conclusion I drew was the negative one, that, though we must hold 
to our faith in the evolution of species, there is little evidence as to 
how it has come about and no clear proof that the process is con- 
tinuing in any considerable degree at the present time. The thought 
uppermost in our minds is that knowledge of the nature of life is 
altogether too slender to warrant speculation on these fundamental 
subjects. Did we presume to offer such speculations they would have 
no more value than those which alchemists might have made as to 
the nature of the elements. But though in regard to these theoretical 
aspects we must confess to such deep ignorance, enough has been 
learned of the general course of heredity within a single species to 
justify many practical conclusions which can not in the main be 
shaken. I propose now to develop some of these conclusions in re- 
gard to our own species—man. 

In my former address I mentioned the condition of certain animals 
and plants which are what we call “ polymorphic.” Their popula- 
tions consist of individuals of many types, though they breed freely 
together with perfect fertility. In cases of this kind which have been 
sufficiently investigated it has been found that these distinctions— 
sometimes very great and affecting most diverse features of organiza- 
tion-——are due to the presence or absence of elements, or factors, as 
we call them, which are treated in heredity as separate entities. 
These factors and their combinations produce the characteristics 
which we perceive. No individual can acquire a particular charac- 
teristic unless the requisite factors entered into the composition of 
that individual at fertilization, being received either from the father 
or from the mother, or from both, and consequently no individual can 
pass on to his offspring positive characters which he does not himself 
possess. Rules of this kind have already been traced in operation in 
the human species, and though I admit that an assumption of some 
magnitude is involved when we extend the application of the same 
system to human characteristics in general, yet the assumption is one 
which I believe we are fully justified in making. With little hesita- 
tion we can now declare that the potentialities and aptitudes, physical 
as well as mental, sex, colors, powers of work or invention, lability 
to diseases, possible duration of life, and the other features by which 
the members of a mixed population differ from each other, are deter- 
mined from the moment of fertilization, and by all that we know of 
heredity in the forms of life with which we can experiment we are 
compelled to believe that these qualities are in the main distributed on 
a factorial system. By changes in the outward conditions of life the 
expression of some of these powers and features may be excited or 
restrained. For the development of some an external opportunity is 
needed, and if that be withheld the character is never seen any more 


378 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


than if the body be starved can the full height be attained, but such 
influences are not superficial and do not alter the genetic constitution. 

The factors which the individual receives from his parents and no 
others are those which he can transmit to his offspring; and if a fac- 
tor was received from one parent only, not more than half the off- 
spring, on an average, will inherit it. What is it that has so long pre- 
vented mankind from discovering such simple facts? Primarily the 
circumstance that as man must have two parents it is not possible 
quite easily to detect the contributions of each. The individual body 
is a double structure, whereas the germ cells are single. Two germ 
cells unite to produce each individual body, and the ingredients they 
respectively contribute interact in ways that leave the ultimate prod- 
uct a medley in which it is difficult to identify the several ingredients. 
When, however, their effects are conspicuous the task is by no means 
impossible. In part also even physiologists have been blinded by the 
survival of ancient and obscurantist conceptions of the nature of man 
by which they were discouraged from the application of any rigorous 
analysis. Medical literature still abounds with traces of these archa- 
isms, and, indeed, it is only quite recently that prominent horse 
breeders have come to see that the dam matters as much as the sire. 
For them, though vast pecuniary considerations were involved, the 
old “homunculus” theory was good enough. We were amazed at the 
notions of genetic physiology which Prof. Baldwin Spencer encount- 
ered in his wonderful researches among the natives of Central Aus- 
tralia; but in truth, if we reflect that these problems have engaged the 
attention of civilized man for ages, the fact that he, with all his 
powers of recording and deduction, failed to discover any part of the 
Mendelian system is almost as amazing. The popular notion that any 
parents can have any kind of children within the racial limits 1s con- 
trary to all experience, yet we have gravely entertained such ideas. 
As I have said elsewhere, the truth might have been found out at any 
period in the world’s history if only pedigrees had been drawn the 
right way up. If, instead of exhibiting the successive pairs of pro- 
genitors who have contributed to the making of an ultimate indi- 
vidual, some one had had the idea of setting out the posterity of a 
single ancestor who possessed a marked feature such as the Hapsburg 
lip, and showing the transmission of this feature along some of the 
descending branches and the permanent loss of the feature in col- 
laterals, the essential truth that heredity can be expressed in terms of 
presence and absence must have at once become apparent. For the 
descendant is not, as he appears in the conventional pedigree, a sort of 
pool into which each tributary ancestral stream has poured some- 
thing, but rather a conglomerate of ingredient characters taken from 
his progenitors in such a way that some ingredients are represented 
and others are omitted. 


Then aids Bah) Te AAO ei ng omni Behr OF ia 


eA 


ee ee ee ee ne ae a ee er 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 8379 


Let me not, however, give the impression that the unravelling of 
such descents is easy. Even with fairly full details, which in the 
case of man are very rarely to be had, many complications occur, 
often preventing us from obtaining more than a rough general indica- 
tion of the system of descent. The nature of these complications we 
partly understand from our experience of animals and plants which 
are amenable to breeding under careful restrictions, and we know 
that they are mostly referable to various effects of interaction be- 
tween factors by which the presence of some is masked. 

Necessarily the clearest evidence of regularity in the inheritance 
of human characteristics has been obtained in regard to the descent 
of marked abnormalities of structure and congenital diseases. Of 
the descent of ordinary distinctions such as are met with in the 
normal healthy population we know little for certain. Hurst’s evi- 
dence, that two parents both with light-colored eyes—in the strict 
sense, meaning that no pigment is present on the front of the iris— 
do not have dark-eyed children, still stand almost alone in this re- 
spect. With regard to the inheritance of other color-character- 
istics some advance has been made, but everything points to the in- 
ference that the genetics of color and many other features in man 
will prove exceptionally complex. There are, however, plenty of 
indications of system comparable with those which we trace in 
various animals and plants, and we are assured that to extend and 
clarify such evidence is only a matter of careful analysis. For the 
present, in asserting almost any general rules for human descent, 
we do right to make large reservations for possible exceptions. It 
is tantalizing to have to wait, but of the ultimate result there can be 
no doubt. 

I spoke of complications. Two of these are worth illustrating 
here, for probably both of them play a great part in human genetics. 
It was discovered by Nilsson-Ehle, in the course of experiments with 
certain wheats, that several factors having the same power may co- 
exist in the same individual. These cumulative factors do not neces- 
sarily produce a cumulative effect, for any one of them may suflice to 
give the full result. Just as the pure-bred tall pea with its two 
factors for tallness is no taller than the cross-bred with a single 
factor, so these wheats with three pairs of factors for red color are 
no redder than the ordinary reds of the same family. Similar 
observations have been made by East and others. In some cases, as 
in the Primulas studied by Gregory, the effect is cumulative. These 
results have been used with plausibility by Davenport and the 
American workers to elucidate the curious case of the mulatto. If 
the descent of color in the cross between the negro and the white man 
followed the simplest rule, the offspring of two first-cross mulattos 
would be, on an average, one black, two mulattos, one white, but this 


880 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


is notoriously not so. Evidence of some segregation is fairly clear, 
and the deficiency of real whites may perhaps be accounted for on 
the hypothesis of cumulative factors, though by the nature of the case 
strict proof is not to be had. But at present I own to a preference 
for regarding such examples as instances of imperfect segregation. 
The series of germ-cells produced by the cross-bred consists of some 
with no black, some with full black, and others with intermediate 
quantities of black. No statistical tests of the condition of the 
gametes in such cases exist, and it is likely that by choosing suitable 
crosses all sorts of conditions may be found, ranging from the 
simplest case of total segregation, in which there are only two forms 
of gametes, up to those in which there are all intermediates in various 
proportions. This at least is what general experience of hybrid 
products leads me to anticipate. Segregation is somehow effected by 
the rhythms of cell-division, if such an expression may be permitted. 
In some cases the whole factor is so easily separated that it is swept 
out at once; in others it is so intermixed that gametes of all degrees 
of purity may result. That is admittedly a crude metaphor, but as 
yet we can not substitute a better. Be all this as it may, there are 
many signs that in human heredity phenomena of this kind are com- 
mon, whether they indicate a multiplicity of cumulative factors or 
imperfections in segregation. Such phenomena, however, in no way 
detract from the essential truths that segregation occurs, and that 
the organism can not pass on a factor which it has not itself received. 

In human heredity we have found some examples, and I believe 
that we shall find many more, in which the descent of factors is lim- 
ited by sex. The classical instances are those of color blindness and 
hemophilia. Both these conditions occur with much greater fre- 
quency in males than in females. Of color blindness at least we know 
that the sons of the color-blind man do not inherit it (unless the 
mother is a transmitter) and do not transmit it to their children of 
either sex. Some, probably all, of the daughters of the color-blind 
father inherit the character, and though not themselves color blind, 
they transmit it to some (probably on an average half) of their off- 
spring of both sexes. For since these normal-sighted women have 
only received the color blindness from one side of their parentage, 
only half their offspring on an average can inherit it. The sons who 
inherit the color blindness will be color blind and the inheriting 
daughters become themselves again transmitters. Males with nor- 
mal color vision, whatever their own parentage, do not have color- 
blind descendants, unless they marry transmitting women. There 
are points still doubtful in the interpretation, but the critical fact is 
clear, that the germ cells of the color-blind man are of two kinds—(i) 
those which do not carry on the affection and are destined to take part 
in the formation of sons, and (11) those which do carry on the color 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 381 


blindness and are destined to form daughters. There is evidence 
that the ova also are similarly predestined to form one or other of 
the sexes, but to discuss the whole question of sex determination is 
beyond my present scope. The descent of these sex-limited affections 
nevertheless calls for mention here, because it is an admirable illus- 
tration of factorial predestination. It moreover exemplifies that 
parental polarity of the zygote, to which I alluded in my first ad- 
dress—a phenomenon which we suspect to be at the bottom of various 
anomalies of heredity, and suggests that there may be truth in the 
popular notion that in some respects sons resemble their mothers and 
daughters their fathers. 

As to the descent of hereditary diseases and malformations, how- 
ever, we have abundant data for deciding that many are transmitted 
as dominants and a few as recessives. The most remarkable collec- 
tion of these data is to be found in family histories of diseases of the 
eye. Neurology and dermatology have also contributed many very 
instructive pedigrees. In great measure the ophthalmological ma- 
terial was collected by Edward Nettleship, for whose death we so 
lately grieved. After retiring from practice as an oculist he devoted 
several years to this most laborious task. He was not content with 
hearsay evidence, but traveled incessantly, personally examining all 
accessible members of the families concerned, working in such a way 
that his pedigrees are models of orderly observation and recording. 
His zeal stimulated many younger men to take part in the work, and 
it will now go on, with the result that the systems of descent of all 
the common hereditary diseases of the eye will soon be known with 
approximate accuracy. 

Give a little imagination to considering the chief deduction from 
this work. Technical details apart, and granting that we can not 
wholly interpret the numerical results, sometimes noticeably more 
and sometimes fewer descendants of these patients being affected 
than Mendelian formule would indicate, the expectation is that in 
the case of many diseases of the eye a large proportion of the chil- 
dren, grandchildren, and remoter descendants of the patients will be 
affected with the disease. Sometimes it is only defective sight that is 
transmitted; in other cases it is blindness, either from birth or com: 
ing on at some later age. The most striking example perhaps is that 
form of night blindness still prevalent in a district near Montpellier, 
which has affected at least 130 persons, all descending from a single 
affected individualt who came into the country in the seventeenth 
century. The transmission is in every case through an affected 


1 The first human descent proved to follow Mendelian rules was that of a serious mal- 
formation of the hand studied by Farabee in America. Drinkwater subsequently worked 
out pedigrees for the same malformation in England. After many attempts, he now tells 
me that he has succeeded in proving that the American family and one of his own had 
an abnormal ancestor in common, five generations ago. 


3882 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


parent, and no normal has been known to pass on the condition. 
Such an example well serves to illustrate the fixity of the rules of 
descent. Similar instances might be recited relating to a great 
variety of other conditions, some trivial, others grave. 

At various times it has been declared that men are born equal and 
that the inequality is brought about by unequal opportunities. Ac- 
quaintance with the pedigrees of disease soon shows the fatuity of 
such fancies. The same conclusion, we may be sure, would result 
from the true representation of the descent of any human faculty. 
Never since Galton’s publications can the matter have been in any 
_ doubt. At the time he began to study family histories even the broad 
significance of heredity was frequently denied, and resemblances to 
parents or ancestors were looked on as interesting curiosities. In- 
veighing against hereditary political institutions, Tom Paine remarks 
that the idea is as absurd as that of an “hereditary wise man,” or 
an “hereditary mathematician,’ and to this day I suppose many 
people are not aware that he is saying anything more than commonly 
foolish. We, on the contrary, would feel it something of a puzzle if 
two parents, both mathematically gifted, had any children not mathe- 
maticians. Galton first demonstrated the overwhelming importance 
of these considerations, and had he not been misled, partly by the 
theory of pangenesis, but more by his mathematical instincts and 
training, which prompted him to apply statistical treatment rather 
than qualitative analysis, he might, not improbably, have discovered 
the essential facts of Mendelism. 

It happens rarely that science has anything to offer to the common 
stock of ideas at once so comprehensive and so simple that the courses 
of our thoughts are changed. Contributions to the material progress 
of mankind are comparatively frequent. They result at once in 
application. Transit is quickened; communication is made easier; 
the food supply is increased and population multiplied. By direct 
application to the breeding of animals and plants such results must 
even flow from Mendel’s work. But I imagine the greatest practical 
change likely to ensue from modern genetic discovery will be a quick- 
ening of interest in the true nature of man and in the biology of 
races. I have spoken cautiously as to the evidence for the operation 
of any simple Mendelian system in the descent of human faculty; yet 
the certainty that systems which differ from the simpler schemes only 
in degree of complexity are at work in the distribution of characters 
among the human population can not fail to influence our concep- 
tions of life and of ethics, leading perhaps ultimately to modification 
of social usage. That change can not but be in the main one of 
simplification. The eighteenth century made great pretense of a 
return to nature, but it did not occur to those philosophers first to 
inquire what nature is; and perhaps not even the patristic writings 


j 
| 
| 
| 
f 
| 
. 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 383 


contain fantasies much further from physiological truth than those 
which the rationalists of the “ Enclyclopedia” adopted as the basis 
of their social schemes. For men are so far from being born equal or 
similar that to the naturalist they stand as the very type of a poly- 
morphic species. Even most of our local races consist of many dis- 
tinct strains and individual types. From the population of any 
ordinary English town as many distinct human breeds could in a 
few generations be isolated as there are now breeds of dogs, and 
indeed such a population in its present state is much what the dogs 
of Europe would be in 10 years’ time but for the interference of the 
fanciers. Even as at present constituted, owing to the isolating 
effects of instinct, fashion, occupation, and social class, many in- 
cipient strains already exist. 

In one respect civilized man differs from all other species of animal 
or plant in that, having prodigious and ever-increasing power over 
nature, he invokes these powers for the preservation and maintenance 
of many of the inferior and all the defective members of his species. 
The inferior freely multiply, and the defective, if their defects be not 
so grave as to lead to their detention in prisons or asylums, multiply 
also without restraint. Heredity being strict in its action, the conse- 
quences are in civilized countries much what they would be in the 
kennels of the dog breeder who continued to preserve all his puppies, 
good and bad; the proportion of defectives increases. The increase is 
so considerable that outside every great city there is a smaller town 
inhabited by defectives and those who wait on them. Round London 
we have a ring of such towns with some 30,000 inhabitants, of whom 
about 28,000 are defective, largely, though, of course, by no means 
entirely, bred from previous generations of defectives. Now, it is not 
for us to consider practical measures. As men of science we observe 
natural events and deduce conclusions from them. I may perhaps be 
allowed to say that the remedies proposed in America, in so far as 
they aim at the eugenic regulation of marriage on a comprehensive 
scale, strike me as devised without regard to the needs either of in- 
dividuals or of a modern State. Undoubtedly if they decide to breed 
their population of one uniform puritan gray, they can do it in a few 
generations; but I doubt if timid respectability will make a nation 
happy, and I am sure that qualities of a different sort are needed if it 
is to compete with more vigorous and more varied communities. 
Everyone must have a preliminary sympathy with the aims of 
eugenists both abroad and at home. Their efforts at the least are 
doing something to discover and spread truth as to the physiological 
structure of society. The spirit of such organizations, however, 
almost of necessity suffers from a bias toward the accepted and 
the ordinary, and if they had power it would go hard with many 
ingredients of society that could be ill-spared, I notice an ominous 


384 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


passage in which even Galton, the founder of eugenics, feeling per- 
haps some twinge of his Quaker ancestry, remarks that “as the 
Bohemianism in the nature of our race is destined to perish, the 
sooner it goes, the happier for mankind.” It is not the eugenists who 
will give us what Plato has called divine releases from the common 
ways. If some fancier with the catholicity of Shakespeare would 
take us in hand, well and good; but I would not trust even Shakes- 
peares meeting as a committee. Let us remember that Beethoven’s 
father was an habitual drunkard and that his mother died of con- 
sumption. From the genealogy of the patriarchs also we learn, 
“what may very well be the truth,” that the fathers of such as 
dwell in tents, and of all such as handle the harp or organ, and the 
instructor of every artificer in brass and iron—the founders, that is 
to say, of the arts and the sciences—came in direct descent from 
Cain, and not in the posterity of the irreproachable Seth, who is to 
us, as he probably was also in the narrow circle of his own con- 
temporaries, what naturalists call a nomen nudum. 

Genetic research will make it possible for a nation to elect by what 
sort of beings it will be represented not very many generations hence, 
much as a farmer can decide whether his byres shall be full of short- 
horns or Herefords. It will be very surprising, indeed, if some 
nation does not make trial of thisnew power. They may make awful 
mistakes, but I think they will try. 

Whether we like it or not, extraordinary and far-reaching changes 
in public opinion are coming to pass. Man is just beginning to know 
himself for what he is—a rather long-lived animal, with great powers 
of enjoyment if he does not deliberately forego them. Hitherto 
superstition and mythical ideas of sin have predominantly controlled 
these powers. Mysticism will not die out; for those strange fancies 
knowledge is no cure; but their forms may change, and mysticism 
as a force for the suppression of joy is happily losing its hold on the 
modern world. As in the decay of earlier religions, Ushabti dolls 
were substituted for human victims, so telepathy, necromancy, and 
other harmless toys take the place of eschatology and the inculcation 
of a ferocious moral code. Among the civilized races in Europe we 
are witnessing an emancipation from traditional contro] in thought, 
in art, and in conduct which is likely to have prolonged and won- 
derful influences. Returning to freer or, if you will, simpler con- 
ceptions of life and death, the coming generations are determined 
to get more out of this world than their forefathers did. Is it, then, 
to be supposed that when science puts into their hand means for 
the alleviation of suffering immeasurable, and for making this 
world a happier place, that they will demur to using those powers? 
The intenser struggle between communities is only now beginning, 
and with the approaching exhaustion of that capital of energy 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 385 


stored in the earth before man began it must soon become still more 
fierce. In England some of our great-grandchildren will see the 
end of the easily accessible coal, and, failing some miraculous dis- 
covery of available energy, a wholesale reduction in population. 
There are races who have shown themselves able at a word to throw 
off all tradition and take into their service every power that science 
has yet offered them. Can we expect that they, when they see how 
to rid themselves of the ever-increasing weight of a defective popu- 
lation, will hesitate? The time can not be far distant when both 
individuals and communities will begin to think in terms of bio- 
logical fact, and it behooves those who lead scientific thought care- 
fully to consider whither action should lead. At present I ask you 
merely to observe the facts. The powers of science to preserve the 
defective are now enormous. Every year these powers increase. 
This course of action must reach a limit. To the deliberate inter- 
vention of civilization for the preservation of inferior strains there 
must sooner or later come an end, and before long nations will realize 
the responsibility they have assured i in multiplyi ing these “ cankers 
of a calm world and a long peace.” 

The definitely feeble-minded we may with propriety restrain, as 
we are beginning to do even in England, and we may safely prevent 
unions in which both parties are defective, for the evidence shows 
that as a rule such marriages, though often prolific, commonly pro- 
duce no normal children at all. The union of such social vermin 
we should no more permit than we would allow parasites to breed 
on our own bodies. Further than that in restraint of marriage we 
ought not to go, at least not yet. Something, too, may be done by 
a reform of medical ethics. Medical students are taught that it is 
their duty to prolong life at whatever cost in suffering. This may 
have been right when diagnosis was uncertain and interference 
usually of small effect, but deliberately to interfere now for the 
preservation of an infant so gravely diseased that it can never be 
happy or come to any good is very like wanton cruelty. In private 
few men defend such interference. Most who have seen these cases 
lingering on agree that the system is deplorable, but ask where can 
any line be drawn. The biologist would reply that in all ages such 
decisions have been made by civilized communities with fair suc- 
cess both in regard to crime and in the closely analogous case of 
lunacy. The real reason why these things are done is because the 
world collectively cherishes occult views of the nature of life, be- 
cause the facts are realized by few, and because between the legal 
mind—to which society has become accustomed to defer—and the 

seeing eye, there is such physiological antithesis that hardly can 
they be combined in the same body. So soon as scientific knowledge 


18618°—sm 1915——25 


886 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


becomes common property, views more reasonable and, I may add, 
more humane, are likely to prevail. 

To all these great biological problems that modern society must 
sooner or later face there are many aspects besides the obvious ones. 
Infant mortality we are asked to lament without the slightest 
thought of what the world would be like if the majority of these 
infants were to survive. The decline in the birth rate in countries 
already overpopulated is often deplored, and we are told that a 
nation in which population is not rapidly increasing must be in a 
decline. The slightest acquaintance with biology, or even schoolboy 
natural history, shows that this inference may be entirely wrong, 
and that before such a question can be decided in one way or the 
other hosts of considerations must be taken into account. In normal 
stable conditions population is stationary. The laity never appre- 
clates what is so clear to a biologist, that the last century and a 
quarter corresponding with the great rise in population has been an 
altogether exceptional period. To our species this period has been 
what its early years in Australia were to the rabbit. The exploita- 
tion of energy capital of the earth in coal, development of the new 
countries, and the consequent pouring of food into Europe, the 
application of antiseptics, these are the things that have enabled 
the human population to increase. I do not doubt that if popula- 
tion were more evenly spread over the earth it might increase very 
much more, but the essential fact is that under any stable conditions 
a limit must be reached. A pair of wrens will bring off a dozen 
young every year, but each year you will find the same number of 
pairs in your garden. In England the limit beyond which under 
present conditions of distribution increase of population is a source 
of suffering rather than of happiness has been reached already. 
Younger communities living in territories largely vacant are very 
probably right in desiring and encouraging more population. In- 
crease may, for some temporary reason, be essential to their pros- 
perity. But those who live, as I do, among thousands of creatures 
in a state of semistarvation will realize that too few is better than 
too many, and will acknowledge the wisdom of Ecclesiasticus who 
said, “ Desire not a multitude of unprofitable children.” 

But at least it is often urged that the decline in the birth rate of 
the intelligent and successful sections of the population (I am speak- 
ing of the older communities) is to be regretted. Even this can not 
be granted without qualification. As the biologist knows, differenti- 
ation is indispensable to progress. If population were homogeneous 
civilization would stop. In every army the officers must be com- 
paratively few. Consequently, if the upper strata of the community 
produce more children than will recruit their numbers some must fall 
into the lower strata and increase the pressure there. Statisticians 


HEREDITY—-BATESON. 887 


tell us that an average of four children under present conditions is 
sufficient to keep the number constant, and as the expectation of life 
is steadily improving we may perhaps contemplate some diminution 
of that number without alarm. 

In the study of history biological treatment is only beginning to be 
applied. For us the causes of the success and failure of races are 
physiological events, and the progress of man has depended upon a 
chain of these events, like those which have resulted in the “ improve- 
ment” of the domesticated animals and plants. It is obvious, for 
example, that had the cereals never been domesticated cities could 
scarcely have existed. But we may go further, and say that in tem- 
perate countries of the Old World (having neither rice nor maize) 
populations concentrated in large cities have been made possible by 
the appearance of a “thrashable” wheat. The ears of the wild 
wheats break easily to pieces, and the grain remains in the thick husk. 
Such wheat can be used for food, but not readily. Ages before 
written history began, in some unknown place, plants, or more likely 
a plant, of wheat lost the dominant factor to which this brittleness is 
due, and the recessive, thrashable wheat resulted. Some man noticed 
this wonderful novelty, and it has been disseminated over the earth. 
The original variation may well have occurred once only in a single 
germ-cell. 

So must it have been with man. Translated into terms of factors, 
how has that progress in control of nature which we call civilization 
been achieved? By the sporadic appearance of variations mostly, 
perhaps all, consisting in a loss of elements, which inhibit the free 
working of the mind. The members of civilized communities, when 
they think about such things at all, imagine the process a gradual 
one, and that they themselves are active agents in it. Few, however, 
contribute anything but their labor; and except in so far as they have 
freedom to adopt and imitate, their physiological composition is that 
of an earlier order of beings. Annul the work of a few hundreds—I 
might almost say scores—of men, and on what plane of civilization 
should we be? We should not have advanced beyond the medieval 
stage without printing, chemistry, steam, electricity, or surgery 
worthy the name. These things are the contributions of a few ex- 
cessively rare minds. Galton reckoned those to whom the term 
“illustrious ” might be applied as one in a million, but in that number 
he is, of course, reckoning men famous in ways which add nothing to 
universal progress. To improve by subordinate invention, to dis- 
cover details missed, even to apply knowledge never before applied, 
all these things need genius in some degree, and are far beyond the 
powers of the average man of our race; but the true pioneer, the man 
whose penetration creates a new world, as did that of Newton and of 
Pasteur, is inconceivably rare. But for a few thousands of such men 


388 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


we should perhaps be in the Palaeolithic era, knowing neither metals, 
writing, arithmetic, weaving, nor pottery. 

In the history of art the same is true, but with this remarkable 
difference, that not only are gifts of artistic creation very rare, but 
even the faculty of artistic enjoyment, not to speak of higher powers 
of appreciation, is not attained without variation from the common 
type. I am speaking, of course, of the non-Semitic races of modern 
Europe, among whom the power whether of making or enjoying 
works of art is confined to an insignificant number of individuals. 
Appreciation can in some degree be simulated, but in our population 
there is no widespread physiological appetite for such things. When 
detached from the centers where they are made by others, most of us 
pass our time in great contentment, making nothing that is beautiful, 
and quite unconscious of any deprivation. Musical taste is the most 
notable exception, for in certain races—for example, the Welsh and 
some of the Germans—it is almost universal. Otherwise, artistic 
faculty is still sporadic in its occurrence. The case of music well 
illustrates the application of genetic analysis to human faculty. No 
one disputes that musical ability is congenital. In its fuller mani- 
festation it demands sense of rhythm, ear, and special nervous and 
muscular powers. Each of these is separable and doubtless geneti- 
cally distinct. Each is the consequence of a special departure from 
the common type. Teaching and external influences are powerless to 
evoke these faculties, though their development may be assisted. The 
only conceivable way in which the people of England, for example, 
could become a musical nation would be by the gradual rise in the 
proportional numbers of a musical strain or strains until the present 
type became so rare as to be negligible. It by no means follows that 
in any other respect the resulting population would be distinguish- 
able from the present one. Difficulties of this kind beset the efforts 
of anthropologists to trace racial origins. It must continually be re- 
membered that most characters are independently transmitted and 
capable of such recombination. In the light of Mendelian knowledge 
the discussion whether a race is pure or mixed loses almost all 
significance. A race is pure if it breeds pure and not otherwise. 
Historically we may know that a race like our own was, as a matter 
of fact, of mixed origin. But a character may have been introduced 
by a single individual, though subsequently it becomes common to the 
race. This is merely a variant on the familiar paradox that in the 
course of time if registration is accurate we shall all have the same 
surname. In the case of music, for instance, the gift, originally per- 
haps from a Welsh source, might permeate the nation, and the ques- 
tion would then arise whether the nation, so changed, was the 
English nation or not, 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 389 


Such a problem is raised in a striking form by the population of 
modern Greece, and especially of Athens. The racial characteristics 
of the Athenian of the fifth century B. C. are vividly described by 
Galton in “ Hereditary Genius.” The fact that in that period a 
population, numbering many thousands, should have existed, capable 
of following the great plays at a first hearing, revelling in subtleties 
of speech, and thrilling with passionate delight in beautiful things, 
is physiologically a mest smgular phenomenon. On the basis of the 
number of illustrious men produced by that age Galton estimated 
the average intelligence as at least two of his degrees above our own, 
differing from us as much as we do from the Negro. A few genera- 
tions later the display was over. The origin of that constellation 
of human genius which then blazed out is as yet beyond all biological 
analysis, but I think we are not altogether without suspicion of the 
sequence of the biological events. If I visit a poultry breeder who 
has a fine stock of thoroughbred game fowls breeding true, and 10 
years later—that is to say, 10 fowl-generations later—I go again 
and find scarcely a recognizable game fowl] on the place, I know 
exactly what has happened. One or two birds of some other or of 
no breed must have strayed in and their progeny been left unde- 
stroyed. Now, in Athens, we have many indications that up to the 
beginning of the fifth century so long as the phratries and gentes 
were maintained in their integrity there was rather close endogamy, 
a condition giving the best chance of producing a homogeneous pop- 
ulation. There was no lack of material from which intelligence 
and artistic power might be derived. Sporadically these qualities 
existed throughout the ancient Greek world from the dawn of his- 
tory, and, for example, the vase painters, the makers of the Tanagra 
figurines, and the gem cutters were presumably pursuing family 
crafts, much as are the actor families! of England or the profes- 
sorial families of Germany at the present day. How the intellectual 
strains should have acquired predominance we can not tell, but in 
an in-breeding community homogeneity at least is not surprising. 
At the end of the sixth century came the “reforms” of Cleisthenes 
(507 B. C.), which sanctioned foreign marriages and admitted to 
citizenship a number not only of resident aliens but also of manu- 
mitted slaves. As Aristotle says, Cleisthenes legislated with the 
deliberate purpose of breaking up the phratries and gentes, in order 
that the various sections of the population might be mixed up as 
much as posible, and the old tribal associations abolished. The 
“reform” was probably a recognition and extension of a process 
already begun; but is it too much to suppose that we have here the 
effective beginning of a series of genetic changes which in a few 
generations so greatly altered the character of the people? Under 


1¥For tables of these families, see the Supplement to Who’s Who in the Theater. 


390 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Pericles the old law was restored (451 B. C.), but losses in the great 
wars led to further laxity in practice, and though at the end of the 
fifth century the strict rule was reenacted that a citizen must be of 
citizen birth on both sides, the population by that time may well 
have become largely mongrelized. 

Let me not be construed as arguing that mixture of races is an 
evil, far from it. A population like our own, indeed, owes much of 
its strength to the extreme diversity of its components, for they con- 
tribute a corresponding abundance of aptitudes. Everything turns 
‘on the nature of the ingredients brought in, and I am concerned 
solely with the observation that these genetic disturbances lead ulti- 
mately to great and usually unforeseen changes in the nature of the 
population. 

Some experiments of this kind are going on at the present time, 
in the United States, for example, on a very large scale. Our grand- 
children may live to see the characteristics of the American popula- 
tion entirely altered by the vast invasion of Italian and other South 
European elements. We may expect that the Eastern States, and 
especially New England, whose people still exhibit the fine Puritan 
qualities, with their appropriate limitations, absorbing little of the 
alien elements, will before long be in feelings and aptitudes very 
notably differentiated from the rest. In Japan also, with the aboli- 
tion of the feudal system and the rise of commercialism, a change in 
population has begun which may be worthy of the attention of nat- 
uralists in that country. Till the revolution the Samurai almost 
always married within their own class, with the result, as I am in- 
formed, that the caste had fairly recognizable features. The changes 
of 1868 and the consequent impoverishment of the Samurai have 
brought about.a beginning of disintegration which may not improb- 
ably have perceptible effects. 

How many genetic vicissitudes has our own peerage undergone. 
Into the hard-fighting stock of medieval and Plantagenet times have 
successively been crossed the cunning shrewdness of Tudor states- 
men and courtiers, the numerous contributions of Charles II and 
his concubines, reinforcing peculiar and persistent attributes which 
popular imagination especially regards as the characteristic of peers, 


ultimately the heroes of finance and industrialism. Definitely intel- | 


lectual elements have been sporadically added—with rare exceptions, 
however—from the ranks of lawyers and politicians. To this aris- 
tocracy art, learning, and science have contributed sparse ingredi- 
ents, but these mostly chosen for celibacy or childlessness. A re- 
markable body of men, nevertheless; with an average “ horsepower,” 
as Samuel Butler would have said, far exceeding that of any random 
sample of the middle class. If only man could be reproduced by 
budding what a simplification it would be. In vegetative repro- 


eae ill 


HEREDITY—BATESON, 891 


duction heredity is usually complete. The Washington plum can 
be divided to produce as many identical individuals as are required. 
If, say, Washington, the statesman, or preferably King Solomon, 
could similarly have been propagated, all the nations of the earth 
could have been supplied with ideal rulers. 

Historians commonly ascribe such changes as occurred in Athens, 
and will almost certainly come to pass in the United States, to con- 
ditions of life, and especially to political institutions. These 
agencies, however, do little unless they are such as to change the 
breed. External changes may indeed give an opportunity to special 
strains, which then acquire ascendency. The industrial developments 
which began at the end of the eighteenth century, for instance, gave 
a chance to strains till then submerged, and their success involved 
the decay of most of the old aristocratic families. But the dema- 
gogue who would argue from the rise of the one and the fall of the 
other that the original relative positions were not justifiable alto- 
gether mistakes the facts. 

Conditions give opportunities but cause no variations. For ex-. 
ample, in Athens, to which I just referred, the universality of culti- 
vated discernment could never have come to pass but for the 
institution of slavery which provided the opportunity, but slavery 
was in no sense a cause of that development, for many other popu- 
lations have lived on slaves and remained altogether inconspicuous. 

The long-standing controversy as to the relative importance of 
nature and nurture, to use Galton’s “convenient jingle of words,” 
is drawing to an end, and of the overwhelmingly greater significance 
of nature there is no longer any possibility of doubt. It may be 
well briefly to recapitulate the arguments on which naturalists rely 
in coming to this decision both as regards races and individuals. 
First, as regards human individuals, there is the common experience 
that children of the same parents, reared under conditions sensibly 
identical, may develop quite differently, exhibiting in character and 
aptitudes a segregation just as great as in their colors or hair forms. 
Conversely all the more marked aptitudes have at various times 
appeared and not rarely reached perfection in circumstances the 
least faverable for their development. Next, appeal can be made to 
the universal experience of the breeder, whether of animals or plants, 
that strain is absolutely essential; that though bad conditions may 
easily enough spoil a good strain, yet that under the best conditions 
a bad strain will never give a fine result. It is faith, not evidence, 
which encourages educationists and economists to hope so greatly 
in the ameliorating effects of the conditions of life. Let us consider 
what they can do and what they can not. By reference to some 
sentences in a charming though pathetic book, “‘ What Is, and What 
Might Be,” by Mr. Edmond Holmes, which will be well known in 


392 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


the educational section, I may make the point of view of us natu- 
ralists clear. I take Mr. Holmes’s pronouncement partly because 
he is an enthusiastic believer in the efficacy of nurture as opposed 
to nature, and also because he illustrates his views by frequent 
appeals to biological analogies which help us to a common ground. 
Wheat badly cultivated will give a bad yield, though, as Mr. Holmes 
truly says, wheat of the same strain in similar soil well cultivated 
may give a good harvest. But, having witnessed the success of a 
great natural teacher in helping unpromising peasant children to 
develop their natural powers, he gives us another botanical parallel. 
Assuming that the wild bullace is the origin of domesticated plums, 
he tells us that by cultivation the bullace can no doubt be improved 
so far as to become a better bullace, but by no means can the bullace 
be made to bear plums. All this is sound biology; but translating 
these facts into the human analogy, he declares that the work of 
the successful teacher shows that with man the facts are otherwise, 
and that the average rustic child, whose normal ideal is “ bullace- 
hood,” can become the rare exception, developing to a stage corre- 
sponding with that of the plum. But the naturalist knows exactly 
where the parallel is at fault. For the wheat and the bullace are 
both breeding approximately true, whereas the human crop, like 
jute and various cottons, is in a state of polymorphic mixture. The 
population of many English villages may be compared with the crop 
which would result from sowing a bushel of kernels gathered mostly 
from the hedges, with an occasional few from an orchard. If any- 
one asks how it happens that there are any plum kernels in the sam- 
ple at all, he may find the answer perhaps in spontaneous variation, 
but more probably in the appearance of a long-hidden recessive. 
For the want of that genetic variation, consisting probably, as I 
have argued, in loss of inhibiting factors, by which the plum arose 
from the wild form, neither food, nor education, nor hygiene can 
in any way atone. Many wild plants are half starved/through com- 
petition, and transferred to garden soil they grow much bigger; so 
good conditions might certainly enable the bullace population to 
develop beyond the stunted physical and mental stature they com- 
monly attain, but plums they can never be. Modern statesmanship 
aims rightly at helping those who have got sown as wildings to 
come into their proper class; but let not any one suppose such a 
policy democratic in its ultimate effects, for no course of action can 
be more effective in strengthening the upper classes whilst weaken- 
ing the lower. 

In all practical schemes for social reform the congenital diversity, 
the essential polymorphism of all civilized communities, must be 
recognized as a fundamental fact, and reformers should rather direct 
their efforts to facilitating and rectifying class distinctions than to 


HEREDITY—BATESON. 393 


any futile attempt to abolish them. The teaching of biology is per- 
fectly clear. We are what we are by virtue of our differentiation. 
The value of civilization has in all ages been doubted. Since, how- 
ever, the first variations were not strangled in their birth we are 
launched on that course of variability of which civilization is the con- 
sequence. We can not go back to homogeneity again, and differentiated 
we are likely to continue. For a period measures designed to create 
a spurious homogeneity may be applied. Such attempts will, I an- 
ticipate, be made when the present unstable social state reaches a 
climax of instability, which may not be long hence. Their effects 
can be but evanescent. The instability is due not to inequality, 
which is inherent and congenital, but rather to the fact that in 
periods of rapid change, like the present, convection currents are set 
up such that the elements of the strata get intermixed, and the 
apparent stratification corresponds only roughly with the genetic. 
In a few generations under uniform conditions these elements settle 
in their true levels once more. 

In such equilibrium is content most surely to be expected. To the 
naturalist the broad lines of solution of the problems of social dis- 
content are evident. They lie neither in vain dreams of a mystical 
and disintegrating equality nor in the promotion of that malignant 
individualism which in older civilizations has threatened mortifica- 
tion of the humbler organs, but rather in a physiological coordina- 
tion of the constituent parts of the social organism. The rewards of 
commerce are grossly out of proportion to those attainable by in- 
tellect or industry. Even regarded as compensation for a dull life, 
they far exceed the value of the services rendered to the community. 
Such disparity is an incident of the abnormally rapid growth of 
population and is quite indefensible as a permanent social condition. 
Nevertheless capital, distinguished as a provision for offspring, is 
a eugenic institution; and unless human instinct undergoes some pro- 
found and improbable variation abolition of capital means the aboli- 
tion of effort. But as in the body the power of independent growth 
of the parts is limited and subordinated to the whole; similarly in 
the community we may limit the powers of capital, preserving so 
much inequality of privilege as corresponds with physiological fact. 

At every turn the student of political science is confronted with 
problems that demand biological knowledge for their solution. Most 
obviously is this true in regard to education, the criminal law, and 
all those numerous branches of policy and administration which are 
directly concerned with the physiological capacities of mankind. 
Assumptions as to what can be done and what can not be done to 
modify individuals and races have continually to be made, and the 
basis of fact on which such decisions are founded can be drawn only 
from biological study. 


394 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


A knowledge of the facts of nature is not yet deemed an essential 
part of the mental equipment of politicians; but as the priest who 
began in other ages as medicine man has been obliged to abandon 
the medical parts of his practice, so will the future behold the school- 
master, the magistrate, the lawyer, and ultimately the statesman, 
compelled to share with the naturalist those functions which are 
concerned with the physiology of race. 


SOME ASPECTS OF PROGRESS IN MODERN ZOOLOGY.’ 


By Epmwunp B. WILSON, 


Columbia University. 


It is our privilege to live in a time of almost unexampled progress 
in natural science, a time distinguished alike by discoveries of the 
first magnitude and by far-reaching changes in method and in point 
of view. The advances of recent years have revolutionized our con- 
ceptions of the structure of matter and have seriously raised the ques- 
tion of the transmutation of the chemical elements. They have con- 
tinually extended the proofs of organic evolution but have at the 
same time opened wide the door to a reexamination of its conditions, 
its causes, and its essential nature. Such has been the swiftness of 
these advances that some effort is still required to realize what re- 
markable new horizons of discovery they have brought into view. 
A few years ago the possibility of investigating by direct experi- 
‘ment the internal structure of atoms, or the topographical grouping 
of hereditary units in the germ cells, would have seemed a wild 
dream. To-day these questions stand among the substantial reali- 
ties of scientific inquiry. And lest we should lose our heads amid 
advances so sweeping, the principles that guide scientific research 
have been subjected as never before to critical examination. We 
have become more circumspect in our attitude toward natural “ laws.” 
We have attained to a clearer view of our working hypotheses—of 
their uses and their limitations. With the best of intentions we do 
not always succeed in keeping them clear of metaphysics, but at least 
we have learned to try. We perceive more and more clearly that 
science does not deal with ultimate problems or with final solutions. 
In order to live science must move. She attempts no more than to 
win successive points of vantage which may serve, one after another, 
as stepping stones to further progress. When these have played their 
part they are often left behind as the general advance proceeds. 

In respect to the practical applications of science we have almost 
ceased to wonder at incredible prodigies of achievement, yet in some 


1 Address of the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 
Philadelphia, Dec. 28, 1914. Printed by permission of author. 


395 


896 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


directions they retain a hold on our imagination that daily familiar- 
ity can not shake. Not in our time, at least, will the magnificent 
conquests of sanitary science and experimental medicine sink to the 
level of the commonplace. Science here renders her most direct and 
personal service to human welfare; and here in less direct ways she 
plays a part in the advance of our civilization that would have been 
inconceivable to our fathers. Popular writers delight to portray the 
naturalist as a kind of reanimated antediluvian, wandering aimlessly 
in a modern world where he plays the part of a harmless visionary; 
but what master of romance would have had the ingenuity to put inte 
the head of his mythical naturalist a dream that the construction of 
the Panama Canal would turn upon our acquaintance with the natu- 
ral history of the mosquito, or that the health and happiness of 
nations—nay, their advance in science, letters, and the arts—might 
depend measurably on the cultivation of our intimacy with the fam- 
ily lives of house files, fleas, and creatures of still more dubious ante- 
cedants. 

Fourteen years ago to-night it was my privilege to deliver an 
address before the American Society of Naturalists, entitled “Aims 
and Methods of Study in Natural History,”? in which I indicated 
certain important changes that were then rapidly gathering head- 
way in zoology. To-night I once more ask attention to this subject 
as viewed in the fuller light of the remarkable period of progress 
through which biology has since been passing. I will not try to 


range over the whole vast field of zoology or to catalogue its specific 


advances. I will only permit myself a few rather desultory reflec- 
tions suggested by a retrospect upon the progress of the past 25 
years. If my view is not fully rounded, if it is colored by a long 
standing habit of looking at biological phenomena through the eyes 
of an embryologist, I will make no apology for what I am not able 
to avoid. Let me remind you also at how many points the boundaries 
between this and other branches of biology have become obliterated. 
The traditional separation between zoology and botany, for instance, 
has lost all significance for such subjects as genetics or cytology. 
Again, the artificial boundary often set up between zoology and ani- 
mal physiology has wholly disappeared, owing to the extension of 
experimental methods to morphology and of comparative methods 
to physiology. I trust therefore that our brethren in botany and 
physiology—perhaps I should include also those in psychology— 
will not take it amiss if I include them with us under the good, old- 
fashioned name of naturalists. 

The sum and substance of biological inquiry may be embodied in 
two questions: What is the living organism, and how has it come to 


1 Science, N. 8S., vol. 13, no, 314, Jan. 4, 1901. 


PROGRESS IN ZOOLOGY—WILSON. 397 


be? We often find it convenient to lay the emphasis on one or the 
other of these questions, but fundamentally they are inseparable. 
The existing animal bears the indelible impress of its past; the ex- 
tinct animal can be comprehended only in the light of the present. 
For instance, the paleontologist is most directly concerned with prob- 
lems of the past, but at every step he is confronted by phenomena 
only to be comprehended through the study of organisms as they 
now are. Our main causal analysis of evolution must be carried out 
by experimental studies on existing forms. All this seems self- 
evident, yet the singular fact is that only in more recent years have 
students of evolution taken its truth fully to heart. And here lies 
the key to the modern movement in zoology of which I propose to 
speak. 

I do not wish to dwell on matters of ancient history, but permit 
me a word concerning the conditions under which this movement 
first began to take definite shape as the nineteenth century drew to- 
ward its close. In the first three decades after the “Origin of 
Species” studies upon existing animals were largely dominated by 
efforts to reconstruct their history in the past. Many of us will 
recall with what ardor naturalists of the time threw themselves into 
this profoundly interesting task. Many of us afterwards turned to 
work of widely different type; but have our later interests, I wonder, 
been keener or more spontaneous than those awakened by the mor- 
phological-historical problems, some of them already half forgotten, © 
which we then so eagerly tried to follow? I am disposed to doubt it. 
The enthusiasm of youth? No doubt; but something more, too. 
Efforts to solve those problems have in the past often failed; they 
no longer occupy a place of dominating importance; but they will 
continue so long as biology endures, because they are the offspring 
of an ineradicable historical instinct, and their achievement stands 
secure in the great body of solid fact which they have built into the 
framework of our science. Says Poincaré: 

The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old 
edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evo- 
lution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecog- 
nizable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the 
prior work of the centuries past. One must not think, then, that the old- 
fashioned theories have been sterile and vain. 

And, after all, science impresses us by something more than the 
cold light of her latest facts and formulas. The drama of progress, 
whether displayed in the evolution of living things or in man’s age- 
long struggle to comprehend the world of which he is a product, 
stirs the imagination by a warmer appeal. Without it we should miss 
something that we fain would keep—something, one may suspect, 


398 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


that has played an important part at the higher levels of scientific 
achievement. 

I seem to have been caught unawares in the:act of moralizing. 
If so, let it charitably be set down as an attempt to soften the hard 
fact that 30 years after the “ Origin of Species” we found ourselves 
growing discontented with the existing methods and results of phy- 
logenetic inquiry and with current explanations of evolution and 
adaptation. Almost as if by a preconcerted plan, naturalists began 
to turn aside from historical problems in order to learn more of 
organisms as they now are. They began to ask themselves whether 
they had not been overemphasizing the problems of evolution at 
the cost of those presented by life processes everywhere before our 
eyes to-day. They awoke to the insufficiency of their traditional 
methods of observation and comparison and they turned more and 
more to the method by which all the great conquests of physico- 
chemical science had been achieved, that which undertakes the analy- 
sis of phenomena by deliberate control of the conditions under which 
they take place—the method of experiment. Its steadily increasing 
importance is the most salient feature of the new zoology. 

Experimental work in zoology is as old as zoology itself; never- 
theless, the main movement in this direction belongs to the past two 
decades. I will make no attempt to trace its development; but let 
me try to suggest somewhat of its character and consequences by a 
few outlines of what took place in embryology. 

The development of the egg has always cast a peculiar spell on 
the scientific imagination. As we follow it hour by hour in the 
living object we witness a spectacular exhibition that seems to bring 
us very close to the secrets of animal life. It awakens an irrepres- 
sible desire to look below the surface of the phenomena, to penetrate 
the mystery of development. The singular fact, nevertheless, is 
that during the phylogenetic period of embryological research this 
great problem, though always before our eyes, seemed almost to be 
forgotten in our preoccupation with purely historical questions-— 
such as the origin of vertebrates or of annelids, the homologies of 
germ layers, gill slits or nephridia, and a hundred others of the same 
type. Now, these questions are and always will remain of great 
interest; but embryology, as at last we came to see, is but indirectly 
connected with historical problems of this type. The embryologist 
seeks first of all to attain to some understanding of development. 
It was therefore a notable event when, in the later eighties, a small 
group of embryologists headed by Wilhelm Roux turned away from 
the historical aspects of embryology and addressed themselves to 
experiments designed solely to throw light upon the mechanism of 
development. The full significance of this step first came home to 


PROGRESS IN ZOOLOGY—wILSON. 399 


us in the early nineties with Driesch’s memorable discovery that by 
a simple mechanical operation we can at will cause one egg to pro- 
duce two, or even more than two, perfect embryos. I will not pause 
to inquire why this result should have seemed so revolutionary. 
It was as if the scales had fallen from our eyes. With almost a 
feeling of shock we took the measure of our ignorance and saw the 
whole problem of development reopened. 

The immediate and most important result of this was to stimulate 
a great number of important objective investigations in embryology. 
But let me pause for a moment to point out that at nearly the same 
time a similar reawakening of interest in the experimental investi- 
gation of problems of the present became evident in many other 
directions—for example, in studies on growth and regeneration; on 
cytology and protozoology; on economic biology; on ecology, the 
‘behavior of animals and their reactions to stimuli; on heredity, varia- 
tion and selection. The leaven was indeed at work in almost every 
field of zoology, and everywhere led to like results. It was a day of 
rapid obliteration of conventional boundary lines; of revolt from 
speculative systems toward the concrete and empirical methods of 
the laboratory; of general and far-reaching extension of experi- 
mental methods in our science. 

But I will return to embryology. It may be doubted whether any 
period in the long history of this science has been more productive 
of varied and important discoveries than that which followed upon 
its adoption of experimental methods. In one direction the embry- 
ologist went forward to investigations that brought him into inti- 
mate relations with the physicist, the chemist, the pathologist, and 
even the surgeon. A flood of light was thrown on the phenomena 
of development by studies on differentiation, regeneration, trans- 
plantation, and grafting; on the development of isolated blastomeres 
and of egg fragments; on the symmetry and polarity of the egg; on 
the relations of development to mechanical, physical, and chemical 
conditions in the environment; on isolated living cells and tissues,. 
cultivated like microorganisms, outside the body in vitro; on fertili- 
zation, artificial parthenogenesis, and the chemical physiology of 
development. In respect to the extension of our real knowledge these 
advances constitute an epoch-making gain to biological science. 
And yet these same researches afford a most interesting demonstra- 
tion of how the remoter problems of science, like distant mountain 
peaks, seem to recede before us even while our actual knowledge is 
rapidly advancing. Thirty years after Roux’s pioneer researches we. 
find ourselves constrained to admit that in spite of all that we have 
learned of development the egg has not yet yielded up its inmost 
secrets. I have referred to the admirable discovery of Driesch con- 
cerning the artificial production of twins. That brilliant leader of 


400 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


embryological research had in earlier years sought for an under- 
standing of development along the lines of the mechanistic or 
physico-chemical analysis, assuming the egg to be essentially a 
physico-chemical machine. He now admitted his failure and, be- 
coming at last convinced that the quest had from the first been hope- 
- Jess, threw all his energies into an attempt to resuscitate the half 
extinct doctrines of vitalism and to found a new philosophy of the 
organism. Thus the embryologist, starting from a simple laboratory 
experiment, strayed further and further from his native land until 
he found himself at last quite outside the pale of science. He did not 
always return. Instead he sometimes made himself a new home— 
upon occasion even established himself in the honored occupancy of 
a university chair of philosophy. 

The theme that is here suggested tempts me to a digression, because 


of the clear light in which it displays the attitude of modern biology ~ 


toward the study of living things. It is impossible not to admire the 
keenness of analysis, and often the artistic refinement of skill (which 
so captivates us, for instance, in the work of M. Bergson) with 
which the neovitalistic writers have set forth their views. For my 
part I am ready to go further, admitting freely that the position of 
these writers may at bottom be well grounded. At any rate it is well 
for us now and then to be rudely shaken out of the ruts of our 
accustomed modes of thought by a challenge that forces upon us the 
question whether we really expect our scalpels and microscopes, our 
salt-solutions, formulas, and tables of statistics to tell the whole story 
of living things. It is, of course, impossible for us to assert that 
they will. And yet the more we ponder the question the stronger 
grows our conviction that the “entelechies” and such-like agencies 
conjured forth by modern vitalism are as sterile for science as the 
final causes of an earlier philosophy; so that Bacon might have said 
of the former as he did of the latter, that they are like the vestal 
virgins—dedicated to God, and barren. We must not deal too 
severely with the naturalist who now and then permits himself an 
hour of dalliance with them. An uneasy conscience will sooner or 
later drive him back into his own straight and narrow way with 
the insistent query: The specific vital agents, suz generis, that are 
postulated by the vitalist—are they sober realities? Can the exist- 
ence of an “élan vital,” of “ entelechies,” of “ psychoids” be experi- 
mentally verified? Even if beyond the reach of verification may 
they still be of practical use in our investigations on living things 
or find their justification on larger grounds of scientific expediency ? 
However philosophy may answer, science can find but one reply. 
The scientific method is the mechanistic method. The moment we 
swerve from it by a single step we set foot in a foreign land where 
a different idiom from ours is spoken. We have, it is true, no proof 


oo 


in neal, a tin teen ales hint teed ee le ere Te ee 


SS ee ee 


PROGRESS IN ZOOLOGY—WILSON. 401 


whatever of its final validity. We do not adopt the mechanistic 
view of organic nature as a dogma but only as a practical program of 
work, neither more nor less. We know full well that our present 
mechanistic conceptions of animals and plants have not yet made 
any approach to a complete solution of the problems of life, whether 
past or present. This should encourage us to fresh efforts, for 
just in the present inadequacy of these conceptions lies the assurance 
of our future progress. But the way of unverifiable (and irre- 
futable) imaginative constructions is not our way. We must hold 
fast to the method by which all the great advances in our knowledge 
of nature have been achieved. We shall make lasting progress only 
by plodding along the old, hard-beaten trail blazed by our scientific 
fathers—the way of observation, comparison, experiment, analysis, 
synthesis, prediction, verification. If this seems a prosaic program 
we may learn otherwise from great discoverers in every field of 
science who have demonstrated how free is the play that it gives to 
the constructive imagination and even to the faculty of artistic 
creation. 

Thus far I have desired to emphasize especially the reawakening of 
our interest in problems of the present, and the growing importance 
of experimental methods in our science. It is interesting to observe 
how these changes have affected our attitude toward the historical 
problem as displayed in the modern study of genetics. Even here 
we are struck by the same shifting of the center of gravity that has 
been remarked in other fields of inquiry. In the Darwinian era 

“studies on variation and heredity seemed significant mainly as a 
means of approach to the problems of evolution. The post-Darwin- 
ians awoke once more to the profound interest that lies in the genetic 
composition and capacities of living things as they now are. They 
turned aside from general theories of evolution and their deductive 
application to special problems of descent in order to take up ob- 
jective experiments on variation and heredity for their own sake. 
This was not due to any doubts concerning the reality of evolution 
or to any lack of interest in its problems. It was a policy of masterly 
inactivity deliberately adopted; for further discussion concerning the 
causes of evolution had clearly become futile until a more adequate 
and critical view cf existing genetic phenomena had been gained. 
Investigators in genetics here followed precisely the same impulse 
that had actuated the embryologists; and they, too, reaped a rich 
harvest of new discoveries. Foremost among them stands the redis- 
covery of Mendel’s long-forgotten law of heredity—a biological 
achievement of the first rank which in the year 1900 suddenly illumi- 
nated the obscurity in which students of heredity had been groping. 
Another towering landmark of progress is De Vries’s great work on 


18618°—sm_ 1915——26 


402 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


the mutation theory, published a year later, which marked almost 
as great a transformation in our views of variation and displayed the 
whole evolution problem in a new light. In the era that followed, 
the study of heredity quickly became not only an experimental but 
almost an exact science, fairly comparable to chemistry in its sys- 
tematic employment of qualitative and quantitative analysis, syn- 
thesis, prediction, and verification. More and more clearly it be- 
came evident that the phenomena of heredity are manifestations of 
definite mechanism in the living body. Microscopical studies on the 
germ-cells made known an important part of this mechanism and 
provided us with a simple mechanical explanation of Mendel’s law. 
And suddenly in the midst of all this, by a kaleidoscopic turn, the 
fundamental problem of organic evolution crystallizes before our 
eyes into a new form that seems to turn all our previous conceptions 
topsy-turvy. 

I will comment briefly on this latest view of evolution, partly be- 
cause of its inherent interest, but also because it again exemplifies, 
as in the case of embryology, that temptation to wander off into 
metaphysics (sit venia verbo) which seems so often to be engendered 
by new and telling discoveries in science. The fundamental ques- 
tion which it raises shows an interesting analogy to that encountered 
in the study of embryology, and may conveniently be approached 
from this side. 

To judge by its external aspects, individual development, like evo- 
lution, would seem to proceed from the simple to the complex; but is 
this true when we consider its inner or essential nature? The egg 
appears to the eye far simpler than the adult, yet genetic experiment 
seems continually to accumulate evidence that for each independent 
hereditary trait of the adult the egg contains a corresponding some- 
thing (we know not what) that grows, divides, and is transmitted by 
cell division without loss of its specific character and independently 
of other somethings of like order. Thus arises what I will call the 
puzzle of the microcosm. Is the appearance of simplicity in the egg 
illusory? Is the hen’s egg fundamentally as complex as the hen, and 


~~)... 


is development merely the transformation of one kind of complexity © 
into another? Such is the ultimate question of ontogeny, which in — 
one form or another has been debated by embryologists for more than — 
two centuries. We still can not answer it. If we attempt to do so — 


each replies according to the dictates of his individual temperament— 


that is to say, he resorts to some kind of symbolism—and he still re- — 


mains free to choose that particular form which he finds most con- 
venient, provided it does not stand in the way of practical efforts to 
advance our real knowledge through observation and experiment. 
Those who must have everything reduced to hard and fast formulas 
will no doubt find this rather disconcerting; but worse is to follow. 


PROGRESS IN ZOOLOGY—WILSON. 403 


Genetic research now confronts us with essentially the same question 
as applied to the evolutionary germ. The puzzle of the microcosm 
has become that of the macrocosm. Were the primitive forms of life 
really simpler than their apparently more complex descendants? 
Has organic evolution been from the simple to the complex or only 
from one kind of complexity to another? May it even have been 
from the complex to the simple by successive losses of inhibiting fac- 
tors which, as they disappear, set free qualities previously held in 
check? The last of these is the startling question that the president 
of the British association propounds in his recent brilliant address at 
Melbourne, asking us seriously to open our minds to the inquiry, 
“Whether evolution can at all reasonably be represented as an un- 
packing of an original complex which contained within itself the 
whole range of complexity which living things exhibit?” This con- 
ception, manifestly, is nearly akin to the theory of pangenesis and 
individual development, as elaborated especially by De Vries and by 
Weismann. It inevitably recalls also, if less directly, Bonnet’s vision 
of “palingenesis,” which dates from the eighteenth century. 

We should be grateful to those who help us to open our minds; 
and Prof. Bateson, as is his wont, performs this difficult operation 
in so large and masterly a fashion as to command our lively admira- 
tion. It must be said of his picturesque and vigorous discussion that 
we are kept guessing how far we are expected to take it seriously, 
or at least literally. We have always a lurking suspicion that pos- 
sibly his main purpose may after all be to remind us, by an object 
lesson, how far we still are from comprehending the nature and 
causes of evolution, and this suspicion is strengthened by the explicit 
statement in a subsequent address, delivered at Sydney, that our 
knowledge of the nature of life is “altogether too slender to war- 
rant speculation on these fundamental questions.” Let us, however, 
assume that we are seriously asked to go further and to enter the cul 
de sac that Prof. Bateson so invitingly places in our way. Once 
within it, evidently, we are stalemated in respect to the origin and 
early history of life; but as to that, one form of total ignorance is 
perhaps as good as another, and we can still work out how the game 
has been played, even though we can never find out how the pieces 
were set up. But has the day so soon arrived when we must resign 
ourselves to such an ending? Are we prepared to stake so much 
upon the correctness of a single hypothesis of allelomorphism and 
dominance? This hypothesis—that of “ presence and absence ”—has 
undoubtedly been a potent instrument of investigation; but there are 
some competent students of genetics who seem to find it equally sim- 
ple to formulate and analyze the phenomena by the use of a quite 
different hypothesis, and one that involves no such paradoxical con- 


404 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


sequences in respect to the nature of evolution. Are we not then 
invited to strain at a gnat and to swallow a camel? 

But I pass over the technical basis of the conception in order to 
look more broadly at its theoretic superstructure. Is not this, once 
again, a kind of symbolism by which the endeavor is made to deal 
with a problem that is for the present out of our reach? Neither 
you nor I, I dare say, will hesitate to maintain that the primordial 
Amoeba (if we may so dub the earliest of our ancestors) embodied in 
some sense or other all the potentialities, for better or for worse, 
that are realized before us at this moment in the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science. But if we ask ourselves exactly 
what we mean by this we discover our total inability to answer in 
more intelligible terms. 

We can not, it is true, even if we would, conquer the temptation now 
and then to spread the wings of our imagination in the thin atmos- 
phere of these upper regions; and this is no doubt an excellent tonic for 
the cerebrum provided we cherish no illusions as to what we are about. 
No embryologist, for example, can help puzzling over what I have 
called the problem of the microcosm; but he should be perfectly well 
aware that in striving to picture to his imagination the organization 
of the egg, of the embryological germ, that is actually in his hands 
for observation and experiment, he is perilously near to the habitat 
of the mystic and the transcendalist. The student of evolution is 
far over the frontier of that forbidden land in any present attack 
upon the corresponding problem of the macrocosm, for the primor- 
dial Amceba, the evolutionary germ, is inconceivably far out of our 
reach, hidden behind the veil of a past whose beginnings lie wholly 
beyond our ken. And why, after all, should we as yet attempt the 
exploration of a region which still remains so barren and remote? 
Surely not for the lack of accessible fields of genetic research that 
are fertile and varied enough to reward our best efforts, as no one 
has more forcibly urged or more brilliantly demonstrated by his 
own example than Prof. Bateson himself. 

Perhaps it would be the part of discretion to go no further. But 
the remarkable questions that Prof. Bateson has raised concerning 
the nature of evolution leave almost untouched the equally mo- 
mentous problem as to what has guided its actual course. In ap- 
proaching my close I shall be bold enough to venture a step in this 
direction, even one that will bring us upon the hazardous ground of 
organic adaptations and the theory of natural selection. I need not 
say that this subject is beset by intricate and bafiling difficulties 
which have made it a veritable bone of contention among natural- 
ists in recent years. In our attempts to meet them we have gone to 
some curious extremes. On the one hand, some naturalists have in 
effect abandoned the problem, cutting the Gordian knot with the 


eae 


PROGRESS IN ZOOLOGY—WILSON. 405 


conclusion that the power of adaptation is something given with 
organization itself and as such offers a riddle that is for the present 
insoluble. In another direction we find attempts to take the prob- 
lem in flank—to restate it, to ignore it—sometimes it would almost 
seem to argue it out of existence. 

Tt has been urged in a recent valuable work—by an author, I 
hasten to say, who fully accepts both the mechanistic philosophy 
and the principle of selection—that fitness is a reciprocal relation, 
involving the environment no less than the organism. This is both 
a true and a suggestive thought; but does it not leave the naturalist 
floundering amid the same old quicksands? The historical problem 
with which he has to deal must be grappled at closer quarters. He 
is everywhere confronted with specific devices in the organism that 
must have arisen long after the conditions of environment to which 
they are adjusted. Animals that live in water are provided with 
gills. Were this all, we could probably muddle along with the notion 
that gills are no more than lucky accidents. But we encounter a 
sticking point in the fact that gills are so often accompanied by a 
variety of ingenious devices, such as reservoirs, tubes, valves, pumps, 
strainers, scrubbing brushes, and the like, that are obviously tribu- 
tary to the main function of breathing. Given water, asks the nat- 
uralist, how has all this come into existence and been perfected ? 
The question is an inevitable product of our common sense. The 
metaphysician, I think, is not he who asks but he who would sup- 
press it. 

For all that, it would seem that some persons find the very word 
adaptation of too questionable a reputation for mention in polite 
scientific society. Allow me to illustrate by a leaf taken from my 
own notebook. I once ventured to publish a small experimental 
work on the movements of the fresh-water hydra with respect to 
light. What was my surprise to receive a reproof from a friendly 
critic because I had not been content with an objective description 
of the movements, but had also been so indiscreet as to emphasize 
their evident utility to the animal. I was no doubt too young then— 
I fear I am too old now—to comprehend in what respect I had 
sinned against the light. That was long ago. I will cite a more 
recent example from a public discussion on adaptation that took 
place before the American Society of Naturalists a year or two 
since. “The dominance of the concept of adaptation,” said one 
naturalist, “which now distinguishes our science from the non- 
biological ones is related to the comparatively youthful stage of 
development so far attained by biology, and not to any observed 
character in the living objects with which we deal.” Here we almost 
seem to catch an echo from the utterances of a certain sect of self- 
styled “scientists” who love to please themselves with the quaint 


406 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


fancy that physical disease is but one of the “errors of mortal 
mind.” 

Now, it is undoubtedly true that many adaptations, to cite Prof. 
Bateson once more, are “not in practice a very close fit.” Even the 
eye, as Helmholtz long ago taught us, has some defects as an optical 
instrument; nevertheless, it enables us to see well enough to discern 
some food for reflection concerning adaptations among living things. — 
And it is my impression that efforts to explain adaptations are likely 
to continue for the reason that naturalists as a body, perhaps in- 
fluenced by Huxley’s definition of science, have an obstinate habit 
of clinging to their common sense. 

At the present day there is no longer the smallest doubt of the 
great outstanding fact that few complex structural adaptations— 
it would probably be correct to say none such—have come into 
existence at a single stroke; they have moved forward step by step 
to the attainment of their full degree of perfection. What has 
dominated the direction and final outcome of such advancing lines? 
We can not yet answer this question with any degree of assurance; 
but, procrastinate as we may, it must in the end squarely be faced. 
We have seen one theory after another forced back within narrower 
lines or crumbling away before the adverse fire of criticism. I will 
not pause to recount the heavy losses that must be placed to the ac- 
count of sexual selection, of neo-Lamarckism, of orthogenesis. Some 
naturalists no doubt would assign a prominent place in this list of 
casualties to natural selection, but probably there are none who 
would hold that it has been destroyed utterly. The crux lies in the 
degree of its efficacy. Stated as an irreducible minimum, the sur- 
vival of the fit is an evident fact. Individuals that are unfitted to 
live or to reproduce leave few or no descendants—so much, at least, 
must be admitted by all. But does this colorless and trite conclusion 
end the matter or adequately place before us the significance of the 
facts? Just here lies the whole issue. Does destruction of the unfit 
accomplish no other result than to maintain the status quo, or has it 
conditioned the direction of progress? Accepting the second of these 
alternatives, Darwin went so far as to assign to it a leading role 
among the conditions to which the living world owes its existing 
configuration. Since his time the aspect of the problem has widely 
changed. We must rule out of the question the origin of neutral or 
useless traits. We must not confuse the evolution of adaptations with 
the origin of species. We must bear in mind the fact that Darwin 
often failed to distinguish between non-heritable fiuctuations and 
hereditary mutations of small degree. We are now aware that many 
apparently new variations may be no more than recombination prod- 
ucts of preexisting elements. We should no doubt make a larger 


PROGRESS IN ZOOLOGY—WILSON. 407 


allowance for the role of single “lucky accidents” in evolution than 
did many of the earlier evolutionists. And yet, as far as the essence 
of the principle is concerned, I am bound to make confession of my 
doubts whether any existing discussion of this problem affords more 
food for reflection, even to-day, than that contained in the sixth and 
seventh chapters of the “Origin of Species” and elsewhere in the 
works of Darwin. 

Undeniably there is a large measure of truth in the contention that 
natural selection still belongs rather to the philosophy than to the 
science of biology. In spite of many important experimental and 
eritical studies on the subject Darwin’s conception still remains to-day 
in the main what it was in his own time, a theory, a logical con- 
struction, based, it is true, on a multitude of facts, yet still awaiting 
adequate experimental test. Simple though the principle is, its 
actual effect in nature is determined by conditions that are too intri- 
eate and operate through periods too great to be duplicated in the 
experimental laboratory. Hence it is that even after more than 50 
years of Darwinism the time has not yet come for a true estimate of 
Darwin’s proposed solution of the great problem. 

But there is still another word to be said. Too often in the past 
the facile formulas of natural selection have been made use of to 
carry us lightly over the surface of unsuspected depths that would 
richly have repaid serious exploration. In a healthy reaction from 
this purblind course we have made it the mode to minimize Darwin’s 
theory, and no doubt a great service has been rendered to our study 
of this problem by the critical and sceptical spirit of modern ex- 
perimental science. But there is a homely German saying that im- 
presses upon us the need of caution as we empty out the bath lest 
we pour out the child too. This suggests that we should take heed 
lest we underestimate the one really simple and intelligible explana- 
tion of organic adaptations, inadequate though it now may seem, 
that has thus far been placed in our hands. And in some minds—if I 
include my own among them let it be set down to that indiscretion at 
which I have hinted—the impression grows that our preoccupation 
with the problem as it appears at short focus may in some measure 
have dimmed our vision of larger outlines that must be viewed at 
longer range; that we may have emphasized minor difficulties at the 
cost of a larger truth. To such minds it will seem that the principle 
of natural selection, while it may not provide a master key to all the 
riddles of evolution, still looms up as one of the great contributions 
of modern science to our understanding of nature. 

I have taken but a passing glance at a vast and many sided sub- 
ject. I have tried to suggest that the tide of speculation in our 
science has far receded; that experimental methods have taken their 
rightful place of importance; that we have attained to a truer per- 


408 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


spective of past and present in our study of the problems of animal — 
life. The destructive phase through which we have passed has thor- 
oughly cleared the ground for the new constructive era on which we 
now have entered. All the signs of the times indicate that this era will 
long endure. And this is of good augury for a future of productive 
effort, guided by the methods of physico-chemical science, impatient — 
of merely a priori constructions, of academic discussions, of hy- 
potheses that can not be brought to the test of experimental verifica- 
tion. The work ahead will make exacting technical demands upon 
us. The pioneer days of zoology are past. The naturalist of the 
future must be thoroughly trained in the methods and results of 
chemistry and physics. He must prepare himself for a life of inten- 
sive research, of high specialization; but in the future, even more 
than in the past, he will wander in vain amid the dry sands of special 
detail if the larger problems and general aims of his science be not 
held steadfastly in view. For these are the outstanding beacon lights 
of progress; and while science viewed at close range seems always to 
grow more complex, a wider vision shows that her signal discoveries 
are often singularly simple. This, perhaps, may help us to keep alive 
the spirit of the pioneers who led the advances of a simpler age, and 
it is full of hope for the future. 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE: THEIR BOUNDARIES 
AND POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE. 


By Lron DoMINIAN. 


[With 5 maps in color.] 


1. INTRODUCTION. 


The purpose of this paper is to show that definite relations exist 
between linguistic areas in Europe and the geography of the con- 
tinent and that application of facts derived from a study of this 
science to frontier delimitation is valid and practicable. The work 
was planned and executed under the direction of Councillor Madi- 
son Grant, who has drawn on his studies of European anthropology 
and history, as well as on a wide knowledge of the European con- 
tinent, to supply the writer with numerous notes, besides carefully 
revising the final proof and making many valuable additions. It 
is regretted that limitations of space have necessitated restricting 
presentation of a number of fundamental relations to bare state- 
ments of fact. This deficiency is remedied in part by the list of 
sources given in the footnotes. The nationality of authorities cited 
should be determined prior to consultation, as divergences of views 
corresponding to conflicting national aims are not infrequent.? 

Modern history has entered a stage in which determination of 
national boundaries is intimately connected with distribution of 
languages. International events in the past two centuries have been 
marked by constant endeavor to provide conformity of political and 
linguistic frontiers. The progress of western Europe in this respect 
is satisfactory. The eastern section of the continent contains prob- 
lems which have defied diplomatic solution. 

Linguistic areas in common with other data of geography have 
been largely determined by the character of the surface covered or 


1 Reprinted by courtesy of the American Geographical Society of New York. Bulletin of 
the American Geographical Society, vol. 47, June, 1915. 

2 Acknowledgment of important suggestions is due to Profs. Palmer, Le Compte, and 
Seymour of Yale University, as well as to Prof. Jordan of Columbia University. 


409 


410 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


delimited. Occurrences such as the expansion of Polish to the Car- 
pathian barrier or the restriction of Flemish to the lowland of north- 
western central Europe can not be attributed to mere haphazard. 
Determination of linguistic boundaries, therefore, implies due recog- 
nition of selective influences attributable to surface features. But 
the influence of region upon expansion or confinement of language 
is far from absolute. The part played by economic factors will be 
shown in the following lines to have been of prime importance. 

Considered as political boundaries, linguistic lines of cleavage 
have a twofold importance. They are sanctioned by national aspira- 
tions and they conform with physical features. Every linguistic 
area considered in this paper bears evidence of relation between lan- 
guage and its natural environment.’ A basis of delimitation is there- 
fore provided by nature. Eastern extension of French to the Vosges, 
confinement of Bohemian to a plateau inclosed by mountains, uni- 
formity of language in open plains and river basins, all are examples 
of data provided by geography for the use of statesmen engaged in 
the task of revising boundaries. 

Europe may be aptly regarded as a vast field of settlement where 
the autochthonous stock has again and again been swamped by suc- 
cessive flows of eastern and southern immigrants. The wanderings 
of these invaders have been directed in part into channels provided 
by Eurasian structural features. Within historic times Celts have 
been driven westward by Teutons, who in turn were pressed in the 
same direction by Slavs. The consequence is that few Frenchmen or 
Germans of our day can lay claim to racial purity. As a matter of 
fact, northern France is perhaps more Teutonic than southern Ger- 
many, while eastern Germany is in some respects more Slavic than 
Russia. The political significance of race is, therefore, trifling. 

Nationality, however, an artificial product derived from racial 
raw material, confers distinctiveness based on history. It is the 
cultivated plant blossoming on racial soil and fertilized by histori- 
cal association. Language, the medium in which is expressed suc- 
cessful achievement or struggle and sorrow shared in common, 
therefore acquires cementing qualities. Its value as the cohesive 
power of nationality is superseded in rare instances by ideals simi- 
larly based on community of tradition or hope and in some cases 
of religion. Belgium and Switzerland afford good examples of 
such exceptional instances. Broadly, it may be submitted that the 
development of civilization in most countries has been marked by 
the progress of nationality, while nationality itself has been con- 
solidated by identity of speech. 


1 Linguistic maps accompanying this paper should, in every instance, be examined con- 
currently with good atlas sheets. 


2 
; 


Se ee ee Oe ee 


on FASS. 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 41i 


2. THE FRANCO-FLEMISH LINGUISTIC BOUNDARY. 


The westernmost contact between Romance and Teutonic lan- 
guages occurs in French Flanders and Belgium. Starting at a few 
miles south of Dunkirk,’ the linguistic divide follows a direction 
which is generally parallel to the political boundary until, at a few 
miles east of Aire, it strikes northeast to Halluin, which remains 
within the area of French speech. From here on to Sicken-Sussen, 
near the German border, the line assumes an almost due east trend. 

This division corresponds to the mountainous and depressed 
areas into which Belgium is divided. The upland has ever been 
the home of French. Walloon is but a modified form of the old 
langue d’oil.2 Flemish, on the other hand, is a Germanic language 
which spread over Belgian lowlands as naturally as the Nieder- 
deutsch dialects to which it is related had invaded the plains of 
northern Europe. This east-west line also marks the separation of 
the tall, blond, long-skull Flemings from the short, dark, round- 
skull Alpine Walloons. 

In northwestern France the language of the plain has steadily 
receded since the thirteenth century before the uplander’s speech.® 
At that time Flemish was spoken as far south as the region between 
Boulogne and Aire. The area spreading east of the Strait of Dover 
between the present linguistic boundary and a line connecting these 
two cities is now bilingual, with French predominating. It might 
be noted here, however, that Boulogne has been a city of French 
language since Frankish days. 

Within Belgian territory the linguistic line has sustained slight 
modification in the course of centuries. The country may be con- 
veniently divided into a northern section, the inhabitants of which 
consider Fiemish as their vernacular, but who also generally know 
French, and a southern section peopled by French-speaking inhabit- 
ants who adhere to the use of Walloon dialects in the intimacy of 
their home life. A small area in eastern Belgium is peopled by 
Germans.* . 

The figures of the last (Dec. 31, 1910) Belgian census® show that 
the Flemish provinces are bilingual, whereas the Walloon region is 


1G. Kurth, La Frontiére Linguistique en Belgique et dans le Nord de la France. Mém., 
couronnés, Acad. R. Sci. Let. et Beaux-Arts de Belg., 48, vol. 1, 1895, vol. 2, 1898, Brux- 


‘elles; Map, 1: 400,000 published in feb., 1900. 


2Cf. map: Ausbreitung der Romanischen Sprachen in Europa, 1:8,000,000. Gréber’s 


‘Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie, Triibner, Strassburg, 1904-1906. See also Gillieron 


et Edmont, Atlas Linguistique de la France, Champion, Paris. 
' 8 Kurth, loc. cit. Kurth’s work is based partly on toponymic data; its value as an ethno- 
graphic document equals its importance as a contribution to the distribution of languages 
in western Europe. L. De Backer, La Langue flamande en France. Samyn, Gand, 1895. 
4N. Warker, Die deutschen Orts- und Gewiissernamen der Belgischen Provinz Luxem- 
burg, Deut. Erde, vol. 8, 1909, pp. 99, 1389. Maps important. 
5 Statistique de la Belgique, Recensement général de 1910, vol. 2, 1912, vol. 3, 1913, 
Bruxelles. 


412 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


altogether French. Knowledge of French as an educational and 
business requirement accounts for its occurrence in Flanders. The 
Romance language, therefore, tends to supersede the Germanic idiom 
as a national vernacular. Utter absence of Flemish in the Belgian 
Congo constitutes perhaps the strongest evidence in favor of French 
as Belgium’s national language. 

The linguistic dualism is traceable to the period of the Roman 
conquest. Intercourse at that time between the Belew dwelling south 
of the Via Agrippa and the Romans, who were pushing steadily 
northwards, was intimate. The Latin of the Roman invaders, modi- 
fied by the Celtic and Germanic of the native populations, gave birth 
eventually to the Walloon of subsequent times." 

The Belge of the lowlands farther north, however, sucessfully 
resisted the efforts made by the Romans to conquer them. The 
marshes of their nether country and the forested area which was 
to be laid bare by the monks of the middle ages constituted a strong- 
hold, in the shelter of which Germanic dialects took root. 

Ata later date the growth of the temporal power of the Roman 
Church witnessed the establishment of a number of bishoprics over 
districts segregated irrespective of linguistic differences. Perhaps 
one of the most notable facts of Belgian history is found in the fact 
that its linguistic and political boundaries have never coincided. 
Every century is marked by renewal of the age-long clashes between 
the Germanic and Romance races which have been thrown in con-. 
tact along the western end of the line of severance between the plains 
of northern Europe and the mountainous southland of the continent. 

In recent years a keen struggle for predominance between Flem- 
ings and Walloons is observable in Belgium. Language had been 
adopted as the rallying standard of both parties. Aggravation of 
this feud may yet lead to secession. The Flemish provinces might 
then cast their political lot with the Dutch. The languages. spoken 
in Holland and Flanders are practically identical. Religious differ- 
ences alone have stood in the way of political fusion in the past. 
The revolt of the Netherlands from Spanish authority had led to 
the independence of Protestant provinces only. Flemish princes, 
swayed by religious scruples, refused to side with the Protestant 
communities whose political connection had been established by the 
Union of Utrecht in 1579. At present the severance of religious 
from political issues and the menace of absorption by Germany 
may drive the Flemings to join their close kinsmen of the lowlands 
on the north. A state formed by this union could be named the 
Netherlands in all propriety. Its geographical foundation would 


1The Belge of Cresar are probably represented by the Teutonic populations of northern 
I’rance, Flanders, and Batavia rather than by the Walloons. 


# - aS : 
i " J _ — LA * * 
R > . 1 F a Rt 
tS Lo | 5; og a sp i%, = " : 
/ : < Sy % 3 | 733 A 3 H 
ws 
Ss 


J eg 


from available sources 
i eo Ger 


LINGUISTIC BOUNDARY 


; " 4 if 
i : , ‘ 
’ h 
eer at 
Th 


q wi | Pa aE 
Poche Ayaan 
esAnek SOP 
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LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 413 


be secure. Walloons would then naturally revert to French al- 
legiance. The coincidence of political and linguistic boundaries in 
the westernmost section of central Europe would thus become an 
accomplished fact. 


3. THE FRANCO-GERMAN LINGUISTIC BOUNDARY. 


In its central section the long contact line between French and 
German languages conforms approximately with the political line 
dividing the two countries. Modifications which French frontiers 
underwent since the treaty of Utrecht may be regarded as final ad- 
justments in a prolonged process of adapting political to linguistic 
boundaries. The Napoleonic period of political disturbances brought 
about an abnormal extension of the northern and eastern line. 
Between 1792 and 1814 almost all of the territory of Belgium and 
Holland was annexed and the eastern frontier extended to the 
Rhine. Foreign populations in Holland, Flanders, Rhenish Prussia, 
and the western sections of Hesse and Baden passed under the ad- 
ministrative control centered at Paris. But their subjection to Na- 
poleon’s artificial empire was of relatively short duration. The Ger- 
man-speaking people in 1813 united in a great effort to drive the 
French across the Rhine. They were merely repeating the feat of 
their ancestors, who at a distance of eighteen centuries had defeated 
the Latin-speaking invaders of their country led by the Roman Varus. 
Success in both movements was helped to a certain extent by com- 
munity of feeling based on identity of language. In 9 A. D. the 
Romans were forced back to the Rhine from the line they occupied 
on the Weser. The treaty of Vienna restored French boundaries to 
the lines existing in 1790. French territory again reverted to the 
approximately normal boundaries which inclose members of the 
French-speaking family. The union of Frenchmen into a compact 
political body was shattered, however, by the treaty of Frankfurt in 
1871, when France was obliged to cede important strips of French- 
speaking territories in Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. 

The part to be played by Lorraine in the history of Franco- 
German relations was laid out by nature itself. The province has 
always been the seat of a wide pathway connecting highly attrac- 
tive regions of settlement. It lies midway between the fertile plains 
of the Rhine and the hospitable Parisian basin. It is also placed 
squarely in the center of the natural route leading from Flanders 
to Burgundy. The region is physically part of France. It has 
therefore been inhabited mainly by French-speaking inhabitants. 
At the same time the lack of a natural barrier on the east facilitated 
Teutonic incursions. In particular, the Moselle Valley has favored 
easy access into Lorraine throughout history. In the Middle Ages 


414 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


and until the 18th century the province was part of the Empire and 
largely German speaking. This language still persists in the eastern 
parts. The region was thus a border land disputed first by two 
adjoining races and subsequently by two neighboring countries. 

This long period of successive conflicts necessarily witnessed modi- 
fications of linguistic boundaries. Glancing as far back as the 
end of the Middle Ages, a slight westerly advance of the area of 
German speech may be ascertained for the period between the 10th 
and 16th centuries.1 From that time on, however, the regional 
gain of French has been in excess of previous German advances. 
Data obtained from place names often afford valuable clues to 
earlier distribution of languages in this region. Occurrences of the 
suffix “ ange,” which is the Frenchified form of the German “ ingen,” 
in names lying west of the present line show the extent of territory 
reclaimed by the French language.” 

Alsace is the region defined by the valley of the Ill. The wall 
of the Vosges Mountains marks its western limits. Its easterly 
extension attains the banks of the Rhine. This elongated plain 
appears throughout history as a corridor through which races of 
men marched and countermarched. The Alpine race provided it 
with early inhabitants. Romans subjugated the land in the course 
of imperial colonization. The province subsequently passed under 
Germanic and Frankish sway. Its entry into linguistic history may 
be reckoned from the year 842, when the celebrated oaths of Strass- 
burg were exchanged in Romance and Teutonic vernaculars by. 
Charles the Bald and Louis the German. The alliance of these 
two sovereigns against Lothair at this time marked the beginnings 
of the German destiny of Alsace. After 925 the province became 
part of the Teutonic domain and remained German except during 
the period of French occupation which lasted from 1681 to 1871. 

A highway of migration can not be the abode of a pure race. Its 
inhabitants necessarily represent the successive human flows by 
which it has been overrun.? The Alsatian of the present day is, 
accordingly, a product of racial mingling. But the blending has 
conferred distinctiveness, and Alsatians claiming a nationality of 
their own find valid argument in racial antecedents no less than in 
geographical habitation. The red soil of their fertile plains sym- 
bolizes the native land in their minds as it reveals itself to percep- 
tion with the attribute of unity. Alsatians have responded to such 
an environment to the extent of representing a distinct group in 
1H. Witte, Das Deutsche Sprachgebiet Lothringens und Seine Wandlungen, etc. Forsch. 
Deutsch-Landes-u. Volksk., 8, 1894, pp. 407-535. 
2L. Gallois, Les Limites linguistiques du francais, Ann. de Géogr., 9, 1900, p. 215. 

3 Anthropologie data for the southwestern section of Alsace are instructive. The gen- 
eration of a transition type between the short and sturdy Alpine type and the ‘“ sesque- 


pedal’ Teuton is observable. Cf, Ripley, The Races of Europe, Appleton, New York, 1899, 
pp. 225-226, 


8 


Smithsonian Report, 1915-— 


THE FRANC 


LINGUISTI! 
IN ALSACI 


from availé 
Scale: 1:1 
or tinch= 

Popu 


| | THE FRANCO-GERMAN 
| | LINGUISTIC BOUNDAR 


Scale: 1:1,125,000 
or linch=17%4 miles. 


METZ from $0000 to 100.000 inkab 
Colmar . 25.000 @Joe000 . 
Barr = 1000025000 ~ 
Thann tess than 10.000 a 
SS Bxpanston of Pench || 
French Spension 2 
7 Spansion of German 
(German YB Che XV! contrary, 
seveelinguitstte boundary wm am mm potitical becndertes © 
|-—-prowincial beunderter —. chistract ] 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 415 


_ which the basal Alpine strain has been permeated by strong admix- 
_ tures of Teutonic blood. The confusion of dark and fair physiog- 
' nomies represents the two elements in the population. In a broader 
sense the Alsatians are identical with the Swiss population to the 
south and the Lorrainers and Walloons to the north. The districts 
- occupied by all these people once constituted the Middle Kingdom 
of Burgundy. 

Alsace was a province of purely German speech until the end of 
the eighteenth century. French took solid foothold mainly after 
the revolution and during the nineteenth century. An enlightened 
policy of tolerance toward the Province’s institutions cemented 
strong ties of friendship between the inhabitants and their French 
rulers. Alsatian leanings toward France were regarded with sus- 
picion by the victors of 1871, who proceeded to pass prohibitionary 
laws regarding the use of French in schools, churches or law courts. 
These measures of Germanization were attended by a notable emi- 
gration to France. In 1871 there were 1,517,494 inhabitants in 
Alsace-Lorraine. The number dwindled to 1,499,020 in 1875 in 
spite of 52.12 per cent excess of births over deaths. 

Nancy by its situation was destined to welcome Alsatians who 
had decided to remain faithful to France. The number of immi- 
grants it received after the Franco-Prussian war was estimated at 
15,000.2, Pressing need of workingmen in the-city’s growing indus- 
trial plants intensified this movement. Alsatian dialects were the 
only languages heard in entire sections of the urban area. Peopled 
by about 50,000 inhabitants in 1866, Nancy’s population jumped to 
66,303 in 1876. Metz, on the other hand, with a population of 
54,820 inhabitants in 1866, could not boast of more than 45,675 
citizens in 1875. The census taken in 1910 raised this figure to 
68,598 by including the unusually strong garrison maintained at 
this point. ; 

The present line of linguistic demarcation in Alsace rarely coin- 
cides with the political boundary. Conformity is observable only in 
stretches of their southernmost extension. East and southeast of 
Belfort, however, two areas of French speech spread into German 
territory at Courtaron and Montreux. 

In the elevated southern section of the Vosges the line runs from 
peak to peak with a general tendency to proceed east of the crest 
line and to reveal conspicuous deflections in certain high valleys of 
the eastern slope. Its irregularity with respect to topography may 
be regarded as an indication of the fluctuation of racial sites in 
early historical times. 

1¥rench writers claim an average brunetteness of 70 per cent for Alsace and point 
thereby to the predominance of the Celtic strain. 


2R. Blanchard, Deux Grandes Villes Francaises. La Géogr., 30, Nos. 2-6, 1914, pp. 
120-121. 


416 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


From Biren Kopf to about 10 miles beyond Schlucht Pass the 
mountainous divide and linguistic line coincide. Farther north, 
however, French prevails in many of the upper valleys of the 
Alsatian slope. This is true of the higher sections of the Weiss 
basin as well as the upper reaches of the Bruche. At a short dis- 
tance south of the sources of the Liepvre, parts of the Valley of 
Markirch (Sainte-Marie aux Mines) are likewise French. Here, how- 
ever, the influx of German miners who founded settlements as far 
back as the seventeenth century have converted the district into an 
area linguistically reclaimed by Germans. Altogether, it was esti- 
mated that in 1910 French was spoken by 204,262 inhabitants of 
Alsace-Lorraine out of a total population of 1,814,564. 

Two methods of indicating the presence of a French element in 
Alsace-Lorraine are given in the map of this region accompanying 
this article. Percentages according to administrative districts? have 
been contrasted with actual extension of French predominance.* The 
map shows concordance of French and German authorities regarding 
the German character of Alsace, as well as the French nature of a 
substantial portion of Lorraine. The Rhine Valley, a natural region, 
appears throughout as an area of German speech. Viewed in this 
light, French claims favoring extension of the country’s western 
boundary to the left bank of the Rhine deserve consideration only if 
grounded on Alsatian preference for French nationality. They can 
not rest on a sound geographical foundation. 

Of all so-styled natural boundaries, a river perhaps is the most 
unsatisfactory. Conventional representation of its course on paper 
provides the map with black lines which on casual inspection impart 
semblance of a break in regional continuity. Reasoned examination, 
however, discloses the similarity of the land extending beyond both 
banks. Ndlrdeni being made for difference of dlachcion between the 
upper and lower courses of a river, the unit region is obviously con- 
stituted by the entire basin. All the data of observation reveal re- 
gional unity in the Valley of the Rhine. 

The political case of Alsace-Lorraine, viewed from the linguistic 
standpoint, may be summed up as follows: Alsace is German. Areas 
of French in this Province consist of intrusion of minor importance. 
It is evident that the Vosges Mountains have prevented expansion of 
French toward the Valley of the Rhine. Lorraine, however, which 
was also German, was devoid of a natural barrier that might have 
arrested thé spread of French. Consequently, it has been partly re- 
gained by that language. 


1The Statesman’s Yearbook, 1914, p. 984. 

2 After the language map of Alsace-Lorraine in Andree’s Handatlas, Pl. 67—68, 6th ed. 
3 After Gallois’ map, Pl. 4, vol. 9, Ann. de Géogr., 1900. 

“Lord Curzon, Frontiers, The Romanes Lectures, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1907. 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. AT 


Beyond Alsace, French and German meet along a line which ex- 
tends across western Swiss territory to the Italian frontier. Its 
present course has been maintained since the fifteenth century.? Be- 


ginning at Lucelle, ae: 
a ae 7 | 


Jura Mountains 
west of Solothurn. 
Lake Neuchatel is 
surrounded on all 
sides except the 
northeast by 
French - speaking 
communities. The 
western and south- 
ern shores of Lake 
Morat are likewise 
French. Fribourg, 
a city in which the 
struggle for linguis- 
tic supremacy is 
strenuous, lies at 
the edge of French- 
speaking territory. 
The line becomes 
better defined in 
the upper Valley of 
the Rhone, where 
it coincides with 
the divide between 
the Val d’Anni- 
viers and the Turt- 
mann Thal. The 
construction of the 
Simplon Tunnel 
appears to have 
been the cause of 


an extension of 


French influence in Fig. 1.—The boundary between French and German in Switzerland. 
Scale, 1:1,435,000. 


the line crosses the 
Blas 


this region and re- 
cession of German from the Morge Valley to the east of Sierre lies 
within the memory of living natives. 


1P. Langhans, Die Westschweiz mit deutscher Ortsbenennung 1:500,000. Deut. Erde, 
b1906, .Pl. (5: 
21,, Gallois, Les limites linguistiques du francais, Ann. de Géogr., vol. 9, 1900, p. 218. 


18618°—sm 1915——27 


418 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


The origin of linguistic differences in Switzerland may be traced — 
to the early history of the country. At the time of Cesar’s conquests, — 
Helvetia, then peopled by Celts, became subjected to Rome’s imperial 
rule. Later, during the. period of invasions, the Helvetians were 
conquered by the Burgundians, a Germanic tribe, who settled in the 
western part of the country. A fusion of the two peoples followed 
this conquest. The Celtic and Latin languages then prevailing gave 
birth to French, which became essentially the speech of the Jura 
highlanders. German, on the other hand, is a relic of Teutonic in- 
vasions in eastern and central Switzerland. In the sixth century the 
Alemanni took advantage of the weakening of the Burgundian King- 
dom to spread beyond the Aar and overrun the attractive lake dis- 
trict. By the eleventh century they had succeeded in imposing their 
language on the native population of the Fribourg and Valais coun- 
try. Religious struggles beginning in the fifteenth century and main- 
tained to the seventeenth century, furthered the westerly advance of 
the Germans. 

The history of Switzerland shows pertinently that, at bottom, lan- 
guage does not always suffice to constitute nationality. Diversity of 
language has not impaired Switzerland’s existence as a sovereign 
nation. Racial lack of unity in its population has likewise failed to 
weaken national feeling. The indomitable determination of Swiss to 
protect the liberal institutions and the religion around which their 
national life revolved has maintained their qecupendeny® through- 
out the course of centuries. 


4. THE AREA OF GERMAN SPEECH. 


The area of German speech is interposed between the territories 
of Slavic and Romance languages. Niederdeutsch or Plattdeutsch, 
the language of the plain, is restricted to the extensive northern 
lowlands. Dialects spoken in Westphalia, Holstein, Mecklenburg, 
Brandenburg, and Prussia enter into its composition. The wealth 
of words in this tongue seems to indicate that ease of life on the 
plain favored greater development of thought. Relative sterility 
of the vocabulary derived from mountainous sections of central and 
southern Germany is brought out by contrast. 

Oberdeutsch is the German of the highland. It comprises the 
Bavarian, Swabian, and Alemannic dialects of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, 
and Baden. Its adoption as the literary language of all German- 
speaking people became well established in the Middle Ages. Luther’s 
translation of the Bible, written in a combination of Upper and Mid- 
dle German, contributed no mean share in the diffusion of the lan- 
guage. Printed German also followed this form. Its use has been 
favored by Germany’s most noted writers since the seventeenth cen- 
tury. It is fast becoming the language of the educated classes. Its 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 419 


dissemination by the agency of schools and newspapers tends to 
convert it eventually into the only idiom that will survive within 
German boundaries. 

The transition from the northern plain of Germany to high central 
regions is represented on the surface by a zone of intermediate up- 
lands in Saxony, Lusatia, and Silesia. This area is also characterized 
linguistically by a transitional form of speech between Niederdeutsch 
and Oberdeutsch.t The greater similarity, however, of this inter- 
mediate language to Oberdeutsch is observable to the same extent 
that the rising land over which it is distributed presents greater 
analogy to the mountainous region toward which it tends. The 
transitional dialects include Frankish, Hennebergian, and Saxon. 
They occur in the middle Rhineland, Hesse, Thuringia, and Saxony. 

Outside this central mass of Germans living in Germany and Aus- 
tria, the language prevails in the Baltic Provinces of Russia, where 
Protestantism is strongly established. This region was known as the 
German Provinces up to 1876. In that year substitution of Russian 
to German inaugurated Russification of the area by the Government. 
Colonies of Germans are also found in southwestern Russia from the 
headwaters to the mouth of the Dniester. The valley of this river as 
well as that of the Dnieper was peopled by peasants who emigrated 
from Wiirtemberg, Saxony, and Switzerland during the reign of 
Catharine the Great. Many of the settlements still bear German 
names. The presence of Teutons in this part of Russia is devoid, 
however, of political significance. 


5. THE DANISH-GERMAN BOUNDARY. 


Lack of conformity between political and linguistic boundaries 
along the Danish-German frontier has caused ceaseless strife between 
the two nationalities. Denmark’s hold on Schleswig-Holstein prior 
to 1866 had engendered bitter feeling among Germans who con- 
sidered the subjection of their kinsmen settled on the right bank of - 
the Elbe estuary as unnatural. After Prussia had annexed the con- 
tested region it was the Danes’ turn to feel dissatisfied and to claim 
the districts occupied by their countrymen. 

The present Danish-speaking population of Schleswig-Holstein is 
variously estimated at between 140,000 and 150,000. These subjects 
of the Kaiser occupy the territory south of the Danish boundary to a 
line formed by the western section of the Lecker Au, the southern 
border of the swampy region extending south of Renz and the north- 
ern extension of the Angeln Hills. Between this line and the area in 


1 Cf, Sheets 12a, Europa, Fluss-Gebirgskarte, and 12c, Europa, Sprachen and VOolker- 
karte, both 1: 12,000,000, in Debes’ Handatlas. 


is also 


la. Frisian is a 


insu 


long the western coast of the pen 


ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 
spoken in the coastal islands. 


which German is spoken a zone of the old Frisian tongue of Holland 
survives a 


420 


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Scale, 1:1,200,000 (after Rosendal based on Clausens and Heyers). 


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derdeutsch of the lon 


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point. 


Sketch map of Schleswig-Holstein showing languages spoken. 
of the land 


2. 


Fig. 


few inter- 


dependent Duchy in the twelfth century. B 


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421 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 


th the Danish Crown has been continuous to the 


time of the Prussian conquest. In 1848 both Schleswig and Holstein 
were disturbed by a wave of political agitation, which expressed itself 


ts union wi 


10Ns 1 


rupt 


the German 


in 


f both States 


The extent to which the mass of the Danish inhab- 


demands for the joint incorporation o 


in 


Confederation. 


TM] 


Hi 
( 
! 


to the German view- 


gs 
c—) 


Accordin, 


(Based on maps on pp. 59 and 60, Andree’s Handatlas, 6th ed.) 


Fic. 3.—Sketch map of Schleswig-Holstein showing languages spoken. 


000. 


200 


Seale, 1:1, 


point. 


torical 
t fief of the old Germano-Roman 


t in this movement is open to his 
Its population has always been largely German. But the 


itants of the Duchies 


took par 


of the 


, 1866, both Austria and Prussia had 


led mainly by Danes. By the terms? 


Treaty of Prague, of August 23 


q 
ae 
(2) 
q 
e) 
q 
ns] 
mn jor 
ee 
a jor 
A 
2 on 
M ord 
3 BE 
cas 
eons 
ake 
fab ie aan (>) 
S oO 
oH BS 
ici Ls, 
gas 
om A 


Majesty the Emperor of Austria transfers to His Majesty 


1s 


Art, Vie 
the King of Prussia all the rights which he acquired by the Vienna Treaty of Peace of 


1 [Translation] 


30th October, 1864, over the Duchies of Holstein and Schleswig, with the condition that 
the populations of the Northern Districts of Schleswig shall be ceded to Denmark if, by 


HE. Herstlet, The Map of 


a free vote, they express a wish to be united to Denmark. 
Europe by Treaty, vol. 3, p. 1722, Butterworths, London, 1875. 


429 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


agreed to submit final decision on the question of nationality to pop- 


ular vote. The provisions of the clause dealing with the referendum, — 


however, were not carried out, and on January 12, 1867, Schleswig 
was definitely annexed by Prussia.* 
‘Incorporation of the Danish Province was followed by systematic 


attempts to Germanize the population* through the agency of — 


churches and schools. In addition, a number of colonization soci- 
eties, such as the “Ansiedelungs Verein fiir das westliche Nord- 
schleswig,” founded at Rédding in 1891,? and the “ Deutsche Verein 
fiir das nordliche Schleswig,” were formed to introduce German 
ownership of land in Danish districts. The final years of the nine- 
teenth century in particular constituted a period of strained feeling 
between Danes and Germans, owing to unsettled conditions brought 
about by duality of language and tradition. 

At present the problem of Schleswig is considered settled by the 
German Government. A treaty signed on January 11, 1907, between 
the cabinets of Berlin and Copenhagen defined the status of the 
inhabitants of the annexed duchy. The problem of the “ Heimat- 
lose,” or citizens without a country, was solved by recognition 
of the right of choice of nationality on their part. The German 
Government considered this measure as satisfying the aspirations 
of its subjects of Danish birth. Nevertheless, the acquiescence of 
Danes living in Germany to any solution other than the adoption 
of linguistic boundaries as frontiers between Denmark and Ger- 
many remains doubtful. The standpoint of speech gives evidence 
of the thoroughly Danish character of northern Schleswig. The 
southern part of this Province, together with the whole of Holstein, 
- is undoubtedly German. 


6. THE ITALO-GERMAN BOUNDARY. 


The southern boundary of Germanic speech abuts against Italian 
from Switzerland ® to the Carinthian Hills. Along this contact zone 
a notable intrusion of the Romanic tongue within the Austrian 
political line is observable in the Tyrol. This foreign area lacks 
homogeneity, however, for it is Italian proper in western Tyrol and 
Ladin in its eastern extension. 


1A later treaty signed by Austria and Prussia at Vienna on Oct. 11, 1878, suppressed 
the referendum clause, which had never been viewed with favor by the German Goy- 
ernment. : 

2M. R. Waultrin, Le rapprochement dano-allemand et la question du Schleswig. Ann. 
Sci. polit., May 15 and July 15, 1903. 

2, Gasselin, La Question du Schleswig-Holstein, Rousseau, Paris, 1909. 

40. Gasselin, loc. cit., p. 206. 

5 Blocher u. Garraux, Die deut. Ortsnamenformen in Westschweiz. Deut. Erde, 5, 1906, 
p. 170. 


: 
‘ 
3 
‘ 
: 
{ 


EE a, ae ee 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 423 


The southerly advance of German in the mountainous province 
has followed the valleys of the Etsch and Eisack, showing thereby 
that the channels through which mountain waters flowed toward 
the Adriatic also facilitated transit of goods and the language of 
the traders from the German highlands of central Europe to the 
Mediterranean. A steady current of freight has been maintained 
in a southerly course along this route since the origins of continental 
commerce in Europe. By the Middle Ages numerous colonies of 
German merchants had acquired solid footing along the much- 
traveled road over the Brenner Pass, which connected Augsberg and 
Venice. 

This protuberance of German occupies the valley of the Etsch 
south of its confluence with the Eisack. The divide between the 
two languages has its westernmost reach at Stelvio, near Trafoi.’ 
The junction of Swiss and Austrian political boundaries at this 
point corresponds to the contact between the German of the Tyrol 
and the Romonsh idioms of Engadine. Thence the linguistic line 
of separation skirts the base of the Ortler massif and subsequently 
coincides with the watershed of the Etsch and Noce Rivers. Ladin 
settlements begin north of the Fleims Valley * and spread beyond the 
Gréden Basin to Pontebba and Malborghet, where the meeting of 
Europe’s three most important linguistic stocks, the Romanic, Ger- 
manic, and Slavic, occurs. 

The Italian section of the Tyrol constitutes the Trentino of pres- 
ent-day Italian irredentists. As early as 774 Charlemagne’s division 
of the region between the Kingdoms of Bavaria and of Italy had 
implied recognition of linguistic variations. But the importance of 
maintaining German control over natural lines of access to southern 
seas determined his successors to award temporal rights in the south- 
eastern Alps to bishops upon whose adherence to Germanic interests 
reliance could be placed. The bishopric of Trentino thus passed 
under the Teutonic sphere of influence, which is preserved to-day by 
the political union of the territory of the old see to the Austrian 
Empire. Definite annexation of the Trentino to the Province of 
Tyrol took place in 1815. 

In its eventful history during the present millennium the Tyrol 
has been the cockpit of Germano-Romance clashes. <A lively trade 
competition between German and Italian traders has ever been main- 
tained within its borders. During the era of religious upheavals 
the Germans rallied to the cause of reformation, while the Italian 
element remained faithful to the authority of the Vatican. Contact 


10. Noel, Histoire du Commerce du Monde, 2, pp. 148-168. Plon, Paris, 1891. 

2B. Auerbach, Races et Nationalités en Autriche-Hongrie, Alcan, Paris, 1898, p. 86. 

® Schneller, Deutsche u. Romanen in Siidtirol u. Venetien. Petermanns Mitt., 1877, pp. 
365-385. 


424 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


with the Teutonic element appears to have failed, however, to eradi- 
cate or modify the Italian character of the region’s institutions or 
its life. In this respect the colossal statue of Dante in front of the 
main railway station in the city of Trent symbolizes faithfully the 
aspirations of the majority of the inhabitants of the Trentino. 


7. THE ITALO-SLAVIC BOUNDARY. 


The Adriatic provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are 
peopled mainly by Italians and Slavs. German and Hungarian 
elements in the population consist of civil and military officials as 
well as of merchants. From an ethnological and linguistic stand- 
point the maritime district is Italian or Slav according to its eleva- 
tion. The Romanic stock forms the piedmont populations, while the 
dwellers of the hilly coast chains are of Slavic issue and speech. 

The western coast of the Istrian Peninsula is an area of Italian 
speech. The vernacular of Dante is, however, feebly represented 
in the Dalmatian Islands and on the Illyrian coast.? It is generally 
confined to urban centers. Zara, Spalato, Sebenico, Ragusa, and 
Cattaro* contain flourishing colonies of Italians, whose secular com- 
mercial enterprise has contributed to establish prevalence, if not 
predominance, of their mother tongue in the region. Outside of 
these cities the Italian element wherever present is restricted to 
littoral strips. The Slavs invariably occupy the inland plateau and 
the slopes extending seaward. 

The Istrian region of predominant Italian speech consists of the 
western peninsular lowland extending south of Triest* to the tip of 
the promontory beyond Pola.® Istrians, to whom Italian is a ver- 
nacular, form over a third of the peninsula’s population. The 
Slavs of the Karst and terraced sections constituting the balance 
belong to the Roman Catholic faith, but have no other common 
bond with their Italian countrymen. 

Settlement by Slavs of the hills dominating the Adriatic appears 
to have taken place continuously between the ninth and seventeenth 
centuries. Feudal chiefs of medieval times first resorted to this 
method of developing the uncultivated slopes and highlands of the 
eastern coast. The Venetian republic and the Austrian govern- 


1A, Galanti, I Tedeschi sul versante meridionale delle Alpi, Typ. Acad. Lincei, Rome, 
1885, p. 185. 

2It is estimated that, in all, about 18,000 Italians live in Dalmatia. 

Italian predominates in both Zara and Spalato, the latter city being second in com- 
mercial importance along the Dalmatian coast. 

4The city of Triest is peopled mainly by Italians. Its suburbs, however, are inhabited 
by crowded Slavie settlements. The census of 1910 shows 142,113 Italians, 37,063 
Slovenes, 9,689 Germans, and 1,442 Croats. For Istria returns of the same year give 
147,417 Italians, 168,184 Serbo-Croatians, and 55,134 Slovenes. 

5M. Wutte, Das Deutschtum im Osterreichischen Kiistenland. Deut. Erde, 8, 1909, 
p. 202. 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 425 


ment adopted similar measures of colonization. Slavic tribes hard 
pressed by their kinsmen or by Tatars from the east thus found 
refuge in the mountainous Dalmatian coastland under the xgis of 
western nations. A traveler taking ship to-day and sailing from 
harbor to harbor along the shores of the eastern Adriatic could 
readily notice numerical predominance of the descendants of Slavs, 
who, for that section of the world, constitute the mass of toilers 
in every walk of life and who sooner or later will probably erect 
a political fabric on the foundation of their linguistic preponderance. 


8. THE AREA OF FINNISH SPEECH. 


The eastern half of the European land mass contains a region 
of excessive linguistic intermingling’ along the contact zone of the 
Germanic and Slavic races. The Finns occupying the northern- 
most section of this elongated belt are linguistically allied to the 
Turki. Physically they constitute the proto-Teutonic substratum 
of the northern Russians, with whom they have been merged. 
Their land was transferred from Sweden to Russia in 1808. <Au- 
tonomy conceded by the Czar’s Government until rescinded by the 
imperial decree of February 15, 1899, provided the inhabitants with 
a tolerable political status. The opening years of the present cen- 
tury marked the inception of a policy of Slavicization prosecuted 
with extreme vigor on the part of the provincial administrators. 

The area of Finnish speech forms a compact mass extending 
south of the sixty-ninth parallel to the Baltic shores. Its complete 
access to the sea is barred by two coastal strips in the Gulfs of 
Bothnia and Finland, in both of which Swedish predominates in 
varying percentages.?, The group of the Aland Islands, although 
included in the Czar’s dominions, are also peopled by Swedes all 
the way to the southwestern point of Finland.* 

This broken fringe of Swedish is conceded to be a relic of the 
early occupation of Finland by Swedes.t| The Bothnian strip is 
remarkably pure in composition. The band extending on the north- 
ern shore of the Gulf of Finland, however, contains enclaves of the 
Finnish element. This is ascribed to an artificial process of “ Fenni- 
fication,” resulting from the introduction of cheap labor in the in- 
dustrial regions of southern Finland. Slower economic develop- 
ment of the Provinces of the western coast, on the other hand, tends 
to maintain undisturbed segregation of the population. 

1H, Nabert, Verbreitung der Deutschen in Europa, 1: 925,000. Flemming, Glogau. 

2 Atlas de Finlande, carte 46, Soc. de Géogr. de Finlande, Helsingfors, 1911. 

3K. B. Wiklund, Spriken i Finland, 1880-1900, Ymer, 1905, 2, pp. 132-149. 


+R. Saxen, Répartition des Langues. Fennia, 30, 2, 1910-1911, Soc. de Géogr. de Fin., 
Helsingfors, 1911. 


426 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 
9. THE AREA OF POLISH SPEECH. 


South of the Baltic the unbroken expanse now peopled by Ger- 
mans merges insensibly into the western section of the great Russian 
plain. This extensive lowland is featureless and provides no natu- 
ral barriers between the two empires it connects. The area of Polish 
speech alone intervenes as a buffer product of the basin ‘of the 
middle Vistula. The region is a silt-covered lowland, which has 
emerged to light subsequently to the desiccation of a system of gla- 
cial lakes ef recent geological age. It appears to have been inhabited 
by the same branch of the Slavic race since the beginning of the 
Christian era. It was the open country in which dearth of food and 
the consequent inducement to migration did not exist. The develop- 
ment of Poland rests primarily on this physical foundation. Added 
advantages of good land and water communication with the rest of 
the continent likewise contributed powerfully to the spread of 
Polish power, which at one time extended from the Baltic shores to 
the coast of the Black Sea. 

The language is current at present within a quadrilateral, the 
angles of which are determined by the Jablunka pass in the Car- 
pathians, Zirke on the Wartha, Suwalki in the eastern Masurian 
region and-Sanok on the San. A northern extension is appended 
to this linguistic region in the form of a narrow band which de- 
taches itself from the main mass above Bromberg and reaches the 
Baltic coast west of Danzig. In sum, from the Carpathians to the 
Baltic, the valley of the Vistula constitutes both the cradle and the 
blossoming field of Polish humanity and its institutions. In spite 
of the remoteness of the period of their occupation of the land, 
these children of the plains never attempted to scale mountainous 
slopes. The solid wall of the western Carpathians between Jab- 
lunka and Sanok, with its abrupt slopes facing the north, forms the 
southern boundary of the country. 

This unit region in the midst of the diversity of the surface of 
the European continent has produced a unit language in the varied 
stock of European vernaculars. Uniformity of speech was thus the 
result of the unifying influence of a region characterized by a 
common physical aspect. Nevertheless, similarity of physical type 
among all individuals speaking Polish does not exist. Marked 
anthropological differences are found between the Poles of Russian 
Poland and of Galicia.1 They correspond to the classification of 
northern Slavs into two main groups, the northernmost of which 
comprises the Poles of Russian Poland, together with White and 

1 J. Talko-Hryncevicz, Les Polonais du Royaume de Pologne d’aprés les données anthro- 


pologiques recueillies jusqu’A présent. Bul. Int. Ac. Se. Cracovie, Classe des Se. Math. 
et Nat. Bul. Se. Nat., Juin, 1912, pp. 574-582. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915+ PLATE 3. 


23 


Popuulati 


a over 75% Polet\ RE A 


e » 50% Pr oD 
O » 27% Gen 


; > SPEECH 


1S data unavail 


LODS over 100.00 © Sources. 


ELBING trom 50030809 


Smithoorian Report, 1915-—Deminian. PLATE 3, 


from available sources. 


Seale 1;2.250,000 
or Inch 30% miles 


_) German 


OS Russian 


hj — — — political boundaries : > 
administrative boundaries | 1.4 


a 


—y crm " 


: AN SURG a 


rt ae @ 


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+ 


wesw: ay 


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LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 497 


Great Russians. Traces of Finnish intermixture can still be de- 
tected among them, in spite of the process of Slavicization which 
they have undergone. The Poles of Galicia, on the other hand, like 
the Ruthenians and Little Russians, reveal crossing of autochthon- 
ous populations with Asiatic and Mongoloid invaders of Europe.* 

The southeastern extremity of the language attains the sources 
of the Moravka, an affluent of the Ostrawica. In this district the 
line of demarcation between Ruthenians and Poles passes through 
Tarnograd and along the San Valley. Its southern extension 
skirts the foothills through Rymanow, Dukla, Zmigrad, Gorlica, 
and Gribow.2. Thence to Jablunka it merges with the political 
boundary. 

In its western section the physical boundary coincides for all 
practical purposes with the ethnographic line of division. The 
Polish-speaking Gorales mountaineers have never aspired to cross 
the divide of the Beskid Mountains. The result is that the gentler 
slopes of the southern side are peopled altogether by Slovaks, while 
habit and custom have prevented the Podhalians or Polish shepherds 
inhabiting the high valley of the Tatra from leading their flocks to 
the southern grazing slopes which form part of the Hungarian 
domain.* 

Changes in the aspect of the land resulting from human activity 
provide an easily observable boundary between the territory in- 
-habited by Poles and that occupied by Ruthenians. The first, 
proceeding from the Vistula lowland, are now scattered over a 
territory in which deforestation and large areas of tilled soil be- 
speak prolonged human occupancy of the land. The latter, coming 
from the Pontic steppes, reached the Carpathian slopes much later 
than their western neighbors. Consequently, only 20 per cent of the 
surface of the western Carpathians is now available as prairie and 
pasture land, whereas the percentage of grazing land in the eastern 


1 Southern Poland was overrun by Mongolians during their third invasion of Hurope. ~ 
The Asiatics were attacked near Szydlow on March 18, 1241, by an army of Polish noble- 
men recruited from Sandomir and Cracow. The defeat of the Christians enabled the in- 
vaders to plunder the latter city, besides opening the way for incursions farther north in 
the course ef which they penetrated into Silesia by way of Ratibor and marched toward 
Breslau. Near Liegnitz an army of 30,000 Europeans was defeated again on Apr. 9 of 
the same year. These disasters were followed by a westerly spread of the Tatar scourge. 
Traces of its passage can still be detected among Poles. 

2'The Poles constitute the majority in the population of many cities in eastern or Rus- 
sian Galicia. In Niederle’s list Bobrka, Muszyna, Sanok, Lisko, Sambor, Peremysl, Rawa- 
ruska, Belz, Zolkiew, Grodek, Ceshanow, Stryj, Kalusz, Stanislawoff, Kalomya, Tarnopol, 
Husiatyn, Buczacz, Sokal, and 'Trembowla are credited with over 50 per cent Poles in their 
population. On the other hand, the predominance of German in the cities of Biala, 
Sezerzec, Dolina, Bolechow, Nadworna, Kossew, Kuty, Zablotow, and Brody is attributed 
by the same authority to the Jewish element present. L. Niederle, La Race Slave, Alcan, 
Paris, 1911. A digest in English of his conclusions will be found in Ann. Rep, Smiths. 
Inst., 1910, Washington, 1911, pp. 599-612. 

3H, Reclus. Géogr, Univ., vol. 3, Europe Centrale. Hachette, Paris, 1878, p. 396. 


428 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


section of the mountain chain is twice as high.t_ The area of plowed 
land in the western region covers between 40 and 50 per cent of 
the surface. In the east it barely varies between 5 and 10 per cent. 
Again, the Polish section is practically clear of the forests which 
cover in contrast from 50 to 60 per cent of the eastern Carpathians. 
Similar differences can be noted in the valleys up to an altitude of 
about 2,300 feet. Within them the proportion of plowed land con- 
stitutes 88 per cent of the surface in the Polish section. In the 
Ruthenian areas they do not exceed 15 per cent. 

On the southwestern border the line attains the Oder in the vicinity 
cf Bohumin. Here a number of localities in the Teschen country are 
claimed alike by ‘Bohemians and Poles. The increasing use of Polish 
and German, however, tends to invalidate the claims of Bohemians.’ 
A transition zone between Bohemian and Polish exists here and is 
characterized by a local dialect of mixed language. 

The western linguistic boundary of Poland extends through the 
German Provinces of Silesia and Posen. Here a gradual replace- 
ment of the language by German since the sixteenth century is no- 
ticeable. At that time the Oder constituted the dividing line. As 
late.as 1790 the population of Breslau was largely Polish. To-day 
over 75 per cent of the inhabitants of the city and of neighboring 
towns and villages are Germans. The district north and south con- 
stitutes in fact an area of linguistic reclamation. The westernmost 
extension of Polish occurs in Posen at the base of the provincial 
projection into Brandenburg. Around Bomst the percentage of 
Polish inhabitants is as high as 75 per cent. The line extends north- 
ward through Bentschen to Birnbaum, after which it assumes a 
northeasterly direction. In spite of this western extension, however, 
the area of Polish speech within German boundaries is broken in 
numerous places by German enclaves of varying size.* 

In western Prussia the Poles form linguistic islands in the German 
mass and attain Baltic shores, where they occupy the entire western 
coast of the Gulf of Danzig. From Oliva and Danzig the line 
extends to Dirschau (Tezew) and crosses the Vistula about 6 miles 
below this city. It then strikes east to Altmark, whence it turns 
southward toward Marienwerder (Kwidzyn) and Graudenz (Grud- 
ziadz). Proceeding due east from here the boundary passes through 
Kylau, Osterode, the southern territory of the Masurian lakes and 

1. Romer, Esquisse Climatique de l’Ancienne Pologne. Bul. de la Soc. Vaud. des Se. 
Nat., 5e Sér., vol. 46, June, 1910, p. 251. 

2 J. Zemmrich, Deutsche und Slayen in den ésterreichischen Sudetenliindern, Deut. Erde, 
2, 1903, pp. 1-4. ; 

3p, Langhans, Nationalitiiten-Karte der Provinz Schlesien, 1: 500,000. Sonderkarte 


No. 1 in Deut. Erde, 1906; id., Nationalitiiten-Karte der Provinz Ostpreussen, 1 : 500,000. 
Sonderkarte No. 1 in Deut. Erde, 1907. 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 429 


on into Russian territory until Suwalki is reached. The eastern 
frontier begins at this point and is prolonged southward, according 
to Slav authorities, through Augustow, Bielostock, Surash, Bielsk, 
Sarnaki, and Krasnostaw.* 

The struggle for predominance between Poles and Germans along 
Poland’s western boundary is fully nine centuries old. In the sixth 
century Slavonic tribes had become widely distributed between the 
Oder and Elbe in the course of westerly expansions which correspond 
to south and west migrations of Teutonic peoples. The beginning 
of the present millennium witnessed the inception of a slow and 
powerful Germanic drive directed toward the east. Repeated Ger- 
man aggressions brought about the earliest union of all Polish 
tribes into one nation at the beginning of the eleventh century. It 
proved, however, of little avail before the fighting prowess of the 
knights of the Teutonic Order who, by the first half of the thirteenth 
century, had succeeded in adding all Wend territory to Teutonic 
dominions. This early and northern phase of the “ Drang nach 
Osten” brought the Germans to the coast of the Gulf of Finland. 
Their advance was rendered possible in part by the presence of 
Tatar hordes menacing southern Poland. Teutonic progress was 
also facilitated by the condition of defenselessness which character- 
izes an open plain. Between the Oder and the Vistula the slightly 
undulating lowland is continuous and devoid of barriers to com- 
munication which the interposition of uplifted or uninhabitable 
stretches of territory might have provided. 

Polish history has been affected both favorably and adversely by 
this lack of natural bulwarks. The one-time extension of Polish 
sovereignty to the coasts of the Baltic and Black Seas or to within 
50 miles of Berlin and the central plateau of Russia was a result of 
easy travel in a plain. This advantage was more than offset by the 
evident facility with which alien races were able to swarm back into 
the vast, featureless expanse forming Polish territory. The very 
dismemberment of the country is in part the result of the inability 
of the Poles to resort to the protection of a natural fortress, where a 
stand against oppressing foes might have been made. 

Poland’s easterly expansion, with its prolonged and finally dis- 
astrous conflict with Russia, began after the battle of Grunwald in 
1410. Although the Poles then inflicted a decisive defeat on the 
German knights, the western Provinces they had lost could not be 
regained. In this eastern field the basin of the Dnieper merged 
without abrupt transition into that of the Vistula, just as the basin 

i Niederle, loc. cit., p. 73, but ef. H. Praesent, Russisch Polen, ete. Petermanns Mitt., 


vol. 60. Dec., 1914, p. 257. 
2A, C. Haddon, The Wanderings of Peoples, University Press, Cambridge, 1912, p. 48. 


430 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


of the Oder on the west had formed the western continuation of 
the Baltic plain. Four centuries of struggle with Russia ensued, 
until the Muscovite Empire absorbed the greatest portion of Poland. 

The German element is slowly spreading eastward throughout 
the eastern provinces of Prussia which once formed part of the 
Kingdom of Poland. The emigration of Poles to central and west- 
ern Germany partly accounts for the German gain. From the larger 
cities of eastern Germany, and more especially from Posen, Brom- 
berg, Gnesen, and Danzig, steady flows of emigrants continually 
wend their way toward the industrial centers of the west, where 
they find higher wages and generally improved economic conditions. 
The German Government favors this expatriation of its Slav sub- 
jects. None of the vexations to which the Poles are subjected by 
Government officials in their native plains are tolerated in the 
Rhine Provinces of the Empire. The result is that notable colonies 
of Poles have sprung up in the vicinity of industrial centers like 
Diisseldorf or Arnsberg, in the Minster district and the Rhine 
Provinces. From a racial standpoint these Poles are practically 
indistinguishable from the Nordic type of Teuton. Their presence 
in Rhenish Prussia and Westphalia is no menace to German unity. 
They are so easily assimilated that the second generation, speaking 
German alone, forgets its antecedents and becomes submerged in the 
mass of the native population. Slav settlements are particularly 
numerous and dense along the Rhine-Herne Canal between Duisburg 
and Dortmund.t' The heavy preponderance of Poles in certain ad- 
ministrative divisions of eastern Germany has, nevertheless, been 
unimpaired by the Polish emigration. Their percentage in the “ cir- 
cles” (Kreise) of Odolanow, Koscian, Ostrzeszow, Posen, Pszczynsk, 
Olesia, and Skwierzyn still exceeds 80 per cent of the total popula- 
tion. In the province of Posen the German-speaking inhabitants 
still are in the minority. 

The Poles scattered in the eastern section of Germany constitute 
the largest foreign-speaking element in the Empire’s population. 
Their number is estimated at 3,450,000 by Niederle. German census 
returns for 1900 give 3,086,489. It must be noted here that the per- 
centage of Jews in German Poland is high, particularly in the urban 
areas, and that the practice of census takers is to classify them with 
the German or Polish population according to their vernacular. In 
Russia the last available census (1897) figures reveal the existence 
of 1,267,194 Jews? disseminated in the Polish provinces. This rep- 
resents 13.48 per cent of the population of Russian Poland. Here, 


1K. Closterhalfen, Die Polen in Niederrheinisch-westfilisch Industriebezirk 1905. 
1:200,000. Pl. 16 in Deut. Erde, vol. 10, 1911. 

2N. Troinitsky, Premier Recensement général de la population de l’Empire de la Russie 
1897. Vols. 1 and 2, Petrograd, 1905. 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 431 


as elsewhere, they are rarely engaged in agricultural pursuits, but 
show tendency to invade prosperous towns and cities. 

In addition to drastic educational measures compelling study of 
their language, the Germans have resorted to wholesale buying of 
Polish estates in the sections of the kingdom of Poland which fell 
to the lot of Prussia when the country was partitioned. A coloniza- 
tion law (Ansiedelungsgesetz), decreed on April 26, 1886, placed 
large funds at the disposal of the German government for the pur- 
chase of land owned by Poles and the establishment of colonies of 
German settlers.2. The measure was artificial and proved valueless 
against economic conditions prevailing in the regions affected. A 
decrease in the percentage of the Polish population of the estates 
acquired by purchase was rarely brought about. The new settlers 
could rarely compete with the natives. The most tangible result 
consisted of a mere substitution of German for Polish ownership. 
The mass of laborers and dependents on most of the large estates 
remained Poles, as they had been prior to the transaction. The 
breach between Poles and Germans was widened in part by the 
change of masters. Nevertheless, although returns corresponding to 
the sum of effort and money expended were not obtained, the meas- 
ure has contributed to the advance of Teutonism in northeastern 
Kurope.* 

From the east, pressure corresponding to Teutonic battering, 
although exerted with less intensity, is applied by Russian endeavor 
to create national homogeneity. Of all the different members of 
the widespread Slavic race the Poles and Russians are the most 
closely related by speech. But the affinity ends here. The formid- 
able barrier of religious differences hampers fusion of the two nation- 
alities. Caught between the Slavic hammer of Russian orthodoxy 
and the anvil of Teutonic reformation, the Poles have remained 
staunch Catholics. Creed in this case has played a considerable part 
in the preservation of national spirit. 

The problem of delimiting Polish national boundaries is compli- 
cated on the east and west by the absence of prominent surface 


1The Jews cluster especially in the eastern governments of Warsaw, Loniza, and Siedlce 
where their percentage varies between 15.6 and 16.4. This ratio is lower in the southern 
and western administrative divisions. In Kalisz it reaches only 7.2 per cent and is reduced 
to 6.3 per cent in Petrokow. In the cities the Jews constitute on an average slightly over 
a third of the population, although here again they are more numerous in the east. Cf. 
D. Aitoff, Peuples et Langues de la Russie. Ann. de Géogr., 15, Mai, 1909, pp. 9-25. 

2A law passed in 1908 authorizes the state to acquire land in the administrative circles 
in which German interests require development of colonization. B. Auerbach, La Ger- 
manisation de la Pologne Prussienne: La loi d’expropriation, Rev. Polit. & Parlem., 57, 
July, 1908, pp. 109-125. 

*P. Langhans, Nationalitiitenkarte der Provinz Schlesien 1:500,000. Deut. Er., 1906, 
Sonderkarte 1; P. Langhans, Nationalitiitenkarte der Provinz Ostpreussen 1: 500,000, 
Deut. Er., 1907, Sonderkarte 1; Die Provinzen Posen und Westpreussen unter besonderer 
Beriicksichtigung der Ansiedlungsgiiter und Ansiedlung, Staatsdomiinen und Staatsforsten 
nach dem Stande von 1 Januar, 1911, Deut, Erde, 10, Taf, 1, 1911. 


432 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 
features. The lines of linguistic parting can not be emphasized and : 
are apt to be unstable. This circumstance detracts from their politi- 
cal value. 


10. THE AREAS OF BOHEMIAN AND SLOVAKIAN SPEECH. 


The Bohemians, who with the Moravians constitute Slavdom’s 
European vanguard, occupy the mountain-girt plateau of Bohemia 
in the very heart of Europe. Here the steady advance of Teutons 
has prevented expansion of these Slavs along the valleys providing 
them with lines of easy communication with the rest of the continent. 
Bohemians and Moravians thus found themselves bottled up inside 
the mountainous rim of their land by the Germans of Germany and 
of Austria. 

The German ring surrounding Bohemia is composed of sections 
representing various types of the Teutonic family. The south- 
western element represents the Bavarian settlers from which it is 
descended. Farmers and woodsmen were introduced into the 
Béhmerwald as an inevitable phase of the exploitation of the moun- 
tainous area by religious communities of the 13th century. The end 
of the Thirty Years’ War was marked by a new influx of Germans 
needed to repopulate the sorely devastated Bohemian districts. The 
Bavarian element, however, never reached the foot of the eastern 
slopes. Modern Bohemian resistance to its spread toward the pla- 
teau persists unflinchingly. 

The Erzgebirge uplift is a German ethnographic conquest. For 
centuries its mineral wealth has attracted artisans from Franconia, 
Thuringia and Saxony. The mountain slopes resound to-day to 
the sound of the dialects of these ancient countries. The Saxon 
element prevails particularly among the inhabitants of the Elbe 
valley. 

Farther east, descendants of natives of Lusatia and Silesia still 
use the vernacular of their ancestors in the upland formed by the 
Iser and Riesen ranges. The valleys of these mountains yield a 
steady stream of German-speaking inhabitants who wend their way 
toward the industrial towns of the southern plain. The German 
workingman’s competition with his Bohemian fellow-laborer is keen, 
however, in this district and has not been marked by notable ad- 
vance of the Teutonic idiom. 

Linguistically the Bohemians and Moravians form a unit hemmed 
in by Germans on all sides except the east, where they abut against 
their Slovak kinsmen. Community of national aspirations is gen- 
erally ascribed to these three Slavic groups, in which the Bohemian is 
the leading element. The union has been fostered by the lack of a 
literary language among Moravians with the consequent adoption 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 433 


of Bohemian forms of style in writing. The numerical inferiority of 
the Slovaks! found strength in this alliance. 

The Bohemian linguistic area presents homogeneity of composition 
which is seldom encountered in other parts of Austria-Hungary. 
Intermingling of Slav and Teuton elements has been slight in this 
advanced strip of Slavdom. Overlap of German occurs in banded 
stretches generally parallel to the political divide. It is particu- 
larly noticeable in the eastern angle formed by the junction of the 
Bohmerwald and Erzgebirge, where it almost attains the town of 
‘Pilsen.2 Beyond in a northerly direction the volcanic area charac- 
terized by thermal springs les within the German line. Reichen- 
berg, the strenuous center of Teutonism, maintains easterly and 
westerly prongs of German in the Iser-Riesen uplifts and the Elbe 
valley, respectively. The German of Silesia spreads into Moravia 
along the Zwittau-Olmiitz-Neu Titschen line. 

A short stretch of the southern linguistic area coicides with 
the political frontier in the neighborhood of Taus, but the balance 
of the southern Béhmerwald overlooking Bohemian levels is German 
in speech from its crests to the zone in which widening of the valleys 
becomes established. The disappearance of this mountainous chain 
in southern Moravia coincides with a southerly extension of Bo- 
hemian in the valley of the March. Contact with Slovak dialects 
begins in the Beskid area. 

Celts, Teutons, and Slavs have occupied in turn the Bohemian 
lozenge. The appellation of Czechs first appears in the 6th century. 
National consolidation begins with the country’s conversion to 
Christianity three hundred years later and is maintained with vary- 
ing fortunes until 1620. Bohemian political freedom suffered anni- 
hilation in that year on the battlefield of the White Mountain. 
After this defeat the land and its inhabitants lapsed into a state of 
historical lethargy. Half a century ago Bohemian was almost ex- 
tinct. Fortunately, the high cultural attainment of some modern 
Bohemians succeeded in rousing their countrymen to a sense of 
national feeling. In particular, the fire of Bohemian patriotism 
has been kept alive by literary activity. 

Successful attempts on the part of Hungarians to assimilate the 
Slovaks have caused these mountaineers to turn to their Bohemian 
kinsmen for assistance in the preservation of race and tradition. 
Merging of national aspirations has been facilitated by close lin- 
guisite affinity. A Bohemian-Slovak body consisting of 8,410,998 
individuals* thus came into being within the Dual Monarchy in 

1 Official Austrian figures estimate the number of Slovaks at slightly over 2,000,000. 
Slavic authorities generally give higher figures. 

2J. Zemmich, Deutsche und Slawen in den dsterreichischen Siidetenlandern, Deut. Erde, 


2, 1903, pp. 1-4. 
® Census returns for 1910. New Inter. Hncyc., Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1914, 


18618°—sm 1915——28 


434 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


order to maintain resistance against German and Hungarian en- 
croachments. 


The Slovaks are mountain dwellers who have but slightly fra- | 


ternized with Bohemians and Moravians, notwithstanding close racial 
and linguistic affinity. The course of centuries failed to change 
their customs or the mode of life led in the western Carpathians. 
The Hungarian plain unfolded itself below their rocky habitation 
without tempting them to forsake the seclusion of their native 
valleys. Their language holds its own as far east as the Laborec 
Valley. Junction with Polish is effected in the Tatra. 


11. THE AREA OF HUNGARIAN SPEECH. 


The presence in Europe of Hungarians, a race bearing strong 
linguistic and physical affinity to Turki tribesmen, is perhaps best 
explained by the prolific harvests yielded by the broad valleys of 
the Danube and Theiss. Huns, Avars, Hunagars, and Magyars, one 
and all Asiatics, wandering into Europe successively, were enticed 
into abandonment of nomadism by the fertility of the boundless 
Alféld. Western influences took solid root among these descend- 
ants of eastern ancestors after their conversion to Catholicism and 
the adoption of the Latin alphabet. So strongly did they become 
permeated by the spirit of occidental civilization that the menace of 
absorption by the Turks, their own kinsmen, was rendered abor- 
tive whenever the Sultan’s hordes made successful advances to- 
ward Vienna. At the same time fusion with the Germans was 
prevented by the oriental origin of the race. The foundation of a 
separate European nation was thus laid in the Hungarian plains. 

The linguistic boundary between Hungarian and German is 
found in the eastern extremity of the Austrian Alps.*. The south- 
ern side of the Danube Valley between Pressburg and Raab is Ger- 
man. Magyar spreads, however, to the north to meet the Slovak 
area. The line then crosses the upper valleys of the Raab and attains 
the Drave, which forms the linguistic boundary between Croatian 
and Hungarian. East of the Theiss contact with the Rumanian of 
Transylvania begins in the vicinity of Arad on the Maros River 
and extends northward in an irregular line, hugging the western 
outlines of the Transylvania Alps, and attaining the sources of the 
Theiss. In the northeastern valley of this river Hungarian and 
Ruthenian language areas become contiguous. 

The area of Magyar speech thus defined lacks homogeneity in its 
western section lying west of the Danube, where important enclaves 
of Germans are solidly entrenched. The central portion of the 


iP, Hunfalvy, Die Ungarn oder Magyaren, pp. 104-120, Prochaska, Vienna, 1881. 


Smiths 


| AUSTRIA-HUNGARY | 


| AND PARTS OF SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE ’ 
SHOWING 


¥ LANGUAGES 


Scale :1:5,550,000 
or 1 inch=87'*2miles. 


nee, “eee 
ore . 


Smitheosian Report, 1915—Deminian, 


| ~vell wa as AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


4 Legend 


(Oltalian Polish } \ EN Ge? --a0seng AND PARTS OF SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE | 


@Rumanian GirechsMoraven DSS ps =: —— SHOWING | 
(lserman Slovakian 0 ‘ ra 2% LANGUAGES 
(Hungarian GD Slovene ‘ r 4 | ’ Siena | 
or Linch 87" miles. 


ri v 


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LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 435 


monotonous expanse unfolding itself between the Danube and the 
Theiss, on the other hand, is characterized by uniformity of the 
Hungarian population it supports. Enclaves exist again all along 
the eastern border of this area. 

A minor group of Hungarians have settled on the eastern edge 
of the Transylvania Mountains. They live surrounded by Ruman- 
ians on all sides except on the west, where a lone outpost of Saxons 
brings Teutonic customs and speech to the east. The name of 
Szekler, meaning frontier guardsmen, applied to this body of 
Magyars, is indicative of their origin. Their presence on the heights 
overlooking the Rumanian plain bespeaks the solicitude of Hun- 
garian sovereigns to control a site on which the natural bulwark 
dominating their plains had been raised. These Magyars represent 
at present the landed gentry of Transylvania. 

This Hungarian colony was in full development at the end of the 
thirteenth century. Its soldiers distinguished themselves during the 
period of war with the Turks. Prestige acquired on the battle-field 
strengthened the separate and semi-independent existence of the 
community. The region occupied by these Hungarians is situated 
along the easternmost border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 
The towns of Schissburg and Maros Vasarhely he on its western 
border. But the area of Rumanian speech situated between the 
land of the Szekler and the main Hungarian district is studded with 
numerous colonies of Magyars, thereby rendering delimitation of a 
linguistic boundary in the region almost impossible. 

The Saxon colony adjoining the Szekler area on the west is also a 
relic of medieval strategic necessities. In spite of the name by 
which this German settlement is designated, its original members 
appear to have been recruited from different sections of western 
European regions occupied by Teutons.t. Colonization had already 
been started when King Gesa II of Hungary gave it a fresh im- 
pulse in the middle of the twelfth century by inducing peasants 
of the middle Rhine and Moselle Valleys to forsake servitude in 
their native villages in return for land ownership in Transylvania.” 

To promote the efficiency of the soldier colonists as frontier guards- 
men an unusual degree of political latitude was accorded them. In 
time their deputies sat in the Hungarian diet on terms of equality 
with representatives of the nobility. The exigencies of prolonged 
warfare with the Tatar populations attempting to force entrance 
into the Hungarian plains determined selection of strategical sites 


1. Teutsch, Die Art der Ansiedelung der Siebenbiirger Sachsen, Fors. z. deut. Land u. 
Volksk., vol. 9, pp. 1-22, 1896. Cf. also O. Wittstock, Volkstiimliches der Siebenbtirger 
Sachsen in the same volume. 

2 Luxemburg and the regions comprised between Treves, Diisseldorf, and Aix-la-Chapelle 
furnished many German colonists, 


436 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


as nuclei of original settlements. These facts are responsible for the 
survival of the Teutonic groups in the midst of Rumanians and 
Hungarians. To-day the so-called Saxon area does not constitute a 
single group, but consists of separate agglomerations clustered in the 
vicinity of the passes and defiles which their ancestors were called 
upon to defend. The upper valley of the Oltu and its mountain 
aftluents in the rectangle enclosed between the towns of Hermann- 
stadt, Fogaras, Mediasch, and Schissburg contain at present the bulk 
of this Austrian colony of German ancestry. 


12. THE AREA OF RUMANIAN SPEECH. 


The Germans and Hungarians who founded settlements on the 
Transylvanian plateau were unable to impose their language on the 
inhabitants of the mountainous region. Rumanian, representing the 
easternmost expansion of Latin speech, is in use to-day on the great- 
est portion of this highland,’ as well as in the fertile valleys and 
plains surrounding it between the Dniester and the Danube. A por- 
tion of Hungary and the Russian Province of Bessarabia is therefore 
included in this linguistic unit outside of the Kingdom of Rumania.” 
Beyond the limits of this continuous area the only important colony 
of Rumanians is found around Metsovo in Greece, where, in the re- 
cesses of the Pindus Mountains and surrounded ‘by the Greeks, 
Albanians, and Bulgarians of the plains, almost half a million 
Rumanians* have managed to maintain the predominant Latin char- 
acter of their language.* 

The survival of Latin in an eastern land and in a form which 
presents closer analogies with the language of the Roman period than 
with any of its western derivatives had its origin in the Roman con- 
quest of Dacia in the first decade of the second century. Occupation 
of the land by important bodies of legionaries and a host of civil 
administrators, their intermarriage with the natives, the advantages 
conferred by Roman citizenship, all combined to force Latin into 
current use. When in 275 Aurelian recalled Roman troops from the 
eastern Provinces of the Empire, the vernacular of Rome had taken 
such solid root in Dacia that its extirpation had become an im- 
possibility. 

iN. Mazere, Harta etnografica a Transilyanei 1: 340,000, Inst. Geogr. al Armatei, 
Iasi, 1909. 

2G. Weigand, Linguistischer Atlas des Dacorumiinischen Sprachgebietes, Barth, Leipzig, 

a 

Ae ae number is given at 750,000 by G. Murgocé and P. Papahagi in “ Turcia cu privire 
speciala asupra Macedoniei,’ Bucarest, 1911. Greek computations, in contrast, rarely 
exceed the 100,000 figure. d 

The total number of Rumanians in the Balkan peninsula is estimated at about 10,- 
300,000 individuals, distributed as follows: Rumania, 5,489,296, or 92.5 per cent of the 


population ; Russia, 1,121,669, of which 920,919 are in Bessarabia; Austria-Hungary, 
3,224,147, of which 2,949,032 are in Transylvania; Greece, 373,520; Serbia, 90,000. 


—— 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 437 


This abandonment of the region by the Romans is invoked for 
political reasons by the Magyar rulers of Transylvania in order to 
deny the autochthonous character of Rumanian natives of this Hun- 
garian Province. Rumanian historians, however, have been able to 
demonstrate the untenability of this assumption.’ Clues offered by 
geography also tend to validate Rumanian claims. 

From the valley of the Dniester to the basin of the Theiss the 
steppes of southern Russia spread in unvarying uniformity, save 
where the tableland of the Transylvanian Alps breaks their conti- 
nuity. The entire region was the Dacia colonized by the Romans.” 
Unity of life in this home of Rumanian nationality has been un- 
affected by the sharp physical diversity afforded by the enclosure of 
mountain and plain within the same linguistic boundary. The 
thoroughness with which Rumanians have adapted themselves to the 
pecularities of their land is evinced by the combination of the twin 
occupations of herder and husbandman followed by Moldavians and 
Wallachians. Cattle and flocks are led every summer to the rich 
grazing lands of the elevated Transylvanian valleys. In winter man 
and beast seek the pastures of the Danubian steppes and prairies. 
Rumanians thus maintain mountain and plain residences, which 
they occupy alternately in the year.* These seasonal migrations 
account for the intimacy between highlanders and lowlanders, be- 
sides affording adequate explanation of the peopling of the region 
by a single nationality.* 

There was a time, however, when Rumanian nationality became 
entirely confined to the mountain zone. The invasions which fol- 
lowed the retirement of the Romans had driven Rumanians to the 
shelter of the Transylvanian ranges. Perched on this natural for- 
tress, they beheld the irruption of Slavs and Tatars in the broad 
valleys which they had once held in undisputed sway. Only after 
the flow of southeastern migrations had abated did they venture to 
reoccupy the plains and resume their agricultural pursuits and 
seasonal wanderings. 

The outstanding facts in these historical vicissitudes is that the 
mountain saved the Latin character of Rumanian speech. Had the 
Romanized: Dacians been unable to find refuge in the Transyl- 
vanian Alps there is no doubt that they would have succumbed 
to Slavic or Tatar absorption. As it is, the life of Rumanians is 


1A. D. Xenopol, Histoire des Roumains, Leroux, Paris, 1896. 

2W. R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas. Holt, New York, 1911, pp. 34, 35, 39. 

8’ Typical examples of seasonal migration are found in Switzerland, where conditions 
prevailing in the higher and lower valleys of the Alps have induced the inhabitants to 
shift their residence with the seasons, 

4A similar nomadism is observable among the Rumanians of the Pindus Mountains; 
vy. The Nomads of the Balkans: An account of life and customs among the Vlachs of 
Nofthern Pindus. By A, J. B. Wace and M. S. Thompson, Methuen, London, 1914. 


438 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


strongly impregnated with eastern influences. Oddly enough, its 
Christianity was derived from Byzantium instead of from Rome, 
and were it not for a veritable renaissance of Latinism about 1860 
its affinity with the Slavic world would have been far stronger in 
the present century. 


138. THE AREA OF SLOVENE SPEECH. 


Of the two groups of southern Slavs subjected to Austro-Hun- 
garian rule the Slovenes are numerically inferior.t Settled on the 
caleareous plateaus of Carniola, they cluster around Laibach and 
attain the area of German speech, on the north, along the Drave 
between Marburg and Klagenfurt.2, Eastward they march with 
Hungarians and the Serbo-Croat group of southern Slavs. Their 
southern linguistic boundary also coincides with the latter’s. Around 
Gottschee, however, a zone of German intervenes between Slovene 
and Croatian dialects. Practically the entire eastern coast of the 
Gulf of Triest lies in the area of Slovene speech. The group there- 
by acquires the advantage of direct access to the sea, a fact of no 
mean importance among the causes that contribute to its survival 
to the present day in spite of being surrounded by Germans, Hun- 
garians, Croats, and Italians. 

The Slovenes may be considered as laggards of the Slavic migra- 
tions that followed Avar invasions. They would probably have 
occupied the fertile plains of the Hungarian “ Mesopotamia” had 
they not been driven to their elevated home by the pressure of 
Magyar and Turkish advances. Confinement in the upland pre- 
vented fusion with the successive occupants of the eastern plains 
which unfolded themselves below their mountain habitations. Ra- 
cial distinctiveness characterized by language no less than by highly 
developed attachment to tradition resulted from this state of 
seclusion. ep 


14. THE AREA OF SERBIAN SPEECH. 


South of the Hungarian and Slovene linguistic zones the Austro- 
Hungarian domain comprises a portion of the area of Serbian 
speech. The language predominates from the Adriatic coast to 
the Drave and Morava Rivers, as well as up to the section of the 
Danube comprised between its points of confluence with these two 
rivers.’ Serbian, in fact, extends slightly east of the Morava Valley 
toward the Balkan slopes lying north of the Timok River, where 

11,252,940, Census of 1910. 

2 P, Samassa, Deutsche und Windische in Stidésterreich. Deut. Hrde, 2, 1903, pp. 39-41, 
which cf, with Niederle’s delimitation in La Race Slave, pp. 139-140. 

3 Scattered Serbian settlements are also found between the Danube and Theiss Valleys.as 


far north as Maria-Theresiopel, and farther south at Zambor and Neusatz. Serbian is the 
language of the entire district of the confluence of the Theiss and Danube. 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 439 


Rumanian prevails as the language of the upland.t To the south 
contact with Albanian is obtained. 

The area of Serbian speech thus delimited includes the inde- 
pendent kingdoms of Montenegro and Serbia. Within the territory 
of the Dual Monarchy it is spoken in the provinces of Croatia, 
Slavonia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia. The language is, 
therefore, essentially that of the region of uplift which connects the 
Alps and the Balkans or which intervenes between the Hungarian 
plain and the Adriatic. 

Union between the inhabitants of this linguistic area is some- 
what hampered by the division of Serbians into three religious 
groups. The westernmost Serbs, who are also known as Croats, 
adhere to the Roman Catholic faith in common with all their kins- 
men, the western Slavs. Followers of this group are rarely met east 
of the 19th meridian. A Mohammedan body consisting of descend- 
ants of Serbs who had embraced Islam after the Turkish conquest 
radiates around Sarajevo as a center. The bulk of Serbians belong, 
however, to the Greek orthodox church. Cultural analogies be- 
tween the Mohammedan and orthodox groups are numerous. Both 
use the Russian alphabet, whereas the Croats have adopted Latin 
letters in their written language. 

The Serbian group made its appearance in the Balkan Peninsula 
at the time of the general westerly advance of Slavs in the fifth and 
sixth centuries. A northwestern contingent, wandering along the 
river valleys leading to the eastern Alpine foreland, settled in the 
regions now known as Croatia and Slavonia. Here ‘the sea and 
inland watercourses provided natural communication with western 
Europe. Evolution of this northwestern body of Serbians into the 
Croatians of our day was facilitated by the infiltration of western 
ideas. But the great body of Serbians occupying the mountainous 
area immediately to the south had their foreign intercourse neces- 
sarily confined to eastern avenues of communication. They there- 
fore became permeated with an eastern civilization in which By- 
zantine strains can be easily detected. In spite of these cultural 
divergences, the linguistic differentiation of the Croat from Serbian 
element has been slight. 

To-day the political aspirations of this compact mass of Serbians 
are centered around the independent kingdom of Serbia, which is 
regarded as the nucleus around which a greater Serbia comprising 
all the Serbian-speaking inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula will 
grow. This Serbo-Croatian element is see to comprise at least 
10,300,000 individuals.” 


1 Serbian authorities usually extend the zone of their vernacular to points farther east. 
Cf., J. Cvijié, Die Ethnographische Abgrenzung der Vélker auf der Balkanhalbinsel. 
edternannis Mitt., 59, I, March, 1913, pp. 113-118. 

2J. Erdeljauovi¢é. Broj Srba i Khrvyata, Davidovié, Belgrad, 1911. 


440 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


By its situation, the Serbian linguistic area and the rugged land 
over which it spreads afford a political and physical link whereby 
connection between problems pertaining respectively to western 
Europe and the Balkan peninsula is established. The process of 
nation-forging undertaken by Serbian-speaking inhabitants of south- 
eastern Europe induces a southerly gravitation of Croatians and 
Bosnians. In opposition to this tendency, artificial forces are ex- 
erted at Vienna in order to prevent detachment of the Serbian 
element in the Dual Monarchy. 


15. THE CASE OF MACEDONIAN. 


Within the Balkan Peninsula linguistic groupings now conform 
to a large extent with the political divisions which ended the wars 
of 1912-13. Greater distance in time will undoubtedly afford an 
increasingly satisfactory perspective of the results which followed 
this attempt to totally eliminate the Turk from’ mastery over this 
portion of the European continent. Racial sifting followed close 
on territorial readjustments. Turks from all parts of the former 
Turkish Provinces transferred their lands to Christian residents and 
emigrated to Asia Minor. Special arrangements for this exodus 
were provided by the Turkish government. Greeks settled in the 
newly acquired Bulgarian and Serbian domain similarly sought new 
homes within the boundaries of the Hellenic kingdom. A heavy 
flow of Bulgarian emigrants is at present directed to Bulgaria from 
Bulgarian-speaking territory allotted to Serbia.t 

Pressing need of further boundary revision on the basis of lan- 
guage is still felt in the Balkan peninsula. Resumption of hos- 
tilities in this part of Europe was due principally to the ‘moot 
case of the nationality of the Slavs of Macedonia. Serbs and Bul- 
gars claim them alike as their own. In reality the Macedonians 
constitute a transition people between the two. ‘The land they 
occupy is surrounded by a mountainous bulwark which assumes 
crescentic shape as it spreads along the Balkan ranges, and the 
mountains of Albania and the Pindus. For centuries this Mace- 
donian plain has constituted the cockpit of a struggle waged for 
linguistic supremacy on the part of Bulgarians and Serbs. The 
land had formed part of the domain of each of the two countries 
in the heyday of their national life. To this fact the present duality 
of claim must be ascribed in part. 

The language of the Macedonians is likewise transitional between 
Serbian and Bulgarian. Its affinity with the latter, however, is 

1 Such migrations generally follow boundary revisions. The crossing of Alsatians into 
French territory from the year 1870 on has been mentioned in its place above. A large 


number of Danes likewise abandoned their home in Schleswig-Holstein in 1865 and wan- 
dered into Denmark. 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 441 


greater. It is, in fact, sufficiently pronounced to have generally led 
to its inclusion with Bulgarian. Travelers in the land of the Mace- 
donian Slavs know that a knowledge of Bulgarian will obviate difii- 
culties due to ignorance of the country’s vernaculars. Serbian, how- 
ever, is not as readily intelligible to the natives. 

These relations have not illogically weighted the consensus of 
authority on the Bulgarian side. The result is that compilers of 
linguistic or ethnographic maps have generally abstained from dif- 
ferentiating the Macedonian from the Bulgarian area.t. The im- 
possibility for Bulgarians to regard the terms of the treaty of 
Bucarest as final are, therefore, obvious. Extension of the Rumanian 
boundary to the Turtukai-Black Sea line was also an encroachment 
on soil where Bulgarian was the predominant language.” 

In its westernmost area the delimitation of a Bulgarian linguis- 
tic boundary is greatly.hampered by the relatively large Serbian- 
speaking element on the north and a corresponding mass of Greeks 
on the south. Reliable statistics are still unavailable. The region 
in which determination of Bulgarian or Serbian linguistic pre- 
dominance assumes its most complicated phase is found in the 
quadrangle constituted by Pirot-Nish-Vranja-Prisrend. Here the 
language of the Slavic natives departs equally from the Bulgarian 
and Serbian, between which it varies. This region, however, lies 
north of Macedonia proper. At the same time, there appears to be 
little room to doubt that the area of Bulgarian speech extends 
to the zone of the eastern Albanian dialects and that it attains the 
Gulf of Salonica. But the seafaring population of the Mgean 
coast is largely Greek except in the sections within Bulgarian bound- 
aries which are now destitute of Greek fishermen. 

The advance of Teutonic and Bulgarian forces in Serbia and 
Albania during the winter of 1915-16 has resulted in a westerly 
spread of the territory occupied by Bulgarians. Decision on the 
permanence of this occupation will rest with the peace congress to 
convene at the end of the present European war. 


16. THE AREA OF ALBANIAN SPEECH. 


Outside of Macedonia, a Balkan zone, in which political and lin- 
guistic boundaries fail to coincide, existed until recently in southern 
Albania. The frontier of this principality with Greece had been 
extended into a region in which Greek was undoubtedly spoken by 


1p. M. Brancoff, La Macédoine et sa population Chrétienne, Plon, Paris, 1905. The 
Serbian viewpoint is resumed by J. Cvijié in ‘‘ Ethnographie de la Macédoine,”’ Ann. de 
Géogr., 15, 1906, pp. 115-132, and 249-266. 

2Tt is estimated that 1,198,000 Bulgarians are still under foreign rule in the Balkans as 
a result of the treaty of Bucarest. Of these 286,000 live in Rumania, 315,000 in Greece, 
and 597,000 in Serbia. Cf. R. A. Tsanoff, Jour. of Race Develop., January, 1915, p. 251. 


449 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


the majority of the inhabitants.1_ The Hellenic government, taking 
advantage of disturbances in Albania and the European war of 
1914, despatched troops in the territory claimed by its citizens. As 
a result of this invasion the Albanian area of Greek speech is at this 
writing under Greek military occupation.? 

The inhabitants of Albania are utterly devoid of national feel- 
ing. The formation of this independent state was a political move 
undertaken by Austrian statesmen to prevent expansion of Serbia to 
the Adriatic. Within the boundaries determined by the ambassa- 
dorial conference held in London in 1918, strife and dissensions pre- 
vail to-day as intensely as during the Turkish régime. Natives of 
the northern sections of the country speak Serbian dialects and are 
inclined to favor union with Serbia or Montenegro rather than inde- 
pendence. Malissori tribesmen fought side by side with Monte- 
negrin troops in the fall of 1912, while the Albanians of Ipek gave 
assistance to Turkish regulars. The inhabitants of the valley of the 
upper Morava sent supplies to Serbian troops against which the 
chieftains of central Albania led their men. The purest type of 
Albanian found in the vicinity of Elbassan, Koritza, and Avlona® 
is practically submerged in a sea of Greeks. Under these circum- 
stances partition of the country between Greece and Serbia might 
not be incompatible with native aspirations. Departure from lin- 
guistic differentiation in this case would probably be attended by 
political stability which could not be provided in any other manner. 


17. CONCLUSIONS. 


Certain inferences engage attention in this study of linguistic areas. 
Inspection of the map of Europe prepared for this article suggests 
strikingly that zones of linguistic contact were inevitably destined by 
their very location to become meeting places for men speaking different 
languages. They correspond to the areas of circulation defined by 
Ratzel.t| The confusion of languages on their site is in almost every 
instance the result of human intercourse determined by economic 
advantages. In Belgium after the Norman conquest the burghers of 
Flanders were able to draw on English markets for the wool which 
they converted into the cloth that gave their country fame in the 
fairs of Picardy and Champagne.’ We have here a typical example 
of Ratzel’s “ Stapellindern” or “transit regions.” In a cross direc- 


1R. Hiiber, Carte Statistique des Cultes Chrétiens. 1: 600,000. Baader & Gross, Cairo, 


1910. 

2L. Biichner, Die neue griechisch-albanische Grenze in Nordepirus. Petermanns Mitt. 
61, 1915, February, p. 68. 

3G. Gravier, L’Albanie et ses limites. Rev. de Paris, Jan. 1, 1913, pp. 200-224. 

4, Ratzel, Politische Geographie, 2d ed. Oldenbourg, Munich, 1903. Cf. chap. 16, 
“Der Verkehr als Raumbewiiltiger,” pp. 447-534. 

5R. Blanchard, La Flandre, Colin, Paris, 1906. 


SHOWING 


LANGUAGES 
having political significance. 
‘based on sheet N212 ¢ (Sept 1911) Debes'Handatlas and other sources 
Seale :1:9000,000 or t inch -142 miles 


S&S 
() Lettish aLatrmantan GQ Narkish « Tatar 
————- political boundariee vw. en linguistic boundaries 


Ge at. | 
DAL “Ode 


Atte 


ape se tira), UTarets| 


‘ ryt 
| i te 
HOt bpd Adee 


r) 


a 


“gt 


ane a 


TIN 


AT eid 8 8 


-s 


a 


* er 
Lh a el} 


=e ! oe. 


3" 


LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE—DOMINIAN. 443 


tion the traffic of the Rhine ran at the end of the twelfth century 
from Cologne to Bruges along the divide between French and 
Flemish. Lorraine, inviting access from east and west, is known to 
historians as a Gallo-Germanic market place of considerable im- 
portance.t In our own time the river trade between Holland and 
Germany along the Rhine has caused expansion of Dutch into Ger- 
man territory as far as Wesel and Crefeld. The intruding language 
yields, however, to German everywhere.” Prevalence of French in 
parts of Switzerland is generally ascribed to travel through certain - 
Alpine passes.* The penetration of German in the Trentino has 
already been explained. In Austria the entire valley of the Danube 
has provided continental trade with one of its most important ave- 
nues. I have called attention in a former article to the Balkan 
peninsula as an intercontinental highway.* In a word, language 
always followed in the wake of trade, and Babel-like confusion pre- 
vailed along channels wherein men and their marketable commodi- 
ties flowed. 

The history of Europe during the nineteenth century shows clearly 
that modern reconstruction of nationalities is based on language. 
Practically all the wars of this period are the outcome of three great 
constructive movements which led to the unification of Germany and 
of Italy, as well as to the disentanglement of Balkan nationalities. 
These were outward and visible signs of the progress of democratic 
ideals. The congress of Vienna failed to provide Europe with politi- 
cal stability, because popular claims were ignored during the delib- 
erations. At present, inhabitants of linguistic areas under alien rule 
are clamoring for the right to govern themselves. The carrying out 
of plebiscites under international supervision can be relied upon to 
satisfy their aspirations and serve as a guide to frontier rearrange- 
ments. 

All told, the growing coincidence of linguistic and political bound- 
aries must be regarded as a normal development. It is a-form of 
order evolved out of the chaos characterizing the origin of human 
institutions. The delimitation of international frontiers is as neces- 
sary as the determination of administrative boundaries or city lines. 
Human organization requires it and there is no reason why it should 


not be undertaken with a fair sense of the wishes and the feelings of 
all affected. 


1J. Vidal de la Blache, Mtude sur la Vallée Lorraine de la Meuse, Colin, Paris, 1908, 
pp. 165-180. : 

2 Cf. inset on pp. 65-64, Andree’s Handatlas, 6th ed., 1915. 

3 J. Brunhes, La Géogr. Humaine, Alcan, Paris, 1912, pp. 598-599. 

4The Balkan Peninsula, Bull, Amer. Geogr. Soc., vol. 45, no. 8, 1913. 


ii ae a peer dud to sis See fe wer oitit 

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- oF avroral 3 Seat: Dae tans mort eAnIoe BANAL Snkeriwnl 
fui sideiabianws PO sonld dodiaar strane otta®- a ae = 
bis Disliol nsewied obeid s97i1 od} amit mvo to at us 
19) ofat, dotetl Yo. ohm As beets and otidih oxld eh! ‘{CROTISE, 
voeiadel anibivini oft blatavD bay lees Wen int ea Tip Levi, r 
‘pi doget'h toaslevenL, *oradineiys agnriat) os ‘svewou ri bev 
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— 9 eal onidoorT od} wt mantra) To coneiensg DAT “aaa og 
. 2 sditantl oft to volley otis ot winterrAé al honislaxs oad vefusa hy 
etn Jashogial ont att te yoo thew shad betaseitinio byierotg. a 


=) nadieel. odd 09 slottta asar0t «ni ao niiothe Haller ovede Dey 7 
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‘: sthonwuon sldatetisn tight? ban som ietodw 2 ‘gata yoals Beli 


Sawoll aii 


7 wanuueast so. headed a carat 1S woiten TACOS T mivhaat 
7 das1y ovid) to smosico edt orn Horaq aidd to view ode Pe viheothow: t 
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yaad! ‘eaotion nntlnel Yo inaualydetaesih ond Od en Lew 29 pe 
sii nwomoel. to. eeorgerg off to. aanie olderd bos brewed wrowgeniTe 
; 2 Hilo ditto aqoiet ohio. iq 04 holiot ennai ¥ Lo esragos a 
4  sdiish old nariwh boroagt sree emiale: seliqaey saranda, iilid ate 
| blirs nafs taban ancia oltelurgnit ‘to etanlidadai ; shuseeng $A. “ato ru 
tio wiberiny att zovloeamuld atiroy of igfais! arly jot netiontal y if 
oF Rogar bation ad aes Gor ruse le (nuoijarrmini sshoiw soe dni be 
sGnavtear toiiuort of shir, & an avesa Bias, aooiterina nied x t: 
3 
“hanbd Leaitting-boa buaterad 46 eftiincdae eat Fy iia 
pao or iets 2 at 22 Unemoleveh tation « ‘ea baba ges, al daBae , mt 
> maid: to Rhytro’ ath: ‘guixivetgrtats eomda att toto, huang sali a 
nea oo, aeal elie facoilementi to: iro idusttonilopy ath eieond vali 

“@éail ydio to asia dhadod: ovttwesiaiinte: te, noitinteniphs OULS es 

\ Plvodea dt vier poser ott et ayaa ban je aes hops ath 

ro ayiiiest off bre eatlaiw elt "dst tisk at 


+ -— 


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Poh i, Lote a : ; axa be eae 
i a wan PANG MG STOR aired reat 

i. ny a sont ah: bit oR mael, 


EXCAVATIONS AT TELL EL-AMARNA, EGYPT, IN 
1913-1914.1 


By Lupwig BorcHanrpt. 


[With 13 plates. ] 


Following the discoveries of last year, which were mainly at 
the houses of the chief sculptor Thutmes and his workmen (pl. 1, 
P 47, 1-3), it was natural this year to investigate the adjoining 
estates, so far as they had not been previously excavated. The 
excavation was therefore started westward from the Thutmes’ house 
and following the northern edge of the Wadi extended to the main 
street which connects the modern villages Hagg Qandil and Et-Till 
(see pl. 1). This street, corresponding to the main thoroughfare 
of the old city, was reached at house N 47, 1. There were also 
laid bare the groups of houses Q 48, 1-3 and O 48, 14-15 among 
the hills rising from the Wadi. Behind the first row of estates, 
west of “the street of the high priest” and north of the Wadi, 
the premises lying westward were disposed of as also a block of 
smaller estates, Q 46, 18-23, to the north of “the Christmas house” 
(Weihnachtshaus”), Q 46,1. On the east side of this part of “the 
street of the high priest,” between it and the eastern city line, 
several estates were cleared up, and the work was considerably 
advanced northward. The area of the city so far excavated was 
thus about the form of a T, the upper or horizontal bar running 
from south-southwest to north-northeast—from M 51 to Q 45— 
and the perpendicular bar extending from west-northwest to east- 
southeast—from N 47-48 to Q 48-49. The lower bar at the present 
state of the work appears split into two strips of houses separated 
by the Wadi, though it is certain that in ancient times the entire 
ground was fully built up. 

Strange as it may appear, the ancient Egyptians in building up an 
area did not take the precaution to leave the lower levels free of 
structures. They apparently disregarded rains in distant parts of 
the desert which caused torrents to rush into the Nile Valley carry- 

1 Abstract translated from Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin, 
No. 55, December, 1914, pp. 1—45. 

445 


446 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


ing everything before them, although the experience of millenniums 
should have taught them better. The difference of level which thus © 
far could be established between the floor of house Q 48, 3 and~ 
that of N 47, 6 amounts to 4.50 meters which is quite a marked 
difference considering that these houses are only about 480 meters” 
apart. ‘The same mistake was made in the palace of Amenophis ~ 
III, south of Medinet Habu, and elsewhere. The ancient Egyptian ~ 
architects were, however, not alone in committing this error, for 
their modern colleagues and even Europeans building in Egypt do ~ 
no better. As a result of this thoughtlessness and carelessness of 
transient engineers, parts of the railway dams, even in the recent 
decades, have often been swept away by floods, and in 1895 an en- © 
tire corner of the place of Heluan in Cairo was carried off. | 
The appearance of the excavations in the Wadi differs from that 
in the rest of the city area. Elsewhere the house ruins appear as 7 
flat, desert hills where the still remaining upper rows of masonry 
are brought to light with the first stroke of the pick. In the Wadi 
a layer of sand or pebble, 0.5 to 1 meter deep, must first be removed 
before the upper parts of the walls, 1.5 meter or more in height, ap- 
pear. The débris between the walls is here also more compact, due ~ 
to alluviation and not merely to the rubbish from the upper build- — 
ings. 
As the Wadis, which now form a break in the city area, must once © 
have been fully built up, the extensive interruption of the ruin field 
in the neighborhood of the modern cemetery of Et-Till must be con- ~ 
sidered as only incidental, and those parts of the ruins formerly 
termed northern settlements must once have been directly connected 
with the present main part of the city. 
We thus obtain a city area of about 7 kilometers from north to ~ 
south with a greatest width of only 1.5 Inlometers. This elongated © 
form of the city, probably in part conditioned by its location along 
the river, is accounted for chiefly through its origin, which is even — 
now clearly perceptible. The city was built on a long street which 
ran parallel to the course of the river or, since the river limited its 
development on the west side, more toward the east on the main street. — 
This main street, which probably already existed as a country road 
when the city was founded, originally connected the palace and temple 
quarters near modern Et-Till with the similarly important quarter 
at the modern village Hagg Qandil. This main thoroughfare still 
exists as a connecting road between these villages, and appears on the 
plan (pl. 1) between the premises M 47, 2-6 and M 47,1. The first 
plan of the city was probably limited to the building up of both sides 
of the main street and later other broad streets were laid out, running 
parallel to the main thoroughfare, but bending toward it from the 


Smithso 


” 
aF 


Tell el-Amarna 
Plan of the localities excavated up to 1914, 
Scale 1:4000. 


EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT—BORCHARDT, 447 


north and south, and probably leading from certain important cen- 
ters to the main street. The first of these broad parallel streets which 
thus far can be traced, may be seen on the plan in front of house L 50, 
1, between the houses N 48, 15 and O 48, 8, in front of the house OQ 
48, 18, and between O 47, 2-4 and P 47,19. The next, apparently the 
most extreme parallel street, is the one termed Oberpriester-Strasse 
(street of the high priest) and has been fully described in Mitteilun- 
gen der Deutschen Orient Gesellschaft, No. 52, page 7. 

The necessary connections between these main arteries of the city 
were narrow cross streets varying from 1.50 meter (!) to 10 meters 
in width. They are clearly visible, as shown on the plan between the 
premises extending from Q 46 to P 48, but good examples of them 

are also recognizable south of the Wadi at the end of the “high 
priests’ street.” These cross streets do not always run in a straight 
line, but some are of a rectangular outline, as the one between Q 46, 2 
and Q 47, 9. 

So much concerning the streets within the city the system of 
which is gradually becoming more distinct. But likewise as regards 
the long-known street outside of the city area, to which the mapping 
of the region has added a large number, some views may now be 
given which may correct former statements on this subject. In the 
first place, a sharp distinction must be drawn between earlier streets 
of the time of Amenophis IV and later ones. One of the older 
streets was no doubt the one which led far into the desert to the ala- 
-baster quarry of the Old Kingdom, having a length of 17.5 kilo- 
meters, and in some places presenting for its time creditable “ art 
structures,” such as ramps and fortified side slopes. Two other 
roads on the eastern plateau lead still farther into the desert and to 
the stone quarry located 24 kilometers from the Nile in an air line. 
This is an alabaster quarry. Its original circular entrance shaft led 
through a sandstone elevation rising from the surface of the desert 
(pl. 2, fig. 1, top, on left side), but at present the entrance is some- 
what more accessible because of a break in the covering, as shown in 
the central portion of the figure. In the interior there opens, first, 
an irregular space, from which passages lead down to other rooms, 
and from these to still lower levels. In some of the rooms late 
Roman potsherds were found, bearing witness to the age of the work- 
ing of the quarry, which is also attested by the rude relief in the 
wall of the uppermost room on the left side, near the present entrance 

(pl. 2, fig. 2). This relief represents a priest sacrificing a gazelle 
before a row of five gods—Re, Atum, Thot, (?), and Har-si-ese. As 
the age of the quarry furnishes the date of the two roads which lead 
up to it, they must be disregarded in the reconstruction of the road- 
net at the time of Amenophis IY. There remain, therefore, for this 


448 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, | 


period only the so-called “round roads” which above, upon the 
mountain, connect the tombs and the frontier stele, and their con- © 
necting roads which lead through the plain from north to south, as 
also the roads from the tombs to the various points of the city. The 
“round,” or encircling, roads possibly served for the military guard 
of the city territory. As regards the object of the other roads, the 
most plausible assumption for the present is that they connected the 
working places, unfinished tombs, and frontier stele with one an- 
other and with the factories in the city. 

In this year’s campaign only a few large estates, but very many 
small premises were cleared, especially such as already had been 
investigated and rummaged by our English and native predecessors 
during the excavation of the city, so that little was learned as to the 
general arrangement of buildings on large areas. But one assump- 
tion which was formerly questioned was definitely proved. What 
was formerly, though with some doubt, designated as a front garden 
on the street, is now proved to exist at house O 48, 14 (pl. 3, fig. 1) 
in the form of tree holes regularly arranged with a rectangular 
border of bricks. The general arrangement seems to be that the 
house garden proper was inclosed within high walls and thus hidden 
from public view, but in front of the high wall there was another 
garden surrounded by low fences, so that passers-by could enjoy the 
trees and bushes. This consideration for the public, however, is not 
a characteristic of the oriental, who timidly conceals his possessions 
behind high walls. But the customs of the ancient Egyptians, espe- 
cially those practiced in the home and the family, must not be meas- 
ured by the customs of modern Mohammedan Orientals. 

One remarkable habit which was this year firmly established, 
though it was in former years often observed, but not clearly recog- 
nized, shows how conservative Egypt is. .On the estate of a wealthy 
man (house P 47,17) the main entrance on the street and the entrances 
to the dwelling were walled up. The walling-up was executed when 
the wooden doors were still in their frames. Later the white ants, 
which at Tell el-Amarna devour anything made of wood or similar 
substances, destroyed the wooden doors behind the masonry. The 
owners who departed from this estate, probably on their return to 
Thebes, secured their property, which they perhaps expected to use 
again, by walling it up against housebreakers. This custom had 
already been practiced in the Old Kingdom, as in the mortuary 
temple of King Sahu-re‘, near Abusir, and is still employed in Egypt. 
Thus several years ago the German consul general, after all the pack- 
ing cases of his predecessor had been lost, had the storeroom which 
held his own properties walled up on the advice of natives who were 
familiar with the conditions of the country, and with the desired 
result, for the boxes were all there when he departed, though some- 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Borchardt. PLATE 2. 


1 
| 1. ENTRANCE TO THE ALABASTER QUARRY OF LATER TIMES. 


——s 


2. BAS-RELIEF IN THE ALABASTER QUARRY OF LATER TIMES. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Borchardt. PLATE 3. 


2. ALTAR OF BRICKS IN House P 47, 22. 


EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT—BORCHARDT. 449 


what musty. There are instances, however, in Thebes where the 
officially walled-up tombs served merely as a cover for the pillagers 
of reliefs to perform their work of destruction. Every method for 
security leads to devising a corresponding method for breaking in. 

The largest and best preserved house excavated this year, and 
which, because of its excellent condition, permitted the reproduction 
in a colored drawing of one of the main rooms, the deep hall, was 
that of General Ra‘-mose and his housekeeper. ’Jnet (House P 47, 9), 
where the incomplete tombs, already known for some time, lie in 
the row of the so-called southern tombs in the eastern mountain of 
Tell el-Amarna. The house is of special interest because its owner 
is known, and the more so since it supplies some information about 
his personal history. Under the father of the king he had been 
active in the high administrative position of “superintendent of the 
house of King Amenophis III.” His name at that time was Ptah- 
mose, but under the young king he became “General of the king of 
both lands,” and after he had moved with his master to Tell el- 
Amarna he changed the name to Ra‘-mose (pl. 4). With the con- 
stantly browing emphasis of the sun-cult, names in which other than 
solar deities played a part became unfashionable in good society. 

This custom of altering names, which has its foundation in the 
persecution of those gods who were not affiliated with the sun-cult, 
and therefore must have originated at the time of the highest de- 
velopment of the Aten cult, is important in the chronology of this 
remarkable religious movement. The house of this “General” is 
quite close to the confines of the city, which was not founded before 
the fourth year of Amenophis IV, and was therefore probably built 
a considerable time after the court had moved to Tell el-Amarna. 
The name was changed when the house was nearly finished, perhaps 
even considerably later. Hence the opposition to the names of the 
nonsolar divinities, as we see it in the above alteration of the name 
Ptah-mose, regarded as characterizing the period of Amenophis IV, 
may be considered the last acute stage of the “reformation” of that 
king, which took place in the last decades of his reign. The intro- 
duction of the Aten cult was therefore not an abrupt, sudden phe- 
nomenon, but a gradual development, beginning probably far earlier 
than the time of Amenophis IV. In fact, there is in the British 
Museum a statue belonging to the time of the father of the king, 
bearing a regiment’s name, “the god Aten sheds his rays upon King 
Amenophis III.” Thus the so-called new god of Amenophis IV 
must already have been highly respected under Amenophis ITI, else 
a regiment would hardly have been named for him. Thus, after all, 
Amenophis IV, both as the ruler of a gigantic empire and as the 
founder of a religion, was only an heir, and, as the results in both 
spheres has shown, not a fortunate heir. 

18618°—sm 1915——29 


450 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


But to return to the house of General Ra‘-mose. The first thing 
noticed was that all the doors, not only that of the main entrance 
but even those of the inner rooms, were framed in ashlar. This was 
later often observed in other, even plainer, houses, though they had 
no inscriptions as on the doorframes of Ra‘-mose’s house. These 
stone frames of interior doors are of some importance in connection 
with the colored reproduction of an inner room to be described below. 

The Ra‘-mose house also furnished new data concerning the “ quad- 
rangular” room hitherto regarded as the master’s room, but now as 
that of the lady of the house. Its presumed function as the master’s 
room was derived from the fact that it overlooked the courtyard 
and the storerooms. This would presuppose that it had a window 
from which one might look out. But Egyptian windows in the 
lower rooms, with the exception of the “audience windows” in the 


— 


palace, are arranged for lighting the inner rooms, being placed high ~ 


up, almost at the ceiling. So that this reason for considering it the 
“room of the master” fails. On the other hand, there are two rea- 
sons favoring its designation as the “room of the lady” in the case 
of the house of Ra‘-mose. In the first place this is the only known 
instance where the name of the mistress of the house appears on the 
frame of a false door, in exactly the same manner that her husband’s 
name is preserved architecturally pendant from a real door. But as 
all the doorframes of the house have not been preserved, it can not 
be asserted that the name of the wife occurred only on this one 
frame and that therefore the “ quadrangular” room must be con- 
sidered as that of the wife. But there is another and stronger 
reason. An annex to the “ quadrangular” room, accessible through a 
short corridor, is evidently a wardrobe room. On two sides of this 
wardrobe or dressing room are wooden benches, about 70 centimeters 
high, resting on brick bases, and wide enough so that on and under 
them the clothing and ornaments of the lady could have been placed. 
This may seem a bold assumption, but not if it is recalled that in the 
female apartments .of the palaces of Amenophis III, south of 
Medinet Habu, each bedroom of his numerous chief wives had a 
wardrobe chamber fitted up with like wooden benches, though of 
correspondingly greater dimensions. The wardrobe chamber near 
the “ quadrangular ” room therefore decidedly favors the assumption 
that it was the “room of the wife.” However, it will be the safest 
plan to defer a positive statement as to such use of the “ quad- 
rangular” room until women’s apparel and children’s playthings 
have been found in such a room. 

The painting on the walls of the “ deep hall,” the dining room of 
General Ra‘-mose, is well preserved and offered a very interesting 
study which was gladly taken up, though with the consciousness that 
it can not at present be definitely interpreted, so that what has been 
accomplished must necessarily be considered as only a first attempt 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Borchardt. PLATE 4. 


DOORPOST IN THE HOUSE OF GENERAL RA‘-MOSE. 


alvid 


"3SOW-,VY IWHAN35D JO 61 ‘Zp d 3SNOH NI 


« TIVH d33q,, SHL SO 3dIS LSA 


*}pueyoiog 


Sl6L 


‘uoday uejuosyyiws 


EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT—BORCHARDT. 451 


to reconstruct in a drawing the interior decoration of an Egyptian 
living room. 

The “deep hall” or the dining room of the General Ra‘-mose house 
was 7 by 7 meters in size, with entrances from the northwest through 
two vaulted doors in the center, and on the eastern side of these a 
single door counterbalanced by a false single door on the western 
side (pl. 5, right half). In this way there was produced that sym- 
metry which is an absolute requisite in Egyptian architecture. 
Double doors with an additional single door between two rooms was | 
at that time customary. The two side walls exhibit the same archi- 
_ tectural arrangement: in the center are double niches with single 
doors or niches on either side of these as might be needed. The back 
wall, however, has only the two side doors, without the central vaulted 
doors or niches; in their stead there is on the floor the usual low eleva- 
tion thought to be the place for the seats of the master of the house 
and his wife. Corresponding to this at the center of the west wall, 
there is the usual platform made of limestone, with raised sides 
(pl. 5, left half), perhaps the seating place during meals, since it is 
provided with receptacles for waste water, the washing of the hands 
before meals playing an important part in ancient Egypt. In this 
dining room there are also traces of four pairs of columns which 
stood in two rows (pl. 5, the two holes in the brick plaster of the 
front), and the limestone base of one of these columns may still be 
seen. The arrangement of the windows can be determined from the 
position of the staircase, which renders an opening for a window in 
the middle of the wall impossible, for there was space only for the 
door lintel, the fragments of which were found on the floor. It may 
seem strange that the doors were so low, but in Egyptian houses they 
were made just a man’s height. 

So much about the ground plan of the room and its architectural 
construction. 

The painting on the walls, made directly on the Nile-mud plaster, 
is everywhere nearly as high as the remains of the walls themselves, 
reaching in some parts 1.30 meters above the floor. On the floor of 
the room were found fragments of the painting fallen from the up- 
per parts of the walls, including parts of richly painted door head- 
pieces, chamfers, tore, etc. Such were the data from which to re- 
produce a colored drawing of the room. The result is quite satisfac- 
tory, but as here represented in black and white (pl. 13) the light 
and shade effects of the colors could not fully be preserved, though 
the general impresssion is accurately rendered. The color tone of 
the wall is greenish-brown, like Nile mud. The doors have black- 
bordered white frames and white chamfers. The idea underlying 
this color combination must have originally been to represent lime- 
stone doors set in brick masonry. But in the present case this idea 


452 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


was forgotten in the choice of colors, showing that we have here 
not something original but a mixing of various older motifs. The 
door frames are not of stone color, but that of red-brown wood, 
superposed by bright yellow hieroglyphic lines. They should repre- 
sent an inlaid decoration in two wood colors. But glaring as the 
yellow tone of the hieroglyphics is in itself, it has an excellent effect 
in mass upon the dark-red brown. The folding doors are yellow, 
while the wider doors, which naturally would consist. of several ver- 
tical boards in red brown, are’yellow and red brown, each board 
separate. The papyrus stalk between the two halves of the double 


= 


niche is likewise painted in natural colors, green with yellow basal | 


leaves. Naturalism prevails also in the color scheme of the door head- 
piece of the tombs of Tell el-Amarna and the temple of Abydos, 
which is painted in the yellow and red-brown wood colors. The 
painting of the chamfer of the door headpiece is remarkable. Per- 
haps originally a frieze of uraei (sacred asps) was intended or er- 
roneously laid on, while in the painting coarsely executed rosettes in 
different colors were employed. The yellow tone of the window 
grating is due to the fact that these structures date back to the period 
of original wood construction. Of the painted garlands which ran 
as a frieze around the walls, and which in the New Empire were al- 
ways rendered in the correct forms and colors of the flowers, enough 
fragments were found to permit an accurate reconstruction. 

But now we come to the rather doubtful elements of the construc- 
tion, the columns and architraves. Besides the white bases only the 
red-brown color of the shafts of the columns, traces of which can be 
discerned upon the bases, is assured. The form of the columns as 
palms was selected after old representations of the dining room in the 
palace of Amenophis IV, and consequently a green color was as- 
sumed for them. The abaci and architraves, as carried out in the 
reconstruction, may have been yellow, remains having been found of 
wooden architraves in another excavation. 

These are the data for the attempted reconstruction which, in many 
cases, have shown that this dining room was quite a comfortable 
place and that the color scheme, even to our taste, was not coarse or 
glaring but produced rather a pleasing and harmonious effect. Life 
in such rooms must have been quite pleasant, although they were not 
very well lighted as evidenced by the frequent finds of lamps and 
lamp stands. 

In exploring the environments of the atelier of the sculptor 
Thutmes some pieces which had been carried away from his work- 
shop fell into our hands, notwithstanding that a considerable num- 
ber of the finds of this year were from house ruins which had been 
already exploited by natives and, perhaps, also by our scientific 
predecessors at Tell el-Amarna. This year’s experience has thus 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Borchardt. PLATE 6. 


1. MODELED HEAD OF A BABOON, FOUND IN HOUSE Q 48, 1. 


Resin composition. Natural size. 


2. MODELED HEAD OF A BABOON, FOUND IN House O 47, 5. 


Limestone. Natural size. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Borchardt. PLATE 7. 


AMENOPHIS IV WITH HIS WIFE. 


Relief model of resin. Frontside. About one-half natural size. Found in house P47, 25. 


EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT—BORCHARDT. 453 


shown that in making museum collections it is worth while to ex- 
amine methodically places already rummaged, aside from the purely 
scientific results which such work always yields. 

In house Q 48, 1, about 100 meters from the atelier of Thutmes, 
toward the southeast, there was found an exceedingly well executed 
model of the head of a baboon (pl. 6, fig. 1). In the same house there 
also came to hght beautiful ivory carvings, which later on will be dis- 
cussed. It need not be assumed that the baboon’s head came from 
the workshop of Thutmes, for some artisan probably lived there in 
house Q 48, 1 who could make such a good model of the baboon, 
especially since, together with the baboon’s head, there was found a 
small saucer containing remains of the material from which the 
model was made. The most remarkable feature of the baboon mask 
is its material, a brown and now hardened stuff at first designated as 
“resembling wax.” This, then, wasthe material for modeling, and not 
clay, and from this first model a copy was made in stone. By chance 
we also found the head of a baboon made in limestone (pl. 6, fig. 2). 
It came from the house O 47, 5, about 100 meters from the atelier of 
Thutmes, toward the west. Judging by the location of this find, it 
may have come not from the atelier of Thutmes but from some other 
not yet discovered center of sculptural works. It need not be as- 
sumed that the limestone baboon was worked after that in “ wax,” 
though many details suggest it. The task of molding the head of a 
baboon, the sacred animal of Thot, the god of wisdom, must often 
have presented itself to the sculptors of Tell el-Amarna, since the 
center of the cult of this god, to whom the sun cult of Amenophis IV 
was not at all opposed, was at Eshmunejn, close to Tell el-Amarna. 

Although the authorship of these two models must be left unde- 
termined, yet that of the next and most important model (pls. 7 
and 8) may safely be assigned to Thutmes. This one was found in 
house P 47, 25, about 125 meterg north of Thutmes’s atelier, in a 
region which is still within the circle of this atelier. Looking first 
at the back or reverse of this find (pl. 8), it shows nothing more 
than the accurate impression of a board which was roughly planed 
with an adze. The board itself, like all woodwork at Tell el-Amarna, 
had been devoured by white ants, but the impression reproduces all 
the details, even the grain marks. The material of which the model 
is made must therefore once have been so soft and flexible that it 
could with great sharpness adapt itself to the smallest differences 
in the surface of the original. At present it has the same glass- 
hard consistency and the identical brown color of the “ wax-like” 
model of the baboon head (pl. 6, fig. 1). Prof. Schmidt, of Cairo, 
who made a preliminary examination of a small particle of the stuff, 
recognized it as a kind of gum resin, probably Oliban (frankin- 
cense) or bdellium, with an earthy (Nile-mud) admixture. 


454 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


This stuff must, therefore, have been poured upon the board while 
liquid and presumably warm, and then the sculptor modeled into 
its surface, perhaps with a heated metal instrument, the charming 
reliefs represented in plate 7. The sculpture represents the king 
and the queen. He has embraced her with his left arm and loosely 
lays his hand upon her shoulder; she turns with her face to him 
and, with her right hand busying itself at his bosom, she nestles 
on his broad neck ornament. Costume, type, and treatment of the 
bodies leave no doubt as to the date of this art work. Even if the 
location where it was found were unknown, every connoisseur would 
unhesitatingly attribute it to the time of Amenophis IV, and, on 
account of the unartificial, dashing execution, with the same cer- 
tainty would pronounce it the first sketch of a relief. This will 
suffice for the present. There are obviously connected with this 
find many other questions which are to be discussed later, such as 
the real composition of the “resin mass,” the origin of the several 
ingredients, their workableness when combined, the instruments with 
which they were worked, their suitability for casts in gypsum, etc. 

It was intimated above that in the square of houses O 47 we seem 
to have come across a new center of sculptural finds, for in this 
region there came to light many unfinished granite pieces to be laid 
into reliefs, representing wigs, a very beautiful torso of the statuette 
of a queen, though the wooden head of the queen is unfortunately 
totally decayed, the baboon’s head mentioned above (pl. 6, fig. 1), ete. 
Only two of these finds will here be specially considered. There is 
first of all a small limestone mask (pl. 9, fig. 1) doubtless copied from 
a life-size gypsum mask, many examples of which have been found in 
the modeling chamber of Thutmes. The wrinkles on the forehead, at 
the base of the nose and around the nose wings and the mouth are 
here, and in a non-Egyptian fashion well indicated, though in a more 
schematic manner than on the large masks. 

Only 50 meters from the above there was found another study (pl. 9, 
fig. 2), a portrait of Amenophis IV, which in its almost incredible 
delicacy can confidently be placed by the side of the best reliefs of 
this king. The artist succeeded best in reproducing the eyes, cheeks, 
and front of the neck. As the main concern was the portrait, the 
accessories of the royal costume, such as the headcloth, the frontlet, 
and the asp (uraeus), are treated in a secondary manner and even 
to some extent merely indicated. 

So much concerning the finds of models in this region which, as 
stated, is in the environs of a new center of sculptural works, not 
before carefully explored, though it may have been rummaged by 
our predecessors. 

The last find to be mentioned came from an entirely different district, 
from house Q 48, 1, which is also remarkable for the frequent occur- 


PLATE 8. 


Borchardt. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915. 


25 


About one-half natural size. 


IMPRESSION FROM THE MOLDBOARD FOUND IN House P 47, 


Back side. 


Relief model of resin. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Borchardt. PLATE 9. 


1. REDUCED Mask MODEL, FOUND IN 
House O 47, 9. 


Limestone. Natural size. 


2. AMENOPHIS IV, RELIEF STUDY, FOUND IN House O 47, 13. 


Limestone. -About one-half natural size. 


EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT—BORCHARDT, 455 


rence of art finds. The baboon made of gum resin, mentioned above 
(pl. 6, fig. 1), comes from this house, but the other objects found there 
are of ivory and as far as they are dated are older than Amenophis 
IV. Among these is the cover of a box from the time of Amenophis 
III (1411-1375 B. C.), and the exquisite carving (pl. 10), to be 
presently discussed, belongs to the time of Thutmosis (Thotmes) IV 
(1420-1411 B. C.). These dates lead to the assumption that these 
objects had been collected by some craftsman who inhabited house 
Q 48, 1, to serve him as copies of patterns. 

The art work in question consists of the outer 
shell of part of an elephant’s tusk, about 12 cen- 
timeters long, bisected lengthwise and carved in 
pierced work. Its surface thus forms the half 
mantle of an obtuse cone, and it is therefore nearly 
impossible to reproduce it by photography and _ Fig. 1—cuf with repre- 
by drawing except through unrolling. The work, SE a anaye eet 
which was made still more difficult because of the ofa relieffrom the mortuary 
brittleness of the original, was executed by the ‘mp2 1 Newserte’ at 
skillful hand of Mr. A. Bollacher. sixth natural size. 

The carving shows King Amenophis IV striking with the raised 
sickle sword a Libyan who fell on his knees before him and whom 
he grasps by the hair. In addition, the King also grasps a bow 
and arrows, as customary in this ancient type of representing 
“a king striking down a captive.” This incredible deftness of the 
hand, which the Egyptian kings displayed at this ceremony, at least 
on pictorial representations, is already shown in an instance of the 
Vth dynasty, from the mortuary temple of King Sahu-re‘. Behind 
the king, over whose head the sun disk is to be noticed, the uraeus 
serpent rises upon papyrus stalks, the heraldic plant of Upper 
Egypt. The scene plays before a statue of the god Montu of 
Thebes, who presents to the king the sickle sword and holds the rib 
of a palm, the symbol of everlasting duration. In front of the god 
is inscribed what he is saying to the king: “I hold the sickle sword 
for you, oh beautiful god! With it thou shalt slay the chiefs of all 
foreign lands.” There is nothing of particular interest either in the 
composition or the contents of the carving. But the workmanship is 
finer, particularly the neat execution of the costume of the king and 
the exquisitely modeled faces of the prostrated Libyan, and still 
more so of the king. 

What purpose did this art work serve, or to what object was it at- 
tached? The answer to these questions is furnished by an earlier find 
from our excavations. In the mortuary temple of Ne-user-re‘ was 
found a fragment of a relief (fig. 1) representing the left arm of a king 
shooting with the bow. The wrist is protected with a cuff against 
the rebound of the bowstring, and upon the cuff appears in minia- 


456 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


ture the scene of our ivory carving, “the king striking down a cap- 
tive.” In its form the ivory carving, which is to be imagined as 
backed with some stuff, corresponds exactly to the half shell of such 
a cuff in natural size. It would comfortably cover the half of an 
Egyptian slender wrist. But this neat, fragile carving could hardly 
have stood a practical use. It could only have been put upon a statue 
of life size; that is, one which according to the inscription of 
Thutmosis (Thotmes) IV represented the king shooting with the bow. 

It is not surprising that an object with the name of Thutmosis IV 
was found in the city of Amenophis IV. It may not even be as- 
sumed that it was brought from Thebes or elsewhere. It has been 
long known that the city “ Horizon of the sun cult” already existed 
before Amenophis IV, perhaps, even probably, under another name, 
as was then the case as to personal names, such as Amenophis 
changed to “Ich-n-aten and Ptah-mose to Ra‘-mose. 

On account of the great find of tablets made in 1887 in the “ house 
of the royal letter writer” in the royal archives in the palace quar- 
ter, not far from the village Et-Till, the surroundings of this house 
had been again and again searched throughout by varicus investi- 
gators with the result of adding merely a few unimportant pieces 
to the original find of upward of 350 tablets, but since the early 
90s of the last century hope and further search were given up. 
So that on December 15, 1913, when Mr. Dubois, the Government’s 
superintendent of buildings and of the excavations, announced the 
discovery of a clay tablet in house O 47, 2 it seemed scarcely credible 
(pl. 11; pl. 12, fig. 1). A portion of another tablet was found on 
December 19 in house N 47, 3 (pl. 12, fig. 2). 

Both these pieces were found in premises which already had been 
thoroughly excavated, the first near the wall of a courtyard, where it 
became fastened on the upper edge about 30 centimeters below the 
surface. Though the surface humidity was slight, yet it caused 
much flaking of the left margin of the obverse and the correspond- 
ing part of the reverse side of the tablet. The second piece lay 
considerably deeper in the débris, and therefore escaped this damage. 
The surroundings of both places where the finds were made were 
diligently dug up in search for other pieces, but without success. 

In the division of the finds these two valuable documents fell to 
the share of the Egyptian Service of Antiquities, and its courtesy in 
lending them for examination and study is here gratefully acknowl- 
edged. Dr. Otto Schroeder of the division of western Asia in the 
Berlin Museum prepared a provisional translation and explanation 
of these tablets. The smaller one (pl. 12, fig. 2) is of light-brown clay 
with darkish spots, probably due to contact with chemical salts. It 
is 6.1 centimeters high by 3.6 centimeters wide, its greatest thickness 
2.65 centimeters. It is inscribed on the obverse only and contains a 


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EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT—BORCHARDT. 457 


portion of an Assyrian syllabary. Syllabary is the designation of 
tabular arrangements in different columns of cuneiform characters, 
their names and values. Usually they consist of three columns. In 
the middle column are placed the cuneiform signs which are to be 
explained; the column to the left gives the pronunciation and syl- 
labic value of the character, while the column to the right contains 
the names of the signs. The present fragment is either the writing 
exercise of a dragoman who was intrusted with the cuneiform cor- 
respondence to western Asia, which the large script would suggest, 
or a reading exercise provided for such a dragoman in western Asia. 

Of much more interest and value is the larger fragment (pl. 11; 
pl. 12, fig. 1). It is made of a fine light-red clay, with a height and 
width of 10 centimeters and a thickness not exceeding 2.4 centi- 
meters. It is closely inscribed on both sides with the so-called 
“Hittite” stroke of the cuneiform script, the several paragraphs 
being separated by lines. As far as made out, it is the first part of 
a serial literary work, bearing the title “ King of the Battle” (Sar 
tamhari), which treated of a military campaign in western Asia, 
of which the present fragments delineate the causes and the begin- 
ning. Unfortunately, the name of the author or scribe, with which 
Assyrian tablets are usually signed, is here wanting. In its place 
is some wiped-out Egyptian red ink and the impression of a finger 
besmeared with red ink, which might suggest that the Egyptian 
name of the author or scribe in Egyptian script was intended to be 

placed there. 
The first question which pressed for answer was, Did these pieces 
come from the well-known archives, or are they the harbingers of 
the existence of deposits of cuneiform tablets apart from the public 
archives in Tell el-Amarna? The contents of the two tablets do not 
hinder their having come from the archives, for syllabaries had be- 
fore that been found in the archives by Professor M. Flinders Petrie 
and the existence of literary texts in the archives may likewise be as- 
serted. There was found there, belonging to the library of Ameno- 
phis III, a faience label of a wooden case of a papyrus which con- 
tained, obviously in Egyptian script, the tale of the “ Sycamore and 
the Date Palm.” But the great distance of the location of the find 
from that of the “house of the royal letter-writer,” about 1} kilo- 
meters, would indicate that it did not come from the archives. We 
should have to assume either that in ancient times pieces from the 
archives had been scattered over the field of ruins, or that the peas- 
ants of Et-Till, who discovered the archives in 1887, have in an in- 
credible manner thrown some of the pieces around. But whatever 
may have been the origin of the two new tablets, it is certain that 
there is hope of still further finds of tablets in Tell el-Amarna, 
where search had been completely abandoned. 


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VACCINES. 


By L. Roger,’ 


Professor on the Faculty of Medicine, University of Paris, Member of the 
Academy of Medicine. 


The majority of infectious diseases do not occur a second time; 
the first attack confers immunity. About a thousand years before 
the Christian era this fact was known to the Chinese, among whom 
smallpox made terrible ravages at that time. But all who survived 
a first attack could live without inconvenience in infected places, so 
that there was a considerable economic advantage in encouraging the 
development of the disease during youth. In case the individual 
died the loss to society was small; in case of survival, the value of 
that individual immune to a second attack was considerably in- 
creased. Such were the reasons given by the Chinese for practising 
variolation, or inoculation with the disease. It is remarkable that 
such an idea should spring up and develop at a time when diseases 
were more often attributed to divine wrath than to contagion, and 
that it should lead to a prophylactic method which was not taken 
up again until the end of the eighteenth century. 

Variolation was practised by inserting under the skin or in the 
nostrils of subjects scabs taken from convalescents. This infection 
through inoculation is much milder than infection contracted spon- 
taneously. This result is easily explained: The pathogenic agent is 
introduced into regions unfavorable for its development and with a 
subject in good health, not predisposed to infection, while under 
ordinary conditions of spontaneous infection it is more often the 
case that resistance has been lowered through the agency of pre- 
disposing or adjuvant causes. 

However, variolation is not always harmless; the organism inocu- 
lated may be in such a condition of predisposition that infection 
spreads and takes a serious course, resulting sometimes in death. 
And even if the inoculated subject resists it, the few pustules which 
develop are capable of spreading the disease and constitute a danger 

1Translated by permission from La Nature, Jan. 830, 1915. 


2'The frequency of infections in time of war creating special interest in a study of their 
prophylaxis, it has seemed to me useful to publish a brief general summary of the whole 


subject. 
459 


460 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


for the persons in the vicinity. More than once they have been the 
starting point of epidemics. 

In spite of these limitations, variolation rendered great services. 
It was introduced little by little into Persia, then into Turkey. In 
1721 the wife of the English ambassador at Constantinople, Lady 
Montague, who witnessed the results obtained by this procedure, 
made it known on her return to London. The new method spread 
rapidly and was very happily modified by two Scotch farmers, the 
Suttey brothers, who invented the subepidermic inoculations. 

Variolation has to-day only a historic interest. It has retreated 
before another procedure which was introduced into science at the 
end of the eighteenth century. It had been known for a long time 
that in certain regions in England, and notably in the county of 
Gloucestershire, that persons who have the direct care of cattle often 
have on their fingers small pustules contracted by contact with ani- 
mals attacked by cowpox, and that this eruption gave them immunity 
against smallpox. In 1768 Sutton and Fewster drew attention to 
these facts, and it was then that Jenner conceived the idea of prac- 
ticing systematically, in the interest of prophylaxis, the inoculation 
of cowpox. In 1798 the results of these researches were made 
known. It was established that the virus coming from the cow is 
inocuable in man; that it may be transmitted from man to man, keep- 
ing its fundamental characteristics, for when reinoculated in the cow 
it produced again the characteristic eruption. Finally, inoculation 
with the virus taken from a cow or from a man previously inoculated, 
confers immunity against smallpox. ‘The objection was raised that 
the resistance was not perfect; that several inoculated subjects later 
contracted the disease. But it came in a mild form and turned off 
shortly before the period of suppuration, taking a special form, which 
has given it the name of chickenpox. 

The discovery of Jenner brought up an interesting problem which 
has not yet been solved. Can the disease of the cow, or vaccine 
(vacca, cow), be considered as a special infection, or should it be 
regarded as a variolous infection modified by a long series of pas- 
sages through the Bovide? The majority of French scholars agree 
in keeping the two separate. In Germany and Switzerland re- 
searches have been carried on tending to establish the fact that the 
variolous virus can be transformed into vaccinal virus. Whatever 
solution may be finally adopted, it can be stated that inoculation 
with vaccine was the first instance of a prophylactic inoculation 
which was efficacious and harmless. Whether vaccine is a special 
virus or a modified variolous virus, it produces in man a local erup- 
tion which becomes general only in exceptional cases, and in these 
cases only in a very mild form. 


VACCINES—ROGER. 461 


‘For preventive inoculations the liquid (vaccinal lymph) collected 
from the pustules of a child or from one of the Bovidex is used. The 
animal vaccine is in general use to-day. Young calves are pre- 
viously inoculated by numerous scarifications on the flanks, and 
used for the culture of vaccine. It is to be hoped that the attempts 
now being made will permit the cultivation of vaccinal virus in 
artificial media so that the passage through animals will not be 
necessary. 

According to their etymology the words “ vaccine” and “ vaccina- 
tion” ought to apply only to the diseases of the cow and to its 
inoculation. But, diverted from their original meaning, they desig- 
nate to-day a whole series of viruses used for prophylactic purposes. 
Thus, for instance, the terms anthrax vaccine and antianthrax vacci- 
nations are used. Anthrax vaccine is used only in veterinary medi- 
cine, but its study is valuable because the method has been the start- 
ing point of numerous discoveries. 

To Toussaint, professor at the veterinary school of Toulouse, 
belongs the credit for having first tried antianthrax vaccination. He © 
subjected anthrax blood to a temperature of about 55° for 10 minutes, 
thinking in this way to kill the bacilli contained in it. Several 
animals died on being inoculated with the blood thus prepared, but 
those which survived became refractory. Toussaint believed that he 
was vaccinating with the soluble products deposited in the blood 
by the anthrax bacilli. As a matter of fact he was using weakened 
microbes. This was shown by Pasteur, who in submitting anthrax 
cultures to the action of heat, succeeded in producing vaccines which 
could be accurately graduated. 

The most important of the Pasteur vaccinations consists in culti- 
vating the anthrax bacilli at 42°. The microbe develops but does 
not give off spores, and its virulence diminishes more and more. 
If, after a certain length of time at 42°, the microbe is placed in a 
new medium and raised to a eugenesic temperature of 37° or 38°, 
it develops, gives off spores, but maintains the degree of weakness 
which it had previously reached. There are two Pasteur vaccines— 
one called the first vaccine, comes from a bacillus which is kept at 
42° for from 15 to 20 days; it is so weakened that it no longer has 
the power to kill animals except those new born. The second vaccine, 
which has remained for from 10 to 12 days at 42°, can still kill the 
adults. 

In practice these two viruses, weakened but living, are inoculated 
successively, and in this way sheep and cattle are rendered immune 
with no attendant risk. The economic importance of this method 
is readily seen, and man, who contracts anthrax only by contact 
with animals, is indirectly protected. 


462 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Since antianthrax vaccinations are a protection against possible 
contamination, it will be asked if a similar method would not be 
effective during incubation—that is, between the time when the 
virus is introduced into the organism and the time when the symp- 
toms appear. It was also Pasteur who brought up and solved this 
problem. 

Tt was already known that it was possible to confer immunity 
against rabies. A professor at the veterinary school of Lyon, Gal- 
tier, had shown that the saliva of a mad dog injected in the veins 
of a sheep or goat did not provoke symptoms, but conferred a power- 
ful resistance against a later inoculation of the virus. The discovery 
was important but was devoid of practical interest, as the method 
was uncertain and dangerous. 

Taking up the study of this question, Pasteur, in collaboration 
with Chamberland, Roux, and Thuillier, recognized that inoculations 
performed under the cerebral duramater with the emulsion of a 
fragment of bulb taken from a dog which had died from rabies were 
certain to transmit the disease. Using a rabbit, if the inoculations 
are made in series, the virulence increases—that is, the time of incu- 
bation diminishes: it becomes only 6 or 7 days after a hundred 
passages, and from this time it no longer varies; from then on the 
virus is fixed. 

If the spinal marrow of a rabbit which has succumbed to an inocu- 
lation of the fixed virus is suspended in a sterilized flask containing 
a substance free from water, such as fragments of potassium, it was 
learned that under the influence of drying the virulence diminishes, 
and at the end of 14 days the organism becomes accustomed to 
supporting viruses more and more active. As the incubation of the 
disease—that is, the time which elapses between the bite and the 
first symptoms—lasts a very long time, and as the process of render- 
ing immune is relatively rapid, the refractory state is successfully 
reached before the appearance of symptoms. 

The treatment varies according to the location, the extent, the 
depth, and the number of bites. It lasts from 15 to 22 days anid 
consists essentially in injecting at different intervals fragments of 
marrow, beginning with those dried for 14 days and gradually 
progressing to those dried only 3 days. | 

It is useless to dwell on the results obtained. Pasteur’s method 
is causing the gradual disappearance of rabies, and the time can 
be predicted when this terrible infection will join smallpox and 
anthrax in the group of historic diseases. 

Against smallpox, anthrax, and rabies immunity is secured by 
means of living virus. It is known to-day that all the effects pro- 
duced by microbes are due to substances which they contain or 
which they secrete. Experience shows that it is possible to obtain 


~ 


VACCINES—ROGER. 463 


immunity by introducing into the organism either sterilized cul- 
tures, liquids of the culture free from microbes, or extracts of the 
bacteria. Each of these different methods has to its credit a certain 
number of experimental successes and admits of practical application. 

The prophylaxis of typhoid fever has attracted special attention 
and incited numerous researches. After the first attempts of Chan- 
temesse and Widal, it was established through the work of Wright 
that cultures sterilized by heating can be used. It is only necessary 
to take care not to exceed a temperature between 53° and 56°. Even 
within these limits heating has the drawback of weakening the 
ability to render immune. It has also been proposed to sterilize the 
cultures by the antiseptics phenol, chloroform, ether, and iodine. 
And for some time there have been used in practice the autolysats of 
microbes. It is known that the protoplasm of bacteria, as all living 
protoplasm, contains digestive ferments. Left to themselves under 
unfavorable conditions the cells are digested—that is, liquefied by 
the ferments which they contain. This autodigestion is given the 
name autolysis. On this principle is based the vaccine of M. Vin- 
cent. But as among the higher plants innumerable varieties of a 
single species are known (it will be recalled what the horticulturists 
have obtained in growing roses or chrysanthemums), so in each 
microbe species we should distinguish the varieties or races which 
close study permits us to differentiate. That is why, in the prepara- 
tion of vaccines, bacilli from different sources have been used. The 
polyvalent vaccine of Val de Grace is prepared with 10 different 
specimens. They are sprinkled on a liquid solidified by agar-agar, 
and after 48 hours in the incubator the cultures are taken out and 
their surface scraped. The bacilli thus collected are put in salt 
water to be macerated. The liquid is agitated at different intervals, 
then at the end of 36 to 40 hours it is submitted to clectric centrif- 
ugalization to be clarified, and finally it is sterilized with ether. 
Four injections with this vaccine must be made at intervals of eight 
hours to confer absolute immunity against typhoid fever. 

The different antityphoid vaccines give excellent results. The 
trials made in the Army have demonstrated their efficacy and their 
harmlessness. The only effects observed during the time following 
their application are a slight discomfort and a small rise of tem- 
perature. But these manifestations are light and passing. So it is. 
with good reason that compulsory antityphoid vaccination has been 
decreed for the whole French Army. This measure is the more 
important since in time of war the rate of sickness and death from 
typhoid fever is extremely high. Even with the precautions taken 
there is a large number of cases, but these occur only among those 
not vaccinated or insufficiently vaccinated. However, even among 
shose who have received the necessary inoculations, infections simi- 


464 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


lar to typhoid fever, but milder, occur quite often. These are para- 
typhoid fevers. They are due to the paratyphoid bacilli, of which 
two principal varieties are described, designated by the letters A and 
B. These two types are related to each other and also on the one 
hand to the typhoid bacillus, on the other to a microbe very wide- 
spread, the colon bacillus, by a series of intermediary forms. The 
antityphoid vaccines are powerless against these microbes, and a 
study is now being undertaken to find means of preparing either a 
single active vaccine for the whole group or a special paratyphoid 
vaccine. 

It has been thought that, instead of injecting the vaccine under 
the skin, it would be simpler to introduce it by the digestive tract. 
This new method is too recent to permit of a final judgment. What- 
ever its lot may be in the future, it would be hazardous to use it at 
present; during a war is not the time to begin such an experi- 
ment. Prudence demands that we use only methods of procedure 
whose efficacy is indisputable. 

The less the condition of the microbe in use is altered, the stronger 
and more lasting is the immunity obtained by vaccines. For this 
reason the heating of cultures has been gradually diminished. At- 
tempts have been made to replace the heating process by antiseptic 
substances; and, finally, the systematic use of living cultures has 
been proposed. 

M. Nicolle advises introducing into the veins living microbes freed 
from all soluble matter by a prolonged washing. It has been made 
certain that this method is innocuous and that the bacteria injected 
remain in the organism and are there destroyed. This discovery is 
important because it might have been feared that a person vacci- 
nated, like one having the disease, would throw off living elements 
and become a source. of contamination. This method of procedure 
admits of numerous applications; it is successful in giving immunity 
against cholera, dysentery, and whooping cough, as well as against 
typhoid fever. 

If we seem to be especially occupied with this last infection it is 
because its frequency and its seriousness hold first place, especially 
in our lands. In countries with a warm climate vaccines are fre- 
quently used against cholera and against the plague. 

The study of anticholera vaccine, begun by Ferran and Gamaléia, 
has been continued by Haffkine. The living microbe is generally 
used. On the contrary, Haffkine uses against the plague, cultures 
sterilized by heating to 70°. 

The immunity created by the passage of an infection or by the 
introduction of a vaccine is chiefly characterized by cellular modifi- 
cations which lead to humoral modifications. A vaccine does not act 


VACCINES—ROGER. 465 


like an antiseptic or an antidote. The organism itself, under the 
influence of the vaccine, secretes certain substances, or, better, modi- 
fies the condition of the blood, and this liquid is given new properties. 
Immunity results not from a simple impregnation by useful products, 
but from a reaction against harmful products. For this active im- 
munity to be established, a certain amount of time must be allowed 
after the time of vaccination. When it is necessary to act quickly— 
for instance, when a foreigner arrives in a country swept by cholera 
or the plague—instead of a bacterial vaccination, it is preferable to 
use serum from an animal rendered immune. The two methods must 
not be confounded. Serotherapy, or serovaccination, consists in 
treating or rendering a person immune by means of a blood serum 
of an animal previously vaccinated. The animal has received the 
microbe-bearing product and has reacted from it; he has acquired 
active immunity. The serum of his blood acts almost like an anti- 
septic or a specific antidote. From the time that it impregnates a 
new organism it protects it from infection and the organism does 
not need to react; it takes no part in the action. Thus, it is said, 
as opposed to the preceding case, that a serum produces a passive im- 
munity. 

Passive immunity develops rapidly but is not lasting. The two 
methods of procedure may be combined—the serum in alcohol may 
be injected, followed by the vaccine, or, better, an injection of a 
mixture of the serum and vaccine may be made. 

Starting from these results M. Besredka has proposed a new 
method—vaccination by sensitized virus. The microbes placed in 
contact with the serum from a vaccinated animal are impregnated 
with this serum and lose their means of defense. They can no longer 
resist the phagocytes—that is, the cells capable of absorbing and de- 
stroying them. At present they are called sensitized. But an excess 
of serum is more harmful than useful. So it is necessary to take 
care, before injecting the microbes impregnated with the serum, 
to wash them carefully in salt water. This is a new method which 
has already been applied to a large number of diseases. Metchnikoff 
and Besredka recommend it as efficacious against typhoid fever, and 
after experiments made by them on chimpanzees they conclude that 
it is superior to all other methods of procedure. 

The bacterial vaccines serve, as we have said, in rendering normal 
organisms immune from danger of infection. It has been asked 
why they would not be useful in fighting an existing infection. As 
a result there has arisen a new method given the name of vaccino- 
therapy, or, better, bacteriotherapy. 

The first trial is due to Koch, who proposed to combat tuberculosis 
by injecting into subjects a special product, tuberculin, which is only 


18618°—sm 1915 30 


466 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


an extract of the cultures and the protoplasm of tuberculosis bacilli. 
The results have been widely varying—often bad, sometimes favor- 
able. It may be that at first too strong doses were used. In any 
case the product has not the effect of vaccination and its therapeutic 
use is not free from danger. 

The work of Wright especially has attracted attention to bac- 
teriotherapy. The Wright vaccines are used against typhoid fever, 
melitococcus, infections of streptococcus, and of staphylococcus. A 
certain quantity of microbes killed by heating is injected into the 
subject. When it is possible a specimen taken from the sick person 
himself is used, autovaccines producing appreciably better results. 
By thus introducing bacterial products into a diseased organism the 
cellular reactions are stimulated. Thus, by the indirect process of 
favoring the development of an active immunity, the means of re- 
sistance against infection are augmented. 

This brief summary shows the important results obtained by prac- 
tical medicine from experimental researches. Prophylaxis and thera- 
peutics have been completely revised by the vaccines and serums. 
But it is important not to confound these two terms, and to distin- 
guish clearly the methods which they designate. The word “ vac- 
cine” should be reserved for products of bacterial origin—that is, 
for living microbes, weakened or modified—for bacterial autolysats, 
and for soluble matter secreted by the bacteria. Serum, on the con- 
trary, is a product of animal origin coming from an individual pre- 
viously rendered immune. Vaccine arouses in the organism defensive 
reactions; it creates an active immunity. Serum impregnates the 
organism and establishes a passive immunity. 

Active immunity requires several days to develop, but lasts a long 
time. Passive immunity is immediate, but quickly disappears. Vac- 
cine is especially a-prophylactic means, used more often to prevent 
than to combat infection. Serum is at the same time a therapeutic 
and a prophylactic medium. 

Thanks to serotherapy, mortality from infections and especially 
from diphtheria has greatly diminished; owing to vaccination, sick- 
ness has declined. Smallpox, rabies, and anthrax have almost passed 
out of existence, and the time can be predicted when other infections, 
especially typhoid fever, will in their turn disappear. 


PROGRESS IN RECLAMATION OF ARID LANDS IN THE 
WESTERN UNITED STATES: 


By J. B. BEADLE, 
U.S. Reclamation Service. 


[With 13 plates. ] 


The reclamation of arid lands by the Federal Government has 
moved steadily forward since the passage of the Newlands Act in 
1902, in spite of the numerous and intricate problems arising, many 
of which could not be foreseen prior to the enactment of the funda- 
mental law governing the operations of the Reclamation Service. 

The Service has added some notable structures to the engineering 
monuments of the country. It has built the highest dam in the world 
on the Boise River, Idaho, and the one storing the greatest quantity 
of irrigation water on the Rio Grande, New Mexico. Its reservoirs 
are capable of holding 6,500,000 acre-feet, or two thousand billion 
gallons of water. It has excavated 130,000,000 cubic yards of earth 
and rock, placing 12,000,000 yards in dams and forming conduits ag- 
gregating 10,000 miles in length, including 25 miles of tunnels and 
85 miles of flumes. Its canals placed end-on would circle the United 
States. Its structures of all kinds, large and small, dams, bridges, 
canal drops, checks, and the like total over 70,000 in number. 

The works so far constructed make water available for 1,500,000 
acres, and the projects under way when completed will provide for 
nearly as much more. For this greater area the principal works have 
in large measure already been built, such as storage reservoirs, di- 
version dams, and main canals, leaving to be added the necessary 
extensions to the distribution systems. 

As incidental to the construction of large irrigation works the 
Service has engaged in a wide variety of engineering effort, includ- 
ing the construction and operation of roads, telephone systems, power 
plants, transmission lines, and even railroads. On one project Port- 
land cement was manufactured and on several others the material 
known as “sand cement” has been produced and used to advantage. 

But as varied and intricate as are the engineering problems in- 
volved in Government reclamation work, of even greater difficulty 


1 This article is in continuation of papers printed in the Smithsonian Reports for 1901, 
pp. 407 to 423; 1903, pp. 827 to 841; 1904, pp. 373 to 881; 1907, pp. 331 to 345; 1910, 
pp. 169 to 198. 

467 


468 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


are the succeeding problems of settlement and utilization of the 
works. These later problems, involving the human element, less 
susceptible of mathematical statement, require correspondingly more 
judgment, as well as patience and tact. 


. REsery 
River | 


PROJECT NAMES SHOWN THUS: A 
BELLE FOURCHE ~ 


Fig. 1.—Principal reclamation projects. 


The physical management and operation of an extensive reservoir 
and canal system, in which the quantity of flow is regulated at all 
points and all times according to design, is in itself an intricate 
problem, akin to railroad management, but in addition this already 
involves dealing with 25,000 individuals who are dependent on the 
Government systems for the most vital requisite in their daily occu- 
pation of irrigation farming and who are depended upon in turn 


RECLAMATION OF ARID LANDS—BEADLE. 469 


to repay to the United States the large investment made in building 
the works. ‘Thus, in a sense, the Reclamation Service stands midway 
between the water users and the Nation, owing a duty to each and 
responsible for the protection of interests that may sometimes ap- 
pear antagonistic, making the service a natural target for criticism 
from one quarter or another. However, a broad view of the rela- 
tions between the Government and the irrigators will usually show 
their interests to coincide, since the Government has made large 
investments in reclamation works, the return of which to the Na- 
tional Treasury is directly dependent upon the success of the settlers. 

Among those entering public lands are many with no experience 
in irrigation and often little or none at farming of any kind. Even 
with water brought to the edge of his farm, the pioneer irrigator 
has much hard work not common to farming in older humid settle- 
ments. The land must be cleared, ditched, and carefully graded to 
receive the irrigation water, which must be manipulated with skill 
to prevent loss and damage. Capital is necessary to prepare the 
land, erect buildings, equip and stock the farm. Many of the prob- 
lems attending a new agricultural community brought quickly into 
being relating to crop selection, disease prevention, transportation, 
and marketing of crops, call for cooperative effort and must be 
worked out for each project. 

In many of these matters the Reclamation Service can act only 
by suggestion, being limited rather narrowly in the powers given 


by law. 
RECLAMATION LAW. 


What may be regarded as the “ organic act” governing the opera- 
tions of the Reclamation Service became law in June, 1902, and is 
commonly called the reclamation act. This remains the principal 
legislation, but has been amended and supplemented from time to 
time in important details, particularly by what is called the reclama- 
tion extension act of August 13, 1914. The broad features of the 
existing law provide for the following: 


1. A reclamation fund composed of the receipts from the disposal of public 
lands in the arid States under the provisions of the various land laws. The 
fund now approximates a hundred million dollars. 

2. The construction of irrigation systems to water public and private lands. 

3. Practically free entry to the public lands under the irrigation projects, 
limiting any one citizen to a farm of such size as is capable of supporting a 
family. ; 

4. Subdivision of the private lands by sale in small tracts, limiting the area 
to which water will be furnished one individual to 160 acres. 

5. Repayment in easy terms, extending over a long period, of the cost of 
building the works by the holders of the lands benefited, the money going back 
into the reclamation fund for use on other projects. 


470 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


One feature of the law that has been criticised is the absence of 
any test or qualification for settlers on the reclamation projects. 
Any citizen who has not exhausted his homestead right may take 
up a farm unit. Many come in who are unfitted for the arduous 
task of developing the raw land or who lack the necessary capital 
to develop their farms and tide them over the nonproductive period 
at the start. The result may be disastrous to the individual and 
postpones until his successor is established the payments to the 
United States for building the works. 

Another point of weakness relates to the private lands within the 
Government projects. There is naturally a tendency to hold these 
for high prices, such that large owners may realize great profits or 
“unearned increment” due to the Government construction. The 
reclamation act sought to force subdivision of large holdings by 
limiting to 160 acres the area for which any person could acquire a 
water right. This did not prevent the owners from holding the 
excess at high prices, and the reclamation extension act seeks to 
meet the situation by providing that to be included in a project the 
excess areas must be sold at a price fixed by the Secretary of the 
Interior. The efficacy of this provision has yet to be demonstrated. 

The principal change in the law made by the extension act, how- 
ever, was to provide easier payments and extend the time in which 
the irrigators are required to refund the project costs. The act of 
1902 provided for repayment in 10 annual installments. The exten- 
sion act spreads the payments over 20 years. In the case of a new 
entry or application only an initial payment of 5 per cent is required 
in the first five years. This gives the settler a liberal period in which 
to put his farm on a producing basis, during which he may apply 
his capital to that end unhampered by the necessity of meeting 
payments on the water-right charges. A liberal extension was un- 
doubtedly needed in a great many cases and the first effect of this 
recent legislation has been to create a better feeling between the 
water users and the Government with the increased hope of success 
in establishing permanent homes. 

Another important feature of the extension act, in line with the 
policy of the fullest possible cooperation between the water users 
and Reclamation Service, is the provision that after the construction 
cost is once fixed by public notice it may not be increased through 
additional construction except after approval by the water users, 
expressed through individual vote or contract. 


COMPLETED WORK. 


The Reclamation Service has completed 23 projects or units to the 
point where the systems are operated and water supplied the farmers 
for crop production. 


RECLAMATION OF ARI) LANDS—BEADLE. 4°71] 


In this connection it is well to note the difficulty of fixing an exact 
time when a large reclamation project is physically completed. Irri- 
gation may start with the completion of the first portion of the canal 
and laterals, but the construction of the rest of the system may extend 
over a number of years and yet keep well in advance of settlement 
and development of the irrigable lands. A better knowledge of the 
dependency of the water supply gained during these years by further 
measurement and study may warrant additions to the canal system 
and the area covered. Or the development of the new community 
may sufficiently advance land values to justify further expense to 
increase or conserve the water supply, as by building added storage 
works or lining the canals with concrete to prevent seepage losses, in 
either case permitting additional land to be served. 

Thus the project as a whole becomes a growing thing, and is not 
to be compared to a single definite piece of construction, such as a dam 
or office building, but is similar to-a city or railroad system that in 
a sense may be regarded as never complete. 

Nor is the matter of completion made definite by reference to the 
plan before construction, for we commonly find that during the early 
history of a large project, while it is being investigated for con- 
struction, the conception of what the project finally will be suffers 
radical changes with the surveys of canal lines and irrigable areas 
and the accumulation of information regarding the water supply, 
soil quality, and other factors. 

The Government projects now operated are listed in Table 2, which 
shows that the Reclamation Service delivered irrigation water to 
760,000 acres during 1914, but that the systems were constructed well 
in advance of this, as noted above, being capable of serving 1,240,000 
acres. In subsequent pages the principal projects are briefly de- 
scribed with an outline of the work done since former reports. The 
following tabulation gives some idea of the quantity and diversity 
of construction work done by the Service on these projects: 


TaBLe I.—Brief swnmary of construction results. 
[To June 30, 1915.] 


: . Number or 
Item. Unit. quantity. 
CONSTRUCTIONS. 
DD SEN Se eae eR ee Se es ohn atin Boa on sane e eeu step erebiee ce 100 
Ce ec Re antes Sn See ae ee ere Io 9, 683 
ATSITI TIES See ee ee er eta KS ne Osa es saat coe nan See sae eee 25 
Dikes or levees 91 
Trrigation and drain pipe 300 
ee ee ee i 
ana concrete 

ae aso ee rhstaes 784 
Railroads 82 
Rel pati Or ObinAS sek ae nes tee See Neh fe dae fon aoknda a ee seam eae ine <1ralaeies doshas 2, 554 
Abaclalsrareetiaien | liha(e@ma sete ete 2a ken on aay RIOR Hn Lan Pr nS SS ABMS oo sis oe doé-scceee 429 
(SENaTT] CUTE Eres eee b= ee ot en Sasa scl doe.- me Sapo ekSoray leoesesccdae: 64, 847 
TBYHIGS {SSeS eh eset pen cs Se — ae i es ree pel A a Se See) 4, 622 
RTOS Pee ee ee eee ee ws ae ce een ee Rae noc ine epee Cee Sele satte | hetractareretaiameitern 5,714 
Sia di rrss eee cho See to ee oR Eee APL ae RR tee ie clbice cu se naostace 1,068 


472 


ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


TasLe 1.—Brief summary of construction resulis—Continued. 


Ti Number or 
Item. Unit. quantity, 
MATERIALS HANDLED. 
Bae aes 
SEES BOs CRE Es LHe eect ee Oe aon te as Bee aOR Bere Ar ae NEE Cubic yards... .} 115,599, 284 
Taaursiel Ep a2 coro teers adety: + See PeSe eras 355 Uys fraptee Shee e ee Beas est ORS ee , 085, 948 
110°C) "a esata Seance wy eae! vee nye aa ee es BO. Soncuts 6, 964, 136 
Motalten ss cce votes cen acess ota be cece eda ae ee eee eee tee | ere dolenenee 130, 149, 368 
bhp Peak: in dams: 
Sn rg SIGUE Oe Ran no it) Ce beri bessrinnich er creieeee t Gocmner ashi A gse dors 3-12-29 1,993;1502 
eae etree oe renee Meine Seca None CTS ye ie ti ae Sine a (een mr SST 
Rockhill ANC CribLbess-& - 22+ = sasb ee once = See eae ee = PE eee eee ee dozea-srs- 978, 474 
Motals .Fits.6- sa-45pl-Se Piss fiat Bes See ese ae a. eae ae ee eee nee ees 12, 202, sas 
12:3) 042] Oe OREO MEE Se 5S SBC eaer Shab SoS USA TEAR OL Back oe ceataAsnoeS seoneeson Cubic yards .- 1: 023) 398 
RAVAN ES rtoes ds ButeNeee - Sees Seb eb lee oe AS A res Bh ee Square yards.. 615, 583 
(Gora cin 2] i pespainet apie et ees Ry) a iin ee ORO ora De ea WE NS Johns SER EES e. Cubic yards. . 2, 674, 977 
Comientis < f4sou8 <3 isd, depen: G25 shaadi 2 sae eee oe eee ee Barrels. ....-)- 2,501, 382 
| 


CROPS. 


The irrigated lands are already producing an annual crop worth 
upward of $16,000,000, which should be steadily increased by more 
intensive farming as well as by the development of additional laud. 
In 1914 the farmers on the Government projects harvested irrigated 
crops from over 700,000 acres. The 60,000 acres listed as irrigated, 
but not cropped, represent mainly young frwit trees and newly 
seeded alfalfa. 

Alfalfa dominates all crop statistics from the irrigated areas (pl. 2, 
fig. 1). It occupies nearly half the cropped acreage and yields over 
one-third the total crop value. Its many virtues readily explain this 
popularity. Once established, or a “stand” secured, it is a hardy 
plant and continues almost indefinitely to furnish good annual yields 
without reseeding. It gives several yields or cuttings each year. It 
is a legume with the peculiar power of drawing from the atmosphere 
the nitrogen in which the soils of the arid region are often deficient, 
and leaves behind more than it found of this most valuable of plant 
requirements. It is the deepest of subsoilers, penetrating with its 
many roots to a remarkable depth for the other essential elements of 
plant growth and improving the physical condition of the soil. It 
furnishes a hay of superior quality for conditioning and fattening 
stock, so effective in fact that its medicinal value is now being 
utilized for humans. 

A wide variety of other crops are grown on the Government proj- 
ects—hays, cereals, fruit, sugar beets, and cotton, as well as garden 
products. Barley is the leading cereal, largely replacing corn in 
importance in comparison with middle western farming. <A con- 
siderable area is devoted to grains little seen in the humid States 


PLATE 1. 


Beadle. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915. 


a 


¥ 
a 


Ce ne 


ARIZONA DESERT BEFORE RECLAMATION. 


1. 


ARIZONA DESERT RECLAIMED. 


2. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Beadle. PLATE 2. 


1. AN ALFALFA LANDSCAPE, SHOSHONE PROJECT, WYOMING. 


2. YOUNG ORCHARD UNDER IRRIGATION, YAKIMA PROJECT, WASHINGTON. 


RECLAMATION OF ARID LANDS—BEADLE. 473 


and belonging to the sorghum-corn family, including Kafir corn 
and milo maize. Beet-sugar factories have been established on a 
number of the projects, contracting with the farmers for a profitable 
crop on a large acreage. Cotton has furnished an industry of im- 
portance on the southern projects, but this has been set back by the 
adverse market condition following the outbreak of war in Europe. 

Fruit growing is naturally slow to become general, owing to the 
capital required and postponement of returns; but the industry is 
making steady progress and has become of major importance on the 
projects peculiarly suited to it. The Sunnyside Unit in Washington 
is the home of the famous Yakima Valley apples, and in 1914 pro- 
duced over a million dollars worth of fruit (pl. 2, fig. 2). 


TABLE 2.—Irrigation and crop results on Government reclamation projects, 1914.7 


| 
Value of crops. 
: Trrigable | Irrigated | Cropped 
State. Project. acreage. acreage. | acreage. Per 
Total. acre 
cropped. 
Arizona......... en OALGPRAVON Sons. 6o-ste es 187,112 | 2178,030 | 169,719 | $4,039,079 $23. 80 
Arizona-California..} Yuma................-...-.- | 60,000 | 25, 207 22, 568 709, 409 31.43 
Califormign.- 22: .232 Onlardesree tt. See t2h! oak 14, 300 7, 354 6, 540 176, 331 26.99 
Colorada.-- 232. 4- Uncompahgre Valley.....-... 52, 338 33, 873 33, 091 870, 381 26.30 
Idaho. ft) . 2S: BOISOL csr ese eee eee eee ZOTROUO Ss aaa Sse. c|SEE EL eee meee «St | eee 
Farms reported.....---. SP eae --| 64, 767 58,064 | 1,033,447 17.80 
_ Farms not reported *....|... 12.2.2... 18,823 | 16,868 300, 140 17.80 
MMI ORR ec) ain ee aa TW AO Uy ESS Se SR (AP ars oe) [ee Le NI Re ey 
Gravity unit........ ciann|isedeondocers 45,730 | 39, 188 661, 796 16.91 
Sou Le Side (pumping |i 2 see sce eee 35, 788 33, 512 558, 059 16.65 
unit. 
Montana..........- 2 trit|,  ee ee 28,808 | 17,068] 17,068 454, 583 26.63 
MillGRiver!y 03. 222... 13, 440 2,201 2,163 34,618 16.00 
Sinightver ses scecc se 1h: | 16, 346 6, 613 6, 561 106, 594 16.25 
soneneN orth | Lower Yellowstone... -.-.-.- 36, 250 5, 743 5, 621 96, 707 17.20 
akota. 

Nebraska-Wyoming| North Platte................ 91, 504 60, 532 59, 53 890, 202 14.95 
ING VAG. cose acne. Truckee-Carson.........---- | 2, 039 39, 516 39, 285 441,018 411.23 
New Mexico. ...... Carisbadess tie wee Jas. 20, 261 12, 690 10, 731 237, 663 22.15 
LDA Sees oe IGG OMe pie a eat 1, 224 1, 224 1,172 21, 458 18.31 
New Mexico-Texas.| Rio Grande................. 40, 000 28, 442 27,302 | 1,160,720 42.51 
North Dakota......| North Dakota Pumping... 12, 239 1, 056 1,045 36, 440 34.87 
Oregon.:)..22i24. mati) shed Pees es 17,000 5, 102 3,013 88, 614 29.41 
Orepon-California..| Klamath. -..........---.-.-- 38, 000 24, 440 24, 440 347, 344 14, 22 
South Dakota...... Belle Fourche. ..-..-....---- 68, 852 37, 454 36, 709 461,188 12.56 
Washington........ Okanogan... ._...--. See 10, 099 7, 740 3, 180 104, 575 32. 88 

Yakima: 
Sunnyside unit.......... 81,807 | 64,052] 49,273] 2,858, 845 58.02 
BietonUMit- 22242 - Se 2 34, 000 20, 600 15, 920 472,480 29.60 
Wyoming.......... Shoshone. a5. 2 6. - 5 41, 166 22,226; 20,905 313, 826 15.01 
orale sao ews ee 51,240,875 | 761,271 | 703,424 | 16,475,517 23.50 


1 Data are for calendar year (irrigation season) except on Salt River project, Arizona, data are for corres- 
ponding agricultural year, October, 1913, to September, 1914. __ Figures are for reclamation projects only, 
excluding three Indian projects in Montana, partially completed and under construction by the Reclama- 
tion Service for the Indian Service. 

2 Government project only, exclusive of towns and Tempe Canal lands. 

3 Except irrigated acreage, estimated from figures for reported farms, ; 

4 $18.22, excluding 19,000 acres native pasture land, at $1.21 per acre, and 4,908 acres otherwise not in full 

roduction. 

R 5 Area Reclamation Service was prepared to supply water during season of 1914. 


4.74. ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


SEHPAGE AND DRAINAGE. 


When work in the nature of supplemental construction, already 
referred to, becomes desirable, it is usually for the purpose of drain- 
ing the irrigated tracts of excess water. 

One of the important things to which attention must be given 
after an irrigation system is completed and put in operation is the 
protection of the irrigated lands from becoming seeped and water- 
logged, destroying their productivity. 

In the use of the irrigation water, there is more or less loss due 
to the application of a larger quantity than can be retained by the 
soil and given up to the plants. The amount of water which sinks 
below the zone of plant growth and is wasted in this manner depends 
upon the perfection with which the land is graded and ditched and 
the care and skill used by the irrigator in handling the water. Until 
the processes have been sufliciently perfected to distribute the exact 
quantity of water required for the growing crop, some underground 
wastes are to be expected from this cause. Where, as is ordinarily 
the case, earthen canals are used for carrying or distributing the 
water, there is more or less loss by seepage from these channels. 
This loss, together with the underground waste from irrigation, 
tends to fill the soil and raise the water plane or height of free 
water. When this is raised above certain limits the irrigability of 
the land is destroyed, since plants can not thrive in a soil the inter- 
stices of which are filled with water. 

To protect lands from becoming thus seeped and water-logged, 
it is essential that the position of the ground waters be known in 
order to prevent their rise to or near the surface, rendering the lands 
unfit for cultivation. Occasional observations must be made at 
various points to determine the elevation of the ground water and 
whether or not it is rismg. This is done through the medium of 
wells. When a rise in the water plane is noted and there is danger 
of it coming too near the surface, action must be taken to prevent 
it. The means employed to lower and control the ground-water aim 
at the prevention of losses from canals, the reduction of the amount 
of water applied to the soil in irrigation, or the construction of 
drains for carrying out excess waters. 

Drainage works have become necessary on a number of the Goy- 
ernment projects, and a total of 500 miles of drains have been built 
to relieve or protect about 100,000 acres. The types of drain used 
include both covered tile lines (pl. 3, fig. 1) and open ditches (pl. 3, 
fig. 2). The latter largely predominate, as they have been found 
through experience to give very satisfactory service, while the effi- 
ciency of the tile lines may be seriously impaired by accumulations 
of sand or by moving out of line. 


a 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Beadle. 


1. LAYING TILE DRAIN, HUNTLEY PROJECT, MONTANA. 


2. DRAGLINE EXCAVATING OPEN DRAIN DITCH, BOISE PROJECT, IDAHO. 


PLATE 4. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Beadle. 


ROOSEVELT DAM, WITH FULL RESERVOIR AND WATER PASSING OVER SPILLWAYS, 


RECLAMATION OF ARID LANDS—BEADLE. 475 


SALT RIVER PROJECT, ARIZONA. 


In Arizona the flow of Salt River has been utilized to irrigate 
nearly 200,000 acres of fertile land surrounding the State capital. 
Storage is provided about 80 miles above Phoenix by the famous 
Roosevelt Dam, a rubble masonry arch in the river canyon 280 feet 
in maximum height and 1,125 feet along the crest. This gives a - 
reservoir capacity of 1,367,300 acre-feet, or over 400,000,000,000 gal- 
lons. A notable event in the history of the project occurred in April, 
1915, when, four years after completion of the dam, the reservoir was 
filled and for the first time water passed over the spillways (pl. 4). 
The structure stood the test perfectly, and, excepting some erosion 
of the spillway channels, the excess flood water was discharged with- 
out harmful effect, leaving sufficient storage to insure the project 
water supply for several years. Stream flow records for 25 years 
indicate that, with the erratic run-off of Salt River, the reservoir 
may be expected to fill by floods at irregular periods, but that an 
occasional series of years of lean run-off will empty it again, causing 
a temporary shortage of water, followed by another period of heavy 
run-off and a full reservoir. The study of the discharge of the 
streams of our arid region shows a tendency to these cycles of rela- 
tively wet and dry periods, but with records of 30 or even 50 years 
it is quite impossible to formulate any law as to their recurrence 
or predict the time when strict economy in the use of water will next 
be necessary. Some broad-minded men regard these occasional years 
of scarcity as a benefit. A plentiful supply of irrigation water 
tends to encourage overuse and careless handling, resulting in waste 
and rise of ground water, often ruining the lower farm lands by 
seepage and resultant concentration of alkali. The periodic year of 
scarcity may therefore be a blessing in disguise, forcing better prac- 
tice in the use of water and demonstrating the truth that beyond a 
certain moderate use a greater supply means an actual reduction in 
the crop value. 

From Roosevelt the stored water is passed 60 miles down the river 
channel to Granite Reef, where the diversion dam turns it into canal 
systems north and south of the stream. Over 700 miles of main 
canals and laterals have been excavated to distribute the water to 
the farmers. The opportunities for hydroelectric development cre- 
ated by the construction of the irrigation works have been utilized 
by building power plants at the base of Roosevelt Dam and at sev- 
eral points in the canal system where necessary drops afford good 
heads. Transmission lines have been built, delivering power to the 
several towns on the project, including the city of Phoenix, where 
it is used for lighting and manufacturing, and to near-by mining 
industries, to which the surplus is sold. The receipts from power 
sales are credited to the project, working a reduction in the total 


476 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


amount eventually to be repaid by the irrigators for the construction 
and operation of the project works. 

Except for a few minor details the project is regarded as complete, 
and in 1915 about 190,000 acres were actually irrigated. Crops 
worth from four to five million dollars are annually harvested from 
the irrigated lands, the cultivation of which is practically continu- 
ous, permitting the sowing and harvesting of two different crops in 
the same field within the year. A wide variety of products are 
grown. Alfalfa occupies about one-half the producing acreage, yield- 
ing as many as five or six cuttings annually. For this the farmer 
may secure an average price of $6 per ton, but it is better practice 
for him to feed the hay and market his output in the more concen- 
trated and profitable form of live-stock products. In 1914 cotton 
growing had reached extensive proportions on the project, the crop 
from 11,500 acres bringing a return of $715,000, but the drop in price 
attributed to the European war has led to the substitution of other 
crops. Of the grains, barley, wheat, and the sorghum corns are the 
largest producers. The warm climate lends itself to the growth of 
citrus as well as deciduous fruits and producing trees have been es- 
tablished on a considerable acreage, which is expected to increase 
materially in future years with a gradual development toward in- 
tensive agriculture. 


YUMA PROJECT, ARIZONA AND CALIFORNIA. 


Above Yuma, Arizona, has been constructed the Laguna Dam, a low 
overflow structure of the Indian weir type, 4,780 feet between abut- 
ments and 260 feet up and down stream, with a maximum height of 
40 feet. This turns the water into canals on both sides of the river 
for irrigation in Arizona and California. The main canal heads on 
the California side, and after covering lands on that side crosses the 
river by means of an inverted siphon. This structure, completed in 
1912, consists of two circular concrete shafts connected by a circular 
concrete-lined tunnel 14 feet inside diameter and 930 feet long. ‘The 
siphon delivers water to the canal system covering the largest portion 
of the project in the Yuma Valley, Arizona. On account of the low 
elevation of the irrigable lands and their consequent lability to 
overflow from the Colorado River it is necessary to provide an ex- 
tensive system of river-front protection. The principal work during 
recent years has been on this feature and the extension of the canal 
system, which is now competent to water 70,000 acres. This will be 
extended to cover about 90,000 acres, and an additional 40,000 acres 
on the Yuma Mesa may be reached by pumping. 

About 30,000 acres have been irrigated and the annual crop yield 
is approaching a million dollars. As at Salt River alfalfa is the 


RECLAMATION OF ARID LANDS—BEADLE. 477 


principal crop and a large acreage is here permitted to ripen for 
seed, which in 1914 brought the farmers $160,000 from 5,500 acres. 
Cotton has also proven very profitable on this project and with the aid 
of the Department of Agriculture varieties particularly suited to the 
locality have been imported or evolved. The cotton industry, now 
temporarily suspended by the abnormal niarket conditions, is bound 
to revive when these return to normal. Other profitable crops in- 
clude the cereals, sorghum corns, cane, vegetables, and truck. F rut, 
especially of the citrus varieties, will undoubtedly increase in im- 
portance with development of the project, particularly on the mesa 
lands yet to be reached by the canal system. 


ORLAND PROJECT, CALIFORNIA. 


Near Orland, California, has been completed a relatively small 
project, or what may be regarded as a separate unit of a large Sacra- 
mento Valley project. The East Park Dam on Little Stony Creek 
forms a reservoir storing the water of that stream and of Stony Creek, 
the latter brought to the reservoir through a feed canal. By means of 
two diversion dams near Orland the water is taken out of the stream 
channel into canal] systems supplying an area of 20,000 acres favored 
by exceptional soil, location, transportation facilities, and climate. 

The project has been enlarged since former statements by improy- 
ing the water supply and extending the distribution system to cover 
an additional 6,000 acres. <A diversion dam has been built in Stony 
Creek near the headwaters and a feed canal excavated to convey 
the water thus developed to East Park Reservoir. Near Orland 
separate diversion works have been built for north and south side 
canals. In accordance with the plans for the present the system is 
now practically complete and ready to serve the entire 20,000 acres. 

In 1914, 7,300 acres were watered, producing crops worth $176,000. 
High priced products are grown on this project, including almonds, 
olives, oranges, grapes, and other citrus and deciduous fruits, nuts, 
and garden truck, as well as hay and forage crops. 


GRAND VALLEY PROJECT, COLORADO. 


The plan for this project was briefly outlined in the Smithsonian 
report for 1910, since which construction has been undertaken and 
about 60 per cent of the work completed. 

The diversion dam has been built in Grand River about 8 miles 
northeast of Palisade. The presence of a railroad along the river 
bank and the great expense involved in moving this to a higher level 
led to a somewhat novel construction. It was necessary to control 
the stage of the stream closely and on the approach of floods be able 
to release quickly the back water caused by the dam. For this pur- 
pose a roller crest structure was built, one of the few and the longest 


478 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


that has been constructed in this country (pl. 5, fig. 1). The per- 
manent crest of concrete is erected at a relatively low level and above 
this at 60 and 70 feet intervals rise concrete piers containing the 
operating mechanism for the structural steel rollers. The latter 
extend between the piers and may be lowered to form a water-tight 
junction with the concrete crest, diverting water into the project 
canal, or may be quickly raised to pass flood water over the weir. 

From the diversion dam the main canal follows what is locally 
known as the “high line,” and piercing several hills by tunnels, 
proceeds in a general westerly direction, passing north of Grand 
Junction, Fruita, and Mack, and supplying about 43,000 acres of 
land above the older private canals of the valley. An additional 
10,000 acres may be watered by pumping with power developed at 
drops in the canal. The land is particularly suitable for fruit grow- 
ing and capable of producing crops of high value. 

There remain for construction part of the main canal and dis- 
tribution system, the power and pumping works, and possibly some 
drainage works. Irrigation will begin on this project in 1916. 


UNCOMPAHGRE VALLEY PROJECT, COLORADO. 


Here the Reclamation Service has built the Gunnison Tunnel to 
bring water from the Gunnison River to the valley of the Un- 
compahgre to supplement the meager flow of the latter stream. A 
number of canal systems heading in the Uncompahgre will distribute 
the water to about 140,000 acres. Irrigation has been practiced here 
for many years and the principal private canals have been purchased 
or absorbed in the Government system to permit change or enlarge- 
ment in a comprehensive development of the possibilities for irriga- 
tion in the valley. Work is in progress on the canal system and this 
now reaches 65,000 acres, of which 40,000 are being irrigated. The 
crop production has steadily grown, approximating a million dollars 
in value in 1915. Deciduous fruits are successful on the irrigated 
Jands and good yields are obtained from alfalfa, potatoes, wheat, 


and oats (pl. 18). 
BOISE PROJECT, IDAHO. 


One of the largest projects nearly completed is the Boise in Idaho. 
This is about equal in area to the Salt River and involves the storage 
and diversion of the waters of Boise River. The reservoir is formed 
by the Arrowrock Dam (pl. 5, fig. 2; pl. 6, figs. 1 and 2), the highest 
in the world, a rubble concrete arch rising 350 feet above the lowest 
point of the base and measuring 1,075 feet along the crest. The inac- 
cessibility of this site and the large amount of material to be hauled 
in for the construction made it economical to build a 17-mile railroad 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Beadle, 


PLATE 5. 


1. DIVERSION DAM, WITH ROLLER CRESTS IN GRAND RIVER, COLO. 


2. ARROWROCK DaM, BOISE RIVER, IDAHO. SPILLWAY CHANNEL ON THE LEFT. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Beadle. PLATE 6. 


1. PLACING VALVES IN ARROWROCK DAM. 


2. NEAR VIEW OF ARROWROCK DAM, THE HIGHEST IN THE WORLD. 


RECLAMATION: OF ARID LANDS—BEADLE, 479 


(pl. 7, fig. 2) connecting the site with the nearest railroad at Barber- 
ton. This short railroad, built, owned, and operated by the United 
States, does a small commercial business in addition to the carriage of 
freight for building the dam, and the road shows a profit when due 
credit is allowed for the material carried for the Government con- 
struction. This credit represents a substantial saving over what it 
would have cost to haul the necessary material overland. 

About 12 miles below Arrowrock and 8 miles above Boise is the 
diversion dam of the project (pl. 7, fig. 1), turning the water into the 
canal system, which includes a main canal carrying the water to 
the Deer Flat Reservoir, another storage basin formed by several 
large earth embankments, closing a natural depression some distance 
from the river. 

As on the Salt River project power is developed in connection with 
the Boise, but in smaller amount. A hydroelectric plant: was built 
at the diversion dam and the power here developed was transmitted 
to Arrowrock, where it was used to build the larger structure. 

In addition to the Arrowrock Dam the principal work since the re- 
port of 1910 has been the completion of the distribution system, com- 
prising 1,000 miles of canal and 12,000 structures, together with 
drainage works. The project embraces two old irrigation districts, 
which have contracted for supplemental water supply from Arrow- 
rock Reservoir and for drainage work done by the Reclamation 
Service for the benefit of considerable areas of the district lands that 
have been rendered temporarily unfit for cultivation by seepage and 
alkali. 

Nearly 100,000 acres of the Boise project are now in crops and the 
annual production already exceeds a million dollars. Alfalfa, clover, 
cereals, and potatoes are the leading products. 


MINIDOKA PROJECT, IDAHO. 


In Snake River Valley a project has been built, involving storage 
in Jackson Lake, Wyoming (pl. 8, figs. 1 and 2), and a distribution 
system near Minidoka, Idaho. The Minidoka Dam diverts water to 
north and south side canals and furnishes a head of 46 feet, which is 
used to drive a 7,000 kilowatt power plant erected at the dam. The 
power is utilized to lift irrigation water to additional land not ac- 
cessible by gravity flow and the excess energy is sold for the benefit 
of the project. 

The power is produced at a cost averaging slightly over one 
mill per kilowatt-hour, including all operating expense and plant 
depreciation. This low cost makes it possible to sell the energy for 
varied and novel uses, such as operating washing machines, flat-irons, 
and other utensils of the small home. Considerable is used for heat- 
ing. One of the project towns has recently erected a schoolhouse 


480 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


that is pointed out as a building without a chimney or a gas pipe, 
electricity being used for heating, lighting, and operating all the de- 
vices necessary in a modern high school that includes physical and 
chemical laboratories. j 

The Minidoka Project is practically complete as now planned, and 
it is possible to water 120,000 acres, of which 82,000 are under irriga- 
tion, including 35,000 acres supplied by pumping. Forage crops, 
grain, potatoes, and sugar beets are the principal products. 


HUNTLEY PROJECT, MONTANA. 


This is one of the few projects that requires no storage works, be- 
ing located on the Yellowstone River at a point where the natural 
run-off from a large drainage area provides a sufficient water supply. 
The main canal and lateral system now cover 30,000 acres, which 
may be increased by small extensions. The most novel construction 
feature is a hydraulic pumping plant on the main canal where the 
bulk of the water, dropping through turbines, operates centrifugal 
pumps that lift part of the supply to a high-line canal, the whole op- 
eration being automatic and requiring almost no attention from the 
operating force. 

The project is one of the most successful in operation and about 
20,000 acres are now in crop, yielding products averaging in value 
over $25 per acre. Sugar beets have become the most important 
crop (pl. 9, fig. 1). A company has erected and operates a beet-sugar 
factory, contracting with the farmers for a certain acreage to be 
planted with seed supplied by the company, which pays for the beets 
according to their sugar content. Over 4,000 acres are now utilized 
in this way, returning to the farmer nearly $60 per acre. Alfalfa, 
grain, and garden truck are the other important products. 


MILK RIVER PROJECT, MONTANA. 


Eyer since the passage of the reclamation act the effort has been 
made to develop along broad lines the irrigation possibilities of the 
Milk River drainage. The situation is much complicated and delays 
have been caused by the fact that the river is an international stream, 
rising in the United States, entering Canada, and returning to this 
country. Thus between the storage sites and irrigable lands in the 
United States the river passes through lands that may be watered in 
Canada, leading to conflicting interests in the limited water supply. 
After years of negotiation a treaty with Great Britain was finally 
proclaimed in 1910 for the distribution of the water, but its in- 
terpretation in detail is still subject to adjustment, which is now in 
the hands of a joint commission representing the two Governments. 

Meanwhile the Reclamation Service has built certain features of 
the American project, permitting irrigation of a portion of the lands. 


— 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Beadle. 


PLATE 7. 


1. DIVERSION DAM IN BOISE RIVER, POWER PLANT AND HEAD OF MAIN CANAL. 


2. BOISE AND ARROWROCK RAILROAD, BUILT TO CARRY FREIGHT TO ARROWROCK 
Dam. DIVERSION DAM AND POWER PLANT IN DISTANCE. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Beadle. PLATE 8. 


1. DAM AT JACKSON LAKE, Wyo., MINIDOKA PROJECT. 


2. NEAR VIEW OF JACKSON LAKE DAM. 


RECLAMATION OF ARID LANDS—BEADLE. 481 


A canal 25 miles in length has been excavated to supplement the flow 
of Milk River from that of St. Mary River, thus diverting water 
through the divide separating the Hudson Bay drainage from that 
of the Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico. Work is now under way on 
a storage dam at Sherburne Lakes and additional storage may be 
provided by a dam at the outlet of Lower St. Mary Lake. Three to 
four hundred miles below in Milk River Valley, distributing systems 
are planned, heading at three diversion dams near the towns of 
Chinook, Dodson, and Vandalia, with supplemental storage in a 
reservoir fed by one of the main canals. The Dodson and Vandalia 
dams have been built and distributaries for 40,000 acres. Grain and 
hay are the staple crops. The rainfall is sufficient to permit dry- 
farming, but the yield is doubled or trebled with irrigation. Ulti- 
mately 200,000 acres or more may be watered. 


SUN RIVER PROJECT, MONTANA. 


Near Fort Shaw the Reclamation Service has built and operated 
for several years a unit covering 16,000 acres, and work is now under 
way on larger features of a project that may eventually comprise 
175,000 acres. A diversion dam (pl. 9, fig. 2) has been recently 
built in the Sun River near Elizabeth and a distribution system for 
lands north of the river is under construction. A storage reservoir 
will be built on the north fork of the Sun. 

The irrigable lands are within 50 miles of Great Falls, which 
supplies a market for the farm products. Grain, hay, and vege- 
tables are the principal crops. 


LOWER YELLOWSTONE PROJECT, MONTANA AND NORTH DAKOTA. 


About 18 miles below Glendive, Montana, the Yellowstone Dam 
diverts water into a canal that covers a strip of land west of the 
river in Montana and North Dakota. About 35,000 acres can now 
be supplied. The cold climate and short growing season limit the 
crops mainly to hay and grain, which give enhanced yields under 
irrigation, but the rainfall is sufficient to encourage dry farming 
and renders it difficult to secure uniform support for irrigation 
among the settlers. No construction work has been done on this 
project in recent years. 


NORTH PLATTE PROJECT, NEBRASKA AND WYOMING. 


This is another interstate project, utilizing the flow of the North 
Platte River to irrigate lands in Wyoming and Nebraska. Storage 
is provided near the headwaters by the Pathfinder Dam, a masonry 

18618°—sm 1915——31 


482 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


arch 218 feet high and 432 feet along the crest. Near Whalen, 
Wyo., a diversion dam supplies the Interstate Canal, a notable irri- 
gation conduit with a capacity of 1,400 cubic feet per second at 
its head. The canal is over 100 miles long and serves 130,000 acres 
in the two States. It takes several days for water entering the 
headgates to reach the end of the ditch, and several small reservoirs 
have been constructed along the canal to provide temporary storage 
and better regulation of the flow. These reservoirs, the lower part 
of the canal, and related distributaries have been built since the 
former reports in this series. Other construction has included drain- 
age works, and work is now starting on a large unit on the opposite 
side of the river. Here the Fort Laramie Canal will take out from 
the river at the Whalen Dam. It will exceed the Interstate Canal 
in length and furnish water to an area of 100,000 acres. 

In addition to supplying the Government project of 230,000 acres, 
the Pathfinder Reservoir provides sufficient stored water to supple- 
ment the supply of a number of private canals along the river to 
which rights have been sold under the provision of the Warren 
Act of February 21, 1911, the receipts entering the reclamation fund. 

The area actually irrigated by the North Platte project is now 
increasing about 5,000 acres each year, and the annual crop value 
reached $1,000,000 in 1915, when 70,000 acres were harvested. Alfalfa 
and grain are extensively grown and used to fatten stock for mar- 
ket. Hog raising has become an important and profitable industry; 
during the last six months of 1914 shipments to market averaged 
over 20 carloads, representing monthly receipts of $30,000 from this 
industry alone. 


TRUCKEE-CARSON PROJECT, NEVADA. 


On this project the Lahontan Dam has been recently built, being 
completed in 1915 (pl. 10, fig. 1). The structure is a large earth 
embankment, with rock and gravel paving, 124 feet in maximum 
height and 1,400 feet long. The most interesting feature of the 
structure is the provision for passing excess flood water without 
injury to the dam directly or by erosion of the relatively soft mate- 
rial composing the river channel and canyon walls. For this pur- 
pose concrete spillway channels leading from each end of the dam 
are built in steps, dropping the water to a concreted stilling pool 
below the structure (pl. 10, fig. 2). The reservoir impounds the 
flow of Carson River and also receives the water brought from the 
Truckee through the Truckee Canal, built some years before. Prior 
to building the reservoir a hydroelectric plant was erected to utilize 
the drop from Truckee Canal to Carson River and the power thus 
developed was used in the construction of the dam. 


cc 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Beadle. 


PLATE 9. 


1. HARVESTING SUGAR BEETS, HUNTLEY PROJECT, MONTANA. 


2. DiveRsION DAM IN SUN RIVER, MONT. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Beadle. PLATE 10. 


1. LAHONTAN DAM, TRUCKEE-CARSON PROJECT, NEVADA. 


2. STEPPED SPILLWAY CHANNELS AND POOL AT BASE OF LAHONTAN Dam, NEVADA. 


RECLAMATION OF ARID LANDS—BEADLFE. 483 


Other recent work includes smaller structures, drains, and ex- 
tension of the distribution system, which serves lands near the 
town of Fallon. About 65,000 acres are now under ditch and 
the area may be considerably increased. With additional storage 
and canal systems 200,000 acres may ultimately be reclaimed. The 
locality is extremely arid, with an annual rainfall of about 4 inches, 
insufficient for any crop growth. Under irrigation the soil gives 
good yields of alfalfa, grain, and vegetables. 


CARLSBAD PROJECT, NEW MEXICO. 


Near Carlsbad, New Mexico, two dams have been built across the 
Pecos River, forming storage basins, and from the lower one of 
these a canal system has been excavated to supply 25,000 acres of 
land surrounding Carlsbad. The project was completed in 1912, 
since which about 18,000 acres have been irrigated, producing good 
yields of alfalfa, cotton, grain, truck, and fruit. 


RIO GRANDE PROJECT, NEW MEXICO AND TEXAS. 


This is an interstate and international project, using the waters 
of the Rio Grande to irrigate land in New Mexico and Texas and 
supplying Mexico at the international boundary a quantity of 
water fixed by treaty. 

The largest irrigation reservoir in the world is formed by the 
recently completed Elephant Butte Dam (pl. 11, fig. 1), spanning 
the river canyon near Engle, N. Mex. This structure is of rubble 
concrete, 300 feet from the bottom of the foundation to the crest, 
which extends 1,250 feet between abutments. This gives a reservoir 
capacity exceeding 2,500,000 acre-feet, or 800,000,000,000 gallons. 
One of the problems connected with storage on the Rio Grande is 
due to the great amount of silt carried by the stream, and this large 
reservoir capacity is expected to care for years of silt accumulations, 
which are further provided for by numerous openings through the 
dam for sluicing (pl. 11, fig. 2). 

From the reservoir the water passes down the river channel te 
the irrigable lands, which are located in a series of narrow valleys 
along the stream in New Mexico and Texas. The development of 
each valley involves a diversion dam, main canals on either side of 
the river, and the necessary distributaries and structures. A number 
of private canals watering small areas will be embraced in the general 
developmert. 

In the Mesilla Valley the Leasburg Dam and main canal have thus 
been built to connect with several community canals covering about 


484 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


35,000 acres. An additional diversion is now under construction in 
this valley controlling 60,000 acres. 

In El Paso Valley the old Franklin Canal has been purchased and 
enlarged. This passes through the city of El Paso, where it has 
been concrete lined to give increased capacity. About 29,000 acres 
will eventually be watered. 

Other tracts to be reached lie in Rincon and Palomas Valleys. In 
all, the project contemplates the irrigation of about 155,000 acres in 
the United States. The soils are very fertile and the market facili- 
ties unusually good. Alfalfa yields 3 to 6 tons per acre and 
the price averages above $10 per ton, reaching at times as high as 
$15 or $20. Vegetables, truck, and fruit are very successful, and the 
27,000 acres harvested in 1914 under the Government works yielded 
crops worth well over a million dollars. 


UMATILLA PROJECT, OREGON. 


Former reports have described the portion of the Umatilla project 
lying east of the Umatilla River, supplying 25,000 acres by means 
of a canal system heading in Cold Springs Reservoir, which is filled 
by a feed canal from the Umatilla. Recently an extension to the 
project has been under construction west of the river, adding about 
11,000 acres to the irrigable area. The work includes the Three Mile 
Falls Diversion Dam, a main canal heading at the dam, and a system 
of laterals carrying water to each farm. 

On the older part of the project about 5,000 acres are now in 
crop. The conditions are favorable for the growth of fruit, which 
is gradually becoming the principal product. Good yields are also 
obtained from alfalfa, grain, vegetables, and truck crops. 

One of the difficulties encountered in the operation of the Umatilla 
project is due to the fact that portions of the irrigable land are very 
sandy, causing the irrigation water to escape rapidly to a depth 
where it is not available to the plant roots. To sustain crop growth 
on such land it is necessary to irrigate it frequently and the “ duty ” 
or quantity of water required per acre is excessive. In some cases 
the duty may be as low as 15 or even 20 acre-feet per acre, i. e., 
during the irrigation season the total application to the field is 
equivalent to a depth of 15 or 20 feet. The average duty on the Uma- 
tilla project is now about 7 Acre-feet, and for all the reclamation 
projects the average is between 2 and 3 acre-feet per acre. 

The great importance of this subject is realized when it is remem- 
bered that usually the available water supply and not the available 
land limits the extent of a project and largely determines the cost 
per acre. Also the cost of operating the works and guarding against 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Beadle. PLATE 11 


yy 7) 


ty — 
Pel ok UL a 


41. ELEPHANT BUTTE DAM IN THE RIO GRANDE, NEW MEX. CONGRESSIONAL PARTY 
ON TOUR OF INSPECTION, JUNE, 1915. 


2. INSTALLING SLUICE GATES, ELEPHANT BuTTE Dam, NEW MExiIco. 


Smithsonian Report, 1915.—Beadle. PLATE 12. 


1. CLEAR CREEK DAM, TIETON UNIT OF YAKIMA PROJECT, 
WASHINGTON. 


2, CONCONULLY DAM, OKANOGAN PROJECT, WASHINGTON. 


RECLAMATION OF ARID LANDS—BEADLE. 485 


breaks in the canals is increased as the ‘quantity of water to be 
carried is made larger and the annual charge for operation and 
maintenance against each irrigator is in proportion to the amount of 
water delivered to him. 

The permanent cure for excessive use imposed by sandy land lies 
in the addition of vegetable matter to the soil. With the growth of 
each crop the condition improves through the addition of humus. 
Another influence for a better duty, applicable to all soils, is the 
use of relatively large irrigation heads; that is, supplying the fields 
by using a large stream of water for a short time rather than allow- 
ing a small head to run to the fields during a longer period. To im- 
prove the duty by this means requires proper ditching and grading 
as well as skill in handling the water. 

By these means the average duty on the Umatilla project was 
improved more than an acre-foot per acre in 1914 over the previous 
year, and it is believed that with the gradual addition of humus to 
the sandy portions of the area the problem will be satisfactorily 
solved. The farmers on the sandy tracts require every encourage- 
ment in establishing normal conditions and provision has been made 
for a relatively low charge per acre-foot for such lands for a period 
of years during which opportunity may be had to put the soil in 
proper condition. 


KLAMATH PROJECT, OREGON AND CALIFORNIA. 


In the Klamath country of southern Oregon and northern Cali- 
fornia a plan has been partially carried out for utilizing the run-off 
of Klamath Lakes and Lost River to water areas that may eventually 
total 200,000 acres. As described in former statements certain units 
of the project have been constructed, making water now available 
for 40,000 acres, of which 25,000 are being irrigated. In its entirety 
the project is an intricate one, involving a number of unusual fea- 
tures, of which perhaps the most novel is the dewatering and subse- 
quent canalization of the Tule Lake bed. For this purpose its supply 
from Lost River is cut off by building a dam at Clear Lake, the head 
of Lost River, forming a large shallow basin in which evaporation 
practically equals the inflow, and largely diverting into Klamath 
River the run-off that reaches Lost River below Clear Lake. By evap- 
oration the bed of Tule Lake is gradually uncovering and irrigation 
of the exposed land has begun along the edge of the lake. Construc- 
tion work in recent years includes the Lost River diversion dam and 
channel to Klamath River, enlargements and extensions of canal 
systems and drains for the lands already watered. 

The Klamath area receives an average annual rainfall of 14 
inches, permitting some crop production by dry farming, but the 


486 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


yields are doubled with irrigation. Forage crops predominate, but 
potatoes are successfully grown and small areas of fruit trees have 
yielded well. 


BELLE FOURCHE PROJECT, SOUTH DAKOTA. 


Near the town of Belle Fourche, S. Dakota, the river of the same 
name has been utilized to irrigate lands east of the town. <A diver- 
sion dam in the river turns the flow into a feed canal supplying 
a reservoir on Owl Creek, formed by a large earth dam from which 
canal systems distribute the water to the irrigable lands. Since 
former reports the distributaries have been extended to serve an 
area of 78,000 acres, about half of which is producing crops. Cereals 
predominate, including wheat, oats, corn, rye, and barley. Alfalfa 
is generally grown, and potatoes and garden truck occupy small 
tracts. 

STRAWBERRY VALLEY PROJECT, UTAH. 


This contemplates the irrigation of 50,000 acres east of Utah Lake. 
Storage is provided by a dam on Strawberry River. By means of 
a tunnel nearly 4 miles long the water is carried through the rim of 
the Great Basin and delivered to Spanish Fork River. Here it is 
turned into the canal system by means of a diversion dam. The main 
canal serves also as a power conduit, supplying a hydroelectric 
plant, built early in the construction work, to furnish power for 
driving Strawberry tunnel. A permanent use of the power is 
planned for pumping water to tracts inaccessible by gravity flow and 
for drainage. Surplus power is now sold the towns of Payson, 
Salem, and Spanish Fork. The canal construction has recently 
been actively pushed and the project as a whole is regarded as 85 
per cent completed. A number of old canals in the valley will be 
supplied from the Government works, and the delivery of stored 
water began in June, 1915. The principal products are alfalfa and 
other hays, cereals, sugar beets, and vegetables. 


OKANOGAN PROJECT, WASHINGTON. 


In Okanogan County, Washington, the Reclamation Service has 
built works to serve 10,000 acres of land along Okanogan River 
within 50 miles of the Canadian border. Storage is provided in 
Salmon Lake and by an earthen dam on Salmon River near the 
town of Conconully. (PI. 12, fig. 2.) The water is turned into a 
canal system about 12-miles below the Conconully Dam by means of 
a weir across Salmon River. The gravity system was completed in 
1910 and the water has been used by the farmers each year on an 
increased acreage. The area irrigated has now reached about 8,000 


‘OpRi0[0D ‘yoolorg AoT[VA o1syeduooU ‘pul po}VSIIIT UO OU90S JSoAIB_L 


"GSWHOJSSNVH | LYASSQ SHL 


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RECLAMATION OF ARID LANDS—BEADLE. 487 


acres, making it desirable to build a pumping plant that has been 
regarded as a part of the general plan, and this has recently been 
constructed. Small hydroelectric plants have been erected at. drops 
formerly provided in the project canals and the power thus de- 
veloped is used to operate the pumping plant, which is located near 
Omak. This lifts water from the Okanogan River to supplement 
the supply from the Salmon. It is not necessary to run the pumps 
every year, but they provide capacity to water about 1,000 acres 
during seasons of lean runoff in Salmon River. 

The project lands are excellently suited to the production of fruit, 
particularly apples. Peaches, apricots, pears, prunes, and various 
small fruits are also grown. Hay, forage, and vegetables are pro- 
duced on smaller areas. 


YAKIMA PROJECT, WASHINGTON. 


As described in former reports considerable work has been com- 
pleted toward the execution of a comprehensive development of the 
Yakima Valley, including storage reservoirs at the headwaters of 
the Yakima River and its tributaries, and distributing systems at 
various points lower down in the valley. Since former statements a 
permanent dam has been built at the outlet of Kachess Lake and 
a similar structure is under way at Lake Keechelus. Kachess Dam 
is an earth and gravel fill 1,400 feet long and 65 feet in maximum 
height. On the Tieton River a relatively small reservoir has been 
formed by the construction of Clear Creek Dam (pl. 12, fig. 1) to 
serve a novel purpose. The Tieton is fed by melting snow, causing 
a large diurnal variation in the flow so that the discharge at its peaks 
could not be taken into the main canal and some of the needed 
water was lost. The Clear Creek Dam provides the necessary reser- 
voir capacity to correct this daily fluctuation and store’a small 
quantity of water. 

The principal distribution systems are the Sunnyside and Tieton 
units. In 1906 the United States purchased the old Sunnyside Canal, 
then watering 40,000 acres, and this has been extended and enlarged 
to supply 82,000 acres, including several small tracts to which water 
is pumped, using power developed at plants built at drops in the canal 
system. On the Tieton water is provided for 33,000 acres by a sys- 
tem including a main canal of difficult construction through Tieton 
Canyon, involving several tunnels and long stretches of open canal 
made up of concrete shapes. 

Nearly 100,000 acres are now under irrigation on these two units, 
growing crops each year worth three to three and a half million 
dollars. The section has become a well-known apple producer and 
through cooperative organizations has made great progress in de- 


488 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 


veloping a uniform product and in advertising and marketing it. 
In addition to apples and other fruits excellent yields are obtained 
from alfalfa, cereals, and vegetables. Indian corn is successful 
here; in 1914, 7,500 acres of this crop yielded an average of about 
50 bushels per acre. 


SHOSHONE PROJECT, WYOMING. 


In Wyoming the Shoshone River is being utilized to develop a 
project of 150,000 acres. In the canyon above Cody has been built 
the Shoshone Dam, a rubble concrete arch 328 feet high and 200 feet 
along the crest. This was the highest dam in the world when con- 
structed, but has since been exceeded by the Arrowrock Dam, also 
built by the Reclamation Service. Eight miles below Cody a diver- 
sion dam turns the stored water into Corbett Tunnel, which delivers 
to the main canal. Recent work has extended the distribution 
system to reach 41,000 acres. Slightly over half of this is now being 
irrigated so that the canal system is constructed well ahead of the 
farming development. Agriculturally the project is essentially a 
hay and grain producer, with small tracts devoted to vegetables and 
garden truck. Alfalfa is the principal crop, exceeding all others 
together in planted area and value of product. 


SUMMARY. 


Under the reclamation act of June, 1902, with later amendments, 
the work of redeeming our arid lands has gone steadily forward to 
the point where 23 projects or units have been completed so that the 
problems of construction have been succeeded by those of oper- 
ating the works for agricultural production. A million and a half 
acres can now be supplied with water through the Government 
systems, and half of this area is actually producing crops totaling 
nearly $20,000,000 in yearly value. In effect a State has been added 
to the Nation in that the annual production from the irrigated lands 
already exceeds that of a number of the smaller States. 


SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN TELEPHONY AND 
TELEGRAPHY.1 


By FRANK B. JEWETT, 
Assistant Chief Engineer Western Electric Co. (Ine.). 


With an art such as that of telephony and telegraphy which has 
been either wholly or in large part developed within the last 30 years, 
it is difficult to cover in an article of a few thousand words all that 
might be construed under the term “ recent developments.” It is even 
difficult to determine what should be classified as recent developments. 

As soon as the researches and discoveries of scientists and inventors 
along any line show signs of developing into an art which will aid 
in the every-day life of mankind, a great stimulus is given, not only 
to a betterment of the physical means for affording the service, but 
also to the development and exploitation of the commercial possi- 
bilities made available by the new art and to the production of an 
operating organization which will render the physical equipment 
most fully available for the commercial needs. ‘Thus, it happens that 
in the field of telephony and telegraphy, both wire and radio, great 
strides have been made during the past few years in perfecting the 
_commercial and operating organizations which have been found nec- 
essary to make the work of the scientist and engineer fully available 
to the public. In what follows no attempt has been made to cover 
any features of these latter developments. This seemed the more 
necessary since the commercial and traflic needs of no two countries 
are exactly alike and a full presentation of the subject would require 
more space and more particularly larger knowledge than the author 
possesses. In limiting the paper to the physical and engineering 
aspects of telephony and telegraphy an attempt has been made fur- 
ther to confine it to those developments which have brought about 
rather radical changes in the existing state of the art or which bid 
fair to bring about such changes in the future. 

Before passing on to a consideration of these recent physical and 
engineering developments, it might be well to point out that, con- 
trary to a more or less general belief, most of the physical develop- 
ments have followed as a direct result of commercial or traflic oper- 
ating requirements rather than as the result of a priori considera- 
tions on the part of the scientist and the engineer. Although not 


1Read at the Second Pan American Scientific Congress, at Washington, Dec. 27, 1915- 
Jan. 8, 1916. Printed by permission of Executive Committee of the Congress. 


489 


490 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


universally true, a large majority of the radical physical changes 
have resulted from studies and developments made with a view to 
extending the existing possibilities of telephony or telegraphy to 
cover some new or more promising field. 

In selecting the items to be considered the endeavor has been to 
touch upon those changes in the physical art of telephone and tele- 
graph transmission which would be of interest to all of the members 
of the Pan American Scientific Congress, irrespective of any com- 
mercial, geographic, or climatic conditions which might be peculiar 
to any given locality. In other words, the attempt has been to select 
those developments which tend to improve or modify fundamental 
considerations in the application of the art of transmitting intelli- 
gence electrically. The only exception to this isin the brief discussion 
of apparatus intended primarily for use under tropical and semi- 
tropical conditions. To a large proportion of the members of the 
congress this is really a fundamental consideration which must 
underlie the proper engineering of the physical plant needed to give 
service. 

Although the present state of the art has closely interlaced the 
requirements of wire and radio telephone and telegraph develop- 
ments and although the future seems to indicate an even closer tying 
together of all phases of electrical intelligence transmission systems, 
it is difficult in a short paper to treat the important advances, except 
in relation with the particular field to which they most closely per- 
tain. For this reason the discussion has been divided into three 
main parts: 

1. Wire telephony, 

2. Wire telegraphy, and 

3. Radio communication, both telephonic and telegraphic. 


1. WIRE TELEPHONY. 


Since the whole present art of wire telephony is the result of only 
40 years’ work, almost anything might be construed as a “ recent 
development.” Ten years has, however, been taken as the period to 
be covered, and since any major development in the art requires 
considerable time for its working out, the results of the work during 
the past 10 years can only be properly appreciated by considering 
the state of the telephone art some time prior thereto—for example, 
about 1900. : 

Let us review, therefore, the situation in the telephone field at the 
beginning of the present century. 

By 1900 the telephone art was rapidly emerging from the era 
when the inventor rather than the engineer was supreme in the field. 
The experience gained during the preceding 25 years, supplemented 


DEVELOPMENTS IN TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY. 


JEWETT. 491 


by the application of sound engineering principles, had indicated 
certain things as being fundamental to the proper extension of com- 
mercial telephony. The trend of further development and. the cor- 
rect methods to be followed were also becoming clear. 

Among other things, the necessity for using metallic circuits had 
been proven beyond peradventure. So, too, the employment of the 
relatively high-priced, hard-drawn copper line wire had been shown - 
to be economically cheaper and more satisfactory, all things con- 
sidered, than the inexpensive iron and steel wire originally employed 
for both telephone and telegraph circuits. Moreover, the fallacy of 
building expensive long-distance, open-wire pole lines and terminat- 
ing them in the cities in small wire cables was beginning to be fully 
appreciated, and the engineering of the wire plant was already being 
done on a scientific basis. This basis was that the wire plant as a 
whole should be in cost equilibrium when considered from a trans- 
mission standpoint. In a plant where such cost equilibrium exists, 
the increased annual charge required to give a fixed increment of im- 
provement in transmission is the same, irrespective of the part of the 
plant in which the improvement is made. The full appreciation of 
this fundamental requirement and its extended application has prob- 
ably done more than any one thing to eliminate gross variations in 
the grades of transmission furnished in different localities and greatly 
to reduce plant costs. 

Fifteen years ago the possibility of improving the transmission 
efficiency of telephone circuits by the periodic introduction of loading 
coils was not commercially known. Little or no progress had as yet 
been made in the art of securing a third or “ phantom” metallic 
circuit from two ordinary metallic circuits. Amplifying devices, 
which were among the earliest dreams of the. telephone inventor 
and engineer, were still in a crude state of undeveloped laboratory 
equipment. Fifteen years ago the telephone engineer, except in a 
few localities, had had relatively little experience in the problem 
of operating in close proximity to electric power circuits of extra 
high potential. To be sure, the introduction of street railways 
and low-tension lighting and power circuits had already brought 
with them the necessity for radical changes in the telephone art. 
But the single-phase railway and the high-potential transmission 
circuit employing hundreds of thousands of volts did not then exist. 

In the matter of substation apparatus—that is, transmitters, re- 
ceivers, and associated devices—the telephone art had become some- 
what stabilized. The bipolar type of receiver was in general use, 
as was also some form of multicontact microphone. In America, 
where the ultimate scope of telephony was recognized to include a 

universal long-distance service as well as purely local service, the 
solid back, granular button type of carbon transmitter had come to 


492 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


be standard. In Europe, where the conditions of a purely local or 
at best a very short-distance transmission seemed to prevail, a more 
microphonic type of instrument was preferred. In both continents 
there was already a drift away from the earlier forms of fixed or 
wall type subscribers’ instruments, and the desk stand and hand set 
were beginning to appear. 

In the central office the myriads of inventions which had been pro- 
posed and tried out were gradually giving way to apparatus which 
embodied the best of all that had been suggested. So-called auto- 
matic systems for central office operation were beginning to be ex- 
ploited, but the great bulk of telephone engineering was on the 
basis of manual switchboards, which, to be sure, involved many func- 
tions not manually performed. In fact, nobody as yet had had 
sufficient experience to say definitely where the ultimate development 
of central office switchboards was likely to lead. 

Such, in brief, was the state of the art in the more important 
parts of wire telephony 15 years ago. A comparison of the then 
existing art with that of to-day and a statement of what has been 
done in the last 10 years can best be made by a statement of the 
improvements in each principal line. This survey will also permit 
of making some sort of a hazard as to the future development which 
may be expected in the field of wire telephony. 


PHANTOM CIRCUITS. 


As is well known, so-called “ phantom” circuits are those metallic 
telephone circuits which are obtained by combining two ordinary me- 
tallic telephone circuits in such a way that a third metallic telephone 
circuit is secured without producing any mutual interference with 
either of the component circuits and without causing any mutual 
interference between these component circuits. Considered from the 
theoretical standpoint alone, the problem is a simple one, since it 
consists merely in so arranging the circuits and the terminal ap- 
paratus that the current in one side of the phantom divides equally 
between the two wires of one physical circuit, while the current in 
the other side of the phantom divides equally between the two wires 
of the second physical circuit, a further proviso being that the ar- 
rangement shall be suitably balanced both electromagnetically and 
electrostatically. Under these conditions, there is no tendency for 
currents in the phantom circuit to produce circulating currents in 
the component physical circuits, nor do circulating currents in the 
latter tend to produce a circulating current in the phantom. 

Technically the realization of this theoretical ideal is extremely 
difficult. Since in the transmission of speech we are dealing with a 
band of high-frequency alternating currents, it does not suffice to 


DEVELOPMENTS IN TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPH Y—JEWETT. 493 


have the circuits and terminal apparatus balanced merely with re- 
gard to their ohmic resistance. They must also be balanced with 
regard to mutual capacities and inductances, not for a single fre- 
quency alone but for a multiplicity of frequencies, if the necessary 
freedom from cross interference is to be obtained. 

With the conditions which existed at the beginning of the present 
century, neither the lines themselves nor the terminal apparatus were 
suitably balanced for the introduction of the phantom principle. 
All of the cables then in service were constructed with a view to se- 
curing freedom from interference between simple metallic circuits. 
So also with open-wire lines, which, although transposed according 
to definite rules, were designed merely to provide freedom from 
cross interference between circuits operated on an ordinary metallic 
basis. The terminal apparatus in general use at that time, although 
reasonably satisfactory for the services originally intended, was even 
more hopeless than the lines from the standpoint of phantom 
operation. 

During the years between 1900 and 1906 or 1907 great strides were 
made in the application of phantom operation. A transposition 
system, permitting the use of phantom circuits on open-wire lines, 
was developed and the necessary mechanical details for interchanging 
the wires were worked out. Phantom repeating coils were designed 
and the art of their manufacture developed. Little or no progress, 
however, was made in the matter of successfully adapting cable con- 
struction to the requirements of phantom operation. 

The condition at about the beginning of 1907 was, therefore, one 
in which there was a fairly large and successful application of the 
phantom principle on nonloaded open-wire pole lines which termi- 
nated directly at central offices or terminated through relatively short 
lengths of cable. Where the toll lines had to be brought into the 
central offices through long lengths of cable, it was necessary either 
to place the phantom repeating coils at the junction of the cable with 
the open wire toll line or to endeavor, by a process of experimental 
selection, to find a sufficient number of interference-free pair combi- 
nations in the cable. The first of these alternatives was highly objec- 
tionable, both from the standpoint of maintenance on the coils and 
more particularly because it practically eliminated half of the wires 
from the possibility of use for superimposed telegraphy. The second 
alternative was almost equally objectionable because every repair to 
the cable required a reselection of pairs. 

At this time (1907) there were no means known for combining the 
phantom principle with the benefits from loading, now to be de- 
scribed. 


494. ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 
LOADING. 


Although Oliver Heaviside had shown mathematically in the early 
days of telephone development that material improvements in the 
transmission efficiency of circuits would result from increasing their 
self-inductance in a uniform fashion, it was not until the latter part 
of the last century that any scheme was suggested for the practical 
application of Heaviside’s work. During the two or three years 
immediately preceding 1900, Prof. M. I. Pupin, of Columbia Uni- 
versity, and Mr. George A. Campbell, of the American Telephone & 
Telegraph Co., working independently, showed that by the insertion 
of suitable inductance coils at intervals regularly spaced over the 
length of the line the effect of a distributed inductance could be simu- 
lated to any desired degree of precision. 

This invention of so-called “ lumped” or “coil” loading came at a 
most opportune time in the development of the telephone industry 
in the United States. By 1900 telephone service requirements within 
the larger urban areas and on the long-distance toll lines were taxing 
the then known methods of transmission to the limit. In cities such 
as New York the number of circuits required for interoffice trunk 
purposes had become so great that it was no longer feasible to carry 
them on open-wire pole lines in the streets. The only known alter- 
native was the employment of heavy-gauge conductor cables, whose 
use would entail vast expenditures for copper and conduit space and 
which even then would provide an inferior grade of transmission. 
For this service the benefits to be derived from loading offered a most 
welcome relief by insuring the possibility of obtaining the necessary 
grade of transmission through cables with small-gauge wires. 

The problem in the long-distance toll line field was somewhat dif- 
ferent. Here it was not so much a question of securing more circuits 
but of extending the range of transmission or bettering the service 
over existing circuits. With the large size of copper conductors then 
in use on the longer lines it was clear that no practical transmission 
benefits would be derived from a further increase in the weight of 
metal, while such an increase would necessitate a large addition to 
the item of line costs. It was seen at once that if coil loading could 
be applied to open-wire lines the effective range of the circuits could 
be very greatly increased. 

Under the economic spur of these two requirements, the engineers 
of the Bell system attacked vigorously the problem of producing in- 
ductance coils which would fulfill the requirements set forth by 
Pupin and Campbell. Although the mathematical solutions had been 
obtained and their accuracy demonstrated in the laboratory, the prac- 
tical problem of physical application to existing telephone circuits 
had yet to be completed. 


DEVELOPMENTS IN TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY—JEWETT. 495 


To be effective, loading coils must provide the required inductance, 
without at the same time too greatly increasing the effective resist- 
ance of the line. With the materials at first available it was feared 
that the only feasible way of obtaining the desired transmission 
results would be through the employment of air-core coils. Coils of 
this type were actually constructed and installed during some of 
the early experiments. While fairly efficient in the matter of 
the ratio of inductance to effective resistance, these coils were abnor- 
mally large and had the very serious defect of producing a large 
stray magnetic field, so that it was impossible to locate more than a 
few coils in close proximity to one another without encountering 
serious cross interference. 

This early work showed the absolute necessity of producing a mag- 
netic core type of inductance coil. The solution of this problem led 
ultimately to the development of the fine iron wire toroidal core type 
of loading coil which is now standard. 

By 1906 suitable coils had been developed for loading both cable 
and open-wire circuits of the ordinary metallic type. In the cable 
plant loading was common for all of the longer interoffice trunks in 
cities and loaded underground toll cables between cities were begin- 
ning to be installed. In the open-wire plant loading was common 
for everything except the larger sizes of copper wire which were 
employed in the very long distance services. The loading of such 
wires had not as yet proved feasible, due to the fact that with the 
construction then standard the reduction in transmission efficiency in 
times of wet weather was so great that the loaded circuit was at times 
actually poorer than a corresponding nonloaded circuit. 

At the time in question (1906-7) no progress had been made in the 
application of loading to circuits operating on the phantom prin- 
ciple. In laying out the plant the telephone engineer was con- 
sequently confronted with the necessity of choosing either to avail 
himself of the benefits of better or more extended transmission 
through loading or of greater circuit facilities through phantoming— 
he could not obtain both. 

In this connection it is interesting to note that whether the choice 
was loading or phantoming, the successful operation of plant neces- 
sitated a very much higher degree of line construction and mainte- 
nance than had hitherto been deemed necessary. 


DEVELOPMENT OF PHANTOM LOADING AND DUPLEX CABLE. 


The engineers of the Bell system were fully alive to the disad- 
vantages of the conditions just described and at once commenced 
developments looking to their elimination. The result has been that 
during the past eight or nine years the problem of loading large- 
gauge open-wire circuits has been solved, the use of loading has been 


496 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


extended to circuits operating on the phantom principle, and the 
method of manufacturing cable has been completely revised, so that 
to-day practically no large-gauge telephone cables are constructed 
except those in which all of the wires are available for loading and 
phantom operation. | 

Incidental to these developments but of a practical importance 
almost equal to the major developments themselves has been the 
working out of the methods necessary properly to install and load 
this new or so-called “ duplex ” type cable. 


PRESENT STATE OF THE ART WITH REGARD TO LOADING, PHANTOMING, 
AND DUPLEX CABLES. 


Coincident with the successful adaptation of loading to phantom 
circuits and the production of a cable suitable for loaded phantom 
operation came a rapid application of these developments in the 
extension and betterment of long-distance service. While these ap- 
plications were made principally in the United States, they have also 
been put into use in Europe and in some parts of South America, 
notably at the Isthmus of Panama. At the present time it is stand- 
ard practice in the United States to have all of the longer open-wire 
lines equipped with phantom loading, to have these lines enter the 
central offices through loaded phantom cables, and to connect the 
principal cities with loaded phantom circuits in underground cable. 
The most noteworthy application of phantom loading to the open- 
wire plant is in the transcontinental telephone circuits between New 
York, Boston, and other Atlantic seaboard cities and the Pacific coast, 
while the most noteworthy application of loaded phantom cables is 
between Boston and Washington, where the circuits are carried in 
loaded underground cable pairs for a distance of approximately 
500 miles. In England an underground loaded phantom cable 
between London and Liverpool is now nearing completion. 

As illustrative of the extent to which loading has been applied to 
telephone circuits in the United States within the last 10 or 12 years, 
it might be noted that there are to-day in service approximately 
350,000 miles of loaded inter-office trunk circuit, 34,000 miles of 
loaded underground toll circuit, and 200,000 miles of loaded open- 
wire lines. The average extension in the range of transmission by 
the use of loading is from two to three times. 


TELEPHONE AMPLIFIERS. 


While the idea of telephone amplifying devices is almost as old 
as the telephone art itself, it has been only within the last four or 
five years that anything approaching successful application of this 
idea has been made. 


DEVELOPMENTS IN TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY—JEWETT. 497 


Two problems are involved in the application of amplifiers to 
ordinary two-way telephone circuits. One is the problem of the 
amplifier instrument itself and involves fundamentally the con- 
struction of an instrument which will add energy from a local source 
to the telephcae circuit under the control of the attenuated tele- 
phone current from the distant transmitting station. To be suc- 
cessful the instrument must have such characteristics that no ap- 
preciable distortion of the speech is produced in its operation. 

The other is the problem of so inserting the amplifying device in 
the telephone line that it will work equally well in both directions 
and without any tendency to “sing,” i. e., to operate in a local closed 
cycle. 

Both of these problems were for many years formidable and un- 
surmounted obstacles. Recently, however, both have been solved, 
and the engineers of the Bell telephone system have developed a 
number of types of amplifying devices capable of application to 
either nonloaded or loaded circuits in cable or open wire. All of 
these different types are in successful operation to-day. The appli- 
cation of amplifiers to loaded circuits is particularly difficult on 
account of the peculiar characteristics of such circuits, and the solu- 
tion has involved many radical changes in the previously existing art 
of loading. 


TRANSMITTERS AND RECEIVERS. 


Although the fundamental principles employed in the manufacture 
of commercial transmitters and receivers have not undergone radical 
change within the past 10 years, there have been marked advances 
in the construction of the apparatus. In particular, transmitters 
have been adapted for use interchangeably on local and common 
battery systems. They have been made much more rugged, with 
better “ quality ” and louder volume than the instruments standard 
10 years ago. 

An even more marked improvement has been made in connection 
with receivers due to the employment of pole pieces which are elec- 
trically welded to the permanent magnet portion of the receiver. 

Special transmitters and receivers for a variety of services have 
been developed. In particular, throat and chest transmitters, which 
operate directly from the muscular movements caused by the opera- 
tion of speaking, have been constructed for aeroplane and mine- 
rescue work, where ordinary type instruments can not be employed. 
Special transmitters have also been developed for employment in 
theaters, churches, and other auditoriums for the purpose of enabling 
partially deaf persons to understand better what is being said. 
Special telephones have also been developed for stethoscopic and 
eardiographic observations. 

18618°—sm 1915 32 


498 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 
LOUD-SPEAKING TELEPHONE APPARATUS. 


While the successful completion of the loading and amplifier de- 
velopments which have made transcontinental telephony possible 
have completely eliminated the necessity and desirability for loud- 
speaking telephone apparatus for general telephone service, the last 
three or four years have seen material progress in the development 
of such equipment for specialized services. In particular, there has 
arisen a demand for loud-speaking telephonic equipment for an- 
nouncing purposes, for passing signals and orders to switch towers 
along railway lines, and for use in connection with moving pictures. 
While active development work on this kind of apparatus is still in 
progress, much has already been done to meet the demands which 
have arisen. For many of the services amplifying devices are used 
in conjunction with special transmitters and receivers. 


TELEPHONE CIRCUITS WITH SUPERIMPOSED TELEGRAPH. 


While the original application of ordinary ground-line telegraph 
operation to wires normally employed for telephone service was made 
a good many years ago, notable improvements in the equipment have 
been made during the last 10 or 12 years. The development of phan- 
toming and loading, and particularly the combination of the two, 
introduced many difficulties into the successful operation of super- 
imposed telegraph circuits. Within the last few years it has been 
necessary to redesign completely the terminal apparatus used at the 
central office. In addition, the presence of the telegraph current 
necessitated a special design of loading coil for use on very long cir- 
cuits.in order to avoid impairment of speech quality. 

All of these difficulties have been overcome and the situation to-day — 
is one in which every wire in a modern telephone toll plant is avail- 
able for operation as a grounded telegraph circuit, irrespective of 
whether the wire forms part of a loaded circuit or a loaded phantom 
circuit and irrespective of whether it is in cable or open wire. Fur- 
ther, the telegraph circuit so produced is suitable for the highest class 
of duplex operation. In the United States there are thousands of 
miles of such superimposed telegraph circuits in daily operation. 


INTERFERENCE FROM HIGH-TENSION LIGHTING, POWER, AND RAILWAY 
CIRCUITS. 


Within the last 10 years the art of electric transmission of power 
has undergone radical changes and the whole art of single-phase 
alternating-current railway operation has come into existence. De- 
velopments of a protective nature for telephone and telegraph cir- 
cuits have kept pace with the developments in the disturbing circuits. 


DEVELOPMENTS IN TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY—JEWETT. 499 


The most notable results have been obtained in connection with the 
operation of telephone and telegraph lines in proximity to single- 
phase alternating-current railways. In this type of power transmis- 
sion circuit the inductive effects may be felt at distances measured 
by miles rather than by feet, while on wires in close proximity to the 
railway line the induced potentials may at times reach hundreds or 
even thousands of volts. The problem of protecting low-voltage cir- 
cuits against these excessive potentials led to the development of 
what are known as compensating transformers, which, although caus- 
ing some transmission loss when introduced into the telephone cir- 
cuit, serve effectively to limit the voltage rise in the circuit to a point 
which endangers neither the operation of the circuit nor the lives of 
those employing it. 

In connection with high-tension interference, it is interesting to 
note that in the United States the difficulties from interference which 
beset the telephone and telegraph engineer have reacted to produce 
material altérations in the methods of power circuit operation origi- 
nally proposed. Further, there is to-day a concerted desire on the 
part of telephone, telegraph, and power engineers to introduce 
methods of operation which will be productive of minimum incon- 
venience to all concerned. 

The great growth in the high-tension network which covers the 
country, particularly in the thickly settled commercial sections, has 
added hazards to life and property as well as inductive disturbance 
troubles to the problem of the telephone and telegraph engineer. 
With the increasing complexity of the aerial line plant and more 
particularly through the economic and legislative necessity for 
reducing the number of pole lines to a minimum by joint occupancy 
of low and high-tension wires, the possibility of physical contact, 
particularly in times of storm, has been greatly enhanced. One of 
the very great advances which has been made in the last few years 
has been in defining proper specifications for joint use construction, 
proper specifications for safe construction at crossing points of low 
and high-tension wires, and the formulation and adoption of proper 
types of pole-line construction for low and high-tension wires in 


general. 
TELEPHONES FOR TRAIN DISPATCHING. 


In the railroad field the use of the telegraph for controlling train 
operations is rapidly giving way to the telephone. Up to a few years 
ago the telegraph offered the only feasible means for handling this 
class of service, which required the dispatcher, located at a central 
point, to keep in constant touch with a large number of stations along 
- the line. There were frequently as many as 50 or 60 of these stations, 
and each office had a predetermined call or code which enabled the 
dispatcher to call in the particular operator wanted. 


500 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


During the last few years thoroughly reliable mechanisms have 
been produced for selectively signaling a large number of telephone 
stations on the same line. With this mechanism the dispatcher, by the 
simple process of turning a particular key at the central point, oper- 
ates a signal, usually a bell, at the desired station without signaling 
any of the other stations on the line. As soon as the called operator 
picks up his telephone he, and he alone, is in direct communication 
with the dispatcher over a high-grade telephone circuit. 

The development of this effective signaling apparatus has removed 
the principal obstacle to the general adoption of the more effective 
and flexible telephone and it seems only a question of time when 
practically all train dispatching will be done by this means rather 
than by telegraph. 


TELEPHONE APPARATUS. 


Because of the rapid development of the telephone art it has actu- 
ally been difficult, at times, to produce the new apparatus needed to 
keep pace with the service requirements. This was particularly true 
in the period preceding 1905. The result was that 10 years ago the 
telephone system was employing a great variety of apparatus per- 
forming almost identical functions and consequently the quantity of 
each special type of apparatus required was small and the manu- 
facturing costs correspondingly high. 

With the telephone industry assuming gigantic proportions this 
state of affairs obviously could not continue indefinitely without 
entailing great monetary waste. About eight years ago, therefore, 
the matter of unifying telephone apparatus as much as possible was 
undertaken with the result that there are to-day lines of apparatus 
with but slight differences in structure which are capable of per- 
forming a variety of functions. This has been brought about largely 
by the employment of unit types of constructions capable of being 
assembled in a variety of ways. 

All this has resulted in the adoption of more effective methods of 
manufacture with a consequent reduction in cost. One of the most 
noteworthy results of this general development has been the substi- 
tution of parts punched and formed from sheet metal for parts 
previously made from castings or machined from solid stock. This 
use of sheet metal has also resulted in lighter and simpler apparatus, 
occupying less space in the switchboard or substation. 

A noteworthy example of this standardization of types is found 
in relays, of which hundreds of thousands are employed in central 
office equipments. A few years ago there were almost as many types 
of relays as there were individual service requirements. To-day this 
has been changed and the number of types reduced to very small 
proportions—the necessary service requirements being obtained by 


DEVELOPMENTS IN TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY—JEWETT. 501 


special windings and special arrangements of contact springs as- 
sembled from standard parts. 

Another striking change in telephone apparatus has been the sub- 
stitution of metal for wood, particularly in connection with the 
housing of substation apparatus. Where formerly the subscriber’s 
set and the apparatus box were made from wood, the standard 
practice now is to employ drawn-steel housings, properly japanned. 


2. WIRE TELEGRAPHY. 
LAND SYSTEMS. 


Although the telegraph was the first of the electric intelligence 
transmission systems in the field, progress in the art during the 20 
years following 1885 was not as great as the progress in the telephone 
field. Recently, however, great activity has been shown in the mat- 
ter of utilizing the telegraph-wire plant to better advantage. Not 
only has the use of the superimposed telegraph been greatly extended 
in the telephone plant, but there have also been striking developments 
in the realm of printing and high-speed telegraph systems. 

The primary object of these developments has been economy in 
the wire plant and in operating costs. As a result of what has been 
accomplished it is probably an underestimation to state that one 
telegraph circuit can now be made to carry as much traffic as four or 
five circuits operated by hand-speed Morse. It should be noted in 
passing that this statement is not intended to convey the idea that all 
telegraph circuits should be so operated. 

Two radically different fundamental ideas have been developed in 
the last decade, namely, the high-speed and the multiplex. In the 
high-speed printing system the messages are first prepared on per- 
forated tape by a number of operators, and these tapes when col- 
lected are fed into a transmitting machine in sequence. This trans- 
mitting machine converts the perforations in the tape into telegraph 
signals, which pass out over the line. At the receiving end the mes- 
sages may be printed directly on a paper tape or they may be received 
as perforations in a tape, which is later fed into a special typewriter 
designed to translate the perforations into Roman characters. 

In high-speed systems the printed tape at the receiving station is 
gummed to the telegraph blanks. Thus the operations at the sending 
station of bringing the perforated tapes to the high-speed trans- 
mitter and at the receiving station of distributing the messages and 
gumming the tapes are manual, and a natural development would 
be toward performing these operations automatically or else elimi- 
nating them altogether. 


502 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


The multiplex type of printing telegraph accomplishes this pur- 
pose, and the present indications are that it will become the preferred 
scheme for handling the heavy telegraph traffic which obtains be- 
tween large cities. 

In the multiplex system the line is switched to each operator in 
turn and at each switching the electrical signals, forming a one-letter 
combination, are transmitted over the line. The switching mecha- 
nism operates with such rapidity that it is possible to obtain a speed 
of from 40 to 50 words per minute from each sending operator. 
Thus in the case of a quadruple duplex—that is, a circuit trans- 
mitting four messages in each direction simultaneously over one 
wire—the total carrying capacity of the circuit would be from 320 
to 400 words per minute. 

In the multiplex system the messages are perforated on a paper 
tape, as in the case of the high-speed systems, but instead of one 
transmitting machine and one printing machine operating at a 
high speed a number of separate transmitters and printers are used 
at each end. These transmitters and printers are connected to the 
switching mechanisms, and by means of properly designed syn- 
chronizing apparatus the instruments at either end of the line are 
kept in proper relation to one another, so that each printer is always 
associated with its own transmitter. 

One great advantage of the multiplex from an electrical and me- 
chanical standpoint lies in the relatively long time intervals which 
obtain. Thus, after a letter combination has been sent out by a 
transmitter to the distant printer, the transmitter has ample time to 
set up another letter combination and the printer to print the letter 
and to restore to normal before the machines are again connected 
to the line. 

The multiplex printing telegraph system now being manufactured 
by the Western Electric Co. has shown traffic loads per circuit aver- 
aging nearly one-third greater than those carried by previous multi- 
plex systems using the same number of operators. As compared with 
high-speed systems, the traffic handled by this multiplex is probably 
40 per cent greater per average circuit, although the number of 
operators required is less. 

An outgrowth of the work on multiplex printers has been the 
development of electrical printing mechanisms which bid fair to 
have a wide field of application in other services, such, for example, 
as in the operation of large commercial and manufacturing estab- 
lishments. 


DEVELOPMENTS IN TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY—JEWETT. 503 
TELEGRAPH FOR RAILWAY SERVICE. 


As noted in connection with telephone developments, the produc- 
tion of suitable selective signaling apparatus has made possible the 
substitution of the telephone for the telegraph in the handling of 
train movements on railways. 

As this railway service has been one of the principal uses of the 
telegraph for more than 50 years, its abolition would appear to make 
the handling of commercial messages for business not conducted by 
telephone and the transmission of press dispatches and other matter 
which can be done most economically in this way the principal future 
field for land telegraphy. 


SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH CABLE. 


For many years developments in the submarine-telegraph field 
were practically confined to improvements in the types of cable em- 
ployed and to minor improvements in the terminal apparatus. Dur- 
ing the last few years there has been renewed activity in this highly 
important branch of communication. 

In particular much has been done in the way of amplifying the 
feeble currents received through long ocean cables, thus rendering 
legible current fluctuations which would otherwise be too feeble to 
. produce readable signals on a siphon recorder tape. A direct result 
of amplifying the signals has also been increased speed of transmis- 
sion. 

Within the last two or three years experiments have likewise been 
made with a view to recording cable signals as dots and dashes on a 
sounder, so that they can be read by ear, as is done in the case of 
Morse telegraphs. Just how far this line of development, which 
would permit connecting together submarine cables and land tele- 
graph lines, will succeed commercially is a question yet to be de- 
termined. 

The most recent. work on submarine telegraphy has been that of 
Col. Squier, of the United States Army, who has designed a system 
of alternating-current cable signaling which gives promise of con- 
siderable application. 


3. RADIOTELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY. 


Since the whole life of the art of radiocommunication is scarcely 
more than 15 years long, everything which has been done is in a 
sense a recent development. The physical phenomena involved in 
radiocommunication are so spectacular and weird that more atten- 
tion on the part of the general public has probably been accorded 
the progress of the art than is usually given to the commercial de- 


504 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


velopments of electrical science. For this reason it will doubtless 
suffice to confine our consideration to what has been done during the 
last five years. 

At the beginning of the present decade, radiotelegraphy, although 
serving a useful purpose in connection with ship-to-ship and ship-to- 
shore services, was still in a very unsatisfactory condition. Very 
little had as yet been done in the matter of developing successful 
long-distance communication. With one or two minor exceptions of 
what were in reality experimental installations, practically all radio- 
communication was on a spark-system basis. Continuous wave train 
systems were beginning to loom up as possibilities of the future, and 
controversies as to the relative merits of such systems and the already 
known spark systems had already begun. 

At the time in question—say, 1900—radiotelephony, except as a 
theoretical possibility supported by a few rather unsatisfactory 
demonstrations of an experimental character, did not exist. Certain 
things had, however, been reasonably well determined as essential to 
any future development along this line; for example, the necessity 
for a continuous or almost continuous form of wave train and some- 
thing other than the direct insertion of a telephone transmitter in 

the antenna circuit for modifying the high-frequency waves. 

By the first of 1913 what was termed commercial trans-Atlantic 
communication by radiotelegraphy had been accomplished, and | 
although spark systems were still in the great majority, continuous- 
oscillation systems were beginning to come into favor, particularly 
for long-distance service. In a practical sense, radiotelephony had 
not, however, made very much progress. 


* 
GENERATING APPARATUS. 


During the past five years most of the progress in the field of gen- 
erating apparatus has been in the direction of producing continuous 
oscillations of large power. In this connection should be mentioned 
the Goldschmidt generator, the static frequency changers of the 
Telefunken Co., improvements in the Poulsen arc intended to give a 
larger output and more stable operation, the high frequency alter- 
nators developed by the General Electric Co., and thermionic de- 
vices. Some of this apparatus has reached the stage where it is in 
everyday commercial service, while the rest is still largely in the 
experimental stage. 


RADIATING SYSTEMS. 


During the past few years practically nothing of importance has 
been published on the fundamental principles of radiating systems. 
The general trend of commercial or experimental! radio station con- 


DEVELOPMENTS IN TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY. JEWETT. 505 


struction has been toward the use of larger antenna structures at the 
sending station with a corresponding lengthening of the most effi- 
cient wave length to be used. Although present knowledge is still 
very meager, this tendency to large antenna systems at the sending 
station is the result of the general experience in long-distance radio- 
transmission, which appears to show that the lower frequencies, that 
is, the longer wave lengths, are more readily and efficiently trans- 
mitted than the higher frequencies or shorter wave lengths. 

For receiving, the use of amplifying devices has permitted the 
adoption of very cheap and simple structures. Experience has 
shown that the reduction in receiving efficiency by the adoption of 
small antenna systems is compensated for by the reduction in atmos- 
pheric disturbances—this making possible the use of a high degree of 
amplification of the received signals. 


TRANSMISSION. 


The most important data on the laws governing the strength of 
received signals which has been published during the last few years 
are those obtained by Dr. Austin, of the United States Navy Depart- 
ment. This data was in process of being augmented by a compre- 
hensive series of simultaneous observations at widely separated sta- 
tions under the direction of an international organization at the time 
present hostilities in Europe commenced. Until such international 
cooperation can be reestablished little of value is likely to be done. 


RECEIVING APPARATUS. 


As inferred above, the sensitiveness of receiving apparatus has 
been very greatly increased during the past few years. This has 
been accomplished largely through the employment of detectors of 
the so-called Fleming, De Forrest, and Von Lieben types, together 
with the use of locally generated oscillation methods of receiving 
continuous wave-train signals. The introduction of continuous wave- 
train systems and the improvements made in spark-sending appa- 
ratus have also made possible a decided increase in selectivity at 
the receiving stations. 


ATMOSPHERIC AND INTERFERENCE DISTURBANCES, 


‘Although so-called atmospheric disturbances and _ interference 
from other radio stations have always been recognized as one of the 
serious limitations to the successful employment of radio and ~ 
although a vast amount of labor has been expended during the past 
four or five years, the actual progress toward better conditions has 
been relatively small. 


506 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


In the matter of station interference the improvements in trans- 
mitting and receiving apparatus just noted have, of course, tended 
to decrease the amount of trouble from this source. 

Despite all endeavors atmospheric disturbances of various kinds 
are still a vast obstacle to the successful use of radio in some locali- 
ties,. and in all localities at certain seasons of the year. Many 
schemes for the elimination or reduction of these disturbances have 
been proposed and tried out, but none have as yet shown themselves 
to be even measurably successful. 


OPERATING METHODS. 


By far the larger part of radiotelegraph messages are handled at 
comparatively slow speeds with hand sending, although automatic 
machine sending has been tried out to a limited extent. The receiv- 
ing is done largely by ear. Duplex operation involving the use of two 
antenne at each end has come into use to a limited extent—the 
sending system being under some form of distant control by the 


receiving operator. 
TRAFFIC. 


The present commercial traffic is largely special in nature, such 
as ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship service. Where land business is" 
involved the messages are collected largely by the telegraph com- 
panies and passed on to the radio companies for transmission. In 
addition to this special service for which no wire competition is 
possible, several regular transoceanic services are being maintained, 
notably those from Tuckerton and Sayville in the United States to 
Hanover and Nauen in Germany and that between San Francisco 
and Honolulu. 

REGULATION. 


With the rapid growth in the number and power of radio stations 
during the past few years, conditions of operation under a system 
of no control became so difficult that the whole matter of radio regu- 
lation by law has received a great deal of attention, not only in indi- 
vidual countries but also through cooperative international action. 
The importance of radio communication in matters of hazard to life 
at sea and in matters of maritime warfare tended to augment the 
necessity for rigid control of commercial radio systems. 

Although much has been done to ameliorate the state of affairs 
existing some years ago, further extensions of radio service and 
further improvements in aid transmitting and receiving apparatus 
will undoubtedly necessitate further action by governments, both 
individually and collectively. It is to be hoped that legislation will be 
based on actual physical possibilities rather than on what might be. 


DEVELOPMENTS IN TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY—JEWETT. 507 


RADIOTELEPHONY. 


While the foregoing comments on recent developments pertain 
mainly to radiotelegraphy, many of them apply equally to radio- 
telephony. At the same time it can be said that up to within the. 
last year or 15 months very little of practical importance had been 
done in the field of radiotelephony. 

During 1915 very considerable progress has been made and as is 
well known, successful radiotelephony has been carried on between 
the Naval Radio Station at Arlington and such distant points as the 
Isthmus of Panama, San Francisco, San Diego, Honolulu, and Paris. 
An important part of this work has been a demonstration of the 
practicability of directly connecting long-distance telephone and 
telegraply wires to the radio system at either the transmitting or re- 
ceiving end, thus making possible a continuous communication chan- 
nel involving one or more wire and one or more radio links. 

The success of these recent improvements in long-distance radio- 
telephony has been made possible not only by improvements in the 
receiving apparatus but more particularly by improvements in the 
transmitting apparatus and in the means for influencing and modu- 
lating the radiation of large amounts of energy from the antenna 
system. 

APPARATUS FOR THE TROPICS. 


In a meeting such as a Pan American Scientific Congress, where 
many of the delegates are interested in the conditions which obtain 
in the Tropical Zone, no paper on recent developments in telephony 
and telegraphy would be complete without some mention of the 
special developments that have been made to better the operation of 
apparatus used in such localities. 

Roughly speaking, the conditions of telephone and telegraph oper- 
ation which require special consideration in tropical countries are 
those arising from: 

1. The higher temperature and higher average humidity which 
obtains. 

9. The greater severity of lightning storms and other atmospheric 
disturbances. 

3. The prevalance in some localities of insects which are peculiarly 
destructive to wood, fabrics, and even to metals. 

Trouble in telephone plants from the first of these causes is espe- 
cially noticeable wherever there is common battery operation. With 
this system practically all parts of the local telephone plant are sub- 
jected to the continuous application of the central office battery volt- 
age. This, obviously, results in increased electrolytic corrosion 
troubles where there is any chance of such action. 


508 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Recently switchboard cables, electromagnet coils, switchboard 
cords, and in general the instruments themselves have been so im- 
proved that operation in the tropics is not materially more trouble- 
some than in the Temperate Zones. These improvements, which are 
largely in the nature of moisture-proofing standard equipment or the 
production of corresponding moisture-proof types, have resulted 
from careful studies made by engineers in the Tropics. 

A few years ago there were many complaints about apparatus 
involving wood manufactured in the United States and Europe and 
installed in tropical countries. These complaints covered the de- 
struction of the wooden portions by so-called “white ants.” So 
numerous did these complaints become that it was clearly evident 
that some substitute for untreated northern woods would have to 
be obtained. Two alternatives presented themselves—one, the use 
of tropical woods which experience had shown to be relatively free 
from termite attack, and the other, some treatment of the ordinary 
Temperate Zone woods generally employed by telephone and tele- 
graph companies. While the careful studies which were instituted 
and which involved subjecting samples to actual exposure to termite 
attacks have not yet been completed, it is clear that either teak or 
mahogany is a relatively safe wood to employ. In some cases, of 
course, the value of the apparatus hardly justifies the expense of 
these woods, and doubtless cheaper substitutes will ultimately be 
forthcoming. 

While the so-called “lead bug ” is not confined solely to the Tropics, 
its ravages appear to be more widespread there than in Temperate 
Zone countries, such as the United States. Thus far no very effec- 
tive economical means has been found for preventing its destructive 
action, particularly to lead cable sheaths. Numerous experiments 
are under way at the present time, some of which it is hoped will 
lead to an amelioration of this trouble. . 

In the matter of metal finishes, much improvement has been made 
during the last three or four years particularly where iron or steel 
parts are involved. Where long life for the apparatus is required it 
has been definitely proven that the utmost precautions are required 
in finishing apparatus intended for installation in the Tropics. In 
general thoroughly satisfactory protective finishes must involve the 
use of a coating of some nonrusting or rust preventing metal on the 
iron, either with or without an additional covering of japan or 
lacquer. 

SUMMARY. 


Summarized briefly, the principal developments in the field of 
intelligence transmission during the last four or five years have been 
the introduction of high-speed and printing telegraph systems; im- 


DEVELOPMENTS IN TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY—JEWETT. 509 


provements in the accuracy and speed of submarine cable telegraphy ; 
very great extensions in the use of loading and phantoming on tele- 
phone circuits, both open wire and cable, and particularly in the 
combination of loading and phantoming; the development of suc- 
cessful telephone amplifiers; and in general the reduction of ap- 
_paratus manufacture to a more uniform and economical basis. In 
the field of radio communication the developments have been in 
the production of better telegraph apparatus; in increased range 
and reliability of radiotelegraphy, and recently in the successful ex- 
periments which have been made in long-distance radiotelephony. 
Of major importance in this field has been the establishment, be- 
yond question, of the practicability of directly connecting long dis- 
tance wire telephone and’ telegraph lines with systems of radio- 
transmission. 

With the developments already accomplished and with the other 
developments now in-progress, it is possible to predict with some- 
thing of assurance the probable trend of the various services during 
the next few years. The exact fields of telephony and telegraphy of 
wire and radio communication are becoming more clearly defined, 
and it is evident that the whole art of intelligence transmission 
electrically will develop with the various services acting coopera- 
tively rather than competitively. Telegraphy is essentially not a 
competitor of telephony in the service it is fitted to render mankind, 
and the physical limitations imposed on radio communication show 
that while it has a distinct and valuable place in the art which will 
be vigorously developed, that place does not involve any active com- 
petition with wire telegraphy or telephony. 


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SIR DAVID GILL (1843-1914) 3 
By A. S. Epprneron. 


By the death of Sir David Gill astronomy has lost one of its ablest 
and: best-known leaders. By his widespread activity, his close asso- 
ciation with all the great enterprises of observational astronomy, and 
by the energy and enthusiasm of his character, he had come to hold 
an almost unique position in astronomical councils; and the with- 
drawal of his great motive power leaves a universal sense of loss. 
By his individual achievements and by his leadership he has exerted 
an incalculable influence on the progress of all that pertains to pre- 
cision of observation. It will be our task in this notice to give an 
outline of his work as an astronomer, but to understand his immense 
influence it is necessary also to realize the personal character of the 
man. Those who came in contact with him felt the charm of his per- 
sonality. In some indefinable way he could inspire others with his en- 
thusiasm and determination. Enjoying a life crowded with activity, 
surrounded by an unusually wide circle of friends, he was ever ready 
and eager to encourage the humblest beginner. It was no perfunc- 
tory interest that he displayed. He was quick to discern any signs 
of promise, and no less outspoken in his criticism; but, whether he 
praised or condemned, few could leave him without the truest admira- 
tion and affection for his simple-hearted character. 

David Gill was born at Aberdeen on the 12th of June, 1843, His 
family had long been associated with that city, where his father had 
an old-established and successful business in clocks and watches of 
all kinds. In due course he entered the Marischal College and Uni- 
versity, Aberdeen. At that time J. Clerk Maxwell was a professor 
there, and his teaching had a great influence on the young student. 
Judged by ordinary standards, Maxwell was not a successful lec- 
turer; but there were some students who could catch a part of his 
meaning as he “thought aloud” at the blackboard and feel the im- 
pression of his personality in after-lecture conversation, and these 
found him an inspiring teacher. Gill was among these, and he be- 
came imbued with a zeal for experimental science which soon mani- 
fested itself in his setting up a small laboratory in his father’s house. 


1Reprinted by permission from Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 
London, Feb., 1915. 


511 


512 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Up to the age of 20 Gill’s scientific interests appear to have had no 
particular inclination to astronomy, but in 1863 he became desirous 
of securing an accurate time service at Aberdeen. Encouraged by 
a visit to Prof. Piazzi Smyth at Edinburgh Observatory, he suc- 
ceeded in interesting Prof. David Thomson in his efforts. There 
was at that time an old observatory at King’s College, Aberdeen. 
Together the two men unearthed and set up in adjustment a portable 
transit instrument which had long been disused, the sidereal clock 
was overhauled and fitted with contact springs for the electrical con- 
trol of other clocks, and the observations for time determination now 
became the chief occupation of Gill’s leisure evenings. 

Tt was not long before he began to seek for an instrument which 
would give him a wider scope for astronomical work. He met with 
a second-hand silver-on-glass mirror of 12 inches aperture and 10 
feet focal length. The task of mounting this equatorially gave him 
the first opportunity of displaying that skill in instrumental de- 
signing for which he afterwards became so famous; and the whole 
mounting was made from his working drawings. He made the driv- 
ing clock with his own hands. 

Among the chief results obtained with this telescope were some 
excellent photographs of the moon. At that time Lord Lindsay 
(son of the Earl of Crawford) was planning to erect an observatory 
at Dum Echt, 13 miles from Aberdeen. Having seen these photo- 
graphs, he visited Gill in order to see his instruments and methods 
of work. The acquaintance thus formed led to Gill’s receiving early 
in 1872 an invitation to take charge of the Dun Echt Observatory 
that was about to be erected. 

At this time Gill was actively at work all day, his father having 
retired, leaving the business in his hands; it was only his evenings 
that could be devoted to scientific pursuits. He had married in 1870, 
and was living in Aberdeen near his little observatory. To accept 
Lord Crawford’s offer meant the giving up of a flourishing business 
and a heavy pecuniary sacrifice; but by now astronomy was claiming 
hiny irresistibly, and he made the choice without hesitation. The 
business that he now relinquished had never been congenial to him; 
but the time he had devoted to the clockmaker’s art had not been 
wasted, for it is reasonable to believe that his natural mechanical 
genius was in no small measure fostered by this early training. 

Gill’s direction of the Dun Echt Observatory lasted from 1872 to 
1876. It was his task to design and install the fine equipment that 
was rapidly acquired—for him a foretaste of the similar work he 
was afterwards to carry out at the Cape. But this period of his life 
is chiefly remembered not for observations made at Dun Echt but 
for an expedition to the island of Mauritius on the occasion of the 
transit of Venus, 1874. It was in preparation for the work at 


ee 


i i 


SIR DAVID GILL—-EDDINGTON. 513 


Mauritius that he first began to use the heliometer, an instrument 
with which his most celebrated researches were afterwards made. 
The 4-inch heliometer of the Dun Echt Observatory (afterwards pur- 
chased for the Cape) was made under Gill’s superintendence by Rep- 
sold; and whilst it was in the course of construction he took the op- 
portunity to visit Hamburg for the meeting of the Astronomische 
Gesellschaft in 1873. Besides attending this congress, Gill visited 
several of the continental observatories, and in this way made the 
acquaintance of the leading European astronomers, and also obtained 
an insight into the organization of the large observatories. 

The Mauritius expedition introduced him to two of the great prob- 
lems, which more especially he made his life’s work—the determina- 
tion of the solar parallax and the problems of geodetic measure- 
ments. Deferring, for the present, consideration of the scientific 
results of this expedition and of another expedition to Ascension 
Island in 1877, we pass on to the next great step in his career. 

Early in 1879 David Gill was appointed by the admiralty to be 
Her Majesty’s astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope, in succession 
to Mr. E. J. Stone. Before sailing for the Cape he made another tour 
of the European observatories, visiting Paris, Leiden, Groningen, 
Hamburg, Copenhagen, Helsingfors, and Poulkovo. Perhaps the 
most important fruit of these visits was his acquaintance with Dr. 
Auwers and Dr. Elkin, which led to much valuable cooperation be- 
tween them. 

On the 29th of May, 1879, he arrived at Cape Town and took up 
his duties at the observatory. The only instruments which he found 
in use were the Airy transit circle, a 7-inch equatorial, and a photo- 
heliograph. The observatory, founded in 1820, had fulfilled a useful 
duty by the regular work of meridian observation, the early Cape 
Catalogues being a most valuable source for the positions of the 
southern stars. Its history had also been marked by one conspicuous 
achievement—Henderson’s detection of the parallax of « Centauri, 
the first proof that the parallax of a fixed star could amount to a 
measurable quantity. Whilst the instruments and observations might 
be open to many criticisms, the work was, for that period, fairly effi- 
cient. But the standard of precision was being raised, and Gill’s 
standard was the highest of his time. To his mechanical insight the 
faulty design and unsatisfactory repair of the old instruments was 
apparent, and he would not rest until the defects were remedied. 
He was no believer in the Airy type of transit circle, incapable of re- 
versal, but it was many years before he could obtain an instrument 
according to his ideals. Meanwhile it was necessary to make the 
best of the existing telescope. The object glass was deteriorated, the 
micrometer screws were worn, and the whole instrument was in need 


18618°—sm 1915——33 


514 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


of a thorough overhaul. He at once set to work upon it with his 
usual energy, and so transformed it that for differential work it left 
little to be desired. The Airy transit circle performed useful service 
until 1901, when it was replaced by the new reversible transit circle. 
It is still used at times for special researches. The 7-inch equatorial 
was likewise submitted to a thorough overhaul. 

The only immediate addition to the equipment was the 4-inch 
heliometer, which was secured by Gill by private purchase. With 
this provision he was content to spend the first few years of his 
directorship, until he should be in a stronger position to press his 
claims on the treasury. The principal additions made during the 
subsequent years that he spent at the Cape were the 6-inch Dallmeyer 
lens used for the photographic Durchmusterung, acquired in 1884; 
the 7-inch heliometer in 1887, the astrographic refractor erected in 
1890, the Victoria telescope (a 24-inch photographic refractor with 
guiding telescope and spectroscopic equipment) in 1898, and the 
reversible transit circle in 1901. He was thus for his first researches 
limited to instruments of very moderate size and cost, and the suc- 
cess with which he afterwards obtained an adequate provision for 
the observatory was due both to the confidence inspired by his bril- 
liant early work and to his pertinacity in pressing the needs of 
astronomy. 

Tf from his many and varied services to astronomy we were asked 
to pick out the one in which he arrived at the most striking and 
complete success, there is little doubt that the answer would be his 
determination of the solar parallax. At the time when Gill, by 
accepting the charge of the Dun Echt Observatory, definitely em- 
barked on an astronomical career a celestial event of the first magni- 
tude was approaching—the transit of Venus of 1874. Great expecta- 
tions were entertained that this would afford an improved determina- 
tion of the solar parallax, a fundamental constant which was at that 
time involved in unsatisfactory uncertainty. Preparations were 
made by the leading observatories and astronomical societies on an 
unprecedentedly lavish scale, and expeditions were dispatched to 
different parts of the world. Lord Lindsay was cooperating in the 
work, and the Dun Echt expedition took up a station at Mauritius. 
Gill had already formed the opinion (which he afterwards conspicu- 
ously advocated) that there were other and better methods of find- 
ing the sun’s parallax involving far less expense. He believed that 
the observations of the transit were of such a nature that the results 
would be inaccurate and capable of more than one interpretation, 
for too much depended on the arbitrary judgment of those who had 
to discuss the observations. He determined, therefore, to use the 
opportunity of the expedition to make trial of another method, 
namely, morning and evening observations of the minor planet 


el illite, 


SIR DAVID GILL—EDDINGTON. 515 


Juno, which was then favorably situated. He considered that a 
single observer could by heliometer observations of a minor planet 
obtain results comparable in accuracy with those derived from all 
the transit of Venus observations together. Unfortunately, the 
heliometer was delayed in arrival at Mauritius, and the first half 
of the opposition of Juno was lost. Observations in the latter half 
were secured on 12 evenings and 11 mornings, but the parallax factor 
was then small. The result, 8’’.77+-0’’.041, though disappointing 
owing to the causes mentioned, gave a clear indication of the value 
of the method, and this pioneer effort served its purpose as a pre- 
liminary to a more ambitious attempt. From that time onwards 
Gill had a strong conviction of the value of the heliometer for work 
of the highest refinement, and he acquired his remarkable skill in 
using it. The transit of Venus was observed by the party, but Gill 
appears to have formed so low an opinion of the trustworthiness of 
the measures that he took little interest in their subsequent use. 

In 1877 an exceptionally favorable approach of Mars to the earth 
offered a good opportunity for a renewed attack on the problem of 
the solar parallax. Gill, who had resigned his position at Dun 
Kceht, began to prepare for an expedition to Ascension Island for 
this purpose. He fully expected that Mars would, owing to its large 
disk, prove to be a less satisfactory subject for heliometer observa- 
tion than a minor planet, which is practically indistinguishable in 
appearance from the comparison stars; but the parallax factor was 
so much more favorable than for any minor planet then known that 
the opportunity was not to be missed. His anticipations proved 
correct. The value of the solar parallax now found showed a great 
improvement on any previous determination. The result, 877.78, 
with a probable error of +0’’.012, marks a new stage of advance. 
But Gill by this work became more than ever convinced that the 
definitive determination of the constant must rest on minor planets. 

For his third and final attempt, in 1888-9, the minor planets 
Iris, Victoria, and Sappho were chosen. Instead of measuring the 
diurnal parallax, he proceeded this time by the combination of ob- 
servations made at widely separated stations. This involved a great 
scheme of cooperation in which many observatories and individuals 
took some part. The actual heliometer measures of the planets were 
made mainly by Gill and Finlay at the Cape, by Elkin and Hall at 
Yale, and by Peter at Leipzig. Of the many other cooperators Dr. 
Auwers in particular took a large and important share in the work. 
Accurate places of the comparison stars were needed, and meridian 
observations of these were made at a large number of places. In 
the case of Victoria this was supplemented by a heliometer triangu- 
lation in order to avoid the various systematic errors that affect 
meridian observations. The whole discussion, which forms two 


516 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


large volumes (vi and vii) of the Cape Annals, is a remarkable 
record of a thorough and laborious undertaking. It was particularly 
the kind of investigation to bring out the characteristic qualities of 
Gill’s genius. To plan the work required that perfect understand- 
ing of instruments and observations in which he was unrivaled; and 
to carry it through in its completeness required a dogged persistence 
which overcame all obstacles, an enthusiasm which shirked nothing, 
and a power of leadership which inspired all his helpers. There 
have been other great and successful cooperative schemes since then, 
but we miss in them the unity of execution which the immense driv- 
ing force of Gill’s leadership supplied. ; 

The final result gave for the solar parallax 8’’.804+.0’’.0046, and 
in due course this value was adopted (as 8’’.80) in the Ephemerides. 
In so far as a single investigation can be held to settle so important 
a constant, the solar parallax was now known with all the accuracy 
required for the calculations in which it plays a part. Subsequent 
researches have all tended to confirm Gill’s value; the discordant 
results found by other methods are disappearing, whilst the supe- 
riority of the minor planet method has become more and more mani- 
fest. In the Eros campaign of 1900-1901 the Cape Observatory took 
no share, owing to the northern declination of the planet, but Gill 
followed the investigation with keen interest and took part in the 
arrangement of the work. The results from Eros, whilst diminish- 
ing the range of uncertainty, so far as accidental errors are con- 
cerned, have not appreciably altered the value. Shortly before leav- 
ing the Cape, Gill initiated a determination of the same constant by 
means of spectroscopic observations, the line-of-sight velocity of the 
earth relative to a star being measured at opposite seasons, so that 
the earth’s orbital velocity is found. These observations are now 
yielding excellent results. 

We have seen that his measurements during the observations of 
Juno at Mauritius convinced Gill of the value of the heliometer 
as an instrument of research. In his hands it was capable of re- 
markable accuracy. The instrument is peculiarly difficult to use, 
and the number of those who observe with it has always been few. 
At the time when the 4-inch instrument was constructed for him 
the heliometer was usually regarded in England as an exercise for 
the textbook or the examination question. Even now that its pos- 
sibilities have been demonstrated it has not been taken up widely. 
At the present day it is natural to prefer photographic methods, 
which give equal or perhaps slightly superior accuracy, whilst mak- 
ing far less demands on the observer. Perhaps, too, the prospect 
for future progress and development is more obvious in the case 
of photographic than of heliometer observations. Certainly Gill’s 
success with the heliometer never blinded him to the advantages 


SIR DAVID GILL—EDDINGTON. 517 


of the long-focus refractor, and he fully shared the modern tendency 
to depend more and more on photography. But there is one ad- 
vantage of the heliometer over the photographic refractor, both 
for solar and stellar parallaxes, on which Gill strongly insisted— 
the heliometer measures are independent of the color of the object 
under observation. He maintained, and confirmed by experimental 
observations, that the skilled observer in making coincidences of 
the images matches the colors and not the most intense points of 
the minute spectrum caused by atmospheric dispersion. This is a 
refinement obviously impossible in photography, and, for example, 
it is well known that the doubtful effect of atmospheric dispersion 
leaves a little uncertainty in the solar parallax deduced from the 
photographic observations of Eros. 

So early as 1872 Gill had begun to plan a series of determina- 
tions of stellar parallax with a micrometer attached to his reflector— 
an investigation which was interrupted by his removal to Dun 
Echt. On his appointment to the Cape he began to apply his 4- 
inch heliometer to this work. In this he was joined by Elkin, as 
a volunteer observer, and they set to work on a program of 9 stars, 
including Sirius, Canopus, « and 8 Centauri, with some stars of 
exceptionally large proper motion. The most important outcome 
of this work was the parallax of # Centauri, 0’’.75, with a probable 
error of only a hundredth of a second of are. The desirability of 
a larger instrument with some alterations of design soon became 
apparent, and in 1887 a 7-inch heliometer was constructed at a 
cost of £2,200. With this, Gill and Finlay, and afterwards De 
Sitter, measured 17 stars, including 12 of the brightest in the 
southern sky, in most cases with a probable error as low as +077.01. 
These results were of great interest, establishing the remoteness 
and intense luminosity of some of the brightest stars, such as 
Canopus and Rigel.: Whenever they have been put to the test 
Gill’s values have always been confirmed. Spurious parallaxes are 
a great bane in stellar investigation, and, at least until recently, | 
few observers have escaped an occasional bad error; but Gill’s 
parallaxes can always be relied on. His general accuracy has been 
equaled, perhaps a little surpassed, by some modern photographic 
determinations; but when we compare the sizes of the instruments— 
the 40-inch telescope at Yerkes or the 26-inch at Greenwich with 
his 7-inch heliometer—we must marvel at the precision he could 
obtain. The following table (given by him) will show the com- 
parative accuracy of his work. Ht gives the probable error of the 
measured position of a parallax star: 

Cambridge refractor (19.3 feet focus), 4 exposures_______________--- =£0’’. 048 


Yerkes refractor (63 feet focus), 3 exposures__—-________________-- ==0) = 026 
Heliometer, one complete observation, i. e., TG) POImMtings 2. = eee +0 . 0386 


518 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Another application of the heliometer was made in his deter- 
mination of the elements of Jupiter’s satellites and of the mass 
of Jupiter. The longitudes of the satellites can be found very 
accurately from the usual observations of eclipses, but the lati- 
tudes are more difficult to derive. Heliometer measures had been 
made before by Bessel and others, but in all cases the satellite had 
been referred to the limb or center of the disk. Guill’s method was 
to measure the distances and position angles of the satellites rela- 
tive to one another; for, as he had found in his observations of 
Mars, the best results are only possible when the objects to be meas- 
ured have no sensible disks. The observations were carried out 
in 1891. On each night the measures were reduced to a constant 
scale by referring them to the distance between two standard stars. 
The absolute distance between the standards was determined by a 
lengthy comparison with the distances of stars employed in the 
Victoria triangulation, whose definitive coordinates had been found 
with an accuracy quite exceptional. These observations were the 
beginning of a very thorough investigation of the whole problem; 
but the further observations and the discussion of the results were 
placed by Gill in the hands of younger men, who could give a more 
undivided attention to the problem. The nature of the investiga- 
tion required a repetition of the observations at a subsequent date. 
This was made by the late Bryan Cookson at the Cape in 1901-2. 
Photographic observations were made concurrently in 1891 and 
1902, and again in 1903-4. The whole material thus collected 
formed an exceedingly valuable source for improving the accuracy 
of our knowledge of Jupiter’s system. The detailed discussion was 
taken up by De Sitter at Gill’s suggestion; he reduced Gill’s own 
observations during a visit to the Cape (1897-99), and worked out 
the elements and masses derivable from the whole work. It is 
evident that Gill attached the greatest importance to this work, 
and, though the later stages were in the charge of other workers, 
he followed its progress to the minutest detail. His stimulating 
influence carried it to a successful conclusion, if conclusion it can 
be called, for in his summary of the work in the History of the 
Cape Observatory he urges the need for an extended program of 
future work, and appeals to astronomers to carry it out. His last 
scientific effort, on the day the fatal illness began, was to write an 
introduction to De Sitter’s discussion. 

Gill’s detection of the existence of magnitude equation in observa- 
tions of right ascension with the meridian circle was an incidental 
result of his heliometer observations at Ascension. This definitive dis- 
covery of a systematic personality, by which faint stars are regularly 
observed too late relatively to bright stars, has been of fundamental 
importance in meridian work. He took great interest in the problem 


SIR DAVID GILL—EDDINGTON. 519 


of eliminating this peculiarly difficult source of error by screens and 
other methods, and it was a source of great satisfaction to him that 
the traveling-wire micrometer seems to have successfully accom- 
plished this object. 

Reference has already been made to Gill’s early photographs of 
the moon. These were, of course, not by any means the first lunar 
photographs, but in 1882 Gill made a notable advance in celestial 
photography by successfully photographing the great comet of that 
year. Several pictures of this comet had already been obtained, 
with fixed camera, and the knowledge thus obtained that the light 
was sufliciently intense encouraged Gill to attempt to obtain images 
of greater scientific value by guiding the camera in the modern way. 
He was assisted by Mr. Allis, a local photographer, from whom he 
borrowed a doublet of 24 inches aperture and 11 inches focal length. 
He mounted this doublet on the 6-inch equatorial, which he used as 
guiding telescope. Excellent representations of the comet were ob- 
tained with exposures of from 30 minutes upwards; but, a fact of 
still greater importance, it was found that, notwithstanding the in- 
significant size of the apparatus, a great many stars were shown 
whose images were well defined over a large field. This suggested the 
practicability of using similar but more powerful instruments for 
mapping the sky and for other astronomical purposes to which 
photography is now applied. 

We now know how this result has revolutionized the methods of 
observational work. Gill led the way in turning the new possibilities 
to a practical account. The immediate outcome was the Cape Photo- 
graphic Durchmusterung, started in 1885. The survey covers the 
region of the sky from the South Pole to Dec. — 18°, and is complete 
so far as photographic magnitude 9™-2 (on the C.P.D. scale). A 
rapid rectilinear Dallmeyer lens of 6 inches aperture and 54 inches 
focal length was used for the photography. The work was completed 
in 1890. Very soon after the start Prof. Kapteyn’s offer was received 
to devote himself for some years to the arduous labor of the meas- 
urement and reduction of the plates, a work for which the Cape Ob- 
servatory was unable to provide. This is a further instance of Gill’s 
success in attracting for his helpers the men best capable of carrying 
out the work desired. The association of Gill and Kapteyn, which 
began now, has proved a most powerful influence in the advance of 
stellar investigation, and, to quote Gill’s own words, “probably the 
most valuable result of the C.P.D. to science is the fact that it first 
directed Kapteyn’s mind to the study of the problems of cosmical 
astronomy and thus led him to the brilliant researches and dis- 
coveries with which his name is now and ever will be associated.” 

We can only mention briefly the other photographic work with 
which Gill was associated. When the history of the inception of the 


520 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


International Astrographic Chart and Catalogue comes to be writ- 
ten it will probably be found that much was due to Gill’s initiative. 
It may be difficult to trace whence the first suggestion arose, but at 
least we know that he was in its councils from the very beginning 
and gave his whole-hearted support to the great enterprise. His 
measuring machine for photographic plates, designed by him and 
constructed by Repsold, has been very generally copied in its main 
features. Another work of great value which owes much to his coun- 
sel and assistance is the chart of the sky made by the late J. Franklin- 
Adams. Mr. Franklin-Adams, an enthusiastic amateur, who had 
only recently applied himself to astronomy, came to the Cape at an 
early stage of the work to photograph the Southern Hemisphere. It 
needs little imagination to realize how Gill, by his experienced ad- 
vice and his insistence on a high standard of quality, helped to make 
of this the valuable work that it became. 

In 1897 the necessary expenditure for a new reversible transit circle 
at the Cape was at length sanctioned. Since his first appointment 
Gill had lost no opportunity of urging the need for an instrument 
which should be free from the defects which were obvious in the old 
design. For the determination of fundamental right ascensions and 
declinations the chief requirements are an extreme stability of the 
instrument, means of eliminating or determining the flexures of the 
various parts, and of guarding against the effects of temperature 
changes both in the instrument and in the surrounding air. The 
problem of equalizing the distribution of temperature was most care- 
fully thought out. The piers were made hollow, covered externally 
with nonconducting material, and filled with water. The telescope 
tube was surrounded by a double envelope of copper to minimize the 
effects of local heating, and the graduated circles were similarly pro- 
tected by copper disks. Of special interest was Gill’s method of ob- 
taining fixed meridian marks for maintaining the azimuth of the 
transit circle. Four deep pits, reaching down to the unweathered 
rock, were constructed underneath the long-focus collimating lenses 
and the marks respectively, and a simple method was devised by 
which the apparatus above ground could be readily set in a definite 
position with respect to the vertical collimating lines of object glasses 
fixed in the rock below. So perfect is the stability of these marks 
that it has been found possible to measure the movement of the North 
Pole over the earth’s surface by the apparent change of azimuth. It 
is certain that the device will be widely imitated in future. 

On his appointment as H. M. astronomer, in 1879, Gill began to 
consider the question of a geodetic survey of South Africa. His 
previous experience of such work had been obtained on the occasion 
of his visit to Mauritius. In connection with the Transit of Venus 
expeditions of 1874, numerous longitude determinations were made 


SIR DAVID GILIL—-EDDINGTON,. 521 


by the various parties of observers; and, indeed, these geodetic re- 
sults proved to be the most important outcome of the whole work. 
Gill’s share was a chain of telegraphic longitudes connecting Berlin 
with Malta, Alexandria, Suez, and Aden. Before returning home he 
proceeded to Egypt, in response to an invitation from Gen. Stone, 
chief of the military staff of the Khedive, in order to measure a base 
line for the proposed survey of the country. This work made slow 
progress at first, as Gill had no trained assistance on which he could 
rely; but in the end, with the help of Prof. Watson, he carried it 
through satisfactorily. No permanent outcome of this work has 
survived, for the defining marks of the base line were afterwards 
destroyed by Arabs. 

It would serve little purpose here to enter into the details of the 
work which Gill succeeded in accomplishing in South Africa. Be- 
sides the more practical uses of an accurate survey, Gill kept ever in 
view the object of the ultimate measurement of the great arc of the 
meridian of 105° from the North Cape to Cape Agulhas—the long- 
est measurable are of the meridian in the world. Colonial and for- 
eign Governments, the Chartered Company, and the scientific socie- 
ties were all in turn pressed and persuaded. Difficulties of funds, 
of personnel, of war, interposed obstacles; but there was no resisting 
Gill. His indomitable persistence always won in the end. Worried 
ministers would ultimately come to terms with their genial perse- 
cutor. Still active in this great cause after retirement from the 
Cape, he had the satisfaction of getting the last link of the South 
African chain filled in. The great measured are along the meridian 
of 30° E. now extends from Cape Agulhas to within a short distance 
of Lake Tanganyika, near the boundary of British territory, a 
length of 24°, at which point it awaits the other chain of triangula- 
tion that will some day be pushed down from Egypt. 

We have now passed jn review the most important of Gill’s scien- 
tific investigations. To these may be added some miscellaneous 
contributions, of which we can not here give any detail. A triangu- 
lation by heliometer of the southern circumpolar stars was made 
under his direction in 1897-1900, but he was not very satisfied with 
‘the consistency of the observations. A series of meridian observa- 
tions of the lunar crater Mésting A, organized by him jointly with 
Sir William Christie at Greenwich, led to a good determination of 
the lunar parallax and figure of the earth. The arrangements for 
a catalogue of zodiacal stars were placed in his hands by the Inter- 
national Astrographic Congress. 

In October, 1906, Sir David Gill left the Cape. Owing to ill 
health he had anticipated by rather more than a year the date of 
compulsory retirement. But there were no signs of failing vigor 
when he returned to England; on the contrary, he plunged into a 


022 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


strenuous life of scientific activity in London. He became presi- 
dent and afterwards foreign secretary of the Royal Astronomical 
Society, president of the British Association at Leicester, and on 
the councils of the Royal and Royal Geographical Societies as prési- 
dent d@honneur of the committee of the astrographic chart, and in 
numerous other duties he was a center of energy and initiative. For 
several years he worked at his History and Description of the Cape 
Observatory, published in 1913. Amid our sorrow at his death, 
when still in the full vigor of scientific activity, there is cause for 
thankfulness that he was spared to complete and to see the reception 
of this retrospect of the work to which he had devoted his life. 

To this record of strenuous work in the cause of science must be 
added some allusion to the other side of his life. There was an ideal 
background to his public life in the quiet home, always characteris- 
tically Scotch wherever he lived. In Lady Gill he found a sympa- 
thizer in all his sacrifices and devotion to astronomy. She did not 
become an astronomer, but she shared all his desires, and it was ever 
her care to aid him to fulfill his great calling. She was of Scotch 
birth, like himself, and their home was bright with an indescribable 
spirit of open-heartedness which seemed to come from his loved 
Highlands. 

In December, 19138, he was seized with double pneumonia, and from 
the first the gravity of the illness was realized. His magnificent 
constitution carried him bravely through a long fight with the dis- 
ease, but heart failure supervened, and on the morning of January 
24 he died peacefully. 

There is no need to enumerate the honors conferred on him by the 
British, French, and German Governments, and by numerous acad- 
emies and universities. Official recognition was generously be- 
stowed; even richer was the tribute of admiration and affection of 
his world-wide circle of friends. 


WALTER HOLBROOK GASKELL, 1847-19141 


By J. N. LANGLEY. 


Walter Holbrook Gaskell was born on November 1, 1847, at Naples, 
where his parents were passing the winter for the sake of his father’s 
health. His father, John Dakin Gaskell, was a barrister, a member of 
the Middle Temple, who followed his profession for a few years and 
then retired to private hfe. His mother was Anne Gaskell, second 
cousin of his father. Gaskell as a boy lived with his father at High- 
gate and attended Sir Roger Cholmeley’s school at that place. At 
school he worked chiefly at mathematics, but had considerable interest 
in natural history, and appears to have made more than the usual 
schoolboy collections connected with that subject. 

He came up to Cambridge in October, 1865, when he was not quite 

18, as a member of Trinity College. In his third year he was elected 
to a foundation scholarship, and proceeded to the B. A. degree in 
1869, being twenty-sixth wrangler in the mathematical tripos. After 
taking his degree he studied for a medical career, and in the course of 
his preliminary scientific work he attended the lectures on elementary 
biology and physiology given by Michael Foster, who came to Cam- 
bridge as prelector in physiology at Trinity College in 1870. Foster 
led a considerable number of his early pupils to a scientific career. 
He first aroused an interest in scientific problems and then, some- 
times gradually, sometimes suddenly, suggested that there was no 
better course in life than that of trying to solve them. Gaskell, as 
far as my recollection serves, was influenced in the latter way. In 
1872 he went to University College Hospital, London, for clinical 
work. On his return to Cambridge, Foster, in the course of a conver- 
sation with him, suggested he should drop his medical career for the 
time and try his hand at research in physiology. Gaskell, I believe, 
adopted on the spot this suggestion, and instead of proceeding to 
the M. B. degree went to Leipzig to work under Ludwig (1874). 

At this time Ludwig’s laboratory was much the most important 
school of physiological research in Germany or elsewhere. It at- 
tracted students from all parts of the world. All the work was 
planned by Ludwig, who had an almost unerring sense of the lines 
sy VSG fet fea as ES 


ae eA? Si ei ee eee 
1 Reprinted by permission from the Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, Series B, 


vol. 88, no. 606, April 1, 1915. 
523 


524 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


of work which would yield profitable results. To this the success of 
the school was mainly due. Its popularity was increased by the 
method of procedure adopted by Ludwig. This has been described 
by Sir T. Lauder Brunton, who was with Ludwig in 1869-70. The 
experiments were carried out by Ludwig with the pupil as assistant; 
Ludwig wrote the paper and then published it, occasionally as a con- 
joint work, but more usually in the name of his pupil. As I have 
heard from Gaskell, the method was the same in his time. The work 
given him was a continuation of that on the innervation of skeletal 
muscle already begun in the laboratory. This led him by a series of 
steps, which were perfectly logical but impossible to foresee, from 
point to point of scientific inquiry up to his theory of the origin of 
vertebrates. 

Soon after his return to England in 1875, Gaskell married Miss 
Catherine Sharpe Parker, a daughter of Mr. R. A. Parker, of the firm 
of Messrs. Sharpe, Parker & Co., solicitors, by whom he had one son, 
Dr. J. F. Gaskell, and four daughters, two of whom survive him. He 
settled in Grantchester, about a mile and a half from Cambridge, and 
in the Cambridge Physiological Laboratory he carried further the 
investigation on the innervation of the blood vessels of striated . 
muscle. He found (1877), amongst other facts, that stimulation of 
the nerve supplying the mylohyoid muscle of the frog caused con- 
siderable and constant dilatation of the blood vessels, although con- 
traction of the muscle itself was prevented by curare. This was the 
most decisive instance known at the time of such action in a purely 
muscular structure. It did not, however, settle the question of the 
occurrence of vaso-dilator fibers in the nerves of skeletal muscle, the 
discussion of which was carried on by Heidenhain and others. 

From the behavior of the arteries under nervous stimulation he 
passed to the investigation of the behavior of the small arteries and of 
the heart with varying reaction of the blood, and, finding that a 
small addition of alkali increased the tone of both, and that a small 
addition of acid decreased it, he suggested that, besides the nervous 
control of the circulation, there was also a chemical control in each 
organ and tissue by the products set free in activity, so that, for ex- 
ample, the contraction of the muscle by setting free acid led to an in- 
creased fiow of blood through it. The suggestion was not entirely 
new, but it was wider in range than any of its kind previously made 
and rested on more solid facts. This work directed his attention to 
the heart, and for the next four or five years he devoted his time to 
the questions of the innervation of the heart, and the cause of the 
heart beat. With these questions others were busily engaged, notably 
Engelmann and Heidenhain. 

In the early seventies it was universally held that the beat of the 
heart was due to the nerve cells present in it, and that it was initiated 


WALTER HOLBROOK GASKELL—-LANGLEY. 595 


by the nerve cells of the sinus venosus. There were very varied views 
as to the method of working of the nervous mechanism, especially as 
to the parts played by the nerve cells of the septum of the auricle, 
and the nerve cells of the base of the ventricle. As it became more 
widely recognized that parts of the heart which had no discernible 
nerve cells could contract rhythmically, it was felt that the nervous 
theory did not account for the whole of the phenomena. Moreover, 
some of the pharmacological results could not be satisfactorily ex- 
plained on the theory as then put forward. But no one had any 
more satisfactory explanation to offer. 

The question of the action of the nerve cells in the heart was part 
of the general question of the functions of the peripheral ganglia. 
In 1869, Engelmann argued that the peristaltic contraction of the 
ureters did not depend on nerve cells and that the contraction was 
conducted from one muscle cell to the next without the intervention 
of nerve fibers. In 1875 he advocated a similar view as regards the 
passage of contraction from one part of the ventricle of the frog’s 
heart to the rest, and he thought this was probably also the case in 
the auricle. But in one important point he kept to the old theory and 
considered that the passage of contraction from auricle to ventricle 
was brought about by nerve cells and nerve fibers. Gaskell (1881) at 
first adopted the current theory with some modifications in detail, but 
in 1883 he abandoned it, and argued that the contraction of the heart 
was of muscular origin; it started in the sinus and spread as a peris- 
taltic wave to the other chambers, the delay in the passage of the 
contraction wave from one chamber of the heart to the next being due 
to a slow conduction in the modified muscular tissue which he found 
at the junction of the sinus venosus with the auricle, and at the 
junction of the auricle with the ventricle. In the course of his work 
Gaskell made a large number of original observations on the be- 
havior of the several parts of the heart and of the cardiac muscle. 
The term “block” Gaskell adopted from Romanes’s account of the 
passage of contraction waves in Meduse; the phenomena had been 
partly worked out in the frog’s ventricle by Engelmann, but they 
were much more completely elucidated by Gaskell’s work on the heart 
of the frog and the tortoise. It was known that the contraction of 
the ventricle might only occur at every second, third, or fourth beat 
of the auricle. Gaskell obtained this effect experimentally by vary- 
ing the degree of block between the two chambers. After the lapse 
of years the invention of the string galvanometer brought the obser- 
vation of heart block in man into the region of clinical medicine. 

The different effects produced on the heart of the frog by stimu- 
lating the vagus nerve were investigated simultaneously by Gaskell 
and by Heidenhain. Gaskell observed that stimulation of the vagus 


526 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


sometimes caused an increase in the strength of the beats in addition 
to the quickening which had been already described by Schmiedeberg 
and others, and which had been attributed to special accelerator nerve 
fibers. Heidenhain found that by stimulating the medulla oblongata 
at different points, acceleration and augmentation, or slowing and 
weakening, of the heart beat could be obtained. Gaskell traced in 
the crocodile and frog the origin of the accelerator fibers to the sym- 
pathetic system, and this was followed up by a more complete 
anatomical investigation by Gaskell and Gadow. The innervation 
of the heart of lower vertebrates was thus brought into line with that 
of the mammal. In addition, he gave a more complete account than 
had been given by Heidenhain of the cause of the independence of 
the slowing and the weakening of the heart beat caused by pure 
vagus fibers, and of the quickening and the increase of strength 
caused by sympathetic fibers. A little later Gaskell showed that an 
electrical change can be produced in quiescent heart muscle on stimu- 
lation of the cardiac nerves, and that the change is different accord- 
ing as the vagus or the accelerator nerve is stimulated. 

Gaskell’s work in this field was of the first importance. His papers 
are a storehouse of observations of a fundamental nature. He elab- 
orated his theories and gave an admirable account of the whole sub- 
ject in an article on “The Contraction of Cardiac Muscle” in 
Schifer’s “Textbook of Physiology,” published in 1900.. It may be 
mentioned that the rhythm of the heart was the subject of his 
Croonian lecture to the Royal Society in 1881, and that on the work 
mentioned above he was elected a fellow of the society in the follow- 
ing year. 

In the course of his dissection of the accelerator nerve in mam- 
mals, Gaskell was struck by the overwhelming preponderance of non- 
medullated nerve fibers in it, although the nerves centrally of ganglia 
from which the accelerator fibers arose were mainly medullated, and 
this determined him to investigate the relation of the sympathetic 
system to the spinal cord. At this time the question of the relation 
of the sympathetic and other peripheral gangha to the cerebro- 
spinal system was in a state of profound confusion, and general 
agreement had been reached on a few points only. A great number 
of facts had been described, and they covered a wide area of de- 
seriptive anatomy in different classes of vertebrates, of histology of 
nerve fibers and nerve cells, and of physiology. Few observers cov- 
ered more than a small portion of the ground. Results were coming 
quickly and the ground was tilled rather hastily. The practical dis- 
appearance of the theory that the “ vegetative” nervous system was 
independent of the “animal” nervous system had led to the periph- 
eral ganglia being less considered as a whole than they had been 
at an earlier time, and to special explanations being put forward for 


WALTER HOLBROOK GASKELL—LANGLREY, 527 


the working of the several parts. Thus, those writers who tried to 
give an impartial summary of the state of knowledge found them- 
selves reduced to stating a number of more or less contradictory 
facts and irreconcilable theories. 

Gaskell did not approach the subject from the point of view of 
what had already been done or said. He approached it from the 
point of view suggested by his observations on the accelerator nerves 
in the mammal. This method had the disadvantage that it led 
him to leave uninvestigated some of the chief difficulties which were 
felt at the time, but it had the advantage that it enabled him to 
come to a rapid decision on certain important points. Gaskell con- 
fined his attention to the efferent “visceral” fibers. His most im- 
portant conclusions were, that all efferent visceral fibers, whether 
in cranial or in spinal nerves, were small medullated fibers, and that 
they left the cerebrospinal system in three groups—the cervico- 
cranial, the thoracic, and the sacral—the thoracic portion being what 
was ordinarily called the sympathetic. These conclusions reestab- 
lished the connection of small medullated fibers with the whole of the 
“ organic” system described by Bidder and Volkmann in 1842, gave 
an explanation of Reissner’s statement in 1862 that the anterior roots 
of the thoracic nerves contained bundles of small medullated fibers, 
while those of the cervical and lumbar nerves contained only a few 
such fibers scattered amongst the larger ones, supported the view 
which had been held by some anatomists that the white rami com- 
municantes constituted the sole connection between the spinal cord 
and the sympathetic, and brought all the involuntary nerves of what- 
ever origin into one system of gaglionated nerves as had been recently 
advocated by Dastre and Morat. In these conclusions there was one 
weak spot. Whilst it was definitely shown that the outflow of visceral 
fibers from the central nervous system to the sympathetic was enor- 
mously greater in the regions in which there were only white rami, it 
was not shown that no fibers passed out by the gray rami. Gaskell’s 
observation of the rarity of small medullated fibers in the gray rami 
was not in accord with earlier observations, and he did in fact under- 
estimate their number. Further, physiologists of repute had de- 
scribed vasomotor, pupil or heart effects as being caused by stimula- 
tion of the cervical nerves, which had gray rami only. It might then 
be said that the few small medullated fibers present in the centrally 
running branch of the gray rami represented the few scattered small 
medullated fibers of the anterior roots of the corresponding spinal 
nerves. Thus the difference between the thoracic and other regions 
of the spinal cord might be one of degree only. So far, however, as 
subsequent investigation has gone, Gaskell’s conclusion was correct, 
and the gray rami receive no efferent fibers from the spinal cord. 


528 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


Gaskell’s work clarified the air. It gave anatomists and physiolo- 
gists a clearer view of the general arrangement of the efferent 
nerves governing unstriated muscle and glands, and it directed the 
attention of physiologists to points which they had singularly neg- 
lected. It is to be noticed also that Gaskell’s earlier theory that the 
heart beat is not due to the activity of local nerve cells has an 
intimate bearing on the much-discussed question of the automatic 
and reflex action of peripheral ganglia. 

In the paper setting forth the conclusions given above, Gaskell dis- 
cussed a number of other problems of the sympathetic system. His 
theories were based on facts known at the time, but the experiments 
to test their wider application were few. Some are still under 
discussion; some are superseded. The most far-reaching of these 
theories was on the nature of the difference between motor and 
inhibitory nerve fibers. In 1881 he had advocated the view that 
the vagus is the trophic nerve of the heart. Lowit, in 1882, had 
suggested, on the lines of Hering’s theory of assimilatory and dis- 
similatory processes in the body, that the cardiac inhibitory fibers 
favor assimilation, and that the accelerator fibers favor dissimi- 
lation. Gaskell, developing his trophic theory, took a more definite 
and a wider view and urged that all inhibitory fibers are anabolic, 
and all motor fibers are katabolic. 

Gaskell’s microscopical and anatomical observations led him to 
questions of morphology. He argued that in a typical spinal seg- 
ment a lateral root was to be distinguished in addition to the ven- 
tral and dorsal roots. The lateral root consisted of two parts, one 
arose from the lateral mesoblast plates of Van Wijhe and supplied 
the respiratory muscles of Ch. Bell’s system, the other formed the 
ganglionated nerves of the visceral system. On this basis he dis- 
cussed the homologies of the cranial and spinal nerves, and returned 
to this subject in a paper published a few years later. For his 
work on the nervous system he was awarded the Marshall Hall 
prize of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society in 1888, and was 
elected a fellow of the society. 

In 1890 the Nizam of Hyderabad suppled funds to a commis- 
sion for the investigation of the cause of death under chloroform— 
the second which he had supported. The commission reported that 
death was due to an action of the respiratory center, and that if 
the respiration was carefully attended to it was unnecessary to 
pay any attention to the pulse. These conclusions were directly 
opposed to common belief based both on experimental and clinical 
ebservation. One of the members of the commission asked Gaskell 
to criticize their report. Gaskell arranged with Dr. Shore to make 
a joint experimental inquiry. Gaskell and Shore, employing vari- 
ous methods, notably that of cross circulation from one animal to 


WALTER HOLBROOK GASKELL—LANGLEY, 529 


another, brought forward evidence which was generally regarded 
as conclusive that chloroform had a direct weakening action on 
the heart. Their paper, published in 1893, checked a tendency to 
regard the respiration as the only factor to be considered in ad- 
ministering chloroform. It was a useful piece of work, but it 
gave Gaskell the only enemy he ever made. 

This investigation was a sidetrack from the main line of the 
work which Gaskell had been pursuing for some years. His mor- 
phological studies on the homologies of the cranial and spinal nerves 
had led him to consider the problem of the origin of the nervous 
system in vertebrates, and this again led him to a theory of the 
origin of vertebrates to which he gave nearly all his time in later 
years. Dr. Gadow has been kind enough to write the following 
account of this part of Gaskell’s researches: 


Gaskell’s physiological research has always been to a considerable extent 
on the morphological side, and this combination of the sister sciences culminated 
in his inquiry into the origin of vertebrates. He was drawn to this at present 
hopelessly difficult problem neither by accident nor design but by the complete 
failure of various morphological friends to account for certain structures 
the understanding of which was necessary for his research. He therefore deter- 
mined to find out for himself, and thus it has come to pass that a man between 
30 and 40 years of age, M. D. of Cambridge and a physiologist of renown, de- 
voted about 25 years of his life to essentially morphological studies, more 
than—in the nature of things—applies to some of his rather bitter scientific 
opponents. Moreover, entering the new field quite unbiased, his critical mind 
enabled him, when studying, for instance, the best comprehensive textbooks 
on embryology, to discover the weak sides of that discipline. It was not a 
question of picking out what suited him; on the contrary there was hardly a 
point—be it the homologies of the germinal layers, the occurrence of some 
obscure feature like Reissner’s fiber, or some Silurian fossil, which he did not 
take often infinite pains to examine into. Frequently he enlisted friendly help, 
as.in the case of the digestive properties of the Lamprey’s skin. 

This is not the place to discuss the strong and weak points of his hypothesis 
that vertebrates are descended from some Crustacean-like ancestor—i. e., from 
some vaguely reconstructable stock of which the paleozoic Trilobites, King 
crabs, and Scorpions are the only known representatives on the invertebrate side, 
and he bridged the gulf between them and the vertebrates by the Silurian 
Ostracoderms, of whose internal organization the larve of the Lampreys, be- 
fore their marvellous changes into the present adult forms, seemed to afford a 
clue. The gulf was great indeed, but his planned bridges were not more hazily 
sketched than those which pretend to connect the vertebrates either separately 
or conjointly with Amphioxus, Tunicates, Balanoglossus, ete., with worms and 
even with Echinoderms. Especially the various worm theories he considered 
as no solution of the problem, since they would carry the connection so far 
back as to merge almost into the beginning of the Metazoa, amounting to no 
recognizable origin. He on the contrary believed that “each higher group of 
animals has arisen in succession from the highest race developed up to that 
time. 

Further, as the leading motif of the whole course of this solution he dis- 
cerned the orderly sequence in the development of the central nervous system, 


18618°—sm 1915——34 


530 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


in which no break of continuity can possibly have occurred. The brain and 
nerves afford the fundamental homologies; the organs which they innervate may 
fall into line in a surprising way, but they are not the essential comparisons— 
e. g., a new gut may be formed, as in the transforming Ammocetes. ‘ The 
secret of evolutionary success is the development of a superior brain.” 

The immediate starting point of Gaskell’s investigations on the origin of 
vertebrates was the recognition of the close similarity in structure and function 
of the different parts of the vertebrate brain with those of Arthropods. The 
segmental character of the vertebrate central nervous system, so clear to the 
physiologist, and long before insisted upon by most anatomists, had lost weight 
for the morphologists, clearly because the C. N. 8S. appears embryonically as a 
single unsegmented tube. Here then was the next question forced upon Gaskell’s 
attention. Can not the two opposing views be reconciled by the suggestion 
that the vertebrate C. N. S. consists of two parts, closely entangled, viz, a seg- 
mental nervous system on the same plan as that of the Arthropods, which is 
outside and has surrounded an epithelial tubular structure? 

This idea explained at once the remarkable nonnervous epithelial parts of the 
tube, which become so conspicuous aS we descend the vertebrate phylum, and 
every part of this tube bears the same resemblance to various parts of the 
C. N. S. as the dorsal stomach and intestine of an Arthropod. As a crowning of 
his conception the pineal eyes fit into the right place of the scheme; and the 
resemblances become greater and more numerous on the one hand in Am- 
moceetes, as was to be expected in the lowest available vertebrate, and on the 
cther in Limulus, the King crab. In short, there was now a provisional work- 
ing hypothesis, obtained by a direct logical process from the consideration of 
the vertebrate nervous system. 

After this working explanation of the tubular nature of the C. N. 8. the next 
step was the inquiry into the nature of the cranial neryes and therefore the 
double segmentation of the vertebrate body in the head region. Now he was in 
the midst of the most complex and abstruse problem of morphology, involving 
every organic system. The resemblances between Arthropods and vertebrates— 
with Limulus and Ammoccetes as the champions—are, indeed, numerous and in 
many cases perplexingly close. Of course, the more Gaskell became absorbed by - 
his research, the more resemblances he saw, many of which are in all probability 
mere coincidences, or even erroneous. With great intuition and ingenuity he 
connected them, and in some of the most important cases his argumentation as 
to their being homologous structures has remained intact. He knew that if but 
a few are true homologies, his case would be proven, according to all the ac- 
cepted canons of the theory of descent, and all the rest could be waved aside 
as incidental convergences, due to correlations, the possible laws of which we 
are now only just beginning to speculate about. Hence he felt it necessary to 
defend, so to speak, his whole extended line; not that the yielding of some point 
would mean a disastrous breach but because of the lack of criterion to know 
which of his many points might prove one of his best assets, viz, an absolute 
homologue. 

On the other hand he felt justified in assuming as most unlikely that repre- 
sentatives of two fundamentally different phyla should have produced so very 
many close resemblances, so close in function, structure, and relative position 
as to make it impossible to show them up as heterogeneous. He was also fully 
aware of it that our time-honored conception of homologies versus analogies 
and their application to phylogeny are under reconsideration. It is a blow to 
the comparative anatomist and to the constructor of pedigrees, but all the more 
interesting since it shows that it is life, function, adaptation, and inheritance, 


WALTER HOLBROOK GASKELL—LANGLEY., 531 


which shape the material, and this being Gaskell’s standpoint of view he skill- 
fully worked with the tools of the morphologist as a physiologist. Be his genial 
hypothesis, elaborate enough for a theory, right or wrong, he has discovered and 
elucidated many a feature both in vertebrates and invertebrates which without 
bis tireless work would remain still neglected and unexplained. 

His book, “The Origin of Vertebrates,” published in 1908, has made little im- 
pression. Partly, it is to a great extent a reprint of numerous previous papers 
and series of assays, partly because, instead of pleading, he did not present his 
views and the long chain of argumentation in an easy manner. Lastly the idea 
of our, descent from “some Crustacean-like ancestors” was so subversive of all 
the other rival hypotheses (one of which if assumed to be right implies that 
all the others are wrong) that the unbiassed reader expects at least a clearly 
summarizing explanation why Gaskell considered the older hypotheses not only 
insufficient but wrong. 

He did not choose this line. He had too noble a character, the respecting 
admiration of his many friends, ever ready to defend his own, willing to give 
in to sound argument, but rot to be suppressed. ‘“ By their fruits you shall know 
them.” 

In reviewing Gaskell’s work one can not fail to be struck with the 
carefulness and accuracy of his observations. But the bent of his 
mind lay in the direction of generalization. A fact once definitely 
ascertained was never viewed by him as an isolated phenomenon, it was 
used as a basis for formulating some general rule. If he sometimes 
generalized too hastily, it was but the defect of his virtue. The value 
of his work was widely recognized. He was awarded a royal medal of 
the Royal Society in 1889, and at various times was the recipient of 
honors both at home and abroad. 

One or two further events of his life and some personal character- 
istics remain to be mentioned. In 1878 he proceeded to the degree of 
M. D. by thesis, but he did not at any time practice medicine. Two 
or three years after this he began a lifelong part in the advanced 
teaching of physiology in the university. His subjects were those on 
which he had himself worked, viz, the heart, the nervous mechanism 
of respiration, the sympathetic system, and, at a later date, the origin 
of vertebrates. In 1883 he was appointed university lecturer. His 
style was incisive, and he spoke on controversial points with a half- 

‘suppressed enthusiasm which was eminently infectious. 

‘In 1888 he left Grantchester and took up his residence in Cam- 
bridge. In the following year he was elected a fellow of Trinity Hall, 
and was appointed prelector in natural science in the college. Living 
in a town was not to his liking, and in 1893 he built a house (The Up- 
lands) on a hilltop in Great Shelford, opposite that on which perched 
Michael Foster’s house. Here he remained for the rest of his life. 

Gaskell attended but little the congresses of scientific associations, 
though he did not altogether shun them. He was president of Sec- 
tion I of the British Association in 1896 at Liverpool, and attended 


532 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 


the meetings of the association in Canada in 1897, and in South 
Africa in 1905, and took the opportunity of seeing a good deal of 
these countries. He was present also at one or two of the earlier 
triennial meetings of the International Congress of Physiologists. 

He did not take much interest in the ordinary business of the 
university, but he served on the university council (1907-1910), and 
if any broad question came before the senate he was fairly certain 
to be found on the Placet side. When there was real need of his 
services he did not grudge them. He served on the Royal Commis- 
sion on Vivisection, which was appointed in 1906, and the final re- 
port of which was not issued until 1912; and he was a member 
of the Mosely Commission on Education in America. 

As an undergraduate he rowed in the May races, played cricket 
and racquets, and frequented the bathing sheds. Later on he en- 
joyed an occasional set of lawn tennis, but, in general, active exer- 
cise did not greatly attract him. In recreation, as, indeed, in work, 
he took throughout life a somewhat leisurely course. He liked both 
work and play, but not to the stage of exhaustion. For some years 
he spent part of the long vacation yachting and fishing with his 
brother. His hobby was gardening. He converted a large part of 
his 15 acres of sloping hillside at Shelford into a charming terraced 
garden, the early summer display of which was the occasion of an 
annual reception to Cambridge residents. He was always glad to 
receive physiologists visiting Cambridge, and his bluff, hearty greet- 
ing left no doubt of their welcome. In the evening he liked a game 
of whist or bridge, and after college feasts he was among the first 
to settle down to a rubber. 

In the year preceding his death he was a little troubled about his 
health, but his customary course of life was hardly affected. He 
was writing a small volume on the “Involuntary Nervous System,” 
and on September 3 revised the last sheets. Early on the following 
morning he had a cerebral hemorrhage, and died on September 7 
without recovering consciousness. 


| 


atti 


é P A. Page. 
le EOL) SSS SSS 8 ote eee Sd eee xii, 18, 23, 85, 105, 106, 107, 127 
report on Astrophysical Observatory. ................-.-...-.-. 84 
SSL Eto ada ae OI ea 7, 20, 29, 32, 125 
Ackermann, A.S8. E. (The utilization of solar energy)........................ 141 
Adams, W. I., disbursing officer of the Institution.......................... xi, su 
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, National..................2..........-. 14 
Advisory committee on printing and publication, Smithsonian................ 110 
Hhemiynamical Laboratory; the Langley: 2:.-22. 02. .2 S2ee 14 
eM abitcal library WIMIHSONIAN ==... 25-<2-22.02-2l-2+22=+c 2.2 cgebce, eooeee 93 
Aeronautics, National Advisory Committee for..............2...22..-.....--. 14 
Seep Waneiey Mrhtism@iss 32) too Seeks: So. cde Se eee ee 121 
Africa and Siberia, anthropological researches in...................2.22-2---- 10 
Agriculture, Secretary of (member of the Institution)................22....... xi 
Bemrbaeepeucha NO Aron, Ole. cn nee aes tc. soe feos. 2 soe laeen. sseescee as 441 
eres) ers ee ts ees ne ee ee Na Seis Secs eo ates xii, 85, 105, 126 
SED? | EVES Ctassetete dd bapa iss reeds MA Gel a ete ee EO, ea 128 
American Historical Association publications.....................--....2-- 17, 109 
RMI OUNUN Ile ce Solent ston ats hecilacha cae ete net See eae Eee a 7, 128 
Angstrém, PAU REO Tene oe Rte See Ree en hs aS EES oR ere eter ey eats 105 
PEELE DONS, SIL HBONIAN 3. oo oP can ot we a ante eee tee < ee ae 16, 105 
Anthropological researches in Africa and Siberia. ........---..---...--.----- 10 
PEE ca emnmt nie iy ve Ee tory Se ey: Seba ad Peewee Oe. S 106 
Arid lands, progress in reclamation of, in the western United States (Beadle)... 467 
Permmniauabl alloy. 0692 fess Se Sa oe oe Ss sob uae ae ae en oe teen 20, 35 
Briain Secretly Of the ination. <- 2205-02. Jsas sqee<See none g ose cre eas xi 
Astronomy, review of, for the year 1913 (Puiseux) .........--.-.-.-.------.-- 131 
Sea Ey EIU ORSOry MOLY. tec enn ot See Sees Cee ee ne MC nc eee 23 
lubbrary-Of seen 52 ee Se ees cies wert 2 22 oon si) 
THEY OYE Fain, RP ete CaS et ee ee EES Se eS 84 
MAHER MENINICE) (2 2 soe oo aa ee See uo eRe «Seas eee ae poe o5 aes os 219 
_VRULLUE TS) RST ELSE 20" WRF pa eg ae bag es eg Sim nmbntaap eee peg a Baie, ot teats _ 187 
Borer HHpOry.. GUICeMOUSt0..(2a" saa2. ote cans ges sd eo Seas cine aoa Leaps Hf 
me Bias mdceleetronss Cousins her ttc tare acc te toes scale oe oe 177 
(BVO) aS hCoh Ea ARSes 5 ees NPR ants Pe Ape IO ee ena ASE eS 182 
Attorney General (meniber of the Institution)... -....-.-.-.-.--------------- xi 
Avery, Robert Stanton (bequest)...-.....---- BARS SEE BN eae ee 2, LL7 
5: 
Bacon, Augustus Octavius. ..-.<:-.--2 2... 22-42 ss tes <= oni nae = =  cinn= 0 5 116 
Bacteria, fossil... 2222. 52:.=<--->- Fs oA eas re ae Sie aioe eee 240 
mrmeiceland danse fo okt st cpl ee ee emai cin anima mcluls Aisiecemae 107 
said, Se Bee S a) ie SE eee sec emee + see sane tee ee 95 
[571 Seige gl 2 eh Ee Re SE aa Se a sera a. Sen CN eras See Ls I xii 


534 INDEX. 


Page. 
Baker, Wrank:. 22s... dik... Senet dei e eae eee ee xii, 18, 107 
report on National Zoolesieal Park: 1. 5-2 se ee ce 
Balloon pyrheliomebny. ea. =o o2e metab eee oer Pr rl 86 
Ballou, Howard: Mico. oo cee 2 acces ais a sine ee ee 54 
Barham, W255 2222222 ee re ee eeepc oe etn esa 59 
Bartlett, Paul Wayland... 2 2.2.22. 2 2 BE SR ee be oeret eee 118 
° Bartech; Paula 4ixess ioc: acacte eeeeoz ce aa eee See eee ae eee xii 
Basel er: Bh Se oo cas oh oie SOR sat bec oe = oe nea at ie xi, 6 
Bateson, William (Heredity) 4... ..2¢3i20 pee eee ee ey eee 359 
aC Vos Ae neo as atone begets 6 <3 cies see tee Oe REESE cic aut oe 106 
Beadle, J. B. (Progress in reclamation of arid lands in the western United 

Blabes)e..pacisice. fee. Sie 22S. Bache oooh tree ee A 467 
Bears; studies of Amerieatt.i cy. to0-.32 32g sed eee e aera ee = ee a 13 
Becquerel, Paull sac ceo- fSpephin ciyein ph AS te ea ese ee eee 108 
Beede, A. McG wc eon dian 5 tiadcie «op code ae eet ae ere ci eee mel 58 
Bell, Alexander Graham (Regent)........-.------ xi, 2, 15, 18, 20, 30, 93, 115, 116, 122 
Belle Fourche reclamation project, South Dakota........-.-.-.-.-.+-+------- 486 
Benedict; James". (26.2. SLL Sic he Pe ee eee xii 
Benjamin, Marcus. ..... ae ee ne ee ae ee ce ree re amiabe i Pre hs xii, 108 
Boagivlests.c 4 scckecnd G6 we ae reid passe aren ee ee 2:3, LOL 
Berry lid ward: Wc... 2 cee he ee ee ne ee ee 106 
Biologteatl work tn China. os oe ees apa ino ean ee al ae A 126 
Bird studies in Atbngiss.. Sale evs te estae oe See St Se ep 8 
Birds, tropical, impressions of the voices of (Fuertes)............-.----------- 299 
Binclowelder ligt. :: .cevrerekes eR. ae ee ee ego eae 106 
TUNER UR tS oS om is pic ms a cae ea a ee ee a ee ees a 85 
Bloke. Ry -K: (Submarine signaling )\ 22 2. he 5 eee 203 
Bilpen MUeene. . vs 5.5. ot See were as cae Set eee ei a ee 106 
Board. of Regents of the Institution, proceedings of.......-.....------------- 116 
Bogs? Brangs>< 232.502. c485.08 Co ee ee oe eee xii, 48, 56 
Baers: Waldemar: .os (oo 5ese.5'o. 5320 52 esate cape oe ee ee 48 
Bohemian and Slovakian speech, the area of-......-.-...-.--------------85- 432 
Boma reclamation: project, ldahos: 22052222254. 28 see eee = ee ee 478 
pond, A’ Russell 2. os eos ro. oot acoso cere = cae oh eee eee 106 
Borchardt, Ludwig (Excavations at Tell el-Amarna, Egypt, in 1913-14)....... 445 
Borneo'and:Celebes expeditions... 2. Jt 2. ..cess$s.2 eee ee 7,125 
Bose Jagadis Chinder. 02.928 + dua toe ok ae ae 107 
Boden, 1577 | ge GRID AOR ee Regen es Pee eMe aE A Pela) ae Jk 107 
Botanical explorations in.South. America... 3. ).220,.952- sane see = eee 9 
Beitish Columbia, reological work inm- 22.0 sc. ist. a ea eee ae eee 126 
Brockett, Paul, assistant librarian of the Institution.......-.--..---:--------- xi 
report on Smithsonian Library. 222 2 =.55.-4-25 carne ee 91 
Brown, S.C) on 2 Pas de oe heieie Seta eae ea ee o> Ce a xii 
mana AG: Sou ea Sh a oe Nene ae eee ss a Mine 5a See 107 
Buckingham SM. 25. <..daceaes Soe bcam abe ees a a ee ee 15, 120 
Buckland, James. >... 96 5. hoc Serene See ea ne eee 106 
Bureau of American Ethnology ..<....22.-42-. 4-5. eo ses see Stee 22 
library... 2. 22),....5222+, 42 nes 3aSOE eee 58 
publications. 2. ..¢5 5. 52..42- esse ene eee 17, 55, 109 

TOPOl 2 ac LSS ee es eee 40-59 — 


Burleson, Albert Sidney, Postmaster General (member of the Institution). . -- xi 
Bushnell, Di; Ur. cd. <-0 so. 262 enc meee cep cae one pale eee eee eee 54 


GC 
(LUSSIER NE PE eee Ae IE Gees “10h 
. poh TEE Rs rane aa ee en a a ae kaa ie a are kh ys 243 
Carlsbad reclamation project, New Mexico. ..........22.---nc2.eceeeeeeeeee 483 
Bernere lonistiivon.o Washington... <2. x. <> -ocess.5se-s8k Sie Se 9 ae 
2S SELES EES a Se aa i eS BRS EE NE PD | : 97 
Sper man lOMmem expediilons.~ ©... 20. ).s2+ les c-dc.lce. ooe ae 7 
irerremine iter VOL Elo oe eee en cE ee ae ge oe ne 31 
Chief Justice of the United States (member of the Institution). .............. xi 
mn MeA WOLK Ne = 22 oa: oS Oost 222s te Peace ea ee 126 

- Choate, Charles F., jr. (Regent)............... PE ea A et ee . XL, 2, 116 
Clark, Ao Howard, editor of the Institution. --... ~~... --¢.5.2cceeanteee xp a 18 
report on the publications of the Institution............... 104 

Spa EST 2 UR eh ag ae eigenen ders Semis se aS Det 97, 105, 109 
emer l CEE es ree SO ae ee re a A 30 
LLL 6 laos RAS See EE a Pe PRR eee Reem eer er gee ce beter xii 
1, Bigegingd 510 pS ONS 3 BA a A eel Pe Saya AES eee eae eee See 106 
apa eine ean ae eo tor eis erin Sa ae eaten. Bon' Soe Oe te deco dees Gee 107 
emer ee TP Re re on S NT e e  e Ae  ee e s 33 
Commerce, Secretary of (member of the Institution)..........-.....-....-- xi 
REBPNOliy MeaURECE (ICPCNL). 2 Siete axe Diese eae tee ag See xi, 2, 115, 116, 125 
Constitution of matter, the, and the evolution of the elements (Rutherford).... 167 
Mmisttyciion OL insect nests (SiGstedt). <2 22 as. A425 aaceces ese. bsiees sees 341 
Gontributions to Knowledge; Smithsonian: ..-.2.:-:--.2-...-2--+--.sessies8 16 
GLEE Ye st Hes Fs epee eo ee ea Pe See ee 7 
| VEATJUS Wines D558 Ae ee OE ees eee ee ea eee sooner ie rt > 106 
| OP EpLLL/ TADS CES al i cag a pacer ee 12, 13, 106, 117, 122, 124 
Bertie Vie ot ete ae are Nae Magee oer See cee) Ae we a a Etna eee xii, 106 
PTLD Sle" ip aera eae aE BY AR Slat ea Ny ie ae Set es te a = 12, 127 
5 STE las leg Cae” ee Ory rns he) ake oy okie meres 5 ie xii 
LOPES Giant le SE Se = DAE ne See ene ie ae oy me See yaNen foe Jer Sete 170 
iia, Henderson expedition in. 7. osc 222-2 2= <5 cade enn dF pee ans ae 8 
Curlew, the Eskimo, and its disappearance (Swenk)....--------------------- 325 
Reames WET OTIN ANE! Soc. 2) aoe oe nc Slam inionig.« o> oni os oe eee 56 
Gughman, Joseph Aubustine....-.2--.52----+---+ 54. 582e0 inee cee aes 109 

D. 

CNL E\ REET oi § (oe ee cle emer Comoeescecrerceer ss. Or.) xii, 97, 98, 108, 109 
Daniels, Josephus, Secretary of the Navy (member of the Institution).-.....-.. xi 
Danish-German linguistic boundary, the.......--------------++-++-+-++-++++++- 419 
Daughters of the American Revolution publications. .-..---------+--++------ 17, 110 
Way, Arthur D2. . 4.2225. - 20222 one <a eee een ieee etic s ences asec enn 106 
Mevbaunay., lis, > tse Senin as die 3S +35 - i omnes ee ene pS sane eee 107 
de Morgan, Jacques... .. 2... 2.000222 0222 er ern nnn tate Ol BS eae 106 
Neredtiatle, ©. -lyock. fesse obese. lneqaann ot hide he ine Se sara ee ee ns ieee xii 
Densmore, Miss Frances. --...--+.------- 0202 0e 22 cee eres cece teeceee ene ees 53 
Meyatre. Pemries -.. 22222252 gens o-oo. Sees Case e seca nse ieee ee 106 
Tyrekson, He N : 2: =2--2- Pe deenes Seve E S20 32 SWS ie Fete ee ee 106 
Gemedones Me seen etescnrs eked Aas tak Saat ee eee oss ee ee ee 107 
Dominian, Leon (Linguistic areasin Europe: Their boundaries and political sig- 
PAICATICOW = o> fac o> soo oats am anc te Seas waninn eins see ne 409 
Dorsey, Harry W., chief clerk of the Institution .......-.----------+-+-+++++++ xi 
Dunbar, John -B...-:=-222--2-- 2-2 S9PS32S22E a RE SE Jooetresseess 55 
Wan, Ps Pe ite so sor viet ta openness sense sae 2 Geer erin: 55 
du Pont. Ti, Colemanesie0sens5 22222222578 O S892 REO 2 irs SESE 13, 122 


536 - INDEX. 


a Page. 
Earthquake in the Marsica, Central Italy, the (Mancini)..................-.. 215 
Hast, Far, expeditions tothe: 222/05 .. -aos cece -oeeeee nee eee ee Z 
Eastman, Charles R. (Olden time knowledge of Hippocampus)......-----.--- 349 
Echinoderms; fossil; in western: New York.22-1i22 > [Sco een eee see sence 6 
Hddington; A. S.(Sir David Gull), ieee seca es eee see ee 511 
Hdwards)Charles Ty7.-25 20S Aae eS ee See Geo nin at eee Ce ee 106 
Egypt, excavations at Tell el-Amarna, in 1913-14 (Borchardt).-.........-.-.- 445 
Eiectrical-precipitation,-cleariny of 02: Dy. eee se eeece ence eee 123 
Blectricity, unitofss 2. Sa 2o oS. oars ee el ee ee 175 
Electrons: 22% 20) see Stele en eie Dae gees oa ee aes ene 174 
counting atoms and: "7S a oe oe ee ee ees = ere 177 
distribution ot aa Che Atom... <2 oe eee Ne oe ee ee ae 199 
tracks of atomis wnt 2. 2s See eee ee 182 
Elements, the evolution of the, and the constitution of matter (Rutherford)... 167 
Bilis, Carleton. 2 5.2). ~~ 5 oe heh on So nee ee eee i ire 106 
Energy,:solar, the utilizationiof (Ackermann) 2220 eee ee eee 141 
Hpby; Ch? t oe oc hie Saw as Soe cbs Se a om oe ett ero es ee ne ee 106 
Eskimo Curlew, the, and its disappearance (Swenk)...............---------- 325 
Establishment, the Smithsonian: “To <2 20 + 2. ane ee ee ee ee eee z 
Rehnolucy; Bureau of Ameticaus<* io a ee ee ieee aah ctie wetiees 3 22 
DEAT. 3-25 oe aes oe Sake aa ree eee 58 
publications S222. 20-. 2, ee eee eee 17, 55, 109 
SY 0X0) Roe Ee UN eve iS ay Ia eis ete ta stein SRS A ee ee 40-59 
Europe, linguistic areas in: Their boundaries and political significance 
(POTENT AD) oo ee are a a pani = eter eae eae See ae 409 
1A Vo ts: ab ita Da Re RH Coe oars EAST Cay aim NS Se a, 106 
Evan. William T’.* 2022 2. co Saba ees Soc bh eee a ees ee 35 
Eve, A. Bote ns ene Sidon lage 2 Sees aisle Sinisa we eaicee ite ea a ge ee 107 
Evidences of primitive life (Walcott). . ater Neha ened remem Meh Swe Foss. 235 
Evolution of the elements, the, and the constitution of matter (Rutherford)... 167 
Excavations at Tell el-Amarna, Egypt, in 1913-14 (Borchardt). .....-...----- 445 
Executive committee of the Board of Regents of the institution, report of-- --- - lil 
Expeditions, Siarthypnian. 222000 372 sore - cde se eee eee Bates ap 125 
Borneo and Celebes: Guise pe ha a ee 7 
Cuban oo es shapes Os ci 22a dds Gok acer, Sie ee Meee en 8 
faland: of Timor: ¢ ..<2 12055 tara qsoc ds 2 su ee oe 12 
the Far East): of) 0.12 ere 2 BSR aS ABs Rae te EAC 2 ae 7 
Bxplorations.and: researches... 2 =. +... .52.- 2: 207 ccs SUI A Pe 4 
in South America, batadnically 4: 20'UJ0U ps) ee ee Ses 9 

F. 
Pairbanks, Charles; W..(egent) + ..25-4ses5e0- ss ree aa eee xi, 2,116 
Bersusen, John ©) 2)... Sales Se Ses epee ose creat eee 108 
Hers. Scott. (Mesent) i. <....2455-56-55555 B aialhsayancm am acs ae ae eee oem xi, 2 
ew kes, a. Walter. 3 oso cescaeeus oes eee = sk ese eens xii, 22, 40, 58, 105 
inances:of the Institution: 23 3 /52.-s oe Use eee ee ee 2, ANT 
Fimmish speech, ‘the atéa:of... 245%. 45554554 nees ate eee 425 
Fog, clearing of, by electrical precipitation 2.0.2). 4:26.25 s2b-d pew ieb eee =e 12, 123 
Word, James: s2....3e 2.0.85 ag Saauoe seats poe ee ae ee 107 
Foreign depositories of U. 8. Governmental documents. ......------------+- 66 
Forestry, the place of, among natural sciences (Graves)... ..---------------- 257 
Hope) bacteria: 2/0 5 ok sank, tee | ca pat ees Hh 240 


echinoderms in: western New York. 22-45-22 522-2 eee eee eee 6 


INDEX. 537 


BemrreenaniceirKMOW i 2522.02 uo Fi) Reeve hese oo ee 
vertebrate, in Montana. SEIN 15 by A auis eae ee 7 
MMMM VOUT cans Fo. 52 Sy eo Aes do scree See ee eee 1.) 22,50 
’ 
le pee ie tere fysbe ees 8 he) AT le lo abis Wea xii, 85, 105 
Frachtenberg, Bod 65 os. teaise hE te bie on one? neha saber xii, 48 
Pranco-German linguistic boundary.....2 2/2222.22022) ee ee 413 
Le EL DEES Ui eS a a Pe RP ee OP 19, 35, 124 
eM ALON] GG ors 8 2-2 as. 2e ss ats Sx ea Sole ee 19, 124 
Fuertes, Louis Agassiz (Impressions of the voices of tropical birds) <<. 700s 299 
G. 
TGS Uh to ae ee ee i ORIN IRR RRM Mt ieee oar 2 J 55 
Garrison, Lindley Miller, Secretary of War (member of the institution)........ a, 
Peaerh WW alcor Holbrook (Lanciey).......2.-..02202 2.2.22. 523 
Pe emeremcrcteiet Sons ye eee en ae ee eee xii 
Geological explorations in the Rocky Mountains..........:.................. 5 
Seen te SPEC CONMMOI nice. Soc Seen he eee he ee 126 
German speech, the area of...---...2.2.22..... Sais 7 Mae tives Sant eee ee 418 
oly Lie ip SATUS SESSA ee il I a ag ce es Mana a aoe he 2 xii 
eal, De Lancey...::-..-..- ES ee ees ere ein es SA ee Reema: ts 5 5 5s xii, 57 
Oop LEAS 2S i ai inh ieee elo rte fil, ai ie aed tien Se eibraasie tise 97 
Gill, Sir David (Eddington)............... Se ee ante OS eae es oo eee 511 
Burs neodere Nicholas, tribute t0-1.......2ca-22-. + ssl. neck ee eee 26 
ememicrioms NAMES gan Pore ee eo. ee ee oie iia fen a eeiceaeees 7,30, 109 
Goetze, Frederick A.......- EPROM See cede ese ee Ree Sy Cone ee gfe Sa be 
(CS OCI “Es, 0s Blas sae ie aaa a apa, te aus Seage ea a ceca RE ee ec eee AED a xii 
Government documents, international exchange of...................-.-.--- 24 
Governmental documents, United States, foreign depositories of............... 66 
0 ESSE ESE (2 ig ig AAI 5 6S lac a ea Aer a A) Nn 106 
Grand Valley reclamation project, Colorado... -.5)5-<. 62-22-2222 est eee 477 
Graves, Henry S. (The place of forestry among natural sciences)............ 257 
hes SFTED. 0) oe ara aia UO A ao een ehh AS ES MON Sic rg EE et 107 
Gray, Andrew. ..... Behn ena oe a ge Lae ee eA oe Ta et oe ee 107 
Gray, George (Regent). . Grease ode setos caug eae ees daar xi, 2, 115, 116, 117, 125 
Peers Mawar bras Cotte eee oe eae ae eek one ote ns see see 98 
Gregory, Thomas Watt, Attorney General (member of the institution)......... xi 
GnNe ll wibconardsC ver sca ae ee ee res ies a aie ec paren ere mere xi 
oe on International Catalogue of Scientific Literature.. 101 
TL TERMS OS G7 OO 6 uss te Se end ga eR deh apogee) Aah mY A xii, 55, 109 
He 
Peer SIMCONOEQUONE) mee cc. a pm nt.os2 sae moe en 3 be reais iete ten ie eee 2 
REPRRIOTG MET Sat cee ee ce eres ies 22, eC tn, 2 ite etre ae omit Sere 43, 55, 109 
ates GyCorpein ie. cee hn eae ane aa ere as ip oe i A rin ioral ee eae 106 
eamititon. aimed (PeqQUeel)- .0-~- Sa. ao<.o6 sgoevin sw Poona oe 2 
fbeemeerati Wires Be El on Se bes ante octane ovate Sie ee ee ee ee 12, 125, 127 
Peieyrra risen CRUSE STNG oy Se ee ana pe cea re a a 13, 125 
EteieteerenT OHM Pe oo leo oe Senco eile oe a Seti i oe re xii, 47, 55, 59 
pee gen ee is cen e Saou ain oe eae ae Se eee weal Ona ni 97 
Henderson, John B., jr. (Regent). AeA ere epee oh xi, 2, 15, 20, 32, 34, 116, 119, 122 
Henderson expedition i BID OU Das aetna seek eae ree eS eee 8 


538 INDEX. 


Page 
Hetherington, Clark ‘Wi... . 2-02. . stateless ates: Sees | eee eons 108 
Howitt, oN. Bac 2 tins, 25244. J ee ee ee ee ee eee xi, 43, 54, 56 
ie ye;GeorgerG: eis os tes nob sl ea eee aac nena eee eee ee 30 
Hill, J. H., property clerk of the Institution BP ee Pa os Rte) eRe | ee: a 2 xi 
Eppacnnpus, olden time knowledge of (Hastman).....-..--.---£ a.) -ssadss 349 
History; American, additions to collection of... - —- ssJaehed-steteeeel Aaeeee es 31 
Hodges Ba Wiss. os on. aoe ee ek eee ca seenee ee eee eee aoe xii, 18 
Feportveli<. 2,5. gees. 3 DO eee eee reas LW ets eee 40 
Hodgkins fund... 240i pikt oe ey te ainda y-cdes Eeoteeriaie f: cise ee A oes - ogy 
Hodpkins, Thomas:G,.(beqtest) .).ostc.2,o- 22 eee eee ee eee 233 
Higiermesss Mion: oc oe <5 toca ssi Oe SEN re 106 
Hollis, Henry Mrench(Repent i135. os eee ee eee xi, 2,116, 125 
Holmes” Wilbianin aes 49 oS oie ene a eae ae ee EN RET ORNS Xi, 22, 50 
Hooker. BlonsHrs:, ome 205 22.6.2 4 a So ae ee Be ee ae ee eee 13, 122 
Hopper; Litthery2.2 425522 - (288. A055 SC EE See me 108 
VOUS AWE: ait) Sac oi ee hate ae ee ee a eee EN ei: xii 
Houston, David Franklin, Secretary of Agriculture (member of the Institution) . Dit 
Howards Ty) Os ssoiss.0 2 oS ons Cate eee nes meee ac eee Dee ae ee xl 
Hrdlicka, Neo Raa ee ae ard Oh ea EN os Meee Oe ene Os kan: x1i; 10, 106 
iumphraysy Dns 22.25 LOO ag oe ce oe Deeds ee Seen ee eee 120 
Hungarian eee thewereaofre. 5 oo... at Boe eee ee eee oe 434 
Hansaker. Jo 2. icc cd Ree ioe otc oe on Beer ee eee ee 120 
Huntley reclamation project, ‘Montana. ..0.0-0. 2 oe ae ose ee er ee 480 
iB 
LEO Ey 1h S01) 1c! Cp neenRey ae ees ae Megane eR RU ae Fo Op arr A) A BAAR SRS A 1 9 23558 
inEset nests, construction. of (SjGstedt a. 2 ee ee ee 341 
Interior, Secretary of the (member of the Institution).-.............--------- xi 
International Catalogue of Scientific Literature............---...----+-----+- 24, 101 
Bixchang eas. 1/5 whee Ss ca Sig a a ke ee eo 24, 60 
Interparliamentary exchange of official journals.........../----.-----------+- 68 
Tialo-Germam linguistic boundary; the. 25.22.7206 seo eeeseke nee eee 422 
Tialo-Slavic linguistic‘ boundary, thes: aa: s-4 hae es Se ee 424 
Ji 
Janmarin, Gustayisns o-563 25.0 tac acidic oe eee e Bee eee 106 
Jennings, Hennoem< ot 22 55.05.ced3 oilian octane te cee eee eee 13, 123 
Jewett, Frank B. (Some recent developments in telephony and telegraphy).. 489 
Jahneon “Puncam esse sk os ee ew eects ae Sas ee 107 
Tolyy En o> << les Sek oh ce aan oh re ie ce 107 
ones, 1b. Riess See ches So ee eee 107 
andds, Neil Mic: duc corse 8 2 ae sa ea te Ree 51, 52, 53 
K. 
Kanokort Kose Mie oa ID eee 106 
Koller: Henty Ge ics7osrt coves sz Soe ee 5 ee 107 
Relig, Mis. OR oe ee eo ee See eee ae pee ene gee 59 
Klamath reclamation project, Oregon and California...........-....---------- 485 
Knowles; We Ait ce Sa Ree Ss Se ee ee xii 
Horen, Capt, Goes Wen c=: 5 oye clowns oe Se eno a ee 7, 128 
IKPOCD ERAN Dates egot nc) ore ee ee Bee ie ne Ue Seem hd Cea evel aie pam 2, ates aca SF td 54, 55 
Kunz; Georve 832 2. 02055 Ss ee ee eee 13, 123 


a 


INDEX. 539 


L. 

Page. 
Labor, Secretary of (member of the Institution).....................-.---.-- xi 
1) DMSO STE 0 A sea i i ae eae a MM om or GN 118 
Pee oncuG, Hraneig7 eck uss ck Me es tig htt Sea eee xii, 44 
1 LL LI aS ee ea ee AF a Lied 5 Oa ae REO. SCCM hel Dost en 55 
Lane, Franklin Knight, Secretary of the Interior (member of the Institution). . xi 
Langley Aerodynamical Laboratory. ......................-. cc etree 14, 117, 120 
Haneiey acroplane, flighisiof: 2.2.5 .22.0 nc oe cc cc ene Be Eee ACRE 121 
Baneley, 2. N-( Walter Holbrook Gaskell). /:20de. 70 2p Ve 523 
Lansing, Robert, Secretary of State (member of the Institution)............... xi 
eaEenice wb cujamiilic BD 22.65.05) Say oe a ees. ms My 13, 123 
MER PE as 3 lo oS Sa NSS Rae Mb og SR So I So oe xii, 58 
Mechuresin the National. Museum... << .<.222.cneessescs Te ™.. 36 
Menrrart a rodericic. 1). gous SOI. 8 LOLs 2 TNO PUR Sg Oo are xii 
Hbetignta  CUOREMSOTINDN Ss 2080S SEINE SS ees Sk op SI Yt ee 18, 91 
iierprinntzye, evidences of. (Walcott) ..<-:22e2v0cceeeeree OE). wt 235 
PeOAMNSPOCMAs tsk 2 tedden See Ss See oes Se ee 173 
iienum nephriticum (Safford )........22.. 4.24220. a2 540202222: 2d SontyioeS f 271 
Linguistic areas in Europe: Their boundaries and political significance 

UTR TINAAY OS Sorc bw oo 3 geen tt ERS os Ro x 409 
ritle, Arthur Deo: 205 22 2c. oo. SSS Re eA 6s ae RE 13, 122 
Medco. Henry Osbot (Regent): -2 2 22.o2cc.~ 225 eeniee s LE A cece wckewe xi, 2, 125 
Lower Yellowstone reclamation project, Montana, and North Dakota........ 481 
LL GTC APN AEE Pe ee es ee ee ee ek Cee re eA bk eee ee ce 108 
yon, J. Crawford: .2-22.~. ©. SS AR Veo t ORNS AE ges Nt be 3 fae See 20, 29 

M. 

McAdoo, William Gibbs, Secretary of the Treasury (member of the Institution). x01 
Li@ TE aV6 (Gyo) tal cpl ED nt eee es ee NE I Rae ho Sy hea Mie i I ede ONE SE ENS, ote 105 © 
Seren taESed NEVES TINLEY: CHRONO etter OS ROE TIE Te ome carats a are 2 ae 440 
Remecrvio. Wennet hk. 9s es 9 ee a eee ee ie ee eh Pe eel eee 105 
TSG! 106 PL & il a te ag Pt i Sr net par eh Ae einen he Ge 107 
Pes ItRvAStORy OL OSs 2 Pee ec wc cee et ee io ee ree ae ee 10 
Mancini, Ernesto (The earthquake in the Marsica, Central Italy) ..........-- 215 
Li ie cigs I XG) eae tea RI A a SESS oh eee AS pee gS Ae Fat rears 126 
Mcnemrsccre Ml: no oN ae aes tee oak fe ee aes eee 108 
Marine we evolution of Carly... 222.52-55.ss2s.- 22 22st eee een ee =e 247 
Marshall, Thomas R., Vice President of the United States (member of the In- 

PAV EGOR oe oe one ede So tom ab eens dpe cameewa ete mene eee xi, 2,116 
Marsica, Central Italy, the earthquake in the (Mancini)........-..-..------- 215 
2 eee Aan Ee Sse by ‘eesg abbey lt Is.eehet worn aiee 30 
Matter, the constitution of, and the evolution of the elements (Rutherford).... 167 

EPANSIOFMALION OL... -cskcce. . -- nnid oe HI is ee ee ee ale 183 
SOREN IW gee ce eg ea el oes Sate see eee eer Rees xii, 97, 105 
Maynard, George C........2.-.----. 22-2 222222) eee een eee ences e et ae ee xii, 97 
Morriane.C. Har. 2226 5 Sass a 2a es a et ae ee 13, 125 
NOMerrE TU xGys sek oS Sass SE ESD eterno en an ie xii, 18 
Michelson, Truman. -22.-2-22-22--- 32.2. = 2 fo oe ae eae oe ee xii, 46 
Milk River reclamation project, Montana...-....-----------------++-++-++-+-+-- 480 
Mellie, Promton G2 /22-2- seh ee ee- = -h-ee e e  oo ae 108 
MiaMer Gerrit Sires eae ssoee eee ee eg ee eee xii 
Minidoka reclamation project, Idaho. ..-.-.--------------+-++-+-+-+++5+0+t: 479 
Mooney, Jalles:2: 2... 22-222 2-0 2 eo te eer oe seeeeeeeceee xi, 42, 58 


540 INDEX. 


Page. 

Mibore; Clarence Bis... assoc: so ects peters Se eae ee 30 

Moorehead, Warren 152222 22 2 oscars ett me sre ee ee ne 54 

Mosony!, Eemilios..-. 2.0025 0-2 225. se > ogee pe ao Re 30 

Murie;, James Ri? 222 -2----3---- = = Bone ASS re Ae See en A BS 54 

Music, Indign. i000 oo 7 Soi oe sec eee ee ae neta te 23 
N. 

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.............-.--.--.-.--.----- 14 

National. Gallery of Artsi3 u=sjee}-ad e-em ete Be ee = eee 20, 35 

National Museum, thew. 22 55.2242. o44 sees siete assert ee 20 

collectiona.s. 2252.42: 4. Bop eaa eee ee 29 

Library ...2- 2 226235 sia sous pee Gen eee 94 

meetings, congresses, and special exhibitions..........-...- 36 

publications: . oot. .c. joes ose eae 2 eee 17, 108 

T@POVGs6<.- 5522. ee ses oe 3 eee ae ee ee 28-39 

VISIONS. 2352 cc. s6-- done aes beer eee. See ee 39 

National ‘Zoological Park. : 0.12.4 2.222 1.25225 cco nee s sae mol ee 25 

animals,inthe.eollegtion 22 - qsaue Eh 224. eee Soe 74 

ih 9: ee Re eR Aten (Aertel Uh a Ne Be YS 72 

improvements. «055. 2022-0) ee a eee 78 

TIDTARY .2 s = 22 2s sae 2 ope Hos aa CR Pee eee 100 

NCQGSb. << aiesd ads: Hoadeys tebe ete eee 81 

183] 0) Gee ee PES OTE Oe ese GSS ioe tras 52k Sev: 72 

Natural Nistory of man. «32.2.5, 554-05-532).. Shen pe a ee ae 10 

Nawalle (Md OuarG <a. lao ain oS Sen ioe aie ie Aleem ets Ae on ea 108 

Navy, Secretary of the (member of the Institution)..............-...-.--.---- xi 

Neila: atars Sd <6 apenas ot cots ope Ree ie ee eRe NGS eee amet YL. ee 136 

ANGerOlO ey. ax Sta 3 Sa Sais ers Se ek Relea he ae ee 26 

Nests, insect, construction of (Sj6stedt)..-...--.2 2525-0 .02.+ upp abe eee 341 

Neumann Pelix.. - 2. 522205 os us eae Soe ee cae SS cle etc 54 

Nienols: Mig. Mrances S32. 2.s5o0): Stace vas ee eels Se tae ie ee tae 55, 109 

North Platte reclamation project, Nebraska and Wyoming..........--..-.----- 481 

Nucleus,’charge carried by the: ...i3-- 225.58 4-3 42 oS eee ee 192 

Nutting, Charles Cleveland. 2-2. ..2 fc 2220-5 206-2. 22a ee 109 
Ds 

Official journals, interparliamentary exchange of...............-..---+---+----- 68 

OP Bicia -Mdaward Poon 2222. ieb0 ce eee bee teapeceeeeceeaceee eee ee meee 107 

. Okanogan reclamation project, Washington............-.2-.22.-2222-2.00-- :. 486 

Olden time knowledge of Hippocampus (Eastman)... -- Dee eeenin te Dea eRe 349 

Orland reclamationiproject; California 22+ Gicuse.o2 1208. 25. 20L Io! see aT 

Qscillator, submarine telegraph, uses'of-0--2-22- 22s. -.- =. ~k POUR ee 203 
Be. 

Palmer, Maj. George Henry... 2. 0. ..).,..-2 5358-42 ae 0 eae ee ee 29 

Panama-California Exposition, anthropological exhibits at...........-.-.----- 10 

Parker. “Arthur G. 32. ce sic bh es eee ee ee ae 54 

Parsons, William Barclay... 2.225.020: 22: week athe < POR ee oe ee 13, 123 

Pearse: Ae. iis. 2 Fee fated La rt ee ee 106 

Bhanton circuits: 32560225523. 05s ee ee aiceht aheees 492 

Pianos, collection of, in the National Museum.................+...---<.----- 31, 119 

Beast, Miss Mlorence Miso. 322 2.05.5: -ciasew none Caos Se ene ee Oe 40 


Pe rear ie AFCN, OFS. 5 oon Va suet | side “26 
ee ener. Bt So A ne Oe pee 
Foon buey T. and George. W. (bequest)... 4020202 Sta bore ah aueelior a 3, 19,117 
Postmaster General (member of the Tnstitution)2—2. 2. .iiatuad) eae pe xi 
Pre-Cambrian Algonkian North America.................................... 236 
Precipitation, electrical, clearing of fog by...................22.---........ 12 
President of the United States (member of the Institution). ..°2. Sicese aes xi 
Primitive life, evadences of (Walcott).:.2..5.....-.-....2.. 0.§08. oie ee 235 
Perea alloimentn fons = 2 oe ew en 17 
Printing and publication, Smithsonian advisory committee on............... 18,110 
Proceedings of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution......__.. 116 
Progress in modern zoology, some aspects of CWalsomyost 220i) Sag te Oe Bias 395 
Baiiications of the Institition..2.i2:2.-5-.2..63..le te eset 15, 104 
TESTES ct re Eta ne ec i ne nee Ds fre 106 
(Review of astronomy for the year 1913).......................... 131 

ee ene tn YANO ON ooo is as oie dacs Sonn ety eaten an Fa PO 86 

R. 

ae yee Miche ete 2 a). 8) oss. sede ee VE SRE 106 
Bi earn Pe ies <A Cee ge Seed Annakin! ire cor pet 23, 86-90, 126 
Pe eareacuivemlementss cx. < ici Gaede eset ere aot es Ue as We 196 
madtotelophony and -telegraphiy:...25-<u2-0---'s2. 222. (St Bee 503 
Rathbun, Richard, Assistant Secretary of the Institution.................... xi, xii 
MEPOR MOI = 3a 2A ae se sree. us SOUR i eee 28-39 

Braman Mirenachatd \. Sss selec ate Sees <2. 5. ecu acs a 97 
RRM ewEad AU eter tte 2's soe Sw GIS ede py ae IER 7, 29, 32, 125 
Heme ee MO Ose 2525 ees Poe as ch Oe esgic ee xii 


Reclamation of arid lands in the western United States, progress in (Beadle).. 467 
Redfield, William Cox, Secretary of Commerce (member of the Institution)... . xi 


Re ea eh ec onimee sso HOOD ae ae SO nae naa Seee eae Le 105 
Regents of the Institution. ............- oo BR el ae He SA a Fons te Re aa thal | 
proceedings.of the Board.of =~ <.-s5222. 222522. 116 
Pere OUI Le Peet han ances oes coda se see shoes Sealy eee se ee 108 
Repel Cae EU DECUEn Ne tpa>= secu. seen. Sadhu a Soe eh sane Eee ee 4 
PEPOnICn PONHOEAMON cet. 5122-500 s = SEL byl h Lees oie 12/122 
esearc ben emploratonsiand. Asso os ech naan esta av canes wk ee Ee ee 4 
Pere Mane sEr eerie) Stes ne SS Ss wate oad ae OA «ee ee 5 
ieheess Walliams Jones: (bequest) =< 2 sckeo.e ees eo wots Se 2,3 
pe ret arin COW 2 Fog tetne aso tnsins vedo edn Sales aoe sek Se eee 97 
OWENS OO DET bec pine cg eowa crew qa os seen Seas. - ah BODOPE Et eee xii, 8, 97 
Rio Grande reclamation project, New Mexico and Texas... ......-----.....- 483 
inaneris: finest. Wi (Resent) <2. 2... .- 2. -Peeeedeee ses Bee xi 2,15, 116, 122 
Propanson. Login. 223555 enon sets asia} OSS oe STE: His eA CL ees 108 
froekhill: William Woodvillesns. i. < 03% cn Ses ais SRS i Sas se en Se 27 
Rocky Mountains, geological explorations in the. .........-...--.----------- 5 
Roger, L. (Vaccines). - - . - - Bal heat Si wi teapot te ante ane SEES Se: eee 459 
Wie DN SS 5 5 xen cloiaremnwifataers otras tsig PEALE Ree SUPE RE BE 9, 97 
eR A NW LOR Bean proto nai ear nm tee ea ai ard Hi Il 2 ee ere 56 
famanian speech, the area.ot. ....-.-.<---=--10-2-48+-2cee4-= 50-5 eh tae ee 436 
Rutherford, Ernest (The constitution of matter and the evolution of the ele- 
CUVEIE GS) is cm eR Ie eee RS ime Pg ee Cure ic crn 167 


542 INDEX. 


S Page. 

Safford, W. E..(Lignum nephriticum) . -: .5: 2.242222. 42.222 2-ds2 6b eee 271 
Salt*River reclamation project, Arizona... <2 2722 5225.-42 SgaGetk Hae Teed 475 
Sanford) George H...(bequest). .....-<e@oiuiisdall Damek te Seen Dees! eee 3 
Schmit-Jensen; H. O. . 2.2.22 225s 2.5 +=> =. Ree A SE See eee ee 108 
Sehuchert, Charles: (.2 <2. gs.2-2545 2245 5¢ g8 an pee ae ee 107, 109 
Schiick, 'V-:... .- +--+... [ed selan se. SBS Ae ee) Bele Tees Ee ae 10 
Seidmore, Miss Eliza WR... .--~..>-.5+ 22a < 2h Oe) Reames ei eee 31 
Scott, Hrmest Kilburn -.2.: -.- 24 5s.iciao=5a0- e500 oa s 22 ee ae 106 
Seudder, N.P....-.<- .teee aioe ae ae ee ee er eee Dera xii 
Secretary of the Institution.............. xi, xii, 1, 5, 15, 16, 97, 105, 116, 122, 125, 126 
Secretary’s statement to the Regentg/7).\n. abwaren sintoa yeeoes Ab ue ee 118 
Serbian speech, the area of. ..-. 2. 5... .-5-s2c0e-2----s eee i Jose begs 438 
Slepherd, Fo. S.2c.2ag2'o- Shetek ee oie eae erent, ee eee 106 
Sherman, Althea R,... 2+. .+¢0n.2 28 eee aR eee wae Si eee eee 106 
Shoemaker, Co W age ciace wn tenes ae ieee ee eee Led eters xii 
report on International Exchanges... --.-......--.----------- 60 

Shoshone reclamation project, Wyoming... 52. Do. ecs eae ee ee 488 
Bhuteldt, Robert: W ..25.4¢ saa ween 5 oe coe ree ee a Sk 97 
Siberia and Africa, anthropological researches in................-----+5-<+-- 10 
Siberia, western, expedition t0in..<<-....< <4. -c-% +--+ <-n eet OSeee SHOE 127 
Signaling: submarine (Blake)-...:....-..5.--2+--=..284aenalot. hae sodasier 203 
Sjéstedt, Y. (Construction of insect nests)... .---- Seal) sunereton th - Cede aey * 341 
Slevene speech, the area, Ofs. soe... 4-5 552555425554 on. APIS ooo eee 438 
Smillie: TW eet Seas aoe al Rog aet a xii 
Srilj leo Varies lo GA UCKI) i.)02 Gorm ers a sees aa ee 2 
Solar energy, the utilization of (Ackermann), ........~..-+...-.---.3-ab- 00 ft 141 
Solar radiatiqny\. gi saSeeang. doteie Led ad Farm wags aelt ortodaral fees de 23, 86-90, 126 
South America; botanical explorations in sscasc2) jdorieheeis rae). cee: BE 9 
Siwerbiy; Arthur is see race i sn wy ae oe ee ee 7, 32, 126 
Spectra, Tights. 2 22 Sage a an inna ed ans sas ee eee 178 
Springer, Frank... 222: ss---id-leeet-ed! Jo-pumthess te nd: fait a ieee 6, 12, 127 
Standley. Pauli. .\5- saaeeaee 4 pag a ee Ser o ag ee e 109 
Stars ‘and nebulee- pc. sac eee cca 5sncc4s aac Sacco eee hoe Peres 136 
State, Secretary of (member of the Institution)... -...............252-.-.--- xi 
Stejneger, Leonhard «2... .5 bs cascnse+ess-ocess- sn ees 5 oun AOU ee eee xli, 18 
eitevensom, Mins, MiG ice Ae 6. a ee a ea ea 45, 56, 58, 59 
Stewart, Lowis Bi. 2 cco Secs 5s oka oa oe el wee ee ee 107 
srone: (Charles: Av. 32 eaceaseate sass ~ 95.960 chis 3 Se ee ee 13, 122 
Stoneppwulliam: J. (Revent)|- ae. oe Ss ot oe ae ee xi, 2, 15, 116, 122 
Storrow, James J.......<... [9u%9-0 fei adres we Sse eeerelnee obi 13, 122 
Stratigraphic studies in central Tennessee. .....--------/0:-2-------2220--5- 6 
Strawberry Valley reclamation project, Utah... -.......-.-..---.--2+-+-+--s+ 486 
Sirone. hy. Moo. aci.e eee ak corey ate earns eo rr enisyy. Ah 108 
Structure of:the atom -::,2)....22..:...\.c.. eee esetueigas: Leon oa Sasa 187 
Submarine signaling (Blake) s ois. cc2eciesd.nenccin ages aonee.. 4 SOee ee poe 203 
Suw River reclamation project, .Momtama, 12.07 <<) wiseva ee tty tees sige alee we 481 
rc LILA SUITELS TACO) Oh A 00: lea RRS 2) MMe a ne a AN ee SS 134 
Swanton; John RS. << 52. ..5.<5< 5 Sac ae vee ous 2s ee Ree ee xii, 43, 55, 109 


Swenk, Myron H. (The Eskimo curlew and its disappearance)..-..-.------- 325 


INDEX. 543 


EF: 
Page. 
Telephony and telegraphy, some recent developments in (Jewett). ......... 489 
Tell el-Amarna, Egypt, excavations at, in 1913-14 (Borchardt).............. 445 
Geliuride “Association: .::..2:...:2tR0s? bos anos. soon) noliamalson 128 
Tennessee, stratigraphic studies in central.................................. 6 
| LUISE TE Con A ee elation Ge 108 
(Atleiia) 22522 5252) 25552 Site ee Ss en antes eine aap 219 
| US Gnaa 0 1 ips eae cae eben er ee seer ren ere eee | 106 
gamer, Island of, expedition: < / 2.5.2_ 42222-22227: 21 SOREN aT ies 12, 127 
ieee ae td Ce akbe tS = 2 73222: OR Oe se ee 33 
Beaiiuemation of matter” <: 21.1221 - Sk irt< scenes Ry 183 
Treasury, secretary of (member of the TSU GWLON ee ees ee he ty eae xe 
Tropical birds, impressions of the voices of CRHERIER ee mee ae ree eee 299 
Truckee-Carson reclamation project, Nevada....................-.......... 482 
GN I eget a eee tye Ita CLEC lo Lal EI eee SNS ga 118 
Ds. 
LL DS) OS SE eee emerenntaer gies Pent snes Re GIR Seni mooy) Ne 6 
Umatilla reclamation project, Oregon... ... 2.22.22. 2-2 e cece eee e eee cece ee. 484 
Uncompahgre Valley reclamation project, Colorado....................-..... 478 
Utilization of solar energy, the (Ackermann). .......................2.-.--- 141 
Vi. 
Pi aIeE eC EOD GI ao Ae. oc Soe a s eet a, SRS Sees ee ae 459 
Serr nans sh Wawdand <2. o5 ft od og tae ye eee ce ae 7 
(SLED, EVES BCC 22 SRR ese io ane Sa ened ese Bees 18, 94 
matieataefortisin Montana. - 62222. o oe cick Lc cee sisal a ee 7 
Vice President of the United States (member of the Institution)............- xi 
Voices of tropical birds, impressions of the (Fuertes)..............--.-------- 299 
W. 
Walcott, Charles D., Secretary of the Institution.......................----- x 
xii, 1, 5, 15, 16, 97, 105, 116, 122, 125, 126 
(Evidences of primitive life)...............2.-2--.-.-2-- 235 
te obi. Mra Charles D3. .220o fe sa Sots ees coe eee ees eee 5, 18, 94 
Walker; J.. Bernard.........-.<: SOs oe scaaen ae eee ee ee eee 106 — 
War, Secretary of (member of the Institution)... ..25.2.2.22.2....22 12. 4.32 2ae xi 
IGM y CPO aR el: ee oS oases Peron Satie tos Poe pare Sate oe me oR 105 
Senin aterew sD. Chegent): <2 a c2.cccces Jets eae sae =e eee ae xi, 2, 116 
ct pe PEN os kets oes oon a 2 hee dro oi Sis Saeed ci ee ee xii 
White, Edward Douglass, Chief Justice of the United States (member of the 
EDS TUE! 0) 6) 6 SRL ee ee ean cook re Re et etches NE x, LEG 
Prmniarie Merry saatense sen. Sea... 22a CSE ee se ee ee eee 34 
Wilson, Edmund B. (Some aspects of progress in modern zoology)........-..-- 395 


Wilson, William Bauchop, Secretary of Labor (member of the Institution)... - xi 
Wilson, Woodrow, President of the United States (member of the Institution) . xi 


remlgeke “HMerbene ws: facee Cot 8 oars a8 « Soo eee ee See ee eee ee 29 
Damen ce lemra olny. 86i143 2-952! Sie ies ag se ioe ene cleo eee eee 501 
TT Ss F000 eR SSO. eee eM Perea Ro eis 490 
UV IGHIO ETN ee ete te a as Sy te gree etc al ee ag ce ee 109 
SCLC IN 2 1 010 a ce Pe ee AR et SRS age RSA orchat ey Ree eee 20, 31, 119 
Perera MAL Beye eo at eo af esi ORR 22 he ai oe aS oes Cate 34 


Perebstay. Orvillost 5); san. ty nse tenn caiy ser Gat <a cle ate eae apis =e eee ene 107 


544 INDEX. 


¥. 
Page. 
Yaeger, William Dy:..-22 2+ 2d icheecwl ioe cys pea pee ee 113 
Yakima reclamation project, Washington. ...........---...------ 2 «ce 487 
Yuma reclamation project, Arizona and California.............-....-..-....- 476 
Z. 
Pa A Wee cones ca ans cee ee ee ee ee a 14, 15, 105, 107, 121 
Zetek, JAMS 3 nyo. Ss 2 ssa Foci is shen hin me ee wren ee 32 
Zoological Park, National 2.225232 ..23e ce yee ee ee 25 
animals in the colleciton.:. 22.2 22:2 5. 4n- wes 74 
Pls. .c.. 12. se hagts Se ee ees ae 72 
EIN POVCMCNIS Soop at pi, a Se el eee 78 
FUDPAEY 5, occas, each seis aera eee 100 
NOedg, 5 ode Lee pee See ee ee 81 
TOPORE 2 2 soos SoS ok aioe yee ee eee SI Seeger 72 
Zoology, modern, some aspects of progress in (Wilson)..........-..---------- 395 


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